The Slash Man

by Engazed

Book 2 of 'The Fallen': After ten days of unspeakable torture at the hands of Sherlock's worst enemies, John Watson has returned to Baker Street to live with a man whose death, no matter how fake, still haunts him. But his recovery is not easy, his friendship with Sherlock is strained, and a dangerous but hidden menace continues to threaten them both. Violence/Horror/Rape

20. What's in a Name

Chapter 20: What's in a Name

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2015

'Go,' Molly said, and so he went.

Now he stood at the on the stoop outside 221, hoping to be let inside. He breathed hot air onto his hands—in his haste, he had forgotten to grab a pair of gloves on his way out the door, and damn, it was cold tonight—and rubbed them rapidly against one another for warmth. He would get in tonight, even if that meant he had to ring Mrs Hudson, no matter the late hour. It wouldn't be too much of a bother, he was sure: He had it on good authority that she was fond of him.

But it didn't come to that. The door buzzed opened without his having to force his way inside. He practically ran up the stairs and into the upper flat where he found John waiting for him, standing in the centre of the room, sleeves rolled and arms folded, and wearing an expression that could cut stone.

'I told you we didn't need any police,' he said with a raise of his chin.

Lestrade instinctively steeled himself against that glower and let the door close softly behind him. 'I'm not here as a policeman,' he said.

'Then why are you here?'

Something was happening behind the hard expression, a small flash of light set deep in John's eyes. Something prowled, ferocious, lethal, something that had been stamped down time and time again, threatening to break free, and already would have done but for the guardian standing watch, the soldier keeping it in check. And that's who faced Lestrade tonight: the soldier.

Lestrade didn't have to look around to know that the man in question was nowhere near; Sherlock had such presence that his absence had just as much force. 'Because one of my friends got hurt,' he answered. 'I'm here as a friend.'

John regarded him coldly, clearly not intending to respond to that.

'Will you tell me what happened?'

'I believe I already did.'

'Fine.' This was not a satisfactory answer. He had questions, like where, when, who, how, and why, but he conceded that it might be the best he would get tonight. He settled on just one more: 'Will you at least tell me how he is?'

John's eyes flashed again and his lips pinched white. 'They ambushed him. Forced him to eat dirt, stoned him, and threw him in the river. How do you think he is?'

Lestrade sighed and shook his head. 'Bloody awful.'

'Bloody awful's right.' John turned away. He set his hands on the back of a chair and let it support his weight. 'He's sleeping. It's what he needs right now.'

'Are you sure he shouldn't be taken to hospital?'

John looked at him sharply over his shoulder. 'Back into the public eye, you mean? And give Kitty Riley more ammunition? Sure. Let's do that. Let's give her more wool to spin a tale of lies. Let's give her readers even more cause to hate him and yet laud the vigilantes of this city who would have him done in.' He huffed, shook his head. 'He'll be all right. Here. Not out there.'

'Is that what this was? Vigilantism?'

'Something like that.' John swung around and marched into the kitchen, barking the order, 'Sit down, I'm making tea.'

For a moment, Lestrade stood flummoxed. The words were an invitation to stay, though the tone might have been used to tell him to get the hell out. He wavered between the door and the chair, then between the sofa and the chairs by the hearth, and finally, a little bashfully, he sat in Sherlock's, half expecting John to shout at him to move. But he didn't.

Several minutes passed in silence while Lestrade fought the urge to go check on Sherlock and instead just sat there while John banged about in the kitchen, dallying, watching the water boil, and avoiding him. Lestrade tried not to stare at him, but he hardly knew where else to look. He was concerned about John, as concerned as he'd ever been. It was clear that he was not taking very good care of himself. He was still underweight, barely touched by the sun (what little sun peaked through the winter clouds), and bearing an air of depression. Sherlock's arrest certainly hadn't helped any. Lestrade could see that he hadn't shaved in the last few days, and the redness under his glassy eyes made him wonder if he'd been sleeping very well at all. Had he been taking regular meals? Bathing? And then, to deal with tonight and the aftermath of whatever had happened out there . . . How far could the man's mental faculties be tested?

John didn't ask how he took his but returned with two mugs of strong, black tea. Evidently, he was not planning on sleeping tonight, and apparently, Lestrade wouldn't be either.

