when we catch a criminal, there's nothing we can do but play cops and robbers

[could_be_dangerous]

Who: Sherlock Holmes, Kenzi
What: Being a chronicle of Sherlock Holmes' not-so-very-slow descent into madness.
Where: The library.

Sherlock sits and he thinks, really thinks, which is a pleasant change from what has become the usual. The problems that surround him these days are distant and infuriatingly unsolvable, the data largely predictable and mostly useless, and himself so far outclassed in terms of sheer firepower that it's hardly worth thinking about at all. If it weren't for being stuck, if it weren't for the life he's desperate to get back to, he might have stopped trying ages ago.

This is different. This helps nobody but Sherlock, does nothing but help him to refresh his mind. To reset himself, after a fashion.

And so he immerses himself in books and in memory. In the closest he gets to mythology, to mysticism, and it might just slow his steady descent into utter madness.

Not that it likely looks it on the outside, not with the way he's piled half a shelf full of books onto a table and is sifting through them all with impatient noises, muttering to himself. It would all be so much easier if John were here; then he could talk it out, work it through, and John would do what he always does, that thing Sherlock still doesn't understand where he needs only sit there and maybe sigh a bit, say a few inane words, and then there, there it is, the answer. Or one of the answers.

That's not going to happen, though, and it's not the sort of mental path he really wants to walk down right now anyway. The point of this is to avoid all that, and it's not really helping, not when work and John are so tied up in one another, but it's still better than nothing at all. It's got to be. There's nothing else.

And speaking of nothing, there's nothing at all of use in the completely inane book Sherlock has set in front of him, and so he slams it shut and sets it aside, sighing heavily. Next.

Comments

[onteamdyson]

The library really isn't Kenzi's fave place. Reminds her too much of Trick's stupid books and that reminds her of Trick who reminds her of Bo who she misses so damn much that it hurts. Obviously Sherlock feels the same way about that John guy, who she has learned not to mention in front of him, and that's probably why she's always checking up on him. No one else does it. It's kind of like her job or something. So when she shows up at his house and he's nowhere to be found, she tries the library next.

Bingo.

The slam of the book and the heavy sigh are the perfect things to cover up her attempt at stealth. She creeps up behind him as fast as possible and covers his eyes with her hands.

"Guess who!" That may or may not be a hilarious jab at his deduction skills.

[could_be_dangerous]

Someday, Sherlock is going to murder her. He really is, and no jury would convict, not in light of all the evidence. Now, case in point. It isn't as though he doesn't notice her coming up behind him; he knows the smell of her and the way that she walks and it's all quite pedestrian but then, then she touches him, and he wasn't expecting that at all. People don't, as a rule, and as a rule, Sherlock is perfectly fine with that.

“I never guess,” he says, because that's best gotten out of the way first, “and I do know this one. Annoying little thing that buzzes around and won't leave you alone. Like a mosquito, but it's got a name. Something insignificant. Kendal. Kentucky. Kensington.”

And because he's safe in his knowledge that no jury would convict, he feels equally justified in picking up the book in front of him and raising it back over his head to smack against the top of hers. It's not assault if it's self-defence. It's also not assault if it's not really hard enough to do more than smart a bit. Probably. By some standards.

“Kentledge! Dense, useless for anything more than ballast; I think that's it.”

[onteamdyson]

What evidence? Since when is friendship evidence?! If anything, the jury would sympathize with all the bullshit she puts up with on a daily basis. Like books to the head and insults to her intelligence!

"Fucking--! Ow. The hell was that for, Fluffy, huh? I'll show you useless." Self defence her ass! She smacks him lightly on the back of the head before circling around to sit across from him where books can't reach her unless they're being thrown.

"Are you brooding again? Do you want me to turn off the lights so you can brood more effectively?"

[could_be_dangerous]

"Don't generally brood with books, bit pointless. Just makes you look overly serious about what you're reading and then people try to engage you in discussions about literature." Sherlock pronounces the word disdainfully, like he can't imagine a bigger waste of time than that. He can, in truth, but not by much. It's difficult to make reading made-up stories even more useless, but discussing reading made-up stories does accomplish it neatly.

