Chapter Text
Both Greg Lestrade and Mycroft had advised John to wait until morning and not to leave 221B, but John was finding it difficult not to worry and difficult to do nothing. Yes, it was not unusual for Sherlock Holmes to disappear, sometimes even for days on end, when working on a case, but something was different this time, and John was uneasy. For one, Sherlock had left his phone behind, which he almost never did. Also, at least as far as John was aware, he was not currently working on any cases. In fact, Sherlock had not been taking any cases for a while now, except for the ones he could solve in under five minutes without leaving the flat… And finally, there was what happened the previous day, which made John highly doubt that Sherlock would choose to go away at this time…
Seeking to occupy himself, John sat down to write at his computer – not a blog post or anything he would publish anytime soon, or ever, for he had no idea how on earth his readers might receive this, or if they would even be interested at all in any of it. He only wanted to document the last three months and try to make sense of them for himself, if not for anyone else.
Even though the events of the previous day were obsessively replaying in his mind, he tried to start at the beginning. He started and stopped several times, deleting the first few sentences and restarting again and again. Finally, he found it easier to write if he still addressed his readers as if writing a new blog post…
If you are expecting a story of yet another adventure or mystery, I should warn you in advance that this is not that kind of story, not this time. It has been a while since my last post, and the reason for this is that, in the last three months or so, Sherlock Holmes and I have not embarked on any memorable crime solving adventures. But as I write this, Sherlock is missing under suspicious circumstances, and that in itself is a mystery… So, I give you here a brief account of the last several months, in the hope that, either a clue will appear as to where he might be, or Sherlock himself will barge into the flat with a mad explanation for where he was all day, thus ending the need for me to write this at all…
Just over three months ago, as you know from my last entry, it was revealed to me that my now ex-wife Mary was an assassin, and that it was she who had shot Sherlock in the chest just a few days prior to this revelation. She tried to kill him because he had found out about her true identity and planned to tell me about it. I also found out at the same time that she had lied about being pregnant. Sherlock, of course, was the one who made all this known to me. He had escaped from the hospital where he was recovering and lured Mary into a trap that tricked her into revealing the truth to me, but you know all that already… Right there at the Empty Houses with her face projected on the façade, the police arrested Mary, just as Sherlock collapsed in terrible pain again and was taken back to hospital. I moved back into 221B Baker Street that night, after being reassured that Sherlock was stable again, and I began sinking into a deep depression.
I was so unwell at the time that I had to take a week off work. I tried to visit Sherlock in hospital every other day or so and could barely manage to stay longer than half an hour before returning home to wallow in the misery of my failed marriage and the pain of Mary’s betrayal, internally tearing myself to shreds for my grave errors in judgement, my naivete, my shame… Most of all, I dwelled on the fake pregnancy. Why did she do that? We were already married! What was the point? Why did she have to do that to me? And how did she expect me, her husband, not to mention a doctor, to continue to fall for the lie longer than a couple of weeks? I considered visiting her in prison just to ask her that question, but I could not bring myself to ever look at her again.
Much to my surprise, Sherlock seemed to have been harassing Greg Lestrade, Molly Hooper, and Mrs. Hudson to check on me daily, and he texted me a lot himself. Mostly, he sent silly jokes and memes he was finding on the internet, mostly about assassins – behavior I cannot remember him ever engaging in before. A couple of the jokes I remember that did make me chuckle were memes that featured an assassin from a popular video game, but of course Sherlock did not know that himself when he sent them and only saw that they fit the events of the night he was shot. The first joke showed the hooded assassin posing dramatically for the camera alongside the text: “I don’t always climb buildings, but when I do, I ignore the ladder two feet away,” and he followed it up with a correction: “I ignore the *lift,” because, of course, Sherlock has to correct everything…! The other one showed the same video game assassin standing surrounded by dead bodies on the ground, and the text read: No one will notice…
When I visited Sherlock in hospital, he genuinely asked how I was feeling and constantly tried to make charming jokes, sometimes tried too hard. I found all this rather odd and suspicious, as Sherlock only ever behaved this way when trying to apologize or make up for having done or said something hurtful, insensitive, or infuriating to me, and even then, he would not do so for days on end! But this was only the beginning.
