fossilised | For John Watson

For John Watson

It was the worst blizzard that London had endured for three hundred years. That's what the news reports said before they all cut off, the power lines giving under the weight of the snow. It had started as just inclement weather (everyone take care out on the roads!), and then escalated into proper warnings (the emergency services recommend you stay indoors), and had finally ended in full lockdown (up to 65% of Londoners are trapped in their homes today).

John had been planning to catch a train to visit Harry, she claimed to be off the drink again and it was his duty as brother to go and support her. It had just made sense to stay an extra hour or two until the snow let up. Big mistake, as it turned out. Now he was fully snowed in with an extremely bored and agitated Sherlock Holmes.

No radio. No internet. No TV. No electricity of any kind.

Sherlock hadn't said anything for fifty-seven minutes, probably a relief to the poor beleaguered John, but that was because he was busy. He had to do something to occupy his mind, it was either that or dig into his stash of drugs hidden in John's bedroom, and he had chosen the fridge. Slightly manic movements have helped him get literally everything out from the fridge and freezer, distributing it all over the living room floor. There's everything from a glass jar of thumbs in formaldehyde, to three half eaten tubs of Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream.

His treasure trove assembled, Sherlock crouched on the floor and began to move things around, organising them and then reorganising them in an ever more frustrated manner. It took only a further fourteen minutes before he stood up and shouted, explosively.

"DAMN IT!"

Before he threw a ceramic pot of left-over stew at the wall, where it shattered with a loud crash and drenched John's chair (and John, if he happened to be in it) in congealed lumps of meat in gravy.

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"So John tells me on a frequent basis," replied Sherlock, voice dry as if he were not bothered by being cuffed to a chair awaiting his only real friend to walk into the spider's web. "Never had much practise at it, I'm afraid. Enemies, though, that I'm good at."

He smiled. For Moriarty was his greatest enemy, someone it would always be a thrill to tangle with. There was a connection between them, but there was also an underpinning of fear and hatred that fuelled everything with a sharp bitterness.

"It'll be hard to play twister like this. Just an observation."

Not that they would be playing twister. He disliked imagining what Moriarty actually had planned for when John arrived.

“Mmm. You’re right,” Jim mused. “It will be. But we’ll see how you manage. More tea? Oh wait.” His smile dropped completely. “You broke the cup. 18thcentury, you know. Gift from the Queen. Or so I was told when I took it.” His eyes scanned the mess on the carpet before he toed the jagged edges.

Oh, oh Sherlock. It might have been smarter to break the cup and gouge his eyes out instead, eyes that flickered back to the trussed up man in the plush red chair.

“Now. What were you doing out in the snow? My hunch,” and he shrugged his shoulders very high before he shoved his hands into his pockets, “is that you were looking for a body. We should do that together! In about 15 minutes.”

He was bluffing. John would take at least twenty to get here, even in Mycroft’s car.

Sherlock ran through the possibilities of what Moriarty might intend for when John arrived. His thoughts worked at a rapid pace, running through the corridors of his mind palace, but there were too many variables to work with. He could intend to kill Sherlock. No, discarded as foolish, he liked Sherlock alive as a playmate. He could kill innocents and have John and Sherlock hunt them out in a macabre guessing game. Unlikely, it would be too repetitious after the bomb treasure hunt and Moriarty liked to keep people on their toes. He could actually want them for twister and tea, also unlikely and almost ludicrous. He may intend to kill John, for nothing else would motivate Sherlock quite as much as that. Unfortunately, a dangerous possibility.

He stretched in his chair, long legs crossing one over the other. His voice was deceptively mild, as if asking for more tea, but there was a stern firmness behind each word that said he was not bluffing.

"If you harm John, I'll bite off my own tongue and end the game prematurely."

Ever the flair for the dramatic. But Sherlock had never had a friend before, only Redbeard his dog, and he feared losing John with an intensity that didn't quite make sense to him. He had not lost anyone before, there was no trauma there, but still the fear was encompassing enough to have him willing to sacrifice himself before he saw John killed.

