Chapter Text
John took a slow, deep breath and let it out on a count of eight. He was seated in a plastic chair that, usual cliches aside, was really fairly comfortable, elbows on his knees, forehead resting on the heels of his hands, waiting.
Waiting was what his world had narrowed down to, that and thinking, but the waiting was preferable by a tiny margin -- which said a lot, really.
He also had his senses stopped down, barely above human-normal levels, because he really wasn't up to dealing with the all-too-familiar hospital scents of blood, cancer, pain, fear and disinfectant, not to mention the sounds. Not tonight. Which was how Lestrade almost managed to surprise him; he only caught a whiff of someone familiar a half-second before he heard a voice speaking his name.
Blinking, John looked up and saw the DI, looking more rumpled and tired than usual, holding out a paper cup full of hospital tea. In his other hand, he held a cup for himself.
Lestrade cleared his throat. "Thought I'd come and see how you were doing," he said.
"Thanks," John said, taking the tea, but with a question in his voice.
Lestrade shrugged and dropped into the chair next to John, sighing in genuine relief. "Given that you two called me last time you got arrested, I figured you might need some looking after tonight." He took a sip of tea, and studied the blank wall opposite them before adding, "You have any family?"
"A sister," John confessed, wrapping his hands around the cup, grateful for the warmth if nothing else. He'd drunk a lot of tea, had a meal at the hospital canteen and consumed all the sweets in his pocket, working from the soldier's perspective that one should take sustenance whenever possible, just in case there wasn't an opportunity later. He was doing fairly well, nutritionally. "But we don't get on. I don't call her unless I have to." He took a sip of tea, out of reflex. No sugar. Bitter. Institutional. But it was sustenance, not to be wasted. "Mycroft's around here somewhere, though. Have you met Mycroft . . .?"
Lestrade chuckled. "Oh, yes," he said, the two words holding a world of sarcasm. "I've met Mycroft. Anyone who spends any time around Sherlock gets to meet Mycroft. Usually in a deserted parking garage or somewhere equally charming."
John snorted in appreciation. Not that John had any cause to be giving Mycroft grief, not tonight, when he was bending rules left and right and center in ways that would benefit John. "Sounds about right." He took another sip of tea.
"How is he?" Lestrade asked, after a moment's pause. John didn't need to ask whom he meant, despite the change in subject.
John sighed. "The operation went off without a hitch and they've been pumping blood into him nonstop. He's still unconscious. But that's not necessarily bad." Really, once the doctors had pulled the stake out of Sherlock's chest and sutured up the major damage, the best thing that could be done was leave his vampiric healing abilities to do their work. He'd either wake up good as new, or he wouldn't. "Now it's just waiting."
Lestrade nodded absently and drank tea.
"Thanks," John said, again, and this time he didn't mean for the tea. "You suffer through a lot for the sake of that 'good man' you expect to materialize someday."
That earned a sidelong smile. "Oh, there's a bit of self-interest involved," Lestrade said. "Along the lines of resource management."
"So you consider Sherlock a resource, rather than the thorn in your side?"
"Of course he's a resource. Bit of a loose cannon, but he gets results."
"Among other things," John said. "Are the results worth it?"
"Damn right they are," Lestrade said, with feeling. "It's a war out there, one we're never going to win, and I'll use any weapon I've got." He stopped and blinked, then gave John a wary look. "Sorry. Probably could have chosen a better metaphor, if I'd stopped to think about it."
John, taking another sip of tea, shook his head and swallowed. "S'okay." Welcome back, Doctor Watson, a voice said in his memory. "It's . . . accurate, really." Lestrade looked relieved. John continued. "Just seems like Sherlock causes more trouble than anything, sometimes."
"He doesn't make the paperwork any easier, that's for certain," Lestrade said.
John laughed, the first real, heartfelt laugh he'd had in what felt like forever, even though it was probably only hours.
"But it's worth a few jiggered reports and pretend drugs busts and stolen IDs to have him working on my side." Lestrade paused. "That reminds me," he said, his voice going almost plaintive, "how does he fake the sigil, when he's waving my identification around?"
John considered, but only for a second. Lestrade had earned the truth, by John's reckoning. "He's got a little piece of blue foil he palms. Very reflective, mylar I think . . . Anyway, if he flicks his wrist the right way when he's holding up the ID," John waved his hand in illustration, "it gives a flash."
"Blue foil?" Lestrade repeated in disbelief. "And people buy that?"
