They woke up to several of Mycroft's "administrative assistants" hustling them about, giving them each a cursory exam, and then dropping them off at their respective homes to sleep it off. All three men felt like they had been through the ringer twice, and then once more for good measure.
Although Sherlock did actually sleep this time, he was most likely the first to awake. He stared with bleary eyes at the tablet by his bedside, then snatched it up and started scrawling in it like a madman. His head was still too muddled to file directly into his mind palace, so the paper diagram would have to do in the mean time.
"John!" Even from his bed, Sherlock was already bellowing for his flatmate. He couldn't pull himself away from his write up of the event, fragmented as it was. Sherlock knew that John's account of things, in all his ordinariness, would not add much to Sherlock's recollections, but he called for him still. John was occasionally good a pearl or two.
Sherlock heard John heavily padding down the stairs. He smirked. He could practically hear John holding his head like he did only during his worst hangovers.
Sherlock was simultaneously writing, remembering, and formulating and prioritizing the questions he should ask John and Lestrade to get the best information about the situation. John appeared at Sherlock's bedroom door.
"Are you alright?" Asked Sherlock. Wait, what? As John was mumbling his reply, something about pissing matches between men who wear long coats, Sherlock wondered about how that particular question leaped to the front of the queue ahead of much more pertinent ones.
The ever-present soother of 221B was steeped on the counter and wordlessly handed from the doctor to the consulting detective. About an hour later, they were seated in Lestrade's office, this time clutching coffee instead.
They all shared the same symptoms: throbbing headaches, dry throats that nothing seemed to quench, and terribly confused recollection starting sometime after apprehending the two men in the morgue. Over the squalid fare from the Yard's coffee machine, they mapped out the details that each remembered. A phone call to Molly provided confirmed the names, that the two men each had "lovely" blue eyes, and that Mr. Harkness smelled nice. Ms. Hooper was a great pathologist but got downright flustered when attractive men flirted with her. Luckily, she remembered more about the body of Mr. Tennyson than the men that took him. Her written and electronic reports had mysteriously disappeared.
John remembered the make of the old revolver carried by Capt. Harkness because he had connected it to the memory that it was similar to his grandfather's WWII service sidearm. Lestrade had recalled the beat of the heel of the shoe before it rose into the air because it was reminiscent of his favorite Queen song. They were able to recreate a sparse yet decent timeline of the events.
There was one snippet of a memory that he kept rolling around in Sherlock's buzzing brain as he chewed on the coffee stirrer (a poor substitute for a cigarette, a craving made worse by the hint of smoke lingering about Greg, no doubt a stress-induced relapse). The memory was a phrase. The phase was not spoken though, it was tactile. John had teased Sherlock last winter when he spent a week training himself to read engraved text by touch alone. Well, mostly he teased him because it involved sitting in the broom closet for hours on end. The engraving in question that nagged at Sherlock's memory said "make my day". It was so unconnected and it was infuriating.
But maddening bits aside, Sherlock was on cloud nine. He had been chasing the rumors and vanishing leads of Torchwood for ages. It was even better than a cocaine high.
Sherlock always knew that Mycroft had a hand in keeping him from unlocking the Torchwood mystery. The passwords that he "procured" from his brother, or had actually been granted to him on some occasions, seemed to always stop short of the level of clearance that he felt Torchwood existed on. But the evidence was so often there in the lack of evidence. There were witnesses that had holes in their memories, records wiped clean, and too-convenient cover stories. And now Sherlock's theory was confirmed. Not only did Mycroft have a hand in keeping it from Sherlock, he was the British government's liaison to Torchwood, as clearly evidenced by Harkness's phone directory.
Sherlock cut off something John was saying to Lestrade when he interjected with "And why on earth have you never told me about being at Canary Wharf, Lestrade? You kept it from me all these years! Valuable first-hand data just wrapped up in your tiny brain! Such a waste! Although I have to admit I am a bit impressed that you held your cards so close on the topic that even I didn't see it."
Both Greg and John exchanged a look that imparted that neither knew if Greg should be insulted or flattered by Sherlock's outburst. As it happened often, it was a bit of both.
"Sherlock, in my defense, it's not like you go around advertising your interest in the topic. Come to think of it, what was your take on the 'ghosts' and the 'metal men'? Did you deduce it before the rest of us?" Lestrade parried with.
Sherlock shifted uncomfortably and averted his eyes. "I was otherwise indisposed at that time." He finally gave Lestrade a quick but hard stare.
John recognized that look on Sherlock, as he was often on the receiving end of it. It was his "if you just think hard enough you will realize you already know this" look. It was a dash condescending and bordered on calling the receiver an idiot. Although John was partly happy for not being the one who it was cast upon, he did feel a bit uncomfortable being left out of the loop.
