Deducing Tragedy Part One: See No Evil

For Sherlock, there was no greater challenge than the puzzle. Finding all the little pieces and putting them together to create a picture that was coherent and elegant. He found that people were like puzzles. They gave you all the pieces to put together. However should you put it together wrong or finish it to quickly they get mad and reject you because of it. It is this reason that Sherlock spent much of his life alone.

People liked to believe that they were harder to solve than they actually were. Very few would acknowledge that he had figured them out and even fewer were remotely ok with that. John was the first person to accept completely that Sherlock knew everything about him. Even Mrs. Hudson occasionally deluded herself into thinking that she could hide something from him. But no he solved everyone, in time and when that happened he would become bored and wait for the next puzzle to come along.

“Something has happened,” Sherlock said as he and John stepped out of the cabby and onto Baker Street. He looked around, something was off- he could feel it. His senses were telling him that something wasn’t right but what could it be? A painful pressure on his chest caused him to slowly turn around toward the flat and look up.

Sherlock reveled in a difficult puzzle, like the Adler woman or Moriarty. They didn’t just give him the pieces; they hid them forcing him to solve not one puzzle but two. Where were the pieces and how do they fit together? On both occasions he was almost too late and something terrible would have happened but the challenge was worth it. Never before had his mind been used so extensively, never has he doubted himself or his abilities like that.

He took the stairs two at a time with John right on his heels. They raced down the hall and threw open the door to reveal their living room. “Sherlock…?” John whispered not looking at the man. Sherlock didn’t respond, he was busy scanning the room before them. While that pressure steadily climbed and spread across his chest. “Hanna?!”

He liked to think that everyone was solvable in one way or another. That every case was only a matter of time before he figured it out and he was bored once again. But lately two of them have evaded him. The Case of Jack Jr. the man who killed the part girls. And the Case of The Monster, the man tormenting Hanna. Now that he knew the two were one in the same he wondered why he didn’t see it a long time ago. It was right there in front of his face but Sherlock didn’t see it.

John ran through the room, into the back- her room Sherlock assumed as his eyes continued to scan the scene before him. “She- she’s not here Sherlock” John sad running back. “Please tell me you have something- anything!” Sherlock didn’t look at him. He continued to look at the room but…

“John-“ he started, his voice trembling as he placed his hand over his chest where the pressure was. “I- I”

The two cases fit together like two half’s of a whole, completing an elegant picture of this man’s last seven years. But there was still one puzzle left to solve: Hanna Hooper. The Girl who kept Sherlock guessing. Every time he thought he figured her out she seemed to expand and show him that he had more work to do. He found that she wasn’t just one puzzle she was hundreds, maybe even thousands, of them and when put together would provide the answer to The Girl.

“Sherlock? Please tell me you know what happened here,” John said, his voice wrecked with worry and fear. “Please, what happened to Hanna?”

“John,” Sherlock breathed, tearing his eyes away to look at his best friend. “Call Lestrade-“

“what why?” Another puzzle, one with all the pieces in place but this wasn’t just any puzzle. The pieces were jagged, sharp to touch. Sherlock couldn’t solve this puzzle, not without help from someone. Lestrade really was the only choice.

Sherlock ran his hands over his face, wiping away the few stray tears that were threating to fall before he glanced back around the room. The walls and floors were covered in blood nothing was left untouched by the ruby liquid. Above the chairs hung two of Hanna’s cats while the third hung in the window above the piano; little nooses around their broken necks.

“because I don’t know what I'm looking at”