John plants a kiss on the tip of my nose. "I'm knackered," he yawns, rolling to my side, sticky note still in hand.
"Mine or yours?" I ask
"What?" John asks without thinking first. "Oh, the beds. I want to sleep in yours, with you in it this time. That's if you're sleeping tonight."
"I must work on the case and sleeping only slows my mind," I say with the hope that John will complain enough to convince me away from work.
"Just one night," he groans.
"Out of the question," I automatically reply. Now I'm actually going to have to work. I should write up my findings for John so that he can log them on his blog correctly this time.
"Then I'm going back to my own bed."
He drags himself from my bed, procrastinating at my door momentarily but I'm already reaching for my laptop. I assume John must have moved it back in here. While I wait for my laptop to start up, I hear John collapse onto his bed.
Not too long after my computer loads, I have finished documenting tonight's findings. I glance at the clock at the bottom of the screen. It's almost 3am, my usual bedtime. I throw my laptop aside and lie back on the bed but it feels strangely wrong without John. I lie still for a few minutes but I cannot welcome sleep. It seems as though one night lying by John's side has left me with a certain dependence that means I can no longer sleep alone.
I change into my bed wear and creep through the flat to his door. I pause with my hand on the handle; should I still go in if he's asleep? I know I've done it before, I've sat on the floor in his room on numerous occasions but climbing into the bed with him seems wrong somehow, even if I am invited. Still, I push on the door and it silently swings open.
He stirs slightly but I'm confident he's still asleep. I manage to tiptoe across the room to the side of the bed but I fail to judge the distance and end up slamming my knee into the chest of drawers of the opposite site of the room. I backtrack slightly and lower myself onto the bed, pulling at the covers.
"Finished you work?"
The suddenness of John's voice startles me. "I was trying not to wake you, I read that waking people who are sleeping is a bad thing…" I blunder. My eyes adjust to the darkness a smidge so that I can now see the outline of John on his bed. "It's something about the importance of sleep and not being woken from a deep slumber because your melatonin levels decrease when you're concentrating on something-"
"Shhhhhh," John hums.
His arms open wide, beckoning me in but I stand my ground just like I did on the cab ride home. "I'm taller," I protest.
I open my arms this time and tempt him closer. His teeth flash white in the dark through a smile. He wriggles closer until I hold him firmly in my arms. He buries his head into my neck and drapes an arm over my stomach. I sue the arm pinned beneath him to draw tiny patters across his back with a fingertip. I trace his scar and along the shoulder blades. After a while I barely notice that I'm doing it, it just feels natural. I sneak in a kiss on his forehead.
I feel drowsiness waft over both of us and I fall gratefully into sleep where I land in a familiar yet unfamiliar dream.
John is at the top of the building, on the edge, and I stand behind him grasping his hand, staying away from the edge.
"Look at it all," he says, "look at the life."
I look, holding his hand tightly as I gaze over the edge. "John, can we move back?"
"Why?"
"You know why," I gulp, "Because of the dreams."
"Sherlock, look at me." I look at him now. "I'm not going to jump. Never again. I'm here with you now."
I sigh with slight relief but I still tug at his hand. He refuses to budge, still staring down at the world.
"Don't you trust me?"
The question hits me over the head with the force to scramble my words. "Trust, yes, I do." I take a breath and begin again. "I trust you, I do, but sometimes I can't predict how you're going to react."
"You're not supposed to predict or deduce, Sherlock."
"But that's what I do," I argue.
"It doesn't work like that in love. You just have to let it happen."
With this he sprints towards the edge of the building, not looking like he plans to stop. "NO," I yell, "JOHN, STOP, PLEASE."
And he does, just centimetres from the edge, "You don't trust me. I told you but you wouldn't listen," he says.
I wake with start in John's bed. I backtrack against my thoughts to correct myself. I don't wake up in John's bed, I wake up in OUR bed. I blink sleepily and turn to face John. He is so peaceful in sleep it almost seems a shame to wake him. Although the truth is, I like John when he's awake better. He breathes life into my lifeless body just by being here.
