First of all, thank you to all who are still with me...
I'msorrymylove: Thanks for the favs and follows, you made my day. And, no, it's okay...
Sooooo did you guess who Kiara saw? Well, let's see whether you were right. Here's chapter 6!
The next night I am prepared. I kept the little handgun I stole from Holmes a bit over a year ago and I hide it in my dress. The man I saw is dancing with a woman I don't know, but I have time. I order a drink and wait.
After some time, the woman kisses him on the cheek and leaves. This is my chance and I know it. I am behind him, so I walk up to him and ask him for a dance with a deeper voice than usual. The moment he turns around I am already incredibly close to him and press the gun against his stomach. His eyes widen for a moment, but there's nothing he can do, the gun is hidden between us, his jacket and my dress block the view.
"I heard somewhere you were dead, Mr Holmes," I say quietly with my normal voice so that the others won't notice. I put my free hand onto his neck and he stiffens even more. I can feel his cool breath against my face while he is looking around, searching for an opportunity. His head is practically smoking.
"Why don't you come with me, I think we have some catching up to do," I whisper and lead him with the gun on his abdomen and my hand on his neck to the edge of the dancing area. From there we go through the 'Staff Only' door and into a dark alley.
"Miss Moriarty. I thought you were in London?" he asks politely and I smile.
"My name is Kiara Josephina Johnson for now... And, as you can see, I am not." I answer him and he smirks.
"Well, my name is John Harrison, Miss Johnson..." He whispers. I know since our first meeting that he is quick. But I think he is even quicker now. He uses his left hand to push the gun up and the right to push me away. He isn't quick enough though, as I pull the trigger and the bullet goes straight through his left arm while he's turning slightly. He gasps and curses, but I am close again. While I press the gun against his back and stretch up and whisper in his ear, "Not really a good move, Mr Harrison," but he just curses slightly and presses with the palm of his right hand against the wound.
"Come on, Mr Harrison, my flat is two minutes away," I scold. For the rest of the way he does what I tell him to do.
Once inside I lock the door and tell him to sit at the kitchen table. My second gun is still on there. I flick the security back on my gun and put it into the waistband of my dress, after I got the first aid kit.
"Put both your arms on the table," I say and surprisingly he does what he is told. I use disinfectant and then stitch the wound up. It is nothing serious, barely more than a graze, but I am sure it hurts. When I duck down to cut the thread, I suddenly feel cold metal at the back of my head.
"I can only repeat myself," I say and chuckle, " Not really a good move, Mr Holmes." I push against my second gun gun which he holds and stand up.
"That gun doesn't even have bullets," I explain and ignore his confused face, "Do you really think I'd be stupid enough to leave it on the table otherwise? No, I simply had it done with a bit more metal to compensate. I wouldn't have thought you'd fall for it, though..." I smirk at his glare.
A few minutes later we both sit at the kitchen table with a drink. Holmes looks different now. The basics like face and height are the same, but he looks tired. He has a beard and his hair is longer. His clothes are different, instead of a fine suit and a button down he is wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. His expensive watch isn't on his wrist, instead he is wearing three leather bracelets with little wooden pearls on each arm. I decide that I would have liked this look, if it weren't for everything else. He is thinner than I remember him and his eyes have lost the sparkle. He misses Watson, I'm sure, and that's one of the things I want to talk about.
"Mr Holmes, why aren't you in London? Why do you keep everyone in the dark?" I ask him and he frowns.
"Miss Moriarty, you probably know what your father did. He threatened my friends and if I didn't jump off the roof of St Barts, his snipers would have shot them. To leave me no escape, he shot himself. It was our last meeting, I decided at which place we would meet. With the help of a pathologist at Barts I managed to fake my death... I've been hunting your father's minions ever since." He says quietly.
I can only nod. Tears are threatening to fall, but I don't want to cry in front of Holmes. So that's how and why Father died. To protect me, indeed, and he had paid the final price for it. Then Holmes words sink in.
