[Fic] Sovereignty
Title: Sovereignty
Prompt: Accidental mating for life (H/c bingo, round 2)
Rating: G
Pairing: Gen
Warnings: None
Beta:
lady_ganesh and
misanthropyray. Thanks!
Set in the Push!verse following Raw Data.
(As a side note, cuz I've gotten pretty deep into this now: Pushverse is a series of fics set in an AU that I fused with the 2009 action film Push. It's a fun movie but it's not necessary to have watched it to understand these fics. If you want to go back and get into it, the series starts with VIP.)
John sleeps by the side of the road and takes the first morning bus back into Bangkok. The Thai phrasebook tucked in his backpack is not going to cut it, so he uses some of his rapidly disappearing funds to hire Taiy, a rail-thin teenager in a blue football jersey and ridiculously large sunglasses.
On day two, Taiy leads him to a grungy warehouse that looks about to fall in any minute. Once John blinks through his adjustment to the lower light inside, he focuses on a slight but muscular Thai man sitting cross-legged on the floor a good thirty feet away. This is Khun Chupong, or so Taiy tells him.
John takes one step forward and discovers why Chupong has no henchmen here with him. A sensation like a hand putting pressure on his sternum halts John in his tracks; it's deceptively gentle pressure, but his attempt to push through gets him nowhere.
Taiy interprets Chupong's rapid burst of Thai. "He says, what do you want, English?"
"I know you sell boost," John says. He gives Taiy time to translate this and for Chupong to take it in before he reaches slowly for his hip pocket. He stops when the pressure on his chest increases perceptibly, and drops his hand. He doesn't react as Chupong feels out the shape of the object inside his pocket, then levitates the folding knife out. John wonders if Chupong's sensitivity and multitasking are the result of good training or of extraordinary talent.
John puts out his hand, and Chupong lets the knife drop into it. John flicks the blade out and slices a cut into his right hand that he then heals in under thirty seconds: demonstration is quicker and more persuasive than simply telling Chupong that he’s psychic.
Chupong smiles. "You looking to buy, English?”
"I'm actually looking for someone. Tall, white...he has dark, curly hair.” This is his best lead on Sherlock right now: the Sniff had been handling psychosteroids, and given that he was on the run he had probably bought them under the table from this man.
Chupong jumps to his feet and stalks closer to John, spitting words like daggers. Taiy edges away from them, shooting John little sideways glances as he translates.. “He says, he doesn't like police.”
“I'm just looking for my friend,” John says, refusing to flinch. “There can't be that many Englishmen who come to you.”
Chupong stops some ten feet away and raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps. Everything is for sale, in Bangkok.” The hint is obvious.
John draws a wad of bhat out of his pocket and starts to flick it open one bill at a time, letting Chupong count it as he does. He folds the bills back in half, then holds them up. Chupong takes them with his ability, and they float over to him, where they fan open for his inspection before folding and inserting themselves into his pocket.
“Sherlock,” Chupong says clearly.
“Yes!” John replies, unable to suppress his eagerness.
John's bribe gets him an introduction to Rodney, an oily European git in designer jeans, who shows John the ramshackle house roofed with corrugated metal where Sherlock lived when Rodney introduced him to Chupong. Washing hangs from a line stretched across a first-floor balcony, and a line of shrubs in clay pots decorates the sidewalk in front of the houses. Inside the upstairs flat, John stoops amid cracked pottery to pick up a tiny, vial with the Batman logo on it: Chupong's trademark.
Expats in Bangkok are devilishly hard to find because they don't use surnames, and they don't stay in one place. It takes two head-throbbingly anxious days for John to relocate Milo, the expat Sniff who helped John find his feet when he first arrived in Thailand. John paid generously enough last time that Milo is willing to take significantly less on this occasion, and he sounds honestly regretful when he shakes his head over the vial. “Sorry, man,” Milo says. “I'm getting an absolute blank.”
John feels near a breakdown. “That was my only lead,” he says.
Milo goes quiet while John pockets the vial and stands to go. “Wait,” he says just as John puts his hand on the doorknob. “Go to the Doctors Without Borders clinic on Yaowarat Road after eight tonight. Look for Sarah. I like you, man, but just- try not to drag her into any shit, you know?”
When John arrives at the clinic some twelve hours later, the door is unlocked and the fluorescents in the hallways are still turned on, casting a dim glow through the reception area. “Milo sent me,” he calls out once he’s slipped inside. “Sarah?”
There's a sound behind him: fabric over skin. John spins and sees a skinny woman dressed in jeans and a baggy jumper, her light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her pale blue eyes are clear and cold, and her hands are steady as they train a Glock semiautomatic on him.
John slowly raises his hands up by his head, palms out. “Whoa,” he says. “I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding. I'm-”
“I know exactly who you are,” she says crisply. “How long did you think you could pick us off one by one before we started to fight back?”
“I don't know who you think I am,” John says. “But I'm not that man. I'm just looking for-”
“Sherlock Vernet,” she says. “Tell me how far out your team is.”
“What team? What are you talking about?” Chupong had been more comprehensible than this, and he'd been speaking to John through a translator.
She bares her teeth at him and raises one elbow slightly. “The team you brought to take me out! How long do we have before the Division gets here?”
John is flooded with relief. “I'm not with them. Sherlock and I are both off the grid, he went missing and I'm trying to get back in touch.”
“Pull the other one,” Sarah says. She's tensing up, as if in preparation to shoot.
“Jesus,” John says in alarm. “Please, look, we can talk about this? I swear this is all just a misunderstanding.”
“Every psychic you've talked to in the past week has ended up dead or in Division custody,” Sarah says. “That's one big misunderstanding.”
“What?” he says. “I didn’t-“
“Milo's missing,” she continues, cutting him off.
John swallows. “When I left Milo he was fine.” Her lips thin. Shit. “Okay, let's start with step one. How can I convince you to stop pointing that at me?”
She seems stymied by that for a moment, then rallies. “Let me check you for bugs. If the Division is sending you in solo, they must be watching you, and that means a wire.”
So John walks ahead of Sarah to the tiny room that stands in for the facility's radiology department, and he lets her take x-rays. John keeps his mind calm and his eye on the handgun. Soon enough she'll realize she's wrong about John and they can sit down and have the reasonable discussion he expected when he first came in.
The plan comprehensively falls apart when Sarah steps back suddenly, clutching the radiograph of his cervical spine. “Found it,” she says.
“That's impossible,” John says. He moves to get off the table and freezes as Sarah levels the gun at him.
“You think I'm making this up?” Sarah snaps.
“No, I just-” John closes his eyes and performs his umpteenth scan with his ability. “I'm a Stitch, all right? I am intimate with every cell of my body, and I'm telling you everything is completely normal.”
“And I'm telling you there's something there,” Sarah insists. John shakes his head. There's nothing there. Is Sarah that desperate for an excuse to shoot him? “It's small,” she says. “I could remove it.”
“No way,” John says at once.
“Here,” Sarah says. She flicks her wrist to put some tension in the sheet of film and holds it out to John. When he takes it from her hand, she immediately steps back again, out of John’s reach. He glances down at the image.
There's a dark spot behind the vertebrae at the back of his neck. “What the holy fuck is that?” John bursts out, so startled he actually takes his attention off the woman with the gun.
“You would know better than me,” Sarah says, but there's a shade of doubt in her voice now. John flings the film down and reaches up to feel the back of his neck. There's nothing there, his fingers and his memory and his ability all agree. But there's the x-ray. He doesn't know Sarah's ability, but as far as he's aware there's no psychic power that lets you fake x-rays.
“Fuck,” John says again. His skin is crawling now, all over his body, not just his neck. It can’t be a recording device, but it’s something, and it’s inside his body. “I changed my mind,” he says. “Do it. Get it out of me.”
It wouldn't matter if she was a butcher, John could always fix himself up after; but as it happens Sarah is extremely handy with a scalpel. She's a doctor, he realizes belatedly, not just a nurse or a radiology tech. She puts on gloves and has him disinfected in a matter of moments, while John concentrates on temporarily shutting down the nerves through the entire region. “Don’t waste time on anesthetic,” he says when she hesitates. “I'm a Stitch, I've got it. Go.”
When she finishes, he barely notices the blood trickling down the back of his neck and soaking into the collar of his shirt. He is busy staring and staring at the inch-square object in Sarah's palm, which is black underneath the sheen of his blood. “What the hell is that,” he breathes.
She pokes it with one finger until she manages to flip the thing over, revealing circuitry on the back. “It’s a GPS transmitter,” she says. “There was an article in The Lancet; these cause cancer in lab rats, apparently.”
