A/N: Hello. This is Knyle Borealis, the author. I'm finally figuring out how to make friends with this site, so please bear with me if any of the formatting/structural stuff doesn't make sense. I'll keep editing.

This is my First Fanfiction Ever. I love Sherlock and John with a passion that started back when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the only authority on the subject (not meaning to exclude Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone, or any of those other wonderful people who brought my hero to life), and ever since my seven-year-old self picked up a volume of "A Study in Scarlet," I have been in love with the world of Sherlock Holmes.

It's not Brit-picked AT ALL, so I apologize. I welcome any feedback that you feel like giving, nice or no, so please comment!

Disclaimer—none of this is mine! Okay, well, a wee bit of it may be mine… (Blood, Sweat, and Tears included) but all of the good stuff definitely belongs to Doyle, Moffat, and Gatiss. I thank them greatly.

I hope you enjoy it.

Note: This chapter has been the fastest one for me to write so far. I don't know how that happened, but if there are any mistakes because of it, I'm sorry, and please let me know. Now, about the actual plot-I love Lestrade. He's a representation of "normal" in Sherlock's world that still doesn't quite fit the boring, uninteresting label that Sherlock has applied to that part of the universe. He reminds me of asort of surrogate-guardian type for Sherlock, and his team is just so laughable sometimes that I had to put them in here (if only to make fun of Anderson).

Note 2: I started writing the car as American-made! Sorry! I fixed it!


Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade was not happy with his Consulting Detective. The mouth of the Baker Street alleyway was alive with police personnel, forensics and ballistics running amok as they sought to work out exactly what had happened there approximately two hours earlier.

The reports all said approximate, because while over a dozen people from the nearby area had called in with a report of shooting in the alley, they had all done so over an hour after the event and had therefore been unable to quite agree on a time frame. Somehow, none of them could make calls from their mobiles before then, and precious few people kept land lines any longer.

Even if it hadn't happened at Baker Street, Lestrade would have gone looking for Sherlock the second that he heard about it. Since it was at the lanky detective's home, though, he'd rushed over to 221 as fast as he could, pulling up to the scene to see that half of his team was already there, somehow ignoring that they were in the homicide department and coordinating the assessment of what had gone on.

"Please tell me that you have something," he grumbled to his coworker as he ducked under the police cordon.

His right hand, Sergeant Sally Donovan, had her fists on her hips as he walked over, staring hard at the abandoned, unmarked car sitting in front of her and at the milling people going back and forth in the street as they tried to piece together the course of events that had brought the vehicle there. And had also left so many bullet casings lying around.

To answer his plea, she scowled and glanced over, reporting dourly, "I have one unregistered vehicle with both right side tires shot flat, a bullet through the right side of the hood. Signs of multiple people in the alley, a shootout, and a fistfight as well. I know that out of over a hundred bullets, all but one appear to have four come from semi-automatic, single action pistols, and that there are three more waiting to be dug out of that car and identified." Gritting her teeth, she ground out in frustration, "I do not have any of the participants, any victims, or any witnesses. At all."

Lestrade ran a hand over his eyes, nodding in acknowledgement as he swept his gaze around the cordon. "Where're Sherlock and John?"

Sally's grimace deepened. "Freak's not here. I sent someone in to talk with his landlady. She just got in a couple of minutes ago."

As she spoke, a young forensic trotted up, holding a small slip of paper in his hand and wearing a slightly amused, very uncomfortable expression. Coming up to the Sergeant, he held out his offering gingerly, as if he was expecting her to bite him when she tried to take it. "The landlady doesn't know where they are, Ma'am. She and I found this note on her kitchen table while I was…helping her carry some groceries into her flat. It's from Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson."

"So that's what took you so long." Nearly proving that the man's hesitance was well founded, Sally snatched the paper out of his flinching hands, scanning it over quickly. An expression of growing outrage grew on her features, and Lestrade waited in impatience while she satisfied herself of its contents. Realizing that she might need a hint about who needed to see the evidence, he cleared his throat suggestively.

"Donovan, if you aren't too terribly fond of that…"

Looking up sharply, she caught on to what she was doing and handed the note over with a sheepish air. Her face was still twisted with dislike and indignation, though, so Lestrade was pretty much expecting to be insulted as he looked down to read. On the page, torn neatly from an ordinary "Just a Note" pad that so many households kept lying around, Sherlock and John had both scribbled hasty explanations to their landlady, along with a few other, more pointed remarks that were meant for a different audience entirely.

