TITLE: It Takes a Village
CHAPTER/TITLE: Chapter Fifty/ Down the Rabbit Hole
RATING: T (violence/language)
A/N: AHHH! I'm so mean!
Chapter Fifty: Down the Rabbit Hole
John stared down the barrel of his own gun, being aimed at him by his own daughter.
"Billie -"
"Who are you?"
For a moment, John couldn't speak. The bombshell of seeing his little girl turned teenager was one thing, but the combined shock of seeing said daughter wake up, train a gun on him, and then hear her voice for the first time in seven years, well, that was definitely enough to steal any words he might have had. Not to mention the added stinging - no, stabbing - sensation of having that daughter not know who he was.
Speechless, John simply stared in confusion, awe, horror and pain at the girl he had once known so well.
"I asked you a question," she repeated. "Who are you?"
"I - I - I'm your - father."
"You - what? No." She answered and then spoke again far too quickly for John to recover from the emotional whiplash. "Where's Peter?"
"Peter?" John was definitely sure now he was no longer breathing. "Moriarty."
"Peter's my father. As good as is. He takes care of me. Where is he? What have you done to him? What did you do to me?"
"Nothing, please, listen -"
John flinched as the crack of a bullet breaking free from the gun filled the small room. It slit through the air and into the wall.
"No more lying. Where am I?" She demanded, brandishing the recently fired gun.
"You're at a military hospital is Aldershot, Hampshire," John answered carefully, trying to be completely honest with everything that he could and give her the facts she was grasping at.
"Why?"
"We found you here," John swallowed.
"Found me?"
"Yes," John cleared his throat, his brain ticking away even as his heart has slowly stopping. "Someone, a man, took you. Kidnapped you. He brought you here."
"Why didn't Peter come for me?" The questioned was precariously balanced between hurt and anger.
"He - he sent us." John supplied, not entirely lying.
"Us?" Her still somewhat sluggish gaze tracked across the room.
"Yes," John nodded. "My friends, and I. They're right outside. The - the men who took you, they found us. I - I stayed here. To protect you."
"Then why did you say you're my father?" She pressed, suspiciously.
John opened his mouth to answer, a curse instead escaping his lips as he accidentally moved his leg.
"You're bleeding," she spoke softly, yet still with a guarded edge, as her wandering eyes landed on his leg. "You're shot?"
"I'm alright," John lied through a grimace. "It was worth it. To get to you."
"But you don't even know me," she shook her head.
"Billie -"
"Who's Billie?" The teenager furrowed her brow. "You called me that before? Why are you calling me that?"
Whatever calm and trust John had managed to instill in the girl evaporated. She was unstable, at best. He had no idea what had been done to her in those seven years. One thing he could deduce, though, was that, even if she knew exactly who she and John were, she still wouldn't be exactly in her right mind. The drugs were still meddling with her mind. He could see their aftereffects in her eyes and sometimes stalled movements. The way her gaze would flicker for a fraction of a second to somewhere else, as if she was seeing something that wasn't there. John guessed she probably was.
"Peter," John began, practically choking on the poisonous name, "he told us to. He said this was a - uh - secret assignment. He didn't tell us your real name."
John didn't want to lie to his daughter, but, above anything, in that moment, he needed to get her to lower the gun. Once he did that, they could get her home. Even if they had to force her to go with them. They would do whatever it took. They would get her help. The prospects were grim, but anything was better than not having her at all.
"I've never seen you before," she said skeptically.
"Like I said," John continued, "this was a secret assignment. Classified. Your da - Peter, he only uses us for the secret missions. No one is ever supposed to see us, that's the point."
"So, who are you?"
"I'm Captain John Watson." The former soldier thought adopting his military moniker might deem him more trustworthy.
"Like the Army?" She didn't notice that she was lowering the weapon.
"Yeah," John nodded with a small smile, "formerly. Now I work on - cases, like yours."
"And your friends?" She glanced at the commotion outside.
"Sherlock Holmes," John started, watching for any sign of recognition in his daughter's eyes. "Consulting Detective. He also works on special cases like yours. And Mary is my wife. She - she was - an intelligence agent."
"What does that mean?"
John was spared answering that question as the noise beyond the door suddenly ceased and both of them drew their attention to the barricaded entry. Sherlock and Mary had returned and were trying to gain entrance. Their efforts were going to be a bit hindered by John's impromptu barricade. Without thinking, John moved to stand and walk toward the door. He ended up not doing either of those things.
John had hardly moved before his body gave way underneath him and he crumpled to the floor.
