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Ghosts are meant to do the decent thing and stay dead. Sherlock, of course, never got the hang of doing the decent thing and probably saw staying dead as only a slightly better option than staying quiet, so he came marching back into all our lives and brought chaos back with him.Not that I would have had it any other way, for John and Mycroft’s sake even if not mine.But it doesn’t mean my heart and brain work the same when I see his name on my phone at 3.00am.Grief and loss and joy and luck; all those heavy thoughts in a second or two before I blink myself awake and the bed’s too small and too empty and the rain is thundering outside and my dead… my no longer dead annoyance in chief is ringing me so early in the morning even the owls are in bed.It’s a lot.Sherlock’s a lot. The whole damn family is, and that includes John now, because he’s a Holmes in every way that matters aside from a ring on his finger.‘Sherlock.’ I don’t bother reminding him of the time. I’m never quite sure he thinks things like time apply to him, unless he’s trying to work out the time of death.‘How quickly can you get to Dartmoor?’I don’t bother blinking in surprise at that. It’s a reflex you lose once you’re around him for long enough. ‘Why Dartmoor?’‘I am unavoidably detained with a case -‘ I can hear a sudden quick squabble in the background, a woman’s voice saying ‘a goose?’ and John saying ‘don’t worry, Mrs Hudson, I didn’t let him bring the giant rat in,’ and then a crash - ‘and I need someone down there immediately.’‘What about John?’ I protest.‘John is, I’m afraid, an integral part of my case here for tomorrow at least. And I need someone on the ground there tomorrow. John’s skills aren’t in the order of teleportation.’I don’t want to go to Dartmoor. It took years for the guys at work to run the Hound jokes into the ground last time around.‘I’m working,’ I point out.‘Mycroft has already cleared that with your superiors. He’ll meet you at Baker Street at 8.00am to leave for Dartmoor. Unless that is inconvenient.’‘You’re meant to make that a question, Sherlock,’ I hear John’s voice in the background.I don’t think anyone has ever won that argument with Sherlock. He talks about inconvenience like a parrot talking about the weather; without any kind of understanding or malice. He doesn’t get it.I’m glad, after all this time, there’s still something of our Sherlock left. Annoying and all.I tell him to fuck off in my head, and start packing bags once he’s hung up. At least I don’t have to deal with the giant rat.**There is a goose wandering around Baker Street. Mrs Hudson has a casserole dish out and a book on French meat cookery on the table, so I doubt the goose will be a long term resident. Best not to know anything about it.John’s staring at Sherlock. He always has to hide that away; turn and make a joke of it, a deflection. Would have been easier to hide if he’d ever remembered that, despite all Sherlock’s digs on the matter, we’re still Scotland Yard.It’s different now, since he decided to stop being dead. Since Sherlock gained all those scars he thinks we don’t know about, the ones that make him wince and grimace in cold weather which is all it ever seems to be in London these days. Like he expects him to vanish if he looks away for too long.Fear and wonder and… yeah. Love.Why lie? John loves him, you can see that in every one of their moments together.If he can teach a Holmes to recognise that they’re loved, it might be the best thing he’s ever pulled off. I don’t think either of them know how to be.And then Mycroft’s there, so John stops staring at Sherlock and stares at him instead. ‘Are you sure Watson doesn’t bite?’ Someone asked me once, and no… No, I’m not. If he needed, if he thought he needed to protect Sherlock, I wouldn’t bet against it.‘Brother mine,’ Mycroft leads off and curses on the man, that’s exactly the wrong tone of voice to take with Sherlock this early in the morning. How can someone who’s grown up with him be so stupid?But this Sherlock, our Sherlock as he is now… still half a ghost, still jumping at noises in the night and shadows in the street (and if that’s what John tells me willingly, what else does he keep secret?) just glares at him and waves everyone to their seats.The goose honks companionably from by the fire and a PowerPoint display flickers into life on one of their laptops. I’m not sure they bother with separate possessions anymore; at least Sherlock treats every unlocked mobile in his sightline as fair game and locked ones as some kind of enrichment toy.It must be John who put it together because the whole thing is incredibly fond. I don’t think Sherlock notices, because he gets distracted halfway through and starts googling melting points of diamonds, while John keeps lecturing us about Dartmoor.It probably isn’t anything to do with Hounds, real or otherwise.Just, two people have disappeared while out walking down there recently and Search and Rescue aren’t very happy with the condition of the bodies they’ve got back. They don’t look quite right, although the reports are a bit coy about exactly what’s ’not quite right.’I feel like that’s a phrase that’s doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Probably need Molly to take a look at least; she’ll give you a straight answer.But there’s someone else missing, and it makes sense now. John slides the picture over while Sherlock’s muttering about files and drawing something that’s either a complicated diagram or something entirely meaningless straight out of his head.A young man, messy dark hair, dark eyes. Look at him just right and you might see a hint of Sherlock there. Or maybe I’m doing John a disservice there, breaking it down to looks.