John was sure something was getting written into him now. One letter a day. The last had been an 'a' or an 'e' or 'q', something horrible that looped. Didn't much matter; he couldn't get himself to stop shouting.

But he was getting sick. John lay on the cold concrete, staring at the bottle of water he'd been given for the day. He needed to clean his wounds, but he didn't have his hands.

"Do you ever wonder what you're meant to do with your life?" Mike asked, leaning against the wall across from him and struggling to uncap an Orangina bottle. John looked up dumbly, wondering why the man had not stayed hidden back behind the wall where he clearly slept. The man looked up from his bottle and shrugged self-consciously. "I'm just never sure, like, you get into a routine and you wonder, is this it? The same day, over and over again, until I'm gone?"

John swallowed, wondering if there was any way to twist this conversation in his favor. He wasn't sure what 'in his favor' could be - this man was capable of digging into his back with a scalding nail and still hold up a decent conversation. He was hardly squeamish.

"You could be better than this," John tried anyway. He pushed himself up by his hands, surreptitiously checking his bindings. They had ripped a bit further from his tugging, that day. He didn't dare chew on them further, not yet. If Mike replaced them again he'd be dead before he had time to get through the plastic again.

Mike tilted his head, as if considering his words.

"No.. That's not what I mean. It's not a moral qualm. But I've noticed that every year time seems to pass faster and I'm like …damn. I think that's what a routine will do to you, it'll make time speed up. But then, without a routine I'm miserable, so I'm left wondering - is this what I'm supposed to be doing?"

John stared at the man, unable to respond. What kind of madness did it take, to torture a man and feel so unaltered?

"I think it's why I like my work. It changes from project to project and helps me meet people," Mike commented and grinned at John as if he should be in on the joke.

"Unbelievable," John breathed, wishing Sherlock were nearby. They would have such a laugh, over this.

Sherlock is alive. Perhaps they would, after all. John felt as if hope had been poured straight into his lungs and he breathed and rubbed his hands down his legs to warm them. He would see Sherlock again, some day. Mike's bottle hissed as it popped open and he walked away, chugging it down.

~~/~~

"We found a possible pick-up site," came over Lestrade's radio, two hours later. Sherlock jerked up from his seat, his chair flipping backwards, his eyes fixed on Lestrade's radio..

"Go ahead," Lestrade ordered and a detective rattled off the address, his voice grainy over the poor quality radio. Sherlock was out the door before he'd finished speaking, knowing there weren't two '17 Cottonfield Way's in London.

The crime scene was a back alley off of the Marylebone graveyard. There were bleach patterns burning most of the blood away, clean sections of concrete where there should have been years of grime buildup. Sherlock skipped under the tape, ignoring the officers' shouts of protest, wanting to growl at them all. Lestrade would have to deal with them. For now they were too busy taking photo shots of his face with their camera phones. Idiots.

The crime scene set up looked far, far too familiar.

"This was done by a cop," Sherlock said, whirling around the scene though there wasn't much to check. The crime scene had been cleared following police procedure but there were faint blood stains all the same, seeped into the crease between the concrete street and brick walls. Rain had not washed it away yet; this crime and its cleanup were recent. A man was attacked, fought back, a gun went off, someone died, and a bullet lodged its way into the opposite brick wall.

John killed or someone else? Murder was always the most likely scenario for missing person's cases but the text had seemed like so much more than Moriarty announcing that the game was done, that he'd already won. John Watson. Shot in an alleyway? It didn't make sense. Moriarty always wanted so much more.

"Donovan!" Lestrade shouted and Sherlock looked up to see the female cop walking toward him, her fist clenched and her eyes burning, clearly about to punch him. She stopped short at Lestrade's call and stood fuming at him.

What? Sentiment, but which?

"It wasn't a fucking cop," she said and spat on him. Sherlock glanced down to see the saliva on his ugly bomber jacket. She'd confirmed it then, definitely sentiment. And she did still smell like Anderson.

"Actually, it was," Lestrade replied, sounding frustrated. Donovan whirled, looking shocked and disgusted.

Of course, she'd believe him, when he's wrong almost 30% of the time, Sherlock thought, before returning to the scene. There had to be something relevant here, something that could tell him which it was. Who had died? It was almost definitely the attacker.

"This is Charlie's murder scene from last week. He remembered that it was by this graveyard and let me know. I thought it sounded promising," Lestrade replied.

"Oh," Donovan replied, glancing at the spit on Sherlock's jacket.

Oh, Sherlock thought, stopping, feeling his heart slow down. The graveyard, John had been to his graveyard. Sherlock closed his eyes, cursing himself. He should have realized that as soon as he heard the address.

"Where's the attacker's body, then? Bart's morgue?" Anderson grunted. Sherlock stared at the man, feeling as if he were going mad. Of course, they would have recognized John Watson's corpse, so it clearly wasn't his they'd found.

