Chapter Twelve:
For Sherlock, it was far from a good evening. As soon as he left the dining room, the full weight of the past eight hours landed right on the back of his neck. The after-effects of the near melt-down were still making his stomach churn. He desperately needed to rinse his mouth out with something, anything, to get rid of the taste of bile. Away from the log fire, he was feeling the cold, too. His brother never heated the house properly when he wasn't hosting a Government event.
In the hall at the bottom of the stairs, Sherlock hesitated. He needed to think, really think. The fact that he'd broken the phone open solved a few problems- but it could not get Flight 007 airborne again. His brother would have to work very hard, and be very clever to resurrect the situation. He had no doubt that Mycroft would be successful in turning this around, but it was only a battle to be won, rather than the war itself.
The fact would remain that Moriarty could not be brought into custody. It was simply not possible. The man had too many contingency plans for just such an event. And any government that tried it would be held to ransom by the man's network. For the same reason, any attempt to kill Moriarty would be countered by unleashing an unstoppable series of crimes against the state that dared try such a thing- even if it proved to be successful. It had been Moriarty's protection for almost a decade, and it would stop Mycroft from being able to truly defeat Moriarty.
Sherlock was simply horrified that he had been the unwitting instrument of Moriarty's plots against Mycroft. He was angry to the point of rage that Mycroft had been stupid enough to keep something so important from him. He needed to think this one all the way through and figure out how to stop Moriarty. He knew Mycroft would not want him to do this. He didn't care. He was so angry right now that what his brother thought just didn't matter anymore.
He made a decision, and went up the stairs, down the corridor to the east wing of the house, up another flight of stairs and then into his old bedroom. Alone amongst the bedrooms, his had never been converted for use by visitors. It was too small and dark to be thought of as acceptable in today's world of five star hotels and conference venues. Now more of a storage space, it still held a wardrobe in which some of his old clothing still hung. He changed into a pair of dark jeans, a thick sweater and then dug into the back of the wardrobe floor for his pair of old hiking boots and socks. He left his suit hanging on the wardrobe door, and then went down the back stairs to the kitchen. He took a bottle of water from the fridge and rinsed his mouth out to banish the taste of bile, then drank the rest of it, before taking another bottle for the journey. He liberated one of Frank Wallace's old shooting jackets from the boot room- it was waxed cotton and reasonably waterproof, if a little muddy and worn. Then he went out into the courtyard and disappeared into the night.
He needed to walk. It was the best therapy he knew for settling his mind when too much was going on in it. The helicopter ride seriously overloaded his sensory perceptions. The stress of realising how much his own stupidity would cost his brother was another nail in the coffin. If he didn't get his proprioceptive and vestibular systems back in synch, he was headed for a serious melt-down.
To keep his mind focused, Sherlock decided to walk back to London. There were fifty seven miles between the house and Baker Street, but that would be as a crow flies, and he had no wings. His journey on foot would nearly double that distance. He'd start now and walk through the night, then all day tomorrow; he'd probably be back by late evening or early morning on the third day. A lot depended on whether he could be bothered to try to avoid showing up on cameras, which would require him to do more off road walking. He knew the footpaths, the river walks, the bridle trails and the tracks of West Sussex as well as he knew the streets of London. He knew that his brother would track him on the estate's security systems, so he wanted to get off the land quickly. He headed into Northpark Wood. At the far lake, he'd cross the Greatham Lane. Another half mile across fields and he would reach the River Arun. Following that watercourse upstream, he would then get to North River and be able to take that past Horsham. Then up and over the South and North Downs. It was surprisingly easy to keep to the rural corridor between main roads and settlements all the way to Esher. After that, he'd reach the Thames at Hampton Court. From there on, the Thames Path would lead him home. He'd done it before. He'd have to climb fences, cross fields and generally trespass to hell and gone, but no one really cared about a sole pedestrian enough to stop him.