Reading Sherlock's dark, precise lettering, Lestrade almost laughed out loud before he remembered that he was supposed to feel affronted. Honestly, the man knew no bounds. It was easy to see from John's easy, messy scrawl that the man had been ever-mindful of his flatmate's charm when he said his piece. Even on paper, the two of them were opposites, but their relationship seemed to work splendidly nonetheless.

Sherlock's message to his landlady:

Gone to the country with John. Don't know when we'll be back. Don't let Anderson have any scones.

John followed it up with a much more helpful, apologetic explanation.

Don't worry, we won't be long. And I did all the packing, so we've got everything we need this time. I'll call as soon as I know what part of the country I'm actually going to be staying in. Sorry about the short notice.

Oh—I'm sorry, but some of your rags were ruined earlier. Sherlock will replace them when he gets back.

Lestrade actually gave in and chuckled when he read that one. John Watson did seem like an unassuming sort of bloke, but when it came to his flatmate, he was made of steel. Lestrade had seen how adept he was at keeping his force-of-nature friend—and Christ, he and Sherlock really were friends, somehow—in line for the benefit of those around them. There was no doubt in his mind that Mrs. Hudson's kitchen would be receiving the most expensive linens that London had to offer before the week was out.

Going on, he lost a bit of his brevity when Sherlock intervened again, prompting him to sigh and roll his eyes at the younger man's complete lack of tact. And respect. And every other aspect of average social behavior.

Lestrade, that mess outside is completely beyond you without me, and Mrs. Hudson doesn't want the police in her back alley causing problems and making stupid assumptions, so stop pestering. It's only polluting my house with stupid.

Anderson, since you're the main culprit behind that toxicity, stop being and idiot and do your job competently for once. And Put. That. Scone. Back.

At the very bottom, in an even more illegible mess than his normal, stereotypical doctor's hand, John had tried to soften the blow.

Sorry Lestrade. I didn't catch him in time. But seriously, Anderson, leave Mrs. Hudson's baking alone.

He'd probably written it just before he'd run out the door after Sherlock. Feeling a little half-smile tugging at his lips, Lestrade looked up into Sally's glare and bit back a laugh, turning and searching the area for a particular dark head. Chagrin settled into his chest when he saw the man coming around the building from the front of Baker Street, chatting with a colleague and trying to hide something palm-sized and pastry-looking down at his side.

Shaking his head, the DI strode over, feeling a bit of thunder slip into his expression. Anderson saw him coming and got an edgy, trapped look in his eye. Lestrade didn't even have to look down at the forensic scientist's hand for confirmation of his edible contraband, after that. Narrowing his eyes at his often-embarrassing associate, the Detective Inspector pointed back the way Anderson came.

"Christ, Anderson, she's an old woman. Go put the scone back and apologize."

"B-but she offered," Anderson stammered.

"Put it back." Lestrade glared until the man was headed hurriedly to do so until turning to the man that Anderson had been conversing with, a tall, surprisingly fit-looking fellow with glasses that seemed to hide his eyes. His badge identified him as a forensics specialist, and scanning it quickly for his name, Lestrade commanded, "Barkley. Show me what happened here."

With an odd sort of non-smile, the man nodded and led the Detective Inspector back towards the alleyway, walking carefully along the wall to avoid scuffing up the trace evidence on the pavement. His job was to translate all the swept dirt and kicked clutter into a description of what people had been doing while they made the mess. It was a bit of an art, his chosen career, and therefore most people who did his kind of work were held in a sort of awe by the rest of the general police force.

Lestrade had seen it done and been impressed a dozen times, but after being around a man who could spend five seconds looking at a scene and be able to tell you exactly what happened, who was involved, and a large amount of their personal histories, he'd always found forensic reconstruction a bit dull. Necessary, for those times when a certain tall, rude specter wasn't around to make their jobs easier and their feelings sorer, but still…dull.

"The way I see it, sir, there were two fights here," the specialist—his first name was Clive—said. No, he drawled. Lestrade shot him a look, noting to himself that he'd never seen a forensic look so laid back, confident, or…powerful.

The man wasn't Anderson, for certain. He was huge, for one thing, but not in plain size. It was his tall, muscled stature that did it, made his well-toned shoulders seem so very broad and his hard arms so very strong-looking. There was a sort of grace about him, too, a casual, assured lightness on his feet that Lestrade usually attributed to the over-capable physical trainers at the police academy. Especially the ones who delighted in beating the tar out of any harried, slightly-out-of-training Detective Inspector who happened to stroll across the tumbling mat. Altogether, the unusual physicality gave him the feel of a lion. An arrogant, challenging lion.

Brushing the bizarre thought off, the policeman raised an eyebrow and questioned, "Care to explain that to me, Barkley?"

