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There’s a dead nun in the entry. Seb steps over her body, signaling to Frances to drag it outside, and goes on. With the power and generator out, the building is a shadowy, twisting nightmare. There are more dead nuns in one of the hallways, and a dead child on the stairs. Mycroft’s voice is steady in Seb’s ear, telling him the building plan and the last reported location of the hostiles.
He shoots at someone in the depths of a classroom, misses. It’s an adult, at least. He details two of his people to deal with it and keeps moving. They clear the first floor, and then the second, without much trouble and then they go back down to clear the basement. This was always going to be the hard part; Seb would have known even if he hadn’t had Mycroft to tell him.
When he slides the camera under the door the stairs are completely dark and the hallway and the rooms below are invisible in the blackness. “No windows,” Mycroft says, “no natural light.” Four missing nuns, seven missing children, three hostiles, and a little girl strapped with explosives, and no wonder the GIGN hadn’t wanted to touch this.
He signals to his team to stand by, and he flings the door open and they lean in and pitch three flashbangs down. Seb goes down first, in three big jumps, and rolls his ankle hard. There’s a hostile down the hall, on his knees and blinking, and Seb slams him in the face on his way past. “First door is on your right in less than a metre,” Mycroft says, and Seb kicks it open and throws in another bomb.
When the air clears he can hear the team behind him, coming down and securing the man on the floor. He keeps moving. “Second door on your left,” Mycroft says, and Seb finds it just where it’s meant to be, door conveniently partway ajar, and he flings in a flashbang.
“Clear,” someone calls from the door of the first room and Seb picks up the pace. It’s been close to ninety seconds since they threw the first grenade. They’ve lost any element of surprise they might have had, and the hostiles are likely to panic and start shooting hostages pretty soon.
“Furnace room dead ahead, maybe six metres,” Mycroft says. “On the blueprints it’s the only one on this level left that’s big enough to hold them all.”
In the dim light his headlamp casts Seb can see that it’s closed, and probably barricaded. They can’t use the flashbangs if they can’t get the door open. Seb’s done this a thousand times, in Bosnia, in Somalia, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in London working for both Jim and Mycroft. It never ends well for the civilians, but he’s fucked if he can see any choice.
He signals Benedict to bring up the ram. They hit the door hard and there’s screaming on the other side, women and children shouting in French and men in another language he thinks might be Armenian. They hit it again, and it shudders, a third time and the frame splinters and he could use another flashbang but they’re expecting that.
Instead he waits while they hit the door a fourth time, shield on his arm, visor down, and then he goes in through the shattered remains.
There's a hostile just inside and Seb hits him straight on, putting all of his weight into it and taking him down like an American football player and rolling up to his knees, shield in front of his face.
One more. He’s across the room in the shadows, half hidden by the bulk of the water heater. This one is cleverer; he has a small girl in front of him, arm around her throat, one hand holding a gun on her. And with the other hand he holds the wrist of a second girl, this one even younger. She’s covered in wires. Seb can see them even in the dim light of his headlamp.
She isn’t just wearing a bomb, he thinks. Somehow, she is the bomb.
“Do you have the shot?”, Mycroft Holmes says in his ear.
“Negative,” Seb says. “He’s holding a hostage. I can’t get a clear shot.”
“Not the hostile,” Holmes says, and his voice is dead even. He could be talking about anything. “The girl.”
The girl. Seb looks from one girl to the other. The hostage is perhaps ten, brunette, in a plaid skirt and dark jacket. The other girl is seven or eight, darker haired, in a grubby pink sweatshirt and jeans and pink and white velcro trainers Seb’s fairly sure he saw for sale at Lidl a few weeks ago. His heart clenches. Both of them are tearstained, shivering, clearly terrified.
Seb can’t save either of them. “I have the shot,” he says.
“Take it,” Mycroft Holmes orders him, and Seb does.
His shot echoes in the big space, and Seb’s already moving, launching himself across it, too late. He’s still ten feet away when the second shot rings out. The third one comes from behind him, a beautiful and nearly impossible angle that he’ll admire another day.
By the time he skids to a stop and squats down to check both girls are dead. Empty eyes stare up at him from ruined faces. The hostile is lying on his back with a bullet wound in his throat, dying.
“Is it done?” Holmes asks him.
Seb stands up slowly, tasting the copper of blood in his own mouth where he bit his lip. “It’s done, sir.”
“Very good,” Holmes says. “Go ahead and pull your team out. The locals are spearheading the cleanup.”
