Fic: The World on His Wrist - 6/6 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: The World on His Wrist
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 5.5k, this part, 31.6k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU)
prologue - part one - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Epilogue
John is going to kill Jim Moriarty. He is going to kill him in triplicate.
He doesn’t have a gun in Essex, but he’s sure he could find a way around that.
John washes his face, calls in sick and passes his car keys off to Marta.
“You look terrible,” she tells him at his door, eyes full of concern as he fakes a series of coughs. “You should really go back to bed.”
“I think I will,” he says.
A brisk walk, a pair of tenners, and forty minutes by train later, John walks out of Liverpool Street Station, London. He adjusts his watch on his right wrist, the metal band making his mind bend. This isn’t either of his Londons, never will be, but he’ll bear it while he must.
His London, he corrects himself. Singular.
He only has the one, now.
A nice touch this, the pool, Moriarty had made him say, where little Carl died.
John hadn’t learned the address last night, but that’s fine. He knows enough to have tracked it down on his laptop this morning. Not many twelve-year-old kids had drowned in 1989 London swimming competitions.
He buys a drawing pad, a small one, and goes in with pencil in hand. He looks a bit odd, he knows, standing there fully dressed, drawing the dimensions of the room, craning his neck to see the bleachers up above.
A member of staff approaches him, looking politely concerned, and John greets her before she can say a word. He’s researching for a film set, would she mind answering a few questions about the building?
He gets a bit of a tour after that, explaining to the woman what the film would need in its pool scene. Snipers up here, the victims down there, he needs to see how all the hallways connect. Blocking, very important. He needs to see for himself to check the light levels.
He’s focused, charming if brisk, and only halfway through does he realise he’s doing an impression of Sherlock.
John doesn’t break character, but it’s a close thing.
Sitting in a Costa down the street, nursing a latte he doesn’t particularly want, he works out his plan of counterattack.
Mrs. Hudson will be positioned there, covered in explosives. Sherlock enters here, this time without a gun.
Moriarty will be in these hallways here.
Where will the snipers be?
Three hours later, what John has is a list of ways to get them all killed.
Chess is not John’s forte. Having once let Sherlock bully him into a game, John knows this very well. Maybe a master tactician would be able to get Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson out alive, but John is one man with one gun and limited ammunition. There is no way for John to handle this on his own and that’s....
Sane.
Of course John can’t do this on his own. What chance does an ex-army doctor stand against almost a dozen trained snipers? No chance at all, that’s what.
He looks down at his notes and plans, all of his considerations for ambush after ambush, and fights down a hysterical laugh. What the hell is he doing? This won’t save Sherlock.
Even if it does, it won’t be his Sherlock.
The loos in this Costa are single rooms, not stalls. Which is fortunate, particularly as it pertains to crying in the men’s toilet.
He can’t win at the pool. There’s no way to win.
He’ll have to do something else.
Oh.
Oh.
“Obvious,” John whispers to himself.
He walks back to Liverpool Street Station, needing to get the energy out. The entire train journey is spent fidgeting, more than the first was.
Back home, back into his jimjams, John settles down in front of the telly just before Marta comes by to check on him. She makes him soup but refuses to comfort him, berating him instead for his low fluid intake.
“If I die,” John says, “you can have my car.”
Marta sets down the soup on the coffee table and touches the back of her hand to his forehead. “No fever,” she reports. “Looks like a case of chronic idiocy.”
“I mean it,” he says. He doesn’t know what will happen when next his body - his mind? - attempts to wake in analogue London. Will he skip over those days? Will he simply die? Will he return for a split second of consciousness, before he goes? There must be more time left there, there’s always more time left. That can’t really be it.
He didn’t get to say goodbye.
Humming her sympathy, Marta sits down on the arm of the sofa. Pets his hair. John closes his eyes against the touch. “Doctors really are the worst patients,” Marta tells him. “Stop being such a cliché.”
John does Sherlock’s best sullen huff and flop combination, curling in on himself and making Marta laugh. Once in position, he stays that way.
“Want me to leave you to sleep, then?” she asks.
He nods. “Check in on me in the morning, okay?”
“’Course,” she says. “Eat your soup.”
“Thanks.”
She leaves, he eats, and the layout of the pool is pressed into his memory. That can be Plan C.
There’s a one-in-three chance John might wake up dead, but he goes to bed all the same.
Afghanistan.
Thank god, Afghanistan.
For all Plan C must be avoided at all costs, he fleshes it out all the same. If he can make a functioning strategy in advance, the risk level ought to be reduced. Somewhat. Maybe enough.
It’s a good thing John has help.
“All right, lads,” he says over breakfast, the lot of them crowded together in the mess at base. “I’ve got a hypothetical hostage scenario I bet you can’t solve.”
Surrounded by soldiers, John becomes the object of everyone’s focus.
He spells it out, draws it out, gives them the specifics of the encounter. Today’s game is set in London, in a pool. Here is the woman as the bait, here is her grown son as the targeted victim. The son tries for an exchange that is ultimately rejected. The enemy toys with his victim in this manner. The snipers have this area to operate within and this timing to follow. The rescue team is from the Met, New Scotland Yard having been tipped off. Assuming the enemy is led by a complete nutter - dangerously brilliant, but still a complete nutter - how can the family be saved?
By the end of the day, they have some pretty good ideas.
When John can’t fall asleep that night, it has very little to do with the sounds of Afghanistan. He’s more acclimatized to those sounds than he is to the noises outside his flats. He’s more used to this life, really, than he is to his other ones.
Here, he’s never doubted who he is. John H. Watson is Dr. Watson is Captain Watson. He is a doctor and a soldier, a surgeon and a fighter. He is a straight man who will someday marry, have children, and take his family on holiday to Devon in the summers. He will not be an alcoholic. He will not hit his wife or curse his daughter or alienate his son. This is the life he’d chosen, so very long ago when he’d had but one life to choose. He’d chosen this life, trained for it. It’s not everything he’s ever wanted, but no life is. No one life can be.
Tomorrow, John may wake in London. With yesterday in Chelmsford, a return to Essex is unlikely, a long shot in the extreme. Even if it weren’t, it’s not where he wants to go.
Tomorrow, John may wake in London.
Tomorrow, John may be dead.
He died with Sherlock Holmes in his arms and that, that is satisfying. In a way, it’s the most satisfying way he could have gone, dying to save his idiot of a best friend. He’s annoyed, he’s absolutely furious at the man, but John doesn’t regret his choice. It hurts, it hurts so damn much, more than he’s letting himself feel.
He’ll never know if Sherlock lived.
He thinks Moriarty must have died, though, can’t imagine him surviving so close to the blast.
