TIME WELL SPENT

Chapter 1.

Well.

Being…

888

"Are you there yet?"

"YEAH! I'm here." Jolted, John shook his head, alerted by the sound of Sherlock's voice. Dazed, grappling with his awareness, he rose to his feet, dripping wet and soaked to the skin from the waist down, to stand at attention with lightning reflexes.

"John!" The tremendous relief in Sherlock's voice was unmistakable through the earpiece.

"Yeah." His crisp affirmation concealed his confusion.

"Where are you?"

"I don't know. I've just woken up." John registered the deep chill permeating his waterlogged clothes, but his personal condition was secondary. "Where are you?"

"In another cell. I just spoke to the girl on the plane again. We've been out for hours."

"What? She's still up there?" Although the standing water was baffling and his visual reconnaissance was significantly hampered by the dark, John agreed that the little girl and the many passengers aboard the plane were still their top priority.

"Yes. The plane will keep flying until it runs out of fuel."

Listening intently to the voice in his one ear whilst trying to detect outside sounds with the other, John peered into the obscurity and glanced up. The walls around him towered so high that the ceiling was lost in darkness. The blackness frustrated visibility. There seemed no avenues to find Sherlock's cell, nor could he hear anything to indicate Sherlock might be nearby. His friend's voice was solely emanating from the earpiece.

"Is Mycroft with you?" There was an edge of disquiet in Sherlock's question.

"I have no idea. " John leant back against the rocky surface and shivered despite himself. "I can hardly see anything. My-croft? MY-CROFT?"

The lack of Mycroft's response worried them both.

"Are you okay?" There again—as it had been so frequently of late—John heard the unmasked concern in Sherlock's voice.

"Yeah." John felt no need to mention the potential for hypothermia just yet, although he was chilled to the bone.

"All right," Sherlock huffed in resignation. "Well, just keep exploring. Tell me anything you can about where you are."

John's shivering hands detected the uneven, sometimes slimy fortification that enclosed him. "The walls are ...rough," he reported. "They're rock, I guess."

"What are you standing on?" the earpiece crackled.

"Uh," John glanced down toward his feet and shrugged. "Stone, I think. But listen. There's about two feet of water..."

He felt a tug of resistance as he attempted to raise one foot free above the surface. "Chains," he exhaled under his breath. Shaking his head—the challenges of his confinement had become a bit clearer—he bent over and reached down into the water. "Yeah, my feet are chained up." His groping hand underneath the water connected with floating objects. "I can feel something," he said as he snatched up his discovery, sticks of some sort, and stood. Too dark to identify it immediately by sight, he used his diagnostic touch to discern what he had found. The long slender objects were not flat, but cylindrical and had a familiar shape like branches or "…bones, Sherlock. There are bones in here." He repeated half to himself.

"What kind of bones?" Sherlock replied sounding both curious and distracted.

"Uh, I dunno." A tingling chill ran down John's spine that had nothing to do with being wet. Unwilling to believe the unthinkable about the objects he held in his hand he stuttered. "S-small."

"Redbeard." Sherlock whispered softly in stark dismay and then John's earpiece cut out.

50 seconds and counting

John fiddled with the earpiece. He tried not to imagine that this might be his last contact with his friend…with anyone—his breath hitched—with Rosie! The ache nearly overpowered him.

Breathing hard, he shoved away the dread those thoughts stirred and yanked angrily on the chains that hobbled him, checking their length, testing their strength and how much mobility they allowed him. Not much. More perplexing was the presence of water at thigh level. It was a pool of some kind, not a sewer; his prison did not have the associated stench, but he wondered where all the water had come from and why it had not drained.

Waiting for his eyes to adjust to his surroundings, John found himself reciting what he knew about night vision to keep his anxieties at bay and his mind focused on rational thoughts. "The key to night vision is the photopigment Rhodopsin used by the rods. Darkness causes the molecules to regenerate in a process called 'dark adaptation' in which the eye adjusts to see in the low-lighting conditions."

There was some visibility in the extreme low light. John was pleased his eyes had adapted, but what he could see was not encouraging. He was within a door-less, windowless room, encircled by a massive wall of wet stone. There was no staircase up or down, no ladder that he could see or feel, and no obvious means of egress.

Is this a basement in a turret or some kind of tower? Maybe there's a window or door above just out of view. If I could only see...

Frowning, John was certain that either way, there were no expectations of him getting out without assistance. Quashing a wave of panic, he wondered why he was there in the first place.

How does this fit in Eurus' plan?

