Sherlock Fic: Broken beyond repair, Chapter Six
Well, please excuse my little april fool, I couldn't resist, it's the troll inside of me.
But here's the true chapter six where some questions are answered, and some new questions will appear.
Please appreciate the part with Sebastian, I really love Sebastian Moran in this story, and I like how he evolved :)
So, good luck with chapter six then. Please don't blame me afterwards for some emotions, because I have them too...even the more when I think about the next chapters ... :x Leave a comment, maybe we can comfort each other! :)
Next chapter will hopefully be up before or on easter sunday...I won't visit my family, that's why I have some freetime left ;)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Broken glass
Above his head by a string swings a mobile phone. Someone carved a smiley into the screen, probably with a knife. With a big grin it looks down on Sherlock.
After he woke up from his trip he couldn’t remember a thing. Those five words still flickered in front of his closed eyelids, but he wasn’t able to file them. When he realised where he was, in Johns bedroom that dusk had already painted grey, and when he discovered his mobile phone on the ground and saw the open text file, his memory returned.
Come and pick him up.
Five words. Count the letters. Four, three, four, three, two.
A code? No, the sentence is simple and it’s obvious what it means. It is addressed directly; the sound of it simulates familiarity. Pick him up...
Sherlock swallowed down the bitter taste on his tongue. Shivering he went out of the room, left the black box and his 7% behind. When his voice stopped shaking he called Lestrade, concealing the fact that the text already reached him on the early afternoon. It didn’t take them longer than 20 minutes to locate the phone from which the message had been sent.
It smells of brackish water, a bit mouldy. It was warm the past days and the sun had warmed up the cloudy water of the Thames. One wall of the warehouse abuts on the river, on the left and right other halls are crowded together, and the front is piled up with pallets and boxes. The police has to clear the entrance first, Lestrade and two of his men try to enter the building through an alleged backdoor. Sherlock claims that he wants to examine the evidence at the front, actually he fights against the animal in his body which keeps throwing itself against the wall of his stomach and almost forced him to his knees more than once. He still feels giddy, an after-effect of the drugs, sometimes heat rises into his unusual pale face, and then the gravelly soil twirls under his feet and he has to cling to one of the pallets so as not to fall over.
A shout resounds, then the rattling of a gate. Sherlock turns around, sees that a swathe has been made and that the high gate has been pushed aside in its rusty mounting. Inside stands Lestrade, obviously he found a second entrance. With pounding ears Sherlock sets his feet before each other, it seems like he constantly has to remind his body how to walk. The policemen around him grow into faceless spectres, he wanders past them, concentrating on the dark gateway of the warehouse in which he will find John. The next thought forces itself upon him.
Dead or alive. There are only these two options. He calculated the probability, included all the factors; sometimes he tried to manipulate, betrayed himself and science. But the result stayed the same. He didn’t like it. Not at all.
When he walks through the gate, he breathes in dusty air, stale and filled with particles, the storage depot stood empty for a few months. Lestrade grabs his shoulder when he tries to pass him. His face is ash, grey and sunken. He searches eye contact, looks severely at him for some seconds, and Sherlock can see it working in the other ones head, searching for the right words in a situation where there are no right words. Finally Lestrades exhales slowly.
“He’s inside, Sherlock. Keep calm, don’t panic. He’s alive.”
Sherlock numbly nods, pushes Lestrade aside with a feeble hand, concentrating on his feet and his steps and not on the pieces of broken glass on the floor or the gravel under his shoes. He doesn’t mind the barrels standing on his left or the empty boxes under the plastic foil, he ignores the second tall gate through which he struggles, notices just partly the darkness which is only punctuated by a glary floodlight the police set. Everything around him becomes silent when he enters the great hall, which is empty.
No crates, no pallets, no plastic foil or boxes. Just a lifeless body in the spotlight.
