221b Skyfall
Donovan stood on the gas pedal of her jeep, eyes on the track she was following, and the train that was currently hurtling along it. She had been keeping up with the train so well for so long that it hardly even occurred to her that the road could come to an end.
"There isn't going to be much more road, I can't go any further." she exclaimed into her earpiece as she screeched to a halt when she got to the end of the road and jumped out of her jeep.
She grabbed her gun and crouched fluidly, taking aim, as the train exited a tunnel and two men fighting on the top of it came into view. "I may have a shot." she said unsurely.
She could practically hear the held breaths back in HQ.
She squinted down her telescopic sight and took aim at the mercenary, Sebastian, but Agent Double-0 Seven kept getting in her way.
"It's not clean." she finally said decisively. "Repeat, I do not have a clean shot." She raised her head briefly to gauge how long she could keep the train within sights. "There's a tunnel ahead, I'm going to lose them!" she reported.
"Can you get in a better position?" M's voice shot directly into her head with a calm urgency.
"Negative." Donovan exclaimed. "There's no time!"
There was a moment of intense silence from HQ. "Take the shot." M said finally, voice tight.
Donovan hesitated as Agent Double-0 Seven wrestled on the other end of her sight.
"I said, take the shot!" M repeated firmly.
"I can't!" Donovan fairly yelled back, distraught. "I may hit Watson!"
"Take the bloody shot!" M ordered.
Bang!
A deafening moment of silence that suspended the two combatants on the roof of the train in time... and then Double-0 Agent John Watson toppled off the train, limp.
Sebastian caught sight of Donovan and just stared at her emotionlessly as though taunting her. And then he was gone.
Donovan swallowed down on her feeling of failure, hard.
"Agent down."
Back in England, Vauxhall Cross, SIS Headquarters, Mycroft Holmes turned away and stared out of the window down at the Thames.
His expression was unchanged. John could've succeeded, or failed, the mission and it would not make a lick of difference in M's expression.
He was, as always, calm and collected.
He was the Iceman.
Anthea looked up from her Blackberry once briefly in a rare show of concern during the car drive to HQ. "Sir, alert at the Q branch, someone's trying to decrypt the stolen hard drive. They're tracing the encroaching signal." she informed him as calmly as she could. "Localizing now. Signal's in the UK... London."
They exchanged glances.
"Get us back to base, as soon as possible." Mycroft said to the driver.
"It's coming from HQ." Anthea said, shocked.
"What?"
"The data bank is linking to our network. Correction, this is behind our firewall. We should shut down." Anthea advised grimly.
"No! Track it. We have to know where it's coming from." Mycroft disagreed.
Anthea nodded and made a call to the head of Q Branch. "Strip the head and strike the source."
"How the hell did they get into our system?" Mycroft mused aloud to himself.
"Get it traced back now." Anthea said on her phone to Q. Then, she turned her laptop so both could see what was going on. "It appears... it appears to be your computer, Sir." she said slowly.
"Shut it down." Mycroft snapped.
As Anthea tried to shut the system down, some other power source took control of it.
The screen blinked out an image of the British flag and Mycroft's face popped up, wearing a crown, and laughing manically like a serial killer doll in one of those terrible horror films.
Then, Mycroft and Anthea watched in fascinated horror as Mycroft's image on the screen transformed into a skull and the British flag burned.
As the finale, a message blinked out on the blank screen.
I.O.U
Boom!
Mycroft and Anthea both jumped at the explosion and turned to see great tongues of flame lick the sky from MI6 HQ.
THINK ON YOUR SINS
With a tired sigh, Mycroft leaned his trusty umbrella against the arm of a chair and poured himself a finger or two of scotch when he heard something that nearly made his heart stop.
The sound of metal shifting against wood.
He whirled around and caught sight of an achingly familiar silhouette against his sitting room window.
His mind immediately began cataloging various explanations as to why the silhouette of a presumed dead man had shown up in his flat.
"Kind of you to stop by." he said calmly, a hint of dry sarcasm clear in his tone.
"007, reporting for duty." the ghost murmured.
Mycroft flicked a switch, casting a light on John Watson.
The man had dark bags under his eyes and a cane cradled in one hand. So that was what Mycroft had heard shifting in the dark.
"Why didn't you call?" Mycroft asked him at length.
