Sherlock BBC Fic: It's my Note. PG-13
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 01:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evila_elfTitle: It’s My Note
Rating PG-13
Spoilers: Major spoilers for Reichenbach
Disclaimer: Don’t own them :(
Word Count: 3177
Summary: Sherlock has a reason for everything he does, so John goes looking for answers.
Thanks: To my awesome beta reader,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daasgrrl, for the multiple reads and whipping this into shape. Any mistakes to be found are mine alone.
John had visited Sherlock’s grave again, but it would be for the last time. Seeing the tombstone had left him feeling a chill that had had nothing to do with the temperature. He’d tried to say a few words, but the tombstone wasn’t Sherlock. He had never felt farther from his friend than he had right then.
Now, instead of going back to Baker Street, John went to Bart’s Hospital. He took the lift as high as he could, then climbed the stairs to the roof.
The wind greeted him, bringing with it a sense of calm that he hadn’t felt since it had happened. Two of the worst weeks of his life.
He pulled his coat tighter around him and stepped away from the door, feeling the full force of the wind as he did so. He thought he could hear laughter dancing on the breeze and he turned, convinced he would see Sherlock smiling at him. John mentally kicked himself for being disappointed to see nothing.
A stain on the cement drew his attention and he walked towards it. Blood. He knelt to get a closer look. It was faint, faded not with age but with a cleaning solution. “Who was up here with you?” John mused quietly. Had someone been wounded? Killed? “Why’d you still have to jump?” Even after a hundred times in the asking, the question still went unanswered. Why?
The ledge was less than five metres away. John swallowed, throat dry, and stood. He started walking, unsure if he would stop when he reached the edge, or just plummet over, keeping his silent vow to follow Sherlock everywhere.
The wind tousled his hair and tugged at his clothing, as if pulling him along, ready to help give him that final fatal push. But John did stop, didn’t give in to the siren song of the wind.
“I still believe in you, Sherlock.” John’s whisper was snatched from him before it could reach his own ears.
John reached into his pocket and pulled out the plastic evidence bag Lestrade had given to him that morning. Inside was Sherlock’s mobile. It had been found next to the roof’s ledge and John remembered, remembered Sherlock’s “Goodbye, John,” right before he had tossed it away like it had meant nothing to him.
He opened the bag. The mobile was cold, like death. It wasn’t supposed to feel like that. It should have been warm from being tucked away close to Sherlock’s body.
It wouldn’t switch on. How appropriate.
John left the rooftop shortly after that, the mobile tucked safe in an inside pocket.
***
John found the phone’s charger hopelessly tangled with his own. As it had been for the last several months. Neither he nor Sherlock had had the patience to untangle the blasted things, and for that, John was glad. Glad he wouldn’t have to dig through unmarked boxes that contained, in a word, Sherlock. The therapist had said that packing up Sherlock’s things would help, but until they were actually out of the flat, the phrase ‘out of sight, out of mind’ didn’t apply. John couldn’t bear to throw them away.
John plugged in the phone. It’s ‘I’m charging’ chirp made him turn away and hurry to the kitchen to fix a cup of tea. He ignored the half-bottle of whiskey in the fridge. That would come later.
He had planned on looking at the mobile after he’d made tea, to see if Lestrade’s team had missed anything. Anderson had been the one to go over it, and John trusted him just as much as Sherlock did. But John didn’t look at the phone again that day.
***
The drink didn’t mute John’s dreams.
Sherlock had the mobile pressed to his ear, just as he had during their final conversation, but John was up on the roof with him this time, pleading with Sherlock not to jump. Sherlock backed away from John, towards the edge.
“It’s madness! You can’t be serious!”
“It’s the only way.”
“Sherlock!”
“Trust me.”
“Not this time.” John started forwards, only to have a gun pointed at him. “You wouldn’t shoot me.”
“Stay right where you are. Don’t move.”
“Sherlock...”
Sherlock backed against the ledge. “This phone call...it’s my note.”