He was in quite a hurry to be released from hospital, which he finally was about a week or so later, and he continued his recovery at home. I was still in the depths of my worst bout of depression since his fake suicide and spent most of my time either in my room or at work. Or at least I tried to spend most of my time in my room. The truth is that Sherlock didn’t let me. At first, I was very irritated by his incessant tricks to get me to come out and sit with him: blaring the television at full volume until I came out to turn it off, burning food on the stove so that I would come out and prevent a fire, pretending he was still too weak to answer the door when the bell rang (he definitely was not), and sometimes just yelling my name repeatedly from the living room until I got angry enough to come out and shout at him… But I soon realized that his intentions were unselfish. He wasn’t just bored; he wanted to keep me company and keep my mind off Mary. In his own ridiculous way, he was trying to take care of me! When I did resign to leave my room, he kept making me drinks, bringing me meals, and playing cheerful music on the violin… I’ll admit that it did help a bit, although I had never experienced Sherlock being so consistently caring and focused on me, and I was more than a little confused…
Old feelings and suspicions that I used to have and had long abandoned or given up on resolving were resurfacing even as I tried hard to resist them. I had already accepted years ago that my singular partnership with Sherlock could never be anything other than an unusually, uncomfortably, intense platonic friendship. I had long made peace with this, or thought I had… Also, Sherlock faking his suicide and not telling me for two whole years that he was alive had really broken something between us that I don’t think could ever be totally fixed… But here he was, with Mary gone, Moriarty gone, and no more arch enemies in sight, with the two of us just sitting at home recovering in every sense of the word, trying to heal, there he was being…oddly, irresistibly charming, and occasionally giving me that long-forgotten sensation that he had something to say and was afraid or didn’t know how to say it. Yes, he was often irritating, awkward, and ridiculous, but that’s just how he is! And most of the time, at least in retrospect, I admit I found it all rather endearing…
This continued as he got stronger and as his recovery was nearly complete. I wasn’t yet up for going out on cases, so he simply refused to take any that required leaving the flat. I told him he didn’t have to do that and that I was well enough to be left alone, but he stayed anyway and claimed he could use some time off… I have never, since the day I met him, heard Sherlock Holmes speak of taking time off…
Yesterday morning, with the air of someone trying to get something over and done with as quickly as possible, Sherlock informed me that Mary was murdered in prison a couple of days earlier… He broke the news to me as gently as he knew how, which was not very gently by most people’s standards, but then he sat and waited apprehensively for my response. To my own surprise, I found that the news did not affect me as much as I thought it should. To a large extent, Mary was already dead to me from the moment her truth came out. She had lied to me about nearly everything since the day I met her, betrayed me, and almost killed my best friend. If I was reeling from the effect of her presence in my life, it was not because I still had any love for her, it was because I was trying to rebuild my life after she had nearly destroyed it. So, when Sherlock asked me if I was okay after hearing the news, I could not say that I was, because I wasn’t, but I had questions…
First, I asked him who killed her. “Oh, I don’t know yet,” he answered. “Probably someone dangerous she worked with found out she was in custody and arranged a hit on her before she could start spilling secrets to get her sentence reduced…or someone she wronged who wanted revenge…” Those seemed like logical potential explanations.
The rest of my questions were more out of hurt than desire to have answers, and I didn’t really expect any. “Why did Mary pretend to be pregnant? Why did she do that to me? Why did she come into my life in the first place? If she didn’t love me, why did she bother?”
But an answer did eventually come from Sherlock, after a lengthy silence, and it was nothing I ever expected to hear. Forgive me if I cannot recall his exact words, but I will try my best.
“Do you really think she didn’t love you, John? I wouldn’t necessarily say that she didn’t,” he said. “She probably did…but I believe her love for you was selfish…possessive… If you remember, back at the Empty Houses, she said about you finding out the truth, ‘It would break him, and I will lose him forever…and believe me when I say there is nothing in the world that I wouldn’t do to stop that from happening.’ Clearly, this included murder, as you already know… She would have rather murdered me, your…best friend, and kept you in the dark about who she was for the rest of your lives, rather than risk losing you by telling the truth…”
This still did not explain the fake pregnancy. So, after hesitating again (this seemed to be nerve-wracking for him to talk about for reasons unclear to me at first), Sherlock continued his theory. “I think she felt threatened, John, and she thought that making you think she was pregnant would keep you by her side long enough until she could guarantee your loyalty or my silence…or until she could get me out of her way for good.” He said the last few words very quickly before suddenly acting very interested in his cup of tea. I, of course, understood almost nothing of this.
“Threatened how? Why?” I asked. “I had just married her! And how the hell was she going to keep up the fake pregnancy anyway? What was she going to do when I figured it out?”
“Oh, she never would have let it go on for that long. She probably would have faked a miscarriage or something soon enough, which would have also kept you by her side for a while because of the way you are… You would have felt responsible for her, stayed and taken care of her… Until maybe she could get pregnant for real or think of some other plan… She just wanted to maintain the illusion long enough to draw you closer and me further away…”
“You?” My confusion only intensified. “Why has this got anything to do with you…? Why would she want you out of the way even before you even knew about her lies?”
And this, my friends, was the moment at which everything changed… In response to my question, Sherlock’s expression became deeply sad, and he simply looked into my eyes and did not look away but said nothing. I looked back, trying to understand, trying to dare to understand. It took me a while, a very long while, but neither of us looked away as comprehension slowly dawned on me, or at least I thought it did. I didn’t dare to be confident in my conclusion, so I had to be absolutely sure.
“So…can we be clear, because this is…a lot right now, to be honest… You’re saying that Mary… Mary knew, or thought, that…”
“Mary knew what you are to me, John…” Sherlock said.
I confess I started to feel a little lightheaded. “What I am…to you…” I repeated, and he simply looked at me, back to silence. “What…your best friend?” He still said nothing, and I was beginning to feel annoyed and frustrated. I rubbed my face with both hands in exasperation and stood up, and Sherlock’s expression actually became fearful.
“Listen, if you’re not going to be clear–” I started, but he stood up as well and interrupted me earnestly.
