Sherlock: Apotheosis 1/2 (R)

[10leaguesbeyond]

Title: Apotheosis
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: Sherlock (2010)
Rating: R for violence, gore, antisocial behavior and broad-spectrum mayhem
Characters: John, Moriarty, Sebastian Moran, Mycroft; oh, and Sherlock. Possibly even Sherlock/John, in fact.
Length: 16,556
Spoilers: The Great Game, natch.
Summary: John is given a chance to take the fight to Moriarty. You know what they say about whoever fights monsters...

A/N: Another fic meme response, requesting a reversal of the Empty House scenario: namely that it's John who is presumed dead for three years. Which of course made me wonder just what he'd be up to in that time...

I guess I should warn for Wikipedia research, unstable concord of tense and a modified quote from ACD's "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier." No insult is meant to any of the nations or nationalities mention herein, and no actual governments were toppled in the production of this fanfic.

A/N 2: Now a podfic by calliglad!

Apotheosis
by Mad Maudlin

April
He was still on some serious painkillers when they offered him his commission back. "A promotion, actually," the brigadier explained, while John was distracted trying to work out if he could come to attention while laying in bed. "As you are clearly no longer disabled, there should be no difficulty returning you to active duty."

"Back to Afghanistan?" John asked.

The brigadier smiled. "No, no, I think you've got more pressing matters to attend to, don't you?"

"Moriarity," the colonel behind the brigadier said, when John clearly wasn't processing. "He's been categorized as an international terrorist and a threat to national security."

"We are doing what we can by conventional methods," the brigadier continued. "But as you've probably guessed by now, taking down Moriarty will require unconventional methods as well."

"Why me?" John thought to ask.

The brigadier tilted his head to one side, oddly dog-like. "Because you have had three months of training in the methods of Sherlock Holmes, but none of his flaws," he said. "Because you have an uncomplicated love of country and a strong moral code, which allow you act independently and reliably. Because you have a personal investment in making Moriarty pay for what he's done."

"How long do I have to decide?" John asked, because he was alert enough to know he really wasn't competent to be making these decisions on this much medication.

"Forty-eight hours," said the colonel.

Forty-seven hours after that, John convinced a nurse to help him into a wheelchair and take him down the corridor to see Sherlock. He was still unconscious, but according to his chart his intracranial pressure was dropping and there would be no permanent brain damage. If he was very lucky, he wouldn't even scar.

John watched Sherlock's face in sleep and thought about the last three mad, glorious, infuriating months. And he covered one of Sherlock's hands with his own. "If he wants to hurt you, he's going to have to come through me," John told him quietly.

He didn't see Sherlock again for three years.

October

He was transferred to a military hospital--not Selly Oak, something small and secret, near the sea. Had to get back into fighting shape, not just physical therapy but full-on conditioning: he'd let himself go, a bit, eating like a soldier without exercising like one, and he wasn't twenty-five anymore.

When he was fully healed he was transferred to Sennybridge and dumped directly into SAS selection. He wore an officer's uniform without rank insignia and a name badge that said Lewis; he was five years older than the next oldest man in the group and the trainers all seemed a little wary of him. When he wasn't running and shooting and learning about bombs, he was pulled aside for private lessons-in languages, computers, defensive driving on either side of the road. He didn't talk much, except to ask relevant questions, and when they were given a bit of computer time he checked Sherlock's website (no recent updates) and his own blog (deleted).

At some point between carrying his own body weight up a mountain and heading off to run around a jungle in Borneo, he sent an email to try to explain: I'm no good to you in London. I don't have your mind or your skills. But with the Army backing me up, I can take the fight to Moriarty. I won't pretend I can get to him before he gets to you, but I can make him regret he ever put a finger on me, which is close enough.

He didn't get a reply until selection was almost finished; only a handful of men were left, and not many of them made it out of SERE training. John personally thought Mycroft Holmes was the best practical lesson in R2I he'd ever gotten, and filed the thought away along with a thousand other unsent texts and untold jokes. When he stumbled blearily to a computer a few days later, he found a message from an unfamiliar address in his inbox:

Had to abandon the old email; no longer secure. Naturally I had already deduced your motives, and while I find your reasoning flawed I recognize that you will not be subject to persuasion...

There was something off about it, something John couldn't put his finger; nothing he could express logically, but something in his gut. He sometimes thought his guts had better deductive abilities than Sherlock's brain and just couldn't articulate them properly. He made a note of the new email address and replies with a simple, thank you. I'll keep in touch if I can.

The day before he met with his handler, he got a reply: Had to change mobile numbers as well. Better if you don't text anyway, unless absolutely necessary.

They met at St. Mawgan's, John wearing the new-familiar major's uniform and the colonel in barrack dress. He received an envelope containing three different passports and a pistol with a supressor. "Moriarity's last know base of operations was Prague," the colonel told him. "Go fish him out."

