Piter Raw Chapter 4
Title: Piter Raw (part three of Four Corners of the Western World) Chapter 4 of 8
Author: pennypaperbrain
Fandom Sherlock BBC
Betas: Chloe, eldritchhorrors, russpick by madoshi
Rating: Teen for Chapter 4, NC-17 for the fic
Warnings for this chapter: depictions of bipolar disorder, canon-typical violence
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Wordcount: Chapter 4: 5,004. Fic so far: 16,679
Spoilers: All six episodes
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters. I couldn’t be trusted with them. There’d be kinky slash everywhere.
Summary: John and Sherlock have a plan to take out Kolyvanov. It does not go particularly well.
Also on AO3
Each fic in this series is self-contained, and they can be read separately with the help of the intro summaries, but for the best experience they should be read in order.
Four Corners of the Western World
1: Vegas High (complete): LJ, AO3
2: Malta Bright (complete): LJ, AO3
3: Piter Raw (in progress): LJ, AO3
4: Always London
John
A few hours later, they are on Unpronounceable Street, which has become John’s default name for most places in St Petersburg.
It’s arse-freezing bloody cold (surprise), even though John is wearing so many clothes that he feels practically spherical. This is not how he usually approaches a mission. Still, at least you don’t get sand in your pants around here. And the layers hide firearms well, enabling John to bring his rifle as well as the Gyurza he intends to use. He’d gone with his second best choice when it came to the rifle and he was grateful for that now. The Val had a collapsible skeleton stock that folded away so neatly that even a short-arse like himself could conceal it under a coat.
Sherlock is beside him, miraculously normal as promised. And by normal, John means that he’s doing an amazingly good job of pretending to be someone unrecognisably different. Both of them are heavily caked with the contents of Zoya’s make-up box, which John worried would merely make them appear ridiculous, until Sherlock got to work. John watched the whole thing, but he’s still not sure how Sherlock managed to change the planes of his own face, and perform some alchemy that made John’s nose look wider and his cheeks fuller. With additional padding inside his cheeks John surely ought to look like a joke chipmunk, but that’s not what the mirror showed. Sherlock is even managing to seem considerably shorter than his actual height, while still being swaggering and imperious. His public schoolboy air is gone, though. He’s implying with his every movement that he’s as common as a Peckham drug dealer, and as streetwise. That might, of course, be totally the wrong approach here. They have no way to know.
They stroll up - down, rather, given that it’s a basement - to Vyborgskiy. John’s initial fear, that there will be some kind of bouncer who casually bars them, or worse still searches them, proves groundless. They just push through the door into a crowded room which looks fairly Western apart from some embroidered screens along a wall. There’s table footie, flat screen tellies showing dancers in spandex, and what appear to be fairy lights hanging from the low ceiling.
What tells him he’s definitely not in England is the five guys huddling round a bar table on which are lying the half disassembled parts of an unfamiliar combat shotgun. Nobody else seems bothered. Mobsters, or ‘bandits’ as the Russians seem to say; former Spetsnaz most likely.
‘Ya ishu Kolyvanova,’ says Sherlock to a passing waitress. They spent some time in at the flat getting a few words of Russian into their heads - John simply ignoring the amount of effort this cost Sherlock, because their other options have run out - and this is the result. Now John just has to hope it’s colloquially correct to use the verb ‘to seek’ like that, and they haven’t delivered a deadly insult or something.
It seems to work. The waitress stiffens then fires off a stream of obviously nervous Russian.
Sherlock responds with a mask of imperious uninterest. John can detect his incomprehension, but to anyone else it would look like the waitress’ words were simply beneath his notice.
The gamble pays off. The woman looks offended, then irresolute, then simply points at a door in the far wall. Sherlock sets off towards it, glancing back at John. John nods. Time for action.
The plan, in as far as they have one, is to pose as London mobsters who want a local partner for routing Afghan and Kyrgyz opiates through Petersburg. Sherlock’s the businessman, John’s his hired muscle... and if they can get Kolyvanov in a private room with only a couple of hangers-on, Sherlock will drop the tear gas and John will shoot. If Kolyvanov figures out who they are before that, then they will have to do the gas-and-bullet routine in the middle of the bar.
Right. John stops speculating like a fool and narrows his focus to the matter in hand.
When they open the door, the white-walled room beyond is slightly quieter, but even smokier than the main bar. Black leather sofas take up most of the space - and yes, sitting on one of them is Kolyvanov. He’s smaller than the men around him, and there’s a whetted sharpness to both his face and his movements as he gestures with a mobile phone. He has palpable charisma, but that’s of no concern to John. He slides a hand into his jacket to grip his handgun. Beside him, Sherlock is looking around disdainfully, in-character, about to speak.
John’s arm won’t move.
It’s actually stuck inside his lapel because of a pressure to the right. One of the chatting drinkers has simply moved closer, and so has another, and they are holding John on both sides. He tries to escape, feeling like a dog being hoisted off the street by a catcher, but he can barely squirm as he’s marched towards Kolyvanov, who looks up at him as a way clears. To John’s left, the same thing is happening to Sherlock, and John’s hands have been pulled clear of his clothes by their wrists as if he was on puppet strings, and he thinks I love you because coming next is very probably a bullet to the head. They have the attention of the entire room now. Women in too much make-up are laughing. They can all fuck off. This is bloody stupid grandstanding and John is not impressed.
Nor however is he dead, yet.
Sherlock, caught between another pair of thugs in suits, is face to face with Kolyvanov, who is looking mildly pleased as one of his minions reports to him in Russian, jutting a thumb at John. Kolyvanov’s blue eyes are piercing under his mousy hair. He remains sitting down as he assesses them: he’s a small man so he doesn’t bother trying to strut or loom.
‘Ah, yes, I know who you are,’ he says, squinting carefully at their faces. ‘Very good make-up, Mr Holmes, but your friend can’t act. If you come in here and look like you want to shoot, my men spot you very quick. So, are you interested in the job?’
The banality of the words wrongfoots Sherlock, but probably only enough for John to notice.
‘Are you trying to impress me?’ Sherlock says. ‘You think I need your little puzzles?’
‘I think you are impressed in the important way,’ says Kolyvanov, gesturing around him. Several weapons are visibly pointed at John and Sherlock. ‘And I think business in this city has enough puzzles even for you, yes. I could kill you very easily, and I would have killed Dr Watson to pay a personal debt to James Moriarty, but I don’t like waste. You come with me now.’
