The Game Is Afoot
Chapter 2
| Benophie x Young Sherlock Holmes
Sophie emerges from the narrow alley a quarter before midnight that would lead her to Diogenese Club. A gentlemen’s club that Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s elder brother co-founded. Though one can also note it to be a front for British intelligence, where Mycroft conducts government business.
Two shadows materialize beside the backdoor of the club, one of them belonging to her long time friend. Sherlock introduces James Moriarty after giving her a perfunctuary hug.
“A pleasure to meet your acquaintance Miss Baek.” James says, giving Sophie a flirty smile and a kiss on her hand. She laughs lightly, already amused by Sherlock’s new friend and his antics.
Ruggedly handsome she notices, what with his broad physique and Scottish accent. There is an impish gleam in his mossy green eyes that suggests he is as sociable wherein Sherlock is the opposite of that effect.
“Finished?” Sherlock interjects with a raised brow having no time for unnecessary flirting from Moriarty and leads them toward an unoccupied room in the club.
“You were expelled again, were you not Sherlock?” Sophie gives a small laugh to her friend.
“Expelled? I was expelled, our dear friend, however was fired from being the University’s porter. Drinks?” James offers the amber liquid while helping himself to the bar cart in the corner.
Sophie only lets out a small “ah.”
She and Sherlock both declined while James, merely shrugs and pours himself a generous amount of amber liquid.
“So, what is this all about then? Not to mention the urgency of the letter you sent.” She asks while setting herself down to one of the leatherback chairs stationed around the room.
“James and I visited Appleton Manor after the whole debacle at Oxford.” Referencing the ancestral Holmes family residence.
“When a woman appeared by the door looking for a lady named Cordelia Holmes.” That statement gives Sophie a pause because Sherlock’s mother had passed years ago.
“So, who was it then?” She asks, still not understanding where all of this was going…
Sherlock sits beside Sophie and gently grabs one of her hands.
“She claimed to be Maria Baek. Your mother, Fee.” Sherlock tried softening the blow by using his childhood nickname for her, while smiling sympathetically.
Everything in her freezes.
“I… I… I don’t understand.” Things are not making any sense right now, and she does not know how to respond or feel about what her friend had just revealed.
“Here.” James hands her a glass of scotch, which she promptly drinks and coughs as her throat burns from the alcohol. Sherlock then proceeds to pat her on the back, only for her to wave his hand away, as if saying she’s alright. But was she alright? When someone just announces news such as this, how should one respond?
“Are you quite sure? We were both fairly young when she…” Died? Resurrected? Sophie is getting ahead of herself, she determines. The right terminology is not of importance at this very moment.
“Niles, our butler recognized her. Fee, it really is her.” Sherlock leans forward to make her look into his blue-green eyes. Sophie unceremoniously slumps into her chair and merely nods at the statement.
“Where is she now? Most importantly, why now?” So many things are running through her mind, that she is struggling to grasp for something to hold onto. Anything, for just a moment, to stay steady on solid ground.
Meanwhile, without noticing, James rejoined the pair inside the room with an additional company.
A gasp sounded just behind and with an instinct of a maid, was ready to apologize profusely.
“Sophia?” A woman hesitantly asks. She seems quite frail at first glance, but besides a few strands of grey in her long half pinned raven hair, the woman in question was rather hauntingly beautiful with her porcelain skin. Not to mention: the complete mirror of Sophie’s image.
Sophie stood motionless while the woman apprehensively, saunters forward with the help of James, using the crook of his elbow to guide her towards the frozen young female.
Sophie does not know whether to faint, shout or throw up. Hell, she does not even know which way was up or down by this point in time. Gods above, Sophie needs to pull herself together before she falls apart at the seams.
Sophie then inhales deeply, counting to three in her head, and deciding that one can fall apart, the moment she is safely back in her room at Bridgerton House.
