Familiar Demons
Jan. 9th, 2013 12:45 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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our_bbcsherlockTitle: Familiar Demons
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Greg Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Harry Watson, Sebastien Moran
Word count: ~7,500
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Rating: Tween on up / PG
Summary: John watched as Sherlock jumped off the roof. But he'd do almost anything to have Sherlock back, to have Sherlock just not be dead.
Warnings: Nothing that's commonly warned for that isn't in the series.
Notes: Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thisprettywren, who betaed until called away by other duties.
I deliberately left some things in the story ambiguous and up to the reader's interpretation, and wouldn't say that there is one correct interpretation.
"It's a trick. A magic trick." At that moment, John felt the bond sever. It wasn't gone, it just... stopped. John had barely even felt it there, but shock went through him as it broke.
The spell of binding had never seemed a huge imposition, just enough to draw him always to Sherlock’s side, just enough to know that it would have to be broken before John could even think about having a life of his own without Sherlock. Of course, as long as he couldn’t conceive of a life on his own, he had no motivation to try to break the bond.
But Sherlock stood at the edge of the roof and the bond severed. There was no time to figure out what was happening, and then Sherlock was dead. The severing of the bond must have been part of whatever forced Sherlock off the roof. Panic, sorrow, and the confusion of too many things happening at once swept the spell out of consideration.
And then there was pain, and anger, and not being able to think past the leaden gray of Sherlock's absence. It took John months to wonder how he was still alive even though his bondmate had died. The bond hadn't attached to anyone else, or been weak enough to wither away harmlessly. There had to still be something it was attached to, even if John couldn't tell what was on the other end.
Was the bond attached to ghost? John remembered Sherlock's remarks that after death people were "taken to a special room and burned". Whatever Sherlock's afterlife was, its existence must have come as a shock. But "ghost" made sense. Sherlock had left some unresolved issues. His reputation was still in tatters; heaven knew Sherlock's vanity would not countenance that, no matter what he'd said during that last phone call. And Moriarty's organization was still out there.
John had already, by that point, done everything he knew how to do to repair Sherlock's reputation. He'd looked through all of his case notes and contacted everyone involved to see if they'd be willing to speak for Sherlock. He'd managed to obtain pictures of the class photographs that had long hung on the walls at Sherlock's old schools; 'Richard Brook' appeared in none of them. He'd even managed to find a classmate willing to testify that Richard Brook had never gone to their school, though it took endless phone calls tracking down people who were rude, gloating, or indifferent. And he'd turned copies of all that information over to both Lestrade and a sympathetic journalist; anything he posted on his own simply wouldn't be taken seriously.
And all of that might eventually bear fruit, if the journalist managed to interest his editor, if Lestrade managed to persuade someone with pull to examine the latest evidence. But none of John's efforts had altered the state of the bond.
He wanted to track down and wipe out Moriarty's network, but it didn't take long for him to realize that finding the people involved just wasn't in his skill set, either magical or mundane. No spell he cast showed him anything he didn't already know. Maybe there was another spell that would work better. There were people back home he could ask. But though people in the community and tradition he'd been raised in might be able to do more, it wasn't certain, and they wouldn't willingly be involved in a manhunt even if they could help.
Being able to go over Sherlock's old notes might have been useful for tracking. After all, Sherlock had investigated a lot of crimes, and this was a criminal network. But it turned out that Sherlock had left them to a university as a contribution to the science of detection and stipulated that they not be opened for the next twenty-five years or until Mycroft Holmes notified the university that he had retired, whichever came first. John briefly regretted ever having mentioned to Sherlock that he might show consideration to his brother from time to time.
John hated going back to the flat but was unwilling to let the university take one more sheet of paper, one more part of his and Sherlock’s life together, than had been bequeathed. Mycroft had already taken the more interesting information before the two young men showed up to collect the notes, John was sure of it. Sherlock's laptop was missing entirely. The two men sent to pick things up—boys, really, had he ever been that young?—chatted casually while shoving things haphazardly into boxes, with drifts and swirls of paper, mostly marked up printouts, becoming even more shuffled in the process. They seemed puzzled as to why the university was even bothering. John had to hold himself in check as one of the young men commented "at least we know we can use these to study frauds". There was no use in causing more scandal or being jailed for assault.
Realistically, as one man in his position, he couldn't clear Sherlock's name. He couldn't finish Sherlock's work. All those nights, all those mornings half asleep the bond pulled and ached like a phantom limb until he came fully awake or managed to nod off despite it. But in between times he needed to move on with his life. A more steady job. Maybe a girlfriend. Hell, perhaps he'd take up fly fishing.
“John?” Emily looked down and fussed with her cuffs. Her dark hair fell over her face, obscuring her shining green eyes and hiding her expression. “If there’s anyone else....” She was hunched as though against a chill wind. The wool of her trousers was spotted with darker circles, marks of quiet tears.
John leaned over and took his girlfriend’s hands, stilling them. “Nobody, there’s nobody. Why would you even think that?”
“When you’re not focussed on what you’re doing, you always bring me my tea fixed exactly the same way. But you know it’s not the way I take it, and I know it’s not the way you take it." She straightened slightly. "People who know you seem to be startled a little when they see it’s me with you—it’s like they expect someone else—but everyone’s a bit embarrassed and nobody mentions why. And then", she blushed, "there’s the riding crop. You don’t ride horses. Nobody in your family rides horses. And if you were looking for a little kink... do people even use riding crops without a partner for anything? You’re not a man who just keeps stuff around for...”
“Sentiment.” John took his hands back so he could bury his face in them. “I keep it around for sentiment. It used to belong to Sherlock, and there’s nobody else, Emily.”
Emily looked up from where her hands had clenched together on her lap. “Nobody but Sherlock?”
John was silent just a second too long.
“No, don’t answer that, just.... I have a friend, not a psychologist, she helps people who can’t... settle things with the dead. I’ll give you her number. But I need you here, with me, with the living, John.”
He tried. They tried. He couldn’t let go of Sherlock, he couldn’t draw closer to Emily. All things considered they parted amicably enough. But if he was going to live, really live, he would need to not be bound to a dead man.
And that was how, five weeks later, John ended up at the door of a spiritualist. Emily had not been a part of his tradition. She probably hadn't even known it existed. And one thing his family's faith really didn't believe in was spiritualism; at best it was seen as an empty sham to comfort the living. But John was willing to give it a try to figure out if there was anything he could do that would allow him to let go of Sherlock and Sherlock's spirit to move on.
If she knew about John and his relationship with Emily, the spiritualist didn't seem prepared to hold it against him. She was cheerful and friendly when John called for an appointment. But all that didn't keep him from bracing himself at the doorway before he knocked. Spiritualists ‘deduced’ people, didn’t they?
The young woman who answered the door looked perfectly ordinary. And she didn't seem to be paying any attention to his shoelaces, callous patterns, or the right cuff of his shirt. "John Watson?"
"Yes, yes, I'm John Watson." John was unsure of why he suddenly felt nervous.
"I'm afraid that I'm going to have to cancel. But I have this for you." She handed him a sheet of paper, smiled, and stepped back.
The door closed abruptly in his face.
John's first thought upon unfolding the paper was that it should smell like violets. His second thought was that the handwriting looked exactly like his grandmother's from the letters she used to send when he was a boy.
"Dear Johnny,
I'm afraid you won't be able to contact Sherlock this way. If you're not very careful, sweetheart, you're going to be seeing him sooner than you expect. Just remember..."
There was a blur and the handwriting abruptly stopped.
John folded the note and tucked it away in an inside pocket. He considered heeding the warning, no matter who it had really come from. Impossible. John thought on how he would go about being "not very careful".
