Darkling, I Listen - Sherlock/John (Part 4a)
Title: Darkling, I Listen
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Summary: No one who enters old London ever comes out. They say that the beast devours them. When his sister disappears, John ventures into the dead zone beyond the wall, and finds a brilliant madman under a terrible curse...
Warnings: slash, alternate universe with superstition and magic, angst, swearing, blood
Notes: For siehn on livejournal, who inspired this with her five acts round six prompt. This story is loosely based off of beauty and the beast. The title is a line from the poem “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats.
Part 4
Beast and Corpses
“There is no point in any tears, any sorrow or guilt for your patient’s death,” His father tells him once, rather clinically, when John has thrown himself into a graveyard, collapsed into the dirt after running for so long. It isn’t far enough. It never is. He can still see young Bennie’s eyes, glassy and round, staring up at him like a porcelain doll.
John knows that his father feels nothing, no emotions, now that his mother is dead, but he can’t help but scream at him, bang his fists against Gordon Watson’s chest, “What is wrong with you? That was a little boy and he died because you chose to operate on his mother instead!”
Gordon doesn’t flinch or move. He is like marble, immovable and without vitality. “She had a greater chance of living,” he replies monotonously, a robot where his father should be. “The boy had less than ten percent.”
“It doesn’t matter!” John screams. “You should have tried to save him anyways. You should always try, even if you can’t, you should try-”
“And waste precious energy, resources, trying to save a lost cause when you could be utilizing that time to save a greater number of lives?” Gordon looks down on him.
His fists stop and John begins to shake, unable to return his father’s empty gaze. He can only glare at his father’s tie, tears welling up with the immeasurable screams and shouts balled up inside his heart. It hurts so much that sometimes he wishes that he didn’t care, but then he remembers his father and he takes the wish back, rips it into two.
“You cannot save everyone, John.”
He breathes out a shaky sigh, refuses to wipe away the streaks on his face.
“I know that,” he says.
Caring is not an advantage. Caring will not bring them back. Caring will only obscure your skill. You cannot care if you wish to become a doctor, or your emotions will blind you every time that you fail. Your patients are just subjects to operate on, nothing more.
They don’t matter.
He knows this, has memorized each of the empirical and cold arguments that his father has laid out in front of him over and over again.
“But they do matter,” is what John always whispers in response. “They matter to me.”
And so he cares.
His heart breaks every time he fails.
-
“That’s ridiculous,”-but nothing is anymore, not in the fog, but John can’t think of that right now-“Harry’s not dead. You haven’t even met her, how can you possibly-”
“Oh, she’s dead alright,” Moran grins widely, his teeth gleam dangerously in the light emitting from Jim’s hands. They remind John of the demons... and the wolf. The shadows are angled sharply around the contours of Moran’s face, making his chin sharper, the creases and lines on his face harsher. Men shouldn’t look like that, John thinks, so at home in the darkness, eager to watch other people burn.
John tightens his jaw. “I don’t believe you,” he says, feeling how dry his lips have become, the remaining adrenaline in his veins still pumping and screaming at him to run away before the demons find him again.
Moran laughs and it is nothing like John has ever heard before, a baritone chuckle that seems to make every shadow flicker. “Harriet Marie Watson... has a brother called John, always begging for a drink, crawling around the tunnels looking for a way out... She’s not one of us anymore. It’s a miracle that she even survived this long here, her type rarely does. Anyways she’s one of them now, dead.”
The word echoes down the tunnel and travels towards the pipes, bouncing off every surface before rippling back into his ears.
“You’re lying,” John begins to sit up, ignoring the unfinished stitches and his bleeding side. He bites his tongue before showing his pain, lets the blood well up in his mouth so that he can taste it (and remember that he is alive.) The sharp jolts keep him alert. His senses take in the position of all three strangers, their possible danger levels and what weapons they may be holding.
There is something off putting about these people, especially Moran. The man keeps staring at him as if he is a piece of meat, something to devour. He doesn’t trust him and he hasn’t forgotten Mrs. Hudson’s warning about other outsiders.
(Besides, as another side of him has suspected since the ambush only a few minutes earlier, what if one of them is the witch?)
“I don’t need to stay here, I have to go back,” to 221B, to Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock, he gets up on his feet. “Thanks for the save; I’ll take it from here.”
The rounded ceiling of the tunnel and the long metal pipes threading parallel through it begin to spin when John takes his first step forward. He feels warm liquid trailing down from his shirt to his pants, staining his boots and his footsteps. He wonders what the tunnels will look like if they are ever engulfed in light. Would the demons be chased away? Would his red stained footsteps still be there?
His limp is still there and John can only tighten his grip possessively around his pistol. He can crawl if he has to; he’s not staying here where the demons breed.
“Wait!”
A hand reaches out and John spins around fast enough to stop it from touching him with a protesting arm lifted up. It’s Anthea, her tanned face looking grey in the dim lighting and her brown hair like a black curtain behind her. She looks tired but determined.
“You can’t spend the witching hour, or even the night, here alone. You need people who know the tunnels and can keep the monsters away or you’ll be eaten alive.”
