I wanted to make this a really long one-shot and post it actually on Valentine's Day, but schoolwork and the fact that I'll be out tomorrow means that I'll have to post it in chapters, and the first one day early. I hope you enjoy it, I had a lot of fun writing this part (I'm trying to keep them in character as much as I can) I hope you like it, and I'd love feedback if the mood takes you.
I imagine that this is Post-Reichenbach, and everything is back to normal. I'll refer to it in later parts, but I thought I'd tell you now just to stop any confusion. (I proof-read myself, and I'm not the most sharp eyed one, so I apologise profusely for any grammar mistakes.)
Shall we begin?...
The Personal Blog of John H Watson
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY EVERYONE!
I hope that whatever you're doing, and wherever you're going you have a fantastic day. I will be spending it alone, so if you're lucky enough to be with someone on this special day, I would advise you not to take it for granted!
COMMENTS:
Harry Watson: Not spending the day with that flatmate of yours then? ;)
John Watson: Only in the entirely platonic sense.
Harry Watson: Yeah, sure.
John Watson: Really. I'm dreading him getting up. He's going to be insufferable all day without a case.
John finished typing his response, and as if on cue, Sherlock slumped into the living room. John was suddenly very glad that he had hidden his gun.
"Good morning, Sherlock," John said, without taking his eyes off of his laptop.
Sherlock grunted in response and flung himself onto the sofa. John snuck a look at the clock to time how long it would be before Sherlock uttered the dreaded B word. The first warning sign was a loud exhale. John counted a few more seconds, before there was another exhale, this time with a quick glance in John's direction. Sherlock cleared his throat pointedly. John deliberately pretended to be busy on his laptop.
"John."
John looked up, even though he knew what was coming. "Yes?"
"Bored." John checked the clock. Two minutes. A new record.
"There's nothing I can do about that, Sherlock."
A couple more minutes passed.
"John."
"Yes?"
"I'm bored."
It never ceased to amuse John how someone so brilliant and so resourceful could resort to the level of a petulant child when he found himself faced with nothing to do.
John moved his laptop away from him and got up. Sherlock's eyes lit up at the prospect that John might do something to cure his boredom. His hopes were promptly crushed by John simply walking into the kitchen to make tea. Moments later, he returned with two mugs in his hand, and offered one to Sherlock, before calmly sitting back in his armchair and taking a sip.
Sherlock glowered at the mug as if it was the cause of all that was wrong in the world, before flinging it at the wall with a shout. It smashed with a satisfying noise.
"BORED!"
"You're even worse than usual today, Sherlock, are you feeling alright?"
"It's Valentine's Day, John. That means happiness and joy and 'love'," he began in a tone of derisive incredulity, "and simple people being taken in by corporate companies and buying all these stupid presents, like chocolates and flowers and stuffed animals because society tells them they have to-never mind the fact that the relationships will inevitably end, statistically sooner rather than later looking at the people today. It's loathsome. Nothing interesting is going to happen today, and if anything it's just going to prolong the time before I get another case."
"So you're begrudging people who decided to make an effort for their partner rather than plan an elaborate murder?"
Sherlock shot him a dark look. John stifled a laugh, but continued to bait him.
"You never know. There could be a murder. Revenge of the jilted lover. Someone using Valentine's Day to make a point."
"Yes, an excellent blog title, John, but how remarkably dull would that be. It would be painfully obvious of who'd committed the murder, even Anderson could work it out."
"I'm trying to make you feel better."
"Well, don't," Sherlock snapped.
The two men glared at each other, and the atmosphere seemed to crackle with tension. There was a knock on the door.
"Yoo hoo!" Mrs Hudson poked her head around the door. "Only me."
John broke the eye contact with Sherlock and smiled at the landlady.
"Morning, Mrs Hudson," he said.
"Good morning, dear and Happy Valentine's Day!"
Sherlock rolled his eyes and slumped further into the sofa, sulking.
"And to you, as well," said John.
