Chapter Text
Cabs. Cabs everywhere. John never could understand how Sherlock always managed to find a cab within minutes of leaving whatever building he was tearing through at the time. Did he pay the cab company to just have cars circling the block ready for him?
He wouldn’t put it past the eccentric detective, really.
John shook his head clear of errant thoughts and hastened after Sherlock, who was gone off with the wind, chasing after the scent of whatever he was looking for now. John followed Sherlock’s confident stride as he couldn’t follow his brilliant mind, standing just behind his new friend’s right shoulder, a silent guardian.
Speaking of cabs, Sherlock had hailed one effortlessly, only glancing up from his phone once before the car was smoothly pulling over. John wondered who Sherlock was furiously texting that he couldn’t even spare more than a second to look for transport.
Despite how short their acquaintance was, John knew that Sherlock detested clambering into cabs and sliding gracelessly over seats. Seeing Sherlock still with his head bent over his phone, John moved forward to slide into the cab before him and prevent Sherlock the hated awkwardness. Sherlock stopped him before he could open the door.
“This one’s mine, get the next one.”
John stared as Sherlock gracefully sat himself behind the driver and the cab disappeared without him. He couldn’t quite believe the ridiculousness of paying two cab fares to get two people to one place, but shook his head in resignation. John firmly believed that he’d never understand Sherlock Holmes.
He quickly hailed another overly convenient cab - he was definitely having a talk with Sherlock after this - and asked the driver to follow in Sherlock’s wake. As the car pulled smoothly away from the curb and took off after the speeding cab, John couldn’t help but wonder just what the hell Sherlock was doing.
---
[Have lead, following up now. -SH]
Mycroft sighed to himself, the near silent gust of air echoing through the deathly quiet of the tea room. Of course his idiot of a charge would gallivant off after the serial murderer with no back up, no weapons to speak of, and no fall back plans. Sometimes it was so blatantly obvious that Harry Potter was behind those blue eyes that Mycroft was surprised Wizarding Britain hadn’t figured it out yet.
Then again, it pays to do business with the Goblins first and foremost. Lovely chaps, excellent senses of humour.
Mycroft placed aside his newspaper and re read the text message, pondering the logistics of Sherlock’s latest half-concocted venture. He idly tapped his foot against the leg of his side table, chewing the inside of his cheek. Filthy habit, but one does pick up such things in times of stress and boredom.
He just wasn’t sure which of those this instance counted as.
Finally he sighed again and began to respond, mind whirling with the next steps of this - by now - routine drama.
[Do be careful, I hate cleaning up after you. -MH]
That sent, Mycroft finished his cake and rose elegantly from his seat, strolling towards the exit with his umbrella in hand. There was much to be done. His own personal Obliviators would need to be on stand by, as would the London PD and Scotland Yard. Then there was fire, ambulance, news, government, army, and church to notify - best to have all bases covered.
Oh, and of course he’d have to call Mummy.
Mycroft sighed yet again; Sherlock really did attract the most tedious of troubles.
Stepping out into the cool air of even, Mycroft greeted his assistant with a nod as he slid into his personal car, her not far behind. Mycroft glanced out the window briefly before returning his attention to his phone, already tapping away notifications for all relevant parties.
“I wonder, my dear, could you get a tracker onto my errant brother’s mobile phone?” Mycroft asked idly, noting the way that she didn’t even look away from her device as she accepted her task. Single-minded focus was an admirable quality.
Mycroft sent off his messages, receiving confirmation from them all - mostly in the form of violent swearing and “Not again” - before hitting speed dial and holding the phone four centimetres away from his ear. Such unhygienic devices, yet so useful.
The phone rang twice before it was answered. Mycroft smiled thinly.
“Hello, Mummy.”
---
[I’m always careful. -SH]
Sherlock sent his reply off even as the cab pulled into a schoolyard, abandoned for the night. It was charming, really, the thought the killer put into his locations. Traumatising children was so very quaint.
“Are you ready, Mr ‘Olmes?”
Sherlock glanced to the cabbie in front of him. He was so old, so frail, so ill. It was so utterly obvious that he would be the killer. Why had it taken him so long to piece it all together? And what could he possibly have done to convince each of his victims to kill themselves?
A brief nod had the man - Phil he had said his name was - ambling his way into the building, Sherlock hot at his heels. His phone was left in the cab, as per Phil’s insistence, but Sherlock didn’t care about that. No, this little predicament was far more interesting than any messages Mycroft could possibly come up with.
