Chapter 4: Istanbul, Turkey
His feet slapped the pavement in a rhythmic pattern, each step on the unforgiving ground sending a jolt up his legs that reverberated in his joints. The wind whipped past his face, drowning out all sound as it filled his ears. Blood rushed through him, pumped with adrenaline, and his heartbeat was loud in his ears, rendering him almost entirely deaf to the sounds around him.
He was gaining ground on his target as she weaved in and out of the crowded streets, but he was at a disadvantage: this wasn't his city, these weren't his people, they were hers. She as an expert; he was simply surviving. So when she dipped back into the crowd and did not reappear, he knew she had evaded him. Again. He looked around himself, spinning in a slow circle, but he cold not determine where she had gone.
Swearing under his breath, he quickly moved into a side street, already planning his next move. She couldn't have gotten far. Perhaps if he…
A small sound, barely audible, behind him was the only warning he received. He turned sharply and dodged a shining silver blade, but he felt it prick the shell of his ear. He hissed, more out of anger than pain, and batted the knife away, sinking into a low, protective crouch.
The woman, a Turkish assassin named Berna Marangoz, stood opposite him looking almost bored, three small knives sticking out of her hand like extra fingers. She, like him, was tall and lean with dark hair that she had pulled back and out of her dark eyes. Most of her head and face was hidden behind a sand-colored scarf, but her expression was read easily enough: he was an easy kill, and she would take care of him quickly.
"Why have you followed me today?" she asked in Turkish, her eyes searching him curiously. "When we spoke the other day, I refused to make a deal. I have not changed my mind."
"You did not allow me to name a figure," Sherlock replied. "You may decide taking my deal is worth your while."
"Keep your money," she said, and Sherlock could hear the sneer in her words. "I am not so petty to betray my country for money." She clenched her fists angrily, the small knives glinting as they caught the light.
"Is there nothing I can offer you?" Sherlock ventured, cocking his head, eyes scanning her carefully. There was very little data he could see, but there had to be something.
"Nothing whatsoever," she said firmly.
Sherlock internally sighed. So it had come to this again. Pity. Mycroft would be disappointed.
She made the first move, lunging for him with incredible speed and deadly intent. He moved, albeit slower, and just barely avoided a split abdomen from the three finger-like knives in the assassin's fist. He spun away, agility his only ally, but his opponent followed. She moved gracefully, like a dancer upon the stage, wielding death in her hand. She slashed and lunged, and he kept spinning away, the reluctant partner to their shared waltz. He didn't have her speed, and each blow became harder to parry. Before long, he stopped trying to block her and simply moved, waiting for an opening.
The first wound opened shallow on his left forearm. The sleeve of his jacket and shirt took the brunt of the damage.
The second wound was a stab to his right shoulder, deflected from her intended target at his clavicle. It sank deep, bringing a grunt to his lips and quickly staining his clothes crimson.
The third wound stung his palm as he deflected another slash.
The fourth wound opened on his thigh, making his leg tremble and almost buckle. He staggered then, lost his balance, and the assassin pressed her advantage. She brought the butt of a knife down on his temple, dazing him and bringing him efficiently to his knees. His vision blurred and swayed, and she stepped around him smoothly.
The fifth, sixth, and seventh wounds happened simultaneously. The three knives slashed down from his right shoulder to his left hip, ripping into his back with enough force to scatter drops of blood on the ground. The knives were sharp and they cut deep, his body arching away from the contact and his head snapping back as a ragged scream tore itself out of his throat. He fell forward onto his hands, all fight abandoning him. His left arm shook violently under his weight, but his right shoulder buckled first, the pain too much on the rapidly bleeding hole that had been out there earlier. His face hit the dirt, hard.
Marangoz was on him immediately, turning him onto his back and pressing a knee forcefully into his gut. The slashes on his back ground painfully into the dirt beneath him, He gritted his teeth around another groan, willing himself to focus on the blade now digging into his throat.
"You fight poorly," the assassin said, no trace of fatigue in her voice even as he breathed raggedly. He saw no emotion in her eyes either. His death would be quick and would mean nothing to her.
What she did next, however, was something he did not expect. She removed the blade from his throat. His shock gave him pause, and even his pain was momentarily forgotten as the assassin unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his bare chest. Through his blurred vision, he thought he saw her eyes soften. He could quiet words coming from behind the scarf, sounding almost like a prayer.
"To no soul will Allah grant respite when the time appointed for it has come," she whispered. "And Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do."
The blade cut into the skin of his chest, and he was wrenched back to reality. She was cutting into him. No… she was carving something into his skin, calm and meticulous and almost… worshipful. When she spoke again, he knew she spoke to him.
"My appointed time did not come yet," she said. "Our dance was not my last. I will live to die another day, at Allah's command." She finished carving whatever it was into his skin and moved her knife back to his throat. She looked directly into his eyes.
"Your day of judgement has arrived," she said. "Embrace the destroyer of light." The pressure at his throat increased…
"Get off him!"