“Oh, that’s so romantic!” Jim sighed, physically dragging Sherlock in his chair towards the window so he could have a good look outside. There was absolutely no traffic at all, just a lot of dark, stormy, snowy streets and blocks of warehouses to look at with a ghostly view of the city in the background. Sherlock would be able to see the car approach, however. When it did finally come. “But you know I’d stop you from dying, right? It’s very easy to retrieve a tongue and veeeeeery easy to stop the bleeding. But it’s still so sweet. You must tell John about it when he comes.”

Jim leaned on the back of the chair for a few minutes before he finally went to fetch a dustpan and clean up the mess. He could have had any number of his associates do it, but Moran was busy and he didn’t want Sherlock seeing anyone else’s face.

They were just little red dots to him and would remain that way if Jim had any say in the matter and!

He did! He had all the say in all the matters!

“But now you’re making me jealous. Will you swallow your tongue for me too? Like. If I asked just really nicely?"

Sherlock's eyes rolled at the idea of it being a romantic gesture. People, even Moriarty it seemed, were so fixated on the idea that to love someone deeply was to care for them on a romantic level. Sherlock was a man of logic, romance had no place in his life. His love for John was-- odd, granted, but the strength of it did not wax or wane on romantic entanglement.

Nor was he particularly worried that Moriarty would be able to stop him from dying. He could be an extremely stubborn man when he wanted to be, and he would certainly be stubborn in that regard.

"No."

The response was short and brusque as he watched John get out of the car. He could hit his flatmate right about now, what kind of idiot was he? He never observed. He never stopped to look at his surroundings and deduce that there may be something odd here and that he should leave. No, he just blithely came on in. Idiot.

"I'm afraid you're not quite that persuasive, Jimmy."

As the car finally pulled up, shorter than the estimated twenty minutes and shorter even than the fifteen Jim had quoted, Moriarty went to the window beside Sherlock and pressed his hand against the frigid glass. The car did not stay for long and John Watson appeared to have something in his hand. He looked left and right (darling! Was he expecting traffic to whizz along and bowl him over?) before he entered the building. There were some lights on in the windows downstairs (battery operated since Jim had shut down the grid in the whole city that wasn’t hooked up to generators without anyone noticing due to the weather) and certainly lights on up here with them, but John never looked up.

It made him squeal. And so did being called Jimmy.

“Oh, nicknames now! So. Cute. You’ll be Sherly from now on,” he pronounced and headed over to the fireplace to open the cabinet above it and reveal the television. There was an infrared image of John Watson’s lingering downstairs. Most of the doors were locked. He’d have to take the stairs. It was hard to see exactly what he was doing but he seemed to be fishing around in his pocket—

Sherlock’s phone, the one still in his pocket, buzzed.

“Go on, answer! You’ve got enough play with your jewelry haven’t you?”

How had John been the assistant of a consulting detective for so long without learning some basic deductive reasoning of his own? Honestly, if and when they got out of this situation, Sherlock would be sitting John down and firmly going through a few home truths about what he should and shouldn't know. It was disgraceful.

There were a few ways this could go.

Naturally Moriarty would have anticipated Sherlock answering and immediately warning John, so there was probably a sniper or two watching the doctor's movements ready to take him out. That would be no good. He thought for a moment as he fiddled the phone from his pocket and drew it to his ear.

"You took your time, John," he said in the slight snap he always used when impatient. Hopefully John would at least be smart enough to pick up on their danger phrase. "In the time it took you to get here, the pope could have made a cameo from the Vatican to Westminster and back."

John was not in the mood. Not at all. On screen, he moved about in agitation. "Do you want a case or not?" Being out in the snow was only marginally better than being stuck in a stinky flat with a crazed flat mate. But only just. "It's actually a good one and doesn't require to be out in the snow--"

But there was something off about Sherlock. Something a bit more manic than usual. That was disappointing. Or worrying. Or both really. John glanced back outside.

