Author's Note: This is my first foray into the world of Sherlock and you readers are awesome! Thank you so much for your kind reviews it was much appreciated. This is not SLASH. Friendship only between Sherlock and John in this one. Although if you squint you can read it anyway you like. As promised, here is the Saturday posting...

**Thank you to everyone that has read and/or reviewed this little piece of fiction! The comments have been lovely!

(This is the point where we jump off into AU. Hope you enjoy it.)

PLEASE REVIEW: Since this is the first effort in a new fandom, if you enjoy the story and want to see it finished, please leave a review so I know. Cheers!

Disclaimer: Sherlock does not belong to me…such a shame…it is the brainchild of Arthur Conan Doyle and the current iteration belongs to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and PBS Masterpiece (although the genius behind the relationship between Sherlock and John is the character interpretation by Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman). I am not making any money off this; it is purely for the story monkeys in my head and anyone else that wants to read.

Chapter 3

Emergency Contact

The taxi ride home had been quiet. Neither of them spoke as the car rolled through the narrow streets toward their flat. John's unasked question meant that the engagement ring was still sitting, heavily, inside of his jacket pocket. He'd never mustered the nerve to ask Mary to marry him. Not after Sherlock had dropped the emotional equivalent of an A-bomb on him.

He couldn't get the image of his best friend standing, no, perched on the edge of the roof at St. Barts hospital, out of his head. The blasted coat, that Sherlock wore everywhere, billowed out around his legs, like a cape. But John knew that this wasn't a superman movie and the sociopath wouldn't fly if he jumped. Sherlock's arms had been spread wide, almost like wings, and then he'd leapt to his, supposed, death. There were no words to describe the cold emptiness that suddenly threatened to engulf John as he watched, in slow motion, the flailing body of his best friend drop, like gravity intended, to the sidewalk below.

Never in his life had he been this confused by an emotional onslaught. He had been too shocked in the restaurant to fully comprehend what was happening right in front of him.

Sherlock was back!

But later...in that coffee shop…the only emotions John had been equipped to feel; were anger and betrayal.

Mycroft…the tramps…even Molly Hooper had known that the consulting detective hadn't actually died that day. And John would be bringing that up to both of them at a later date. But right now it felt like everyone, that had been deemed important by Sherlock, had known that he wasn't dead; everyone except for John Watson.

He honestly hadn't meant to punch Sherlock, at least not the second time. But the damn sociopath had a way of tearing down John's walls, which allowed the doctor's anger to rule his actions...and apparently his fists. It was one of the things that his therapist had warned him about. John needed to 'deal with the rage', not bottle it up until it exploded into the world in the form of violence. The image of Sherlock lying on the floor in the little shop, his palm pressed against his bloodied lip, flashed to the surface. And the doctor groaned internally. What was worse was that John now had a slight headache from the initial head butt that had flattened the tall, thin man.

"Are you okay?" Mary's soft question barely registered, but it did register.

He shook his head. "No. I'm not okay."

She didn't say anything. She didn't try to convince him that he should be fine with everything that had transpired. She didn't tell him that he didn't have a right to be confused or angry. She simply stood quietly in the doorway watching him for a moment before nodding once and stepping from the room, giving him some much needed privacy. He didn't know how to explain what he was feeling. He wasn't exactly good with feelings.

For as often as John had born witness to Sherlock's lack of emotional communication, John had believed that he was better at dealing with his own emotions. But as he assessed the current ball of anxiety that was sitting like a coiled snake inside his gut, he knew that he was every bit as bad at expressing those complicated little pieces of humanity as the consulting detective was. That is a sobering thought.

John's ringing mobile interrupted his thoughts and he blinked back the weariness that was an everyday occurrence. He glanced down at the mobile screen, fully expecting it to be Sherlock and completely ready to ignore the call. But when Greg Lestrade's number popped up on the screen he flicked the 'answer' button.

"Hey Greg, it's not a good t—"

"You need to come to the hospital." The tightly contained way that the detective inspector started the conversation immediately set John's nerves on edge. He straightened and rolled his shoulders. It was an unconscious habit that he had gained in the army; those moments when he needed to 'soldier-up'.

"…time. Sorry? What?" He finished without thinking and then immediately wondered if Harry had gone on another bender and somehow wound up in hospital due to an accident.

"It's Sherlock." Lestrade's voice rose and dipped when he uttered the consulting detective's name, his own shock at uttering those words coming through the speaker. When John didn't answer for several key moments, Greg continued, almost accusingly. "You knew. You knew he was alive."

