Fic: One More Miracle (5/11)
Title: One More Miracle (5/11)
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Sherlock/John, Mycroft Holmes, OMCs
Warning: None
Rating: R
Summary: Six weeks ago, Sherlock went to finish off Mrs Moriarty - leaving John and their daughter behind. Again. This time, though, John's the one with the secret, and John's getting tired of waiting for Sherlock Holmes. Part Three of the Heart ‘Verse.
A/N: Thanks to dduane for her help with Dublin, where I have never been and yet still felt compelled to write. The pub John visits is loosely based on McDaid’s in Dublin. Any differences between the actual McDaid’s and really anything in Ireland can be attributed to the fact that this is an AU in which men get pregnant, and should not be a reflection on Diane’s awesome assistance.
My apologies for those who were waiting in vain this morning for today’s chapter; my fault entirely, a combination of sleeping in, spring break, and toddler sons who demand attention. I’ll try to do better with posting the last half of the story on time! (And no, I never mind ANYONE asking me or sending me pokes to post!)
Chapter One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four
Chapter Five
When the black car pulled up opposite John as he stood at the kerb just outside Dublin Airport, he stared for a moment, trying to decide if he was surprised or not.
“What the hell,” he sighed finally, and climbed inside. When he saw Mycroft sitting on the far end of the seat, he instantly thought of Emily, and the vast number of disasters that might have occurred which would have prompted Mycroft to fetch him at the airport.
But no. Mycroft was quite calmly reading a newspaper, turning pages casually, and seeing this, Mycroft in his normal habits, did more to calm John’s worries than anything else.
“John,” said Mycroft pleasantly.
“What, there’s no abandoned car-parks in Dublin? Dilapidated warehouses? Dark alleyways suitable for sinister meetings?”
Mycroft turned a page of his newspaper. “Pleasant flight?”
“Lovely. There was time for peanuts.”
“If you’d wanted to travel incognito, there are better ways of doing it,” said Mycroft. “One of which involves not traveling under your actual name.”
John grinned. “How long did your men follow Harry before they figured it out?”
Mycroft folded the newspaper and settled it on his lap. “You could always have asked me for assistance.”
John snorted. “Hullo, Mycroft, I need to talk to your brother while he’s off faffing about trying to save my life. Mind telling me where he is?”
“I could have arranged for a message-”
“That’s why I didn’t contact you, Mycroft. I don’t want Sherlock getting a message. I’ve had enough of messages. I want to-”
John broke off. Mycroft was giving him a very Mycroftian look - the sort that said “I am only humoring you, in fact I know every detail of what you are supposing and finding it all quite amusing”.
“Do you know where Sherlock is?” asked John shortly.
Mycroft rustled the paper on his lap. “Ah.”
John frowned and waited.
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty-”
“Piss off, Mycroft,” said John. “This is me asking. You’ve done enough to fuck up my life in the last couple of years, I think you owe me.”
Mycroft cleared his throat. “Sherlock went off the grid 27 hours ago. He was meant to contact me three hours ago. He did not.”
Mycroft was calm in saying it. He could have been stating that Sherlock was, in fact, driving the car and that it really wasn’t of any great concern. But John looked hard at him, and saw the tick in his jaw, the way his fingers tapped against the newspaper, the dark circles under his eyes, and the slight elongation of his earlobe, as if he’d only recently been pulling on it.
Mycroft might have been calm. But he was very, very worried.
John was very careful - he didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t change his breathing pattern. He didn’t so much as twitch a finger. But every single bit of his attention went straight to the bond knot, checking it carefully. It still held. Sherlock was still alive. John was sure of it.
“All right,” said John carefully. “Where was he going?”
Mycroft shook his head, and with a single look at John’s expression, spoke quickly. “Ireland. I don’t know specifics. He was not terribly forthcoming.”
John nodded, somehow believing him. “Do you think I know something you don’t?”
“Dr Watson,” said Mycroft dryly, and John almost smiled at the use of his title, “I think you know many things I do not.” He shuffled the newspaper again, and pulled out a large envelope. “Sherlock has gone off the grid previously. It was a near-constant state during his first…absence, I suppose we could call it. He did so less often recently, but it was not uncommon. What is uncommon is the length, and the fact that he has neglected to check in.”
“Neglected,” John interrupted. “As in, you think he’s fine and he just hasn’t got around to telling you yet.”
“Precisely.”
“That’s not like Sherlock.”
“That’s exactly like Sherlock.”
“Sherlock, not learn something fascinating and want to share it with me immediately?” said John.
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “Not you, John. Me. And Sherlock very rarely shares anything of such import with me.”
John bit his lip, and nodded his head. “Fair enough. What’s in the file?”
Mycroft handed it to him. “Everything we know about Nola Moriarty. As you have recently returned from Spain, I suspect much of this will be known to you.”
“And you brought it to me yourself. I’m touched.” John opened the envelope and peered at the papers inside.
“Certain people needed to be reassured that you are well and have not lost your senses,” said Mycroft dryly.
John glanced up at him. “Aurora.”
Mycroft shrugged.
“So you want me to follow Sherlock’s trail and find him?”
“More importantly, John, I think you do. Or you would not have engineered your escape from the estate in order to do so.”
Mycroft reached into his briefcase again, and this time pulled out John’s Sig.
“Ah,” said John, eyeing the gun.
“I know I shouldn’t have to remind you of the various implications should you be arrested with it,” said Mycroft. “My influence only extends so far.”
John slid the gun into its usual place at the small of his back. “Any hope that the lovely Emma has made a reservation for me to sleep somewhere?”
“And here you were, trying to be self-sufficient.”
“Sod self-sufficient, if I’m going to do your work for you, you’ll be footing the bill,” said John, and Mycroft actually smiled. John emptied the envelope onto his lap. Papers: a birth certificate, school records, travel itineraries. John frowned. “Mycroft - these are all forty years old. You’re honestly telling me you don’t have anything recent on her?”
“It would appear that Nola Moriarty is quite good at hiding in the shadows,” said Mcyroft dryly. “Need I remind you what James was capable of doing with the public record? Simply obtaining these documents was complicated enough.”
“I’m sure,” muttered John, and scanned them. “Father Niall; her mother died in childbirth.”
“Yes.”
“Employment contracts for a succession of nannies from her birth to age thirteen. Excellent marks at school, but she left uni after a few years without a degree.”
“Your point?” asked Mycroft.
John set down the papers. “My point is that this all sounds very familiar. As you should know.”
“I know,” said Mycroft softly. “It’s Sherlock, played thirty years earlier.”
“Yes,” said John, and he rifled through the papers again, agitated without quite knowing why. “There’s nothing in here about what happened after Spain.”
“You’ll find the death certificates for Mario and Diego-”
“But that was in Spain. I’m talking about when she returned to Ireland afterwards. You’ve got every move she made until the day they died, but you don’t even have that she came back here.”
“There are no records of her return.”
“Well, she’s not in Spain. The people in Roses said she returned here.” John frowned. “Sherlock thought she returned here, or he wouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
“Well,” said Mycroft. “I have very seldom been able to comprehend the actions my brother seemed to believe were obvious.”
John rifled through the papers again, and the photograph slipped from his lap. John reached down to pick it up, and paused.
