London rain has a sound to it—sharp and whispering, like secrets sliding off rooftops.
You’d only meant to drop off coffee.
That morning, you were late. You remember fumbling with your lanyard at the checkpoint, offering an awkward smile to the armed guard who barely glanced up. You remember the fluorescent lights overhead, the smell of disinfectant, paper, ink, nerves.
And then—
Glass. Heat. A sound like the sky ripping open.
They said you were found in the wreckage—alive, buried beneath the twisted remains of a reinforced corridor, your uniform burned, hands trembling. Your hair was singed at the tips. Your eyes, bloodshot and wide.
You didn’t speak for three days.
"You were at the epicenter," Mycroft said, his tone like glassware—cold, breakable. "That’s not coincidence."
You sat across from him in a private suite at St. Bart’s, IV in your arm, monitors beeping like cautious metronomes. He stood with arms crossed, framed by the flickering television screen behind him—footage of the explosion looping again and again. Officials called it sabotage. No one knew by whom.
Except someone did.
"Mycroft," John interrupted gently, standing near your bedside. "They’re not ready."
"You think I’m being harsh?" Mycroft snapped. "You didn’t see the security feed before it went dark. She looked up. She saw something. I need to know what."
"I don’t think she even knows she saw it," Sherlock muttered from the corner. He hadn’t looked at you yet. His coat was soaked through. He’d come straight from the rubble. “Memory and trauma don’t get along.”
You finally met his eyes then—sharp, storm-colored eyes that didn’t blink.
“I’ll get it back,” he said quietly. “If it’s in there... I’ll find it.”
But someone else was already listening.
Far beneath the city, in a wine-red room with no windows, James Moriarty watched a paused security still on a screen. You. Frozen mid-step, turning your head at just the wrong—or right—moment.
“Oh, darling,” he whispered, lips curling. “You did see.”
He tilted his head as he rewound the feed again, fingers twitching in rhythm with the quiet ticking of the antique clock behind him.
“You’re the last thread. And if I pull just right...” He snapped his fingers once. “Everything unravels.”
He glanced at the two men flanking him.
“Find out what she dreams about,” he said, smiling. “Nightmares are awfully revealing.”
Now, you sit in Baker Street. Or what's left of you does.
Sherlock paces, watching you from the corner of his eye, his violin silent for once. John has tea on the table, untouched. Mycroft is threatening some psychological specialist over the phone.
And you?
You're trying to remember. Trying not to remember.
The flashbacks are creeping in now, like black ink under a door: a flicker of a shadow just before the blast, the hiss of static in your earpiece, the unmistakable smell of gun oil.
And always, in those shattered memories—
A smile. A voice. The words: “Boom. Time to change the game.”
Someone tried to kill everyone. And they failed.
Because you lived.
And now they know you’re still breathing.