Title: Fear Itself (2/3)
Characters: John, Sherlock, misc. unmentioned (ACD and BBC canon spoilers in second part)
Rating: K+
Word Count: (this bit) 4321
Warnings: general creepiness, mild snark, shameless h/c and fluff, poetic license with universe-blending...my usual, in other words.
Summary: John is accustomed to being kidnapped at this point in his London residence, though he never expected someone else to adopt Mycroft's signature abductions in order to lure him in without a fight.
A/N: Written for the Challenge 018 at watsons_woes, my first challenge entry in I think well over a year. I set as my goal, to write a fic which fulfilled the requirements of creepiness/scariness without resorting to supernatural phenomena - and without physically laying a finger on any of the main characters. Now in three parts; let's hope it doesn't mutate further. o_O

It's surreal, actually, and if he were safe at home behind two locked doors and Sherlock he'd be laughing at himself – because it's straight out of a third-rate horror flick. But it's not a film, and he really is running down a deserted street in an unknown part of town, close to midnight, and the street lamps are going out one by one just behind him with a rhythmic click-pop that is far too regulated to be coincidence or mere electrical failure, and his heart is pounding so loudly he can count his pulse in his eardrums, and he can't tell if there are really footsteps behind him or if that's just his admittedly overworking imagination, and there's actually a dog howling somewhere close by, for goodness' sake.

To top it all off, Sherlock is prattling in his ear, and even if the man were making sense John wouldn't be able to tell, since it's impossible to run and properly hold a phone to the side of one's head. Finally he gives up and stuffs the mobile in his jacket pocket, still connected, and sprints for the main road several squares ahead of him. Sherlock's voice trails downward off on a bellowed I know you have these rooms bugged, Mycroft, so get up off your infernally lazy late-night-snacking– and if John wasn't out of breath by this point he'd laugh manically at the idea that he's more upset about Sherlock alienating his brother unnecessarily than surprised that Mycroft has the sitting room of 221B under at least audio surveillance.

The lamp behind him sizzles and then something shatters with a loud pop. Not a gunshot (he hopes), but it might as well have been, for all the good it did his nerves. Cold adrenaline now fuels his aching legs, limp forgotten in the flight for life, and he sprints the last few meters to the road he has been aiming toward this entire time.

It is deserted, bereft even of vehicles, but given the events of the last half-hour he is not overly surprised. He does, however, snatch a leaflet from where it lies forgotten, trapped under a plant-pot outside a closed Chinese restaurant, and as he yanks the phone back to his ear he scans it to make sure the name matches that of the restaurant before him.

"Hackford Road," he gasps breathlessly, cutting Sherlock off in the middle of a rant on the inefficacy of the London electrical systems and Mycroft's security forces.

He can almost hear Sherlock snap to attention. "What?"

"I'm on…Hackford Road…somewhere," he answers, doubled over almost at the waist in a futile attempt to catch his breath. He shuffles into the reassuring light of a street lamp and takes stock of his surroundings; not the nicest of areas, but most of London is safe enough if a person is smart about his behavior. He's walked through far worse neighbourhoods than this. He wouldn't really be that worried, as he can take care of himself and has before now in the course of investigations, were it not for the circumstances.

"How on earth did you end up all the way in Lambeth?"

He sighs. "I wouldn't know, Sherlock, now would I? And where, exactly, would Hackford Road be in Lambeth?"

"Two streets west of Brixton Road, which is parallel to you. Multiple bus stops and definitely better populated this time of night. Head that direction. I'm hanging up to call Mycroft and have him pinpoint the disruption in the CCTV feeds. Two minutes, John. Keep moving and watch your back."

The line goes dead before he can acknowledge the order, and he pockets the phone as well as his watch (far too fancy for his taste, a gift from Sherlock after he'd dropped John's other on in acid, though the thoughtfulness was negated a bit by the fact that his flatmate had charged the watch to one of Mycroft's credit cards), not willing to draw any more attention to himself as a target than he has to. One look back down the street from which he's come, and he refuses to shiver at the sight of an entirely dark road. He has not, apparently, been followed into the light of civilization, but that does not mean he is safe. Nor, conversely, does it mean there was actually anyone there in the first place, though it is a bit much to be coincidence, and he still has no idea why he was abducted and then left unharmed. It is more than a bit unnerving, and he believes he can be forgiven his understandable trepidation and – because only a fool would refuse to admit it – his fear.

