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The Prey	By : amandalee Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 3756 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter List
- 10
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Chapter 11

John settled back into his seat, at a loss for words. Like the discovery of Sherlock's medication, John somehow thought he would have been trusted with such information. But then again, after last night's row, perhaps he really did not deserve that trust.

He looked up at the face on the screen. If Mycroft was feeling any pain from the memory, he was certainly hiding it extremely well.

"So..." John said, his throat suddenly dry, "how long was he..." he hesitated, not at all liking the idea of Sherlock so monstrously treated, "... in hospital?"

"He was in a coma for two weeks, and then remained for another month, much to his refusal. Obviously the trauma did not rob him of any of his more... charming traits."

John managed a small, joyless laugh at the thought. He could not help wondering if his friend had gone into histrionics over the fact that the catheter had required shaving part of his head.

"And what happened to this Moran?"

"Arrested and successfully jailed," Mycroft simply replied.

John's brow lifted a little in disbelief. "Considering what he did to Sherlock, I'm a little surprised that you didn't have him done away with."

"Should he come back and attempt anything remotely similar..." Mycroft's lips thinned for a second. "Let's say that it doesn't do anyone well to try my patience."

Mycroft glanced aside and John nearly thought he saw vulnerability in the elder Holmes' eyes for a brief moment. He chalked it up to the choppiness of his recorded image on the computer screen.

"In fact, he is eligible for parole soon."

"Erm... how soon?"

"Next year."

The doctor scowled, unable to read Mycroft's opinion on the matter from the politician's face.

"Should we be worried?" he asked.

Mycroft responded with a derisive bark of laughter. "Hardly," he said. "Colonel Moran has not exactly been famous for his good behaviour in prison. I am confident the parole board will reject his appeal, but in case they do not, I have the means to keep that beast of a man locked up for plenty more years."

John exhaled from relief. A vengeful lunatic with a major grudge against Sherlock was the last thing they needed to deal with at this time. Though his general opinion of Mycroft Holmes remained the same, John couldn't help but be grateful for the man's influence and resourcefulness.

"I felt responsible for what happened to my brother that night," Mycroft admitted. "Sherlock was so close to dying, and I could have stopped it."

"You didn't know that would happen. Even you can't predict the future," John objected.

"Quite right, but that wasn't the first time that man had hit Sherlock. He'd sported some suspicious bruises before, but he insisted it was nothing, and I didn't take action. I could have had Moran apprehended and incarcerated on a multitude of charges, ranging from assault to fraud to possession of narcotics, but I didn't. I suppose I didn't want Sherlock to despise me more than he already did."

John rubbed at his face as though in an attempt to clear his mind of the whole story. He finally sighed and looked back at the screen.

"Did he give any reason as to why he nearly killed Sherlock that night?"

Mycroft looked past John pointedly, clearly seeing something beyond the doctor's shoulder.
"Perhaps you could explain it to him, Sherlock?"

John felt his chest tighten for a split second as he realized the situation and turned around.

Sherlock stood leaning against the wall, motionless as he stared at both man and laptop. He tried to maintain a blank expression, but his blanched blue eyes betrayed him. John suddenly had the strong urge to hurry forward and embrace him, but he had a feeling he might get pushed away or hit. He expected Sherlock to remained silent and possibly even walk away from the situation, but the younger man stayed put.

"He had cocaine hidden away in his flat. It took me less than five seconds to figure out where. I was impatient and tried pinching some when he was still home."

He brushed a hand through his thick curls and John was briefly reminded of the mental image of his partner's partially shaved head.

"Left me with a lot of time to do nothing but think... and go through cocaine withdrawal."

"At least you were alive to complain about it," John tried, but it was a lame attempt at combining comfort and humor.

"Try quitting drug addiction outright and see if you're still so optimistic," Sherlock retorted.

John remembered the blissful fogginess brought by the painkillers he'd been on after being shot, and how tempting it had been to keep taking them even after the pain abated. Other than that, John had never experienced substance addiction, even though he did his best to empathize.

"But you did it, Sherlock," he said. "You got clean. That takes plenty of determination and will-power."

"How long did it take for Sherlock to relapse that time?" Mycroft asked from the video feed. "Ninety-two days?"

"Close it down!" Sherlock shouted, making stabbing gestures at the screen and his brother's image. "If I have to look at that face one more second I'll be sick!"

Mycroft tutted. "Sick? Brother dear, you haven't eaten for over a day. How could you feel sick with nothing in you? Part of the good doctor's anatomy doesn't count," he added with that supercilious sneer they were both very familiar with.

