Chapter Text
John
John had watched the video four times now, and still saw nothing. The Christmas market bustles around them, while Rosie stares, entranced, from John’s arms; Father Christmas, now tantalizingly near, bounces a howling infant on his knee while looking long-suffering and calm. And then, abruptly, Sherlock jerks, staring past John’s shoulder—then drops his basket and cane and takes off running, without saying a word. By the time John turns around on-screen (in the real world, four days earlier), he’s vanished.
Nothing had been seen or heard of him since.
Mycroft had minions digging for additional camera views—this one, from the pharmacy on the far side of the green, was blurry because of the distance to the festival booths, and has a very limited angle of view. But North Holmwood, despite its 6000-strong population these days, still had more in common with a village than a city when it came to technology. Only a few businesses around the common had cameras, and most of those didn’t work very well. After the second day, Mycroft dispatched people to do interviews of known attendees at the market, as well as the business owners. Many locals remembered seeing Sherlock (or “Lock”, or even “Lockie”, depending on the age of those questioned) at some point in the day, but so far, no one recalled seeing whoever, whatever it was he ran after.
John hadn’t been terribly concerned, at first; annoyed, yes, since he now had to manage a toddler, a basket, a (very expensive) cane that Sherlock, damn him, still needed* and had just taken off running without, and Father Christmas, all by himself. Without Rosie’s pushchair he couldn’t even put her down to use his phone, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to pull out of the line to chase after Sherlock—Rosie was so excited, it would break her heart (though he was quite sure she had no idea what the whole thing was about). He fretted, certainly, but knew his duty (and Rosie seemed a bit perturbed herself, leaning over John’s shoulder, chirping “Sock, Sock” and waving bye-bye).
He suspected he was a bad father when Rosie took one look up from Father Christmas’ lap and howled, and John felt nothing more than relief. He scooped her up with an apologetic smile, took the complimentary candy cane and hustled off towards the tea tent, where the elder Holmeses were taking a break. A quick explanation, a handoff of the baby and the rest of his burdens to her unofficial Nana, and he was off.
John started with the obvious, texting Sherlock as he hustled back to where the detective had disappeared. He asked at every booth of that side of the green with no results; many people remembered seeing their group together, two remembered seeing Sherlock take off running towards the trees (“Why was he limping? Is something wrong?”) but nothing since. John walked all the way around the common, cursing when no answer came to his earlier text. He tried calling—straight to Sherlock’s snarky voicemail. Didn’t bother leaving a message—Sherlock would already know why he was calling.
He next left the green altogether, heading off in the direction Sherlock had gone and searching unsuccessfully for an indication of, well, anything that would tell him what was going on (while certain that Sherlock could have taken one look and led him to the exact route). No people to ask, here—the boundary of dense trees and underbrush, with only a few footpaths weaving through, had no easy sightlines to the residential areas on the far side.
At that juncture he’d been more annoyed that concerned; didn’t think there was likely to be danger lurking at a small-town Christmas festival, after all. And this kind of thing was well within Sherlock’s typical modus operandi—he would typically come bouncing back in a couple of hours, pleased with himself (or sulky, if he hadn’t succeeded). So John trudged back to the tea tent, gave an apologetic smile to Sherlock’s parents (who weren’t all that concerned either) and they all headed home to wait for the prodigal’s return.
Eight hours later, they were still waiting.
By midnight, they had all moved into the realm of “concerned”. Siger reached out informally to the village constabulary, who had heard nothing, seen nothing. John contacted Greg Lestrade, on the off chance that Sherlock had seen something connected to one of their cases and called the policeman to either gloat or complain. Nothing there, either. Finally, by unspoken agreement, Siger called Mycroft.
The Great Man skyped them, a little over an hour later. “I have set various groups to searching uploaded security feeds—certain systems do such uploads, with the owners often unaware.” John found himself wondering how, exactly, that had come about. One look at Siger’s raised eyebrow confirmed his suspicions. “Unfortunately, those in the village are largely older-generation systems—we have yet to locate any that are not. If we hear nothing by morning, I would suggest filing an official Missing Person notice with the local police. I can ensure they have more than adequate resources.”
Because that was the elephant in the room, honestly. In a “normal” household, that formal call to the authorities would have already taken place. In the Holmeses’ world, though, and particularly in Sherlock’s orbit, vanishing for a day or more and returning unharmed was relatively common—well, at least it had been, back when John first met him. But Sherlock’s similar disappearance earlier in the year, and its terrible consequences, left them teetering between “it’ll be fine” and “something awful has happened”, debating whether filing a report would endanger a delicate case solution, or not filing it would endanger their son.
