A/N: Apparently that blood and hydrogen peroxide forensics test was a bit unrealistic. I was going for a allusion to Sherlock at Bart's when Mike first introduces John, and Sherlock is pipetting something from too high (it's going to splatter, dear). The blood sample fizzing shot appears on the opening scene sequence.
Or perhaps I was just lazy. I've been making this plotline very long, haven't I? And I'm breaking this chapter in an odd place because of my bad habit of describing every facial twitch of our heroes. I really need to stop doing that. -csf
5.
Baker Street's only consulting detective exits a small coffee shop with a sweetened caramel mochaccino for himself, and a straight black coffee sludge for his firecracker companion that looks like he's running on an empty tank since last Wednesday. John is waiting outside, looking pale under the midday winter sun, dark circles nestled under his eyes, making him look like a wild creature, out of place in a small town setting.
'Sherlock.' Sensing his return, the doctor calls him, without even turning his head to acknowledge him. His gaze remains stubbornly stuck in the distance. 'Don't look now, but I'm being followed.'
'Followed?' The detective's senses go on alert. Mechanically he hands John the coffee, just like he could have been handing him the lead. How did Sherlock not notice it before? How is he so disjointed?
The former soldier takes the coffee without moving his sight off his target. Sherlock wants to look, but they can't both look. He watches the frantic needy movements of the other man's Adam's apple and briefly wonders if John is displaying caffeine-fuelled paranoia; he quickly dismisses the possibility, John's army senses are always on cue, permanently etched into the man's soul.
John smirks, and it doesn't ease the tension lining his jaw and neck one bit.
'Well, I suppose we both are being followed, but there is only one of them this time, and if we split up I'd bet he'd come after me, not you', the former army man notices quietly. Finally, John looks honest and straight at Sherlock to add: 'It makes for a change, huh?'
'I will hunt him down', Sherlock growls; the train platform attempt on John's life not forgotten, it never could be deleted from Sherlock's mind again. Every instance where John's life has been endangered – every near miss, dark plot and negligent action from a third party – will forever burn dark holes in Sherlock's archived memories, like concentrated sulphuric through wallpaper.
John seems to easily follow the path of his thoughts. 'He might have been one of those guys at the train station. How did they find me here?'
Still energetically sipping his coffee, like a man with a vendetta against Arabica coffee beans, Sherlock notices. Not one single external show of fear; no, not John, he is much too brave for that. Brave to the point of idiocy. A fleeting notion that John tends to go off script, to risk too much when he is the most detached from the life elements that ground him – 221B, gun oil, and tea – hits Sherlock like a ton of bricks. Instantly he's on John alert.
John taught him that, to listen to his instincts.
He responds reasonably, to the exploration of facts and theories presented to him. 'How could they not find your destination? You're clearly not in the area for the tourism. You're visiting your past. That man must know something about your family, John.'
John's brow clouds over tenfold. 'Oh', he comments, muted. Sherlock faintly registers that wasn't the reaction he was expecting, before John smirks defiantly and adds: 'Evasive manoeuvres, Sherlock? I can meet you back at the house?'
'I not letting you out of my sight', Sherlock growls, his John alert level upped by a notch. Seriously, is it because those enemies aren't a match to Jim Moriarty or foreign wars insurgents? Does John feel the need to equalise the odds of something very bad by making Sherlock work twice as hard at protecting his friend?
'You may not have a choice.' John grins at his claim to self-determination. Sherlock will be damned if he misses the chance to handcuff John to himself in the next ten seconds.
Something of his train of though conveys in his features for John blinks, and a bit of that reckless energy dissipates through a sharp anger nasal intake. Very John-like, and a detraction from a minimal stand down from a proud soldier with a cause.
John looks away, having once again read Sherlock to the core, read the perception of himself in his friend's reaction, like looking into a trusted mirror. He looks truly haggard in the pale sun.
Alert reduced to lower levels. Engagement with target recommended.
'John.' What is a genius supposed to say?
