If you've ever read the fic "The Adventure of the Six Painted Virgins," you'll know that John and Sherlock get stuck in a kiln - presumably electric. I loved that idea, especially as a ceramics major, soooooo... there is some nice gruesome kiln-torture in here! Not really gruesome, actually, and I'll give you advance warning as to the cliffie, but I really wanted to work in my personal knowledge of this area. I actually asked my ceramics prof how long he thought someone could survive in a lit gas kiln, and he was a bit alarmed until I explained it was for a story :D. Enjoy!


A Study in Triplicate

John woke up hazily, eyes blurring at the edges and his mouth stuffed with wool. He licked his lips, trying to swallow past the dryness, and inhaled.

Christ.

He laid perfectly still, breathing shallowly through fluttering nostrils as his fingers scrabbled against the rough, chalky stone he was sprawled on. It was almost completely dark, but the faint glow coming from peepholes down low in front showed him an oven shape, flat and square with a curving ceiling. He closed his eyes, breathed again, but it was no use. He knew that scent. Stone, and earth, and the crackling memory of fire, traces of gas still clinging to the walls.

Clara had been a potter – still was, as far as he knew. Back before his falling-out with Harry, before Afghanistan, he remembered helping her with the heavy, unwieldy shelves, stacking them high in her gas kiln, laying out her pots and sculptures in neat rows. Then, after, with the heady roar in his ears and Clara's expert fingers working the dials, peering into the spyhole at the inner furnace as it glowed angrily, consuming everything in a brilliant yellow heat.

John's palms broke out into a cold sweat at the thought, and he moved gingerly to sit up. It was cool and impersonal here, with the grit of kiln brick clinging to his pores and the fibers of his clothing. Slowly his heart rate receded, and he thanked his lucky stars he'd woken before the person who'd put him in here had decided to turn the kiln on. At least this way he had a better chance of escaping.

Theoretically.

As John followed the seam of the kiln door with his fingers, trying to find the best place to push, footsteps scraped on concrete. He froze where he was, hunched against the door. Closing his eyes to the darkness, he strained his ears.

But there was no voice. No clue except for the rasp of shoes on a dusty floor, the sigh of a coat sleeve brushing against the metal shell of the kiln. John's heart was pounding again, and the thick press of panic had a chokehold on his throat as his eyes flickered blindly, trying to follow the person's progress from inside his prison.

The light filtering weakly from the base of the kiln flickered, and there was a soft, muted click as the mystery person pushed the button to turn the furnace on. John choked, and then he was scrambling upright and throwing himself across the small space, looking through the hole at the kiln's back. The empty, yawning mouth of a gas pipe stared back.

"Wait – please! I'm in here, don't turn this on!" His voice was hoarse, but intelligible enough, and he filled his lungs for another go. "Please, who are you? Just let me out, I –"

Through the silver of space afforded him, John watched as a ratty pair of jeans appeared, followed by a bony, masculine hand, the nail beds ringed in dried clay. The hand twisted the gas valve, and John backed away, choking as the scent clogged his nostrils and coated his tongue.

"Fuck it, what are you doing?" It tore itself from his throat, terrified and shedding sanity like water droplets, and John pressed himself as far back against the kiln door as he cold. He couldn't remember what Clara had said about air currents, where the heat was most likely to pool – all he could think about was getting as far away from the gas pipes as possible.

There was no reply – no vocal reply, at any rate. The man simply tapped his fingernails against the metal casing, the hollow thwacks echoing in the small space. John watched in horrified fascination through the tiny spyhole as the hands moved deftly, turning knobs with expert finesse. Then, with the deliberate pace of someone who knew what they were doing, the man reached out of sight and clicked something.

Whoosh.

Flames jumped into the kiln, petering out less than three feet from where John pressed himself feebly against the kiln door. He could feel the heat from where he stood, but it wasn't unbearable. The sweat trickling down his brow and under his arms was purely from the nerves that twisted at his insides. Belatedly, he scrambled for the buttons on his jacket, doing them up to the throat and tucking his hands in his pockets. It was uncomfortable, but it might protect him from the burns that would likely begin to form. John turned his back on the roaring flames licking greedily at the air, and tried not to think about the potential damage to his face and hands.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there, cloaked in heat that was rapidly growing towards the 37 degree mark. The gas pipes with their tongues of flame blocked out any noise from outside the kiln, though he suspected his murderer was long gone. John swallowed convulsively, Adam's apple pressing uncomfortably against the snug collar of his jacket. My murderer. It was already a foregone conclusion.

Squeezing his eyes shut, John pressed his hands to his stomach, and felt the burn of metal against his wrist. With a leaping heart, he realized he still had his watch on. With fingers clumsy from the heat, he fumbled with the scorching metal and dropped it hastily to the ground. It was getting harder to breathe, though that was no surprise with the flames taking up all the oxygen…

John's heart stopped cold. Snatches of conversations came back to him, of Clara's pleasant alto running through terms and definitions pleasantly as they stacked pottery on kiln shelves.

"How long do you think it would take?"

A confused flash of green eyes. "How long would what take?"

"If a person was put in a kiln. How long until they died?"

A merry peal of laughter. "God, John, you're so morbid! Good thing you've enlisted, maybe the army will drum that out of you."

John pressed his fingers to his eyes, trying to concentrate. His brain was swimming, and thoughts darted and leaped in his head, refusing to be pinned down. Think, Watson! he whispered to himself. What did she say?

"Really, though," John said, grinning as he hefted a large piece of sculpture into place. Even handling it gingerly, the unfired glaze left smudges of red and white on his tee shirt and the pale undersides of his arms. "How long d'you reckon?"

Clara cocked her head, half-concentrating on sorting the cone pack in her hand. "Oh, I dunno. Maybe three hundred Fahrenheit until they turned to ash. But the carbon monoxide would get you before the heat did. Ten minutes, tops, unless the damper was open and the air flow was considerable."

John gasped, choking, but couldn't draw breath. This damn heat was near intolerable, but he'd withstood worse in Afghanistan. And it wouldn't even be the flames that did him in. It would be the bloody carbon monoxide.

Panic washed over him again, wordless and intense enough to throttle, and his fingers jammed themselves into the corners of the kiln without thought, seeking purchase. He pushed frantically at the door, trying to get it open, but the weight was too much, the leverage all wrong from the inside. Black spots danced at the corners of his eyes, and he was barely conscious of his fingertips scraping themselves raw in an effort to squeeze just one inch of open air between the wall and the door.

A sudden wave of dizziness slammed into him, and his head fell forward, knocking against the scalding brick. The pain stabbed through his muddled senses, jerking him from the edge of unconsciousness. He realized with a leap of hope that his forehead had knocked a brick loose. Reclaiming control of his hands, he pushed and worried at the brick in question until it fell outside the kiln with a distant crack. Eager, heedless of the way the fierce heat biting into his skin, he pressed his face to the opening and breathed in a long, sweet breath of untainted air.

Behind him, the fire hissed and rattled, seeping into his bones with an unquenchable heat. John's heart sank even as he drew clean air into his starved lungs. So it's going to be the heat after all. Then, I wish I'd had a chance to tell Sherlock that I love him.

Faintly, in the far distance, voices. John's body trembled violently, trying to reject the heat, and the relatively cool air stung his lips and teeth as he breathed stubbornly. In and out, Watson. In and out.

Darkness pulled at the corners of his eyes, crept beneath his eyelids. John sagged, his strength deserting him, and then everything was blessedly, blessedly quiet.