The Equation, Chapter 4
Breathing is boring........Reunion scene? No promises, lol
The Equation
Chapter 4; Breathing Is Boring
Sherlock is the property of the BBC and Moffat and Gatiss. They are true blue geniuses and Martin and Benedict can have my first-born if they make more seasons. I gain nothing but joy, no money here.
AN; I'm a history teacher and World War I is my main emphasis so I assure you that the gas descriptions are totally accurate, yeeech. Also, I researched both anti-venom (scary actually) and the idea that Sherlock could actually do what he did with the wires and he could, definitely. Trust me, stay calm and believe in Sherlock Holmes
Mycroft held the written word out to Sherlock but his petulant younger brother didn't take it.
"Tell me you, somehow, have it figured out." The younger Holmes sneered.
"Moriarty was, at least in this regard, rather obvious."
Lestrade looked between the two of them in confusion.
"Gas, Detectives. This sordid clue is the name of an abandoned factory. And it is quite a distance away. You realize, Sherlock, that this is a trap in the most obvious fashion."
Sherlock's snarl grew. "You cannot be both obese and obtuse Mycroft. They manufactured it; I create the 'explosion' and Moriarty kills John anyway."
Was it the Detective Inspector's imagination or did Mycroft's eyes actually soften? Terrifying to think that _both_ Holmes had a fondness for the doctor.
"Boss?" Sally Donovan came rushing up to him and Greg turned his back on the two brothers.
"Hmm?"
"Half of the CCTV cameras went down in Westminster. We've gotten over twenty calls in the last five minutes."
Sally paused.
"And?"
"And we can't answer any of them, the phones won't dial out, we've been using mobile but it's dodgy at best."
Lestrade spun to look at Mycroft Holmes who had a smug little smile on his face.
"We can't endanger the public Mr. Holmes." He sputtered.
"Oh calm yourself, _Greg_; my people have always countered your amateur policing attempts in the best of times."
Lestrade tried to be offended but three other Yarders came rushing up to him, distracting him with other 'meltdowns'.
He stifled a groan and turned to see a dramatic coat flouncing out the door.
"Sherlock!"
"Let him go Detective Inspector. We're searching for these locations as we speak."
"Damned lot of good it will do if Sherlock…."
Mycroft's eyes were piercing.
"Where is John?" Lestrade asked softly? "*If anyone could know*
"Do you honestly believe I would let this charade continue if I could locate the doctor? Locating seven different forms of anti-venom has been the closest I can come to diluting this maelstrom."
Lestrade was speechless.
"What do you….?"
"Moriarty has played us all well. He won't allow John to survive. He will break Sherlock completely." Even Anthea looked up from her Blackberry at the words, no, the tone.
"Now, I believe, Lestrade, that the other CCTV's have malfunctioned in Westminster and forty percent are about to go off in London proper."
Lestrade allowed himself a very colorful curse.
The consulting detective ran.
John could always keep up with him, amazing considering the height difference. It probably said something that Sherlock Holmes didn't continue to glance behind him, making sure his friend was still there.
Moriarty has poisoned John, tortured him.
He was going to lose him, his John.
The uncharacteristic self-doubt threatened to overwhelm him. He had to do this, had to outsmart the consulting criminal. Despite what everyone (not everyone Sherlock, not now) thought of him, he could not allow the disaster the Moriarty had set up to happen.
The first hour had slipped away like water through his fingers.
He urged the cabbie to hurry, willed the road to shorten. Time was merciless as it slipped into the second hour, ten minutes, twenty minutes.
Finally, they were here.
Mycroft's card apparently still worked for the extravagant fee but Sherlock didn't waste his breathe *Breathing is Boring, boring John, do you hear me? Please, don't, stop*
responding to the man's thanks.
He still didn't like cabbies too much, serial killers or no.
Lights flickered on and off in the distance. Sirens echoing from various streets. Mycroft and his bloody power complex.
It was here, not the gas itself, no but the switch that would create a disaster on the scale of events of years, tragedies, past.
He scoured the walls. He found it in the dusty corner of this abandoned place, where a terrible occurrence had happened so long ago.
Small and overrun with wires. A skull and crossbones etched into the main switch. Six wires, three locations.
Child's play.
