fic for hiddenlacuna: Loose End
Title: Loose End
Recipient: HiddenLacuna
Author: rabidsamfan
Characters/Pairings: Sebastian Moran, Mycroft Holmes, Simza Heron, Rene Heron, John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings: canonical character death, spoilers for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, science of the milk-drinking-snake variety, diverges from canon.
Summary: The hunter becomes the hunted.
Also on AO3: "Loose End"
I did my job at Reichenbach. Did it well. There’s no question about that. I was where I needed to be, and I shot the man I was meant to shoot. Everything went to hell all the same, but that’s not on my head. I did my job.
But the Professor miscalculated. Somehow. Somewhere. There was a factor he didn’t take into consideration. A man he underestimated. And if you ask me, it wasn’t Mr. Sherlock Bloody Holmes.
Mind you, I’d warned the Professor. Don’t discount a man who made it out of Maiwand alive, I told him whilst he was planning the ambush on the Brighton train. He listened, too, and added three more men. Didn’t work, but there you go. I wasn’t there. I had work to do in France. Still, that’s where it all started to go wrong. That train. And Watson.
“Do something!” Simza wailed, as Rene’s body shuddered into stillness in her arms and Watson froze for a moment, as stunned as he’d been in the boxcar when his friend Holmes stopped breathing. “Please!”
“Curare, curare,” he muttered, as he felt for a pulse and then began to tug at Rene’s tie and buttons. “Why on earth would they use...” Watson stopped mid-sentence to change positions and place an ear against Rene’s now bared chest. “There’s a heartbeat,” he said. “But he’s not breathing. He needs air.” He used both hands to reposition Simza at Rene’s head. “Here, pull on his arms, lift them up and out, like so; then push them back, the same way.”
Simza did as she was asked, laying Rene on the floor despite wanting desperately to keep her arms around him. Rene looked dead. His eyes were staring, and there was saliva bubbled up at the corner of his mouth, but she had seen Watson perform a miracle for a dead man once before, and she had faith in the Good Lord he could do it again. The moment she had Rene’s arms back down, Watson pressed gently against Rene’s chest. “What are we doing?” she asked, as she began the routine again.
“Artificial respiration. It might keep his heart beating long enough for me to think of something clever.” She could almost see the gears turning in Watson’s head. “Dammitall, I only recognized the curare because Holmes poisoned Gladstone with it when I still lived at Baker Street! I’ve never heard of an antidote!”
“Gladstone?”
“My dog. Holmes is forever experimenting, and...” His eyes lit up. “Baker Street. Gladstone. Adrenal gland extract!”
“What?” Simza asked, but Watson was getting to his feet, grabbing one of the soldiers.
“You. Help her,” he ordered, as if there were no chance he would be disobeyed. He delved into his pockets, pulling out the wallet where he kept his credentials. “I used the prepared dose on Holmes to get his heart started again. But there might be some left.”
Simza kept working Rene’s arms, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away as Watson found the little leather case and opened it. For the first time since the dance floor, he smiled. “Holmes, you paranoid bastard,” he said approvingly, and knelt beside Rene once more. He lay out his discovery. The little needle kit she remembered, yes, and a small glass ampoule beside it, filled with a golden yellow liquid.
“Is that it? Is that the stuff you used in the boxcar?” Simza’s arms were already growing tired of the work she was doing, but the thought gave her fresh strength.
“I certainly hope so.” Watson said, his hands unfairly steady as he transferred the medicine into the hypodermic. Gently, so much more gently than he had injected his friend before, he slid the needle into Rene’s chest, near his heart. “I’m not making any promises,” he said, coaxing the dose into her stricken brother. “But I haven’t got any other ideas.”
“Rene, Rene my brother, come back to me,” Simza pleaded in the words of their childhood. For a small eternity there was no response, and she bent to draw up his arms once more. But then it came. An inhalation. And then another, and then Rene leaped up into the arms of the waiting soldiers, his eyes wide, and his breath coming in great, frightened gasps. He pressed a hand against his chest, and stared at Simza and Watson where they still knelt on the floor.
“Why am I not dead?” he cried, dismayed. “Simza, what have you done?”
