On the Eighth Day of Sherlockmas... "Bandit Queen", a gift for apple_pathways.
Author: ?
Title: Bandit Queen
A gift for: apple_pathways
Characters/Pairing: Anthea, Moriarty, Mycroft; Anthea/Moriarty, Moriarty/Moran
Category: Het
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: descriptions of violence
Summary: She works for them - with them - both, and they each offer her countless opportunities. For Jim, she’s a gunhand and something like a friend, for Mycroft, she’s a brain, a processor, and occasionally a useful pretty face. This arrangement works fine until Jim has to go and do something stupid.
Author's Notes: Thanks so much to my brilliant beta, ?. Title take from The Decemberists song of the same name.
One day, she knows, one day one of them will kill her. What name will they put on her tombstone, she wonders.
She's given up any pretence of knowing who she's loyal to, if anyone. Just as they've given up the pretence that this is anything more than just a game. If at one point she was a double agent, now she's more of a go-between.
Mycroft's sphere is the official, his world that of diplomacy and public service and all the teeming, seething scheming that bubbles under the surface. Jim, however, deals far below the public realm, maintaining the vast web of the less-than-legal world. Their two spheres need not ever intersect and therefore they need not ever interfere.
++
She comes to him, that first time.
She's been in London a year, happy to escape the single-focused, incestuous sectarian world of Belfast for the glorious possibilities offered by the teeming masses of London. She works as a temp in the City by day, enduring patronizing comments and pathetic come-ons from heavy-drinking, red-faced, middle-aged public school boys.
On her own time, however, she sets up a number of small, under-the-radar jobs: creative accounting, daisy-chain banking, well-hidden but profitable - a scammer-for-hire. She gains a reputation as the girl to go to if you wanted to dip your hand into the pot, so to speak. Learning each bank’s system in mere days, she finds the weak points, the areas that go unnoticed and unchecked. She never lets her clients get greedy - one go, one discreet but significant amount - minus her fee - was all she allowed. For her, the pleasure lies in the challenge, not the money. Blood’s more easily traceable than money, a body irrefutable evidence while numbers may be overlooked, so for a time she leaves her guns stored.
She flattens her voice, squaring off her elided Rs and adopting a new, benign and falsely pleasant accent. She smiles and dresses well and never has to work to seduce anyone. She strives to be pretty but forgettable, her reputation carefully crafted so that that which meanders in the circuitous underground streams of intelligence is a name and a skill-set, not a history or a face.
He has a job; more hands-on than she usually takes, but her fingers are itching and her hands far too clean. It’s a risk and she knows it, but she shows up in the grimy little transient office he calls home and tries not to look too keen. He’s expecting her, of course; if she’d taken him by surprise she would have walked right back out, just on principle.
“Ah, Ms Walker, is it?” He’s seated behind a narrow laminate desk, chipped at the corners. Before it is a wire chair, arms rusted and stability tenuous at best. He, however, is impeccable: dark suit with slim lapels, white shirt clean and pressed, narrow navy tie. His hair is cut short and dark, his face impish and youthful, his expression one of carefully constructed neutrality.
He makes no reference to their squalid surrounds, so she doesn’t either, seating herself with confidence on the tetanus-trap of a chair. “I heard there was a job going.”
The corner of his lip twitches, in amusement or annoyance, she’s not sure. “Ah, yes. I find myself in need of a messenger, you could say.” He folded his hands together on the desk.
She frowns faintly, studying him. He’s leaning forward on his elbows slightly, belying his anticipation for her answer. She’s not sure yet how much is a game, this coded negotiation, this play of power, but everything about him, from the dingy surroundings to the carefully knotted tie, seems calculated to perform a part.
“A messenger? Then perhaps I’m not the right person for you after all.” She uncrosses her legs and stands, taking pleasure in the flicker of uncertainty crossing his face.
He composes himself, though, cocking his head, a glint of curiosity in his gaze. “Really? Why is that?”
She takes a step forward, heels clicking on the concrete floor, and cocks a hip. He, obligingly, wanders his eyes up her body, over the curve of her thigh and up her torso to where the wide neckline of her blouse hints at the fullness of her breasts. He does it deliberately, but perfunctorily; now she knows it’s a game they’re both playing, this act of seduction, of mediation.
“Because I don’t do messages.” She spits the word out, leaning forward, placing her hands on his desk. “My jobs are neat, clean, and discreet. I don’t leave evidence and if I’ve done my job correctly, no one even knows there’s been a crime.”
He meets her gaze and leans back, refusing to allow her intimidation due to the advantage of height. “Then why, my dear, did you come here?”
At that, she grins outright, leaning in toward him. They both know what she’s going to say, but she has to say it anyway; it’s her role in this little drama they’ve engendered, just as his is to be flippant and unimpressed. “Because I heard you wanted the best.”
He smiles instantly and it’s very nearly genuine. She knows then that she’s in and feels, despite all the well-earned bravado, a quickening in her chest. She holds his gaze for a moment before stepping back and sitting down again.
“So, CV? References?” His grin twists sardonically and she can see how he loves the drama, how the quips and the acting are nearly as important as the end product. “Have I seen your work before?”
Undoubtedly; the London crime circle’s small, the Irish one even more so. But even with his name and the lilt to his voice, she’s not eager to claim a shared homeland. They’re two different worlds, London and Belfast, two different lives.
