holmestice | Fic for scandalbaby: Lift Hill (Reply)

Title: Lift Hill
Recipient: scandalbaby
Author: amindamazed
Fandom: Elementary
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 2900
Characters/Pairings: Joan Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Ms Hudson, Marcus Bell
Author's Note: Happy Summer Holmestice, scandalbaby! I hope you enjoy this peek into Joan's post-proposal life.
Many thanks to the encouragement and insight of my gifted beta and to the patience of our kind holmesticemods.

The carriage creaks in a steady rhythm that intensifies the suspense as it creeps up the crest of the track. At this steep angle, the view ahead contains only fragile latticework of rail and support and the bright blue sky. Her stomach expresses its doubts about the undertaking; didn’t she swear never to do this again, last time? She wants to look back but knows the sight will be terrifying, as high up from the ground as she is. Her heart skips a beat when the rattle of the wheels stutters and the motion begins to slow. In a few seconds she’ll round the top and the roller coaster ride will truly begin.

Her hands grip the safety bar, and she indulges a momentary release into pure fear, squeezing her eyes shut when the car pauses at the summit before moving on down, down. The sound resumes, increasingly louder and faster, but nobody’s screaming, not even her, and all of a sudden she realizes “it’s a dream” and her eyes fly open to see Sherlock standing in front of her room’s fireplace, tapping a tack into the wall which is now covered with paper: flow charts, outlines, bullet lists, diagrams, and timetables, like a powerpoint explosion exhibiting every bad practice in slide design.

He doesn’t turn around but tilts his head to the left at the sound of her rustling sheets and waggles the absurdly tiny hammer in his left hand. “Not the most auspicious beginning, Watson, but we didn’t discuss your training protocol, so I’ll let this one late morning slide.” She glances bleary-eyed at her clock — 6:13 — and pulls the covers up over her head with a groan.

She shook her head with a smile when she realized just in time that he’d swapped the contents of her bath oil and shampoo bottles. The holes cut into her towel by four or five different kinds of knives, as she discerned when peering closely at the slices, were slightly less amusing, but she could shrug that off given that it wasn’t actually her towel but one from the stash of mismatched linens of unknown provenance in the hallway closet. However, the coffee pot chained to its base and secured with what appeared to be the oldest lock from Sherlock’s collection sent her promptly back upstairs to grab her wallet and coat and set out for the nearest cafe. Perhaps she should have given the ramifications of her acceptance a little more thought.

He sent six texts in the ten minutes it took her to arrive, place her order, collect the cups, and sit down at the table in the back corner from which vantage point she could see the entire room.

Your coffee’s getting cold, she texted back, and settled in the chair, cradling her cup in two hands while she waited. Five minutes later, there was no reason to hide her smirk when she saw his frazzled approach from the direction of the other coffee shop she often frequented. He frowned as he bounced to a halt after seeing her through the door, but his face was composed in haughty calm by the time he crossed the floor to her table. He stopped and stood right next to her to best accentuate his looking-down-his-nose-at-her-insolent-behavior stance. Exhilaration bloomed in her chest, gently dissolving the anxiety of her dream and the irritation of his initial antics. She lifted her head back to return his gaze steadily, careful not to let her jaw reveal how hard she was suppressing her laughter.

“Sit down,” she relented, “and tell me about your plans for how we’ll proceed.” She hesitated a moment before sliding his coffee across the table toward the chair next to hers. He tensed up, clenching his fists at his sides for a beat before expelling a short exasperated sigh and sinking to perch on the edge of the chair. His frown returned, and she felt a wash of chagrin for deflating his excitement about their new arrangement. “I’ve got a few ideas of my own,” she said. “Perhaps starting with a moratorium on booby traps and destruction of property?”

His expression brightened immediately. “Nonsense, Watson. A detective must develop constant vigilance. Evidence may lie hidden in plain sight anywhere and everywhere. You will learn to take nothing for granted.” He picked up his cup and took a long swig. She didn’t hold anything back when his face contorted in response to the tablespoon of salt dissolved within.

In the weeks following the blizzard, work kept them busy enough that the days bled one into the next, and it was a surprise every Tuesday evening (or the wee hours of a Wednesday) to come back to the brownstone and find evidence that Ms Hudson had been there. Not just cleared floors and orderly books and scents of pine or lemon instead of…other things. Once there had been thick soup bubbling in the crock pot, with a note explaining that certain items in the fridge were about to pass their expiration dates and she hoped they didn’t mind. Another time Joan left her closet door open in her rush to get to the police station before a suspect made bail and returned fifteen hours later to find her clothes and shoes organized beyond anything she’d ever imagined. She wasn’t sloppy in her care for her things, by any means, but neither did she put much thought into it. Ms Hudson’s methods were a revelation; she had no idea her wardrobe contained such potential.