‘His name’s Sean. He was in my regiment,’ and John stares at me. I must have caught his gaze before, but maybe not like this. All razor blade sharpness and storm cloud threats: defensive.‘We were friends.’Friends, I think and don’t say and how many more things do we not say between the four of us? Do we ever talk once we stopped needing the seance board and the gravestone and ‘stop being dead, Sherlock?’I don’t think we do.‘Lovers. You might as well tell them, John,’ Sherlock says. His hand on John’s wrist is a dance move writ in miniature. The flex of long musician’s fingers around pale skin, the bounding vulnerability of John’s pulse.‘He was your lover.’‘I fucked him a few times in Kabul and that is not relevant to this case.’Next to me is silence from Mycroft. Quiet, contained silence as if he knew and perhaps he did. I remember the grilling we got when John first arrived on the scene, the love and the fear that he poured into his research.He researched drugs like that once, I remember. As though John was just another addiction that might break his brother.‘He was on a walking holiday. The others… the other two were local. One was a horse rider, the other was collecting butterflies.’‘He is the first one who’s body hasn’t been found almost immediately. The others were found within a day, all close to the area where they’d been reported missing.’John gives a briefing like he’s been trained to do it. Perhaps he learnt it from me; perhaps it’s ghosts from the hospital and the army showing through. He’s good at it.Sherlock stares at him too. Although Sherlock stares at lots of people; I’m never quite sure if he’s fascinated by someone or working out ways to kill them without leaving a trace. But his eyes go soft when he looks at John, even when John’s talking about body parts and blood splatter.Takes one to know one and all that.Fifteen minutes and I’ve got a murder case dumped fully on my lap. Twenty minutes and Sherlock is hurrying me and Mycroft out the door, and into the stair rods of rain outside.He’ll be down tomorrow morning, he promises me. I know Mycroft says something in return, because the temperature between them drops like a stone.It’s a good job John’s still inside, else he’d start humming Western showdown music at them both and that’s never helped before but it hasn’t stopped him doing it.There’s a car outside with number plates that promise all sorts of harm to anyone who might enquire too closely about why it’s going anywhere or who the people are inside. Until I met Mycroft, I didn’t realise there were layers of protection above diplomatic immunity.He lets me have the front seat. Folds himself neatly into the back and I find myself wishing I could see him for the journey.We don’t get long enough together.Or perhaps I should stop asking for things like that. I don’t want the universe to see fit to throw us into quarantine together or something.**
The benefit of a chauffeur is that you don’t have to drive, of course. The downside is, despite Mycroft’s promises, it’s hard to speak in front of strangers.His drivers and aides are all the same, really. Anonymous. If I ask questions about their roles I’ll either get silence or answers, and I’m not sure what one would disturb me most. There’s a curve on this one’s arm, a suggestion of something mostly hidden by clothing that invites questions about the things you can’t see.Do they work for him? For the government? I guess we can say they work for Sherlock’s safety, now, at least. Or maybe they’ve worked out the cost analysis of that now, so they work for Sherlock’s safety up until he’s too much of a liability.So we don’t talk, all the way down South, all the way down the motorways. The rain whispers against the glass and I think of missing people and bogs and that strange dog with the fire bright painted face we’d met there once before.Behind me, I think Mycroft is doing paperwork. At least, at one stage, I hear a small, neat sigh and the recording of a voice memo: ‘Reminder: Switch Harley to Driver And Vehicle Licencing Agency, effectively immediately.’Other than that, I might as well have lost him somewhere in the storm on route.**It’s a different pub. A different slice of the moor, all granite houses huddling for shelter and swaybacked trees standing dolefully on the edge of sight.‘Am I even allowed to be myself here?’ I ask and Mycroft lifts an eyebrow at me.He looks good out here, I think. He always does. The rawbone strength of him, all whipcord thin, the few lights outside the inn catching his eyes to spark them like flints. Like he could have got down from a four horse carriage back in some other century. Timeless and vital, something drawn down from dreams.Not thoughts you should indulge on the job. Not thoughts that are safe to have anyway, not about him.‘What do you mean, Inspector?’I wonder how my name would sound in his mouth.