He lowered the phone from his ear, cutting off their communication even though John was standing right in front of him. Then he tossed the phone away. Both men watched the mobile fall, the sound loud as it clattered to the ground.
John rushed forwards, whether towards Sherlock or the phone, he didn’t know.
BANG!
Blood on the roof. Everywhere. Spreading. Sherlock. “...it’s my note...”
John woke with a start. Sun filtered in around the curtains, blinding him. His head throbbed when he sat up and he looked at the empty bottle on the floor with contempt, as though its contents had forced their way down his throat.
He didn’t stand until the pounding in his head subsided. Only then did he hear the echo of Sherlock’s voice from his dream. It’s my note. John repeated the words aloud, hesitating, then rushed towards Sherlock’s phone. He unplugged it from the charger and turned it on.
The screen flashed blue as it started up, and then the standard hello message greeted him.
Not sure where to start, John first went into the text messages. He recognized a handful of texts related to their last case, but none of them were recent. And John knew Sherlock had received several texts since then. Leave it to Anderson to only look for only what was there instead of what was missing.
The voice mail box was empty, which came as no surprise. John checked the received and sent calls. A few of the numbers he recognized; others he didn’t. But Lestrade had checked the numbers himself, and nothing had come up suspect.
John wanted to throw the mobile, smash it against the wall, in his frustration. He had been so sure, and the disappointment hurt just as much as each time he realized that Sherlock would never be coming back. Absently, John scrolled through each menu until he came to the last option.
Notes.
As much as John wanted to open the folder, he also didn’t want to. Another rush of disappointment might be his undoing.
He opened it.
139 Finsbury
John dropped the phone on the table and ran his hands over his eyes and through his hair. Had Sherlock left the note for him? Or was it some long forgotten piece of a clue that had never been removed?
In the end, John dressed and went outside to hail a cab. Inevitable, really.
The address belonged to a medium sized hotel. John approached the two men at the front desk. He paused, unsure what to ask.
“Welcome. Are you Mr Watson?” a large man with a bushy red beard asked. His name badge read ‘Gavin’.
“Of course he is,” the other, ‘Jeff’, replied. He stood a full head taller than his colleague and acted as though he were thrilled by John’s presence.
John cleared his throat. “Do I know you?”
“Someone left a message for you,” Gavin reached under the desk and placed an envelope on top of it. Clipped to the envelope was a picture of John. It was at least a year old, taken at a crime scene. John recognized Sherlock’s elbow, but the rest of him had been cut away.
“Who left this?” John demanded, voice loud and just as commanding as it had been when he had served in the military.
“Don’t look at us,” Jeff said, raising his hands. “We was paid good money to hold on to that. Don’t want no trouble.”
John snatched up the envelope, tearing it open, and pulled out a single piece of folded yellow paper.
John,
I’m sorry, but things had to happen this way...
“Did you get a Dear John letter or something?” Gavin asked.
John shot him a murderous glare and moved a few steps away from the desk.
... I’ll understand if you want to step away from this and wash your hands of me. But if you would allow an explanation, please see Molly.
SH
John read over the letter several times. Was Sherlock alive? “When did you get this?”
Jeff shrugged. “A couple of days ago, I think. Some lady dropped it off.”
Sherlock was alive. He had to be; the note was in his handwriting. But why did he want John to go see Molly? Did he not want to see John himself? He’d never taken Sherlock for a coward before.
***
John hadn’t seen Molly since the funeral, and it felt odd to go to the morgue without Sherlock leading the way.
Molly looked up from her study of a corpse, her pen poised over a clipboard. She straightened, lips twitching as though she wasn’t sure whether to smile or frown. “Hi, John.” Her lips settled on a combination of the two expressions. “Can I help you with anything?”
John held up the letter and was relieved when she seemed to recognize it.
Molly nodded. “Let me put Mr Stein away. I’ll meet you out the front in ten minutes. Okay?”
