CHAPTER 31: WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2015
London
For the rest of her life, Sally Donovan would remember with almost perfectly clarity what happened the day Lestrade called her to the War Room, aka HQ, aka 221C Baker Street.
She arrived with Dryers, assuming they would find Lestrade alone, or perhaps with Molly. Instead, there were three men in the room: Lestrade, of course, and two who were wholly unexpected.
The first was Mycroft Holmes. That he had left the security of his penthouse alerted her to the gravity of whatever situation she had just walked in on. How had he managed to sneak away without being spotted? Why would he risk it? He was seated at the head of the conference table, or rather perched, his posture that of one prepared to rise at any moment. One hand was fisted on top of the table, the other moving the mouse of the laptop set up in front of him, and his eyes were darting. Hardly the repose or demeanour of the man she had met with only days before.
The second man was a greater shock.
'Donovan, you remember Mr Niazi?'
Flummoxed at the sight of him, she stood opened mouthed and dumb, so it was Dryers who answered. 'Karim Omid Niazi, yes, hello. How . . . how are you?'
The Afghan transplant—the Slash Man's penultimate victim and survivor—lifted his eyes from his own collection of computers (four of them, set in a semicircle on the far side of the table) and grinned shyly. He looked remarkably well: well fed, well dressed, well groomed. Quite different to the man she had last seen in hospital, recovering from torture and a near-fatal hanging. He shook Dryers' extended hand.
'One of Mycroft's recruits,' said Lestrade in a tone that indicated neither endorsement nor disapproval. He alone was on his feet, pacing back and forth between Mycroft and Karim with his mobile in hand, bouncing it nervously. 'A wizard with computers, turns out. Right proper hacker.'
'You gave him a job?' said Donovan. 'Working for . . .' She trailed off, vaguely indicating Mycroft Holmes.
'I am practicing my English every day,' said Karim, as though he sensed her objection and thought he understood it.
'One ought not turn aside an ally, Sally,' said Mycroft without lifting his eyes.
Lestrade debriefed her, succinctly and efficiently. Two of the linchpins were confirmed dead, the third presumed so. They had lost their primary means of communicating with Holmes and Watson, and due to an error in code cracking (Mycroft subtly shook his head disappointedly at this point in the debrief), they had also lost communication with Murray. Nevertheless, they had gleaned from Murray's final texts two important bits of information: one, that Murray had been eyewitness to the aftermath of a massacre; and two, that Moran was en route to Barcelona. From these sparse texts, news reports, hacked police files (courtesy of Mr Niazi), and their own spies in the field, Mycroft had deduced the larger part of what had happened: a confrontation in Belgrade; Holmes and Watson taking out the third linchpin and his crew; Sebastian Moran discovering that he was on the verge of watching the whole house of cards come down.
There wasn't much time.
The first priority was finding Sherlock and John, and to that end Lestrade revealed that, only minutes before Donovan and Dryer's arrival, he had activated the Spanish operatives of what turned out to be—according to Lestrade's brief description—a 'vast, efficient, and effective network' with a 'high confidence rating', as established by Mycroft Holmes himself. Donovan voiced no scepticism, though it must have registered on her face, because he concluded by saying, 'Of which you, Sally, are a part. As are you, Tom.'
As sightings and reports came in, Lestrade assigned Donovan and Dryers to the task of collecting and processing intelligence. They were also charged to transmit the passcode their spies were to use if any of them were to encounter Holmes and Watson. Within the hour, they were part of this well-oiled machine with dozens of eyes, feet, hands, and brains, all in search of Sherlock and John.
But they found Sebastian Moran first.
'CI says it's an invitation to some sort of gathering,' said Donovan to the room. She had just received the intelligence as a photo texted to one of a dozen phones lying in the centre of the table. She hooked up the phone to a projector, and on one of the larger screens appeared the snapshot of the invitation, all black, the size of a business card, with a series of numbers she could make little sense of. Not at a rapid-fire pace anyway. Her brain didn't work like that. Fortunately for them all . . .
'Sir, it looks like an access code,' said Karim to Mycroft.
