(no subject)

[tangledtrinkets]

Title: Rebuild All Your Ruins.

Chapter: [1/6] The Hero Dies in This One

Rating: M. For safety.

Warning: Character Death, eventual violence, stalking, and talk of drug use. I don't trust myself to keep my language clean.

Summary: When Sherlock is killed in the pool bombing, John somehow finds himself the target of leftover attention both from Moriarty, and an old friend of Sherlock's called simply 'The Doctor'.

With John's death and the increase in attacks from Moriarty's empire, Sherlock has been worn down to the bone, and even he isn't sure how to stop the criminal mastermind.

Sometimes, the universe makes mistakes, and sometimes, just sometimes, it fixes them, too.

Note: This is about to get a little timey wimey, just so's you know. Also, unbeta'd for the most part. And not brit-picked.

 

Four months to the day after the incident, Harry called him up at nine in the morning.

She was in top form, having apparently been up for hours from the sound of things as part of her newly health conscious kick, a bit manic and filling space in the conversation with things he didn't particularly care to know, but felt he probably should take an interest in as her brother. She was in the middle of talking about her new dieting regimen (That seemed to have taken the place of the drinking in how fervently she'd taken to it and probably wasn't healthy. It consisted mostly of a drink that seemed to be made up of ninety percent grass from what he could tell.) but it was better than the drink, and left her sounding more like his sister than she had since her University days, so he didn't mind it. . Giving up the drink had brought Clara back, and Harry had always been better with her around, so he could handle the whole fad diet for as long as it took to run the course of her interest.

Eventually she trailed off, having stalled long enough, and probably getting some sort of prompting from Clara from the pause on her end.

He'd been expecting this, honestly, but it still made him want to hang up the phone and go back to bed. There were things he didn't want to deal with before ten in the morning, and then there were things he didn't want to deal with at all, especially when they were being put in front of him by Harriet. She had a way of forcing everything into some awful sort of perspective, if only by being dead wrong more than half the time.

"It's official, John. I hate to say it, but he's been dead now longer than you knew the bloke. It's time to move on with your life already." She said. There was a sudden jostling noise as she moved to cover the phone, but he still heard Clara's offended 'Harry!" in the background. When her voice returned, she sounded a bit chastised, but it didn't stop her from continuing.

"John? I know you're still there, Johnny. And what's more, you know I'm right. Don't you?"

"Harry-"

"John. Listen to me, when have I ever steered you wrong?"

He bit his tongue, before he could say something he really regretted, and they both knew he was doing it.

"Harry. I'm fine."

There was silence on the other end of the phone, before she sighed heavily.

"Johnny-"

"Look, I've got to be to the clinic in an hour, I'll call you tomorrow."

They both were silent for a long moment before she finally said her goodbyes, and John lay back on the bed, ignoring how his leg fought the action even as it made him wince.

Some things he didn't want to deal with at all.

-

He wasn't lying when he said to be at the clinic, and Sarah's smile when she saw him was actually fairly nice to see after Harry's wake up call. She didn't ask how he was holding up, like she had last month, which he was thankful for.

Instead, she dropped a stack of files on his desk larger than he knew was really necessary but was probably to keep his mind off things, and she mentioned that they had lunch planned for the day after. Even though their Romanic ideas went up like a house fire, they'd remained friends in a way he appreciated like little else at the moment. What was better was the woman seemed to be one of the few people on the planet not hell-bent on coddling him, like some kind of widower.

Yes, he'd lost someone he was close to. That happened all the time. He'd lost probably what he'd have considered his closest friend, nowadays. Probably the closest anything he’d had in his life. There wasn't really a proper word for it, and he'd never really been able to try and pin one down, and when he tried he just felt silly and stupid.

Idiotic, even.

When Sarah walked back in, she caught him with his face in his hand, telling himself he was laughing, (because by god, was he an idiot) so he could feel less stupid about not being able to see the first patient yet.

As always, she was an absolute joy, holding off Mr. Higgins for a good ten minutes so he could compose himself, and when he went out to retrieve the second patient a good half an hour later than he should have, he came back to find a cuppa sitting on the corner of his desk, steaming away.

