It was appalling how quickly routine could become established.
Not the one he'd developed in the five weeks since he'd returned to Baker Street. The routine Sherlock had been expecting – anticipating, really – had been disrupted by the reason for his return, by the initial uncertainty regarding living arrangements, by the shift in his relationship with John.
It was the routine that centred around the ruined stone house on its isolated hill that alarmed him. An hour of methodical searching, moving back and forth across the grid Lestrade had devised for them, had yielded nothing. John's name, shouted into the vast open space over and over, had gone unanswered.
All the evidence clearly indicated that John wasn't there. No matter that the three of them had been together a mere twelve hours earlier, they were now separated. The house in which he and Lestrade had been unceremoniously abandoned had not been John's drop point – provided John had been taken at all.
Yet Sherlock was loath to leave. His mind subverted the logical conclusion that there was nothing – no one – here to find with an irrational insistence that if they stayed long enough, John would turn up. There was absolutely no evidence on which to base that conclusion, but ignoring it as he scrawled a hasty note to be tucked into the cairn Lestrade was building drew a faint nausea, a tightening of his stomach and lungs that was both preposterous and unproductive.
John could be anywhere, and anywhere included Baker Street, or even under Mycroft's protection in London, raising a fuss about Sherlock and Lestrade.
They were the detectives, after all. Both of them highly trained in investigative techniques. John had developed considerable skill, but had never been taught or required to implement it in a consistent fashion. He may not have been considered a threat.
That felt untrue, and the sensation necessitated he swallow a growl, if only to avoid Lestrade enquiring as to the problem. Deductions couldn't be based on feelings.
He had no facts, other than the inescapable one: John was not with them.
Heading north, following the passes. SH. GL.
It would have to do. Anyone who may be looking for them – who thought to turn their investigation to an isolated, unpopulated area of northern Wales – would recognize the initials. Anyone unrelated to the investigation would not.
John would know precisely what to do. His army training had better prepared him for this sort of circumstance. There was a moment of fleeting and dry mirth; having John here would increase their chances of survival.
Maybe that's why, Sherlock thought, then gave his head a sharp shake as he folded the note and secured it between two small, flat stones. With no means to tie it, they would have to trust it to stay there, and that whomever stumbled upon the cairn would get the hint from the arrow of stones pointing directly at it.
Relying on the intelligence of others had always been a risky proposition. With no other choice presenting itself – aside from staying and decreasing the probability of being recovered – Sherlock hoped like hell that if someone did find the cairn, it was someone clever.
"Ready?" the DI asked as Sherlock secured the stone sandwich in the centre of the cairn's apex.
To spend two days walking through northern Wales in the hopes of encountering hikers or farmers? No, he thought, but gave a curt nod.
"Yes."
"Let's get this the hell over with," Lestrade said.
"Tell me what you remember."
"What?"
Sherlock turned his eyes toward the sharp blue sky, resisting the urge to close them with a sigh if only because it meant the possibility of tripping on this offensively uneven terrain.
Save me from fools and newly reinstated DIs, he thought, shooting a scowl at Lestrade, who only raised his eyebrows in return, managing to keep his footing despite looking over his shoulder.
"From last night," he sighed. "Focussing on before you woke up here, please."
"Yeah, obviously," Lestrade replied with a smirk.
"I can't rely on you to make the proper connections," Sherlock snapped. The DI rolled his eyes, turning back to watch his path.
"We were chasing that suspect," Lestrade said. "Down that alley. Little before eight, wasn't it?"
"That's it?" Sherlock demanded.
"Till I woke up here, yeah," the DI said with a shrug. The disgusted noise gusting from Sherlock's lips made Lestrade glance back again.
"What about it?" he asked.
"Think!" Sherlock admonished. "Sights, sounds, smells! Anything out of the ordinary!"
"Aside from chasing down a potential murder suspect, you mean? Never mind – that is ordinary for us." He paused, silence wrapping around them as surely as the breeze, then gave his head a shake. "It was dark, so the lamps were lit, and there was a light over one of the doorways in the alley. Just enough to see him vanish around a corner – couple of bins near the door, one of them knocked over where he ran into it. Young guy, in his mid to late twenties, I'd say. Athletic. Five-ten, maybe five-eleven. Dark hoodie, dark jeans, dark shoes. The alley smelled of rubbish – most strongly coffee grounds, so the light was probably the back of a café. Not much traffic on that street – maybe a bit odd for that hour, but it could be that area." Another pause, hands bundled into pockets in defence against the cold air. "You?"