John held back his myriad of questions and did as Molly asked. He wondered where they were going to. Some quiet restaurant to talk? The thought of food turned his stomach, even though he hadn’t had much of anything since lunch the day before. And the whiskey.
Molly showed up exactly ten minutes later. “Hope you don’t mind a bit of a walk. I don’t have a car. Fresh air is always lovely.”
John would have offered to pay for a cab, but Molly had turned and started walking, leaving him to hurry after her. “Is Sherlock alive?”
She picked up the pace a little and John got the not-so-subtle hint.
John kept his mind carefully blank, holding back the anger that burned in his chest, keeping his focus only on matching Molly’s quick pace. “Where are we?” he asked 20 minutes later as Molly turned to knock on a door.
She didn’t answer John’s question, but then the door was opening and it was Sherlock and--
“Oh, John, good of you to stop by—“
John’s reaction was instantaneous. He swung his right fist at Sherlock’s face.
Sherlock ducked under the punch, but he hadn’t planned on John’s left and stumbled backwards under the weight of John’s fury before he could fully right himself.
“You bastard! I thought you were dead!”
“That was rather the point.” Sherlock touched his tender jaw, body tense as though he thought John might attack him again.
“I’ll make tea.” Molly pushed past the two of them and went into the kitchen.
Sherlock looked...good. Alive. Thinner. Nervous. He motioned John to join him in the sitting room. “You found my note,” he said once he had settled at one end of a couch and John had perched on the edge of a chair, back rigid.
John nodded. He could hear Molly moving about in the kitchen and he felt a stab of jealousy. “Are you two a couple now?” He meant it to come off as a joke, but it fell flat.
“With Molly? God, no. But she was integral to my plan.”
“Can still hear you,” Molly said from the kitchen.
“She helped you kill yourself?” John had a hard time controlling the volume of his voice.
“I didn’t die, John.”
”For two weeks, I thought you had!”
They were interrupted by Molly. She balanced a tray with three cups of tea and a small dish of biscuits. She set them on an end table, then moved the table closer to both of them.
“Am I interrupting?” she asked, looking from Sherlock to John and back again.
Sherlock gave a noncommittal shrug, which John normally interpreted as ‘just leave me alone’.
Molly frowned, then picked up her cup and sat at the opposite end of the couch, defiant. Good for her.
Sherlock watched her settle in out of the corner of his eye. His jaw clenched, as though he was thinking about taking back his shrug and banishing her from the room.
John said Sherlock’s name, getting his attention once more. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I left you a note.”
“I didn’t get it until this morning. What if Lestrade hadn’t given me the phone at all?”
“Lestrade wasn’t supposed to give it to you any sooner.”
John felt sick to his stomach. He glanced at Molly, who looked guilty and like she regretted her decision to stay in the room after all.
“So, everyone knew, then. Everyone except me.”
“Molly and Lestrade. No one else.” Sherlock took another sip of tea before setting the cup aside. “And Mycroft.”
John stood, turned and stalked off down the hallway. The first left put him in a small room. Bookshelves filled with books lined two of the walls. The only other piece of furniture was a small computer desk. A closed black laptop with a large red rose skin on the lid sat on top the desk, surrounded by papers that threatened to bury it. The chair that belonged to the desk rested by the window. A rolled up sleeping bag, a stack of blankets, and a pillow lay in a pile by one of the shelves.
“The couch wasn’t long enough for him.” Molly stepped into the room. “I don’t know why it matters. He doesn’t sleep much.” She took her chair and pushed it back to the desk. “He’s missed you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
“He has a funny way of showing a lot of things,” she agreed. “But it’s him. He doesn’t do anything without good reason. If you’ll just listen to him.”
John rubbed a hand over his eyes.
“Look, I’ve got to get back to work,” Molly continued. “Stay as long as you’d like. Make him eat, if you can. Just lock the door if you leave.”
John caught Molly by the arm as she turned to go. “Thank you. For giving him somewhere to go. For everything.”
