[fic] A Devil in Despair 3/7
Jan. 29th, 2011 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: A Devil in Despair
Rating: 14
Genre: drama
Wordcount: 28k
Warnings: slight gore.
Summary: There is a solution to every problem, even if sometimes one needs to step outside the realms of logic, common sense, or even human domain. Sherlock knows this and acts accordingly, while John is left picking up the pieces.
Author's note: the story is finished, will be posted whole over the next couple of days.
Credits: Strongly influenced by Supernatural, oddly enough the Mentalist and Neil Gaiman's Lucifer (to the point of borrowing characters from the latter).
Betaed byyami_tai. <3 Thank you so much, hun, for all the hard work!
“What is going on?” John asked, sounding extremely reasonable to his own ears. He was factoring in the fact that a corpse had just spoken and if to an impartial observer there was a hint of hysteria in his voice, well, it couldn’t be helped. “Sherlock?”
“It is not my fault.”
“Bullshit.”
“How the world spins,” said the dead woman. “Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear.”
“Sherlock,” John said. “I would like to know what are you putting in our food cupboards.”
“Food, obviously.” Sherlock’s gaze never strayed from the corpse, though there was a moment in which he seemed to reconsider his previous statement. “Mostly.”
“Any hallucinogens?”
“Don’t be absurd. Even Anderson would find those.”
The corpse watched and waited, still as a statue. “You have forgotten,” she said. The words came out malformed, hindered by the stiffness of her facial muscles. “Everything has its value.”
Sherlock didn’t move. “What have I forgotten?” he asked, finally convincing John that he was hallucinating. He’d suspect Sherlock of just about anything, but being completely calm when talking to a corpse, that was new.
“Nothing is for free. You called. We answered.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” Sherlock said. His hands were shaking and suddenly John felt a lot less certain. Sherlock saying the unthinkable wasn’t far-fetched. He wasn’t keen on lying, but he wasn’t untruthful either. However, the delicate quivering of his fingers, that would have been hard to fake.
“I am prepared to offer punishment.”
“Are you?”
“You have signed your name, Sherlock Holmes, in blood. There are no limits to what can I do to you.” She cocked her head, tearing a ligament in the process. “How would you like to drown in your own blood?”
Sherlock coughed, delicately at first, as though he was trying to get someone’s attention, but within moments the coughing escalated. John could swear he could hear tissue tearing and, as if to support that theory, there was blood on Sherlock’s mouth, spatters of it on the floor. He couldn’t breathe, John realised, when Sherlock staggered into him, gasping for air.
“Stop it!”
“Payment, Sherlock Holmes,” she said, and then the coughing stopped, Sherlock straightened as if nothing happened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the corpse grinned. “Let this one go.”
“No.”
“You shall,” said the corpse. Her words slurred as though she was falling asleep. “Let this one go, or you will regret it.”
She stilled on the slab, the only clue to the fact that she’d only just sat up and spoken was the haphazard way her hair was arranged, and in the arm that now rested across her naked belly.
“Sherlock,” John said. “Did that just happen? Really?”
The great genius detective, who, if the day proved to be real after all, had just been revealed as the biggest moron since the original Darwin Award recipient, was silent. He was still silent when Molly walked back in and he remained silent when John stammered excuses to Lestrade. He said nothing on the way home, either. In the end John had to manually relieve him of his coat and push him on the sofa, else he ran the risk of walking out the kitchen with two hot cups of tea and running into a shell-shocked Sherlock standing in the middle of the room.
“I don’t see why I’m the one making tea. Arguably I had more of a shock today. I’m still not fully convinced it happened, mind.”
“It happened,” Sherlock said. “It is a problem.”
“You think?” John set aside his cup. “So, if it is real, may I say a few words?”
“By all means, your insight is sometimes appreciated.”
“Oh good.” John sat back in his chair, took a deep breath, then stood up and started yelling. “What the fuck where you thinking? You strut everywhere showing everyone just how smart you are, and here we are, pondering the biggest fucking lunacy known to man! And then some!
“Did someone drop you on your head as a child? Did Mycroft hit you repeatedly with that umbrella of his, until you stopped moving? Did you lick the lead paint on your cot? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Are you finished?”
John deflated. “Not quite, no, but punching you at this angle would be difficult.” Not to mention a decent punch would require wedging himself between the couch and the coffee table.