John hesitates. While it isn’t wise to trust anyone in the fog, anyone exempt from the game that Moriarty has set up, he knows that it is suicide to wander these demon breeding grounds alone. He’ll die if he goes into the dark by himself. There might not be a wolf to save him again, at least not in these underground passages. He doesn’t even know the way out. These strangers have effectively trapped him here in their company.
Anthea sighs, “Please. I knew her. Your sister. She and I were... friends.”
“Know,” He replies tersely, wanting very much to be as far away as possible from the lunatics who are convinced that his sister is dead (but what if she is, what will John do then, but no, no, Harry isn’t dead, he would know, he’s her brother, he would know-) “You know her, you are friends,”-but if they are, where is Harry now?-“and if you don’t mind, I’ll be going now.”
“Are you afraid?” Jim finally speaks, his expression unreadable from all the light he is holding. Strange, John thinks, that they all yearn for sunlight only to be so blinded when they are faced with it. Would the entire human race become blind with happiness and sorrow if they saw the sun again?
“I’m sorry?” John bites his tongue again. His whole body feels numb, like the knots tying his mind to it are being loosened.
The shadows are flickering again and the light glows brighter. He can barely make out their faces, only blurry shapes against screaming white, voices that are thinned down as in a dream.
“To find out if she’s really dead, mate,” Jim replies bluntly, his tone sad and sympathetic. He recognizes that tone. It’s the tone that those who came to his mother’s funeral, and later his father’s, always use.
“I’m not afraid because she’s not dead,” He snaps at them, swaying slightly on his feet. “You’ve got the wrong Harriet Watson.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to lose if we take you to see her.”
The light stings and he has to close his eyes. Never has the darkness felt so welcome, so peaceful. He’s not sure when he fell onto his knees, or when Anthea started to clean his wounds again, placing his head against her lap, whispering to ignore Moran and just think of home (that makes him laugh because he doesn’t have one anymore.)
“You mean her body...?” He mumbles, imprints of dancing lights flashing in and out against his eyelids.
“No, I mean to see her die,” answers the Irishman.
This is when alarm should awaken him once more, but John can’t seem to open his eyes. They’re heavy, not his anymore. Voices murmur within his mind for him to relax, to doze off and think of peaceful things. Aren’t you tired? The familiar fog crones. Rest, Johnny boy, rest. We can play tomorrow, my dear, we can play tomorrow with the newest toy.
He groans, trying to focus back. Anthea shushes him and begins to sew up his wound again. He thinks Moran is still staring at him hungrily, can feel the eyes burning into his flesh.
“To see her die...,” John can barely say. “I don’t... can I really see her?”
“Oh yes,” Jim’s voice seems far away now. “I promise that you can see your sister soon and then you will know the truth.”
He wants to ask what Jim means, what these outsiders want with him and why they’re toying with his mind with lies. He wants to know how long they’ve been here, likely eaten away by bits of insanity, bits of hallucinations that never happened. But the voice whispering is so gentle now, such a contrast to the usually glee he hears at his expense.
Sleep now, my dear... tomorrow we can play again.
He does.
-
There he is, running again in the darkness, crashing into trees and having his clothes caught on branches. They grasp at him viciously as if to encage him in their roots forever. John rips at them and tries to reach the running shadow in the dark.
He shouts a name (but he can’t quite hear what it is) but the figure ventures farther and farther away. He shouts until his voice is hoarse and it feels as the flesh in his throat will rip apart if he speaks anymore. But he has to keep trying, has to, has to-
“How can you do this, Harry? This is what mum turned to; this is what killed her-”
“No, what killed her was her damned gift and it’s killing me too, goddamn it John, just let me have my escape while you go rushing into wars! I hope you get blown up just as you’ve always wanted-”
“No, no, Harry, that’s not what I want-”
A smash. Broken glass against bits of skin and crimson. He grabs her hand-“Harry,” he says desperately (feeling so tired)-and she slaps him away.
“Don’t fucking touch me, John, don’t even come near me!”
“Harry, please, see some reason-”
“You’re supposed to be my brother!” She screams. “You’re supposed to save me when I need it, you’re supposed to fix me!”
“I’m here now,” he is saying to the ghosts that surround him. The trees crowd closer together, rattling as they move. “Harry, please!” He yells at the figure that is barely even visible in the fog, “Come back, Harry, I’m here, come back!”
They wrap further around him, until the branches press into his skin, embedding scars and digging further around him. He feels the tips like thorns cutting into his throat, his wrists, his waist and his mouth in a choking embrace. They close in, until he can’t breathe, can’t even keep his eyes closed.
And suddenly the branches are arms and the trunk behind him is body.
She whispers to him, “You couldn’t fix me.”
There are a million things he wants to say (I’m sorry and how could you expect one person to bear all your mistakes? And I just want my sister back) but none of them come out. Only a harsh breath, hardly a whimper.
(But it’s close enough.)
Her touch cuts his skin, creating careful trails and scars along his arms in senseless swirls and shapes.
“Come back,” John says as he feels the cuts bleed.
