Darkling, I Listen - Sherlock/John (Part 6b)
The fog whispers faintly, leaving a lingering caress on his cheek before the sound of sparking fire replaces it.
“Over here!” A familiar voice shouts. “I found him and, gods, he’s alive!”
He groans, pain demanding attention all over his body. There is darkness everywhere or perhaps that is because he hasn’t tried to open his eyes yet. They are heavy, too heavy for him to pry open. There seems to be so much pressing down on him, layers and layers of weight. He tries to move his feet, but they’re trapped, as are his fingers.
“Come help me dig him out!”
Some of the weight is lessened, moving away from the surface. He hears yet another voice he recognizes, swearing. “Fuck. This is heavy,” the second presence is panting. “You wouldn’t happen to have a gift that could help us out, would you?”
“My gift is useless in the dead zone,” the first once replies, “and Soo Lin can’t help us with this either.”
“Alright, then we go back to hard labour. What fun,” the second grumbles.
The weights begin to shift again and he assumes that they’re resuming their work. He frowns, tries to recall what happened to him. He’s a soldier (or is he a healer?) and now he’s no one. He’s looking for his sister (but she’s gone now) and he met... he met someone... someone important... there was light, so much light, trying to devour him but the warmth...
“Don’t worry, Doctor Watson,” the second voice reassures him, “We’re going to get you out of here.”
He knows them. Yes he does. It’s... Sally? And... and Anthea, the first voice. They found him. He met them in darkness, he fought monsters with them... he...
And there was a beast.
Not a beast, never a beast. Just someone that he...
The flames are still crackling from all around but the warmth is gone. Is the world still on fire? Did he turn into ash?
“...Watson... Doctor Watson... can you hear me...? Watson... come on...”
John opens his eyes and breathes in the cool air.
-
He starts to choke when he feels smoke returning to his lungs. A hand steadies him, thumps on his back to clear his airway. It doesn’t really take away the poison from his throat and makes him splutter out in dry heaves. Two pairs of arms grab his shoulders and pull him up so that he can regain his footing against pieces of charred wood and plaster.
“Steady there, Watson,” Sally tells him from his right. “You were just buried under all that rubble since the fires started. Just take a breather. You’re safe.”
For now at least. But Sally doesn’t mention that.
John blinks slowly, sees Anthea’s tired smile and Sally’s concerned expression. They’re standing on the foundations of 221B or at least... what’s left of her.
“...Oh god...”
With a strangled cry, John pulls himself out of Anthea and Sally’s grips. He falls on his knees, running his hands through the pile of ash and charred glass. But he can’t feel anything. Those damn gloves, still so pristine and smudged, prevent from being able to touch the flat’s remains. He wants to wrench them off, wants to shout and scream but there’s nothing. Nothing emerges but this dull feeling in his mind-
221B is still screeching in his mind. The sound of metal scratching against the blackboard, turned up to maximum volume. His eardrums throb at the
“I should be dead,” John says, seeing what the fire has taken (almost everything) and what is left (almost nothing.) “I should be ash, so why... why am I still alive when...?”
“Oi, don’t say that!” Sally yanks on his sleeve. “You should be glad you’re alive, though god knows how you even survived.”
“But that’s just it!” John tries to shout at her, but his voice is hoarse from all the smoke. “I shouldn’t be alive. That fire wasn’t normal, it was something Moriarty made. Somehow, it killed 221B. She was supposed to have the strongest defenses against magic. She was supposed to be the one place that Moriarty couldn’t enter!”
“...You talk about that flat like its alive or something...” Sally mutters to herself.
“Well she is!” His shouts begin to crack and John’s says shakily, “...She was...”
And now she’s gone. Just like Harry, another victim of witchcraft, of the fog...
Someone kneels beside him and presses something into his hands. John looks up to Soo Lin’s sad gaze.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she tells him.
He looks down at what she’s given him and finds his throat constricting achingly when he sees the golden numerical plates that used to be nailed to the brick wall of the flat. The numbers ‘two’ and ‘two’ and ‘one’ plus the capital letter ‘B’ gleam back at him in a pile. He closes his eyes and remembers the fond creaks of the flat, the way she smashed the pipes to show her annoyance or affection.
“Me too,” he admits.
“221B protected you, to her last breath...” Soo Lin explains in the same soothing tone. “It’s why we found you buried under rubble. Even when she could have run away, left Baker Street to set up as a different house, she didn’t.”
She should have, he thinks. You stupid, noble and amazing flat. You should have left.
But he can only imagine the response that the flat would have. Perhaps she would shake the floorboards to remind him that she protects her humans because she wants to. (Because she was so fond of them.) Perhaps she would make him sit down and make him recover before jumping into another dangerous situation. John can almost feel her now, in his head, smashing the pots and pans together, telling him to save their detective and landlady.