Marangoz looked up, her eyes searching for the speaker. There was a metallic click, followed closely by a whistling sound, and the assassin's head jerked backward with enough force to give her whiplash. Her face bore an expression of shock, her eyes and mouth open wide, like the hole now burned into the center of her forehead. She stayed upright for a long moment before collapsing right on top of Sherlock. The full weight of her body took his breath from him and pushed the wounds on his back even harder into the dirt. Tears pricked his eyes at the pain of it and he struggled to breathe.
His vision blurred again, his body finally surrendering after the stress of the past half hour. Time, already a relative concept, no longer held any meaning. The world swam in and out of focus, showing first the alleyway, then a crowded street, and then more alleyways, his feet somehow moving although he could not recall telling them to do so. When had the Marangoz been removed from his chest? Who was the person who had shot her? Was it the same person who supported him now, pressed firmly to his left side and holding his arm around broad shoulders?
Sherlock tried to focus, blinking his eyes rapidly at the stranger and attempting to make sense of what he saw with a mind gone quite delirious with pain. He could not see a face (it was turned away from him), but he could see a full head of short-cropped blonde hair. The man was smaller than Sherlock, but he was clearly very strong, supporting almost all of the detective's weight on this journey they were making. When he spoke, it was with unquestioning authority, parting the crowds around them with short barks. But when he spoke to Sherlock, his voice was calm and reassuring.
"Not far now. We're almost there. You'll be alright."
John…
Sherlock's sudden elation at seeing his best friend was so great that his knees threatened to give out. A strong arm around his waist flexed powerfully against the sudden shift. It was John. John was here. How did he get here? When did he get here? How had he known where to find Sherlock? Dozens of questions raced around in his head, but he didn't care about any of them right now. All he wanted was to rejoice in the knowledge that John Watson, his protector and savior, had found him and saved him again.
John was here.
John had saved him.
John was everything.
When he awoke, he was sprawled on a bed in a small room with only one window. Sunlight streamed in through it and illuminated a patch of clay wall on the other side of the room. A rough cloth pillow dug patterns into his face, and he could feel blankets covering his legs. His back was exposed to the warm air. The sticky feeling of dried blood and the smell of herbal medicine led him to a conclusion: doctor's home, wounds cleaned and bandaged.
Sherlock let his eyes roam around the small room, taking in the furniture and the rug upon the stone floor. Bottles of medicine and bandages covered the tiny bedside table, and more bandages, stained with (his) blood, lay in a heap in the opposite corner. So he'd been here long enough to need his dressings changed, perhaps 24 hours. From the angle of the sunlight on the wall, he judged it was close to 11:00 in the morning.
Movement near the door brought his eyes to a figure upon a woven chair, arms crossed and chin pressed to his chest in slumber. The figure was familiar, the short-cropped blonde hair and golden skin that of the man who had helped him the previous day. John. Sherlock's chest filled with a kind of giddy excitement, the urge to laugh almost entirely overwhelming, and the smile he felt tugging at his lips was wider than he had felt it in over a year.
But with the happiness also came the doubt. Those questions that had flooded his pain-delirious mind earlier came back, sharp and clear and demanding his attention. How had John known where to find him, that he was in danger, that he was alive? Sherlock had been very careful, had left instructions for Mycroft that no one outside of the few who were involved in his "suicide" was to know he was still alive, and even fewer were to know where he was at any given time. So how could this man be the one person whom he needed most but could never know that he was alive? How could he be John?
Upon closer inspection, with eyes sharper than they had been before, Sherlock located every flaw, every clue that made this man different. Like John, he was a military man, as was indicated in his posture and his strength. Like John, he was tanned from sun exposure in a desert climate. Like John, his hair was blonde and cropped in a military style. Like John, he was prepared to kill when Sherlock was in danger… Unlike John, his military training had been much more recent. Unlike John, his skin was too golden to have been living in London for over a year. Unlike John, his hair was full and free of grey. This man was too tall, too young, too fresh off the plane from a war zone to be John. No, not John… Mycroft's man, sent to follow Sherlock in case of too much danger.
Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed, feeling his happiness plummet and settle somewhere around his navel, turning into a black, brooding mess. John hadn't come for him. That had been a ridiculous hope. The only way he could ever see John again was if he deconstructed Moriarty's web, took it apart strand by sticky strand until there was nowhere else the spider could turn. Then and only then, could he reveal himself again.
Sherlock willed himself to fall back to sleep, having gone several days without it before his fight and needing his body to heal properly after the wounds he had accumulated. He tried not to think about the feeling in his gut, unraveling the ropes of disappointment and longing into his body. He tried not to think about the drawing the American woman had given him and the words she had spoken. He tried not to think about how desperately he had wanted to take John's face in his hands, look deep into his deep blue eyes, and taste his lips…
Author's Note:
Ok, so I did some research for this chapter. I wanted the assassin to have a kind of ritual that she performed before every kill, and so I took some quotes from the Quran. The symbol she was carving into Sherlock's chest was the star and crescent, an ancient symbol of Islam and the Ancient Near East.
Again, I apologize for the time it takes me to post. This chapter came a lot quicker than the last, but no promises for upcoming chapters.
Thank you for reading.
