The only problem with working 9-5 at a hands-on science museum aimed at children is the fact that the children, though delightful, come in with nasty little viruses and bugs that non-children non-parent people have little to no immunity for.
Also, how long does it take people to get back to people about job applications? I would rather like to hear a 'yes' or 'no' from at least *one* of the places I applied to...
Deepest apologies for this being so very late. It's been bonkers over here. Let me know if there are any errors or Americanisms, and thank you for your support and comments- I love every one of them. :)
Consciousness returns slowly.
At first it's just sound—his name, mostly—and he thinks that it can't be John since John never says his name like that.
The person calling him doesn't let up. Soon he's aware that his mouth feels as if it's full of cotton and that his head feels strangely light and floaty, as if up and down aren't feeling quite so strict about things at the moment and have convinced left and right that they really don't need to be so straitlaced, either.
He's not sure how much he likes that. He's quite sure he doesn't like the fact that it isn't John saying his name over and over. John says it so much better. He's very interested in listening to John once the baby has a name. He wonders if he'll say her name the same way he says 'Sherlock'.
Will this not-John person ever shut up? Sherlock tries to get up and register his displeasure with them, but moving proves to be a terrible plan. The floaty, whirly feeling redoubles and he's half-convinced that he'll either tip over onto the floor or float off the bed entirely. Groaning, Sherlock raises hands to anchor his head and is startled when a blanket comes with them. He's confused when he finally registers that he's on some sort of couch, and then he's alarmed when he opens his eyes and picks out Agatha Landeshaw's features from the blurry mess that greets him. "What."
"You've been drugged, Mr Holmes."
It's less a rush of memory and more a sudden reprioritisation of information as Sherlock's mind escapes enough of the drug to start functioning at something approaching proper functionality. His hands fly to his chest and pat fruitlessly at the empty folds of the carrier wrap; the sound that escapes him as he clutches at the cloth is uncomfortably close to a panicked sob. "Where is she!? Where is John!?" He forces himself to sit up and immediately regrets it when the room—the Landeshaws' office, apparently—starts spinning again.
Unforgivable. He cannot be dizzy when John and the baby are gone.
Alistair Landeshaw appears at his elbow at Agatha's signal, helping him to his feet and steadying him as he gets his bearings about him. He nods and Agatha presents him with a tablet computer; there's camera footage of the lobby on the screen. "We've gained access to the security footage. As best as we can tell, two men broke off from the tourist group and approached Captain Watson from behind. We think you were drugged when you were jostled; after you handed over the baby and collapsed, a third man joined the other two and walked the Captain out of the building."
Heart pounding, Sherlock watches the screen as the scene plays out—the two men flank and redirect John at almost exactly the same time as Sherlock is bumped. The image is grainy, but Sherlock can see John's clenched jaw and the pained expression on his face as Sherlock slumps to the floor in front of him. By the time the tourists have realised something is wrong, the two men flanking John have been joined by the third and are walking out the glass doors. The footage then switches to an outdoor view, where the plate and model of the car John is forced into are clearly visible.
The door to the office opens and the young woman from earlier appears. "We're in, Ms Agatha—you were right. We've found several payments made to Greystone over the past three weeks."
"Thank you, Maryam." Pursing her lips, Agatha enters something on the tablet and then turns to her husband. "Get our things, Alistair, and bring a set for Mr Holmes. Catherine and her team are in pursuit."
The baby nuzzles into the crook of John's neck and roots blindly, grizzling. John, for his part, blinks owlishly in the sudden light—after being blindfolded in the car and driven about for God knows how long, he's having difficulty getting his eyes readjusted.
Wherever he is, however, there's serious money involved. He's on a suede couch that looks like it belongs in an art museum, the coffee table in front of him probably cost about as much as it would to buy 221B outright, and the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the table is a nearly-uninterrupted view of the Thames that stretches from Canary Wharf in the east, past the Shard and the Walkie-Talkie to the south, and the Eye and much of Westminster to the west.
