John was glad when Sherlock let the girl, Holly, leave without harassing her unduly or pestering her with questions. He was impressed that the consulting detective seemed to be content with her assessment of the shades in the scarves, which probably meant it was accurate. He saw her to the door and waited as she hailed a cab, ensuring she was off safely. Then he shook his head as the car disappeared up the street before shutting the door against the chilly November air and heading back upstairs. There were a number of things vying for his attention, not least that Sherlock had nicked Lestrade's police badge and there would be hell to pay if the DI ever found out.

That was shunted out of its position of importance when John stepped back inside and found Sherlock had marked up the mirror even more, writing seventeen underscore lines on the glass, followed by a question mark. He groaned and met Sherlock's eyes in the black-lined glass, but Sherlock ignored this, refocusing instead on the puzzle in front of him. With this sort of thing available to him, John knew he was defenceless.

"Try to find a connection between the victims, at least the most recent two pairs," Sherlock ordered him in a tone that indicated he didn't even consider that John wouldn't listen. John held his ground for a moment, but when Sherlock didn't blink or let alone acknowledge that John was resisting, the doctor sighed, giving in. He always gave in, it seemed. Well, not always, but often. But he didn't really mind, although sometimes it was best to make Sherlock think he did. If only because it occasionally made Sherlock think up creative ways to show his appreciation, or to wheedle John into doing as he wanted.

John fished around for some files and took two of the pictures off of the table from their places beside their scarves. He shook his head – this was absurd, wasn't it? What kind of person did this sort of thing, sent this sort of message? Was it a game?

That thought made John think of Moriarty and he repressed a shudder. An unbidden thought leapt up – had the man somehow faked his own death and was now playing with them again? But no, it was easy to think that, because it meant that there weren't other people out there just as mad, just as intelligent perhaps, or close enough to as made no difference, and with just as much disregard for human life. John thought of that cabbie from their first case, whom Sherlock had told him at some point had also been a proper genius. He didn't know if that cabbie had been a psychopath, but if this killer was, it explained the high level of intelligence. Unfortunate how those two things went together.

Wouldn't it be easier if we lived in a world where the psychopaths were generally dim? he asked himself, shaking his head over the files, standing up to rescue a pad of paper and a pen from under the mess, then deciding he needed a cup of tea. It was already past mid-afternoon and although they'd eaten lunch at a nearly normal lunch hour at Angelo's, John had a feeling it was going to continue to be a long day. It seemed like last week that he'd actually seen Tricia, not just this morning, even though Josephine was still downstairs with Mrs. Hudson. Probably napping now, John thought, eyeing the time, or having just woken up. He could do with one of those himself.

Instead, he made two cups of tea, delivering one to Sherlock who took it out of habit and held it for a few minutes before putting it down and forgetting about it. He was still stationed in front of the mirror, chewing on his lower lip, the unstoppered felt pen held between his thumb and forefinger. John watched him for a moment, and Sherlock drummed the fingers of his left hand against the surface of the table just beneath the mirror, his wedding band catching a brief glint of light.

"You're distracting me," he said without ever meeting John's eyes.

"Sorry," John said, turning back to his own assigned work, sipping his tea, then putting the mug very carefully on the floor next to his foot, in the absence of anywhere else to put it. He opened two of the files, clearing a space for himself on the table, hoping that dislodging the other files wasn't going to get him snapped at.

He began to jot down information about the couples' family members and close friends that were indentified in the reports. It was still early on the most recent murders, of course, but Lestrade had sent over what he could while they'd been waiting for Holly to arrive from her shift at the store.

He paused, glancing at the photograph of the most recent couple that he'd taken from the table and paper clipped back to the file folder. Linda Gordon and Frank Gordon were older than Sara Clayworth and Tarik Aswad, both in their late forties. For a moment, John thought he had a flash of insight, checking to see if they had children, but yes, the Gordons had two grown sons, and the second couple had adult children as well, and grand children. So it was coincidental that the other three couples hadn't, probably because of their ages, he guessed. And – he checked – Aswad and Clayworth had only been married about seven months. So if they'd been planning on a family, they hadn't made it there.

He sighed, scrubbing his eyes once with his hands and put the file from the second case away, returning to the two cases from London. He checked the information on the Gordons' sons, but although they were adults, they were still young, in their very early twenties. He wondered what it was like to be orphaned at that age, and so violently. But they didn't appear to know Clayworth and Aswad, and both were away at university, so they were unlikely to have come in contact with the first set of London victims.

