A/N: This is my first story for Sherlock, so I'm terribly excited. Suffice to say, I own none of this, except for Sgt. Patrick.
"Put a stop to this, Inspector," the new Superintendent had said, as though it were that simple.
Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade didn't protest. He knew he was lucky to still have his job, and this was, after all, his mess to clean up, because he was the one to bring Sherlock Holmes into the fold in the first place.
He couldn't accept all of the blame, however. He didn't ruin Sherlock's life all by himself, but it was probably his betrayal that pushed Sherlock over the edge. He didn't need a lawsuit to tell him that.
Sergeant Sally Donovan had certainly had a hand in it, too. That was why she was accompanying Lestrade to John Watson's flat, whether she liked it or not.
As if Sherlock Holmes' suicide and subsequent redemption wasn't enough of a public relations nightmare, the last thing the Met needed was a lawsuit brought by a veritable folk hero and the powerful family of the fallen idol. No one ever saw or heard from Sherlock's family, but Watson was all over the place. He was now more famous than Sherlock, and Sherlock was posthumously a Big Deal.
People didn't often win wrongful death cases against the police, but this one had the steam of Sherlock and John's loyal Internet fan base. Every university student in the country had a poster of Sherlock Holmes pinned to their wall or a t-shirt with his face on it. His silhouetted profile with the deerstalker hat was painted and plastered all over the city.
And the tabloid press was suddenly very Team Sherlock. Funny, how the press was all about calling him a fake genius until the police investigation officially declared him innocent and 100% authentic. The media's about-face from vilifying Holmes to vilifying Scotland Yard for vilifying Holmes was staggering. But they couldn't very well sue The Daily Mail for libeling a man who wasn't around to defend himself.
So, here they were.
They had arrived at John's new flat and were standing at the front door, daring each other to ring the bell. The new place was a step down from Baker Street. But the doctor hadn't done too badly for himself, even though he could have been a millionaire by now if he'd only sold his story. It would've made for a Hell of a book or a movie.
Lestrade understood why John wouldn't want to go back to the flat he shared with Sherlock, but he worried about John living on his own, without Mrs. Hudson to look after him. He didn't know where John was working now, if he was working now.
Lestrade rang the bell and John turned up at the door less than a minute later, looking pale and scruffier than he remembered. The cane he used the first time they'd met had returned. His brow was deeply creased and his mouth was set in a frown amidst a couple days' worth of beard growth. This was the face of an angry, grieving man if Lestrade ever saw one.
A lot had happened in the months since Sherlock died, but everyone involved was more or less back to where they'd started. Lestrade was suspended until the investigation proved that Sherlock was innocent, and then he was re-instated. Nothing changed for Donovan and Anderson. If they felt any remorse for being so fatally wrong, they didn't show it to Lestrade. The ex-Superintendent was the one to really take the fall, but it was in the form of an early retirement. Not such a bad deal. In fact, there were days when Lestrade wished he'd been forced into retirement. Today was one such day.
Lestrade hadn't realized how much John Watson lost when he lost Sherlock Holmes. Looking at him now, Lestrade knew it was immense and unfathomable. Just dropping the assault charges against him and reading off a public apology on the tele did very little to make up for how badly he was wronged.
"Come in," John said, and then turned to limp toward a set of stairs at the end of the hallway. They followed him down to the basement and he ushered them wordlessly into his apartment.
"Thank you for meeting with us," Lestrade said warmly.
John turned in the middle of his dark, sparsely furnished living room and looked at them with a tired expression. "Have a seat."
Lestrade and Donovan sat down on the sofa opposite the armchair that John stiffly dropped into.
"How have you been, John?" Lestrade asked.
"Fine," John said in a clipped tone
So, he won't be offering any tea, Lestrade thought. He smiled tightly and said, "Good to hear."
"You're barking up the wrong tree if you're here to stop the lawsuit. It's up to the Holmes estate, not me."
"I think you have plenty of pull with the family. But don't be mistaken, John. I don't want to talk you out of anything. You're entirely justified in what you're doing, and I think you'll probably win," Lestrade said.
John looked baffled. "You think so?"
"Yeah. And I'm sure you could do with the money."
"It's not about the money," John said, his expression turning hard.
"I know it's not."
"It's not."
"I believe you," Lestrade said. "Look, I was told to come here and get you to drop it, but I know that's not going to work, so I just wanted to come and apologize to you personally. I can't tell you how sorry I am. We really fucked up."
"Fucked up?" John said. He shook his head and laughed. "You got him involved in work for which he had no training, and exposed him to all sorts of danger. Then you turned on him after working with him for years. And all that after the courts failed to convict Moriarty, in the first place, for the crime of the century. He was caught red-handed and he got off, and then you let him poison you against Sherlock."
"It was a massive miscarriage of justice," Lestrade said.
"Don't do that!" John shouted suddenly. "Don't agree with me. Don't patronize me."
