Once again, enormous thanks to burninganchors, my lovely friend and beta! Go check out her work!
Mycroft and Temperance returned at noon to deactivate her bracelet, telling her she would have until midnight to do her work before it would go off for the last her bracelet would be permanently disabled and removed by her sister and Mycroft and she would be free.
As soon as they were gone Cindy started walking to the cafe where she would meet Greg, wearing the sunglasses left from yesterday in a sad attempt to cover up her black eye. Luckily this would be a masked affair tonight, a call-back to the old days. Greg wasn't happy to see her worsened state but didn't comment on it, instead buying them coffees and situating himself so his body blocked her face from the pap's cameras.
"Some bit of you will still be in the evening tabloids," grimaced Greg apologetically. She made sure to keep her head ducked low when they left while the prince wrapped his suit jacket around her for extra coverage, moaning apologies all the way.
"It's fine," she told him as they found shelter at last in the form of a nondescript palace car.
Greg stared petulantly out the window. "No, it's not, it's rubbish; this is why I've been single so long. I'm so sorry."
On impulse, she reached across the plush leather seat and closed her hand around his. "Greg, it's fine." He smiled uncertainly. "I'm probably going to end up all over the papers in a few days anyway, right?" She had, in a strange fit of trust, told the prince of her suspicions, but not of the Moriarty man who had forced the pieces together.
There was just something about him that she was starting to believe in.
His hand turned over and squeezed back. "Right."
"You want me...to wear this?" she asked, trying to keep the apprehension from her voice as she eyed the shining dark silver gown hung on the rack before her.
Grinning nervously, Greg's stylist Ianto reached around her and tugged a wrinkle out of place. "It compliments your skin tone nicely?" he meekly offered. "Besides, this is the only one we had ready that will cover up the, ah, bindings. Which unfortunately do nothingfor your bust." He frowned so dejectedly that Cindy couldn't help but laugh and grin comfortingly at him. It was tasteful enough, anyway, long and with a fine thin collar to make it appear sleeveless but prevent slippage. She even accepted the ridiculous silver shoes, only because they had kitten-heels and were nothing ridiculously flashy.
There wasn't much to be done for her hair, sadly, as it was so curly to begin with, but Ianto was nothing if not enthusiastic. He downright attacked Cindy's hair with a blow-dryer, straight iron, and curling iron, which seemed counter-productive but actually worked rather well. It was possibly the oddest thing in the world to see her hair straight (and so long!), but that only lasted so long before it was being returned to bigger, looser curls.
She'd never had the chance to look pretty before. She hadn't known she was capable.
Ianto pulled her hair back behind her ears, then fastened her mask - white with matching silver around the edges and eyes - gently in place before helping her into her dress. There would be a fancy dinner before the ball itself, but people were supposed to dress for the dance regardless.
As soon as she was safely buttoned and zipped into the endless garment, she was bade to sit in the drawing room of the palace to wait for Greg. On the way she met John, looking alarmingly handsome in his Army dress uniform. Despite her hard feelings about the sleeping pills the day before, Cindy had never felt so good so soon after one of Meghan's tantrums, and had to admit her brief descent into completely catatonic floppy limpness had helped.
"That really you in there?" he teased with a quirk of his eyebrows, pretending to attempt peering into the eyes of her mask. His own was one of red and white to match his uniform, though it was obvious that he felt just as silly as Cindy in the thing.
She spread her arms in a wide shrug. "It's me. How do I...I mean...?" She swallowed thickly and wrung her hands.
John smiled. "You look beautiful, Sally."
They paused as each seemed to realize what he'd just said. "Greg told you?"
"I forced it out of him," amended John, turning red around the ears. "Actually I tortured him. Did you know hanging people by their ankles-?"
"It's okay," she cut him off; he seemed relieved. "I know you suspected anyway - why else take my blood?"
He quirked an embarrassed smile. "Actually, that was Sherlock's idea. Concrete evidence and all that."
A brief flash of consternation wrapped around her - the younger Holmes had, of course, managed to pick apart most of the details about not only her real reason to be at the auction ("Same reason I am, though you'll have less success.") but the pertinent details of her living situation ("Not raised by family, a foster family; they abuse you on a regular basis yet you never call them on it.") in a matter of moments - but she quickly dismissed it. If John trusted him, and Greg trusted John, and she for some reason trusted Greg, then maybe he was alright really, really deep down.
