Sherlock 100: 017. Brown

Title: 017. Brown
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the BBC's characters or plots. The dialogue that you recognize is obviously not mine.
Warnings: Language; hints of suicidal ideation.

She wondered, if the idea was to make the carpet and drapes resistant to stains, why whoever had furnished the room hadn't gone with a darker brown. As it was, it was just brown enough to be drab, but not brown enough to be usefully utilitarian. She knew; she'd dropped three mugs of tea on the carpet, thanks to her damned hand. Each time she'd had to spend fifteen minutes on her knees scrubbing the carpet out, because the cleaning fee would have been money she could ill afford to spend. Each time she'd paid for it in another way the next day, when the minutes on the floor had made her leg seize up so badly she could barely hobble to the loo and back. Being bedridden left one with very little in the way of entertainment, even for a crippled ex-soldier with low standards. Staring at the clock, making herself count the minutes, always pushing back by fifteen more the time at which she would transfer the gun from the drawer to under her pillow... she'd killed two hours that way before falling asleep. And two more, upon waking.

She sat on the bed-- light brown sheets and coverlet-- and considered the opposite wall-- beige-- and her strange meeting with Mr Sherlock Holmes. The only phrase she could summon was, What the hell? If Mike was right, if the man hadn't been putting on an elaborate show to have her on, then she thought he was probably a little mad.

Her phone-- he'd borrowed it. What had he sent? That could be illuminating. She took it out of her pocket. The inbox was empty, it was always empty. The sent messages--

All right, maybe a lot mad.

She limped over to the desk and looked up his name on the Internet. There were only a few hits, the top one purporting to be the website of one Sherlock Holmes. “The Science of Deduction”-- well, that might explain why he'd been in the lab, then. Mike had never told her what the man did, but after thinking about it, she'd realized that scientists and doctors with the NIH usually didn't need flatmates to make the rent.

The website was fascinating and inexplicable, which, she realized, was a pretty good description of its owner as well. Surely he couldn't be serious about all this, all this business about ties and thumbs and green ladders and arrests? And who had he texted, anyway?

She finished looking through his website and shut her laptop. Staring at the brown wall, she recalled the meeting in the lab. Sherlock Holmes had taken her apart, guessed nearly everything about her life, stared at her like he could see right through her... but he hadn't pitied her.

The thought occurred to her that, possibly, Sherlock Holmes was even more mad than she was. Wouldn't that be refreshing? She didn't have to commit to anything, if she went round to see the flat. Just have a look, and maybe see if the man was really as rude, abrasive, and strange as he seemed.

And what else did she have to do tomorrow at seven, except sit and stare at brown walls?