starfishstar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
starfishstar) wrote2015-12-24 05:29 pm
starfishstar) wrote2015-12-24 05:29 pm
Buds and Bells and Stars without a Name, chapter 5 (final chapter)
BUDS AND BELLS AND STARS WITHOUT A NAME
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Summary: Where Greg could have sworn an oak tree had stood a moment before, there was now instead a very posh man in a long, dark coat.
…In which Greg Lestrade has lunch in a city garden, and gets way more than he bargained for.
Characters: Greg Lestrade, Sherlock, cameos from Mycroft, Mrs Hudson, Donovan, Moriarty (sort of) and Redbeard (sort of); eventual Sherlock/Lestrade, but can also be read as mostly gen
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
CHAPTER FIVE
Greg came to with a sick headache pulsing in his head.
“Erggh…Sherlock,” he mumbled.
“Here,” came a weak voice nearby.
Greg’s eyes snapped open. “Sherlock!”
Where Greg could have sworn there’d been a half-felled tree when last he’d looked, Sherlock now lay on the ground. Even in dimness of the dell, Greg could see dark blood staining the crisp white shirt Sherlock wore beneath his coat.
“Bloody hell!” Greg shoved himself to his feet, groaning at the spinning in his head, and stumbled towards Sherlock, ducking down between the sticky strands of the web that separated them. He fell to his knees at Sherlock’s side, fumbling his shirt open to assess his wounds. “God, Sherlock, we have to get you to hospital, need to see if I can get mobile reception out here –”
“Hudders,” Sherlock mumbled. Then, louder: “No hospital, they’re for mortals, take me to – Mrs Hudson.”
“Mrs Hudson? Who the hell is that?”
“Just through the woods,” Sherlock said faintly. “Not far. Trust me…”
And Greg, because he had clearly lost all common sense the day he met Sherlock Holmes, did trust him. He got his arms under Sherlock’s shoulders and levered him up from the ground as best he could. Sherlock groaned and cursed, but managed eventually to get his feet under him and stand. Together they made their slow and painful way out through the web and up to the lip of the grassy dell.
“Just that way,” Sherlock mumbled, nodding vaguely into the woods ahead of them. “Doesn’ much matter which direction, ‘s the intention that matters…”
“Right,” Greg grumbled, “because that makes a lot of sense.”
But he hooked his arm more firmly under Sherlock’s armpits and half-led, half-dragged him onwards through the dark woods that smelled earthy and strange, redolent with the musk of leaf litter, onwards through the lurking shapes of half-seen trees that formed a treacherous maze of low-hanging branches and protruding roots that Greg had to see Sherlock safely through.
It was most likely mere minutes that they struggled through the woods together, but it felt an eternity, with Sherlock slumped heavily into Greg’s arm and Greg hyperaware with every step they took that Sherlock was still bleeding, that Sherlock could die here in these peaceful woods amidst the tranquil scents of leaves and wildflowers and the rustlings of small night creatures in the underbrush. That he might die and it would be Greg who had failed him.
“Oh, Sherlock!” a voice cried out of the darkness ahead of them. A warm, motherly voice, the kind of voice that promised fussing and competent care and possibly tea.
Greg, who’d had his eyes down, focused on keeping his and Sherlock’s feet moving in the right direction, looked up and – his brain stuttered to a stop.
He’d grudgingly accepted the existence of the giant spider, and he’d watched the spider do battle with some winged creature Greg was sure was not supposed to exist in this world. He was also not stupid, and was willing to concede that it was very unlikely Sherlock was human, either. But this beast in front of him –
“She’s a griffin,” Sherlock grumbled beside him. “Body of a lion, head and wings of an eagle, known for guarding riches and treasure. Mrs Hudson, specifically, guards the riches of ancient London, and no, I can’t tell you what those are, because yes, I really would have to kill you. Now, would you stop gawping so we can continue?”
“Oh, Sherlock,” the griffin repeated, hurrying towards them with fluttery steps, surprisingly light on its feet for such a large creature. Its wings waved in dismay, and Greg’s poor abused brain wondered how he could possibly know so clearly that those wing motions meant that particular emotion. “What have you done to yourself, you silly boy?”
“Nothing you can’t fix, Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock muttered between gritted teeth.
The griffin slid Sherlock from Greg’s arms with its – her? – forelegs and laid him down on a patch of moss, making “tsk tsk” noises.
