Fic: Sherlock: TGIO: The Body

[gayalondiel_bak]

thegameison_sh Cycle Three, Challenge Three
Third :D

Title: The Body
Character/Pairing: Sherlock, John
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Discussion of character death.

Disclaimer: The Holmes characters fall in the public domain: This version falls under the creative control of Messers Moffatt and Gatiss, and the BBC. No ownership is implied or inferred. This is done for love only.

Prompt: Poem
Crossposted to:watsons_woes, dispatch_box, sherlockbbc



John was dead.

Killed outright, dead on arrival.

Gone.

Sherlock closed his eyes and turned away from Mycroft's sympathy, shutting out the hospital room. In his mind he saw clouds of brick dust, John hauling himself to his feet, kneeling before him, gasping Hold on, Sherlock, as the world faded to black...

“He’s not dead,” he whispered.

***

The moment he was discharged, Sherlock headed for the mortuary. Molly met him outside the door. She murmured, “They wouldn’t let me take care of him,” and he found himself hugging her tightly before he passed her and swept in.

“Mr Holmes, is it?” said the coroner coolly. “The body’s through here.” He led him over, flicked the sheet on the gurney back, and there was John. Bruises on his face, torso and arms, nothing more. He could be sleeping.

Sherlock reached out, ready to see him wake, eyes clear, whispering hold on, Sherlock... He was almost touching him when the coroner said “No contact. Family request.”

Sherlock stayed for over an hour with the body. Watching, waiting. Twice he thought he saw the twitch of a muscle beneath his skin. He forced himself to remember.

“Sorry for your loss,” the coroner in a bored voice.

***
Lestrade and Mycroft sat up with him the night before the funeral. They drank brandy and spoke about John. Sherlock sat in silence, his mind spinning.

John kneeling before him, talking.

Brick dust on his eyelashes. Eyes bright, clear.

Cold and dead on a mortuary slab.

Not cold. They hadn’t let him touch the body.

Small circular bruises.

He was on his feet and down the stairs before the others could call his name. Already hailing a taxi when Lestrade barrelled out the door and made him wait for Mycroft.

“He’s not dead,” said Sherlock. “I saw him afterwards. He was fine. In the mortuary they wouldn’t let me touch him. Why? Because he was warm. There are circular bruises on his upper arm and inner elbow. Bruises consistent with injections. He had the same thing from his ‘flu shot.”

“Sherlock,” began Mycroft.

“Unless you shoot me you will not stop me,” he snapped. “Come, or leave.” Mycroft opened his mouth to speak but stopped at a glance from Lestrade.

“We’ll stay with you,” Lestrade said.

***

There was one attendant in the funeral home. Lestrade went for his badge, Mycroft prepared to pacify him. Sherlock struck him with a single blow and knocked him out cold.

Ignoring them he crossed the chamber and wrenched the coffin open. John was pale and quiet, wearing his dress uniform. He was still.

Doubt twisted Sherlock’s heart. Was he wrong? He brushed his cheek - not cold, not warm; felt at the carteroid artery - a flutter, or the rush of his own pulse? Sherlock squeezed his eyes against the tears that had gone unshed.

He heard Mycroft pull out his phone. Sherlock waited for the call, the fallout. But Mycroft was silent, and Sherlock opened his eyes to see him holding the device out, touchscreen face down, a centimetre or two away from John’s face.

He turned it over to reveal a fogged screen.

Then there were phone calls. Lestrade to Scotland Yard for containment and an ambulance and hurry, damn you. Mycroft to the Home Office, SOCA and Harry. Sherlock watched, and finally saw it. The tiniest flicker of an eyelid.

He cupped John’s cheek with one hand, and gently drew back his eyelid to reveal movement, flickering and trying to focus. He saw the exact moment John locked on to his own face, and Sherlock tried to smile, but found there was a tear on his cheek instead.


***

The coroner was arrested in minutes. He had a fatal heart attack soon thereafter. The attendant died in an accident as he was brought in.

Molly found a stash of drugs in the mortuary: barbiturates, anaesthetics, Amitriptyline. She called Lestrade, handed them over, and Donovan held her while she sobbed.

Anderson, in a startling moment of observation, found the tiny webcam embedded in the lid of the coffin.

Sherlock sat up with John every night until neither could possibly stay awake. On the fourth night John fell asleep. Sherlock dimmed the light and shut his eyes for a moment.

After waking to the sound of terrified screams, he resolved never to switch the light off again. Even though those screams were the only sound John would ever make.