A/N: Is there anybody out there? Asking for a friend. -csf


6th.

Had a restless night, I did. Surprising? Yes. Not one of the usual type either. Instead of bright and sharp snippets of recombined war memories sneaking up on me on my unconscious state, I was a captive spectator of a collection of imaginative blurred colours, fluid shapes, probing feathered touches and nauseating vortices of movement. I was alone in a strange world I didn't recognise as my own, one that I was learning to assimilate by instinct and experiment. I felt restless, in accepting of a looming fate always undefined, but no less than discomfited by my happenstance location; I was floating in a strange world with a logic of its own, its machinations a secret from my prying eyes.

At one point my mind wandered over to the memory of my best friend. How come he wasn't a presence in that strange alien universe, how come he was so lamentably missing. For I know, without a doubt, that if Sherlock Holmes was there he'd be attracting all the attention and energy in the room to himself, with his magician-like abilities to dominate a strange, unreal setting, he'd make sense of it for me. And yet, Sherlock wasn't far off, of that I was sure, without ever knowing how, I just knew it. My consciousness could travel the flow of odd shapes and flowing, mingling colours, and seek my friend to connect with. I didn't, though. I didn't know Sherlock's colours.

Odd, freaky dreams. No wonder I woke up bathed in sweat and slightly out of breath.

'You're running a low fever, John. Otherwise you seemed perfectly healthy, if a bit restless.'

It's disconcerting to wake up to an unemotional medical diagnosis, precisely delivered with cold detachment.

Oh, yeah, and by the way Sherlock's just having a morning coffee and news in my bedroom at the B&B. Uncaring exposed as a slipping mask on the detective.

To be honest, being Sherlock we're talking about, this home invasion exercise actually rings pleasantly of familiarity, grounding me after the weird nightly excursions of my feverish mind.

I look on over to the window. Rain splatters diagonally across, against the cold window pane. It reminds me of the sea waves splashing against the shore.

'Sherlock, the case!' I splutter at once, raising myself from the damp, creased bedsheets.

'What case?' he asks guardedly. As if he had several he was working on in tandem. Knowing my friend, he probably does.

'The cold case? Remember we were on our way to the seaside to solve a cold case?'

He looks intrigued. 'Your sense of duty is a defining feature of your personality, sure, but there's no rush. It's a cold case. And you are ignoring a giant octopus attack on you, John', he adds, pertinently. Sternly he steels his avoiding gaze and assures: 'It's an affront to me as detective that you'd have me go to a cold case when event surrounding you are so deliciously entertaining. John, I—'

We're interrupted by the shrill sound of my phone ringing. With no qualms of privacy, Sherlock reaches out and takes the mysterious call. I try to grab my phone back. Predicting my gesture, Sherlock swings it out of reach.

'Lestrade? ...John's fine, John is always fine... He's right here in bed with me...'

I chuckle at what my dimwit flatmate is saying. I swear Sherlock went from "don't know how the rumours started" to "I'll just outwit the rumours, shall I?" in no time.

'Pass me the phone', I demand, crisply. Sherlock raises an imperious hand and twists away, getting up from his chair.

'No, John has been asleep all this time. I've been monitoring his sleep... No, I don't find it creepy, why should I?'

'Sherlock...' I warn, demanding my phone, palm held open in wait.

'Lestrade, I don't need a medical degree to watch John sleep.'

'Sherlock!'

I push away the covers, swing my legs over the side of the bed and push myself upright.

Reality dutifully tilts over and I come crashing down on the hardwood floor like timber in a forest.

'John!'

I can hear the clatter my phone makes when hitting the floor.

.

I blink as the blurry room returns to its ugly sharp relief. Useless dust attracting knickknacks piling up at every available surface, as if poised to attack us with their kitsch aesthetics. I roll my head in the hardened pillow, seeking illusive comfort that just won't come.