'You say you're his friend,' John repeated, almost a query. He sat himself carefully in his chair and sank back, hands curling around the mug.

And yours, Lestrade thought. But somehow, the words caught in his throat just then, and all he could do was nod, hold his steaming mug, and wait for it to cool.

'Then what the hell are you doing working with his brother behind his back?'

If he had been in motion, he would have frozen. As it was, he was already perfectly still, and it was only his heart that stopped. 'Come again?'

'You heard me. Sherlock knows you and Mycroft are up to something. You forget who the idiot it is in this scenario, in any scenario where he's concerned. Who do you think you're dealing with?'

Lestrade overlooked the insult. 'What does he suspect?'

But John didn't seem to hear the question, or, if he did, he ignored it. 'It's bad enough that Mycroft keeps him so far at bay, but you?' John's eyes stabbed him with their accusation. 'I don't think he was expecting that. That you would ally yourself with an enemy, that is.'

'Enemy? You know that isn't true, John. Mycroft is doing everything in his power to . . . protect him.' The words fell pathetically from his lips because, when it came straight to it, he didn't know what the hell Mycroft was doing. So he said the only thing that he did know for sure. 'He cares about Sherlock.'

John huffed in derision and set aside his tea, barely sipped. His jaw was so tight Lestrade could see a vein pulsing in his forehead.

'He does.'

'Right. Is this the same brother who shrugged off seeing him in jail? Who calls him toxic. Who has had barely a thing to do with him since he came back? The same brother who didn't lift a finger to save him the first time around or bother to carve out an hour in his busy government schedule to come to his bloody funeral?'

'I don't claim to understand either of the Holmes boys perfectly, let alone their relationship with each other. But I'll never get it out of my head, seeing them come face to face for the first time after three long years. If you had seen it, John. They may have a difficult past, and they may never talk about it, but I've heard Mycroft say things, when he thought Sherlock was dead and . . . Well. I've never doubted that Mycroft has some tenderness of feeling.'

'He's got a funny way of showing it,' John said, unpersuaded. 'If it were my sister who suddenly came back to life, no matter our difficulties before . . .' His voice raised in pitched, and he cut himself off, hands balling on the armrests. Lestrade felt his eyes begin to burn in sympathy, and they cast their gazes away from each other.

Lestrade took a slow sip of scalding tea, giving him a moment. Then he said, softly. 'I'm sorry about Harry. I didn't know until . . .' Until Mary told me. 'Too late,' he finished.

And oh god, how he wanted to say he was sorry about Mary, too. It was for that that he wanted John to scream at him, to declare that it was his fault she died. He wanted to feel the fullness of the rage he knew was locked up inside John, let it pierce him, shatter him. But he feared it, too. He feared to be on the receiving end of that hatred, however warranted. And so, craven man that he was, he said nothing.

When he looked back, John's face was half covered by his hand, his eyes shielded. For the first time since the hospital, he realised, he could see the scars on John's wrists, the pink loops, and the white dashes of scars up to the elbows. John's breaths came in deep and unnatural rhythms and he had the unmistakable pallor of exhaustion about him.

'John, when's the last time you slept?' asked Lestrade carefully.

John's hand came away from his face and he cleared his throat. 'Kitty Riley's source is Irene Adler,' he said. His head hung wearily to the side, and his eyes were locked on the rug at his feet.

The midnight hour seemed to slow down. Lestrade stared, dumbfounded. He repeated John's words over in his mind, again and again, as though waiting for a different translation. None slid into place. 'What did you say?'

'Has to be. It has to be her.'

'Why?' Lestrade leaned forward anxiously. 'Did Sherlock say? How does he know?'

'I know. You should know it, too. You read the article, I assume.'

'Kitty's latest? Yes, I read it . . .'

'Molly.'

Lestrade blanched. 'What about Molly?'

'Kitty Riley wrote that it was Molly who helped Sherlock fake his death.'

'Yes . . .' He wasn't following John's train of thought.

'That was supposed to be kept a secret. Only you, me, Sherlock, and Molly knew it, right? So how did Kitty Riley know?'

Lestrade's heart was like a racket in his ears. 'She's an investigative journalist,' he said numbly.

'And a poor one.'

