Beautiful Minds – Outtakes

by Soledad

Author's notes: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see Outtakes 01.

Also, please consider the big, honking AU label.

This part is set at the same time as the first ones and is its direct continuation. Obviously.

Toshiko's last message is a modified version of that in the Torchwood Second Season finale, "Exit Wounds".

Note: This part hasn't been beta read yet. so apologies for all mistakes. I'll replace it with the final version as soon as it comes back from my lovely beta. I just didn't want people to wait for too long for the ending.

HANKY ALERT!

Outtakes 03 – Hell Hath No Fury…

Part 03

Ianto drives them to Baker Street, assuming (and rightly so) that John wouldn't be able to stay in his home alone, knowing that Toshiko will spend the night in prison. John and Sherlock go up to the living room at once. Ianto parks the car and contacts Mycroft to inform him about the events at Appledore Tower in all the necessary details.

Then he rejoins the other two in the living room, which looks every bit as it's always looked, regardless of John's presence or absence. It was always Sherlock whose taste and personality marked their environment. John's sparse belongings usually went under in Sherlock's mess. Back when they lived here together, that fact often annoyed John. Now it is a blessing. It is like coming home.

"Mr Holmes is not happy,"" Ianto tells them. "With any of us. The least with me, I reckon, for going behind his back. But he won't make an appearance tonight; he has to organize the damage control at Appledore, and it will likely take the whole night."

"Thank God for small mercies," John mutters; then he glares at them. "Well? Which one of you's gonna tell me why my wife saw no other way out than to murder that jackal and why she'll be spending the rest of her life in some nameless government prison?"

Ianto looks at Sherlock. "You were there from the beginning."

Sherlock shakes his head. "Actually, I wasn't. I entered the scene just a few years before you. You've probably gained a better picture of the early years from the Archives."

"All right," Ianto says. "Here are the facts. Toshiko's scientific genius was discovered at a tender age; she started university with sixteen and did exceedingly well, despite being years younger than the average student. This was brought to the attention of Mr Holmes, who selected her for his scientific think tank while she was only twenty and still at university. She worked with that group for the next ten years. After graduating, she got employed by the Lodmoor Research Facility, a division of the Ministry of Defence, where she got her second degree, working on sonic technology."

"Unfortunately for her, a renegade member of the same think tank joined an eco-terrorist group," Sherlock picks up the story when Ianto pauses to order his thoughts. "This group arranged the kidnapping of Mrs Sato to blackmail Toshiko into building them the sonic weapon the lab was experimentally working on. She managed to build it, even though the blueprints she'd stolen from the lab were faulty."

"It was the same weapon she used today on Mr Magnussen," Ianto adds.

"She couldn't know that Ms Blaine and her department within MI5 already had a close eye on the group," Sherlock continues. "All they needed was to catch them red-handed."

"Which they did, in the very moment when Toshiko delivered the weapon," Ianto supplies grimly. "They all ended up in prison, without a trial, without the chance to defend themselves – as if there could have been any acceptable defence for what they planned to do. You saw the weapon at work; it's still an experimental prototype, but it can do a lot of damage, almost without getting noticed. The ideal thing for terrorists."

"And Toshiko went to prison for high treason, too, right?" John asks because there really isn't any other way things could have happened. She cooperated with terrorists, for God's sake! She built them the ultimate weapon! Even if John understands – and he does, really – that she only did this to save her mother, there's no way that she would have spared.

Ianto nods. "Yes. Her rights as a citizen were withdrawn, as is the standard procedure in such cases, without legal representation or the right of appeal. She'd have been held there indefinitely, with no contact to anyone outside the facility, if not for Mr Holmes."

John shakes his head in bewilderment. "Is there anything that man can't do?"

"I mean the younger Mr Holmes," Ianto corrects, and John stares at Sherlock, baffled.

"You got her out of a secret government prison? How? Why?"

"Don't be ridiculous, John, of course I didn't," Sherlock answers with a snort. "Admittedly, I knew of her; there aren't that many people with genius-level intelligence in this country. But that's all. I merely suggested to Mycroft that it would be a criminal waste to allow a mind like hers to rot away in prison when it could be put to much better use and my brother, the greedy git, agreed with me about that at least. We both hate waste. So he pulled some strings…"

"A lot of strings, actually," Ianto corrects. "It couldn't have been easy. She was in a high-security UNIT prison, and Mr Holmes has only so much influence when it comes to international anti-terrorist operations. He has a… a consulting function," he says, with a jaundiced sideways glance at Sherlock, "but he doesn't make the actual decisions."

