pull me out of the air crash, pull me out of the lake

[could_be_dangerous]

Sherlock counts the days. That's what he does now, he counts days, like notching the stock of a rifle to commemorate every kill. It's a ritual enacted when he sits, when he rests, and sometimes he feels like he does it in his sleep. They're imprinted in his bones, and at first each one cuts deep, down to the marrow where the real tenderness is. After a while, though, there are so many that even the number becomes meaningless. Enumeration ceases to be a useful tool. Or maybe he just hasn't got any bones yet.

It's worked its way into his chest by the time he reaches London. Not the counting, but the sickness, some minor infection of the upper respiratory tract picked up somewhere in the vicinity of Arkhangelsk which ought to have worked itself out days ago, but hasn't. Plenty of reasons for that, more factors than bear thinking about but he's got nothing better to do so he works them out anyway, stretches out a long thread of blame which ultimately ends him back up at the very start, with his mother and his father and one particularly untimely fuck. He very much doubts that either of them had expected this.

Nor had he, really, which ought to be lovely but isn't, not today. And of course the important factors are far more immediate. Too weak. Too exhausted. Not enough food, sorry excuses for shelter, missed opportunities. Either way each breath is heavy, rattles in his chest when he lays on his back. Sometimes something catches and he explodes into nothing but a body wracked by a hacking cough, mind momentarily superseded by the far more important and somehow all-encompassing task of preventing him from aspirating his own mucous. Frankly he wonders, every time, every time he sits hunched over with reddened cheeks and reddened lips, dizzy for lack of air, why his body bothers. The bronchitis is only getting worse.

It would be better, perhaps, if he were coming back to London under his own power, of his own will, instead of tied up and shoved in the back of a van with a sullen, heavy-browed sot who reeks of alcohol and piss and says nothing, but seems to have grown fond of giving Sherlock a boot to the ribs when he speaks, and now even when he coughs, as though the pain might somehow dissuade an autonomic response. The fucking idiot. Sherlock can see hundreds of things about him but none of them particularly matter when the fellow holds all the cards, and possibly can't speak English anyway. That Sherlock can't tell. Perhaps he's just astoundingly good at pretending.

At least he knows where he's going and to whom. The face that greets him when he's hauled blinking into the daylight isn't unexpected. Still, it'd be a bit disheartening for anyone who knows Colonel Sebastian Moran to face him like this, to be taken by the jaw and forced to meet his smiling gaze. Thick, callused fingers press against the joint that binds mandible to skull. More force and he could dislocate it. For a moment Sherlock thinks he means to. He coughs, mouth closed, restrained, almost polite. Moran releases him with a curled lip.

They're going to play a game. It wouldn't be as good a game as Moriarty's if they played fair, this he admits, so he's not going to play fair. This time it doesn't matter who wins. In the end, Sherlock will still lose, and that's a promise.

Two days later a small, nondescript, nameless man with strangely shifty eyes cuts a lock of hair from Sherlock's head and stuffs it in an envelope. Moran tells him that evening when he stops in, smiling conspiratorially, that everything is in place.

One day after that Moran stands over Sherlock and makes the call.

“Doctor Watson, isn't it? No, we haven't spoken before. I have a proposition for you. An hour ago I dispatched a courier--” a rat-faced man Sherlock recognises; he's on the list “--to deliver a parcel to your doorstep. It should have arrived by now. In it, you will find an item which may be of some interest to you, along with some papers. Take particular note of the mobile number enclosed. Should the contents of the parcel prove persuasive enough, that is the number you must call to accept my offer. If not... walk away. This is a game you play of your own free will.”

Either way, in the end, Sherlock Holmes dies. But nobody ever says that much at the start.

Comments

[theconsultingblogger]

There was a silence that came over the rooms on Bakerstreet that was something that no one it seemed could grow accustomed too. No one being John. Growing accustomed to was somewhere along the lines of 'he had grown so much around Sherlock to ignore his constant stream of thought (verbalized)'. Missing the severed heads and thumbs in the fridge didn't come until the sixth month after Holmes had taken the leap out of everyone (read: his) life. John had not grown used to the endless photos being taken of him or Sherlock during their exploits and would not miss it.

What he had missed was the man himself. For a bit after his death; all it seemed he was forced to endure were the slanderous things that the press would put out there. Richard Brooks committing suicide because of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes being implicated in many horrible crimes that he had solved, that he wasn't even involved in, and some 'sources' that came out to say that he was some sort of psychopath to those that knew him. Sociopath, perhaps. Living with Sherlock was a life lesson in and of itself about of patience.

But living without Sherlock was akin to living the life he had been before. He didn't sleep much, the active life he kept up with Holmes was a thing of the past. Truthfully, the authorities didn't need the doctor without the detective. He didn't blame them in the tiniest.

He didn't expect anyone else to blame him for attempting to go back to work as a doctor at the clinic. His life had become automatic at best at this junction in his life, but he suspected that he would be able to move. He lived under that assumption that he would be able to move on from the life that he lived, but John did nothing if not dwell on these sorts of things. He would have continued to do so if he hadn't received the mysterious parcel and the phone call. A normal person would call the authorities; thankfully anyone could could count on John not being so normal when the lock of hair reminded him too much of a ghost.

First he checked if the grave site had been disturbed; standing before it as he dialed the number on the mobile phone that had been in the package along with the lock of hair. "I have no idea what your game is," but he was curious, "but I really have no other choice." If the person in question was truly Sherlock...well, first of all he had listened for once to someone other than himself not to be dead. But he had overall, made a small handful feel the anguish of him dying.