“Oh, Sherlock, when your brother hears about this, he’ll be so worried…” she fussed, as she deftly flipped open Sherlock’s coat and shirt with her claws, revealing the gaping wounds at both sides of his torso.
“Yes, well, he doesn’t need to know unless someone decides to tell him, does he?” Sherlock snapped, his face pale in the wan moonlight that filtered through the trees. Greg wondered how much blood he’d lost.
Mrs Hudson – and incidentally, how, how, and why did a bloody griffin end up with a name like ‘Mrs Hudson’? – leaned her beak down close to Sherlock, ignoring his petulance. She turned her head this way and that, examining him out of each of her beady eyes in turn.
Finally she sat back on her lion-like haunches and regarded Sherlock shrewdly. “I can heal you, dear, but wouldn’t you rather transform back first? Less painful if you’re not the sort of thing that’s got nerve endings.”
Sherlock grimaced at her in a way that might have seemed threatening if he hadn’t been lying flat on the ground while doing it. “This will be fine, Mrs Hudson. My…human companion doesn’t know about the…other thing.”
Is the other thing the one where apparently you’re sometimes a tree? Greg thought, but decided this wasn’t really the time to be interjecting with his own curiosity.
Mrs Hudson bent low over Sherlock, intoning strings of words in a low murmur, tracing shapes in the air above his chest with her claws. Spells? Incantations? Nothing would surprise Greg anymore. It sounded like Greek, both figuratively in the ‘it’s all Greek to me’ sense, and also literally.
Greg let himself sink down to the soft, mossy ground in relief that Sherlock wasn’t going to die, nobody had to die, and he let his eyes drift closed to the sound of Mrs Hudson’s continued incantations.
He startled back to alertness at the strange sensation of a claw tapping him on the shoulder.
“He’s healing now,” the griffin said above him. “Poor boy. Always getting himself into all sorts of trouble. But he’ll sleep it off and be just fine. Now come have a bit of a kip, too, young man, you look all tuckered out. I’ll make you up a nice bed.”
Mumbling his thanks, Greg stumbled to his feet and followed Mrs Hudson over to where Sherlock lay on his patch of moss. Sweat-soaked curls were plastered to his forehead and his white shirt was torn and bloodied beyond repair, but he was sleeping peacefully. He wasn’t even wounded. From what Greg could see of Sherlock’s torso through the ruined shirt, his injuries had vanished.
After everything else Greg had seen tonight that was patently impossible, he didn’t even ask.
“Go on, make yourself comfortable,” Mrs Hudson was saying. “Plenty of moss here for two. I’ll go back to my perch once you’re settled, but you bed down here with Sherlock. Nothing will harm you in my patch of the woods.”
Greg didn’t protest; after this strange night, a nice bed of moss sounded heavenly rather than bizarre. A gently breathing Sherlock close by his side didn’t sound so bad either.
Greg lowered his aching body to the ground beside Sherlock. Mrs Hudson fussed overhead, her great wings and limbs working in tandem to spread Sherlock’s big coat over both them. The coat fell around Greg’s shoulders, a wonderful, comforting weight.
“Sleep well, young mortal man,” Mrs Hudson murmured, and Greg thought he heard her whisper even more quietly, “How lucky Sherlock is to have you.”
Then he was asleep and knew no more.
~ ~ ~
Greg awoke in the woods for a second time to find morning sunlight slanting through the trees and Sherlock sitting up, ruined shirt gathered regally about his shoulders, watching Greg with those strange, pale eyes.
“Arng,” Greg grunted, which was not the most eloquent way to start a morning, but the sight of Sherlock boring into him with his eyes had startled him.
Greg struggled to a sitting position, pulling with him Sherlock’s coat that had served as their blanket during the night, and wrapping it around himself. He opened and closed his eyes a few times, trying to get the world into focus. The soft golden light pouring over Sherlock’s bright face was painfully beautiful, and made it a little hard to think.
Still fixing him with that unnerving, unblinking stare, Sherlock said, “Okay, you’ve got questions.”
Greg swallowed experimentally, and found his throat and voice in working order. The pain in his head was gone, too. For some reason the first thing that came out of his mouth was, “The Regent’s Park Robber, that wasn’t just a bird, was it?”
“Nope.” Sherlock popped the ‘p’ loudly. “Harpy.”
“Harpy?”