'A password?' said Lestrade. 'To what?'
Mycroft answered, though haltingly, still struggling to find words with ease: 'Un— encrypted site,' Mycroft answered, 'on the dark web. Karim followed the . . . A.G.R.A. . . .' He made a sprinkling gesture with his fingers.
'Breadcrumbs,' Lestrade supplied. 'The ones Sherlock and John supplied.'
'Yes. Those. It led him straight there. It's one of the ways they communicate.'
Minutes later, they found themselves staring at the screens on the wall and a web page in what at first appeared to be nothing more than a monochromatic black background. But as Donovan stared, she was able to distinguish a dark grey M filling the screen, barely contrasted against the black. In the corner, almost unnoticeable, the spider logo lay in wait. Karim clicked on it, and a new text field appeared. Slowly, deliberately, he entered the access code.
El program comenzará en . . .
2 horas 12 minutos 17 segundos
And the clock was ticking down.
'Program, what program?' muttered Dryers.
'Greg, whatever this is,' said Mycroft, 'I want shoes on the ground, as many as we can find. Get those op— op— operatives back on the line.'
Two hours and twelve minutes. It raced by like the devil himself was on its heels, hastening sundown. With every phone call, every encrypted message, Donovan checked the clock, and with each flick of her eyes, it seemed another ten minutes had expired in rapid succession. From one operative they learnt of an invitation to a party at a mansion just outside of Barcelona, which was an hour ahead of London. From another they learnt that invitations would be checked at the door. From yet another they learnt that Moran himself was expected to be present. But what this place was and who lived there, no one seemed to know. All they knew for certain was that three of their operatives—working deep under cover—had secured invitations, and more would be positioned within a half-mile radius at one o'clock, four o'clock, six o'clock, and ten o'clock. They also knew that there would be a broadcast, for anyone who had the access code.
Donovan marked the time.
0 horas 2 minutos 9 segundos
'God, I hope they're not there, whatever this is,' she murmured to Dryers, who nodded sombrely.
Lestrade overheard her, though just half a second ago he had been in conversation with someone in his ear. 'No confirmed sightings yet.'
Mycroft was more pragmatic. 'There would be no broadcast otherwise.' But his face was grim with dread.
They watched numbers diminish. One minute to go, and Donovan concentrated on her breathing, trying her damnedest to comport herself with the steeliness of a Royal Marine readying for battle. Dryers reached for her hand under the table and squeezed. She squeezed back.
Thirty seconds. Mycroft's mouth was hidden behind his joined hands, his elbows spread on the table, watching the numbers fall.
Twenty seconds, and Lestrade dropped the phone from his ear to stare at the screen.
Absolute silence filled the War Room as they watched and waited.
The numbers dissolved to zero, and an image appeared on the screen: a stage, like in a play, with a gold curtain. And a voice: ¡Damas y caballeros!
They stared in wonder, uncomprehending, as the voice continued its welcome message. But then it happened. At the pronouncement of his name, Sebastian Moran stepped through the curtain. A show had begun.
They watched with mounting horror as the events unfolded: The curtain had parted, revealing a scaffolding, crossbeam, and rope. A man, his head shrouded in a black bag, was led to the stage. And it might have been any man . . . but no. Even Donovan knew him, the way she would have known her own brother, if she had ever had any. So the man in the room whose brother it truly was could not mistake him.
Mycroft shot to his feet so quickly he almost fainted, and might have done, if Lestrade had not instantly been there to bear him up.
'Stop this, stop this, now!' he demanded—of everyone in the room, of the villain on the other side of the screen, of a cruel universe who had already exacted too much from them all.
Lestrade lunged for another phone, even as he barked his orders to Donovan ('Position the agents to intervene!'), to Dryers ('I want medical on the ground, now!'), and to Karim ('You get control of that camera feed. Hack it.')
They worked like a machine, and not them alone, but their agents in the field, who responded to their every order. The energy in the room was hyper-focused, not frantic, quite unlike anything Donovan had experienced. She had never seen Lestrade so commanding and competent, like he was the seasoned conductor of an orchestra he expected to follow his every gesture, to read his facial expressions with pinpoint accuracy, and to respond as one—and they did. She trusted him implicitly.