"That was you? All the threads of Father's web that Moran couldn't hold?" Holmes only nods, so I continue. "Mr Holmes, I want to make a deal with you. I have access to information you don't even dream of. I can tell you about Moran. I can also tell you about your friend, Dr Watson. However... I want Moran killed. He is slandering Father's name. Secondly, I don't mind if we clear your name or anything, or if Jim Moriarty is real again, but don't let anyone slander his name any more. I also want a fair share of the money that Moran has right now. Do you agree?"
He cocks his head to the side and looks at me.
"Are you willing to help me destroy your father's web, clear my name after your father did so much to destroy my reputation and slander your father's name?" He is curious, really curious.
"Yes and no. I will help you to do what you said, but I am not slandering Father's name. He was famous and important as Jim Moriarty, and I don't mind if he gets called consulting criminal or not, because that's what he was, but I want to make sure that everyone knows he did it all for a good reason. The wreaking of your reputation and making you commit suicide for example was revenge for what you did to me and to protect me." I can only whisper the last part, but hold out my hand for him to shake.
He cocks his head again and narrows his eyes, still curious. I smile when I see him like this, he looks almost like he did when I met him first, but still so different. He considers my offer, but I can see how hard it is when he looks quickly over his left shoulder. It puzzles me at first, but then it is obvious. He is turning around to talk to Watson, but sees that he isn't there. My deduction from a year ago was right, he cares a lot for him. He must miss him a lot.
"I could also tell Moran where you are." My voice is as bored as I manage. He pales slightly and answers quickly.
"No! No, you mustn't, he'd kill John..." he whispers.
"What do I care?" I drawl, but I am bluffing. If I tell Moran, then he will find me and he would kill my only chance of destroying Moran.
Holmes doesn't see it. He swallows, and I know he will accept. And I know that the papers were right. Holmes does love Watson. Not how they think, not romantically, but in a platonic way. He loves Watson in brotherly way, Watson is his best friend, after all. Though I correct myself quickly. I met them, even though maybe not in the best way, but still. How they interacted, how they talked. If I had to define them, I'd say soul-mates. Definitely soul-mates.
"Okay, Miss Moriarty. You have a deal. Just... Just don't risk John." Holmes stutters a bit in the end, and I can see that he is scared. Good.
"For a genius like you, I seem to have to repeat myself awfully often, Mr Holmes. My name is Kiara." My lips form a smirk when I see his glare.
I don't know why I say this. He was the nemesis of Father, after all. But I have always been drawn to geniuses. Father, and now Sherlock Holmes. I'm not sure I like him, but I don't hate him like I used to. Maybe it's because I have come to peace with Father's death. I'm still sad and grieving, I am, but I know that he did it to protect me. And what I'm doing right now is something he would have wanted. Revenge. Revenge on Sebastian Moran.
"Very well, Kiara. Mine is Sherlock." He answers and shakes my hand.
"Sherlock. I'd never have thought I'd ever call you that." I say thoughtfully and Sherlock's lips twitch.
"Neither did I."
"So it was you, then?" I ask him suddenly. We are still sitting at the kitchen table, both with a cup of coffee. I offered him tea, but he didn't want any. He told me it was because of Watson. He always made tea. Sherlock looks up and frowns.
"What was me?" he asks and I have the sudden urge to giggle.
"Father's web. I thought it was because of Moran's incompetence, when all the small threads fell and some of the bigger ones started to."
"In a way. The smaller ones fell mostly by themselves because, let's face it, Moran is an idiot. I might hate your father, but at least he was intelligent. Anyway, the wavering was my work. I haven't been very successful, though..." Sherlock muses.
"Moran was furious when he noticed, I think that was a success." I say and to my surprise he smiles slightly. It is a real smile, not his smirk or a fake one, and it reveals that he isn't as far away as one might think. I giggle and soon I can hear a deep chuckle. It takes minutes to calm again.
"Sherlock, when I said I have information, I didn't lie. I also... well, I am able to look into 221B. Your friend still lives there, you know. I... You can look at him, if you want." I say, unsure whether it was the right thing.
Sherlock stares at me, then swallows.
"Can I... I mean, can I look at him? Please?" his voice breaks at the end, and once again I can see how much he misses Watson.
I don't answer, just pull my phone out and click through it all till I can see Watson.
"Here," I say and nearly give it to Sherlock, when I see Watson standing up.
