Chapter 8
Iskenderun
Mike had never before so strongly wished that he spoke Arabic.
He could have coped quite adequately—even smoothly—with German or French or Classical Greek (possibly even Latin), but the jumble of syllables about him was nearly as confusing as the random accostings he was suffering at the hands of apparently well-meaning people. Someone had offered him a glass of cloudy water; another had tried to hand him a live chicken. He tried as politely as possible to assure people he really only wanted someone who spoke English (or even Classical Greek), but to no avail whatsoever.
Until suddenly a friendly face emerged from the crowd in front of him—the tanned, handsome visage of Greg Lestrade.
"Doctor Stamford, I presume?" he said with a wry grin and clapped Mike's shoulders in a traditional Arab greeting—naturally foregoing the cheek-kisses in deference to the English sensibility.
"Oh, thank heaven, Lestrade," Mike breathed. "What a relief."
"Good to see you, too, mate," Lestrade said, smiling. "Where's Sherlock?"
"He's in Austria, or at least, I think he still is," Mike said, still disconcerted by the shuffling crowd and the overly-friendly people attempting to accost him. "Slight…detour."
"So you're on your own?" Lestrade asked in surprise.
"Yes, but it's all under control," Mike said, waving away a woman who was inspecting his clothing quite closely. "Have you arranged our supplies?"
"Yeah, of course. But where are we going?"
"This map will show you," Mike said, reaching into his breast-pocket. "It was drawn by…"
A man had suddenly positioned himself in front of Mike and Lestrade. He was crisply-dressed and wore round wire-rimmed spectacles. He clicked his heels together and bowed, nearly clipping Mike in the nose with his short-brimmed hat.
"Doctor Stamford?" he asked in an unmistakably German accent.
Mike tucked the map back into his pocket and didn't say anything, giving Lestrade a sidelong glance. "Er…yes."
The man continued. "Welcome to Iskenderun. The Director of the Museum of Antiquities has sent a car for you."
"Oh…yes? Well, then, your servant, sir."
Lestrade stepped slightly forward, positioning his shoulder in front of Mike's. "And I'm his."
"Follow me, please," the German man said, and turned.
Mike raised his eyebrows and said, "I guess my reputation precedes me, eh?"
Lestrade only frowned. "There is no museum in Iskenderun," he said quietly and conversationally.
But the German man had heard him. He turned and accosted Lestrade suddenly. "Papers, please."
Lestrade patted the front of his white linen jacket. "Oh, yeah, papers…of course." He leaned over slightly and whispered, "Run."
Mike blinked for a moment, then looked at him. "Er…"
Lestrade smiled broadly and continued to feel around his pockets. He at last pulled out a folded newspaper and said, "Paper, sir. Got it here. Egyptian Mail, morning edition. Not much use, though, without the cricket scores…run!"
Mike blinked again. "Did you, er, say…"
Lestrade held the paper up in front of the German man and yelled "Run!" just as he punched the man through the newspaper.
The man fell backward and Lestrade grabbed Mike's arm. They took off through the crowd as quickly as the milling bodies would allow.
They turned a corner, but Lestrade knew it was too late to reach any of his known safe-houses. He saw a curtained door nearby and decided to improvise. "Okay, in there," he urged Mike. "Go on."
Mike disappeared through the curtain without hesitation, and Lestrade turned, ready to draw off their pursuers so that he could come back later to collect his friend.
Yet behind him he heard the roar of a truck engine, and he turned back to the curtained door just in time to see a large truck pulling away from the façade that he had mistaken for the door to a house. He ran a few yards after the truck before realizing it was no use. He slumped against the false door-frame in defeat, watching the truck disappear into its own dust-cloud.
He had found Mike, then lost Mike. Sherlock was going to be so brassed off.
Berlin
Victor stood where he had been told to. Victor had shaken all the hands of the important people around him, and had smiled and accepted their praise when it was offered.
Victor had worked very hard to get to this moment in his life.
And yet, the cost lay before him in an ever-growing mountain of burning paper and leather. A rally held to inspire people's fervor for the Third Reich had also become a celebration of book-hatred, a triumph of gleeful ignorance. People fed the blaze with eagerness, with savage rapture.
Each book that withered in the flame felt like a dagger to Victor. It was as if he could almost feel the suffering of the characters as they succumbed to the fiery results of fear and hatred.
