Darkling, I Listen - Sherlock/John (Part 6a)
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 6
Witch
The soldiers play a game, in the nights when they have nothing to do in their tents but stare off into space and think. And thinking is dangerous territory after you’ve seen endless mounds of bodies scattered in the sand. Thinking puts many of John’s men into shock, some into asylums or hospitals, muttering to themselves about demons and angels.
(But that’s silly; there aren’t any angels in this world.)
There are cards and some beer (if anyone has any.) They try to ignore the moans of the wind outside; try not to think of the constant fear that perhaps the next winds will bring more demons, more spells (or worse, the fog.) But for now it’s just sand, sand that wisps at their fingers for a taste of human skin. If John closes his eyes, he thinks that he can hear the desert moaning with the wind.
They quietly go through a few rounds of cards, bodies tense despite the smiles on each other’s faces, before someone will say, “What do you think a witch looks like?”
The newcomers will blink slowly, having never really wondered. Witches are blurry figures in their imaginations, things that exist in tales told in the night and in the dead zones. They exist in curses but no one who’s been cursed ever has a consistent description other than brightly changing eyes, shadows enveloping their bodies.
“A demon with lion’s teeth,” one of them will say.
“A skeleton with organs trailing from its feet.”
The descriptions get more and more ludicrous as the game goes on. It helps to laugh about it, to make up the most bizarre life form as possible if only to chase away the fear. John never participates, never adds in his own comments. He had asked his fair share of questions when he was younger, to his parents and his sister. They always answered with stories (empty looks or stories.)
But one day, Murray turns to him and nudges his shoulder, “What about you, Watson? What do you think a witch really looks like?”
Heads turn and look at their captain expectantly, assuming that he’ll go along with the ridiculous nature of their game.
John stares at his bottle.
“I dunno,” he shrugs.
“Oh,” they joke, “you’re no fun. Come on, Captain, what do you think they look like?”
He peeks behind him, to the outside of the tent, to where the fog is waiting beyond the desert. He thinks of Doctor Hardwicke, trying not to crumble, telling yet another patient that there is nothing he can do against a curse. He remembers wondering how anyone could be stupid enough to make a willing contract with a witch, how anyone could bear to look at them if they appeared to be monsters.
“Like anyone of us, I suppose, they just hide whatever unique attributes they have.”
The game doesn’t go on after that and no one looks him straight in the eye for several more weeks at hand.
-
Everything is burning but John can’t stop staring at the wrist clutched in his hands, trying to feel for something that just isn’t there. He’s back at the first day he touched a corpse, felt its cool and hard touch, bones that would never move again. Lungs paused in anticipation for the beat that would never come. It wasn’t until his father told him to breathe that John realized he had been waiting to hear that pulse.
But this isn’t a corpse. These hands are warm and…
No, his gift is wrong. There has to be a different explanation, some kind of circulatory problem or maybe John is imagining things, maybe the tremors in his hand are interfering (yet they’re not shaking, not at all, not in this stress) but-when you eliminate all other possibilities all that remains is the truth.
His vision is getting blurry. John feels so light-headed but he can’t help but cling to Sherlock, to touch his face. 221B is screeching and screeching, her walls are falling, crumbling into dust and grime around them. It falls on Sherlock’s face, covering the pale skin and rains against John’s back. John thinks he can hear Moriarty’s laughter growing closer and closer.
(He laughs like the fog, during witching hour.)
John blinks, snapping out of his haze. They need to get out. Find some water. Put out the fire. But Sherlock’s safety comes first; he needs to get Sherlock out. John looks around, trying to find pins, something, to pick at the handcuffs. He needs them off.
Sherlock spasms, clutching at John’s wrist so tightly that it might fall off. “John,” he gasps.
“It’s going to be alright,” he says out loud, searching, always searching.
“...John... stop it, don’t be stupid! Get out, you idiot, I’m fine-”
“No you’re not!” John shouts, wrenching his hands from Sherlock’s grip entirely. The detective’s hands seem to freeze in midair, lost without something to hold. “You, you’re bleeding with some kind of poison that I can’t recognize and you’ve collapsed from blood loss. I can’t even heal you; my gift isn’t even working properly. And... and I can’t even feel for a pulse, my hands have to be shaking or, or-”
“-John-”
“No, Sherlock, just let me take care of it. I just need to,” he coughs, smoke caught in his lungs and poisoning his insides, “just need to-”
“Don’t be obtuse, John,” is the low murmur he hears.
“What?” Dizzy, he looks down at the hard frown that has made its way to Sherlock’s face.
“There’s no need to pretend anymore,” Sherlock continues, his voice growing harsher by the second, “you know what I am now. You are like the rest of them. You can put two plus two together, can’t you? Or is that too difficult for your tiny, little brain?”
John pulls back his hand, feeling the sting of Sherlock’s words curling uncomfortably in his gut.