---
[That’s what worries me. -MH]
Sherlock smirked as Phil pulled out two little jars - vials, even - each containing a single, identical pill. They appeared harmless. Something you’d pick up from a Chemist or, if you were Sherlock, made yourself in your bathroom sink. There was no really way to distinguish between them - same size, same shape, same colour, same number of blue specks in a near identical pattern - and yet one would kill, the other cure. It was a game, a joke, a riddle.
Sherlock paused. A riddle...
All of a sudden, Sherlock was no longer in an abandoned school room playing Russian Roulette with a terminal cabbie. He was back, over a decade in time and several hundred kilometres north, in a dungeon in a castle. Another time, another life-or-death scenario, another riddle.
Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind...
---
[Sherlock. -MH]
Sherlock remembered the fear, the panic of his eleven year old self at the seemingly impossible choice before him. So many ways to die, so many ways to fail, only one way to move forward, but forward was also death. Sherlock swallowed down the bile that threatened to claw its way up his throat. It was different now, he was older, wiser, smarter, he’d figure this riddle out no problem.
It was easy. It had to be easy.
But the memory was making way for others. Chess matches and fights and dungeons and potions and voices, so many voices, all crowding in. There was a chink in the armour, a hole in the wall, and Sherlock’s past was battering at the door, breaking its way into his mind. Voices, spells, yelling, crying, swirling colours and sounds and overwhelming pain and guilt and fear.
He couldn’t escape. He couldn’t get away. He was trapped.
Trapped in his own mind, his last defence.
Oh no...
---
[Sherlock, respond immediately. -MH]
Sherlock couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Everything was collapsing around him, all his carefully constructed defences razed to the ground in the face of two, tiny, insignificant little pills.
Voices, screaming, muttering, condemning from every side battered his ears and tore at his heart. Years of death and danger and deceit all coming back to him all at once. Sherlock clapped his hands over his ears, staggering away from the choice that bloody choice ...
Danger lies before you....
Phil’s voice, asking him to hurry up, mingled with the voices of the past screeching at him. Ron’s hoarse shouting - should’ve known you’d get in, no point telling me how to do it too though, huh? No need to tell your best friend - Hermione’s stern ranting - Harry, you can’t! You’ll get us all killed, or worse expelled! - Ginny’s ear-grating whining - Stop moping, Harry! Talk to me, Harry! Why don’t you love me, Harry! - it was all too much. Too much. Too much!
Danger...
He had to focus, he had to think, he had to get away from the memories, the guilt, the voices...
Ungrateful Brat Saviour Destroyer Boy-Who-Lived Chosen One Saint Potter Boy Scarhead Champion Lunatic Man-Who-Killed Dangerous Criminal Coward FREAK...
Sherlock shook his head furiously, glaring at the two little pills in their two little jars, so seemingly innocent and yet dripping with the guilt and pain of years of suffering. Phil was sitting there, smiling serenely as Sherlock fell apart, scratching at his head and snarling under his breath. Sherlock glared at him hatefully - it was all his fault, him and that stupid bloody pill and his stupid bloody smile and the stupid bloody voices.
Too dangerous to be left free too unstable to be left alone unnatural unstable ungrateful freak freak FREAK …
---
[Damnit Sherlock! -MH]
“Shut up!” Sherlock shouted over Phil, who paused in his reminiscing of his prior victims to watch curiously. Sherlock paced and growled and tried to rid himself of the memories, the betrayal. He was too calm, too quiet, too content to sit and watch.
Danger...
Sherlock span on one heel, stomping in the opposite direction as he paced and paced and thought and thought. Forcing his mind beyond the voices, beyond the fear, beyond the past to focus on the present danger. A choice, like the one from years ago. A riddle to be pondered and solved and beaten.
Beaten.
Get back here Boy or I’ll whip you till you bleed -
No. Sherlock span and paced the opposite direction. He’d defeat this like he’d defeated every other challenge in his life. He’d win and go home and be Sherlock Holmes. Harry Potter was gone, a memory, a shadow, a voice among thousands. Sherlock Holmes was his life now, he’d never go back.
For your own good, for the Greater Good -
Sherlock shook his head and stared at the jars with their pills, burning the image into his mind and using it to fend off the memories. It was only a riddle, only a riddle.
Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind...
Sherlock froze, pausing in the middle of his pacing as he felt it. A tingling on the back of his neck, a secondary sense telling him that there was something behind him, someone behind him, watching. Waiting. Ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. A glance to Phil told Sherlock that he hadn’t noticed as the old man stood and started to slowly approach Sherlock, gun aimed for his stomach. A long, slow, painful death.
Much like Phil’s own.
The tingling was still there, irritating, distracting...
Safety lies behind...