John made notes, trying to tie names together, trying to tie events together, but having no luck. There seemed to be no overlap at all, in family, in associates, in business, in where they'd been, in where they lived. He picked up his tea again and sipped it, then made a face, because it had gone lukewarm while he'd been working and he hadn't noticed. Sherlock was still stationed in front of the mirror, staring at it as though he'd get an answer if he just looked long enough and hard enough.

"Could this just be random?" John asked.

"They had to all have been somewhere where the killer could identify them, John. And since he was sending a message, it's unlikely he picked them at random."

"Yes, but he could have just been standing on a street corner for all we know," John pointed out.

"In Sheffield and Codnor and Bicester and London? No, there was some reason he was in all four of these places. It's there, we just have to find it."

John muttered under his breath – he was having doubts, and if it was there, the man had gone to great lengths to ensure it wasn't easily visible. But then, that wasn't the point was it? The message was the point. Everything else was probably secondary to him.

"Well, I can't find anything connecting the London cases," he sighed.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," Sherlock murmured and John wondered where he'd trotted that out from. He glanced back over his shoulder, but Sherlock was bent over a sheet of paper now, tapping the pen against his lips, this time at least not getting black marks on his skin.

John drained his tea, even though it wasn't hot anymore and tried to go back to work. Outside, the winter sun edged toward the horizon, finally dropping below the buildings across the street and vanishing, leaving them in growing twilight. John turned on some lamps and when he did so, Sherlock pushed himself from the mirror with a snort of disgust, taking out his violin and settling it onto his left shoulder to play.

John took his empty tea mug and Sherlock's full but untouched one into the kitchen, emptying it into the sink. He wished Sherlock would drink it, because dehydration wasn't going to help him any, but John also knew he'd probably exhausted his supply of having Sherlock do what he wanted by making him eat earlier that day.

He walked around the flat carefully and music followed him as he did so, rolling his shoulders, rolling his neck, trying to work out the kinks. If he wasn't careful, his left shoulder was going to start protesting, aching, and Sherlock was nowhere near in the mood to help him deal with it. John let himself take a break as long as there was music, which alternated between rapid pieces and slow, almost melancholy strains, which seemed somehow fitting for the day and the early November night that was upon them.

When Sherlock stopped playing and carefully restored his violin to its case, John sat down in front of the files again with a weary internal sigh, glancing at the mess of notes he'd made, none of which found any common ground between the two London cases. Sherlock went back to his station in front of the mirror and John bit his lower lip, trying not to tap his pen against his paper, knowing it would irritate the detective.

A sudden hiss made him look up, twisting over his shoulder, expecting some sort of result, but Sherlock was bent over, head dropped forward, thumb and forefinger of his right hand pressed against the bridge of his nose, with his left arm braced against the table. John could see the muscles in his jaw working and was on his feet in an instant, berating himself for being surprised.

"Sit now," he ordered, but Sherlock shook his head, eyes still pressed closed.

"I'm fine," he snapped in reply, but John saw his braced arm tremble, once.

"You're not fine, you're bloody well pushing yourself to the point of collapse," John snapped back.

Sherlock raised his head to glare at him and John could tell he was forcing the expression to be the only thing that showed. John gripped Sherlock's arms and wondered at innate Holmesian obstinacy, because Sherlock was not going to just let him win.

"I'm fine, John!" Sherlock repeated. "Let me go."

"Not a bloody chance, Sherlock," John snapped back. Honestly, he'd been better at pacing himself after the crash Moriarty had orchestrated all those years ago, almost three now, he realized. And probably because he remembered bits and pieces of it, more than he'd ever let on to John, the doctor suspected. And he'd been able to see a lot of his injuries – John had caught Sherlock with a hand mirror in the bathroom trying to see the stitched and healing cut on the crown of his head, but it was at a very awkward angle.

He probably half disbelieved he'd even been injured, if he couldn't recall it or see it.

John wondered how someone so brilliant could be so bloody stupid but held his tongue against asking. It certainly wouldn't help.

"You haven't slept properly in over two days, and even last time, you probably only got four or five hours, despite the fact that you're still recovering from a concussion!" John snapped. "You haven't had anything to drink since that coffee at Angelo's, and that was the only real meal you've had in the past two days. You need to stop this, Sherlock, before it bloody stops you."

"I'm perfectly capable of managing myself," Sherlock replied coolly.

John ignored this, steering Sherlock toward the bedroom, despite the fact that Sherlock resisted. Sherlock was stronger than he looked, but had a tendency to forget that John was actually stronger than him, when he had a mind to be, even if John was shorter. Years in the army hadn't amounted to nothing.