OK. Abduction. Better than being shot. John takes a moment to spit out the horrible and now unecessary cheek padding, tenses minutely, joint by joint, trying to sense any slackness in the grip on his arms.
‘And if we escape, some of your little friends come after us and kill us, I suppose?’ says Sherlock.
‘No. They kill Dr Watson, disable you and bring you back,’ replies Kolyvanov. ‘And I tell British journalists who killed Jordan Graf, Philip Zagami and Abram Tabone. After that you will be glad that I protect you.’
Then he does stand up. He has a loose way of holding his mouth; it’s in contrast with the haunted fixity of his eyes, and at home John would probably draw conclusions about Afghanistan and write up a psychiatric referral while thinking there but for the grace of God... But the detail of what fires Kolyvanov is irrelevant. What’s important is that he trades on the kind of flexible half-madness that gives one hyena the edge over a pack. Maybe John can engage with that somehow... He might drop his guard...
Kolyvanov has taken a cigar from one of his cronies, and is bringing the lighted end slowly closer and closer to Sherlock’s face. Sherlock’s eyes fix on it in obvious fear. He hasn’t been trained the way John has. When the embers near his cheek, he jerks back - and Kolyvanov abruptly turns on his heel and approaches John. And oh fuck John is not certain he can deal with this either, with that dot of fire approaching him level with his eye... Then on the edge of vision he sees Sherlock jerk violently in the grip of the restraining thug. There is a hiss. Tear gas.
John holds his breath. Kolyvanov has been dragged off somewhere by his minders. There’s shouting and swearing. People are choking and bending over. A couple of bruiser types are obviously trying to grope their way towards John and Sherlock, who is wheezing and wobbling on his feet. John grabs him by the arm and drags him blindly towards the exit, eyes closed. Please God let nobody start firing in panic...
Sherlock is resisting his pull. Sherlock is - a gun is fired. It’s Sherlock shooting. What the -?
‘You fucking idiot!’ John snarls. ‘You’ll make it worse - shit.’ He grabs Sherlock. ‘We just go.’
Sherlock is burbling something - ‘John, I don’t care, I just want to finish this, them or us. Just shoot me now and go home. Anything -’
John is not interested. The lack of extra screaming suggests that Sherlock has not hit anyone. Peering through slitted eyes, John ploughs into the stumbling, coughing crowd that blunders out into the main bar, spilling drinks and knocking over small tables. John and Sherlock make it to the exit as part of a flailing stream of bodies. Just maybe they’re getting away.
There is another shot, from behind them. Then three more, just as they make it out into the air. John sees the material jerk and rupture away from Sherlock’s upper left arm. He sees blood spray onto the dirty wall beyond Vyborgskiy’s outside staircase. But they are not dead, so John keeps going, up the stairs, then down a side street. He’s dragging Sherlock, who comes without resisting now. All around them are coughing and weeping and incomprehensible accusations.
After two minutes’ running, they emerge onto a main road and follow it towards a Metro station. John stops and briefly checks Sherlock’s arm; thank God it looks like a messy but shallow flesh wound. He takes off his furry Russian hat and gives it to Sherlock to hold over the area and minimise public attention. Sherlock is shaking all over. He doesn’t speak.
John’s own thoughts are a mess. They were going to get through this. Sherlock was going to stay calm... why the hell did John believe that? This is not London. It’s not Afghanistan either, but still John is the one with the relevant skills here. He should have prevented this, should have looked after Sherlock better, should have known the plan of luring Kolyvanov aside was never going to work. John would have done better to simply trail the guy alone and shoot him. But he had expected Sherlock to be brilliant, and pull this off the way he would have done in London. Sherlock survived his own suicide, so of course he could handle this.
‘Never be the first to fire unless it’s a killshot,’ John says as they enter the brightly-lit station. Lecturing Sherlock has no point to it now but he can’t stop himself. He has to keep talking, keep them moving, keep glancing around for trouble because Sherlock most certainly isn’t doing it. At least the bloodstain has stopped creeping down his arm. ‘These people, even the scumbag element, are rich enough to have plenty to lose. It’s called civilisation. So they don’t want serious violence in public places. Why did you throw that bloody gas when you did? No way was Kolyvanov going to seriously hurt us, when he wants to bloody recruit you. We could have learnt more.’
John goes ranting on. He knows that’s what it is. He’s mostly doing it to stop other words echoing in his head: Shoot me now. One of his Army jobs was to identify men who were starting to think like that, and send them home before any further harm was done. But he can’t send Sherlock home. He can’t love him back to sanity. He can’t do his job. He can build himself up to kill, and force down the doubts that killing brings.
But only if Sherlock has his back.
They are on the escalator. John’s staring over the top of Sherlock’s head, down the vast descent, and it’s abundantly clear that they are not leaving here tomorrow, even if they survive.
‘How can I kill for you if you don’t want to live?’ John demands into Sherlock’s ear. ‘I shot Hope and Zagami and Tabone, and I’m OK with that, I can deal, but I need you to work with me.’
This is not good, John knows it. Sherlock’s face is hidden, staring down the escalator, and it would be better for John to vent this to anyone else, but there’s only the two of them. Right now, knowing Sherlock can’t be expected to handle this is not good enough. John needs him to handle it. John is human too. John is scared.
Sherlock clearly can’t deal. He’s shaking more now. As they stand close together John puts a hand on his back. It makes no difference.
‘I miscalculated. I should not have fired,’ says Sherlock woodenly. ‘I apologise. I...’
Sherlock trails off. John moves his hand up and down, stroking. Sherlock takes a step down the escalator then stops.
John freezes. Sherlock flinched from his touch.
Sherlock flinched from his touch.
They make for the flat in silence after that. Zoya is there, nervously looking out for them, and after a ten-second summary of events from John she sets to work gathering gauze, antiseptic and also plenty of vodka. They seat Sherlock in a kitchen chair where he stares mutely ahead.
John, crouching beside him, cuts the fabric away from his arm, tweezes fluff out of his raw flesh and then stitches up the mercifully straightforward gash. Shock, alcohol and physical trauma are plainly making Sherlock dopey, and when his eyelids finally flutter shut he actually slumps sideways into John’s arms. John just holds him close for a moment, finding that doing anything else is suddenly untenable because it would involve letting go. He is dimly conscious of Zoya watching them.
‘You very much love him,’ she says, sounding sympathetic but also surprised.
John nods. Her surprise is annoying, but he’s too tired to mount a defence of his sexuality. She seems to get that, and carries on filling the silence.
