A/N: If amputation is triggery for you or anything, tread carefully with this one. It's not explicit, but I thought I'd give fair warning just in case.
"So you don't work with the police."
"Not exactly, no."
The black cab pulls away and John eyes what is very clearly police tape roping off the building in front of them. "Then why are we at a crime scene, exactly?"
Sherlock simply flashes him a wry smirk. "To solve a murder, of course."
"Oi, Freak!" A woman's voice turns their heads and they watch as she strides toward them with irritated purpose, her wings mantled and her curly hair bouncing with every sharp step. "No. Out. You are not supposed to be here."
Sherlock attempts to shoulder past her but she sidesteps in front of him smartly, her hand raised between them in the universal signal to stop, so close she's very nearly touching his chest. He narrows his eyes and gives a long-suffering sigh through his nose. "Must we do this every time, Sally? I was invited."
"Yeah, except that I happen to know for a fact that you weren't," she retorts without missing a beat and John can't help but be a little impressed. He's starting to get the feeling that Sherlock Holmes wasn't a very easy man to say no to, and yet she handled it without faltering. "The Yard does communicate, you know. Lestrade doesn't want you on this one, and I agree."
Sherlock makes a scoffing sound in the back of his throat, but his gaze nonetheless sharpens, like a hound that's finally caught a scent. "Of course you don't, but Lestrade? Why?" The question's met by stony silence so he continues. "He called me in for the last one and I have it on good authority that they're linked, so what's so different? The killer's done something new, hasn't he? Sometimes interesting?" The relish in his voice is as impossible to miss as the disgust on Sally's face.
"Donovan!" The silver-haired man from yesterday is standing just behind the police tape, looking wearily resigned. If he didn't have to raise his voice to be heard, John was sure his words would've been a tired sigh. "Go on, let him in. You know he won't leave until he's seen it."
Sherlock's positively oozing with smugness as Donovan leads them back, reluctantly lifting the tape for Sherlock, only to give John a confused look, as if she hadn't noticed him before. "Who's this then?"
"Colleague," the dark-haired man answers simply. "He's with me."
"Colleague?" She repeats incredulously. She gives John an almost pitying look. "What? Did he follow you home?"
Alright, now this is getting old. John shifts his weight and holds back a sigh. "Listen, if it's a problem, I can always-"
"No," Sherlock interrupts, lifting the tape and holding it there obstinately until John ducks under it. "Come along, John."
When they meet up with Lestrade at the entrance to the building he flashes John a confused glance, but doesn't question the presence of the stranger from the day before, probably because Sherlock is already demanding information without even breaking stride.
"Name's Elaine Ritters, found dead by her Bridge club not too long ago. Very little blood, so looks like she was killed elsewhere and-" Lestrade pauses, as if something's just struck him, and he moves to cut Sherlock's progression off. "How did you know about this one anyways?"
"I have my sources," Sherlock replies with a slick smile. "Now are you going to let me in or not?"
The D.I. hesitates, his gaze flickering briefly to John only once. "You have two minutes." Then he steps back and lets them in, calling for the forensics team to clear off for a bit.
Upon initial inspection, the large, high-ceiling room could have been one of a million more, its linoleum floors and florescent lighting nothing if not uninspired. Utterly, perfectly normal.
Except, that is, for the body.
She's lying face down in the exact center of the room, pale and prone, her limbs carefully spread eagle. A slight corona of blood stains the floor around her neck, but not nearly enough to have been from the initial, killing slice. Lestrade was right then. Killed elsewhere before putting put on display with perverse pleasure.
But that isn't the surprising part. John's seen corpses before - far too many, he'd say, though he's beginning to accept that that is a lie. What is surprising is the woman's shirt. What once must have been white is now stained a deep, deadly red with dried blood that freezes the wrinkles and folds in place around two butchered stubs of gristle protruding from between her shoulder blades.
Don't look at Sherlock. Don't look at Sherlock. Don't look at Sherlock.