-

The walks home were the worst part, he didn't see the point in a cab, or the tube, or the bus. It was close enough, even with the cane, most days. People avoided him as he walked, because no one wants to be the arse to run into a cripple, and that suited him just fine. It delayed the inevitable, when he got home and realized there was nothing to look forward to.

Nothing.

God knew, he'd lived like this before.

(But. Said a voice in the back of his head, treacherous thing that it was. But this is different. )

He could live with the limp, could've done for the rest of his life. But he didn't know how well he'd ever adjust to this hollow, useless feeling that only ever seemed to get worse.

Funny thing, people going around on eggshells around him, treating him like some widower who’d lost someone of years instead of someone who’d lost a friend and flatmate of only months.

Truly funny thing.

Because, sometimes, he felt like it.

-

Mrs. Hudson had plans to visit her sister in Gloucester for the week, so he was left utterly alone in the flat. He ignored two different calls from Harry, probably trying to apologize for the morning at Clara’s insistence, but he picked up the third, and was treated to Sally Donovan shouting at someone else, not having noticed that the call had picked up in whatever was happening on the other end.

“John!” She said, sounding apologetic when she realized what had happened. “We’ve got a bit of a mess down in your end, and Lestrade wanted to see if you would come down.”

He could hear her pause to shout at someone else, thankfully pulling the phone away this time, but it sounded as if she was horribly busy, and if Donovan was, Lestrade could only be worse off.

They’d taken to doing this, in some odd, twisted sense of loyalty, or probably hope, they’d called him down a few times when they realized that there was something that interconnected with what police were calling ‘The London Bomber’.

He took a cab to the scene, glad to be out of the dull, emptiness, of the flat, and was greeted at the edge by what looked to be a rather unhappy Sergeant. Her face was pinched and full of distaste for the couple of reporters who tried to steal her time while she was letting him in, and she waved them off with an order for another officer to take her place at the barrier.

“We’re in there, Anderson thinks it’s some kind of warning, Greg thinks he’s taunting us because he-“ Sally stops speaking, and continues on walking, barely slowing down her usual pace so John can keep up. “But one thing’s true, we all think it’s him. Between the day, and the fact that….Well, you’ll see. We’re sure as we possibly could be.”

The closer they got to the tent, the better he could see the bomb squad as they moved everyone out, must’ve been finished with their jobs.

Lestrade was standing over what looked like a swarm of officers, seemingly hell bent on nearly knocking into each other at terribly close calls. They went back and forth milling around a large, wooden, well made, black box. When he got in close enough, he could see the mess of wires and bits of electronics inside the box.

“Ah, there you are.” Lestrade waved them both over, and held something out to John. “Something you need to see.”

It was an envelope, with his name across it in elegant, blue lettering.

-

My Dear Doctor,

It seems to me, that I’ve broken all of my toys in the first round. Pity, that. Things have been a bit boring for a while, don’t you agree? London makes a better battlefield than most, and since the big dogs wont bite, I guess I’ll have to make do with a dead man’s leftovers.

Don’t worry too much, Doctor Watson. You’ll have plenty of warning to try and catch me.

Call it a head start.

Do try not to get yourself caught this time, it would cut the game rather short, and it seems in everyone’s best interest to keep me entertained.

M

-

Lestrade took the letter from his hands once he’d finished, reading it over to himself what seemed to be two or three times before passing it to Sally with a curse.

“Damn him.” He said, hands on his hips, flaring his coat out and giving the impression of an irritated animal who’d puffed up due to danger.

John watched the both of them as they looked over the paper, Sally’s face growing more drawn and angry as she went.

That bastard. John couldn’t get the image of the lizard like cold behind his eyes out of his head. Moriarty.

Damn him to hell.

“It’s rare I think we’re dealing with something just plain inhuman, but-“ Sally cut herself off, practically seething. She’d confided that, though she’d never been among ‘the freak’s’ fans, she found herself hating the bomber for killing him, as if he’d murdered a member of the department.

She’d been at least three sheets to the wind and leaning on the bar when she’d done so, but she’d been all too sincere.

And Sally wasn’t alone, it seemed like most of the officers who’d known him took personal offense to his death. Like they were the only ones allowed to cause him trouble. John hoped, sort of, that Sherlock had been able to figure that out, that’d he’d been an annoyance and a prat to most of them, but that he was considered ‘theirs.’