I’d picked up a good bit of the Romani, dealing with Claude Ravache and his lot. And I knew Rene Heron’s voice. So when I heard him shouting when by all rights he should have been dead, I knew I had the Doctor to thank for it. There hadn’t ought to be an antidote for curare poisoning, but he’d managed to have one in his pocket all the same. It was only knowing that I had a rifle tucked away where I could get a clear shot of the road that kept me from turning back to finish the job then and there.
I had faith in the Professor, you see. His brains or his money had got us out of tight places many a time. If I could just shut Rene’s mouth before there could be any sort of trial, or investigation, there’d be nothing for Holmes and his brother to show to anyone who mattered. So I knew what to do, and I didn’t need orders for it. I’d get my gun and take my place on the mountainside. I’d shoot Rene when they brought him down the mountain, and if I happened to shoot John Watson as well, well, that’d only be turnabout. He’d put a hole in my side at Heilbronn. I’d put a hole in his heart now.
But as I was starting for my perch I happened to look over, across to the balcony above the Falls. Fifty feet. Less perhaps, to my gun and a decent shot, but no time to get there. The Professor and Sherlock Holmes were teetering on the edge, and as I watched, they went over.
Beyond them, in the doorway, I saw the Doctor, as shocked and blank as I felt myself. I’d have given anything in the world to already be in my perch, my gun in my hands, just for the sake of killing him. But my feet wouldn’t move, not yet, and I was still watching when the fat Holmes brother joined the Doctor in the doorway.
“Doctor? Doctor. John.” Mycroft nudged his brother’s friend into a position against the doorjamb, where he’d be less like to fall. The man was paler than Mycroft had ever thought possible, and his breath came brokenly, small gasps made visible in the chill of the outside air. “What is it?”
“They’re...” Watson took a deeper breath, reached up to clutch at Mycroft’s lapel. “They’re gone. Both of them. Over the edge. I saw. Your brother...” He looked up, met Mycroft’s eyes, and looked away again, out into the night. “I was too late. I’m sorry.”
Disbelief allowed Mycroft the moment he required. “Carruthers, to me!” he called, and his aide appeared at his elbow. “Get him to a chair,” Mycroft ordered, freeing his lapel abruptly. He strode to the parapet and looked over, knowing already that he would not see Sherlock clinging to an outcropping.
Below him, the cataract roared.
He took a step back, looked down at the marks in the thin layer of snow that had accumulated on the terrace. Here was Sherlock, wearing Mycroft’s second best pair of oxfords. And here was Moriarty, his toe broader and squared off, the left heel showing wear on the inside. They had faced each other, here at the edge, Sherlock with his back to the falls, Moriarty in a position to push. But that wasn’t what had happened.
Fragments of tobacco, some of it already blackened, on the ground. A damp patch on the table, right at the height where a man might use it for leverage with a well placed foot.
“What were you thinking, mon frere?”
Not that it wasn’t obvious when Mycroft took the moment to consider the question from his brother’s position, to reconstruct the logic of it. Moriarty would be furious at being balked. Moriarty would want revenge against the man who stopped him. Moriarty was particularly fond of assassinating and tormenting loved ones as revenge. Sherlock loved Watson. Imprisonment and trial would never be sufficient to prevent Moriarty from commanding others to do his work for him. It would take some grandiose gesture -- like dying to cut off the serpent’s head -- to ensure the safety of the Doctor and his charming wife. And Sherly had always been the one to make the most grandiose of gestures, trusting Mycroft to clean up the aftermath.
Very well. One last time.
Mycroft Holmes examined the balcony while I still clung to that damn rock shelf, staring at the pair of them like a looby. I wasn’t thinking straight. We’d planned for contingencies, the Professor and I, but all those contingencies depended on his being alive. Him alive and Rene dead. And I knew Rene. Knew he’d never keep his mouth shut. Not if it was his sister asking him the questions. I tried to think, but it was all a jumble.
Fat Holmes went back to the doctor and told him to see to his patient.
Mind you, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, not at that distance and with those bloody falls roaring like a train gone out of control. But I can read lips, a little, if I know the lingo. It helps make an impression if you’ve taken out a man’s eye a moment after he’s been indiscreet. So I’m pretty sure Watson asked why he should bother. But he was already putting himself back together. Already drawing up straight, like a soldier in a battle he’s got no chance of leaving with anything more than the shreds of his honor.