And he wasn't letting some sodding serial killer get the better of his husband.

He shut the bedroom door behind them and Sherlock darted around him, but John pressed himself up against the door, shaking his head.

"Don't make me call Mycroft and have him commit you to a hospital for enforced sleep," he threatened.

Sherlock stilled suddenly, drawing back, eyes flashing and expression tense.

"You wouldn't," he countered.

"Try me," John replied, letting a growl slip into his voice. He hated to do it, but he knew it would work, because it was a threat that could be carried out.

And it did work. Sherlock relented, giving him an offended glare. John ignored this as well, wondering what kind of tally he was racking up in Sherlock's mind, because Sherlock was undoubtedly storing this as important knowledge that would require future consideration.

"It's not even gone six, John," Sherlock pointed out.

"And you still haven't slept in over two days," John rejoined, shaking his head. Knowing Sherlock wasn't going to help him out, he fished out a pair of pyjamas and tossed them on the bed, before setting to work divesting Sherlock of his clothing.

This wasn't entirely bad, although Sherlock was damned if he was going to let John in on this. The doctor was more than a little experienced in getting Sherlock out of his clothing, although, admittedly, this didn't usually involved getting him back into something else immediately. It wasn't unheard of, but much less common. John's hands worked quickly and efficiently, almost a bit clinically, and Sherlock made no move to help him, ensuring to keep the displeased glare on his face.

If he was going to be forced to take a nap like some infant, he'd at least enjoy a part of it, he decided. It wasn't as though he even felt dizzy anymore. Somehow, he suspected that pointing this out to John would be fruitless. Honestly, the man was the most stubborn person on the planet, possibly with the exception of Mycroft.

He kept his expression stern but appreciated the sensation of John's fingers against his bare skin, noting that John slowed down after a few moments to let his touch linger here and there. Sherlock feigned further detachment when John dispensed of his trousers and underwear, because it wouldn't do to actually encourage John about this. Nor would shagging help his thought processes on a case.

Once John had Sherlock changed, which took some time, because Sherlock's lack of cooperation was not entirely passive, he shuffled the detective into bed and left the room with a strict warning not to go anywhere. Sherlock considered how long it would take to climb out the window onto the fire escape and then pick the lock to get back in the front door, but John was back before he could pin down the time required, bearing two glasses of water. He made Sherlock drink both, watching with impatiently crossed arms, then shucked his jeans, leaving them in an untidy heap on the floor, pulling on a pair of sweats instead. He climbed in beside Sherlock.

"Are you just going to sit there until I fall asleep?" Sherlock asked.

"If I have to," John replied. "Lie down."

"And if I don't?"

John shot him a pointed look, but these really had nothing on Tricia's, even if John could threaten him with more dire consequences, like withholding sex. He was still somehow less intimidating. Possibly because Sherlock suspected John wouldn't last long himself under that threat, whereas he was certain Tricia could make his life rather painful in inventive ways, if she was ever so inclined to try.

But John knew something about him that Tricia did not, and employed it now, lacing a hand into Sherlock's hair and stroking the back of his scalp gently with his thumb, taking care now to avoid the healing cut.

"John!" Sherlock growled, but was unable to help himself as he relaxed, feeling the irritation and tension draining away. He tried to hold onto these but could not, cursing himself for having this weakness and John for being clever enough to have found it and learned to exploit it.

But he couldn't bring himself to be truly angry, not really.

"Just a few hours, Sherlock," John said reassuringly. "It will do you a world of good."

"I'm not even tired," Sherlock protested, but his eyes fluttered closed, giving lie to his protest. He sighed, giving up then, knowing he'd long ago lost anyway, and consented to snuggle under the duvet, John joining him. Sherlock hesitated a moment, then just surrendered entirely altogether, wrapping himself around John. If he was going to be trapped in bed at a completely unreasonable hour of the day, so was his husband.

He closed his eyes, telling himself he was not really going to sleep anyway, focusing on the sensation of John's hand on the back of his head, and drifted off without quite intending to.

Sherlock woke up two minutes after midnight and dislodged himself enough from John's sleeping hold to crane his neck back and check the time on the clock beside the bed.

Good, he thought, a smile twitching on his lips. Now John can't say I haven't slept at all today.

He allowed himself a moment to feel triumphant about that, disregarding the fact that "today" was only two minutes old. John was sleeping very soundly, their legs tangled, the doctor's arm wrapped possessively around Sherlock's waist, his head on Sherlock's pillow. Before Sherlock had moved to check the time, John's face had been nuzzled against his neck, which was most definitely not an unpleasant feeling.

