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Sherlock Holmes stepped off a rooftop in the height of winter, fell three stories, and died on impact for the whole world to see.
John left Dr. Watson behind that night.
Lestrade had been the first and only one, to approach John sitting there on that sidewalk.
He looked pale. Ashen, really. An expression that he'd seen all the time in Afghanistan. Wide-eyed and shell-shocked, with a day's worth of stubble and hair that stood up on end. He looked like he'd never sleep again. He looked like he'd woken up in a warzone, didn't remember how he'd gotten there, and wanted to go home.
Poor guy, he reflected dully.
"John," he said. "This is. It's. ...I..."
"He's dead."
Greg lurched to a halt.
John stared back down to his hands.
His bloody, useless hands.
He didn't really care, if Greg felt guilty.
At least Greg had bothered to come over here. Donovan, thus far, was doing a superb job at keeping her distance. Directing about officers, scribbling down notes, not once speaking up to send him off even though he was still sitting on the wrong side of the crime scene tape- and being very, very careful, never to look at him. Not even once. And that, still, was miles ahead of Anderson.
The forensic tech had taken one look at the... the pavement. The... he's my friend. He's my friend... blood.
And just- left. Hadn't seen him since.
Good fucking riddance.
John hoped he got hit by a car.
"John," Greg started again, suddenly urgent and torn. Urgent as if this was suddenly the most important thing in the world. "John, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I never wanted-"
"-wanted this to happen? Yeah. Yeah, good for you." John's fingers dug into his trousers, two little knots of denim wrung out by his thumbs. His heart pounded so hard he thought it might burst. "He's still dead."
He was dead.
John had lived with this brilliant, bloody idiot on the edge for two of the most exhilarating years of his life, and now he'd watched Sherlock walk right over it and fall right through his arms.
He's dead, and I could've caught him.
I could've caught you, Sherlock.
A day would probably come, when he'd forgive Gregory Lestrade. He knew in his heart that if Lestrade hadn't been the one to arrest him, it wouldn't have made the difference. It would've just been somebody else. Somebody who probably wouldn't have even given Sherlock the choice, to leave without handcuffs. Someone who wouldn't have given the order for his officers to hold their fire, when Sherlock had stolen that gun, and would've just shot him then and there on the street.
He didn't care.
Sherlock's blood smeared a sloppy circle on the palm of his hand and he didn't care.
He's my friend, let me through.
He's my friend.
"He told me it was just a magic trick."
Greg started again, dropped limply next to him to sit on the kerb. He turned back to him with wide, red-rimmed eyes, his face still almost the same color as the pavement. "Sorry?"
"Just a..."
No. Sherlock. Stop this. Stop this now. It's not funny. Stop this right now, Sherlock, stop it now. Sherlock.
"Just a-"
He couldn't catch his breath. When had he started panting? When had- John's fingers clawed at his throat, but they were red and wet, and suddenly all he could see was the navy blue knot of a scarf, tied off like a signature flourish around a neck that was so, so pale. Splashed with the spreading stain of blood. Red on blue on white. So much blood, just on impact. So sodding pale; what was wrong with him, pale as a ghost even under all those layers-
"John-"
"He said it was just a magic trick," he heard himself say, as if from far away. "He told me that he was a fraud. That he'd faked everything, and everything he could do was- just a magic trick. Then he jumped."
Greg's complexion faded from sour milk to grey as ash.
And John-
John looked back down at the blood on his hands.
They'd moved the body, at least.
Body.
Not Sherlock.
Greg shifted in the corner of his eye, his breaths low and shaky. He started to say something once, then stopped, staring down at the street as if it held all the answers that John did not have.
The seconds ticked by.
"Do you... do you... think that-"
"No."
"John-"
"No," he snarled, and for the first time since Sherlock's fragile, shattered, lily-pale, fucking dead body had been lifted away from him, he stood. "I don't think. I know."
Greg looked positively devastated, suddenly so guilt-choked he probably regretted speaking up at all. "I didn't mean-"
"I don't care what the fuck you meant. Sherlock Holmes did not tell me a lie, and if you believe that he did, then you're stupider than Anderson ever was."
Stop it, Sherlock. Stop this. It's not funny. Stop this. Stop this. Stop this.