With an easy nod, the man turned and walked Lestrade over to a large pile of wood, indicating a small space that had been cleared out of its far side. "Look here, under the window. The boards have been cleared away, and there are signs that some sort of mechanized equipment was here, tucked against the building. From the size and shape of the sawdust patterns on the pavement, it was about yay big," he outlined a smallish box shape in the air with his hands, "and someone found it and took it apart using this."

Holding up an evidence bag, he held it so that Lestrade could see the small piece of twisted, heavy-gauge wire inside. "I found it tucked out of sight and wiped, clean, in case you were wondering. Once that was done, its components set down here, and here, and here," the man went on, pointing at places on the ground where sawdust had fallen and outlined several oddly-shaped pieces and parts. Looking over at him, Barkley supplied, "I won't know what any of it was until some tests come back, but whoever was doing all this was snuck up on from behind."

Turning, he gestured to several indistinguishable marks on the ground that Lestrade didn't even try to make sense of. "Shoe size of Mr. Big puts him at well over six feet and his stride would equate to someone over a meter wide at the hips," Barkley diagnosed. "The person here, we'll call him Tall, since his stride and foot size have him standing at over six feet as well, was kneeling. When Big came up behind him, Tall stood up and then went stumbling backwards and knocked these boards around. That's probably what shook up enough sawdust to leave those outlines."

Lestrade watched with a growing feeling of fascination as Barkley kept on, warming up to his subject and becoming much more animated. He'd started moving, stepping delicately around the evidence that only he could see while revitalizing the immediate past with his words and wild hand gestures. It seemed like he was having fun; the hungry lion aura had evaporated, and he'd started to smile. Although Lestrade had to admit, it was something of an eerie smile: lots of teeth, a bit of dark humor, and excitement that seemed a little too exuberant gleaming in the man's shielded eyes.

"So Tall goes a-tumbling. We'll assume he was punched by Big. Sawdust shows him at the wall, Big comes forward, but then Tall darts around him this way and spins on one foot. Big goes down on his knees and probably takes a kick to the face, judging by this blood splatter. Then he's up again, and Tall's backtracking."

Barkley paused as he shared that, shooting Lestrade an apologetic look from his position standing in the center of the alley. The Detective Inspector didn't even think of holding the man responsible for whatever he was about to say sorry for. He was still trying to figure out how Barkley had gotten to where he was when Lestrade was certain that he'd just been standing right beside him.

Showing no sign of whether or not he saw his boss's confusion, Barkley confessed, "It gets a little muddled out here in the middle, sir, since more people were moving around later. I can't tell you exactly what went on, but the amount of blood says that they were here a while. Otherwise, it's all pretty blurred over. I think that Big walked over this way, towards the bins. His nosebleed left a trail."

Lestrade followed the man with his eyes as Barkley walked a parallel path to the nearly invisible one that he saw on the ground, explaining as he went, "When I first saw it, I thought that Tall's tracks had been swept away. He'd just disappeared. Then I saw these bins." He paused, surveying the pile of toppled metal. Some of the containers had hefty dents in their sides. Almost absently, he remarked, "Big has quite an arm."

Lestrade's steadily-rising eyebrows had reached their high water mark. Feeling the scrunch in his forehead, he suddenly found himself recalling that the last person who had managed to make him so surprised was popularly believed to be a psychopath.

"Er, wait a minute," he interrupted, sidling over to the forensic and deliberately tiptoeing his way around the odd thought. "Are…are you saying that this poor bastard was thrown into the bins?" He used his finger to highlight a rudimentary arch of trajectory. "From here to…there?"

Barkley nodded matter-of-factly. "Yep. We've got some blood here; not much, just what you'd expect from scraped knees, a few minor cuts. After he'd thrown Tall, though, then Big came over. They rolled around a bit—got a decent amount of blood out of it. Somebody rolled over this way, but then he left the ground again—since he's been thrown already, my guess is that it was Tall—and he ends up against the wall over here. It's pretty much over for him after that."

Lestrade frowned. "You mean Big was the winner?"

Barkley smiled faintly. "Not necessarily."

Crossing his arms, the DI shook his head and told him flatly, "Then finish up. Who walked out of here, Big or…" he gritted his teeth, feeling ridiculous, "Tall?"

"Neither." Barkley was definitely grinning at that. Before Lestrade could open his mouth to demand a straight answer, the forensic turned back to the wall, holding his hands out to indicate a person of above-average height standing there. "Big picked up Tall here, held him against the wall. There's blood up here, from Tall's head, probably. The only reason why you aren't dealing with his body right now is because somebody else came along and helped him out."