Underwater, with John’s body to shield him, it’s theoretically possible for Sherlock to have lived. Maybe the building fell down a bit around them, maybe the snipers fired, but bullets can bounce off water and fire can’t penetrate it. Debris might have fallen, but as long as Sherlock could still get to air, a nice coating of concrete and iron is safety in disguise.
Moriarty died, Sherlock lived, and John has already been avenged.
He doesn’t know if that’s true, but once he decides to believe it, he sleeps.
The alarm of his digital watch beeps and John sits up, turning it off. The old woman was last night, the Golem is tonight, and the pool will be tomorrow night. There’s no time to waste.
He dresses, grabs his laptop and his gun, and is out the door before Derek notices he’s woken.
“Molly, hi,” John greets, all easy smiles, desperately trying for that weird Sherlock version of charm that will make Molly do anything. “You’re dating that IT bloke, right?”
Molly’s too surprised to blink at him, her eyes stuck wide. “Um, who-”
“Jim, right?” John asks. “He said he’d take a look at my laptop, but I haven’t seen him in days.” He holds up the laptop in a put-upon fashion, indicating it with light annoyance. “Do you know where he’s off to?”
“Oh, um,” Molly says. She’s gotten around to the blinking now. By the look on her face, she’s desperately trying to remember where she’s met John before, which is perfect, seeing as she hasn’t.
“I wouldn’t make a fuss, but it’s getting to be an issue.”
“Oh, sure, right,” she replies. “I think I know where he is.”
“Can you come lure him out for me?” John asks and smiles. “I think he might be hiding.”
Molly laughs a little. She shows him to where Jim from IT ought to be, if Jim from IT were a real person. “That’s strange,” she says. She pulls out her mobile and sends off a text. “He’s probably seeing to someone else. He’s been really busy lately.”
“I don’t mind waiting,” John says. “Oh, but could I have his number, just in case? He wrote it down for me before, but I forgot it.”
Something in Molly freezes at that.
John makes an expression of polite concern.
“When you say he wrote down his number,” Molly says.
“I couldn’t exactly look up the IT helpline on my computer,” John says, because no. Ten thousand times no. Sherlock has clearly been here, making Molly paranoid about her fake-boyfriend being gay.
Molly smiles, relieved, and John feels like a heel. How to warn her, he wonders. Is there any way, any good way she would believe and not be hurt by? Probably not.
He gets that phone number and waits until his stomach demands a lunch to compensate for his missing breakfast. For all Moriarty has no reason to suspect a mild-mannered man in a tan jumper, he doesn’t seem to be coming back. If he was even here today. John can’t imagine Moriarty used this persona for more than that single look at Sherlock.
Time for a change of tactics.
He asks around, using his brisk, calm manner to look like he belongs there. He has to backpedal in a hurry when Mike Stamford rounds the corner, but it’s too late. They take a quick lunch together, catching up on old times. John confirms along the way that Jim from IT hasn’t been seen at his job in days.
So much for Plan A.
One of the benefits to having interviewed Adam West’s fiancée is knowing when her brother came to her house. Will come to her house.
He has a bit of time before his window of opportunity, so he makes a vain attempt to shop for a new jacket. His old one with the epaulettes is a bit past the point of recovery from last night (four, five nights ago?) in the street. Too much blood and dust. He’s been wearing the black one with the patches since then, but it confuses him. Much like the tan jumper, he associates the patched jacket with Sherlock, ever since he wore it while shooting a cabbie.
He doesn’t make much progress on the new jacket, but then, he doesn’t expect to. He’s hardly about to bring along an extra jacket as he goes housebreaking. The carrier bag with the gun and laptop in it is already plenty. He does buy a pair of gloves, though.
There are more than a few skills John has picked up from life with Sherlock. The lock-picking is particularly nice. He could always kick it down, of course, but that? A bit suspicious.
On the other hand, more suspicious than a broken door?
Police tape.
John stops on the pavement, checking his watch for the digital date. This is wrong. Sherlock doesn’t solve this until tomorrow.
No, wait. That’s wrong. Sherlock had solved it long before John had gone to the tracks. Meaning Sherlock had delayed in recovering the missile plans because of John, for some strange reason.
This Sherlock hadn’t delayed.
Oh Christ.
John lets himself in anyway, stepping carefully. He goes straight to the drawer where he knows the plans were being kept. Gloves on, he sorts through its contents and finds no sign of his goal. He looks around a bit more, already knowing he won’t find anything. He bites his lip, keeps down a groan.
The contents of the drawer are returned in order, or close enough to it for most people. He shuts the drawer and keeps his hand on it, pressing it in even once it can go no further.
There goes Plan B.
He has a choice.
Very likely, Plan C will change the course of his life in this London, the last London he has. Once he comes to Sherlock’s - this Sherlock’s - attention, everything will change. John might be deemed insane. John might be arrested for illegal firearm possession and sentenced to ten years. John might be kidnapped by Mycroft for real this time. At the very least, he’ll probably have to make his goodbyes to Derek and Maggie.
If he stands down, does nothing, he doesn’t know what will happen. Moriarty won’t kill Sherlock tomorrow night. No matter how the man taunts, John’s sure of it. He wanted to scare Sherlock, to make things personal, and then he was going to kill John to seal it. Armed with John’s gun, Sherlock foiled the plan, killing Moriarty and John, and possibly himself as well.
Tomorrow night, Sherlock won’t have that gun. He’ll walk in with the missile defence plans, hand them over, and watch Moriarty throw them into the pool. He’ll have the chance to remove the bombs from Mrs. Hudson before Moriarty returns and-
Oh.
That was why Moriarty had left. Coming back, that hadn’t been a change of plan. He had left, fully knowing that doing so would allow Sherlock to remove the explosives, turning John into a safe target to shoot.
Sherlock tries to save him, then John dies anyway. Making it about more than John, making it about failure, Sherlock failing. Sherlock would have been furious beyond measure.
This is the ploy Moriarty will use. Tomorrow night, unless John does something to stop it, Moriarty will kill Mrs. Hudson.
John doesn’t have a choice after all.
On his way out of Joe Harrison’s flat, he spies a mobile charging on the counter.
Maybe he doesn’t have a choice, but suddenly, he has options.
He goes back to his flat, puts the mobile and laptop away, and rests for a bit. Rests, doesn’t sleep. The next time he sleeps, he may wake up dead, which is why there can be no sleep tonight. He has too much left to do here. He takes a shower to keep up his energy and changes into dark clothing.
He heats up some of the leftovers in the fridge, filling his plate and using a cover in the microwave the way Derek asks him to do. The man’s still out, can’t catch him misbehaving, but it’s habit by now. He sits down in front of the telly and watches the news.