“How the fuck did I not know it was there?” The conflict between his anger and his fear is making John feel a bit sick. It was there. It had incontrovertibly been inside his body, but he'd had no idea.
She shrugs and dumps the chip onto a surgical tray with a clatter. “Well, I'd say you were lying about not knowing,” she says. “But that would make you the best actor ever, since your reaction here seems pretty genuine.” John realizes his hands are shaking slightly and he crosses his arms, clenching his hands in his armpits to hide the tremors. “Or someone did a really, really good job of making you believe the chip wasn't there. Spoken to any Pushers lately?”
John goes cold. “Oh, fuck,” he says.
***
Wake up.
John opens his eyes. He's facing Aaron Wentzler's corpse across the dining room table. John first realizes that his nose, which should be broken, is intact: which means that another Stitch has been working on him while he was unconscious. That thought is nearly enough to panic him.
Fortunately Mycroft Holmes is standing in front of him, which causes his brain to kick over into perfect, crisis mode calm. The man is dressed in an immaculate suit, as last time, and yes, there's the umbrella propped against the wall behind him. John takes his eyes off Holmes for a moment, to assess the other people in the room- the middle-aged, Indian Mover who smashed him face first into a wall is now standing in the doorway to the study, straight and stiff as a soldier, and there's a slim, curly-haired blonde in a smart trouser suit on one knee next to the table, stirring through John's pack with her gloved hand.
“It's good to see you again, Doctor Watson,” Holmes says. His voice is perfectly congenial, but there's something sharp and dangerous about the way he's looking at John. He looks like a predator.
“Fuck you,” John says conversationally. He flexes his wrists against the wooden arms of the chair he's bound to, but the zip ties are on so tight they're cutting into his skin. He's not going to be able to escape easily or quickly.
“You've been busy, haven't you?” Holmes goes on. “I was very interested by your little con job in Mombasa.”
John licks his lips, feeling chilled. He tries to reassure himself that even if Holmes knew about the fight at Kinuthia's house, there was no way he could know how John had used his ability. “There was no con,” he says, keeping his voice level with some effort. “We gave Kinuthia exactly what we promised. He was the one who wanted to renege.”
Holmes makes a noncommittal noise. “What interests me most, Doctor Watson, is how you came to be involved with Sherlock.”
“He hired me,” John says. There's no reason to keep that a secret. “I healed Gloria Kinuthia, and Sh- Vernet paid me. That's all.”
“And yet when Sherlock visits Doctor Wentzler, the man you were helping him to find, here you are,” Holmes says. He puts one hand in his trouser pocket and regards John. “Very curious, wouldn't you say?”
“I wasn't helping him find Wentzler,” John denies weakly.
“I care very much for Sherlock,” Holmes says. “He is a...passionate man. It has ever been my duty to protect him from the consequences of his passions, but there is little I can do for him if he insists on hiding himself from me.”
John follows Holmes' gaze to the corpse. He licks his lips. “You think he killed Wentzler?” Holmes looks down his nose at John with an almost pitying expression. “I don't know where he is. Honestly.” Not that he'd tell Holmes if he did, but that was besides the point.
“Don't you.” Holmes beckons to the woman at the table, and she walks over to him and holds out a slim, leather-bound journal. Holmes takes it from her and begins to flick through it. “Watchers have been monitoring Sherlock since we landed in Bangkok. Six hours ago, he disappeared. He's picked up a Shadow, a very skilled one.”
“But you found this place,” John says.
“Yes,” Holmes agrees. “It turns out we should have been monitoring you instead.” Holmes turns the journal round and holds it up, showing John an adept ink drawing of himself, examining Wentzler's corpse. Holmes flicks the page and shows John another drawing, this one of Sherlock dragging at John's arm, with one hand fisted in his sleeve. A third drawing shows John kneeling, holding some object, and an inset close-up shows the item to be a vial with a Batman sticker on it. Holmes shuts the book with a snap and hands it back to the blonde. “Where is Sherlock, Doctor Watson?”
There’s an edge to Holmes’ voice, suddenly, that wasn’t there before. Now is the time to be very careful and very honest, because John has the feeling that question is what this little meeting is really about.
“I don't know,” John says earnestly. “I haven't seen him since Mombasa, you're drawing entirely the wrong conclusions from-” His sentence tails off in a gasp as the front half of his left index finger bends ninety degrees and snaps cleanly at the second knuckle. John breathes heavily through his nose for several seconds, until his agony is under control. He blinks the tears from his eyes and looks back up at Holmes. Behind him, the Indian man guarding the door has extended his left hand toward John and is holding it palm down and watching John with a completely flat expression.
“Where is Sherlock?” Holmes says, in the exact same tone of voice, still as polite as if they are having tea together.
“I don't know,” John repeats. The Indian man jerks his middle finger sharply upward, and John's left middle finger snaps. He snarls in furious pain.
“Where is Sherlock?” Holmes says through gritted teeth. He takes a step closer.
“I don't- fuck!” John's answer is cut off as his ring finger breaks. The thought suddenly pops into his head, Tell him, fuck, tell him everything, it can't get any worse and it's sure not getting any better, just tell him. “He asked me to come to Thailand with him. I said no, I thought he was mad, but I changed my mind,” John gasps out, words blurring together in his haste to spill it out. “I bribed some ivory smugglers for a ride to Bangkok and paid a Sniff for a reading on something Sherlock gave me. I didn't see him and I don't know where he is, when I got here he was gone and Wentzler was dead.”
John looks up and sees Holmes peering at him with eyes that are inky black, no pupils to speak of. “God damn you!” John roars. He tries to kick out but only succeeds in hurting his ankles. “God fucking damn you, you manipulative arsehole!”
Holmes' shoulders slump, very slightly. For a moment, he looks profoundly disappointed. Then he straightens up again. “I see,” he says. “Well, at any rate we've acquired a new recruit. Christopher, would you kindly collect Doctor Watson's things and escort him to-”
“Sir,” the blonde says distractedly. She is bent over the dining room table, sketching in the leather-bound book at an almost frantic pace. Holmes stops immediately and waits for several silent minutes until she picks up the book and shoves it at him.
He takes it from her and examines it carefully. He looks up at John, then looks back at the book. He shuts it and hands it back to her. “Ah,” he says. He cocks his head slightly. “The matter of your first assignment, Agent Watson.”
John laughs thickly. “I'm not working for you.”
Holmes smiles at him, the faintest twitch of the lips. “You may think of it as freelance work, if you like. Well-paid, naturally.”
“I don't want your money,” John rasps.
“So what do you want?” Holmes says, eying him carefully for a second. His eyes are still fully black.
Tell him. “My freedom,” John blurts out, then, “Stop fucking doing that!”
“I won't send you back to a war zone,” Holmes says. “Nor will I forget you exist. You're far too useful.” John's lip curls. “But I can give you autonomy. Your choice of assignments, a reinstated passport. You could work for Division on your own terms.”
John grits his teeth. It's tempting- God help him, it's tempting. He's so fucking tired of running and hiding, of feeling terrified and exhausted when he isn't just mind-numbingly bored. It's a better offer than he thought he'd ever get from the Division. Not that he can trust Holmes. Still, he has to ask. “And what is it that I'd have to do, to get this autonomy?”
“Find Sherlock and bring him home safe,” Holmes says. “That's all.”
John laughs. “That's all. Just sell him out.” John gathers his saliva and spits; misses Holmes, but it's the thought that counts. “No.”
“You don't have autonomy yet,” Holmes says. He catches John's eye and arches one eyebrow at him. “Find Sherlock and bring him home safe,” he says again.
You've got to find him and protect him. You like him, he helped you, and you want to help him. That's what you came here to do, so keep doing it. John can feel the compulsion sinking into his mind, and he knows the Pusher standing in front of him with his jet black eyes is the one putting it there. He kicks and struggles helplessly against the zip ties, but the man's in his fucking head and there's nothing John can do to keep him out. His silent litany of no no no no no does nothing to prevent the artificially-inserted desire from taking hold.
“You have no right!” John snarls helplessly. “No bloody right!”
Holmes simply talks over him. “When next you wake, you'll be on your own, Agent Watson. For the most part.”
You're tired, exhausted. John blinks heavily, trying to fight the overwhelming urge to shut his eyes.
“Good luck,” Holmes says. He pulls a business card holder from his jacket pocket, removes one of the cards, and sets it down on the table where John can see it.
Sleep.
***
“That evil son of a bitch,” John says. “He was letting me see him Push me to find Sherlock, as a distraction. To keep me from seeing the commands he was implanting deeper. I never even felt him do it.” The idea of another man inside his head, manipulating him so skillfully that he can't even detect it, is terrifying. What else has John been told to do, that he's incapable of remembering or thinking about?
