Lestrade turns up the following day. Sherlock insists he has already sent a report to the Met explaining the various scientific details of hellfire, if anyone was ever interested in the external realms of science that included the form of magic and multi-dimensional entities, which they probably weren't because Anderson was still infecting people with his stupidity. Lestrade stares at him for a moment, trying to process the various arguments, before running his hand over his eyes. John notices the heavy shadows beneath his eyes, the slight tremble in his hands.
'I need to tell you this before you find out on your own,' Lestrade informs Sherlock gravely. 'You have personal involvement, so you can't be directly involved. We'll do this as clean as possible. Photographs. Reports.' He breathes in, lifting his gaze to the roof. 'I'm saying this so you stay out of it, Sherlock. You need to stay out of it.'
Sherlock doesn't sit up in his chair, but his eyes focus. He isn't just looking at Lestrade now, he is observing closely and processing every single detail in that vast mind of his. But John doesn't need to. He already knows what is happening. He bites down on the words in the frail hope that the silence will hold away reality as long as possible.
Lestrade lifts his chin with a sense of finality. 'Right,' he nods. He passes a thin file over to Sherlock, who pulls out the contents carefully.
Sherlock's eyes lose their euphoric blue, leaking into a washed grey. He clenches his jaw, closes his eyes, and exhales. 'The victim is in his early-twenties,' he reports smoothly, 'a natural blond, hair was dyed after death, he worked in the botanical gardens of Birmingham until lately when he started his own marijuana plantation. Lives alone, no relatives, no one to notice he was gone. However, I cannot discern whether the scarf was stolen in the past week, or before.' He extends the photograph towards John, who reaches for it despite the image which is already leaking behind his retinas.
The photograph is captured with scientific apathy. The victim lies on his back on a clean, white bed, hands folded over a book on his chest. John instantly recognises it as the King James' Bible. The victim's hair has obviously been dyed, the dark curls too black to be mistaken as real colour. The scarf knotted around his neck is dark blue, bleached on one end with mild acid.
Sherlock's scarf.
John's gut twists with disgust. How did Moriarty find his way into their home? They thought they were safe. Two archangels should be more than enough to keep any sensible demon out, even if one was fallen and the other a mere fledgling. But then, Moriarty seemed far from sanity. That he should invade something so private as Sherlock's personal belongings sickened John. Perhaps it should have frightened him, but the Good Soldier never associated home with safety. He built his various abodes in the cold interiors of dugouts, in wind-beaten tents that need to be collapsed and dragged onwards. His heart attaches itself to the threat of steel, to the looming presence of death.
But a demon has walked in the place he has, touched that which should belong only to him, if not to Sherlock. John finds it hard to suppress his rising anger.
Yet Sherlock is calm, dangerously so, as though facing the beginning of the end is merely another calculation. Maybe it is. John will never truly understand the incredible workings of that mind. It is part of the allure, of course, for a creature as old as he is, to discover something entirely new and mysterious.'
Sherlock inquires as to whether anyone has inspected the bible. Of course, Anderson has performed a thorough examination on it, eager to prove his worth, but Sherlock dismisses this as irrelevant. Whatever chemicals are present on the bible, it has nothing to do with the murder. The bible itself was stolen from the office of a civil engineer currently employed in Tasmania.
'Yes, alright, we figured that out, thank you,' Lestrade frowns, folding his arms. 'What we discovered, though, was that one page was missing. Page 12, Corinthians -.'
Sherlock's eyes flash upwards to the grey-haired man, his eyebrows lowered in a frown. 'The book is irrelevant, as is the text,' he interrupts quietly. 'An efficient message. The Word of God is thereby irrelevant to my behaviour. It is the number which is important, Lestrade.'
John knows. He knows because he holds the entirety of his fledgling's history in the palm of his hand. 'That's how old you were when you solved your first murder,' he states.
Moriarty is telling Sherlock his gifts of observation and deduction have nothing to do with the Mighty. This is not a threat, nor is it a game. It is a trial, and if Sherlock succeeds, then the demon will swallow John's fledgling up in his dark embrace. This is a slow corruption and subtle theft of Sherlock's mind.
John will not allow it.
The tea bursts into flame. Lestrade shouts. John blinks, and the fire dies away, leaving behind the faint smell of singed milk.
'Oh,' John utters mildly. 'I'm so sorry.' He stands and offers a bland smile to the unfortunate witnesses to his outburst. 'I'll make us some more tea. Would you like some, Greg?'
He receives a long, shocked stare. He takes it as an affirmative, and sets about washing the mugs and putting the kettle back on. He imagines he hears Lestrade whisper something about safety and chemicals in tea.
