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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.

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When you’ve forgiven but you can’t forget
If feels like you’re drowning but you still got breath
And we’ve been trying to lay this ghost to rest

But there ain’t no getting out of this mess¹
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“If everyone would kindly shut up!”

The three men who make up Lestrade’s forensic unit cease their incessant conversation, although Anderson’s sneer is still making the back of Sherlock’s skull itch.

“Does he think he’s going to hear a clue?” the weasel-faced man murmurs to his colleagues, who snicker behind their hands.

The detective glares at him, debating whether to list a selection of auditory clues that have helped solve past cases, or to simply call him a ham-fisted twat. He is leaning toward the latter—the rude word will make John laugh, and the only thing better than having a laugh at Anderson’s expense is watching someone else have a laugh at Anderson’s expense. It’s that, surely, and not just the thought of making John happy, that prompts his body to release a rather pleasant cocktail of serotonin and oxytocin. The detective is opening his mouth, the first syllable poised on his tongue, when Lestrade steps into his line of vision.

“Anderson, get us a coffee,” the DI calls over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off Sherlock. The detective’s insult dissolves into a small sigh of annoyance at having his fun spoilt. When there is no movement behind him, Lestrade looks back. Anderson’s mouth is hanging open incredulously. The detective inspector simply raises his eyebrows and jerks his head toward the door. With an elaborate eye roll, Anderson excuses himself, and the itch at the base of Sherlock’s skull recedes a bit. He spares a small nod for Lestrade, who shrugs and waves to the room: I scratch your back, the gesture says. Now you scratch mine.

Sherlock glances at John, who is studying the bloodstains on the wooden floor. The doctor is irritated again this morning, frustration radiating from him like heat. Sherlock is familiar with the many variations of John’s anger: worried anger, confused anger, hurt anger, even joyous anger. It used to be one of his favourite pastimes, puzzling out which John was indulging in at a given moment. Now, the doctor’s frustration is a sort of psychic background noise that Sherlock wraps around him the way a child might his favourite blanket. God, he has missed him.

This morning, the detective is certain, John’s anger stems from feeling inadequate. To be honest, the doctor is rather useless here, but Sherlock would rather have him underfoot and safe than out of the way and dead. He closes his eyes, remembering the doctor’s heartbeat, felt more than heard as he pressed his forehead against him the night before. The frantic pulse—leftover from the nightmare, or was it elevated because Sherlock was close? He’s noticed this, the way John’s whole body kicks into high gear at the detective’s proximity—was it there before? He can’t seem to remember.

“What am I looking for, again?” John asks, the blue overalls Lestrade insisted they wear rustling as he turns.

Sherlock—who can’t be bothered with something as trivial as Scotland Yard’s idea of a contaminant-free crime scene—is still wearing his customary suit and coat. “Anything out of the ordinary,” the detective tells him.

“Ah.” John looks around him at the gruesome scene. “Aside from all the blood, I suppose?”

Sherlock spares him a look that is both amused and annoyed. “Naturally.” He takes his magnifying lens from his pocket and bends down to inspect one of the stains. “How much blood would you say there is here?”

“Our boys said a pint and a half, give or take,” says Lestrade.

John glances at the floor. “Probably. Two at the most, allowing for what’s soaked into the wood.”

“Less than a litre total.” Sherlock pauses, waiting for John to find the implication. He’s dying to show off for someone—there’s been no one to care for so long now—but he’d rather John feel like he’s contributing.

And while Sherlock knew this within moments of entering the flat, it still pleases him when John deduces correctly: “He didn’t bleed out. He was dead before his heart was—” He stops, glancing at the detective.

“Before the heart was removed, yes,” Sherlock finishes for him. Then, quietly, he adds, “You don’t have to keep doing that.” He ignores the tableau that has painted itself over the floor where John stands: Victor, his flesh twisted and angry from the burns, his blonde hair missing in places where he has torn at it in agony, the rest sticking to his face in sweaty clumps. Sherlock’s stomach clenches, fighting an old instinct that says he should have seen it, should have stopped it—and a newer, darker force that says Victor got what he deserved. John thinks the detective is in mourning, and in a way, he is. But he is mourning a boy who died years ago, on a rainy night, with cruel words on his tongue and cold malice in his eyes. The man who came after was a stranger to him. And if there is a slight tremor in his hand as he inspects the bloodstains—well, that’s likely just too much tea on an empty stomach.