She looks at him, half sad and half amused. It’s her sisterly look, one he hasn’t seen since grade school when she used to threaten those who bullied him with scissors. She used to dress in silly dresses and shave her head bald, run around in the mud with her dolls. She used to be a radiant girl until the drink (the gift) took that glow away.
“I can’t come back, John.”
Her hand strokes his cheek, leaving a scar of blood slipping down his neck. He sees her form words with his mouth, but he can’t quite make out what they are, such a crucial few syllables and he can’t see it-
A wolf howls in the distance.
Everything shatters.
-
“-shouldn’t have knocked him out, Moran-”
He shifts on his side, feeling groggy and heavy. He tries to recall what he was dreaming but nothing comes up. It’s gone. There is a light ringing in his ears, next to the eager whispers that have begun in his ear again. Good morning, the fog says gently now, a different voice than the one during witching hour, welcome back.
“...would have been out before anyways...” A voice he recognizes as Moran jeers, “I just helped him along... besides his injuries are better, aren’t they, little spy?”
“Shut up. I don’t take orders from you,” He hears Anthea’s cool reply.
John winces and slowly props himself up on his elbows. It’s still dark, but the light from Jim’s hands and several other orbs of light, floating like fairy lights along the tunnels cast shadows in different directions. Some silhouettes cross paths, showing the same object in contradicting sizes, long and tall or wide and stout.
There are tents of plastic sheets and abandoned rubbish bins set up along the slick tunnel walks. The sheets are held up by makeshift poles of sticks and metal bars. It’s odd, but John notices huge claw marks cracking open the bricks that hold the tunnel together. Some of the tents appear hastily assembled, with more torn flaps and some sticks that have been tied together again. It’s as if wild creatures have run through here.
And, John reflects, perhaps they have.
Small fires are set up within old rusty pots and pans, with a small group of people gathered around it. John squints and sees that they are dressed in grubby garments, stained from the mud and sewer water. Ash smudges their skin and faces, making them blend in with the darkness.
Other outsiders, John realizes, or what’s left of them in the dead zone. He remembers what Sherlock told him during his first witching hour, how the demons pick off and target outsiders if they are not carefully hidden. He’s seen the long list of those missing on his walks through New London or during the anniversary of Dead London’s formation, when all the soldiers would line up and salute for three minutes of silence. There are hundreds of names on the list.
Here, John sees about six.
“Of course, always staring at your little phone,” one of the figures, Moran, is gesturing, “hoping against hope that you can send a signal back towards your beloved employer... well wake up, Ms. No Name, you’ll never get your phone call! He’ll never get your texts. You’re stuck here, forever, until someone wins the game... and no one will, ever.”
There is a pause and only the random drips of water from the pipes can do anything to fill the tension that John can feel in the stagnant air.
“Then I suppose someone should break the curse then,” Anthea’s reply is like a dying echo.
One of the other women, who John recognizes as the other part of the pair that he and Sherlock had chased through the city and into the tunnels, scoffs, “No one will. There’s no chance that anyone will ever...”-John can’t hear this part of the sentence, as if it’s been blotted out by an invisible hand-“...that freak. It’s bad enough that the beast has been attacking our camp for the past two nights since you brought the doctor here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the freak...”-another blank, John shifts closer-“...for his own sick twisted amusement.”
There are murmurs of agreement that seem practised, out of habit. There seems to be no one in their little group who believes that the fog will disappear someday.
John takes this opportunity to clear his throat, prompting only five of the six heads to turn towards him. He sits up; swallowing down a groan of pain at his recently sewn wound and manages a stiff smile.
“Hello, which one of you knocked me out and took me here against my will?” He asks, his throat feeling dry from being unconscious for so long. “How long was I out anyways?”
He’s not sure how they will act to his glaring. But he feels gratified that there are some guilty expressions though none from Moran.
“Oh my goodness, I should apologize on behalf of this idiot here,” the woman with cinnamon-toned skin punches Moran in the arm. “I’m Sally and that’s Soo Lin” she gestures to the Asian woman who smiles hesitantly.
“Hello,” she says and John manages a quick of lips in return.
Sally turns towards him, “Apparently Jim wanted to get your wounds treated so he told Moran to stop you from leaving into the tunnels by yourself. They brought you to the camp two days ago.”
“Two days?!” He thinks of Sherlock, wandering the city with a day’s worth of memories. Did any part of him still remember John? Will John even be able to find Baker Street again from the tunnels? He has no idea where he is and what these people are capable of.
“You were bleeding very badly, mate,” Jim nods. “I’m not going to apologize for saving your life... besides... you wanted to see her, didn’t you?”
“Now look here-wait, what do you mean?” John asks suspiciously, “See who?”
But Jim doesn’t have to answer. He doesn’t have to because the seventh person at the fireplace stands up, and in the glow of the flames John can make out her face.
“...Harry...”
-
(“I can’t come back, John.”)
-
She doesn’t respond to her name. “Harry!” John says again, jumping up despite Jim and Anthea’s protests that he should rest. Moran is grinning with mirth while Sally and Anderson look like they would rather be anywhere but here. Soo Lin turns her head down, expression unreadable.