'Sherlock, I have to do something.' Bargaining, pleading. Submitting the control he hangs to by a thread to Sherlock. It's a narrow victory and the detective knows it.
'By all means, let's do it together', the taller man declares magnanimously.
John doesn't seem to register the words. His body is ever the more tense, muscles locked tight, in his neck a thick vein protruding as a praise to the gods of war. He is a man desperate for action, locked in his spiralling mind, unsure of the very foundations on which he stands. He shakes his head in a twitch – an immediate reaction to the coffee, or is John already this wound up? – and he mutters, with a trace of the local accent to boot: 'He's after my grandfather, they all are, it's a damned witch hunt.'
'Hmm?'
John startles himself out of his mutterings, no matter how gentle Sherlock's insertion was. He looks up to his friend, and blushes guiltily.
Sherlock tosses the mochaccino in the bin nearby and ruthlessly imposes his towering figure over John's smaller one. It's a posturing of war, and one that can collide strong wills into supernova explosions in a public street.
'You've been lying to me, John.'
'What? No!' He's blushing, giving himself away. This awkward honesty is refreshing in the man trying to fight all and sundry a moment ago. The soldier who can knock out Sherlock in three economical moves is always derailed in his anger by a good deduction. Still, John will meet Sherlock's eyes. Not a full lie, an omission then. A crucial one.
How is Sherlock meant to solve this case without all the evidence?
'You know more than you've told me, John.'
'Look here, the bad guy will get away!'
'He is unimportant, and God help me, I might just do his job for him, if you don't tell me all you remember right now, John Watson.'
John blinks. He doesn't know it yet, but that's the moment when he's folded. Sherlock allows a gratuitous, vengeful smirk to spread on his face. John's face turns to a veritable impression of marble. Of pale and dead cold marble.
'I'm your client, mate.'
'I'll get you a refund.'
'Sherlock, I don't really know all that much.'
'I'll be the judge of that.'
'And I don't want to—' He cuts himself off abruptly.
Sherlock huffs, rolling his eyes. Immediately the knife cutting intensity of the moment dissipates. The ridiculously dramatic detective gesticulates about. 'You're trying to protect the memory of a dead man. Why should you care? He's gone now!'
John stands up straighter, assumes echoes of a parade's rest. The detective stops as he glances at his friend, sees the man and easily fills in the lost soldiers he carries in his shadow.
'Sherlock, I...'
He's cut short by an abrupt, curt gesture.
'No time for this now. Save it till later. The target is coming towards us. He's not waiting any longer. You get your action today, soldier.'
But even as he says it, he knows this isn't the resolution for an affront to the soldier. There is a blond child in his friend's past that is grabbing a mental slingshot and starting a riot in his home town. A child desperate to protect a loving figure from his childhood. A child that knows a lot more than its adult self will try to hide even from his best friend.
Damn it, John. The doctor tosses his own paper cup coffee to the bin too – it bounces off, only dregs inside, all that caffeine tempestuously swirling inside the smallish doctor – and that sets off the action as sure as a gun going off marking the beginning of a marathon.
They turn on their heels and run down the corner, nearly toppling over an old lady with a shopping bag. 'Sorry!' John quips, they are already turning the corner like mischievous boys.
The midday town traffic is quiet enough that they can hear another set of heavy footsteps pounding the pavement slabs. The bait is on. Sherlock spots it first, in the alley winding behind some shops nearby, a fire escape ladder and a couple of big rubbish bins, big enough to conceal an elephant. That will do, the trap is set. Sherlock smirks, John reads his mind with the same ease of always. They are two halves of a well oiled machine.
A stocky, burly man in a motorbike leather jacket turns to the alley too. He stops as it seems deserted. After a heavy glance at the normal street behind, he brings out a gun and cocks it. The metal clicking into place is a loud noise in a quiet alley.
'Come on out, Watson! I just want to talk to you! I read all about you and your posh friend in that blog of yours. You didn't come across as a coward, but them again you are a Watson.'
