"My God, woman, don't break my wrist!"
John snaps awake to the site of Sherlock crouching near the bed, grasping his right wrist. Mary is sitting bolt upright in bed, her eyes wide, reaching for him.
"Sorry! Sorry, you startled me! You ok?" she asks anxiously.
John flops back against the pillows and smirks at Sherlock remembering the first time he had accidentally startled Mary from sleep. He'd found himself suddenly on the floor with a knee on his chest and a knife at his throat. Luckily for Sherlock, Mary had got somewhat out of the habit of having sharp objects about her person where her children might accidentally access them.
"Fine," Sherlock says shortly, allowing Mary to reach out and grasp his other arm. John's eyes narrow as he realises Sherlock is already miles away, mentally speaking.
"What's happened?" John asks flatly. Sherlock shifts and clasps Mary's extended hand in his raising it quickly to his lips to show no harm done, but his gaze is dark as he regards John, his face carefully blank.
"Let's go look, shall we?" he says quietly. "Leave Shirley and Miyah with Jackson and come to the Library. We'll have breakfast," he finishes, a note of manic lightness in his voice that bodes no good, and he's gone from the room.
Mary casts John a stricken look.
"I hope-"
"No, Mary, it's not you. But, unless I'm mistaken, the game is once again on. Except...I don't know. Usually that's a good thing," John gets out of bed and scoops up Shirley, snuggling her to him gently as Miyah starts fussing for breakfast.
With a momentary pang of guilt, Mary and John give them over to the effusively enthusiastic care of the butler and cook and make their way to the library where an entire quarter panel of the wall of books has made way for a giant flat screen TV.
Sherlock is rewinding and replaying a recording in slow motion. Mycroft sits at the back of the room scowling down at his iPad. Automatically Mary pulls the robe she's wearing more fully across herself, wishing she'd changed before coming in.
"Have some tea and coffee and whatever before you lose your appetite," Mycroft drawls without looking up.
Breakfast is laid out on a small table by the window. Mary appreciates the coffee. She never drinks tea and that makes living with John just a bit rough sometimes.
John holds his mug in his hand and takes a seat in front of the TV.
"What are we looking at, Sherlock?" he asks, the frozen frame on the TV too blurry to suss out.
"I'll play this from the beginning," Sherlock says and a recording of that morning's news comes on. Thirty seconds into the broadcast, the screen fuzzes into static and abruptly chaotic images flash in rapid succession. John stares for a second, then tenses.
"Wait, that's-"
"Keep watching," Mycroft says grimly.
The images slow. It's footage of Sherlock over the years, badly cobbled together, short bursts of action mixed with intermittent static.
The footage depicts many of his chases and show him pelting down alleys and tackling or restraining his marks, in some cases rather violently-John sees parts of himself in several of the videos all of which seem to be taken from the vantage point of the ubiquitous cameras posted around every major London street. The picture the video paints is not one that is remotely flattering for Sherlock.
To anyone unfamiliar with the context, it would seem that Sherlock is the attacker rather than- Well, John has to admit that Sherlock is the attacker, albeit a legally justified one. Well, mostly legally justified. Certainly morally justified.
"This is wrong," John says slowly as the images give way to the news cast with a final burst of static. "That nonsense with discrediting you-It's all been cleared up." his voice rises as something remarkably like panic starts to stir in his gut.
"Yes," Sherlock muses quietly, rewinding the footage. "This is something new." He sips his tea and makes a face. "Mycroft, what the hell is this?" he asks, pushing the cup as far away from his person as possible.
"I was recently in China, brother mine, and took a fancy to the delightful pu erh tea they were serving at the embassy in Yunan. They saw fit to send me home with a generous supply. It's quite good, though I admit it may be an acquired taste."
John sips his tea and is pleasantly surprised by the nutty, rich flavour.
"Delicious," he says smiling. Mycroft nods at him, eyebrows raised.
"Liar," Sherlock growls, steepling his fingers in front of his face. "Probably sent you home with enough of this foul stuff to keep you away," he murmurs, his eyes losing focus. Mary recognises the tone. It's Sherlock's "there's more important things to think about than bloody Chinese bloody tea" tone.