John made it just two steps past the yellow banner of crime scene tape before Greg's hand caught him by the shoulder, and begged him back.
"John. John, please-"
"What?!"
Greg's mouth thinned to a flat line, his jaw tight but the look in his eyes a stomach-lurching gut punch in a world that was already in freefall. He stared at John for several seconds, silent and devastated, still with that shellshock rimming his eyes. A warzone right on a sidewalk of central London.
"I'm so sorry," he started again, but it was a segue, not an apology. "Considering the- the circumstances. My supervisor says you can go home tonight, but you'll need to make an appearance some time tomorrow. I'm sure I can get it downgraded to just a citation, but to do that I'll need your help. ...please don't let this be worse than it already is."
John did not have the first clue as to what Greg was talking about.
The inspector cleared his throat, after several seconds ticked by in nothing at all but dead silence. He looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground and never come out. "The assault charge," he said, his voice rough, and it all just came flooding back.
The superintendent. Assault charge. That smart-mouthed, slimy, arrogant little prick, looking down his nose at Sherlock. The casual, off-handed remark of weirdo. And there had gone John's fist.
Assault charge. Right.
John tilted his head back, and started to laugh.
It was too much. That was the final straw, right there, and it just sailed right over the line of acceptable and smacked straight into absurd. No.
Just-
No.
There was nothing he could've ever possibly cared less about in the world.
He was done.
Greg was staring at him now through a thin, barely disguised veneer of alarm. Like he was mentally unstable, and well, given that he was cracking up two feet and an hour away from the sight of his best friend's suicide, maybe that wasn't that unfair an assessment. But he wasn't Dr. John Watson, Sherlock's best friend, he had never been that at all, and maybe this would've been crazy if he was Dr. Watson but he wasn't and he was too far gone to care.
John tilted his head back, and laughed until he ran out of breath and his sides hurt with the force of it.
"Goodbye, Lestrade," he said, and walked away.
John watched the funeral from Barcelona.
It would've been nice, to say that he watched it with magic. There weren't any spells that actually would've let him watch events from a country away, or if there were, they certainly weren't simple enough for him to pull it off, this many years out of practice, half-drunk and so sick at heart he wanted to throw up.
But it would've been very nice, for him to be able to credit the insight to a mere wave of his wand.
He watched it on youtube instead, as the seediest of clickbait rags livestreamed the entire thing to ten thousand other viewers.
With commentary.
"...fake genius Sherlock Holmes, unable to face the coming exposure of his fraud, in shame and disgrace..."
John closed his eyes for a beat, and concentrated very, very hard on staying calm.
The hollow space in the center of his chest throbbed again. This awful, ever expanding, leaden sense of guilt and grief and numbness, this sick feeling that had moved in after he'd left the wizarding world, then after, Afghanistan, it was back. He'd been running from this feeling his entire life and Sherlock had been the one. Sherlock. This insane lunatic, this Muggle that was more magical than an entire world of wizards. It had been Sherlock, to make John freer than he'd ever had before, lighter than air, alive and ecstatic and happy-
And now he was watching his fucking funeral.
The hole that Sherlock's death had caved him into was massive and dark and horrible, and John was never, ever, climbing out.
Mycroft wasn't there.
Bloody fucking bastard.
"...and killed himself rather than face justice for his crimes..."
John was- actually rather okay, with this. All things considered.
More than okay with it.
Dr. Watson wouldn't have been okay with missing his best friend's funeral at all, but that wasn't who he was.
And who he was. Who he really was-
He couldn't be there. Not like this.
He had no right to.
"...took Richard Brooke with him- the innocent actor that he'd taken advantage of, that he hinged this whole scheme on, right from the start! Some sources rumor there was a sexual partnership? The unanswered question arises again; was Sherlock Holmes gay? Or possibly..."
John glowered at the screen, a momentary stab of dark anger overpowering the grief. How dare they.
Mental note: add these bastards to the list.
Once upon a time, John had left Sherlock's reputation up for Mycroft to protect. Those days had ended when he'd found out Mycroft had sold him out to the most dangerous psychopath in all of western Europe.
A lot of things had ended, when he'd found that out.