***
John took another moment to himself before he rejoined Sherlock in the sitting room. “You have five minutes before I walk out that door.” John had expected a rush of words, Sherlock’s usual spill-all way of getting his point across. What he got was quite different.
“You went up to the roof?” Sherlock asked, his words slow and measured. Tired.
“I did.”
“Notice anything unusual?”
“The bloodstain?”
Sherlock nodded.
“I take it it wasn’t yours?”
“Moriarty. He had gunmen watching Mrs Hudson. Lestrade. You. He said that if I didn’t jump, he would have all three of you killed. Then he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I needed Lestrade to cover up his death.”
John frowned. “Why would you need to cover up for him?”
Sherlock gave him a look that said John was being terribly dense. “Did you forget the papers? I created Moriarty,” he said with contempt. “The man who ended up dead on top of the same building I jumped from. The papers would love that.”
“But with Moriarty dead, why are you--”
“Five minutes are up, John. You can leave now.”
“Why are you still pretending to be dead?” John finished his question. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Mycroft is still looking for the last gunman. It was easy enough to find the one watching Mrs Hudson, and the one watching Lestrade. Yours should be caught and dealt with by the end of the day.”
“Dealt with?”
“Yes.” Sherlock didn’t elaborate and John wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Look, I think there’s a Chinese place round the corner,” John suggested. “Let’s eat. Sort things out.”
“But--”
“I won’t take no for an answer.” John heard a buzz from Sherlock’s pocket. “Must be a text from Mycroft. Maybe he’s caught the gunman and we’ll have something to celebrate.”
Sherlock followed John to the door, grabbing his coat as he took his new mobile from his pocket, reading the text. “John, wait! Stop!”
But John had already opened the door. He faintly heard Sherlock’s yell being punctuated by the sound of a gun, then pain in his chest, the force knocking the air from him. Then Sherlock was behind him, pulling him back inside, kicking the door closed on the sounds of yelling and more gunfire outside.
Sherlock cradled his phone between shoulder and ear, barking directions for an ambulance while he tore open John’s shirt, pressing the ruined material against the wound.
John took a breath and choked, tasting blood. He reached out to grab Sherlock’s sleeve, not wanting to lose him again.
***
Four days later:
“I can’t believe you used me as bait!”
“It wasn’t like that.”
The bullet had punctured John’s lung. His chest tube had just been removed earlier that morning. He was sitting in a chair, tired after walking just a few laps around the hospital room. That was when Sherlock decided to confess.
“What was it like, then?” Yelling hurt, but it also felt good and deeply satisfying.
“While you were out of the room with Molly, I talked to Mycroft. He reported that the gunman hadn’t made any move to follow you around London. He must have planted something on you, either when you left the flat that day or in your shoes. He didn’t need to follow you to know your location.”
“He’s dead now?”
Sherlock nodded. “Shot three times and hit by a car. Or so I heard.”
“Did you see the papers?” Molly said cheerfully, walking into the hospital room.
Sherlock shook his head in warning and she immediately tucked the newspaper behind her back and started to retreat.
“What’s in the papers?”
“Uh.” She looked to Sherlock for direction, then handed the paper over to him before turning to John. “Please get better soon, John. It will be nice to have the flat to myself again.”
“What’s in the papers?” John repeated after Molly had gone, holding out his hand, demanding them.
“Later would be a better time.”
“Don’t make me come over there.”
“I do believe I can outrun you.” But Sherlock brought the paper over to him anyway.
Front page, in bold type:
Dead Man Saves Life
Sherlock Holmes, who jumped from the roof of Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital three weeks ago in what was initially thought to be an obvious suicide, has turned up alive and well. According to Detective Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, Mr Holmes faked his apparent death as part of undercover work to help bring down an illegal band of guns-for-hire.
The operation came to a head three days ago, resulting in the injury and near death of one Doctor John Wilson. Due to Mr Holmes’ quick thinking and fast response at the scene of attack, there was no loss of life.
“John Wilson?” John exclaimed, not bothering to read the rest of the article.
