[Fic] Blue on Blue, Chapter 2/3
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Gen
Spoilers: TRF
Warnings: None
Summary: Members of November Foxtrot- the fifth SAS squadron, the phantom squadron- never explicitly identify themselves as such, because anyone who doesn't know they're in the unit isn't qualified to know.
John's heart was beating faster, and he managed to sit up even straighter despite his already-rigid posture. "Sir. Are you suggesting I'm eligible, sir?"
Note: Something for the Rag and Bone Man is meant as a prequel to this story. You don't have to read it, but it gives you an idea of John's state of mind.
Thanks to Mazarin, for betaing and especially for helping me figure out the end. Also thanks to: Thisprettywren, for the Latin; Lishan, for helping me talk through John’s emotional arc; and Mad-maudlin, for the prompt that led me here.
2 days ASH (After Sherlock Holmes)
The first thing John did was move out of Baker Street.
It turned out that two days was his limit: two full days of sitting inside, listening to the press outside knocking and yelling and hanging on the bell, two full nights of staring at Sherlock's chair replaying his jump over and over, two eternities of being reminded of Sherlock by every thing he saw and every breath he took. He was settled into a new flat before Sherlock's body was even in the ground.
He went back to pack up Sherlock's things though. No one else was going to do it, evidently; it was possible that's what all Mycroft's calls were about, but John wasn't going to talk to him to find out. Anyway, John found he didn't like the idea of some hired goons of Mycroft's handling all Sherlock's possessions. The only thing worse was the thought of Mrs. Hudson climbing all those stairs and having to lug armfuls of books and clothing and mold cultures, alone and surrounded by memories of a man that was more to her than just a tenant. So John spent a long, excruciating day binning experiments in progress and packing boxes, using a newly-purchased marking pen to label them in permanent block capitals: books, lab, notes, clothing. When he was done, he wrote Mycroft's number on a loose sheet of paper, slid it under Mrs. Hudson's door, and left.
He didn't take anything with him. Sometimes his wild mood swings took him to maudlin places, and he would wish he had kept some memento to hold on to. But really, what was there that could encapsulate Sherlock Holmes' existence? He was better off with just his own things in his own bare flat, no obvious touchstones to sear him every time his glance lighted on them.
The media left off after he'd ignored them for a while; the people he knew took longer. Lestrade called a lot. Mrs. Hudson invited him round. Mike Stamford asked him to the pub. Even Molly Hooper, who left tearful voicemails that he deleted without listening to, after the first one. It was easier. He didn't want to be pitied. He didn't want to reminisce. He didn't want to be told it would get better. Deep down, he was afraid that if he heard enough about the fake construct-Sherlock that people had created, he might start to believe it; that he'd wake up one day and his memories of Sherlock would have been replaced by someone else's.
He talked to his therapist. He talked to the people who called him in for job interviews. He talked to Sherlock's gravestone.
John visited Sherlock's grave nearly every day, at first. He had very little to do, and it gave him somewhere to go: a definite destination, rather than just aimless wandering. And then, he missed having someone to talk to, argue with, shout at. His days were mostly silent, and sometimes the silence clawed at him. Talking to the grave wasn't the same, but at least he could do it without thinking he was losing his grip on reality. Somehow in the wake of the "fake genius's suicide" John felt almost as if his reputation was tied to Sherlock's. If John was crazy or deluded, it might justify the story that Sherlock had fooled him.
"Hello, John," he heard one afternoon as he sat leaning against the back side of the stone. He'd stopped talking and dropped into introspection, and so hadn't heard anyone approach. He glanced up: Lestrade, wearing his overcoat over jeans and a button-down. He sat to John's left, leaning back against the trunk of the massive pine and stretching his legs in front of him.
"I should go," John said immediately, averting his gaze. He pulled his legs up, preparatory to standing.
"No, don't," Lestrade said quickly. "I came to see you."
"Oh," John said.
"You've not been to Baker Street, and Mrs. Hudson said she didn't have your new address," Lestrade said. "You aren't answering your phone. I couldn't find you."
"Well you have now," John said. He stared straight ahead of him, refusing to make eye contact. "Not the best detective work, I must say," he said, with a little nasty thrill. He wanted to add What would Sherlock think? but he didn't think he could get the words out without his voice cracking.
"Well I'm not a detective at the moment, am I?" The bitter edge to the words made John look up at Lestrade, who was also gazing into the middle distance.
"What?"
Lestrade finally made eye contact. "I'm suspended. With pay, which is something I suppose. It's been in the papers, I thought-" Lestrade stopped before he finished you'd have read about it.
John found his lips curling into a smile against his will. Maybe Sherlock was right about Lestrade being an idiot. "Sod the papers," he said flatly.
Lestrade paused a moment. "All the DIs who worked with him are suspended, pending review of the cases." Lestrade huffed a bit of a stale laugh, the barest ha. "Your government at work."
"You don't think they're going to find anything untoward then," John said, trying to load each individual word with sarcasm. "No crimes secretly perpetrated by the fake-" His voice cracked and he had to stop, closing his eyes against the pricking of tears. He kept his face a mask, refused to wipe his eyes. This was humiliating enough.
"Don't be stupid," Lestrade said. His voice was so harsh that John opened his eyes to glance at him, seeing a tight rictus of forced control that must match his own expression. "I was bloody there and so were you. We know there was nothing fake about what he did."
Part of John is relieved at that, but it's overtaken by a surge of fury. "Well that's not what you said that night, was it, when you were lining up behind Donovan and her load of-"
"Come off it, John," Lestrade said. "It was a possibility, we had to rule it out. That's how policing works, you know. It's not all chase scenes and takedowns and dramatic bloody reveals. And you can't ignore a line of questioning because of personal-"
"Personal!" John practically hooted. "Oh, that's a laugh. With Donovan gloating-"
"But it wasn't her whose nose you bloodied, was it?" Lestrade said sharply. "None of us were at our best that night. None of us."
John ducked his chin to his chest and turned his face away. "What do you want?"
"I just wanted to see how you were," Lestrade said. "To let you know...well. You have my number, if you need- someone to talk to. Go down the pub with. Whatever."
John forced a laugh. "I have a therapist, thanks."
"Not what I meant," Lestrade said. "I had a mate once, who- you know. And we all said after how no one ever thought he'd do it, but you still feel like you should have seen it-"
"No," John snapped. "I didn't kill him. He didn't kill himself. It was fucking Moriarty, and if he hadn't already topped himself I'd take care of it for him, so don't try to guess how I feel, god damn it, and don't you dare try to foist your own complexes off on me, because I know how I feel and I'm certainly not the one who ought to feel guilty."
"Oh, fuck off!" Lestrade said, standing so abruptly that John glanced up at him out of instinct. His face was blazing. "I'm the one who called to warn you the order'd been given to arrest him, in case you've forgotten. I've been on his side since before you even-" Lestrade stopped suddenly, drawing a great, quivering breath. "Never mind. I thought we were friends, or at least allies. Something. But if you'd rather be alone, you and your bloody stupid martyr complex, then, you know, fine. Just- fine."
Lestrade paused as if waiting for a rejoinder, then stalked away, back towards the entrance to the graveyard.
* * *
Then there was the issue of Seb Moran.
The man had flat-out vanished by the time John was back in London with his cane and his pension. The military wouldn't help of course; that was the whole point, to delete him from their collective memory, and the whole ugly Khost business along with him. John couldn't find him on the web, or via any of the resources designed for vets trying to reconnect, and he wasn't turning up in any phone books. John knew next to nothing about his family, and other than the occasional e-mail they hadn't really connected between deployments, so he just didn't have any leads. By the time he'd met Sherlock, he'd basically given up on figuring out where Seb had gone. Until that meeting with Mycroft- the one that John now realizes was the bastard's first attempt at damage control, having belatedly realized that giving your brother's life story to a psychopath was not the brightest idea.
John had felt the spark of recognition when Mycroft shoved the photo under his nose in his stupid posh club, but he feigned ignorance because fuck Mycroft and his fucking games, there were things about John's past that he was not entitled to know. John had barely had the time to process top international assassin, what with Sherlock being called in on the kidnapping almost immediately after that meeting. And after that...well. It's not like he'd had a lot of time to sit down and muse about the old days.
Until after Sherlock's jump. Then he had nothing but time.
And then, one day, there he was: the lanky figure with the deep-set eyes and jutting chin that he remembered, with the shock of unruly hair from the photograph. He was sitting on the front steps of John's building, having a smoke. Denim jacket and a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, ESS Airbornes, looking like a club kid with a few extra years hanging on him.
"Jove," he said politely, exhaling as John reached the steps.
"Seb." John walked past him and put his key in the lock. "I suppose you'd better come up."
Seb leaned his bony hip on the ratty sofa and watched John put away beans, bread, weetabix in the cupboard. "The flat at Baker Street is better," he said, carefully folding his sunglasses and setting them down.
"Can't afford it any more." Not the main reason he'd left, but still true. He closed the cupboard and stared at it for a second. "International assassin, really?"
"Well I had to do something with myself," Seb said.
"So you chose murder for hire?" John turned so as not to lose the impact of his raised eyebrow.
"The same way you chose CP on Sherlock Holmes," Seb said, and John's fists clenched involuntarily. "We do what we're good at."
"You were one of Moriarty's clients," John said. He wasn't going to dick around with small talk when Sherlock's death and the events surrounding it were standing between them like a wall of knives. "You wanted the code, he offered it-" But Seb was shaking his head. "What then?"
"He was my client. 'If anybody touches Sherlock besides me, I want you to put three slugs in him.' I tried to tell him slugs are shotgun ammo, but you know how civilians are." Seb grinned, and John's skin leapt and crawled with a fierce urge to punch him. "I think he was some kind of dramatist."
"Oh, fuck off," John snapped, stepping closer. As if he had any idea at all what Moriarty was, what his love of dramatic bullshit had cost. As if he had a right to stand in John's flat and joke about committing murder at Moriarty's command.
"Christ, now they've got you thinking like a civilian," Seb complained. "We've both killed better men than either of those bastards I shot." This was undoubtedly true, but it didn't reduce John's anger at all.
"Moriarty ruined Sherlock," John said, his voice low and dangerous. "And you were part of it."
Seb met his eyes coolly, inclining his head slightly to acknowledge the truth of this without giving an inch of ground. A challenge, not an agreement. "So were you," he said after a moment.
John punched him in the face.
The struggle distinctly lacked finesse, despite both their years of training in close combat, both armed and unarmed. John had a knife in his boot and he could clearly see that Seb was carrying both a snub-nosed handgun and a balisong knife, but neither of them reached for weapons. This wasn't that kind of fight. It was hard and fast and brutal, grappling and shoving, knees and elbows, pulling hair and gouging at eyes and hard-edged punches at the groin and kidneys. John bounced Seb's head off the wall and left a splash of blood there, Seb kicked him to the floor and stomped on his fingers. In times of action John's head was always clear, but now it was full of the roaring in his ears and Seb's and his labored breathing and somewhere in the back of his head Sherlock's voice: Keep your eyes fixed on me, can you do this for me?
