A/N: Sorry, small insert type of chapter. I'll have it finished on the next one, I hope. It's getting rather lengthy of its own accord. -csf


Three.

I felt bad soon after. Particularly when Sherlock insisted on staying up all night having tests on our front door. I had to stay up too, intent on keeping him from inflicting chemical damage on the dark wood, or those near microscopic drilled holes that went a way into proving I know not what. It really made me feel rotten as I saw every hypothesis and test he selected to perform come up flat. Couldn't be otherwise. Sherlock was searching desperately for a trick from outside, an evil entity taunting him, a Jim Moriarty's shadow carrying some of the original's enticement, when I knew for a fact that Baker Street was as impregnable and safe as it had always been. I was reaching my own wits end, unable to hold on to the act much longer, to rationalise a trick gone horribly wrong for lack of foresight, when suddenly as it had all started, it ended.

Sherlock abandoned pursuit. Grabbed that mask out of the old shoebox and declared it his greatest mystery after all.

That was a close call.

Guilt and embarrassment still poisoning my veins. How could I have been so callous not to ponder how Sherlock would feel upon discovering he's been duped? By me, too. I'm no Moriarty. The ignominy becomes sharper, tangier, leaving a bad taste behind.

It was easier to imagine that I could explain myself when I anticipated a milder response from the detective. He would find it odd, then funny, then pat me in the back and promise darkly some sort of revenge that involved swapping my shampoo for industrial dye that would not actually come to pass.

The same reason I started in this mess – to save Sherlock from himself – is the reason this is now all going horribly wrong. Sherlock's obsession with his work.

The moment the great detective abandoned pursuit of the illusive intruder, I sighed in relief, only to second guess myself. Had Sherlock found me out? Did Mrs Hudson slip when talking with the detective? I immediately dismissed the latter. For an old lady who had managed to deceive the CIA with practised ease and hide a certain reputable camera phone in the folds of her day dress, well... if there's ever a secret to keep from her tenants she's absolutely capable of making sure we never even suspect. Luckily we have this senior Mata Hari on our side. She has missed a great career with the other Holmes brother, if they only got along better.

'John, stop daydreaming and fetch me my thin point tweezers.'

I look up, startled. I'm a bit sleepy, a bit groggy, but in no hurry to hit the bed. Sherlock is just now starting his analysis on the case I fed him in secret. It's only five in the morning anyway.

'Tweezers', I mutter to myself, getting up from the kitchen chair and stretching my limbs awkwardly. 'Sherlock, what did you just ask me for?'

He glances at me. Somehow he decides to take pity on me. 'Tweezers, John.' It comes across concerned, but that can't be right; Sherlock has got all his attention on the mysterious object.

Why would a mask generate concern?

Right, that's it. I'm a bit tired, that's all.

I open the cutlery drawer and get those damned tweezers out. They stay with the forks, all having prong like endings. Spatulas with the spoons, and scalpels with the knives. It keeps them tidy. Also handy when there's no clean cutlery left.

'What are you got there then?'

'Wooden fibbers, John. Determining the type of wood. Also dissolving the paint in different concentrations of acid to ascertain the paint solvents used. And, of course, I'm determining the accurate measurements between the eye slits and mouth to infer probable cultural inheritance of the maker, assuming, of course, he modelled those features after himself and not a client.'

'Oh, that's clever. I wouldn't have thought of all that.'

'That's alright, you'll never be a detective, John. We are all built favourably different.'

There is a flash of clever humour in his eyes, but I'm too tired to make sense of it.

.

John has fallen asleep, slumped on a kitchen chair, close by. I have noted before that at times when he's haunted by the traumatic events of his past he sleeps better in close proximity to me. How he expects me to infiltrate his memories and shield the bad ones I'm not sure. Perhaps he does that on his own when I'm around. Or it's the quiet sounds of my activity that ground him, safe at home.

John is not shy to fall sleep, even in a room full of people. Must be the army training, with the all hours medic shifts, and the constant uprooting.

His light coloured hair, full of dusty blond and silver streaks, reflects the electric glow of the overhead fluorescent tube. It's not a kind light, as it harnesses the blue tinges under his eyes, resting just under the pale skin. While asleep, John's face is a marvellous work of transformative art. It loses the layers of cognisant social etiquette, the harsh lines of military training, and the constraints of age and background. He looks young, too young, to have had the life I know he's lived. The war, the many losses, the difficulties in his path, all but forgotten, erased, until morning, or a stiff neck, awaken him again.