'I don't argue that, but she's been sniffing up the right trees for weeks now. She came to Molly, asking questions, and told her she knew that Molly had signed the coroner report verifying Sherlock's death. Coroner reports are not sealed; they're of public record. It can be tricky getting access, but . . . but she must have done. She must have inferred the truth.'

'When was this? When did she speak to Molly?'

'Early January.'

'If she figured out that Sherlock's saviour was Molly a month ago, then why did she wait so long to print it?'

'I don't know.'

'Unless someone told her to wait.'

Lestrade shook his head, not following. 'What are you driving at?'

'Think about it, Lestrade.' In that moment, Lestrade thought he heard Sherlock's voice instead, but the moment passed and it was John again. 'If Kitty Riley had it all figured out in January, she would have printed it. She has no restraint. But weeks go by, and nothing. Then suddenly, someone—Irene Adler—breaks into Molly's flat to leave messages, not for her, but for Sherlock, including a note with a hidden message implying an understanding of an important history between Sherlock and Molly. She knows what Molly did for him. Overlooked back then, Molly's now being shepherded into the ring of Sherlock's friends, and the so threat against her had to be made clear, as it was for you, me, and Mrs Hudson. It was Adler's way of saying to Sherlock, "I've got my eye on this one, too." And then, not two days later, the story comes out. But it had been in the works all along. Kitty'd been holding it back. Adler's not only her source of information: she's her puppet master.' John sighed and licked his lips, parched, perhaps. 'That's my theory, anyway.'

It was then that Lestrade looked around the flat and finally noticed the strewn newspapers, the unfolded maps, the notecards tacked to the wall above the sofa, the empty mugs of tea and coffee littering the tables. Sherlock Holmes had been in police custody for nearly three full days, and John Watson had been busy.

'Somehow, this is all part of the sick, twisted game she's playing' John continued. 'She's using Ms Riley, whether Kitty knows it or not. Playing to her vanity, feeding her love for drama, flattering her ego. And Kitty's libel is doing exactly what Irene wants it to do: turn the city against Sherlock. Tonight, it almost killed him. And the police aren't doing a damn thing about her.'

'We confiscated Ms Riley's property,' said Lestrade. 'Her personal computer, Blackberry, everything. We found evidence of a long correspondence with a ghost account, a stack of deleted emails, of which we could recover only a handful. But we couldn't trace it back to an originating IP address. They're using unsurpassable firewalls, complicated blocking software, stuff my guys have never seen before. They've been calling the technology military. Look, what we found wasn't enough to arrest her, and her wide-arse lawyers saw to it that we didn't interrogate her further. But if this is true, if we can use this to prove that she's been consulting with Adler and Moran—!'

'Just Adler. Someone your lot doesn't actually believe exists.'

'There's evidence now, John. We got DNA off the lipstick on the glasses.'

'Did you match it?'

He sighed. 'No.'

'That's because DNA tests are only as good as the records you keep,' he said. Then, with a few more drops of bitterness in his tone: 'And Adler knows how to play the record keepers. There will be nothing linking her to her past. You don't have anything. Not really.'

'Every scrap of truth is important. It will help.'

John's silence on that point indicated his doubt. Instead, he said, pushing himself to his feet, 'I'll tell him you were here.' Then he wandered over to his wall of cards, staring at his work.

'But . . .' There was nothing for it. This was a dismissal, and he would go. 'He really is okay?'

'He will be.'

'I'm going to report this, John. You know I have to. I need to find out why he was released without my knowing, and at such an hour. Besides. The people who attacked him—they shouldn't get away with it.'

'Can you do it without making it public?' John asked without turning back to face him.

'Yes. I can. Of course, I can.'

'Thank you. You're . . .' From behind, Lestrade saw his head bow a little, a slow nod. 'You're one of the good ones, Greg. And Sherlock—he's known that a long time.'

Lestrade smiled sadly, but facing away, John didn't see. 'He is rather drawn to the sort,' he said.

John gave no indication that he heard this. 'You need to get back to Molly,' he said tiredly. 'You shouldn't have left her alone.' With his back turned, Lestrade couldn't see his expression, but he felt the heaviness of his words. 'Never leave her alone, Greg. Never leave her alone.'

