Wormwood. Chapter Four.

[ghislainem70]

Title: Wormwood. Chapter Four.
Author:  ghislainem70
Rating: NC-17
Word count:  1765
Warnings: graphic depictions of violence (entire work), explicit sex (entire work)
Summary:  Sherlock, John and Lestrade become entangled in a mystery of the London art and theatre worlds.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al 

After the third pint, John was thoroughly miserable with himself. He wanted to be back at 221b with his own life, his life together with Sherlock. He remembered their lovemaking before the fireplace last night and his heart painfully contracted.  He wasn’t going to let a 10 year old failed romance ruin the present, after all he had been through to be here, was he? He heard the mocking voice of Mrs. Moriarty, admonishing him that the secret to life was to live in the present, the now.

The past was dead.

It certainly looked as if Sherlock was caught up in the past.

He ordered another pint. A familiar black-coated figure sat down next to him. Lestrade.

"John. Thought you might be here."

"Well. You see me. Kindly leave me, Lestrade."

Lestrade was taken aback at the black pain he heard in John’s voice. He wondered if Mrs. Moriarty and her threat had really gotten to John after all. This was not like John, however, who was probably the bravest of them all, when it came down to it. Lestrade was not ashamed to admit that. It was one of the things that made Lestrade put John above all others. He was worthy to be so.

"Come on then," he said gently. "Look, I don’t want you worrying about Moriarty. Mycroft has it well in hand. No surprises this time. I know you know that Mycroft watches you and Sherlock -" Here John pounded the table -"so it would be very hard for Moriarty to make a move on Baker Street."

"Who says I’m going to be at Baker Street?" John said bitterly.

Lestrade was amazed. "Look, I don’t know what you’re on about. Forget that bitch. John, seriously -" here he made a very bold move and put his hand on John’s arm - "if they want to try to take you again, they’ll have to come through me first," he swore fervently. It was not bravado. He meant it with all his toughened heart.

John looked at him, really looked at him for the first time since the cavern at the lighthouse. Lestrade took his hand away and waited.

"Lestrade. Thank you. But I really don’t want everyone trying to pen me in, you may as well put me in a cell with Mrs. Moriarty if it comes to that." He well remembered his own cell, the black water rising. "No. I am going to live my life."

"Listen, I understand. For police, we deal with this too. You can’t live your life looking over your shoulder and I’m not asking you to. But Moriarty, that’s a different class of animal. I’m just asking you to consider taking precautions, that’s all."

John was listening.

"Sherlock’s in love with Ophelia, or anyway, she’s in love with him. Still." John blurted. He was definitely more than a little drunk.

Lestrade bit back a triumphant grin. This was getting better and better.

"Look, John. I know I have been way out of line. You were right to let me have it. I know I deserved it. But if you want somewhere to stay, somewhere that isn’t Baker Street, you can stay in my flat. I promise to be good as gold." He held up his hands, all innocence. He pulled a spare key from his pocket and left it on the table. "Please be careful, John. I meant what I said. You don’t have to ring first if you decide to come. Just come."

He left, whistling a familiar Scottish tune.

* * *

As he was returning to Scotland Yard, Lestrade got a strange email. When he opened the attachment, he saw a beautiful woman with long blonde hair, reclining in an old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub full of water.

Her hands were folded over her chest and she appeared to be asleep in the water. She was wearing what looked to be a medieval gown of some sort, colorful and richly embroidered.

The bath water was scattered with red flowers. Poppies.

He looked closer at the picture. Maybe not asleep. Maybe unconscious.

Or maybe, dead.

* * *

He forwarded the email to his team with an urgent request to get him any information about it and was about to text Sherlock when Sherlock texted him first, asking him for help.

Lestrade could not ever remember Sherlock asking for his help with anything.

The text requested his help in finding the missing actress, Beatrice Phillips, true name Irene Adler. Sherlock had helpfully appended her photos from the Hamlet production, in costume.

Lestrade went cold.

* * *

Rather than send the photo on to Sherlock, Lestrade decided to wait the few extra minutes and show it to him in person.  He would go to Baker Street.

* * *

Sherlock was restlessly searching the Internet for clues. Suddenly, his screen was entirely taken over by an image. It was a photograph of a Victorian playing card. The Queen of Hearts. He pounded the table in frustration. His laptop was temporarily frozen.

"No!! Come on, then!!" He quickly figured out how to disable the image and save it properly. He was studying it for clues when he got a call from Mycroft.

"I hope I’m not interrupting anything important," Mycroft said.

