Welcome to Baker Street

91. The enigma of a broken heart

When the door closes behind the guard, Sherlock stares at Giulia with a steely gaze. What is she doing? Why was she so familiar and affectionate with a bodyguard? According to her backstory, she went down that road already. She told him and John that she used to be very close with her former bodyguard at the Consulate, in Latin America—the guard who kept her hidden after the explosion and handed her over to the MI6 for protection. From what little she said about him, it was clear that her old mentor was special to her. She had trusted him with her life, but she had also implied it was more than a simple working relationship.

Sherlock remembers it distinctly: she said they got close and called it 'a mistake'; those were her exact words. He couldn't forget it. Her account of those events had stuck with him ever since that day at the hospital. It's not like he stored it away in his mind palace like any other piece of potentially useful information. That wasn't just a random fact memorised by his brain; it was a fixed idea bugging him under the surface.

It wasn't just the mere story of that bodyguard that gnawed at him, though. He strongly despised the feeling of uneasiness he felt whenever he thought back to her sad face in his hospital room when she reluctantly announced that her bodyguard and she had to part ways soon after she arrived in London, without ever specifying the reason. And he didn't need the full story to see she had said goodbye with a heavy heart. Even though he would never admit it to himself, this was eating him up inside.

He blurts out arrogantly, "I thought you knew better than to grow fond of another bodyguard of yours. After all, your past experiences should have taught you that this kind of partnership always comes to a painful end for you."

A hurt look cuts across her face. She confided her backstory to him, and now he is using it as leverage against her. How dare he be so insensitive!

"What do you care? I thought you were alien to all human emotions. Should I believe that Sherlock Holmes has given in to jealousy?" she taunts him.

He spits out a bit too emphatically, "Don't be ridiculous. I'd rather say it's kindness: I just wanted to warn you against... inconvenient weakness," he hesitates at the end of the sentence, cursing his awkwardness. Why can't he talk about feelings without sounding like a case-hardened machine?

"Thank you for your concern, but I can assure you there's no need for that. I know that love can be a dangerous poison—I've tasted it myself. And when I got poisoned by heartbreak, the only person who helped me was precisely my old bodyguard, Thomas. He saved my life and restored my faith in humanity. And in the end, I couldn't even grant him what he dreamed of. I couldn't be the person he wanted me to be..." she trails off.

Sherlock arches a brow at her, bewildered. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," Giulia hastens to say before swallowing hard, trying to conceal the lump in her throat. "What I meant is that I have good reasons for trusting my bodyguards and letting them breach some rules, once in a while. In hindsight, asking Thomas to break protocol in that horrible night at the Consulate saved me."

Sherlock listens to her words carefully. She is referring to the explosion that changed her existence forever, but whenever she approaches the subject, it's always a fleeting, elusive mention. Then she shuts up completely and shuts the whole world out, he included.

He wishes it wasn't the case. He wishes she felt free to open up to him. Why doesn't she confide her whole story? For how long will she keep playing hide-and-seek with him? Is she incapable of trusting him?

He sighs and nods to the door recently slammed by the bodyguard. "Why did you do that?"

She shrugs. "Jake is going through a lot. I just wanted to help him out, cheer him up a bit."