Fingers on his wrist briefly to see if his heart is still racing and how badly, and then he sets off down the cross street, staying out of the shadows, and hustling as quickly as he can on still drug-heavy legs. He crosses Cranworth Gardens (now there are street signs a-plenty, he notes in exasperation, and wonders if the masterminds behind this had actually gone so far as to remove them in the location he'd been left) and moves on down the shabby side street toward Brixton Road, which means far more to Sherlock I-have-a-miniaturized-London-A-to-Z-saved-to-my-mental-hard-drive Holmes than it does to him.

It's not even the promised one hundred twenty seconds before his phone blares in his pocket.

"What did he have to say?" he asks, and is pleased that his voice has steadied now.

"I couldn't get through,"is the sobering reply.

"You mean the line was busy, or…?"

"I mean I didn't even get that automated tone telling me the number could not be completed as dialed. Just white noise, John."

He swallows, and watches the shifting shadows a bit more closely. The CCTV cameras are still off all around him, dark and silent and foreboding by virtue of the missing red lights. He's almost to Brixton Road; he can hear the traffic of cabs and late-night buses, the signs of life and of safety in numbers.

Sherlock's tone is tense, clipped in that way that indicates he is intent upon a problem. Or worried. Or both, given the circumstances. "Someone obviously doesn't want me being able to contact anyone," is what John hears next, and his heart sinks as the detective continues. "I got the same thing when I tried to call Lestrade."

"Texts?"

"Won't go through; they aren't even being delivered."

"Well, that's lovely," he mumbles, side-stepping an empty crisp packet as it blows past in a gust of crackling wind. "Try Mrs. Hudson's landline in the flat?"

"Dead. I'm coming to find you, John," Sherlock says, and he hears the tinny noise of the phone being jostled from hand to hand; the man is putting his coat on. "Just keep moving east to Brixton Road, then head north, and tell me as soon as you see an intersection so I have a location for the cabbie. As soon as you see one, John, are you listening."

"Yes, yes, give us a few," he snaps, though he thinks he can be forgiven his irritation under the circumstances. Something scuttles into an alley just behind him. Probably a cat; too small to be dangerous, or so he hopes.

A thought occurs to him, and he bites his lower lip, debating whether or not to mention it.

"I know," Sherlock articulates suddenly through the phone, and he curses his flatmate's ability to read his mind even without being able to look at him. "Whoever is doing this apparently doesn't mind that we can contact each other; they simply do not want us to be able to call in reinforcements. It certainly would have been easier to simply ensure the destruction of your mobile, rather than selectively disabling features of it."

He sighs. This is getting a bit old; they might as well be married if every criminal in the city thinks he is the best way to get to Sherlock Holmes. At least in that case he'd be legally entitled to Sherlock's not-inconsiderable family fortune and wouldn't feel guilty about shelling out five pounds fifteen on chocolate biscuits every Friday. Not that he would get to eatsaid biscuits unless he hid them better than the last box he stuffed under the cling-wrapped toes in the crisper, but –

The definitely-not-hysterical-thanks-very-much part of his mind informs him that he is rather behaving like the wife, and he snaps back into reality with a jolt.

"So, I'm probably bait to lure you out into a trap, since they obviously wanted me to call you."

"Most likely, yes."

"Maybe you should stay in Baker Street then, Sherlock," he begins, hoping by his calm tone to make the man stop and think for a bit, but it isn't any use and he knew it probably wouldn't be. And, if he's honest with himself, he's a bit selfishly glad that Sherlock isn't going to leave him to face this on his own.

"Out of the question. Hold on, there's a cab." Loud scuffling, a door slams, and then Sherlock's back on the line. "Brixton, fast as you can. John?"

"Haven't gone anywhere," he mutters dryly. Something clangs behind him, and his heart shoots up into his throat before thudding back into place. He's nearly to Brixton Road now, unless he's been heading the wrong way this entire time.

