A/N: I'm still enjoying writing the shenanigans between these two. What comes after a "trilogy"? Should I? I am far too lazy to generate new stories every time, hence the veiled excuse of a repeated expression. Ooh, the internet calls it a tetralogy, but that is a mouthful. Is a quartet a musical ensemble only? A foursome sounds like something M rated. A quadrumvirate is brilliant, but I doubt it applies to collections of shorts… I mean it - no idea what comes after a trilogy. Or should I just put this endless collection of shorts to rest? -csf
(2).
'John, don't you dare!'
Sherlock's shout is not helpful one iota, as he foresees my intentions even before – it would seem – they are fully laid out in my mind. He can read the intentions clearly off me like a font size 16 printed ink jet black on bleach white photocopying paper – I intend to protect Sherlock.
And if in the process I must risk my life for his, so be it.
.
The shooter has cornered us both inside the post office. Sherlock and I managed to pry the back door open and release the employees and customers that had been corralled into the back as this dastardly duo looks for valuables in packages, raids the drawers for cash including foreign currency, and snoops on old ladies' greeting cards. They would have done better to have left long ago, but much like other dangerous robberies in London's post offices, these guys seem to be looking for some correspondence in particular, and that was what alerted Mycroft Holmes and got this case in our hands in the first place.
We didn't expect that a duo rummaging through old pensioner's mail would be armed to their teeth.
'Oh, it's the stolen Granada diamonds, John! I have been too slow! The Count gave the Granada diamonds to his mistress, an actress currently starring as Madame Bovary in the West End stages. But when the Countess found out, she demanded them back as they were part of her inheritance. The Count went back to the actress and seduced her once more, asking for the diamonds to be worn one last time, intending to sleep with the actress and nick the diamonds as he sneaked out of her dressing room at the end of the deed. But the actress was too clever, and in the dusky light of her dressing room she was wearing what appeared to be a string of diamonds much like the Granada diamonds, but they were fake diamonds, taken from a travelling trunk of props from the theatre's assets. Crystal fakes was what the Count grabbed from the actress' neck. He recognised them easily for forgeries, as the setting wasn't even that good. What works under stage lights for a faraway audience is unlikely to convince a thieving Count once the lust stops blinding him. He knew he had been duped as soon as he left the dressing room. He placed his bodyguard outside the dressing room and effectively held the actress hostage. Over the next two days he brought her food and newspapers, but wouldn't let her out of his sight more than to perform on the stage and return to the dingy dressing room. Every time she performed on stage, he ransacked her dressing room, each time more desperate, but he could never find the real diamonds. Finally, he saw a drawer full of envelopes and paper for correspondence that she used to reply to her fans. I mean, who has the time to answer fan mail these days? So he realised that must have been how the actress parted with the diamonds. One by one, she addressed them to herself as fan mail or to an accomplice. That's why he sent these two goons here today, he's looking for the letters!'
I blink, taking it all in. That was a lot of words, a whirlwind deduction about a case I wasn't even familiar with. 'A bit rotten, to give away your wife's necklace to your mistress and then hold the mistress hostage till she gives it back, no?'
'Oh, it's fine, she probably hid the Granada diamonds in the roses in her dressing room. Who would look for priceless gems inside the flowering buds of thorny plants? Or maybe she hid them in the crawl space under the dressing room's floorboards. Or in a disused air vent. Maybe they are inside some flat cider glass on a side table, disguised as ice. Balance of probabilities is that these guys are looking in the wrong place, John.' He tries to look round the corner from where we hide, behind a desk. A shot is fired at once and he jumps back, breathless. I brace him back, thinking what a reckless idiot he can be.
His big brain is not bulletproof, not matter how extraordinary it may be.
'Care to tell them that the diamonds are not here?' I hiss.
'I think they are finding that out on their own. This is the last post office that could have handled a letter from the West End area, John. They are desperate.'
