It was several long hours later that the Team of Torchwood 3, Dr. Jones, and the consulting detectives from Baker Street all stumbled back into the Hub. Martha was still extraordinarily weak from having her body act as an arena for thousands of fratricidal larvae. If Owen hadn't mastered the singularity scalpel in just the knick of time, she would have suffered the same messy fate as Billy the assassin. She took Jack's arm on the way down the stairs and he didn't say a word about how heavily she leaned against him.
Dr. Harper was worse off yet. He was carefully assisted/half-carried to the med bay by John and Ianto, Tosh trailing a step behind holding up the IV bag that ran to his arm. Dr. Copeland, just as Sherlock had predicted, struck back like a coiled viper when he was cornered. If it had not been for John and Sherlock lurking in the shadows (Sherlock had put up such a stink about not being permitted to come along on the rescue mission that it resulted in the duo from London being handcuffed to a metal railing. Good thing the team was in too much of a rush to bother dragging them down to the cells. After two picked locks and the borrowing of Ianto's personal vehicle, they were on their way), things may have turned out much worse for Torchwood's resident doctor. The shot Copeland fired at Owen hit him in the side of his chest instead of dead center due to Sherlock taking him down with a running tackle from the side. It was one of his less graceful moves, but it most likely saved Owen Harper's life. John's battle-field triage experience came in handy. He accurately assessed that the bullet missed Owen's lung and that it was shallow enough for John to extract back at the Hub. The team left the Pharm in fiery ruins, all stunned near-silent by the grim job of having euthanized the facility's enslaved batch of alien test-subjects.
Owen insisted on staying awake to inspect John's work but was high enough on painkillers to not watch it too carefully. John scrubbed up and got down to business. Martha, although still a bit shaky, assisted him in the extraction of the bullet. The open med-bay/autopsy room of the Hub was not known for its privacy. Ianto brought bottles of water to Jack, Gwen and Sherlock where they looked on from the walkway above where John and Martha worked on Owen. Sherlock hadn't had a chance to see John operate ever before. He couldn't keep his eyes off of the doctor's deft hands, not a tremor to be seen. Tosh sat just behind Owen, making sure to keep out of the way of where Drs. Watson and Jones passed instruments. She ran her fingers through Owen's short hair and spoke to him in soothing tones and soft smiles. Maybe it was the effect of the painkillers, but Owen returned every smile without his usual snark and didn't even notice when John completed the stitching and bandaging up.
Hours later the only clue that morning had arrived was the brief waft of fresh sea air that blew through the Hub when the resident pterodactyl was let back in through some secret passage after her nightly free-flying session. Owen was asleep in the med-bay's single bed, Tosh asleep by his bedside, her head resting on her folded arms by his waist. Sometime in the night, Owen's fingers had found their way into her jet-black silken hair.
Martha was slumped sideways in the only padded seat in the med-bay. John had laid his own jacket over his colleague sometime during the night. John sat vigil, periodically checking Owen's vitals as well as those of the sleeping Dr. Jones. He was bleary eyed but kept afloat by sips of a large mug of cold coffee. Sherlock set up shop in close proximity. The Pharm's research was backed up remotely but there was significant damage to the network from the destruction of the compound. Sherlock chased as many leads as he could in leu of Tosh being otherwise indisposed. Whenever John started to doze off, Sherlock would comment on his findings just enough to rouse him again.
Gwen was stretched out on the lone sofa in the main Hub, snoring softly. There was a soft light on in Jack's office. Jack worked at his desk most of the night through, taking a few breaks to pace through the Hub, get an update from John, and then disappear again. Sherlock peaked at just the right angle to catch a glimpse through the open door of an uncharacteristically rumpled looking Ianto Jones propped up across two office chairs in Jack's office, covered up to his chin by Jack's long military coat.
Shortly after Myfawnwy's return to her roost, Ianto re-appeared from Jack's office looking magically crisp and perfectly put together again. He could be heard climbing up numerous unseen metal stairs, fussing over the feeding of the pet dinosaur, and then going about the routine of making a fresh batch of coffee to wake his co-workers with. By the time the coffee had brewed, everyone was awake and slowly each making their way to the conference room. Owen was back to his usual self again and loudly complained about John being a bit too cheap about the use of painkillers. He also complimented John on his neat sutures, although that was stated much quieter. Martha seemed to be looking much less ashen than the night before and her brilliant smile was back.