It takes some time for it to be mentioned, this late in the day, but there’s a report on it eventually. Eight people killed in an explosion last night, the old flats collapsing downwards. Eight, not twelve. The names of the deceased are disclosed, followed by a video taken on a mobile phone. The picture is low quality, the street dark but for streetlights and fire, and John can barely identify himself as the black-jacketed man doing chest compressions. He hopes no one else can either. He did ask to be kept anonymous.
John clears his entire plate and doesn’t taste a thing.
It’s very easy to kill a man, knowing his location in advance.
The Golem is flesh, not clay, but John shatters him all the same. Hiding in the planetarium is a simple matter after the Antiquities Museum.
He runs out the way Sherlock had once let him in, so very long (five days) ago.
Killing a man in London always leaves John with a strange feeling. It’s not regret, never that, because John doesn’t kill unless he’s sure. He shoots killers who are about to end innocent lives and he does so in the moment before the victim becomes a casualty.
If anything, it reminds him of having sex - specifically the walk of shame. Feeling as if his actions are blatant, there for the world to see and disapprove of. Feeling as if, should anyone ask, he wouldn’t so much as try to deny it.
Yes, I shot him.
He was about to kill my friend, kill his sister, kill that professor.
Yes, I shot him. I shot him cleanly and well. Could you have done better?
There’s something wrong with John, something besides the obvious. Sometimes, he thinks he should be more worried about it than he is. Other times, this time, he knows who’s been sending these men, the mastermind behind this chain of assassins.
John Watson has yet to kill Jim Moriarty in triplicate, but three henchmen isn’t a bad start.
He spends the night writing. Careful compositions, all of them, concise and short and blunt. Capitalize. Punctuate. Brisk and deliberate.
All to be signed SH.
Come morning, John has developed a new and unending love for Derek’s coffeepot.
“Caffeinated much?” Derek asks, watching him twitch his way through breakfast.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says. “Explosions and PTSD don’t mix. But I’ve work today, so.”
“Sure you’re up to it?”
“I’ll steady out,” John replies, knowing that he will. Once he’s up and active, the adrenaline will properly kick back in. He checks his watch, keeps checking it, waiting for the time of the fourth call. He remembers the time exactly - Mycroft had texted him immediately after, saving the time to John’s mobile. “I think I’ll watch the news,” he says, a minute to go.
He sits down on their sofa, fidgeting with his hands to keep himself awake.
Ten minutes later, the news report comes in. John stares in disbelief.
Sherlock didn’t solve it.
Distantly, he registers Derek sitting down next to him, registers the man swearing. “An orphanage,” Derek says. “A fucking orphanage.”
John hears himself make a sound, something carefully restrained away from the realm of articulate meaning.
If Sherlock didn’t solve it, he hadn’t learned about the supernova. Because he’d never been to the planetarium. Because he’d never sent John to check the dead museum attendant’s flat, to find the message from Professor Kannes.
Or, or Sherlock had been right about solving Moriarty’s challenges. It only counted if Sherlock figured it out, and with Professor Kannes alive to hand Sherlock the answer, Moriarty had called foul play.
Whichever way it had happened:
Boom.
“You all right, mate?” Derek asks. Knows better to touch John when he’s like this, not so much as a hand on the shoulder. Derek shuts the telly off.
“Fine,” John says.
“I’ll get you a bin, all right? Don’t be sick until I get back.”
“Fine,” John repeats.
Derek gets him that bin. John doesn’t have to use it. Feeling sick doesn’t end in vomit for him, not feeling sick like this. He’s never had any issues keeping his food down. He holds the bin all the same, grounding himself with his focus on the plastic container.
“All right, mate?”
“Fine.”
“Please stop saying that.”
John remains silent for a long moment, then says, “I think I’ll call in sick.”
“I think that’s for the best,” Derek confirms. “You need to get some sleep.”
“No.”
Whatever Derek sees in his face, hears in his voice, it’s enough to convince him. “Okay,” Derek says. “Okay, sure. Whatever you like.”
John takes a deep breath. Sitting on the sofa, he folds in half, hands covering the back of his neck. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, I’m just- I don’t know. This is too much.”
“Three explosions,” Derek says. “No way this isn’t intentional. You saw that at the second one, didn’t you?”
John nods, head bent, eyes closed, elbows on his knees. It takes him a moment, but he straightens. Breathes normally again.
“Now what happens?” Derek asks. Derek might be the older one, but it’s still John who’s expected to know. For all John’s smaller, he’s stronger.
“Now,” John says, “we trust in the police and the British government.”
There’s a bit of a pause.
“Oh great,” Derek says. “I feel so safe.”
If John laughs a bit more than is appropriate, neither of them mentions it.
That morning, John does something he’d promised himself he’d never do again.
He eats at Speedy’s.
It’s the restaurant’s first day open since the initial explosion, a fortunate thing, and there are no chairs set outside today. All the better. John sits inside, looking out, waiting for a cab to pull up. He has a newspaper spread out before him on one of the few small tables and he keeps drinking the coffee so they don’t kick him out. He doesn’t need to read the headlines to know tensions are running high. Three explosions in a week and London is understandably on-edge.
Every cab that passes by snags his attention. When one finally stops, John fixates instantly.
The man who climbs out is tall and sullen, a cold twin to John’s flatmate. He’s exhausted but not defeated, and it makes John wonder. His Sherlock wasn’t so tired. The orphanage then, the explosion? Is zero multiplied by children still zero?
This man with Sherlock’s face takes out Sherlock’s key and goes up into Sherlock’s flat. John wonders, then, for the first time, if this Sherlock has a flatmate. He must. Who does Sherlock split the cost with in this world? Will John get to see this man, some bloke who couldn’t be arsed to follow Sherlock to the circus? Maybe he’ll be kidnapped instead of Mrs. Hudson.
John waits to see if another car will pull up, if Lestrade is going to follow. No car, no copper. Good. John hadn’t thought that would be an issue, but the changes make him leery. Still, having already caught Joe Harrison for the death of Adam West and the theft of the missile plans, Sherlock has no cause to go anywhere or do anything but watch crap telly before his midnight rendezvous.
Plan C, revised edition, is ready to go. On the stolen mobile, the drafts folder is full of last night’s work. All he has to do now is to send them in the correct order.
John sends the first text.
Lost my charger in the explosion. Battery just died, using Mrs. Hudson’s phone. Contact me at this number until I say otherwise. SH
Two tense minutes later, he receives Lestrade’s reply.
Fine. You’ll tell me when he texts again.
For all John has to respond to this on the spot, the answer is simple.
Obviously. SH
Lestrade doesn’t text back. As far as John can tell, the man finds nothing amiss.
Contact established.
From there, it’s a matter of timing.
He’s approaching his forty hour mark again, which is a bit not good. There are certain things every surgeon discovers, first among them being how long they can remain awake and fully functional. Second is how long they can remain awake before needing to effectively hibernate.
