A/N: Hey guys! This is the first Sherlock fic I've done in a while, and, amazingly, only my first venture into the Johnlock pairing! Hope you enjoy, and as ever, reviews of any kind would be much appreciated :)
The ramshackle truck trundled on through the night, the only light coming from the full moon that shone to the west and the stars that glittered across the bluish-black sky. Sherlock didn't quite know where they were, except that it was abundant in snow-topped trees and somewhere in Eastern Europe; his driver and his companion were arguing in what sounded like Russian. From what Sherlock could decipher, the driver had slept with his friend's wife, and the two were now quarrelling over whose claim to the poor woman was strongest. Not that Sherlock had needed to listen to their chatter to know about their problems; he had understood what the situation was between the two men when he'd spotted the mud on the driver's shoes, and the grease stains on his companion's shirt. It was textbook, really.
This journey into the depths of wherever had been arranged by Mycroft, who, much to Sherlock's disgust and annoyance, had done his brother a great favour. Mycroft had helped Sherlock keep his survival a secret, and had arranged for him to be assigned on a series of MI5 missions to keep the detective busy while government agents dismantled the rest of Moriarty's web. It shouldn't be too difficult; when a spider dies, it doesn't take long for its strings and workings to deteriorate. But for Sherlock's own safety, he was to keep away from his homeland for a year at least, just in case dregs of the consulting criminal's network remained. Sherlock had tried to tell Mycroft that this wasn't just about him, that he needed to stay in London to protect John and the others; his brother, though pleasantly surprised at his sibling's rare show of selflessness, insisted that for now at least, keeping up the fiction of the detective's 'suicide' would be for the best, and that he personally would command agents to keep a watch over Sherlock's friends. Sherlock had begrudgingly accepted that his brother was right, and within a few hours, he'd been bundled into this truck with nothing but a cheese sandwich and a flask of coffee. There hadn't been the time for further preparations, Mycroft had insisted. The world's most famous- and supposedly dead- consulting detective had needed to disappear in a flash.
Sherlock knew this was for the best, but he was still struggling to reconcile himself to his fate. His mind was a hurricane; his thoughts crashed against each other, torn from peaceful coexistence like trees from the ground. They collided and combined, becoming nothing more than a mash of words and wishes and unwanted feelings. Faces flashed through the turmoil; the faces of his friends, his foes, even, tedious as they were, his family. They all think I'm dead, he realised, his heart sinking. Life had been so much easier for the detective when he didn't let emotions scale the ten-foot walls in which he had encased himself. But then John had crashed into his life like a bulldozer breaking through concrete, letting a tidal wave of sentiment flood out of Sherlock. He thought of John, and Molly, and Mrs Hudson, and even Gavin Lestrade- was that his name? Or was it Graham? He never had quite managed to remember the small details about the detective inspector. Not that it mattered now, he supposed; he was probably never going to see him again anyway.
Sherlock shivered. His brother could at least have thrown a blanket in the back of this omnishambles of a vehicle; the heating was broken, the windows were cracked, and Sherlock could feel a draught, the winter air caressing his bare cheeks. He surmised that the temperature outside was around -5 Celsius; a fairly warm night compared to some of the paralysing chills that the winters in this part of the world could bring. Still, it made Britain seem like a tropical paradise- a wondrous feat if there ever was one- and Sherlock found himself constantly trying to warm his slender hands with the little hot breath he could muster.
The feeling of air hitting skin sent memories of John flashing through his mind: his lover's gasp when their lips had touched for the first time; John's constant huffing and puffing whenever Sherlock asked him to get the milk, and his sigh of pleasure when he was rewarded for doing so in ways he found very enjoyable; the breathy laugh that rumbled from his lips whenever Sherlock showed complete ignorance of something generally considered to be 'common sense' (but really, who cares about whether the sun goes around the sun or not?). A small smile crept across the detective's face as he recalled these echoes of happiness, but it soon disappeared when he realised that they were just that; echoes of times gone by, which, like ripples on a pond, would one day fade into nothing. All of these memories were little fluttering fragments of joy that he might never be able to piece together again; Sherlock didn't know if or when he would be able to return to his Dr Watson, even if he survived the near-suicidal missions that Mycroft had assigned him. He wasn't sure that he wanted to survive them. A life without John would be like a life without oxygen; painful, a struggle, and ultimately impossible.
The truck jolted to a halt, stirring Sherlock from his thoughts. They had stopped in front of a concrete-clad hut surrounded by barbed wire and sheltered by towering fir trees. The doors of the truck were flung upon, and before he could even move Sherlock was roughly dragged out of the vehicle and thrown onto a clear patch of ground in front of his destination. He attempted to stand up, but was struck around the face and pushed back down again. Blood oozed from his nose, and his head throbbed with the pain of the blow.
His assailant was unknown to him, a middle-aged man strutting around the clearing in full army uniform and with a cigar in his moustache-framed mouth.
"Mr Holmes," the man drawled in a thick Russian accent, "welcome to your first assignment." A grin spread across the man's face, a smile born not from joy or pleasantry, but from cruelty, brutality, and a thirst to inflict pain. "I hope you are accustomed to suffering."
Sherlock let his eyelids drift shut, the image of John, beautiful, unattainable John, shining through the darkness that engulfed him. A single tear trickled down his face. His voice was barely more than a whisper.
"You have no idea."