False Flag by GhyllWyne
Prequel to Crossfire, a missing scene story for HLV.
False Flag - A military tactic, a *ruse de guerre*, where an action is mounted under color of an entity other than the one actually responsible for its execution.
John kept the phone pressed to his ear, listening to Sherlock breathe. It was the only concession he'd gotten him to agree to after all attempts to talk sense into him had failed.
*Tracing my location will do you no good.*
*I'm not trying to trace you, I just want to know you're still breathing until I get there.*
It was a valid concern. Sherlock had been out of the hospital for at least two hours now. Off the pain medication, detached from the oxygen, and no longer receiving intravenous fluids vital to maintain his blood pressure. He was literally risking his life by doing this, whatever *this* was about. John had no choice but to do it Sherlock's way, as always, in order to get him back in hospital before the damage became irreversible.
The cabbie Sherlock had sent to pick him up twenty minutes earlier at Baker Street must be one of his network, because the man didn't respond to threats or bribery. *If you shoot me, you'll never find him. I'll take you to him, but only if you stop talking.* John didn't know London as well as Sherlock (no one did), but he recognized Leinster Gardens as they approached the row of houses on the now-silent street. The taxi stopped in front of number 23.
"Sherlock, I'm here." John got out, and the cab pulled away. "Sherlock?"
The door directly ahead of him opened. "Come in, John."
The interior was nothing but a very narrow passage with concrete walls and widely-spaced overhead lights suspended from the high ceiling. He could touch both walls without fully extending his arms. Sherlock was sitting in a wheelchair a few paces inside with his phone pressed to his ear. He lowered it, and John put his own in his jacket and crouched in front of the wheelchair to check his friend's condition. Sherlock endured it without protest, which ticked John's alarm up another notch.
He had intravenous morphine running, as well as saline. The volumes looked correct. John stood up, hands on hips. "I won't ask how you got here because you clearly had help from someone on the hospital staff." He hadn't gotten a wheelchair and equipment out of the building unaided, and he wasn't likely to have reinserted his own IV lines. They should have included oxygen, but he was grateful for what they had done. "Now would you mind telling me why the *hell* we're here?"
Sherlock studied him for a moment. "You were at Baker Street. What did you see?"
"You moved my chair back." He had obviously predicted that John would go to the flat looking for him, or for clues to where he might have gone. The chair had been a message. "I hope your co-conspirator from the hospital at least did the heavy hauling."
"I'm not suicidal, nor do I relish pain. Yes, I had him bring it down from your room."
"I'm relieved to hear that you're not completely insane. Yet." He took a deep breath. "What are we doing here?"
Sherlock glanced at his watch. "I don't think we have much time to talk about it." He pushed up from the chair, wincing in pain.
John reached out and steadied him. "You need to sit down and let me call an ambulance before you kill yourself."
He shook his head. "John, I don't have time to prepare you any more than I already have, but I think you've put together more than you're letting on." He met John's gaze. "At least, I hope you have."
John turned and took a step, then turned back. "You think Mary had something to do with your being shot."
"And you're coming to the same conclusion. But you didn't get there just from the little tableau I set up with the chair. What else had you noticed?"
John frowned at how halting and breathless Sherlock's speech was becoming. "I would really like you to sit down. I don't understand why we had to come out here to talk about this, and I'm becoming very concerned about what you're doing to yourself."
"Answer me, John. What had you noticed?"
"All right. Mary was not sleeping when I called her from the hospital the night you were shot. She pretended to be, but I know she wasn't."
Sherlock tilted his head. "Not exactly damning evidence."
"Not by itself, no. But the next day I left her alone with you for a few minutes in the hospital, and I must have come back before she expected me to. She was leaning over you, and she was upset when she saw me. I never told her you were shot in the chest, and the dressing wasn't visible, but she knew where the wound was. You noticed her perfume in the air in Magnusson's office. I assume that's why you left a bottle of it on the table next to my chair. You don't do anything without a plan."
"I had a lot of time to work it out. Just had to turn down the morphine a bit more than I would have liked. Muddies up the thought processes."
