"Angels fall to earth
World heats down
Now your heart is cold
Waiting on the summer
Of my soul
Gotta wait
On the samhain of my soul
Gonna bring your world
Down in fire"
"Soul on Fire" – EMA (Danzig cover)
"I've read into you, Mary Morstan."
"And what have you read, exactly, Sherlock Holmes?"
Sherlock stared at her, at Mary Morstan, John's constant companion through those lonely years, Sherlock's substitute.
"That you are not who you appear to be."
"What am I then?" She asked pleasantly.
Sherlock turned, his face full of coldness.
"A liar."
"I hate to burst that positively model veneer of the world you must live in, but everyone is a liar."
"Some more than others." Sherlock replied taciturnly.
"Looks like the pot's calling the kettle black, Mr Holmes."
"I never claimed I was a saint." Sherlock sniffed. "But accusing me does not absolve you of what you've done."
"I believe I have the right to know the crimes I'm being accused of?" Mary said, her chin tilting up in an attempt to look innocent. They never learned that acting led them nowhere, only in circles. "That's what they do with war crimes, isn't it?
"I first toyed with the idea when Moran told John that his sparring had gotten sloppy." Sherlock began, leaving her question both answered and unanswered. "He said 'I wouldn't bet on him remembering that bit'. What event was extreme enough where John wouldn't remember? I could only think of one." Sherlock's sharp gaze turned to her. "The Kremlin. The only area of memory where John draws a blank. Nothing, not one thing in three years, escapes him except those meager hours he spent locked into a gurney waiting for you to save him until he decided to save himself. And, as I understand it, you responded quite quickly. Within minutes. 'What on earth caused you to be so fast?' I wondered. Then it came to me. You were waiting for his call."
She leaned against the old stone wall and smiled as her phone began to ring.
"If he was as valuable as you claim, what were you waiting for? An engraved invitation to raid the place? My brother's permission? But you wouldn't care for that. Mycroft is just a walrus in a suit to you."
"You act like the people you love mean nothing to you, Mr Holmes, but we both know they mean everything—"
"Trying to bait me by reminding me of their existence won't work." Sherlock snapped. "And you've gotten me off my train of thought, which makes you rude as well. No, you, you were waiting to see if John was capable enough to get himself out. And he passed with flying colours."
"He did."
"That night in Bruges, if you remember, while John was showering, you woke up and I asked you about his actions during my absence. You told me them in such an abridged way that I was left to wonder if you'd shared with me everything that you, as John's closest friend outside of myself, would have felt the responsibility to share. I asked you if anyone would be coming after John for his betrayal and you told me that it depended on just whose orders he had shied from.
"And, I have to admit, you baffled me there. I spent my time at Mycroft's in supreme agitation because you had given me a puzzle that I could not solve: John's history during my exile. But then John showed up at the door, bloodied and half-dead, and I had greater things to worry about, more important things, but when I realised no other evaluation seemed to be working, fortune smiled upon me in the form of Mikeia Mikhailovic's hospital band." Sherlock drew it from his pocket, reading the back. "'Scan me.'"
He did not miss the colour leaving Mary's face.
"It seems that despite your agency's exhaustive intricacies, your skills of coercion still need a bit of work." He said, unable to keep the smirk from his face. "Mikheia was never yours. He will never be yours."
Sherlock looked at Mikheia, swathed in a hospital gown that made him look smaller than he was.
"You wouldn't say yes, because even though you are angry at me you don't have the nature to seek revenge on me or on John since you think maybe one day you can join us like you're hoping and you don't want to ruin your chances."
Sherlock knocked away the call button that Mikheia was reaching for.
"Mikheia, you aren't that petty as to end a conversation because you don't care for its results."
As he drew away, he tucked a folded note between the bed and the call button.
Sherlock smiled grimly. "I'm afraid a madman got to him first."
Mikheia found the note the next morning after he woke when he leaned over to call for a pitcher of water.
His name is Moran. He will say he has your mother and sister. Do not trust him. Do not follow me. Do not worry. John and I will come back for you. It was always my intention to come back for you.
Sherlock Holmes
"My name is Moran. Sebastian Moran. I have a proposition for you. And I can guarantee that you are not going to say no to me."
Mikheia stared back at him.
"You are not here to offer me money." Mikheia concluded quietly. "You want my help, but you do not intend to pay me for it." His eyes turned dark. "You are threating me."
"It's not your life that you need to worry about so much as your mother's and sister's."
Mikheia gripped the note in his hand.
Flashes of movement. Moran was too close. An invasion of space that politeness usually leaves empty. His breath smelled of stale tobacco. His pores secreted the sweat of desperation, bitter and pungent.
"You will be emitted tomorrow since that's more of a flesh wound than a festering bullet." He said in that low, scratchy voice that made Mikheia think of darkness that pulsed with evil. "And unless you get on the train I tell you to, you'll find yourself with another bullet wound to worry about. And make no mistake, I don't miss twice."
He moved away. His movements hadn't been subtle enough for Mikheia to not notice him switching his hospital band with another. He'd relied too heavily that Mikheia would be shocked that he was speaking to the man who shot him. But he couldn't know that he'd already done that, seven years ago, right before blood splattered on his face and he went home and made sure not to tell his mother the truth of how he got the thick, rounded wound in his side. He had gone to bed that night in the worst pain of his life, a pain in his chest that felt like his soul had been poisoned, and woke up with a raw throat, a burn in the soft skin of his hip, and tears on his face. His sister had glanced questioningly at him at breakfast but hadn't said anything until the early hours of the next morning, when she cried for him at his hospital bed because she thought the new hole in his chest was a bullet wound that she'd been afraid would come one day.
