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keep_countingCharacters/Pairings: John, Sherlock, Harry Watson, Clara
Rating: PG13
Warnings: AU, selling of souls, a bit blood, dead people, temporary character-death, resurrection
Genre: Crossover/Drama/AU
Word-count: 1,564
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this.
A/N: Crossover with Supernatural, though it is not necessary to have watched the show: I am merely using the mythology to fill a plot-bunny made by
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fueschgast and me: the wonderful banner is also made by her!Summary: The strange, mad man shows up exactly two days after Harry's return.
Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Part Four // Part Five // ...
Sherlock
When I’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth
~
The strange, mad man shows up at the house exactly two days after Harry’s return. He’s wearing a long, billowing cloak, his dark hair is curly and his eyes are an intense blue that makes John sit and gape for a while.
He – Sherlock Holmes, that’s his name, which isn’t weird at all – is apparently some sort of private detective, only he’s been hired by an actual police inspector and John cannot fathom why this DI Lestrade would do such a thing.
“I’m a specialist,” Sherlock had said with a smirk, then frowned just a bit. “Or I’m becoming one,” when he’d said that he’d given Harry such an odd look and John hadn’t known if he had wanted to jump in front of his sister to protect her or just shake the man, ask him to explain.
Of course, no-one had explained anything to John bloody Watson, because no-one ever did.
“I just woke up in my grave,” Harry had said. “And I had to… well, I had to crawl out.”
She certainly looked like she’d crawled right out, with blood and dirt on a face that wasn’t at all mashed in from an intimate kiss with the front of a bus, and a quick visit to the hospital was definitely in order, and the police and a few hundred therapists for all of them while they were at it.
“You were dead,” Clara had muttered. John hadn’t said anything, only walked outside to jam his fingers in the door on-purpose: it hadn’t been enough to wake him from this very surreal, very realistic dream.
“I know,” Harry had said and then there’d been hugs and John had had to go upstairs to sleep. For forty hours.
And now this man was here. This man who claimed that he could give all the answer. This puzzling, mysterious man that looked at Harry as if she was a marvel and a treasure and an experiment all in one. And it was odd, because John was usually the first to bark at things like that, at anyone threatening his family, but this time his ire wasn’t raised: he felt, to his own great confusion, as if he could trust this man.
Yes. He’d definitely lost his marbles.
John was busy going over every single movie he’d seen, in where the victim kept flashing between a perfectly good, if slightly strange life and wrapped in a strait-jacket in some asylum somewhere, when suddenly Harry said something, her tea-cup clinking loudly down against the wood of the table.
Not that Harry hadn’t been saying a lot for the past few minutes, Mr Holmes having insisted that she tell every single detail of her side of the story. John honestly hadn’t been listening, because he’d heard it fourteen times now (yes, he kept count in a feeble hope that that would somehow help) and he still understood absolutely nothing of what had happened.
“I heard laughter, when I woke up in my coffin,” Harry said and John was sure, as sure as he was that his hair was greying and his shoulder ached in the winters, he was sure that she hadn’t mentioned that before.
Apparently so was Clara, because she gave Harry a startled look. Only, she wasn’t looking at Harry, John realized.
“John, are you alright?” she asked, reaching over to where John sat, clasping his hand tightly in hers. “You’ve gone so pale.”
“Yes, no, sorry,” he muttered, eyes trained on the floor. “It’s just… not nice… well, it’s just… a very uncomfortable topic.”
“One would think that the return of a lost relative would gain a happier reaction,” Sherlock said and John’s eyes snapped up to meet his, wide and shocked.
It wasn’t an accusation, not really. It was a statement, a wondering. Sherlock honestly wasn’t sure. He was just assuming. He was asking John, ‘is that right?’ ‘is that how it works?’
“Right, no, it’s not that. It’s more the, um…” to think up a lie in the face of a detective. “The whole buried alive thing, digging oneself out.” He laughed nervously and dropped the detective’s intense stare, because really, if eyes could burn (where had that thought come from?) these eyes would burn right through him and see everything.
Laughter.
Oh, Johnny-boooooooooooooy.
It happened just then, a simultaneous reaction from three of the four people in the room: John’s head snapped up as if hoping to see who had said that, but instead only observing Sherlock’s head turn to the side as if listening and Harry’s hand jerked violently, pushing her mug down on the floor where it shattered into pieces, tea staining the carpet.