She cocks her head to one side, crossing her legs at the knee and casually jogging one heeled foot. “Please. That’d be telling.” She smiles mildly. “Give me the details and I’ll have specs for you in twenty-four hours. You can choose to use them - and me - or not.”
He narrows his eyes but nods, accepting the terms, and begins to detail his requirements. It’s exactly the kind of job she needs: all strategy, lots of tech, but with a tempting chance to get her hands dirty. She’s best at the preparation, at plans and details and tools, but she has, in her time, succumbed to the thrill of a body splattered by a long-range rifle, of a life neatly ended by the tip of a blade, of a crime scene washed of all evidence.
If she’d had a CV to give him, it’d say, just at the top, detail-oriented.
++
She’s annoyed when he’s the first to unearth it, the name she’s left behind. He's young and headstrong and eager to prove himself and they both know she’s an asset. Her first job for him had been textbook, her skills put to good and successful use. His reach may still be short but he holds sharp command over his place in the seething web of London’s underbelly and he’s ambitious. His reputation and her abilities may prove the right combination to extend his influence just past the edge of dangerous. There’s promise there and she wants to take advantage.
She goes back to his bare, depressing little office. He’s put up a solitary poster, of a kitten dangling off a countertop. The word perseverance looms large and mocking beneath it.
He speaks first. “Job well done. I’m impressed.” A pause; she waits, face impassive. “Now, before I bring you in, I think we should get to know each other a bit. Lay out the cards.” He widens his eyes a bit, holding out his hands, palms up, as if to say no secrets here.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Make him say it first, reveal how much he knows.
“You didn’t tell me who you were, Ms Moran.”
She doesn’t blink. “I told you who I am. I left all that behind ages ago.”
He leans back in his chair, eyes delighted at her reluctant confirmation. “The Colonel’s girl. Jesus, sure and you live up to the stories.” He plays up the brogue, the picture of a country boy sharing the village gossip.
“Stories?”
“Even in Dublin those with an interest heard of the twelve-year-old girl who planned dozens of successful missions. I thought you were dead, like your da.”
“I'm not, am I? Here in the flesh.” She’s annoyed and letting it show a bit too much. Fine, then, let him think that’s her deepest, darkest secret. Let him think he’s got her.
His smile now is feral, reptilian. He licks his lips and leans over the desk. “Let’s see what we can do together, then, shall we?”
++
Jim wants her with him all the time, in the next room, in the next bed, and it’s a terrible idea but when he offers, when he throws open the door to the second bedroom in his newly-purchased penthouse flat, she says yes anyway. She moves into a room with a wall of glass, windows looking down on London and its meaningless teeming masses.
From that height, she can make sense of the labyrinth, can trace the centuries-old paths which inscribe the earth and produce new meanings. She amuses herself in the early sleepless mornings by placing imaginary bombs in carefully-chosen nuclei of the city, unleashing the maximum amount of chaos.
In the next room, Jim turns the telly on, sound low, and calls their favourite Thai place for delivery. She can hear his soft footfall on the heavy carpeting, can trace his path as he paces, awaiting a call from an underling in Prague. It’s almost domestic, this, like she could step out and kiss him sweetly, ask about his day and share foot rubs on the sofa. She might just, to see the surprise on his face.
She’s gone quickly from occasional consultant to full-time employee to, somehow, Jim’s right-hand. He consults her obsessively, if only to hear her agree, but she refuses to be sycophantic. Does him good to remember she knows things he doesn’t, that if she so chose, she could destroy him on muscle memory alone. He takes nearly as much pleasure in her contrariness as any obsequiousness, eyes bright and voice sing-song as they argue over the minutiae of a strategy.
If she didn’t know better, she’d think he trusted her. But she sees enough in his cold, feral eyes to know he’s interested rather than trusting. The relationship they build up rests not on fidelity but on mutuality: a shared awareness of all they can create and obliterate together, of what they can share.
They’re both tacticians, but he has funds, connections, while she’s always worked alone. Her practical experience, however, far trumps his, and while he may take gleeful pleasure in the performance, she’s always behind the scenes, crafting the set, managing the props. He’s completely mad - brash, reckless, and audacious - taking on risks and challenges that should leave them dead but instead make them breathless and exhilarated and wanting more. She loves that about him.
The cases they take on vary from the extraordinary to the mundane, but the end results all share a certain glorious precision. They gain a reputation, which brings them new cases - Dear Jim - and at the end of a job well done, they collect their fee and turn their eyes to the next.
She saves his life a handful of times, and he returns the favour once or twice. She finds, watching him berate a hired engineer for a delay that will set them back three days or threaten a wavering contact trying to weasel away, that she’s grown fond.
If, sometimes, in the adrenaline-rich comedown, one or both brings home another body - soft, nubile, willing flesh - well, they tolerate each other’s needs. The flat may fill with the throaty, needy moans of slim, dark-eyed boys or the shaky, begging cries of softly sweet women, but come morning there’s only breakfast for two. They’re not all things to each other - not even close - but their lives don’t allow much room for anyone else.
++
She had almost laughed, right to his face, the first time Mycroft Holmes had offered her a job. He had known just where to find her; approaching her discreetly after she finished a clean-up job in an old storehouse near the shipyards. He hadn't gone near the building, its floors newly drenched with bleach, but stood outside patiently, in front of a black saloon car, the tip of his damned umbrella between his feet, hands folded neatly on its handle. There were no threats nor coercion; she slid into the backseat out of her own will and curiosity.