"Well, Doctor?" The other man's voice startles him, most especially the calm in it. Another wingless man facing the murder scene of a brutally de-winged woman would have been shaken at the very least, if he didn't just take his leave right then and there. Sherlock, however, is anything but normal, and if he feels anything at the sight, he doesn't show it. "What do you think?"
John gives him a long look that clearly says what are you playing at? but Sherlock only responds with an arch of his eyebrows and, despite the myriad of professionals on the job milling about, he finds himself limping over to kneel awkwardly next to the body. "Cause of death, exsanguination due to a single incision to the carotid artery. Wings amputated crudely, but postmortem." He doesn't add thank God. He looks up to find Sherlock kneeling opposite him, eyes trained on the body. "But you already knew that."
"True," he admits, unfolding himself to his full height. "But it's always nice to get a professional opinion."
"One we could have gotten without you here," a new man gibes from where he leans against the doorway, looking entirely displeased that they were walking all over his crime scene.
Sherlock makes a disgusted sound. "Anderson. A pleasure as always," he quips snidely. He gives him a surveying look. "Wife away, is she?"
Anderson's jaw clenches but he otherwise doesn't react to the blatant attempt at provocation. "It was obviously a crime of passion - just look at her wings," he huffs. "The killer must have just-"
"Thank you for your useless and utterly wrong opinion as always, Anderson, please do shut up now," Sherlock interrupts neatly, casting Anderson a look of pure condescension. "Elaine Ritters was a widow with two cats and a rose garden who played bridge 'with the girls' on Thursday nights. The closest thing to 'passion' she had was daytime televisio-" He stops abruptly, a furrow appearing between his eyes. "Where's her ring?"
Lestrade, who had been hanging back, watching how Sherlock and John tread around the body like a hawk, is the first to react. "What ring?"
"Her ring! Her wedding ring! Where is it?" Sherlock snaps with palpable impatience, his movements frenzied as he crouches closer to the body.
"You just said she was a wido-"
"Yes, and she still wears it out of sentiment. Look at the tan line on her finger. Obvious. She wouldn't just up and stop wearing it after all these years, especially not to go out with her friends. So the killer took it. But why?" He straightens almost too quickly, turning his focus to Lestrade. "The first victim, Hoit, was he married?"
The D.I. frowns. "Engaged. His fiancé was the one who found the body, but there was no ring." His frown deepens. "He was in construction - she said he must have taken it off for work."
John clears his throat and finally speaks up. "Trophies then?"
Sherlock gives him a startled look, as if he'd forgotten he was there, but shakes his head, his response considerably gentler than the one Anderson had received. "No. He doesn't kill for pleasure - not entirely. What's important is the game. Look at the victims - a twenty-three year old construction worker and a middle-aged widow. Connection? Apparently none, aside from the lack of rings, but there has to be something. Something small, seemingly inconsequential. He wants to see if we're clever enough to find it," he muses, suddenly pacing around the body as if a new angle would shed more light on the situation.
John's head lifts as a thought strikes him, synapses sparking with a moment of clarity as the dots suddenly connect. Sherlock doesn't work for the police, he is allowed onto crime scenes, and for some reason Lestrade hadn't initially wanted him on this one. Maybe because he was abrasive, maybe because he insulted his employees, or maybe because something about this one was different. "Ah, the first victim, the construction worker. Was he…missing his wings too?"
"No," Sherlock answers. There's a beat before he looks at John, comprehension of something that must go beyond the fact that one victim's wings had been removed and another's hadn't dawning all over his face. "Oh," he breathes. "Oh." He neglects to explain further and instead he's nearly running out the door, slipping past Anderson without even an insult to spare.
"Sherlock!" Lestrade calls after him, looking frustrated. "What is it? What do you know?"
"Wings!" Is the faint response he gets back.
And next to a murdered woman with nothing but a cane he despises and only a vague sense of where he is, John Watson is left alone.