Because he's asleep under the cold scrutiny of the white light, I can pick up on the speckled skin. Minute freckles that you cannot really observe during the day, like clear night skies full of stars away from the urban light pollution. And those light tan lashes that are so often eclipsed by the big honest eyes. They are near translucent in this light. His breathing is deep and paced, no hint of the nightmares that have kept him company the last few nights. They may yet come, as it's an exhaustion slumber he dwells under at this time, too exhausted for any dreams.

He should be in his bed. It's not only nightmares that keep him close. He wants to help. I wouldn't have turned him away if I had tried. His loyalty almost a proof of identity.

Yet his reactions are a bit off in this case. Or I'm off my game myself – but that is highly unlikely. Statistically speaking, of course.

John Watson is a oxymoron wrapped in a paradox of life. The soldier and the healer, the leader and the team player, the short stature man that stands straight and can look taller than anyone else in the room. Almost anyone. I still stand taller, but I suffer little illusion. That is because he chooses to defer to me, to allow me to fill the room, as he takes a preferred back seat.

A modest man. A quality that marks the way he lives his life and answers to challenges.

He's added to his list of enticing mysteries of personal choice being the creator of a fake case. Extraordinary. The nerve, the cool headedness, the artifice without real malice, are all incredible draws. Should every detective have a faithful sidekick to dig up new cases by any means necessary and there may be more of us in the job.

I could really have been upset the moment the farce became crystal clear to me, kneeling at our home's front steps. When you rule out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. No intruder had set foot inside Baker Street. An inside job, then. John had remained close at all times, incapable of pulling the deception without being seen. Mrs Hudson then, clearly. An accomplice. Both the lack of opportunity and wrong style tell me this isn't her doing. Yet Mrs Hudson's loyalty is no match to promises of wealth, fame or fortune. Some other motive would have lured her down this path. Who, then, could ask her such a simple favour, and yet, keep in her grace? Who but the harmless looking, easy smiles doctor Watson?

John. Our John.

The identity of the mystery client solved in the most improbable way, now remained a more pertinent question; why?

Could I still trust John? Was he the naïve vehicle for some helpless dame, or gent, asking him to keep their identity covert, to take up penship of a latter and deliver the goods? John will always fall for a helpless client in distress, it's almost part of his romantic nature, but, somehow, the way he tiptoed around the letter and the case did not reveal the fervour of a white knight.

He's been quiet, instead of passionately advocating for the client at any opportunity.

That would imply this is John's own case. Preposterous, really, that he wouldn't just come right out and ask me to investigate it for him. I could hardly proclaim me too busy to take it. Well, of course I'd act as if I were, but I mean afterwards, after considerable debate, I'd take the case.

I've always found it hard to refuse John.

My doctor has divorced himself from the mask, the mystery. That seems to imply a casual finding, not much background information to provide.

Or, paradoxically, too much.

I look on at John, earlier tonight, through the lens of memory. Distractedly making tea, as is his custom when uncomfortable. Guilt, then. It doesn't sit well with him the deceit he's played on me.

Guilt is one of 21 possible triggers for John's tea making, ordinarily.

Tea is an extraordinarily complicated process.

I wonder where John got this mask, this odd object so divorced from his usual acquisitions. I'm the clutter collector, the trophy finder, the hoarder of assorted goods. John is the minimalist soldier, always on the go, keeping light.

Why get this?

Unless it is an old acquisition. Keeping it because getting rid of it disrespected the memory of an ancestor. Unless that old relative is actually a real reference, that John transposed to his invented narrative.

This is John's own past. The flicker of a memory he brought forward to tame my restlessness now I don't have cases.

He told me all he could, about an old trunk with a false bottom in an attic, through the guise of an anonymous client. I believe his story to be as factual as he could keep it without denouncing his identity.

Oh, the self-deprecating detail of getting his own name wrong. Devilish, deliciously tortuous, and oddly enough a frequent mistake. John knows our clients, knows the character he was playing.

Still he could have avoided the artifice. Why didn't he come to me? John is too considerate to impose on me a dead and buried mystery. He redefined it through the impartial façade of an anonymous client to whom I owe nothing.

One I can abandon heartlessly at any point, for I know not the client, he thinks.

This is John's own case, I know now.

I will investigate it, as per his request.

And John is still a source of constant surprise to me. When I think I've got him figured out, he surprises me with his generosity.

I must remember, though, that he feels guilty over the deception. He expects me to get back at him, after discovery of the facts. I could easily lead him to believe he won this round, and I never found out, but the guilt would only deepen in the folds of his actions regarding me. Lots of apologetic cups of tea. Whilst always fine standards tea, it's not one of the 21 reasons John Watson makes tea that I like to stimulate. No, the rouse must be laid bare. The lie, the mystery and the solution.

.

TBC