"I don't understand!"
Sherlock pressed his palms together, fingertips touching his nose, as he paced the flat, thoughts racing down branching pathways, trying to find elusive connections.
"It doesn't make any sense!" John's protest cut through the sleeting deductions but Sherlock barely noticed; some small part of him always insisted on being aware of John and he'd realized ages ago it was better just to let it – it allowed the rest of his brain to focus on the problem. "Why would she take Mary's brother? What's the point?"
What was the point? The question chased itself around in Sherlock's mind – there was no obvious solution but there was a reason, even if it was unknown to him. Some connection, some tenuous link drawing the Woman and Mary together via Alexandre Georges.
"Do you think he was involved in any of this?" John asked. "Maybe working for her – Irene Adler I mean?"
Sherlock heard the reluctance in John's voice, as if naming her was as good as summoning her. He gave his head a sharp shake, refocusing on his partner.
"No." It wasn't a guess, it wasn't just a possibility – he was certain Georges had nothing to do with this. He was a man trapped by a family he didn't know and that was where the connection lay. A mystery author whose own life had been – until recently – a relatively placid read, ignorant of characters behind the scenes of his own biology.
He'd never cared to know them, but now it seemed they cared to know something about him.
"You said she wasn't working for her. I mean Adler. For– Mary."
"No," Sherlock said again. Even if he'd been uncertain about the rest of the details, he was certain about this. Mary's actions spoke for her: two madmen faded into nothing more than memory when they became too unpredictable to be assets.
Her world was ordered, a control she dictated and imposed. No room for those who had lost their usefulness, no concessions for those who trod their own path rather than hers.
Mary Morstan did not play games.
The Woman did.
It hit him suddenly, freezing him in place, halfway through a step, and he was dimly aware of John demanding to know what it was and of the way his partner silenced himself – reluctantly but knowing it was important to do so – when Sherlock held up a hand.
He fixed his attention on John, aware of the way it made his partner shift, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. The doctor's gaze flickered away before being drawn back up by Sherlock's unflinching one, muscles in John's jaw and neck working as he swallowed, steeling himself.
Sherlock ignored the faint displeasure at causing John any unease; he needed the focus more than he needed John to be comfortable. Every sense was deliberately turned to his partner's presence, not just the sight but the smell and the feel, the way John changed the air merely by being there.
And he was there. Solid. Real. He'd been in their bed that morning, he'd been with Sherlock at the Yard and in the cab and at Lassalle's. He was here now, some understanding flickering through his blue eyes, and Sherlock loathed the fact that it was John who took a step forward to close the gap between them, John who reached out and caught his wrist, John's fingers that tightened with a brief, reassuring squeeze.
He hated the fact that he couldn't do it, make that small yet immense gesture – the inability was weakness, he knew that even if his own brother would have called it a strength.
But it didn't matter to John.
"Yeah?" John asked. Sherlock twisted his wrist slightly in John's loose grip, wrapping his own fingers around John's arm, feeling the steady beat of a pulse against his skin. He nodded once, the action more certain than he was, and let his mind skirt around the contours of memories that weren't nearly old enough for his liking.
Mary didn't play games.
The Woman did.
He was certain it was all there, waiting for him, bits and pieces that needed to be put together the way he'd been trying to do in Wales, and preventing himself at every turn for fear of what the memories might do.
But John was here, right here, and Georges was not.
She had taken him and this was a game – at least to her.
And Georges wasn't the first person she'd taken.
Sherlock's eyes slid away from John's, narrowing unconsciously, letting the observation take him where it wanted – even when where it wanted was an abandoned and crumbling stone hut on a desolate Welsh hillside. He tightened his grip on John's wrist, reaffirming the reality, unable to ignore the memory of desperation as he'd sought John out in the darkness, then again, more systematically but just as futilely, in the daylight.
That had been a game too, of sorts.
Plucking him and John from London, dropping them, separated, into the wilderness. Sherlock had had Lestrade but the Woman had known what losing John would do.
Three days hounded by a smothering fear – terror – that John had been taken away from him permanently and irrevocably. That this, what he held onto right now, was as insubstantial as mist, not really his, out of his control.
Three days locked in his own mind trying to escape the suffocating possibility.
Sherlock would have figured it out faster if he'd been with John, and John would have got them home faster if they'd been together. His deductive skills combined with John's army training. Solutions and survival.
But the delay hadn't been for him, not really.
Removing them had drawn Mycroft's gaze away from London.
Long enough to…
"Oh," Sherlock said without hearing himself, aware that he must have spoken only by the shift in John's stance, the slight change in pressure of fingertips on his skin.
Because they'd come back and there had been a faked letter in French, one body in place of another, a forgotten tunnel beneath the heart of London.