"I've been watching your work. You're good - neat, careful, logistically precise - and seem to foresee every eventuality." He didn't mention an excellent shot and good at blowing things and/or people up. "I need someone like you on my team."
She did laugh here, a short snort of surprise. "What on earth makes you think I'd work for you?"
"I think you'd enjoy the challenge."
"You clearly don't know anything about me."
Here, he slipped a small black notebook from an inner pocket of his jacket, opening it to a page about two thirds of the way through. "Alias Julia Walker, née Sinead Moran, daughter to Sebastian Moran, otherwise known as The Colonel, Provisional IRA officer, deceased 2001, and Mairead Moran, deceased 1983 upon your birth. The Colonel's girl," he said this last piece with a hint of contempt and she feels anger, hot and liquid, rise in her chest. "Yes, your father did give the British government a bit of bother, didn't he?" He says it like the Colonel's worst charge was an ASBO or two.
"If you know all that about me, then you know exactly why I'd never work for you, or this government."
"Ah, yes, Ireland for the Irish and that. But then, you never really believed in all that, did you?"
She started with surprise, as much at hearing the familiar words coming from his posh bastard mouth as his statement.
"Of course I did." She drew herself up straighter. "I fought for the freedom from oppression of all Irish men and women."
"No, you fought for the challenge, for the thrill of tactical guerrilla terrorism. You completely removed yourself from that world after your father's death and have since found other venues where your particular skill set is appreciated. You didn't care about the Republican cause just like you don't care about the petty underworld criminal network you now work to maintain.” He inspected the handle of his umbrella, brushing off an invisible smudge.
"That, my dear, is why you will work for me.” The words, stated mildly, were nonetheless forceful. “Because I can offer you outlets for your skills, but more importantly, I can offer you bigger challenges and better tools."
He left her at her own doorstep with a phone number, carefully hand written on the back of an old-fashioned calling card. Mycroft Holmes, it said, dense, heavy embossing, and she has always liked those who refuse to hide behind aliases.
Ironic, that. Her own life has been little more than one mask after another for a decade.
++
They lie on the sofa, his fingers carding through her hair, her cheek against his stomach. She wriggles her bare toes, kneading them into the soft velvet of the imposing chesterfield. Her skirt slips up her thighs and his hand wanders idly across the soft skin. The telly bleats softly in the background and she’s full, content, after a long, gloriously drawn-out and client-expensed meal at Le Gavroche. Her cheeks are flushed from the wine and his body splays under her, muscles loose and heavy.
The conversation she’d had the day before continues to play in her mind. The potentials - and the complications - form lists, weighted columns of every eventuality. “I’ve been offered a job,” she murmurs, lips against his abdomen where she’s resting her head.
She feels him shift, raising his head to look down at her. “Moonlighting, my dear?”
“Oh, seeing if the grass is greener.” He’s interested, she can tell, can feel the muscles of his abdomen tighten as he tenses slightly. “Mycroft Holmes.”
At the name, he sits up abruptly, brusquely turning her about to face him. His eyes gleam, bright and manic. She’ll wonder, later, if this is the moment it all starts. He knows the name, of course: Mycroft might be invisible to the general UK population, but to those interested in the machinations, the mechanisms, the densely twined web of power and knowledge in which all of London life is enmeshed, to those his name is familiar.
“You’ll take it, of course.”
“I’m not going to spy for you, you know.”
“Please.” He rolls his eyes, knowing what they both don’t say: that the absorption and use of knowledge in either sphere can only affect the other. That she, the tenuous link between the minor public servant and the consulting criminal, could be Jim’s way up - or his ending.
++
Those first few months when she splits her time between the two are heady and surreal. It’s unspoken, really, that she’s only loyal to the work but despite that she still builds up her own code of conduct. She doesn’t share information that directly pertains to either’s operation, but tangential intel is fair game; she kills criminals for Jim and no one at all for Mycroft; and she can take Mycroft’s toys home but she always brings them back.
Oh, and the car? The car she can use for whatever she pleases, as long as she remembers they’re both always watching.
She doesn't fuck either of them - despite the knowing glances and nasty barbs some have been so unwise as to throw her way. Sherlock is the only one who does it more than once - anyone on either payroll would quickly find himself redistributed or worse at the first insinuation. Sherlock, though, delights in regaling Mycroft with the nastiest and most pornographic suggestions as to break time at the office, which earn him little more than Mycroft's patient false smile. As much as she'd like to redistribute Sherlock's kneecaps, she respects Mycroft's request and ignores him.
Jim tried once, in the beginning. Easily obsessed, her Jim; when he finds something of interest he wants to possess it, wholly, mindfully, to know intimately each component part. He dissected and broke apart all his little toys, to discard or rebuild at his whim. So when he came to her, in her room in their shared penthouse, thin, cold hands on her cheek, a glint of danger and possession in his eye, she knew if she allowed him to start he’d never stop. Not until he understood her and god knows she’s too smart for that.
She took one step back and raised one sardonic eyebrow. “Now, Jim, you and I both know this would never work.” She bites back the Jimmy, less a pet name than a reminder that he needs her. Won’t chide him, can’t, not now that they’re scrambling their way to the top together, hard-won skills put to the test. Have to pretend they’re equals though they outpace each other alternately in a strange circular race of destruction and power.
Only difference is, he wants it more.
She trails one finger along the back of his hand and, when their eyes meet, murmurs one word. “Patience.”
To him, that’s a challenge.