"Where are you?" Heroin slips dulled Sherlock's body to let his mind pull a better focus. But this... Had he traded a downer for an upper? And how did he get it? "'I would rather not climb up all six flights."

Seriously? Sherlock resisted the urge to groan aloud. What it must be like to exist in such a dull mind that never comprehended the evidence around him. He restrained himself to a roll of his eyes that John couldn't see and a press of the phone a little closer to his ear.

"Then don't."

Sherlock made his voice easy and smug, a well established actor of his own right, exactly as he would sound if he had just managed to get one over on John.

"Do use your mind, John, I'm not in Southwark. Why would I be in Southwark? Nasty streets and boring cafes, I just needed to make sure you were out of the way long enough for me to conduct an experiment at home. You would have thought too loudly, it would have distracted me."

Don't come up, just walk away. But not suspicious, not so that Moriarty would have his subordinates kill him.

Watching silently beside Sherlock, face not visible, it was hard to miss just how Jim vibrated next to his captive. Such a fun game! If John didn't join them, that was fine. He faced a long walk to the tube and then a few cross overs between lines before a long walk home. That would be misery enough.

On the video, John obviously had his hand against his forehead before it dropped back down to his waist. "Just-- Stay out of my things-- I swear to-- I'll see you at home."

He was angry when he hung up the Phone and Jim sounded delighted as he rocked forward in a laugh and John moved back out into the snow. He rushed to the window to watch the black dot of Sherlock's pet try to decide which way to walk for the closest way home and watched even more excitedly as the lapdog finally looked up!

Jim even waved. And that sent John charging back into the building. "Jim and John. Sherlock and Sebastian. Two soldiers. Two crack shots. Two mental cases. Two geniuses. We fit so wonderfully," Moriarty mused and rubbed his hands.

Damn!

Sherlock had thought, just for a moment, that he had managed to get John to safety. Relative safety, at least, for John would only have to get back to Baker Street to find that Sherlock was, in fact, not there and had lied to him. But it would have at least given Sherlock perhaps ninety six minutes to play with, in order to attempt to free himself.

Apparently that had just been knocked down to about sixty three seconds, perhaps sixty flat if John really raced up those stairs.

"Now who's cheating to make things boring? Being outmanoeuvred doesn't mean you should overturn the board."

"Oh but you're the one who made him sound so stupid, you know," Jim pointed out. "And you've been sitting here in this window the entire time. He could have looked up before, but didn't. Even I wouldn't have calculated a high probability of him glancing up here now! Oh but he is such a good boy. You do vex him so, don't you?"

Jim sat himself down by the fire and assumed Sherlock's usual deductive positioning. Fingers pressed together in a steeple under his chin, but eyes focused steadily on the door before they closed.

He looked almost heavenly.

John's image disappeared from the camera as he charged up the stairs but even the lush furnishings of the room couldn't keep the sound out of him charging up the hollow stairs on the otherwise hollow building.

There was a shot to follow. Loud.

Jim reached a hand towards Sherlock. "Don't go chewing your tongue, love. It's just a tranquilizer. Death can be so boring so early in the game!"

Sherlock had no idea why, but the very idea of losing any of his friends was the single most terrifying thing to him. Not just John, though he was obviously primary in these concerns, but also Mrs. Hudson, Molly, Lestrade, and even Mycroft to a degree. Not that he would ever tell his older brother that sometimes he noticed the care given and appreciated it, that was not how their relationship functioned.

It was frustrating not to know something, doubly so when it was about his own psyche. He had seen that others did not feel so frightened about the prospect of losing loved ones - frightened, yes, but not as much as Sherlock. Why? He would normally attribute this to the death of a friend in the past, or even a friendship gone sour extremely significantly, a traumatic experience from which behaviours such as these grew. But there were none. He had never possessed a friend before John Watson.

