Darkling, I Listen - Sherlock/John (Part 6c)
"How, how did we get here?!” Sally looks around. The orb is even brighter in person. It hovers ominously a few feet in the air, stretching out misty tendrils across the burning city. (Come to me.) Up close, John can hear the whispers as if they are being spoken into his mind, twisting through his head. He wants to step closer, wants to reach out and-
Demons flap around the light, screeching when too much of it hits them. They stay a distance away, watching predatorily.
Off to the side, Lestrade, Molly and Mrs. Hudson are standing like statues in a great hall. Their heads are pointed straight ahead but John can see the panicked looks in their eyes, trapped in their own bodies. A table is set up in front of them, with a pair of pills settled in front of each Chosen.
Moriarty and Moran stand just in front of where the orb hovers, shadows twisting around each of them, Moran in particular.
“Magic,” Soo Lin answers while staring hard at Moran. “Demons.”
“Where’s Sherlock?” John demands, seeing nothing of the detective anywhere. He forces his features to remain blank but on the inside, everything is shouting, yelling Sherlock’s name and the whispers from the orb, they’re so damn loud now. (Come to me.)
“Oh,” Moriarty shrugs, “Sherlock? Well, let’s see... he jumped.”
All of the colour leaves John’s face. “W...what?”
No, he couldn’t have heard that correctly. There’s no way that Sherlock would... (He has an awful image in his head, of Sherlock standing on the roof of St. Bart’s in world with a blue-actual blue-sky. His madman is saying something about a note into a phone, his madman makes him watch just as he says, “I lied” and then in the worst moment of John’s life, he watches his mad man fall-)
But no, that’s not possible. That didn’t happen-
Moriarty sneers at him, “You heard me, Johnny boy. Sherlock decided to fucking JUMP which means that he’s GONE and it’s all. Because. Of. You.”
“You’re lying-”
“Oh no,” Moriarty shakes his head. “Sherlock didn’t want to play anymore. He NEVER wants to play anymore because of YOU. So instead of indulging in our last run together, he decides to JUMP and now he won’t come OUT!”
No one says a word, only watches the witch pace back and forth, something unreadable in his movements. John almost recognizes it as something... something that...
“Oh but I have a plan... I was just going to let you all get ripped apart by Moran and his kin but I have a better use for you now, Johnny boy. I’m going to make you pay. I’m going to make Sherlock come back out to try and save you again when you come crying... oh yes... and I have the perfect way to make you suffer...”
Moriarty steps towards them, Sally and Anthea raise their weapons, preparing to shoot but then Moriarty says that spell again, the same one from before-
“Tenete corda eorum!”
Instantly, Sally and Soo Lin go rigid. John puts a hand on Soo Lin in alarm, shakes her, “What’s wrong? What is it?” Anthea’s eyes are wide, like she recognizes this. She steps forward. But Soo Lin only shakes her head as she slowly picks up her knife...
John jumps back, remembering how Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson were turned against Sherlock and him before. It’s the same spell, but Soo Lin and Sally aren’t Chosen, aren’t one of the pawns. They’re outsiders, aren’t they... unless...
“You made them eat the pills,” John begins to connect the dots.
“Oh yes,” Moriarty cackles, “Clever of you, Johnny boy. I cast a spell, made them think they were still struggling so I could lure out Big Brother’s little agent but then you had to interfere, Johnny. You had to go muck things up with Sherlock’s curse just by existing. I don’t like that very much, no I don’t... now here’s what’s going to happen...”
He snaps his fingers.
Sally, Soo Lin, Mrs. Hudson, Molly and Lestrade all hold out daggers, have them pressed up against their throats. Anthea is grabbed by Moran and twisted in a tight hold. John cries out in outrage.
Moriarty giggles, “Oh, I’m going to have so much fun watching Moran tear you apart, Johnny boy... but first, I want you to do something for me or all your friends die.”
John trembles with rage. The article that Mike and Doyle were talking about, those serial suicides that were so grotesque and impossible. The way Harry tried to tell him with her eyes what was really happening... “You’re controlling them with the pills. That’s how you made Harry kill herself.”
“Ding, ding, ding! Another point for the loyal pet. Now to the fun part... unless you want your friends to follow little Harriet so soon?”
He can feel pleading eyes from all five of his friends, telling him not to do it. But he can’t let them die... he just can’t.
“What do you want?” John’s voice comes out.
