[fic] A Devil in Despair 7/7
Jan. 30th, 2011 11:35 pm![[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!
Extraordinary circumstances required allowances. Those included moving out of one’s comfort zone. Sherlock wrapped his coat tighter around himself. Public transportation was an inconvenience, a poorly managed inconvenience, full of irrelevant people with uninteresting problems. The staccato of the wheels hitting the rails bored into his skull with the efficiency of a power drill.
His immediate companion was a pudgy girl in her early twenties -- uneven make-up covered portions of her face, suggesting she needed to disguise discolouration of skin in particular places, which were consistent with the marks of a harsh slap; smell of perfume and cologne, stale clothes and take-out, a textbook in her bag, a student, likely living with a boyfriend; covering bruises, shame and the instinct to hide them; a certain amount of bounce in her, a little fright, not the first time it’d happened, but still in its early stages. “Leave him,” he told her.
“Excuse me?”
“Statistically, abusers never stop the abuse. Anything he does or says that makes you think otherwise is wishful thinking.”
The girl gathered her things and fled, without a word. Sherlock shrugged and threw his legs onto her seat. Only an hour longer on the train, twenty-one hours and seventeen minutes left, twenty exactly when he reached his destination, if he ran.
The train rolled into the station three minutes past schedule. Sherlock was out the door as soon as he could squeeze through, and then he was running at top speed through the countryside, as though the hounds of the hunt were on his tail.
The village had changed in the past ten years, but he barely noticed. The cobbles remained as they were, and that’s how he found his way now -- the idiocy of people, redoing the facades of their homes, failing to realise that buildings were a major navigational feature. Good thing no one rearranged the streets. Seven streets north, two south, a wooden gate, half a mile up the beaten tract and there it was -- the tiny chapel he’d come to when he’d lost all hope for recovery, when all hope for anything at all had been lost.
Just like before, Sherlock entered without hesitation. No one was there, so he walked in and took a seat. Same as the last time. The chapel was well-kept, clean, sparsely decorated, peaceful. There were smudges on the glass, suggesting it had been washed recently, and fresh flowers were on the table in the middle.
He was certain he didn’t doze, but he was forced to conclude there had been a moment when he wasn’t fully conscious of the passage of time. Nineteen hours, three minutes remaining and he wasn’t alone.
An old lady was kneeling in the pew next to his, lost in prayer. Sherlock breathed out. There had been the risk of him making the journey and finding a gravestone. “Hello,” he said. His voice echoed in the small room, as though it were a cathedral.
She glared at him. “Shush, boy. This is a house of God.”
“I need to know about the Devil.”
Her eyes narrowed further, disappearing amidst wrinkles in translucent skin. She was older than Sherlock remembered, no surprise, really. “I remember you.”
“I’m glad.”
“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your saviour yet?”
Sherlock remembered him from his memory of the story John relayed in Hell, further confirmed by the insistent flickering of her eyes towards the statue of the crucified man on the altar. “I assumed he’s too busy being tortured to death to bother with saving others.”
“Heathen!”
“I’m having a little bit of trouble with the Devil.”
“Pray, and you may still be saved.”
“It’s a little more immediate than that. I need to know how to kill the Devil. Is there a gun, or a weapon, or anything of that sort?”
The lady laughed. “Kill the Adversary! With a gun! Foolish child.” Out from the depths of her book there came another heavy, leather-bound book, painstakingly copied from old manuscripts. “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”
“I don’t think they are. Please, this is really quite urgent.”
The lady closed her book and glared. “When you came here last, you said something about writing a novel.”
“It turned out to be more… complicated than I anticipated. Working on a sequel now.”
“You come here to mock me?” her hands tightened on her cane -- a new addition to her daily routine, the foot was hardly worn at all -- “I will not be mocked. I am not insane. I know what I see is true.”
“Madam, I believe you. I have no intention of mocking you. I need help. Please.”
She gave him one last look. “I shall pray first,” she said, “You too.” Sherlock groaned, but at her behest knelt on the worn wood and folded his hands as she did. Her head was bowed as she mumbled under her breath, so he bowed his head as well.
The pews were dark and old, but the coating of varnish was fresh. The strokes of brush were inexpert, likely made by a complete amateur, since there was also a certain fragility to the lines, suggesting an uncertain hand, which in turn implied an elderly person. Plenty of jobs done at the church carried the mark of an infirm hand, from the coat of paint on the walls to the ragged edges to the cloth on the table.
“I can see this is getting us nowhere,” she said all of sudden.
“I’m sorry?”
“Round and round the garden? This is a house of God, I will not have it defiled by your presence no further. Let’s go.”
Eighteen hours, forty-nine minutes to go.
She took him to a solitary house, not that different from the other houses in the village. The only difference was the garden; instead of flowers, it was lined with herbs, many of which were poisonous, while plenty of others could be used for seasoning. A strange fancy must have prompted that arrangement, when both were often sharing a space.
Her kitchen was small but light, but it was the library that was the goal that sent Sherlock rushing out of London. In the unassuming little house the ordinary old lady held a collection of rare volumes -- some copied, but a few originals as well -- all of them devoted to demons and creatures of the night.
So Sherlock drank his tea and ate a cookie, as she wouldn’t be convinced he thought better when his stomach was empty, and leafed through pages upon pages of tiny scribbles. “How can I kill the Devil?” he asked.
“Jesus will defeat the Adversary.”
“Without his interference.”
“It is quite impossible. What is this book you’re writing?”
“About a man who goes to Hell and walks out possessed by the Devil, who wants to walk the Earth.”
“Does he succeed?”
“That depends on what I find here.”
“I see. Well…” her bones cracked as she carefully hoisted herself out of the chair. “It is quite impossible to kill the Devil, of course. Even the most skilled exorcists can do no more than banish him. The best one can hope for is to return him to his kingdom.”
“How?”
She picked out a book, a dark, aged tome, filled with fresh, white pages. “In a mortal vessel, you say? Why, it’s quite simple then. Kill the vessel.”
“Absolutely not.”
“The Devil must be stopped,” the old lady said, scandalised. “At all cost! In a novel even more!” She stared at Sherlock. “There is no novel. There is no story.”
“Would it really be so bad, to have him out in the open?” Sherlock flipped through entire chapters, stopping only when a word would catch his eye.
“The Devil’s dominion is Hell! Wherever he goes, he is sure to drag Hell along with him, mark my words.” Her eyes blazed as she spoke, as though she’d forgotten everything else in her zeal to proclaim these warnings. “He will come, and with him the legion of his minions, who will wreak havoc upon this world!”
Sherlock nodded, barely listening. The words on the page danced before him, mixed with the memories of Hell, the world that was build on everything but logic, a world in which gravity had a temperament and displayed it often, in which causality could be looped in on itself. A world in which criminals could disappear into thin air, in which they could commit their crimes without even leaving their homes…
A key turned in the lock and soon after that a young woman appeared at the library door. “Grandma, you’ve got a guest!”
“The Devil is coming, dear,” the old lady said, hiding in her chair. “He will come and the legions of Hell will follow him.”
“Not for a while yet,” the girl said with a small smile, before turning to Sherlock. “I’m sorry, when she gets like this it could be hours before she’s lucid again.”