Which was why when the shot came, Sherlock was already out of the chair and straining against the cuffs as far as they could go, wrists protesting the pain. Moriarty's voice filtered through to him and he forced himself to sit, relax again, though his eyes were harder than before.

"I'm hurt, Jimmy, I thought this was a game between you and me, why involve John at all?"

"Why?" Jim was silent for a few minutes. He wasn't thinking of an answer, he was listening for Moran to drag John up the last half flight of stairs. "Mmmm, because you and he are a pair. You were never Sherlock Holmes, great detective, until you met him. And he was a dead man before he met you. I... Oh. I just love parasitic relationships."

He sounded as if they thought brought him nothing but pleasure and he hummed before standing up to go to the door Sebastian had locked from the outside. He was excited for this, excited to see what would happen.

He never really just winged something before. Every string was usually carefully laid out to be plucked in a certain order but the snow left him bored. Not having too much on left him bored. And he really had missed Sherlock. So much. So much it burned.

"Oh!" He clapped his hands and spun back towards Sherlock, "he's a bit like a carrot. A prize. Or are you the prize? Hm. Something I haven't considered. It's been a slow week."

He rather hoped John would be the carrot, that would mean he had to stay relatively healthy and unhurt in order to prove a suitable prize. In addition, Sherlock would obviously be better at solving any game that Moriarty decided to throw at them. He wasn't too worried about that, Moriarty was fascinated by him and his brain, he wasn't going to fritter away their time together by making someone ordinary solve the puzzles.

"Gone off twister, then?"

Sherlock snorted and slipped his hand into his pocket to swiftly and surreptitiously send a text to Mycroft. Just his location and the name Moriarty. Much as he hated to involve big brother, he would crow about it terribly, needs must.

"If we're going to get started then can we please move onto the more interesting part of the night? All I've had so far is a very mediocre cup of tea out of this whole thing."

"I have gone off Twister. You've proven yourself prone to violence tonight. It didn't have to be that way," Jim sighed. "I don't need danger and violence to stay interested. We could have played lovely games or What's In The Tea, some strip poker and maybe some Settlers of Catan because I must find someone that can break Sebbie always getting the longest road. Always." He snorted as the door unlocked. "But you're being very selfish tonight. And very worried about your pet."

Moriarty had a terrible smile when he wanted it to be terrible, charming when he wanted it to be charming. And right now, it was more the former. There was nothing pleasant on his face at all.

He stood back as Moran opened the door and dragged an unconscious Doctor into the room, letting him sprawled out on the floor like a wild animal he had hunted and shot.

"Still alive?"

"Yes, Boss," Moran promised. "Too a wee tumble down the stairs but good shape otherwise."

"Do you have our game?" Jim asked and his minion produced playing cards and handed them over. "Oh good. Now off you go for Big Brother when he comes. Sherlock is in a cheating mood. Aren't you my dear?"

"Mycroft won't come himself." Sherlock didn't deny that he had sent a message that way, it would at least severely limit what time Moriarty had to play with. Mycroft would mobilise his many underlings to have Sherlock extracted safely. Judging on his brother's night routine - Diogenes club and whist on a Friday come snow or shine - it would likely take him between thirty and thirty two minutes to pick up the message. A further six to issue orders, and a final thirteen to get people to his location. Perhaps an hour at the absolute outside for anything to happen.

He relaxed back into his chair and observed Moriarty closely. It was so hard to get a read on a man who could be all things and nothing in the flicker of an eye.

"It seems we have limited time, and I'm sure you'll want to be away before company arrives." Moriarty might be bored, but Sherlock was sure that he wouldn't risk capture just to play this night. "So why don't we get started?"

Sherlock's childish need to not only be right (or mostly right) and to get the last word in would make him lose in the end. Of course Jim knows that Mycroft won't come himself. Of course he was hoping for this whole thing to play out because he had allowed Sherlock to keep his phone.

Jim was only messy when it suited him.