Emily, sitting in the gardens on Aurora’s lap. Aurora held her granddaughter closely, their eyes closed, clearly giving and receiving comfort from each other. Emily’s dark curls were in chaos around her face, and John thought he could see the faint dampness under her eyes. There was a bruise on her arm that he didn’t recognize, and a scrape on her knee that he did. John knew the story of the scrape; Emily had tried to climb a tree three days before, and the branch had given way. She’d cried for exactly two seconds and then ran off before he’d even had a chance to kiss it better. The bruise was probably the result of a fall, and the fact that John didn’t know its story hurt in a way that was new.
“Clever of you to hide the note in the teapot.”
“Yes, well.”
“That I would look after Emily, of course, never needed to be spelled out.”
“You have a tendency to take instructions out of context,” said John, still looking at the photograph. “I didn’t really want there to be any doubt, in case neither Sherlock nor I returned.”
“Doubt about Emily’s care, you mean.”
“It’s always about Emily.”
“She’s rather upset with you, but otherwise quite well.”
John looked at the photo, of his daughter and her grandmother close together. It was impossible to look at it; it was impossible to look away, and all he wanted to do was to wipe away the tear that threatened to fall from his daughter’s cheek, to kiss her and tell her he was there.
He’d already spent two days away from her, and here was proof that she was living without him, getting scrapes and bruises and crying and laughing and he had no idea what the stories were.
That’s why Sherlock didn’t want to know about her, thought John, and the realization cut deep. Because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, and knowing he had no choice would have driven him mad.
Mycroft cleared his throat. “She seems to think you have gone to fetch Sherlock for her.”
John slid the photograph into his coat pocket and looked Mycroft in the eye.
“That’s because I have.”
*
The place to start was with Niall Moriarty.
The problem was finding anything about him. Finding him was easy. The man had been dead for forty years; he hadn’t moved from the cemetery in which he’d been buried. John didn’t think he’d actually find anyone in Dublin who remembered him. But he’d been wealthy enough, a prominent business man according to the papers Mycroft had supplied. John thought he’d find some mention of the man in newspaper accounts from the day. A morning in the library, scrolling through microfiche at grainy images of newspapers from forty and fifty years previously showed no mention of the man.
John rethought his plan of attack, and went out on the streets to visit the actual storefronts. He learned two things: most of the stores Niall Moriarty had owned no longer existed - and that they’d all been located in the same area, close enough to a touristy shopping district that John heard just as many European and British accents as he did Irish.
By the time John finished his walk, it was well past tea time, and he was hungry and tired and thirsty and far more turned around than he had any right to be, having lived in London for the past six years. The streets were tight and tiny, the buildings towering overhead, and he into the first pub he saw that was actually recognizable as a pub, tucked in between two plain-looking buildings as it were more a reminder of how a pub ought to look than actual pub.
The bartender was busy with customers when John walked in, which gave John enough time for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, and allowed him to scope the pub for likely acquaintances. There weren’t many - the average age of the pub skewed younger than Niall Moriarty, though a bit older than John. The pub itself was the sort of dark-paneled charming-cheerful that John recognized - perhaps pubs all over the world followed the same decorating pattern - with the name stenciled on the mirror behind the bar, and framed by lights and bottles of various alcohols.
“All right, mate?” asked the bartender.
“A pint,” said John automatically. The drink was halfway to his lips before he remembered the baby, a bit like a half-remembered dream from several weeks before. Beer had less alcoholic content than wine; a glass of wine per week was perfectly reasonable during pregnancy. John considered, and took a sip anyway, but couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that Sherlock was somewhere, disapproving.
That’s my child’s brain cells you’re destroying, Sherlock told John.
Shut up, wanker, thought John in response, and his next sip was defiant.
“You look like a man with the world of guilt on his shoulders,” said the bartender.
John set the glass back down on the counter, glad for the excuse to stop drinking for the moment. The bartender had left the discussion at the far end of the pub, and leaned against the counter, drying a glass with a hand-towel. He actually appeared curious and sympathetic, and the combination was enough of a cliché that John wanted to laugh.
“You’re not wrong,” said John. “Don’t suppose there’s a menu back there?”
“Not as such. The burgers are good, if you’re hungry. Skip the chips, though. I’ll get you a packet of crisps.”
“Ta.”
The bartender went to put in the order, and returned with another wet glass. “Haven’t been long in Dublin, have you?”
John nearly choked on his drink. “How did you know that?”
“I’ve seen plenty,” said the bartender. He reached over his hand. “Tom.”
“John.”
“Cead mile failte, John. When did you arrive and how long until we see your back?”
John chuckled. “In other words, ‘Hello, Brit, how long have you been here and when do you get the fock out’?”
“There are those who would interpret it that way, aye.” But Tom’s eyes smiled, and John grinned at him in appreciation. “As long as you have euros....”
“I do.”
“Then by all means, spend your whole holiday here.”
“My bondmate does that,” said John, lifting up his drink again. “Looks at someone and know things.”
“Did they now? Learned it off a website, I did.”
John tried not to laugh through the alcohol. Christ, Sherlock, I just found the one man in Ireland who read your website.
“Useful trick, but didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know from working back here,” continued Tom. “Your mate in town with you?”
“No,” said John. “I’m here looking for him. Looking for the people he was looking for, really. Names of Niall and Nola Moriarty? Father and daughter, Niall died about forty years ago but lived and worked near here….”
John’s voice trailed off; Tom had stiffened the moment after he’d said their names. He set the glass down on the counter carefully, took a breath, and pushed away slowly.
“Is that so. Can’t say I’ve heard the names before. Think I’ll check on your meal, mate,” he said, and left, quickly, into the back kitchen.
John watched the door to the kitchens swing back and forth. Tom wasn’t the only one who could pick up on cues; the order had only just gone in, and John doubted the kitchen worked that quickly.
He had the very clear idea that it might be better to not wait for his meal.
John pulled a twenty out of his wallet and left it on the counter under his glass. More than necessary for the beer, but enough to hopefully cover the meal he wasn’t going to eat, either. And anyway, Tom had inadvertently given John warning just as much as he’d threatened him.
It was barely half past six, but the storm clouds covering the city made it feel like twilight. John turned his collar up against the cold and moved quickly down the street. Back to the hotel, he supposed - the day’s search hadn’t really turned anything up…except it had, in a strange way. Whoever Niall Moriarty had been in life, he’d been effectively wiped away after his death, to the point that mere mention of his name was enough to frighten bartenders into some kind of nervous action.
John didn’t put much on his chances of finding anyone willing to talk about the man anytime soon - not if the bartender had been that unnerved by the mere mention of his name.
John could see the hotel when the van pulled up alongside him, and suddenly he found himself accompanied by two men wearing dark hoodies and placid expressions.
“Fancy a ride, mate?” asked the man on the left - blue eyes, dark blond hair, rugged and about three stone heavier than John, most of which was muscle.
“No thanks,” said John pleasantly. “I’ve got a mate already, and he’s a better-looking bloke than you.”
“Told you he weren’t coming quiet-like,” said the man to the other bloke, and John really ought to have expected the bag that went over his head as he was tossed unceremoniously into the back of the van. His head hit the metalwork on the side; he only dimly heard the doors slam beside him. The tires squealed and John rolled as the van sped down the road.
