It only took three seconds once the car pulled up to the curb outside Adair's office building for John to regret his decision to accompany Lestrade. He had little choice however; Lestrade was already sliding out the door on his side and John felt obligated to follow. The rain, which had been threatening all day, finally made its appearance, pelting both men as they ran for the cover of the entrance. The building itself was a white-bricked antiquity, either a hold over from the 19th century or a good facsimile of one. Across the street, a modern steel structure was being erected, the stark lines and cold glass standing, as always, in direct opposition to the older parts of the city. Two different styles coexisting. That kind of thing never ceased to fascinate John.
There wasn't much time for contemplation however, as Lestrade all but pushed him up the steps and out of the sudden downpour. Adair's suite was at the top of the building and posh – he was clearly doing well for himself. There was no sign of any co-workers or secretaries and Lestrade ushered him under the police cordon into Adair's private office.
The room was completely devoid of either Anderson or Donovan. In fact, none of the officers milling around the room looked familiar and the realization of just how much time had passed struck John squarely in the solar plexus. The officer tugging fruitlessly at the open windowpane didn't even look old enough to grow a beard, let alone be a member of the Met. John found himself frozen in place, feeling both alien and familiar, and dreadfully alone.
Lestrade put a steadying hand on his shoulder and led him over to an older man who was bent over the body.
"Brown, this is Dr. John Watson," Lestrade said.
The older man extended a hand. "Medical examiner?"
"Of sorts," John replied, taking the offered hand. "The victim?"
"Robert Adair, mid-40s, killed by a single bullet to the back of the head. No sign of a forced entry or struggle. Door was locked from the inside and no one was seen entering or exiting the building."
"Hmmm." John was dimly aware of Lestrade moving away from him. Brown sidled silently out of the way as well and suddenly it was just John and the body of Robert Adair, a man he had known only by sight and reputation. The man's eyes were open and bulging, his body sitting slumped forward, hunched in on itself. Latex gloves were pushed into his hand, probably by Brown, and John pulled them over his fingers before examining the wound at the back of Adair's head.
The entry wound was not large enough to have been the result of a point blank shot, and the lack of a corresponding exit wound meant ether a low powered weapon or shot from some distance. John glanced at the closed row of windows lining the back wall of the office, not a single one broken. Clearly the shooter had been in the room. Molly would be able to tell him more, or he could visit the morgue himself, take part in the autopsy.
His mind came to an abrupt collision with the white expanse of the brick wall of St. Bart's, reeling back as a deep baritone voice brokenly said goodbye, and this was too much and too soon even after three years and dear god, why was he here. His heartbeat was elevating, his breath coming too quickly, a vise closing around his lungs and heart and cracking his ribcage. A locked room, a body, and if he closed his eyes, it was as if no time had passed. Only that white wall, the gray pavement splashed with the red blood, and the memory of Molly's tears kept him from turning to search out the dark curls that always seemed to hover at the periphery of his vision.
Lestrade reappeared at his elbow.
"Well?" The DI looked expectant when John finally dragged his gaze up to the other man's face.
"Well, I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for from me." He said with a forced shrug, shutting a mental door on the threatening storm brewing in his mind. "I can tell you it's a relatively small calibre bullet, probably .33 or .50. Depending on the weapon used, it could have been fairly close range. Or not. Anyone could have told you that. Christ, Greg, what do you want from me?"
Lestrade looked away. "I want to know what you see."
You see but you do not observe.The words ricocheted around his head like the bullet that had so recently scrambled Adair's brain, threatening to rip through the locks on the door marked Before. His muscles tensing, John finally gave in and squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden sharp ringing in his ears. He couldn't do this and he was fine, dammit. He peeled the gloves off and dropped them unceremoniously on the desk before shoving his hands deep in his pockets.
"I don't see anything more than you do," he said beneath the noise of the continuing investigation. "Not anymore."
"He would have loved this case."
"No. He wouldn't have," John said before he could think better of it, and took a final look at the curled body of Robert Adair. A deep breath and the howling of his heart receded. "I'll call some of my old army mates. See if any of them still kept in touch with Adair. That sort of thing. It's the best I can do."
Lestrade nodded slowly. "I'd appreciate it, John." He put a tentative hand on John's shoulder. "I'm glad to see you looking so well."
"Yeah, you too." John shook him off and strode purposefully out the door to the elevator. He didn't falter at the door, didn't hesitate at the elevator, and didn't let out the shaky breath he was holding until the elevator doors had shut, leaving him alone in his descent.
His hands trembled as he shoved them through his short, sandy hair. Well kept because Mary made him get it cut, and because it was normal dammit, and he had not and would not fall apart. He let himself slump against the rail for almost exactly one minute before squaring his shoulders with a mental command for attention. Again.
