Chapter Text
Jim Moriarty looks up from the pretentiously official gold seal on the letter in his hands to the woman standing on the other side of his desk.
The person known as AGRA is no longer available for assignments.
“They’re sending a goodbye note? How disgustingly polite.”
The woman lifts her chin and shifts so she’s standing straight and tall—her dark hair slicked back from her forehead and eyelashes bare, nothing to interfere with her eyesight—and levels him with her unsettling, assessing gaze. He has no doubt if he were to twitch his fingers right now, he’d have a bullet through the eye before he could take a breath.
Intelligent, ruthless and skilled. That’s what he’s always liked about her.
“Time to go under, Mr. Moriarty,” she says. “Leave the game before it plays you.” She reaches into her bag and carefully places a very familiar Walther on the desk between them —a statement of mutual self-destruction. “To your continued good fortune,” she adds, and turns confidently toward the door. He sees his sister glance up from her computer when she passes, and then the door swings closed with a barely audible click of the automatic lock.
Moriarty slowly turns back to the monitor behind his desk to watch two little children sit huddled in the dark, damp remains of a candy factory, and suppresses a shudder.
………………………………………………………
Sherlock unfastens his seatbelt as soon as the wheels touch the tarmac, and before the plane even stops rolling he’s standing at the door. His exile, his slow execution, commuted by miraculous timing.
Sherlock is instantly suspicious.
John and Mary are standing next to Mycroft’s car, the cold January breeze ruffling Mary’s hair and loose-fitting maternity shirt under her open coat. Sherlock imagines it must be warm, growing a life inside of your body. He idly wishes he could try it, just once.
“All sources point to a cannibalised uplink originating in South Africa,” Mycroft says, and the sound grates Sherlock’s nerves. “Best come back to my office. Someone is very aware of what we are doing here, given the rather ... coincidental timing of Moriarty’s return.”
“A leak, Mycroft?” Sherlock sneers. “I thought you were above such weaknesses.”
Mycroft scowls and looks ready to reply just as John steps between them. “Need I remind you both we’re standing in the middle of an open airfield? Given what we just saw, perhaps we could save the bickering for a more secure location.”
Sherlock glances over at Mary, who is slowly scanning the horizon. Sherlock does the same, and catches the flash of light on a scope just as she yells “Down!”, leaving them all to duck behind the car as a bullet clips the roof.
“I’m pretty well over having guns pointed at me,” John says, crouching low below the level of the windows, as he carefully opens the door and lets Mary climb into the car. Sherlock flinches as another shot shatters the window, and he can feel the rain of tiny bits of glass against his head and shoulders. He tries to grab John and shove him into the car but John won’t move.
“Get in the car!” Sherlock yells, but John still won’t budge. Sherlock curses him under his breath for a ridiculous sentimental idiot and grabs his shoulder to force him into the car, but before he gets any leverage John shoves back, hard, throwing Sherlock into the back seat. John slaps the top of the car twice to signal the driver and jumps in just as the car peels away. The door is still partly open, leaving Sherlock to fight to pull John all the way into the car to safety as the driver swerves wildly to evade additional shots that are pinging to the ground in front of them. He finally manages, leaving them both on the floorboards as Mary pulls the door closed and Mycroft barks instructions to his driver to get them to Whitehall as quickly as possible.
Sherlock looks up at John’s blue, blue eyes barely six inches from his own, the weight of him still pinning Sherlock to the floor, and they grin at each other.
“Looks like the game still has the same players after all,” John says, and Sherlock can’t help but laugh.
………………………………………………..
Mycroft’s underground office is still as bleak and grey as the day Sherlock came back to London. The previous one was, at least, bigger with some warmth, but Sherlock understands budget cuts and viciously hopes Mycroft is as uncomfortable as possible as he plots.
“Obviously, when you told me Moriarty was dead, I shouldn’t have taken your word for it,” Sherlock says and drops into a chair by the door. Mary and John both stand against the wall, holding hands and wearing identical frowns. Sherlock notes the worry lines around Mary’s eyes.