The next time she was home when Ms Hudson arrived, Joan sat hunched over the lock room table, framed by stacks of pristine National Geographics from the 1930s as she poured over the June 1935 map of Africa. Sherlock claimed an international crime syndicate had bribed the typesetters to embed messages on specific pages related to various smuggling schemes. She was skeptical; it would not be the first time his stated assignment had nothing to do with the real task he wanted her to perform. It wouldn’t be the first time he turned out to be wrong about what he thought was going on, either. So far neither option was readily apparent to her after scouring sixty-plus issues of the magazine. In the mean time, a refresher on European colonial aggressions in African countries between the world wars was as good a topic to review as any. Not to mention good practice for building a visual vocabulary suited to cartographic interpretation, she could imagine him saying.

“Oh, I l just love old maps. I could spend all day with them.” Ms Hudson stood across the table from her, still wearing her coat and hat, looking down at the map. “I did my undergraduate thesis on early Roman cartography,” she said, smiling fondly at the recollection.

“Classics major?” Ms Hudson nodded, eyes still following the Mediterranean coastline. “I thought Sherlock told me you taught yourself Greek?”

“Yes, I did. I studied Latin in school, though. ”

“Me too. It was supposed to be good for premed, but once I was out of medical school it was clear I would have been better off with Spanish or Mandarin for my patients.” Joan grimaced. “I hated it, sorry.”

“Oh, so did I.” At Joan’s surprised look, she laughed softly. “Latin always sounded dead to me. I know it’s a cliché. But that’s why I turned to Ancient Greek. I’ve had call to use Latin in my work on occasion, but it was never my favorite.” Her elegant fingers traced the coast of Egypt. “I used to have dreams about visiting the original Library of Alexandria…” she said with a wistful smile.

“Have you ever been to Egypt?”

“It’s my biggest regret from my time in London, not taking the opportunity to travel across the continent simply because I was afraid to go on my own.” She released a dramatic sigh, pulled off her hat, and shook her head before reaching up to gather her hair back and twist it into a knot at the base of her neck. “Ah well, water under the bridge, as they say. Perhaps I’ll take myself there one day after all.”

“You know, I never thought about it before, but even though I’ve lived by myself for most of my adult life, I don’t travel much because the logistics of going with someone else never work out.” Joan’s brows furrowed, and she leaned back away from the table. “Never occurs to me I could just go on my own.” The realization troubled her, and she saw recognition and empathy in Ms Hudson’s eyes.

“Where would you go?” she asked, her calm voice soothing the edge of self-recrimination Joan felt prickling her confidence.

Joan looked back at the map and tapped the island off the southwest coast without hesitation. “Madagascar. I’ve always wanted to visit the southern hemisphere, see the stars from there. And islands fascinate me.”

“Mmm. When I first met Holmes, he was forever darting off around the globe for one investigation or another. Perhaps he’ll find a case to take you there.” She walked to the foyer to hang up her coat and suddenly stopped and came back, frowning. “No. No! What were we just saying? You don’t need him to get you there. You’ll take yourself, when you’re ready. And you’ll love it.” She nodded decisively, and Joan smiled in return.

“I’ll send you a postcard. And I won’t even tell Sherlock where I’ve gone — he’ll have to deduce it.”

“A fitting souvenir gift for him. And speaking as your housekeeper, much easier to transport and maintain than another lemur skeleton or a vanilla plant.”

A lull in perplexing criminal activity meant no calls from Gregson and left them at loose ends at last. Sherlock pulled out the reading list he’d tacked to her wall that first morning, and which she had taken down, along with the rest of his training protocol documentation, that first afternoon. In the months since then, he’d tasked her to read widely, and she gave up trying to predict which subjects he wanted her to skim and which he urged her to delve into. (She found the four books on the history of counterfeit currencies fascinating but balked at reviewing his collection of Sears catalogs from the 1960s and ‘70s, rewarded by his comical grimace and tactical retreat once she argued that familiarity with changing lapel widths in boy’s formal wear was not the best use of space in her mental attic.) He set to work now updating the topics and texts, muttering to himself and alternating between climbing the library ladder to flip through books and delving into library catalogs online.

She’d taken it upon herself to go searching for new material on the topics he assigned. So far, she was batting .250 for things she found that he hadn’t read yet himself. He was inordinately pleased when that happened, the extent to which she she only realized after she heard him report three times in one day the (uncredited) main points of an article she showed him on inappropriate applications of forensic analysis. To the medical examiner, then to Detective Bell, and again during a rather animated video chat (waking her from a sound sleep at 3am) with an Australian forensic anthropologist. She knew teaching gave him an outlet when investigative opportunities waned — he’d been doing it since she first started working with him as sober companion — but she was gratified that her turn as student wasn’t merely a stop-gap against boredom.