The Torchwood 3 team, plus one visiting Dr. Jones, plus the crime-fighting duo from Baker street, all collected at the large table. Sherlock shared what he was able to salvage from the computer trail with Tosh, who thanked him for his work. She examined the electronic records and muttered mostly to herself about the procedures she could use to reclaim even more data in coming days. Owen flicked through the medical records from the Pharm and expressed his mixed emotions about their incredible findings and their equally incredibly reprehensible methods.
John was finished echoing his agreement with Owen's feelings on the matter when he went to take his first sip of fresh coffee from the day. Sherlock's cool hand closed over John's, just firm enough to halt the progression of the mug to his lips.
"Don't drink the coffee, John" said Sherlock, making the order loud enough to catch the attention of everyone in the room.
John shot Sherlock a questioning look. Ianto Jones flashed a brief look of defensiveness on behalf of his coffee-brewing expertise before the true meaning of the warning settled in.
"The case is over. Our usefulness has been exhausted. At any moment they could decide to administer a dose of, what did you call it Captain Harkness, retcon? But as you saw from your last attempt, it doesn't work on me. My ability to lock away information in my mind palace is too foolproof for your chemically-induced amnesia. It would take a while perhaps with a higher dose, but I would find where every minute of our interactions have been locked away and I would piece it all back together again. I will expose your organization, Captain. Your reign over concealing the truth about the universe from the public is over."
John eyed the coffee in his grip like it was a hand grenade and carefully put it back on the table. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. It was easy to forget, in light of all the shared adventures over that last two days, that their mission was to come to Cardiff and bring the secrets of Torchwood into the light of day. He only had to think of Lestrade's rage over both the deaths and the subsequent memory-erasing coverup at Canary Wharf to regain his defenses against the flashy allure of shiny weapons and medical technology beyond anything he had ever seen.
Jack Harkness met Sherlock's stare without backing down an inch.
"You can trust the coffee, Dr. Watson. I have an offer to make to the both of you before deciding when and if to make any threats."
Jack took a drink from his own cup as if to demonstrate the truth of his statement. Sherlock waved his hand in a flippant gesture that told the Captain to continue. Jack rose and leaned against the wall as he spoke.
"We are a small team. We could use all the help we could get from others who know what's out there, who can handle themselves in a crisis situation, and who also bring certain unique skills to the table. John, if I had met you under any circumstances I would have offered you a job with Torchwood 3 within the first ten minutes. You're smart, you have battlefield medical knowledge, you know your way around weapons on almost an instinctual level. And don't think for a second that I didn't notice how much fun you had these last few days. And Mr. Holmes, although I would have never guessed it from my experiences with Mycroft, you are quite ready and willing to jump into the fray of field work. Your ability to make connections and pick up on things that others don't even notice is incredible. Once you have seen through the looking glass, Alice, you can never see things like you used to. So what do you say? Want to join up? I know you have strong ties to London and that area has been without the protections of Torchwood since the fall of Torchwood 1. We could consider your flat at Baker Street an annex of sorts from our base here at the Hub. I took the liberty of running the schematics on your building. Torchwood could rent out the flat in your basement and have some special contractors come in and get the whole place kitted out with the equipment you'll need. Might need to wipe a wee bit of your landlady's memory about the renovations until they are completed. For that matter, we may be able to get her to forget the basement apartment even exists. Tosh do you think we could rig a perception filter..."
"No" echoed a firm baritone.
"Well, if you think the old gal can be convinced that it's nothing more than some high tech laboratory equipment then maybe we could get away with not bothering to spike her afternoon tea."
"I mean 'no' to all of it, Captain. Do you really think that we'll trust you just like that? And not only trust you but actually follow your orders?" Sherlock punctuated his point of the whole proposition being absolutely absurd by laughing in Jack's face at the idea.
"We are not going to trust you, any of you. You work together everyday side by side and yet none of you trust each other. None of you know each other, not really. And your whole organization reeks of hundreds of years of subterfuge. I can count those I trust enough to follow and care about enough to fight beside on one hand and only one of the people in this room fit that description."
"Hold on now, just hold on one damn minute!"
Sherlock swung his scathing gaze to the source of the exclamation, Gwen Cooper. The former copper stood up at the table, her two fits planted on the hardwood surface.