Mrs Hudson smiled at him, before turning her attention to Sherlock.
"A letter arrived for you, you know. I thought I'd bring it up for you, seeing as there's not much chance of you leaving here today."
With that she held out the bright red envelope in her hand towards Sherlock. He eyed the bright colour warily.
"I suspect you've got an admirer, Sherlock," she said, with a wink.
"Burn it," Sherlock muttered.
"Oh, don't be that like that. You might as well read it, what harm is it going to do?"
Sherlock made no response.
"Sherlock," she said in a warning tone.
"Fine, fine, I'll read the stupid letter," he grumbled, snatching it from Mrs Hudson's hand. She smiled in gratification and swept out of the flat.
He examined the envelope. "That's odd," he remarked.
"What?" John asked.
Sherlock was suddenly alert, sitting on the edge of the sofa cushion, and turning the envelope over in his hands.
"The envelope. There's no address, no stamp, only my name. That means that it was hand-delivered."
"What's your point?"
"That means that the sender knows where I live."
"Lots of people know where you live. It's been in the news and everything. The Detective of 221B Baker Street."
"Yes, but why would a stranger have bothered to come all the way here just to deliver a card? That would suggest a disturbed mental state, resulting in the sender feeling as though proximity is a necessary measure."
"So, you think you have a stalker?"
"No. I think that whoever sent it is someone that knows me well enough to hand-deliver this card."
"Well, why don't you open it if this person has bothered to come all the way over here to deliver it?"
Sherlock hesitated, but the pull of finding out the unknown won out, and he reluctantly turned the envelope over and slit a neat line along the top. He pulled out a folded piece of paper, where a message was typed.
John walked across to look at what was written.
LITKSGEA,
IQHHN CQSTFZOFT'L RQN.
DN UOYZ ZG NGX OL VIYZ NGX SGCT ZIT DGLZ.
Q LTKOTL GY HXMMSTL.
TFPGN.
"What's that, Icelandic?" John asked, squinting at the jumbled up letters.
"No," Sherlock replied, his eyes darting over the letters, clearly trying to decipher the message. "It's clearly a code of some sort. Go and get something to write on and with."
John walked over to his desk.
"Quickly!" Sherlock barked imperiously.
John rolled his eyes, and rifled through the mess to grab a notebook and a pen. He took his seat back in the armchair.
"Any ideas, Sherlock?" he asked, flipping the notebook open.
Sherlock gave him a look that seemed to say, 'Please, this is me you're talking to.'
He actually said: "Several. First of all, we can tell that the first word is my name. The comma after it suggests this, seeing as the note seems to be written in the same format as a letter might. This is proved by the fact that there are eight letters, none of them the same, so the first word is Sherlock. Write this down, John, keep up. Now, we have the second line. This is also pretty much spelled out for us as well. The apostrophe before the L of the second word, and seeing as L is also the first letter used in the coding of my name, we know that the second word ends with apostrophe s. Judging by the blinding colour of the envelope, and the number of letters in the neighbouring word, we can assume that the second line reads, Happy Valentine's Day. Dull, but at least the sender gave some partly stimulating means of expressing a meaningless greeting. Now, the rest of the message could be anything, nothing that we could guess anyway, so the code is needed to translate it. But what kind of code is it? It's not a numerical code, and it's more advanced than Caesar's cipher. It's still a rather elementary code in principle, but I've got an idea of how to work it out," Sherlock leaned closer to the paper and ran his thumb over the printed letters. He sniffed at the printed section of the paper, before measuring the sheet of paper roughly with his fingers. "Interesting. The sender chose to type up and print out the message, which is explainable enough, they didn't want their identity revealed, and handwriting would be heavily indicative, even if they tried to disguise it. The ink is a standard Canon make, the same one we use, in fact. The paper they used is just a simple A4 sheet, which would mean that this is a regular person, with a regular printer setup, nothing particularly special or remarkable in the chosen paper. This would also suggest that this is a person of above average intelligence, with the ability to make a message with a seemingly made up code, but still, near average nonetheless, they were trying to be clever, trying to capture my attention, but still, used a basic code. We can tell from the lines that we've already decoded that the letter Q is the letter used for A. So, what code would randomly begin with Q? That's a strange letter to start with, don't you think? But we know that the sender is a regular person, so what would a regular person see every day that involves letters in a certain order, starting with the letter Q? John, bring me your laptop."
