Chapter 9

John got off the tube at South Kensington. He emerged from the Thurloe Street gates, checking the list, and headed for Imperial College. It was rush hour and a throng bustled about, patrons leaving the museums, night shoppers heading for Piccadilly, lonely girls and boys returning from work, respecting one another's urban solitude.

Sherlock had somehow inserted himself into his dream last night and it had given him – oh, how he hated to admit it - the heebie-jeebies. Even now he felt like he was being watched. He hadn't even done anything illegal yet. How did he get into these situations, anyway?

Holmes, curse him.

He'd been behaving rather strangely today. Strange for Sherlock, anyway. He probably didn't realise it, but he made a weird face each time Molly was mentioned, sort of afraid, sort of confused. John had seen it only once before. No wonder Sherlock resisted all forms of emotion; he was off his game when he was feeling…

And then it hit him like a locomotive as he pressed the button for the traffic lights.

Shit. He's actually gone and fallen for her, the sodding muppet.

This could be bad.

This could be really bad.

Nah, don't be ridiculous. What was it Sherlock said all the time? Preposterous! He didn't have time for that sort of thing. Sentiment gets in the way of pure, cold logic. Apparently. But then there was the thing earlier, Molly fleeing the scene of the crime, upset, and Sherlock being all imperious and claiming she'd propositioned him. If the crime was a broken heart, he could understand that.

Really, Molly darling, don't you even know the meaning of 'playing hard to get'?

But they had been spending a lot more time together since John got married. In a way it was his own fault if Sherlock needed someone to fill his shoes and they'd been thrown together. Damn.

And then there was the Molly-helping-Sherlock-fake-his-own-death-thing.

The first thing he'd done after Sherlock's return – well, not the first thing he'd done; the real first thing he'd done was to lock himself in the bedroom and down half a bottle of scotch – but the first actual thing he'd done was to go to Molly Hooper's flat and give her a piece of his mind. Mary had held his hand the whole way there.

Molly had brought them inside, silently making a cup of tea, and John remembered thinking, she's taking this well, very dignified. But apparently, Sherlock had already been to see her and prepared her for the fact that, 'John knew everything and wasn't very happy about it'.

It felt like a conspiracy against his heart.

So she calmly explained why she'd done what she had to do, and why she'd lied to him all this time and let him drift out of her life. And John explained, not very calmly, what he'd been through in the last two years and that she could have prevented him all that. And how, for the love of God, had she gotten through the funeral, and were the tears real, and was anything fucking real anymore?

Mary sat on the sofa, her hands folded in her lap and stayed very quiet through the whole thing, until she put a hand on his arm and told him to calm down and stop 'shouting at the poor woman in her own home'. And by the end of it, John was crying and Molly was crying, and she was 'so sorry, what could she ever do to make it up to him', and he said, 'nothing, Molly, nothing can ever take this pain away'. He stalked around her living room, gesticulating wildly and getting angry until he saw that she was hurting too. They all sat in silence for a while processing what had happened until he apologised for showing up unannounced and admitted he wasn't exactly proud of the way he'd conducted himself, and he eventually forgave her and told her about the engagement.

But all through that evening, the way she talked, the way she hadn't even batted an eyelid at risking so much for a man who was, essentially, a bastard to her for most of their relationship, told John that it wasn't just a silly infatuation, it was real.

It. Was. Real.

It would hardly be surprising if something developed from this. Okay, he admitted to himself, hardly surprising if it was a normal person they were talking about. It wasn't like Sherlock didn't get offers. But John couldn't understand how someone could deny themselves sleep, food and sex for so long. It was practically superhuman. Talk about blue balls. The man's gonads must be fucking turquoise by now.

There was no denying it; if anyone could find the chinks in his armour, it was Molly. She was the only person Sherlock didn't call stupid. She was the only person he actually went to for advice. She'd even shamed him into his first ever apology. When Sherlock was around Molly he was a good man... ish, and John liked that. He was human. He was actually nice to the clients for Christ's sake. But he wasn't at peak performance. This was bad news for the world.

It would be bad news for Molly, too. Sherlock had the capacity to destroy her. Not deliberately; it was just that these women didn't understand that you couldn't save an addict, you couldn't just fix them.

Him.

You can't just fix Sherlock Holmes. He would never change.

Oh, ye of little faith, John Hamish Watson.

