for Sherry

[formoftherapy]

Kite made it to Christmas break alive, which still feels like an accomplishment. (Sunnydale habits are hard to break.)

She's using the time to get through the rest of her grandmother's journals and the bar seemed like as good a reading room as any. Kite has laid claim to one of the couches, legs sprawled across the cushions and a coffee mug on the floor beside her.

Comments

[if_inconvenient]

"Well, I did not say I minded."

[formoftherapy]

"Ah. Good to know."

[if_inconvenient]

He raises his eyebrows slightly.

[formoftherapy]

She blinks innocently.

"What?"

[if_inconvenient]

"Nothing," he says, with no expectation of being believed.

[formoftherapy]

Now it's her turn for the skeptical eyebrow raise.

[if_inconvenient]

"What am I like?" he asks, which is a complete non sequitur unless you know how Sherlock's mind works, and a bit of a leap even then.

[formoftherapy]

"Not afraid of a complicated question, for one thing."

She pauses, gathering her answer.

"Infuriating," is how she decides to start. (She can't quite say it without grinning, though.)

"Private. Ten steps ahead of everybody. You make me worry and you make me laugh. You're one of my best friends."

That's about all there is to it.

[if_inconvenient]

"That sounds about right," he murmurs.

[formoftherapy]

Kite grins.

"I did good, then."

[if_inconvenient]

Slowly, thoughtfully, he grins back.

[formoftherapy]

"Any other questions?"

[if_inconvenient]

His hand touches his throat. "You've done this to me, haven't you."

[formoftherapy]

(talk to me, Sherry)


"Yes," she says softly.

[if_inconvenient]

"More amicably, I hope," he says with a dry smile.

[formoftherapy]

She laughs, short and sharp.

"Considerably more."

[if_inconvenient]

"Oh, good."

[formoftherapy]

"It was."

[if_inconvenient]

He smiles.

[formoftherapy]

"What about you then--Sunnydale or New York?"

[if_inconvenient]

"Sunnydale. But I am aware of a timeline where we stayed, hence asking."

[formoftherapy]

She nods.

"I met one you from one of those. He was a vampire."

[if_inconvenient]

"—From one of those?"

Oh, Obadiah. How silly you are when it comes to assassination.

Not that he doesn't have a guess: "And how did he get that way?"

[formoftherapy]

"You--he and Tony were in New York. Obadiah hired vampires to take the two of them out. Tony died; he didn't."

[if_inconvenient]

That part, he wasn't expecting.

His first thought is How?, but his ruthless imagination answers it without a pause. Of course that Obadiah would not have done it on purpose—he is, bless him or damn him as you like, too smart for that. It would have been an accident. One he was given cause to regret, Sherlock expects. God knows you would not need to remove his soul to put him in a vicious mood under such circumstances.

All this flashes through his mind in hardly a breath; disinclined to reveal any of it, he voices only a very subdued, "Oh."