AN: And once again, the detective is deducing, the doctor is doctoring, and John Watson is being rather pathetically Forever Alone. You'll see what I mean.

Enjoy!

Sherlock barely registered John's anticipatory hovering as he pored over the first girl's file. He had been standing there for at least a minute and a half, but his concern seemed comparatively irrelevant. Her hand, the bruising, the sheet, the location, it was all resolving, all solidifying in his mind into clear, definite points. He had directions, things to investigate; now there was just –

Something cool and smooth poked him in the face. His head jerked away, causing an insufferable pounding, and he looked up to see that John – eyes narrowed and lips pursed – had literally shoved the plate of toast into his face until it bumped his cheek.

"John –" he sighed, exasperated.

"Don't start." He snapped, but without much fervour, "I dragged you out here, I can drag you back to your room, now eat the toast."

Sherlock looked away dismissively, but John, with clockwork precision, set the plate of toast on Sherlock's thigh, grabbed him by the back of the hand, and forcibly curled his fingers around a red mug of tea. "As your doctor, I order you to ingest that before moving on with this investigation." He carefully cleared a piece of floor and plunked down unceremoniously to keep watch while Sherlock pouted about eating his toast. "So, what's your idea then?" He asked, hoping that if Sherlock got to ranting he would eat simply out of agitation, since he wasn't able to pace without extraordinary effort. "If not rape, then what?"

"John, you saw the bruises on the third girl, they weren't haloed, were they? Just dark patches."

"Sounds about right, yeah."

"And the other two, based on the photos, looks like the same thing."

"Yep."

Sherlock looked at him expectantly, as though he was supposed to be picking up on this already, but when John just stared blankly he continued. "Look at the first girl. Her left hand was smashed." He flipped over the photograph nearest him so that John could glance at it. "There's yellowing and faint halos around the bruises, which means her hand swelled after it was broken."

"That does tend to happen with trauma that severe." he agreed hesitantly, fearing that he was missing something that Sherlock found terribly obvious, as usual.

"But...?" Sherlock prompted, raising his eyebrows.

He scowled, ready to shrug and let Sherlock lay it out for him when suddenly it clicked. "But the rest of the bruises didn't swell," he announced triumphantly, "blood pooled because of the capillary damage, but there was no arterial blood flow to them when they were made. No blood pressure, no heartbeat, so...the...victims were already dead?" He was sure, but he added a question mark as insurance. Couldn't make too many intellectual assertions with Sherlock in the room.

"Exactly. Same with the welts. They look like they were made with a stick or a riding crop; they broke the skin, but caused almost no bleeding, obviously, no blood pressure." He took a satisfied bite of the toast. Sweet, dry, crunchy victory for John.

"So they were all beaten after they were dead, except the first girl's left hand. How does that make a difference?"

He chased the toast with a sip of tea and continued. "It makes a great deal of difference. It means the murderer to no pleasure in seeing them hurt. He smashed the girl's one hand but then decided to kill her and the others before doing the rest of the damage. For some reason he wanted them to look really beat up when the police found them, but didn't want to torture them. That's why there was so much damage to the face, but less to the rest of the body. Seems to me that a rapist, someone who thinks his victim is beautiful, wouldn't smash her up like that. The sheet suggests the same thing. They were neither raped nor murdered on the sheets they were found in, none of them were, the only bloodstains are minimal and match perfectly to their body positions when they were unwrapped. The first was blue and well-worn, the other two were white and brand new. The one we found yesterday still had the factory anti-stain coating on it, so it had never even been washed. I suspect the same of number two. That means that the killer didn't just wrap them in the sheets he killed them on for convenience, he pre-emptively bought new sheets, for them specifically, and when he was finished with the girls, he very carefully wrapped up their bodies and got rid of them. Why not just use the bin liner? It's convenient, practically untraceable. No, this killer felt remorse. This killer didn't kill for the sake of killing, he had some ulterior motive that he was forced to kill in order to achieve." He was now almost through an entire piece of toast. John was practically ecstatic.

"So what about the rapes then? You can't tell me that someone who couldn't stomach seeing them in pain could bring himself to rape three little children?"