“She knew that I love you, John…! That I was, am, in love with you…and have been for a long time… She knew, or at least guessed, that the only thing that kept us apart, well, other than my own idiocy probably, was Moriarty forcing me to kill myself…and that before then, I was afraid that the truth would endanger your life… So, she had to find her own way of keeping things the way she liked them when I came back after those two…terrible years…not dead after all…”
I sat back down in the deafening silence that followed. I was in too much of a shock to say anything for quite some time, but, soon enough, Sherlock continued talking, so I didn’t have to, yet. He too sat back down and seemed to just be trying to fill the uncomfortable silence with theories and explanations.
“Not sure she needed to bother… After what I had done to you by faking my death and not telling you about it, I didn’t think there would ever be a chance for… But anyway, perhaps she got scared when you forgave me rather quickly, and then there was my speech at the wedding, that probably scared her as well… I don’t think she planned to get violent, though, until I found out who she really was… If she had succeeded in killing me, no one would have suspected sweet, pregnant Mary! I was prepared to let everything go when I thought that this was what you wanted, that she was who you wanted… But when I found out the truth, I couldn’t just let her deceive you like that… Not to mention she was incredibly dangerous…”
“Shut up a second, will you?” I was quite overwhelmed by then and was vaguely aware that my shift at the clinic was due to start in less than half an hour. He was looking away now, at last, relieving me from his gaze, and he still seemed afraid and apprehensive. I needed time to process everything I had just heard, but I also didn’t want him to think that I was upset or repelled by his confession. I thought hard about what to say to give myself time.
“Look,” I started, “do you mind if I just think about all this for a bit? Can we talk again tonight…? It’s just… I have to go to work, and this is… This is too important.” He looked up as he heard the last word.
“Important…” he repeated.
“Yes, this is important to me, and I want to discuss it properly.”
He seemed to be somewhat relieved, so I was satisfied that I was not leaving him in too much turmoil.
I had a very distracted day at work, my mind running through nearly every moment I’ve experienced since the day I met him in which I’d had suspicions of his feelings towards me or struggled with my own, and there were many… Some were merely silent looks and moments of mysterious intensity, while others were not so subtle. I had locked all these things away deep in a box in my mind, so extracting them was difficult. They burst out of the box as if desperate for their freedom and zoomed around franticly in my mind as if they were living creatures that had been caged for too long…
A wink and a smile the first day we met… Practically seducing me into accompanying him on a case the very next day… Me asking him if he had a boyfriend and feeling weirdly relieved when he said he didn’t and then weirdly disappointed when he said he wasn’t interested in going out, even though I wasn’t really asking him out… His look after we ran through the streets of London and ended up back at Baker Street, that look as he said, “Says the man at the door,” and I realized that my stubborn psychosomatic limp was miraculously gone… The way I felt in the beginning every time he went off on one of his rapid, ingenious deductions… I wasn’t just impressed, though he clearly tried to impress me, I was fascinated, infatuated…attracted…obsessed. My jealousy of Irene Adler, which she herself saw through immediately… That bloody best man speech at my wedding… My jealousy of Janine even after I was just married to Mary… All the times we risked our lives for each other… So many moments…Too many to have ignored for so long… And to find out now, after more than five years, two of which I lived thinking he was dead, after so much has happened, to find out that these moments were real, that my intuition was right, that he had deliberately repressed his feelings, just as I have, for the sake of friendship and safety, my safety… He was going to let me be with Mary because he thought that would make me happy… It was overwhelmingly painful, all of it, so painful in fact that I was not sure I, or we, could fix it… Could we? Going by the look on his face that morning, just yesterday morning, he at least seemed to want to try…while I went back and forth between feeling hopeful and feeling like I need to run away from Baker Street and hide somewhere…
And so, after work, I came home to find that he had ordered food for us and taken it out of its containers and onto nicer plates on the kitchen table, an endearing effort, I thought and couldn’t help smiling.
“Dinner…?” he asked when I came in, smiling and impeccably dressed. When I didn’t answer immediately, he started nervously babbling. “I considered cooking myself, but I think we both know that would’ve ended in disaster… The chemistry is perfectly simple, and you would think I should be able to follow a recipe, but I just get distracted and burn everything…”
“Thanks…” I was too nervous to eat but sat down anyway, looking at my plate and avoiding his gaze for as long as possible. He didn’t eat either and only looked at me expectantly, nervously.
I tried to look up at him, and, as soon as I managed it, an involuntary sob burst out of me along with a couple of tears. He was quite taken aback by that, even as I regained my composure just as quickly as I had lost it.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry… I just…” I was finally able to hold his gaze for a while. “We have really been a couple of massive idiots, haven’t we?”
After a pause, he started to smile and then we both burst out laughing. It was a strange laugh for me, almost equally sad as it was happy or relieved… We laughed for a minute or two, feeling absolutely ridiculous, and then he slowly started to eat. A few moments later, I started to eat as well. For a while, we did not need to speak, although my mind was buzzing with lots of questions and even more concerns, most of which would have to wait for now. But there was one thing I needed to know right away.
“When did you know?” I asked. “When did you start knowing…?” I knew by his expression that he understood my vaguely worded question.
“Since the night you shot the cabbie,” he answered, and I felt a painful stab in my stomach. “When I looked over and saw you standing by the police cars waiting for me, and I realized that it was you who’d shot him… That’s when it started for me… But I only became sure after our first face-off with Moriarty… By the swimming pool…”
“The night I shot the cabbie,” I repeated unable to suppress some bitterness. “Just an hour or two after giving me the ‘I consider myself married to my work’ speech…!”