“It’s no trouble,” Sherlock said, flicking his fingers before the girl’s eyes, simultaneously hiding the book in his coat with the other hand. “We had a pleasant enough chat. Good day to you.”
Two hours before the return train, sixteen hours, thirty-nine minutes.
Sherlock read as he waited at the station. The book was hand-written, undoubtedly by the lady herself -- signs of dementia, even in the early parts of the text, and a shaky hand towards the end, often launching into irrelevant tirades on the margins -- visions of Hell and demons and visitations by spirits who spoke of the strangest things.
Hell on Earth, he repeated to himself over and over again, flipping through pages of visions of labyrinths which drove some people insane and yet which were straight and open as the highway, of buildings which wrapped around its inhabitants and never let them go, for thousands of years. These were the details that his mind made vivid and real, amidst the carnage and misery that permeated the words.
Kill John, stop that from befalling the Earth?
Sherlock snapped the book shut. Kill John, stop the world from going to Hell. Kill John, or Hell. Kill John, doom him to Hell.
He nearly missed the return train.
*****
It was John’s voice that greeted him when he returned to Baker Street.
“Found anything?” he asked, raising a brow. Sherlock averted his gaze. There was something about John that hurt his eyes.
“No.”
“I could have saved you the journey.”
“Thank you, no.”
“Suit yourself. Are you done trying?”
“I believe I still have eleven hours, six minutes.”
“You do.” Lucifer picked up a book and flipped idly through the pages. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“Thank you for the concern.”
“Oh, I’m not concerned. I only need you well enough to utter an invitation, and for all my limitation I can do that with ease.”
Sherlock filed the comment away. “The explosion,” he said finally. “I knew something was off.”
“A minor intervention on my part.”
“I knew it!”
“Surprising, really.”
“How so?”
“John’d known, right away, which was fairly inconvenient. Any human being would know. Except you.”
“I knew we shouldn’t have been able to survive that explosion.”
“Yes, that you knew. By calculating the magnitude of the explosion and your relative positions.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“That is why you almost got skewered by the siren.” Lucifer turned a page in the newspaper and raised a brow again. “Now that is just plain silly.”
Sherlock retired to his room. He could feel the minutes trickling by, as though there was a ticking bomb strapped to his chest. The irony was not entirely lost on him.
*****
Ten hours had past and he was no closer to finding a way to get out of the obligation than he had been at the beginning. Or rather he had the perfect way to get out of it, except that was the one road he didn’t want to take, a concept so novel he needed an hour just to familiarise himself with the feeling.
He went through it, for hours, lying in the dark on his bed. He’d never shot a man before, but that wasn’t the trouble. He was an exceptional marksman, and a sociopath to boot. He could easily shoot a man through the head at close range, wash his blood and brains off his hands and then go for coffee without the slightest twinge of remorse.
It wasn’t that the thought of John’s demise had never even crossed his mind, oh no. He’d pictured it many times over, in the months they’ve been living together. Given their line of work it was more than likely that Sherlock would witness John’s final breath. Britain’s disdain for guns meant only that the probability of getting shot was low, there were still knives and bombs and cars. Sherlock had considered them all. He’d studied John’s medical history, the surgery done on the bullet wound that caused him trouble on rainy days, and imagined what it must have been like, when the bullet hit. John’s report had been terse, written in shorthand -- twitchy, uneven letters, still under the influence of painkillers -- gloriously brief, bereft of unnecessary details.
This gave Sherlock a long moment of wonder in the hospital. The incident that resulted in John’s wound was mundane, more of an accident than a result of deliberate action on anyone’s part (which was only sensible, John was just an army doctor, unlikely to see front line action), least of all John’s. There were no heroics or melodrama, just a stray bullet and a lot of pain, spread out over a long period of time. He’d sat in the Afghan desert for hours, according to the report, just watching the sky and wondering how long would it take, either for help to arrive or for the blood loss to render him incapable of self-defence, thought, life…
Sherlock liked to call up the image on the rare occasions he tried to sleep. It soothed his frantic brain, gave him a semblance of peace in the darkness. He’d close his eyes and imagine sitting beside John under the black sky, bright with points of light, watching the desert, as their blood sunk into the sand. Inevitably the sound of breathing would dwindle to nothing, and Sherlock would no longer remember who he was. The desert would be dark and inviting, and empty, offering the quiet and comfort he seldom experienced and then he’d been able to sleep.
John had died a hundred times in his mind, in every possible way. Sherlock had washed his blood off his hands a hundred times, all the while watching John potter about the house, unaware. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, it would have been him who pulls the trigger, administers the poison, or thrusts the knife -- there had been a dream in which John died on the hood of Sherlock’s car, a concept ridiculous by it’s very nature, as Sherlock didn’t drive.
He’d pictured the moment so many times. He’d be slow, gentle even, standing before John with the gun in his hand, and John would watch him every step of the way, a small smile on his face. Sherlock would bring the gun to his forehead, their eyes would meet and John would still be watching when Sherlock pulled the trigger.
That way, no one would ever again take him away.
His fingers twitched. The suffering of others meant very little to him, human or animal. So why was it that the thought of John dying was so abhorrent, all of sudden? All men died eventually, and given all this new data, Sherlock would join John in Hell sooner rather than later.
Sherlock turned, facing the wall.
He should have known this was a bad idea. Sharing inevitably lead to catastrophes. In his defence he’d never suspected it might turn out to be true in this case. He’d been above such petty things all of his life, so why now? How now, even? He’d known Lestrade for five years, seven months and thirteen days, and he was fond of him as he was fond of anything, but he’d step back and watch him die without a twinge to show for it. As there was supposed to be a correlation between the length of a relationship and emotional attachment, this seemed doubly suspect. He’d known John for less than a year.
Five hours, twenty-one minutes…
*****
They were unlikely to get more privacy in central London than could be had on the roof of Baker Street. Sherlock carefully triangulated the position of the CCTV, so that he remained in their blind spot, and built the door. He’d been less than pleased with the quality -- carpentry was a lot more complicated than he’d suspected, virtually impossible to get right at first try -- but the construction, at the very least, was upright and stable.
“I’m doing this under protest.”
“Duly noted. You needn’t have gone to so much trouble, I told you, anything would do.” Lucifer had brought a knife with him and as soon as Sherlock was done he started carving symbols into the frame, some that Sherlock recognised as Hebrew script, some he had never seen before.
The muzzle of the gun dug into Sherlock’s spine. It seemed to be getting heavier and hotter with every second, calling to him in a voice that drowned out everything else, until finally Sherlock reached for it. It was cold, to his surprise, given how it burned his skin, more so when he pointed it at the back of Lucifer’s -- John’s! -- head.
Strange, how acutely aware he was of this person before him, how every move betrayed that he was not John, and yet, somehow, with the gun, all he could think about was John. He pulled the trigger, and in the very same instant Lucifer turned, and moved away from the bullet’s path, and then he was on Sherlock and they were both falling, until Sherlock’s back hit the ground. Lucifer’s grip on his hand, still wrapped around the gun, burned, and it was more than the pain caused by the force exerted by human muscles. Sherlock saw, out of the corner of his eye, the steel of the revolver glowing, he saw smoke, but then Lucifer’s face was so close to his own and he could barely breathe.
