Title: Brothers Three
Summary: The lives of three brothers intertwine in a variety of ways. When R suddenly becomes Q due to an explosion at MI6 he is forced to turn to his half-brother for help. But Sherlock Holmes has his own problems to deal with. The confluence of the lives of the three Holmes brothers through the events of Skyfall, the Reichenbach Fall and beyond in the alternating points of view of Q and John Watson.
Parings: Mostly friendship unless you happen to want to read anything in between the lines. Lestrade/OC in passing.
Warnings: Spoilers for Skyfall and Sherlock Season 2. Language. Some violence. Potential OoC moments. Shakespeare quotations taken out of context and mangled mostly as chapter titles. A dictionary might prove useful as both Q and John tend to use obscure words. Unbeta'd and not Brit picked. I apologize in advance for any anachronisms, grammar errors and/or typos. Author's notes, if any, will appear at the end of each chapter.
Standard Disclaimer: All characters and settings belong to their respective owners. I am merely playing with them for my own as well as your amusement. I recieve no compensation, I make no profit.
Chapter 5 – The Valiant Never Taste of Death but Once
It has been my experience that 00's have an aura about them that they can turn on and off at will. It seems to engender extremes in other people. Extreme attraction, extreme nervousness, extreme awareness, extreme violence. When 007 stalked into Q branch with the full force of his personality on display my staff exhibited all those extremes with the exception of the last one. I, having the dubious pleasure of spending most of my formative years with not one but two manipulative geniuses, ignored him. I was busy with Silva's laptop.
He moved up behind me into my personal space and cleared his throat. I continued to ignore him. After a few minutes of attempted intimidation he finally started asking me questions about the laptop. I decided to monolog rather than answer directly.
"Now, looking at Silva's computer, it seems to me, he's done a number of slightly unusual things. He's established fail-safe protocols to wipe the memory if there's any attempt to access certain files. Only about six people in the world could program safe-guards like that." What I didn't say was that I didn't think Silva was one of them.
"Of course there are. Can you get past them?" was Bond's reply.
Well at least he'd stopped questioning my youth. Now he was doubting my competence. Wonderful. "I invented them. Right then." I started plugging the laptop into a segregated area of the system and commenced hacking past its security. "Let's see what you've got for us, Mr. Silva." I typed for a moment then continued, "We're in."
One of my minions spoke up. "Sir what do you make of this?" I'd been running a synchronized display on the large wall monitor so everyone in the area could see what I was doing for just this reason.
"This is omega site. Best encrypted level he has. Looks like obfuscated code to conceal its true purpose. Security through obscurity." Tricky bastard.
That couldn't be all there was. The previous attack had been much more sophisticated. I continued hacking away at the code and shuttling out bits and pieces to my people to see if anyone else could get a handle on it. Ah there it was, the secondary layer I'd known had to be there. Now that was more like the previous attack. Interesting structure. It was very similar to the coding on the thumb drive Sherlock had sent me. Code structure at this level was almost as individual as a fingerprint and tended to evolve rather than change radically over time. What was strange in this case was that I'd dug up some of Silva's early work and I couldn't really understand how he'd developed this style. This was more similar to what Silva had used to trigger the explosion than to his original coding work. It was almost as if…Oh, I'm an idiot, he was working with a third party.
I was so deep in the code analysis that for a moment I forgot Bond was there until he shifted his weight leaning slightly into my personal space again. I restarted my monologue.
"He's using a polymorphic engine to maintain the code. Whenever I try to gain access, it changes. It's like solving a Rubik's cube that's fighting back."
I felt Bond tense. "Stop. Go in on that," his voice was low. "Granborough. Granborough Road. It's an old tube station on the Metropolitan line, been closed for years. Use that as the key."
I plugged the name in as the algorithm base. Suddenly the shifting obscurity stopped and the underlying data started decrypting. "Oh look it's a map!" I couldn't help myself. The setup had been so clever.
Of course 007 identified it in a glance. "It's London. Subterranean London."
I happened to look over at my security monitoring display. Then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. The security doors had unlocked themselves and popped open. What?!
"What's going on? Why are the doors open?" No sooner had I said that then Bond was out the door at a dead run and I had System Security Breach flashing on every monitor.
"Oh, no! Can someone tell me how the hell he got into our system?" I asked somewhat rhetorically aloud as every last one of us hackers was on a terminal typing furiously trying to contain the infection and protect the secure data.
I shut down the interconnects between servers and took the databanks off line. Thank heavens we hadn't migrated much from the backup servers yet. My screen shifted to read Not Such A Clever Boy under a stylized red skull. "Oh shit!" He'd calculated that I'd link directly into the server trusting to my firewall and segregation protocols and then he trusted his code to blow through them. I yanked the cables out of the laptop. "Shit, shit, shit! He hacked us."
I finished segregating the virus keeping up a litany of profanity in at least three languages as I worked. Once that was done I paused and bumped my head lightly against the monitor. Hubris. Of the seven it always was my sin. I straightened up. My crew was looking to me for guidance. I took a deep breath. "Ok people, let's identify the scope of the damage and figure out how to stop it from happening again."