He clutches the numbers until he feels the edges cutting through the leather of Sherlock’s gloves into his skin. He presses a kiss against the first number ‘two’ that is stained with his blood and puts them all reverently into his jacket pocket.
I’ll stop him, he promises her then, and I’ll bring Sherlock back to you, 221B.
Then he stands up, helping Soo Lin to her feet. (She seems to have gained a broken ankle. Clinically, John makes a note to heal that soon.)
“Where’s Sherlock?” John asks them all.
Pained silence answers him.
Sally turns her face away with a scowl but there is distress in her eyes while Anthea frowns and looks back to her blackberry again. Soo Lin stares at her feet before she says, “Moriarty took him. Moriarty took all of them.”
John almost stops breathing.
“That can’t be. What about Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade? 221B was protecting them at least. Have you found them?”
“No, Moriarty took them too,” Sally says. “He needs them for his game.”
“What game?!”
“Just look around you, Watson, and tell me what you think!”
It occurs to John then that they have more lighting and visuals than usual in the fog. Normally the air is several shades darker. He always has a hard time seeing his hand as more than a shadow when he stretches out to reach for something. He can see the buttons on Sally’s jacket and the key pads on Anthea’s blackberry with reasonable clarity, even from where he’s standing. Soo Lin, who is leaning against a makeshift crutch, looks like a faded noir photograph that has slowly regained a hint of its colourful tinge.
It’s as the fog is shrinking away, retreating to whatever world it comes from. But John knows that is not true. He can feel the fog still, tickling at his skin, his lips. He can hear the desperate (but now distant) whispers in his ears, barely distinguishable.
John opens his mouth to ask but then closes it when he sees the line of angry orange glow shining over the next line of buildings.
London is on fire.
-
“Oh my god.”
He can see those same hungry tongues of angry orange climbing higher than all the towers and buildings in the streets. They light up through the fog, almost outshining the round moonlike orb that still hangs at the center of the city.
There are distant cries of terror, ones he didn’t notice in his numb grief. They are everywhere, echoing around them, deafening the dying whispers of the fog. The strangled cries are accompanied by the haunting growls and ripping of flesh. John thinks he can even seen smears of red along the pavement, another lone body part peaking behind an abandoned car.
“He’s turned this whole place into hell,” Sally says grimly. “There’s nowhere to run. We would have been turned into one of those people if Anthea hadn’t saved us last witching hour. Soo Lin got her leg busted up really bad when we escaped Moriarty. He’s just letting his demons loose, letting them run around and eat who they like. It doesn’t matter if you’re a player or an outsider or just one of the pawns now. The demons are coming for all of us and there’s nothing we can do.”
John gapes at her in horror.
“Then we need to find Sherlock, save him! We can’t let Moriarty do this; we’ll have to stop him!” John shouts, searching around for a weapon. Maybe his pistol survived the fire too.
“Save the freak?” Sally exclaims, hands on her hips. “I’m sorry if no one’s told you yet, Watson, but that man is one of them, a witch!”
“I know he’s a witch-”
“Then what the hell do you think you’re doing? Why are you still trying to save him? He made this all happen. He made the dead zone. He’s probably laughing it up with his pal Moriarty, enjoying all the destruction he’s caused and you want to rescue him?”
“No, Sherlock’s not like that. He’s not Moriarty, he’s-”
“They’re all like that!” Sally roars, taking him by the shoulder and shaking him. “Every last one of them! They’re all the same. They want to see you suffer. Those sick bastards get off on it, enjoy it. They take away the people that you love, make you watch them suffer...” Her voice falters, “They take everything away from you until there’s nothing left! All witches are the same, everyone knows that!”
“Then I’m wrong!” John roars back, “Everything that I, that we, know about witches is wrong and we need to get over it, rescue Sherlock, stop Moriarty, stop the curse... stop...”
Soo Lin embraces him then, presses his head against her shoulder and whispers soft words in Mandarin. He wants to push away, but he doesn’t. Instead he marvels at the wet spot on her jumper, wonders where the rain must be coming from.
God, is he crying? He didn’t think he could anymore.
“...I know he’s a witch,” John settles on saying, “...but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.”
“He doesn’t care. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t care about anyone.”
But he does.
Sherlock’s saved John’s life more times than he can remember. He searched for Harry with John even though he wanted John to break the curse first. He tried to save 221B and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade... He held onto John so many hours ago...
Except-
(I made the dead zone.)
“Sally,” Anthea says quietly, “221B wasn’t the only one protecting John from the flames.”