He looked down at his plate almost sheepishly. “Yes, that was…unfortunate… But let’s not forget all the times you’ve pointedly yelled at people that you’re not gay…”
Food was suddenly not going down very easily at all.
“Fair enough…” I said, feeling heat rise in my face. I put my fork down and started babbling, “Listen…I’m not not open to this… And there was a time in the past when I…probably would’ve been immediately… Not that I’m not pleased… What I’m trying to say is… So much has happened… Some of it really, really difficult, painful stuff… And it’s been such a long time…that I think I…need to take a bit of time just to digest everything… See how to go on from here… D’you know what I mean?”
He seemed flustered, but said, “Yes, of course… Of course… Nothing has to change, I just…wanted you to know…”
Knowing that Sherlock usually means what he says very literally, I found this somewhat reassuring.
“Would you meet me tomorrow during my lunch break so we can talk some more?” I asked. “Not here, at a café or something?”
“Yes, okay,” he said immediately.
“Okay… Good,” I got up to leave the kitchen, but he called to me when I was at the door.
“John, what about you?” he asked. “When did you know…?”
So, he needed to know as well… I considered the question for a moment. “I was intrigued from the moment you made your deductions about me at Bart’s, winked, and left… But…when Angelo handed me my walking cane…” I knew he knew exactly what moment I was talking about. When I opened that door, saw Angelo standing there with my cane, and realized the miracle that had just happened, it was like a magic spell…and it was because of him…
There was a lot of pain and sadness floating between us, and I was definitely feeling it as I left the kitchen. So much time lost, so much silent suffering… Timing…he was never great at it…and I suppose neither was I… I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night and was nearly late to work in the morning, which is in fact this very morning, as I write this later the same day. I briefly saw Sherlock in the kitchen having his morning tea. He didn’t look like he slept much either. He was awkward and nervous again, and so was I, but I smiled and said, “See you at lunch,” and he seemed pleased. I found myself thinking again that perhaps time away from Baker Street to process all this might be necessary, and I was already making a mental list of people I might be able to stay with temporarily… But I didn’t have to think about it for long, because I have not seen Sherlock or heard from him since then…
I texted him and tried to call when he didn’t show up to lunch at the agreed location, but I received no reply. I didn’t think much of it, although I was a bit disappointed. I thought perhaps he got distracted by an urgent case or lost track of time as he often does. I went back to work then came home to find that he was not there, and that he had left his phone behind, the text I sent him earlier today and the missed call notification displayed on his lock screen.
I have no idea where he is or what his disappearance means, and I am very uneasy about it…
***
When John got up the next morning after another night of very little sleep, Sherlock was still not in the flat, and so, he texted Mycroft.
He’s still not here.
Almost immediately, his reply came.
On my way.
No matter what Mycroft had said before, he must also be worried. John was slowly pacing the living room as he waited for Mycroft, and he swung the door open as soon as he saw his car arrive in the street.
Mycroft came in, shut the door behind him, and looked John up and down.
“I was hoping you weren’t as worried as you sounded…” he said. “But you are even more so… What happened, John?”
“What do you mean? Nothing happened?” said John.
“Something happened between the two of you, didn’t it?” he said, which annoyed John greatly. “Did you have an argument?”
John felt as though he were being blamed and became somewhat defensive. “No, we didn’t, everything was fine…”
“Dr. Watson,” John registered the switch to his last name, “there is something you are not telling me, and, if we’re going to find him, I’ll need to know what it is…”
John hesitated and looked away from Mycroft. He didn’t want to share the truth with him. It felt like a violation of his and Sherlock’s privacy on a matter that was quite unfinished.
“Oh, God,” said Mycroft, rolling his eyes and finally sitting down. “It’s worse than an argument, isn’t it? Did you two have sex?”
John was startled. “What? No!” he said more defensively than he actually felt.
“Oh, God, it’s even worse than that, isn’t it? Did you two talk about…feelings?” Mycroft said with disdainful stress on the f sound. Despite the seriousness of the situation, John was reminded of a small school boy expressing disgust at the idea of kissing a girl. John was also somewhat infuriated by Mycroft’s ability to read him so easily.
“Mycroft, can we please focus on finding him? I don’t want to talk about th–”
“When did this happen?”
John sighed and said, “Two nights ago.”
“What time?”
“I don’t know, at dinner…”
“What happened immediately after what I’m sure was a very touching conversation?”
John rolled his eyes. “Nothing. We went to sleep…” Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “Separately, Mycroft! We didn’t even finish what we were talking about…”
“Are you sure he didn’t go out at night?”
“Positive.”
“How could you be?”
“I wasn’t able to sleep most of that night, I had a lot to think about… I would have heard him leave… Christ, do you think he’s off on a bender somewhere?”
“It’s possible. What happened the next morning?”
“That was yesterday morning. I was late for work. I saw him at breakfast. He seemed…normal… We had agreed to meet up for lunch. I reminded him of that before I left. He seemed pleased…like he was maybe looking forward to it, possibly… Would he do that? Go looking for drugs when he’s…seemingly happy or hopeful…?”