"Yep. Helps that he's fast and sloppy about it. After all, he can't have anyone getting a good look at your photo, either."
"My God," Lestrade said, slumping back in his chair, stunned. "It's that simple. All this time I've thought he must be using some kind of spell."
"Sherlock doesn't like spells. He says they're unreliable. And unnecessary, since people see what they want to see, most of the time, rather than what's there. They don't observe." John couldn't help grinning as he imitated Sherlock's derision.
Lestrade shook his head. "Blue foil. Only Sherlock-bloody-Holmes would have the gall to think of that and the balls to pull it off." He rubbed a tired hand across his face and began to laugh.
John joined in, realizing what a relief it was to have someone he could talk to about Sherlock -- someone who understood.
Lestrade leaned forward so that his elbows were resting on his knees, mirroring John's pose. He shifted his tea to his left hand, and laid his right hand flat, palm-up, sighing. "Blue foil," he repeated, still sounding amused. As he spoke, sparks of blue light flared to life in his skin, grew and spread, outlining the crowned "ER" sigil written into his flesh and blood, symbol of his sworn oath as a member of Scotland Yard. He shook his head again, as if trying to believe anyone in their right minds wouldn't be able to tell the reality from the fake.
"I'm amazed at what you let us get away with, sometimes," John said, moved to more-than-usual honesty by the intimacy, the weirdness of the moment. After all, this was the DI who knew, who had to know, that the man sitting next to him was a werewolf illegally off his meds (who had, not-so-incidentally, killed at least one man recently while in wolf form), but Lestrade had never said word one. Didn't even seem bothered by it. Hell, Lestrade would sometimes pull John off to the side at crime scenes, sans Sherlock, and ask him if he had any "impressions" he'd like to share, meaning, Did you smell anything useful? John, for his part, had willingly shared any information his supernatural senses had picked up, while being vague about his methods. The words "shapeshifter," "werewolf" or "lycanthropy" had never passed between them.
Lestrade snorted, then fell silent, looking down at the sigil burning blue in his hand. "There are two ways to approach police work." he said after a moment, amusement gone, "the letter and the spirit. Give me a choice and I'll take the spirit every time." When he finished, his gaze remained fixed on the sigil and there was a meditative quality to his silence.
John, uncertain what to say, didn't respond. When things were bad, he'd spent long hours alone summoning and contemplating the caduceus-sigil marking his own hand, but hadn't realized anyone else -- especially someone sworn to something completely different -- might do the same. It felt as if he was witnessing something intensely personal, but Lestrade didn't seem concerned.
"The minute I laid eyes on him," Lestrade continued, gazing at his sigil as if it held every answer he needed, "I could see people would remember Sherlock Holmes a hundred years from now. Greg Lestrade they'll forget, but Sherlock . . . I knew I'd been given a chance to make sure he was remembered for the right things. 'Course, that was before, when he was still human -- now, they'll remember him because he'll still be there in the flesh, making whatever poor bastard has my job completely miserable." Lestrade chuckled.
John couldn't share the humor this time. "If he survives that long," he couldn't help saying.
"He will," Lestrade said, as if it were a done deal, as if he saw the future written in the blue traceries of his sigil. "He's got you, hasn't he?"
John winced and looked down at his own hands, laced between his knees. That was a direct hit. He's got me, but for how long? He unlaced his fingers and studied the back of his own hand. It looked the same as it always did, square and capable; his face in the mirror looked the same each morning, careworn but not old, framed by sandy-blond hair just starting to streak with grey. Only time would tell whether that sameness was permanent, or if Time would continue to make its usual changes.
If John had been ordinary, his relationship with Sherlock was at a point where it should start evolving into something different, something lasting. Human servant was an outmoded term, but people still used it to indicate the symbiotic bond that could form between a mortal and a vampire, one that would defy time and keep a non-vampire as eternally young as their supernatural partner . . . for as long as the vampire's life lasted, anyway. Then it was everyone gone to ashes together. Bit of a one-way trip, that bond. John didn't mind. He'd long since decided that following Sherlock -- anywhere -- was his life's goal from here on out. What bothered him was that he'd never found a single account of a vampire having a shapeshifter servant.
John couldn't imagine, through the entire run of human history, it had never been tried. Someone must have done. But they'd never bothered to record whether it worked or not. Shapeshifters were immune to so many things: death by any metal but silver, most diseases, a laundry list of poisons and injuries . . . would that physiology also resist a vampiric connection? A shapeshifter couldn't be made a vampire, that much was known.
