Glimmers In Darkness

On occasion, the most irritating thing about John and Amarisa was how well they took things, how they seemed to accept strange happenings with barely a qualm.

Sherlock had been left reeling. John was not only being attacked by death spells but also had the gall to keep this fact a secret. And to cap it all, Nostrepheus was going on about doom and prophecies.

"A prophecy that says you will be their doom."

It seemed there was more to John Watson than even Sherlock had suspected.

John stilled with a piece of toast halfway to his mouth, and Amarisa froze in her attentions to Raniel.

Then they did something even Sherlock hadn't expected – they laughed.

"You're joking, right?" John said, grinning a little uncertainly. "That's why they wanted to kill me?"

Sherlock spared a moment to hope that he wasn't gaping at John the way Raniel was gaping at Amarisa.

"I assure you, this is not a joking matter," Mycroft said.

"Well, it's obvious they got the wrong guy, isn't it?" John said, still chuckling. "They definitely misunderstood something about that prophecy."

"We've had no indications that's the case," Nostrepheus said, a hint of disapproval in his voice.

John made an effort to moderate his amusement, perhaps sensing that every other occupant of the flat disapproved of how blithely he treated threats to his life. Raniel nipped at Amarisa's forelegs to show his disapproval, and the wolfdog retaliated by gently biting at the scruff of his neck.

Two months ago, Sherlock had watched a nature documentary on the mating habits of various animals so he would be better able to detect when two people were engaged in a relationship by their daemon's behaviour. Strangely, watching Amarisa and Raniel triggered a memory of the narrator describing the courting habits of mammals.

Resolutely, Sherlock turned his face away, and ignored Mycroft's disgustingly smug, all-knowing look.

"Do you really think I'm capable of being some witch clan's doom?" John was asking Nostrepheus.

"Don't sell yourself short, John," Raniel muttered, and Sherlock wished his daemon would just shut up right now – Mycroft was looking smugger by the second.

John grinned at the polecat. "Nice of you to say so, Raniel, but Risa and I aren't important enough in the grand scheme of things to make problems for witches."

"So speaks the man who befriended an armoured bear," Mycroft commented, voice deceptively light.

John blinked. "How did you...oh, Aeliana told you, right?"

Mycroft smiled.

"John...whether you believe in the prophecy or not is irrelevant," Nostrepheus said. "The important thing is that they believe it. They joined the war in Afghanistan because they knew it would give them an opportunity to kill you."

At least that seemed to startle John. It startled Sherlock, come to that.

But then, infuriatingly, John laughed again. "You're telling me the entire clan joined a war just on the off-chance that they'd find the person the prophecy was talking about? And then they somehow mistook me for that person, so that's why they're withdrawing now?"

"That's exactly what we're saying." Nostrepheus sounded a little frustrated, and Sherlock could sympathise. "The prophecy is clear on that point – as long as you are alive, their downfall is assured."

Under normal circumstances, John's conviction that he and Amarisa were in no way important would be rather fascinating, but as it stood it was just irritating, not to mention short-sighted.

"So why didn't they go for me immediately, then?" John asked. "I was there for quite a while before the death-spells made an appearance."

Mycroft sighed theatrically. Under normal circumstances Sherlock would be making his violin screech horribly right now to drive his sibling out of the flat, but he wanted to see this through. He had no interest in whatever petty government problem Mycroft was bringing him, but John...John was another matter.

"They needed time to determine who you were, John," Mycroft pointed out. "They did not know you on sight."

"And once they did, they tried to kill you," Nostrepheus reiterated, as though unable to understand why John couldn't grasp the concept.

Sherlock could feel Raniel's agitation, but with Amarisa's paw still around his chest the daemon was restrained from expressing it, and so was practically vibrating on the spot with outrage.

"So couldn't they have got it wrong somehow?" John pressed.

Mycroft shook his head minutely, apparently giving up on John's inability to comprehend his own importance. Tehayla shuffled on his shoulder and tapped his ear gently with the tip of her wing, as though in reminder, and Mycroft produced the file that had been the true purpose of his visit and attempted to hand it to Sherlock.

Sherlock, of course, didn't so much as glance at it or raise his hand. Tehayla clacked her beak reprovingly as Mycroft moved past Sherlock's chair to deliver the file to the disgustingly agreeable John.

"Don't take it!" Raniel snapped.

John sent the daemon an exasperated look, and Sherlock wondered if he was imagining the definite tinges of fondness in the doctor's expression.