Mycroft chuckled darkly. “You have no idea…!” That made John feel considerably worse. “Wouldn’t be the first time if that’s what he did. But even though I asked you to wait, I did look for him last night at all the usual drug-related spots and sent people to interrogate some of his old dealers. No one I’ve spoken to or sent for has seen him or sold him anything… I also asked Bill Wiggins to start asking everyone in Sherlock’s homeless network… Nothing so far…”
“Then… Where is he? And why would he leave without even taking his phone?”
“I don’t know…” said Mycroft quietly. “Maybe he didn’t want to be tracked… Or maybe he had no choice…”
“Mycroft, I think we have to take this seriously. We can’t just wait… This is too weird… I think he might be in trouble…” John was worried that Mycroft might dismiss the issue because of his apparent disdain for sentiment.
“You may be right,” said Mycroft, and John relaxed a little. “Something is off…” John watched the older Holmes brother think and held his breath. He knew Mycroft was about to jump into action.
“Phone Lestrade,” Mycroft said, standing up. “Tell him to treat this as a missing person’s case but not to announce it publicly, at least not yet. Have his people lift prints off of every surface in this house and look for any evidence that might help. Keep Sherlock’s phone and yours charged and handy.”
“And what are you going to do?” asked John.
“Check on some old enemies…” said Mycroft already halfway to the front door.
“Hold on a minute! Does this mean you actually think he might have been…I don’t know, abducted or something…?”
“I don’t know, Dr. Watson, but I will find out.”
As John did what he was told, he considered the possibility of abduction. If Sherlock indeed was abducted, wouldn’t there have been signs of struggle around the house? Wouldn’t they have been contacted by now with a list of demands, or something of the sort? Who would abduct Sherlock in the first place? Moriarty was gone, and Sherlock had no current enemies as far as John knew… Old enemies… What old enemies was Mycroft talking about? John’s worries were spiraling into possibilities even worse than abduction, so he tried to focus instead on alerting Greg. Within half an hour, Greg was at Baker Street with a team of policemen and women, searching every corner in Mrs. Hudson’s house. John looked at his watch: noon. It was going to be a long and anxious day…
Occasionally, John would get angry entertaining the possibility that Sherlock had simply freaked out and left. Left him, John, and his brother, and all his friends to worry about him and just took off. After all, John could not deny that he himself had briefly felt the impulse to run away after their conversation. Still, the thought made John want to break things and throw everyone out of the flat. But then he would come back to the facts, as he had watched Sherlock do countless times: Sherlock had disappeared from Baker Street without his phone, without his wallet, without his computer, without even changing his clothes, as it transpired after some investigation of his room, and on a day when he was clearly feeling at least hopeful, if not happy. Even though there were no signs of struggle that John had noticed when he came home the day before, that could have easily been taken care of by the abductor. It was after all, a time of peace, or so they thought. Sherlock rarely had reservations about answering a knock on the front door or even about keeping the door to the flat properly shut at all times. The abductor might have known that no one would start seriously looking for Sherlock until sufficient time had passed for them to get him wherever they wanted to take him… or to do to him whatever they wanted to do… A pit opened up in John’s stomach at the idea… Was there someone out there who simply wanted Sherlock dead?
“We’ve got everything we need,” Greg finally said to John. “I’ll keep you posted if we find any unknown fingerprints.” John nodded as he rubbed his forehead tiredly with one hand. “Try not to leave the flat, you know, in case he comes back…” John instinctively glanced at the front door and couldn’t help imagining Sherlock bursting through it with a bizarre story about where he’d been and what had happened to him. The pit in John’s stomach ached. “We’re leaving his phone and computer here with you and a couple of my men on watch duty downstairs. We can’t really get into his computer or easily hack his email, it’s all very secure, but we’ll do it if we have to. Still a bit too early for desperate measures… We’ve got nothing to go on… To be honest, I don’t think we’ll get any meaningful leads unless he or someone else contacts us…”
“Yeah, that’s what Mycroft thinks, too,” said John somberly. “He also said he was checking up on ‘old enemies,’ whoever those are… I’m sure he’ll let us know if he finds anything…”
“Okay…” Greg noted the worry and exhaustion on John’s face and put a hand on his shoulder. “Try not to worry too much. You know what he’s like and how tough he is. If someone really has him, they’ve got their work cut out for them! He’s no damsel… It could all be nothing…”
This was true, thought John. He gave Greg a grateful nod, as his comment allowed John to entertain different images in his mind. Images of Sherlock heroically escaping faceless captors, using their own chains against them, and bringing them back with him to hand to Greg. John smiled a little at the fantasy.
“Attaboy!” Greg clapped him on the shoulder and left.
But a whole other night went by with no news of any kind and no clues, and John was quickly spiraling back into uncontrollable anxiety. He wished he could control his emotions the way Sherlock could. It must be so much easier to think clearly when not going mad with worry and fear. Worst of all for John was the inaction. There was nothing to do but wait, and that was not sitting well with John Watson.