"You may think you're so smart with your guessing of passwords and your uncanny predictions but don't think for a second you can judge us like that. You have no idea what we are for each other. Time after time this team has demonstrated that we would lay down our lives for one another."
"Miss Cooper! Ever hear what they say about stones and glass houses?" Sherlock pointed at her engagement ring.
"You're engaged to a man, a civilian, working for a trucking company. Probably recently promoted and quite chuffed about it. Probably overweight. And yet you spend long hours here. You say you love him and want to marry him yet you would walk away in an instant if the right person, the right person in this room, said just the right thing. In fact you have turned your back on him before to share in 'after-hours team-building' activities with a yet another co-worker."
Sherlock was up and prowling then. He was launching his own full frontal assault but his "big guns" were no-holds-barred deductions instead of shiny guns built for beings with more than five fingers.
"Owen Harper!" Sherlock turned to next.
Although still recovering from his gunshot wound, Dr. Harper looked about a breath away from coming over the table at Sherlock. John readied himself to jump between them if need be, even if Sherlock deserved it, but with a subtle raise of his hand, Jack bid Owen to stay put.
"Also a fan of the after-hours team-building, and PC Cooper was not your first work buddy to have partaken in that with. Always looking for a partner as broken as you to make you whole. How terribly predictable coming from a child of a mother with BiPolar Disorder and Borderline, no wait, ah yes, Histrionic Personality Disorder. Tell me, Owen did she get the psychotic features consistently or only when she tried to keep you away from forming meaningful connections with peers."
"Fuck you, Holmes." Owen gritted out through clenched teeth.
John worried that Sherlock was going to push Owen's blood pressure up so high that it would make his wound seep blood through the bandage. Tosh put a nervous hand on Owen's shoulder, and attempt to sooth.
"Ah Miss Sato, also not a stranger to family drama. Daddy had so wanted you to be a boy, and was never shy about telling you that. Mother then pushed you to be perfect at everything, her way of trying to impress upon your hard-to-please father that you were worthy of his love despite your unsatisfactory gender. Soshite mochiron, -ka no isha no tame ni anata ga motte iru kanjo wa jissai ni himitsude wa naiga, karera wa nanidesu ka?"
When Sherlock had dropped effortlessly into Japanese (with less of an English accent than she had, Tosh noted inwardly with annoyance) the color drained from her face and she dropped her hand from Owen.
"What the hell did you say to her?" Ianto growled.
"Nothing you didn't already know, Mr. Jones. The archivist. The keeper of Torchwood's secrets. How much do they not know about this place simply because they are too lazy to get elbow deep in the dusty records. You've dug in though, haven't you? But your motivation isn't just from being a thorough employee. How else are you going to find out as much as you can about your lover. But you know there's always more. Always more that he won't tell you. Not that you tell him quite everything though either. Got out of Cardiff as quick as you could once you came of age. Jack is right, you do look good in a suit, but that's hardly what you were used to wearing growing up at the estate, was it?"
Ianto dropped his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. A red heat crept up his neck extending from the collar of his silk shirt to his neatly trimmed side burns.
"Even the lovely Dr. Jones has some secrets. So young and such a winning and ready smile, yet hiding a broken heart. Somebody older. Someone you would have followed anywhere." Sherlock squinted his eyes and faltered momentarily. The dark-eyed woman before him was surprisingly harder to deduce than he originally thought. He flipped through numerous possibilities for who it could have been. Employer...professor...mentor...ah! Physician that had overseen her training perhaps?
"Doctor?" Sherlock muttered off-handedly.
"What?!" said Martha and Jack in unison.
Sherlock wasn't quite sure what that meant but he did a fine job of playing off as if he did. He made that calculated decision to quit with Miss Jones when he was somewhat ahead.
"And finally Captain Jack Harkness. The man of enigmas. He wears clothes that were in fashion generations ago, yet looks no more than 40-ish, and is comfortable with alien and advanced technology as if it were old hat to him. He seeks out the young and clever to surround himself with but never quite lets them completely in. And just last night, I saw it Jack."
Sherlock had rounded the table and loomed dangerously close to Jack's face, a clear challenge.