"Rightly so. We should begin." He glanced at his watch before he opened up the deck of cards and began to shuffle them. "It's very easy, this game. All you need to do is tell me everything I put in your tea. You've guessed the cocaine, good! And no need to mutter about with milk and sugar. Or tea leaves. Boooooring!"

They had exactly four minutes before Sherlock would succumb to the sedative, hidden so clever under the tiny bit of upper. In So fun, this game! He'd be feeling it soon though. His vision ought to be fuzzing out any moment.

"If you guess them all right, I'll let you and your lapdog go."

"Boss, timer's started," Moran chimed over the loudspeaker, making him laugh and laugh.

"Oh and you'll have to finish guessing and diffuse a bomb in the next three minutes and forty some seconds or, kaboom!"

For a millisecond there was nothing but frozen tension inside Sherlock, before everything fizzed into life in a brilliant explosion of colour and inspiration. Adrenaline flooded him to keep the sedation effect at bay, because this is what he lived for. No drug could ever give him this sort of high, nothing else could ever interest him as much. The game, life or death, his brain against impossible odds, that was what he craved.

His gaze immediately turned inward to monitor his body, to check on all his vital signals and any symptoms that may be progressing. The bomb would have to wait for at least a minute or so, he wasn't going to be able to diffuse it still handcuffed and so he had to diagnose himself first in order to get free.

Slightly fluttering heartrate, sluggish limbs, slower breathing. A sedative, then. He flexed his fingers, no numbness so it wasn't a morphine derivative. He didn't feel heavy so it wasn't anaesthesia. Something to counterbalance the cocaine--

"Delay-action Zopiclone, at least fifteen milligrams."

He rolled his tongue inside his mouth to garner any remaining taste. The bitterness of the tea, the cloying sweetness of the milk and sugar, the discarded chemical taste of the two already identified chemical substances. And something else, something sharp. Something else with a delayed action, could be anything, could even be something deadly. Designed to be a final test, can he get medical attention before it kills him. Maybe, maybe not, maybe it was just a squeeze of lemon.

But he doubted it.

"Ricin."

It's a guess. Mostly flavourless, developed from the castor oil bean, it mercilessly attacked the organs of the victim and usually had them dead to infection or internal haemorrhaging in a few days. Maybe, maybe not. He wasn't afraid, even if it was that, far too engrossed in the game for anything stupid like worrying about his own mortality.

Edited 2017-01-28 13:28 (UTC)

"Ricin! Sherlock, no. When I kill you, it will be face to face-- or at least it will be somewhere nearby. Ricin!" Jim laughed as he crossed the room and set the keys to the handcuffs on Sherlock's head, as if he too were a dog to do parlor tricks. "But otherwise, well done,". He crouched then, hand actually touching Sherlock's knee. He closed his eyes to shiver at the feeling as if it was literally the very best thing he had ever experienced in his whole life. He caught his lower lip between his teeth and exhaled. "Don't explode, Sheryl," Jim said before he stood, stepped over John, and left the room.

There would be no time for Sherlock to just leave the warehouse and clear the radius of the blast by the time he uncuffed himself and dragged John with him. Right now, he didn't even know how long he had for the bomb to be diffused, just that he himself would fall unconscious in under three minutes.

Jim did know how to throw a good game night!

So it had been a hint of lemon, then. Sherlock felt honestly more annoyed at his own incorrect guess than relieved that he wasn't poisoned and about to die. He didn't even wait for Moriarty to leave the room, he simply tilted his head forward to let the key drop into one of his outstretched hands and began undoing the cuffs.

It took four seconds longer than he would have liked, he could feel himself slowing down and his consciousness fuzzing at the edges. Not good. He vaulted John himself, ignoring his friend, in order to race through the warehouse after the bomb. Upstairs, Moran's voice had come through a speaker and the wires in the corner led up into the ceiling.

He took the stairs two by two, breathing heavily and increasing the rate at which the drug absorbed into his system. No time to worry about that now. A quick glance around the upper level brought faint footprints in the dust to him, ones he followed to a little black briefcase wired into a bomb. Cliche. Disappointing.

