This one's the fault of MapleleafCameo who said how much we like to abuse John and to whom I was talking about being the Property of HRH (Her Royal Highness) and sticks of rock. Ta, Honey!
It was less than three weeks since her return and she was already getting into trouble, he thought ruefully. The three weeks mattered to him more than it might, as that was the period of time needed for the reading of banns. His wedding - their wedding - was due next Saturday. It would be rather a let-down if she weren't actually there for it. So inconsiderate of her!
'Who the hell would go on a jaunt to a disused tube station under Charing Cross Station, on their own, and leave a note and a map anyway?' he mused as he grabbed his phone and the gun he now kept under his bed. Sherlock wasn't picking up, so he fired off a text telling him where he'd gone and why, ignoring the hypocrisy of his actions.
The map was a detailed schematic of the abandoned tunnels built for the Jubilee line's original course, before being diverted down to Westminster. He found the partition walling between the disused Jubilee platforms and those for the rest of the station, as directed, more easily than he'd anticipated. The rush hour was so long gone that it was easier to slip through the fire exits without anyone seeing him than he could have hoped. He assumed that other interested parties had taken care of the alarms as nothing had sounded by the time he had clicked them shut again.
John tiptoed across the circulation area between the platforms for the disused line and looked about tentatively. No one in evidence. The archway was flooding with an eery blue light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. He could still make out the small piles of rubble and coatings of dust everywhere and was careful where he trod in case of making noise and drawing unwanted attention.
He was immediately confronted with the smudgy outline of dark, partial-footprints and corresponding splashes of what was presumably the same dark substance, down the corridor and trailing away out of sight onto the south-bound platform. Too large for her tiny feet, he thought and experimentally dipped a finger into one of the splashes, rubbing it between his fingers and holding it up to the light - unmistakably blood. If it was her blood, she could be at the source to the trail, injured or worse. That would have to be his first port of call and the owner of the footprints would have to wait.
John grasped his gun. Creeping around Criminal Central, even armed, was asking for trouble. He stealthily moved around the opening and checked all directions before following the bloody trail, pivoting around periodically to check around him for any hostile attention.
He ran across the open space at the bottom of the escalators and skidded to a halt in horror at what he saw. Her biker jacket was slung over the stationary handrail and a small pool of blood gave witness to the fact that he had found the source of the bloody footprints. So was that good news or bad? Was she injured or been killed and had been carried away, or had she nothing to do with the pool of blood at all? Or was she responsible for creating it? The latter seemed quite possible on past experience. He decided to leave the worrying until he had further information. He'd be of no use to anyone if he contemplated the worst at this point. In the meantime, he scooped up her jacket, she'd want that back later - he hoped.
He wished Sherlock was there. Sherlock would be able to make more of the gory mess of evidence. Well, he was no expert, but there was still something to be said for following the owner of the footprints. It was a lead of sorts in any case. They led onto one of the twin platforms, this one had been planned to head towards Aldwych, when the trains had stopped there in the nineties.
When John peered onto the platform he saw what she would calmly call a Mexican stand-off. She was stood with a gun pointed at a man and he at her. She was in a stance that gave John the impression she'd used firearms before, and often. Both hands were on the barrel and her shoulders were down and relaxed, her feet apart, the right slightly behind the left, with her weight evenly distributed so it was impossible to predict which way she might dart. There was a trail of blood leading off down the platform. There was no evidence of a body but he was relieved to see that the blood could not be coming from her.
She didn't look round as he stepped through the archway and raised his gun to point at the man. "John, not another step!" There was enough warning in her voice to halt him on the spot.
The other man turned his gun around to point directly at John as he spoke for the first time, "All you need do, is tell us where you've hidden it and we'll let your lover go!" And then he recognised the voice, the hint of Essex in his Estuary vowels, and John could see her having her head ducked by the Korean thugs and hear this man taunting her from the background, giving a message to Sherlock by announcing his presence. He'd played that recording over and over and there was no doubt in his mind it was the same man, the one who she had reported as being in strategic places around the world when certain bad things were going down.
He was jerked back to the present when she spoke in reply, her voice flat and emotionless. "Relationships don't matter, friendships don't matter, what you want doesn't matter, what is good for the people you care about doesn't matter. Once you work for the government, none of it matters anymore. Cut me open and you'll find 'Property of HRH' running through me like a stick of seaside rock[1]."
She pivoted round, stoney faced, her gun still raised to shoulder height and fired straight at John's chest. The last thing he remembered thinking before hitting the deck was, 'She shot me!'
"Shame that was the last bullet - I'd like to have saved one for me to avoid what happens next," she said lowering the gun with her arms straight and looking down at the floor defeatedly. It was enough to put even Moriarty's righthand man off guard, she thought, and she rapidly raised the gun and fired in one fluid movement. One of his henchmen was lurking just out of sight and managed to deflect her arm enough that the shot went harmlessly into the wall over the track. The man with the Estuary vowels was gone in flash; the henchman disabled with a quick sweep to the back of his knees and a blow to his neck.
John was aware of her leaning over him. Time to say something crucial, momentous, something meaningful, might be his dying words after all - important to make your final words mean something. "You shot me!" he said with more than just a hint of petulance.
"Course I ruddy shot you - only thing I could think of to save your life! Oh John, why the hell can't you just stay out of harm's way? You could just have phone for backup! Don't think so well when you're around and it matters so much," she murmured not really apologetically.
John touched his chest and held his hand in front of his eyes, a feeling of disbelief creeping over him. "I'm bleeding!" he said plaintively.
"No you're not, you goose ... well, at least not from there." She was balling up her t-shirt and applied it to the back of his head tentatively, making him wince. "Sorry the same can't be said for your stupid head. What you want to go head-butting the floor for? Couldn't coat your head in kevlar too, more's the pity."
And then it dawned on John that he was wearing her jacket, the jacket he'd found at the bottom of the escalators and slipped on absentmindedly. The jacket that had saved his life - or had got him shot, as he'd like to think she wouldn't have pulled the trigger if he'd been wearing ordinary denim and not her kevlar biker gear. But if he wasn't bleeding from a bullet wound, and he had to take her word for that, as all he felt was numbness, where was the blood coming from?
And the last thing he thought as he slipped back into unconsciousness was, 'Blue angel! - so beautiful! - if it didn't look like Mycroft - why did it have to be Mycroft?'
The train doors slid open to reveal Mycroft, looking for all the world like a blue-faced business commuter in the odd lighting. He was carrying his umbrella and a small black attaché case. Sherlock hopped down from the carriage in front and rushed over to his friend, now unconscious.
"At least when he's with me I don't get him shot!" he chided from a kneeing position. "Well, not often anyway."
[1] Stick of rock: seaside rock is a type of English boiled sweet (candy), made in the long, cylindrical (stick) shape. It has writing running through the length, made with coloured sugar, so that, wherever you break it, you can read the script.