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Science and Faith	By : ambersue Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 3734 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock (BBC). The show and all characters belong to BBC, Moffat, Gatiss, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I don't profit from a thing.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
And if I fall here
At least you know, my dear
That I would die for you
______________________________________________________________

Sherlock sits on the floor, back against one of the desks in the St. Bart’s lab, arms dangling loosely over his knees. A mug of coffee sits cold and forgotten on the desk above him, where Molly left it an hour before. Unable to draw any more information from the bullet, the detective has turned to his last and best resource: his memory. His fingers twitch and his eyes are focused inward as he retreats into the hard drive of his thoughts.

First, the facts. Moran is a predator, and Sherlock is his prey. John—the detective suppresses a wave of anxiety as the doctor’s face flashes across the screen of his mind—John is bait in Moran’s trap, and a predator would never lay an impossible trap. Moran wants to be found, and that means he has already given Sherlock the information he needs.

233—that’s the key. Sherlock sets this number up and to one side, keeping it nearby to compare to other relevant details. It is the key, but the detective still has to figure out which door it unlocks. The bullet gives him nothing else—he deletes his other findings and focuses on what else he knows about Moran.

He’s Moriarty’s man. Sherlock realises he’s known this, but hasn’t really thought about the implications—Moran appeared on the detective’s radar after Moriarty’s death, but he’d been around long before. Mentally, Sherlock increases Moran’s timeline, stretching it back to the woman with the pink case (he absolutely does not think of the case as A Study in Pink, and he waves a hand dismissively to brush aside the page from John’s blog that keeps stubbornly intruding over the memory).

Right. If Moran’s been with Moriarty that long, been aware of Sherlock for that long, what changes? The detective plays back the cases touched by Moriarty’s hand, opening each file individually, letting the contents scroll past and filtering out anything that seems important. There’s nothing in Pink—he does admit, grudgingly, that the title makes for convenient shorthand. The Black Lotus case…John was kidnapped there as well, taken from the flat. Sherlock pulls out several images: John bound to a chair, a precariously balanced crossbow, an abandoned tramway tunnel. He considers the latter. Would Moran know about the hideout? Possible, but it’s a reach, and what would it have to do with the number? A code, like before? But pointing to what book?

No, there’s too little there, too many holes. Moran wouldn’t be so sloppy. Sherlock’s eye twitches minutely as he mentally closes the Black Lotus file and tosses it aside. In its place, he pulls up an image of his first meeting with Moriarty, at the pool where the man made his first kill. This feels—not right, but closer to it.

Moriarty himself took John that time. Another still frame: the doctor wired with explosives, yelling for him to run, the moment John became not just an oddity, not even just an exceptionally loyal colleague, but his John. Sherlock pauses here, studying the moment, savouring it—but he can’t afford to be idle, and he winds back the memory, because there’s something else, something near…Another thought appears—far later on his timeline, but glowing bright and insistent, flashing onto the screen over and above the scrolling images.

Four assassins living right on our doorstep…a surveillance web closing in around us. Moriarty knew the value of proximity. Those assassins had been among the first of Sherlock’s targets after his “death.” They’d been entirely too close to John.

But what if Moran’s bullet had been trying to tell him something else? Not a hint of things to come, but a hint of things past: the man assigned to kill John had to be a sniper. No one else was close enough. And if Moran was watching John that day, how long had he been watching?

The older still frames freeze, and Sherlock selects one, enlarges it, sets it alongside a new image of Moran, rifle in hand, John in his scope. This image is of shattered windows, a sensory memory of the pressure wave that accompanied the explosion. John, rushing in the next morning, so concerned for Sherlock, but he is fine, their flat mostly unhurt. Their flat. 221. But the decimated flat—the building that had housed at least one assassin during Moriarty’s endgame…

Stupid! Obvious! Sherlock snaps back into the present, pushing up from the floor in one fluid motion, his hand sweeping across the desk to find his phone and tumbling the untouched coffee to the floor. The detective is halfway to the door before the mug hits the ground, dialling frantically as he goes.

“Wha—”

“An address! God, it’s so simple!” Sherlock overrides Lestrade before he can get a word in. “The bullet was from a sniper rifle; it implied distance, but that makes no sense. The hunter must be close to his quarry if he’s a hope of catching it.”

“Slow down. You mean Moran—”

“How could I not see it? An address! The numbers are an address!”

“The numbers. 233, yeah?”