Now Sherlock did blink at him. “After everything you’ve seen, you’re going to be surprised about the harpy?”
“No… No, sorry. Not surprised, just – not completely awake yet. So, it was – when you told me to look for something that attacked from above, that’s because you knew the thing stealing people’s watches and mobiles was a harpy.”
“Yep.” Same exaggerated pop. “Dumb as posts, but they’re sometimes useful. I assume you’ll have noticed I summoned the same harpy to attack Moriarty last night.”
“Yeah, about that…” Greg paused and took a couple moments to draw his wits about him. Sat up straighter. “Just to recap: Last night, we tracked down the lair of some giant, mythical spider that you’ve been fighting throughout centuries of history, and that for whatever reason had built its latest web in Hampstead Heath. And has been stealing and eating local pets.”
“Well…not quite ‘in’ Hampstead Heath, because in fact Moriarty bends space slightly around himself and expands it to suit his purposes, so while the space he occupied was technically within the bounds of the park, to say that he was ‘in’ Hampstead Heath –”
“But the rest is more or less correct, yes?” Greg cut him off, not sure how much of the metaphysics lesson he would be able to absorb before coffee.
“More or less, yes.”
“And you are…?”
He expected Sherlock to take the hint and fill in the rest of the sentence but, right, Sherlock didn’t do social cues. Greg tried again. “What are you, Sherlock?”
“I?” Sherlock looked surprised, as if this part were so obvious that Greg shouldn’t have had to ask. “I’m a dryad.”
“You’re a dryad?" Greg spluttered. “Aren’t those, uh, beautiful young maidens who live in trees and frolic around in the woods?” Not blokes who turn into trees at the drop of a hat.
Sherlock turned an affronted frown on Greg. “Whom would you rather trust as the authority on the subject: I, who in fact am a dryad, or something you read on Wikipedia?”
Greg opened his mouth to protest that he was a detective, thank you very much, and perfectly capable of doing research beyond the level of treating Wikipedia as a primary source, then closed his mouth again. Some battles weren’t worth fighting.
“Ooh-ooh!” a voice trilled.
Mrs Hudson bounded out from behind the trees and leapt to a stop in front of them, beaming. That is, if a creature that had a beak rather than a mouth could be said to be beaming. But somehow Greg rather fancied that was precisely what she was doing.
“Oh, Sherlock, you look so much better,” Mrs Hudson enthused. “You do heal up well, don’t you? Even in human form, and that’s no small feat. And your young man is looking sprightly again, too – you were a little ragged last night, luv, after tangling with that nasty spider. Sleeping out of doors does wonders, you know, wonders. Ooh, my hip used to give me such trouble in those years I spent pretending to be a statue in a library, but it’s all cleared up now that I’ve taken to sleeping out of doors again.”
Greg glanced at Sherlock, and was surprised to catch a trace of humour lurking around his lips. So the man did have a sense of the absurd, despite being rather absurd himself. At least as absurd as a chatty griffin with a razor-sharp beak and a bad hip.
That little smile did wonderful things for Sherlock’s usually austere mien, and Greg couldn’t help but smile back.
Then he tore his eyes from Sherlock’s beguiling expression and said, “By the way…” Greg hated to break the convivial atmosphere, but he did have a duty to the public if there was a mythical monster on the loose. “Speaking of the spider… Is it still here in the woods somewhere? Because if it is, it’s a menace to the public, I’ll have to get an armed unit out here –” Greg broke off, because Sherlock was shaking his head. “No?”
“Moriarty’s gone,” Sherlock said tersely. “He fears harpies – one of the only things he fears. They always aim for the eyes, and his eyes are his weak point. He won’t be back, not here, anyway, not for now.”
“That’s good news.” Greg took another look at Sherlock’s face. “…So why do you look like it’s not?”
“I should have stopped him!” Sherlock burst out, curls flying wildly as he shook his head vigorously in frustration. “Each time, I’m able to hold him in check, but I’m never able to stop him for good!”
Mrs Hudson, who’d settled down comfortably onto her haunches, tutted. “Sherlock, dear, you mustn’t go thinking you have to solve all the world’s problems at once. After all, you’re only human.” She turned to Greg and added conversationally, “Well, strictly speaking, of course, he’s not human, but you know what I mean.”
“Yes, Mrs Hudson, I’ve told him about that. You’re behind the times,” Sherlock snapped.