“Sit down, John.”
“Sherlock, what the hell were you thinking? What was going through your head the moment you decided that signing off your eternal soul to a demon was a good idea?”
Sherlock, having already turned the page, and the subsequent five, awarded him a puzzled glance. “You seem to feel very strongly about this.”
“Great job, Sherlock, for a minute there I was afraid your powers of deduction were waning, what with all the demons and corpses.” John sat down heavily. “For God’s sake. This is why people read things other than pathology reports, so that they know that some abstract things are bloody stupid. Dealing with demons is bloody stupid.”
“It worked for Faust.”
“He died, Sherlock. He died unhappy and, far as I recall, violently.”
“Everybody dies. He got the life he wanted, and anyway he squandered the gifts given on trifles.”
“What gifts? He made a deal with the devil-- Wait, Faust?” Somehow, this was more of a shock than the animated corpse. Either that, or John was projecting his shock onto lesser subjects.
“I did research, obviously.”
“I see. And in the course of this research it didn’t even occur to you, it might be a bad idea?”
“The risks seemed reasonable.”
“One of these days, Sherlock, you will cross the line, and then I’ll have to kill you, I hope you realise that.”
Sherlock raised a brow and the look he awarded John could only be described as impish. “I seem to have made a pact with the devil, and yet we’re both still here, John. Do you realise that?”
“Don’t get cocky. It might be the way you squeeze toothpaste, you never know. Can’t stand people who squeeze it wrong.”
“You’re babbling.”
“You did make a deal with the devil, as you said. I’m surprised you aren’t.”
“I’ve had ten years to get used to it. Oh, and it’s towards the top.”
“What?”
“The toothpaste. It seems to be of some importance to you.”
“Of course, keeps me up at night.” The silence weighed heavily on him. Sherlock wasn’t letting this go, he could tell by the way he was breathing. “What do you plan on doing?”
“What do I plan on doing with what?”
“You aren’t going to just sit there and do nothing.”
Sherlock flopped onto the sofa and considered the ceiling. “No.”
“Is there anything I can say that would persuade you not to do anything?”
Sherlock allowed himself a smirk. “What can you do, John, short of shooting me?”
“I could tell Mycroft.”
“I imagine that would go over very well. ‘Hi Mycroft, Sherlock has sold his soul to the devil, do you know how we could get it back?’”
“I don’t sound like that. Anyway, I could…” John considered. “I could always tell them you had a relapse and it’s in your best interest to keep you isolated.”
“Interesting…” Sherlock sat up, leaned towards John, interlacing his fingers and resting his chin atop of them. “So you propose to lie in such a way as to have me declared incapable of making medical decisions, because I can’t imagine myself voluntarily submitting to a hospital stay. Furthermore, you propose that I should be kept in such an institution against my will, a rather problematic idea at the best of times. Provided you had Mycroft on your side, all you need to ensure is that I don’t escape. Which means that you would have to have me restrained.” Sherlock tapped his forefingers, intent and focused. John could bet his mind was running detailed scenarios. “I am, of course, adept at escaping various confinements, certainly anything most institutions would have on hand. Which leaves restraint and constant supervision, which would be costly, inefficient, and inadvisable, as you cannot prove I am in fact a danger to myself and others around me.
“So it turns out that the only viable option is sedation. Sedating a patient with a history of substance abuse is inadvisable, at best. So tell me, John, what is your plan?”
“I could always call your mother,” John said, relishing -- for precisely fifteen seconds -- the look of surprise and sheer panic on Sherlock’s face.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t have the number. It’s classified.”
“I know who to ask.”
“Mycroft wouldn’t give it to you.”
“Do you want to bet?”
Sherlock didn’t. John didn’t need the verbal admission -- which he didn’t get -- to know as much. Mycroft might be insane, enigmatic and violently protective of his family, the latter of which was, in this case, all he needed to be. John bet he could be having tea with Sherlock’s mother before he could finish saying: “Mycroft, your brother is in over his head, I fear he might do something incredibly stupid, unless we try some emotional blackmail.”
“I’m going to bed. If you figure something out, let me know.”
He wasn’t really surprised when nothing was said.