The elevator doors opened on the opulent lobby, grayed by the evening rain, and John was suddenly exhausted. So ready to be done with this foreignly familiar ritual. He had thought he'd excised this particular demon at least two years ago, but time and your heart have a habit of playing tricks. Only the thought of everything he had struggled to maintain in the last three years, a job, a stable relationship, propelled him across the expanse of hardwood and affluence and through the front doors. The street was busy and he was easily able to hail a cab, hunching his shoulders against the rain.
Once he was comfortably ensconced in the back seat, he pulled his mobile from his back pocket and dialed a number he hadn't rung in a while.
The voice was tinny through the small mobile. "John Watson! To what do I owe the pleasure?" Bill Murray had returned from Afghanistan roughly six months after John had, except with his military career intact. John hadn't been jealous at the time, but things had changed in the months and years following.
"Nothing good, I'm afraid. Friend of mine just told me Adair's been shot."
Bill inhaled sharply on the other end. "Can't say I'm surprised. Bit of a chancer, Adair was."
"You keep in touch?"
"Nah, not really. Run into him when I'd have a pint sometimes though. Usually at the cards with a toff or two."
"Gambling?"
"Yeah, found himself a 'business associate' or something and tried living high. Shady, really. Poor bloke."
"Yeah, well, returning's not always easy. It's always something."
"Cheers to that. Good for us that we had something to come back to."
The following silence stretched into awkwardness, the unsaid words dropping through the quiet cellular connection. In moments like this one, John allowed himself to think that the bullet that caught him in that godforsaken desert had led to a lot more pain than he'd initially been aware of. That regret, sharp and bitter and unwanted, made the occasional calls for evenings out at the pub just a little harder to make and receive.
"Anyway, thought you should know." John said and only half listened as Bill made his goodbyes. Lestrade would want to know about the gambling, if only to look into any possible debts or criminal connections. As the cab turned onto Baker Street and came to a stop in front of 221B, John sent him a quick text and resolved to wash his hands of the entire matter.
One hand on the door handle, John paused, his eyes fixed on the familiar numbering. It had been three years since the last time he'd exited a cab after visiting a crime scene. The vacuum of space behind him in the unused seat kept him still, heart pounding again. The door to the flat, with its brass numbers, looked exactly the same as it had the first time he'd seen it. Back then, he'd have been coming home with the case already solved. Hell, back then they wouldn't have even left 221B. It probably rated at a three, if even that.
"Oi! You getting out or what?" The cabbie demanded impatiently. John was startled away from his perusal of his front door. He shook his head wordlessly and gave Mary's address. The cabbie rolled his eyes, but didn't seem too terribly put out at the extra fare.
Mary's flat was cheerily middle class, snuggled in a row house in an equally cheery middle class neighborhood. Suburban and just this side of overpriced, much like the people who lived there. John had made a self-deprecating and devastatingly charming joke upon first seeing it, and Mary had colored prettily in mild embarrassment. That had been over a year ago and this time John just dragged himself up the steps and let himself in.
His fiancee was sitting curled up in a chair, book in hand.
"Hello, love. I didn't expect to see you tonight." Mary stood to kiss him on the cheek and he followed her into the brightly lit kitchen. Everything was in its place, stenciled vines of ivy creeping across the walls, decorative ceramic roosters perched above neatly ordered cabinets. Normal and comforting.
"I missed you. Thought I'd stay the night and keep you company." John smiled at her as she settled herself into a seat at the small table in the kitchen. She called it a breakfast nook, which he would have found himself sneering at three years ago but now only found reassuringly comfortable.
"Oh? And fancying a shag had nothing to do with it?" Mary asked, winking up at him.
"Never even crossed my mind," he said with a leer and a quick kiss on the mouth, easing into his role as fiancé, settling it over his uneasiness like a familiar blanket.
Mary smiled brightness and light at him. "Have you eaten?"
"Not yet."
"There's pasta in the fridge. Help yourself."
As John rummaged in the cupboards, his breathing eased and the heavy weight in his chest that had haunted him from Adair's office began to dissipate into domesticity. His hand shook, nearly imperceptible now, as he pushed the plastic container of bolognese into the microwave and punched the numbers.
"How was work?" Mary asked absently, making small talk the way people did.
John took a deep breath, placing himself squarely in the present. Normal people who did not fall apart also did not keep their evening activities a secret from their fiancees. "I was on a case tonight."
"Hmm?"
"A case. With an old friend from the Met. I wasn't at work."
"Oh. Like when you worked with Sh-"
"Yeah," he said quickly, turning away. He pulled the sauce out of the microwave and poured it over his bowl of noodles, relishing the sting of heat on the pads of his fingers. "Like that."
