Above, Below (Through the Cracks) || Part Three ||
//
"Oh, fuck it," John cursed.
He grabbed his donkey jacket from the back of the door and threw it on. Then collected the gun from where he’d put it in his desk drawer, checked the safety was on and tucked it in the back of his jeans.
Three minutes after he'd watched the front door click shut behind the consulting detective, John was running out of the flat after him.
"I would like to take you with me, but it is impossible and too dangerous."
Too dangerous John's arse. He was a doctor, he'd been to war. The consulting detective might be smart but he obviously didn't know how to take care of himself and there were some very bad people after him.
While the consulting detective had been closed lipped about why the men were after him, John couldn't imagine he’d done anything that meant he deserved to be caught by them. He'd seen men like that in Afghanistan, they might have spoken a different language and had different coloured skin but the look in their eyes was the same. The identical maniacal glint of malice. They didn't fight for their country, for honour or morals, for liberty or self-preservation. They did it because they enjoyed it, the smell of blood and screams of pain, and most of all, of being the cause.
There was no stopping, or reasoning, with men like that. The consulting detective was still tired - one night’s rest and some tea and scrambled eggs didn't undo what looked like weeks of running or magically heal a stab wound. He couldn't just sit back and pretend nothing was wrong as the man walked off to his death, not at the sort of hands who would take pleasure in making it hurt. John wouldn't, couldn't, do nothing.
He made his way around the back of the house to the road the consulting detective should have ended up on. As soon as he rounded the corner it was obvious which way the consulting detective had gone. He could hear shouts of distress mingled with the blood-curdling laughter of the snake and the enthusiastic cheers of the wolf.
John ran.
He was down the road and to the source of the commotion in an instant. He took a second to process the sight in front of him.
The man was huge. He was at least seven feet, lean but powerful and he had both his dustbin lid-sized hands around the consulting detective’s throat, holding him off the ground. The consulting detective’s feet kicked at his attacker as his face became increasingly red and his hands tugged at those around his neck. To the side, the snake and the wolf were wrapped around each other and watching the events unfolding in front of them with hungry gazes.
For just a second he wanted to know why none of the people walking past were stopping to help or call the police. Why everyone on the street was acting like it was a normal Tuesday morning rather than acknowledging the fact a man was being strangled next to the bus stop.
Then the consulting detective started to turn blue. John stopped thinking and acted.
The shot rang out with an ear-splitting crack and the giant crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, hitting the ground with a sickening thump. The consulting detective collapsed beside him, rolled onto his side and vomited.
No one screamed.
//
Sherlock looked at the Golem. Wherever the shot came from, it was perfect.
It hit right between the Golem’s eyes and hadn’t even come close to grazing Sherlock, despite their struggling. Blood and brain matter were sprayed out over the pavement and Sherlock could feel the warm, wet of it on his face and the back of his hands were slick and red.
The rush of oxygen back to Sherlock’s brain made his thoughts hazy and his head throb, along with the rest of him. He blamed it for the delay in questioning why the Golem had suddenly, if expertly, been killed. Moriarty and Moran had seemed to be enjoying the show far too much for such an action and they were criminals from Below. They didn’t believe in firearms. Not personal enough.
Sherlock took a deep breath and rolled on to his other side so he didn’t have to look into the Golem’s empty and lifeless eyes, the perfect hole in the centre of his forehead, or his own vomit. He swallowed down the nausea at the sick rush it gave him and mentally traced the trajectory of the bullet, then turned his head to look.
For just a moment, Sherlock wasn’t able to breathe again and his heart pounded inside his chest.
Doctor John Watson.
He stood on the other side of the road still holding what was most likely a Browning handgun, illegally retained from his service in the army and he’d shot the Golem. He had saved Sherlock’s life with a crack shot between the eyes, not just contending with two men struggling, but two lanes of traffic between him and his target.
His earlier underestimation of the good doctor had nothing on this revelation.
Moriarty and Moran ran. Doctor Watson had his sights trained on Moriarty now and they were far enough away from Sherlock that he could easily send them the same way as the Golem before they harmed Sherlock.
Moriarty didn’t resist a parting shot, growling at Sherlock as he vanished. “You can’t hide behind his skirts forever.”
