Bonus fic for randomly_rusted: Rings are Full Circles

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

Title: Rings are Full Circles
Author: calccarbonate
Recipient: randomly_rusted
Characters: Di Lestrade, Anderson, Donovan, Molly Hooper, Jennifer Wilson
Pairings: Potential for Lestrade/Hooper
Rating: PG
Summary: Rings mean a lot of things to people...and Sherlock overlooks a great deal.


Rings are Full Circles

Long after Sherlock left (as usual in a tear), Lestrade found himself passing a face of mixed expressions to Anderson (he later copied this same expression to Donovan on the street). Of course Anderson was still spitting angry at the sheer presence of Sherlock, forget what he actually said.


Serial Adulteress.
When Anderson prepares to go home that night, it is to wash his hands carefully in the sink. He includes his ring with the soap; there’s too much of a risk that he’ll have it off and the soap will send it down the drain and into the trap or wedge it to where even a soda straw and Donovan’s chewing gum can’t lift it out.

“Her wedding ring. Ten years old at least.”

Ten years of his marriage. He held it together for the first five. Back then he could still believe what he said—he’d been naïve that way. “Until death do us part.” That had been simple enough, right? Simple enough. His parents found it an easy vow. His sisters with their husbands (Even Julie). Divorce was rare in the Andersons…they swore it was their deep Christian upbringing, but he felt it was really the long courtship—date at least a year, more if you can. Get to know them before you commit to more. Everyone else had done well by the family advice.

As usual, good family advice never seemed to work that well with him. Or rather, as Jocellyn would have said, the family advice never quite worked with him because of the other people involved. His family was all nice and normal and he wasn’t considered very nice for working with poor dead people, and he wasn’t normal for the same. But he was married and wishing he’d known ten years ago what a trap that ring about the finger could be.

This was the modern world, where there was supposed to be a cure for all but the worst ails. And a wife who grew more insane with each year was an illness he couldn’t find a cure for.

When she returned from her trip, it would be with bags and bags of things she didn’t need or even want. All because she saw them and for a fleeting moment she thought they were pretty and she wanted pretty things.

Jewelry they couldn’t afford, clothes, cutlery and plates, even. Paintings or some other bit of art he didn’t understand and he’d given up protesting long ago because of how she would always combat him.

“It’s perfectly all right, darling.”
(Translation: “I have to do something, you know, because I’m an orphan and there’s nothing to do but spend Mummy and Daddy’s money, the money they never let me have while they were alive.”)

Or:

“Don’t worry about it, dear.”

(Translation: I can afford it. You can’t on your salary, and I can’t exactly go to the opera with you on my arm, with your work in forensics, but I can afford myself some pretty things.”)

And finally:

“Everything will be all right.”

(Translation: I have plenty of charming men who can take me places and let me be a princess for the evening. You go back and work.”)

Anderson dried his hands with the paper towel and accidentally caught his face in the wash-room mirror. He frightened himself. He wasn’t supposed to look that old…or that angry.

Don’t worry about it, dear.

Perhaps some day that would mean something else.

Such as, “You can have your divorce.”

Perhaps. Anderson might be a fool for thinking the best of the situation, but he would prefer to be a fool for trying.

She would take his ring with him, he knew. Just because it had meant too much to him at the time, because the ring had stood for endless months of tithing over his pay at the jeweler’s…and as many months of agonizing over the choices. She had a platinum band that fitted inside the curves of the matching engagement ring, a tiny yellow diamond snugged on top like a spark of lemony fire. She had loved it at the time, and at the time he had imagined it was because he had tried so hard to give her the right ring. It wasn’t until seven years later and down the road on a murder in another jeweler’s that he took a harder look at the displays and realized the style had been “understatedly ostentatious.”

He glared at his ring, fingers stiff and straight out from his palm. He was tired of making mistakes. Mistakes at home, at work. And thinking he was actually marrying someone who wanted marriage…wanted children.

Like Sally.

If he ever had the chance to marry again, he wouldn’t ever, ever buy so much as a diamond toothpick without her approval first.


Donovan:


“The rest of her jewelry’s been regularly cleaned but not her wedding ring. State of her marriage, right there.”

Her mother’s ring is over two hundred years old and from Afghanistan. The band is gold. A tiny ruby makes the center of a flower, and five small white diamonds are the petals. There were two rings at one time, this one is the betrothal ring, the one her fourth-great-grandfather gave his wife when he came back from Maiwand. He’d bought it from a little jewelers on a little street and it was something he could afford on his officer’s pay.