++
The world Mycroft opens for her is so much more vast, more complicated, than anything she’s touched. It’s an infinite playground and he’s only too happy to supply the toys.
Her first day in, he hands her a Blackberry and tells her to plan a way into the fortified compound of a self-styled dictator in Liberia. It’s filled with specs and surveillance - the job itself is easy, but the sheer amount of information astonishes her and she spends a good two hours after she’d finished the assignment perusing it intently.
The work she did for him was all about weak spots, and weak spots were what she did: predictable schedules, lax security, flares of conscience and emotion. It was all down to systems and the all too human need for routine, for reminders. Systems were the key, she the anarchy.
She learns to talk, to tempt and tease diplomats, to extract - and to plant - information. She’s the eye candy and the confidante, the pretty secretary and the femme fatale all in one. All the world’s a stage, she thinks, and her masks exist in layers.
She adopts a new identity for each: Anthea Miller for diplomacy, Sabrina Connor for conspiracy. Mycroft pronounces her name like he’s savouring the taste on his tongue - it’s more than precise, it’s knowing, and in any other man, she’d say lustful.
Jim says her name carelessly, tossing it around to prove it doesn’t matter. He likes to call her Seb, in offhand camaraderie. It throws new clients and enemies off alike, the familiar flirtatiousness, lets them underestimate her, think she’s just his pretty bitch. She loves to see the look of surprise when she holds a gun to their heads.
++
Jim knows everything about her other life, her other employer, so she’s surprised to feel shock the first time he mentions Sherlock Holmes. It’s forcefully offhand, like a waylaid thought brought back at a quiet moment, his statement that Sherlock might be on his trail. However, there’s far too much thrill in his voice and she can feel it - the beginning.
Late March and she’s been his gunhand, his hunter, his champion, for nearly five years. He values a clear head in a tight place and has always listened to her advice before, but suddenly he’s unreachable, obsessed. He plans a trap, a maze, a game, and she wants to scream as her carefully constructed schemes come falling down.
She finds solace in the fact that her presence has yet to be uncovered, that while Sherlock unravels her prudently woven plots, he only does so with the teasing clues Jim can’t help but give. She’s still a silent player in this game which means she might come out alive.
++
Neither of them have slept in days and he’s blowing up elderly women. He reveals his final move: the pool, and the vest, and John Watson, that sweetly loyal man she’d sat next to and ignored. Chess played to the death and isn’t that dramatic, isn’t that Jim? Infuriating, his childish penchant for histrionics.
She touches his shoulder as he sits, intent on his computer screen. It’s split into frames, showing security feed from a number of locations. DI Lestrade, pacing in his office. The still quiet of their own front step. The interior of 221b, windows blown out and lights dim. Sherlock Holmes, prone on the sofa, and Dr Watson placing a mug of tea next to him. John’s hand stretches out, hesitant, then strokes Sherlock’s hair.
Jim turns his head and kisses her hand. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Touching really, how quickly little Johnny has grown to love his master.” She murmurs a noncommittal agreement. “No, really, I’m quite pleased they’ve found each other. Nice to let Sherlock enjoy his loyal sidekick before I blow him to pieces.”
She kneels, swivelling his chair so they’re facing, places her hands on his knees. “Is that so? What do you know about loyal sidekicks?” She smiles, teasing, runs her tongue over her lower lip and holds his gaze. She’s giving him the high ground, feigning vulnerability, and she waits for him to take the bait.
“Oh, plenty,” he answers, at once off-hand and deliberately pointed. He thumbs across her lower lip, smearing her saliva. He’s aroused. Not by her, she’s sure, but - she runs her hands up his thighs and he grins, leans down, claims her mouth with his.
She’s not sure she wants him, really, so much as she wants him to want her. Wants him to think he knows, to believe that because he sees her, open and fragile, that she can be broken open by his hand. Wants him to underestimate her.
He kisses her, and they both think of the game. She takes him to bed - touching, kissing, licking, biting - to focus their attention.
“My colonel,” he whispers to her in the night, “my tiger-huntress. My arm. My destruction.” The last is murmured with a hint of the steely, abrupt anger she knows so well. If it’s a prophecy, it’s also a warning - take me down and I’ll take you with me.
++
She was the one who first taught him to make bombs. Small pipe bombs, glorious in their crude destruction, and calibrated semtex masterpieces. He’s a quick study and a steady hand and together they delight in calculating careful, precise devastation. It’s a hobby she’s not been able to frequently indulge in, in practice, though the mathematics of it, chemical ratios and blast radiuses, never escapes her. It’s automatic, scanning her environment, gauging angles and assessing potential obstacles.
The vest he creates, without her, is careful stacks of semtex, designed to rip through bones, steel, and concrete.
++
He goes forward without her and she follows unwillingly.
It’s a good thing they haven’t seen her face in the shadows because if they had they’d know, Sherlock would know, that they’re in no danger from her corner. She’ll never pull the trigger, not because she’s loyal to Mycroft, but because she’s as good as dead if she does.
She’s not dying over this childish game.
She leaves when Jim does but she doesn’t come back. There are three others stationed there, in the high places, but no one outranks her, not even Jimmy. She may follow his whims, by and large, but she doesn’t take her orders from him and he needs to be reminded.
She makes her way back to their flat and changes clothes, the stale chlorine air haunting her. She sits on the sofa, the only light in the room that of London filtering through the wall of windows. One handgun, loaded, sits on the coffee table within easy reach. She waits for him to return.