“Sorry,” she muttered, hair coming down to hide her eyes.
“It’s alright, I’ll get that,” Clara said, squeezing Harry’s shoulder and picking up the broken pieces, apparently unaware that she was the only person in the room not tense and desperately searching with darting eyes for something that wasn’t there.
John’s hand clenched as he took calming breaths, telling himself that all of this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
“The police thought it was fraud, of course,” Harry started saying, as if wanting to fill the silence with something. Sherlock’s interest was wavering though, only half-way listening to what she was saying. “That we’d wanted insurance money and had somehow screwed up or something. But there wasn’t much they could do: there were too many people involved, two coroners that we’d never met before, the people arranging the funeral, the poor priest that saw me crawl out of that hole…” she let out a snort at that last one and John felt somewhat grateful that she could at least joke a bit about it, about anything in general after what she’d been through. God knows he couldn’t.
“The coroner,” Sherlock said, sharp eyes focused now. “That was Molly Hooper, right?”
Harry lifted an eyebrow in confusion. “I honestly don’t remember, I didn’t…”
“It was,” John interrupted, remembering the sweet woman who’d been so kind to him in there. “At St. Bart’s morgue. She was the one that showed me…” he trailed off, eyes flickering to Harry’s whole, unblemished, un-bloodied face and he didn’t know why he suddenly felt like throwing up: she was here, she was safe. Everything was alright.
“She showed you the body?” Sherlock was focused on him now, and it was really unnerving to have the full attention of this man. “Did you notice any marks on her?”
John’s eyes widened. “Any marks? She’d been hit by a bus, for god’s…”
“No-no, not on your sister,” Sherlock interrupted, sounding exasperated and impatient as if John was being dense on purpose. “Molly, the coroner. Did you notice any unusual markings?”
“Um, no?” John muttered, thinking that he had been a bit occupied with his dead sister at the moment to really notice or care that much.
“Damn,” Sherlock mumbled and John had to fight back his temper, thinking back to the day and how every single light in the morgue had seemed brighter than what should be possible, that the grey tiled-floor had seemed almost green, that everything had seemed fluid and moving, especially when that man had smiled at him so widely.
Wait.
“There was a man there,” John practically yelled, eyes widening in realization. Why hadn’t he remembered that before. “A man… in the coroner’s office.”
He felt ridiculous just saying it, because why shouldn’t there be – Molly hadn’t been the only one working there. But Sherlock’s eyes lit up as if it was Christmas, and he leaned eagerly towards John.
“Yes?”
“He was wearing a suit, I think,” John had said. “And he was… he was smiling at me. Really widely.”
“Brilliant,” Sherlock said. “Oh, this is just… this is fantastic, it’s just…” he leaned back in the chair and let out a low laugh, eyes closing in delight.
Harry raised an eyebrow. “So, do you know what happened to me?”
“Of course I do, I’ve known all along.”
“What?” John hissed.
“Yes. You see,” Sherlock sat up straight again. “I’ve been on a special case for quite some time now. Almost my whole life. DI Lestrade contacted me about it, and I’ve been following the leads and clues for a while now. At first, none of it made sense. But I kept digging and I found… oh, the things I found. But there was no other way,” he was looking at Harry again, hands tucked under his chin, palms flat against each other as if in prayer. “Once you’ve ruled out every other possibility, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the correct answer. But I thought it couldn’t be. I had to test it out.”
“What do you mean, ‘test it out’?” John said, fist still clenched, vaguely wondering if Sherlock really was a mad-man.
“Because there is one thing you said, John, that isn’t correct,” Sherlock continued, eyes glinting in triumph. “Harriet wasn’t buried alive. She was very much dead."
“I really was?” Harry mumbled, low and quiet and sounding just a bit scared. John wanted to reach out and comfort her, but was too tense to do so, too engrossed in the dangerous, thrilling glint in Sherlock’s eyes.
“Oh yes. Until I brought you back to life again.”
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Date: 2012-03-03 08:51 pm (UTC)Oh wait, that must mean he got kiss Jim. Oh god, now I have a bad case of envy. On the other hand, Sherlock totally just sold his soul! Oh, the things he would do just to test a theory.
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Date: 2012-03-04 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-07 08:09 am (UTC)