***
Jim seems to have cooled down. Seldom has Sebastian seen him as furious and disappointed as that, and never before has Moriarty killed a person out of sheer frustration. Now the corpse of the young IT expert lies sunk down behind the desk, on his forehead a little hole where the bullet broke through his skull.
The office is located inside a building complex in the financial district. Jim likes to change his position and never stays too long in one place. It would be too risky and naive to think the most wanted criminal of England, maybe of the world, the man with all the strings in his hands, would be safe in one single location.
The young man wasn’t supposed to die, not this time, Moriarty planned to be merciful because today was the big day, the delivery of the package. The man was supposed to lie drugged in a storeroom and not until tomorrow he should awake with no memory of what had happened.
But then Sherlock was a long time coming. Jim planned everything. When he had to send the message and how long it would take Scotland Yard to trace the phone. When they would reach the warehouse and what time they would need to clear the entrance. He wrote every minute of his plan down on a piece of paper he carried with him all the time.
“The lightning conditions, Seb,” he raved and made an expansive gesture. “The certain orange diffused light when he enters the hall. The dust particles becoming visible inside the light beams. The silence.” Jims eyes were burning with anticipation, he grabbed Sebastian’s shoulders as if he wanted to shake him. “It’s a painting I’m creating here. And he shall enter it and feel it, Seb, feel it tearing him apart!”
But it dawned and finally it grew dark without Sherlock or the police showing up. They installed cameras inside the building, so small and inconspicuous that it was nearly impossible to locate them. Sherlock would guess their presence, but if everything would go according to the plan, he wouldn’t be interested in details like this.
“When someone picks up pieces of glass he doesn’t care for the one who broke it. He is careful not to cut his fingers and works on a solution to mend his favourite glass.”
But Sherlock was supposed to cut himself, the cuts should reach deep into his flesh, and he should fail to repair what Moriarty had destroyed.
Jim smashed a computer and threw a couple of chairs out of the window, which gladly just faced the inner yard. Otherwise it could have been difficult to stay hidden, although the building itself was empty. The young man, who they kidnapped earlier this day and who they ordered to set up a connection to the cameras, became nervous. Before he was surprisingly calm, even dared to make some cheeky remarks, Sebastian actually admired him a bit. But all his guts couldn’t do against a bullet in his brain. Wordless he had sunk down.
Jim is obsessed with Sherlock. At first it was more like a strange attachment which he felt he had with the consulting detective, he discovered a similar way of thinking and he was obviously impressed when Sherlock solved all his riddles. Moriarty hates humans, hates their manner, their movements and motives, why they do something for what reason. Actually he detests that everything needs a reason at all. The life itself is abhorrent to him, as well as he doesn’t care about any being. Initially Jim thought about making Sherlock changing sides. The tendencies, the darkness and the disgust for humans, he has it all. But then Jim realised that this would end the game before it even started. He wants to crush Sherlock. He wants to make him human like all the other pathetic creatures. It’s not simple, a challenge. And Jims raison d’être.
Sebastian can’t get anything out of that. For him killing is something anonymous. It has less to do with mental cruelty than with steal and skin. He doesn’t want to know his victim, doesn’t want to look into his soul. He just wants to feel the life leaving the body, he likes the last shiver, the last breath. The physical and subsumable like tendons and muscles and blood, the violence of killing, that’s Sebastian Moran. Jims obsession with a person, how he watches him like through the lens of a microscope planning experiments, how he forgets about important things just to observe every minute of his test object; Sebastian can’t understand that. And it scares him. It’s not Jim’s madness, not the thought that he himself is just loosely entangled in this network and that his string could break anytime, leaving him to be a useless puppet in Moriartys hands. It’s concern. What will happen when the game is over? And what if Jim changes the rules of his little game, checkmating himself? Even now he is so close to get lost in it, and sometimes Sebastian thinks that Sherlock will be the secret winner of this trial of strengths because he made Jim be obsessed with him. He thinks that frequently. But he never speaks it out loud.