“Yes, well, we were also relying on your rather startling first-person account,” Mycroft says, and sits at his desk. “There was, of course, no body recovered, as his minions managed to beat us to it, but the blood and brain matter collected was a DNA match.”
“Surgery. Simple. You should have checked. He’s not above it, cutting a piece of his own brain out to leave somewhere.” Sherlock drops his head back and stares at the dull grey ceiling. “So hard to get good help these days,” he adds, and John chuckles, as Sherlock knew he would. He doesn’t blame Mycroft too terribly much, not really, but he could listen to John Watson snort with derisive laughter for the rest of his life.
Mycroft sighs. “Yes, well, be that as it may, we cannot change it. We have a situation to deal with. I will continue to gather information and we will find him.” Mycroft stands and walks toward the door. The light fixture over his desk shines brightly behind him as he looms over Sherlock’s chair, and Sherlock fights not to squint. “The car will be here to take you back to my house in fifteen minutes.”
Sherlock groans. He should have known there would be a catch. Bloody idiots, all of them. Magnussen’s execution was a necessary evil, and they knew it. He’s not a marauding murderer, despite all indications to the contrary.
“Don’t grumble. It’s a condition of your commutation that you stay … under my roof. Your sentence will be revisited at the end of this case. Deal with this, and you may gain your complete reprieve.” Mycroft leaves, closing the door carefully behind him, and Sherlock knows he’s fully aware of the bomb he just left ticking.
Sherlock can feel the tension grow the longer the silence settles. He finally risks a glance at John, and the puzzled look he gives back does not bode well for Sherlock’s future.
“I thought … I thought you were just being got out of the way until the dust settles,” John says.
Sherlock swallows. “There was a contingent that wanted a bit more of an...exile element brought into it. More dramatic.” Sherlock risks a smile. “Politicians. Always doing everything for show.”
John smiles but it’s a tight, small, smile that Sherlock knows means that he can hear the lie in Sherlock’s words. John will sort it out, he always does, eventually, and when he does there will be hell to pay. Mary looks sympathetic. She knows. She understands the price paid for her freedom, even if she knows it had nothing whatsoever to do with her at all.
Always for John Watson. His pressure point.
Mary looks away and finds a seat, settling in with a sigh and a hand on her belly. She looks well, if a bit puffy, and John pats her shoulder.
“You realize this idiot wants us to name the baby after him,” he says. “I did tell him, by the way, about the scan.”
“Sherlock’s not so bad,” Mary says. “It’s the William part I’m not so sure about.” Sherlock snorts, and Mary cracks a smirk that lifts one side of her mouth. “I think we’re going with Olivia.”
“Olivia Sherlock Watson,” Sherlock says, and there it is, that flash of a smile from John that makes Sherlock’s heart speed and then almost stall, leaving him high and breathless.
“Not even remotely. I’m not sure we should name her after anyone. I’m not, save the Watson.” John places a gentle hand over the swell of Mary’s stomach and must feel the baby move, or something, because he twitches a smile. Sherlock can’t decide if he’s fascinated or slightly terrified at the change the baby will bring, but given the future he just avoided, he’s not going to dwell on it.
“Sherlock was my great-grandfather’s name,” Sherlock says. “Family ties and all that.”
Mary looks down at her belly. “I was named for my grandmother,” she says, and really, there’s nothing Sherlock can say to that, because now that he’s in Mycroft’s office he could work out, in the blink of an eye, what that name actually is. But he has and will refrain. John says he doesn’t want to know and Sherlock isn’t sure he wouldn’t tell him. John shifts on his feet but says nothing, and the air inside the office goes as still and cold as death.
………….......................................
Mycroft sends John and Mary home in the car, and as Mycroft shows them out Sherlock sulks around the office and tries to ignore the feeling of prison walls closing around him.
Death as the price of six months of pure freedom. Two years of it previously, if bought at a higher price than that—John’s company, and his trust.
Sherlock idly changes Mycroft’s password to an unintelligible keysmash and goes back to his chair to wait. Mycroft comes back into the office and scowls when he tries to log into his laptop.
“Juvenile,” he says.
“Don’t make it so simple next time, then.”
“You realize Mary was working with Janine, yes?”
