Chapter Text
“Well?” Lestrade asks as Sherlock returns to his side. Sherlock shakes his head.
“Nothing,” he says, but of course that’s a lie. He’s seen the surgeon with the cerulean eyes. That man is no Valid. His skin is still raw from his morning exfoliation; his heart is beating far too erratically for a Valid; his eyes shine from where his contacts catch the light. No, Dr Moran is a borrowed ladder, but Sherlock isn’t inclined to squeal today. He may work with the Yard, but he doesn’t have to answer to them.
(Besides, Moran is irrelevant to the case. He’d just gone through morning urine screening, if the unzipped fly is of any indication.)
“All right, then.” Lestrade gestures to the body. “We’ll double-check with the usual tests; I’ll have Miss Hooper tend to that.” With that, he waves away the doctors and nurses assembled; they disperse and Sherlock finds himself turning to watch Dr Moran vanish into his consultation room.
He sighs and looks back down at the body, saying, “Murray was killed leaving the lab, from behind. We know that he’s unpopular with the teaching staff, and that the killer was probably in the lab with him before his death.” He pauses, frowning at the body.
“Take a look at this,” Anderson says suddenly. Sherlock rolls his eyes as Lestrade walks over to him. “The eyelash of an in-Valid.”
“Sure that’s not yours, Anderson?” Sherlock sneers. But Anderson holds up the scanner screen, with the face of a bespectacled young man on it. JOHN WATSON, it reads. IN-VALID.
Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “I see.”
“John Watson. Know him?” Lestrade asks, but Sherlock shakes his head.
“The files will tell, though. I’ll see if Mycroft has them.”
Mycroft Holmes relinquishes the employment logs of Bart’s after Sherlock reminds him that he caught Mycroft’s own personal assistant as a borrowed ladder last week. Andrew West has since then been replaced by a woman named Anthea. Sherlock ignores her as he exits the office with the files.
John Watson had been, according to the files, employed at Bart’s as a cleaner around five years ago. He then disappeared. The records of in-Valids and Valids are kept separate, but Sherlock is fairly certain that if he bothered to look through the Valid files he would see Sebastian Moran’s name emerge five years ago, around the time John Watson disappeared from Bart’s.
He only tells Lestrade the first part, though, and quickly signs off, heading for his usual chemical laboratory at the hospital. Molly Hooper is running the daily screenings. Sherlock notices that the borrowed ladder has evaded capture that way and smirks.
At that moment, however, the door to the lab opens and Dr Moran walks in, smiling at Molly.
“I’m here to get my results for Ms Irene Adler,” he says.
“She’s not entirely Ms Adler,” Sherlock says as he stoops over the microscope in an attempt to look busy. He hears Moran’s footsteps halt; grinning to himself, he straightens up and fixes the borrowed ladder with his steely gaze.
“Not entirely… Ms Adler?”
“The databases show that she is, yes, but she was also part of a borrowed ladder arrangement with a woman named Kate,” Sherlock answers calmly. “I caught them after a prominent novelist came to me asking to sort out an affair of hers.”
“Oh.” Moran smiles blandly. “I thought the donor usually stays out of sight, though.”
“I never said she was the donor.” Sherlock doesn’t break eye contact.
Moran shifts uncomfortably. “So you’re the one responsible for sending her to prison. She never told me what for.”
“Fraud, obviously.” Sherlock shrugs carelessly. “Of course her donor bailed her out. Others haven’t been as lucky.”
Moran definitely looks uncomfortable at this point as he takes his results. “Well, that’s, uh, good to know.” He smiles briefly, backing towards the door. “Thank you.”
Sherlock watches him leave with an odd dryness in his throat.
John exhales long and slow as soon as he reaches the sanctuary of his office. He dusts the room, hoovers away as much evidence of John Watson as he can before replacing it all with traces of Sebastian Moran. The results for Ms Adler’s tests he tucks away into her file. She’ll be arriving for their appointment tomorrow, but in the meantime he has to go home to check up on Sebastian –
He runs into Sherlock in the hallway outside. His breath hitches sharply; his traitorous heart is beating wildly. Sherlock advances towards him, eyes still scrutinising and sharp as ever. John wonders what sort of colour they are; with every flicker of light they change.
