Pantomime
part thirteen"Hello, you've reached the mobile of Dr. John Watson. I'm busy at the moment but please leave your name, number, and reason for calling. If it is a medical emergency, please do not wait for a call back to seek immediate help. I will try and answer back as quickly as possible in all cases. Thank you."
Beep.
"..John..... Well, I suppose this is as good a way as any. He's going to die, John. The world has been unkind to him but my brother has been unkind to us all in turn. He was not, however, completely forthcoming when you spoke this evening. There remains one secret not yet shared. He is willing to die for what he knows, John. Willing to die for you again. And it is assisted suicide, surely; there is no reason he has to face this tonight instead of return to hiding but.. well, you know Sherlock. He loves to be dramatic. The information will not die with him, though. I won't speak a word of it but that does not mean that some day, years from now, you won't come to know it as we do. And as I have wrestled with my part in this... I remain unsure as to what is truly the kinder option. And so I leave it to you, John, with this final warning: if you learn this secret, your entire life will change once more and Sherlock may still die either way. The only thing you stand to gain is knowledge and the ability to make an informed decision; everything else is forfeit.
Sherlock leaves at ten. I will send a car for you at that time. If you get in the car, you will learn everything. If you do not, my lips are forever sealed.
This is his fault. We must not forget that. Do not pity him, do not do anything for his sake solely. This is about you, John. It has been from the start. I will blame you for nothing either way."
Beeeeeeep.
--+--
Sherlock stood with his coat collar up, scarf pulled around his neck, no disguise, no weapons, no pretenses, nothing but a lonely frown reserved for the moonlight rolling in through the rickety ventilation ducts in the ceiling of the abandoned warehouse. Cold concrete floors, trash and scraps against the walls, a few hanging chains from days of working machinery, a wrap around loft from the open floor above; spacious, a great deal of emptiness all reserved now for transients of all kinds. Sherlock could see the stars above through the large broken panes of ancient windows. The lights of London often dulled the intensity of their brilliance but further out, where the streets were less traveled and the lanterns not often lit, he could see they were not only brighter but in greater magnitude. Sometimes it was not the light which revealed the true nature of things. Sometimes, as with stars, it was the darkness.
Then again, if one wanted to go star gazing, one had only to wait for the morning when the biggest and brightest star in the sky rose in the east. Odd that. People seemed to forget to count the sun among the celestial stars, preferring the temporary pin points on the black velvet of night to the blinding brilliance of the day. The night stars and their constellations were lovely but ornamental. Idiots who pointed up at the brightest of them were often fooled by the Mars and Venus--not stars at all but yet another trick of the sun to remind the world it was still there, still waiting, not afraid of the dark in the slightest. Sherlock's favorite star had always been the sun.
And that was life; one analogy as simple as starlight which explained everything he was, everything he wanted and the basic mechanics of his entire life's work. The way he looked at the world was as different from ordinary people as night and day.
The warehouse whistled with air through her empty halls, chains chattering with rusty groans. Sherlock kept his gloved hands fisted deep in his pockets from the cold night breeze. He was early but that meant nothing to the people he was involved with. If he arrived at ten, they'd been there since eight setting up. As personal as he felt the case was, the situation was hardly being conducted as such. One person connected to a web was always part of something much greater. The spider was surely watching. He breathed out, wishing for a cigarette and feeling rather stupid for not having taken any with him. Not the first of his regrets but his current one. His breath looked like smoke but failed to please him.
"You're early," a voice called, its timbre alluding to mild amusement as it bounced through the emptiness of the room.
Sherlock faced her, offering a forced smile. "Will Teacher be giving me a gold star for attendance?"
Mary hummed an appreciative note as she walked towards him, the heals of her shoes louder than the wind could ever hope to be. "It can be arranged. It would make for an interesting decoration on that tombstone of yours." She stopped ten feet in front of him, her breath in wisps through her pink, parted lips. Her smile turned sour as she paused, finally fading to a look of tired indifference. "This all could have been avoided had you just stayed away. Do you think I enjoy this?"
"No. Neither do I think this was in any way unavoidable." Sherlock eyed her stance, the shape of her hands in her pockets, the position of her feet. "You will at least be happy to know what you will not be having to call me your boss. I decline. And therein lies our dilemma; yours and mine."
"John."
Sherlock nodded, eyes never leaving hers as she stared back uncomfortably. "He chooses you, Mary. He loves you. But he also chooses the side of good, which you are clearly not on. If I stay in London, if I go back to work, if I become a nuisance, can you promise me on your life that never will an order come down to put John in harms way to target me?"