He tuned out Mycroft's explanation about the man and the death in favour of rosining his bow. Though he couldn't resist smirking at John's snort when Mycroft said the plans for the new missile defence system were on a memory stick.

"That wasn't very clever," John said, in the calm, placid tone that meant he was privately amused by something.

Sherlock managed to stifle his outright grin into a close-lipped smile, and Raniel chittered in amusement.

"This is serious, John," Nostrepheus admonished.

John sent the owl a chastising look. "Don't pretend – I know you're smiling."

Sherlock froze with the rosin in mid-stroke over the hairs of his bow. Mycroft didn't blink, but Tehayla's feathers suddenly ruffled. Even Raniel had gone still between Amarisa's paws.

John and Amarisa seemed to realise something was wrong. John was glancing awkwardly between Nostrepheus, Mycroft and Sherlock, while Amarisa's ears were pricked and her eyes were darting around the room.

"How did you know?" Nostrepheus asked.

John shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with sudden scrutiny. "Something in your eyes, the way your head tilted...oh, I don't know, I can just tell. The same way you can tell someone's smiling even if you can't see their mouth."

By and large, daemons settled in animal forms – save the rare few who took human shapes – so their expressions were constrained by the form they'd settled in. While mammals and some reptiles could make an approximation of a smile, birds were a very different matter; beaks just didn't bend that way. People with bird daemons usually said they could tell when their daemon was smiling by some nuance of expression like the way their eyes looked or how their head moved...but it was always their own human who made that distinction. People with bird daemons themselves had a certain measure of success in deciphering other bird daemons' expressions, just as someone with a lizard daemon was more likely to understand the communications of a snake daemon.

Sherlock had grown up around bird daemons and had trained himself to be able to determine what all varieties of daemons were expressing…but he'd never met anyone who could 'just tell'.

It was made all the more eerie by the fact that John hadn't been given any other indication as to Nostrepheus' mood. The daemon's tone had been disapproving, and there certainly hadn't been any other verbal cues. It had taken Sherlock almost a full second to determine that Nostrepheus was reluctantly amused by John's quip, and he'd been raised with the daemon. Yet John, who didn't have a bird daemon and had apparently never made a great study of them had just glanced at the owl, and he'd known.

But this had happened before, Sherlock reminded himself. John had always had an unusually good grasp on people's moods and their daemon's state of mind. He was just exceedingly empathic, that was all. Nothing more than a natural gift for understanding people.

"Interesting..." Mycroft mused.

But Mycroft seemed willing to let it go, and continued describing the problem he'd decided to dump on Sherlock's doorstep. In spite of himself, Sherlock was somewhat intrigued, but of course he would never let Mycroft know and instead lifted the violin to his shoulder.

A few moments of truly horrific bowing, and Mycroft and Tehayla were out of the flat, Nostrepheus departing along with them.

John was looking mildly puzzled. "What was-?"

But Raniel interrupted, scrambling free of Amarisa to jump onto the coffee table. "Now you're going to tell us exactly why you kept it a secret that you'd been shot with death-spells!"

"We thought you knew," John replied, sounding bewildered. "I mean, you worked out everything else."

"Strangely, 'being shot by an arrow with a death-spell placed on it' didn't enter into my calculations when I was considering the source of your limp," Sherlock hissed, feeling incensed for no clear reason he could name.

"We're sorry," Amarisa said, in a move obviously meant to placate them. "But it's not like there's much to tell. One moment we were running along behind Ragnvald, and the next..."

Amarisa rolled her shoulders in a shrug.

Ragnvald sounded like a Norse name, and Sherlock assumed it referred to the armoured bear that towered over John in the photo on his bookshelf.

"We don't remember much about it," John finished. "I mean, being hit by the arrow was pretty unpleasant..."

Both he and Amarisa seemed to suppress shivers, and Raniel scurried to the edge of the coffee table to nudge at the side of the wolfdog's head, obviously trying to comfort her. Amarisa turned and briefly touched her nose to his, and Sherlock wondered if it was entirely logical to be jealous of your own daemon.

"But Ragnvald carried us back to base, and then Aeliana – your Mum – put a bunch of spells on us to put us back together."

John sounded so unconcerned Sherlock was gripped by the irrational urge to grab him by the throat and shake him.

"So what was Mycroft on about?" John went on. "What was 'interesting'? Should I expect men in black suits to come and take me away to secret testing facility?"

Raniel sniffed, as though to express what he thought of that. "No. It's just...well, that degree of sensitivity to other people's daemons is unusual."

"Really?" John asked. "You're not having me on?"