"Are those my exact orders, sir?" John asked.

The colonel rolled his eyes. "We didn't train you this long to follow orders, Watson. Your plane leaves Manchester in the morning."

April

He was in Aktau when he realized that he hadn't seen Sherlock in a year--hadn't heard his voice, hadn't communicated except in fleeting e-mails. If he hadn't been hiding out in the gutted remains of an Soviet-era block of flats, he might've called, or at least e-mailed. As it was, he didn't remember until he was safely across the border in Azerbaijan two weeks later, and Sherlock didn't respond to him anyway.

Moriarty had a network, one that went deep and wide, and John spent the first year clawing his way up one monster at a time. He didn't think of them as murders, because this was war; besides, they weren't very nice people. He shared this thought with the colonel while they were debriefing in Istanbul, something that had become almost routine, and the colonel stared at him for a long time.

Bit not good, John realized a moment too late. "I suppose I'll be sectioned for that," he said, looking into his coffee cup.

The colonel shook his head and stubbed out his cigarette. "You wouldn't be a particularly good assassin if you gave a shit, Watson."

Is that what he was? John didn't remember when that happened. In six months since he'd been deployed, he'd killed five people. Also performed an appendectomy in the back of a moving truck and broke up a human-trafficking ring. He suspected he may have accidentally married an Uzbek woman as well. He'd gone into this thinking like a detective, trying to think like Sherlock, but of course Sherlock usually just handed the culprit over to the police. John was the police, and the judge, and sometimes the executioner.

That probably ought to have upset him more. Maybe there was a reason he and Sherlock got on so well.

"Anyway," the colonel said, pushing a thumb drive in John's direction, "We've got new intelligence for you. Moriarty's been sighted in Venezuela."

"Venezuela?" John echoed incredulously.

"Different arm of the octopus," the colonel said. "There are other agents to take over here. Use the Irish passport."

John used the Spanish one, just to be contrary, and in the airport he bounced an email off a secure server. On the move again. Himself is apparently on holiday. Don't expect me to bring you back a coca plant or anything.

(John had not been back to London since the bombings, not even during the months of convalescence and training; but at that time he didn't doubt that someday he would be.)

The only reply he got was: That's very interesting.

September

He spent four months crawling the length of Latin America before he was sure he was chasing shadows; Moriarty was busy, sure, but not that busy, and some of the names on the thumb drive turned out to be less minions than rivals. From somewhere in Argentina he placed a secure phone call. "This is bullshit, sir. I was getting warm in Asia."

"You're saying you let him get by you?"

"I'm saying he was never here!"

Six weeks later and half a world away, he accidentally crossed the Rio Grande in the back of a refrigerated truck, and from a sheriff's office in Texas he got an email from Sherlock. I think I may have heard from Himself again. Will explain deductions later; for now, investigating fraud case. What can one buy for nine and one-tenth pence?

The answer, on the date of the email, was one South African rand; John escaped from ICE, booked the flight from Miami and reported to the colonel afterward.

Sherlock had been updating his website again, slowly; he even wrote up a case, the way John used to, with pedantic grammar and truly bizarre spelling mistakes and a mention of John in the preamble: I often had occasion to point out to him how superficial his own accounts were and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste. Having put my hands on the keyboard, I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader.... It might've been the closest to humble Sherlock would ever sound, and while John wondered a bit about the past tense he didn't dare bring it up when he left a teasing comment (anonymous, bounced off so many proxies it probably circumnavigated the globe).

Sherlock didn't mention Moriarty anywhere on the site, or contact John with any gory details, so he didn't know quite what had happened--just that he monster himself wasn't back in England, couldn't have been. South Africa lead him up the coast, to weapons dealers and failed states and genocide, and he felt like he was closing in again when the colonel sent a message summoning him to Mombasa.

"Thailand," he said. "Human trafficking. We have video confirmation this time."

"I've got six people who say that's impossible," John said.

The colonel looked annoyed. "And how many of them are still alive?"

It stung, but this was war, and John had been willing to kill for Sherlock the day after he met him. He pushed the guilt down. "Give me more time," he asked. "Two weeks."

"We've already booked your tickets," the colonel said peevishly. "Don't make me give you an order, Watson."

"I thought you didn't train me to follow orders?"

It ended in a stare-down, but the colonel just raised his chin, and John knew that he'd already lost the momentum back in Somalia, might lose the equipment and funds that keep him going. So he flew to the UAE and changed planes for Thailand, leaving another trail to grow cold behind him.

Any idea what the LD50 is on green curry paste? he asked Sherlock in an email.

The answer was confident: You won't find anything, you know.

John knew. His gut was always a better deducer than his brain. He stayed to clean up the trafficking ring anyway, and followed a chance rumor back into Russia, and didn't report to the colonel this time at all.