*****
John knew he shouldn’t be surprised even when two days passed and Sherlock was nowhere to be found, or, to be precise, nowhere he cared to look. There was, at any given time, a handful of places he might try looking, but as many of those would require delving into the shadier areas of London, John tended to pretend nothing was wrong, choosing instead to stand guard by the phone, in case Sherlock managed to get himself locked in another epic battle of synchronised pill-swallowing.
John was a patient man, but standing idly by why the action happened to someone else, that was almost too much to bear. His sent box was filling rapidly the longer Sherlock’s absence progressed, though he was somewhat mollified when the very occasional “Stop nagging. Busy. SH” text would come through. He’d abandon his vigil for an hour, read, then go right back to watching the phone.
On the evening of the third day John was sitting on the sofa, listening to the unnerving beating of the rain against the streets and rooftops, his hands folded in his lap, his gaze trained on his bloody mobile. It’d been twelve hours since Sherlock’s last text, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he had no bloody clue where to start, he would have been on his trail already.
He prayed Mycroft wouldn’t call. Dealing with him at the best of times was problematic, dealing with him when Sherlock was missing, presumed in Hell, well, John would much rather never have that conversation at all.
“Oh, never mind, he’s a grown man,” John said out loud, acutely aware that he was talking to an empty room, an early sign of mental problems, and that he didn’t fully believe what he was saying. Sherlock needed a bloody babysitter, needed one like he needed the air to breathe.
Still, he was sitting in an apartment whose defining feature was the lack of Sherlock. John was bored. After catching himself in the act of checking his phone for the seventh time in ten minutes, he got up and walked out the door, with the intention of visiting a pub, then it occurred to him that being alone and drunk wouldn’t be the greatest idea, so he called Sarah.
“John, isn’t this a surprise.”
“Would you fancy some dinner?” he asked, mentally cataloguing the amount of trouble Sherlock could be in by now. He stopped when he reached the Apocalypse, although of course he couldn’t rule that out.
“Now? I suppose, yes. Where?”
*****
Eight p.m. found John at the window table at Angelo’s, rolling his eyes at the owner’s concerned inquiries as to Sherlock’s health and whereabouts. Sarah’s arrival cut the interrogation short, thankfully.
“How are you doing?” Sarah asked, shaking rainwater off her coat. “This is such a nice place. I don’t think I have been here before.”
“Sherlock showed it to me,” John said, studying the menu.
“I see.” Sarah consulted the waiter, ordered the fettuccine Alfredo and John tried to relax. It was so comfortable, talking to someone who didn’t intersperse their conversation with remarks about the other patrons’ private lives. John felt the stress of the past few days gradually dissipate, drowned in a bottle of good wine and a plate of pasta, helped along by Sarah’s kind voice.
“Sherlock called,” she said as she finished her fettuccine.
John nearly shot out of his chair. “What? When?” His phone didn’t beep, there was no indication of any calls of messages. Would he call Sarah? Of course he would, this was Sherlock. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. I just said that to get your attention.” Sarah smiled behind her glass of wine.
“Wait, I wasn’t- I didn’t mean to! It’s just that Sherlock is in a lot of trouble right now.”
“So I gather.”
“I’m sorry,” John tried again. Stupid Sherlock. He was disrupting his dates even when he wasn’t there.
“Don’t be. It’s really sweet,” Sarah said with a laugh and John narrowly avoided breaking his nose against his plate.
It was lucky, in a way, that in that moment his phone rang. John was grateful for the excuse to look away without looking like he was about to die from embarrassment.
“John,” he heard, distantly.
“Sherlock? What the hell, where are you?”
“Tow… idge. ‘Urry.”
John stared at the phone in surprise. Either Sherlock really wanted to send a text, or he was in serious trouble. He might as well toss a coin, it could be either. Could be both, come to think of it.
“I’m really, really sorry,” he said, signalling the waiter. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Sure,” she said, without the spark of genuine interest, and John would have bemoaned the missed opportunity (or string thereof), had he not been halfway out the door already. “Be careful!”
“I’ll try,” John said, as though it was humanly possible. He hailed a cab, yelling at the driver to go before he had even braked to a proper stop. “Tower Bridge, fast.”
“Like I haven’t heard that one before,” the cabbie muttered, but stepped on it. An astonishing half an hour later John was stumbling onto the pavement, looking around wildly, and there, in the distance, was Sherlock, standing on the railing.
