The Difference A Friend Makes

Chapter 1

The door to the small, dark flat banged open and the world's only consulting detective stumbled in, his left hand clutching his ribs and his right flung out to steady himself.

He caught the edge of the single, cushioned chair and sank down into it heavily, leaning back against the cushions and gritting his teeth, the rasping echo of his harsh breathing the only sound in the room. For several seconds he just sat there, panting, letting his eyes fall shut and relaxing marginally now that the danger was past. They wouldn't come knocking on his flat door - they'd more or less accomplished what they'd been sent out to do, and would be long gone by now. No sense searching for him and risk running into the police. They were mercenaries with no real stake in the game, and arrest likely wasn't worth whatever they were being paid. Sherlock shifted in an attempt to ease the hot flares of pain in his side and chest, but the movement only aggravated them. He let his muscles go limp instead and tried to even out his breathing, which was only making everything hurt worse. Running half a mile at top speed with injuries wasn't exactly conducive to one's health.

"Ah, but he's only given me more information," Sherlock wheezed to the room at large. "The sort of man who'd..." He tailed off, wincing, and decided he'd better take a closer look at himself.

He levered himself out of the chair with difficulty, his body protesting the cruel decision, and staggered into the bath, fumbling for the light switch and leaning heavily on the tile counter. After a moment, the light flicked on, and after blinking for a few seconds to adjust to the change, Sherlock squinted at his reflection in the mirror, and grimaced at what he saw. His face was far from pretty. His left eye was blackening rapidly and starting to swell a bit, and there was a small slice on his right cheek where one of his assailants had been wearing a ring. There was another cut on his temple, which he had the brick wall of the alley to thank for, and it had bled profusely as head injuries were wont to do, leaving a spread of dark red down the left side of his face and in front of his ear. It had stopped bleeding at present though, and some of the blood was already turning beginning to dry and turn black.

His lip was split, as he'd suspected, and blood had trickled down his chin and smeared across his jaw. But he didn't think the blood was from his lip alone - he'd been tasting copper all the way home, indicating a mouth injury, and he hoped he didn't have any damaged teeth. Sherlock tugged off his gloves and probed his teeth and gums with his fingers, breathing a small sigh of relief that the teeth were intact and none loose. After a moment, he located the source of the blood - he must have bit his tongue at some point and not really noticed with everything else going on. He leaned over the basin and spat, his saliva coming out red and runny. Straightening up, he ran a hand over his nose and smiled crookedly in the mirror, glad he had at least managed to spare it. He dug around in the cupboard and pulled out his meagre first aid kit, throwing it open and pulling out gauze and antiseptic.

He ought to stock some better medical supplies, he mused, as he folded an ancient piece of gauze into a thick square and poured alcohol over it. Being a consulting detective was far from one of the most dangerous jobs London had to offer, but it did occasionally put him in a position where he needed a bit of care. Fourteen months ago, he'd been stabbed - not badly, just a laceration on his forearm, but he'd needed stitches, and he'd had to sit in a doctor's office with Mycroft's shadow looming over him while he was carefully sewed up. The scar from the incident was thin and white, and already fading away into his pale skin, but the memory of Mycroft's clipped tones berating him for letting someone with a knife get that close was burned annoyingly into his mind. He would have deleted it, but the lecture served as incentive to be more cautious, if only so he didn't have to deal with Mycroft's particular brand of concern again.

He raised the gauze and daubed at his cheek, hissing at the sharp sensation of antiseptic against raw flesh. He cleaned the injury quickly and moved on to his lip, then spent a bit longer working on his temple, where beneath the drying blood he found the skin bruised and shredded from a wide scrape. Finally, with an unbloodied corner of the gauze, he gently wiped his left eye, where the swelling was beginning to force him to squint. That maintenance finished, he tossed the gauze in the bin and pushed hesitantly at his skull where it had been smashed into brick - shutting his eyes briefly against the pain but thankfully finding no particular evidence of a fracture. He didn't seem to be concussed, either, though they'd certainly thrown him against the wall hard enough. But, no extended dizziness, no confusion, no nausea. He sighed and leaned forward, turning on the water, warm, to scrub off the rest of his face, particularly the left side where a fair amount of blood still adorned his skin.