He supposed that was quite like Sherlock all together.

[could_be_dangerous]

Sherlock hadn't meant it. How often did he mean it, the hurting? Save when it had a purpose, almost never. He certainly hadn't chosen to be forced into jumping. On the contrary, if one drew it back to its logical source, John's bloody blog had more to do with it than his own conscious choice.

Nor did he choose this, the filthy mattress on the floor, the ragged clothes, the hollow chest and exposed ribs. The sickness in him, the mobile phone clutched in his hand. The number.

“You're allowed to help him,” Moran had said, crouching over him and grinning, patting his cheek. “'Course you are. I hope you will. I hope he makes it in time, Sherlock Holmes, because I want him to see you die.”

He'd said nothing. And now he waits, waits for John to decide. To ring the number on the card tucked into the package, or to give it up as a prank. Sherlock wouldn't blame him. It has all the markings of one.

It is one, really, after a fashion. Still, he waits.

On the other side of the card from the package, he knows, is a set of coordinates, and there something waits. A puzzle. A trail of breadcrumbs. Again, again. Not very creative. Nothing new under the sun.

[theconsultingblogger]

Truthfully, he never expected Sherlock to know how much that it would hurt the friend(s) he left behind. John especially, since he had built his life around the man; so recently and so quickly. Still John wasn't going to be left a fool when it came to the little task the faceless man had sent him on when he received the package that may have confirmed that Sherlock was still amongst the living. A part of him was angry, a larger part relieved, and a small part felt a little ashamed about the relief that washed over him. As if his final departing words over Sherlock's headstone was heard by something that he had never cared to believe in.

It didn't take a genius, detective, or genius detective to look through the parcel. Locate the card with the number on it and the coordinates to the location the voice wanted him to go to.

John came prepared, his own phone ready in his pocket. His gun hidden on his person just in case this was a trap. Because nothing ever fell into their laps so easily. John picked up the mobile once again before dialing the number that was given to him. "If this is some sort of sick joke, I can promise you it isn't that funny at all." When there was no reply, the doctor almost felt himself become undone. "Who is this and what do you want?" 'Where is he?' remained unasked and quieted. Because, of course, he wanted to speak to Sherlock again.

He wanted to know if he was still alive. Even if he couldn't see him, or wouldn't be able to. It was always nice to know in the very least.

[could_be_dangerous]

When the mobile does ring Sherlock's heart pounds, pulse in his throat, rapid and dizzying and unsettlingly weak. His hands shake and for a moment he's terrified he'll miss the call, too clumsy to answer properly, or he'll hang up accidentally. The mobile can't make outgoing calls. He's tried. He'd be done for, that's it, and no last words.

Then again, he has already said those. There is that.

But he does answer. And for a moment he just breathes, ragged, obviously ill, and when the words do come, they come all at once, in a flood. He's only so much time to get them out.

“John, you've got to stop, you've got to stop now; it isn't a game, it's a trap.” The door to his cell slams open. “He's a sniper, one of the best in the world. Go home. Forget it, go--”

Sherlock's voice is cut off in a rush of air, a grunt as a boot collides viciously with his solar plexus, knocking the wind from his lungs. For a time he simply lays on the filthy mattress, head swimming, gasping shallowly, and then all at once air rushes in, a moment's relief before a violent coughing fit forces it back out again.

When it passes he picks up the mobile from where it's fallen, scrabbling at it with weak fingers. “Don't,” Moran snarls. “Say what you're supposed to say.”

Sherlock looks up at him from the corner of his eye and stares his unblinking understanding.

“A clock,” he says into the mobile. “You're looking for a wooden clock. Bit of rubbish in an empty lot; that's all they've told me.”

[theconsultingblogger]

What he truly had been expecting was for the other man to answer the phone. What he hadn't expected was for Holmes to do so. The months of mourning for Sherlock had been for naught. He should have known, suicide wasn't the thing that would kill Sherlock Holmes it would've been something else.

Unfortunately, he would never put into thought about what had the possibility of killing the consulting detective. It never really occurred to him that Sherlock would actually be the individual in mortal danger waiting for John to come save him. He supposed it was...bound to happen at some point in their lives. He was just sure it would've happened when Sherlock hadn't faked his death. The conversation didn't merit him asking a large amount of questions as to why he had faked his death or where he was.

He would find him soon enough. Other than that, you didn't think John would know it was a trap by now? And if that was the case, he was horribly disappointed in how much Sherlock seemed to underestimate him and his intelligence (read: common sense). "Sherlock..." He didn't sound as good as he would have liked. Asking if he was okay was a stupid question in John's eyes...knowing he was alive would have to do for now as he kept the mobile to his ear as he continued looking for the wooden clock.

The things he went through for the man who had just called him up to say something was 'going to be dangerous'. The man whom just decided a little bit after they had met that he was okay to room with. He wasn't up for playing a game especially with the person who what sounded like hurt Sherlock. The thought of getting Sherlock to communicate without words at this point had crossed his mind and he was almost willing to ask him, but the idea that the man would just end the 'game' was too dangerous for him to allow something that silly to happen.

He realized that he was going to have to play along. "I don't suppose you can tell me where he's hiding?" John looked cautiously around the empty lot and surrounding areas, the last thing he needed was to get shot before he even got to where Sherlock was. He still hadn't even mentioned Sherlock telling him that it was a trap.

He figured the silence was enough of an answer for the detective as anything. John hadn't stopped moving, jogging around the empty lot (to most people he'd just be some odd man who might have been looking for some good cell reception). John was okay with odd.