Said woman raises her eyebrow in question.
Anthea points at the gloves. Sally goes still, watching them with an expression of disbelief, as if lead has been turned to gold. “He gave those to John.”
John wants to question what they’re talking about but a mysterious shake from Soo Lin tells him that they shouldn’t interrupt the moment. Sally is shaking, looking more vulnerable than John could ever have guessed the strong woman to be.
She clenches his jaw and nods, “Alright, Watson. Fine. I’ll help you. But I’m not doing this for him. This is payback. Moriarty is going to get what’s coming to him.”
He doesn’t know what to say to this change of heart, only-
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Another howl interrupts them and Sally pulls out a pistol, “We need to get moving.”
-
The light from the flames eating the buildings parallel to them casts an inhuman orange glow on their faces, makes them look possessed.
Each woman, John notes, is armed with a gun of some kind, probably from the underground. John wonders if they’re all loaded with bullets dipped in witch’s blood, if they’ll kill a demon. When he asks, Anthea only smiles.
“You’re from the British Government, aren’t you?” Because John remembers the rumours of someone in Parliament paying millions of pounds for volunteers to go into the dead zone, Sherlock mentioning someone named Mycroft hiring people to find him, Mrs. Turner whispering about witches in the government...
Who else could know how to kill one besides the witches themselves?
To that Anthea smiles again and hands him his Browning.
He doesn’t ask how she found it.
-
“Where will Sherlock be?” John asks.
Anthea points to the orb of light that hangs from the center of the city. There, John can spot a swarm of dark and murky creatures flapping around the orb, surrounding it. Demons. “That’s where we saw Moriarty and Moran heading with the hostages, when we were spying on you. We think it’s the center of the spell, since it’s was impossible to get there before on foot.”
John recalls that. On his first day in Dead London he’d tried to reach that orb but it had always stayed the same distance away, no matter how much he walked.
“But now the curse has weakened...” Soo Lin adds.
“...It’s possible to get there now,” John realizes.
-
After John heals Soo Lin’s ankle, they all move quickly through the streets. Sally takes up the rear, eyes darting for any attack from behind. Soo Lin supports John, putting an arm around his shoulder since he’s been having trouble breathing (damn smoke) and his hands won’t stop shaking. He’s no good as a shot if he can’t make his body stay still.
Anthea leads the way, her steps quiet and deliberate. They all seem to move according to the rhythm of their heartbeats, as fast as possible before something strikes.
It’s their luck when they seem a dark (indescribable) shape, thing, monster leaping towards them against the hue of orange in the background. John yells at them all to get down but Anthea pulls out an assault rifle from her bag (AK-47, John notes numbly; he hasn’t seen one of these since the war) and lets out a stream of gunfire which hits the demon across the chest.
The demon roars, one huge arm slashing towards them before it falls against the road. It bleeds out black and red, red and black. The colours swirl and change, making John’s vision spin.
“Don’t look,” Anthea orders them. “You’ll go insane and it’s not quite dead yet.”
Soo Lin tugs at his arm and Sally pushes them both forward, covering their backs with a hunting rifle. They rush down the street, ignoring the groans of the thing left behind, the thing that is groping around and yowling after them.
Don’t look. John thinks of shapeless things, things too grotesque to describe and just shuts his eyes. Don’t look.
There’s more gunfire. Anthea is frighteningly efficient with a soldier’s weapon. Her face is blank as she shoots each demon in the vital areas. Her bullets stick and do not slip away from the demons. They leave the monsters struggling on the road, in bits and pieces or crawling helplessly after them. Sometimes John thinks that he sees demon parts scattered in half, still dragging their way towards future victims.
(They see a woman and her children unable to escape the monsters, screaming as they are torn apart and just as Sally and Anthea shoot it down.)
He tries not to think about it.
As Soo Lin throws a knife a yet another shadow that creeps up on them, John can only think about running.
-
“You said Moriarty captured you before,” John says in between pants, when they’re two blocks away from the orb. It’s huge, a large sphere of eerie light, more luminescent than the moon. The trails of light radiating from it feel like misty threads of pearly fog, reaching for John’s face. It hangs above St. Bart’s hospital (of all the places) hovering over the rooftop.
He has to pry his eyes away to prevent himself from being held within its haze.
The demons are all concentrated on the rooftops of the buildings, hoards and hoards of them, all writhing and changing forms of black. They jump down on the few remaining civilians that haven’t run from the area. Blood stains and body parts litter the streets. There’s no fire here, only monsters. The fire is behind them now, setting the entire city alight in infernos.
Anthea leads them behind one of the shops, where they try to think of a plan.