Lestrade stood, setting his tea, barely sipped, on the table. Slowly, he buttoned his coat and made his way to the door, all the while trying to think of something more to say, something worth saying. As if words could make any of this right. Already on the cusp of overstaying his tenuous welcome, he knew that one more word might shatter it completely. So he left, feeling like a blade hung precariously above them all. He would return to Molly, his beautiful Molly, a wrecked but resolved man, determined to let not another hour pass without confessing himself to her. He would lay out all his faults and weaknesses, his love and his need for her, not yet knowing what strength he would find in her arms. He would touch her at last, a kiss that would be more than a kiss, and she, warm and trusting, would open herself to be touched. They would come together, fall together, one filling and fulfilling the other, soft and fierce and wonderful, promising and accepting, until their consecration resolved itself in dreamless sleep, bodies still touching, hands still joined, untroubled till morning.

As Lestrade exited the flat and started down the stairs, he cast one more look behind him and saw that John Watson, the stalwart and steadfast soldier, was crying.

---

The first thing he noticed was the cold—like a cave. Not bitter, but ever-present, unchanging cold that sank slowly past skin, tissue, bone, until it hardened the marrow into an icicle, ready to shatter.

He walked in circles, downward spiralling from black into a soft, grey light. In his hand he held a length of leather, a strap or a cord, which he gripped with spidery fingers. His thumbs rubbed it, had been rubbing it for hours already, days, years, and the leather had softened in the imprint of a thumb. But it was strong. As he descended, he tested it, jerking the length of the leather hard and feeling it snap taut, unbreakable.

Then, into the stretching corridor with its white tiled floor and peeling white walls. He couldn't see the end to this bright tunnel, didn't even know if there was an end, but he kept on, unhurried and unconcerned, his black shoes clicking with each step, until he saw a figure standing in the distance. As he drew nearer, he recognised Mycroft's tailored suit and mirror-shined shoes, and nearer still, the thinning hair and prominent nose. At his approach, Mycroft turned and extended a hand. That'll do, he said, and Sherlock placed the length of leather in his hand.

It was then, only then, that Sherlock saw that the strap was long; he had been dragging it behind him as he came. And attached to the end of it was John, who had been following after him all along.

Mycroft tugged the lead, continuing on where Sherlock stopped, and John was compelled to part from him and follow.

Paralysed with horror, Sherlock could do nothing but watch as his friend moved away from him, an unresisting slave. His ankles were shackled, his hands bound with wire, and he was naked but for the coating of blood dripping from the IOUs carved into his back, the ones Sherlock himself had put there. He had no memory of it, no clear recollection of placing the knife, but he was sure it had been him, he was sure.

Mycroft pulled John further down the bright hall, and when Sherlock made to follow, he found his shoes stuck to the tiles. He pulled his legs, twisted his body, but his feet wouldn't budge. Panic rose in his throat like bile. He bent over to reach his laces, yanking the ends, fingernails digging into and tugging the knots, but every time he loosened their hold, of their own accord, they tightened again. Looking up, he saw that Mycroft was handing the leather lead over to a group of ten men—mere shadows, from this distance—and they surrounded John, obscuring him from view.

He shouted behind closed teeth, gave another jerk of the laces, and finally stepped out of the shoes. He stumbled forward, found his footing, and hurried after them, slipping sometimes on the slick tiles. Mycroft! he shouted in rage, then in fear, John!

But the faster he ran, the longer the corridor stretched. He couldn't reach the far-off shadows; he couldn't break up their dark ring. Mycroft stood by, watchful but motionless, the iceman in the watchtower.

A body suddenly arose before him, conjured as though from nothingness, blocking his way. He tried to halt himself, but his socks slipped out from under him, and he fell backward, landing on hands and elbows. He tried to scramble backwards but could find no purchase on the slick tiles. The man advanced on him, and Sherlock saw—it was him. Moriarty. Dark eyes alight with glee, mouth twisted in a perversion of a smile. He said nothing, not a word, but lifted his hand and snapped a finger.

From far away within that dark ring, Sherlock heard a scream. Fuelled with rage, he rose to his feet, but Moriarty seized him, wrapped two hands around the back of his neck, and pulled. With terrible force, their two heads collided.

