Chapter Text
John drifts, rising and falling softly in his own head, unmoored and untethered.
He’s remembering.
A pub, one night, bright and cheery yet managing through its odd magic that all good English pubs possess to also be gloomy and muted. He’s laughing with a friend, with Lestrade because he remembers the grainy hair and the easy grin. He’s drunk. He’s stumbled outside and someone’s leading him to a cab. Their hands aren't gloved and he wishes they were someone else’s but he can’t think of whose exactly he wants them to belong to. He remembers staring out of the window, the glass comfortingly cold, at London’s wet, blurred face as he passed by it, and he remembers wondering if anyone would miss him if he disappeared. The dark streets are tar, sucking him down, preserving him, fossilizing him, keeping him whole, keeping him in a womb of quiet stasis, keeping him waiting, waiting…waiting for what? For whom? He knows he’s been waiting, waiting for…
Sherlock.
The anchor drops, the reverberations SherlockSherlockSherlock striking at the walls of his skull as he’s yanked into consciousness.
A door’s being slammed shut, but he’s learned to keep his eyes closed if only to allow himself to get his bearings without being conspicuous.
“Oh leave off, Watson, I know you’re awake.”
Damn.
John keeps his eyes shut. There’s a gruff sigh and a hand sharply slaps him across the face.
“Was that really called for?” He croaks, opening his eyes in the thick darkness to glare in the direction of his captor.
“Would you rather I kiss you, Sleeping Beauty?”
"Fair point." John rubs his head, tender from sleeping on the hard ground, or at least tries to before he remembers his hands are tied behind his back by the circulation-restricting tension in his bound wrists. “Should I expect water and food deprivation during this point of the torture?”
The man responds by tossing a water bottle in John’s direction, striking him roughly on the chest before it rolls into his lap. He closes his knees around it to stop it from tumbling to the floor.
“And I’m going to open this—how, exactly?”
“Same way you’ll open this.” The man grunts, chucking an energy bar at him. “Figure it out yourself.”
“Ah, so I’m in the luxury suite. Marvellous.”
“And can that attitude while you’re at it. The boss won’t mind your mouth.”
“You mean Moran?”
The man stares at him for a moment and grins.
“He’s going to have so much fun with you.”
John smiles back.
“I can’t wait.”
* * * * *
Lestrade stares blankly at Sherlock, as if he’s budded off himself and sprouted twins instead of announcing that New Scotland Yard was about to burst into flames.
“Care to repeat that?”
“No.” Sherlock replies briskly. “Call your people. Report a gas leak, turn on the sprinklers, pull the fire alarms, I don’t care. Get them out.”
“You’re going to have to give me more, Sherlock, or I’m going to look like a right arse, sticking my neck out for a false emergency. Why do you think Moran is going to blow up the Yard?”
“When I questioned him, he mentioned mould culminating in the vents before he told me that I had no idea what's going on right under my nose. He then said, and I quote ‘what's the mystery in revealing all of your hand to the public when it's so much sweeter to hide it’.”
“And from all that you think he’s going to blow up the Yard?”
“Yes.”
“Sherlock, I’m going to need something more. Your word isn’t enough. I need proof.”
“Would you like it in the form of a smouldering pile of office building and charred employees?” Sherlock snarls before something in him seems to soften with quiet insistence. “Lestrade…Greg. When have I given you false information? Intentionally.” He adds at seeing Lestrade’s scepticism.
Lestrade stares at him for a moment, his rationale clearly at war with his better instincts. He nods curtly and turns, ordering two officers to radio into the Yard. “Evacuate immediately. Report an 11-71. Get all personnel out.”
“And the prisoners, sir?”
Lestrade pauses.
“If you can.”
He turns to Sherlock and grabs his arm, steering him towards a waiting panda car as he climbs into the driver’s side, turning the lights on. Sherlock barely has time to buckle himself in before Greg stamps on the pedal and swerves into the street.
“Right.” Lestrade growls, barrelling through traffic. “Tell me the truth, the whole unexpurgated truth.”
“Moran only gave me one clue, ‘cruet’, which, to be frank, didn’t make any kind of sense until I thought about it, about him and his methods. He said he wanted to prove a point, that I’d come whenever he called because he has John and that it didn’t have to be about anything important—Christ, Greg, I’d like to make it there alive—and sodium has a high thermal conductivity and low neutron absorption cross section—”
“English please—” Lestrade barks as he weaves through passing cars.
“Cruets have salt, which is comprised of sodium, which, when it’s in the form of sodium metal and exposed to water can cause a violent reaction, namely great massive explosions.”
“Okay, and how the bloody hell did you come to that conclusion?”
“I tried telling you before! Moran gave us information with seemingly no intermingling involvement, when really upon all possible aspects are put under consideration it all makes sense, you’re just too dense to see it—”
“Sherlock!”
“What? It’s not my fault you have the IQ of an echidna—don’t feel bad, I feel like an idiot for not realising it sooner, although in your case you’ve got to have it spelled out before you have a modicum of—”
Greg darts between two cars and in the process clips the mirror off Sherlock’s side, but out of frustration or carelessness, he can’t tell.
“Sherlock—”
“The vents!” Sherlock bursts out irately. “Moran must have some form of sodium metal available to him at the Yard and he mentioned mould and water damage—he’s going to blow up the Yard and all he has to do is turn on the sink in his cell—”
The car comes to a screeching halt, the brakes skidding on the pavement, as they arrive outside New Scotland Yard and Sherlock falls silent.
“Jesus Christ…” Lestrade murmurs. He doesn’t bother to kill the engine, leaving the lights flashing as he climbs out of the car.
Sherlock stares through the windshield, speechless. He feels his heart kick in his chest as he unblinkingly unbuckles his seat belt. He steps tentatively out of the car, feeling as if the road beneath him was paved in petroleum.
He was wrong.
He can feel the heat from where he stands. The windows have been shattered, black smoke billowing from the pattern their destruction creates, a bright, all-consuming fire that belches out from the smashed glass. Later, he’ll admire the craftsmanship of it all, the sheer intricacy and effort it took. Later. He will later.
In the melting face of the Yard there is a word, punched in a black and blazing message.
I.O.U.
He was wrong.
Moran didn’t want to just blow up the Yard.
He wanted to burn it.