A/N: A bit more on Greg than I thought I would do. It's tempting as I haven't played much the narrator's point of view with Greg Lestrade. And after surmising some of what could have been his and Sherlock's early days, I feel like I owe him air time and context. He's a nice guy. He allowed Sherlock to discover a way to put his unique talents to the use of mankind. It would take John's bulletproof belief in Sherlock and their seamless partnership for the Work to become organised, methodical and fulfilling for Sherlock, taking the place of other, unhealthier, obsessions, but the early spark seems to have come from the inspector's willingness to break the law and share details of crime scenes to give a focus to the detective. Greg got rewarded well, as Sherlock never took the credits for the early cases (although he teased the inspector mercilessly in order to bully him into giving another case quickly), and that help may have helped Greg progress in his career at the Yard – yet Greg is a very good detective himself. He's just bound by rules, regulations and a sense of self-preservation, all things that Sherlock, along with John, lacks spectacularly.

...And because you need to be emotionally invested in Greg, otherwise this story becomes boring after John's rescue.

I really shouldn't have binged the first two series in one go, should I? Too late now. This is the result.

I'm hoping to finish in the next chapter, although I still need to figure out how. And what to do next. Maybe I'll buy another jigsaw puzzle. Maybe I'll stress about work some more. -csf


V.

I'm banging on DI Lestrade's front door, shouting his name, and checking what I can see through the street facing windows of the suburban house. Past the dishevelled grass lawn with the trampoline where tree leaves have been piling up in a central swamp, the neighbours are starting to come out to see what is going on. Fine, it suits me. Maybe one of them has an idea of where Greg can be.

'Tryin' to get yous' arrested?' a woman asks me. 'He's a copper, y'know?'

I turn to face the thick accent woman. 'Yeah, I guess I am, know where he's at?'

She shrugs, pulling an annoyed face now. She goes back inside and bangs the door shut. And bolts it.

Nice neighbourhood. Greg could have been picked right off the street and no one would care much to intervene. I vaguely remember Greg moving in after the divorce. Maybe I should help him move out soon.

I shrug my jacket collar over my stiff neck and start walking down the driveway.

'Say, mister, are you that detective's hubby?'

It's a grubby pre-teen girl, coming out of nowhere.

'Sherlock Holmes and I aren't a couple', I try to be reasonable. She's a child, after all. Maybe I shouldn't have eye rolled at her.

'He said you were.'

I blink.

'Well, yes, Sherlock did, but that was for a case. Just once. I was hoping everyone would have forgot about it', I mutter, embarrassed. Sherlock told the press to deduce why we had taken the honeymoon suit at the hotel. There was no other room available, and he was being sarcastic. They deduced wrong. I was mad when I found out through the afternoon papers, knowing it would never die that down, and then Sherlock was stroppy for ages, assuring me he's a great catch. It was all very surreal.

'Dad says you are. Not like an actual couple, but in your own way.'

'I guess your dad's got something there.' I sigh and start walking along again.

'Is that why you were looking for dad?' she asks, hugging a school bag, as if I hadn't turned away.

I do a double take.

'Missy?' She nods at her little girl's nickname. 'You've grown.' She smiles, proudly, like only a child would when hearing that. 'What are you doing here?'

'Coming home from school. Sometimes I come this way. I know dad's at work, but I— Why are you looking for him? Is he alright?'

I bite my lip.

'I have no reason to say otherwise, but I can't seem to reach you father.'

She nods, resilient as kids can be. A messy divorce will do that, or perhaps she's just a bit world-weary like her father. 'Neither could I', she confesses. 'But don't tell my mum I've been calling him', she adds hastily.

'I won't.' Because I see nothing wrong with that. Greg's ex-wife is still holding a grudge, I see.

'Will you find dad? With Sherlock?'

I know this answer for sure as I ponder the loyal brown eyes, so familiar in their shape and colour. 'Yes, we'll find him.'

'Good', she decides to trust us. 'You won't tell my mum I've been talking to dad's friends, will you?' she reminds me before rushing along down the street. I find a couple of girls in the same school uniform waiting on her, and they accosted her for all the gossip at once.

.

DI Greg Lestrade counts his breaths, slowly, in and out. It still stings badly, but the blood letting has lessened considerably. He tries to blink, to cast away the shadows in front of his eyes before he realises it's the natural daylight, not his vision, faltering in the evening. Will he have to endure a night of slow torture like this?