“Well I think I believe you now, if that helps,” Sarah says. She's set her gun down and is stripping off her gloves. “About not working for Division. Obviously they've been following you round using the implant.”
Oh fuck, if Sarah is right- that means that he's been unwittingly leading everyone who helped him into the slaughter. His stomach twists sideways and he retches. John heaves in several deep breaths, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fuck,” he says.
“You can heal that up yourself, right?” Sarah asks.
She's probably only asking because John's still sitting there bleeding everywhere, like he's too damn stupid to clean himself off. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. The cut is closed and healed in about thirty seconds. It steadies him a bit. He's still powerful. He can still control himself.
“All right, let’s talk,” Sarah says briskly. “I’m willing to help you find your friend, but you’re going to pay me up front.”
“I- don’t have much money left,” John admits, flushing.
“I don’t want money,” she says. “I want your ability. Three days in the clinic.”
John just stares at her. “Are you crazy? We’ll have the Division on both-“ He stops, realizing that the Division has been following him, but being very careful only to pounce once he had gone on his way. They don’t want John to know they’re watching.
“I figure if I stick with you, and you stick with that tracker, we’ve got at least a few days of them keeping their hands off,” Sarah says, crossing her arms and leaning back against the closed door. “But once we split up, I’ll have to go on the run. Which is why you have to pay up front.”
“Okay,” John says. “No, wait. Maybe I should ask what you have on offer. Besides your gun-handling skills, obviously.”
She grins broadly. “I’m a Watcher.”
“Shouldn’t you have known about the GPS then?” John says suspiciously.
She shrugs. “The future changes. Be glad, my original projection for this evening ended with me shooting you in the face.”
“Thanks for that,” John says. “So. How are we going to do this?”
They tape the tracker to John’s upper arm, so he can’t forget to carry it with him, and the next morning Sarah brings him into the clinic. He’s under supervision until Sarah freaks out at him for realigning a dislocated shoulder manually, then checks his work and realizes that John has done it exactly right. (“You prat, you didn’t tell me you were a doctor, too.”)
John runs himself ragged, not just because he has no idea where to search next without Sarah’s help, but because when he's idle, the constant itch at the back of his neck becomes a throbbing headache and he can hear his own voice in the back of his head. Find him. The motivation that Mycroft Holmes forced on him doesn’t seem to recognize that this interlude is the necessary price for Sarah’s help, and therefore part of the search. It simply punishes John for every moment he’s not actively looking for Sherlock.
Late at night, after the clinic, John lies on the couch in Sarah’s cramped apartment and massages his temples while Sarah taps her pencil against the loose sheets of paper she uses instead of the typical notebook.
“I have better luck focusing on you,” Sarah says, beginning to sketch rapidly.
“That’s what Holmes said about his Watchers,” John remembers. He closes his eyes and thinks at his inner voice, Shut up, shut up, I’m working on it. “He said Sherlock had a Shadow on him.”
“Or he’s just clever,” Sarah says. “Watchers see the future based on people’s intentions, mostly, so you can avoid us if you don’t make decisions.”
John giggles, the first time he’s laughed in ages. “I don’t think it’s possible for Sherlock to not make decisions,” he says.
“Or it could be that he’s not doing anything, or even observing anything,” Sarah says. She squints at her drawing and holds it up. “What do you make of this?”
John takes his hand from over his eyes and turns his head to look. “It’s an office building?” he guesses. “Not very specific.”
“Yeah,” Sarah says, glaring critically at the paper. She picks up a lighter sitting on the edge of the table and lights the corner of the page, then drops it into an empty metal rubbish bin set nearby for this purpose. She picks up the pencil again and starts sketching again, in a desultory way.
John signs and drapes his arm over his face, shading his eyes from the light again. It’s day three of his indentured servitude, and Sarah still hasn’t produced anything worthwhile. His headaches are getting worse, and obscurely they seem to pound more insistently when he tries not think about Sherlock at all. For a moment he decides to just let it in, and see if the compulsion isn’t better than the pain. He lets himself think of Sherlock: sullenly smoking John’s cigarettes, strolling up Joseph Kinuthia’s front walk, fighting the bodyguards, leaping wildly across the rooftops of Mombasa.
John’s going to find Sherlock: he has to believe that, and not just because of Mycroft Holmes. Because- assuming Holmes didn’t fake this too- he realized in Tanzania that Sherlock was right. John is completely bored and seriously exhausted with life on the run.
The headache does in fact ease, although the nag of his inner voice is severely distracting. John’s introspection is punctuated by a gasp from Sarah. He looks at her again, and she’s bent over her papers, drawing energetically. John’s thoughts drift sideways into his fury at Mycroft Holmes. If he wasn’t on this damned hunt, he might be thinking about staying here. Sarah was doing good work with refugees and the impoverished: helping the people who could least afford good medical care. He could stay and have a real job and use his talents and have friends again. It’s a nice fantasy, and something he’s never going to achieve thanks to Holmes.
Sarah stops drawing and looks up, sees him staring. “What did you do?” she demands intently, her eyes narrowing.
“What? Nothing,” John says reflexively.
“I was focused on your future, and I got this massive block of images,” she insists. “Now they’re gone. You did something.”
“I was just thinking about Sherl- oh,” he says.
“Do it again,” Sarah commands.
By one in the morning, Sarah has dozens of pages full of sketches. They mostly show John and Sherlock together, running, laughing, arguing, handcuffed together at the wrists, slumped against each other on a bus. John wants to linger on these, but Sarah sets them aside in favor of another set that she says are in the more immediate future. John loading his gun, John and Sarah creeping along a wall, Sherlock leaning heavily on John. And, beautifully, John and Sarah breaking into an office building with a large sign mounted on its front wall: the office building where they’re going to find Sherlock.
Sarah packs a rucksack and tucks her sheaf of drawings into her jacket pocket. They make one detour on their way to the business district, so that John can palm the GPS tracker into the pocket of a man boarding a bus to Phuket.
Once they get to the building from Sarah's drawing, their search through the offices is a little slow because John insists they stay together in case of armed resistance which never materializes. They're halfway through the third floor before they find an office that has been emptied of furniture except for a large, wire dog crate into which Sherlock has been crammed. Truth be told, it’s a bit of an anticlimax.
“Sherlock,” John says, but there's no response. The nagging refrain of find him goes blessedly silent for the first time since Wentzler's house, and John almost collapses from sheer relief.
Sarah crouches by the farthest side from the opening, inspecting Sherlock through the mesh. “I think he has earplugs in,” she says. “As well as the blindfold.” The blindfold is blatantly obvious: it covers Sherlock from mid-forehead to nostrils, a band of black cloth wrapped in layers around his head.
“You were right about the reason no one could find him,” John says. Trembling with fury as he notes the way Sherlock's arms and legs have been twisted up and tied behind him, John fumbles with the latch for several seconds before he can get the thing open. When John manages to wrestle Sherlock's hogtied body out of the kennel and onto open floor, Sarah is ready with his pocket knife in her hand to cut the zip ties- wonderful woman- and the two of them gently stretch his limbs out of their cramped positions. At least Sherlock's long sleeved shirt and gloves, trousers and socks, have cushioned his wrists and ankles against abrasion by the ties.
Sherlock is breathing shallowly through his mouth, which is explained when John discovers that under the edge of the blindfold he's wearing a nose clip as well. John slides it off as gently as he can; he can see that the skin around it is rubbed red and raw from the constant pressure and friction. He removes the ear plugs as well, and tosses them away. Sherlock begins to draw deeper breaths in through his nose at once, but he still doesn't try to speak, and he doesn't react at all when John repeats his name. John carefully unwinds the blindfold, but Sherlock half-opens his eyes and then squinches them shut against the light.
Sarah, meanwhile, is gently tapping Sherlock on the hands and arms. “He's way too unresponsive,” she notes. “Drugged?”
John, on a hunch, unbuttons Sherlock's shirt to the sternum and pulls it aside to reveal the site of his port-a-cath. The skin over the port is splotched with bruises of various ages, ranging from deep purple to a sick greenish-yellow. “Oh yeah,” John says. He glances up at the door, and then at Sarah. “Cover me for a second. I think I can fix this.”
Sarah takes out her gun and stands up, facing the door. John lays one hand against Sherlock's chest and shuts his eyes. He has no idea what Sherlock's been dosed with and he doesn't have the time to figure it out. But that's okay; all he has to do is up enzyme production and Sherlock's body will quickly metabolize the drug without any further input for John. While he waits and monitors Sherlock for any signs of drug toxicity, he busies himself repairing the bruises at the injection site and on Sherlock's wrists and ankles. He's absorbed in checking Sherlock over for non-obvious injuries when the man suddenly jerks away from John, then writhes beneath his hand as if trying to wriggle backwards.
