A/N: Hello, friends! I apologize for the very tardy delay in getting this out. School has had me scrambling the last few months. But, I'm on a small holiday for this week and next, and I've been working on this beautiful story and will continue to do so as the break continues. Thank you for your continued support and encouragement! We are almost to the end! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this chapter—it was a fun one to write!
Glancing at his companion, John realized she looked much the same as he must have. Her eyes were even glistening with potential tears. The doctor's chest constricted, and he began to imagine that the frightened young woman before him was not Nadya Ivanova, but Rosie Watson, grown and alone with a strange man to look after her. He met her gaze sternly, and as he gripped the gun inside his jacket, he felt sweat gathering around his hold.
Nadya Ivanova, I sure as hell won't let anything happen to you, he told himself, and he hoped it showed through his eyes.
He held a finger to his lips, and Nadya held her breath like a balloon inside her mouth. She slipped the phone inside her jacket pocket and held her handgun in both hands. John held up a finger to caution her. He mouthed in a blanketed voice, "don't you dare fire that gun yet."
She gave one sullen nod. They were hidden for now, but wouldn't be for long, and at John's hurried, hand-motioned instructions, she went toward the bedroom window, slinking cat-like behind one of the curtains. He concealed himself behind the open door. He could see Nadya's round eyes looking at him from a crack in the curtain fabric, and as he put his finger to his lips again, she nodded quietly. The curtains didn't even stir. John felt almost proud of her.
"You know I know you're here, Johnny boy. Don't play dumb. You're a lot smarter than Sherlock gives you credit for."
John now had both hands on his weapon as well, and he exchanged glances with Nadya.
Peering through the door, he saw Jim Moriarty, hands swaying aimlessly at his sides, and a nauseating grin sprouting on his face.
The pulse tick-tocking in John's ears sounded like a clock. Time. Time running down. His other hand felt the cell phone in his pocket. One day left until detonation. Soon the last day would be chipped away hour by hour.
"You can't hide from me, John. We both know you can't. You…and the pretty girl."
An icy hand seized John's already closing throat and made his head feel light. Moriarty knew there was a young girl with him.
John could almost feel Nina sucking in her breath behind the curtain, but when he glanced at her through his peripheral vision, he saw her breathing with a steady, calculated rhythm. She wasn't scared, and she felt no need to be. Of that he was sure.
"You know, John, Sherlock's gonna be in the hospital. St. Paul's Hospital, over in downtown Kirov."
The words made John's ears ring and burn, as though they were hot acid dripping down the canal and frying his ear drums. Damned St. Paul's…again.
"I figured it went nicely with our apostolic theme," Moriarty continued, "if you catch my drift…"
A moment of silence. Moriarty made no sound, no movement—nothing. He stood there in the middle of the sitting room, John watching him through the crack between the door and the wall. The room was pitch black, but he could see the man's outline on the floor thanks to the few slivers of moonlight that came from the loft.
At long last, he spoke.
"Heavens, John, you really do know how to keep quiet…how to keep a man waiting."
John said nothing, the blood in his veins still racing like slick oil down a smooth stone. The revolver against his chest was practically begging for employment, but he'd not shoot just yet. Not when he didn't have to. Not when he could flee. He shut his eyes, his brow beginning to perspire.
"Won't you come out, Johnny boy? I won't hurt you…" Moriarty went on.
John opened his eyes and took a quick look through the crack again. Moriarty's back was to them—that much could be seen—and he was beginning to slowly ascend the stairs to the loft. Nadya was watching John's face, and as he signaled her with a widening of his eyes and small flourish of his hand, she stealthily crossed the space between them with the silence of a ghost. John took the opportunity to quickly explain his plan of action as Moriarty ascended the final steps to the loft.
"The place will be crawling with traps. He's not here alone. When we leave this room, we'll have more coming for us than just James Moriarty. Stay behind me, stay sharp, and keep your hand on your gun. You hear me, Nina?"
"Yes sir," she replied, the teasing tone gone and the flippant curl of her lip nonexistent.
"Good, now follow me. Say nothing. The door opens to the hall—we're going to run."
She took his hand, and John closed his hand around hers without even realizing what he'd done. The door was open, the girl was here, and the exit would not be open for long.
They ran.
