Original Prompt is that John Watson is a serial killer. Everything else I just ran with.

Part three and the final bit of my Serial Killer! John Watson Tumblr prompt. This was really fun to write, and I hope I get more prompts/find more prompts soon. Also, Thanks for all the reviews! They're much appreciated!

Fleece In Our Eyes

Mycroft knew the moment he hit the bottom landing that he was too late to save his brother, and he died a bit there on the spot with what was left of his family. He hadn't been informed that The Wolf had slipped its bonds a few hours after the actual event had taken place, and only then had the power outage for most of Baker Street come through as a true alarm. As a siren that it should have been when he'd been notified about it originally and dismissed it as nothing more than finicky old wiring in a tired city during winter. Because Mycroft knew that John had intentions to return to Baker Street, to his brother, and he should have seen it the moment something like this happened.

But the truth pained him, because he didn't. He didn't know.

And he'd failed.

The door to the flat, as well as the building, was still locked just as tightly as it had been when he'd left a few hours previous, meaning that the point of entry was somewhere other than the most obvious means. Mycroft had had the locks changed on the entire building, of course, just as a precaution, but it hadn't stopped The Wolf from barging in. Regardless, Mycroft doubted that the man was stupid enough to use the front door anyways. He'd probably scaled the fire escape around back and entered through the window that didn't always latch properly, sneaking his way in under the cover of darkness that he'd created. The power lines for most of the streets of this part in Westminster had been cut cleanly through with something formidable and very, very sharp. The Wolf's curved blade came to mind almost unasked and it made Mycroft's haste intensify for all its worth. That the man had the blade he'd kept so hidden from those who sought it wormed its way into his very core.

He'd practically flown to Baker Street then, up the few stairs and through the front door that opened into the lobby staircase between 221 A and 221 B. It was there that the great wave of copper assaulted his nose from all the way up the stairs, and Mycroft wasn't good enough to convince himself of anything but what he knew would be residing up there in the flat now. His brother was dead and he hadn't been able to stop it. Hadn't been able to see the calling card for what it had been until too late.

Ascending the staircase was probably one of the hardest things Mycroft had ever done before. Knowing that whatever was behind that locked door had the capability to produce that much of a blood smell was probably worse, because logically he knew that it was coming from what used to be his brother. Never before had Mycroft felt like he was gagging, suffocating in his own body, as he did right that moment. Finding his key seemed to take a life time, and turning the lock even longer than that. He felt like an old man as he finally got to turn the door knob and open the heavy wooden door, and it was hardly comforting that behind it was going to forever hurt him. Perhaps even kill him outright. Because now he was the only Holmes left, outliving both his Mother and Father, as well as his youngest and eldest brothers.

He'd outlived them all.

The apartment was as it always was, with the exception of the body.

Sherlock lay crumpled on the rug before the fireplace, long limbs sprawled in several directions from their origin point on his torso, one arm wrapped around John even in death, his head presumably resting in John's lap but out of sight from his vantage point. The Wolf himself was sitting with his back to the doorway on his knees with Sherlock, the tattered clothing he'd stollen to keep out winter's frigid fingers barely doing its job now that the fire had gone so low. The embers were barely illuminating the scene, but gave off enough low light to see just how much blood was spilt around them both like some god awful halo or painting. If Mycroft had to guess, he'd say that The Wolf had opened up Sherlock's jugular...and maybe more. Maybe he'd decapitated him, the head a present for him when Mycroft finally drug himself around and out of his stupidity. God he hoped not, he did not know if he could handle looking into the glassy blue eyes of Sherlock as his head resided some way away from the rest of his body.

Mycroft's gun leveled on John's back without hesitation then, the click of the safety turning off overly loud in the dimly lit apartment. He couldn't afford to flinch, to hesitate now, not with this creature so cleanly laid out for him. John didn't even seem to care that he was there, but the barest movements of his shoulders told Mycroft that he knew of his presence in the doorway and that a firearm was in play. But there was no effort to turn around and face him like the cold blooded killer that he was, no movement to indicate that John even cared he was there at all, or that he wanted confrontation or escape.

And then Mycroft spied the knife.

It was beautiful, as far as knives go. The blade -had it not been nearly drowned in Sherlock's oh so very red blood- would have shown brightly of black matte steel when it caught the light, the handle just as curved as the blade was. A delicate arch that bore pain and agony to many before coming to rest in Sherlock's pale flesh, the black a heavy contrast against the pale and the red. Mycroft suspected that it retracted back into the handle when not in use, for ease of use and storage and deployment, the black color of the blade and handle used to hide it from those who might see it coming at them in the dark. When not in use and in sheath it would have been easy to hide, and its no wonder that it was never found during the tearing apart of the flat some months ago. It, along with whatever trophies John had claimed for himself, were probably hidden just like The Wolf had been. In plain sight. Mycroft didn't except to ever find them.