"No. You know there's not." Mary looked away, her left hand pulling from her pocket to push her blonde hair over her shoulder, the pearl bracelet spinning on her wrist. "As long as you're alive and in business, John will always be a potential target."
"In which case for me, you are the greatest threat to his life, and for you, I am. There is no possible way for us to both be a part of John's life."
"I told you as much."
Sherlock smiled just slightly, remembering their conversation in the sitting room, Mycroft distracting John perfectly for just enough time to come to an understanding. "Oh, I never doubted it. I needed to test you, though. See how far you'd go. Were you aware that Jacob nearly murdered John last night? He nearly took a bullet for me the night before. Your attempts to get me out of the way have nearly killed him twice now."
"He never said-"
"No. John wouldn't wish to worry you. He will lie and hold a lie to his grave if it means sparing pain to someone he loves."
Mary's shoulders hitched closer to her ears, her face drawing closed with disapproval. "Don't talk about John like you know him better than I do."
"I will because I do. The only reason we're even discussing this is because of chromosomal favoritism. On an equal playing field, I would win hands down." He held his smile, that tiniest bit of truth the only thing he had left to hold over her. It hid the bite of disappointment, the maddening acceptance of defeat and yet again for the gift of his design and through no fault. "I concede to the fact that if I stay, I will be the death of him and so no matter Sebastian's reply, I will leave London and John forever. But not before I know one more thing. Your bracelet, Mrs. Morstan. Particular kind of pearls found in the Indian ocean. That smuggler father of yours sent you back plenty of nice things but Moriarty kept that one especially, didn't he?
Yes, I know your story. Military father turned smuggler when the right sort of men offered him the right sort of incentive. Young girl, seventeen, just trying to help Daddy and playing the perfect little look out, unsuspecting and invisible--Moriarty's little eyes. You sold your soul to the devil for a shot at revenge when the other smugglers turned on him. And the devil made you a promise, didn't he? One pearl returned for ever deed done; a contract void once the bracelet was complete. So tell me, Mary, is there a pearl there that came with an order to get close to John?"
Mary was silent, mouth held tightly closed as the tendrils of breath blew out from her nose like dragon smoke. She averted her eyes for a moment, breasts heaving with a long, deep breath. "...No matter how things started, it doesn't change the fact that I love him now."
"Surely." Sherlock took no pleasure in being right this time. He smiled all the same. "And the pearl that was returned to you on Saturday. What order did it come with?"
Mary returned the empty smile, her right hand drawing up from the pocket of her brown coat with a small black gun in its grasp. "Kill Sherlock Holmes," she said. She clicked the safety off.
"Moran never intended for me to accept let alone decline and walk away."
"You're the reason Moriarty is dead; did you really think he was going to just forgive that?"
Sherlock breathed a laugh. There was always something; he was never quite one-hundred percent correct. "Of course. It wasn't Jacob Saturday night; it was you. You texted John right after to make sure he was okay having seen him throw us both out of the line of fire. You had to see that you hadn't hit him on accident. Yesterday you couldn't risk being identified in the card hall, however, and sent Moriarty's cheap labor in. You wanted to do it yourself, though, which is why I was drugged with a heavy sedative and not poisoned instead. You weren't aware Jacob had his own ideas about ignoring Moriarty's last order. No time to do research, I'd only given you half a day's notice to come up with something."
"You weren't playing fair."
"I'd say that makes two of us." Sherlock took a step back, spreading his arms out wide, his coat falling open where he hadn't bothered with the buttons. "Well, what are you waiting for then? Under orders, abandoned building, John's safety on the line. I'm tired of being a dead man. Go ahead and make me a corpse."
"I will. I need to know what you told him, though. About me. You're clever, you knew what this was coming down to. Is there a secret note somewhere, a tape, an e-mail, some message that in a few days, or months, or years is going to show up and tell him what's been going on?" She was breathing harder, hand shaking: scared. She was scared to lose him, for him to know. She was almost done with this contract, two more favors to complete. Sherlock wondered if she really believed it would end after that. Surely not.
"Nothing so cruel. He can't have us both but I'm certainly not going to be the reason he can have neither of us. As I said; he loves you. I have said nothing and I have ordered my brother to do the same. And I think, this time, John really will hate me. You'll no longer have to live in the shadow of Sherlock Holmes. I'm sure you'll both be happier for it. No promises he won't still try and name your first born after me but on a personal note I sort of like the idea of this weighing on your conscious forever."