Sherlock shrugs. "He still got her out, didn't he?"

"Yet for that, he had to call in a lot of favours," Ianto says seriously. "Favours he wasn't able to call in later in other difficult situations. And ever since he got Toshiko out of that fetid hole, certain people have been watching him – and her – with eagle eyes to see them make a mistake. She's always been a liability for him; but she's done excellent work, so the gain overweighed the risk."

"She once mentioned that she was supposed to work for Mycroft for five years only but proved too useful to be let go, ever," John murmurs and Ianto nods.

"Not because of Mr Holmes, though," he clarifies. "He would have honoured the five-year-agreement. It's UNIT that would never let her go; even though her records have been wiped clean."

"But some people remembered," John realises, "and that's how Magnussen got wind of it. That's what he had in hand against Mycroft."

Ianto nods again. "When Magnussen began to send her subtle hints that he new about her past, Toshiko understood that sooner or later he would begin to blackmail her. It wasn't her past that worried her. She never denied that she was guilty, you see. But if a story about Mr Holmes making a deal with a traitor and a terrorist hit the papers – cos that is how CAM News would have sold it – that would have ended Mr Holmes's career and destroyed everything he'd worked for in the last twenty-some years."

"Which, as much as I hate to admit, wouldn't be good for this country," Sherlock adds.

"But more than that, Toshiko refused to live in fear," Ianto says. "She wanted the matter settled, once and forever."

"By murdering Magnussen with the only weapon that would without doubt reveal her as the murderer?" Sherlock frowns. "That was stupid. As a rule, she isn't stupid."

"When we went to Appledore, we still believed there would be hard copies," Ianto explains. "The plan was that she'd distract Magnussen by pleading to him not to destroy her life, while I search the Vaults and remove the evidence. Then we'd have planted the sonic weapon to conjure up a past connection between Magnussen and the Toclafane, which would have delivered him into a UNIT prison for the rest of his life. Of course, when we realised that there were no such thing as the Appledore Vaults, she had to improvise; and she chose to remove the threat to Mr Holmes. Permanently."

"I can't blame her," Sherlock grimaces. "Staying in Mycroft's debt for life is just a different sort of prison."

John gives him a weary glare. "Sherlock… just shut up, would you?"

Surprisingly enough, Sherlock does just that, and John turns back to Ianto. "So, what can we do now?"

"There's nothing to do," the young Welshman answers regretfully. "The murder Mr Holmes might have been able to sweep under the carpet; but the fact that she was able to rebuild the same weapon from memory only would raise all sorts of alarms with MI5, MI6, UNIT and a dozen other organisations connected with the Home Office. Besides, she refused to run away. You both heard her."

"I'm never going to see her again, am I?" John murmurs in defeat.

Ianto hesitates for a moment, but then he chooses to be honest with the doctor. "Most likely not, I'm sorry. The most you can hope for is to be allowed to raise your child."

"Will I?" John asks quietly and Sherlock's expression becomes feral.

"Oh, I'll make sure that you will, John, don't worry. Even if I have to tie Mycroft to a chair and force-feed him with double chocolate cake until he bursts. This is all his fault anyway."

"Hardly," Ianto says dryly; then he rises. "Well; I have to go now. There's a great deal of clean-up to do, and every single one of us will be needed. Me especially, as I'll have to go through Mr Magnussen's library, at the odd chance that there are still sensitive documents hidden among the books."

"Mycroft's minions can do that," Sherlock says, sounding bored.

Ianto tilts his head to the side and gives him a blank smile that, nonetheless, is vaguely unsettling.

"Certainly. And I am the minion best suited for that particular task. I was trained to become head archivist of the Torchwood Institute, remember? If there's anything, I will find it."

With that, he leaves them alone and Sherlock, fairly out of his depth, makes awkward attempts to be helpful.

"Your room hasn't been changed much, John; well, save for the case files I store on your bed," he offers. "I can temporarily move them back to my bedroom if you want to sleep in your old bed tonight."

John almost smiles at that because the offer is so much Sherlock that it is comforting in itself.

"I don't think I could sleep tonight at all," he says. "And should I nick off after all, the sofa will do nicely enough. It won't be the first time."

"Yes, and it's killing your bad shoulder every time," Sherlock retorts. "You're being unreasonable, John."

"Perhaps," John allows. "Let's compromise, then. We can watch crap telly. I need the distraction, and you can snip at the idiocy of it, like in old times."