The warm liquid was gentle and soothing, and he spent nearly two minutes rubbing it and a scant amount of frothy soap over his cheeks and jaw, before rinsing off the small lather and dabbing himself dry with a towel. The towel came away with a number of bloodstains, but no matter. He hung it back on the rack as if nothing was wrong with it and pulled out a couple of sticking plasters, then pasted them quickly over his cheek and temple to catch the fresh blood now welling from his injuries - his cleaning had reopened them, and he had little desire to scrub more blood off his face in a few minutes. Finished with his face, he glanced at himself again in the mirror, appraisal of his handiwork. There was nothing he could do about the black eye - it wasn't bleeding, and he'd just have to wait for the bruising and swelling to go down. He supposed he could put some ice on it, but he had little time for that. Now that his face was taken care of, he needed to move on to more serious matters.

Solving the case was his top priority, after checking on his chest and torso.

Because the injuries to his face certainly weren't the worst of it.

He strode painfully back into what passed for his sitting room - he could receive clients in it, anyway, but mostly it was his study and library and general centre for working out cases. Bookshelves crammed with an eclectic collection of peculiar tomes, some new, some ancient, surrounded a small space inhabited by one comfortable chair, one spindly wooden chair, and a low coffee table - the only other furniture. Boxes occasionally littered the floor, save for one alley exclusively reserved for pacing, and those that lay open were mostly full of chemistry equipment. Those that lay shut tended to be piled upon with more books, and various stacks of paper - although as far as paper was concerned, the coffee table was the most impressive. The table was strewn with sheets upon sheets of it, some that were scribbled upon with impatient handwriting, and some that had been written upon with even strokes and meticulous care, depending on his mood and whether or not haste had been necessary at the time. His laptop lay among the haphasard piles, its metal surface gleaming softly in the faint light that came in through the window.

And in the centre of the coffee table, atop a manuscript on the effects of poison gleaned from Amazonian tree frogs, sat the pièce de la résistance of the room, the only one who would listen to Sherlock's deductive rants without exasperation or eye rolling (sans Mycroft, and even he could be a crapshoot), the one who never called his deductions a 'trick' or sneered at his massive leaps of logic, whom Sherlock could always count on to bounce ideas off of and talk to without reticence...

His skull.

At times he fancied it his only friend, and he turned to talk at it now as he shrugged out of his coat with a pained grimace and flung it onto the wooden chair.

"Stupid of him to send thugs after me," he gasped, reaching next for the buttons on his jacket. "It's only shown his hand. Now I know he has enough resources to hire three men to come after me and warn me off, and that he's not so controlling or arrogant to insist upon doing it himself." Sherlock hissed, tugging one of his sleeves off, and then carefully pulled his bruised arm out of the other. "Doesn't like to get his hands dirty," he growled at the empty eye sockets, tossing the jacket after the coat and setting to work next on his shirt, "and yet he didn't send them to kill me, only to rough me up so - " He cut off with another gasp as he twisted the wrong way, hot pain flaring up in his left side. He stumbled sideways to the chair and gripped its left arm tightly, curling over the source of the pain and keeping his knees from buckling with an effort.

Damn. Breathing consistently hurt, so he'd known his ribs were at least likely to be cracked, but the amount of pain he was experiencing was beginning to make him think they were quite broken. He hoped feverishly that he wouldn't find evidence of internal bleeding when he finally got his shirt off. After resting a few moments, he straightened up slowly, and his fingers went back to their work on his buttons. At least he wasn't wearing a t-shirt or jumper, because pulling something over his head like that would probably have made things even worse.

"So he's not interested in killing unless the circumstances are extreme," Sherlock continued in a low voice, glancing down in the gloom as he fumbled with an inexplicably difficult button. "He has some morals left, not wanting to murder someone uninvolved in his personal vendetta, and yet he's stupid enough to think a beating will stop me..." He finished with the last button and finally flicked on the light, spreading the sides of his shirt wide and looking down at his torso with trepidation.