John wondered if anyone had seen the kidnapping. Surely someone might be calling the police right now…
“Oi,” called John, fuzzy and already beginning to sweat under the hood, “you could at least buckle a bloke in.”
“Shut yer hole,” growled one of the men, and the van took a corner tightly as John bounced off the side of the van again.
The van was moving quickly; John could tell by the vibrations and the sounds of the engine. The men didn’t say a word, and John tried to brace himself into the corner. It seemed to work; the next time the van turned, he managed to ride through it without toppling over.
Should have left a tenner instead of the twenty, thought John wryly.
John’s heart was pumping furiously, and he cursed himself for being so ridiculously stupid. He thought Sherlock would have cursed him as well - what kind of idiot honestly went asking everyone high and low about a man whose name was never mentioned, anyway? James Moriarty had been the spider lurking in the shadows; no one had even guessed that Nola Moriarty existed. There was no reason to imagine that family patriarch hadn’t been the same.
After what seemed like far too short of a time, the van stopped. John let the men pull him out without a fight - it was stupid to fight, when he couldn’t see and didn’t know where he was. They half carried, half pulled him along the ground. Grass, the sounds of birds, faint hint of rain in the air now. John could feel the cold on the back of his hands.
And then he heard it - a rushing, rumbling, furious sound, like a crowd of distant people applauding. The moment John had placed the sound as water, someone roughly pulled his arms behind his back and handcuffed them together. Someone else pulled the bag from his head, and he was shoved forward, so quickly he barely had a chance to realize that he stood on the edge of a precipice, looking over a short drop to the churning water below. Someone held tightly to the handcuffs, keeping him from falling, and John felt his heart surging in his chest.
Holy fuck.
“So the lads and me are wondering,” said a cheerful voice behind John, “why a Brit and fine gentleman such as yourself is askin’ after poor Niall, forty years after he’s left us to better things.”
“Genealogy?” asked John, and whoever held the handcuffs didn’t much care for the answer, because suddenly he felt himself start to lean closer to the water. John dug his toes into the grass, and tried to breathe normally.
“Think you’re clever, do ye?”
“Not much, no.”
“True enough that,” said the man thoughtfully. “So I’ll ask you again, and this time try not to be more clever than you’ve the right to be. Niall’s been dead and gone, rest his soul, why are you so interested in him and his?”
“That’s between me and Nola Moriarty,” said John.
“Hmm.”
“Don’t know who you are, do I?” challenged John. “Can’t exactly go mouthing off on private business with you.”
“True enough. But if you had private business with Mrs Moriarty, you’d know better than to go asking for her father in the pubs, wouldn’t you now?” Something shifted behind him. “Drop him in, lad.”
The grip on the handcuffs loosened. “I know about Diego!” shouted John, and he was caught up again, and pulled back entirely from the edge of the river and tossed to the grass below.
The voice came low and close to his ear - a growling, angry sort of sound. “You little piece of traitorous shite-”
Someone broke in, timid and afraid. “Dougal-”
“Shut up!” shouted the man - Dougal, John thought. Dougal bent low over John again. “If you know about Diego then you must have been close. And if you don’t know how to reach her then you can’t be close anymore. Which makes you a traitor, I think, because the only ones who aren’t close to Nola Moriarty are dead. So we might as well just expedite what was previously neglected, don’t you think?”
“Fuck off,” said John into the grass, choking for air.
“Fock off-?” repeated Dougal, incredulous - and then stopped.
Everything stopped, John thought. Dougal above him, his hot and heavy breath on the back of his neck, the sound of his companion moving as though unsure how to participate, the birds singing in the trees that surrounded them. The only sound John could hear was the continuous rushing of the river.
And something softer, something quick and sharp, as if Dougal was sniffing him.
“You little-” said Dougal, wondrously, and he was off John like a rocket. “You’re focking breeding.”
John coughed with the sudden influx of cold air into his lungs. There was a clinking sound, and John saw the keys to the handcuffs thrown on the grass near his chest.
“Dougal!”
“I can’t kill a fockin’ omega who’s gone up the pole,” snapped Dougal.
“Mrs M said-"
“I have standards.”
“We can’t just leave him, he’ll talk.” The kid was visably nervous; John fumbled in the grass for a moment until he heard the telltale click, just as Dougal turned on him again.
“You. Get out of Dublin in 24 hours or I’ll send someone who doesn’t have the scruples I do.”
“Dougal…” said the young man again.
“What?” shouted Dougal as he rounded on the kid, clearly annoyed with the entire situation. He didn’t see John coming, and less than two minutes after he’d been pushing John Watson into the ground, Dougal found himself in a similar position, reversed.
“Hello, Dougal,” said John, as he straddled Dougal’s backside. He pointed Dougal’s gun at the other man, whose hands were already up in surrender. “We’ll give your mother credit for teaching you scruples. Your father ought to have taught you never to turn your back on an enemy, though.”
“Piss off,” said Dougal into the grass.
“Plan on it,” said John. “After you take me to Nola Moriarty.”
Dougal didn’t say anything. John cocked the gun.
“I trust you have a way to contact her?” asked John. “Mobile phone, text, writing in the sky?”
“Don’t answer,” said Dougal.
John pressed the gun next to Dougal’s ear.
“Yes,” said the man, eyes wide. Dougal groaned.
“The thing is,” said John, “I had a rather enlightening conversation with Mrs Moriarty a few months ago. And I’ve had some time to think about it, and there’s a few things I’d like to add. I’m sure she’d like to hear them, so perhaps you should ask her. The name’s John Watson. Go on, I’ll wait.”
The man glanced between John and Dougal, and after a moment, Dougal nodded his head just enough. The man, hands shaking, pulled a mobile from his pocket.
“Er,” said the man into the mobile after a few moments. “There’s a man here who says he wants a word with Mrs M. Name’s John Watson. He - ah - he has a gun on Dougal.”
There was some violent shrieking on the other end of the line, and John tried not to grin.
“Could you just go and ask?” groaned the man, and he turned back to John. “He’s going to ask.”
“Oh, good,” said John pleasantly.
It was a tense few moments that John thoroughly enjoyed before someone started barking orders through the mobile again.
“All right,” said the man, and he took a step forward. “I’m supposed to give it to you.”
John kept the gun on Dougal, and reached for the mobile. “John Watson speaking.”
“Hello, Mr Watson,” said a smooth and familiar voice, the Irish accent slightly more pronounced than John remembered. “You understand of course that I need to ensure it is you and not an imposter.”
“Oh, of course.”
“Then you’ll remember what I said to you, in regards to my son.”
John gritted his teeth. “That your son had Sherlock’s attention for the last four years. That Sherlock had chosen James over me.”
Nola Moriarty chuckled. “Give the phone to Dougal, if you would be so kind?”
John set the phone down on Dougal’s ear, and after a moment, Dougal bit out a, “Yes, ma’am.” He jerked his head, indicating he was done with the call, and John closed the mobile and tossed it back to the other man.
“Excellent,” said John. “I suppose this means we’re going for a ride.”
*
Dougal wanted to blindfold him. John politely refused.