Dr. Watson had. John had left him behind, that day in Mycroft's office. He didn't know what he was going to do, as of yet, but what he did know was that Dr. Watson was dead now, too. That part of his life was done.
He wanted to blame Mycroft.
He did. He did fucking blame Mycroft. Mycroft Holmes had sold out his baby brother to a psychopath in his game of human chess, and John had let it slide when he'd sent Sherlock into Irene Adler's black widow spiderweb but there was no letting it slide when the fallout was the pieces of Sherlock's cracked skull splattered in blood across the pavement.
It was Mycroft's fault.
It was Mycroft's fault.
It was-
Grief swelled in John's throat.
It wasn't.
Oh, god. It wasn't.
"...but the question on everybody's mind is: where is Dr. Watson? Dr. John Watson- rumored as Sherlock Holmes' former lover- but now the question is, was Dr. Watson his accomplice? Was he aware th-"
John shut the laptop, shut his eyes after it, and then spent the next five seconds willing himself not to curse the damn thing into a dozen pieces.
Oh, fuck it.
"Reducto," he hissed.
Blue light flashed in the tiny space. An azure shock of light that flashed as lightning along the cracked walls and chipping paint and every last decrepit detail. The laptop, and Sherlock's funeral with it, disintegrated in his hands.
He hated this.
He couldn't-
"I can't do this," he croaked. To himself. On the floor of an empty hotel room to a stolen laptop and a flask of vodka and a week after he'd just watched his best friend die. "I... Sherlock. Sherlock, I can't do this."
Nobody could be that clever.
You could.
You are.
You are, Sherlock.
Don't do this...
Sherlock had thrown himself off a fucking rooftop because he hadn't trusted John. He hadn't trusted John could make it better, could protect him, would listen to whatever it was that had gone wrong in his head to make him want to kill himself and would make it all better. To be there.
He hadn't trusted John to believe in him.
And he'd been bloody right not to, because John had been lying to Sherlock since the day they'd met.
He'd really never known.
Sherlock Holmes, the man who knew everything, hadn't known.
He'd nearly laughed himself silly over it a dozen times. He'd laughed himself to tears again and again, except it wasn't fucking funny.
Sherlock had stood up there and told him I lied to you, and the blazing dumb idiot had had no idea that John's best answer to that was I've lied to you, too.
Problem was, if John started laughing at that now, he was pretty sure that was going to turn into him crying again.
Sherlock hadn't lied to him. No. Sherlock had not lied. Or, no, he bloody fucking well had, every single word out of his mouth on that fucking rooftop had been a lie, because Sherlock hadn't lied to him, he wasn't a fraud. He was the most brilliant, amazing man John had ever known, and every dazzling deduction, every case solved with fascinating aplomb and a swirl of that bloody long coat, was for real. The genius that clicked together picture-perfect conclusions was real. The reckless idiocy with which he ducked from bullets and taunted criminals and walked on a razor's edge was real.
The bright, warming gleam in his eye, at the praise- praise John had long ago put together Sherlock had never truly had, before now- was real.
He closed his eyes again, breathing harshly into his stinging, numbing hands, and for a long moment, was just so fucking miserable he couldn't do anything but sit there in this shitty hotel room and try not to sob.
He fucking hated Sherlock Holmes with every fiber of his being.
"You told me it was a magic trick," he croaked. "Just a magic trick, you said."
Deep breath. Focus. Focus.
No one here but him. Just him, and this horrible hotel room, and the snow melting outside and the pervasive cold bit all the way in because he wasn't dressed for this because he hadn't wanted to come here because he hadn't wanted Sherlock to die.
Deep breath.
"I know you were lying. Because I'm the magic trick," he said.
And-
Well, great, now he was fighting to not start fucking sobbing again, because he'd made his confession and it didn't matter because there was no one there to confess it to.
The last thing that John had done in 221b Baker Street was say goodbye to Mrs. Hudson.
Mostly because she hadn't given him a choice.
"Oh, John-"
She was on him the very instant he walked into the flat.
"John, oh, no. Oh, no, John, it's not true- tell me it's not true-" She wrung her hands about, her face blotchy and red, makeup smeared. "They've been saying the most awful things on the telly, oh, John, tell me it's not true-"
The TV, he realised, was on. On commercial right now, blaring away uselessly by the kitchen. A spilled cup of tea, completely shattered, at its feet.