John had managed to kill one of the men capturing him, despite being caught by surprise. Somehow he always underestimated John, who could make himself look so harmless. He should have thought of that; where was the body then?; he'd missed an entire fucking body. He wasn't thinking straight, images of John were clouding his thoughts. If it didn't stop he was going to lose this race. And yet still he could not stop fearful images of a dead corpse he had not seen from blocking his mind, consistently getting in the way. Sherlock hissed and strode from the scene; there was nothing left here. Or if there was, he wasn't finding it.

Damn it all.

~~/~~

Mike cut his shirt off of his body and let it drop to the ground. John stared down at it dumbly, watching the blue fabric soak his blood out of the pavement. A flash of light startled him, and he looked up to see a camera in Mike's hands. So, dead Moriarty was sending images to a dead man's phone.

They're all mad, John thought, struggling to keep his weak hands on the rough rope to save his shoulders. He left his index fingers up, in clear view of the camera, and prayed Sherlock Holmes would see him.

And they didn't think me ready for combat, he remembered, choking out a laugh. Mike looked up from inspecting his camera and frowned at him, looking rather concerned.

Sherlock's not dead, John thought desperately. Which meant Sherlock was going to get those photos soon. John gripped the rope tighter. Sherlock would be coming for him. He'd want his shoulders intact, so he could punch Sherlock's face in, after they were far from here. Mike shoved the camera into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, identical to the letter he'd read from Moriarty. John gripped the rope holding him up, bolstering himself for the drivel he was about to hear.

"Cosy, Little Johnny Boy?" Mike started, before glancing up from the top of the paper to ensure that John was paying attention. John waited until he'd looked away and rolled his eyes. "Do you understand your position yet? Tortured by a dead man, waiting on another. Is there anyone coming for you? Do you know? Do you see what this all means? You're nothing, you're not the point."

John swallowed, grateful for Mike's toneless reading. He sounded like a sixth grader droning out a book report. Unsurprising that Moriarty's myriad of contingency plans didn't take a paid tormentor's skills at dramatic reading into account.

There was a purpose to Moriarty's words. John saw it immediately. Torture hit harder if its victims had no cause, no faith, nothing to stand for. And Moriarty already knew John to be an atheist. The only thing left was to take away his enemy and his pride. An effect which was rather damaged by Mike squinting at the paper, trying to read the elegant cursive script.

"Don't you wish you had someone to fight? Mike is not your enemy. He's just a pawn. See? How he reads this even as it insults him? Surely, he is not the man you wish to kill. And alas, I am already dead," Mike read out, his tone changing as he got to his name. He just sounded annoyed as he finished the letter.

"This man is an asshole," Mike commented, slowly lowering him from the ceiling, careful about the rope this time. John had to suppress a laugh, and coughed instead. He heard phlegm rise up in his throat, the cough becoming only too real. That wasn't good.

Mike walked away, still looking at the camera, and John curled into a ball by the wall, doing his best to look broken. The feeling of helplessness would add to psychological trauma more than anything else. If he were in Mike's shoes, he never would have tied him with anything as weak as plastic. Not when the tiny dents he'd made in his binds could give him hope.

~~/~~

"You're a monster," Donovan spat.

Sherlock regretted standing up to get water. As soon as he'd reached the fountain he'd been ambushed by the woman. Deciding the damage had already been done, Sherlock leaned over the water fountain, pressed the side lever, and began to drink.

Sally Donovan seemed older than she'd been when he'd jumped, far more than three years older. She had wrinkles folding around her mouth and eyes, marking where she'd squinted over paperwork. Her curly mass of hair was starting to sprout with gray. She'd spent most of the last three years frowning. And she'd very quickly decided to blame him for it, Sherlock surmised. Apparently despite having spent a significant amount of time recently uncovering how he'd been summarily framed, harassed, and publicly reviled.

Sherlock stood up slowly.

"John Watson is missing," he reminded her, and walked back into the conference room to continue to work. They got the postmortem photographs in for John's dead attacker, labeled Homicide Victim 2491892: Unidentified and just for spite, he stole her desk when he sat down to inspect them. It seemed he'd unintentionally done her a favor, as she never left his side while he had access to them, though what precisely she thought he'd do with them remained unclear. Perhaps her intention was only to drive home the fact that she still didn't trust him, as if he'd miss that. He just had to hope it didn't slow down their investigation or he'd struggle not to kill her after they found John's body.

Maybe he's alive, Sherlock told himself, swallowing grimly.

