Epiphany's Child~
To the Epiphany, the vision of solace that does not exist in this World...
Prolouge~
Mycroft set down his tea cup. John eyed his fish and chips with a disinterested glare.
"You know, I'm not hungry , would you like the rest of this?"
Mycroft licked his lips ,uncertainly.
"You'll need to eat, and rest, and gather an abundant amount of energy if you are to do what I ask of you...What your country asks of you..."
John set down the cup of tea he'd been working on.
"What ...does...my country need from me, now?"
Mycroft could hear the barely ,respectfully, controlled bitterness in his tone. The country that he had lived the hell of Afghan combat for,and was shot to pieces for , was the self-same country that drove Sherlock Holmes to the grave.
"Since the death of James Moriarty,...my ...assistants... have been working to take down his criminal Network. Together said Network is planning an act of terrorism, that could be a genocide of the English people...
Up until now, I have not spoken of this to you,because I had promised...an... agent...of mine...that I would not involve you unnescesarily...That I would keep you alive, keep you safe. Which was, actually, his...last wish..."
John was silent ,for a long time.
"Who? Who among your people would ,first off, KNOW me, and second, ask for my personal safety as his...final...wish?"
Mycroft licked his lips...
"You're talking about Sherlock aren't you?!" John hissed, leaning forward. "You KNEW he was going to jump. He had an ulterior motive...I've always known that something wasn't adding up...That it was somewhat out of character for him to just...give up...and ..." he bowed his head, fuming with a barely bridled rage. "You KNEW..." he whispered...
And then,his fist collided with the table. Mycroft felt his jaw clench, having expected the soldier's fury. Having need of it, actually...
"So, why...didn't you stop him?"
Mycroft swallowed, and began to explain.
"John, you are going to have to listen VERY carefully to what I am about to tell you."
"I've got ALL night..." he hissed, leaning forward. Mycroft nodded.
"When Sherlock went up on the roof, to have one final confrontation with Moriarty, he ...anticipated something like a forced suicide. It was to be the solution to their "Final Problem", which is what Moriarty was calling the struggle between the two of them, who were exact mirror images of each other, save that one was on the side of angels, and one wished to fan the flames of hell ,to cast its glare upon himself..."
John nodded, listening to a frightening intensity. Mycroft swallowed harder, "What Sherlock did NOT know...was that Moriarty would have three snipers trained to his only three friends in the world. He had failed to factor in Molly Hooper, although she would prove to be important later. The three he targeted, were Mrs. Hudson...Detective Inspector Lestrade,...and...yourself."
John's eyes squinted, confused, and he shook his head, lips forming a silent "What?"
Mycroft swallowed, "There was no way out of comitting suicide. If Sherlock didn't jump, you would have died. However, he anticipated this might happen, as I said. So, he conspired with Molly Hooper, and myself, a plan of possibly surviving this suicide. I am ...uncomfortable with informing you of this, but the methods at which we did this,were still of an extreme risk to him. There is... no way in which one can safely avoid death by falling from so tall a building. ... The methods that we were to use...MAY have...killed him. Molly Hooper provided the neccesary materials, one of which was a drug that would lower his pulse enough to slow down the flow of his blood, if the wire device we used ...malfunctioned...She also provided a "body" for Sherlock, a very convincing dummy that students at Bart's use for learning how to perform autopsies...We dressed it up, to have it placed discreetly on the sidewalk ,where there would be witnesses of the "death". Sherlock ,however, was strapped into a device much like they use in window washing those very tall buildings. A device which was modified to being able to be hidden under his gawdy coat..and which would cause him to swing in through a window, (that's glass we had removed from the pane , to avoid the evidence of broken glass). ...
When he jumped, and when you were trying to reach him, by the time you were already in route, and were accidently knocked over by a bicyclists if I am not mistaken, and by the time he was hidden from view by the ambulance station,..."
Mycroft drew a shaky breath...by now John was a color that made snow look dark, and his mouth was hanging open,
"He ,uhm, he twisted the wrong way on his way down, and was nearly torn in half by the device, which was already faulty, and had been put out of service by the window washers prior to this, which is how we were able to come by it without suspicion. We had to fly him out of England, via one of those med-vac helicopters, and he was rehabiliated from the Fall for atleast 3 months,in a hospital in Edinborough..."
There was a long and awkward silence...
"Sherlock...is...alive?" came the shaky question.
"Listen very carefully, John! Time is precious now...Sherlock WAS alive, the last I saw of him..."
John's whiter than snow countenance bleached itself again.
"His very last wish to me, as he lay dying in that med-vac helicopter...was that I would leave you out of this. He thought that if you knew about it,...you might try to become involved. Or that, your altered grief would attract suspicion from his enemies to you,and would put you at risk...So, we decided, against our best wishes for your emotional well-being, to leave you in the Light...
And I say the Light, because your darkness was a bright and shining place compared to that nightmare to which I sent my own little brother...And now that he has been tormented by one of the Host ,as we call them,to the point of amnesia and insanity,...now that I have lost him utterly to the darkness of the movement in Serbia, ...I need you...I need you to help me recover him.
Because you see, your Light, might be the only thing that can reach into his Darkness now, and save him..."