She’s grown up seeing the interesting looks on people’s faces…not that she’s a Donovan looking like a Dubuku, as one prick said seconds before she crushed his face with the bottom of a beer stein. No, they’re still amazed her family can go all the way back to another war with Afghanistan.

Once she joked about being black Irish, just to see what the reactions would be. They were interesting, but not enough to make a habit of the trick.

“You’re quiet tonight, Sally.”

Sally stopped stirring at her hot and sour soup with a chopstick (cardinal rule, always have both in your fingers), and didn’t look at the man on the other side of the table. She and DI Lestrade had shared a lot in the workplace, but off-duty they both had an incurable craving for spicy foods. She didn’t think there was a single Aisan, Middle Eastern, or Indian tavern, chip shop or whatever they hadn’t grabbed takeaway from, or just simply haunted.

“Just thinking about that poor woman.” She muttered at last. The unsweetened tea was hot and rinsed down her throat like balm. “Bothers me, you know? No matter what she was in London for, she’s going to be known for being a serial adultress.”

Lestrade nodded at her from across the table as he chewed on an Asian meatball that was guaranteed to make any man a fire-breathing dragon. “Typical that people are rarely remembered for who they really are.” He pointed out. “Its someone decides who they are at the end.”

“Like the Freak.” She remembered.

He no longer corrected her in her assessment of Sherlock. Sometimes she felt disappointed in that. He just shrugged.

For some reason that produced the words she’d been searching for all evening. “There’s plenty of people with dirty rings that love each other.” To her own ears her voice was odd. “I mean, what if she wasn’t an adulterer, just someone who took her ring off a lot and never thought to clean it?”

Lestrade considered the question and moved to another meatball.

“Those things will rot out your teeth.” She told him.

“I only got two, Sally. It’s hard to put down the sweets when I’m thinking about another nicotine patch.” His dark eyes were warm as he smiled. “Well,” he drank his own cup of tea. “What would you think it meant if it were a clue to you?”

He was looking for a different explanation than Sherlock’s. She always liked that about him. Even when the Freak proved her wrong over and over, he still listened to her. Nothing seemed to change that.

“Maybe she was just…busy.” She began lamely. Now that she started, she wasn’t sure how to go about it. “Just…working. She did have that media job, so there wasn’t any point in hiding all that pink, was there. Probably helped hide her in a way.” After all, who would commit adultery in such plain sight? “She had to take off her rings anyway…everyone does eventually. Not cleaning them doesn’t really mean she doesn’t care about her husband or partner, does it. It could mean she isn’t worried about her marriage in that way.”

“Taking the other person for granted?” He asked softly.

Sally hadn’t meant it to come out that way, but it did. She turned red and looked down to the table where her plate of noodles still wanted attention.

“Something like that.” She said.

Her mother wanted her to have that ring. Sally wanted it, and she feared it. She hated that she wanted what it stood for: two hundred years of mothers and daughters, and she was awfully, awfully tired of explaining that the ring passed through the women, not the women of the men of the line, but a sort of side-ways inheritance that was probably more pre-Christian than anything else.

Sometimes she didn’t want to explain anything at all…she just wanted to up and do something, even if it was stupid and drastic.

DI Lestrade:
He doesn’t always dress with the amount of professionalism they want him to. That’s because he might be a good boy for them in many ways, but they aren’t paying for his wardrobe. After the second year of his promotion he got quite less concerned with silk ties and stiff collars.

When he comes home at night, his clothes are often in a rough state—he can’t bring himself to hold back and leave everything to his men—and more importantly to Sally—so the clothes are usually just not salvageable for a second go. He has exactly enough laundry to get him through a mad week, no more no less and if that doesn’t work he has a can of louse spray and a one-minute walk to the nearest charity shop, which thankfully is known for its clothes more than its ratty popular fiction novels, broken toys and cookware no one, even Sherlock, can deduce.

Come to think of if, Sherlock would likely be the last person to trust with identifying something for the kitchen. He’d think of how it would work in that morgue-kitchen he keeps.

Clothes are off, shower on, and while the water rolls down his closed eyes he uses as much soap as he can spare off the bar. Its something he needs to do at the end of the day…washing off more than just the city itself, but the little bits and pieces that still cling to his mind.

Sherlock had just pulled the woman’s ring off her finger with perfect ease, and that should have meant something to the man. It did to Lestrade.

A ring can’t just slide off like that without practice.

His own ring slides off smooth and easily. Its an ordinary silver band—a real wedding band and it means as much to him as it did the day it was slipped on. She had laughed because her own fingers had had trouble with it, but Cassie wasn’t the type to let anything defeat her, not even limited mobility and the pain of the stitches that pulled at her smile.