As he paced the flat, utterly unable to distract himself, John’s mind would flash him bits of his and Sherlock’s last two conversations as well as the image of Sherlock’s face right after John had said, “See you at lunch”. It was not the face of a man about to do anything stupid before lunch… John himself had gone to work that morning feeling a bit giddy. He had inwardly laughed at himself for feeling that way. Although he still had his concerns, he finally had the truth that he had previously longed to hear. Sherlock was in love with him, and he had said it himself, timing be damned! There was hope radiating in John’s chest that day… But now, his heart sank at the memory in light of the turn of events. He wondered in horror if they had all already failed Sherlock… If he was already lying somewhere, gravely injured or trapped, thinking John or Mycroft or Greg must surely find him soon, except that it was the third day now, and no one had any idea where he might be… Or, even worse, was Sherlock still alive…? John couldn’t take it anymore. He felt as if the walls were closing in to crush him. He had to get some air… He grabbed Sherlock’s phone after checking the screen for the hundredth time in the last few hours, put it in his pocket, grabbed his jacket and his own phone, and left the flat.
It was still the middle of the day, overcast and slightly chilly. He passed Greg’s men outside the house, “I’ll be back in a bit,” he told them.
John walked and walked and walked. He walked until he was too tired to feel as overwhelmingly anxious. Instead, the small drop in anxiety was replaced by exhaustion and misery. He started to head home, hoping against hope that, somehow, he would walk into the flat and Sherlock would just be sitting there as if nothing had happened.
As he walked, John was fingering Sherlock’s phone in the pocket of his jacket so that he could feel it buzz if he got a text or call, but the device was infuriatingly still. His other hand was on his own phone in his other pocket, also infuriatingly still. He wondered for a moment if Sherlock knew his phone number by heart… Surely, he must know it…? He jumped on a bus that would stop near Baker Street, too tired now to keep walking. He flopped down in an empty seat and threw his head back against the glass, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Exhaustion and dread threatened to overwhelm him, but he scrunched up his face and pushed them back down. Now was not the time. He must keep it together.
John was breathing deeply to keep himself calm when suddenly his desperate meditation was interrupted by a buzzing sensation in his left hand, the hand clasped around Sherlock’s phone. John whipped it out so quickly that the phone almost flew out of his hand and into the lap of the old woman sitting next to him on the bus. John fumbled, apologized, and frantically looked at the screen, trying to will his frantic eyes to focus. It was a text message from an unsaved number. He couldn’t unlock the phone, but the message was short enough to be seen on the lock screen preview.
Gelp
John stared at it, demanding more information. He waited, his breathing going shallow again. Please let something else come! He pulled out his own phone in his other hand, took a photo of the lock screen of Sherlock’s phone and sent it to both Mycroft and Greg. Meanwhile, he continued to glare at Sherlock’s phone. Then it hit him. How stupid of him! He unlocked his own phone and immediately entered the strange number into it. But he hesitated to hit the call button… Sherlock may well be the one who sent that message. What if he sent it from a phone he had stolen from one of his captors, and what if by calling it, John would expose the theft and get Sherlock in even worse trouble…?
Just as his finger hesitated on the call button, John’s phone buzzed. It was the same message from the same number, this time spelled correctly.
Help
Before John could make a decision, his phone rang.
“Mycroft!” John cried.
“Don’t call the number!” Mycroft said immediately.
“Should I text it?”
“No, wait at Baker Street! I’ll call you back in a few minutes!”
“But– ”
“Just wait!” And he hung up.
John swore loudly, and the people around him on the bus stared, scandalized. He didn’t want to do any more waiting! He jumped off the bus at the next station and hurried back to the flat, checking both phones every few seconds and walking into several people on his way. What he couldn’t understand was why. If Sherlock had indeed nicked a phone, wouldn’t he use it to send something more useful? More informative? A clue as to where or how to find him? It was unlike him to do something like this. Unless… Unless the phone was discovered and taken away from him before he could do anything further… Or, John shuddered at the possibility, perhaps he was too injured or disoriented to have any idea where he was at all…
John almost fell over the steps to 221B because his phone buzzed again. It was another message from the same number.
Ron flint
Factory
Tell m
John immediately called Mycroft…
***
Less than twenty minutes later, John was at the police station with Greg and Mycroft. On the cab ride there, John had looked up the name Ron Flint, which sounded vaguely familiar, and the result of his search sent his heart down into his knees. Mycroft explained in the car as they left the station with Greg, several other police cars speeding behind them.
“It was one of Sherlock’s first big cases. A serial killer who had tortured, raped, and killed three women and four men, all in their early twenties. The man was meticulous. His victims simply vanished from their homes without a trace, never signs of struggle or break-in, never a fingerprint or a single drop of DNA. In fact, several of the bodies were not found until Sherlock got involved and was able to locate them. It took him weeks and weeks to track him down and force him to make a mistake. Sherlock had a theory about the male victims, about how Flint chose them, and he decided to use himself as bait. He told the police exactly where to wait to catch him, by the abandoned factory building we’re heading to right now, but things didn’t go as planned. Sherlock’s bait idea did work. He was young enough at the time to fit the victim profile perfectly with just a bit of a wardrobe change and some exaggerated flamboyant behavior…and he did manage to get Flint close to the trap where the police were waiting, but not close enough… Something went wrong. I don’t know what it was exactly, but Flint got suspicious and seemed to decide he should just knock Sherlock out and disappear. They brawled. Each of them got a pretty good beating at the hands of the other, but Flint is a significantly larger man. He eventually won the fight and escaped and was never seen in England since, nor did any other disappearances matching his M.O. happen in the UK. The conclusion was, he either left the country or went on some sort of hiatus, changed his identity, etc.… It’s not unheard of if he had the right connections… But his encounter with Sherlock meant that his DNA was now in the police database. Some of his blood was on Sherlock’s hands and clothes… Anyway, my guess at the moment is that he holds a grudge and wants to punish Sherlock… The man who almost caught him, made him go into hiding and go through all that trouble, maybe even stop doing his favorite thing for a while… Now that Sherlock is basically famous and has been for a while, he is a target for people like Flint who crossed paths with him but didn’t get caught… Not that there are many of them…but it only takes one… He never listens to me about upping his personal security…”
Mycroft sounded calm, but his face was white. John knew he must also be wondering what had been happening to Sherlock in the last three days, and more importantly, whether they were going to be able to end whatever it was tonight…
“A bit cocky of Flint to take him to the same place…” Mycroft continued. “Perhaps he could not resist a touch of irony and defiance… If he really is there, John, it will not be good…”
John didn’t even care to watch the way they were going or become aware of where they were exactly. His head was spinning. All he knew was that they were outside London in a relatively quiet small town. A few shops were still open, and a few people were milling around the center of the town. They passed a pub.