"You never thought it was anything special," Sherlock realised. Which, really could be said for a lot of things about John.

"We've always been able to do that," Amarisa said. "And did you know your brother has a magic umbrella?"

Raniel chittered, and Sherlock grinned to himself; this was more like it. John and Amarisa tended to be much more restrained when someone else was in the room – Amarisa was less likely to address Sherlock and John was less likely to talk directly to Raniel – as though these free, easy conversations were something private. Something restricted to their own little world.

"Mummy enchanted it for him," Sherlock explained. "Being a Witches' Consul and also being in politics isn't easy."

Raniel nibbled at one of his forepaws broodingly, and Sherlock knew exactly what his daemon was thinking on. Though the conversation had drifted from the original topic, their minds were still consumed with two questions – what kind of prophecy would induce the witch clan to kill John, and would they try again?

Sherlock doubted they'd ever be able to determine the exact wording of the prophecy; Mycroft and Nostrepheus would have supplied it if they'd uncovered the actual text, which meant their information had come second-hand, more from rumours and whispers than any concrete informant.

When Lestrade called with an interesting problem it was pleasantly diverting, but some part of Sherlock's mind was still ticking over those questions, and he knew Raniel was doing the same. He couldn't help glancing up at the sky, wondering if the clan would someday decide eliminating John was worth the risk of Mycroft coming down on their heads.

Logically, Sherlock knew that his knowledge of the clan wouldn't affect whether or not they came after John. But it was still there, a niggling urge to watch any woman on the street with a bird daemon if only because John and Amarisa weren't watching them and dammit, why were they so careless with their life?

But then they reached the police station and Sherlock's attention was thankfully consumed by the mysterious phone addressed to him. Though it was slightly infuriating to learn that most of Scotland Yard apparently read John's blog, especially with Zarania who, instead of glaring at Sherlock and Raniel, now spent most of her time snickering at them.

And when that voice sounded from the pink phone...Sherlock knew this particular mystery went far deeper than they'd suspected.

"Do you think it's Moriarty?" Raniel whispered as they poured over the trainers in the laboratory.

They'd long-since hypothesised that Moriarty and the anonymous poster on his website (and John's blog) were one and the same.

"Very likely," Sherlock mused, adjusting the microscope to give him a better view of the pollen grains he'd scraped from the tread of the shoes.

Which made it likely these shoes would be the most fascinating puzzle they'd ever received. They were used to solving crimes that had been committed to serve other people's motives, as had the ensuing cover-up. But this was a mystery addressed to directly to them, and they'd never been so excited about a case, never.

This was why the drugs could never really compete with the cases. Oh, they'd passed the time, stopped the incessant boredom from gnawing their brains into shreds when there wasn't a case on but when there was...

There was nothing better.

John and Amarisa came back – they'd left to get a coffee, as they'd had difficulty sleeping last night (probably due to the noise of the emergency services outside) – and even though their presence made no appreciable difference to his deductions, Sherlock was glad to have them in sight again, all the same. Ridiculous, really, but there it was.

Raniel leaned over the edge of the table to touch noses with Amarisa, and Sherlock resisted the urge to scoop his daemon up and pull him away from the wolfdog. He was always uncomfortably aware of how much that greeting looked like a kiss, and felt vaguely embarrassed every time Raniel did it, as though some secret had been given away.

But Amarisa only held the contact for a moment before dropping her head and loping around the table. John seemed similarly restless, pacing up and down the room, and while it could be the influx of caffeine, Sherlock suspected there was something more behind it.

"So who do you suppose it was?" John asked eventually.

"Who?" Raniel asked.

Sherlock didn't look up from the microscope.

"The woman on the phone," John clarified. "Remember, the one who was crying?"

There was a certain sharpness to his voice, almost impatience.

"Oh, she doesn't matter, she's just a hostage," Sherlock murmured carelessly. "No lead there."

They weren't dealing with someone who'd choose someone known to them. No, this person would be clever enough – and cunning enough – to pluck a complete stranger off the streets, someone with no connection to them whatsoever.

Amarisa bristled. "We weren't thinking about leads."

"Then you're not going to be much use to her," Sherlock pointed out.

John looked as if he wanted to say something in response to that, but settled for asking, "Are they trying to trace the call?"

"The bomber's too smart for that," Raniel said.

The polecat was perched on the very edge of the table, alternating between looking up at John and down at Amarisa. There was perhaps ten centimetres of space between Raniel and the edge of John's fingers, and it would be so easy for John to lift his hand and just touch...