‘I had a husband,’ she says. ‘Divorced now. He took my money, then left me with his debts. And all the time he’s complaining. Men don’t like that I’m stronger than they are. My job.’ She taps her bicep.
‘Yeah,’ says John, without much vigour. Accepting a partner who is tougher than him is not currently the problem he faces. Anyway, if Sherlock breaks, John will still love him, he’s sure of that. But if Sherlock gets them both killed, then it’s game over.
‘OK, I need to get him to bed,’ he tells Zoya.
He’s surprised when she hefts Sherlock’s torso off the chair without any signs of excessive effort, and leaves John to collect the dangling feet. Sherlock weighs less now than he did when John and Lestrade put him to bed after the Adler bitch drugged him. That seems like a lifetime ago.
Zoya and John manoeuvre Sherlock down the corridor and arrange him on one of the ottomans. Zoya goes to the door, and stands there.
‘Thanks,’ John says. ‘For, uh, quite a lot of things I guess.’ His head is fuzzy. They’d be screwed without this bolthole, and her, and he wants to communicate that, but he’s knackered. ‘We are going to sort out Kolyvanov, I promise.’
Zoya smiles oddly. ‘There is a Russian proverb about the calf that eats the wolf,’ she says.
‘That means anything’s possible, yeah? Very true,’ says John, not particularly wanting to be compared to a cow, and very much wanting to go to sleep.
‘No, it means something that could never happen,’ says Zoya. ‘So... although it is dangerous for me, tomorrow I ask people I know. People my Uncle Gleb knows. I suppose they are bandits. I always avoided troubles, but nobody likes Kolyvanov. And I don’t like your friend,’ Zoya nods around John towards the unconscious Sherlock. ‘But you came to me and I look after you.’
‘Thank you,’ says John seriously. He’s tuned in now. ‘Do you mean...’
But Zoya has closed the door on him. Her slippered tread can just be heard retreating down the hall.
OK. John really needs to know what she was talking about, but for now it will have to wait. he takes a few minutes to undress Sherlock, recheck his wound and cover him with blankets, then lies down on the other ottoman and falls asleep with military ease.
For the first time in months, he dreams of Afghanistan. He’s taken cover behind a pile of rubble, and he’s shooting and shooting at enemies he can barely see. Between him and them, Sherlock is strolling around, looking at spindly bushes through his magnifying glass, and John is frantic not to hit him, and then Kolyvanov surges over a rock, in Russian army uniform, and shoots, and Sherlock’s skull explodes like Zagami’s, and he slumps to the ground soaked with blood, and John is rooted to the spot with horror, and the soldier beside
him turns out to be Zoya, and she grabs his arm and shakes him and shouts...
No. He’s awake now, and Sherlock is the one shaking him. It’s still night. There is shouting. That really is coming from Zoya.
‘Sookin syn! Begite, bandyty u podyezda - Kolyvanov’s men. My friend by gate, she know them, she ring me. They must be on stairs. Get out! Mama’s window! Go, go, now, out!’
John
They have escaped again, John allows himself to realise as he and Sherlock stumble down a snowy concrete avenue in the dark, some three miles from Zoya’s. They half-slid, half-scrambled down the drainpipe outside Mama’s window, John’s bodyweight ripping it from the wall, but fortunately not until he was four foot above a snowdrift. They have the things they managed to shove into backpacks - their electronics, their guns, and most of their documents, plus some clothes - and they are not dead.
‘I won’t believe that Zoya betrayed us,’ John says now. ‘God, I hope she’s all right.’
The fact that she probably isn’t hangs in the freezing air, and if John was with anyone except Sherlock, that person would probably say something consoling. But Sherlock isn’t talking right now. He’s looking around him at the closed shops with the muted, contemplative expression John first saw when he was looking at Jeff Hope’s pill.
Last night, John said I need you to work with me, and Sherlock moved away. John needs a way to bear that, and all the rest, but there’s nothing in sight.
Fuck it, there’s at least one source of pain that he might be able to resolve, even though it’s reckless. He stops in the lee of crumbling wall, digs out one of their pay-as-you-go phones and calls Zoya, dreading equally that nobody will pick up or that one of Kolyvanov’s men will. Sherlock stops a little in front of him, showing no reaction.
‘Allo?’ Zoya’s voice is cautious but collected.
So she’s not dead. That’s a start, though who knows what else has happened. ‘Zoya. I...’
‘Chto - you safe?! Do not come here!’
‘We weren’t going to. What happened? Are they gone?’ John scans the street scene around them. People are starting to emerge from their apartments and make for work. There’s too many of them for him to be sure if any are deliberately heading for him
‘Yes,’ says Zoya. ‘Four localtsy, men who were soldiers. I had to open door or they would break it. They ran around and smashed a table and shouted at me. I said you paid for this room and I know nothing. I cried and I pretended stupid, though I have a knife in the pocket in case they attack me. They believed me, I think.’ Zoya’s voice is light enough, but trembling.
‘I’m so sorry,’ says John, heavy-hearted. He starts walking swiftly again, just hoping Sherlock will follow; he does. ‘Have you any idea how the, er, locals found us?’
‘Probably someone guessed you are not tourists. Informing on neighbours is Russian tradition.’ Zoya laughs humourlessly. ‘I do not want to live like this! Men like these killed my father. They will not kill me!’
‘No, they won’t,’ John promises, as if it’s under his control. ‘OK, I’m going to ring off. It isn’t safe for you to talk to us.’
‘Nyet, wait! I said I will ask my Uncle Gleb. I will call you with what he says. He is also an informal entrepreneur. I think that he would not go against Kolyvanov himself, but if you do it, he will help.’
‘OK. Thank you. Thank you.’ John rings off and does another routine scan of their surroundings. He would like to dwell on the thought of Zoya, but he mustn’t. He is leading them, at a carefully nonchalant speed, down a narrow, tree-lined street, and now they are far enough from the flat, John is very aware that they do not have an actual destination.
‘Apparently Kolyvanov’s sent local ex-soldiers after us,’ he says. He doesn’t really expect an answer from the silent man beside him, but Sherlock shakes his head and speaks.
‘He would have young ex-soldiers working for him,’ Sherlock says. ‘Veterans of Chechnya most likely. Russia has a conscript army, not professional soldiers. Every conflict produces a tranche of damaged or otherwise unemployable but still young men. They turn to the black economy for work.’
John almost stops walking, and looks at Sherlock hard. Is his mind waking up? That insight... at least it makes Zoya’s obsession with the unobtainability of ‘normal life’ a bit more comprehensible. John imagines being shipped by force to Afghanistan, or Chechnya as a teenager and surviving three years... dear God.