"Oi! There you are!" came Moriarty's sing-song voice. "I knew you were here somewhere—"
They didn't stop. The halls of the hotel were long, lit, and felt cold, like the long corridors of a mental asylum. John felt chilled. He turned his head just long enough to catch a glimpse behind him, but no one was on their trail, not even Moriarty.
"Someone will have heard him," he gasped as they finally made it to a stairwell. He pushed the heavy metal door open with his shoulder, and shoved Nadya inside, not bothering to shut it behind them.
"I figured they'd have. Come on," she hastily replied, jumping down the center of the stair well to John's absolute horror.
"Nadya!" he screamed, leaning over the rail and watching her fall perpendicular, grasping a railing at the bottom before landing on the floor. She was perfectly fine.
"Shut up and hurry! It's two stories!"
The hesitation in his head vanished as he heard—with a jolt of horror—the door behind him jolt open, and without hesitating, he vaulted over the stair's edge. He fell a good five or six meters, his stomach tumbling as he flew, but he resisted the urge to shut his eyes, knowing he would most certainly die if he did.
Shots erupted above him, and he felt something singe his shoulder before he touched the ground. With a horrid crack he hit the floor, fire shooting through his singed arm, and his mouth hung open with an inaudible cry of pain. He lay for a moment in a crumpled heap at Nadya's feet. Was that blood on the pavement?
Nadya was hauling him with both hands now, pulling with all her teenage might to clear him from the stairwell and the attacker's line of fire.
"Oh God," he gasped, holding his shoulder and breathing heavily. His arm burned, and the wounded shoulder was indeed leaking blood.
"I'm alright, I'm alright! C'mon, we've got to run."
"Toropit'sya!" came a cry from above them, and there were more voices answering.
"Pognali! Pognali! Toropit'sya!" It almost sounded religious, especially when their thunderous feet began running down the stairs in pursuit.
Without thinking, John scrambled to stand, holding his wounded right shoulder with his good hand. Nadya flung the stairwell door open, and the two of them sprinted into the open foyer, making for the front door. Matching his frantic pace, the girl had her gun cocked and ready in both hands, glancing behind them at the stairwell as they ran.
"Wait!" she screamed, pulling him to the left, across the room, and diving behind a long settee. She brought him down with her, which obscured both of them from view. "I can shoot them from here where they won't see me. Just wait until they come through the door. They'll come through here for sure. If we go through the door, they'll pick us off easy. I can take them from here," she said, her breathing now irregular and erratic.
John's face was a study of exasperation. "You can't snipe Russian assassins with a bloody handgun!" he hissed in a furious whisper. "Are you mad?"
"That's true—a British man can't, but a Russian girl?" she paused in the middle of the bleak situation, letting her lip curl again. "A Russian girl probably can. If I get shot, you leave me. NO, don't you argue with me, Doctor Watson. Just shut up and take this goddamn phone. Here," she said, thrusting it into his hands with an impatient push. "Take it. Hide it. There's three guys on us—I could tell that much from the voices. I can take at least two, and when they fall, I'll distract the third, and you run."
"No, I'm not leaving you, Nadya," John seethed through gritted teeth. For all the anger on his face, it could honestly be said that he wasn't at all mad at the girl.
"There's no time to argue with me—here they come."
The stairwell door almost sounded as though it were exploding, and three men in long trench coats and masks over their faces emerged, rifles against their chests. Nina peered through a crack in the settee at them, and bit her lip. She fit her already cocked gun into the crack, closed one eye, and waited three long, eternal seconds.
Then she fired.
One of the men clutched his throat, blood rippling over his fumbling hands, and fell to the floor, coughing and spluttering in his final moments. The other two held their guns aloft, firing twice into the air. They couldn't tell where the shot had come from.
"Little British girl. Little British girl…" one of them cooed eerily.
She cursed under her breath. "Screw them—I'm not British," she mouthed. She picked up the gun again, cocked it as silently as she could, and held it in both hands. The settee was far enough in the corner of the foyer that it would be difficult for the men to tell where the shots had come from. Besides, they were still a good distance from their hiding place.
John winced as he shifted his weight, holding his bleeding, throbbing shoulder and watching the inky red seep through his fingers. Blood. So much blood. His eyes were fixed on Nadya's fingers, which were toying with the trigger. She raised the gun toward the crack in the settee once more and fired.
