"Well, isn't this nice and cosy," Mycroft said, face pinched as he glared at their security detail.
He had no doubt personally appointed the two bodyguards, and he looked disappointed to find they had been slumming it with his little brother, despite standing at attention,wide-eyed and ramrod straight, ever since they had heard the annoying tapping of his umbrella as their boss slowly made his way up the seventeen steps. They looked so uncomfortable that John took pity on them and sent them out for a little bit of fresh air. It was his fault for tempting them with their favourite show in the first place, but John doubted Sherlock could have endured the two intruders if they had just loomed silently around the flat all day, watching his every moves. Unsurprisingly, Clara and Oswald jumped to the occasion for a swift escape, saluted John, probably out of reflex and hurried away.
"Thank you… Captain," Mycroft said primly and looked at the couch with a moue of distaste, thinking better than to sit on it.
Sherlock smirked from his beer-free armchair so John offered up his own and pointedly sat next to Lestrade, as far away from Sherlock as he could. That should teach him some manners.
"So," Mycroft drew out, sitting ramrod straight, hands gripping his umbrella in front of him. He looked...smug, John decided. "We apprehended the sniper, as expected."
"Moran?" John asked, wondering if the placid man was finding anything humorous about the situation this time.
Mycroft nodded and continued.
"We also stumbled upon who I believe is none other than James Moriarty, but he hasn't said a word since the team I sent took him in, so if you would care to confirm his identity, John."
Mycroft flipped his phone over, showing him a picture taken up close of a face he knew all too well. It only took him a few seconds to recognize those dark, sinister eyes and that unhinged smile. John nodded once and turned his eyes away, not wanting to look at that face any more than necessary. He'd delete it if he could. And he was so relieved... So bloody relieved he felt like a ton of bricks had been lifted from his shoulders. It was over. With Moriarty locked away, the number of attempts on Sherlock's life should plummet dramatically, even more so if they kept his security detail around, so maybe this was it… maybe his Dreams would disappear for a while.
"And you, Sherlock?" Mycroft continued. "I don't suppose you would care to tell me about the mysterious source of your suspiciously accurate information?"
John knew he would have told his brother to piss off, but before he could, Greg choked on his beer, drawing everyone's attention to him instead.
"Everything all right, Detective Inspector Lestrade?" Mycroft asked, his voice as mild as ever but his eyes sharp as he looked him over, catching his panicked glance towards John, and then Sherlock.
"Yes, sorry. Went down the wrong way," Greg replied and excused himself for the bathroom.
John then watched warily at the silent battle of wills between the two Holmeses. They were staring at each other and seemed to be having some kind of conversation that way, Mycroft looking slightly irritated while Sherlock did an admirable job at faking boredom. Mycroft was the first to break the silence. John wondered if that counted as a victory for Sherlock, or just proved he was the more childish of the two.
"Anything you care to share? Anything at all?" Mycroft persisted, quite pointlessly, John thought, because Sherlock could be just as stubborn as he was, especially where he was concerned.
"You've put on a bit of weight, but I'm sure you knew that already," Sherlock deadpanned, making Mycroft's nostrils flare for a second.
"Very well," Mycroft said, getting up and tapping his umbrella once as if to signal his imminent departure. "Now that this nasty business is behind us, I hope you'll manage to reign in your insatiable need to make lethal enemies everywhere you go. For a little while, at least. Goodnight, gentlemen."
"He could have just called," Sherlock grumbled once his footsteps had disappeared down the stairs. "He suspects something is afoot. He won't find out, of course. He doesn't believe in hocus pocus."
"Are you calling me-"
"Is he gone?" Greg interrupted, his voice lowered as if he feared to summon the elder Holmes again.
John nodded.
"YOU HAVEN'T TOLD HIM?" Greg exploded. "You might have told me that. I thought for sure he would be in the know. He always knows everything and he's your brother. I could have spilled the beans anytime."
"I think you did a fair job of that already," Sherlock drawled.
