Chapter Text
William’s head was empty for the first time.
He could have been thinking about gravitational acceleration and survival probability, but it didn’t matter how many milliseconds he had left to exist. They would be spent in Sherlock’s arms, and he was content with whatever happened next.
Then a clap, and the whole world was as dark and numb as his mind.
The position of Sherlock’s arms around his head protected him from an instant death, but he could feel bones snapping as the impact of the water tore him apart.
But he was alive. And from the tight and unyielding grip, he could surmise that Sherlock was, too.
The current swept them under. William came close to giving up any hope that they’d ever breathe air again before it spit them out into the deafening spray of the waves.
“For a genius you really are an idiot!”
Sherlock felt it prudent to waste his valuable breath and energy on shouting that at him despite the fact that they remained in the process of what most people would call drowning.
But Sherlock was treading water, more or less. If he could flounder around in the choppy water, his injuries must have been minor.
William clung to his shoulders. Otherwise, Sherlock would try to carry him. He’d rather sink than be a burden, but Sherlock did have him in a bind with this mutual destruction gambit of his.
“My leg is broken,” he said. His voice was lost in the crashing waves as the river pushed them relentlessly downstream.
His chest was searing in pain with each breath. They bobbed under and up again. He coughed water.
“I can’t swim the distance it would take to reach the shore.” Not to mention that the river’s flow was pushing them at a rate and trajectory that would make it almost impossible even for a champion swimmer.
“And? Do you think I would drop you and save myself?”
“I am merely stating a fact.”
Sherlock snorted water from his nose and spat. “I’ve got a plan! Just hold on, don’t get any funny ideas about sinking without me.”
William had never had a person threaten them with their own life, but it was effective. “I swear.”
Hearing those words seemed to give Sherlock a rush of motivation. William was certain if it weren’t so dark, he would see a ridiculous smirk on his face.
He swam with the debris fallen from the rafters above. William tried to float as much as he could to lessen the strain, but holding the air in his chest was agonizing. Broken ribs. At this point he could be dying slowly from internal bleeding, and there wasn’t much he or Sherlock could do about that.
A distant secondary concern was how if they were spotted floating in the river, William would be taken and most certainly executed. That was not so important to him, but it would prompt Sherlock into a series of foolish actions that may end up with him accused of conspiracy. He couldn’t have that.
Sherlock grabbed onto a plank of wood that had enough buoyancy to float even with them in tow. It would also hide them from view in one go. A good plan.
Even with that, they choked for air and struggled to stay alive against the river.
***
Sherlock was caught between the pure ecstatic disbelief that they’d actually survived and the inevitability of what would come next.
With the aid of the wooden piece, he could hold Liam for hours, likely. The problem was the cold. It was not freezing, but far enough below a normal body temperature to cause hypothermia after enough time. Sherlock wasn’t the mathematician here, but he surmised they’d last 2 hours at best, and that would barely take them ten miles. That meant the outskirts of the city, but still within search radius.
A new puzzle presented itself: how to protect the most wanted man in London. How could they get out of the river without being spotted?
A dark place is what they needed.
The underneath of a bridge would be too obvious, too well traveled. He had to wait until they came to a spot where the edge of the water was lined with thick trees.
Liam’s grip began to slack. Sherlock still had no idea to what extent he had been injured.
There was an embankment with tall grass. It would have to do.
“It’s far enough,” he said, and discarded the makeshift wooden buoy.
From there he swam with Liam in tow until his feet touched ground.
The grass was enough to hide in, as long as they stayed down. In the distance, city lights were flickering.
“It’s not,” Liam mumbled, shivering and stuttering in the oncoming hypothermia.
Sherlock slipped and slid in the heavy mud as he dragged Liam up. “I know it’s not.”
They were plastered in dirt, stinking of earth. Liam’s clothes snagged on an exposed root and tore as Sherlock dragged him free. They both collapsed.
“Are you sure—“ To hear Liam struggle to jab at him in spite of everything hurt more than everything he had endured so far. “Sure... you aren’t trying to kill me... after all?”
“At least you’re healthy enough to sass me,” he laughed, coughing up river water and mud, then he began the slow crawl once again.
After heaving Liam’s battered body all the way up to where the ground was firm, Sherlock let himself sit if only for a brief rest. Liam slouched against his shoulder, too broken and exhausted to even hold his head up. His foot wasn’t quite aligned with his knee.
Now that the extreme about-to-die feeling had died down to a more general sense of danger, Sherlock could process what had happened and what it meant. “So, professor, can you calculate the odds we just beat?”
Liam responded in the most close-to-dead tone. “You wouldn’t be able to follow it.”
“Sounds impressive.” Sherlock groaned as he pushed himself off the ground, hauling Liam by the arm. He was freezing and Liam felt even colder. “We’ve got to get to dry ground somehow or other, or we’ll both die.”
Liam began to laugh, but stopped and coughed.
“Broke your ribs too, huh? Any other injuries you want to share with me?”
“I doubt I could hide it from you,” he said, punctuated in a gasp for air. Sherlock’s heart jumped at the fear he might have punctured a lung, but Liam quickly recovered and continued on. “Broken leg, fibula I think. Maybe the tibia too.”
“Those two do tend to go together.”
“They do.”
“What else?”
“Broken ribs. Two at least. Dislocated shoulder on this side.”
Sherlock pushed with each step through the sticky marsh. “And here I am, relatively unharmed.”
“Do you honestly believe—“ he stopped for breath.
“Do I honestly believe that this genius mathematician could read the slope of a wave and angle himself to take the brunt of a fall? I do.”
“You think... too much of me.”
“Maybe so, but here we are.”
***
The embankment led to a few acres of empty land. The trees were stumped, but tall grasses and weeds had grown up in their place.