I look over my shoulder to reassess the ingress points in the compound. Yes, this is a bad stalemate, but there may be a way to surprise the armed men. I finger my gun in my belt. We have been saving bullets, and holding out for the Yard's arrival, but it is taking too long. The situation is growing tenser by the second, a metaphorical gunpowder barrel and someone threw a lit match into it.
I thrust my gun into Sherlock's hand. 'Cover me,' I direct him, knowing this is something I need to do.
Over stupid diamonds, for which I care not one bit.
No, it's for Sherlock. I need to keep him safe, now that we are in the bad mess we're in.
'John!' his clawed hand misses me by mere millimetres judging by the desperation in his voice, and hearing his supplicant tone breaks my heart.
He must have read my mind.
Hang in there, Sherlock, have my back, I know what I'm doing.
Close to the ground I make my way to the other side of the room, narrowly avoiding two shots that ring in the air, mingling with the staccato beats of my heartbeat in my ears.
Come on, Sherlock, come true for me; I urge my best friend, wordlessly.
I know he can read my mind as clear as print. I am going to circle round the criminals while Sherlock creates a timely distraction with my gun. They must be running out of bullets by now.
A sharp noise to my left and I know that I'm not the only party coming up with attack plans. Sherlock. I left him alone, they are trying to jump him from the left flank. Damn it!
I sigh deeply. A new plan. I don't like it. I have no choice.
'John, don't you dare!'
Sherlock's shout is not helpful one iota, as he foresees my intentions even before – it would seem – they are fully laid out in my mind. He can read the intentions clearly off me like a font size 16 printed ink jet black on bleach white photocopying paper – I intend to protect Sherlock.
And if in the process I must risk my life for his, so be it.
I jump out from behind the desk armed with little more than a sharp letter opener, derailing the enemy's stealth attack. The first criminal hits the ground before me just as two shots ring in the close quarters of the post office.
Captain Watson is down, get a medic in here!
John Watson has taken a bullet as he jumped in front of Sherlock Holmes, desperately trying to get his best mate out of the firing line.
As I gasp in a wet puddle on the post office floor, lights flickering above as a genius desperately presses his scarf against the gushing wound and begs me to stay awake, I know I did the only thing I was ever meant to do. Save a life. Save Sherlock's life.
.
Vulnerable. As much as I didn't want to feel vulnerable and exposed to Sherlock, whom I admired so much to the point of idolising before the Fall, so did Sherlock not want me to see him fallen after the Fall, while he chased Moriarty's web of crime. Removed from his mask of confident arrogance and casual elitism, from the world where the detective had crafted himself a heroic façade for me to blog about. He was brought down to the humblest version of himself, and he feared that I would no longer be able to look up to him, to see greatness in him, and that was a scenario he could not bring himself to face. Every time he failed in fully closing another loop of the web he chased, he thought I would be disappointed in him. Removed from his support network – London's underground network, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, and me – Sherlock lost confidence in himself, lost himself. He was no longer the great detective. He was a fighter in a deadly crusade. He lost touch with himself, and what kept him himself.
Europe and the dismantling of Jim Moriarty's web brought the inexperienced genius to his knees, and every turn, when he needed me the most – hunted, starved, stabbed, giving up his pride for a fixed goal – Sherlock stubbornly refused to bring back the life-threatening danger, the pain and the hardships of his fight to me.
Well, that was stupid. I would have gladly helped, given my life for that cause even.
I don't think Sherlock doubted my loyalty. I think he feared its outcome.
That I could give so much that my life could be risked too much, and that I could perish for the mission. Sherlock was wrong. It was my choice to make, and he shouldn't have kept me from it.
One thing Sherlock Holmes cannot logically understand is my choice to save his life,
save him, always,
even if it costs me my life.
.
'You matter too much, John. Without you, my thought processes turn into sharp edged disarray, and it hurts to think. John, you make the mundane bearable, and the adorn the trivial with the unexpected. It is a gift, in so much as you are also my conductor of light. And if nothing of this guilt trips you into stopping this, coming back, then I am at a loss onto how I'm supposed to carry on without you.'