John wouldn't know what to do until they found her. If they ever found her. He hoped to God that they did, or that the police did, because judging by the whole Adler affair, if something happened to Molly, someone he actually cared about, Sherlock would be out of control. He wasn't willing to watch the man go through that again, destroy himself and possibly something or someone else in the process.

No, he wouldn't let it go that far. He would take it upon himself to find Molly, even if no-one else could. That much he felt he could do for his friends. But then he felt that he would have to do everything in his power to make sure this 'thing' between them never happened. Such a tragic dichotomy. It was the reverse of the vow that Sherlock had made when he married Mary; John would have to promise never to let them find each other.

Sometimes you had to break someone's heart to save them.

This plan had better bloody work, Sherlock.

He checked the shopping list again when he turned into Exhibition Road. It said,

'Kai Chung Hsieh, Chemistry Dept. Imperial College, owes me for the Phenakistoscope and he's expecting you. 3kg Fe2O3 powder, 1kg Al metal powder, 1kg Ba(NO3)2, powder…'

And a few other things.

Ah, here it is. I remember. He approached the car park cautiously; there were red and white barriers and a bus stop, but relatively few people loitering around. Crisp, brown leaves swirled around in a breeze, disappearing into the unlit portions of the street.

The entrance to the Chemistry department was flanked by two statues, colossi of the scientific community. Imposing old limestone buildings were spaced with shiny new blocks of architecture. John almost felt nostalgic for his student days.

Hsieh had been waiting for him in the foyer, wringing his hands. Obviously doing business with Sherlock was nerve wracking.

"Doctor Watson." The guy shook his hand. John noticed that it was still clammy from nerves. He unconsciously wiped his hand on his jeans.

"So, do you teach here, or…?"

"Technician."

"Ah. Got you."

Hsieh led him down a corridor and through a door that he unlocked with a large bunch of keys from his lab coat pocket. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it in broad view of everyone in the building. John had plenty of practice at trying not to look furtive, but he still would have been more comfortable doing this under cover of darkness. He watched Hsieh, a slight young man, with the mannerisms of someone with a lifelong dislike of social interaction, unlock the door to a lab full of fume cupboards. Beyond this room was a storeroom with a hazardous chemicals warning symbol on it.

They looked at the list together.

Hsieh busied himself fetching the requested chemicals from the shelves. John's arms were soon straining under the weight of several 5kg drums of powdered metals. They proceeded to one of the benches in the lab where Hsieh silently weighed out what Sherlock needed.

"You don't talk much, do you?" John was naturally distrustful of quiet people. You never knew what they were thinking. He wondered about the exact circumstances in which Sherlock had met this guy, and what exactly a Phenakistoscope was. He drummed his fingers on the plastic lid of the Barium Nitrate.

Hsieh snapped the lid on the last container and labelled it with a Sharpie. "What's he making this time? Because these are all the ingredients for TH3."

"I don't - " John stopped himself. "Wait. TH3, as in Thermate?"

Hsieh nodded, unconcerned, scribbling on the container.

"As in, what's in grenades?"Christ, Sherlock, what are you up to?

"He said you're a doctor." Hsieh was confused.

"An army doctor."

"So you've seen what this stuff can do."

"I'm not sure I should give it to him now."

Hsieh stopped what he was doing and turned to John, a benevolent look on his face. "Don't worry. Sherlock Holmes is always in control."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"You're his friend. Trust him."

"Says a fellow chemist who's not averse to breaking the law."

Hsieh just smiled and held up his hands.

John sighed and gave in. He'd made a personal commitment to saving Molly and if this was part of the plan, he'd have to go along with it. "Is there a back door to this place?"

"No. You go out the front door. Less suspicious this way." Hsieh winked and fetched an empty copy-paper box from the rubbish bin.

Five years.

She'd known him for five years now. A crush didn't last five years, did it? Or, if you subscribed to the belief that love was a disease, as Sherlock did, love was just 'an involuntary state of adoration and attachment to a limerent object involving intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviours from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation'.

She should be over it by now, shouldn't she? She'd been through the incubation period; two years of infatuation. She'd survived the two years of his absence. He'd been back for a year now and - who was she kidding? - he was still all she thought about.

All she'd thought about while she'd been here in this living hell, with the noise of all the people coming and going, and the laughing and the screaming and the grunting. The occasional bang on the locked door of her cell. The cable ties cutting into her ankles and wrists.

