A/N: It's a grim concept. Maybe I shouldn't read crime novels on Valentine's day? Still, it's a very Sherlockian combination. -csf
.part one of two.
John curses the cold morning by viciously kicking a blob of frozen muddy grass in his path.
Sherlock, walking by his side and imposing a punishing pace with his long legs, raises an inquisitive eyebrow, but remains silent. John, the consulting detective notices, has been frequently tense lately. Tense even for John's military uptight standards. Perhaps it's the case in hand, that Lestrade has just called them in, or maybe it's nothing more than a never-ending, punishing lockdown to combat a powerful virus that keeps getting an upper hand on modern life, depriving it from human flavour in the fight to defeat the virus spread. It's a close call, but Sherlock opts to put his bets on the heinous nature of the case. Corpse snatching in a cemetery overnight, just the sort of thing to trouble John Watson. The former soldier carries enough memories of fallen comrades within him, and desperately wants to lay them to rest forever. The idea that some idiot teenagers or perverted thieves would disturb this peace is abhorrent to John, and also deeply disturbing. Sherlock checks his own mental database to find nihilist notions of "once you're dead you won't know anymore, as you decompose slowly", mixed in with religious inculcated views that science has yet to prove or disprove, but finds this is unlikely to placate John, so keeps it to himself, wisely.
He tries for another way of getting a reaction out of John:
'Remind me to have Molly get me two forearms, John. I want to study the wrist ligaments and tendons, particularly the medial and lateral epicondyle.'
The glare that John gives him is completely oblivious of how much John himself, and Molly Hooper, give in to Sherlock's whims. With flawless logic, Sherlock once again ponders his much John bends his own rules to accommodate and excuse Sherlock's eccentricities. Sherlock is only eager to test those limits, of course.
'Lestrade', Sherlock calls as they near the minimal team gathered around an excavated plot in the glacial cold cemetery.
The work-worn DI from Scotland Yard turns at once. 'You'll like this one', he alludes, too joyous, too fast. It's even too cold to properly groom a restless consulting detective that is flat out of cases.
Sherlock and John exchange looks. Greg Lestrade falters and admits: 'I'm cold, wet, and starting to suspect you as our corpse snatcher, Sherlock. I just want this case wrapped up fast and a long hot shower. See anything that can help us here?'
The guest detective smirks and kneels by the open graves. Fresh mud tracks, but they are unclear, overlapped by the footsteps of a six foot man and a 5 foot 7 youngster; the caretaker and a teenager, it's clear by the genetic trait, repetitive pressure on the inner arches of the foot that caused both sets of shoes to become well worn in a tell-tale way. So far, no surprise, someone had raised the alarm, setting the Yard in motion. Next, the gravestone. Old woman, unlikely a celebrity or a rich heiress going by age and burial. Not a fresh corpse either, one of the weather-worn graves around. Unlikely to be missed in a hurry. Perhaps a young medical student lacking scruples and the imagination to infiltrate a hospital morgue – far more interesting findings before all the embalming fluids, amateurs! – or a crass witches cult building up a narrative. Unlikely a kidnap, those usually involve living targets, as that speeds up the ransom delivery in a way a dead corpse really wouldn't.
John comes lower to search the open grave as well, and Sherlock glances at the eager face of the doctor. He looks tired.
Sherlock gets up just as a junior officer brings Lestrade the medical examiner's report on the woman who was buried in the modest grave. Oh, much better if foul play is involved. Sherlock snatches the report right out of the inspector's hands. Lestrade just sighs and won't even put up a fight, visions of a hot tub filling his conscious mind now.
'Murdered?' John asks. 'Maybe trying to conceal evidence the police missed?'
'Hey!' Greg protests. 'We're not helpless, like Sherlock enjoys making us appear! No, something just didn't sit right with the examining doctor, so he asked for an autopsy. It happens. Apparently it didn't uncover anything wrong.'
'Oh, I see... The thieves took the casket too. Why would they do that? Afraid some evidence could be picked up from the coffin?'
'Maybe they didn't want the deceased riding shotgun in case someone spotted the deadly pallor upon a red light?' Greg shrugs.
'Hmm.'
The inspector narrowly misses John's eyeroll.
Sherlock immediately repeats that immature display of impatience, a lot more stravagantly. He just rolls his eyes at them with artistry. Immediately John stands up straighter and the inspector's ears metaphorically perk. Sherlock takes a deep breath and starts with a tirade: 'Unlike John seems to believe, I do pay attention to the names of the characters in our murderous charades.'
John starts a mock count using the his fingers. 'Yeah, just not clients, witnesses and investigators.'
Greg adds: 'No one alive, then.'
Sherlock accepts that. 'No, the alive ones all bother me with their annoying little problems...'
'Go on, tells us what you found, sunshine!'