“But no, you can’t be-it’s a lie, a, a misunderstanding or-”
When you eliminate all possibilities all that remains is-no, stop, it’s not true. Just a mistake. His medical training screams at him to perform CPR, resuscitate the patient in some way but his eyes can see that Sherlock is breathing… breathing… and yet Sherlock is so perfectly still that John isn’t sure if he’s hallucinating, mind playing tricks...
He’s yanked down by the collar of his shirt. “Don’t be an idiot, John!” Sherlock practically roars into his ear, the smoke seems to expand at the sound of his voice. “You can see it and now you’re observing it, you know what I am. Don’t deny your instincts!”
One of the light bulbs from the ceiling comes crashing down between them, spilling jagged glass over them both and scratching them with cuts. But John can’t react. He can only stare at Sherlock’s form, thoughts jumping up at him, each demanding attention.
He should run now, shouldn’t he?
Fire licks at their boots. The air around them is boiling, should have burned them alive by now but 221B must be protecting them, still trying to use her own brand of magic to shield her humans. It’s all John can do not to crumple in the heat and grime but he can’t (won’t) move from his spot.
“Oh get it through your thick head,” Sherlock growls when he realizes that John refuses to react. “I am your enemy. I did all of this. I made the dead zone!”
John recoils, hands against the floorboards as he subconsciously backs away. The handcuffs cut into his wrists, make him hiss. Glass digs into his skin and his fingers brush against the abandoned gloves on the ground.
“No, no, you didn’t. You wouldn’t-” His throat is dry, clogged up from smoke and this, this feeling that is ripping through his chest, his head, and he wishes he couldn’t feel it. He wishes he didn’t feel so much and maybe it wouldn’t hurt-
“I know you,” John tries again. “You wouldn’t do this, make this, this hell. Not for anything-”
“Well you don’t know me, John Watson. You have no idea just what I am capable of, no idea of what I’ve done to this city,” Sherlock’s tone darkens as he slowly gets up, a shadow against the bright flames. “You should run while you have the chance.”
“You’re a witch,” John finds himself saying, surprised that he can even say that much. Obvious. All of London might be burned to the ground at any moment and yet he’s sitting here stupidly, waiting on an answer he already knows.
The blindfold seems to darken, despite all of the grit smudged against the fabric. Sherlock’s lips twitch to say more but-but then-
The fire stops moving. It’s still there, so very present, but it does not jump hungrily for more fuel. It lingers in midair as 221B’s screeches are suddenly wrenched away from the background.
“Now that’s awfully rude and ignorant of you, Johnny boy,” drawls a voice from behind. The flames seem to pause in time at his words, waiting upon his command. “’Witch’ is such a general term, don’t you think? We’re called warlocks because we’re male... though ‘witch’ does have a nice and chilling ring to it, I do like that. Witch. A word to drive a human into tears. Yes, I can see why humans default to that term...”
He pauses.
“WITCH!” Moriarty roars at them all, delighting at the sound.
John turns around quickly, manoeuvres his handcuffed wrists to his gun, ready to shoot. But then he sees who is there and his eyes widen in surprise.
“...Jim...?” He whispers. “But I thought... Moran...”
But said man is standing next to the witch (not Sherlock), keeping a tight grip on poor Molly’s wrist. The girl is shaking but she keeps her gaze pinned straight ahead so she can ignore the demon holding her. He is smiling dangerously at John. Moran watches John with a spark of madness, licking his lips. The shadows seem to weave back and forth around him in the same madness. John suppresses the urge to shiver. Moran hasn’t changed at all.
It’s Jim who has. The polite looking man from before is dressed in an expensive dark suit and tie. Though he stands unassumingly, there is no mistaking him for an average business man (Death in a suit, John starts to think hysterically.) While Moran’s eyes are alive with madness, Moriarty’s eyes survey the building paused in fire with calculation and amusement. The madness is there, John has no doubt, but it’s cleverly hidden in the obsessive way Moriarty regards Sherlock.
(And the way his eyes glow red.)
“Moriarty,” Sherlock snarls from behind.
Jim (Moriarty, the witch, the one who caused all this but what about Sherlock?) tilts his head. “Hi,” He sings out. The flames flicker once but remain still. Everything is still, frozen, breaths held in anticipation save for the two witches, the demon and John.
“You missed our last date,” Moriarty pouts, but the undercurrent of a threat is ever present. The flames flicker once more before pausing. “I was so disappointed, Sherlock dear.”
“I have more important things to do then participate in your silly little games now,” Sherlock growls. This time, the smoke seems to slither closer around them, blackening the space between the two witches.
“Oh really...?” Moriarty steps closer, the red tint in his stare gleaming brighter than before. “And why is that I wonder? Have you found someone cleverer than me to play with? Is that it? No, that’s impossible. I’m know that there’s no one on this pitiful world more brilliant than you and I. Are you bored of me? Are you?” Moriarty’s soft and pleasant tones become a shout. “Or maybe...” He looks at John, “...you think you’ve found the one.”
John scowls at Moriarty and raises his pistol up towards the witch’s chin. His arm has never been so steady in his life. He can’t kill any of them without spilling witch’s or demon’s blood on his bullets but he can make sure that this will hurt.
