"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know." -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
John wakes up for the second time that day, screaming and throwing punches at invisible foes. It is so strange to feel yourself returning to consciousness without realizing you not to begin with. There's a strong arm around his waist holding him still in a vise-like grip. Even in his disoriented state, he can tell he's being propped up by a solid body. His mind is muddled until he spots the needle in the hand of a police officer; she is placing it into a brown envelope for processing.
Suddenly, everything is entirely too clear.
"Sherlock," John calls weakly, detesting even the sound of his own voice that echoes hollowly back to him through time.
"John, can you hear me?" D.I. Lestrade speaks softly from behind him.
That throws him off a bit, but he turns to see the inspector holding him up. There's a paramedic there, too, wiping an antiseptic cloth over a scratch on his chin. John shakes his head and she backs away. Greg lets go but doesn't move, obviously still lending his support, which John appreciates, but he really needs to get to Sherlock right now.
After the stupid row, if something's happened to him now—how can he ever forgive himself?
John tries to move but he's dizzy again and ends up on the pavement on his behind with his head in his hands, Greg watching him carefully.
"John?" he tries again.
"I'm here Greg, I'm here, but I don't want to be. I can't lose him…again…I can't." A lump the size of a boulder is stuck in his throat. It is getting hard to breathe and everything is gray around the edges.
"I understand, we are doing all we can. Mycroft's cameras caught up with the car a few minutes ago and he alerted me to…well, to you and here I am."
"Why aren't you out looking, too?" John raises his head. He can see Greg wince and step backwards, both of them reminded forcefully of another time in a similar situation. It has all happened so fast.
"It's Mycroft's case now," Greg states, flatly, brown eyes flashing.
"Oh," is all John can think of to say. "That bad?"
"I'm not a liberty to discuss it, apparently." Greg drops gracefully to the pavement beside him, patting his pockets. He finds a decrepit pack of cigarettes that has certainly seen better days and offers it to John. John declines by holding up his hand then takes the lighter from the DI and lights his for him. Greg takes a deep drag and closes his eyes.
"Any idea on time?" John hates himself for asking because it sounds so much like the pleading he's heard victims do, time and time again. How can Greg be so calm? He's Sherlock's friend, too…why can't he see how important this is?
Greg shakes his head, takes another drag, pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and coughs. "Now I remember why I quit this." He plops it back between his teeth, however, and leans back on one hand. With the other one he pulls the stick out of his mouth and exhales, his lips forming a perfect smoke ring.
John watches, slightly hypnotized and thinks about how there's something eerily deja-vu'ish about those smoke rings*. Something otherworldly but strangely grounding.
Greg sighs, takes one last drag and stubs the cigarette out on the cement between them. "Vile habit," he mutters.
John thinks he sounds an awful lot like a Holmes.
"I have nothing to tell you, John, though God knows I wish I did. Sounds like we are both out of the loop on this one, at least until Mycroft's dogs get the scent of their quarry—which really, they are half way there last I heard." Greg stares out at the busy streets around them.
000
Water is dripping agonizingly slowly somewhere; it brings Sherlock almost fully around. The sound of his pulse is loud in his ears and he hesitates to open his eyes.
Inside the mind palace, however, he can see clearly that Doctor/Warrior John and Machine are keeping a close eye on him, or rather on his own alter that is stretched out on the luxurious bed in John's room. Nothing there has changed from his last visit, except that the light is dimmed.
John is leaning over his bare chest, slowly sliding his palm down Sherlock's abdomen, causing the muscles to jump under the caress. Sherlock moans pitifully.
"I know, love, it's going to hurt for a while yet," John croons gently.
"What did they give you?" Machine asks in a gruff, raspy voice.
Sherlock doesn't remember giving him the power to speak but right now he's not going to argue the point. A list of a thousand different drugs—all illicit, all easy to get if your connections are good—runs down the now solid white wall behind Machine. The cyborg lifts his eye patch and studies them carefully. The weirdness of reading with a precious stone in an empty eye socket is not lost on Sherlock; at the moment he simply doesn't care.