It ended in stalemate, both of them gasping and spent on the floor, bent over and dripping blood onto the grotty carpet. Seb felt for his cigarettes and pulled one out, rather battered now but still intact.
"Oi," John said. "You can't smoke in here."
"Come stop me," Seb said. He rolled over onto his back and blew smoke at the ceiling, wiping at his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. "Feel better?"
"Yeah," John said, lying very still so he could hear his heart pounding. "Yeah, a bit."
"Me too," Seb said. "Better than fucking therapy by a long shot, hey?"
"How did you know-" John heard the voice in the back of his head saying You've got a psychosomatic limp, of course you've got a therapist, and firmly told it, No, stop, don't spoil this. "Forget it."
"You didn't testify at my court martial," Seb said to the ceiling.
"Nobody told me there was one," John said. "Anyway I was out of my head with fever, wasn't I?"
"I know," Seb said. "If I thought you were in on it I would have killed you myself."
"Well I wasn't," John said.
"I said I bloody know."
"Good."
"Fine."
"Fine."
John was never sure, later, which one of them started laughing first.
* * *
Meet me at the Caffe Nero around the corner, said the text John got the next morning. The chime of the text alert dumped adrenaline into John's bloodstream even though he never really considered that Sherlock might suddenly text him from beyond the grave. It was a reflex. 90% of John's texts had been from Sherlock, before, and therefore meant excitement (Meet me at NSY, new case. S) or danger (Bring your gun. S) or even just rage (Small fire in bathroom. Pick up new towels on way home. S). It was more than a month since he'd got one, and he was still Pavlov's bloody dog.
Bit disingenuous to ask who it was: the number wasn't in John's phone, which meant it was either someone he knew who didn't have his number, or Mycroft. And Mycroft would probably commit ritual suicide before being caught in a Caffe Nero. But admitting that his social life was that pathetic- had been even before, really- was too embarrassing. Why? he finally texted back.
Don't be a wanker Jove. John sighed and went to get dressed.
After the first five minutes picking at his muffin and waiting for Seb, he started reading a discarded paper. Fuck it. Seb could find him, he wasn't going to sit there looking like he'd been stood up by his coffee date.
Finally the man plunked himself down opposite John, dressed down in denim again, still wearing his obnoxious Airbornes.
"Those don't look nearly as cool as you think," John told him snidely.
"Still cooler than you." Seb smirked.
"What do you want, Seb?" John folded the paper over and set it down next to his demolished muffin.
"To ask for your help," Seb said. When he turned his head slightly to the side, John could see that the Airbornes were disguising an enormous black eye that Seb probably got from him. "Do you know how many people were watching your old flat?"
John remembered back to the conversation he had with Mycroft, the folders he'd been shown. "Four. Sulamari, Ludmilla something, you, and another guy whose name I don't remember."
Seb shook his head. "Five. Not including me, because I wasn't there for the same reason they were. Two of them are dead, one has left the country. The other two are still here."
John raised an eyebrow. "Decided to immigrate, did they?"
Seb's grin took up most of his face. "You'd be surprised by the strength of the domestic job market, Jove. At any rate I have a client who thinks they've overstayed their welcome."
"What happened to calling the police? The government knows who they are," John noted.
Seb was already shaking his head. "Their only evidence is suspicion, rumor- these are professionals. The best the government could do would be to deport them home, or perhaps to another country that's got more evidence or fewer scruples."
"So you're going to just, what? Mur-" John followed Seb's glance sideways at a nearby table with two businessmen chatting over coffee. "Get rid of them?" Seb cocked his head, and John laughed a little hysterically. "Christ, Seb." It was hard to read people without seeing their eyes, but John had a lot of experience with Seb. And he also had a lot of experience with pity. "I appreciate what you're trying to do. But I'm not that-" He stopped. Desperate seemed a bit too insulting for an old friend trying to do him a favor.
"It's not like that," Seb snapped. He reached up and drew off his sunglasses, exposing his glare to John, who leaned back. Clearly the last thing on Seb's mind was pity. "They both know me, if I don't catch them simultaneously I might be months tracking down the second one again. So I need a man I can trust not to cut my throat or cock the whole thing up."
"I still don't-" John started, and Seb cut him off with a sideways jerk of his hand.
"Bullshit, you don't. Either of these shits has a higher body count than our entire troop did. I doubt even their mums would cry for them. And you- well." Seb shrugged slightly. "You have a personal interest. And I know you. There's nothing for you on civvy street."
John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't want to admit how right Seb was; every day he could feel the torpor stealing back over him, dragging him back to the blank emptiness of his life post-war and pre-Sherlock. "We all have to become civilians sometime," he said wearily. It was his mantra, what the Army psychologists had told him, what Sherlock had taught him was bullshit. That man had never worn a uniform or taken an oath, but he was never a civilian.
Seb slid his glasses back on. "Not us," he said. "Socii patiantur pereant soli." He took a pair of folders out of his jacket, one navy and one maroon, and dropped them in front of John so that they slid off the remains of his muffin and he had to grab them before they fell to the floor. "What are these?" John flipped the top folder open almost automatically. In it were pictures of the Russian woman Mycroft had identified as an assassin. Dyachenko, that was it. There were photos, maps, a list of confirmed kills. John lingered over those pages. The names were unfamiliar, but helpfully identified in parentheses: Swiss politician, Tibetan activist, Russian politician, Russian military leader.
"Lots of Russians," John noted. "Patriotic girl, is she?" Seb chuckled, and John felt the corner of his mouth quirk up in a half-smile. John flipped back to the photos. He never liked having to fight women. Old-fashioned, he knew. Idiotic, Sherlock had said. But he was raised not to hit girls, and some things were hard to talk yourself out of, even if you knew firsthand women could be just as dangerous as men. Why does it matter? he asked himself. It's not like he was seriously considering this, was it? He shut the blue folder and stuck it under the magenta one, opened that up. Just curiosity, he told himself. He wanted to see who the other one was.
John did a double take.
"Holy Christ," he said. "Him?" The heavyset man in the photos was startlingly familiar, although he wasn't one of the assassins Mycroft had showed him pictures of.
"Seen him, have you?" Seb asked.
John flipped through the photos, and sure enough there was a shot where he was in shirtsleeves and John could see the stark black tribal tattoos twisting up his forearms. The sudden flood of rage and adrenaline choked him even while his heart pounded in his ears. "Yeah." John cleared his throat, licked his lips, and tried again. "Yeah. He was doing some work at Baker Street. I came back to the flat to check on Mrs. Hudson, and he was-" The rage mingled with nausea.
"Christ- your landlady? What did he do?"
"Nothing," John said. "Nothing- it's just. He was right there. I left her with him! I didn't even realize-" Logically he knew at least one of them had been in there, they'd found the camera after all. Hell, Moriarty had been in the flat. But it was somehow different to realize that a dangerous assassin had been standing in the foyer being chatted at fondly by Mrs. Hudson, and John had looked at him and not seen- He'd left Mrs. Hudson in danger because he just couldn't observe. His inner Sherlock cursed him for a simple-minded cretin. John flipped through the rest of the folder, taking in stats, confirmed kills, recent movements, the name and location of the hotel where the Estonian assassin was currently staying.
He slapped the folder shut with finality and handed both back across to Seb. "Him," John said. "I'll have him."
Seb cocked his head again. "You're sure?" he said. "If you really don't want to, mate, it's fine."
Do you want to see some more? John's smile was a fragile, sharp thing, like a shard of broken glass. "Oh yeah," he said. "I'm sure."
* * *
That afternoon a courier delivered a large envelope to John at his flat; when he slit it open he found a pay-as-you-go mobile with a single number pre-programmed into it under the name 5NF. An hour later, 5NF texted him, No privacy in London anymore, bloody cameras. Got a bp?
John had in fact been thinking of a plan, turning over the information he had read about the assassin called Peeter Sepp. Someone had already done most of the dull recon bits, figuring out when the Estonian was in his hotel room and that. Probably Seb. Maybe. date/time?
Fri 11p will both be home. Requis?
John had left behind the sort of life where you had to plan how to kill someone years ago, but it was a surprisingly easy mindset to fall back into. It was familiar, almost nostalgic. So John spent the time most people would occupy agonizing over whether to end a life planning how he would do it. Most close weapons were messy and personal, so gun was the obvious choice. Just as easily, John couldn't use his. Even with Sherlock gone- don't think about that, damn it, stop- there were two people at minimum who knew about the Sig. The taxi driver had been one thing, but if the gun was ever traced back to Sepp's murder...well. John knew just what to tell Seb when he asked what gear was needed.
wp22 gtsup subs
The reply was immediate: Traditionalist.
The gun was delivered the next afternoon, to Baker Street, disguised as a package from the Christmas Jumper Company. Which was probably Seb's idea of humor. John made stilted small talk with Mrs. Hudson over tea until he couldn't think of anything else to say that didn't involve Sherlock in some way. After he escaped to his new flat, he opened the box and immediately cleaned and checked the Walther P22 inside. He laid it in the top drawer of his desk and felt strangely pleased.
Thursday morning he memorized a street map of the area surrounding Sepp's hotel and then went for a long, leisurely walk through the neighborhood. He ate an ice cream and window shopped and tried not to make it obvious that he was locating every CCTV camera and pinning virtual tacks on his mental map.
On Friday around 9, John casually loaded the P22 and put it in his left jacket pocket and the silencer in his right. He took the tube most of the way and walked the last couple blocks to a pizza place owned by a man whose missing son Sherlock had once located. John had only been there once, 18 months ago, but he'd remembered when he walked past the previous day that it was part of Sherlock's network of gratitude. Sure enough, by the time John had finished his slice of pizza, Hassan had come out of the kitchen to say hello. With Sherlock gone, John found himself somehow the target of redirected but effusive thanks.
"The newspapers, always lying," Hassan said. "He was no fake. I know." It should've been reassuring to hear other people testify to their faith in Sherlock. But instead it made John's gut clench and his face freeze into a blank mask.
"Hassan," he finally cut the man off. "Can I use your back door?"
Of course he could, Sherlock's friend could come back through the kitchen and welcome. When the door closed behind him, John was in the narrow alley between two sets of commercial buildings, which just happened to be a CCTV blind spot. The alley led him to the unguarded entrance of a block of flats, whose second story terrace was close enough to the fire escape of Sepp's low-rent hotel that he didn't have to jump so much as step over the gap.
By the time John let himself into the right hotel room, he was buzzing with adrenaline. Some guys loved the planning. John was not one of them. For him, the planning was a necessary ritual, like a gourmand chopping veg or a junkie fiddling with spoons and syringes. The planning just enabled the sweet rush that came when Sepp arrived home and John stepped out from behind the door, fired two precisely placed bullets into the base of Sepp's skull, and kicked the door shut behind him as he caught the man before he slumped fully to the floor. John laid him neatly on the carpet and checked his carotid pulse with two latex-gloved fingers.
