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Sherlock (BBC) - Interrogation
Title: Interrogation
Genre: Mostly gen, hint of canon Donovan/Anderson.
Rating: R for violence and gore
Length: 3,650 words
Warnings: Violence, brief descriptions of torture, gore.
Synopsis: Sally Donovan was good at her job. That does not necessarily mean anything when caught, bound, and at the whims of an apparent psychopath with a knife.
Author’s Notes: This is a Sally-centric piece. She doesn’t always get a lot of love in fanon or canon, but I’d like to think she’s more than what she appears to be at first glance.
Disclaimer: I do not own this incarnation of the Sherlock universe, nor am I making any profit from this.
~~~~~~~~~~
Sally Donovan was not an idiot, despite what certain “consulting detectives” had to say. She had worked her way up the ranks just like everyone else, possibly putting in more effort because she happened to have a set of ovaries instead of a set of balls, but never once did she resort to sleeping her way to the top. Yes, Sherlock was annoyingly correct in his deduction that she and Anderson had a thing on the side. What he did not know is that Lorelei was completely fine with it as she was seeing Simmons as well.
Anyway, none of that mattered much at the moment. Right now all that mattered was that a very large man had a gun on her and his very large friends appeared to be reaching for weapons of their own and, look, there went hers flying across the stone, and yes, that wrist might well be broken.
She wondered where her backup was. Then she remembered the traffic delay they would have to get through that had slowed her down as well, and the echo of a reminder to stay where she was and not approach until they arrived.
She had done as told and not approached. It was not her fault that the large man and his goons had found her before Lestrade managed to get across the Thames.
“Bring her!” the man growled. Two of his lackeys grabbed her and manhandled her towards the ubiquitous abandoned warehouse that always seemed so cliché in the films. Her wrist was jostled and her vision whited out for a moment and she felt her feet scrape against cement as her handlers did not bother to pause to wait for her.
Her vision returned just as they entered the warehouse. She almost wished it had not. She saw the back of a man tied to a chair with little rivulets of bright blood dripping down onto the less than pristine grey flooring, the shadow of someone pacing, and then another pair of thugs stepping up before her. They took her from the first pair, stripped her of her outer jacket, and pushed her into a chair of her own, bindings lashed tight against her now bare wrists and forearms, holding her soundly in place. On the up side, it stabilized her wrist. On the down side, that likely was not going to matter when all was said and done.
They moved away and she had a clear view of what awaited her. There was a small table adorned with a suitcase, what appeared to be a leather roll similar to what she had seen chefs carry their gear in, her weapon, and a cane. The shadow stopped its pacing and revealed its identity, to which she had to fight not to roll her eyes as she greeted him with a pained, “Hello, Freak.”
Her phone and badge from her jacket joined the bounty on the table as he looked down at her curiously. “I know you,” he said, almost absently. “Donovan, was it?” he asked.
She felt her heart speed up at that. Sherlock was known for many things, but being forgetful was not one of them. The man’s mind worked far too fast for something as simple as forgetfulness to leach in. Lack of respect for those he deemed lesser humans, yes, but anything that might make him himself seem lesser, hell no. She looked into his pale eyes to find the pupils nearly blown, evidence that he was on something. The question was whether it was his own doing or that of their hosts?
“I say we shoot her, get it over with,” one of the thugs suggested. She memorized his face for later.
“Now, now,” the larger man said a bit too calmly for her liking. “We’re letting Genius here run the show tonight, see what he’s made of and all that,” he continued as if repeating himself.
“Do you like my work so far, Ms. Donovan?” Holmes asked. He cocked his head to the side and stepped back to reveal the figure in the other chair. It was John Watson, his flatmate and supposed friend. The man’s arms and chest were crisscrossed with thin lines of blood, his head lolling backward to seek support that was not there, and his eyes rolling upward the few times they fluttered open.
That explained the cane then, but not why he chose to use a knife when it was clear everyone else here was well armed and more than willing to provide him with a better weapon if needed.
“He screamed for me,” Sherlock said without emotion. “Will you scream for me?”
“You really are insane, aren’t you?” she asked with a calmness she did not feel. She tested her bonds, but they held steady, the rough rope catching and biting into her skin.