John withdraws at once and puts an arm around Sherlock's shoulders, intending to help him sit up. “Sherlock, hey!” he says as Sherlock tries to push him away.
He slits his eyes open slightly and looks at John. “Oh,” he says. He voice is raspy; probably dehydrated. “What are you doing here?”
“I was wondering if your tempting offer was still open,” John says. He almost doesn't realize what he's saying until the words are already out.
Sherlock blinks at John owlishly, then glances from John to Sarah, his back and shoulders visibly tensing. “And you as well?” he asks Sarah.
“I'm not looking for a life of crime, thanks,” Sarah says, smiling a bit.
“Obviously.” Sherlock sniffs disdainfully, but his shoulders relax. Sherlock hasn't said yes to him. John feels slightly panicked. Has Sherlock changed his mind? If he has, will John's need to find and protect him leave off, or is he going to have to trail Sherlock around like an unwanted puppy? John concentrates for a few moments on getting Sherlock on his feet, leaning back against the wall. He almost falls once, but then the muscles hold: the massage and the Stitch job had done their work.
“Holmes knows I went to her for help,” John says. “He'll be after her too. I need help fixing it so she can go back to her life.” Sarah's eyes widen in surprise- John knows she fully expected to go on the run after tonight- but it's the least he owes her, after all this.
“And what about you?” Sherlock asks.
John's hand twitches reflexively towards his pocket before he stills it. “I'll be fine,” he says.
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “You didn't- oh, you did. You idiot. What did he promise you?”
John's stomach drops. He tells himself that he would have told Sherlock about the deal with Holmes eventually, he had to, but this was not how he wanted the conversation to start. “Nothing,” he says at once, then realizes how guilty that makes him sound. “I mean- I didn't- shit.”
Sherlock lunges the few feet to John, grabbing his shirt with one hand and shoving the other into the jeans pocket where Holmes' card is tucked. John, not used to putting up with this sort of assault, grabs Sherlock's shirt to shove him away and raises his hand to punch him. But then there's the urge, like a voice in his head hissing protect him and John suddenly can't hit Sherlock. He lets his hand drop to his side and Sherlock steps away with the card tucked between his index and middle fingers.
“You colossal moron,” Sherlock says, sneering. “How simple are you, that you really thought he'd keep his word? What did you ask him for- safety, freedom? You're not going to get it. What did he make you give him in exchange?”
“It doesn't matter,” John says. “As I'm about to break our agreement anyway.”
Sherlock pauses at that, and studies John for a moment. “Ah,” he says. “You were supposed to bring me back to London.”
“Yes,” John admits, flushing. “If it helps, I never intended to.”
Sherlock purses his lips. “Of course you didn't,” he says. John has opened his mouth to protest this apparent sarcasm, but Sherlock continues, “No, all your previous actions indicate both a strong moral principle and an aversion to compromise. Something besides greed motivated you- something beyond concern for my well-being.” Sherlock taps the card thoughtfully against his chin. “Oh, obvious. He pushed you.”
“I was looking for you anyway,” John says. “I tracked you as far as Wentzler's fresh corpse. I think I would have kept looking even if Holmes hadn't told me to.” John still isn't sure if this is strictly true, but it's something he has to believe: because he has to trust in something, and his own mind seems like the best of a lot of bad options.
Sherlock's face is unreadable. He's still tapping away with the card. “I need to make a phone call,” he says.
He needs John's support to make it as far as the next office over, where he slumps into the chair behind the desk, which is set up with a computer and phone. Sherlock stabs each button violently, as if committing murder with his finger. He presses the button for speakerphone and sets the handset back in the cradle. He doesn't bother with a greeting when the line picks up. “If you had any knowledge of my activities you would know that killing Wentzler was absolutely counter to all of my goals,” Sherlock declares. “Frankly I'm insulted that you think I would do it.”
“I can’t always predict you. Take it as a compliment,” Mycroft Holmes says tinnily from the speaker. “Hello Dr. Watson. And- Dr. Sawyer, I presume. I take it that the two of you are not en route to Phuket.”
“No, but your GPS implant is,” John says.
“That was a really shitty thing to do to someone, by the way,” Sarah adds. John can’t help but smile at her for that.
“Shut up, don't interrupt,” Sherlock says. There's nothing wrong with his voice now; it's firm and competent and disdainful. “As you have gathered, Mycroft, my abrupt departure from the scene of Wentzler's murder was entirely involuntary. It is crucial that I remain at large to pursue those responsible.”
“I have teams of Assets ready to go to work on the case,” Holmes says smoothly.
“And none of them have a Sniff half as good as I am,” Sherlock says matter-of-factly. “Release me to work this case without interference, and I'll keep you informed. I know you do love your progress reports.”
“You still need a team,” Holmes says, after a lengthy pause.
“I don't need a team,” Sherlock says at once. “I have John.” John flushes at that, glancing down and away.
Holmes simply says, “Ah,” a medium-long exhale of sound. Sherlock bares his teeth at the phone. “Well, I'll leave you to it.” Wait, that was it? John glances from the phone to Sherlock, who looks as if he is considering ripping the cord out of the device, then back. “Dr. Watson, always a pleasure. Dr. Sawyer, my apologies for the inconvenience, and my surveillance team will be removed from your workplace at once. Good morning.”
“What just happened?” John asks, beyond confused at this point.
“I lost an ongoing argument,” Sherlock says. “I have been refusing Mycroft's attempts to partner me with another agent for nearly a decade.”
“Oh.” John shouldn't feel hurt by that, shouldn't, but it stings anyway. He doesn't want to be a grudging concession. “I suppose you never had a potential partner with a hard-wired need to work with you.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Idiot,” he says. “I never had a potential partner I wanted to work with at all.” A smile tugs at the corner of John’s mouth, despite the insult.
“Oi,” says Sarah from behind him, and John and Sherlock both turn to look. “So how seriously can I take this guy, Sherlock? Because I don’t want to abandon my life here, but I don’t fancy walking into a trap, either. He’s already netted several of my friends.”
Sherlock shrugs. “There’s not much you can do for anyone he’s already caught, but he wouldn’t have said he was pulling back from you if he didn’t mean it. There’s no gain for him in lying to you, now that he has what he wants.” Sarah nods grimly, as if this makes good sense to her.
“You found, and me in service,” John mutters darkly to himself. His entire life spent eluding the Division, and he’s walking into their arms with a smile on his face. Sarah raises an eyebrow at him. “Go on, then,” he says. “And, you know- thanks. For your help.”
She hesitates, then reaches into her jacket and pulls out the folded pages she had stuffed there earlier. Her drawings of John and Sherlock. She smiles as she hands them over. “Somehow, I don’t want to burn these,” she says.
She hugs him goodbye, and when she’s left the room John turns back to see Sherlock sitting with his elbows on the desk and his fingers steepled beneath his chin. “You can still leave, if you like,” Sherlock says abruptly.
“No I can’t,” John says. He runs a hand through his hair. “I was looking for you anyway,” he repeats, trying to convince himself as much as Sherlock.
After a pause, a slow smile spreads across Sherlock’s face. “I was right,” he says. “You were bored.”
“Yes, fine, you were right,” John snaps. He clenches his hand and fights the self-destructive urge to tug out his hair by the roots. “I just- wanted it to be on my own terms.”
“Sovereignty,” Sherlock says. “Ironically, that’s why Mycroft became de facto head of the Division in the first place. Only somewhere along the way he became more enamored of authority than of self-determination.”
“You sound as if you’ve known him a long time,” John says. John can hear it in the bitter way he speaks, and in the way he always calls Holmes by his first name.
“My entire life,” Sherlock says. “He’s my brother.”
John’s jaw drops. “But your names-”
“Half brother, actually. I prefer his father’s name to mine, but it’s safer for both of us if people don’t realize the Deputy Director and I are related.” Sherlock stretches his arms and gets shakily to his feet, leaning on the desk for support.
John is rapidly connecting the dots now. Mycroft’s impromptu trip to a war zone when Sherlock went missing, his obsession with protecting Sherlock, his obvious frustration back at Wentzler’s. “That’s why you can stop him with a single phone call,” John realizes.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking my brother has stopped, John,” Sherlock says. “He wants us back in London, and under his direct control. This is a ceasefire, nothing more.”
“Bollocks,” John says. “We’ll go back to London when we’re damned well ready. And it won’t be on his terms, either.”
Sherlock is giving him that look again, the one he wore when John took Kinuthia and his bodyguards down in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. As if John is fascinating. He thinks he likes it when Sherlock looks at him that way.
I was looking for you anyway, John says to himself, and this time he very nearly believes it.
