Chapter Four.
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"Boarding in five minutes sir," the woman said, leaning down to speak confidentially to a business-suited man who was engrossed in the contents of a brown manila folder.
"Thank you, Genevieve."
The woman thus addressed straightened, glancing casually around the Heathrow executive lounge. Aside from a bartender and a morose-looking Taiwanese businesswoman surrounded by empty tequila glasses, they were alone. The woman relaxed fractionally.
"Do sit down, Genevieve."
"No thank you, Mr Ellis."
The woman's eyes scanned the entrances, flicking over the large plate-glass windows. She gave her employer a cursory once-over. His charcoal-coloured suit was immaculate, as ever; his nails were neatly manicured, and his jaw so smooth that he could have been freshly shaven. His hair was getting a little long, she noted with a frown. She would have to arrange time for him to get it cut before the meeting with his American counterpart.
A genteel electronic beep sounded, and the woman checked her watch.
"Two minutes sir. We should move."
Mycroft Holmes was already standing, slipping the folder back into his briefcase.
"Thank you, Genevieve. I shall not, in fact, be coming with you."
The woman looked at him in polite confusion. "Sir?"
"I am sure you will manage admirably without me."
"And you will be?"
"As a matter of fact, I shall be in North Korea. I have recently obtained a new contact there, and it is vital that we meet in person. My flight leaves in forty minutes. I apologise for the deception, but I did not wish it to be generally known."
The woman lifted her own briefcase and fell into step with him as they left the executive lounge and made their way briskly to the gates.
"Do you need me to cover for you?"
"If you would, please. I shall need at least four days. You will understand if I don't make contact."
"Understood sir."
They had reached the gate. The woman retrieved a passport from the pocket of her blazer and handed it to a bored-looking attendant. The name on the passport wasn't Genevieve, but that was alright: it wasn't her name either.
Mycroft Holmes put a hand on the woman's shoulder and leant down to kiss her lightly on the cheek.
"Goodbye, my dear. Have a pleasant flight."
The woman nodded. "You too, Mr Ellis. See you in Washington."
Mycroft's mouth quirked almost imperceptibly. "I look forward to it."
"You're going on leave," Sally said flatly.
"Yep."
"You're going on leave for three weeks, in five and a half days' time, and you somehow failed to mention this to me."
"Um… yep."
Sally groaned, and sank down onto the corner of his desk, rubbing her eyes with one hand.
"I'll make it up to you," Greg promised. He prised open his Sergeant's fingers and pushed a large cup of expensive café coffee into her hand. Mentally, he patted himself on the back for his foresight.
Sally raised the cup automatically, still looking as though she could cheerfully have murdered him.
"You know we've got the Timson trial starting next week, right? And there's the Lambeth murder, and that weird fridge thing…"
"…And your Inspector's exam," Greg finished, wincing. How the hell could he have forgotten that one?
"Yeah," Sally sipped morosely at her cappuccino.
"Oh hell. I'm sorry Sal'. I can't even promise that I'll be in email contact."
"It's fine. I'll manage somehow."
"You'll be amazing," Greg told her, honestly. "You really, really will."
"Yeah… thanks chief." She didn't sound convinced.
"You taking the boys?" Sally asked, after an awkward pause.
"Uh, no actually. Dumping them on my brother for three weeks." And hadn't that been a fun conversation? Sodding Mycroft sodding Holmes, contrary to myth, did not think of everything.
"So who're you going with?"
"John and Mary and the kid. And, uh – Molly Hooper."
Startled out of her contemplation of her coffee cup, Sally looked over at him, her dark eyes wide with surprise.
"Something going on there that you're not telling me?"
"Not at all."
"You're blushing."
"I am not!"
"You are, you know."
"Don't be ridiculous, Donovan!"
"Oh, so it's Donovan now is it?"
"I've had about enough of your lip, Sergeant."
Sally grinned. "Enjoy it while you can, boss. By the time you get back, you'll be calling me sir."
"As if."
Sally sighed, suddenly gloomy again. She swung her heels against the leg of his desk and took a disconsolate sip of her coffee.
"I still can't believe you're leaving me on my own."
"I'll owe you dinner."
"At the very least." She rubbed her knuckles into her eyes and ran a hand across her hair; the curls sprang back in its wake. "It's honestly enough to make me want Holmes back, some days."
Greg chuckled. "Be careful what you wish for," he said.
Sarah Sawyer shoved open the door of the break-room with her hip, arms loaded with clean tea towels and boxes of biscuits, and stopped short in the doorway. Mary Watson was sitting on one of the faded blue armchairs with a mug of tea in front of her, and crying.
"Mary!" Sarah exclaimed, dropping the tea towels hastily on the bench. "Are you alright? What's wrong?"
"Oh!" Mary looked up, startled, and tried to scrub the tears away with the back of her hand. "Oh God, Sarah, I'm so sorry. It's just – just something that John said."
Sarah hastened to the chair beside Mary's and offered her arm for a hug. With a choking sort of sob, Mary leaned into her.
"What's that horrible little man been up to now?" Sarah asked. Mary gave a watery chuckle.
"It's probably nothing. I'm being silly. Just hormones and stuff. Stupid baby." She sniffed.
"What's John done?"
"Oh, it was just something he said about Sherlock. You know, sometimes I think that it's Sherlock he's really in love with… that he only married me to spite him."
"Hey… you know that's not true."