She pours him a cup of coffee and creams and sweetens it before handing it to him and he smiles at her, absently sipping.
Mycroft puts the stops the replay and switches to live TV. After muting it, he begins flicking through channels. The video is being featured all the news shows, and the hosts comment on it with professionally confused looks on their faces.
"At least they're confused and not-not like before," John says remembering all to clearly the vicious beating Sherlock had taken in the press as Moriarty had torn him to shreds.
Mycroft huffs and tosses his iPad at John who looks down at the revolting site of Kitty Riley's smug smile. Her editorial article thanking the vigilante filmmaker for exposing the dangerous activities of one Sherlock Holmes has already been shared on Facebook 500 times and has an astronomical twitter count. Two hours after it was written.
"Any media attention is unwelcome," Mycroft scowls.
"Still can't figure out how he broadcasts, huh?" Mary winces sympathetically. It's so rare for Mycroft to fall short in these matters. Mycroft treats her to a blank, almost hostile look.
"It's not important," Sherlock mutters. "It doesn't matter in the least how he does it. What matters is why!" He jolts out of his chair grabbing the TV box off Mycroft's desk and flips back to the video.
He slows down the frame rate by half and then even more, and they watch his face, contorted by exertion and fury, flow slowly and grainily across the screen.
There is a quick burst of static even in that frame rate then the next scene. Sherlock's eyes widen and he raises the frame rate, getting so close to the big screen that his nose is practically pushing into it. Another burst of static.
"Mycroft, have your people suss out the message in the static. As soon as we understand to whom this is directed, the sooner a course of action will be clear to us."
"And you'll be doing what in the meantime?" Mycroft asks blandly, his fingers flying over his phone.
"Getting the hell out of this...this church and going back home, for one," Sherlock says, pausing at the door, his hand half lifted to the knob. "I assume the demo charges were a scare?" He asks, regarding Mycroft over his shoulder.
"Dismantled." Mycroft answers, not looking up from his iPad. Sherlock nods curtly and is through the door.
"So there were bombs?" John asks his chin jerking towards his chest, and Mycroft deigns to look up and meet his gaze.
"Dismantled, as I said. But yes. Enough to give the whole block a second story view of the underground tubes. We've checked everything rather carefully. Baker Street is once again secure." He flashes a quick, too-cheerful smile and drops his eyes to his phone.
"You mean it's secure now," Mary says quietly. "Apparently, it wasn't before."
Mycroft stops fidgeting with his phone for a moment, but won't raise his eyes. "Quite so. My...apologies on that front."
"You're doing your best. Just remember, Mycroft Homes, you, too, are mortal," Mary says, almost kindly, and leaves the room to hunt down her clothes.
John stands in the room awkwardly, then swipes another croissant and his teacup and nods sharply to Mycroft before following his wife.
He doesn't see Mycroft put down his phone and lower his head into his hands, scrubbing at his eyes, doesn't hear the ragged sigh that comes from his centre.
Mary thinks it odd, as they unpack the car and eagerly tumble into their home at 221 Baker Street, that the house still feels like everything a home should feel like: safe, secure, comfortable.
She was attacked here, they were spied on through the windows, Mycroft almost certainly had at least one camera in the house, and yet it still felt safe, comforting and, well, homey. Especially when juxtaposed against Mycroft's manse.
Sherlock ran straight up the stairs, wanting to check on some experiment or other that might still be viable. She and John settled Shirley and Miyah on the living room floor and John stayed with them while Mary went to make tea.
It is all so natural and so normal, these rhythms, and yet she cherishes every moment, having never expected to have the gift of normalcy and comparative serenity. The afternoon sun drifts through the kitchen window, warmly illuminating the room.
"John, I'm not going to buy new curtains," She said suddenly, fighting back a lump in her throat. "I will wash the children in the bathroom from now on, but I refuse to-I mean I can't give up-" Her hands shake as she holds the kettle under the tap.