“This is where Sherlock went undercover to get himself picked up by Flint,” pointed Mycroft. The sign above the pub read: The Empty Wine Barrel.
The car stopped near an alley, and John jumped out of it, just as Greg was getting out of the passenger seat. “We have to stop here and continue the approach on foot, while the rest of the officers circle the area. I think you two should stay here.”
“That’s not going to happen,” said John immediately as Mycroft also got out of the car.
“John,” started Greg, “this could be d–”
“Yeah, I don’t care. You can arrest me if you like, but I’m not staying in the bloody car!”
Greg knew it was no use. He sighed. “Ok, but you stay in the back, do you hear? In the back, John!” John nodded curtly. “I swear to God, if you endanger yourself or this mission, I will handcuff you to a pipe and leave you there until we are done, are we clear?”
“Yes, ALRIGHT!” shouted John, loading his firearm.
“Good… Remember, this man killed many people and destroyed lives, maybe more than the ones we know of… If he is here, we must catch him, preferably alive… This is not just about Sherlock!”
“I’ll wait here,” said Mycroft. “I have more backup on standby if needed.”
And with that, John and Greg headed off in the direction of the old factory building and were followed by two more armed officers. Greg was almost experiencing déjà vu. Nearly ten years ago, he was in the same spot advancing on the same building, then crouching in the same corner with thirty armed men and women surrounding the area, quietly waiting for Flint and Sherlock to step into view. But it never happened that night. Only Sherlock showed up covered in blood, limping slightly, and cursing the night because Flint had gotten away… Greg wanted to catch that monster so badly back then as well as now. And, more importantly, he desperately hoped to find Sherlock alive. He couldn’t help but think of the bodies of Flint’s other victims, the state they were in, and wonder if he could ever recover from finding Sherlock’s body in a similar state or having to deliver terrible news to John. He shook his head vigorously and returned his attention to the mission at hand.
Greg had a plain view of the building, and the rest of his officers were hiding in various spots, covering all sides. They stayed extremely quiet. If any noise came from the building, they had to be able to hear it, and the suspect must not hear them coming. John was crouched behind him, gun in hand, eyes blazing. Greg briefly stood up and signaled with his right hand to people that John could not see. He pointed vigorously twice towards the building and twice towards a broken down dirty white van parked near it, and once more towards what looked like a small storage shed. John saw two armed officers in bulletproof vests and helmets sneak up to the building and climb the metal stairs leading to fire exit doors on the sides to look through the windows spaced all around. Another pair of officers hurried to the van, and another pair to the shed. They were so quiet they might as well have been alley cats.
The waiting was killing John… What if he wasn’t here…? He so badly wanted this to be over…
A female officer’s voice suddenly spoke from Greg’s radio.
“Sir, Lucas and I can’t see anyone on the factory floor, but we don’t have full view of the interior from the top. There are indicators that someone might have been here recently, but it’s too dark to see clearly. There is one light bulb left on in a corner that’s blocked from view by factory equipment and some closed offices at the front of the building. We have to breach to get a better look.”
“Ok,” said Greg into the transmitter, “you and I will go in with Lucas, James, Said, and Umar to clear the building. Everyone else stand by. Meet me on the east side by the open door.” He put on a helmet, held up his weapon, and, within a few seconds had stealthily disappeared inside the building ahead of the other officers through a door on the side that was left ajar.
John watched and waited with the two other officers whom he did not know, grinding his teeth. He waited for what felt like an hour but was actually only five minutes.
Greg and his team swept the building very carefully and quickly, leaving the one lit corner to the end. It could be a trap, he thought. Flint himself could be hiding somewhere with a gun, waiting for anyone to step into the light. That lit corner was hidden from view by a large rusty broken-down machine, and they could only see the faint yellow glow of the light around it. Only after the entire building was cleared except for that corner did Greg start to approach it, asking the others to wait and cover him. He reached the rusty thing and stood with his back against it. He started to skirt around it carefully and slowly to see what lay behind… Did he hear something…? Like a hiss…?