"I'll announce you," John insisted with a mischievous grin, edging through the door and closing it before she could follow. He cleared his throat noisily, and within the room Cindy could hear Greg laugh; again, the unnecessary butterflies made themselves known in her gut. "Sire, your date for the evening has arrived."
"She's been here all day, you prat," laughed Greg. The amused shine was still in his eye when John swung the door open and Cindy saw him for the first time since they separated to get dressed. He looked so overwhelmingly handsome in something that, on any other man, would seem perfectly ordinary, that Cindy couldn't help but wonder if she wasn't falling just the smallest bit in love with him.
The look that spread across his face at the sight of her seemed to signify he was thinking the same thing.
The ballroom was crowded, to say the least, lit up bright and deafening with live music and seeming to burst with so many different colors crammed into one place. After straightening Greg's mask (royal blue and white to match his suit) and warning him not to fuss with it, Cindy took his arm and let him lead her in. The room applauded at the sight of their prince, even more rousing than the greeting for the King and Queen minutes before - where his parents were fair and taciturn leaders, Greg was youthful and likable by damn near everyone, it seemed.
They made the rounds that Greg moaned were necessary for him to make among the usual dignitaries, then quietly excused themselves to search out Moriarty and his bomb. It was unclear whether or not the man himself was there, but as Sherlock and Mycroft both insisted, he had eyes everywhere doing the dirty work. It was most likely that the bomb would be either outside along the foundations of the building or somewhere in a side room, or maybe even in the kitchen where trays and carts were being rolled out all the time.
"Outside first?"
"Yeah, get that over with before it gets too cold."
"Mm."
When they were nearly ten feet from the garden door, an older woman in a mauve dress peeked her head in the corridor from the ballroom and called out, "Yoohoo!Greg, love, I want to meet your young lady!"
"Oh, God, sorry," Greg muttered under his breath before halting and turning them around. "Hullo, Mum. This is Cindy. Cindy, this is my, er, stepmother. Her Royal Highness, Queen Martha Hudson-Lestrade." Rubbing the back of his head, Greg averted his eyes like a teenager and blushed.
Cindy felt as though she'd just been shoved out onto a stage with a spotlight shining in her face and a crowd of thousands waiting for her to recite a soliloquy she'd never bothered learning. Rather than saying how nice it was to meet the matron of their nation, all she could think to blurt out was, "My mum's name is Martha, too."
The old woman smiled and crowed happily, a complete opposite of the woman she was before the public. "How lovely, dear! Martha is a very popular name among people my age, though I suppose your mother's a bit younger than me! Got started late, I did; actually, I was married once before I met dear Geoff! For almost twenty years, but then he went to Death Row and, well, that was that. What about you, love? Where are you from? I'd like to hear all about this mysterious young lady our Greg's been pining after for so long!"
Cindy peered at Greg from the corner of her eye; he winced and his blush darkened.
"Mum, lovely as it would be to have a nice long chat, Cindy and I were actually busy," he muttered with one hand pressed to his eyes.
"Oh, of course, love!" replied the queen instantly, waving her hands and retreating back toward the ballroom. "Don't let me get in the way of young love!" Greg groaned quietly and brought his other hand up to his face as well. "But before that - unless it's an emergency, of course, dears, then get on with it! - make sure you say hello to the DCI and his family, won't you? Kisses, darling!"
"Kisses, Mum."
Just when they thought they were safe, they heard, "And be sure to use protection! I'm your stepmother, not your babysitter, dear!"
The moment the door closed, Cindy burst into uncontrollable cackles while Greg banged his head against the wall. "Oh, that is embarrassing!" she laughed, more amused than she could ever remember being.
"Shut up!" groaned Greg. "But she was right, I ought to go say hello before we do this. Do you want to wait here for me?"
At first Cindy furrowed her brow, wondering why he would think she wanted or needed to wait. "No, I'll come along; it's fine."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, let's go."