“You insignificant ape!” he hissed. “How dare you!”
“You said,” Sherlock started saying, though the burning sensation in his hand was causing extreme discomfort.
“Invite me in,” Lucifer said, just as his hand tightened around Sherlock’s. “Now.”
There might have been fire. Sherlock wasn’t sure. Black spots whirled in front of his eyes and there were lights, too, even as he screamed the invitation through the burning pain.
Lucifer let go then, letting Sherlock drop onto the roof. “Good boy.”
“Wait!” Sherlock called, picking himself up from the ground. His hand was on fire, and his vision was liquefying the world before his eyes, but Lucifer barely awarded him a glance as he stepped through the door. Sherlock watched him turn on the other side, bare his teeth and raise his arms -- John’s arms -- and then a bright light engulfed him, swallowing the world.
He might have imagined the deafening noise that tore through the air and knocked him off his feet. He might have imagined the flames consuming the inefficient door-like structure and John, still standing in the middle as the inferno roared around him.
He might have imagined screaming himself hoarse, before there was silence and darkness, at last.
*****
There was a bed. An uncomfortable one, by objective standards. The mattress was lumpy and providing support in all the wrong places. The air was chock-full of smells; antiseptics, ointments -- three different sterilising substances, quite easy to distinguish -- linen and blood. Also orchids, roses and lilies.
Sherlock opened his eyes to find a thousand dust specs dancing in the beam of light above.
“Took you long enough,” Mycroft said. “I see waiting by your bed is becoming a bimonthly tradition.”
Sherlock coughed. His throat felt like it was scraped raw. “What time is it?”
“Quarter past three in the morning.”
“Impossible.”
“I have overwhelming evidence.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Can I not be concerned about my brother’s well-being?”
“Frankly, no.” Sherlock looked down at the standard hospital sheet, thin enough to provide no heat isolation whatsoever. “Where is John?” he asked tensely, still studying the weave, running over the possible answers. Dead. They found the body -- parts of the body, charred beyond recognition, though bearing the marks of torture -- on neighbouring rooftops. Missing. They found no remains on the soot-covered roof. Seen laying waste to London, by means of fire and brimstone and mutilation of her population.
Mycroft didn’t even blink. “Outside. Lestrade is questioning him, I believe.”
That was unexpected. “Why?”
“He was with you on the rooftop. Also, I assume his fingerprints on the Semtex in the bouquet of forsythia had something to do with it.”
“Excuse me?”
Mycroft pointed his umbrella at the far table. Orchids, Sherlock noted. Next to them, a massive bouquet of Forsythia intermedia, decorated with asparagus fern, and then a plainer, but still huge, ball of Clematis flammula, amongst which sat a folded piece of paper.
“Why is there shrubbery in here?”
“Brought by well-wishers, mostly.”
Sherlock blinked. “I have those?”
“The orchids are from myself and Anthea. The clematis is from the police force. I think the card is Mr Anderson’s personal touch.”
“Charmed, I’m sure. Why are they here?”
“My guess would be that all those people wish you a speedy recovery.”
This was news to Sherlock. “No one bothered the last time.”
“Well, there wasn’t much cause to gloat then, was there?”
“That makes no sense.”
“Sir?” Mycroft’s assistant appeared in the door, phone in hand.
“For God’s sake,” John was saying behind her, “Let me in.”
Mycroft waved his hand and she stepped aside, letting John through.
“Honestly, two bloody geniuses and you need Lestrade to confirm I didn’t send Sherlock flowers with Semtex? If I wanted to blow him up, I would have filled the couch with it.”
“Who is the forsythia from?”
“The yellow bush?” John hesitated. “From Moriarty, I assume.”
Sherlock gave the flowers a long look. “And there’s nothing in them?”
“Just the Semtex. It wasn’t rigged to blow. I think it was meant to be a signature.”
“As touching as this reunion is, I must take my leave now.” Mycroft stood up, tapping his umbrella against the floor. “Next time, Sherlock, do try and think before you start any experiments, would you? Stay in the hospital, until they release you.”
John looked to the ceiling. He didn’t look at Sherlock until after Mycroft left. “I told them you were experimenting with propane.” His eyes travelled to and from the screen at Sherlock’s side, up to the IV and down to the needle in his arm.
Sherlock raised a brow. “Is the medical treatment to your satisfaction?”
“Not really, they haven’t taped your mouth shut.”
“I’m getting out of here,” Sherlock said, getting out of bed. Thankfully no one had bothered to undress him, it was merely a question of finding his shoes.
“Can I adopt Mycroft? He’s so useful when it comes to making you do things.”
“Very funny.”
Sneaking out of the hospital wasn’t hard at all. The security was laughable; Sherlock could walk out of there having committed no less than seventeen murders and a dozen thefts -- morphine, codeine, syringes, he would have never come here again.
It’d been hell, staying by John’s side the last time, with all those substances at the tips of his fingers, it was no better now.
*****
Baker Street was largely unchanged. Even the cup empty of tea was still on the coffee table.
“I’m bored.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I rather think I am.”
“You aren’t allowed to be bored for at least a week. I need to get some sleep, and possibly earn enough money to pay the bills.”
“What am I supposed to do, then? Crotchet?”
“Here.” John dropped a round, rubbery object in Sherlock’s lap. “Though crocheting is not a bad idea either.”
“What is this?”
“A rubber ball.”
“And?”
John hesitated. “It’s for your hand.”
Sherlock felt the need to blink in surprise for a couple of seconds, before finally looking down. It seemed odd that he’d miss it for so long. There were bandages on his right hand, from the tips of his fingers to the wrist. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“It’s for squeezing.”
Sherlock gave the ball an experimental squeeze with his left hand. “I don’t see how is that supposed to stave off the boredom.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” John snatched the ball out of his hand and forcefully put it in the other one. Sherlock winced, and clearly some of it had shown on his hand, because John dropped the ball as though it was red-hot and got up. “The bandage needs changing,” he called from the kitchen. “Don’t move.”
“I fail to see how squeezing a rubber novelty is supposed to help with anything,” Sherlock yelled back.
“If you ever want to play the violin again, it should.” John returned, dropped a first-aid kit on the table and snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
“Oh,” Sherlock said, and the fingers of his left hand automatically tightened, trying to find the strings on the neck of the imagined violin. With John unwrapping the gauze, looking as though the task would take hours to accomplish, he started going through the Sonata in F, but given the attention lavished on the wound, testing was going to be difficult. “My phalanxes seem to be mobile. The violin is not out of question yet.”
“Yes, except right now all you’d be capable off would be the sound approximating that of a cat being flayed alive.”
“Your taste in music leaves much to be desired.”
“So says the man who refuses to acknowledge basic scientific facts.”
“Again with the useless sciences. Astronomy can hardly even be called that!”
“Just because you think something is unimportant, doesn’t mean it’s not!” John glared over the charred edge of Sherlock’s fingernail. His thumbs were kneading the joints that connected Sherlock’s fingers to his palms, sending a symphony of jolts of burning pain up his arm.