“Baker Street,” Sherlock has already made it to the pavement, his legs moving faster than even his brain, his whole body launching into overdrive. He raises a hand to hail a taxi, his heart tripping over itself in a lurch of adrenaline. “233 Baker Street!”

Lestrade’s voice is tight, an echo of Sherlock’s own tension. “You’re sure?”

The detective doesn’t grace this with a response. “I’ll meet you there,” he says instead as a taxi pulls alongside the kerb. “Ten minutes.”

He puts his phone back in his pocket and gives the address to the cabbie, his thoughts reduced to a rhythm, a chant: JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn. His fingers clench tight as he tries to formulate a plan, something that will give him an advantage, but his mind keeps returning to its mantra, and he abandons his efforts before he’s halfway home.

John. Oh, John, I’m coming.

***

Time passes.

John is surprised how quickly he loses track of the hours—at least, he’s reasonably sure it’s still hours, not yet days. The only reference he has is the changing brightness of the light in the corridor when Moran opens and closes the door to his room, and his eyes are only open the first few times this happens. After that, John saves his energy for more important things than observation—things like breathing. And screaming.

The first few shocks draw that pitiful, involuntary whine as his throat constricts and the air rushes from his lungs. His instinct is to fight it, to remain stoically silent, to deny his captor the pleasure of hearing him cry out. But at some point his training surfaces through the fog of pain, and he remembers screaming is supposed to help. Screaming or singing, and the image of himself tied naked to a chair and singing sends him into a fit of hysterical giggles that earns him another jolt. Screaming it is, then.

When the doctor runs out of breath, his brain decides he’s had enough, and John goes away for a while.

His hair is still wet from the rain as he sits at the café table, facing Mycroft.

“He’s not like that,” he tells the elder Holmes. “He doesn’t feel things that way.” Which isn’t exactly true, and John knows it, but that isn’t the point. Talking to Mycroft bears little resemblance to normal conversation—it’s more like playing verbal chess. So John makes his move and waits for Mycroft to counter.

The older man offers him the faintest of wry smiles, acknowledging his efforts—and then changes tactics entirely. “My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher, yet he elects to be a detective.” His eyebrows raise, and the look he gives John is inscrutable. “What might we deduce about his heart?”

Check.

Mycroft’s face shifts to Sherlock’s, the features altering but the expression the same—detached, resigned, looking through John instead of at him. “He told me the worst thing he could think of,” says the detective. “He told me the truth. That everyone will leave.”

The doctor’s hand closes over Sherlock’s. He wants to say something, but this isn’t Mycroft and his chess game anymore, this isn’t even just his friend anymore, this is a whole new game with new rules and no one has deigned to tell John Watson how the hell to play.

Sherlock looks at his hand, then at John’s face. “You don’t have to,” he says, and his eyes are sad. John’s fingers clench tighter, until his knuckles are white and jaw aches from biting back everything that he should say.

The detective reaches out a hand, gripping his chin. “You’re going to have to let go of that eventually.” He shakes John, and the doctor pulls back—

“—easy, then,” says Moran. The Irishman’s fingers massage John’s jaw, loosening the muscles there. “Let it go.”

John blinks, his tongue moving sluggishly in his mouth, his lips dry and cracking. Something is in the way, preventing him from closing his mouth completely, and it takes the doctor several seconds to remember that his belt is still clenched between his teeth. Between Moran’s coaxing and John’s own painful efforts, the doctor finally manages to pry his teeth apart enough for the man to remove the now-destroyed strip of leather. He groans in spite of himself, letting his jaw sag open.

“Come on now, Captain,” Moran says, “can’t have you sleeping through the good bits. Here. Drink.” John feels a cup at his lips. He fumbles for it, slurping the water greedily, shivering when it spills over his bare chest. Moran tsks softly, producing a flannel from his back pocket and wiping up the water, then dabbing at the perspiration on John’s brow.

“All that damp,” says the Irishman. “Won’t agree with the wiring, you know, and I’d really rather you were still alive when your Mr. Holmes arrives. How are we feeling?”

The doctor lets his head fall back against the chair, eyes closed, his throat raw from screaming, his tongue swollen. His limbs twitch randomly, but he’s hardly aware of the motion. He grits his teeth and with supreme effort manages to choke out, “Get...fucked.”

Moran laughs. “So spirited. I must say, a pleasant change from Mr. Trevor. All that begging, all that unnecessary name-calling. Now, ‘get fucked,’ that’s more like it. Simple, direct. Elegant.”