November

The closest he got to Moriarty in the whole three years was in Russia: he insinuated himself in a private little war on the gas fields, and he wasn't sure if one side was Mafiya or FSB (or if there was even a difference this far from Moscow) but the other side had Moriarty's fingerprints all over it. John had a feeling that if he waited around long enough, he'd find the man himself.

Unfortunately, Moriarty found him first.

John wasn't even given a chance to fight back; he fell asleep in his rented room with a bit of a headache and woke up naked on a concrete floor. He spluttered in the icy water that had just been dumped over his head, and the first thing his eyes found was the bucket, swinging languidly from one hand; and the hand was coming from a sleek grey suit, and the suit belonged to Moriarty, smiling beatifically at him.

"Hello, Johnny."

John pushed himself up to his knees, but no higher; there were no red laser spots dancing around him, but then again there was no one else to watch. If this was still a game, the rules had changed, because this time there was no need for a show. "Evening."

"I have to admit you surprised me," Jim carried on. "Not many people do. Oh, speaking of which..." He pulled out a phone and snapped a picture with it, of John drenched and shivering and white. "Should I send this one to Sherlock, do you think? Might be a bit of a shocker...though I suppose just sending him your head in a box would be worse." He sighed, and then looked speculatively at the bucket. "The postage will be outrageous, of course..."

"Is this supposed to frighten me?" John broke in.

Moriarty blinked at him. "Why, are you frightened?"

John wiped the wet fringe out of his eyes--he'd let his hair get too long, let his beard grow too thick. Sherlock might not even recognize him now. Well, not his face. "I don't have much time left, I reckon, so I'd rather you don't waste it," John said. "Get on with the torture, would you?"

He chuckled, smiling darkly. "What makes you think I haven't?"

He snaps a few more pictures, walking in a circle around John while John tried not to care. SERE was focused on interrogations, on pain with a purpose: there was something clean about torture when it wasn't really personal. Moriarty was entirely personal, and John knew that there was nothing he could give up that would make this stop, nothing outside this room that he wanted. The only thing he could do was make it worse, and that was a head game that could not be beaten.

"How many snipers?" he asked, to keep focused.

"What makes you think I have any?" Moriarty drawled.

"My hands are free," John said. "After I tried to choke you back in London you wouldn't run the risk I'd do something daft and suicidal again, and Sherlock's not here to threaten this time. So. At least one sniper, probably more, to make certain I can't use you as a human shield from any angle. Hollow-point bullets for minimum penetration, minimum risk to you."

Moriarty giggled. "Very nice, Johnny. Very wrong, but very nice."

"Oh," John said, and realized he wasn't naked just for the embarrassment. It was November and they were on permafrost; there was no sound but one creaking generator, meaning the drilling site was very far away. "You do know what they say about backing your enemy into a corner, right?"

Moriarty just smiled. "I could say the same thing to you, Johnny. You've been very naughty lately. A fellow could get a persecution complex."

"Am I that much of a threat, then?" John asked, genuinely curious.

"Well, not to me, obviously," Moriarty said with a flicking wave of his hand. "But you're bad for business. Makes the clients skittish if they have to start looking over their shoulder for the Littlest Assassin."

There was that word again. John didn't feel like an assassin right now, though; he felt like murder, cold-blooded and pre-meditated and entirely without guilt. "Maybe you should look into retirement," he suggested. "I've heard Guantanamo Bay is nice this time year."

Moriaty scoffed. "Been there, done that," he said casually. "Besides, you just got interesting. Why would I want the game to end?"

For some reason that made John angrier than being naked and trapped. "This isn't a game to me," he said quietly.

"Oh, right, this is about lives," Moriarty said dramatically. "How many people have you killed, Johnny? Indulge me."

"Sixteen," John told him quietly. He'd been counting.

"Oh, well." Another flick of one limp wrist. "You've got some catching up to do."

John wasn't getting a not-so-different-are-we speech, not from Jim fucking Moriarty. He'd much rather skip to the knives and hot pokers, thanks. "Not much time left for that," he said tightly.

"No," Moriarty said, and sighed. "Not much at all, I'm afraid." He drew a gun from inside his tailored jacket, a Sig Saur, as if for old times' sake. "Now, stand up, Johnny, and show me what Sherlock still sees in you."

John climbed to his feet slowly; his legs were numb from kneeling so long. He started to put his hands up, but before he got a chance Moriarty tossed him the gun. John almost dropped it. "What is this?" he asked.

"It's a game, my dear," Moriarty said wearily. "A deduction. No pills this time, though--I do hate to repeat myself. Let's see if you can figure out the rules."

