To address some reader's comments and concerns: Yes, even though this story is going to wade through some heavy emotional waters, there will eventually be a happy ending for some of the characters. But not all. Also, Molly was drinking wine in the first chapter even though she's pregnant: a single glass now and then is perfectly safe. Remember, her initial goal was a glass of milk but the envelope rattled her so much she needed a bit of Dutch courage to steady her nerves.
Oh, yeah, and I still own nothing. I am in the same boat as every other writer on this site, sadly. We all just love to play in someone else's sandbox, is all.
The "M" didn't belong, as he'd assumed at the time, to a dead man. No, strike that; it belonged to a dead man, just not the dead man he'd anticipated (dreaded) seeing when he arrived at the meeting place at the prescribed time.
It wasn't Jim Moriarty, miraculously still alive after eating the barrel of a revolver and leaving his brains leaking out his ears on the roof of St. Bart's. If he'd fooled Sherlock the way Sherlock had fooled the rest of the world (excepting Molly), then he was continuing to lay low.
Instead, Sherlock found himself facing a man he'd seen shot down by John Watson on the eve of his own return to the land of the living.
Sebastian Moran.
He was sitting outside the café's front door, sipping coffee, smoking a cigarette, face hidden behind a newspaper as Sherlock strode up to the entrance. His voice had arrested the detective in mid-step. "Hullo, Mr. Holmes. I was wondering if you'd show up."
He folded the paper with deliberation, taking another drag off the cigarette hanging from his lips as he placed the paper and coffee cup down on the table and jerked his head toward the light-weight metal-and-rattan chair opposite his. "Have a seat. We have a lot to talk about."
Sherlock did as he was asked – ordered – willing to go along with whatever the other man wanted, at least until he determined the truth of his assertions that his son was being poisoned in some unknown manner. "You used a body double," he said after a moment spent sizing each other up had passed in silence.
Moran inclined his head in acknowledgement (still blonde, still a military-style crew cut, still the same cruel green eyes and jagged scar by his left eyebrow, but he's lost at least fifteen pounds in the 18 months since his supposed death). "And you jumped into a truck full of mattresses, doused yourself with your own blood, cut yourself up, dosed yourself with something to simulate death and dropped onto the pavement in time for your best mate to find you and believe you'd killed yourself. We all have our tricks, Mr. Holmes. I needed you off my back, and letting Dr. Watson 'kill' me seemed to be the best way to go about it."
"A pity Jim Moriarty didn't have any such backup plans in place," Sherlock sneered.
Moran stiffened at the slight to his former employer (lover, best mate, brother-in-all-but-blood?), then visibly forced himself to relax, to adopt a nonchalant pose as he leaned back in his seat and took another drag off his cigarette. "True, Jimmy usually had at least three of those in play at all times, but he thought he had you over a barrel. Then you came up with something that made him realize you had the upper hand, so he killed himself. For real. Quite the mess he left behind, too," he added, as if reminiscing about his days in the military, with fondness and a bit of disgust at the same time. "Took my men almost an hour to get it all cleaned up before the coppers showed up to investigate the roof." He grinned, a shark's grin, all teeth and no mercy. "Wouldn't want them to suspect foul play, now would we? Give them a reason to doubt your suicide and all of Jimmy's plans for you would unravel."
"How loyal of you to want him to succeed even after he'd made such a spectacular failure of himself," Sherlock responded, sounding bored. "Is there a point to all this, Mr. Moran? Unless you'd rather I called you 'Seb,'" he added with a deliberate sneer.
Only Jim Moriarty had been allowed to call the ex-military man 'Seb,' Sherlock knew that from his investigation into the madman's right-hand man, even if the true nature of their close relationship continued to elude him (hard to deduce when no one else knew, either, except the two who would never reveal it to him). His chosen executioner; the sniper who'd had a bead on John Watson's head, who would have shot him without a single qualm or pang of conscience just on Moriarty's say-so.
The one who now claimed to be poisoning Edmund Hooper-Holmes through unknown means. "Let's dispense with the tedious backstory, shall we?" he said, leaning forward abruptly and resting his arm on the table. "I presume you have more proof than a single snap of my son at the St. Bart's crèche to back up your ridiculous claims?"