Now, that was something that the Detective Inspector could work with. Perking up, he took a step towards the forensic specialist, demanding, "Who?"

Barkley shrugged, still grinning. "Little guy. Smaller feet, shorter stride, had mud on his shoes." Half-turning, he gestured back towards the mouth of the alley. "He came from the right, which leads to the front of these houses on Baker Street. Stopped a few feet in, then started running, swinging by the wood pile as he went." Looking back to the two intangible men grappling against the wall, he got a funny gleam in his eye. "He came over here, behind Big. Then Big's nosebleed ends up right against the ground and half of a broken board ends up here on the ground. I say Tiny used it to soften Big's skull. That's why Big crawled over here and pulled himself up with the window ledge—See the blood?—before he charged the newcomer. Who, by the way, dodged and dropped him."

For some reason, Lestrade didn't like that Barkley was calling the third man "Tiny." He opened his mouth, intending to set the man straight, but he stopped himself when he realized what he was going to say. John Watson isn't that small. Was that who he thought the last man was, then? John? Mild-mannered, reticent, humble John, who always had a warm look ready to blunt Sherlock's razor-edged comments and a stern tone waiting to remind his flatmate of his neglected manners?

It was. Sighing, the Detective Inspector looked down at the ground where Barkley had said Big—he felt like a schoolboy, using code names like Big, Tall, and…Tiny—fell for good, ordering his thoughts. John. Lestrade wondered at himself. For some reason, he thought it perfectly logical that John was capable of taking down a man almost twice his size, who'd already put Sherlock out of commission.

Because that was who Tall had to be, if John was his rescuer. The aloof, unapproachable (tall) detective was never without his constant, paradoxically light-giving shadow. If anyone was to gain John's assistance in a fight, it would be him.

And if Lestrade's gut told him right, John could handle himself in one hell of a fight.

Looking up automatically as he processed that thought, Lestrade asked the waiting forensic, "So, where did all the bullets come from, then?" Catching sight of Sally waiting impatiently by the car as another forensic popped the hood, he added quickly, "And sorry, mate, but you'd better make this one quick."

Barkley looked disappointed, but he did speed it up, opting to move to the middle of the alley and point around himself rather than walk through the whole scene. Glancing at the place near the wall where he'd 'left' Sherlock, he began, "Well, Tiny—"

"Let's just call him Smaller," Lestrade suggested, wondering why he was playing along with such a ludicrous method of identification.

Raising an eyebrow and nodding, Barkley began anew. "Smaller went over and helped Tall inside. The car pulled up, two men got out of the back seat and walked over to where Big was laying, started to pick him up. I put them both at six feet as well. Smaller's footprints show up near the doorway, Big ends up on the ground as the two men turn, and then there's bullets. Lots of them."

Glancing in the direction of Mrs. Hudson's bullet-riddled walls, he noted, "Most ended up all around the doorway, which Smaller was hiding in. Eventually, one guy carried Big to the car while the other covered Smaller for him. Smaller stepped out twice from shelter. One time, the man with Big on his back dropped his gun—we found it with a bullet hole in its side and blood on it. Smaller shot it out of his hand. The second time, when Mr. No-Gun was closer to the car, he shot out both left-side tires and into the front of the vehicle, and No-Gun hit the pavement with Big. After that, two more men got out of the car, and all of the people here ran out the left of the alley with Smaller bringing up the rear."

Looking away from the mouth of the alley, he pointed to the doorway of 221 again. "Tall came out after that, wearing shoes, and went to the car. Then Smaller came back, stood by him for a while, went over to the woodpile, went with Tall to the driver's side, and then they both went back into the building."

Well, he had said to speed it up, hadn't he? Wishing that he'd thought to pull out the notebook that he kept with him for when he had to deal with Sherlock's super-fast deductions, Lestrade told himself to just read it all in the report and nodded at the forensic specialist, offering him a tired, "Thanks."

Turning, he walked quickly and carefully back towards the end of the alley. His damage control instinct was on high alert. Donovan was leaning over the technician's shoulder with an expression that made her look like she belonged in between some nice, sturdy iron bars, not putting other people behind them, and Anderson had yet to return from his scone-replacing, self-effacing mission. Lestrade sighed inwardly. As usual, he'd left his people alone for five minutes, and they were already misbehaving. Between them and Sherlock, he might as well be earning a salary for being the Yard's harassed babysitter.

Striding up on the technician's open side, he caught Sally's eye over his bent back and gave her a cautioning look. He was half surprised that she listened and reigned herself in; the scowl dampened back into the normal realms of unhappiness. She was actually a nice woman, Sally. Proud and stubborn, but a great cop and an excellent friend when she decided that she liked someone. Unfortunately, she had determined from their first meeting that she did not like Sherlock.