Prompt: Accidental mating for life (H/c bingo, round 2)
Rating: G
Pairing: Gen
Warnings: None
Beta:
lady_ganesh and
misanthropyray. Thanks!
Set in the Push!verse following Raw Data.
(As a side note, cuz I've gotten pretty deep into this now: Pushverse is a series of fics set in an AU that I fused with the 2009 action film Push. It's a fun movie but it's not necessary to have watched it to understand these fics. If you want to go back and get into it, the series starts with VIP.)
John sleeps by the side of the road and takes the first morning bus back into Bangkok. The Thai phrasebook tucked in his backpack is not going to cut it, so he uses some of his rapidly disappearing funds to hire Taiy, a rail-thin teenager in a blue football jersey and ridiculously large sunglasses.
On day two, Taiy leads him to a grungy warehouse that looks about to fall in any minute. Once John blinks through his adjustment to the lower light inside, he focuses on a slight but muscular Thai man sitting cross-legged on the floor a good thirty feet away. This is Khun Chupong, or so Taiy tells him.
John takes one step forward and discovers why Chupong has no henchmen here with him. A sensation like a hand putting pressure on his sternum halts John in his tracks; it's deceptively gentle pressure, but his attempt to push through gets him nowhere.
Taiy interprets Chupong's rapid burst of Thai. "He says, what do you want, English?"
"I know you sell boost," John says. He gives Taiy time to translate this and for Chupong to take it in before he reaches slowly for his hip pocket. He stops when the pressure on his chest increases perceptibly, and drops his hand. He doesn't react as Chupong feels out the shape of the object inside his pocket, then levitates the folding knife out. John wonders if Chupong's sensitivity and multitasking are the result of good training or of extraordinary talent.
John puts out his hand, and Chupong lets the knife drop into it. John flicks the blade out and slices a cut into his right hand that he then heals in under thirty seconds: demonstration is quicker and more persuasive than simply telling Chupong that he’s psychic.
Chupong smiles. "You looking to buy, English?”
"I'm actually looking for someone. Tall, white...he has dark, curly hair.” This is his best lead on Sherlock right now: the Sniff had been handling psychosteroids, and given that he was on the run he had probably bought them under the table from this man.
Chupong jumps to his feet and stalks closer to John, spitting words like daggers. Taiy edges away from them, shooting John little sideways glances as he translates.. “He says, he doesn't like police.”
“I'm just looking for my friend,” John says, refusing to flinch. “There can't be that many Englishmen who come to you.”
Chupong stops some ten feet away and raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps. Everything is for sale, in Bangkok.” The hint is obvious.
John draws a wad of bhat out of his pocket and starts to flick it open one bill at a time, letting Chupong count it as he does. He folds the bills back in half, then holds them up. Chupong takes them with his ability, and they float over to him, where they fan open for his inspection before folding and inserting themselves into his pocket.
“Sherlock,” Chupong says clearly.
“Yes!” John replies, unable to suppress his eagerness.
John's bribe gets him an introduction to Rodney, an oily European git in designer jeans, who shows John the ramshackle house roofed with corrugated metal where Sherlock lived when Rodney introduced him to Chupong. Washing hangs from a line stretched across a first-floor balcony, and a line of shrubs in clay pots decorates the sidewalk in front of the houses. Inside the upstairs flat, John stoops amid cracked pottery to pick up a tiny, vial with the Batman logo on it: Chupong's trademark.
Expats in Bangkok are devilishly hard to find because they don't use surnames, and they don't stay in one place. It takes two head-throbbingly anxious days for John to relocate Milo, the expat Sniff who helped John find his feet when he first arrived in Thailand. John paid generously enough last time that Milo is willing to take significantly less on this occasion, and he sounds honestly regretful when he shakes his head over the vial. “Sorry, man,” Milo says. “I'm getting an absolute blank.”
John feels near a breakdown. “That was my only lead,” he says.
Milo goes quiet while John pockets the vial and stands to go. “Wait,” he says just as John puts his hand on the doorknob. “Go to the Doctors Without Borders clinic on Yaowarat Road after eight tonight. Look for Sarah. I like you, man, but just- try not to drag her into any shit, you know?”
When John arrives at the clinic some twelve hours later, the door is unlocked and the fluorescents in the hallways are still turned on, casting a dim glow through the reception area. “Milo sent me,” he calls out once he’s slipped inside. “Sarah?”
There's a sound behind him: fabric over skin. John spins and sees a skinny woman dressed in jeans and a baggy jumper, her light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her pale blue eyes are clear and cold, and her hands are steady as they train a Glock semiautomatic on him.
John slowly raises his hands up by his head, palms out. “Whoa,” he says. “I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding. I'm-”
“I know exactly who you are,” she says crisply. “How long did you think you could pick us off one by one before we started to fight back?”
“I don't know who you think I am,” John says. “But I'm not that man. I'm just looking for-”
“Sherlock Vernet,” she says. “Tell me how far out your team is.”
“What team? What are you talking about?” Chupong had been more comprehensible than this, and he'd been speaking to John through a translator.
She bares her teeth at him and raises one elbow slightly. “The team you brought to take me out! How long do we have before the Division gets here?”
John is flooded with relief. “I'm not with them. Sherlock and I are both off the grid, he went missing and I'm trying to get back in touch.”
“Pull the other one,” Sarah says. She's tensing up, as if in preparation to shoot.
“Jesus,” John says in alarm. “Please, look, we can talk about this? I swear this is all just a misunderstanding.”
“Every psychic you've talked to in the past week has ended up dead or in Division custody,” Sarah says. “That's one big misunderstanding.”
“What?” he says. “I didn’t-“
“Milo's missing,” she continues, cutting him off.
John swallows. “When I left Milo he was fine.” Her lips thin. Shit. “Okay, let's start with step one. How can I convince you to stop pointing that at me?”
She seems stymied by that for a moment, then rallies. “Let me check you for bugs. If the Division is sending you in solo, they must be watching you, and that means a wire.”
So John walks ahead of Sarah to the tiny room that stands in for the facility's radiology department, and he lets her take x-rays. John keeps his mind calm and his eye on the handgun. Soon enough she'll realize she's wrong about John and they can sit down and have the reasonable discussion he expected when he first came in.
The plan comprehensively falls apart when Sarah steps back suddenly, clutching the radiograph of his cervical spine. “Found it,” she says.
“That's impossible,” John says. He moves to get off the table and freezes as Sarah levels the gun at him.
“You think I'm making this up?” Sarah snaps.
“No, I just-” John closes his eyes and performs his umpteenth scan with his ability. “I'm a Stitch, all right? I am intimate with every cell of my body, and I'm telling you everything is completely normal.”
“And I'm telling you there's something there,” Sarah insists. John shakes his head. There's nothing there. Is Sarah that desperate for an excuse to shoot him? “It's small,” she says. “I could remove it.”
“No way,” John says at once.
“Here,” Sarah says. She flicks her wrist to put some tension in the sheet of film and holds it out to John. When he takes it from her hand, she immediately steps back again, out of John’s reach. He glances down at the image.
There's a dark spot behind the vertebrae at the back of his neck. “What the holy fuck is that?” John bursts out, so startled he actually takes his attention off the woman with the gun.
“You would know better than me,” Sarah says, but there's a shade of doubt in her voice now. John flings the film down and reaches up to feel the back of his neck. There's nothing there, his fingers and his memory and his ability all agree. But there's the x-ray. He doesn't know Sarah's ability, but as far as he's aware there's no psychic power that lets you fake x-rays.
“Fuck,” John says again. His skin is crawling now, all over his body, not just his neck. It can’t be a recording device, but it’s something, and it’s inside his body. “I changed my mind,” he says. “Do it. Get it out of me.”
It wouldn't matter if she was a butcher, John could always fix himself up after; but as it happens Sarah is extremely handy with a scalpel. She's a doctor, he realizes belatedly, not just a nurse or a radiology tech. She puts on gloves and has him disinfected in a matter of moments, while John concentrates on temporarily shutting down the nerves through the entire region. “Don’t waste time on anesthetic,” he says when she hesitates. “I'm a Stitch, I've got it. Go.”
When she finishes, he barely notices the blood trickling down the back of his neck and soaking into the collar of his shirt. He is busy staring and staring at the inch-square object in Sarah's palm, which is black underneath the sheen of his blood. “What the hell is that,” he breathes.
She pokes it with one finger until she manages to flip the thing over, revealing circuitry on the back. “It’s a GPS transmitter,” she says. “There was an article in The Lancet; these cause cancer in lab rats, apparently.”
“How the fuck did I not know it was there?” The conflict between his anger and his fear is making John feel a bit sick. It was there. It had incontrovertibly been inside his body, but he'd had no idea.