“Step away from us,” He says, “or I will shoot you.”
“John,” Sherlock says in a warning tone.
“Oh do keep your mouth shut, Sherlock dear, or you’ll ruin my fun,” Moriarty snaps his fingers. The fire resumes its task, viciously eating up the walls of their flat, climbing higher and higher. John and Sherlock yell out in protest and then Moriarty raises his hand for the fire to pause. “Unless you’d like 221B to be utterly destroyed now rather than later, I’d zip it.”
Sherlock swears under his breath but stays quiet. John glowers up at Moriarty and spits at his feet.
Moriarty laughs. It’s different from Jim’s laughter (all high pitched and melodic) now in a slower and deliberate tenor.
“Oh, you’re such a cute little pet, aren’t you? So loyal. So obedient. You humans are a real ignorant lot, always assuming you know all, especially you, Johnny boy, you pitiful and lost little thing.”
He doesn’t react to the jibe, keeps himself as impassive as possible.
“Trying to play the brave hero,” Moriarty hums, “but never able to save anyone. Oh, you tried. Yes, you did. You heard that your sister was missing. You searched... and you searched... trying so hard to find her. You even went into the nasty fog, how noble of you. But,” Moriarty smirks, “maybe not so noble after all. Silly and whiney Harriet, always going on and on about how unfortunate she is, how horrible life is to her.”
John almost drops his gun. “Wh-what...?”
“Oh Johnny!” Moriarty scrunches up his face in imitation, but another voice comes out. A voice he knows all too well, “Why do we have to have these nasty gifts? Why can’t I find someone who loves me without my power? Why did Clara break up with me? Why don’t you ever make it better, Johnny? Why don’t you take the booze away? Why? Don’t join the army, Johnny. Stay with me. Make me better, Johnny. Make me better!”
If he wasn’t on his knees already, he would have collapsed. “H-Harry?”
“You abandoned me the moment you had the chance! It’s all your fault, Johnny, all your fault that I’m dead!” Moriarty finishes before letting out a stream of suppressed glee. “How precious, the relationship between siblings. How much they say the love when all they do is hate. Isn’t she the most annoying tart? Oh,” Moriarty sees John’s clenched fists, “I made you angry. So sorry. But I’m right, of course. Didn’t you run off to be a toy soldier to get away from her and her nagging and her drinking? Didn’t you run away from her? Leave her? Kill her?”
“Stop it!” John yells, “Just stop it!”
He shoots, or he almost does, before his training kicks in and he regains control of his grip. His fingers are trembling again in slight tremors. He can hear her voice even now, accusing him.
Harry, Harry, I’m so sorry.
“Oh,” Moriarty pouts, leans in closer with a soothing tone, “seems I’ve hit a nerve. Let me make it better. Of course you didn’t kill her, Johnny boy. You only wanted her dead, gone. What difference does it make? You got your wish in the end. She waltzed off into the fog and then we witches had her killed. Sherlock here made the dead zone. I made the demons. It all goes hand in hand, no wonder she went mad. No wonder she died. Hm, seems that we did you a favour.”
Something inside him (whatever has kept him grounded, calm, somewhat stable) breaks.
“Shut up!” John yells, dropping his pistol, “Just shut up, shut up, shut up! I want nothing to do with your kind. You’ve ruined this city, fucked up so many people’s lives. Harry’s dead because of you,” but is she? Or maybe she would have been driven to... to... No, just keep going, Watson, pull yourself together-“Why should I have mercy for you?”
He’s out of breath, all of his hate and bitterness thrown into that last outburst. All is silent and John closes his eyes, certain that this is the moment when Moriarty will lose his temper, burn them all but-
Moriarty starts to laugh. But this time, it’s unbridled mirth and triumph. It’s the laugh of a mad man who has won everything (the mad hatter who married the mad queen of hearts, off with their heads, off with their heads-)
“Do you hear that, Sherlock? See? He’s just like the rest.”
John gasps and he whirls around, sees how pale Sherlock has become, how his fingers clench and dig into his skin, the tight set of his mouth. “No, no, wait, Sherlock, I didn’t”-but he made the dead zone-“I didn’t mean-”
“Oh, but you did and now I think I shall let everything burn!” Moriarty bellows. “Sherlock is mine now!”
“NO!” John shouts, standing up to tackle the witch.
The fire returns. So do the screams.
-
“If you could kill one, how would you kill it?”
It is several months after that night of cards. Some of his soldiers still cast him skittish looks, bothered by the honesty that John always projects. “People don’t like to talk about witches,” he remembers Harry telling him, when he’d been scolded by one of his teachers for being too nosy about ‘rotten devilry.’ When he had asked why not, Harry had replied, “Well, because it’s easier to pretend that they don’t exist if you don’t admit that they’re real.”
John looks up abruptly, eying the private sternly, “Excuse me?”
