Part Twenty.
Sherlock ripped off his scarf as they walked through the front door of 221 Baker Street. He was irritated with Thea, and it showed as he stomped up the stairs to the flat. "Twenty-four hours…" he muttered.
Thea sighed and shook off her coat as she and John followed closely behind. "We're so close, Papa. It'll take less time than we think. And besides, it kept us from being kicked off the case. Unless you would have preferred that?" Her father grunted. "Right, I thought so."
"I don't like time limits." He threw his effects onto the coathook in the flat and ruffled his hair with his hands, standing in front of the web of secrets at the fireplace.
John put his coat next to Sherlock's and said, "Don't you think they'll be back in China by tomorrow?"
"No, they won't leave without what they came for. We need to find their hide-out; the rendezvous." He regarded the web. "Somewhere in this message it must tell us." They stood in front of the nonsense, each trying to figure it out in their own way. Finally, Sherlock huffed and began pulling things from the strings and pins.
"Oi, we're not giving up yet!" Thea exclaimed.
"Thea, please. I'm moving it to the table. Clear it off, we can work better from there. Besides, the skull isn't offering any worthwhile advice."
She rolled her eyes and set to piling things on the floor as John placed other papers on the armchairs. Sherlock began setting things on the table in what he might consider an orderly fashion. Then when everything was settled, they examined the evidence. For what seemed like hours, they orbited around each other in a delicate dance, as if they were planets passing each other in the endless blackness of space. They had already perfected this dance, passing each other pictures and articles as another moved to grab a nearby book. When Thea would reach for the notepad, Sherlock was already handing it to her. When he needed a pen, John was trading it for the sequence of numbers in the detective's other hand.
Finally, Thea ran a hand through her curls and kicked off her heels before sitting and rubbing her sore feet. "I don't understand. We're missing something important, but what could it be?"
John stretched and started towards the kitchen, "We've gone over everything a million times. I don't see how we could have missed something so big that it would solve the case." As he put on the kettle, he turned towards the fridge as if thinking of rummaging for food, then seemed to think better of it and moved to the folder of menus. "Take-away then?"
"I have a sudden craving for Chinese," Thea grinned, sticking out her tongue at John when he deadpanned.
"You're hilarious. Phoenix Palace?"
"You read my mind."
Sherlock slammed down a picture and ruffled his hair again, a tell-tale sign that he was either frustrated or had just finished a thought process. The former seemed to be the case. "It doesn't make any sense. What could we be missing?"
When he had slammed down the picture of Van Coon's cipher, the picture of the message on the brick wall fluttered to the ground. Thea bent over to pick it up, "I'll laugh if it's something super obvious. You know, something sitting right under our…" Her thought trailed off and her smile disappeared as she glanced at the photograph in her hand, and she stood almost dizzyingly. "Dad. Oh my god, Dad!" She almost literally shoved the picture into his face. "It was right here!"
On top of the picture was a woman's handwriting in fine, delicate curls, clearly deciphering two of the numbers they had been searching for.
Sherlock tore the image from her hands as she paced the room. "I didn't even consider it. I saw her writing something before but I'd forgotten all about it after he…" She felt her legs buckle and she sat in her father's armchair. "In her final moments, she helped us more than we could imagine." John was standing in front of her now, his eyes flickering between father and daughter.
Sherlock pulled the image from the forensics bag and motioned to the army doctor, "John, look at this. Soo Lin at the museum – she started to translate the code for us. We didn't see it!"
John took it and looked it over, shaking his head and furrowing his brows, "'NINE' 'MILL'…. Does that mean millions?"
But the detective was already looking around the room, though his mind was clearly somewhere else. "Nine million quid. For what? We need to know the end of this sentence." Then he turned on his heel and briskly went to his coat and scarf.
Thea looked up and stood just as John asked, "Where are you going?"
"To the museum; to the restoration room." He grimaced, and almost in exasperation of himself, said loudly, "Oh, we must have been staring right at it!"
His daughter closed her eyes and nodded. "The book. Right, of course. The code book had to have been there for her to have translated it."
"Soo Lin used it to do this! Whilst we were running around the gallery, she started to translate the code. It must be on her desk." Then, with a flash of his coat, Sherlock was running down the stairs. Thea's cheeks burned with anger and she started out the door.
"Hey! Dad!" She caught up with him at the bottom of the stairs and grabbed the back of his coat. "Dad!" He turned to her, but she could see he wasn't focused on her. She scoffed. "You can't be serious. Are you really about to run off without me again?"
His eyes turned to her, a tumultuous sea of blue-grey, "I'll be just a minute. There's no need for you to follow."