His eyes narrowed slightly, though she could not tell if it was at her or in response to some unkind yet familiar commentary being made by some of the men gathered around them. A knife appeared in his hand only to sail through the air and lodge into the plaster behind one of the men. “I was promised silence. How do you expect me to work with this… cacophony?”
“Give him what he needs,” the leader, a man she suspected was Kelvin Rodgers based on the profile she had seen back at the Yard, ordered the others.
They fell silent and Holmes took a step closer, his breath ghosting over her face, ridiculous curls mingling with her own, eyes searching hers to find something within. A new knife gleamed in his hand, blade reflecting the florescent lighting set high above them all. “Do you trust me?” he asked, barely sufficient to be considered a whisper.
“No,” she replied loud enough for the others to hear, knowing they were listening to anything and everything the two acquaintances had to say no matter what the volume. She swallowed heavily, her entire head moving with the action.
His hand was on her instantly, the ropes against her injured wrist shifted ever so slightly as he brushed against them. She had no time to feel relief however, as the blade made contact with her skin, tracing a careful line down her upper arm just beneath her capped sleeve and stopping just shy of the crook of her elbow. She breathed out heavily, and watched the blood, her blood, bubble up to the surface of her skin. A fraction of an inch to the left and he would have hit a major artery. The hand against the ropes moved upward and squeezed, the blood flowing freely now, sluggish but most definitely there. She could not stop the grunt of pain the action caused, and he seemed to smile at her discomfort.
“Going to take your time, aren’t you?” she guessed, though she cursed the unsteadiness of her voice.
“Of course,” he agreed as he drew the tip of the blade through the wound, spreading and smearing her life about her. “I do so love a show.”
“You are such a freak,” she bit out.
He scoffed at her. “That’s hardly original, Ms. Donovan. I believe you have used that one already.” The knife found a new target, tracing another line, this one along the side of a vein. “Do you think your people will come in time? Do you think they even know where you are?” he taunted.
“They’ll be here,” she assured him. “And you sick sons of bitches will pay.” She let her gaze track the others around the room, tried not to remember she had a sociopath with a sharp object digging into her skin. She saw some of them look concerned, but not enough. Unless Lestrade brought a full team, and soon, they would be outnumbered and over powered in no time.
The knife stopped and Sherlock looked up at a man hovering beside him. “She’s lying; she has no backup,” he advised. “Also? Do get out of my light.” To accent his words, he drove the knife into the man’s leg, catching in the seam of his trousers, but also catching his skin enough for him to stumble backwards.
“Boss?” the thug gasped, trying to pull the blade free.
“He’s doing his job, you do yours,” Rodgers brushed him off. “Get out of his light and let him see if she knows anything about our operation. If she does, maybe I’ll let you finish her. If she doesn’t, maybe there will be enough of her to play with when our new man here is through.”
Sally wanted to roll her eyes at the threats, having heard far worse than that in her time, but ended up biting her lip as Sherlock made a slice down her uninjured arm with yet another knife. Part of her wondered how many he had with him and the rest of her said she was being stupid as obviously the chef’s roll was where he kept his toys. A look at the table confirmed her suspicions as she saw the roll laid out nice and neat with all sorts of gleaming instruments, several of which she was fairly certain he had stolen from the morgue.
“Now, Ms. Donovan,” he said, ever so casually. “Who led you here? What possible evidence was left behind that brought you to us this evening?” The blade paused and her arm squeezed, warm fluid dripping and tickling. “If you are good girl and tell me, perhaps you will be rewarded and I will allow you to watch me take apart whoever was foolish enough to make such a mistake before I finish with you.”
“Boss! You can’t let him go after one of us, can you? One of your own?” one of the men in the back asked, a hint of franticness to his tone.
Rodgers glared at him, Sherlock pulling back to watch. “If one of you left something behind that led her to us, I’d want to finish you myself. Our partner here will just be far more artistic about it.”
There were murmurs across the gathered men, some supportive, some sympathetic, and some aghast that he would so easily turn his own people over to a psychopath. It was likely excellent for his control. From what she had read about the man, he ruled a fair share of the market, but power was a slippery thing and any sort of underground business had the opportunity to be rife with infighting and squabbling. If he could add to his power base, through fear and the possibility of pain, it would be good for his image and good for business. She was trying desperately not to think of what killing a detective would do, or if he was willing to go there just for the clout.