John’s cane was a distant memory by now, but even so, he wasn’t an athlete, so it was a pleasure to confirm that, provided adequate glandular stimulation, he was capable of a great turn of speed.
Even so, he was almost too late. When his brain finally switched off automatic and allowed John full control again, he was hanging on the railing, with the cold stone digging into his stomach, glaring at a very peeved Sherlock Holmes, who was dangling above the Thames, held in place only by John’s vice-like grip on his ankle.
“Must you always ruin my experiments?” Sherlock asked.
“Only when they’re particularly dumb.” John waited for a beat, scrabbling for purchase on the slippery pavement, but Sherlock made no move in either direction, save for the gentle swaying in the wind. Upside-down he looked like a giant, resting bat. “Any time you want to start climbing back is fine by me.”
“I have no intention of climbing back.”
“Then you’ll be pulled back. I don’t really care.”
Sherlock cocked his head. “Really, John, must we do this now?”
“Why, are you busy?”
“I was trying to jump off the bridge. What are you doing here, weren’t you on a date with Sarah?” Sherlock pronounced “date” as thought it meant “colossal waste of time”.
“How did you…? Never mind. Come back up here, and we’ll talk.”
“No.” Sherlock crossed his arms.
“For God’s sake! Suicide solves nothing!”
“Suicide? Oh, of course. That explains quite a bit.” Sherlock wiggled and John only narrowly managed to hold on to his leg.
He had the vaguest sense that they were attracting a crowd of depressingly passive onlookers.
“Let go, John,” Sherlock said.
“No.”
“Would it make you feel better if I said I wasn’t trying to commit suicide?”
“At this point, no. Because I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“You have said things the whole world, myself included, interprets differently than you. Also, my shoulder really hurts.”
“My sympathies.”
“So what were you doing, if you weren’t trying to commit suicide?”
“I was going to Hell.”
“Aren’t we all,” John said with a weary sigh then he registered the subtle capital letter Sherlock sneaked into his reply. “When you say Hell, do you mean the actual place? Fire and brimstone, and wailing and gnashing of teeth?”
“I’ve always found that depiction unfairly one-sided. There are more concepts of Hell, John, than just the one they teach at Sunday school.”
John’s shoulder was going numb. If someone didn’t get off their arse soon, however unlikely it seemed in the pouring rain, Sherlock was going to have a very close and personal meeting with the River Thames.
“Why are you in such a hurry, then?”
“I like to deal with problems as they present themselves.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t do laundry until your bedroom is overflowing.”
“Ah, laundry,” Sherlock said, dismissing the whole notion of dirty clothes as unworthy of attention of such an intellect as his.
“Sherlock!”
“I need to go to Hell, John.”
“And it absolutely couldn’t wait until some madman with a gun decided to off you in a back alley? You had to speed up the process by jumping off a bridge?” Breath was increasingly harder to come by. John was beginning to see dark circles fly across his field of vision.
“What use would be going to Hell after I’m dead?” Sherlock asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Much as I’m enjoying the conversation, could we perhaps continue somewhere else, over tea? It’s raining.”
“A storm is upon us and it is the night of a full moon,” Sherlock said, consulting his watch. With his free leg he was kicking at the construction. “I really would like you to let me go now. These windows of opportunity are quite narrow and the next one isn’t for another three to seven months, at best.”
“I’m sorry, did you expect me to show up and cheer as you jumped?”
“Of course not. It is in your nature to save people, no matter how misguided the attempt might prove to be.”
“Thankfully most people seem to appreciate that. Why did you call, then?” John asked, trying to figure out how much Sherlock could weigh and whether his strength alone would be enough to pull him over the railing.
“Call?”
“You called me,” John said, already seeing the incomprehension on Sherlock’s face. Before either of them could speak, however, something monumental happened, a kind of soundless, invisible roar of triumph and the strain on reality proved to be too great.
Three things happened simultaneously -- lightning split the sky, accompanied by thunder, reaching all the way to the tumbled waters beneath Sherlock, who delivered a particularly vicious kick to the concrete railing, gaining enough momentum to push himself away from the structure and John, fighting with the screaming pain in his shoulder and back, slipped on the pavement.
The last thing he remembered was the sight of Sherlock, a great blob of black coat, close enough to touch, and the Thames consuming the world before his eyes, and then nothing.
