0:03... 0:02... 0:01... 0:00...

Jackie opened her eyes and blinked.

The first thought that entered her head was, Am I dead?

Somehow, it didn't look like it, yet it seemed the whole world was caught in a freeze frame.

A whole minute ticked by with no sound, no movement, nothing.

[Moriarty's Staying Alive ringtone starts to play]

Ok, if this was death, it was beginning to get seriously weird. Slowly, Jackie lifted her head and turned.

Sherlock and John hadn't gotten far. There they were, standing only a few metres away, but now their attention too had been arrested by the peculiar sound. Across the vast swimming pool separating them, Moriarty rolled his eyes, huffed and reached into his pocket.

"Do you mind if I get that?"

No one replied.

"Hello?" he spoke into the phone.

"Yes of course it is! What do you want?"

In an instant his face had gone very nearly apoplectic.

"SAY THAT AGAIN!" he roared into the receiver.

Even the length of a swimming pool away from him, Jackie, still in her bomb-chair, winced.

"Say that again, and know that if you're lying to me, I will find you and I will skin you."

Jackie turned her head, this time to catch her father's gaze. He met hers, his eyes still the very image of stunned astonishment.

I don't think I'm dead, she mouthed at him.

Sherlock blinked.

Moriarty was still pacing and his hand gripped his mobile phone so tightly his knuckles had almost turned white.

"Wait," he said into it and then clicked his fingers in the air. The sniper sights vanished from all of their bodies.

"Sorry. Wrong day to die. You'll be hearing from me, Sherlock."

At last it seemed Sherlock had found his voice.

"You-you... the bomb... it was a hoax?"

Moriarty clicked his tongue impatiently.

"Oh she's far too valuable as leverage against you to waste on a mere demonstration, Sherlock. I only wanted to show you what I'm capable of. She's free to go now."

Without another thought, he returned to his phone conversation.

"So if you have what you say you have, I will make you rich. If you don't, I'll make you into... shoes."

And he walked out the door.

Sherlock was at Jackie's side in less than an instant, literally tearing the wires off to free her. But the girl herself remained surprisingly quiet and still, closing her eyes and simply drawing in deep lungfuls of air.

With John's help, the two men had her free of the wretched trap in less than a minute, but for a moment, she didn't move.

"Jackie..."

Sherlock's voice was hoarse with emotion and relief. He held out his hand to help her out. But the shaky half-smile on his face evaporated entirely when she opened her eyes and looked at him.

It struck even John how hardened they made her look, how much older than her mere seventeen years.

"We're going home," she stated through clenched teeth, turned on her heel and marched toward the door, followed, after a brief pause, by the two bewildered men.

The taxi ride back to Baker Street was awfully silent, filled with tension you could have cut with a knife. Jackie's anger was simmering barely below the surface and John could see she was on the verge of an explosion. For the first time in his life, he could also see Sherlock looking almost amusingly contrite and apologetic, trying to say something, to even catch his daughter's eye, but she continued to steadfastly ignore him.

As soon as the cab pulled up to their curb, she was the first one out and she literally ran out and up the stairs.

"Jackie! Wait!"

Sherlock was next after her, leaving John, as usual, to pay the cabbie.

For once, he didn't bother complaining and, settling the fare as quickly as possible, followed at their heels.

He bounded up the stairs and walked directly into a full fledged face-off.

Not for the first time he wondered at the striking similarities between Sherlock and his daughter, especially when they argued.

"...doesn't even seem like you care!"

Sherlock's face was white as he faced his daughter's accusations and perhaps only John could appreciate how deeply they struck him since they were coming from Jackie.

"You know that's not true."

Sherlock's voice was level, but brittle, possibly finally exhausted by all the anxiety and the twists and turns this case had taken.

Jackie's eyes spat flame.

"Oh isn't it? You're my father, Daddy! Don't you think it's about time you started acting like it?! You can't even protect me! Your enemies can just pluck me out of school, keep me in cold storage for two days and threaten to blow me up for their own sick entertainment and all you have to say is that there was nothing you could do?! Am I supposed to accept that as an excuse from the great Sherlock Holmes?!"