And I hadn’t even got the shreds.
I climbed the rest of the way, tucked myself into the perch. The balcony was empty by the time I’d assembled my rifle, but I stayed there anyway, pulling myself together while I waited for them to bring Rene out where I could shut his mouth.
I tried to think. With the Professor gone, the careful web of fear and favour he’d constructed would collapse. I was just as ruthless, and clever enough in my own way, but it wasn’t the same. I could command the men who controlled the less savoury of the Professor’s enterprises, but they’re an ambitious lot, and they’d want paying. And the more respectable men of the network, the scientists and the bankers, they’d want nothing to do with me. I had some of the codes, but only the Professor had had them all.
Twenty minutes passed, the cold settling into my bones, and nothing. Nothing. Oh, more men came out onto the balcony with Mycroft Holmes, and tutted over whatever it was they could see in the snow. But no sign of Watson. Nothing until I glimpsed him by the gate guards, directing their attention upwards. He vanished inside again before I finished aiming. Then soldiers began pouring out of the fortress, arms high as they began their hunt.
They were looking for me.
That’s when I knew for certain that Rene had talked. Watson had been too smart to bring him out where he could be shot. Not even to let him be seen through a window. And now I was in a worse position than I’d been at the factory. I had the high ground, but Watson had the better guns, and we both knew it. He’d nearly killed me when he’d destroyed the tower. Nearly killed me again with that shot in the woods. He wasn’t under fire now. He had time to take a deeper breath and hold it. Time to focus on the killshot. And me in the crosshairs.
But only if I stayed where I was.
I laid down some covering fire, dropping five men with five shots. Wounds, only, to keep the Doctor and the guards busy while I went the rest of the way up the mountain. Oh, I got shot at, but all they hit was rocks. It was dark, and the weather was getting worse. I had that much advantage. Ten miles over the mountains and I’d be clear. In a week I could be in Florence, and no one in the world would know what had become of me.
I had no time for revenge. No time even for mourning. My commander had fallen, and there was nothing for me to do but retreat and regather my forces. I survived Afghanistan too.
Recipient: HiddenLacuna
Author: rabidsamfan
Characters/Pairings: Sebastian Moran, Mycroft Holmes, Simza Heron, Rene Heron, John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings: canonical character death, spoilers for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, science of the milk-drinking-snake variety, diverges from canon.
Summary: The hunter becomes the hunted.
Also on AO3: "Loose End"
I did my job at Reichenbach. Did it well. There’s no question about that. I was where I needed to be, and I shot the man I was meant to shoot. Everything went to hell all the same, but that’s not on my head. I did my job.
But the Professor miscalculated. Somehow. Somewhere. There was a factor he didn’t take into consideration. A man he underestimated. And if you ask me, it wasn’t Mr. Sherlock Bloody Holmes.
Mind you, I’d warned the Professor. Don’t discount a man who made it out of Maiwand alive, I told him whilst he was planning the ambush on the Brighton train. He listened, too, and added three more men. Didn’t work, but there you go. I wasn’t there. I had work to do in France. Still, that’s where it all started to go wrong. That train. And Watson.
“Do something!” Simza wailed, as Rene’s body shuddered into stillness in her arms and Watson froze for a moment, as stunned as he’d been in the boxcar when his friend Holmes stopped breathing. “Please!”
“Curare, curare,” he muttered, as he felt for a pulse and then began to tug at Rene’s tie and buttons. “Why on earth would they use...” Watson stopped mid-sentence to change positions and place an ear against Rene’s now bared chest. “There’s a heartbeat,” he said. “But he’s not breathing. He needs air.” He used both hands to reposition Simza at Rene’s head. “Here, pull on his arms, lift them up and out, like so; then push them back, the same way.”
Simza did as she was asked, laying Rene on the floor despite wanting desperately to keep her arms around him. Rene looked dead. His eyes were staring, and there was saliva bubbled up at the corner of his mouth, but she had seen Watson perform a miracle for a dead man once before, and she had faith in the Good Lord he could do it again. The moment she had Rene’s arms back down, Watson pressed gently against Rene’s chest. “What are we doing?” she asked, as she began the routine again.