The scene played out above their heads as she moved pieces on the chessboard with intense precision. She could not deafen herself to Moran's hideous threats, nor pretend she was not horrified when Sherlock's face was revealed. She felt physically ill when the camera revealed John on a platform. And she had to look away at what happened next. Mycroft groaned like a dying man, and she wished Lestrade would order him from the room. He was the Iceman no longer. If they failed him, he was mere moments away from witnessing the execution of his own brother.
Donovan's panic was mounting. The impossibility of their task became more and more apparent with each passing minute. The room was filled with enemies, and they didn't have enough agents to combat them. Even if they could get to Sherlock and John, she didn't know how they could save them. She cast a glance at Mycroft, who was openly weeping, his hands clenched and trembling at his mouth.
And then they heard a man scream.
'Moran!'
At first they couldn't believe their eyes. The camera swung around and found him on the balcony—Bill Murray, that elusive man involved in John's abduction, whom Sherlock had turned into a spy, was right there, with a gun to a man's head and ordering Moran to release John and Sherlock.
Eyes pinned to the screen, Mycroft slowly rose back to his feet on shaky legs.
'Someone turn that damn camera off,' Moran was saying.
Mycroft gasped and looked at Karim, but Karim held up a hand. 'I am control,' he said, then turned his laptop for Mycroft to see that he was in charge of the feed. The cameras remained on.
They watched the exchange between Moran and Murray with bated breath. Donovan's throat was so dry she was incapable of swallowing. Let them go. Her thoughts were desperate as a prayer. Please, just let them go.
To her amazement, Moran lifted John's bleeding body from the hook and dropped him senselessly to the floor.
Let him live, she prayed. God, let them both live.
But then it happened. Murray slowly retracted the gun from pointing at his hostage—and aimed it at himself instead.
'Jesus, no,' Mycroft whispered.
The feed suddenly went dead.
'No!'
They were dead. They had to be. A bomb had gone off a thousand miles away, and everyone in the room knew it. Donovan stared at the blackened screen in shock and dismay, disbelieving that they had failed. Numb with despair, she could neither blink nor breathe. To her side, however, Dryers had shot to his feet, screaming obscenities, while Karim held two hands across his mouth and Mycroft staggered away from the table, crashing against the wall and sinking to his knees.
Only Lestrade was in control. With fury in his eyes, he swung on Karim. 'Another feed. Get me another feed.' Then to Dryers, 'Update on the medical team. Don't just stand there, move!'
Then Donovan locked eyes with Lestrade, and it was like a jolt to her senses. 'I'm contacting our agents on the ground,' she announced, and got back to work.
He nodded sharply, and turned to comfort Mycroft.
Over the next seventeen minutes, they worked feverishly to reestablish contact with their network—at least, those they could find—to gather new intelligence and execute orders. They knew the Bombers and Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona were en route, responding to reports of an explosion, and that the mortality rate was high. But then a report came—in broken English—that Holmes and Watson were not in their last-observed locations. 'Not in the house,' the man said excitedly. 'Yo repito, they are not in the house.'
Then there was radio silence. No new news was coming in, and there were no more orders to pronounce. All they could do was sit and wait.
At twenty-eight minutes, a new report came in.
'Holmes and Watson secure,' said Dryers, repeating what he had just heard on his phone. He looked up at Lestrade, mouth hanging open as if he couldn't believe the words he had just spoken.
'Say again, constable,' said Lestrade breathlessly.
'Holmes and Watson secure,' he said, 'and en route to a safe location.'
Mycroft straightened, his face splotchy and hands still shaking. 'Show me.'
But it was two hours before they heard anything more. To allow them to abscond undetected, their agents requested radio silence until they reached the safehouse, and Lestrade granted it, though he demanded to know the status of their charge in the very instant that all was secure.