It hit him, the same way it must have hit Mrs. Hudson.
Those damn vultures.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Hudson," he said. It was all he could say. Once again, he heard himself as if floating far, far away, and the silence that followed was the quiet in the wake of a bomb blast.
And then, Mrs. Hudson was sobbing, and John didn't know how to do anything other than stand there with a hand on her shoulder, and let her cry.
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.
For the first time, John found himself crying, too.
How dare you, Sherlock. You made Mrs. Hudson cry, you selfish son of a bitch. How DARE you.
Come back.
He wasn't coming back.
He hoped Anderson was hit by a car, and Kitty Riley was hit by a bus.
Mycroft-
A quaking rage invaded his chest, a sharp, violent, angry stab of flooding anger, and his arm around Mrs. Hudson's shaking shoulders tightened.
He hoped Mycroft was hit by a fucking train.
And he knew then, sitting there in the near silence of this dusty, terrible room, this suffocating tomb that Sherlock would never stand in again, what he had to do.
There were many things that John Watson, ex-army doctor, should've done. Probably would've done. John Watson, respectable, loyal, ordinary Dr. John Watson, would stay sitting right here and comfort Mrs. Hudson. He'd keep his chin up and be strong.Head into the Yard tomorrow, for a citation and community service and to apologize, and look Donovan right in the eye, and dare her to open her mouth. Dodge reporters, and tell them to go to hell on live TV. Oh, god, god, he'd start- planning a funeral-
Because the very last thing that Mrs. Hudson deserved was to face these coming months with two empty bedrooms instead of one.
The problem was that that John Watson was a lie.
"Mrs. Hudson," he murmured. She was still crying. Fifteen minutes, now, and no sign of it stopping or even slowing down. She could make herself sick, at this point. His throat ached badly, a grief stabbing in his temples, but his eyes were dry. He squeezed her shoulder again and started to draw to his feet. "I'm going to get-"
"No! No you are not, John Watson!"
He drew back, biting his tongue, but Mrs. Hudson followed him inch for inch, catching his arm before he could pull away. "You are not going to get me something to calm down, do you hear me, young man?! Sherlock is dead! If ever there is a time to be upset-"
The anger flagged just as quickly as it had come, and the tears rushed right back.
"Oh, Sherlock-"
She buried her face back down into her hands. Her wet face, streaks of tears that caught and gleamed against the streak of orange sunset glow, patterned against the fading shadows of the room that was already dark; so, so dark, an empty chair and lonely microscope and forgotten scarf, curled at their feet.
Had Sherlock looked like that, before-?
He'd been crying, on the phone. Sherlock Holmes. Crying.
Bile swam at the back of his throat.
"I'll be right back, Mrs. Hudson," he promised.
And for the first time that day, he'd said the truth.
It took less than a minute, for him to retrieve his wand.
"Mrs. Hudson," he said again. Her face was still buried in her hands, little hiccuping sobs, high-pitched trills over the monotonous drone of the reporter behind them. Fake genius and alleged fraud Sherlock Holmes jumped today from the roof of St. Bart's hospital...
"Quiesce."
Just like that, the sobbing stopped.
John stood silently there in the space of the flat, the warmth of his wand soaking into his hand for the first time in a year. A year. Mrs. Hudson was fast and fully asleep, fallen limply to the nearest pillow and her face calm. Calm in a way that was all a lie.
Now, the only breach into the suffocating quiet of 221B, was the continued drone of the reporter.
"...Mr. Holmes was the prime suspect in the kidnapping and attempted murder of two unidentified children, and is now suspected to have murdered Richard Brooke, in addition to numerous other-"
"Reducto!"
The diatribe shut off, and the warmth of magic blossomed into the fiery heat of rage.
He was going to put a stop to this.
He was going to put a stop to this now.
John stepped over the shattered remains of what had once been a TV set, and headed off to pack.
John Watson was no Sherlock Holmes, so it took him a little bit of legwork, to get his investigation off the ground.