They walked with a foot of space between them, Cindy playing with her clutch purse, until Greg tentatively reached across and took her hand. For appearances' sake, of course. Still, she felt heat creep across her collar and neck as they reentered the chaos of the ballroom. Greg hummed along with the music as they picked their way through the dancing couples and under flashing lights until they reached a cluster of numbered tables. The lower numbers were all assigned for fellow royalty who had deigned to appear, but table seven seated a small family that made Cindy's heart wrench. Neither Greg nor his stepmother had actually mentioned the name of the DCI's family, and she hadn't been thinking straight.
Her first sight of her mother and father in 14 years was of them smiling. Leaning in toward one another, hands clasped loosely atop the pristine white tablecloth, Cindy couldn't have wished for a better reunion. But of course, this was hardly the time for such a thing, and she schooled herself into a neutral expression. Her brothers were so handsome it made her want to cry.
As they approached, her father looked up and beamed; Cindy almost smiled back before realizing it was meant for Greg and not her. "Greg, m'boy!" he boomed, uncaring of making those at surrounding tables uncomfortable. "Who is that beautiful girl on your arm? I thought you'd joined a monastery at this point!" Even as he said it he was clambering to his feet, displaying an impressive over-6-foot height that Cindy had completely forgotten, and embracing Greg like a son.
"This is Detective Chief Inspector August Donovan," Greg told Cindy with a smile overflowing with sympathy, "his beautiful wife Martha, and their strapping sons, Scott and Simon." Drawing away from August, Greg instead moved to her side and wrapped an arm around her waist, the perfect image of a doting boyfriend. "This is my-my date, Cindy."
August smiled fondly at their stiff affection and shook Cindy's hand; it was warm and rough. "I've heard a lot about you," she forced out, hoping she sounded normal.
"Nothing bad, I hope?" he grinned, and they all laughed, and it was just so normal. He seemed so happy to be there with his wife and sons, at a benefit memorializing his lost daughter...who he didn't even seem to miss. None of them did, really, though there were lines around her mother's eyes that seemed too deep for her age, and her brothers kept exchanging pointed looks with one another. Scott was doodling on a napkin, and Simon had a book on his lap under the table.
As Greg and August talked, Cindy edged around the table to see what Scott was drawing - a strange sort of tentacle monster and armor-clad super-woman fighting it with a sword. "That's really good," she told him quietly.
Scott blushed. "Thanks."
"Are you like a cartoonist?"
"Illustrator," Simon corrected her without looking up from his book. "He illustrates comic books. But that's for one he's writing himself."
"Shut up!" whispered Scott, blushing furiously, and Cindy grinned.
She turned then to Simon. "What do you do, then?"
The older boy - well, man, he had to be at least 26 - shifted in his seat. "I'm still in uni, getting my teaching degree."
"Brilliant! Not gonna be a copper like your dad, then?"
Both sons snorted. "That'slikely," muttered Scott.
"I'd rather teach children not to do bad things than clean up the mess left by adults who never learned," retorted Simon darkly. He pushed his glasses further up on his long nose and finally looked up at her with hazel-eyed scrutiny. "Why d'you care? Just because our sister's dead you think we're going to drop everything to get revenge, like some stupid action film?"
"Well, n-"
"Looking for Sally's destroyed our father's life, even if he did get promoted to DCI," he continued in a mercilessly flat tone. "He's living in a fantasy world where he thinks he's going to find Sally at any moment, alive and well, when the reality is that after 24 hours the chances of finding a missing child alive plummet to nearly zero. It's been 15 years; her bones are lying at the bottom of the Thames or under four feet of topsoil."
To hear her brother speak so emotionlessly of his own sister - of her, though he didn't know it - made Cindy's skin crawl. But she couldn't blame him for coping in his own way. She swallowed roughly and shrugged with an unsteady smile. "Well. There's always hope."
Simon rolled his eyes and went back to his book, Scott had become absorbed in his drawing again the moment his brother got worked up, and Martha was smiling gratefully at her, eyes shining.
Greg and August discussed a few menial topics, not showing the slightest sign of awkwardness or boredom, for several minutes before he and Cindy were able to make their escape. She waved goodbye to her family, knowing that she would see them all again fairly soon, and if she leaned a bit more on Greg than before he didn't say a word until they were outside.