He dabbed away one errant tear as subtly as he could, hoping no one had noticed.
First, he had been forced to betray and leave Sherlock to his doom; now, he was forced to stand on the side of evil as they worked to destroy knowledge, hope, the very voice of humanity. He had known that aligning himself willingly with Austria's oppressors would come at a great cost; he now understood that he had deeply underestimated that cost.
As soon as he was able, he excused himself from the proceedings. He walked tiredly along the arcade to one side of the large stadium, wishing that his path held more choices than he currently could see.
Lost in thought, he was an easy target for the man who grabbed him and pulled him into the shadows. He was pinned against the column before he even realized what was happening.
But the feel of his captor—the scent, even when disguised by a stolen uniform—the voice—all were familiar. "Herr Doktor," Sherlock's silken whisper breathed out of the darkness, "where is it?"
He looked into Sherlock's eye, barely visible under the brim of a soldier's hat. "How did you get here?" He tried to keep the tremble from his voice, and failed.
"Where is it? I want it," Sherlock hissed, and pulled open Victor's jacket forcefully.
Victor gasped, his heart racing, but Sherlock only reached for his pockets and found the diary. Victor had refused to turn it over to the Reich, knowing what they were likely to do with it. He looked up at Sherlock in surprise. "You came back for the book?"
"John didn't want it incinerated."
"Is that what you think of me?" Victor demanded, his voice cracking. "I believe in the Grail, not the Swastika!"
Sherlock bared his teeth. "And yet you stood up to be counted with the enemy of everything the Grail stands for. Who gives a damn what you think?"
"You do!" He hadn't meant it to sound so desperate. His hands were on Sherlock's waist, and he didn't even remember putting them there.
Sherlock's eyes were wide, pale, frightening in the dim, refracted light from the rally behind them. He shoved Victor back against the pillar again and pressed two fingers to the base of his throat. "All I have to do is push."
Victor put a hand around Sherlock's wrist, but he did not squeeze. "All I have to do is shout."
They stared at one another for a long moment, Sherlock panting with rage, Victor trembling in his grasp. Finally, Sherlock let go of him and spun away, striding across the arcade and into the shadows beyond.
"Sherlock," Victor tried to cry, but it only came out as a whisper.
Using identification and money stolen from unconscious SS officers, Sherlock and John were able to check in to a hotel on the outskirts of Berlin. Sherlock had arranged transport aboard a zeppelin, but the flight would not leave until the following day, so (since they could see no sign that they had been tracked—at least, not yet) there was both time to kill and a well-earned night of sleep to be had.
They were given adjoining rooms, and though John had seemed annoyed by the fact (he had refused to have dinner with Sherlock or discuss the diary until the next day), Sherlock found it was quite easy to leave the door between the rooms unlocked from his side. Though he was weary to the bone, he settled onto the clean linens with an empty stomach and a full mind, relentlessly ticking away at the details of everything he had seen and heard since leaving England.
He steepled his fingers under his chin and tried to forget that John was only a few meters away, on the other side of the hateful wall behind him.
Yet even as his mind shifted, stored, and analyzed all the data from their experiences, there was a voice that would not stop nagging him, prodding him with the memories of his foolishness about Victor, his failures with John. What did you think? the voice said, sounding something like Mycroft, that Victor could be a substitute for John? That he could replace John? That you might be able to start over with him?
In the bare, dark, honest places of his soul, Sherlock had to admit that none of these was actually the truth—though he had allowed himself a rare moment of sheer self-deception where Victor was concerned. He had let himself stumble blindly into an intimate situation without considering the implications—had, in fact, refused to give the implications full voice even as they whispered in the corners of his mind. The pleasant bubble of eager arousal that had filled him from the first moment of meeting the man had been so deliciously intoxicating—a feeling he'd not had since first meeting John—that he'd had little wish to douse it, even as his mind had sifted the facts and concluded that Victor stood only a 24% chance (at most) of being completely genuine in his ardor.
The risk had been too sweet a possibility to refuse.
It had also been a way to briefly—and hollowly—recapture some of the heady feeling he'd so enjoyed in the first few months of his life with John. He had known that he could not love Victor—not as he'd loved John—nor could Victor, in all likelihood, love him. It seemed in all of his life that only John H. Watson had had the suitable temperament and innate attraction to danger that made loving Sherlock Holmes possible. His headlong rush into Victor's arms had been nothing but an echo of that feeling of being loved, but he'd seemed unable to keep from grasping at it nonetheless.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he told himself now. Mike was in danger, John was still at risk, and they were going to race the entire Nazi army for an object which, to his mind, may not even truly exist. All because he'd accepted Frankland's challenge: all because he couldn't resist the challenge posed by impossible quests. And because he'd wanted to impress John once again.