"There's no reason to tell him," John explained. "And Sherlock has this idea that if Mycroft does find out, he'll want to whisk me off into some super-secret laboratory to find out what makes me tick and how they can use it for their own benefit."
"I wouldn't put it past him," Greg grumbled. "So who knows? Apart from us."
Sherlock raised an eloquent eyebrow.
"You're kidding."
"Best way to keep a secret. If I wasn't such a poor liar, we wouldn't even have told you, but I have to admit it does have it's perks. Tonight went as well as we could have expected with you in the know. Better than expected, in fact. He got Moriarty too. I can't believe it's over," John stretched and smiled. "I can't wait to have a night without that bloody Dream springing up on me."
"Oh," Greg breathed out as he finally put two and two together, understanding why John looked so dreadful lately. "Yeah, that can't be nice. But won't there be another? I mean… even with Moriarty locked away, if you have one every time someone wants to kill Sherlock, you must be seeing Anderson going at it every night."
Sherlock snorted.
"I think what Sherlock is trying to say is that angry kittens don't count. You have to actually mean it and actively prepare his demise to trigger a Dream. Anderson can fantasize all he wants about stabbing Sherlock in the back, I won't see it, thank God. But there's still a lot we don't know about how it all works. It's not like I got a manual when it started."
Greg asked a few more question, his curiosity piqued now that he knew all of this wasn't an elaborate hoax on their part, but John soon begged off. He had fought against sleep for so long that he might just drift off the next time he blinked, and he'd rather sleep in bed instead of the sticky, beer-covered couch.
ooo
John stumbled into the kitchen the next day, lured out of his warm bed by the smell of fresh coffee and warm pastries. He blinked in the light streaming in through the window, trying to locate the source of the much needed caffeine, when a shadow loomed over him and kissed the top of his head.
"Hello sleepy-head," Sherlock said affectionately.
"Mnin," John replied.
"Afternoon, actually," Sherlock corrected. "You slept through the morning. How are you feeling?"
"Bedr...Cfee," John answered, letting his boyfriend guide him to a chair where he supplied with enough caffeine to wake the dead. He hummed appreciatively and after a while, was able to string intelligible words together again. "This is nice. Did you go out in your bathrobe again?" John asked pointing to Sherlock's attire. It wouldn't be the first time he rushed out without getting properly clothed.
"No," Sherlock said, offended, as if he had never done such an unbecoming thing. He had. "Lestrade dropped off the coffee because he couldn't find any this morning and said you'd probably need it. He slept in your old room, by the way. Is he going to make a habit of it? Because he snores, it puts me off my experiments."
John considered offering the spare room to Greg more often and pointed at the pastries with a questioning look.
"Your 'fan-club'," Sherlock sniffed.
John frowned, reconsidering the croissant he was nibbling on. The only 'fan' of his his mind could conjure right now was Moriarty.
"I imagine it's their way of thanking you for saving them from my brother's wrath," Sherlock clarified.
Oh, Clara and Oswald. That was all right. John bit into the croissant and smiled, glad they hadn't gotten into any more trouble because of him. John felt strange knowing he had the whole day stretching before him with absolutely nothing to do, no Dream to analyse, no madman to escape from, no deathtrap to avoid… Only...Sherlock. They were soon back into the bedroom and spent most of the day there. And the following days, until Greg called them out on an 'interesting' case that consisted of a suicide disguised as a murder for a change. Some people knew how to hold a grudge to the bitter end.
ooo
Everything was back to normal. Or as normal as things could be for them anyway: fingers and lungs in the fridge, awaiting to be cut, frozen, burned or God knows what else; chasing thieves and murderers around London with their two tag-alongs dogging their every step and breaking thugs' noses from time to time if they came too close to their charges; hosting very loud Dr Who nights where John had soon decreed everyone leave their guns at the entrance because the debates over the show sometimes got a bit too out of hand and shooting at the wall was not a valid argument. And, of course, waiting on the prophetic Dream to take form. John only had the visit of the colourful swirls at night, which gave him a very vague sense of foreboding he quickly forgot in the morning. It had been going on for a couple of weeks already and didn't seem to want to change. If he was lucky, it would last for as long as it had the first time he had a Dream, and it would be months before he had to witness Sherlock's death again. Maybe years, if they were lucky.
