Timeframe/Info About This Fic: Pre-Fall
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock BBC. This is purely for fun.
Authors Note: My first multi-chap Sherlock fic :D (And I have to conclude that after seeing The Hobbit, Martin Freeman is the most adorable thing to ever exist. Oh, and I could totally hear Benedict's throaty growl as the Necro, even though all we saw of him was a shadow D:)

Prologue

"Are you not going to pack?" John grunted as he dragged a large case from his room. He learned it against the fireplace brick, turning back around to face a blank Sherlock, idly plucking at his violin strings. John cleared his throat noisily and stepped directly in front of Sherlock.

"Are you not going to pack?" John repeated in a much louder voice. "Because, if you think that I'm going to pack yo—"

"I'm not going with you."

"Last time I tried to pack for you, I forgot one of your blood pathogen samples—how on earth was I supposed to know about those—and you said the case was ruined because of me—wait, what? You aren't going?"

"I am going—just not with you."

John blinked once. "Not with me…? You can't tell me that you're planning on taking a cab across the Chunnel."

"I'm taking the flight tomorrow to Ghent. After borrowing some of Mycroft's notes—"

"Borrowing?"

"Please, John, don't interrupt with your moral compass. After borrowing some of Mycroft's notes, I found that the key suspect in our case is going to be on my new flight tomorrow to Belgium. Surely not for a winter getaway—no, more likely he's going to try to warn his boss that we're onto to him." Sherlock squinted, pursing his lips together in thought. "Why else would an innocent man want to leave the country and travel to a city fifteen minutes from crime lord Jom Martyrise's last known whereabouts. Clearly he isn't going to celebrate the festival—which was finished months ago. Aside from sightseeing, which he could do in any city in Belgium, why else would a reformed criminal want to go to Ghent. Really, John. I feel like I'm repeating myself now."

The former army doctor frowned slightly. "I could have reached the same conclusion," after a doubtful look from Sherlock, he added a sheepish "eventually." John glanced back at the suitcase next to him. "But why did you have to reschedule your flight? Couldn't we have just, I don't know, waited for him at the airport?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Wouldn't have worked. I need to question him without him knowing who I am."

There was a beat of silence. "Do you know who you are?" John's eyebrows sunk incredulously. He blinked twice, unsure if he heard correctly.

Sherlock looked at him oddly. "What a funny question. Tell me, John. What is going through your ordinary mind at this moment?" He peered at his roommate curiously.

John rolled his eyes despite himself. "I mean, people know you're Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective. How are you going to question this suspect, if he knows who you are?"

"I'm not going to be me, and you aren't going to be there." After seeing the blank look on John's face, he hastily added "Let me explain. If I'm disguised as something neutral, something mundane—a secretary! Yes, a secretary." Off on his own tangent, Sherlock stared to tick off reasons on his fingers. "A secretary has a relatively neutral job with no firm attachments to the law or with rival gangs. He or she may also know from classified sources where Mr. Martyrise's man might be able to find a few extra jobs once his employment is through." John looked skeptical, but he didn't interrupt. "Luckily our man is relatively new to London. He would only recognize me if you were also there, since that's all that's been in the tabloids." Sherlock wrinkled his nose slightly. "If he suspects that I'm who he thinks I am, his suspicions will be soothed when he discovers that a Mr. Sherlock Holmes and a Doctor John Watson have already taken a flight to Ghent a day before him."

John sighed loudly. "I see you've already thought this through, yet you always neglect to tell me until the last moment." Sherlock shrugged, turning back to his violin. After a pause, John glanced at his phone and gave a small start. "My flight leaves in an hour!" He bent over, hefted his suitcase with a slight grunt, and wobbled towards the door. He stopped at the door, glancing over again at his flatmate.

"Aren't you going to wish me a safe flight?"

Sherlock frowned, looking slightly confused. "Why would it not be a safe flight? And how would wishing make it any better."

John rolled his eyes one last time, wondering when Mycroft was going to ship him his invitation to be knighted for putting up with his brother for so long. "You're right. I'll just, uh, see you in Ghent." He settled for a shrug of the shoulder as a wave, but it was missed by Sherlock, who was distractedly tuning his violin.

Sherlock was vaguely aware of John leaving. Downstairs, he could hear John murmuring goodbye to Mrs. Hudson.

"Thank you again for the sandwiches, Mrs. Hudson. I'm sure they'll be better than the food on the airplane."

"It was no problem." Sherlock could envision his landlady smiling broadly. "I hope you have a safe flight, dear."

"At least someone is hoping everything will be fine." John kept talking, but he fell out of range for Sherlock to hear, and the detective surely wasn't going to get up to hear what else was being said.

Lost in thought, Sherlock absently plucked an ill tuned cord. It slammed against the neck of the violin with a shrill, flat snap, causing a slight shudder to run up the normally composed man's spine.

Why would it not be a safe flight?

No thanks to a good deal of nagging from Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock finally began to pack. It was a demeaning task for someone of his intelligence—after all, John always had packed for the both of them—and had Mrs. Hudson not been peering over his shoulder not unlike a hawk the entire time, it was very likely Sherlock would have forgotten something obviously important to ordinary people, such as his toothbrush or extra undergarments. After being constantly assaulted with various forms of "Oh, dear, you don't really need those, do you?" and "Sherlock, dear, they may detain you if you bring along that.", Sherlock finally dragged his suitcase of investigation gear to the bottom of the apartment to be sent to Ghent ahead of him. For once deciding to deem his landlady's words as wise, the detective decided not to take his evidence samples of a rudimentary bomb on the plane with him, instead sending it by a reliable express delivery service to where he and John would be staying.