"Seems healthy, doesn't he?" Moran mused as he took a deliberate sip of his coffee, finishing it off before setting it back on the table. "Shows no symptoms, hasn't been sick, not coughing, eats all right, nice skin tone…" Then he leaned forward as well, eyes darkening as he and Sherlock locked stares. "Get a urine sample from him. Find someone, some doctor or lab tech, who owes you a favor – and don't try to tell me you haven't one on the string, because we both know you'll be lying if you do – and ask them to analyze the sample off the record, looking for these specific markers." He slid a folded piece of paper across the table. Sherlock pocketed it without removing his gaze from the man opposite him. "You have two days to check it out. Oh, and don't tell the little woman about our meeting, or I'll add her to the 'experiment.' Only her dose won't be slow-acting – and I won't be giving her the antidote."
He rose to his feet, dropping his cigarette butt into the empty coffee cup. "Meet me here at the same time in two days, Mr. Holmes, and tell me then if you think I'm lying." Then he smiled his predator's smile and strolled away.
He hadn't had to tell Sherlock not to follow him or go to the police; that much was understood by them both. If he did either, Moran would cut his losses – and Edmund and Molly would both be dead. Either from this mystery toxin or through the more straightforward methods Moran usually preferred.
Instead, Sherlock had taken a urine sample from his son – ridiculously easy to do where little boys were concerned, especially at diaper-changing time – and brought it to a private lab outside of London where, yes, the head technician owed him an enormous favor for saving her brother's life.
The sample had turned out to be positive for the markers Moran had indicated. Markers for a designer poison of some kind that, so he was informed, would take months to fully analyze or reproduce – and even longer to find an antidote to.
His son was being poisoned. A slow-acting poison, but one that would ultimately prove fatal, would already have done so if he hadn't been similarly dosed with the antidote. The estimate given to him by the technician was that yes, the person who was being poisoned – he neither identified the victim nor the reason for his analysis – would be dead within a week if the antidote weren't administered by then.
And no, she told him apologetically, even though he hadn't asked, she couldn't even begin to try and concoct an antidote. It was impossible in the timeframe allowed. Their facilities and, she told him with a frankness he couldn't help but appreciate, her research skills just weren't up to it.
A sort of numbness fell over him as he returned to the flat later that morning, after first stopping by St. Bart's to pick up Edmund and take him home in order to spend one last day with his son before his next meeting with Moran – a meeting, he knew, that would end with him doing exactly as he was told. He took a bitter sort of pride in the fact that Molly saw nothing wrong, nothing worrying in his behavior on that last day and night the three of them were to spend together.
He played with his son while Molly finished out her day at work; took him to the park after lunch, fed him ice cream – could the park vendor be the dispenser of the poison, wittingly or unwittingly? Had it been in the canned, circle-shaped spaghetti Sherlock fed him for lunch in complete disregard of Molly's request that they try and eat something healthy for once?
There was no way of knowing, short of analyzing everything his son ate or touched or wore – impossible in the timeframe allowed, he thought to himself bitterly as he waited for Molly to return home from St. Bart's that evening.
After Eddie had been fed and bathed and read to – one story from each parent – and put to bed, he'd taken Molly upstairs to John's old room, laid her on the day bed and made love to her with a hunger and intensity he knew would have to last him for a long, lonely time. No matter how this all turned out, no matter how long it took him to extricate his son from this torturous predicament – and he would do so, or die trying – he knew the fallout would be devastating to his relationship with his son's mother.
Especially if he was, indeed, forced to reenter a sexual relationship with Irene Adler.
Afterwards, when they'd lain together, entwined in one another's arms, Molly dozing lightly against his shoulder as he toyed with her hair and pressed absent kisses to her forehead, he thought about how his life had changed for the better the moment Edmund entered the picture – oh, it had already been dramatically improved by the change in his relationship with Molly from "almost friends" to "more than friends," but still. His son's birth had been nothing short of a revelation.
Even though fatherhood had been thrust upon him without warning; even though at first he'd been angry – more at himself than at Molly, although a measure of fault lay with her for their collusion in careless recklessness the night of his triumphant return – and disconcerted and, if he was willing to admit it, terrified; even though he'd felt all those things, all the doubts and fears and anger had fallen by the wayside that night.