"I sent a postcard." John replied flatly.
They fell into silence as they regarded each other, a tad wary.
Mycroft examined his agent. At first glance, he had seen exhaustion, a psychosomatic limp, PTSD, and ghosts behind John's eyes. But on second glance, despite being haunted, his eyes were alert and intense, despite the presence of the cane, it was not being used. And despite the exhaustion and PTSD, the moment he and Mycroft had begun talking, the shakes in his hands ceased.
John didn't explain where he had gone to for three months, or why. And Mycroft never asked.
Neither did Mycroft ask why he decided to return. John wasn't haunted by the missions. He had missed it.
"Welcome back, 007."
"007, I'm your new Quartermaster." The man with curly, black hair, and a physique that would make Ichabod Crane envious, said quietly but terse.
"You've got to be kidding me." John grumbled back, glancing once at the man and not believing.
"Why? Because I'm not wearing a lab coat?" the man scoffed. "As per expectations of dull human beings, you see but do not observe." he said derisively.
"What are you, fresh out of college?" John taunted.
"Would that bother you, even if I do a better job then the previous Quartermaster?" Q droned.
"Not if your competence is as cultivated as your ego thinks it is." John shot back.
"I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pyjamas before my first cup of tea than you can do in a year in the field." Q declared.
"Oh, so why do you need me?" John challenged.
"Because M won't let me out of the house." Q replied ruefully. "And every now and then a trigger has to be pulled."
"Or not pulled." John retorted. "I suppose it's hard to know which... in your pyjamas." he deadpanned.
Before this moment, neither Q, nor 007, had caught each others' eye, both simply stealing glances when the other was clearly not looking. But now, they glanced at each other simultaneously.
Their gazes held for a moment.
Then, something clicked for them, like they had instantly jumped onto a shared frequency. They burst out into laughter, Q with his deep, baritone chuckles, and John with his fits of high-pitched giggles.
When they had calmed themselves, John reached over and held out his hand. "Q." he finally acknowledged.
"Sherlock." Q corrected, which John was quite certain was against basic protocol, but he didn't say anything. They shook hands. "007."
Against better reason, the field agent shook his head. "John."
They both smiled.
Sometimes, John wonders how his life came to this.
He was seated at the bar in a Macau casino with an attractive woman who he knew was an accomplice to an assassination.
And she knew he knew. She also knew that he killed the assassin, Sebastian.
"Would you mind if I asked you a business question?" the woman, Irene, asked.
"Depends on the question." John replied noncommittally.
"It has to do with... death." Irene formed her words slowly and carefully, rolling them around on her tongue as if tasting them.
"A subject in which you are well versed." John noted.
Irene tilted her head. "And how would you know that?"
"Only a certain kind of woman wears a backless dress with a Beretta 70 strapped to her thigh." John replied cautiously.
"I would wear a riding crop strapped to my thigh, but I can't." Irene responded with a sly smirk. "It chafes. So I have to make do."
"Um..." John said intelligently.
Irene smiled and took pity on him. "Am I correct in assuming you killed Sebastian?" she prompted. She was well aware of what did and did not happen that night, but she wasn't letting on.
"Yes." John replied, seeing no use lying.
"May I ask why?" Irene asked curiously.
"I want to meet your employer." John replied, matter-of-factually.
A brief silence overtook them and John caught Irene's expression freeze for a moment before sliding back behind her mask of lies, confidence, and make-up.
"Be careful what you wish for." Irene warned as nonchalantly as she could.
"You're scared." John realized aloud.
"Thank you for the drink, Mister Watson." Irene stood and tried to excuse herself.
"I know when a woman is afraid and pretending not to be." John said quietly, catching onto her arm gently.
"How much do you know about fear?" Irene asked.
"All there is." John replied solidly.
"Not like this." Irene huffed nervously, eyes shifting. "Not like him."
For the first time in a long time, John wondered if he had gotten in too deep with this clearly dangerous man.
John was tied to a chair, this was very, very original of his captors. He had been sitting in this chair for five minutes since being separated from Irene, clearly, his captors were waiting for something... or someone.
John hoped he was finally meeting the terrorist behind the attack on MI6. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he would get home and have a nice relaxing cup of tea.
The old elevator at the other end of the room groaned and whirred on its way down and the doors opened.