John glares up at him with one eye, too exhausted to open both. The Irishman pats his cheek, grinning, “I knew I liked—”

A muffled crash from somewhere above them—the soundproofing in the room means it’s less a noise and more a shuddering vibration. Moran freezes. John holds his breath, but there’s no more shaking, and he can hear nothing.

“Looks like the cavalry has arrived, eh?” Moran breathes, crossing to the door and reaching a careful hand for the knob.

The doctor tenses, waiting. The Irishman opens the door a crack, and now John hears voices—faint, the words indistinguishable but the tone crisp, organised. Police, John realises.

“Sher…” John’s vocal chords seize on the syllable, his voice hardly a whisper in his ruined throat.

Moran raises an amused eyebrow at him. “So it would seem. And he’s brought <i>friends</i>. Not very sportsmanlike, is it?” He slips into the hallway, his hand sliding behind his back, and John spots the butt of a pistol tucked into his trousers.

“Sherlock!” The doctor tries again, his shout still more air than noise, but a bit firmer this time.

“Ah, ah,” Moran chides. “None of that. You wait here.”

Right. Like going somewhere is an option. John manages to find the energy for an eye roll, and then the door clicks shut behind Moran, and he is left alone in the quiet and the dark.

***

“You’re not coming in.” It’s the fourteenth time Lestrade has said this, and Sherlock is running out of new ways to disagree.

“You’re not stopping me,” he replies.

“I could put you in handcuffs and toss you in the back of my car,” Lestrade counters, and the detective glares at him, realising this is entirely within Lestrade’s power. Over the DI’s shoulder, Donovan smirks at him. Smirks! John’s life on the line, and the woman has the nerve to goad him! It takes all his self-control not to finger the heavy bulk of John’s Sig Sauer in his coat pocket.

Sherlock switches tactics. “You need me. You don’t know Moran like I do.”

“And whose fault is that?” asks Lestrade, annoyed, strapping on his own firearm.

The detective flinches, but he can’t let himself be sidetracked. “You didn’t find the bullet clue. You might miss something else.” The DI stiffens at that but does not reply, and Sherlock presses his advantage, adding softly, “Please. It’s John in there. I have to…” He hesitates, unsure how to finish, one hand half raised toward the other man’s arm.

Lestrade is silent for a moment, and Sherlock can see him struggling with himself: the brown eyes radiate concern, warm and creased at the edges with the need to protect John from whoever’s taken him, to protect Sherlock from himself. But those eyes study the detective from behind a wall of professionalism, Lestrade clearly torn between doing what’s right and doing what’s right for Sherlock. The battle stretches on for an agonising few seconds—and then the tension drains from him as he relents.

“Look,” says the DI, “you stay behind us. Completely out of the way.”

Donovan, barking orders into her radio, pauses to shoot him an incredulous look, and Sherlock knows he’s overwrought because he can’t even spare a moment to sneer in return; he’s too busy nodding furiously at Lestrade, only half hearing him over the thrum of his heartbeat.

“Right.” Lestrade unholsters his weapon. “Donovan, with me. Everything else ready to go?”

She nods, clipping her radio to her belt. “Ambulance standing by.”

“Fantastic.” He glances at Sherlock. “Behind us. The whole time, understood?” The detective’s hand steals into his pocket, one finger resting against the gun there. The cold metal is reassuring. He nods.

“Then here we go.”

***

For Sherlock, time slows. Lestrade’s men move around him, in front of him, like insects struggling through sap. The detective’s senses are on high alert, filtering through the abundance of stimuli, discarding the ones that don’t matter: the splintering crack of the door as it buckles under the ram, the rustle of bodies shuffling past him, the pounding of feet as the officers fan out, searching rooms and corridors, the shouts of “Clear!” echoing through the ground floor. Sherlock hears these things, but dimly; they are not important, they are not John.

Lestrade’s face in his field of vision. “We’re going up. This floor’s clear—see what you can find. Do not follow us until I call for you, yeah?”

He offers a single nod, irritated, making small motions with his hands to shoo the DI away. He needs to look, to listen…The sounds of Lestrade and his men fade as they make their way upstairs. Sherlock paces the ground floor, sketching a blueprint in his mind.