He was tempted to just lie there and watch John sleep, his eyes adjusting to the near darkness that was offset only slightly by city lights filtering in around the edges of the curtains and the light from the clock. John had no idea how wonderful it was to just watch him sleep. Of course, it was equally wonderful, perhaps more so, to wake him up and watch his face fill with desire and anticipation.

But not tonight. There was a puzzle that wanted solving, so Sherlock disentangled himself carefully but expertly from John's grasp, gently rolling John onto his back. The doctor made a sleepy protest but snuggled down back under the duvet when Sherlock pulled it up to his shoulders. He kissed John lightly on the forehead and slipped out of bed, opening and shutting the door silently. John had, at some point, conscientiously turned the lights off in the flat, so Sherlock moved through the darkness from memory, turning on a single lamp near the mirror and another near the table, where the scarves were laid out.

He picked up Holly's notes and cast a glance over the scarves and the tags, identifying the shades easily now that they were distinguished and marked for him. Absently, he chewed on his lower lip, eyes dancing over the information, even if it was information he could not quite decipher.

Sherlock snagged another pen and paper and drew seventeen lines, followed by a question mark, then tapped the pen against the paper, thinking.

What was it? An alphabetic cipher? If so, was it in English? A reasonable assumption, since this was England, after all, but it need not necessarily be the case. Or was it numeric? A combination of the two?

Best to start with the basics, he thought. This was meant to be deciphered and read, and it was quite well hidden already. The killer wouldn't want it to be too difficult, presumably. It was already quite tricky as it was.

Sherlock found the palest shade of scarf, from the first murder, and wrote an "a" in the appropriate place. He found the darkest shade and wrote a "z" for the second scarf in the second murder.

It didn't amount to much, because if he was bracketing himself with the whole alphabet, he had a lot of room for error. What if it wasn't "a"? What if it wasn't "z"? What if it wasn't both?

He tapped the pen against his lips, then pushed himself away from the table, taking Holly's notes with him, standing in front of the mirror for a moment, then shaking his head at his reflection.

He desperately wanted to play his violin, but John was sleeping, and he was more inclined not to wake John up, lest his husband be subsumed by the doctor again and he started insisting on more sleep.

Sherlock didn't need more sleep. He was tired of his body making unreasonable demands, just because he'd taken a thrown beer glass to the head. It was unsuitable that he should react in such a typical manner, and he just needed to start listening to himself.

And he felt rested enough as it was, having managed six hours of sleep, which was his normal habit when he did sleep.

He paced about the flat, tapping his fingers together lightly, playing the violin in his mind. It was a pale substitute, but at the worst of times when he couldn't play, it made somewhat of a difference.

He stood over the scarves again, eyes narrowed, trying to think, trying to see.

There were ten shades, according to Holly, and the one that repeated itself was in the middle. But in the middle at the fifth position or the sixth? This was tricky, since there was an even number. Had it been an uneven number, eleven, for example, there could have been an easily definable middle with five others on either side.

What if he were approaching this the wrong way?

He picked up the pen and paper again, leaving the "a" and "z" where they were, but concentrating on the four spots with the most commonly repeated shade. It would have to be quite a common letter, so a vowel was a good choice, but it was in the middle, so it could be a consonant from the middle of the alphabet.

He chewed on his lower lip.

"O" would be a decent choice, as with "l" and "n".

Unless, of course, the pattern was skewed toward lower letters, like "s" or "t".

He ignored this, jotting the three letters he'd come up with in the four required positions, then frowned at the page. He could think of no word that contained "alz" "anz" or "aoz", although it was impossible to judge right now where the word breaks were.

But, "n" was the middle of the alphabet, or "m", depending on what side one fell on, although "m" was less common, so less likely to be repeated so frequently.

He scratched out the "l"s and the "o"s and jotted in the "n"s in the four appropriate spaces, leaving him with

_ _ anz_n n_n_?

Which made no sense.

He checked Holly's notes again. There was a shade darker than the "n" shade, so he wrote in an "o" between the "z" and the "n".

Still, that made no sense.

Something zone? he thought. He sketched an "e" in behind the second "n" and then realized if it was the case, there were one more, so filled that in as well.

_ _anzone_ _ _ _en_n_?

It still made no sense.

Sherlock glared at the paper and then up at the mirror. He was certain about the "n"s and so filled those in on the glass, leaving the others, which he wasn't sure about.

