Joanne Hartwell is sent to London via the elder Holmes cousin Julian to hand off a top secret letter to Mycroft Holmes. Someone has infiltrated the ranks of the British Intelligence Services, and as a result are always one step ahead of them.
All kn...
Joanne slowly came to, her mind sluggish from the medication and severe concussion. Aromas of a hospital setting were noticed first - laundered linen, cleaning agents and smell of plastic tubing. Her headache had diminished somewhat thanks to the IV that was currently supplying a cocktail of drugs on a steady drip. A cadence of beeps from the vital signs machine along with intermittent signals from the IV unit buzzed low in the background. Without opening her eyes, she focused on the soft murmur of voices nearby. To her left near a window were Sherlock and Mycroft, who were discussing someone named Iggy. To her right near the foot of the bed, a familiar deep and sonorous voice issued orders to a doctor. Only a Holmes would dare to do that. How like Julian this other voice sounded!
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An involuntary moan of pain escaped her that had nothing to do with the wound at the back of her head. Sherlock's earlier words came back to her, the only thing Joanne could remember since the brothers had strapped and hoisted her out of the water near the wreckage of the boat: "There's nothing we can do. He's dead. We have to continue on..." She had let oblivion claim her after that. The combined shock of the head trauma and Julian's loss were too much to bear.
Joanne would have gladly let the medications lull her back to the darkness, when the sound of footsteps approached on either side of the bed. Scents of red and yellow with a hint of underlying green from aftershave accompanied the one on the left: Mycroft.. Or is it Kieran? She liked both names, and in her mind's current scrambled state, it was hard to remember which was first.
Pleasant and familiar colors filled her minds eye from the scent directly above to her right. Exotic blues, reds and indigo mixed with high golden notes from specially imported oil fragrances.
It can't be...
Long warm fingers stroked her face as they moved closer, the colors intensifying. Joanne willed her eyes to open, trying to focus.
"Xýpna, kardiá mou."
Squinting from the bright light streaming into the window, her vision slowly focused. A pair of overly bright snapping brown eyes peered intently into her own.
"Julian!!" she croaked, her throat dry from the constant flow of oxygen down the nasal cannula. "I thought... I thought you were..." Joanne couldn't stop the tears of happiness that spilled from her eyes, her hands going to his face and gently moving over every feature: lips, eyes, forehead, jawline. He was here. He was really here, as though back from the dead. To her, he had been.
"Koíta me, agápi mou. I am here. Did you really think I would leave you?"
The heart monitor beeped out a faster rate as anger filtered through the overwhelming relief that he was indeed alive and well. "You pushed me into the water... made me leave... but I came back."
"And were nearly killed for it," Mycroft said looking down at her, his blue eyes like flint. "What were you thinking?"
Fully awake yet exhausted, Joanne was in no mood to argue. Still, she couldn't bite back the retort that sprang to her lips. "I was thinking of getting Julian off that boat, physically if I had to!"