Would John wither and die of old age while Sherlock had barely started his own immortal life? Sherlock liked to play at being an emotionless sociopath, but that was bollocks and John wasn't the sort to engage in any false modesty over whether or not Sherlock cared about him. That was a given. But Sherlock also wasn't the sort to care easily, and he felt it more deeply than most when he finally did.
John didn't think he flattered himself by thinking that Sherlock wouldn't take his loss well. While there would be any number of suitable replacements around at any given time (John was quite sure there were better partners for Sherlock now, for all John had somehow got lucky), it would be all too in-character for Sherlock to ignore them and go his solitary way, rather than risk further pain by letting someone else get close to him. And Sherlock on his own was a disaster waiting to happen.
I didn't even know when he got hurt. I was scared, but I didn't know.
Shouldn't I know?
All this ran through John's head in a swift, well-worn stream, but Lestrade was still speaking. "He's got that mad brother of his, too, which means the whole bloody British government if you believe half of what Sherlock says. He's got me, whether he cares or not. And . . . the powers tend to look after those that serve 'em, as much as they can."
John pulled his thoughts back to the present. "Sherlock doesn't serve anything," he said, turning to look at Lestrade, sensing an odd shift in the conversation while simultaneously realizing what a sad picture they must have made, two men sitting in an empty hospital corridor staring at their own hands.
Lestrade snorted, and shot John a look reminiscent of Sherlock's you're an idiot expression. The sigil still shone in the palm of his hand; it lit his face oddly, from below and to the side, competing with the overhead fluorescents in strength. "We all serve something," Lestrade said. "Whether we like it or not."
Wait, when the hell did Lestrade turn into Obi-Wan Kenobi? John thought, completely thrown off his mental stride. "Vampires don't have souls. They can't take oaths," he said, his mouth following the weird twist in the conversation, even if his brain wasn't quite wrapping around it yet.
That was the accepted wisdom, anyway; vampires were incapable of taking any oath that required a soul's bond, which most major religions took to mean that they were, for all intents and purposes, mere animated bodies, as good as dead already.
"You don't seriously believe that, do you?" Lestrade asked with a derisive edge, sounding more like his usual self.
It was an unexpected question, a bizarre one, even, and John hadn't a clue how they'd got here from cups of tea and stolen IDs. Yet . . . it was John's experience that hospital corridors saw more contemplation of the infinite than any given church, so maybe hashing over the nature of immortal souls wasn't out of place after all.
John took a deep breath. That was another thing he'd been worrying over: the idea that someone as amazing and admirable and brightly-burning as Sherlock could just go out like a snuffed candle, nothing left of him. John couldn't, wouldn't, let himself believe it.
"No," he said.
"Good," Lestrade said, approving. "Anyone who thinks that doesn't know the first thing about vampires. They can't bear a sigil, but this," he gestured with his blue-lit right hand, "is nothing. It's just the tip of the iceberg."
John's eyebrows went up at the contradiction. Lestrade's phrasing was perilously close to repudiation; at the very least it bordered on disrespect, the sort of thing that shattered oaths from the inside . . . but the mark on his flesh was burning with the brilliance of true belief.
"What's underwater, then?" he asked.
Lestrade grinned -- actually grinned. "The rest of the iceberg. The thing people really serve."
"What's your iceberg, then, if it isn't the Met?" John asked, partly as a challenge, partly . . . because he wanted to know.
"Justice," Lestrade said, with proud affection. "Not the easiest, but I've always been a glutton for punishment." His sigil flared into unbearable brightness, bright enough to cast its own shadows in the grim, beige hallway, drowning out the flickering fluorescent lights.
"That's what Sherlock serves, too? Is that what you're saying?" John asked, dazzled and wondering how loopy he still might be after the day's events. He had lost a lot of blood.
"Oh, no," Lestrade said. "Sherlock serves the truth. Poor bastard. That's even worse."
"Aren't they the same?" John asked, without thinking.
Lestrade sighed. "No," he admitted, and the blue light finally dimmed. "Not always. It's good when they are, though."
John felt his ears go red. Naive, he told himself, you know better.
"Where is all this coming from?" he asked out loud, sounding much the same as Lestrade had when he'd asked how Sherlock faked sigils. He took a deep, suspicious draught of air, checking, but Lestrade's scent remained, as always, resolutely human-normal. He hadn't suddenly morphed into something supernatural and cryptic.