His skin was littered with bruises, some more rapidly developed than others, and a few scrapes that had been oozing crimson and annoyingly stained the inside of his shirt. He reached down and ran his fingers none too gently over his stomach, kneading the sensitive area to see if he could feel any potential interior problems. It seemed all right. He left off examining his battered stomach and moved up to his ribcage - a large patch of bruising ran across his upper right ribs and sternum, but it was the lower left side that had him worried. The bruising there was dark and purpled, and gently probing it left him in agony, half doubled over and clutching the chair again for support as a bead of sweat ran down his forehead. Broken, they had to be broken, to provoke that kind of reaction. It was a wonder he'd been able to run like that - adrenalin was a marvelous thing. He drew in a painful, gasping breath and pointed his free finger shakily at the skull.

"Then again," he remanded, "damage is fairly, agh! ...extensive. And they would have gone farther if I hadn't gotten away from them, so... ghn... so perhaps he intended to have me laid up, put out of commission until the investigation grew cold..." Judging by the effort they had put into pounding his upper torso, they would have broken his collarbone if they'd been able to manage it. Sherlock congratulated himself again on his knowledge of baritsu, and how it tended to come in awfully handy from time to time. The pain in his side had finally faded enough again for him to stand up straight, and he rubbed his hands together in delight as a new thought struck him. "Ooh, that means there's probably time sensitive evidence, something he expected I'd find if I kept looking, but that would be gone after a couple of days. Yes, that makes the most sense with the data available - he might be setting up a deal with contraband that'll be sold soon, or waiting for the elements to destroy something he daren't return to and risk attracting attention..."

That meant he had even less time to determine who the murderer was, and precisely why he had murdered his victim. He needed to go and get his ribs looked at, absolutely needed to, no question - but he needed to solve the case first, and put a murderer behind bars before valuable evidence was lost and the act made impossible. He licked his lips and turned to the latest diagram he'd pinned up on the wall, the Harrington case, where a young man of 27 years old had been found dead by his niece in his sitting room with blood pooling beneath his head and soaking into the sofa. A dozen suspects or more - he'd been a very rich man, and few people had been fond of him except his niece - they'd played cards on the balcony together often, and it seemed the little girl had been one of the few members of his family to truly know him.

Sherlock had felt a slight pang of jealousy as he'd watched the young girl cry, envious that Edmund Harrington, at least, had someone to cry over him in death. No one would cry when Sherlock expired - perhaps Mycroft, if for some reason he didn't die first, but his tears would likely be over quickly, short and controlled before he went back to work, the supreme discipline of a Holmes and the quintessential English gentleman winning out over any thin strains of personal grief. Not the heartfelt, desperate sobs of an innocent who saw nothing but a man she loved dead, and found no shame in crying over him. Even a sociopath could see the beauty in that. Not that Sherlock had any room to complain, really - if Mycroft died before him he too, would most likely control himself if he felt any pain. Most likely.

"But he's narrowed the field now," Sherlock told his skull feverishly, abruptly deleting that last useless train of thought and drumming the tips of his steepled fingers together in excitement. "Shot in the head, a quick death, he didn't suffer... It correlates with the murderer's merciful side - sending men to injure me, but not to kill me, possible he feels some guilt..." He remembered the voice in his ear as he was slammed sideways against the wall, his head hitting the rough brick hard enough to daze him. We've got a message for you, Sherlock Holmes. Back off of Harrington before it's too late.

"He's been clever enough to keep himself shrouded until now, but suddenly he started to panic. It was stupid of him to tell his men to warn me off - if he was planning on forcing me into a hospital bed for a couple of days it would have made more sense to make it look like a mugging, instead of telling me for certain it was related to the case at hand. I must have done something, gotten close to something that worried him... Unless of course he's just confident enough that I won't figure it out that he believes he can afford to give me a message like that, but then if he's that confident why bother beating me up at all? No, no, it's simple panic-induced stupidity, the same stupidity that would make him think threatening and hospitalising me would make me stop. Five minutes on my website and he could have seen the folly of that."

