A/N: Very near the end, I think. My greatest appreciation and thanks to all of you that have stuck with me through to the end! Thanks for reading and the kind reviews. :)
Warning: Violence! Be warned.
Sherlock's hands were white-knuckled against the armrest of the chair, his muscles and his joints stiff. He had not moved from that position since he started watching the video feed, hours poured into the examination of previous recordings and now this - at the sight of the two nude forms reclining no the couch he looked away, scarcely breathing. Ice and fire fought over the insides of his veins, and he enraged himself by noticing the bulge straining at the front of his suit pants.
"Don't know quite what to do with it, do you?" asked a voice by the door, and Sherlock swiveled the chair away from Mycroft, causally drawing his coat into his lap to cover himself up.
"I know exactly what to do with it."
"Do you?"
Mycroft stepped into the room, his eyes on the pair on the screen.
"Well if he's quite content to get himself bedded and eaten far be it from me to - "
"Sherlock."
The two Holmes traded angry glares, and for once Sherlock was the one to turn away. He didn't understand this - he couldn't compute this. There was bitterness in his mouth and stinging in his eyes, but Sherlock wasn't the type of man to cry. Caring is not an advantage, he told himself. But why was he there at all, in London, when he should have been quietly biding his time, systematically burning out the rest of Moriarty's network elsewhere if he didn't care?
Yes, he did care. It was the only logical conclusion. Now what was he going to do with that data?
"For all your powers of observation, you can be incredibly naïve," drawled Mycroft, leaning against the video console and tapping a finger to the screen. "Dr. Watson seems to be able, on a daily basis, to succeed in deducing something that you aren't capable of comprehending."
"And what's that?" Mycroft leaned in, his eyebrows raising and his eyes widening in that expression that Sherlock hated - the one that had been telling them since they were old enough to coherently understand each other that he was missing something important.
"What he wants."
Sherlock was grateful to be distracted from his brother by the movement on screen. He watched as John stood, disentangling himself from the younger man and moving off towards his room - Sherlock's room. The detective couldn't help but feel a strange ambivalence at the idea of John sleeping in his bed, his mental eye transfixed on a room in his mind palace dedicated to the way John's body had looked while he touched himself on Sherlock's sheets. There was an indirect intimacy in the thought of it, one that made the detective's stomach drop and body warm. Was that… desire? Yes, of course it was. But what an invasion of privacy it had been! Then again, flatsharing was an invasion of privacy in and of itself. The sound of a door closing pulled the consulting detective from his thoughts and he brought his eyes to the screen. The young surgeon had been seated with his head against the arm of the chair, supposedly sleeping. At the sound of the door he had raised his gaze, looked the camera in the eye and winked.
Sherlock stood and swept on his coat and scarf in one fluid motion. He noted that Mycroft was abysmal at hiding smirks and strode past him to the door.
"Where are you going, Sherlock?"
The detective met his brother's eyes and the challenge there with a stone-set face and a determined glare.
"To get what I want. Now give me a car."
Sherlock had to admit as he sat in the back of one of his brother's luxurious black cars that being related to Mycroft Holmes had its perks. Eyes scanned the car's interior - fancy leather, spotlessly clean, occupied only by himself, the driver, and the assistant who persisted on being on her cell phone regardless of whether or not she was doing anything meaningful on it. Sherlock glanced over at the movements of her fingers and registered that she had sent only one text in the fifteen minutes they'd been driving, and spent the rest of the time admiring the colorful, shifting background on her screen - or, he surmised, observing him out of the corner of her eye with the purpose of reporting to his brother later, which might possibly have been the more likely case.
They were ten minutes from Baker Street when Sherlock sent the message.