"Did you solve it?"
"Of course not. Not really my area." The admission sent a stab of pain through his leg and he stumbled as he brought the food to the table where Mary sat, patiently gazing up at him. "The DI needed a second medical opinion. Just a favor for an old friend."
"Ah well, I hope you'll be able to balance your current responsibilities with your new life of secret crime solving," she teased, standing up and running her hands over John's shoulders.
"I'm hardly Bruce Wayne."
"And don't I know it." Mary smiled down at him. "Finish your food and come to bed. Big day of sitting around and watching telly tomorrow. Need to be rested up."
John laughed and accepted her quick kiss on his cheek before she padded up the stairs in her worn slippers. He finished his pasta alone in silence under the flickering fluorescent lighting, his fork clinking against the ceramic bowl like a miniature church bell. He let the repetitive motion settle him and he eased back into the familiar, boring rhythm of this new life. Pasta wound around the tines of the fork, brought up to his lips, chewed and swallowed, over and over again. Tomorrow he would wake up, head to the surgery, work his shift, and go home.
He resolutely refused to feel empty.
Mary was snoring lightly by the time John had rinsed his bowl and completed the perfunctory rituals of brushing his teeth and pulling on the worn pyjama bottoms that resided in the bottom drawer of his fiancee's bureau. She had left the bedside light on, the diffused yellow glow of the lowest setting casting deep shadows across the bed. Her short blond hair tangled against the smooth white expanse of her pillow and John felt his stomach clench. Being with Mary was normal, easy, and everything he had told himself he was looking for when he'd emerged from his brief foray into the madness that was life at 221B with an enigmatic consulting detective.
The bulging eyes of Robert Adair hovered on the edge of his mind as John eased himself between the covers and reached for the lamp. Turning the light off with a couple of practiced clicks, he stared unseeing into the darkness of the room, his own eyes adjusting slowly in the dimness.
John woke the next morning beside Mary, back sore and eyes sticky from lack of sleep. He pulled himself out of bed, groaning as he went, and shuffled into the bathroom. The sterile brightness of the small space, his toothbrush nestled in the bright blue holder, the fluffy coordinated towels hung above the toilet all grated against his consciousness with their aggravating normalcy. The calm he had found the evening before had evaporated, leaving him restless and wrong. Sitting in the kitchen, where Mary pressed a mug of tea into his hands, wasn't any better and John escaped into the waiting cab with a sigh of relief. His skin itched with the need to get away, busy pinpricks of something dancing along his nerve endings.
The Adair case haunted him through his entire surgery shift, niggling its way into his patient notes and surfacing during the morning meeting. A nasty case of pink eye on a four year old boy reminded him of Adair's bulging eyes, open and surprised at the moment of his death. The old man with a pronounced case of scoliosis brought a vision of Adair's hunched shoulders and rounded back. Even lunch in the mess led to thoughts of his military days and the time or two he had shared a wordless cigarette with his fellow captain.
During a particularly useless consultation with a young woman convinced her cold sore meant she was weeks away from dying of mouth cancer, John actually began to sketch out Adair's office, high windows facing the street, body slumped at a desk in the middle of an otherwise empty room. He drew in several possible trajectories and was contemplating which was most likely when he realized his patient had stopped nattering and was looking at him expectantly. He sighed and crumpled the paper.
"You do not have mouth cancer," John said, his voice sharp.
"But you -" the young woman began.
"It's a cold sore, nothing more. I'll write you a scrip for Aciclovir."
"But I -"
"You'll be fine in about five days." John stood and strode out of the room, leaving the young woman gaping after him. He dropped the crumpled floor plan of Adair's office in a bin, scribbled out the scrip, and handed it to the nurse.
It really was for the best that the shift was only a half day, because by the time the afternoon surgery shift was beginning, John had had enough. He made his goodbyes to the nurses, exchanged quick all rights with the doctors coming in for the afternoon, and continued to try to shake off the feeling that he had somewhere more important to be. There was nothing he needed to be doing outside of living a normal life.
The black car sitting outside the surgery bordered on surreal. John stopped and stared at it for several minutes, coat in hand, stomach swooping down his legs and landing somewhere near his feet. There was nothing in this world that would induce him to get into that car, nothing that would force him into confrontation with Mycroft Holmes, not when he had spent several years successfully avoiding the man. Years of going to and from work, years of being fine, years of normalcy where he didn't hurt and didn't yearn and didn't fall apart. Getting into that car would unravel everything and rip through the gossamer shreds of the bandages he had used to patch his heart. The one that had not broken, no matter what it had felt like at the time.
So John spun on his heel and stalked away down the pavement.