END of part one.
On to Chapter 4
Rating: 14
Genre: drama
Wordcount: 28k
Warnings: slight gore.
Summary: There is a solution to every problem, even if sometimes one needs to step outside the realms of logic, common sense, or even human domain. Sherlock knows this and acts accordingly, while John is left picking up the pieces.
Author's note: the story is finished, will be posted whole over the next couple of days.
Credits: Strongly influenced by Supernatural, oddly enough the Mentalist and Neil Gaiman's Lucifer (to the point of borrowing characters from the latter).
Betaed by
yami_tai. <3 Thank you so much, hun, for all the hard work!“What is going on?” John asked, sounding extremely reasonable to his own ears. He was factoring in the fact that a corpse had just spoken and if to an impartial observer there was a hint of hysteria in his voice, well, it couldn’t be helped. “Sherlock?”
“It is not my fault.”
“Bullshit.”
“How the world spins,” said the dead woman. “Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear.”
“Sherlock,” John said. “I would like to know what are you putting in our food cupboards.”
“Food, obviously.” Sherlock’s gaze never strayed from the corpse, though there was a moment in which he seemed to reconsider his previous statement. “Mostly.”
“Any hallucinogens?”
“Don’t be absurd. Even Anderson would find those.”
The corpse watched and waited, still as a statue. “You have forgotten,” she said. The words came out malformed, hindered by the stiffness of her facial muscles. “Everything has its value.”
Sherlock didn’t move. “What have I forgotten?” he asked, finally convincing John that he was hallucinating. He’d suspect Sherlock of just about anything, but being completely calm when talking to a corpse, that was new.
“Nothing is for free. You called. We answered.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” Sherlock said. His hands were shaking and suddenly John felt a lot less certain. Sherlock saying the unthinkable wasn’t far-fetched. He wasn’t keen on lying, but he wasn’t untruthful either. However, the delicate quivering of his fingers, that would have been hard to fake.
“I am prepared to offer punishment.”
“Are you?”
“You have signed your name, Sherlock Holmes, in blood. There are no limits to what can I do to you.” She cocked her head, tearing a ligament in the process. “How would you like to drown in your own blood?”
Sherlock coughed, delicately at first, as though he was trying to get someone’s attention, but within moments the coughing escalated. John could swear he could hear tissue tearing and, as if to support that theory, there was blood on Sherlock’s mouth, spatters of it on the floor. He couldn’t breathe, John realised, when Sherlock staggered into him, gasping for air.
“Stop it!”
“Payment, Sherlock Holmes,” she said, and then the coughing stopped, Sherlock straightened as if nothing happened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the corpse grinned. “Let this one go.”
“No.”
“You shall,” said the corpse. Her words slurred as though she was falling asleep. “Let this one go, or you will regret it.”
She stilled on the slab, the only clue to the fact that she’d only just sat up and spoken was the haphazard way her hair was arranged, and in the arm that now rested across her naked belly.
“Sherlock,” John said. “Did that just happen? Really?”
The great genius detective, who, if the day proved to be real after all, had just been revealed as the biggest moron since the original Darwin Award recipient, was silent. He was still silent when Molly walked back in and he remained silent when John stammered excuses to Lestrade. He said nothing on the way home, either. In the end John had to manually relieve him of his coat and push him on the sofa, else he ran the risk of walking out the kitchen with two hot cups of tea and running into a shell-shocked Sherlock standing in the middle of the room.
“I don’t see why I’m the one making tea. Arguably I had more of a shock today. I’m still not fully convinced it happened, mind.”
“It happened,” Sherlock said. “It is a problem.”
“You think?” John set aside his cup. “So, if it is real, may I say a few words?”
“By all means, your insight is sometimes appreciated.”
“Oh good.” John sat back in his chair, took a deep breath, then stood up and started yelling. “What the fuck where you thinking? You strut everywhere showing everyone just how smart you are, and here we are, pondering the biggest fucking lunacy known to man! And then some!
“Did someone drop you on your head as a child? Did Mycroft hit you repeatedly with that umbrella of his, until you stopped moving? Did you lick the lead paint on your cot? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Are you finished?”
John deflated. “Not quite, no, but punching you at this angle would be difficult.” Not to mention a decent punch would require wedging himself between the couch and the coffee table.
