-ooo-
St. Bart's exterior of cold heavy stone masked the white clean laboratory behind a couple of narrow windows. Molly Hooper is expecting them, already, and seems unsurprised when Sherlock and John enter. She lowers the deep green aqueous solution in her hand and faces them at once. She's about to say something but as her gaze passes over John she remains quiet instead.
'So, you're investigating away', she starts, stumbling a bit, leading Sherlock into the conversation. John remains behind, by the door, standing tall, following the conversation of the two lab genius with interest. 'What do you need, Sherlock?'
'Access to all of the records in the last month. We need to go through every single one of them. The answer has to be there, it has to be...'
'Feel free to use the computer by the window', she directed him.
Behind them, John coughed slightly. 'Actually, if you have another computer, I might be able to help.'
'Are you sure?' she asked him, taken aback. Wasn't that weird? To investigate killings that mimic what his own shooting almost was?
'Quite sure', he insisted, controlled, as Sherlock already took a seat in front of the computer. John looked over at him in a casual gesture and then he saw it. This time he saw it. This time he knew what to look for, to be fair. He saw the feeble movement of a rifle from the apartments across the street, and he didn't doubt for a second that he could already be too late. 'Sherlock!' He hit Molly with his arm to throw her to the floor where she'd be safe as he ran the distance between them him and Sherlock in two huge steps. In a desperate move he threw himself over his friend, to knock him out of the firing line. They both hit the floor as the window smashed to pieces over them, splashing shards of glass over them. Sherlock felt the pain of the blow as his head hit the ground with violence. Confused by the blow, he'd look around the room, everything was fuzzy and a loud ringing echoed in his hears. 'John? Molly?' he murmured at once, as he regained sense of what was happening.
Molly had crawled closer to the door and was sounding the fire alarm, the best way she had to attract immediate attention from security. She seemed completely unharmed. And John? He looked down on John by his side. No, please not again. Not so soon, not in the same way...
John was alright. He was trying to get himself seated upright as he grabbed Sherlock by the collar of his shirt, pulling him down, away from the visibility range from outside the shattered window. All the while, Sherlock was already securing him against the set of drawers under the desk, he was blacking out, but he wouldn't let go of his friend.
-ooo-
'They knew where to find you, Sherlock', Mary pointed out, in a cold reasoning, and almost a taunting voice.
'Well, St. Bart's is my home away from home. It's where I get the materials for my experiments, it's where...' (It's where I started my career and where I met John, and Molly and Greg.) 'John said that. Said he had just made up his mind on coming here the night he was shot. And I had just decided on going to Molly when I was almost shot.'
'It's not just the location, though, is it, Sherlock? If you didn't have a lousier shooter this time around...'
'You think he was going to miss the shot?!' Sherlock misunderstood.
'No, I think he took too long to take it. It's not like in the movies, Sherlock. The shooter doesn't stand around aiming until the velocity of the wind is just perfect and the light of the sun is angled right. They take the shot and leave in seconds, they can't stick around like that. Your shooter, unlike John's, just isn't an expert. He took too long. And John spotted him', Mary told him.
(He saved my life.) Sherlock shrugged his shoulders. 'Maybe John is not so clueless as I thought him to be. At least sometimes.'
Neither of them smiled. Not anymore. Sherlock and Mary didn't smile at each other when they talked. They'd sit almost expressionless in the room for the whole time. Unless someone was there. Usually John. Then they'd engage in the usual social conventions. But just when the two of them were together, they didn't feel the need to do that. They were both cold reasoning machines in each other's eyes and they understood themselves that way. How much of a contrast they were from the people crossing those hallways. The nurses, hurrying on doctors orders, the patients' families, scurrying along with raw emotions. As Sherlock and Mary sat outside the private room where John had been admitted half an hour ago, they stood as solid rocks among the senseless pain around them.
A male nurse exited the room with a few sample bottles full of blood for testing. Sherlock could have told them it was useless. John had collapsed under the strain of constantly saving him, that was his sole problem, he was far too generous. What they were doing to John now, poking him for samples, and drugging him to submission in a Hospital bed, draining the action of the military doctor, it was all because Sherlock himself wasn't capable of admitting his part, his guilt in the situation, and he was allowing it to happen with his silence...
'Sherlock?' Mary called him. 'You're not going soft on me now, are you?'
He straightened himself up a bit. 'Don't know what you mean', he deflected, looking down on her. She'd still bring a hand into his arm as a comfort gesture. He covered hers with his, trying to comfort her back as well. (John had done that to them both, he had changed them, made them painfully human.)
-ooo-
Sherlock left the Hospital through the front door. As he wrapped up tighter in his coat, he noticed the fleeting concealed motion of one of Mycroft's men, ordered to shadow him and keep him safe. John had been utterly oblivious to the fact that this had been going on for the past days, ever since John was unexpectedly shot. Maybe Sherlock should have told John. So John would worry less. But then again, John would certainly worry more, seeing that he wasn't the only one deeply concerned for Sherlock's safety.
A cab pulled over by his side without him even having to hail it. Another offer from Mycroft, aiming at making his big brother's work easier. Sherlock took it with no complaints.
'221B Baker Street.' The cab took off, rolling swiftly through London's streets.