The things you learn after a man dies.

“John,” Lestrade began, looking for all the world like a man who needed more of a vacation than he was ever going to get. He looked tired, and older than he was. ”We should just see how far up we can hand this. I don’t think we’re qualified, and I don’t think it’s fair to drag you back into this mess. Not really. This is sort of above and beyond.”

Sally looked back and forth between the two of them, her jaw set, and tracing the paper’s fold with her nails. They had no illusions that they’d find any finger prints. No sense in treating it like they would.

“I think….” John paused, flexing his hands over the head of his cane and he noticed how for the first time in months he didn’t feel like needles were stabbing at him from the knee down.

Instead it just felt like something was crushing his chest.

Awful trade off that was.

“I can’t let this go.” He said, finally looking to the both of them, surprised to see a level of determination, equal to what he felt, cross Sally’s face. “I don’t know how much help I’d be, if any, but I think I’d like to try.”

Lestrade sighed, heavily, running a hand over his hair and he looked at the two of them.

“Really. The both of you. You’re sure about this?”

“I think if we don’t do it, whoever gets stuck with it wont know what to do.” Sally said, diplomatically. “We’ve dealt with him, and everything that happened before was on our watch.”

“I just can’t sit at home and do nothing. Besides, Moriarty seems rather adamant that I be a part of whatever this is. They’ll be no chance of keeping me out of it.”

“There’s no chance you lot are just about done?”

Anderson ran up to meet the three of them with a harried expression. He was growing the beginnings of a beard that really didn’t suit him, to be honest, and it made him look like a wild man run free at the scene.

“We’ve got more reporters than you would believe.” He said, and the other two cursed.

“Taking it or not, there’s little we can do till we get everything back from the labs or till he sends something else.” Lestrade glared off in the direction of the crowd, and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

“Thought you’d quit.” John said, as he turned to follow a grumbling Sally away, hopefully to find a way across the barrier that wouldn’t get him knocked over by someone with a camera.

“So did I.”

John let Sally show him out, but the look he caught of the detective inspector right before he slipped out of the tent made it seem as if he had gained a decade in the last few minutes, staring at the box as the cigarette’s smoke trailed lazily from his fingers.

-

There was little else he could do, other than go home.

Harry would have tried to argue that, would’ve said he should come back to her place. Hell, he was sure if he’d mentioned it, he had several people who would gladly let him stay at theirs, even if just for the night.

But, as lonely and quiet as the place was, Baker Street was home.

It was somewhere around midnight when he finally got in, and John dropped his keys on the counter, before stopping and staring at the barely cleaned remains of the chemistry set on the side table. If he had any sense, he’d have cleaned it up already. But, it seemed quite likely that he had none, if people were to be believed.

Instead, he put the kettle on, and closed his eyes, leaning back against the counter.

If he tried, hard enough, sometimes John could pretend like everything was fine. In a few moments, He would come tearing up the stairs, or out of his room, or from the living room and there’d be some new, mad dash. Or just his ridiculous ability to tell exactly when John had begun to make tea, so that he could ask for a cup without any sort of word from John about it. Because, if he was already making it, he could obviously make some for him too. Obviously.

God. It really pained him to admit it, but Harry might have actually been on to something.

This couldn’t be healthy.

There was the sound of the bell, and John opened his eyes and glared in the general direction of the sound.

Who could be calling at this hour?

-

“If you’re here” He said, calling out as he walked down the stairs. “To try and have a case taken, to give condolences, or if you are Harry, you really ought to just go home and save yourself the trouble.”

Once he got to the landing, he opened the door, and was about to ask why someone felt they had to hang on the bell when suddenly a ginger in a long jumper pushed past him and into the hall.

“I’d expect better hospitality from your old friends,” The girl said flippantly, spinning about on her heel to face both him, and the man standing in his doorway.

“Amy-“ The man began, and John hoped someone was going to begin to make sense. And hopefully stop barging into the entry way.

“You are Sherlock Holmes aren’t you? We’ve been told seven different addresses by people on the street and-…“ Amy looked back and forth between the two of them for a moment, her expression suddenly became something bordering on embarrassed. “And you aren’t, are you?”

