A/N: 4th instalment of the Christmas piece
Admittedly not so Christmassy at all. Double oops.
Still not British, or a writer, and certainly not getting closer. -csf
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I'm pacing the sidewalks of Baker Street with tension bunching my shoulders when I distinctly hear a slowing car coming to match my speed, splashing the curb with rain-wet debris from the side of the road.
Mycroft. The meddling big brother comes to play couch therapist now; oh, joy to the world!
I decide not to give him the satisfaction. I don't acknowledge the heavy lines car, I don't turn my face, or even check its reflection on a shop window. Nope, nothing to see. Mycroft can take a hike.
His baby brother, Baker Street's mighty highness, can come and talk to me in person if he wants to, there is absolutely no need to send dignitaries to a peace treaty he will then pretend was never his doing. Sherlock can be a right prat, too proud to give in and say "I'm sorry".
A prat, a brat, a gnat, and a middle-of-the-road tyre gone flat. With the mysterious eyes of a cat, giving you the alluring danger chat, crazy like a bat and dangerous like combat, and then treating you like a doormat.
I'm an idi-at, for putting up with him for so long.
Mycroft can bloody well follow me around, and he can wait before I acknowledge him. Mycroft can—
A car door slams, a powerful hand grabs me by the neck, immediately putting pressure on my windpipe and forcing my head back, I lose balance, straight into the hard metal of the car. Pain snaps between my ears and I crumble to the pavement, walled from sight by the car's body, before anyone could possibly notice.
My last coherent thought comes in a Sherlockian deriding tone: Has it occurred to you yet, it's not Mycroft at all?
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John left.
The realisation strikes the beleaguered detective as a physical manifestation; he bends double, breathless, weak, hollowed.
It's preposterous that a seemingly ordinary man like John can yield this power over the genial detective, and yet he so very clearly does. Sherlock has spent decades defending and procuring evidence in which to base his logical deductions. His current bodily reaction – mild hyperventilation, queasiness, disorientation, sprinkled with a tinge of hysteria – are all irrefutable evidence.
Sherlock is not surprised when his knees hit the worn rug over the floorboards in John's room. His descent a mere echo of the crumbling inside him.
He sees himself from above, detached, cold, shutting down. He sees the mess of his own creation.
He locks Mycroft's disembodied voice firmly away, so he won't have to hear the fraternal lecture. Too bad the conclusion seeps through every corridor door as Sherlock travels further down the spiral stairwell of his Mind Palace.
John left because Sherlock pushed him too far, pushed John away.
He sincerely hopes John will be happier now, getting some distance between himself and the man who would always burn him to the ground.
Deep inside, Sherlock very much doubts that.
They need each other, as co-morbidities in a common ailment.
No, John will have to do better. John will have to declare it's all over to Sherlock. Only then will Sherlock truly accept he cannot be happy ever again.
Sherlock shuts his eyes tight and exhales one long breath in the cold, barely lit bedroom, as outside the drawn curtains the night descends upon London. When he reopens his eyes it's to the bright incandescent light of John's.
John is always the most luminescent in Sherlock's mind.
It's hardly the only subtle change. If the detective wasn't so frazzled, he'd comment on the restful look a young, easy smiling John welcomes him from the depth of Sherlock's mind.
'How deep are we, by the way?' Mind Palace conjured John looks around, as if could see the other location among his bedroom walls.
Sherlock blinks. What does it matter? Why does John always grab tight hold of the meaningless details, almost always missing the bigger picture?
'Pfft, no, I don't!' The miffed soldier smirks in full camaraderie, mocking the beleaguered detective.
'You can hear my thoughts now, John?' He squints at the doctor.
'No', his conjured friend answers softly. 'Only the really, really obvious ones. They are as explicit as if they sort of hovered above your head, like movie subtitles, before disappearing when the camera pans out.'
'I, John, am barely predictable and never obvious!' Sherlock defends at once.
'You've repeated yourself times enough that even an average mind like mine can recall the disparaging remarks you make. But if your loyal fans ask, no, you're right', he appeases openly, 'you never repeat yourself.'
'John...'
Mind Palace John is laying out the fight avoided narrowly earlier. Sherlock sighs and closes his eyes for a moment.
'How deep down would you put me, Sherlock? Did we leave the medulla oblongata, the last part of the brainstem, went down the spinal chord? Did we dive through the carotid artery and plunged the muscular walls of your—'
Sherlock snaps his eyes open in fierce warning, causing John to purse his lips, quiet, infuriatingly holding onto a wry smile.