"Oh, no!" That was Bond's voice. It was coming in from one of the micro-radios that we were starting to issue to all the field agents. I hadn't even seen Bond grab one from the box on the desk.
"Q, he's gone."
I switched that particular transceiver into mission mode so I had more control and better tracking capacity.
"I'm on a stairwell below isolation. Do you read me Q?"
Oh…I hadn't acknowledged that the transceiver was working. "I can hear you. I'm looking for you. Got you. Tracking your location. Just keep moving forward. Enter the next service door on your right. If you're through that door, you should be in the tube."
"I'm in the tube," was his reply.
I switched over to the now isolated laptop and looked as some of the decrypted information. "Bond, this isn't an escape, this was years in the planning. He wanted us to capture him, he wanted us to access his computer. It was all planned. Blowing up HQ, all the emergency protocols, knowing we'd retrieve it down here."
"I got all that. It's what he's got planned next that worries me"
I switched back to the main computer and brought up the underground maintenance map. "District line is the closest. There should be a service door on your left."
"Got it. It won't open."
"Of course it will." There had been a crew through it just last week. "Put your back into it."
"Why don't you come down and put your back into it?" He grunted, "No, it's stuck. Oh, good. There's a train coming."
Sarcasm thy name is Bond. "Hmm. That's vexing." Two could play at the sarcasm game. I heard a shot.
"I'm through."
Typical 00 behavior. If it gets in your way, shoot it. "Told you! We've alerted security, police are on their way."
I left the line open. I wanted to hear what Bond was up to. In the mean time I delegated two of my programmers to make sure the communication system was clear from surveillance and any other results of the hack. When I refocused I found I'd lost track of Bond.
"Where are you now?"
"Temple tube station, along with half of London."
I brought up the CCTV feeds for the tube station. It took me a moment to locate him. "Oh, I see. Here you are."
"I know where I am, Q. Where is he?"
"Just a second, I'm looking for him." I signed for Shirley to help me look for Silva on the CCTV cameras. She took up the task smoothly.
"There's too many people, I can't see him." Bond was sounding frustrated.
"Welcome to rush hour on the tube. Not something you'd know much about." Damn, still couldn't find the bastard. Where was he? I indicated that George should join the hunt.
"Train's leaving. Do I get on the train?"
"Don't get on the train unless he's on it. Give us a minute."
"Do I get on the train?" I was glad that I wasn't within arm's reach. Bond sounded like he wanted to strangle someone.
Oh! Got him! "Bond?"
"What?"
"Get on the train."
The next few minutes were interesting. I couldn't tell exactly what was going on but apparently Bond had managed to get on the train. When his breathing calmed down I decided to confirm.
"Where are you?"
"Take a wild guess, Q."
Well so much for getting confirmation for the mission record. I took a look at the still I'd lifted of Silva from the CCTV camera. "He's in disguise now. He's dressed as a policeman."
"Of course he is."
Smart ass. I followed Bond's movement through the train and the train's movement through the system. "Where is he going? Where is he going?" I muttered over the open line.
Bond inhaled sharply, "He's going for M. Tell Tanner, get her out of there."
We had the servers mostly scrubbed when Tanner came into Q branch at a trot.
"He took her," he said without preamble.
It wasn't too much of a stretch to determine that Tanner was referring to the fact that Bond had run off with M after the attack on the Parliamentary hearing. He had turned off the ear piece so I didn't have a way to track him. I just had to hope that one or the other of them would deign to call in. I had left the ear piece frequency slaved to mine just in case. A small beep sounded in my ear. Think of the devil and he decides to call in. I put him on speaker so Tanner could hear.
It was a simple request. Not quite so simple to execute.
"I guess this is not official" I asked him to confirm.
"Not even remotely," was Bond's reply.
I was resigned, "So much for my promising career in espionage." Bond cut the line. Luckily Tanner and I had been the only ones in the communications room at the time.
This would be tricky. I needed to leave a bit of the hack active so Silva could find the trail we left. I didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize the main servers again. I set up a link to one of my shadow servers. It was designed to echo part of the communications rig that Silva would be watching. Now for the really hard bit, playing the person rather than the machine.
"It's a fine line. If the breadcrumb's too small then he might miss it. Too big and Silva will smell a rat." I was hoping that Tanner would have a better idea than I did about the size of the nature of the trail.
"Yes, but you'd think even Silva would be able to spot that," Tanner grumbled.
"He's the only one who could."
Tanner half turned and started, "Sir!"
I glanced back. "Oh." Crap. Mallory.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
Uhh. What to say? "We're just…monitoring."
Mallory gave us an oh really look. "Creating a false tracking signal for Silva to follow."
Shit. He had us cold.
"Well, sir, um..." Tanner made an attempt to salvage the situation but ran out of inspiration.
My turn to try. "Well, no…" but Mallory cut me off.
