Dear God, He's Gone and Done It: Chapter 13

The day was fading into evening. It had to be going on 21:00. Barbary had found this lovely little pub, a couple hundred years old, if you were to believe what you were told about it. The name had something to do with meters? She might have known when she walked in here, but four hours later and more than a few pints, Barbary couldn't tell you what planet she was on.

Currently, she was sitting at a table, alone. Perhaps to say she was actually sitting was being kind; right now, Barbary was slumped in the seat, barely able to focus on keeping her balance. She had handed the bar tender a wad of money and told him to keep the drinks coming until it ran out.

Before stopping at the pub she had gone by St. Bart's to check in and see how Dr. Hooper was fairing with her new 'assistant'. In all honesty, the assistant was that young girl Yasmina that was going to marry Barbary's son, Tarek. When she and Tarek had met NSY and Sher...that bloody detective out by the river, Tarek had stepped away briefly to make the phone call that would arrange Yasmina's arrival in London.

Yasmina's father was a man that most people only knew as Piri. The only ones who knew his real name might have been his own parents and perhaps his wife at one time. He was a friend that Barbary had made during some time spent in Istanbul. He was a handsome devil and a good man with a killer sense of humor. Piri's wife….Barbary set them up together. Well, she would take the credit for it. Her name was Puja.

**She had been one of the first girls that Barbary had saved during her early days as an agent with MI-6. If Barbary was remembering it correctly, Puja had been maybe 16. Her family had been from a desperately poor village in India and given her over to some people claiming that they would see to it that she got into good schools in England and become a doctor. It was the same tired old trick the traffickers played on hundreds of thousands of poor villagers in third world nations across the globe. But it worked. The traffickers would offer enough money that would feed the family for at least a month, but in terms of equality with the Euro or the American dollar it would be mere pennies. They would get the child and whisk her (or him in some rare cases) away with smiles and promises. As soon as the child was out of reach of her family she was crammed into the back of a truck with dozens of other girls and sent to the nearest port and then loaded, along with the other children into shipping containers and sent all over the world.

When Barbary found Puja, she had to physically carry the girl. She had been flung into a pit with others; some dead, some not. The traffickers had caught wind of the raid somehow and when they could not gather enough of the girls together quickly enough, they started killing them and flinging them into open pits…although some were still alive…and then setting the pits on fire. It was an effective technique used over centuries by various groups to get rid of their enemies or victims; never with more shocking clarity as when the Nazis employed the method to dispose of the Jews when clearing Concentration Camps.

Barbary had entered the room, seeing the pit. She felt her heart plummet, it didn't look like any of the girls were alive. She was about to move on to another room to perform a sweep when she heard a small voice. It was really faint, more of a moan or groan for help than anything.

She went back over to the pit; it was almost too much to bear to see the faces and mangled bodies of the girls lying there, dead. She saw faint movement and ran to the area of the pit that was closest to the spot. It was a girl, left alive! Barbary had to crawl across some of the dead girls to reach her. She felt horrible about it, she couldn't stop crying and it became hard to see through the tears. The only comfort that she took in this act was that at least she could try to save this one girl….if she could do that, save the girl and get her away from this place and on to a better life, then these other poor souls could find some measure of rest.

It took some doing, but after some struggling she got to the girl and pulled her back across the bodies and out of the pit. Barbary was so tired; she had been working this assignment for weeks with very little sleep. She had to physically fight ten different men in hand to hand combat on her way to this place. She was losing blood herself. Shutting all of this out she hoisted the young girl up over her shoulders in a fireman's carry; it was the only way she would be able to get very far, the girl was nearly the same size.**

As Barbary took another drink, she tried remembering the time she spent watching over Puja while she was in the hospital. She never left the girl's side. That was the first time she could ever remember telling Mycroft to piss off.

**Almost as soon as they had arrived back at base with the survivors, and everyone had been taken care of medically speaking, Mycroft was dead set on sending Barbary on another mission within less than seventy-two hours.

Barbary didn't feel right leaving the girl, Puja. What if she woke up in a strange place with no familiar faces around her? Barbary remembered what that was like. It was terrifying. When she had gone through that, waking up in some strange hospital with nobody around that she recognized, she was terrified for a moment that she had been recaptured….or worse that the ones who had captured her would be worse than the ones she had just fought her way free from. She had ripped the IVs out of her arms and tried pulling the wires lose that had been responsible for helping her breathe. She had been in such a blind panic to get away; it had taken Mycroft multiple tries to get her attention to calm her down.