His first stop came three weeks after London, when it surely would've only taken Sherlock a day. In a dingy hostel that smelled like mothballs that the Spanish government had down as a front for a drug trafficking ring, and that John needed an invisibility charm to sneak into while Sherlock would've charmed his way in with his silvertongue alone.
That was okay. He was patient.
He wasn't as good as Sherlock. Nobody would ever be as gloriously transcendent and brilliant as Sherlock Holmes, standing on the edge, watching John from too far away, and saying goodbye.
That was okay.
Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock wasn't the only one of them who could get things done.
John punched one of Moriarty's lieutenants in the nose, just as hard as he'd punched the superintendent, hit him right in the face with the strongest confundus charm he'd ever cast, and dropped him off on Interpol's doorstep.
"You're lucky it's not Azkaban," he murmured in his ear, and disapparated.
One down.
John said goodbye to Lestrade on a kerb, Mrs. Hudson in a note, and Molly Hooper on a street corner. One foot already in the cab, one foot out.
She hadn't been crying.
John, gutted and hollow past the point of breathlessness- John stared at her, her mouth firm and her cheeks dry and her eyes like fire- and for just that one heartbeat, hated her.
"John," she gasped again, stricken. She stared at him, then the cab, her face flushed, each breath a sharp inhale of wounded disbelief. "I just wanted to- to check on you. I wanted to..." She trailed off after seconds, her gaze lingering again on the still idling cab. "I didn't realise you'd be- going somewhere."
Once again, John found himself unable to do anything more than just stare blankly back. Bitterness caught in his throat; snagging, like a bush of thorns tearing at his sleeves until the skin bled.
Was he?
Was he going somewhere?
When he didn't answer, Molly dropped her hand from his sleeve, hesitating with her lower lip between her teeth. Wonderful, sweet Molly; poor Molly. He would've thought she'd be bawling by now. She wasn't.
He thought about Mrs. Hudson, fast asleep and her face still wet with tears, back in the flat: alone. He thought about Lestrade, ashen and shell-shocked. He looked at Molly, and saw her like he'd never seen her before.
Was he going somewhere?
Was he leaving?
"You're not okay," Molly started, her eyes widening. She looked horrified. "You're not- of course you're not, but- John, come here-"
A sick heat burned in the back of his throat. Something re-ignited in his chest, that deep hole that felt like it was collapsing inward, inward, and his best friend was dead.
It was all just a magic trick
Nobody could be that clever
You could. You could, Sherlock.
Sherlock
"Oh, John-"
"No," he choked, and pulled away. His throat was tight and tears stung at the back of his eyes, but he had never been more sure about anything in his life.
He saw Lestrade shell-shocked, and Mrs. Hudson sobbing, and Molly devastated.
And he saw Sherlock.
Standing up on that rooftop.
"John, please- you're not okay- you look-"
"It's my fault," he said.
Oh, Molly hadn't been devastated before. He'd been wrong, on that one.
Because now-
Now, she was devastated.
"No. No, John Watson, it is not-"
"I lied to him," he said.
And then he laughed. Just as he had with Lestrade.
"John-"
Goodbye, John.
"Goodbye, Molly."
Mr. Watson,
I have included the requested solutions of dittany, Polyjuice Potion, and Veritaserum: enough for three uses, each. I expect anyone requesting such material in this manner does not need my instructions on proper usage.
Consider our score now settled. I expect any such future requests to come through the proper channels, with proper payment.
Prof. Snape
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
John gave the owl- a small, fast, grey bird, with neat feathers and the look of one of the official Hogwarts carriers- a scratch around the back of the neck, and sent him on his way without reply.
Good.
Then, he turned back to his waiting hostage.
Louis Trevor. Another of Moriarty's lieutenants, this one wanted in three countries for charges of murder, terrorism, and assorted other crimes, most vile enough that John determined prison to be too good for him. A criminal record stretching back a decade, and speckled with stories of him slipping away like a wiry eel free every time charges came up because witnesses turned up dead. By all appearances, France's very own consulting criminal.
Handcuffed on the floor of John's motel room, staring at him with eyes wide and gleaming, and unable to make a single sound.
"Sorry about that," he said brightly. "Wizards, you know? We could cure cancer if we bothered, but still communicate via glorified carrier pigeon. Dreadfully inconvenient."
