Best Laid Plans
by TheMadKatter13
SUMMARY~After the detective's suicide, anyone with eyes could see that there was no John Watson without Sherlock Holmes. Only a rare few even realized there was a flip-side to that coin: that there was no Sherlock Holmes without John Watson. Unfortunately, Jim Moriarty is one of those rare few, and while kidnapping his blogger had drawn out out the genius so well the first time, new intel on the 'alpha' doctor has the omega criminal arranging a little bit of 'playtime' between his alpha and his bait while they wait for the not-quite-dead to arrive. CU: Post-Reichenbach omegaverse; alpha!Sherlock/omega!John.
DISCLAIMER~The rights to (BBC's) Sherlock reside with Sir ACD, Moftiss, and BBC and I receive no financial gain from the writing of this story.
AN~First, Happy New Year. Second, this is the omegaverse I've been working on for a bit that I wanted to have finished before 2013 ended but a need for additional chapters took me by surprise so I'll just start with posting the prologue for now. Speaking of which, prologue and epilogue will be John's journal in first person POV, and will be rather short, and the rest of the chapters will be third person and rather longer (and I do mean a great deal so). So, here we go, I hope you enjoy, and I'm so sorry for how short the prologue is.
Prologue
The Personal Blog of Dr. John H. Watson
16 June 2016
5 Years
Memories are finicky things. You can remember what you did but not why. You can remember a scent but not the sight, the feeling but not the action. Sometimes bits of memories fade after time. Sometimes the memory never fades.
I remember standing in a queue with my mother when I was four. I can't tell you what I wore or what she wore or what store we were in. What I can remember is the look on the omega's face who stood just in front of us when he went into heat right there in the store. I can remember the way it felt when the female alpha behind us leaped over me and knocked my head into the counter. It's how I got my first scar, just behind my hairline. I remember deciding right then that I never wanted to be in the position that omega was in.
I remember being 16 knowing I was about to present, assuring my parents that I wasn't so they would go on holiday. Harry had just left for uni not long before. Before the symptoms that anyone else would recognize began to show, I went to the pharmacy to to refill my mum's omega suppressant subscription and to purchase alpha-scented body wash. I remember signing in to an anonymous omega hotel, going into heat for the first time in secret. It was agony, feeling so empty for days and days, and I remember never wanting to feel that way again. That it would have to take a very special alpha indeed to change my mind.
I remember washing with the alpha wash for the first time, trying to get used to it before my parents got home. I remember my mother and father's pride and perhaps minor disappointment that I was an alpha like Harry rather than an omega, and also regret they had missed it when they were away. I remember Harry punching me in the arm. "Lucky dog," she called me.
I remember going through Bart's, relieved that there was an easier way to get suppressants than trying to refill my mother's prescription. I always took the suppressants anonymously from Bart's stores, paying the same way.
I remember enlisting, terrified, petrified, that they would discover my ruse. That they would somehow know that I was an omega. It was far from illegal for omegas to join but I knew I wouldn't be treated the same as the alphas were treated. I remember the relief when they never did. The suppressants were better in the army too, even more of a relief with all those alphas around. I had accustomed myself to civilian alphas but military ones were another level. But I was never once tempted to go off my meds. I remember how hard I practiced to be better than the rest, to not only present myself as Alpha by smell, but also by attitude. No matter what anyone else tried to say about how I elevated through the ranks, I know it was nothing but hard work and perseverance.
I remember being shot. The physical pain of the bullet ripping through my flesh and muscle, nicking my bone. The infection that followed after that was almost more fatal than the bullet itself was, and the long, intense treatments to keep me alive. The hallucinations from the fever. The fear that the suppressants would wear off before I was better and I would be found out. I wasn't, but I was discharged anyway. No one wanted to keep a soldier with a limp nor a surgeon with a shaky hand.
I remember the desolation that followed. Sitting alone and friendless in that tiny bedsit. The worry I wouldn't be able to stay in the city I had grown up in and had grown to love. Where would I go after that? There were thoughts of suicide, my service gun in my hand every morning when I woke up, wondering if today was the day. There was nothing left to me. Both of my careers were over. The only friends I had left were either dead or still in the army. Even then, I had few. I couldn't risk getting too close to someone lest they find out my secret. I didn't even have any family I could rely on since my parents had died in a car crash when I was at Bart's and Harry was in an out of jail cells and one-night stands and had no place of her own since Clara had broken the bond.
But most importantly of all, I remember meeting the whirlwind storm that is Sherlock Holmes. The way he breezed into my life and swept me away. I had known him for less than 48 hours when I shot and killed a man for him, to protect him. I remember every case that followed, the way he cured my psychosomatic limp and, in a way, my shaking hand. He cured me. He became everything in my life. He became the first alpha in my life to make me want to go off my meds. To finally bond, mate, have a child with. I was only 37 but the older an omega gets, the lower the success rate of the birth, and the need, the want, to successfully procreate called to me.
I remember the pain of knowing he was "married to his work". That when we had the case where he was surrounded by a room full of omegas in heat, young, pretty omegas, he didn't even flinch, he was in no way tempted by any of them. A man of iron will, or perhaps complete disinterest. It left me little hope that he would be interested in me the way I was in him. Even worse, every date that he sabotaged, every beta he stole me away from, kept that little sliver of hope going that perhaps he did want to settle down, he only needed to be shown how.
And then it happened. I can still remember the way his voice shook over the phone line, the way he reached out to me from that rooftop. I could almost hear the tears in his voice and, having seen and heard him in all manner of acting, this was the first time that sounded truly real. I remembered the fear as he spoke, the feeling of impending doom, the oncoming apocalypse. He was my entire world... and then he jumped.
My heart stopped then. The world shifted and turned and I think I was knocked over but I had to get to him. The image of him sprawled on the concrete, the way the dark blood just further seemed to highlight the paleness of his skin, will forever be seared on my memory and has featured in every single one of my nightmares since. I think my fingers shook when I tried to take his pulse and my own stopped when one failed to beat beneath my grip. As they dragged me away, all colour in the world had faded. My heart had been ripped from my chest and it hurt more than the bullet wound or the infection ever had. The only alpha I had ever chosen, ever wanted, had left me, and he would never come back. My gun became part of my morning routine again.
See? Not terribly long, but then, I suppose a lot of prologues aren't. But this fic is well over 25k where I'm at now, and the next chapter is both long, and containing of smut. I hope you enjoy your New Year's celebration and your first day of the year and you'll see a post next week. Cheers!