"Hullo, Mycroft." John said softly, shifting in the floor ever so slightly, tone the same patient calm as it always was, always had been. "Nice to see you again. You're a bit late to the party, but that's okay. I'm nothing if not flexible."

Mycroft didn't answer.

"You don't need to be so quiet, you know. You're not going to wake him." John gave a huff of a laugh before presumably petting Sherlock's hair, the movement, even from behind, familiar. "No one will ever wake him again. I made sure of it."

"You'll be the same way, soon. There is no escape for you here, no chance for survival. I'm going to put you down like the dog you are." Was all Mycroft allowed out of his mouth, the hatred dripping from his words he allowed. "Only I wish it weren't to be so quick for you."

"For that, I'm grateful. He's waiting."

And Mycroft fired, aim sure and steady.

-

In the beginning, John's victims had all been threats of some dimension, both external and internal, either to him directly or to others, but usually just to him. John was what Mycroft's people later dubbed a Preservation Killer or a Necessity Killer, a killer who targets others in society for their quirks or dangers and quietly took them out. They weren't working for society, necessarily, more for themselves, but the act of killing itself wasn't always the prime motive for the acts. Apparently there weren't very many of John's kind in history, only a few ever truly recorded and most of them had been worlds apart, through time and distance. The most recently discovered murderer even in the same ball park as John had been the Bay Harbor Butcher, who had been hellacious to track down, but ended up killing himself in a fiery explosion somewhere in the heart of the Everglades some years prior. These killers all shared the preference for an End Game, just as John had, as well as their taste in victims. Though without John's testimony or confession, it was likely that the British Government and Scotland Yard would never really know who all John had claimed, and the public would never endorse what he'd done.

John was silent to the grave.

John was silent as the grave.

John was loudest from the grave.

And with most of John's accomplishments only speculation and no trophies of his ever found, the murder weapon was hardly evidence enough to convict or assign true victims, and it was hard to determine what was really his kill and what wasn't. They were just going on speculation and what little physical evidence they'd been able to find, not to mention a lack of bodies for most of them. Missing, John had said, one of the rare things he'd said. Never proof to show otherwise. Reasonable doubt...and even Mycroft couldn't agree more. If John had let himself live, and there was no doubt in Mycroft's mind that John had waited there for him, for his death to come find him, he most likely wouldn't have been solidly convicted for much more than armed assault due to the doubt. Maybe they would have gotten him for Moriarty, but who could blame an ex-army medic for protecting himself and his dearest friend from that man's wrath?

The truth was, John never would have been fully convicted.

So Mycroft sat up long nights after the funeral of his brother pouring over what little evidence they'd found, trying to find some sort of pattern, motive, anything. But the few known years of John's life all pointed to the same conclusions from earlier. It was frustrating, damning, and painful to realize that Sherlock, the world's most brilliant Consulting Detective, had been fooled. Hoodwinked and cloaked by a Wolf in sheep's wool and then lead so brilliantly to the slaughter. A lamb, he'd been nothing more than a little black wooled lamb. There was no reason for John's murdering of him, no reason for him to have so taken Sherlock's life. It just didn't fit his pattern, his calling card.

That was, until Mycroft saw the shift, the shift that began the month Sherlock and John first met. Around then, about three years ago, the original pattern changed from little no names, house wives, dates, and potential threats to other, bigger fish. Small time criminals or back alley whores turned into drug dealers, small crime bosses, and more recently, heads of criminal webs the likes of which he'd never seen. John had been growing steadily more and more bold, and with it, more and more out of his comfort zone and into the lime light until someone had finally noticed. Mycroft couldn't figure out the common denominator, the common factor between all of the victims before and all of the victims after...

But as he stood there before the photos of what had been left cooling of his brother upon the floor in 221 B Baker street, before the photos of him and John Watson -The Wolf- curled together even in death, he knew. He knew and it pained him to know, he wished that he didn't know, that it wasn't suddenly so obvious that even a child could see it. That it wasn't something so bright that it nearly damned him to even think it.

There hadn't been a break in pattern, merely an escalation.

John had killed those people for Sherlock.

Not because of Sherlock...no, no, for him.

To protect him.