Disregard the Danger [BBC Sherlock - Johnlock, Warstan & Johnlockary]

Pull the trigger

She’s been looking forward to scaling the building.

The security of the CAM tower is impenetrable. In drawing up her plans, she set about finding an entry point into the top floor, where even if she sets off alarms, she’ll already be in the right place, able to act immediately.

She’s identified the weakest window on the top floor and designed a path up the side of the building to get there. No belay line or climbing harness -- just some good climbing shoes, a bit of rope to secure herself in place once she reaches the window, and a glass cutter. Plus a spray-bottle of goo (top secret, courtesy of the British government) that will let her stick to glass, gecko-like, once she’s applied it to her gloves and the toes of her shoes.

All very Mission Impossible (though with an admittedly feminine twist; Ethan Hunt probably didn’t put on lipstick and perfume before pulling a similar stunt — but she’d told John she was going out with friends tonight, and she sees no reason not to look and feel her best).

The first five floors are fun -- she feels like Spiderman as she gets the hang of the sticky substance. It’s good stuff, but it’s also a bit terrifying. Hold perfectly still, and it can easily support her weight -- could easily support a dozen more of her, as well. But twist a bit, and it comes right off -- allowing one to imitate a moving gecko, rather than a gecko superglued in place. She focuses on keeping three points of contact with the glass at all times, palms and soles pressed to glass, and she inches her way upward.

It’s slower going than she’d expected; she missed out on the chance to practice on other buildings when she moved the date up, so she didn’t account for some of the difficulties. Keeping her toes still against the glass isn’t easy or natural. She also hasn’t practiced the transition between floors -- the sticky material doesn’t work well on the steel and concrete between the windows, so she has to climb more traditionally there, finding fissures and imperfections to perch on for the few feet between each story.

She worries as she climbs, about John, about Sherlock. The boys have no idea what they’re getting into if Sherlock truly goes after Magnussen. She hopes fervently that they’ll give her enough time to handle him herself, that they’ll stay away from him for at least another week or so. He’s too scary; she doesn’t want Magnussen near John -- nor Sherlock. And besides, Magnussen is hers.

She shakes her head, trying to clear it and focus on the task at hand. But her thoughts keep returning to John and Sherlock, wondering what they are up to, what John was hiding from her. She also uneasily considers her last text to Janine, and the fact that it went unanswered all afternoon and evening -- very unlike Janine. She feels unsettled. Her foot slips a little. Focus. All that will save for later.

By a third of the way up, she’s sweating profusely, and her arms are straining. This exercise involves lots more teeth gritting, face making, and limbs aching than the movies would make it seem. She came up with the plan back before she knew she was pregnant. Since then, she hasn’t been working out as much as she used to. Hasn’t been keeping food down or sleeping as reliably as she once did, either. Ethan Hunt was probably in much better shape when he scaled his skyscraper. She bets he also didn’t have to deal with weirdly sensitive nipples, or with frequent waves of nausea.

She shakes the thought off, keeps going.

Near the midway point, she turns her head to the side and vomits. She learns that experiencing your abdominal muscles convulsing uncontrollably as you hang in the air fifteen stories above the ground, secured by nothing more than some sticky tape that the government is still testing, is a remarkably insecure feeling. She also worries that someone will see her projectile stomach contents and sound the alarm, but she doesn’t spot anyone obviously noticing.