"Excellent thinking, get him isolated. Send him on the A9, it's a direct route, you can monitor his progress more accurately and confirm it with the traffic cameras." His tone was more order than suggestion.
I had to ask, "But, uh…what if the PM finds out?"
"Then we are all buggered," was his heartening reply. "Carry on," he said as he exited the communications room.
Tanner and I stared at each other for a moment then got back to work. Mallory's message was clear. We were all going to hang together rather than separately.
I was running on 20 hours awake with only minor cat-naps when Bond turned on his earpiece again. I had switched over to satellite upload for the signal just in case he ended up somewhere really remote. It was a good thing I had because near as I could tell he had arrived at Skyfall in Scotland. That was his family estate. A bit of godforsaken marsh out in the middle of nowhere. A couple of small villages within a few miles but no reliable cell service or radio repeaters within relay distance. As it was the signal cut in and out. Most likely he was moving in and out of buildings blocking the satellite signal.
Judging from the snippets of conversation I heard M was still with him as was someone else. It was someone Bond knew. Most likely the caretaker. Kincaid. I found his name in a database. They had fortified and booby trapped the place in preparation for Silva's eventual arrival. I suspected that Bond had turned on the earpiece so we'd have at least a partial record in case they didn't survive and we would be left to deal with Silva by ourselves. Considerate of him.
It dawned on me several minutes later that it was also a message to me. 007 not only trusted that I had laid the trail correctly but also that I was awake, alert, and competent enough to figure out a way to get a signal from the earpiece in such a remote area. Nice to know I was appreciated.
I was currently alone in the communications room. As soon as we had the trail laid and we knew that Silva had taken the bait Tanner had left for Glasgow to head up the extraction and clean up team. I had already scrambled the component parts and requisitioned enough fire power for a small war. If Silva escaped Bond he'd have a hard time escaping the backup team. It wouldn't be quiet and Mallory, Tanner and I would most likely take the fall for it but if necessary we'd get the bastard on the way out the door.
The next few hours were nerve racking. Hurry up and wait. Eve Moneypenny came in and joined me about an hour or so on. She was unofficially there as Mallory's eyes and ears. His last vestige of deniability if things went pear shaped. I locked us in and put the audio on speaker. I was glad of her presence.
Suddenly it was all action. Shots, explosions, running, and sounds of fighting. The sound of a machine pistol on full automatic followed by a splash. Had Bond gone into the lake? Good thing I'd made the earpiece waterproof. I had muted the mike on my end. Since I had no data to contribute I didn't want any distracting sounds coming over the earpiece to Bond.
Finally everything went quiet save for Bond's breathing. It sounded from the interference as if he was in a building. Oh. The family chapel. Eve and I listened to Silva's faint rant asking M to put them both out of their misery. A thump, a gasp then a pause. Bond's voice, "Last rat standing."
Now that was a non-sequitur. I was tempted to ask for a report but I refrained in case it wasn't over yet. The only thing over the com was Bond's breathing. Finally M's voice, "007 what took you so long?"
"Oh, I got into some deep water," he replied.
Talk about understatement.
A muffled sound of pain that wasn't Bond, movement, something knocked over, a thump. M's voice again closer to Bond but hesitant and in pain, "I suppose it's…too late to make a run for it."
"Well, I'm game if you are," was Bond's soft reply.
"I did get one thing right," M's voice was barely audible.
A moment later there was a sound. A strangled sound forcing its way out of a suddenly too tight throat. The sound of a man who doesn't know how to grieve, how to cry, dealing with the death of someone he loved. I'd heard it before. Mycroft had made it when he found our father just before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
I shifted communications to Tanner's frequency. "M's dead," I said without preamble. "Go collect Bond and clean up." I cut the connection before he could say anything in response.
It had been a while, over five years, since I had wanted to cram myself in a small space and shut out the rest of the world. Thus, I was unprepared when that old half-forgotten urge hit me full force.
When I was a child and the emotions became too much to bear I would cram myself into the nearest smallest space I could reasonably fit in until one or the other of my brothers would come and talk me out. Unsurprisingly it was usually Sherlock who found me and gave me the will to face the world again. Sometimes he could even talk me out of hiding in the first place. Sherlock wasn't here and there was no small space to hide in communications so I did the next best thing, I crumpled to the floor ending up sitting with my head on my knees and my arms around my head.
I slowly became aware of additional arms around me. Eve. She was crying when I couldn't and rocking me gently back and forth. I don't know how long it was before I unfolded and wrapped my arms around her in turn. We sat there for an indeterminate time like children lost and abandoned until Malloy's voice came over the interoffice frequency and demanded to know what the hell was going on.
Author's Note: Chapter title derived from Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 2. Thank heavens for IMDB and its quotes section without which I would have wasted quite a bit of time transcribing.
Sorry for the late update. I was on vacation and Internet access was spotty. I didn't want to chance a botched upload.
Thanks due to Clearwater over on AO3 who spotted a typo.