She raised her head defiantly, Sherlock keeping the knife flush against her, but not pressing, not cutting, for now. “You were sloppy,” she accused, riding on Rodgers’ fears. “When you didn’t leave physical fingerprints, you left enough of your trademarks behind that it was like following a map.”
Rodgers glared at her, but then snapped at his men, “Nichols, Higginbotham, you two ran the last job. What did you leave? What did you put your fingers in? If you did something, anything extra, to lead them to us...”
“Nothing, boss, I swear!” a man with an unfortunately nasal voice insisted.
“We did exactly as you said,” a second, gruffer voice confirmed. “The job went off without a hitch and nothing out of the ordinary happened.”
There was an indignant huff of breath before the nasally man added, “Well, aside from your fascination with that watch.”
“It was there! Just sitting there! Do you have any idea how much one of those things cost?” the gruffer man defended himself. “What was the harm in taking it?”
“It could have been bugged,” Sherlock offered. “If they had suspicions of your next target, it could have been a plant.” Sally wisely did not comment on the fact the Yard did not have the finances to purchase some fancy tiny tracking device, let alone some random flash bit to draw the eye.
Rodgers motioned and one of the thugs was dragged into her line of sight by another two while a fourth hovered at the sidelines. The man’s wrist was forced forward and, sure enough there was an ostentatious metal thing at the end. A bit of force was used to remove it, and she may have silently taken pleasure in seeing the man’s wrist snap back similar to how her own had done, before the thing was laid out on the table and smashed with the butt of one of the henchmen’s guns.
“What else does she know? What else did she hear?” Rodgers demanded. “How much of tonight has been transmitted along with everything else?”
“Give me a moment,” Sherlock huffed impatiently. He turned back to Sally with a put upon frown. “Really, no respect any more. These things take time, you see, and everyone wants their results now, now, now.”
“I could care for a bit of expediency,” she replied. Her jaw clenched at the pain radiating through her body, and her eyes wanted to squeeze tight, but she forced herself to relax, to watch and wait and listen for anything and everything that might possibly help her.
The knife danced in front of her, the shine dulled by the red of her blood. She had to admit that as far as intimidations went, it was quite effective. “I have not gotten you to scream yet,” Sherlock commented. His tone was sad, as was the way his lower lip stuck out just so.
“Not going to happen,” she told him with a confidence she did not fully feel.
“Oh, I think I will,” he told her. He cocked his head to the side as though contemplating some great thought, like the meaning of life or just how Cadbury got the liquid goo inside those chocolate eggs. “In fact, I think you should scream right now.”
“Really?” she asked, less than impressed.
His eyes cleared of all fog, the ethereal pale that much more shocking around his still slightly dilated pupils. “Yes,” he told her. His voice had lost some of the bravado, some of the falseness it had been tinged with since she arrived, and he sounded far more like his usual insane self. “Now would be good.”
She opened her mouth as if to reply, watching the knowing smirks on the faces of the gathered men, and then shouted at the top of her lungs, “In here!”
The rest was a blur. There was stampeding footsteps and shouting and a round or two of gunfire and at least one flash grenade. Her wrists were suddenly free with Sherlock leaning low and demanding, “Are you okay?” even as he pressed her own gun back into her hands. John was mobile and swinging, wrestling with a man that had tried to get Sherlock from behind, aided by Lestrade himself who knocked the man out and supported the flailing doctor all in one go.
By the time she sorted things out, it was mostly over. She did, however, have the pleasure of grinding her heel into the wrist of the man who broke her own, his whimpering scream oddly satisfying when it all came down to it. When she looked up to find both Lestrade and Sherlock staring at her, she shrugged, “I thought he was reaching for his weapon.”
“Indeed,” Sherlock agreed knowingly.
A new figure appeared and she was oh so very tempted to sink into his arms, but she resisted and simply greeted him with a perhaps tad more emotional version of his name than she intended when she said, “Anderson.”
“What did they do to you?” he asked, aghast. His hands hovered over her wounds as if afraid to touch and make them real. His eyes then tracked over to where Holmes still held a knife in his hands, handle now slick with blood as it was his sole weapon during the fight. “What did that psychotic do to you?” he demanded.
“Sherlock did this?” Lestrade confirmed, taking in the mixture of cuts and blood as well as the broken wrist.