In his hospital bed, John, looking tiny and frail and a broken John, fighting the anaesthesia of post-surgery for the removal of a stray bullet to his abdomen and mess it created in the core of the former army doctor, does not react. The life stats displayed by the machine monitoring his heart rate and breathing remain the same. His expressive eyes remain closed, his blunt short fingers powerless over the coarse hospital bedsheet.
Sherlock lets his forehead rest on the top of his steepled fingertips, oblivious to how akin that posture is to a silent prayer to an unknown to him almighty deity.
'John, you took a bullet for me. I wish you hadn't. It was wicked and cruel to leave me here without you.'
Still no reaction, and the detective's chest does not dislodge that oppressive feeling it harbours constantly now. Sentiment is not an advantage.
Not for John, anyway, who took a bullet for Sherlock.
'You made your point, John. About leaving and going where I could not follow you. Here I am, left behind, acutely mourning the loss of the bravest person I ever had fighting my corner. I feel… lonely. Empty. Lost. Vulnerable without you.'
He huffs and scrubs fisted hands over his eyes.
'You never told me how you managed to overcome my loss, John. How am I now supposed to face this without you by my side? You are the light, John, and you are the one who explains all those pesky feelings to me. How am I supposed to make sense of it on my own? I don't fully believe that I can, that I am equipped to do this, John. So I need you still. I need you back. By my side. I'll even warm you up some tinned soup when we get you back at 221B. How does that sound?'
Bargaining. Useless. John Watson is nothing if not stubborn and human.
He does not listen to Sherlock's many pleas. And if at the end of the night, Sherlock holds John's cold small hand in his trying to at least impart some heat onto that cold listless hand, then maybe something is communicated between the both of them at last, for with a small shudder, John starts to fight back through the haze of the medication and pain, and starts surfacing to consciousness.
'…lock?' his parched voice rolls out, even before John's honest sea blue eyes open and focus on the man sat next to him. As if he knew Sherlock would be there, or at least he cared more for his companion than his own prognosis.
'John! Don't talk, shh. You've been shot, you were trying to save me, being your usual selfless idiotic hero self, and you, you… left me here waiting.'
Sherlock blinks. He absolutely cannot phantom why he just said what he said, why he's such an idiot as to blame his hero for being heroic, for saving him. Because Sherlock, deep down, does not fully believe he deserves the care and loyalty of John Watson.
He never did.
John's eyes acquire a certain tenderness as he ponders the younger man sat by his side, the dirty, mussed clothes and the jawline stubble indicating that Sherlock has not yet returned home and showered. John has learnt a thing or two about deducing from the master himself. And maybe some deductions are just easy pickings anyway when it's about caring and that is something that John does instinctively.
'You need to shower and eat and sleep, Sherlock', he forces the words out carefully. They leave him a bit winded. Right. Recovery will take a while yet. John should know, he's been shot before. Nasty business. John never liked to rummage through soldiers' guts to fix them as an army doctor. Now all those familiar and unfamiliar faces from the battlefield watch on silently from the side-lines; payback.
'Not showering and eating until you do,' Sherlock defies, childishly. He tries to remove his hand from John's grasp, but finds that the doctor predicted that and is now holding onto Sherlock, like a lifeline.
'I mean it,' John insists. 'We take turns, right?'
'Turns?' Sherlock does not follow. He worries if the medications levels are optimised. Maybe he can ask the doctor on the hospital bed, he should know, right?
John's voice breaks into a horse whisper as he insists on saying:
'We take turns in taking care of each other.'
Oh. Sherlock's eyes widen and he remains silent. But nothing more needs to be said between the two. John has said it all.
They are both at their most vulnerable, and open to each other to see. It's raw, and it's beautiful, to see the strength of their bond as they have recourse to no hiding left. Sherlock's magnificent persona is quiet and subdued, John's strong independent act is pointless as he lays in a hospital bed defenceless and broken. They gaze into each other's eyes, silently asking – will you take me as I truly am?
Of course I will.
Don't be daft.
.
TBC