Sherlock stood straight, eyes wide, spinning around just in time to hear a gunshot from outside the window behind him. He threw himself left and down, cursing as his leg hit one of the spindly stools scattered about the room. A pained cry had Sherlock’s head snapping up in time to see Phil - desperate, dying Phil - clutch at his chest. They locked eyes, Sherlock’s wide and Phil’s resigned, before the cabbie crumpled to the floor, blood spreading from the wound and staining his home-knitted cardigan. Sherlock inched closer, checking for a pulse, a sign that he would live.
There was none.
Sherlock sighed, staggering to his feet. He looked around himself for some clue, some sign of what had happened. His eye caught the two jars on the table, still torturing him. Two quick steps and a sweep of the hand, and the two jars shattered against the cold linoleum floor. Sherlock watched the pills bounce against the body of the Cabbie Murderer with a detached sort of satisfaction.
It was over, he’d beaten the past, forced back into his nightmares where it belonged. He’d solved the case. He was alive. He was -
Not all right. Not even a little bit. But he could be, in time. This episode was just that - brief, over quickly, to be ignored or used to strengthen resolve. He would be fine, good, better, in time.
Sherlock nodded to himself and turned towards the door, just in time for it to burst open.
---
[We’ve got him, boss.]
[About time. -MH]
---
John ducked under the crime tape and wandered over to Lestrade, who seemed to be talking to an overgrown, emaciated, sulking teenager wrapped in a large orange towel. As he got closer, John realised that said sulky child was Sherlock Holmes, and he laughed softly to himself. Sherlock was all right, he was alive and annoying the living crap out of everyone around him.
All was well.
“This is ridiculous, I’m perfectly fine! I don’t understand why I’ve got to have this blanket on me-” Sherlock was ranting quite impressively, scowl bested only by the positively gleeful look on Lestrade’s face at the sight of the bane of his existence so indisposed - even if it was arbitrary.
“It’s a shock blanket, Sherlock. For the shock,” the detective inspector spoke slowly, clearly relishing the words ‘Sherlock’ and ‘shock’ being so close together. If anything Sherlock managed to look even more indignant, and John snorted.
“Shock?! I’m not in shock, there was absolutely nothing shocking about any of the night’s proceedings, it was all rather boring, so if I could please be excused-”
“Nope, sorry, no can do,” Lestrade didn’t look sorry at all. “You have to stay here until the paramedics have cleared you. Now, you stay here while I go start figuring out who fired that gun.”
John paused at this, shifted nervously. Sherlock would know, he was too sharp to miss that John was the assailant. John winced, Sherlock’s pride would lead him to blurting out the answer, and John would have to face a trial. He smiled, a little bitterly, to himself. He wouldn’t really mind, going to jail. Not if it was for a friend. Even as John drew himself up, ready to be arrested, Sherlock began to speak.
“Oh you’re such an idiot, Lestrade, it’s obvious who the killer was. Ex-military, steady in grip and experienced with a weapon of that calibre. It was male, probably shooting from shoulder height from the next building over, making his height about...”
John saw Sherlock spot him, and his eyes widen in realisation. John offered him a weak smile and a nod, silently saying that it was all right, that he would accept the consequences of his actions. Sherlock frowned, his lips moving as if he were mumbling to himself. John straightened his shoulders, forcing himself to relax, waiting for the words. It was John Watson ...
“Shock.”
What?
John stared straight to Sherlock, who was standing up, in Lestrade’s face, waving his awful orange blanket around like a cape. John couldn’t believe his eyes as Sherlock began to shudder and jiggle and flail like a common frightened civilian. It was so different from the controlled way he moved normally, until John noticed the way the jiggles never lasted more than a few seconds, and the shuddering was exaggerated. This was planned. John sighed in relief.
“I’m in shock, Lestrade. Ignore me, I’m in shock. See? Look at my blanket!”
John couldn’t help but laugh at the utterly bemused look on Lestrade’s face, relief coursing through his veins. He was safe. Sherlock was safe. Everything was all right. He turned away from the scene and move back out into the open, waiting for Sherlock to finish being ‘shocked’.
“Th... Thank you, John.”
John span to see Sherlock, looking decidedly anxious and fidgety and the most genuine John had ever seen him. He smiled, clapping Sherlock on the back and shrugging self-deprecatingly.
“What’re friends for, eh?”
“Friends... I’m not very good at friends,” Sherlock frowned, and John laughed.
“Me neither.”
Sherlock grinned weakly, and John sighed happily. He gestured towards home with a raised eyebrow, and Sherlock nodded, pushing past to lead the way back to Baker Street. Over his shoulder John heard Lestrade shouting for them to come back, and smothered a laugh. Sherlock shot a mischievous look over his shoulder and called back.
“I’m keeping the blanket!”