Details. Not much traffic, no – but common for that area, particularly at that time of day. Their entry into the alley coincided with a change in the nearby traffic light, which reduced the number of vehicles passing them by at that moment. Light from the streetlamps bled into the alleyway, illuminating the first metre or so, but weakly. Light from the rear door of the coffee shop casting a circular yellow-white glow around the immediate perimeter of the doorway. Enough to catch the colours of the suspect's clothing. Shadows from his hood too deep to decipher eye or hair colour even when he'd glanced back; outline of his head under the hood suggested a shorter hair style. Light skinned – chin and neck just visible. Hands: gloved – clever. No fingerprints here, just as with the crime scene.
Lestrade in the lead, John half a step behind Sherlock. Three sets of footfalls following another, hard asphalt slapping beneath soles, remnants of small puddles from the rainstorm the night before, threatening to make the ground slippery, spraying cuffs and fine leather with each connecting step.
Harsh breathing – his own, John's. Still becoming re-accustomed to the chase. Lestrade's lead was practical and practiced – he was the DI (three weeks now; that had the smell of Mycroft all over it) and had kept up the same habits even as a sergeant.
Smells – coffee grounds the most predominant, mixed with the faintly musty smell of water on road surface and brick, petrol fumes a distant memory from the nearby road. Nicotine lingering in the air near the coffee shop door; someone had just taken his or her break – her, more likely, given the faint smudge of lipstick on the ground out butt littering the stoop.
Blind corner, one of them might have gone round the other way, intercepted from the street, but it was a maze back here, no telling which way the suspect would go. Darkness around that corner, the sound of retreating footsteps, a shout from John to stop, unheeded (of course). Eyes closed briefly, using the fragmentary moment to try and adjust to the impending darkness and–
"Christmas music?" Lestrade asked.
"What?" Sherlock demanded, stopping abruptly to avoid walking into Lestrade's suddenly stationary form.
"You just said 'and Christmas music'."
Eyes narrowed to glare at the DI, but there was nothing in the confused expression suggesting Lestrade was having a go at him. Sherlock backtracked mentally and ran up against it again.
Christmas music played on a violin.
His violin.
A sigh and roll of his eyes as he jammed his hands into his own pockets, still mildly surprised – put off – by the lack of wallet and phone. No connection to the outside world, to assistance or rescue.
Or to John.
"The last thing I remember is rounding the corner," he said, giving the DI a sharp nod, indicating that they needed to continue walking. Stopping and starting would get them nowhere quickly; the more ground they covered during daylight hours, the better their odds were of running into someone. "The memory of music is obviously erroneous."
"What, you're telling me that your mind plays tricks on you?"
"When I've been drugged against my will," Sherlock replied dryly. "Or perhaps you've forgotten Grimpen altogether?"
"As opposed to being drugged by your will," Lestrade said smartly, causing Sherlock to scowl at his back. He scarcely needed a reminder that he had deliberately surrendered his mind to inconsistency and fantasy. "You don't remember much more than me though – right, don't start about your observational skills," he added when Sherlock drew a breath to clarify the statement. "You know what I mean."
Silence lapsed back in, an encroaching tide as Sherlock held his tongue against a retort. Lestrade was right. For the moment. The back of his head, where he'd been struck, ached dully in response to the realization. They must have got further than just around the alley corner; it was unlikely they'd remember the moments immediately before the attack, and John might have had time to respond if he'd heard Sherlock and Lestrade go down before him.
Which could explain why he wasn't there.
Sherlock caged that thought immediately, denying the consideration it warranted. Speculation would lead nowhere useful, and he wasn't about to give life to the more desperate possibilities.
The facts were these: he was in northern Wales, with Lestrade, in March. Low hiking season. Unpredictable late winter weather. No means of communicating or being tracked. Very little food. Lost.
With each step, the last fact was becoming history – provided nothing else befell them. Useless to speculate, he reminded himself. Lestrade glanced over his shoulder, past Sherlock. The detective didn't need to turn back to see what was no longer there. The stone house had vanished behind the slope of another hill, again as abandoned as it had been a mere day before, save for the note they'd left behind.
Without comment, the DI turned back to his path, picking his way carefully across the rugged terrain. Necessary details flowed to Sherlock's feet via his eyes, body switching to autopilot as he let his mind return to the case, to the details of the crime and of the alley, searching for anything that might signify how they came to be here, and why.
The gap was there again, as dark and vast as it had been the night before, an open space in which there was nothing. Void. Blankness.
He'd experienced the same thing following the fall – his jump – but had expected to. On some level. Better not to have complete memories that anyway; bad enough remembering the last desperate phone call to John, having only an inkling of what was to come, for both of them.
