A/N: Still not British, nor doctor or detective. -csf


10.

Sherlock Holmes is a conundrum to anyone who comes even close to knowing him. The man is tall, sharply dressed, with a sharper tongue and an endless roll of witty remarks that he embroils effortlessly in intelligent and unique case solving rants. He is unassailable and distant like a demi-deity to rationality and order.

He can run after a suspected criminal through gnarly underground tunnels and tackle the criminal to the mucky sewer passages and still not come out looking dirty nor unkempt. The luscious dark curls will bounce into artistic disarray, and the white marble checks will flush as the shirt fabric strains around the buttonholes lined across his chest, the mud will flick across his high cheekbones accentuating them, and Sherlock will flash a wicked smirk to John Watson as John finally catches up with the detective's long legs, immediately joining in on the action, helping restrain the struggling criminal with handcuffs that always materialise out of thin air.

John puts down this incredible cover model ability to look poised at best, and artistically dishevelled at worse, to Sherlock's upbringing. John imagines there were butlers, governesses and a variety of hired help, or at least Mycroft Holmes has so lead him to believe, some times.

All the times, if the three piece suit and the tall black umbrella on sunny days are to be taken into consideration.

Mycroft, and the fact that Sherlock seemed oblivious on how the washing machine worked, when John first introduced him to it.

For the first time in a very long time, Sherlock couldn't cajole others to do life's boring bits for him. John was adamant that washing cycles and detergents were, at times, as important as a triple beheading, and just as worthy of Sherlock's consideration. John couldn't be ordered, bribed, tricked into it, nor emotionally blackmailed. So, of course, Sherlock tried arranging for the chore to be done for him at the nearest laundry store. John intercepted that lazy commercial exchange, and because he found out that one of his jumpers had mysteriously made it to the load, he went off on Sherlock for stealing it for his science experiments. Which the detective denied, but of course no one otherwise couldn't explain that odd colour shifting stain that persisted through the next couple of washes; most likely some pH indicator, because it changed colour whenever John showered or sweated.

Worse than that, John caught Sherlock trying to bin the purple shirt – he'd buy new shirts, have them delivered at 221B – and John not only stopped the sacrifice of the purple shirt but he also became very, very angry. Sherlock sighed, rolled his eyes, pouted, and all his usual tricks, but John was solid as a mountain. That was very, very unusual in Sherlock's life.

In fact, Sherlock was used to deceiving and manipulating others in order to get what he wanted. He wasn't shy to use his sharp tongue, nor his looks. That always got him quick results he could rely on. Except with John Watson.

John would brush off most remarks, with a quiet self-confidence that thrummed at his core with fierce determination. "Not good, Sherlock" wasn't a scathing comeback, it was the patient reminder of conversations past and overall propriety.

"Heroes don't exist, John" came up a bit too often, when the consulting detective forgot to give the Yard their solved case, as solving the case was often more engaging than humiliating the overworked Yarders, particularly if John kept censuring what Sherlock really wanted to say to them.

Clients were prone to trust Sherlock with their cases when they saw the hefty imaginary price tag in Sherlock's suits, which suited the detective just fine, the Holmes bank accounts were managed by someone else and never ran dry. Witnesses were easily swayed by an attractive smile and some innuendo, and that easily happened with both sexes, Sherlock wouldn't discriminate, it was all faked lies anyway. Sentiment, he despised it anyway. Not to mention the tears, the accents, the quick application prosthetics for disguises. All justifiable means to an end, the higher cause – or case.

But, really, Sherlock thought, in a disappointing B&B in a lost town where John Watson grew up, when had John learnt so much manipulation from Sherlock himself?

Or could John really be that oblivious? That straightforward and yet so blind to the impact on his audience?

Where Sherlock Holmes is carefully considered manipulation, John Watson is straightforward honesty – and the electric charge created by two polar opposites in a confined space is driving inspector Lestrade absolutely to the edge.

Sherlock has been caught unfiltered, as he watches John on the only bed, studying human anatomy with a fervour that would befit Sherlock during one of his best cases. The intense look on Sherlock's features a wordless confession of attachment and yearning for connection.