When the call came in, he took over the phone call from Dryers. They all listened as Lestrade arranged everything—the secure link, the video feed, and the privacy. He set a laptop in front of Mycroft. Then, solemnly, he looked at Donovan, and with his head gestured to the door.
She wished she could stay. She wanted to see him, too. She wanted to see them both, and know they were okay. But this wasn't her time, and she knew it. Taking Dryers' hand, she arose and followed Karim out the door, Lestrade close behind her, leaving the Mycroft and his brother to talk.
Just Outside of Barcelona
The web was unravelling.
A hole had been blasted in the stronghold known as Appledore. For days, confusion reigned as emergency personnel and the Spanish government tried to make sense of what had happened. Piece by piece, the story began to unfold and was broadcast on news outlets around the globe.
The homeowner—one Charles Magnussen, an exceedingly wealthy Danish expatriate and news tycoon living in Spain—was presumed dead, a victim of the massive explosion presumed to have ties to terrorists, possibly but not conclusively domestic. He had been hosting a party of internationals, fifty-two of which had been confirmed dead. Another thirty-nine were being treated for severe burns and related blast injuries. More were presumed missing or dead—no one knew how many bodies had been utterly destroyed when the bomb went off, or who may have fled and not contacted authorities. Disturbingly, the ballroom where the disaster had occurred featured a stage, and on that stage a scaffolding, and above that scaffolding, a rope still hanging from a beam. The police were interrogating survivors, but what they were learning was not being released to the public.
The next morning, investigators on the scene found a body in the forest. Sebastian Moran, a British national wanted for crimes in London and elsewhere, was dead. This, too, was kept from the papers. Instead, law enforcement—beginning in Europe with the SIS and INTERPOL but quickly spreading to other continents—coordinated their efforts to take down a growing number of crime syndicates that had suddenly sprung into visibility.
But long before it was discovered these syndicates' connection to one James Moriarty, before Moran's body was positively identified, and before the smoke had even dissipated from the smouldering Appledore, two men on the outskirts of a quiet Spanish village were waking up to a new day.
Through the night, they had been under the strictly confidential care of a private medical team consisting of emergency medical technicians and nurses. Come dawn, a small team of doctors—vetted and assigned by Mycroft Holmes himself—arrived to more accurately assess Sherlock's and John's injuries. John, emphasising his own medical credentials, insisted that Sherlock be tested for blast lung, an injury he had commonly seen while serving in Afghanistan, which resulted when the shock wave from an explosion caused damage to the lungs, leading to intrapulmonary haemorrhage, which was so often fatal. John had been concerned with Sherlock's difficulty in breathing through the night, even with the assistance of oxygen. To his great relief, further assessments concluded that smoke inhalation was the primary cause of his breathing difficulties, and though his lung irritation was persistent for the first twenty-four hours, it was expected to resolve within forty-eight and lead to no long-term effects.
What would not resolve itself, however, was his hearing. The blast had spared his lungs but affected his vestibulocochlear nerve, resulting in sensorineural hearing loss in his right ear. He had not noticed it in the immediate aftermath because of his disorientation and efforts to rescue John, but it became apparent in the quiet of the conference room when he talked to his brother's seemingly muted voice. Fortunately, his left ear was undamaged. Still, it was unlikely that he would ever hear from his right ear again.
Other maladies were treated, and with positive outlook on recovery. His near-fatal hanging might have led to spinal cord injuries, prolonged lack of oxygen to the brain, or muscle strain. As it was, he suffered deep surface abrasions that would heal in time, as would a new sprain in an ankle that had not quite recovered from its last injury. All told, as he said as an understatement to John, he had come through the fires of hell with just a little smoke in his eyes.
As for John, he had miraculously suffered no physical injury from the explosion itself, not even the flecks of shrapnel that had peppered Moran's body. Reflecting on this, he surmised that Moran had been positioned just so as to block John from flying debris, quite inadvertently sparing him such injury with his own body. John couldn't exactly muster gratitude toward his former captor for this. Rather, he saw it as some benevolent force using his enemy as a human shield, weakening him for the battle to come. It felt like a small measure of mercy from an otherwise apathetic universe.