"Lestrade couldn't understand why you didn't want to identify the shooter. You had to be facing him when you were shot."
"And did you explain it to him?"
"I said you must be protecting someone."
Sherlock looked pleased, as if John were a student who had just mastered a difficult task. In a way, he was. "In this situation, there weren't a lot of people who deserved protection." A small smile. "Just one, actually."
John's emotional control was teetering on the brink as it was. He swallowed down the lump that threatened to choke him. "I still don't understand why we're here."
"Because you need to hear this from Mary," he said simply, and John's heart turned over.
"She's coming *HERE*?"
Sherlock checked his watch. "Any moment, I expect." His mobile began vibrating, and he answered it, listened for a moment. "Delay her as long as you can." He put it back in his coat. "Please detach me from the lines and help me move the chair back there." He pointed to the far end of the passage.
"No. I won't do that. You've taken enough risks over this. Let me talk to her myself-"
Sherlock was already pulling up his coat sleeve to do it himself.
"Stop. Let me. Don't be a..." He couldn't think of an insult strong enough for such idiocy. He pulled the lines and capped the shunt. "Now what?"
"Take the chair down to the end and sit in it. Pull up your collar. I want Mary to believe you're me."
"And where are you going to be?"
Sherlock waved him off and pulled a second phone from his pocket. He pressed a speed dial number and held the phone to his ear. "Can't you see me?" As he walked toward the door, he said, "It's the lie of Leinster Gardens." He turned to the left, out of sight, and John could no longer hear him.
He placed the wheelchair at the end of the passage and sat down. There was a light directly behind his position that would render him a featureless silhouette from just a few paces away. Sherlock had thought of everything.
The prospect of hearing Mary confirm his worst fears was like waiting for the executioner. His life would be over in moments, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The door opened wide, and there she was. He was surprised by the depth of his disappointment, but still held the irrational hope that there was some other reason she had come. Like him, she could be here hoping to help Sherlock. It might not be an admission at all, just the actions of a concerned friend. He clung to hope until the moment she reached inside her coat and brought out a silenced automatic.
"How badly do you want to find out?" She listened for a moment, then took something (a coin?) from her pocket, tossed it in the air, and fired.
Sherlock appeared behind her. "May I see?"
She peered at John's silhouette a moment longer. "A dummy. I suppose that was a fairly obvious trick."
John was no longer listening. It would have been kinder, he thought, if she'd shot at the chair instead of the coin. Her back was facing him now, and she was talking to Sherlock.
Sherlock. At this very moment, John hated them both. Mary for betraying him, and Sherlock for making him see what she was. For making him realize how horribly, tragically, impossibly wrong he had been about her. About everything.
"Please," she was saying to Sherlock. "Understand. There is nothing in this world I would not do to stop that happening."
Sherlock reached for something on the wall. "Sorry," he told her. "Not that obvious a trick."
Suddenly the passage was flooded with light, and he saw Mary's body stiffen. For a moment, no one moved. And then she turned slowly to face him.
Mary gasped. John heard it, and it pleased him to think it might mean that she felt even a fraction of the pain he was in at this moment. He stood and walked slowly toward her, watching the hope in her eyes disappear. He stopped before he drew close enough to touch her.
"Now talk," Sherlock said quietly. "Sort it out, and do it quickly."
She could barely meet his eyes, but John had no such difficulty. He glared at her with the full intensity of what he was feeling, wondering wildly if it might be possible after all to kill someone with a look.
"John, please. I-"
"Don't. Speak." He saw Mary flinch as if he had slapped her.
Sherlock inhaled sharply and reached for the wall to steady himself. John observed it with the detachment of a passerby. Ten minutes off the morphine. It was longer than John had expected him to last. The pain would ramp up quickly.
"Baker Street. Now," Sherlock said softly, and walked out into the night.
John stepped around Mary before she could speak again. He honestly didn't know what he would do if she so much as said his name.
end of False Flag
Author's notes: I hope you enjoyed my take on how Sherlock got out of the hospital and what happened before Mary joined them at Leinster Gardens. It seems I haven't quite finished with HLV. Please let me know if there's a missing scene you'd like me to try. I do love a challenge. - GW