“Oh, how lovely!” Mrs Hudson trilled, immune as always to Sherlock’s flights of rudeness. “You’ve seen all these strange doings that a mortal oughtn’t to see, and yet you’re still here. Isn’t our Sherlock a lucky boy to have you.”
“Mrs Hudson, we’re not –” Greg began, then stopped. Were they? He glanced at Sherlock, and was treated to the most surprising sight of all in this long, strange night: The faintest hint of a blush was creeping up Sherlock’s neck, tingeing that beautiful, cold face with emotion.
Suddenly, Greg very much wanted to know if Sherlock’s lips were as unexpectedly warm as the touch of his hand had been.
“Er,” he coughed, covering his interrupted sentence. “We’re not…going to be able to stay much longer, unfortunately. I need to get back, because believe it or not, at the Met it’s going to be just another normal working day. And I thought Sherlock…might want to come with me?”
A wonderful array of emotions chased themselves across Sherlock’s normally aloof face. There were doubt and hope and suspicion as he wondered whether he’d understood Greg correctly, then a growing, smug satisfaction as Sherlock determined that, yes, he’d understood.
Greg stood, feeling the aches of the tumble he’d taken to the ground last night, though not as badly as he’d feared. He slid Sherlock’s coat from his own shoulders and held it out.
“Here, you’ll probably want this back.”
Sherlock rose from the ground, graceful as ever, as if he’d never been mortally wounded. He shook his head. “You wear it for now. It…suits you?” He cocked his head at Greg, as if to confirm that this was in fact the correct phrasing.
Greg grinned. “Yeah, ta.” He draped the long coat, which indeed felt as luxurious as it looked, back around his shoulders and held out his hand to Sherlock. “Come on, then. I have a very bizarre story I need to edit into a form my Detective Sergeant will believe when I get to work today, and you might as well help.”
Sherlock stared down at the offered hand, then up at Greg. Greg wiggled his fingers, and Sherlock caught on. He stepped forwards and grasped the hand in his own, those lovely, long fingers wrapping around Greg’s.
He’s a tree, Greg thought in bafflement and wonder. All those times when I thought he seemed strange, or alien, or just really bloody…tall and gorgeous, it’s because he’s a bloody tree. Greg decided that when he was a little less sleep-deprived, he would return to examining this fact in much more detail.
For now, he was going to enjoy the feeling of Sherlock’s hand in his, and damn the rest of it.
To Mrs Hudson, who rose from her seated position to her full lion-ish height – and that was never not going to be slightly alarming – Greg said, “Thank you so much for your help last night. Sherlock might have died if it weren’t for you, and apparently he’s not well versed in thank-yous, so I’ll say it for him. Thank you, Mrs Hudson.”
Sherlock had begun to squawk indignantly at that idea that he’d ever been in danger of dying, but Greg squeezed his hand and he subsided.
“Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure,” Mrs Hudson beamed, though again, it didn’t seem as though beaming should have been possible for someone with a beak. Greg had turned to go, Sherlock’s hand warm in his, when Mrs Hudson exclaimed, “Oh, Sherlock, shame on you, you never even told me your young man’s name!”
Greg turned again, in time to witness an exquisite display of Sherlock rendered speechless.
Greg burst out laughing. “You don’t know my name, do you? All of this, and you never bothered to learn my name.”
He laughed so hard, he thought his legs might fold underneath him, and the impatient consternation with which Sherlock was regarding him only made Greg laugh harder. In mere days, his life had gone from normal to this.
And he wouldn’t change it. He didn’t want to change a thing.
“Greg,” he said, when he could finally speak again. “My name is Greg. And don’t forget it, all right? You may change names as it suits your whim, but that one’s mine for the duration, and I’m sticking with it. Now, come on. You’ve vanquished your spider nemesis for now, but there are a thousand other criminals you could be helping me catch. Fancy solving some mysteries?”
Sherlock favoured Greg with what Greg had come to recognise as a very rare, but very genuine, smile. And they walked together through the park in the softly slanting morning sunlight, out of the woods and back into mortal, everyday London.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
THE END
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
End notes:
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Summary: Where Greg could have sworn an oak tree had stood a moment before, there was now instead a very posh man in a long, dark coat.
…In which Greg Lestrade has lunch in a city garden, and gets way more than he bargained for.