Addiction is such a destructive thing, Sherlock, Mycroft's voice went on. Surely you know this by now.
Sherlock snarled and leaped up from the bed, starting to pace now, wishing they hadn't stopped here to rest, wishing they had found some other way to travel Southward and were already on their way. Wishing he could just send John home and retrieve Stamford and make sure everyone was safely back in London. Even those office hours and needy students didn't seem so bad now.
He was startled by the sound of a knock at the door, and it took him only a split-second to recognize that it came from the adjoining suite door rather than the door to the hallway. He opened the door to John, whose brows still looked thunderous and who was still fully dressed, but who held up a tray of food and said, "Okay, alright, I ordered room service, since I know you won't eat if I don't. Shall we?"
Sherlock stepped quickly aside and gestured toward the room.
It was small—in no way equal to his fine apartments in Venice, but in the corner was a writing-desk with a chair, which he offered to John, who set the tray down on the desk and took the seat. Sherlock sat on the edge of the bed nearby, hands on his knees, wondering whether John would keep his anger in check or decide to simply shout it all out at him now that they had nothing more pressing to do with their time.
John seemed to be pondering the same question. He sat looking at Sherlock, the diary bouncing gently on his knee. At length, he pulled the lid off of one of the plates of food and handed it to Sherlock. "Eat."
Sherlock ate dutifully, waiting, but John didn't say anything, and in silence they finished a modest meal. As John stacked the plates back onto the tray, Sherlock began to think he should say something, and he opened his mouth cautiously. "Er, so…"
"Alright, look," John said suddenly, "you did say you were sorry, and I just wanted to acknowledge that fact, since I didn't earlier, and say…well, thanks for trying. Because I think you are trying. And I guess…that means something, does it? It's better than the nothing I got for almost three years—but no, I'm not going to dwell there, I really didn't want to bring that up again, so let me just say thank you for giving it your best, and now we can just move on. Alright?"
Sherlock stared at him, his mind boggling to process the entire utterance, and he realized that his mouth was hanging open. He closed it. "Er…yes. Of course. It's…fine. Great, actually. That's…great. I had hoped that…" His voice failed him for a moment. "I had hoped that someday perhaps you'd come to not hate me."
John gave one of those short laughs that Sherlock had come to know did not mean humor.
"Perhaps you still do, but it means a great deal to me to know that you're trying, too," Sherlock went on. "I'm sorry you have to be on this quest with me, rather than…well, anyone, I suppose. Though of course the best person would have been your father. So yes, I'm sorry it has to be the one person you didn't want to ever see again."
"And yet," John said, standing up and pacing away a few steps, "you're the one person I've thought about non-stop for the past five years of my life, Sherlock. How's that for irony?"
Sherlock stared. "You mean…you're indicating that you…"
"Don't hate you, yeah. Of course I don't. Could you hurt me this much if I did?"
Sherlock had to admit the logic in that. "Does this mean that you someday might—"
"Take you back?" John gasped, and he was breathing a little harder now, running his hand over his mouth and chuckling. "God, I don't know. I just don't know."
Sherlock was gaping again, but made no effort to stop himself this time. "I was going to say…forgive me," he whispered. "It was never a question that you'd…"
John looked at him for a moment, his tongue curling over his upper lip for a moment, then his hands were grabbing Sherlock's lapels, and then his face. "God, Sherlock," he breathed. "You still don't understand me, do you? I may never forgive you, but God help me…I do need you."
The sensations triggered by John's sudden kiss lit Sherlock's brain and body up like a gasoline fire, and he jerked backward from it before he knew what he'd done. John stared, and then said, "I'm sorry, you don't…"
But the fire was raging now, and though the initial blaze of it had startled him with sweet, dark pain, he was anything but ready to stop it. He pulled John down into another kiss, this one hard and nearly desperate. The fire threatened to burn the very synapses that cohered his being, but Sherlock did not care. He would let it burn, if this was how he was to go. John.