“Look,” he said patiently. “Either your boss is going to kill me when I get there, which means I’m never going to tell anyone where I’ve been anyway, or she’s going to let me walk away, which means she doesn’t care if I do. So there isn’t much point in blindfolding me.”
“Ye’ve got a mouth on ye, don’t ye?” snapped Dougal.
“I’m also the one with the gun. Drive the fucking van, all right?”
John had lost all track of time; it was somewhere in the middle of the night when they cleared Dublin, and the sky was already beginning to lighten before they reached their destination. John gazed out of the windows, bleary-eyed and exhausted, his stomach slowly rolling the forced wakefulness of the past few hours, the constant tension of worry for Emily and Sherlock, and the after bite of adrenaline from his kidnapping and desperate bid not to be tossed into a river. They’d stopped for petrol once, and John had bought a stack of sandwiches and tea with some of the dwindling stack of Euros. Dougal had refused anything, mostly out of pique; the other chap had eaten three in quick succession.
Dougal had remained awake, staring with a seething hatred at John. After the first few hours, and the sandwiches, the other man had started to talk to John. It was music at first, as they talked about the songs on the radio. Then movies, then books, then schooling, and little by little, John worked to gain his trust. His name was Toph, short for Christopher, and he was younger than he looked, no more than 25. Alpha, recently mated, mate was pregnant and due in three weeks. They had a dog and a cat and a flat with a garden and Toph thought his job was grand, didn’t he get to have adventures every night now, and if there was a little bit of roughing up of innocent folks on the side, well now, not everyone was always as innocent as they seemed. Toph figured they got what came to those who didn’t pay attention - present company begging his pardon, of course.
Dougal watched, and John had no doubt that the older man knew exactly what John was doing, and he didn’t care. John didn’t know what he’d find when face to face with Nola Moriarty, and if knowing a little bit about Toph meant a few extra seconds before his head was shot clean off, then John would take them. There was a lot one could do in such a short amount of time.
“We’re almost there,” said Toph, as the sky turned a steel grey. They were near the sea, running alongside it with the sunrise behind them. John stared out at the landscape, green and verdant and picture-postcard-perfect. When he saw the grey stone castle at the end of the road, he started to wonder if he was driving into a fairy tale.
Toph pulled the car up to the door and waited, not moving. Behind them, Dougal remained tense, his hands lightly on his knees, and John wrapped his hand more securely around the handle of his gun.
After a moment, the door opened, and a man stepped outside, wearing dark trousers and a dark jumper over a collared white shirt and dark tie. His hair was slicked back, not a lock out of place, and he had a moustache which gave him an old-fashioned, proper air. He stepped smartly to the car and pulled open John’s door.
“Mr Watson, if you please,” he said, and John slid out of the car with barely a backwards glance at Toph or Dougal. As soon as he slammed the door shut, Toph drove the car away. John began to shiver; they were close enough to the sea that the wind was fierce and bitingly cold. John thought he could feel shards of ice strike the exposed skin on his neck, face, and hands. But despite the light clothing, the other man didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold at all.
“Follow me,” said the man.
“And you are?”
“The butler, sir.”
“I’ll just call you Jeeves, then?”
“As you like,” said Jeeves indifferently, and John followed him into the castle, but didn’t let go of his gun.
The last time John had been in a castle was on a school field trip when he was ten. He didn’t remember much, except rough-housing with the other lads and shooting spitballs at the girls, endeavoring to make as much of a nuisance as he could. Colin had been particularly good at that. This castle looked much the same: fancy tapestries on the walls, interspersed with overly ornate furniture and grandiose portraits of people in historical clothing. John thought he spied a few faces that bore family resemblances to James Moriarty, had Moriarty ever worn ruffled collars and velvet waistcoats.
“Sir,” said Jeeves, ushering John into an antechamber. It reminded John of the sitting room at Aurora’s estate: a warm rug on the floor, furniture that was more to scale, heavy damask curtains, and a fireplace on the far end, where chairs and a table were already arranged as if for tea. A fire roared merrily away, and John went to it automatically, holding his hands out for warmth.
“Please wait here,” said Jeeves. “Someone will be with you shortly.”
John looked over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, could I trouble you-”
But Jeeves had shut the door, and was gone. John was alone.
“For nothing at all, never mind me,” muttered John, and turned back to the fire to warm himself up. It didn’t take long. He had just started to wonder if he should go looking for Nola herself when the door opened again, and Jeeves re-entered, carrying a tray laden with plates and things for tea.
“Mrs Moriarty was concerned you would require nourishment,” he said, and set the tray carefully on the table nearest the fire.
“That’s nice of her,” said John dryly. “I like a meal before I’m set on fire, you know.”
“One usually does,” said Jeeves, without so much as a blink, and John wondered what it would take to unnerve the man. Jeeves banked the fire expertly while John examined the tray. Tea, milk, sugar, lemon, several biscuits, toast both dry and buttered, small pots of Marmite and jam, and under a metal dome, an omelet with cheese and peppers and a few potatoes and tomatoes resting on a lettuce leaf. There were even small shakers of salt and pepper, and the strong scent of the eggs hit John and his stomach rolled. He dropped the dome back on the tray and picked up a piece of toast to shove in his mouth before he became sick.
“I’m assuming she hasn’t poisoned any of it.”
“Of course not, sir,” said Jeeves, having finished the fire. “Mrs Moriarty much prefers a direct approach.”
John snorted and sat down on the arm of the nearest chair. “Yeah, I suppose poison is a bit chancy. Maybe I’ve spent a decade building up an immunity to iocane powder.”
Jeeves blinked, and John thought he saw the butler’s mouth twitch. He counted it as a victory.
“Have you, sir?” he inquired pleasantly. “If so, I should make a note of it.”
“What do you think?”
Jeeves smiled at him - not a pleasant smile, exactly, more like one that he put on for form’s sake - and left the room.
John kept chewing on the toast. After a slice and a half, he went to look out the window.
The sun was fully up now, shining on the white-washed sea. The mist was heavy; John couldn’t quite tell where the sea ended and the sky began. He blinked, almost reminded of something, as if he’d seen such a sight before.
I don’t know what it was like, for you. I thought…I thought you would be going through what I went through, being apart. The loneliness and the empty nights and the way my brain never quite settled. I thought it would be the same. But it wasn’t, for you. You had Emily. You haven’t forgiven me. I can go away again…
John shook his head. “Stop it,” he muttered, half to the Sherlock in his head, and half to himself, and then squinted out of the window again. But the view didn’t change, except to grow lighter as the sun rose, and finally John left the window and returned to the chairs by the fire. He sat down, despite his skin itching and his muscles twitching with anticipation, and he stretched out his legs and folded his hands above his stomach.
The fire crackled pleasantly. The chair was soft and molded perfectly to his body. The room was warm, and John’s stomach no longer rolled and rebelled. John watched the fire, tried to imagine where Sherlock could be, and slowly closed his eyes in sleep.
*
“John,” said Sherlock, somewhere just out of reach. John thought if he could just stretch a little further, he’d be able to touch him, grab hold of Sherlock’s hand as he fell, swing him up safely from the ground which was startlingly close.
“John,” said Sherlock, and John kept looking, over and over, and felt like he was looking in the same box over and over again.