His hostage managed nothing at all more than another silent blink. John wasn't surprised. He'd forced his mouth shut with a silencing charm an hour ago.
He wondered if that was how scared Sherlock had looked, when Moriarty had played his final hand on that bloody roof.
"So!" He leaned forward again, and smiled. He'd been doing that a lot, lately. Smiling, though he'd never been more gutted in his life. "Let me tell you how this is going to go down. I am going to give you a little bit of this-" He shook the first vial of Veritaserum before Trevor's eyes, just a tiny vial of a solution, of what looked to be no more than harmless water. It wasn't water. "And then, you are going to tell me everything that you know about Jim Moriarty, and Sherlock Holmes."
Trevor could do nothing at all but stare back.
And John-
He didn't care, if it made him a bad person.
He loved that helpless gleam, in his eyes.
He wanted to see it in the face of every single person who had ever dared to harm so much as single stupidly expensive curl on Sherlock's head.
"When we're all wrapped up here," John said, "I'll give you a ride to the local police station, and you're going to have the chance to sit there, nice and quietly, for the next several decades, and think about what you've done. I'm sure you can escape, of course- you've done it before. But that's also something you should think about. Because if you escape, then I'll come back."
John smiled again, and gave his wand a careful, controlled little twirl. Watching Trevor's eyes trace the tip as if it were a snake about to bite gave him what was probably the best sense of pleasure that he'd felt since leaving London.
"And if I have to come back," he promised, "then it won't be for just another chat."
His answer was nothing but a third, wet-eyed, stuttering blink. Ah, the man was absolutely terrified.
John continued to grin.
Even the most frightening Muggles really did go down like wet paper.
In retrospect...
He really should've seen it coming.
Mycroft already knew.
"My deductions were correct, then. You are a... I believe the term is, mudblood?"
John stiffened.
Impressive.
He'd thought it wouldn't have been possible, to hate Mycroft more than he already had, taking the cab over here today.
"And where exactly did you hear that word?"
"Minister Minchum, as it were. Oh, don't look like that, John- it was readily apparent. You are obviously a wizard, anyone in the know would see that much, yet you clearly received a state primary school education, which wizards do not." Mycroft paused once, dark eyes flickering more piercing than an X-Ray. "I am to take it, by your expression, that it is not still the accepted term."
"Would you call my sister a dyke?"
"...Ah."
There was an uncomfortable silence.
"John," he started, after a beat; somehow, he'd dredged up enough gall to look abashed. "There's something that I think you should-"
John held a hand up in another wordless command, this one for silence. He glared back at Mycroft until the Holmes shut his mouth, until the proper apology clearly on his tongue failed, and abashment had faded back to silence.
"I'm leaving. As I'm sure you've already, 'deduced'," he snarled, a proper-Sherlock snarl, dragging air quotes around the word with as much viciousness as he could muster. "And now that you know who I am, and what I can do, you're going to let me go. And if I ever see so much as a single camera following me ever again, a single black car waiting on the kerb, if you ever try to contact me again- I will personally apparate you into outer Mongolia, tie you up, and leave you as dinner for the carrion. Do I make myself clear, Mycroft Holmes?"
Mycroft stood quietly, restrained and detached as always, his pale face utterly unreadable. For someone whose brother had just died that very morning, that level of calm was downright fucking insulting.
And when he finally nodded, John turned his back, and set his sights on Anywhere in the World But Here.
If Mycroft wanted to be a creepily detached, uncaring freak-of-nature, that was on him.
It was just before he left, that he finally asked the last unknown that he would ever have, about Sherlock Holmes.
"Did Sherlock know?"
Mycroft, for a breath, was silent.
Did Sherlock know?
"...Not that I am aware. He likely suspected something- but if he is aware of the existence of Wizarding Britain, he has never told me. He didn't know, John."
John, for a breath, paused himself.
His chest felt scraped as if by shattered glass.
"Just a magic trick, then," he muttered.
"John. Sherlock is-"
He apparated straight out of his bloody office, and left London.
Moriarty had sworn an oath to burn the heart out of Sherlock. And he had. Despite John's every last effort to keep that amazing, brilliant man safe, despite John's oath that he would protect Sherlock Holmes from him and anyone else who'd ever dare to touch him from harm, Moriarty had reached straight through John's chest, grabbed Sherlock by the heart, and reduced it all to ash.
