A/N: I got a new computer. SO YAY. I'm back! Would've been up earlier if I was less lazy.
Needles
Sherlock wakes up to a chilly breeze blowing its icy breath across his naked body, and a hand on his shoulder. A familiar, rough voice graces his ear.
"I've been replaced, S'lock?" it pouts merrily.
Sherlock's eyes snap open as he takes in a shaky gasp of air, breathing in the scent of the damp moss that his head is resting on. Everything aches, and it feels like every single nerve ending in his right leg is on fire - he thinks briefly that it's probably broken. But he can't focus on the pain right now, can't even look, because the moist breath tickling his neck and the heavy hand resting on his shoulder are both of much greater concern.
And he knows that voice.
Despite the pain, the detective jumps, unsteadily, to his feet. Twigs and crumpled leaves tumble out of his thick locks, where they had made themselves at home, as he backs away from the large man who had been leaning over him.
He bumps into a thick trunk that scratches against his bare shoulder blades, and his knees start to buckle. Sherlock throws up one long arm to grapple for a branch to hold up his failing body, and somehow manages to stop himself from falling onto the ground below, which is still wet with the morning's dew. He winces and his chest gradually rises and falls with struggling breaths; some from pain, some from shock.
The thing about Sherlock Holmes is that he doesn't get surprised. He calculates almost everything before it happens, and if something unexpected occurs, he's ready for it.
Right now, he's as shocked as he was on his first full moon.
The other man watches Sherlock from his squatted position on the forest floor, grinning and laughing softly. The wind tinkles gaily with him, blowing the longish hair of both men and stirring up the dead flowers and animals that cover the ground.
He slowly rises, stepping forwards with dirty boots the color of coal.
He wears tight, mud-colored pants that are held up with a belt that carries numerous pockets and a silvery gun. A simple white t-shirt allows his muscular chest to be seen quite clearly, and it's topped with a dusty leather jacket and yet another weapon, which is strapped across the man's torso. He has longish, scraggly brown hair, a lengthy, slightly hooked nose and striking copper eyes that seem to glow with the sparse rays of sun filtering down.
He smiles wickedly.
"Mmhh, you look just as good as ever. I could just," he laughs, "eat you up."
He glances below Sherlock's abdomen for a second, suggestively raising his eyebrows.
Sherlock twitches but doesn't move, knuckles turning white as he tries to stay up. His leg is obviously much more than broken.
He glances down, and sees a pearly white patch of bone peaking out from under his kneecap. Red strands of muscle and vein halfheartedly grip the fixture and blood streams down his calf, pooling at his feet. His leg is almost entirely drained already. It's torn and gnarled, and Sherlock examines it grimly.
"Oh, that. I think we've both had worse, haven't we? You should be fine in about two minutes, filthy fucking Lyco you are," the other man muses.
"What," Sherlock breathes, "do you want? Why are you here? How are you...," he trails off.
The other man grins arrogantly. "You really think you're that hard to find? Dammit, Sherly, how have you even lasted this long out on your own?"
Sherlock grimaces, biting his lip. He's about to respond when he feels himself start to heal. If you could call something that causes this much bodily torture "healing".
There's nothing building up to it, he's just suddenly hit with a blinding pain that turns his vision white and has the power of what feels like a locomotive behind it. He immediately crumples to the ground like a puppet that's had it's strings severed, and he has no control over his body as it spasms and twitches while his wound starts to repair itself. His right leg straitens out and goes rigid as it is flooded with light, and Sherlock's screams accompany the show.
The other man leans against a tall oak, his face impassive and almost bored.
"See, I don't have to bother with this shit. It's so much better, you wouldn't believe!" he exclaims, throwing his arms out. "Well, you don't, actually," he ads in retrospect.
Roughly two minutes of incomprehensible burning slowly pass. Sherlock cringes and gasps until, at last, the pain leaves him and his body is his own again. He lies on the cool forest floor while chilled sweat runs down his body.
"Get up," the other man calls impatiently, glancing over at Sherlock's frail form as he dully picks at his dirty fingernails.
Sherlock pulls himself off of the ground and turns to face him, dusted in soil and looking positively furious.
"What do you want, Victor? Why don't you just up and take me to your employer? I'm dying to meet him again - quite literally." He starts trying to brush himself off.
"You'd leave your poor John, then?"
Sherlock stops dead, straightening up to look at Victor with piercing, forceful eyes. "How do you know about John?"
The man is amused, lips quirking up into a sly smile. "Shape-shifting, remember?" he says, tapping his head with a gloved finger.