The baby's unhappy gruntings begin to escalate to more serious fussing; somewhere behind John, someone lets out a frustrated sigh. "Will you do something about that noise?"
John goes to turn around and accost the speaker—male, soft voice, possibly Liverpudlian—but gets a warning poke to the back with something cold, small, and cylindrical. He heeds the warning and goes back to looking out the window. "She's hungry." He channels as much disdain and 'isn't-it-obvious-what's-wrong-with-you' into his tone as he can manage. "It certainly isn't my fault that you've taken the bag with her bottles."
There's an exasperated growl and some sort of uncomplimentary muttering. "By the door. Make sure he doesn't try anything."
Booted footfalls that hark back to John's days in the army move across the room behind him. Even the sounds of weaponry and combat gear shifting are there—whoever the person is, they're not one of the three plainclothes goons who had accosted him in the tower. Once the footfalls stop, John waits for them to begin again and starts counting.
Thirty steps later, the bag appears in John's peripheral vision as it's lowered over the back of the couch. "Thank you," he says, and unzips the bag without turning. Thirty-two steps... that's fifteen full strides, then. He lifts out the cooler and checks the contents of the bottles. Assuming Sherlock's estimates and John's memory hold, the average stride is a bit over a meter and a half long, so fifteen meters plus another seven or eight: if the goon's path is a straight line, he's looking at twenty-three or twenty-four metres from the door to John's position.
By himself, he'd consider that doable, but he's anything but alone. John lets out a quiet sigh and finds a burping cloth in the bag, slinging it over his shoulder before gently nudging his daughter's lips with the nipple on the bottle. After a bit more fussing, she accepts it and begins to eat, quieting to the occasional grunt and crinkle of her tiny nose.
John's lips twitch into a smile despite the anxiety curling high and tight in his chest. He dips in and presses his lips to the fuzzy crown of his daughter's head, resting them there and closing his eyes as he takes in the milky, chalky scent of her. "We'll get out of this," he murmurs, tucking his chin in so he can rest his forehead lightly against hers. She pauses briefly in her suckling, denim blue eyes dancing over the details of his face. "You and me and Sherlock. Promise." He knows she can't possibly understand, but she closes her eyes and resumes eating, as if reassured.
Faintly, the sound of phone keys being pressed floats across the room. After a long moment—waiting for someone to pick up?—the man from earlier clears his throat. "Mary, dearest lovely Mary. It's time you answered for your crimes," he croons. "I have the doctor and your whelp; I recommend you come quietly and unarmed if you want them to remain unharmed."
John tenses. The idea of being in the same room as Mary rattles angrily in his head and his chest, sparking fury and hope and agony all at once. If Sherlock and Mycroft aren't the ones to get John and the baby out of this, Mary is without a doubt the only other person capable of doing it, but John doesn't know if he can bear to hear her voice again. He wants it, wants it so badly, but at the same time, he wants to get as far away as possible so he never has to hear it again. It's like the months after breaking up with his secondary-school sweetheart, his heart simultaneously expanding and crushing down on itself under his ribs, except now it's a thousand times worse.
Behind John, someone shuffles uneasily and switches the safety on their gun; it jerks him out of his thoughts as effectively as a splash of cold water. "Man, I liked this job early on, but I didn't sign on tuh kill no babies. Yer gunna havtuh find some other sick fuck, man, cuz I ain't him."
John hears the rattle of a magazine being ejected and pocketed—apparently, the American is disengaging his weapon in protest. Footsteps start away decisively, but then, twenty-eight steps later, a muffled gunshot rings out and there's a sound like someone dropping a sack full of books.
Except for the baby's disgruntled squawk, there's a long, long moment of shocked silence. John shuts his eyes.