At two minutes to one, the doorknob turns.
Title: Bandit Queen
A gift for: apple_pathways
Characters/Pairing: Anthea, Moriarty, Mycroft; Anthea/Moriarty, Moriarty/Moran
Category: Het
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: descriptions of violence
Summary: She works for them - with them - both, and they each offer her countless opportunities. For Jim, she’s a gunhand and something like a friend, for Mycroft, she’s a brain, a processor, and occasionally a useful pretty face. This arrangement works fine until Jim has to go and do something stupid.
Author's Notes: Thanks so much to my brilliant beta, ?. Title take from The Decemberists song of the same name.
One day, she knows, one day one of them will kill her. What name will they put on her tombstone, she wonders.
She's given up any pretence of knowing who she's loyal to, if anyone. Just as they've given up the pretence that this is anything more than just a game. If at one point she was a double agent, now she's more of a go-between.
Mycroft's sphere is the official, his world that of diplomacy and public service and all the teeming, seething scheming that bubbles under the surface. Jim, however, deals far below the public realm, maintaining the vast web of the less-than-legal world. Their two spheres need not ever intersect and therefore they need not ever interfere.
++
She comes to him, that first time.
She's been in London a year, happy to escape the single-focused, incestuous sectarian world of Belfast for the glorious possibilities offered by the teeming masses of London. She works as a temp in the City by day, enduring patronizing comments and pathetic come-ons from heavy-drinking, red-faced, middle-aged public school boys.
On her own time, however, she sets up a number of small, under-the-radar jobs: creative accounting, daisy-chain banking, well-hidden but profitable - a scammer-for-hire. She gains a reputation as the girl to go to if you wanted to dip your hand into the pot, so to speak. Learning each bank’s system in mere days, she finds the weak points, the areas that go unnoticed and unchecked. She never lets her clients get greedy - one go, one discreet but significant amount - minus her fee - was all she allowed. For her, the pleasure lies in the challenge, not the money. Blood’s more easily traceable than money, a body irrefutable evidence while numbers may be overlooked, so for a time she leaves her guns stored.
She flattens her voice, squaring off her elided Rs and adopting a new, benign and falsely pleasant accent. She smiles and dresses well and never has to work to seduce anyone. She strives to be pretty but forgettable, her reputation carefully crafted so that that which meanders in the circuitous underground streams of intelligence is a name and a skill-set, not a history or a face.
He has a job; more hands-on than she usually takes, but her fingers are itching and her hands far too clean. It’s a risk and she knows it, but she shows up in the grimy little transient office he calls home and tries not to look too keen. He’s expecting her, of course; if she’d taken him by surprise she would have walked right back out, just on principle.
“Ah, Ms Walker, is it?” He’s seated behind a narrow laminate desk, chipped at the corners. Before it is a wire chair, arms rusted and stability tenuous at best. He, however, is impeccable: dark suit with slim lapels, white shirt clean and pressed, narrow navy tie. His hair is cut short and dark, his face impish and youthful, his expression one of carefully constructed neutrality.
He makes no reference to their squalid surrounds, so she doesn’t either, seating herself with confidence on the tetanus-trap of a chair. “I heard there was a job going.”
The corner of his lip twitches, in amusement or annoyance, she’s not sure. “Ah, yes. I find myself in need of a messenger, you could say.” He folded his hands together on the desk.
She frowns faintly, studying him. He’s leaning forward on his elbows slightly, belying his anticipation for her answer. She’s not sure yet how much is a game, this coded negotiation, this play of power, but everything about him, from the dingy surroundings to the carefully knotted tie, seems calculated to perform a part.
“A messenger? Then perhaps I’m not the right person for you after all.” She uncrosses her legs and stands, taking pleasure in the flicker of uncertainty crossing his face.
He composes himself, though, cocking his head, a glint of curiosity in his gaze. “Really? Why is that?”
She takes a step forward, heels clicking on the concrete floor, and cocks a hip. He, obligingly, wanders his eyes up her body, over the curve of her thigh and up her torso to where the wide neckline of her blouse hints at the fullness of her breasts. He does it deliberately, but perfunctorily; now she knows it’s a game they’re both playing, this act of seduction, of mediation.
“Because I don’t do messages.” She spits the word out, leaning forward, placing her hands on his desk. “My jobs are neat, clean, and discreet. I don’t leave evidence and if I’ve done my job correctly, no one even knows there’s been a crime.”
He meets her gaze and leans back, refusing to allow her intimidation due to the advantage of height. “Then why, my dear, did you come here?”
At that, she grins outright, leaning in toward him. They both know what she’s going to say, but she has to say it anyway; it’s her role in this little drama they’ve engendered, just as his is to be flippant and unimpressed. “Because I heard you wanted the best.”
He smiles instantly and it’s very nearly genuine. She knows then that she’s in and feels, despite all the well-earned bravado, a quickening in her chest. She holds his gaze for a moment before stepping back and sitting down again.
“So, CV? References?” His grin twists sardonically and she can see how he loves the drama, how the quips and the acting are nearly as important as the end product. “Have I seen your work before?”
Undoubtedly; the London crime circle’s small, the Irish one even more so. But even with his name and the lilt to his voice, she’s not eager to claim a shared homeland. They’re two different worlds, London and Belfast, two different lives.
She cocks her head to one side, crossing her legs at the knee and casually jogging one heeled foot. “Please. That’d be telling.” She smiles mildly. “Give me the details and I’ll have specs for you in twenty-four hours. You can choose to use them - and me - or not.”