'My mental processes are confined to a synergistic neuro pathway configured entirely in my brain space, John. And I do not take mental lodgers in separate dependencies.'
John's conjured smile fades a bit. 'How would you know? When was the last time you actually acknowledged your heart?' John shrugs. 'Or your stomach, for that matter. It's practically dissolving itself in gastric acids, constantly empty!'
'Spare me the lecture, doctor! I am quite capable of taking care of myself, have been doing it for a long time before you came along!'
The doctor lowers his arms, disentangling them. His posture is now of tired acceptance, tinged with defeat. He typically takes two fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose, rub the dark circles at the inner corners of his eyes.
'Why carry a mind copy of me if you won't ever listen, Sherlock? I don't get it', he whispers as if mostly to himself.
'John, you are essential to my processes.'
He shakes his head, quietly. 'No, I'm not.'
Sherlock feels like raising his arms up in the air and exploding. 'Why would you believe that!'
'I'm trusting the evidence of my own senses?'
'You're quoting me!'
'I'll pay you the royalties; but still true, Sherlock.'
Don't be smart with me, John! Read that in size 12 font, Italic and centred!
'Why do I need to say it all! John, you never made me say it all – explicitly – before now!'
John seems to ponder that for a couple of moments. 'Maybe because it's Christmas.'
'Who cares if it's Christmas, Hanukah, Eid, Diwali, winter solstice, or Sir Isaac Newton's birthday!'
John ponders him thoughtfully once more. 'I do. You know I do.'
Sherlock opens his eyes through a dead cold shiver that shakes him to the core. Suddenly plunged back in the upstairs bedroom, where logic dictates he never left. Slowly the genius gets up from the cold floorboards, and blames Mrs Hudson's old death trap house for the dense weight in his stomach. Full of drafts that lingers as knots in the stomach, kinks in the neck, and bruises on the knees.
Even before he leaves the room, he knows this is one "deduction" his doctor would never buy.
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'Mycroft, don't you pick up the phone anymore?' Sherlock snaps to his own device, held by clenched fingers, squeezing the electronic life out of the so far useless device.
The detective glares at the top of the corner left ceiling high shelves, where he suspects Mycroft keeps a hidden camera to satisfy his voyeuristic tendencies over his family member's life.
Lest by actually taking phones calls Mycroft could be accused of being banal.
The device barely holding on to life in the detective's hand connects instantly to the older Holmes command, long after the network stopped putting the call through. Another prime example of the magic interference of a high security clearance, Sherlock nearly huffs; nearly.
'Mycroft, I need you to find John!'
The older brother is anything but calm and phlegmatic as he drawls over the line: 'You always had a knack for losing your possessions, little brother. But whereas I could help you find your marbles, your slingshot, and the one time your violin, I cannot seriously be expected to go collect people for you. People are customarily under the impression of having free will. We wouldn't want them to catch on, would we?'
'Mycroft, something is wrong.'
'Sherlock, I am aware you and John have been having little...domestics. Perhaps you should give the man some time to cool off?'
'Then you've been spying on us', Sherlock notes, with the briefest smile of victory. Sentiment deflection is the one way of catching Mycroft admitting his tricks.
'Oh, no, I have paid personnel to do the menial work. I merely deduced it, from experience. We shared a bedroom for three years. Horrid miscalculation from Mummy.'
'Indeed...' At Baker Street, Sherlock shakes his head. 'Mycroft, I— I believe it is customary to give Christmas gifts to a younger sibling', he starts. 'I would be ingratiated if you were to check up on John, make sure... he's alright.'
'Good grief, Sherlock, what have you done to him this time?'
Sherlock buries his eloquent answer in a timely growl.
'Very well, if I must...'
'You're enjoying every second.'
'Of course I am. Let's see. Camera 3, 221B's doorstep. Rewind. A woman walks the dog, or more like it the dog walks her. A business man on his way to his secret lover passes in the opposite direction. A small blond army doctor comes out of your front door. He looks delightfully pissed off, stomps down the street to the rhythm of a war march, and... oh.'
'"Oh"? What is "oh", Mycroft?' Sherlock demands violently.
'He's been picked up by a dark, compact middle range car. Wait, I need a better camera angle.'
'You've got him all along, Mycroft?' Sherlock hisses, vengeful.