The building is large, but not complex: two shops facing the street, but they have separate entrances and exits than the rest of the building—worth investigating further if this search proves fruitless, but not before. The corridor he’s standing in leads from the front door to the living space, with a stairway to his left that leads upstairs. On the ground floor, there is one small flat stretching behind the shops, with windows on the opposite side of the building, facing Allsop Street. An air of disrepair hangs about the place—after the “gas leak” explosion two years ago, the building’s façade and shop fronts were quickly repaired, but the refurbishment appears to have halted there. The building seems structurally sound, but some walls are only half papered, and loose wiring protrudes from the wall in several places. The ground floor flat is dark and devoid of furnishings, layered with dust on every visible surface—including the floor, Sherlock notes. He crouches down, positioning himself so he can see the corridor and the sitting room of the flat, his eyes wide, sponging information from his surroundings.

Floor in the flat evenly coated with dust. Corridor floor isn’t clean, but the dust has gathered into corners; not swept—pushed aside by regular foot traffic. Not using the flat—no furniture, no other clean surfaces to indicate much interaction with the room. Living somewhere else then, maybe upstairs, with the windows facing Baker Street—more practical for watching our flat. So why come this far down the corridor, why not just to the stairs? Has to be something interesting—dusty floor with a few footprints would mean he came here once or twice, but this floor says he’s here often.

The detective spots no signs of blood, of struggle—if this was where Moran kept Victor, where he took John, he’d expect to see—

He pauses, his eyes catching something odd, although it takes a moment for him to process it. He steps carefully into the flat, turning in slow circles to take in the entirety of the space. The room in which he stands, a combination kitchen and sitting room, is rectangular, but the adjacent room, the bedroom, is built on an L-shaped floor plan. Which wouldn’t be unusual, except, Sherlock realises, there’s no architectural reason for it. The L-shaped room has less space; the only reason for such a shape would be to accommodate—what? Sherlock scans the adjacent room: a door in the far corner opens onto a bathroom, and a closet takes up the rest of the space on that wall. There’s nothing in the flat to indicate a reason for the shape of the room.

He steps back out into the corridor, finding the patch of wall that corresponds to the missing space—and now he’s looking for it, he sees it immediately: the outline of a door, carefully papered over to match the rest of the corridor wall. A wire dangles from the wall at roughly the level of a doorknob. Given the condition of the building, it’s not surprising the police missed it.

Sherlock’s hand dips into his pocket, closing around the grip of John’s pistol. He can still hear the faint footsteps of the police above him, busy clearing the two upper floors. Should he call for them? If Moran is behind this door, he’ll be listening, waiting to see if he’ll be discovered. Calling out will only let him know the game is up, and Sherlock isn’t sure what that would mean for John.

If he’s still alive, his mind offers unhelpfully. Sherlock frowns, shaking this thought off. It’s not like him to be so needlessly dark—he’s certain John is still alive. Taking him is a punishment for Sherlock, one Moran will want to prolong. If he’s going to kill him, he’ll wait until Sherlock can watch him do it. Hardly more comforting. The detective closes his eyes for a moment against a spike of pure dread, the adrenaline in his system only just managing to keep him standing. Mycroft’s voice in his head, vicious in its logic: Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock. No, it isn’t, but now it’s there, the detective is rather unpractised at shutting it off.

He takes a deep breath, gathering his fear, his worry, that tiny glow of something warm and uncertain that is huddled deep in his chest: God, John. Sherlock seeks out the doctor’s room in his mind, trying to fit the haphazard bundle of emotion inside. For a moment, his heart resists, insisting these things are too large, too important to be locked away—but his mental discipline wins out, and the detective closes the door, feeling his anxiety ease a bit as his mental barriers slide into place. It’s not perfect, and it won’t last, but it will work for now.

He opens his eyes, easing John’s gun from his pocket, pleased to see that his hands are steady. Well, perhaps a slight tremble, but that’s the adrenaline. His head feels clear, at least. He can’t call out to Lestrade—truth be told, doesn’t want to call out for him, because this is his fight and he intends to finish it. But he hears the foolishness, the arrogance in this, and with John’s life at stake…

With his left hand, he fishes out his phone and types out a text to Lestrade.

2:51 PM
Hidden basement door. Need back up. -SH

Twenty two seconds elapse with no reply. Sherlock calculates quickly—it took them three minutes to clear the ground floor, but the upper floors are larger. Another seven or eight minutes to clear those, then, supposing they find nothing. It took Sherlock two and a half minutes to find the door, so he has perhaps four or five minutes before he can expect Lestrade to read the message. Too long.

