Disclaimer: I don't own Batman or Sherlock
Jason's POV
When we get back to the flat, Mrs. Hudson is waiting for us.
"Sherlock, what have you done?" she asks, sounding quite upset.
"Mrs. Hudson?" he asks.
"Upstairs," she says.
I follow Sherlock up the steps. He opens the door to the living room, where police officers are rummaging through his possessions. Sherlock storms right up to Lestrade. "What are you doing?"
"Well, I knew you'd find the case," Lestrade says casually, "I'm not that stupid."
"You can't just break into my flat," Sherlock says accusingly.
"And you can't withhold evidence," Lestrade ripostes. "And I didn't break into your flat."
"What do you call this then?" Sherlock exclaims angrily.
I look around at all the people. I've never really liked being around a lot of people all moving about and making noise… it makes me kind of want to slip out of the flat and find a nice alleyway or abandoned warehouse that doesn't have a psychopath in it, and hide there for a while, but I don't move from where I am standing off to the side, arms crossed over my chest as I glare at anyone who looks at me.
"A drug bust," Lestrade says.
"Are you kidding me?" I ask. "This guy, a junkie? Have you met him? He doesn't exactly fight the stereotype for that."
"John, you probably want to shut up now," Sherlock says.
"Wait, you're serious? You were a junkie?"
"Shut up!" Sherlock exclaims, turning back Lestrade. "I'm not your sniffer dog."
"No, Anderson's my sniffer dog," Lestrade says.
"What?" Sherlock says, as we turn and see Anderson in the doorway to the kitchen, looking smug. It really gives me a strong desire to shoot him.
"What are you doing on a drugs bust?" Sherlock questions Anderson.
"Oh, I volunteered," Anderson says complacently.
I instinctively reach for my gun, but stop myself just as my fingers touch the hidden holster.
"They all did," Lestrade says. "They're not strictly speaking on the drugs squad, but they're very keen."
"Are these human eyes?" that Donovan woman appears holding a plastic bag of what definitely looks like human eyes. "They were in the microwave."
"Don't touch that!" Sherlock exclaims. "It's part of an experiment."
Of what? What could he possibly be experimenting on? Please tell me it's not like some of those creepy villains' experiments where they try to genetically enhance people.
"Keep looking guys," Lestrade calls to his squad. "Or," he turns to Sherlock, "we could work together and I'll tell them to stand down."
"This is childish," Sherlock snaps.
"Well, I'm dealing with a child," Lestrade retorts. "Sherlock, this is our case. I'm letting you in, but you do not go off on your own. Clear?"
"Oh, what, so you set up a pretend drugs bust to bully me?" Sherlock accuses.
"It stops being pretend if they find anything," Lestrade points out.
"I am clean!" Sherlock exclaims loudly.
"Is your flat?" Lestrade questions. "All of it?"
"I don't even smoke," Sherlock says, pulling down his sleeve to reveal his nicotine patch.
"Neither do I." Lestrade pulls down his own sleeve to reveal a nicotine patch there as well. "So let's work together on this. We found Rachel."
Sherlock turns back to him, excited. "Who is she?"
"Jennifer Wilson's only daughter," Lestrade replies.
There's something about the look on his face that tells me the lead was a dead end. Bats are always able to read tells, making it easy for us to communicate with one another when out on the rooftops; a simple look, and we know what we're supposed to do. Dick calls it: speaking Bat.
"Her daughter? Why would she write her daughter's name? Why?" Sherlock says, going into his weird detective mode, trying to find a reason.
"Never mind that," Anderson says, pointing at the pink case in the living room. "We found the case. According to someone, the murderer has the case, and we found it in the hands of our favorite psychopath."
Sherlock glares at Anderson. "I'm not a psychopath, Anderson. I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research."
"You need to bring Rachel in," he says to Lestrade. "You need to question her. I need to question her."
"She's dead." Knew the lead was a dead end.
"Excellent!" Sherlock exclaims. Huh, apparently it's not a dead end to Sherlock.
"How, when and why? Is there a connection? There has to be."
"Well," Lestrade starts, "I doubt it, since she's been dead for fourteen years. Technically she was never alive. Rachel was Jennifer Wilson's stillborn daughter, fourteen years ago."
Sherlock looks confused. "No, that's ... that's not right. How ... Why would she do that? Why?"
"Why would she think of her daughter in her last moments?" Anderson asks, his voice giving me a headache. "Yup – sociopath; I'm seeing it now."
Sherlock gives the moron an irate look, before beginning to pace. "She didn't think about her daughter. She scratched her name on the floor with her fingernails. She was dying. It took effort; it would have hurt."