Her nostrils flared and she felt the anger bubbling in her chest. "'No need'? The last time you ran out on your own, you left me to clean up your mess with Scotland Yard and nearly killed yourself to prove a point in a fucking mind game!"
She stood there, her chest heaving, as her father in all his wisdom paused, disregarding her language. Then he pressed his gloved hand to her cheek and said quietly, "I'm just looking for the book. I'll be back soon. We can solve this one together, I promise." He turned back to the door and opened it, looking back at her as he added, "And you and Dr Watson can continue bonding over dinner." The door shut tightly behind him, and she was left with an empty pit in her stomach.
She trudged back up the stairs and entered the flat as John was finishing placing their order for take-away. He hung up and looked to her as she collapsed bitterly on his chair, angrily staring at her father's chair with a heat that could have melted it.
"So…" John started as he stood near her, "You swear when you're angry."
Thea glanced up at him and couldn't help the small smile that grew on her face, "Erm. Yeah. Bad habit, picked it up from my grandad, actually."
"I can't imagine Sherlock's father swearing."
"You've never seen him watch a cricket match or get into an intellectual battle with my father on the finer points of Victorian literature."
John chuckled and sat in a chair at the table, leaning back and folding his arms across his chest. They sat in a comfortable silence for a minute before he asked, "Do you want a glass of wine? I think we each deserve one."
Thea raised an eyebrow, "I won't tell my father if you don't." The doctor stood and walked to the kitchen, and Thea mulled over Sherlock's parting words as she turned to sit sideways in the good doctor's armchair. "My father said something funny just now."
"Oh?" John asked from the kitchen, and there was a pop as the bottle was uncorked.
"He said we could continue bonding over dinner." She took the glass of red wine that John offered her and took a sip. "I wasn't aware that we were bonding."
Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door downstairs, and John looked at his watch. "Blimey, that was quick. Shall we eat on trays?"
"As long as they're wiped down first."
"Right," John muttered as he set down his glass and headed down the stairs. Thea stood and made her way to the kitchen, where she set about making up two trays with silverware and clean plates. As her back was turned, she heard footsteps on the stairs and called out, "I hope you tipped the poor lad well; he was right quick. I had a tenner you should have borrowed."
She turned around and froze as two hooded figures emerged at the top of the stairs. On gut instinct, she screamed and dropped her wine glass, staining the rug in front of the kitchen sink. "John!" The bigger of the two figures reached for her and she threw the first thing closest to her: a glass beaker. He swatted it away and it shattered on the tiled floor. The other made a move for her on her other side, and she realized quite quickly that she was trapped between them. The first, bigger man grabbed her arm, twisting it, and she immediately fought back, scratching at him desperately as her voice tore from her throat. Fear clawed at her every nerve, and she could feel herself begin to hyperventilate.
Focus, you stupid girl! she thought to herself, but as soon as she did, the other man grabbed her around the waist from behind and held her tightly. She kicked as hard as she could towards the larger man, all the while screaming for the doctor. Then a strip of cloth was pulled across her mouth and tied at the back of her head before he tied another at her hands. And finally, everything went dark as they pulled a sack over her head and bashed the barrel of a pistol against her head.
There was a blinding pain in her left temple, and it radiated out towards her frontal lobe. The last thing she wanted to do was lift her head, but she did so anyway, and another sharp pain shot through her neck and spine as she did. Thea groaned and tried to open her eyes, but the pain in her head was so intense that she couldn't see straight. She focused instead on her other senses, honing in on the details that might save her life. Her hands and legs were bound, and she was tied to a rickety chair beneath her. Around her head was the same dirty cloth that she'd been gagged with while she'd been kidnapped.
Thea listened carefully to the small chatter that was being made nearby, but it sounded distorted in some way. She listened closer and realized that it was an echo; they were presumably in a tunnel. A fire flickered near her, and she felt the heat of it against her clammy skin. She wasn't wearing her shoes and she was still in her dress from earlier in the evening. She was trembling, but not terribly so.
And she was alive. There was an importance in that itself.
The throbbing in her brain abated somewhat, and she took the opportunity to look at her surroundings. She had been right; they were in a tunnel of some sort, surrounded by large crates, boxes, and barrels. Immediately in front of her was a group of three people, the two men who had kidnapped her and a woman. She couldn't distinguish their faces, but their murmurings sounded Mandarin.
So we were right, Thea thought humourlessly, the smugglers are still here.