The world was ice and frost and whirling cold, cold that would rip from one's lungs a laboriously obtained breath. Sherlock huddled, shaking violently, ice at the tips of his exposed hair and eyelashes. John had never seen him looking so lost and miserable. John reached out to touch him and...
Woke up.
After Sherlock's death he had expected nightmares of falling, blood, and death. Those memories never touched his dreams. But he'd been dreaming of Sherlock over and over, ominous dreams filled with tension, stealth, and hardship. Sherlock's death was utterly missing. The dreams were no more conducive to his rest for all of that. He needed to do something about them. And he needed to do it now.
The magical training John had received when he was younger and the books he already possessed were deliberately vague on the subject of the afterlife. Life was one thing, the afterlife (or possible afterlives) another, and anything that tried to reach from one to the other outside of the natural paths of death and rebirth was dangerous to itself or others. John's teacher Richard had not been a dangerous man. And John's teacher's friends were not dangerous. But when they got together to gossip, well, certain names came up.
When John finally managed to track down Richard's cousin's ex's brother, who turned out to be named 'Michael', he was sneered at for his trouble. The man wasn't much to look at, slightly younger than John but bearing the marks of someone who had aged hard and quickly. His skin had a grey cast except for the nicotine stains on his fingers, and both his clothes and his flat looked just as worn as his face.
John was mute; it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't planned anything to say, an approach to take.
Michael stood in the doorway for a moment, looking as though he was trying to place John's face. It was clearly visible when recognition hit. "I know who you are. One of those goody-goodies. You can rot in hell before I help you out."
When the door slammed in John's face it wasn't unexpected. John turned past some disinterested teenage boys who'd been loitering in the hall, passed the broken lift, and started down the poorly lit stairwell and its seven flights of stairs. John wondered if the rumors had been right, if Michael really was practicing black magic. Had it worked? If it was working, whatever Michael had risked his soul for couldn't have involved money. Or if it had involved riches, it certainly wasn't working.
It was two days later when John heard an unexpected knock on his own door. There was nothing for Emily to come back for, she'd taken all of her things, and nobody else had showed up at his flat in the last half year.
"I heard you went to see Michael." It was the first thing Harry said when John opened the door. She looked like hell, bags under her eyes, a matte pallor to her skin, grey showing at the roots of her hair. "Nice to not be the family fuck up for a change."
"Just... don't. I'm not even going to get into it with you. Why are you here?" John stood barring the entrance to his flat.
Harry leaned back against the doorpost and got comfortable. "Mom sent me. She says that it was fine when you stopped coming to any of the rituals, so long as you didn't go off and talk to the Daily Mail about us. But now you're talking to Michael, and she'd prefer you go back to not doing any rituals, ta very much." Harry smirked. John could tell that she loved conveying that message.
"And she couldn't come tell me herself?"
"It would look too official if she did it. She doesn't want other people to get involved in this. Yet." Harry straightened and turned away. "Watch yourself," she called over her shoulder as she headed towards the lift. John didn't stay to make sure she got on it, just closed the door after her and locked it thoroughly, hitting every lock.
There was the sound of breathing. The heat pressed like a weight, a physical presence taking up every available empty millimeter of the confined space. Stress sweat and ketones mingled with the scent of dust. But all was impenetrable darkness and silence.
Then chaos. Someone was yelling something unintelligible. Someone was screaming. Crashes and thuds sounded from above, sounds like crockery and furniture breaking, drywall being caved in. But still everything was blackness. More yelling, more scraping, silence.
There was the sound of breathing. The heat pressed like a weight, a physical presence taking up every available empty millimeter of the confined space. All was darkness. John was as still as it was possible to be and...
BAM! His door flew open and hit the wall. There were bright lights and someone was yelling “Down on the floor!” John rolled off the bed with a thump, somehow still asleep enough to be surprised at the impact.
Then, for a long pause, nothing happened.
“JE-sus, John, what was that all about?” someone who sounded like Lestrade sighed.
“What was what about?” John managed in return, propping himself back against the wall and managing to focus on a figure who turned out to be Lestrade. With a flashlight. And another bemused officer standing behind him.
“The neighbor said you’d been screaming off and on for the last half hour. Sounded like you were being tortured. You didn’t respond to her knocking or phone calls.”
“Mrs. McDonald decided it was a homicide?”
Lestrade looked sheepish. “Not as such. Mycroft decided that it would be best if I... yeah,... so here I am.”
“And here I am”, came a voice from the doorway. John’s landlord did not look happy. “Give me a call in the morning. We need to talk.”
John’s new flat was reasonably priced, and that’s about all that could be said about it. ‘Reasonably priced’ was terribly important, though, right now. The nightmares had been leaving him too exhausted to focus, and too exhausted to focus was too exhausted for a doctor to work. He’d picked up fewer shifts lately.
He’d probably have needed to move soon, anyway. At least this way his former landlord had been understanding about him leaving quickly; the man had felt sympathy for a veteran with nightmares and not been difficult about the lease. And Harry didn't know where this flat was, or at least not yet. That was something.
Jerry's sister Lydia was quite a bit more upscale than Michael had been. Her life was private, guarded. It didn't take long for John to determine that the only chance he had of contacting her outside of expensive restaurants, exclusive clubs, and her posh office was to jog beside her on her morning run through the park.
Later as he bent over and panted, trying to catch his breath, he reflected that it was a mercy the conversation had been short.
"I know who you are," she said as he pulled even. "You're Sherlock Holmes's partner. And whatever it is, the answer is 'no'." She'd then picked up speed and left him in the dust.
John looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his humiliation. But there was only an old man and a teenage kid, maybe his grandson, ignoring the signs about feeding the ducks.
"Just be sure you don't get anything permanent on the wallpaper, there's a love." John maintained his focus on the symbols he was drawing; if he stopped before they were all completed he would need to wipe everything clean and start over. Mrs. Hudson and the reason she was standing in the doorway could wait.
When he finished he turned and found Lestrade standing by Mrs. Hudson's side, looking startled and skeptical. After Mrs. Hudson left with an "I'll just get you boys some tea," Lestrade visibly gathered himself together and spoke up.
"John?" He looked around at the symbols on the walls of 221b. "Planning a seance?"
"No," John sighed, "Just trying to deal with some things." For all the symbols, it was a relatively simple ritual. If it worked he'd have a direction, a clue, a way to find the truth he needed to know. Seeking the truth and positive guidance was white magic. John could avoid more attempts at darkness if the spell worked. But he'd done the ritual countless times since Sherlock's fall, without remarkable results.
"You don't actually believe in any of this, do you? I mean.... John, are you alright? Mycroft is worried about you."
The corner of John's mouth quirked up almost involuntarily. "Constantly. Yes, I know."
"He'd like you to have some help coping. He'd pay for it. I get the impression you're not keen on therapists, but you could be doing something more constructive than," Lestrade gestured at the symbols "this. This is not going to do anybody any good."
"Have you ever seen an answered prayer, Greg?" John made himself more comfortable on the floor. "I've seen enough battlefields and bedsides to know that when people are in a bad situation and don't know what to do, they pray. It may not be Church of England, but this is me praying."
"Still, Mycroft would feel better if you talked to someone."
"Neither of us always does what Mycroft tells us to do. Would you like some of that tea Mrs. Hudson is making, or would you like to head out to the pub?"
"What about all this?"
"This will wait. It's not going anywhere. What's been happening with you?"
A couple of cups of tea and a few pints later, they were chatting like it was old times. And it was good to talk with someone. Just not, necessarily, about Sherlock.
Darkness again, but different, a diffuse glowing brown all around. The sky was earth was sky, swirling, scraping, filling nostrils, sanding against eyes, stealing the possibility of breath from one's lungs. Sherlock was wrapped in robes, cloth held firmly across his mouth and nose, squinting as he stood against the winds of the haboob. There was danger if he became lost beyond finding, and John somehow knew there was danger if he stayed where he was. A sudden gust blew the air even darker, and John lost sight of Sherlock.