This man did not scare him. He had seen worse things.
"What if I were to stay here?" He asked quietly, staring into those light eyes that bespoke blackness.
Moran grinned.
"If you would be so cold as to risk the life of your family, then perhaps you belong on my side."
Sherlock eyed the bracelet in his hand.
"5-2-9-1-14-25-18." He read off the front. "His admissions code. Such a meaningless sequence of numbers to anyone other than myself. And to you as well, I suppose, since you constructed it to track him after he left. Meaningless…at least until it led me to a bank account of one Ryan John Bise." Sherlock smirked as the colour drained from Mary's face yet she said nothing. "You relied too heavily on recycling your account numbers. You were careless, thinking that no one would check.
"Imagine my surprise when, upon pulling up Ryan John Bise's wedding registry, I find your name. Mary Morstan. Widowed after four months of marriage. I take it the honeymoon didn't last long, then? Or did you meet someone else? Someone who fulfilled your depraved needs with his own? Someone who fed off your love and attention like a parasite and rewarded you with the kind of love only reserved for psychotics? Someone who offered you an escape from a marriage you didn't really want in the first place?"
"I didn't cheat on him, if that's what you're implying—"
"There is more than one way to be unfaithful, Mary Morstan." Sherlock said darkly before his expression calmed. "And you were quite unfaithful to say the least. Oh, but you were so clever." He whispered with something akin to reverence in his voice. "Letting John think that silly four number code was his idea—no harm in a special code between friends—when you yourself had used it as an anagram to conceal your past, making it so obvious that no one would suspect it, hiding there in plain sight. You were so clever, using your powers of persuasion to get close to John so you could destroy him where it hurt most, and, upon finding out his sexual preference didn't lean your way no matter how many cleavage-bearing shirts you wore or how much you smiled at him, you decided to take a different approach. You gained his trust. And isn't that worth more than any other kind of pain you could cause him?"
"I didn't want to cause him pain." Mary said monotonously, her large eyes turning up to his. "He is where you hurt most, Sherlock Holmes. He told me once that you said you didn't have a heart, but that he thought you were wrong. I want what Jim wanted. I want to burn you, inside and out."
"As there was Jim Moriarty," Sherlock said quietly, "so there too were his helpers. Moran…and Morstan."
Mary eyed him over before speaking.
"John told me about your tantrums, so I know that you understand me when I talk about boredom. About having nothing to do with yourself. You think John was the only one who found meaning in following a mad genius around? And, in the end, Jim was cleverer than you. He outsmarted you."
Sherlock made a face.
"Ah, wrong."
"What?"
"Wrong." He repeated calmly. "You are wrong. Jim did not outsmart me. Obviously, since I'm alive—"
"Didn't he, Sherlock?"
This wasn't overconfidence. This was knowing something Sherlock didn't know, something he had yet to realise.
"What did you do, Mary?"
"I've been beaten by the great Sherlock Holmes." Mary said quietly. "A feat that destroys his victims as surely as it guarantees their infamy. But what can he do when the victim is clever enough to destroy him?"
"Jim is dead, Mary. What did you do?"
"He was on the right track though, wasn't he? Strapping those bombs to John, aiming a rifle at him, threatening him, making you realise just how human you are—"
Blood thrummed in Sherlock's ears and the next thing he knew, he had tackled Mary to the ground and pinned her.
"What did you do?"
"Hyacinth—" She coughed, gasped through the sudden lack of air pushed out of her by Sherlock's weight. "What happened to Hyacinth? The human man that came between two gods?"
For once, all thought in the mind of the great Sherlock Holmes ceased.
He scrambled up, his long legs bringing him to the door as he flew into the hallway, leaving Mary on the floor to pull out her mobile.
Sherlock was in the middle of a dead sprint out of the main factory to the ammunitions plant when he heard it.
A single gunshot.
It rang out through the empty night, freezing Sherlock in his tracks and sending a flock of crows fleeing into the quiet darkness.
Death had always been a possibility.
John's death, however, had always been an impossibility, at least to him. Death would and could happen to everyone but John. John was too good, too pure, too human for death. It was as if Sherlock had deluded himself into thinking that his affection for John alone was untouchable, that it cocooned itself around him and made him invincible.
Everyone wants to hold on to the people they love. Everyone is selfish.
He really was just like everyone else. Love seemed to be the common denominator. How interesting.
Who was he kidding? He'd been proven to be nothing else countless times before this. He held his head so loftily, looked down on everyone around him, yet judging by the way he felt like he was trapped in an ice floe, cold and numb as his shocked mind allowed raw, chilly fear to pulse through him, freezing him from the inside out, he was no different from them.
But he'd been right so many times before. Shouldn't that count for anything? For some kind of credit he could use to not feel this way, to not have his world stop at the thought of not having John Watson in it?
No use wishing for the illogical.
Somehow, his brain managed to reattach itself to the rest of his body and sent him running down the halls at a furious pace, bursting outside to the assembly plant where the shot had rang out.
John's laugh. His smile. How he hissed every time he took a sip of too-hot tea, even though he did it enough for it to be habit. His frown, the crease in his brow. The feeling of his bare heart beating under Sherlock's palm. His anger, the only thing that had ever made Sherlock doubt himself.
His love.
Sherlock couldn't lose any of it. He wouldn't survive. Living without John was like taking a rich feast away from a king and leaving him to live off nothing but bread and water. It was unbearable.
It was not an option.
Mikheia watched Sherlock appear as he pocketed his gun, watched him burst from the main factory and cross the empty yard like the stretched shadow of an invisible man, watched him pull open the large doors to the assembly plant and enter.
He watched, waited, and then followed.