John felt himself blushing furiously and was sorely tempted to simply slam the laptop shut. Maybe he would have done exactly that if Mycroft hadn't spoken up again.

"It seems you two have some things to sort out," the elder Holmes said. "So I'll leave you to it. I myself have a meeting to attend in fifteen minutes."

"Hey, don't let us keep you from running Britain," John said with a scoff.

"Indeed. I suppose you'll get in touch if you need any more advice concerning my volatile little brother."

"Thanks for the chat," John said, embarrassed that the topic of said "chat" was now known to Sherlock as well.

"Bye, Doctor. Sherlock." Mycroft gave them a small, tight smile before closing down the link, and as soon as his face was gone from the screen, a frustrated groan could he heard from Sherlock. John expected him to dart back to his bedroom or launch a string of curses upon John, angry and hurt that his only friend had betrayed his trust by contacting Mycroft behind his back, but Sherlock proved once again what an unpredictable man he could be. Staying silent, he sat down next to his partner on the couch, his face unreadable.

"Are you still angry with me?" John asked cautiously, knowing that Sherlock's rage was much like a bubbling volcano, ready to erupt at any given time.

"Why would I be angry with you, John?" the genius muttered, suddenly very interested in the accumulated dirt under his fingernails.

"I... I hacked into your Skype account, I went behind your back to talk to your brother--"

Sherlock snorted. "Please! You give yourself way too much credit, John. You didn't 'hack' anything. The password had already been entered. You simply clicked 'log in'."

"That's hardly the point. I still... kind of betrayed your trust."

"You were worried. I know you worry, John. You have that in common with Mycroft."

John wasn't sure how he felt about being compared to the Ice-man in any fashion, but he decided to let that one slide for now.

"So we're good, then?" he asked hopefully, giving Sherlock a playful nudge with his shoulder. "Still friends?"

The detective nodded mutely. He was still subdued, maybe even downcast, when compared to his usual hypo-manic self, but at least he had come out of his room and willingly talked with John. It was progress.

"Can I ask you a question, Sherlock?"

"What?"

"Mycroft said it wasn't the first time this Moran guy had hit you. Why did you let him do it?"

Sherlock stared at the floor for a few seconds before answering. John patiently waited for an answer. Patience was the least he could give him, after all.

"It didn't bother me, so I didn't bother stopping it."

John held back a frustrated sigh and instead placed his hand on one of his partner's own. "Please?"

Sherlock shut his eyes. "I wanted to leave. But I wanted the drugs more," he finally admitted. "And part of it was because Mycroft didn't approve. I wanted to be spiteful, to anger him. And..." He paused, eyes still closed. Perhaps he hated seeing the possible look on John's face in response to the truth.

"And I just wanted the attention."

A line formed at the center of John's brow in puzzlement. "Attention from your brother?"

"From Sebastian..." he replied, opening his eyes and quickly looked regretful. "From Moran."

His expression darkened, perhaps reliving a memory. John's squeezing of his hand caused him to look up.

"I don't miss him, not really" he said thoughtfully. He managed a rather false looking smile. "Perhaps that's indicative of how close we really were."

John pulled his hand away, feeling the gesture was somehow forced. After all, Sherlock was not overtly sentimental.

"Mycroft did mention a parole coming up. What do you think would happen if he was actually released?"

"Haven't thought about it," Sherlock muttered, trying his best to sound non-committal, but John knew that was a lie. It was obvious that thoughts of Moran's imminent release had plagued his mind quite a bit.

"The man nearly killed you. You're telling me you're not even the tiniest bit afraid he might try again?"

"Why would he?"

"You had him put away, for one. Ten years is a lot of time. He--"

"He got sixteen years for attempted murder," Sherlock interjected. "Added to all those other felonies he'd been piling up for quite some time. The parole board will never accept his request. Either way, Mycroft has a say in things, and he'll make sure it doesn't happen."

John nodded contemplatively, thinking back on his conversation with the elder Holmes, and how Mycroft had said virtually the same thing. Perhaps they could breathe out for now.

"You're lucky to have a brother like him," the doctor said, surprised to realize he really meant it.

Sherlock's response was a groan and an eye-roll. "Oh, shut it, John!" he exclaimed and pretended to swat his friend in the back of the head. It was the most animated Sherlock had been since last night, and while John knew it probably meant he would go back to being an unthinking arsehole, it was very much preferable to the apathetic Sherlock who didn't even bother looking for clues to a case.

"I've made coffee and breakfast, do you want some?" John asked.

"Just coffee, please."