Chapter Six
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Sherlock/John, Mycroft Holmes, OMCs
Warning: None
Rating: R
Summary: Six weeks ago, Sherlock went to finish off Mrs Moriarty - leaving John and their daughter behind. Again. This time, though, John's the one with the secret, and John's getting tired of waiting for Sherlock Holmes. Part Three of the Heart ‘Verse.
A/N: Thanks to dduane for her help with Dublin, where I have never been and yet still felt compelled to write. The pub John visits is loosely based on McDaid’s in Dublin. Any differences between the actual McDaid’s and really anything in Ireland can be attributed to the fact that this is an AU in which men get pregnant, and should not be a reflection on Diane’s awesome assistance.
My apologies for those who were waiting in vain this morning for today’s chapter; my fault entirely, a combination of sleeping in, spring break, and toddler sons who demand attention. I’ll try to do better with posting the last half of the story on time! (And no, I never mind ANYONE asking me or sending me pokes to post!)
Chapter One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four
Chapter Five
When the black car pulled up opposite John as he stood at the kerb just outside Dublin Airport, he stared for a moment, trying to decide if he was surprised or not.
“What the hell,” he sighed finally, and climbed inside. When he saw Mycroft sitting on the far end of the seat, he instantly thought of Emily, and the vast number of disasters that might have occurred which would have prompted Mycroft to fetch him at the airport.
But no. Mycroft was quite calmly reading a newspaper, turning pages casually, and seeing this, Mycroft in his normal habits, did more to calm John’s worries than anything else.
“John,” said Mycroft pleasantly.
“What, there’s no abandoned car-parks in Dublin? Dilapidated warehouses? Dark alleyways suitable for sinister meetings?”
Mycroft turned a page of his newspaper. “Pleasant flight?”
“Lovely. There was time for peanuts.”
“If you’d wanted to travel incognito, there are better ways of doing it,” said Mycroft. “One of which involves not traveling under your actual name.”
John grinned. “How long did your men follow Harry before they figured it out?”
Mycroft folded the newspaper and settled it on his lap. “You could always have asked me for assistance.”
John snorted. “Hullo, Mycroft, I need to talk to your brother while he’s off faffing about trying to save my life. Mind telling me where he is?”
“I could have arranged for a message-”
“That’s why I didn’t contact you, Mycroft. I don’t want Sherlock getting a message. I’ve had enough of messages. I want to-”
John broke off. Mycroft was giving him a very Mycroftian look - the sort that said “I am only humoring you, in fact I know every detail of what you are supposing and finding it all quite amusing”.
“Do you know where Sherlock is?” asked John shortly.
Mycroft rustled the paper on his lap. “Ah.”
John frowned and waited.
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty-”
“Piss off, Mycroft,” said John. “This is me asking. You’ve done enough to fuck up my life in the last couple of years, I think you owe me.”
Mycroft cleared his throat. “Sherlock went off the grid 27 hours ago. He was meant to contact me three hours ago. He did not.”
Mycroft was calm in saying it. He could have been stating that Sherlock was, in fact, driving the car and that it really wasn’t of any great concern. But John looked hard at him, and saw the tick in his jaw, the way his fingers tapped against the newspaper, the dark circles under his eyes, and the slight elongation of his earlobe, as if he’d only recently been pulling on it.
Mycroft might have been calm. But he was very, very worried.
John was very careful - he didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t change his breathing pattern. He didn’t so much as twitch a finger. But every single bit of his attention went straight to the bond knot, checking it carefully. It still held. Sherlock was still alive. John was sure of it.
“All right,” said John carefully. “Where was he going?”
Mycroft shook his head, and with a single look at John’s expression, spoke quickly. “Ireland. I don’t know specifics. He was not terribly forthcoming.”
John nodded, somehow believing him. “Do you think I know something you don’t?”
“Dr Watson,” said Mycroft dryly, and John almost smiled at the use of his title, “I think you know many things I do not.” He shuffled the newspaper again, and pulled out a large envelope. “Sherlock has gone off the grid previously. It was a near-constant state during his first…absence, I suppose we could call it. He did so less often recently, but it was not uncommon. What is uncommon is the length, and the fact that he has neglected to check in.”
“Neglected,” John interrupted. “As in, you think he’s fine and he just hasn’t got around to telling you yet.”
“Precisely.”
“That’s not like Sherlock.”
“That’s exactly like Sherlock.”
“Sherlock, not learn something fascinating and want to share it with me immediately?” said John.
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “Not you, John. Me. And Sherlock very rarely shares anything of such import with me.”
John bit his lip, and nodded his head. “Fair enough. What’s in the file?”
Mycroft handed it to him. “Everything we know about Nola Moriarty. As you have recently returned from Spain, I suspect much of this will be known to you.”
“And you brought it to me yourself. I’m touched.” John opened the envelope and peered at the papers inside.
“Certain people needed to be reassured that you are well and have not lost your senses,” said Mycroft dryly.
John glanced up at him. “Aurora.”
Mycroft shrugged.
“So you want me to follow Sherlock’s trail and find him?”
“More importantly, John, I think you do. Or you would not have engineered your escape from the estate in order to do so.”
Mycroft reached into his briefcase again, and this time pulled out John’s Sig.
“Ah,” said John, eyeing the gun.
“I know I shouldn’t have to remind you of the various implications should you be arrested with it,” said Mycroft. “My influence only extends so far.”
John slid the gun into its usual place at the small of his back. “Any hope that the lovely Emma has made a reservation for me to sleep somewhere?”
“And here you were, trying to be self-sufficient.”
“Sod self-sufficient, if I’m going to do your work for you, you’ll be footing the bill,” said John, and Mycroft actually smiled. John emptied the envelope onto his lap. Papers: a birth certificate, school records, travel itineraries. John frowned. “Mycroft - these are all forty years old. You’re honestly telling me you don’t have anything recent on her?”
“It would appear that Nola Moriarty is quite good at hiding in the shadows,” said Mcyroft dryly. “Need I remind you what James was capable of doing with the public record? Simply obtaining these documents was complicated enough.”
“I’m sure,” muttered John, and scanned them. “Father Niall; her mother died in childbirth.”
“Yes.”
“Employment contracts for a succession of nannies from her birth to age thirteen. Excellent marks at school, but she left uni after a few years without a degree.”
“Your point?” asked Mycroft.
John set down the papers. “My point is that this all sounds very familiar. As you should know.”
“I know,” said Mycroft softly. “It’s Sherlock, played thirty years earlier.”
“Yes,” said John, and he rifled through the papers again, agitated without quite knowing why. “There’s nothing in here about what happened after Spain.”
“You’ll find the death certificates for Mario and Diego-”
“But that was in Spain. I’m talking about when she returned to Ireland afterwards. You’ve got every move she made until the day they died, but you don’t even have that she came back here.”
“There are no records of her return.”
“Well, she’s not in Spain. The people in Roses said she returned here.” John frowned. “Sherlock thought she returned here, or he wouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
“Well,” said Mycroft. “I have very seldom been able to comprehend the actions my brother seemed to believe were obvious.”
John rifled through the papers again, and the photograph slipped from his lap. John reached down to pick it up, and paused.