The postmortems didn't show anything. The attacker had taken a hit to the groin and a bullet wound to the stomach. He had already been on the ground when he'd been shot, but that had been fairly clear from the blood splatter at the scene. It didn't help to determine whether or not the shooter had been John and there was no way to determine height with a shooter on their knees. The shot had come left-handed, that much at least was pertinent. There just weren't that many left-handed people who'd disappear from around his graveyard in the last five days, but if the shooter had been completely unrelated, had just shot a mugger and walked home, they still had no information. The victim's body was useless and yet he searched the photographs, cursing forensics for not running wholly unnecessary tests on the body before it'd been buried to rot.

"Lestrade to Donovan," Donovan's walkie buzzed.

"Go ahead," she answered.

"Bring Sherlock back in. We've received...word," Lestrade replied, his voice tense.

Tense, what did that mean? Sherlock stared at Donovan, searching for clues. Her face looked worried, nothing more. Useless. He rushed toward the conference room.

Tense could mean news that John was dead, or some other sort of missive - likely a ransom note or an unpleasant photo, text, or audio file. There were two possibilities for defining unpleasant; physical or social. So news that John was dead, a ransom note, or evidence of him screaming in pain or doing something sexual that Lestrade would find awkward – the sounds of pleasant sex were unlikely - as far as he'd heard John was not loud, so a sexual audio file was unlikely. A sexual photo was just as improbable; who would send it and for what purpose? A ransom note made little sense – Moriarty wanted nothing from him. So likely a photo or the sound of John suffering, designed simply to taunt.

6/15/13 Come and find your pet, sexy. You should take better care of your things.

Sherlock threw himself toward the consulting room, letting the door slam open. It didn't make a noise against the wall and a man cursed; he'd hit someone again.

There was a giant photo of blood projected onto the far wall. Sherlock felt his brain clamp down on his rising emotions. He was thinking now. That was better.

John was lying on his side on what looked like concrete, but it wasn't clear from the amount of blood coating it. It had dried black, despite its quantity - roughly twelve hours of evaporation. There was another fresh puddle seeping out around where the victim lay - John had moved, rolled himself away from something.

Why?

The skin was alive or very freshly dead, too pink to be dead longer than a half hour. Freshly dead was unlikely – the pictures almost guaranteed that this was Moriarty's final move. It wasn't his style to kill without leaving a puzzle to be solved.

So, John was alive and more, Sherlock was getting clues, there was data to work with now.

"Oh, good," he muttered quietly before his brain reasserted himself and he focused. What were the facts?

The victim was alive. He'd clearly been beaten – the round bruises on his face suggested a flat surface – he'd been beaten into a wall or some kind of board had been used against him. A non-pliable board -it hadn't curved around to hit the front of his nose. No, the bruises - likely made by slamming him against a wall -were deep purple and the bulging was receding – four or five days old - that fit the time frame for occurring with his alleyway capture.

The bruises on his nose and the fracture there had been caused after – they were blue and purple but still swollen beneath the blow. He didn't have lesions on the corners of his mouth -hadn't been gagged, then; he was somewhere he could scream. That almost guaranteed he was in the outskirts of the city or beyond it. He had bruises all across his arms and legs, but they seemed fainter as they approached his short sleeves – possibly made for show, then, but either way...

"Where's all the blood coming from?" Sherlock asked aloud. The picture was labeled at the side -8:07 AM, 1 of 3 in album. Did the others explain the blood? When would they receive the others?

"Jesus, Sherlock," Lestrade complained.

"The victim has had his face smashed into a wall, four or more days ago, possibly during capture. His nose was broken two to three days ago and beaten again yesterday or today – the picture isn't zoomed in close enough to be sure, but all of these appear to be obtained in capture or are for made for show; they're more concentrated where they can be seen, becoming less frequent by the sleeves and shirt collar," Sherlock spelled out, pointing over the projected screen, hating the cops all the more for slowing him down. "So where is the blood coming from?"

"The victim?" Donovan sounded choked. "You mean John? John Watson? Your flatmate?"

Sherlock ignored her, focusing on Lestrade who might actually give him answers while the officers were busy ranting.

The man was staring at him like he'd never seen him before, looking ill. He had not been acting uncomfortable minutes before; sentiment driven discomfort, probably. Irrelevant.

"You really are a sociopath," Lestrade declared, sounding dazed.

"Is that news to you?" Sherlock sneered before ripping himself back to the image. He was thinking; that was all.

"Actually, yes," Lestrade answered.

John was looking pale, too pale. Starving, cold, dehydrated?

Stupid, stupid, he chastised himself, seeing the corner of the man's bonds now. John was rolled on his shoulder, facing the camera but there was a glimpse of his hands beneath his chest. The wire ties were coated in blood and at a strange angle, tightened into the skin too far. They looked like they cut into their victim's wrists, which would explain the blood on his hands. Why would he have pulled so damn hard on bonds that he'd have known wouldn't give? Torture, then, or desperately trying to get to someone else, or just plain out of his mind – which would again imply torture, of course. Torture seemed the most likely regardless, but then where had the blood come from? There was only old blood soaked into the chest of John's shirt; that hadn't soaked fully though -from the light look of it. So from the floor then; the outside. Was there a second person bleeding there or were there wounds the pictures didn't show?