Billie leapt off the bed and joined the man on the ground, poking and prodding the now unconscious stranger. The teenager implored her protector to wake up in vain. The people outside were shouting. They screamed the soldier's name - and her's - or, at least, the name for her they had been given.
She wanted to scream too. Peter was gone. She was alone. She didn't know if she could trust these strangers. Her own body and brain were betraying her. The room seemed to be tilting and her thoughts intertwined and tangled. She couldn't seem to focus her sight or her mind. She could feel sweat pouring off of her skin and all she desired to do was crawl back into that bed and sleep for days. Even the panic that was pulsing through her couldn't put off the disturbing drowsiness.
There was another, louder, slam. The noise hammered against her skull, sending the room spinning as the barricade shifted, the cabinet collapsing sideways, and the door partially peaking open.
Everything was so loud. Too loud. Even her own heartbeat. She had a vague and disturbing desire to check to make sure that it somehow hadn't been ripped out of her chest. The voices outside the door were like drums, their words becoming nothing more than indecipherable noise.
Before she could even organize her thoughts enough to properly understand what was happening, her body reacted. Lifting the gun, her finger instinctively squeezed the trigger.
At least the pounding and screaming stopped.
Sherlock dropped to the floor at Mary's side, hands hastily moving to cover the new wound that decorated the woman's lower body. He didn't even offer any attention to the bullet that had pierced her chest and was now embedded in her vest. All three of them had armed themselves with bulletproof vests and yet it was their life and luck that had two of them down with wounds to the leg.
The detective glanced in a near panic from Mary to the door. Having no other choice, he momentarily abandoned the already unconscious woman. Readying his weapon, Sherlock slipped inside, immediately lowering the gun as he saw who exactly he was pointing at.
"Who are you?" Billie demanded.
"I'm - Sherlock," the man revealed, keeping his voice calm despite the chaos within him.
"You're Sherlock?" She lowered her weapon warily. "The detective. The one with him."
Billie nodded to John's motionless form and Sherlock noticed his unconscious friend for the first time since stepping back in the room. Momentarily forgetting about the unstable teenager with a gun pointed his way, Sherlock made to charge forward.
"Don't," Billie ordered shakily. "Just - stay where you are."
"Please," Sherlock uncharacteristically implored, lifting his hands in a sign of surrender. "I promise I will not harm you."
She hesitated until finally she nodded, her weapon though still at the ready.
"I didn't do anything to him," she spoke as she backed away from the pair. "He fell. He's been shot."
"I know," Sherlock's tone was far away as he examined his friend, desperately searching for signs of life.
The detective delicately placed two fingers on the doctor's neck and couldn't contain his breath of relief when he was met with the, weak, but very much beating, pulse.
"John," he implored, gripping the man's chin, "John, wake up. This isn't time for a quick kip. Your wife needs you. Come on."
It wasn't until Sherlock started slapping the man's face as he spoke that John finally, albeit slowly, started coming around.
"Sher - lock?"
"Focus, John," Sherlock was practically biting down on the words, using his commanding voice to pull the soldier out of the wounded and weary man. I need you awake. Mary needs you awake."
"Mary?" John still slurred the name.
"She's been shot."
John didn't notice Sherlock's briefest of glances toward Billie, but she definitely did.
"What?" John was almost entirely alert now. "Where is she? How is she?"
Sherlock was already dragging John up and across the room with one arm while he used the other to dial on his mobile.
"One shooting victim at a time, shall we?" Sherlock swallowed as he pulled John along. "Give me your diagnosis."
How much time do you have left?
No. He couldn't think about that. But he also needed to keep the man talking as they moved.
Sherlock watched as John furrowed his brow, the man attempting to catalog his own condition.
"Tachycardia," John licked his lips. "Tachypnea. - Shock. Probably almost 30% blood loss."
Neither of them needed to say what that meant.
How much time - not a lot.
Not enough.
And Mary has less.
The two men dropped down to Mary's side, John choking back a howl of pain as he did so.
"Jes - Mary," John breathed as he stared down in horror at his wife.
There was only that moment of shock before the soldier sprang into action. The captain took control while the husband was hidden away.
"Keep pressure on it," he ordered. "Damn it," his eyes swept over the pool of crimson surrounding the limb. "The bullet hit the femoral artery."
That definitely answered Sherlock's question of how much time.
Three minutes, if she's lucky.
Sherlock and John both shook off the haunting thought.
"She's already dead."
The two men snapped their heads up in unison at the voice.
If they were keeping a tally to how many times something could stop their hearts that day, this would have been about the hundredth.
Billie stood above them, once more aiming John's gun at their faces.