White for the anger.
Does Mycroft know what he has created? Sherlock is not only capable of seeing fallen angels, he is also able to give them back their wings.
If this is the reason Morning Star needs to protect Sherlock, then the storm is darker and wider than John anticipated. This frightens him. He will face demons, yes, and the rest of the Mighty for his fledgling, but to face his fallen brother will sear too many knives into his scarred heart.
The kettle whistles. John ignores it for a while, and remembers the beauty that was Morning Star, and the sorrowful acceptance the Good Soldier had to see in his star-filled eyes when the General finally struck him down, and he tumbled from the heavens to the abyss below. He closes his eyes and the figures of this violent play change, and it is Sherlock that falls while the Good Soldier's sword juts from his chest.
So this is the storm.
The Good Soldier has seen his fair share of wars. Only now is he afraid.
.
He walks out into the dead city by himself, leaving Sherlock drifting through slumber, liquid nightshade feathers dancing in sleepy trickles up the walls. He knows the way this city used to feel, the way the stench of piss and death used to cling to every brick. This city was the banquet of demons, and the horror of those that were brave enough to be Guides. Now, it is full of old bricks darted with dried blood long since washed away by the eternal rain. The lights still illuminate the cobblestones, and where the tarmac has replaced the dirt, the ground remembers grit and filth and spit. This is a dirty city, but by the Mighty, it is Sherlock's city, and his wings envelop it in a dusting of secret night.
Sometimes, like now, time stands still, and the storm holds its breath. Danger pretends to sleep.
The demon girl is still where John first met her. She holds out her little tin cup towards him and smiles thinly. He drops a handful of coppers in. He can feel his wings burning the air, warming the space around them. He knows she can feel it too, even if she cannot see.
She smiles up at him with such heartbreaking sadness. He suddenly wonders how he could hate demons so. 'You know,' she states.
John sighs, digging his hands into his pockets. 'Lucifer wants to have wings again.'
She laughs then, and shakes her head. She beckons him closer, looking up into the sky as though unseen ears will hear her. They cannot. This is the dead part of the city, the hollow bottom of sin from which the Mighty have averted their eyes. 'Not at all,' she reveals in a whisper. 'The King doesn't want anything anymore. And Sherlock's not a weapon. He creates. He heals.' She presses her icy fingertips against John's cheek. 'He healed you.' She drops her hand and her smile fades. 'That's what the King wants,' she informs him solemnly. 'The King wants you to be well.'
John looks into her wide, hazel eyes, and sees the subtle shift of colour. The darkness is there, yes, and the glimmer of sharp teeth and claw. She is one of the creatures the Good Soldier himself was created to defeat, but the endless millenia that roared by evolved her into something else. Something mild. Something a little tired of the old ways and the new madness.
Something like me.
Even if they were both created to hate each other's substance, they cannot ignore that they are both old soldiers, tired of the battle.
'Moriarty will make him a weapon,' John warns the demon.
She runs a thumb round the edge of her cup. The nearest street lamp flickers momentarily, casting half her face into shadow. Her cheek hollows out into skeletal sallowness, long, needle-like teeth pressing against her lower jaw. Demons do not expose their true face often, even if it is just a glimmer. They only show their true form to those they trust.
There is a lot of power to a creature's name and nature. This old being trusts him, a fallen angel, the killer of demons and destroyer of blackened souls. Moriarty must be a terrible adversary indeed.
'Stop him,' she advises. 'Kill him.'
John produces a sharp, twisted smile, because he will.
.
The next corpse is a teenage girl, and it is immediately obvious who she is meant to impersonate, from the intentionally nude shade of her lips and the unassuming ponytail. The girl's eyeballs have been removed cleanly from her eyes sockets and placed in her left palm. John excuses himself from the room and spends the next few moments staring into the sink, trying not to empty the contents of his stomach into the drain.
'The lipstick is Molly's,' Sherlock informs Lestrade, his eyes drawn towards John's hunched back. 'The laboratory coat, however, is cheap costume, online purchase. But the shoes, those are Molly's. A size too small, never returned to the original point of purchase, kept in the back of her office at Bart's. The lipstick itself can also be found in her office. Her home should be safe, however I would suggest a thorough search through your autopsy reports. They may have been tampered with.' He presses his fingers against his lips.
Moriarty is clever. He infiltrates everything - the most efficient of toxins.
Lestrade suggests the possibility of protective surveillance, even if they both know that no amount of human steel or force can keep demons out. Sherlock suspects Molly can take care of herself anyways, if she is anything like John.
'What do the eyes mean?' Lestrade ventures.