He doesn’t understand. His sister is looking dully into the distance, as if she cannot see her companions or John at all. She is like one of the mannequins in a shop’s window display, frighteningly pale with and eerie gaze. Then she turns and begins to walk.
“Harry,” John moved towards her, bypassing the fire and grabbing her arms. “Harry, please, look at me.”
But she goes away from him, away from the tents and down towards the end of the tunnel. Even when John tries to pull her back, it is like she’s one of the clockwork figures made in a clock tower, designed to move only as she’s been created to do. John steps in front of her but is nearly knocked over as she continues forward.
He catches sight of her eyes, pupils moving around wildly and desperately as they look at him, but her body continuing despite her thoughts. She is trapped, like one of the ‘pieces’ Molly described, stuck in her own flesh and with no control, just like Mike and Doyle.
There is a stack of makeshift weapons at the corner of the camp, stockpiles of kitchen knives, crowbars and, John thinks, two illegally confiscated pistols.
That is where Harry walks.
“No,” John whispers when he realizes what is happening. “Not Harry... please, not my sister...!”
John tries to stop her from moving towards the weapons but Soo Lin and Sally grab him, their grips digging into his skin, drawing blood. “Don’t be a fool!” Sally is shouting while Anthea moves in front of him, shaking her head, “It’s too late, you can’t stop this-”
“It’s already happened, John, she’s already dead, just reliving it-”
“Let me go!” John shoves Sally and Soo Lin away.
He runs past Anthea, rushing forward just as Harry grips one of the knives, holds it to her heart, looking at him pleadingly with unspoken words (“You’re supposed to fix me!”) while he thinks, god, no, please, I’ve failed her in everything but not this time, not this time!
His fingers reach the blade. He grabs it, feeling the blade cut at his fingers, tries to pull it away from Harry, but there is something trembling in her gaze now, a softness he has not seen since he was little, when she was his only friend as they played tag in the fields.
The knife goes into her heart, ripping deep scars into John’s hands.
Harry looks at him one last time, the spell on her body broken, and with one trembling hand on John’s cheek, whimpers, “...You came...”
Her body falls over, a ragged doll of flesh and blood, and John falls with it, holding what once was his sister in his arms.
-
Anthea and Sally try to pull John away from Harry. They give up after awhile, when they see that he only responds with cold glares and holds on to his sister even tighter. He’s not leaving her, not this time. He wasn’t with her enough in life and so he will be with her in the moments after her death.
Moran’s taunts barely capture his attention. He can only focus on the cold corpse in his embrace and how he is always too late.
-
The only one who comes to sit with him is Soo Lin. She has a quiet presence and doesn’t try to intrude in his fresh grief. In fact, she shares the same pained eyes (not nearly as devastated as Anthea had been) and she murmurs some Buddhist prayers for which John is grateful. He’d stopped going to church when his father died, but after he was sent back to England after Afghanistan found it comforting to sit in the church pews and listen to the music. Soo Lin’s quiet words are just as soothing.
He thinks that Harry would have liked it, despite her misgivings about organized Religion. He tells this to Soo Lin and she smiles at him.
“I’m glad to be of service and to lighten your sorrows, even for a short while,” she lifts her head from her bow. “I’ve also lost a brother to the fog.”
When she sees John’s devastated expression, she shakes her head sadly. “No, I came into the fog to escape him... He was going to kill me-it’s a personal tale, one I don’t wish to share, but, I remember finding him in the city, thinking that he was going to finish his job... only for him to be torn to pieces by invisible spirits in front of my eyes.”
John doesn’t know what else to say but, “...How...? And why...?”
It isn’t the most articulate of phrases but Soo Lin understands his meaning nevertheless. She puts her arms around her knees and tells him, “Anyone who is an outsider... and dies in the fog becomes one of those trapped in their bodies. They relive the day of their death again and again, in the same area and nothing will stop it... until the fog is gone, if ever.”
His mouth goes dry again and John swallows. “That’s not right. You shouldn’t have to... your brother, my sister, no matter who they are, you shouldn’t have to suffer through your death every day like that forever... God, what must it be like...?”
He can’t imagine it, the pain that he saw there in Harry’s broken gaze. She’s only been stranded here for several days. He’s not even sure which date she died.
Soo Lin shrugs grimly, “It is the fate that awaits all of us here in the fog. We followed the whispers and promises of dark spirits and now we are to be punished.”
“The fog never promised me anything,” He admits. “It asked me to come inside and I did.”
Soo Lin stares at him strangely, “It never tried to pull you into a contract?”
He shakes his head.
“Never offered you a miracle, salvation to your troubles?”
He shakes his head again, wondering what this means. Soo Lin only appears disturbed and she avoids looking into his eyes.
“It just... asked? And you came?”
“Yes,” says John, remembering the way it crooned in his ear, how the fog had wanted him to come play (it still does) and it had only taken his sister in the hopes of coaxing him inside... “Does that mean anything to you? Do you know what it wants from me? It hasn’t stopped whispering since I came...”
She doesn’t answer, only backs away from him slowly, murmuring something softly in Chinese which John recognizes as protection against evil. Soo Lin retreats into one of the ruined tents, despite John’s protests. She doesn’t come back out.