Emily, sitting in the gardens on Aurora’s lap. Aurora held her granddaughter closely, their eyes closed, clearly giving and receiving comfort from each other. Emily’s dark curls were in chaos around her face, and John thought he could see the faint dampness under her eyes. There was a bruise on her arm that he didn’t recognize, and a scrape on her knee that he did. John knew the story of the scrape; Emily had tried to climb a tree three days before, and the branch had given way. She’d cried for exactly two seconds and then ran off before he’d even had a chance to kiss it better. The bruise was probably the result of a fall, and the fact that John didn’t know its story hurt in a way that was new.
“Clever of you to hide the note in the teapot.”
“Yes, well.”
“That I would look after Emily, of course, never needed to be spelled out.”
“You have a tendency to take instructions out of context,” said John, still looking at the photograph. “I didn’t really want there to be any doubt, in case neither Sherlock nor I returned.”
“Doubt about Emily’s care, you mean.”
“It’s always about Emily.”
“She’s rather upset with you, but otherwise quite well.”
John looked at the photo, of his daughter and her grandmother close together. It was impossible to look at it; it was impossible to look away, and all he wanted to do was to wipe away the tear that threatened to fall from his daughter’s cheek, to kiss her and tell her he was there.
He’d already spent two days away from her, and here was proof that she was living without him, getting scrapes and bruises and crying and laughing and he had no idea what the stories were.
That’s why Sherlock didn’t want to know about her, thought John, and the realization cut deep. Because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, and knowing he had no choice would have driven him mad.
Mycroft cleared his throat. “She seems to think you have gone to fetch Sherlock for her.”
John slid the photograph into his coat pocket and looked Mycroft in the eye.
“That’s because I have.”
*
The place to start was with Niall Moriarty.
The problem was finding anything about him. Finding him was easy. The man had been dead for forty years; he hadn’t moved from the cemetery in which he’d been buried. John didn’t think he’d actually find anyone in Dublin who remembered him. But he’d been wealthy enough, a prominent business man according to the papers Mycroft had supplied. John thought he’d find some mention of the man in newspaper accounts from the day. A morning in the library, scrolling through microfiche at grainy images of newspapers from forty and fifty years previously showed no mention of the man.
John rethought his plan of attack, and went out on the streets to visit the actual storefronts. He learned two things: most of the stores Niall Moriarty had owned no longer existed - and that they’d all been located in the same area, close enough to a touristy shopping district that John heard just as many European and British accents as he did Irish.
By the time John finished his walk, it was well past tea time, and he was hungry and tired and thirsty and far more turned around than he had any right to be, having lived in London for the past six years. The streets were tight and tiny, the buildings towering overhead, and he into the first pub he saw that was actually recognizable as a pub, tucked in between two plain-looking buildings as it were more a reminder of how a pub ought to look than actual pub.
The bartender was busy with customers when John walked in, which gave John enough time for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, and allowed him to scope the pub for likely acquaintances. There weren’t many - the average age of the pub skewed younger than Niall Moriarty, though a bit older than John. The pub itself was the sort of dark-paneled charming-cheerful that John recognized - perhaps pubs all over the world followed the same decorating pattern - with the name stenciled on the mirror behind the bar, and framed by lights and bottles of various alcohols.
“All right, mate?” asked the bartender.
“A pint,” said John automatically. The drink was halfway to his lips before he remembered the baby, a bit like a half-remembered dream from several weeks before. Beer had less alcoholic content than wine; a glass of wine per week was perfectly reasonable during pregnancy. John considered, and took a sip anyway, but couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that Sherlock was somewhere, disapproving.
That’s my child’s brain cells you’re destroying, Sherlock told John.
Shut up, wanker, thought John in response, and his next sip was defiant.
“You look like a man with the world of guilt on his shoulders,” said the bartender.
John set the glass back down on the counter, glad for the excuse to stop drinking for the moment. The bartender had left the discussion at the far end of the pub, and leaned against the counter, drying a glass with a hand-towel. He actually appeared curious and sympathetic, and the combination was enough of a cliché that John wanted to laugh.
“You’re not wrong,” said John. “Don’t suppose there’s a menu back there?”
“Not as such. The burgers are good, if you’re hungry. Skip the chips, though. I’ll get you a packet of crisps.”
“Ta.”
The bartender went to put in the order, and returned with another wet glass. “Haven’t been long in Dublin, have you?”
John nearly choked on his drink. “How did you know that?”
“I’ve seen plenty,” said the bartender. He reached over his hand. “Tom.”
“John.”
“Cead mile failte, John. When did you arrive and how long until we see your back?”
John chuckled. “In other words, ‘Hello, Brit, how long have you been here and when do you get the fock out’?”
“There are those who would interpret it that way, aye.” But Tom’s eyes smiled, and John grinned at him in appreciation. “As long as you have euros....”
“I do.”
“Then by all means, spend your whole holiday here.”
“My bondmate does that,” said John, lifting up his drink again. “Looks at someone and know things.”
“Did they now? Learned it off a website, I did.”
John tried not to laugh through the alcohol. Christ, Sherlock, I just found the one man in Ireland who read your website.
“Useful trick, but didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know from working back here,” continued Tom. “Your mate in town with you?”
“No,” said John. “I’m here looking for him. Looking for the people he was looking for, really. Names of Niall and Nola Moriarty? Father and daughter, Niall died about forty years ago but lived and worked near here….”
John’s voice trailed off; Tom had stiffened the moment after he’d said their names. He set the glass down on the counter carefully, took a breath, and pushed away slowly.
“Is that so. Can’t say I’ve heard the names before. Think I’ll check on your meal, mate,” he said, and left, quickly, into the back kitchen.
John watched the door to the kitchens swing back and forth. Tom wasn’t the only one who could pick up on cues; the order had only just gone in, and John doubted the kitchen worked that quickly.
He had the very clear idea that it might be better to not wait for his meal.
John pulled a twenty out of his wallet and left it on the counter under his glass. More than necessary for the beer, but enough to hopefully cover the meal he wasn’t going to eat, either. And anyway, Tom had inadvertently given John warning just as much as he’d threatened him.
It was barely half past six, but the storm clouds covering the city made it feel like twilight. John turned his collar up against the cold and moved quickly down the street. Back to the hotel, he supposed - the day’s search hadn’t really turned anything up…except it had, in a strange way. Whoever Niall Moriarty had been in life, he’d been effectively wiped away after his death, to the point that mere mention of his name was enough to frighten bartenders into some kind of nervous action.
John didn’t put much on his chances of finding anyone willing to talk about the man anytime soon - not if the bartender had been that unnerved by the mere mention of his name.
John could see the hotel when the van pulled up alongside him, and suddenly he found himself accompanied by two men wearing dark hoodies and placid expressions.
“Fancy a ride, mate?” asked the man on the left - blue eyes, dark blond hair, rugged and about three stone heavier than John, most of which was muscle.
“No thanks,” said John pleasantly. “I’ve got a mate already, and he’s a better-looking bloke than you.”
“Told you he weren’t coming quiet-like,” said the man to the other bloke, and John really ought to have expected the bag that went over his head as he was tossed unceremoniously into the back of the van. His head hit the metalwork on the side; he only dimly heard the doors slam beside him. The tires squealed and John rolled as the van sped down the road.
