The Murder of John Watson (Sherlock BBC Fanfic)

AN – set as a stand alone AU – not meant to match with either of my other AU's – this is getting complicated! Maybe I should stop writing…

I got the idea by reinterpreting the conversation that Sherlock and John had about the murder of the Woman In Pink. Sherlock asked what John would be thinking if someone was murdering him and we all assume that it's the Taliban that John was talking about… but what if it wasn't?

… And then it took off from there with a will of its own. Sorry about this! I give Sherlock a History which is not very nice (he was a victim) and try to kill John off as a child as well…

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Jogged Me

It's a murder, of course, that jogs his memory. Sherlock is rather startled to discover that his memory needs jogging – this has never happened to him before and he's not entirely sure that he likes the feeling. After all, he's not supposed to forget things, he's Sherlock Holmes!

"Are you even paying attention, Sherlock?" Lestrade asks impatiently, "I know that you've got the attention span of a gnat on a good day, but try not to let your mind wander too far."

"Murder," Sherlock breathed, gripping his hair in both hands, "He's been murdered before."

"He?" Anderson broke in, his voice even more annoying and nasal than usual, "First of all the victim is a woman – how you missed that I'll never know, especially taking into account her… surgically enhanced attributes…"

"Yes, yes, Anderson, we've all noticed that she's a double F," Donovan interrupted tartly.

"… and secondly, how do you murder someone twice? Even for you that would be something of a feat," Anderson concluded, shooting a nasty look at Sergeant Sally.

'Trouble in paradise,' the remark that floated through Sherlock's mind did so in John's voice, something that was happening more and more often over the last few months.

"No you fool," Sherlock retorted, "You've entirely missed the point. Lestrade! I need you to look up a file for me."

"I'm not the A to Z, Sherlock. I've got a crime to deal with here…"

"Yes, yes, I already know who did it. I'll give you the full details at the Yard, but I need you to look something up at once! I'll even ride in your blasted police car."

Lestrade gave him a shocked look, but seemed to understand that whatever had caught Sherlock's attention was urgent, or at least important. He nodded, gave the orders necessary to get the crime scene finished up and under control. He followed Sherlock out to his car and watched as the thin genius climbed in, fidgeting impatiently.

Sherlock pulled his phone out as Lestrade pulled out, trying to decide if he should text John or not.

"Once you've told me what I want to know, Sherlock," Lestrade said in a warning tone, "I'll look up whatever this file you want seen to. Can you at least give me a hint of what this is about?"

"John," Sherlock replied tersely, "What else?"

"I should have known, nothing else gets you into a lather quicker these days than John Watson," Lestrade muttered. Sherlock rolled his eyes. The tone was fond though, which was no great surprise. Lestrade and John had grown quite close over the last year – ever since the Detective Inspector had dived into that god-forsaken pool and pulled John out just as he was going under for the third time, struggling to support himself and Sherlock's dead weight, despite serious injuries. Sherlock had been unconscious for all this, but Mycroft had film of the event and he'd shown it to his younger brother, at said brother's insistence.

Lestrade had even visited them at the hospital – though he'd been more interested in seeing John than Sherlock; after all, John was the more welcoming of the two and Sherlock had never had the sort of relationship with Lestrade that led to socialising outside of work. Things between all three of them had changed after that. John had quit the surgery, taking up a job in the ER of their local hospital, though he only worked part time. He'd also started attending the cells at the Yard as a police surgeon, on an emergency call out basis. He'd had drinks with Lestrade on a semi-regular basis. The thin consulting detective had gotten used to thinking of Lestrade as John's friend and no longer assumed that the DI was at Baker Street to see them in connection to a crime, depending on the schedules of both John and the DI.

Of course, things had changed between Sherlock and John as well. The pass that John had made at Sherlock in Angelo's restaurant that first night was finally reciprocated. Sherlock had confessed that John had caught his interest and that he'd been half hoping the doctor would make another attempt to approach him as their friendship progressed. John had insisted on them sitting down and 'working out' what it was that Sherlock wanted from the relationship, something that irked the thin man immensely. It had been more than worth it though, as not only had it cemented their professional partnership, the thin genius had discovered that in the purely physical domain, John was something of a minor god – in Sherlock's opinion.

John had taken their partnership by the scruff of the neck and shaped it into an intricate relationship that worked so smoothly Sherlock sometimes forgot that he had ever existed without John. They had become two halves of the same coin – to use yet another of John's ridiculous phrases – and even Mycroft couldn't beat them when it came to solving any problem in their path. Separately, they were good; together they were a force to be reckoned with. This spilled over into every aspect of their daily lives: Sherlock had even heard John mutter to Lestrade once that he almost had the ER running the way he wanted it, and Sherlock knew it was the absolute truth. The hospital was lucky to have John… luckier than they knew.

Because it seemed evident to him now that John Watson had been murdered before. Not in Afghanistan as Sherlock had assumed, not by Moriarty – though not for lack of trying, but before any of those things had ever happened.

What was it he'd said, back over a year ago when they were standing in the front room, John not even fully moved in yet and Lestrade in the middle of a fake drugs bust. Sherlock had asked him what he would do, what he would think if he was being murdered.

'Please god let me live.'

Sherlock had scoffed at him, calling him boring and pressing him for a true answer and John had told him that it was. Sherlock had assumed that his friend – and even then he'd known that John was his friend – had been talking about the events that led to his wounding in Afghanistan.

It wasn't until just now, looking at the woman and her surgically enhanced attributes that Sherlock had recalled the words John Watson had once spoken to him and the minor mystery before him had paled to insignificance. Sherlock had been presented with a key piece of information about John early in their friendship that he hadn't recognised as being crucial: even now, after all they had shared and all they knew about how the other half of their partnership worked, John was capable of being a complete mystery to Sherlock.

That was one of the reasons why Sherlock loved him as he did.

Disclaimer – characters and settings and dialogue as depicted in Sherlock BBC series not mine. No money being made. Plot is mine

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