A/N: All in John's point of view, funnily enough. Should be less confusing. -csf


III.

It feels comfortable, trekking the English rural landscape with Sherlock. I always find it curious that the detective who swings at vertiginous speed between workaholic hyper mania and bouts of languid idleness, never seemingly aware of a middle ground, can suddenly seem so in tune with the rhythms of nature. He once said he'd like to retire one day to the countryside. I thought he was joking, I really did, as Sherlock seems in perfect harmony with the high pace, frenetic bouts of London. But when I see Sherlock following the dirt beat track by another drywall partition among quartered agricultural fields, I start developing this new theory over my surprising friend, where I really think he absorbs energy from his surroundings and blends in with ease. Perhaps Sherlock could do with a little cottage somewhere, in his old age. However, I won't ever assume he'll want to retire. His much too in love with his work.

I join my hands behind my back, keeping up with Sherlock's long legged pace easily. I try to follow his gaze, and decipher what he's thinking. No, all I see are patches of green, beige, green, blue, dark green, light green, grey, and green again.

I really don't know how Sherlock does his county fair's mind reading trick. I sure can't pull it off on him, he's too inscrutable, too unpredictable.

Just like that, without a twitch on his face or hitch in his breath, Sherlock must have read my mind, for he unmutes himself mid-thought, for my benefit alone:

'—not hard, Mycroft could arrange it all, I'm sure. He'd complain, Mycroft always complains, but he has an innate need to be the big brother, he'd secretly enjoy arranging all those tedious details. Can't be all that hard to transport the whole of 221B Baker Street – Mrs H included – to a secluded corner of the university campus. Nothing would really change all that much. John could give up his folly dream of healing all humanity one patient at a time, and become an enrolled student, present at my lectures. Wait, no, I need an assistant. Could take in a new assistant, but John is very well trained now, if I may say so myself. I guess John could be a student and an assistant, given he's halfway through the Science of Deduction training as it is, and that is unfair advantage upon the students. Cannot possibly show favouritism like that, except that with the extra of assisting, John would have far less time to study the curricula. Ah, but John is clever, he can keep up with the emerging teacher's pets. He's also possessive with me, so he'd naturally want to outshine the contenders, this could be stimulating to watch, of course. And I mustn't forget—'

'Here' – I interrupt him, handing the teacher a wild apple growing from a gnarly tree by the path. I rather think I'll mute Sherlock again for the time being. His breakneck, deduction-speed, spiralling inner thoughts are making me all tired again.

I wonder how this intelligent man doesn't overthink himself till he keels over.

Looking back, I think I've seen him do that before. I guess that's got to be a natural curse of someone with a big brain, to overthink everything.

Great, now I'm overthinking things. Does that mean I'm also quite intelligent or is it just contagious, like when you see someone yawning?

'The latter', Sherlock runs through half chewed apple.

I chuckle. He's just guessing, he likes to keep me perplexed as to his mind reading abilities. No better way of keeping them highly unbelievable than throwing in a few random guesses, generic enough so that they're one-size-fits-all.

Sherlock reaches for an old fashioned traditional gate and holds it open for me as I go past. He carefully latches it closed after us, I'm already eyeing benignly the peaceful cattle that grazes parched grass at a distance. Big, strong creatures with doey eyes and a peaceful temperament.

It really doesn't look at all like we are heading towards a city, or at least a village, but it's Sherlock's road trip, he can choose whatever path he wants.

Our footsteps crackle over the dried grass that covers the land, as Sherlock makes a beeline straight to a darker foray of trees at the edge of the field. There's a bit of an elevation, soon getting steeper as we march our way through the warming morning. Beyond the trees, we start to discern a rockier ground, uneven and untamed, lightly sprinkled with natural heather, just starting to bloom, to transform the dull greenery into fiery purples.

Sherlock halts suddenly, picking up something off the ground. Possibly some dead moth or the residual excrement of a colourful beetle; he'll do that. He'll give the natural world as much forensic attention as he gives the crime scenes, his need to find and solve puzzles everywhere the connecting thread between the uncommon hobbies. He sometimes even collects his findings in bagged and tagged evidence packets he "borrowed" from the Yard. He really finds comfort in solving, ordering, cataloguing and organising the past events of the worlds he crosses. Sherlock is a funny character. No barren landscape is ever boring to him. He sees the stories they carry, and I tell them.

'John, you should take a look at this', he requests, all solemn and grave all of a sudden. I lean closer at once.

'Not what I expected to see', I mutter.

'Indeed', he agrees.

A lost phone, out of battery and dusty, completely abandoned. Not a pink phone, luckily, but still an expensive piece of property few would be content to leave behind.

'It's dead', I comment, as it won't power back on.

'Hence my interest', Sherlock confirms.

'Could have been dropped weeks ago.'