"Stay on the line with me, John. What was that?"

"Something shifting in a bin, I think. Listen, Sherlock; if whoever it is wanted me dead they'd have done it by now, God knows they've had plenty of opportunity. They want you, and you're practically just handing yourself over to them gift-wrapped."

"You would rather I let you walk home all the way from Lambeth when we both know someone is following you, then?"

"It's better than walking into an ambush, Sherlock. What if that cab you just got into was planted there?"

"Improbable; I waited for the third one. When on a case, never take the first or second cab which trawls past, John; I have told you this multiple times. Do try to pay attention."

He doesn't answer.

Déjà vu is unpleasant even at the best of times, and this is definitely one of the worst. His therapist would be proud of the fact that he doesn't panic, though his mouth does go a bit dry and he can feel the beginnings of uncontrollable shaking start in his hands and knees.

A red laser-dot has suddenly appeared on his chest.

"John?"

He breathes in, one-two-three-four, and holds it, one-two-three-four, then lets it out, counting to eight. And again, and again, and each time forces the panic to recede.

Focus.

The laser sight isn't moving; a steady hand, then – a professional sniper, he suspected one with military experience. Probably the same one they'd never found after the incident at the pool. He'd suspected that there was only one sniper there; for one thing, the multiple laser sights after Moriarty had re-entered were flickering wildly and bespoke of a different hand than the steady one which had kept upon him during the negotiations. He'd watched the laser sight travel over him, flicking from detonator to his heart, and then still stay on his exposed arm when he'd tackled Moriarty from behind; it had been a professional, and a steady one. But when the multiple sights had focused upon both him and Sherlock when Jim had re-entered the pool, they had been flickering wildly. For another thing, the steady hand had kept the laser on him until after he'd jumped Moriarty – and then the dot had disappeared to re-appear on Sherlock's head. Had there been more than one sniper, the second should have just sighted as well and there would have been two target lights showing. Mycroft's men had taken out one man armed with a silent rifle and a multi-laser-sighted device, but Sherlock had upon meeting the minion deduced immediately that he was no more than a patsy; the real sniper, the real marksman and Moriarty's right-hand man, had vanished as quickly and easily as smoke dissipating in a high wind.

John reflects with a flicker of gallows humor that once again he's met Sherlock's archenemies before the man himself had.

"JOHN, ANSWER ME," Sherlock is bellowing in his ear, loud enough to be heard down the street even when not on speakerphone.

"Still here," he says, exhaling shakily. The laser is steady on his chest, holding just over his heart, barely wavering even in the half-darkness. He can't tell where it's coming from, and he's willing to wager that he wouldn't be able to even if it were daytime. It has him pinned in the middle of a dimly-lit side street, only scant yards from relative safety on a more populated road. He can hear his freedom, but can't move to reach it. Even if he did not get shot the moment he makes a break for it, he won't endanger innocent lives (there has been enough innocent death by association with Sherlock Holmes to last him a lifetime). That means this sniper, whoever he is, knows that – and he's starting to have a sick gut feeling that unless the criminal underworld has decided to start copy-catting the Napoleon of Crime, as Sherlock had called him once, then this scenario is one which is now all too familiar.

And it fits; he's been played and played with tonight, as opposed to being harmed or killed when he easily could have been. Jim Moriarty's specialty is mental torture, not physical, and the whole fiasco reverberates with the telltale sound of his particular artistic flair.

He could be wrong, it could just be coincidence, but the steady pinpoint of light over his heart, just where his shoulder was initially wounded in Afghanistan, says otherwise. Whoever this is knows him too well, knows Sherlock too well, and that knowledge is going to be the weakness that threatens to eventually take them both down if it is not compensated for.

"What is it," Sherlock demands. "John, this is no time for your ridiculous penchant for melodrama – answer me!"

The dot flicks up to the phone in his hand and holds steady on it for a long instant, before moving back down to his chest. The message is clear.

"Sherlock…I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he manages, pleased that the tremor which has started in his left hand hasn't spread to his voice beyond a slight flicker in the last word.

It's enough, though, to alert London's most observant man that there's something he's not telling. But he'll see these people, whoever they are, in a hell of their own making before he'll make Sherlock listen to another person die over a mobile phone.