Private Collins, a shy bloke who likes to read Shakespeare before he goes to sleep, flushes but bravely continues, “I mean, if you could capture one, a witch. Wouldn’t you want to make it suffer? Want to draw out how it dies, make it remember that it can’t prey on us like we’re insects-”
“I’d shoot it,” John says sharply. “If it was threatening me or another human being directly then I’d shoot it and then run because there is no way to kill a witch, private. And even if there was a way, what you’re talking about is torture, do you understand?”
The young man stares up at John as if he is seeing a demon in front of him. He splutters, reaching out to him, “But they’re not like us. They don’t deserve mercy; you can’t torture something that isn’t human! It deserves to be punished!”
“Yes, well maybe I’m tired of seeing torture everywhere in the fog, have you ever thought of that?” John demands. “They cause so much despair, so many people to suffer. We don’t need any more of that, especially if we all claim to be as human as you’re saying.”
Collins clenches his fists and says, “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of it. Wondered.”
John holds his gaze, one hand fluttering over the hold of his gun by his side.
“There’s nothing to wonder about. Just shoot them and run. That’s all you can do.”
-
At this moment (just for one stupid, weak and horrible moment) when 221B begins to splinter and the floor sinks down into the lower levels (into more heat and fire), when he hears Molly crying out his name, hears Moran shouting for more blood and Moriarty just breathing, he wonders.
Then John hits Moriarty with the back of his gun and rolls off of him without checking for unconsciousness. Glass presses against his cheeks before he jumps to his feet and looks wildly for Sherlock. Sparks catch against his jumper. He can’t breathe with all the smoke and the heat pressing (slamming) against his body.
The fire looks as if it is beckoning to him with hungry sharp lilts of embers. It’s already taken all four walls. John doesn’t know where Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade are. He only hopes that 221B has kept them buried enough (but the flat is still screaming, shrieking, holding on so desperately that he just doesn’t know anymore.)
“Sherlock!” John shouts, coughing as more smoke invades his mouth. There’s only fire now, bright, bright fire. It stings at his eyes, suffocates him. He feels like he’s already on fire even though the flames haven’t tasted him yet. He wants to go back into the dark, back to the fog where it was cool and whispered to him. This light is too much, too much...
“John,” He hears.
Suddenly something has grabbed his ankle. John panics, kicking at the unknown presence before arms yank him down, backwards and he is pressed back against a familiar chest.
“Sherlock-”
The detective (witch) slams his hand against John’s mouth, shutting him up. John tries to say something, tries to struggle, but nothing about the blindfold gives away Sherlock’s expression. Only the snarl and the growled ‘stay still’ hints at the anger in him, as Sherlock shoves something against John’s hands, something leather and soft... wait, what?
John stares down at the gloves now covering his hands, Sherlock’s gloves. He casts another desperate and questioning look at said man, but Sherlock only snaps, “Now you can run!”
“But-”
He shoves John through the away into the flames. John screams out, tries to crawl back towards Sherlock but another grabs his jumper, pulls him up-
It’s Moriarty, blood dripping down his forehead from where John hit him. The crimson streaks glisten in the wild firelight, heighten the absolute loathing present in that gaze. He’s the flames of insanity encased human form, letting John dangle just above the ground.
“I think that you’re done playing this game, Johnny boy,” Moriarty smiles, teeth stained in scarlet. “It’s time for the grown-ups to talk alone now.”
“Put him down!” Someone shrieks. (Is is Molly? 221B suddenly speaking English? ...Sherlock?)
Moriarty blinks slowly, as blood trails into the white of his eyes. “Alright, I will.”
The floors crumble into the eager flames that are one floor below. They jump up, nipping for John’s boots. The subtle crackles of long orange tongues fill John’s ears. He can see the hues of orange, yellow and deep crimson all coruscating around them, writhing and reaching, so hungry for more food...
And Moriarty throws him in.
He doesn’t know who is screaming anymore.
-
He always wondered what the sunlight might feel like, if the fog and the darkness ever went away. He’d asked his mother and father that question countless times (What is the sun? What is sunlight?) and receive mixed responses, changed every time.
They thought that sunlight might be just warmth-warmth by a fireplace, warmth when wrapped up in bundles of quilts, warmth of a nice cup of tea when snow touches the earth. His father proposed that sunlight was just a layer of that warmth on skin, nothing too phenomenal or special. “It’s pointless to wonder,” Gordon Watson had said. “This is the world we live in, we must accept that.”
But John always wondered. He’d curl up with his stuffed dog Gladstone by the fire, close his eyes and just imagine.
“This is sunlight,” he’d say to himself, “this is what it feels like.”
Now he falls into fire, thinks back to the story of Icarus who flew too close to the sun, the foolish soul who couldn’t appreciate the wings he had, the foolish soul who let them melt.
Maybe this is what falling into the sun will feel like-infernos exploding, roasting his skin, eating up his flesh until he is nothing but unrecognized char. Maybe this is punishment for curiosity, for asking questions, for wanting the sun (because now he has it, now he can scorch into smoke from too much heat.)
Sherlock, he thinks. Even now, that’s all he can make out in his thoughts. Sherlock.
The flames wrap around him greedily, lick around his limbs and chest.
It’s warm. So very... very...
