Part 2 yaay! Thanks again to the wonderful miss She Steps On Cracks for brit-picking :D You should check out her story Weighing His Words as well when you've read this one. It's a good read.
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Mycroft sat in a room filled with a dozen monitors flashing black and white CCTV recordings. In front of each screen but Mycroft's own sat two people. The entire surveillance and protection team he'd had following Dr. Watson had volunteered along with a surprisingly large number of other people.
Later, Mycroft would concern himself with how they all had even heard of the situation.
Much later, he would look into why Captain Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, who was trained as a doctor first and a soldier second, had managed to spot a rogue gunman without any of Mycroft's men even realizing the gunman was there.
Next Tuesday, he'd planned a rather lengthy kidnapping session for the doctor where they would discuss his rather flippant dismissal of imminent danger and his utter disregard for his own life. He would be including Mrs. Hudson, she'd always seemed to have some kind of hold over Sherlock and his doctor, perhaps her worry would rub off on him somehow. He ought to include Greg Lestrade as well, come to think of it. He briefly considered kidnapping Harriet Watson to be included in their little discussion, but decided that was more likely detract from the point he was trying to make.
First, though, first they had to actually find the gunman, determine the treat level, and neutralize it if necessary. It was a matter of professional pride as well as a personal obligation to his late brother.
"Stop!" came a call from behind him, he didn't take his eyes off his own screen though. They'd had many false positives since they started the afternoon before. "Something has him concerned. Across the street, just above eye-level. Do we have anything of that?"
There was a pause filled with typing from the back of the room where his assistant sat with three monitors in front of her. Seconds later their monitor was populated with the street from several angles.
"Nevermind, there's a domestic going on some stairs. He looks like he's debating whether to interfere."
"Is that the one from last month?" One of the surveillance men, Aled, called from three monitors down without taking his eyes off his own screen.
"Ohh, I remember that one," Kathy the transcriber answered. "John's been fuming over it for weeks."
"You're not on surveillance. How'd you hear about it?" Aled called back.
"He gives Sherlock an update on the case every week, of course." It went unsaid that when Kathy said Sherlock she actually meant Sherlock's Grave. It didn't need to be said. That was how John always referred to it so that was how they did.
"We've got something!" Ellen from Human Resources called from monitor five. "Last Thursday at 8:00. He keeps looking out the window to the house across Baker Street."
"Wait about five minutes," Mary answered from monitor two. "He'll start making a thermos of tea and take it over to Marshall."
"That man knows how to make a fine cuppa, let me tell you," Marshall added. A chorus of agreements went around from all the surveillance team. It was John Watson's subtle way of letting them know he'd spotted them. It had become a bit of a game for them all. If, by the end of the night, John hadn't spotted them, he left the thermos on the doorstep with a plate of biscuits.
They didn't get the biscuits if he found them first.
"Never mind, Anthea. Mary's right, he's just pulled out a thermos."
"My name isn't actually Anthea. You all know this," Anthea told them flatly as her typing made sure every one of the thirteen other monitors in the room had a constant feed of video.
"What? And you think my mother was really mean enough to name me Rupert Richard Robert?" Rupert asked from the monitor directly next to her.
"Your name is Rupert Richard Robert. I've seen the birth certificate," Anthea deadpanned but Rupert wasn't fazed. He just turned to give her a cheeky grin.
"If 'Anthea' is good enough for dear ol' John, it's good enough for us."
"Eyes on your monitor, Mr. Robert," she answered blandly. He muttered under his breath but turned his chair back to the black and white screen.
"That was a gun barrel," Elliot muttered, but it seemed loud in the room of silent movies. "That's a gun barrel, definitely a gun barrel! Anthea-"
"I'm on it," she snapped back. There was a terse moment where everyone in the room seemed to be holding their breath and the only thing filling the silence was her frantic typing. A sharp inhale from his personal assistant had Mycroft pausing the video running on his own screen. "Sir," she breathed out. Her voice held a surprising amount of concern as she replaced the images on Mycroft's screen with the two videos of important.
One of John Watson.
One of a seemingly innocent set of flats, presumably where the gun would appear.
And there it was in the second story corner window. Mycroft leaned forward slightly, squinting at the barrel that slipped through the tinted window that had only been opened a few inches. The good doctor noticed it almost instantly, though to the untrained eye it seemed as though the pain in his thigh had simply flared causing him to stumble. Mycroft knew better. He knew John was simply using that time to study the gun pointed at him.
"Do we have any more footage of the gun?" he asked. He scanned his memory, trying to identify it based on the grainy image in front of him. It was a long range sniper rifle of some kind. Why was the sniper using such a long range weapon for such a close shot? Was it all he (the slight shadow on the window hinted at a male) had on hand?
"No," she responded, now unnecessarily, "We're lucky we even have that. That camera is supposed to be pointed at the pedestrian crossing but it was malfunctioning."
New understanding flooded through Mycroft before Anthea had even started to reply. Never one for the dramatics of his little brother (who gasped and stumbled through realizations as any other would an orgasm), the only sign of his new found knowledge was a slight smile, barely a twitch of his lips. He resumed play of the video on his screen and watched as the barrel continued to follow the doctor's movements until it was eventually withdrawn back.
"What about the flat? Anything on that?" Elliot asked, squinting at the image on his own screen. Mycroft wasn't really listening, too focused on the screen in front of him (though later, he would still be able to tell you word for word the conversations that went on around him).
With the gun withdrawn, the doctor resumed his way back home. Thought he kept a very subtle eye on the window by reflections in windows, he gave almost no sign he had noticed the threat at all.
"The family was out of town. They reported a break in when they returned but nothing was stolen. In fact there was money left for the one thing that was broken, a cheap vase."
"That seems a bit suspicious," Eleri commented. "Why did they bother reporting it?"
"The money was exact change for the sale price she'd paid for the vase the week before. She was worried they had some sort of stalker."
As soon as the doctor was out of visual range of the apartment, a pale hand slipped out to rest on the windowsill, the fingers tapping out a seemingly random pattern. Mycroft inhaled a sharp breath quietly as he catalogued every twitch of the hand on the screen in front of him. The movement lasted only a minute before the hand, too, was withdrawn and the window closed but it told Mycroft everything he needed to know.
And, though he sighed wearily at the drama and overcomplicated flare, he allowed the tiniest amount of relief flooded his chest.
Now he just needed to find his errant little brother.