"John? John, what –"

He ends the call and thumbs the volume over to vibrate, lowering the phone slowly toward his pocket; he's no desire to be shot because whoever this is thinks he's got his gun on him. Then he remembers that the sniper is in league with his abductors, and so whoever he is already knows his prey is unarmed. The phone is buzzing with Sherlock's number on the ID before it even hits the top of his pocket, but he ignores it.

"Well?" he queries the darkness, not knowing if the sniper is even close enough to hear him or if he can read lips through night-goggles. "Bit of a stand-off, isn't it?"

There's not a soul in sight all up and down the street, which is both disappointing (he can't get lost in a crowd) and relieving (no one will get hurt for his sake). The laser doesn't even wink at him, just stays placidly in the upper left of his jacket. Obviously, keeping onward toward relative safety on a populated road is not in the plans of his abductors.

He's not as good at working things out as Sherlock is, but he has nothing better (or smarter) to do at the moment than think, and so think he does, with surprising calmness. He's obviously a lure for Sherlock, that much is evident; if whoever his abductors were – probably Moriarty's henchmen – wanted to kill or harm him, he'd have been dead ten minutes after he was taken. He wonders wryly for a moment if he shouldn't get a tracking device implanted, as often as he seems to get kidnapped for Sherlock's sake. But if all they wanted was Sherlock, why the whole business with the lights and leaving him in the middle of nowhere? Why not keep him, and why bother following him with scare tactics?

More importantly, why has the sniper not just picked him off, if John has now done his bit in giving away his basic location to Sherlock? His being alive isn't going to have any effect on a trap springing closed now. Not that he's ungrateful, mind, but he just doesn't understand. You don't leave loose ends open if you're a consulting criminal mastermind, so why hasn't he been eliminated from the picture after performing what he no doubt was intended to perform?

Why is he still alive? If that rifle has a silencer then no one will even hear the soft pop of a gunshot; he'll be dead within seconds, and with the street deserted and his body half-hidden in shadow there will be no danger of the killer being discovered for hours yet.

Possibly, just possibly, he reasons, wishing he had Sherlock's gift for rapid inductive logic, then they don't want to kill him just yet. He tests the theory warily by backing up slowly, until he is pressed against the low stone wall which separates the pavement from the front gardens of the slightly dilapidated flats behind him.

The reassurance of solid stone at his legs and lower back calms his nerve a bit, accentuated by the fact that the sniper does not fire. The dot moves with him, settling back on his left shoulder (shot there a second time by rifle, and he'll probably never have even partial mobility with the arm again, permanent damage to the nerves, and as he is primarily left-handed that is definitely not a desirable scenario), but the sniper doesn't fire. The thought that he isn't meant to die like this, in this horrid street in such an ignoble manner, is oddly reassuring, as reassuring as it can be when he knows his heart is centered in a sniper's scope.

He risks a slow, unthreatening glance behind him at the stone wall. It is just below waist level, and runs down the remaining length of the street until it ends at what must be Brixton Road, if Sherlock's knowledge of the city is correct.

Wait.

Brixton Road.

He is not Sherlock Holmes, does not have a map of London in his head down to street signs and road constructions, but that means something, and he should know what. If these people wanted him to be in danger, they'd have dropped him off in a more dangerous part of the city. While London is a fairly safe city, there are various locations which decent citizens avoid in the hours of the night, and multiple streets which are known as teenage gang centrals – even the bravest of men is not foolish enough to walk them without good reason. But they dropped him in Lambeth, which is not necessarily an upscale part of town but is by no means the red-light district. (1)

Why.

Brixton Road. Why Brixton.

His phone hasn't stopped vibrating this entire time, but he doesn't think he wants to chance being shot if he reaches for his pocket so he ignores it, trying in his own feeble way to puzzle it out, until he has an indication of what to do. The sniper hasn't budged a fraction of an inch, the dot still lingering on his chest like a too-cheerful glowing reminder of his own fragile mortality. Sherlock is on his way, though there's no guarantee he'll ever even find him with nothing more than a street name to go on and no way to trace his phone. It's not like Sherlock can call for help either, from the police or anyone else, if his phone's not working other than to contact John. He absently wonders if the pink phone Moriarty gave Sherlock is locked to Moriarty's number alone, or if Sherlock could use it to call for help – it would give the game away since it's assuredly tapped, but at least it would get word out. But no doubt Sherlock's already thought of that.