All the rest of his dreams that night were spent wandering through sandstorms, looking for something, though by the time he awoke in the morning he had forgotten what it was. There was a sticky grittiness across his face. At first in muddled half-sleep he thought the sand had been left stuck to his cheeks, but when he touched his face he found the tracks of dried tears.
A couple of days later John came home to find that Harry had slid a note under his door. At least she wasn't lying in wait for him. And at least the note was short, a double blessing as Harry's scrawl was virtually impossible to decipher at the best of times. "Michael and Lydia vanished. None of their stuff is gone. The police think Lydia was kidnapped. Be careful."
John was already on edge. There was one last person on his list, one last chance to track down what he wanted. But that last person... well, usually when someone said 'dangerous' John jumped at the chance. 'Psychotic', on the other hand, didn't hold nearly the same appeal. Not that he knew much about the guy. He had a name, though probably not a real name; a general location; and some whispers that the guy was truly evil, in a class of his own. That was it. From that he'd been able to track down an address.
When John finally visited the address, he found a smoking ruin — fire crews were still wrapping up, keeping people back from the perimeter where the entire tower block had been turned into ashes and rubble. A fresh-faced teen turned away from the perimeter and walked over to join John.
"I know who you are." The kid was matter-of-fact and relaxed. And he didn't even look as though he'd been alive long enough to have earned a fraction of his reputation. "You trained with Richard and you followed Holmes. But I don't know what you're looking for."
"Why should you help me?" John was feeling skeptical. "I talked with two other people from your set and they didn't even want to know what I wanted."
"Avarice. It's my deadly sin. You'll need one or two if you're going to fit in with our crowd." The boy rocked back on his heels and gave John a cocky smirk.
"I want a spellbook for communicating with the dead. I have money." Rituals, spells, and ceremonies were gifts in the community John had grown up in. They were given to everyone as a whole, or given to the people who were most suited to them, or given to people as their needs and talents arose. John had heard stories, of course, of some of the things people outside the community traded. But they were rumors, possibly myths, and thoroughly blended with stories from the outside culture, mixed with the scurrilous libel religious figures had written about all of their kind.
John could only hope that the money he had in his pocket would be enough. His soul was not longer his own to trade.
"Of course you have money." The smirk had not left the boy's face. His gaze raked John from the crown of his head to the bottom of his shoes, obviously not overawed by what he saw. "£100."
John was careful not to let his breath whoosh out in a sigh of relief. There was no telling if the book would be in any way useful. But at least he wouldn't have to live on beans, toast, and weak tea while he was finding out.
The exchange that night, at a fish and chips shop of all places, went smoothly, so smoothly that it triggered John's sense of paranoia. But the bag contained the book he expected; he could tell. So he handed over the money and headed back to his flat.
The book in the bag was not an ancient tome hand-copied by depraved dark monks onto parchment made from the skin of sacrificed virgins, or anything of the sort. It was printed on ordinary cheap paper, hot glue bound, and someone (probably the sarcastic arse who had sold it to him) had put on a brightly colored, cartoony cover with the title "Necromancy for Dummies" prominently displayed. None of that mattered; John could feel its potential before he even cracked the pages. Besides, the practical side was that he could easily take notes in the margins without worrying about it and he didn’t have to spend his research time gingerly flipping through parchment pages he’d rather not touch.
Once John had eliminated spells that were useless, too harmful, impractical (involving ingredients he couldn’t obtain, locations he couldn’t travel to, and so on), or involved another person in some way, there was nothing left in the book. So he went back and started sifting again.
He tried all of the harmless, practical spells that didn’t involve another person. He was unable to muster the self-delusion to see any actual messages in his results. They were the sort of rituals that could titillate, mystify, or sometimes even comfort people who had no idea what they were doing. But that was of no use to him.
The next step was to try the ones that were largely harmless, didn’t involve another person, and impractical. He did manage a few of them and felt that there was almost something. But he didn’t have the resources to repeat them indefinitely.
And that was it for quite a while. He wasn’t going to involve another person even as a witness and recorder, should one of the channelling spells work.
There was one last spell at the end of the book. Someone’s life could be traded for Sherlock’s. Deep in his bones, John felt that it would be o.k. if his life were traded for Sherlock's. But someone else would have to do the ritual. That would be pulling another person into darkest magic.
John was afraid of himself because the prospect actually did tempt him. But he told himself that he was o.k. because he would never actually do anything like that. He didn’t ask himself why he put the book away on a high shelf once he was “done” with it, instead of destroying it.
John meticulously disposed of anything he’d used with rituals from the book and went about his life. For some reason, perhaps because he'd finally convinced himself that he'd done everything he could, the nightmares died down. He took on more shifts and, after a couple of months, was asked to stay on for nearly full-time work. There were sprained ankles to wrap, sniffles to diagnose, and rashes to inspect, the common everyday things of a general practitioner's work. There were women to date, though that never seemed to go anywhere long term these days. He was back to the same old disagreements with Harry; she had nothing to hold over him anymore. After a slight awkwardness he was back to occasional nights at the pub with Greg. His flat became more livable, as various girlfriends tried to warm it up with bedspreads and cushions and throws, a clutter of things that tried to either match his style or break him out of a rut. At any rate there was more color, both in his flat and his life.
Greg mostly held off on comments about John's beliefs. It helped that John didn't have any ritual objects or supplies out and visible in his flat, and that after that first time Greg never came across John doing anything "unusual".
There was a night right after the Adair murder that was touch and go, though. Greg had already finished a couple of pints by the time John met him at the pub and the DI was in a dark mood. Police hadn't released all of the information on the case. John knew what was in the papers and a slight bit more because Bill Murray had been in a poker game with Ron Adair, John Hardy, and Sebastian Moran right before Ron had been killed. Bill said the police had been asking about gambling debts, but Ron didn't have any. In fact, he and Moran had won quite a considerable amount of money a couple months back and the rest of the players had an ongoing joke about winning their money back. Hadn't happened, though. Moran had won again.
There had been no mention of a suspect, either from Bill or the police, and no mention of a weapon. They had to be short on leads. Greg seemed frustrated beyond reason.
Finally, near the end of the night, Greg leaned over to John and said "You've seen a lot of... stuff. You know military weapons. You went to that research lab with Sherlock. And there's that... thing you do."
"Yes?"
"And you can keep a secret."
"Yes."
Greg stared very intently at him. "Do you know of a weapon, a something, any of it that would set a man on fire from the inside out, something from a distance? It's like a Goddamn curse out of a storybook."
"No. Nothing like that."
Lestrade continued to stare at him. "Nothing?"
"No." John grabbed their coats. "I think it's time to head out."
After Greg sobered up there was no mention of it again.
John's new attempt at an ordinary life lasted for nine whole months.
Then, as he was on his way to visit Mrs. Hudson, there was a shadow of the wrong shape in the wrong place. The building across the street from 221b was supposed to be empty and wasn’t. John was protective of Mrs. Hudson; squatters who’d been in Sherlock’s homeless network were o.k. But journalists trying to dig up new dirt on an old story? Not when Mrs. Hudson was still living there.
John was quiet going up the stairs. Years of the battlefield — both in Afghanistan and with Sherlock — had taught him the use and value of timely stealth. Scaring a journalist away should have been a noisy process. Approaching a frightened or desperate person’s refuge should have been a noisy process. But something told him that this time silence was key.
A man was pointing a device out the window at 221b, presumably at Mrs. Hudson. It wasn’t a camera; John wasn’t sure what it was, but not a camera. Instinct took over and the man was lying silent on the ground, felled by a blow to the back of the head.