The screen flickers, the cameras have only a limited night vision. The police tentatively illuminated the hall with a floodlight, but the faces are still in deep shadows. Jim suddenly bends forward very close to the screen, the image is reflected in his eyes. Sherlock Holmes enters the scene. And on the stage the shards are scattered.
***
John lies sideways, his face averted. The light comes from the front, enlightens his face which Sherlock can’t see yet. He wears the same clothes he wore that morning when he was shot, in the semi-darkness Sherlock can see dried blood on his back, soaked into the jumper since that certain day. For a second it’s like the last two months never happened, as if he was shot just a moment ago. But then Sherlock returns to the current situation, slowly he gets closer, his steps sound incredibly loud on the dirty floor.
A young man crouches besides the body, one hand put around the limb wrist, counting heart beats. Sherlock can see John breathing, the chest rising and falling slowly but steadily. He imagines that the doctor is sleeping. He clings to this thought, wants to keep it, but his bloody visions tear it off and hide it in a corner of his mind, he can’t find it again.
Slowly he circuit the body, Sherlock casts a shadow over John, drapes his face in blackness. The young man stands up, turns around to Sherlock and nods, as if permission is needed.
He’s asleep, Sherlock thinks so he doesn’t forget it. When the man steps aside, he glances down to the wrist, the hand. Four fingers. Sherlock holds his breath. Steps aside. The light falls onto Johns face.
He isn’t pale. His skin seems to be smoother, eased, peaceful. The hair is longer and brighter, sand blonde, as if the sun had bleached it a bit, as if he just returned from the desert. His slow breathing, his silence, one could really think he’s sleeping. Sherlock forgets to inhale.
John’s eyes are open, staring obscurely into an unknown distance, looking without fixation point into the nothingness. No movement of the pupils. Once he blinks, but it’s more self-preservation than an actual reaction.
He’s asleep, he’s asleep, Sherlock thinks. And knows it is a lie.
Can you see it? Yeah? Right, it's Chapter Seven!
But here's the true chapter six where some questions are answered, and some new questions will appear.
Please appreciate the part with Sebastian, I really love Sebastian Moran in this story, and I like how he evolved :)
So, good luck with chapter six then. Please don't blame me afterwards for some emotions, because I have them too...even the more when I think about the next chapters ... :x Leave a comment, maybe we can comfort each other! :)
Next chapter will hopefully be up before or on easter sunday...I won't visit my family, that's why I have some freetime left ;)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Broken glass
Above his head by a string swings a mobile phone. Someone carved a smiley into the screen, probably with a knife. With a big grin it looks down on Sherlock.
After he woke up from his trip he couldn’t remember a thing. Those five words still flickered in front of his closed eyelids, but he wasn’t able to file them. When he realised where he was, in Johns bedroom that dusk had already painted grey, and when he discovered his mobile phone on the ground and saw the open text file, his memory returned.
Come and pick him up.
Five words. Count the letters. Four, three, four, three, two.
A code? No, the sentence is simple and it’s obvious what it means. It is addressed directly; the sound of it simulates familiarity. Pick him up...
Sherlock swallowed down the bitter taste on his tongue. Shivering he went out of the room, left the black box and his 7% behind. When his voice stopped shaking he called Lestrade, concealing the fact that the text already reached him on the early afternoon. It didn’t take them longer than 20 minutes to locate the phone from which the message had been sent.
It smells of brackish water, a bit mouldy. It was warm the past days and the sun had warmed up the cloudy water of the Thames. One wall of the warehouse abuts on the river, on the left and right other halls are crowded together, and the front is piled up with pallets and boxes. The police has to clear the entrance first, Lestrade and two of his men try to enter the building through an alleged backdoor. Sherlock claims that he wants to examine the evidence at the front, actually he fights against the animal in his body which keeps throwing itself against the wall of his stomach and almost forced him to his knees more than once. He still feels giddy, an after-effect of the drugs, sometimes heat rises into his unusual pale face, and then the gravelly soil twirls under his feet and he has to cling to one of the pallets so as not to fall over.