Sherlock just smiled.
Rating PG-13
Spoilers: Major spoilers for Reichenbach
Disclaimer: Don’t own them :(
Word Count: 3177
Summary: Sherlock has a reason for everything he does, so John goes looking for answers.
Thanks: To my awesome beta reader,
daasgrrl, for the multiple reads and whipping this into shape. Any mistakes to be found are mine alone.John had visited Sherlock’s grave again, but it would be for the last time. Seeing the tombstone had left him feeling a chill that had had nothing to do with the temperature. He’d tried to say a few words, but the tombstone wasn’t Sherlock. He had never felt farther from his friend than he had right then.
Now, instead of going back to Baker Street, John went to Bart’s Hospital. He took the lift as high as he could, then climbed the stairs to the roof.
The wind greeted him, bringing with it a sense of calm that he hadn’t felt since it had happened. Two of the worst weeks of his life.
He pulled his coat tighter around him and stepped away from the door, feeling the full force of the wind as he did so. He thought he could hear laughter dancing on the breeze and he turned, convinced he would see Sherlock smiling at him. John mentally kicked himself for being disappointed to see nothing.
A stain on the cement drew his attention and he walked towards it. Blood. He knelt to get a closer look. It was faint, faded not with age but with a cleaning solution. “Who was up here with you?” John mused quietly. Had someone been wounded? Killed? “Why’d you still have to jump?” Even after a hundred times in the asking, the question still went unanswered. Why?
The ledge was less than five metres away. John swallowed, throat dry, and stood. He started walking, unsure if he would stop when he reached the edge, or just plummet over, keeping his silent vow to follow Sherlock everywhere.
The wind tousled his hair and tugged at his clothing, as if pulling him along, ready to help give him that final fatal push. But John did stop, didn’t give in to the siren song of the wind.
“I still believe in you, Sherlock.” John’s whisper was snatched from him before it could reach his own ears.
John reached into his pocket and pulled out the plastic evidence bag Lestrade had given to him that morning. Inside was Sherlock’s mobile. It had been found next to the roof’s ledge and John remembered, remembered Sherlock’s “Goodbye, John,” right before he had tossed it away like it had meant nothing to him.
He opened the bag. The mobile was cold, like death. It wasn’t supposed to feel like that. It should have been warm from being tucked away close to Sherlock’s body.
It wouldn’t switch on. How appropriate.
John left the rooftop shortly after that, the mobile tucked safe in an inside pocket.
***
John found the phone’s charger hopelessly tangled with his own. As it had been for the last several months. Neither he nor Sherlock had had the patience to untangle the blasted things, and for that, John was glad. Glad he wouldn’t have to dig through unmarked boxes that contained, in a word, Sherlock. The therapist had said that packing up Sherlock’s things would help, but until they were actually out of the flat, the phrase ‘out of sight, out of mind’ didn’t apply. John couldn’t bear to throw them away.
John plugged in the phone. It’s ‘I’m charging’ chirp made him turn away and hurry to the kitchen to fix a cup of tea. He ignored the half-bottle of whiskey in the fridge. That would come later.
He had planned on looking at the mobile after he’d made tea, to see if Lestrade’s team had missed anything. Anderson had been the one to go over it, and John trusted him just as much as Sherlock did. But John didn’t look at the phone again that day.
***
The drink didn’t mute John’s dreams.
Sherlock had the mobile pressed to his ear, just as he had during their final conversation, but John was up on the roof with him this time, pleading with Sherlock not to jump. Sherlock backed away from John, towards the edge.
“It’s madness! You can’t be serious!”
“It’s the only way.”
“Sherlock!”
“Trust me.”
“Not this time.” John started forwards, only to have a gun pointed at him. “You wouldn’t shoot me.”
“Stay right where you are. Don’t move.”
“Sherlock...”
Sherlock backed against the ledge. “This phone call...it’s my note.”