Where the bloody hell are Sherlock and John? Why aren't they coming to find him, get him out if here?

The inspector leans his damp forehead on the cold metal wall, seeking an elusive relief.

Earlier in the last crime scene, the one before John got taken, back in the days when only ordinary Londoners got abducted and killed, Sherlock and John were discussing the Curfew Killer.

'Why is he doing this?' the doctor had asked. John always asks those questions; he wants to understand the inner motives of those tortured souls the criminal justice thrives on. Lestrade always thought of John as a tad innocent, as if he never really got tarnished by the endless gory the team chased. He still seems to believe in the best of people – cue in Sherlock and the fall from Bart's –, and in motives for otherwise senseless actions. Lestrade would say John has never seen the monsters the inspector has encountered in his career, but then he always remembers John has seen the battlefield from the inside out. The inspector doesn't know what to make of John Watson. Sherlock seconds him.

On the occasion of the first victims, Sherlock seemed to share the DI's perspective, as he hopelessly reminded the doctor: 'He's a serial killer, John. Do serial killers still surprise you?'

'Probably not as much as they should', John admitted easily. 'But this guy, he creates a new way of killing for every victim.'

'Yes, creative, isn't he?' Sherlock had a hard time disguising a flash of an exhilarated grin. John had pointedly ignored it, chalking it up to Sherlock being his weird unique self, but Lestrade just felt the usual queasy jolt at the bottom of his stomach.

John easily finds a way out for Sherlock's gaffe: 'Thanks to that the fifth victim is still alive, Greg. Sherlock deduced the twin would be found in the take away's basement, as we all got distracted with the dead twin dropped at the mouth of the alleyway. He changed his modus operandi to challenge Sherlock, and Sherlock responded. That changed the rules of the game.'

Lestrade had lamented: 'The surviving twin was in shock, we couldn't get anything of importance out of him. I suppose that's hardly a surprise.' What the inspector does not voice is the pity he felt for the sequestered victim who had lost the closest family member and business partner; and for what? For the caprice of a bored serial killer?

'Yeah, I guess it was expected, the killer would've taken precautions... but where does he get his ideas?' the doctor had insisted, as he studied the laceration on the bus driver's foot, stretched out on a morgue slab, between Greg and the Baker Street duo.

Sherlock had filled in the gaps effortlessly:

'He gets his ideas from the victims themselves, John. He's inventive and bored. He doesn't kill them outright, he enjoys stretching it out, a sadist then. The technician was killed by poisonous laboratory chemicals the residue of which was probably the only thing I could not identify from under her fingernails, the university student was strangled in the residential halls when she was returning from an bondage scene club – is that how you say it, John? Bon-dage? Bond-age? Bőnd-âge? John, will you show me how it goes later?' At this point the doctor had just groaned and dug his head on his palm, trying to ignore the sniggering audience. Sherlock picked up where he had left it: 'And the bus driver died from carbon monoxide poisoning when he was attacked on his walk home, as he frequently did after his shifts, as one can tell by the blisters caused by the new shoes, next to the calluses the last pair of work shoes left behind.'

John had then muttered something about Sherlock's bright mind that had made the detective glow smugly over the dead bus driver's corpse, as far as Lestrade could recall.

In fairness, the inspector is 99% certain that's what John did, praise Sherlock, and the odds are a million to one in favour. John is genuine in his abundance of praise, and Sherlock never tires of it. In fact, unlike the general population, the consulting detective never seems to grow fatigued of praise, and never takes it for granted either – not since his return to London, that is – John's praise only seems to spur him on.

Gently, the inspector hopes to the highest power that John is in a praising mood. Greg needs Sherlock at his best.

All Greg can do is keep faith and wait.

.

The patrol car ride is pure ignominy, and Sherlock Holmes his holding on tight to his last threads of patience and lucidity. He has – rather foolishly – accepted Sergeant Donovan's ride to Lestrade's house, mostly because she insisted she had dropped him off home after the crime scene, so logically that's where the inspector needed to be. Apparently she was unfamiliar with the concept of doors. It was obvious that while she saw him go inside his house, he had clearly left it since.

And where is John anyway?

As if to answer the broody calling, the detective catches sight of doctor John Watson from the car window. The short blond looks like he's been caught freezing, as he huddles inside his asymmetric shoulder patch jacket. He walks the pavement with a determination that is all John, even as he thickly pecks on his phone's screen with chubby thumbs.

Sherlock nearly jumps on the back seat as his phone starts ringing.

