Please note before reading that not all locations are genuine and have been created for writing purposes. Enjoy part 2!
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Part 2: Devil's Palm
Chapter 1
War has erupted between two devastating forces. It remains in a state of shadows; neither side knows of the others plans, of their arsenal, of their sanities. This does not stop the loss of life and the threat of Death.
As the storm raged outside, sending sheets of rain cascading on the windows and darkening the world outside, the lit room filled with warmth and comfortable surroundings was certainly more pleasant. Glossy surfaces, plumped pillows on deep armchairs and not a speck of dust in even the smallest corner of the room, he still continued to look out the window at the damp street, ghostly figures whose faces he would never see again, running through the rain or strolling with umbrellas above their heads while fighting against the traitorous wind.
Midway through taking another sip of the steaming hot coffee the assistant had handed him upon arrival, the man John had woken up so early to meet walked in with a similar beverage in one hand and a thin, brown folder tucked under his other arm. Mycroft lowered his hand to offer John a seat, but declined, instead walking over to place his coffee down on the glass mat atop the mirror-like oak table and taking the folder Mycroft handed over. The older Holmes proceeded to sit down and pick up the nearest newspaper as John looked through the small amount of paperwork that he had been desperate to get hold off.
"I assume everything appears acceptable?" Mycroft asked as he skimmed over the front cover of The Sun. All the correct sections had been signed, governmental seals official, court orders prevented before they had been even issued. John nodded as he closed the folder. "Why do you suppose he did it?"
"Excuse me?" John asked in surprise. The question was sudden and not at all specific to him.
"My brother had every chance to return over the past three years and carry on life as if the days before had been a simple misunderstanding. Yet he chose the rather bizarre route of living alone in the murky regions of London. You know him better than me. Why?" Mycroft finished, looking up at the army doctor, who was stunned.
"If I had any idea as to why then I would have told you a long time ago," John answered, finishing his coffee. "I'm still busy trying to figure out how he survived the Fall. Or why he came back looking like a train wreck a fortnight ago." Mycroft made no response, only looking back at his newspaper.
"He would have earned his motives." With nothing more to say, and deciding to keep his sudden thoughts to himself, he made for the large double doors to leave. "Do keep me informed on my brother's recovery."
Within seconds of exiting the building John's coat was soaked through in the torrential downpour falling from the dark grey sky, the sun's first rays still trying to climb over the horizon of towering apartment blocks and company buildings. It took three attempts to hail a cab in the rain, visibility limited for John himself and any free cab. When he was finally on the route home, he checked his phone for any messages. None, not that he had been expecting any.
The money was handed over to the cabbie and with the folder tucked under his coat, he rushed for the door, fiddling with the lock longer than he wished, slamming it behind him against the wind. John shook his coat, sending droplets of water everywhere and hanging it on the banister before heading upstairs. There was a large amount of clattering. He opened the door to the living to find several boxes trailing towards the kitchen. He walked around the corner and narrowly avoided being hit in the face by a book.
"This is ridiculous! An infant could have ordered this better!" Sherlock bellowed. He continued digging around the boxes to unpack various science equipment and papers covered in research scribbles, some he had finally taken to throwing away judging by the scrunched up pieces lying around John's feet. Or it was during a fit the man had thrown. John could only guess that despite being gone for nearly an hour, Sherlock had been cursing at the air, taking no notice of John's presence. "Whoever stored this has absolutely no sense of categorisation!"
"I'm sure Mrs Hudson would love for you to tell her that directly. Besides, a dead man can't exactly pack away his belongings," John said bluntly. A glass vial smashed against the wall behind him, missing his head my mere millimetres. Sherlock held his judgemental glare at John after catapulting the vial towards him. In response, he waved the brown folder at Sherlock, who huffed and went back to arranging his equipment. "You can't ignore this, it's important."
"It's a few scraps of paper that help avoid wasting time," Sherlock mumbled.
"They're court avoidances, Sherlock! When people find out you're alive the police who aren't on Greg's side are going to get you arrested as fast they can. Not because of Moriarty, but because faking your own death isn't exactly ignored these days," John tried to explain, but it was closer to trying to talk to a brick wall that the usual five-year-old Sherlock turned to in these sorts of conversations.
Since he continued to be ignored, John sat down to watch the news before he had to go to work, once again finding his train of thought changing direction and contemplating what had occurred recently. Sherlock had been gone for nearly three years. He had been homeless, hurt and had seemed to be attracting trouble every step of the way. John had watched Sherlock recover from both the night of his actual return and the night of the first case back.
