Random one-shot that came to me in the shower.

I don't own Sherlock. If I did, Sarah wouldn't exist. All she does is get captured and post comments on websites.

The Game

John had just finished typing up his new blog entry, about Moriarty, and was just starting to check it through for mistakes. As he looked at the title, 'The Great Game', he realised something.

"Damn it," he said, unable to think of anything else to say at that moment in time.

Sherlock was lying on the sofa on his back, thinking about his new case. There had been a spate of serial killings recently. All the victims were criminals, recently released from prison.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock ignored John and kept on thinking. The victims must have either wronged the killer before their capture or during their time in prison. It couldn't have been in prison, as they were all in separate areas of the compound and would never have interacted. No criminals released in the past month were still alive, so no-one they could have talked to could be the killer.

"Sherlock." John said again, with slightly more force.

Sherlock ignored him again. The victims couldn't have had any major mutual contact before incarceration as they were in different parts of the country and doing vastly different things. One was a car-jacker and another was a cat burglar. No, no connections there. It could just be that someone wants to wipe out criminals. They'd need a web of helpers spread out, but it was the most likely option. Now to start tracking them down.

"Sherlock!"

"What!" Sherlock replied in type, sounding almost imperceptibly whiney, but John caught it.

"I've lost The Game."

"What? How does that concern me? I nearly had it then." How was Sherlock meant to know about this 'Game' John spoke of? It sounded unnecessary.

"You don't know about The Game? Everyone knows about that. Mind you, I shouldn't be surprised since you didn't know about the Earth going round the Sun."

"Not that again." Sherlock said, audibly irritated. He sat up. John said nothing, obviously waiting for an addition, possibly a rant about hard-drives and brains.

"Well? If it's that important, you'd better explain it, hadn't you?"

"Well," John began. He'd never had to explain it before, so decided to use the words from a Youtube video he once saw.(1) "The concept of The Game is that there is a game, and if you think about the concept that there is a game, you lose." Then he added the other rules he'd found out about on Wikipedia. "All losses must be announced to at least one person. Everyone in the world is playing The Game, whether they know about it or not, and The Game will only end when the Prime Minister of the UK goes on national TV and says 'The Game is up'."

"In that case...I lost The Game" Sherlock then proceeded to lie back down on the sofa and go back to working on the case. Conversation over.

John congratulated himself a bit for making Sherlock listen and learn about everyday things. He forgot about Sherlock's amazing ability to delete stuff from his memory.

Sherlock never lost The Game again, no matter how hard anyone tried. Either that or he just never admitted his losses.

I don't mind if you review or not. Moriarty however... Has decided to give you a semtex vest if you do. He thinks you'll want to blow stuff up.

(1) The youtube video is called 'Near Lost The Game' by PrettyPinkDepression.