Part 6 cont'd
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 6
Witch
The soldiers play a game, in the nights when they have nothing to do in their tents but stare off into space and think. And thinking is dangerous territory after you’ve seen endless mounds of bodies scattered in the sand. Thinking puts many of John’s men into shock, some into asylums or hospitals, muttering to themselves about demons and angels.
(But that’s silly; there aren’t any angels in this world.)
There are cards and some beer (if anyone has any.) They try to ignore the moans of the wind outside; try not to think of the constant fear that perhaps the next winds will bring more demons, more spells (or worse, the fog.) But for now it’s just sand, sand that wisps at their fingers for a taste of human skin. If John closes his eyes, he thinks that he can hear the desert moaning with the wind.
They quietly go through a few rounds of cards, bodies tense despite the smiles on each other’s faces, before someone will say, “What do you think a witch looks like?”
The newcomers will blink slowly, having never really wondered. Witches are blurry figures in their imaginations, things that exist in tales told in the night and in the dead zones. They exist in curses but no one who’s been cursed ever has a consistent description other than brightly changing eyes, shadows enveloping their bodies.
“A demon with lion’s teeth,” one of them will say.
“A skeleton with organs trailing from its feet.”
The descriptions get more and more ludicrous as the game goes on. It helps to laugh about it, to make up the most bizarre life form as possible if only to chase away the fear. John never participates, never adds in his own comments. He had asked his fair share of questions when he was younger, to his parents and his sister. They always answered with stories (empty looks or stories.)
But one day, Murray turns to him and nudges his shoulder, “What about you, Watson? What do you think a witch really looks like?”
Heads turn and look at their captain expectantly, assuming that he’ll go along with the ridiculous nature of their game.
John stares at his bottle.
“I dunno,” he shrugs.
“Oh,” they joke, “you’re no fun. Come on, Captain, what do you think they look like?”
He peeks behind him, to the outside of the tent, to where the fog is waiting beyond the desert. He thinks of Doctor Hardwicke, trying not to crumble, telling yet another patient that there is nothing he can do against a curse. He remembers wondering how anyone could be stupid enough to make a willing contract with a witch, how anyone could bear to look at them if they appeared to be monsters.
“Like anyone of us, I suppose, they just hide whatever unique attributes they have.”
The game doesn’t go on after that and no one looks him straight in the eye for several more weeks at hand.
-
Everything is burning but John can’t stop staring at the wrist clutched in his hands, trying to feel for something that just isn’t there. He’s back at the first day he touched a corpse, felt its cool and hard touch, bones that would never move again. Lungs paused in anticipation for the beat that would never come. It wasn’t until his father told him to breathe that John realized he had been waiting to hear that pulse.
But this isn’t a corpse. These hands are warm and…
No, his gift is wrong. There has to be a different explanation, some kind of circulatory problem or maybe John is imagining things, maybe the tremors in his hand are interfering (yet they’re not shaking, not at all, not in this stress) but-when you eliminate all other possibilities all that remains is the truth.
His vision is getting blurry. John feels so light-headed but he can’t help but cling to Sherlock, to touch his face. 221B is screeching and screeching, her walls are falling, crumbling into dust and grime around them. It falls on Sherlock’s face, covering the pale skin and rains against John’s back. John thinks he can hear Moriarty’s laughter growing closer and closer.
(He laughs like the fog, during witching hour.)
John blinks, snapping out of his haze. They need to get out. Find some water. Put out the fire. But Sherlock’s safety comes first; he needs to get Sherlock out. John looks around, trying to find pins, something, to pick at the handcuffs. He needs them off.
Sherlock spasms, clutching at John’s wrist so tightly that it might fall off. “John,” he gasps.
“It’s going to be alright,” he says out loud, searching, always searching.
“...John... stop it, don’t be stupid! Get out, you idiot, I’m fine-”
“No you’re not!” John shouts, wrenching his hands from Sherlock’s grip entirely. The detective’s hands seem to freeze in midair, lost without something to hold. “You, you’re bleeding with some kind of poison that I can’t recognize and you’ve collapsed from blood loss. I can’t even heal you; my gift isn’t even working properly. And... and I can’t even feel for a pulse, my hands have to be shaking or, or-”
“-John-”
“No, Sherlock, just let me take care of it. I just need to,” he coughs, smoke caught in his lungs and poisoning his insides, “just need to-”
“Don’t be obtuse, John,” is the low murmur he hears.
“What?” Dizzy, he looks down at the hard frown that has made its way to Sherlock’s face.
“There’s no need to pretend anymore,” Sherlock continues, his voice growing harsher by the second, “you know what I am now. You are like the rest of them. You can put two plus two together, can’t you? Or is that too difficult for your tiny, little brain?”
John pulls back his hand, feeling the sting of Sherlock’s words curling uncomfortably in his gut.
“But no, you can’t be-it’s a lie, a, a misunderstanding or-”
When you eliminate all possibilities all that remains is-no, stop, it’s not true. Just a mistake. His medical training screams at him to perform CPR, resuscitate the patient in some way but his eyes can see that Sherlock is breathing… breathing… and yet Sherlock is so perfectly still that John isn’t sure if he’s hallucinating, mind playing tricks...