“Yes, he did,” Soo Lin shivers, remembering her ankle. “I blacked out but Sally was with me too. Anthea rescued us.”
“How did you get away?”
“We almost didn’t,” Sally grumbles. “I remember fighting back while Moran was pinning me to the floor. They tried to give us this pill. I don’t know what the fuck it was for, but Moriarty was going on about how this would make us help him kill you and how he’d have Sherlock all to himself, win the game finally... Then all of a sudden, Moriarty froze. He shouted at Moran to stop, that something was wrong; the curse was lessening or something. That’s when Anthea came in with her gun and distracted them. I carried Soo Lin out of there and we all ran for it.”
John’s eyes widen. The curse was lessening? John couldn’t remember what could have possibly happened during witching hour to lessen the curse. He had found out that Sherlock was (is) Siraj and said that it was fine... then he’d fallen asleep...
“They didn’t send any demons after you?” John questioned.
“No,” Sally shook her head. “I think they were distracted by whatever was messing with the curse. That’s when Anthea suggested we go try to find you. Strength in numbers and all...” She peeks back outside to where the hoards of demon are prowling on the rooftops, waiting to pounce on whoever tries to step towards the hospital, “...but the odds of four to hundreds of demons is a suicide mission. We’re never going to make it!”
“Well we have to do something,” John insists. His mind runs through several different battle scenarios and tactics, none that would be remotely successful under these circumstances. He wishes Sherlock was here, if only to tell him that he was being an idiot.
“What?” Sally throws up her hands while Soo Lin frowns, “Should we walk out there and run for our lives, while the sky rains down monsters to tear us apart? I don’t know about you, but that’s a stupid plan.”
“Then what should-”
“Quiet,” Anthea orders, her stance tense.
They all look to her, confused. But Anthea puts a finger to her lips before she points out to the open, where she has been watching the demons on the rooftops.
Slowly, John, Soo Lin and Sally peek their heads out and see it.
Every demon on the buildings surrounding St. Bart’s has stopped moving. They are completely still, as black and inky statues made of silhouettes, still taking on horrific forms in the backdrop of fog and firelight. But they aren’t moving, aren’t howling or growling into the air. They’re absolutely quiet.
They’re watching them. The demons are watching them, every head craned to their position.
Anthea loads up her rifle. “Right,” she pets her pocket, where her precious blackberry is, “We might have to walk out there after all.”
-
They walk.
The demons just watch them; their eerie and glowing gazes seem to pierce right through John. The demons seem to breathe in harsh subtle growls, hungering for flesh. John thinks that they might pounce on them at any moment, surround and eat them all before they can ever reach St. Bart’s.
But they don’t.
The monsters just watch them... just breathe on them...
Soo Lin holds on to John’s shoulder, supporting him the best way she can, while Sally presses her hand to his back, watching the skies warily. Anthea keeps the lead at the front and tells them not to let go of each other, not to take their eyes off the monsters that watch them.
“...What are they waiting for...?” Sally hisses quietly. Anything could trigger them.
John doesn’t answer. His hands quiver slightly over his pistol. He tries not to look at the demons for too long. He’s has enough madness in his own head.
“...They wait on the witch’s orders,” Soo Lin guesses. “Perhaps the witch wishes to deal with us personally because we’ve escaped and defied him.”
Nonetheless, they keep walking.
The monsters just watch.
That’s all.
They watch.
-
They’re just two metres away from the front doors when all of the monsters come to life and begin swooping down on them all, a dark cloud of ravenous locusts.
“Run!” Sally yells and they bolt towards the door. There’s gunfire, yelling and scrambling. John nearly trips but Soo Lin holds him upright.
Somehow they reach the doors but they’re locked shut. Anthea shoots the lock open and the four of them push in, shutting the entrance though they know that it will do no good.
“Where are the stairs?” Sally asks.
“This way,” John remembers, leading Soo Lin with him.
Quickly they go past the lobby and towards the stairs rather than the lift. They can hear the screeching and echoing snarls outside. The doors slam down and now the demons swarm into the building, faster than human legs can escape.
“Fuck!” Sally shouts, shooting away at them, trying not to let Soo Lin or John get taken. “Hurry up and go!”
They don’t need telling twice. John rushes ahead, since he knows the layout better and points to the entrance for the staircase. “There!” Automatically, Anthea slams the door open and then shouts at Soo Lin and John to head in first. Sally follows after, shooting like crazy.
Anthea closes the door, but when she turns around, they’re not in a staircase.
They’re on the rooftop... and Moriarty is leaning back on his heels with the most dangerous red in his eyes.
“Hello, ladies and Johnny boy... so nice of you to join our final game.”
-
Part 6 cont'd