John's two primary complaints involved fresh lacerations to his back and a deep puncture wound to his shoulder, less than an inch away from where a bullet had once almost ended his life. This time, however, the blood loss was surprisingly minimal, requiring no transfusion. The wounds needed stitches, not staples, and doctors prescribed him no more than painkillers and antibiotics. His face was a mess of bruises, and his left eye was swollen shut for more than a day, but the other aches and pains he suffered were of little consequence, as he said dryly to Sherlock, given that he could still stand on his own two feet.
On the whole, they moved slowly, slept often, and sought solitude with each other, away from the medical team and security detail. They were placed in adjoining rooms, but it didn't occur to either of them to remain apart. For weeks now, they had shared a single room and often a single bed, one keeping vigil while the other showered or slept, one encouraging the other to eat or rest, putting their heads together to puzzle-solve and strategise. With Moran dead, there was no need for a vigil and no call to plan their next move while simultaneously figuring out how to survive to the next day, and the next. But habits were not so easily broken.
So it was that, only two days after they were found in the wood, John left the bathroom where he had been gently cleaning around the wounds on his face and found Sherlock sitting in an armchair, facing the black screen of a television set but doing nothing at all, just staring into a space. Softly, John stepped beside him. He picked up the pulse oximeter resting on a side table, lifted Sherlock's left hand by the wrist, and clipped it onto his index finger.
While he waited for the reading to appear on the screen, he studied Sherlock's face, frowning at the mean red mark looping Sherlock's neck just above his collar, below an ugly scar—now more than a year old—from when the Libyans had almost ended his life on a desert road. A few seconds later, the oximeter beeped, and John read 92%. Satisfied, he returned Sherlock's hand back to the armrest, then moved around to the chair on the opposite side, facing him. He sat gingerly on its edge, mindful of aggravating his stitches. He had taken his painkillers only ten minutes before, and they had yet to reach their full effect, so he could feel the blood pulsing through the wounds with every beat of his heart.
'All right?' he asked quietly, lest he startle Sherlock from deep thought.
Sherlock nodded, but like he hadn't quite heard the question, just the inflection.
They hadn't talked about what had happened in any detail. In the shock and numbness of the aftermath and caring for their injuries and being too exhausted to keep their eyes open, there simply hadn't been the moment. Now was the moment.
'If I could have traded places with you,' said John, 'I would have taken your place on that stage in a heartbeat.'
Sherlock's eyes misted. 'I know. And I would have taken your place under Moran's maniacal hand.'
'Yeah,' said John. 'I know that, too.'
'I'm sorry I wasn't more careful. If I had only—'
'Regrets never saved us before,' John said, overriding him. He waited for Sherlock to lift his eyes and find him, then he smiled sadly. 'The truth is, neither of us would be here, if not for Bill.'
'I . . . did not expect to see him there. Or for him to . . . do what he did.'
John nodded sombrely. 'There's only one reason he was there, you know.' Before Sherlock could query him, John continued, 'You saved him. Back in May. You did that. I would have killed him, had it not been for you. You saved all of us that night, Sherlock. We just didn't see the fruits of that decision until now.'
'Pity I couldn't save him in the end.' He sighed from a place deep inside. 'I thought he might not survive this. But I thought . . . forgive me, but I thought Moran would kill him. Discover what he was, and kill him.'
'I thought the same.'
'Did I send the man to his death? Did I do that?'
John shook his head, looking down at his hands. 'Bill chose his own fate. You know, for all the things he did . . . and didn't do . . . I don't hate him. I can't. In the end, he was my friend. He saved my life twice—on the road to Kandahar and again at Applegate—both times in the very moment it needed saving. He saved yours, too, when there was nothing I could do. Bill was a hero, despite his best efforts. He was a good man, the kind that struggled every day of his life to fight off his demons. I know something about that.' He sniffed, rubbed his nose, and let out a long breath. 'Fran needs to know that. His kids need to know. I feel like I should be the one to tell them.'
'We . . . can't go home, John.'
John frowned. 'It's over, Sherlock. He's dead. The network is dying, it's—'
'It's not over. I don't know that it ever can be.'