“I seem to be in a considerable amount of pain,” Sherlock said as he watched John’s ministrations. His palm and fingers bore the sings of having been in contact with a heated metal surface, consistent with the shape of John’s revolver. It was the back of his hand that bore more interesting marks; long, narrow and angry-red slashes of burnt skin, not unlike the burns left by red-hot metal or acid, or even a naked flame.
“I told them not to give you any sedatives.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Tough.”
“Are you okay?” Sherlock asked, after a few moments of silence. John wasn’t looking at him. “Is he gone?”
“Yes.”
“But are you fine?”
“Are you?” John paused in his ministrations. “I did hurt you.”
“Oh? When?”
“Did you hit your head? Far as I recall you managed not to, but no one ever lost money betting against you doing anything stupid, so I can’t be sure.”
“I only ever do what is necessary.”
“Right.” John rolled his eyes and continued causing substantial pain by working the joints of Sherlock’s hand. “With as much flare and show as humanly possible. Or, often, more.”
“These are very interesting,” Sherlock said. “Hand me my magnifying glass, would you?”
John didn’t move, and the expression on his face caused Sherlock a long moment of discomfort. He was familiar with that expression, naturally, though it very seldom registered, even rarer was that it registered in the proper context.
“Are you upset?” he tried cautiously.
John opened his mouth, closed it, then looked away. “Of course I’m upset, idiot. Those are deep, second-degree burns, third degree in places. Half the bones in your hand are cracked, your arm is broken. You’ll be lucky if you retain enough dexterity to pick up a pen again.”
“Nonsense.” Ah, spare magnifying glass. It paid to get spares, and it paid to leave them lying about the house. The line between healthy and burned skin was sharp: the object that caused it had to have been solid. Upon closer inspection the marks weren’t uniform, either. The shape of them closely resembled that of human fingers, though how…
“John,” Sherlock said. John still wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Show me your hands. Without the glove.”
John made no move to comply, so Sherlock reached out and peeled the glove off his left hand -- he was nearly ambidextrous, but he often preferred to shoot with his right, meaning an effective block, one allowing for further frontal contact had to be done with the right, meaning --
“You’re unharmed.”
“Yes, on the whole.” John didn’t seem happy.
“Would you rather he hurt you?”
“Of course not.” There was still the note of anger and fear in John’s voice, but…
“Remarkable. Given the precise edge to the burns it must have been only by physical contact that the heat was transferred, none of the energy whatsoever dissipating into the air. A remarkable physical phenomenon--”
“A hundred percent energy transfer efficiency,” John finished in unison. “I am a doctor, Sherlock. I am aware of the fundamental laws of physics.”
“You are unharmed. Excellent. I wasn’t certain he’d keep his word.” If the moments after Lucifer crossed the threshold into the world were any indication, he was certain he wouldn’t.
John chuckled mirthlessly. “It was a patently stupid thing you did, Sherlock.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“I wish I didn’t have to tell you.”
“What would you have me do, then?”
John looked out the window, at London, at the awakening of her diurnal population. Up high the sun was rising and perhaps it was his imagination, but the shade seemed slightly different today. As though there was something different in the air, now the door was open. “You should have shot me.”
“I tried.”
“You failed. You don’t usually fail at things you do, which leads me to believe you weren’t really trying.”
“Lucifer disagreed.”
“That is going to come back to bite you.”
“I really don’t care.”
“Don’t you?” John glared and for once the glare was effective. “Do you at least know what you did, by letting him out?”
“I assume you’re about to inform me.”
“You opened the door to Hell, Sherlock.”
“They open all the time, I don’t see how this is any different.”
“They open into Hell only, that’s the point. This is a door out of Hell, the only one in existence. It’s closed now, but it was open long enough for many demons to get out.”
“How did we get out then? Before it opened?”
“Angels can travel through dimensions. It’s complicated.” John sat back and rubbed his forehead. “Actually, it’d probably make sense to you, I assume that’s how you think all the time. Lucifer needed to be out of Hell to open the door, but he couldn’t get out without tearing it open, so he needed someone who wasn’t from Hell to walk him out. He could transport us out, because we aren’t originally from Hell.”
“Makes sense.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“You seem unhappy.”
“Unhappy that you think like the Devil? Now why would that possibly worry me?”
“About the situation,” Sherlock clarified, though John’s raised brows let him know immediately that this was unnecessary.
“Why would I not be? We let the Devil out of Hell, Sherlock. Him and a whole bunch of demons.”
“You didn’t seem so concerned when you made the deal in the first place.”
“You didn’t seem so concerned when you were going to stay in Hell forever!”
“Really, John, if you’re going to complain that I failed in killing you and freed some demonic entity in the process, at least spend some time yelling at yourself for enabling it.”
“So it’s my fault, all of sudden?”
“Isn’t it?” Sherlock reached for the magnifying glass again, this time with his right hand, which proved to be a fatal mistake. He dropped it with a hiss and John took the opportunity to test his resilience to pain one more time, by dousing his fingertips with antiseptic and then lotion.
“It probably wasn’t the wisest course of action,” John said as he wrapped fresh gauze around Sherlock’s hand. Try as he might, Sherlock could see no regret on his face. There was guilt, though that seemed to disappear, or at least lessen, when John looked away from Sherlock’s injuries, indicating that was precisely that he felt guilty about, however little sense it made.
“Ah, lighten up. Finally, there shall be excitement!”
“I don’t even want to know what you’re thinking.”
“Did Lucifer say anything else?”
“He didn’t say much of anything. Apparently some kind of a rule was broken when he burned you,” John said. “He wasn’t allowed to do that. I’m not sure what that means, but he was livid when he left.”
“Yet there was no retaliation. You’re fine, I’m fine.”
“I’m fine because he swore I would be. There is some supreme law governing everything, apparently. You…” John hesitated. “He promised you wouldn’t be harmed. By doing that to you, he crippled himself somehow.”
“Interesting…” Sherlock stared off into space. A limited number of demons could be dealt with. A Devil, subject to rules? That was in no way a hindrance.
“What happens now?” John asked, packing the first-aid kit.
“I thought we might kill some vampires.”
John hiccupped and shook his head “I used to have a list of things I was certain -- or I hoped -- I would never hear from you. This used to be quite high.”
“Oh? What else was on the list?”
“Number one is still ‘I wonder what this giant red button does’.”
“Dull.”
“Apparently. Why vampires?”
“I did some research, barely a sufficient amount, of course, but I was otherwise occupied at the time, and it lead me to believe the hairdresser was murdered by vampires.”
“Wonderful.” John fitted the scissors into the kit, then looked up, “Wait, the puncture holes were on either side of her throat.”
“Yes, that was tricky, I grant you. It is perfectly plausible that a vampire would use, not only a human agent to lure his victims in, but also implement medical instruments, to cover their tracks, suggesting they intend to stay hidden and, if caught, put the blame on the humans in their employ.” Sherlock leaned back, forcefully pressing his palms together. The injured hand protested, but he didn’t relent. A little pain was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. “Which makes it all the more pressing to locate them. We will start by searching the basements of the buildings near which she was found.”
John snorted and shook his head. “Fine. But we are getting something to eat first.”
“Excellent. How do you feel about Spanish cuisine?”