"Ah," Machine intones, "it appears to possibly be these." He raises his hand and swipes at the list just the way Sherlock does out in the real world. Machine's hand goes all the way across the list, while real world Sherlock's hand is hindered by the handcuffs someone has put on him.
In the mind palace, though, none of them pay any attention to his physical form. Not yet. Sherlock's eyes rove the list and he snaps his fingers. Some of the names of the drugs turn red while the others vanish. Beside the ones that remain, a virtual drop-down menu of chemical reactions, metabolic rates and possible side effects appears. Sherlock sits up and forward so that he may study it quietly for a few moments, then leans back down, intending to lie back; instead, he's caught by John's arms and the sensation is so real that he can feel the coolness of the chain mail beneath John's robes against his cheek.
"Wakey, wakey, eggs en bakey!" A cold slap of what must be water yanks Sherlock into the present where he finds himself handcuffed to a cold metal bar; the same cold metal bar he'd just been leaning his face against. He doesn't spit or splutter, merely sizes up the bald, podgy man who threw, yes, a bucket of water on him as it streams down his face.
"There 'ee is, dee-tech-tiff." The man smiles and Sherlock is not amused to see a mouthful of nasty teeth, minus one in the bottom row.
"You've got a bit of green stuff there," Sherlock retorts, tilting his head and swiping at his own incisor with his tongue.
Instead of hitting him, though, the man answers the snappy comeback by emptying the rest of the water onto Sherlock's head. He cackles bravely, but Sherlock notices he stays out of what would be Sherlock's reach if he weren't wearing the handcuffs. He shivers a little, but whether it is from anger, humiliation or actual cold at the moment he isn't in any mood to decide.
Sherlock narrows his eyes at the man, and he can clearly see this one is just a patsy—the one left to keep an eye on him for whomever set up this whole scheme in the first place. Well, if he can't get loose at least he can maybe not be bored while he waits for the cavalry.
000
"Greg, I can't stand this."
"John, won't you sit down and have a nice cup of tea?" Mrs. Hudson has suddenly appeared like a food-bearing angel from the ether with a fully-loaded tea tray.
Outside the window at his back, a cold sunset is giving way to a colder night.
Greg, sitting on the sofa, uncrosses his leg and gets down to business, tucking in as if he hasn't eaten in days.
John wants to rail, he wants to scream and break things, he certainly wants to shoot someone…but none of that would help. They've been receiving regular reports on the hour from Mycroft's team but for John it will never be enough. Being cooped up in their flat, besieged at is it with…everything…that is so Sherlock is enough to drive a sane man nuts and a half-crazy one…well, maybe he needs to stop that train of thought, too, because if he doesn't, he's going to go get that bottle of whiskey from the top cupboard and maybe drown in it for a day or three.
He crosses the room to get away from the window where his detective stands and sways so sweetly when he coaxes such serene melodies from his violin; he can't sit on the couch next to Greg, so he drops into Sherlock's chair so hard it shakes beneath him. The hot cup of tea is just another strong reminder of a useless argument brought on because John thought he could finally stop canvassing the area for the newspaper vultures when he went out—he was wrong, once again.
He sips his tea, knows he's being terrible company, but hell, haven't they all been here before? Mrs. Hudson has taken the seat beside the DI and they are conversing in low tones. John knows better than to ask to be alone, so he doesn't even try. There's too much history here, but in a way even the bad kind is comforting.
In his heart, he knows he's just got to keep believing.
At the top of the hour, both his and Greg's mobiles chime with an update. They read their message, lock eyes over the coffee table and get to their feet at once. A quick word of thanks to Mrs. Hudson and John is following the silver-haired detective down the steps and they are hastening out into the night.
*do you get it? ;)