He pushed himself away again, padding through the flat in the silence, suppressing a growl at his inability to play the violin at the moment, at the unnatural stillness, which he'd never liked in the flat. He stopped by the bedroom door and opened it a hair, listening to John's breathing, taking a moment to appreciate that, to help it refocus him. Then Sherlock eased the door shut again, raking his hands through his hair in irritation.

"What do you want?"he hissed at the mirror, not really at his own reflection, which stared back at him from behind the black marks.

He paused suddenly, thinking of that ridiculous American game show John sometimes watched with Mrs. Hudson, where they spun a wheel and purchased letters to solve a puzzle.

Good lord, was the killer a fan, too? It would certainly explain a lot. Sherlock suddenly felt as though he'd been shoehorned into being a contestant against his will, only there was no prize, but a penalty for failure.

After all, what would the next message say, and how long would it be?

He was approaching this wrong, he realized, because those game show contestants usually eliminated vowels as quickly as possible. Sherlock snatched Holly's notes again and frowned at them. He had two vowels in place already, so that left him with three others. Quickly, he counted off their positions in the alphabet, then tried to gauge where they might fall in the shades.

He pencilled them in tentatively.

I_anzone_i_ _enin_?

It still made no sense. What about a zone? And surely that was incorrect, because it would be "a zone" not "an zone". Unless, of course, the killer didn't speak English as a first language and was sending a complicated and mangled message.

Or it wasn't in English.

He sighed, chewing on his lower lip.

But then, no, he wrote in a "g" at the end of the sentence, because if it was English, it made sense.

He was still wrong, he could feel it.

He began pacing again, turning the words over and over in his mind, trying to peg something down that could have that strange beginning. He was aware he was faced with the very real problem that, if it wasn't English, he was stuck unless it was French or German. He had resolved to learn Portuguese once, hadn't he? It had never happened. John spoke some Dari Persian, bits and pieces only, from in his time in Afghanistan, but couldn't read or write it, Sherlock knew. Sherlock's German wasn't as strong as it should be, since he didn't use it as much as he did his French.

But in London, it could be anything.

"Damn," he murmured, shaking his head, stopping to stare at the mirror. He met his own eyes and narrowed them, raking a hand through his hair again, ignoring the fact that it was dishevelled now from both sleep and his frustrated thoughts.

"I can hear you," he whispered to the unknown killer, the man who had left the complicated message, wanting to be understood and acknowledged, but obviously not without effort. "But I can't understand you."

He chewed on his lip again and then froze.

No.

It couldn't be.

It couldn't be so simple.

He stared at himself, scarcely daring to breathe, then stepped slowly toward the mirror again, looking down at the sheet. Still holding his breath, as though letting it out would break the spell and force the universe to notice and negate his work, Sherlock crossed out the "z" and wrote in a "y".

He'd missed a vowel, which was not always a vowel.

He closed his eyes, seeing the missing letters slot themselves into place.

It couldn't be that easy, could it?

But it was a short message, a question.

So elegant in its simplicity, and so pointed in its purpose.

What else would a serial killer want?

Sherlock had deduced the first set of these murders was not the killer's first actual murders. How long had he been killing, and where? Hadn't Moriarty started in early adolescence? If this man was a psychopath, and Sherlock knew he was, and he was even a fraction as intelligent as Moriarty, he could have been killing for years and have had no one notice, no one draw it back to him. It was part and parcel of what psychopathic serial killers did.

It was never their fault, because they did not understand blame or guilt or remorse.

He unstoppered the felt tip pen that lay on the table beneath the mirror and filled in the blanks on the glass quickly, as though delaying would make it wrong, make the whole thing fall apart.

Isanyonelistening?

He drew sharp vertical lines between the words, separating them more visibly on the glass.

Oh, he thought, staring at the letters, not even seeing his own reflection now.

Is anyone listening?

Sherlock let out a sharp breath, feeling the silence in the flat expand, the mess around him dissolve, the night ebb away, so there were no sounds from outside, no city spread around him, no John sleeping in the next room, no Mrs. Hudson downstairs, nothing, nothing but himself and the killer and the beautiful simplicity that connected them.

It was like a dance, a tentative dance with an unknown partner that he could neither see nor hear, but who had reached for him across nameless distances, both of them moving through London, removed, as strangers. But Sherlock knew him, if not his name, if not his identity, and the killer didn't know, not yet. He had stretched to find someone, anyone, who could hear him.

Is anyone listening?

"Yes," Sherlock whispered.

(End)

A/N: hat tip to mustangwoman who gave me the idea for the Wheel of Fortune connection.