"You said that the victims all took the poison themselves, that he makes them take it," I remind him. "Well, maybe he... I don't know, talks to them? Maybe he used the death of her daughter somehow."
Sherlock stops and looks at me. "Yeah, but that was ages ago. Why would she still be upset?"
I freeze for a moment, and I can't help but wonder if Bruce has gotten over my death. It was six years ago. Not fourteen years, but still quite a while. I wonder if he cares anymore, or if he ever did.
"Not good?" Sherlock asks me as everyone falls silent and begins to stare at him.
I'm not much for sentiments, but after spending time with Dick and Alfred, I know the answer. "A bit, yeah."
Sherlock shrugs it off and takes a step forward, beginning to whisper to me intently. "Yeah, but if you were dying ... if you'd been murdered: in your very last few seconds what would you say?"
Images begin to flash through my mind.
'Which hurts worse? A or B?'
'Nah, I'm just gonna keep hitting you with this crowbar.'
'Tell the Big Man I said "Hello."'
I remember crawling across the floor after falling down when I tried to stand up, finding the door locked. There was no way out. And then I saw the bomb… only a few seconds left.
I closed my eyes, and it went off.
"Let it be quick," I murmur.
"Oh, use your imagination!" Sherlock exclaims in exasperation.
"I don't have to," I snarl at him, a lot of my natural rage showing through.
Sherlock blinks at me, and I realize that under all the anger, I let a flash of pain dart across my face, and Sherlock, being the creepy detective he is, noticed it.
He pauses, staring at me almost apologetically, and then continues. "But if you were clever. Really clever. Jennifer Wilson, she was clever, running all those lovers. She was clever," he starts to pace again. "She's trying to tell us something."
Mrs. Hudson comes through the door. "Your taxi's here, Sherlock."
"I didn't order a taxi; go away," Sherlock says, rudely.
"Oh, dear," Mrs. Hudson says, "They're making such a mess. What are they looking for?
"It's a drugs bust, Mrs. Hudson," I explain. I'm glad the police never had one of those at my mother's apartment. They'd have taken her away from me, not that death didn't do that eventually anyway.
Mrs. Hudson looks worried. "But they're just for my hip. They're herbal soothers."
"Shut up, everybody, shut up!" Sherlock shouts, irritated intensely. "Don't move, don't speak, don't breathe. I'm trying to think. Anderson, face the other way. You're putting me off."
"What? My face is?!" Anderson exclaims. I almost want to laugh.
"Everybody quiet and still," Lestrade commands. "Anderson, turn your back."
"Oh, for God's sake!" Anderson shouts, outraged.
"Your back, now!"
"Come on, think. Quick!" Sherlock mutters to himself.
"What about your taxi?" Mrs. Hudson asks.
"Mrs. Hudson!" he shouts furiously.
She turns away and flees down the stairs, and that's when Sherlock has his realization.
"Oh." A delighted smile comes across his face. "She was clever, clever, yes! She's cleverer than you lot and she's dead. Do you see? Do you get it? She didn't lose her phone; she never lost it. She planted it on him. When she got out of the car, she knew that she was going to her death. She left the phone in order to lead us to her killer."
"But how?" Lestrade asks.
"What? What do you mean, how?" Sherlock asks in shock. "Rachel!"
He looks so triumphant, but everyone just looks at him blankly. Is it wrong that I kind of want to laugh right now?
"Don't you see?" he tries again. "Rachel! Oh, look at you lot. You're all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing. Rachel is not a name."
I don't really find my life relaxing, but okay. "Then what is it?"
"John, on the luggage, there's a label. E-mail address." Sherlock instructs.
I go over to the annoyingly pink case and read the email address to him. "Uh, .uk."
"Oh, I've been too slow. She didn't have a laptop, which means she did her business on her phone, so it's a smartphone, it's e-mail enabled," he pulls up the website, "So there was a website for her account. The username is her e-mail address... and all together now, the password is?"
"Rachel," I murmur.
"So we can read her e-mails. So what?" Anderson says obnoxiously.
"Anderson, don't talk out loud. You lower the I.Q. of the whole street. We can do much more than just read her e-mails. It's a smartphone, it's got GPS, which means if you lose it you can locate it online. She's leading us directly to the man who killed her," Sherlock says.
The look on Anderson's face makes me have to fight as hard as I possibly can to hold back the laughter and maintain my hostile, stoic look. I don't laugh in front of people I don't trust… I realize with a jolt that I laughed in front of Sherlock earlier. Was that creepy guy with the umbrella right? Do I trust him?
"Unless he got rid of it," Lestrade says.
"We know he didn't," I say, remembering texting the creep.
"Come on, come on. Quickly!" Sherlock says, impatient with the computer.
