Btw, this takes place post-reunion, so there will be Reichenbach spoilers for… reasons.

An Idiotic Experiment

"Dead?" Sherlock repeated, the darkness hiding the grin spreading across his face.

"Yes, dead." The reverend was still wringing his hands together. "The exact same symptoms as the rest of his family, the same expression and everything."

"But," his eyebrows furrowed, then his face suddenly cleared. "Oh. Have you moved anything?"

"Nothing; even the b-body's still in the same position. I did open a window, though; the air in the room was just awful."

"Did you happen to find him in the kitchen?"

"Y-yes, how did you know?"

Ignoring this, Sherlock turned around. "John!" he called. "John!"

Moments later, a disheveled John stumbled into the darkened hall. "What is it? Are you ok?" Then he saw Rev. Roundhay. "Is everything alright?"

"Marty Tregennis is dead."

The doctor stared at his friend for a minute. "Back to square one then, is it?"

"Not necessarily."

"If you could come quickly," Rev. Roundhay interjected, "that would be best. I didn't even call the police yet, since I thought you'd like to have a look around first."

"Wise choice."

"Just give me a minute to get dressed, and then we can go." John rushed back into his room.

"Make it quick!" Sherlock called after him.

After several minutes, with the reverend waiting patiently with his arms folded, the detective also waiting- albeit impatiently- and alternating between pacing and tapping his fingers on the wall, John emerged. They pulled on their coats and headed out the door. As they walked down the desolate road, the sky began turning a pale pink.

"How did you find him so early in the morning, reverend?" asked Sherlock, who, John noticed, was still wearing his pajamas underneath the Belstaff. He rolled his eyes; the detective had had plenty of time to change his clothes.

"I woke up early, and, when I couldn't get back to sleep, decided to make myself a cuppa. When I turned on the lights in the kitchen, well…" he gulped, shaking his head. "It was the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced."

"Hasn't seen that much, then, has he?" Sherlock muttered to his friend.

John smirked. "Yeah, well, we've seen more than the average person."

Arriving at the house, Rev. Roundhay unlocked the door for them. "The kitchen's just on the left. I'll call 999 while you're looking; the police usually take a while to get here, so you can look until they arrive."

"That should be ample." The detective breezed into the room, and the doctor followed.

The first thing to catch John's attention was Marty Tregennis himself. His hands grasped the table as if it was his last lifeline, his head tilted back with an expression of sheer horror. It just didn't make sense. If Marty Tregennis wasn't the murderer, even though Sherlock had almost implied that he was the night before, then who was?

At the sound of his friend having a coughing fit, John turned around. Sherlock had his head in the oven. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he asked.

"Investigating," came the hoarse and muffled reply. Straightening up, the detective slipped something into his coat pocket and held up an object for inspection.

"Another potato?" the doctor asked, puzzled.

"Yes." A wide smile crept across Sherlock's face. He promptly strode out of the kitchen, and, after getting instructions from the reverend, bounded up the narrow stairs to Marty Tregennis's bedroom, John trailing behind. The detective's eyes scanned the room.

"The bed's been slept in, no sign of a struggle, so he got up on his own volition. Something must have woken him." He crossed to the window and inspected the sill. "Well, no one was old-fashioned enough to throw rocks at the window. Tregennis probably got a call on his cell phone," he opened and shut several drawers, "which happens to be missing. I'd have to check in Tregennis's pockets, but I would bet that his murderer took it so we couldn't trace the call."

With that, he raced back down the stairs to the scene of the murder, with the doctor following at a slightly slower pace. John waited in the kitchen doorway while Sherlock checked the dead man's pockets. Just then, the front door opened, hitting the wall with a bang, and a young police officer entered. Looking perplexedly at John, he asked, "Who are you and," noticing Sherlock, "why is that man going through a corpse's pockets? And wearing pajamas?"

"As to the pajamas, I think he just didn't feel like taking the time to get dressed."

"And… why are you two even here?"

Sherlock finished his search and walked over to them. "We are here because I'm a consulting detective. As such, I would direct your attention to the oven and lack of cell phone. Come, John, we're finished here."

"The oven?" The poor man just stared, completely confused, after the two men as they left the house.

"Well, he's certainly not the brightest bulb," commented the detective as they walked. "Let's see if you can do better."