“If she’d listened, I would’ve told her that you weren’t.” The man said conspiratorially. “He’s quite a hard one to miss.”

“Ah- You’re…You’re looking for Sherlock Holmes?” John asked, ignoring the way something twisted up inside him when he realized how long it had been since he’d said Sherlock’s name.

“Yes!” Said Amy, pointing at him. “He wouldn’t leave until we dropped in, but of course, it’s been “A while” so he didn’t know where to drop in to. And now my feet hurt, and half of London thinks we’re mad, I’m sure.”

“It’s only been a few years. Not too much could’ve changed, really.” The man said, and stepped in the open door and shut it behind him, leaving John very little he could do to get them to go back out the door again.

Why hadn’t he just left the door closed? From now on, he was going to ignore social niceties after eleven at night.

“I’m sorry you hadn’t heard, but Sherlock isn’t….” John cut himself off. "He passed. About three months ago.”

The man looked at him as if he’d said the world was flat and the sun went round the moon for a moment, before his expression went rather blank.

“Condolences.” He said, as if only just remembering the word. “....That. That is very, very bad.”

“Doctor?” Amy said, and both men turned towards her.

“Um….That’s uncanny.” She said, “The Doctor.”

“I appear to have made a mistake. I’d thought…” The man, Doctor, apparently, said. “If you don’t mind, what happened?”

John looked at the both of them, Amy’s unsure expression, and the Man’s rather upset one, and thought there really should be something he could do to get them out of the flat before he spent half the night reliving all of it.

From upstairs, the kettle began to whistle, and John cursed.

“Amy, would you-?” The man began, and Amy nodded.

“No, I’ve got it.” John said, unsure how they’d even thought inviting themselves in was a good idea, really. Did they do this oft-…Then, if he was a friend of Sherlock’s, anything could be possible.

“Sorry, mister…Whoever you are, but I really am not so sure you do.” She said, and bounded up the stairs, taking two at a time, and after a few seconds, the kettle stopped.

There was a quiet moment, where he and the man stood shoulder to shoulder, watching up the stairs to see if Amy would return, and when she didn’t immediately, John turned to look at him.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” He began, the words clipped as he barely reigned in his temper. It took a hell of an effort, to be honest. “Who are you?”

“He’s the Doctor!” Came a shout from the top of the stairs, and with a flash of red, Amy was leaning over the landing. “I’m Amy Pond. And If we’re going to have this conversation, you both should come up here.”

“I-“

“Come on. Least we could do is actually make you your tea. Hurry up!” She said, and leaned on the railing.

“And, I think with those introductions out of the way, I believe we need your name.” said the ma-The Doctor. Why would someone go by ‘the Doctor.’ Not particularly descriptive, that.

“John. John Watson.” He said, unsure how he ended up with the two of them in his flat and inviting him to his own tea, but really, there seemed to be no getting rid of them.

“Ah. John. Good name, John.” Said the Doctor, and clapped him on the back, before heading up his stairs.

No getting rid of them at all.

-

“It was about three months ago.” John began, sitting in Sherlock’s chair, mostly to keep the both of them out of it. They’d invaded the flat with great ease, and even though they had asked for the story, and as a friend of Sherlock’s the Doctor probably should get it, there were a few things John wasn’t willing to let happen.

“There was a case, and he died in the line of-Well, trying to solve it. Anyway.”

“What sort of case.” The Doctor asked, completely ignoring his tea, steaming away in his lap. “Did he solve it?”

“I don’t understand what you mean by case.” Amy said, staring between the two of them. “You didn’t say he was an officer or anything.”

“He wasn’t.” They both said, at the same time, and Amy put up her hands.

“Okay, boys. No need for surround sound.”

He debated for a moment, telling them the truth, but instead he put down his cup on the table and leaned forward.

“How did you know Sherlock, Doctor?” He asked.

“We’re old friends.” The Doctor said, frowning for a moment before following it up a few seconds later. “Were.”

“Sherlock didn’t have many friends,” John said, preparing in his mind for pretty much anything, even if neither of them looked particularly dangerous and had only given off the impression of being terribly impolite.