Neither of them sleeps that night. The telly keeps running without actually being paid attention to. John is still too numb with shock, and after a while Sherlock retreats into his Mind Palace to analyse the recent events and the mistakes they all made, for future reflection.

Around 9 pm Mrs Hudson appears with Sherlock's breakfast. She notices the tension and sadness in the atmosphere at once and leaves the tea and toast on the coffee table of the living room without a comment. John drinks the tea and munches on a piece of dry toast, going through the motions like an automaton, just because it gives him something to do. Sherlock ignores the whole scene. Then they fell quiet again, while the telly keeps running in the background, tone now muted.

A little after 10 pm Ianto arrives at Baker Street. He doesn't look any different than he always does, not really; and yet there's something in his manner that gets Sherlock out of his Mind Palace at once.

"What happened?" the detective asks sharply.

"There was an accident," Ianto replies, avoiding to meet their eyes. "The car that took Toshiko back to prison somehow got out of control and slammed into a concrete wall at full speed. The driver died on the spot. The two agents accompanying her are in hospital with multiple skull and rib fractures… it doesn't look good."

"What about her?" John asks in the insane hope that she might have somehow got away, although Ianto's expression suggests something else as he is staring down at his highly polished dress shoes.

"She made it to the A & E… barely," the young Welshman says. "I'm sorry, Dr Watson. Even if they could have saved her, she'd have been paralysed from the neck down."

"The baby?" John asks tonelessly. Ianto just shakes his head.

Later, John has no memories about the rest of the day. As a doctor, he knows how shock can cause memory loss; he still finds it odd how he's lost half a day so completely.

His memories set on again in the next morning, when he finds himself sitting in the living room, still wearing the same clothes he put on before they'd break into Magnussen's house, staring at a paper cover with an unlabelled DVD in it that lies in front of him on the coffee table.

"What is this?" he asks, his voice harsh and foreign in his own ears.

"Something Jeeves left here for you," the familiar baritone answers and, looking up, he sees Sherlock saunter into the room, wearing his old, blue dressing gown and pyjama bottoms and nothing on his feet. "He said Toshiko gave it him to deliver to you, should anything happen to her," he looks at John expectantly, then he asks. "Well, aren't you going to watch it?"

John doesn't answer. He doesn't know what to answer. He doesn't know if he has the strength to watch the pre-recorded message of his dead wife… 'cause what else could it be? He doesn't know if he'll ever have the strength.

"You can use my laptop," Sherlock offers awkwardly. "I'll leave you alone to watch it, if that's what you want."

"No," John finally says, and it's shockingly hard to speak at all. "No, I don't want to watch it alone. Besides, if I did, the curiosity would kill you."

"You want us to watch it together?" Sherlock clarifies because that thing with human emotions is still terra incognita for him.

John gives him a tired smile. Well… the pale echo of a smile, saddled heavily with sorrow, but still something akin a smile.

"Yeah," he says. "Bring the bloody laptop. Perhaps it's better to have a friend with me while I'm doing this."

Sherlock jumps at the choice to finally be able to do something that might be helpful, and less than five minutes later they are staring at the laptop screen. John has the CD already slid into the slot, and now Sherlock is waiting for him to hit Play.

As soon as he is, a window pops up, showing Toshiko, wearing glasses and a white lab coat. She takes off the glasses and faces the camera.

"John," she says, and her voice is so achingly there that John could feel a suspicious prickling in his eyes. "If you're seeing this, I guess it means, I'm... well, dead. Hope it was impressive! Not crossing the road or an incident with a toaster. I just wanted to say... it's OK. It really is. You saved me. You showed me that there are still possibilities in this world; that there's still joy and love and happiness. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Thank you. I love you. Always will, no matter what happens. And... I hope I did good… and that you won't forget me."

The message ends and Sherlock stops the DVD at the last picture to conserve Toshiko's shy, beautiful smile, meant for John alone. But John can't even see through the blur of his unshed tears. She was the best thing that's happened to him since Sherlock's fake suicide, and now she is gone, too.

The fact that at least Sherlock is back doesn't lessen the impact of her loss; and that of their unborn child.

"Dammit," he breathes heavily, trying to force the tears back… and failing spectacularly. "Why must you all leave me behind?"

But Sherlock, watching him helplessly break down under the burden of his grief, has no answer to that question. For the first time of his life, the world's only consulting detective has no answers at all.

~The End – for now~

Will be continued in "Outtakes 04 – Secrets of the Soul".

Soon. Don't worry. It's already been written.