Characters: Greg Lestrade, Sherlock, cameos from Mycroft, Mrs Hudson, Donovan, Moriarty (sort of) and Redbeard (sort of); eventual Sherlock/Lestrade, but can also be read as mostly gen
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
CHAPTER FIVE
Greg came to with a sick headache pulsing in his head.
“Erggh…Sherlock,” he mumbled.
“Here,” came a weak voice nearby.
Greg’s eyes snapped open. “Sherlock!”
Where Greg could have sworn there’d been a half-felled tree when last he’d looked, Sherlock now lay on the ground. Even in dimness of the dell, Greg could see dark blood staining the crisp white shirt Sherlock wore beneath his coat.
“Bloody hell!” Greg shoved himself to his feet, groaning at the spinning in his head, and stumbled towards Sherlock, ducking down between the sticky strands of the web that separated them. He fell to his knees at Sherlock’s side, fumbling his shirt open to assess his wounds. “God, Sherlock, we have to get you to hospital, need to see if I can get mobile reception out here –”
“Hudders,” Sherlock mumbled. Then, louder: “No hospital, they’re for mortals, take me to – Mrs Hudson.”
“Mrs Hudson? Who the hell is that?”
“Just through the woods,” Sherlock said faintly. “Not far. Trust me…”
And Greg, because he had clearly lost all common sense the day he met Sherlock Holmes, did trust him. He got his arms under Sherlock’s shoulders and levered him up from the ground as best he could. Sherlock groaned and cursed, but managed eventually to get his feet under him and stand. Together they made their slow and painful way out through the web and up to the lip of the grassy dell.
“Just that way,” Sherlock mumbled, nodding vaguely into the woods ahead of them. “Doesn’ much matter which direction, ‘s the intention that matters…”
“Right,” Greg grumbled, “because that makes a lot of sense.”
But he hooked his arm more firmly under Sherlock’s armpits and half-led, half-dragged him onwards through the dark woods that smelled earthy and strange, redolent with the musk of leaf litter, onwards through the lurking shapes of half-seen trees that formed a treacherous maze of low-hanging branches and protruding roots that Greg had to see Sherlock safely through.
It was most likely mere minutes that they struggled through the woods together, but it felt an eternity, with Sherlock slumped heavily into Greg’s arm and Greg hyperaware with every step they took that Sherlock was still bleeding, that Sherlock could die here in these peaceful woods amidst the tranquil scents of leaves and wildflowers and the rustlings of small night creatures in the underbrush. That he might die and it would be Greg who had failed him.
“Oh, Sherlock!” a voice cried out of the darkness ahead of them. A warm, motherly voice, the kind of voice that promised fussing and competent care and possibly tea.
Greg, who’d had his eyes down, focused on keeping his and Sherlock’s feet moving in the right direction, looked up and – his brain stuttered to a stop.
He’d grudgingly accepted the existence of the giant spider, and he’d watched the spider do battle with some winged creature Greg was sure was not supposed to exist in this world. He was also not stupid, and was willing to concede that it was very unlikely Sherlock was human, either. But this beast in front of him –
“She’s a griffin,” Sherlock grumbled beside him. “Body of a lion, head and wings of an eagle, known for guarding riches and treasure. Mrs Hudson, specifically, guards the riches of ancient London, and no, I can’t tell you what those are, because yes, I really would have to kill you. Now, would you stop gawping so we can continue?”
“Oh, Sherlock,” the griffin repeated, hurrying towards them with fluttery steps, surprisingly light on its feet for such a large creature. Its wings waved in dismay, and Greg’s poor abused brain wondered how he could possibly know so clearly that those wing motions meant that particular emotion. “What have you done to yourself, you silly boy?”
“Nothing you can’t fix, Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock muttered between gritted teeth.
The griffin slid Sherlock from Greg’s arms with its – her? – forelegs and laid him down on a patch of moss, making “tsk tsk” noises.
“Oh, Sherlock, when your brother hears about this, he’ll be so worried…” she fussed, as she deftly flipped open Sherlock’s coat and shirt with her claws, revealing the gaping wounds at both sides of his torso.
“Yes, well, he doesn’t need to know unless someone decides to tell him, does he?” Sherlock snapped, his face pale in the wan moonlight that filtered through the trees. Greg wondered how much blood he’d lost.
Mrs Hudson – and incidentally, how, how, and why did a bloody griffin end up with a name like ‘Mrs Hudson’? – leaned her beak down close to Sherlock, ignoring his petulance. She turned her head this way and that, examining him out of each of her beady eyes in turn.