He turned his phone off and entered the trees, relishing the darkness. Once his eyes were fully adjusted, he could see the lighter track clearly. His ears picked up the sounds of his childhood- wind murmuring in the tree leaves, the rustling of undergrowth when a vole or weasel went about its business. A little owl screeched somewhere in Humphries Copse. He wondered if the badger sett near the estate boundary wall there would still be occupied. Probably not. Mycroft is so bloody PC these days. The badgers were under threat of culling; too many cases of bovine tuberculosis made farmers wary of them, as they were carriers of the disease.
He just parked the problem of Moriarty, and then double-parked the issue of Irene. I will think about them in a couple of hours or so. He found his mood lifting.
oOo
Back in North London, John went up Baker Street in a bit of a state. He'd spent the entire five hours he promised to Irene worrying. He'd not followed The Woman's advice. To be honest, since Jeanette broke it off in the New Year, he'd not had many dates, and didn't feel able to give the few women he had taken out a last minute call. He ended up in a pub, the Gunmakers, on Aybrook Street about ten minutes' walk away from the flat. He liked the Greene King IPA they served. With a pint in his hand he settled into the corner. It had a reasonable menu and he chose a couple of Indian samosas and a curry. Sherlock didn't like them as spicy as he enjoyed them, so he told the barman to put on the hot chutney.
It turned out to be pub quiz night, and the regulars started filling the place up. He decided to watch the competition. He found himself wondering what Sherlock would make of it. ("Competition? More a test of stupidity, John. I mean, why would anyone clutter their brains with useless data about football teams, soap opera stars and inanities about Hollywood films?") At one point, there was a question about the solar system and it made John smile into his second pint. He realised that even when he was alone now, his friend was still with him, never far from his thoughts. John was only ever really free of thinking about Sherlock when he was working at the clinic or as a locum at one of the hospitals. Diagnosis required total concentration on the patient; it was one of the reasons why he was reluctant to give up medical work, even when Sherlock's case load might have tempted him to do it. It was a break from the full-on demands of sharing a flat and a life with the man.
That made him feel guilty. He hated Irene Adler for doing that to him. He'd made a whole series of assumptions about Sherlock's need to be protected, never realising that the man was more than happy to meet her on his own without saying anything, in order to protect him from getting annoyed about it. Sherlock would have deduced John's distrust, and just avoided the whole topic. John sighed. On the other hand, the man's first encounter with her had not exactly ended well- drugged and then thrashed with a riding crop…Oh My God! John just connected what happened in The Woman's bedroom with what he knew now about Sherlock's experience with being assaulted with a riding crop when he was fifteen.
He put the pint down and tried to breathe. Calm down. She couldn't have known. But…Sherlock did. Or was he so drugged at the time that he couldn't remember it? GHB did have a tendency to affect memory of the incident. For once, he hoped that was the case.
He tried to think it through. What he had just seen of the two of them suggested there was sexual chemistry from her side- or was that just her way of expressing a connection? Sherlock showed no reciprocation in that way; was that because women in general were "not my area" or…could he have been referring that night in Angelo's to sexual contact of any kind? He remembered the conversation at Battersea Power Station. He'd said "Who the hell knows about Sherlock Holmes?" And six months later he was no clearer about it. He'd never seen Sherlock react that way to anyone, male or female.
Irene Adler scared John; but clearly she didn't scare Sherlock. All that Dominatrix stuff was sort of like…water off a duck's back. His friend seemed impervious to Adler's banter or to her sexually motivated approach to life. Did he actually understand that sort of thing? He remembered asking Mrs Hudson, "Has he ever had any kind of…girlfriend, boyfriend, a relationship, ever?" She'd been as baffled as he was that neither of them knew.
As he tucked into his curry, he spent a while trying to understand what Sherlock might see in her. Apart from the dominatrix stuff, apart from the sexual innuendo that she constantly used, apart from the way she dressed (or undressed), well, if one could set those aside (and he was having real difficulties doing just that), then what remained? An incredible intelligent woman. That much he got. One who had outsmarted Sherlock. That didn't happen very often, if at all. Maybe, it was the novelty value. Meeting someone who could compete with that massive intellect, so Sherlock had become fascinated? Maybe.
