John watched the English countryside fly by below, unable to remember any landmarks that'd tell him if they were nearing their letters' catacombs. Judging from Sherlock's comfortable posture, they were right on target.
The Appledore Estate house was as intimidating and opulent as promised. It stood on farm country, carving out a large section of the local fields to surround itself with grass and professional landscaping. Its modern design complete with huge windows and stained-glass front door reminded John of celebrity homes, meant to impress visitors and deter trespassers. They landed on the front lawn and Sherlock hopped out, vibrating with excitement.
A man dressed sharply with a speaker in his ear - some mix of butler and security guard - opened an arm in a wide gesture toward the house's front door. Another man, posed on the gleaming mahogany staircase inside, gestured them to the left.
How long has he been standing there? John wondered, eyeing the servant as they walked past. The servant followed behind them, apparently paid to stalk them through the house. John was sorely inclined to vandalize something, just to see what the man would do. Sherlock fulfilled that urge by swiping a crystal ashtray from a sidetable as they walked through a doorway and out of the man's sight. He slipped it into his jacket pocket with a devious grin and John started giggling. Another servant joined them, a pale man with his pale hair pulled back in a low ponytail reminiscent of an 18th century wig. Then John was laughing for real and Sherlock giggled behind him, his gaze stuck on the man's overly tailored coat. They sobered at a glare from the servant and John avoided looking at Sherlock, knowing he'd laugh again.
The servants escorted them into a large atrium decorated with white tile, white paint and glass walls. Magnussen sat poised for them on a white couch, holding a glass of hard liquor on his knee. The servants left through another door behind John and he could finally focus on the real villain in front of them.
"I would offer you a drink but it's very rare and expensive," Magnussen commented, taking a sip for himself. John was starting to get tired of the calculated boorishness. Sherlock had to be exasperated. Sherlock sat down on the sofa beside the man, bouncing slightly and leaning back with a huff. He glanced up and made a feigned 'huh' of surprise.
"You got these," Sherlock commented, looking toward the side of the room. John wasn't sure if Magnussen as supposed to recognize the fake tone or not, so he stayed quiet. John turned to see a screen playing a slideshow of Mike's photo stream. Picture after picture, like a flipbook, all chronologically ordered to show with each successive image John's body hanging from the ceiling, his crumpled body, his urine splotches, then his nakedness, his blood. John turned away to focus on the white sterile room. He wouldn't break now. He focused on Magnussen, standing ready to take him down. Perhaps Magnussen had no way to guess what adrenaline did for him, that it kept him sane when inanity would kill him. He'd probably meant to put them off-center.
"Yes, of course. It's very hard to find a pressure point on you, Mr. Holmes. The drugs thing I never believed for a moment. Anyway, you wouldn't care if these were exposed, would you?"
Then the projector started making noise and John turned in time to see a security video of Scotland Yard's conference room, where Sherlock was pacing around, theorizing desperately about the victim's injuries and possible location - the picture of John's supine tortured body on the screen behind him. Sherlock turned suddenly and punched through the precinct wall. A mad genius, distraught.
"But look how you came about John Watson. Your damsel in distress," Magnussen continued. More boastful than a man who'd simply procured some photographs. John turned around, rage filling his head before any true deduction. Still, he knew this one was true. He could see it in Magnussen's smirk.
"You had me tortured… for leverage?" he bit out. Sherlock's eyebrows jerked up. He hadn't thought of that or hadn't thought John would get it too.
"I suggested it, only. I admit, I expected Jim would not be so careless as to let you go before the end. Just think of the poetry, a madman in love with another. I wouldn't have let you get ill. I'm not a murderer, John," Magnussen said. "Let me explain how leverage works, Dr. Watson," the man started, standing up and moving to shut down the projected movie. "For those who understand these things, Mycroft Holmes is the most powerful man in the country. Well, apart from me. Mycroft's pressure point is his junkie detective brother Sherlock. Sherlock's pressure point is his best friend John Watson. John Watson's pressure point is his need for privacy and pride. You're a stoic, arespectable man, Doctor. I own your privacy, I own Mycroft. He's what I'm getting for Christmas."
Magnussen sat down again. Sherlock's face had barely moved during the blackmailer's spiel. Before Moriarty's torture, before Sherlock's reappearance, John could easily imagine what such a threat would have done to him. His pride had been the last thing about himself he'd hold to his chest as worth defending. He'd have been struggling to outwit Magnussen now, to find some way out of such exposure, his bloody soiled body no doubt shown on every screen in the country. Maybe the world. And no doubt Magnussen had the exits sealed and their attempt to outflank him would destroy them. Now, they didn't need to try. John stood comfortably, watching Magnussen smirk at Sherlock, wondering if Sherlock was aware how much had changed in the last two months.
"It's an exchange, not a gift," Sherlock clarified, pushing Mycroft's laptop over toward Magnussen's waiting hand. Magnussen tipped his head, looking rather doubtful of that claim.
"Forgive me but… I already seem to have it," he boasted.
"It's password protected," Sherlock sneered. "In return for the password, you will give me any material in your possession pertaining to John."
He was brilliant to watch, like this. Self-possessed and confident, laying their trap. A legal sting - they just needed Magnussen to demand state secrets, under the threat of blackmail. The threat they had well established, now they just needed him to officially accept the bloody laptop.
"You don't want to watch it? You might enjoy it. I enjoy it," Magnussen said, glancing at where the video had been projected.
"Then why don't you show us?" Sherlock asked, goading him.
"Show you Appledore? The secret vaults? Is that what you want?" the man asked. Mocking them, but John didn't quite understand how.
"I want everything you've got on John," Sherlock said.