John can remain awake without ill effect for forty hours. Sometimes thirty-nine, sometimes forty-two, typically forty. After forty hours, once he sleeps, he’ll hibernate. After forty hours, the only thing for it is to stay up as long as possible, because once he drops, he drops. Properly fed, paced and caffeinated, John can handle fifty or so hours of continuous consciousness without giggling or falling over, but only just.
As it happens, waking up at eight yesterday morning means the forty hour mark falls at midnight tonight. Ten hours from that will get John well into morning, when he’ll check the news or go to the pool or go to Baker Street. He’ll be a zombie by that point, but there’s no alternative. Until then, there’s nothing to do.
With all of the texts sent, there’s no reason for John to remain awake, save the possibility that he’ll never wake again.
He has to see this through first.
At the thirty-eight hour mark, ten at night, he receives a call. Not on his mobile, on the stolen one.
John lets it ring out, grunting at Derek when his flatmate tries to prompt him into picking up.
He checks caller ID. Lestrade.
The mobile vibrates in his hands, receiving a text.
Who is this? Lestrade asks. If you want to stop Moriarty, come forward.
John types out a recently memorized phone number into the body of a text and sends that in reply.
I already followed your instructions to contact Mycroft Holmes, Lestrade answers.
Which John knows, or at least suspected. He doesn’t doubt Mycroft was the one to see through John’s textual Sherlock impression.
He picks up the mobile, says goodnight to Derek, and holes up in his bedroom. It’s warm in there, at least, none of the windows broken. He sits on the floor, nice and uncomfortable. It’s not his room in Baker Street, doesn’t particularly feel like it’s his at all. He misses his home.
At eleven-thirty, Lestrade texts again.
I’m sure you already know he’s taken Mrs. Hudson. What I need to know is whether I can depend on your information. You can’t possibly know all those details. Why should I trust you?
There’s a gamble John could make, a slight reveal, a small one. He’d called in the anonymous tip on the cabbie, all that time ago, and he’d had the sense to do it from a payphone, but that would give the police his voice. He’s not sure Lestrade would even believe him, not without evidence. Too much time to check John’s claim, time they don’t have.
Lacking that or a plausible lie, John will simply have to tell the truth.
Jim Moriarty once strapped a bomb to me. He kidnapped me off the street and threatened the people I love most. He is evil or insane or both. Whatever I can do to help you, I will. Please, let me.
After much too long, Lestrade replies, You’d better be right about this, “SH”.
I am, John answers.
He hasn’t prayed since he was shot, but it comes back to him easily enough.
Please, god. Let them live.
Some point around three in the morning, Derek must hear him pacing.
There’s a knock at John’s door, his flatmate holding a mug of coffee, and Derek’s ever-present warning of “I’m sure you know, but this isn’t remotely healthy.” The mug is pressed into John’s hands. “You look like shit,” Derek adds.
“Knew that too,” John replies.
They go into the kitchen, sit down, and Derek pours himself a coffee as well. John watches him tinker with milk and artificial sweetener. Contained motions make the other man look smaller than he is. It’s something to focus on as his mind cries out for rest.
“Would you like me to not sleep with you?” Derek asks after a bit.
“I would prefer not to sleep with you,” John replies.
It’s three a.m. humour, stupid but amusing all the same. John’s not up for more than that. They sit there for long drooping minutes.
“I’m tired,” John admits.
“Hadn’t guessed.”
John’s watch doesn’t tick, not in this London, but he can almost hear the sound anyway.
Dawn crawls closer.
Derek goes back to bed eventually, leaving John at the table with mug and mobile, emptying the one and waiting on the other.
When it rings, he nearly answers.
It’s in his hand in an instant, stopped only by desperate, ingrained restraint. Being beneficial to the police doesn’t make police attention beneficial to him. They want him to slip, to reveal himself and expose his sources. John must look like a goldmine of information, he knows he must. If they find him, they’ll never believe him.
This time, Lestrade doesn’t follow the call with a text.
John waits, the way only a soldier can.
Lestrade calls again in an hour.
Again, no text.
John takes the mobile back into his hands and types, Is there something you’d care to tell me, DI Lestrade?
Pick up your phone, Lestrade answers.
I’m holding it right now. Being overtired does poor things to John’s personality, he knows, but he’s sick of being tested.
Lestrade calls yet again.
John refuses to answer.
He waits another hour, but that’s the last call.
Standing by the side of the Thames, John makes one last attempt. It’s simple enough to work.
Are you and your landlady all right?
He waits, arms folded on stone, head bowing forward. Forty-nine hours is a long time. He knows Sherlock can - could? - can handle fifty-six, but that’s borderline inhuman.
Yes. Is this my Good Samaritan? SH
A giddy rush of blood floods through his head. He leans forward, hard, almost losing his balance.
I prefer Great, thanks.
He sends the message and presses the mobile to his lips, trying to keep his laughter in, his tears, his everything. He’s reaching his breaking point.
Of course. I will find you, you realize. SH
It sends a shiver through him. He lets himself enjoy it.
I’d rather you didn’t, John replies all the same.
Why not? Moriarty may be dead, but his network is vast. We’ve killed the spider. Help me destroy the web. SH
His knees almost buckle. Moriarty, Moriarty dead. One out of three, dead.
By the time he’s digested this, he’s pushing at hour fifty.
You don’t need my help.
True, but I’ve never had a partner before. I think I would enjoy it, if it were someone as clever as you. SH
John presses his lips against the mobile, presses hard. This time, it’s not to keep from crying or from laughing, or maybe it is.
I’ll consider it, John lies. Give me a week to decide.
Granted. Either way, I will find you. SH
Something shakes inside John’s chest and it’s nothing close to fear.
In that case, John types, I look forward to meeting you again.
He sends the text, erases every message in the inbox and sent file, and pulls out the battery. He puts on his gloves to wipe the electronics free of fingerprints, holding them out of sight between his body and the short wall before him. He leans on the barrier, elbows on stone, and lets phone and battery fall into the Thames.
That done, he walks away.
After fifty-one hours awake, John feels the crash coming. He makes himself sit down first, take care of things.
A short note to Derek, explaining the gun in John’s desk drawer and how to report it to the police. He thanks Derek for sitting up with him. He considers adding a short request to the note, asking for a text to be sent to this number to identify Dr. John H. Watson as the Great Samaritan. He considers, decides against it. Who is he to deprive Sherlock of the pleasure of that chase?
He folds the note and places it into the breast pocket of his shirt. He writes a second note, this one to Harry, and he leaves it in his desk drawer with the gun. He kicks off his shoes, calls in sick to work yet again, and goes to bed fully dressed.
It’s almost noon, hour fifty-two. His pillow is soft.