She shrugs and dumps the chip onto a surgical tray with a clatter. “Well, I'd say you were lying about not knowing,” she says. “But that would make you the best actor ever, since your reaction here seems pretty genuine.” John realizes his hands are shaking slightly and he crosses his arms, clenching his hands in his armpits to hide the tremors. “Or someone did a really, really good job of making you believe the chip wasn't there. Spoken to any Pushers lately?”
John goes cold. “Oh, fuck,” he says.
***
Wake up.
John opens his eyes. He's facing Aaron Wentzler's corpse across the dining room table. John first realizes that his nose, which should be broken, is intact: which means that another Stitch has been working on him while he was unconscious. That thought is nearly enough to panic him.
Fortunately Mycroft Holmes is standing in front of him, which causes his brain to kick over into perfect, crisis mode calm. The man is dressed in an immaculate suit, as last time, and yes, there's the umbrella propped against the wall behind him. John takes his eyes off Holmes for a moment, to assess the other people in the room- the middle-aged, Indian Mover who smashed him face first into a wall is now standing in the doorway to the study, straight and stiff as a soldier, and there's a slim, curly-haired blonde in a smart trouser suit on one knee next to the table, stirring through John's pack with her gloved hand.
“It's good to see you again, Doctor Watson,” Holmes says. His voice is perfectly congenial, but there's something sharp and dangerous about the way he's looking at John. He looks like a predator.
“Fuck you,” John says conversationally. He flexes his wrists against the wooden arms of the chair he's bound to, but the zip ties are on so tight they're cutting into his skin. He's not going to be able to escape easily or quickly.
“You've been busy, haven't you?” Holmes goes on. “I was very interested by your little con job in Mombasa.”
John licks his lips, feeling chilled. He tries to reassure himself that even if Holmes knew about the fight at Kinuthia's house, there was no way he could know how John had used his ability. “There was no con,” he says, keeping his voice level with some effort. “We gave Kinuthia exactly what we promised. He was the one who wanted to renege.”
Holmes makes a noncommittal noise. “What interests me most, Doctor Watson, is how you came to be involved with Sherlock.”
“He hired me,” John says. There's no reason to keep that a secret. “I healed Gloria Kinuthia, and Sh- Vernet paid me. That's all.”
“And yet when Sherlock visits Doctor Wentzler, the man you were helping him to find, here you are,” Holmes says. He puts one hand in his trouser pocket and regards John. “Very curious, wouldn't you say?”
“I wasn't helping him find Wentzler,” John denies weakly.
“I care very much for Sherlock,” Holmes says. “He is a...passionate man. It has ever been my duty to protect him from the consequences of his passions, but there is little I can do for him if he insists on hiding himself from me.”
John follows Holmes' gaze to the corpse. He licks his lips. “You think he killed Wentzler?” Holmes looks down his nose at John with an almost pitying expression. “I don't know where he is. Honestly.” Not that he'd tell Holmes if he did, but that was besides the point.
“Don't you.” Holmes beckons to the woman at the table, and she walks over to him and holds out a slim, leather-bound journal. Holmes takes it from her and begins to flick through it. “Watchers have been monitoring Sherlock since we landed in Bangkok. Six hours ago, he disappeared. He's picked up a Shadow, a very skilled one.”
“But you found this place,” John says.
“Yes,” Holmes agrees. “It turns out we should have been monitoring you instead.” Holmes turns the journal round and holds it up, showing John an adept ink drawing of himself, examining Wentzler's corpse. Holmes flicks the page and shows John another drawing, this one of Sherlock dragging at John's arm, with one hand fisted in his sleeve. A third drawing shows John kneeling, holding some object, and an inset close-up shows the item to be a vial with a Batman sticker on it. Holmes shuts the book with a snap and hands it back to the blonde. “Where is Sherlock, Doctor Watson?”
There’s an edge to Holmes’ voice, suddenly, that wasn’t there before. Now is the time to be very careful and very honest, because John has the feeling that question is what this little meeting is really about.
“I don't know,” John says earnestly. “I haven't seen him since Mombasa, you're drawing entirely the wrong conclusions from-” His sentence tails off in a gasp as the front half of his left index finger bends ninety degrees and snaps cleanly at the second knuckle. John breathes heavily through his nose for several seconds, until his agony is under control. He blinks the tears from his eyes and looks back up at Holmes. Behind him, the Indian man guarding the door has extended his left hand toward John and is holding it palm down and watching John with a completely flat expression.
“Where is Sherlock?” Holmes says, in the exact same tone of voice, still as polite as if they are having tea together.
“I don't know,” John repeats. The Indian man jerks his middle finger sharply upward, and John's left middle finger snaps. He snarls in furious pain.
“Where is Sherlock?” Holmes says through gritted teeth. He takes a step closer.
“I don't- fuck!” John's answer is cut off as his ring finger breaks. The thought suddenly pops into his head, Tell him, fuck, tell him everything, it can't get any worse and it's sure not getting any better, just tell him. “He asked me to come to Thailand with him. I said no, I thought he was mad, but I changed my mind,” John gasps out, words blurring together in his haste to spill it out. “I bribed some ivory smugglers for a ride to Bangkok and paid a Sniff for a reading on something Sherlock gave me. I didn't see him and I don't know where he is, when I got here he was gone and Wentzler was dead.”
John looks up and sees Holmes peering at him with eyes that are inky black, no pupils to speak of. “God damn you!” John roars. He tries to kick out but only succeeds in hurting his ankles. “God fucking damn you, you manipulative arsehole!”
Holmes' shoulders slump, very slightly. For a moment, he looks profoundly disappointed. Then he straightens up again. “I see,” he says. “Well, at any rate we've acquired a new recruit. Christopher, would you kindly collect Doctor Watson's things and escort him to-”
“Sir,” the blonde says distractedly. She is bent over the dining room table, sketching in the leather-bound book at an almost frantic pace. Holmes stops immediately and waits for several silent minutes until she picks up the book and shoves it at him.
He takes it from her and examines it carefully. He looks up at John, then looks back at the book. He shuts it and hands it back to her. “Ah,” he says. He cocks his head slightly. “The matter of your first assignment, Agent Watson.”
John laughs thickly. “I'm not working for you.”
Holmes smiles at him, the faintest twitch of the lips. “You may think of it as freelance work, if you like. Well-paid, naturally.”
“I don't want your money,” John rasps.
“So what do you want?” Holmes says, eying him carefully for a second. His eyes are still fully black.
Tell him. “My freedom,” John blurts out, then, “Stop fucking doing that!”
“I won't send you back to a war zone,” Holmes says. “Nor will I forget you exist. You're far too useful.” John's lip curls. “But I can give you autonomy. Your choice of assignments, a reinstated passport. You could work for Division on your own terms.”
John grits his teeth. It's tempting- God help him, it's tempting. He's so fucking tired of running and hiding, of feeling terrified and exhausted when he isn't just mind-numbingly bored. It's a better offer than he thought he'd ever get from the Division. Not that he can trust Holmes. Still, he has to ask. “And what is it that I'd have to do, to get this autonomy?”
“Find Sherlock and bring him home safe,” Holmes says. “That's all.”
John laughs. “That's all. Just sell him out.” John gathers his saliva and spits; misses Holmes, but it's the thought that counts. “No.”
“You don't have autonomy yet,” Holmes says. He catches John's eye and arches one eyebrow at him. “Find Sherlock and bring him home safe,” he says again.
You've got to find him and protect him. You like him, he helped you, and you want to help him. That's what you came here to do, so keep doing it. John can feel the compulsion sinking into his mind, and he knows the Pusher standing in front of him with his jet black eyes is the one putting it there. He kicks and struggles helplessly against the zip ties, but the man's in his fucking head and there's nothing John can do to keep him out. His silent litany of no no no no no does nothing to prevent the artificially-inserted desire from taking hold.
“You have no right!” John snarls helplessly. “No bloody right!”
Holmes simply talks over him. “When next you wake, you'll be on your own, Agent Watson. For the most part.”
You're tired, exhausted. John blinks heavily, trying to fight the overwhelming urge to shut his eyes.
“Good luck,” Holmes says. He pulls a business card holder from his jacket pocket, removes one of the cards, and sets it down on the table where John can see it.
Sleep.
***
“That evil son of a bitch,” John says. “He was letting me see him Push me to find Sherlock, as a distraction. To keep me from seeing the commands he was implanting deeper. I never even felt him do it.” The idea of another man inside his head, manipulating him so skillfully that he can't even detect it, is terrifying. What else has John been told to do, that he's incapable of remembering or thinking about?