“Artificial respiration. It might keep his heart beating long enough for me to think of something clever.” She could almost see the gears turning in Watson’s head. “Dammitall, I only recognized the curare because Holmes poisoned Gladstone with it when I still lived at Baker Street! I’ve never heard of an antidote!”
“Gladstone?”
“My dog. Holmes is forever experimenting, and...” His eyes lit up. “Baker Street. Gladstone. Adrenal gland extract!”
“What?” Simza asked, but Watson was getting to his feet, grabbing one of the soldiers.
“You. Help her,” he ordered, as if there were no chance he would be disobeyed. He delved into his pockets, pulling out the wallet where he kept his credentials. “I used the prepared dose on Holmes to get his heart started again. But there might be some left.”
Simza kept working Rene’s arms, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away as Watson found the little leather case and opened it. For the first time since the dance floor, he smiled. “Holmes, you paranoid bastard,” he said approvingly, and knelt beside Rene once more. He lay out his discovery. The little needle kit she remembered, yes, and a small glass ampoule beside it, filled with a golden yellow liquid.
“Is that it? Is that the stuff you used in the boxcar?” Simza’s arms were already growing tired of the work she was doing, but the thought gave her fresh strength.
“I certainly hope so.” Watson said, his hands unfairly steady as he transferred the medicine into the hypodermic. Gently, so much more gently than he had injected his friend before, he slid the needle into Rene’s chest, near his heart. “I’m not making any promises,” he said, coaxing the dose into her stricken brother. “But I haven’t got any other ideas.”
“Rene, Rene my brother, come back to me,” Simza pleaded in the words of their childhood. For a small eternity there was no response, and she bent to draw up his arms once more. But then it came. An inhalation. And then another, and then Rene leaped up into the arms of the waiting soldiers, his eyes wide, and his breath coming in great, frightened gasps. He pressed a hand against his chest, and stared at Simza and Watson where they still knelt on the floor.
“Why am I not dead?” he cried, dismayed. “Simza, what have you done?”
I’d picked up a good bit of the Romani, dealing with Claude Ravache and his lot. And I knew Rene Heron’s voice. So when I heard him shouting when by all rights he should have been dead, I knew I had the Doctor to thank for it. There hadn’t ought to be an antidote for curare poisoning, but he’d managed to have one in his pocket all the same. It was only knowing that I had a rifle tucked away where I could get a clear shot of the road that kept me from turning back to finish the job then and there.
I had faith in the Professor, you see. His brains or his money had got us out of tight places many a time. If I could just shut Rene’s mouth before there could be any sort of trial, or investigation, there’d be nothing for Holmes and his brother to show to anyone who mattered. So I knew what to do, and I didn’t need orders for it. I’d get my gun and take my place on the mountainside. I’d shoot Rene when they brought him down the mountain, and if I happened to shoot John Watson as well, well, that’d only be turnabout. He’d put a hole in my side at Heilbronn. I’d put a hole in his heart now.
But as I was starting for my perch I happened to look over, across to the balcony above the Falls. Fifty feet. Less perhaps, to my gun and a decent shot, but no time to get there. The Professor and Sherlock Holmes were teetering on the edge, and as I watched, they went over.
Beyond them, in the doorway, I saw the Doctor, as shocked and blank as I felt myself. I’d have given anything in the world to already be in my perch, my gun in my hands, just for the sake of killing him. But my feet wouldn’t move, not yet, and I was still watching when the fat Holmes brother joined the Doctor in the doorway.
“Doctor? Doctor. John.” Mycroft nudged his brother’s friend into a position against the doorjamb, where he’d be less like to fall. The man was paler than Mycroft had ever thought possible, and his breath came brokenly, small gasps made visible in the chill of the outside air. “What is it?”
“They’re...” Watson took a deeper breath, reached up to clutch at Mycroft’s lapel. “They’re gone. Both of them. Over the edge. I saw. Your brother...” He looked up, met Mycroft’s eyes, and looked away again, out into the night. “I was too late. I’m sorry.”
Disbelief allowed Mycroft the moment he required. “Carruthers, to me!” he called, and his aide appeared at his elbow. “Get him to a chair,” Mycroft ordered, freeing his lapel abruptly. He strode to the parapet and looked over, knowing already that he would not see Sherlock clinging to an outcropping.