Part 4 cont
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Summary: No one who enters old London ever comes out. They say that the beast devours them. When his sister disappears, John ventures into the dead zone beyond the wall, and finds a brilliant madman under a terrible curse...
Warnings: slash, alternate universe with superstition and magic, angst, swearing, blood
Notes: For siehn on livejournal, who inspired this with her five acts round six prompt. This story is loosely based off of beauty and the beast. The title is a line from the poem “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats.
Part 4
Beast and Corpses
“There is no point in any tears, any sorrow or guilt for your patient’s death,” His father tells him once, rather clinically, when John has thrown himself into a graveyard, collapsed into the dirt after running for so long. It isn’t far enough. It never is. He can still see young Bennie’s eyes, glassy and round, staring up at him like a porcelain doll.
John knows that his father feels nothing, no emotions, now that his mother is dead, but he can’t help but scream at him, bang his fists against Gordon Watson’s chest, “What is wrong with you? That was a little boy and he died because you chose to operate on his mother instead!”
Gordon doesn’t flinch or move. He is like marble, immovable and without vitality. “She had a greater chance of living,” he replies monotonously, a robot where his father should be. “The boy had less than ten percent.”
“It doesn’t matter!” John screams. “You should have tried to save him anyways. You should always try, even if you can’t, you should try-”
“And waste precious energy, resources, trying to save a lost cause when you could be utilizing that time to save a greater number of lives?” Gordon looks down on him.
His fists stop and John begins to shake, unable to return his father’s empty gaze. He can only glare at his father’s tie, tears welling up with the immeasurable screams and shouts balled up inside his heart. It hurts so much that sometimes he wishes that he didn’t care, but then he remembers his father and he takes the wish back, rips it into two.
“You cannot save everyone, John.”
He breathes out a shaky sigh, refuses to wipe away the streaks on his face.
“I know that,” he says.
Caring is not an advantage. Caring will not bring them back. Caring will only obscure your skill. You cannot care if you wish to become a doctor, or your emotions will blind you every time that you fail. Your patients are just subjects to operate on, nothing more.
They don’t matter.
He knows this, has memorized each of the empirical and cold arguments that his father has laid out in front of him over and over again.
“But they do matter,” is what John always whispers in response. “They matter to me.”
And so he cares.
His heart breaks every time he fails.
-
“That’s ridiculous,”-but nothing is anymore, not in the fog, but John can’t think of that right now-“Harry’s not dead. You haven’t even met her, how can you possibly-”
“Oh, she’s dead alright,” Moran grins widely, his teeth gleam dangerously in the light emitting from Jim’s hands. They remind John of the demons... and the wolf. The shadows are angled sharply around the contours of Moran’s face, making his chin sharper, the creases and lines on his face harsher. Men shouldn’t look like that, John thinks, so at home in the darkness, eager to watch other people burn.
John tightens his jaw. “I don’t believe you,” he says, feeling how dry his lips have become, the remaining adrenaline in his veins still pumping and screaming at him to run away before the demons find him again.
Moran laughs and it is nothing like John has ever heard before, a baritone chuckle that seems to make every shadow flicker. “Harriet Marie Watson... has a brother called John, always begging for a drink, crawling around the tunnels looking for a way out... She’s not one of us anymore. It’s a miracle that she even survived this long here, her type rarely does. Anyways she’s one of them now, dead.”
The word echoes down the tunnel and travels towards the pipes, bouncing off every surface before rippling back into his ears.
“You’re lying,” John begins to sit up, ignoring the unfinished stitches and his bleeding side. He bites his tongue before showing his pain, lets the blood well up in his mouth so that he can taste it (and remember that he is alive.) The sharp jolts keep him alert. His senses take in the position of all three strangers, their possible danger levels and what weapons they may be holding.
There is something off putting about these people, especially Moran. The man keeps staring at him as if he is a piece of meat, something to devour. He doesn’t trust him and he hasn’t forgotten Mrs. Hudson’s warning about other outsiders.
(Besides, as another side of him has suspected since the ambush only a few minutes earlier, what if one of them is the witch?)
“I don’t need to stay here, I have to go back,” to 221B, to Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock, he gets up on his feet. “Thanks for the save; I’ll take it from here.”
The rounded ceiling of the tunnel and the long metal pipes threading parallel through it begin to spin when John takes his first step forward. He feels warm liquid trailing down from his shirt to his pants, staining his boots and his footsteps. He wonders what the tunnels will look like if they are ever engulfed in light. Would the demons be chased away? Would his red stained footsteps still be there?
His limp is still there and John can only tighten his grip possessively around his pistol. He can crawl if he has to; he’s not staying here where the demons breed.
“Wait!”
A hand reaches out and John spins around fast enough to stop it from touching him with a protesting arm lifted up. It’s Anthea, her tanned face looking grey in the dim lighting and her brown hair like a black curtain behind her. She looks tired but determined.
“You can’t spend the witching hour, or even the night, here alone. You need people who know the tunnels and can keep the monsters away or you’ll be eaten alive.”
