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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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.

John looked instantly worried, instantly put out, and instantly afraid. "How? Sherlock... Sherlock, how?" This wasn't some joke. This wasn't some play between friends. Sherlock didn't do those sorts of things and it would have been in really poor taste considering what John had been through at Moriarty's hands at the pool. He'd rarely been more terrified in his life.

Setting aside the coffee, the doctor arrived at Sherlock's side, fingers separating the curls to gaze at the stitch job. Fine. Good even. Probably better than he could do. The surgeon had had steady hands and the sutures were small.

He took a step back, out of Sherlock's space.

"Is Mycroft trying to find him?" He didn't ask how Sherlock had been let go. He didn't ask why he didn't remember what happened. It wasn't for the blog. Moriarty was a fantasy name that scared some and confused others. They couldn't have this getting out. "Because we have another few days of snow. It should be starting up any time now and we might get another-- Sherlock. Listen to me. We aren't going after him. Not yet. You know I want to but it's too dangerous like this."

Sherlock's eyes blazed with the implication that he would want to hold off on chasing down Moriarty, that wasn't how the game worked. Jim had made the first move, the initial gambit, and now the chess board needed to be played out until checkmate. He pushed himself up from the kitchen chair, a whirl of long limbs and barely suppressed energy.

"Who cares about Mycroft? He's probably already found him, that's what he does with his endless spy network of surveillance cameras, but he won't do anything. Moriarty isn't his, he's mine."

It was a dangerous obsession, almost like two magnets being forced together no matter how bad it would be for them both. He and Moriarty. He looked over at John with a smile.

"The game is on, John, there's no time for snow."

"I'm afraid that the weather didn't get the memo," John muttered as the first of the new snow fell from the sky in more of a shout than a whisper. John watched it swirl with the wind through the tunnel like street of homes and then turned back to Sherlock, honestly looking relieved that he hadn't up and vanished to go running out into the white.

It was ridiculous to say it, but he just wished that Sherlock would think this one through. Being obsessive about his cases tended to do him good, but most cases didn't have him face death as certainly as games with Moriarty.

John wasn't having it.

"What exactly is your plan? Rush out to get kidnapped again? Mighty fine plan, that. Worked quite well last time."

"We need to get back to that warehouse in Southwark so that I can examine it properly for clues, that should tell us our next location."

He would ignore that jibe about being kidnapped, he could hardly help it if everyone once in a while someone came and clocked him on the back of the head. Besides, John could hardly claim a much better record, he had also ended up face down at the mercy of Sebastian Moran.

"Snow again, typical, the taxis won't run for much longer. Hurry up, John, before we miss one entirely and have to walk."

He does not want to try walking all the way to Southwark, that's six miles away.

Sometimes when Sherlock said his name, it was like a blackness was lifting from the world and he was about to be inducted into some sort of heaven where there was no boredom or tedium or thoughts about being unable to cope on the day to day. Sometimes it left him asleep at his desk at the surgery and sometimes he was dead on his feet days at a time thanks to Sherlock Holmes being his brilliant, wonderful self. And sometimes hearing his name was nails on a chalkboard.

His stomach sank down into his feet but he could absolutely not let Sherlock go alone.

He looked about ready to say a hundred horrible things but in the end he marched back to his room like a good little soldier and got himself dressed.

Again.

He ignored the headache. He'd had to power through worse on the rocky hills of Afghanistan.

John Watson was one in a thousand, in a million. Most people would never put up with Sherlock, they could barely even stand to spend ten minutes in the same room as him, but John followed on his coattails as if he truly wanted to be there. He might not be the biggest asset when it came to deduction, his brain was just as ordinary as the next man, but he was an excellent lightning rod for creativity and an often oddly comforting presence.

Which is why Sherlock waited for him to get his clothes on before dashing off, choosing instead to dress himself in his customary suit and Belstaff coat.

Only once John had emerged from his room did Sherlock head for the door, perky despite both of their head injuries.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."

"How is it you remember speeches like that and have trouble remembering that the earth revolves around the sun?" John asked, exasperated as he followed Sherlock down the stairs. He was a little unsteady on his feet, but he could hold himself together, he was pretty sure at least. As if on cue, Mrs Hudson appeared to yell after them for answers and ended up having her voice follow them back into the snow to remind them that she was not going to clean up any more messes like the one she had just experienced a few hours before. And to mind themselves because it was cold.

The snow was falling and laying in their hair as Sherlock called for a cab with barely a wave of an arm and John tumbled in with him.

Back to Southwark they went, power back on and lights working properly thank god so that the cab only had to compete with the freezing road and not the possibility of head on collision.

The doctor was silent for a few minutes before being unable to help himself in asking: "are you all right?" Sherlock would very likely push it off or roll his eyes but he looked... Strange. More fuzzy. He wasn't sure if that was Sherlock or his own head wound.

Words meant something, they were the building blocks for genius and civilisation, why would he not recall some of the most powerful words put to paper? Shakespeare was useful in everyday life, what possible application did the earth revolving around the sun have? None. Honestly, John should be able to tell why one piece of knowledge was worth deleting and another worth saving. He contented himself with just a snort of disbelief, however, and didn't argue the point.

The cab ride and any aches or pains were soundly ignored in favour of thinking. There would be clues laid out for him to find, he was sure of it, Moriarty enjoyed their game too much to allow anything else.

"Hm?" He tilted his head to look at John - glassy eyes, pale, pinched expression - and shook his head. "Yes; you, however, have a mild to moderate concussion. Mycroft will have made sure you had some pain relief issued while sleeping, but I'm sure we could find some paracetamol somewhere."

It was impossible to diagnose yourself as a doctor, mostly when you’re a doctor as stubborn as John Watson. He didn’t believe for a second that he was as bad off as Sherlock seemed to make him out to be, thank you, though he couldn’t deny the dizziness. Still, the choice had been to stay home and recover or let Sherlock get himself hurt again and John did not care to have that repeated.

He turned his attention to the street outside. There were almost no pedestrians because there were no shops open. Even the convenience stores hadn’t bothered, save for a few 24-hour Tescos, and that was just unfortunate, low end of the totem pole employees shoveling their side walks just in case any customers showed up.

No matter how unlikely that might be.

They crossed the bridge carefully and arrived at the warehouse not too long after that, John back out in the cold and paying while Sherlock headed right up inside.

He wasn’t sure what they had come to find. If Sherlock found any sloppy clues, that would just mean that Moriarty was egging them on. John didn’t like that. Not at all.

Sherlock was counting on Moriarty leaving them deliberate clues and egging them on, that was how this little game of cat and mouse worked. If he didn't go and look, if he didn't follow the breadcrumbs, then Hansel and Gretel would wind up being burned in the witch's oven. Moriarty was perfectly capable of setting up a different chase with bombs, with victims, if Sherlock didn't play the game right.

Besides, he wanted to.

Long legs took the stairs by twos and threes, leaving John behind to pay the cabbie. Unfortunately, that cab driver wasn't exactly who he should be. He got out and strong-armed John back into the back of the cab, all the doors locking and the partition closed to keep him from being able to touch the driver.

"Settle in, Dr. Watson," he said, voice rough through the little tannoy system. "We're going for a drive."

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