"Coffee," I say, announcing my awakening as I always have.
"You snore."
"Hmm?" I reply, not quite sure I've heard him correctly. I frown as I piece together the letters again.
John worms closer to me and kisses me daintily. "You snore," he repeats with a pulchritudinous smirk.
"I absolutely do not," I argue, his grin growing wider.
"You do," he teases, poking me in the chest playfully. He rolls out of bed and asks, "Coffee?" before prancing out of our room.
"Black," I pause for a second before noting, "I don't snore, John."
"I should have recorded it, you were very loud," he calls.
I join him in the kitchen now. He's grinning stupidly now. But it's not the kind of stupid that offends me; it's sort of comforting and entertaining. "Are you positive it wasn't you who was snoring?" I defend.
"Yes, Sherlock. It was unmistakably you," he says whirling about the kitchen.
"I've never snored."
"We'll see what Mycroft has to say about that, shall we," he threatens.
But John knows how sensitive I am about my brother, doesn't he? I've told him many times. I've never been more honest about anything in my life. Well, until now.
"Don't you dare," I warn.
"Calm down, I'm not going to," John replies, but he replies in a certain tone that leaves me suspicious about his true intentions.
I search his face; his eyes have fallen from amusement to seriousness. Nothing makes sense. "A-are we going to break up?"
John stands before me dumfounded. A jumble of words clatter from his tongue, "Break-up? What do you-? Why? Wha-"
I stop listening after this, allowing him to go on spluttering words at me that only seem to confirm my deduction. He wouldn't have made such a big deal about my snoring if it didn't bother him. He wouldn't have threatened to consult my brother, damning me to another world of bulling by both John and my brother this time. Mycroft would eventually play mother and try to fix me, again, by putting all the pieces back wrong. I don't want John to fix me like this; I want him to repair me like he's repairing me now: on his own.
"What do you mean?" John bursts eventually forming a string of words that makes sense.
I explain it to him nervously, "Break up. You don't like my snoring. We were fighting."
John's jaw flaps about stupidly as he gathers the right words. "Sherlock, for one we weren't fighting in any sense of the word," He starts carefully. "Secondly, I actually think your snoring is pretty cute. Third, we are DEFINATLEY not breaking up because I love you way too much."
He likes my snoring, I smile to myself. We're not breaking up, John is mine and I am his. Us. He hands me a steaming mug of coffee. I take the lead and glide into the living room. OUR living room.
"Find anything more about the case," John queries, settling down into his chair.
"Yes," I reply, eyes fixed on a dot on the window.
"Care to share," he says encouragingly.
I huff in laziness. I haul myself from my position, retrieve my lap top and drag the wooden chair from the desk beside John's chair. I plonk down and open the laptop.
"Amanita mushrooms grow in the forest areas of Europe and America, dependant on very particular environments to grow," I simplify. There are many types of these mushrooms, most are very common and grow just about anywhere with cool environmental temperatures. However, the most poisonous generally only grow in very specific environments. "The fungi are purely poisonous meaning that they would not have been imported from these locations for leisurely use."
I look towards John, hoping for him to deduce what I am about to tell him now. Sadly, he doesn't follow and as usual I have to explain it to him word by word.
"They have either been planning to kill these women for some time now or have been prepared to kill them since their initiation into the cult in case they broke vows. However, it's obvious that their murders were not because they broke the vows."
"How?"
"They would have been more brutally murdered and tortured. Common in cults…" I piece together the facts.
"But they were tortured and brutally killed; they were drowned and fed poisons that take hours to kill," John interjects.
"Yes, but you have forgotten the fact that the item was carried only for a short amount of time, a month at most in every victim. I did some research and found that these murders have been made before, less frequent but the same nevertheless. They are good transporters and what better way to transport something illegal than by hiding it inside a human body, particularly the uterus which was made to protect a human life. They held information that was not intended to be given to the opposition," I pause to let the information sink in. "Us, John. They don't want the people that can stop them to find out anything. Quite obviously these women would hold some information about the cult and, if left alive, they could pass what little information they know to other people, hence defeating the anonymity of the people involved and their intentions."