"But it's like he's not even the same person with Sherlock gone," Mary sobbed. "The baby's teething, and we're up all hours of the night, and we barely talk, but it's like John doesn't even notice… All he does is talk about Sherlock-this and Sherlock-that and how he can't wait till Sherlock gets home…"
Mary buried her face in her employer's shoulder and sobbed desperately. To a completely arbitrary observer, it might, perhaps, have appeared just the tiniest bit theatrical.
"Hey…" Sarah said, patting her on the back. "Hey, it's ok. John and Sherlock have always been dicks about each other. That's just the way they are."
"I know that," Mary mumbled. "And I don't want to blame him for it, I really don't. It's just all been too much these past few months… And then John…"
"Alright, Mrs Watson, here's what we're going to do. You are going to take a holiday. You and your husband. You're going to take a couple of weeks off, you're going to go to some nice sunny tropical beach, and you're going to work it out, ok? And if John's still being a dick when you come back, then I'll fire him for you. Sound good?"
Mary gave another slightly watery laugh. "We can't just leave you short-staffed. I took so much time on maternity leave last year…"
"Hush," Sarah said. "No more of that. I'll manage, alright? God knows I'm used to John buggering off whenever he feels like it. Trust me, a week's notice is a dream by comparison."
"Well, if you're sure…"
"Of course I am. Now, you cheer up and spend ten minutes Googling flights to Santa Monica. It'll make you feel better."
Mary smiled, a dimple appearing surreptitiously in her cheek. "I'm sure it will," she said.
Mary's method of convincing Sarah to give them leave was not what John would have chosen. She recounted the story gleefully to Greg and Molly over drinks on Tuesday, causing Greg to laugh uproariously and Molly to stuff her knuckles in her mouth to smother her giggles. Neither of them, to John's immense irritation, seemed to consider Mary's story even remotely implausible.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," he said softly, later that night. They were lying in bed, John's hand brushing lightly over Mary's hip in small, abstracted strokes.
"Do what?" she asked.
"Say that stuff about me and Sherlock. I know everyone else does, but I wish you wouldn't."
She turned her head to look at him. In the darkness, she couldn't make out his features.
"I didn't realise it bothered you," she said, frowning. "You usually just laugh it off."
"Usually, the people saying it aren't my wife. And it's not true. It's never been true."
"I know it's not true John…" she hesitated a moment, then continued. "But I also know that you would have married him years ago if he hadn't happened to have a Y-chromosome."
Was she right? John wondered. Would he have done? He didn't think so. Sherlock, he couldn't help but think, would be just as aloof, just as unobtainable female as he was male. It was one of the things that made him Sherlock. Somehow, nobody else seemed to understand that about him. They persisted in seeing him as a sexual creature, as someone who could be won over, when he just – wasn't. Oh, he could fake it, alright. He knew the actions and the words, but it never affected him personally. John had no doubt that he could learn, if he so chose – but it would take something rather more phenomenal than John H. Watson.
He couldn't even try to articulate that to Mary. Not without sounding like he'd put an unhealthy amount of time into considering his friend's sex life.
"I wouldn't have," was all he said, instead.
"It's not a bad thing," Mary persisted softly. "It doesn't mean I think you're going to jump him the moment my back's turned. But I've just – I've never known two people who fit more perfectly than you."
John was silent. He'd never known any either.
"Not that I can really picture what Sherlock would be like as a woman," Mary laughed – a deliberate effort to lighten the mood. "God, I can't even imagine it."
"Like Irene," John said, his fingers stilling at the thought. "He'd be like Irene."
Mary rolled over on her hip until she was facing him. Her hand reached out beneath the covers to land across his ribs.
"Who's Irene?" she asked, her frown apparent in her voice. "John?"
"Adler," John explained thickly. "Irene Adler. The woman Mycroft's gone to find."
Mary frowned again, her eyes searching his face in the darkness. John didn't know what she was looking for. He wasn't sure he wanted to.
The week fled by frighteningly fast. Between memorising instructions from Mycroft, picking up suspicious parcels from even more suspicious locations and posting them to obscure addresses in Eastern Europe, and spending his work days feigning emotional coldness towards his wife (he did think that Mary might have put a teensy bit more thought into her excuses before she dropped him in it), John was slightly panicked to realise that Friday night had rolled around and he was boarding a plane to France.
"You think Mycroft might have bothered to get us business class," Greg muttered in his ear as they fought to stow a bassinet in the overheard locker.
"Wouldn't fit with our cover," John grunted, agreeing.
Given a choice of laps to sit on, Billie opted for Greg's. She whinged a little on take-off, but otherwise seemed reasonably happy to turn the pages of a cloth book backwards and forwards at dizzying speed and chew on Greg's fingers whenever she could get away with it. Greg was good with kids, John thought, smiling a little to himself. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Molly, and his mouth twitched. It seemed that she'd also noticed.
The woman who stepped from the passenger seat of the black taxi had very little luggage. She took two bank notes from her purse to pay the driver, and shouldered her small overnight bag. The taxi driver didn't pull away immediately. The woman made her way up the street towards a block of tall flats, her beautifully-shaped legs moving quickly. Her hips swayed beneath a cream-coloured pencil-skirt. The taxi driver eyed them beadily. At last, just before the block of flats, the woman turned aside, vanishing into a narrow alleyway. The driver sighed, flicked on his indicator, and pulled back out into the traffic.
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