He picked up John's medical report of the last victim, then stretched out his hand to grab the stack that contained the other two. He couldn't quite reach and was about to stand up from the sofa, but John rushed to pick it up first and hand it over. "Thank you. Now, I notice that your report is slightly more precise than these other two, John, commendable, I seem to be rubbing off on you. Anyway, the other two reports say…" he flipped a few pages, "'minor vaginal trauma' and 'vaginal trauma consistent with sexual assault.' Yours says…" he rifled a bit more, "'superficial tears to the hymen membrane,' very telling indeed." John didn't like being reminded of having to write those words, but he nodded. "Yet, in spite of the violent treatment of the rest of the bodies, that was it as far as sexual injuries? There was no damage to the cervix, nothing more serious than a few minor tears? Odd, don't you think?"

"I suppose." Odder that Sherlock had such detailed knowledge of the female reproductive system. It seemed like something he would have chosen to delete.

"And virtually no blood at all?"

"Correct."

"The rape was post-mortem as well, John, and I don't even think it was truly rape. I think someone used a foreign object and then the syringe method."

John could hardly keep his mouth from gaping. "Why on earth would someone do that? Why would they go out of their way to leave DNA evidence that we could easily find?"

"Because The DNA in the bodies is not the DNA of our killer. He –" he stopped pointedly, "or she was trying very hard indeed to throw us off the true motive for the crime."

John had to look away for a moment to process that. Could anyone really be so conniving?

"There's a connection between them, something obvious, something the killer knew we would find out if not for the rape aspect. We need to go to Scotland Yard," Sherlock insisted, "I need to talk to Lestrade, I'm sure he has more data for me by now."

"Wait, wait, hold on." John waved off his attempts to gather up the files, "You're in no state to be going anywhere. You're unsteady on your feet and you look – objectively – like a complete wreck. What about the tip-off letter? Isn't that what he's expecting anyway?"

"This is too important for a damn tip-off letter!" Sherlock growled, clearly frustrated.

"Fine, phone him up then, I'll get your mobile." He pried himself off the floor with some difficulty and turned back to the bedroom.

"No, I need to be there. If I phone him he'll ask me to come in anyway. If I send you he'll just start asking asinine questions, you'll have to phone me, it'll be a mess." He resumed gathering up the files, eager to look urgent, but trying to hide the fact that walking or even standing in his compromised state was a considerable effort.

"Sherlock…" he warned knowingly, feeling more and more like a parent, "you should be in a hospital. You should be on monitors and pure oxygen and bed rest, yet against my better judgment you're here in our flat eating toast. I don't know how you convinced me to let you stay here, but you did, and so be it, but I absolutely am not taking you to Scotland Yard."

Score for John Watson today: two whole pieces of toast and the avoidance of a dangerous and undignified outing. He should save Sherlock's life more often; it seemed to give him some fleeting semblance of authority. He swallowed and shivered off the thought of his friend's icy pale face, deciding against that solution.

"John…" The sudden, hopeless agony in Sherlock's voice turned his heart on end. "This is important, this work…this is what I live for, and if I can't –" his voice cracked, trailed off.

John was suddenly furious. Knew he was acting, knew it was all bluster and crocodile tears, but it got right to the core of him nonetheless. He chewed the inside of his cheek in frustration. He was slowly coming to the realisation that when Sherlock wanted something from him, he couldn't refuse. No matter how sure he was of the right thing to do, Sherlock had an unexplainable, unrelenting power over him, and he was now exercising it to its fullest potential. He desperately cast around for conditions to tack on to his consent. He was going down, but not without a fight.

"You…have to shower. And you have to eat more than toast. And you can't complain about having to lean on me the whole way." He knew the demands were half-hearted, but it was the best he could come up with on short notice.

Sherlock smiled. "Do I ever?"

John shook his head, furious. The game, it seemed, was on once again. Whether he liked it or not.

"What I want to know," he mused, loudly, over the rush of the shower as he stood leaning against the door –closed, but not locked, at John's insistence, "Is how a serial killer gets a hold of some other bloke's spunk for use in red herring tactics. It's not like you just find the stuff lying around."

Sherlock didn't answer immediately, but after a few seconds the tap shut off. "Oh, I would beg to differ, John." He said matter-of-factly. "When was the last time you emptied your rubbish bin?"

John's face flushed pink and he vowed to keep his mouth shut. He'd embarrassed himself enough for one morning.