Playing the Fool

.

Chapter Nine

.

He knew it was a fever the moment he woke up and felt the sweat beading on his forehead. He wasn't surprised; it was only a matter of time before his immune system faltered from all the mental shocks received during the last week. Somewhere out there Sherlock Holmes was walking about while everyone who had ever cared about him – a number which John could count on one hand – was left with nothing but a painful memory. John knew now how he did it, but as Mycroft stated from the very beginning, there was no leads as to why.

With a long drawn out sigh, the doctor slid out of bed and stumbled his way to the bathroom. He took some ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet and gave the digital thermometer a hard look. Last time he saw the device, Sherlock had it sticking out of a severed head; the memory made John decide that his fever was 'not so bad', and that the thermometer could stay where it was.

His morning rituals took longer than usual considering he paused every time he heard a strange noise coming from the common room. Irene Adler was still an active presence within the flat, and sometimes John would fall prey to the illusion that it was Sherlock stalking about. Now that John knew the man was alive, every thought was drawn to the concept of his return. Multiple scenarios unfolded within John's mind - more than one of them resulted in John making a mental note to keep the First Aid kit well stocked and his gun out of reach. Sherlock was going to get an earful when they finally met - the only question was whether or not it was before or after the inevitable punch to the face.

Perhaps that is what made the man linger. If the roles were reversed, John would dread returning after months of separation. There was just nothing one could say to return everything back to normal. Was Sherlock wrong in faking his own death and leaving John grief-struck and clueless? Knowing Sherlock, there were probably reasons John couldn't even fathom keeping the man from coming home.

That led his thoughts to the camera - the key item placed in Molly's hands. John thought that once he bullied Donavan into releasing Sherlock's laptop (not to mention his own), things would begin to make more sense. He expected clarity; yet when he sat down and slowly dredged through the abundant data stored on the device, John couldn't see how the footage from the camera could have been stored in Sherlock's hard drive without the meddling folks at the Yard discovering it. He was missing something. Something Sherlock wouldn't have thought he'd miss.

He found himself staring into his own reflection like a dead-man, glassy eyed expression making him wonder just how ill he really was. There was a sickly sheen across his fore-head and a lethargy that made itself known in every move the doctor made. He didn't notice Irene leaning against the doorway of the bathroom until she cleared her throat and attracted John's attention.

"You do not look good." Always the impish grin. The smile that rubbed John the wrong way. It was like she caught him doing something he shouldn't. John took half a minute to formulate a reply, feeling as dumb as drugged cattle.

"I don't feel good either." He wasn't going to be making any snappy come-backs today. He brushed past Irene to make his way into the kitchen. He wasn't hungry, but he knew that he needed something to keep up his energy if he wanted to solve this mystery anytime soon.

He didn't expect Irene to follow him like a curious cat. "Fever?" She mentioned casually, moving to the corner of the room as if she were just a talkative part of the background. John noticed that she was wearing Sherlock's dressing gown – and nothing else. Maybe that explained the fever.

"A mild one." He put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster and took out the jam. "Why are you still here?"

Irene's smile became wider. "Do I need a reason? I would have thought you'd like me to stay; perhaps my presence will entice Sherlock to come back to you sooner?" She sighed at her own words and drew circles into the counter top with her fingertips. "Though we both know it's not me he lusts after."

"If you are insinuating..." John began before he realized Irene was just trying to make him angry. He clung to a butter knife as if it would help reinforce the idea he wanted to express – which was to piss off.

She laughed then - loud and sincerely. "I love how your mind goes there first of all places John." She filled the kettle to make herself a cup of tea. "It's most fascinating."

"How many times-" No, he was playing her game now. "Never mind! I don't have the time for this ridiculousness." John was frustrated. He wanted to sling a snappy comment back at the woman in his defence, but there was none coming. He felt like he was fighting in a straight-jacket. There was nothing at all romantic between the him and Sherlock - why then, was it so blatantly obvious to the both of them, but not to the rest of the world?

"We're best friends." There was nothing but sincerity in his words.

"Tell me John. Who drew the line?" The woman withdrew a mug from the cupboard. It was difficult for John to keep his eyes on her face, since Irene didn't mind exposing the more hidden regions of a lady's form with every reach of her long ivory arms. "It wasn't you, was it?"

John closed his eyes in a long drawn out blink to clear his thoughts. "Look. This is a topic that is really none of your concern... which is funny considering that the people it should concern couldn't care less, so why don't we drop it? Better yet, you could just leave Baker street all together and give me a little peace and quiet."

"I threaten you."

There was always the tone of absolute certainty with Irene. Out of everything she did – manipulate people, sell herself, ruin lives - the statements she could pin on people bothered John the most. With Sherlock it was a deduction based on fact; but with Irene it was drawing conclusions from more internal tells. She worked with emotions, a language John himself was fluent in – and it unnerved him.