He knew, if Moriarty was using all three and knowing the psychopath he probably was, the effects that the gas would have. On the human body, if he could ever bring himself to experiment with the substances, the results are quite dramatic.
Chlorine, which Sherlock now hated just on principle (and smell). Causes the mucus membranes to overstimulate. Blindness, clogged sinuses, burning, and then the lungs begin to fill with liquid. Slowly, slowly drowning in a darkened, scalding hell.
Phosgene, heinous in its simplicity and covertness. Inhaling it like oxygen, only a slight tightening of the lungs, then dizziness, then weakness. Your memories float away, your body is dying and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. You fade, fade away.
This, Sherlock can admit to himself, is the most terrifying to him, to lose your mind and will before you ever realized it was happening.
Blue, blue lips and blue bodies in the battlefields of Verdun.
Then Mustard, for the Americans especially. Napalm, its descendant, is so beautiful, chemicals creating a rose of fire and destruction. Mustard gas is not so lovely, the way it melts human skin. The way it eats a body away from the inside out, the lungs hacked out until a soldier is hollowed away.
The blisters, boils, _burns_ on every sensitive part of the body. It, transforms, you.
An explosion would burst the gas out at uncontrollable speeds. No one would be safe.
Chemical reactions mixed with fire (because Sherlock of course knew Jim couldn't be torn away from his precious bombs.) Chain reaction.
Sherlock moved three wires together, then three more. Input and output, reverse the polarity.
An implosion wouldn't stop the gas and wouldn't release John from his torment but Sherlock was running out of time.
Ten minutes until the second hour is gone.
Sherlock's hands trembled and he forced them steady.
He had to do this….the implosion; they could find John, before its too late.
Please.
Let it backfire *It will* let the gas contents be pushed out, *it will* and let more
lives be saved.
*Will caring about them help save them?*
John. Let Moriarty not find out, not yet.
*He will.*
His gloved hands were on the wires, the current would reverse. Six currents, running in and out, one control.
Experts said it could only be done with three. None of these 'experts' were Sherlock Holmes.
Three containers, hidden somewhere. Three deadly types of gas.
His memory forced upon him John's ragged breathing.
*Don't make people into heroes, John.*
He picked up the first two wires. Soon, less than an hour, Moriarty had placed Sherlock too far away to witness anything; he knew it wouldn't matter anyway.
Closer.
Sherlock stopped and John's voice suddenly echoed in his head.
"Of course I trust you, you great idiot. I'd trust you with my life. I _have_ trusted you with it."
John stood there, all 5'7 of him, in his lumpy jumper. Sherlock held the folder in his hands, dumbfounded.
And the doctor was enjoying that, for once, he'd caught his best friend unawares.
"This, how did you get this John? We searched, and…."
John grinned. "Focus visual memory? Ring any bells?"
"It was…."
"Hidden in plain sight. You're not the only actor here."
"John, the importance of this, you….I said I…."
"I know what you said Sherlock, and I also know you."
"Lestrade…"
"Is excellent at what he does, but only you can do this Sherlock, though your uncharacteristic humility is refreshing."
Sherlock finally stood a little straighter.
"Mycroft."
"Can sod off." John snapped. "Didn't need his money back then and don't need it now."
A new patch in John's trusty coat said otherwise. But Sherlock smiled and felt something warm inside.
"Do what you do, Sherlock." John's eyes softened. "I believe in you."
His mind was _Itching_ to open that folder, to finally get a hold of those records. It
could have cost John everything and John didn't surrender what he did and who he was easily.
"You don't need to tell me what could have or can happen." John said softly and Sherlock looked at him intensely.
The folder remained unopened.
"I know, Sherlock that you think that Moriarty is playing some kind of chess game with you. But you're wrong."
An elegantly arched eyebrow.
"It's more than a game to him. You solve problems and move to the next, but he _creates_ the problems. He enjoys hurting and killing and when his true nature really, _really_ comes out…"
*I will burn the _heart_ out of you.* A snarl, raw insanity in those dark eyes.
"Then you'll see it and hopefully finally understand that you're nothing like him. Nothing."
Sherlock scowled at the shorter doctor. "John, this attitude of yours is becoming tedious, leave the deducing to me."