John's first move was to check the gun; he couldn't break it down completely, of course, but it didn't seem to be tampered with and it was fully loaded with normal-looking bullets. Moriarty had just handed him a gun. Moriarty was smiling. John was naked. There could be a car outside, or there might not be; even in a car it was a long way to anything like civilization, and even with the heat on John might not be able to make the drive without warm clothes. Moriarty might have arranged a pick-up at a fixed time, in which case John could kill him and wait to see what came next, if he'd freeze here before the car came; or Moriarty's people might be waiting for his call, and one bullet would strand John here to die. Moriarty, after all, didn't care about the risks to his own life; Moriarty just wanted to prove he was clever. Also the building could be wired to explode at any moment. But John wouldn't have gotten into this if he wasn't willing to die.

"Figured it out yet?" Moriarty asked sensuously, rocking on his heels

John was very, very far from home.

He raised the gun.

Moriarty grinned, practically bouncing on his heels.

John shot out the room's single lightbulb.

He had once caught Sherlock wandering around the flat blindfolded, something to do with visual memory and learning to navigate in the dark. He didn't have much time to take stock of this place--some kind of garage, he thought--but for a split second he'd got the element of surprise. He charged at Moriarty, a full-on rugby tackle, but Moriarty had enough time to half-dodge and John only caught his sleeve. They grappled by feel for a moment, and Moriarty stomped on John's bare toes with his expensive shoes and John sank his teeth into Moriarty's hand hard enough to draw blood; then Moriaty shrugged off his jacket and twisted out of John's reach, and it was just the two of them in the dark, breathing.

"You do keep surprising me, Johnny," Moriarty said gleefully. "I was so sure you'd go for the simple headshot."

"When has anything with you ever been simple?" John asked, limping to one side on broken toes.

Moriarty laughed. "True." His clothes rustled--had he got his own gun? "But you only get half-credit for catching onto the joke. For full credit you need to supply the punchline."

You hate to repeat yourself, John thought, but didn't voice it, didn't give Moriarty a target. There were windows in the garage, small and high and greasy, and John needed to find one. He tried to move quietly, shuffling over the wet patch of concrete to the dry.

"The silent type?" Moriarty said. "I like that in a man. The windows are nailed shut, by the way."

He had no reason to trust anything Moriarty told him. Also no reason not to.

"I could've just murdered you, you know," Moriarty said petulantly. "I could've just mailed you home to Sherlock in bits. I brought you out here for a reason. The least you could do is play along."

John almost laughed--who'd have known that Moriarty had a tell? But he held in it while he shuffled as silently as he could, trying to make a straight line for the nearest window--

And tripped on the bucket.

He snagged it on one foot and it made a horrible clatter of steel on cement; he tried to shake it free and put too much weight on his broken toes. And then Moriarty was on him, almost faster than he could dodge, and there was no gunshot: just the wet heat of a knife digging into his hip.

"That's better," Moriarty sighed, and wrenched the blade out with a vicious twist.

John hadn't lost the gun, but that was pure reflex; his brain whited out and he couldn't have shot even if he'd dared to. It was reflex to curl into a fetal position and let the next wild slash take him across the back, deep into the latissimus dorsi. That hurt like hell when he rolled away, but he did roll away, and it gave him a moment to get his bearings while Moriarty groped after him--probably tracking the blood trail by feel.

Flesh wounds, he told himself. Stand the fuck up.

"I could've used a gun, you know," Moriarty panted. "I could've just shot you. But since you decided to take a level in badass, I thought this would be more fun. More personal."

John's legs were trembling, and his right leg didn't want to take his weight. He could've laughed until he cried over that. He staggered away from the sound of Moriarty's voice, staggered until he found a wall. Now to find a window. Any one would do.

"Sentimental Johnny," Moriarity crooned, "always ready to lay down your life for a friend. Do you really think he's back home pining for you?" There was a scuffle; he was getting to his feet. "Come face me!"

John used the wall to support his weight, and there it was, the high, small window, so cold on his fingers that it hurt to touch. It was almost too high for him to get to, until he found a box under it, wobbly but silent. John used his left leg to raise himself up until his head was level with the glass. "You first," he blurted.

In the pure darkness he could easily see the muzzle flash of Moriarty's gun. He could feel the bullet groove the side of his face, below his ear, peeling back a flap of skin from his jaw as he jerked away from its path. It burst through the window, but there were no alarms triggered, no lights, just a breathy gasp from whoever had been hiding on the other side of the glass.

The other three windows--two in the walls and one in the door--burst inward with the chatter of rifle fire, and Moriarty screamed.

John didn't bother trying to open the window behind him; he used the butt of the pistol to smash the glass in, and then hauled himself through the jagged opening, though it felt like he left half his skin behind.

He fell into the snow, and something--shock, perhaps--kept him from feeling the flaying cold. He hauled himself up with the scaffold that the dead sniper had been standing on; the burst of gunfire had stopped, and someone was shouting to Moriarty in Russian, which he answered in kind. John just started running, as best as he could, out into the snow and darkness; started running and kept running until he stopped.