Sherlock swept over to the coffee table with a wince and crouched painfully down to look his skull in its lack of eyes.

"So, what do have, then? Mercy, guilt, tendency to panic and act rashly, on top of that the money and contacts required to hired three mercenary professionals. Doesn't risk attacking me himself, or playing the third mercenary, though it'd be cheaper - either too frightened or having a burst of pragmatism, since getting involved himself would have been monumentally stupid." Those men had worked together like a well-oiled machine - they were clearly a team, having worked together a number of times, so there was no way two of them were hires and one of the murderer himself. Not unless the murderer was a part of the team to begin with, but that was highly unlikely. Someone with enough compassion to kill a man instantly and hold back from murdering the detective on the case, even though it would have been a more effective course of action than injury and threat, would not indulge in regular work roughing people up. Clearly he didn't enjoy causing suffering, Sherlock mused, unlike the men who'd hauled him into an alley and proceeded to systematically beat the living daylights out of him.

"Unless of course, Edmund Harrington was the exception, and he only killed him quickly because he did care for him... Or because he only had a limited time in which to get it done. But then if he was ruthless he would have just gone ahead and tried to have me killed. A compassionate nature is the most reasonable conclusion here, don't you think?" Sherlock leaned forward a little, cocking his head to one side as if he expected the skull to answer him. The skull, of course, remained silent. It would have been convenient if the skull could talk back, as long it was reasonably clever and didn't the same stupid things the idiots at Scotland Yard always said. Sometimes, when Sherlock was high or feeling particularly imaginative, he would presume to pretend that it did talk back, picturing what it might say to him as he rattled off strings of deductions.

It might compliment him, tell him he was clever instead of that he was a freak. It might bounce his ideas back at him, adding a few of its own, ideas that actually weren't half bad and might give him a fresh perspective from which to think. It might, he thought, in the darkest moments after falling out of a cocaine haze, offer to make tea and chat. But the skull couldn't do any of that, and it was foolish to entertain the idea that it or anyone else would. So usually Sherlock just talked at it animatedly, and though he gave it time to respond, in his head he wasn't answering for it, but already moving on to the next problem to solve. That was efficiency, and it was what got things done.

The skull continued to say nothing, and Sherlock just nodded as if it had agreed with him and went on.

"So, who on our list of suspects fits that psychological profile, has a fair amount of resources, and may have hinted at illicit dealings?" Sherlock raised his eyebrows and grinned. "Only three that come to mind at present." He stood back up to survey the collage of potential murderers on his wall. Too quickly. He'd been so engrossed in his thoughts he'd all but forgotten the dim tugs of pain on his body, and as he stood they roared back to remind him of his neglect, the suddenness making him dizzy. He staggered sideways and nearly fell over the coffee table, but with a titanic effort wrenched his clarity back and managed to shakily regain his balance. The hot coals in his left side reminded him that he needed to solve this quickly - not only so Edmund Harrington's murderer could be caught, but so that he could finish with the case and leave for A&E in good conscience. He ran his fingers over the damaged area again gently, trying to make sure that the broken ribs weren't tearing him up from the inside. It was a wasted effort - there was no way to tell just by that. He'd go into the bath and have a good look in a bit, once he'd gotten his thoughts organised, selected the most likely candidate of the three, and made a plan of action.

"There's his uncle Baxter, of course, made the same money Edmund inherited from his father in the steel business... Though the motivation's uncertain there, unless it was revenge or jealousy for Edmund's not having to work his way up from the bottom for his share." Sherlock tapped his fingernails against his teeth from where they were steepled together. "But perhaps there's something else involved. If Edmund found out about Baxter's gambling on the side, and something was amiss with it, it might drive Baxter to kill him. But he definitely has a soft nature, if his steady supply of sweets is anything to go by." Baxter had always seemed to have some form of candies about him, and handed them off to Harrington's niece like Christmas crackers, disregarding the damage to her teeth to offer some form of comfort in the wake of her uncle's death.