Making it sound like they were narrowing their scope beneath his threats. That they only wanted John's safety, not Appledore, now. This was going well. Magnussen started to chuckle.
"You know, I honestly expected something good," he said, sounding disappointed.
He thinks he won.
"Oh, I think you'll find the contents of that laptop…" Sherlock started.
"Include the GPS locator," Magnussen filled in.
Shit.
"By now your brother will have noticed the theft and Security Services will be converging on this house. Having arrived, they'll find top secret information in my hands and they'll have every justification to search my vaults. They will discover further information of this kind, then I'll be imprisoned. You will be exonerated. Restored to your smelly little apartment to solve crimes with your catatonic not-yet-boyfriend."
Sherlock's face was expressionless while their blackmailer ran down the entirety of their plan. John was almost at the point of asking why when he realized that the arrest would work the same, even with Magnussen aware of it. There was nothing the man could do, now, even if they never got an official acceptance of state secrets. Security Services had their probable cause for a search of the premises, and they'd find the vaults beneath the building, and Magnussen would be in prison all the same.
"Mycroft has been looking for this opportunity for a long time. He'll be a very proud big brother," Magnussen added. A damned observant man, to have cut to the quick of that relationship without ever seeing the two in a room. Sherlock just looked puzzled.
"The fact that you know it's going to happen isn't going to stop it," he pointed out. Magnussen put his empty drink down, still looking smug.
"Then why am I smiling?" he asked.
You're not, John wanted to answer. The man's face had barely tightened at all. He could be an attractive man, John thought, if he showed any expression beyond his dead-eyed stare.
"Ask me," Magnussen ordered but Sherlock didn't budge.
Fuck it.
"Why are you smiling?" John growled.
"Because Sherlock Holmes has made one enormous mistake which will destroy the lives of everyone he loves and everything he holds dear," Magnussen answered.
We've been through that before. Try it. Magnussen got up from the couch yet again. Either the man couldn't stay still for two minutes or he thought it added drama.
"Let me show you the Appledore vaults," he offered, closing the buttons of his suit jacket. John frowned. That was…unexpected. Would it be the man had anticipated their GPS tracker on the letters, had buried the letters with their contents and left them empty handed?
Instead, the man led them through his home to a pair of closed doors and introduced the entrance to his vaults while he presented them with an empty white room containing nothing but a chair.
"There are no vaults beneath this building. They're all in here," he explained, sitting down and touching his temples like Professor Xavier. "You know about mind palaces, don't you Sherlock?" How to store information so you never forget it by picturing it. I just sit here, I close my eyes, and down I go to my vaults. My memories. I'll look at the files on Dr. Watson."
To John's surprise, the more Magnussen talked the more Sherlock looked genuinely scared. The man pretended to be leafing through files with his fingers and John had to clear his throat to cover a laugh.
"This is one of my favorites. Oh, it's so exciting," the man gloated.
What a ridiculous man.
"All those whack jobs for the USA. I can really see why you like him…" Magnussen drawled. John swallowed. Sherlock didn't even bother to feign surprise.
No secrets.
Magnussen opened his eyes.
"So there are no documents. You don't actually have anything here," John summarized.
"Oh, sometimes I send out for something if I really need it but mostly I just remember it all."
That's it? That's why he thinks he's won? We'll just believe that and the Special Forces will quickly abandon their search for more and he'll still be on top of world?
"I don't understand," John admitted.
"You should have that on a t-shirt," Magnussen drawled.
He's trying to drive us to do something rash, John thought. There was nothing the man really had to threaten them with, not if the vaults were real and the letters were in them. A likely bet, given how the megalomaniac had not gloated about finding them. Strange for a man not to mention the one detail he'd need to expose to truly defeat them. But Sherlock was looking very nervous. Genuinely, now.
"It's all about knowledge. Everything is. Knowing is owning," Magnussen philosophized.
Beautiful.
"But if you just know it, then you don't have proof," John replied, to stall. Sherlock's face was blank with fear. Beyond acting. True fear. What had happened?
"Proof? What would I need proof for? I'm in news, you moron. I don't have to prove it, I just have to print it."
Bullshit. Surely Sherlock knew that. Without proof, the newspaperman would be slammed for libel. He'd have been imprisoned years ago. No judge would believe his 'mind palace'. Magnussen walked past, heading out toward the large porch on the other side of the room.
"Sherlock, do we have a plan?" John asked and Sherlock didn't appear to be listening, thinking. Thinking too hard about this, really. "Sherlock?" John headed after Magnussen without him.
~~/~~
So close. He'd come so close to ruining all this again. It would have been so easy, so logical: propose to Janine, try to find Smallwood's letters - they wouldn't have been there; the tracker made that clear - drug his family, steal the laptop, end up here… guilty of the theft of state secrets, without the vaults to redeem them. They'd both be arrested and with Magnussen set against them… they'd never get out of prison. And all of John's pictures would be spread across the world, their enemies handed their names, prison numbers, descriptions. They wouldn't last for long. No - John would, even with his injuries, but not forever.
Damn it.
So close. Except for John.
God but he loved that man. Sherlock closed his eyes. He wanted to grip John to his body and never let go. Kiss him, feel him bare, feel him hard. They'd come close to that, before. In their small stolen moments when they could stop thinking and feel.
Meet his eyes a lot and wait.
Touch me when you want to.
Fuck that. He wanted to. He followed after John, who was currently slipping outside. He'd said…something. Sherlock had missed it. It probably didn't matter. Nothing could stop them now. John had brought Magnussen to his knees. The man just didn't know it yet. This would be fun to watch.
~~/~~