-\-\-\-

He woke on a hard, narrow bed, dizzy and disoriented. He was still trying to reconcile the rich reds of the quilt with the rich reds of the blood in the IV bag when the colonel stepped into the room, puffing on a cigarette. He put it out when he saw John's eyes were open. "With us, Watson?"

"Moriarty's alive," he said, because it was the first thing that came into his head.

The colonel snorted. "So are you, no thanks that disappearing act. I'd have had a devil of a time explaining to my superiors that you went off the grid and turned up hanging from a bridge somewhere hot and dry."

His hands were swathed in bandages--frostbite, certainly. One side of his face was numb and stiff from the graze that was stitched up. He could hardly feel his lower body at all. "You tracked me down in Russia," he slurred. "Think I'm in love."

"That's just the opiates talking," the colonel said, and sat down next to John. "In a couple of days we're moving you to a more secure medical facility. You'll be out of the game for a while with this one."

John could already feel those opiates pulling him down to sleep again, but he'd been debriefed by this man too many times and the words came like reflex. "Coat," he said. "It was the coat."

"What was the what?"

"Moriarty wasn't wearing a coat." His eyelids closed in spite of himself. "There had to be snipers because he didn't have a coat. No radiators in the garage. Didn't drive out there--helicopter. Don't think Moriarty can fly."

There was something affectionate in the way the colonel says, "Go to fucking sleep, Watson. I'm not your blogger."

John fought a giggle. "Don't even know your name."

The last thing he remembered was the colonel lighting another cigarette. "It's Moran."

January

It took three months for John to be re-deployed; they put him up in a tiny little flat in Birmingham, and in return he tried not to terrify the neighbors. The knowledge that he was so close to London, so close to Sherlock, started out as a distraction, but before he was even unpacked he found an email waiting for him.

I know about Siberia. You are really a tremendous fool. Stay where you're put; Himself is watching.

John read it three times and then lay down on the unmade bed. Of course, if Moriarty knew that John survived he'd expect him to return to England, and if John was in England he would visit Sherlock--it would be walking into a trap. He waited three days to reply Doesn't mean I don't miss the skull and Sherlock didn't even dignify that with an answer.

(John didn't know what kind of security Sherlock had, if the only thing that kept Moriarty from putting a single bullet in that beautiful mind was the love of the fucking game. Sherlock certainly didn't offer details and John didn't want to ask; it would only make him worry, and he didn't have room in his head for that and the mission at the same time.)

Convalescence this time was worse than ever; John suspected that his wounds went deeper. He slept badly and at odd hours, got flustered in the shops just trying to buy tea; he scanned everyone he met for concealed weapons and planned terrorist attacks in his head, followed by counter-insurgency strategies. Men in stylish suits made his heart beat too fast, and he sometimes wished Moran hadn't taken his weapons away. Other times he was all too glad. The gash on his face got people's attention at first, but it healed about as cleanly as could be expected and soon he was completely anonymous, under cover in his own country.

I could murder anyone in this room and probably get away with it, John thought in a waiting room at Selly Oak, waiting to get his stitches checked. I wouldn't even need a gun.

He worried that this was what Sherlock felt all the time.

Sherlock only wrote up the two cases properly and deleted one of them later; he updated his site on an eccentric schedule and John hated that he checked it daily anyway, sometimes more than once a day. He understood that he needed action, as addicted as if it were heroin--his hand shook in Birmingham sometimes, and sometimes his leg went numb for no reason at all. But Sherlock's work was something John had enjoyed, too, something that filled up other empty spots inside him. The war on Moriarty was just psychological methadone, and he would go back to it until the mission was done, but he'd never blog about it or try to remember it later.

So he pushed himself through therapy, as hard as he dared, going off what he knew his body was capable of rather than how he felt. Moran shows up on the day of a stress test, and watched John run on a treadmill, run harder and faster until his lungs burned, run until his right leg gave out in a mass of very-not-psychosomatic cramps. Afterward, Moran took him out to eat.

"If it were up to me, you'd have another month or two of rehab," he groused, but he passed John an envelope containing two passports and a gun. "But I'm being overruled. This just came in from MI-6 and they think you're the best man for the job."

John found the plane tickets to Havana and his leg stopped even feeling stiff.

"If it were up to me, you'd be invalided, actually," Moran said, smoking trailing from his cigarette. "You're a risk to your own safety."

"If that were true, I'd have shot at Moriarty in Siberia," John said absently, perusing the passports.

Moran shook his head. "Just don't go off the grid again, you hear me? It's going to get harder from here on out and it's not worth my commission to lose you."

"You always say the nicest things to me, sir," John said.

"I've got your back if you'll let me, Watson," Moran said. "How's that?"

John pushed his plate aside and stood. "I need to pack for Havana," he said.

He slept soundly for the first time since Siberia.

August

Moran was right--it did get harder. Moriarty had apparently decided John was a proper threat, or maybe he'd just been indiscreet, building a reputation; either way, people knew his name now, and they were gunning for him from the moment he walked in the door.