---

Sherlock flung himself out of bed, hitting the ground with a slap. Pain flashed throughout his body, in limbs and joints and muscles, but it was unimportant, inconsequential. Even when he found his feet and felt a sharp pain splitting the skin at his heels, he still rushed out of the room, down the hallway, through the kitchen, and—

'Sherlock!' John, having heard his fall, was on his feet at the desk by the boarded windows, laptop aglow.

He was panting, he realised, sweating, and clutching his side, which was aflame with pain. He couldn't remember why. His head swam, and for a moment, he thought he was about to fall over, and he reached for the edge of the sliding glass door they never closed. But he had to prop himself up for only a second before John was at his side to act as a crutch. Limping in unison, John pulled him into the sitting room and set him on the sofa.

'Jesus, Sherlock,' he said. He touched Sherlock's face with the backs of his fingers, but Sherlock felt only the light graze of physical contact. He stretched his mouth and felt the dull pull of swollen skin around his lips and cheeks. Gradually, he became aware of the aching bruises, first in his face, then everywhere else. And he meant everywhere. Oh god, it was bad, wasn't it? 'You're overheated,' said John. 'Sit there, cool down. I'm getting you something to drink.'

John disappeared to the kitchen, and Sherlock rubbed the daze from his eyes, wincing when he accidently pressed raw, throbbing skin. John was right: he did feel overly warm, like he'd been standing under a hot sun wearing his winter coat. As he slowly came to fuller alertness, the reality of what had happened to him sharpened in his memory, and though the dream was slowly draining away, the dregs of it stuck in the forefront of his mind. He'd handed John over. God, he'd actually delivered John into the hands of killers. A dream, he chided himself as he scratched, roughly and unrelentingly, at the back of his hand. Just a dream.

His eyes swept the room, a little blearily at first, but his head was clearing rapidly. He wondered vaguely how long he'd been sleeping as his brain registered stacks of newspapers and at least a dozen cups and mugs scattered throughout the room. He'd been in too grave a state to notice before. A notebook lay open on the coffee table, covered up and down the recto and verso sides of the page, and maybe other pages as well, in John's untidy handwriting, but at the angle he sat he couldn't read it. But when he reached for it to get a better look, his side flared up again. 'Agh!' he said, leaning back gingerly into the sofa.

'Fractured rib,' John reminded him, coming back into the room with a glass of water. Sherlock noticed it was a glass from the back of the cupboard, seldom used except for when they had nearly run out of clean ones. He drank it all down at once, earning him a satisfied nod from his doctor. 'But not a dangerous one. Let me hear you cough.'

He coughed.

'You'll want to lie on that side for a while,' John said. 'You'll breathe better.'

Then he reached for the medical kit that had been scooted under the coffee table, and Sherlock submitted to another examination, this one conducted in less haste. John worked silently, checking his temperature (normal), his pupils (contracting), his heart rate (slightly elevated), and his blood pressure (acceptable). Then he changed the bandaging on the worse of the wounds and treated the others. He paused when he noticed the back of Sherlock's red-raw hand.

'You want to talk about this?' he asked under his breath, almost as though speaking to himself.

Sherlock tried to pull away, but John's grip tightened. He rotated the hand, now inspecting the red ring looping his wrist where the skin had worn away. When he seized the other, he saw the same. 'Damn them all to hell,' he seethed.

'You've been busy,' said Sherlock by way of distraction.

'You've been gone.' John eyed him quickly, then began applying soothing cream to his wrists. The tube was squeezed nearly to the tip. They would need to restock some of those items soon.

'And you've not been sleeping,' he next observed while he let John work.

John's eyes were bloodshot and his visage somnolent, but that wasn't all. He smelled strongly of coffee, there was a certain weary delay in all of his motions (now that he was no longer fuelled by adrenalin), and Sherlock was certain that he'd been wearing that very shirt the last time he had seen him. There was a musky scent of three-day unwashed clothing about him, poorly masked by less successful attempts at bathing and layers of deodorant.

'Too much to think about,' John said a little evasively. 'I thought you would know how that is.' Finishing his ministrations for the second time that night, he capped the tube and snapped the kit shut. 'You should go back to bed. You need rest. After what you've been through—'

'Are you all right?'

'Sherlock, I'm fine. You're the one who's in a right state.' He stood, indicating that Sherlock should follow. 'Come on, then, don't make me drag you.'