At dawn, John and Siger decided to take another look around the green—without the crowds around it might be easier to get an idea of where the person or persons Sherlock was pursuing had headed. Siger also wanted to start canvassing friends who might have been at the festival and see if they had seen anything.
The booths were still in place, but most had canvas drop cloths over their fronts now; no one was on the green but an elderly man walking his dog, off in the distance.
The green itself gave them nothing: flattened, somewhat muddy grass, a smattering of trash and discarded tickets, a few discarded pieces of wrapped candy. Siger and John took it in quadrants, gradually circling back towards each other. They finally ended up working their way along the tree line, and finally into the woods, following each dirt path. It was there, in mid-morning, that John trotted over after a shout from the older man—to see him holding Sherlock’s phone in his hand.
They made the police report then.
Over the following two days, Mycroft’s people had interviewed nearly 50 attendees, focusing on those who had been identified from the existing videos since they had definitely been on the green at the right time. They found more people that noticed Sherlock running (limping) off, but, because most were locals, they knew it was nothing unusual for the younger Holmes boy—they didn’t pay much attention after he charged out of sight.
Siger, Mellie and John followed up on some of these interviews—those where the interviewee indicated they had phone video from the event. Those videos were duly sent to their little task force, and they watched hour after hour of it. Maddeningly, Sherlock (and John and Rosie) appeared in several files, often from the back, or through brief glimpses of Sherlock’s dark curls above the crowd. One actually captured the beginning of the detective dash, but only in the background, and the camera turned away almost immediately afterward.
Mellie Holmes looked increasingly strained as the days went by; like Sherlock, she had the tendency to push herself to the point of collapse. Siger had, more than once, gently urged her to go lie down “even if you don’t sleep”. She did, and she did sleep, but never for long. After two days John called Harry to see if she could take Rosie for the duration; the baby was picking up on the strained atmosphere and had begun to notice Sherlock’s absence, so John thought it would be better for everyone.
On the fourth day Mycroft showed up at breakfast; he’d driven down in the pre-dawn (sans Anthea) to help go through the remaining volume of video. John suspected that that was more an excuse than not, but figured the elder Holmeses could use the moral support.
Siger had gone into the village very early, to pick up a phone from a very elderly neighbor who didn’t know how to use it. “Her grandson gave it to her, and used the camera over the weekend, including at the festival,” he said. “So there may well be something on it, but she can’t figure out how to look. I asked if I could borrow it, in exchange for operating lessons when I bring it back,” he added with a wry smile. He handed off the phone to the young man Mycroft had brought with him as technical backup, who proceeded to fiddle around for five minutes before bringing the files up on the smart TV in the lounge. It made a nice change from staring at a computer screen, at least.
The first ten minutes or so consisted of family videos; Siger quickly advanced through that. Suddenly, though, the scene changed to what John recognized as the edge of the town commons. What followed was perhaps twenty minutes’ worth of views of the festival. John recognized Sherlock twice, from the back, and a brief glimpse of himself holding Rosie, a huge smile on her face. After that, though, the camera view swept into a slow panoramic view of the scene as a whole.
John had stepped away towards the kitchen with the aim of putting together another round of tea and biscuits when he heard Siger’s sudden gasp. He turned back to see the older man gesturing to his son. “Run that back a minute or two,” he said urgently. “And see if you can slow it down, and perhaps zoom in when I tell you to.”
Mycroft nodded to his assistant, who dutifully cued up the reversed footage. It was now visible at perhaps twice the size of the previous views, and moving noticeably slower—John wasn’t sure how that last part had been accomplished. Siger leaned forward, then suddenly yelled “Stop!”, and the screen near-froze on an image of a sharp-faced woman—girl, really, with short, spiky blue hair--holding a toddler. The toddler, curiously, looked at the ground or into the woman’s shoulder rather than towards the enticing noises and lights of the festival. His little hands worked nervously, over and over. “Myc,” Siger said, staring at the hands, “is that Sign? It’s not clear, and you know it better than I these days.”
The bureaucrat nudged his technician. “Play it one more time,” he said. “Focus on the child.” The agent dutifully reversed the video one more time, keyed in more data on his keyboard, and the view zoomed in yet again, though with the loss of a fair amount of detail. This time the little boy on the woman’s hip was center screen, his hands moving fitfully. Mycroft suddenly went very, very still. “It is indeed BSL,” he said, picking up his phone and typing rapidly. “And he is saying, repeatedly, ‘help me’.”