He’s yanked down by the collar of his shirt. “Don’t be an idiot, John!” Sherlock practically roars into his ear, the smoke seems to expand at the sound of his voice. “You can see it and now you’re observing it, you know what I am. Don’t deny your instincts!”
One of the light bulbs from the ceiling comes crashing down between them, spilling jagged glass over them both and scratching them with cuts. But John can’t react. He can only stare at Sherlock’s form, thoughts jumping up at him, each demanding attention.
He should run now, shouldn’t he?
Fire licks at their boots. The air around them is boiling, should have burned them alive by now but 221B must be protecting them, still trying to use her own brand of magic to shield her humans. It’s all John can do not to crumple in the heat and grime but he can’t (won’t) move from his spot.
“Oh get it through your thick head,” Sherlock growls when he realizes that John refuses to react. “I am your enemy. I did all of this. I made the dead zone!”
John recoils, hands against the floorboards as he subconsciously backs away. The handcuffs cut into his wrists, make him hiss. Glass digs into his skin and his fingers brush against the abandoned gloves on the ground.
“No, no, you didn’t. You wouldn’t-” His throat is dry, clogged up from smoke and this, this feeling that is ripping through his chest, his head, and he wishes he couldn’t feel it. He wishes he didn’t feel so much and maybe it wouldn’t hurt-
“I know you,” John tries again. “You wouldn’t do this, make this, this hell. Not for anything-”
“Well you don’t know me, John Watson. You have no idea just what I am capable of, no idea of what I’ve done to this city,” Sherlock’s tone darkens as he slowly gets up, a shadow against the bright flames. “You should run while you have the chance.”
“You’re a witch,” John finds himself saying, surprised that he can even say that much. Obvious. All of London might be burned to the ground at any moment and yet he’s sitting here stupidly, waiting on an answer he already knows.
The blindfold seems to darken, despite all of the grit smudged against the fabric. Sherlock’s lips twitch to say more but-but then-
The fire stops moving. It’s still there, so very present, but it does not jump hungrily for more fuel. It lingers in midair as 221B’s screeches are suddenly wrenched away from the background.
“Now that’s awfully rude and ignorant of you, Johnny boy,” drawls a voice from behind. The flames seem to pause in time at his words, waiting upon his command. “’Witch’ is such a general term, don’t you think? We’re called warlocks because we’re male... though ‘witch’ does have a nice and chilling ring to it, I do like that. Witch. A word to drive a human into tears. Yes, I can see why humans default to that term...”
He pauses.
“WITCH!” Moriarty roars at them all, delighting at the sound.
John turns around quickly, manoeuvres his handcuffed wrists to his gun, ready to shoot. But then he sees who is there and his eyes widen in surprise.
“...Jim...?” He whispers. “But I thought... Moran...”
But said man is standing next to the witch (not Sherlock), keeping a tight grip on poor Molly’s wrist. The girl is shaking but she keeps her gaze pinned straight ahead so she can ignore the demon holding her. He is smiling dangerously at John. Moran watches John with a spark of madness, licking his lips. The shadows seem to weave back and forth around him in the same madness. John suppresses the urge to shiver. Moran hasn’t changed at all.
It’s Jim who has. The polite looking man from before is dressed in an expensive dark suit and tie. Though he stands unassumingly, there is no mistaking him for an average business man (Death in a suit, John starts to think hysterically.) While Moran’s eyes are alive with madness, Moriarty’s eyes survey the building paused in fire with calculation and amusement. The madness is there, John has no doubt, but it’s cleverly hidden in the obsessive way Moriarty regards Sherlock.
(And the way his eyes glow red.)
“Moriarty,” Sherlock snarls from behind.
Jim (Moriarty, the witch, the one who caused all this but what about Sherlock?) tilts his head. “Hi,” He sings out. The flames flicker once but remain still. Everything is still, frozen, breaths held in anticipation save for the two witches, the demon and John.
“You missed our last date,” Moriarty pouts, but the undercurrent of a threat is ever present. The flames flicker once more before pausing. “I was so disappointed, Sherlock dear.”
“I have more important things to do then participate in your silly little games now,” Sherlock growls. This time, the smoke seems to slither closer around them, blackening the space between the two witches.
“Oh really...?” Moriarty steps closer, the red tint in his stare gleaming brighter than before. “And why is that I wonder? Have you found someone cleverer than me to play with? Is that it? No, that’s impossible. I’m know that there’s no one on this pitiful world more brilliant than you and I. Are you bored of me? Are you?” Moriarty’s soft and pleasant tones become a shout. “Or maybe...” He looks at John, “...you think you’ve found the one.”
John scowls at Moriarty and raises his pistol up towards the witch’s chin. His arm has never been so steady in his life. He can’t kill any of them without spilling witch’s or demon’s blood on his bullets but he can make sure that this will hurt.
“Step away from us,” He says, “or I will shoot you.”