The chime of an incoming message interrupted Sherlock's thoughts. "Pass me my phone."

He wasn't entirely sure why he'd said that. Now that he had, he'd see it through, of course, but the order had been pure impulse. He'd seen John near Raniel, and he'd just wanted the man to touch him in some way, however small...

"Where is it?" John asked, glancing around. Amarisa even appeared to be sniffing the air, as if she could find the phone by scent.

"Jacket," was all Sherlock said, resolutely keeping his eyes buried in his microscope as Raniel skittered nervously across the table.

"Are your arms painted on or something?" Amarisa groused.

John practically stomped over to Sherlock's side, shoving his hand into the jacket and jostling Sherlock's chest sharply.

"Careful!" Sherlock reprimanded.

The hands gentled almost immediately – even when John was angry and frustrated, there was no malice in him – and pulled out Sherlock's phone.

Sherlock had been expecting the text from Mycroft about the missile plans, and told John to delete it. He already had a very strong suspicion about who had his brother's precious USB, but there was no reason to act quickly – after all, if any move was made to sell it, the Secret Service would be able to get their hands on it without Sherlock having to go to the bother.

"Why is my brother so determined to bore me when someone else is being so delightfully interesting?" Sherlock sighed, commiserating with his daemon.

Raniel huffed in agreement, then suddenly snickered. "Do you think he's texting because they had to numb his mouth during his dental appointment?"

"Try to remember there's a woman who might die," Amarisa muttered.

John didn't say anything, but the skin on his face was slightly stretched as though his muscles were clenched tight.

"What for?" Raniel asked loudly, now staring avidly at the computer screen as it scrolled through various pollen spores.

"There are hospitals full of people dying," Sherlock said, looking directly at John and his daemon for the first time since they'd re-entered the room. "Why don't you go cry by their bedside, see what good it does them?"

Honestly, he would have thought that John and Amarisa, of all people, would understand. Yet the wolfdog growled, low and almost sub-sonic; it wasn't a snarl, but there was a definite warning tone to it. It almost sounded as though they…disapproved? But why – surely they didn't shed tears over every patient they treated?

The computer sounded an alert as the search completed itself, and Sherlock made note of the results before he began examining the laces beneath his microscope. There seemed to be flakes of skin attached to the material, and he boosted Raniel up to the eye-piece so the polecat could see.

They were so absorbed they barely glanced at Molly's new boyfriend, not even to identify his daemon – it seemed to be some kind of spider, and both he and Molly were carrying the reinforced glass boxes that were used to protect delicate daemons in bad weather or heavy crowds.

Admittedly, Sherlock and Raniel might have been able to spare Molly and 'Jim' a few moment's notice if they hadn't been working on two problems at the same time. The puzzle in front of them was their foremost consideration, of course, but in the back of their minds they were still thinking over what Mycroft and Nostrepheus had said.

"A prophecy that says you will be their doom."

But how? John and Amarisa were dangerous, yes – no sane person would dispute that – but how could they be such a threat to an entire clan of witches? A dozen, maybe, but over a hundred or so? It would have been a consideration if John and his daemon had some reason to want all of them dead, if they'd actively wanted to hunt the clan down and pick them off one by one, but they didn't. The witches had deliberately tried to murder them and they still hadn't borne a grudge, at least not the kind that drove people to mass murder.

Sherlock knew they shouldn't be thinking about it. As much as it absolutely galled him, there was little they could do. Thinking about it wouldn't help, so he should stop doing it – he'd given that advice to John and Amarisa only moments ago.

So why was he having so much trouble following it himself?

xx

Amarisa had tried to contain herself while Jim and Molly were in the room, but as soon as the door swung shut, she was sneezing vigorously and shaking her head. John scrubbed at her nose with his shirt – he was never really sure if it helped, but at least it let his scent overlay whatever had so taxed his daemon's senses.

"Are you all right?" Raniel asked.

John was a little bewildered at how Sherlock and Raniel could swing from being so caring with them to being so, so...sociopathic with everyone else. Hadn't they been expressing their disinterest in a woman strapped to a bomb only minutes ago? And now Raniel was hovering over Amarisa like a hen with a single chick?

"Jim was wearing far too much cologne," Amarisa explained, still rubbing at her muzzle with one of her paws. "He was practically drowning in it – I don't know how Molly can stand it."

"I'm sure her nose isn't as sensitive as yours, Risa," John reminded.

Though he had to admit she had a point. Even John had been able to smell it, and he'd been halfway across the room. He suspected the only reason Raniel hadn't noticed it was because the polecat's nose was right up against the computer screen and his concentration was as unbreakable as his human's when something interested him.