She looked up from a suspicious clump of rosebushes to see him offering his jacket. "You're shaking." Raising her hands out for the garment, she saw that he was right, even if she didn't feel it at all. "Are you okay, Cindy?"
"Fine," she said, blanching, tugging the jacket tight around herself before continuing the search through the garden. Her second name had never entirely sat well with her before, the unnaturalness of knowing it wasn't really hers, but now it seemed vile and poisonous in the deep back of her throat and made her clench her jaw to keep from being ill.
They pressed on searching fruitlessly for five minutes before, about to give up, Greg grabbed her arm. "Hear that?" he whispered, and Cindy strained her ears listening to the rustling of grass and crunching of fallen leaves. Someone was walking toward them, trying very hard to keep quiet, obviously already knowing someone else was there.
What do we do?she whispered silently.
Greg nervously wetted his lips. Follow my lead, he replied. Sorry.He coiled a hand round the back of her neck, tilted her jaw slightly upward, and kissed her.
Sensation exploded in Cindy's gut, not only from the kiss itself but the fact that this was her very first and it was with the crown prince while searching for bombs in a cluster of rosebushes. She hadn't thought kissing would be so wet, though it was a perfectly sound assumption to make. Her lips felt enormous and were very clumsy, but Greg merely guided them to fit better and let out a theatrical moan. She did the same, though admittedly she was only half-acting as a million new sensations and feelings arose to be cataloged and examined. Their thick heavy masks clashed together and she actually giggled - her!
A blinding white flash and victorious laugh snapped them out of their act with horror; the pap snapped two more pictures as they tore apart, spun on his heel, and ran.
"Who the hell let you in?" shouted Greg after him, tugging at the collar of his shirt. He seemed a bit breathless and red under his mask; Cindy could sympathize.
Moving his hands to his hips, Greg shook his head and turned back to face her. "Well, we just dug ourselves a hole, didn't we? Sorry about that."
After a moment, his breathless chagrin cracked apart into a smile, and then they were giggling like children against the wall of the palace, considerably closer than they'd been before - both figuratively and literally.
A shadow passed over the nearby window and Cindy instinctively flinched, too many memories of Papa Jeff or Meghan's looming forms making her paranoid. Greg looked up for the source and dropped himself and Cindy into a low crouch in the shadows.
Moriarty and another man, both in fine-cut black suits, were sequestered against the window, talking quietly into their champagne flutes. No one looked twice at them. The man's bearing reminded Cindy in an odd way of John Watson, but taller and meaner-looking, like the boy in the schoolyard who slowly stomped the guts out of toads for fun. Really he looked nothing like John at all, it was just the militaristic stance and shabby dress uniform that had her thrown.
"That's them," she whispered, "that's Moriarty and his lackey."
The pair nodded at one another before separating, Moriarty vanishing in the crowd while the soldier moved deliberately toward the kitchen.
"Right, let's split up," decided Greg. "I'll take Moriarty, you take the soldier?"
She nodded, and they set off. Through masses of people Cindy weaved and bobbed, keeping her eyes on the splash of red lapels of the soldier's jacket to trace him. He drifted soundlessly through the crowd, never stopping or straying in his path to the kitchen. Cindy had to bunch her wide skirt in one hand to avoid tripping herself and others up, grimacing when she saw the mud and grass stains on it that came from kneeling and snogging in the shrubbery.
The soldier walked effortlessly through the doors to the kitchen but veered left before he actually made it fully inside. He was less conspicuous in his dark suit, but Cindy would be noticed in an instant with that bloody silver dress of hers. Peering down the wall, she saw another small door a fair space to the left, where servers were rolling trays of hors-d'oeuvres out into the ballroom. Three servers left, and then out rolled the soldier with his cart, the only sign of something amiss being a single wire trailing from under the tablecloth.
She practically sprinted across the distance to him, standing deliberately in the way of his cart only because she didn't know what else to do to stop him. Dark eyes narrowed, and he tried to swerve around her, but Cindy grasped the opposite push-handle and refused to let him move.