Sherlock scowls. “Yes. That’s how she gained access to the office. As I did.”
“So the nature of their relationship is no doubt clear to you?”
“Mary became friends with Janine to get closer access to Magnussen. I am certain that they quickly discovered their mutual self-interest. Janine is … extremely good at getting what she wants, and if Mary had the expertise to dispose of Magnussen, Janine would have been more than happy to help.”
Mycroft eyes him suspiciously. “Do you know what Magnussen had on Janine?”
“No idea.”
“Neither have we. Irish, moved in the last 8 years to London, worked as a secretary and then a PA. Has been Magnussen’s PA for the last 2 or so years. Hard to say if what he had on her is from her earlier life or more recently acquired, but nothing showed up in her file outside of a run-in over marijuana during Uni. Regardless, it’s not relevant at this point.”
“That’s one of the first correct things you’ve said all day. Well, it’s been fun, Mycroft, but we’re through here. John and I have quite a lot of work to do.”
“Don’t you mean you and John and Mary?” Mycroft says mildly.
Sherlock says nothing, can’t even find his way to look Mycroft in his smug face. So he picks up a small golden apple paperweight that sits on the edge of Mycroft’s desk. How appropriate, he thinks, and tosses it in the air a few times to calm his nerves. He longs to leave this room as quickly as possible, as the stifling air of responsibility and his brother’s all-too-knowing gaze is smothering him already.
“Moriarty is your focus now, Sherlock. Not whatever domestic disaster that is sure to be the Watsons’ marriage.”
“Piss off.”
“I’m warning you, Sherlock, let him find his own way in this.”
“I said piss off,” Sherlock snaps, and throws the apple across the room where it hits the concrete wall with a satisfying crack. Sherlock yanks open the door to Mycroft’s office and strides down the hall as quickly as he can, and waits, shivering, for the next car to arrive.
………………………………………………………………………………………….
Sherlock spends the next 12 hours in deep, thought-organizing meditation in the middle of Mycroft’s solarium. Well, once he’d rearranged the furniture to his liking. The wicker basket chair is comfortable enough and the sun warms the room to an almost luxuriant temperature for January, necessary for the delicate orchids scattered about.
Between the orchids and the servants, Sherlock would swear it was the 19th century. Mycroft never has managed to drag his mind into modernity.
But it is restful, and conducive to excellent thought, so beyond the cups of tea that appear and disappear without his requesting them, a longer stretch of interruption-free focus he’s not known in quite some time.
It’s too bad, really, that nothing is coming from it. A rehash of the last three years is turning up nothing to really sink his fingers into, and his mind keeps wandering down the paths of memory instead of logic, leaving him itching to uncover whatever it was behind John Watson’s eyes the night of his marriage, that brief flash of recognition that left Sherlock’s heart thrumming and his belly warm.
Sherlock shifts in his seat. It’s useless, being here. He should disengage and wait for Moriarty to move. Because he will move, eventually, and Sherlock will then be able to pick up the thread from there.
He’s considering moving upstairs for a bath and fresh clothes and a sneak out of the window when the front door bangs open and he can hear John’s voice in the hall.
“Oh, down here, is he? I’ll just pop in. Yes, I’m allowed to be here. You know that or I’d be dead already.”
Sherlock smiles at that and opens his eyes, and the door swings open and there John is, looking around the room with a bit of a wrinkle between his eyebrows.
“Your brother’s a bit of a twat, isn’t he?” John says, and drags up another chair and drops down into it. “I don’t just mean this place, though good God. Who’s he trying to be, Mr. Darcy?”
Sherlock chuckles. “He has delusions of grandeur,” Sherlock says.
“Yeah, well. Cheers to him. Listen, we’ve got a bit of a problem.”
Sherlock sits up, all senses on full alert. “What?”
“Yeah, figures you’d not have seen the news. He’s made his move, Sherlock. Moriarty. Managed to sneak in and make a cut in the earlobes of about a dozen people last night while they were sleeping, and my guess is that they were all connected with him.”
Sherlock stares. “How on earth do you know that?”
John rubs his hand across his face. “Because Mary was one of them.”