'What do you mean?'
He watched Sherlock's eyes fall closed and his breathing come more deliberate. 'The woman,' said Sherlock. He closed his eyes, shook his head. 'He was broadcasting that horror show to her. She wasn't at Appledore, she was out there, somewhere, watching.'
'Fine. Then she watched us die. Honestly, Sherlock, she thinks we're dead.'
Sherlock looked sharply. 'That didn't work out so well for me last time. Or for you.'
John felt his words like a physical blow. 'Shit, Sherlock.'
'Either way. Think about it, John, either way, we're still not safe. Not from her. If we resurrect in London, she sees us. If we hide as dead men, two ghosts wandering in this great big world . . .' He shuddered, and John saw that his hand was trembling as it came up to his lips. 'She found me before.'
John felt a little fire beginning to grow in his stomach, and anger began to spread outward. 'Okay. And what power does she really have? No, Sherlock, look at me. What does she have? She cannot inherit A.G.R.A. because it's destroyed. We did that. So what does that leave her?'
'Revenge. I know this woman, John. She's resourceful, focused, spiteful. The games she plays, she plays for the thrill of it. She's like Moriarty, that way. She doesn't need all of A.G.R.A. to feel strong. She just needs to destroy one man. That's enough.'
John opened his mouth, ready to argue, but Sherlock wasn't done.
'And then there's Them.'
'Who?'
'Mycroft's people. His so-call Big Boys Upstairs. They've been plotting against me longer than Moriarty has. They've outlasted all my enemies. They've even destroyed my brother. '
John had seen this before—Sherlock, spiralling into despair. It had happened in the wake of discovering the twisted meaning behind a bouquet of flowers, and again in hospital in the wake of the Slash Man's attack on John on Baker Street. Sherlock was no longer one to revel in his victories or embrace the sense of relief that should accompany a danger thwarted. He had too long and too often had his victories and solace undercut by the next impending threat, and he was feeling it again. John had no remedy for it. He never had.
'What did Mycroft say to you the other night?' John asked carefully. Sherlock had been notably vague about that conversation, which had lasted over an hour, and John had respectfully not pried. Now, however, he thought he ought to know.
Sherlock scowled, an indication that he didn't want to talk about this, not even with John. But John didn't back down.
'If this is about Them, then I bloody well deserve to know.'
Sherlock sniffed and pursed his lips together as though he wouldn't answer, but John knew he just had to wait him out.
'All he said was, don't come home.'
'Did he say why?'
'The time isn't right, he said. It may never be.'
For a moment, John just stared. But the fire had indeed spread by now, and it urged him to his feet. 'I admire your brother greatly. I didn't always, but I do now. For many reasons. Not the least of them because he loves you more than he's ever been able to express in words, and I've seen for myself what that kind of love can do. But you know something? Sometimes he gives shit advice.'
He walked past Sherlock's chair, heading for the unused adjoining room. For an hour, at least, he needed to be alone.
'We'll talk about this later,' he said before he shut the door.
As part of their physical recovery—and perhaps on the insistence of one Mycroft Holmes—doctors, nurses, and medical technicians attended to them regularly. Perhaps too regularly. Meals and teatimes appeared with English-style regularity (breakfast at eight, lunch at noon, tea at three thirty, and dinner at six thirty). Bandages were changed morning and night, medications were administered every four hours, and blood and urine tests were drawn once a day. John could scarcely burp without someone recording in his medical chart: eructation at 1405 hrs; monitor for gastrointestinal reflux disease. By day three, it was driving him barmy.
He was anticipating six to eight weeks for his lacerations to fully heal, if the last time (and his ample medical training) was anything to go by. But he didn't think he could stand being cooped up in this Spanish hacienda. He was grateful—he really was—for the care and security. And he was by no means eager to re-enter the public eye. The trouble was, he and Sherlock were approaching a bend in the road, one he almost never truly expected to see, and he wasn't sure whether to pump the brakes or step on the gas.