He reaches for the wires dangling from the wall and pulls, feeling the door mechanism give. The door opens silently and smoothly on its hinges—recently used, as if he needed more confirmation—and the detective finds himself staring down a short flight of stairs.

One more deep breath, then, John’s gun held straight in front of him, Sherlock descends into the basement.

***

John’s chin is on his chest, eyes closed as he tries to force himself to listen. It’s no good—there’s nothing to hear, and even if there were, his brain is fuzzy round the edges, thoughts slipping and sparking and tumbling out of his head as quickly as they appear. The line between consciousness and unconsciousness is blurry, and only the ache in his muscles and the erratic thread of his pulse tell him which side of the line he’s on.

So when the door opens and he squints into the sudden pool of washed-out daylight in the doorway, the doctor isn’t quite sure if he’s dreaming or not. For a moment, he sees Moran: the height, the frame, the too-long hair are all the same. It takes him several seconds to pick out the differences—the flaring coat, the gun—Jesus—and even backlit in the dimness of the room, the set of the eyebrows is too intense, so focused on John that he feels those eyes on him even before one long arm reaches for the lights and he can actually see.

“John!” The gun falters, the detective’s hand dropping to his side as he moves; for once, the pull between them dragging Sherlock to him instead of the other way round. John is suddenly aware of the way his whole body is trembling, and he ducks his head, absurdly embarrassed, as the detective drops to his knees beside him.

“Sorry—” The word falls from numb lips, and everything else the doctor may have meant to say seems suddenly irrelevant, his tongue shaping the apology over and over: “So sorry, Sherlock. Jesus.”

But Sherlock is ignoring him, his hands everywhere, checking his pulse, his pupils, stripping the wires from his skin. The tape pulls painfully at John’s bare skin, but he hardly feels it. He does flinch away from his gun, still casually held in one of the detective’s hands, wanting to shout at him—Are you mad? That hasn’t got a safety, you know.—but he can’t translate this into actual speech, and all he can say is, “Sherlock, safe.”

Which, of course, the detective misunderstands entirely, but at least he sets the gun down so he can loosen the leather straps binding the doctor to the chair, murmuring, “Yes, safe now.” His long fingers fumble with the plastic ties around John’s wrists and ankles. He growls in frustration and disappears, and John has to bite back a wave of panic that threatens to sweep him away. It’s only seconds, and then Sherlock is back, slicing through the plastic with a knife, presumably scavenged from Moran’s supplies.

“Can you stand?” the detective asks, and John notices for the first time how pale he is, his full lips pressed together with something deeper than concern. And there—the memory of those lips in the dark, Sherlock tasting like Sherlock, Sherlock tasting like John, all smoke and salt and hunger; it flashes through the doctor with startling clarity, and he reaches for him reflexively.

The detective catches his hand, and their eyes meet for a moment—Sherlock’s eyes are guarded, but his hand on John’s squeezes once, and John wants to say…but it’s gone again, evaporating into the grey fog of his thoughts. He realises Sherlock is still watching him, waiting for an answer.

John takes his hand back, bracing himself against the arm of the chair and attempting to lever himself to his feet. His knees buckle immediately, and he has a moment of blind terror; his arms and legs feel alien to his body, his muscles watery and his head spinning.
“Christ, I can’t—,” he mutters, and then again, “Sorry.”

Sherlock catches him, one arm snaking around his torso and keeping him—just barely—from collapsing entirely. “Stop that,” the detective snaps.

“Stop…?”

“Apologising. It’s unproductive.”

“I just—”

“Not now, John.” God, the irritation in his voice is nearly as comforting as his touch; both are practical, focused, but so familiar that John grasps at them, grounds himself in them and takes root, finding strength in Sherlock’s certainty. The detective eases him back into the chair, shrugging out of his coat and draping it over John’s shoulders.

The doctor nearly flushes, remembering for the first time that he’s wearing nothing except a fine sheen of sweat and filth and a few abrasions. He huddles into the coat, sliding his arms into the too-long sleeves as Sherlock retrieves the gun and starts to pace, eyes glancing wildly around the room.

“Moran,” John stammers. “Where…where is he?”

“Here,” says a cheery voice from the corridor.

John’s instinct screams for him to duck, to find cover, but there’s nowhere to hide. He freezes instead, coat wrapped around him like a shield. Sherlock reacts for him, his arm snapping up, gun straight and steady as Moran steps smoothly into the doorway.