On the other side of the call, Mycroft ponders idly just when did his baby brother become so animalistic in his interjections. Sometime in college, the older brother believes. Letting Sherlock out into the world damaged the young Holmes in more ways than one. Made him coarser, commoner, adept at liaising with army doctors who go missing.
'Sherlock, I assure you my cars are not mid range brands.'
'What type of car?' Finally the detective voice comes clean, crisp, cold. Analytical.
'How should I know? You're the detective. Tyre tracks, footprints, ashes; they are your thing, right?'
Sherlock's phone beeps with an incoming text. The detective eagerly opens the attached jpeg.
There is no such brand. For, as you look closer, there are intertwined rings in a single file, only they are five. And the typical silver colour is off, a slight degraded brass golden tone. Five golden rings.
Just like the appropriated Christmas song, played by a psychopathic serial killer trying to catch Sherlock's eye.
He's got Sherlock's full attention, by thieving the one thing Sherlock needs the most. He's just lamentably late arriving at that foregone conclusion.
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There are police cordons blocking both ends of the most relevant of Baker Street's blocks, the one with 221B at the very heart. Several police units are crowding the space, milling about, waiting for the forensic team to pick up on millions of fingerprint, footprints, oil fluid samples on the road asphalt, and litter discarded on the curb. Beat officers are knocking on doors, calling for witnesses to the daring kidnapping – for Sherlock cannot believe John would let himself get caught by means of a simple stratagem, after all he served as a captain in Her Majesty's Army, still has pinpoint sharp reflexes today – and trawling the footage of many private CCTV cameras, dashboard cameras, and the general public's geo located selfies on public social media profiles.
'Anything?' Sherlock is shocked at how unsure his voice sounds in the cold December night.
DI Lestrade lays what he hopes is a confident, compassionate look on the younger man, and shakes his head. The seasoned inspector is under the impression that if he were to mention John's name out loud, Sherlock would have an instant meltdown. Greg did not expect this immaturity, this vulnerability. Not for the first time, he wonders if Sherlock and John's friendship is not both their most valued possession and their most easily identifiable weaknesses.
As Greg Lestrade is about to wonder if he should insist Sherlock go inside and sit down with the sainted landlady Mrs Hudson, he sees the consulting detective surprise him. Not the blue scarf tied askew, in a manner that is not Sherlock's way of looping his scarf at all. Or the faint tremor in the bouncy curls that originates in the spades of pent up energy uncoiled in the detective's core. No, it's actually the younger man's sudden immobility. Sherlock freezes on the spot, eyes glazing over, as a hard drive overrun by mental processes; and, sure, Lestrade has seen that look before – the promise of imminent brilliant deductions at lightning speed – but it never ceases to amaze him.
'Sherlock?'
The man shushes the inspector with an empty gesture, almost a flick of a response bouncing off his flint mental cogs. His eyes eerily trace John's footsteps on the rain washed pavement up to the point where Mycroft's footage shoes a car came over. He raises a hand to point at the noticeable absence from the scene.
'John didn't make a sound. No one turned, no one looked. I know for a fact that for a trained soldier with war experience, making a sound upon being attacked is a habit quickly lost, seconded to the survival fight. When John wakes from his war nightmares he is often silent, muted, his training kicking in. He wouldn't have screamed, he would have fought back immediately. Forgetting for a moment that John was foolish enough to get caught as a mere civilian – he was distracted – he would had sprang into military shape as soon as he felt the attack. How?' Sherlock's liquid eyes fluidly roam the scene. 'I've been slow, too slow!' he berates himself, as he drops on his knees next to a rain gutter. From the metal casing he grasps a collection of mud and debris. He shows it up to the inspector with solemnity. 'That's John's hair thickness and colour. John got wacked on the scalp, hard enough that he lost some hairs. Likely unconscious he was pulled into the car.'
The inspector is about to ask "how can you tell John's hair from – I don't know – a golden retriever?" but thinks better of it. Their hopes are now pinned on Mycroft's team locating that car. They've got a partial plate and a modified car model. They've got a BOLO out on a "five gold rings", dark navy, partial plate MC47. Officers across London, and the whole of the Union, are aware and attentive, but what are their chances on a trail rapidly growing cold?
'That's great, Sherlock, really something. We'll find John in no time now', DI Lestrade tries to instil optimism in the broken consulting detective.
Sherlock tries to cling onto the hope.
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TBC