He knew exactly where the switch to turn on the machines were, knew the exact order to punch the buttons that sent the assembly line roaring to life for the first time in eighteen years. He'd made sure to learn before he arrived.
It was of vital importance.
Silently, he entered the empty plant whose silence sung of decrepit rust.
Silently, he stalked over to the main switchboard, punched the buttons, and watched as Sherlock came to stand in the middle of the empty room as the machines began to bang and churn around him in a billowing plume of noise and dust. He looked like a mad scientist among his metal prodigies.
"Did you always know how to do that," Sherlock's voice came calmly through the steam and empty whirring of the rusted machines. "Or did your employer teach you?"
"Novgorod school number 24, actually." Mikheia answered, stepping back into the shadows. "To graduate you had to assemble an AK-47 in no more than 30 seconds."
"The machines didn't turn themselves on."
"No, I did that, sir. Since I was qualitied and had no other option, I used to work at a place much like this."
"Qualified." Sherlock corrected. "How is your shoulder?"
"Better than before. Mostly healed now."
"You and John match now, you know."
Silence.
"Why?" Sherlock asked into the clanging void. "Why are you doing this?"
"I was charged with keeping you busy." Came the solemn voice.
"And this is your solution?"
Silence from the other end.
"Let me go, Mikheia." Sherlock said as evenly as he could manage, taking another step towards the doors. "You know what John means to me. You know, I know you do. Let me go and help him—"
"No!" Mikheia's voice echoed through the room like thunder. "He must do it alone."
Sherlock shut his eyes, the action visible to no one but himself. He reached a hand out and quietly tried the door handle. Locked, like all the others.
"They are all locked." Mikheia said, his voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. "I am thorough, sir, if nothing else."
"He saved your life." Sherlock said, his voice trembling as if it were angry for John. Angry at the unfairness of it all. "He saved your life, Mikheia. You owe him."
"No, sir. You saved me my life. You took me out of Novgorod, showed me what the world was like, and it was just as I imagined. They were just as I imagined—"
"I didn't want you to join them because they gave you a better offer!" Sherlock said irately. He paused, the hisses and grinding of the machines nearly drowning out his next words, spoken so softly, like a prayer in church. "I trusted you."
A jet of steam whistled ahead of Sherlock, near the chipping double doors, before falling, revealing Mikheia's pale face, close in proximity, but distant and untouchable in every other sense.
"You should not have." He said softly in a voice thick with darkness. "Love, it is a liability."
He struck a match and everything caught fire.
What an awful time for Sherlock to realise he was standing in a room that had been soaking in oil for two decades.
Fire bloomed around him like a sunrise, hot, sudden and bright. A machine to his left that had once been tasked to sorting bullets started to sputter as sparks began emanating from it. He could only hope the idiots that had abandoned this factory had taken the ammunition with them.
Through the thick black smoke Sherlock could make out Mikheia's form, flitting through the fire like a shadow.
"Mikheia!" He drew his shirt to the bridge of his nose and tried to squint through the smoke that blossomed around him. There was the smashing of glass and the room began to clear as smoke gushed out into the clear night air. A suicide mission didn't seem to be either Mikheia's forte or the way he truly wanted either of them to go.
A quick glance through watering eyes proved to Sherlock what he already suspected, that Mikheia had thrown himself through a window by the quickly heating metal stairs, not quite between the first and second floors.
Sherlock followed the thinning smoke to it, banging his knees against the hot iron of the industrial stairs and sending a long cut along his arm as his sleeve snagged the corner of a machine. He stared out of the smashed window at the imprint Mikheia's body had left in the bushes beneath him as he tucked and rolled through the impact.
The fall would hurt, but it wouldn't be fatal.
Good.
Just like his last one.
John had barely made it to the double doors before his legs had given out beneath him.
Moran laughed from where he lay sprawled on the floor as he wiped the blood on his jaw away with his sleeve.
"Did you really think I wouldn't have a back-up plan?" He barked as he wobbled to his feet, picking up his dropped fag.
John could feel his limbs begin to spasm, but the feeling was distant, detached, as if all of his nerve endings had been shot. He felt severed from his body, although it anchored him down he felt nothing in it but the rapid beating of his heart. He had the sudden feeling that he'd felt this way before.
"Was this—" He muttered into the concrete. "Was this what you gave me in the Kremlin?"
Moran chuckled as he relit his cigarette.
"Look at you. Every time I try to get to the exposition properly, you keep spoiling it." He circled John's convulsing form before he stopped and all John could see was the polished toes of his boots. "It's a newer drug, a form of benzodiazepines. They took clonazepam, that drug they use to control seizures, and reinvented it. You like it?" He asked, smiling. "Well, actually I can't see why you would be, considering that we haven't given it to you since Novgorod. Which would explain the little episode you're experiencing now. Sorry if I don't turn your head to the side so you don't swallow your tongue." He sneered as he began to circle John again.
John felt his stomach begin to convulse and heave, yet he could do nothing but choke on every breath he took before letting it rattle out of him. Moran knelt beside him, picking up his forearm in a tight grip and examining it for a moment before sinking the needle of a syringe into it and pushing the plunger.
John bit back a groan as cool water flooded through him. It felt like blood was surging back into sleeping limbs. He felt his body bloom back to life, reconnect back to his brain, and settle into soft stillness. He let out a slow exhale before breathing back in, marvelling at the sudden calm.
"You deserve every kind of hell, John Watson." Moran breathed, standing back up and kicking at John's still twitching leg. "This is the kindest one I'm offering. Addiction. You see, clonazepam embodies everything that forms an addictive substance. It takes the pain away. Makes you…dependent. Makes you think you need it to feel normal. Makes you see problems where they aren't any."