A man in a smart Westood suit stepped out and strolled leisurely toward John and his guards.
"I was beginning to wonder when you'd show up." the man drawled with a distinctly Irish accent. "Was wondering who the Iceman would send out to play."
John kept silent as the man sauntered near, hands casually stuffed in his pockets. "Jim Moriarty." he smirked. "Hi!"
"Now." Sherlock said as he whirled about the new Q Branch, flitting from computer to computer like a manic hummingbird. "Looking at Moriarty's computer, it seems to me, he's done a number of slightly unusual things. He's established fail-safe protocols to wipe the memory if there's any attempt to access certain files. Only about six people in the world could program safe-guards like that."
John didn't understand half of what the technological expert said, but he went along with it. "Of course there are. Can you get past them?"
Sherlock smirked at him proudly. "I invented them." John smiled back and let him boast. "Right then... let's see what you've got for us, Mister Moriarty. We're in."
Sherlock's assistant, a sweet girl with 'Molly' and a few hand-drawn flowers printed on her name tag, scurried around. "What do you make of this?" she asked nervously.
Sherlock turned to examine the large screen at the front of the room. "This is omega site. Best encrypted level he has. Looks like obfuscated code to conceal its true purpose. Security through obscurity."
He typed furiously on his laptop for a moment. "He's using a polymorphic engine to maintain the code. Whenever I try to gain access, it changes. It's like solving a Rubik's cube that's fighting back." He smirked to himself as he continued typing without missing a beat. "I like it. It's something... new."
John stared up at the large screen for a few moments and began feeling slightly sick, watching all the numbers and letters moving at such a rapid pace. No wonder Sherlock wore glasses, no wonder everybody in the Q Branch needed them.
"Um." he said. "I know I'm no expert at all this computer coding..." He pointed at a few letters on the decoder. "... but what the Hell is that?"
"Well obviously it's part of a-..." Sherlock stopped his agitated prowl through the army of Q Branch computers and stared. "Oh...! Oh! Of course!" His eyes widened, mouth dropping open into an 'O' shape and he clapped his hands like a child. "Oh, he would, wouldn't he?"
John scowled a bit, impatient to know what Sherlock's epiphany was. "What?" he ground out, trying hard not to snap.
"'Security through obscurity'." Sherlock reminded him. "I was looking for a more complex back door, a manual hack into the algorithm, so to speak." He fairly flew over to his own laptop and typed furiously. "But Moriarty knew I would, so he hid the key decryption word in plain sight, see? Put it all together and-..."
He finished off a string of cyber commands with a flourish and the various random letters aligned to make a word.
"Granborough." John read. "Granborough Road. It's an old Tube station on the Metropolitan line, been closed for years. Use that as the key."
He turned back to see that Sherlock was already at work. "Obviously, I'm not stupid." he huffed, affronted.
A moment later, a mesh of lines unfurled on screen. It took John a moment to realize what this was.
"Oh look, it's a map!" Sherlock let out gleefully, voicing John's thoughts.
"It's London." John breathed in shock. "Subterranean London."
A loud noise behind them startled them both and they whirled around to see the glass doors on the floor opening.
Strange...
"That's not supposed to happen." Sherlock noted suspiciously. "What the Hell's M up to now?"
John's eyes widened in realization. "Not M." he muttered and dashed off.
Sherlock watched him leave until a dialogue box on the large overhead screen distracted him.
SYSTEM SECURITY BREACH
"No-... how...?" Sherlock frowned deeply.
As he tried to get a grip on the situation, his screen froze up before blacking out and reappearing with a red skull and the most taunting message Sherlock had ever been on the receiving end of.
NOT SUCH A CLEVER BOY
"Oh, shit."
"Q, he's gone." John reported into his earpiece as he dashed after Moriarty's fleeing shadow. He had no doubt that the Quartermaster already knew this, but it didn't hurt to involve him on the chase. He could be an incredible asset. "I'm on a stairwell below isolation. Do you read me, Q?"
"I can hear you. I'm looking for you." Sherlock said and lapsed into silence for a moment. "Got you. Tracking your location. Just keep moving forward. Enter the next service door on your right. If you're through that door, you should be in the Tube."
John clambered into the dark tunnel. "I'm in the Tube."