‘Where are we going?’ Johns says. If Sherlock can answer that, then maybe they’re still in business. Down the road, a minibus door slams, and John tenses, but no he is not going to drop to the ground. Just because Afghanistan is mentioned does not mean he will have a flashback.
But after his brief speech, Sherlock’s eyes seem to be glazing over, like they did in Malta when he talked about fire in the sky; John remembers the sight of Sherlock fighting and fighting that. Now he just strides mechanically forwards.
‘I would like to lie down in the snow and die,’ says Sherlock as if reporting an observation. ‘I understand however that this impulse arises from imbalanced chemistry, and will not use it as a guide to action.’
Christ. In one way John is getting used to pronouncements like that, in another - never.
‘Are you thinking you failed me last night?’ John says. There is a woman looking at them from an upstairs window across the road and it is all he can do not to draw his pistol, and - ‘Look, I vented at you, but we both bodged up. It happens. What matters is we’re alive to try again.’
It’s not clear to John whether Sherlock takes that on board or not. His reply, after a long moment of thought is: ‘It’s unlikely that Kolyvanov has ordered Mrs Hudson and Lestrade shot yet. He really does appear to want me, and as yet to be unaware that I am no longer of any use, so he hasn’t spent his bargaining chips. But if I was him, at this point I might start doing so.’
John feels a chill in his spine. He has not been thinking about things that are outside his immediate control. Trust Sherlock to do it... and it’s clearly necessary.
Sherlock stops abruptly, in the lee of a shuttered kiosk, and sits down on a cinderblock. John’s heart pounds - has Sherlock finally ground to a halt? But no, he’s fiddling with his phone. In spite of the glaze on his eyes he does look just a little more like himself. Is it shock, or a moodswing? Could John dare to hope it’s the lithium?
John himself is out of ideas. He needs Sherlock to do something brilliant. That’s what always happens at this point. Isn’t it?
Sherlock has his phone out.
‘So I’ll tell him he’s going to get me,’ he says, poking a button. ‘It’ll win us time, and maybe I’ll be able to think..’
John’s stomach drops. Either this is total insanity, or a sound move that will get Kolyvanov to ease off long enough for them to regroup and contact ‘Uncle Gleb’. He half-expects the call to fail but no, Sherlock gets through, and introduces himself as if this really is a civilised job interview. John leans in to hear.
‘You haven’t left me much choice, Mr Kolyvanov,’ Sherlock says, his voice perfectly pitched to weary resentment with a tinge of admiration. ‘What exactly does the position involve?’
‘I receive thousands of reports from Piter and all Russia, and half are lies or confusion by stupid people,’ comes the tinny reply. ‘You can sort out it. You see patterns, see where things will happen.’
‘I don’t speak Russian.’
‘You can learn in two weeks. I know what you are. A mind like Moriarty, but you don’t care to be master. I take that responsibility. You get an inside vista on every racket from London to Vladivostok, Mr Holmes, and I can pay extremely well. Don’t tell me you aren’t interested.’
John holds his breath. Kolyvanov evidently does have a good handle on what Sherlock is, but not that good, or he wouldn’t be using money as a lure.
‘You’re telling me how valuable I am to you, not what you can do for me,’ says Sherlock, and the tone of faltering bravado is so real John has to draw back and glance at him, and see his cold eyes fixed on the deserted kiosk.
There is a sarcastic sigh on the other end of the phone.
‘Maybe you are the only man in Europe who truly is indifferent to money,’ says Kolyvanov. ‘In that case, I remind you, do you want the BBC journalists to know who killed Graf? What I do for you is obvious. You do whatever you like and I can protect you. I’ll even give you a nice apartment, to live with your very good friend.’
Sherlock waits out a long pause. ‘Fuck you,’ he mutters, like a man cornered.
‘Ah, no, you don’t fuck me. Come to my office, Monday afternoon, three o’clock,’ says Kolyvanov. ‘Without guns, of course. We will arrange matters then.’
Sherlock starts to speak but Kolyvanov has apparently rung off. John suddenly finds that his knees are wobbling, and he has to sit down on the cinderblock.
‘Imbecile,’ says Sherlock contemptuously. ‘He actually thinks I’ll be scared of people knowing we’re gay.’
‘Yeah, how ridiculous,’ says John. He doesn’t mention that they really are shit scared that Kolyvanov will shoot their friends and tell the media who killed Graf and Zagami. ‘OK, that was a risk, but you probably bought us two and a half days. Anything could happen in that time.’ The lithium could kick in - is this it? Is it starting? ‘Gleb could come through with something or we could get another lead.’
‘But where’s Kolyvanov getting this stuff?’ says Sherlock, taking off his Russian hat and rubbing his gloved hand vigorously through his hair the way he used to when he was frustrated, when he was himself. ‘I don’t recall us snogging in public. John, something’s bothering me.’
‘What?’ The idea of picking a single worry out of the million contenders seems ridiculous.
‘Please tell me we still have the list of Kolyvanov Securities staff.’
‘Um, yeah, I put it with our papers, and I grabbed them when we scarpered. Why?’ says John, reaching for the papers in question.
‘Give,’ says Sherlock, and holds out his hand. When John obeys, Sherlock briefly scans the list and then sits back against the frosty kiosk wall. ‘Ah. Here we go: Senior Consultant Gleb Yevdokimov. It’s a common enough surname, and there’s a Marya Yevdokimova on reception, but I think we must conclude that your little girlfriend is how Kolyvanov found us.’
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. John stammers, trying to think: ‘Maybe Zoya doesn’t know he actually works for... I mean, why would she mention him to us, if...’
‘Because people are arrogant, John, and incompetent, and like to show off by waving facts under my nose and thinking I won’t notice. But I’m not that damaged yet.’ Sherlock sounds grimly satisfied. John wants to belt him, and is madly relieved at that feeling, because it means the git is becoming himself again, and for that this is almost worth it... except that Sherlock is leaning back against the grubby kiosk, visibly winding down, whatever has powered him for the last five minutes draining from his expression.
‘Sherlock!’ John almost shouts. ‘If you worked all that out, you can work out what the bloody hell we do now, then!’
‘Shoot ourselves in the head?’ suggests Sherlock. His eyes roam vaguely, then settle on a snowy bollard.
When John tries to budge him, at first he won’t move. Right, this is it, he’s truly lost it, thinks John, almost dreamily... then Sherlock gets up, and starts walking mechanically ahead. John has to follow, without the slightest idea of where they are going, or to what possible end.
