He woke up remembering, and not in hospital.

"What…"

"Shut up."

John.

"What happened…"

"Shh!"

John was all right.

"But…"

"Greg Lestrade, I swear to God, if you don't shut your mouth and let me finish this…"

He shut up.

A few minutes later, his head was lifted up and laid down gently on hard tarmac.

"Ow."

John's face filled his field of view and he realized he must have had his head in the doctor's lap.

"What were you…?"

"Stitching you up. For God's sake, they had spikes in their boots."

"They did?" They didn't when I was…

"How did you not notice? One's sliced clean across your forehead. What did you think I was stitching?"

"The knife…"

"You idiot, if I'd left that 'till now… I am a doctor, you know."

"Why'm I not..." dead "in hospital?"

John's mouth thinned to the angriest line Lestrade had ever seen. "Sherlock."

"Sherlock?"

"You thought I'd fought off six hardened young gang members myself? Should I be flattered?"

"Sherlock helped?"

"Sherlock's people helped."

Right. Sherlock had his own connections on the filthy streets of London.

"Hospital?"

"He wouldn't let me take you."

"Wouldn't have stopped you."

"He told me you wouldn't want to go."

Lestrade nodded and the motion of his head set off a dull, deep ache – and then he felt the answering throbs prickling through his body, bruises, cuts, a burning in his chest.

"The knife." The second time he'd asked.

"Hit your sternum. You lucky sod. Turned it off to one side. The cut on your chest is pretty bad, but nothing you can't survive."

He'd seen, then.

"Been stabbed before."

"Yeah. I know."

"Nearly died."

"Didn't look minor."

"It's what got me off the streets, in the end."

Nothing. He was doing that thing again, trying to get Lestrade to talk. Or maybe he just didn't have an answer.

Lestrade raised his head off the rough surface of the street. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Just bruises."

"They only had the one knife?"

"I suppose so. Hey."

"Hmm?"

"You saved my life."

"No, I didn't. Don't be – "

"Thanks."

He wasn't sure what to say to that, so he opted instead for another quick nod and, "Help me stand up, then."

"No. Stay down."

"God, no. I'm bloody freezing."

He suddenly noticed he was wrapped in something more than just the shirt he'd had last night. "Is that – why'm I – the jacket? But you – "

John said, "And that's exactly why you need to stay lying down. I'm wearing the jacket. Sherlock bought yours off one of his… informants."

He twitched, wondering where the heavy denim fabric might have been, then decided he'd worn much worse. They must have changed the polo neck as well; it would have been torn, would have been bloodied.

A hand cupped over his eye, and John peered into the other one, checking pupillary reflexes. "I think you've gotten off with just a mild concussion there," he said. "Tell me what day it is."

"Come on, you wanker," he said instead. "Help me up." And he rolled onto his side, pressing his hands into the tarmac to brace himself.

John wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him the rest of the way up, grabbing him tightly when his head swam and he stumbled drunkenly.

"With any luck," he said with effort, "people will think we've had a night out on the town."

"You look like you've had a night out in a horror movie," John replied.

"Yeah, well," he shrugged, which was difficult while being supported by John, "people are idiots."

They shared a laugh.

"So we're still on the job for Sherlock, then?"

"You don't think your new haute couture was just out of the kindness of his heart, do you?"

"Bloody hell," and Lestrade went to run a hand through his hair, accustomed gesture that said 'stress,' or, synonymously, 'Sherlock.' Except his fingers met a line of stiff threadwork, sparks of pain shooting from his forehead down his face and to his neck, and he twitched back, away from his own touch.

"Yeah," said John. "You won't be doing that for a while."

Wordless growl of frustration. "Fine, come on. Bastard better have left us money for breakfast."

John showed him the slip of paper Sherlock had given them that day, although his subtlety had been rendered somewhat ineffective by the fact that the detective had subsequently also paid off a number of his homeless associates to rush to their defence and stayed to ensure that his request was carried out.

The Strand. Getting braver.

"Damn. Two murders in two nights?"

"Sherlock thinks he's going to keep on."

"Killing every night, you mean?"

"He said so."

Lestrade stopped his hand halfway to his head this time, letting it fall back into his lap. "What does he expect us to do, mount a two-man vigil everywhere between here and bloody Hounslow?"

"Talk to people who might've seen something last night, I expect."