“Someone needs to put that lunatic down!” Anderson ranted, falling silent only when she held up one red-tinged hand.
“Someone needs to thank him for his knowledge of anatomy,” she corrected. She turned to the man in question. “All that time with corpses did you good. You knew where to cut and how deep. Looks nasty, but it’s doubtful these will even scar. Maybe we can get you a nice cadaver as a thank you.”
“You have lost enough blood to be lightheaded. You may wish to lie down shortly to prevent the urge to pass out,” Sherlock told her. She took that as his version of concern and simply nodded in agreement. She also noted he did not say no to the cadaver.
“I want to lie down,” John chimed in as he hobbled over to them. He looked terrible, crisscrossed with blood leaning heavily on a cane for what she was fairly certain was no longer psychosomatic purposes. “That, and a good drink.”
“Alcohol in your condition would not be a wise decision,” Sherlock chided. He looked at his own handiwork and wrinkled his nose in distaste.
“Fine,” Watson conceded. “Wash me up, stitch up that one mistake, get some food into me, and then get me drunk,” he amended.
“I did not make a mistake. You flinched,” Sherlock insisted.
“I flinched because the knife was in the wrong position and you pressed too deep,” John corrected. As if to take the sting out of his words, and perhaps the pout off of his flatmate’s face, he added, “Thank you for thinking of the cane though. Don’t think I’d be standing without it right now. Playing hostage is tiring work.”
Lestrade rolled his eyes. “Both of you are going to hospital to be checked over right and proper,” he declared. He turned to the doctor and added, “Sorry, John, no drink tonight.”
“I’ll bring you some,” Sherlock comforted him. “Sherry okay? I believe we still have that bottle from Mycroft and were waiting for a proper time to open it.”
“Sherry would be lovely,” John agreed, completely ignoring Lestrade’s attempt to talk over him about how that was a bad idea and he’d check Holmes himself before he was allowed in the room and was anyone listening to him?
Sally used the distraction to lean discreetly into her lover, who ran a comforting hand along her back. They would make their own time later, after everything had calmed down. Lorelei herself would likely insist upon it.
He took her injured wrist between his own far larger hands, carefully manipulating it to determine just how bad of a break she had sustained. “Did he do this?” he demanded in a combination of a growl and a whisper. Like they were fooling anyone at this point.
“No,” she answered honestly. “That would be the pansy over there on the floor crying for his mummy.” She gestured to the man who was currently insisting they not put him in cuffs and that they take him to a surgery immediately for treatment.
“Ah,” said John. “That’s why you...” he trailed off, realizing he was speaking the obvious.
“No need to be gentle with him, boys,” Lestrade called, and Sally knew she was not the only one to take subtle delight in the tightening of the cuffs about his wrists. They watched as he was hauled away with the others and then the Detective Inspector turned his attentions back to her. “You will go get that set tonight, and have every last one of those cuts cleaned and cared for properly.”
“Yes, sir,” she dutifully replied, ever the proper civil servant. Then, with a hint of a smile, she added, “It does look ghastly, doesn’t it?”
Lestrade just shook his head. “If I hadn’t seen up close how shallow those things really were, I would have had you in that ambulance long before now,” he told her. He turned to Sherlock and added, “And I don’t know whether to thank you or be horrified you knew how to do that.”
“Be horrified, it’s saner,” John supplied.
Lestrade laughed as he led the way out, ushering the captives towards the waiting van and the injured towards the waiting ambulance. Sally hung back with John for a moment, trying not to think of what a good act he had put on, she asked, “Save a bit of that Sherry for me, yeah?” She could more than use a drink after a night like this.
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Sherlock asked, appearing as if out of thin air. She should have known he would never be far away. At her questioning look, he added, “In your condition, I mean. Unless you want to risk even lower intelligence with the genes you have chosen to share. It is, after all, your decision, but I would think it to be a fairly straightforward choice.”
Her eyes grew wide at the implication, and she looked back to where Anderson was discussing something with a tech on the scene and sending her meaningful looks every chance he got. “You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered.
As she tried to figure out if he was serious or not or if there was any meaning behind John’s chuckled, “Was that really necessary?” and Sherlock’s deadpan, “Now she will never name it after me,” one of the paramedics asked if she was ready to leave.
She looked across to see just the bare hint of a gleam in Sherlock’s eyes and replied, “Oh, hell yes.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Feedback is always welcomed.