'I've been locked away for— Wait, what day is it?'

'It's Tuesday. It's also gone three in the morning.'

'Right. Well, I've been gone since Saturday, then, haven't I, and clearly you've been'—he fluttered a hand at the room—'up to things. You know I can't sleep when I'm in a curious mood.'

'I'll tell you all about it once you've had a proper sleep,' said John. Then he let out a long breath, looking somewhat discouraged. 'I'm probably wrong anyway.'

'About what?'

'I don't— It's just— The thing is, I thought I was onto something before you turned up tonight, but . . . You're right, I've not been sleeping. I'm sure it's nothing.'

'John, what?'

'I think . . . I thought . . . that, maybe I'd, you know, cracked it.'

'It?'

'The riddle. The one left on Jack and Jill.'

'The nursery rhyme . . . ?'

'Not a nursery rhyme, Sherlock. A riddle. I mean, they've all been riddles, haven't they? Puzzles to be solved. But this one . . . It's like we've been holding the map all along, and now they've given us a compass.'

'Now you're talking in riddles.'

John looked at him from the corner of his eye, smiling very softly.

'Tell me.'

'It can wait—'

'Tell me. Please.'

'You're incorrigible.' John sighed, but his annoyance was minimal, and Sherlock knew he was relenting as he dragged a chair nearer to face him and sat. 'Do you know the name Alice Liddell?'

Sherlock's nose and the skin between his eyes wrinkled in thought, waiting for the name to spark a memory, open a box, but nothing came up in the search. 'Celebrity? Royalty? You know I've been gone for three years, and I hardly concerned myself before with such—'

'Neither.'

'Not a former client . . . ?'

'No. Alice Pleasance Liddell was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's children's story: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.'

'All right . . .'

'You know that one, surely.'

'The preposterous and highly illogical tale of a little girl who falls down a rabbit hole? Yes, I'm afraid I do know it. Never much cared for it.'

'Well, that doesn't matter, because Alice is the key you were looking for.'

Sherlock nodded eagerly to prompt John to explain more quickly, but his head hurt with the motion, so he stopped.

'Carroll denied that his stories were based on Alice Liddell, despite the books' eponymous heroine sharing her name. But there were hints. The second book, Through the Looking-Glass, concludes with a poem. It's called "Life Is But a Dream", and its final stanza'—he stretched an arm to the coffee table and rifled through some of his notes, extracting a single page from under an empty mug and passing it to Sherlock—'goes like this.'

Sherlock's eyes broke away from John's intense stare and fell to the page. The whole poem had been written out by hand, and the final stanza circled. There, he read:

Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?

'So not Row Your Boat,' Sherlock murmured to himself.

'Not Row Your Boat,' John agreed. 'It's more complicated than that. Carroll's whole poem questions what is real, and what is just a dream. It suggests that the two can't be distinguished from each other. Not really. The people we've known appear in our dreams; and the characters of our dreams haunt us when we're awake. Happiness? Waking or sleeping, it's just an illusion. Merrily, we row downstream, as it were.'

Sherlock frowned and glared at the poem. 'I never liked literary analysis.'

'Yeah, but . . . take a closer look. The poem itself. It's an acrostic.' Mercifully, Sherlock was spared asking what that was, because John was pushing ahead of his own accord. His face was tight and focused and his eyes bright. Whatever energy that was left to him after three days of little and poor sleep was being exhausted, now, in this revelation. 'The first letter of every line, do you see it?' He gestured eagerly at the page. 'Read vertically, top to bottom. Do you see?'

Sherlock saw: The first letters of the twenty-one lines spelled out the name Alice Pleasance Liddell.

'That's why people believe Carroll was really writing about Alice Liddell. Because her name was hidden in the poem, the last thing written at the end of all her adventures.'

'I see that. But John. What does this have to do with Jack and Jill?'

A tinge of colour rose in John's cheeks. 'I thought, maybe, they were playing the same game with us. You know. That there might be a message hidden in all the rhymes. Like in the acrostic.'

Now Sherlock's gaze returned to the notebook, blackened with John's repeated copying of the lines from nursery rhymes they had encountered. The cradle will fall was stacked atop A pocket full of posies and London Bridge is falling down, with TAL circled, then scratched out. The rhymes in their entirety were written out, too, the first letters ordered then scrambled then re-scrambled in dozens upon dozens of attempts to force reason into the madness. But all that had come of it was more madness: nonsense words slashed through with black ink, again, and again, and again.

