A/N: I made the mistake of reading some A Study in Emerald!verse fic right before going to bed, and then woke up with a very insistent part of me quite instantly telling me about ASiE!Sherlock telling John to get apples and WRITE IT DAMN YOU. So I did. And I'll admit up front, I don't know much about Lovecraft, other than the bits and pieces I've picked up from and gleaned off of pop culture. ^^;; Not Britpicked (or should that be Albion-picked? heh), so any glaring Americanisms are all on me.
If you haven't read Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald," OMG, go read it now. Otherwise, this AU won't make sense.
oOo
Prelude
He only limps when he is on a hunt.
It's something to do with proximity to the Royalty, he knows. Maybe it is psychosomatic, like Sherlock insists, but...
It had been worse; had been all the time - a cold, icy burning from the remembrance of the things in the depths of an Afghani hell that had touched him, but now, it's only when he is near one of them and only until they are dead.
The good thing about it, though, as Sherlock had pointed out, is that it is very good for keeping both the Met and Moriarty off their trail. The Met, Sherlock often sneers, are idiots who miss everything, but Moriarty is clever. (And oh, how John hates the way Sherlock's eyes light up, always light up, when he says that.) Moriarty had not missed the signs of John's limp and he had told the Yarders...which meant John, walking normally every other time but for when Royalty is in his sights, never draws suspicion upon himself.
It is, Sherlock has told him, the best possible disguise. John could be walking around a crime scene of his own making, scalpels and knives still wrapped in their leather case, tucked against the small of his back, and the Met would completely disregard him because they were looking for someone with a pronounced limp.
John finds it fitting, so terribly, horribly fitting, that his leg burns with cold fire, with madness under his skin, when he is near Royalty, and that taking them apart slice by slice returns warmth and sanity and painlessness to his limb. They were the ones to do this do him; their blood undoes it. It is a fitting revenge.
The war has broken him, he knows, the war and Royalty, and it is Sherlock Holmes, with his own source of his hatred for them, who has given him a way to repair and heal himself, slice by slice and cut by cut.
The day his leg no longer throbs when he is near Royalty will be the day he stops...the day he can stop.
The day he will have to stop.
He suspects Sherlock knows this...and that that is why he still limps in their presence, why Sherlock may sneer that it is only psychosomatic but never actually pushes; never forces like he did to get rid of John's limp whenever Royalty is not around.
In his broken way, John loves him, just a little, for that. For leaving him enough for his revenge - and only that - because for now, walking down the quiet street to their Montague Street digs, he is not limping. There is no cold, maddening paradoxical flame searing his flesh from the inside. Only the tremor of his hand - another way his broken mind and body protect them, for who would think a man with a trembling hand could cut so sure a stroke, could fire a gun with such deadly aim? - and betrayed shoulder from the guns of the Afghani rebels remains, and that, he thinks, is the work of Man, of men fighting for their freedom, and it is fine.
That is all fine.