He and Amarisa made a mess of trying to deduce things about the shoes, as usual, but Sherlock and Raniel always seemed so pleased when they tried it was almost impossible to refuse. Even if they were derided almost immediately afterwards.

Still, Sherlock and Raniel did seem to come to a realisation as they were trumping John's and Amarisa's observations with their own. The polecat daemon suddenly went still, hissed the name 'Carl Powers', and then the next thing John and Amarisa knew, they were in a cab on the way back to Baker Street, the trainers accompanying them.

"1989, young kid, champion swimmer, came up from Brighton for a school sports tournament, drowned in the pool," Sherlock explained, speaking rapidly as though he was being timed somehow. "Tragic accident, you wouldn't remember it – why should you?"

"But you remember?" John pointed out inanely.

"Yes."

"Anything fishy about it?"

"Nobody thought so," Raniel sighed, as though disgusted with the intelligence of every other human and daemon on the planet. "Nobody except us – we read about it in the papers."

"Started young, didn't you?" Amarisa mused.

While Raniel was sitting comfortably in Sherlock's lap, holding onto the plastic bag that contained the shoes, the wolfdog's sheer size meant that she was sitting on the floor, leaning against John's legs to steady herself against the motion of the car.

"The boy, Carl Powers, had some kind of fit in the water," Sherlock went on. "His daemon screamed for help, but by the time they got him out, it was too late." He hissed through his teeth, as though in frustration. "There was something wrong, something I couldn't get out of my head..."

"What?" John asked.

"The shoes."

John and Amarisa shared an exasperated look before the wolfdog prodded for more information. "What about them?"

"They weren't there."

"We made a fuss," Raniel chimed in. "We tried to get the police interested, but no one seemed to think it was important. Nobody but us."

"He'd left all the rest of his clothes in the locker," Sherlock elaborated. "But there was no sign of his shoes."

"Until now," Raniel said, deliberately nudging the trainers.

"Hang on a minute!" John exclaimed, suddenly struck by something. "You said his daemon got help?"

Raniel nodded.

"Well, most kinds of seizures usually affect the daemon as well."

"Do they?" Sherlock drawled, looking thoughtful.

"I mean, it tends to vary," John hastened to qualify. "But usually, the only seizures that don't affect daemons immediately are ones triggered by poisoning or something similar."

"Interesting..." Sherlock mused.

His face took on the intent, focused expression which meant there'd be no point talking to him for the next two hours or so, and as soon as they were back in the flat Sherlock and Raniel shut themselves up in the kitchen.

John and Amarisa stayed in their bedroom, trying to pretend they weren't as useless as they felt.

"Carl Powers was the first crime they were really interested in," John mused. "And his name was on the envelope..."

"It's slightly disturbing to think this rigmarole with the hostage and the bomb is specifically targeted to Sherlock and Raniel," Amarisa finished.

The whole business gave John a very strong urge to clean his gun and count his bullets, and he didn't bother resisting. But at this point he was so familiar with the firearm it didn't need any thought at all, and he and Amarisa seen needed something more absorbing to distract them.

They tried to busy themselves with reading, fiddling with the laptop, and trying to figure out some of the more sophisticated functions of John's phone for an hour before they finally admitted defeat. They couldn't concentrate on anything but the case, not now, so they went down to see if there was any way they could be of help.

The chime of an incoming message told them Mycroft had resorted to texting John about the plans now, and he reminded Sherlock and Raniel about it...only for him and Amarisa to get scoffed at for their sense of duty.

"You can't just ignore it!" John snapped, Amarisa beginning to bristle beside him.

"I'm not ignoring it," Sherlock replied, his voice perfectly even and calm. "I'm putting my best man onto it right now."

Which, of course, meant he was putting John onto it.

"Brilliant, just bloody brilliant," John muttered as he and Amarisa made their way to Mycroft's offices. "'Best man on the job' – more like only man…"

"Come on!" Amarisa encouraged. "We see them do that deduction thing all the time – given a chance, I'm sure we can solve this mystery!"

John laughed in spite of himself and ruffled his daemon's fur as they sat down to await Mycroft's coming. Sure enough, barely five minutes had passed before the man himself was striding through the door, umbrella swinging at his side…

But his daemon was nowhere to be seen.

John tensed, remembering the medical lecture of 'daemon pulling' and the adverse side-effects of having your daemon deliberately held away from you. Amarisa sprang to her feet, as though determined to track down the raven daemon right away and find out whatever was keeping her from her human.

