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holmesticeTitle: Into a Grey Sky Morning
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
egonongrata
Author: [to be revealed]
Characters/Pairings: Harry Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Anthea
Word Count: ~1,630
Rating: PG
Notes: Set immediately following TGG. Title comes from “The Best I Ever Had” by Vertical Horizon. I owe many thanks (and probably my first born) to [redacted] for wrangling an overabundance of wild commas and awkward phrasing and just generally making this better than it was.
Toegonongrata: This isn’t exactly what you’d asked for, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. :)
Summary: Moriarty’s game affects more than just those directly involved: Harry Watson and Mycroft Holmes in the aftermath.
Into a Grey Sky Morning
Harry only hears her phone ringing at three in the morning because she passed out with it next to her head, the old-school ringtone jarring her right into wakefulness and causing her heart to beat double-time in her chest.
“Ms. Watson?” The voice on the other end of the line is deep, the accent posh.
“Yeah, what do you want?” she asks, playing up her own northern accent, the one she’s spent most of her life trying to escape, if only because she thinks it will annoy the voice on the other end of the line.
“Ms. Watson, there has been a terrible accident,” Posh Accent says. “You’ve seen news of the recent explosions in London, yes?”
Harry pushes herself upright, jamming the phone between ear and shoulder so she can root around for clean clothes. “What’s happened to John?”
“Your brother and mine were attempting to apprehend the man responsible for those explosions,” Posh Accent, apparently the brother of her brother’s mad flatmate, says. “The authorities were not quick enough to prevent another explosion, one in which Dr. Watson was caught.”
“What has happened to John?” Harry repeats slowly, trying to push down the gut-churning panic threatening to take over. John’s a survivor, she tells herself. He made it out of a warzone alive, if not unscathed; some psycho bomber isn’t going to take him out now. Wound him, yes probably, but not kill him.
“He was trapped under rubble for some time.” Harry misses the next few words as she pulls her phone away from her ear and quickly strips out of her sleep shirt, puts on a bra, and pulls a jumper over her head. “—alive, though in very serious condition.”
“Oh, thank god,” she sighs and lets herself sag on the edge of the bed for just a moment. “Which hospital?”
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that information over an unsecured line,” he says.
“Do you mean to say that you’ve called me in the middle of the night and scared the shit out of me and now you’re not going to tell me where I can find my brother?”
“What I mean to say, Ms. Watson, is that I cannot tell you where your brother is, but that I can have you taken to him,” he says and Harry is gratified to finally note and undercurrent of stress and worry in his voice. “There is a car waiting outside for you. I trust I will see you soon.”
And with that Harry is left holding onto her phone; its screen is still lit up and the length of the call flashes for a few seconds before it all goes dark.
“Oh, hell,” Harry mutters and yanks on a pair of jeans and shoves her phone in the pocket. She decides that the search for clean socks will take too long and jams her bare feet into a pair of trainers and barely remembers to grab her keys on her way out the door.
There’s a black Mercedes idling at the kerb, a woman in a perfectly pressed skirt suit with Blackberry in hand standing halfway between the car and Harry’s front door. “I’m to take you to your brother,” the woman says, eyes still on her phone. She turns without waiting for a reply and, like it’s all been choreographed, the driver steps out and opens the back door, the woman gets in the car, and the driver shuts the back door before getting back behind the wheel, and Harry is left standing alone on the sidewalk ten feet from the weirdest car service she’s ever seen.
The inside of the car is nicer than Harry would’ve expected, the seats contoured and the leather comfortably heated. There’s a raised and tinted window between the back seat and the driver and Harry would hazard a guess that it’s also as close to soundproof as you can get with glass. Probably bullet-proof too, judging by the paranoia evident in this entire venture.
“Where exactly are we going again?” Harry asks the woman sitting next to her, fighting a losing battle with herself to keep her eyes above the woman’s plunging neckline. Not that anyone could blame her; the woman has quite an amazing pair of breasts.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” the woman replies, still tapping away at her Blackberry. “We’ll be there soon enough, though.”
And if that’s not a blatant dismissal, then Harry doesn’t know what is. Doesn’t stop her from watching the rise and fall of the other woman’s cleavage with every breath she takes. Again, who could blame her?