John pinched the bridge of his nose. "No. Not until earlier tonight, I didn't." He sighed. "What's he done now? Cocaine or morphine?" Because that was Sherlock's MO, when things didn't go his way would find himself a dealer and alleviate the disappointment of failure.

"Neither." Greg paused for a moment before continuing. "Look mate, he's in a bad way. You need to come to the hospital." He didn't want to give John the details over the mobile. These were things that needed to be said in person.

"He was fine an hour ago." John argued, but his heart was now pounding inside his chest and he could feel the cold stabs of dread deep within himself. He didn't want to feel this way. John didn't want to care about what happened to the sociopath. But the truth, if he was really honest with himself, was that he did care…he would always care. Sherlock had been his best friend. No, scratch that. He is still my best friend. He's just an asshole.

"Well he's not now." Greg snapped back.

John blinked slowly and released a pent up breath before saying anything else. "How bad is he?" If there was any way that he could avoid a trip to the hospital right now, he really wanted to try.

"Unresponsive at the scene. Lost a lot of blood—"

"Wait, this wasn't a drug overdose?"

"If it had been, I would have started with that." Lestrade sounded pissed. "Look John, I'm not any happier about being fooled by Sherlock than you are, but something bad happened to him and you need to get your ass down here, now!"

John ground his teeth together and shook his head in resignation…because there was no way that he wasn't going to the hospital. But he was definitely not happy about it. "I'm on my way." He finally bit out as he grabbed his jacket off the chair, his fingers clamping down on the cloth and his whole body going still as he listened.

Greg quickly gave John the rest of the relevant information and hung up. The doctor found himself frozen, in his living room, replaying his confrontation with Sherlock over and over inside his head. Please don't tell me he did something stupid because of me. It wasn't a pleasant thought and it was tossing his emotions around like a bouncy ball.

"You need to go." Mary's incredibly reasonable words broke through his paralysis and spurred him into action. John shrugged into his jacket and quickly kissed her before he raced out of their flat, flagging down the first taxi he saw.

221B 221B

Serbia, 4 months ago…

Sherlock knew the moment he heard the helicopter that he was not getting out of this one. He'd managed to slip through the baron's hands on two different occasions, but it appeared as though his luck had finally run out. He careened through the trees, ignoring the stinging slap of branches as they hit him in the face and the fiery agony in his right ankle that threatened to send him crashing to his knees.

He'd tripped over a downed tree and then slipped into a dry creek bed. Unfortunately, his right ankle had gotten caught between a series of roots and he'd been unable to correct the angle at which he had fallen. He had bit through his lower lip to keep from voicing his pain that would have immediately given his position away. As the spotlight from the helicopter flared to life around him and he was suddenly being screamed at, in Serbian, he slowed his ambling gate to a walk and finally stood still surrounded by men that wanted nothing more than to steal his life with a bullet.

In front of him were several soldiers with rifles aimed directly at his chest. He knew enough Serbian to understand that they would kill him if he didn't give in to their demands. His thoughts were chaotic and he hadn't slept in more than 3 days, so he knew he wasn't operating at peak efficiency. So the moment he heard John's voice he wanted to keep running.

"They will kill you." John's words were, again, a statement of the obvious. But this time Sherlock did not argue. He did not disagree with the doctor's assessment of the situation he now found himself in, because Sherlock was so tired of being alone…that he would take anything, at this moment, which resembled a 'friend'. Even if that friend was a watered down version of the real thing. "You need to run, Sherlock."

"Can't." he whispered.

Instead he raised his hands above his head and sank to his knees. His stomach twisted painfully as his ankle throbbed in time with his heart. The men were starting to approach him and suddenly realized that he was alone. His 'John' hallucination was nowhere to be found. Once again, he was alone. The words he had thrown at his friend scrolled through his head and his stomach clenched painfully; he wanted to retch at what he'd said. "Alone is what I have. Alone protects me."

What rubbish! Sherlock had never really 'wanted' to be on his own. He simply didn't understand people or how to interact without them, through no fault of his own, wanting to punch him in the face.

The men closed the distance quickly and before Sherlock could say anything, one of them cracked him in the back of the head. His brain quickly supplied that it had probably been with the butt of a riffle. There was a sudden burst of blinding pain that preceded his descent into darkness as he pitched forward.

Later…

Sherlock trudged through his mind palace. The royal blue dressing gown billowed around his trouser clad legs as he stepped over another pile of books. "John?!" he called as he nearly tripped over an overturned bookcase. "You've got to clean this place up…one of us is going to break an ankle." His eyes picked up on the volumes of books that the doctor seemed to be studying. "What are you trying to find?"

The mind palace version of the army doctor stepped around a large stack of texts and shrugged. "You locked me in here. What did you think I was going to do? And I think the question is, 'what are you trying to find'?" His gaze dropped to Sherlock's feet. "Where are your shoes?"