They pulled apart only long enough to share a few tremulous, panting breaths, to see one anothers' dazed looks and flushed faces, and John's hands were on Sherlock—God that touch, how he'd missed it, no one could handle him like John could—and John's mouth was everywhere, and God, it was bliss, sheer bliss, and yes, this is how he would go, this could burn him to cinders here and now and he'd not care, just don't stop, John, don't stop…
John put a knee on the bed beside him now and lunged, pushing Sherlock backward. Sherlock let himself be pinned under the fearsome, savage kisses, let John grab his wrists and push his hands to the bed over Sherlock's head.
Sherlock could only strive to breathe through the searing heat lapping through his every vein, could only pant for breath as John plundered his neck with teeth and tongue, ungentle as he held Sherlock's wrists in one hand while undoing his flies with the other. Sherlock wanted to cry John's name, to beg him not to stop, but he was afraid that if he spoke, if he uttered one word, John would come to his senses and stop his explorations, go back to his room, and leave Sherlock in cold ashes.
He lay still, passive, waiting, allowing John to undress him, allowing John to stand away and undress himself. He tried not to speak, even to breathe, but when at last John stood naked before him, the sight was so familiar, so achingly beautiful, that he did say one thing before he could stop himself. "John."
John was breathing easier now, calmer, and he looked at Sherlock with an almost…gentle expression. "Are you sure about this?" His voice was low, soft.
"Yes," Sherlock whispered, mouth gone suddenly dry. He could not bring himself to return the question.
"Even if this isn't…any sort of…promise?" John asked, leaning onto the bed now, angling toward Sherlock but not yet touching him.
"Yes," Sherlock repeated, still in a whisper.
John looked at him a long moment, eyes roving over his face, his hair, his skin. He nodded. "Well. I'm not." He sat back, and Sherlock went suddenly cold.
"John," he started.
"No," John said quickly. "I just…I can't do this. I can't put myself into this…"
Sherlock raised a hand and slid it down the arm that was nearest him. He swallowed, and said as evenly as he could, "I would offer you more, but I do not think you would take it."
"Would you?" John asked, looking past Sherlock to the wall beyond. "Would you, after what you said in Austria?"
"I am…a poor partner, a broken machine of a man, I know this," Sherlock said, low and quiet. "But I was never whole without you. I never will be." He'd said it. He'd thought it so many times, and now he'd finally said it. He let out a long breath and grasped John's wrist, probably too hard, but he had to hold on to what he could, while he could. Any moment John would turn and leave, and—
But John turned to him, his eyes bright. "You do love me."
Sherlock formed the word "yes" with his lips, but no sound came.
Then John's arms were around him again—those incredibly strong arms, how strong John was without most people realizing, God—and they were kissing this time with a slow depth, the desperate tension gone and a marrow-deep need pressing them deeper and deeper into the kisses.
As they made love, more slowly and deliberately than Sherlock would have thought possible, Sherlock held on for dear life to the moments, cataloging every sensation—no mean feat, as he could feel John everywhere, all the way to his toes and fingertips and every atom in between—and abandoning any attempt at silence. "John. John…"
It did not take long for John's cries to join his.
It seemed an eternity that they lay afterward, their panting slowing, their pulses easing gradually to a steady rhythm once more, Sherlock returning only with reluctance to the real world, the world beyond John's arms, the world where he could so easily forget the words that could be spoken in the magic of a moment.
At least, that was how it had always been. He did not know whether it could ever be different—he suspect it could not—but he was not able, now, to simply walk away from this man whom he loved more than himself, more than his life, more than even the work itself. He would simply wait and see what John wanted. He would be unable to say no, whatever it was that John might ask.
But at length, John rolled off of him and disappeared to the bathroom. He returned and gave Sherlock a warm flannel and bent to retrieve his clothing.
"I guess that means we'll talk about the diary tomorrow, then," he said finally.
Sherlock sat up, frowning. "Why?"
"Because I'm tired, and I'd like to get a good night's sleep before—no, in my own room, Sherlock, I really think that's best, at least for now."
At least for now.
"All right," Sherlock said.
John paused at the door to his room. "Sherlock, don't. Don't…deduce this. The truth is, I just…don't know. I just don't know. Is that…can that be enough for you?"
Sherlock nodded. "Yes."
John nodded, looking at the doorframe. "I…forgive you."
Sherlock couldn't speak.
"Good night, then."
And Sherlock sat awake for much of the night, fingers steepled, deep in thought.