Finally she sat back on her lion-like haunches and regarded Sherlock shrewdly. “I can heal you, dear, but wouldn’t you rather transform back first? Less painful if you’re not the sort of thing that’s got nerve endings.”
Sherlock grimaced at her in a way that might have seemed threatening if he hadn’t been lying flat on the ground while doing it. “This will be fine, Mrs Hudson. My…human companion doesn’t know about the…other thing.”
Is the other thing the one where apparently you’re sometimes a tree? Greg thought, but decided this wasn’t really the time to be interjecting with his own curiosity.
Mrs Hudson bent low over Sherlock, intoning strings of words in a low murmur, tracing shapes in the air above his chest with her claws. Spells? Incantations? Nothing would surprise Greg anymore. It sounded like Greek, both figuratively in the ‘it’s all Greek to me’ sense, and also literally.
Greg let himself sink down to the soft, mossy ground in relief that Sherlock wasn’t going to die, nobody had to die, and he let his eyes drift closed to the sound of Mrs Hudson’s continued incantations.
He startled back to alertness at the strange sensation of a claw tapping him on the shoulder.
“He’s healing now,” the griffin said above him. “Poor boy. Always getting himself into all sorts of trouble. But he’ll sleep it off and be just fine. Now come have a bit of a kip, too, young man, you look all tuckered out. I’ll make you up a nice bed.”
Mumbling his thanks, Greg stumbled to his feet and followed Mrs Hudson over to where Sherlock lay on his patch of moss. Sweat-soaked curls were plastered to his forehead and his white shirt was torn and bloodied beyond repair, but he was sleeping peacefully. He wasn’t even wounded. From what Greg could see of Sherlock’s torso through the ruined shirt, his injuries had vanished.
After everything else Greg had seen tonight that was patently impossible, he didn’t even ask.
“Go on, make yourself comfortable,” Mrs Hudson was saying. “Plenty of moss here for two. I’ll go back to my perch once you’re settled, but you bed down here with Sherlock. Nothing will harm you in my patch of the woods.”
Greg didn’t protest; after this strange night, a nice bed of moss sounded heavenly rather than bizarre. A gently breathing Sherlock close by his side didn’t sound so bad either.
Greg lowered his aching body to the ground beside Sherlock. Mrs Hudson fussed overhead, her great wings and limbs working in tandem to spread Sherlock’s big coat over both them. The coat fell around Greg’s shoulders, a wonderful, comforting weight.
“Sleep well, young mortal man,” Mrs Hudson murmured, and Greg thought he heard her whisper even more quietly, “How lucky Sherlock is to have you.”
Then he was asleep and knew no more.
~ ~ ~
Greg awoke in the woods for a second time to find morning sunlight slanting through the trees and Sherlock sitting up, ruined shirt gathered regally about his shoulders, watching Greg with those strange, pale eyes.
“Arng,” Greg grunted, which was not the most eloquent way to start a morning, but the sight of Sherlock boring into him with his eyes had startled him.
Greg struggled to a sitting position, pulling with him Sherlock’s coat that had served as their blanket during the night, and wrapping it around himself. He opened and closed his eyes a few times, trying to get the world into focus. The soft golden light pouring over Sherlock’s bright face was painfully beautiful, and made it a little hard to think.
Still fixing him with that unnerving, unblinking stare, Sherlock said, “Okay, you’ve got questions.”
Greg swallowed experimentally, and found his throat and voice in working order. The pain in his head was gone, too. For some reason the first thing that came out of his mouth was, “The Regent’s Park Robber, that wasn’t just a bird, was it?”
“Nope.” Sherlock popped the ‘p’ loudly. “Harpy.”
“Harpy?”
Now Sherlock did blink at him. “After everything you’ve seen, you’re going to be surprised about the harpy?”
“No… No, sorry. Not surprised, just – not completely awake yet. So, it was – when you told me to look for something that attacked from above, that’s because you knew the thing stealing people’s watches and mobiles was a harpy.”
“Yep.” Same exaggerated pop. “Dumb as posts, but they’re sometimes useful. I assume you’ll have noticed I summoned the same harpy to attack Moriarty last night.”
“Yeah, about that…” Greg paused and took a couple moments to draw his wits about him. Sat up straighter. “Just to recap: Last night, we tracked down the lair of some giant, mythical spider that you’ve been fighting throughout centuries of history, and that for whatever reason had built its latest web in Hampstead Heath. And has been stealing and eating local pets.”