"You know you have to eat sometime--"

"Just the coffee, John!"

"Alright, alright. Don't get your knickers in a twist." John got up from the sofa to do Sherlock's bidding. "Although you're not wearing any that I can see."

When he returned from the kitchenette with two cups of coffee, one black and the other one black with three sugars, the laptop once again held Sherlock's undivided attention. The detective's keen eyes were fixed on something that on first glance appeared to be just a random collection of pixels in various shades of green. Sherlock had opened one of Sarah Cavanaugh's photographs and was zooming in on the area in the top right corner.

"What does that look like to you?" Sherlock accepted his cup of coffee and took a sip, but without taking his eyes off the screen.

"Umm..." John's brow screwed up in confusion as he too intently studied the pixels. Yet he could not see anything even remotely resembling, well, anything. "Branches, leaves... perhaps part of a tree trunk?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and clicked on the small navigation window in the program.

"Thankfully, these photos were taken at high resolution. So one would hope that we won't lose much data when we zoom in." He looked back at John for a moment. "It also helps that your girlfriend did some adjustments on the shadowy bits."

John did not smile at the remark. At present time, he doubted the connection between himself and Mary was at all salvageable. The problem was, he loved both Mary and Sherlock, and he did not want to let either of them go, but almost immediately he realized how stupid and selfish he sounded. Mary did not seem the type to be anything but monogamous, and John was almost certain he was quite the same way. But he knew he had to grow some stones and decide who he truly wanted to be with: someone kind, patient and reliable, or someone who was not only a good lay, but a good friend.

"Ah-ha," Sherlock said, shaking John out of his not so pleasant daydream. The doctor leaned forward, scrutinizing the image. He was about to speak, but whatever he was going to say left his mind completely as he identified the shape.

"That is not a branch."

Indeed it was not. Sherlock carefully adjusted the lighting just a little more and then clicked 'sharpen'. His eyes narrowed, pleased at his discovery, while John's eyes widened.

The silhouette formed a torso and an arm.

"Someone was watching her," Sherlock said. John inwardly confessed that he felt the same breed of satisfaction his partner presently felt as well, that sense that they had uncovered another piece of the puzzle.

"Someone from the cabin?" he offered, even though he had a feeling this was indeed the connection they were looking for.

"Very possibly," Sherlock replied, leaning back with fingers interlocked.

"Although that doesn't prove he had anything to do with her disappearance," John felt forced to add. "Sure, he's probably a perv - a voyeur, if you will - but we have absolutely nothing that suggests he did anything but watch her."

"Look at the date, John." Sherlock zoomed back out until the little yellow digits in the lower right corner became visible.

"The same day Sarah went missing..." the doctor murmured, wondering if that too could be a coincidence. "It's still just circumstantial, Sherlock. We don't know if--"

"This man, whether he was involved in her disappearance or not, would have been one of the last people to see her alive. Thus we'll need to find him, and find out what he knows."

"Saw her alive...? We can't even be sure she's dead!" John objected.

The detective did another one of his frustrated eye-rolls and then looked at John as if he were a complete idiot.

"That's obvious, isn't it? There's been no demand for a ransom, no communication whatsoever that might suggest the abductor had any interest in keeping Sarah alive. All we can hope to find at this time is a body and one or more perpetrators to answer for their crime."

John had to admit that his friend, for all his callousness and cold-hearted reasoning, was probably right. Sherlock's lack of a heart was what allowed him to see things clearly without being hindered or dragged down by sentiment.

"Should we tell Ferguson?" John asked.

Sherlock shook his head. "Not yet. I'd like to have more to go on before sharing the news with my client." He took another sip of coffee. "We should investigate. I believe it is of vital importance to find the source of that smoke, as well as the man whose silhouette we see right here."

"How can you be sure it's a man?"

"I cannot, but judging from the angle the picture was taken, the individual caught on camera is well above average in both height and build. Added to this we have the indisputable fact that voyeurism is far more prevalent in men than women, which significantly lowers the statistical probability of this being a female. Am I wrong?"

John shrugged. "Good point."

He wished he had thought of the deduction himself, that he could be a little cleverer to keep up with his partner's train of thought, but with the exception of Mycroft, John doubted many people at all could keep up with Sherlock Holmes' train of thought.

The quiet of the room was interrupted by the sound of a door opening, Mary's bedroom door to be precise. Sherlock did not seem to respond whatsoever, still staring at the laptop screen, but John looked up at her as she leant against the door frame. Wearing an oversized t-shirt, she looked surprisingly well-rested for having cried herself to sleep the previous night, based on what he heard from sleeping on the couch. Even so, her eyes still betrayed the sadness of discovering John's infidelity. John wanted to apologize but it just seemed empty to do so anymore. He had been an egotistical idiot and wanted to make things right, but he did not know how.

