A/N: Team! You wonderful people, you! Thanks for reading. You seriously make my week! I don't own these characters.
John didn't see it coming.
He didn't hold that against himself. Even in the heyday of his time solving mysteries, he hadn't always known when a kidnapping attempt was imminent; he was out of practice. After all, it had been over three years since anything of this sort had happened to him, so he figured he was entitled to being a bit rusty.
Still, the blow to the back of the head hurt.
He came to wincing, the swimming mental disconnect unnervingly familiar.
What did it say about a person if he recognized the feeling of waking up concussed, blindfolded, and handcuffed to a chair? Probably not good, that. Still, it was nice in a horrible, ironic way. Almost nostalgic.
"All right there, Doctor?" a voice asked. Not a familiar one.
"Been better," John replied, opting for snarky politeness. "Not to be rude, but what's this about?"
"Standard-issue kidnapping," the voice explained. "The usual reasons."
"The usual reasons... which would include ransom, child custody disputes, or the furtherance of another crime. Ransom is out as you've seen my neighborhood and can deduce the state of my financials, and I'm not a child, so I'm going to go with option three."
"You're close, if not spot on. Is this the part where you threaten me with your powerful friends and what not?"
John smirked coldly.
"Sorry. Afraid I can't help you there. If that's what all this is about, you should have done your homework. I've been out of the game for a long time."
"Mm, well, you won't mind if I double check that, will you?"
John winced as a needle slipped below the skin on his forearm. His ears roared a bit. Taking steady breaths to control his heart rate, John waited out the drug, trying to gauge his symptoms. It didn't take him long.
"Sodium thiopental," he stated, words wobbling toward a giggle. "You've given me truth serum?" He shook his head. "You know that stuff is faulty at best, right? Its effects are really no different than a large helping of alcohol…which, by the way, I would have preferred. Next time you want to talk, let's just try the pub, eh?"
Garrulous, a voice in his mind warned. You're talking too much. One of the symptoms.
But John couldn't quite bring himself to care.
And that's a symptom as well…
"You may be right, Doc, but I'm short on time. So it's this or we start in on the harsher forms of interrogation. Former soldier like you would be familiar with the concept, I'm sure, so let's just make this easy on both of us, and you tell me what I need to know."
John chuckled. "I don't know how you think I can possibly help you. I don't know anything about any—"
"Where is Holmes?"
The question cut off John's breath. He sat in silence for a beat, feeling his insides harden with sudden cold.
"Lose someone, did you?" John replied humorlessly. "Mycroft doesn't run his plans by me. You should have kidnapped his assistant."
"Don't play games, Doctor. I told you I'm short on time."
"That's not all your short on."
"Where is he?"
"Bugger off."
Slam! Fireworks rocked across John's vision as a fist connected with the side of his head. The chair kept him upright, but the room was spinning.
"It must be him. In Prague…Vienna. We know he took the train to Southern France. Where has he gone?"
"Dunno."
Slam!
A matching set, John thought ruefully. Now both of his ears were ringing. Couple that with the blow to the back of the head, and at least the damage to his brain would be well-rounded. And perhaps there was damage, because where else would all these mental images be coming from—memories he had so carefully hidden away, bright flashes of crime scene tape, the chirp of a mobile, a skull's empty eye sockets, and—
He pushed the thought away before he could finish it.
Bloody drugs.
"You know, we've met before, Doc. More than once, in fact, and though we've never been properly introduced, I feel like I know you a bit—after the pool and all, with the semtex and the missile plans... bit of a hero, aren't you, Johnny Boy?"
Johnny Boy.
'You can talk, Johnny Boy. Go ahead." The Irish lilt echoed back from memory, but this voice was not the same, not Moriarty.
A sniper, then? Moriarty's gunman?
"But it was the day on the sidewalk that did it. You can learn a lot about a man when you watch his world end. Because it did end that day, didn't it, John? I saw it written all over your face."
That should mean something, John's mind warned him. The fact that a sniper was watching at Bart's, there's something important there... But his drugged thoughts slipped and skidded.
"What would you know about the end of the world?" John asked coldly.
"More than you might think. Now, where is he?"
There was a dark, snarling part of John that almost wished he did know Mycroft's whereabouts. He owed that man nothing, nothing, not after what he'd done. But thinking of Mycroft brought up another face, another name. An odd breath of fortifying thrill gusted through him as his mind's eye presented him with the image of his best friend.
And perhaps it was Sherlock's ghost whispering in his ear, but John abruptly made two realizations.
First, his kidnapper—Moriarty's sniper—had been pointing his gun at John the day that Sherlock fell.
And second, that John was not likely to have time to figure out what that meant, because he was probably going to die.
Help was not coming. If Mycroft was truly being tracked across the continent, then there was no one else to come to the rescue. And seeing as John really couldn't deliver any information, it would only be a matter of time before the gunman tired of his questioning and finished the job he'd apparently started near the hospital all those years before. John wondered dizzily why it had taken the man so long.
"Last chance," the sniper warned, standing near. "I want the truth."
"The truth?" John murmured. A wistful twist crossed his lips.
John opened his mouth and said the truest thing he knew.
"The truth is... I believe in Sherlock Holmes."
The next blow knocked him back into the dark.
A/N: So here's the part where I come clean... I haven't written the second bit of this-you know, the part where John gets rescued. My wonderful, patient editor told me to post it even if it was not finished... So blame him.