John shakes his head—in disagreement or disapproval, the detective isn’t sure. The doctor lowers his voice. “Look, I know you’ve got the corner on the whole voice of logic bit, but why are we here, Sherlock? There’s nothing to solve. You already know who did it.”

The detective continues to study the surrounding floor with his magnifying lens. “Yes, but I don’t know where he is.”

“It’s probably safe to assume he knows where you are.”

“And as long as that’s the case, he controls the game. He decides when to move and we react. If I can find him, I can get ahead of him.” He pauses, lingering over one bloodstain: edge too regular; something was in the way, stopped the blood from pooling normally.

“What did you move, aside from the body?” Sherlock calls in the general direction of Lestrade and his men.

The detective inspector answers, “Nothing, except to remove trace, and there wasn’t much of that. Why?”

“You’re sure?” Sherlock’s eyes are scanning the floor. “None of the furniture was touching the blood?”

“No.”

There. Sherlock’s gaze lands on a threadbare rug in one corner of the room. He swoops down on it, drawing a pair of blue latex gloves from his pocket and pulling them on. The detective runs one finger along the edge of the rug, noting the red-brown dust that flakes off onto the wood floor. Dried blood. Moran moved the rug—hiding something. Something he knew I would find.

He lifts the rug carefully, folding the fabric back on itself to expose the bare wood underneath. Nothing. He trails gloved fingers over the floor, closing his eyes to focus as much attention as possible into his sense of touch. There—one board ever so slightly higher than the others. He continues to feel his way along the seam, pressing experimentally as he goes until—

The board pops free, allowing the detective to pry it up. John and Lestrade have moved to stand behind him, watching over his shoulder as he reaches into the small cavity underneath. Sherlock withdraws the object inside, holding it carefully between a gloved thumb and forefinger.

Lestrade speaks first. “A bullet?”

Sherlock turns it toward the light. “Blood on the tip, but the casing is intact. It’s never been fired.” The detective takes a small bag from his coat pocket, dropping the bullet inside. He offers the bag to John—again, the doctor won’t tell him anything he can’t find out on his own, but Sherlock finds it enjoyable to watch him think. Sherlock’s own mind is a computer, processing thousands of bits of information a second, mechanical married to electrical in a blur of friction and light. John’s is a typewriter, methodical, clunky, simplistic—but elegant in its own way. Sturdy.

“Heavy ammunition. 8.59mm, I’d say—sniper rifle. And—hang on, these marks on the bottom are wrong. These numbers here—233?” The doctor hands the bullet back to Sherlock. “Mean anything to you?”

The detective shrugs.

“Sniper rifle?” asks Lestrade, hands on hips. “You’re not going to tell me this poor sod was killed by a sniper?”

Sherlock just smiles evasively. “Anderson processed the scene. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Anderson?” Lestrade glances over the detective’s shoulder at the doorway. “He’s still out.”

“Either the staircase has developed a deviated septum, or he’s back,” Sherlock retorts, taking advantage of Lestrade’s averted gaze to pocket the bullet. John watches the exchange with a poorly suppressed grin. The detective stands, turning to the door just as Anderson reappears, a cup of coffee in one hand.

The DI moves to block his path again. “Right, and where do you think you’re going?”

“Well, let’s see,” Sherlock muses. “We’ve inspected the scene, found the obvious clue that Anderson missed—”

“Hang on,” interjects Anderson. “What the devil did I—”

Sherlock overrides him without missing a beat, casually rearranging his scarf. “Oh, don’t look so surprised, Anderson. Frankly, it’s amazing you do as well as you do, intellectual capacity the size of walnut. But I would rather like to make use of a lab, now that we have all the evidence.”

Beside him, John coughs. “Alright then,” he mutters. “You’ve made your point. No need to preen like a bloody great peacock.”

Sherlock’s smug grin slips a bit in spite of the laugh underneath the doctor’s warning. He does not preen. Lestrade holds out a hand to silence Anderson, who is red-faced and spluttering, his nostrils flaring like a bull about to charge.

“You know I can’t just let you walk out of here with evidence,” he tells Sherlock.

“The bullet is a message for me. Even if your men process it, even if they find something, they won’t know what it means.” It’s difficult not to take another swipe at Anderson here, but Sherlock manages—though his discretion is somewhat spoiled by the prideful glare he shoots at John.

The DI is unmoved. “I’m not letting that evidence out of my sight. Last time I let you have free rein of a crime scene, it nearly cost me my job.”

Sherlock bristles. “Only because you were foolish enough to listen to this…this paramecium”—he jerks his head toward Anderson—“and get the chief superintendent involved.” John is rolling his eyes again, but that one was hardly preening—just stating the facts.