Havana was a near miss, but he killed two more people and threatened the structural integrity of the government. Venezuela was closer, except he nearly got shot again and had to camp in the rain forest for a week and a half until the mercenaries backed off. He skipped Brazil and went straight to Japan, where he played the bumbling tourist by day and at night made deals with the yakuza.

For the first time he killed someone that wasn't connected to Moriarty--a Russian gangster, or maybe FSB. It was a favor to a yakuza boss, a way to get information, but it kept John up at night--the foul-smelling cigarette and the blood on the expensive leather jacket and the look of surprise behind the knock-off shades when the bullet pierced the heart. He wasn't a very nice man, he told himself, sitting in the window of his borrowed apartment while Tokyo pulsed by him.

Of course, neither are you.

He was still dancing to Moran's tune, or whoever commanded Moran; he had to abandon the trail in Japan and go to India instead. But India lead him back east, over the Chinese border, and he found himself setting up a secure internet connection for Uighur nationalists in exchange for ten minutes of internet time.

He emailed Moran, to let him know he wasn't dead. Sherlock had written to him. You are getting close again. He will not underestimate you a second time.

How do you know that? John wrote back, but his ten minutes were up and two days later he was sneaking back over the border in a truck loaded with cheap polyester nightgowns.

Moran met him again in Almaty, in a coffee shop owned by an American expat near the shopping district. "You really need to tell me that you're going off-mission before you go off-mission," he grumbled around his cigarette. "It at least allows me to pretend I've tried to stop you."

"Plausible deniability," John said, watching the shoppers on the main boulevard. A pack of student-age kids with enormous backpacks rambled up to the shop--Americans, Peace Corps volunteers, just arrived in the country and still learning the languages. He watched them spread out all over one corner of the shop and set up a forest of laptops, talking too loudly and laughing too much.

"I don't care about plausible fucking deniability, I care about your life," Moran said, in that way that made the words sound completely unfriendly. "We're not having another thing like Siberia."

John shook his head. "Do you have anything new for me or not?"

Moran shoved an envelope at him. "Nigeria. Oil again. Try not to get killed."

John thought carefully about what he'd learned in China. He thought, for some reason, about Sherlock's message. "Is this from Int Corps or MI-6?" he asked.

Moran's eyes narrowed. "MI-6. Why?"

He wasn't sure why, just that it mattered. His gut was deducing without him again. "Nothing special. Is there even a plane that goes direct from here to Abuja?"

There wasn't; it took him three days to get there, and three more to get from the capital to the oilfield hovels where the action was. Then he had three days to zero in on the details; after that was when the Golem came for him.

-\-\-\-

Moriarty was rumored to be making a deal with someone in the government and John had obtained both a powerful sniper rifle and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher; he'd prefer to do it cleanly and precisely but was willing to make a mess. He just needed the place and time, and that meant going back and forth between government offices and the poorest slums, waiting for the right person to give the right fact away.

He was posing as an aid worker, which was almost as good a cover as tourist: he was probably doing irreparable damage to Medecins Sans Frontieres in the process, but it gave him access nearly anywhere he wanted to go. (And actually helping people from time to time helped him sleep at night.) John was happy to spend an afternoon listening to asthmatic lungs and handing out antibiotics or vitamins, just to cement his cover story or for no reason at all. At one point a young man in his twenties herded a preteen boy in to have a sore checked out--just an infected bug bite, and John washed it out and prescribed erythromycin.

"Thank you, Doctor," the man said in that gorgeous lilting language that everybody insisted was English. He flashed a wide smile and herded the boy right back out, and John wouldn't have marked him at all except for a glimpse of the mobile phone in his pocket--a late-model smartphone, glossy and new. John wouldn't have even marked it in London, maybe not in Abuja, or even here in the oilfields on some consultant come from overseas. But in a clinic that catered to the poorest of the poor, on a man wearing worn Nike sneakers and slightly threadbare cargo shorts, who had to bring his son or brother to a free clinic for a minor infection--

John was made, clearly. It was just a matter of when.

He was staying in a hostel, the sort where the walls of the room didn't even go all the way up to the ceiling, and he could hear people calling back and forth through the gap, the sound of the street outside through windows that had screens but no glass. That night he went through his bedtime routine, and switched off the light as usual. He lay down on the bed, fully dressed, with a gun in his hand.

He didn't expect another abduction, because Sherlock had warned him and because it wasn't like Moriarty to repeat himself. He supposed that if Moriarty were being particularly efficient, he'd just blow up the entire hostel--perhaps the city block. But then again, he did seem to like that personal touch.

So when the door of his "room" was softly jimmied open, John remained still, tracking each heavy footfall. He needed to wait for the right angle to fire; the jacketed bullet would go straight through the assassin's skull, and he didn't want it to continue through doors and walls and window screens, though people that he couldn't see. He kept his breathing slow and even while the murderer approached, a strangely halting gait that stopped short of the bed.