THE END.
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!Extraordinary circumstances required allowances. Those included moving out of one’s comfort zone. Sherlock wrapped his coat tighter around himself. Public transportation was an inconvenience, a poorly managed inconvenience, full of irrelevant people with uninteresting problems. The staccato of the wheels hitting the rails bored into his skull with the efficiency of a power drill.
His immediate companion was a pudgy girl in her early twenties -- uneven make-up covered portions of her face, suggesting she needed to disguise discolouration of skin in particular places, which were consistent with the marks of a harsh slap; smell of perfume and cologne, stale clothes and take-out, a textbook in her bag, a student, likely living with a boyfriend; covering bruises, shame and the instinct to hide them; a certain amount of bounce in her, a little fright, not the first time it’d happened, but still in its early stages. “Leave him,” he told her.
“Excuse me?”
“Statistically, abusers never stop the abuse. Anything he does or says that makes you think otherwise is wishful thinking.”
The girl gathered her things and fled, without a word. Sherlock shrugged and threw his legs onto her seat. Only an hour longer on the train, twenty-one hours and seventeen minutes left, twenty exactly when he reached his destination, if he ran.
The train rolled into the station three minutes past schedule. Sherlock was out the door as soon as he could squeeze through, and then he was running at top speed through the countryside, as though the hounds of the hunt were on his tail.
The village had changed in the past ten years, but he barely noticed. The cobbles remained as they were, and that’s how he found his way now -- the idiocy of people, redoing the facades of their homes, failing to realise that buildings were a major navigational feature. Good thing no one rearranged the streets. Seven streets north, two south, a wooden gate, half a mile up the beaten tract and there it was -- the tiny chapel he’d come to when he’d lost all hope for recovery, when all hope for anything at all had been lost.
Just like before, Sherlock entered without hesitation. No one was there, so he walked in and took a seat. Same as the last time. The chapel was well-kept, clean, sparsely decorated, peaceful. There were smudges on the glass, suggesting it had been washed recently, and fresh flowers were on the table in the middle.
He was certain he didn’t doze, but he was forced to conclude there had been a moment when he wasn’t fully conscious of the passage of time. Nineteen hours, three minutes remaining and he wasn’t alone.
An old lady was kneeling in the pew next to his, lost in prayer. Sherlock breathed out. There had been the risk of him making the journey and finding a gravestone. “Hello,” he said. His voice echoed in the small room, as though it were a cathedral.
She glared at him. “Shush, boy. This is a house of God.”
“I need to know about the Devil.”
Her eyes narrowed further, disappearing amidst wrinkles in translucent skin. She was older than Sherlock remembered, no surprise, really. “I remember you.”
“I’m glad.”
“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your saviour yet?”
Sherlock remembered him from his memory of the story John relayed in Hell, further confirmed by the insistent flickering of her eyes towards the statue of the crucified man on the altar. “I assumed he’s too busy being tortured to death to bother with saving others.”
“Heathen!”
“I’m having a little bit of trouble with the Devil.”
“Pray, and you may still be saved.”
“It’s a little more immediate than that. I need to know how to kill the Devil. Is there a gun, or a weapon, or anything of that sort?”
The lady laughed. “Kill the Adversary! With a gun! Foolish child.” Out from the depths of her book there came another heavy, leather-bound book, painstakingly copied from old manuscripts. “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”
“I don’t think they are. Please, this is really quite urgent.”
The lady closed her book and glared. “When you came here last, you said something about writing a novel.”
“It turned out to be more… complicated than I anticipated. Working on a sequel now.”
“You come here to mock me?” her hands tightened on her cane -- a new addition to her daily routine, the foot was hardly worn at all -- “I will not be mocked. I am not insane. I know what I see is true.”
“Madam, I believe you. I have no intention of mocking you. I need help. Please.”
She gave him one last look. “I shall pray first,” she said, “You too.” Sherlock groaned, but at her behest knelt on the worn wood and folded his hands as she did. Her head was bowed as she mumbled under her breath, so he bowed his head as well.
The pews were dark and old, but the coating of varnish was fresh. The strokes of brush were inexpert, likely made by a complete amateur, since there was also a certain fragility to the lines, suggesting an uncertain hand, which in turn implied an elderly person. Plenty of jobs done at the church carried the mark of an infirm hand, from the coat of paint on the walls to the ragged edges to the cloth on the table.
“I can see this is getting us nowhere,” she said all of sudden.
“I’m sorry?”
“Round and round the garden? This is a house of God, I will not have it defiled by your presence no further. Let’s go.”
Eighteen hours, forty-nine minutes to go.
She took him to a solitary house, not that different from the other houses in the village. The only difference was the garden; instead of flowers, it was lined with herbs, many of which were poisonous, while plenty of others could be used for seasoning. A strange fancy must have prompted that arrangement, when both were often sharing a space.
Her kitchen was small but light, but it was the library that was the goal that sent Sherlock rushing out of London. In the unassuming little house the ordinary old lady held a collection of rare volumes -- some copied, but a few originals as well -- all of them devoted to demons and creatures of the night.
So Sherlock drank his tea and ate a cookie, as she wouldn’t be convinced he thought better when his stomach was empty, and leafed through pages upon pages of tiny scribbles. “How can I kill the Devil?” he asked.
“Jesus will defeat the Adversary.”
“Without his interference.”
“It is quite impossible. What is this book you’re writing?”
“About a man who goes to Hell and walks out possessed by the Devil, who wants to walk the Earth.”
“Does he succeed?”
“That depends on what I find here.”
“I see. Well…” her bones cracked as she carefully hoisted herself out of the chair. “It is quite impossible to kill the Devil, of course. Even the most skilled exorcists can do no more than banish him. The best one can hope for is to return him to his kingdom.”
“How?”
She picked out a book, a dark, aged tome, filled with fresh, white pages. “In a mortal vessel, you say? Why, it’s quite simple then. Kill the vessel.”
“Absolutely not.”
“The Devil must be stopped,” the old lady said, scandalised. “At all cost! In a novel even more!” She stared at Sherlock. “There is no novel. There is no story.”
“Would it really be so bad, to have him out in the open?” Sherlock flipped through entire chapters, stopping only when a word would catch his eye.
“The Devil’s dominion is Hell! Wherever he goes, he is sure to drag Hell along with him, mark my words.” Her eyes blazed as she spoke, as though she’d forgotten everything else in her zeal to proclaim these warnings. “He will come, and with him the legion of his minions, who will wreak havoc upon this world!”
Sherlock nodded, barely listening. The words on the page danced before him, mixed with the memories of Hell, the world that was build on everything but logic, a world in which gravity had a temperament and displayed it often, in which causality could be looped in on itself. A world in which criminals could disappear into thin air, in which they could commit their crimes without even leaving their homes…
A key turned in the lock and soon after that a young woman appeared at the library door. “Grandma, you’ve got a guest!”
“The Devil is coming, dear,” the old lady said, hiding in her chair. “He will come and the legions of Hell will follow him.”
“Not for a while yet,” the girl said with a small smile, before turning to Sherlock. “I’m sorry, when she gets like this it could be hours before she’s lucid again.”