“Well…not quite ‘in’ Hampstead Heath, because in fact Moriarty bends space slightly around himself and expands it to suit his purposes, so while the space he occupied was technically within the bounds of the park, to say that he was ‘in’ Hampstead Heath –”
“But the rest is more or less correct, yes?” Greg cut him off, not sure how much of the metaphysics lesson he would be able to absorb before coffee.
“More or less, yes.”
“And you are…?”
He expected Sherlock to take the hint and fill in the rest of the sentence but, right, Sherlock didn’t do social cues. Greg tried again. “What are you, Sherlock?”
“I?” Sherlock looked surprised, as if this part were so obvious that Greg shouldn’t have had to ask. “I’m a dryad.”
“You’re a dryad?" Greg spluttered. “Aren’t those, uh, beautiful young maidens who live in trees and frolic around in the woods?” Not blokes who turn into trees at the drop of a hat.
Sherlock turned an affronted frown on Greg. “Whom would you rather trust as the authority on the subject: I, who in fact am a dryad, or something you read on Wikipedia?”
Greg opened his mouth to protest that he was a detective, thank you very much, and perfectly capable of doing research beyond the level of treating Wikipedia as a primary source, then closed his mouth again. Some battles weren’t worth fighting.
“Ooh-ooh!” a voice trilled.
Mrs Hudson bounded out from behind the trees and leapt to a stop in front of them, beaming. That is, if a creature that had a beak rather than a mouth could be said to be beaming. But somehow Greg rather fancied that was precisely what she was doing.
“Oh, Sherlock, you look so much better,” Mrs Hudson enthused. “You do heal up well, don’t you? Even in human form, and that’s no small feat. And your young man is looking sprightly again, too – you were a little ragged last night, luv, after tangling with that nasty spider. Sleeping out of doors does wonders, you know, wonders. Ooh, my hip used to give me such trouble in those years I spent pretending to be a statue in a library, but it’s all cleared up now that I’ve taken to sleeping out of doors again.”
Greg glanced at Sherlock, and was surprised to catch a trace of humour lurking around his lips. So the man did have a sense of the absurd, despite being rather absurd himself. At least as absurd as a chatty griffin with a razor-sharp beak and a bad hip.
That little smile did wonderful things for Sherlock’s usually austere mien, and Greg couldn’t help but smile back.
Then he tore his eyes from Sherlock’s beguiling expression and said, “By the way…” Greg hated to break the convivial atmosphere, but he did have a duty to the public if there was a mythical monster on the loose. “Speaking of the spider… Is it still here in the woods somewhere? Because if it is, it’s a menace to the public, I’ll have to get an armed unit out here –” Greg broke off, because Sherlock was shaking his head. “No?”
“Moriarty’s gone,” Sherlock said tersely. “He fears harpies – one of the only things he fears. They always aim for the eyes, and his eyes are his weak point. He won’t be back, not here, anyway, not for now.”
“That’s good news.” Greg took another look at Sherlock’s face. “…So why do you look like it’s not?”
“I should have stopped him!” Sherlock burst out, curls flying wildly as he shook his head vigorously in frustration. “Each time, I’m able to hold him in check, but I’m never able to stop him for good!”
Mrs Hudson, who’d settled down comfortably onto her haunches, tutted. “Sherlock, dear, you mustn’t go thinking you have to solve all the world’s problems at once. After all, you’re only human.” She turned to Greg and added conversationally, “Well, strictly speaking, of course, he’s not human, but you know what I mean.”
“Yes, Mrs Hudson, I’ve told him about that. You’re behind the times,” Sherlock snapped.
“Oh, how lovely!” Mrs Hudson trilled, immune as always to Sherlock’s flights of rudeness. “You’ve seen all these strange doings that a mortal oughtn’t to see, and yet you’re still here. Isn’t our Sherlock a lucky boy to have you.”
“Mrs Hudson, we’re not –” Greg began, then stopped. Were they? He glanced at Sherlock, and was treated to the most surprising sight of all in this long, strange night: The faintest hint of a blush was creeping up Sherlock’s neck, tingeing that beautiful, cold face with emotion.
Suddenly, Greg very much wanted to know if Sherlock’s lips were as unexpectedly warm as the touch of his hand had been.