“John,” Sherlock says in a warning tone.
“Oh do keep your mouth shut, Sherlock dear, or you’ll ruin my fun,” Moriarty snaps his fingers. The fire resumes its task, viciously eating up the walls of their flat, climbing higher and higher. John and Sherlock yell out in protest and then Moriarty raises his hand for the fire to pause. “Unless you’d like 221B to be utterly destroyed now rather than later, I’d zip it.”
Sherlock swears under his breath but stays quiet. John glowers up at Moriarty and spits at his feet.
Moriarty laughs. It’s different from Jim’s laughter (all high pitched and melodic) now in a slower and deliberate tenor.
“Oh, you’re such a cute little pet, aren’t you? So loyal. So obedient. You humans are a real ignorant lot, always assuming you know all, especially you, Johnny boy, you pitiful and lost little thing.”
He doesn’t react to the jibe, keeps himself as impassive as possible.
“Trying to play the brave hero,” Moriarty hums, “but never able to save anyone. Oh, you tried. Yes, you did. You heard that your sister was missing. You searched... and you searched... trying so hard to find her. You even went into the nasty fog, how noble of you. But,” Moriarty smirks, “maybe not so noble after all. Silly and whiney Harriet, always going on and on about how unfortunate she is, how horrible life is to her.”
John almost drops his gun. “Wh-what...?”
“Oh Johnny!” Moriarty scrunches up his face in imitation, but another voice comes out. A voice he knows all too well, “Why do we have to have these nasty gifts? Why can’t I find someone who loves me without my power? Why did Clara break up with me? Why don’t you ever make it better, Johnny? Why don’t you take the booze away? Why? Don’t join the army, Johnny. Stay with me. Make me better, Johnny. Make me better!”
If he wasn’t on his knees already, he would have collapsed. “H-Harry?”
“You abandoned me the moment you had the chance! It’s all your fault, Johnny, all your fault that I’m dead!” Moriarty finishes before letting out a stream of suppressed glee. “How precious, the relationship between siblings. How much they say the love when all they do is hate. Isn’t she the most annoying tart? Oh,” Moriarty sees John’s clenched fists, “I made you angry. So sorry. But I’m right, of course. Didn’t you run off to be a toy soldier to get away from her and her nagging and her drinking? Didn’t you run away from her? Leave her? Kill her?”
“Stop it!” John yells, “Just stop it!”
He shoots, or he almost does, before his training kicks in and he regains control of his grip. His fingers are trembling again in slight tremors. He can hear her voice even now, accusing him.
Harry, Harry, I’m so sorry.
“Oh,” Moriarty pouts, leans in closer with a soothing tone, “seems I’ve hit a nerve. Let me make it better. Of course you didn’t kill her, Johnny boy. You only wanted her dead, gone. What difference does it make? You got your wish in the end. She waltzed off into the fog and then we witches had her killed. Sherlock here made the dead zone. I made the demons. It all goes hand in hand, no wonder she went mad. No wonder she died. Hm, seems that we did you a favour.”
Something inside him (whatever has kept him grounded, calm, somewhat stable) breaks.
“Shut up!” John yells, dropping his pistol, “Just shut up, shut up, shut up! I want nothing to do with your kind. You’ve ruined this city, fucked up so many people’s lives. Harry’s dead because of you,” but is she? Or maybe she would have been driven to... to... No, just keep going, Watson, pull yourself together-“Why should I have mercy for you?”
He’s out of breath, all of his hate and bitterness thrown into that last outburst. All is silent and John closes his eyes, certain that this is the moment when Moriarty will lose his temper, burn them all but-
Moriarty starts to laugh. But this time, it’s unbridled mirth and triumph. It’s the laugh of a mad man who has won everything (the mad hatter who married the mad queen of hearts, off with their heads, off with their heads-)
“Do you hear that, Sherlock? See? He’s just like the rest.”
John gasps and he whirls around, sees how pale Sherlock has become, how his fingers clench and dig into his skin, the tight set of his mouth. “No, no, wait, Sherlock, I didn’t”-but he made the dead zone-“I didn’t mean-”
“Oh, but you did and now I think I shall let everything burn!” Moriarty bellows. “Sherlock is mine now!”
“NO!” John shouts, standing up to tackle the witch.
The fire returns. So do the screams.
-
“If you could kill one, how would you kill it?”
It is several months after that night of cards. Some of his soldiers still cast him skittish looks, bothered by the honesty that John always projects. “People don’t like to talk about witches,” he remembers Harry telling him, when he’d been scolded by one of his teachers for being too nosy about ‘rotten devilry.’ When he had asked why not, Harry had replied, “Well, because it’s easier to pretend that they don’t exist if you don’t admit that they’re real.”
John looks up abruptly, eying the private sternly, “Excuse me?”