"I don't remember much of what happened. I know my contact in Novgorod was a snitch and I know I was drugged and taken into the Kremlin. I kind of drifted in and out after that, but I remember hearing your name and—it sounds so odd now—but I remember the taste of chewing gum and the smell of gunpowder."
"One—" John coughed. "One dosage can't form an addiction—"
Moran grinned.
"Who said anything about Novgorod being your first dose? Don't you remember the gum they gave you? How you always got so nervous before a hit, so restless that your hands were shaking? How the gum always seemed to calm you down?" He smiled as John's eyes widened. "You can't have convinced yourself it was just a sugar rush."
The drug was in the gum—no—it was the gum, only with a vague synthetic mint flavouring, which would make perfect sense since cordite is three-fifths nitroglycerin so it would taste sweet naturally…
Moran looked up as the doors opened. "Wonderful, back-up has arrived." He said and John followed his gaze to the two men entering the room, one lightly tanned and blonde, the other bald and dark skinned. "Took you long enough." Moran sneered then turned back to John. "These two are Asad and Isaacs. Been working with them since before Sherlock's fall at St. Bart's. Some of the best of the best, as far as assassins go. The agency's been after them for a while you know—"
John drew his gun from his belt and fired. It caught the blonde guard in the bridge of his nose and a burst of red and pink splattered the wall behind him. Unnecessary. Unfortunate. One down.
Moran laughed, a deep scratchy rasp. The other guard moved to draw his gun.
"No, Asad, leave it." Moran ordered and Asad lowered his arm. "Isaacs was always the worst shot of the two of you. I was thinking of firing him anyways." A slow smile crept on his face. "Seems Johnny here beat me to it." He laughed as if John had made a good joke and nudged him with his foot. "Didn't know you had that gun, Watson. Remind me to frisk you next time."
"There won't be a next time." John said through gritted teeth and Moran turned around.
The two stared at each other for a moment, John's gun aimed at Moran and Moran's hands in his pockets.
"Well, Doctor Watson, what are you to do now? Kill me, hurt me if you must, but won't be getting revenge. Not really."
"There are other ways to hurt you." John said coldly.
"I concur." Moran said, blood trickling into his smile as he pulled out his gun and fired a bullet into John Watson.
Sherlock burst into the factory warehouse just as the shot rang out. How many more would he have to hear thinking that John was at the other end? What if—
No.
He had come out onto a mezzanine overlooking the factory floor, built for the labour supervisors to watch their workers. A hawk's nest that offered a view of the entire building.
That same view included John's body, sprawled on the ground, blood spotting his right shoulder as Moran moved to stand over him, raising his gun.
No, wrong, no, no, no, NO—
"Moran!" Sherlock shouted, his voice booming around the bare skeleton of the building.
Moran's head snapped up and even from a distance Sherlock could see his smile widen.
"Look who's come to join us, Watson!" He said gleefully as he headed towards the stairs. "You stay right there, love." He chuckled to John as Sherlock rushed down. "Your own little Prince Charming, here to save you—"
Moran rounded the corner to the stairs just as Sherlock reached the bottom and rushed forward, grabbing the closest thing he could find and slamming a shattered beam of wood into his face, sending Moran to the ground in a blur of splintered wood and gushing blood.
"John?" Sherlock tossed the beam aside and it clattered beside Moran's sprawled form. He heard a rustle of movement, footsteps, and he quickly ducked the pistol whip aimed for his head. "Really?" He scoffed at the guard as he blocked the thick punch aimed for his solar plexus. "Have we been resorted to caveman-like tactics?" Sherlock leaned back to avoid the oncoming swipe to his temple and twisted his weight, sending all of his momentum into a harsh blow to the man's jaw, leaving him to collapse, out cold on the concrete. "Apologies for the indecorum." Sherlock sniffed, straightening his jacket back into place.
A gasp, a rattle of drawn breath, broke the quiet.
"John?"
The floor looked more complicated when it sprang up around him, a maze of half-stocked shelves and broken machinery."John?"
"Sh—m'here." A voice rasped, followed by a sudden weak banging.
John groaned in relief as Sherlock came into view and let his foot fall from where he'd been kicking the underbelly of the assembly machine beside him.
His blood shone in the dim light.
Sherlock's blue eyes turned a dark red as they reflected the blood blooming under John's body. The rich red, that dark carmine like wine, staining the oil slick, greasy concrete beneath him. There wasn't much, but the bullet could still have struck a vital artery, still could have lodged itself in John's lung or his heart—oh god, his heart—
"John, hold on—"
"Sherl…k"
"Yes it's me you great idiot." A gentle hand brushed at his temple.
"I—is Moran—"
"I don't know." Sherlock said as he unzipped John's jacket to get to the wound. "I didn't stick around to find out. Much more pressing issues."
"Hope he is. Bastard." John coughed.
Sherlock grinned at John's petulant tone as he tossed away the jacket.
"I do too, John."
He looked backed to him and his smile fell, a pale hand shooting out to grip John's face tightly.
"John? John, I swear, if you do something so predictably tedious as die on me tonight, I will find a way to drag you back from the hereafter so I can kill you again—"
"Look…f'ward to it."
"John—" He didn't like how his voice sounded, so full of shaking instability, so…insecure. Not for the first time, he wished not to be burdened with an intelligence that knew the outcome of the situation. "No—John, I—you can't leave me. You swore, John. You promised—"
A hand sticky with blood found his.
"N—Sherlock. Never. I—" John let out a breathy laugh that Sherlock found entirely too irrelevant to the situation. "Too. You. Love you. Too."
