The inertia of arrogance
Rose woke up very late the next morning. It was another nightmare, but instead of the officer's tearful eyes, she saw a tall figure from behind.
She ran, getting further and further away from that figure. The world spun, the sky was clear, but suddenly it began to snow. Ice crystals landed on her eyelashes, on her brow. She couldn't stop, nor could she look back. The unspeakable secrets of her life were buried in this blanket of white snow.
She screamed and sat up.
There was a knock on the door. "Miss Rose, are you alright?"
A steady, capable female voice came from outside the door; it was Anthea.
She looked around and saw floral curtains, a yellow pearwood bookcase, and a velvet blanket. The familiar furnishings calmed her down.
“I’m fine.” She got out of bed, but suddenly a question occurred to her: Wasn’t Mycroft supposed to go to Termour today? Why was Anthea here? Could it be that he hadn’t left London at all?
Rose opened the door.
Anthea was still wearing that black suit, her hair perfectly styled. "My husband instructed me to take care of you before he left."
It turned out that Anthea was there to spy on him. So yesterday at the theater, even though she didn't reveal anything and even repeatedly brought up Sherlock to distract him, Mycroft still couldn't shake off his unease.
But Rose said nothing, appearing completely accepting of the situation, and even smiled at Anthea, saying, "Thank you." She was no longer the impulsive and naive girl she once was.
Anthea smiled too, but it was a formulaic smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Then feel free to contact me anytime if you need anything."
Rose nodded and then closed the door. The sound of footsteps receding into the distance came from behind the door—the crisp sound of high heels on the wooden floor.
She waited until the sound completely disappeared, then opened the bottom drawer of her desk and took out an old photo album.
The album is mostly filled with photos of her and Sherlock when they were children. One photo was taken shortly after she arrived at the estate; she and Sherlock are standing in front of a statue in the garden, both smiling happily. You can see his canine teeth in this photo.
She turned the page and saw another picture. Mycroft was in it too. He stood behind her and Sherlock, looking somewhat helpless, but with a smile in his eyes.
She remembered the sunny day the photo was taken. Mycroft was unusually home, not in Cambridge or at the Mathematics Society. He was just passing by when he saw her and Sherlock chasing each other on the grass. Sherlock insisted on taking a picture with him.
Her fingers brushed across her own cheek in the photo, then unconsciously slid down to Sherlock's cheek, lingered for a moment, then slid to the side, only to snap back just before touching the other face. She pulled her hand back as if burned.
She lowered her eyes. A few seconds later, she looked up again. She placed the photo album in the fireplace, where the farewell letter had been burned and was still burning brightly.
The flames quickly engulfed the smiling faces, and a warm tear rolled down Rose's cheek. She silently said goodbye in her heart.
Goodbye, Sherlock Holmes.
Goodbye, Mycroft Holmes.
Goodbye, Rose Holmes.
———
At that moment, her escape plan officially began.
Mycroft's arrogance makes him accustomed to looking down and calculating. He is wary of Sherlock's sharpness and Eurus's schemes, but he may well underestimate her clumsiness.
Then we should cater to his preconceived notions and create some seemingly clumsy little acts of resistance to cover up the real plan.
She began to behave in a way that was in line with Mycroft's expectations and seemed reasonable. She ate very little and spent most of her time sitting by the window, gazing at the place that held so many beautiful memories with Sherl. Occasionally, she would have some outbursts, such as breaking her mother's cherished vase or throwing a newspaper with a headline like "Baker Street Detective Solves Another Mystery" into the trash. One day, she even pushed all the documents on the desk in "Heart" onto the floor.
She knew that Anthea would relay every single one of his actions to Mycroft with perfect precision. And that precision was exactly what she needed.
Then she began to act, in a clumsy form of resistance that Mycroft had anticipated.
She found paper and pen and wrote a letter in trembling handwriting, incoherently expressing her fear and longing for freedom, pleading with the recipient to help her escape.
She hid the letter under her pillow, in a place easily discovered by the maid during her routine checks.
Sure enough, the letter disappeared quickly, but the number of guards at the manor did not increase. Clearly, the arrogant manor lord believed everything was under control, including the manor's security level and her own emotional fluctuations.
Rose sneered inwardly.
———
She wrote SOS letters every day, though they were all gone when she woke up.
A few days later, she was still writing. But this time it wasn't a cry for help, but a suicide note. In it, she mentioned that she was completely devastated and decided to drown herself in the lake, so that she could "die in a clean place."
Then she hid in the closet.
When the maid came in for her routine check, she assumed the woman had gone to another room to smash things in frustration, but then she saw the letter on the table.
A sharp alarm blared from the manor, and Anthea rushed there almost like a whirlwind.
Her voice, which was usually completely flat, suddenly became urgent: "There's no time to tell the master, hurry to the artificial lake in the garden to search for him!" There was a tremor in her voice that she herself was unaware of.
A flurry of footsteps rushed into the garden from all directions. Anthea, the servants, the guards—all were drawn to the lake that gleamed coldly in the moonlight.
As the crowd dispersed, Rose, wearing a thin nightgown, opened the closet and slipped out of the bedroom.
In the midst of the chaos, no one noticed that the woman who claimed she was going to jump into the lake nimbly turned a corner in the shadows of the bushes on the other side of the lake and disappeared behind an abandoned tool shed that had been locked for years.
There, hidden by vines, was an entrance to the estate's sewage system.
She discovered this place when she was a child playing hide-and-seek with Sherlock.
The place was foul-smelling, damp, and dark—a stark contrast to the luxurious elegance of the manor's interior. Rose didn't hesitate to slip inside, her slender hands bracing themselves on the slippery moss, her skirt instantly soaked through with the filthy mud.
She gritted her teeth and crawled laboriously along the narrow, dirty pipe toward the river outside.
She vomited at one point, but didn't have a spare hand to cover her mouth and nose. Eventually, she couldn't smell anything anymore, seemingly having become desensitized.
It was very dark, and even crawling, she slipped several times. Toads jumped onto her hand, making her feel nauseous, and she shook her hand to shoo them away. Sometimes she could feel herself crushing a few earthworms, but she couldn't see them clearly.
She didn't know how long she climbed, or how many times she fell. She was almost ready to give up, and even began to question whether this sewage pipe had any end.
But she just kept crawling, crawling. Crawling with anticipation, crawling with sorrow, crawling with regret, crawling with determination, crawling with hope, crawling with despair.
It felt like an eternity, as long as the second half of her life, yet as agonizing as the first half. Suddenly, she saw a glimmer of light. She thought she had gone blind, then wondered if she was hallucinating, and finally concluded that she had arrived in heaven.
The further she went, the more blinding the light became. Eventually, it became so bright that she couldn't open her eyes at all.
As her eyes gradually adjusted to the light, she first noticed her hands, which were covered in mud and grime and had several scratches.
Then she looked up.
———
The air was thick with the stench of decay, a scent of freedom mingling with the smell of decay.
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