It’s not long at all before the car pulls to a stop in a brightly lit ambulance bay and Harry has her hand on the door, ready to fling it open and find her brother, when she’s stopped by a dainty hand against her wrist.
“Mr. Holmes will meet you inside,” the woman at her side says before she sits back and turns her attention back to her phone, her task apparently completed.
“Right,” Harry says and practically throws herself from the car and is moving at something only slightly short of a sprint when she hits the hospital doors. There’s not a main reception desk, but there is what looks like a nurse’s station just down the hall, so that’s where Harry heads.
“Please, I’m looking for John Watson,” she says once she gets there, already out of breath. The nurse just looks at her for a minute before her eyes shift to something behind Harry. Or rather, someone behind Harry.
“Ms. Watson,” Sherlock’s brother says and Harry spins around and looks up and up and, good heavens, Harry knows she’s short, but this man is ridiculously tall. “Mycroft Holmes.”
Harry shakes the hand held towards her and even though she’s never met this man before in her life, she can’t help but think that he looks tired. His suit is impeccable—which is a miracle for half three in the morning—and his posture is perfectly straight, but something in his eyes and the set of his mouth speaks so clearly of the exhaustion that Harry is used to seeing in the mirror more often than not.
“Call me Harry,” she tells him and then immediately says, “Where’s John?”
“In surgery still, as is Sherlock,” and Harry remembers that this man’s brother was injured too, probably pretty seriously. “There is a quite comfortable room upstairs where we can wait. If you’ll come with me?”
Mycroft starts walking away without waiting for an answer and Harry is hard-pressed to keep up with his long-legged stride. He doesn’t bother to wait for the lift, but heads for the stairwell at the end of the hall. The breath that Harry had just gotten back abandons her and she’s wheezing when they arrive on the second floor.
“Are you kidding me?” Harry asks after following Mycroft into the waiting room. The furniture in here probably costs more than Harry’s flat; she wonders if maybe she could convince the hospital to let her have a chair or two, maybe a couch.
She doesn’t realize she’s said that out loud until Mycroft says, “I can have a set delivered to your home, if you’d like,” and that’s when Harry realizes that she might be a little bit in shock. She sinks into the closest chair, which really is sinfully comfortable, and breathes deeply through her nose.
“They’re going to be okay, right?” she asks, hands pressed flat against her thighs. Mycroft sits in the chair next to her and, after a long moment, rests his hand over top hers.
“I do not believe that either of our brothers will be so easily killed,” he says and though Harry doesn’t turn to see, she knows his eyes are on her. “They are both too stubborn to die.”
Harry barks out a laugh and ignores the tears in her eyes with just a bit of her own stubbornness. “How right you are.”
They sit that way for a long time, long enough that Harry’s vision starts to blur with exhaustion and she’s given up trying to count the number of right angles in the geometric wallpaper on the opposite wall. Mycroft’s assistant, the one from the car, comes by once with a latte from Starbucks exactly how Harry likes it, but she doesn’t stick around for long.
Harry’s not exactly sure how much time she and Mycroft spend in that well-furnished room, but it must be several hours, judging by the fact that the sky is beginning to lighten from black to grey, before they are disturbed again, this time by a man in blue surgical scrubs.
“How are they?” Harry asks as soon as she sees the man. There is a ball of worry sitting heavily in her stomach, threatening to make her sick. “How’s John?”
Mycroft’s hand is back on hers and she grips it tight and she tries to keep her mind from wandering to the worst case, but unable to stop herself from imagining John permanently disabled and John in a hole in the ground, surrounded by satin and cherrywood.
“Doctor, status report, please,” Mycroft says evenly, but Harry’s sure she’s not imagining the strain and impatience underneath. He needs to know just as much as Harry does.
The doctor smiles and says, “They’ll both be fine,” and Harry practically wilts, her head coming to rest against Mycroft’s shoulder. She tunes out the rest of what the doctor has to say, her mind fixating on the word fine, and when it’s time to go see John, when the sun is shining weakly through the early morning clouds, she lets Mycroft help her up and lead her with a hand on her elbow.