Wade came in to check on her again. He lit up in the corner, like he always did. "Still not dead yet?"

She made little coughing noises to try and make a point.

"Emphysema's the least of your worries right now, sweetheart."

She stopped. "I see you haven't developed a conscience yet."

"And you haven't developed Stockholm syndrome yet. I was so looking forward to spending some quality time together." He took a drag on the cigarette.

"What's your interest in Sherlock Holmes?" she asked. Wade raised an eyebrow and blew smoke in her direction, not intending to answer any time soon. "Back in the hospital you said you didn't want him coming there any more. It's plausible enough… If you were the real Barnett. But you're not, so what's the deal? You knew that if he was told to stay away, the first thing he would do is come and see what all the fuss was about. It's quite simple reverse psychology."

He finally peeled himself off the wall and stood over her. "It's not me, it's Jokic. Some misguided vendetta, consuming him, making him sloppy. See, hate is just as bad of a distraction as love. Love betrays people to their death. Hate betrays people too."

"So, what is this, your Bond-baddie monologue?"

"You mistake me for someone who matters. As dear Jokic told you before, I am just a pawn, like you."

"So I'm the bait?"

"Sure looks that way, darlin'"

"I think you're over-estimating my importance in all of this. I'm not important to Sherlock."

He'd proved it this morning when he'd raised his voice. He'd never done that before. Her body still flinched at the thrill of his voice reverberating through her. If he was burning when he was being smart then he was incandescent when he was angry. But it only served to make her love him more.

Her love for him was a scar on her heart that would never heal. It eclipsed everything else in her life, including Tom. It would always be there, like background radiation, blighting all their lives. And now, if her theory was correct, it was her love for him that would actually get her killed.

"What's your interest in Sherlock Holmes?" Wade almost read her thoughts.

"None," she said, turning her face away from his falling ash, "absolutely none at all."

"Oh, it's like that, is it? Do you realise you wear your heart on your sleeve?"

"If you were any good at reading people, you'd realise he's not that interested in me." She felt hot tears threaten for the first time since the drugs had worn off.

"But what you didn't know, is that we've been watching you both for a while now, looking for a way in."

The thought of wade or even Jokic spying on her interactions with Sherlock made her feel sick to the stomach. What had they seen? What had they done that made a stranger interpret it that way? If these guys could see it, then could everyone else? Was Tom with his jealousy just mirroring what everyone else was thinking? "He's not going to fall for it. He's too clever for that."

"Aw, poor little martyr," he mocked, "willing to go to the grave for the man she loves. Shame there's no glory in that."

"I don't do any of this for recognition."

"Ah, that's right. If it's any consolation, the real Lawrence Barnett was a nice man. He wouldn't have given you a bawling out like that. Too bad you'll never know how that would have panned out. You know, he didn't even put up that much of a fight. You'd think a doctor would place a lot more value on his own life."

"You're sick."

"No, sweetheart. You're the one who's sick. Now, enough of this claptrap, I have work to do." And with one last flick of the cigarette, he was locking the door behind him.

They'd made a grave mistake. Sherlock wasn't a hero. There were no heroes in this life, no knights on white horses to coming to rescue her. Partly she was glad to think that he wouldn't fall into so blatant a trap. Partly she was already mourning herself.

There would be no close family at her funeral, only Tom. There was a great aunt, Helene, somewhere up north. They didn't speak. All she knew about Aunt Hel was that she'd given her a hand knitted teddy bear when she was born. Her friends would be there, of course, Mike and Caroline and Meena and her boyfriend Niven. Rebecca from school. John and Mary would mourn her. Martha Hudson too.

There were so many things she hadn't done with her life, so many things she wanted to do again. She wanted to feel the sun flickering through groves of beech trees as she drove to Glastonbury in June. She wanted to feel the sand between her toes down in Hove like she did when she was a kid. She wanted to taste one more Hummingbird cupcake. She wanted to feel the unashamed, warm wet flourish of arousal for the man she loved.

NO!

To hell with this, I'm going to live!

All her life she'd had to do everything for herself. Anything she wanted, she'd gotten. No-one had ever told her that she couldn't do something because she was a woman. She'd never had to rely on anyone else and that wasn't going to change now.

She was going to rescue herself.