One minute fifteen seconds. Not long enough to go back for John, not long enough for anything, really, except trying himself. He couldn't get John out of the way of the blast, but perhaps he could get the blast out of the way of John. He was moving again in seconds, stumbling every couple of steps on feet that felt very heavy now, hands feverishly feeling for the wires and dredging through his mind palace for the right solution. He headed up again, going for the roof.

His knees buckled, blackness swam up to meet him and, in a moment of desperation, he grabbed what he hoped was the right wire and pulled.

The only thing that John remembered before he woke up in bed was that he had been running up the stairs of a warehouse along the south bank. This was just odd to blink awake with a familiar ceiling overhead, surrounded by familiar objects.

He didn't question where his coat and boots had gone. Or why his lucky jumper was over the arm of the chair by the window. Not really so lucky at the moment, considering he'd gotten no where with Anthea, again, and had a run in with Mycroft. Not pleasant memories at all.

He sat up and pressed the palm of his hand to his forehead, pain spidering across his temples. Jesus. "Sherlock?!"

He knew better than to wait for the detective to come to him so he slid out of bed and frowned down at himself.

What the hell?

It had been the fall down the stairs that did it, kept John out for longer than Sherlock. He too had come to his senses in his own bed, Mycroft irritatingly seated in a chair by his bedside. He had almost childishly rolled over and refused to speak than converse with Mycroft right then, but he sighed and forced himself to a sitting position.

"Two stitches to the back of the head from being struck with the butt of a gun, mild bruising on the left wrist from restraints, otherwise the effects of the drugs in your system have now worn off."

"Yes, thank you, Mycroft," said Sherlock, voice dripping with disdain. "All quite obvious to anyone with half a brain."

"That would be how you managed, then." Mycroft smiled tightly at Sherlock. A familiar sniping match, for they did not do worry and affection well, but beneath it all he was glad to see this escapade had not ended too badly. "Dr. Watson has a mild concussion, sprained wrist, and cracked rib. I've taken the liberty of alerting the surgery to his absence for the next few days." He stood and picked up his coat from the back of the chair. "Try not to make a habit of this, brother mine."

Sherlock just snorted and waited until Mycroft had gone, before dressing himself in a silk dressing gown over loose trousers and a plain t-shirt, and heading out to the living room. When John surfaced, Sherlock glanced to his bedroom door.

"If you have nausea with your concussion, try not to be sick on the floor."

John's brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to say something, but gave up. Sherlock was moody, probably because he'd been thwarted by his brother. John had no idea what had happened, just that he was in his underpants and a t-shirt after waking up in bed, of all places. He glanced out through the window at the snow. The storm had lulled and plows had been through the streets, making way for some taxis mostly, but it was already threatening to storm again and given the shadows across the street, it was mid afternoon. He confirmed that with a glance to the clock as he trudged into the kitchen to pour himself some coffee, having missed Mycroft's departure and Mrs. Hudson's cleaning of the living room.

Coffee in hand, rare for him as he preferred tea, John made a show of sitting down, still in his dressing gown, and then looked up at Sherlock.

"Are you going to explain what happened last night? I could have sworn that I saw you sitting in a window of a warehouse with someone standing next to you-- But here I am and not in hospital."

"Mycroft clearly didn't believe it necessary for either of us to be admitted to hospital, though some medical care was obviously given."

Sherlock tilted his head so that John could see the two stitches where a tiny patch of his curls had been shaved away. Irritating, he'd have to comb his hair an entirely different way to disguise that bald patch, he would be willing to bet that the wound hadn't even truly required stitches and Mycroft had only ordered them given to annoy his little brother.

"It was Moriarty," his voice hushed, deep timbre growing even more baritone. "Bored by the snow, just like me, he decided it was time to play. This means he's in the city, John."

Which meant the game was emphatically on.

For John Watson

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