Mike Stamford was sitting on the bench when he glanced up and saw a familiar face rushing by. Was that...? Yes, it was! The compact frame and blond head were unmistakable. He stood quickly and called out to the man.
"John!"
No response.
"John Watson!"
The other man kept walking. Mike shrugged, and went back to his coffee.
Harry looked at the phone in her hand.
That had been an... odd... conversation with her brother, to say the least. It had started off the usual way: she'd called up to complain about her wife, her job, her life in general, as well as to nag John to come stay with her while he settled into civilian life.
Of course, the conversation moved on to her drinking. Again.
But after they started to argue, things started to seem a bit... off. Usually John was immune to her curses and insults, giving as well as he got, but this time he had gone strangely quiet after Harry called him 'useless.'
She shook her head, then winced as the room lurched around her. Another drink would take her mind off of it.
Lestrade's morning didn't start out well. He was called in for what looked to be a routine suicide - if such a thing existed. After the recent events, he was checking out all suicides personally, just in case. This didn't appear to be related to the so called "serial suicides," however - the man had clearly shot himself in the head, sitting at his desk. No mysterious poisoning involved whatsoever.
According to reports, the man was a soldier recently back from Afghanistan, a doctor, RAMC, injured out quite recently. It was unfortunate how hard it could be for soldiers to adjust back to civilian living, really. He looked with a pang at the fallen soldier. John Hamish Watson, MD, survived only by a sister, one Harriet Watson. He was glad he wouldn't have to make the call.
Anderson sulked in the kitchen, glaring into various drawers as he looked for anything he could use against the bane of his professional existence. The drugs bust had seemed like a golden opportunity to put Holmes in his place, but the man was being his usual infuriatingly obnoxious self, prancing about and talking non-stop.
The landlady was nattering away in the background when suddenly Holmes went silent (For once! Thank god!) and rushed out the door.
Useless. Utterly useless. For all Holmes had his bright ideas about phones and passwords, it hadn't lead to a damn thing. He snapped his evidence case shut, glanced around once again and stalked out the door after the rest of the team, leaving the flat empty behind him.
Mycroft had received the call on his special line, the one dedicated solely to personal matters - which almost always meant Sherlock.
"What has he done now?" he sighed into the phone, but instead of launching into the usual concise report, the agent on the other end of the line had hesitated a moment before speaking.
He was at the scene within 15 minutes.
It seemed impossible. It should be impossible. Surely, it was impossible.
He stared down at his brother's body; his mind, for once, completely blank.
Molly examined the newest corpse in front of her. Identified but unclaimed, no rush. She started processing it anyway - she'd been throwing herself into her work this past week, working long hours, trying to take her mind off her grief.
She tagged the body and slid it into place, already forgotten as she moved onto her next task. Aneurysm, natural causes.