He lowered the phone from his ear, cutting off their communication even though John was standing right in front of him. Then he tossed the phone away. Both men watched the mobile fall, the sound loud as it clattered to the ground.
John rushed forwards, whether towards Sherlock or the phone, he didn’t know.
BANG!
Blood on the roof. Everywhere. Spreading. Sherlock. “...it’s my note...”
John woke with a start. Sun filtered in around the curtains, blinding him. His head throbbed when he sat up and he looked at the empty bottle on the floor with contempt, as though its contents had forced their way down his throat.
He didn’t stand until the pounding in his head subsided. Only then did he hear the echo of Sherlock’s voice from his dream. It’s my note. John repeated the words aloud, hesitating, then rushed towards Sherlock’s phone. He unplugged it from the charger and turned it on.
The screen flashed blue as it started up, and then the standard hello message greeted him.
Not sure where to start, John first went into the text messages. He recognized a handful of texts related to their last case, but none of them were recent. And John knew Sherlock had received several texts since then. Leave it to Anderson to only look for only what was there instead of what was missing.
The voice mail box was empty, which came as no surprise. John checked the received and sent calls. A few of the numbers he recognized; others he didn’t. But Lestrade had checked the numbers himself, and nothing had come up suspect.
John wanted to throw the mobile, smash it against the wall, in his frustration. He had been so sure, and the disappointment hurt just as much as each time he realized that Sherlock would never be coming back. Absently, John scrolled through each menu until he came to the last option.
Notes.
As much as John wanted to open the folder, he also didn’t want to. Another rush of disappointment might be his undoing.
He opened it.
139 Finsbury
John dropped the phone on the table and ran his hands over his eyes and through his hair. Had Sherlock left the note for him? Or was it some long forgotten piece of a clue that had never been removed?
In the end, John dressed and went outside to hail a cab. Inevitable, really.
The address belonged to a medium sized hotel. John approached the two men at the front desk. He paused, unsure what to ask.
“Welcome. Are you Mr Watson?” a large man with a bushy red beard asked. His name badge read ‘Gavin’.
“Of course he is,” the other, ‘Jeff’, replied. He stood a full head taller than his colleague and acted as though he were thrilled by John’s presence.
John cleared his throat. “Do I know you?”
“Someone left a message for you,” Gavin reached under the desk and placed an envelope on top of it. Clipped to the envelope was a picture of John. It was at least a year old, taken at a crime scene. John recognized Sherlock’s elbow, but the rest of him had been cut away.
“Who left this?” John demanded, voice loud and just as commanding as it had been when he had served in the military.
“Don’t look at us,” Jeff said, raising his hands. “We was paid good money to hold on to that. Don’t want no trouble.”
John snatched up the envelope, tearing it open, and pulled out a single piece of folded yellow paper.
John,
I’m sorry, but things had to happen this way...
“Did you get a Dear John letter or something?” Gavin asked.
John shot him a murderous glare and moved a few steps away from the desk.
... I’ll understand if you want to step away from this and wash your hands of me. But if you would allow an explanation, please see Molly.
SH
John read over the letter several times. Was Sherlock alive? “When did you get this?”
Jeff shrugged. “A couple of days ago, I think. Some lady dropped it off.”
Sherlock was alive. He had to be; the note was in his handwriting. But why did he want John to go see Molly? Did he not want to see John himself? He’d never taken Sherlock for a coward before.
***
John hadn’t seen Molly since the funeral, and it felt odd to go to the morgue without Sherlock leading the way.
Molly looked up from her study of a corpse, her pen poised over a clipboard. She straightened, lips twitching as though she wasn’t sure whether to smile or frown. “Hi, John.” Her lips settled on a combination of the two expressions. “Can I help you with anything?”
John held up the letter and was relieved when she seemed to recognize it.
Molly nodded. “Let me put Mr Stein away. I’ll meet you out the front in ten minutes. Okay?”
John held back his myriad of questions and did as Molly asked. He wondered where they were going to. Some quiet restaurant to talk? The thought of food turned his stomach, even though he hadn’t had much of anything since lunch the day before. And the whiskey.
