Hello everyone! Thanks for returning to read chapter two, in which John hears from Mycroft and plot ensues. Hope you enjoy it! Happy Reading!
John hoped he would never hear from Mycroft Holmes again. It wasn't that he disliked the man any more than he ever had. There were just too many painful memories. Living at 221B was hard enough. Being surrounded by Sherlock's things, his scents, his maddening experiments. But seeing Mycroft was simply too much. The living, breathing brother of his dead friend was more than he could handle.
When the limo pulled up beside him, he considered running. He wondered, idly, how far he'd get before Mycroft's goons found him and drug him back. Probably not far. As if sensing this, the camera on the street corner whirred to life, turning in his direction and elongating its lens as it zoomed in on him. With a sigh of defeat, John opened the door and got in.
"Hello, Mycroft," he said dryly. Mycroft flashed him that tight smile and inclined his head in greeting. "Can we just have done with this cloak and dagger nonsense? If you want something, give me a ring. Text me. Knock on my door."
"Ah, but there are so much more efficient ways of getting your attention, Dr Watson. A call can be ignored. And you know how much I hate to text. Plus, you wouldn't begrudge an old man for not wanting to climb those stairs to get to you."
"Mrs Hudson gets on just fine and she's three decades older than you."
"A shot at me, John?" Mycroft made a tsking sound and shook his head. "I thought you above such things."
"Yeah, well I'm not. What do you want?"
Sensing the end of John's patience, Mycroft cleared his throat the got right to the point. "I need your help."
"You?" John laughed. "Need my help? You have the entire British government at your finger tips, as well as half of every other government in the world most likely. What could you possibly need me for?"
"A retrieval. Of a...delicate nature. As you are both a soldier and a doctor, you fill both the qualifications I am seeking. And there are...other factors."
"Other factors? Just tell me what the hell is going on, Mycroft."
"You're being called upon to serve Queen and country, Captain Watson, that's what 'the hell is going on.'" Mycroft said sharply. John fixed him with a stony glare.
"Queen and country," he whispered softly. Mycroft only lifted one brow, taking the anger in John's tone in stride. There was a tense moment of silence between them. "You never to have to resort to physical force, do you Mycroft?" John finally asked.
"Rarely, no."
"I will do this once, and only once. Because your brother-" He stopped, unable to express the feelings. "And when I've done whatever you want, you're going to leave me alone. You're never going to pull me off the street into one of your limos, you're going to get your bloody surveillance cameras out of my home, and if all goes as planned, we will never have to speak to each other again."
"Fine," Mycroft agreed quickly, surprising John. He'd expected some protest, but Mycroft's face was bland and accepting. "But John, if you change your mind about the terms of our deal once its done, I'll be happy to once more invade your privacy and interfere with your life."
"Not bloody likely," John muttered. Mycroft didn't respond to the comment, but instead passed a file to John.
"I need you to retrieve someone. He's been a prisoner of a gang in southern Europe. With his help, I was able to uncover his exact location. Now we need to get him out. And he will be in need of a doctor."
"Political ally?"
"Hardly." A small smile tugged at Mycroft's lips. "Quite the opposite, actually. But someone I have a vested interest in none the less. You'll be taking a jet, then arriving at the location via helicopter. There will be gear waiting for you. We have no surveillance of the cave and I can't tell you if there will be members of the gang still alive inside when you arrive. But your only priority is to get to your mark and get him out. After that, you're to administer whatever emergency medical care is needed while the two of you are taken to a private hospital in Belgrave."
"Who's my mark? There isn't a picture in here."
"No pictures. Too dangerous. The sketch of the basic lay out is in the file. Your mark's location is the red X. If all goes well, you'll find him there with no problems."
"And if there are problems?"
"I have no doubt that in the time you spent with my brother some of his ability rubbed of on you. You'll figure it out." The limo pulled to a stop even as John was wincing at the reference to Sherlock. They got out wordlessly, and in moments, John was boarding the jet.
On the flight, he changed, strapped on his gear, then flipped through the file Mycroft had given him. The layout seemed pretty clear, if Mycroft's intel was correct. He'd done retrieval before, in his army days. Usually when the person being extracted had been subject to some sort of physical trauma. IED blast, torture from enemy soldiers, illness. Assuming his mark had been a captive of the gang for any length of time, John could guess that he would be treating torture wounds. As much as he wished they would be his first, they wouldn't by a long shot. War was ugly. He knew that first hand. People could do terrible things to one another. He checked the bag of medical supplies. It was more than adequate, not that he expected anything less from Mycroft.
Once in the helicopter, John's mind turned, as it often did, to Sherlock. Seeing Mycroft had brought too many painful memories to the fore. The loneliness never really left him, but he'd been able to tamp down the despair. The wrenching emptiness. Now, the wound felt as fresh as it had two years ago. Loosing Sherlock was the hardest thing John had ever been through. The pain had threatened to consume him. In their time together, Sherlock had somehow become John's whole life. He was snide and a little cold, brilliant to a terrifying degree, antisocial and calculating. But he was also funny, loyal, even kind in his own way. John had never met another man more determined, nor one who'd ever intrigued him as much. But Sherlock wasn't just a mystery to John. He'd been a friend. His best friend. And perhaps the only one to ever know the softer side of the detective.