And the writing on the wall.
Not writing, no – symbols, meaningless at the time but linked directly to Alexandre Georges via the cover of his latest novel, and Alexandre Georges linked directly to Mary Morstan via the accident of blood.
Nothing had been stolen from Mycroft – nothing physical. That would have been obvious.
Whatever it had been, Mycroft had never even known he'd had it.
None of them had.
Until now.
Sherlock hadn't taken the bait with the letter but the Woman would have other resources at her disposal. A name somehow linked back to Mary, the connection unclear… He would have uncovered it if he'd been interested in France when it had first come up, and he would have led her right where she'd wanted to go.
He'd passed up the chance – unknowingly – but it didn't matter because she'd solved the riddle anyway and taken Georges as neatly and as silently as she'd taken them.
"But why?" John asked, pulling Sherlock back to the present, relieved he'd had the presence of mind to speak as he was thinking and save them the time it would have taken to go over it again.
"I don't know," Sherlock replied.
John looked slightly surprised by the admission but Sherlock ignored him; there was too much at stake for pretences, and what he didn't know yet, he would learn.
"She doesn't know either." Sherlock heard the words before he'd registered the realization behind them, aware that John's expression had shifted to confusion. The doctor shook his head, a short, sharp military movement.
"Who doesn't know what?" the doctor asked.
"Mary. She doesn't know about Georges."
"What?" John demanded. "No! You told me not two hours ago that it was a stupid assumption–"
"A dangerous and simplistic conclusion, John. And it was. It's not now."
"Oh yes, because now you've thought of it?"
"Because we have facts, John! Two hours ago we didn't know that Amélie Lassalle and Mary Morstan were the same person. We didn't know who Georges' biological sister was."
"So what? How does that change Mary knowing? You said it yourself: just because Alexandre Georges didn't bother to find out about her doesn't mean she wouldn't have found out about him – or that she hadn't known her whole life!"
"Of course she knows who Alexandre George is," Sherlock sighed, silencing John's attempted protest with an abrupt gesture. "Listen to me, John. Mary knows who he is because she follows the news and she follows us. Yes, yes she does." He tightened his grip on John's wrist slightly, not enough to be threatening but enough to stop his partner from pulling away. There was no time for the finesse the situation needed, no time to spare John's feelings or indulge the doctor's anger on his sister's behalf.
"You know she does, John. Using the same means Moriarty did, because he was her man. But not in the same way. Not for the same reasons."
"And that makes it all fine, does it?" John snapped. "The criminal mastermind that used my sister is keeping tabs on us and you know that and you're happy to let it happen?"
"How am I supposed to stop it?" Sherlock asked. "Would you stop writing your blog? Would you stop working? Would you have me stop working? Would you have us stay in the flat without leaving for the rest of our lives? I can't stop it, John, because it would mean going through everyone in London – and then beyond – but she is, as you said, keeping tabs. Nothing more. No, don't argue! She knew we went to Paris and she knew we met Georges there – possibly she doesn't know about the letter. Hard to say. She does know he's missing now, but she doesn't know why."
"How can you be sure?" John demanded.
"Because if someone like Mary had a family member stolen, we'd have felt it by now. She wouldn't let anything stand in her way of getting him back, not if he meant something to her. London's underworld would be bleeding, John, but right now, it's no more unsettled than it normally is. Mary knows a French author we've met is missing, but she doesn't know who he is to her. She may not even know who's taken him."
"So why bother then? Why take him if there's no connection between Alexandre and Mary – or between Mary and Adler for that matter?"
"We don't know there's not. I said the Woman wasn't working for Mary. There's obviously a connection."
"Obvious now," John commented sardonically.
"Yes," Sherlock agreed, keeping the sigh out of his voice if only to avoid a row they couldn't afford. "Obvious now."
He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate, a traitor thought snaking through his mind, artfully dodging his attempts to ignore it. Carefully, Sherlock disentangled himself from his partner's grasp so he could pace the living room again, hoping in vain that the familiar textures beneath his shoes would distract him, help him build a rationale against this terrible idea.
But there was no way around it, not this time.
If he didn't try, it was one powerful lead not followed and as much as he despised the disloyalty to John, Sherlock could not let that outweigh another man's life.
He paused, back to his partner, taking a slow breath to savour one last moment before he had to ask his of John, then turned back, using another deep breath to steel himself.
"John, I have to talk to her."
The shock in John's blue eyes was mirrored in his stance, the way he tensed and drew back slightly, as if he could distance himself from the reality. As if not comprehending – or not wanting to – could change what had to be done.
"What–?" he asked. "Do you mean– to the Woman?"
"No," Sherlock said. "To Mary."