Mycroft, apparently correctly interpreting their tension, spoke quickly, "I assure you, Dr. Watson, I'm in no danger – Tehayla and I are separated."

"Oh!" John relaxed, and Amarisa sat back down. "Oh, okay."

As the name implied, 'separation' referred to the condition in which daemon and human could be separated by great distances with no ill-effects. It was ability usually seen in witches, though a few (very few) people chose to undergo it themselves for various reasons. People with aquatic daemons – like that man whose daemon had settled as a reef shark – usually underwent separation so the human wouldn't be forced to linger constantly at the water's edge.

As far as John knew, it was unusual for a non-witch to separate from their daemon when it wasn't strictly necessary, but Mycroft and Tehayla seemed happy enough, and it was hardly his place to judge their choices.

So with that understood, John got down to business. "What can you tell me about Andrew West?"

Mycroft tilted his head to the side in a manner very much like his daemon, as though John and Amarisa had said or done something puzzling. A little unsure as to why the older man was staring at him like that, the doctor shared a confused glance with his wolfdog.

"You're very accepting of people's little quirks, aren't you?" Mycroft mused.

John wasn't sure what to say to that. Fortunately, Mycroft didn't seem to be expecting a reply, as he then began to list everything known about the dead man. John made sure to jot it all down, even facts he was certain were included in the file Mycroft had given them.

Andrew West:

Daemon – Nahara, female meerkat

27

Clerk at Vauxhall Cross, MI6

Involved in project in minor capacity

Secruity checks clean

Last seen by fiancee, 10:30pm

Oyster card, unused, no ticket on the body

It seemed the big mystery (apart from how he'd ended up dead and what had happened to the Bruce-Partington plans) was how West had got from his home to the train tracks at Battersea.

John and Amarisa were still mulling that over when they arrived home, entering the kitchen just in time to catch Sherlock's moment of triumph.

"Clostridium botulinum!" he exclaimed, hitting the table with enough force to jolt Raniel and rattle the teacups.

"It's one of the deadliest poisons on the planet!" Raniel said as he turned to Amarisa, apparently unperturbed by the fact that he'd nearly tumbled from the table.

John knew he and his daemon weren't unintelligent, but sometimes they required a few extra moments to catch up with the runaway locomotive that was Sherlock and Raniel's train of thought. This was one of those times.

"Carl Powers!" Raniel cried, when Amarisa's blank stare hadn't cleared.

"Wait, are you saying he was murdered?" Amarisa clarified. "And you're certain?"

"Remember the shoelaces?" Sherlock prompted, gesturing to the pieces of the shoes that had been strung around the kitchen.

John nodded and Amarisa made an agreeable noise.

"The boy suffered from eczema, it'd be the easiest thing in the world to introduce the poison into his medication," Sherlock explained, prowling around the kitchen and gesturing wildly. "Two hours later he comes up to London, the poison takes effect, paralyses his muscles, and he drowns."

John was frowning. "How come the autopsy didn't pick that up?"

"It's virtually undetectable," Raniel told him. "And nobody would have been looking for it. But we found tiny traces of it inside the trainers from where he'd put the cream on his feet."

Sherlock was busy at the laptop, typing something up at the kind of speed John envied – why had he never quite been able to grasp touch-typing?

"That's why the shoes had to go," the detective finished.

John nodded once to show he understood. It seemed Sherlock intended a slightly cryptic message on his website to be the bomber's cue, to let it be known that he'd solved the case.

"The killer kept the shoes, all these years..." Amarisa mused, nosing at one of the low-hanging laces.

Sherlock nodded jerkily. "Yes."

There was a moment's pause, and both he and his daemon seemed to be waiting for something.

"Meaning...?" Raniel prompted.

John and Amarisa connected the dots at exactly the same time.

"He's our bomber!" they exclaimed together, their voices matching in tone and cadence almost perfectly.

Sherlock grinned and Raniel chittered as though they were somehow amused.

The pink phone rang in the next instant, and the poor woman was finally released. When they invaded Lestrade's office the next morning, he told them that she'd been forced to don packages of Semtex and made to read out from a pager. If she'd deviated by a single word or if Sherlock had failed to solve the case, a sniper would set off the explosives.

John was so perturbed by this development and caught up in wondering if it was going to happen again that he almost missed Sherlock's breathless whisper.

"Elegant."

Amarisa turned, the hairs along her back beginning to stand up, and John reflected that it was times like these that made Sherlock's claim to sociopathy seem believable.