He narrows his eyes but nods, accepting the terms, and begins to detail his requirements. It’s exactly the kind of job she needs: all strategy, lots of tech, but with a tempting chance to get her hands dirty. She’s best at the preparation, at plans and details and tools, but she has, in her time, succumbed to the thrill of a body splattered by a long-range rifle, of a life neatly ended by the tip of a blade, of a crime scene washed of all evidence.
If she’d had a CV to give him, it’d say, just at the top, detail-oriented.
++
She’s annoyed when he’s the first to unearth it, the name she’s left behind. He's young and headstrong and eager to prove himself and they both know she’s an asset. Her first job for him had been textbook, her skills put to good and successful use. His reach may still be short but he holds sharp command over his place in the seething web of London’s underbelly and he’s ambitious. His reputation and her abilities may prove the right combination to extend his influence just past the edge of dangerous. There’s promise there and she wants to take advantage.
She goes back to his bare, depressing little office. He’s put up a solitary poster, of a kitten dangling off a countertop. The word perseverance looms large and mocking beneath it.
He speaks first. “Job well done. I’m impressed.” A pause; she waits, face impassive. “Now, before I bring you in, I think we should get to know each other a bit. Lay out the cards.” He widens his eyes a bit, holding out his hands, palms up, as if to say no secrets here.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Make him say it first, reveal how much he knows.
“You didn’t tell me who you were, Ms Moran.”
She doesn’t blink. “I told you who I am. I left all that behind ages ago.”
He leans back in his chair, eyes delighted at her reluctant confirmation. “The Colonel’s girl. Jesus, sure and you live up to the stories.” He plays up the brogue, the picture of a country boy sharing the village gossip.
“Stories?”
“Even in Dublin those with an interest heard of the twelve-year-old girl who planned dozens of successful missions. I thought you were dead, like your da.”
“I'm not, am I? Here in the flesh.” She’s annoyed and letting it show a bit too much. Fine, then, let him think that’s her deepest, darkest secret. Let him think he’s got her.
His smile now is feral, reptilian. He licks his lips and leans over the desk. “Let’s see what we can do together, then, shall we?”
++
Jim wants her with him all the time, in the next room, in the next bed, and it’s a terrible idea but when he offers, when he throws open the door to the second bedroom in his newly-purchased penthouse flat, she says yes anyway. She moves into a room with a wall of glass, windows looking down on London and its meaningless teeming masses.
From that height, she can make sense of the labyrinth, can trace the centuries-old paths which inscribe the earth and produce new meanings. She amuses herself in the early sleepless mornings by placing imaginary bombs in carefully-chosen nuclei of the city, unleashing the maximum amount of chaos.
In the next room, Jim turns the telly on, sound low, and calls their favourite Thai place for delivery. She can hear his soft footfall on the heavy carpeting, can trace his path as he paces, awaiting a call from an underling in Prague. It’s almost domestic, this, like she could step out and kiss him sweetly, ask about his day and share foot rubs on the sofa. She might just, to see the surprise on his face.
She’s gone quickly from occasional consultant to full-time employee to, somehow, Jim’s right-hand. He consults her obsessively, if only to hear her agree, but she refuses to be sycophantic. Does him good to remember she knows things he doesn’t, that if she so chose, she could destroy him on muscle memory alone. He takes nearly as much pleasure in her contrariness as any obsequiousness, eyes bright and voice sing-song as they argue over the minutiae of a strategy.
If she didn’t know better, she’d think he trusted her. But she sees enough in his cold, feral eyes to know he’s interested rather than trusting. The relationship they build up rests not on fidelity but on mutuality: a shared awareness of all they can create and obliterate together, of what they can share.
They’re both tacticians, but he has funds, connections, while she’s always worked alone. Her practical experience, however, far trumps his, and while he may take gleeful pleasure in the performance, she’s always behind the scenes, crafting the set, managing the props. He’s completely mad - brash, reckless, and audacious - taking on risks and challenges that should leave them dead but instead make them breathless and exhilarated and wanting more. She loves that about him.
The cases they take on vary from the extraordinary to the mundane, but the end results all share a certain glorious precision. They gain a reputation, which brings them new cases - Dear Jim - and at the end of a job well done, they collect their fee and turn their eyes to the next.
She saves his life a handful of times, and he returns the favour once or twice. She finds, watching him berate a hired engineer for a delay that will set them back three days or threaten a wavering contact trying to weasel away, that she’s grown fond.
If, sometimes, in the adrenaline-rich comedown, one or both brings home another body - soft, nubile, willing flesh - well, they tolerate each other’s needs. The flat may fill with the throaty, needy moans of slim, dark-eyed boys or the shaky, begging cries of softly sweet women, but come morning there’s only breakfast for two. They’re not all things to each other - not even close - but their lives don’t allow much room for anyone else.
++
She had almost laughed, right to his face, the first time Mycroft Holmes had offered her a job. He had known just where to find her; approaching her discreetly after she finished a clean-up job in an old storehouse near the shipyards. He hadn't gone near the building, its floors newly drenched with bleach, but stood outside patiently, in front of a black saloon car, the tip of his damned umbrella between his feet, hands folded neatly on its handle. There were no threats nor coercion; she slid into the backseat out of her own will and curiosity.