The Irishman holds his own pistol, and he aims the barrel not at Sherlock, poised to shoot, but at John, helpless in the chair. He smirks at them both before addressing the detective. “Mr. Holmes. So nice to finally meet you face to face.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow, his grip shifting slightly on the Sig, and John wonders—not for the first time—if the detective actually knows how to shoot. His hand looks comfortable, his stance is confident, but Sherlock is a talented actor, and John knows all too well the difference between merely pulling a trigger and actually shooting to kill. Somehow, he isn’t convinced that Sherlock knows the same.

Moran’s smirk slips into an almost friendly smile, and he tilts his head toward John. “Alright there, Captain?”

From the corner of his eye, John sees Sherlock’s finger tighten almost imperceptibly on the trigger. Moran must see it too, because his pistol swings away from John and centres on the detective instead.

“Not so fast, I think,” he grins. “I’m a bit disappointed in you, you know.”

Sherlock cocks an eyebrow at him. “And why is that?” he asks, his dry tone at odds with the tension in his stance.

“Didn’t think you’d call the Met on me. That’s not exactly playing by the rules.”

“I wasn’t aware there were rules.”

“There’s always rules. An eye for an eye. According to the rules, one of you”—his gun twitches briefly toward John—“should be dead.”

“Don’t think I’m particularly keen on that rule, then.”

“So it would seem. But I owe you a death, Mr. Holmes. I’d have liked to make it painful, but your rather cowardly involvement of the police means it’ll have to be quick.”

“They’ll hear the shot,” Sherlock points out. “You won’t make it out of the building.”

Moran acknowledges this with a slight nod. “Maybe. But my life is hardly the prize. I’m here to finish what Jim started. After that…” He shrugs dismissively to show his lack of self-concern.

John’s arms and legs are still shaking, his exhausted mind still trying to retreat into unconsciousness. He keeps his eyes on Moran’s hands. The doctor is unarmed and defenceless, which is his biggest weakness and his only advantage. If Sherlock can keep him talking, keep his attention off John—but the space between them is too much. Moran will have plenty of time to shoot, and unlike Sherlock, John knows Moran won’t miss. He focuses on steadying his limbs, trying to channel the ebbing adrenaline in his bloodstream into one last surge of control.

“And yet,” says Sherlock, “you haven’t killed me.”

“Sherlock…” John warns, and that’s all he has time for before Moran moves, and then everything is happening at once.

Sherlock must be watching the Irishman’s body language, because he fires, but something in his calculations is off, and Moran sidesteps the instant before Sherlock’s finger squeezes the trigger. The bullet zips past him, burying itself in the corridor wall. Moran, still in one fluid motion, adjusts his aim, and John can see the path the bullet will take, Moran’s gun pointed at Sherlock’s heart, and it can’t, he won’t let it, he can’t lose him again.

With the last reserves of his energy, he shoves himself upward, throwing his weight into the detective. There’s a bang—two?—and John feels the bright-hot punch to his chest, carrying him backward, and he lands in a pile on top of Sherlock.

“No!” Sherlock’s voice in his ear. “No, John!” The detective is pulling at him, one arm under his shoulders, rocking back and forth above him. John’s eyes are wide, the room strangely dark in spite of the daylight and the bare bulbs on the ceiling. In the doorway, another crumpled figure—Moran?—and someone stepping over it, gun still trained on the corpse.

“Sherlock, is he…Oh, Christ.” Lestrade’s voice this time. John opens his mouth—I’m fine, stop this—but he tastes copper, and he can see a thin stream of red hit the floor when he tries to speak.

“Get the ambulance!” Sherlock says above him—he’s right there, John could touch him, could kiss him maybe, so why does he sound so far away? “John.” The detective lays one hand against his cheek, and his eyes are furious, furious and full of fear. “Don’t you dare,” he whispers fiercely.

Lestrade is on his radio, John can see him, just at the edge of his vision, and then the grey fog in his mind sweeps over him and John can see Sherlock, only Sherlock, and the tang of blood on his tongue—is that Sherlock’s taste or his?

“Sor…sorry,” he manages, the word bubbling up over his lips on a hitched breath.

“Shut up!” says Sherlock’s mouth, but his eyes say Stay here. And yes, that’s all he wants, really. Just to stay.

The grey fog turns to black, and John lets it roll over him.

***

1. The Script. Science & Faith. Sony Music Entertainment UK, 2011.
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