"Oh for….fine, want me to say it? I'll say it!! He knows he can hurt you, hurt me." John actually stopped here, getting his cracked voice under control, "And he wants to! Why do you think, that the fifth-"
John and Sherlock both froze. Too dangerously close to what was Never Talked About.
Glittering water, John's eyes flickering towards him. Sherlock couldn't breathe, John's arm around Moriarty's neck pleading with his friend to run. Sacrificing himself.
Hopelessness, sheer, raw helplessness.
Sherlock looked from the folder to his best friend. Because he was, that.
"I-I, trust you as well, John. When you say, said there is, always another way, well…I believe in you too." The words were so low that John could barely believe he'd heard them correctly.
"What in god's name, no…I Do not DO THAT." But John was unabashedly _hugging_ him.
"Shut up, oh great detective."
He fit right under Sherlock's chin, like, oh nauseating, a puzzle piece. But Sherlock's long arms snaked around and hugged him back.
*Always another way, I trust you Sherlock. Always another way.*
*That was, incredible.*
*Because you're an idiot.*
*I trust you too, John.*
Sherlock's fingers froze.
He pulled out his phone and dialed with lightning speed.
"Lestrade."
"Sherlock, your creeper brother has really outdone himself with this, and-"
"Shut UP." Sherlock barked. "John, on camera, look at him."
Silence. "Sherlock, what are-"
"Just do it! Really, really look."
Movement on the other end and Lestrade's subdued voice.
"Sherlock, he's fading."
"His hands look at his hands."
"What?!"
"He can't communicate with us and god knows he must be trying, despite Moriarty. This is John, Lestrade and lives are on the line."
"A-all right, I'm looking. His hands, Sherlock his wrists…."
"Just focus!" Sherlock snapped, not wanting to think about it.
"Sherlock, his, his fingers, they're moving."
Sherlock let out a breath. *Of course they were*
"I, can't, its too fuzzy. He keeps stopping."
He's exhausted, fading as Lestrade said. Too late, NO!
"I'm not sure what he's doing." A pause. Make the connection, Lestrade.
Sherlock smiled when Lestrade bellowed out, "Does anyone know sign language?"
Minutes passed. Sherlock kneeled in the dark factory listening as they pieced letter to letter, all that John could present to them.
"I didn't know John knew sign language." Lestrade murmured.
A bitter smile. "Neither did I."
"Then how…?"
"Just tell me!"
T-R-I-C-K
F-A-K-E
S-W-I-T-C-H
S-W-I-T-C-H
"Switch, that one is repeating, what's switched?" The DI wondered aloud.
Nothing. "Lestrade?" Sherlock shouted.
"He's trying but, Sherlock, I…"
*I trust you John, come on. Let me do this, let me figure this out.*
F-L-O-O-R
C-O-N-T-R-O-L
It didn't even take two leaps and Sherlock had it.
"Sherlock, it's…"
"It's switched, switched Lestrade. Whatever's happening to John and what's here. Moriarty's set this game up well, I activate the gas, no matter if its imploded and John…."
"Sherlock, John's not alone anymore."
Sherlock's heart froze into a hard, painful lump.
"He's still signing." Lestrade whispered.
Sherlock's phone buzzed. Three new picture messages. He had to watch as Moriarty, in each still frame stepped closer to John. A huge man with a scarred face was right behind the criminal.
"Lestrade."
H-O-S-P
Incoming call.
Sherlock picked it up.
"I'm still within the time frame Jim." Sherlock's voice was deathly still.
"Oh, I know, I know but your pet has been very naughty. I've been watching him, of
course, it's so much more fun when they make it, interesting.
But against the rules, Sherlock, really."
"How? How is it?!" Sherlock demanded desperately.
"Because it spoils my _fun_." The last word hissed.
*You're not like him, Sherlock, not like him and his true nature.*
"Makes no difference, really, the outcome but I don't like having my surprise ruined. You would have gassed your best friend and some of his nearest and dearest and he would have, well, needless to say he _must_ like children because he's been fighting my little contraption for all this time."
Sherlock could barely hear John breathing in the background. It terrified him.
"Not long now. You won't find him. He's dead, as good as dead and so are all of _them_"
"And I'm a man of my word."
One last picture message.
"Moriarty, d-"
The large man swung a crowbar and Sherlock didn't need to hear John scream. He was screaming enough for both of them.