But two weeks of peace was all that John was allowed. However, trouble did not come in the form of a Dream. John was on his way home after having left Sherlock at the lab in St Barts where he apparently wanted to pull an all-nighter looking at some dirt samples that all looked the same to him.
He'd hardly reached the end of the street when a long black car pulled over. John was ready to bolt, but the passenger window had been pre-emptively lowered and John saw Mycroft's face giving him the look that meant he'd better get in and not test his patience. John sighed, he yearned for a nice hot cuppa after a day spent running after the younger Holmes, but complied, sliding in the seat next to the elder Holmes and tripping on that bloody umbrella of his he carried everywhere. Why? It wasn't even raining today, for God's sake! John almost wished he still had his cane so he could accidentally shove it up Mycroft's large nose.
"What's going on?" John asked resignedly as soon as the car had driven off, wondering what could possibly force the always so busy British Government personified to pick him up personally instead of sending one of his assistants to kidnap him.
"Moriarty," Mycroft answered, the name rolling off his tongue like something foul.
John's insides froze. He could think of only one reason Mycroft would come to see him where the madman was concerned.
"He escaped?"
Mycroft laughed mirthlessly.
"No. I assure you it would take nothing short of a small miracle for him to escape. But, despite our best efforts, Moriarty has been very...uncooperative."
"You've had him two weeks," John stated blandly.
"And yet, he hasn't uttered one word. Not even a sound, actually. I would call myself impressed, but..."
Mycroft didn't need to finish that sentence. They had tortured Moriarty for information, for two weeks, and gotten nothing for their efforts. Talk about a civilized country. Talk about a madman.
"What about Moran?"
"Same results, but he is a highly trained soldier, so no real surprise there."
John's lips pressed into a thin line of displeasure. Torturing soldiers... That sounded familiar, and not in a good way. Was Mycroft trying to get him to sympathize with the enemy? Because he was doing a fair job of that. At least he had been humanely treated while in Moriarty's hands. In fact, most of his injuries had been the results of his multiple escapes, so you could call them self-inflicted to some degree.
"And this concerns me how exactly?" John asked.
"Moriarty did speak today. Two words," Mycroft paused, probably for dramatic effect, the prat, and John pretended very hard that it didn't annoy the shit out of him, especially because he had a pretty good idea of what Moriarty had said. "John. Watson."
John had gotten it right. Hooray for him. He might be a real prophet after all.
"So let me guess: he'll speak, but only to me." Mycroft nodded. "Go to hell, Mycroft."
"John," he replied in the tone he usually used on Sherlock after he'd done something spectacularly stupid. "Don't be unreasonable."
"No," John said, shaking his head. "No, Mycroft. This has nothing to do with me now. This is your game, with you spies and your secrets... and your torturers, apparently. I have no reason to go and see that twisted psychopath and let him mess with my mind just because he's bored."
Just the thought of the Irishman's lilting voice was enough to send a shudder down his back. He didn't want to renew the experience.
"You were a soldier, John. Better yet, you were an army doctor," Mycroft said and John puzzled at the apparent non sequitur. "You've seen exactly what happens when the enemy gets their hands on intelligence or weapons they shouldn't have."
John did, in fact, remember how it felt to have his hands on the broken bodies of his fellow soldiers, trying to keep their blood and organs where they should be, while taking the twisted pieces of metal that shouldn't be there, out, failing more often than he wished. Some of those had been awfully young. Kids, really, who called on their mother when the pain was too much, or when the light in their eyes dimmed until it was completely extinguished.
John was startled out of his flashbacks by the familiar chime of his phone. By the time he took it out, Mycroft's chirped as well.