John sleeps.
next
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 5.5k, this part, 31.6k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU)
prologue - part one - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Epilogue
John is going to kill Jim Moriarty. He is going to kill him in triplicate.
He doesn’t have a gun in Essex, but he’s sure he could find a way around that.
John washes his face, calls in sick and passes his car keys off to Marta.
“You look terrible,” she tells him at his door, eyes full of concern as he fakes a series of coughs. “You should really go back to bed.”
“I think I will,” he says.
A brisk walk, a pair of tenners, and forty minutes by train later, John walks out of Liverpool Street Station, London. He adjusts his watch on his right wrist, the metal band making his mind bend. This isn’t either of his Londons, never will be, but he’ll bear it while he must.
His London, he corrects himself. Singular.
He only has the one, now.
A nice touch this, the pool, Moriarty had made him say, where little Carl died.
John hadn’t learned the address last night, but that’s fine. He knows enough to have tracked it down on his laptop this morning. Not many twelve-year-old kids had drowned in 1989 London swimming competitions.
He buys a drawing pad, a small one, and goes in with pencil in hand. He looks a bit odd, he knows, standing there fully dressed, drawing the dimensions of the room, craning his neck to see the bleachers up above.
A member of staff approaches him, looking politely concerned, and John greets her before she can say a word. He’s researching for a film set, would she mind answering a few questions about the building?
He gets a bit of a tour after that, explaining to the woman what the film would need in its pool scene. Snipers up here, the victims down there, he needs to see how all the hallways connect. Blocking, very important. He needs to see for himself to check the light levels.
He’s focused, charming if brisk, and only halfway through does he realise he’s doing an impression of Sherlock.
John doesn’t break character, but it’s a close thing.
Sitting in a Costa down the street, nursing a latte he doesn’t particularly want, he works out his plan of counterattack.
Mrs. Hudson will be positioned there, covered in explosives. Sherlock enters here, this time without a gun.
Moriarty will be in these hallways here.
Where will the snipers be?
Three hours later, what John has is a list of ways to get them all killed.
Chess is not John’s forte. Having once let Sherlock bully him into a game, John knows this very well. Maybe a master tactician would be able to get Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson out alive, but John is one man with one gun and limited ammunition. There is no way for John to handle this on his own and that’s....
Sane.
Of course John can’t do this on his own. What chance does an ex-army doctor stand against almost a dozen trained snipers? No chance at all, that’s what.
He looks down at his notes and plans, all of his considerations for ambush after ambush, and fights down a hysterical laugh. What the hell is he doing? This won’t save Sherlock.
Even if it does, it won’t be his Sherlock.
The loos in this Costa are single rooms, not stalls. Which is fortunate, particularly as it pertains to crying in the men’s toilet.
He can’t win at the pool. There’s no way to win.
He’ll have to do something else.
Oh.
Oh.
“Obvious,” John whispers to himself.
He walks back to Liverpool Street Station, needing to get the energy out. The entire train journey is spent fidgeting, more than the first was.
Back home, back into his jimjams, John settles down in front of the telly just before Marta comes by to check on him. She makes him soup but refuses to comfort him, berating him instead for his low fluid intake.
“If I die,” John says, “you can have my car.”
Marta sets down the soup on the coffee table and touches the back of her hand to his forehead. “No fever,” she reports. “Looks like a case of chronic idiocy.”
“I mean it,” he says. He doesn’t know what will happen when next his body - his mind? - attempts to wake in analogue London. Will he skip over those days? Will he simply die? Will he return for a split second of consciousness, before he goes? There must be more time left there, there’s always more time left. That can’t really be it.
He didn’t get to say goodbye.
Humming her sympathy, Marta sits down on the arm of the sofa. Pets his hair. John closes his eyes against the touch. “Doctors really are the worst patients,” Marta tells him. “Stop being such a cliché.”
John does Sherlock’s best sullen huff and flop combination, curling in on himself and making Marta laugh. Once in position, he stays that way.
“Want me to leave you to sleep, then?” she asks.
He nods. “Check in on me in the morning, okay?”
“’Course,” she says. “Eat your soup.”
“Thanks.”
She leaves, he eats, and the layout of the pool is pressed into his memory. That can be Plan C.
There’s a one-in-three chance John might wake up dead, but he goes to bed all the same.
Afghanistan.
Thank god, Afghanistan.
For all Plan C must be avoided at all costs, he fleshes it out all the same. If he can make a functioning strategy in advance, the risk level ought to be reduced. Somewhat. Maybe enough.
It’s a good thing John has help.
“All right, lads,” he says over breakfast, the lot of them crowded together in the mess at base. “I’ve got a hypothetical hostage scenario I bet you can’t solve.”
Surrounded by soldiers, John becomes the object of everyone’s focus.
He spells it out, draws it out, gives them the specifics of the encounter. Today’s game is set in London, in a pool. Here is the woman as the bait, here is her grown son as the targeted victim. The son tries for an exchange that is ultimately rejected. The enemy toys with his victim in this manner. The snipers have this area to operate within and this timing to follow. The rescue team is from the Met, New Scotland Yard having been tipped off. Assuming the enemy is led by a complete nutter - dangerously brilliant, but still a complete nutter - how can the family be saved?
By the end of the day, they have some pretty good ideas.
When John can’t fall asleep that night, it has very little to do with the sounds of Afghanistan. He’s more acclimatized to those sounds than he is to the noises outside his flats. He’s more used to this life, really, than he is to his other ones.
Here, he’s never doubted who he is. John H. Watson is Dr. Watson is Captain Watson. He is a doctor and a soldier, a surgeon and a fighter. He is a straight man who will someday marry, have children, and take his family on holiday to Devon in the summers. He will not be an alcoholic. He will not hit his wife or curse his daughter or alienate his son. This is the life he’d chosen, so very long ago when he’d had but one life to choose. He’d chosen this life, trained for it. It’s not everything he’s ever wanted, but no life is. No one life can be.
Tomorrow, John may wake in London. With yesterday in Chelmsford, a return to Essex is unlikely, a long shot in the extreme. Even if it weren’t, it’s not where he wants to go.
Tomorrow, John may wake in London.
Tomorrow, John may be dead.
He died with Sherlock Holmes in his arms and that, that is satisfying. In a way, it’s the most satisfying way he could have gone, dying to save his idiot of a best friend. He’s annoyed, he’s absolutely furious at the man, but John doesn’t regret his choice. It hurts, it hurts so damn much, more than he’s letting himself feel.
He’ll never know if Sherlock lived.
He thinks Moriarty must have died, though, can’t imagine him surviving so close to the blast.