The 22 was terribly neat: the low velocity bullets hadn't even made it through the other side of Sepp's skull. He looked almost peaceful lying on his back, except for the blood pooling under his neck. John unscrewed the suppressor from the barrel of the Walther and pocketed both again. He neatly picked up both shell casings from the floor and put them in his trouser pocket alongside his wallet. He didn't remove and pocket the gloves until he was back in the alley outside.
It was 11:06. John was swimming upstream through endorphins and having to school the grin from his expression with utmost care as he walked back to the restaurant, let himself in through the back door. Are you all right? Well you have just killed a man. This time, the memory of Sherlock's voice in his head was comforting, not painful. Well he wasn't a very nice man, he told Sherlock silently, and remembered giggling together and the suffusion of warmth as he realized that Sherlock wasn't going to turn him in, that he approved of what John had done. John allowed himself a little bit of a smile as he walked out the front door and popped back into existence again.
He walked home. He needed the pleasant burn of a long walk in his legs and lungs to work off the energy; if he took the Tube home he'd just be bouncing off the walls all night. Anyway, the walk gave him an opportunity to cross over the Thames, letting the shell casings fall from his re-gloved hand as he leaned for a moment over the safety rail.
The gun and the silencer, he kept.
* * *
The next package from Seb contained another pay as you go mobile, a short note ("take the SIM card out of the old phone and break it") and five thousand pounds in cash.
What the fuck is this, John texted when he got the phone booted up.
Your share. Well part of it, didn't want to send it all in one go.
I can't take it, John replied, his hands shaking slightly. He didn't even need to think. Something about holding the money in his hands, knowing it was payment for killing a man, made him feel sick to his stomach.
Why the fuck not? came in while John was already thumbing out his next message.
I didn't do it for money, it was never for money, I can't take it. He did it as a favor to Seb, as vengeance for Mrs. Hudson and for Sherlock. And maybe, he had to admit, for himself most of all: a reminder that he was still useful, could still help and protect people.
So it's only immoral if you get paid? Seb texted back.
Fuck you, John sent. He wasn't going to get into an argument about morality with Seb, of all people.
There was a lengthy pause then, which John recognized from two years' worth of having fights with Sherlock via text message as the other party typing a long reply. It was never about money for me either, you know, but a man has to eat. I'd be insulted if this wasn't your usual passive-aggressive pissant bullshit.
My aggression is not passive. John forgot to breathe, waiting to see if this attempt at diffusion succeeded.
Give it back then, Christ, what do I care.
John sellotaped the envelope shut again with the cash inside, and when a bored courier rang his bell he gave it to her without a bit of hesitation. I just can't take it. Don't make it a thing, John texted.
Fine, next time you get paid in altruism and rainbows.
Fine, John replied. It was only about ten minutes later, after he'd set the phone down and was making himself a mug of tea, that he realized that during the conversation his crisis of conscience had slipped right by him and he'd segued directly from post-case adrenaline into comfortable acceptance.
In other words, he'd already made up his mind that there would be a next time.
* * *
He didn't hear anything from Seb for more than a week. He fell back into routine: shopped, went for walks, checked the job listings, made his weekly appointment with Ella. He thought about Sepp from time to time. He didn't feel any urge to walk by the hotel or check the papers for news of the body being found- John was only an idiot when compared to Sherlock, that kind of crap was amateur hour. He never felt any particular guilt, which did surprise him a bit. It was true that in NF he had killed people, but usually it was in aid of something else; he didn't just sit down and plan out murders. He had never regretted the cabbie either, but that was a bit more spur of the moment. So John might have felt something. But he didn't.
Sherlock had once thrown a man out of a window for putting his hands on Mrs. Hudson. He hadn't shot him twice in the back of the head, but then Sherlock had never been specifically trained to kill people.
John reminded himself that he hadn't changed; not really, not irrevocably. He was a criminal, sure, but he'd been a criminal for years, toting around an illegal gun and firing it when necessary, never mind all the burglaries and assaults he'd committed in Sherlock's cause. Whether it was speeding or stealing or hurting someone, no one really believed the law applied to their specific situation. Morality was a very flexible beast.
John checked Seb's mobile every day.
One night, a new text was waiting: Lots of business lately. Could use a subcontractor.
John swallowed, his mouth dry even as he tapped back, Not an assassin.
The reply was so quick that Seb must have anticipated John's words. Because it doesn't count if you don't get paid?
Because money doesn't motivate me, John fired back.
There was a longish pause, then. The Sherlock in John's head crowed, Wrong, John! Many assassins are motivated by non-financial factors. He could probably give John names, if he was here. But that still wasn't the point. John had finally given up waiting for a reply when the phone suddenly rang.
"Moriarty was more than just one man," Seb said as soon as John picked up.
"He-"
"No, shut up," Seb said. "Everybody and I mean everybody knew who he was. Not how to get to him, but that he existed. He didn't manage it all himself, there's no way."
"He had a network," John said, bits of Sherlock's rants coalescing in his mind. Sherlock was fixated on Moriarty, the "spider at the center of the web," as he said, but the existence of the web was always implicit. "Why would you care?"
"I don't," Seb said. "But you do." John said nothing. "Criminal networks don't die with their leader, any more than terrorist cells or insurgent movements. I can help you get the guys that want to replace Moriarty," Seb promised.
"Nobody can replace him," John said. "He was unique." Well, almost unique. No, stop, don't think about that.
"So was bin Laden. How's that working out?"
John cracked a smile. There's always someone left to fight over what the boss leaves behind- that was a truth John, like Seb, like a thousand other soldiers, had etched in his gut and his bones by Afghanistan. "Okay. I wouldn't mind kicking Moriarty's people while they're down." Sherlock would have done it, if he'd survived the roof; he would have put on steel-toed boots and laughed the whole time. "But I still don't get why you'd help. Chasing a dead man's lackeys can't be that profitable. I thought you needed to eat."
"You'd be surprised." Amusement lurked in Seb's voice. "And shit, Jove, I miss working with you. I don't-" Seb's voice caught for a fraction of a second. "I don't really have anybody I can trust. It makes a nice change." God, did John know how that felt.
"Okay," John said. "Okay. What do you have?"
* * *
What Seb had was a tip about Moriarty's involvement in arms smuggling. John booked a flight to Volgograd- Seb sent him a passport that gave him the last name Ivanoff, ha ha- but John bought his own black market gun once he arrived, a snub-nosed little Makarov repro that he'd be sorry to have to dump when he left the country. It was about a week and a half of solid recon, following a Russian gangster that Moriarty's former man, Balanchuk, was apparently trying to woo into a contract.
"The buzz is that Balanchuk has taken over Moriarty's operations in the Baltic states and the Ukraine," Seb had told him. Now he was poised to expand into Russia. If John took him down, none of his underlings were sufficiently powerful or respected to take over the whole network. It would fall to smaller, much less dangerous, pieces.
John didn't have the technology he'd had access to in November Foxtrot, nor did he have Jack's language skills. So most of the recon involved following Balanchuk and the Russian around, watching their movements at long range through a spotting scope he'd bought back in England along with a couple field guides on Russian birds. He was sitting on the roof of a combine factory eating a sandwich and waiting for Balanchuk to return to his armored car when his mobile vibrated.
Surprised, John hauled the phone out and glanced at the display before answering. Mostly out of habit, of course it read 5NF- who else was going to call this phone? "Christ," Seb said when he picked up. "I didn't expect this to go through. Aren't you done yet?"
"Soon," John said. "Tomorrow morning, I think." Balanchuk's security was sloppy when he was getting in or out of the car back at the hotel. That was probably the best time.
"What happened to thunder and lightning?" Seb asked. "You sad tosser."
"Oh, piss off," John said, smiling to himself. "I'm not the one who needs to hire someone to do his wet work."
"It's not hiring if nobody gets paid," Seb said. "You're more a hobbyist. Blackwater hobbyist."
"I'm freelance," John said. "Go fuck yourself."
Their shared laughter was easy, and it warmed John. Surveillance was boring, and stakeouts were lonely. It always helped to have someone to share them with: even if you were on hard discipline and you couldn't talk, even if you were crammed together into a narrow closet listening to a murderer rustling around in the next room. It was good to hear another man's breathing in counterpoint to yours, to know you weren't on your own. Sentimental, Sherlock would have said, but it wasn't. Just human nature. Even Sherlock was subject to it, or why had he dragged John along on so many of his cases?
John could smile at that, now.
"Hey, Jove," Seb said, distracting him from his thoughts.
"Yeah?"
"Can you get me his phone?"
John gave it a moment's thought. "I could go in close, sure. I know what pocket he keeps it in." Right trouser pocket, always. It might be easier to get the jump on him by pushing in close, anyway. Vantage points were a bitch when your target was constantly moving. "Why?"
"I think it's got his client list," Seb said. "Useful intel, that."
John felt a slight twinge- he was trying to cut Moriarty's network down, surely the information that was part of it ought to be destroyed along with the men who ran it?
As the pause lengthened, Seb began to wheedle. "Oh, come on," he said. "The client list is downstream, not up. Smaller fish. You don't need or want it, and I can use it."
John huffed a breath. "All right," he said. It was Seb, anyway. He was a gun for hire, not an arms smuggler. Hell, maybe that was how he made the connections that let him get hold of illegal weapons. An arms smuggler was a likely source of the Makarov John was carrying now, it was a bit hypocritical of him to profit from these people on the one hand and condemn them from the other. He was losing focus, that was the problem. This was supposed to be about shutting down Moriarty for good, not saving the world one criminal at a time. There were way too many criminals for that to work; he'd learned that lesson in Afghanistan.
"I've gotta go," he told Seb. "Target's moving." Suited figures were emerging from the warehouse meeting place, headed back to the car.
"Don't fuck up," Seb said, and rang off.
John laughed again as he stuffed his gear into the pockets of his overcoat.
John was up at five the next morning, high on black coffee and adrenaline as he walked briskly towards Balanchuk's hotel. Like a lot of powerful people, he was a man of habit, and it hadn't taken him long as a guest in Volgograd to establish one here. John timed his arrival carefully, so that he was just turning the corner at the hotel when the Balanchuk emerged at 7:10 precisely to be chauffeured to breakfast. One of his bodyguards stepped ahead to open the car door, turning his back to John. The other lagged behind in the lobby, exchanging words with the doorman as was his habit. It was maybe fifteen seconds of inattentiveness, but John had been timing it every day for a week and he knew exactly how to exploit it.
The tricky bit was to fire and keep firing as he walked. First two shots into the bodyguard at the car door, shoulder of his gun arm and then knee. Re-aim at Balanchuk, inhale, exhale, two in the chest, second bodyguard emerging from the hotel to John's left, two in the left kneecap, visual check to be sure the driver is still in the car, excellent. John had come alongside Balanchuk by then, who was bleeding and wetly gurgling through a pneumothorax. Stoop and fish the phone out of his trouser pocket with the right hand, two more in the head with the left. Visual check: driver keeping his head down, bodyguards still down. John pocketed the phone and the gun and kept right on with his brisk walk.