"Of course, Mary. I'm sure he's gone from that place now anyway," John says. He understands completely what she means. Everything else is transitory. This place must remain the same, grounding and solid and home.
"What do you think Mycroft will find in the static?" Mary asks, joining John in the parlour and watching Miyah and Shirley teaming up on an innocent radio, methodically taking it apart and gumming the parts. Mary wonders absently if she shouldn't put a stop to it but neither child has ever shown a propensity to ingest any of the detritus of their experiments in destruction. John grimaces.
"Nothing good," John says heavily. "There has to be more to this than just the video. It's not damning enough to do mischief on its own and it's not even...cohesive." He says, frustrated, hating all things that cast Sherlock in a less than positive light.
Later that evening they're watching Top Gear-Mary's choice-and Jeremy Clarkson is cut off mid-rant suddenly by a burst of static. The following scenes are clearer than the last, obviously not captured by CCTV but rather by professional looking cameras.
John's blood chills as he sees Sherlock, face battered, lip bleeding, wearing unfamiliar clothes, charging after a man in a hoodie, tackling him to the ground and slamming his head off the concrete once, twice, before standing up over the still form, his teeth bared in an unpleasant and smug sneer.
Sherlock looks up, off camera through squinting eyes, and raises his hands above his head as sirens sound and lights flash. His arms are grasped by two policemen wearing foreign uniforms, the writing is in Cyrillic, and abruptly Jeremy Clarkson is back, finishing a tirade against the Porsche 911 after a rather lengthy bit of static.
John and Mary stare at each other and hear Sherlock pounding down the stairs. He arrives in their flat seemingly composed, but his jaw is clenched, his hands jiggling at his side.
"You have questions," he says quickly, then continues before they answer. "Russia, one year ago, he had just committed his fifth double homicide, there was a bounty on him dead or alive. They still do that there, unofficially.
"I wasn't following the case, exactly. He wasn't part of Moriarty's nonsense, but I had identified him to the authorities and next thing I knew he was after me. I did what I had to do to protect myself. I did not accept the bounty," he finished, clenching his teeth again, his body radiating tension like a violin string stretched too tight.
"Ok," Mary says. "Cuppa?"
Abruptly, all the tension dissolves and Sherlock unwinds like a spring, almost falling into a chair by the kitchen table. John realises abruptly that Sherlock had been worried, even scared. Possibly terrified just now.
"Sherlock, what was that?" he asked getting up and sitting across the table.
"I just told you, John, I-"
"No, not that. This," John says, mimicking Sherlock's recent rigor.
"Oh, I have no idea," Sherlock says, tucking his chin back and picking at his fingernail. "Or I was upset that I didn't realise that whole altercation was planned and filmed at the time. Pick one."
"So it had nothing to do with you being terrified that we thought you were a murderer? From some stupid video?" John asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Oh! My husband the detective!" Mary laughs from behind John. She places three mugs on the table and turns back to the teapot. "Let be, my love, let be."
Sherlock relaxes a bit further, and pulls out his phone and fires off a quick text.
"Mycroft should have been able to isolate something from all that static by now," he snarls quietly and scowls at the phone that distinctly doesn't chime in reply.
Mary sets tea and a plate of cheese down on the table, slightly in front of Sherlock. He's begun fidgeting with the phone again and almost subconsciously nibbles at the cheese while frowning as he scrolls through app after app.
John winks at Mary and sips his tea, wondering what the backlash from this recent video will be. Sherlock suddenly slams down the phone.
"There is nothing, just nothing I can do until something else happens. It's infuriating."
"You need a case, Sherlock," John says suddenly. "You need a distraction."
"You're mad," Sherlock says.
"Not a bit of it," Mary snips back. "He's right. Text Lestrade. See what he's got. Or go down to Bart's and beat up a cadaver. Get the stress out. Do you good," she says smiling.
Sherlock hesitates then quirks a smile at John. "Does it bother you to have two people who are always right in your life?" he asks.
"It was my idea, you berk!" John answers, smiling. "And no, it doesn't. Not one tiny, little bit."
Sherlock breezes through the door to New Scotland Yard and is instantly aware that every eye in the lobby is trained on him.