"I do agree with you, though. You're not telling me anything I haven't thought myself, a million times. I take full responsibility, John."
John sighed and shook his head, then turned to frown at Donovan again. "And what about you? Why are you even here? You don't seem very keen to admit any mistakes."
She cleared her throat and glanced at Lestrade. "I'm deeply sorry for what happened."
"But?"
"But I was doing my job."
"Well, you didn't do it very bloody well."
"I have to consider every possibility, John," she said. "It seemed like a definite possibility."
"Because it was set up that way," John said.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"You got played."
"I know."
"You were incompetent."
She hesitated and then said through gritted teeth, "I made a mistake."
John stood up and put his hands on his hips. "Well, if that's all you came to say, perhaps you'd better-."
Donovan put a hand out, "John, please calm down."
"Please show yourselves out."
"John. I wish things had ended differently, but this is not going to change—"
"Shut up!" John shouted. He shook his head and stepped around behind the armchair, striding smoothly without a trace of a limp. He leaned against the back of the chair and paused to take a deep breath. "If you- You. If you didn't have it out for Sherlock from the very beginning- If you'd thought about it for more than two minutes, you would have known that he couldn't have faked all of that."
"I didn't have it out—"
"You hated him. You called him 'Freak' right to his face. Moriarty must have seen that somehow and he exploited it."
It was Donovan's turn to sigh heavily. "We didn't see eye-to-eye, but I never wished him harm, even though he was never exactly pleasant toward me."
"The night we met, you told me to stay away from him. You said he was a psychopath. You were implying he was capable of murder even then."
"I didn't mean—"
"What made you think he was a psychopath? I'm genuinely curious," John asked.
"John, Donovan's not to blame here," Lestrade said.
John kept his eyes locked on Donovan's and ignored Lestrade. "Go on. Tell me."
Donovan took a deep breath and leaned back against the cushion. "You know what he was like."
"I knew him and he wasn't a psychopath. He said he was a sociopath, but I know that wasn't true, either. He was a good man."
"I'd never seen a good man so giddy at a crime scene, I know that much," Donovan said.
His fists were balled up in the blanket on the back of the chair. "He was interested in the mysteries, in solving the problems. He didn't 'get off' on anything. He'd never hurt anyone on purpose."
Donovan scoffed. "What makes you so sure?"
"What are you talking about?"
"There's a lot you didn't see," Donovan said slowly. "He was not exactly trustworthy before you came along. He was a flake and he could be cruel and selfish. And he had a violent streak when he was high. I knew him longer than you, John, you ought to remember that."
"Donovan—" Lestrade started. He wasn't sure exactly to what Donovan was referring, but he knew he didn't like where this conversation was going.
"What the Hell are you talking about?" John asked.
"Sergeant Patrick," Donovan said.
"What?" John said.
"Patrick?" Lestrade said.
It was a name Lestrade knew well, but hadn't thought about for ages. In fact, the last time he could remember thinking about him was the night he was ordered to arrest Sherlock Holmes.
"Yes. I know you know probably what I'm talking about, but I doubt John knows anything about it," Donovan said.
Lestrade shook his head and held up a hand. "Now, hold on."
Donovan leaned forward and said gravely, slowly, "The first week I met him, I found out exactly what Sherlock Holmes was capable of and it wasn't all good."
A long-buried image flashed in Lestrade's mind and he felt like he was going to be sick. "Sally, shut up."
"No. He needs to hear it," she said.
"Just don't," Lestrade said. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, yes I do."
"Shut. Up. That's an order, Sergeant Donovan."
Donovan sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. Lestrade marveled at how the topic of Sherlock Holmes would always turn this sensitive, intelligent woman into a petulant child.
John's hands smoothed out the fabric of the blanket he'd been wringing in his hands, and he looked between Lestrade and Donovan. "Did I miss something?"
Lestrade frowned at John and then looked toward the ceiling with a sigh. "Oh, God help me," he muttered.
XXXXX
Lestrade really had enough to deal with. He had a sick kid stuck at home with his poor, exhausted wife, he had the Holmes kid running around insisting his open-and-shut murder/suicide was actually a double homicide, and now he had to break in a new sergeant, on top of it all.
Sally Donovan was green, but she seemed bright enough. She had an impressive CV, but looking good on paper didn't necessarily mean making a good CID officer.
The big question was whether she would be okay with Lestrade's secret weapon: his consulting detective. The very last thing he needed was for someone to go over his head and complain about him consulting a civilian on his cases.
And Sherlock didn't make it easy to like him.
"You're all so concerned about your stats. You find an answer that suits you and you run with it, even if the facts are obviously contradictory."
"Okay, Sherlock, you've proven your point," Lestrade said through a tight grin.
Sergeant Donovan sat quiet and wide-eyed. Sergeant Patrick leaned against the wall with a cold stare fixed on the back of Sherlock, who was pacing in front of Lestrade's desk.
