As Sherlock closed his eyes, the scratching of the charcoal, John's even breaths, the fishwives shrieking at the market down the street, the rattle of the carriage horses' hooves on asphaltum, and the distant strains of the accordion being played for a few centimes receded as he settled into his mind palace. Sherlock's mind thrummed like a locomotive as he flicked through the facts of the case so far.
One knee, found by a baker by the ruins of the Bastille.
Half a hip, discovered by a street child at the Charenton Asylum.
A neck, stumbled across by a doctor at the Hospice de la Vieillesse Hommes.
Pieces of three different corpses with their only intersection being the place of discovery: asylums and prisons all.
The neck had been his lucky break, he reflected. How much even Sherlock could tell from a knee and half a hip was limited, especially since the murderer seemed to have a sterile sort of madness about him. The lumps of flesh had been carefully vivisected with a scalpel and then hacked about with a saw of some sort.
To disguise the evidence? To set Sherlock off the scent? To spread a panic? Purely because the killer enjoyed a good temper tantrum? To tenderize before cooking? Unlikely, but possible. Not enough data.
From the knee and the hip Sherlock had deduced that there were two victims, both male, and both poor.
The hip had been discovered first by a street child's dog. The boy had thought the dog had stolen from a charcuterie until he attempted to pinch it off the dog to eat. He had realized that it was not pork or beef just in time.
The knee was slightly more recognizable as human and the Sûreté had thankfully picked up on the sudden hail of body parts. It was then that Lestrade had called on him at his apartment to set him on the trail of this ridiculous crime.
Sherlock silently cursed both Lestrade and his own bloodhound nature every time he was forced to seduce an informant or pick lice out of his hair but he grudgingly admitted that Lestrade had been good to a bored, posh addict throwing his life away. He had enlisted Sherlock in Vidocq's special police force, former criminals who went undercover to solve crime.
Sherlock had to admit that the force did work, crime rates in Paris had gone down by 40 per cent after they were introduced. He credited his usual brilliance with at least 20 per cent of the change. It was only this particular case that had left him stymied.
But after the neck was found, pieces had finally started to slot into place. It started with a flood of comprehension as it usually did, with Sherlock spouting nigh prescient deductions to the entire Sûreté before unexpectedly running dry.
He'd deduced that the link between the victims was their choice of work, all were male prostitutes and approximately his age. This was yet a third body, shaved the day of his death, suggesting an assignment. No signs of a struggle, but there wasn't much struggling one could do with just one's neck. Habitually wore jewelry, a lover's trinket perhaps? Longer hair, a bit of a dandy. A faint shadow that could be a love bite, but the flesh was too dappled with cuts to tell for certain. Could be a kept man, could be a maison du tolerance employee-
and suddenly Sherlock stopped. Lestrade, who had been taking notes, looked up, confused.
Sherlock had blinked. That was it. He had nothing more.
"Is that it?" Lestrade had asked disbelievingly. It had rankled.
"You gave me twenty square centimetres of bloodied flesh and gristle. I gave you age, gender, profession and jewelry. It's hacked beyond recognition. I'd like to see the incompetent wastrels you call detectives get even a fourth of that!" Sherlock had retorted aggrievedly before spinning on his heel and exiting, frock coat swirling dramatically behind him.
He had been rattled, he remembered, and calling in his homeless network had uncovered nothing of value. No one missing, no extra body pieces floating about, nothing more dangerous in the streets than a spooked carthorse.
He'd become desperate.
There was only so much even the great Sherlock Holmes could puzzle out without a crime scene, body, cause of death, witnesses, family, or suspects.
So he'd taken matters into his own hands. He'd called off any male prostitutes in his network and warned them. He'd dug up his most down market, seductive clothes, rented a squalid dump and settled in for some good old fashioned sleuthing.
Sherlock was a naturally able flirt, and very good at getting people to talk, and even with his dogged pursuit of scraps of information, slim, beautiful figure and prodigious charm, he'd stumbled across nothing but the very faintest whisper about the son of the Comte de Chambord having some unusual tastes.
His lips tightened a bit. The day after the rumors had come to his ears, he had come across Wiggins, an informant that Sherlock valued both for his brevity in speech and quick legs, lying bloodied in the gutter. He was alive, luckily, and Sherlock had taken him to his older sister in their cellar room and left him there with a generous 30 francs for treatment. The girl had been astonished and teary-eyed in her gratitude. It was medical care, rent and food for both of them clutched in her grubby fist.
Say what you liked about Sherlock, he took care of his own.
And now the men had come after him. Interesting. He would have to be more circumspect in his inquiries. He made a mental note to visit Wiggins in disguise soon, ostensibly to check up on him but really to see if the men who'd beaten him matched the one's who had attacked Sherlock.
There was something niggling at him about the placement of the remains. He called up his mental map of Paris and found no patterns. Not equidistant from anything, no clear next strike. Asylums and prisons. Is it an escapee from either? No breakouts recently.
He needed more data.
Sherlock scowled and dragged himself free of his mind palace.
John was still sitting by his side, drawing. Sherlock hadn't moved enough for mere mortals to notice so he took a quiet moment to observe John.
No tension around the eyes, relaxed neck and shoulders, almost dreamy expression- fascinating. It seemed that John was in his own version of a mind palace. Sherlock's esteem of the man ticked up a notch.