John put down the notebook, where he'd been attempting to keep up with Sherlock's train of thought, but gave up, and managed to poke a hole through the page with the tip of the biro, while still in awe of the speed of Sherlock's deductions. He walked over to the kitchen counter and grabbed his laptop. He passed it wordlessly to Sherlock, who flipped the lid open. Sherlock grinned in triumph. He jabbed a finger in the direction of the Q key of the laptop's keyboard.
"See? This code is in the order of the keyboard of a laptop. So, Q is A, W is B, and so on. Now, all we need to do is work out the rest of the message. Write down the words as I say them, John."
John took up the pen and notebook again, as Sherlock lifted the paper in front of his face and turned an analytical eye to the words once again. His mind at work truly was a wonderful thing to watch, John mused. He could practically see the cogs turning in Sherlock's mind, and the letters dance in front of his face, and the words unravelled, and the letters changed to what they were meant to mean.
"Sherlock, Happy Valentine's Day," Sherlock began to dictate, and still at his usual breakneck speed of speaking, he decoded the message. "My gift to you is what you love the most. A series of puzzles. Enjoy."
John finished hastily scribbling down the message. "Brilliant," he said.
Sherlock smiled. "Simple, really. It killed a few minutes of my time, but there's still the rest of the day to suffer through. Honestly, it said there were a series of puzzles-"
He broke off after catching sight of something drawn in the corner of the page. He sprang off of the sofa to where his coat was hanging up, and rummaged in the pockets. He withdrew his pocket magnifying glass, and inspected the page more closely.
"Look, John," he said, passing both objects over.
John looked through the glass. In the corner of the page, there was drawn a tiny crown.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Isn't it obvious? It's a clue. It's telling us where to go next. The sender was telling the truth, there is a series of puzzles, and this is the first one!" he was suddenly grinning with excitement. "Something to do, brilliant! I won't have to suffer through a day of crap telly and mindless chatter with you!"
"Oi!" John protested.
"Oh, be quiet. You really do talk about the most inane things."
John glared.
"But anyway, get dressed, bring your wallet, because we're going to Buckingham Palace," Sherlock announced.
"Wait, wait, wait, Sherlock. How do you know this isn't some kind of plot to lure you to a closed off location and kill you? Are you sure you want to go on a wild goose chase around London only to get us both killed?"
"Moriarty is dead, John, that means that there is no-one else who wishes to cause me harm with the intelligence to do so remaining in London. Mycroft, perhaps, but if that was the case, he would have killed me years ago."
"But you said that the sender was of average intelligence, surely that means that it won't be as well planned out?"
"Stop arguing with me John! I'm bored, and this anonymous sender has provided me to escape from the mundane and horrific prospect of being stuck here all day. I'm going to follow this trail, so are you going to come with me or not?"
John rolled his eyes. "Of course I am, but I'm bringing my gun, just in case."
Sherlock smirked. "Of course you are."
With that, they parted to their respective bedrooms to get dressed for the day, and returned to the living room. They headed downstairs, yelled a goodbye to Mrs Hudson, and left the flat.
"Wait," John said, "I've left my keys, I'll be back in a second."
Sherlock raised his eyebrows, but said nothing and went to hail a cab. John returned swiftly, and climbed into the cab beside Sherlock.
"Got your keys?" he enquired.
"What? Oh. Yes, I have."
Sherlock shot him an unfathomable look before leaning towards the driver.
"Buckingham Palace, please."
Part 2 coming soon (most likely Friday/Saturday) I've written it, but need to edit. Thank you for reading!