Adult-FanFiction.org : Television / Streaming

The Thinker Challenge	By : marksandspence Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 2251 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This story is based solely on the television show Sherlock that airs on BBC1, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. I borrow their universe to play in and do not claim any ownership or intend to make any money off of this fun hobby of m

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
Author’s Note: Ok, so the order of the next two chapters is rather unimportant and I have switched it around a few times already. Trying not to fixate on it. Will upload both in quick succession anyway. Both meant to be a bit funny J
Another quick reminder that to avoid confusion, you might want to go back and read Chapter 1. The chronological order of events is: Chapter 11 (Drugs & Doodles) then Chapter 1 (This is not the beginning) and then Chapter 13 (Finding Sio) or Chapter 14 (Introvert Bliss).
Chapter 13: Finding Sio
In Sherlock’s flat, John is sitting on the couch with a laptop while Sherlock is building what looks like a massively intricate 3-D puzzle on the kitchen table.
“Anything yet?” Sherlock asks.
“It has literally been 5 minutes,” John responds before continuing to nibble on his thumbnail. “Besides, you’d hear the beep if I had gotten a message.”
“I can’t be expected to pay attention to such things,” Sherlock whines. “Figuratively, it has been en eternity. Answer the question.”
Rolling his eyes in defeat, John replies, “No. Nothing yet.”
“I need a bloody case. This is insanity,” he begins to pace the kitchen.
“Tell me about it. Mary is going to insist I come back in a minute if we don’t have anything to do,” John complains, his leg twitching.
“No she will not. It’s your guilt that will send you running,” Sherlock answers.
“Either way, I can’t sit around here all afternoon,” John responds.
“How long have you been here?” Sherlock says.
“You’d just started your puzzle thing,” John answers.
The doorbell rings.
John throws his head back, “Oh thank God.”
Sherlock walks quickly to the door, his eyes widening. But after a moment, he frowns just before swinging it open.
“It’s only you,” he sneers, turning his head to inform John, “It’s only Harry.”
“Henry!” Henry insists under his breath.
“Whatever,” Sherlock walks dejectedly back to his puzzle. “Has she sent you to pick something up? You can forage.”
Henry steps into the room and nods to John.
“Hello again, Henry. Sorry for…him. A bit restless, I’m afraid.”
“So she’s not here?” Henry says as more of a statement than a question. “I haven’t heard from her in nearly a week. She doesn’t answer her phone. She missed lab meeting. Everyone is freaking out.”
“And by everyone, you mean…,” John leads.
“Er,…the lab. Even the Department Chair asked about her and he never does that. Admittedly, the first couple of days were sort of a party when she didn’t come in. But now I’m really starting to worry,” Henry explains showing real concern.
“When was the last time you heard from her?” John asks.
“I got a text last Monday asking me to drop off a few papers and files – work stuff. I assumed she was sick. She didn’t answer the door when I stopped by, so I just slid them under and left. I went away for a mini-break and when I came back, all my texts just bounce.”
John turns to Sherlock, “Are you listening to any of this? Could be a case.”
“Don’t be daft, John. She never remembers to charge her phone when Harry isn’t around,” Sherlock dismisses.
“When did you last see her?” John asks.
“I have no idea,” Sherlock answers, still reeling from the disappointment of Henry’s arrival.
“Surely it hasn’t been a week. You two usually…” John says to Sherlock.
“Yes, usually, but sometimes I get involved in a case or she gets involved in something and we don’t ask questions. Weeks occasionally go by. Don’t project your style of relationship onto us,” Sherlock admonishes with a bit too much force.
“And don’t call him Shirley!” Henry jokes.
“So that’s why you’ve been a right misery lately. Explains a lot,” John says rather gleefully.
“It explains nothing, John. I need a case.”
“But this sounds like it may be a case.”
“Fine, you take it, then.”
“I don’t know what your problem is, but fine.”
“Good. Easy peasy. I am confident you can handle it.”
John says to Sherlock, “Check your phone to see when your last communication was.”
He sighs loudly. But after a quick sideways glance, he fishes his phone out of his coat pocket and starts fiddling with it.
“There’s a text from Tuesday afternoon,” he says.
“What was it about?” John asks.
“She wanted to know how to get in touch with Wiggy.”
“Who is…?” John leads.
“Someone who…gets things for me on occasion,” Sherlock replies.
John closes his eyes in frustration and disbelief. When he speaks, his voice is tinged with anger, “So in your last communication with Sio, she asked how to contact your drug dealer and you saw no cause for concern?”
“I didn’t know it would be our last communication then, did I? In any case, he is as trustworthy as that sort can be and I advised her to mention my name, thereby ensuring she’d be treated fairly,” he responds, aware of John’s apparent disapproval.
“What did she sound like?” John asks.