Movement behind him. Sherlock turned his head. Moran was struggling to get up, wet blood matting his hair.
Ignoring John's rising protest, Sherlock stood from between the rusting machines, something steeped in darkness somewhere inside him swelling with rage. His hands fisted at his sides.
"Why the long face, Holmes?" Moran barked. "Your bonnie lass' lights going out then? Wish you'd gotten here later, when the party would really be starting. There'd—there'd be much more blood, I can guarantee that—" He didn't have the chance to finish before Sherlock was upon him in a vicious blur of movement.
He straddled Moran as he struggled, sending carefully calculated strikes into places he knew would hurt most. Sternum. Solar plexus. Hollow of the throat. He sent all of his force into the punches then pulled back at the point of contact so the blows were sharp, so they were concise, concentrated. Maim, yes, but don't kill. Make him feel like John does. Make him hurt. He couldn't hear John's sounds of protest or Moran's mad laughter. He only heard the thunder of gunfire, only heard the screech of that blast that sent that small piece of metal into John's shoulder at a high velocity, something that only should have happened the one time, once, before Sherlock had known him, before he had loved him enough to want to save him and damn the fates that made it happen again.
After he landed a particularly sharp hit below Moran's ribcage, he realised he was crying stinging, dehydrated tears. The kind of tears borne from a harsh wind whipping at them, borne from keeping his eyes open too long so he could see the blood blooming from under his hands.
"Stop!" John's voice rang out through the garage, bouncing off the cold floor from where he lay. Sherlock took a steadying breath as he lowered his fist, curled into an anticipated blow, and glanced down. Moran wouldn't be getting up any time soon. Couldn't hurt John. John. John needs him.
He knelt beside him as John tried to grasp the straps of something Sherlock should have noticed before.
He should have known John would have been prepared, would not have walked into a situation that might be fatal and not have a back-up plan. Where Sherlock was instant, John was patient. Where Sherlock was logical, John was practical.
"Help me get this off, would you?" John groaned, nudging at his bullet-proof vest. "It's stifling underneath."
Sherlock helped him haul the ruined vest off and as soon as he flung it away he knelt closer to John's shoulder, examining the thick abrasion on the curve of his clavicle.
"Could've been worse." John muttered. "God, that knocked the wind right out of me. I forgot what that felt like…"
Sweat matted at his hairline, colouring his hair darker, and a bit of his blood had splattered across his jaw. Sherlock wiped it away with his thumb as he helped John sit up.
How dare he make you remember, how dare he fire that gun at you, make me think you were dying, make me think that a man like that could take a man like you away from me...
"Where's—oh Christ." John's voice trailed off and Sherlock glanced up to where he was looking, his face crestfallen.
Moran was gone.
Sherlock followed John through the silent shelves of the factory, the still-blazing plant casting their shadows in a dark orange glow against the concrete.
"Do you think he got to Mikheia?" John asked quietly and Sherlock considered his answer.
"No." He said, his eyes scanning the room. "Mikheia is smart. If he's as smart as I suspect, he should be a mile away by now."
"And if he's not?"
"Then he's still here."
"Are you alright?" John asked softly.
"Me? Yes, of course, I wasn't the one that was shot at."
"No, I mean—Sherlock, when I came back to the room, there was blood all over your face—"
"Ah, that. Yes, Moran did get a bit punchy. Happy to see me, I suspect."
"I should have shot him when I had the chance." John muttered.
"Well there's much to be said about second chances—" Sherlock said before he sent a kick into the nearest shelf, toppling it over with a resounding bang. There was a sudden noise, heavier, as someone tried to scurry out of the way. "Namely that they always appear sooner or later."
"Stay behind me." John said, drawing his gun from his waistband and pushing in front of Sherlock as the figure attempted to crawl out from between the tight space between the collapsed shelf and the wall. A great plume of dust rose with the shadow as it stood and soon settled to the floor.
"Mikheia…" John muttered. Two great green eyes stared at him, blood trickling down the side of his face from an open cut. His hands were bandaged with torn, bloodied pieces of cloth in the way of street punks that had habits of breaking windows.
His eyes flickering between the two, Mikheia opened his mouth as if to say something before he closed it and turned on his heel, vaulting over a fallen machine and disappearing from sight as he ran.
"Mikheia, wait!" John tucked his gun back into his belt and jumped over the machine as well as he ran after him, Sherlock following close behind.
John called his name once more as Mikheia leapt over the still unconscious guard and made his way to the stairwell, yet the boy didn't stop.
Sherlock's heart bloomed.
The chase was on.
Mikheia had mentioned to Sherlock once that he was a fan of parkour.
Sherlock had taken that to mean that he liked watching it, not practising, although apparently he did it quite often.
Of course his mind chose to bring this fact up as he watched Mikheia leap onto the top of a rusted piece of machinery with nothing more than a running start and some admirable arm strength.
Some part of him, however small, was quite jealous at the dexterity it was being shown.
Another part of him quietly remembered that Mikheia had a shoulder injury that would not allow him to continue completing such a trick. There was only so far he could go.
As soon as Mikheia's feet hit the roof of the machine he was bounding up again, crossing the gap to bang against the railing of a catwalk hanging above the floor. Sherlock heard his groan of pain as he dragged himself up and over as John called his name again and Sherlock bit back the desire to remind John that, since Mikheia had not responded to his name earlier, repeating it over and over again wasn't going to help.
But then John called him and there was something in his voice that made Mikheia stop, made him freeze in his tracks on that skimpy little excuse for a catwalk. Sherlock could see him shaking.
Mikheia looked down to them for a moment.
A large industrial light above them turned on, a brilliant blaze of light blinding them for a moment.
Then it shut off.