"He's probably been tortured, look at his wrists. From struggling to get free," Sherlock said, in case they hadn't kept up.

"Jesus, Sherlock," Lestrade choked out again, from behind him.

"Leave, if you cannot be helpful," Sherlock snarled, turning away from the precious photo to face the crowd. Lestrade stared into his eyes, looking stricken and Sherlock sneered.

"Let's get back to work. Contact dispatch, keep an eye out for anyone seeing a man fitting John's description getting pulled from a car or walking anywhere at gunpoint. They'd had to have gotten him there somehow. If you've got a lead, track it down. Let's move, people," Lestrade ordered, and the shuffling, useless policemen rushed to obey. Sherlock turned back to his photograph, deciding to ignore them. He'd spent most of a year tracking down Moriarty's hired killers and setting up their capture. He'd cut off tangled financial structures, inserted himself into illegal organizations and torn them down, started wars between Moriarty's factions and served them up to the authorities with their hands tied. He knew what they were capable of. Lestrade would not find any witnesses.

Lestrade seemed to know it too, for he sat down at the desk with a quiet sigh, Donovan beside him, and stared at the photograph on the wall without comment.

~~/~~

"Why do you scream for Sherlock Holmes?" Mike asked when the letter and photos were finally done. "I mean you have to admit, there's kind of a weird thing going on here."

The rope above him released and John tumbled to the floor, unable to catch himself.

"He was my friend," John answered, rolling his head as the man pulled a wrapped-up sandwich from a brown bag in front of him.

Day three, John thought sickly.

"Yeah, but I have lots of friends and I swear I wouldn't scream their names on my deathbed," the man said, tossing him the food. John saw it land by his head and scrambled for it, ignoring how his body spasmed as he sat up.

It was remarkably odd to see a common Brewers Fayre hamburger in his hand in the middle of hell.

I can use this, he thought desperately, opening the wrapper as fast as he could, hoping he was subtle when ripped the label off. Then he smelled the food and it was all he could do not to forget his plan as he tore into the meal.

"Also, I doubt you appreciate this, but I am really fucking bored," the man said, sitting down in his chair. "This is without a doubt the worst job I've ever worked."

John glanced up, not sure he was supposed to respond and went back to his food.

"Are you always this quiet?" the man asked him finally. John thought about it. He'd already decided he wasn't stupid enough to lie to his torturer about stupid shite and he wasn't starting now. He needed to come off as an open, normal bloke. A man with no secrets to find.

"Mostly, yeah," he answered, thinking about all he'd been after he'd retired from the army. He just didn't start conversation much. Or continue it for long.

Except with Sherlock, he realized, his mouth quirking slightly as he remembered going off on a tangent with the man, even shortly after they'd met. ' People don't have arch-enemies'. Mike watched him curiously and bit off another mouthful of his burger.

"I'm not actually into torture, by the way. And I don't do anything for free. I'm not going to hurt you just 'cause I'm bored," he said around his food, leaning back in his chair to stare at the ceiling. "They always get that wrong in movies."

John nodded gratefully. He was damn lucky, of the apparent myriad of sadists in the world, Moriarty had chosen – fucking grateful? Was this how Stockholm Syndrome developed then? Was he watching it happen in his own brain?

Fuck that then. He was going to stay sane. Mike was a man for hire and Moriarty was insane; he'd dealt with both types. And he would keep his mind, if it took force of will to do so. Still the question dug at him - did anyone know he was gone? He doubted he would be able to get himself out of this, not with his hands bound and a careful torturer staying so close.

"Do you want to play cards? We've got two hours before I start again. I've got a stack," the man gestured toward the ramp, where he disappeared after each session. John glanced over quietly, though he doubted he was going to come up with some brilliant escape scheme with it when he could barely walk.

"No, thank you," he answered, deciding not to flash the damaged plastic around his hands any more than he had to.

Mike shrugged and John did his best to push the wrapper into his blood-crusted jeans pocket without it making any noise.

Two hours until I start again.

He couldn't help but let the words have their intended effect. Dread pooled in his stomach and he struggled to think about anything but the coming nail against his flesh. John closed his eyes.

Get me out of here, Sherlock.

~~/~~

A/N: So, what did you think? Was the torture too much - did you skip any?

I've gotten enough preorders for Spinster's Gambit to come out in PRINT! It'll be available to buy (hopefully) before its release date (March 20th) Find it here:

Amazon dot com / dp / B00U8CR1L6