“Why isn’t she here now?” Sherlock demands. Of all the stupid things in the universe, he needs to examine her, he needs to ask her questions. John knows this…
“Because she’s at the obstetrician’s office, having a scan. We’re checking if the baby is still sideways. Getting a bit late in the game for her not to present head down, though there’s still time.”
“You … left her to go to the doctor’s office after she was assaulted in the middle of the night by Moriarty to come here? Are you insane?”
“Don’t be so paranoid. She’s trained, for God’s sake. She’s fine.”
Sherlock notices John doesn’t actually say what it is Mary is trained in. Denial, perhaps, on John’s part, or self-protection. If he doesn’t actually say it, perhaps it doesn’t feel as real. John’s talking around the elephant in the room, the one fact neither of them wants to articulate, but Sherlock knows he must.
“She’s worked for him. That’s why she was included.” He’ll sort through who else was included in the attacks later, to look for patterns, but for now, the anger and fear burns like cold fire in his stomach. He allows it to consume him for an instant before tamping it back down.
“Yeah, she said she had, but had been planted there by the CIA. I … believe her, Sherlock. I do. I didn’t want to ask a lot of questions at that moment, but now I’m afraid we’ll have to.”
Sherlock is warmed by the use of “we,” as if it really were still the two of them, together. “Indeed. As soon as possible. Today, actually.” Sherlock stands and begins to gather his phone and some notes he’d scribbled on a napkin, but when he’s ready to go upstairs he’s surprised to find that John hasn’t moved. Is watching him, in fact, and the crease has re-formed between his eyebrows.
“Are you going to be able to leave?” John asks. “Mycroft seemed pretty insistent that you weren’t to be on your own.”
“Of course I am,” Sherlock says, and hopes the breezy tone of his response gives him the room he needs to maneuver around the truth of it— that he’ll be able to leave, but it won’t be for long, and they’ll have company following them nearly everywhere to guard the public from his menacing, murderous presence.
The frown lines around John’s mouth deepen. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say. You’re just going to go along as if yesterday never happened.” John leans back in his chair and glares. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”
Sherlock stills, and there’s no sense in lying now that John’s managed to pin him down. “No,” he says simply.
“Mary knew. She told me last night. Said you weren’t likely to have come back, had this not happened.” John’s fist closes reflexively over the arm of the chair, and Sherlock tries to hold down the panic. He’d not foreseen this conversation: he’d expected to never see John again, and he’d convinced himself that leaving John happy and unknowing was the best thing.
“Yes. She would know the likely punishment for my crime.”
“And yet she wasn’t going to tell me, either.” John stands so abruptly Sherlock steps backward, but is still close enough to John he can see the bristle of whiskers on his cheek. John’s barely-checked frustration rolls off of him in waves, and the corners of his mouth are tight and drawn. “Why is it both of you insist on lying to me, hm? It’s really wonderful to know that the two people who supposedly love me the most in the whole world can’t trust me to be a big boy and deal with my problems!” John turns away and crosses his arms over his chest. His neck is bent, and Sherlock can see his back shift with the heaving breaths of an attempt at self-control.
“I … I didn’t want to hurt you,” Sherlock says, and the words are delicate, measured. “You’ve endured so much, and you had a chance for a home, a family, everything you want —“
John spins back to face him. “Yeah, about that, you never bother to ask me what I want. I wanted you, Sherlock!”
Sherlock feels like he’s been punched in the chest. “You didn’t,” he whispers. “You needed what Mary can give you. Comfort, stability—“
“I needed someone to love me! And you didn’t love me enough to stay.” The words seem to spill from him, as if he couldn’t hold them in any more. John closes his mouth quickly and looks pale, almost startled, and his eyes won’t meet Sherlock’s. He runs his fingers roughly over his hair but says nothing more, and instead turns on his heel and leaves the room.
Sherlock swallows past the lump in his throat. Considers two years of hunger and torture and loneliness, a glimpse of what could have been, and the certainty of devotion he wasn’t entirely sure it was wise to feel.
I didn’t know it was possible to love you more, he thinks, as the reverberation from the slam of the front door sets the orchids dancing.