Then Doctor Watson was across the road, dropping to his knees on the pavement beside Sherlock, where he was still nauseous and gasping for breath. Doctor Watson’s hands were at Sherlock’s throat in an instant, his fingers careful but insistent as they moved over Sherlock's throat, where the skin was hot and sore and throbbing.
"Don't try and speak," Doctor Watson instructed in a tone that said very clearly not to argue as Sherlock opened his mouth to make an attempt.
"Just nod, or shake your head," he continued, fingers pressing gently against Sherlock's Adam’s apple. "Are you having any difficulty breathing?"
Sherlock shook his head and the world spun a little more violently than it was before.
"Feeling dizzy?"
Sherlock nodded. Carefully.
"Easy,” Doctor Watson said and Sherlock imagined he’d lost some of the colour that should have been returning. “Is your vision blurry?"
Sherlock shook his head again, the only thing that was currently blurring his vision were tears from the pain of a mistaken attempt at swallowing.
"Good,” Doctor Watson said with a relieved looking smile. “Nearly done, can you wiggle your fingers for me?"
Sherlock waved his hand in response and made his own additional check that his feet were also in working order. As he could feel the cold, hard press of the pavement beneath him and the sharp throbbing pain in his throat, he felt it was safe to assume no permanent damage had been done by the attempted strangulation or sudden drop to the ground.
"Alright, now use your fingers to answer. How long was he strangling you?"
Sherlock held up one finger, then reconsidered and added a second.
"One to two minutes?"
Sherlock nodded and Doctor Watson took a hold of his face in one hand and gently lifted one eyelid, and then the other, to check each eye carefully. Pressed in close Doctor Watson smelt like his flat, like damp and stale air, but underneath was something earthy and real.
“Well, let’s get you back inside the flat. I think I’ve scared the creepy bastards off long enough to get you some water and wash the blood off you. Not to mention I’d like to get off the street, seeing as I’m more than a bit concerned that no one’s paying any attention to the fact I just shot someone as they waited for the twenty-nine bus.”
Sherlock opened his mouth to try and say something, but it felt like razor blades were being pulled up his throat and nothing more than a croak came out.
“No, no talking just yet,” Doctor Watson admonished firmly and everything that Sherlock wanted to say, all the questions and statements and protests that wanted to tumble out of his brain through his mouth would have to wait.
Doctor Watson helped Sherlock to sit upright, hand pressed warm and solid against the small of his back as the world lurched violently. He gave Sherlock a moment to swallow down the urge to vomit again, before putting Sherlock’s arm over his shoulder and easing them both to their feet.
The world swayed again as they moved and Sherlock closed his eyes. When he opened them again after two deep breaths everything was as it should be, the Golem was dead at their feet and Doctor Watson was staring into his face in concern.
//
"You alright?" John asked as he pressed a hot cup of tea into the consulting detective’s hands. He was sat on the worn beige sofa in John’s flat and didn’t seem to be aware of the tremor occasionally running through him, so slight it was almost imperceptible.
"I'll be fine," the consulting detective answered. His voice was scratchy and hoarse and he tried, but failed, to hide a wince at the pain swallowing caused him as he sipped carefully at his tea.
John raised an eyebrow in disbelief and sat down on the sofa next to him. The consulting detective’s face was washed free from blood and had returned to its normal, if worryingly pale, colour but his neck was still an angry red and smudges of black and purple were already forming.
John just hoped they weren’t going to turn into handprints. John had tried very hard not to notice it, not while he was looking after the man, but there was no denying the consulting detective was stunning. With his smooth pale skin, sharp blue eyes, messy black curls and tall, lean frame, he was the sort of man John would class as out of his league if he spotted him in the pub, or on the street.
John knew it was ridiculous and base, but he didn’t want to see another man’s palm and fingers marking the consulting detective. Even if he would be gone soon, even if John would never have a chance to be someone other than the bloke who once did the consulting detective a good turn.
"You're lucky he didn't crush your windpipe,” John pointed out, his fingers moving up to touch carefully at bruised throat again. If he were truthful with himself, it was as much just to be able to touch as to reassure himself of the initial check he’d done on the street. “He could have killed you."
"He was never going to kill me," the consulting detective finally said, dismissively, when John returned his hands to his lap and his cup of tea. He was as satisfied as he could be without proper equipment that no serious, or lasting damage had been done by the attempted, and very nearly successful, strangulation.
