It was midday and Sherlock Holmes was bored.
Bored, bored, bored!
He looked outside the window. Quiet. Calm. Peaceful. UGH.
This was dull.
"John, tea," Sherlock said before looking around. Oh, his flatmate must still be irritated. Emotions. Dull. This was why Sherlock didn't bother caring. It made people act even more stupid than usual. John was his friend, but sometimes it was very obvious that he was part of the masses. He must have deleted the fact that John had not come home last night.
"Sherlock!" Mrs. Hudson's scream broke the detective from his thoughts and he ran down the stairs in his blue robe.
It was obvious what made her scream.
Package, no stamps, printed label, taped on. Standard ink and paper. Package is leaking. Thick. Cardboard failing. Presumably an organ of some sort due to the coloring and horrific reaction.
These thoughts raced through the detective's head in a matter of very brief seconds and he walked to see what was in the package that had his name typed on the label.
A hand...
That hand. He knew that hand.
John.
Sherlock grabbed the box, staring at the dismembered hand.
John didn't return last night. Left in the evening. He was angry.
John... it was John's hand... Sherlock would know it anywhere. But he did see everything, as he always did, and so he quite easily found the tiny scrap of paper with a note.
That exercise was so full of errors that I just had to fix them. So let's play!
-J
Moriarty.
Angry. John has been irritated and left. But always came back. What if he couldn't? Taken again, just like with the Black Lotus.
John. John was hurt. A doctor without a hand. Because of them.
His only friend was in pain because of Sherlock. Doctor John Watson had been captured... No. No! That would not help! But the old conversation haunted him now, the words a taunting echo.
"Will caring about them help save them?"
"Nope!"
"Then I'll continue not to make that mistake."
He cared. He cared about his blogger, his flatmate, his doctor, his friend. Sherlock took the package upstairs to analyze it more. He was loathe to ask for help, but Mycroft probably knew the last place John had been. And Sherlock was sure that his brother had seen the package arrive. He would probably be here shortly.
But there was nothing. Meaning the surveillance outside had to see who had dropped off the package. If not them, then someone in Sherlock's network definitely had.
He ran outside. He had a friend to save and a mystery to solve.
Things were normal.
So then why did he feel so... odd? So strange? It was an odd sensation in his chest...
Sick?
No... no, this wasn't any normal sickness...
But as he ran, Sherlock began to realize what it was.
Worry.
He was scared.
Scared that he might lose his only friend. And that... was not normal. Trying to delete it only made it worse, and Sherlock knew that he would have to deal with it as he hunted down someone who could have seen who had dropped off the package. It couldn't have been too long ago... Sherlock was sure of it. The person might still be around somewhere.
And so he ran.