He'll be damned if he answers John's call from the back seat of a police car, like some common criminal...

'Are you going to answer that?' Donovan asks impatiently, over her shoulder. Her patience is as good as her driving.

'Stop here', Sherlock cuts imperiously, already yanking on the door handle. It doesn't budge. He glares at the sergeant. Amused, she stops the car and unlocks the doors that usually hold in petty criminals.

'I'll see you at the house, then', she mostly talks to herself, as Sherlock is quickly crossing the street. She huffs, and hits the pedal, storming off. The sharp start shoves the passenger's back door shut, that Sherlock had left wide open.

The tyres noise, rasping on the tarmac, rouses John's attention, who by now is looking very concerned, as Sherlock won't pick up the damned call. He recognises immediately the figure coming his way, and presses his lips together, still holding up the phone. For further dramatic effect, an eyebrow is raised silently.

Sherlock huffs and tries to have the last word.

'Hi, John, I'm just heading your way', he finally answers the call.

The incoming glares between the two men meet in the middle, intensifying instead of cancelling each other out.

'About ruddy time too! Sherlock, why weren't you picking up the calls when for all I know there's a serial killer after you—'

'John, I need to hang up on you, some angry little man is thoroughly upset with me.'

'Don't you dare!'

Sherlock pockets his phone slowly, making a show off it. John is completely thrown for a loop. He really can't understand how or why he puts up with Sherlock. Now right now he can't, at least.

He suspects it has something to do with the amount of times they save each other's lives on a regular basis.

'Why here, John?' the detective asks, looking around, as if nothing had just happened.

John takes a deep breath, thinks of Lestrade, and explains: 'This is the area Greg grew up in.'

'Explains the accent', Sherlock comments neutrally, turning his musician ear towards some old folks walking past some way off.

At a distance the train whistles at it goes past a station where it doesn't stop, fast speed pounding the tracks at a staccato pace, and John can't hear the local specimens talk.

John looks around, they are on the verge of a small grassy park, with a couple of trees and benches. Some houses scratch the ground in long parallel lines, all looking the same, grey dull brick and bulky walls.

'Any of these houses?' Sherlock enquires smoothly. He's not used to following the lead and it feels off putting.

'The one he grew up in? Apparently no, it doesn't exist anymore. His ex-wife told me.'

'You called her?'

'I didn't think she'd know where Greg was. She did suggest his office, working overtime, but I think she was just being bitter then. It's just— You said the killer uses his victim's lives as inspiration for his staged attacks, Sherlock.' John looks back at Sherlock's face, in eager expectation.

This is what John does, he gives the detective crumbles and watches him put unimaginable castles together from near dust.

'It would appear so.' Sherlock doesn't quite take the bait. Not yet, at least, but John is confident he will, and that Sherlock is about to find the missing link, so he stretches out his introductory crumbles.

'I'm a former soldier, under constant media scrutiny, so he stuck me in a box for everyone to see, and a bomb under me. Am I right?'

Sherlock has a hard time disguising the cold shiver running down his back that has nothing to do with the cold autumn evening.

'Something like that.'

'So, you know Greg longer. What do you know about his life?'

Sherlock looks troubled for half a second, which triggers John's immediate guilt.

'No, of course you don't have to know, it's just a general question, I know you don't do meaningless socialisation as you put it—'

'No, John, you're wrong', Sherlock intones, as if bewildered. Oh here it comes. Sherlock's got that expression of utter reverence to a forlorn deduction deity once again.

'I am?' John is shocked, and a bit lost.

Sherlock speeds through a quick private monologue, opening his thought processes to his esteemed audience of one: 'It's not about knowing the victim better, it's about the public information the killer can get on the victims. The first five? They were anonymous, boring people, he only studied them as far as their habits. Then he gained confidence, he targeted you. No time to follow you about, and if he had you'd have found him out as a stalker too soon. No, he used the information gathered by the papers. Former soldier – explosives. Doctor – poisonous gas. Sherlock's lover – the pilfering of your clothes. He got all that from the tabloids, John. Now, think! What can he have found out about Lestrade? Again no time for a deeper study, just what he can amass from—'

Sherlock's voice falters, his eyes grow wide. John copies him instantly.

'Last month, that train track killer', the doctor voices first. 'Greg told the journalists he grew up in a house by the tracks, that's exactly what he said.'

They both turn towards the sound of another passing train.

'Have you brought your gun with you, John?'

.

TBC