"Would anyone else like to lodge a complaint?" When the soft-voiced man doesn't get a response, he continues. "Such a brave young man, dying in the line of duty. You'll be quite sure to let your superiors know how valiantly he performed his job, won't you?" Footsteps are followed by a door opening. "You. Get in here and take his post." The door shuts again. "Now, I sincerely hope I won't be hearing any more whingeing about who you will or won't hurt. That's not what I hired you for."
John nuzzles the baby, who stares back up at him over the bottle with wide, startled eyes. "I know," he murmurs, "I know." Whoever the soft-voiced man is, he's not afraid to kill a man in front of his teammates. More importantly, he's scary. Even mercenary teams develop bonds, and the fact that the others aren't retaliating is telling. After Afghanistan—after witnessing the things some people did simply because they were in the positions of power to do so—John is all too familiar with the type. All he can do is put his head down, keep the baby quiet and calm, and wait.
Time seems to slow to a crawl as a tense, anxious silence settles over the room. The baby falls asleep as soon as she's been burped and cleaned up a bit; cradling her close, John sits and stares out the window, watching as ferries crawl along the Thames and traffic on London Bridge stops and starts. He looks at the peak of the Shard, visible over the top of a roundish tower he's pretty certain is the Walkie-Talkie, and wonders if Sherlock is awake yet.
He tries not to think of the possibility that the goons could have given Sherlock an overdose of the sedative. He doesn't think about the potential for the soft-voiced man to escalate, to hurt John or his daughter before Sherlock can arrive. He does try to think of 221B, of being home on the couch with the baby on his chest as Sherlock plays his violin, but he's too attuned to every rustle and faint rattle that break the silence in the room behind his back. Even the goon behind him fiddling with their phone is almost too much for him to take; he's of half a mind to ask for the blindfold back, please and thank you, so he's not constantly tempted to just look back.
When a knock finally sounds at the door, John isn't the only one startled—he hears at least two people muttering under their breath and readjusting weaponry.
"Let her in," the soft-voiced man says.
There had been a deer once, when Sherlock was six or seven; a stag. It had staggered into the garden whilst he and Mummy were digging and cataloguing the weeds, panting and twitching, the bloodshot whites of its eyes plainly visible as it stared at them over the azalea and dripped frothing spittle on the carmine flowers. Sherlock hadn't protested when Mummy had grabbed him up like a rugby ball and bolted for the house—even he could see that something was terribly, terribly wrong about the deer in the garden.
As Sherlock stares at the man standing in the open-plan office on the forty-fourth floor of the Leadenhall building, he can't help but be reminded of that day. There's something disturbed about Frederick Riesch, something mad-eyed and shuddering that the opulent three-piece suit, sturdy musculature, and charming features don't quite hide.
Riesch regards Sherlock serenely, but when he speaks, his tone is alkaline, stripped of dignity by its greasy bitterness. "You." It's not a question, but the corrosive tone makes it clear—Sherlock is not who Frederick Riesch had wanted to see behind the door.
Sherlock lets his gaze wander from side to side, taking in the whole of the office floor. The building hasn't been opened yet, not officially; though the office is furnished, much of the floor is empty, providing ample sight lines for the three compact, deadly figures in combat gear and balaclavas. The one that had opened the door and the one standing near Riesch are both wielding American army-issue M16s, but the one fiddling with his phone in the back of the room is holding a Tavor SAR-B18—Americans, then, or meant for him to mistake them as such. Sprawled facedown on the floor in a pool of blood is a fourth mercenary, his unloaded weapon a meter away from his hand and a neat, dark hole in the back of his head. Sherlock doesn't need to turn to know that the back of the door probably sports a splattering of gore and an embedded bullet.
Movement from the couch in the back of the room catches his eye, and his heart leaps into his throat. Right there, right behind the mercenary with their hands on the grip and trigger of the B18, is the ashy blonde back of John Watson's head.