'See for yourself, Lestrade. The victim's name as is the same as the medical examiner in charge of the autopsy. Someone autopsying themselves? How utterly efficient!'
'Wait, what? Let me see that!'
'The case is now in your capable hands, inspector! I suggest you dig in the medical examiner's life records. I also suggest you take some tissue samples for DNA.'
'What samples? There's no body!'
Sherlock patiently points upwards to the tree covering them. On the lower branches pends a rotten, dead section of an arm.
'Also, can I keep it after you're done?'
.
'It's not weird', Sherlock defends himself, arrogantly.
'It is plenty weird to the rest of us', Greg insists.
They are sharing a morgue sink, washing their hands in the small restroom to which scent of refrigerated death and decay valiantly infiltrates the nauseating disinfectant smell.
'All I said was, if John were to die in mysterious circumstances, I would insist on performing his autopsy myself. The man is my devoted associate. Isn't it... kind?' Sherlock asks. His keen eyes study the inspector's features with a hint of vulnerability. This is an honest question, a true request for a man unused to navigating social skills.
Greg nearly curses John for not being there to guide Sherlock in another social blunder.
'Kind is not the word I'd go for, mate.'
'Hmpf!' Sherlock manages to make his interjection sound hurt. The inspector relaxes. At times, the great Sherlock Holmes is but a man-sized child.
The scientific detective tries to explain:
'I wouldn't have someone else draining John's cold, sluggish blood, or rummaging through John's internal organs in search of defects and anomalies. It's a damn near intimate thing, Lestrade. John would prefer someone he trusted inside him, I'm sure.'
Greg often wonders if Sherlock is this clueless when it comes to his overuse of innuendo. John trustingly believes Sherlock is unaware most times as a facts-man following a linear reasoning, and that other times Sherlock is joking as a silly pre-teenager giggling on the inside. Greg suspects Sherlock is much more sophisticated than a hormonal teen. There's humour and timing, and the man would be deadly in his charm, elegance and wits if he weren't so goddam awkward too. What the inspector cannot pinpoint is if Sherlock zeroes in on John as a puppy crush in 99% of his tirades because it's funny, or if he's awkwardly disguising an infatuation over a straight man who he can never have in such a manner. In order to know the real story, Greg would have to know Sherlock's heart's makings, but he fears not even Sherlock himself knows that, after so many decades of burying all his emotions deep in some Mind Dungeon.
Greg finally removes from his mind the image of Sherlock's long fingers inside John's thoracic cavity.
'John trusts Molly too. And he wouldn't want you remembering him that way.' Broken, cold, dead.
Sherlock frowns, as if he cannot follow the logic. Has the hapless inspector forgot that Sherlock works routinely with the dead? 'What way, disembowelled? He'd be dead, not like he'd protest if I wasn't doing a good job; which is ridiculous, because of course I'd do a great job, especially disembowelling John, he's special.'
Greg barely holds in a groan. Sherlock is too surreal. He suddenly realises an enamoured Sherlock would valentine his lover with a real human heart, would plot his murder lovingly when daydreaming about his love, and might just about poison all the wedding guests to death to skip the boring wedding reception.
'You really should just confirm with John this is his choice', the tired inspector tries to focus.
'I have. He allowed it. We came to an arrangement. John gets to check in on my autopsy, if he's not performing it himself. He said something about medics excusing themselves from patients they are close to. I, myself, do not fear compromising my impartiality. I can compartmentalise my emotions.'
Greg's smile is not nearly as triumphant as incredibly sad, with a touch of pity; if Sherlock can fool himself to believe losing John would be a compartmentalised event, like a spreadsheet full of numbers or a machine's output in a factory.
'Wait, did you say John agrees with this crazy idea?' Greg notices suddenly.
'Naturally', Sherlock declares.
'Was he drunk or something?' the inspector suspects.
'Yes', the detective admits matter-of-factly. 'Still, John was deceptively cunning. He was the one insisting on studying my corpse as well. I told him; people will talk. He even said he didn't care.'
Not for the first time, Greg Lestrade wonders if the madness is reciprocal.
.
'Our boy Sherlock was absolutely right. She was about to face bigamy charges. It would end her career just before retirement. So she faked her death and put some other stiff in the casket. Of course in order to do that she had to fake the autopsy on "herself". You know these people, they all keep to themselves, no one noticed. Who knows where she is now; Brazil? Equator? Your guess is as good as mine, mate.'
John nods, and closes his pocket notebook where he's been taking notes.
'I'll tell Sherlock.' He gets up, hesitates. 'Look, Greg, it's nice to see you, but I didn't need to come to the Yard to hear this.'
The patient inspector nods and relates the conversation he had earlier with the mad detective.
'John, is this tale true?'