No, he didn't cuddle a teddy before bed or tear up at old movies, but he was wildly protective of the few he cared about. He could cut someone to the quick thoughtlessly, then lift them back up with a few kind words when he realized what he'd done. He would stay up on nights when nightmares plagued John and play his violin into the wee hours of the morning when the music would finally lull John back to sleep. And he'd brought John back to life. Shown him a world of adventure and excitement. With Sherlock, there was never a dull moment. That brilliant mind worked at light speed, fascinating and sometimes disquieting him with its genius. Sherlock had been everything he'd never known he'd been missing in his life.
And now he was gone.
John blinked back the sheen of tears and cleared his throat. His pilot radioed that they were getting ready to set down. Behind John, the other soldiers checked their weapons. Out of habit, John palmed his gun though he wasn't supposed to have to use it. That's what the others were there for. His only job was finding his mark and getting him out.
The chopper set down and they set off at a run. The bright glare of the sun was suddenly cut off as they entered the cave. Relying on his mental map, John cleared his path to his mark. From the mouth of the cave, it was a simple path. In three meters, left two meters, door on the right. As the other soldiers spread out, John saw the bodies littering the floor. How long had they been there? Not more than a day, he guessed. If they were all down, why hadn't the mark left the cave? And if he'd had help, why hadn't the help assisted him in getting out?
John pushed aside his questions and rounded the last corner. The door was in sight. He kicked it open and neither of the occupants inside moved. One was just inside the door, only a few bruises marring his skin, neck obviously broken. Nothing about him jumped out to John. If he'd been the mark, then Mycroft was out of luck. The other figure in the room was a mass of blood and torn clothes. His pale chest was bare but the skin was so colored with blood and bruises that it was hard to see anything else. Hair was long and shaggy, matted down so its original color was impossible to discern. Trousers that had presumably once been black were stained with dirt and mud, shredded at the knees, unbuckled at the waist. Ill fitting, hastily tied boots were on his feet.
Years of training kicked in and John was at his side in an instant. He checked for a pulse and found one, thready but insistent. After a quick preliminary check of injuries, John prepared to lift the man. Usually, he'd have done a fireman's lift, but the man was so emaciated that John was able to pick him up with one arm under his knees and the other about his shoulders. The weight was manageable and this way he wouldn't further aggravate the nasty gashes on the man's back. With a quick heft, John was on his feet once more. He started for the door, eyes roving over the body in his arms, already cataloging injuries. Broken knee, serious lacerations to the back, broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, all the fingers on one hand broken. There were angry red marks around his neck as if someone had tried to strangle him. Broken nose, large cut on his cheekbone that would need stitching.
As John stepped out of the cave, the man's head lolled back completely, and for a moment, John was blinded. But he thought- he thought he'd seen- no, he was just seeing things. His mind playing tricks on him because Mycroft was the one who'd sent him out here, because he'd been thinking of Sherlock on the helicopter ride over, because when the pain got to be too much he saw Sherlock's face everywhere. He blinked his suddenly stinging eyes, more eager than ever to get back to the chopper and prove himself wrong. He got into the back, laid out the man on the open space reserved for John to do his work. Inside the helicopter, the light was more muted. As his eyes adjusted, John grabbed his bag and started taking out the items he would need, unable to look at the man's face.
Because when he looked, it wouldn't be Sherlock and somehow, it would be like loosing Sherlock all over again. Knowing logically that Sherlock was dead, had been for two years, didn't stop his heart from yearning. He wished he could be like Sherlock, wished he could be only logical, push aside the sentiment, reject the emotion that crippled him. But he couldn't. He was simply unable to. But he'd faced the emptiness over and over again in the last two years. He could face it again. He had to.
He turned back to the man on the floor of the chopper, used light fingers to tip his chin back so that John could see his face. Could be confronted with the truth.
His heart skipped a beat, then started to thunder.
No.
No.
It wasn't possible.
He smoothed back the long, matted hair with shaking fingers. That forehead, those cheekbones. The nose was broken, but still, John knew that nose. Those lips, that chin. His wild eyes ran down the length of the body before him. It was sickly thin, but the right height, the right structure. Helplessly, John's eyes went back to the face. That face. Sherlock's face. Desperate, crazed hope rose up within him. Sherlock.
Sherlock.
"Sherlock?" He finally managed to bring the word to his mouth, to choke it out like a dying man. As if swimming out from under a great burden, the eyelids twitched. "Sherlock?!" John said it as a demand, a prayer. With Herculean effort, one eyelid cracked open, then the other. They blinked hazily as the world came into focus. John watched, breathless, still as a statue until the eyes opened. He stared down. Into Sherlock's eyes. "Sherlock!"
From deep within the recesses of his mind, Sherlock heard the call and tried to answer it. He registered the pain as John's arms went around him and held tightly, but the pain was nothing, nothing compared to the joy. John was here. Holding him. John was here. John was safe. His last thought before he blacked out again was Finally, home.
Reuinted! ~anyone else just get that song instantly in their heads? Reunited and it feels so good...~ anyhow, I hope you loved reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! I try to stay as true as possible to the actual character voices and mannerisms, but of course its never quite perfect. This was a short little chapter...but I bet if you left a review telling me what you think so far, the Chapter Fairy will come along and leave you another little tidbit tonight ; )
