Jim

I looked up Mycroft Holmes once before. He was boring, as I recall. As I recall, I could find next to nothing on him. And, as Moran recalls very clearly –

"You wouldn't let me shoot him."

I've moved upstairs. He's still feeling this very real need of his to watch the street in case anybody should try to join us. He wasn't for leaving this window. I came up because Danielle couldn't face being the one to tell him.

That was the first thing he's said, by the way. I told him the situation, and that we could work on it because we even had a name. Then I told him the name and that's what he said. 'You wouldn't let me shoot him'.

Lying to him, "What? I don't remember this." Hoping he'll play along, or just be thick and believe me and say it doesn't matter.

"I wanted to shoot him because of…" And here we both have to stop and think for a second; him searching out the truth in the memory, me to think what past excuse it'll have to beat to be the strangest or most disturbing. "…I think because he was ugly and skinny and didn't look pleasant." We have a winner. "Anyway, I wanted to shoot him, and you said it was too much exposure, and you said no."

"I have to say, you're reacting a lot better to this than Dani thought. She predicted a lot more rage."

"Me, mate? Rage? Never. I'm a cool, collected soul."

"Good-o…"

Forgive my lack of enthusiasm, but I've got a feeling there's more coming. For one, he's not looking out the window anymore. For another, he puts his hand into an overnight bag that's lying next to him and it turns out he wasn't winding me up when he said he was hiding Uzis at my place. I think we're alright, though. He just seems to want to hold it. It just sits in his lap and his hand's just lying on it, not round it. I don't think anybody… anybody in the immediate vicinity is in danger. Yet.

"Besides," he says, smiling, "you'll not say no this time, will you? Pull the trigger this time."

"Oh yeah, certainly. If the opportunity arises there's nobody else I'd think of g-"

"The fuck," he snaps, "do you mean, 'if the opportunity arises', Jim?" See? I told you there was more. Cool, collected soul, my arse, how did I get roped into breaking the news? "You were there, you know what happened. I had to be dead before he would stop. He made my oldest friend give me up for it. And yeah, alright, so we got round it, but I don't have my own name anymore, and it's the principal of the bloody thing, isn't it? So who the fuck do you think you're talking to saying 'if the opportunity fucking arises', Jim?"

Now, I'm not afraid of my own hitman. No way. That's not how this relationship works. Fear is a one-way process, between us. But I think very, very carefully about what next comes out of my mouth. And then I think it again. And then I listen to it in my head to check it sounds right. And then I say, "What I mean is, the opportunity to just fire the shot. Dani seems to want torments inflicted, lives flayed open, squidgy inside bits becoming pulpy outside bits, the whole nine metaphors."

"Oh," says Moran, "Well, that could be agreeable. But if the kill shot comes up-"

"All yours."

He nods, accepting that. For a while, then, we sit in silence. That's when I start looking up Holmes.

I told you before I was lying to Moran; I do remember giving the order not to shoot. See, I couldn't find much information on Mister Mycroft. And with a name like that, it's not as though I had the wrong one. My mistake was to think that meant he wasn't important. Hadn't done anything so there were no records of him having done anything. But I'm wiser, this year. Be a fecking shameful thing if I wasn't any wiser. After all, who should know better than me how important you can be and still stay off the record? Keep off the record, deliberately, in order to be more effective in the things that you do.

Just because I can't find anything doesn't mean there's nothing there to find.

First step, research. Reconnaissance. Anybody can be locked in a room and tortured like a grabby landlord. That's not what we're after here. Dani and Moran are owed more than that. And then, of course, there's the fact that the bastard seems to think he can come after me. He might not know who I am yet, but if he suspects that I exist he must suspect what sort of a person I am, right? So he's invited this. And he clearly thinks he's ready for it.

I didn't make the first move here. I am therefore entirely and wholeheartedly within my remit to strike back in a swift and brutal fashion. I'm honour bound to do so. If I don't, I look really weak, too, and I'm not having that.

See all this? See all these dozens of reasons and perfectly logical justifications? No jury in the world would convict me.

Exhibit A: trauma victim cradling firearm as though the world had ended and he'll need it to fight off the survivors, mourning the loss of his name and former self.

Exhibit B: chain smoker who's been in the shower for the last half-hour pretending it drowns out the crying and the occasional thump on the wall.

Exhibit C: pissed off man, being condemned for pursuing an unconventional living, already an unfair situation since it is the only living truly suited to his talents and tendencies.

A court, based on that alone, would let me sue the man for damages. Here in the real world that's not really an option. Detonating the prick, though, that's an option. That's a very real option.