"John, this isn't an escape, this was years in the planning. He wanted us to capture him, he wanted us to access his computer. It was all planned. Blowing up HQ, all the emergency protocols, knowing we'd retreat down here." Sherlock told him, clearly aggravated at losing track of an adequate tech rival.
God knows how much he wanted to pick apart that brain.
"I got that." John grumbled back. He was, after all, a field agent. He wouldn't last long if he didn't know how to figure things like this out. M didn't dish out the Double-0 status like candy, either. "But what does he have planned?"
"Don't know yet." Sherlock confessed in a very uninterested manner. "District line is the closest. There should be a service door on your left."
"Got it." John found the door and turned the handle, leaning his weight onto it. It didn't budge. John had a very bad feeling in his stomach. "It won't open."
"Of course it will. Put your back into it." Sherlock snapped back impatiently.
"Why don't you come down and put your back into it?" John grumbled as he rammed his shoulder into the door. "Nope, it's stuck." He saw a light growing brighter in the distance and knew that his hunch was right. "Oh good, there's a train coming." he sighed sarcastically.
"Hm, that's vexing." Sherlock said tonelessly and John mentally cursed him in every language he knew.
John growled and fired at the door, shoving his way through moments before the train screeched past. He could feel the wind from the moving train nip and pluck at his trousers.
He stared for a moment at what could've been a very ugly death and let out a sigh of relief. "I'm through." he announced as levelly as he could.
There was half a second's hesitation on the other end. "Told you." Sherlock spat out lamely.
"What? That's all you can come up with?" John snorted good-naturedly. "What happened to the sarcastic little shit in the museum?"
"... What, did you want me to say 'Oh, I remember now! It was a 'pull' door not a 'push' one'?" Sherlock snarked back.
John scrambled to his feet and continued running, grinning. "That's more like it."
Moriarty shoved open the large wooden double-doors of the inquiry with his men fanning out behind him, guns blazing, mowing down the fleeing masses.
But he had eyes only for M.
Mycroft met his wild gaze and held it steadily.
Moriarty lifted his gun and took aim.
Suddenly, a silver-haired man leapt over the bar the the front of the room with the admirable agility and reflex that proudly declared him from the trained Hereford Regiment, and grabbed Mycroft, pulling him out of harm's way. So this must be Gareth Mallory, a small part of Moriarty's brain supplied him with the information.
The shot meant for Mycroft's skull imbedded itself into Mallory's shoulder and he fell back.
By that time, Anthea had grabbed Mycroft and hunkered down with him under the cover of the pew until John showed up.
John fired on Moriarty and his men when he caught sight of a startled but alert Donovan, who was present, working as Mallory's assistant. He saw a gun lying at his feet and nudged it over to her.
Donovan snatched it up like a lifeline and provided cover fire.
John was looking for M when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and realized Mallory had taken Moriarty's moment of distraction to snag a weapon for himself.
John saw Moriarty's gun swivel but the MI6 agent fired first, forcing Moriarty to huddle behind cover long enough for Mallory to arm himself and begin firing back.
The senior agent took a wild shot and one of Moriarty's men went down. John raised his eyebrows, slightly impressed. He had read about his record in the Northern Ireland Hereford Regiment in the man's file, but until now, he hadn't quite been able to get past the image of Mallory being one of those bureaucratic desk gremlins.
He caught Mallory's eye and winked at him before shooting out a fire extinguisher, filling the room with white.
Now, separated from Moriarty by a wall of foam, Donovan and Mallory began evacuating the remaining survivors along with M and Anthea while John set off after Moriarty, who had been forced to retreat after his assassination attempt had failed.
Mallory held open the door for Mycroft and Anthea as they passed through and Mycroft leveled him a sharp look.
Mallory nodded curtly in response and painfully shoved the door shut after them.
"Q." John said professionally as he drove Mycroft away from Central London. "I need your help."
"I'm tracking the car, you know that's M's car, don't you?" Sherlock responded irately, John could hear keys being tapped rapidly on the other line. "Where are you going?"
"I've got M." John told him. "We're about to disappear."
A slight pause. "What?"
Bless him, he even stopped typing for once in his life. "I need you to lay a trail of breadcrumbs impossible to follow for anyone except Moriarty. Think you can do it?"