By the time he finished these ruminations, the curry was sitting uncomfortably heavy in his stomach. Getting stressed about what might or might not be happening back in Baker Street was giving him a headache, too, not helped by the increasingly raucous laughter of the pub quiz contestants. Fuelled by more than a few beers, the teams were getting more aggressively competitive. So, he decided he needed some air. He walked south. He had an hour and a half to kill before he could return when he said he would. He headed for Oxford Street's lights and a bit of window shopping.
By the time he'd reached Oxford Circus, he was bored with that, and decided to head for another pub. This one was the Old Explorer on Great Castle Street, a traditional pub. John loathed the new breed of wine bars; give him an old-fashioned boozer any day. This one was a Greene King pub, too. So he had a third pint of IPA. Fortunately, the place was not very busy and he was left alone to think about how he felt. Irritated with himself, a tad defensive, too, if the truth be told. Irene did that to him. Made him annoyed. He could not get out of his mind the look she had given Sherlock when he broke the code. Unfettered admiration combined with unabashed lust. And yet Sherlock had not understood it. Was I right to leave them alone together? He worried about what might happen when a sexual predator met a man who did not relate to people in that way. Yet, there was something going on. But, he found it hard to imagine a man who disliked being touched turning into someone who liked intimacy. A man who had little sense of personal boundaries, yes- but not one who had much, if any, sexual experience, if his brother's comments at Buckingham Palace were to be believed.
He scrutinised his own motives. Ever since he'd moved into the flat, he'd been continually surprised by Sherlock. Life's never dull when you share it with a mad genius whose idea of fun is chasing criminals across London's rooftops. It was just what he needed. The psychosomatic limp was healed within days, and the depression that dogged his limping steps since Afghanistan lifted soon afterwards. While it was challenging living with the man, it was also something that John had grown to like. Despite his grumbling about being taken advantage of, John actually liked feeling needed. He knew that Sherlock would never admit to appreciating it. He didn't expect thanks. But a strange kind of friendship, a mutual dependency, had grown up. The younger man resented John's dating. ("It gets in the way of the case work, John.") He was totally selfish in that way, and very annoying at times. It wasn't just the solar system- the whole world had to revolve around Sherlock, according to him. But, it did make John realise that if push came to shove, and he had to do with one but not the other, the dating would always take second place. Jeanette had been right.
The only other person with whom John had to "share" Sherlock was Lestrade, who on more than one occasion had made it clear to John that he was delighted to have someone else to shoulder some of the responsibility of keeping that brain and its transport functioning. After initial suspicions, even Mycroft had grown accustomed to John's presence in his brother's life, seeing him as a calming influence.
So, it was a shock to find that Sherlock was not only willing but able to form a relationship of some sort with another person. And one such as Irene Adler. Well, there's no accounting for taste. Yes, damn it. He was jealous of the attention he was paying to her. It made him realise his own shortcomings. If Irene's appeal to Sherlock wasn't sexual, and he had no evidence of that yet, then perhaps it was intellectual. That made John even more self-conscious about his own shortcomings in that area. Maybe Sherlock was just bored with him.
He sighed into his beer. Three pints and he was getting maudlin.
When he headed west on Mortimer Street he was still trying to suss things out. Turning north onto Baker Street, as he came up the road, he realised that the lights in the living room were off. That made him wonder where they might be. He let himself into the flat and came up the stairs, taking care to make his entrance a little noisier than usual. Give them warning, if… But he found it hard to imagine those two making out on the sofa. He was relieved to find the room empty when he got there. A quick glance down the corridor from the kitchen showed him that Sherlock's bedroom door was open and there were no lights on. He cautiously peeked around the door and found it empty, too, with no evidence of anything having taken place there between two people. So, not in the flat at all. He wondered where they might have gone. Looking for more privacy? His mind boggled at the thought, as he made himself a cup of tea and prepared for bed.