Lestrade knitted his brow in concentration, but then his face softened as the realization set in. "Oh, right. But they were here for weeks! Surely you couldn't have been, so indisposed the whole time as to not notice at all."
Sherlock shifted in his chair again then spoke through gritted teeth. "It was my last time...it was the worst time. Mycroft tracked me down in Belgium. The last thing I remembered though, I had been in Paris. I detoxed in a private country estate. Just me and the tapestries and a handful of nurses and MD's that fluttered through with pills and food and changed the sheets."
He spoke with a hostile tone, but after the first moment John saw that the aggression was not towards he or Lestrade, but rather himself. Sherlock hated that his affliction led him to missing out on all the fun of a near-successful alien invasion. "There may have been a 'ghost' or two that passed through but I also had visions of an irate Mozart and figures from Greek mythology so I was in no shape to judge what was real or not."
Lestrade nodded silently and took another sip of his cold coffee. "How about you John?"
Although he was not crazy about discussing the topic, John was actually grateful to be able to relieve some of the weight that hung in the air around Sherlock.
"I was in Afghanistan. I spent 30 days huddled in a cave with a dozen other men, waiting for public enemy number 1 to possibly move through the area. We were on radio silence, even had some high-tech stuff that blocked thermal imaging detection. We were in the middle of a desert, basically invisible. Guess we were further off the radar than we thought. Nothing showed up to pay us a visit. Didn't even get hide nor hair of it until after we got air-lifted out."
John looked up from where he had been staring into his empty cup. Sherlock's eyes were sweeping over with such an intensity, as if he was a corpse that had met a terribly interesting demise. But that wasn't quite right. It was also laced with something else. Something softer. Concern? Wonder? Was he picturing John living in the stink of extended close quarters, abrasive sand turning every inch of his skin into rough, dry parchment? Did he see how the waiting and the silence had been driving John insane? What would that John, the parched Captain Watson, have thought if Sherlock had appeared there in the cave, a vision from his future, all silk shirts and smooth, clean alabaster skin and bright, dancing eyes that had just the faintest lines forming at the corners. All cheekbones and violinist's hands and that one unruly bunch of curls over his brow that never fell quite right into place. Would that former John Watson get up and follow him without a word?
John smiled faintly at his friend. He couldn't imagine a time or place now when he wouldn't follow Sherlock Holmes.
Greg Lestrade cleared his throat. The he cleared it again.
John and Sherlock finally looked away simultaneously.
"So what now then? At least as far as the paper trail and evidence goes, I have no real crime to pursue at this point. And with Mycroft's involvement, doubt I'll ever be able to pin them down. Officially, I am out of the game."
"And unofficially?" John asked.
Lestrade leaned in. "Unofficially, let me know anything I can do to help you track those bastards down and bring all their dirty laundry to light. Government sanctioned or not, I don't take well to people who think it is in their rights to mess with people's memories."
"Excellent" Sherlock crooned.
Sherlock proceeded to spend the next several hours conducting internet and records searches on the Yard's computers. Every thirty minutes or so, he would switch to another work station, logged in under a different Yarder's account. Sally Donovan bristled when it was her turn to give up her computer to Sherlock. With an icy look from Lestrade, she acquiesced. She turned 3 shades of red when he logged into her account without having to ask for her password first.
John caught sight of this as he was delivering a fresh cup of tea and a bag of crisps to Sherlock.
"Do I want to know what her password is, considering how badly she was blushing?" John asked while settling in across from Sherlock with a fresh pile of files.
"That depends, doctor. How much do you want to know about what Anderson calls Sally when they are in bed together?" Sherlock asked without looking up.
"Never mind I asked." John replied with a sour look. "Drink your tea. It'll sooth your sore throat a bit."
A mere few hours later, Sherlock and John entered their private compartment on the train to Cardiff. John just finished stuffing both of their overnight bags into the proper storage spaces, as Sherlock was too busy on his smart phone to be arsed to take care of it himself.
John finally let himself fall into the seat across from Sherlock with a heavy sigh.
"So," he started, finding that he had to clear his throat again. It was better than it was earlier, but still quite dry and sore. "We're just going to get off the train in Cardiff and start wandering around the city, with luggage mind you, and wait for someone to pop up and tell us where we can find a more-than-top-secret government agency headquarters is located?"
"Nonsense, John, I know exactly where to start." Sherlock replied with a wry smile.
After a few too many moments of silence, John huffed in exasperation. "You're going to make me actually ask, aren't you? Okay then. Sherlock, where in Cardiff are we starting our search?"
Sherlock smiled wider and even more wickedly. "Why where everyone starts out in a new city, John. The tourist information center!"