He's hanging onto John's every unspoken word, waiting for a hint, a sign, a gesture, from John. Something that defines this grey area where they tiptoe around each other, after Bart's rooftop.

And Sherlock is too much cowardly to proceed without a sign from John. There's too much he won't risk losing, he only just won back John's trust after the Fall.

He's yet to win back his redemption, make it up to John in such a way that it no longer stands in their past, sticking out like a sore thumb.

Today, Greg senses Sherlock would have inched a bit forward, actually tried to define the crackling electric potential between him and John, hadn't Lestrade been there as a clumsy third wheel. It might have been good for John; stunned the doctor out of complacency. As it is, it took something else – danger and heroism – to bring John out of his shell, out of the confinement of his own mental walls.

Second best, and that game between Sherlock and John persists, strangely warping light and shadows around them, trying to bend two parallel lines towards each other.

Then glass smashes and smoke billows; and the window of opportunity shuts them out.

.

Reverent hands lower the unconscious blond to a large wool coat spread out over cold, damp rubble in an urban industrial decay scape. Lestrade tries to help, ready to hasten in retreat if Sherlock yet again growls at him, to keep him away from John.

The mad man is beside himself with worry over his mate, most likely missing that important other part of himself that is John Watson when he is conscious and interacting. Right now, the narcotised army doctor sleeps heavily under a chemical spell from which he can't be snatched before the clock runs down. He is unaware of the gentleness in Sherlock's handling of him, or the way his scarred shoulder makes his left arm hang more rigidly and closer to his body than his right arm, as Sherlock holds his head and neck protectively, lowering him to the wool cocoon. Greg softens the fall of the last Watson in town, and wonders how he'll stop Sherlock Holmes from unleashing a vengeful hell on the town's inhabitants.

The inspector glances at the scruffy looking man that urged them through a side window of the B&B, and through dirt paths and side roads onto this desolate and abandoned industrial building. He tries not to think of how suited these old conveyer belts, heavy rusted machines and mechanised cranes on overhead beams would befit a horror flick.

'Water', Sherlock growls, making the inspector jump; Greg is on edge himself. The detective is looking straight over the inspector's shoulder, at the new forced element of the team.

The stranger flickers an unsteady gaze from Sherlock to Greg as his excuses die on his lips. He dares not contradict the detective at this point. Instead he gets up and goes to find some fresh water from somewhere.

The inspector wonders if it's even feasible to get potable water here. The factory has long been left unused, to rot. It's unlikely there would be running water still connected.

'John?' Sherlock chokes a bit on repeating the familiar name, as he gently pats John's cheek. It's no good. John won't respond, not yet.

'Sherlock, what are we doing here? Are we even trusting that guy?'

The distraught detective shrugs, silenced, diminished, focusing all his attention on the army doctor.

'That smoke bomb, that's very sophisticated stuff, Sherlock. Lord knows how many of them are involved in this!'

'Almost all of the town, certainly all of the older residents, the ones that grew up here, inspector. Next question?'

Greg blinks. He could doubt Sherlock in his frazzled state, emotions blurting through the cracks in the detective's carefully built façade. But he can't forget something John always says, something John always believes and trusts with his very life – Sherlock works best under life-or-death pressure.

Sherlock is at his finest under the most dire circumstances. John trusts this. He will save "in extremis" as the last card up their sleeves when the world explodes and crumbles around the two mad men of Baker Street. That's one of the reasons John's selflessness works so well in their duo, it puts the sometimes needed pressure on Sherlock in order to make him excel the limits of greatness, transcend onto the realms of legendary.

Notwithstanding John's own tendency for excessive risk taking in order to feel alive, and an exaggerated belief that Sherlock will always find a way out and never, ever leave him behind.

And John is annoyingly correct, Greg concedes, as he sees the fire burning deep in Sherlock's eyes, making them a strange shade of danger; like cold diamonds that could cut through steel.

'Sherlock, how long have you known this?'