"Seems too easy for Sherlock, somehow."

"Yeah? Tell me how easy it is when you can't even walk a straight line properly."

"Shut up. Ready to go and do some talking, then?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Haven't finished my tea."

And the ridiculousness of their lives struck Lestrade and he rested his head carefully in his hands and laughed, laughed for John's slowly cooling tea, laughed for the fact that they were out here freezing half to death in other people's clothes, laughed for the stitches in his head and chest and for the ache that threatened to swing him around dizzily and rob him of consciousness, laughed for himself and for John and for the crazed madman of a detective who somehow, always, managed to convince them to do this to themselves.

"You all right?" John asked him anxiously.

His fingers brushed across John's neat stitching, as gently as he could, but there was still a brief shock of pain and coloured dots swirled for a moment across his eyes.

"Yeah," he said, "I'm all right," and he laughed at that, too, because his standard for 'all right' had dropped rather alarmingly since he'd met Sherlock.

In the end, talking to people turned out to be easier than they had expected.

John had anticipated hostility; Lestrade had been prepared for exclusion. Both of them had expected the murder in the Strand to be the prime topic of conversation, and neither quite knew what to say when they arrived at a day centre some distance from yesterday's and discovered that, in fact, everyone was talking about "the gang fight last night" instead.

They listened for a bit ("I heard it was Hoxton boys," "what would they be doing down here?" "Heard it was revenge," "someone said drugs and money,") before Lestrade chuckled derisively and said, "You've no idea, have you?"

It caught their attention. "What do you mean?"

"Was there. I saw it."

Nervous shuffling as their eyes travelled from his face to his injuries, thick black thread making it obvious he had done more than just see it. He gave them an annoyed look. "Oh, come off it, do I look like a gang member?" Ha. "Wrong place, wrong time."

His opening gambit paid off and they were soon well into the conversation, John taking over most of the talking as Lestrade tried to keep his head straight enough to follow along. At some point, John managed to bring up the murders, asking if the people they were talking to thought they were gang-related, too (clever, he thought, well done, John), and he sat up (lightning throb through his head; squeezed his eyes shut, let it fade) and leant forward to pay closer attention.

First, though, he'd better put an end to speculation. John had brought the discussion around to what they needed to hear, but he just didn't know enough about the seedier side of London. "Nah, no way it's gangs," he scoffed. "It'd be all over. Kill someone once, maybe it's revenge, maybe it's a private message. Kill a lot of people, if you're a gang, you want everyone to know who's behind it. This isn't."

Another man, stubble and scruffy hair jammed under a black hat (RAF Mildenhall; ex-serviceman, maybe, it wasn't that uncommon on the streets) muttered something Lestrade didn't quite catch about the way the murders had been committed – the injuries, something about –

"You mean whoever's doing it is enjoying it," said John, and couldn't quite suppress a shudder.

"You see some crazy stuff out here," the man said. American, Lestrade thought, and the unfamiliar accent did strange things to his already-disordered thoughts. "Face of humanity, I tell ya."

John kept up the back-and-forth of conversation, teasing information from those around them (mostly barely-founded opinions from the same people who'd been wrong about the fight, but the old flyer seemed to have a real idea what he was talking about). Lestrade went on listening, letting the current of the words eddy around his brain while he tried to make sense of it. God, he was tired. Or maybe that was just the boot to the head talking, or the loss of blood. Surely John would have seen to it if it were anything serious, wouldn't he?

Focus.

"Pretty gen, aren't you?" John was saying, and Lestrade shook his head (ow, Christ, no, don't do that) to try to clear it, because he was relatively certain that wasn't real English.

The other man shrugged. "I'm not the one asking."

John shrugged right back, met the man's gaze. "As long as he's out there, mate, anything that keeps me out of his sights is fair game."

"Oh, yeah?"

Something wasn't sitting right with Lestrade. Something about the challenging tone this conversation had taken; something about the man's slow drawl, maybe, or the way he talked around violent and brutal deaths like they were idle curiosities instead of clamorous alarm bells for anyone who didn't have a door to lock behind themselves at night.

"James." He'd figure that one out.

"Yeah – sorry, yeah?" Apologizing for the interrupted conversation. Good. Keep up appearances.

"Nearly noon. Closing time. Should go and find a place for tonight, and all this talk isn't helping." He shifted uncomfortably, trying to look uneasy – which wasn't hard; the man in the Mildenhall hat was growing more off-putting by the minute, narrowed eyes and calculating stare.