“There,” Moriarty sings, “that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now I want you to fetch Sherlock for me. Drag him out like a lunatic, if you have to. Bring him back to me and your friends can live a little longer before I let Moran play with you.”
John feels faint. “But you said that he jumped... that he’s gone...”
“Oh yes, he jumped into there,” Moriarty points at the orb. It seems to shimmer all the more. (Come to me.) “Clever of him, really. But then that’s what I should expect from my other half. It should drive a human insane to go in after him. I’ll enjoy the results. Your insanity will bring him rushing out here and back to me....”
John looks back up at the orb again. It calls to him, more of the luminous and foggy strands seem to stretch out to him (but perhaps that is his imagination.) Its song irks and steadies him a combination of a violin’s scratchy strings screeching at the night and a comforting nocturne in the night.
This is where the fog comes from, he thinks, from something so bright...
He is stepping towards it, tuning out Moriarty’s monologues and taunts. His fingers rise, he’s too short to reach it, that orb. He won’t be able to reach it and then-
John is burning, he screams. From the inside out, he is burning, all gone, all white and red and blue and then, all the images, so much, so much-
John Watson jumps.
John Watson is gone.
-
Interlude: Sally
-
Studying (and then practicing) witchcraft is what kills her mother, makes her destroy herself in the constant pursuit of more power, more knowledge, more, more, more-
-
“The dark arts aren’t something you just... learn,” her father would say one day, when Sally asks why her mother abandoned them, why her mother changed. “There’s something evil about them. You learn them... and then you want to experiment with it, want to try it and then you start casting spells. Curses. You want to do more-”
Sally hates that word.
-
She remembers tugging at her mum’s skirt, asking her mum if they could do something together. Maybe they could play checkers or watch the tellie. But her mum would be so absorbed in her magical texts. “Just a minute dear, I need to learn more about this interrogation spell... makes it’s victims internal organs explore if they’re lying... brilliant... imagine if we used that at the Yard... how efficient we’d be...”
Horrified, Sally would flinch away. But it got worse. Her mother would start bringing in skeletons dug up from their graves. She’d get pig’s blood and goat hearts, make circles of red in the candlelight and chant strange words.
At night, when her father was on duty, Sally remembers hearing inhuman shrieks from the basement. She’d close her eyes and whisper that mummy was just experimenting, no harm done. Mummy wouldn’t do anything bad to her, never...
But Sally has always been able to see strange colours (auras) around people. They’re like halos of different coloured lights. Most people have normal colours of blue and green all mixed together in varying degrees of morality.
Her mother’s steadily becomes black.
-
Once her mother asked Sally for her heart. Sally said she would give it to her mum, of course she would (because little children are naive, little children trust so much.)
Once her mother tried to kill her with a steak knife just to take out that heart.
And she did it all with adoration in her eyes.
-
Her father rushed in to stop it, authorities and police were called. Sally couldn’t sleep for weeks. She hates magic right then. Hates the witches for changing her mum, hates everything to do with witch craft.
Magic is evil.
“I’m going to become a police officer just like my dad,” she decides right then. “I’m going to protect people from witches.”
-
Now here she is, caught in spell, knife to her throat, staring with hatred at Moriarty. She should have seen it, the black in his aura, but he’d hidden it just as he’d hidden his so-called non-pulse. But she can see it now, the black and red teaming around his person.
It’s strange.
She used to hate Sherlock Holmes too. Hated him so much for studying the dark arts, despite her warnings (“Mum, mum, what are you doing...? Why are you holding the knife like that...? Mum...? MUM!”) Hated him for taking on that dark tinge, making her always suspect.
Well, she was right, wasn’t she? Sherlock Holmes is a witch. But...
He isn’t the one making five people commit suicide. He isn’t the one threatening Sally’s life right now. He isn’t the one who has chased her with demons.
She’s not sure what kind of witch Sherlock is anymore. She always thought they were the same. But she knows what the gloves mean. She can see Watson’s aura, more blue and green than any she’s ever seen before. If a man like that can trust Sherlock well...
Magic is evil.
Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But at the moment, Sally glares with hate at Moriarty, she hates this man. She hates what he represents, what he reminds her of.
(“Sally, dear, may I have your heart...?”)
With a flood of loathing, Sally bites her tongue, let’s the blood fill her mouth and she drives the knife from her throat to her shoulder instead and then yanks out the blade, spitting out the red.
Moriarty stares at her in what she smugly recognizes as surprise.
Sally picks up her gun and points it at him.
“You can’t control me.”
Then she shoots.
Part 7 cont'd