Prompting Part XXV
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IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
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IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
( Read more... )
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“No, Sherlock. Just-No.”
John heard Sherlock's confession, pulse racing, unable to process the words except to hear the urgency in them. He sprinted toward the hospital as soon as Sherlock hung up, arriving at the spot as Sherlock hit the ground.
Sherlock lay broken and bleeding on the pavement, just barely breathing. “Everyone stay away! Just-just don't touch him!” shouted John to the crowd that had gathered, spreading his arms to indicate a wide perimeter. “Sherlock, don't move,” he said as he knelt by Sherlock's head. “Just don't move, and you'll be okay, we'll get out of this. You'll be okay.” He slid his fingers under Sherlock's dark curls, clasping his bleeding head just firmly enough to insure it didn't move and snap the spinal cord. He bent over Sherlock, ear above his mouth, eyes focused on his chest, to monitor his faint breathing.
“John--”
“Don't try to talk, Sherlock, just concentrate on staying conscious. Think of the details of what happened up there, get it all straight in your head, but just don't move.”
“John, listen,” Sherlock struggled to speak, his voice a gasping whisper. “They have-to think-I'm dead.”
“Who does?”
“Everyone. The press. The whole world. I wanted you to think so too-” here Sherlock stifled a cough and John made sure he kept still- “But I couldn't think of a way to make this work without your help.”
“What do you need me to do?”
Even in his injured state, Sherlock could still break into that rapid speech John knew so well. “The paramedics will arrive in approximately 1.5 minutes. Pay close attention to everything I say between now and then and remember it as well as you can; your system is flooded with adrenaline at this moment so that should help you do so. Get the paramedics to strap me to the backboard, but then have them pronounce me dead and cover me in a sheet. I need to look dead when I'm taken into the hospital, John, it's useless without that. Then you'll bring me through the hospital and load me onto a furniture lorry that's waiting by the back door. Drive back to Baker Street and cover me with the Oriental rugs you will find in the bed of the lorry, then wheel me into the house. Molly has ensured me that all necessary medical supplies will be in the bed of the lorry as well. Put everything into the basement flat of Mrs. Hudson's building; it's less vulnerable to espionage than 221b. Then put me in traction-I've at least four, no-five significant fractures-and give me as much morphine as I can take without risking cardiac arrest. Definitely remember that last part. Actually, do that before you put me into the lorry.”
“Got it,” said John, smirking a little despite the situation. The paramedics were arriving now, and John had to pull rank to get them to comply, but he successfully made it appear that Sherlock had been pronounced dead. He was even able to get them to wheel the “body” into the mortuary rather than the emergency room.
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“Calm down, Molly, he's alive,” said John as he worked. “I've told him not to try to move but he hasn't said he can't feel anything, and he was quite conscious before the morphine, so there's hope of full recovery. He's told me the whole plan. Let's put it into action, shall we?”
Molly nodded. By that evening, Mrs. Hudson's basement flat had been converted into a miniature private hospital, complete with bed, IV, oxygen and medications, and space and tools for physical therapy. “A dartboard, John? Really?” said Sherlock when he became conscious, looking at the opposite wall. “Well, I knew you'd get bored," replied John, "and the recoil from a real gun would really be a bit much for you at this point, not to mention the noise and damage to the wall. But I could always put in a television in its place. Might do that anyway, actually.”
“Dull. Leave the dartboard.”
John and Molly arranged a memorial service and mourned with heartbreaking realism. They gave statements to the press and bought a burial plot in which they interred an urn of wood ash. John in particular visited the grave often, knowing it might easily be surveilled by Moriarty's surviving henchmen. Reasoning that if Mycroft could get hold of his therapist's notes then Moriarty's organization might be able to as well, John went back into therapy and even resumed his psychosomatic limp. Their show was flawless; not even a hint of suspicion was evinced by the press, the British Government, or the criminal underworld. As the months went by, Sherlock's health improved under John's care. Still hiding in the basement flat, Sherlock prepared to go after the rest of Moriarty's organization as soon as it was physically possible. His bones mended, he regained muscle tone and strength, and (at John's insistence) he tapered off his pain medication. But questions remained in John's mind. One day, as John and Sherlock worked through the physical therapy routine they'd devised, John decided to ask.
“You still haven't told me why you did it.”
“Jumped? I've accomplished more against Moriarty's organization with my staged suicide than I could've dreamed I would! Not only have I died in disgrace, thus ensuring that my inconvenient and hazardous celebrity status is effectively over, but I've also removed myself from the organization's radar and witnessed the death of Moriarty himself. I consider it one of my most successful ideas to date.”
“But why not just retire, to accomplish all that? Or be found dead after taking some sort of phoney poison, and wake up unharmed in Hawai'i or something? Surely there was an easier way than this,” John pointed out, as he helped Sherlock through a particularly painful stretch which proved his point.
“Hawai'i? Dull,” said Sherlock, grimacing. “A monoculture of happy, peaceful idiots, where the only crimes have to do with cannabis and even those have absolutely no mystery to them because they aren't even concealed. Give me fog and grime, give me intrigue and depravity, give me criminals, give me London! Even if the price is-ow!-annoying exercises and painful stretches.”
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“Well-honestly, I suppose there's no point in not telling you. Moriarty had snipers pointed at you, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson, and he told me I had to jump to save your lives. I tried to talk him into calling them off, but the maniac shot himself before I could get anywhere with that. Not exactly what I'd predicted. Anyway I knew he'd have some such scheme in mind with regards to you, so I put precautions into place to ensure I'd survive. I think it's gone quite well.”
“Wait a minute-so that's what happened? You risked your life to save me?”
“Not my life. Humans survive falls ten times that high every year; don't you think that's fascinating enough that I would've studied how they do it?”
“But your spine. You'd risk paralysis. I'm a doctor; I know there's no way someone can make a jump like that without a significant risk of catastrophic spinal injury.”
“Well-there weren't a lot of other options. I thought about it, and I did consider walking away. Bart's isn't the tallest building in the world, but I knew it would be quite a painful fall. I hesitated; I almost convinced myself it was too late and I should just climb down. But then you picked up the phone, and I heard you talking on the other end. I knew at that point that if you died because of me, it would cause a serious and long-term detriment to my concentration, which would hamper my work.”
“Oh, I see,” said John, smiling at his friend's effort to hide the tenderness of emotion that had caused him to throw himself from a building to save the people he loved. “A detriment to your concentration, that's all. Sherlock, thank you for telling me. Thank you-for saving my life. You shouldn't say you're not the hero. What you did on top of St. Bart's was pure heroism. There's just no other way to put it and you shouldn't try to frame it as anything else.” Sherlock scoffed mildly, but John knew better; and he decided to ask his other remaining question while Sherlock seemed to be willing to answer it.
“One more thing-you said you couldn't think of a way to make this work without me. But I've thought of three since we got here, and if I have, I can only imagine that you've got loads.”
“And if I have? Just because there were other, theoretically possible ways of faking my death that don't involve your knowledge doesn't mean they are at all possible outside the realm of theory.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, in any case, that a doctor is indispensable for any version of this scenario. You were definitely the most convenient and trustworthy choice.”
“Oh, I see,” John nodded, feeling just a twinge of disappointment.
“And also, is there any other way I could survive months of immobility and recovery? I'd be lost without my blogger,” Sherlock said, his smile slightly constricted by the bandages round his head.
John just patted Sherlock's cast and smiled.
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I've been racking through the old filled prompts and found this diamond in the ruff! It's heartwarming :)
Nice fill!
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