As his eyes readjusted to the darkness, Sherlock could hear feet pounding on the thin metal. He heard John call out as he rushed up the stairs trying to head Mikheia off.
He tried to follow, but stumbled into a conveyor belt with a crash. Disorientation was not his favourite state of being.
His vision cleared right as John reached the top of the stairs and Mikheia leapt off the catwalk onto an old shelf full of tin and spare parts near the doorway that Sherlock had burst through earlier, as Moran stood over John's bloodied form and he had thought the worst. As Mikheia jumped from the shelf to the door, he sent a kick to the back of the shelf as it gathered momentum, causing it to fall towards John in an attempt to blockade the door, yet John managed to slip through at the last second, pursuing Mikheia down the corridor, leaving a great mess behind for Sherlock to clean up if he wished to follow.
Time consuming and incredibly tedious, yet necessary. Loathsome work. Something he usually would leave John to do.
He'd better get to work then.
The assembly plant caved in on itself in a massive implosion of flame and sparks, casting John's form into shadow as it blazed through the window as he bolted past. He managed to round the corner just as something hard, cold, and heavy slammed into him, catching him on the injured shoulder.
Idiot! Always check unknown territory before you follow.
He collapsed to the floor, the feeling not so dissimilar from behind shot, although far less intense. He felt the metal's impact reverberate deep through his bones as he tried to suck in the breath it had punched out.
He groaned, clutching at his shoulder and generally feeling sorry for his current predicament, as Mikheia dropped the pipe he was holding and it banged against the floor.
"I am sorry, I tried not to hit too hard." Mikheia said, dropping to his knees beside John, holding each of his shoulders under his palms.
"Too late." John groaned, feeling the damp warmth from the boy's hands pass onto his skin. Shadows began to stretch around him. Mikheia's silhouette began to expand as he opened his mouth to talk.
"I needed to talk to you, sir. Alone."
Sherlock had managed to clear the shelf in record time through a decisive combination of kicking at the debris and swearing loudly before squeezing himself through the gap as soon as he could.
He banged open the doors and rounded the corner to an empty corridor, as he had suspected it would be. He hurried to the end of it, where four halls intersected, and passed through the silence before a dark movement caught his eye.
"John!"
He doubled back to the crossed hallways and bolted down the one where John had appeared at the end. Sherlock rushed up to him just as John strode towards the detective, meeting him halfway and grabbing him, turning him around as he searched for any visible wounds.
"Are you alright? Did he hurt you?"
"What? No." John shook his head, his breathing heavy from exertion. "No, I lost him in the hallways. He must have ducked into an empty room or something, waited for me to pass before coming back out."
Sherlock stared at him for a moment before straightening up.
"Did you see him?" John asked, wiping sweat from his brow. "Did he come this way?"
"No, obviously." Sherlock said with a roll of his eyes. "Otherwise I would be in pursuit."
"Moran has his family, doesn't he? Or he's convinced Mikheia that he has."
"Most likely the latter." Sherlock sniffed. "Mycroft sent someone en route to Novgorod to watch them, although I am apprehensive as to whether they were successful."
"Ghost hostages. Brilliant idea on Moran's part, since he figures we don't know if we're even sacrificing ourselves for anyone's safety, which we don't. Fantastic. Right." John sighed before flinching as his hand gingerly touched around his right shoulder. "I suppose I should be grateful that the bullet didn't catch me anywhere vital, but Christ this stings. Probably not helped by…chasing after Mikheia like that."
"What did he inject you with?"
"Who? Moran?"
"It was to my understanding that you haven't been injected with anything recently, at least not to my knowledge, with the exception of tonight."
"Well if that's the attitude you're going to take—"
"No, John, that's not—" Sherlock exhaled heavily, bringing a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Please, just…tell me."
"Do you remember how the agency gave me drugged gum?"
"Yes."
"Well, turns out what was in it wasn't just cordite, it was clonazepam, a drug used to—"
"Control seizures, or at least give the illusion of control, which is simultaneously the most idiotic and brilliant notion because humans crave control the most, so naturally through association there would be an attachment to the drug, which makes it highly addictive…" Sherlock finished then trailed off as his eyes grew wide.
"And do you remember Prague? When we were in the men's room?"
"And do you know how it felt when I thought I finally had control of my life and then you come back and royally fuck it all up?"
Sherlock couldn't stop the destruction of the final mirror.
"I thought I was the one in charge of my life, Sherlock! Not you, not Mary, not bloody sodding MYCROFT ! Christ, I mean, have I truly done anything on my own without anybody meddling?" He headed to send another fist into the already smashed glass. With the sharp edges and the velocity the tissue damage would be so hard to repair—
"John, John—stop!"
"Yes." Sherlock answered solemnly.
"I was shaking then, not enough for me to notice, but I was. I had a panic attack. Thought you were leaving me or that you were working with Mary of all people or…well, I don't know what I thought. It was so sudden—took me off-guard—and I didn't even start to consider why it happened in the first place. But…I'd stopped chewing the gum then, hadn't I? I'd stopped the medication for something I didn't really need but my body thought I did."
"Dependency is a remarkably despondent state of being."
"Funny thing, that." John chuckled hollowly, running his hands through his hair. "I never wanted to be dependent on anything. Except maybe you on your good days." His gaze turned to look out of the window at the plant, consumed by fire. "This is all my fault, isn't it?" He asked in a quiet, broken voice that Sherlock never wanted to hear from him again.
Sherlock stared at him for a moment before he reached his hand out and ghosted his fingers over the scarring IOU by John's ear. John flinched slightly then leaned into his touch.