John wondered if anyone had seen the kidnapping. Surely someone might be calling the police right now…
“Oi,” called John, fuzzy and already beginning to sweat under the hood, “you could at least buckle a bloke in.”
“Shut yer hole,” growled one of the men, and the van took a corner tightly as John bounced off the side of the van again.
The van was moving quickly; John could tell by the vibrations and the sounds of the engine. The men didn’t say a word, and John tried to brace himself into the corner. It seemed to work; the next time the van turned, he managed to ride through it without toppling over.
Should have left a tenner instead of the twenty, thought John wryly.
John’s heart was pumping furiously, and he cursed himself for being so ridiculously stupid. He thought Sherlock would have cursed him as well - what kind of idiot honestly went asking everyone high and low about a man whose name was never mentioned, anyway? James Moriarty had been the spider lurking in the shadows; no one had even guessed that Nola Moriarty existed. There was no reason to imagine that family patriarch hadn’t been the same.
After what seemed like far too short of a time, the van stopped. John let the men pull him out without a fight - it was stupid to fight, when he couldn’t see and didn’t know where he was. They half carried, half pulled him along the ground. Grass, the sounds of birds, faint hint of rain in the air now. John could feel the cold on the back of his hands.
And then he heard it - a rushing, rumbling, furious sound, like a crowd of distant people applauding. The moment John had placed the sound as water, someone roughly pulled his arms behind his back and handcuffed them together. Someone else pulled the bag from his head, and he was shoved forward, so quickly he barely had a chance to realize that he stood on the edge of a precipice, looking over a short drop to the churning water below. Someone held tightly to the handcuffs, keeping him from falling, and John felt his heart surging in his chest.
Holy fuck.
“So the lads and me are wondering,” said a cheerful voice behind John, “why a Brit and fine gentleman such as yourself is askin’ after poor Niall, forty years after he’s left us to better things.”
“Genealogy?” asked John, and whoever held the handcuffs didn’t much care for the answer, because suddenly he felt himself start to lean closer to the water. John dug his toes into the grass, and tried to breathe normally.
“Think you’re clever, do ye?”
“Not much, no.”
“True enough that,” said the man thoughtfully. “So I’ll ask you again, and this time try not to be more clever than you’ve the right to be. Niall’s been dead and gone, rest his soul, why are you so interested in him and his?”
“That’s between me and Nola Moriarty,” said John.
“Hmm.”
“Don’t know who you are, do I?” challenged John. “Can’t exactly go mouthing off on private business with you.”
“True enough. But if you had private business with Mrs Moriarty, you’d know better than to go asking for her father in the pubs, wouldn’t you now?” Something shifted behind him. “Drop him in, lad.”
The grip on the handcuffs loosened. “I know about Diego!” shouted John, and he was caught up again, and pulled back entirely from the edge of the river and tossed to the grass below.
The voice came low and close to his ear - a growling, angry sort of sound. “You little piece of traitorous shite-”
Someone broke in, timid and afraid. “Dougal-”
“Shut up!” shouted the man - Dougal, John thought. Dougal bent low over John again. “If you know about Diego then you must have been close. And if you don’t know how to reach her then you can’t be close anymore. Which makes you a traitor, I think, because the only ones who aren’t close to Nola Moriarty are dead. So we might as well just expedite what was previously neglected, don’t you think?”
“Fuck off,” said John into the grass, choking for air.
“Fock off-?” repeated Dougal, incredulous - and then stopped.
Everything stopped, John thought. Dougal above him, his hot and heavy breath on the back of his neck, the sound of his companion moving as though unsure how to participate, the birds singing in the trees that surrounded them. The only sound John could hear was the continuous rushing of the river.
And something softer, something quick and sharp, as if Dougal was sniffing him.
“You little-” said Dougal, wondrously, and he was off John like a rocket. “You’re focking breeding.”
John coughed with the sudden influx of cold air into his lungs. There was a clinking sound, and John saw the keys to the handcuffs thrown on the grass near his chest.
“Dougal!”
“I can’t kill a fockin’ omega who’s gone up the pole,” snapped Dougal.
“Mrs M said-"
“I have standards.”
“We can’t just leave him, he’ll talk.” The kid was visably nervous; John fumbled in the grass for a moment until he heard the telltale click, just as Dougal turned on him again.
“You. Get out of Dublin in 24 hours or I’ll send someone who doesn’t have the scruples I do.”
“Dougal…” said the young man again.
“What?” shouted Dougal as he rounded on the kid, clearly annoyed with the entire situation. He didn’t see John coming, and less than two minutes after he’d been pushing John Watson into the ground, Dougal found himself in a similar position, reversed.
“Hello, Dougal,” said John, as he straddled Dougal’s backside. He pointed Dougal’s gun at the other man, whose hands were already up in surrender. “We’ll give your mother credit for teaching you scruples. Your father ought to have taught you never to turn your back on an enemy, though.”
“Piss off,” said Dougal into the grass.
“Plan on it,” said John. “After you take me to Nola Moriarty.”
Dougal didn’t say anything. John cocked the gun.
“I trust you have a way to contact her?” asked John. “Mobile phone, text, writing in the sky?”
“Don’t answer,” said Dougal.
John pressed the gun next to Dougal’s ear.
“Yes,” said the man, eyes wide. Dougal groaned.
“The thing is,” said John, “I had a rather enlightening conversation with Mrs Moriarty a few months ago. And I’ve had some time to think about it, and there’s a few things I’d like to add. I’m sure she’d like to hear them, so perhaps you should ask her. The name’s John Watson. Go on, I’ll wait.”
The man glanced between John and Dougal, and after a moment, Dougal nodded his head just enough. The man, hands shaking, pulled a mobile from his pocket.
“Er,” said the man into the mobile after a few moments. “There’s a man here who says he wants a word with Mrs M. Name’s John Watson. He - ah - he has a gun on Dougal.”
There was some violent shrieking on the other end of the line, and John tried not to grin.
“Could you just go and ask?” groaned the man, and he turned back to John. “He’s going to ask.”
“Oh, good,” said John pleasantly.
It was a tense few moments that John thoroughly enjoyed before someone started barking orders through the mobile again.
“All right,” said the man, and he took a step forward. “I’m supposed to give it to you.”
John kept the gun on Dougal, and reached for the mobile. “John Watson speaking.”
“Hello, Mr Watson,” said a smooth and familiar voice, the Irish accent slightly more pronounced than John remembered. “You understand of course that I need to ensure it is you and not an imposter.”
“Oh, of course.”
“Then you’ll remember what I said to you, in regards to my son.”
John gritted his teeth. “That your son had Sherlock’s attention for the last four years. That Sherlock had chosen James over me.”
Nola Moriarty chuckled. “Give the phone to Dougal, if you would be so kind?”
John set the phone down on Dougal’s ear, and after a moment, Dougal bit out a, “Yes, ma’am.” He jerked his head, indicating he was done with the call, and John closed the mobile and tossed it back to the other man.
“Excellent,” said John. “I suppose this means we’re going for a ride.”
*
Dougal wanted to blindfold him. John politely refused.