There was a covered object a couple of feet away from the three people and directly in front of her, and when she saw the sandbag, she felt the air leave her body. She let out a small noise and the woman turned to her, sunglasses covering her eyes. Thea instantly recognised her as the woman who had been taking photographs of her and John on the street during the week. She smiled at Thea and walked up to her. "Hello, Miss Holmes. It's nice to finally make your acquaintance." When Thea's eyes flickered to the covered object, the woman looked back. "Ah, yes. Don't worry. All will be explained when your father wakes up."
Thea looked to her right worriedly but was semi-relieved when she saw John sitting there, ungagged and unconscious. Her eyebrows furrowed. They had called him her father, but Sherlock wasn't here... was he?
As if sensing her presence and questions, the good doctor began to rouse from his state, groaning a little as he did. Just as he was about to wake, the woman walked back towards the other two men, stopping halfway between them and John. She faced him and smiled coyly.
"'A book is like a magic garden carried in your pocket,'" the woman said, and John looked over to Thea, his grey eyes dancing with worry. She was not surprised to see he did not appear afraid. "Chinese proverb, Mr Holmes."
At this, both Thea and John looked at the woman, who had moved the sunglasses to the top of her head, and John replied shakily, "I'm… I'm not Sherlock Holmes."
The woman kept the coy smile situated perfectly on her face. "Forgive me if I do not take your word for it." She stepped forward and rummaged roughly through John's inside jacket pocket to retrieve his wallet, receiving many protestations from him. She withdrew it, reaching inside to pluck a card from it. "Debit card, name of S. Holmes."
"Yeah, that's not actually mine; he lent it to me," John said quickly and ineffectively.
She raised an eyebrow and looked through the wallet again, pulling out a cheque, "A cheque for five thousand pounds made out in the name of Mr Sherlock Holmes."
"Yeah, he gave me that to look after."
She checked the wallet again, and Thea's hope began to drain. "Tickets from the theatre, collected by you, name of Holmes."
"Yeah, okay… I realise what this looks like, but I'm not him!" John continued to protest, but the woman didn't seem to hear him.
"You took your daughter to her therapist appointment," the woman said, glancing at Thea.
John shook his head. "No, no. Wait, Thea's not my daughter. She's my friend."
"We heard it from your own mouth," the woman continued, and at this, John's eyebrows furrowed. Thea cocked her head. She leaned in closer and quoted, "'I am Sherlock Holmes and I always work alone because no-one else can compete with my massive intellect.'"
Thea looked to John suspiciously and he gave a small, humorless laugh before wincing at the pain that was no doubt radiating through his head, "Oh, god. Did I really say that? I s'ppose there's no use me trying to persuade you I was doing an impression –"
Before he had even finished the sentence, the woman raised a pistol to John's head, causing John to cringe away from it, blowing out a breath, and Thea to begin to panic. She felt tears springing to her eyes, felt the burn on her wrists as she struggled against her bonds.
The woman grinned. "I am Shan." John and Thea looked up at her in disbelief as she continued, "Three times we tried to kill you and your companion, Mr Holmes. What does it tell you when an assassin cannot shoot straight?"
She cocked the pistol, and John closed his eyes, whispering, "Don't, don't." Thea couldn't tear her eyes from her friend as Shan's finger tightened around the trigger, even when her deepest gut instinct screamed at her, Look away, Thea Holmes, before it's too late! And just when she thought John was going to die, the trigger was pulled and the gun clicked.
It was empty.
John let out a shaky, shocked breath as Thea bowed her head and let the tears pour from her eyes. Thank god.
Shan smiled smugly. "It tells you that they're not really trying." Then she pulled a clip from her jacket pocket and slipped it into the gun, giving it a satisfying click to ensure it had secured in place before turning it back on John. Once again, Thea felt her stomach drop. "Not empty now." Then she cocked her head at John as he closed his eyes and breathed heavily. "If we wanted to kill you, Mr Holmes, we would have done it by now. We just wanted to make you inquisitive." She turned stern as she asked harshly, "Do you have it?"
John's eyes opened again, "Do I have what?"
"The treasure."
Thea and John shared a glance. "I don't know what you're talking about." Shan turned away, and Thea shook her head slightly and pleaded with her eyes. Be quiet, don't say anything more.
"I would prefer to make certain," Shan said over her shoulder and motioned to one of the men. He nodded and walked to the covered object, throwing the cloth from it. Thea closed her eyes expectantly, her heart pounding, as John murmured, "Oh Jesus…" When she opened them again, she found herself on the other side of the crossbow, an arrow already notched in its place.
Shan stood next to it and gazed upon it almost lovingly, "Everything in the West has a price, and the price for her life…" she pointed to Thea and John looked to her, "…information."