“Sit down, John.”
“Sherlock, what the hell were you thinking? What was going through your head the moment you decided that signing off your eternal soul to a demon was a good idea?”
Sherlock, having already turned the page, and the subsequent five, awarded him a puzzled glance. “You seem to feel very strongly about this.”
“Great job, Sherlock, for a minute there I was afraid your powers of deduction were waning, what with all the demons and corpses.” John sat down heavily. “For God’s sake. This is why people read things other than pathology reports, so that they know that some abstract things are bloody stupid. Dealing with demons is bloody stupid.”
“It worked for Faust.”
“He died, Sherlock. He died unhappy and, far as I recall, violently.”
“Everybody dies. He got the life he wanted, and anyway he squandered the gifts given on trifles.”
“What gifts? He made a deal with the devil-- Wait, Faust?” Somehow, this was more of a shock than the animated corpse. Either that, or John was projecting his shock onto lesser subjects.
“I did research, obviously.”
“I see. And in the course of this research it didn’t even occur to you, it might be a bad idea?”
“The risks seemed reasonable.”
“One of these days, Sherlock, you will cross the line, and then I’ll have to kill you, I hope you realise that.”
Sherlock raised a brow and the look he awarded John could only be described as impish. “I seem to have made a pact with the devil, and yet we’re both still here, John. Do you realise that?”
“Don’t get cocky. It might be the way you squeeze toothpaste, you never know. Can’t stand people who squeeze it wrong.”
“You’re babbling.”
“You did make a deal with the devil, as you said. I’m surprised you aren’t.”
“I’ve had ten years to get used to it. Oh, and it’s towards the top.”
“What?”
“The toothpaste. It seems to be of some importance to you.”
“Of course, keeps me up at night.” The silence weighed heavily on him. Sherlock wasn’t letting this go, he could tell by the way he was breathing. “What do you plan on doing?”
“What do I plan on doing with what?”
“You aren’t going to just sit there and do nothing.”
Sherlock flopped onto the sofa and considered the ceiling. “No.”
“Is there anything I can say that would persuade you not to do anything?”
Sherlock allowed himself a smirk. “What can you do, John, short of shooting me?”
“I could tell Mycroft.”
“I imagine that would go over very well. ‘Hi Mycroft, Sherlock has sold his soul to the devil, do you know how we could get it back?’”
“I don’t sound like that. Anyway, I could…” John considered. “I could always tell them you had a relapse and it’s in your best interest to keep you isolated.”
“Interesting…” Sherlock sat up, leaned towards John, interlacing his fingers and resting his chin atop of them. “So you propose to lie in such a way as to have me declared incapable of making medical decisions, because I can’t imagine myself voluntarily submitting to a hospital stay. Furthermore, you propose that I should be kept in such an institution against my will, a rather problematic idea at the best of times. Provided you had Mycroft on your side, all you need to ensure is that I don’t escape. Which means that you would have to have me restrained.” Sherlock tapped his forefingers, intent and focused. John could bet his mind was running detailed scenarios. “I am, of course, adept at escaping various confinements, certainly anything most institutions would have on hand. Which leaves restraint and constant supervision, which would be costly, inefficient, and inadvisable, as you cannot prove I am in fact a danger to myself and others around me.
“So it turns out that the only viable option is sedation. Sedating a patient with a history of substance abuse is inadvisable, at best. So tell me, John, what is your plan?”
“I could always call your mother,” John said, relishing -- for precisely fifteen seconds -- the look of surprise and sheer panic on Sherlock’s face.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t have the number. It’s classified.”
“I know who to ask.”
“Mycroft wouldn’t give it to you.”
“Do you want to bet?”
Sherlock didn’t. John didn’t need the verbal admission -- which he didn’t get -- to know as much. Mycroft might be insane, enigmatic and violently protective of his family, the latter of which was, in this case, all he needed to be. John bet he could be having tea with Sherlock’s mother before he could finish saying: “Mycroft, your brother is in over his head, I fear he might do something incredibly stupid, unless we try some emotional blackmail.”
“I’m going to bed. If you figure something out, let me know.”
He wasn’t really surprised when nothing was said.