"Don't cause a scene, love," purred the soldier, completely unconcerned with being confronted by a skinny 19-year-old with broken ribs.
"Then I suggest you turn this cart around or I damn sure will."
They stared silently at one another for several seconds before, with no outward distress, the soldier walked slowly backwards through the door once again, Cindy still holding the handle on the other side. The door closed behind them, and the sound of the ballroom was muffled.
Cindy felt like she was underwater, trapped in a single moment lasting for decades as the salty spray filled her lungs, but not her eyes. They were glued to the soldier's, in deadlock.
Then he pulled out a gun.
Terror caused a spiraling whirlpool under the depths and sent her careening. She had faced pain, and fright, and hunger, but she couldn't imagine the torture of being shot. Her hands started to shake but she didn't let go of the cart. She was going to die. In a matter of moments, her brains would be scattered across the walls. There would be no more pain, no more fright, no more hunger. Just the dark and quiet. It made her oddly calm.
"Go ahead, shoot me," she said, voice shaking like never before. "I know what a silencer looks like, and you seem to have forgotten yours. The moment you kill me, everyone will know you're here, and then where will you be?"
The soldier chuckled to himself, releasing his other hand around the cart handle to reach into his pocket. "Of course I have a silencer, you stupid girl," he said, not once breaking eye contact as he began fastening it to the barrel of his gun. "If you'd like me to use it, I'll use it, but it won't matter. Everyone here will be pink mist by the end of the evening regardless." He twisted it on slowly, obviously savoring the ability to drag the moment out.
Cindy closed her eyes so she wouldn't see the moment of her death coming. She heard a chamber loading and braced herself.
The soldier sighed. "Well, that's just not fair."
Puzzled, Cindy opened her eyes just in time to see the soldier drop his gun, John Watson holding an identical one to his temple. Young though he was, John's hand didn't falter and his face showed no sign of doubt.
"Back away from the bomb and the girl," the shorter man demanded, "or I willkill you." The soldier pursed his lips but did as he was told, obviously put out. John's eyes went to Cindy. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine."
He nodded. "Good. Now have a seat, Sebastian; the authorities are on their way."
The soldier (apparently named Sebastian) looked theatrically around with his hands held aloft, then shrugged. "And where would you like me to sit if there are no chairs?"
"Try the floor, I hear it's much more comfortable than a bullet in your eye socket."
"Fine, fine, touchy..."
The moment Sebastian's arse hit the tile there were uniformed guards rushing into the tiny room, forcing him into handcuffs and carefully assessing the bomb. "We've got experts coming in to check this out any minute," one of the guards said to John as his fellows forced Sebastian up and out of the room. He rolled the cart out after tucking in the wire. "We'll keep it quiet like you asked, sir."
"Thank you, gentlemen."
They swept out within moments, leaving Cindy and John alone in the small room. The adrenaline suddenly crashed its way out of her veins and she fell back against the wall, wincing and breathing slowly as exhaustion laid over her like a drunken lover. John stepped cautiously to her side but made no move to touch her. "Alright?"
"Mmhmm," she hummed with her eyes closed. "I just can't believe it was that easy."
John snorted. "You call getting a gun aimed in your face 'easy'?" he asked with a breathless giggle. "Come on, let's get you something to drink. They're hushing up the scare so people don't panic."
"And did they get-?"
"Moriarty? Yep," he nodded, putting a hand on her shoulder and guiding her back into the ballroom. "Got him crawling over the front gate, trying to save his own skin. Greg's got a good rugby tackle; I taught him that when we were eight and ten."
She took a slow breath. "Right. So...it's over? I mean, the bomb's gone and Moriarty's going to jail?"
"Far as we can see. Here, have a drink, dance a bit; you've earned it."
And she somehow felt like she had. She found Greg on the edge of the dance floor, leaning across the velvet rope to speak with the conductor of the band. There were grass stains on his knees and a smear of dirt high on his cheek, but it was nothing compared to the ecstatic gleam in his eyes as he swung the rope idly between his hands. He was obviously pleading with the conductor, cajoling him, trying to convince him to do something. At last the conductor rolled his eyes and nodded; Greg clapped him on the back with a grin and found Cindy in the crowd within moments.