Underwater, with John’s body to shield him, it’s theoretically possible for Sherlock to have lived. Maybe the building fell down a bit around them, maybe the snipers fired, but bullets can bounce off water and fire can’t penetrate it. Debris might have fallen, but as long as Sherlock could still get to air, a nice coating of concrete and iron is safety in disguise.
Moriarty died, Sherlock lived, and John has already been avenged.
He doesn’t know if that’s true, but once he decides to believe it, he sleeps.
The alarm of his digital watch beeps and John sits up, turning it off. The old woman was last night, the Golem is tonight, and the pool will be tomorrow night. There’s no time to waste.
He dresses, grabs his laptop and his gun, and is out the door before Derek notices he’s woken.
“Molly, hi,” John greets, all easy smiles, desperately trying for that weird Sherlock version of charm that will make Molly do anything. “You’re dating that IT bloke, right?”
Molly’s too surprised to blink at him, her eyes stuck wide. “Um, who-”
“Jim, right?” John asks. “He said he’d take a look at my laptop, but I haven’t seen him in days.” He holds up the laptop in a put-upon fashion, indicating it with light annoyance. “Do you know where he’s off to?”
“Oh, um,” Molly says. She’s gotten around to the blinking now. By the look on her face, she’s desperately trying to remember where she’s met John before, which is perfect, seeing as she hasn’t.
“I wouldn’t make a fuss, but it’s getting to be an issue.”
“Oh, sure, right,” she replies. “I think I know where he is.”
“Can you come lure him out for me?” John asks and smiles. “I think he might be hiding.”
Molly laughs a little. She shows him to where Jim from IT ought to be, if Jim from IT were a real person. “That’s strange,” she says. She pulls out her mobile and sends off a text. “He’s probably seeing to someone else. He’s been really busy lately.”
“I don’t mind waiting,” John says. “Oh, but could I have his number, just in case? He wrote it down for me before, but I forgot it.”
Something in Molly freezes at that.
John makes an expression of polite concern.
“When you say he wrote down his number,” Molly says.
“I couldn’t exactly look up the IT helpline on my computer,” John says, because no. Ten thousand times no. Sherlock has clearly been here, making Molly paranoid about her fake-boyfriend being gay.
Molly smiles, relieved, and John feels like a heel. How to warn her, he wonders. Is there any way, any good way she would believe and not be hurt by? Probably not.
He gets that phone number and waits until his stomach demands a lunch to compensate for his missing breakfast. For all Moriarty has no reason to suspect a mild-mannered man in a tan jumper, he doesn’t seem to be coming back. If he was even here today. John can’t imagine Moriarty used this persona for more than that single look at Sherlock.
Time for a change of tactics.
He asks around, using his brisk, calm manner to look like he belongs there. He has to backpedal in a hurry when Mike Stamford rounds the corner, but it’s too late. They take a quick lunch together, catching up on old times. John confirms along the way that Jim from IT hasn’t been seen at his job in days.
So much for Plan A.
One of the benefits to having interviewed Adam West’s fiancée is knowing when her brother came to her house. Will come to her house.
He has a bit of time before his window of opportunity, so he makes a vain attempt to shop for a new jacket. His old one with the epaulettes is a bit past the point of recovery from last night (four, five nights ago?) in the street. Too much blood and dust. He’s been wearing the black one with the patches since then, but it confuses him. Much like the tan jumper, he associates the patched jacket with Sherlock, ever since he wore it while shooting a cabbie.
He doesn’t make much progress on the new jacket, but then, he doesn’t expect to. He’s hardly about to bring along an extra jacket as he goes housebreaking. The carrier bag with the gun and laptop in it is already plenty. He does buy a pair of gloves, though.
There are more than a few skills John has picked up from life with Sherlock. The lock-picking is particularly nice. He could always kick it down, of course, but that? A bit suspicious.
On the other hand, more suspicious than a broken door?
Police tape.
John stops on the pavement, checking his watch for the digital date. This is wrong. Sherlock doesn’t solve this until tomorrow.
No, wait. That’s wrong. Sherlock had solved it long before John had gone to the tracks. Meaning Sherlock had delayed in recovering the missile plans because of John, for some strange reason.
This Sherlock hadn’t delayed.
Oh Christ.
John lets himself in anyway, stepping carefully. He goes straight to the drawer where he knows the plans were being kept. Gloves on, he sorts through its contents and finds no sign of his goal. He looks around a bit more, already knowing he won’t find anything. He bites his lip, keeps down a groan.
The contents of the drawer are returned in order, or close enough to it for most people. He shuts the drawer and keeps his hand on it, pressing it in even once it can go no further.
There goes Plan B.
He has a choice.
Very likely, Plan C will change the course of his life in this London, the last London he has. Once he comes to Sherlock’s - this Sherlock’s - attention, everything will change. John might be deemed insane. John might be arrested for illegal firearm possession and sentenced to ten years. John might be kidnapped by Mycroft for real this time. At the very least, he’ll probably have to make his goodbyes to Derek and Maggie.
If he stands down, does nothing, he doesn’t know what will happen. Moriarty won’t kill Sherlock tomorrow night. No matter how the man taunts, John’s sure of it. He wanted to scare Sherlock, to make things personal, and then he was going to kill John to seal it. Armed with John’s gun, Sherlock foiled the plan, killing Moriarty and John, and possibly himself as well.
Tomorrow night, Sherlock won’t have that gun. He’ll walk in with the missile defence plans, hand them over, and watch Moriarty throw them into the pool. He’ll have the chance to remove the bombs from Mrs. Hudson before Moriarty returns and-
Oh.
That was why Moriarty had left. Coming back, that hadn’t been a change of plan. He had left, fully knowing that doing so would allow Sherlock to remove the explosives, turning John into a safe target to shoot.
Sherlock tries to save him, then John dies anyway. Making it about more than John, making it about failure, Sherlock failing. Sherlock would have been furious beyond measure.
This is the ploy Moriarty will use. Tomorrow night, unless John does something to stop it, Moriarty will kill Mrs. Hudson.
John doesn’t have a choice after all.
On his way out of Joe Harrison’s flat, he spies a mobile charging on the counter.
Maybe he doesn’t have a choice, but suddenly, he has options.
He goes back to his flat, puts the mobile and laptop away, and rests for a bit. Rests, doesn’t sleep. The next time he sleeps, he may wake up dead, which is why there can be no sleep tonight. He has too much left to do here. He takes a shower to keep up his energy and changes into dark clothing.
He heats up some of the leftovers in the fridge, filling his plate and using a cover in the microwave the way Derek asks him to do. The man’s still out, can’t catch him misbehaving, but it’s habit by now. He sits down in front of the telly and watches the news.