His gaze snaps back to Riesch, whose stoic expression has slid into insincere pity. "What a dreadful shame. She can't even be moved to protect her own husband and child, so she sends an errand boy?"
Ah. "And walk willingly to her own death? You deserve whatever punishment she'll be meting out when this is all said and done if you've underestimated her that badly."
John's head snaps up, but he doesn't turn—bound or threatened? Reluctantly, Sherlock drags his gaze back to Riesch as the man reaches into his suit jacket and draws a handgun from an under-arm holster. "It sounds so reasonable when you put it that way. Did she feed you that line, I wonder? Whisper it in your ear and make it true the way she did with Jim?"
Sherlock's hands fly up without his bidding when the gun is levelled at the couch John is sitting in. "She did," he agrees hastily, "she did, she said you would kill her and she'd never know why." Paranoia, he thinks, or an obsession—either way, he needs to play off of it, make himself a victim too. "She's watching me right now, she'll kill me if I fail, God, just tell me why so I can tell her, please," he begs, transmuting his terror at the sight of a gun pointed at John into the sound of being pinned under a sniper's crosshairs. John's position in front of the windows makes his nervous glances in that direction all the more sincere; he can see it when Riesch takes the bait.
"Have you ever seen someone with a terminal illness, Mr Holmes?" he asks in his soft, reasonable voice. "Have you ever watched their family members? Friends?" Sherlock finds himself staring down the barrel of the handgun as Riesch uses it to point at him. "Just watch them, Mr Holmes. They're so ready and willing to believe that the absence of symptoms is reason for hope, aren't they?" He sneers. "Profits are up, but it's a gilded poison, Mr Holmes, it's been in the water for years, tainting the roots, working its way to the brain, the beating heart of the network.
"That was Jim, Mr Holmes. You remember him, don't you?" Riesch bares his teeth at Sherlock. "It was her, you know. She started like the rest of us did, but working with us was never good enough, no, she had to be better. Oozing her way up, one poor sod at a time, a smile here, a date there, borrowing favours and assignments and then leaving her little trail of conquests behind like so much rubbish. I watched her, I did—she didn't see me, thought I was useless, but I saw her, Mr Holmes, I saw what she was doing!"
Sherlock nods and makes an understanding face. "She went right past you and went for the throat. For Jim."
"YES!" Riesch snarls, lashing out with one foot at a nearby chair. He kicks it again after it topples. "Jim was a genius, a God amongst men, and she twisted him, made him believe he wasn't something more, bent him under her fucking heel!" The gun swings around and points at Sherlock again. "She turned him onto you, Mr Holmes, whispered in his ear and slowly turned his attention away from us, away from his work, made him believe he was like you—tame. She never even saw what I saw, that James was never meant to be tied down or held to her cute little picket fence business world, never recognised the genius that I saw, the artistry, and then she gives it up for that pathetic doctor because 'Jim told me to?' Mr Holmes, I know what she wanted, and it was a bit of rough and easy money, never mind the rest of us or James Moriarty!"
All thoughts of motive fly from Sherlock's head as the gun swings to point at the couch again. "No!" he barks, palms outstretched again. Have to stop him, have to make John a non-target, but how...? "You're just playing into her hands if you do that!"
Riesch's head snaps around like an animal scenting blood.
"You were Jim's greatest proponent," Sherlock ventures. "He saw that, never acknowledged it but he saw it, and she's going to use you to smear his name in the media even more if you kill them."
The gun drops; Sherlock's knees very nearly go out with it. "Get. Her. Here," Riesch snarls. He barely remembers to reset the safety before jamming his gun back into the under-arm holster. "Get your phone, call her, and get her here. I don't care how, just DO IT!"
Sherlock doesn't need to fake fumbling for his phone; the sheer relief after such a close call is leaving him clammy and weak. He manages to get his phone out and shows Riesch the screen as he dials.
He presses 'call'.
Across the room, at the back of the couch, a phone rings.
The Tavor roars.