Then John said, 'But it was simpler than that. A lot simpler. We just . . . didn't see it.'

Sherlock lifted his head and found John staring at the wall above him. 'Look,' he said.

Carefully turning his neck, Sherlock looked and saw that John had made a collage of notecards over the fleur de lys trellis pattern on the wall. He shifted to get a better look, and with John's help, hands grasping forearms, they rose together. He stood now, despite his aching bones, shoulder to shoulder with John, the better to examine his work. Stacked top to bottom in a queue down the centre of the collage were the names of the five victims of the Slash Man, and branching off of each, details of where, when, and how they died, and branching even further off, biographical information: where they had once lived, past professions, and other identifying characteristics, both unique and general. So this is how John's mind organised itself: like a tree, or a web, one idea linking systematically to the next, which one must trace from a point of origin. Not like his. His was more like . . . rain.

'It's all of them together. Look at their names. The first letters of their names.'

And then he saw it: Sam, Holden, Ewan, Ralston, Lynette. He put out his hand and dragged it down through the air, using two fingers as a guide as he pointed to each letter: L

'It's your name, Sherlock. With his victims, he's spelling out your name.'

Its simplicity astounded him. These hapless human targets, cherry-picked out of hundreds of poor homeless sods, based solely on their first initials? And yet, an impossible pattern to see in the first victim, the first two victims, maybe even three. But that couldn't be right. It couldn't! There must have been some greater suggestion, something he should have been able to see from the start.

Sherlock's eyes skittered slightly to the right, to the victims' surnames. And as the letters lifted off the flat surface and more carefully aligned with one another in their proper order, he said, in a voice soft with astonishment, 'Not just my name. But yours, too.'

'What?' said John, startled.

'Look.' His arm shifted, and he pointed to the surnames, and John leant forward on his toes to see what he had missed.

'But—' His breath caught, because now he saw it too. Jefferies, O'Harris, Nichols, Winters, and Avery, their names working together, were beginning to spell out his own: J O'H N W A

'God,' he said, paling.

'This is brilliant.'

'Sherlock!'

'No, don't you see, John? This is precisely what I've been looking for! There had to be a pattern, a hidden message, I knew there had to be, and you've discovered it!'

'These people unwittingly died in your name, and your name— No, our names, are in their deaths! This threat, the one that's been there all along, it's just a game to them.'

'Yes, and now we can play the game properly, can't we? We now know the rules. We know the next piece of the puzzle before it is given to us! Someone with the initials OT. Oh ho, this is brilliant!'

'Not brilliant!' shouted John, suddenly furious. 'Sherlock, five people had to die for us to see it!'

'I know, but—'

'And this'—he stabbed a finger at the wall—'says there are three more. Three more people out there, already queued up, just waiting for their turn. Only, there are four more letters to go in my name.'

'Not if he uses the O'Harris trick again.'

'There you go again, calling it a trick, like this is some sort of clever magic show.'

'That's not how I see it. But don't you see, John? With what we know now, we can stop these crimes! We can save those people.'

'And what about the others? Those who already died?'

Sherlock threw up his hands. 'They're dead! I can't save the dead, John. I can catch the killer and make him pay, but that is all.' He ran a hand through his hair, forgetting about the gashes, the sores, and as the pain flared up, so did his temper. 'The past is the past. Nothing can be done to change it, nothing. Its only purpose anymore is to provide evidence. I use that evidence in moving forward, don't you see? It's all I can do. Beyond that, what does it matter now? It happened. It's done.'

'What does it matter?' John was aghast. 'It ruined my life! I had a good life, Sherlock. I was happy.'

Sherlock turned to face him, realising too late that they weren't really talking about Sam Jeffries or Ewan Nichols anymore. This was about more than that. John was trembling—in anger, from exhaustion, about to split: he had seen it before.

'John,' he said steadily, instantly contrite but wanting him to understand, 'if I could give you that life back, if I could make it so she had never died, I would. Don't you think I would? I would die a thousand times over if it had even the slightest chance of restoring to you that good life and make you happy again.'

