They get up the next morning wordlessly, the silence stretching between them. John can tell that Sherlock is preoccupied, irritated even, but he doesn't know why. His head throbs with the lack of sleep, his mind flitting restlessly between thoughts.
He wonders what he screamed in the night to bring Sherlock running; what Sally Donovan is doing at this moment, what Anderson's role in all of this was.
He wonders, fleetingly, if he will ever feel normal again.
Sally sits uncomfortably at her desk, her mind splintered into a million different directions. She knows the answer on paper, knows what she should do, but she can't bring herself to do it, to ruin one life and add insult to injury in another. When Lestrade passes, she lowers her head quickly to her papers so he won't see the expression on her face.
She never was any good at poker.
He rolls up his sleeve deftly, not even needing to unfasten the buttons any more. The weight loss isn't what he craves, but the feeling of power over his own body relaxes and thrills him in equal amounts. Letting the blood run is…different. It feels like a release from the tension that builds up inside him, and simultaneously an anchor to reality when sleep deprivation makes him feel like he is floating.
He hates himself for it, from a medical perspective and from the perspective of a man who has seen people die in battle; it feels trivial, pathetic, juvenile. The kind of thing that he always sneered at as a junior doctor.
John watches the blood bubble up to the surface of his skin, coalescing into dark droplets and trailing down the crook of his elbow, and feels the sudden urge to laugh at what he has turned into.
He looks up, and the smile falls from his face as his eyes drop closed and he takes a hasty step backwards. The man in the mirror doesn't look like John Watson any more – not that he minds that, he's always found his face too plump, eyes lost within crinkles of skin – but what distresses him is what he does look like.
Shadowed eyes, pale papery skin, a hailstorm of scars littering his arm, and a guarded look that just won't leave however hard he tries…
He looks like a rape victim and the thought makes him want to cry.
He needs to talk to someone, he realises with no small amount of displeasure. He needs Sally.
Lestrade looks at the papers on his desk that he's supposed to be doing something with – god knows what – and stares at the wall again. He doesn't know what to think, apart from that something is going on with Anderson and Donovan and the former hasn't turned up to work with the other sitting at her desk like a ghost, staring into space. Add to that the fact that Sherlock hadn't been himself for weeks, and Watson was essentially turning into a walking skeleton (and he wonders if there's a link between the two), Lestrade's life is not easy.
He picks up the phone decisively, hesitates for a fraction of a second, and then taps in Sally's extension.
"Can I have a word?"
When Sally walks in he can tell she's been crying. Her eyes aren't red but she's wearing no make up and he didn't have to channel Sherlock to deduce that she expects to cry again.
"Sally" he says gently, "Can you tell me what's going on?"
Her lip wobbles suspiciously and her fingers tighten around the frame of the chair.
"I'm not sure that I can" she says, her eyes fixed on a stain on his desk, unblinking, and Lestrade hasn't expected that.
"Are you in trouble?"
She doesn't say anything for a moment, but he sees the fat tear roll down her cheek and splash onto her knee and feels a wave of sympathy for her. She's not had the easiest of times he knows - a woman in a man's world, having an affair with a married man which is the Yard's worst kept secret and the scratching post for Sherlock Holmes – but he has never known her to show even a flicker of weakness before now.
"No" she says finally, still not meeting his eyes, and he doesn't want to ask the next question.
"Is it Anderson?"
She looks up at him suddenly, her face stricken, and an unpleasant feeling uncoils in his stomach.
"I don't know what to do" she says, her voice so quiet he can barely hear her, "I know something that I don't want to, and I don't know what to do."
He sits back, massaging his temples, feeling the onset of what is likely to be a long-lasting headache. Tears are trickling freely down Sally's face now, and he pushes a box of tissues towards her, aware that he's not being as sympathetic as he could but stumped by the situation. He doesn't feel he can force the answer out of her, and in some ways if it involves Anderson then he's not sure he wants to know.
They sit there in silence, both trying to build up the courage to make the first move, tears still dripping down Sally's face although she doesn't sob, her jaw clenched so tightly it must be painful.
"Sally…"
"He paid someone to attack someone else" she says, the words all coming out in a stream with a hitch in her breath at the end, and then unable to restrain herself her resolve breaks and she sobs loudly, burying her face in her hands.
Lestrade's breath leaves him with a whoosh and the pieces fall into place.
"No"
The word, the denial is a waste of time. He knows from the look on Sally's face that it's true, and she doesn't need to reiterate it.
When she looks at him, her eyes are shadowed and exhausted and he feels a pang of sympathy.
"I thought he was a good man" she says, dashing the tears away with the back of her hand, "I'm sorry."
Lestrade passes a hand over his face as though he can brush off the exhaustion and sick feeling twisting in his gut.
"Can you tell me what you know?" he asks, not even slightly surprised when she shakes her head, "Sally, please."
She sniffles, suddenly looking much younger than her age, fragile and distressed, and begins to talk.
Sherlock gazes unseeingly out of the window. He is certain there's something he's missing, some key fact that will piece together the puzzle, and he's not naïve enough to think that his feelings, platonic as they are, aren't having some sort of effect on his intellectual capabilities. He feels oddly protective over John, for no rational reason. The man's an ex-army doctor for goodness' sake, he's more than capable of looking after himself, and yet Sherlock can't help but to feel this wave of concern every time he looks at the other man.
It's been like watching someone fade away in front of his eyes, literally and metaphorically. It hasn't escaped his notice how John avoids food, how he spends time alone so much more, avoids eye contact and physical touches. He sees it, but he doesn't understand what it means, doesn't understand what he's meant to do.
He doesn't stir when he hears John come downstairs, hesitating at the doorframe. There's a pause of three, maybe four beats where the footfalls stop, and then he hears them padding down to the front door and resumes his gaze into the middle distance for a few seconds before inspiration strikes and he leaps to his feet again.
"Follow him!" he exclaims to himself, and grabs his coat.
John makes his way through the office to Donovan's desk, and stops dead when he sees her.
"What happened?" he asks, his stomach knotting uncomfortably as he takes in her puffy eyes and dishevelled hair.
She looks up at him, her eyes full of apology, and shakes her head.
"I'm sorry John," her voice cracks, "I had to tell someone. It's my job."
He loses his breath momentarily, feeling as though he's been kicked in the gut, ears ringing uncomfortably.
"They've taken him away."
Even through the cold rush of horror and adrenaline he can feel a stab of sympathy for her, having turned in her lover and partner.
"I'm sorry" he says, hoping the words sound heartfelt, because he can barely hear over the rushing in his ears and the thumping in his chest. Sally looks up at him, concern on her face, and says something he can't hear, her hand reaching up. He jerks away violently, too violently, overcome with the horror of everyone knowing now what's happened, and as he steps back from her outstretched hand and horrified face his collides with something large and firm behind him.