Author's Note: A million thanks to the world's best beta, Becca (Ao3's LlamaWithAPen).

Prompt from user Aelaer: John meets Sherlock by saving him from his captors. If you want a potential idea as to how to make that happen, maybe John took to urban exploration of abandoned areas once he discovered his limp improved with adrenaline rushes? He then hears a car, and sees from a distance that a man is obviously there against his will.

Walking in the Woods

The orange sun is low in the sky. The trees are too tightly packed together for it to cast much of a glow through the gaps. Shadows stretch over the ground, over leaves and twigs and dirt. It's quiet. The only sounds are that of the occasional breeze whispering by, rustling the leaves on the trees.

It's eerie. This is exactly why John is here.

Though no one could have predicted it, this is what helps his limp – the result of his time serving in Afghanistan. He was wounded in his shoulder, but the pain was in his leg. He needed a cane, and he leaned heavily on it with every step he took.

Psychosomatic, said his therapist. John hadn't believed her at the time.

He had gone to therapy. He had talked about symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, about sleepless nights, nightmares, and a pain in his leg with no apparent physical cause. He tried a sort of exposure therapy, by talking about some of the most painful memories he had, bringing them to the forefront of his mind so that he could deal with them in the safe space of his therapist's office. It didn't help.

He went to physical therapy, too, even though his therapist insisted that the pain was not really physical. He tried various stretches, tried walking regularly, but it was for nothing. He had no success there either.

The cure, as it turned out, was adrenaline. Neither John's therapist nor his physical therapist could have figured that one out. John had only made the discovery by accident. He had taken a walk in the park after the sun had set. He had heard a woman scream, turned in time to see a man with her purse running towards him. John had been knocked to the ground in the man's haste to get away. Automatically, as if on autopilot, John had rushed to his feet and followed. He hadn't realised that his cane was still on the ground until both he and the perpetrator were several blocks away, and he realised that he had run the entire route without even a spike of pain.

He told his therapist about it the following week. He can still remember the mild surprise that showed on her face. She had concluded it was the adrenaline that explained it. John's body had gone into a fight or flight response, and it had gotten rid of the pain. That, and there was the distraction – it was something else for his mind to focus on. So much of his attention had been on the man he was chasing, he had not had the time to realise that he was in pain.

It was hardly a normal treatment, but John's therapist had said that they could use it.

John took up different hobbies. He could finally start exercising again, now without a cane holding him back. He sought out activities that focussed his mind, activities that caused a flood of adrenaline through his body. Some of them were suggested by his therapist; others John had found on his own. The one that John liked best, he didn't tell her about, because he wasn't sure she would approve.

It was more than just walking, like his physical therapist had suggested all those months ago. Walking was good, but it didn't produce that rush of adrenaline that he needed if he just walked through the park or through the streets of London. John only got that rush of adrenaline if he walked somewhere that was potentially unsafe. Abandoned areas. Woods. Places at night, when it is dark and quiet and eerie. When the sun starts to set, and he is alone, he feels some sort of instinct to stay on high alert. He has never really been in any danger, but there is the possibility of it, and that possibility is what keeps his heart pounding and makes him hypervigilant to any sound. He walks, and he explores, when it is late in the evening, and the possibility that he might not be safe out there keeps the pain from his leg.

Leaves and twigs crunch beneath his feet. He pushes branches out of his path. He's been walking for almost half an hour, now, which means it's time to turn around and follow the path back again before he finds himself hopelessly lost in the dark. He's sure a situation like that would lead to a lot of adrenaline, but he's pretty sure being lost in the dark is just not worth it.

He turns, and then he hears a noise. He cannot quite identify it. A scuffle of some sort. It might have been a footstep. It doesn't come from John's own feet.

He freezes, and he listens. It might be nothing. It might be an animal, or the wind, or something else non-threatening. It might not be anything to worry about.

Again, he hears the noise. This time, in the shadows, he can see movement, approaching. Whatever is approaching is tall enough human. If it's not human, then it's a dangerously large animal. Either way, the situation is not great.

Hide.