Unbidden and in a flash, memories reeled him back to relive in vivid detail the most agonizing moments….

888

"Shoot Doctor Watson." Coldly calculating Mycroft had made his impeccable reasoning perfectly clear. "There's no question who has to continue from here. It's us; you and me. Whatever lies ahead requires brainpower, Sherlock, not sentiment. Don't prolong his agony; shoot him."

"Do I get a say in this?" John remembered protesting, finding the circumstances so unbelievably absurd he hadn't been sure if an appeal was actually necessary. Certainly what either of them had to say would probably not have helped Sherlock make so difficult a decision. John had trusted Sherlock with his life many times, but in this last challenge it had not been a question of trust. It had become a choice. Who should be saved? Who would have to die? It was the same choice the one-time army surgeon had made on the surgical table as the wounded poured into the hospital unit. Not all could be saved.

"Today, we are soldiers." Mycroft had reminded them all, throwing John's own words back at him as the two men faced each other. "Soldiers die for their country. I regret, Doctor Watson, that privilege is now yours."

John stared at Mycroft, stymied by the irrefutable logic. The elder Holmes knew Eurus. John did not. Only family—not an outsider—could stand a chance against their criminally insane sister.

Scarce days ago, there had been that quietly intense argument between Mycroft and Sherlock back at 221B— "This is a private matter." "John stays." "This is family." "That's WHY he stays!" —which secured John's position in the family…

"Be careful what you wish for..." Sherlock had once warned long ago in the tube car filled with explosives after he had fulfilled John's wish and returned from the dead. But John would have had it no other way. He belonged by Sherlock's side, come what may.

However, it had now come to this. It had to be blood-brother over bond-brother, requiring a strategic decision in a family battle of wits.

"Shit! He's right…" In the face of the facts, John turned toward his silent friend, acknowledging the sacrifice being required of him—the soldier assigned to a suicide mission.

A shadow of doubt had flickered across Sherlock's grim countenance. Or was it anguish?

"He is, in fact, right," John had stated simply, trying to mask his alarm and fully aware that furthering the quarrel could not change their circumstances.

Pushing his advantage, Mycroft had kept his eyes on John as he ordered his brother. "Make it swift. No need to prolong his agony. Get it over with." Imbuing his voice with blatant disregard for the life of the man beside him, he had turned away and sniffed. "And we can get to work."

Except Sherlock's hesitancy had become an obstacle provoking Mycroft to greater ridicule. A snarling laugh had preceded the elder Holmes' brazen mockery. "God!" With a reptilian flick of his tongue, Mycroft parted his lips, and bared a wicked grin of disdain. Hands thrust in pockets showed his utter disapproval. "I should have expected this. Pathetic. You always were the slow one…"

Although he had pivoted his face away and down, the tilt of Sherlock's head and lifted eyebrow had been the only indicators that he was in fact listening; even so, his stubborn silence had served to infuriate Mycroft.

"…the idiot. That's why I've always despised you," Mycroft had hissed in scorn. "You shame us all. You shame the family name. Now, for once in your life, do the right thing. Put this stupid little man out of all our misery."

John chewed his lower lip to hold his tongue, although the lump in his throat had made it impossible to speak.

"Shoot him!" With eviscerating vehemence Mycroft had goaded, "Shoot him!"

"Stop it." The younger brother had quietly commanded his elder.

Triggered by Sherlock's impassivity, Mycroft had seemed driven to escalate his attack. "Look at him. What is he?"

Whilst John had clenched his fists, bracing himself as best he might for the searing devastation of a bullet, he had been more stunned by Mycroft's reaction. John had offered no argument. Why had Mycroft launched such a battering offensive against him?

"Nothing more than a distraction…" Locked and loaded with lethal cruelty, Mycroft had discharged every denunciation in his arsenal "…a little scrap of ordinariness for you to impress, to dazzle with your cleverness. You'll find another…"

This had been a low and terrible blow, sure to mortify Sherlock on an emotional level and redirect him to think logically. Yet, whilst Mycroft's words had been aimed at Sherlock, they had instead penetrated John as if the gun had actually been fired, and the single bullet had exploded in his heart.

888

It had been mere moments since Sherlock and he had lost communication and it had taken but a few fleeting seconds for John to revisit those painful memories.

But something had pulled him abruptly back to the present. Maybe it was the thudding in his ears, synchronized with his rapid heartbeat; or his hands which tingled unpleasantly, if not from the cold, then from his body's psychological distress. The shortness of breath did not help, it was making him dizzy. PTSD symptoms notwithstanding, he was sure he was hyperventilating and that was easier to control.