Mary had stayed behind, in the Hospital, by her husband's side. Only her. John would be pissed, truly pissed, when he woke up, the next day. Even John knew how useless visitors were in those situations. No, he'd be pissed because Sherlock had gone out alone.
He was just going home. Mycroft's men had been there to make sure it was perfectly safe for him to return.
The cab parked by the front door. Sherlock payed the sum. Home. It felt cold. Mrs Hudson was out, and the lights were off behind the window piece on top of the door.
He'd be alone at last, and alone was a relief for Sherlock right then. All those pokes and holes on John were still fresh on his mind, and it was becoming harder to conceal it, that flaw, that he felt the pain for someone else. That was no good. It made him a crap investigator. Maybe he just needed to let go of the investigation until the next day. Just for a few hours.
It wasn't just John who was stone cold out for the rest of the day. Sherlock felt very much the same on his own way.
Sherlock took the gloves off and threw them on the kitchen table as he entered the flat. Only then he noticed Mycroft had given instructions to leave the window blinds closed. He smirked. Don't make it easier on the shooter, Sherlock, he could have translated. Fine. He'd keep them closed... for now.
Sherlock flipped the switch and the lights came on. All was the same, the clutter, the papers, John's chair, John's blood on the floor boards. All he could do was to take a seat on his chair, get his fingertips together, and try thinking... He kept failing, and opening his eyes. John's empty chair in front of him. He used it to motivate him, every time. But all the times he started thinking of the facts, he hit a stone wall. The visual of John's body going limp on his arms. No, it was for John. Not about him. He had to focus harder. The hits, it was about the hits. It was him and John, the targets. The coated bullet was the chosen means. Unusual, extravagant even. Not the easiest way. Mary had said he had pissed off the shooter. It was personal. But not just Sherlock, John also. The proof of it was that even though John's murder hadn't been successful, the mastermind had moved on to the next target: Sherlock. The both of them. There were lots of enemies to chose from, lots of pissed off foes in the shadows. How could he narrow it down? Just focusing. There had to be enough clues already for him to solve the puzzle. Only then could he really rest.
The abandoned factory had been the depository for old ammunition from the end of World War Two. Could there be a meaning to its choice or was it the result of a stroke of luck? Either way, it was a signature, once again, extravagant. The mastermind was vain, he wanted to publicize himself. The one who defeated the great hat detective and his partner. He could see the papers already: Sherlock Holmes got beat at last. Actually, it's probably something more on the lines of: Internet detective hit gets hit. There were no good writers left among journalists...
John, oh, John, what had you done? You had said Yes to coming spend a night in Baker Street, a replay of old times, and all had gone astray... You were probably sorry you agreed now...
Sherlock lowered his eyes to the small chest by the window. He wondered what Mycroft would say about it...
-ooo-
The patient and his visitor were both deep asleep. Side by side, one on the bed, hooked up to some medical devices, and the other leaning from a chair towards the bed, resting her head in his pillow, straining herself to feel his warmth and his security.
John's breathing was drugged and heavy, unnatural even, and the expression in his face had something to it of a lost person. It was unfiltered, sincere, unbound by social conventions and affectionate white lies. John couldn't hide it this time, because his body betrayed his heart. Both exhaustion and the truth had taken over his facial expression, and it could be read with ease this time. John was on the verge of a physical collapse and emotional meltdown. Taunted, haggard, that was how his expression read now, in the most honest display, a sheer contrast to the rock solid soldier that he took pride in exhibiting to the world.
Leaning from the chair, Mary was sleeping more lightly, in a vigilant state, her face turned towards his but her eyes closed. She wasn't aware of his expression and his inner struggle, she didn't catch a glimpse of his truth, because she had closed her eyes. She must have figured it out in some level, however, as even in her sleep she had her hand resting and comforting his hand where the IV filtered in a constant drip of medication.
There was one more person in the room. A young European doctor, ginger haired, analyzing the patient's charts with a keen eye, through his reading glasses. That would be, at least, the first impression of the man. Perhaps it would take Sherlock Holmes himself to notice the lack of graduation in his glasses, or that the man's shoulders stood too straight for the average medical school undergraduate. A second look, more accessible to the common person, might bring to light that the badge on the white coat was not a match to the person wearing it. Both ginger heads, but different features. And again, the average person might have recognized the ginger impersonator's features as similar to those of a more famous individual, one that divided public opinion sometimes, but undoubtedly called in the attention under the unordinary name of Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock would remain thus unseen till the early hours of the morning, doing relatively little to no work at all, shuffling patient files on his hands whenever other service providers crossed the hall or came by the door. All the while, John and Mary slept by each other's side, unaware of the caring vigilance. Worthless, for sure, as Mycroft had had his hand on them as well, but still the only action that seemed to set Sherlock at ease that night.
Mary would be the first to wake up. It happened to be at the time a ginger doctor was exiting the room. She concluded that it had been something the doctor had done that had awoken her. John, in his turn, was still completely out. He hadn't stirred the whole night, apparently. The medication he had been induced on had been severe and there seemed to be a restlessness in his expression that proved he had been fighting it every inch of the way. Slowly it was wearing off.
A/N: Oh boy, what was I thinking? I was under post-flu blues when I wrote this. Yes, there's a plot reason. If it helps: I haven't had another flu since (*wink*). This is one of two chapters that had me almost giving up on posting this story at all. Please don't hate me. -csf