“You can’t get married, Greg. You’re a policeman in London, for heaven’s sake. Your wife will be worried sick about you.”

True enough on one level, but no one had ever told Cassie:

“You can’t get married, dear. You’re a journalist for the Embassy, for heaven’s sake. Your husband will be worried sick about you.”

They had bonded together on their worries, through crazed bombers and snipers and the more silent forms of hatred: poison and knives (lots of those), and wire-taps and things that didn’t even exist electronically any more…they were outmoded along with the 8-track or the concept of large ear-phones.

So they felt they could at least worry together.

But they both drafted up their wills first, before the wedding and a bloody good thing too because Cassie had been one of the passengers on the Flying Scotsman the day a car lost its brake and the driver managed to jump out but the car kept going and went right over the tracks before the 10:15.

Three weeks in hospital, and three years of joking that it had taken a train to retire Cassie when a Libyan bullet could not. She laughed all the same, kept herself busy, and when he came home at night it was to ask what he was doing, and how was it all.

He still felt her presence when he walked through the door.

Cassie hadn’t been able to slide her ring off at all. Not after the second year of marriage. That left hand was just too battered from tendon damage. She managed to make do, but the ring stayed put; it would have taken a metal saw and a skilled lapidary’s hand to work that miracle. But she hadn’t wanted the ring off.

What she wanted for him was a different matter.

“You can’t be walking around carrying that thing forever, you know.”

He ignored her—pretended to ignore her words—and pretended just as hard to stare at the hissing sound of the equipment piled up around the bed-stead.

“Go on, you idiot.” She could still smile, even with the oxygen mask over her lower face. “We both knew one of us would have to stay behind. Don’t wear pieces of me like a trophy…or armour.”

He agreed, but he lied.

He stepped out of the shower, clean all over and relaxed and warm. It would feel wonderful until he stepped into the chill of the living room.

Until then, he pulled out the silver cleaner and the toothbrush bought special, and scrubbed his wedding band to the last grain.

Silver. Neither wanted to mess about with gold. Gold was soft, gold was too expensive and did more good as a part inside a computer than hanging off a finger. People got killed for their gold more than their silver, and they had both intended to live as long as they could.

Jennifer Wilson had worn that ring frequently, and often. She hadn’t cleaned it, but there were other ways to show some sort of concern. It still fit her finger, for one. There had been no re-sizing, no adaptions, no struggling to make the ring fit even though her hand was beginning to change with age.

It made him sad, and it also made him sad to think of the other forms of life-waste going on. Donovan and Anderson had to be the saddest, with both of them going around weighed down with the combined metric tons of their family’s expectations. He’d met various figureheads of the two clans at equally various mandatory socials designed to “mix” the policeman’s world before it got too inbred. It made him cranky to think about, because if there was one person Gregory Lestrade disliked on sight, it was the willowy runway model pretending to hang off her dear Andy’s arm on the way to the drinks table.

Andy. What sort of warped diva makes a pet name out of her husband’s name, the name she wouldn’t even take for herself when they married? And the helpless look on Anderson’s face as he spent the rest of the evening paying fetch for the Rhinestone Queen…well, that had been painful for everyone on the team. Worse because it was clear that fireworks simmered below the surface of those too-pretty green eyes, and they were the sort of fireworks that maimed people when you lit them up.

Sally’s unhappy expression was just as bad. Frankly, he tried not to think about that too much, because here she was without a fellow, and her mother and aunt asking not-so-subtle questions about all the fine-looking men around, and giving the most shameless glances at every man’s left hand for clues.

Eventually, Lestrade had about all he could take of it, and he could just imagine Cassie’s laughing voice urging him on. He slipped his ring into the small inner-pocket of his dinner jacket and put on an appearance as a “very interested” supervisor who was glad Sally Donovan was on his team.

Later, Donovan and Anderson both took him aside, thanked him sincerely and whole-heartedly for the salvage of Sally’s sanity, and finished off with the promise to hang him in Molly Hooper’s most favorite drawer if he ever did that again. It amused him no end that although they had praise/castigated him separately, their wordings had been almost identical.

Talk about being married…they were already more married than most people.

He had a feeling that in the Afterlife, Cassie was agreeing…even as she was urging him to take his own advice.


Molly Hooper:

She doesn’t think of her people as inanimate things, but she is so used to seeing the attitude in others she doesn’t flinch at it….much.

It’s because she has thought long and hard about it and she has come to realize that she is responsible for her feelings, and shouldn’t enforce what she thinks on anyone else. This is part of the reason why her work is acquiring information from the dead, and she’s quite good at it.