He broke into a run when he turned the corner, dashed up two streets, and hailed a cab. In the men's room of a McDonald’s down by the Volga, he washed his hands vigorously and field stripped the Makarov. The pieces, along with the leftover bullets and the shell casings, went into his pocket, and then into the river. After a brief exchange of texts with Seb, he packed up Balanchuk's mobile and sent it off via courier.
When he boarded his plane home that afternoon, he was no longer wearing or carrying anything that could connect him to Balanchuk's execution.
* * *
The calls and texts came in a steady stream after that. He kept up his routine for the sake of things, kept interviewing for part-time work, but now he was always a little glad when they turned him down. He didn't need the money: the pension covered his bills and food, barely, and while he'd had to argue twice more about payment with Seb, after Volgograd John agreed to accept reimbursement for travel expenses. A legitimate job would just mean more people John had to explain himself to.
Not that he always had to travel. Moriarty, unsurprisingly, had plenty of lackeys and underbosses in good old England. John wondered if he had started in the UK; he'd never really learned anything about the man personally. Moriarty and his accents had seemed UK-based, but he also had an obvious flair for mimicry that taken to its logical conclusion meant he could really be from anywhere. Sherlock had gone off on a rant about it once or twice, muttering about linguistics in a way that John hadn't thought was important, at the time. He'd just assumed that any time he was working on the Moriarty problem, Sherlock would be there with all his insight to point John in the right direction.
Nor was it all assassinations. Sometimes he did intel trades, sussing out criminal schemes that weren't directly Moriarty-related, and giving the info to Seb in exchange for new leads or targets that John was interested in. That led to not a few b&e jobs- a bit like old days, rifling through documents in various offices and back rooms while hoping the owner didn't show up ahead of schedule. Or sabotage, which could involve anything from arson to whispering in the right ears to set off inter-syndicate warfare.
Ono one occasion, he flew to Colombia on a fake English passport- he'd never pass for South American, he couldn't speak Spanish worth a damn for one thing- and spent a week working close protection on a high-ranking drug lord.
Fuck off, he'd texted to Seb, thumbs stumbling in his rush so that he had to delete and retype it twice. Then, on the phone because it was impossible to yell properly via text message, "What about 'I want to take down Moriarty's network' screams 'I would love to cozy up to a Colombian crime syndicate?' Half of them are listed terrorist groups!"
"His chief rival is Julio Botero," Seb said. "He started out as a client of Moriarty's, but he became a sort of subcontractor, sourcing all the work that Moriarty was doing there."
"How do you know that?" John snapped.
"For starters, he's been bragging about it for the past six months," Seb said.
John half-laughed. "Because self-serving statements are such reliable intel? Christ, were you in the war or was that just your body double?" There was an undercurrent of familiarity to the conversation that John took a second to recognize: oh yeah, arguing strategy with a berk who thought he knew it all and couldn't think things through. He'd never done that before at all.
"Jove, I'm locked in to sources you don't have. If you could bloody google these guys' connections, international law enforcement would have it well sorted, wouldn't they?" He had to concede that one. It was sort of the point of their arrangement. "Botero is for real. He wants to be Colombia's new criminal mastermind, but his whole fortune and his main rep are built on coke. You can break it open but you're not going to be able to do it without help."
John drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk. He could cooperate with some distasteful people and bring down Botero. Or he could let well enough alone and see Botero trade on the resources Moriarty fed him to become even nastier than his rivals.
John had always thought that easy choices were barely worth the time you took to make them.
"Fine," he said. "I'll show these idiots how we bodyguard when we actually care if the person gets killed, shall I?" Seb's low, pleased chuckle was almost familiar too.
CP was was mostly about paying attention, because it took someone particularly suicidal (i.e. a lunatic) to just charge at a target without looking at his security. And anyone who looked at the security and saw that it was really fucking good was likely to be deterred from testing it. So if your target and the rest of the security detail followed procedure, and you were doing your own job right, it was all hideously boring. It made John nostalgic for the days of what Seb had (not inaccurately) called CP on Sherlock Holmes, because bodyguarding Sherlock was infuriating and challenging and never, ever boring; mostly because the man was constitutionally incapable of not stupidly risking his life at every opportunity.
The drug lord John was sat on took his safety seriously; he wanted money and power, not danger and excitement. The men working with John listened to his orders and followed them perfectly. It was, quite frankly, hateful. At least it was productive. John walked away with intel on Botero's operation and a promise of resources to help bring him down. All John had to do was plan it.
There was a sort of giddy thrill that came along with planning destruction on this kind of scale. It wasn't state-sanctioned this time around, but John somehow doubted that the state would disapprove if they knew. And it was nice not to have to get hold of all the material personally, although he did insist on managing the execution himself; he did in fact have limits, and he wasn't about to start giving Colombian gangsters courses in British special ops. He set up and blew the primary charges under Botero's main distribution point himself; also the ones in his private office (his bodyguards were too good for a frontal assault, and John wanted to be sure). One of Botero's lieutenants died with him, the second and third were gunned down in two separate assassinations (which John planned but did not execute), and the fourth ended up grabbed by the Colombian DEA after an anonymous tip. John's erstwhile allies weren't too happy about that, but the guy was the only one of Botero's who was actually on the wanted list, so he figured he might as well take advantage.
Riding into the sunset on a wave of native resentment? Been taking lessons from the Americans? John's phone read when he deplaned at Heathrow.
:) was all John texted back.
* * *
John went to the gravestone again the day after he got back. He wanted to talk to someone and everyone he knew (few as they were) was right out, because they'd inevitably ask why he was so tan, and so cheerful, although probably none of them would notice the distinctive chemical stains on his fingertips. It wasn't the same as having a conversation, but at least when John visited Sherlock, he felt that he was talking to someone. If he was really talking to no one, well, it was less insane than talking to no one in his flat.
But of course even sitting at the graveside in the open air, no one around, unlikely to be bugged (John didn't think even Mycroft, bar none the most intrusive man he'd ever met, would bug a gravestone), he was still too paranoid to speak aloud about what he'd done.
"You'd have enjoyed that," he finally said. Sherlock preferred the puzzle, but when the authorities couldn't or wouldn't step in, Sherlock was always there, John at his side, to physically chase the suspect down and put him in custody. Sherlock's denouement was the clever reveal, but he knew that John lived for the adrenaline granted by the chase and the capture, that however much he protested he always burned with secret joy when he got to fire his gun. John had frequently wondered in those days how many times Sherlock decided they needed to conduct the capture themselves just to sate John's lust for action. There had always been that sort of prideful glee when he grinned at John after a case, as if he considered near-death experiences a sort of gift.
John had kept thinking of Sherlock at the oddest times, in Columbia, and when he'd blown the charges that ruined a quarter of a million pounds' worth of cocaine he'd thought take that, as if it was the final word in their years-long argument about addiction. "I wish you'd been there," he whispered.
Absurd, because if Sherlock had been there he'd have figured out a way to get Botero's entire crew arrested...and probably the cartel John had worked with, too. He would have been frustrated by John's inability to trace these cogs in Moriarty's machine back to the heart of the mechanism.
"I'm not you," John said quietly. "I can't be you. I can't put it all together the way you can, and I can't build the case and persuade the authorities to take action. All I can do is end it, be the action the government would take if they understood how important it was." It was what he trained for, what he was good at. He was the solution for countless problems in Afghanistan, and he was the solution to the problems left by Moriarty. Just, now he wasn't letting anyone else tell him what to do any more.
* * *
Very shortly thereafter, John went off on a short-notice trip to Albania. He had gone to end the lives of a pair of Moriarty-funded entrepreneurs, but that became secondary once he figured out that their business venture involved smuggling girls into Italy to serve as involuntary prostitutes. When he returned, it was with a feeling of remarkable contentment with life, the sort of calm rightness that since Sherlock's death, he had only really felt for a few minutes just after putting one of Moriarty's people in the ground.
That mood soured as soon as he'd dropped his overnight bag inside the door of his flat. "Mycroft," he said flatly.
Mycroft Holmes sat at ease in John's desk chair, turned away from the desk to face the room. He had one leg crossed casually over the other, and he looked as impeccable as ever, his usual umbrella leaning against the desk next to him. Did he look a touch sallow, his cheeks a little more hollow, his middle a bit plumper beneath the tailored suit, or was John imagining it?
"Hello, John," he said.
John crossed his arms over his chest. "What are you doing here?" He hadn't seen Mycroft since his aborted attempt to speak to John just after he changed flats: roughly eleven months ago now. It was as if his momentary paranoia at Sherlock's grave had conjured the man.
"Simply checking in on an old friend. Is that so unusual?"
John barked a laugh. "Friend. No. We're not friends, Mycroft. You only ever checked up on me because you wanted to check up on-" John's breath caught, looking at Mycroft's face. They looked so, so alike in their expressions sometimes, and that aloof look was textbook Sherlock. "No. You don't have that excuse any more."
"What if I were to tell you I was interested in a somewhat more professional capacity?" Mycroft said. His voice was light, but John could see the danger lurking there. He squared his shoulders. "You've not been back to your flat in six days, but you took only an overnight bag," Mycroft said. "You're a light packer generally speaking, but even so that suggests-"
"Mycroft, don't do this," John said, but Mycroft kept right on talking over him.
"-that you were not using your own clothing for the entirety of the trip. What's more, there are no records of John Watson traveling by train, aeroplane, or hired car in the past week."
John gritted his teeth. "This is really none of your business."
"I'm afraid it might be."
John was reminded of the staring contests Sherlock and Mycroft used to have: entire conversations in a language foreign to John, exchanged right under his nose, quirks of the face and eyes sending each other a thousand messages. John didn't flatter himself that he understood Mycroft the way his brother had, but he could see well enough that Mycroft had some suspicions that John was up to no good- he was the British government after all- but not enough to take any concrete action or put them out in the open. That was oddly reassuring in its way. If he was fooling Mycroft Holmes, he could fool anyone.
"Do you ever imagine him watching you, John?" Mycroft asked. John froze, drawing a long, shuddering breath in through his nose and expelling it in a hiss between his teeth. Time had somewhat dulled John's memory of what it was like to be subjected to this kind of psychological game. He had to forcibly remind himself, he cannot read your mind, just your body language. "Do you ever imagine what he'd think?" Mycroft leaned slightly forward. "Shall I tell you?"
"Get out," John said, his voice tight. He swung open the door that he'd closed behind him and stood to one side, clearing Mycroft's path to it. "Get. Out." Something in his eyes or the way his body was tensed must have made Mycroft realize that he was not fucking around, because in between one word and the next he was on his feet and tucking his umbrella under his arm. Mycroft opened his mouth and John raised a hand and looked away. "No. Let me be perfectly clear, since evidently my punching you in the face and then declining to speak to you for a year has been too subtle. I am done with the Holmes family. I will not be taking any calls, or any visits, and under no circumstances any advice you care to offer me, so just save. Your. Breath."