Genre: Mostly gen, hint of canon Donovan/Anderson.
Rating: R for violence and gore
Length: 3,650 words
Warnings: Violence, brief descriptions of torture, gore.
Synopsis: Sally Donovan was good at her job. That does not necessarily mean anything when caught, bound, and at the whims of an apparent psychopath with a knife.
Author’s Notes: This is a Sally-centric piece. She doesn’t always get a lot of love in fanon or canon, but I’d like to think she’s more than what she appears to be at first glance.
Disclaimer: I do not own this incarnation of the Sherlock universe, nor am I making any profit from this.
~~~~~~~~~~
Sally Donovan was not an idiot, despite what certain “consulting detectives” had to say. She had worked her way up the ranks just like everyone else, possibly putting in more effort because she happened to have a set of ovaries instead of a set of balls, but never once did she resort to sleeping her way to the top. Yes, Sherlock was annoyingly correct in his deduction that she and Anderson had a thing on the side. What he did not know is that Lorelei was completely fine with it as she was seeing Simmons as well.
Anyway, none of that mattered much at the moment. Right now all that mattered was that a very large man had a gun on her and his very large friends appeared to be reaching for weapons of their own and, look, there went hers flying across the stone, and yes, that wrist might well be broken.
She wondered where her backup was. Then she remembered the traffic delay they would have to get through that had slowed her down as well, and the echo of a reminder to stay where she was and not approach until they arrived.
She had done as told and not approached. It was not her fault that the large man and his goons had found her before Lestrade managed to get across the Thames.
“Bring her!” the man growled. Two of his lackeys grabbed her and manhandled her towards the ubiquitous abandoned warehouse that always seemed so cliché in the films. Her wrist was jostled and her vision whited out for a moment and she felt her feet scrape against cement as her handlers did not bother to pause to wait for her.
Her vision returned just as they entered the warehouse. She almost wished it had not. She saw the back of a man tied to a chair with little rivulets of bright blood dripping down onto the less than pristine grey flooring, the shadow of someone pacing, and then another pair of thugs stepping up before her. They took her from the first pair, stripped her of her outer jacket, and pushed her into a chair of her own, bindings lashed tight against her now bare wrists and forearms, holding her soundly in place. On the up side, it stabilized her wrist. On the down side, that likely was not going to matter when all was said and done.
They moved away and she had a clear view of what awaited her. There was a small table adorned with a suitcase, what appeared to be a leather roll similar to what she had seen chefs carry their gear in, her weapon, and a cane. The shadow stopped its pacing and revealed its identity, to which she had to fight not to roll her eyes as she greeted him with a pained, “Hello, Freak.”
Her phone and badge from her jacket joined the bounty on the table as he looked down at her curiously. “I know you,” he said, almost absently. “Donovan, was it?” he asked.
She felt her heart speed up at that. Sherlock was known for many things, but being forgetful was not one of them. The man’s mind worked far too fast for something as simple as forgetfulness to leach in. Lack of respect for those he deemed lesser humans, yes, but anything that might make him himself seem lesser, hell no. She looked into his pale eyes to find the pupils nearly blown, evidence that he was on something. The question was whether it was his own doing or that of their hosts?
“I say we shoot her, get it over with,” one of the thugs suggested. She memorized his face for later.
“Now, now,” the larger man said a bit too calmly for her liking. “We’re letting Genius here run the show tonight, see what he’s made of and all that,” he continued as if repeating himself.
“Do you like my work so far, Ms. Donovan?” Holmes asked. He cocked his head to the side and stepped back to reveal the figure in the other chair. It was John Watson, his flatmate and supposed friend. The man’s arms and chest were crisscrossed with thin lines of blood, his head lolling backward to seek support that was not there, and his eyes rolling upward the few times they fluttered open.
That explained the cane then, but not why he chose to use a knife when it was clear everyone else here was well armed and more than willing to provide him with a better weapon if needed.
“He screamed for me,” Sherlock said without emotion. “Will you scream for me?”
“You really are insane, aren’t you?” she asked with a calmness she did not feel. She tested her bonds, but they held steady, the rough rope catching and biting into her skin.
His eyes narrowed slightly, though she could not tell if it was at her or in response to some unkind yet familiar commentary being made by some of the men gathered around them. A knife appeared in his hand only to sail through the air and lodge into the plaster behind one of the men. “I was promised silence. How do you expect me to work with this… cacophony?”