John checked to make sure the man was still alive. But he’d just hit a man with potentially lethal force for pointing an unidentified and possibly harmless object across a street. This was not going to look good. Was it a harmless object? Or was it that weapon the police hadn't been able to figure out in the Adair case?
The feeling of threat had been visceral. But would turning the man over to the police even do any good or just end up with John incarcerated and unable to defend Mrs. Hudson against a threat he could only feel? What about calling Mycroft? What was Mrs. Hudson to Mycroft? Possibly nothing.
The wallet in the man's back pocket had an ID with the name 'Sebastian Moran'. John tried to remember if he'd ever met Bill's poker buddy, but concluded that they'd probably never been at the same game. Moran had played with Adair, though. He remembered Greg's question after the Adair case. He remembered Greg's description of what had happened to Ron.
Along with the ID the wallet contained two bank cards, a ten pound note, an oyster card, and a ticket to a parking garage. Tucked into Moran's front pocket was the key to a car, a make John recognized as having a very large boot. John realized that he’d started thinking about logistics rather than morality. Anyone who could threaten Mrs. Hudson, well, the threat couldn't be allowed to remain.
If it was safe to leave Moran here for a while, he could go get supplies and Moran’s car. The congestion charge tracking would be done for the evening by the time he was able to obtain everything he needed. Then there were the standard CCTV cameras, but those Mycroft could influence easily without anything seeming odd. John thought he'd be able to talk Mycroft into at least that. But where would John go to do the ritual? John tied Moran with his shirt and belt, and went off to gather supplies.
The stairwell echoed every time Moran's bound feet hit the stairs. Good thing the place was empty. John had found Moran's car in a garage tucked right under the building.
He mentally went over his preparations to make sure he had everything. He'd disabled the cameras in that area of the garage (his time with Sherlock had been educational), tucked a backpack full of supplies into the back seat along with Moran's device, and downloaded a map to a sheep pasture he remembered from a childhood vacation to the countryside. A quick check of the satellite view had confirmed that it was still pasture, and still far enough away from surrounding habitation that they would likely remain unnoticed.
Getting Moran into the boot was an exercise in awkwardness that was in no way helped by the fact that he was taller than John. And large as it was, the boot was not made to easily accommodate people; Moran kept getting stuck on corners or knocked about by projections. John positioned him as well as possible to make sure he'd get enough air and clipped the wire on the release handle before closing the hatch.
Everything seemed ready to go. He pulled a cap down low over his face before using Moran's card to exit the garage. It was going to be a long, careful drive out into the country.
John once again referred to the diagram in the book before pouring another line of powdered chalk across the ground. It didn't look quite right to him, somehow, but it did look exactly like the diagram. And he wasn't sure how much his past experience pertained; he had never worked dark magic before. The closest he'd come had been that binding spell he'd put on himself to draw him to Sherlock, and that was only after he'd nearly fatally lost track of the man. He wasn't entirely sure that putting a binding spell on himself had been more on the up-and-up than putting a tracking spell on Sherlock, but at least it shouldn't materially affect Sherlock in any direct way. It was gray magic, dark gray at the worst.
But this was definitely dark. He could call it a ‘trade’, but he knew Sebastian would be...elsewhere by the end of the evening if things went well. John reached over to make sure the bound figure was still breathing regularly then went back to his work. This ritual was even more nerve wracking because it was showy magic. It wasn't like a blessing that might quietly help good or hinder ill. It wasn't like a bond that was primarily felt by the people who entered into it. It didn't slowly coax natural forces, like a weather spell that would draw rain together or disperse it gently. Something this dark didn't need to respect the natural order; if a being appeared tonight, it would be obvious.
It was close to midnight by the time everything was in place. The circles were perfectly reproduced, a large containment circle surrounding a protective circle and what would be a door. The candles and symbols were exactly where and what they should be according to the book. Sebastian's ropes staked him to the ground in such a way that he couldn't disturb anything. Sherlock's robe awaited, bringing a part of him, bringing a memory of him, bringing an expectation of him and, on a more practical basis, ready to provide swift coverage should Sherlock arrive in immediate need of such. John took his place in his circle, closed it, drew a calming breath and began to chant.
Mycroft appeared out of the darkness, his step curiously silent for a person of such presence, eyes examining the scene before him before fixing upon the symbols and markings that traversed the ground. He casually scuffed his foot through the outside containment circle as he passed through it, looking as though he hadn't noticed it at all, and stood looking at the inner circle across from John. "Are you trying to summon a demon? If so, you should know that your containment circle is quite inadequate for the task."
John held perfectly still within his own protective circle. This was, after all, not necessarily Mycroft. "God, no. And what you're looking at now is not a containment circle. It's a doorway of sorts. Or was to have been."
"You certainly achieved a doorway." Mycroft looked up from his contemplation of the circles and symbols and glanced at the book John was clutching. He frowned slightly.
"No wonder." Mycroft's shoulders straightened. "Are you familiar with the work you are using? It's a trap for naive people. The type of person who can't accept that people die. The sort of person who would bind themselves to a dangerous man within forty hours of meeting him just to try to keep him from fatal mistakes."
John straightened inside his own circle as Mycroft took a step toward him and continued. "Whatever forged the end of that book is terribly powerful and likely horrifically hungry. Do you think, if it had Sherlock, it would save him to exchange later?"
Mycroft walked toward John. "Even your protective circle—I take it the book told you to how to construct this one?—is put together to be quickly dismantled from the outside by those in the know."
As Mycroft nudged his foot against John's protective circle then stepped inside, John was surrounded by the intimate smell of milky tea, expensive grooming products, fine wool, matches, and underneath it all something frightening and powerful.
"Was that what you planned to exchange for Sherlock?" Mycroft turned away and gestured toward Sebastian. "I will make the deal you planned, after all."
John was suddenly glad he couldn't see Mycroft's eyes.
"John Halbert Watson, I will take Mr. Moran. And you will have Sherlock back. You can trust me on that. Or at least you can trust me as much as any of the other...diplomats who might have appeared."
Without a word, two expensively dressed assistants materialized from the shadows and carried Sebastian Moran away between them. Mycroft swanned away after them, the darkness taking him once more. John was briefly startled by a wash of headlights and the sound of the car, with its load of strange equipment and presumably Moran, driving away.
John carefully deconstructed the circles, struggling a moment in his worn out haze to figure out which chalk lines were safest to scruff out first.
The front pocket of his rucksack quickly held the things he wanted to keep, very few of them. He wrapped the things he considered contaminated into a bag he'd made ready for that purpose and shoved them into the main pocket. He'd dispose of them properly later.
For now he hiked through the morning chill toward the train station. He caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window as he passed, a slightly scruffy and worn man wearing a jumper and carrying a daypack, and was reassured by the normalcy of the image. Not a thing spoke of magic, black or otherwise. He looked like nothing more extraordinary than a rambler who'd been caught out later than he expected.
He made his unexceptional way back to Baker Street to return Sherlock's robe. Sherlock would not, at the very least, be needing it tonight. And taking Sherlock's robe back to his own flat wasn't something John wanted to do. Before you knew it that sort of thing could turn into a shrine. Too exhausted to go home, John collapsed on the sofa.
John woke at dawn to the sound of a door creaking. He looked up just in time to see Sherlock stumble through the entranceway, face haunted, clothes worn. Something snapped back into place as the bond renewed and Sherlock moved forward as though drawn by it, quickly wrapping his arms around John until John felt as though he were drowning in a sea of gangly limbs.
Sherlock never did truthfully say where he'd been, though he'd started spouting impossible stories within seconds of his improbable hug, stories that betrayed that he still wasn't paying any attention to geopolitical events that didn't directly impact crime. Had he just been in hiding? The question of where he had been hidden, by whom, or even on what plane of existence could wait indefinitely.
Sherlock was back. And that was all the magic John needed.