John makes a split second decision and ducks behind the nearest tree. He presses his back against the trunk and holds his breath. Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't make a sound.

More scuffles, more footsteps, and then a voice. Human, then, not an animal. At least two humans, actually, because he can hear a conversation, two different voices bouncing off one another.

Why are they out here so late? It's not safe to be out here so late.

(John knows he's a hypocrite.)

He hesitates, and then shifts, very slightly. He leans sideways and he peers out from behind the tree.

It's not two people, he realises now that he can see them. It's three. They're close together – unnecessarily so. It's almost hard to tell where one person ends and another begins. One of them is holding a torch to light their path. Light shines over the ground.

John watches. One of the men – the one in the centre – is not walking like the other two are. His feet are dragging along the ground. He is being held up by the two men either side of him.

No, John realises. He's not just being held up. He is being held.

John leans without realising he is doing so, trying to get a better look. He has to move his foot to keep his balance. This is his mistake. Something makes a sound beneath his foot, and the light from the torch quickly moves towards the source of the noise, towards the tree, towards John. John immediately ducks behind the tree and holds his breath once again. Don't move, don't breathe, don't move, don't breathe.

The trees ahead of John are lit up briefly as the torchlight moves from one side of his tree to the other. Searching, checking. John tries to make himself small, smaller than the trunk that is currently hiding his body from view. He presses his arms to his sides and his feet together. Don't move.

Then, there is a voice from behind him. "Come on, let's go," it says – male voice – and then there is darkness as the torch is withdrawn. John waits, hesitates, and then carefully – more carefully than last time – he moves to lean out from behind the tree again. Light now illuminates the men's path, away from John. He is safe.

John is safe, but the man in the middle is clearly not safe. He is being restrained, practically being dragged. Maybe he's drunk, or drugged. In one way or another, he is incapacitated. He is not safe.

There is no way to know for sure why they are here, what the relationship is between the three men, and why the man in the middle is being dragged. There is no way of knowing where they are going. However, it is safe to assume that what the two men on the outside will do to the man in the middle when they reach their destination will not be good. Wherever they are heading, it will be private. It will be quiet, isolated. They could torture or kill the man in the middle without anyone hearing a thing.

Anyone except John.

It's safe to assume that the two conscious men on the outside of the trio are dangerous. They are clearly able to incapacitate someone – even someone who is taller than both of them, as the man in the middle looks like he would be at his full height. It is safe to assume that they have weapons, either used to incapacitate the man in the first place or to use when they reach their destination. It's safe to assume that anyone who gets involved would be in danger too.

The men do not know that John is here. They did not see him when he accidentally made a sound from behind the tree. They do not know that he is there. He could wait until the sound of footsteps is gone, and then creep the other way. He could be out of the woods before they even noticed that, for a moment, they were not alone. He would be safe.

But there is no way that John would ever be all right with that. John cannot prioritise his own safety and creep away now while he has the chance, not when he knows that there is someone who is in even more danger, someone who may very well die if John does not help.

John has to do something. He cannot just stand there and do nothing.

He follows.

John does not follow the direct path of the other men. That would be too obvious. He stays behind trees, where he can duck and hide if need be, if the torchlight shines in his direction once more. He keeps his footsteps as quiet as he can manage. The woods aren't silent – there is the occasional sound of wind, of animals in the trees. A quiet noise can be dismissed as nothing more than the sounds of nature around them. If he keeps quiet enough, then no one will know he is here.

Ahead, the two men on either side of the trio are talking. They're just slightly too far away, their voices too muffled, for John to be able to make out more than a few words. Boss is audible. So is job. So is something that sounds a little bit like the word homes.

John wishes he had his gun. It's stashed away in his drawer. Technically, he's not supposed to have it at all. Next time he'll bring it, just in case anything like this ever happens again. Maybe it will help with the adrenaline, feeling the gun against his back and thinking that he might actually need to use it to protect himself or someone else. Maybe it will make him feel better. And it would definitely be good to have it if he ever is in a situation like this again.

It's unlikely he'll ever be in a situation like this again. He might not make it out of this one alive.