William’s mind was already back to it’s constant activity, observing and speculating. An empty lot of this size this close to London? The proprietor must have run into a hangup. If it were a matter of money, someone else would have swept in and bought the land.
This information seemed useless for the time being, but he was thankful for the familiar buzz of thoughts in his head that deafened turbulent emotions.
He pushed along with his one good leg in attempts to support his weight. Sherlock was heaving, his strength was waning fast. He paused for rest. Walk, rest, walk rest. So much effort to go a few steps at a time.
They had to make it far enough that a canvassing of the riverside wouldn’t find them.
The moon had graced them with a bit of light, just a halo of silver around the edge of their surroundings.
“Ah!” Sherlock shouted in the dark. “I see something.”
In the distance, William could make out the jagged shapes of man made structures. This part of the city was slowly overcoming the challenge of the soft earth and encroaching toward the river.
“It’s too far. You won’t make it there with me.”
“Not the city. There’s an outcropping.”
His vision was blurry. He could see the moon’s glow glinting against a patch of rock. A spot raised above the mud and surrounded by tall grass.
“Careful now.” Sherlock lifted him as tenderly as one might carry a bride across a threshold, and laid him down across the smoothest area.
Without taking a beat to rest, Sherlock loomed over William and began to unbutton what was left of his jacket.
“What—“
“Cold clothes will kill you faster than bare skin. Besides, I need to check the severity of your injuries.”
William laid there in indignation as he permitted Sherlock’s examination. Perhaps the punishment for his crimes would be endless pain and humiliation at the hands of this man rather than death.
Sherlock’s hands were cold, and they moved with purely clinical intent across his skin. Not like when he grabbed his hand, or when he enveloped him in his arms. His fingers probed in the ridges of his chest.
“They’re only cracked,” he said, and sighed in relief. “Try to breathe more from your belly and you should be okay.”
He went on to look at William’s leg. Because of how it was twisted, he hadn’t attempted to remove the pants. At first William thought of that as a relief, but then Sherlock began feeling put his bones through the cloth, prodding him all over.
“Looks bad. You’re damn lucky your leg bones haven’t broken the skin.”
“Did you learn this medical expertise from your Doctor Watson?”
“Well, sort of. I’ve broken a bone or two in my time. He was there for a few of them.”
“I see.”
“If I had a splint I could try to set it, but even with that, my medical abilities are limited to, well, watching John.”
“I will live,” he said. “Or, rather, my leg won’t be the thing that kills me.”
“You’ll die from exposure much more quickly, yes. And this slab of dirt, it looks like it could be submerged as soon as the water level changes.”
“That will only happen if it rains.”
“And when does it rain? We’re only in London, after all.”
William laughed, which he then regretted. His chest burned.
They both knew the conclusion here.
“You have to go ahead of me.”
To find a place to hide, food, clean water. Supplies for William’s injuries. None of that could be done while dragging William. Sherlock could disguise his own identity with some effort, but William’s face had been in the last day’s newspaper.
“If they comb the riverside, they’ll find you.” The way he said that was almost spiteful, like he couldn’t abide the thought of someone else catching him. William suppressed the urge to laugh again.
“They won’t comb this far for men who are dead.”
He knew that was not a certainty.
“I don’t like it.”
Sherlock moved to sit beside him. “I’ll stay with you until dawn. It should come soon. No use wandering in the dark.”
He took William’s hand, and as they remained linked, his touch began to feel warm again.
“I think I may sleep until then, if it is permissible.”
“Sure. Save your strength. It wouldn’t make sense to die at this point.”
Sherlock continued to say more, but William had already fallen asleep hand in hand.
***
“Now how will I get my hand back?”
Liam’s grip on him was tight for a moment, but as he fell deeper into sleep, it relaxed and he was released.
Sherlock peeled off wet jacket and shirt and set them where they’d be most likely to dry. A slim likelihood as it was.
He laid down and draped his arm carefully over Liam. It was fortunate the weather had been mild, but mild for London was still weather to die in if you couldn’t get dry. At least with his body, he could offer some warmth.
Liam slept like a log, even in spite of the pain he must be in. That was an amusing detail he hadn’t yet known about Liam, and fortunate too. If he knew about this, he’d probably rather die.
When the sun rose, the sky was still as clear as it had been when the moon came out the night before, and that gave him some hope that maybe he’d win this battle for Liam’s life against man and nature alike.
The sun was shining and a gentle breeze made the grass sway, as if this could have all been a camping excursion, a vacation by the riverside.
Liam was sleeping just as deeply as before. That blond hair and pale skin that had always been so perfectly kept were caked in mud.
He did his best to clear the matted hair and grit from his face, but his own hands were just as dirty.
Sherlock knew that a death wish wasn’t so easily cured. Once his own safety was ensured, Liam would have less motivation to comply with the idea of life ongoing. But for now, at least when he was sleeping, it didn’t seem that those worries troubled him.
He sat up and threw on his shirt. Less damp, not dry.
Liam was roused by the removal of Sherlock’s body from his side, even though nudging him wouldn’t have woken him before.
“I’m going,” Sherlock said, buttoning his shirt out of habit, though it made little difference. “Town’s only a few miles. The sun should warm this rock up a bit by midday.”
Liam knew better than to try to move. He looked up at the sky with a listless expression. It took a moment for Sherlock to realize that he was noticing the weather patterns. “It won’t rain. I should survive until night falls. Although, this situation will make things easier for search parties as well.”
“Mixed blessing.” Sherlock took his coat and laid it out. “Once that dries, put it on along with yours. More layers the better.”
Liam smiled, but it was hiding a bitter melancholy that Sherlock could not miss. A mysterious expression. All washed up like a sewer rat, and his eyes were still as striking.
“Thank you.”
“You can thank me by staying alive until I come back.”