Only then I notice Sherlock, curled up on an uncomfortable chair, near me. He was supposed to keep vigil but somehow exhaustion crept up on him and he's asleep. How he keeps himself folded so tightly, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around those lanky legs, all whilst his chest is softly raising and falling to the rhythm of his sleeping breaths, I have little idea. I make sure to keep quiet as I get up from the mattress, and slip my sock cladded feet into my shoes. In the same quietness, I reach for the door handle, twist it and leave the room, without even closing the door.

It's a dream. You don't need to close doors in dreams.

If this was reality, Sherlock would be awake. I'd be cold or sleepy, hungry or thirsty, perhaps.

A longing smell of sea fills me as I take a deeper breath. Those colours, soft mingling hues that rise like fog, envelop me slowly, swirling like tides, alluring like mysteries unsolved, iridescent turgid colours overwhelming my senses.

Soft ivory, peach tones. Non-threatening, peaceful, familiar. I follow their call.

In the back of my mind I keep the awareness of a calm, curious tide of sage and silver hues.

.

'John.'

I blink myself out my daze. 'Sherlock', I recognise. I've no jacket on, my shoes are untied, I have no recollection of the last... of a long while. 'How did you get me here?'

It's Sherlock's doing. It's always Sherlock's doing.

'John?' He seems taken back. 'John, I followed you here.'

Nice joke, mate! Now can we stop saying each other's names?

'Sherlock...' I breathe, impatient.

Apparently not. He hands me his beloved long coat, his features are harsher than I expected, and I know I must take it for now.

I wrap myself in the warm wool, knowing I'm a bit cold, a bit lost.

'John, you were mesmerized by some strange force, following invisible instructions. I saw you take decisive choices on which path to take, and you even climbed down reinforced steel steps embedded in the wall.'

'Where are we?' I ask after a suspicion filled glance around. Sherlock smirks at my sudden paranoid, much more a show of the John Watson he is accustomed to.

'Old water well catchment.'

I squint. 'Why?' I let my suspicions take over.

His eyes take a soft concerned approach. 'You tell me. I feared you might take a tumble as you entered this construction. You were determined as always. So I held back, monitoring you. I tried assuring I could keep you safe, hamper you if you fell, but you were very independent and ignored all my pleas, all my interceptions. You seemed to be navigating a world only you could sense. It was... terrifying.'

'I'm sorry', I say reflexively. He seems genuinely shocked, his eyes still a bit unsure, sunken on a pale face.

He shrugs wordlessly in the same instinctive answering.

I look around in the weird underground bunker. Again, Sherlock precedes me.

'It seems to have been a community spring well, John. Abandoned sometime in the 1910s going by the sunlight discoloration on what seems to have been non-arsenic-free wall paint.'

'Arsenic?' I look up. That shook me out of my daydream trance alright.

'Lead too', Sherlock adds, pragmatic. He takes a flake of the peeling paint and licks it, grimacing afterwards.

Sherlock, in the name of all that is holy in science... stop licking the evidence!

'Then what I saw...' I say instead.

This time Sherlock waits uncharacteristically patient, without interrupting or rushing me.

'Sherlock, I saw fleeting movements. Long tentacles flowing fluidly in the water.' I remember them now. They were my full attention, my only care in the world.

The detective looks sombre. 'Octie is slowly being poisoned by heavy metals, by absorption through the sensitive skin. She must leave this home. It might even be that the metals bleaching into the stilled waters are the reason for her aberrant behaviour when she attacked you, John.'

'Yeah, but—' I hesitate.

'What is it, John?'

'The tentacles I saw... curling and slithering in the water... they were not long. They belonged to infants.'

Sherlock glances into the dark tunnels.

'She's calling you, John. She's a desperate mother calling you to help her babies. John, this is fascinating.'

Glad one of us thinks that... I think angrily, but I don't really mean that, I don't think. I'm just a bit freaked out right now.

.

TBC