Resurrection Ch 4
A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, especially microbialme who picked up on my complete ignorance of matters medical. Yes, I should have put erythromycin in Watson's medical bag, I stand corrected. Please forgive any further goofs on my part. Also thanks to everyone who as reviewed, you are my life's blood. Especial thanks to Mirith Griffin and Giraffes Sent Me - happy little Snoopy dance to you both xxx More reviews please, you make want to keep writing...
John woke up, warm and happy, to the bleep of his alarm clock. It was a familiar sensation, the feeling of waking up, free as a bird, and then remembering the truth, and the pain hitting him square in the sternum. But not today. Today there was a long, skinny arm snaked around his waist, and a familiar soapy smell in the bed. He flapped his arm about for the alarm, but when he pressed the button, it didn't stop.
The phone was ringing.
He crawled from under the duvet and staggered about, looking for his mobile. It was Mycroft. Sherlock blinked at him lazily as he pressed the 'Answer' button.
'Yeah?'
'John, I'm sending a car for you. Something has come up. I need you to move fast.' His voice sounded urgent, even slightly worried.
'Mycroft, you know I don't do that stuff any more.'
'This is important.'
John sighed. Sherlock sat up, gave him that penetrating stare. 'Okay, look, something really important is starting here. I think you'd better come.'
'I really am rather busy-'
'I think this will help. Just trust me, Mycroft.'
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. 'Is this about that homeless man you picked up last night,' he asked eventually.
'I thought you'd stopped having me watched.'
'Matters have taken an unfortunate new turn. It has become necessary.'
'Just come.'
A sigh. 'Fifteen minutes.' The line went dead.
'Big brother?' Sherlock asked, cocking his head on one side.
John nodded. 'He'll be here in fifteen minutes. We'd better get dressed. You'll find plenty of clean clothes still in the drawers.'
John let Mycroft in ten minutes later. He was struck immediately by how drawn and tired the older man looked these days. Losing Sherlock had taken it out of him, too. He wondered how he was going to react when he got upstairs and saw the surprise waiting for him. He showed Mycroft up to the living room, and closed the door discreetly, glad that Mrs Hudson was away visiting her sister. If she'd been at home, it would have been all over London in minutes.
'What's going on,' Mycroft demanded.
John pointed to the kitchen. Mycroft followed his arm with his eyes, and registered the figure standing beside the table. With his own clothes on again, his ragged hair tied back at the nape of his neck, and despite the beard, there was no mistaking Sherlock.
Even on the battlefield, John had never heard a sound as terrible as the one that came out of Mycroft's mouth then, a horrifying keening that even the agonised wounded couldn't make. He staggered and fell sideways against the arm of the sofa, and Sherlock was in like a shot, holding him.
'What's wrong with him? Is he having a heart attack?'
They struggled with the howling, writhing sibling until John's hand came in contact with his chest. The heartbeat was fast but strong and steady, and the pulse in his neck regular, though racing.
'No, I don't think so.'
Mycroft grasped Sherlock's clothes and hung on, his face contorting in terrible pain.
'Mycroft,' Sherlock said, pulling his brother's body tight against him. 'It's okay, big brother, its okay. It's over. I'm here. I'm back.'
The cries were transforming into sobs, wracking the barrel chest under its tight camouflage of pinstripes. He pressed his face to Sherlock's cheek, and Sherlock stroked his hair, tears on his own face too.
It was too much for John. Feeling like his heart was being ripped out all over again, he retreated up the stairs. They needed to work through this alone. He closed the door of his room and lay back on the bed. Presently he heard raised voices, and smiled to himself. That was more like it. He put in his earphones and switched on his ipod to wait it out.
He had listened to a U2 album, a Smiths album, and was well into Aiden Moffat and the Best Ofs when Sherlock appeared in the doorway. He looked truly dreadful, his face blotched, his eyes red and puffy. The fat lip that John had given him on the Embankment was really starting to show up now, and there was another mark, a red welt across his cheek that suggested the firm slap of a brotherly palm.
'He really was pissed, wasn't he? John said, giving him a hug.
'Not as bad as I'd expected actually,' Sherlock muttered. 'But don't tell him that. Anyway, you'd better come down. The game is apparently afoot.'
Mycroft's habitual urbanity was somewhat marred by his red eyes and flushed cheeks, but he sat as elegantly as ever, legs crossed, in Sherlock's favourite armchair. Reasserting power and reclaiming control, John realised. Sherlock pulled John down onto the sofa, wrapping a jealous arm around his shoulders. He snuggled in, rather liking this new, possessive quality.
'You didn't throttle him then?' he quipped.
'I'm saving that joy for another day. Can we get on? Matters are moving rather fast, and as usual, my little brother's timing is impeccable.'
'Okay, fill me in.'
