Infinite Improbabilities

Chapter 7: Jack

John needs to shut up. – snip snip – The universe is rarely so lazy. – Looks can be deceiving. – When Sherlock met Sally – John is NOT mad, honestly!

John wasn't sure what he would find when he got back to the hotel room (perhaps Sally Donovan kneeling over Sherlock's dead body?), but it wasn't the sight that greeted him when he opened the door: Sally sitting in the ratty armchair holding a sleeping Sherlock on her lap, his thumb hanging out of his mouth and the soft elephant clutched in his fist. Sally's head popped up quickly, but John was fairly sure she had been in the middle of smelling Sherlock's hair.

"Shut up," Sally hissed.

"I'm not saying a word," John smirked. He dropped the key onto the bedside table and went over to help Sally, who was having some difficulty standing up without dropping Sherlock.

"Help me put him on the bed. But be careful, he's got my hair."

Together they got him onto the bed, and Sally carefully untangled his fingers from her hair so she could stand up. "Ouch, my arm is asleep," she said, massaging her shoulder. "He's heavier than he looks."

"I can't believe you rocked him to sleep."

"Ha ha. He brought me the Bible and insisted I read to him. He's quite the little manipulator."

"You don't say," John grinned.

"Here, you've got to look at this." Sally sat down on the bed next to Sherlock, who had curled up on his side with his arms wrapped around the elephant, and started fussing with the hem of the pyjama top.

"Is the top snapped to the bottoms?"

"Yes, and it's a bloody pain. But good job they snap together or the bottoms would fall down off his skinny bum. Kid's got snake hips. And of course I didn't even think of getting him pants." With a shudder, she pulled a little harder and the snaps came undone. "There. Look at this."

She pulled up the top and John got a glimpse of Sherlock's pale torso, dotted with purple-black bruises in various shapes and sizes. John's stomach gave a lurch. This is what he had been hoping to protect him from, but apparently he had failed. Well, maybe not entirely. At least it had only been a few hours of torture rather than two weeks.

"What about. . ." John gently folded down the waistband of the pyjama bottoms and spotted a small, round burn, raised and red, on Sherlock's hip.

Sally's intake of breath told him she recognized it for what it was. "I didn't even notice that."

"I thought we might have gotten to him before that happened, but apparently not. He had three scars, but I only see one, so I suppose that's something."

"He never complained. I put him in a hot bath and he never said it was hurting him. He's pretty tough."

"He's got a high pain tolerance. You gave him a bath?"

"Yes. He insisted he couldn't do it on his own. He certainly wasn't shy about stripping off in front of me." Sally's face had reddened slightly. "I now know his—um—status."

"Status?"

"You know. . ." She made a vague scissors motion. Ah.

"Never mind; I don't want to know."

"You mean you didn't know already?"

John made a face. "God, no! Flatmates and friends, that's all. I'm married!"

"All right, all right. You said he had three scars?"

"Yeah, 'little smokies' is what we call them in the surgery. Cigarette burns."

"How is it you've seen those and not his. . . you know?"

"I've had to bandage him up a few times. He's got a few other scars too, I think from this but he never told me much. I had to get the details, such as they were, from Mycroft. He had awful screaming nightmares about it, and I needed to know what was going on."

"I never knew he was having nightmares."

"Well, he wouldn't exactly tell you, would he? No offense intended," he added hastily at the expression on her face.

"None taken. It's no secret we don't get on."

"The first time he had a nightmare right after I moved in, I went down to check on him. I didn't know what all the shouting and thumping was about. I touched him on the shoulder, and he tried to punch me in the face. Fortunately PTSD means quick reflexes. I ducked, he threw a pillow at me and shouted at me to leave. The next day he said never to touch him if he's having a nightmare."

John tried to fix the snaps on Sherlock's pyjamas, but finally had to give up and let Sally do it. When she was done, she lay down on the other side of the bed with a yawn. "God, I'm tired. Taking care of this kid is exhausting."