'So she can't see' John replies, breaking through whatever suggestion Sherlock was about to make. 'And she can see Sherlock's wings, so she can see his soul.' He smiles tersely. That is enough information for Lestrade. Anything else is in danger of passing to Mycroft's prying ears, and it would not do well for Gabriel to discover another member of the fallen. He has enough pawns to play with. 'Moriarty wants Sherlock all to himself,' John adds quietly.
A love affair of bodies and cruelty. How very fickle.
Sherlock's lips purse, and his eyes glimmer with a familiar light. 'There's a pattern,' he mutters, his voice rumbling in his chest. 'First solved murder, first friend.' He lifts his gaze to meet John's. 'First lover.' He darts from the sofa in a liquid motion, fingers pressed against his lips. 'The next victim will have a similar appearance to John. Late thirty's, same build, military background. Considering the purchase of the previous victims, dishonourable discharge. He'll have his heart cut out and placed in his hands, if we don't find him first.'
So he can't love. Oh, Sherlock, I could never stop loving you.
Lestrade makes no move to leave, holding the case file loosely in his hand, his eyes traveling from Guide to fledgling slowly. In moments like these, when he seems decades older, John remembers that he is a witness to the terror that is the Mighty's war. He has no choice but to watch and bear the weight of a human heart.
Most witnesses lose their minds. Lestrade goes down to the pub for a pint.
Sherlock grows impatient and ushers Lestrade out, insisting that he has provided a sufficient description for the Met to use. He paces through the flat, wings dragging through shards of sunlight, refracting light in places they should not belong, crystal shards of brilliant pink and absent-minded green. Anger and fear drift through their connection, swamping John's heart with the bitter taste of acid and the colour of the weeping sky. The Good Soldier watches quietly from his place at the edge of the lounge, his arms still folded over his chest and not reaching out to his fledgling. He wants to hold Sherlock, promise him things that are not entirely true, pretend that his beautiful miracle is an innocent child easily fooled.
Oil-coloured feathers drift upwards to the ceiling and sink into unattended cracks, filtering through the rafters. John tries to follow, but his feathers are rooted into his spine. He cannot change, and Sherlock is forever volatile, water slipping through the foundations and drifting away.
Would the storm sweep him away for good?
And the darkness, it will disappear, and what is light without his darkness?
John closes his eyes and - for the first time since he started wearing human skin - calls out to the Mighty. He whispers in his old tongue and begs, pleads.
But the Mighty do not listen to fallen heroes.
.
Some of his fledgling's dark markings ripple with delicate ruby light. They are pressed against each other, Sherlock's lips buried in the receding peak of John's hairline, breathing in faint syncopation. The Good Soldier's wings drape lazily over the bed, half-covering a long, ivory leg and the scars there. Sherlock draws his fingertips over John's shoulder blade carefully, his nails dragging through the blood-coloured scapulars there. He receives a soft hiss of pleasure for his efforts, and smiles triumphantly.
But this fades, and he digs his hands into John's spine. 'I won't let him take you,' he growls.
John smiles good-naturedly, even if his heart is ripping into shreds and he can feel the waters close in over his head. He draws his finger along his imprinted confession. They were never made for moments of peace. They are creatures of battle. of gunshots, of smoke and blood and fire and poison. 'He won't have you either,' he whispers. 'You're mine.'
The fledgling exhales in a long, soft, sigh of relief. 'Yours,' he breathes, the syllable a fervent prayer on his lips.
John remembers a prayer he made not so long ago, and closes his eyes. He has more faith in this love than the love of his absent creators, even if it is this love that will be their undoing.
.
When it happens, it happens quickly. Almost painlessly.
Effortless, in a way.
And he bleeds, because he is of flesh and blood, and if he is cut he must empty his life onto the ground. But there are hands, and a magic that tastes like sick and mud, leaving a ringing familiar to bombshells discarded between barbed wire. Curved little lines appear on his arms. He is cursed and claimed. Tainted.
If that is even possible anymore.
Sherlock will not want him as a Guide after this. His mouth tastes like tar. His eyes water and his vision swims. These veins have a new scripture written inside them, one that even Morning Star would never stoop to write. And the laughter is so sweet, so mocking, yet so faint.
He deserves this, for being so blind. He should have known. He should never have left. But he failed Sherlock, and now they will both pay the price.
'Oh, Johnny boy, we're going to have so much fun,' laughs the victor. 'Wait till he sees you like this, his precious dog. Pretty pet. Pretty, pretty pet.' And he can't see John's wings but they are molting, crisping into black wisps of memories, and he is going to die like this, gagged and bound.
The Good Soldier despairs. The last game will be played soon, but the cards have been dealt and Moriarty wins.