“Boys, honestly,” says the doctor, stepping between them. He looks at Lestrade. “He’ll have to use the lab at Bart’s. You come with us, and the evidence never leaves your sight.”

“Fine,” Lestrade says, lips pursed.

“Fine,” Sherlock sighs.

John’s phone vibrates in his pocket, and he pulls it out. Tension in his shoulders, fingers tightening, slight frown—Sherlock knows it’s Mary before he answers. Well, she did say she’d call. Interesting though: yesterday John was relieved to hear Mary’s voice. Today he just looks weary.

The doctor wanders away, lowering his voice with a sidelong glance at Sherlock. The detective recalls his body language yesterday, the way he always managed to place himself between Mary and Sherlock—first intentionally, protecting Mary from Sherlock’s scrutiny, then unconsciously, like they are ammonia and sodium hypochlorite, like allowing them to get close is dangerous for all of them and disastrous for John. Which, Sherlock supposes, is exactly what John believes. And watching him yesterday, wavering between them…

The detective has felt the magnetic pull between them, felt how he moves and John follows. Felt it, but never really been aware of it, until yesterday, when he felt John resisting. If the doctor keeps letting himself be pulled in two directions, he’ll be pulled apart—but he seems determined to divide himself between the two of them. Sherlock fights back a wave of irritation at the thought. He’s never been terribly good at sharing. Shouldn’t have to share—he was mine first.

“—if you’re sure.” Across the room, John’s voice has meandered back into audible range. “No, of course I think it’s important, I just—No, you’re right. We’ll talk.” He rubs at his eyes in a put upon manner that he usually reserves for Sherlock on his bad days. “Well, I can’t exactly get away from him at the moment.” He glances at the detective, realises he’s listening, and lowers his voice again.

Sherlock’s heartbeat goes oddly syncopated for a moment, and he busies himself removing his gloves. A memory surfaces, unbidden—the feeling of his fingers in John’s hair, the smaller man’s hands fisted in his jacket. He pushes it away. Perhaps thinking of Victor has him feeling more vulnerable than usual, but he can’t afford to think this way. John is his friend, but John isn’t…he’s always said he wasn’t…but there is that way that his breath catches whenever Sherlock gets too close, the way he relaxed against his chest when Sherlock held him, the way…

No. He thrusts his hands into his pockets with a bit more force than necessary. He needs to get to Bart’s, get to the lab—back to things that make sense. Chemicals behave the way they ought to. Hearts are so infinitely unreliable.

“Okay then,” John says. “No, I’ll see you in a bit.”

The doctor pockets his phone, and Sherlock raises a questioning eyebrow at him. “I presume we’re to have the pleasure of Mary’s company?” He can’t help it if his voice has gone strangely flat.

“She’s meeting us at Bart’s.”

“Quite the house party this is turning out to be. You’ll be inviting the neighbours next.”

“She wants to talk, and you won’t let me out of your sight. It was there or Baker Street, and now you’ve got a clue to work from and a body on its way to the morgue, I can’t imagine we’ll be back home anytime soon.”

His logic is sound, but Sherlock scowls anyway. “Very well,” he says, and it is most certainly not petulant, so John can stop looking at him like that.

He wraps his hand around the plastic bag in his pocket, tracing the shape of the bullet with one finger.

***

Sherlock crumples a piece of paper in his fist, growling in frustration.

“Hey!” Molly protests. “That’s Mr. Crieff’s post-mortem report!” She snatches the paper from his hand, trying to smooth it. The detective ignores her, leaning on the lab table with both hands, his head hanging between his arms.

John leaves off trying to help Molly sort out the papers—she’s more flustered by his help than by the damage to the document. The two have been awkwardly cordial, Molly falling over herself to apologize, John falling over himself to forgive, but both maintaining an oddly cool professionalism. She smiles at him in a sort of uncomfortable gratitude and excuses herself, disappearing into the hallway with a last glance at Sherlock.

The detective glares after her as she rounds the corner—which is why he sees Mary slip into the lab behind her. She doesn’t say anything when she enters, and Sherlock avoids making eye contact. John hasn’t noticed her yet—perhaps if they both ignore her she will simply go away.

The tension between John and Molly was distracting; the tension between John and Mary will be absolute chaos to his thought process, and all Sherlock wants to do is settle into a rhythm again—the lab, the clues, the experiments…and John beside him, an ear for his endless discourse, someone to talk to so he looks less insane than talking to himself. And, all right. It’s rather nice when John answers back, even if he does have a habit of saying stupid things.