He's here by Lestrade's request, albeit after he had texted Lestrade requesting the request. The man is good for something at least, this case would be interesting even if he had no ulterior motives.
He pauses just after passing the security desk and glares at Dunnock who sits behind it glaring right back at him.
"In the eight years that I have been blowing past your desk when not in the company of DI Lestrade, you have never once neglected to insist that I sign your infernal book. Explain yourself." Sherlock snaps, striding back to the desk.
"Maybe I couldn't be arsed to deal with such a monumental dickhead so early in the morning!" Dunnock snarls back at him, leaping to his feat and leaning over the desk, his face barely an inch from Sherlock's.
Internally Sherlock reels. Dunnock's tone, his aggressive body language, his invasion of Sherlock's space, all these things are so entirely out of character that Sherlock is very privately shocked.
Externally, Sherlock raises an eyebrow, staring down his aquiline nose at Dunnock, and makes a few easy deductions.
"No need to take your anger at your wife's indiscretions out on me," He drawls with the smug, self-assured tone that gets right up everyone's ass. "It's not my fault you haven't been able to please her sexually for the past year." He ignores the snarl of rage as he swirls away, walking swiftly through the glass doors.
"Dunnock called up," Lestrade snarls by way of a greeting. "You don't always have to be such a complete ass." His eyes when they meet Sherlock's have no humour in them whatsoever. "I won't have my people abused by you. You're useful, but I don't need you that much," he finishes, slamming a folder shut with so much force it shakes the desk.
Something wrong wrong danger wrong wrong
Sherlock shakes his head sharply. His internal monologue is getting more and more intrusive. He could almost feel the words searing across the tops of his eyeballs. He studies Lestrade for an instant.
Lestrade is glaring at him, his breathing is elevated, his pulse is apparent in carotid artery on his temple. He's literally gripping his desk in a bid to maintain control of his temper.
It has to be the video, Sherlock thinks. It has all these people on edge. How many times will he be forced to prove himself to these mundanes, he wonders, not for the first time.
"Would you like an explanation of last night's video Detective Inspector?" Sherlock says coolly.
"No," Lestrade snaps. "There's no time. In case you forgot, there's a bloody murdering rapist walking around the streets of London at the moment. I don't have time to deal with your, your-"
"My petty peccadilloes of murder?" Sherlock asks.
"It wasn't in my jurisdiction," Lestrade snarls, and Sherlock suddenly understands that, at this moment, Lestrade wishes it had been, wishes that these "crimes" of Sherlock's were within his right to avenge, even though he himself had set Sherlock on the majority of them.
Sherlock understands suddenly that Lestrade, a man who he has come to trust implicitly, is going to try to slip Sherlock up so he can take him down. He grins.
How interesting.
The crime scene is every bit as messy as it looked in the pictures Lestrade had sent him. Body sprawled out in a vast puddle of blood. Sherlock uses the scene as a chance to observe the reactions of the other Yarders to his presence. The changes are subtle, fascinating.
He catalogues the normal reactions to his arrival-irritation, apprehension, dismissal, fear, rejection, repugnance, and adds to them new reactions that begin to surface after mere minutes in his presence: tension, anger, resentment, agitation, the latter escalating exponentially the longer he stays. He files the information away for later analysis and turns his attention to the dead woman.
By the time he gets to actually observing the body, the atmosphere around the crime scene is rife with hostility and tension, and silence gradually falls.
Sherlock, looks up and realises with surprise that everyone is staring at him. No one is talking. No one is moving. Everyone's attention is riveted on him in a way that might have pleased him except for how much it unnerved him.
They're staring at him not what he's doing. Adrenaline sparks through his system and alarm bells start ringing in the back of his head as he senses a general shift in the posture of the small group of people surrounding him. He stands abruptly, turning to Lestrade who is positively glaring at him. In his periphery, he sees Donovan stiffen, clenching hands into fists. It is definitely time to go.