"Well, it certainly looked like it." John didn’t even bother trying to hide how much he didn’t believe it. Not with the colour the consulting detective had been turning when John pulled the trigger.
"He was merely incapacitating me,” the consulting detective stated. “Moriarty and Moran have plans to torture me for information before they kill me. You put the fear in them, though. Congratulations, I don't think anyone has done that before."
John drank his tea and didn’t let the news affect him. Even if the giant hadn’t been about to kill the consulting detective, he’d been about to hand him over to a pair of men who would do much worse than suffocation. John had seen that in their eyes the minute he’d seen them on his doorstep. Nothing twitches inside his chest, no guilt stirs. The giant was a bad man, working for animals, brutal and vicious.
John had done the right thing, he didn’t doubt it, but he wanted to know why. “Now are you going to tell me about the trouble you’re in?” he said in a tone he’d not used since the army. The one that demanded obedience without using any overt command.
Something that looked an awful lot like it might have been regret passed over the consulting detective’s face. “It is best if I don’t. I am sorry, Doctor Watson.”
“I think, seeing as I’ve saved your life, you could stretch to calling me John.”
“John,” the consulting detective echoed and for just a moment, something hopeful flared in the pit of John’s stomach.
He squashed it immediately, reminded himself just how foolish he was being.
“Alright,” he said. If he wasn’t going to get an answer to that question, there was another that was troubling him. As much as he didn’t want to think about it, about the consequences of the actions he’d just taken, he could hardly bury his head in the sand. “How about you tell me why everyone out there didn’t pay a blind bit of notice to you being strangled, or me shooting a seven foot giant of a man?”
A look of something flashed across the consulting detective’s face. John might not have known exactly what it was, but he could tell that it didn’t bode well. Probably for him, rather than the consulting detective.
“It is complicated and we shouldn’t linger. I truly am sorry, John,” the consulting detective said and John believed him on both counts.
The shooting of that bloody giant wouldn’t stop men like that for long, they would regroup, rearm and then try again.
The consulting detective looked pained as he confirmed what John was already thinking, “I have to run. Before they have time to find another associate to act as a shield for them. You should run too. They will not be afraid of you for long and they are nothing if not resourceful.”
The consulting detective had a point, but that didn’t stop the flash of anger burning bright and hard in John’s chest. The first real, solid anger he’d felt in six months and he wasn’t just going to accept the consulting detective walking away without giving him any answers.
“You deduced my entire life this morning, tell me where I have to go,” he demanded.
“Distant relatives, the further from London the better,” the consulting detective said, looking pained again. “They will be more preoccupied with me for the time being, but I cannot guarantee how long that safety will last.”
John could feel his cheeks flushing red with anger and it took a sheer force of will not to shout back at him. “And you just expect me to let you walk out of here, knowing they’ll be out there? Trying to kill you. Again.”
John had been willing to do almost anything to help the utterly brilliant, if a bit mad man next to him. He still would. They were both in danger and still the consulting detective wanted to go out there alone, when he needed John to protect him. Just as much as John needed him for the answers there wasn’t time for.
“You already have once today.”
“That was before I killed a man,” John growled in return.
He stood, going to the small wardrobe to pull out his old army pack. His jaw ached with how tightly he was clenching it, biting back all the things he wanted to say to the consulting detective. Things he knew would be of no use.
He knew when a mind was made up.
The bloody idiot was going to get himself killed for some stupid sense of pride, or worse, the notion that it was John who needed protecting.
A tentative hand on John’s arm stilled him as he pushed two jumpers into the bag.
“Are you-,” the consulting detective said, his tone the least confident John had heard since they’d met. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” he answered automatically. Then thought about it, and corrected, “No, but I will be. He wasn’t a very nice man from the looks of it and even if he wasn’t about to kill you, he was going to hand you over to the pair that would. I don’t regret it.”
He meant it, as well.
He didn’t regret it. He had taken exactly five lives, three in battle, one in mercy and one to save the consulting detective’s life. He didn’t regret any of them. He wouldn’t have done it, if there’d been room for regret.
What he did regret was that he would never see the consulting detective again. That he had walked into John’s life and turned it upside down, reminded him that he did have the power to save lives, to change them, but all his efforts would be for nothing.
That he’d never get the chance to-.