But there were patchy sensations. The knot in his stomach. The rush of wind and blood in his ears. The smooth feel of cotton against his cheek when he'd awoken. Molly's fingers on his forehead, holding steady as a penlight made each eye jerk, seeking escape.
This time, there was just – nothing.
And the strains of his violin.
Blast! Sherlock thought, features pinching into a scowl. An instinct to banish it was suppressed; he shifted his attention deliberately toward the unsolicited recollection, turning it over in his mind, pressing it for understanding.
Christmas music. Strains from his violin. Memory of movement flowed through his muscles, from shoulder to fingertips. Snowflakes cast in the subdued brightness of lights outlining a window. Smells of pine, tea, and perfume.
Disappointing. A emotional reaction. So pedestrian. So unnecessary. Unconsciously seeking safety when none existed. His last Christmas at Baker Street. John and Mrs. Hudson. An interruption of what was with what had been. An attempt to subvert himself.
Neither John nor Mrs. Hudson were here. That was a fact. Inescapable as the wind that surrounded them, its low and mournful pitch reinforcing isolation.
Mrs. Hudson was gone. John was not. Not present, but not gone. The distinction was crucial. Baker Street awaited Sherlock's return, as it had little over a month ago. That knowledge would not change the facts as they were now: no John, no phones, no idea why they were here.
The music was superfluous. Seeking safety in memory when no other was immediately available. Resolved, Sherlock shelved the analysis in a distant corner of his mind and shut the door on it.
The case had to be the reason they were here; the answers he needed would be found in its details, in an examination of the facts, not in emotion and unnecessary distraction.
"Do you think it was her then? Morstan?" Slight hesitation on the name, Lestrade's acknowledgement that it was not her name, but that they had no other by which to call her.
"No." Surprise evident in the DI's posture, in the way he glanced over his shoulder. He'd expected the opposite answer, and in some way, it would have made sense. A simple and obvious solution to the who.
"This is too–" A moment's uncharacteristic struggle for the right word let the one he hadn't intended slip past his lips. "Moriarty. This is a game."
"I'd think Morstan is an expert at games," Lestrade commented, picking his way more slowly over the uneven ground as they crested the base of a low hill, keeping the stream in sight on their left.
"Undoubtedly," Sherlock replied. "But she doesn't play them. Not her style."
"What do you call that whole thing with Harry Watson then?" the DI snorted.
Waiting, Sherlock thought. "A calculated risk. She wasn't doing it for fun; she was doing it for information. Everything she's done has been deliberate and planned – yes, even the faked kidnapping," he added when the DI drew a breath to interrupt. "It gave her time to extricate herself while we were chasing down false leads."
"Well it can't be Moriarty," Lestrade snapped. "You don't recover from swallowing a bullet like that. And she was his boss, according to you."
"She let him die because he was becoming unpredictable. By her own admission."
"Which she admitted when she rang you to taunt you!"
"That wasn't a taunt," Sherlock contradicted. "It was just as calculated as the rest."
"Yeah right," Lestrade muttered. "Give you just enough information so you'd back off." He'd read the transcript of the conversation, just as everyone else who had been involved in the case – everyone but Harry. It had only been John's reaction that had made Sherlock uneasy. No need to defend himself to anyone else.
"Didn't really work, did it?"
"No," Sherlock murmured, keeping to himself the observation that perhaps he was not pursuing it with the same zeal he may have had Mary given him nothing. It appalled him – privately – to realize that, and it was discomfiting to be driven by guilt and concern rather than the simple elation of the challenge.
"So there you go."
"If Mary Morstan wanted us out of the way or dead, we would be," Sherlock sighed. "She had unrestricted access to John for seven months, and knew about my return long before most people did. This," he swept his right hand in a wide arc, trying to encompass the landscape and the ridiculousness of the situation, "is not her style. Why do this? Why bother?"
"We must have been too close to something," Lestrade replied.
"Yes," Sherlock agreed. "But not to her. There are so many easier ways to remove us from consideration that don't involve this. She's a professional, Lestrade. Yes, fine, so were Moriarty and Moran, but they were both psychopaths. Easily bored. She doesn't play games. She does business. This– this is just… contrived."
"Glad you think so," the DI snorted. "Makes the whole situation so much better, doesn't it?" Sherlock rolled his eyes, not deigning to answer. "So it's not Mary Morstan because it's too much of a game, and it's not Moriarty because he blew his own brains out. Who does that leave us with?"
"Someone new," Sherlock replied.