Mrs. Hudson was trailing behind him, chattering incessantly about the last time she had visited Belgium quite a few years ago. Sherlock tuned her out, instead scouring the busy London streets for his man, who would pick up his stuff and take it directly through the Chunnel. Unfortunately, it was raining, and since Sherlock did not really prefer the cold drizzle, he quick dragged his stuff into the sandwich shop adjacent to his flat, and sat down at the very first table he saw. Mrs. Hudson, who sat on the opposite side, continued her merry ramblings until she cut off suddenly with a deep frown. Smiling and cheery people throughout the café also stopped their pointless conversions, their expressions turning solemn.

The sharp difference between the gentle buzz of the sandwich shop and the new stifling silence was almost painful. Sherlock's eyes darted to the worried face of Mrs. Hudson, taking note that her gaze was elevated, as was everyone else's. Sherlock, whose back was turned to the suspended television sets, twisted his back to see what had sobered an entire shop.

"Flight 693, which departed from London at approximately 12:00 o'clock this afternoon, has strayed significantly from its course to Ghent, Belgium. Due for landing at the Ghent Airport fifteen minute ago, instead the flight has traveled an extra two hundred kilometers past Ghent and into Germany."

Mrs. Hudson's slightly quavering voice rose high above the stern newscaster's report. "Isn't that John's flight? On the telly?" Sherlock's eyes were glued to the screen; he was unable to tear them from the box in fear of missing some crucial detail as to John's current situation.

"Officials have been unable to communicate with the pilots onboard Flight 693. Either the plane has been hijacked, or something has gone very wrong. The flight has been spotted and is in a steep decline," the reporter read off with a slowly slipping a beat of horrible silence and a frantic shuffling of papers, he added with a pained grimace that "the flight has now gone over three hundred kilometers past its scheduled landing."

Beside the sweating newsman was a large map of north-western Europe with a tiny plane rapidly scooting further away from a starred Ghent. Sherlock grimaced as he took note of the renegade plane's new course. It was heading steadily towards the Eifel mountain range of Germany. Quickly heights and widths of the individual mountains flashed through the detective's mind. Alone, none of the mountains stood particularly tall, but to a sinking plane, they were incredibly dangerous. It was unlikely that John's flight would make it over the sharp mountains and rolling hills.

Without even noticing his body's takeover of control, Sherlock felt himself rise closer to the telly. He almost expected Mrs. Hudson to yell at him to move, but then he realized the woman's head was probably bent in frantic prayer. His light eyes darted across the screen, trying to fight off the rising bile in his throat and the ice coursing through his veins. He was barely aware when the news anchor stopped talking, noticing with a slight start that the man's mouth had stopped moving as he listened, frozen in place, to the incoming message. The world around Sherlock was deathly silent, and the only thing he was conscious off was the whispering murmurs of "oh, God…" and the slight buzz from the static on the television screen. John is on that flight, was repeated continuously through Sherlock's mind, each repetition of the mantra causing a deep pain that felt like knives slicing through emotions he was unsure he had ever possessed.

After what felt like an eternity, the reporter's face went ashen. In an unsteady voice, much too high to be professional, the reporter announced the fate of the plane, John's plane.

"Flight 693 has gone down somewhere in the Eifel Mountains." There was a suddenly explosion as the helpless civilians in the sandwich shop each grasped the terrible reality. One woman started sobbing, blubbering about how her nephew was going to Ghent for the weekend, but she had forgotten which flight he was on. Mrs. Hudson started to sniffle behind Sherlock, murmuring the word "John" every so often. Others viewed the report with varying shades of confusion to sorrow, some still too far in shock to grasp the situation.

A nearby bystander could have considered the world's only consulting detective as one of the latter people. Instead of lashing out in anger or simply breaking down, Sherlock just stood there, eyes desperately absorbing everything on the buzzing screen. The giant seemed to be neither aware of his body's slight tremble, nor of his labored breathing, echoing loudly in his ears. He was hoping, so deeply that it hurt, that this was all a misunderstanding and that—oh, God, John, please don't be dead.

After a lifetime had passed, and the news did not change its coverage, Sherlock slowly accepted the truth with an icy certainty. John was dead and had Sherlock not have been so determined to beat a case, he too would have been dead.

Moving faster than he had ever moved before in his life, Sherlock was out of the sandwich shop, leaving behind a crying Mrs. Hudson, a gray faced news reporter, a nearly hysteric woman, and a downed flight. He burst into the wet drizzle of London, the rest of the city blissfully unaware of the recent tragedy, but quickly turned and darted back to the entrance door to his apartment. Climbing three steps at a time to get to his silent flat, Sherlock rushed inside, slamming the door behind him.

He refused to let the world outside see his weakness.

Err...so sorry to those who have read my previous Sherlock fic. But unlike that one, this one still has the potential to have a relatively not depressing ending. (And yet, my attempts to be cheery have only made this less happy...)
Thank you for reading! Hopefully you'll want to stick with this :D