Wait.

The pink phone. The phone from A Study in Pink.

Brixton Road.

Lauriston Gardens is a group of dilapidated flats just off Brixton Road. (2)

If this is how Sherlock feels when his chains of deduction all suddenly connect, it's no wonder the man becomes no less than spastic during those fragile moments just beforehand, shouting for complete silence so that his brain can catch up with his intuition and connect the dots before he goes mad. John much prefers being plain boring idiot John Watson, thanks very much, because the sudden heady rush of rightness, the knowledge that he's made the correct deduction, even if it's not a very hard one to make, is almost enough to make him forget about the imminent danger he's in.

There has to be a connection. What, he has no idea; he's not Sherlock. But the connection must be there, and if Sherlock is so focused on getting to him and has no knowledge of Moriarty's sniper, then his friend may not have drawn that connection together yet. John has to warn him, and probably needs to get to Lauriston Gardens. It's too much to be coincidence, the fact that he's been followed and practically guided this direction by an unseen and disquieting hand.

Besides that, he's been standing here like a helpless damsel in distress for too long as it is. He flicks a glance down at his chest and the winking red light that rests there, without moving his head, and then glances down both sides of the street. It's a risk, but one that has a fairly good chance of succeeding. No sniper, no matter how good, can hit a moving target with entire accuracy at night, even with the aid of night-goggles, and besides that even the fastest sniper in the world can't adjust a scope in less than three or four seconds (that's enough); and John is himself an army man and a crack shot. He knows how to move and how to hide, to afford the least chance of being hit.

It's a gamble, but then that gambling thrill has always been his one real addiction. Besides, if he stays here, eventually one of two things will happen. One, the sniper will get tired of waiting in the cold and will just pick him off out of boredom and desire to go have a hot cuppa. Or two, Sherlock will find him and walk right into the line of fire – if he hasn't been diverted to a well-laid trap already.

Well, then.

He leans against the low stone wall, affecting weariness and shifting his weight to his right leg to further give the impression that his adrenaline's fading and he's close to giving out. His right hand, because that one's stronger, grips the stonework at the top of the low wall, and his whole body tenses as the sniper's sight shifts a fraction to adjust for the new angle. Still, he does not fire, and John takes that to mean the man's under orders to not shoot unless he absolutely has to, if at all. He looks around; stone wall and tiny thatches of garden or brick, trees, rows of flats. Ah, fire escape three flats down. He'll have to jump pretty high to pull it down, but with a running start it should be doable.

It's a calculated risk. He smiles darkly as his phone buzzes insistently again in his pocket, and then in one quick motion flips himself over the wall behind him, rolls for a moment in the darkness of shadow behind the wall, and then starts running – this time for his life, in a race against a sniper's night vision.

He doesn't see the light quietly wink out behind him, or the shadow slip away into the alley opposite.

(1) I am American, and so am not native to London; but I did some research regarding the safety of the city itself. I know that it's supposed to be the safest city in Europe, and after visiting it more than once I would probably agree with that; I felt safer walking the streets of London, even at night, than I do walking the public shopping malls in my home town.

But there are a few districts, according to the general consensus I could find, that you don't really want to be caught in after dark. Had this been the ACDverse Holmes, I would simply have dropped Watson in Whitechapel or Soho, but times and locations change, and so I settled on this after doing my research and decided to generalize for the most part.

(2) According to widely-accepted ACD canon, Lauriston Gardens was off the Brixton Road; just google LG and you'll easily find the sites which say so. However, in the BBC show, Lestrade tells them that the body was found in Brixton. When I Googlemap Brixton, it brings up the region in question which I mention here (including Hackford Road), but it has a Lambeth postal address. As I'm not a native and don't know precisely how all the divisions work, that's why I refer to it as Lambeth even though the show calls it Brixton.

Anyone else confused? :| Anyway, just wanted to let you know I did research this, I promise.