Sherlock had entered the flat long before John.
Realizing that the doctor wasn't there, he kept himself occupied by deducing what John had been doing while he had been gone. He walked around the rooms and drank in the familiarity.
The teapot had been used consistently, that was for sure. His violin case was completely dusty, although the top layer had apparently fallen off. It had surely been opened recently.
His gaze fell upon the empty bottle of scotch. Sherlock instantly understood what had transpired that night.
The good doctor had gotten plastered, and then was drugged. No, that wasn't it. Sherlock looked again at the violin case and then shook his head despairingly.
No wonder he didn't remember any of their last encounter. The doctor must have thought that he had gotten the pills out of his system, since that combination would have proved fatal. But enough had been absorbed to make a difference.
In his grief, John had in fact drugged himself. The fool. Mycroft was right, caring was certainly not an advantage.
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Sherlock sprung upright and gasped for breath. The oxygen pouring into his lungs was doing nothing to clear up all the confused thoughts smothering his head.
The last thing he remembered was… Reinchenbach.
But wait, wouldn't that mean he was dead? He glanced around and the cold metal table he had been laying on indicated that he was in the correct place for that conclusion.
"Ohhh you were faking? I was faking tooooo!"
A shiver ran down the detective's spine at the appearance of that unmistakable voice. He drew the thin sheet surrounding him closer.
"What have you done?" Sherlock's voice was hoarse, but still operational.
His mind worked quickly as the key words to unlocking this mystery echoed in Sherlock's head.
"As long as I'm alive you can save your friends. You got a way out."
And then Moriarty raised the gun and shoved the barrel in his mouth.
As Jim pulled the trigger, the detective heard a distinct hissing sound just like the guard had described when he had stolen the crown jewels.
In hindsight, it was sure to be some chemical element that would slow his pulse down enough to be almost untraceable.
Sherlock was still puzzled about where the bang came from.
Looking back on it, there was no blood when Moriarty fired the gun. There should have been tons. The bright red only stained the pavement when his head hit it. Must have been a hidden packet. Clever.
Sherlock had been too distracted, too overcome with emotion to notice the subtle things that he normally would.
He had even been so foolish to not check if Moriarty was actually dead.
"You didn't think that the game was overrrr did you now?" Jim's typical drawn out sentence snapped the detective out of his reverie.
"I don't understand. Why go to all this trouble?"
"You always ask the right questions Sherlock. You don't care about how you got to this point, you just want to know why. Why did I save you?"
"I saved you because I owed you. Told you that right from the beginning. I owed you the opportunity to destroy yourself, your public image, and most of all, your friends."
"Ohhhh we are going to have sooo much fun, you and I!" Moriarty squeaked with delight, and then sneered.
Sherlock felt sick, knowing there was nothing he could do that would make a difference. Jim was going to keep him as a companion and use the fondness he felt for his friends against him.
"I told you that I would burn the heart out of you."
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Nine months had passed and Sherlock time and time again had proven useful as Moriarty's invisible right hand man.
The worst part about the whole thing was that Sherlock began to realize that he was enjoying himself.
He hated the thought. Completely despised it. He was only supposed to be doing this for the benefit of his friends. Maybe Jim was right, and they were more alike than he originally had thought.
What would John think of him now?
He knew what others would think, Donovan had been bold enough to state that one day Sherlock would be the one putting bodies at crime scenes.
Sherlock wasn't actually murdering people, but he wasn't exactly preventing them either.
"I brought you a presentttttttt."
Moriarty basically pranced into the room, followed by one of his big goons. Slung over his shoulder was a small figure, definitely unconscious.
Sherlock rubbed his hands together quickly in excitement. "What have we got today?"
The man was unceremoniously dropped into the dentist's chair. Sherlock's breath hitched in his throat.
A groan escaped from the figure's mouth, followed by an almost indiscernible "Don't be dead."
John Hamish Watson sat in the chair before him.
The detective immediately reeled on Moriarty with wide eyes. He had followed the rules. He had stayed away. "You promised he would be safe!"
"And so your friend shall remain as long as I do."
Sherlock gathered all the courage he could muster and tried to appear like this turn of events didn't affect him as much as they both knew it did.
"He's just my colleague." He thought back to when it was John stating the lack of emotion about Sherlock, when they had first started getting to know each other.
There was no denying that there had always been a connection between the two men.
"Not anymore." Jim corrected. "You work with me now, remember that. And to demonstrate that you won't forget it, I have a wondrous task for you!"
Moriarty held up an object the size of a pinhead. Dread filled Sherlock's stomach. He had seen that device before. He had quite enjoyed implanting it into others, but now he recognized that those had just been practice for this more important procedure.
"I see that you are aware of what this is. The smallest explosive known to man, affectionately named the nanobomb. I like to call it insurance."
He was defeated. The smug smile on Moriarty's face told him so. He had no choice.
He took a deep breath and removed his fingernails from digging deep into the palms of his hands. He hadn't even been cognizant that he was doing that in order to not lose control.
Sherlock raised the 18 guage needle with an additional sedative and carefully injected it into John's neck. "John…" he whispered in the doctor's ear "…I'm sorry."
John's eyes ceased fluttering and became completely still.
"Oh don't you worry your prettyyyy little head Shirley! I'm sure there won't be MANY side effects." Jim cackled at the detective.
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At some point Sherlock found himself at John's desk. Opening the drawers one at a time revealed nothing particularly fascinating. Until he reached the top right one, that is.
There lay John's gun. It was where it always had been, but the aspect that caught the detective's attention was how clean it was.
He shuddered at what that revelation meant. Sherlock didn't want to play the game any longer, and he closed the drawer with a thud.
Suddenly he heard another noise coming from downstairs. The doctor had returned.
[END CHAPTER 2]
Authors Note: Sadly I do not own Sherlock. : ) Hopefully I haven't scared anyone away just yet! This chapter was a bit more tricky to write, and I'm crossing my fingers that the timeline jumping wasn't too confusing. Let me know what you think! And as always, thanks for reading.