He turns around. His team are getting the hostages out, like they should be. Frances is the only one standing still– standing watch, good girl. Her eyes, when they meet his, are almost all pupil, black with shock and horror.
“We’re clear in here,” Seb says sharply. “The boss wants things left for the cleaners.” And Christ, that feels like something he would have said in the bad old days when the boss was Jim Moriarty. This whole situation is fucked. He knows that’s why Mycroft wanted him in the first place. Seb’s an expert on fucked, has been there and done that in three decades and on four continents.
“Fall out,” he says, and Frances goes after the others. Seb follows her, trying not to limp. They take the hostages out the front to the ambulances and the prisoners out the back into the alley, where the GIGN has cars waiting. Anthea’s there, too, her collar turned up against the growing chill of the evening.
“Mr. Holmes says you did well,” she tells him. “He knows this wasn’t easy and he’s grateful to all of you for what you did today.” She has an alpha’s charisma, though Seb’s rarely seen her use it before today. She’s using it now, meeting each of their eyes in turn. Doing Holmes’ dirty work, clearing up his messes with an efficiency Seb can only admire.
“Mr. Holmes thinks it’s best if you don’t stay to debrief,” she says. “They’ve closed all the airports and train stations, but there’s a van parked four blocks east. You’ll be all right to get everyone home?”
“Of course,” Seb says, because what choice does he have, really? He knew what he was signing up for.
Anthea hands him a set of keys, a wad of Euros, a Visa card, and paperwork to show at the border. She touches his shoulder before she turns away, sympathetic but not tender, the kind of thing she’d do with another alpha. Anthea’s always been good about treating him like it doesn’t matter. Seb doesn’t have it in him to appreciate it right now but maybe he will later.
An hour later they’re on the eerily quiet A1, pointed toward the tunnel and London. Seb keeps it sedately at the speed limit. They stop for dinner before they reach Calais, and Seb pays for the meal and the petrol and a truly horrific amount of junk food from the BP station with Mycroft’s money, and pretends not to notice that Benedict’s somehow acquired a handle of Bacardi. He’s ex-Army, and clearly hasn’t forgotten how to forage.
Taylor Swift sings softly about her broken heart while his team drinks rum and Cokes and Seb tries not to think about anything at all. They’re sitting on the train when Frances says very quietly, “He ordered you to shoot her.”
It’s not a question. Seb doesn’t turn to look at her. “Yeah,” he says.
“Was this the worst job you’ve ever been on?”
“Bad. Not the worst.” He can feel everyone in the van watching him now. “This was quick,” he says. “There wasn’t time to think about it before, and that always makes it easier. And she didn’t suffer. I could tell you a lot of the usual shite about the greater good and how many lives we probably saved but that would just be me lying to you. I did it because the big man ordered me to and I trust him to make the decisions. If you can’t do that, no shame, but this isn’t the job for you.”
“Okay,” Frances says but her voice is still small.
Seb unscrews the cap on his Diet Coke and screws it back on. He’s never been good at this part. At the words. In the old days he would have taken them out into the desert and made them run until they were ready to drop, but this isn’t Iraq and it isn’t the army. “It doesn’t mean it’s easy or that it doesn’t stay with you for the rest of your life one way or another,” he says finally. “Telling myself I did it because it was the right thing to do is a lie I can’t live with. I did it because I was ordered to, that’s all. I have a little girl of my own–.” He finds he suddenly can’t go on.
“I get it, sir,” Frances says hurriedly. She’s sniffling a little but she sounds better, her voice stronger. “I get it.”
Seb knows she doesn’t, but he lets it go. Whatever she thinks she gets, if it brings her peace, there’s no sense in trying to take it away.
Anthea booked them hotel rooms in Dover, but Seb suddenly wants to be home in bed next to John Watson’s sturdy warm body, has never wanted anything more than he wants to watch his daughter breathe. He finishes the Diet Coke and does a ton down the dark empty motorway to London, squinting through the raindrops on the windscreen while his team drifts into sleep.
It’s after three by the time he’s dropped them one by one at home. London is quiet as a drowsing cat in the blackest part of the night. He parks the van and sits in it for a long moment, gathering his energy and courage, before he goes in to check on Isobel.
She’s asleep in her own bed in her own little room for once, the constellation nightlight casting the dim shadows of stars on her face and stuffed animals lining the edge of her bed. She’s alive, her breathing steady, ordinary as if nothing in the world has ever gone wrong, as if her mother hadn’t killed two other girls tonight.