A shout resounds, then the rattling of a gate. Sherlock turns around, sees that a swathe has been made and that the high gate has been pushed aside in its rusty mounting. Inside stands Lestrade, obviously he found a second entrance. With pounding ears Sherlock sets his feet before each other, it seems like he constantly has to remind his body how to walk. The policemen around him grow into faceless spectres, he wanders past them, concentrating on the dark gateway of the warehouse in which he will find John. The next thought forces itself upon him.
Dead or alive. There are only these two options. He calculated the probability, included all the factors; sometimes he tried to manipulate, betrayed himself and science. But the result stayed the same. He didn’t like it. Not at all.
When he walks through the gate, he breathes in dusty air, stale and filled with particles, the storage depot stood empty for a few months. Lestrade grabs his shoulder when he tries to pass him. His face is ash, grey and sunken. He searches eye contact, looks severely at him for some seconds, and Sherlock can see it working in the other ones head, searching for the right words in a situation where there are no right words. Finally Lestrades exhales slowly.
“He’s inside, Sherlock. Keep calm, don’t panic. He’s alive.”
Sherlock numbly nods, pushes Lestrade aside with a feeble hand, concentrating on his feet and his steps and not on the pieces of broken glass on the floor or the gravel under his shoes. He doesn’t mind the barrels standing on his left or the empty boxes under the plastic foil, he ignores the second tall gate through which he struggles, notices just partly the darkness which is only punctuated by a glary floodlight the police set. Everything around him becomes silent when he enters the great hall, which is empty.
No crates, no pallets, no plastic foil or boxes. Just a lifeless body in the spotlight.
***
Jim seems to have cooled down. Seldom has Sebastian seen him as furious and disappointed as that, and never before has Moriarty killed a person out of sheer frustration. Now the corpse of the young IT expert lies sunk down behind the desk, on his forehead a little hole where the bullet broke through his skull.
The office is located inside a building complex in the financial district. Jim likes to change his position and never stays too long in one place. It would be too risky and naive to think the most wanted criminal of England, maybe of the world, the man with all the strings in his hands, would be safe in one single location.
The young man wasn’t supposed to die, not this time, Moriarty planned to be merciful because today was the big day, the delivery of the package. The man was supposed to lie drugged in a storeroom and not until tomorrow he should awake with no memory of what had happened.
But then Sherlock was a long time coming. Jim planned everything. When he had to send the message and how long it would take Scotland Yard to trace the phone. When they would reach the warehouse and what time they would need to clear the entrance. He wrote every minute of his plan down on a piece of paper he carried with him all the time.
“The lightning conditions, Seb,” he raved and made an expansive gesture. “The certain orange diffused light when he enters the hall. The dust particles becoming visible inside the light beams. The silence.” Jims eyes were burning with anticipation, he grabbed Sebastian’s shoulders as if he wanted to shake him. “It’s a painting I’m creating here. And he shall enter it and feel it, Seb, feel it tearing him apart!”
But it dawned and finally it grew dark without Sherlock or the police showing up. They installed cameras inside the building, so small and inconspicuous that it was nearly impossible to locate them. Sherlock would guess their presence, but if everything would go according to the plan, he wouldn’t be interested in details like this.
“When someone picks up pieces of glass he doesn’t care for the one who broke it. He is careful not to cut his fingers and works on a solution to mend his favourite glass.”
But Sherlock was supposed to cut himself, the cuts should reach deep into his flesh, and he should fail to repair what Moriarty had destroyed.