Sherlock scoffed. "I'm guessing this isn't strictly official." Was it just John, or did he sound despairingly pleased with the prospect?
"Not even remotely." John replied, deadpanned. Mycroft glared sharply at him through the rear view mirror.
"So much for my promising career in espionage." Sherlock muttered sarcastically and sipped his tea calmly. "When M get's back, I'm blaming all this on you."
John fought hard not to smile.
Anthea joined Sherlock in Q Branch several minutes later as the Quartermaster set down the bread crumbs.
"It's a fine line. If the breadcrumb's too small, then he might miss it. Too big, and Moriarty will smell a rat." Sherlock was making a running commentary on everything he was doing, God knows Anthea was twice as protective of Mycroft than himself. And it wasn't just going to be just John going down if Mycroft came to fatal harm.
"Yes, but you'd think even Moriarty will be able to spot that." Anthea said, eyes on the screen.
"He's the only one that could." Sherlock replied confidently.
Anthea turned and inhaled sharply. "Sir."
This caused Sherlock to turn around, puzzled. "Oh."
Mallory was standing behind them, face carefully unreadable. "What are you doing?" he asked although he clearly already knew the answer.
"We're just... monitoring." Sherlock replied lamely, sounding like a boy being scolded by his father.
"Creating a false tracking signal for Moriarty to follow." Mallory corrected him solidly, expression grim.
"Well, Sir, uh-..." Anthea said.
"Well, no..." Sherlock tried to deny at the same time.
Mallory rolled his eyes at them both and took pity. "Excellent thinking, get him isolated. Send him on the A9, it's a direct route, you can monitor his progress more accurately and confirm it with the traffic cameras."
"What if the PM finds out?" Sherlock asked him seriously.
Mallory gave a one-shouldered shrug so as to not aggravate his injured other shoulder. "Then we're all buggered." he said simply and turned away. "Carry on."
And he left just as swiftly as he came.
John stood casting an eye around the bare gun room as the housekeeper Mrs. Hudson tutted regretfully. "They sold the lot to a collector from Idaho or some such place. They were shipped out weeks ago. There's just your father's old hunting rifle. We couldn't let that go."
Mrs. Hudson pulled the gun out and handed it carefully to John.
Mycroft looked a little disappointed. "And this is what we've got?" he tried not to sound too disapproving.
"There might be a couple sticks of dynamite from the quarry." Mrs. Hudson remarked and then clucked at Mycroft. "But, if all else fails, sometimes the old ways are the best."
She pulled out a large hunting knife and set it down on the table with an innocently sweet smile.
Mycroft stared and tried not to faint as he wondered if Mrs. Hudson was too old to recruit into the Service.
Mycroft stared down unsteadily at Moriarty's body and the knife that was embedded into his back.
John walked into the room. "Last rat standing." he muttered to Moriarty before turning to Mycroft in concern.
Mycroft had one hand pressed to his bloody side and the other on a pew to keep him standing. "007-..." he wheezed and collapsed.
John reached him before he fell and lowered him to the ground. "M-..."
Mycroft snorted weakly. "Oh, don't look at me like someone's dying." he snarled through his pain. "I'm shot, but I'm not dead yet."
John coughed out a laugh. "No."
"Back-up is coming." Mycroft said, breathing slowly.
"I didn't-..." John began.
"Q will have tracked us by now." Mycroft cut him off. "Sherlock, for all the trouble he is, is my younger brother."
John nodded with a slight noise of understanding. "Your brother-... of course he is."
"And Anthea wouldn't let him rest without finding us."
"God forbid." John agreed.
"And then there is Mallory." Mycroft hummed thoughtfully.
"I thought you two were at odds." John said, confused.
"It is the strategically finer stance, considering our positions." Mycroft shrugged weakly. "When you disappeared, we both knew the government would be out for my blood. I trust Gregory with MI6 and my brother, more than a stranger."
"'Gregory'?" John laughed a little, confused. "I thought his name was 'Gareth'."
"I mentioned my late husband, I never said he was dead." Mycroft scoffed. "When he was a field agent and I was Quartermaster. He was 004 Agent Gregory Lestrade."
"Wow..." John gasped.
"Had a knack for 'resurrection' same as you. Unlike you, he decided to 'stay dead' when he left the field."