“Give him what he needs,” the leader, a man she suspected was Kelvin Rodgers based on the profile she had seen back at the Yard, ordered the others.
They fell silent and Holmes took a step closer, his breath ghosting over her face, ridiculous curls mingling with her own, eyes searching hers to find something within. A new knife gleamed in his hand, blade reflecting the florescent lighting set high above them all. “Do you trust me?” he asked, barely sufficient to be considered a whisper.
“No,” she replied loud enough for the others to hear, knowing they were listening to anything and everything the two acquaintances had to say no matter what the volume. She swallowed heavily, her entire head moving with the action.
His hand was on her instantly, the ropes against her injured wrist shifted ever so slightly as he brushed against them. She had no time to feel relief however, as the blade made contact with her skin, tracing a careful line down her upper arm just beneath her capped sleeve and stopping just shy of the crook of her elbow. She breathed out heavily, and watched the blood, her blood, bubble up to the surface of her skin. A fraction of an inch to the left and he would have hit a major artery. The hand against the ropes moved upward and squeezed, the blood flowing freely now, sluggish but most definitely there. She could not stop the grunt of pain the action caused, and he seemed to smile at her discomfort.
“Going to take your time, aren’t you?” she guessed, though she cursed the unsteadiness of her voice.
“Of course,” he agreed as he drew the tip of the blade through the wound, spreading and smearing her life about her. “I do so love a show.”
“You are such a freak,” she bit out.
He scoffed at her. “That’s hardly original, Ms. Donovan. I believe you have used that one already.” The knife found a new target, tracing another line, this one along the side of a vein. “Do you think your people will come in time? Do you think they even know where you are?” he taunted.
“They’ll be here,” she assured him. “And you sick sons of bitches will pay.” She let her gaze track the others around the room, tried not to remember she had a sociopath with a sharp object digging into her skin. She saw some of them look concerned, but not enough. Unless Lestrade brought a full team, and soon, they would be outnumbered and over powered in no time.
The knife stopped and Sherlock looked up at a man hovering beside him. “She’s lying; she has no backup,” he advised. “Also? Do get out of my light.” To accent his words, he drove the knife into the man’s leg, catching in the seam of his trousers, but also catching his skin enough for him to stumble backwards.
“Boss?” the thug gasped, trying to pull the blade free.
“He’s doing his job, you do yours,” Rodgers brushed him off. “Get out of his light and let him see if she knows anything about our operation. If she does, maybe I’ll let you finish her. If she doesn’t, maybe there will be enough of her to play with when our new man here is through.”
Sally wanted to roll her eyes at the threats, having heard far worse than that in her time, but ended up biting her lip as Sherlock made a slice down her uninjured arm with yet another knife. Part of her wondered how many he had with him and the rest of her said she was being stupid as obviously the chef’s roll was where he kept his toys. A look at the table confirmed her suspicions as she saw the roll laid out nice and neat with all sorts of gleaming instruments, several of which she was fairly certain he had stolen from the morgue.
“Now, Ms. Donovan,” he said, ever so casually. “Who led you here? What possible evidence was left behind that brought you to us this evening?” The blade paused and her arm squeezed, warm fluid dripping and tickling. “If you are good girl and tell me, perhaps you will be rewarded and I will allow you to watch me take apart whoever was foolish enough to make such a mistake before I finish with you.”
“Boss! You can’t let him go after one of us, can you? One of your own?” one of the men in the back asked, a hint of franticness to his tone.
Rodgers glared at him, Sherlock pulling back to watch. “If one of you left something behind that led her to us, I’d want to finish you myself. Our partner here will just be far more artistic about it.”
There were murmurs across the gathered men, some supportive, some sympathetic, and some aghast that he would so easily turn his own people over to a psychopath. It was likely excellent for his control. From what she had read about the man, he ruled a fair share of the market, but power was a slippery thing and any sort of underground business had the opportunity to be rife with infighting and squabbling. If he could add to his power base, through fear and the possibility of pain, it would be good for his image and good for business. She was trying desperately not to think of what killing a detective would do, or if he was willing to go there just for the clout.