"I'm not scared of you, not in the least."

John had his own smile that was like a guillotine. It ended conversations with a sharpness that left everyone in the room uncomfortable. The doctor calmly took his toast, the knife and the jam into the living room, where he sat down at the table and fired up his laptop.

Irene's eyes followed him the entire time. It took an hour of John puttering about on the internet, before the woman attempted to talk with John again. This time she was fully clothed in something surprisingly conservative. She sat across from him in Sherlock's usual place, her hands caressing the detective's laptop with interest. "Do you mind if I try and find that footage for you?"

John looked up, shocked that she'd even suggest it. There was a portion of him that wanted to deny her access to anything that belonged to Sherlock, for she was beginning to make a habit out of surrounding herself in anything that belonged to the man. Yet, if anyone could root out a secret in his possessions... it would be 'The Woman'.

"Why not?" He said simply. There was mixed feelings about allowing the action, but he cast them aside as he went back to reading a month old e-mail from Sarah. It was filled with heart-felt condolences that struck John in an odd way. It was strange going over the dozens of sympathetic messages he had received when he knew that Sherlock was alive. It felt wrong somehow.

His morality took a back seat when he noticed that Irene was getting more and more irritated at the lack of information she was uncovering from Sherlock's computer. John felt oddly proud that his flatmate was causing someone else discomfort from 'beyond the grave'. The feeling came to a crescendo the moment a clip of Rick Astley's Never Gunna Give you Up" started to play through the speakers. It only got through a couple of lyrics before Irene slammed the screen shut and looked at the laptop as if it insulted her.

John was struggling not to laugh. "Was that what I thought it was?"

The woman flew from the chair in a tantrum. "If I had known that he would resort to such juvenile tricks I wouldn't have even bothered!"

"Found nothing then?" He knew he shouldn't have sounded so cheerful, but it wasn't everyday you witnessed a rick-roll from a dead man. He watched as the woman seethed silently and threw herself on the sofa. John's smile faded the moment he noticed that Sherlock usually did the exact same thing when something was bothering him.

"I doubt we'll ever find it. It's not on your laptop I assume?"

"No, and if he wanted me to find it, I'm certain it would be something simple. I'm not exactly techno-savvy." John leaned back in his chair. His headache was returning, but he didn't feel like he had to energy to fetch himself another pill. "I can't think of anything else... but there must be..."

Irene stared at the ceiling. "Could he have sent it to your phone?"

"I would have received it right away." John's forehead furrowed. He was trying to think if there was anything else he owned that could be accessed wirelessly; but the laptop and phone were as gadgety as he got. Perhaps he sent to someone else, like Mrs. Hudson or Irene?

John looked to Irene, wondering if Sherlock would involve her in all this. It seemed unlikely. Besides, her phone would be in Mycroft's possession –

No wait. It wasn't.

He had given Irene's phone to Sherlock himself. It could still work, couldn't it? It was wiped of everything, but put a battery in it and it could theoretically store any information sent to it – if the number still worked.

The doctor got to his feet and immediately tripped over himself getting to Sherlock's desk by the window. It was where the detective kept some of his most important possessions that weren't in the digital realm. Irene was at his side in seconds, she smelled a conclusion the moment John left his chair.

"Onto something?"

"Your phone, the one you used to nearly crush the country's economy." John said, fumbling about the drawer with a frown. It was locked and he had no idea where the key might be. "It's the only other thing that would work."

Irene moved John aside. "Here, let me. It's an old style lock..." She nicked a paper-clip from a stack of papers and bent it to suit her needs. "I could open these in primary school."

She may have failed at extracting information from a computer, but the drawer yielded to Irene's whims and she had it open in seconds. John rifled through it just as quickly, but his heart settled back into place as he realized that the phone was missing. It was another dead end.

John ran a hand through his hair and realized his fingers were trembling. He made himself sit down before he fell down. Today was just not his day. "I don't even know if I should waste my time even looking for it. How am I to know where the hell he put it, or even if the camera sent it to it... or even if the footage taken means anything?" He flailed his arms about before turning into molasses in his chair. This entire affair could just be one giant wild goose chase designed to keep the doctor busy while Sherlock ran about doing god-knows-what.

"I'll check the boxes in his room..." Irene offered, sensing John's irritation. She left him to deal with it on his own. The probability of the phone cropping up in Sherlock's boxed possessions was slim to none and they both knew it.

Once again John was sitting in his empty living room feeling as if the world had abandoned him. He stared at Sherlock's vacant seat with a bit of contempt. "It's your fault I'm like this..." He said out loud, shocked that he would talk to himself like some common lunatic. Maybe his fever was worse than he thought. "Running me ragged and you're not even here..."