The night of the case, when they returned to the flat, Sherlock spent another three days locked away in his room, John leaving out food, drink and bandages for him to collect when John couldn't see. It had been two weeks since the case and Sherlock was very much nearing complete recovery, with only a few small scabs and faint patches of bruising on visible skin and he no longer clutched his chest from whatever wound had previously been there. Mrs Hudson had got hold of the scissors and tamed his hair while John was away at work. Looking over at the consulting detective, who was presently looking through his microscope to make sure it still worked properly, was wearing his black trousers, white shirt, (kept clean and ironed by Mrs Hudson over the years gone by) and a thin black dressing gown on top.
"What exactly was the reasoning behind stealing and washing my clothes?" Sherlock piped up, halting the train of John's thoughts for a while. He knew exactly what he meant, and it meant the train could go back on course. The beaten down clothes Sherlock had been wearing were left on his bed one day, when he was wearing his night clothes a few days previous. John had grabbed them while he was lying on the couch thinking silently and took the clothes downstairs, asking Mrs Hudson to clean them. Despite the state of them, John took them back and left them for Sherlock on his bed.
"You seem pretty attached to them, you still have the jacket and leather coat hung up by the door," John answered. Although Sherlock's belstaff coat had magically appeared one day, John realising it was one of the few things he had kept safe in the filthy bags he brought back on the return night, the leather coat was next to it with the thin, black jacket underneath. "I thought you might want to keep the rest of the set."
"Why would I hold any sentiment towards some clothing!?" he exclaimed, looking around at an invisible crowd with one of his unique expressions of confusion, before looking at the back of John's head.
"Asked the great Sherlock Holmes, who I know has neatly kept the very items we are referring to on the bottom shelf in his wardrobe." Sherlock left the air blue with curses while John smiled, checking his watch and walking out, Sherlock continuing his unobserved tantrum when John walked through the lobby and out the front door.
During the morning it was a slow rush of patients who mainly needed check-ups or were panicking they had some fatal disease they had discovered on the internet, occupying the hours before a short lunch break in the clinic's staff room. Simply minutes after finishing his day old sandwich bought at the shop did John's first patient of the afternoon walk through the day, taking him much by surprise. Young children with pale or even green faces did occasionally happen with the accompaniment of a parent, usually ranging from disbelieving in their child's obviously ill state or overly concerned. However, this young girl, with curly, shoulder length, blonde hair and blue eyes dulled from whatever illness she had caught was recognised. It took John a few moments to decipher where he had seen the young girl before, and it suddenly hit him when he realised she was at least two years older.
It was the young girl who had arrived with both her parents, walked into the clinic alone and left the rose after the first anniversary. Now she had returned ill. John showed her the seat behind his desk for her to sit at, but was confused when he saw a women close the door behind the girl. Whoever she was, and John wasn't entirely sure she was the girl's mother, was John's height, casually dressed and, in John's immediate thoughts, pretty.
Naturally, the 'pretty' lady explained why they had arrived, obviously to check what the young girl, Samantha, had contracted, but also to see how severe it was. Basic checks were carried out, and in the end it was just a simple stomach bug that may have started going round.
"I can prescribe some medicine to hopefully get rid of it quicker," John offered at the end, but the lady shook her head.
"I can't make that decision sadly. That would be for her parents to decide," she answered. Samantha was sat on the edge of her seat, hugging her as she stroked her blonde her, comforting the young child. John looked up from the computer stunned.
"So you're not her mother?"
"Goodness, no! I'm taking care of her while her parents are out of town, though they're on their way back after I rang saying Sammy wasn't feeling well."
"Are you related at all?" John asked. It was certainly a personal question, but he couldn't stop himself.
"Nah. I mean, Sammy and her little brother call me Auntie Mary but I'm just a nanny. Part time, anyway," Mary smiled. John wanted to talk to her a little more, but both their phones went off, a call from Mary's mobile and a text on John's. As Mary whispered a conversation with Samantha's mother about collecting her outside the clinic, John raised an eyebrow at the text he peeked at behind the keyboard.
Case. Come here immediately.
-SH
Surprised by the text, he looked over at Mary who was tucking her phone into her small handbag. Samantha looked between them, still clutching Mary's chest for comfort.
"Looks like I have to go, but her parents say it's okay for her to have the prescription," she said. With a short conversation about collecting and taking the medicine, John printed out the form and left it on the side for her to sign as he checked his phone. The text was still lit up on the screen and screaming to be obeyed, but obviously the detective was oblivious that John was in the middle of work!