Why did Mycroft kidnap you? Are you alright? Do you want me to kill him? -SH
John smiled despite himself. Sherlock must have asked Clara to follow him home again. He did that whenever they split ways. He'd keep Oswald, who was less chatty and didn't fidget as much as Clara, sending her after him to make sure he was safe. She must have ran back to St Barts to tell Sherlock he'd been picked up by Mycroft. Sometimes, John wondered who they were more loyal to: their employer or their charges?
Mycroft was not amused by whatever insults Sherlock must have sent him, but he wasn't typing a reply either, merely watching him… waiting for him to make a decision.
John sighed and typed a message, knowing Mycroft would know what he typed, the way Sherlock did.
He's taking me to talk to an old acquaintance. And no, you can't kill your brother. He's useful sometimes. -J
John looked to Mycroft, who inclined his head in thanks and ignored his own message, but their phones chimed again, one after another, and he did roll his eyes then.
No. Turn around. Come back.
Sherlock didn't even sign it this time. He was probably working himself into a full-blown tantrum. But Clara and Oswald were there to look after him, so he should be okay.
I have to do this. Don't worry. I'll be back soon. I love you. -J
He put it away and ignored the subsequent messages that were piling up in his inbox, Mycroft following his example.
"Thank you, John."
"I'm not doing it for you," John said, just to be clear.
"I know," Mycroft replied and opened the door, holding it for John to descend behind him.
John took a deep breath of the brisk night air before being swallowed up by a building that probably had no official existence.
ooo
"John! What a pleasant surprise!" Moriarty said cheerfully and he almost sounded sincere.
But maybe he was. He looked terrible, small and washed out, starved and sickly, a fine sheen of sweat visible under the crude lights. John almost felt sorry for him, and he'd had to reign in his doctor's instincts, but Moriarty had it coming, if only for trying to kill Sherlock so often. However, from the information Mycroft had asked him to get out of the criminal mastermind, Moriarty did more, much much more, on a daily basis and on a very large scale.
"I'd offer you some tea, but…" Moriarty trailed off, holding his handcuffed hands up as far as they would go, the chain that linked his wrists to the table clinking as he strained against it. John took the seat in front of him, glad for the wide stretch of table between them.
"You didn't offer any in the cell you stuck me in, so I can't say I'm surprised."
"Oh, Johnny boy… Are you still mad about that? If I'd known you were the special one, I would have taken better care of you instead of playing with boring old Sheeeer-lock."
John stiffened and tried very hard not looking at the red light of the camera on the wall in front of him. Or all the other cameras in the room for that matter.
"Tell me about the missile plans. Who did you sell them to?" John asked.
"Aww, come on, John. A little give and take here."
John grimaced. He wasn't about to spill the beans to Moriarty, of all people, and not with Mycroft bloody Holmes listening in with half the MI6.
"Why don't you ask me how I got the plans in the first place, then? I'll even answer that question for free. As a thank you for coming here."
John frowned. That wasn't something Mycroft had asked him to find out, but if the madman was willing to talk, he might as well let him. That's what Mycroft wanted after all.
"How did you get them?"
Moriarty pouted.
"Didn't they tell you? The Iceman and the Virgin, keeping you around at their beck and call but not sharing anything with you. How sad."
John hadn't understood half that sentence. If Moriarty had decided to talk in codes, he had either gone round the bend already, or, as he had suspected, he was just messing with his mind.
"Who's-"
"Oh, Johnny boy. Surely you can guess."
John had heard that name before, the Iceman… in the car, when Moriarty had kidnapped him the first time around.
"Iceman playing silly buggers with me," he had muttered when their speeding car had unexpectedly lurched to a halt. Could someone who controlled the CCTVs of London also turn green lights red? Probably. So the Iceman would be Mycroft, and-
"Well of course, Virgin might not be such a good descriptive now," Moriarty commented, winking at John. "You do like messing up all my plans, don't you, John?"
"I'm not at their beck and call," John growled instead, refusing to even mention his sex life. Creepy lunatic bastard.
"No? And yet, here you are."
"If you're not going to tell me anything, I might as well leave," John snapped, getting half out of his seat before Moriarty's next words forced him back down out of sheer shock.
"Sherlock gave me those plans."