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Greg Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Harry Watson, Sebastien Moran
Word count: ~7,500
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Rating: Tween on up / PG
Summary: John watched as Sherlock jumped off the roof. But he'd do almost anything to have Sherlock back, to have Sherlock just not be dead.
Warnings: Nothing that's commonly warned for that isn't in the series.
Notes: Thank you to
thisprettywren, who betaed until called away by other duties.I deliberately left some things in the story ambiguous and up to the reader's interpretation, and wouldn't say that there is one correct interpretation.
"It's a trick. A magic trick." At that moment, John felt the bond sever. It wasn't gone, it just... stopped. John had barely even felt it there, but shock went through him as it broke.
The spell of binding had never seemed a huge imposition, just enough to draw him always to Sherlock’s side, just enough to know that it would have to be broken before John could even think about having a life of his own without Sherlock. Of course, as long as he couldn’t conceive of a life on his own, he had no motivation to try to break the bond.
But Sherlock stood at the edge of the roof and the bond severed. There was no time to figure out what was happening, and then Sherlock was dead. The severing of the bond must have been part of whatever forced Sherlock off the roof. Panic, sorrow, and the confusion of too many things happening at once swept the spell out of consideration.
And then there was pain, and anger, and not being able to think past the leaden gray of Sherlock's absence. It took John months to wonder how he was still alive even though his bondmate had died. The bond hadn't attached to anyone else, or been weak enough to wither away harmlessly. There had to still be something it was attached to, even if John couldn't tell what was on the other end.
Was the bond attached to ghost? John remembered Sherlock's remarks that after death people were "taken to a special room and burned". Whatever Sherlock's afterlife was, its existence must have come as a shock. But "ghost" made sense. Sherlock had left some unresolved issues. His reputation was still in tatters; heaven knew Sherlock's vanity would not countenance that, no matter what he'd said during that last phone call. And Moriarty's organization was still out there.
John had already, by that point, done everything he knew how to do to repair Sherlock's reputation. He'd looked through all of his case notes and contacted everyone involved to see if they'd be willing to speak for Sherlock. He'd managed to obtain pictures of the class photographs that had long hung on the walls at Sherlock's old schools; 'Richard Brook' appeared in none of them. He'd even managed to find a classmate willing to testify that Richard Brook had never gone to their school, though it took endless phone calls tracking down people who were rude, gloating, or indifferent. And he'd turned copies of all that information over to both Lestrade and a sympathetic journalist; anything he posted on his own simply wouldn't be taken seriously.
And all of that might eventually bear fruit, if the journalist managed to interest his editor, if Lestrade managed to persuade someone with pull to examine the latest evidence. But none of John's efforts had altered the state of the bond.
He wanted to track down and wipe out Moriarty's network, but it didn't take long for him to realize that finding the people involved just wasn't in his skill set, either magical or mundane. No spell he cast showed him anything he didn't already know. Maybe there was another spell that would work better. There were people back home he could ask. But though people in the community and tradition he'd been raised in might be able to do more, it wasn't certain, and they wouldn't willingly be involved in a manhunt even if they could help.
Being able to go over Sherlock's old notes might have been useful for tracking. After all, Sherlock had investigated a lot of crimes, and this was a criminal network. But it turned out that Sherlock had left them to a university as a contribution to the science of detection and stipulated that they not be opened for the next twenty-five years or until Mycroft Holmes notified the university that he had retired, whichever came first. John briefly regretted ever having mentioned to Sherlock that he might show consideration to his brother from time to time.
John hated going back to the flat but was unwilling to let the university take one more sheet of paper, one more part of his and Sherlock’s life together, than had been bequeathed. Mycroft had already taken the more interesting information before the two young men showed up to collect the notes, John was sure of it. Sherlock's laptop was missing entirely. The two men sent to pick things up—boys, really, had he ever been that young?—chatted casually while shoving things haphazardly into boxes, with drifts and swirls of paper, mostly marked up printouts, becoming even more shuffled in the process. They seemed puzzled as to why the university was even bothering. John had to hold himself in check as one of the young men commented "at least we know we can use these to study frauds". There was no use in causing more scandal or being jailed for assault.
Realistically, as one man in his position, he couldn't clear Sherlock's name. He couldn't finish Sherlock's work. All those nights, all those mornings half asleep the bond pulled and ached like a phantom limb until he came fully awake or managed to nod off despite it. But in between times he needed to move on with his life. A more steady job. Maybe a girlfriend. Hell, perhaps he'd take up fly fishing.
“John?” Emily looked down and fussed with her cuffs. Her dark hair fell over her face, obscuring her shining green eyes and hiding her expression. “If there’s anyone else....” She was hunched as though against a chill wind. The wool of her trousers was spotted with darker circles, marks of quiet tears.
John leaned over and took his girlfriend’s hands, stilling them. “Nobody, there’s nobody. Why would you even think that?”
“When you’re not focussed on what you’re doing, you always bring me my tea fixed exactly the same way. But you know it’s not the way I take it, and I know it’s not the way you take it." She straightened slightly. "People who know you seem to be startled a little when they see it’s me with you—it’s like they expect someone else—but everyone’s a bit embarrassed and nobody mentions why. And then", she blushed, "there’s the riding crop. You don’t ride horses. Nobody in your family rides horses. And if you were looking for a little kink... do people even use riding crops without a partner for anything? You’re not a man who just keeps stuff around for...”
“Sentiment.” John took his hands back so he could bury his face in them. “I keep it around for sentiment. It used to belong to Sherlock, and there’s nobody else, Emily.”
Emily looked up from where her hands had clenched together on her lap. “Nobody but Sherlock?”
John was silent just a second too long.
“No, don’t answer that, just.... I have a friend, not a psychologist, she helps people who can’t... settle things with the dead. I’ll give you her number. But I need you here, with me, with the living, John.”
He tried. They tried. He couldn’t let go of Sherlock, he couldn’t draw closer to Emily. All things considered they parted amicably enough. But if he was going to live, really live, he would need to not be bound to a dead man.
And that was how, five weeks later, John ended up at the door of a spiritualist. Emily had not been a part of his tradition. She probably hadn't even known it existed. And one thing his family's faith really didn't believe in was spiritualism; at best it was seen as an empty sham to comfort the living. But John was willing to give it a try to figure out if there was anything he could do that would allow him to let go of Sherlock and Sherlock's spirit to move on.
If she knew about John and his relationship with Emily, the spiritualist didn't seem prepared to hold it against him. She was cheerful and friendly when John called for an appointment. But all that didn't keep him from bracing himself at the doorway before he knocked. Spiritualists ‘deduced’ people, didn’t they?
The young woman who answered the door looked perfectly ordinary. And she didn't seem to be paying any attention to his shoelaces, callous patterns, or the right cuff of his shirt. "John Watson?"
"Yes, yes, I'm John Watson." John was unsure of why he suddenly felt nervous.
"I'm afraid that I'm going to have to cancel. But I have this for you." She handed him a sheet of paper, smiled, and stepped back.
The door closed abruptly in his face.
John's first thought upon unfolding the paper was that it should smell like violets. His second thought was that the handwriting looked exactly like his grandmother's from the letters she used to send when he was a boy.
"Dear Johnny,
I'm afraid you won't be able to contact Sherlock this way. If you're not very careful, sweetheart, you're going to be seeing him sooner than you expect. Just remember..."
There was a blur and the handwriting abruptly stopped.
John folded the note and tucked it away in an inside pocket. He considered heeding the warning, no matter who it had really come from. Impossible. John thought on how he would go about being "not very careful".
The world was ice and frost and whirling cold, cold that would rip from one's lungs a laboriously obtained breath. Sherlock huddled, shaking violently, ice at the tips of his exposed hair and eyelashes. John had never seen him looking so lost and miserable. John reached out to touch him and...