John gripped the door handle pointedly and glared Mycroft all the way out the door. He paused on the threshold and there was a slight in-drawn breath, as if he was about to say something. But he moved through without speaking, and John heard him recede down the stairs without further comment.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 3a
Pairings: Gen
Spoilers: TRF
Warnings: None
Summary: Members of November Foxtrot- the fifth SAS squadron, the phantom squadron- never explicitly identify themselves as such, because anyone who doesn't know they're in the unit isn't qualified to know.
John's heart was beating faster, and he managed to sit up even straighter despite his already-rigid posture. "Sir. Are you suggesting I'm eligible, sir?"
Note: Something for the Rag and Bone Man is meant as a prequel to this story. You don't have to read it, but it gives you an idea of John's state of mind.
Thanks to Mazarin, for betaing and especially for helping me figure out the end. Also thanks to: Thisprettywren, for the Latin; Lishan, for helping me talk through John’s emotional arc; and Mad-maudlin, for the prompt that led me here.
2 days ASH (After Sherlock Holmes)
The first thing John did was move out of Baker Street.
It turned out that two days was his limit: two full days of sitting inside, listening to the press outside knocking and yelling and hanging on the bell, two full nights of staring at Sherlock's chair replaying his jump over and over, two eternities of being reminded of Sherlock by every thing he saw and every breath he took. He was settled into a new flat before Sherlock's body was even in the ground.
He went back to pack up Sherlock's things though. No one else was going to do it, evidently; it was possible that's what all Mycroft's calls were about, but John wasn't going to talk to him to find out. Anyway, John found he didn't like the idea of some hired goons of Mycroft's handling all Sherlock's possessions. The only thing worse was the thought of Mrs. Hudson climbing all those stairs and having to lug armfuls of books and clothing and mold cultures, alone and surrounded by memories of a man that was more to her than just a tenant. So John spent a long, excruciating day binning experiments in progress and packing boxes, using a newly-purchased marking pen to label them in permanent block capitals: books, lab, notes, clothing. When he was done, he wrote Mycroft's number on a loose sheet of paper, slid it under Mrs. Hudson's door, and left.
He didn't take anything with him. Sometimes his wild mood swings took him to maudlin places, and he would wish he had kept some memento to hold on to. But really, what was there that could encapsulate Sherlock Holmes' existence? He was better off with just his own things in his own bare flat, no obvious touchstones to sear him every time his glance lighted on them.
The media left off after he'd ignored them for a while; the people he knew took longer. Lestrade called a lot. Mrs. Hudson invited him round. Mike Stamford asked him to the pub. Even Molly Hooper, who left tearful voicemails that he deleted without listening to, after the first one. It was easier. He didn't want to be pitied. He didn't want to reminisce. He didn't want to be told it would get better. Deep down, he was afraid that if he heard enough about the fake construct-Sherlock that people had created, he might start to believe it; that he'd wake up one day and his memories of Sherlock would have been replaced by someone else's.
He talked to his therapist. He talked to the people who called him in for job interviews. He talked to Sherlock's gravestone.
John visited Sherlock's grave nearly every day, at first. He had very little to do, and it gave him somewhere to go: a definite destination, rather than just aimless wandering. And then, he missed having someone to talk to, argue with, shout at. His days were mostly silent, and sometimes the silence clawed at him. Talking to the grave wasn't the same, but at least he could do it without thinking he was losing his grip on reality. Somehow in the wake of the "fake genius's suicide" John felt almost as if his reputation was tied to Sherlock's. If John was crazy or deluded, it might justify the story that Sherlock had fooled him.
"Hello, John," he heard one afternoon as he sat leaning against the back side of the stone. He'd stopped talking and dropped into introspection, and so hadn't heard anyone approach. He glanced up: Lestrade, wearing his overcoat over jeans and a button-down. He sat to John's left, leaning back against the trunk of the massive pine and stretching his legs in front of him.
"I should go," John said immediately, averting his gaze. He pulled his legs up, preparatory to standing.
"No, don't," Lestrade said quickly. "I came to see you."
"Oh," John said.
"You've not been to Baker Street, and Mrs. Hudson said she didn't have your new address," Lestrade said. "You aren't answering your phone. I couldn't find you."
"Well you have now," John said. He stared straight ahead of him, refusing to make eye contact. "Not the best detective work, I must say," he said, with a little nasty thrill. He wanted to add What would Sherlock think? but he didn't think he could get the words out without his voice cracking.
"Well I'm not a detective at the moment, am I?" The bitter edge to the words made John look up at Lestrade, who was also gazing into the middle distance.
"What?"
Lestrade finally made eye contact. "I'm suspended. With pay, which is something I suppose. It's been in the papers, I thought-" Lestrade stopped before he finished you'd have read about it.
John found his lips curling into a smile against his will. Maybe Sherlock was right about Lestrade being an idiot. "Sod the papers," he said flatly.
Lestrade paused a moment. "All the DIs who worked with him are suspended, pending review of the cases." Lestrade huffed a bit of a stale laugh, the barest ha. "Your government at work."
"You don't think they're going to find anything untoward then," John said, trying to load each individual word with sarcasm. "No crimes secretly perpetrated by the fake-" His voice cracked and he had to stop, closing his eyes against the pricking of tears. He kept his face a mask, refused to wipe his eyes. This was humiliating enough.
"Don't be stupid," Lestrade said. His voice was so harsh that John opened his eyes to glance at him, seeing a tight rictus of forced control that must match his own expression. "I was bloody there and so were you. We know there was nothing fake about what he did."
Part of John is relieved at that, but it's overtaken by a surge of fury. "Well that's not what you said that night, was it, when you were lining up behind Donovan and her load of-"
"Come off it, John," Lestrade said. "It was a possibility, we had to rule it out. That's how policing works, you know. It's not all chase scenes and takedowns and dramatic bloody reveals. And you can't ignore a line of questioning because of personal-"
"Personal!" John practically hooted. "Oh, that's a laugh. With Donovan gloating-"
"But it wasn't her whose nose you bloodied, was it?" Lestrade said sharply. "None of us were at our best that night. None of us."
John ducked his chin to his chest and turned his face away. "What do you want?"
"I just wanted to see how you were," Lestrade said. "To let you know...well. You have my number, if you need- someone to talk to. Go down the pub with. Whatever."
John forced a laugh. "I have a therapist, thanks."
"Not what I meant," Lestrade said. "I had a mate once, who- you know. And we all said after how no one ever thought he'd do it, but you still feel like you should have seen it-"
"No," John snapped. "I didn't kill him. He didn't kill himself. It was fucking Moriarty, and if he hadn't already topped himself I'd take care of it for him, so don't try to guess how I feel, god damn it, and don't you dare try to foist your own complexes off on me, because I know how I feel and I'm certainly not the one who ought to feel guilty."
"Oh, fuck off!" Lestrade said, standing so abruptly that John glanced up at him out of instinct. His face was blazing. "I'm the one who called to warn you the order'd been given to arrest him, in case you've forgotten. I've been on his side since before you even-" Lestrade stopped suddenly, drawing a great, quivering breath. "Never mind. I thought we were friends, or at least allies. Something. But if you'd rather be alone, you and your bloody stupid martyr complex, then, you know, fine. Just- fine."
Lestrade paused as if waiting for a rejoinder, then stalked away, back towards the entrance to the graveyard.
* * *
Then there was the issue of Seb Moran.
The man had flat-out vanished by the time John was back in London with his cane and his pension. The military wouldn't help of course; that was the whole point, to delete him from their collective memory, and the whole ugly Khost business along with him. John couldn't find him on the web, or via any of the resources designed for vets trying to reconnect, and he wasn't turning up in any phone books. John knew next to nothing about his family, and other than the occasional e-mail they hadn't really connected between deployments, so he just didn't have any leads. By the time he'd met Sherlock, he'd basically given up on figuring out where Seb had gone. Until that meeting with Mycroft- the one that John now realizes was the bastard's first attempt at damage control, having belatedly realized that giving your brother's life story to a psychopath was not the brightest idea.
John had felt the spark of recognition when Mycroft shoved the photo under his nose in his stupid posh club, but he feigned ignorance because fuck Mycroft and his fucking games, there were things about John's past that he was not entitled to know. John had barely had the time to process top international assassin, what with Sherlock being called in on the kidnapping almost immediately after that meeting. And after that...well. It's not like he'd had a lot of time to sit down and muse about the old days.
Until after Sherlock's jump. Then he had nothing but time.
And then, one day, there he was: the lanky figure with the deep-set eyes and jutting chin that he remembered, with the shock of unruly hair from the photograph. He was sitting on the front steps of John's building, having a smoke. Denim jacket and a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, ESS Airbornes, looking like a club kid with a few extra years hanging on him.
"Jove," he said politely, exhaling as John reached the steps.
"Seb." John walked past him and put his key in the lock. "I suppose you'd better come up."
Seb leaned his bony hip on the ratty sofa and watched John put away beans, bread, weetabix in the cupboard. "The flat at Baker Street is better," he said, carefully folding his sunglasses and setting them down.
"Can't afford it any more." Not the main reason he'd left, but still true. He closed the cupboard and stared at it for a second. "International assassin, really?"
"Well I had to do something with myself," Seb said.
"So you chose murder for hire?" John turned so as not to lose the impact of his raised eyebrow.
"The same way you chose CP on Sherlock Holmes," Seb said, and John's fists clenched involuntarily. "We do what we're good at."
"You were one of Moriarty's clients," John said. He wasn't going to dick around with small talk when Sherlock's death and the events surrounding it were standing between them like a wall of knives. "You wanted the code, he offered it-" But Seb was shaking his head. "What then?"
"He was my client. 'If anybody touches Sherlock besides me, I want you to put three slugs in him.' I tried to tell him slugs are shotgun ammo, but you know how civilians are." Seb grinned, and John's skin leapt and crawled with a fierce urge to punch him. "I think he was some kind of dramatist."
"Oh, fuck off," John snapped, stepping closer. As if he had any idea at all what Moriarty was, what his love of dramatic bullshit had cost. As if he had a right to stand in John's flat and joke about committing murder at Moriarty's command.
"Christ, now they've got you thinking like a civilian," Seb complained. "We've both killed better men than either of those bastards I shot." This was undoubtedly true, but it didn't reduce John's anger at all.
"Moriarty ruined Sherlock," John said, his voice low and dangerous. "And you were part of it."
Seb met his eyes coolly, inclining his head slightly to acknowledge the truth of this without giving an inch of ground. A challenge, not an agreement. "So were you," he said after a moment.
John punched him in the face.
The struggle distinctly lacked finesse, despite both their years of training in close combat, both armed and unarmed. John had a knife in his boot and he could clearly see that Seb was carrying both a snub-nosed handgun and a balisong knife, but neither of them reached for weapons. This wasn't that kind of fight. It was hard and fast and brutal, grappling and shoving, knees and elbows, pulling hair and gouging at eyes and hard-edged punches at the groin and kidneys. John bounced Seb's head off the wall and left a splash of blood there, Seb kicked him to the floor and stomped on his fingers. In times of action John's head was always clear, but now it was full of the roaring in his ears and Seb's and his labored breathing and somewhere in the back of his head Sherlock's voice: Keep your eyes fixed on me, can you do this for me?
