Chapter Summary: Alternative ending to chapter 1: Sherlock convinces Mycroft to find the military record of one John H. Watson, Active duty, Afghanistan.

"Mycroft! What have you found?" Sherlock asks eagerly. Then he catches a good look at his brother's face, and his jubilation is very suddenly replaced by a hard knot in his stomach.

Mycroft's face is strained, the look in his eyes unsuccessfully shielded regret.

Sherlock sinks into the chair across from him, intense gaze drilling into his brother.

Mycroft looks down, delicately balances the manila folder on his knee. "Sherlock," he begins, and Sherlock can't stand the careful, pitying tone.

"Don't!" he leaps to his feet. "Don't try to break it to me gently," he sneers. "If he's dead, tell me."

Mycroft's upward glance assess him gravely.

"Is. John. Dead." he growls, looming over his brother.

"No," Mycroft replies in his irritatingly measured tone. "John Watson is not dead. He is missing, presumably captured."

He offers the file, and Sherlock snatches it, rifling rapidly through its pages.

Mycroft summarizes the information he's scanning. "May 13, six days ago, Captain Watson and two other soldiers went missing while on patrol. No demands made, no trace."

"Get me over there. I'll find him."

"Sherlock," Mycroft says wearily, "Sending a civilian into that area is not—"

"Attach me to one of your specialized teams then. Obviously I'm no soldier, but I am a specialist: finding people, recovering missing personnel—it's what I do Mycroft. I'm very good at it. It could work."

He's literally holding John Watson in his arms.

John is white, and gasping, holding his wounded arm tight against his body as they run.

Sherlock is half-guiding, half-holding John up in their headlong, stumbling flight.

They both instinctively duck when another volley of gunfire crackles out across the hills behind them. But they keep running.

Ahead, the other two prisoners, Anderson and Michaels, drop into the shelter of a ravine. Sherlock and John plunge down after them.

"Here!" one of the extraction team yells.

They dodge behind the boulders. Their own men are providing covering fire now, sharp, deafening noise, holding off their enemy.

They're crouched side by side. John's face is beaded with sweat, and he's shaking slightly.

"Alright?" Sherlock asks. "John, are you alright?" he demands.

It's the first chance they've had to speak since Sherlock burst through the door of the shack steps behind the extraction team. They'd sliced the prisoners' bonds, Sherlock had slung John's good arm over his shoulder, and dragged him out of the hut at a dead run.

"What t-took you so bloody long?" John gasps.

Sherlock blinks at him, uncertain.

Then John looks up at him, and he sees the light in John's eyes past the pain of his shoulder. It's the light of chasing criminals through the backstreets of London; of leaping rooftops and forgotten canes; of running for their very lives.

Sherlock tips his head back to the brilliant desert stars, and laughs.