Rooftop. Ten minutes. -SH
He could only assume that Niles would bring John with him, regardless of whether or not he specified to come alone. Leverage was what the doctor was, like a hostage that didn't know he'd ever been taken. Sherlock couldn't, wouldn't simply ensure Niles' disappearance - he had implanted himself too deeply into John's life for that. But Sherlock couldn't leave him off either. And Niles, for whatever reason, was enthralled by the both of them. The detective could see that Niles was using their little quandary - and the cover of Baker Street and its position as media black spot, its relative low profile with the police - to enjoy himself, and it didn't help that most everyone he'd operated on at Bart's would come to his defense.
There was no way around their little game.
The young surgeon was waiting for him when he clambered up the fire escape, perched on the edge of the roof with a cloth and a sabre in his hands, another blade balanced across his lap. Sherlock eyed them warily, noting their sharpness and lack of plastic safety nibs - they were lethal blades, or had been sharpened to be.
"Care for a bout, Sherlock?" asked Niles, setting the cloth down beside him and taking both blades into his hands. He approached the detective and offered him a sabre, hilt-first. Sherlock's eyes glanced at the reddish bruise, the slight imprint of teeth low on the other man's neck - Niles had come topless, clad only in his pajama bottoms for the purpose of showing it off, no doubt - and fought the urge to lunge forward with the sabre and impale the young surgeon on its blade.
"Or would you rather run me through?"
Sherlock took the sabre and Niles took a few steps back, bending his knees a few times to test their pliancy. He took the stance of a practiced fencer - though Sherlock read in the angling of his feet that he hadn't been practiced at it for a few years. He had been distracted by other recreational activities.
"Used to love it, fencing," said Niles, taking a practice lunge, his blade swinging a foot from Sherlock's face. "Most fencing's like flirting, really - back and forth, teasing each other, trying to figure out who's going to make the first move and how to respond to it. I much prefer the sabre. More direct, more… aggressive. You lunge - " The surgeon took a step forward and lunged at him, his blade coming in from Sherlock's right. He batted it aside and took a step back, raising his sabre in preparation for another attack.
"Good! I lunge, you parry, the sequence continues. Of course I'm out of practice. Haven't had the time lately, with… you know, everything I've been up to. Do you have any answers for me, incidentally?" Sherlock watched his feet, mirrored his stance.
"You ate them," he said simply, stepping forward and feinting a cut to Niles' wrist before swinging down at his other side. Niles anticipated and parried the blade away, moving in to mark Sherlock's neck - the detective leapt away. "Your first mistake was where you chose to drug me - in the alley, where I could see your car and your helpers. Who are they, caretakers? A butler, perhaps? You take them back to that family home in East Finchley, likely some specialized room you have made up, chop them up, bring some of the meat back… here."
Sherlock advanced on him, making the surgeon retreat, and moved as if he were feinting at his wrist. Niles saw the dip in his blade and went to parry a blow coming to his other side as he had before - Sherlock used the opening to score a cut on his original target, a thin line of blood emerging on Niles' wrist. The surgeon retreated a few steps and drew his tongue against the cut, humming with his now red-tinged lips.
"Very good, Mr. Holmes! You do read people quite well, don't you? Still, though, that isn't all there is to my puzzle, is there? No, that was just the bonus." The surgeon advanced quickly, and Sherlock found himself retreating, almost stumbling over his steps as attacks came one after the other, the younger man's speed surprising him. Niles stopped and stood straight and Sherlock caught his breath, maintaining his stance. The boy wasn't done yet. "You still haven't told me why, Sherlock. Why am I at Baker Street at all, why come back and hunt all those people in London when I would've done perfectly well where I was? I'll leave him alone, as promised, if you've got an answer for me. Although," and Sherlock narrowed his eyes when he raised a finger to the mark on his neck. "John may be just the tiniest bit upset. He has gotten quite fond of me, I think. You know, I was wrong about him. He wears dominance very well. Must be the soldier in him… so very suited to barking out orders to people on their knees."
Sherlock swallowed, began an advance on the surgeon again. He wasn't about to let himself be distracted by inappropriate thoughts of John and his military attitude now.