It ended in stalemate, both of them gasping and spent on the floor, bent over and dripping blood onto the grotty carpet. Seb felt for his cigarettes and pulled one out, rather battered now but still intact.
"Oi," John said. "You can't smoke in here."
"Come stop me," Seb said. He rolled over onto his back and blew smoke at the ceiling, wiping at his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. "Feel better?"
"Yeah," John said, lying very still so he could hear his heart pounding. "Yeah, a bit."
"Me too," Seb said. "Better than fucking therapy by a long shot, hey?"
"How did you know-" John heard the voice in the back of his head saying You've got a psychosomatic limp, of course you've got a therapist, and firmly told it, No, stop, don't spoil this. "Forget it."
"You didn't testify at my court martial," Seb said to the ceiling.
"Nobody told me there was one," John said. "Anyway I was out of my head with fever, wasn't I?"
"I know," Seb said. "If I thought you were in on it I would have killed you myself."
"Well I wasn't," John said.
"I said I bloody know."
"Good."
"Fine."
"Fine."
John was never sure, later, which one of them started laughing first.
* * *
Meet me at the Caffe Nero around the corner, said the text John got the next morning. The chime of the text alert dumped adrenaline into John's bloodstream even though he never really considered that Sherlock might suddenly text him from beyond the grave. It was a reflex. 90% of John's texts had been from Sherlock, before, and therefore meant excitement (Meet me at NSY, new case. S) or danger (Bring your gun. S) or even just rage (Small fire in bathroom. Pick up new towels on way home. S). It was more than a month since he'd got one, and he was still Pavlov's bloody dog.
Bit disingenuous to ask who it was: the number wasn't in John's phone, which meant it was either someone he knew who didn't have his number, or Mycroft. And Mycroft would probably commit ritual suicide before being caught in a Caffe Nero. But admitting that his social life was that pathetic- had been even before, really- was too embarrassing. Why? he finally texted back.
Don't be a wanker Jove. John sighed and went to get dressed.
After the first five minutes picking at his muffin and waiting for Seb, he started reading a discarded paper. Fuck it. Seb could find him, he wasn't going to sit there looking like he'd been stood up by his coffee date.
Finally the man plunked himself down opposite John, dressed down in denim again, still wearing his obnoxious Airbornes.
"Those don't look nearly as cool as you think," John told him snidely.
"Still cooler than you." Seb smirked.
"What do you want, Seb?" John folded the paper over and set it down next to his demolished muffin.
"To ask for your help," Seb said. When he turned his head slightly to the side, John could see that the Airbornes were disguising an enormous black eye that Seb probably got from him. "Do you know how many people were watching your old flat?"
John remembered back to the conversation he had with Mycroft, the folders he'd been shown. "Four. Sulamari, Ludmilla something, you, and another guy whose name I don't remember."
Seb shook his head. "Five. Not including me, because I wasn't there for the same reason they were. Two of them are dead, one has left the country. The other two are still here."
John raised an eyebrow. "Decided to immigrate, did they?"
Seb's grin took up most of his face. "You'd be surprised by the strength of the domestic job market, Jove. At any rate I have a client who thinks they've overstayed their welcome."
"What happened to calling the police? The government knows who they are," John noted.
Seb was already shaking his head. "Their only evidence is suspicion, rumor- these are professionals. The best the government could do would be to deport them home, or perhaps to another country that's got more evidence or fewer scruples."
"So you're going to just, what? Mur-" John followed Seb's glance sideways at a nearby table with two businessmen chatting over coffee. "Get rid of them?" Seb cocked his head, and John laughed a little hysterically. "Christ, Seb." It was hard to read people without seeing their eyes, but John had a lot of experience with Seb. And he also had a lot of experience with pity. "I appreciate what you're trying to do. But I'm not that-" He stopped. Desperate seemed a bit too insulting for an old friend trying to do him a favor.
"It's not like that," Seb snapped. He reached up and drew off his sunglasses, exposing his glare to John, who leaned back. Clearly the last thing on Seb's mind was pity. "They both know me, if I don't catch them simultaneously I might be months tracking down the second one again. So I need a man I can trust not to cut my throat or cock the whole thing up."
"I still don't-" John started, and Seb cut him off with a sideways jerk of his hand.
"Bullshit, you don't. Either of these shits has a higher body count than our entire troop did. I doubt even their mums would cry for them. And you- well." Seb shrugged slightly. "You have a personal interest. And I know you. There's nothing for you on civvy street."
John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't want to admit how right Seb was; every day he could feel the torpor stealing back over him, dragging him back to the blank emptiness of his life post-war and pre-Sherlock. "We all have to become civilians sometime," he said wearily. It was his mantra, what the Army psychologists had told him, what Sherlock had taught him was bullshit. That man had never worn a uniform or taken an oath, but he was never a civilian.
Seb slid his glasses back on. "Not us," he said. "Socii patiantur pereant soli." He took a pair of folders out of his jacket, one navy and one maroon, and dropped them in front of John so that they slid off the remains of his muffin and he had to grab them before they fell to the floor. "What are these?" John flipped the top folder open almost automatically. In it were pictures of the Russian woman Mycroft had identified as an assassin. Dyachenko, that was it. There were photos, maps, a list of confirmed kills. John lingered over those pages. The names were unfamiliar, but helpfully identified in parentheses: Swiss politician, Tibetan activist, Russian politician, Russian military leader.
"Lots of Russians," John noted. "Patriotic girl, is she?" Seb chuckled, and John felt the corner of his mouth quirk up in a half-smile. John flipped back to the photos. He never liked having to fight women. Old-fashioned, he knew. Idiotic, Sherlock had said. But he was raised not to hit girls, and some things were hard to talk yourself out of, even if you knew firsthand women could be just as dangerous as men. Why does it matter? he asked himself. It's not like he was seriously considering this, was it? He shut the blue folder and stuck it under the magenta one, opened that up. Just curiosity, he told himself. He wanted to see who the other one was.
John did a double take.
"Holy Christ," he said. "Him?" The heavyset man in the photos was startlingly familiar, although he wasn't one of the assassins Mycroft had showed him pictures of.
"Seen him, have you?" Seb asked.
John flipped through the photos, and sure enough there was a shot where he was in shirtsleeves and John could see the stark black tribal tattoos twisting up his forearms. The sudden flood of rage and adrenaline choked him even while his heart pounded in his ears. "Yeah." John cleared his throat, licked his lips, and tried again. "Yeah. He was doing some work at Baker Street. I came back to the flat to check on Mrs. Hudson, and he was-" The rage mingled with nausea.
"Christ- your landlady? What did he do?"
"Nothing," John said. "Nothing- it's just. He was right there. I left her with him! I didn't even realize-" Logically he knew at least one of them had been in there, they'd found the camera after all. Hell, Moriarty had been in the flat. But it was somehow different to realize that a dangerous assassin had been standing in the foyer being chatted at fondly by Mrs. Hudson, and John had looked at him and not seen- He'd left Mrs. Hudson in danger because he just couldn't observe. His inner Sherlock cursed him for a simple-minded cretin. John flipped through the rest of the folder, taking in stats, confirmed kills, recent movements, the name and location of the hotel where the Estonian assassin was currently staying.
He slapped the folder shut with finality and handed both back across to Seb. "Him," John said. "I'll have him."
Seb cocked his head again. "You're sure?" he said. "If you really don't want to, mate, it's fine."
Do you want to see some more? John's smile was a fragile, sharp thing, like a shard of broken glass. "Oh yeah," he said. "I'm sure."
* * *
That afternoon a courier delivered a large envelope to John at his flat; when he slit it open he found a pay-as-you-go mobile with a single number pre-programmed into it under the name 5NF. An hour later, 5NF texted him, No privacy in London anymore, bloody cameras. Got a bp?
John had in fact been thinking of a plan, turning over the information he had read about the assassin called Peeter Sepp. Someone had already done most of the dull recon bits, figuring out when the Estonian was in his hotel room and that. Probably Seb. Maybe. date/time?
Fri 11p will both be home. Requis?
John had left behind the sort of life where you had to plan how to kill someone years ago, but it was a surprisingly easy mindset to fall back into. It was familiar, almost nostalgic. So John spent the time most people would occupy agonizing over whether to end a life planning how he would do it. Most close weapons were messy and personal, so gun was the obvious choice. Just as easily, John couldn't use his. Even with Sherlock gone- don't think about that, damn it, stop- there were two people at minimum who knew about the Sig. The taxi driver had been one thing, but if the gun was ever traced back to Sepp's murder...well. John knew just what to tell Seb when he asked what gear was needed.
wp22 gtsup subs
The reply was immediate: Traditionalist.
The gun was delivered the next afternoon, to Baker Street, disguised as a package from the Christmas Jumper Company. Which was probably Seb's idea of humor. John made stilted small talk with Mrs. Hudson over tea until he couldn't think of anything else to say that didn't involve Sherlock in some way. After he escaped to his new flat, he opened the box and immediately cleaned and checked the Walther P22 inside. He laid it in the top drawer of his desk and felt strangely pleased.
Thursday morning he memorized a street map of the area surrounding Sepp's hotel and then went for a long, leisurely walk through the neighborhood. He ate an ice cream and window shopped and tried not to make it obvious that he was locating every CCTV camera and pinning virtual tacks on his mental map.
On Friday around 9, John casually loaded the P22 and put it in his left jacket pocket and the silencer in his right. He took the tube most of the way and walked the last couple blocks to a pizza place owned by a man whose missing son Sherlock had once located. John had only been there once, 18 months ago, but he'd remembered when he walked past the previous day that it was part of Sherlock's network of gratitude. Sure enough, by the time John had finished his slice of pizza, Hassan had come out of the kitchen to say hello. With Sherlock gone, John found himself somehow the target of redirected but effusive thanks.
"The newspapers, always lying," Hassan said. "He was no fake. I know." It should've been reassuring to hear other people testify to their faith in Sherlock. But instead it made John's gut clench and his face freeze into a blank mask.
"Hassan," he finally cut the man off. "Can I use your back door?"
Of course he could, Sherlock's friend could come back through the kitchen and welcome. When the door closed behind him, John was in the narrow alley between two sets of commercial buildings, which just happened to be a CCTV blind spot. The alley led him to the unguarded entrance of a block of flats, whose second story terrace was close enough to the fire escape of Sepp's low-rent hotel that he didn't have to jump so much as step over the gap.
By the time John let himself into the right hotel room, he was buzzing with adrenaline. Some guys loved the planning. John was not one of them. For him, the planning was a necessary ritual, like a gourmand chopping veg or a junkie fiddling with spoons and syringes. The planning just enabled the sweet rush that came when Sepp arrived home and John stepped out from behind the door, fired two precisely placed bullets into the base of Sepp's skull, and kicked the door shut behind him as he caught the man before he slumped fully to the floor. John laid him neatly on the carpet and checked his carotid pulse with two latex-gloved fingers.