Chapter 5 will be posted on 27 May
Author: pennypaperbrain
Fandom Sherlock BBC
Betas: Chloe, eldritchhorrors, russpick by madoshi
Rating: Teen for Chapter 4, NC-17 for the fic
Warnings for this chapter: depictions of bipolar disorder, canon-typical violence
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Wordcount: Chapter 4: 5,004. Fic so far: 16,679
Spoilers: All six episodes
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters. I couldn’t be trusted with them. There’d be kinky slash everywhere.
Summary: John and Sherlock have a plan to take out Kolyvanov. It does not go particularly well.
Also on AO3
Each fic in this series is self-contained, and they can be read separately with the help of the intro summaries, but for the best experience they should be read in order.
Four Corners of the Western World
1: Vegas High (complete): LJ, AO3
2: Malta Bright (complete): LJ, AO3
3: Piter Raw (in progress): LJ, AO3
4: Always London
John
A few hours later, they are on Unpronounceable Street, which has become John’s default name for most places in St Petersburg.
It’s arse-freezing bloody cold (surprise), even though John is wearing so many clothes that he feels practically spherical. This is not how he usually approaches a mission. Still, at least you don’t get sand in your pants around here. And the layers hide firearms well, enabling John to bring his rifle as well as the Gyurza he intends to use. He’d gone with his second best choice when it came to the rifle and he was grateful for that now. The Val had a collapsible skeleton stock that folded away so neatly that even a short-arse like himself could conceal it under a coat.
Sherlock is beside him, miraculously normal as promised. And by normal, John means that he’s doing an amazingly good job of pretending to be someone unrecognisably different. Both of them are heavily caked with the contents of Zoya’s make-up box, which John worried would merely make them appear ridiculous, until Sherlock got to work. John watched the whole thing, but he’s still not sure how Sherlock managed to change the planes of his own face, and perform some alchemy that made John’s nose look wider and his cheeks fuller. With additional padding inside his cheeks John surely ought to look like a joke chipmunk, but that’s not what the mirror showed. Sherlock is even managing to seem considerably shorter than his actual height, while still being swaggering and imperious. His public schoolboy air is gone, though. He’s implying with his every movement that he’s as common as a Peckham drug dealer, and as streetwise. That might, of course, be totally the wrong approach here. They have no way to know.
They stroll up - down, rather, given that it’s a basement - to Vyborgskiy. John’s initial fear, that there will be some kind of bouncer who casually bars them, or worse still searches them, proves groundless. They just push through the door into a crowded room which looks fairly Western apart from some embroidered screens along a wall. There’s table footie, flat screen tellies showing dancers in spandex, and what appear to be fairy lights hanging from the low ceiling.
What tells him he’s definitely not in England is the five guys huddling round a bar table on which are lying the half disassembled parts of an unfamiliar combat shotgun. Nobody else seems bothered. Mobsters, or ‘bandits’ as the Russians seem to say; former Spetsnaz most likely.
‘Ya ishu Kolyvanova,’ says Sherlock to a passing waitress. They spent some time in at the flat getting a few words of Russian into their heads - John simply ignoring the amount of effort this cost Sherlock, because their other options have run out - and this is the result. Now John just has to hope it’s colloquially correct to use the verb ‘to seek’ like that, and they haven’t delivered a deadly insult or something.
It seems to work. The waitress stiffens then fires off a stream of obviously nervous Russian.
Sherlock responds with a mask of imperious uninterest. John can detect his incomprehension, but to anyone else it would look like the waitress’ words were simply beneath his notice.
The gamble pays off. The woman looks offended, then irresolute, then simply points at a door in the far wall. Sherlock sets off towards it, glancing back at John. John nods. Time for action.
The plan, in as far as they have one, is to pose as London mobsters who want a local partner for routing Afghan and Kyrgyz opiates through Petersburg. Sherlock’s the businessman, John’s his hired muscle... and if they can get Kolyvanov in a private room with only a couple of hangers-on, Sherlock will drop the tear gas and John will shoot. If Kolyvanov figures out who they are before that, then they will have to do the gas-and-bullet routine in the middle of the bar.
Right. John stops speculating like a fool and narrows his focus to the matter in hand.
When they open the door, the white-walled room beyond is slightly quieter, but even smokier than the main bar. Black leather sofas take up most of the space - and yes, sitting on one of them is Kolyvanov. He’s smaller than the men around him, and there’s a whetted sharpness to both his face and his movements as he gestures with a mobile phone. He has palpable charisma, but that’s of no concern to John. He slides a hand into his jacket to grip his handgun. Beside him, Sherlock is looking around disdainfully, in-character, about to speak.
John’s arm won’t move.
It’s actually stuck inside his lapel because of a pressure to the right. One of the chatting drinkers has simply moved closer, and so has another, and they are holding John on both sides. He tries to escape, feeling like a dog being hoisted off the street by a catcher, but he can barely squirm as he’s marched towards Kolyvanov, who looks up at him as a way clears. To John’s left, the same thing is happening to Sherlock, and John’s hands have been pulled clear of his clothes by their wrists as if he was on puppet strings, and he thinks I love you because coming next is very probably a bullet to the head. They have the attention of the entire room now. Women in too much make-up are laughing. They can all fuck off. This is bloody stupid grandstanding and John is not impressed.
Nor however is he dead, yet.
Sherlock, caught between another pair of thugs in suits, is face to face with Kolyvanov, who is looking mildly pleased as one of his minions reports to him in Russian, jutting a thumb at John. Kolyvanov’s blue eyes are piercing under his mousy hair. He remains sitting down as he assesses them: he’s a small man so he doesn’t bother trying to strut or loom.
‘Ah, yes, I know who you are,’ he says, squinting carefully at their faces. ‘Very good make-up, Mr Holmes, but your friend can’t act. If you come in here and look like you want to shoot, my men spot you very quick. So, are you interested in the job?’
The banality of the words wrongfoots Sherlock, but probably only enough for John to notice.
‘Are you trying to impress me?’ Sherlock says. ‘You think I need your little puzzles?’
‘I think you are impressed in the important way,’ says Kolyvanov, gesturing around him. Several weapons are visibly pointed at John and Sherlock. ‘And I think business in this city has enough puzzles even for you, yes. I could kill you very easily, and I would have killed Dr Watson to pay a personal debt to James Moriarty, but I don’t like waste. You come with me now.’
OK. Abduction. Better than being shot. John takes a moment to spit out the horrible and now unecessary cheek padding, tenses minutely, joint by joint, trying to sense any slackness in the grip on his arms.