"Thank you," whispered Samantha, who Mary was carrying out through the door John held open. Mary only smiled to bid farewell, a bright, lively smile that he immediately smiled back at. Quickly grabbing his phone and jacket, he rushed out to reception and made the quickest excuse he could to end his shift early, earning only a grunt from the receptionist.
It was time to get back into business.
After a long trip back to Baker Street, John almost ran up the stairs, expecting to see Sherlock impatiently waiting for him or to have left a note saying where to meet him or staring at an assortment of pictures and files pinned to the wall as he tried to work out the killer, or how the victim had been killed. Instead the first face he saw when he opened the door was Greg Lestrade's and then saw Sherlock sat at his desk rummaging through the research papers he had lifted from the boxes and was now filing or throwing away.
"What's going on?" John asked, confused. Greg sighed at the ceiling and Sherlock looked up.
"There was no rush, there isn't a case," he answered, picking up a wad of papers and dropping them in a bin next to him.
"There is a case, but Sherlock is presently refusing to go," Greg interrupted. "He's making excuses that it's not interesting and so on!"
"Kidnaps are dull! And you may have forgotten, but the last case we went on led to a dramatic arrest and even more dramatic end," Sherlock loudly retorted. John looked between them and shook his head.
"Sherlock, it won't be like that this time. Things have changed. You should be on your feet helping," he argued himself, walking over and moving the papers from Sherlock's reach. "Not looking through scraps of paper." Two eyes glared straight through his, showing obvious intent to retort at the top of his voice, but Sherlock simply walked past, holding his raging stare and went to the kitchen to look through some more boxes.
"How are you going to get him out the place?" Greg whispered, keeping his back to Sherlock. John turned around, looking at the smiley face graffitied on the wall.
"Shouldn't there be a 'we' in there somewhere?" he replied.
"You've had more luck in the past of getting him to go along with us. He followed us after I talked to you about the last case." John thought for a few moments. Sherlock didn't follow just because the DI mentioned a mass homicide, but because Sherlock didn't want John going to crime scenes alone where he suspected it dangerous. Either way, the only idea he had was the only chance.
"Fine, tell me about the case," John announced, louder now and attracting Sherlock's attention, who huffed.
"It shall be dull and you will be wasting your breath!"
"You don't have to listen," John mumbled. He nodded at Greg who cleared his throat and stood between John who was standing by the desk and Sherlock sat in the kitchen.
"Fine, this is what has been reported so far. A scientist who works in London has gone missing. No one knows exactly when, no one knows where he might have gone and there is no footage anywhere to suggest if he was murdered or kidnapped. Since there haven't been any reports of bodies found, we're classing it as a kidnap," Greg explained. Occasionally Sherlock looked up but looked away in disappointment, muttering the words dull, boring, uninteresting, and various others under his breath. John indicated for Greg to keep going.
"We need help finding anything at his laboratory, planetarium or the observatory he works at to suggest where he went," Greg continued. John noticed Sherlock stare a little longer than normal when he mentioned the planetarium and holding it when he said observatory.
"Wait, who is this man?" John asked. Sherlock was slowly ascending from his seat and walking towards Greg, a hint of concern hidden in his eyes.
"It took a while to get through to his assistant who'd just arrived, but Professor Benjamin Antric is now officially missing and-"
"I'll take the case!" Sherlock exclaimed, taking both of them by surprise. He looked around at nothing in the flat before rushing off to his room. John shrugged when Greg looked at him with utter confusion.
"Sherlock!" John called towards the end of the hallway. "What are you doing!?" After a few moments of silence, Sherlock came rushing back, now wearing the rest of his suit and grabbing his coat and scarf.
"Why did you suddenly change your mind?"
"No time. Where to first, Lestrade?" Sherlock asked. John suddenly knew he wouldn't get the answer out of him for a while. "Lestrade?"
"Uh, the London observatory. His assistant there was the one who reported his absence," Greg answered. "Why are you suddenly so intrigued?!" Sherlock gave no answer, only the psychical response of rushing down the stairs. Greg and John followed soon after; at least pleased he was on his feet and actually going to assist in the case.
Sherlock was hailing a cab in the thankfully empty street, no-one around to recognise him from the papers and either stand stunned or look upon him on shame. Greg walked off down to the street for his police car round the corner and John went to climb in the black London can after Sherlock.