"If you look at the CCTV tapes from the corner of Arch and Sydney Street between the 11 and 11:45 PM last night, you will be able to identify her attacker, who wore no form of disguise," Sherlock says shortly, and turns away to leave before Lestrade can answer or ask for an explanation.
He passes by Donovan as he leaves the scene and she hisses as the tail of his coat brushes her.
He stops, hearing a word in that sharp intake of breath.
"What did you say?" he asks shortly, not even turning around to face her, because he's too busy mapping out routes of escape, should they become necessary.
"Arsehole," she snarls. Her consonants fall slightly wrong and Sherlock's mind whirls. He recognises the cadence, but can't retreat to his memories to research it in such a charged environment. He files it away for later and walks around the corner consciously forcing his shoulders to relax as he realises he's been bracing for...something.
Sherlock continues walking swiftly along the sidewalk, not thinking of where he's going or in what direction he's travelling.
His blood is racing and his breath comes short as he struggles to control his response to the adrenaline rushing through his system. He finds a bench in a small park and sits for a moment, staring into middle distance, and forces his body to calm.
He steeples his fingers in front of his lips and calls up the memory of Donovan's slurred epithet. He cross references it with everyone he can remember that has called him that name before, twitching his head slightly as he fails to find a connection with any of the faces that fit in that category.
He concentrates on the sound of the liquid "r", phonetically at odds with almost any London accent and certainly divergent from Sally's. The sound echoes in his mind and all of a sudden Harry's face plasters itself over his consciousness, her face frozen into the furious expression that Sherlock had filed away from the baby shower.
The intonation is the same, the inflection similar in its incongruity. But what possible connection to Harry could Donovan possibly have? His mind spins through hundreds of potentials but none fit. He backs up to the word and the sound of the consonants and looks for more correlations. He finds them suddenly.
Lestrade. Donovan. Harry. Dunnock.
Three Yarders and one civilian. Three people that know him well and one person he'd never met. His eyes open slowly.
Not enough data. Time to experiment.
Sherlock sees a crowded coffee shop on the street adjacent to him and decides that's as good a place as any. He walks in and purchases a tea and sits in the most centrally located table he can find.
It takes less than three minutes for the general atmosphere to take a turn decidedly for the worst. The background babble slowly mutes and then dies altogether. The coffee shop becomes silent and the people become restless, agitated and uhappy. There are a few exceptions. They leave quickly, glancing around in consternation.
Sherlock watches in fascination as thirty or so people slowly but surely shift their focus to him. Abruptly, he stands and exits the store.
"Run," he hears someone say, deadpan, as he exists the door. The "r" rolls, liquid from the woman's mouth.
Sherlock will now admit it even to himself. He is frightened. Frightened for his life. Every nerve in him is singing in tension as he walks along the sidewalk.
He realises that people have begun stopping after he passes, turning to look at him. No, he corrects himself, glancing out of the corner of his eye, turning to glare at him.
He removes his coat, though it makes him feel naked and unprotected, snags baseball cap from a souvenir vendor's display in passing, not even recognising the theft in his distraction, and tucks his curls up under the cap, pulling the brim down over his face. It helps. No one stops on the next block and he turns down two additional streets before attempting to hail a cab.
After the third failed attempt, he realises smugly how much his normal outward appearance affects the world around him. The fourth cab stops.
He gives the cabby cross streets two blocks Southeast of the 200 block of Baker Street and sits back. He removes the ball cap and scrubs at his hair. His phone buzzes. It is a blocked number. He answers the call.
"Get to cover immediately. Baker Street is preferable. Can you make it?" Mycroft says with no preamble, and his voice bears none of its usual affected boredom.
"Of course," Sherlock answers, and hangs up. Mycroft does not want his orders in text or from his own phone. This must go very deep indeed.
Sherlock replaces the hat on his head, though he loathes how it feels.
A thrill runs through him as pieces begin to fall into place and he stitches together the beginnings of a theory. It's improbable. It's almost impossible, but one by one, he eliminates more mundane solutions.
It's big. The biggest. He grins as his heart rate ratchets right back up again. It's the biggest case he will ever take.
The crime is poisoning and the victim is the entire population of London.