“No, I don’t suppose he did.” The Doctor said, the frown settling in a little deeper. “I bet he’d have been more likely to call us colleagues or something silly like that. I helped him. About….” The Doctor trailed off, and looked at the paper on the coffee table. “Oh, five years ago.”

“He never mentioned you.”

Though, to be fair, Sherlock didn’t mention much. And, really, it wasn’t fair to say it like that. Three months. Three months was not that long to learn about a person.

“He kept getting himself arrested trying to talk to this officer, Lestrade? Yes! That was it! He kept getting himself arrested by being at the scene of things, and I helped him clear his name. He was a bit…addled.”

John stared at the Doctor, trying to imagine the scenario in his head. Five years, Lestrade said he’d known him that long, kept mentioning offhandedly to Sherlock how his actions had consequences, even if he didn’t think they did. Hell, Lestrade then would know who this was.

“Addled.” John said, knowing before the Doctor glanced off what he meant.

“He did get off of it, didn’t he?” The Doctor asked? “I told him that was fairly…well…a stupid way to waste his head. Didn’t take to kindly to that really. That face looked better with a black eye than this one, let me tell you.”

“Um-“

“Oh! Yes.” The Doctor stood up, and wandered over, to drop in John’s chair, across from him.

“This case.” He said. “You never said. Did he solve it?”

“…Yes and No.” John said, after a long minute.

“That’s not much of an answer.” Amy said, from off at the couch, apparently having stolen the Doctor’s tea when he didn’t drink it.

“He solved it, but the man who did it escaped.” John said. “He was a bomber, the building exploded….” John rolled his cane against the floor. “They never found Mori-The Bomber. I got tossed halfway ‘cross the room, woke up in hospital a week later. Sherlock didn’t make it.”

The Doctor stared at him intently for a long moment, eyes flicking over his face in a way that reminded him of his friend.

“John, this bomber. They haven’t caught him, have they.”

“No. No, they haven’t.” John said, sitting back in his chair to escape the feeling of being watched, if only just a bit. It was unsettling.

“Why haven’t they?” Amy asked, breaking the tension as both John and the Doctor looked in her direction.

“He’s smarter than that, isn’t he?” The Doctor asked, before John could answer. “If Sherlock took time out to take the case, he had to be smart, and if Sherlock died in the process, well…”

The Doctor paused, that intense expression back.

“It would either be blind luck or he’d have to be dastardly and dangerous…a whole new brand of it.”

He looked at John, taking in the entirety of him.

“And, I’m guessing luck had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

This, John was sure of. If luck had been involved, they’d have both made it out. Moriarty would’ve stayed away. Anything else would’ve happened if luck was involved. Or, maybe, Sherlock would’ve just thought the whole idea of luck playing into any of it was ridiculous. He’d have scoffed at the lot of them, right then. He knew it.

“Luck wasn’t it.” He said, and heard the scoff he was expecting, but from the girl on the couch.

“You lived through a bomb. I’d say that’s luck, honestly.”

John wasn’t sure how to express how that wasn’t luck at all.

-

As it turned out, he was right.

There was no getting rid of Amy and the Doctor, and as it turned two, John gave in and told them to stay instead of trying to get back to wherever they were staying in the middle of the night.

That, and the fact that Amy had fallen asleep on the couch as he and the Doctor had gotten into more depth, explaining Moriarty’s game. The Doctor dropped his jacket over her shoulders soon after they’d noticed that her commentary had stopped. The tired look the Doctor had given her the moment she wasn’t able to look back was the defining moment that allowed John to relax.

Something about it was rather painfully familiar, and he remembered shoving cups of tea at Sherlock in his moods and dropping the duvet over him when he’d come home to see the man out like a light. There really was nothing to be done once he actually had fallen asleep, waking him up only meant you were stuck dealing with him until he managed to quiet his head again, which could take hours, and likely included the violin. After a certain point in the night, it just had not been worth it.

Somewhere around two thirty, John gave in to his own need for sleep, and left the Doctor and Amy in the living room, climbing up the stairs to his own even though, with Sherlock gone, more than one person had suggested he take the room on the lower landing.

He couldn’t do that.

John went to bed that night, utterly worn, and feeling old. There was the quiet noise of someone bustling about on the floor below, and if John ignored his leg and the bone deep tiredness that never seemed to go, he could almost pretend everything was alright.