It worked. John stood up, pushing his chair back with his knees, and offered a hand to Lestrade (standing up was still shaky; was that a bad sign?).

"Hold on." Still one thing to do, and he turned back to the man they'd been talking to. " You know your way about. Anyplace good to spend a night 'round here?"

A long stare, then, "The Cathedral."

"On a Sunday?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"Don't the police?" He really didn't know. The only time he ever had to worry about police presence in Westminster was when it revolved around a murder scene.

"They don't care."

"Thanks." And, to John, "Come on, then. Let's go."

"What was that?" John asked, as they shivered together in the wind of the cathedral square. "Why are we here?"

"Good place to spend a night?"

"No, seriously."

"Don't trust him," Lestrade admitted. "Seemed… wrong, somehow. I don't know. Sherlock would've been able to sort it out."

"You don't trust him, so we're taking his advice on where to sleep?"

"No. I don't trust him, so we're making sure he knows where we're sleeping."

John caught on immediately, and Lestrade made a note to thank Sherlock for having conditioned his flatmate to expect this kind of outrageousness. All in a day's work at this point, really, putting themselves on the line to draw out whatever dangers might come their way.

"So we're bait."

"That's what I was going for, yeah."

"Can't say it's the first time."

"You can still leave."

John's are-you-joking look was coming along well. Lestrade was reminded of the day he'd met the younger man, when John had asked Sherlock about wearing coveralls and had been rewarded with that expression for the first time. He'd learnt well; Lestrade reckoned the look he was getting now would top Sherlock's easily.

"It'd be the sensible thing to do, you know."

John shifted his gaze pointedly to Lestrade's chest, where the sharp, continuous burn had faded to a deep, unpleasant itch that stung with every inhalation.

Right. Message received. 'Sensible' not really playing a major role at the moment.

"So… what do we do between now and nighttime?"

"I'd guess we've got about seven hours before full dark." Useful knowledge if you were a scared kid who just wanted to finish a job you'd never asked for and find a safe patch for the night before the Fields Boys came out to play.

"Talk to Sherlock?"

"How do we do that?"

"Stand outside 221B and ask for change until he comes out?"

"Bit of a long shot."

"Have you got a better idea?"

He hadn't, although he vetoed the suggestion of begging ("I'm not being chased off by PCSOs in my own supervisory area,"), and they set out. Lucky, in the end, that they had those seven hours; though it was only a couple of miles from the cathedral to Baker Street, their adventures of the night before meant that the going was slow and punctuated repeatedly with rest stops and John's completely-disregarded insistence that they not go after all.

Being dropped onto the kerb by John was a welcome relief, and Lestrade hunched up inside his denim jacket and fended off the doctor as he tried to check that the stitches had survived the journey intact.

"Oi, hands to yourself!"

"You can hardly stand. I think I'm well within my rights."

"Well, go and be within them somewhere else. I'm fine. I've just walked across half bloody Westminster, haven't I?"

"Yeah, and now look at you."

"Bugger off, would you?"

Of course, Sherlock chose that moment to exit the front door of 221, shooting them a condescending glance as he went.

John bit back the urge to respond in kind. "Any change, sir?"

Sherlock came over to them. "What do you want?"

"Nice to see you, too," Lestrade muttered, softly enough that they wouldn't be overheard. After all, Sherlock might consider the fact that he was the reason Lestrade was sitting here, held together mostly by catgut and John's careful ministrations.

John said, "Westminster Cathedral tonight," and Lestrade added, "On the piazza."

Sherlock nodded, crammed something from his pocket into John's hand and left, walking briskly in the opposite direction.

"What's that?"

John opened his hand and flattened out the crumpled bit of paper. "Nothing. Takeaway receipt."

"Had to give us something."

"I asked for change."

"Yeah, well, at least he'll know where to be tonight," Lestrade pointed out, taking the receipt from John and tucking it into a pocket of the stiff denim jacket.

"Maybe this time he'll show up before anyone gets hurt."

"Speaking of which, give me a hand here."

John cast a long look at the curtain-covered windows of 221B. "You know, I have proper medical supplies right there."

"Come away."

"How's the head?"

"Murderous."

"That's not even funny."

"Yeah, it is."

"It's not."