Nice one, John! Going all to pot. Calm yourself.

John rolled his head, and rotated his shoulders, chagrined that he had let himself get carried away. If this were how isolation affected him, he'd better get a grip. There was no predicting how long he would be stuck here and the last thing he needed was to go raving bonkers in the interim.

Isolated. In water.

It was unlike being isolated in a flotation tank which had sensory benefits, as John recalled. Off the top of his head he could remember some—decreased production of cortisol, ACTH, lactic acid and adrenaline, increased production of endorphins, heightened visualization, and created mental clarity, alertness. Instead, wherever he was, it was increasing his stress and his thoughts were in free fall. It was more like the kind of mental process he experienced standing up in the daily shower, and lately, not all those thoughts had been beneficial.

Resolute, he scrubbed down his face and sighed. He had nowhere to go and idle time was his worst enemy. He needed to focus, to think back to what he last experienced in the cell at Sherrinford. Maybe he might remember something about how he got here, wherever here was. Promising himself he would keep his emotions under control this time, John resumed where he had left off in his memory—that disturbing moment:

After Mycroft had failed miserably with personal insults targeting Sherlock, he had switched tactics, and instead, desecrated Sherlock's inviolate friendship with John.

But Sherlock had put a quick end to the madness, not by shooting Mycroft; rather, by exposing his older brother's deliberate provocation for what it was—kindness.

Only a Holmes would consider verbally demoralizing a person a kindness…

Shocked as he was by the withering disparagement, John had felt astonishment, admiration, even gratitude for Mycroft's over-the-top reverse psychology. Of course Sherlock rarely did as told, which had been Mycroft's plan.

Toneless and detached, Eurus had been unsurprised by her big brother's solution to the elimination round. She revealed that this decision had been predicted by his intellectual peer— Moriarty. In fact, the consulting criminal had relished the outcome of "Holmes killing Holmes" in a pre-taped video, implying that this prediction had been based upon Sherlock's perceived weakness: sentiment for John Watson.

Unlike Moriarty and even Eurus, however, Mycroft had offered the solution from a genuine and deep-rooted regret for his involvement, a sense of justice for his complicity, as well as affection for his brother. He had a sentimental reason—certainly this was an oxymoron for the more cerebral Holmes brother.

Yet, there was scarce time to acknowledge the gesture. Sherlock had turned the tables on Moriarty and Eurus when literally he turned the gun away from his brother—despite his years of ranting, Sherlock never had fratricide in his heart—and pressed it under his own chin to make the ultimate sacrifice. Dread had made John's blood run cold and he tensed in readiness to intercept.

Before Sherlock could pull the trigger, an expertly aimed tranquilizer dart had aborted Sherlock's countdown; a similar dart had hit John.

As the twilight of the imminent blackout began to blur his vision, John had seen Mycroft still standing—there had been no dart for him—just as the gamers had predicted, the older Holmes would not have needed one as a dead man. What Sherlock had done was game-changing!

Where was Mycroft now? Did they kill him anyway?

John feared for what had become of him. No matter what mistakes the man had made out of hubris or a misguided sense of responsibility, Mycroft did not deserve to die like that. John could admit that he had grown to appreciate the man and his devotion to his younger brother.

But the sister! Sherlock had been right. She had been subjecting them to emotional vivisection.

Soaked and shivering in the dark, John was chained to more than the floor. Anxious thoughts weighed on him like an anchor. Still helplessly corralled in a cell where there was little light and virtually no other noises, except the sound of his own splashing, John wondered with mounting urgency: what more could Eurus have in store for Sherlock?

Fearing the worst for his friend, John crossed his arms over his chest and bowed his head. Wishing with all his might for a miracle, he would just settle for one word to know that Sherlock was still okay…

888

A.N. Both Sherlock and John wore earpieces, it is not clear whether Eurus was in control of what each heard. Sometimes it appeared that they were not always able to hear each other. Eurus let them both hear her singing, but when the little girl on the plane was speaking, John was not part of the conversation. These chapters explore what John thought during those moments of silence.

Very special thanks to englishtutor and Fang's Fawn for their beta skills, encouragement, and faith in me. Also, while I do diligently review (over and over and over) Sherlock episodes to transcribe dialog (over which I claim no rights) from the BBC show, I shortened my labors immensely again, during the course of composing this fanfiction, thanks to the wonderful and brilliant transcripts by Ariane DeVere aka Callie Sullivan to whom I am always greatly indebted.