John could sense something was wrong as soon as he stepped into the flat, the tiny hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as he observes his surroundings. Everything seems in place, untouched, where it belongs, and yet, it isn't.

His steps are slow, calculated as he walks through the flat, as if someone were going to leap out at him. For a split second his hand hovers around his waistband where his gun is usually kept, but he curses himself when he realizes he left it in his bedside table this morning in a rush to get to the surgery after receiving an emergency call from Sarah.

As he walks through the hallway towards Sherlock's room, the door barely open, a feeling of panic begins to rise up in him, enveloping him, suffocating him as his hand finally brushes the door open cautiously, a strangled mixture of a gasp and cry escaping his lips as his eyes stop at the detective laying unresponsive in the bed.

His knees almost give way underneath him as he stumbles forward, hands outstretched to catch himself on the mattress as they come in contact with something wet, sticky. Sherlock's blood.

Sherlock lay supine in the bed, arms distorted and stretched out above him, bound at the wrists and secured to the bed post. A tie sits firmly between his lips, knotted tightly behind his head, saliva and blood soaking the once expensive material. The more his eyes travel down, the more he begins to feel bile in his throat, Sherlock's pale naked chest and abdomen marred with gaping cuts, blood seeping from the wounds, soaking his pyjama pants from a pale gray to a dark crimson.

When John manages to finally snap himself out of the trance the sight has pulled him into, the consulting detective's name leaves his lips in a strangled cry, his hands making quick work to unbind his wrists from the bed post.

As he moves to remove the gag from Sherlock's mouth, John lets his eyes fall on Sherlock's closed lids, a painful look creased across the detective's face, his breaths coming out shallow as the material finally falls from his face. The ability to take in a deeper breath than he has for the past several hours supplies well needed oxygen to Sherlock's brain as he suddenly groans out, his eyes fluttering but staying closed as he rolls onto his side away from John, coming so close to the edge he threatens to fall off completely.

The dried pool of blood that has formed around Sherlock causes the sheets to stick to his back as he rolls, and John winces at the almost inaudible whimper that escapes the detective's lips as he carefully pulls them away, revealing a much more chilling scene, the doctor sitting back as his blood runs cold, the breath being knocked out of him by an invisible force.

Twice as many cuts litter Sherlock's back, not quite as deep, but deep enough to scar. However random the cuts on Sherlock's chest and abdomen were, the cuts on his back are methodical, strategically placed. The cuts are formed into words that John knows will be scared into his mind the way they will scar onto Sherlock's back, and he feels his blood begin to boil as he closes his eyes, already seeing the words etched into the darkness of his memory: Property of Moriarty.