Chapter 2: Played By Sirens~
20 hundred hours came and went, and still the "bloodhound" had found no traces in the Lestrade house but a scent of "Claire de la Lune" that was slightly amiss.
"Not the answer you were looking for, but something to go on..." Sherlock said, regretfully, taking a test swipe of the "Claire de la Lune" traces they had found on the pillow, to run through his chemistry set when he and John got back to Baker Street. John was giving him the Look. The Look that meant he knew that he saw right through that iced-over mask that Sherlock was wearing for Greg, saw the troubled waters churning beneath the frozen silver-green eyes.
"Well, It's...s'alright...I mean, I know you'll figure it out pretty quickly...And she's leaving me anyway..." Greg began, with a wistful half smirk, "Maybe it's none of my business?"
Sherlock swallowed. John titled his chin, watching him closely. Sometimes Sherlock felt like one of his test-strips under the microscope when John was watching him. It wasn't necessarily a bad feeling, but it was a tiny bit intimidating to have someone who could see as clearly through him as he saw through every one else.
"You have every right to be concerned about her. She was your wife first, you know." Sherlock said, meeting John's eyes.
John nodded, "But for right now, you need some sleep, doctor's orders. You won't be of much use in finding her if you don't get any rest." John said, and with that they said their evening goodbyes, and Sherlock and John headed off into the night, walking home so they could talk.
"So, you gonna tell me what all that was about?"
"All what was about?"
"The way your face was all pinched together when we found the perfume..."
Sherlock thrust his hands into his coat pockets...not so sure how to tell John this.
First he needed to see how much he remembered. About their lives before they met in the lab of St. Bart's. About before when they had been boys in school, training for military jobs, in the days when they had met in another lab, and Sherlock had been John's boy-genius lab instructor. About after that, their early days as an army-medic, and a military police consulting detective. About their first year in Afghanistan.
"How much...do you remember...about the days of our mutual military service?..." Sherlock began, carefully, wading into the troubled waters that were about to rise in their minds.
"I've recovered most of my memory ,there's only a few things Mycroft says are "off". But what's that got to do with anything?"
Sherlock got very quiet. And John began to feel a sickness in the pit of his stomach, the feeling you get when you already know there's something you don't want to remember, before you actually do conjure up the memory.
"Do you recall...any of the details...surrounding Mary Morstan?"
And then, like a train colliding with the heart of the moon, there she was again, before John's waking eyes, the first and last woman he had truly "fallen in love" with.
"Hmmm...Someone's got her eye on you, Doctor."
John is standing in the shadows with Sherlock, at some party they were throwing for the officers on the home front. A dance before they all deployed. This was before Major Sholto was partially crippled, and he was currently spinning a ginger dizzyingly around the room.
The pretty blonde nurse closer to John's age (Sherlock was only 19 at the time, whereas John was 3 years older, so he was 22) was standing across the room, in her dress uniform, a little white hat cocked on top of her bobbed off hair. She was adorable, and John was trying not to look.
"Shut up. I'm not -technically- a doctor yet. And anyway, that's Mike Stamford's girl."
"No, that WAS Mike Stamford's girl. But Mike is as quick to find a new female companion as he is to find the dessert table. Mmm,...he and Mycroft will make good friends!"
John laughed, almost snorting the punch he was drinking. He turned to say something to Sherlock, but Sherlock had folded his knobby elbowed arms, and his attention was fully engaged with someone else.
John turned around, and bumped into the blonde.
"Oh, sorry!" she cried, and John gasped, and started wildly apologizing, and Sherlock sniffed a soft, 'I told you so' sort of sniff, and went to confront Mycroft at the punch bowl.
"No, really, sorry! I just actually came to say 'Hello'." said the girl, and she smiled, a foxy sort of smile, that melted John right where he was standing.
"Well...hello." John gasped, wondering if his tongue had fallen out of his mouth. She smiled, and wrinkled her nose.
"Well..."
"Well?"
"Got a name?"
John laughed because that's almost exactly what he had said to Sherlock when they had met about 3 years ago at school.
"John. Sorry...there's..HUNDREDS of "Johns", uhmm, John Watson. I'm Donald Watson's son."
"Am I supposed to know who Donald Watson is?"
That remark was what did it for John. At the time he still believed that his Uncle Sal was actually his dad, Donald, though really he was his twin brother, and had murdered him, and had been trying to pass himself off as him for many years, jealous of his brother's rank, and wanting to prove he could be in that rank himself. Solomon was so abusive of John as to make him almost despise him, and so, any one who put his dad off as not being so important as he wanted everyone to believe he was, somehow vindicated John, and he instantly loved them for it.
