Necessary Faith
By Alecto Perdita
Chapter 2 - "Who did you lose?"
Rating: PG-13
Posted: April 14, 2012
"Who did you lose?"
John would later learn that most hunters, those that hadn't been born into it, came into the game after the loss of a loved one to malevolent forces.
He stares down into the amber depths of his pint. "My flatmate. My best friend."
An impossible man that he loves with all his soul.
"It wasn't..." John trails off. No, he had lost Sherlock to evil, just not supernatural evil. He lost Sherlock to human evil, to mistakes, to ignorance, to pride, to one man's unrelenting madness... "He killed himself."
Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees her toying with the ring threaded through the gold chain around her neck—an engagement ring with a small diamond (sentiment).
She catches his eye and smiles warily. "Me too. I lost my best friend too, he was the love of my life."
John thinks that if they had met under different circumstances—if they hadn't met on the road to absolution and revenge, before he knew Sherlock and she her deceased fiance—he could have maybe fallen for Mary Morstan.
-x-x-x-
Mary and he exchange numbers before parting outside the pub (because that's what's done after having drinks with a pretty woman). John doesn't actually expect to hear from her ever again. He shoves the paper with the digits into the back pocket of his jeans and forgets about it until he realizes it was still there when he pulled the wet denim from the washing machine. He sighs at the wadded mess before binning it; the numbers are more Rorschach ink blots than anything else.
She doesn't contact him either.
For John, the world becomes strange and exciting again. And he goes hurtling toward the unknown and the adrenaline rush he hasn't tasted since Sherlock left. When he can't sleep, he prowls through London's darkened streets in search of his nightmares to face head-on—not like the intangible inner demons he can't reach inside his psyche. He doesn't find other creatures of the night though, just the occasional muggers and thugs that he fights with all the same relish.
John's nighttime patrols often take him past the cemetery where Sherlock is buried. The gates are locked for the night, and John would stand at the entrance and stare in the direction of a gravesite he can't see from that vantage point. Almost two weeks after meeting Mary, he notices that the gates were left slightly ajar. He slips through the opening, causing the iron to creak and groan. His feet move automatically in the direction of his best friend—dead and buried underneath six feet of cold earth.
John never makes it to his intended destination, sidetracked by light and grunts of exertion just a few dozen yards in. "Graverobbers" is his first guess. But as he stands at the edge of the three feet trench and looks down into the opened earth, he only finds one—Mary.
"Ah, John. This is a bit of a surprise." She cranes her head up, blinding him for a bit with the torch affixed to her helmet. "Want to lend me a hand with this ghost? You were so helpful when dealing with the Vetalas last time."
Five months and a week after losing Sherlock Holmes, John Watson desecrates his first grave to salt and burn a corpse. He just hopes with all his body, soul, and heart that he never has to do the same at the edge of Sherlock's.
-x-x-x-
Like her hunter legacy, Mary's house in South Harrow is left to her by her late father. She explained that her immediate family had been hunters for several generations now, starting with her great-grandfather. Day broke and they are both tired from exhaustion. John sits in the armchair in her cozy living room and just listens as she speaks of impossible things: spirits and monsters and demons.
"This is what you do for a living? Track and kill monsters?" he asks.
It's mad. But is it really all that madder than chasing after serial killers?
She had changed out of her street attire—well-worn jeans and leather jacket caked with earth after their digging expedition. The long-sleeved blouse and ankle-length skirt skillfully conceals all the fit muscles he had previously seen at work. "Dad didn't want me to, but he taught me anyway. He wanted me to be able to protect myself. And what about you, John Watson? Why haven't you run away screaming in fright or accusing me of lunacy?" She smiles tightly.
His next breath is his only hesitation before his own story rushes out like a cascading waterfall. He tells her about getting shot in Afghanistan, about meeting Sherlock Holmes, about the magnificence of the cases, and about losing that brilliance. Mary never interrupts him—she just listens attentively and patiently like a saint. She gives no indication that she previously knew anything about his situation, even with all the media coverage that had gone on. After what seems like hours, John has nothing left to share except for the grief choking his lungs.