Molly showed up exactly ten minutes later. “Hope you don’t mind a bit of a walk. I don’t have a car. Fresh air is always lovely.”
John would have offered to pay for a cab, but Molly had turned and started walking, leaving him to hurry after her. “Is Sherlock alive?”
She picked up the pace a little and John got the not-so-subtle hint.
John kept his mind carefully blank, holding back the anger that burned in his chest, keeping his focus only on matching Molly’s quick pace. “Where are we?” he asked 20 minutes later as Molly turned to knock on a door.
She didn’t answer John’s question, but then the door was opening and it was Sherlock and--
“Oh, John, good of you to stop by—“
John’s reaction was instantaneous. He swung his right fist at Sherlock’s face.
Sherlock ducked under the punch, but he hadn’t planned on John’s left and stumbled backwards under the weight of John’s fury before he could fully right himself.
“You bastard! I thought you were dead!”
“That was rather the point.” Sherlock touched his tender jaw, body tense as though he thought John might attack him again.
“I’ll make tea.” Molly pushed past the two of them and went into the kitchen.
Sherlock looked...good. Alive. Thinner. Nervous. He motioned John to join him in the sitting room. “You found my note,” he said once he had settled at one end of a couch and John had perched on the edge of a chair, back rigid.
John nodded. He could hear Molly moving about in the kitchen and he felt a stab of jealousy. “Are you two a couple now?” He meant it to come off as a joke, but it fell flat.
“With Molly? God, no. But she was integral to my plan.”
“Can still hear you,” Molly said from the kitchen.
“She helped you kill yourself?” John had a hard time controlling the volume of his voice.
“I didn’t die, John.”
”For two weeks, I thought you had!”
They were interrupted by Molly. She balanced a tray with three cups of tea and a small dish of biscuits. She set them on an end table, then moved the table closer to both of them.
“Am I interrupting?” she asked, looking from Sherlock to John and back again.
Sherlock gave a noncommittal shrug, which John normally interpreted as ‘just leave me alone’.
Molly frowned, then picked up her cup and sat at the opposite end of the couch, defiant. Good for her.
Sherlock watched her settle in out of the corner of his eye. His jaw clenched, as though he was thinking about taking back his shrug and banishing her from the room.
John said Sherlock’s name, getting his attention once more. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I left you a note.”
“I didn’t get it until this morning. What if Lestrade hadn’t given me the phone at all?”
“Lestrade wasn’t supposed to give it to you any sooner.”
John felt sick to his stomach. He glanced at Molly, who looked guilty and like she regretted her decision to stay in the room after all.
“So, everyone knew, then. Everyone except me.”
“Molly and Lestrade. No one else.” Sherlock took another sip of tea before setting the cup aside. “And Mycroft.”
John stood, turned and stalked off down the hallway. The first left put him in a small room. Bookshelves filled with books lined two of the walls. The only other piece of furniture was a small computer desk. A closed black laptop with a large red rose skin on the lid sat on top the desk, surrounded by papers that threatened to bury it. The chair that belonged to the desk rested by the window. A rolled up sleeping bag, a stack of blankets, and a pillow lay in a pile by one of the shelves.
“The couch wasn’t long enough for him.” Molly stepped into the room. “I don’t know why it matters. He doesn’t sleep much.” She took her chair and pushed it back to the desk. “He’s missed you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
“He has a funny way of showing a lot of things,” she agreed. “But it’s him. He doesn’t do anything without good reason. If you’ll just listen to him.”
John rubbed a hand over his eyes.
“Look, I’ve got to get back to work,” Molly continued. “Stay as long as you’d like. Make him eat, if you can. Just lock the door if you leave.”
John caught Molly by the arm as she turned to go. “Thank you. For giving him somewhere to go. For everything.”