His heart is pounding against his ribcage. His leg is in no pain.

He follows as closely as he can manage without being seen or heard. He does not want to risk losing sight of them through the densely-packed trees. John cannot guarantee that he will be able to save the man, but he's pretty sure he can guarantee that the man will have no chance of survival if he is alone.

As they move further, the trees start to become a little less dense. John slows a bit so that he is a little further behind, a little less likely to be seen when he is out in the open, moving between each of the trees. What they come to is not quite a clearing, but more of an opening – some space where the trees are not so tightly together. The men enter this opening, and they shove the man in the centre to his knees, forcefully. This man is weak. He does not even manage to kneel; instead, he immediately falls in a heap.

"Pathetic," says the man on the left. It's easier to hear him now that they are relatively out in the open. "Thought the boss told us to be careful with this one. He said it'd be difficult."

The man on the right walks over to the one that is now in a heap on the ground. He grabs a handful of dark curls on the man's head and yanks his head back, hard. The man on the ground barely flinches. "I'm a little bit disappointed," the man on the right says. "You'd think a druggie would have a bit of a higher tolerance."

"And this is the Great Sherlock Holmes," says the man on the left, mocking. "God knows what the boss saw in this one. Come on. Let's finish the job and get home."

He reaches into the back of his trousers, and John can see the outline of a gun even before it's been fully removed from the man's waistband.

There will be no time once the gun is firmly in the man's hand, pointed straight at the head of the fallen man in the middle. John might be fast, but he isn't faster than a bullet. It's now or never.

John launches himself at the man from behind. He barrels straight into his back, the force coupled with the man's surprise knocking them both to the ground. The man loses his grip on the gun and it falls from his fingers. John does not give him the opportunity to reclaim it. He used the moment of surprise that he has and the momentum to roll them further away from the gun, and he tries to pin the man down on the ground.

The advantage that John has from taking the man by surprise does not last long, and then it is down to strength alone. John is no stranger to physical combat. By the looks of things, neither is this man. Together, they throw punches and kicks; they use their weight and momentum to roll into different positions, to try to pin one another to the ground. They are fairly evenly matched. Neither stays on the ground for very long at a time.

The man's fist collides with John's left cheek. Pain blossoms through his jaw. There will be a bruise there tomorrow. However, he finds he hardly notices, pain masked by fear and adrenaline. If he does not win this fight, a bruise to his left cheek will not matter in the slightest.

He retaliates with a punch to the man's jaw, with enough force behind it to turn the man's head. The man responds in kind, and it's a flurry of movement, fists colliding with faces, yells of pain ringing out in the silence. John manages to regain control of the situation for long enough to return them to their earlier position – John on top, using his weight to keep the man on the ground, but at some point during their fight, the man has managed to pull another weapon from somewhere. It's not his gun – that still lies on the ground a little way away from them – but instead, it's a syringe. John has no way of knowing what it contains, but he definitely does not want to be injected with it.

John is a doctor first and a soldier second. John wants to save lives, not take them. If there is ever an alternative to causing harm, John will not cause harm. However, this time, there is no alternative. The man with whom he is fighting will not hesitate to kill John. John has to defend himself.

They wrestle on the ground for several seconds. The man tries to inject John with the syringe, and John barely manages to keep it from his skin. They roll across the ground, but John manages to regain the control he temporarily lost. He ends up on top, and he ends up in a position where he can control the man's arms, and more importantly, the hand holding the syringe. He manages to pull it from the man's hand.

If John was capable of conscious thought in that moment, he would have hoped that whatever is contained in the vial will subdue the man without killing him.

He plunges the syringe into the man's neck.

It does not work instantly. For several seconds more, the man continues to struggle. After seconds, however, his movements become weaker. After a moment, he falls limp. John waits to make sure he's not moving, and then he presses two fingers beneath the man's jaw. There's a pulse. The man is alive and breathing, but he is no longer a threat.

It is only at this moment that John realises that it was an even fight. Yes, John had been aware from the start that the man was about as strong as John himself – they were evenly matched in that sense – but this is not what takes John by surprise. What surprises him is the fact that it should not have been an even fight. There had been two men, working together. It should have been two against one.