Then a hand the size of a dinner plate clenched over John's face.

He had only ever seen the Golem in shifting half-light, distorted and indirect; the dim incandescent bulbs in the nearby rooms gave just enough light to limn a terribly familiar profile. John had enough sense to roll into the Golem's grip instead of away from it--he wasn't contributing an ounce of the leverage necessary to snap his own neck. He tried to press the pistol into the big man's ribs, but the Golem shifted aside and wrenched John off the bed, slamming him into the floor hard enough to smash his nose.

The world danced away from him long enough for the Golem to get his hands round John's head, in the perfect position to twist it off entirely. Long, skeletal fingers expertly found his Adam's apple and pressed in above it; he fancied he felt the moment his hyoid bone cracked. Black spots exploded in his eyes, but he still had the gun in his hand--the Golem either hadn't noticed or didn't think John would be able to get a shot off in this position, pinned to the floor by a man a foot taller and struggling to draw a breath.

When he'd landed, the pistol had been pinned partway under his body. He thrashed against the Golem's grip, enough to get his arm all the way under, to position the gun under his opposite armpit.

He honestly had no idea where it was pointing when he pulled the trigger, but it was his only chance to stay alive.

The sound of the shut was muffled by his clothes; he felt the bullet groove along his ribs, but the rush of hot blood that followed wasn't entirely his own. The Golem groaned and swore in Czech, and his grip shifted, enough for John to twist around and make another ridiculous across-the-body shot. This one hit home, too, and the Golem's cry was just vowel sounds now, less human than animal.

He didn't let up the pressure, though; maybe adrenaline was helping him overcome blood loss and pain, but for a moment John's vision went black and he found the thought in his head was not: God, let me live.

It was: Sherlock, I'm sorry.

The hostel room flickered around him, like badly-spliced film, and suddenly the Golem's weight shifted and his grip slipped. Just enough for John to suck in a thin ribbon of precious oxygen.

Just enough for John to whip his gun around the other side and smash it into the Golem's temple.

The big hands went slack and John scrambled away, muscles spasming, gasping for air and gagging on blood from his broken nose. The first thing he saw when his vision cleared was the Golem crawling towards him like some kind of malevolent spider, dragging one leg limply.

John didn't dare shoot at this angle, so he flipped his grip on his gun and slammed it down on the Golem's hand as soon as it was within reach. The bones splintered, and the Golem howled, and reached for John with the other hand. John dodged it, and while the big man is still off-balance he lunged forward and slammed the gun down again, on his head.

And again.

And again.

Again.

His arm was in perpetual motion, not even conscious or planned. He split the Golem's skull like a piece of fruit, shattered the mandible and crushed the cervical vertebrae. There were people pounding on the door of his cubicle, but it was only when they got it open and the light flooded in that he stopped, really stopped, and looked at what he'd done.

The police hadn't arrived yet--might not arrive at all in this neighborhood--and when John raised the gun the hostel residents backed away from him. They let him walk out of the room, out of the building, out of town--John thought he might be in shock, but he didn't stop walking, not until he found himself on a muddy river bank, somewhere between the Niger and the sea.

It was weirdly symbolic, diving into the river to wash away the blood and powder. It was symbolic and unhygienic. It also didn't work.

John sat down in the mud and checked his own injuries--broken nose, moderate airway trauma, a shallow laceration where the bullet grazed him. Swallowing hurt, but he could breathe normally enough. The gun was a lost cause, though--too many delicate parts damaged, the frame itself bent. On the horizon, plumes of fire belch out of the oilfields, excess methane burning like an offering.

That was how Moran found him at daybreak. He didn't say anything at first, just crouched down in the mud next to him and let out a slow, deep breath. His face looked oddly white under its tan. "Jesus, John," he said, eventually.

"Are you going to section me?" John asked. It didn't sound like his voice. He was vaguely aware it might never sound like his voice again.

"I should do," Moran said. He fumbled for one of his cigarettes. "I should haul you in and lock you up somewhere. Your own safety. Everyone else's."

"But you won't," John said. If Moran was going to stop him, he wouldn't have come alone.

Moran got the cigarette lit and sucked in the smoke, let it out a gray plume that matched the firey ones far away. "No," he said. "I won't."

John looked at the ruined gun in his hands. It was still splattered with blood and hair and brains; he hadn't seen the point in cleaning it. "I could kill you," he said, surprised by how calm it came out.

Moran stared at him for a minute, then said, "But you won't."

John nodded. "No, I won't."

Moran finished his cigarette while the sun rose, and when he tugged on John's arm, John climbed unsteadily to his feet, and let himself be lead to the car waiting further down the banks.