Sherlock looks disconcerted. He goes completely still, face becoming a blank slate. The wind continues to whistle around in the trees, but somehow seems to leave him untouched, a statue of pale marble that resembles the Greek figures of old. His mouth is open, words that were never uttered ready to slide off of his tongue. To someone who knows him well, Sherlock Holmes could be recognized as being frightened.
But really, he's much more than that. He's downright terrified. He'd thought he was safe, at least for the moment. Months of running, hiding, and sneaking around in the dark - for this? How long had Victor been watching him? What had he seen? And John - oh, John, now he was wrapped up in it all... how long would it take? Did he have long enough to send a warning, get Mycroft to send for someone -
"Oi! Still here, darling," says Victor with his prissy grin.
Sherlock snaps out of his reverie to once more become the angry, acrimonious creature he had turned into the night before. Deep down, he knows that it's a sign he's becoming more unstable, more at risk of hurting someone else -
But all of the emotion he's bottled up comes spewing out at the arrogant, hateful man in front of him.
"Why won't you tell me what's going on?" he shouts, face twisted.
Victor is unperturbed. "All in the game, sweetheart."
"Then why are you here?" he screams, eyes wild.
"Well," Victor seems to lose some of his self-importance, "I'm not actually here on orders. I thought I'd give you one last chance. The boss will kill me, but I just want to let you know that you're losing. Pretty fucking badly."
Sherlock is beyond shouting now. He struggles for a moment, face jumping from different expressions of fury. He looks, quite simply, insane.
Somehow, he pushes the beast that was clawing at his insides back down.
"I'm going to ask you once more: what do you want?" His voice is dangerously low, almost a growl.
"Can't you see how much better it would be if you were one of us? Don't you want power, freedom to whatever you - "
"No, I don't! I know what it does to people, I know what it did to you - I don't want that. I just want to be left alone!"
Victor narrows his eyes. "You know that will never happen."
"Then I'll fight for it," Sherlock says viciously, stepping forwards. "It's all I have! This life has cost me so much. What the war did to us -"
"It made us better!" interrupts Victor. "We're stronger than ever before! We can finally have our reign! A better world, where Eklektoses don't have to hide!"
"You are corrupt," Sherlock says disgustedly.
"When we both were just filthy little Lycos, we could never have imagined this! Dammit, nobody ever could, until we discovered the power we had, the power you could have - "
"I don't want it!" Sherlock shouts.
"We'll see," says Victor softly, looking at the almost skeletal, angry man before him with eyes that have become cold.
"Maybe your precious John will, too."
Then the man changes; one second he's standing there with a devilish grin and a heavy stance, the next he seems to be gone entirely. A small, sickly creature flies away from the spot he had stood.
"Don't touch him!" Sherlock yells.
There's a faint cackling that seems to be riding on the wind.
xOxOxOxOxOx
John stomps over to the pantry, and after a moments hesitation, pushes all of its contents into a large bag with long sweeps of his sweater-clad arms.
"Fine my arse," he mutters to himself as he does so.
For the next hour, he runs around the flat gathering up various supplies and amenities. While he's at it he grabs Sherlock a couple pairs of pants, socks, t-shirts and his (rather soft) blue scarf. Funnily enough, Sherlock's equipment was the only thing of his that was actually gone from Baker Street - and they had never really given it away anyway. All of his posters, odd nick-knacks and every miscellaneous item he'd ever collected for some purpose or another was still present in the flat, like their owner had never left.
Apparently he hadn't, but that was beside the point.
Mycroft had come by on one rainy afternoon. John had been skulking by the window, watching clear drips of rain slide down the foggy glass when the older Holmes had let himself in.
He had stood watching John for a moment, then sighed; there was nothing to say, really. Besides, John didn't have anything to say either. Mycroft had then asked for the violin ("family heirloom"), and the skull ("sentiment...") and if John had thought that wanting your dead brother's pet skull was odd, he hadn't voiced his opinion. Finally, Mycroft had asked for Sherlock's coat. He wouldn't say why, which, though it was per the norm for Mycroft Holmes to prance around without needing to explain himself, had struck John as just a bit odd.
And he had said no. He didn't know why; maybe to have something Sherlock had touched, worn all the time; to get the closest he could to having the real thing with him again.
Mycroft had left with a sad smile, and without the coat. It was within John's right to keep it, of course; Sherlock had left him everything in his will. Mycroft had come around with it a few days before he had come for the objects, explaining how all of Sherlock's accounts would be transferred to his own, all of his possessions changing ownership. It had turned out that Sherlock hadn't needed a flatmate at all. He had enough funds for pretty much any apartment in London.
And yet he had chosen to live with John.
