Necessary Faith
By Alecto Perdita
Chapter 5 - I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES
Rating: PG-13
Posted: April 25, 2012
John should have known something was off for Lestrade to request a second meeting on Christmas Eve. They meet at the same pub three blocks away from Baker Street. Lestrade had already started without him, judging by the number of empty glasses littering the surface of the table.
"I hope you've been pacing yourself, Greg," John says as he settles down on a stool.
Without preamble, Lestrade slides a memory stick across the surface of the table.
"What's this?" He picks up the small object.
"It's the full report prepared by Internal Investigations."
John nearly drops the stick into his beer. "What? You're not supposed to have this, are you?"
"No, and don't go telling anyone you have this. I'll definitely lose my job then."
He wipes his sweaty palm against his jeans before finally asking Lestrade, "Then why give it to me at all?"
A pained expression flashes across the detective's face, pinching the space between his brows. "Because it's the least I can do, John. I'm as much at fault as Anderson and Donovan. I stood by and let that happen to Sherlock."
The mention of John's least favorite Yarders feels like a punch to the solar plexus. He tries not to think of the smugness and the pity on Donovan's face when she showed up at St. Bart's after Sherlock jumped.
I told you so.
Never before had he wanted to hit a woman so badly. Never before had he wanted to wind his hands around another human being's throat and squeeze, to throttle the life out of them. He did neither. Just gave his statement with eyes fixed in a glare at the ground and in short, brusque sentences.
"What did he say?"
"He said that he was fake, that he had researched me, that it was all a magic trick. He said goodbye."
"I told you so. I warned you."
"If you really believe that, then you're an even bigger idiot than Sherlock says—said..."
John chugs his drink instead to drown the sparks of an emerging sob. "It wasn't your fault," he offers eventually.
Which is true—it's not really Lestrade's fault. John knows what Lestrade's actually trying to apologize for. It's for that brief moment of doubt he must have had months ago when Lestrade stood in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street and politely requested Sherlock come down to the station. And John can forgive that moment of weakness (it's easier now after all these months). Because Lestrade didn't know Sherlock as well as John did. Because almost no one knew Sherlock Holmes as well as John Watson.
"I didn't say anything last time, but I've been officially demoted back to Sergeant. They say I'm lucky that's all they're doing."
John wants to laugh; he wants to scream. Both would make him look insane. So he does neither and orders another pint instead.
It's over, John realizes with a sinking heart. That chapter of his life—with Sherlock and chasing criminals—is officially closed and gone. Even if his best friend had somehow managed to escape death or miraculously return to life in some stupid fantasy, things can never go back to the way they were.
Hours later, he stumbles out of the pub with one arm around Lestrade. They're both well and truly pissed at this point. Lestrade's career, while not completely over, is dead in the water. He's never going to get promoted again.
And John...he feels as if his life in London is finally over.
He shivers alone at the street corner after depositing Lestrade in a cab and giving the detective's address to the driver. He pulls out his mobile, fingers trembling from both the cold and liquor, and speed dials one (the honor used to belong to Sherlock's number, but no more...).
"Mary," he slurs the last syllable of her name. "I'm coming with you."
-x-x-x-
They set out for Southampton on Boxing Day, after they each spent Christmas Day packing. John arranged to take all his vacation days for the year at once. Mary, who has been working as a private tutor, had already dropped all her students before the holidays started.
She's waiting by the open boot of her Peugeot 206 (a silver-colored 2003 model) on the morning of December 26th. John places his old Army canvas bag between her rolling suitcase and two other duffel bags stashing things from the weapon cabinet in her cellar. Through the rear window, he could also see a pile of essential references sitting in the back seat.
After shutting the boot with a thunk, Mary leans in against his side. He takes a moment to revel in the shared warmth of their bodies against the December winds.
"You don't have to come with me," each word expels little puffs of air. "I'd be fine on my own."
The thought of her running off alone—of abandoning her to whatever fate awaited—makes his chest constrict painfully.
"Tough luck, you'd have to beat me off with a stick."
They both slide into the front of the car. Mary is driving. John presses his forehead against the cool window and pushes away the memory of Sherlock's back walking away after breaking into Kitty Reilly's residence. He should have chased after his flatmate that night. He should have never let Sherlock out of his sight. He should have never allowed Sherlock to push him away with cruel words in the lab at Bart's.