I contradict my initial theory. They aren't killed because the broke the pact, they were killed because there was a possibility that they would break it. Secrecy is the key to cults and if any of this information got out their cult would be at the sharp end of the knife.
"I wonder how much of this stuff they need to transport," John mumbles.
"These three women aren't the first, they are the beginning to the trade in London but not the beginning around the world. There have been 62 similar cases documented around the world in the last three months and the murders have generally occurred in capital cites of states, territories, counties or regions. This wasn't a cult, this is an organisation," I realise, "and I'll be very surprised if there isn't another murder today."
In the silence of John taking in the hoard of information I have just recited to him, his phone bleeps in his pocket.
After fumbling it out of his pocket, he raises it to his ear swiftly.
I can only barely hear Lestrade voice through the phone, "There's another one and you better come quick because she's still alive."
"Where?" he asks hurriedly. But I already know where, she'd be in the Royal London Hospital; she's a witness to a perennial murder case after all.
On the cab ride to the hospital I build my emotional barrier again. I distance myself from John so that I have the chance to do some valuable work without considering John's reactions. Despite my shield, I can't help smiling because finally we're getting somewhere with this seemingly dead end case.
She's been moved to a private room in the hospital for questioning, but just as I am about to swing her door open John places a hand on my wrist.
"Sherlock you need to be sensitive about this," he warns, swinging himself to stand in front of me.
"I don't understand."
"Remember when you thought that I thought you had no emotions?"
"Yes," I say, hurt and knowing exactly what this leads to: John's disappointment.
"I know you have feelings but you're not particularly good at conveying them, especially to victims," he comforts. "Just try your hardest to be human."
My brain can't comprehend the term. "I am human," I state, waiting for an explanation but John just turns from me to open the door.
The room is almost blinding; stark white, lit with more the enough fluorescent lights. In the centre of the room a weak looking woman lays on the bed. Her dark hair splays out from her head like a black halo. I take in her body; she's very weak from her blood loss, she also shows symptoms of inefficient poisoning. Her hands lie limply by her sides and but her eyes flash open as we enter.
"Good evening madam. I am Sherlock Holmes and this is John Watson," I introduce, dragging a chair close to her bed. "May I ask your name?"
"Laura," she whimpers. Her accent isn't from London, but it's from this continent, that much I can tell. I search her over again now that her eyes have opened. She's in her late twenties. A large stone on a golden ring shows that she's engaged but there are no flowers by her bed and no signs of visitors. Her fiancé has either not been notified about her attack and her location or he has been targeted by the organisation.
I soften my voice us much as I can bear; trying my best to sound calm and sympathetic. "Laura, I want you to explain what happened to you." John watches me carefully as I speak but when I finish I glance over to him and receive an accepting smile.
"They slit me open and took it out and they were about to poison me when my boyfriend came home and they started attacking him and I ran with my stomach still cut open. I lost a lot of blood." Funny, she's obviously engaged but she still refers to him as her boyfriend.
"You need to tell me who they were and what it was they took out," I urge.
She struggles to take a breath as she recalls on information, , "They call themselves Salvatores Liberis. It means-"
"Saviours of Children," I interrupt. John pokes a finger between my shoulder blades fiercely. I recalibrate my sympathy and wait for Laura to proceed.
"You know of them?" she stammers .
"No, I just understood the Latin. Go on," I urge, slowly becoming restless.
"They cut into the uterus and make you impregnable and leave something inside."
"What is it? What do they leave?" I snap, momentarily losing my patience with her. Witnesses are both the most useful and the most useless of all crime scene clues.
I can see my gruesome scowl reflected in watery eyes for just a split second before she bursts into a fit of violent, shuddering sobs. John's arm wraps roughly around my arm and drags me out of the chair. I stagger across the room, away from Laura.
"Not good," I say, half questioning and half admitting.