John turns around.

The man in question – the one who John would have expected to get involved in the fight at the first available opportunity – is gone.

What is even more surprising is the fact that the last man – Sherlock Holmes, they had called him; the man from the middle, the man who moments ago had been in a barely-conscious state, crumpled on the ground – is on his feet. He is standing tall and perfectly steady.

Sherlock Holmes, noting John's confusion that stems from the fact that there is one less person to fight off, says, "He ran as soon as the fight started. I presume he made the reasonable decision that his job was not worth getting himself killed over."

"I wasn't going to kill him," John says.

In response, Sherlock looks pointedly over John's shoulder at the man who now lies unconscious.

John says, "He's not dead."

Sherlock says no words in response.

After a moment, John takes a step closer. "Are you hurt?" he asks, eyes roaming over the man's pale skin for any signs of injuries.

The man shakes his head. "Hardly," he says.

John says, "A moment ago you were barely conscious," he says. "Now you're... standing. How did that happen, exactly?"

"They underestimated the amount that they would need to use for a drug to have an effect on me," Sherlock explains. "Which is an example of their own stupidity, really. Their conversation when we arrived here proves they knew I was an ex-addict."

John frowns. "So... you were faking it," he says. He doesn't quite phrase it as a question.

Sherlock makes a dismissive gesture. "I've enough experience in the area to be familiar with the sensations. It's easy enough to replicate the symptoms of an overdose."

"Why?" John asks. "They were going to kill you, and you were just lying there. You didn't even try to fight them off."

"I wasn't going to let them kill me," Sherlock says.

"You very well nearly did. You were going to have a bullet through your head if I hadn't stepped in when I did."

"And it's precisely the fact that you were there that I didn't bother to fight them off. I knew you were there."

John blinks. "Excuse me?"

"I heard you," Sherlock explains. "I knew that you were following us. It was hardly a huge leap to think that you were prepared to step in if it looked like my life was in danger. I knew we had a much better chance of survival if I were to wait for you to join my side."

"That was a massive risk, you realise," John says. "What if I'd been on their side? Or what if I'd not been strong enough to take them on? We could have both died."

"And yet," Sherlock says, "here we both are."

John frowns. He wonders to himself if the man before him has some sort of death wish, though he doesn't ask this out loud. Instead, after a pause, he asks, "Okay, so why bother faking the symptoms of being drugged in the first place?" he asks. "You wouldn't have known that anyone else was out here to help you. Why didn't you try to fight them off before you reached a place as isolated as this?"

Sherlock clears his throat. "Yes, well, that was a poor decision on my part," he says, looking away briefly. "I had not anticipated being taken to such a... mundane location. I expected more from Moriarty."

"Moriarty?" John repeats. He looks towards the fallen man on the ground. "Is that his name?"

Sherlock scoffs out a laugh. "No, certainly not," he says. "Moriarty is the most dangerous criminal mastermind I have ever encountered – and I assure you, I've encountered a few of them. In recent months, suffice to say he's developed a sort of... obsession with me. I've been playing his game for months now, trying to track him down. I thought for sure he would want to meet face to face at least once before he inevitably tried to kill me. I expected his goons to take me to him." He looks around the trees, around the woods. "I'm a little bit disappointed, actually."

"You're disappointed you weren't taken to, quote, 'the most dangerous criminal mastermind' to be killed," John says.

"Yes," Sherlock says seriously in response.

John stares at him for a moment, and then shakes his head, letting out a breath. "Maybe you do have a death wish," he mutters, and then he looks towards the fallen man on the ground. There's no way of knowing how long he will remain unconscious for. John assumes the syringe contained a sedative, but he has no way of knowing how strong it is.

A part of John feels guilty for leaving the man behind. He then reminds himself that the man found his own way here, and so, once he wakes up, he will be able to find his own way back.

John turns back to Sherlock. "We should get out of here," he says.

Sherlock nods his head and collects the fallen torch from the ground, where it had been dropped in the fight. "Then let's go," he says.