"Elegant?" he echoed, unable to entirely disguise the disbelief and vague stirring of anger in his voice.

Lestrade wondered aloud why someone would ever do something like this as Zarania shifted uneasily on her perch, and Sherlock gave some pat dismissal about being bored. Moments later, a message came in on the phone – a picture of a car – and a call came for Sherlock in the voice of the new hostage.

The car in question was discovered at a construction site with blood puddled in the driver's seat and smeared liberally across the gear stick. John and Amarisa hung back, letting Sherlock and Raniel poke into the glove compartment and check the mirrors and whatever else they were doing

"Still hanging around him?" Donovan asked, Matriel up on her shoulders like a fur scarf in an effort to keep his paws out of the wet.

"Yeah," John said shortly.

He was cold and grumpy and really not in the mood for this. His gloved hands were buried in Amarisa's thick ruff to keep them out of the biting wind.

"Opposites attract, I suppose..." she mused.

Oh, god, not this again. He'd become somewhat resigned to it in the beginning, but after meeting Sebastian and realising just how much he wasn't Sherlock's type, these comments just seemed like cruel digs.

Sherlock and Raniel emerged from the car as Donovan was suggesting alternative hobbies. The detective and his daemon put on a show for the widow, pretending to be a grieving friend, and John reflected that it was more than a little unnerving the way Sherlock could just do that. Amarisa flattened her ears in disquiet and John tried not to let his face give anything away – it was difficult, as the idea of Sherlock honestly crying over something was just…it just didn't happen.

Sherlock figured it all out, of course – Mr. Ian Monkford had faked his death with the help of Janus Cars – and soon enough, the poor sod draped in a bomb was being rescued. But by then John was in desperate need of food and, seeing as the only things in their cupboard were a jar of pickles, some suspicious-looking bread and a bloodied finger in a zip-lock bag, they went out for some food.

John wondered how it was that Sherlock and Raniel could not give a damn about those poor hostages and then turn around and go out to a noisy, crowded diner – something they hated – just to ensure John and Amarisa got some food.

But of course, with the way their luck had been going, they were barely halfway through the meal before another 'pip' came in.

"I'm worried," Amarisa admitted on their way to see Connie Prince's brother. "Did you see Sherlock's face when we said what the bomber was doing was all for them?"

John nodded. Sherlock had smiled – that faint, barely-there smile that meant he was truly pleased – and Raniel had actually wriggled on the spot with delight.

John and Amarisa had always known their flatmates were enthusiastic about crime, but this time…there just seemed to be a much more sinister undertone to it. They could almost feel them pulling away, and it was ridiculous to feel like an old housewife competing with a young and gorgeous mistress, but this bomber was leading Sherlock and Raniel to some very dark places.

John and Amarisa would follow, of course they would, and they'd try to keep their friends from going too far down the rabbit hole.

Sherlock and Raniel determined Connie Prince died by botox injection, but it didn't save the old woman. She'd started to describe the sound of the bomber's voice, and had died for it.

John watched the news feed detailing the explosion (which had been given out as a gas leak), the fact that twelve people had died when the block of flats went up, and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut.

Outside of a war, most people baulked at that kind of careless massacre. Those who did, those people who attacked schools and workplaces…it was always their own school, their own workplace – there was always some kind of motive to it, however pathetic and convoluted. But this bomber didn't do that – he chose people and locations apparently at random. The explosions were incidental, the people unimportant…

In short, there was a deliberate coldness to it, a distance that somehow seemed far more chilling than any case they'd dealt with before.

"Well obviously I lost that round," Sherlock said. "Although technically I did solve the case."

He punctuated that petulant mutter with a jab of the remote control that turned the television off.

There was something in the way he said it that John didn't like. If he was asked, he couldn't have said exactly what it was, only that it was there, creeping under his skin. He knew Amarisa felt the same – the hair along her spine was beginning to stand up.

"He killed the old lady because she started to describe him," Raniel remarked from Sherlock's lap.

Sherlock nodded absently, staring off into the middle distance, his brain obviously going a thousand kilometres an hour. "Just once, he put himself in the firing line."

"What do you mean?" John asked.

"Well, usually he must stay above it all. He organises these things but no one ever has direct contact." Sherlock still wasn't looking directly at him, and John tried not to feel like it was a deliberate slight.

Amarisa, sensing his discomfort, licked at his hand for one brief instant before she spoke up.

"What, like the Connie Prince murder – he arranged that? So people come to him wanting their crimes fixed up, like booking a holiday?"

"Novel," Sherlock breathed.