Sheepishly the small doctor looks into the distance through the inspector's office window to answer: 'Yes, of course it is.' He stands straight, shoulders back, hands united behind his back, legs parted, weight evenly distributed over both legs. Parade's rest, Lestrade recognises.
'You'd autopsy Sherlock on a slab.'
'Yes.' The doctor is impassive, stoic, calm, detached.
'Are you nuts?'
There's brimstone fire consuming the former army doctor's eyes as he snaps his gaze violently on Greg. 'I wanna make sure the git is thoroughly dead, this time around.' His features distort into an ugly, joyless smile – so unlike John Watson. 'It's but a redemption tale. I failed miserably last time, outside Bart's.' He snaps his eyes away from the inspector, redirecting his anger elsewhere. Greg nearly shivers when he notices it's not the cold winter day outside that garners John's hatred, but the faint reflection of John's own image superimposed on the cold glass pane. 'I should have turned in my medical license. What a sucker I was... A doctor that can't discern life and death is the bottom of the pile.'
'John.' Lestrade knows this is dangerously thin ice he threads on. A man's sanity lies beneath the thin sheet, propping him up. A slip and Greg will shatter the thin ice veneer and each sharp slither of ice will pierce John's damaged core. 'You were concussed, were confused, passers-by held you back, and had just witnessed the jump. Give yourself a break, mate.'
'My brains faltered me. I should have seen the lie, the deception. I let myself believe that Sherlock would succumb to these demons. But they weren't his demons, they never were.' John is agitated now, he flails his arms, his voice sharpens and cracks in a broken rhythm, his breaths don't suffice despite the apparent gulps of air he inhales, and Greg knows – he would have to be blind not to see – that pain John carries still, that John can't forgive himself, is as close to the surface as it has always been. Time might have elapsed on the surface, but in John's broken heart, it's always the day after the most horrific experience he's ever been through. And John is a soldier, he's seen the worse humanity has to offer. It's not the violence of the act, and the memory of it, it's not even the haunting replay of the fatidic jump that creeps up in his nightmares, this is John blaming himself for a staged, faked death. Still blaming himself. John is Sherlock's protector. By walking himself off the top of St Bart's hospital, Sherlock destroyed the one thing that John had, that made him whole; his idol, his family, and his life's mission as a protector, all wrapped in one.
'Don't say that, mate.'
The sad irony being that Sherlock was never aware of how incredibly important he was to his quiet assistant. In a pitiful self-deception, Sherlock will have convinced himself he was becoming too attached, too emotional, too needy, and that in contrast John was strong, enduring, unfaltering. When Sherlock cut the ties by expedient of a masterful lie, two men fell from their pedestals. Sherlock would pass difficult nightmares in exile, be so far removed from his world that he'd doubt his own identity. And John would become the merest shadow of a man, an empty man, waiting on death. Sherlock was lost to them, but John was still among them, so all his friends rallied around John trying to prop him up, to force him to return to the man they knew. A concerted effort that ultimately barely became victorious, but the group of friends wouldn't hail themselves heroes. It'd be John carrying the brunt of the pain, the fight, the comeback. If Greg did not already have a profound respect over the soldier's capacity to rebuild himself from the ashes, he'd fully learn to respect John then.
Sherlock missed all that. How a tormented and bruised soul can once again soar high like a beautiful bird. Sherlock came back and only saw the scars, not the fight. Scars that trouble and torment the detective yet, because he knows he has inflicted them – unknowingly, stupidly – on the one he cares about the most.
Mycroft rescued Sherlock from an archenemy. Had Sherlock sought John to take the rescuer's place in an alternative plan, these two men may have been carrying a lot less scars in their battle armours today.
'But Sherlock's brain is to be donated to science, by his in insistence. He told me that', John parrots on. 'Also, he said I can't have his heart because he doesn't have one; which is patently untrue in many ways. Also I can't have his gallbladder, but he didn't tell me why. Mrs Hudson wants to sell his organs for transplant in the black market, apparently she's got some contacts. So it came down to very little in the end. Oh, and no burial either. Pyro-Viking-burial, was it? Can't remember right. Mycroft knows all that. Sherlock was quite adamant he didn't want a regular burial... again.'
Greg needs to clear his throat to regain his voice. When he talks, he still doesn't fully trust it.
'Sherlock wants to spare you of a second burial?'
'Nah. Don't think so. Maybe it's a bit of a mess, records-wise. There's still the first headstone, you know? I won't have them take it away.' John answers defiantly. Lestrade shivers at the amount of glistening pain he sees in John's honest blue eyes.
'It's still there? The headstone?'
John nods, with too much certainty for a man who does not visit often.
'There's blank space under his name, ever noticed that?' he asks in an eerily quiet voice.
All the experienced senses tingle in the seasoned inspector. He grabs John by the arm, and makes the short doctor follow him, stumbling in his in feet as they gun for the door.
.
TBC