On her shelf she still has her treasured copy of “Dead Men Do Tell Tales”, the story of the life’s work of William Maples, and she reads it on a regular basis because it reminds her of why the job is unpleasant and why it is worth doing. When Maples described how he had seen the bones of a murdered infant rise and point its finger to the man who killed it, she was still wracked with the awed chills of what could be done to bring truth to the dead.

Maples was a genius, and she would always regret never meeting him. She loved his American descriptions of London while he was studying the Elephant Man, and his chapter devoted to the strangeness of suicides; how a murder victim was only identified by breast implants that were mistaken for “inland jellyfish” by a sheltered student in an American swamp, and how the real forensic writers would trap the script writers for QUINCY against the wall and give the gits precious pieces of their minds.

Determining a redhead by looking at the skeleton? To laugh.

At least, that was what Molly thought until last month when a latest forensics article showed how they’d proven the coloration of a small dinosaur’s skin and feathery crests using the scanty fossil evidence left behind. She marveled to herself and then wondered if any of the poor writers would at least get some vindication for being ahead of their time, science-wise.

One thing she does to remember these are people is to keep their names. She admires Sherlock his single-minded focus and she knows a bloody genius when she sees it (Molly has very well-developed hero worship skills, cultivated since early childhood), and she knows she will never, ever be as bright or as smart or as together as Sherlock…but still she can’t help but wish and keep trying while she’s still doing her job.

Sherlock is one of the people who thinks when you’re gone, you’re gone and all that’s left is something not worth feeling about although you can still think about them. That tells Molly more than anything that is the Hereafter Sherlock has picked out for himself—and he’s probably figured it out years ago, going to his conclusions at warp speed and then sticking to them without a qualm or a hitch.

Molly doesn’t have that mental distance. With her it all boils down to one of Maples’ most favorite quotes, one he took from the Old Testament:

Can these bones live?

Its her job to see to it that they do live, for a little bit before their final resting place. When they brought in poor Jennifer Wilson she was all set to be sympathetic from the story brought down; cleaned her up best as she could and started on the autopsy because there had to be a loved one waiting for her, right?

So she cataloged blood type, signs of death, tissue necropsy, broken nails (so much care in herself…so very much care), and all the other signs, and she dutifully made note of everything as she went along.

It was when she came to the feet that something odd came to her mind. The toes took her attention: They were painted the same shade of pink as her finger-nails…not that that didn’t make sense, but the shade was still rather unusual to her mind…something like a more modern version of Pink Panther Pink…which was still a closely guarded recipe at the studios. She knew that because she had watched a lot of the telly growing up, and there wasn’t much for someone shuttled back and forth between London and Cardiff (London-father and Cardiff-mother). It was cartoons in the morning and Jackanory in the noon, and Dangermouse in the 80’s, and episodes of Quincy every evening like clockwork.

Yes, she liked Quincy. She liked the show because of how it started: Jack Klugman reading and resting in the hospital from a bout of lung cancer, and wanting to transform his interest in medicine for something the public would like. And how she did like it. Look at her today.

She was bending over the latest bit on the clipboard when she got another visitor.

“Still working on Jennifer Wilson?”

“There’s still a lot to see, Greg.” She no longer felt awkward about using his first name. He insisted on it with a weary look and an explanation that he heard his last name so much he had to make sure he didn’t forget the name his mum gave him at birth. He looked rumpled-up and sleepy with smears under his eyes and he’d been rummaging his fingers through his hair again.

Should they ever have anyone else in the room, they would go back to the usual titles, but no sense in that when it was just the two of them.

He took a deep breath and looked at Jennifer Wilson on the table. Molly knew for a fact that if Jennifer Wilson had been alive, he would be alarmed to see so much as a square inch of her skin without her permission. But here, he seemed to think being naked was part of the processing of finding answers.

“We had word from the family. Her husband will be bringing her home for burial on Friday.” He said at last. “Any chance you found anything else?”

“Not really, though it is interesting…when you look at a few things.” Molly looked at her clipboard. “Someone put in a note to see if she worked in media?”

“Yeah…I think it was Donovan.”

“I’d say she was right.” Molly explained about the pink. “Its only a few tonal gradiations from being the secret formula. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was from a studio.”

Greg’s mouth twisted into a peculiar smile. “Fancy that.” He said. “I should have paid more attention to cartoons when I was a kid.”

She wanted to ask him what he’d done instead, but it wasn’t her business, really. “Well, they weren’t always interesting…unless you’re on about Dangermouse. Did you get that show?”