Raniel was practically vibrating on his human's lap. Sherlock's fingers were clenched in the polecat's pale fur, and both of them oozed pure, joyous excitement.

As John stared, hoping he'd imagined the admiration in Sherlock's voice, Raniel glanced at the phone sitting prominently on the armrest.

"Taking his time…" the daemon hissed.

He sounded disappointed. John knew Sherlock and his daemon got excited about murders – truth be told, he and Amarisa got a little excited about them now as well – but this wasn't a body. This wasn't someone who was already dead and wouldn't be suffering anymore; this sounded almost as though they were eager for another hostage to be grabbed and strapped into Semtex. This had an undercurrent of heartlessness that John and Amarisa were desperately trying to ignore.

There was a brief back and forth about Carl Powers – the only person the bomber had admitted to killing himself – which John barely paid attention to, still unsettled by Sherlock and Raniel's blatant fascination.

"So why is he doing this then?" John wondered aloud. "Playing this game with you? Do you think he wants to be caught?"

The barest hint of a smile twitched at Sherlock's lips. "I think he wants to be distracted."

There was only so much John could take. He smoothed a hand down the stiff, ruffled fur along Amarisa's back and heaved himself out of his chair.

"Well I hope you'll be very happy together," he muttered, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

His comment seemed to draw Sherlock out of some reverie. "Sorry, what?"

"There are lives at stake!" John snapped, gripping the back of his chair in an effort keep himself under control. "Actual human lives! Just so I know, do you care about that at all?"

Sherlock's head tipped back slightly, as though John was a particularly fascinating specimen of bacteria and Sherlock wanted a better view. "Will caring about them help save them?"

"Nope."

"Then I'll continue not to make that mistake."

There had been a measure of contempt in Sherlock's tone that set John's teeth on edge. As a doctor, he knew a certain distance was required between yourself and your patients, as with Sherlock and the victims of whatever case he was investigating…but you still felt something for them. Didn't you?

"And you find that easy, do you?" he asked before he could stop himself.

"Yes, very!" Sherlock replied, sounding indignant. "It that news to you?"

"No," John admitted, his voice abrupt.

Both daemons were quiet. Raniel, still half-curled on Sherlock's lap, only looked irritated, as if John and Amarisa were being the obtuse ones. The wolfdog, however…

Amarisa's ears were low – not flattened, but certainly drooping – and her shoulders were hunching even as her tail stood defiantly straight.

"I've disappointed you," Sherlock said in a more moderate tone, as though he'd only just realised it.

"Good deduction, yeah." There was an undercurrent of venom in John's voice that surprised even him.

"Don't make people into heroes, John," Sherlock scoffed. "Heroes don't exist and if they did I wouldn't be one of them."

Another 'pip' interrupted the escalating argument, and the tension didn't exactly defuse but it did crack and flatten, like a glass door hit with a mallet. It no longer obstructed the way, but it left sharp shards scattered about, glittering and painful underfoot.

At least, that was what it was like for John and Amarisa – Sherlock and Raniel didn't seem to care.

John and his daemon were feeling battered, almost shocked. They'd thought they were at least friends with their eccentric flatmate and his albino daemon, but this had them questioning everything they thought they knew. Because surely if you cared for someone – anyone – you'd understand why people in general were considered important? Surely you'd think more of their lives than just as pawns in some madman's game?

But apparently, Sherlock and Raniel didn't quite grasp this, so John and Amarisa were stuck loving a man and his daemon who thought caring was a mistake.

Sherlock told him to check the papers, as though John was a trained monkey or something, not a friend whose thoughts and opinions he might at least pretend to respect. For several moments, John didn't move, toying with the idea of just walking out the door and coming back when he didn't want to strangle the man quite so badly.

"Oh," Sherlock drawled, a tone of understanding overlaying the definite sneer in his voice. "You're angry with me, so you won't help – not much cop, this 'caring' lark."

At that, Amarisa's tail finally wilted, dropping between her legs. John didn't say anything – he didn't want to draw Sherlock or Raniel's attention to it, but he rested his hand on the top of his daemon's head, giving comfort and taking it at the same time.

They ended up checking the newspaper anyway, and accompanying Sherlock and Raniel to the crime scene, of course they did. Because they loved them. And god help John and his daemon both, but it simply wasn't in their nature to abandon someone they loved.

xx

AN: As usual, thanks goes to ginbitch, my wonderful beta.

Also, my profile has been updated with some more wonderful art for not only this story but some other fics of mine – check them out, they're gorgeous!