‘And if we escape, some of your little friends come after us and kill us, I suppose?’ says Sherlock.
‘No. They kill Dr Watson, disable you and bring you back,’ replies Kolyvanov. ‘And I tell British journalists who killed Jordan Graf, Philip Zagami and Abram Tabone. After that you will be glad that I protect you.’
Then he does stand up. He has a loose way of holding his mouth; it’s in contrast with the haunted fixity of his eyes, and at home John would probably draw conclusions about Afghanistan and write up a psychiatric referral while thinking there but for the grace of God... But the detail of what fires Kolyvanov is irrelevant. What’s important is that he trades on the kind of flexible half-madness that gives one hyena the edge over a pack. Maybe John can engage with that somehow... He might drop his guard...
Kolyvanov has taken a cigar from one of his cronies, and is bringing the lighted end slowly closer and closer to Sherlock’s face. Sherlock’s eyes fix on it in obvious fear. He hasn’t been trained the way John has. When the embers near his cheek, he jerks back - and Kolyvanov abruptly turns on his heel and approaches John. And oh fuck John is not certain he can deal with this either, with that dot of fire approaching him level with his eye... Then on the edge of vision he sees Sherlock jerk violently in the grip of the restraining thug. There is a hiss. Tear gas.
John holds his breath. Kolyvanov has been dragged off somewhere by his minders. There’s shouting and swearing. People are choking and bending over. A couple of bruiser types are obviously trying to grope their way towards John and Sherlock, who is wheezing and wobbling on his feet. John grabs him by the arm and drags him blindly towards the exit, eyes closed. Please God let nobody start firing in panic...
Sherlock is resisting his pull. Sherlock is - a gun is fired. It’s Sherlock shooting. What the -?
‘You fucking idiot!’ John snarls. ‘You’ll make it worse - shit.’ He grabs Sherlock. ‘We just go.’
Sherlock is burbling something - ‘John, I don’t care, I just want to finish this, them or us. Just shoot me now and go home. Anything -’
John is not interested. The lack of extra screaming suggests that Sherlock has not hit anyone. Peering through slitted eyes, John ploughs into the stumbling, coughing crowd that blunders out into the main bar, spilling drinks and knocking over small tables. John and Sherlock make it to the exit as part of a flailing stream of bodies. Just maybe they’re getting away.
There is another shot, from behind them. Then three more, just as they make it out into the air. John sees the material jerk and rupture away from Sherlock’s upper left arm. He sees blood spray onto the dirty wall beyond Vyborgskiy’s outside staircase. But they are not dead, so John keeps going, up the stairs, then down a side street. He’s dragging Sherlock, who comes without resisting now. All around them are coughing and weeping and incomprehensible accusations.
After two minutes’ running, they emerge onto a main road and follow it towards a Metro station. John stops and briefly checks Sherlock’s arm; thank God it looks like a messy but shallow flesh wound. He takes off his furry Russian hat and gives it to Sherlock to hold over the area and minimise public attention. Sherlock is shaking all over. He doesn’t speak.
John’s own thoughts are a mess. They were going to get through this. Sherlock was going to stay calm... why the hell did John believe that? This is not London. It’s not Afghanistan either, but still John is the one with the relevant skills here. He should have prevented this, should have looked after Sherlock better, should have known the plan of luring Kolyvanov aside was never going to work. John would have done better to simply trail the guy alone and shoot him. But he had expected Sherlock to be brilliant, and pull this off the way he would have done in London. Sherlock survived his own suicide, so of course he could handle this.
‘Never be the first to fire unless it’s a killshot,’ John says as they enter the brightly-lit station. Lecturing Sherlock has no point to it now but he can’t stop himself. He has to keep talking, keep them moving, keep glancing around for trouble because Sherlock most certainly isn’t doing it. At least the bloodstain has stopped creeping down his arm. ‘These people, even the scumbag element, are rich enough to have plenty to lose. It’s called civilisation. So they don’t want serious violence in public places. Why did you throw that bloody gas when you did? No way was Kolyvanov going to seriously hurt us, when he wants to bloody recruit you. We could have learnt more.’
John goes ranting on. He knows that’s what it is. He’s mostly doing it to stop other words echoing in his head: Shoot me now. One of his Army jobs was to identify men who were starting to think like that, and send them home before any further harm was done. But he can’t send Sherlock home. He can’t love him back to sanity. He can’t do his job. He can build himself up to kill, and force down the doubts that killing brings.
But only if Sherlock has his back.
They are on the escalator. John’s staring over the top of Sherlock’s head, down the vast descent, and it’s abundantly clear that they are not leaving here tomorrow, even if they survive.
‘How can I kill for you if you don’t want to live?’ John demands into Sherlock’s ear. ‘I shot Hope and Zagami and Tabone, and I’m OK with that, I can deal, but I need you to work with me.’
This is not good, John knows it. Sherlock’s face is hidden, staring down the escalator, and it would be better for John to vent this to anyone else, but there’s only the two of them. Right now, knowing Sherlock can’t be expected to handle this is not good enough. John needs him to handle it. John is human too. John is scared.
Sherlock clearly can’t deal. He’s shaking more now. As they stand close together John puts a hand on his back. It makes no difference.
‘I miscalculated. I should not have fired,’ says Sherlock woodenly. ‘I apologise. I...’
Sherlock trails off. John moves his hand up and down, stroking. Sherlock takes a step down the escalator then stops.
John freezes. Sherlock flinched from his touch.
Sherlock flinched from his touch.
They make for the flat in silence after that. Zoya is there, nervously looking out for them, and after a ten-second summary of events from John she sets to work gathering gauze, antiseptic and also plenty of vodka. They seat Sherlock in a kitchen chair where he stares mutely ahead.
John, crouching beside him, cuts the fabric away from his arm, tweezes fluff out of his raw flesh and then stitches up the mercifully straightforward gash. Shock, alcohol and physical trauma are plainly making Sherlock dopey, and when his eyelids finally flutter shut he actually slumps sideways into John’s arms. John just holds him close for a moment, finding that doing anything else is suddenly untenable because it would involve letting go. He is dimly conscious of Zoya watching them.
‘You very much love him,’ she says, sounding sympathetic but also surprised.
John nods. Her surprise is annoying, but he’s too tired to mount a defence of his sexuality. She seems to get that, and carries on filling the silence.
‘I had a husband,’ she says. ‘Divorced now. He took my money, then left me with his debts. And all the time he’s complaining. Men don’t like that I’m stronger than they are. My job.’ She taps her bicep.