"So no, not brooding, working, though it doesn't surprise me in the least that you don't know what that is." And he would dearly like to leave it at that, dearly like to just move on, but she won't leave him alone if he makes it boring for her, she'll just bother him until it isn't.

So he sighs at her again and pulls a book from the top of the pile. "Does the name Marcus Vanek mean anything to you?"

Likely not. Likely it's a name nearly everyone has forgotten, if they ever knew it at all, and Kenzi is likely too young to've heard it when it was the closest it ever came to being a household name. Still, he'll ask, because the less he has to explain, the better.

[onteamdyson]

Well fine. He usually broods with everything else! It's just his thing. She's come to accept this. Whatever. Working. Pft. She knows what working is! Just ... doesn't do it very often.

"Is... he ... left wing for the Buffalo Sabres?" Close, but no. The name means nothing. She obviously has no idea who this guy is. "I'm assuming you're going somewhere with this and not just spouting random names only smart people would know to make me look stupid."

[could_be_dangerous]

Oh, Sherlock's going somewhere with this. He wouldn't be leaning forward so intently if he weren't. “Marcus Vanek was an eight year old boy who was found stripped naked, stuffed in a cardboard box, and left by the side of the I-295 in 1981. Murdered, obviously, but nobody quite knows how or by whom. Nobody even knows why he was left there; the Potomac river wasn't far, so why leave the body there, waiting to be found?”

It's not a rhetorical question, but it's not one to which he has an answer yet. Perhaps he never will, but at least thinking about it has given him something to do. He gestures at the spread of books in front of him. “The body was found near and the murder likely committed in the District of Columbia, major city, nation's capital, big uproar, panic. That's where the boy lived, with his parents. Unremarkable. Middle class. Not suspects of the official investigation.”

Sherlock isn't entirely certain that was wise, hopes they weren't discounted out of hand but all the records he's seen don't really state either way. “Only gone two days before the body turned up. Naked, as I said, and all his hair had been cut short. Messy job. No signs of sexual assault. Virtually no signs of damage at all, autopsy didn't turn up much, so what happened?”

And so the research. The books. Maps, contemporary guidebooks, a book on famous cold cases, histories; absolutely everything he could get his hands on which might possibly have to do with the boy's murder. The rest of the known details are in his head.

[onteamdyson]

"Oh, gross!" But she's leaning forward, interest definitely captured. It's weird how desensitized she's become to gruesome stuff since meeting up with Bo. It still freaks her out, but nowhere close to the way it used to. Especially not just hearing about it. That's nothing.

She listens to the facts, expression darkening as she eyes the books set out in front of him. That's fucked up. That's weird. At least fae have motives, usually survival-related, occasionally sick perv-fetish related. But it's rarely kids. Barely ever kids. That's just wrong.

And yet, she can't help thinking about Bo and her mom. The realisation that filtered into her eyes before she let go. "... Maybe they snapped out of it. Change of heart, moment of panic, noooooo idea what to do. Guilt got to them. Left the body for the family and disappeared."

Just a guess. A long shot of a guess in answer to a rhetorical question. "Fluffy, this is hella depressing."

[could_be_dangerous]

Depressing? Sherlock isn't really certain how to respond to that. He sits silent, expression carefully blank. If John were here, he'd know what to do, how to answer, what to say to balance what's honest and what's good.

He's not here, though, and that leaves Sherlock reeling, trapped in a silence that stretches out the spaces between seconds, fills them up with questions, packed so tight he can hardly think, much less come up with the right answer, the acceptable answer, because it isn't, it isn't depressing at all, it's how things are, it happened, it's a wonderful mystery but besides that it's how people will always be (isn't it?) but that's not good, that's not a bit good to say, not even to think silently, yet here he sits, thinking it, being not a bit good, caught in an uncomfortable loop of thoughts (jumbled) and feelings (equanimous, unsettled), can't, can't for a moment understand but he's “-- why there? If it was for the family, why there, why not somewhere closer?”

Perhaps it's best not to address it. You machine. But that was different. Then he'd known exactly what to do, because friends protect people. He just can't possibly consider it a failing that he was unable to protect a boy killed when he himself wasn't yet five, a boy who lived an ocean away. Can he? Does she?

“Impossible to say unless we know who the killer is in the first place.” Sherlock folds his hands in front of him. “Which is what I'm trying to find out.”