But it was in the quiet moments, when he and Sherlock weren't talking, now three days removed from the harrowing events at Appledore, that John's brain finally started processing all that had happened. When he closed his eyes, he saw a great ball of fire rushing toward him, filling his vision and threatening to consume him. He felt the sharpness of the fear that had gripped him like a choking cilice at being at the mercy of Sebastian Moran. And in those moments, he did not picture the darkened wood or the shadow that loomed over him; instead, he found himself back in that kitchen, with its flickering lights and cold orange tiles, and from the corner of his eye he saw Daz coming for him.
His PTSD was getting ready to rear its ugly head, and he wished he could phone Ella. The nightmares were coming. He could almost feel it, like someone standing over his shoulder, out of sight by undeniably present. It wouldn't be long. Tonight, or tomorrow night, or a fortnight away, the dreams were waiting for him, and he wouldn't be able to tell whether he dreamed. Not until Sherlock pulled him back to reality.
Because he knew Sherlock would. Mary had promised.
He remembered seeing her in the forest. The memory was as clear as bright as if it had happened within the past hour. A hallucination? The scientist in him said of course. There was precedence, after all. Since the convent, he had suffered all manner of hallucinations and intrusive thoughts. Surely, this had been no different. And the things she had said to him in the wood had been mere projections of a desperate hope, his last and only hope, embodied in the woman he had loved and lost.
And yet. Somehow, he didn't believe the scientist in him. Instead, he believed the nearly forgotten little boy who had once lit candles for his dying mother at St Luke's, the one who had once had faith in something greater than himself, a something that wasn't so apathetic after all.
John was left with a disquieting thought, however. If Sherlock was always there to save him, who was there to save Sherlock?
He had promised himself that he would kill for Sherlock, and he had. He had promised that he would die for Sherlock, and he meant it. But had had also promised Sherlock, in those hours before they had taken down the second linchpin, that John would be the one—always John, and only John—who would take a life to spare Sherlock the horror of killing. But it had been Sherlock, in the end, who had killed Moran. A needful act, and John would never say otherwise. He was grateful the man was dead. He was forever indebted to Sherlock for doing it. But he was sorry, still, that Sherlock had had to do it at all. Because John was right, he knew he was right: killing changed a man, and Sherlock was no exception. He just wasn't sure what form that change would take.
That night, John lay on his side in bed, staring into the dark and unable to sleep, thinking of Bill Murray, a man he would never get to thank for his monumental sacrifice, when he felt the bed jostle ever so slightly.
He thought little of it at first. It was just Sherlock shifting behind him, deep in sleep. But then it happened again, then a third time, and he realised what it was, so often as he had experienced it himself: a clenching abdomen from a sob trying to break free and a body that refused to give in. For a moment, John debated what to do. Feign sleep? Pretend he didn't notice? He didn't want to embarrass Sherlock, who was clearly trying to be quiet and still. In all the long days they had known each other, seldom had he seen Sherlock break down and cry. But the man had been running and fighting for so long now—since the day he fell—and even now there was no end in sight. He needed rest. They both did. But there were yet more dragons to slay.
Mindful of his tender back, John turned onto his stomach, then to his opposite side where Sherlock lay facing away from him. Gently, he manoeuvred himself closer. He rested his head closer to Sherlock's, and when there seemed to be no objection, he wrapped an arm around Sherlock's body and held him close.
A quiet minute passed. Then Sherlock slid his fingers into John's and held on.
They lay unmoving, but for the shudders that passed from Sherlock's body into John's. Neither spoke. John wanted only to absorb Sherlock's sorrows, mixing them with his own, and somehow still be strong enough for the both of them. But he knew that such wasn't how these things worked. All he could do was be there, and let Sherlock mourn the life he wished he could reclaim.
By the time the nurses arrived at eight in the morning, John had made a plan. They each went through the normal health check-ups, except this time, when it came time to change his bandages, he said to the nurse, 'Show Sherlock how to do it, and let him help.'