"You once told me that you knew who did this to you." Sherlock said quietly. "Tell me he is the man that tortured you. Tell me he is the man that shot Mikheia, turned him against us, and is now making us save his family because he knows that you're a good man, better than me, since you aren't inclined to abandon them like I might've been. Tell me his name, and I swear to you that I will destroy him and everything that he is or hopes to be. After you have your turn, though."
"You're a good man too, you know." John said solemnly. "A great one. The best, actually."
"John."
John looked at him, an infinitesimal regret seeping into his gaze. He opened his mouth then shut it, looking at anything else but Sherlock.
"Moran."
Sherlock leaned in and kissed him then, as if it were a reward for a correct answer. John thought it tasted salty, like sweat. Like smoke and tears. A mouthful of ashes of the remains of something beautiful.
"Good. Well done. It seems he is the culprit here, not you." Sherlock stepped away and moved almost as if he was going to start pacing and then reconsidered it, turning on his heel back towards John. "Moran has done all of those things because I wasn't smart enough to stop him. Because I failed you. I will not allow him to continue."
"What if they take you again? I won't be here to—to stop them." To protect you.
"My hand-to-hand combat skills are more than proficient enough to handle them, judging by the incompetence we've encountered lately. Moran merely got lucky in the hotel. It's hard to fight back when you're in a post-orgasmic haze and have a sedative fired into your chest." Sherlock sniffed before his expression turned cool, controlled. "They almost took you from me." He said calmly. "I know you have no plans to get revenge yourself for your bodily harm, however, my interests remain incongruous." He stepped closer to John. "I will make them hurt for what they did to you, John. I want them to feel how I felt, seeing you covered in your own blood and knowing I might not be able to save you."
John stared at him silently. He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"It has to be me, Sherlock." He whispered. "I have to face him, in the end."
Sherlock scoffed and gave him a look as if Anderson had just suggested they go out to lunch.
"Ridiculous. I will not allow it."
"He's my Moriarty, Sherlock. You know he is."
"I will not make that same mistake twice, John, and I will certainly not sit back and let you die by his hands, staged or not."
"Sherlock, look at me." John said softly. When Sherlock didn't move, he added more forcefully "Sherlock, turn around."
Sherlock did as he requested and as his blue gaze turned to him John was reminded of a child he had seen in Afghanistan who had watched his home burn in front of his eyes.
"Sherlock…"
Sherlock said nothing, taking a shallow, shaking inhale as he pulled John to him, resting his forehead on John's.
"You said you wouldn't leave." He said in a breath of words that billowed into John's face like smoke.
The tone of Sherlock's voice almost made him wish he could stay. He sounded like cracked glass about to shatter, like someone whose feet were losing their balance on the ledge of a roof impossibly high up, someone who knew they had no safety net below them anymore, only pavement and velocity.
John tilted his head up softly and let his mouth graze over Sherlock's. It could hardly be called a kiss, but it was so much more than a show of mere affection.
It simply was.
"Dying doesn't mean that I'll leave you." John said quietly. "You should know that well enough. You never left me."
"Oh, bollocks." Sherlock muttered in contradiction. "Yes I did. I faked my death, I deceived you, I ran around the world, and you weren't at my side. I left you in the fullest sense of the word."
"No you didn't. Not really."
How could John just disarm him like that? With five words he proved himself the better man. Again. As if Sherlock needed more proof.
"There will never be another you. Not for me, at least."
"Well, there's only one consulting detective in the world, so it's not like I have my pick of the field." John smiled and let it fade.
"Don't go where I can't find you." He muttered lowly in John's ear. John nodded, laying his forehead back down on Sherlock's.
They stood there for a moment, forehead to forehead in a quiet hallway, savouring their moment of peace as a building burned to ash behind them, setting their shadows alight.
John pulled away first.
Sherlock thought, in the burst of clarity he typically associated with epiphanies, that he was an idiot. An absolute idiot.
How supremely imprudent of him to assume that John had been the only one to have been injected with anything. How stupid, when he had nearly an hour of blank memory to account for, an hour between his kidnapping and John's arrival.
He looked down at his steady hands. No trembling. He and John were not part of the same experiment.
His shadow stretched in front of him as if it had just woken up. As if it had been strapped to a rack and stretched.
"I saw the Golem's shadow."
Sherlock could only stare at it. Stare as John continued running ahead, past the burning assembly plant, to the multilevel car park in the distance, the only place they agreed that Moran could have run to.
Move. MOVE. MOVE YOUR SODDING LEGS SHERLOCK HOLMES.
But he couldn't.
An aftershock detonated inside his head, feeling as if it were blasting away all the accumulated dirt and muck that had been gathering for years; the grime of his association with London's underbelly, with the seedy bars and clubs and alleys of the world as he burned Moriarty's remains. It made his mind feel clean again, peaceful and calm. Something not unlike the rush of cocaine. Something not dissimilar to the feeling of John pushing and pulling inside of him. He choked on a breath, clutching at his chest.
John. Where had John gone? Had he realised yet that Sherlock was not at his side? Surely he had. Wasn't that something that was immediately obvious?
But…in all their escapades, had he ever waited for John if he had fallen behind? Truth be told, he hadn't even noticed when John wasn't there until he arrived at his destination. His mind had honed in on one goal—get there—and everything blurred away into obscurity until it jutted back into sharp focus when it mattered to him again.
He felt a sharp, hollow pain in his chest as he realised that John would not notice his absence until he was facing Moran alone, if Moran was indeed where they suspected.
The sound of safety clicking off cut into the silence.
"Don't move, Mr Holmes."
Sherlock shut his eyes in frustration. He could not deal with this right now.
"Hello again, Mary."
"I'm afraid that I can't let you leave."