The consulting-detective blew out a breath and waived off the stupid inquiry. "I don't know. I lost them."

"Well, you're leaving bloody footprints in my room."

"Since this is my 'mind palace', I'm pretty sure that I can leave footprints, bloody or otherwise, anywhere I wish." Sherlock pressed his lips together and knitted his eyebrows in irritation. "Besides, I told you, I can't locate my shoes at the moment. They seem to have disappeared."

"I heard you. And that..." He pointed at Sherlock's bare feet. "Makes no sense." John answered evenly. "Why are you bleeding?" His eyes swept the floors. "There's nothing in here to cause that type of injury."

"I'm sure it's nothing." He waived off the concern he detected in the doctor's voice. He was getting better at hearing and understanding the nuances of speech; at least where John was concerned.

"Sherlock, whatever your body is going through in the real world…it's bleeding over into this one. That's more than a bit not good." John blinked a few times and then tilted his head to the side. "Are you a doctor?"

Sherlock looked like he'd swallowed something incredibly foul. "No. I'm not a doctor. As you bloody well know."

"Well, lucky for you that I am. Let me take a look and see what I can do." John stepped over and pushed Sherlock down into the chair with the Union jack pillow…John's chair. (How did John's' chair get in here?) "Let me see." His fingers twitched with the need to help.

"I'm fine." The dark haired man complained as he let himself be pushed down, his dressing gown billowing out as he settled into the chair. He hissed in pain when John's fingers slowly probed the lacerations to his feet. "It's just a scratch." The deep baritone was tightly controlled, but there was tension running along Sherlock's entire body as John continued to palpate the area.

"It's not just a scratch and you are not fine." John sat back on his heels and shook his head, his blonde eyebrows pulled together as he considered the best course of action. "These are infected, Sherlock. And if it's that bad out there, it could kill you."

Sherlock's attention caught on something that John had just said. "What did you say?"

"You're not fine—" John started to repeat.

Sherlock interrupted. "No, not that. After that."

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "An infection could kill you in here if it is reflective of what's happening to your body out there."

"That's a bit more than you previously stated. But far more detailed, so that must have been me." There was a bit of a smirk shining through the pained expression when he glanced up the doctor.

"I'm inside your head, Sherlock. Everything I say is 'you' talking." John wrapped the injured flesh in a bandage as he spoke gently.

"Have you figured out what they want to know? Why they keep bringing you back to that…" John's voice broke on his last word. "…room?"

Sherlock shook his head. He'd been dissecting everything the baron asked. Every question seemed to bring more questions and none of them had answers. At least not yet. He'd been inside Serbian Baron's custody for more than a week now and nothing had led him to the answers he was seeking. Sherlock needed to know the last piece of the puzzle. He needed the name of the man sent to kill John Watson. Without that information, he couldn't leave because John would still be in danger. And that meant he couldn't go home and there was nowhere in the world that the detective wanted to be more than at home, in London…with his friend at his side.

The John in his mind palace was poor substitution for the real thing. He had found it interesting that he hadn't hallucinated anyone else. On occasion Mycroft would make an appearance, but that was rare and only to belittle Sherlock's deduction skills.

John's quiet voice broke the silence that Sherlock had fallen into. "I'm not sure how much more of this you can take."

Now it was Sherlock's turn to shrug dismissively. "As much as I have to."

"That doesn't even mean anything." John shot back angrily.

Multi-hued eyes turned on the man kneeling at his feet. "I refuse to die out here…alone."

"Then lets figure out how to get you out of there."

More than anything Sherlock wanted to turn his attentions toward that, escape. The idea of escaping the constant abuse and the pain was so very enticing.

"Not yet." He answered in a broken whisper.

221B 221B

The taxi pulled up to St. Barts exactly twenty-two minutes after John had hung up with Lestrade. He quickly paid the cabbie and jumped out into the rain. His eyes lifted to the barely visible roof and John's heart plummeted. Within seconds he was right back where he'd been two years ago. All of the emotions that he had tried so hard to work through, or buried depending on whom one asked, crashed in on him like a tidal wave. He reached out and steadied himself against a lamppost as his knees started to buckle under the onslaught.

John took several slow breaths to try and steady his nerves before rolling up onto his toes once and then taking that first step toward the doors, towards Sherlock. No matter how he was feeling at this very moment, John had to find out what had happened to the consulting detective. Because now that he knew the man was alive, he couldn't go back to living in a world without the consulting detective.

TBC…

Author's Note: Please take a moment and let me know if you're interested in the rest of the story.