Everyone looked surprised, Sherlock not least of all. In the past months, John had spent some time teaching him about wound care in the event that one of them was seriously injured and a hospital was out of the question. He had covered everything from bullet wounds to broken bones, puncture wounds, and infections. Sherlock already had some first aid knowledge to build on, and some practical experience to boot, but John had instructed him as if he were training him to be a combat technician, which, in a sense, he was.
All the same, with the care they were now receiving, there was no call for him to put into practice any of that knowledge, and he started to make objection.
'You've never seen them heal,' said John in an undertone to Sherlock, recalling them both to the night he had shown Sherlock his scars.
The nurses were more hesitant, but John insisted, and then he turned himself over to being the patient.
Sherlock was a studious student, quiet but focused, inclining his good ear to better hear the nurse. Under her supervision and instruction, he took all of John's readings, removed the bandages, applied petroleum jelly, and put on fresh bandages. When it was all taken care of, John said to the nurse, 'Please have our breakfast and lunch delivered to the room today. And if we could get paper and pen, and a laptop as well, that would be great.'
Once they were alone again, Sherlock finally faced John square on and asked, half in jest, half in earnest, 'Are we planning to abscond?'
John smirked, but grew serious again almost at once. 'Not just yet.' He took a couple of tender steps toward the little round table in the room—he was always a little tender after wound care—and lowered himself into a chair. He indicated to the chair opposite for Sherlock to join him.
'I haven't said thank you,' John started. When Sherlock's eyebrows pinched in confusion, he made his point clear: 'For killing Moran. I know, it's a strange thing to say thank you for. Especially because I . . . I never wanted you to have to do it. But I couldn't. I couldn't. I was helpless, and if you hadn't come when you did . . .'
Sherlock shook his head. 'Don't thank me for something I should have done almost a year ago.'
'It's important to me that I do. Because it was a hard thing you did. A good and right thing. But a hard thing, all the same.'
Now Sherlock nodded, but slowly, still not fully understanding why John was saying all of this.
'When I killed Daz,' John explained, 'it was also a good thing. He had destroyed so many lives and hurt so many people, including my Mary. Including me. I have no regrets, doing what I did, or how I did it . . . But none of that keeps me from being haunted by what I did, or who I am because of it.'
'You presume I'm haunted now. Because I killed Moran.'
'I presume nothing. I'm merely asking how you are, in the wake of things.'
'I'm fine.'
John frowned at the quickness of the answer.
'You don't believe me.' Sherlock glanced at the bed, a look of shame about him, like he was embarrassed to acknowledge his moment of weakness. 'Is this about . . . last night?'
'This is about your mental state. Our mental state. We don't have an Ella to help us out, and I want to make sure we're ready for what comes next.'
Sherlock's eyes narrowed, curious but cautious. 'What does come next?'
With an assertive nod, John said boldly, 'The final linchpin, the one we neglected to count. Irene Adler.'
Sherlock was physically taken aback.
'We don't run. We don't hide. We go after her.'
'What?'
'You're left ear works just fine,' he said, smiling. Sherlock huffed a laugh, but without much humour. John continued. 'Look. You've outwitted her before. More than once. You'll do it again.'
Sherlock snorted derisively. 'We're no longer playing the same game.'
'That's right. Because this time, we are laying the board, and we are setting the rules. Come on, Sherlock, you know I'm right. We can't rest because our work isn't done. And I'm tired of not living my life, our life. We don't wait for her to discover us, or wonder if she ever will. We go after her, like we went after Moran's linchpins. You and me. It's always been you and me.'
'But—'
The door opened; a nurse was pushing a breakfast trolley.
Sherlock lowered his voice. 'I wouldn't even know where to begin. No one has seen or heard of her since April.'
John shrugged like it was nothing. 'So we start by solving her puzzle. One last riddle. One last nursery rhyme. You know the one.' He smiled at the nurse, who was just uncovering a platter of huevos rotos, a plate of bizochos, and a bowl of oranges. John picked up an orange and tossed it through the air. Sherlock caught it deftly one handed, regarding John like a puzzle himself, and there was a light of intrigue in his eye. John knew then that the had him. 'Oranges and lemons,' he quoted, 'say the bells of St Clement's.'