"You know, you're the second person to tell me that today and the first couldn't keep their promise."
"I will not."
Sherlock made a noise of irritation and turned around, hoping he looked foreboding and not obviously suffering from whatever drug had been injected into him.
He looked at the gun she was holding. They both were aware that, with her line of work, she most certainly knew how to use it.
"I am not going to let you keep me from him." He ground out lowly.
Mary smiled. It reached her eyes. How odd.
"That's the thing, Sherlock. I don't think you have a choice."
The multilevel car park smelled of oil and dirt, as many tended to do. It smelled dark and damp, metallic, of thick rust and new blood. John could hear the Miljacka River thunder furiously behind it like adrenalin enhanced blood through a vein. He peered over the edge of the concrete lip. The river was dangerously close, as if the rising floodwaters would sweep the car park away soon. He hoped it had been built on good foundation.
A noise clattered above him, on the next level, and he drew his gun as he headed up the ramp to the next level, passing by a decrepit elevator shaft that cocooned a rusting lift in its shadow.
Moran was waiting for him amid the decaying husks of cars that dotted the car park. He was alone. Hands in his pockets again, blood smeared on his face.
"You look lovely." John deadpanned.
Moran smirked.
"As do you. I have a question, Johnny."
"Shoot."
"Ah, let's not spoil the surprise. That's coming later."
"Your question?"
"Men like us. Soldiers. What happens to us, in the end?"
"We die." John shrugged. "But see, the thing is, that's nothing special. Everyone dies."
"Usually I find that our kind goes first." Moran said casually. "Those who like the thrill of fire always end up being consumed by it."
"To be honest, I thought a quiet death would be quite boring."
Moran eyed him. "Yeah, I bet some days you wish you'd bled out in the desert. Can't blame you since I do the same."
"Then go back."
A bark of a laugh escaped Moran's rough throat. "They'd never let me go back. I burned a lot of bridges when I left."
"Then turn around and leave."
Moran did not laugh this time.
"I can't leave for the same reason that you're here. The geniuses had their run already and now it's our turn, I suppose, although not many people ever tune in for the sidekicks."
"It doesn't have to end this way."
"Yes, I'm afraid it does. I have sacrificed too much, I have worked too hard, to let you walk away from this." Moran said lowly. "Why do you think I convinced the agency to take a look at you? To send all those people into your clinic and see what you'd do? To have that mugger ambush you in the alley?"
The third time, it had been an accident and on purpose and enjoyable, all at once. He never told anyone, he wouldn't ever tell anyone what had truly happened. All they needed to know was that there was a body and John Watson had put it there.
He remembered his phone ringing and he had scrambled a bloodied hand into his pocket to answer the unknown number.
"You didn't—you can't have—"
"I was trained by the best, John. And I did it for him. Even though alive or not he'd never appreciate it, I did it for him. He is my genius, my dark angel, and I am his soldier. After all," Moran grinned. "Isn't everyone always harping about how closure does you good?"
"And you think that my death will give you that? What about Sherlock? He'll come after you with everything he's got."
Moran laughed. "You think that hasn't occurred to me? I know I'm not as bright as the rest, but give me some credit, Watson. Jim left me a list of people; good people that I can rely on."
"What if Sherlock's taken care of them?"
"He hasn't."
"And why me? Why here and now?"
"Jim wanted Sherlock to watch his heart burn to ash. I always gave Jim what he wanted."
"But he's dead."
Moran smiled and cocked his head slightly. "No, he's not."
John felt his heart lurch. Impossible.
"Yes he is…I saw the bloodstains, Sherlock told me what he did, I—no one survives that."
A dark gleam appeared in Moran's eyes, like the shine of blood. "There are many forms of survival, John Watson." He said as he drew his gun from his pocket and trained it on John. "You didn't put your vest back on, did you?"
"No." John answered. He had aimed lower on Moran's body, in the non-lethal areas. Moran had not granted him the same mercy.
"Good. I don't want any cheating in this round. A fair fight to the end."
"If you want to call it that."
"Any last words?"
John shut his eyes and when he opened them, everything seemed clearer, every detail sharper and more defined. The moonlight was bright against the smoke of the still-smouldering remains of the assembly plant. When he spoke next, his words rung out through the emptiness.
"10. 5. 8. 14."
"You and Holmes got some sort of code now?"
John nearly smiled.
"Not exactly."
Sherlock let out a heavy exhale, damp in the night air.
"It was not my intention for you to receive the awful headache that you will get upon consciousness." He said down to Mary's decidedly unconscious form. "Or perhaps not. Morality has always been sort of a grey area for me." He sniffed, about to head towards the car park before he turned on his heel back towards her, kneeling down and fishing around in her pocket for her mobile, yet he came up with nothing. Knowing her, she would have had one on her person at all times, yet a quick frisk told him that there was no such device anywhere on her.
Never mind that, it's insignificant now. Get to John.
As he ran towards the car park, the sound of car alarms blared through the night. Plural. All had set off inside the car park simultaneously. Curious.
There was a bang. Gun shot. Not curious. Worrisome.
John.
He was almost there, sprinting across the grass, his face slick with grime from the fire. The air smelled of ash and smoke. His chest hurt.
"JOHN!"
His voice was drowned in the subsequent blast as the garage exploded.
Don't go where I can't find you.
Man, that was long!
Thank you so incredibly much to everyone who has stuck with this the whole way through! I googled this for the hell of it and found out that there are some silent watchers in the wings, so I'd like to thank you as well, even if you've never reviewed, because you matter just as much and you're giving this story an audience, which is all I wanted. I will post the epilogue shortly and, if everything goes right, the sequel should be up soon!