“You really are pathetic at this. It was a text,” Sherlock snips.
“I realize it was a text, I was simply asking if there was anything in it that might have revealed her state of mind,” John clarifies.
“I would doubt it possible to reveal her state of mind in a text,” Sherlock muses.
“What exactly did you tell her?” John asks.
“I gave her his mobile. And perhaps a suggestion or two,” Sherlock responds.
“Wait, so you’re saying my boss went to see a drug dealer? To buy drugs. I seriously didn’t think she had it in her to attempt something so…practical,” Henry says.
John starts getting his coat on and says, “We should go to her flat. Do you have a key?”
Henry and Sherlock respond in synchrony.
“No.” “Yes.”
Henry and John look to Sherlock, surprised.
“You do?” They both say.
Irritated, Sherlock puts his hand up, “Don’t.”
“On the way, why don’t you try to contact your man to see if she was successful in her expedition,” John instructs Sherlock.
*
As they approach the door of her flat, Sherlock’s phone beeps. He looks down at it and utters, “Uh oh.”
“What? You heard back from Wiggy?” John asks.
“Indeed. This could be a problem.”
“You look pale. That can’t be good,” Henry observes.
Sherlock looks up, “We need to find her.”
“What is it?”
“I was a bit distracted when I responded to her text. I had meant to suggest she should avoid a particular concoction, but somehow I managed to recommend it. A simple typo.”
“How bad is it?”
“It’s name is ‘Reset’ and it will likely…well, it will make her think she’s stupid. For a while.”
Henry gasps, bringing his hand to his mouth. “Oh that’s very, very bad.”
Sherlock unlocks the door and they enter. A quick peruse and it is clear she is not there. Instead of doing his usual investigative walk around, Sherlock stands nearly still in the middle of the main room. John watches him for a moment before saying anything, waiting for him to leap into action. When he doesn’t, John scratches his head and after a moment, his face lights up with an idea.
He accuses, “You are thinking about sex. Instead of looking for clues, you’re thinking about whatever it is you get up to in here. You can’t help yourself!”
Sherlock stiffens a bit “Don’t ever presume to know what I am thinking, John. It’s insulting.”
“Then tell us where she is. Do your thing!”
“Just…give me a minute,” Sherlock responds, a bit flustered. He has noticed this before; his lack of perception regarding Sio and her things. It is at times both disconcerting and comforting, depending on the details of the situation. “You’ve got eyes and a slightly above average intellect. Why don’t you have a go?”
John walks over to the desk in the corner. It is strewn with papers. He picks up a few of them.
“Birth certificate, lease, letter of employment, old bank statement. She was looking for something. A document she doesn’t use much,” John suggests.
“There’s a phone number,” Henry offers, lifting up a piece of torn paper.
“Call it,” John replies.
Henry dials, waits for an answer, then quickly hangs up.
“Solicitor’s office,” Henry reports.
Sherlock is still standing motionless in the middle of the room.
John walks down a hallway and returns a moment later.
“She definitely packed – badly. Clothes strewn about; a rejected case on the floor.”
“I usually have to pack for her – or at least re-pack her bag whenever she goes anywhere. She’s pretty useless with travel,” Henry comments.
“Could there have been a conference you forgot about? You said you were away,” John asks.
Sherlock sighs loudly and then says, “This is excruciating. It’s like watching a Cricket match in slow motion. She is in York at her Grandmother’s house, presumably settling the estate. Note the missing road map from the second shelf, the newspaper with all pages discarded save one, drivers license is missing from the pile of documents—old style as she doesn’t own a car and rarely drives and if you look at the paper jammed in the printer, I imagine you will find the exact address. I’ll leave you to it while I go back to the flat and wait for a real case to present itself.”
“Leave what to us?” John asks.
“To go and get her. She’ll be a mess with the drugs and so forth; I thought I’d explained,” Sherlock replies.
“Don’t you want to come and see if she is alright?” John leads.
“For the third time, I think it quite obvious that she is not alright. That’s why I agreed to go out despite it being nowhere near the minimum seven. But she will not want to see me in the state she is in, that is for certain,” Sherlock snips.
“Got it!” Henry says triumphantly as he pulls a crumpled sheet of paper from the bowels of the printer.
“I can’t just get in a car and go to York. It’s not like the old days. I’m sure Henry can manage,” John says.
“That’s rather cold, John. She may need medical attention. Wiggy gave her quite a grab bag. Besides, you have already seen her cry,” Sherlock responds.
John answers, indignantly, “I’m the one who is cold. Sounds like it is you who doesn’t want to see her in the state she is in. And even for you, that's….”