'The puzzle pieces have been collected long ago, but the full image hadn't revealed itself to me until now. I've been slow, too slow. This man, this redemptive criminal, has finally given me the full view of the board.'

'Can we trust him?'

'He's a simpleton with a conflicted moral code. He was there as John was almost pushed onto the train tracks of an incoming train. Seeing the plan come to action gave him cold feet. Luckily for him, John survived the crude murder attempt. He has gained a chance to redeem himself before John. I for one will not stop trying to get John's forgiveness.'

The inspector frowns at the arrogance and briefly wonders if Sherlock enjoyed facing Moriarty and those other big shot criminals with the speech pattern of a master detective from eras bygone. Probably, yeah. Or maybe it's just Sherlock's inner Mycroft surfacing.

Most likely Sherlock fancies himself in some redemption quest of his own for John's full forgiveness, so John won't again hesitate to come to him, to bring the consulting detective a case pertaining his past.

'That's all very nice, but I need to know if we're trusting that guy right now, Sherlock!' The inspector looks over his shoulder and adds: 'If he hasn't just done a runner and left us behind.'

Sherlock has the grace to smirk.

'He'll be back to atone to John.'

'Speaking of personal experience, are you?' Greg asks ruefully.

Sherlock easily ignores the inspector's tirade.

'He's come too far, it's not like he can turn back now. Who in town would believe he hadn't spilled the beans to us already?'

'Wait a minute. The whole town is in on this?' The inspector's voice exudes curiosity.

Sherlock pretends to ponder. 'Most all of them. I suppose someone could have moved in in the last couple of months and still not be aware of what is going on.'

Greg is about to lose his patience with the genius detective. This is clearly the same lanky junkie Lestrade met years ago during a particularly tough case, and who solved it out of a glance to a manila file (still closed) out of a trench coat pocket. Oh, and who casually returned the case solved as child's play, not worth nor his time, nor his effort.

'Pray, tell me, oh great one,' Greg spits, voice dripping with sarcasm, 'what is the bloody big cover up!'

Sherlock smiles, a rare, lopsided, partly deranged smile that is so becoming, and so alive, that is utterly disarming.

'Industrial pollution, environmental triggers on a male dominant inherited genetic disorder, and a nation-wide scale cover up. John carries the genes, by the way. That's why it's always been about John, and not Harriet, his sister. Hence the guilt their mother felt, the way she turned to her father for help, even if he was just a simple country doctor. It's been passed down in the paternal lineage. It's a Y chromosome mutation, and John's father carried constant anger, masking up the guilt he felt. How difficult it is to face a son that may grow sick and die because he's your son? How hard it is to love him properly when you might lose him in a matter of weeks. It's a piss poor excuse not to be a better father, but it's easier to rest in victimhood than to fight the odds. How easy it is to feel persecuted by the whole town, their grieving mothers and torn families, and how easy it is to believe that John's grandfather is not studying the illness, but humiliating him every time he builds up an altar to sacrifice the integrity of those who are freshly deceased, to cut them up, expurgate the rotten bits and never, ever, letting John's father forget, for a second, that he has been spared by a stroke of luck, but his son may not.'

The inspector blinks. 'Genetic disorder, with an environmental trigger. A time bomb, activated by some nasty chemical, produced in factories like this one.'

'Bingo, inspector. The town's residents put it together. Most lived here long enough to know who had safe genes, and what families had been stricken down by the illness already. The girls weren't in danger. The men had been lucky, escaped it somehow. It happens, but the survival rate is low. John's father survived it. So did John, in the end. All the town's boys were watched attentively, some developed the tell-tale symptoms, got the disease, and died.'

'And Hamish dug those up, and studied them.' Lestrade frowns.

Sherlock shrugs. 'It really was for Science, in this case. I think we can agree their families didn't know. If they found out the graves had been disturbed, whole families went after John's grandfather with metaphorical pitchforks. And the Watsons moved town once again.'

'John needed to know! He should have been told. What if John would have had a male child? He should have known the danger he carried. Medicine evolved a lot, after all. If John knew, and the worse came to pass, and there was something he could do to save his son... Not telling John is compromising the survival of a potential child of John.'