Though Lestrade was actually rather fond of both Baker Street's male inhabitants, he could almost sympathize with Donovan's vexation. Just being around the detective's house was bad enough; to have a crime scene and a note of mockery left for the police to clean up while Sherlock and John went skipping off to the country was making his sergeant see red. Lestrade told himself that he should probably keep her distracted from any opportunities for vandalism until it was time to leave.

Glancing down at the tech, he surveyed the wreckage of the engine and asked him sideways, "So, where'd the bullet go?"

At that, the man between the two homicide detectives let out a small, disbelieving, almost nervous laugh. With a hesitant look at Donovan that he hastily disguised as a check for approval, he got his nod and pointed down into the depths of metal and machinery. "It's small caliber handgun ammunition, and it's right here, sir. It entered through the left side panel, that hole on your right there and embedded itself in this fuse box."

Something in his tone told the Detective Inspector that there was more. There was something about fuse boxes, some tidbit of auto care information that his tired brain was simply not up to rooting out amongst all his other disorganized knowledge. It was the two hours' sleep, no breakfast, and no coffee days that really made Sherlock's computer-like mental system look impressive. Resisting the unprofessional urge to scrub his face with his hands, Lestrade settled for an extra-weary blink and looked at the wreckage of the engine component that the technician had highlighted.

Hoping that the explanation wouldn't be too obvious or make him feel especially stupid, he instructed the man, "Tell me what that means."

The tech nodded, his expression thankfully devoid of condescension. Tapping the casing of the fuse box with the long examining rod that he had been using to search the evidence, he divulged, "The fuse box is used for the ignition. Without it, it's impossible to start the car. If it wasn't idling when whoever it was made this shot—which it wasn't, by the way—then the driver couldn't get it to turn on in order to drive off."

"So the shooter took it out on purpose," Sally interjected.

"Well, I doubt that." The man sandwiched between her and her boss shrugged, bumping them both and muttering a quick apology before he continued, "Look at the angle of entry here for the bullet. The path that it needed to take in order to reach the fuse box involved going between multiple places where there was only and inch's clearance to either side and hitting its target at exactly the right spot to disable the ignition completely. To make that shot on purpose, whoever it was had to have an intimate knowledge of this model's engine layout and the best damn skills with a handgun that I've ever seen."

He made as if to shrug again, then stopped himself before jostling those around him once more and concluded rather stiffly, "It's more likely that whoever it was shooting has been watching too much telly. He was probably trying to make the whole thing blow up like in the movies and got lucky."

He sounded very sure of himself, and Sally was nodding right along with him, obviously in accord. They shared twin looks of dismissal and scorn in regards to the unknown marksman; the Detective Inspector made a note to make sure that Anderson stopped rubbing off on his fellow police people. Giving the technician a curt nod of thanks—he might not agree with him, per se, but he was still a man who upheld professional courtesy—Lestrade looked away from their close-mindedness.

He gave one last look to the evidence, tracing the trajectory of the impossible bullet with his eyes. The technician had one thing right—for a normal man to make that kind of a shot, he had to be incredibly, stupidly lucky. But then, he didn't exactly suspect a normal man, did he? Shaking his head, Lestrade stepped back and walked away, going around the outside of the vehicle and sending a cursory glance in the driver's open door as he passed. Wiped clean, all evidence removed. Probably everything of empirical consequence had already been discovered and devoured by a certain thin, energetic detective he knew, whose conclusions had subsequently led him to drag his flatmate and friend off into who knows where for the sake of the case.

That thought, and the irritation that it and its kind usually brought with it, didn't quite take hold in the Detective Inspector's mind. Not yet, anyway. He was still thinking of the fuse box, preoccupied by the precision of the four shots that John had made, the only ones with different ammunition from that majority that had been discovered thus far. Not only had John disabled the car, he remembered, he'd shot a gun out of a man's hand. Out of a man's hand. That sort of skill was above and beyond what he'd been expecting from a discharged officer of the RAMC. Far above, and miles beyond.

John hadn't just gotten 'lucky,' the policeman thought as he strode over to a small huddle of forensic officers to collar Anderson with his bloody platter of scones and personally escort him back into Baker Street. Thinking back to the strategic, definitely purposeful wreckage of the engine and ignoring his coworker's stammered objections as he grabbed the plate of pastries unforgivingly out of Anderson's grasping hands, he heard a quiet, sure voice in his head say the truth.

John Watson makes his own luck.