Sherlock interrupts, “Again, do not presume to know what I am thinking, John. On the contrary, the thought of her tangled, matted hair, puffy eyes, flushed tear-streaked cheeks, red snotty nose is inexplicably appealing to me mainly because any thought of her is appealing. When I think of her, I want to see her, always. But she doesn’t think I know…”
John nods.
“Aw. I am totally going to pretend I didn't hear that,” Henry chirps as he walks toward the door.
“You should go. And soon,” Sherlock insists.
Henry jiggles his car keys, “I am happy to drive!”
“Fine. I’ll need to call Mary,” John replies.
“You can drop me off on your way out,” Sherlock says as he turns to leave.
*
Henry and John arrive at the cottage – a little farmhouse on an isolated plot of land a few miles from the nearest village. The door is open, so they walk sheepishly inside.
“Dr. Stanton?” Henry calls in quiet voice.
They hear a noise on the second floor. Before ascending the staircase, John glances at the kitchen table, which is strewn with a selection of books, recently unpacked from a large Amazon box. The titles include: Cooking for Dummies, Housework for Dummies, A Little Bit of Everything for Dummies. John tilts his head and murmurs, “a little extreme.” Next to the books are a collection of groceries, a box labeled Mary Kay filled with make-up and nail polish and an envelope filled with pills.
They find Sio in one of the bedrooms upstairs. She is in a pink, fluffy dressing gown. Her hair looks like she has put her hand in an electric socket and her face is streaked with the remnants of bad make up. She is laying on the bed amongst what looks like an exploded tissue box.
“Oh, it’s you,” she moans as she looks over at them, blotting her eyes with a tissue. She dramatically grabs the pill bottle from the bedside table and pops two tablets in her mouth, spilling another three onto the bed.
John walks over to the bedside table and picks up the unlabeled bottle.
“What are you taking?” He asks, adopting a neutral tone.
“They’re my ‘no cry’ pills – Percocet, I think. If I don’t take them, I cry,” she moans.
“How many have you taken today?” John asks, concerned.
She gestures toward the tissues on her bed. “Obviously, not enough.” Her speech is sloppy, but hard to tell if that is from the crying or the drugs or perhaps the half empty bottle of scotch she is holding in her other hand.
Henry is still standing in the doorway, covering his eyes. “Should I, like, stay out here? I’m not sure I can un-see this.”
“Poor Henry. You’re going to have to look for another job. I can’t be a scientist anymore because I’m stupid. I’m just like everyone else,” she says this dramatically with a wave of her tissue filled hand.
John turns to Henry, “Why don’t you go downstairs and look up the pill code for the tablets in the kitchen.”
Henry jumps at the opportunity, turns around and heads straight back down the stairs.
“I don’t see anything. It’s all a bloody mystery. Look,” she tosses a crumpled up piece of paper and misses the garbage by about six inches. It joins the twenty other little bits of paper surrounding the small basket. She continues to rant, “I’m going to have to learn to cook, to clean….to do laundry. The Mary Kay lady that came to the house says I’ll need to wear a lot more make-up to attract a husband around here. She says I’ll need one of those unless I get a job. What sort of jobs do stupid people do?”
John sits down on the bed next to her, trying very hard not to laugh or smile. He awkwardly puts his hand on her shoulder.
“Now, now. It’s not that bad being average,” he offers, unable to help himself.
She starts to sob, wailing, “I’m going to have to have… babies.”
John lets a laugh escape, tries to cover, but can’t stop himself from giggling.
“How is this funny? I don’t know how to do anything!” Sio moans again.
“Sio. You are not stupid,” John says calmly.
“Sorry, did I offend? I guess now that I am one of you, I should use another term. Oh God, I’m going to have to learn to be nice,” Sio responds.
“No. It's the drug you took. The combination pill that Wiggy gave you – the one called ‘Reset’. It’s some kind of long-acting hallucinogen. But Sherlock says it effectively silences the analytic part of your brain. In a bad way,” John explains.
She blinks hard a few times, trying hard to comprehend what he just said.
“You mean, this is temporary?”
“Yes.”
“I'm still a genius?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t have to find a new job?”
“Not unless you want to.”
“I really don’t want to learn to cook. I don’t mind baking – sort of like chemistry. I like chemists.”
“Your kitchen can remain unused indefinitely.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“You could still work on the ‘nice’ thing.”
“So he left off the ‘not’. Whatever you do, do NOT let him give you Reset.”
“Indeed.”
“Wow. It takes an excruciatingly long time to work things out with a normal brain. How can you stand it?”
“Henry! You can come up now,” John shouts.
“I think I am going to need to detox. I feel sick.”
“Henry – bring a bucket,” John yells in a panic.
“Thank you, John. And thanks for not bringing Sherlock. I kind of want to hug you right now. You people do lots of hugging, I think”
“Please don't.”
*
- 13
- 14
- 15
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Thinker Challenge