John hesitates. While it isn’t wise to trust anyone in the fog, anyone exempt from the game that Moriarty has set up, he knows that it is suicide to wander these demon breeding grounds alone. He’ll die if he goes into the dark by himself. There might not be a wolf to save him again, at least not in these underground passages. He doesn’t even know the way out. These strangers have effectively trapped him here in their company.
Anthea sighs, “Please. I knew her. Your sister. She and I were... friends.”
“Know,” He replies tersely, wanting very much to be as far away as possible from the lunatics who are convinced that his sister is dead (but what if she is, what will John do then, but no, no, Harry isn’t dead, he would know, he’s her brother, he would know-) “You know her, you are friends,”-but if they are, where is Harry now?-“and if you don’t mind, I’ll be going now.”
“Are you afraid?” Jim finally speaks, his expression unreadable from all the light he is holding. Strange, John thinks, that they all yearn for sunlight only to be so blinded when they are faced with it. Would the entire human race become blind with happiness and sorrow if they saw the sun again?
“I’m sorry?” John bites his tongue again. His whole body feels numb, like the knots tying his mind to it are being loosened.
The shadows are flickering again and the light glows brighter. He can barely make out their faces, only blurry shapes against screaming white, voices that are thinned down as in a dream.
“To find out if she’s really dead, mate,” Jim replies bluntly, his tone sad and sympathetic. He recognizes that tone. It’s the tone that those who came to his mother’s funeral, and later his father’s, always use.
“I’m not afraid because she’s not dead,” He snaps at them, swaying slightly on his feet. “You’ve got the wrong Harriet Watson.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to lose if we take you to see her.”
The light stings and he has to close his eyes. Never has the darkness felt so welcome, so peaceful. He’s not sure when he fell onto his knees, or when Anthea started to clean his wounds again, placing his head against her lap, whispering to ignore Moran and just think of home (that makes him laugh because he doesn’t have one anymore.)
“You mean her body...?” He mumbles, imprints of dancing lights flashing in and out against his eyelids.
“No, I mean to see her die,” answers the Irishman.
This is when alarm should awaken him once more, but John can’t seem to open his eyes. They’re heavy, not his anymore. Voices murmur within his mind for him to relax, to doze off and think of peaceful things. Aren’t you tired? The familiar fog crones. Rest, Johnny boy, rest. We can play tomorrow, my dear, we can play tomorrow with the newest toy.
He groans, trying to focus back. Anthea shushes him and begins to sew up his wound again. He thinks Moran is still staring at him hungrily, can feel the eyes burning into his flesh.
“To see her die...,” John can barely say. “I don’t... can I really see her?”
“Oh yes,” Jim’s voice seems far away now. “I promise that you can see your sister soon and then you will know the truth.”
He wants to ask what Jim means, what these outsiders want with him and why they’re toying with his mind with lies. He wants to know how long they’ve been here, likely eaten away by bits of insanity, bits of hallucinations that never happened. But the voice whispering is so gentle now, such a contrast to the usually glee he hears at his expense.
Sleep now, my dear... tomorrow we can play again.
He does.
-
There he is, running again in the darkness, crashing into trees and having his clothes caught on branches. They grasp at him viciously as if to encage him in their roots forever. John rips at them and tries to reach the running shadow in the dark.
He shouts a name (but he can’t quite hear what it is) but the figure ventures farther and farther away. He shouts until his voice is hoarse and it feels as the flesh in his throat will rip apart if he speaks anymore. But he has to keep trying, has to, has to-
“How can you do this, Harry? This is what mum turned to; this is what killed her-”
“No, what killed her was her damned gift and it’s killing me too, goddamn it John, just let me have my escape while you go rushing into wars! I hope you get blown up just as you’ve always wanted-”
“No, no, Harry, that’s not what I want-”
A smash. Broken glass against bits of skin and crimson. He grabs her hand-“Harry,” he says desperately (feeling so tired)-and she slaps him away.
“Don’t fucking touch me, John, don’t even come near me!”
“Harry, please, see some reason-”
“You’re supposed to be my brother!” She screams. “You’re supposed to save me when I need it, you’re supposed to fix me!”
“I’m here now,” he is saying to the ghosts that surround him. The trees crowd closer together, rattling as they move. “Harry, please!” He yells at the figure that is barely even visible in the fog, “Come back, Harry, I’m here, come back!”
They wrap further around him, until the branches press into his skin, embedding scars and digging further around him. He feels the tips like thorns cutting into his throat, his wrists, his waist and his mouth in a choking embrace. They close in, until he can’t breathe, can’t even keep his eyes closed.
And suddenly the branches are arms and the trunk behind him is body.
She whispers to him, “You couldn’t fix me.”
There are a million things he wants to say (I’m sorry and how could you expect one person to bear all your mistakes? And I just want my sister back) but none of them come out. Only a harsh breath, hardly a whimper.
(But it’s close enough.)
Her touch cuts his skin, creating careful trails and scars along his arms in senseless swirls and shapes.
“Come back,” John says as he feels the cuts bleed.
