"Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per cent?" Saul Bellow

Sherlock wakes at the ring of his phone. He reflexively reaches out to answer it and hoarsely calls out for John to make him tea before he realizes what he's said.

Oh.

He lets the phone ring for a moment, lost for a moment in how empty the space beside him is, how full of army doctor it should be. His fingers tighten around the balled up cream coloured jumper he'd clutched to his chest all night before he snatches up his phone.

"Lestrade." He answers.

"Sherlock," Lestrade sounds harried, out of breath. "There's been another one. We sweated an address out of him this morning. Forensics just got here."

Sherlock has already leapt from the bed, shrugging his coat over the clothes he's slept in. He'll change later. He can't afford to now, not when John is still gone.

"Who is it? Have you identified the body?"

There's a pause, as if Lestrade doesn't want to answer. Sherlock hesitates at the front door as the ground trembles underneath him, as if it's about to crack and split and consume him.

"Lestrade—"

"Sorry," His voice cuts back in. "The service is rubbish here. They're working on identification now. It's a woman, late 20s. We know that. Not much else though. Are you leaving soon?"

"I'm getting a cab now. What's your location?"

Lestrade hears the line disconnect after he's given Sherlock the address and sighs.

They'd better find John soon. Sherlock was already starting to crumble, if this morning's breakdown was any indication, and John had been listed as a missing person for barely 24 hours. As much as he'd like to revel in his denial, as much as he'd like nothing more than to convince himself that Sherlock could solve this, after 48 hours hope would start to dwindle. He knew it was an inevitability, he'd spent too many work on too many cases that ended badly, and he knew that Sherlock was well aware of the fact that, if John was gone much longer, they might not find him at all. It was hard to be an optimist when your job made you stare into the face of reality from the moment you woke up—his phone ringing at two a.m. that called him out to a crime scene had long ago stopped being unexpected—and the moment you went to sleep—or collapsed, rather, to savour those few blessed hours of rest before the cycle began again.

Sherlock wouldn't last much longer, he could tell. The detective put up a tough front, the stoic staring coldly down on the battlefield, that only a handful of people could see through. Sometimes Lestrade wished he was still blind, could still see the detective for what he appeared to be instead of what he was. It was more comforting that way, to believe that Sherlock was infallible, but fate had other plans. Lestrade had been fortuitous enough—though some days it seemed unlucky—to be the officer on call to check on a reported breaking and entering and, upon entering the flat, finding a skinny little wretch of a person—truly a walking shadow, a ghost waiting to die—slumped over the bathtub, half conscious and convulsing. The ghost had responded to his questions before letting himself be carted off to Bart's to get his stomach pumped. He'd had the oddest name Lestrade had ever heard, and he remembered thinking in that moment, as he watched the ambulance speed off to Bart's, that he'd love to see the priceless look on the epitaph engraver's face at having to carve the name Sherlock Holmes.

Of course, years, over a decade later, someone did have to engrave a headstone with his name, and there'd been nothing humorous about it to Lestrade then. Quite the opposite.

And John. John had been forced to bear the brunt of that. Lestrade had thought—more than once—that the poor man would crush underneath the weight of it all. Of the world. Of Sherlock's death. Of his own grief. But John was stronger than he looked. He and Sherlock were deceiving in that way; they were nothing akin to how they appeared.

"Sir?" A voice asks, breaking him out of his thoughts and reminding him that they should be elsewhere. He turns to one of the younger officers. "Do you want the perimeter to span the street outside or just the interior flat?"

"May as well extend it to the street, but just to the property line. No use holding up traffic. Are you busy with something?"

"No, sir."

"Right, you're on the crime log then. Thanks." He turns to head back into the flat.

"Sorry, sir," The officer says, and Lestrade looks back to them. "But are we expecting Holmes? Should I put him and Watson on the log?"

Lestrade frowns.

"Just Holmes for now."

Sherlock breezes into the crime scene minutes later, looking as if he were regressing to the ghost Lestrade met him as, pale, gaunt, unshaven, and in the same outfit as yesterday. Lestrade almost expected John to follow him with some joke about Sherlock's appearance or how the cabbies are trying to kill him again.

Almost.

"What have you got?" Sherlock asks, pretending for the both of them to not notice the absent space beside him.

Lestrade turns away from examining the mantle, which consisted of various knicknacks, candles, and a bust of what look to be Napoleon.

"Jane Doe, as of now, late 20s like I said, stabbed to death. Home invasion and armed assault are being considered."

"Right on both counts," Sherlock sniffs, turning into the room. "As you do tend to stick to the obvious answers. Someone did break in and someone was armed, clearly."