The man in question sighs as if he has heard Sherlock’s thoughts, folding his arms across his chest. “No ideas, I take it?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Sherlock snaps fondly. “Of course I have ideas.”

“So talk us through it. You know how much you enjoy hearing yourself talk.”

Sherlock glares at him, but John’s face is tactfully blank. He may be a horrible liar, but the man can play innocent when he wants to.

“Fine,” says the detective. He moves to the computer, where several enlarged images of the bullet are pulled up. “No primer, no propellant—it’s a dummy. Copper jacket, lead-filled. Nothing unusual in the metallurgy of the bullet. No trace aside from the blood.”

“DNA?”

“It’ll take hours—days really—to finish processing, but I have a theory.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Blood type is A positive.” Sherlock watches John’s face for a reaction.

The doctor’s lips purse as he absorbs the information. “Lots of people are A positive, Sherlock.”

“Not many of them play personal blogger to Sherlock Holmes, though.”

“Should I even bother asking how you know my blood type?” John asks. “Or, for that matter, how a mass murderer knows?”

“I doubt he knows,” says the detective. “Much more likely it’s actually your blood.”

“Ah, well, that’s a comfort.”

“You had blood drawn just a few weeks ago—cholesterol test, I believe. If he’s half as good as I think he is, it wouldn’t be that hard for him to get hold of.”

John’s expression is world-weary as he sighs, “And how long, exactly, have you been following my medical records?” Sherlock just looks at him--Do you really want me to answer?—until John drops his gaze—No, I suppose not.

“No fingerprints,” the detective continues, turning back to the photographs of the bullet. “All that’s left is the damned numbers!”

“233,” the doctor muses. “A date, maybe? Twenty-third of March?”

“Possibly a date. Or a time. Half twenty-three hundred—eleven thirty in the evening. Or two thirty-three in the afternoon. Or a password. Or a pin number. Hell, it might even be a victim count.”

“You’re joking. Two hundred and thirty-three? That’s a bit ambitious, don’t you think?”

The detective shrugs, his gaze fixed on the computer screen. “The bullet is a kind of signature. Moran wasn’t a sniper during his military days, but he got top marks in marksmanship. The bullet itself isn’t military issue, though it’s made to look it.”

John moves closer, looking over his shoulder. “What do you mean, made?”

Sherlock tries to ignore the way John’s breath feels against his neck. “Here.” The detective points at one of the images on the screen, a close up of the bullet’s base. “If this were manufactured by any of the major ammunition suppliers, there would be letters, numbers, something to indicate who made them. You said it yourself—the numbers are wrong. No file marks, either, so he didn’t purchase a bullet and alter it later.”

“Hang on, you’re saying he made this?”

“Just guessing, but—”

“But it’s a good guess,” John finishes for him, and Sherlock smiles faintly. “Why a bullet from a sniper rifle, if he’s not a sniper?”

“Not a sniper by habit,” the detective corrects. “He’s made distance kills before. Moran doesn’t have a preferred method of killing—habits are dangerous. Men who acquire habits tend to get caught. He used a long-range bullet so I know he can find me anywhere. That’s the message—I’m not safe.” He pauses, meeting John’s gaze for a moment, fighting back a flinch as he adds, “<i>You’re</i> not safe.”

He’s not sure how he expected John to react to that, but the doctor surprises him by smiling. “And that’s as close as we get to normal, isn’t it?” he asks, laughing softly.

And I said dangerous, and here you are, Sherlock thinks, smiling back. Again, for a moment they are themselves again, and the detective is struck by the unique balance between them, like two notes in a chord, separate but complementary, fuller, richer, somehow more together than they ever could be apart.

“John?” Mary’s voice cuts through the swelling harmony in Sherlock’s mind, making the notes turn sour. The doctor jumps a little, turning toward the door, and Sherlock frowns. He’d halfway forgotten the woman was still standing there, and her intrusion leaves him feeling surly.

“Mary? Christ, how long have you been there?” John crosses the room to her, but he hesitates when he reaches her side, clearly uncertain how he ought to greet her. There is a momentary awkwardness that Sherlock inwardly savours before Mary brushes her lips across John’s cheek.

“A few minutes,” she says in answer to his question. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Quite right,” Sherlock mutters.

John looks at him. “What was that?”