She looks at him, half sad and half amused. It’s her sisterly look, one he hasn’t seen since grade school when she used to threaten those who bullied him with scissors. She used to dress in silly dresses and shave her head bald, run around in the mud with her dolls. She used to be a radiant girl until the drink (the gift) took that glow away.
“I can’t come back, John.”
Her hand strokes his cheek, leaving a scar of blood slipping down his neck. He sees her form words with his mouth, but he can’t quite make out what they are, such a crucial few syllables and he can’t see it-
A wolf howls in the distance.
Everything shatters.
-
“-shouldn’t have knocked him out, Moran-”
He shifts on his side, feeling groggy and heavy. He tries to recall what he was dreaming but nothing comes up. It’s gone. There is a light ringing in his ears, next to the eager whispers that have begun in his ear again. Good morning, the fog says gently now, a different voice than the one during witching hour, welcome back.
“...would have been out before anyways...” A voice he recognizes as Moran jeers, “I just helped him along... besides his injuries are better, aren’t they, little spy?”
“Shut up. I don’t take orders from you,” He hears Anthea’s cool reply.
John winces and slowly props himself up on his elbows. It’s still dark, but the light from Jim’s hands and several other orbs of light, floating like fairy lights along the tunnels cast shadows in different directions. Some silhouettes cross paths, showing the same object in contradicting sizes, long and tall or wide and stout.
There are tents of plastic sheets and abandoned rubbish bins set up along the slick tunnel walks. The sheets are held up by makeshift poles of sticks and metal bars. It’s odd, but John notices huge claw marks cracking open the bricks that hold the tunnel together. Some of the tents appear hastily assembled, with more torn flaps and some sticks that have been tied together again. It’s as if wild creatures have run through here.
And, John reflects, perhaps they have.
Small fires are set up within old rusty pots and pans, with a small group of people gathered around it. John squints and sees that they are dressed in grubby garments, stained from the mud and sewer water. Ash smudges their skin and faces, making them blend in with the darkness.
Other outsiders, John realizes, or what’s left of them in the dead zone. He remembers what Sherlock told him during his first witching hour, how the demons pick off and target outsiders if they are not carefully hidden. He’s seen the long list of those missing on his walks through New London or during the anniversary of Dead London’s formation, when all the soldiers would line up and salute for three minutes of silence. There are hundreds of names on the list.
Here, John sees about six.
“Of course, always staring at your little phone,” one of the figures, Moran, is gesturing, “hoping against hope that you can send a signal back towards your beloved employer... well wake up, Ms. No Name, you’ll never get your phone call! He’ll never get your texts. You’re stuck here, forever, until someone wins the game... and no one will, ever.”
There is a pause and only the random drips of water from the pipes can do anything to fill the tension that John can feel in the stagnant air.
“Then I suppose someone should break the curse then,” Anthea’s reply is like a dying echo.
One of the other women, who John recognizes as the other part of the pair that he and Sherlock had chased through the city and into the tunnels, scoffs, “No one will. There’s no chance that anyone will ever...”-John can’t hear this part of the sentence, as if it’s been blotted out by an invisible hand-“...that freak. It’s bad enough that the beast has been attacking our camp for the past two nights since you brought the doctor here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the freak...”-another blank, John shifts closer-“...for his own sick twisted amusement.”
There are murmurs of agreement that seem practised, out of habit. There seems to be no one in their little group who believes that the fog will disappear someday.
John takes this opportunity to clear his throat, prompting only five of the six heads to turn towards him. He sits up; swallowing down a groan of pain at his recently sewn wound and manages a stiff smile.
“Hello, which one of you knocked me out and took me here against my will?” He asks, his throat feeling dry from being unconscious for so long. “How long was I out anyways?”
He’s not sure how they will act to his glaring. But he feels gratified that there are some guilty expressions though none from Moran.
“Oh my goodness, I should apologize on behalf of this idiot here,” the woman with cinnamon-toned skin punches Moran in the arm. “I’m Sally and that’s Soo Lin” she gestures to the Asian woman who smiles hesitantly.
“Hello,” she says and John manages a quick of lips in return.
Sally turns towards him, “Apparently Jim wanted to get your wounds treated so he told Moran to stop you from leaving into the tunnels by yourself. They brought you to the camp two days ago.”
“Two days?!” He thinks of Sherlock, wandering the city with a day’s worth of memories. Did any part of him still remember John? Will John even be able to find Baker Street again from the tunnels? He has no idea where he is and what these people are capable of.
“You were bleeding very badly, mate,” Jim nods. “I’m not going to apologize for saving your life... besides... you wanted to see her, didn’t you?”
“Now look here-wait, what do you mean?” John asks suspiciously, “See who?”
But Jim doesn’t have to answer. He doesn’t have to because the seventh person at the fireplace stands up, and in the glow of the flames John can make out her face.
“...Harry...”
-
(“I can’t come back, John.”)
-
She doesn’t respond to her name. “Harry!” John says again, jumping up despite Jim and Anthea’s protests that he should rest. Moran is grinning with mirth while Sally and Anderson look like they would rather be anywhere but here. Soo Lin turns her head down, expression unreadable.
He doesn’t understand. His sister is looking dully into the distance, as if she cannot see her companions or John at all. She is like one of the mannequins in a shop’s window display, frighteningly pale with and eerie gaze. Then she turns and begins to walk.
