The Emotional Children

L

Consciousness dawned on Sherlock Holmes like a fiery sunrise after a lifetime of darkness. His eyes flickered open wearily, and the smallest rays of white light flooded the blackness he had slept under.

How long had he been like this?

The wounds in his leg and stomach pulsated as he became aware of himself again. His head was the weight of a thousand bricks. He couldn't have moved it even if he wanted to.

As his surroundings became clearer, he inhaled and registered the pungent odors of saline solutions and sanitizing sprays. The scratchy hospital sheets greeted him with their stark discomfort. He gingerly raised a hand and rubbed his eyes.

"On prosnulsya!" someone beside him hissed. He heard a swift rustling of a cloak and turned in time to see the speaker flee the room in the whirl of a white medical uniform. Sherlock's Russian was rudimentary, but he knew prosnulsya meant "awake."

"On prosnulsya!" the voice cried, louder this time out in the hall. "On prosnulsya! On prosnulsya!"

His face bathed in the bright morning light, Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to rest. His head pounded and his stomach was demanding sustenance, but the remembrance of past events soothed him and painted a smile on his face.

"Sherlock!"

It was John, bright-eyed and sporting the grandest smile Sherlock had seen on his face in the last few months. The doctor was standing with his arms crossed in the doorway, studying the detective with satisfied amusement.

"You're finally awake then?" he asked, laughter threatening to emerge in the back of his throat.

He allowed himself a small laugh. His head ached whenever he so much as made a noise. But he went on: "How long has it been, John?"

"Four days. The doctors were nervous you wouldn't pull through. But I mean, after everything you've been through, a couple punctures surely couldn't have kept you down for long. I was right, wasn't I?" he asked, laughing through his nose.

"I'm glad you were," Sherlock managed to say, his eyes still adjusting to luminous reality. His head still pounded, but that persistent, profound gratitude for existence kept him conscious.

"You did it, Sherlock," John exulted. "Saved the whole of London. And finally put to death the spider we've been playing with for the last what . . . five years?"

"Is he really dead, John? They checked . . . to be certain?"

"Yep," John replied, beaming yet somehow sober. "No movements, no pulse. They've taken his remains into the morgue. And they locked it to be sure. He's dead, Sherlock. It's over. Like you told me: it's done."

"Yes . . ." Sherlock muttered under his weary breath. "It's done."

"Not to be pretentious, but I did say I knew it would end this way," a voice said from behind John. Sherlock's pale face went a touch pink, and he felt his thoughts firing rapidly in his head. Her voice.

John turned abruptly, his face jolly with the flush of recognition, and he made a space for the detective's wife to enter the room. He winked at Sherlock before departing through the open door.

Sherlock felt his vision clouding again as Irene Adler entered the room, newborn bundle in her arms and chestnut tresses falling over her shoulders in frizzy waves. Her face was red with the animation of life, her blue eyes shone, and her thin lips were curved in an unpainted smile.

"You're awake," she said. "On prosnulsya," she repeated, in Russian. She sat in the chair at his bedside, never taking her eyes off him.

"It would seem so," he said, gently, not sure of how to begin or what he ought to say. So much—too much—had happened since their last horrific meeting, and the water standing in her eyes told him she didn't know how to begin either. He breathed in through his mouth to fill the gap of silence.