*****
John knew he shouldn’t be surprised even when two days passed and Sherlock was nowhere to be found, or, to be precise, nowhere he cared to look. There was, at any given time, a handful of places he might try looking, but as many of those would require delving into the shadier areas of London, John tended to pretend nothing was wrong, choosing instead to stand guard by the phone, in case Sherlock managed to get himself locked in another epic battle of synchronised pill-swallowing.
John was a patient man, but standing idly by why the action happened to someone else, that was almost too much to bear. His sent box was filling rapidly the longer Sherlock’s absence progressed, though he was somewhat mollified when the very occasional “Stop nagging. Busy. SH” text would come through. He’d abandon his vigil for an hour, read, then go right back to watching the phone.
On the evening of the third day John was sitting on the sofa, listening to the unnerving beating of the rain against the streets and rooftops, his hands folded in his lap, his gaze trained on his bloody mobile. It’d been twelve hours since Sherlock’s last text, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he had no bloody clue where to start, he would have been on his trail already.
He prayed Mycroft wouldn’t call. Dealing with him at the best of times was problematic, dealing with him when Sherlock was missing, presumed in Hell, well, John would much rather never have that conversation at all.
“Oh, never mind, he’s a grown man,” John said out loud, acutely aware that he was talking to an empty room, an early sign of mental problems, and that he didn’t fully believe what he was saying. Sherlock needed a bloody babysitter, needed one like he needed the air to breathe.
Still, he was sitting in an apartment whose defining feature was the lack of Sherlock. John was bored. After catching himself in the act of checking his phone for the seventh time in ten minutes, he got up and walked out the door, with the intention of visiting a pub, then it occurred to him that being alone and drunk wouldn’t be the greatest idea, so he called Sarah.
“John, isn’t this a surprise.”
“Would you fancy some dinner?” he asked, mentally cataloguing the amount of trouble Sherlock could be in by now. He stopped when he reached the Apocalypse, although of course he couldn’t rule that out.
“Now? I suppose, yes. Where?”
*****
Eight p.m. found John at the window table at Angelo’s, rolling his eyes at the owner’s concerned inquiries as to Sherlock’s health and whereabouts. Sarah’s arrival cut the interrogation short, thankfully.
“How are you doing?” Sarah asked, shaking rainwater off her coat. “This is such a nice place. I don’t think I have been here before.”
“Sherlock showed it to me,” John said, studying the menu.
“I see.” Sarah consulted the waiter, ordered the fettuccine Alfredo and John tried to relax. It was so comfortable, talking to someone who didn’t intersperse their conversation with remarks about the other patrons’ private lives. John felt the stress of the past few days gradually dissipate, drowned in a bottle of good wine and a plate of pasta, helped along by Sarah’s kind voice.
“Sherlock called,” she said as she finished her fettuccine.
John nearly shot out of his chair. “What? When?” His phone didn’t beep, there was no indication of any calls of messages. Would he call Sarah? Of course he would, this was Sherlock. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. I just said that to get your attention.” Sarah smiled behind her glass of wine.
“Wait, I wasn’t- I didn’t mean to! It’s just that Sherlock is in a lot of trouble right now.”
“So I gather.”
“I’m sorry,” John tried again. Stupid Sherlock. He was disrupting his dates even when he wasn’t there.
“Don’t be. It’s really sweet,” Sarah said with a laugh and John narrowly avoided breaking his nose against his plate.
It was lucky, in a way, that in that moment his phone rang. John was grateful for the excuse to look away without looking like he was about to die from embarrassment.
“John,” he heard, distantly.
“Sherlock? What the hell, where are you?”
“Tow… idge. ‘Urry.”
John stared at the phone in surprise. Either Sherlock really wanted to send a text, or he was in serious trouble. He might as well toss a coin, it could be either. Could be both, come to think of it.
“I’m really, really sorry,” he said, signalling the waiter. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Sure,” she said, without the spark of genuine interest, and John would have bemoaned the missed opportunity (or string thereof), had he not been halfway out the door already. “Be careful!”
“I’ll try,” John said, as though it was humanly possible. He hailed a cab, yelling at the driver to go before he had even braked to a proper stop. “Tower Bridge, fast.”
“Like I haven’t heard that one before,” the cabbie muttered, but stepped on it. An astonishing half an hour later John was stumbling onto the pavement, looking around wildly, and there, in the distance, was Sherlock, standing on the railing.