It takes some time for it to be mentioned, this late in the day, but there’s a report on it eventually. Eight people killed in an explosion last night, the old flats collapsing downwards. Eight, not twelve. The names of the deceased are disclosed, followed by a video taken on a mobile phone. The picture is low quality, the street dark but for streetlights and fire, and John can barely identify himself as the black-jacketed man doing chest compressions. He hopes no one else can either. He did ask to be kept anonymous.
John clears his entire plate and doesn’t taste a thing.
It’s very easy to kill a man, knowing his location in advance.
The Golem is flesh, not clay, but John shatters him all the same. Hiding in the planetarium is a simple matter after the Antiquities Museum.
He runs out the way Sherlock had once let him in, so very long (five days) ago.
Killing a man in London always leaves John with a strange feeling. It’s not regret, never that, because John doesn’t kill unless he’s sure. He shoots killers who are about to end innocent lives and he does so in the moment before the victim becomes a casualty.
If anything, it reminds him of having sex - specifically the walk of shame. Feeling as if his actions are blatant, there for the world to see and disapprove of. Feeling as if, should anyone ask, he wouldn’t so much as try to deny it.
Yes, I shot him.
He was about to kill my friend, kill his sister, kill that professor.
Yes, I shot him. I shot him cleanly and well. Could you have done better?
There’s something wrong with John, something besides the obvious. Sometimes, he thinks he should be more worried about it than he is. Other times, this time, he knows who’s been sending these men, the mastermind behind this chain of assassins.
John Watson has yet to kill Jim Moriarty in triplicate, but three henchmen isn’t a bad start.
He spends the night writing. Careful compositions, all of them, concise and short and blunt. Capitalize. Punctuate. Brisk and deliberate.
All to be signed SH.
Come morning, John has developed a new and unending love for Derek’s coffeepot.
“Caffeinated much?” Derek asks, watching him twitch his way through breakfast.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says. “Explosions and PTSD don’t mix. But I’ve work today, so.”
“Sure you’re up to it?”
“I’ll steady out,” John replies, knowing that he will. Once he’s up and active, the adrenaline will properly kick back in. He checks his watch, keeps checking it, waiting for the time of the fourth call. He remembers the time exactly - Mycroft had texted him immediately after, saving the time to John’s mobile. “I think I’ll watch the news,” he says, a minute to go.
He sits down on their sofa, fidgeting with his hands to keep himself awake.
Ten minutes later, the news report comes in. John stares in disbelief.
Sherlock didn’t solve it.
Distantly, he registers Derek sitting down next to him, registers the man swearing. “An orphanage,” Derek says. “A fucking orphanage.”
John hears himself make a sound, something carefully restrained away from the realm of articulate meaning.
If Sherlock didn’t solve it, he hadn’t learned about the supernova. Because he’d never been to the planetarium. Because he’d never sent John to check the dead museum attendant’s flat, to find the message from Professor Kannes.
Or, or Sherlock had been right about solving Moriarty’s challenges. It only counted if Sherlock figured it out, and with Professor Kannes alive to hand Sherlock the answer, Moriarty had called foul play.
Whichever way it had happened:
Boom.
“You all right, mate?” Derek asks. Knows better to touch John when he’s like this, not so much as a hand on the shoulder. Derek shuts the telly off.
“Fine,” John says.
“I’ll get you a bin, all right? Don’t be sick until I get back.”
“Fine,” John repeats.
Derek gets him that bin. John doesn’t have to use it. Feeling sick doesn’t end in vomit for him, not feeling sick like this. He’s never had any issues keeping his food down. He holds the bin all the same, grounding himself with his focus on the plastic container.
“All right, mate?”
“Fine.”
“Please stop saying that.”
John remains silent for a long moment, then says, “I think I’ll call in sick.”
“I think that’s for the best,” Derek confirms. “You need to get some sleep.”
“No.”
Whatever Derek sees in his face, hears in his voice, it’s enough to convince him. “Okay,” Derek says. “Okay, sure. Whatever you like.”
John takes a deep breath. Sitting on the sofa, he folds in half, hands covering the back of his neck. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, I’m just- I don’t know. This is too much.”
“Three explosions,” Derek says. “No way this isn’t intentional. You saw that at the second one, didn’t you?”
John nods, head bent, eyes closed, elbows on his knees. It takes him a moment, but he straightens. Breathes normally again.
“Now what happens?” Derek asks. Derek might be the older one, but it’s still John who’s expected to know. For all John’s smaller, he’s stronger.
“Now,” John says, “we trust in the police and the British government.”
There’s a bit of a pause.
“Oh great,” Derek says. “I feel so safe.”
If John laughs a bit more than is appropriate, neither of them mentions it.
That morning, John does something he’d promised himself he’d never do again.
He eats at Speedy’s.
It’s the restaurant’s first day open since the initial explosion, a fortunate thing, and there are no chairs set outside today. All the better. John sits inside, looking out, waiting for a cab to pull up. He has a newspaper spread out before him on one of the few small tables and he keeps drinking the coffee so they don’t kick him out. He doesn’t need to read the headlines to know tensions are running high. Three explosions in a week and London is understandably on-edge.
Every cab that passes by snags his attention. When one finally stops, John fixates instantly.
The man who climbs out is tall and sullen, a cold twin to John’s flatmate. He’s exhausted but not defeated, and it makes John wonder. His Sherlock wasn’t so tired. The orphanage then, the explosion? Is zero multiplied by children still zero?
This man with Sherlock’s face takes out Sherlock’s key and goes up into Sherlock’s flat. John wonders, then, for the first time, if this Sherlock has a flatmate. He must. Who does Sherlock split the cost with in this world? Will John get to see this man, some bloke who couldn’t be arsed to follow Sherlock to the circus? Maybe he’ll be kidnapped instead of Mrs. Hudson.
John waits to see if another car will pull up, if Lestrade is going to follow. No car, no copper. Good. John hadn’t thought that would be an issue, but the changes make him leery. Still, having already caught Joe Harrison for the death of Adam West and the theft of the missile plans, Sherlock has no cause to go anywhere or do anything but watch crap telly before his midnight rendezvous.
Plan C, revised edition, is ready to go. On the stolen mobile, the drafts folder is full of last night’s work. All he has to do now is to send them in the correct order.
John sends the first text.
Lost my charger in the explosion. Battery just died, using Mrs. Hudson’s phone. Contact me at this number until I say otherwise. SH
Two tense minutes later, he receives Lestrade’s reply.
Fine. You’ll tell me when he texts again.
For all John has to respond to this on the spot, the answer is simple.
Obviously. SH
Lestrade doesn’t text back. As far as John can tell, the man finds nothing amiss.
Contact established.
From there, it’s a matter of timing.
He’s approaching his forty hour mark again, which is a bit not good. There are certain things every surgeon discovers, first among them being how long they can remain awake and fully functional. Second is how long they can remain awake before needing to effectively hibernate.
