A Good Man Went to War - Chapter 9

The music came from the home of John Watson, and was produced from John's violin being held reverently by Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock stepped slowly around John's bedroom in only his dark blue jeans as he played and the other fell into sleep. His shirt, which had become stained with blood when John's wounds opened during his using his friend as a punching bag, was discarded onto the floor; his coat and scarf were draped over the couch in the living room. Continuing on, Sherlock almost danced about, spinning and bowing slightly at the waist as if to put on a show for John should he open his eyes.

After a bit, he stopped and allowed his eyes to close as he played, realizing John was asleep but unable to leave the song unfinished. Even with that aside, he missed playing the violin. He'd only had one opportunity during his two years away, and that had been nearly a year ago itself. Sherlock hadn't been worried about his skill in the slightest though; he had perfected the violin many years ago and a single year away from his art wouldn't affect him.

When at last Sherlock ended the song just as smoothly as he had begun it, he drew in a deep breath as he opened his eyes. It was such a feeling, even for him, to make such a beautiful sound. He really always felt this overwhelming amount of power and serenity flowing from him even when he felt like everything had crashed down around him. Maybe that was why he felt excited when he realized that John had a violin, and he remembered how it would calm John to hear him playing back at Baker Street.

Anything to comfort the man he hurt so badly was enough to make him happy.

Sherlock turned back into the living room to set the violin back in the worn case John had it in, and then stopped at the doorway when he saw John laying on the bed. His eyes took in the sewn up lacerations across the front of his body and the healing ones across his face. Moriarty had done enough to enrage Sherlock in ways that even he didn't fully grasp. He just knew that he wanted to make the man pay dearly for what he had done to John.

Carefully Sherlock read every detail of the autopsy report, sometimes even reading a few things through twice just to be for certain. It appeared Lestrade identified the body, probably because his wife had finally discovered his affair with Sergeant Donovan and left him, and his family had relocated to halfway across England. Lestrade would be, obviously, the perfect choice to identify one of the men in his employ.

HOMICIDE

BULLET LODGED NEAR THE TOP OF THE SKULL; ENTRY ANGLE AND DEPTH INDICATE THE BULLET CAME FROM A LONG DISTANCE. POSSIBLE SNIPER ROUND(?)

Sherlock ground his teeth at the word "sniper." He thought that he had dispatched of the snipers that were a threat to those he knew, but apparently had others. He mentally scolded himself for not having realized that beforehand.

Finished with the file, Sherlock set it aside and grabbed another. This one was for Mike Stamford, an old friend of John's.

His cause of death was the same.

He grabbed another, and another, and another. The causes of death were all the same. And, better yet, every single one was someone they had known well and/or had helped them in their cases. It bothered him deeply that everyone they had been close to at any point in time had been killed by a sniper. Some of them he could see why they had been taken out since they were around them on at least a weekly basis - Anderson and Stamford mainly - but the others were people they'd had dealings with maybe just once. No one who would've been a threat to Moriarty's reign however.

Finally Sherlock picked up the final file and noticed something different about it. The word "important" had two exclamation points after it and was underlined sharply twice. He noted that the pencil used to make the word had been pressed down rather hard to make the letters bolder than on the other files.

He opened it to find a sheet of notebook paper taped delicately to the coroner's report; Molly wrote a short-hand note to John. Some of the letters had barely appeared and there were a few smudge marks on the edges of the paper. The date at the top of the note was from over two months ago, and it was all written in haste. Out of curiosity, Sherlock read the note.

John,

I wanted to tell you this in person, but I'm afraid I no longer have the time to do so. People are coming for me in connection with Sherlock's death, and I don't know for how much longer my colleague can fend off the soldier at the door. Sherlock is alive; he used a drug called tetradotoxin. Many believe it to not work in the fashion that he made it, but this is Sherlock Holmes. Of course he made it work. I don't have time to tell you the rest of it, but I do hope you find him soon. Ask him then. Sorry, but I don't know where he is or I would have told you at the beginning. Goodbye John.

Molly

Once Sherlock finished the note with a heart heavier than he thought he would have, he peeled it off of the coroner's report. His name, date of birth, the identifier of his body, and all the other general information was present, but where the details of his death should have been, only a single five-letter word resided scratched across the page.

A L I V E

His eyes stayed on the word for the longest time before he turned his attention back to the note. He skimmed over it again but felt no sadder or angrier for Molly's death. She was another on what was quickly becoming a long ledger of people he knew had been wrongfully taken down because of whatever connection they may have had to him or John. Perhaps he would avenge them, perhaps not. It wasn't quite clear yet.

Molly had done John a service by leaving him a note telling him that his best friend was still alive, though it appeared she chose her confession at an ill timed point. He still, however, found it a crying shame that she couldn't tell him in person. To be hunted down by someone he had obviously still been training - he had seen his manuscript for The Science of Deduction on the couch earlier - and who was probably twice the detective he had been two years ago would've been fun. Sherlock almost regretted the turn in events that forced him to come back to London.

Regardless of the final service Molly had done both men, Sherlock decided it would be best for John to see the note after he told him himself. He slipped the file, note and all, under the middle couch cushion. John wouldn't notice the slight difference in that particular cushion since he normally sat in the spot that Sherlock now occupied on the left side of the couch, something the former detective had noticed when he first entered the home.

Sherlock placed the other files back onto the side table exactly as he found them so as to avoid a yelling match with John already. He then found himself bored; nothing better to do then to go to sleep at the time since he was now a fugitive and couldn't go running off to help Scotland Yard. So he crawled back into the bed next to John with the thin blanket pulled up to his chin.

Before he drifted off to sleep, Sherlock suddenly made a mental note of two things:

1) John's hair was shaggy and needed to be cut in the morning.

2) John seemed much thinner than when they last saw each other, though he could attribute that to the imprisonment under Moriarty.