‘Am I here as an Inspector? Sherlock neglected to mention that.’He shrugs, a movement as insubstantial as moonlight. ‘This is John’s case. I am sure, like my brother, he trusts your judgment.’‘Is that why you didn’t say anything on the journey down? About what we were going to do here?’‘If those two trust you to hold the fort before they can arrive, I can assure you there is nothing I could have said or suggested that would make the faintest bit of difference. You know full well they tend to be suspicious of my decisions, especially now.’‘So why are you here?’ I ask in the end.He stares at me as if it’s obvious. ‘Because they asked me to come. Have you any idea how rarely either of those two ask for things?’‘You told me John asked for help with the speeding fines he got. And that Sherlock got you to arrange for him to borrow that elephant from London Zoo.’‘Don’t remind me,’ he mutters. ‘The elephant took more paperwork than their London Bridge closure and the using dynamite to get evidence out of the Thames thing combined.’Sherlock being involved in the dynamite thing makes sense. I can’t see why I’d never worked that one out.‘They both asked me to come,’ Mycroft repeats. ‘Of course I came.’**The morning is a blur of visits and paperwork. Of two desolate families already soured on the police, already angry with that kind of brittle rage which is a close cover for heartbreak.Mycroft shadows me. Strange, to walk into someone’s house, sit on someone’s broken leather settee and know the bloke at your shoulder drinking a cup of tea can sit in palaces and Downing Street if he so chooses. He passes for a copper about as well as a lion passes for a house cat but no-one challenges him on it.Butterfly collector guy might have wandered into a bog. Might have fallen, not been able to call for help. Might have been innocent.Riding guy might have fallen. Horse might have spooked or got them both lost; he came home riderless. Might have been innocent.Sean might have wandered off. People do that, don’t they? Walk away when it’s a bit much. Wander off to take a call or for a moment of silence in a group and then the mist comes down and…We were all here before. We know how it ended then.Devon and Cornwall Police don’t want to listen. Fine. Mycroft worries them more than he worries the normal people. I can’t say I blame them. Hard to be reassured that you’re doing your job alright when the Met are sending down people who won’t explain what they’re doing, and the press are ranging outside.The search is huge. Men and drones and dogs, press and onlookers and volunteers. Some of them are military men, and I wonder what memories of John they might have. What ghosts I might be able to raise up by going down there.There’s a search and rescue team. People who know about mud and about scenting with animals, and how the early autumn chill can turn into something with teeth that rend. They don’t need me here; I could put together a search in London and Mycroft could pull‘I need the autopsy reports,’ I say and Mycroft manages something that might be a smile. It should probably seem stranger, that he smiles at times like this.‘They’ll have them for you tonight,’ he says and I don’t doubt him. Why would I?‘Anything else you want?’ He offers later. It is later, I hadn’t noticed how late. Easy to lose yourself in pages of documents when Sherlock isn’t there to jump at conclusions and distractions, even if you can’t forget that there’s a man out there missing.A man John Watson… what? A man John had known. Let’s leave it at that. That’s a long list, according to rumours, even if you keep it to lovers.Maybe I should have asked him more questions but then what would I remember of twenty years ago? And how I could have asked those questions with Sherlock sitting there… I couldn’t.Dartmoor is empty when I let myself out into the garden of the hotel. Stars scattered carelessly across the sky, which seems unnaturally large and empty here. The quiet grates across my nerves; I’ve had all the silence anyone would ever want in their lives.Two dead men.One missing man.I’m not Sherlock to sort all that out. I can’t be.It’s a short walk out onto the moor itself. I can see Mycroft’s light burning in his room; the two of us the only ones staying here. I wonder how far away I can walk and still have that light to guide me home. He managed to find Sherlock across the River Styx after all.I walk, and I think. Two dead men and one missing. Two and one, one and two, and John and Sherlock and why are we here in the dying days of the year?The stars are burning. You’d think you could feel the heat of them, shining that fiercely.I stumble and the light is gone.The grass is soft.Their voices aren’t. Their hands aren’t.I wonder what Mycroft’s hands would feel like, as the world spirals away in the rain and the dark.