"He wouldn't."
Sherlock wouldn't do that knowing what it could do, all the people, civilians and military alike, it could kill.
"He did it for you."
Oh. Sherlock would do that. He would know John would hate him for it, but he would do it anyway in exchange for John's life. John pushed the anger away, it wouldn't be useful right now and he'd bet it was exactly what Moriarty wanted. It did explain why Sherlock had been avoiding telling him what he had been forced to do while he'd been held hostage though. One mystery solved.
"And the intel on our forces abroad?"
"Sherlock," Moriarty answered smugly. "He's very good at ferreting out classified and encrypted information. A shame he never considered a criminal career."
Oh God, this was a right mess. It explained why Mycroft was ready to do just about anything to fix all this mess though. Sherlock had done it for John, and Mycroft was doing it for Sherlock, because wasn't what his little brother had done treason? The least John could do was fix all of this, he was the cause of it, all things considered.
"I need a minute," John announced, standing out of his chair so abruptly, his head spinned.
"Take your time, Johnny boy. I'm not going anywhere," Moriarty said, his chains clinking as he waved at him.
John hurried out the door and leaned against the wall in the grey, empty anteroom, breathing heavily. There was a one-way mirror here from which he could see Moriarty lounging back in his chair, whistling a merry tune. He seemed completely unconcerned at being held here and John wondered if he wasn't just biding his time. That thought terrified him.
"John?" came Mycroft's worried voice.
"Is it true?"
"I had hoped Sherlock might have told you by now, but given your reluctance to come…"
"You could have told me."
"No. Sherlock would not have forgiven me for that."
"So you let Moriarty do the dirty deed for you?" John raked a hand through his hair. "God, this is all my fault. If I hadn't been so stupid-"
"He would have just found another way," Mycroft said in a voice that was surprisingly soft.
"You're covering for Sherlock," John said and received the smallest of nods, as if he was afraid someone might see his confession. "There's only you behind those cameras, isn't there?"
Another small nod. John hummed as his mind spinned with all this new information. Surprisingly, he and Mycroft were on the same team, the one meant to save Sherlock from being thrown into the darkest, dankest cells of the country if his treason was ever made known, one not even Mycroft could dig him out of. They needed to get those plans back, that information obliterated and tear down anyone who held any proof of it had ever been out there.
"Alright, we can do this," John decided and pushed off the wall, surprising Mycroft for once. "Turn off all the cameras. I'll not have anything I say be taped. You can watch from here," he said pointing at the one way mirror that had a speaker on the side.
Mycroft looked him long and hard in the eye before he nodded, disappeared for all of two minutes and returned, giving him the go ahead as he placed himself in front of the mirror, glaring at the Irish man who was still enjoying his little break from torture and interrogation.
"John, you're back! I thought I might have scared you off there," he said gesturing at the now dark cameras. "Does that mean we can chit chat now? Because I'm just dying to know more about you."
He batted his eyelashes in a manner very reminiscent a teenage girl trying to be play coy. So. Disturbing.
"Answer one of my questions and I'll answer one of yours. Fair?" John asked.
Moriarty grinned and immediately told him all about the missile plans, who he had sold them to, when, who they would be passed to and who would eventually use them and when. John was… kind of impressed. The best part was that they still had time to stop the plans from being used altogether and nobody would be the wiser that they had ever been in enemy hands. John could just picture Mycroft behind the mirror at his back, typing furiously on his phone, pointing all his people down that path, like a pack of hounds after a fox.
Moriarty leaned over as far as he could, making John flinch on reflex.
"Now, Johnny boy. Tell me how you did it," he demanded, his eyes gleaming with malice and curiosity, excitement and...lust? John's nose crinkled. It really looked like Moriarty would gobble him up if he could.
"That's a rather open-ended question. Care to be more precise?"
Moriarty fell back on his chair and licked his lips.
"Nobody knew about Maple Cross. And I do mean nobody. Just me and Sebastian, and I trust him with my life, as you probably know. I thought for a while the Iceman had finally managed to get some competent mole into my ranks, and I've been weeding out the ranks, but I kept being thwarted, sometimes before I could even make my moves. So I had to put up that little travesty."