'The clues, Lestrade! John's grandfather left him clues to puzzle it together. I suppose someone argued that it was unfair to burden a child too young to carry such knowledge. Hamish didn't spell it out, but he left enough clues for John to puzzle it together.'

The detective's gaze is intense, and his whispered voice sharp.

'Why not a straightforward letter?'

Sherlock scoffs. 'Have you met John? He's one stubborn loyal idiot. Convincing John that his father was keeping a secret from him might take half an eternity; and even Hamish's ghost would have been wary of that! No, if you want to convince John Watson of something he's too stubbornly loyal to see, you must give him plenty of clues, and plenty of time to puzzle it together on his own. John is clever. He always gets there in the end.'

The inspector blinks, wondering if Sherlock speaks of more than just the case at hand. If Sherlock is waiting for John to puzzle together other little clues between them and reach their inevitable conclusions.

No one knows John quite like Sherlock does, that's for sure.

Lestrade looks down on John Watson. His eyelids flicker, he's surfacing slowly, returning to them. It's hardly been fair, to hear Sherlock's deductions before John does. So the inspector deduces something on his own; Sherlock is asking Greg to help him convey all this to John Watson.

John will inevitably feel betrayed by his family, and will need his friends' support.

As the inspector looks up, the old mask of boredom and high intellectual walls is back firmly in Sherlock's demeanour. A noise alerts him to the return of the man that got them to this safe space, walking over the rubble that litters the damaged space.

.

Sherlock raises from the rubble with an indecent feline flexibility that allows those metal grey eyes to pierce through this other man incessantly.

He's not young, his clothes are a bit scruffy; scars on his hands indicate professional years as a manual labourer, but some regeneration shows he's been out of work for a while; supermarket clothes, affordable but bland and ill-fitting, full of wear revealing a habit of drinking beer on the sofa, always with his left hand holding the can over the sofa's arm, left-handed obviously; scratches at his jaw when he's unsure, John would advise to approach slowly, this man is frightened he's made the wrong choice in helping them.

'I take it you know John Watson.'

The man nods, his eyes flicker down at the fallen doctor with some pity.

Sherlock's eyes narrow in John's defence.

A water bottle is handed over, Sherlock takes it. Doesn't uncap it yet.

'We were at school together, although not for long. I'm older than John, but he still punched me after I kissed his older sister.' He shrugs. 'We were both teenagers and trying out for a first kiss. It wasn't meant to be, two days later Harry left me for a girl scout.' He smiles bravely, but also a bit hollow. Sherlock really misses John at these times, these conversations make him cringe and not know what to say.

The inspector steps in. 'You forgave John for that punch.'

'Oh yeah, he packed it well, but I get why he did it. John was defending Harry. He's alright. I don't want him dead.'

'Who does?'

'Some of the others.'

Sherlock zooms in on something only he seems to see.

'Who's giving the orders?'

The man looks around the derelict building.

'The owner of this place.'

Sherlock looks all around too. Oh, how could he have been so blind?

'Is that the man who got you this water bottle for us? You really dropped the ball there. This gift of trust you brought us, this proves someone else is pulling the strings behind the shadows. There may not even have been much of a mob outside the B&B. A smoke bomb and a few folks to shout threats and keep us moving so we don't see the true scale of the attack. You built it up, made it seem like the whole town was in on it still, just like in the old times when Hamish was persecuted. All this to bring us here, to be spied upon. I can recognise hidden cameras when I see them. They tend to not carry the dust and cobwebs as the rest of the rubble and old machinery. So who's behind the screen? Who's too afraid to face Sherlock Holmes?'

Greg is standing tensely by the detective's side, only his brown eyes shifting constantly between the detective and the scruffy man. He's the first one to see the man on stepping up from behind them. The newcomer stops a few yards away from them. Sherlock doesn't turn to acknowledge him. Greg really misses his service gun by now.

'I'm no Jim Moriarty', the newcomer says, with humour weighing his words. 'But I'm glad to have caught your attention at last.'

.

TBC