"Not at all, not at all, Mycroft." Sherlock was not about to get into a discussion with Mycroft, of all people, about Irene Adler. Mycroft would be apoplectic. Under ordinary circumstances the prospect might have brought a grin of sorts to Sherlock’s lips, but not now. He listened to Mycroft with approximately one one-thousandth of his attention and continued clattering at his keyboard.

"Do you have any free time just at the moment? I’m afraid the manhunt for McQuarrie and Ballantyne has gone cold. We’ve looked over all the evidence, of course, but thought that you could give a hand. Look it over, tell us what we’re missing."

"Mycroft, if you’ve missed it, probably it isn’t there." A rare admission of competency from one brother to another. Mycroft realized Sherlock was actually trying to avoid getting involved. He must have something on, something he didn’t want Mycroft to know about. Yet.

"It’s just a little video. Take you no time at all. You remember the cave, the one you blasted? There’s some video feed. McQuarrie was recording the entire excavation. Must have been afraid his confederates would steal the gold from under his nose and didn’t want to leave anything to chance."

Sherlock sighed. "Go on then, send it to me and I’ll tell you what I think." He hung up without further formalities.

Now there was a new message from Mycroft, containing a video attachment. Sherlock closed the image of the Queen of Hearts card, made a clear print of it on his printer, and opened the attachment.

* * *

It was the black cave below the lighthouse. It was very well lit, though so the images were at least of good quality, very good in fact.

Sherlock groaned impatiently. The manhunt for McQuarrie and Ballantyne was a boring distraction. The men would turn them up eventually.

He was scanning quickly through the video. Now he saw two men in black drysuits, McQuarrie and Ballanyne. One was bleeding, dragging John and cuffing him to a pillar.

Now he slowed it down, paying close attention.

One of the rubber-suited men was watching at the entrance to the cave. The other man was beating John viciously. There was no sound with the video, but Sherlock could see that John was not saying anything in response to repeated questions.

It gave him a unique sensation of exquisite pain to see John being hurt, and he did not notice that tears were actually welling in his eyes until they dropped, splashing, onto the keyboard.

Now Lestrade was bursting in, taking down both of the black-suited men with what looked like a rock. Sherlock was, for once, glad that Lestrade had been there.

Now Lestrade went to John, reached out to release him. And was suddenly pressing hard against John’s body, kissing him fiercely.

And with a pain that made his feelings a moment before seem like the merest nothing, he saw the unmistakable, and to Sherlock very familiar, signs of John’s passion in return.

Sherlock whirled away from the screen. The laptop he flung with all his might against the wall, shattering it into a thousand fragments.

* * *

John returned from the pub with takeaway Chinese from down the street.  He felt like a complete fool and was determined to forget all about Ophelia/Beatrice/Irene. It was ten years ago. Sherlock was his, now.

Sherlock was sitting in his customary chair by the fireplace, staring at the wall which seemed to have a new injury of some sort. He was extraordinarily pale, even for Sherlock.

John put the food down on the little breakfast table and went to kiss Sherlock, hoping to get him to eat something.

Sherlock brandished his violin bow violently at John, holding John at a distance, rather like a rapier.

"Don’t. Touch. Me." Sherlock whispered, still not looking at him, not looking at anything at all but something he was seeing only in his own mind.

"Sherlock," John was exasperated. This was too much.  He tried again to raise Sherlock from the chair, but Sherlock pushed his hand away with a roughness that John had never felt from Sherlock.  Sherlock turned his face away.

Now John saw that Sherlock was holding a colorful picture of a Victorian playing card depicting the Queen of Hearts. With a flash of intuition, he realized what Sherlock was still obsessing about. Beatrice. Ophelia. Irene. "I thought you loved me once."

The Queen of Hearts.

She meant to rule him again.

John could even see, with complete amazement, that Sherlock had recently been crying.

John was sometimes slow on the uptake, but even he could read these clues.  Beatrice, or Irene, or Ophelia, really was Sherlock’s lost love. Perhaps he had thought her gone forever, but now that she was back, he wanted her.  John had been perhaps a welcome distraction after what must have been years of torment of losing Irene, missing her.  Sherlock had waited ten full years before even living with another human soul. And God knows, he reproached himself, I made it easy enough for him.

He almost despised himself.

He turned and went to his room. It was never too soon to extract yourself from a failed relationship, this was one thing John had learned well, over the years.

He threw a few items into his duffle bag, and left without saying goodbye.

Lestrade’s key jingled in his pocket.

To be continued . . .

back to Chapter Three:  Next Chapter (Five):