"I've been watching your work. You're good - neat, careful, logistically precise - and seem to foresee every eventuality." He didn't mention an excellent shot and good at blowing things and/or people up. "I need someone like you on my team."
She did laugh here, a short snort of surprise. "What on earth makes you think I'd work for you?"
"I think you'd enjoy the challenge."
"You clearly don't know anything about me."
Here, he slipped a small black notebook from an inner pocket of his jacket, opening it to a page about two thirds of the way through. "Alias Julia Walker, née Sinead Moran, daughter to Sebastian Moran, otherwise known as The Colonel, Provisional IRA officer, deceased 2001, and Mairead Moran, deceased 1983 upon your birth. The Colonel's girl," he said this last piece with a hint of contempt and she feels anger, hot and liquid, rise in her chest. "Yes, your father did give the British government a bit of bother, didn't he?" He says it like the Colonel's worst charge was an ASBO or two.
"If you know all that about me, then you know exactly why I'd never work for you, or this government."
"Ah, yes, Ireland for the Irish and that. But then, you never really believed in all that, did you?"
She started with surprise, as much at hearing the familiar words coming from his posh bastard mouth as his statement.
"Of course I did." She drew herself up straighter. "I fought for the freedom from oppression of all Irish men and women."
"No, you fought for the challenge, for the thrill of tactical guerrilla terrorism. You completely removed yourself from that world after your father's death and have since found other venues where your particular skill set is appreciated. You didn't care about the Republican cause just like you don't care about the petty underworld criminal network you now work to maintain.” He inspected the handle of his umbrella, brushing off an invisible smudge.
"That, my dear, is why you will work for me.” The words, stated mildly, were nonetheless forceful. “Because I can offer you outlets for your skills, but more importantly, I can offer you bigger challenges and better tools."
He left her at her own doorstep with a phone number, carefully hand written on the back of an old-fashioned calling card. Mycroft Holmes, it said, dense, heavy embossing, and she has always liked those who refuse to hide behind aliases.
Ironic, that. Her own life has been little more than one mask after another for a decade.
++
They lie on the sofa, his fingers carding through her hair, her cheek against his stomach. She wriggles her bare toes, kneading them into the soft velvet of the imposing chesterfield. Her skirt slips up her thighs and his hand wanders idly across the soft skin. The telly bleats softly in the background and she’s full, content, after a long, gloriously drawn-out and client-expensed meal at Le Gavroche. Her cheeks are flushed from the wine and his body splays under her, muscles loose and heavy.
The conversation she’d had the day before continues to play in her mind. The potentials - and the complications - form lists, weighted columns of every eventuality. “I’ve been offered a job,” she murmurs, lips against his abdomen where she’s resting her head.
She feels him shift, raising his head to look down at her. “Moonlighting, my dear?”
“Oh, seeing if the grass is greener.” He’s interested, she can tell, can feel the muscles of his abdomen tighten as he tenses slightly. “Mycroft Holmes.”
At the name, he sits up abruptly, brusquely turning her about to face him. His eyes gleam, bright and manic. She’ll wonder, later, if this is the moment it all starts. He knows the name, of course: Mycroft might be invisible to the general UK population, but to those interested in the machinations, the mechanisms, the densely twined web of power and knowledge in which all of London life is enmeshed, to those his name is familiar.
“You’ll take it, of course.”
“I’m not going to spy for you, you know.”
“Please.” He rolls his eyes, knowing what they both don’t say: that the absorption and use of knowledge in either sphere can only affect the other. That she, the tenuous link between the minor public servant and the consulting criminal, could be Jim’s way up - or his ending.
++
Those first few months when she splits her time between the two are heady and surreal. It’s unspoken, really, that she’s only loyal to the work but despite that she still builds up her own code of conduct. She doesn’t share information that directly pertains to either’s operation, but tangential intel is fair game; she kills criminals for Jim and no one at all for Mycroft; and she can take Mycroft’s toys home but she always brings them back.
Oh, and the car? The car she can use for whatever she pleases, as long as she remembers they’re both always watching.
She doesn't fuck either of them - despite the knowing glances and nasty barbs some have been so unwise as to throw her way. Sherlock is the only one who does it more than once - anyone on either payroll would quickly find himself redistributed or worse at the first insinuation. Sherlock, though, delights in regaling Mycroft with the nastiest and most pornographic suggestions as to break time at the office, which earn him little more than Mycroft's patient false smile. As much as she'd like to redistribute Sherlock's kneecaps, she respects Mycroft's request and ignores him.
Jim tried once, in the beginning. Easily obsessed, her Jim; when he finds something of interest he wants to possess it, wholly, mindfully, to know intimately each component part. He dissected and broke apart all his little toys, to discard or rebuild at his whim. So when he came to her, in her room in their shared penthouse, thin, cold hands on her cheek, a glint of danger and possession in his eye, she knew if she allowed him to start he’d never stop. Not until he understood her and god knows she’s too smart for that.
She took one step back and raised one sardonic eyebrow. “Now, Jim, you and I both know this would never work.” She bites back the Jimmy, less a pet name than a reminder that he needs her. Won’t chide him, can’t, not now that they’re scrambling their way to the top together, hard-won skills put to the test. Have to pretend they’re equals though they outpace each other alternately in a strange circular race of destruction and power.
Only difference is, he wants it more.
She trails one finger along the back of his hand and, when their eyes meet, murmurs one word. “Patience.”
To him, that’s a challenge.
++
The world Mycroft opens for her is so much more vast, more complicated, than anything she’s touched. It’s an infinite playground and he’s only too happy to supply the toys.