***
John took another moment to himself before he rejoined Sherlock in the sitting room. “You have five minutes before I walk out that door.” John had expected a rush of words, Sherlock’s usual spill-all way of getting his point across. What he got was quite different.
“You went up to the roof?” Sherlock asked, his words slow and measured. Tired.
“I did.”
“Notice anything unusual?”
“The bloodstain?”
Sherlock nodded.
“I take it it wasn’t yours?”
“Moriarty. He had gunmen watching Mrs Hudson. Lestrade. You. He said that if I didn’t jump, he would have all three of you killed. Then he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I needed Lestrade to cover up his death.”
John frowned. “Why would you need to cover up for him?”
Sherlock gave him a look that said John was being terribly dense. “Did you forget the papers? I created Moriarty,” he said with contempt. “The man who ended up dead on top of the same building I jumped from. The papers would love that.”
“But with Moriarty dead, why are you--”
“Five minutes are up, John. You can leave now.”
“Why are you still pretending to be dead?” John finished his question. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Mycroft is still looking for the last gunman. It was easy enough to find the one watching Mrs Hudson, and the one watching Lestrade. Yours should be caught and dealt with by the end of the day.”
“Dealt with?”
“Yes.” Sherlock didn’t elaborate and John wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Look, I think there’s a Chinese place round the corner,” John suggested. “Let’s eat. Sort things out.”
“But--”
“I won’t take no for an answer.” John heard a buzz from Sherlock’s pocket. “Must be a text from Mycroft. Maybe he’s caught the gunman and we’ll have something to celebrate.”
Sherlock followed John to the door, grabbing his coat as he took his new mobile from his pocket, reading the text. “John, wait! Stop!”
But John had already opened the door. He faintly heard Sherlock’s yell being punctuated by the sound of a gun, then pain in his chest, the force knocking the air from him. Then Sherlock was behind him, pulling him back inside, kicking the door closed on the sounds of yelling and more gunfire outside.
Sherlock cradled his phone between shoulder and ear, barking directions for an ambulance while he tore open John’s shirt, pressing the ruined material against the wound.
John took a breath and choked, tasting blood. He reached out to grab Sherlock’s sleeve, not wanting to lose him again.
***
Four days later:
“I can’t believe you used me as bait!”
“It wasn’t like that.”
The bullet had punctured John’s lung. His chest tube had just been removed earlier that morning. He was sitting in a chair, tired after walking just a few laps around the hospital room. That was when Sherlock decided to confess.
“What was it like, then?” Yelling hurt, but it also felt good and deeply satisfying.
“While you were out of the room with Molly, I talked to Mycroft. He reported that the gunman hadn’t made any move to follow you around London. He must have planted something on you, either when you left the flat that day or in your shoes. He didn’t need to follow you to know your location.”
“He’s dead now?”
Sherlock nodded. “Shot three times and hit by a car. Or so I heard.”
“Did you see the papers?” Molly said cheerfully, walking into the hospital room.
Sherlock shook his head in warning and she immediately tucked the newspaper behind her back and started to retreat.
“What’s in the papers?”
“Uh.” She looked to Sherlock for direction, then handed the paper over to him before turning to John. “Please get better soon, John. It will be nice to have the flat to myself again.”
“What’s in the papers?” John repeated after Molly had gone, holding out his hand, demanding them.
“Later would be a better time.”
“Don’t make me come over there.”
“I do believe I can outrun you.” But Sherlock brought the paper over to him anyway.
Front page, in bold type:
Dead Man Saves Life
Sherlock Holmes, who jumped from the roof of Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital three weeks ago in what was initially thought to be an obvious suicide, has turned up alive and well. According to Detective Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, Mr Holmes faked his apparent death as part of undercover work to help bring down an illegal band of guns-for-hire.
The operation came to a head three days ago, resulting in the injury and near death of one Doctor John Wilson. Due to Mr Holmes’ quick thinking and fast response at the scene of attack, there was no loss of life.
“John Wilson?” John exclaimed, not bothering to read the rest of the article.
Sherlock just smiled.