A woman is bound to the bed, limbs tied to each corner, the soft skin of her belly exposed. They wanted her to feel helpless, vulnerable. Alone.

Most interesting.

Newspapers had been plastered to her naked body with water so the ink bled onto her skin. Suicide of Fake Genius, Moriarty Walks Free, Sherlock's A Fake: The Shocking Truth as told by Richard Brook. All involving Moriarty, all involving Sherlock's planned fall. It had Moran's name all over it, metaphorically. Sherlock's own face made a shoddily applied appearance in the space between her breasts, the picture with that damned idiotic hat on his head.

The phrase I.O.U. was carved vertically in thick lines in the bloodless flesh of her stomach. Her hair was braided on both sides, a deerstalker cap on her head, with an irritatingly familiar blue button fastened to it.

"We just got an I.D. on her, she's—"

"Kitty Riley."

"Yeah. She's that woman that tried to defame you, right?"

"Correct."

"I thought she was working with Moriarty."

"No," Sherlock shakes his head minutely. "She was working with Richard Brook."

"Moriarty's alias?"

"And subsequent fallback identity, yes. She had no idea Moriarty really existed."

"Are you sure?"

"If she had, John would be dead by now, well before my return to London, and so would you. Her loyalties were with another man entirely, the one Moriarty wanted her to see."

"He must have been good at that."

"Yes," Sherlock says tensely, his jaw clenching. "He was good at that."

"Why is she dead, then?"

Sherlock stared for a moment at the body. An inconvenient annoyance in life, an important mystery in death.

"I'm inclined to say her murder was out of a fear that she would talk to the Yard—"

"That's what I thought—"

"But then I would sound like an idiot." Sherlock continues, as if Lestrade hasn't spoken. "She knew everything about Richard Brook and nothing about Moriarty, so she would be no help to you, even if she told you everything she knew, because it was about a man that didn't exist."

"Alright," Lestrade crosses his arms. "So the question still stands then."

Sherlock breathes heavily as he examines her arm, following the trim of ink around to her palm. "The paper's been stuck to her skin with a mix of flour and water, the papier mâche method. It was done post mortem."

"How do you know?"

"Flour in her hair and not under her nails. If she'd been alive, she would have struggled. Someone set aside time to do this, two hours at least. This was calculated, not a crime of passion, but that was obvious. There's glue residue around her wrists and ankles—I feel almost grateful that they deprived of her clothing, it's much easier to gather information this way—which shows she was restrained with tape while she was alive, but it's not around her mouth, which means they wanted her to scream."

"Why?"

Sherlock looks at him for a moment. "So she would know it was pointless."

"Christ."

"This is good though, information-wise. It means they took her somewhere secluded, isolated, where they knew they wouldn't be interrupted."

"Does this have anything to do with Moran?"

"It has everything to do with Moran, please try not to be so stupid about obvious facts."

"No, you ponce, I meant does it have to do with what he told you earlier? About the salt shakers?"

"His comment on the cruets?"

"Yeah, d'you have anything on that?"

Sherlock purses his lips. "No."

"Why'd he say it then?"

"I'm not sure. I'm not sure he even meant anything by it."

"You—are you sure?"

"I—yes—no…I don't know, that's the point of it all!" Sherlock growls, straightening up. "He's diverted completely from the composite I have of him."

"Which is?"

"I thought he was continuing what Moriarty had failed to do—namely, as he said, 'burn my heart out. I thought he was going to kill you and John and Mrs Hudson, but this hasn't been the case. I thought he was going to try and make me suffer, that he'd have some sort of plan, but it's the opposite! He seems to have no outward motivations at all, even where Jim is concerned; you heard him, he called him a coward and liar and thief, all very accurate, but all very unexpected, considering the source. Here's a man who did everything Moriarty told him to, yet seems not to have done so out of loyalty and certainly not out of money. So what is it? What is he? He's turned himself in to the Yard, he's killed two people who are seemingly unrelated and who have no value to him, to what end? To send a message?"

"Do you think he's trying to give us a red herring? Something to throw us off or distract us?"

"No, that would be…" Sherlock trails off suddenly, his eyes widening. "That would be something Moriarty would do."

He turns suddenly and rushes from the room, grabbing his coat as he shrugs it on.

"Sherlock? Sherlock!" Lestrade follows him through the gathered officers and out the door into the busy street. "Wait!"

Sherlock whirls around, his face pinched and solemn.

"I need you to call your officers. Tell them to evacuate Scotland Yard. I don't care what your excuse is, you get everyone worth saving out of there."

"Sherlock, tell me, I need to know what's going on."

Sherlock looks agitated, carding a shaking hand through his hair.

"He's going to blow up the Yard. Moran is going to blow up the Yard."

Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas everyone!