Woke up.
After Sherlock's death he had expected nightmares of falling, blood, and death. Those memories never touched his dreams. But he'd been dreaming of Sherlock over and over, ominous dreams filled with tension, stealth, and hardship. Sherlock's death was utterly missing. The dreams were no more conducive to his rest for all of that. He needed to do something about them. And he needed to do it now.
The magical training John had received when he was younger and the books he already possessed were deliberately vague on the subject of the afterlife. Life was one thing, the afterlife (or possible afterlives) another, and anything that tried to reach from one to the other outside of the natural paths of death and rebirth was dangerous to itself or others. John's teacher Richard had not been a dangerous man. And John's teacher's friends were not dangerous. But when they got together to gossip, well, certain names came up.
When John finally managed to track down Richard's cousin's ex's brother, who turned out to be named 'Michael', he was sneered at for his trouble. The man wasn't much to look at, slightly younger than John but bearing the marks of someone who had aged hard and quickly. His skin had a grey cast except for the nicotine stains on his fingers, and both his clothes and his flat looked just as worn as his face.
John was mute; it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't planned anything to say, an approach to take.
Michael stood in the doorway for a moment, looking as though he was trying to place John's face. It was clearly visible when recognition hit. "I know who you are. One of those goody-goodies. You can rot in hell before I help you out."
When the door slammed in John's face it wasn't unexpected. John turned past some disinterested teenage boys who'd been loitering in the hall, passed the broken lift, and started down the poorly lit stairwell and its seven flights of stairs. John wondered if the rumors had been right, if Michael really was practicing black magic. Had it worked? If it was working, whatever Michael had risked his soul for couldn't have involved money. Or if it had involved riches, it certainly wasn't working.
It was two days later when John heard an unexpected knock on his own door. There was nothing for Emily to come back for, she'd taken all of her things, and nobody else had showed up at his flat in the last half year.
"I heard you went to see Michael." It was the first thing Harry said when John opened the door. She looked like hell, bags under her eyes, a matte pallor to her skin, grey showing at the roots of her hair. "Nice to not be the family fuck up for a change."
"Just... don't. I'm not even going to get into it with you. Why are you here?" John stood barring the entrance to his flat.
Harry leaned back against the doorpost and got comfortable. "Mom sent me. She says that it was fine when you stopped coming to any of the rituals, so long as you didn't go off and talk to the Daily Mail about us. But now you're talking to Michael, and she'd prefer you go back to not doing any rituals, ta very much." Harry smirked. John could tell that she loved conveying that message.
"And she couldn't come tell me herself?"
"It would look too official if she did it. She doesn't want other people to get involved in this. Yet." Harry straightened and turned away. "Watch yourself," she called over her shoulder as she headed towards the lift. John didn't stay to make sure she got on it, just closed the door after her and locked it thoroughly, hitting every lock.
There was the sound of breathing. The heat pressed like a weight, a physical presence taking up every available empty millimeter of the confined space. Stress sweat and ketones mingled with the scent of dust. But all was impenetrable darkness and silence.
Then chaos. Someone was yelling something unintelligible. Someone was screaming. Crashes and thuds sounded from above, sounds like crockery and furniture breaking, drywall being caved in. But still everything was blackness. More yelling, more scraping, silence.
There was the sound of breathing. The heat pressed like a weight, a physical presence taking up every available empty millimeter of the confined space. All was darkness. John was as still as it was possible to be and...
BAM! His door flew open and hit the wall. There were bright lights and someone was yelling “Down on the floor!” John rolled off the bed with a thump, somehow still asleep enough to be surprised at the impact.
Then, for a long pause, nothing happened.
“JE-sus, John, what was that all about?” someone who sounded like Lestrade sighed.
“What was what about?” John managed in return, propping himself back against the wall and managing to focus on a figure who turned out to be Lestrade. With a flashlight. And another bemused officer standing behind him.
“The neighbor said you’d been screaming off and on for the last half hour. Sounded like you were being tortured. You didn’t respond to her knocking or phone calls.”
“Mrs. McDonald decided it was a homicide?”
Lestrade looked sheepish. “Not as such. Mycroft decided that it would be best if I... yeah,... so here I am.”
“And here I am”, came a voice from the doorway. John’s landlord did not look happy. “Give me a call in the morning. We need to talk.”
John’s new flat was reasonably priced, and that’s about all that could be said about it. ‘Reasonably priced’ was terribly important, though, right now. The nightmares had been leaving him too exhausted to focus, and too exhausted to focus was too exhausted for a doctor to work. He’d picked up fewer shifts lately.
He’d probably have needed to move soon, anyway. At least this way his former landlord had been understanding about him leaving quickly; the man had felt sympathy for a veteran with nightmares and not been difficult about the lease. And Harry didn't know where this flat was, or at least not yet. That was something.
Jerry's sister Lydia was quite a bit more upscale than Michael had been. Her life was private, guarded. It didn't take long for John to determine that the only chance he had of contacting her outside of expensive restaurants, exclusive clubs, and her posh office was to jog beside her on her morning run through the park.
Later as he bent over and panted, trying to catch his breath, he reflected that it was a mercy the conversation had been short.
"I know who you are," she said as he pulled even. "You're Sherlock Holmes's partner. And whatever it is, the answer is 'no'." She'd then picked up speed and left him in the dust.
John looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his humiliation. But there was only an old man and a teenage kid, maybe his grandson, ignoring the signs about feeding the ducks.
"Just be sure you don't get anything permanent on the wallpaper, there's a love." John maintained his focus on the symbols he was drawing; if he stopped before they were all completed he would need to wipe everything clean and start over. Mrs. Hudson and the reason she was standing in the doorway could wait.
When he finished he turned and found Lestrade standing by Mrs. Hudson's side, looking startled and skeptical. After Mrs. Hudson left with an "I'll just get you boys some tea," Lestrade visibly gathered himself together and spoke up.
"John?" He looked around at the symbols on the walls of 221b. "Planning a seance?"
"No," John sighed, "Just trying to deal with some things." For all the symbols, it was a relatively simple ritual. If it worked he'd have a direction, a clue, a way to find the truth he needed to know. Seeking the truth and positive guidance was white magic. John could avoid more attempts at darkness if the spell worked. But he'd done the ritual countless times since Sherlock's fall, without remarkable results.
"You don't actually believe in any of this, do you? I mean.... John, are you alright? Mycroft is worried about you."
The corner of John's mouth quirked up almost involuntarily. "Constantly. Yes, I know."
"He'd like you to have some help coping. He'd pay for it. I get the impression you're not keen on therapists, but you could be doing something more constructive than," Lestrade gestured at the symbols "this. This is not going to do anybody any good."
"Have you ever seen an answered prayer, Greg?" John made himself more comfortable on the floor. "I've seen enough battlefields and bedsides to know that when people are in a bad situation and don't know what to do, they pray. It may not be Church of England, but this is me praying."
"Still, Mycroft would feel better if you talked to someone."
"Neither of us always does what Mycroft tells us to do. Would you like some of that tea Mrs. Hudson is making, or would you like to head out to the pub?"
"What about all this?"
"This will wait. It's not going anywhere. What's been happening with you?"
A couple of cups of tea and a few pints later, they were chatting like it was old times. And it was good to talk with someone. Just not, necessarily, about Sherlock.
Darkness again, but different, a diffuse glowing brown all around. The sky was earth was sky, swirling, scraping, filling nostrils, sanding against eyes, stealing the possibility of breath from one's lungs. Sherlock was wrapped in robes, cloth held firmly across his mouth and nose, squinting as he stood against the winds of the haboob. There was danger if he became lost beyond finding, and John somehow knew there was danger if he stayed where he was. A sudden gust blew the air even darker, and John lost sight of Sherlock.
