Battleship

"I can learn to live with guilt. I don't care about being good." ~ Holly Black, Red Glove

Milo had been fifteen when she saw a man get strapped down, having molten metal being poured onto his joints and eyes and mouth until he stopped screaming.

His death was the penalty for being a snitch for Ol' Bill and as a warning to those who might have tried the same.

She couldn't have said a thing.

Young, small and very fragile, there wouldn't have been anyone to stop them from doing that to her. They would have done worse, actually. There was no mercy for someone who defended a traitor just as there was none for the man himself.

Besides, his betrayal would have also cost her, her freedom.

She'd never been sure of what a life was worth. If murdering a man – stealing something that shouldn't be stolen – was equal to a large amount of money, freedom, another's life. Everyone else around her was always calculating that, though.

Wide eyed and terrified, she did throw up. And they laughed at her. She'd seen people die just not like that and even if her last shreds of humanity were putting up a fight, the rest of the world put up one right back.

And a rough man with scars on his face, who had been to jail before that, had put a huge hand on her shoulder and muttered. "If you're not willing to kill for it, how important can it be?"

She hoped he had kept that sentiment to his grave, where he went only a few months afterwards, shot while making his escape from the police. His freedom was evidently more important to him than his life.

He would have slapped her in the face if he would have seen her now. And she would have taken it, stoically and deservingly because she was wasting inside.

Her freedom might have been in doubt if faced with another person's life, even after all those years, but there was no question in her mind that it was worth more than her own. The thought ran circles in her head.

She hadn't eaten nor slept, had stopped drinking after those original glasses of wine and the cigarettes were untouched in her back pocket.

If she was going through nicotine or alcohol withdrawal, she didn't notice it above the symptoms of her incarceration. Boredom, paranoia, exhaustion, anxiety and restlessness made her hands shake uncontrollably. She made a fist and stuffed them in her pockets and yet they didn't stop. There was a tightness in her chest, she had a headache, difficulty breathing and a vague sense of nausea.

Like all the very young, she acutely felt the sentiment of absurdity, impossibility. Everything was illogical, horrible: the dark, cool nights followed by calm days – as sunny as was possible in the spring, in England – the face of the only man who talked to her, the voices of her past who came when she stood still long enough, all the dead faces she'd seen, all the things she'd stolen.

A brief glance in the mirror spelled near disaster: tragically pale – she never tanned, she burned – dry, chewed on lips, stained red from the bottle of wine, and heroin-habit eyes, glassy with dark circles. Dilated pupils nearly swallowed the colour of her eyes.

Jean Paul Gaultier would have been proud.

"She's dead"

Carrow thought he was taking her by surprise. Truth was she could hear him walking a mile off, overcrowded senses stretched to the ludicrous, chaffing at her patience and temper. He and two others, who had stopped before reaching the door, walked like mammoths. So, her hunch was confirmed. That was where the two other men were…

"What happened?" she asked in a small voice, not solely for the innocent act but also because loud sounds were beginning to hurt.

He shook his head and held three other folders.

John's was back. Added to that was that of a kindly old lady she'd only met once, who had given her a biscuit and didn't comment on her state of drunkenness or apparel. The third was a child. Orphan.

And suddenly it didn't matter anymore that she'd wanted to know who they were and what they were doing, the score, the mark, the people…

She wanted out of the game or, bar that, reinvent the rules and win. 'Ground Zero at the Freak-out Zone" Ally had called it once, being the sort of thing she would have said. The moment bad memories thought forgotten came back along with the worst physical symptoms of revulsion.

Milo was there, front and centre and she wanted out.

She pushed the picture of the child ahead. The man looked disgusted at her for longer than a moment, and she was sure that if there weren't microphones and cameras around, he would have switched her choice with one of the other two…any of the other two.

"I just told you that the other old woman died. And you pick a kid. A kid" he emphasised as if she could take it back. She wondered briefly if she could, before rethinking it.

"Do you think I'm a bitch, now?" she asked, slowly. "Or do you just think this is sad?"

He glared. "Sad? Fuck you, this isn't sad. This is fucked up" he got up and passed his fingers through his hair a couple of times.

She watched him with large eyes, gradually growing cold, playing with the corner of the picture.