"I don't doubt it. Taking care of an adult Sherlock is tiring enough."

Sally rolled over to her side to face John. Between them Sherlock sighed and pulled the elephant in against his chest. "John, what are we doing here?" Sally asked. "I mean, honestly, how did we get here?"

"I wish I knew." John tucked a pillow behind his back and lay back against the headrest. He supposed he could stick around a few more minutes before heading off to confront Sherlock's dad. "Funny, I was just talking to Sherlock about this the other day."

"About being kidnapped?"

"Yeah."

"That's seems an odd coincidence. Why were you talking about it?"

"Well, I stayed over a couple of nights ago. . ." He trailed off because Sally was giving him a look. "Not like that! We had spent all day trying to track down the Wizard and it was late. I stayed in my old room. Well, he woke up shouting again, and I tried again to get him to talk about what happened, but he wouldn't tell me. Said it was ancient history."

"Don't you think it's odd we ended up here, after that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it's odd we ended up at the right time and place to intervene."

"I suppose it is, but I don't think I caused it. How would I have done that?"

"I have no idea. It must mean something, though. What if we're stuck here? I mean, what if we can't get home—back to our time, whatever?"

"I don't know. I don't want my daughter growing up without me. . . but I suppose we'd get there eventually, right? That is, if we went back in time, eventually we'll get back to the present. We'll just be a bit. . . older."

"What do we do in the meantime, keep Sherlock and raise him? Can you imagine trying to parent him?"

"I don't have to imagine," John said ruefully. "Been there, done that, made a right mess of it."

"How he turned out is hardly your fault. I blame his mum. Damn kid can't do a bloody thing for himself."

"I've noticed that," John said with a wry chuckle.

"What did you find out about his dad?"

"Oh. His dad has some gambling debts and the ransom was to pay them off. Sounds like they forced him into it. He thought he could get the money from his wife's family, but it seems there is less left than he thought."

"Doesn't excuse this."

"No, but he's terrified of what's happening to Sherlock. They threatened to kill him if he doesn't pay up."

"What can we do?"

"I don't know. We could give Sherlock back to his mum, but that won't help his dad. They're likely to kill him if they can't get their money."

"We could turn them in to the police," Sally suggested. "He'll be in jail but at least he'll be alive."

"What if they come after Sherlock again, or his mum? And I can't imagine how Sherlock would turn out without a stable family to keep him in check." John shook his head. "I've got to go talk to him. I'll go in a bit. I want to catch him at his house, give him a chance to come clean with his wife."

Sherlock mumbled something in his sleep and rolled over onto his back, one arm thrown up over his head. His curls were sweaty and mashed to his head on the side he had been lying on.

"He looks so cute and innocent like this," Sally said. "Too bad he's such an arsehole." Despite her harsh words, she reached out and gently smoothed the damp hair back off his forehead with a half-smile.

"What do you have against him? I mean, I know he's insensitive and a show-off, and he has no mouth-brain filter, but he's really not that bad."

"Oh, that's right. You don't know."

"Know what? What happened?"

Donovan chewed her lip. "Do you know who DC Nikola Kim was?"

"No, never heard of her."

"She was my partner. Almost nine years ago—6 May, 2007, I remember it exactly—we were working on a case, cop killer, and Lestrade brought Sherlock in. He had it all figured out, but instead of just telling us, he decided to catch the bloke by leading us right into a trap, and of course we had to follow him in because he was a civilian and we had to protect him. He thought backup would get there in time and no one would get hurt. But Nikola. . . Nikola was killed."

"Oh, God."

"When I shouted at him about it, he called it 'bad timing' and never did even apologize." Sally was gently stroking Sherlock's hair while she said all of this. John wondered if she even realized what she was doing.