“It’s no trouble,” Sherlock said, flicking his fingers before the girl’s eyes, simultaneously hiding the book in his coat with the other hand. “We had a pleasant enough chat. Good day to you.”
Two hours before the return train, sixteen hours, thirty-nine minutes.
Sherlock read as he waited at the station. The book was hand-written, undoubtedly by the lady herself -- signs of dementia, even in the early parts of the text, and a shaky hand towards the end, often launching into irrelevant tirades on the margins -- visions of Hell and demons and visitations by spirits who spoke of the strangest things.
Hell on Earth, he repeated to himself over and over again, flipping through pages of visions of labyrinths which drove some people insane and yet which were straight and open as the highway, of buildings which wrapped around its inhabitants and never let them go, for thousands of years. These were the details that his mind made vivid and real, amidst the carnage and misery that permeated the words.
Kill John, stop that from befalling the Earth?
Sherlock snapped the book shut. Kill John, stop the world from going to Hell. Kill John, or Hell. Kill John, doom him to Hell.
He nearly missed the return train.
*****
It was John’s voice that greeted him when he returned to Baker Street.
“Found anything?” he asked, raising a brow. Sherlock averted his gaze. There was something about John that hurt his eyes.
“No.”
“I could have saved you the journey.”
“Thank you, no.”
“Suit yourself. Are you done trying?”
“I believe I still have eleven hours, six minutes.”
“You do.” Lucifer picked up a book and flipped idly through the pages. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“Thank you for the concern.”
“Oh, I’m not concerned. I only need you well enough to utter an invitation, and for all my limitation I can do that with ease.”
Sherlock filed the comment away. “The explosion,” he said finally. “I knew something was off.”
“A minor intervention on my part.”
“I knew it!”
“Surprising, really.”
“How so?”
“John’d known, right away, which was fairly inconvenient. Any human being would know. Except you.”
“I knew we shouldn’t have been able to survive that explosion.”
“Yes, that you knew. By calculating the magnitude of the explosion and your relative positions.”
“I don’t see the difference.”
“That is why you almost got skewered by the siren.” Lucifer turned a page in the newspaper and raised a brow again. “Now that is just plain silly.”
Sherlock retired to his room. He could feel the minutes trickling by, as though there was a ticking bomb strapped to his chest. The irony was not entirely lost on him.
*****
Ten hours had past and he was no closer to finding a way to get out of the obligation than he had been at the beginning. Or rather he had the perfect way to get out of it, except that was the one road he didn’t want to take, a concept so novel he needed an hour just to familiarise himself with the feeling.
He went through it, for hours, lying in the dark on his bed. He’d never shot a man before, but that wasn’t the trouble. He was an exceptional marksman, and a sociopath to boot. He could easily shoot a man through the head at close range, wash his blood and brains off his hands and then go for coffee without the slightest twinge of remorse.
It wasn’t that the thought of John’s demise had never even crossed his mind, oh no. He’d pictured it many times over, in the months they’ve been living together. Given their line of work it was more than likely that Sherlock would witness John’s final breath. Britain’s disdain for guns meant only that the probability of getting shot was low, there were still knives and bombs and cars. Sherlock had considered them all. He’d studied John’s medical history, the surgery done on the bullet wound that caused him trouble on rainy days, and imagined what it must have been like, when the bullet hit. John’s report had been terse, written in shorthand -- twitchy, uneven letters, still under the influence of painkillers -- gloriously brief, bereft of unnecessary details.
This gave Sherlock a long moment of wonder in the hospital. The incident that resulted in John’s wound was mundane, more of an accident than a result of deliberate action on anyone’s part (which was only sensible, John was just an army doctor, unlikely to see front line action), least of all John’s. There were no heroics or melodrama, just a stray bullet and a lot of pain, spread out over a long period of time. He’d sat in the Afghan desert for hours, according to the report, just watching the sky and wondering how long would it take, either for help to arrive or for the blood loss to render him incapable of self-defence, thought, life…
Sherlock liked to call up the image on the rare occasions he tried to sleep. It soothed his frantic brain, gave him a semblance of peace in the darkness. He’d close his eyes and imagine sitting beside John under the black sky, bright with points of light, watching the desert, as their blood sunk into the sand. Inevitably the sound of breathing would dwindle to nothing, and Sherlock would no longer remember who he was. The desert would be dark and inviting, and empty, offering the quiet and comfort he seldom experienced and then he’d been able to sleep.
John had died a hundred times in his mind, in every possible way. Sherlock had washed his blood off his hands a hundred times, all the while watching John potter about the house, unaware. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, it would have been him who pulls the trigger, administers the poison, or thrusts the knife -- there had been a dream in which John died on the hood of Sherlock’s car, a concept ridiculous by it’s very nature, as Sherlock didn’t drive.
He’d pictured the moment so many times. He’d be slow, gentle even, standing before John with the gun in his hand, and John would watch him every step of the way, a small smile on his face. Sherlock would bring the gun to his forehead, their eyes would meet and John would still be watching when Sherlock pulled the trigger.
That way, no one would ever again take him away.
His fingers twitched. The suffering of others meant very little to him, human or animal. So why was it that the thought of John dying was so abhorrent, all of sudden? All men died eventually, and given all this new data, Sherlock would join John in Hell sooner rather than later.
Sherlock turned, facing the wall.
He should have known this was a bad idea. Sharing inevitably lead to catastrophes. In his defence he’d never suspected it might turn out to be true in this case. He’d been above such petty things all of his life, so why now? How now, even? He’d known Lestrade for five years, seven months and thirteen days, and he was fond of him as he was fond of anything, but he’d step back and watch him die without a twinge to show for it. As there was supposed to be a correlation between the length of a relationship and emotional attachment, this seemed doubly suspect. He’d known John for less than a year.
Five hours, twenty-one minutes…
*****
They were unlikely to get more privacy in central London than could be had on the roof of Baker Street. Sherlock carefully triangulated the position of the CCTV, so that he remained in their blind spot, and built the door. He’d been less than pleased with the quality -- carpentry was a lot more complicated than he’d suspected, virtually impossible to get right at first try -- but the construction, at the very least, was upright and stable.
“I’m doing this under protest.”
“Duly noted. You needn’t have gone to so much trouble, I told you, anything would do.” Lucifer had brought a knife with him and as soon as Sherlock was done he started carving symbols into the frame, some that Sherlock recognised as Hebrew script, some he had never seen before.
The muzzle of the gun dug into Sherlock’s spine. It seemed to be getting heavier and hotter with every second, calling to him in a voice that drowned out everything else, until finally Sherlock reached for it. It was cold, to his surprise, given how it burned his skin, more so when he pointed it at the back of Lucifer’s -- John’s! -- head.
Strange, how acutely aware he was of this person before him, how every move betrayed that he was not John, and yet, somehow, with the gun, all he could think about was John. He pulled the trigger, and in the very same instant Lucifer turned, and moved away from the bullet’s path, and then he was on Sherlock and they were both falling, until Sherlock’s back hit the ground. Lucifer’s grip on his hand, still wrapped around the gun, burned, and it was more than the pain caused by the force exerted by human muscles. Sherlock saw, out of the corner of his eye, the steel of the revolver glowing, he saw smoke, but then Lucifer’s face was so close to his own and he could barely breathe.