'Not dusty enough, I would say. No signs of deposited rain on the surface, and it has drizzled three days ago, John. And, lastly, the cattle hasn't trampled in its incessant grazing. No, it's been lost, dropped or planted here, but it's a dangerous choice to leave behind your phone on a trekking cross terrain, wouldn't you say?'

Meh, our phones aren't working and here we are. We grew up without mobile phones, Sherlock.

We grew up in the last century.

'It's a young man's phone, new, expensive, customized casing, vestiges of ultraviolent stamp entry passes to London night clubs. This phone, and its owner, do not belong here', Sherlock ponders, starting to look excited, twirling the phone in the air.

Brings back memories.

'Could have been a hand down.'

He ponders me directly. When we met, at Bart's, for the first time, I let him borrow the old phone Harry had bequeathed me.

'The traces of ultraviolet ink would have worn out by now, John, and such instances of phones swapping hands are incredibly rare. Other people are very possessive over their phones, John. Or, more likely, over the secrets they hoard in them... Have you no secrets, John?' he taunts me with a silky voice.

I square my shoulders in defiance. 'I have plenty of secrets. I'm just really lousy with technology, you should see me type.'

He shudders. Pretends to, of course. I think.

'Yes, I believe I have seen you type', he says, breaking the strange stalemate gaze contest at last. 'John, I think we've stumbled onto a case.'

I blink. 'All we have to go by is a phone.'

'A dead phone.'

'Ah, that makes it alright, then', I sarcastically say, as Sherlock is powering up towards the hill. 'If you happen to find a spare tyre while you're at it... just saying', I add, as he glares my way. He's already having too much fun.

.

'Sherlock, what you said earlier... about taking me on as the professor's assistant...'

He twitches a smile on his lips. 'There's a job vacancy for you, John.'

I laugh half-heartedly. 'I can't just pack me up to go to your new job with you, Sherlock. I'm not a good chair, a reliable laptop, or a comfy old sweater.'

He hums and tilts his head appreciatively. 'You'd know all about old sweaters.'

'Naturally', I play along. 'Sherlock, you do realise you don't need me.'

'Nonsense, John, I'll always need you', he answers as a knee-jerk response – as if it were a baseline set idea engrained in him. It's endearing, really.

'Honest, Sherlock...'

'And yet you are smiling, John.'

'Of course I am, but—'

'Last time I was at Uni it didn't quite work out for me, John', he interrupts me as always, but this time there's an edge of vulnerable anxiety in his voice. I let his words sink in.

Yeah, a socially isolated genius with no support network found himself in the throes of addiction, a distraction he actively sought as a coping mechanism. It's easier to explain how Sherlock could mistreat himself in such way than it is to scrutinise how he got clean. I suspect the DI Lestrade would know a lot more on that, and even has had a hand by redirecting a natural detective to his love of morbid mental puzzles, but the loyal inspector won't be the one breaking confidence.

'Right', I say, because the silence is quickly becoming oppressive. 'There's that. But I'm not your battle shield. You don't need me to keep clean, you know that.'

He nods, and it breaks my heart that it's not a fully confident nod.

Maybe I could do fewer hours on the medical field, and I could follow Sherlock at first, just to easy him in, to nudge him in the direction of his own success. Shore up his confidence until he sees what I always see. Suppose I could do that...

It's a colossal ask – and Sherlock is too proud to ask, but this hope hangs from trembling grey-green eyes set on mine – and a decision I need to take after careful consideration.

'Let's keep walking, Sherlock. It's getting hot and I'm feeling hungry.'

He huffs in anticipation of something to come. 'Thank you for the considerate forewarning.'

Sherlock always claims, quite unjustly, that I get into a foul mood when I'm hungry. Preposterous, I say.

The detective sighs and takes up his phone. I clearly see him powering on his device.

'I thought you said you didn't have network coverage.'

'I lied. I was enjoying our road trip, why finish early, before I even made my final decision?' He's looking unrepentant and arrogant.

No, wait.

'But the road, the tyres, the tinned beans?' I protest, looking back at the distance where we left the van.

Sherlock shrugs. 'What if there was a real emergency, John? I couldn't endanger you like that!'

I glare at my friend. He pays me no attention, dismissing it as Hunger Talk.

'That way, John. There's a village a few miles away. Can't you forage your way into a better mood?'

.

As we go higher in the hill, the soft heather covering gives way to grey, sterile, misshapen blocks of rock formations that preceded man's centuries old intervention in shaping the land. What we see now as scattered rocks, sprinkled upon the incline, are steady, deep rooted rock foundations that we stamp with our feet as we ascend.

'Sherlock, is "your" village the other side of this hill, and must we climb it instead of – I don't know – going around it?' I demand to know, as I start having to grab onto rock edges and dry twigs sticking out of the turfed cracks to keep steady on my feet. This is hardly a trek now, more of a climb.

My friend finally takes notice of my words. He seems abruptly snapped out of his daydream as the eyes me and the endless abrupt rocks piercing the ground.