Lestrade snorted, amused rather than offended. His half-smile held a wicked edge. "I should tell you about my family sometime. But not tonight. It's a long story, and it goes better over a couple of pints. Besides which, speaking of family . . ." He closed his fist abruptly, cutting off the blue light of his sigil. A half-second later, Mycroft strode around the corner.
John's senses flinched back to even nearer human baseline. Mycroft's scent was profoundly disturbing to him, because mixed through all the complex layers of superficial information (aftershave, soap, cologne) and the basic notes (human, male, healthy), there was a faint refrain that mirrored Sherlock's scent in the way of all close blood relatives. When he'd first met Mycroft, John hadn't known Sherlock well enough or long enough to recognize it, but now he could hardly notice anything else. It was creepy as hell, sensing a connection between one's lover and the most terrifying individual one had ever met, especially through such an intimate medium.
Mycroft never hesitated, even slightly, when he spotted the two of them. John, still reeling spiritually and emotionally, caught that much, just before the familiar voice said in a decent approximation of warmth, "Detective Inspector -- this is a surprise."
Lestrade rose to his feet, every bit as poised as Mycroft. "No it isn't," he corrected with mild good humor. "Not unless your surveillance people are as bad at reporting in as they are at staying hidden."
Just for a fraction of a second, Mycroft looked put out, and John bit his lower lip. He hadn't spotted any of Mycroft's people, but then he hadn't really been looking. And, in all fairness, he was starting to suspect that Lestrade might see more than the average person.
"Is he awake?" John asked out loud, and everything else dropped away. He rose to his feet, trying not to look too much like a hopeful canid waiting for news of its master.
"So I'm informed," Mycroft said, which was enough for John to push past him on the way to the private room Mycroft had arranged, the one that John had access to despite not being an official family member.
Opening the door was enough to break John's heart all over again: that still lump under the hospital sheets, hooked up to a mass of monitors, shouldn't be Sherlock, the most dynamic person on the face of the Earth.
All the same, though, there was something just a bit different this time, compared to John's first, terrible viewing of Sherlock's unconscious, post-operative self, before the nurse had thrown everyone out of the room, including Mycroft. John's head came up and he inhaled, nostrils expanding instinctively, senses sharpening to the limits his human form could contain. His eager feet carried him to Sherlock's bedside, and to his unutterable relief, pale eyes slitted open to look at him. He curled his hand around long, white fingers that were cold, but not too cold, and which curled slightly back.
"John," Sherlock said, and everything John had considered saying, every opening line he'd been rehearsing silently before Lestrade had arrived, went straight out the metaphorical window. All that mattered was Sherlock, awake and alive. John inhaled deeply, breathing in autumn and iron and home, and said the first thing that popped into his head.
"You smell like other people's blood." The words carried everything he felt, from, You idiot, what the hell were you thinking? to I love you, compressed and encoded.
Sherlock, obviously tired and not functioning at 100%, still managed a faint huff of amusement. "Not by choice," he said. "We can fix that later."
John heard the silent, I thought I knew what I was doing, and I'm sorry and the hundred other things, and smiled.
A faint rustle of fabric drew both John's and Sherlock's attention to the door of the room, where Mycroft was leaning on his umbrella in a species of parade rest, looking disgusted in the most genteel way possible. Lestrade, next to him, was watching everyone else (Mycroft included) with sparkling eyes and a hand over his mouth.
Lestrade was the first to speak, dropping his hand and revealing, yes, a smile. "Well," he said. "I think I've seen enough. You two can take it from here. You've got my unlisted number if you need anything." Sherlock had, indeed, acquired that mobile number somewhere, somehow. He added a dry, polite "Morning," to Mycroft (since it was, by this point, past "late" and on to "early"), accompanied by the hint of a bow, before showing himself out.
John watched him, go, the London DI with a surprising streak of Jedi knight hiding at his core, then glanced at the remaining man in the doorway of the room: the icy, calculating brain behind the British government. Both of them here, like himself, for Sherlock Holmes' sake. And that didn't take into account those who weren't here, but still cared -- Mrs. H and Angelo and the others like them, the friends Sherlock didn't seem to know he had. Powers or no powers, it wasn't a bad tally.
"Do you have any idea how lucky you are?" John asked, returning his affectionately-exasperated attention to Sherlock.
"I think," Sherlock said, with a faint half-smile, studying John's face in much the way Lestrade had studied his sigil back in the hallway, reading the depths as well as the surface, "I might."