Mary nodded, her aim steady, her mind at ease. "Anything I have to do that will save John is worth it. I'm never going to regret this."
The click of a safety flicked off and the cock of a chamber echoed again--impossible, safety already off, wrong kind of gun--a second gun. Why? The echo made it hard to pinpoint the location of the second gunman but Mary had not missed it either, her own eyes scanning and at once growing large as footsteps scrapped across the concrete floor.
"Safety on, Mary. Gun down. Nice and slow."
Sherlock froze under the eruption of goose pimples across his body at the sound of that voice. He looked to Mary, her angry, scared eyes demanding an answer that Sherlock did not have. He shook his head; it wasn't him. John being there helped nothing and he had played no part in it.
Mary stammered, her left hand wrapping around the right and the gun to help keep at the ready as nerves hampered her steady hands. "John... I.."
"Don't. I heard... everything." John walked to join them in a triangle, his body choosing no sides as he refrained from standing too near either. His gun was aimed and ready to fire, pointed with full confidence at his girlfriend. "Just put the gun away so we can talk like civilized people."
"I'm sorry, John... I have orders..."
"Mary... I don't want to shoot you. But if you don't put that gun away, I'm not certain how else you expect me to disarm you." His voice cracked, his tone pleading. Steady as a rock. He didn't dare look away, hardly seemed willing to blink. This was the man who had risen to the rank of Captain, a man who could put everything behind him in order to do his duty, even if that duty was shooting the woman he loved to stop the murder of a friend.
Sherlock watched him with morbid interest. John wasn't the brightest man in the world but there was no possible way in which he could have believed this would end well. He was throwing his life away; not the physical state of breathing and bleeding but the part that made it life and not simple survival. John's optimism and love were killing him in the face of immovable obstacles.
John had already seen him die once already. He did not relish a repeat performance. "John, turn around and walk away."
"Not this time, Sherlock."
"John, honey, listen to both of us!" Mary's panic was escalating. Her eyes were wet. "You know these people. I can't disobey an order. I don't want to do this in front of you, please, baby, please go!"
John shook his head, taking a step back from her, his instance that he'd shoot made all the more believable as he increased his range for her safety. "No one is dying here. We can work this out. We can think of something, now put the gun down!"
Mary saw it first: the light. A spec of red, a hint of intention, a light that said 'go' and not 'stop' as it fell heavy on the black of John's jacket over the plane of his heart. Not alone--these things were never left to chance. No matter what they both wanted separately, on this they had never argued. Mary saw and looked with terror towards Sherlock as he nodded once. No time to spare. Shoot.
He counted three gunshots as he fell backwards towards the floor: one muffled one--Mary's, one booming one--John's, and one silent one made audible only by the sound of impact. He heard two bodies fall to the ground besides his own.
Being shot hurt. He wondered if it hurt more in the deserts of Afghanistan than it did the in a cold, abandoned warehouse near London. He imagined it did not. People in Afghanistan wanted you dead and hated what you stood for, nothing personal. In the war for John, he most certainly had not wanted to die beside him.
Sherlock opened his eyes, watching the chains swing overhead. He tried not to groan as he rolled onto his side, curling in around a bleeding hole in his side. A terrible job. Between surprise, fear, and John's own bullet, Sherlock supposed he couldn't blame her too much for giving him the opportunity to bleed out slowly rather than just simply die and have it done with. Nothing in his life had ever been done easily, why should death be different?
He looked at John, on his back and sprawling with his gun no longer in his grasp. Night light caught the wetness on his face as the cold made sure he was breathing. Sherlock smiled, resting his head on the ground, watching the glitter and smoke.
Mary groaned on the floor, small sobs echoing as she tried to move. Sherlock looked down where several feet away he could see her crawling towards John, one arm limp and leaving a trail of blood. She choked on his name as she dragged her knees across the gravel and smooth poured flooring. John remained unmoved but still breathing, a sight Sherlock hoped she'd soon realize and at least have the decency to shut up.
He wasn't at all surprised to see the red light return, sliding across the concrete. A professional never left anything to chance--a target wasn't left bleeding, it was left dead. Sherlock could see the light out of the corner of his eye as it fell to his temple. A quick shot. A more merciful death. He supposed he should thank Moran for not taking the opportunity to shatter his knee caps, blow off his fingers, his feet, or generally make this worse than needs be. The light seemed to say 'this is business, nothing personal". Oh, how little lights lied.
Sherlock closed his eyes, facing the sun, as the fourth and final shot fired.