John can remain awake without ill effect for forty hours. Sometimes thirty-nine, sometimes forty-two, typically forty. After forty hours, once he sleeps, he’ll hibernate. After forty hours, the only thing for it is to stay up as long as possible, because once he drops, he drops. Properly fed, paced and caffeinated, John can handle fifty or so hours of continuous consciousness without giggling or falling over, but only just.
As it happens, waking up at eight yesterday morning means the forty hour mark falls at midnight tonight. Ten hours from that will get John well into morning, when he’ll check the news or go to the pool or go to Baker Street. He’ll be a zombie by that point, but there’s no alternative. Until then, there’s nothing to do.
With all of the texts sent, there’s no reason for John to remain awake, save the possibility that he’ll never wake again.
He has to see this through first.
At the thirty-eight hour mark, ten at night, he receives a call. Not on his mobile, on the stolen one.
John lets it ring out, grunting at Derek when his flatmate tries to prompt him into picking up.
He checks caller ID. Lestrade.
The mobile vibrates in his hands, receiving a text.
Who is this? Lestrade asks. If you want to stop Moriarty, come forward.
John types out a recently memorized phone number into the body of a text and sends that in reply.
I already followed your instructions to contact Mycroft Holmes, Lestrade answers.
Which John knows, or at least suspected. He doesn’t doubt Mycroft was the one to see through John’s textual Sherlock impression.
He picks up the mobile, says goodnight to Derek, and holes up in his bedroom. It’s warm in there, at least, none of the windows broken. He sits on the floor, nice and uncomfortable. It’s not his room in Baker Street, doesn’t particularly feel like it’s his at all. He misses his home.
At eleven-thirty, Lestrade texts again.
I’m sure you already know he’s taken Mrs. Hudson. What I need to know is whether I can depend on your information. You can’t possibly know all those details. Why should I trust you?
There’s a gamble John could make, a slight reveal, a small one. He’d called in the anonymous tip on the cabbie, all that time ago, and he’d had the sense to do it from a payphone, but that would give the police his voice. He’s not sure Lestrade would even believe him, not without evidence. Too much time to check John’s claim, time they don’t have.
Lacking that or a plausible lie, John will simply have to tell the truth.
Jim Moriarty once strapped a bomb to me. He kidnapped me off the street and threatened the people I love most. He is evil or insane or both. Whatever I can do to help you, I will. Please, let me.
After much too long, Lestrade replies, You’d better be right about this, “SH”.
I am, John answers.
He hasn’t prayed since he was shot, but it comes back to him easily enough.
Please, god. Let them live.
Some point around three in the morning, Derek must hear him pacing.
There’s a knock at John’s door, his flatmate holding a mug of coffee, and Derek’s ever-present warning of “I’m sure you know, but this isn’t remotely healthy.” The mug is pressed into John’s hands. “You look like shit,” Derek adds.
“Knew that too,” John replies.
They go into the kitchen, sit down, and Derek pours himself a coffee as well. John watches him tinker with milk and artificial sweetener. Contained motions make the other man look smaller than he is. It’s something to focus on as his mind cries out for rest.
“Would you like me to not sleep with you?” Derek asks after a bit.
“I would prefer not to sleep with you,” John replies.
It’s three a.m. humour, stupid but amusing all the same. John’s not up for more than that. They sit there for long drooping minutes.
“I’m tired,” John admits.
“Hadn’t guessed.”
John’s watch doesn’t tick, not in this London, but he can almost hear the sound anyway.
Dawn crawls closer.
Derek goes back to bed eventually, leaving John at the table with mug and mobile, emptying the one and waiting on the other.
When it rings, he nearly answers.
It’s in his hand in an instant, stopped only by desperate, ingrained restraint. Being beneficial to the police doesn’t make police attention beneficial to him. They want him to slip, to reveal himself and expose his sources. John must look like a goldmine of information, he knows he must. If they find him, they’ll never believe him.
This time, Lestrade doesn’t follow the call with a text.
John waits, the way only a soldier can.
Lestrade calls again in an hour.
Again, no text.
John takes the mobile back into his hands and types, Is there something you’d care to tell me, DI Lestrade?
Pick up your phone, Lestrade answers.
I’m holding it right now. Being overtired does poor things to John’s personality, he knows, but he’s sick of being tested.
Lestrade calls yet again.
John refuses to answer.
He waits another hour, but that’s the last call.
Standing by the side of the Thames, John makes one last attempt. It’s simple enough to work.
Are you and your landlady all right?
He waits, arms folded on stone, head bowing forward. Forty-nine hours is a long time. He knows Sherlock can - could? - can handle fifty-six, but that’s borderline inhuman.
Yes. Is this my Good Samaritan? SH
A giddy rush of blood floods through his head. He leans forward, hard, almost losing his balance.
I prefer Great, thanks.
He sends the message and presses the mobile to his lips, trying to keep his laughter in, his tears, his everything. He’s reaching his breaking point.
Of course. I will find you, you realize. SH
It sends a shiver through him. He lets himself enjoy it.
I’d rather you didn’t, John replies all the same.
Why not? Moriarty may be dead, but his network is vast. We’ve killed the spider. Help me destroy the web. SH
His knees almost buckle. Moriarty, Moriarty dead. One out of three, dead.
By the time he’s digested this, he’s pushing at hour fifty.
You don’t need my help.
True, but I’ve never had a partner before. I think I would enjoy it, if it were someone as clever as you. SH
John presses his lips against the mobile, presses hard. This time, it’s not to keep from crying or from laughing, or maybe it is.
I’ll consider it, John lies. Give me a week to decide.
Granted. Either way, I will find you. SH
Something shakes inside John’s chest and it’s nothing close to fear.
In that case, John types, I look forward to meeting you again.
He sends the text, erases every message in the inbox and sent file, and pulls out the battery. He puts on his gloves to wipe the electronics free of fingerprints, holding them out of sight between his body and the short wall before him. He leans on the barrier, elbows on stone, and lets phone and battery fall into the Thames.
That done, he walks away.
After fifty-one hours awake, John feels the crash coming. He makes himself sit down first, take care of things.
A short note to Derek, explaining the gun in John’s desk drawer and how to report it to the police. He thanks Derek for sitting up with him. He considers adding a short request to the note, asking for a text to be sent to this number to identify Dr. John H. Watson as the Great Samaritan. He considers, decides against it. Who is he to deprive Sherlock of the pleasure of that chase?
He folds the note and places it into the breast pocket of his shirt. He writes a second note, this one to Harry, and he leaves it in his desk drawer with the gun. He kicks off his shoes, calls in sick to work yet again, and goes to bed fully dressed.
It’s almost noon, hour fifty-two. His pillow is soft.
John sleeps.
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