Chapter Text
Despite telling her to run, he himself doesn't.
He finally removes the disguise on his head and drops it, finding it difficult to catch his breath. His cheek twitches as the adrenaline drops and exhaustion rises. He ignores the part of his brain saying that he's drained from rage, not physicality.
Searching around the makeshift camp, he confirms he is the last remaining person alive. His hand trembles—the bloodied machete abandoned near the bodies. His lip purses.
They deserve it, an idiotic voice in his head says. He shakes his head and finally walks out of the secluded area.
He starts to deduce where she could have run after he told her to, but he realizes he didn't have to.
Because she's here.
One minute away from the execution site, she sits cross-legged on the dirty ground. The dead tree, which looks like it was struck by lightning, supports her lower back as she leans on it, her hands clasped on her lap.
Has she been waiting for him?
Idiot question. Of course, she has.
"I told you to run," he scolds her as he stands before her.
"I did. You saw me."
"I meant further than just outside your execution site," he replies.
She leans back on the tree behind her to look up at him. He manages to hide his wince upon seeing the effect of what happened to her over the past days.
She tilts her head as if to say: You understand now why I couldn't run.
He sighs. At least, he didn't need to spend too much time looking for her just to bring her back to the pickup that the cell had.
He gestures back at the camp. "The car," he says simply.
She looks at the direction of the camp. John would say that she seems indifferent to it. He's not John. He clearly sees the fear in her gaze.
"No survivors," he reassures.
Her eyes snap back to his. A real smirk falls on her face, making him feel some sort of relief at the sight of it. He mentally shakes his head. Now is not the time to be sentimental.
Hold on, sentimental?
"What do you call me, then?" she jokes.
"Someone who also died in Karachi."
Her brow rises. "Are you going to kill me, Mister Holmes?"
"Yes."
The Woman chuckles. "After all the trouble you did?"
Sherlock rolls his eyes, and she laughs quietly. When he offers his hand, she takes it, so he can help her stand up.
As he pulls her up, her knees buckle as she takes a step. He manages to catch her, including the look on her face as she stares at her knees as if they just offended her.
"It seems I'm in shock," she tells no one in particular, sounding annoyed.
"You were almost killed," he reminds her, holding both of her hands as she holds his tightly—the only way she can stay upright—while she leans on his side.
"Wasn't the first time," she replies dismissively.
"Except you had no protection this time," he counters.
"I did." He hums skeptically. "I told you: I like to know people will be on my side exactly when I need them to be. And here you are."
"No."
Her mask falters at the word. She sighs with a tone that says, Fine, I guess there's no point in lying. I really thought I was going to die tonight.
"Can you walk?" he asks softly.
She glares for a moment before finding herself oddly comforted by him. He is, however, painfully aware of how close they are. How tightly she is holding on to him because she needs to keep walking. How tightly he is holding on to her because he—
"I'll need some help, yes," she finally admits just as softly, interrupting his dangerous thoughts.
"Alright," he says without judgment.
He wraps one arm around her back, holding her farther arm. She wraps one arm around his waist. Their free hands settle to hold on to each other, gripping tightly as if they're about to dance the tango.
She stumbles at first as he starts to walk, eventually managing to walk normally. Yet, she doesn't let go. Neither does he. Neither of them speaks.
They reach the camp, and the Woman finally lets go. She stands in the center and looks around the massive pile of dead bodies on one side.
"How are you getting rid of them?" she asks as he goes towards the pickup.
Thankfully, he already found the key from the driver's corpse earlier. For some odd reason, he doesn't want her to see him loot a man he just murdered.
"I don't have to," he tells her. "The convenient thing about this terrorist group is that they're untraceable, especially when it comes to executions. They chose it quite well, too. I'd say I respect their thoroughness, but—"
He stops, not wanting to say that he would never respect anyone who dared lay a hand on—No, stop.
He continues before she says anything. "No one will find this place. Seems you're truly special," he spits. "Everyone in the cell is here. My brother will only be able to find their headquarters if he searches for them and flags them as having fled the place."
"Special and untraceable," she whispers as she looks at the pile of still bleeding bodies. Some are headless. Some are limbless. All of them have been slashed and shot with their own machine guns.
"Yes," he replies, moving towards her. "By the time this place is discovered, only their skeletons remain. None of their identities are on record, so they will never be identified. Not even by their teeth. Even their clothes aren't identifiable."