The car followed. Slowly and deliberately, it crawled behind him.
John only walked faster.
His legs were burning and his chest was heaving by the time the second and third cars had pinned him in the middle of an intersection. Mycroft had chosen his location well, this relatively quiet street halfway between the surgery and Baker Street. There were no other motorists to shout abuse at the blockade, no one to object to a kidnapping, and John accepted his fate with the grim determination of the soldier. When the door of the first car swung open, John ducked his head and slid across the leather seats, lips thinned and jaw clenched. He didn't recognize the other occupant of the car, a mousy haired man in an expensive suit, which was probably for the best. He had a feeling he would have done something unforgivably rude to an unsuspecting piece of electronics had he been confronted by a texting Anthea.
The ride to the Diogenes Club felt much longer than it actually was. John kept his mind carefully blank as he stared out the tinted window, watching London go by without really seeing it. The numb acceptance lasted him all the way through the door, along the halls, and into the room where he had first felt the glimmerings of Holmesian betrayal.
Mycroft stood by one of the bookcases, umbrella hooked over his elbow, watching him expectantly. John stopped just inside the doorway, the heat creeping up from his chest burning away the acceptance and leaving only anger behind. The uneasy truce the two men had made in the months following the fall had long since fallen into disrepair and nothing remained but John's certain knowledge that Mycroft was, and always would be, at fault.
"Hello John. It has been some time, has it not?"
The words propelled John forward, fists clenched and nothing in the last three years had felt quite as good as the feeling of one connecting with Mycroft's smug jaw. Silence followed and his eyes burned into John as Mycroft straightened, hand to his injured mouth.
"How good to see you," he said, drawl unmistakable.
John flexed his hands. "Is there something you want?" Mycroft did not miss the warning, expression hardening as he dropped the pretense of courtesy.
"It has come to my attention that you have visited a crime scene."
"And?"
"What were you doing there, John?"
"Fuck off, Mycroft."
"Now John, three years is a long time to still be angry," Mycroft cajoled in the voice of someone who regularly talked to irate primary school children, head cocked to the side.
"Fuck off," John said again, back ramrod straight, not a tremble in his body.
"He's not coming back and moonlighting as a detective again won't change anything. I'm only saying it for your own benefit." There was steel in the other man's voice now, that thread of command that belied the "minor" role he played in the British government. John could see how most men would be intimidated by that flash of immovability, but he had never been most men and Mycroft bloody well knew it.
"You lost the right to say anything to me a long time ago," John bit out through clenched teeth. "Now kindly fuck off and let me go home."
"Back to two hundred and twenty one B? Or home to the lovely Mary? You can't have both, John." Mycroft's voice went curiously soft again, remorseful in that subversive way that must have been taught to all Holmes children from the moment they became verbal. The same tone that had growled out Goodbye, John and left him gasping.
The joints below John's ears burned with the force of his closed jaw, the soldier determined not to say anything or relax out of the rigid attention position he had assumed. He held Mycroft's gaze, never letting his own stray over the familiar features of the man's face. Too many times he had stood here under the same scrutiny and stood up for his friend and partner in crime solving. The three years of desperately trying to forget the amazing chaos of that life seemed insignificant, no time at all instead of the endless stretch of time it actually was, and John again resisted the urge to look for unruly dark curls.
"Still loyal, I see." Mycroft finally broke the tension in the air, swinging his umbrella around dramatically. "I suppose we're done here. I'll have the car drop you...home?"
"I'll walk."
"Suit yourself," Mycroft shrugged. John executed a perfect about-face and strode from the room, leaving the remaining Holmes brother standing in the quiet recesses of his club.
John found himself staring at 221B hours later, the time and miles he spent getting there doing nothing to cool the burning in his chest. Reverently, he ran his fingers over the gold numbering, the metal still warm despite the cooling of the evening, and dropped his hand down to the latch. Pushing inside, John listened for the familiar comforting sound of Mrs. Hudson's telly before slowly taking the stairs up to his flat.
How many times had he come home from a confrontation with Mycroft to find this door unlocked and the discordant sounds of an angry violin echoing within? The violin was still there, waiting untouched in the corner of the tidy sitting room as John dropped his coat just inside the door. The rest of it was behind a locked door mere feet from where he was now standing. A shrine. That was what his home had become. A shrine to a man who hadn't cared enough to stay.
With purposeful steps, John made his way to that door, the one that looked exactly like the one marked Before in what he refused to call a mind palace.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would open that door, empty that room, and begin the process of leaving 221B behind. He couldn't bring Mary here to live and he couldn't bear to let the madness of Mycroft Holmes and Gregory Lestrade and cases find him here alone.
Tomorrow he would start to pack.