“Well I think I believe you now, if that helps,” Sarah says. She's set her gun down and is stripping off her gloves. “About not working for Division. Obviously they've been following you round using the implant.”
Oh fuck, if Sarah is right- that means that he's been unwittingly leading everyone who helped him into the slaughter. His stomach twists sideways and he retches. John heaves in several deep breaths, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fuck,” he says.
“You can heal that up yourself, right?” Sarah asks.
She's probably only asking because John's still sitting there bleeding everywhere, like he's too damn stupid to clean himself off. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. The cut is closed and healed in about thirty seconds. It steadies him a bit. He's still powerful. He can still control himself.
“All right, let’s talk,” Sarah says briskly. “I’m willing to help you find your friend, but you’re going to pay me up front.”
“I- don’t have much money left,” John admits, flushing.
“I don’t want money,” she says. “I want your ability. Three days in the clinic.”
John just stares at her. “Are you crazy? We’ll have the Division on both-“ He stops, realizing that the Division has been following him, but being very careful only to pounce once he had gone on his way. They don’t want John to know they’re watching.
“I figure if I stick with you, and you stick with that tracker, we’ve got at least a few days of them keeping their hands off,” Sarah says, crossing her arms and leaning back against the closed door. “But once we split up, I’ll have to go on the run. Which is why you have to pay up front.”
“Okay,” John says. “No, wait. Maybe I should ask what you have on offer. Besides your gun-handling skills, obviously.”
She grins broadly. “I’m a Watcher.”
“Shouldn’t you have known about the GPS then?” John says suspiciously.
She shrugs. “The future changes. Be glad, my original projection for this evening ended with me shooting you in the face.”
“Thanks for that,” John says. “So. How are we going to do this?”
They tape the tracker to John’s upper arm, so he can’t forget to carry it with him, and the next morning Sarah brings him into the clinic. He’s under supervision until Sarah freaks out at him for realigning a dislocated shoulder manually, then checks his work and realizes that John has done it exactly right. (“You prat, you didn’t tell me you were a doctor, too.”)
John runs himself ragged, not just because he has no idea where to search next without Sarah’s help, but because when he's idle, the constant itch at the back of his neck becomes a throbbing headache and he can hear his own voice in the back of his head. Find him. The motivation that Mycroft Holmes forced on him doesn’t seem to recognize that this interlude is the necessary price for Sarah’s help, and therefore part of the search. It simply punishes John for every moment he’s not actively looking for Sherlock.
Late at night, after the clinic, John lies on the couch in Sarah’s cramped apartment and massages his temples while Sarah taps her pencil against the loose sheets of paper she uses instead of the typical notebook.
“I have better luck focusing on you,” Sarah says, beginning to sketch rapidly.
“That’s what Holmes said about his Watchers,” John remembers. He closes his eyes and thinks at his inner voice, Shut up, shut up, I’m working on it. “He said Sherlock had a Shadow on him.”
“Or he’s just clever,” Sarah says. “Watchers see the future based on people’s intentions, mostly, so you can avoid us if you don’t make decisions.”
John giggles, the first time he’s laughed in ages. “I don’t think it’s possible for Sherlock to not make decisions,” he says.
“Or it could be that he’s not doing anything, or even observing anything,” Sarah says. She squints at her drawing and holds it up. “What do you make of this?”
John takes his hand from over his eyes and turns his head to look. “It’s an office building?” he guesses. “Not very specific.”
“Yeah,” Sarah says, glaring critically at the paper. She picks up a lighter sitting on the edge of the table and lights the corner of the page, then drops it into an empty metal rubbish bin set nearby for this purpose. She picks up the pencil again and starts sketching again, in a desultory way.
John signs and drapes his arm over his face, shading his eyes from the light again. It’s day three of his indentured servitude, and Sarah still hasn’t produced anything worthwhile. His headaches are getting worse, and obscurely they seem to pound more insistently when he tries not think about Sherlock at all. For a moment he decides to just let it in, and see if the compulsion isn’t better than the pain. He lets himself think of Sherlock: sullenly smoking John’s cigarettes, strolling up Joseph Kinuthia’s front walk, fighting the bodyguards, leaping wildly across the rooftops of Mombasa.
John’s going to find Sherlock: he has to believe that, and not just because of Mycroft Holmes. Because- assuming Holmes didn’t fake this too- he realized in Tanzania that Sherlock was right. John is completely bored and seriously exhausted with life on the run.
The headache does in fact ease, although the nag of his inner voice is severely distracting. John’s introspection is punctuated by a gasp from Sarah. He looks at her again, and she’s bent over her papers, drawing energetically. John’s thoughts drift sideways into his fury at Mycroft Holmes. If he wasn’t on this damned hunt, he might be thinking about staying here. Sarah was doing good work with refugees and the impoverished: helping the people who could least afford good medical care. He could stay and have a real job and use his talents and have friends again. It’s a nice fantasy, and something he’s never going to achieve thanks to Holmes.
Sarah stops drawing and looks up, sees him staring. “What did you do?” she demands intently, her eyes narrowing.
“What? Nothing,” John says reflexively.
“I was focused on your future, and I got this massive block of images,” she insists. “Now they’re gone. You did something.”
“I was just thinking about Sherl- oh,” he says.
“Do it again,” Sarah commands.
By one in the morning, Sarah has dozens of pages full of sketches. They mostly show John and Sherlock together, running, laughing, arguing, handcuffed together at the wrists, slumped against each other on a bus. John wants to linger on these, but Sarah sets them aside in favor of another set that she says are in the more immediate future. John loading his gun, John and Sarah creeping along a wall, Sherlock leaning heavily on John. And, beautifully, John and Sarah breaking into an office building with a large sign mounted on its front wall: the office building where they’re going to find Sherlock.
Sarah packs a rucksack and tucks her sheaf of drawings into her jacket pocket. They make one detour on their way to the business district, so that John can palm the GPS tracker into the pocket of a man boarding a bus to Phuket.
Once they get to the building from Sarah's drawing, their search through the offices is a little slow because John insists they stay together in case of armed resistance which never materializes. They're halfway through the third floor before they find an office that has been emptied of furniture except for a large, wire dog crate into which Sherlock has been crammed. Truth be told, it’s a bit of an anticlimax.
“Sherlock,” John says, but there's no response. The nagging refrain of find him goes blessedly silent for the first time since Wentzler's house, and John almost collapses from sheer relief.
Sarah crouches by the farthest side from the opening, inspecting Sherlock through the mesh. “I think he has earplugs in,” she says. “As well as the blindfold.” The blindfold is blatantly obvious: it covers Sherlock from mid-forehead to nostrils, a band of black cloth wrapped in layers around his head.
“You were right about the reason no one could find him,” John says. Trembling with fury as he notes the way Sherlock's arms and legs have been twisted up and tied behind him, John fumbles with the latch for several seconds before he can get the thing open. When John manages to wrestle Sherlock's hogtied body out of the kennel and onto open floor, Sarah is ready with his pocket knife in her hand to cut the zip ties- wonderful woman- and the two of them gently stretch his limbs out of their cramped positions. At least Sherlock's long sleeved shirt and gloves, trousers and socks, have cushioned his wrists and ankles against abrasion by the ties.
Sherlock is breathing shallowly through his mouth, which is explained when John discovers that under the edge of the blindfold he's wearing a nose clip as well. John slides it off as gently as he can; he can see that the skin around it is rubbed red and raw from the constant pressure and friction. He removes the ear plugs as well, and tosses them away. Sherlock begins to draw deeper breaths in through his nose at once, but he still doesn't try to speak, and he doesn't react at all when John repeats his name. John carefully unwinds the blindfold, but Sherlock half-opens his eyes and then squinches them shut against the light.
Sarah, meanwhile, is gently tapping Sherlock on the hands and arms. “He's way too unresponsive,” she notes. “Drugged?”
John, on a hunch, unbuttons Sherlock's shirt to the sternum and pulls it aside to reveal the site of his port-a-cath. The skin over the port is splotched with bruises of various ages, ranging from deep purple to a sick greenish-yellow. “Oh yeah,” John says. He glances up at the door, and then at Sarah. “Cover me for a second. I think I can fix this.”
Sarah takes out her gun and stands up, facing the door. John lays one hand against Sherlock's chest and shuts his eyes. He has no idea what Sherlock's been dosed with and he doesn't have the time to figure it out. But that's okay; all he has to do is up enzyme production and Sherlock's body will quickly metabolize the drug without any further input for John. While he waits and monitors Sherlock for any signs of drug toxicity, he busies himself repairing the bruises at the injection site and on Sherlock's wrists and ankles. He's absorbed in checking Sherlock over for non-obvious injuries when the man suddenly jerks away from John, then writhes beneath his hand as if trying to wriggle backwards.