‘Yeah,’ says John, without much vigour. Accepting a partner who is tougher than him is not currently the problem he faces. Anyway, if Sherlock breaks, John will still love him, he’s sure of that. But if Sherlock gets them both killed, then it’s game over.
‘OK, I need to get him to bed,’ he tells Zoya.
He’s surprised when she hefts Sherlock’s torso off the chair without any signs of excessive effort, and leaves John to collect the dangling feet. Sherlock weighs less now than he did when John and Lestrade put him to bed after the Adler bitch drugged him. That seems like a lifetime ago.
Zoya and John manoeuvre Sherlock down the corridor and arrange him on one of the ottomans. Zoya goes to the door, and stands there.
‘Thanks,’ John says. ‘For, uh, quite a lot of things I guess.’ His head is fuzzy. They’d be screwed without this bolthole, and her, and he wants to communicate that, but he’s knackered. ‘We are going to sort out Kolyvanov, I promise.’
Zoya smiles oddly. ‘There is a Russian proverb about the calf that eats the wolf,’ she says.
‘That means anything’s possible, yeah? Very true,’ says John, not particularly wanting to be compared to a cow, and very much wanting to go to sleep.
‘No, it means something that could never happen,’ says Zoya. ‘So... although it is dangerous for me, tomorrow I ask people I know. People my Uncle Gleb knows. I suppose they are bandits. I always avoided troubles, but nobody likes Kolyvanov. And I don’t like your friend,’ Zoya nods around John towards the unconscious Sherlock. ‘But you came to me and I look after you.’
‘Thank you,’ says John seriously. He’s tuned in now. ‘Do you mean...’
But Zoya has closed the door on him. Her slippered tread can just be heard retreating down the hall.
OK. John really needs to know what she was talking about, but for now it will have to wait. he takes a few minutes to undress Sherlock, recheck his wound and cover him with blankets, then lies down on the other ottoman and falls asleep with military ease.
For the first time in months, he dreams of Afghanistan. He’s taken cover behind a pile of rubble, and he’s shooting and shooting at enemies he can barely see. Between him and them, Sherlock is strolling around, looking at spindly bushes through his magnifying glass, and John is frantic not to hit him, and then Kolyvanov surges over a rock, in Russian army uniform, and shoots, and Sherlock’s skull explodes like Zagami’s, and he slumps to the ground soaked with blood, and John is rooted to the spot with horror, and the soldier beside
him turns out to be Zoya, and she grabs his arm and shakes him and shouts...
No. He’s awake now, and Sherlock is the one shaking him. It’s still night. There is shouting. That really is coming from Zoya.
‘Sookin syn! Begite, bandyty u podyezda - Kolyvanov’s men. My friend by gate, she know them, she ring me. They must be on stairs. Get out! Mama’s window! Go, go, now, out!’
John
They have escaped again, John allows himself to realise as he and Sherlock stumble down a snowy concrete avenue in the dark, some three miles from Zoya’s. They half-slid, half-scrambled down the drainpipe outside Mama’s window, John’s bodyweight ripping it from the wall, but fortunately not until he was four foot above a snowdrift. They have the things they managed to shove into backpacks - their electronics, their guns, and most of their documents, plus some clothes - and they are not dead.
‘I won’t believe that Zoya betrayed us,’ John says now. ‘God, I hope she’s all right.’
The fact that she probably isn’t hangs in the freezing air, and if John was with anyone except Sherlock, that person would probably say something consoling. But Sherlock isn’t talking right now. He’s looking around him at the closed shops with the muted, contemplative expression John first saw when he was looking at Jeff Hope’s pill.
Last night, John said I need you to work with me, and Sherlock moved away. John needs a way to bear that, and all the rest, but there’s nothing in sight.
Fuck it, there’s at least one source of pain that he might be able to resolve, even though it’s reckless. He stops in the lee of crumbling wall, digs out one of their pay-as-you-go phones and calls Zoya, dreading equally that nobody will pick up or that one of Kolyvanov’s men will. Sherlock stops a little in front of him, showing no reaction.
‘Allo?’ Zoya’s voice is cautious but collected.
So she’s not dead. That’s a start, though who knows what else has happened. ‘Zoya. I...’
‘Chto - you safe?! Do not come here!’
‘We weren’t going to. What happened? Are they gone?’ John scans the street scene around them. People are starting to emerge from their apartments and make for work. There’s too many of them for him to be sure if any are deliberately heading for him
‘Yes,’ says Zoya. ‘Four localtsy, men who were soldiers. I had to open door or they would break it. They ran around and smashed a table and shouted at me. I said you paid for this room and I know nothing. I cried and I pretended stupid, though I have a knife in the pocket in case they attack me. They believed me, I think.’ Zoya’s voice is light enough, but trembling.
‘I’m so sorry,’ says John, heavy-hearted. He starts walking swiftly again, just hoping Sherlock will follow; he does. ‘Have you any idea how the, er, locals found us?’
‘Probably someone guessed you are not tourists. Informing on neighbours is Russian tradition.’ Zoya laughs humourlessly. ‘I do not want to live like this! Men like these killed my father. They will not kill me!’
‘No, they won’t,’ John promises, as if it’s under his control. ‘OK, I’m going to ring off. It isn’t safe for you to talk to us.’
‘Nyet, wait! I said I will ask my Uncle Gleb. I will call you with what he says. He is also an informal entrepreneur. I think that he would not go against Kolyvanov himself, but if you do it, he will help.’
‘OK. Thank you. Thank you.’ John rings off and does another routine scan of their surroundings. He would like to dwell on the thought of Zoya, but he mustn’t. He is leading them, at a carefully nonchalant speed, down a narrow, tree-lined street, and now they are far enough from the flat, John is very aware that they do not have an actual destination.
‘Apparently Kolyvanov’s sent local ex-soldiers after us,’ he says. He doesn’t really expect an answer from the silent man beside him, but Sherlock shakes his head and speaks.
‘He would have young ex-soldiers working for him,’ Sherlock says. ‘Veterans of Chechnya most likely. Russia has a conscript army, not professional soldiers. Every conflict produces a tranche of damaged or otherwise unemployable but still young men. They turn to the black economy for work.’
John almost stops walking, and looks at Sherlock hard. Is his mind waking up? That insight... at least it makes Zoya’s obsession with the unobtainability of ‘normal life’ a bit more comprehensible. John imagines being shipped by force to Afghanistan, or Chechnya as a teenager and surviving three years... dear God.