The Equation
Chapter 4; Breathing Is Boring
Sherlock is the property of the BBC and Moffat and Gatiss. They are true blue geniuses and Martin and Benedict can have my first-born if they make more seasons. I gain nothing but joy, no money here.
AN; I'm a history teacher and World War I is my main emphasis so I assure you that the gas descriptions are totally accurate, yeeech. Also, I researched both anti-venom (scary actually) and the idea that Sherlock could actually do what he did with the wires and he could, definitely. Trust me, stay calm and believe in Sherlock Holmes
Mycroft held the written word out to Sherlock but his petulant younger brother didn't take it.
"Tell me you, somehow, have it figured out." The younger Holmes sneered.
"Moriarty was, at least in this regard, rather obvious."
Lestrade looked between the two of them in confusion.
"Gas, Detectives. This sordid clue is the name of an abandoned factory. And it is quite a distance away. You realize, Sherlock, that this is a trap in the most obvious fashion."
Sherlock's snarl grew. "You cannot be both obese and obtuse Mycroft. They manufactured it; I create the 'explosion' and Moriarty kills John anyway."
Was it the Detective Inspector's imagination or did Mycroft's eyes actually soften? Terrifying to think that _both_ Holmes had a fondness for the doctor.
"Boss?" Sally Donovan came rushing up to him and Greg turned his back on the two brothers.
"Hmm?"
"Half of the CCTV cameras went down in Westminster. We've gotten over twenty calls in the last five minutes."
Sally paused.
"And?"
"And we can't answer any of them, the phones won't dial out, we've been using mobile but it's dodgy at best."
Lestrade spun to look at Mycroft Holmes who had a smug little smile on his face.
"We can't endanger the public Mr. Holmes." He sputtered.
"Oh calm yourself, _Greg_; my people have always countered your amateur policing attempts in the best of times."
Lestrade tried to be offended but three other Yarders came rushing up to him, distracting him with other 'meltdowns'.
He stifled a groan and turned to see a dramatic coat flouncing out the door.
"Sherlock!"
"Let him go Detective Inspector. We're searching for these locations as we speak."
"Damned lot of good it will do if Sherlock…."
Mycroft's eyes were piercing.
"Where is John?" Lestrade asked softly? "*If anyone could know*
"Do you honestly believe I would let this charade continue if I could locate the doctor? Locating seven different forms of anti-venom has been the closest I can come to diluting this maelstrom."
Lestrade was speechless.
"What do you….?"
"Moriarty has played us all well. He won't allow John to survive. He will break Sherlock completely." Even Anthea looked up from her Blackberry at the words, no, the tone.
"Now, I believe, Lestrade, that the other CCTV's have malfunctioned in Westminster and forty percent are about to go off in London proper."
Lestrade allowed himself a very colorful curse.
The consulting detective ran.
John could always keep up with him, amazing considering the height difference. It probably said something that Sherlock Holmes didn't continue to glance behind him, making sure his friend was still there.
Moriarty has poisoned John, tortured him.
He was going to lose him, his John.
The uncharacteristic self-doubt threatened to overwhelm him. He had to do this, had to outsmart the consulting criminal. Despite what everyone (not everyone Sherlock, not now) thought of him, he could not allow the disaster the Moriarty had set up to happen.
The first hour had slipped away like water through his fingers.
He urged the cabbie to hurry, willed the road to shorten. Time was merciless as it slipped into the second hour, ten minutes, twenty minutes.
Finally, they were here.
Mycroft's card apparently still worked for the extravagant fee but Sherlock didn't waste his breathe *Breathing is Boring, boring John, do you hear me? Please, don't, stop*
responding to the man's thanks.
He still didn't like cabbies too much, serial killers or no.
Lights flickered on and off in the distance. Sirens echoing from various streets. Mycroft and his bloody power complex.
It was here, not the gas itself, no but the switch that would create a disaster on the scale of events of years, tragedies, past.
He scoured the walls. He found it in the dusty corner of this abandoned place, where a terrible occurrence had happened so long ago.
Small and overrun with wires. A skull and crossbones etched into the main switch. Six wires, three locations.
Child's play.