John withdraws at once and puts an arm around Sherlock's shoulders, intending to help him sit up. “Sherlock, hey!” he says as Sherlock tries to push him away.
He slits his eyes open slightly and looks at John. “Oh,” he says. He voice is raspy; probably dehydrated. “What are you doing here?”
“I was wondering if your tempting offer was still open,” John says. He almost doesn't realize what he's saying until the words are already out.
Sherlock blinks at John owlishly, then glances from John to Sarah, his back and shoulders visibly tensing. “And you as well?” he asks Sarah.
“I'm not looking for a life of crime, thanks,” Sarah says, smiling a bit.
“Obviously.” Sherlock sniffs disdainfully, but his shoulders relax. Sherlock hasn't said yes to him. John feels slightly panicked. Has Sherlock changed his mind? If he has, will John's need to find and protect him leave off, or is he going to have to trail Sherlock around like an unwanted puppy? John concentrates for a few moments on getting Sherlock on his feet, leaning back against the wall. He almost falls once, but then the muscles hold: the massage and the Stitch job had done their work.
“Holmes knows I went to her for help,” John says. “He'll be after her too. I need help fixing it so she can go back to her life.” Sarah's eyes widen in surprise- John knows she fully expected to go on the run after tonight- but it's the least he owes her, after all this.
“And what about you?” Sherlock asks.
John's hand twitches reflexively towards his pocket before he stills it. “I'll be fine,” he says.
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “You didn't- oh, you did. You idiot. What did he promise you?”
John's stomach drops. He tells himself that he would have told Sherlock about the deal with Holmes eventually, he had to, but this was not how he wanted the conversation to start. “Nothing,” he says at once, then realizes how guilty that makes him sound. “I mean- I didn't- shit.”
Sherlock lunges the few feet to John, grabbing his shirt with one hand and shoving the other into the jeans pocket where Holmes' card is tucked. John, not used to putting up with this sort of assault, grabs Sherlock's shirt to shove him away and raises his hand to punch him. But then there's the urge, like a voice in his head hissing protect him and John suddenly can't hit Sherlock. He lets his hand drop to his side and Sherlock steps away with the card tucked between his index and middle fingers.
“You colossal moron,” Sherlock says, sneering. “How simple are you, that you really thought he'd keep his word? What did you ask him for- safety, freedom? You're not going to get it. What did he make you give him in exchange?”
“It doesn't matter,” John says. “As I'm about to break our agreement anyway.”
Sherlock pauses at that, and studies John for a moment. “Ah,” he says. “You were supposed to bring me back to London.”
“Yes,” John admits, flushing. “If it helps, I never intended to.”
Sherlock purses his lips. “Of course you didn't,” he says. John has opened his mouth to protest this apparent sarcasm, but Sherlock continues, “No, all your previous actions indicate both a strong moral principle and an aversion to compromise. Something besides greed motivated you- something beyond concern for my well-being.” Sherlock taps the card thoughtfully against his chin. “Oh, obvious. He pushed you.”
“I was looking for you anyway,” John says. “I tracked you as far as Wentzler's fresh corpse. I think I would have kept looking even if Holmes hadn't told me to.” John still isn't sure if this is strictly true, but it's something he has to believe: because he has to trust in something, and his own mind seems like the best of a lot of bad options.
Sherlock's face is unreadable. He's still tapping away with the card. “I need to make a phone call,” he says.
He needs John's support to make it as far as the next office over, where he slumps into the chair behind the desk, which is set up with a computer and phone. Sherlock stabs each button violently, as if committing murder with his finger. He presses the button for speakerphone and sets the handset back in the cradle. He doesn't bother with a greeting when the line picks up. “If you had any knowledge of my activities you would know that killing Wentzler was absolutely counter to all of my goals,” Sherlock declares. “Frankly I'm insulted that you think I would do it.”
“I can’t always predict you. Take it as a compliment,” Mycroft Holmes says tinnily from the speaker. “Hello Dr. Watson. And- Dr. Sawyer, I presume. I take it that the two of you are not en route to Phuket.”
“No, but your GPS implant is,” John says.
“That was a really shitty thing to do to someone, by the way,” Sarah adds. John can’t help but smile at her for that.
“Shut up, don't interrupt,” Sherlock says. There's nothing wrong with his voice now; it's firm and competent and disdainful. “As you have gathered, Mycroft, my abrupt departure from the scene of Wentzler's murder was entirely involuntary. It is crucial that I remain at large to pursue those responsible.”
“I have teams of Assets ready to go to work on the case,” Holmes says smoothly.
“And none of them have a Sniff half as good as I am,” Sherlock says matter-of-factly. “Release me to work this case without interference, and I'll keep you informed. I know you do love your progress reports.”
“You still need a team,” Holmes says, after a lengthy pause.
“I don't need a team,” Sherlock says at once. “I have John.” John flushes at that, glancing down and away.
Holmes simply says, “Ah,” a medium-long exhale of sound. Sherlock bares his teeth at the phone. “Well, I'll leave you to it.” Wait, that was it? John glances from the phone to Sherlock, who looks as if he is considering ripping the cord out of the device, then back. “Dr. Watson, always a pleasure. Dr. Sawyer, my apologies for the inconvenience, and my surveillance team will be removed from your workplace at once. Good morning.”
“What just happened?” John asks, beyond confused at this point.
“I lost an ongoing argument,” Sherlock says. “I have been refusing Mycroft's attempts to partner me with another agent for nearly a decade.”
“Oh.” John shouldn't feel hurt by that, shouldn't, but it stings anyway. He doesn't want to be a grudging concession. “I suppose you never had a potential partner with a hard-wired need to work with you.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Idiot,” he says. “I never had a potential partner I wanted to work with at all.” A smile tugs at the corner of John’s mouth, despite the insult.
“Oi,” says Sarah from behind him, and John and Sherlock both turn to look. “So how seriously can I take this guy, Sherlock? Because I don’t want to abandon my life here, but I don’t fancy walking into a trap, either. He’s already netted several of my friends.”
Sherlock shrugs. “There’s not much you can do for anyone he’s already caught, but he wouldn’t have said he was pulling back from you if he didn’t mean it. There’s no gain for him in lying to you, now that he has what he wants.” Sarah nods grimly, as if this makes good sense to her.
“You found, and me in service,” John mutters darkly to himself. His entire life spent eluding the Division, and he’s walking into their arms with a smile on his face. Sarah raises an eyebrow at him. “Go on, then,” he says. “And, you know- thanks. For your help.”
She hesitates, then reaches into her jacket and pulls out the folded pages she had stuffed there earlier. Her drawings of John and Sherlock. She smiles as she hands them over. “Somehow, I don’t want to burn these,” she says.
She hugs him goodbye, and when she’s left the room John turns back to see Sherlock sitting with his elbows on the desk and his fingers steepled beneath his chin. “You can still leave, if you like,” Sherlock says abruptly.
“No I can’t,” John says. He runs a hand through his hair. “I was looking for you anyway,” he repeats, trying to convince himself as much as Sherlock.
After a pause, a slow smile spreads across Sherlock’s face. “I was right,” he says. “You were bored.”
“Yes, fine, you were right,” John snaps. He clenches his hand and fights the self-destructive urge to tug out his hair by the roots. “I just- wanted it to be on my own terms.”
“Sovereignty,” Sherlock says. “Ironically, that’s why Mycroft became de facto head of the Division in the first place. Only somewhere along the way he became more enamored of authority than of self-determination.”
“You sound as if you’ve known him a long time,” John says. John can hear it in the bitter way he speaks, and in the way he always calls Holmes by his first name.
“My entire life,” Sherlock says. “He’s my brother.”
John’s jaw drops. “But your names-”
“Half brother, actually. I prefer his father’s name to mine, but it’s safer for both of us if people don’t realize the Deputy Director and I are related.” Sherlock stretches his arms and gets shakily to his feet, leaning on the desk for support.
John is rapidly connecting the dots now. Mycroft’s impromptu trip to a war zone when Sherlock went missing, his obsession with protecting Sherlock, his obvious frustration back at Wentzler’s. “That’s why you can stop him with a single phone call,” John realizes.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking my brother has stopped, John,” Sherlock says. “He wants us back in London, and under his direct control. This is a ceasefire, nothing more.”
“Bollocks,” John says. “We’ll go back to London when we’re damned well ready. And it won’t be on his terms, either.”
Sherlock is giving him that look again, the one he wore when John took Kinuthia and his bodyguards down in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. As if John is fascinating. He thinks he likes it when Sherlock looks at him that way.
I was looking for you anyway, John says to himself, and this time he very nearly believes it.