It's not the fall that kills you.

Chapter 3

The best thing about being Sherlock Holmes, he thinks, is that he is twice the adrenaline junkie as John Watson ever was, and he knows how to find a hit around every single corner.

Correction: he was twice the adrenaline junkie before he fell.

Now, Sherlock needs it about five times as much. Luckily for him, there's a high waiting for him, just about ten minutes away.

Lestrade doesn't notice it, which is an unsurprising but woeful tragedy, as far as he's concerned. Sherlock really is the only one in the room to realise the fact that the murderer is still there. Yes- it really is just him. Lestrade is crouching next to the body, wholly and utterly oblivious, John is lingering at the door frowning at some inconsequential letter lifted from the nearby coffee table, Donovan is mucking about, as usual- and Sherlock is the only one to realise there's one person in the house that shouldn't be.

Well, it'll hardly be the first time he has to do the Yard's job for them, will it?

It's inordinately easy, to slip away. He fakes a phone call from Mycroft, who never calls him and yet no one look twice, anyway- idiots- and is slinking towards the stairs before anyone can be any the wiser. If his suspicion is correct, and he's Sherlock Holmes, so it is, then there's a false panel in the ceiling. He's waiting for the police to leave to come out. He's waiting for a roomful of idiots to not notice the slightly cleverer idiot in hiding and then, he'll be free to sneak out, tamper with the crime scene, and steal away as he pleases.

Sherlock grins, and it's all teeth.

It really is such a thrill, being the most clever person in the room.

What he'll tell people later, is that it didn't go according to plan.

It did, though.

It really, really did.

They end up toppling out the window together, four different ways he could've ended this here and now shelved because he wants a blood-pounding chase and by god, he's going to get it. The fall is rough, shattering glass and a sharp cry and a shoulder knocked out of the socket, but the police are slow on the uptake, as ever, and Sherlock pelts off after the suspect with leaves in his hair and mud on his face and it's the best he's felt in years.

John will be so disappointed.

The chase is glorious, and his feet pound over the pavement in a way that clears his head so exquisitely he never wants to stop running. In fact, he doesn't. He lets the man run for three extra blocks just because he can, he waits for the poor sod to tire himself out and is disappointed when he does. He runs and runs and runs, and he is in Afghanistan and Venezuela and Russia all at once when he slips to the side of the first sloppy punch and disarms the man, blow by calculated blow.

There's a knife. He's pretty sure there's blood. It's all a bit of a blur, detective inspector.

But that's how it goes, and that's how Sherlock ends up standing over a winded, dazed, whining imbecile on his back and with blood on his hands. Some of it is his dead wife's. Some, dripping from his nose and splattered all over, is obviously his.

Some is also Sherlock's, but he just really doesn't care.

"Well," he announces, hands dusted off, the blood howling in his ears, "that was tedious. Wouldn't you say?"

The poor sod is still too utterly winded to respond.

Sherlock smiles, fanning his coat out to easier drop to his knees beside him. "You could've given me a more interesting time of it, though. Really! You barely managed five minutes of my time. Next time," he chides, patting his face in a way that makes him flinch, "do better. Hm?"