John feels there were many things that he should have done in the last 24 hours of Sherlock Holmes' life. Things that are so blindly clear and obvious now with hindsight.
But he didn't. He hadn't.
-x-x-x-
Releasing the press statement on January 6th, Sherlock's birthday, is another slap in the face from the Met. It also predictably kicks up another round of media frenzy over the late Sherlock Holmes. It's a good thing he's run off to Southampton with Mary by then.
John has already read the full report front to back—all 365 pages of it—no less than three times since Lestrade first handed it to him. John had no idea how many cases the Greater London Metropolitan Police had previously consulted with Sherlock for. It added up a lot over the last six years.
The way that the writing style and the number of obvious spelling and grammar errors changes every few set of cases reviewed makes it apparent that a number of different people had prepared the report. It's also plain to see that no one fully appreciated Sherlock's true genius.
The five-page conclusion at the end is what pains John the most. The Met can admit that the majority of the physical evidence and motives procured via Sherlock's consultation were sound, that the people arrested and convicted did commit the crime they were accused of. There were some liberties taken that the Met has now secured against through new and soon-to-be-published guidelines for police consultants. Though John doubts they'll allow anyone to consult again soon—not with all the egg on their faces after this one.
The Met wants to—no, needs to—save face on this. It's probably one of the reasons they pushed the report out so relatively quickly.
But on the rumors of Sherlock Holmes being a fraud—that he had somehow helped all these criminals engineer their crimes so that he would ultimately swoop in and solve them? They would not take a stance. The possibility is instead entertained through double-speak and carefully worded speculations. That while it was theoretically possible for Sherlock to be either some great actor with a penchant for manipulation or a true criminal mastermind, it was not likely. But the idea that Sherlock had been one or the other wasn't impossible either.
It makes John want to hurl his laptop against a wall. It makes him want to scream until his throat is raw.
Unexpectedly, the report—once leaked online within a week of the press conference—also galvanizes Sherlock's supporters. He and Mary are still looking for leads in Southampton when Lestrade sends the first photo attached to a text message.
FROM: Greg Lestrade
3:05PM, January 8
[pic_ attached]
On the corner of Baker Street and Melcombe.
The words, "I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES," is boldly scrawled in bright, yellow spray paint on an nondescript wall.
John's vision wavers for a moment.
The next day, John's inbox and old blog is flooded with comments and emails. He's only able to read about a dozen of them before he turns off commenting and sets up a generic auto-reply message for his email. He doesn't reply to any of the messages himself.
It is Mary who alerts him to the true scope of the campaign.
"The internet has taken up the cause," she says with a small smile on her face.
The denizens of the internet hasn't just take up a cause. It's a crusade. Fueled by just social media, the war cries (I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES; MORIARTY WAS REAL; RICHARD BROOK IS A FRAUD) grew and swelled by the hour. It's difficult to pinpoint the origin of Sherlock's new virtual army. Part of it was due to the original graffiti that Lestrade had sent him, which had been reblogged on tumblr some 12,000 times according to Mary. There are hashtags and Google bombs and other terms that John doesn't fully understand.
He and Mary don't get out to investigate much that weekend. Instead, they stay in their hotel room and remain glued to the internet.
"Why?" he asks over the audio of a Youtube video of teenagers filming their graffiti spree around Central London.
Mary shrugs a bit. "Because there's an injustice being done? They see something wrong with the world, wrong with what the adults are doing..."
"But they don't know him."
"I don't think it matters."
Mentions of John himself are absent on the most part. There are a few questions about where he's gone and why his blog is inactive, but little else. Everyone is far too focused on the martyr, Sherlock. John is actually comforted by this.
"Do you want to go back to London?" Mary asks over dinner on Sunday night.
John pauses for only the briefest of seconds, "No."
Because the war for Sherlock's reputation is out of his hands. It hurts, but he must accept that this faceless throng on the internet will probably be able to do more to clear Sherlock's name than he alone can. There is power in the sheer volume of their combined voices.
In Arduis Fidelis.
He reaches across the table and grasps her hand. "I'm with you, Mary. I'll stay with you until this is done."
He resents that he's making the choice between a dead man and a living woman. But Sherlock has an army now, and Mary only has John.
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