He knew, if Moriarty was using all three and knowing the psychopath he probably was, the effects that the gas would have. On the human body, if he could ever bring himself to experiment with the substances, the results are quite dramatic.
Chlorine, which Sherlock now hated just on principle (and smell). Causes the mucus membranes to overstimulate. Blindness, clogged sinuses, burning, and then the lungs begin to fill with liquid. Slowly, slowly drowning in a darkened, scalding hell.
Phosgene, heinous in its simplicity and covertness. Inhaling it like oxygen, only a slight tightening of the lungs, then dizziness, then weakness. Your memories float away, your body is dying and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. You fade, fade away.
This, Sherlock can admit to himself, is the most terrifying to him, to lose your mind and will before you ever realized it was happening.
Blue, blue lips and blue bodies in the battlefields of Verdun.
Then Mustard, for the Americans especially. Napalm, its descendant, is so beautiful, chemicals creating a rose of fire and destruction. Mustard gas is not so lovely, the way it melts human skin. The way it eats a body away from the inside out, the lungs hacked out until a soldier is hollowed away.
The blisters, boils, _burns_ on every sensitive part of the body. It, transforms, you.
An explosion would burst the gas out at uncontrollable speeds. No one would be safe.
Chemical reactions mixed with fire (because Sherlock of course knew Jim couldn't be torn away from his precious bombs.) Chain reaction.
Sherlock moved three wires together, then three more. Input and output, reverse the polarity.
An implosion wouldn't stop the gas and wouldn't release John from his torment but Sherlock was running out of time.
Ten minutes until the second hour is gone.
Sherlock's hands trembled and he forced them steady.
He had to do this….the implosion; they could find John, before its too late.
Please.
Let it backfire *It will* let the gas contents be pushed out, *it will* and let more
lives be saved.
*Will caring about them help save them?*
John. Let Moriarty not find out, not yet.
*He will.*
His gloved hands were on the wires, the current would reverse. Six currents, running in and out, one control.
Experts said it could only be done with three. None of these 'experts' were Sherlock Holmes.
Three containers, hidden somewhere. Three deadly types of gas.
His memory forced upon him John's ragged breathing.
*Don't make people into heroes, John.*
He picked up the first two wires. Soon, less than an hour, Moriarty had placed Sherlock too far away to witness anything; he knew it wouldn't matter anyway.
Closer.
Sherlock stopped and John's voice suddenly echoed in his head.
"Of course I trust you, you great idiot. I'd trust you with my life. I _have_ trusted you with it."
John stood there, all 5'7 of him, in his lumpy jumper. Sherlock held the folder in his hands, dumbfounded.
And the doctor was enjoying that, for once, he'd caught his best friend unawares.
"This, how did you get this John? We searched, and…."
John grinned. "Focus visual memory? Ring any bells?"
"It was…."
"Hidden in plain sight. You're not the only actor here."
"John, the importance of this, you….I said I…."
"I know what you said Sherlock, and I also know you."
"Lestrade…"
"Is excellent at what he does, but only you can do this Sherlock, though your uncharacteristic humility is refreshing."
Sherlock finally stood a little straighter.
"Mycroft."
"Can sod off." John snapped. "Didn't need his money back then and don't need it now."
A new patch in John's trusty coat said otherwise. But Sherlock smiled and felt something warm inside.
"Do what you do, Sherlock." John's eyes softened. "I believe in you."
His mind was _Itching_ to open that folder, to finally get a hold of those records. It
could have cost John everything and John didn't surrender what he did and who he was easily.
"You don't need to tell me what could have or can happen." John said softly and Sherlock looked at him intensely.
The folder remained unopened.
"I know, Sherlock that you think that Moriarty is playing some kind of chess game with you. But you're wrong."
An elegantly arched eyebrow.
"It's more than a game to him. You solve problems and move to the next, but he _creates_ the problems. He enjoys hurting and killing and when his true nature really, _really_ comes out…"
*I will burn the _heart_ out of you.* A snarl, raw insanity in those dark eyes.
"Then you'll see it and hopefully finally understand that you're nothing like him. Nothing."
Sherlock scowled at the shorter doctor. "John, this attitude of yours is becoming tedious, leave the deducing to me."