“Oh…a light,” says the detective, putting on an innocent face and patting at his pockets. He withdraws a lighter and his cigarettes, enjoying the look of disapproval that clouds John’s face. “Ah, never mind. I’ll just be outside then. Sure you two have lots to talk about.”

He brushes past them into the hallway, letting the door swing shut behind him. He strides a few steps down the hallway for good show, then doubles back to lean against the wall just outside the door, casually lighting a cigarette. He smokes it reflectively, closing his eyes to better focus on catching the snatches of conversation he can hear through the door.

***

After Sherlock leaves, Mary stands still for a moment, watching the door. Her eyebrows draw together, pinching a thoughtful crease into her forehead. “He knew I was here,” she says softly, as if she’s speaking to herself.

“What, Sherlock?”

She shakes herself, glancing back at John. “He saw me come in, I’m almost certain. He just chose to ignore me.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not exactly the type to say hello.”

Mary doesn’t respond to that, just squeezes her lips together and looks up at him.

The doctor sighs. “Alright, so what, then? You want me to go after him, ask him to apologise? It’s just the way he is, Mary.”

“You mentioned.”

John finds a stool and sinks down onto it, leaning his elbows on the lab table. He indicates another for Mary. This conversation is not exactly off to a great start, and he has a feeling he’ll want to be sitting down for the rest.

“You said you wanted to talk,” he reminds her.

She hesitates before coming to sit beside him. “John…” She says his name like it’s porcelain—fragile. It draws him out of his irritation, softens his heart and makes him draw her close. He kisses the side of her forehead, and it takes everything in him not to apologise again.

“What’s happening to us?” she asks quietly. “What’s happening to <i>you</i>?”

“Mary, it’s not—”

“Don’t say it’s nothing, because you know that’s a lie.”

Yes, he knows it’s a lie. But that doesn’t mean he can explain it. “We can get through this,” he says instead. “A lot has happened in the last few days. A lot of things I thought were over…”

He stops, taking a deep breath, and Mary jumps in.

“That’s what I’m talking about, John. Listen to yourself. You talk like…I don’t even know.” She pulls away from him. “I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how this man can come back from the dead, how he can just…just take you from me.”

“Come on.” John tries to laugh, but Mary’s eyes are tearing up, and his smile goes crooked. “Hey, come on. He’s not taking me from anyone.”

She looks at him with wide eyes. “You really don’t see it? God, John. Since he’s been back, you’ve been…”

“I know I’ve been angry, but I think—”

“Angry?” Now she does laugh, but the sound is enough to wipe the last shred of humour from his face. “John, you haven’t been angry, you’ve been…I don’t know. Alive. I’ve never seen you like this before. You yell, you…Christ, you punch people”—she ignores his eye roll, gesturing to the lab around them—“you do…whatever all this is, looking at dead bodies and being hunted by murderers and…”

“Hey,” he cuts in, “slow down. This is just…it won’t be like this, not all the time.”

Mary shakes her head. “That’s not it. I don’t…all of this, it’s not me, you know that. But I don’t mind that it’s you. I mind that…that I never knew it was you.” Another pause, as she wipes at her eyes. “Why didn’t I know, John?”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. To any of it. He can’t even bring himself to meet her gaze. “I guess I just thought it didn’t fit together. My old life, I mean. I couldn’t be who I was with Sherlock…not with you. Not at all. It just…it hurt too much.”

“And now he’s back, and you can’t be both people, John. You can’t be his John and mine.”

The doctor takes a deep breath, reaching for her hand. He wants to hold her, but that doesn’t feel fair, somehow. “Can I at least…can you give me some time, Mary? God, so much has happened. You can’t ask me to choose—”

“Choose?” She looks genuinely surprised, and her voice softens. She lays one of her hands against his cheek, the gesture so gentle it breaks his heart. “Oh, John. He’s right, you know.”

“What?”

“You’re an idiot,” she sighs, smiling sadly. She cuts off his question with a finger across his lips. “I’ve been telling you I loved you for months, and I always wondered why you couldn’t say it back. At first I thought it was just you being male, being afraid of commitment…but that wasn’t it. You’re more committed than any man I’ve ever met. You were just…already committed to someone else.” She leans in and brushes her lips across his, and John is too overwhelmed to do anything but sit and stare. “I just wish it was me,” she whispers.

“Mary…”

She shakes her head again, her eyes starting to tear up once more. She gives him one last kiss. “Goodbye, John Watson,” she says. There is no anger in her voice, no heat, only a kind of resigned sorrow. She pushes away from him and hurries for the door, and John can only watch her go.

***

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