“Look,” he said patiently. “Either your boss is going to kill me when I get there, which means I’m never going to tell anyone where I’ve been anyway, or she’s going to let me walk away, which means she doesn’t care if I do. So there isn’t much point in blindfolding me.”
“Ye’ve got a mouth on ye, don’t ye?” snapped Dougal.
“I’m also the one with the gun. Drive the fucking van, all right?”
John had lost all track of time; it was somewhere in the middle of the night when they cleared Dublin, and the sky was already beginning to lighten before they reached their destination. John gazed out of the windows, bleary-eyed and exhausted, his stomach slowly rolling the forced wakefulness of the past few hours, the constant tension of worry for Emily and Sherlock, and the after bite of adrenaline from his kidnapping and desperate bid not to be tossed into a river. They’d stopped for petrol once, and John had bought a stack of sandwiches and tea with some of the dwindling stack of Euros. Dougal had refused anything, mostly out of pique; the other chap had eaten three in quick succession.
Dougal had remained awake, staring with a seething hatred at John. After the first few hours, and the sandwiches, the other man had started to talk to John. It was music at first, as they talked about the songs on the radio. Then movies, then books, then schooling, and little by little, John worked to gain his trust. His name was Toph, short for Christopher, and he was younger than he looked, no more than 25. Alpha, recently mated, mate was pregnant and due in three weeks. They had a dog and a cat and a flat with a garden and Toph thought his job was grand, didn’t he get to have adventures every night now, and if there was a little bit of roughing up of innocent folks on the side, well now, not everyone was always as innocent as they seemed. Toph figured they got what came to those who didn’t pay attention - present company begging his pardon, of course.
Dougal watched, and John had no doubt that the older man knew exactly what John was doing, and he didn’t care. John didn’t know what he’d find when face to face with Nola Moriarty, and if knowing a little bit about Toph meant a few extra seconds before his head was shot clean off, then John would take them. There was a lot one could do in such a short amount of time.
“We’re almost there,” said Toph, as the sky turned a steel grey. They were near the sea, running alongside it with the sunrise behind them. John stared out at the landscape, green and verdant and picture-postcard-perfect. When he saw the grey stone castle at the end of the road, he started to wonder if he was driving into a fairy tale.
Toph pulled the car up to the door and waited, not moving. Behind them, Dougal remained tense, his hands lightly on his knees, and John wrapped his hand more securely around the handle of his gun.
After a moment, the door opened, and a man stepped outside, wearing dark trousers and a dark jumper over a collared white shirt and dark tie. His hair was slicked back, not a lock out of place, and he had a moustache which gave him an old-fashioned, proper air. He stepped smartly to the car and pulled open John’s door.
“Mr Watson, if you please,” he said, and John slid out of the car with barely a backwards glance at Toph or Dougal. As soon as he slammed the door shut, Toph drove the car away. John began to shiver; they were close enough to the sea that the wind was fierce and bitingly cold. John thought he could feel shards of ice strike the exposed skin on his neck, face, and hands. But despite the light clothing, the other man didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold at all.
“Follow me,” said the man.
“And you are?”
“The butler, sir.”
“I’ll just call you Jeeves, then?”
“As you like,” said Jeeves indifferently, and John followed him into the castle, but didn’t let go of his gun.
The last time John had been in a castle was on a school field trip when he was ten. He didn’t remember much, except rough-housing with the other lads and shooting spitballs at the girls, endeavoring to make as much of a nuisance as he could. Colin had been particularly good at that. This castle looked much the same: fancy tapestries on the walls, interspersed with overly ornate furniture and grandiose portraits of people in historical clothing. John thought he spied a few faces that bore family resemblances to James Moriarty, had Moriarty ever worn ruffled collars and velvet waistcoats.
“Sir,” said Jeeves, ushering John into an antechamber. It reminded John of the sitting room at Aurora’s estate: a warm rug on the floor, furniture that was more to scale, heavy damask curtains, and a fireplace on the far end, where chairs and a table were already arranged as if for tea. A fire roared merrily away, and John went to it automatically, holding his hands out for warmth.
“Please wait here,” said Jeeves. “Someone will be with you shortly.”
John looked over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, could I trouble you-”
But Jeeves had shut the door, and was gone. John was alone.
“For nothing at all, never mind me,” muttered John, and turned back to the fire to warm himself up. It didn’t take long. He had just started to wonder if he should go looking for Nola herself when the door opened again, and Jeeves re-entered, carrying a tray laden with plates and things for tea.
“Mrs Moriarty was concerned you would require nourishment,” he said, and set the tray carefully on the table nearest the fire.
“That’s nice of her,” said John dryly. “I like a meal before I’m set on fire, you know.”
“One usually does,” said Jeeves, without so much as a blink, and John wondered what it would take to unnerve the man. Jeeves banked the fire expertly while John examined the tray. Tea, milk, sugar, lemon, several biscuits, toast both dry and buttered, small pots of Marmite and jam, and under a metal dome, an omelet with cheese and peppers and a few potatoes and tomatoes resting on a lettuce leaf. There were even small shakers of salt and pepper, and the strong scent of the eggs hit John and his stomach rolled. He dropped the dome back on the tray and picked up a piece of toast to shove in his mouth before he became sick.
“I’m assuming she hasn’t poisoned any of it.”
“Of course not, sir,” said Jeeves, having finished the fire. “Mrs Moriarty much prefers a direct approach.”
John snorted and sat down on the arm of the nearest chair. “Yeah, I suppose poison is a bit chancy. Maybe I’ve spent a decade building up an immunity to iocane powder.”
Jeeves blinked, and John thought he saw the butler’s mouth twitch. He counted it as a victory.
“Have you, sir?” he inquired pleasantly. “If so, I should make a note of it.”
“What do you think?”
Jeeves smiled at him - not a pleasant smile, exactly, more like one that he put on for form’s sake - and left the room.
John kept chewing on the toast. After a slice and a half, he went to look out the window.
The sun was fully up now, shining on the white-washed sea. The mist was heavy; John couldn’t quite tell where the sea ended and the sky began. He blinked, almost reminded of something, as if he’d seen such a sight before.
I don’t know what it was like, for you. I thought…I thought you would be going through what I went through, being apart. The loneliness and the empty nights and the way my brain never quite settled. I thought it would be the same. But it wasn’t, for you. You had Emily. You haven’t forgiven me. I can go away again…
John shook his head. “Stop it,” he muttered, half to the Sherlock in his head, and half to himself, and then squinted out of the window again. But the view didn’t change, except to grow lighter as the sun rose, and finally John left the window and returned to the chairs by the fire. He sat down, despite his skin itching and his muscles twitching with anticipation, and he stretched out his legs and folded his hands above his stomach.
The fire crackled pleasantly. The chair was soft and molded perfectly to his body. The room was warm, and John’s stomach no longer rolled and rebelled. John watched the fire, tried to imagine where Sherlock could be, and slowly closed his eyes in sleep.
*
“John,” said Sherlock, somewhere just out of reach. John thought if he could just stretch a little further, he’d be able to touch him, grab hold of Sherlock’s hand as he fell, swing him up safely from the ground which was startlingly close.
“John,” said Sherlock, and John kept looking, over and over, and felt like he was looking in the same box over and over again.
Chapter Six