Recipient:
egonongrataAuthor: [to be revealed]
Characters/Pairings: Harry Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Anthea
Word Count: ~1,630
Rating: PG
Notes: Set immediately following TGG. Title comes from “The Best I Ever Had” by Vertical Horizon. I owe many thanks (and probably my first born) to [redacted] for wrangling an overabundance of wild commas and awkward phrasing and just generally making this better than it was.
To
egonongrata: This isn’t exactly what you’d asked for, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. :)Summary: Moriarty’s game affects more than just those directly involved: Harry Watson and Mycroft Holmes in the aftermath.
Harry only hears her phone ringing at three in the morning because she passed out with it next to her head, the old-school ringtone jarring her right into wakefulness and causing her heart to beat double-time in her chest.
“Ms. Watson?” The voice on the other end of the line is deep, the accent posh.
“Yeah, what do you want?” she asks, playing up her own northern accent, the one she’s spent most of her life trying to escape, if only because she thinks it will annoy the voice on the other end of the line.
“Ms. Watson, there has been a terrible accident,” Posh Accent says. “You’ve seen news of the recent explosions in London, yes?”
Harry pushes herself upright, jamming the phone between ear and shoulder so she can root around for clean clothes. “What’s happened to John?”
“Your brother and mine were attempting to apprehend the man responsible for those explosions,” Posh Accent, apparently the brother of her brother’s mad flatmate, says. “The authorities were not quick enough to prevent another explosion, one in which Dr. Watson was caught.”
“What has happened to John?” Harry repeats slowly, trying to push down the gut-churning panic threatening to take over. John’s a survivor, she tells herself. He made it out of a warzone alive, if not unscathed; some psycho bomber isn’t going to take him out now. Wound him, yes probably, but not kill him.
“He was trapped under rubble for some time.” Harry misses the next few words as she pulls her phone away from her ear and quickly strips out of her sleep shirt, puts on a bra, and pulls a jumper over her head. “—alive, though in very serious condition.”
“Oh, thank god,” she sighs and lets herself sag on the edge of the bed for just a moment. “Which hospital?”
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that information over an unsecured line,” he says.
“Do you mean to say that you’ve called me in the middle of the night and scared the shit out of me and now you’re not going to tell me where I can find my brother?”
“What I mean to say, Ms. Watson, is that I cannot tell you where your brother is, but that I can have you taken to him,” he says and Harry is gratified to finally note and undercurrent of stress and worry in his voice. “There is a car waiting outside for you. I trust I will see you soon.”
And with that Harry is left holding onto her phone; its screen is still lit up and the length of the call flashes for a few seconds before it all goes dark.
“Oh, hell,” Harry mutters and yanks on a pair of jeans and shoves her phone in the pocket. She decides that the search for clean socks will take too long and jams her bare feet into a pair of trainers and barely remembers to grab her keys on her way out the door.
There’s a black Mercedes idling at the kerb, a woman in a perfectly pressed skirt suit with Blackberry in hand standing halfway between the car and Harry’s front door. “I’m to take you to your brother,” the woman says, eyes still on her phone. She turns without waiting for a reply and, like it’s all been choreographed, the driver steps out and opens the back door, the woman gets in the car, and the driver shuts the back door before getting back behind the wheel, and Harry is left standing alone on the sidewalk ten feet from the weirdest car service she’s ever seen.
The inside of the car is nicer than Harry would’ve expected, the seats contoured and the leather comfortably heated. There’s a raised and tinted window between the back seat and the driver and Harry would hazard a guess that it’s also as close to soundproof as you can get with glass. Probably bullet-proof too, judging by the paranoia evident in this entire venture.
“Where exactly are we going again?” Harry asks the woman sitting next to her, fighting a losing battle with herself to keep her eyes above the woman’s plunging neckline. Not that anyone could blame her; the woman has quite an amazing pair of breasts.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” the woman replies, still tapping away at her Blackberry. “We’ll be there soon enough, though.”
And if that’s not a blatant dismissal, then Harry doesn’t know what is. Doesn’t stop her from watching the rise and fall of the other woman’s cleavage with every breath she takes. Again, who could blame her?
