I know exactly what I want and who I want to be
I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine
I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy
Oh, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh
(Marina and the Diamonds - Oh No)

Friday 14th April

6.49 am

St. Bart`s Mortuary

It is hot and airless, and I cannot see a hand in front of my face (why would I want to? A hand in front of my face would scare the bejezus out of me at this point). My breath is coming thick and fast, which is a bit mental considering my confined space and hard fast restrictions regarding noise of any kind. The merest fidget, the simplest cough or scrape across the floor of the cupboard could alert him to my whereabouts, and my whereabouts must not be given up lightly.

The cupboard is barely two feet across and three feet in height. I am folded into three parts, none of them comfortable in their points of contact with the Formica/MDF that makes up my walls and ceiling. In the distance I hear a refrigeration unit hiss and the drip of that bloody tap (first thing Monday – unless I am on life support in an Isolation Wing – I am getting a plumber in here to put a sodding washer on that tap). The heating has not been adjusted and I feel beads of sweat forming beneath my arms and across my forehead, then my upper lip. I can taste salt and my body is sticky and almost pulsating in the tight, hard confines of my self-imposed prison.

Then I hear a new sound.

The single slap of a bare foot upon the tiled floor of the morgue. Then another. In this sensorial deprivation, I can hear every sound, from every corner of this building (room, at least). Slap follows slap, and the crinkle of a blue paper suit and the light breathing of a man who tracks people for a job. For money. Professionally. And he is tracking me. The sweat is now trickling down my left armpit and onto my ribcage. I am almost light-headed and untethered from the world. In one hour, I could be facing a death sentence and my heart could not be lighter or brighter or my head more clear. I mindlessly gnaw at my lower lip and become aware that the slap of foot on tile has halted and is now very near the cupboard I reside within. Around the edges of the door, cracks of light are darkened by his shadow and his breathing is louder. I can smell him, the very essence of him, and I know he must know I am here.

So very silently and with infinitesimal care, I lift my leaden hand from beside my numbed feet and press it to the cool, hard carcass of the door, flattening tight against it.

Touch me. I am here.

~x~

Friday 14th April

6.49 am

St. Bart`s Mortuary

The last time I played hide and seek was aged seven, when Mycroft knew I had hidden in a kitchen cupboard and pushed an armchair up against it until I hammered on the door to be let out. I was found by my mother approximately three minutes after my bladder had given up hope.

I hope you realise that my attitude towards Mycroft is not merely an unsubstantiated affectation.

Thus, I felt certain that that particular tragic game would be my last, and until this day (perhaps the last day I could call my own) and Molly Hooper`s request for distraction, it was.

"I`ve always wanted to play hide and seek in here," trilled she, swishing her hair and appled cheeks from left to right, surveying a room she has good cause to know intimately. "Let`s do it!"

"Why?"

"Why not? In an hour, we could be at the mercy of a heart monitor."

As if I could refuse her anything now. Why not, indeed.

"Ninety nine, one hundred." Before I had even opened my eyes (ridiculous), I knew exactly where she was. The moment I had agreed to play, her eyes had darted to the third cupboard to the left of the refrigerator (the most empty, since the new delivery of test tubes that were to stock it had been due the day we entered quarantine. How do I know this? – I read delivery notes and invoices; I remember detritus; small details enthrall me; I am Sherlock Holmes).

I have stopped before the cupboard and I hear her. Not just her soft breaths, but I fancy I detect her heartbeat, pulsing and pounding. She is hot, sweating. I smell the fresh heat of her and, suddenly, this knowledge fells me (both mentally and physically) and I find my knees have buckled, and I drop and kneel before the cupboard, knowing that 30 mm of melamine separates us, and it is nothing, and it is everything.

I am very tired, but cannot rest. We knew this last night would be the most difficult, and we determined to tackle it as best we could. I am light-headed and light-hearted. I feel the shift in the universe as it pulls me in, sweetly and discreetly. My pulse is pounding hard in my ears and I find my breathing to be irregular and difficult to control. My limbs feel heavy and unwieldy, but I lift my arm; my hand and its heat finds the coolness of the cupboard door, and I press my palm towards its centre.

"I am here," I whisper, "I have found you."

~x~

Consequence

"Good morning Doctor Watson, and may I take this opportunity to offer the most sincere congratulations on the birth of your son."

"Ta very much, Mycroft. We actually did get your fruit basket – but then, you probably didn't realise you`d sent it – "

"Ah, I do believe that was a time of trouble in the Sudan. My staff, however, are more than reliable."

"Mary loved the kumquats."

"Indeed. I am more than delighted."

There is a slight pause, which always happens when Mycroft Holmes and I meet, without the distraction of his younger brother to give us a common focus of irritation. I break the silence:

"They have been so lucky."

He nods, sagely, as if the false alarm of the CoriVirus had been in his plans all along.

"Although a distinct possibility, the odds were in their favour."

"Mycroft, they must have gone through hell these last five days – not knowing – doing mad science in amongst a solid wall of dead people. They must have been terrified."

Mycroft Holmes crosses one leg over the other as we sit in the visitor`s waiting area of St. Bart`s. Sherlock and Molly`s testing had revealed Mr Paulo to have been the victim of nothing more terrible than a second bout of rheumatic fever, combined with a fatal heart defect. His heart had been enlarged (as CoriVirus would indicate) but that was a rather unfortunate coincidence, which rigorous and meticulous analysis had eventually determined.

"My brother is not easily terrified," he comments in that drawl I know he designs to appear casual, but embues all with a meaning we lesser beings have to jump and reach for.

I nod in agreement, then he says:

"Dr Hooper, however, has been astonishing."

Superlatives from Mycroft are as snowflakes in a furnace – look quickly, for soon they are a mere memory. I am surprised, so I stutter:

"Yes – yes, she is. She is a wonderful person. Truly, one of the best people I know."

Another pause as I hear a child scream and ask where his daddy is, and hear the vending machine dispense a can of something fizzy. His silence annoys me (I am sleep-deprived and easily annoyed, to be sure) so I add:

"Sherlock really does respect Molly`s opinion – that`s why he was here – to make amends, for the drugs den scenario." I decide to share with a man to whom emotion is a strange and foreign land.

"He actually does care what she thinks about him, Mycroft."

Irritatingly, he inclines his head and adjusts his grasp on his umbrella handle. So assured. So annoying.

"Of course he does, John," his eyes actually find mine and I experience a tiny shiver (weird) – "he is in love with her."

Oh good God.

And I am breathless, and I am wrung-out, and I am utterly disjointed, but I finally manage to say:

"Yes. I know."

Because I do.

THE END

A/N:

Thanks muchly to everyone who followed, favourited and especially those who commented on this story. It really is lovely to have feedback in all its forms.

I liked this prompt a lot and hope I did it justice. There is plenty of scope to develop it and I suspect that might be a future project!

(And I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I totally stole the `hands touching, separated by a barrier` idea from an episode of Dr Who, where the tenth Doctor (David Tennant) and Martha were blasted apart from each other and into space and said goodbye through a porthole, hand to hand)

Also, Cordiolium is the Latin for heartache, so there you are! :)

Emma x