“I’m relieved,” the consulting detective breathed, stepping even further into John’s personal space. His heart pounded. “Thank you, for everything, but I have to go. You shouldn’t stay past the hour, in case they send someone.”
There was a ghost of breath against John’s cheek then the consulting detective was gone.
John sagged against the wardrobe. For just a moment he’d thought-.
But no, it was foolish and stupid. He had to pack and to leave, and not think about the consulting detective again.
Maybe he would prove John wrong and survive.
He hoped so.
//
Sherlock made it as far as the doors to the church where he had crawled, bleeding and exhausted, from Below into Above. Then he stopped. The rain had started again, a persistent drizzle that was already starting to seep through his clothes and into his skin.
He remembered the wet and the cold.
He remembered demanding, pleading, with John not to take him to a hospital. Any sensible, normal person would have ignored Sherlock’s wishes and as a result he would currently be dead.
Sherlock thought about Doctor John Watson and attempted to the put the world back to rights. Only it seemed to shift out from under his feet every time he thought about John and remembered what he’d just done. The man with a shaking hand, psychosomatic limp and a cable-knit Aran jumper had seemed harmless.
John Watson was not even close to ordinary and he was the only reason Sherlock was alive. Not once, but twice over, and to think Sherlock had brushed him off. Had deduced him to be harmless and he’d been wrong.
So incredibly wrong.
Sherlock realised that what he had seen under the soft smile and gentle eyes wasn’t weakness, merely a glimpse of something else. Something lost and almost broken in John. Only then did Sherlock understand what it meant, just how close to falling through the cracks John had already been when he’d found Sherlock.
That was why John had seen him, collapsed and bleeding on the pavement in the pouring rain. John was just as lost as Sherlock had been five years ago and Sherlock had mistaken it for something else.
He had seen John as little more than a Good Samaritan when there was so much more. John Watson was loyal and brave, selfless, and a crack shot with a moral code of steel. Sherlock suspected that John was the most dangerous man he would ever meet and that included whoever was behind the murders Below. It was John, and only John, because you wouldn’t, couldn’t believe he was capable of murder.
And in the correct circumstances he was. Without remorse or regret.
He realised with a jolt, a sharp clenching in his stomach, that he had no idea why he had left John. Other than the possibility that he had been unbearably, unforgivably slow.
There was no doubt that John had slipped through the cracks in the world, an obvious fact Sherlock had been choosing to ignore. It was impossible that he could have shot a man in the middle of a crowded street and had it go unnoticed unless he was no longer part of Above. Sherlock had dragged him down and left him alone for what?
A misguided notion of gallantry?
John Watson was the last person that needed protecting.
What he did need was a guide for Below, someone to do a better job that the simpering Rat-Speaker Molly had done for him. Someone to help him find his place in the world Below, where Sherlock, who had never fitted in anywhere Above had found a place that did not reject him. A place that stimulated him.
John Watson needed someone to show him Below, and if it allowed Sherlock to keep him close, all the better.
//
John blinked in surprise.
The consulting detective stood in his open doorway, one hand held up in either supplication or greeting, or both.
“It’s only me,” he said. There was an edge to his voice that betrayed the cool and calm impression it looked like he was trying to pull off.
John flicked the safety back on the gun and lowered it, tucking it away again in the waistband at the back of his jeans. It wasn’t the ideal spot, but easy access was what counted the most. When he’d heard the noise at the front door he’d been ready to shoot as soon as it had opened, lock picked.
The consulting detective was just bloody lucky that John didn’t shoot first, think second, ask important questions like who’s that? third.
“I thought you were leaving,” John said. After his grand act of buggering off and leaving John to it, the consulting detective could go jump if he thought he was getting a hello.
John watched as the consulting detective closed the front door behind him. He didn’t put the chain or dead-bolt across, just as John hadn’t. They both knew it wouldn’t do much against the men after them. John’s gun and the five rounds left in it were the best protection he had.
“Yes, I was,” the consulting detective said.
“Without me,” John prompted, because he was more than a bit confused and the intensely thoughtful look on the consulting detective’s face wasn’t helping much.
After the whole repeated assertions from the consulting detective that John couldn’t possibly help him, it didn’t make any sense that he’d be back. Even if John had wanted him to come back. To finish what he had almost started.