"You know, this is sad. It's sad he might never experience life. It's sad he might never know love or sadness or pain or joy and you should react like this, but do you know who won't care?" she lifted the picture. "He won't. Because he won't know a thing about it if he dies. And there's no one to mourn him outside of a couple of fucking journalists spilling crocodile tears at the way our society has turned out before moving on the next bits of news about brain-dead celebrities and their sex tapes" she paused. "And if he lives, he's far too young and removed to understand, which can't be said about the other two" she shook her head and put the photograph down, walking towards the window.

She heard the door close behind her, gently. The picture of the boy was still on the table, smile forever burned into her mind.

Milo didn't turn around to see it again, for fear that she wouldthrow up.

Children…It had to be children.

"Going south of the river?" was a long-standing Londoner's joke, usually delivered in the early hours of the morning by an inebriated club-goer to a cabbie desperate to finish for the night. The traditional cabbie's response, of course, was not to be repeated in polite company.

It merely showed that London was really two cities, divided by a common river. It felt normal that the South End got the corpses.

It was a grey morning, under a dully blue sky and they were on the shore of the Thames, closer to Waterloo Bridge than Southwark Bridge, as if they were looking for treasure.

Sherlock had the dead body, which might have qualified, judging by his reaction.

There was mud and small pebbles and, if the telly was to be adhered to, a fount of lost valuables from years past, like Victorian toys or old coins, brought in by the tide. On his stomach, in dirty, wet clothes their body, waited for them. He was turned onto a plastic cover after a copious amount of photographs had been taken, and then, they were allowed to go at the scene.

Everyone else had blue suits and rubber boots but them and Lestrade, having the unenviable job of combing through the sandy mud and small rocks for clues. Firmly convinced in their nonexistence, Sherlock didn't even bother looking around.

He spent a few moments looking through his portable magnifying glass, from face to toes – literally. The bobbing dance around the corpse took an end and John gestured his question, to which Lestrade gestured a positive answer.

Diagnosing the means of death was by no means novel but he hadn't had much experience at it before. John was usually the one struggling to keep someone alive, at the fact, not after. He was getting more practice around the detective, however, willingly or not.

His eyes were directed at the face and hands, looking at the colour where the skin was thinnest. There were no added lesions after death, the head was in a state of convulsion. Rigor mortis had begun to settle. John frowned.

"He's dead about 24 hours. Maybe a bit longer. Did he drown?" he asked, with curiosity. There was no white froth at the nose and mouth, no stones or weeds in his hands, his lungs didn't seem distended…however, there were signs of cyanosis and bloodshot eyes.

"Apparently not. Not enough of the Thames in his lungs. Asphyxiated"

"Yes, I'd agree. There's quite a bit of bruising around the nose and mouth" he pointed. "More bruises here and here" he indicated the round marks surrounded by pale, slightly raised flesh and rose.

Sherlock took his eyes off his phone long enough to mutter "Fingertips" before turning back to his search.

"He's late 30's, I'd say. Not in the best condition" John finished.

"He's been in the water a long while. The water's destroyed most of the data" he smirked to himself, a spark of triumph glimmering through. "But I'll tell you one thing. That lost Vermeer painting's a fake"

The discussion that culminated at the slightly elaborated explanation, the reveal of Sherlock's encyclopaedic knowledge of assassins and the dead man's name, then ended in him running off was just as quickly played out as discussions usually were in his adrenaline-filled presence. The stimulus would have been evident to an observant man by the way he caught cabs: normally, it was a quiet, though confident gesture replaced, in his exulted state by a near jump in front of the car and tearing open the door.

John knew better than to comment on it.

Just as he knew better than to ask more about his "Investing" answer, after handing out a whole fifty quid note to someone living under a bridge. There were some things that would have only baffled him.

"Do you think Milo might know why it's a fake?" John asked, turning his eyes to him, on route to the gallery.

"Did she finally answer her phone?" Sherlock asked, uninterested.

"No, still nothing. But I haven't tried yesterday"

"I did, last night. Went directly to voice mail. Either she doesn't want to be found or she threw away the phone"

"Mycroft said she can take care of herself. Do you think something happened to her?"

Sherlock's thoughts, full of the mystery that had submerged him, briefly touched on the criminal's figure. "I'm sure she'll be fine"

And he was. She had survived thus far, anyway and was in no way included with the entire affair. She wasn't tied to any explosives, running around with him or even attracting attention.

"I'll send her a message. Just in case" he typed a short message on his phone. Just a quick 'Give me a sign when you read this'. If she would have answered, more questions would have followed.