Oh, so that was why Mallory had asked when he first met John.
"Take it as a compliment that I'm telling you this because his name itself is classified these days." Mycroft smirked. "Only you, Sherlock, and Anthea know, for security's sake."
"Remind me not to ask you about your illustrious days in the field, M." John joked.
"I would tell you, but then I'd have to kill you." Mycroft snorted back as the doors of the church burst open and Sherlock, Anthea, and Lestrade charged in with medical help.
"About time..." Mycroft smiled and lost consciousness.
"Wow, I didn't even know you could come up here." John turned to see Donovan on the roof with him, walking toward him.
"It's a nice view." John replied politely. "I thought you were going back on active service?"
"I declined." Donovan shrugged. "You said it yourself, field work's not for everyone." And it didn't help that the woman had grown a soft spot for Lestrade while they had worked together.
"If it helps, I feel a lot better." John smiled cheekily and Donovan grinned back.
Then, her expression turned serious. "His will was read today." she told him and handed him an envelope. "He left you this."
John opened it and read the elegantly written note inside.
221b Baker Street. Take care of my brother.
John stared at the line of neat calligraphy when something slid out of the envelope and hit the ground with a shrill noise. A key.
P.S. Apologies for selling your flat. -M
John smiled.
Inside the building, John stuffed the envelope Mycroft left him into his breast pocket as he and Donovan walked into her new office.
Anthea walked in through the door from the adjoining office. "He'll see you now." she said to John.
John walked into the next office and closed the door behind him. "How's the arm, Sir?" he greeted respectfully.
Lestrade looked up from the files he was poring over. His arm was in a sling since Moriarty shot him. "What? Oh, it's fine. It'll get better. All pretty shocking for someone unused to field work." he replied.
John smiled politely and didn't tell him that Mycroft had told him, in his last moments, about their shared run in fieldwork before he died of blood loss on the way to the hospital.
Now knowing that they had been close, and even married, John wasn't sure if it was acceptable to talk about Mycroft at all.
"So, 007. Lots of work to be done." Lestrade dropped a file marked '007 TOP SECRET' on the desk. "Are you ready to get back to work?"
"Oh God, yes! With pleasure-..." John steeled himself. "...M. With pleasure."
Then he walked out, not knowing why Lestrade was smirking in anticipation at his retreating back.
He flipped open the file as he walked down the hall and his eyes fell on a yellow sticky note pasted on top of the pages. It was obviously not part of the mission briefing, but something that had been added later on.
He plucked it out of the file and nearly dropped it when he read it.
You should understand that some who die, must stay dead, 007. Thought it was time to retire upon my husband's advice. Take care. -MH
John thought back and realized why Sherlock, Anthea, and Lestrade had separated John and Mycroft on their way from Skyfall to the hospital. John had been told that Mycroft had died in transit.
He had not been allowed to see the body before it was carted off in a body bag.
Mycroft Holmes was probably sitting comfortably somewhere in London, the wound in his side wrapped up tight, sipping a cup of Earl Grey and reading the morning papers as his husband went to work saving the world.
The current Double-0 agent turned around and saw the new M lingering in the doorway of his office. The late Double-0 agent winked at him conspiratorially with a mysterious smile and disappeared, closing the door behind himself.
John shook his head and smiled privately to himself before walking away, reminding himself to stop by Q Branch for some equipment.
There was just no way of winning against spies like these.
THE END
A/N: I've always wanted to write a Sherlock/Skyfall crossover because of the similarities in the characters and I've finally done it! Even if it was long overdue...! And I can't resist making this joke...
Silva: She sent you after me, knowing you're not ready, knowing you would likely die. Mommy was very bad!
Sherlock: *sarcastically* And there's a whole childhood in a nutshell!
I am giggling by myself like an idiot. I am very ashamed of my brain sometimes. ...I regret nothing. :)
Cast:
John Watson - James Bond/007
Sherlock Holmes - Q
Mycroft Holmes - M
Gregory Lestrade - Gareth Mallory/M
Sally Donovan - Eve Monneypenny
Anthea - Tanner
Jim Moriarty - Silva/Tiago Rodriguez
Sebastian - Patrice
Irene Adler - Severine
Mrs. Hudson - Kincade
Molly Hooper - Q's Assistant
Hope you enjoyed!