Seb’s the one who can’t breathe suddenly, panic rising in him until it feels like his throat is closing up. It’s worse than mortar fire, worse than napalm, worse than the shadow of nuclear war. He slides down the wall until he’s sitting with his back against it, his knees pulled up against his chest and his face pressed into them.
So very many dead children, lying on their backs with their empty hands open. So many dead girls Seb couldn’t save, didn’t even try to save, and oh Christ, who will save Isobel, if it comes to that; who will save his clever lovely darling girl who loves everyone she’s ever met, who wears purple unicorn trainers and a glitter tutu and goes nowhere these days without a stableful of plastic ponies and who not even Seb can keep safe in a fucked up world like this one.
“Hey,” someone says, and then something touches his arm. “Are you okay?”
Seb jolts away, shocked, opening his eyes to stare at Watson. He can’t manage the words, the lie, he so clearly isn’t okay.
“Moran,” Watson says, kneeling next to him. “Sebastian–.
“Just a bad job,” Seb says dully. “Just–shit.”
Watson pulls him gently to his feet and steadies him when Seb sways a little. “Come on, then. I’ve got you.” He draws Seb into the room they share and undresses him the way he would a child, and then pushes him into the shower.
When Seb’s done, Watson hands him a towel and inspects the big bruise on his ribs Seb can’t even remember getting and his twisted ankle and watches him dry off and dress in the sweatpants Watson brought him, before he leads him back to the bedroom and tucks Seb into their bed like a nurse with a particularly challenging patient.
And afterward they lie together in the dark, each on their own sides of the big bed, not touching. Seb’s exhausted but he’s still far too keyed up to sleep. Instead he stares up at the shadowy ceiling, waiting for Watson to fall asleep so that he can slink into Isobel’s bed and curl up around her the way he wishes Watson would curl up around him.
Instead, Watson sighs after a while. “Want to talk about it?” he says.
“It’s eyes only.” Seb musters a little bit of flippancy, saying it, although it sounds weak even to him.
He can feel Watson roll over to face him. “Is there anything I can do for you to make it better?” he asks.
No, is what Seb should say; he’s been on his own for a very long time and he’s mostly managed. He can manage this time, too. He only has to wait for the off-licences to open, which won’t be forever. Or for the clubs to open, if he wants a fuck, which he doesn’t, even though it will probably make him feel better. Instead he says in a very small voice, “Could you put me down?”
He hears the sharp intake of Watson’s breath. “I thought you didn’t like that sort of thing.”
“Right. It was stupid.”
“No,” Watson says. “That’s not what I meant. You made it quite clear from day one that you were here to be Isobel’s mother, not my omega. You’ve told me a dozen times in a dozen ways that you didn’t want to be treated like an omega.”
Seb’s so tired, and sad and guilty and so stupid with it; the last thing he wants is to have this conversation. “I guarantee you that no one wants to be treated like a fucking omega,” he says, “because you have to choose between being an omega and being a person. God forbid you don’t want to be defined by the hole between your legs a hundred percent of the time.”
“But you want me to put you down now.”
“Yeah,” Seb says, “well. It turns out you can’t just decide not to be an omega. Or maybe you can’t just decide to be a person.”
At least it’s dark, because if Seb had had to have this conversation when it was light enough he and Watson could see each other’s faces, it might literally have killed him.
“Never mind,” he says after a while. “I’ll figure it out. I always have.” He can wait a few hours and if it isn’t better by then, Fleur can do it. It’s awkward and weird and terrible, because she’s his sister and because now she’s mated to someone else, but so is this awkward and weird and terrible.
“No,” Watson finally says. “I’ll do it, I want to.”
Seb should say no but he can still taste the hot copper of blood in his mouth. “Okay.”
They move together in the dimness until Seb’s on his side with a pillow under his bad shoulder and Watson’s pressed against his back, solid and strong. “I could feel you out in the hall. You were– I could feel how bad it was. But I’m not a very good alpha and I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Seb can feel him, too, not just the heat of his body but something that’s radiating calm the way Seb must’ve been radiating distress earlier. Pheromones, Sherlock would have said, just animals being animals, but whatever it is it works. Fleur’s the last person who did this for him and that was years and years ago. Jim couldn’t have, even if he hadn’t been Jim; it takes an alpha to put an omega down. “I’m not a very good omega, so that’s perfect,” he says.
He’s so tired, and he closes his eyes and slides down into the dark, and John Watson holds him all the way down.