Below him, the cataract roared.
He took a step back, looked down at the marks in the thin layer of snow that had accumulated on the terrace. Here was Sherlock, wearing Mycroft’s second best pair of oxfords. And here was Moriarty, his toe broader and squared off, the left heel showing wear on the inside. They had faced each other, here at the edge, Sherlock with his back to the falls, Moriarty in a position to push. But that wasn’t what had happened.
Fragments of tobacco, some of it already blackened, on the ground. A damp patch on the table, right at the height where a man might use it for leverage with a well placed foot.
“What were you thinking, mon frere?”
Not that it wasn’t obvious when Mycroft took the moment to consider the question from his brother’s position, to reconstruct the logic of it. Moriarty would be furious at being balked. Moriarty would want revenge against the man who stopped him. Moriarty was particularly fond of assassinating and tormenting loved ones as revenge. Sherlock loved Watson. Imprisonment and trial would never be sufficient to prevent Moriarty from commanding others to do his work for him. It would take some grandiose gesture -- like dying to cut off the serpent’s head -- to ensure the safety of the Doctor and his charming wife. And Sherly had always been the one to make the most grandiose of gestures, trusting Mycroft to clean up the aftermath.
Very well. One last time.
Mycroft Holmes examined the balcony while I still clung to that damn rock shelf, staring at the pair of them like a looby. I wasn’t thinking straight. We’d planned for contingencies, the Professor and I, but all those contingencies depended on his being alive. Him alive and Rene dead. And I knew Rene. Knew he’d never keep his mouth shut. Not if it was his sister asking him the questions. I tried to think, but it was all a jumble.
Fat Holmes went back to the doctor and told him to see to his patient.
Mind you, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, not at that distance and with those bloody falls roaring like a train gone out of control. But I can read lips, a little, if I know the lingo. It helps make an impression if you’ve taken out a man’s eye a moment after he’s been indiscreet. So I’m pretty sure Watson asked why he should bother. But he was already putting himself back together. Already drawing up straight, like a soldier in a battle he’s got no chance of leaving with anything more than the shreds of his honor.
And I hadn’t even got the shreds.
I climbed the rest of the way, tucked myself into the perch. The balcony was empty by the time I’d assembled my rifle, but I stayed there anyway, pulling myself together while I waited for them to bring Rene out where I could shut his mouth.
I tried to think. With the Professor gone, the careful web of fear and favour he’d constructed would collapse. I was just as ruthless, and clever enough in my own way, but it wasn’t the same. I could command the men who controlled the less savoury of the Professor’s enterprises, but they’re an ambitious lot, and they’d want paying. And the more respectable men of the network, the scientists and the bankers, they’d want nothing to do with me. I had some of the codes, but only the Professor had had them all.
Twenty minutes passed, the cold settling into my bones, and nothing. Nothing. Oh, more men came out onto the balcony with Mycroft Holmes, and tutted over whatever it was they could see in the snow. But no sign of Watson. Nothing until I glimpsed him by the gate guards, directing their attention upwards. He vanished inside again before I finished aiming. Then soldiers began pouring out of the fortress, arms high as they began their hunt.
They were looking for me.
That’s when I knew for certain that Rene had talked. Watson had been too smart to bring him out where he could be shot. Not even to let him be seen through a window. And now I was in a worse position than I’d been at the factory. I had the high ground, but Watson had the better guns, and we both knew it. He’d nearly killed me when he’d destroyed the tower. Nearly killed me again with that shot in the woods. He wasn’t under fire now. He had time to take a deeper breath and hold it. Time to focus on the killshot. And me in the crosshairs.
But only if I stayed where I was.
I laid down some covering fire, dropping five men with five shots. Wounds, only, to keep the Doctor and the guards busy while I went the rest of the way up the mountain. Oh, I got shot at, but all they hit was rocks. It was dark, and the weather was getting worse. I had that much advantage. Ten miles over the mountains and I’d be clear. In a week I could be in Florence, and no one in the world would know what had become of me.
I had no time for revenge. No time even for mourning. My commander had fallen, and there was nothing for me to do but retreat and regather my forces. I survived Afghanistan too.