She and Baxter had seemed to have a soft spot for each other, from the brief glimpses Sherlock had seen of their interaction, and when she'd thanked him for the sweets she'd called him "Professor" and smiled. Clearly some sort of inside joke - Baxter was not a professor, nor anything close to one. Sherlock imagined it might have something to do with his glasses, as he tended to adjust the half-moon lenses whenever he was called that. They did, at least, make him look scholarly. And Baxter was prone to sudden panic too, and foolish decisions - he'd taken a phone call while they were at the house, in the next room, but Sherlock had caught snatches of the conversation, which was a nervous deal made about racehorses that was particularly ill-advised. He'd come out his study looking slightly flustered, and his grand-niece had hurried to him and asked him what was the matter.

There was a great deal of love in the girl's eyes for the old man - Sherlock hoped briefly for her sake that it wasn't him, then shook his head and turned his thoughts to the other suspects. If it was Baxter, it was Baxter, and there was nothing he could do about that except put the man behind bars. His eyes swiveled to another picture, fast scribbled notes pinned around the smiling face.

"Annabel Carson, Edmund's ex-wife - she was a very likely candidate already, but now she's looking even more perfect." There had been a number of female suspects, of course, but Sherlock tended to refer to unknown criminals in general as 'he' just to make things simpler. He wasn't going to waste his breath or his thoughts on 'he or she,' and male murderers were statistically more likely, anyway. "Motivation - revenge, jealousy, money... But probably money. If she'd got wind that Edmund had a serious lover she'd have feared losing her alimony cheques - but she was still in the will, wasn't she, if Edmund were to die instead? She's gotten enough money off of him in the past to hire minions if needed, and her shoe collection practically screamed under the table bribery. In several stores, no doubt. But all that would probably end if her steady supply of funds from Edmund dried up. Her impulsive streak was commented on, and yet so was her sweet nature - they say she wasn't even that upset to find out Edmund was gay, and after two days was almost entirely supportive."

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder at the skull as a businessman might at a stenographer to ask if she was getting all of this. The skull sat quiet and perfectly still on his coffee table, listening to his every word. He didn't always talk out loud quite this much, but it seemed to be working well tonight. It often did on the rush cases. Fortunately, the skull made no complaints. Sherlock spun back around to the diagram, wincing and reminding himself to check on his ribs when he got the chance.

"And finally we have Phillip Masters, Edmund's secretary at the office. He's been mostly under the radar in this investigation, because he stands no particular gain from Edmund's death and is in fact, now in danger of losing his job. But," Sherlock tacked on gleefully, grinning at his macabre companion, "Masters' watch indicated that he has a great deal more money than he lets on, so the job would be of no particular consequence, and I could see from his fingertips that he habitually indulges in illegal substances. If Edmund found out Masters' was dealing, and Masters was deep enough into it, it could certainly be cause enough for murder. And Masters fits our psychological profile - volunteer at an animal shelter and the local hospital - you can't get much more compassionate than that. But he was obviously having a hard time dealing with the paperwork aftermath of Edmund's demise - he almost shouted down the phone and took two Valium while we were there... Oh."

Sherlock's eyes lit up at a sudden thought and he froze in place staring at Masters' grainy picture.

"Animal shelter and the hospital - if he's getting drugs from both of those places, he may have a wide variety of merchandise available and an extensive clientele - not to mention some elaborate potential theft charges... My charming sparring partners may be customers of his. And that could explain why he wanted me landed in hospital - if he's brokering some big deal in the next day or two and then planning to lay low when its finished..." It could have been something Masters had been unable to avoid - some sale that had been set up in advance of Edmund's death and something he couldn't back out of now. Masters was looking more likely - but most of this was conjecture at present, brainstorming only, and he mustn't jump to conclusions. So far there was only really evidence that Masters did drugs, not that he was involved in any sort of large dealing organisation. "The question becomes, then - is he?"

Sherlock spun around toward the coffee table and leaned down with a grunt to sift through the top layer of papers, gathering every scrap of information he had on all three of his suspects. He most likely had a couple of hours of thinking ahead of him, to go over every piece again and try to tie it all together, shifting his newest theory to be certain it fit the facts. Theories were necessary, and conjecture was useful, but it was a capital mistake to go too far, to start twisting facts to fit theories instead of theories to fit facts. Sherlock tried very hard to avoid ever making that error.