And when John saw the pictures of Moriarty on that rooftop, spread-eagled and flat and dead, dead, dead, he knew what was left for him to do.
Jim Moriarty had burnt the heart out of Sherlock and everyone that he loved.
John Watson would do the same to him.
It was supposed to be a routine stop. Routine for John Watson, former soldier and current vigilante, sweeping across Europe on a war path. Another of Moriarty's people: this time, Sebastian Moran, a name that turned up wherever Moriarty had been active, and seemed to make an awful lot of people turn up dead.
Dr. John Watson never would have found him.
John tracked down a vial of his blood in an evidence box in a federal police station, traced it to the source with a curse he'd learned in the deepest rooms of the Ministry as an Auror, and was on his way within the week.
It was very, very illegal.
John was several worlds beyond caring.
And where a world of international strike teams evaded, Mycroftian agents stymied, and entire countries left in disarray and burning, John shielded himself with a careless protective charm that he almost didn't even want to bother with, and strolled right in.
There wasn't even an adrenaline rush, this time.
John sat there in the seedy bar that was almost certainly a front for something very illegal full of some of the most dangerous men in the country, and it didn't matter to him at all, because he knew that he could single-handedly decimate Sebastian Fucking Moran right into the palm of his hand.
You, he determined, watching the man from across the bar. Young; a bit older than Moriarty had been, just a few years. Short and stocky, a build that reminded him of many of the men that he'd served with. Moran had, in fact, fought in Iraq. His dark hair short and neat, his cheap suit barely an inch above off-the-rack.
He reminded him, in that way, of Sherlock.
Whatever trash he was sitting in, and whatever mess he was wearing, if John looked close enough at his eyes, there was a glint in there that warned danger.
John grinned.
You'll regret the day you ever heard the name Sherlock Holmes, Moran.
The first time John had used magic to save Sherlock's life, it was the night that they'd met, and he'd apparated to Roland-Kerr further education college to intercept a serial killer because he hadn't been able to wait the twenty minutes it would've taken for a cab.
The last time that John had tried, it had been a winter afternoon at St. Bart's hospital. Sherlock fell, and the spell to catch him, wound into the crack split through John's heart and seared into his very soul until the day that he would die, had fractured into a scream of Sherlock's name.
He hadn't had his wand, because he'd stopped carrying it to keep his secret from Sherlock.
In the end, it was simple.
In the end, it was John, and Sebastian Moran, and Moran's group of personified trash, John in something of a disguise, biding his time. In the end John had his wand and was ready, and when the moment came, he would end them.
In the end, it was Moran, prattling on about this and that, his new scheme that he wouldn't live to see through to the end-
And that was how John found him.
Not Moran, no.
But the henchman by his side.
Tall and thin, like a wiry beanpole, and hunched into himself in a too bulky coat and sitting down. Even curled in his seat, he couldn't disguise impossibly long legs or the thinness of his spidery hands. Blond at a first glance, dirty, dishwater blond that was straight and flat, but the hint of dark stubble on chin told John it was from a bottle.
Sherlock would've been so proud, he thought bitterly.
His face. Odd, a little; long and angled and milky pale. Unique. Turned away from John, half-covered by one of those thin hands in his little hunched over curl; coming across, in a way, as if he was trying to hide. He was a grown man nursing a drink in a seedy bar, and somehow, looked just like a child who'd forgotten his homework, and was trying not to attract the teacher's attention in class.
His eyes.
One bruised brilliantly, purple and red, swollen on the side of his face and hidden by a cascade of blond hair. He looked like he'd been hit in the face with a bat. The other averted from John, lingering on Moran across the bar and watching him in perfect silence.
Quicksilver blue, and bright and brilliant as a star.
John stepped forward once.
Moran might've stopped talking. He didn't know.
John stared.
The man still looked away, head leaned on his hand and bored gaze slid away, and continued to pretend that John did not exist.
Eyes blue and brilliant, that John had last seen staring and glassy on the cracked pavement about St. Bart's hospital.
The world fell out from underneath his feet.
"Sherlock?"