“Er,” he coughed, covering his interrupted sentence. “We’re not…going to be able to stay much longer, unfortunately. I need to get back, because believe it or not, at the Met it’s going to be just another normal working day. And I thought Sherlock…might want to come with me?”
A wonderful array of emotions chased themselves across Sherlock’s normally aloof face. There were doubt and hope and suspicion as he wondered whether he’d understood Greg correctly, then a growing, smug satisfaction as Sherlock determined that, yes, he’d understood.
Greg stood, feeling the aches of the tumble he’d taken to the ground last night, though not as badly as he’d feared. He slid Sherlock’s coat from his own shoulders and held it out.
“Here, you’ll probably want this back.”
Sherlock rose from the ground, graceful as ever, as if he’d never been mortally wounded. He shook his head. “You wear it for now. It…suits you?” He cocked his head at Greg, as if to confirm that this was in fact the correct phrasing.
Greg grinned. “Yeah, ta.” He draped the long coat, which indeed felt as luxurious as it looked, back around his shoulders and held out his hand to Sherlock. “Come on, then. I have a very bizarre story I need to edit into a form my Detective Sergeant will believe when I get to work today, and you might as well help.”
Sherlock stared down at the offered hand, then up at Greg. Greg wiggled his fingers, and Sherlock caught on. He stepped forwards and grasped the hand in his own, those lovely, long fingers wrapping around Greg’s.
He’s a tree, Greg thought in bafflement and wonder. All those times when I thought he seemed strange, or alien, or just really bloody…tall and gorgeous, it’s because he’s a bloody tree. Greg decided that when he was a little less sleep-deprived, he would return to examining this fact in much more detail.
For now, he was going to enjoy the feeling of Sherlock’s hand in his, and damn the rest of it.
To Mrs Hudson, who rose from her seated position to her full lion-ish height – and that was never not going to be slightly alarming – Greg said, “Thank you so much for your help last night. Sherlock might have died if it weren’t for you, and apparently he’s not well versed in thank-yous, so I’ll say it for him. Thank you, Mrs Hudson.”
Sherlock had begun to squawk indignantly at that idea that he’d ever been in danger of dying, but Greg squeezed his hand and he subsided.
“Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure,” Mrs Hudson beamed, though again, it didn’t seem as though beaming should have been possible for someone with a beak. Greg had turned to go, Sherlock’s hand warm in his, when Mrs Hudson exclaimed, “Oh, Sherlock, shame on you, you never even told me your young man’s name!”
Greg turned again, in time to witness an exquisite display of Sherlock rendered speechless.
Greg burst out laughing. “You don’t know my name, do you? All of this, and you never bothered to learn my name.”
He laughed so hard, he thought his legs might fold underneath him, and the impatient consternation with which Sherlock was regarding him only made Greg laugh harder. In mere days, his life had gone from normal to this.
And he wouldn’t change it. He didn’t want to change a thing.
“Greg,” he said, when he could finally speak again. “My name is Greg. And don’t forget it, all right? You may change names as it suits your whim, but that one’s mine for the duration, and I’m sticking with it. Now, come on. You’ve vanquished your spider nemesis for now, but there are a thousand other criminals you could be helping me catch. Fancy solving some mysteries?”
Sherlock favoured Greg with what Greg had come to recognise as a very rare, but very genuine, smile. And they walked together through the park in the softly slanting morning sunlight, out of the woods and back into mortal, everyday London.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
THE END
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
End notes:
Some thoughts on the mythology I have borrowed (and mangled?) here:
…Yes, dryads are meant to be nymphs that live IN trees, not nymphs that can transform INTO trees, and the trees themselves are not meant to be able to move around. Also, nymphs are supposed to be all female. Clearly I have taken liberties!
But tradition had dryads and other nymphs as long-lived (they don’t die of old age or illness, but are not necessarily immortal) and the specific type of dryads that lived in oak trees could die if the tree they lived in was killed – so all that is “true” for this Sherlock.
Haloa, which Sherlock mentions, was a Greek festival held after the harvest, in mid-winter. It seems to me this Sherlock’s reference points would be a mix of modern British culture, ancient British/Celtic Paganism, and classical Greek mythology, which is why he refers to “Christmas and Yuletide and Haloa.”
Oh, but I added the stuff about harpies liking shiny objects – that’s not actually a thing.
Story title from John Keat’s “Ode to Psyche,” specifically this bit:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name…