All the rest of his dreams that night were spent wandering through sandstorms, looking for something, though by the time he awoke in the morning he had forgotten what it was. There was a sticky grittiness across his face. At first in muddled half-sleep he thought the sand had been left stuck to his cheeks, but when he touched his face he found the tracks of dried tears.
A couple of days later John came home to find that Harry had slid a note under his door. At least she wasn't lying in wait for him. And at least the note was short, a double blessing as Harry's scrawl was virtually impossible to decipher at the best of times. "Michael and Lydia vanished. None of their stuff is gone. The police think Lydia was kidnapped. Be careful."
John was already on edge. There was one last person on his list, one last chance to track down what he wanted. But that last person... well, usually when someone said 'dangerous' John jumped at the chance. 'Psychotic', on the other hand, didn't hold nearly the same appeal. Not that he knew much about the guy. He had a name, though probably not a real name; a general location; and some whispers that the guy was truly evil, in a class of his own. That was it. From that he'd been able to track down an address.
When John finally visited the address, he found a smoking ruin — fire crews were still wrapping up, keeping people back from the perimeter where the entire tower block had been turned into ashes and rubble. A fresh-faced teen turned away from the perimeter and walked over to join John.
"I know who you are." The kid was matter-of-fact and relaxed. And he didn't even look as though he'd been alive long enough to have earned a fraction of his reputation. "You trained with Richard and you followed Holmes. But I don't know what you're looking for."
"Why should you help me?" John was feeling skeptical. "I talked with two other people from your set and they didn't even want to know what I wanted."
"Avarice. It's my deadly sin. You'll need one or two if you're going to fit in with our crowd." The boy rocked back on his heels and gave John a cocky smirk.
"I want a spellbook for communicating with the dead. I have money." Rituals, spells, and ceremonies were gifts in the community John had grown up in. They were given to everyone as a whole, or given to the people who were most suited to them, or given to people as their needs and talents arose. John had heard stories, of course, of some of the things people outside the community traded. But they were rumors, possibly myths, and thoroughly blended with stories from the outside culture, mixed with the scurrilous libel religious figures had written about all of their kind.
John could only hope that the money he had in his pocket would be enough. His soul was not longer his own to trade.
"Of course you have money." The smirk had not left the boy's face. His gaze raked John from the crown of his head to the bottom of his shoes, obviously not overawed by what he saw. "£100."
John was careful not to let his breath whoosh out in a sigh of relief. There was no telling if the book would be in any way useful. But at least he wouldn't have to live on beans, toast, and weak tea while he was finding out.
The exchange that night, at a fish and chips shop of all places, went smoothly, so smoothly that it triggered John's sense of paranoia. But the bag contained the book he expected; he could tell. So he handed over the money and headed back to his flat.
The book in the bag was not an ancient tome hand-copied by depraved dark monks onto parchment made from the skin of sacrificed virgins, or anything of the sort. It was printed on ordinary cheap paper, hot glue bound, and someone (probably the sarcastic arse who had sold it to him) had put on a brightly colored, cartoony cover with the title "Necromancy for Dummies" prominently displayed. None of that mattered; John could feel its potential before he even cracked the pages. Besides, the practical side was that he could easily take notes in the margins without worrying about it and he didn’t have to spend his research time gingerly flipping through parchment pages he’d rather not touch.
Once John had eliminated spells that were useless, too harmful, impractical (involving ingredients he couldn’t obtain, locations he couldn’t travel to, and so on), or involved another person in some way, there was nothing left in the book. So he went back and started sifting again.
He tried all of the harmless, practical spells that didn’t involve another person. He was unable to muster the self-delusion to see any actual messages in his results. They were the sort of rituals that could titillate, mystify, or sometimes even comfort people who had no idea what they were doing. But that was of no use to him.
The next step was to try the ones that were largely harmless, didn’t involve another person, and impractical. He did manage a few of them and felt that there was almost something. But he didn’t have the resources to repeat them indefinitely.
And that was it for quite a while. He wasn’t going to involve another person even as a witness and recorder, should one of the channelling spells work.
There was one last spell at the end of the book. Someone’s life could be traded for Sherlock’s. Deep in his bones, John felt that it would be o.k. if his life were traded for Sherlock's. But someone else would have to do the ritual. That would be pulling another person into darkest magic.
John was afraid of himself because the prospect actually did tempt him. But he told himself that he was o.k. because he would never actually do anything like that. He didn’t ask himself why he put the book away on a high shelf once he was “done” with it, instead of destroying it.
John meticulously disposed of anything he’d used with rituals from the book and went about his life. For some reason, perhaps because he'd finally convinced himself that he'd done everything he could, the nightmares died down. He took on more shifts and, after a couple of months, was asked to stay on for nearly full-time work. There were sprained ankles to wrap, sniffles to diagnose, and rashes to inspect, the common everyday things of a general practitioner's work. There were women to date, though that never seemed to go anywhere long term these days. He was back to the same old disagreements with Harry; she had nothing to hold over him anymore. After a slight awkwardness he was back to occasional nights at the pub with Greg. His flat became more livable, as various girlfriends tried to warm it up with bedspreads and cushions and throws, a clutter of things that tried to either match his style or break him out of a rut. At any rate there was more color, both in his flat and his life.
Greg mostly held off on comments about John's beliefs. It helped that John didn't have any ritual objects or supplies out and visible in his flat, and that after that first time Greg never came across John doing anything "unusual".
There was a night right after the Adair murder that was touch and go, though. Greg had already finished a couple of pints by the time John met him at the pub and the DI was in a dark mood. Police hadn't released all of the information on the case. John knew what was in the papers and a slight bit more because Bill Murray had been in a poker game with Ron Adair, John Hardy, and Sebastian Moran right before Ron had been killed. Bill said the police had been asking about gambling debts, but Ron didn't have any. In fact, he and Moran had won quite a considerable amount of money a couple months back and the rest of the players had an ongoing joke about winning their money back. Hadn't happened, though. Moran had won again.
There had been no mention of a suspect, either from Bill or the police, and no mention of a weapon. They had to be short on leads. Greg seemed frustrated beyond reason.
Finally, near the end of the night, Greg leaned over to John and said "You've seen a lot of... stuff. You know military weapons. You went to that research lab with Sherlock. And there's that... thing you do."
"Yes?"
"And you can keep a secret."
"Yes."
Greg stared very intently at him. "Do you know of a weapon, a something, any of it that would set a man on fire from the inside out, something from a distance? It's like a Goddamn curse out of a storybook."
"No. Nothing like that."
Lestrade continued to stare at him. "Nothing?"
"No." John grabbed their coats. "I think it's time to head out."
After Greg sobered up there was no mention of it again.
John's new attempt at an ordinary life lasted for nine whole months.
Then, as he was on his way to visit Mrs. Hudson, there was a shadow of the wrong shape in the wrong place. The building across the street from 221b was supposed to be empty and wasn’t. John was protective of Mrs. Hudson; squatters who’d been in Sherlock’s homeless network were o.k. But journalists trying to dig up new dirt on an old story? Not when Mrs. Hudson was still living there.
John was quiet going up the stairs. Years of the battlefield — both in Afghanistan and with Sherlock — had taught him the use and value of timely stealth. Scaring a journalist away should have been a noisy process. Approaching a frightened or desperate person’s refuge should have been a noisy process. But something told him that this time silence was key.
A man was pointing a device out the window at 221b, presumably at Mrs. Hudson. It wasn’t a camera; John wasn’t sure what it was, but not a camera. Instinct took over and the man was lying silent on the ground, felled by a blow to the back of the head.
John checked to make sure the man was still alive. But he’d just hit a man with potentially lethal force for pointing an unidentified and possibly harmless object across a street. This was not going to look good. Was it a harmless object? Or was it that weapon the police hadn't been able to figure out in the Adair case?