He laughed out loud.. “Get it? I used to live at one of the places they talked about.” He grinned cheekily, and she warmed to his sudden laugh because it went all the way into his eyes. “The great green wilds of Puttinham Down, which is right between Makingem Cross…”

“And Ungainly Manor.” Molly giggled. “I thought I was the only one who remembered all that.”

“Well it was up against the Sussex Downs when it wasn’t the jungles of Somerset, so I had imagined I was under some sort of exile.” He grinned sheepishly. “Fun show. I need to get the DVDs one of these days.”

“Just borrow mind, no need to spend money.” Molly cleared her throat at herself and looked down. “By the way,” she stared down at table again, “Next time there’s a big society thing going on, you might want to massage your ring finger.”

“Pardon?”

Molly lifted Jennifer Wilson’s ring-hand. The ring itself had been removed but the indentations remained on the skin. “Best you be careful about those relatives of Sgt. Donovan’s,” she warned. “They were only looking for the lack of a wedding ring. That means they’re professional matrimony sharks. If they weren’t, they would have noticed you had a ring-dent on your finger.”

“I didn’t notice that myself.” He said abashed but smiling. “That’s quite good.”

She blushed a bit, smiling down at Jennifer. “Oh, its nothing. Something a woman would think of.”

“I doubt Sherlock would.” He agreed.


Rings Mean Full Circles:

Molly Hooper was bending over the lastest addition when DI Lestrade came in.

“Been almost a week, eh?” He asked politely. “You wanted to see me?”

“Well, for more than one thing, actually.” She admitted.

“Yeah? Me too. You first.” He folded his arms over his chest and smiled tiredly. It all made her want to ruffle up the smooth parts of his hair so it would batch the rest, or comb it down, or just find him a man-sized teddy bear and a large hot toddy.

“Someone said Sherlock wasn’t coming in this week.”

“Ah, no. He was in shock over the shooting. I thought I’d just tell him not to come back for two weeks.”

“He didn’t fight that?” Molly was surprised.

“Well, he thought about it, but he did admit he was in shock in the first place. That’s kinda historic, innit?” He was smiling to himself, as if there was a joke no one else could get and that was fine with him. “Don’t worry, he’ll be back stirring things up and nicking parts before you know it.”

“Oh. All right.” Molly blushed a bit. “Well, that was one thing…the other is this gentleman here.”

“Yeah?” He came closer, looking down upon the body. Late 40’s at least, older than himself. “What is it?” He got it a moment later. “Had a ring on his finger?”

“Yes…that’s what’s got me.” She lifted her eyes up, large and brown and troubled. “He was Mr. Wilson, Greg. Jennifer Wilson’s widower.”

Greg’s face clouded and he looked down. “Too bad.” He lifted the hand up and stared at the marks below. “Knew how to cut his wrists, didn’t he. All the way up, instead of side to side.”

Molly pointed to his left hand. “Look at this…I’m not sure I understand what I’m seeing here.” She showed the left hand. “This was where his wedding ring was…”

“With you so far.”

“But look here.”

She held up his right hand, where the corresponding finger was showing the same dent.

“I didn’t get to see what he was wearing at all when I came in, so I’m not sure. But he had a ring on the right hand too.”

“Widower’s finger.” Greg said softly.

“Pardon?”

“Widower’s finger.” He explained. Without knowing it his own hand had reached to his band. “She had her lovers…but he was in mourning.” His dark eyes sank from hand to hand on the table, taking in things that clearly upset him. “She had affairs for years…and he was wearing a ring on his right hand as if she were already dead.”

“That’s terrible.” Molly said with feeling.

“Yeah.”

Both were quiet for a moment, their thoughts chattering like the hissing of the fluorescent lights above.

“I’m not sure it’s suicide.” She said at last. “I know that’s what the initial report says, but…I’m not sure.”

“Want me to take a look?”

She was horrified at his generosity, knowing full well what his caseload was like. And yet to refuse would make things worse.

“I’d like that very much.” She told him.

“Well.”

She looked up, surprised by the sudden resolve on his face. He was looking at her quietly, politely, but there was something kind about his face, something she didn’t see in Sherlock…it said he was actually seeing her.

“I came down to ask you…” He hesitated, then looked straight at the dead man’s fingers. “I was wondering if you’d like to go out sometime for lunch.”

“Oh, that would be lovely.” Molly brightened a moment before she dulled. “Well…I like spicy foods.”

“That’s fine.”

“Really spicy.”

“Asian meatballs?”

“Oh, yes.” She sighed. “But I can’t eat too many of them. Too much sugar.”

“I’ll watch yours if you watch mine.” For the first time in her presence, ever, Greg grinned.