"Thought it would help tell me apart from all the blokes named John? It's really too common a name. My best mate over there- the tall and dark one?- his name is Sherlock. Now where in blazes did his mum find a name like that?"
She smiled. "Nah, don't feel bad. My name is Mary. And there are as many girls named "Mary" as there are blokes named "John". So that's Mary Morstan to you." she held out a hand, and John kissed it. She laughed.
"Oh, sorry, you just wanted to shake , didn't you? I ..well...people...used to kiss a lady's hand. It seems only right since we probably will never see each other again."
"Well,...maybe not,...if not for the fact that I am being deployed tomorrow too. And since I report to you almost exclusively for "orders" or some rubbish, then I thought I might as well come make friends..."
John was in love the moment he laid eyes on her. The thought that she was going to be with him in Afghanistan excited him and scared him senseless all at once. He immediately felt a need to protect her, and Sherlock both. It was a strange paradox, having the one's you loved with you in danger. You were glad and extremely angry they were in that mess, but with you, all at once.
"Oh God...yes..."John hissed suddenly, "Well, no, not until now anyway...But now..now that you said...Yes. Yes I do."
"Then...you remember...that we met Irene Adler before "A Scandal in Belgravia" too, don't you?"
John felt like he was being compressed into an ice cube, suddenly so heavy was his sorrow...
"...Yes..." he whispered and closed his eyes.
"This new perfume...I like it..." John laughed, kissing Mary for the fifth time, since they had ducked off into this edge of the tent, work for today actually done, bloodied and battered soldiers sleeping contentedly about them.
"How in blazes did you get perfume anyway? We're in the middle of a war-zone!" he gasped, kissing her a sixth and seventh time.
Mary pushed John off, with a gentle laugh. "I made a friend from the 'Outside'."
"Oh?"
"Yeah...She works for the government. One of Mycroft's employees or something. She's supposed to be working with Sherlock, but she's really getting on his nerves. She's been flirting with him like crazy,and he..well...you know how he is...he doesn't know what to do with it. I think...he might actually ...have sort of ,...in his own weird way...started to like her...but, being like he is, instead of diving in like you,he's being extremely nasty to her."
John chuckled. That was Sherlock for you.
"Poor sod will never "fall in love"..." he laughed, and kissed Mary an eighth and a ninth time, as if to change the subject.
Why had a woman given his girlfriend perfume? Did women exchange girly little gifts like that?
Poor once(and only once!) innocent John! If only he had known! If only he could swallow his words a thousand, thousand, thousand times! For Sherlock did ultimately Fall in love, after all, but it would be a different kind. And in the end, Mary, and the Woman who had given her the perfume, the woman who secretly turned out to be treacherously THE Woman, and had caused Mary to fall in love with her, would be the one's to blame.
For they were the very ones who had sold Sherlock to Moriarty the first time. They were the dynamic duo of deception, the conjoint grand architect of the Final Betrayal.
A year before the "Sholto's Boys" murder, when Moriarty and Sebastian Moran enacted their little plan, Mary and Irene betrayed Sherlock and John, taking off their masks to reveal the she wolves that had been wrapped in the woolen veils they had pulled over their once boyish eyes for too long.
It was late at night. Off in the distance, there was a War going on. But here in this tucked off alley of an Afghani village, here was only the moans of the dying. They called out to John like sirens, and the young medic was compelled to come.
That's when he felt Mycroft's ambassador, whose job never really made clear sense to John, Irene Adler, who Mary had been spending every moment of her precious and rare downtime with for the last God-knows-how long, leap from the shadows, and onto his back,using the weight of his gear against him, forcing him to his knees,and holding a sharp piece of bombed car shrapnel like a knife to his throat.
"Oh, hello John!" she said ,courteously, "Glad it's you...If it was someone else, I'd have to kill you. But seeing as it is you...I would rather that you saw it."
"What the-?!"
John never finished what he was saying.
Because there was a choking sound, and he saw the silhouette of a tall, dark man in the shadow of the wall, a figure standing over him, pulling a needle out of his heart.
"Direct injection. You might die from it...You'd best hope for your sake, that you do..."said Mary.
John's heart stopped.
As Mary Morstan drug none other than Sherlock Holmes into the light, by his gasping-for-breath-and-dying-the-same throat.
"On your knees. Right where I like you...Want you to look me in the eye..."
She let go of Sherlock, and Sherlock wheezed, and got up on his knees, giving her a cold look of utter hate. Of sadness as well, because John was just about to ask Mary to marry him. If and when they made it home of course.