'Oh, the village? No, we changed course two hours ago, John. I wanted to explore something I saw. Or thought I saw... Did you seriously not notice? Aren't you meant to be a soldier or something?'

I groan and give up, throwing myself to a sitting position, half-reclined, on the shaded side of a rocky protuberance.

'And what did you see?' I ask despite myself. Damn my curiosity.

The detective is eyeing an almost vertical rock wall, at the basis of which I found my hard seat. He paces as he eyes it, touches it, and follows his gaze upwards to the mightiest height, about 15 feet up. Finally he looks around and collects little fragments of rock from the ground, that he proceeds to start flinging up towards the top.

Looks like a child's amusing explorations.

'What are you—?'

He stops, still eyeing the top and hands out a piece of broken stone. 'Can you hit that green bit, there at the top?'

I shrug, yeah. 'What is it, moss?'

'I don't think so.'

I fling my stone to the very top, and it bounces off whatever Sherlock found at the very top of the rock formation. As he must have predicted the unstable object slides smoothly down the rock wall's side.

It's a climbing rope, I recognise, making no movement inch forward to the unexpected find. This isn't good. Why should anyone leave this behind?

'Yes, it is', Sherlock says and takes the green rope in his hands. He yanks on the polyester weaved fabric and holds it in place. 'Expertly tied down. I think I'll have a look', he declares.

'Be careful, you don't want to break your neck.'

'I'm always careful, I bring my doctor with me.'

Near effortlessly, the bloody flexible and deceivingly skinny detective grabs hold of the rope and starts free climbing up the rock wall. I see his dress shoes slipping and scuffing on the rock here in there, but overall he trails upwards at the speed of his curiosity. Finally he holds himself to the very top and seats boyishly with one leg hanging out, from what I can see.

'What can you see, Sherlock?'

He slowly looks back down on me calm and starts pulling the rope up. I let go at once.

'It's a natural recess, a hideout in the rock, John. Erosion and time would have separated the portion you're contemplating from the rest I see extending at the back. Between them a sort of tunnel, not deep, but full.'

'Full of what?'

'Bones, John. Human bones.'

I blink. This is not what a graveyard usually looks like.

'Ancient human sacrifices dumping ground?' I try to explain the unexplainable.

'Only as old as titanium alloy metal plates, John.' I frown and rub my frail shoulder absentmindedly. 'Unless I'm very mistaken that shining down there is a hip replacement.'

Blasé as ever, Sherlock dutifully takes a record picture of what he sees, then carefully pins a paper clip on the end of the rope to fish out a couple of smaller bones to show the authorities and corroborate our story. If he had it his way, we'd be carrying long tibias over our shoulders on the walk away from here, like modern pillaging pirates, but he knows I'd protest.

'Just don't break your neck coming back down', I request, going back to my rocky seat, from where I can side see the entire valley.

.

'That's Harry's phone!' a frightened pale waitress gasps at the sight of the object on the local pub's beer garden's table.

Well, that's one improvised way of setting out witness identification of clues, and Sherlock and I willingly take our lucky break before dealing with the local police. We've just arrived at the nearest village, went by a garage arrange for a new tyre and stopped at the local pub for some food. The broken phone got on the table as we chatted over the strange find.

Sherlock takes the lead, acting innocently: 'You know the owner? Can we return him his property?'

'He's my boyfriend. Didn't return home last night. I don't know where he went', she adds, rubbing her elbow in a sheepish manner. 'We had a squabble. He's always going off with his mates. I suppose he misses his time in the big city and this place has more sheep and cows than it has people. He moved in with me because he loved me. He loves me', she corrects looking at us, defiantly. Then briskly away.

She reminds me of Molly Hooper, the shy pathologist who is at times oblivious to her inner strength; who made a mastermind criminal sit down to have tea and telly with her cat, and tamed a consulting detective to being as polite as he can get; who asks "what do you need" instead of the socially distant "what is wrong".

Sherlock might have recognised something there too, for he's not as scanty as usual with our new clients.

'His mates weren't impressed with me, I think', she carries on, still torturing her left sleeve. 'Harry always had flashy women falling at his feet and when he found me I think he found it refreshing that I didn't care so much about the latest fashion clothes and constant selfies for the social media. I think he was rather tired of that.'

'You think', I understand, 'his mates will try to persuade him to return to his old life.' She nods, rather simply.

'I love him. I want him here with me.'

The young waitress looks sincere, for all I can tell. I glance over at Sherlock, forcing him to cross gazes with me. You'll take this case, I want him to read my mind.

A flicker of a restless bony hand tells me silently he doesn't need to read my mind. He knows it, and he's on it, without even looking at me.

'We'll need a photo, a local map, a compass, and whatever John's good old fashioned common sense demands. We'll find you a boyfriend, miss.'

'My boyfriend', she corrects.

'If you insist', my romantically challenged friend shrugs. I intervene at once:

'This is Sherlock Holmes, the great London detective.'

She finally flickers a small smile. 'Thank you, I really need your help.'

.

TBC