Twenty years later
Sherlock was tired. It wasn't a feeling he usually had, and it felt awful. He flipped his coat off and hung it up carefully on his wardrobe door, then yanked off the rest of his clothes carelessly, leaving them where they fell on the floor. He pulled on a pair of pyjama trousers and an old t-shirt and collapsed onto his bed. He only managed to sleep two hours before John came knocking on his door and asking if he was okay. Sherlock, automatically fully awake, shouted back.
"I'm fine John! Make me toast" he ordered
"Fine" he heard John padding around the kitchen and smiled. It was nice to have someone to take care of him. Sherlock got dressed in the same clothes he stripped off a few hours before, catching his eye in the mirror and looking away quickly. He'd spent so many hours as a child ordered to stand in front of the mirror and say he was stupid and worthless and a freak. Before he put the shirt on, he looked over his shoulder into the glass. The word was still etched into his back, the thick white scars standing out slightly from the rest of the lines covering his back. They were mostly from his father's favourite riding crop. He worried often what would happen if John, or for that matter anyone on the police force he worked so closely with, found out about the word etched into his back. Lestrade had saved him, almost a decade ago, from certain destruction. He had pulled him back from the brink of succumbing to drugs and the never ending, bottomless sadness that was always there in the background, waiting to cocoon him and suck him into the sanctum of death. Lestrade had not reacted well when he'd seen it. And if John saw... That would be catastrophic. He would never stop talking about it.
"Sherlock, your toast's ready!" John called. No, John must never know.
"Coming" it was so domestic it made him smile. He walked briskly up to the kitchen and flopped down onto a chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbow, his socks odd, his shoes dirty. John handed him a plate with two slices of buttered toast. Sherlock scoffed the food down, having not eaten in almost a week. He hated to eat, and only did it when his body protested so much he began to lose his mental edge. He remembered the long days, shoved inside the cupboard and denied food, and then the hours when he would be force fed everything in the house until he vomited. Then he would have to eat that too. Sherlock shuddered involuntary. John raised and eyebrow and he got up swiftly, abandoning three bites of toast and fluidly picking up both his and John's phones and checking them for cases. He was on the edge of boredom. He didn't like to fall over that edge. Thank God there was a text on John's from Lestrade.
Weird hit and run. Meet at station. GL
"John, we're going out! Got to catch a pedophile!"
"Awesome. Let me get my coat" John said, a hint of sarcasm making its way into the 'awesome'. Sherlock threw his coat on and was most of the way down the stairs before John caught up. He threw the man above him his phone, and went out into the cold of London's November air.
They got to the station in record time. Lestrade was waiting for him, and smiled slightly at the image of his friend in his floppy coat and woollen scarf.
"Morning Sherlock"
"Lestrade"
"So, a child was hit this morning, the driver didn't stop, but the kid shows all the signs of being murdered after maybe being raped. I can't explain it. He was hit by the car, there were witnesses, but he was obviously murdered elsewhere, we reckon strangled"
"The witnesses, did they see him get hit, or did they see a car accelerate and a child left on the pavement?"
"I dunno. Thinking about it, probably the second one"
"Let's go and see. Take me to the crime scene." They walked down to the crime scene together, Sherlock clocking exactly where they were and every shop around the stretch of road. "They slowed down. Something, weighing around seven stone, was dropped from the back of the... Black Ford Focus. Kid was dead before he hit the road. About three hours before"
"Bloody hell Sherlock, how'd you work that lot out?"
"Isn't it obvious, John? There is a small smear of blood here... and here. A chip of black paint here and here, from where the body hit the car. He must have been wearing something metal?"
"Yeah, his belt had black paint chips on it"
"He was dead three hours before because the blood here is brown, hard. The 'accident' was two hours ago. It takes roughly five hours for blood to get into this state"
They spent almost an hour at the crime scene, Sherlock dissecting every detail. Quite suddenly, Sherlock stopped and whipped around like a bloodhound with a scent. "John" he shouted, then ran off without another word, towards the direction he had looked. John shrugged his shoulders and jogged after him. He couldn't help screaming when he rounded the corner and saw Sherlock flying off the dented front of a black ford focus. He landed, his arm splayed unnaturally to his side, and was still.
"Sherlock!" John shouted, sprinting now towards his best friend. There was a trickle of blood racing down from Sherlock's mouth, another from a gash on his forehead. His arm was clearly broken, his ribs most likely at least fractured. John wanted desperately to pull the taller man onto his knee and keep him safe, but he didn't know if his back was injured. John yelled for Lestrade to call an ambulance, and, as he pushed hair away from a sweaty, wounded forehead, all he wanted to do was howl with the unfairness of it.