Sherlock's fists clench beside him. Taunting John and he's left to hear this from a hiding place. He almost aborts the plan and lets all hell break loose to stop this creep taunting John. Brave John, who has fought wars to keep unimportant people like this creep safe back home.
A controlled, incongruously smiling John comes out from behind the first bin. His movements are economic and his gestures are steady. Sherlock won't be fooled, this is John's rage smile. The sturdy, compact army man his carrying a gun of his own in his right hand, dropped by his hip as if forgotten as an afterthought, nonchalantly. John doesn't need it to face an armed man, not just yet, John is highly dangerous on his own, equalising the odds.
'You talk to me as if you knew me', the doctor declares in a steely voice, that is so far from woolly jumpers and tea cups. 'Trust me, you don't mess with the Watsons.'
'I've got my gun on you, don't you dare any funny ideas!'
John tilts his head slightly, his gaze amused and his voice smooth as steel.
'And I've got my friend just behind you. Didn't quite think this through, have you?'
The man actually turns – amateur! – and sees no-one behind him. As he returns his raging gaze to John, the short blonde has his gun trailed on his target and a fond smirk on his face.
'Ah! Made you look!' he chuckles. 'Put your gun down, before you hurt yourself with it, mate.'
The man scowls and readjusts his aim—
He gets wacked by a drain pipe section. Violently so. He collapses at John's feet.
Sherlock leans forward to evaluate: 'Did I hit him too hard?'
'A bit too hard, yeah! He's unconscious, he can't talk now', John protests.
'I got carried away.' Sherlock shrugs. 'I don't like it when people don't take you seriously.'
John pockets his gun, grabs the second gun, checks it, shakes his head about its maintenance and clicks the safety back on, before pocketing that one too. Sherlock is already exploring the man's pockets for any identification or motive.
'Can't really believe how they never listen when I tell them you're behind them, Sherlock. I mean, it's only fair warning.'
'I didn't have to walk two steps to reach him either.'
'He's clearly an amateur.'
'I got that from him threatening you in my presence.'
Sherlock hands over a crumpled handwritten note to John. The doctor reads it and frowns, blankly. 'A few sets of letters and numbers. We have no idea what it stands for. How will this help?'
'Easy, as it all starts to take shape at last.'
John looks down on the curious cryptic note.
ixo6 vi13 xv12 v09
He can't make head nor tail of it.
Sherlock smiles, unabashedly proud of himself, and yet John gets the impression that he isn't smug for his great mind, but for the fact that it impresses John, time and time again.
'We're going to make some enquiries. I'll get a cab to pick us up from the next corner', the detective announces, working his phone. John tries to ask, but the detective cuts him short, raising his imperious free hand, while texting with his left.
.
'Never do that again, do you hear me?'
The child flinches, spun round by a steel claw on his left shoulder. The difference in heights between adult and child is made worse at times when he can't physically pull away, remove himself from a violent man, though he tries; oh how much he tries.
It's not cowardice, if you know you can't win the fight. To look for a different outcome, a distraction, a plead, a rescue. Something. The last bruises haven't yet fully disappeared, and they left long shadows cast upon his memories.
John will know one that day that this man was wrong. That this was an unacceptable betrayal of trust, that will leave an indelible mark in the way John fails to trust openly those that approach him, the way that John keeps them invariably at arm's length. John will grow to become a champion of the underdog, will repeatedly put his life at stake to keep others from that pain he has learnt too early. He will go to war, trying to fight monsters as dwelling among them is now his natural state. He will become a doctor, and have a special knack, recognised by his peers and patients, to pick out other victims that come into his care, he'll make sure the system supports them as best as can be done. He will become the only companion of Sherlock Holmes and feel the gratitude of those he helps finally take a name, a face and a story. Several names, in fact. Only then will he allow himself the brief belief that he's done right by those kindred souls, for all those he swore to protect when he grew up, a promise he's never forgot.