Jim smashed a computer and threw a couple of chairs out of the window, which gladly just faced the inner yard. Otherwise it could have been difficult to stay hidden, although the building itself was empty. The young man, who they kidnapped earlier this day and who they ordered to set up a connection to the cameras, became nervous. Before he was surprisingly calm, even dared to make some cheeky remarks, Sebastian actually admired him a bit. But all his guts couldn’t do against a bullet in his brain. Wordless he had sunk down.
Jim is obsessed with Sherlock. At first it was more like a strange attachment which he felt he had with the consulting detective, he discovered a similar way of thinking and he was obviously impressed when Sherlock solved all his riddles. Moriarty hates humans, hates their manner, their movements and motives, why they do something for what reason. Actually he detests that everything needs a reason at all. The life itself is abhorrent to him, as well as he doesn’t care about any being. Initially Jim thought about making Sherlock changing sides. The tendencies, the darkness and the disgust for humans, he has it all. But then Jim realised that this would end the game before it even started. He wants to crush Sherlock. He wants to make him human like all the other pathetic creatures. It’s not simple, a challenge. And Jims raison d’être.
Sebastian can’t get anything out of that. For him killing is something anonymous. It has less to do with mental cruelty than with steal and skin. He doesn’t want to know his victim, doesn’t want to look into his soul. He just wants to feel the life leaving the body, he likes the last shiver, the last breath. The physical and subsumable like tendons and muscles and blood, the violence of killing, that’s Sebastian Moran. Jims obsession with a person, how he watches him like through the lens of a microscope planning experiments, how he forgets about important things just to observe every minute of his test object; Sebastian can’t understand that. And it scares him. It’s not Jim’s madness, not the thought that he himself is just loosely entangled in this network and that his string could break anytime, leaving him to be a useless puppet in Moriartys hands. It’s concern. What will happen when the game is over? And what if Jim changes the rules of his little game, checkmating himself? Even now he is so close to get lost in it, and sometimes Sebastian thinks that Sherlock will be the secret winner of this trial of strengths because he made Jim be obsessed with him. He thinks that frequently. But he never speaks it out loud.
The screen flickers, the cameras have only a limited night vision. The police tentatively illuminated the hall with a floodlight, but the faces are still in deep shadows. Jim suddenly bends forward very close to the screen, the image is reflected in his eyes. Sherlock Holmes enters the scene. And on the stage the shards are scattered.
***
John lies sideways, his face averted. The light comes from the front, enlightens his face which Sherlock can’t see yet. He wears the same clothes he wore that morning when he was shot, in the semi-darkness Sherlock can see dried blood on his back, soaked into the jumper since that certain day. For a second it’s like the last two months never happened, as if he was shot just a moment ago. But then Sherlock returns to the current situation, slowly he gets closer, his steps sound incredibly loud on the dirty floor.
A young man crouches besides the body, one hand put around the limb wrist, counting heart beats. Sherlock can see John breathing, the chest rising and falling slowly but steadily. He imagines that the doctor is sleeping. He clings to this thought, wants to keep it, but his bloody visions tear it off and hide it in a corner of his mind, he can’t find it again.
Slowly he circuit the body, Sherlock casts a shadow over John, drapes his face in blackness. The young man stands up, turns around to Sherlock and nods, as if permission is needed.
He’s asleep, Sherlock thinks so he doesn’t forget it. When the man steps aside, he glances down to the wrist, the hand. Four fingers. Sherlock holds his breath. Steps aside. The light falls onto Johns face.
He isn’t pale. His skin seems to be smoother, eased, peaceful. The hair is longer and brighter, sand blonde, as if the sun had bleached it a bit, as if he just returned from the desert. His slow breathing, his silence, one could really think he’s sleeping. Sherlock forgets to inhale.
John’s eyes are open, staring obscurely into an unknown distance, looking without fixation point into the nothingness. No movement of the pupils. Once he blinks, but it’s more self-preservation than an actual reaction.
He’s asleep, he’s asleep, Sherlock thinks. And knows it is a lie.
Can you see it? Yeah? Right, it's Chapter Seven!