He started to drift, wrapping himself in the hurt and hate that seemed to follow the recollections of his eccentric flatmate. Memories started to pour themselves into the forefront of John's mind. Most of them were recent occurrences – meeting Irene and the mess Moriarty created. How did one man attract so much trouble? The moment John thought it, the answers came floating to him in a wave of all the tart things the detective had ever said. Sherlock was the sort to make enemies as easy as John made friends; they were two sides of the same coin.

Then why couldn't he figure this part of his puzzle? Where was the bloody camera-phone?

"Safest place I know." Sherlock's smooth baritone injected itself into John's head and spun there in the endless haze, like smoke in a still room.

John woke with a start. He felt terribly disorientated, and for a moment he had no idea what he was doing in the living room. Irene came around with a concerned look on her face. "You all right? You mumbled something..."

"Mrs. Hudson. I think Mrs. Hudson might have the phone." John mumbled, sounding half-asleep. He pulled himself up from his chair and teetered over to the door. His fever had definitely worsened in the short nap he had taken, and the stairs down to Mrs. Hudson's flat looked daunting.

Irene raised an eyebrow and looked from John to the steps. "You are not going to-"

John ignored her and plotted downstairs, his hand gripping the railing firmly. Irene couldn't follow since she was supposed to be a ghost, but it didn't stop her from peering worriedly from the doorway. Her concern was for nothing, since John made it safely to the main floor and knocked on his landlady's door with vigor.

It felt like ages before it opened. Mrs. Hudson's queer face eventually arrived in the widening crack of the door, and appraised John like a mother would a difficult child.

"What happened to you! A stiff breeze could knock you over!" Immediately a hand flew to John's forehead and she practically dragged the man inside. "A fever? You're a doctor! You shouldn't even be out of bed! Sit down and I'll get you something to drink... you need fluids!" She dashed about, fetching John a glass of water before he could even take two steps. Her mother-henning was annoying and flattering at the same time.

"I'm fine, just in need of a good rest is all. I need to talk to you about a missing camera-phone."

Mrs. Hudson's eyebrows knitted together as she digested what John said. "A camera-phone? I don't know much about that. I haven't seen Sherlock's phone since he..." She paused, unsure of where she wanted that sentence to go. "Well... I don't think I've seen one."

John sipped his water, his hope slowly deflating. "Did you move anything in the flat? Anything at all?"

At this her face lit up and she ran off to some corner of her flat like an excited child. "Oh wait! I remember now! I was dusting the mantle piece months ago... and I thought to myself that it was a good opportunity to get rid of that damned skull." There came the sound of rummaging though trinkets or some sort of storage container. "But I just... I couldn't bear to give it away... or destroy it. There was something so... Sherlock about it. When I picked it up from the mantle, this fell out of it."

She came back bearing the camera-phone and John let out a sigh of relief. "That's it!"

"Good thing I remembered. I thought it might be important, because of that... well, you know - that problem with the man who fell on my bins... so I kept them together." She handed it over, glad to be useful.

"You're a saint Mrs. Hudson!" He finished his glass of water and patted the woman on the back before heading back out the door.

"You better take care of yourself John..."

He gave her a small smile before making his way back up to his flat. He was ready to pass out the moment he reached his door. He was completely out of breath from only two flights of stairs. Irene was waiting, her eyes peering hesitantly over John's armchair. "Did you find it?"

"Yes." He puffed as he held up the device and made his way over to the table. With a weary 'thump' he planted himself down in the wooden chair and turned the phone on. Immediately it began to chime, alerting the user that it had received a message while it was dormant. John accessed it with baited breath and turned up the volume so that everything could be heard through the grain of the poor-quality camera.

For once it was exactly what he thought it was. Footage of Moriarty and Sherlock the morning that their lives had 'ended'. It was at a terrible angle... and there was only a sliver of actual picture for it looked like Sherlock had the device enclosed in his fist before he transferred it into his pocket several minutes into the recording. The conversation was clever, with Sherlock dumbing himself down to get more damning information from his nemesis. How did Moriarty not suspect that Sherlock was leading him to unveil everything he has so cleverly weaved up till now? Perhaps villains really did have the need to monologue. If there was a verbal equivalent of chess, John supposed that it would be very similar to what he was hearing.

The footage ended with Sherlock's fingers deftly inserting the camera into the rubber ball, silencing it as it started it's journey to Molly. The battery wasn't sufficient to keep it operational past that, and the clip ended, making John feel rather hollow. There was nothing about what was said from the moment Sherlock jumped back from the edge, to the moment John and him had their last conversation.