"Mary?" John gasped, and Irene let the jagged metal "dagger" bite him a bit. He hissed, and clenched his teeth.
"No, it's not "Mary" you pathetic fool!...I knew it would work, the whole game of love. WE knew it would work, didn't we, baby?"
"What are you talking about?!" John cried.
"Sorry, 'baby' is me, not you." Irene laughed. "And yes, doll, yes we did."
"...I think I'm going to vomit." Sherlock mocked.
"Better hope you can, for your own sake, Sherlock. 'Akhlys' works fast. Which is good for us, because we need to get you off of our scent FAST." Mary jeered.
"Wait, what the HELL is going on? You two are?-"John cried, confused.
"Gay? Yes. We've been together since before you and I met ,John." Mary mocked, and laughed bitterly, "It's sad isn't it? You two fools thought we really loved you? That we were all gonna go home, have a big splashy double wedding...live a fairytale ending."
"Maybe John thought that; I never could get Sherlock to go so far as to kiss me." Irene teased, and Sherlock gave a sudden irritated cry.
"Oh, rubbish! That's all "love" is anyway. No, no, and no, I never fell for it! I was just playing the Game with you. Looks like this is losing..."
"We'll give you the honor of show-and-tell seeing as you lost." Mary hissed, with an emphasis on the last word. "And then I'm going to kill you ,Sherlock. I'm going to shoot you through your heart."
Sherlock swallowed, looking apologetically at John, whose lips were quivering, trying to process what he was hearing.
"You are part of an organization chiefly operated by women, that has no clear alias as you are always changing the name of it, but is most commonly known as the 'Pandora Pact'. It was convened during the Victorian period, by wives of members of the Illuminati, and the purpose of your work is to slowly disband the existing governments to found a one world dominating power. End all wars. Stop hunger. All that charity rubbish, you claim, but really you just like the thought of world domination. And how you mean to achieve this goal, is by enlisting in integral careers of secret intelligence and military security, and then sabotaging said career with a series of complex betrayals. You are a master assassin ,under cover as an army nurse, Mary Morstan is not your name. And you...are actually a master criminal and a prostitute...you do favors for powerful men, to get your way. Like a spider,...or a more or less a vampire bat."Sherlock hissed, glaring at Irene.
"Mmm...you are a powerful man...But you never needed any favors...So, since I can't use you...I'll just have to eliminate you. I'll have my top gun do that for me."
Mary cocked her pistol, and shot Sherlock in the foot for emphasis. He didn't cry out, but his mouth did fall open in a pained expression that John would never forget.
"You were just on the verge of finding out what a terribly naughty compromise we made ,Sherlock!" Mary giggled, shooting Sherlock in the other foot, and this time he groaned, and he did throw up, in the sand beside him. There was a moan of the wounded Afghanis that Mary had shot to draw John's attention to them.
"You were just about to discover which devil we let out of the bag! We put him on the map; we were his sponsors first, and he will turn around and be the sponsor for us one day when he's King. And it's a sad thing, that,there were so many lives you could have saved, if only you could remember us...But you will be lucky if you survive the Akhyls hour."
Sherlock looked up at Mary, suddenly mindlessly terrified.
"SHERLOCK!" John screamed, as the boy started to froth at the mouth like a dog with rabies.
John couldn't remember anything else. That had been a truly traumatic experience. Sherlock ended up in the medic tent with the rest of the wounded that night, and John ended up sleeping at the foot of his cot.
Mycroft had sent out an assassin of his own to track down the Woman and ,as she was affectionately known by her rouge name, "Pandora" after that.
The names "Mary Morstan" and "Irene Adler" were never spoken again. It had been a superior medical officer's suggestion, as the one time that the names were brought up sent a delirious Sherlock into a manic episode.
John gasped, as the fog of recall lifted, and he realized why Sherlock had brought those old bones up in the first place.
"Claire de La Lune, was Mary's signature perfume. So, you think...the third party that Mrs. Lestrade had the rendezvous with is either Mary or Irene?"
Sherlock swallowed, "It's not just Claire de La Lune. Anybody, including Gavin's wife, could wear it, it's a popular cologne. But you mix the cologne itself with this bitter chemical that has a slight delirient effect if you inhale too much...She's learned how to bottle Baskerville and make as dramatic an exit as she can an entrance. But if she'd had some sort of problem with Mrs. Lestrade, there'd have been a body. So, we can assume...that Lestrade's wife...is working with the Pandora Pact. Against both of her lovers, it seems."
John drew a heavy breath, feeling Greg's pain. And wondering how...for the love of God!, they were going to break the news to him...