"It was...a test? But you were going to kill Sherlock. And that poor woman you beheaded."
"Either way, it was a win-win situation for me."
"I don't see it," John said, drawing out the words, still trying to figure it out. "You're here," he added, gesturing at the chains restraining his movements. "You were hurt. How is that a win?"
Moriarty smiled the way Sherlock did when John was stating the obvious or couldn't grasp his deductive leaps. He really wished he hadn't found something they had in common.
"Either the Maple Cross plan worked: I killed Sherlock and picked you up on my way out, or the plan failed: it confirms my suspicions about you, and we get to have a heart to heart talk... right... here. See? Win-win."
"You're completely crazy," John breathed out, because the madman had actually planned the possibility of them ending up here, like this, and he'd still gone ahead with it. It was not a reassuring thought, because how far after that had he planned? It took all of his effort not to send a worried glance at the mirror.
"So how do you do it? How do you know?" Moriarty demanded.
John took a deep breath. He had to answer, there was still many questions he needed to ask. The advantage his ability gave him would be lost somewhat, but it would still be useful enough to protect Sherlock and that's all that counted right now. He was protecting Sherlock this way too. That's why he was giving up his secret.
"I Dream," John answered and watched the glimmer of interest grow in Moriarty's dark eyes. "If you, or anyone else, tries to kill Sherlock, I will see it, and stop it."
Moriarty stared at him. He looked about to talk a few times, his lips parting, but would always clam up and continue staring silently at him. Again, he reminded John of Sherlock when he was trying to figure out a particularly difficult puzzle.
But John had answered, so after another minute of blissful silence he asked about where the intel on the British armed forces had been sent, and got just as thorough an answer as the last, but it was too late to retrieve in this case, and the army had been notified early so they could move their troops, but at least Mycroft would be able to clean up the trail of witnesses and incriminating proof. It was going to be a messy affair and John did not envy him the task.
Then, it was Moriarty's turn.
"Why you? Or Sherlock for that matter? Are there others? Is it like a club? A club of...guardian angels?" Moriarty let out a shrill laugh, tittering on the edge of madness. "Do you have wings, Johnny boy? Can I see them? Can I touch them?"
John frowned.
"Don't be ridiculous. And what question do you want answered. Only one, remember."
"Why Sherlock?" he asked putting a lot of thought into it. Did that mean he actually believed him? He had always been suspicious of him, sure, but he just accepted such an outlandish explanation? Just like that? John made a mental note to ask Sherlock about that since he seemed to understand how the madman's brain worked.
John's nose twitched. Moriarty would not like that answer.
"I don't know."
Contrary to what John had expect, Moriarty did not explode with anger, but seemed to be waiting for him to explain himself.
"I wasn't even sure Sherlock existed when I started Dreaming of him. I thought I was going mad, actually. I don't know why I was...assigned to him. I just was."
"What if-" Moriarty started and John lifted a hand to stop him. "Your turn," he sing-songed.
So John asked him about a woman named Irene Adler and her phone, about the information she had that he wanted so badly for himself he sent Sherlock after her.
"Did Sherlock like her?" he asked instead. "I thought those two might get along. Get into a little mischief. She's almost as smart as him, you know. They could have played their own game, but then, you left me."
Moriarty pouted while John glared.
"So what? You didn't actually want anything from her? You just wanted to 'hook them up'?"
"Jealous, Johnny boy?"
John didn't know if he was lying or not about Irene Adler. He had never met the woman, but maybe Moriarty had really been trying to drive a wedge between them. Not that it would work, but that might have been his reason for sending Sherlock after her. Mycroft would know. However, his answers had seemed good up to now, so John continued their little game of twenty questions and waited for Moriarty to speak up. And he did, the pleasant demeanour he had displayed until then melting as his face and voice became sharper, more menacing, more like the Moriarty he had met before.
"And what happens to you if Sherlock dies?"