"Who is there?" Watson asks, and I realise that my micro is on.
"Oh, shit." I whisper and quickly turn it off. Luckily Sherlock didn't say anything, otherwise it would have gone really bad.
"Who is there?" Watson asks again and looks around. Both Sherlock and me are shocked by the sight of his face when he looks into the camera for a moment while he is searching for the intruder. He looks older. There are more lines on his face, and his eyes are red and have lost their sparkle. He leans heavily on his cane, his left hand shaking slightly. The army-doctor is very pale and looks extremely tired. It hurts me to see him like that, but that is no comparison to Sherlock. Sherlock's mouth is a thin line, he blinks quickly and clears his throat.
"At least he's alive," he whispers so quietly that I nearly don't hear it.
"Yes, Sherlock, and he will stay that way. But Moran isn't waiting." Guilt and self-hate curse through me as I stop Sherlock from seeing the man he loves. It is hard, but I know that I did right when Sherlock nods and clears his throat again.
"Okay. Explain," He orders and I don't ask how he knows what exactly I was going to do. Taking my phone with me, I stand up and come back with a piece of paper and a pencil.
"Listen, I don't really know how exactly this is built, I just know the basics. Anyway, in the court you described Father's crime organisation fairly well. It is like a web." In the middle of the paper I write Father's name and put a circle around it.
"He's the spider. For Father all his clients were like prey. They would be the caught flies and moths, connected to each others by threads. The spider, Father, had helpers. Men and women he trusted up to a certain degree. He had five of them, and now that he's dead, Moran probably has got a new one. Anyway, those five are the big threads." I draw them on the paper and it starts to look like a mind-map.
"Then there are the medium threads, the ones you already have touched. The flies and moths are big things, like terror-cells, etc. Irene Adler was one of them." It feels weird talking about Irene like this. Then I notice that the last time I saw was the morning of that one fateful job.
"These flies or moths are always connected to two of the big threads. Father could advise them through two people, but the other three wouldn't be able to tell anything to anyone because they simply didn't know. These connections between two of the big threads or the medium threads. And then there are the small threads. Father had almost nothing to do with them. They were the small, boring things. Crimes of passion or similar, most of the times not even organised by Father, but the big threads. He used to do them for the money, the fun and the image. He got the orders for a small crime and gave them to the big threads. It was extra work for them, as soon as he didn't give them to them any more, the small threads fell." I connect the big threads to each other so it looks like a big spider's web. "To destroy the web we can go two ways. Plan 1: We kill Moran and in the hopefully following confusion, all the big threads and theirs second in commands. Plan 2: We kill the threads and the seconds first, and afterwards Moran. I'd go for plan two. We don't know whether there'll be any confusion, and Moran doesn't have that may people he trusts. If we are quick, we should be able to take them out quicker than he can get any new ones."
I look into his eyes and he nods.
"We'll need to be really quick, though, Kiara. I don't think it will be easy, even if I hack into Mycroft's computer."
"Who's Mycroft?" I interrupt him, and he smirks.
"My brother. He is the British government, and has access to all kinds of data, so-"
"The Iceman. Now I know. Father always called him that, I just didn't think he was your brother... Does he know you're alive?" I interrupt again, but this time Sherlock glares.
"No, he doesn't, and he won't. He'd be a complete pain, it's much easier without him knowing." He sounds bored and annoyed, but I don't stop.
"Yes he will. With him we will have easy access to all kinds of all kind of classified information, and we won't be on the run any more. Our deal is off if he doesn't know," I threaten Sherlock, but he just laughs.
"What do I care?" He asks in a smug voice.
"You care, because I have access to nearly all files on Father's computer. You care, because I have access to all the surveillance. You care, because I know Moran and two of the threads. You care because of Dr Watson. Do you really want to do this alone? You won't be able to. You don't know what to look for, who to threaten, who to bribe, how to do this. But I do, and does Mycroft as well. So?"
His eyes have gone wide during my little speech. He underestimated me and my information, and I hope he doesn't any more.
Sherlock nods, and I know he agrees to my plan and to tell Mycroft. The rest of the night goes smoothly without another row.
Well, what do you think? Please R&R, all of you, they motivate me so much!