The feeling of threat had been visceral. But would turning the man over to the police even do any good or just end up with John incarcerated and unable to defend Mrs. Hudson against a threat he could only feel? What about calling Mycroft? What was Mrs. Hudson to Mycroft? Possibly nothing.
The wallet in the man's back pocket had an ID with the name 'Sebastian Moran'. John tried to remember if he'd ever met Bill's poker buddy, but concluded that they'd probably never been at the same game. Moran had played with Adair, though. He remembered Greg's question after the Adair case. He remembered Greg's description of what had happened to Ron.
Along with the ID the wallet contained two bank cards, a ten pound note, an oyster card, and a ticket to a parking garage. Tucked into Moran's front pocket was the key to a car, a make John recognized as having a very large boot. John realized that he’d started thinking about logistics rather than morality. Anyone who could threaten Mrs. Hudson, well, the threat couldn't be allowed to remain.
If it was safe to leave Moran here for a while, he could go get supplies and Moran’s car. The congestion charge tracking would be done for the evening by the time he was able to obtain everything he needed. Then there were the standard CCTV cameras, but those Mycroft could influence easily without anything seeming odd. John thought he'd be able to talk Mycroft into at least that. But where would John go to do the ritual? John tied Moran with his shirt and belt, and went off to gather supplies.
The stairwell echoed every time Moran's bound feet hit the stairs. Good thing the place was empty. John had found Moran's car in a garage tucked right under the building.
He mentally went over his preparations to make sure he had everything. He'd disabled the cameras in that area of the garage (his time with Sherlock had been educational), tucked a backpack full of supplies into the back seat along with Moran's device, and downloaded a map to a sheep pasture he remembered from a childhood vacation to the countryside. A quick check of the satellite view had confirmed that it was still pasture, and still far enough away from surrounding habitation that they would likely remain unnoticed.
Getting Moran into the boot was an exercise in awkwardness that was in no way helped by the fact that he was taller than John. And large as it was, the boot was not made to easily accommodate people; Moran kept getting stuck on corners or knocked about by projections. John positioned him as well as possible to make sure he'd get enough air and clipped the wire on the release handle before closing the hatch.
Everything seemed ready to go. He pulled a cap down low over his face before using Moran's card to exit the garage. It was going to be a long, careful drive out into the country.
John once again referred to the diagram in the book before pouring another line of powdered chalk across the ground. It didn't look quite right to him, somehow, but it did look exactly like the diagram. And he wasn't sure how much his past experience pertained; he had never worked dark magic before. The closest he'd come had been that binding spell he'd put on himself to draw him to Sherlock, and that was only after he'd nearly fatally lost track of the man. He wasn't entirely sure that putting a binding spell on himself had been more on the up-and-up than putting a tracking spell on Sherlock, but at least it shouldn't materially affect Sherlock in any direct way. It was gray magic, dark gray at the worst.
But this was definitely dark. He could call it a ‘trade’, but he knew Sebastian would be...elsewhere by the end of the evening if things went well. John reached over to make sure the bound figure was still breathing regularly then went back to his work. This ritual was even more nerve wracking because it was showy magic. It wasn't like a blessing that might quietly help good or hinder ill. It wasn't like a bond that was primarily felt by the people who entered into it. It didn't slowly coax natural forces, like a weather spell that would draw rain together or disperse it gently. Something this dark didn't need to respect the natural order; if a being appeared tonight, it would be obvious.
It was close to midnight by the time everything was in place. The circles were perfectly reproduced, a large containment circle surrounding a protective circle and what would be a door. The candles and symbols were exactly where and what they should be according to the book. Sebastian's ropes staked him to the ground in such a way that he couldn't disturb anything. Sherlock's robe awaited, bringing a part of him, bringing a memory of him, bringing an expectation of him and, on a more practical basis, ready to provide swift coverage should Sherlock arrive in immediate need of such. John took his place in his circle, closed it, drew a calming breath and began to chant.
Mycroft appeared out of the darkness, his step curiously silent for a person of such presence, eyes examining the scene before him before fixing upon the symbols and markings that traversed the ground. He casually scuffed his foot through the outside containment circle as he passed through it, looking as though he hadn't noticed it at all, and stood looking at the inner circle across from John. "Are you trying to summon a demon? If so, you should know that your containment circle is quite inadequate for the task."
John held perfectly still within his own protective circle. This was, after all, not necessarily Mycroft. "God, no. And what you're looking at now is not a containment circle. It's a doorway of sorts. Or was to have been."
"You certainly achieved a doorway." Mycroft looked up from his contemplation of the circles and symbols and glanced at the book John was clutching. He frowned slightly.
"No wonder." Mycroft's shoulders straightened. "Are you familiar with the work you are using? It's a trap for naive people. The type of person who can't accept that people die. The sort of person who would bind themselves to a dangerous man within forty hours of meeting him just to try to keep him from fatal mistakes."
John straightened inside his own circle as Mycroft took a step toward him and continued. "Whatever forged the end of that book is terribly powerful and likely horrifically hungry. Do you think, if it had Sherlock, it would save him to exchange later?"
Mycroft walked toward John. "Even your protective circle—I take it the book told you to how to construct this one?—is put together to be quickly dismantled from the outside by those in the know."
As Mycroft nudged his foot against John's protective circle then stepped inside, John was surrounded by the intimate smell of milky tea, expensive grooming products, fine wool, matches, and underneath it all something frightening and powerful.
"Was that what you planned to exchange for Sherlock?" Mycroft turned away and gestured toward Sebastian. "I will make the deal you planned, after all."
John was suddenly glad he couldn't see Mycroft's eyes.
"John Halbert Watson, I will take Mr. Moran. And you will have Sherlock back. You can trust me on that. Or at least you can trust me as much as any of the other...diplomats who might have appeared."
Without a word, two expensively dressed assistants materialized from the shadows and carried Sebastian Moran away between them. Mycroft swanned away after them, the darkness taking him once more. John was briefly startled by a wash of headlights and the sound of the car, with its load of strange equipment and presumably Moran, driving away.
John carefully deconstructed the circles, struggling a moment in his worn out haze to figure out which chalk lines were safest to scruff out first.
The front pocket of his rucksack quickly held the things he wanted to keep, very few of them. He wrapped the things he considered contaminated into a bag he'd made ready for that purpose and shoved them into the main pocket. He'd dispose of them properly later.
For now he hiked through the morning chill toward the train station. He caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window as he passed, a slightly scruffy and worn man wearing a jumper and carrying a daypack, and was reassured by the normalcy of the image. Not a thing spoke of magic, black or otherwise. He looked like nothing more extraordinary than a rambler who'd been caught out later than he expected.
He made his unexceptional way back to Baker Street to return Sherlock's robe. Sherlock would not, at the very least, be needing it tonight. And taking Sherlock's robe back to his own flat wasn't something John wanted to do. Before you knew it that sort of thing could turn into a shrine. Too exhausted to go home, John collapsed on the sofa.
John woke at dawn to the sound of a door creaking. He looked up just in time to see Sherlock stumble through the entranceway, face haunted, clothes worn. Something snapped back into place as the bond renewed and Sherlock moved forward as though drawn by it, quickly wrapping his arms around John until John felt as though he were drowning in a sea of gangly limbs.
Sherlock never did truthfully say where he'd been, though he'd started spouting impossible stories within seconds of his improbable hug, stories that betrayed that he still wasn't paying any attention to geopolitical events that didn't directly impact crime. Had he just been in hiding? The question of where he had been hidden, by whom, or even on what plane of existence could wait indefinitely.
Sherlock was back. And that was all the magic John needed.
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Wednesday, January 9th, 2012
Date: 2013-01-09 11:47 pm (UTC)