AN: Okay, not too sure about this chapter, but here we go.
It didn't take John long to find Sherlock at Barts, he just followed the sound of a commotion and sure enough, there was Sherlock.
"What's going on?" He asked as calmly as he could, with a strained smile as he approached Sherlock and the nurses he was arguing with.
"Molly has been poisoned, and these incompetent morons won't let me go see her!" Sherlock raged.
"Of course you can go see her Mr. Holmes, we just need to do a quick blood test first to be sure you've not contracted the poison too." One of the nurses replied.
"I've already told you, I'm fine!" Sherlock insisted "Tell them, John!"
"Right, umm… can I just have a quick word?" John addressed the main triage nurse, nodding her to follow him a short distance away.
When they returned Sherlock's eyes widened in shock and betrayal, seeing John carrying the needle. Then he rolled his eyes.
"This is completely unnecessary, my objections have nothing to do with who is taking the blood, just that it's a huge waste of time and – John!"
John had clapped a firm hand down on Sherlock's shoulder with surprising pressure, at the same time sweeping his feet out from under him, forcing him into the seat behind him, before swiftly plunging the needle straight into an easily visible vein in the crook of his arm, grateful for his already rolled up sleeves. As soon as the needle was in Sherlock knew better than to struggle, but fumed as John drew the blood. "I could sue you for malpractice you know."
"You won't" John replied calmly "And even if you tried, I'm sure given the circumstances I could count on Mycroft to straighten things out for me." He turned back to the stunned looking nurses, carefully handing the needle over. "Do we need to wait for the results, or can we go see his wife now?"
"Right this way."
"See, wasn't that easy?" John muttered to Sherlock, falling into step beside him as he got up to follow the nurse. "What poison are they testing for anyway, what happened?"
"Cyanide. Moriarty sent Molly a card to congratulate us on our wedding, filled with powdered Cyanide. Nasty stuff, can be absorbed through the skin as well as inhaled or swallowed, and the effects are almost instant and potentially deadly. He wasn't aiming to kill her though, or he'd have gone for something more potent and less noticeable. This was just a prelude." Sherlock told him.
John nodded solemnly, taking it in for a second before asking "What did the card say?"
"Don't know yet, didn't get a chance to look. I've been promised pictures though." Sherlock replied.
John's forehead wrinkled in surprise. Normally nothing would stop him making looking at that card his top priority, regardless of whatever poisonous substance might be on it. He understood instantly as the nurse drew back the curtain around Molly's bed, letting them see her. She was sleeping, and attached to a drip and heart monitor she looked smaller than ever. Sherlock moved silently round her bed like a ghost, his eyes intent on the readouts from the machines as his hand slid gently over hers in a light caress. Satisfied with the machine readout's his face turned to scan Molly, with an unusually tender look that made John feel like he was intruding.
"Ah, Mr Holmes." The doctor said, coming over and causing Sherlock to whip round, his face returning to its emotionless mask. "She's doing well, just sleeping it off. It would seem she suffered a fairly large dose, but your own quick actions and diagnoses meant we could get her the antidote quickly enough to prevent the worst of the symptoms."
"Any long term effects?" Sherlock asked
"There can be with Cyanide poisoning, but again I think action was taken soon enough to prevent it. We'll do some tests later but I imagine it's highly unlikely we'll find anything."
Sherlock just nodded, before turning his back to the doctor, effectively dismissing him and focussing again on Molly. The good natured doctor just smiled at the pair, giving John a quick nod before going on his way to tend to other patients. John himself felt a little out of place as Sherlock continued to ignore everything but Molly, pulling a chair up close beside her, so he cleared his throat.
"So uh, not wanting to sound rude or anything, and I appreciate you letting me know what's going on but uh… what am I doing here?" he asked, keeping his voice low enough not to wake Molly.
"Oh, right." Sherlock replied in equally hushed, but now slightly more excited tones, swivelling round in his seat to face John and gesturing for him to take a seat too. "You're a military man, a Captain, no less. I need your help deciding how best to deal with Moriarty. Needless to say this" he gestured back to Molly "cannot be allowed to happen again. The rules of the game have changed, I can't just wait for him to invite me to play anymore. And we'll never find him unless he wants to be found either, he's been managing to keep off Mycroft's radar since his suicide stunt, and the homeless network aren't turning up anything either, and even if they did find him, he could pay them off just as easily as I. I need a better strategy."
"Could you draw him out somehow? Like at the swimming pool with the missile plans?" John suggested.
"He wasn't there for the missile plans John, he was there to make a point, remember?" Sherlock sighed dramatically. "And what do I have to draw him out with this time? If anything I would have expected my wedding to do the trick, and all that got us was a poisoned postcard."
"There's got to be something. We need to turn this back on him, find something or someone he values to use against him the same way he keeps doing to you." John asserted.
"That man cares only for himself and his own entertainment. He'd burn his own Mother just to pass the time, it would be a fruitless search. And besides, even if we could find someone he cares about, what then?" Sherlock said pointedly "What believable threat could we pose to them that would draw Moriarty out? Nothing legal certainly. Nothing innocent. I may be a killer, but I'd like to believe I couldn't torture or kill an innocent, just to draw out one bad man. Could you?"
The suggestion alone made John's stomach turn, and he shook his head.
"I could."
Both men turned to see Mary standing on the other side of the bed, the baby on her hip. She'd been taking a quick nap when John received the text, but had found his note when she awoke and rushed right to the hospital.
"I thought you'd left that life behind." John said, his expression suddenly closed off and tense.
"Oh I have, sweetie, I have!" Mary reassured him, rushing round the bed to him and squeezing his shoulder. "But Moriarty doesn't have to know that."
"And he knows you?" Sherlock asked.
"He knows of me. Of my old reputation." Mary corrected. "A little while after I went… freelance, I heard the whispers, whispers of a consulting criminal in need of people like me. I know how those kind of deals work, and I wouldn't have been hearing whispers about him if he hadn't heard whispers of me first and liked what he heard. And before you ask, no, I didn't do any work for him. I'm smarter than that, the only way a criminal organisation like that stays secret is because no-one leaves it alive, and I wasn't ready to make that sort of commitment. "
"So what are you suggesting?" John asked, "You kidnap whoever it is Moriarty values, and he'll just believe that you'd torture them, and hand himself over?"
"Something like that, yeah." Mary agreed.
"Why are we still discussing this, it's irrelevant because there is no-one to kidnap, no-one he cares about." Sherlock burst out.
"Everybody has somebody, Sherlock." Mary told him with a soft smile, pointedly looking over to Molly.
Sherlock turned back to his sick wife, picking up her hand with a soft sigh.
"I'll get Mycroft to do some digging."