"Of course, that does bring his 'merciful' nature into question, if he's only volunteering at those places in order to obtain drugs, but you still have to be patient and kind enough when dealing with animals and sick people, and the fact that he's been doing it for years indicates that he probably likes it to some degree, or he would have changed obtainment tactics by now. It still fits well enough, particularly if those two institutes have good staff reputation."

He swept the papers into a messy stack and plunked down carefully in the armchair - then thought better of it as his side twinged and stood slowly back up, leaving the stack on the seat of the chair. He needed to take another look at his ribs before beginning - he could spare that much time, and if he did end up hospitalised through his own neglect, well, that was what his murderer wanted, wasn't it? Sherlock flicked the light on in the bath again and stepped in front of the mirror, moving his shirt aside to inspect the dark purple patch. It was nearly black by now, but other than that didn't show much change. He ran his fingers over it lightly, hesitant to prod it again and bring on fresh waves of pain. As of now it had degraded to a dull ache, and he had no desire to reprovoke it.

He felt relatively all right, he thought, staring keenly at his reflection - certainly not as if his side was quietly filling with blood. He didn't feel light-headed, as he would have if there had been blood loss, and there was no sensation of pressure that he could detect - just the persistent pain. It occurred to him that he'd forgotten to take anything for the pain, in his focus on the case, and he reached for the first aid kit he'd left lying on the counter to fish out a couple of aspirin. One wasn't supposed to take it on an empty stomach, but Sherlock had little concern for those rules. He'd eaten less than two days ago, and it didn't usually bother him at that stage. He swallowed the pills with a little water and moved back out into the sitting room, snatching up his papers and dropping stiffly into the chair, noting with annoyance that his muscles would become sore and difficult to use in another eight hours.

But that wasn't important now. He reached out to the surface of the coffee table again and drew his laptop toward him.

Now, he had to think.

ooo00ooo

Three hours later, Sherlock broke out of a thinking trance with a jolt, his eyes swiveling to the skull, who was still sitting complacently on the coffee table. It was rather nice having a friend of sorts who was inanimate - it ensured that his conversation partner, unlike living humans, would not get up and leave while he was thinking. It made for a nice consistency upon returning from his mind to the physical world. Although sometimes Sherlock thought that the inconsistency would be worth it if he could find a living human who would at least be as willing to listen to him for as long as his skull was. It might be quite refreshing, to talk to a patient ear that was flesh instead of bone - it always was nice when Lestrade managed to fully understand him. But no matter.

"It was Masters," he whispered into the silent room. "It fits perfectly. Shift records from the office, the tranquilisers and opiates reported missing from the shelter and hospital, the way people looked at us when we walked in... Oh, it's all there, and it's brilliant." Phillip Masters had been trafficking drugs, and not to just people in general but to the staff of the Harrington company. Medicine had gone missing at Masters' places of volunteer work, and while nobody had managed to determine who had stolen it, it had been child's play for Sherlock to deduce that it was Masters. He even checked himself to be certain he wasn't looking at the situation through bias - but no, the evidence was there, in the police report, the police were just too blind to see it.

And then there was Masters' schedule at work - his time frame was set up to allow him to meet with certain coworkers. Sherlock had hacked into the company database to see when employees took their breaks, and although many of the short breaks were taken seemingly at random, presumably when the employees just felt like it, there were correlations every couple of weeks between Masters' breaks and those of several others. Masters had been doubling up at his place of work - using it for sales because it was convenient. Sherlock was glad that Harrington Steel required all of its employees to clock in and out even for ten minute breaks - meticulous records always made investigations so much easier. And then of course there were the reactions when the police had arrived at the company.

Sherlock hadn't been surprised to see nervous glances - everyone had secrets, and a little fear from random workers was normal anytime he went somewhere big with the police in tow. There were always bound to be a few people involved in something illegal in a company that size, and it was unlikely each little transgression would be related to the case at hand. But now that Sherlock knew who was meeting with Masters, he could go back to his mind palace and recall precisely who had looked nervous. And oh, if many of them hadn't been Masters' clients. He'd found their pictures to confirm their identities, and he could remember them all glancing out of their cubicles with trepidation as Lestrade walked through the halls. They'd feared the police would catch on. Sherlock chuckled. Well, of course the police hadn't. But he had.