The men approached them and moved John's chair away from hers but turned him so he was facing her. He and Thea locked eyes, and he whispered, anguished, "Sorry, I'm so, so sorry."
Thea could feel the tears streaming down her face as she sat calmly in the face of her doom. There was nothing left for her to do; the bonds on her wrists and body were far too tight for her to attempt an escape, and even if she did, she was up against an acrobat and a trained warrior. Her death would be a quick one either way.
Shan glared down John, her gun still aimed at him. "Where's the hairpin?"
He struggled against his bonds despite of it and looked up at her questioningly, "What?" But Thea had figured it out already. The treasure was a hairpin, one valued quite high if Shan was willing to spill blood over it.
"The Empress pin valued at nine million sterling. We already had a buyer in the West; and then one of our people was greedy. He took it, brought it back to London and you, Mr Holmes, have been searching."
John was becoming more desperate as he said, "Please. Please, listen to me. I'm not ... I'm not Sherlock Holmes. You have to believe me. I haven't found whatever it is you're looking for!"
Shan turned to Thea and declared loudly, "I need a volunteer from the audience!"
"No! Please, please! I beg of you, she's only seventeen!"
Shan ignored him and smiled at Thea, "Ah, thank you for volunteering, young lady. Yes, you'll do very nicely." She spun back around and walked to the sandbag. She pulled a knife from her back pocket and stabbed the sandbag, letting the sand begin to pour. Then she cried, "Ladies and gentlemen. From the distant moonlit shores of NW1, we present for your pleasure Sherlock Holmes' pretty daughter in a death-defying act." She walked to Thea and gently placed a black origami lotus on her lap. At the sight of it, Thea's tears became sobs. "You've seen the act before. How dull for you. You know how it ends."
"Please!" John shouted frantically, his voice cracking. "I'm not Sherlock Holmes!"
Shan walked towards him and shouted back, "I don't believe you!"
"You should you know," came a voice from the tunnel, and Shan whipped to face it, her hands pointing the pistol agitatedly in its direction as one of her men started towards the back of the tunnel. "Sherlock Holmes is nothing at all like him."
Thea could feel herself shaking as her sobs racked her body. He found me. We're going to be okay.
Sherlock continued his speech, and it came from a different part of the tunnel. He was using the darkness to his advantage. "How would you describe me, John? Resourceful? Dynamic? Enigmatic?"
John looked up at the top of the tunnel and said tetchily, "Late?"
"That's a semi-automatic. If you fire it, the bullet will travel at over a thousand metres per second," Sherlock said presumably to Shan.
She waited for him to continue, and when he didn't, asked, "Well?"
"Well…" came the reply, and suddenly he flashed from behind a storage container and hit the thug hard in the stomach with what sounded like a metal pipe. The man crumpled to the ground. Thea watched the sand drain from the bag, like sand in her life's hourglass. Hurry, Papa.
"The radius curvature of these walls is nearly four metres. If you miss, the bullet will ricochet. Could hit anyone. Might even bounce off the tunnel and hit you." And as Sherlock said this, he burst from the shadows and kicked over the dustbin from which the fire giving off light had been burning, effectively extinguishing it. It plummeted the tunnel into absolute darkness, and Thea could hear her heartbeat in her ears, just over the sound of sand hitting the floor of the tunnel. Then behind her, she felt the tug of the cloth that gagged her. It fell to the wayside and she sucked in a staggering breath to calm herself. "Dad!"
But before he could reply, she heard him begin to struggle against someone, presumably the other man and Soo Lin's brother. Shan was nowhere in sight. Thea began watching the weight lower towards the bowl, thinking, This can't be it.
Sherlock managed to reach her again, pulling hastily at the bonds before being pulled away again. Her eyes locked with John's. He seemed to realise that Sherlock wouldn't be able to get to her in time. He began to stand, as best as he could with his ankles tied to the legs of the chair, and attempted to get to her. He didn't make it far, though and fell close to the crossbow, effectively trapping himself in his position. Thea's teeth were chattering with fear as her eyes gazed upon the arrow that would kill her.
"Is he watching, Dr Watson?" He paused and shook his head, his eyes desperate. She nodded. "Good. I hope he knows I loved him, and that he was the best I could've asked for." Then she closed her eyes, making peace with Death.
When she heard the arrow fire, she flinched but kept from screaming.
And when she heard the gasp behind her, she could only think that there was no pain and how wonderful that was indeed.
All sound ceased to exist, and it was only when Sherlock put his hands on her cheeks that she opened her eyes.