“You insignificant ape!” he hissed. “How dare you!”
“You said,” Sherlock started saying, though the burning sensation in his hand was causing extreme discomfort.
“Invite me in,” Lucifer said, just as his hand tightened around Sherlock’s. “Now.”
There might have been fire. Sherlock wasn’t sure. Black spots whirled in front of his eyes and there were lights, too, even as he screamed the invitation through the burning pain.
Lucifer let go then, letting Sherlock drop onto the roof. “Good boy.”
“Wait!” Sherlock called, picking himself up from the ground. His hand was on fire, and his vision was liquefying the world before his eyes, but Lucifer barely awarded him a glance as he stepped through the door. Sherlock watched him turn on the other side, bare his teeth and raise his arms -- John’s arms -- and then a bright light engulfed him, swallowing the world.
He might have imagined the deafening noise that tore through the air and knocked him off his feet. He might have imagined the flames consuming the inefficient door-like structure and John, still standing in the middle as the inferno roared around him.
He might have imagined screaming himself hoarse, before there was silence and darkness, at last.
*****
There was a bed. An uncomfortable one, by objective standards. The mattress was lumpy and providing support in all the wrong places. The air was chock-full of smells; antiseptics, ointments -- three different sterilising substances, quite easy to distinguish -- linen and blood. Also orchids, roses and lilies.
Sherlock opened his eyes to find a thousand dust specs dancing in the beam of light above.
“Took you long enough,” Mycroft said. “I see waiting by your bed is becoming a bimonthly tradition.”
Sherlock coughed. His throat felt like it was scraped raw. “What time is it?”
“Quarter past three in the morning.”
“Impossible.”
“I have overwhelming evidence.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Can I not be concerned about my brother’s well-being?”
“Frankly, no.” Sherlock looked down at the standard hospital sheet, thin enough to provide no heat isolation whatsoever. “Where is John?” he asked tensely, still studying the weave, running over the possible answers. Dead. They found the body -- parts of the body, charred beyond recognition, though bearing the marks of torture -- on neighbouring rooftops. Missing. They found no remains on the soot-covered roof. Seen laying waste to London, by means of fire and brimstone and mutilation of her population.
Mycroft didn’t even blink. “Outside. Lestrade is questioning him, I believe.”
That was unexpected. “Why?”
“He was with you on the rooftop. Also, I assume his fingerprints on the Semtex in the bouquet of forsythia had something to do with it.”
“Excuse me?”
Mycroft pointed his umbrella at the far table. Orchids, Sherlock noted. Next to them, a massive bouquet of Forsythia intermedia, decorated with asparagus fern, and then a plainer, but still huge, ball of Clematis flammula, amongst which sat a folded piece of paper.
“Why is there shrubbery in here?”
“Brought by well-wishers, mostly.”
Sherlock blinked. “I have those?”
“The orchids are from myself and Anthea. The clematis is from the police force. I think the card is Mr Anderson’s personal touch.”
“Charmed, I’m sure. Why are they here?”
“My guess would be that all those people wish you a speedy recovery.”
This was news to Sherlock. “No one bothered the last time.”
“Well, there wasn’t much cause to gloat then, was there?”
“That makes no sense.”
“Sir?” Mycroft’s assistant appeared in the door, phone in hand.
“For God’s sake,” John was saying behind her, “Let me in.”
Mycroft waved his hand and she stepped aside, letting John through.
“Honestly, two bloody geniuses and you need Lestrade to confirm I didn’t send Sherlock flowers with Semtex? If I wanted to blow him up, I would have filled the couch with it.”
“Who is the forsythia from?”
“The yellow bush?” John hesitated. “From Moriarty, I assume.”
Sherlock gave the flowers a long look. “And there’s nothing in them?”
“Just the Semtex. It wasn’t rigged to blow. I think it was meant to be a signature.”
“As touching as this reunion is, I must take my leave now.” Mycroft stood up, tapping his umbrella against the floor. “Next time, Sherlock, do try and think before you start any experiments, would you? Stay in the hospital, until they release you.”
John looked to the ceiling. He didn’t look at Sherlock until after Mycroft left. “I told them you were experimenting with propane.” His eyes travelled to and from the screen at Sherlock’s side, up to the IV and down to the needle in his arm.
Sherlock raised a brow. “Is the medical treatment to your satisfaction?”
“Not really, they haven’t taped your mouth shut.”
“I’m getting out of here,” Sherlock said, getting out of bed. Thankfully no one had bothered to undress him, it was merely a question of finding his shoes.
“Can I adopt Mycroft? He’s so useful when it comes to making you do things.”
“Very funny.”
Sneaking out of the hospital wasn’t hard at all. The security was laughable; Sherlock could walk out of there having committed no less than seventeen murders and a dozen thefts -- morphine, codeine, syringes, he would have never come here again.
It’d been hell, staying by John’s side the last time, with all those substances at the tips of his fingers, it was no better now.
*****
Baker Street was largely unchanged. Even the cup empty of tea was still on the coffee table.
“I’m bored.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I rather think I am.”
“You aren’t allowed to be bored for at least a week. I need to get some sleep, and possibly earn enough money to pay the bills.”
“What am I supposed to do, then? Crotchet?”
“Here.” John dropped a round, rubbery object in Sherlock’s lap. “Though crocheting is not a bad idea either.”
“What is this?”
“A rubber ball.”
“And?”
John hesitated. “It’s for your hand.”
Sherlock felt the need to blink in surprise for a couple of seconds, before finally looking down. It seemed odd that he’d miss it for so long. There were bandages on his right hand, from the tips of his fingers to the wrist. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“It’s for squeezing.”
Sherlock gave the ball an experimental squeeze with his left hand. “I don’t see how is that supposed to stave off the boredom.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” John snatched the ball out of his hand and forcefully put it in the other one. Sherlock winced, and clearly some of it had shown on his hand, because John dropped the ball as though it was red-hot and got up. “The bandage needs changing,” he called from the kitchen. “Don’t move.”
“I fail to see how squeezing a rubber novelty is supposed to help with anything,” Sherlock yelled back.
“If you ever want to play the violin again, it should.” John returned, dropped a first-aid kit on the table and snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
“Oh,” Sherlock said, and the fingers of his left hand automatically tightened, trying to find the strings on the neck of the imagined violin. With John unwrapping the gauze, looking as though the task would take hours to accomplish, he started going through the Sonata in F, but given the attention lavished on the wound, testing was going to be difficult. “My phalanxes seem to be mobile. The violin is not out of question yet.”
“Yes, except right now all you’d be capable off would be the sound approximating that of a cat being flayed alive.”
“Your taste in music leaves much to be desired.”
“So says the man who refuses to acknowledge basic scientific facts.”
“Again with the useless sciences. Astronomy can hardly even be called that!”
“Just because you think something is unimportant, doesn’t mean it’s not!” John glared over the charred edge of Sherlock’s fingernail. His thumbs were kneading the joints that connected Sherlock’s fingers to his palms, sending a symphony of jolts of burning pain up his arm.