He slowly reaches for her wrist to pull her away from the bodies. Something in him doesn't want her to look at the aftermath of his actions. As he touches her, her eyes snap at his hand. She quickly grabs it to move it from her wrist to her elbow.
What is she doing? Oh, her pulse, he thinks, swallowing as he remembers the last conversation they had, and the fact that the terrorist group finding her was his doing. He fails to notice that she doesn't remove her hand from his, or that she is staring at him as he stares at nothing.
"You're trembling."
Sherlock looks up at her.
"I'm—" he starts, looking down and finally feeling how much his hand on her elbow is shaking. He immediately lets go, feeling light but managing to stay on his feet. "Right." He shakes his head, pulling himself together. "Let's go to the car. I'll drive us to a safe house I prepared. We'll stay there just for tonight. Their car is also untraceable, so we don't need to worry about being followed. No one knows we're here anyway. In the middle of nowhere."
He starts to walk away, but the Woman stops him with a hand on his forearm. "Mister Holmes."
"What?" he asks impatiently.
"Are you alright?"
"You're asking me?" he asks in confusion, turning to look at her. "You were the one who was about to be ex—"
"You did just kill a lot of people," she points out, looking at him with such... emotion in her eyes that he almost couldn't recognize her.
Not even when he was condemning her to death did she look as... scared as she is now. Not even when she was about to die moments ago. Is she scared of him? No, she wouldn't be scared of him doing something like this, would she?
"It was self-defense in advance," he tries to joke, but his voice is barely a whisper.
"Mister Holmes, my booby trap was made as a precaution, and I wasn't even holding the trigger. More than that, guns are distant weapons. Machetes are not," she says matter-of-factly.
Her tight grip would have pained him on a normal day, but he finds it comforting and grounding right now. Something he needs.
"Are they—Was this—Is this your first—?"
"Yes," he cuts her off. "Anyway, never mind that. Let's go now, so we can get to the safe house as soon as we can. We have much to discuss on how we're faking your death properly."
She looks at him for a moment. He can tell she knows he really wants to leave this place. She nods and he leads her to the pickup—the same one she rode when they dragged her here.
He sighs at the reminder of how the Woman didn't complain or beg for her life as they drove here. They were sitting in the tray of the pickup. She didn't know she was in safe hands, surrounded by terrorists, but sitting behind him. He tried not to watch as her tears fell, looking at the dark road behind the pickup.
She was so cooperative that they didn't bother to gag, blindfold, or tie her. She accepted her fate with dignity, and they were confident that she would not leave the place alive.
As they buckle themselves on the driver and passenger seats, she asks him casually, "Are you okay to drive?"
He blinks at her beside him. Almost saying no. Almost retorting something like: Were you okay to walk? Almost revealing that his state right now is almost the same as hers.
"We need to get to the safe house," he says quietly instead.
And he knows she understands that despite both of them being like this, they don't have a choice but to suck it up and go to the safe house. Their only option is to steal this car, and Sherlock is definitely aware that she knows why he's adamant to bring her there as soon as possible, despite no one chasing after them for now.
She doesn't offer to drive. He doesn't offer to navigate instead. They both know he needed something to concentrate on, and both know she needed some way to rest. He needs a distraction—to focus on her safety.
They ride the car in absolute silence.
The Woman watches the road in front of her, her fists squeezing themselves on her lap as if she's holding a stress ball. Sherlock tries not to do the same thing on the steering wheel. He can't afford to be emotional right now. He needs to be the cold machine they both need him to be while he's behind the wheel.
He fights the urge to grab one of her hands, not sure if the urge is to comfort her or himself. Because she's right. Of course, she is.
He just killed a terrorist cell.
With machetes and machine guns.
If it were just the guns, it'd be much easier to detach himself from the act, but the machete—the feel of flesh under the sword, having to push his whole strength to chop these people, feeling their bodies resist the urge before being penetrated.
They deserve it, but God—
He jumps and manages to regain his composure when the car swivels for a split second.
Sherlock turns to look at the Woman beside him. Her gaze is still fixed on the road in front of him. Her face is still stoic and calm. But her trembling hand has settled itself on his thigh. On another day, he would assume this was another one of her ploys to seduce him. But this is not one of those days.
This is for comfort.
For whom, he isn't sure, but the warmth and almost nonexistent pressure of her palm on his thigh is grounding him. With that, he takes a deep breath and focuses on the matter at hand.
He needs to get her to safety.
His hand dropping to wrap around hers on his thigh is just so he can check on her mental state. Definitely.
Nothing more.