The arrow was not embedded in her chest, as it should have been. She was shaking violently, and her heart was pounding out of her chest. Her father's eyes were marred with terror, and she realised just how close she came to death. "Oh god, Papa." In the distance was the sound of receding footsteps. She dared a look beyond her father's eyes and saw the crossbow mechanism had been knocked down, and John was lying with his feet within a kicking distance of the deadly machine.
Her father wiped away her tears and stroked her arm. "It's okay, hush. It's over." Sherlock gently untied her from her bonds, and when she was free, she fell into his lap, holding tight to his coat as if he would float away from her at any given second.
"I was going to die."
Sherlock refrained from saying anything and pressed his cheek to her hair before going to John and untying his bonds. As soon as the doctor was free, Thea rushed to him and threw her arms around his neck, pressing her face into his coat.
"Oh, love, it's alright. We made it," he said quietly, and they helped each other to stand. In the distance was the sound of sirens approaching. Thea pressed herself to Sherlock's side, and he wrapped an arm around her as they began to walk to the exit. She had escaped death, but she didn't feel triumphant. Her body was still trembling, and her father's fingers wrapped tightly around her arm reminded her that they could have been in a very different situation at this very moment.
"Do you believe in alternate realities, Dr Watson?" she asked suddenly, and the good doctor, her saviour, glanced up at her with furrowed brows.
"It's possible, I suppose. Infinite timelines and such." He let the idea linger before saying, "But constraining our thoughts to the 'what ifs' of the world will do no good. You could watch a lifetime slip through your fingers thinking of the endless possibilities of your decisions. As such, I hold to the mantra of 'Upwards and forwards'."
Thea watched as the phrase tumbled in her mind's eye for a moment before she nodded once, definitively. "Upwards and forwards."
Sherlock squeezed her arm, taking a deep breath. "'Don't look back. You're not going that way.'"
Dimmock rubbed the back of his neck and watched as paramedics put a shock blanket over Thea's shoulders. "I don't know how you do it. You fought off evil acrobats, were kidnapped, and almost killed in a single night, and yet you don't want to file a police report?"
Thea shrugged and stood from the back of the ambulance as she shook off the blanket, her father and their flatmate approaching. The cloth shoes they had provided her hardly provided protection against the sharp stones of the gravel. "I don't want this on my record. Besides, I'm trying to get into an internship programme. I should be distancing myself, so I might keep my daily life from the cases."
The young DI glanced worriedly at her, "Don't distance yourself too much. It could ruin you."
Sherlock and John stopped in front of Thea and Dimmock, John's head having been bandaged and Sherlock's eyes trained on the DI.
"No need to mention us in your report," he said almost victoriously.
The DI looked at his shoes, "Erm… Mr Holmes –"
Sherlock motioned for Thea to join him and placed his arm around her. "I have high hopes for you, Inspector. A glittering career."
"I go where you point me," Dimmock conceded ruefully, and Sherlock half-smiled.
"Exactly."
They began to walk off, the flashing lights of the police cars casting blue and red light over their tired faces. Sherlock's arm was firmly attached to his daughter, holding her close to him as they hailed a cab at the street.
Back at 221B, John bid the two Holmes' goodnight and climbed wearily up to his room. Thea sat in John's seat as Sherlock stoked a fire in the fireplace, warming the room considerably. When he sat back in his own chair, she watched him carefully. He had his violin in one hand and the bow in the other, but he didn't seem to have any intention of playing it.
When the silence was too much for her, she glanced at the fire, "What did you mean by wanting me and John to bond?"
Her father didn't answer right away, but when he did, his baritone voice was low and almost repentant. "I know I am far from the father you deserve, Thea. I am a man of science and childrearing is not a science." He paused and pulled the violin close to his chest, plucking a string or two as he continued, "John can fill the role where I cannot. You obviously feel that he is a father figure, else you would not have treated him as such these past few days. He is… better than I in these scenarios. If you are comfortable with it, he can be whom I cannot."
Thea felt her throat tighten at those words. Her father was not without his flaws, but she could not imagine a life without him. He was willing to accept that she did not want him if he could not fulfill his duties completely and to the letter, and it broke her heart. To others, he was not an ideal father; to her, he was the only one she'd ever known.
"Papa," she said quietly, "There could never be anyone to replace you." He looked at her and for a moment, she saw a wall crumble behind his eyes. There was a genuine warmth to them, an almost gleam that radiated through his entire being. Then his eyes were back to the fire and he nodded slowly.
"I must admit, it is nice to hear that."
She sighed contentedly and rested her head against the armrest. "Can you play that song you played for me when I was a child? I heard it in a dream last night and it was wonderful."
Without another word, he pressed the violin to his chin and began playing. It was to his music that she finally, and restfully, fell asleep.