When the nurse laid his newborn, squalling, red-faced son in his arms, he'd understood the concept of love in a way he never had before. And when he looked down at Molly, an expression of unabashed wonder on his face, and met her tired, smiling face, he'd understood that he loved her as well. That the child he'd originally worried would be nothing but an unwanted burden, a distraction, was the symbol of that love.
He'd finally fallen prey to sentiment, and now he was helplessly trapped by it. And Sebastian Moran had taken ruthless advantage of that entrapment.
oOo
"Why Egypt? Why Irene Adler?" Sherlock asked without preamble as he took a seat opposite Moran in front of the designated café. "Or is this just the beginning of a series of demands you intend to make on me?"
Moran was as relaxed as he had been during their first meeting, his gaze as unwavering, his grin as shark-like. "I owe Irene, I told you that in my note," he replied, steepling his fingers beneath his chin in what could only be a deliberate parody of Sherlock's usual "thinking" mode. "Who do you think got me a body double, one that I could use to make even the great Sherlock Holmes believe it was me?" He leaned forward, his grin morphing into one that held actual glee instead of a threat. "After all, she's rather brilliant at that sort of thing, finding just the right body at just the right time. I'm surprised you didn't go to her for help when you needed one, instead of that frigid little Hooper bitch."
Sherlock fought back the urge to throttle the man sitting opposite him, hands fisted, fingernails digging into palms deeply enough to draw blood. Something in his expression must have alerted Moran, who leaned forward, his own hands going casually to his sides, but the threat was clear since Sherlock had already noted the presence of a gun and a knife beneath the bulky jacket his current nemesis wore.
"What, you don't expect me to believe such a mousy little nobody is actually a tiger between the sheets, do you?" Moran sneered, deliberately pressing Sherlock. Testing him, seeing how far he could push him. "She certainly never let Jimmy find out, although he was willing to give her whatever she wanted. To thank her, you know," he added, clearly watching for Sherlock's response to his taunting words. "For giving him a built-in excuse to get to see you up close and personal. He thought she'd buy into your 'he's gay' theory, but he also thought he'd get a chance to prove you wrong, was really looking forward to shagging her. Funny," he added musingly, "he thought he had her down cold, could read her like a book, but she managed to surprise him." His expression darkened. "He didn't like that, not one bit, but no one thought hurting her would affect you so he didn't bother."
"He made many mistakes. His dismissal of Molly as unimportant was only one," Sherlock said through gritted teeth. "You've made just as many as he ever did, by the way. Once my son is safe, once he's been cured, you and I will have another 'discussion,' only when that happens," and it was his turn to grin a shark's grin, a predator's grin, "it won't go nearly as well for you as this one has."
A flash of something – concern? – appeared and disappeared in Moran's eyes before he waved Sherlock's threat away with a dismissive gesture. "Yeah, but right now I hold all the cards, Mr. Holmes, and don't you forget it. So today you write that good-bye note to Dr. Hooper, kick her out of your flat and your life, and toddle off to Cairo." He tossed a sheet of paper onto the table. "Our dear Ms. Adler will be staying at this hotel for the next two weeks. Convince her to stay longer, find some trouble for the two of you to get into – oh, and make sure she stays completely satisfied, if you know what I mean." He offered up a wink and a leering grin, on the off-chance that his current victim had no idea what he meant by "satisfied", Sherlock supposed as the sick feeling in his stomach – the one that hadn't gone away since he'd received Moran's instructions two days ago – grew. "That's part of the deal. Make her happy, Mr. Holmes. In every way possible. Do it well, and your son lives – and maybe one day I'll even tell you why it's so important."
Then he got up and left, and Sherlock slumped in his chair, mind working furiously – and futilely – at the problem he now faced.
Destroy Molly's happiness, the life they'd created together…or watch her die first, then their son.
Hobson's choice, when it came down to it. Saving Edmund's life was the only choice he could possibly make.
With heavy heart, he rose to his feet and headed back to his flat, to write the most painful note of his life.
All for Edmund, he told himself over and over again in the endless cab ride home.
It didn't help the sorrow that clenched his heart. He was in this dilemma because of sentiment, and sentiment would continue to plague him until it had come to some sort of a conclusion.
For the first time in his life, he considered offering up a prayer to a deity he'd never believed in, for the sake of his son's innocent life.
Then he entered his flat and proceeded to demolish the life he'd embarked on with Molly.