She raised her head defiantly, Sherlock keeping the knife flush against her, but not pressing, not cutting, for now. “You were sloppy,” she accused, riding on Rodgers’ fears. “When you didn’t leave physical fingerprints, you left enough of your trademarks behind that it was like following a map.”
Rodgers glared at her, but then snapped at his men, “Nichols, Higginbotham, you two ran the last job. What did you leave? What did you put your fingers in? If you did something, anything extra, to lead them to us...”
“Nothing, boss, I swear!” a man with an unfortunately nasal voice insisted.
“We did exactly as you said,” a second, gruffer voice confirmed. “The job went off without a hitch and nothing out of the ordinary happened.”
There was an indignant huff of breath before the nasally man added, “Well, aside from your fascination with that watch.”
“It was there! Just sitting there! Do you have any idea how much one of those things cost?” the gruffer man defended himself. “What was the harm in taking it?”
“It could have been bugged,” Sherlock offered. “If they had suspicions of your next target, it could have been a plant.” Sally wisely did not comment on the fact the Yard did not have the finances to purchase some fancy tiny tracking device, let alone some random flash bit to draw the eye.
Rodgers motioned and one of the thugs was dragged into her line of sight by another two while a fourth hovered at the sidelines. The man’s wrist was forced forward and, sure enough there was an ostentatious metal thing at the end. A bit of force was used to remove it, and she may have silently taken pleasure in seeing the man’s wrist snap back similar to how her own had done, before the thing was laid out on the table and smashed with the butt of one of the henchmen’s guns.
“What else does she know? What else did she hear?” Rodgers demanded. “How much of tonight has been transmitted along with everything else?”
“Give me a moment,” Sherlock huffed impatiently. He turned back to Sally with a put upon frown. “Really, no respect any more. These things take time, you see, and everyone wants their results now, now, now.”
“I could care for a bit of expediency,” she replied. Her jaw clenched at the pain radiating through her body, and her eyes wanted to squeeze tight, but she forced herself to relax, to watch and wait and listen for anything and everything that might possibly help her.
The knife danced in front of her, the shine dulled by the red of her blood. She had to admit that as far as intimidations went, it was quite effective. “I have not gotten you to scream yet,” Sherlock commented. His tone was sad, as was the way his lower lip stuck out just so.
“Not going to happen,” she told him with a confidence she did not fully feel.
“Oh, I think I will,” he told her. He cocked his head to the side as though contemplating some great thought, like the meaning of life or just how Cadbury got the liquid goo inside those chocolate eggs. “In fact, I think you should scream right now.”
“Really?” she asked, less than impressed.
His eyes cleared of all fog, the ethereal pale that much more shocking around his still slightly dilated pupils. “Yes,” he told her. His voice had lost some of the bravado, some of the falseness it had been tinged with since she arrived, and he sounded far more like his usual insane self. “Now would be good.”
She opened her mouth as if to reply, watching the knowing smirks on the faces of the gathered men, and then shouted at the top of her lungs, “In here!”
The rest was a blur. There was stampeding footsteps and shouting and a round or two of gunfire and at least one flash grenade. Her wrists were suddenly free with Sherlock leaning low and demanding, “Are you okay?” even as he pressed her own gun back into her hands. John was mobile and swinging, wrestling with a man that had tried to get Sherlock from behind, aided by Lestrade himself who knocked the man out and supported the flailing doctor all in one go.
By the time she sorted things out, it was mostly over. She did, however, have the pleasure of grinding her heel into the wrist of the man who broke her own, his whimpering scream oddly satisfying when it all came down to it. When she looked up to find both Lestrade and Sherlock staring at her, she shrugged, “I thought he was reaching for his weapon.”
“Indeed,” Sherlock agreed knowingly.
A new figure appeared and she was oh so very tempted to sink into his arms, but she resisted and simply greeted him with a perhaps tad more emotional version of his name than she intended when she said, “Anderson.”
“What did they do to you?” he asked, aghast. His hands hovered over her wounds as if afraid to touch and make them real. His eyes then tracked over to where Holmes still held a knife in his hands, handle now slick with blood as it was his sole weapon during the fight. “What did that psychotic do to you?” he demanded.
“Sherlock did this?” Lestrade confirmed, taking in the mixture of cuts and blood as well as the broken wrist.
“Someone needs to put that lunatic down!” Anderson ranted, falling silent only when she held up one red-tinged hand.