That day Bell had shot her a glance of amused commiseration when Sherlock started pontificating on the need for critical thinking in the
use of “his” techniques. He’d assigned her to accompany Bell on a stakeout without, she realized belatedly, conferring with the detective first. Sherlock had gestured impatiently at them to get going, and while Bell’s eyebrows reached toward incredulity, he didn’t seem too bothered by having her tag along, focused on reviewing something on his phone in the elevator down to the garage. As she watched the floor numbers count down, she wrestled with her chagrin at Sherlock’s assumptions, her embarrassment at being an imposition, and her anticipation of what might be revealed (or not, she was realistic) during the stakeout. She knew Bell and Gregson appreciated her role as buffer and Sherlock-manager, but she wanted more.

They’d been easing through midtown traffic for ten minutes before Bell spoke. “So, why’re you doing this?” Three cars ahead, the stoplight turned green.

“Oh, you know, practice.” She shifted in her seat away from the passenger side window towards him. “Sherlock wants me to see as many different crime scenes and evidence sites as possible.”

“No, not this.” He tapped the steering wheel and then outlined a circle with one finger, keeping both hands on the wheel as they started moving again. “I mean the whole thing. Training with Holmes. Being a consultant. If you don’t mind my asking.”

“It’s not the usual way people get started solving crimes, you mean.”

“No. Definitely not. Can’t say anything about Holmes is what you’d call usual.” A quick glance at her and back to the congested street ahead. Including her, she filled in.

“Well, it’s not something I ever imagined for myself. But once I had the chance to see it: What you do, what he does… I don’t know. It just made sense in a way that nothing else had, for a long time.”

“So you just quit your job and—?”

“Something like that.” She shook her head. “I was lucky, being in a position to take the leap when…” She paused, unsure what she wanted to say. Even though Sherlock said she didn’t need to keep their original working relationship a secret, it still felt like his story to tell.

“When…?”

She cleared her throat. “Uh, when Sherlock suggested I try it. Learn what he does, deduction and observing and solving criminal puzzles. You may have noticed he’s very enthusiastic about it. “

“Ha! That’s one way to describe it.”

She smiled. “Yeah, overbearing and relentless aren’t inaccurate either. But he comes on so strong because it’s important to him. Righting wrongs, finding the missing piece.”

“Being right.”

“Only as long as the evidence supports him. He’s obnoxious when he’s right, and that’s often, but that’s one of the first things I noticed about what he does, actually. For all his egotism, he’s not attached to his own theories. He wants to find out what happened, and he’ll give up everything to get there.” That was not always a good thing, she recalled. Little chance Bell had forgotten the night with Moran, but she wasn’t going to bring it up.

He tilted his head, conceding. When he didn’t add anything she worried that she’d sounded defensive. Enough about Sherlock, in any case.

“How about you?”

“Hmm?”

“What drew you to law enforcement?”

He expelled a breath through pursed lips. “The reason I started is not the reason I stayed. Andre—“ He hunched up his shoulders and tightened his grip. “You know about my brother. When we were kids, I saw the direction he was headed, and why. It made a kind of sense: a community, a way to make money, strength in numbers. But the risks— I didn’t like my chances. I have a cousin who’s a uni, and she’d talk about it. Enough to get me interested.”

“And why you stayed?”

He didn’t reply right away. “Well, it’s that strength in numbers again, though not the way that sounds,” he rushed the last words. “It’s more like, because there are so many of us, we have more opportunities to figure out the best way to fix things. Andre felt like he had only one option. I never want to feel that way.”

“You don’t ever find that police regulations or the law make that difficult?”

“Now that sounds like Holmes talking.”

Thinking back on that conversation with Bell, she felt a little uncomfortable having been an advocate for chaos rather than order. Order, keeping the peace — keeping that sock drawer neat — was clearly why Bell did the work he did. Sherlock, too, sought to bring reason and structure to his work. For all his clutter and serendipitous connections, his goal was an organized solution and an organized mind. And at the same time he had a zealot’s fervor about his own independence, and hers. He didn’t want to organize her; he wanted her to do it herself. He didn’t want to be dependent or depended upon. It’s why he shied from admitting he cared for people.

And what did she want? A flash of wide open sky and delicate scaffolding came to mind. She wanted that view, that vantage point. She wanted to see the big picture and not be afraid of how high she was or how she was going to get down. She wanted order and chaos, independence and the strength of numbers supporting her. She didn’t want to choose.

“All right Watson,” Sherlock called, hopping down from three rungs up the library ladder and landing with a thud. “Would you rather follow up on counterfeit with fine art forgeries, the ins and outs of investment fraud, or handwriting analysis?

She inhaled and looked up at him from her seat on the couch with a grin slowly breaking across her face. She let go of the safety bar.

“Yes,” she said.