"Copeland raised his gun and just before I barreled into him I saw you start to drop your posture to coil and jump. But the trajectory of your instinctual leap was not to knock Dr. Harper out of the way. You meant to jump in front of him and take the bullet yourself. You don't wear a protective vest. Your side arm of choice is a single antique pistol. You are a man who does not fear death. And I mean that quite literally. Not one single physical sign of self-preserving panic about you in that moment."
"Who and what the hell are you Jack Harkness? Do any of them know? They follow you, they love you, and one of them sleeps beside you but do any of them really know, Jack?"
Jack's eyes flared, his face somewhere between rage and astonishment before he rallied back to his usual nonchallance with a dash of arrogance.
"Listen Mr. Holmes, that's a nice parlor trick and all and yeah, none of us our angels here. We make hard decisions and sometimes we make mistakes with dire consequences but we are often the only thing that stands in between the human race and everything out there that means us harm. So we all do what we need to do to get through each day relatively in one piece. This team is made up of some of the bravest, most honorable and brilliant individuals I have ever met. Flawed, yes. Damn near broken some days, sure. But they keep walking back through that door. It would be my honor to die for any one of them."
Jack closed some of the space between him and Sherlock. He was fine with playing the no-personal-space game.
"I guess today's big mistake was thinking that you were worthy enough to be invited to join us. Verdict's still out on the good Dr. Watson, although I think we all know where his loyalties will fall. So!"
Jack clapped his hands together once right in Sherlock's face and rounded the room. As he spoke he made it a point to touch each member of his team in some capacity, the team leader re-assuring the ranks.
"Here's the other option. You keep quiet about Torchwood and I don't Retcon you."
"We've already established that your chemicals won't work on me…" Sherlock started smugly.
"But they'll work on Dr. Watson. And at a high enough dose I can take away months. Years. In fact, I was thinking I could probably get the dosage just right to take his memory all the way back to, oh, January 29th of last year."
Sherlock went from arrogant to looking like he would be sick within the space of a blink. John was momentarily confused, but then the date, one of the most important dates of his lifetime, slammed into his awareness. January 29th was the day he met Sherlock Holmes, the account of which was emblazened on his blog for all to see.
Sherlock walked stiffly over to his seat next to John and sat down hard. John sat in shocked silence. He thought back on his life just before he met Sherlock. It was so empty. It was a half-life devoid of color and purpose.
John found himself wishing that Sherlock was wearing his pompous billowing Belstaff in the conference room. If he was, John would be able to reach out his fingers under the table and maybe grab a bit of the hem, a tactile reminder that John did meet Sherlock in the lab at Bart's that day. John felt the room slip away as he faced the devastating possibility of losing the memories of all of their adventures together. Gone would be their unconventional domestic life of cups of tea and beakers of acid. But most of all, their friendship. Their friendship forged in adreneline and deductions but also in a shared dark humor and something that neither could put words too. And what made John feel as if his breath was caught in a patch of thorns in his throat was the loss of all the future possibilities. If they had to rebuild from scratch all over again, would they lose the tentative threads of something else that had just recently been knit into the tapestry of their relationship.
John was so distracted by all of these thoughts that at first the sensation did not register. There was a warmth and pressure slowly wrapping around his right hand. He looked down and found Sherlock's long fingers clutching him with a growing strength that bordered on painfully tight. John clutched back without a second thought.
Sherlock's jaw flexed over and over.
When the detective looked back up to address Captain Harkness again, his voice was calm yet hard.
"That outcome is…unacceptable."
NOTES: Via google translate, this is what Sherlock said to Toshiko in Japanese: "And of course, the feelings you have for the doctor of the house are not really a secret, are they?"
Spoiler alert for Torchwood episode Reset and all episodes that come after it: Sorry for the time-jump from the last chapter to this one. For those of you familiar with the episode of Torchwood that this fic is based in, you will know that the Pharm was destroyed but also Owen was shot dead by Copeland after saving Martha's life by extracting the Mayfly larva with the singularity scalpel. For the life of me I couldn't find a way to insert John and Sherlock into how all that played out, so I kind of cheated.
Thanks to all of you who have patiently waited for this fic to be updated. These deductions were something I had been planning to include from my first conception of this cross-over. I think I'll be wrapping things up in just one last chapter. Please leave a comment about your thoughts/reactions or any constructive criticism. It really does mean a lot to me. Thanks again for reading!