Her first day in, he hands her a Blackberry and tells her to plan a way into the fortified compound of a self-styled dictator in Liberia. It’s filled with specs and surveillance - the job itself is easy, but the sheer amount of information astonishes her and she spends a good two hours after she’d finished the assignment perusing it intently.
The work she did for him was all about weak spots, and weak spots were what she did: predictable schedules, lax security, flares of conscience and emotion. It was all down to systems and the all too human need for routine, for reminders. Systems were the key, she the anarchy.
She learns to talk, to tempt and tease diplomats, to extract - and to plant - information. She’s the eye candy and the confidante, the pretty secretary and the femme fatale all in one. All the world’s a stage, she thinks, and her masks exist in layers.
She adopts a new identity for each: Anthea Miller for diplomacy, Sabrina Connor for conspiracy. Mycroft pronounces her name like he’s savouring the taste on his tongue - it’s more than precise, it’s knowing, and in any other man, she’d say lustful.
Jim says her name carelessly, tossing it around to prove it doesn’t matter. He likes to call her Seb, in offhand camaraderie. It throws new clients and enemies off alike, the familiar flirtatiousness, lets them underestimate her, think she’s just his pretty bitch. She loves to see the look of surprise when she holds a gun to their heads.
++
Jim knows everything about her other life, her other employer, so she’s surprised to feel shock the first time he mentions Sherlock Holmes. It’s forcefully offhand, like a waylaid thought brought back at a quiet moment, his statement that Sherlock might be on his trail. However, there’s far too much thrill in his voice and she can feel it - the beginning.
Late March and she’s been his gunhand, his hunter, his champion, for nearly five years. He values a clear head in a tight place and has always listened to her advice before, but suddenly he’s unreachable, obsessed. He plans a trap, a maze, a game, and she wants to scream as her carefully constructed schemes come falling down.
She finds solace in the fact that her presence has yet to be uncovered, that while Sherlock unravels her prudently woven plots, he only does so with the teasing clues Jim can’t help but give. She’s still a silent player in this game which means she might come out alive.
++
Neither of them have slept in days and he’s blowing up elderly women. He reveals his final move: the pool, and the vest, and John Watson, that sweetly loyal man she’d sat next to and ignored. Chess played to the death and isn’t that dramatic, isn’t that Jim? Infuriating, his childish penchant for histrionics.
She touches his shoulder as he sits, intent on his computer screen. It’s split into frames, showing security feed from a number of locations. DI Lestrade, pacing in his office. The still quiet of their own front step. The interior of 221b, windows blown out and lights dim. Sherlock Holmes, prone on the sofa, and Dr Watson placing a mug of tea next to him. John’s hand stretches out, hesitant, then strokes Sherlock’s hair.
Jim turns his head and kisses her hand. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Touching really, how quickly little Johnny has grown to love his master.” She murmurs a noncommittal agreement. “No, really, I’m quite pleased they’ve found each other. Nice to let Sherlock enjoy his loyal sidekick before I blow him to pieces.”
She kneels, swivelling his chair so they’re facing, places her hands on his knees. “Is that so? What do you know about loyal sidekicks?” She smiles, teasing, runs her tongue over her lower lip and holds his gaze. She’s giving him the high ground, feigning vulnerability, and she waits for him to take the bait.
“Oh, plenty,” he answers, at once off-hand and deliberately pointed. He thumbs across her lower lip, smearing her saliva. He’s aroused. Not by her, she’s sure, but - she runs her hands up his thighs and he grins, leans down, claims her mouth with his.
She’s not sure she wants him, really, so much as she wants him to want her. Wants him to think he knows, to believe that because he sees her, open and fragile, that she can be broken open by his hand. Wants him to underestimate her.
He kisses her, and they both think of the game. She takes him to bed - touching, kissing, licking, biting - to focus their attention.
“My colonel,” he whispers to her in the night, “my tiger-huntress. My arm. My destruction.” The last is murmured with a hint of the steely, abrupt anger she knows so well. If it’s a prophecy, it’s also a warning - take me down and I’ll take you with me.
++
She was the one who first taught him to make bombs. Small pipe bombs, glorious in their crude destruction, and calibrated semtex masterpieces. He’s a quick study and a steady hand and together they delight in calculating careful, precise devastation. It’s a hobby she’s not been able to frequently indulge in, in practice, though the mathematics of it, chemical ratios and blast radiuses, never escapes her. It’s automatic, scanning her environment, gauging angles and assessing potential obstacles.
The vest he creates, without her, is careful stacks of semtex, designed to rip through bones, steel, and concrete.
++
He goes forward without her and she follows unwillingly.
It’s a good thing they haven’t seen her face in the shadows because if they had they’d know, Sherlock would know, that they’re in no danger from her corner. She’ll never pull the trigger, not because she’s loyal to Mycroft, but because she’s as good as dead if she does.
She’s not dying over this childish game.
She leaves when Jim does but she doesn’t come back. There are three others stationed there, in the high places, but no one outranks her, not even Jimmy. She may follow his whims, by and large, but she doesn’t take her orders from him and he needs to be reminded.
She makes her way back to their flat and changes clothes, the stale chlorine air haunting her. She sits on the sofa, the only light in the room that of London filtering through the wall of windows. One handgun, loaded, sits on the coffee table within easy reach. She waits for him to return.
At two minutes to one, the doorknob turns.