He swung his legs over the chair soundlessly and faced John, waiting for him to look up. When he did, John startled violently. The tension returned as Sherlock beckoned for the sketchbook. John passed it over wordlessly. Sherlock flipped it open and there he was again.
John had captured, in his smudgy, charcoaled way, the indomitable spirit of a bruised and bloodied Sherlock. It was a nigh perfect portrait, as John had already shown himself capable of.
Sherlock noted that the cheesecloth over his eyes had morphed into a blindfold and that there was a rattle of discarded scales on the floor next to him.
Sherlock as Lady Justice? He muffled a little snort. If only John knew quite how apt that was.
The image was striking. Subversive. Sherlock didn't count himself as any judge of art, preferring to stick to cold science, but as he looked at the proud, battered avatar of justice he lent his image to, a unsettled feeling in his stomach surprised him. The same cold, determined feeling had risen in him at the end of the Bloody Week. A cock of his head as understanding dawned. "You were a medic in the Paris commune. Is this…" He gestured awkwardly, unsure of the emotions and the artistic terminology.
"A reflection on it?" John seemed surprised, and contemplative. He began to tidy his supplies, packing them away.
"Yes, I suppose it is."
Sherlock contemplated him.
"You must have seen a lot of death." A pain crossed John's face, fleeting. He muttered an assent.
Intriguing. "What did you do in the Paris Commune?" John's mouth twisted wryly.
"How am I to know that you're not a spy, sent to trick me into admitting how many other soldiers I killed?"
"It's been six years, John."
"Paris was under martial law until just a few years ago, and the other Communards are still in exile in New Caledonia." John shot back. "It wasn't that long ago."
Sherlock considered this for a while.
"I was there. I was-" He was about to say one of the university freethinkers that drove the ideological fervor of the new society before remembering his disguise. He quickly regrouped.
"I was an assistant. I helped with the freethinkers."
John looked a little disbelieving.
"You might have known me through Courbet?" As soon as Sherlock ventured the tentative connection, John's forced calm snapped into a steely wariness.
"I told you nothing about that. Who are you?"
"A lowly lorette, nothing more. I ran errands and since I can write, I scribed for the philosophers. I assumed you knew Courbet, the Impressionist movement isn't that large." Sherlock was now regretting showing off as he seemed to dig himself deeper with every sentence. The little army doctor was still scowling at him and it was more worrying than it should have been.
"I never mentioned my artistic affiliation."
"Paint in tubes, John." Sherlock answered exasperatedly. "They aren't that common. New, and all. Mostly painters who prefer to paint en plein air use them. Like Courbet. And you."
John's eyes were narrowed.
"Pretty clever for a so called lowly lorette, aren't you? Not only are you familiar with your artistic movements, you're also conversant on current artistic technology and all the petty scandals and gossip. How do you know about all this?"
Dammit, Sherlock thought furiously. John was cleverer than he had supposed, and Sherlock just had to show off. Now John was suspicious, and rightly so.
Time for a distraction.
Thinking quickly, he gave a throaty rumble of laughter, and paired it with an elaborate stretch.
Tilting his head back to bare his milky throat, he raised his defined arms and coiled his body sinuously, visibly sensually luxuriating in the stretch.
His shirt was still unbuttoned and rode up on his flat stomach. He used that to his best advantage, bringing his arms down and behind him, letting his head fall back and arching his back in reverse, like a satiated cat.
Running his fingers through his tousled curls and leaning forward, he made direct, smoldering eye contact.
"I'm very, very observant, docteur captaine et Monsieur John." He purposefully purred his name in his best baritone, and was rewarded with a tiny snort.
"And I can't help wanting to know more about my rescuer. Is it a crime to be curious?" The little moue again, that had worked well last time.
John seemed entirely dazzled. His eyes had glazed over and he licked his lips.
Mentally congratulating himself on a seduction gone well, Sherlock plucked the sketchbook out of John's hands again, purposefully brushing his fingers alongside his and opened it randomly.
"You do beautiful work, John." He said entirely sincerely, gazing at his remote, bloodied, prideful face in the book. Perhaps he could learn from this oddly observant little man.
"How do you do it? How do you see all this?"
John shook himself visibly, forcibly pulling himself from Sherlock's orbit and after a second, he replied with only a hint of smugness.
"You may have sharp eyes... but you see, you do not observe."
Notes: asphaltum: early version of asphalt. the Sûreté: Guys this is absolutely perfect and fascinating so bear with me. This is the police force that was the inspiration for Scotland Yard and the FBI. It was started in in Paris in 1812 by Eugene Francois Vidocq, who recognized the need for a new kind of police work. These guys recruited former criminals to go undercover and solve crime. It's so perfect for Sherlock. The numbers he cites are also correct, they did really good work. Bloody Week: the Semaine Sanglante. The week at the end of the Paris Commune where the French government attacked the Parisian rebels and basically slaughtered them indiscriminately in the streets. Courbet: An impressionist deeply involved in the Commune. He pulled down a grand and important column and was hunted down after the quashing and forced to pay for his involvement. Paint in tubes, John: before the advent of paint in tubes, artists had to mix their own paints, which didn't lend itself to painting en plein air (outside). With the new invention came a new way of painting and a new way of looking at the world: Impressionism. So this is my first case fic, and my first Sherlock fic ever. So be loves and let me know how I'm doing? Tell me if you spot any plot holes? Oh, and happy end of finals week!