"Are you really going to force me to make a fool of myself?"

"You won't make a fool of yourself if you just think. The oven was off, but still warm, at this last scene, so the oven has everything to do with the murder. There was something in the oven that shouldn't have been there. Curtis Leo knows something important. Curtis Leo is a botanist." At John's blank look, he continued. "Look, Leo knows something because this had to do with a poisonous plant that was placed in the oven. The potato was strategically placed to keep the door open just a crack so that the smoke could escape. Simple enough, really, and quite clever, as all the evidence would be incinerated."

"So… we can never prove what they burned?"

"Oh, but we can! It just so happens that Tregennis's killer didn't wait for it all to burn before turning off the oven," he said, taking an evidence bag out of his pocket, "and I just so happened to get a sample."

"Sherlock, you can't just steal evidence."

"It's for a good cause, John, and I didn't steal all of it, just most of it. Not that the police will find it anyway."

They reached the cottage's driveway and started up it. "So… that's that, then. We know how the murders were committed, so now we just have to find out who did it and why."

"Not exactly." Sherlock pushed open the door. "There's still one thing left to do."

"And… what's that?"

"You don't have to do it with me. If you back out, I completely understand."

"Sherlock, what-"

"It will be dangerous, I must warn you."

"Sherlock!" John interrupted. "What are you about to do?"

"An experiment, John. You see, we need to figure out if this," he held up the bag, "is actually poison. For all we know, it could be the remains of one of Rev. Roundhay's meals. And, because I have none of my scientific equipment, there's only one way to accomplish that." He let it sink in.

The doctor stared at him. "Are you actually telling me that you're going to burn that and see if it kills you?"

"Well, I obviously won't let it get that far. It will be very controlled, and I'll stop the experiment at the first sign."

"So, I assume we're doing this in the kitchen?"

Sherlock raised his eyebrows.

John crossed his arms. "Did you seriously expect me to back down?"

"No," his friend smirked, "but I thought you would appreciate the offer. Yes, we'll do it in the kitchen." They walked into the small room. Sherlock pulled out a chair for his friend. "You can sit here, by the kitchen door so you can get out of the room easily. I'll even crack open the door so you can get some fresh air by you. I'll sit here," he pointed to a chair, "and we'll await results." He walked over to the oven and set up his experiment, putting in the plant and using the same potato he had found in Rev. Roundhay's house to prop the oven door open. He turned the knob on the oven and sat down.

"At the first sign, Sherlock," John reminded him nervously.

"Of course."

JWJWJW

John felt it first. One minute, the cool breeze was rustling the curtains; the next, it was scorching hot, smothering him, like the wind in…

Afghanistan. He was in the desert, running for his life. Darkness and terror crept at the corners of his vision, and he knew that to turn around would mean death. An explosion shook the ground, and John tumbled to the ground to escape the shrapnel. Crawling forward, he saw a body in a chair, a victim of the explosion. He stood up to look at the poor soul, and his heart froze at the all-too-familiar sharp cheekbones and sightless blue eyes, the pale face smeared with deep red blood, deep red clinging to the dark curls. Suddenly, there was a group of people around him, pulling him away from his friend.

"I'm a doctor! Let me come through please, let me come through, he's my friend!" He fought his way through the grabbing hands to his friend's body. Nothing moved but his friend's pale lips, which whispered, "No, John, no. Not John. John."

"Sherlock? Can you hear me?" The world seemed to bend and shiver. He saw…

… a table? The kitchen shimmered into focus, and John saw his friend's terror-stricken face. He knew what to do.

JWJWJW

As Sherlock waited, he wondered how long it would take for the poison to take effect. A gray mist crackled at the corner of his vision, and he was suddenly terrified. But no, he knew it was just the drug; it wasn't real. Mind over matter; there was nothing wrong. Mind over matter, just like in…

Dartmoor. He stood there in the dark and mist, waiting for the hound. He knew it was out there, waiting to rip, tear, kill. He heard the crunch of footsteps, not a dog's. A face loomed up out of the darkness, grinning, lit up by a blue half light. "No," he whispered, shaking his head. "No, you're dead. I saw you die."

The face of Jim Moriarty just grinned wider. "You know you missed me. Poor Sherlock," he pouted, "stuck playing with the ordinary people."