September

They stowed him away on Gibraltar for nearly a month: it was partly the international incident--a dead Czech, a fake passport and a rocket launcher are not things one wants to leave in one's hotel room overseas--and partly it was the injuries, the infection that set in from the dirty river water. They kept testing him for everything from HIV to cryptosporidium, just in case, and debated whether it was worth the effort of plastic surgery for his nose.

John went mad in Gibraltar; later he ascribed it to a combination of fever and antimalarials and over two years of service that hadn't been about Queen or country for a long, long time. John had hallucinations of Moriarty and of Sherlock, he screamed at nurses and he tried to take out his IVs and palm his pills. Toward the end he got hold of a laptop and hid in an empty room, composing an epic, agrammatical email he had a feeling Sherlock might not even read, confessing every murder, all he'd done and failed to do. I did this for you, I did it because I needed to be out here, you don't need me in London and I needed to keep you safe but now I think I need you and I don't know if you'd want me anymore like this, I've killed twenty-nine people and I'm not the man I was, please tell me I can come back home.

When he didn't get a response for a few days, he checked the website--nothing particularly interesting, not even Sherlock snarking at people in the forums. He posted a carefully anonymized comment. Please answer.

He came out of the episode feeling empty and off-balance, cold inside despite the Mediterranean sun. His doctors gave him a clean bill of health--no surgery for the nose, just a new bump in the middle--and Moran stared at him for a long time before he delievered new orders. "Are you going to be able to do this?" he asked.

"I haven't got a choice," John said. He'd decided that, in the dark of night, when he was no longer seeing movement in every corner. He would see this thing through to the end, because it was his duty. Whether he ate his sidearm afterward would be a problem to address at the appropriate time.

Moran finally handed over the file. "Fine. Happy birthday. You're going back to Camp Bastion."

John looked at the date and realized, oh, right, he'd turned forty. Then he looked at the file, at glossy photographs of men in turbans with Kalashnikov rifles and a familiar arid landscape. "What do the Taliban want with him?"

"From the sound of things? To burn down most of Kabul."

Before John left for Afghanistan--again--he checked his email. Sherlock had actually responded to one of his forum posts: Who are you?

But in the email, there was a single line. You are and remain one of the finest men I have ever known.

John boarded his flight telling himself that this was enough.

October

Afghanistan this time round was sort of like therapy; he wasn't alone there. They issued him tags and uniforms that said STANLEY and he commanded a proper SAS team--three handsome young things who looked at him with awe when he performed an emergency tracheotomy and teased him about being short. He was still chasing Moriarty--they were chasing him, one lead at a time--but something about the uniforms, the field rations, the rules of engagement, all reminded John of what he was supposed to be doing here, who he was meant to be.

(It was like moving into Baker Street, a little: he'd stopped stewing over himself when he had Sherlock to mind. His three lads together were less work that Sherlock on a good day, and no fit replacement, but they teased him about being short and invited him to play football and saluted him like he deserved it, which made him wish he did.)

Of course, it pretty quickly became obvious that while the Taliban were determined to blow up quite a bit of government real estate, they didn't need Moriarty's help to do it--and anyway, it wasn't his style, the ideology without the payout. It wasn't fun enough for him. John and his lads stopped the plot anyway in a thirty-six hour operation that involved twenty local police, half a million in counterfeit euros, the complicity of a local television station and two donkeys, and at one point in the middle of the madness one them (his men, not the donkeys) looked at John with wide eyes and said,

"Okay, admit it. You're the fuckin' Doctor, aren't you? Matt Smith dies this Christmas and turns into you."

He didn't ever want to be a legend. "In arduis fidelis," he muttered, and shot a man who was sneaking up behind him.

He slept for fourteen hours after that mess, then found his way to a computer and started writing up a message to Moran asking for new orders. Before he clicked SEND, though, a message popped up saying he had a new email. Not from Sherlock, though. Unknown address.

John clicked on it, leaving his message to Moran in the drafts.

Moriarty is in Switzerland. An American C-130 cargo plane is prepared to take off from Camp Leatherneck in three hours. The crew have been advised to expect you and transport you to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, from where you will be free to go. The passphrase is Reichenbach. Do not inform anyone of the contents of this message.

John looked at the message until his eyes burned, going over the word choice, the originating IP address, the font. It could all be an elaborate ruse, a trick, a trap. There could be an assassin waiting for him as soon as he stepped onto the airstrip.

He checked Sherlock's blog, he scoured the news, he did everything he could think of from the internet to find one scrap of evidence--there was some kind of conference going on in Geneva, the sort of thing where Bill Gates and Bono lecture politicians about things and then everyone goes out for drinks after. Some entrepeneur John had never heard of was supposed to be showing off new water purification technology. Security was supposed to be phenomenally high.

That sounded like loads more fun that Kabul, really.

He left his tags and his beret on his bunk, but he took his pistol and the mobile phone he'd been hiding under his mattress for six weeks. Nobody saw him stroll onto the airfield, but he forwarded an article about the summit to Sherlock, just in case.

Part Two