She couldn't leave this girl to that same fate. Barbary for once ignored a direct order from Mycroft, telling him in no uncertain terms to stick his orders up his ass and proceeded to take her seat next to the girl's bedside.**

Some of the traffickers that hadn't gotten caught in the net had come back around looking for their merchandise and would stop at almost nothing to get back what they could salvage. As soon as Puja was able to leave the hospital, Barbary personally handled the arrangements for her to be taken care of by Piri.

Over time, Piri and Puja came to care for one another. By the time Puja was 19 she had decided she wanted to marry Piri, and it didn't take Piri long to ask her either, it was no matter that the groom was nearly 15 years older than the bride. They cared deeply for each other. Puja loved Piri more than anything in life. He had made her feel like she really had a home for once. The longer Puja stayed with Piri, she began doing things around the house, to make it feel more like home. She cooked; Piri loved her cooking, he even helped her learn how to make more things when she expressed an interest. She kept everything neat and tidy. And she had proved her worth at protecting Piri and his home as much as he protected her.

There had been days when someone of a dubious nature would come by the place. Piri knew most people in his neighborhood; he lived in one of the older districts of the city of Istanbul. Most of the neighbors had families that had lived there for generations. Piri knew them, and they knew him. They knew him to be a kindly book vendor that just so happened to know a thing or two about self-defense and martial arts. And his stall doubled as a place for people like Barbary to find safe passage. He was quick with a good joke, but if you needed him, he never hesitated to offer his help.

One day in particular Piri had been away from home, attending his book stall. Some of those dubious people came by his home. Instead of finding Piri, they found Puja at home alone with the baby Yasmina. Puja had taken some training from Pirir and was able to fight them for a while, but eventually her efforts were not enough. Piri returned home sometime later; before he even opened the door he could hear Yasmina in her crib crying and screaming. Carefully entering the home, he found his wife dead in the floor in a pool of blood. He ran to check on Yasmina to find that she had been left unharmed, only scared.

After that Piri gave up his book stall. He could not leave Yasmina alone and he trusted no one with her care in his absence. He was able to make a living by giving lessons in the martial arts of his people. A friend of his continued to run the book stall; the safe outpost had been in operation in one form or other since a time before the Crusades, and it would continue on for much longer.

Barbary wanted to sit and drink a little longer but she suddenly realized that she no longer had any feelings in her hands. When she stood up to walk out she learned that her legs had also gone numb from intoxication when they buckled under her sending her to the ground.

She laughed at her own predicament. There was no mirth in her laugh. It was the sad laughter of a woman with nearly nothing left to lose. She leaned over and just laid in the floor on her side, not caring a thing about the world around her any longer.

Sitting at the bar, a tall man with strawberry blonde hair with a reasonable build stood making his way over to the fallen woman.

"Come on then, up you go. The boss will likely think Christmas has come early this year, baggin' you. If all goes well I will be getting a lovely bonus myself. Thank you kindly."

Barbary offered no resistance whatsoever; she couldn't even hold her own head up, so of course there's no sort of defense she could mount against a man that had the build and strength of a well trained soldier.

He tossed her into the back of the van after tying her hands together and then linking them with a bit of cord to her feet which were also tied together. After that it was a twenty-five minute drive to the property that was currently being used as base of operations. He pulled into what used to be a loading dock when this was an old warehouse, the door sliding shut behind him, concealing his vehicle.

After parking up, the man got out and pulled the bundle that was Barbary from the van; she was still out of it, it would likely take most of the night and part of the next morning for the effects of that much alcohol to wear off. So what if there was a little something extra in the bottom of the glass courtesy of the bartender who owed some favors to a particular mastermind.

"Boss, I brought the package."

"Well, it's about time Seb."

"She drinks like a fish boss; I had to tell the guy to stop dosing her after the first four drinks. I made the assumption that it would suit your purposes that she would eventually come around. I know how you like to…play….with new toys."

"And she is a doll. I can see why so many are covetous of her."

The slightly built man with the dead eyes signaled for the larger man, Seb, to man the camera and computer equipment. Next, he gave orders to a second man, Torrance, to get Barbary settled in a chair and rearrange her bindings to tie her to said chair.

Smacking his hands together, "It's time to send Mycroft Holmes a public service announcement about leaving his play things lying around. You never know who might stumble upon them. Torrance, I would like you to stay at hand, we may need to force the government's hand in certain matters."

"Yes sir, of course."

"Seb,' the man turned to his right hand man.

"Ready whenever you are sir."

Stepping in front of the camera, the slight man put on his best game face. You could hardly fault him if he allowed a small smug grin to grace his face. It's not every day an opportunity such as this, the chance to ruin both Holmes brothers at the same time, quite literally falls into your lap.

Seb hit record, nodding to the man in charge that it was started.

"Hell-o Mycroft. Did you miss me?"