"A shame Masters panicked, really - he seemed quite intelligent. Before I disrupted his comfort zone he was doing very well. Oh, and I did disrupt it, monumentally," he told the skull as he stood up from the chair, papers sloughing off his lap and falling haphasardly to the floor. "I got too ahhg!" His impending monologue was cut off with an anguished hiss as pain shot up his chest to shock his heart. His knees buckled beneath him and he lashed out blindly for the chair as he started to fall, managing to catch himself on the arm again and groaning in agony as the jolt intensified his misery. He hauled himself half onto the chair seat and collapsed on his right side, his legs dragging on the floor and his hands curling into fists instinctively. He panted for a few moments, shutting his eyes and cursing himself for forgetting and twisting his torso like that. Three hours spent in a daze of research and processing tended to distance him from his body's needs, and now he was paying for that tendency.

He dug his fingernails into his palms and opened his eyes again, desperate to distract himself from the pain. Thankfully, no spots danced in his vision and he felt no particular lightheadness, confirming for him a distinct absence of internal blood loss. It only hurt. He glanced over at his skull, his breathing harsh, struggling to get his lungs under control so he could speak again. The skull grinned silently back at him.

Sherlock wished stupidly that it could help.

After what seemed a long stretch of time, but which Sherlock knew was less than a minute, the sharp, unforgiving throb cooled enough for him to move again. He pulled himself slowly and carefully back up into a sitting position, scrabbling to readjust his legs and testing each movement hesitantly before he committed to carrying it out. Perhaps he would take some more aspirin before going out. He needed to check on Masters' drug stash, and it was unlikely that Lestrade would be willing to demand a warrant and summon a team at this hour based on what Sherlock had to offer as evidence. He knew he was right - it was laid out in front of his eyes like a blueprint, everything slotting into place, but explaining all of his deductions to an average mind like Lestrade's, and sufficiently enough to goad the man to act was another matter. He would have to go out and find the stash himself, and present it to Lestrade already discovered.

"I've been able to triangulate the most likely location where Masters is storing them," he said roughly, massaging his uninjured temple in the hopes that soothing one part of his body would mitigate pain in the rest of it. "He was frightened because of my recent interest in the company warehouses - I wanted to see if things were really as successful as everyone claimed they were, or if Harrington was actually losing money. He didn't have the best business skills, and anyone on the Board of Directors might have murdered him to stop the decline. Masters isn't stupid enough to hide drugs in the used warehouses, but he might have thought I was going to inspect the abandoned ones that they haven't yet renovated, since Lestrade so helpfully mentioned my penchant for thoroughness in front of him.

"Only money or promises actually change hands in the offices - actually bringing the drugs in there would be too risky. But one of the warehouses at the back, where nobody goes... It would be a convenient place to keep a large stock of something illegal, particularly when one's mother lives in one's house and does all the cleaning. There would be too much danger of her finding something, so he stashes his supply in a place he's close to every day, and where he can easily access it for sales. Hands everyone their drugs in the car park at the end of the day and goes home with no one the wiser. There are other possibilities of course, but given his reaction to my warehouse enquiry, that's the most likely place at the moment, so that's where I'll head first."

Sherlock paused as if to give his skull time for comment or rebuttal. When none came, he stood back up again, very carefully, and snagged his coat and jacket from where they still lay on the other chair. Buttoning his shirt and putting everything back on again was something of a trial - trying to avoid any move that might incite his left ribs again, while simultaneously trying not to cause pain anywhere else made the process rather slow. Finally, he pulled the sides of the coat closed gingerly and buttoned it quickly up. He dug his torch out of a box on the floor, made sure he had his phone and his pocket magnifying glass on him, and then belatedly remembered that he'd intended to take more pain medication before he left. Annoyed at the further delay, he stepped impatiently back into the bath and downed two more pills before pulling on his gloves and heading for the door.