"Shit!" one of the men cried.
She shot three times, each crack making her convulse and jolt with the gun's force, despite her stoic efforts to remain still.
"Get down!" Nadya hissed, and they flattened themselves on the floor as shots ripped through the settee and stuffing flew everywhere above them. Nadya was almost crying as gunshots tore the fabric and clattered on the floor. John threw an arm over her, maneuvering himself between her and the settee—he wouldn't let her get shot.
The fire ceased. An eerie silence reigned.
"You shot the second one, I expect?" he whispered in her ear.
"I did, but not the last. He saw me."
"Don't move," John breathed.
Despite the absolutely numbing sensation of having a bullet stuck in his shoulder, he somehow had his gun in his hands, preparing to make one last stand. Silently, he put a hand on the floor to steady himself and rose into a crouching position.
"Doctor Watson…" Nadya mouthed in warning, but knowing full well that she could do nothing to prevent him.
"You've done enough, Nina," John said to silence her, a light smile gracing his mouth. She looked horrified.
The doctor cocked his gun, his shaking finger looming over the trigger. Then he licked his lips and stood to his feet.
Nadya covered her head, shut her eyes, and bullets fired—John's three shots and the other's one.
"AH!"
"Doctor Watson!"
John fell backwards, wincing horribly and uttering curses between his clenched teeth. Nadya saw blood coming from a wound where his shoulder met his chest, just beside the first shot he'd taken a few minutes before.
"He's dead, thank Christ, but he got my chest," John wheezed, wincing as he tried to shift his weight on the floor. "Oh, God, that hurts. Jesus, that hurts. I don't think it's too bad."
"Hang on. I can find a way to get us out of here before anymore shit goes down. Don't move. I've got the gun still, you know."
"Where's Moriarty? Can you see him?" John asked.
"Moriarty? Holy crap! Moriarty. He has to still be here, right?"
"Oh, God knows."
John's mobile rang against him, and he slid his good arm into his pocket, fumbling with it as he pressed it to his ear. Nadya's eyes fixed on his own, and she listened earnestly as he answered.
"Hullo?"
"Making progress, are we, John?" Mycroft asked from the other end, his voice as supercilious as ever. In his maimed state, John wanted to start a row at the pompous greeting, but had no energy to raise his voice or grow excessively angry.
"Well, if you want to call me getting shot twice and lying stuck behind a bloody settee in a Russian hotel progress, then yeah, we've made lots of progress," he snapped, still keeping his voice down.
"Oh dear," Mycroft replied, and John thought he was almost yawning. "I hope it isn't serious. Do you have the asset?"
"Do I have the bloody—YES, I do. Jesus, Mycroft. Did you hear a word of anything I just said? I've been shot! Twice!"
"Yes, I did hear all of that. Don't worry, I've already fetched someone to come 'round and get you. Shouldn't be long. Let me know how it gets along."
"You're insane, Mycroft. Bloody insane."
"That's what I've been told. Take care of Nadya for me, and…oh, my man should be there for you now. Talk with you later, John."
"Yeah, right," John huffed, rolling his eyes as he ended the call.
"Is that them?" Nadya asked, nodding to a car that had pulled up at the front of the hotel. Two young men stepped out, running to the front door.
"Ey!" Nadya called out as they came in, looking about frantically. "Ey!"
John's head was spinning as the men hauled him to their vehicle, which was—frightfully—destined to St. Paul's Hospital in downtown Kirov. Not that he could do anything about it. He craned his head in every direction for Moriarty, and swore he saw him standing in the open stairwell door with a nauseating sneer on his face, watching them haul John away.
His mouth was rendered speechless, and shock took over him. He wasn't dying, but he would if he kept bleeding at the rate he was for much longer. Nadya applied pressure to the wounds with the help of one of the young men as they entered the vehicle, lying John down between them.
The young girl was watching him the entire ride, sometimes even patting his hand. He could hardly follow her words as she told the young men what they'd done in that hotel, and he ended up falling fast asleep. And Nadya later told him that he wouldn't stopped muttering "Rosie, Rosie, it's Moriarty. It's Moriarty, Rose. He's here," throughout the duration of the drive.