John’s cane was a distant memory by now, but even so, he wasn’t an athlete, so it was a pleasure to confirm that, provided adequate glandular stimulation, he was capable of a great turn of speed.
Even so, he was almost too late. When his brain finally switched off automatic and allowed John full control again, he was hanging on the railing, with the cold stone digging into his stomach, glaring at a very peeved Sherlock Holmes, who was dangling above the Thames, held in place only by John’s vice-like grip on his ankle.
“Must you always ruin my experiments?” Sherlock asked.
“Only when they’re particularly dumb.” John waited for a beat, scrabbling for purchase on the slippery pavement, but Sherlock made no move in either direction, save for the gentle swaying in the wind. Upside-down he looked like a giant, resting bat. “Any time you want to start climbing back is fine by me.”
“I have no intention of climbing back.”
“Then you’ll be pulled back. I don’t really care.”
Sherlock cocked his head. “Really, John, must we do this now?”
“Why, are you busy?”
“I was trying to jump off the bridge. What are you doing here, weren’t you on a date with Sarah?” Sherlock pronounced “date” as thought it meant “colossal waste of time”.
“How did you…? Never mind. Come back up here, and we’ll talk.”
“No.” Sherlock crossed his arms.
“For God’s sake! Suicide solves nothing!”
“Suicide? Oh, of course. That explains quite a bit.” Sherlock wiggled and John only narrowly managed to hold on to his leg.
He had the vaguest sense that they were attracting a crowd of depressingly passive onlookers.
“Let go, John,” Sherlock said.
“No.”
“Would it make you feel better if I said I wasn’t trying to commit suicide?”
“At this point, no. Because I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“You have said things the whole world, myself included, interprets differently than you. Also, my shoulder really hurts.”
“My sympathies.”
“So what were you doing, if you weren’t trying to commit suicide?”
“I was going to Hell.”
“Aren’t we all,” John said with a weary sigh then he registered the subtle capital letter Sherlock sneaked into his reply. “When you say Hell, do you mean the actual place? Fire and brimstone, and wailing and gnashing of teeth?”
“I’ve always found that depiction unfairly one-sided. There are more concepts of Hell, John, than just the one they teach at Sunday school.”
John’s shoulder was going numb. If someone didn’t get off their arse soon, however unlikely it seemed in the pouring rain, Sherlock was going to have a very close and personal meeting with the River Thames.
“Why are you in such a hurry, then?”
“I like to deal with problems as they present themselves.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t do laundry until your bedroom is overflowing.”
“Ah, laundry,” Sherlock said, dismissing the whole notion of dirty clothes as unworthy of attention of such an intellect as his.
“Sherlock!”
“I need to go to Hell, John.”
“And it absolutely couldn’t wait until some madman with a gun decided to off you in a back alley? You had to speed up the process by jumping off a bridge?” Breath was increasingly harder to come by. John was beginning to see dark circles fly across his field of vision.
“What use would be going to Hell after I’m dead?” Sherlock asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Much as I’m enjoying the conversation, could we perhaps continue somewhere else, over tea? It’s raining.”
“A storm is upon us and it is the night of a full moon,” Sherlock said, consulting his watch. With his free leg he was kicking at the construction. “I really would like you to let me go now. These windows of opportunity are quite narrow and the next one isn’t for another three to seven months, at best.”
“I’m sorry, did you expect me to show up and cheer as you jumped?”
“Of course not. It is in your nature to save people, no matter how misguided the attempt might prove to be.”
“Thankfully most people seem to appreciate that. Why did you call, then?” John asked, trying to figure out how much Sherlock could weigh and whether his strength alone would be enough to pull him over the railing.
“Call?”
“You called me,” John said, already seeing the incomprehension on Sherlock’s face. Before either of them could speak, however, something monumental happened, a kind of soundless, invisible roar of triumph and the strain on reality proved to be too great.
Three things happened simultaneously -- lightning split the sky, accompanied by thunder, reaching all the way to the tumbled waters beneath Sherlock, who delivered a particularly vicious kick to the concrete railing, gaining enough momentum to push himself away from the structure and John, fighting with the screaming pain in his shoulder and back, slipped on the pavement.
The last thing he remembered was the sight of Sherlock, a great blob of black coat, close enough to touch, and the Thames consuming the world before his eyes, and then nothing.
END of part one.
On to Chapter 4