The sight that met his eyes confused him at first, and then chilled him to the bone. The first thing he saw, directly under the light bulb was a clean, low, wooden stool with a small black device on it, an old-fashioned tape recorder. But the floor around it was filthy with wet dirt, blood, and a surprising amount of water. Greg strained his eyes to try and see outside the circle of weak light… And there, just outside the glow, as if placed intentionally in a secondary focal point to the tape recorder, lay a still figure, curled up on its side with hands tied behind its back, almost naked, and covered in a mess of dried blood and dirt. Greg wanted nothing more than to run to that figure immediately, but he had to be absolutely sure no one else was there, so just a few more seconds of caution, checking every corner of the space from his hiding point.
Finally, filled with trepidation, Greg skirted around the stool with the tape recorder on it and carefully approached the figure, looking right and left and trying to avoid the puddles of water. As he got closer, more detail came into focus. Dark, curly hair, one pale cheekbone… Greg threw caution to the wind and sprinted the last few steps, skidding to a halt on his knees next to Sherlock’s body, feeling for a pulse in his neck, listening for breathing. He was unconscious, his pulse was weak, his breathing shallow, but there was definitely a pulse, and there was definitely breathing. With an odd mixture of horror and relief, he reached for his radio transmitter.
The sound of the radio, which had been frustratingly silent since Greg left, startled John and instantly spiked his adrenaline. He listened with every fiber of his being as Greg’s panting voice came in, sounding urgent. “Sherlock is here, unconscious, it’s bad. Send the medics in immediately! And forensics! Suspect is not here… I want roadblocks all around this town, and…”
John couldn’t hear the rest and didn’t care. He sprinted towards the building before anyone could stop him. Officers yelled after him, but he didn’t stop. Greg said the suspect wasn’t there, so why did anyone care if he ran in? Once inside, he was met by two of the officers who had gone in with Greg. They tried to hold him back.
“I’m a fucking doctor! Let me go!” John shouted at them.
“Let him!” yelled Greg, to John’s surprise. John ran towards Greg at the far corner of the building. He was waiting next to the machine that hid the awful scene from view, holding his hands up as if to try and slow John down.
“Out of my way, Greg!” John was not about to hear it. He knew Greg wanted to protect him, but how on earth could John possibly not do everything in his power to help Sherlock immediately? Greg, knowing it was no use, somberly said, “Go around the stool and try to avoid the water…”
John stepped around the machine and immediately decided that avoiding the water was impossible. He sprinted through the puddles and skidded to a halt just as Greg had done moments earlier next to Sherlock’s still figure. Greg had removed the bonds that had cut into Sherlock’s wrists. John tried to wake him, tapping his face hard, calling his name, making sure his airways were clear. As his own breathing started to go shallow, he looked for anything that might require immediate first aid, but Sherlock’s body was so filthy, it was nearly impossible to tell what had been done to it just by looking in this dark, dank place, and John had no supplies on hand. He registered a lot of redness and dried blood, a lot of bruising, blistering, and black, swollen toes… He continued trying to wake him, now trembling slightly, remembering crouching similarly next to soldiers in the desert who had just had grenades explode near them or been pulled out of fires or collapsed buildings… Just as John heard the medics come into the building, Sherlock’s half-closed eyes fluttered, and his head moved slightly.
“Sherlock, it’s me!” John said immediately, loudly. “We’ve found you. You’re safe. Can you hear me…?”
Sherlock seemed to be trying to say something. John brought his ear down to his lips to try and make it out, but Sherlock’s breath was ragged, and John couldn’t hear anything discernable. Before John could do anything else, medics pushed him out of the way. He heard only snippets of what they were saying as they quickly spoke out loud the status of their victim to each other and worked to get him onto a stretcher.
John got to his feet with difficulty and got ready to follow them. The medics tried to uncurl Sherlock’s body to lay him flat on the stretcher, but Sherlock seemed to be resisting them and suddenly cried out hoarsely. The sound jolted John forward, he wanted to help, needed to help, but the medics had already placed him on the stretcher and covered him with a blanket.
“John,” Greg had come up behind him, looking miserable. “Go on with him. I’ll finish up here and catch up with you at the hospital.”
Greg’s voice and his hand on John’s shoulder snapped John momentarily out of his stupor, but he followed the medics as if floating through a nightmare, barely feeling the legs that were somehow carrying him. Mycroft was waiting by the ambulance truck, eyeing the approaching stretcher and the trailing figure of John, whose face was now greenish. Mycroft was pale and seemed to be at a loss, a very unusual look for him. He started to say something to John along the lines of, “You go, I’ll follow,” but John wasn’t listening. He was already climbing in.
Once settled securely in, an oxygen mask was placed on Sherlock’s face and an I.V. drip was hooked up to his hand. With every manipulation of his body or the smallest bump in the road, he groaned weakly in agony. Once there was no more first aid to be administered, the medics left him alone. John sat by his side in disbelief over the fact that, yet again, there they were on their way to a hospital with Sherlock badly injured. Why was it that they could never catch a break? John had trouble believing that all of this was simply bad luck, or a mere occupational hazard of Sherlock’s unusual job, but he could not provide an alternative logical explanation… Whenever John felt that Sherlock’s eyes were searching or confused, he would try to say anything comforting and touch his hand or the top of his head, and that seemed to help. The sedative Sherlock was given was starting to take effect, and John sincerely hoped he would just sleep until well after the doctors figured out what to do with him…