Almost thirteen minutes later, his phone dinged.

Alive

"Is that her? Ask her what she knows about the Vermeer" Sherlock asked, leaning forward just a bit.

"Alright" he typed again. This time the answer came a lot faster.

The idea was to get out without drawing suspicion right away. If they began to search for her after at least half an hour, it would have given her a head start. Just enough to spot her things. At least everything would seem better once she took hold of her knives again.

She entered the bathroom. Layers came off, boots, trousers and two of the shirts that hadn't exactly flattered her figure. Enough to appear naked to the eye in the Eye in the Sky – or rather, the Eye on the Floor– before she stepped inside the bathtub and started to run the water.

Passing a hand through her hair, she pulled out two hairpins. Whoever imagined that perfect hair happened every day without fail, to anyone, was quite delusional and more than likely a man. Milo's hairpins were made strong and sharp enough to both precisely and painfully – though not lethally – stab a man and hold hair in a delicate, straight, decidedly neat fashion.

They made good improvised lock picks in talented hands, which she would need to open the lock on the window. It was not, to say, a difficult one: spool pins, commonplace, easy. But it was a broken, cheap lock, or to those in the know, the pins were trapped. That made the lock rather finicky and her feet were getting wet. Gradually increasing and decreasing force, pressure and jostling them a bit (along with a fair amount of whispered, creative cursing) the lock opened.

Then she jumped up and squeezed through the window, thinking all the while that if were a size bigger than she was (size she bemoaned while shopping, for example), she would have been definitely stuck there.

And that would have been embarrassing for all parties involved.

Her muscle arms tensed as they supported her entire body weight, while hanging onto the windowsill. There was no place for her to put her foot and she stopped, uncertainly, for a moment to assess her surroundings. She placed the pad of her foot on the wall and propelled herself up, grabbing the edge of the roof and pulled herself up again. She melded with the shingles, just low enough so that no camera had a direct visual.

From her vantage point, her eyes swivelled to see the chimneys, windows, decoration and ventilation that made up the rooftop scenery of the small English countryside. If there was ever a place built for climbing rooftops and jumping off of them…it was probably not the English countryside.

No. It was definitely not the English countryside, she eyed the lawns wearily, where every tree was cut to the millimetre and had enough ceramic ornaments to be used as a B-rated horror movie scene. She felt a pang of nostalgia for the rooftops of New York, dirty but useful, empty and closely clumped.

Her wet foot slipped slightly and she waited with bated breath for the moment when a sound would erupt. It didn't.

So, Milo continued on making slow progress across the roof. The skin on her knees and the pads of her feet tore away against the rough, sharp, damaged tiles in thin, bleeding scratches.

It was times like these that she remembered most of her self-experimented lessons in thievery.

She usually wore wrap-on black boots, flexible black jeans and a black shirt. Dark grey, if black were too conspicuous, such as when climbing buildings or going through safes. In both cases, not an inch of skin was visible. Pockets and holsters were a given, residing in the general area of hips, thighs, chest and the hidden pouches at her wrists. Satin and leather were no good because they shined or squeaked. Rough silk, cotton or velvet were better.

They clung to shadows.

They could glide. Gliding was important. Hesitation made sounds.

In her present state of no pants, no shoes, no outer shirt and just a long, baggy camisole barely covering her arse, she felt very exposed and quite unprofessional. And she kept having the sensation that her hair was far too loud, as it waved in the wind and into her eyes.

If she would have had her phone, she would have had access to the modern GPS system and maps, learning where she and where everything else was. If she would have had her laptop, she could have had access to that and more, would have been able to track her phone and possibly hack into the cameras. As such, her phone was in an undefined part of the house and her laptop was resting in Baker Street.

She took refuge behind the chimney and paused in her trek, breathing slowly. Still, the adrenaline made her hands sit still and hurtful or not, her feet knew the steps.

And then a ringtone started chiming through the house, unique through the fact that, in a world where people started recording their own ringtones or scoured the internet the oddest, most interesting ones, it was reminiscent of the times where phones were a lot dumber and the only tunes they could reproduce were rendered in monophonic beeps.

Milo grinned.

She proceeded to estimate a probable area location of where her phone was in and made her way across the other side of the roof. She clung to windowsills and architecture and landed silently in front of a window at the ground floor with barely a wince. A small pebble pierced her left foot and barely visible footprints of blood could be distinguished against the slate grey of the tile.