After Mycroft had left, John had held the coat up to his face; breathed in the detective's scent. It was sweet, like lilacs and fresh fruit, but musty and slightly woodsy. That part wasn't explainable, as they spent almost all of their time in the city. John had ignored it. Besides, it was nice. The old coat smelt like home, more than 221b did now. At least the small hint of chemicals was familiar.
The scent of the long, dramatic coat is fainter now. John can still smell the sweetness of it, though. He packs it into the bag with everything else.
Anthea arrives with the car at a minute till ten.
"Hello," John says tiredly.
"Mmhh," she says over the clicking of her phone.
John gives the dark sunglasses she's wearing a curious look, but doesn't comment.
He's brought to an empty lot behind a tall, dark building. There's a helicopter there, engine still running, perched on the cement like a bird about to take off. It's a different one from last time. The driver opens his door, and John shoves his bag out before stepping into the chilly air. The sun is out, but there's a tantalizing breeze sifting through his short hair.
The driver stands as still as a statue, offering no directions or instructions. He's wearing tinted sunglasses as well, John notices. It isn't that bright, is it? John thinks.
Once John moves away from the car, slouching with the duffel, the driver gets back into the sleek black vehicle and drives away, seemingly in the blink of an eye.
John turns his head and squints up at the helicopter, shrugging his shoulders.
He hoists the bag on his shoulder and walks over to the metal machine, sun shining on the back of his neck. He stumbles up the gleaming ladder. When he gets to the top, John tosses his luggage into the compartment with an annoyed sigh. He shambles in after it, but doesn't see much of anything before he feels a sharp prick in his neck.
John twists his head around to catch a glimpse of the needle, and has just enough time to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose before he falls over.
xOxOxOxOxOx
Mycroft Holmes answers his phone with an impatient titter.
"What, Julia? I believe i was quite clear in my -"
"He's gone, sir," comes the short reply, cutting him off.
Mycroft forgets to be annoyed that he was interrupted.
"Check the house."
"We did. Landlady said she hasn't seen him, neither has anyone else. He's just simply... disappeared."
Mycroft puts his head in his hand, closing his eyes.
"Is anything gone?"
"We're checking now," the voice on the other line says.
Mycroft sighs. "Alright, you know what to do. Check with communications for me as well."
"Yes sir." The line goes dead.
Mycroft barely has time to curse everything before he gets another call. When he answers the impatiently ringing mobile, the speaker is already in mid-sentence.
" - it's Victor, Victor Trevor, or Moriarty or someone, I'm not sure who but they know more than we thought. I think they're going to get John, to persuade me, but you need to warn him, get him under the best protection you have, I don't care if you have to -"
"They've already got him, Sherlock," Mycroft says tiredly.
Sherlock is silent for a moment, then he's back to practically shouting into the phone.
"Where were you?" he demands, "your people just sat back and -"
"Doctor Watson was already gone from the premises when they arrived. I am doing everything within my power to help."
"What good will it do now? He's gone!"
Mycroft takes a deep breath.
"Yes, he is, and maybe we can get Doctor Watson back if you would stop whining like an insolent child and start contributing to a plan. Which, I'm sure, we'll be able to make with the provided resources of my people, who, in fact, are the best that that the United Kingdom has to offer," he snaps.
He can hear Sherlock breathing deeply from the other end. His younger brother's usually cool demeanor and so it seemed, his sanity, has been disintegrating before his eyes. And Mycroft doesn't like it.
No Holmes was supposed to let his guard down, or let any emotion show at any time. It was weak; so was sentiment. Father had taught them that, and he had had no trouble demonstrating it.
"Yes," finally comes the reply.
Mycroft clears his throat. "Good. Stay where you are, I'm heading there now."
Mycroft's about to add more, but Sherlock hangs up.
A pretty woman in a short black skirt and a ruffled, plum colored top saunters into the room.
"I didn't want to interrupt before you were finished, but Communications has found something. A black car, exactly like the ones we usually use, seen headed away from Baker Street moments before we arrived there," she says, not looking up from her mobile as she does so.
Mycroft shuffles the papers on his desk. "Typical," he remarks in disgust, "Can we track it?"
"Working on it now, Mr. Holmes. We haven't got a plate yet but I'm sure they'll get on it," she says, taking a moment off from texting to sweep her thick hair over her shoulder.
Mycroft stands up.
"Julia, I'm going to need transport to Bunker A34," he says.
"Already got it. They should be here in about five minutes," and with that, the woman strolls out of the room in her gleaming heels, hips swaying as her fingers tap away.
Mycroft smiles. That woman is on top of it all.
"I must be rubbing off on her," he mutters.
A/N: Hoping to start updating regularly again now. See you next week.
(or earlier)