The 22 was terribly neat: the low velocity bullets hadn't even made it through the other side of Sepp's skull. He looked almost peaceful lying on his back, except for the blood pooling under his neck. John unscrewed the suppressor from the barrel of the Walther and pocketed both again. He neatly picked up both shell casings from the floor and put them in his trouser pocket alongside his wallet. He didn't remove and pocket the gloves until he was back in the alley outside.
It was 11:06. John was swimming upstream through endorphins and having to school the grin from his expression with utmost care as he walked back to the restaurant, let himself in through the back door. Are you all right? Well you have just killed a man. This time, the memory of Sherlock's voice in his head was comforting, not painful. Well he wasn't a very nice man, he told Sherlock silently, and remembered giggling together and the suffusion of warmth as he realized that Sherlock wasn't going to turn him in, that he approved of what John had done. John allowed himself a little bit of a smile as he walked out the front door and popped back into existence again.
He walked home. He needed the pleasant burn of a long walk in his legs and lungs to work off the energy; if he took the Tube home he'd just be bouncing off the walls all night. Anyway, the walk gave him an opportunity to cross over the Thames, letting the shell casings fall from his re-gloved hand as he leaned for a moment over the safety rail.
The gun and the silencer, he kept.
* * *
The next package from Seb contained another pay as you go mobile, a short note ("take the SIM card out of the old phone and break it") and five thousand pounds in cash.
What the fuck is this, John texted when he got the phone booted up.
Your share. Well part of it, didn't want to send it all in one go.
I can't take it, John replied, his hands shaking slightly. He didn't even need to think. Something about holding the money in his hands, knowing it was payment for killing a man, made him feel sick to his stomach.
Why the fuck not? came in while John was already thumbing out his next message.
I didn't do it for money, it was never for money, I can't take it. He did it as a favor to Seb, as vengeance for Mrs. Hudson and for Sherlock. And maybe, he had to admit, for himself most of all: a reminder that he was still useful, could still help and protect people.
So it's only immoral if you get paid? Seb texted back.
Fuck you, John sent. He wasn't going to get into an argument about morality with Seb, of all people.
There was a lengthy pause then, which John recognized from two years' worth of having fights with Sherlock via text message as the other party typing a long reply. It was never about money for me either, you know, but a man has to eat. I'd be insulted if this wasn't your usual passive-aggressive pissant bullshit.
My aggression is not passive. John forgot to breathe, waiting to see if this attempt at diffusion succeeded.
Give it back then, Christ, what do I care.
John sellotaped the envelope shut again with the cash inside, and when a bored courier rang his bell he gave it to her without a bit of hesitation. I just can't take it. Don't make it a thing, John texted.
Fine, next time you get paid in altruism and rainbows.
Fine, John replied. It was only about ten minutes later, after he'd set the phone down and was making himself a mug of tea, that he realized that during the conversation his crisis of conscience had slipped right by him and he'd segued directly from post-case adrenaline into comfortable acceptance.
In other words, he'd already made up his mind that there would be a next time.
* * *
He didn't hear anything from Seb for more than a week. He fell back into routine: shopped, went for walks, checked the job listings, made his weekly appointment with Ella. He thought about Sepp from time to time. He didn't feel any urge to walk by the hotel or check the papers for news of the body being found- John was only an idiot when compared to Sherlock, that kind of crap was amateur hour. He never felt any particular guilt, which did surprise him a bit. It was true that in NF he had killed people, but usually it was in aid of something else; he didn't just sit down and plan out murders. He had never regretted the cabbie either, but that was a bit more spur of the moment. So John might have felt something. But he didn't.
Sherlock had once thrown a man out of a window for putting his hands on Mrs. Hudson. He hadn't shot him twice in the back of the head, but then Sherlock had never been specifically trained to kill people.
John reminded himself that he hadn't changed; not really, not irrevocably. He was a criminal, sure, but he'd been a criminal for years, toting around an illegal gun and firing it when necessary, never mind all the burglaries and assaults he'd committed in Sherlock's cause. Whether it was speeding or stealing or hurting someone, no one really believed the law applied to their specific situation. Morality was a very flexible beast.
John checked Seb's mobile every day.
One night, a new text was waiting: Lots of business lately. Could use a subcontractor.
John swallowed, his mouth dry even as he tapped back, Not an assassin.
The reply was so quick that Seb must have anticipated John's words. Because it doesn't count if you don't get paid?
Because money doesn't motivate me, John fired back.
There was a longish pause, then. The Sherlock in John's head crowed, Wrong, John! Many assassins are motivated by non-financial factors. He could probably give John names, if he was here. But that still wasn't the point. John had finally given up waiting for a reply when the phone suddenly rang.
"Moriarty was more than just one man," Seb said as soon as John picked up.
"He-"
"No, shut up," Seb said. "Everybody and I mean everybody knew who he was. Not how to get to him, but that he existed. He didn't manage it all himself, there's no way."
"He had a network," John said, bits of Sherlock's rants coalescing in his mind. Sherlock was fixated on Moriarty, the "spider at the center of the web," as he said, but the existence of the web was always implicit. "Why would you care?"
"I don't," Seb said. "But you do." John said nothing. "Criminal networks don't die with their leader, any more than terrorist cells or insurgent movements. I can help you get the guys that want to replace Moriarty," Seb promised.
"Nobody can replace him," John said. "He was unique." Well, almost unique. No, stop, don't think about that.
"So was bin Laden. How's that working out?"
John cracked a smile. There's always someone left to fight over what the boss leaves behind- that was a truth John, like Seb, like a thousand other soldiers, had etched in his gut and his bones by Afghanistan. "Okay. I wouldn't mind kicking Moriarty's people while they're down." Sherlock would have done it, if he'd survived the roof; he would have put on steel-toed boots and laughed the whole time. "But I still don't get why you'd help. Chasing a dead man's lackeys can't be that profitable. I thought you needed to eat."
"You'd be surprised." Amusement lurked in Seb's voice. "And shit, Jove, I miss working with you. I don't-" Seb's voice caught for a fraction of a second. "I don't really have anybody I can trust. It makes a nice change." God, did John know how that felt.
"Okay," John said. "Okay. What do you have?"
* * *
What Seb had was a tip about Moriarty's involvement in arms smuggling. John booked a flight to Volgograd- Seb sent him a passport that gave him the last name Ivanoff, ha ha- but John bought his own black market gun once he arrived, a snub-nosed little Makarov repro that he'd be sorry to have to dump when he left the country. It was about a week and a half of solid recon, following a Russian gangster that Moriarty's former man, Balanchuk, was apparently trying to woo into a contract.
"The buzz is that Balanchuk has taken over Moriarty's operations in the Baltic states and the Ukraine," Seb had told him. Now he was poised to expand into Russia. If John took him down, none of his underlings were sufficiently powerful or respected to take over the whole network. It would fall to smaller, much less dangerous, pieces.
John didn't have the technology he'd had access to in November Foxtrot, nor did he have Jack's language skills. So most of the recon involved following Balanchuk and the Russian around, watching their movements at long range through a spotting scope he'd bought back in England along with a couple field guides on Russian birds. He was sitting on the roof of a combine factory eating a sandwich and waiting for Balanchuk to return to his armored car when his mobile vibrated.
Surprised, John hauled the phone out and glanced at the display before answering. Mostly out of habit, of course it read 5NF- who else was going to call this phone? "Christ," Seb said when he picked up. "I didn't expect this to go through. Aren't you done yet?"
"Soon," John said. "Tomorrow morning, I think." Balanchuk's security was sloppy when he was getting in or out of the car back at the hotel. That was probably the best time.
"What happened to thunder and lightning?" Seb asked. "You sad tosser."
"Oh, piss off," John said, smiling to himself. "I'm not the one who needs to hire someone to do his wet work."
"It's not hiring if nobody gets paid," Seb said. "You're more a hobbyist. Blackwater hobbyist."
"I'm freelance," John said. "Go fuck yourself."
Their shared laughter was easy, and it warmed John. Surveillance was boring, and stakeouts were lonely. It always helped to have someone to share them with: even if you were on hard discipline and you couldn't talk, even if you were crammed together into a narrow closet listening to a murderer rustling around in the next room. It was good to hear another man's breathing in counterpoint to yours, to know you weren't on your own. Sentimental, Sherlock would have said, but it wasn't. Just human nature. Even Sherlock was subject to it, or why had he dragged John along on so many of his cases?
John could smile at that, now.
"Hey, Jove," Seb said, distracting him from his thoughts.
"Yeah?"
"Can you get me his phone?"
John gave it a moment's thought. "I could go in close, sure. I know what pocket he keeps it in." Right trouser pocket, always. It might be easier to get the jump on him by pushing in close, anyway. Vantage points were a bitch when your target was constantly moving. "Why?"
"I think it's got his client list," Seb said. "Useful intel, that."
John felt a slight twinge- he was trying to cut Moriarty's network down, surely the information that was part of it ought to be destroyed along with the men who ran it?
As the pause lengthened, Seb began to wheedle. "Oh, come on," he said. "The client list is downstream, not up. Smaller fish. You don't need or want it, and I can use it."
John huffed a breath. "All right," he said. It was Seb, anyway. He was a gun for hire, not an arms smuggler. Hell, maybe that was how he made the connections that let him get hold of illegal weapons. An arms smuggler was a likely source of the Makarov John was carrying now, it was a bit hypocritical of him to profit from these people on the one hand and condemn them from the other. He was losing focus, that was the problem. This was supposed to be about shutting down Moriarty for good, not saving the world one criminal at a time. There were way too many criminals for that to work; he'd learned that lesson in Afghanistan.
"I've gotta go," he told Seb. "Target's moving." Suited figures were emerging from the warehouse meeting place, headed back to the car.
"Don't fuck up," Seb said, and rang off.
John laughed again as he stuffed his gear into the pockets of his overcoat.
John was up at five the next morning, high on black coffee and adrenaline as he walked briskly towards Balanchuk's hotel. Like a lot of powerful people, he was a man of habit, and it hadn't taken him long as a guest in Volgograd to establish one here. John timed his arrival carefully, so that he was just turning the corner at the hotel when the Balanchuk emerged at 7:10 precisely to be chauffeured to breakfast. One of his bodyguards stepped ahead to open the car door, turning his back to John. The other lagged behind in the lobby, exchanging words with the doorman as was his habit. It was maybe fifteen seconds of inattentiveness, but John had been timing it every day for a week and he knew exactly how to exploit it.
The tricky bit was to fire and keep firing as he walked. First two shots into the bodyguard at the car door, shoulder of his gun arm and then knee. Re-aim at Balanchuk, inhale, exhale, two in the chest, second bodyguard emerging from the hotel to John's left, two in the left kneecap, visual check to be sure the driver is still in the car, excellent. John had come alongside Balanchuk by then, who was bleeding and wetly gurgling through a pneumothorax. Stoop and fish the phone out of his trouser pocket with the right hand, two more in the head with the left. Visual check: driver keeping his head down, bodyguards still down. John pocketed the phone and the gun and kept right on with his brisk walk.