"I found out later that he was high. Nikola trusted him with her life, and he let her down. I've never trusted him with anything again." Sally's hand drifted down Sherlock's chubby baby cheek to his neck, and then down his arm. Her face looked so sad that John felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for her. There had been a time, right after Sherlock had jumped off that roof, that John had blamed her for everything, and he had spent the next two years studiously avoiding and ignoring her. Then after Sherlock had come back, John didn't know what to think, because obviously he had played both of them, and apparently didn't really even care, because despite his multiple apologies, he had still thought it funny to deceive John again in order to trick him into forgiving him.

"Lestrade set it up for him to go into rehab instead of having charges laid against him for obstructing justice, not that we could pin anything on him anyway." Sally continued. "He didn't want to go but his brother made him do it. He never saw it as his fault, but if it hadn't been for his idiotic. . ."

Sally trailed off, staring at the far wall. John didn't know what to say. He was about to open his mouth to apologize on Sherlock's behalf, when Sally continued. "Nikola had a husband and a daughter, Lyra. She's 14 now, clever as they come. We set up a scholarship fund for her to go to University. It's got almost 40,000 pounds in it. She could go anywhere she wanted, but do you know what she wants to do? Be a police officer like her mum and Auntie Sally. I've been trying to talk her out of it."

"So that's why. . . I asked Sherlock once why you hated him so much. I was angry with you for calling him a freak. He told me you had good reason and that I should drop it. I asked if he had tried apologizing for whatever it was, and he said it wasn't that simple."

"An apology might have helped, but I don't know that I would have accepted it. Probably still wouldn't."

John nodded down at her hand, which was still gently caressing Sherlock's arm. "Does that mean you've forgiven him?

Sally looked down at her hand and groaned. "Oh, it's not fair that he's so soft. Here, feel this." She took hold of John's hand and put it on Sherlock's arm, just below the elbow. When John obediently brushed his thumb over the skin, he couldn't help but match Sally's smile.

"That's amazing. Feels like velvet."

"I know, right?"

"This is probably wrong for us to be doing this. Sort of feels like we're taking advantage of him."

"He's asleep. He'll never know."

"Suppose not. He's taken a bit of a shine to you, hasn't he?"

Sally gave a sort of incredulous laugh. "Seems so. He said I smell like his mummy."

"Really?"

"Yeah, and you know what that means? It means I've always smelled like his mother and he's never told me before."

"That's sort of sweet."

"Yeah, he's making it hard to hate him. I guess. . . I can't really blame this little chap for something he hasn't even done yet, can I?"

John smiled down at Sherlock's little sleeping face, all curves where the adult Sherlock was angles. "It's hard to be angry with him when he's so adorable, isn't it?"

"You are angry with him, aren't you?"

"What? No I'm not."

"He thinks you are. And, well, I can sort of see where he got the idea. You move like you're angry."

"I'm mad at his dad for doing this."

"No, John, not just right now. All the time. That thing you do with your hand."

"What thing I do?"

"You keep clenching your fist, like you're ready to pop off and punch someone."

"I don't do that. I'm not angry."

"Ok, whatever you say," Sally said through a yawn, eyes sliding closed. "Whatever."

"I'm not angry," John repeated, but he got no response. After a moment he realized Sally was asleep, with her arm draped across Sherlock's waist. John sighed. He needed to go back out and confront Sherlock's dad, but now Sally had given him something to think about first. Was he angry? He didn't think so, not anymore, but he couldn't say there were no unresolved issues, between him and Sherlock, and between him and Mary. But he didn't think he was still angry about them. He just didn't know how to fix them. And now how could he fix them if he were stuck in the past, maybe forever? Well, not forever. Time would still pass, right? This was so confusing. John didn't do well with confusing. He was a man of action: he liked things straightforward and uncomplicated. Overanalysis just led to paralysis.

Yeah, time to take action. He had to get up and go confront Garrison Holmes. He'd do that soon. He just needed to close his eyes for a minute first. . .

A/N: Your reviews are much appreciated.