Sherlock glanced at John, and even though he hardly wanted to take part in the strife between his partner and Mary, he had to admit that John sitting there staring like a dead fish was bloody annoying. He cleared his throat, which apparently jarred John from his uncomfortable paralysis.

"I, uh..."

"We seem to have no food," Mary stated.

"Yes, you're right," John replied. He absent-mindedly scratched at his jaw, feeling stubble that needed to be shaved.

"There was that store we passed, day before yesterday," she said. "The big yellow one? Some other visitors said it has practically everything. Perhaps a grocery run is in order."

"Then perhaps you can see to that?" Sherlock inquired, raising an eyebrow. "John and I will be busy working on the case. Can you find your way there, or must I draw you a map?"

"Sherlock!" the doctor objected, noticing with despair how Mary's features closed up entirely once more.

"What?" The detective looked from his friend to the woman, wondering why they both seemed so cross with his proposal. It made perfect sense, didn't it? "I was only suggesting a way for dear Mary to be of some use while we investigate. Now how about that map?"

"Mary, pay no attention to him," John quickly said, wishing there was a way to throttle Sherlock, or at least make him shut his mouth. Perhaps he could sew the detective's mouth closed next time he went to sleep? He doubted a Darth Vader force-choke would work.

"No, he's right," Mary said to John's great surprise. "I'd rather have something to do than just sit here while you two are busy elsewhere."

It was impossible for John to miss the not-so-subtle stab delivered through her choice of words. Blushing, the doctor averted his eyes, while the detective gave a melodramatic sigh to demonstrate his opinion on the matter.

"That cabin won't discover itself, John," he reminded his assistant.

"Yes, I know!" John snapped. Just when they had some peace on this trip... "Mary," he said carefully. "Let's go outside for a moment."

He almost expected her to refuse, to storm out the lodge, but she looked at him, expression blank, and nodded. She crossed the room, giving Sherlock a fleeting look before opening the door and walking out into the sunlight.

"Don't panic," John said - not without a little impatience - to his partner before following. Sherlock only sniffed indignantly and returned his attention to the laptop.

John did not know the time, having not put on a watch, but based on the position of the sun, he surmised that the more prominent businesses had to be open. The three of them had heard the dollar store, being the closest and biggest source of food and supplies for miles, was open quite late in the day, so hopefully this also meant it opened early as well.

"Would you like some company?" he asked Mary. "An extra hand in carrying bags?"

"What about your case?" the woman returned. "Sherlock can't seem to get through it without you, after all." Her statement was slightly bitter, but it had also been an attempt at humor that used to come so easily between her and the doctor.

"Oh, he'll be fine," John replied with a smile. "He's been figuring everything out on his own."

Mary swallowed, her eyes distant, and she glanced at her incompletely adorned state.

"It's still a missing person case," she said. "It can't be ignored. You should keep working."

"You heard the lady," Sherlock interjected from his seat at the couch. "This takes precedence."

"Go," Mary said curtly. "We'll talk later." Though her words held some promise - at least they would be talking now, as opposed to last night - John was not sure it was a conversation he wanted to have.

"Can we at least get dressed this time?" John asked, looking down at his dressing gown and slippers with a critical eye.

Granted they were at a nudist resort, but John did not fancy the idea of roaming the woods without a stitch of clothing. Sherlock previous attempt had also ended in misery for everyone involved. John thought with some regret that unless Sherlock had scorched his skin in the sun and collapsed from dehydration and fatigue, John would never have had to discover his use of antipsychotics, which then led to his trying to offer Sherlock console (and the detective accepting it), which in turn led to an illicit roll in the hay. The Butterfly Effect, as it were.

"Sure, I was going to suggest you wear something appropriate for a stroll through the forest," Sherlock replied. "We are going past the perimeters of the nudist colony. Loafers will not do. You did bring some sturdy hiking boots, right, John?"

John had brought a pair, but his original intention for bringing them had been romantic outdoor activities in the American wilderness with his new girlfriend rather than clue-hunting with Sherlock.

"Right, John?"

"Right."

"Excellent. Bring the mosquito spray as well, the air is thick with them."

John's face twisted in annoyance at the notion, and he scrambled for the spray amidst his luggage. For someone who had wanted to vacation somewhere radically different from his home, he was really missing London.

TBC...
- 10
- 11
- 12
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The Prey