That promise is his mantra, ringing between his ears, as the child holds a throbbing ear that the other man has just clipped under a barrage of belittling comments. The child stoically stands there, besides the yellow sofa in the stuffy living room. If he doesn't engage, it's over faster. The child's mind is beginning to wander, displacing him from the situation. Only his body remains on high alert, tensed up, steeling himself for the next blow. One day a dragon would land on the front garden and take him away. The dragon would puff huge billows of smoke from his nostrils, and attempt to flap its wings, crushing that huge tree with the stretching branches. "Beg your pardon", he'd huff; John nearly giggles.
'Are you touched on the head? I'm talking to you, and you're smirking?'
John rubs the side of his head harder, luckily the parent misses the young sarcasm, still developing.
'I'm not smirking, father.'
'You're like your mother, and that freak of her father!'
.
John grimaces. These are the moments when he feels like his father has failed them, haunted as the man was there is no forgiving certain things. There's understanding in context, there's letting go, but never erasure of some wrongs.
.
'Leave granddad alone!'
'On his side, are you? I'm your father and you should be defending me! I'm the one doing two jobs to put the food on the table and pay the bills! And what does he do, all day in that shed?'
'I don't know', the child answers, tears flowing from his eyes, desperately trying to defend the absent man.
'You should find out, maybe then you'll stop having him as your hero. He's not the hero sort. He's the devil himself. Where's your mother?'
The boy cringes instantly. He must keep this man from her. She's still unwell. He must protect her.
.
John's hands tightly grasp the fabric of his jacket's pockets, hard enough to feel the fabric tear. His mother was on borrowed time, and he misses her to this day.
.
'She's gone to the grocery store', he lies.
She's probably next door with the neighbour woman again. He must know it too, he's never rough on John when she's around.
'Useless waste of space, the three of you are! What do you and Harriet ever do for me? I should go and leave you to starve!'
.
It would have been better if he had left. Please leave, John tries to bargain with an established past. His thought echoes without response.
.
A dragon wing flies past the window, getting John's attention. He didn't see the violent hand until it made contact with his ear again. John falls on a worn carpet with a loud thump. He flinches and looks up.
His father is stepping back, his vicious expression caught in mild shock, beyond John. Not the dragon!
He looks over his shoulder. Hamish is there, tall and sturdy, commanding and charismatic. His presence alone is enough to derail the cowardly attack.
'John.'
A doctor first, he comes to check up on John, his features hard as marble. John allows the strong, safe, embrace and melts into those powerful arms. They hear his father leave the living room.
He'd be a week AWOL.
John's ear has stopped throbbing by then, but something buried deeper never quite heals again.
.
Sherlock has forced himself to unnatural immobility. Hands united behind his back, facing the open distance ahead. He only allows himself to walk, walk miles and miles – walk to the end of the earth – if that allows John to expurgate his demons. This seems to be the adequate place to do so, after all. A peaceful, forgotten cemetery besides a run down chapel.
Not for the first time, John is at ease with the dead, the lost and the forgotten.
Sherlock doesn't want to interrupt John's cathartic account of his abusive father, the yellow sofa, and an imaginary dragon of all things. The tale is at times confusing, at times oddly detached and formal, he can tell John has never rehearsed this moment of release. John had stoically accepted to have his voice as a child taken away forever.
You don't become the world's biggest misfit sociopath without having skimmed through a few psychology books. Sherlock desperately tries to summon any knowledge from them only to find they don't accurately describe John. And that he doesn't know what to respond to John's confidences.
It's John that assures him: 'It's alright, mate. It was a long time ago, water under the bridge.'
'No, John. It wasn't alright', a sociopath knows that much. 'But you are safe now', he blurts out, only to feel stupid for saying that. John is brave and wonderful, he wouldn't be scared by past memories.
'Thanks', the army doctor replies, amazingly insightful, and not just the least ready to mock Sherlock.
A few more moments stretch in companionable silence.
He obliviously misses Sherlock's concerned care as the consulting detective scratches his nails in the palm of his fisted hand, behind his back, desperate to find the logical solution to fix John's problem.
'Right, so, hmm', John composes himself with visible effort. 'Why did you bring me here, Sherlock?'
.
TBC