"You weren't the only one he was threatening to kill, Jackie."

Sherlock's voice reflected his exhaustion.

"Which of the others would have mattered as much to you as me, Daddy?"

Jackie's voice was dangerously low as she leaned forward to make her point, but at this juncture, John couldn't help butting in.

"Hang on, you know that Moriarty was threatening to kill a bunch of people if your father didn't solve his riddles."

Jackie's full-fledged ire turned towards him now and despite himself, John stumbled back a step.

"What I now know for a certainty," she said, in that same bitten voice, "is that my life doesn't matter half as much to my own father as his little games with a crazed maniac! He was making you jump through his hoops, did you realise that, Daddy? And yet you couldn't call his bluff!"

John looked from one to the other, but seeing Sherlock bite his lip and hesitate, continued to intermediate for his friend.

"Jackie, love," he tried to reason, "We couldn't dare to."

Jackie's eyes narrowed venomously.

"Didn't dare to, or didn't care to? Weren't you busy having too much fun puzzling out his psycho scavenger hunt to pause and think that there were actual human lives at stake?"

John frowned.

"Your father did save those lives-"

The girl shook her head in disappointment, her lips curling up in a snarl.

"You still don't get it, do you, Uncle John? Moriarty wouldn't have started this game in the first place if he didn't know Daddy would play. And play he did. It's the thrill of the gamble, Uncle John. He's so addicted that he'll even put my life at stake!"

John couldn't think why Sherlock wasn't making even an attempt to defend himself. He had sunk down onto the sofa and was simply staring at the floor.

He stepped forward, trying to reach Jackie and comfort her after the ordeal she had been through, but she didn't let him.

"This isn't the first time, of course," she said, bitterly.

"All my life I've seen him put his cases ahead of me. And I've never complained. Not ever. Because I always thought that if it was ever me in danger, he would never let anything happen to me."

One angry tear rolled down Jackie's cheek as her turbulent emotions found a vent at last.

"I trusted him. I believed in him, Uncle John. Nobody could touch me if my Daddy could help it. He'd do anything."

The tears had now turned into a torrent upon her face as the full extent of her anguish burst through.

"But he won't, will he? He won't give up his games, not even for me. His job means more to him than my life!"

Angrily she scrubbed at her face. John's heart was breaking to hear her, but she refused to let him near.

"You're disappointed in me. You have every right to be."

Sherlock's all-too measured voice underscored her passionate outburst. He finally seemed to have mustered the strength to respond.

"But you should never have made me into a hero, Jackie. I never was and never shall be one."

This only served to rile his daughter further.

"Right. So this is all my fault then, isn't it? For placing any faith at all in my own father. He saves the world, but can't save me. What am I supposed to understand from that, Daddy? I'll tell you what. I'm a chip. A pawn. Just like all the rest. To be picked up and played with by anyone who wants to see you dance. Just tell me one thing, all right? Do I mean anything at all to you? Or am I just wasting my time?"

Sherlock leaned back and met her eyes frankly.

"You mean everything to me."

Jackie only met her father's honest gaze with iron-clad contempt.

"Then you wouldn't have a job that made you enemies who would toy with your daughter's life."

And with that she stormed out the door.

John waited for Sherlock to follow her, but he didn't. He only rested his head against the back of the sofa, closed his eyes and let out a long breath. So he rushed out after her himself.

"Jackie! Wait!"

She stopped at the sound of his voice and turned. John could still see the tear-stains fresh upon her face.

"Jackie. It's not true. Your father loves you. He would do anything for you."

Jackie watched him for a moment.

"Do you think he'd give up his practice for me?" she asked slowly.

John was about to reply but then he hesitated.

Jackie gave an ironic smile.

"You have your answer, Uncle John," she replied, starting to turn back.

"Where are you going?"

"Home. To mum. For the first time, she seems to be the lesser of my disappointments."

It would be a very long time before Sherlock saw his daughter again.