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Turns out John isn’t the only Holmes who lacks a bedside manner. The lights are blazing, a constellation forced down to ceiling level and captured in a too small room at the inn. The door is not only closed but jammed from the inside with a chair shoved across it. Vaguely I think the bed’s been moved as well; we’re not in a direct line from the window anymore.And Mycroft is alongside me, eyes blazing with rage to outshine the lights.‘What the fuck was that, Greg?’I don’t think I’ve heard him swear before. Not like that, passion and the need for silence combined so it comes out as almost a whisper. I wonder who he’s trying to not disturb; it’s not like Mrs Hudson is here.I go to answer and realise I can’t. Everything’s muzzy, a long way away. It’s not that opening my mouth hurts; it’s that I can’t do it. The signals don’t seem to be going through.He glares at me. At the world, I guess, and I just happen to be in the immediate part he’s looking at.‘Stay there,’ he commands.I couldn’t disobey him if I wanted to. I get as far as persuading one ankle to twitch a bit and it takes more effort than keeping a straight face around one of Sherlock’s announcements.So I do. Nothing to watch and nothing to listen do once he’s dragged the chair away and let himself out; there’s a furious conversation on the edges of my hearing but it fades in and out like dreams and it’s too much effort to follow it.Had there been someone’s face out there, close to mine? Hands on my body in a way that I can’t quite remember? Or is that all dreams, dredged up from memory and mixed with things that never happened?The air’s cold against my face.I can’t remember what I’m wearing now; can’t remember what I was wearing when I left. Does it smell of blood or is that another dream?Funny how there always seems to be blood.Sherlock wore it like a shroud. So did John, from all I’ve heard.There isn’t a clock here. I can’t find my phone.That furious whispering continues as though he means to keep it up to the end of the world. It feels like an anchor.I cling to it.Later. There is a later. I wasn’t sure, for a while, if there would be.But there is, and Mycroft is back hovering at the edge of the bed. His hands flit around like butterflies.I like his hands. I’ve seen them sign paperwork to bring down governments and to kill men.I should tell him that, I think.Now, one hand touches my shoulder briefly. An anchor changed to armour.The world falls away and he goes with it.He smiles a lot in dreams, Mycroft does. Did you know that? Does he know that?**There’s a fight going on. I keep my eyes closed and try not to listen to it. Sherlock seems to be carrying most of it.Time hasn’t bothered coming back online yet, so I don’t know how long it is before I realise Sherlock shouldn’t be there. Nor should John, or the strangers I can vaguely see, sat back so that they’re also not noticeable from the window.Mycroft ought to be, and he is. That’s enough.Strange realisation to have, that safety can be a man like him.‘Ah, you’re awake, Inspector.’ John’s voice is just this side of anxious. He’s doing that tense thing he does, when he bites off every sound into almost a single word.I don’t open my eyes but I do try and turn a little towards him. It doesn’t feel like anything in my body is listening to anything else right now.‘How can you tell?’ Mycroft, equally worried.‘His breathing changed. Sherlock, for God’s sake stop arguing with the staff and get my kit bag, would you? The rest of you, I need some space a moment. Go outside.’Always interesting, watching their little power games with each other. I wonder if John knows how much authority he really has, when he can make a man who makes generals cower walk out of a room with just a gesture.There’s a long silence. I don’t hear the door close, which probably means Mycroft hasn’t moved very far away.‘Can you talk yet?’ John asks, and he’s switched into using his Doctor voice.Does he know just annoying that is?‘Yes,’ and that turns out to be mostly a lie, because my voice gives up halfway through so it’s mostly an exhalation of breath.‘Right. Don’t try, just yet. Mycroft’s done enough talking for the both of you. I didn’t know he knew that many words, let alone all in one go.’He’s a good doctor, John. Perhaps we’re all so used to seeing him as Sherlock’s… Sherlock’s whatever he is that we forget what he was before. What he still can be, when the need’s there.He’s quick and gentle. Kind. Things that Sherlock needs, even if Sherlock doesn’t think so.‘Well, you’re not dying,’ he says at last and throws the last of the testing gear into a paper bag and crumples it all up. ‘I did tell Mycroft that on the phone but he wasn’t inclined to believe me. Poor fella he dragged in here to look after you first barely got out in one piece from what I hear.’I don’t remember there being anyone else. Or maybe that was the hands I’d dimly felt?‘Mycroft got a doctor?’ This time, my voice makes it through most of the sentence.John quirks an eyebrow at that. ‘Course he did. Only thing that stopped him dragging you straight off to a hospital was me yelling at him down the phone. He was worried.’‘I didn’t -‘‘Oh, he does. When there’s enough provocation. We’ve seen him worried about Sherlock before, remember?’I nod. Nodding is a mistake. A century’s worth of New Year’s fireworks go off in my skull and John grabs my hand.‘Do not throw up, Greg. You won’t like what it does to your head. Keep still.’I do as I’m told, although I must bruise his hand in the process. He doesn’t mention it.‘What happened?’ I ask once the colours have subsided a bit and I can see John again. The shadow across the room is Mycroft in the doorway, blocking all the light.‘Someone drugged you. I haven’t managed to work out what with, yet.’ He frowns at that, as though it’s a personal front. ‘Which is why, despite Mycroft’s screaming to the contrary, I’m not actually doing anything for you. It’s been nine hours, you’re improving. Let it work itself out. You’ll be ok.’‘How?’Suddenly the room’s full again. Two Holmes brothers, both of them agitated, and someone who I guess is Mycroft’s security because they’re holding the kind of gun you generally don’t see here and no-one gives them a second look.‘I took the liberty of coming looking for you,’ Mycroft says after a moment. ‘You had been gone for longer than I thought. And…’ he looks away.His hands look swollen, red and black clouded across the skin. ‘I found you. And them.’‘Which is why,’ Sherlock interjects, ‘we’ve now got two bodies for John to occupy himself with once he’s allowed out of here. And my dear brother can no longer claim any kind of moral high ground about things I might have done in the past to protect John.’It feels like there’s a story there, at least from the way John tenses. I’m glad I missed whatever it was. Sounds like paperwork in triplicate if nothing else.John moves people away, shushes them back like chess pieces aside from Mycroft, who stays. Laying under his watch feels a lot like protection. I don’t know if there’s other words I could ascribe to it.John does the briefing, again. Slips off being a doctor with a final spray of disinfectant on his hands and it’s the soldier who lays everything out for me, with plenty of checking in to make sure that I understand.Mycroft had found me less than a mile from the inn. Mycroft opted not to say how he’d found me, or even why he thought I’d been missing for longer than a normal walk would take. I’d been in a car boot, one man driving, one man on the back seat with a map in his hands.Anyway, neither of those two were ever going to be saying anything ever again.(‘You don’t need to kill the suspects,’ Sherlock grumbles then, and John glares at him. As much as John can anyway, which isn’t a great deal.)No, no-one’s looked at the bodies yet. No, no-one’s told Devon and Cornwall Police yet, let alone the press. Carpet sweeping and stuff. It doesn’t do to have Scotland Yard come sweeping into your patch and committing murder on the same day.Mycroft doesn’t wave the word away. He seems fairly calm, at ease with the idea of being a killer in the most hands on way. I’m sure John will fill me in tomorrow or whenever.‘Someone will notice they’re missing eventually,’ Sherlock says after a moment.‘Did you see anything?’ He asks me and I go to shake my head before remembering not to. Ponies in the dark. The far distant hoot of an owl. A sky too large for comfort for anyone who’s used to London.‘I don’t remember.’There’s a silence where they ought to be complaining about my shortcomings as a detective and I don’t like it. Feels like I’m probably not as OK as John says I will be, if they’re all trying to be gentle.‘How did you two get down here so fast?’ I ask instead, and the answer is Mycroft’s hand tightening on my wrist. I hadn’t felt him place it there to start with.‘Our case was… postponed,’ John says easily. ‘And Mrs Hudson agreed to feed the goose, so we came as quickly as we could.’‘Good,’ and I’m not sure if it’s me or Mycroft who says that. It’s too much to keep track of anyway.‘You can go to sleep if you need to,’ John says after a moment. The doctoring tone is back in his voice, the expectation that everyone will do as he says.This time, there’s no dreams and no voices. But I think there’s someone close by, at least.**‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ John’s making it sound like a chant, dragging me back to wakefulness.This time, I can move. It hurts, the nerves crackle and protest but they work. I drag myself into sitting up and looking around. There’s a bar across the window, a security guard in the corner and Mycroft still sitting next to me.‘Do you want me to tell him to be quiet?’ He asks.‘No. No, it’s fine.’Obviously it isn’t fine, because John’s still swearing and Sherlock’s barely getting a word in. It doesn’t sound like an argument, though.‘What’s happening?’He surprises me with a shrug. ‘I don’t know. John hasn’t seen fit to report to me yet, and my brother has been too busy getting into a squabble with the press over what elements of the case they need to report, so…’It must be the first time in his life he’s ever admitted openly to not knowing something.He passes me a glass of water and watches me drink. My bit of the world suddenly seems very silent indeed.**John comes in half an hour later. He won’t look at any of us, directly. Even Sherlock’s been cut out of his gaze.The blank wall by my bed must be the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.‘I’ve looked at the two bodies from last night. The ones Mycroft…’‘Yes, I killed them,’ the man in question says breezily. ‘Carry on.’‘Normal autopsies. Nothing to match the weird findings from the other two, consistent exactly with what Mycroft says happened. Neat gunshots. Except,’ and his voice twists on that. Twists and spirals away like that first bit of smoke rising from a fire.‘Except that one of them was Sean.’He doesn’t look at Mycroft as he says it. He doesn’t look at Mycroft so hard that I think it must be costing him everything.‘He was meant to be missing from a walking holiday, Greg. What the fuck was going on?’