“Hello… Mother.” The word was awkward to her lips, she noted. But Sophie remarked that using the word made the woman’s hopeful eyes transform to one of elation.
“Oh my darling girl, you are so beautiful.” The woman… No, her Mother states as she stands before her.
Maria shakily raises her hands to cup her daughter’s cheeks for the first time in seventeen years. She could not stop herself from silently crying at being reunited with her child, and can only surmise what Sophie has been through all these years.
Everyone gathered at the table, a glass of scotch in each one’s hand, settled for the story on how Maria appeared at Appleton Manor.
“For most of my time in the asylum, they left me well enough alone. More often than not, days and nights would bleed into each other. Passages of time did not matter for patients who were presumed to be left or forgotten.”
Maria looks down at her glass of scotch, seemingly lost to her memories far beyond what the rest of those who sat around her could see.
“Just then, I heard the Director of the institution arguing with one of his staff that my donor was late again for payments.”
“This puzzled me since I do not know who placed me at the asylum in the first place.”
“Soon after that, I was being isolated from the rest, food was given in smaller rations, the number of times the Doctor visited increased…” Her voice carried and exhaled that tiredness that Sophie could relate to.
They may not have experienced the same hardship, but both carried the weight of pain that goes beyond physical. For that alone, Sophie initiated the first contact this time, by reaching over and squeezing her mother’s hand.
Maria’s eyes met hers and glanced at her with a look that layered with stories she never said aloud. Sophie’s mother forced a smile and continued on.
“The doctor’s treatments were becoming more unhinged, and I knew… I knew, I had to see you at least one more time.”
Maria’s throat bobbed, trying to keep the emotions at bay.
“I needed you to know that I loved you enough to let you go and have the opportunity that a mother, pregnant at wedlock, would never be able to give you.” Her lips flattened into a thin line.
“I was barely able to feed myself, much less a growing babe who needed nutrition from her one and only source.”
“Your grandfather paid me to go and by then I was pregnant with you.” Maria smiled nostalgically.
“I was terrified that if I had stayed longer, he would find out and then force me to take remedies to cause you not to grow full term.” Her mother bit the inside of her cheek and cracked her knuckles at the memory. “He was not a good man and did not have a relationship with your father.”
“So I left, but then my own mother had fallen ill and so…” She had to make a choice. Sophie thought to herself, her own eyes gathering wetness.
“I was delirious with the remedies they had given me at the asylum, and I guess my body just brought me to the last place where I felt an ounce of serenity…” Maria ended the sentence by locking eyes with Sherlock this time.
“I do want to get to know you, mother.” Sophie admitted in a brittle voice, one tear sliding down her cheek.
“And I you, dear daughter.” Maria wobbly replies while brushing Sophie’s tears oh so gently.
They hugged each other before departing. Sophie sets a date and time to meet again. James takes her mother back to Mycroft’s residence, which was conveniently empty, and where they all would be staying for the foreseeable future.
Sherlock walks Sophie back to Bridgerton house and they stroll in comfortable silence.
“How do you feel, if you don’t mind me asking Fee?” Sherlock scans Sophie’s face for any indication of what she may be feeling at what had transpired.
“Honestly?”
“Always.” Sherlock smirks. They both know that he relies on facts more than anything else.
“I do not know.” Sophie says truthfully, and he merely tilts his head then nods.
Sherlock never pushed and she was grateful for that. They continue to walk in silence after, their minds occupied with different matters.
Author’s Note: I watched Young Sherlock on Prime recently and wondered, what a little heist would look like with Sophie. Since I’m a sucker for jealous tropes, I also wanted a scene where Benedict gets jealous.
Inspiration was taken from both Bridgerton and Young Sherlock series.
Warning: Eventual Smut
Note: The sequence generally follows the timeline of Season 4 without the whole mistress thing.
Word Count: 1470
𝓜𝓪𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽
| read previous chapter here:
Chapter 1
| read next chapter here:
Chapter 3
| divider credit