No, this wasn't happening. Jim Moriarty could not be standing in front of him. Jim Moriarty died on the roof of…

St. Bart's. Which... was where he was, wasn't it? The sun shone brightly on the concrete, but it was still freezing cold on the roof.

"No," he said to the smiling villain. Why was it so hard to think? "You're dead. I know you're dead. You shot yourself in the head."

"Oh, we're rhyming now, are we? Jim's dead, shot in the head, and didn't wake up in the-"

"Stop it!"

"Really, Sherlock, I did it for you, for the game. I think I deserve a little appreciation."

"Dead men don't get to complain about appreciation. You're dead."

"Fine," Moriarty conceded, rolling his eyes, "if you want to take all of the fun out of it. You still have to jump, though. No cheating, Sherlock." He opened his mouth, and Sherlock knew what was coming. BANG! He jerked back, but there was suddenly nothing under him. He was falling, falling, falling, and he was on the ground. But it hadn't hurt. He looked up at the gray sky and saw John standing over him.

"Sherlock?" Then there was a bright red dot on his friend's shirt. No, John, no. Not John.

"Sherlock, can you hear me?"

"John." He tried to shake his head. No, he couldn't come closer; they would shoot him. Didn't John realize the danger he was in?

BANG! "No!" And he was falling again, but he definitely felt himself slam into the ground this time. He suddenly realized that he couldn't breathe.

"Sherlock!"

He tried to draw a breath and started coughing. As he managed to gasp in some air, his vision slowly cleared and he saw that he was lying on the grass in front of the cottage's kitchen door. John, who was quite alive, thank you very much, was leaning over him, looking concerned. Maybe he should say something to let him know he was ok. That was what people did, right?

"John," he rasped.

"Don't talk; just breathe," came the terse reply. The doctor rolled him into the recovery position and whacked him on the back. Hard.

"I suppose," Sherlock gasped, "you did that… to free up… the airway?"

"Nope. I did that because you're a complete idiot."

The detective smiled weakly, and they just lay on the grass for several moments, Sherlock finally catching his breath. He turned to look at John. "You pulled me out."

"Yes, I did."

"That… that was… good."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't about to let you stay there and…" he didn't finish the sentence. "You said you would stop at the first sign. The first sign, Sherlock."

"I admit that I may have… miscalculated… the strength of the drug and the amount of time it took to take effect."

"No, really?Sherlock, you almost…"

"But I didn't. You pulled me out."

"But what if I hadn't? Do you have any idea…" he shook his head. "Look, I already lost you once. I'd really rather not lose you again. If you ever do something like this again…"

"You'll reprimand me?"

"Quite harshly. And then I'll punch you. Several times. You never know, I could even force you to eat dinner with Mycroft."

"You wouldn't."

"Oh, I would. There was no reason you had to do that experiment, especially when you were sick."

"On the contrary, there was no other way to test if the substance was poisonous, as I told you quite clearly."

"I'm sure your brilliant mind could have come up with something else."

"Well," the detective thought for a moment, "Sally Donovan would agree with you that the experiment was useless."

"Donovan? Why?"

Sherlock smirked. "She would have said that we were already insane when we started."

"I think that's the only thing she and I will ever agree on."

"The experiment or the insanity?"

John smiled. "Both." The detective began to chuckle and the doctor joined in. After they lay on the grass for a few minutes, John thought of something. "So, is the cottage ruined now, or can we go back in?"

"If we open all the doors and windows, the poison should dissipate soon enough. A pity, really. I had hoped to do something to annoy Mycroft. Although, there is still time to set the house on fire…"

"Nope. Not happening." The doctor got to his feet. "You stay here; I'll go open some windows."

Sherlock started to sit up. "I'm fine; I can-"

"Stay here."

"Yes, sir." He lay back down and watched his friend walk into the house. The fresh air smelled heavenly after the smothering kitchen. The time for resting was over, though, and, as soon as John got back, they would see about the who and why of this mystery. He couldn't wait.

JWJWJW

Well, that chapter turned out a LOT longer than I expected. At least that helps make up for the wait between chapters, right? I kind of like how it turned out, though. Thank you again for your support! You guys are all amazing!

As always, reviews/follows/favorites are greatly appreciated.

~JillianWatson1058