'You know that we have been making substantial headway with the Moriarty organisation in the last eight months.' He pointedly left out the reason for that particular timescale, but glared at Sherlock nevertheless. 'My people have tracked his main centre of operations to a former IRA nest in western Ireland, and we are preparing to raid it in the next few days. However, there is a complication. It seems that since my brother's-' he searched for the right word, now unable to avoid it. 'Disappearance, ahem, Moriarty has turned his affectionate attentions to me. He didn't know I existed before the memorial service, but now he seems to think I am a far more worthy adversary than you ever were, Sherlock.'
'I appreciate the dig,' Sherlock said, coolly. 'What makes you think this?'
Mycroft turned his face away, as if to steady his emotions. 'There have already been attacks on my intimates.'
This came as a bombshell. Mycroft had intimates?
Mycroft glanced back at them, took in their expressions, and huffed. 'I'm not a bloody monk, you know!'
'You could have fooled me,' John couldn't help pointing out. He'd had no idea. In all their time together since losing Sherlock, Mycroft had never hinted at anything more than their shared grief, and his sympathy for John's loss. Maybe he had lost more than a brother. Maybe he had reason to be seriously angry.
'I'm sorry, Mycroft,' he blurted. 'I had no idea.'
'No. Well, I take care that no one does. But thank you anyway.' He sighed. His face had closed again. 'It seems that since you and I have become close, you are back in his firing line, and the information suggests that he preparing to move against you in the next few days. I will not countenance any further losses, especially given these new developments –' another glance at Sherlock – 'I need to move you both to a safe house as quickly as possible.'
John knew Mycroft would not take action so extreme if he were not absolutely sure of his sources. His stomach did a little flip, but he went with it, allowing the familiar calm of impending risk to fill him. Sherlock squeezed his shoulders.
'Where is this place?' he asked.
'Not relevant. All you need to know is that it is geographically remote enough to be virtually impregnable.' Mycroft paused, and a small smile crept over his lips. 'Actually, I think you will like it. I take holidays there sometimes. Very restful. And rather romantic.'
'You take holidays?' Sherlock said, aghast.
John thought the idea that Mycroft would know romance when he saw it was far more shocking.
'As I said, I'm not a monk.'
'I'd rather go somewhere urban,' Sherlock said, rather petulantly.
'I think your right to an opinion on the subject is rather null and void at this point, don't you? Anyway, I am trying to save John's life, not yours.'
Mycroft checked his watch. 'John, you'd better go and pack a bag, whatever medicines you need, and such like. I've had clothes delivered for both of you, so there's no need for those. I can give you five minutes.'
The business of escape was a complicated series of sleights of hand. An ambulance arrived and Sherlock was strapped into the stretcher, playing the part of a seriously sick homeless man again, the shambling figure whom John had been seen to befriend in the street. Mycroft slid off in his limousine, and John climbed into the ambulance and watched the paramedic go through the motions, acting as if she was doing her job when really she was just miming.
'This is weird, don't you think?' he asked her.
'Sorry, I'm not allowed to talk to you,' she said. He could only imagine what pressure Mycroft's team had put on her to persuade her of that.
At the A&E unit of St Thomas's Hospital, Sherlock was wheeled into a private room where a man in a white coat who may or may not have been a doctor pronounced him dead on arrival and pulled a sheet over his face. John really had to struggle to control himself at that point.
Porters in grey coats came and transported the 'body' discreetly via a back elevator to the mortuary, allowing John to accompany them. Inside another closed room, John undid the straps anchoring Sherlock to the gurney, and they slipped out of a fire exit and up a flight of steps to where a Range Rover with blacked-out windows was waiting at the top, and bundled inside. The huge car slid out quietly into the stream of traffic and they were away, Mycroft in the front with the driver, going through paperwork, John and Sherlock holding hands on the back seat.
'You had a memorial service for me?' Sherlock whispered.
John shrugged.
'How many people came?'
'Just me, Mycroft, Mrs Hudson and a stray dog.' John had no intention of pandering to Sherlock's vanity at this point in proceedings. He was still unsettled by the sheet, and there were a lot of issues left to clear up between them, after all.
'Liar.' Sherlock squeezed his hand.
John stared at a couple in the back of a taxi next to them in the queue at some traffic lights. They were staring lovingly into each other's eyes and giggling. John felt a tender pain in his throat.
'No one can see us in here, can they?' he asked.
'The windows are one way and armoured,' Mycroft said, not looking up. 'You might as well be in a tank.'
'Good,' he said, and reached over to kiss a surprised Sherlock on the mouth. It felt ridiculously good. 'As soon as we get back,' he whispered, 'we're taking a ride in a taxi.'
Sherlock nodded, his eyes shining.
Credit: I recommend you to the album 'How to get to Heaven from Scotland' by Aiden Moffat and the Best Ofs, (Chemikal Underground 2009), which has some of the most romantic lyrics I've ever heard. I figure John would be a real softie and that would be reflected in his musical tastes, though he's about the right age to like The Smiths.
Tomorrow: whisked away to the edge of the world…