"Is this punk?" she asked as the band began playing anew in a disturbingly sweet melody that sounded oddly familiar. Greg laughed and put his hands on her hips and started dancing; the thrill he found from their little shared victory was infectious, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. The proximity of their bodies made dancing a warm and sticky affair, but she didn't mind the closeness. They threw off each other's masks; Greg stared agog into her unhidden face for a full minute before breaking into the widest of smiles and kissing her again.
People who had at first been avoiding it swarmed the dance floor around them, taking cues from their prince and his mysterious date that had apparently caused quite a stir. The bodies pulled in tight and swayed in time to the classical punk, couples were laughing and kissing one another, and for a while Cindy felt blessedly normal. There hadn't just been a gun in her face, and she hadn't just been digging around in a shady garden. Though, she had just been kissing in the shrubbery. That part had been rather nice. As the music winded down, she let Greg pull her in closer, until the light stubble on his chin was scratching her lips, her eyelashes tickling his cheek. There were more eyes, more cameras, but they seemed so far away now that Cindy couldn't bring herself to care.
Song flew after song, dance after dance, drink after drink, until Cindy felt pleasantly heavy and tired and perfectly content to drape herself around Greg's neck and shut out the whole wide world. This had to be what love felt like, this sensation of complete safety and belonging and not caring the smallest bit for what others might say.
"It would be so easy to fall in love with you, Cindy," Greg whispered. "Or Sally?" His lips curved into a smile against the shell of her ear. "Does it matter?"
She pulled herself in closer around him. "I'm the same person no matter what you call me. Though I think I'll go back to Sally after all this is over." When she was with her family again, when she had a chance at a somewhat ordinary life. Bringing up her hand, she cupped the back of his head and played with the short, soft hairs. It would be very easy to fall in love with him, too.
They sat down for a moment, and Cindy borrowed a pen from Greg and wrote a short note on a stray napkin. He tucked it into his pocket for safekeeping before they turned to go back to the dance floor, too giddy to stop celebrating. It had almost been too easy.
"Do you hear something?" asked Greg after a moment. Puzzled, Cindy strained her ears and heard what he was hearing.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The clock tower started chiming in the midnight hour as Cindy's bracelet went off, and terror paralyzed her. Where had the hours gone? She pulled up the edge of her skirt to confirm that the red light on the bracelet was blinking rapidly; Greg went white.
"That's your-!"
"Yeah."
She looked around the ballroom and surely enough, on the other end of the room near the door to the rest of the palace, there was Papa Jeff in a waiter's uniform and fiddling with his watch. He looked livid, but also puzzled. Of course - he used the GPS in the watch and their bracelets to find them when they ran; it would be reading off that she was right on top of him.
Greg's hand touched her elbow. "Ci-...Sally?"
To hear her name, her real name, from his lips was not enough to calm her. "I need to go. I need to go now, and quickly."
"I'll get you out the back gate and call a car."
With his hand on the small of her back they walked calmly and purposefully to the back of the room, stopping only once when Papa Jeff was passing too near. They sat abruptly at the table with her parents and brothers, ducking their heads and avoiding questions until after Papa Jeff had passed. Martha and Scott were staring at her with boggling eyes while Simon and August tried to figure out what was going on.
"You," breathed Martha, staring at her unmasked face for the first time. "You look so..."
Sally reached across the table and closed one hand over her mother's, only briefly, before pulling the napkin from Greg's pocket and laying it on the table. "I know. And there's reason for it. I'll explain it all in time, I swear, but now I've got to-"
"Sally, he's coming this way again; he knows," Greg muttered, pulling them to their feet. Hand-in-hand they fled, only vaguely hearing her father half-shout, "Did he call her Sally?" as they made a break for it.
A wall of solid cold air hit them in the back garden and Sally swore under her breath but kept them running. Greg fumbled to get his jacket around her shoulders even as they dove into the elaborately-arranged hedgerows. "It's not a maze," he instantly dismissed. "Looks like one, acts like one, but it isn't one."
The farther they got from the palace, the quieter their little globe of space became, the eerier and darker the world seemed to be. Sally pulled Greg's jacket tight once more and tried not to gasp when she heard several pairs of footsteps following them into the garden. Greg pulled out his phone and was dialing with shaking fingers.