A careful glance told of no cameras and she jumped through the window right before the Eye in the Sky turned towards her in its circular round.

Amateurs.

The room was empty, confirming her suspicions tied to the location: everything made just for her. A couple of boxes told of unloaded cameras and other electronics and Styrofoam peanuts and torn bubble wrap covered the floor in an incomplete carpet. Her stuff was tossed in the corner.

She grabbed her backpack, digging for bandages, clothes haven't been replaced since the last time. She'd foolishly believed she hadn't needed more, as she wasn't even planning anything. That was about to change. Milo found it, wrapping it around her feet and up her leg, where the blood had started to well in deep, thin scratches. The leather jacket was there, perfect for covering the knives she was about to stash on her person.

Suddenly, she started to feel better. Knives in sleeves, legs hurting just a tad less and hair braided loosely, she looked at her phones. They were low on battery – one of them dead – and her custom smartphone lighting up.

4 messages and 12 lost calls from one JW and 3 lost calls from SH, one for each day she'd been stuck there. She blinked. She didn't get that many at Christmas, but a skip a few days out of town and suddenly people get interested.

Milo almost regretted adding them on her permanent phone.

Sherlock has an interesting case. Coming?

Are you upset with us?

Are you alright?

Give me a sign when you read this.

She felt a vague sense of guilt creeping in, that she quickly tried to squash. It wasn't her fault she'd been kidnapped, although it was her fault that she thought – even for a moment – of picking John to die instead of a kid. He might have accepted his death, being the type for that, but she would have preferred he didn't.

"Crap. I'm making friends" she muttered sardonically, distantly aware that she was at the very least accepting another's company and detesting the idea.

There was also a definite sense of dread there, of having to answer for her location and safety, something she hadn't done since she was eight and never to someone who actually paid attention.

She typed a quick reply. Alive. That was all she could say for her physical and mental welfare, which would have been quite sufficient in earlier days and didn't quite make the cut lately. The GPS informed her that she was far closer to London than she suspected, which meant that the long drive had probably circled the M25, the most hated stretch of tarmac this side of California.

Depending on the traffic, she could be back on Baker Street in an hour or so. And possibly keep an eye on the two just to make sure they didn't end up killed. It was a sad state of affairs when a girl looking like a poster child for an a sickly Oompa-Loompa was playing bodyguard, but she didn't have much of a choice. She shrivelled inside at the thought that she shared as much with Mycroft but apparently his little brother – or his friends – got in much more trouble than she'd anticipated.

Her phone rang again. She looked at it, visibly annoyed and silenced it before looking at the reply.

Sherlock is asking if you know anything about a lost Vermeer. He thinks it's a fake.

Well.

She tapped her fingers on her chin, deftly crouching and settling underneath a window when the cameras turned to the room.

Need picture.

She racked her brain thinking of exactly what Vermeer's she knew and the location of all of them before typing. There were thirty-five, maybe thirty-six recognized paintings. The task of proper authentication was difficult because of the change in styles and subjects and he signed less than half of those, dating only three.

He was generally considered a bastard for it among art circles, a fiery topic amongst collectors. You couldn't mention the 'missing Vermeer's' without being quickly silenced. Art people were surprisingly opinionated on most matters, especially those of the Masters and it was best not to get into them around a lot of people.

There were at least six of them. Two more works were vaguely his.

It was strange that it had been so surely attributed to him. She knew one was to be unveiled, of course – she had an invitation for it…somewhere – but hadn't thought of ruining the surprise and stealing a peek.

There were footsteps.

She quickly typed a definitive reply. Not in London. Look at light and water. Shades of blue. Observe the painting up close and especially the one who brought it in. Just in case she wouldn't be able to say more. Then she directed her attention to the man who, most likely, was coming to see what the damn phone kept screeching about, presumably at a faster rate than it had, previously.

The most honest means that came to mind was hiding behind the door and whacking whoever it was, on the head with a shoe. Anything else was Hollywood.

But, human beings didn't have an off switch. Any blow hard enough to render someone unconscious had a good chance of severely injuring them, possibly permanently. And the most dangerous part of surgery was the anaesthesia so what did that say about drugs? She was not about to kill or mentally damage anyone for being hired to babysit her.

She pounced out the window just as the door opened. The mistake – the largest one, at least – was that the backpack and jacket were missing. When the man looked outside the window, nothing was there.

She'd climbed the wall and settled on the roof, again.