John looked flabbergasted, eyes wide and glistening with shock. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Then, a shadow fell as he understood Sherlock's words, but when he spoke, it was to prove only that Sherlock hadn't understood his. 'I was happy,' he clarified, 'with you. In that life. Before you fell. If you hadn't . . .'

He staggered backward, creating space between them, and if he hadn't grabbed the chair by the table he might have fallen down, but Sherlock knew better than to try to hold him up this time. John sat heavily. Putting a hand to his face, he turned his head away as if he could keep Sherlock from seeing him.

'Don't look at me like that,' he said. 'Like you don't understand.'

'John . . .'

'Like you don't believe I was your friend, the way you were mine. It's insulting. If I had been given the choice, I would have taken that bullet for you.'

Sherlock winced. In a small voice, he said, 'Don't say things like that.'

'Why not?'

'Because I can't bear the thought . . .'

'What makes you think I could bear the sight?'

Sherlock bowed his head, closed his eyes. John kept talking.

'I didn't, you know. Bear it, I mean. I watched you die. I watched you throw yourself off that roof with no explanation at all but for the claim you were a fake, which I knew wasn't true. I knew it wasn't true. Even when you doubted me—and I know you did—I never for a second believed those lies.' Sherlock's head came back up, his eyes troubled. 'But suddenly, you were dead. And I couldn't take it. I lost everything, after that. If you'd been there,' John continued, his voice now quavering, 'I wouldn't have felt so lost when Harry died. I wouldn't have stood alone at Mike's funeral. If you had only been there . . . I still would have met Mary. But maybe I was never meant to have her. She came looking for you, you know. Not me.'

'It wouldn't have made any dif—'

'You would have loved her, Sherlock. Even you.'

'Because you did,' said Sherlock. 'It would have been reason enough.'

'Oh God.' John moaned into his hands, doubling over in the chair. 'If only she'd been spared knowing me. I would go back and drive her away, if I could. I would turn her away the moment she said she needed a detective, yell at her, offend her, whatever it took. I should never have pretended to be something I wasn't.'

'You didn't.' Sherlock stepped closer, letting John hear his weight move across the floorboards, and watched for a recoil, but John made none. 'You saw someone in need, and did all you could to help. That's who you are. That's who she fell in love with.'

Ignoring the bone-deep ache of battered muscles and broken skin, he crouched down in front of where John sat so that he could look up into his hanging face. John dropped a hand and returned the gaze, his own wet and wearisome. His emotions were run ragged—in the space of only a few short minutes, he had gone from dispassionately tending to Sherlock's own bodily afflictions to raging against him and then ultimately to profoundest sorrow. Sherlock's hand twitched, about to rest on John's knee, or touch his arm, or pull him into an embrace, but he refrained: John had a look of near panic about him, and touch of any sort had set him off before. Sherlock wouldn't risk it. Instead, he needed to get John to agree to doing what was best for his mind and body in that moment.

'You're exhausted,' he said. 'You need to lie down. Sleep.'

John's eyes flicked over to the sofa. 'I don't want—'

'In a proper bed. Tonight, at least.'

Now John's eyes found the door to the landing, beyond which lay the stairs to his room. His eyes filled with dread and he began to shake his head, but Sherlock finished, 'Take mine. For tonight. Besides, I'm awake now. I'm going to stay here and revise your work. We can compare notes in the morning.'

Rather than wait for a response—a refusal or a debate—he arose and indicated that John should follow. To his relief, he did. He walked forward with a shuffle, breathing haltingly through his nose, almost gasping. In the hallway, Sherlock stood aside to let John pass into his darkened bedroom and crawl into his bed to settle beneath the covers. He became still almost instantly, but Sherlock watched a few moments longer, just to make sure. He left the door open and the hall light on. As the night wore on and shifted to day, he would check on him, every hour or two, but John, who would sleep for twelve straight hours, wouldn't move an inch.

Sherlock returned to the sitting room. His plan to keep working quickly evaporated. Tiredness overcame him, too. So he turned down the lamps and stretched himself out on the sofa, gingerly turning onto his side, per doctor's orders, where he felt the pressure in his fractured rib but also relief in his breathing. He hoped for dreamless sleep, or, at the very least, sleep without the reminder of how he had betrayed his best friend, or the fear that someday he would do it again.