Private Collins, a shy bloke who likes to read Shakespeare before he goes to sleep, flushes but bravely continues, “I mean, if you could capture one, a witch. Wouldn’t you want to make it suffer? Want to draw out how it dies, make it remember that it can’t prey on us like we’re insects-”
“I’d shoot it,” John says sharply. “If it was threatening me or another human being directly then I’d shoot it and then run because there is no way to kill a witch, private. And even if there was a way, what you’re talking about is torture, do you understand?”
The young man stares up at John as if he is seeing a demon in front of him. He splutters, reaching out to him, “But they’re not like us. They don’t deserve mercy; you can’t torture something that isn’t human! It deserves to be punished!”
“Yes, well maybe I’m tired of seeing torture everywhere in the fog, have you ever thought of that?” John demands. “They cause so much despair, so many people to suffer. We don’t need any more of that, especially if we all claim to be as human as you’re saying.”
Collins clenches his fists and says, “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of it. Wondered.”
John holds his gaze, one hand fluttering over the hold of his gun by his side.
“There’s nothing to wonder about. Just shoot them and run. That’s all you can do.”
-
At this moment (just for one stupid, weak and horrible moment) when 221B begins to splinter and the floor sinks down into the lower levels (into more heat and fire), when he hears Molly crying out his name, hears Moran shouting for more blood and Moriarty just breathing, he wonders.
Then John hits Moriarty with the back of his gun and rolls off of him without checking for unconsciousness. Glass presses against his cheeks before he jumps to his feet and looks wildly for Sherlock. Sparks catch against his jumper. He can’t breathe with all the smoke and the heat pressing (slamming) against his body.
The fire looks as if it is beckoning to him with hungry sharp lilts of embers. It’s already taken all four walls. John doesn’t know where Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade are. He only hopes that 221B has kept them buried enough (but the flat is still screaming, shrieking, holding on so desperately that he just doesn’t know anymore.)
“Sherlock!” John shouts, coughing as more smoke invades his mouth. There’s only fire now, bright, bright fire. It stings at his eyes, suffocates him. He feels like he’s already on fire even though the flames haven’t tasted him yet. He wants to go back into the dark, back to the fog where it was cool and whispered to him. This light is too much, too much...
“John,” He hears.
Suddenly something has grabbed his ankle. John panics, kicking at the unknown presence before arms yank him down, backwards and he is pressed back against a familiar chest.
“Sherlock-”
The detective (witch) slams his hand against John’s mouth, shutting him up. John tries to say something, tries to struggle, but nothing about the blindfold gives away Sherlock’s expression. Only the snarl and the growled ‘stay still’ hints at the anger in him, as Sherlock shoves something against John’s hands, something leather and soft... wait, what?
John stares down at the gloves now covering his hands, Sherlock’s gloves. He casts another desperate and questioning look at said man, but Sherlock only snaps, “Now you can run!”
“But-”
He shoves John through the away into the flames. John screams out, tries to crawl back towards Sherlock but another grabs his jumper, pulls him up-
It’s Moriarty, blood dripping down his forehead from where John hit him. The crimson streaks glisten in the wild firelight, heighten the absolute loathing present in that gaze. He’s the flames of insanity encased human form, letting John dangle just above the ground.
“I think that you’re done playing this game, Johnny boy,” Moriarty smiles, teeth stained in scarlet. “It’s time for the grown-ups to talk alone now.”
“Put him down!” Someone shrieks. (Is is Molly? 221B suddenly speaking English? ...Sherlock?)
Moriarty blinks slowly, as blood trails into the white of his eyes. “Alright, I will.”
The floors crumble into the eager flames that are one floor below. They jump up, nipping for John’s boots. The subtle crackles of long orange tongues fill John’s ears. He can see the hues of orange, yellow and deep crimson all coruscating around them, writhing and reaching, so hungry for more food...
And Moriarty throws him in.
He doesn’t know who is screaming anymore.
-
He always wondered what the sunlight might feel like, if the fog and the darkness ever went away. He’d asked his mother and father that question countless times (What is the sun? What is sunlight?) and receive mixed responses, changed every time.
They thought that sunlight might be just warmth-warmth by a fireplace, warmth when wrapped up in bundles of quilts, warmth of a nice cup of tea when snow touches the earth. His father proposed that sunlight was just a layer of that warmth on skin, nothing too phenomenal or special. “It’s pointless to wonder,” Gordon Watson had said. “This is the world we live in, we must accept that.”
But John always wondered. He’d curl up with his stuffed dog Gladstone by the fire, close his eyes and just imagine.
“This is sunlight,” he’d say to himself, “this is what it feels like.”
Now he falls into fire, thinks back to the story of Icarus who flew too close to the sun, the foolish soul who couldn’t appreciate the wings he had, the foolish soul who let them melt.
Maybe this is what falling into the sun will feel like-infernos exploding, roasting his skin, eating up his flesh until he is nothing but unrecognized char. Maybe this is punishment for curiosity, for asking questions, for wanting the sun (because now he has it, now he can scorch into smoke from too much heat.)
Sherlock, he thinks. Even now, that’s all he can make out in his thoughts. Sherlock.
The flames wrap around him greedily, lick around his limbs and chest.
It’s warm. So very... very...
Part 6 cont'd