‘Where are we going?’ Johns says. If Sherlock can answer that, then maybe they’re still in business. Down the road, a minibus door slams, and John tenses, but no he is not going to drop to the ground. Just because Afghanistan is mentioned does not mean he will have a flashback.
But after his brief speech, Sherlock’s eyes seem to be glazing over, like they did in Malta when he talked about fire in the sky; John remembers the sight of Sherlock fighting and fighting that. Now he just strides mechanically forwards.
‘I would like to lie down in the snow and die,’ says Sherlock as if reporting an observation. ‘I understand however that this impulse arises from imbalanced chemistry, and will not use it as a guide to action.’
Christ. In one way John is getting used to pronouncements like that, in another - never.
‘Are you thinking you failed me last night?’ John says. There is a woman looking at them from an upstairs window across the road and it is all he can do not to draw his pistol, and - ‘Look, I vented at you, but we both bodged up. It happens. What matters is we’re alive to try again.’
It’s not clear to John whether Sherlock takes that on board or not. His reply, after a long moment of thought is: ‘It’s unlikely that Kolyvanov has ordered Mrs Hudson and Lestrade shot yet. He really does appear to want me, and as yet to be unaware that I am no longer of any use, so he hasn’t spent his bargaining chips. But if I was him, at this point I might start doing so.’
John feels a chill in his spine. He has not been thinking about things that are outside his immediate control. Trust Sherlock to do it... and it’s clearly necessary.
Sherlock stops abruptly, in the lee of a shuttered kiosk, and sits down on a cinderblock. John’s heart pounds - has Sherlock finally ground to a halt? But no, he’s fiddling with his phone. In spite of the glaze on his eyes he does look just a little more like himself. Is it shock, or a moodswing? Could John dare to hope it’s the lithium?
John himself is out of ideas. He needs Sherlock to do something brilliant. That’s what always happens at this point. Isn’t it?
Sherlock has his phone out.
‘So I’ll tell him he’s going to get me,’ he says, poking a button. ‘It’ll win us time, and maybe I’ll be able to think..’
John’s stomach drops. Either this is total insanity, or a sound move that will get Kolyvanov to ease off long enough for them to regroup and contact ‘Uncle Gleb’. He half-expects the call to fail but no, Sherlock gets through, and introduces himself as if this really is a civilised job interview. John leans in to hear.
‘You haven’t left me much choice, Mr Kolyvanov,’ Sherlock says, his voice perfectly pitched to weary resentment with a tinge of admiration. ‘What exactly does the position involve?’
‘I receive thousands of reports from Piter and all Russia, and half are lies or confusion by stupid people,’ comes the tinny reply. ‘You can sort out it. You see patterns, see where things will happen.’
‘I don’t speak Russian.’
‘You can learn in two weeks. I know what you are. A mind like Moriarty, but you don’t care to be master. I take that responsibility. You get an inside vista on every racket from London to Vladivostok, Mr Holmes, and I can pay extremely well. Don’t tell me you aren’t interested.’
John holds his breath. Kolyvanov evidently does have a good handle on what Sherlock is, but not that good, or he wouldn’t be using money as a lure.
‘You’re telling me how valuable I am to you, not what you can do for me,’ says Sherlock, and the tone of faltering bravado is so real John has to draw back and glance at him, and see his cold eyes fixed on the deserted kiosk.
There is a sarcastic sigh on the other end of the phone.
‘Maybe you are the only man in Europe who truly is indifferent to money,’ says Kolyvanov. ‘In that case, I remind you, do you want the BBC journalists to know who killed Graf? What I do for you is obvious. You do whatever you like and I can protect you. I’ll even give you a nice apartment, to live with your very good friend.’
Sherlock waits out a long pause. ‘Fuck you,’ he mutters, like a man cornered.
‘Ah, no, you don’t fuck me. Come to my office, Monday afternoon, three o’clock,’ says Kolyvanov. ‘Without guns, of course. We will arrange matters then.’
Sherlock starts to speak but Kolyvanov has apparently rung off. John suddenly finds that his knees are wobbling, and he has to sit down on the cinderblock.
‘Imbecile,’ says Sherlock contemptuously. ‘He actually thinks I’ll be scared of people knowing we’re gay.’
‘Yeah, how ridiculous,’ says John. He doesn’t mention that they really are shit scared that Kolyvanov will shoot their friends and tell the media who killed Graf and Zagami. ‘OK, that was a risk, but you probably bought us two and a half days. Anything could happen in that time.’ The lithium could kick in - is this it? Is it starting? ‘Gleb could come through with something or we could get another lead.’
‘But where’s Kolyvanov getting this stuff?’ says Sherlock, taking off his Russian hat and rubbing his gloved hand vigorously through his hair the way he used to when he was frustrated, when he was himself. ‘I don’t recall us snogging in public. John, something’s bothering me.’
‘What?’ The idea of picking a single worry out of the million contenders seems ridiculous.
‘Please tell me we still have the list of Kolyvanov Securities staff.’
‘Um, yeah, I put it with our papers, and I grabbed them when we scarpered. Why?’ says John, reaching for the papers in question.
‘Give,’ says Sherlock, and holds out his hand. When John obeys, Sherlock briefly scans the list and then sits back against the frosty kiosk wall. ‘Ah. Here we go: Senior Consultant Gleb Yevdokimov. It’s a common enough surname, and there’s a Marya Yevdokimova on reception, but I think we must conclude that your little girlfriend is how Kolyvanov found us.’
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. John stammers, trying to think: ‘Maybe Zoya doesn’t know he actually works for... I mean, why would she mention him to us, if...’
‘Because people are arrogant, John, and incompetent, and like to show off by waving facts under my nose and thinking I won’t notice. But I’m not that damaged yet.’ Sherlock sounds grimly satisfied. John wants to belt him, and is madly relieved at that feeling, because it means the git is becoming himself again, and for that this is almost worth it... except that Sherlock is leaning back against the grubby kiosk, visibly winding down, whatever has powered him for the last five minutes draining from his expression.
‘Sherlock!’ John almost shouts. ‘If you worked all that out, you can work out what the bloody hell we do now, then!’
‘Shoot ourselves in the head?’ suggests Sherlock. His eyes roam vaguely, then settle on a snowy bollard.
When John tries to budge him, at first he won’t move. Right, this is it, he’s truly lost it, thinks John, almost dreamily... then Sherlock gets up, and starts walking mechanically ahead. John has to follow, without the slightest idea of where they are going, or to what possible end.
Chapter 5 will be posted on 27 May