Sherlock

Mycroft did a lot better than I did. In a sad, petty sort of way I try to blame on my hospitalization (it's boring in here), I flash back to a dozen Mother's Days, Christmases, birthdays. Mycroft makes a habit of doing better. I'm trying to be relaxed about it. Tell myself this time wasn't my fault. I had a bad round. Didn't effectively predict the reactions of my opponent, so on and so forth, but the fact remains he did a lot better than I did.

And perhaps there is some kind sod amongst you with a sunshine soul. This person may very well be a nurse. I always though nurses were awful, disinterested people but as it turns out, when you're not doing it to yourself, when you're not wilfully making their work more difficult, nurses are lovely. Now that I'm clean(er), the profession would appear to have forgiven us our trespasses. So perhaps, just perhaps, there's a nursey type out there in the dark who would say something like, "Oh, don't be silly, dear, you did your best, don't talk about it like 'better'…

"…Don't be so hard on yourself."

I am truly sorry to have to disappoint this person, but the facts are very clear. I tried to gain sensitive information from a wary source and got stabbed in the neck with more temazepam than a human being who hasn't spent a few years full of opiates could reasonably survive. Mycroft, on the other hand, took some very ambiguous tapes to exactly the right people, took their analysis on board and was able to make recommendations, privately and in my name, to D.I. Lestrade about where to look for his serial killer.

It's really not difficult once the noises are properly isolated. Idling car engine – he's stalking, watching the new area, doing his research. The radio, turned down, crackling – a bad reception area for radio, but not for mobile networks. What I thought was a delivery lorry of some sort was a passing train. Spatters of high-pitched chatter were not interference but groups of children, that would be still for a moment, and then walk across the field of the phone line, before dispersing. Crossing the road. A lollipop patrol.

Train lines near a school in a bad radio area. Turns out, or so Mycroft tells me, there are only four places on a map of the boroughs that fulfil the criteria. Go there, look for a stranger in an idling car. See who the children at the crossing are eyeing suspiciously. It's everything I wanted when I listened to those recordings, and everything I wanted when I handed them over to Mycroft.

He had to go, by the way. Of course he did. He'd been here, apparently, since they brought me in. That was already a large and unnecessary chunk of his life spent watching me in my unconsciousness. He has work of his own to do. Well, his own and mine; I think he took a cue from what's happened to me.

And no, I don't mean he's off to get stabbed in the neck and spend long, dull hours subsequently just wanting to sleep and wake up to heave through a wave of nausea and go back to sleep again. Which, by the way, really isn't fair; it's withdrawal without the high to justify it. I'm not happy about that, and if I had nothing else to take up with Mies we would need to have words about that. But no, back to the point, when my head's not swimming, what I mean is, I think Mycroft might have gone to try the same approach. Of course, he can do better at that than me too. You see, Mycroft has access (or I assume he does, but he as good as said so) to prisoners arrested as a result of the surge in the crime rate. He can ask people who might reasonably be expected to have experience of any mastermind that might exist if there is a mastermind who exists. Rather than just bet everything on his best card and just pray…

In hindsight, going after one's best quality criminal… There are a lot of ways in which that's a bad idea.

What I should probably do, for my own good, for the safety of the bloody country, is go somewhere very quiet, somewhere Mycroft will not look, and nobody else neither, and curl up in a corner, and just stay there. Now, that would be the act itself. There are other factors, things that are necessary to the act and which will make the act sustainable. For instance, staying curled up in a corner and not annoying anybody ever again, that could be very boring, yes? So I would need something there with me to put me beyond the reach of boredom, wouldn't I? That's logical. Yes. That's logical.

Oh, this is not fair, and it's not cricket, and it is not kosher; this is everything about relapse and withdrawal and I never even got that warm safe place in between. This is desire after utter destruction and desolation and I don't like it.

I want the nurse to come back. Any of them. There have been three so far. The only thing they won't bring me is pills. That's one thing about them, they are excellent allies in recovery. They have a vested interest, after all; as I explained before, a clean patient is an easy patient. I want one of them to come back. They've seen my big important brother with his briefcase and they think I've got a real chance of happiness in this life. Mycroft turned out alright.

Mycroft's making a big noise about this mastermind business because if he's right and he can prove it then the people above him won't be able to ignore him anymore. You'd have to be utterly blind not to have spotted this by now. The nurses, I forgive, because they only saw him from a distance and because I'm certain they would tell me, if they knew, not to be so hard on myself.