“I seem to be in a considerable amount of pain,” Sherlock said as he watched John’s ministrations. His palm and fingers bore the sings of having been in contact with a heated metal surface, consistent with the shape of John’s revolver. It was the back of his hand that bore more interesting marks; long, narrow and angry-red slashes of burnt skin, not unlike the burns left by red-hot metal or acid, or even a naked flame.
“I told them not to give you any sedatives.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Tough.”
“Are you okay?” Sherlock asked, after a few moments of silence. John wasn’t looking at him. “Is he gone?”
“Yes.”
“But are you fine?”
“Are you?” John paused in his ministrations. “I did hurt you.”
“Oh? When?”
“Did you hit your head? Far as I recall you managed not to, but no one ever lost money betting against you doing anything stupid, so I can’t be sure.”
“I only ever do what is necessary.”
“Right.” John rolled his eyes and continued causing substantial pain by working the joints of Sherlock’s hand. “With as much flare and show as humanly possible. Or, often, more.”
“These are very interesting,” Sherlock said. “Hand me my magnifying glass, would you?”
John didn’t move, and the expression on his face caused Sherlock a long moment of discomfort. He was familiar with that expression, naturally, though it very seldom registered, even rarer was that it registered in the proper context.
“Are you upset?” he tried cautiously.
John opened his mouth, closed it, then looked away. “Of course I’m upset, idiot. Those are deep, second-degree burns, third degree in places. Half the bones in your hand are cracked, your arm is broken. You’ll be lucky if you retain enough dexterity to pick up a pen again.”
“Nonsense.” Ah, spare magnifying glass. It paid to get spares, and it paid to leave them lying about the house. The line between healthy and burned skin was sharp: the object that caused it had to have been solid. Upon closer inspection the marks weren’t uniform, either. The shape of them closely resembled that of human fingers, though how…
“John,” Sherlock said. John still wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Show me your hands. Without the glove.”
John made no move to comply, so Sherlock reached out and peeled the glove off his left hand -- he was nearly ambidextrous, but he often preferred to shoot with his right, meaning an effective block, one allowing for further frontal contact had to be done with the right, meaning --
“You’re unharmed.”
“Yes, on the whole.” John didn’t seem happy.
“Would you rather he hurt you?”
“Of course not.” There was still the note of anger and fear in John’s voice, but…
“Remarkable. Given the precise edge to the burns it must have been only by physical contact that the heat was transferred, none of the energy whatsoever dissipating into the air. A remarkable physical phenomenon--”
“A hundred percent energy transfer efficiency,” John finished in unison. “I am a doctor, Sherlock. I am aware of the fundamental laws of physics.”
“You are unharmed. Excellent. I wasn’t certain he’d keep his word.” If the moments after Lucifer crossed the threshold into the world were any indication, he was certain he wouldn’t.
John chuckled mirthlessly. “It was a patently stupid thing you did, Sherlock.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“I wish I didn’t have to tell you.”
“What would you have me do, then?”
John looked out the window, at London, at the awakening of her diurnal population. Up high the sun was rising and perhaps it was his imagination, but the shade seemed slightly different today. As though there was something different in the air, now the door was open. “You should have shot me.”
“I tried.”
“You failed. You don’t usually fail at things you do, which leads me to believe you weren’t really trying.”
“Lucifer disagreed.”
“That is going to come back to bite you.”
“I really don’t care.”
“Don’t you?” John glared and for once the glare was effective. “Do you at least know what you did, by letting him out?”
“I assume you’re about to inform me.”
“You opened the door to Hell, Sherlock.”
“They open all the time, I don’t see how this is any different.”
“They open into Hell only, that’s the point. This is a door out of Hell, the only one in existence. It’s closed now, but it was open long enough for many demons to get out.”
“How did we get out then? Before it opened?”
“Angels can travel through dimensions. It’s complicated.” John sat back and rubbed his forehead. “Actually, it’d probably make sense to you, I assume that’s how you think all the time. Lucifer needed to be out of Hell to open the door, but he couldn’t get out without tearing it open, so he needed someone who wasn’t from Hell to walk him out. He could transport us out, because we aren’t originally from Hell.”
“Makes sense.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“You seem unhappy.”
“Unhappy that you think like the Devil? Now why would that possibly worry me?”
“About the situation,” Sherlock clarified, though John’s raised brows let him know immediately that this was unnecessary.
“Why would I not be? We let the Devil out of Hell, Sherlock. Him and a whole bunch of demons.”
“You didn’t seem so concerned when you made the deal in the first place.”
“You didn’t seem so concerned when you were going to stay in Hell forever!”
“Really, John, if you’re going to complain that I failed in killing you and freed some demonic entity in the process, at least spend some time yelling at yourself for enabling it.”
“So it’s my fault, all of sudden?”
“Isn’t it?” Sherlock reached for the magnifying glass again, this time with his right hand, which proved to be a fatal mistake. He dropped it with a hiss and John took the opportunity to test his resilience to pain one more time, by dousing his fingertips with antiseptic and then lotion.
“It probably wasn’t the wisest course of action,” John said as he wrapped fresh gauze around Sherlock’s hand. Try as he might, Sherlock could see no regret on his face. There was guilt, though that seemed to disappear, or at least lessen, when John looked away from Sherlock’s injuries, indicating that was precisely that he felt guilty about, however little sense it made.
“Ah, lighten up. Finally, there shall be excitement!”
“I don’t even want to know what you’re thinking.”
“Did Lucifer say anything else?”
“He didn’t say much of anything. Apparently some kind of a rule was broken when he burned you,” John said. “He wasn’t allowed to do that. I’m not sure what that means, but he was livid when he left.”
“Yet there was no retaliation. You’re fine, I’m fine.”
“I’m fine because he swore I would be. There is some supreme law governing everything, apparently. You…” John hesitated. “He promised you wouldn’t be harmed. By doing that to you, he crippled himself somehow.”
“Interesting…” Sherlock stared off into space. A limited number of demons could be dealt with. A Devil, subject to rules? That was in no way a hindrance.
“What happens now?” John asked, packing the first-aid kit.
“I thought we might kill some vampires.”
John hiccupped and shook his head “I used to have a list of things I was certain -- or I hoped -- I would never hear from you. This used to be quite high.”
“Oh? What else was on the list?”
“Number one is still ‘I wonder what this giant red button does’.”
“Dull.”
“Apparently. Why vampires?”
“I did some research, barely a sufficient amount, of course, but I was otherwise occupied at the time, and it lead me to believe the hairdresser was murdered by vampires.”
“Wonderful.” John fitted the scissors into the kit, then looked up, “Wait, the puncture holes were on either side of her throat.”
“Yes, that was tricky, I grant you. It is perfectly plausible that a vampire would use, not only a human agent to lure his victims in, but also implement medical instruments, to cover their tracks, suggesting they intend to stay hidden and, if caught, put the blame on the humans in their employ.” Sherlock leaned back, forcefully pressing his palms together. The injured hand protested, but he didn’t relent. A little pain was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. “Which makes it all the more pressing to locate them. We will start by searching the basements of the buildings near which she was found.”
John snorted and shook his head. “Fine. But we are getting something to eat first.”
“Excellent. How do you feel about Spanish cuisine?”
THE END.