"Hey, it's me. I need a car round back. No, the far back. All the way back, you bloody-! Yeah, thanks. Is John near you? Where?Right." He rung off and sighed noisily through his nose before dialing again. "John, stop snogging your boyfriend! We have a potentially dangerous situation in the back-"
Sally turned her head just in time to see Papa Jeff diving at them between rows of hedges and let out a shout. The sound of tearing fabric filled the air, and she felt a draft against her leg as she and Greg started sprinting for the back of the garden, twisting their way through the sculpted paths.
"John, hurry up!" Greg shouted into the mobile before ringing off and dropping it rather than risking the loss of speed if he tried to find his pockets in the dark. Sally could barely keep up with his longer legs, not with the paracetamol she'd taken wearing off and the running doing a number on her bruised ribs. Her breath came in ragged gasps even as her small heels sank into the soft soil beneath them, and after sinking in three times her ankle twisted and she fell, accidentally dragging Greg down by the hand with her.
Without wasting a moment Greg was pulling them against the hedgerows, snug into the shadows to pause for breath. "I think we lost him for the time being," he whispered just moments before two sets of running footsteps started pounding against the ground, coming at them quickly. Sally got up and pulled an iron outdoor candlestick from the ground, preparing herself, and the moment the dark shapes turned the corner she swung.
Two pairs of hands too young to belong to Papa Jeff grabbed the candlestick and stopped its path. "What the bloody hell?" snapped John. "Are you trying to kill us?"
The feeble weapon fell from her shaking hands, and Sally covered her face. "Sorry. Sorry, I thought..." She sucked in a lungful of icy air and held it for longer than was advisable before letting it out.
"There's someone after her; we thought you were him," explained Greg while she pulled herself together. "John, you take Sally to the back gate and be sure she gets on her way wherever she needs to go. I'll go with Sherlock; give me your jacket so we can try to trick this guy into thinking I'm you, and we'll distract him. Oh, here, keep your gun."
If they were in daylight and no danger, Sally might have laughed at how short John's sleeves were on Greg, but instead felt like crying. "Will I ever see you again?" she asked. Sherlock rolled his eyes and looked away as Greg smiled.
"Wild horses couldn't keep me away."
She forced a smile and John led her away while Sherlock's voice echoed behind them going in another direction, lecturing on how the height difference between Greg and John made switching pointlessly obvious. John laughed humorlessly and they soldiered on toward the back gate. Even in the dark Sally could see how badly mussed John's hair was and the half-tucked state of his shirt, and felt sorry for ruining what was probably a lovely evening for him. Well, it had been a lovely evening for her, too. She'd had the most wonderful time.
"Where's the car taking you?" asked John as they made it free of the hedgerows and the gate entered their sights.
She shook her head. "I don't know. I can't go home now he knows I've left. I- John!"
A shadow streaked out from the labyrinth with two candlesticks in one hand and a gun in the other; before John could free his weapon from his waistband the candlestick was falling over the crown of his head and he was bleeding on the ground with the pointed end of the other candlestick stabbed through his shoulder, pinning him to the ground like a butterfly on a mat. Papa Jeff downright snarled as he turned on her next, swinging the candlestick as she tried to run for the car in vain. All he had to do was stomp on the trailing bit of her skirt and she was falling again on her twisted ankle.
"I put weeks into making sure this would go perfectly, and you ruined it!" he shouted, slamming the iron down onto her back and relishing her scream of agony. "You filthy - no good - whore!"
There was no pain like that of the iron rod's blows raining down on her. Sally almost would have preferred being shot, if only because she would have died straight out. But Papa Jeff just kept hitting her no matter if she tried to get away or even stopped fighting at all, his fury driving him to new heights of violence.
"You think the prince will save you if you suck his prick, is that it?" spat Papa Jeff next, throwing the candlestick away and looming over her with disgust in every line of his face. "You think you can get away? No. I will never let you go." With his free hand he wrenched Sally to her feet, forcing her to stand even as her knees buckled with pain, then pressed the barrel of his gun into her back. "The fairy tale's over, Cindy. Time to go back to the real world."