Irene was staring at the blank screen with an unreadable expression on her face. John turned and tilted his head somewhat, expecting her to say something. She didn't and shifted her gaze to the window instead. There was something in that simple motion, but John was too busy thinking to care. What was he supposed to do now? He had all the pieces together, now it was time to figure out what it all meant.

He had the evidence to prove Sherlock wasn't a fraud. Perhaps he could give it to the media? No. That would result in a mess that might spiral out of control. The media wasn't interested in the the truth, they only wanted what would sell. Maybe he could tell Mycroft...

Then it hit him in a moment of pure genius.

"I'd be lost without my blogger..."

Of course. That was John's purpose. His blog had a wide readership, all of which were supportive. The majority of his e-mails were fans sending him 'I believe in Sherlock Holmes' messages, since he disabled comments on his most recent update. Some even publicly challenged the media, but the fad wore off before John could fully appreciate it.

He fired up his laptop and started to go over the list of things he could say without harming Molly or Dr. Spencer's reputations. Most of his story was going to have to be vague, but the footage alone would revive Sherlock's career far better than his words ever could. He was in the middle of typing out the post that would probably make him famous when Irene came up from behind him and put a soft hand on his shoulder.

"I wouldn't do that."

The comment made John stop in mid stoke. He looked up at her from over his shoulder. "What? This is what Sherlock meant for me to do, I know it is." For once he was certain... for once he figured out what it all meant. Then he looked at Irene's muddled expression and pulled away from the keyboard, a sinking feeling at his core. "Okay... what am I missing?"

The woman's eyes refused to meet his. "You've stopped reading the newspapers since they've been printing slander, haven't you?"

"Not entirely." Occasionally he'd read a headline or two, maybe a crossword.

Irene went over to her purse and fetched a vanilla envelope. She set it down on John's keyboard before sitting across from him and knitting her hands together. "Read that and tell me what you think."

Now it was like he was having a meeting with Mycroft. The formula was there. He would take a look at a clue and then feel the fool once he didn't catch the full meaning of the information. Mycroft had the benefit of being related to Sherlock though; John didn't feel like Irene earned the right to belittle him.

He took the envelope and peered inside. There were a bunch of newspaper clippings, some were in foreign languages, but most were English. He started to read them one at a time, his face slowly melting into a grim expression the more he read between the lines. They were all about bodies being discovered in strange circumstances, or high-profile criminals being brought to justice. There were names he half-remembered Sherlock muttering about, and some names he only saw in the media. Then there were the few he couldn't even pronounce let alone recall. All of them were horrible people – people Sherlock would have been glad to see dead or behind bars.

"And all of them are puppets of Moriarty." Irene added, as if following John's train of thought.

"Sherlock's doing." It wasn't even a question. Nothing was coincidental if Sherlock walked the Earth.

"I can't think of anyone else who has the power to capture so many across three continents in only a couple of months." The adoration in her voice made John set the clippings down heavier then he meant to.

"Some of these are murders."

"Do you think that frightens Sherlock? Do you think him incapable of killing? You've done it. He killed a man at my house. Imagine him running about in the shadows... untouchable by the law since the world thinks him dead. The possibilities are endless." Her eyes motioned to her collection of executions.

John shook his head. It was hard to imagine, but at the same time... it really wasn't. He could picture Sherlock murdering these people, but not his Sherlock; the Sherlock who nicked ashtrays, who smiled at irony, who was happy to see Lestrade pull up in his cruiser with a mystery. That Sherlock died at St. Bart's. There was a monster now in his place.

"If you revive his career, and he returns from the dead... there are going to be some clever journalists out there who are going to make the same connections I did."

He could see what Irene was trying to tell him, and it put him in a very strange predicament. His mind knew the trouble he could potentially cause the detective, but at the same time, Sherlock was clever enough to weasel his way out of trouble. Was this excuse interference from his heart? Emotions were trying to undermine his head into justifying any action that would let him see his flatmate again.

John stared at his blog. The work in progress was beckoning to him, the blinking cursor calling his name. He needed to let the world know that Sherlock Holmes was a good man, and that he was out there waiting for them to believe. He started to type again, ignoring the look Irene was giving him – the look that screamed at him in silence. He knew she was quietly urging him to think this through and realize he was making a mistake.

The post was uploaded two hours later.

It took John less than 24 hours to realize that Irene had been right - but for all the wrong reasons.

.

Author's Notes:

Taken apart, re-written, now I'm happy with it. I had certain plot points I needed to meet in this chapter that I utterly failed to write them when I was sick. I'm such an idiot. I think I ruined the flow of everything for any regulars to this fic... I'm sorry. The next two chapters are going to be epic, I promise. The end is nigh. The reunion is coming. Please Read and Review.