He broke into a run when he turned the corner, dashed up two streets, and hailed a cab. In the men's room of a McDonald’s down by the Volga, he washed his hands vigorously and field stripped the Makarov. The pieces, along with the leftover bullets and the shell casings, went into his pocket, and then into the river. After a brief exchange of texts with Seb, he packed up Balanchuk's mobile and sent it off via courier.
When he boarded his plane home that afternoon, he was no longer wearing or carrying anything that could connect him to Balanchuk's execution.
* * *
The calls and texts came in a steady stream after that. He kept up his routine for the sake of things, kept interviewing for part-time work, but now he was always a little glad when they turned him down. He didn't need the money: the pension covered his bills and food, barely, and while he'd had to argue twice more about payment with Seb, after Volgograd John agreed to accept reimbursement for travel expenses. A legitimate job would just mean more people John had to explain himself to.
Not that he always had to travel. Moriarty, unsurprisingly, had plenty of lackeys and underbosses in good old England. John wondered if he had started in the UK; he'd never really learned anything about the man personally. Moriarty and his accents had seemed UK-based, but he also had an obvious flair for mimicry that taken to its logical conclusion meant he could really be from anywhere. Sherlock had gone off on a rant about it once or twice, muttering about linguistics in a way that John hadn't thought was important, at the time. He'd just assumed that any time he was working on the Moriarty problem, Sherlock would be there with all his insight to point John in the right direction.
Nor was it all assassinations. Sometimes he did intel trades, sussing out criminal schemes that weren't directly Moriarty-related, and giving the info to Seb in exchange for new leads or targets that John was interested in. That led to not a few b&e jobs- a bit like old days, rifling through documents in various offices and back rooms while hoping the owner didn't show up ahead of schedule. Or sabotage, which could involve anything from arson to whispering in the right ears to set off inter-syndicate warfare.
Ono one occasion, he flew to Colombia on a fake English passport- he'd never pass for South American, he couldn't speak Spanish worth a damn for one thing- and spent a week working close protection on a high-ranking drug lord.
Fuck off, he'd texted to Seb, thumbs stumbling in his rush so that he had to delete and retype it twice. Then, on the phone because it was impossible to yell properly via text message, "What about 'I want to take down Moriarty's network' screams 'I would love to cozy up to a Colombian crime syndicate?' Half of them are listed terrorist groups!"
"His chief rival is Julio Botero," Seb said. "He started out as a client of Moriarty's, but he became a sort of subcontractor, sourcing all the work that Moriarty was doing there."
"How do you know that?" John snapped.
"For starters, he's been bragging about it for the past six months," Seb said.
John half-laughed. "Because self-serving statements are such reliable intel? Christ, were you in the war or was that just your body double?" There was an undercurrent of familiarity to the conversation that John took a second to recognize: oh yeah, arguing strategy with a berk who thought he knew it all and couldn't think things through. He'd never done that before at all.
"Jove, I'm locked in to sources you don't have. If you could bloody google these guys' connections, international law enforcement would have it well sorted, wouldn't they?" He had to concede that one. It was sort of the point of their arrangement. "Botero is for real. He wants to be Colombia's new criminal mastermind, but his whole fortune and his main rep are built on coke. You can break it open but you're not going to be able to do it without help."
John drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk. He could cooperate with some distasteful people and bring down Botero. Or he could let well enough alone and see Botero trade on the resources Moriarty fed him to become even nastier than his rivals.
John had always thought that easy choices were barely worth the time you took to make them.
"Fine," he said. "I'll show these idiots how we bodyguard when we actually care if the person gets killed, shall I?" Seb's low, pleased chuckle was almost familiar too.
CP was was mostly about paying attention, because it took someone particularly suicidal (i.e. a lunatic) to just charge at a target without looking at his security. And anyone who looked at the security and saw that it was really fucking good was likely to be deterred from testing it. So if your target and the rest of the security detail followed procedure, and you were doing your own job right, it was all hideously boring. It made John nostalgic for the days of what Seb had (not inaccurately) called CP on Sherlock Holmes, because bodyguarding Sherlock was infuriating and challenging and never, ever boring; mostly because the man was constitutionally incapable of not stupidly risking his life at every opportunity.
The drug lord John was sat on took his safety seriously; he wanted money and power, not danger and excitement. The men working with John listened to his orders and followed them perfectly. It was, quite frankly, hateful. At least it was productive. John walked away with intel on Botero's operation and a promise of resources to help bring him down. All John had to do was plan it.
There was a sort of giddy thrill that came along with planning destruction on this kind of scale. It wasn't state-sanctioned this time around, but John somehow doubted that the state would disapprove if they knew. And it was nice not to have to get hold of all the material personally, although he did insist on managing the execution himself; he did in fact have limits, and he wasn't about to start giving Colombian gangsters courses in British special ops. He set up and blew the primary charges under Botero's main distribution point himself; also the ones in his private office (his bodyguards were too good for a frontal assault, and John wanted to be sure). One of Botero's lieutenants died with him, the second and third were gunned down in two separate assassinations (which John planned but did not execute), and the fourth ended up grabbed by the Colombian DEA after an anonymous tip. John's erstwhile allies weren't too happy about that, but the guy was the only one of Botero's who was actually on the wanted list, so he figured he might as well take advantage.
Riding into the sunset on a wave of native resentment? Been taking lessons from the Americans? John's phone read when he deplaned at Heathrow.
:) was all John texted back.
* * *
John went to the gravestone again the day after he got back. He wanted to talk to someone and everyone he knew (few as they were) was right out, because they'd inevitably ask why he was so tan, and so cheerful, although probably none of them would notice the distinctive chemical stains on his fingertips. It wasn't the same as having a conversation, but at least when John visited Sherlock, he felt that he was talking to someone. If he was really talking to no one, well, it was less insane than talking to no one in his flat.
But of course even sitting at the graveside in the open air, no one around, unlikely to be bugged (John didn't think even Mycroft, bar none the most intrusive man he'd ever met, would bug a gravestone), he was still too paranoid to speak aloud about what he'd done.
"You'd have enjoyed that," he finally said. Sherlock preferred the puzzle, but when the authorities couldn't or wouldn't step in, Sherlock was always there, John at his side, to physically chase the suspect down and put him in custody. Sherlock's denouement was the clever reveal, but he knew that John lived for the adrenaline granted by the chase and the capture, that however much he protested he always burned with secret joy when he got to fire his gun. John had frequently wondered in those days how many times Sherlock decided they needed to conduct the capture themselves just to sate John's lust for action. There had always been that sort of prideful glee when he grinned at John after a case, as if he considered near-death experiences a sort of gift.
John had kept thinking of Sherlock at the oddest times, in Columbia, and when he'd blown the charges that ruined a quarter of a million pounds' worth of cocaine he'd thought take that, as if it was the final word in their years-long argument about addiction. "I wish you'd been there," he whispered.
Absurd, because if Sherlock had been there he'd have figured out a way to get Botero's entire crew arrested...and probably the cartel John had worked with, too. He would have been frustrated by John's inability to trace these cogs in Moriarty's machine back to the heart of the mechanism.
"I'm not you," John said quietly. "I can't be you. I can't put it all together the way you can, and I can't build the case and persuade the authorities to take action. All I can do is end it, be the action the government would take if they understood how important it was." It was what he trained for, what he was good at. He was the solution for countless problems in Afghanistan, and he was the solution to the problems left by Moriarty. Just, now he wasn't letting anyone else tell him what to do any more.
* * *
Very shortly thereafter, John went off on a short-notice trip to Albania. He had gone to end the lives of a pair of Moriarty-funded entrepreneurs, but that became secondary once he figured out that their business venture involved smuggling girls into Italy to serve as involuntary prostitutes. When he returned, it was with a feeling of remarkable contentment with life, the sort of calm rightness that since Sherlock's death, he had only really felt for a few minutes just after putting one of Moriarty's people in the ground.
That mood soured as soon as he'd dropped his overnight bag inside the door of his flat. "Mycroft," he said flatly.
Mycroft Holmes sat at ease in John's desk chair, turned away from the desk to face the room. He had one leg crossed casually over the other, and he looked as impeccable as ever, his usual umbrella leaning against the desk next to him. Did he look a touch sallow, his cheeks a little more hollow, his middle a bit plumper beneath the tailored suit, or was John imagining it?
"Hello, John," he said.
John crossed his arms over his chest. "What are you doing here?" He hadn't seen Mycroft since his aborted attempt to speak to John just after he changed flats: roughly eleven months ago now. It was as if his momentary paranoia at Sherlock's grave had conjured the man.
"Simply checking in on an old friend. Is that so unusual?"
John barked a laugh. "Friend. No. We're not friends, Mycroft. You only ever checked up on me because you wanted to check up on-" John's breath caught, looking at Mycroft's face. They looked so, so alike in their expressions sometimes, and that aloof look was textbook Sherlock. "No. You don't have that excuse any more."
"What if I were to tell you I was interested in a somewhat more professional capacity?" Mycroft said. His voice was light, but John could see the danger lurking there. He squared his shoulders. "You've not been back to your flat in six days, but you took only an overnight bag," Mycroft said. "You're a light packer generally speaking, but even so that suggests-"
"Mycroft, don't do this," John said, but Mycroft kept right on talking over him.
"-that you were not using your own clothing for the entirety of the trip. What's more, there are no records of John Watson traveling by train, aeroplane, or hired car in the past week."
John gritted his teeth. "This is really none of your business."
"I'm afraid it might be."
John was reminded of the staring contests Sherlock and Mycroft used to have: entire conversations in a language foreign to John, exchanged right under his nose, quirks of the face and eyes sending each other a thousand messages. John didn't flatter himself that he understood Mycroft the way his brother had, but he could see well enough that Mycroft had some suspicions that John was up to no good- he was the British government after all- but not enough to take any concrete action or put them out in the open. That was oddly reassuring in its way. If he was fooling Mycroft Holmes, he could fool anyone.
"Do you ever imagine him watching you, John?" Mycroft asked. John froze, drawing a long, shuddering breath in through his nose and expelling it in a hiss between his teeth. Time had somewhat dulled John's memory of what it was like to be subjected to this kind of psychological game. He had to forcibly remind himself, he cannot read your mind, just your body language. "Do you ever imagine what he'd think?" Mycroft leaned slightly forward. "Shall I tell you?"
"Get out," John said, his voice tight. He swung open the door that he'd closed behind him and stood to one side, clearing Mycroft's path to it. "Get. Out." Something in his eyes or the way his body was tensed must have made Mycroft realize that he was not fucking around, because in between one word and the next he was on his feet and tucking his umbrella under his arm. Mycroft opened his mouth and John raised a hand and looked away. "No. Let me be perfectly clear, since evidently my punching you in the face and then declining to speak to you for a year has been too subtle. I am done with the Holmes family. I will not be taking any calls, or any visits, and under no circumstances any advice you care to offer me, so just save. Your. Breath."
John gripped the door handle pointedly and glared Mycroft all the way out the door. He paused on the threshold and there was a slight in-drawn breath, as if he was about to say something. But he moved through without speaking, and John heard him recede down the stairs without further comment.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 3a