"Very 'not good'," he scolds, "That was poor, Sherlock, she's been traumatised and is extremely mentally unstable," I glance back at the weak, sobbing shell of a woman. "Let me handle this and we'll see if you can question her anymore." He's not asking, he's demanding.
He passes me, not waiting for my reply, and takes my seat. His voice is soft when he coos her name, enticing her out of her shell. Laura, it's okay, we are just very distressed about what happened to you and we are truly sorry but you are protected now, they can't get to you," he lies.
She nods, wiping away the last of her tears. "You don't understand what I've been through," she squeaks.
"I've fought in the war, I was traumatised beyond reason and when I finally got home it was because I'd been shot. I understand it," he lies again. He wasn't traumatised by the war. I scowl at him but I don't argue. He leans a little closer to her, "Would it be okay if Sherlock asks you a few more questions? I'll keep a closer eye on him this time," his voice is slow and softer than I've ever heard it.
"Okay," she whispers, taking another rattling breath.
John stands, grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me down so that he can reach me ear. "Be nice," he hisses.
I take his seat and wriggle my fingers through his. I soften my voice again, "Laura, do you have any idea what the object is?"
"No, they knock us out before they put it in, but it's big, and stretches out the stomach a bit."
She writhes in her sheets, pushing at the covers until her wounded stomach is revealed. Laura hauls herself up in her bed so that she now sits upright. Gingerly, she pulls the stark white cotton from her abdomen, revealing a messy purple scar that follows the more recent tender pink but carefully stitched line down her stomach. Her stomach, however, is not as pale and flawless as the skin on her chest and limbs; this skin is stained with gruesomely purple stretchmarks and twist and turn like the roots of a tree.
Her wound, however, is no different from the other women's but then again it is difficult to tell seeing as the hospital has restitched it and managed to destroy any evidence that could have been located there.
"Mine was bigger than other women's."
"Did you see it when they took it out?"
"No, there was too much blood and I was too scared to look down."
I withhold a groan. "How long was it-"
"Two weeks," she interrupts. Finally, we're getting somewhere at a reasonable pace. "Two weeks ago they put it in and escorted me from Wales to London by car a few days later; I've been here in London for a while. They told me to wait."
"Who?" I yawp, on the brink of a revelation that could catch me this cult. I have just enough time to see Laura jump at my exclamation before John's stiffened hand whacks me across the back of my head. I clear my throat again, rubbing the back of my head tenderly. "Who?" I ask more softly and patiently.
"All I know is they're called-"
"Salvatores Liberis. Yes, you've said that. What did they look like?" I urge her.
She winces a little at the combination of my rushed tone and the memories I've brought to the surface. "I don't know they wore costume makeup, they looked like devils and now, looking back, they didn't look that scary," she breathes a weak, airy laugh, "I guess things are different with a gun to your temple."
"Could you draw their faces?" I query, pulling a pen and a small notepad from my coat pocket.
I hold it out to her as encouragement. "I can try," she accepts, repositioning herself in the cot once again. She hesitantly takes the pen and paper from my grasp. She uses quick strokes to sketch four faces that she only half remembers but when she hands the notepad back to me, her sketches are perfect and strikingly aesthetically pleasing. She has used principals, elements and composition in a quick sketch almost as if they came naturally to her. Impressive is the only word that comes to mind.
Still, I dismiss the possibility of a connection the last girl and Laura through art. And while the girl was an introvert with very few friends, Laura here is engaged. There's no connection there.
"Why didn't your boyfriend help you escape? Did he come from Wales with you?"
"No, he lives in London; I had to pretend to be coming to see him. They have him; they're probably torturing him until he dies." Her eyes flutter in vein attempts to fight off the tears that now occupy her eyes. "He didn't know about any of this until he walked in on it."
"Thank you, Laura. You've been a wealth of information to us. You have deserved your rest."
I tense my hand, somehow still entwined in John's, as a signal that it's time for us to leave. He only resists momentarily giving Laura a fond and appreciative smile before he lets me lead him out of the hospital and onto the street.