Mrs. Hudson is back. "Sherlock, dear. This taxi driver-"
He stalks towards her. "Mrs. Hudson, isn't it time for your evening soother?"
I continue to watch the clock on the computer spin to tell us when it'll have finished loading, while listening to Sherlock and Lestrade's conversation.
"We need to get vehicles," Sherlock says, "get a helicopter. We're gonna have to move fast. This phone battery won't last forever."
"We'll just have a map reference, not a name," Lestrade says.
"It's a start!" Sherlock shouts.
The map appears and zooms in on the phone's location. "Sherlock-"
"It narrows it down from just anyone in London," Sherlock insists, talking to Lestrade. "It's the first proper lead that we've had."
"Sherlock-" I try again.
Sherlock hurries towards me, coming in a little too close for my liking to look over my shoulder. "What is it? Quickly, where?"
The map shows us the location.
"It's here," I murmur.
Sherlock straightens up. "How can it be here? How?"
"Well, maybe it was in the case when you brought it back and it fell out somewhere," Lestrade tries to come up with an explanation for the results.
"What, and I didn't notice it?" Sherlock asks, exasperated once again. "Me? I didn't notice?"
"Anyway," I say to Lestrade, "we texted him and he called back."
Lestrade turns towards his squad of officers. "Guys, we're also looking for a mobile somewhere here, it belonged to the victim..."
Sherlock all of a sudden gets a really strange look on his face. It is the same look Bruce always used to get whenever he had finally figured out a case, except a little less stoic.
He looks down at his phone for a moment.
"Uh, Sherlock, are you okay?" I ask, noticing the look on his face getting stranger and stranger by the moment. It almost… worries me. I haven't had anyone to worry about since I died; I'm not used to the feeling.
"What?" he asks. "Yeah, I- I'm fine."
"Okay," I say, not believing him. "Do you want me to try it again?" I gesture to the GPS tracker on the computer.
"Yes, good idea," he says.
Sherlock begins to head towards the door.
"Where are you going?" I ask. It's not a good idea to let someone walk off on their own when they're… not quite stable. That's what got me killed. I should have stayed with Batman rather than go after the Joker on my own.
"Fresh air," Sherlock says. "Just going out for a minute. I won't be long."
I frown, because I didn't think I'd be long either, but two hours later, I was dead. "Are you sure you're all right?"
Sherlock begins to hurry down the stairs. "I'm fine."
I stare after him for a moment, hoping he is just being dramatic because the tracking device failed.
I hear a cab pull away from the flat. "Sherlock just got in a cab," I say.
"I told you," Donovan says, "He does that. We're wasting our time here."
"I'm calling the phone," I say to Lestrade. "It's ringing out."
"If it's ringing, it isn't here," Lestrade says.
"I can try again." I honestly have no idea why I am being so cooperative. Normally, I'd have lashed out at this point. Not saying part of me doesn't want to, but I'm still managing to suppress it, which is a huge accomplishment.
"Does it matter?" Donovan confronts Lestrade. "Does any of it? You know, he is just a lunatic, and he will always let you down, and you're wasting your time. All our time."
I don't believe her. I don't know why, but I don't, though at the same time, I can relate to how she is feeling, because I have been let down too. Batman, no, Bruce, my father, let me down. He failed to save me and then didn't even avenge my murder. The not getting there in time, I can forgive him for that, but letting that clown continue to live? That, I will never forgive.
Lestrade stares at her for a moment, and then finally, he sighs. "All right, fine. Come on everyone; we're done here."
After the police officers leave, Lestrade grabs his coat.
He turns towards me. "Why did he do that? Why did he have to leave?"
"You know him better than I do," I say with a shrug, crossing my arms back over my chest.
"I've known him for five years," Lestrade says with a sigh," and no, I don't."
"Why do you put up with him then?" I ask, raising one of my dark eyebrows. I wonder if it is the same reason Gordon works with Batman.
"Because I'm desperate, that's why," Lestrade says.
So, not the same then. Gordon works with B, because he can get the job done when the police can't, but to me, that sounds like the same thing going on here, even though Lestrade won't admit it, maybe not even to himself.
"And," Lestrade continues, "because Sherlock Holmes is a great man. And I think one day, if we're very lucky, he might even be a good one."
He turns and walks out the door, leaving me to stare after him, arms still crossed, the words he said still running through my mind.
AN: Well, what do you think? I really would appreciate some feedback. The updates might be a little slower during the week, since I have school and I am trying to write novels too, but they will definitely continue. I'd love to know what you think of this; don't be shy, I'd love any feedback I can get on this story.
Thanks again for reading, you are all awesome,
-DragonsintheMoonlight :)