It wasn’t as if he might have left something, John had found him with nothing more than the clothes on his back and they were leaving in slightly better, certainly cleaner, condition.
“You shot a man,” the consulting detective answered and John bristled again.
“Yes,” he said through gritted teeth. He might not regret shooting the man who’d been trying very hard to strangle the consulting detective, but that didn’t mean he wanted to dwell on it. The less he thought about the whole thing, the better.
“It wasn’t an easy shot.” It wasn’t said in any way John was used to. Superiors in the army would say it with a sort of pride and his regiment would laugh and tease and be amazed Doc Watson could do that and stitch a man back together.
To the consulting detective it sounded like a fact and nothing more. It wasn’t an easy shot, plain and simple.
It hadn’t been the hardest John had ever made, but the consulting detective wasn’t ever to know that. “And?”
“It was a crack shot.” Again, said like a fact and nothing more.
John was beginning to miss certain social cues the consulting detective was lacking. Like the ability to get on and say what he wanted before buggering off again and leaving John to run for his life in an unpleasant amount of confusion.
“Thought you were in a bit of a hurry?”
The consulting detective didn’t even have the good grace to look abashed, he just ploughed right on. “Not an easy task for a man with a tremor in his dominant hand.”
“Then you’re lucky I didn’t hit you,” John said shortly. Seeing as he was harbouring some unpleasant thoughts to that tune, he turned back to rearranging the items he’d shoved into his bag to make room for his medical kit.
“There was no luck involved,” the consulting detective said and John stiffened, his whole body instantly tense. The man was suddenly right up in John’s personal space, so close he could feel the damp heat of his breath on the back of his neck. “The limp might be in your head, but the tremor isn’t.”
“Excuse me?” John said spinning around, the words out of his mouth even as the horrible, painful realisation that they’d all been right hit him.
“Your cane, it’s been in the corner of the room since Moriarty and Moran arrived. You’re perfectly fine without it,” the consulting detective said at the same time as John processed the same knowledge.
He didn’t need to look over to the corner of the room to know his cane was there. He remembered putting it there before he opened the door and then it had been forgotten in the rush of helping the consulting detective escape and the sharp push of adrenaline.
“And my hand?” He had to ask, how did the consulting detective know that the tremor in his hand was real when John had felt the pain in his leg as clearly as the pain in his shoulder for the last six months.
“It didn’t shake,” the consulting detective said, breath warm against John’s cheek as he reached down to take John’s hand. He lifted it and stepped back, putting a couple of inches of space between them and circled John’s wrist with long, elegant fingers. “I misjudged you. I thought the war had damaged you. I was wrong.”
John looked up at the consulting detective, tearing his eyes away from the sight of his hand. Steady. “How do you figure that one?”
“The war wasn’t what damaged you, it was leaving that did,” he breathed against John’s ear, an intimate whisper for such a world-shattering secret.
A secret that had been his own personal truth, and hell, since he returned. One he’d told no one. One nobody had even thought to guess.
John swallowed. “Your point?”
“Come with me,” the consulting detective said, still pressed against John, damp, lean, solid and oh so tempting.
It was what John had wanted, after all.
But.
“What happened to impossible?”
The consulting detective stepped back and smirked down at John, pressing the last pair of John’s jeans into the top of his bag and shutting it without looking. “That was before I changed my mind.”
“Oh, really?” John laughed, dryly, and pulled the bag away from the consulting detective’s hands. His assumption that John would just come running because he told him to going much further to pissing him off than the change of tune. “I’m supposed to just come running now you’ve changed your mind?”
“Yes,” the consulting detective replied with so much confidence it came off him in waves. It was just like when he’d told John his entire life story from the few things scattered around his dull and empty room. The sort of confidence that made John’s heart beat just a bit faster and his interest perk up rather a lot.
“Because you miss it. You hide it well, but you miss the danger. I can leave you here and once you’re out of London you’ll be safe. Or, you can come with me. It will be dangerous. Are you interested?”
“Oh god yes,” John breathed.
He couldn’t deny it. Why had he even tried?
There wasn’t any point.
The consulting detective was right, the sexy, know-it-all, bastard, was right. He wanted to go with him.
He was going with him.
“You’d best gather anything else you require,” the consulting detective said with a smile that wouldn’t look out of place on a cat that just got the canary. “We have a market to attend, I need information.”
// Part Four //