In return, she tells him of her deceased and disgraced fiance, a former Crown Prosecutor. Almost a year ago, his career had been dragged down in scandal amidst accusations of evidence tampering, witness intimidation, and colluding with organized crime. She knows he was innocent; but before any real investigation into the allegations could take place, he had turned up dead and was written off as a suicide. But Mary recognizes the sign and can see the crime for what it really is: murder by black magic.
She is on the trail of her fiance's murderer.
James Moriarty—still somewhat wildly regarded as Richard Brook—is already dead. John had seen the body with its shattered skull and rumpled suit. There is no one left for John to take revenge for Sherlock on.
-x-x-x-
The next job that John accompanies Mary on doesn't go as well.
It was so easy to fall into step with Mary after what happened at the graveyard. The only surprising thing about the whole affair is how Mary just let him tag along. She never tries to convince him of how dangerous it is. She never tries to talk him out of being her friend. John soon recognizes that she needs the company as much as he does—that they had unintentionally become the whole of a support system to one another. Mary starts picking him up after his extended hospital shifts, always ignoring the curious glance being cast her way by John's supervisor and coworkers.
They go to pubs two or three nights a week. Sometimes they just sit and talk, enjoying each other's company and trading stories about some of the stranger ordeals they've both faced. Sometimes she is there to gather intel from her contacts and other hunter-types (whom all seemed to loiter exclusively in pubs when not on the job).
Then in the middle of October, he insists on helping to investigate a lead. Maybe he should have asked a few more questions than he actually did.
Either way, he is on his knees on the dusty floors of a dilapidated house in Brixton with fire burning through his veins. The shotgun with rock salt rounds is lying just outside of his reach. He can't believe he had been caught by surprise, but then again, he isn't used to opponents that defy the very laws of human physics. The last of his tortured scream tears out of his throat, and leaves his shaking body feeling completely raw and exposed. The cold clamp around his heart tightens in response.
Please God, let me live. Sherlock, is this what dying felt like to you?
"Get away from him!" Mary screeches as she flies into the room with an iron crowbar in hand.
The spirit dissipates with a few swings of the rod. John falls forward until his elbows slam down to catch himself before collapsing completely. Mary crouches down by his side with her back facing him. She grapples with the shotgun and discharges a round into the incoming spirit.
"Are you alright, John?"
He gasps for air.
"John? Talk to me!"
"I'm fine," he finally grounds out the words.
She scoots closer, trying to shield him with her own body. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you alone. I didn't know this one was going to be so strong."
"I did offer to be bait," he reminds her. The pain is thankfully starting to subside, but the cold sweat still gives way to a few tremors. "Any luck with finding the body?"
"You were right, it's inside the drywall installation in the basement. I've broken through it enough to catch a glimpse of the body, but then you screamed."
John licks his dried and chapped lips. "We better go finish this then." He holds out a shaky hand toward her and she rests the crowbar in his upturned palm.
By the time they're finished, John's shirt is soaked through with sweat and a trickle of blood trails down his face from open wound on his temple cut by a rock salt round flying too close by. Mary is limping after her right ankle caught on a loose nail while tearing down the stairs to the basement. They are covered in 60-year-old plaster and probably more than a few layers of asbestos.
John tightens his arm around her waist and lowers them to the ground outside the house. He considers bandaging her wound with a strip of their clothing, but it will just heighten the possibility of infection. She's probably going to need a tetanus shot too.
Suddenly, he can't stop thinking about Connie Prince, or Moriarty, or the vest of Semtex weighing him down by the edge of a pool. There is the phantom scent of chlorine, and there is bile rising in his throat. All he can feel is the ice racing through his blood, because sometimes there will never be closure—not even a wailing ghost trapped on earth in its own personal cage of hell.
Sometimes there's just nothing.
Her next words shake him out of his reverie. "I can train you, if you like. Teach you everything I know about hunting."
Mary's blue eyes bore into his soul. She knows he is starting to retreat somewhere she will not be able to ultimately reach, so she throws him a lifeline and drags him back forcibly.
Thank you for reading!