"Let me see the bodies. Just five minutes. That's all I need," Sherlock said.
Lestrade didn't miss the face that Donovan pulled at that line. He looked to Patrick, who simply shrugged.
"Fine. Five minutes."
"Fantastic."
XXX
Sherlock Holmes had come to Lestrade from up above, so to speak. A mysterious man, neatly dressed, if slightly portly, summoned him in a black car to some undisclosed location and introduced him to his little brother, Sherlock.
The boy was lanky and pale and probably very young, although he wore a grey Cambridge hoodie, so he was at least college age. Lestrade wasn't sure what he was meant to do or say, so he offered his hand for Sherlock to shake. Sherlock rolled his eyes and took a drag off his cigarette.
The man who called himself Mycroft Holmes assured him that his brother would become invaluable, and that it would be wise to give him a chance to prove it.
As vague and haughty as the elder Holmes was, the younger was blunt and tactless.
"I just got out of rehab for cocaine addiction and my brother thinks helping you solve your murder cases might keep me occupied. He doesn't realize that I didn't do drugs because I didn't have anything better to do, but he's managed to force me here, so we might as well humor him," he had said, seemingly absolutely bored to death by it all. "Give me your toughest case and I will solve it for you in less than a week."
Though he thought he'd never heard anything more ridiculous, Lestrade knew he didn't have much of a choice when Mycroft casually mentioned something that happened a long time ago. Lestrade had tried very hard to keep that something from getting out and thought he had been successful. It wasn't anything very serious, just a rookie mistake, but it was big enough that it would be personally embarrassing and professionally, potentially disastrous. And somehow this stranger knew all about it.
So, he gave Sherlock a year-old case the next day, and they had a man in custody six days later. He then went on to solve 15 out of the 20 cold cases given to him over two months. Before long, he was consulting Sherlock on active cases. Just like Mycroft had promised - Perhaps threatened was more appropriate? - Sherlock Holmes had become invaluable to him.
Working with Holmes changed the trajectory of his entire career. He quickly became the most successful Inspector in his division and he was suddenly on track to someday become Chief Inspector. And it was all thanks to Holmes, but if Lestrade had the good sense to listen to the man, then he deserved the rank, as far as he was concerned.
He had to keep it above board. He had to make it known to his team that he was consulting Sherlock, but he couldn't pay Sherlock or let him have unfettered access. And he definitely didn't want any of his superiors to know anything about any of it. It was an open secret.
It went off brilliantly for over a year. Lestrade's closure rate sky-rocketed and Sherlock stayed clean. Sherlock was even able to move into his own apartment. A year went by before Lestrade ever saw Sherlock be wrong about anything.
When he was finally wrong, he was spectacularly wrong and Lestrade regretted ever associating with him.
XXX
Predictably, Sherlock found something within minutes that proved indisputably that neither of their two bodies could have been a suicide. He brought them to that conclusion days before the medical examiner would have. So, the next step was to go back to the crime scene with Sherlock and see what he could gather from there.
Sherlock noted the minute he stepped into the bedroom that the scene had been disturbed. Of course, when the investigation began, it was assumed that there would be no investigation, because it was so obviously a murder/suicide. He raged on and on about their incompetence and banished them all from the room.
Lestrade suffered it well, as usual, and ordered everyone out.
"You, too," Sherlock said, not turning around.
"Forget it."
"One minute. I need to concentrate."
Lestrade hesitated. He'd never left Sherlock to his own devices at a crime scene. The amount of shit that would roll downhill if any of his superiors found out that he had… but he was in the tall grass on this case already, so he was willing to give Sherlock the benefit of the doubt.
"One minute," Lestrade said and stepped out, closing the door behind him.
Donovan whistled. "Is he always such a bitch?"
Lestrade nodded. "More or less. Yeah."
"He's not so bad once you get used to him," Patrick said. "He gets results. He just needs to be put in his place."
Lestrade's hair stood up on the back of his neck. He looked from the door to Patrick and then to his watch.
"Well, I hope he never turns on me," Donovan said and chuckled.
Lestrade returned his gaze to Patrick and studied him closely. Patrick had an eerily ever-present calm about him. His voice was monotone. His face was almost expressionless, all the time. He had a deadpan sense of humor, which really made Lestrade laugh sometimes. He was mostly the sort of guy anybody would want to have a pint with. Only, every once in a while he would do or say something that would stop Lestrade cold.
This time, it was the look in Patrick's dark eyes, as he talked about Sherlock needing to "be put in his place." Despite the innocuous tone in his voice, it was hard for Lestrade to miss the sinister implication. He'd seen that look a dozen or so times. It wasn't something he could describe to someone, but rather one of those things any policeman worth his salt learns to pick up on.
Then again, it had been a long day and Lestrade had a lot on his mind.
XXXXX
Thank you for reading! Reviews are always appreciated.