"It's a cover," Sherlock said, finding his sabre locked in one of Niles' parries. "No one will investigate Baker Street after that fiasco with my suicide. And Lestrade is far too sentimental to come at it for anything criminal. And John, John is leverage - "
"No, no, no!" Niles took a step in, twisting his blade and using the momentum to rip Sherlock's sabre out of his hand.
"That's all convenient, yes," he said tapping Sherlock on the head with the flat of his blade. "But what's the big picture, Mr. Holmes?
Sherlock took advantage of the surgeon's moment of arrogance and grabbed his arm, turning him and tackling him to the ground, his sabre and the arm that held it twisted painfully against his back. His mind raced, running through interactions with Niles, everything they'd said when they had first met in the living room of Baker Street, the comments he made about John, the way he looked at him when he talked - the murders, the lack of connection between them, their lack of importance…
"This is all about me. Somehow, all of this has been about me," he said, and the boy beneath him laughed.
"Quite sexy when you're being forceful, Mr. Holmes. And quite right! Do go on."
Sherlock wrestled the sword from his hand and tossed it aside, keeping Niles pressed against the rooftop.
"Who the victims were is irrelevant. The murders were just a tool - like John. All of it was to get me involved. But why? What do I matter to you? You were in Germany for most of your adult life, how have you even heard of me?"
"Come now, that would be giving it away. You're not getting partial credit for that, either. Think, my dear detective!"
Sherlock scrambled, snatched and groped for information - but he didn't have nearly enough to go on. He slipped his hand into the younger man's pocket and snatched his phone before standing and backing off, quickly picking up a sabre from the ground and holding it to his neck to keep him from getting to his feet. He didn't know. He had assumptions, but they were farfetched, outrageous. He had thought Niles might have connections beyond being wealthy but he seemed like he'd been working alone - although that bit with the murder-suicide of one of his victims did seem to have something more to it - so he took his phone, and was alarmed at the lack of security.
He immediately realized why when he saw the device had been wiped. So he'd had connections, but was being careful not to reveal them.
"I can memorize messages and phone numbers, you know. I rarely need to keep them on my phone." He tapped a finger to his temple, and Sherlock dug the point of his blade into the skin below Niles' right shoulder.
"Well then. It's easy enough getting those out of you, isn't it?" he said, his voice lowered by a register. He knew the threat in his words reached his eyes - the resulting excitement in Niles' face was proof of that. Niles let out a gasp as the sabre cut slowly across his back and withdrew. He didn't move, didn't squirm, only breathed as the point rested against the base of his skull.
"I don't deny that you could, Mr. Holmes," he said, his back bleeding freely now. "You're not quite the hero John makes you out to be, are you?" The surgeon laughed, then screamed as Sherlock dug the sabre into his back again, this time driving the point through muscle and into the bone of his scapula and twisting.
"You know, don't you, the effect these wounds are going to have on your movements? The damage I'm doing to your nervous system… it will be months before the tremors are gone from your arm. Or shall I destroy your hands, as well?" Sherlock moved the blade slowly, grinding against bone, moving over his scapula towards his arm. "Shall I deprive you of the only thing in the world you legitimately love?"
The young surgeon's eyes widened and for the first time Sherlock saw fear in his eyes. Inspired by it, he withdrew the sabre and drove his foot down against Niles' forearm, pinning it in place.
"No - don't - "
"Then tell me what I want to know." He wasn't surprised by his capacity for violence. He hadn't been lying to Moriarty when he'd threatened him on the roof of St. Bart's, and he certainly hadn't been blowing hot air when he said he could force Niles to divulge the information. The surgeon lay still on the rooftop, panting from the pain in his back. Sherlock read the altered level of consciousness in his face and resolved to end it quickly.
"Give me names," he hissed, and dug the point of the sabre into the back of the surgeon's hand.
He saw the smile on his lips too late.
"What the hell are you doing!"
The blood drained from Sherlock's face and the sabre fell to the rooftop with a clatter.
John Watson stood at the top of the fire escape, a look of horror on his face.