It was 4:18 am.

ooo00ooo

The taxi driver was, understandably, a bit confused as to why Sherlock wanted out of the cab at an empty steel shipping company in the dead of night, but a quick false story about being a 5:00 am shift security guard whose car had refused to start seemed to placate him well enough. Although if he'd been paying much attention to his passenger, he might have noticed the uncomfortable grimaces every time the cab hit a hump in the road. Sherlock paid him and stole into the shadows as the taxi drove off, gravel crunching under his feet as he approached the two ancient warehouses in the back of the line. He fired off a quick text to Lestrade - he'd read it when he woke up - and reached for the handle of a small side door in the first building. Luckily, it wasn't even locked, and the only resistance he met was from neglect and disuse, as the door squeaked and scraped in protest as he pushed it open.

Inside, it was pitch black, and Sherlock let the door fall shut and waited several minutes to see if he could detect any signs of life within. If Masters had been panicking that Sherlock might discover his drug stash, and had spent resources sending men to warn him off, it wasn't an unreasonable assumption that he might have posted a guard or two as well, particularly if his men had reported to him that Sherlock had got off at run - hence the text to Lestrade in the event that anything went wrong. The Inspector should be up in two hours, which would hopefully not be enough time for Masters to completely and effectively cover his tracks even if he found out immediately that Sherlock was onto him and decided to break his upcoming deal. Because the drugs would be here still - if indeed this was where they were hidden - or Masters would have just moved or destroyed them in the first place instead of bothering to harass him. Clearly he didn't have anywhere else to move them and wasn't willing to destroy them, so his panicked choice of action had been violence. Masters wasn't thinking things through particularly well at this point.

After nearly five minutes and not a ghost of sound from the warehouse other than his own light breathing, Sherlock drew his torch from his coat pocket and flicked it on, sweeping the beam over old, dusty crates and forgotten pulley chains. His feet kicked up small swirls of gray fluff as he strode purposefully into the room, mindful of starting to move his body the wrong way again, his sharp eyes keenly examining the possible hiding places in the cavernous room. There were many, but he could easily narrow it down with a little brainwork. His eyes flickered over the concrete floor, looking for fresh footprints beyond his own in the dust. He didn't see any immediately, nor places where the dust had been disturbed by anything larger than a rat, but he hadn't come in through the only door, and it was probable that Masters used a different one. Probably closer to his office...

Sherlock stepped in the direction of the office building and general car park, listening to the wind picking up outside and the roof of the building rattling. Occasionally specks of dirt and dust sifted down from the rafters high above, and Sherlock frowned at the threat that falling debris posed to his mission. Between it and the rats there was a chance of compromising the dust disturbances he was looking for, though not to excess. He would be able to distinguish human traces from others, but if Masters had had the foresight to obscure his footsteps - and even if he hadn't, he may have done so upon learning of Sherlock's interest in the warehouses - this could conceivably take a little while. Sherlock pulled out his phone and checked the time. 4:57. Almost two hours before the employees arrived and Harrington Steel buzzed with life again. He should be able to finish before then. He pushed his phone back into his pocket and drew level with a large crate that appeared to have been gnawed upon.

He should have brought his skull with him for company. But then again, that would have made things even more difficult to explain to the cabbie. Oh, well. Despite the aches emanating from his upper body, the adrenalin of a case and accompanying brainwork sang quietly through his veins.

This would be fun.

ooo00ooo

...And there's the first chapter. Hilariously, this was only supposed to be a two-shot, but now it's going to be at least four chapters, if not six. My own penchant for thoroughness dooms me when I begin to focus on the details of a case. John will eventually make an appearance in the aforementioned fourth chapter, as the original idea of this fic was to highlight the difference in Sherlock's life before and after John. Hopefully updates will be about every week, but if you've ever read anything I've written before you might know that I'm terrible about update schedules...

There are two distinct references to the books in this chapter - bonus points for those that recognise them. If you don't recognise them, bonus points, anyway.

Please review if you're up to it, and I hope you'll enjoy the rest.

Cheers!