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Anthea looks down at her wristwatch before scanning the room filled with entering and exiting agents once more.
Their late, she thinks. This chance cannot be ruined by bad timing. It just cannot.
She turns to the security cameras at the side of her desk and watches Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade enter the facility. Of course he’s on time, but where are the others?
Anthea sighs, nearly inaudible.
She’s been working as The Messenger on Mycroft Holmes’ case her whole life. It took a decade after high school graduation to become an impressive MI-6 agent, four years to be introduced to the man whose destiny lies in her hands, two to be assigned to his security detail, and three more to actually gain the man’s full trust. And yet, she’s known him all his life.
He couldn’t say the same for her.
Anthea’s been counting down the weeks since his very birth, to this particular event that would secure Mr. Holmes’ future until the end of his days.
Tapping her blood red nails against the expensive desk she plays receptionist at, Anthea considers the peculiar life choices of Mycroft Holmes.
During the winter of 1986, the older Holmes boy decided to skip debate club in favor of visiting the new men’s retail store that had just turned up two blocks away from his private school. After entering the store and browsing their collection of suits, Mycroft approached the register, ready to pay using his gold card. Uncharacteristically of him, he dropped his wallet. By crouching down to retrieve it, he completely missed the figure of Gregory Lestrade taking a passing glance through the glass window. If he hadn’t dropped the darn thing, it would’ve been love at first sight, or, at least that’s what Sally speculated after watching the pair from across the street.
In 1990, Mycroft had just turned 21 when he was offered a spot in MI-6. At his age, the offer was practically unheard of. Nonetheless, the talented man had accepted. On his way to the trainees’ facility, a teenage boy with a Northern accent bumped into him on the street, in search of his younger sister. “Sorry mate,” he’d called, already recovered from the collision and twelve paces past the winded Mycroft Holmes. Neither had taken the tiniest of glances at the other. Sally reported the failed “accidental meeting” to Anthea at the playground after school.
Years later, in 2005, Lestrade caught Sherlock Holmes, high on cocaine, snooping around his crime scene. Before he could put him into custody, he received a call from an unregistered number. Moments later, a black Mercedes pulled up behind the crime scene. Lestrade brought the unconscious Sherlock into the car with him, as instructed by the voice on the other end of the line. That day, Sergeant Gregory Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes held a quiet, somber conversation about Sherlock Holmes who lay drooling between them. Anthea called Sally from a secure line after she dropped off the three men to their respective homes and parked the Mercedes in Mycroft Holmes’ office garage.
Early 2010, Anthea escorted Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade up to Mycroft Holmes’ office for a one-on-one debriefing on the operation entitled Black Storm, otherwise known as “Taming Sherlock”, in Mr. Holmes’ private archive. After shutting the office door, Anthea slipped into her own office next door and listened in on their conversation through a bug she had planted in the Inspector’s pocket after picking him up. With weary eyes and calloused fingers, Anthea relayed the evidence of their failure to Sally after sneaking away from the office the next day.
The pair has had many chances for fate to proceed: Too many chances for the average soul mates.
But then again, neither Gregory Lestrade nor Mycroft Holmes has ever been considered average by any means.
Anthea pulls out of her reverie as she watches one of the elevator doors open. The tall, confident figure of Inspector Lestrade greets her.
“Anthea,” he says amiably in his husky voice as he takes in his familiar surroundings.
“Alexandra,” she corrects because that’s today’s alias, isn’t it?
“Right,” Lestrade nods approvingly.
“This way, Sir,” she steps out from behind her desk and leads him to the office she’s been watching for the past thirty minutes.
“Come in,” Anthea’s hand, poised to knock, pauses at the muffled voice of Mycroft Holmes.
Lestrade nods to her as he closes the door behind himself.
Anthea sighs. It’s time to go to work.
*
“Don’t move, everybody put your hands up and get down on the ground!” the stern voice of Captain Mace Peterson echoes as the elevator door opens and a round of bullets aimed at the ceiling go off.
Instead of the usual chaos of running and screaming civilians during a break in or hostage situation in public, each and every person on the top floor of the facility freezes and whips their head around to the sole person in charge.
Anthea doesn’t even blink as all eyes turn to her. “Do what he says,” she says loudly, kneeling to the ground in submission.
As several armed military men enter the premises through the unlocked windows, the elevators, and the staircases, Captain Peterson heads straight to Anthea.
“Where is Mycroft Holmes?” he asks, a thin layer of anger simmering under the surface.
“Mr. Holmes is currently out of the country-“
Smack!
“Don’t give me that bullshit, your security cameras clearly show him entering this building seven hours ago. Now where is he?”
The slap stings, but Anthea has never been one to show weakness, or even emotion, on the job.
“Like hell I’ll tell you,” she sneers spitefully after a minute of tense silence.
She proceeds to dive behind the mainframe computer and flip the emergency switch under the desk.
All of a sudden, a burning pain flashes inside her scalp. She doesn’t scream.
“Get this woman into one of the isolation rooms, I don’t want to deal with her right now,” Peterson bellows, yanking Anthea up by the hair and handing her to a soldier to his right.
Minutes later, she’s thrown into Meeting Room 4.
Somehow, she manages to drag herself to the computer on the desktop at the far end of the room.
*
“What’s happened?” Lestrade questions, panicked, as the windows seal shut with metal panels and the door audibly locks.
Mycroft Holmes lifts himself up from the leather sofa and darts over to his computer. “There’s been a lockdown,” he explains in a perplexed manner.
“Why? Has something gone wrong?” Lestrade begins to pace.
“Anthea’s put the whole facility under lockdown.”
“How do you know it was her?”
“She’s the only one with access to the facility’s mainframe and lockdown settings.”
“Why would she activate lockdown?”
“… Somebody without clearance has gotten inside the facility.”
“So… What now?”
*
Hours later, Lestrade finds Anthea. She’s lying on the floor of Meeting Room 4 with a couple bruises, a bleeding lip, and wild hair.
*
“So what was it? You never really explained,” Lestrade asks, worry marring his face, even though lockdown has been set to peace, the navy has evacuated the premises, and agents are coming in and out of the building as if nothing happened.
“Just a trivial misunderstanding between the head of the Royal Navy and the Chief of Military Intelligence,” Mycroft murmurs, waving his hand as if to shoo away remaining doubt.
“Didn’t seem trivial to me,” Lestrade mutters in response as he looks down at his shoes. “I mean, we were trapped in your office for three hours…”
“Gregory, take my word for it,” Mycroft smiles as the other man lifts his gaze. “It was of no real importance.”
“Alright,” he sighs. “ I’ve got to get back to the office.”
The Inspector turns away and pauses before seeming to make up his mind and turning back to pull the mildly surprised man into a soft, passionate kiss using the end of his tie.
The two part after a couple seconds.
Lestrade clears his throat. “I guess I’ll see you tonight, then?”
Mycroft swallows, pink mar his cheeks. “I’ll send a car for you.”
Lestrade nods, the tips of his ears going bright red before he turns and walks right out of the office.
Anthea suppresses a giggle as she watches the flustered man practically jog to the elevators. Sally will be happy to know that after all these years, destiny has finally prevailed.
Mycroft Holmes exits his office to lean against the reception desk Anthea works at.
“I know what you did,” he says quietly, a smirk pulling at his lips before pacing back into his own office and shutting the door.