Ah right, so this took a while for me to start. Time is not a thing I have in abundance these days, and this chapter was fairly slap-dash.
Things happen here. Some not very nice things. Believe me, not every chapter will be like this. It's just come to those few chapters where everything's kind of dark and unpleasant. I hope you weren't expecting funny, awkward situations with girls for this entire fic, I doubt I would have been able to handle that amount of non-angst.
Anyway, please enjoy.
The Science of Deduction- A Study in John's Taste in Women
It was coming on to midday before John was convinced to join Sherlock at the crime scene. The younger man stood waiting for him beside a now redundant fire engine, his collar turned up against the poisonous breeze. Behind him the charred skeletal remains of a city home spiked into the blue, black curls of smoke occasionally rising from pale piles of hot ash on the ground. John carefully avoided broken glass as he walked to his friend. He was met with a piercing stare. "Well that took ages."
John threw up his hands defensively. "I don't exactly want to be here, you know."
"It's not as if this is the first case we've taken from Lestrade since I got back. Even if it were, I wouldn't understand your reluctance to work with him."
John grew steadily more impatient. That's been happening quite frequently over the past while, Sherlock noted. The blogger's chest puffed up and his hands tinged scarlet from scrunching them into fists. "We've gone over it before, Sherlock, and I won't talk about it again. Especially not-" his pointed finger darted around the mass of destruction surrounding them, "here." Sherlock pursed his lips and shrugged his coat around himself before moving off to do his job. John followed, sucking his teeth.
It ended up being fairly simple, in the end. Simple and horrific.
A thirty-something year old man had lit a fire in the grate. He'd put too much fuel on. He didn't put on the central heating because the fire was hot enough. All seemed fairly innocent until he had gone to bed. In the middle of the night his daughter, who he had trapped in the basement and beaten within an inch of her life, managed to escape. The warmth of the fire drew her to it; it offered some level of comfort and light. But being only a child, she made the mistake of moving too close to it, becoming a torch, lighting the curtains, paintings, and everything within her reach on fire.
Sherlock had surgically picked through melted plastic and crumbled masonry when he had come across what appeared to be the girl's only friend- a rag doll, now seared and frayed into an unhappy bundle of embroidered fabric. The stench of urine down there had revealed all within a matter of minutes, and John had to leave before he was completely overcome with disgust towards the bastarding human race.
Outside, the sight of Lestrade meekly pacing in his direction was actually somewhat welcome. A familiar face, somebody who he knew wasn't really that bad, took away some of the nausea.
It took only seconds, however, before a new wave of illness passed over John's gut at the sight of the inspector's waxed grey hair and eyes that screamed "Isn't it horrible? Will you be more willing to talk to me now that you're angry at somebody who deserves it?" Horrifying memories of the events leading to Sherlock's fall still pierced John's conscience at the very mention of the name Greg, and here, after experiencing that maddening crime scene, the memories jabbed and tore with ten times the intensity that could be classed as normal.
He breathed deeply. Lestrade started to converse.
"This was a nasty one."
John remained uncharacteristically quiet. The inspector looked him up and down carefully. "Still not talking then." Silence. He frowned, and gazed back at the collapsed doorframe. "Sherlock's alive, John. He didn't commit suicide. What I did, it…" he paused, searching for something tactful to say, "It didn't make him do… what we thought he did." He shuffled, knowing that what he was putting across was pretty weak, and that this might not have been a good time at all. He watched as John's breathing became ragged- yes, very bad timing indeed.
" Could you ever bury a hatchet or am I just trying to catch smoke here?" It took a second for him to mentally slap himself for such terrible wording.
The doctor closed his eyes and fought a gladiator battle with his emotions. "It's not a hatchet." Lestrade frowned and turned defensive, a reaction Sherlock would have understood to mean that Greg hadn't grasped the meaning of what John had said. "Bloody hell, is Sherlock Holmes the only human in this universe you can actually forgive for screwing up? I'll remind you he does it regularly enough." He started towards the front door to hear Sherlock's news. "Maybe you could recognise that other people are more deserving of your forgiveness."
John was left standing in the road, forensics and police officers bypassing him without a second glance in his direction. He watched their movements for a while, hoping Sherlock would be done soon so that they could leave. He was eyeing the policeman guarding the tape when he spotted somebody outside a nearby house, huddled in a blanket. She shivered as though death had visited her in the night. John strode over to her.