It’s not long at all before the car pulls to a stop in a brightly lit ambulance bay and Harry has her hand on the door, ready to fling it open and find her brother, when she’s stopped by a dainty hand against her wrist.
“Mr. Holmes will meet you inside,” the woman at her side says before she sits back and turns her attention back to her phone, her task apparently completed.
“Right,” Harry says and practically throws herself from the car and is moving at something only slightly short of a sprint when she hits the hospital doors. There’s not a main reception desk, but there is what looks like a nurse’s station just down the hall, so that’s where Harry heads.
“Please, I’m looking for John Watson,” she says once she gets there, already out of breath. The nurse just looks at her for a minute before her eyes shift to something behind Harry. Or rather, someone behind Harry.
“Ms. Watson,” Sherlock’s brother says and Harry spins around and looks up and up and, good heavens, Harry knows she’s short, but this man is ridiculously tall. “Mycroft Holmes.”
Harry shakes the hand held towards her and even though she’s never met this man before in her life, she can’t help but think that he looks tired. His suit is impeccable—which is a miracle for half three in the morning—and his posture is perfectly straight, but something in his eyes and the set of his mouth speaks so clearly of the exhaustion that Harry is used to seeing in the mirror more often than not.
“Call me Harry,” she tells him and then immediately says, “Where’s John?”
“In surgery still, as is Sherlock,” and Harry remembers that this man’s brother was injured too, probably pretty seriously. “There is a quite comfortable room upstairs where we can wait. If you’ll come with me?”
Mycroft starts walking away without waiting for an answer and Harry is hard-pressed to keep up with his long-legged stride. He doesn’t bother to wait for the lift, but heads for the stairwell at the end of the hall. The breath that Harry had just gotten back abandons her and she’s wheezing when they arrive on the second floor.
“Are you kidding me?” Harry asks after following Mycroft into the waiting room. The furniture in here probably costs more than Harry’s flat; she wonders if maybe she could convince the hospital to let her have a chair or two, maybe a couch.
She doesn’t realize she’s said that out loud until Mycroft says, “I can have a set delivered to your home, if you’d like,” and that’s when Harry realizes that she might be a little bit in shock. She sinks into the closest chair, which really is sinfully comfortable, and breathes deeply through her nose.
“They’re going to be okay, right?” she asks, hands pressed flat against her thighs. Mycroft sits in the chair next to her and, after a long moment, rests his hand over top hers.
“I do not believe that either of our brothers will be so easily killed,” he says and though Harry doesn’t turn to see, she knows his eyes are on her. “They are both too stubborn to die.”
Harry barks out a laugh and ignores the tears in her eyes with just a bit of her own stubbornness. “How right you are.”
They sit that way for a long time, long enough that Harry’s vision starts to blur with exhaustion and she’s given up trying to count the number of right angles in the geometric wallpaper on the opposite wall. Mycroft’s assistant, the one from the car, comes by once with a latte from Starbucks exactly how Harry likes it, but she doesn’t stick around for long.
Harry’s not exactly sure how much time she and Mycroft spend in that well-furnished room, but it must be several hours, judging by the fact that the sky is beginning to lighten from black to grey, before they are disturbed again, this time by a man in blue surgical scrubs.
“How are they?” Harry asks as soon as she sees the man. There is a ball of worry sitting heavily in her stomach, threatening to make her sick. “How’s John?”
Mycroft’s hand is back on hers and she grips it tight and she tries to keep her mind from wandering to the worst case, but unable to stop herself from imagining John permanently disabled and John in a hole in the ground, surrounded by satin and cherrywood.
“Doctor, status report, please,” Mycroft says evenly, but Harry’s sure she’s not imagining the strain and impatience underneath. He needs to know just as much as Harry does.
The doctor smiles and says, “They’ll both be fine,” and Harry practically wilts, her head coming to rest against Mycroft’s shoulder. She tunes out the rest of what the doctor has to say, her mind fixating on the word fine, and when it’s time to go see John, when the sun is shining weakly through the early morning clouds, she lets Mycroft help her up and lead her with a hand on her elbow.
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