“They’re supposed to be silver,” Sherlock explains as if he can read John’s mind (and at this point, John wouldn’t be surprised if he could). “From my mother.”
“Oh.” John nods. “Did you want something?”
Sherlock says nothing, only gestures for John to follow him down the hall. They walk in silence out of the hospital; once out, Sherlock hails a cab.
“Where to?” he asks John. John blinks.
“Montague Street,” he says after a moment.
Sherlock nods; the cab drives off. John watches Sherlock warily from his seat, but Sherlock serenely stares ahead.
“What are you doing?” John asks, trying to break the silence, trying to assuage the tremulous fear that seizes at his heart.
Sherlock looks at him sidelong, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smirk. “I know,” he says after a moment.
John’s shoulders slump slightly. “Know about what?”
“You’re actually John Watson, aren’t you?”
“Why would you say that?” John asks, still hoping against hope to bluff his way out of this. Sherlock doesn’t look as if he has a scanner on hand, after all.
“Because records show that John Watson disappeared from Bart’s around the same time Sebastian Moran appeared. One an in-Valid, the other a Valid. Couple that with your similar features and the obvious signs of alteration of yours to fit his and… well, it’s not hard to make the leap.”
John slumps fully, resigned. “You told the Yard, didn’t you?”
“Not a word.”
That throws him for a curve. John bolts upright, turning to Sherlock.
“You…”
“Didn’t tell the Yard,” Sherlock replies.
“But why?”
They arrive at Montague Street. Sherlock beams at him, saying nothing as John reluctantly gets out of the cab.
“I should probably pay,” he says, trying to stall for time, for explanations. “Reimburse you –”
“It’s fine,” Sherlock replies. “Baker Street!” he snaps at the in-Valid cabbie.
The car zooms away from the kerb, leaving John gaping after it. A couple moments later, he turns tail and enters his and Sebastian’s flat. Sebastian is in his wheelchair in the basement, smoking like a chimney as he fills bags upon bags with blood and urine.
“Make sure you don’t pull the whiskey piss stunt again,” John snaps at Moran as he enters the basement via spiral staircase. “I’d have gotten dinged for that, if the screening hadn’t been after lunch.”
Sebastian rolls his eyes and blows smoke in John’s face. John wrinkles his nose, wafting the foul smoke away from his face.
“Will you stop doing that?”
“You’re not the one cramped in a basement,” Sebastian points out drily.
“If you’re so keen on getting out, why don’t you?”
“You know full well they’ll be suspicious. Especially with a bloke like Holmes flitting around outing every borrowed ladder he can get his eyes on –”
“Holmes was at Bart’s today.”
At that, Sebastian raises an eyebrow.
“Come again?”
“Holmes. Was. At. Bart’s. Today.”
“Oh god,” sighs Sebastian, rubbing his temples. “Please tell me he didn’t see you.”
“He did.”
“Jesus, John.”
“You must be agitated to call me that.”
“Yeah, hearing that my in-Valid’s gotten himself caught by Holmes –”
“He didn’t report us, Hamish.” They’d agreed, years ago. The instant John secured the job at Bart’s, he would be Sebastian. And Sebastian would be Hamish, John’s middle name. John had to, after all, get used to being called Sebastian.
“He didn’t – is this the same Holmes we’re talking about?”
“Holmes the Identifier? Yeah. Same bloke.” John crosses to the sidebar and pours himself a glass of brandy. Sebastian keeps a varied liquor cabinet, after all. “He told me he didn’t tell the Yard about us. Don’t know why, though.”
Sebastian snorts. “Luck of the Irish, perhaps,” he drawls sarcastically. John can tell he doesn’t buy it.
He plays along. “I’m Scottish.”
“Well, I’m Irish and that’s my name you’re using.” Sebastian grins cockily at John and takes another drag of his cigarette. “Wanna go dancing?”
“Like you could manage with your wheelchair.”
Sebastian snorts. “You’re no fun.”