"Oh for….fine, want me to say it? I'll say it!! He knows he can hurt you, hurt me." John actually stopped here, getting his cracked voice under control, "And he wants to! Why do you think, that the fifth-"
John and Sherlock both froze. Too dangerously close to what was Never Talked About.
Glittering water, John's eyes flickering towards him. Sherlock couldn't breathe, John's arm around Moriarty's neck pleading with his friend to run. Sacrificing himself.
Hopelessness, sheer, raw helplessness.
Sherlock looked from the folder to his best friend. Because he was, that.
"I-I, trust you as well, John. When you say, said there is, always another way, well…I believe in you too." The words were so low that John could barely believe he'd heard them correctly.
"What in god's name, no…I Do not DO THAT." But John was unabashedly _hugging_ him.
"Shut up, oh great detective."
He fit right under Sherlock's chin, like, oh nauseating, a puzzle piece. But Sherlock's long arms snaked around and hugged him back.
*Always another way, I trust you Sherlock. Always another way.*
*That was, incredible.*
*Because you're an idiot.*
*I trust you too, John.*
Sherlock's fingers froze.
He pulled out his phone and dialed with lightning speed.
"Lestrade."
"Sherlock, your creeper brother has really outdone himself with this, and-"
"Shut UP." Sherlock barked. "John, on camera, look at him."
Silence. "Sherlock, what are-"
"Just do it! Really, really look."
Movement on the other end and Lestrade's subdued voice.
"Sherlock, he's fading."
"His hands look at his hands."
"What?!"
"He can't communicate with us and god knows he must be trying, despite Moriarty. This is John, Lestrade and lives are on the line."
"A-all right, I'm looking. His hands, Sherlock his wrists…."
"Just focus!" Sherlock snapped, not wanting to think about it.
"Sherlock, his, his fingers, they're moving."
Sherlock let out a breath. *Of course they were*
"I, can't, its too fuzzy. He keeps stopping."
He's exhausted, fading as Lestrade said. Too late, NO!
"I'm not sure what he's doing." A pause. Make the connection, Lestrade.
Sherlock smiled when Lestrade bellowed out, "Does anyone know sign language?"
Minutes passed. Sherlock kneeled in the dark factory listening as they pieced letter to letter, all that John could present to them.
"I didn't know John knew sign language." Lestrade murmured.
A bitter smile. "Neither did I."
"Then how…?"
"Just tell me!"
T-R-I-C-K
F-A-K-E
S-W-I-T-C-H
S-W-I-T-C-H
"Switch, that one is repeating, what's switched?" The DI wondered aloud.
Nothing. "Lestrade?" Sherlock shouted.
"He's trying but, Sherlock, I…"
*I trust you John, come on. Let me do this, let me figure this out.*
F-L-O-O-R
C-O-N-T-R-O-L
It didn't even take two leaps and Sherlock had it.
"Sherlock, it's…"
"It's switched, switched Lestrade. Whatever's happening to John and what's here. Moriarty's set this game up well, I activate the gas, no matter if its imploded and John…."
"Sherlock, John's not alone anymore."
Sherlock's heart froze into a hard, painful lump.
"He's still signing." Lestrade whispered.
Sherlock's phone buzzed. Three new picture messages. He had to watch as Moriarty, in each still frame stepped closer to John. A huge man with a scarred face was right behind the criminal.
"Lestrade."
H-O-S-P
Incoming call.
Sherlock picked it up.
"I'm still within the time frame Jim." Sherlock's voice was deathly still.
"Oh, I know, I know but your pet has been very naughty. I've been watching him, of
course, it's so much more fun when they make it, interesting.
But against the rules, Sherlock, really."
"How? How is it?!" Sherlock demanded desperately.
"Because it spoils my _fun_." The last word hissed.
*You're not like him, Sherlock, not like him and his true nature.*
"Makes no difference, really, the outcome but I don't like having my surprise ruined. You would have gassed your best friend and some of his nearest and dearest and he would have, well, needless to say he _must_ like children because he's been fighting my little contraption for all this time."
Sherlock could barely hear John breathing in the background. It terrified him.
"Not long now. You won't find him. He's dead, as good as dead and so are all of _them_"
"And I'm a man of my word."
One last picture message.
"Moriarty, d-"
The large man swung a crowbar and Sherlock didn't need to hear John scream. He was screaming enough for both of them.