“Harry,” John moved towards her, bypassing the fire and grabbing her arms. “Harry, please, look at me.”
But she goes away from him, away from the tents and down towards the end of the tunnel. Even when John tries to pull her back, it is like she’s one of the clockwork figures made in a clock tower, designed to move only as she’s been created to do. John steps in front of her but is nearly knocked over as she continues forward.
He catches sight of her eyes, pupils moving around wildly and desperately as they look at him, but her body continuing despite her thoughts. She is trapped, like one of the ‘pieces’ Molly described, stuck in her own flesh and with no control, just like Mike and Doyle.
There is a stack of makeshift weapons at the corner of the camp, stockpiles of kitchen knives, crowbars and, John thinks, two illegally confiscated pistols.
That is where Harry walks.
“No,” John whispers when he realizes what is happening. “Not Harry... please, not my sister...!”
John tries to stop her from moving towards the weapons but Soo Lin and Sally grab him, their grips digging into his skin, drawing blood. “Don’t be a fool!” Sally is shouting while Anthea moves in front of him, shaking her head, “It’s too late, you can’t stop this-”
“It’s already happened, John, she’s already dead, just reliving it-”
“Let me go!” John shoves Sally and Soo Lin away.
He runs past Anthea, rushing forward just as Harry grips one of the knives, holds it to her heart, looking at him pleadingly with unspoken words (“You’re supposed to fix me!”) while he thinks, god, no, please, I’ve failed her in everything but not this time, not this time!
His fingers reach the blade. He grabs it, feeling the blade cut at his fingers, tries to pull it away from Harry, but there is something trembling in her gaze now, a softness he has not seen since he was little, when she was his only friend as they played tag in the fields.
The knife goes into her heart, ripping deep scars into John’s hands.
Harry looks at him one last time, the spell on her body broken, and with one trembling hand on John’s cheek, whimpers, “...You came...”
Her body falls over, a ragged doll of flesh and blood, and John falls with it, holding what once was his sister in his arms.
-
Anthea and Sally try to pull John away from Harry. They give up after awhile, when they see that he only responds with cold glares and holds on to his sister even tighter. He’s not leaving her, not this time. He wasn’t with her enough in life and so he will be with her in the moments after her death.
Moran’s taunts barely capture his attention. He can only focus on the cold corpse in his embrace and how he is always too late.
-
The only one who comes to sit with him is Soo Lin. She has a quiet presence and doesn’t try to intrude in his fresh grief. In fact, she shares the same pained eyes (not nearly as devastated as Anthea had been) and she murmurs some Buddhist prayers for which John is grateful. He’d stopped going to church when his father died, but after he was sent back to England after Afghanistan found it comforting to sit in the church pews and listen to the music. Soo Lin’s quiet words are just as soothing.
He thinks that Harry would have liked it, despite her misgivings about organized Religion. He tells this to Soo Lin and she smiles at him.
“I’m glad to be of service and to lighten your sorrows, even for a short while,” she lifts her head from her bow. “I’ve also lost a brother to the fog.”
When she sees John’s devastated expression, she shakes her head sadly. “No, I came into the fog to escape him... He was going to kill me-it’s a personal tale, one I don’t wish to share, but, I remember finding him in the city, thinking that he was going to finish his job... only for him to be torn to pieces by invisible spirits in front of my eyes.”
John doesn’t know what else to say but, “...How...? And why...?”
It isn’t the most articulate of phrases but Soo Lin understands his meaning nevertheless. She puts her arms around her knees and tells him, “Anyone who is an outsider... and dies in the fog becomes one of those trapped in their bodies. They relive the day of their death again and again, in the same area and nothing will stop it... until the fog is gone, if ever.”
His mouth goes dry again and John swallows. “That’s not right. You shouldn’t have to... your brother, my sister, no matter who they are, you shouldn’t have to suffer through your death every day like that forever... God, what must it be like...?”
He can’t imagine it, the pain that he saw there in Harry’s broken gaze. She’s only been stranded here for several days. He’s not even sure which date she died.
Soo Lin shrugs grimly, “It is the fate that awaits all of us here in the fog. We followed the whispers and promises of dark spirits and now we are to be punished.”
“The fog never promised me anything,” He admits. “It asked me to come inside and I did.”
Soo Lin stares at him strangely, “It never tried to pull you into a contract?”
He shakes his head.
“Never offered you a miracle, salvation to your troubles?”
He shakes his head again, wondering what this means. Soo Lin only appears disturbed and she avoids looking into his eyes.
“It just... asked? And you came?”
“Yes,” says John, remembering the way it crooned in his ear, how the fog had wanted him to come play (it still does) and it had only taken his sister in the hopes of coaxing him inside... “Does that mean anything to you? Do you know what it wants from me? It hasn’t stopped whispering since I came...”
She doesn’t answer, only backs away from him slowly, murmuring something softly in Chinese which John recognizes as protection against evil. Soo Lin retreats into one of the ruined tents, despite John’s protests. She doesn’t come back out.
Part 4 cont