“Someone needs to thank him for his knowledge of anatomy,” she corrected. She turned to the man in question. “All that time with corpses did you good. You knew where to cut and how deep. Looks nasty, but it’s doubtful these will even scar. Maybe we can get you a nice cadaver as a thank you.”
“You have lost enough blood to be lightheaded. You may wish to lie down shortly to prevent the urge to pass out,” Sherlock told her. She took that as his version of concern and simply nodded in agreement. She also noted he did not say no to the cadaver.
“I want to lie down,” John chimed in as he hobbled over to them. He looked terrible, crisscrossed with blood leaning heavily on a cane for what she was fairly certain was no longer psychosomatic purposes. “That, and a good drink.”
“Alcohol in your condition would not be a wise decision,” Sherlock chided. He looked at his own handiwork and wrinkled his nose in distaste.
“Fine,” Watson conceded. “Wash me up, stitch up that one mistake, get some food into me, and then get me drunk,” he amended.
“I did not make a mistake. You flinched,” Sherlock insisted.
“I flinched because the knife was in the wrong position and you pressed too deep,” John corrected. As if to take the sting out of his words, and perhaps the pout off of his flatmate’s face, he added, “Thank you for thinking of the cane though. Don’t think I’d be standing without it right now. Playing hostage is tiring work.”
Lestrade rolled his eyes. “Both of you are going to hospital to be checked over right and proper,” he declared. He turned to the doctor and added, “Sorry, John, no drink tonight.”
“I’ll bring you some,” Sherlock comforted him. “Sherry okay? I believe we still have that bottle from Mycroft and were waiting for a proper time to open it.”
“Sherry would be lovely,” John agreed, completely ignoring Lestrade’s attempt to talk over him about how that was a bad idea and he’d check Holmes himself before he was allowed in the room and was anyone listening to him?
Sally used the distraction to lean discreetly into her lover, who ran a comforting hand along her back. They would make their own time later, after everything had calmed down. Lorelei herself would likely insist upon it.
He took her injured wrist between his own far larger hands, carefully manipulating it to determine just how bad of a break she had sustained. “Did he do this?” he demanded in a combination of a growl and a whisper. Like they were fooling anyone at this point.
“No,” she answered honestly. “That would be the pansy over there on the floor crying for his mummy.” She gestured to the man who was currently insisting they not put him in cuffs and that they take him to a surgery immediately for treatment.
“Ah,” said John. “That’s why you...” he trailed off, realizing he was speaking the obvious.
“No need to be gentle with him, boys,” Lestrade called, and Sally knew she was not the only one to take subtle delight in the tightening of the cuffs about his wrists. They watched as he was hauled away with the others and then the Detective Inspector turned his attentions back to her. “You will go get that set tonight, and have every last one of those cuts cleaned and cared for properly.”
“Yes, sir,” she dutifully replied, ever the proper civil servant. Then, with a hint of a smile, she added, “It does look ghastly, doesn’t it?”
Lestrade just shook his head. “If I hadn’t seen up close how shallow those things really were, I would have had you in that ambulance long before now,” he told her. He turned to Sherlock and added, “And I don’t know whether to thank you or be horrified you knew how to do that.”
“Be horrified, it’s saner,” John supplied.
Lestrade laughed as he led the way out, ushering the captives towards the waiting van and the injured towards the waiting ambulance. Sally hung back with John for a moment, trying not to think of what a good act he had put on, she asked, “Save a bit of that Sherry for me, yeah?” She could more than use a drink after a night like this.
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Sherlock asked, appearing as if out of thin air. She should have known he would never be far away. At her questioning look, he added, “In your condition, I mean. Unless you want to risk even lower intelligence with the genes you have chosen to share. It is, after all, your decision, but I would think it to be a fairly straightforward choice.”
Her eyes grew wide at the implication, and she looked back to where Anderson was discussing something with a tech on the scene and sending her meaningful looks every chance he got. “You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered.
As she tried to figure out if he was serious or not or if there was any meaning behind John’s chuckled, “Was that really necessary?” and Sherlock’s deadpan, “Now she will never name it after me,” one of the paramedics asked if she was ready to leave.
She looked across to see just the bare hint of a gleam in Sherlock’s eyes and replied, “Oh, hell yes.”
~~~~~~~~~~
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