Bullseye, for the H/C Bingo prompt 'Nightmares'
Title: Bullseye
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: PG
Characters/pairings: Sherlock, John, Molly, Lestrade
Warnings (including spoilers): Descriptions of drug withdrawal from what I remember of The Cleaner back when it was still airing, so unless I’m much better than I thought, there shouldn’t be anything triggery.
Wordcount: 1,116 words.
Author's note: Written for the 'Nightmares' square of my hc_bingo card.
Summary: Sherlock’s worst nightmares are from the times he was too good.
[*]
Sherlock rarely sleeps, and despite what John says he has several good reasons. The fact that he only explains the first two is no one’s business but his own.
The first is that it’s boring- time wasted that could be much better spent on pretty much anything else. He doesn’t understand why John gets so angry whenever he doesn’t get ‘his eight hours’ every night.
The second reason is Sherlock’s work; even the police, as oblivious as they normally are, have come up with the quaint phrase ‘crime doesn’t sleep.’ Ignoring the fact that crime is not a living creature and would never need to sleep, the crude metaphor has a point: there are far more criminals then Sherlock, and if he wants to solve the puzzles they present he can’t be lazing around on a mattress for a third of his life.
The last reason is not, whatever John might insist, ‘complicated.’ Sherlock knows John has nightmares, but he’s never pushed the other man to talk about them: Sherlock is not an undereducated, pretentious and overpriced therapist who believes that ‘talking things out’- on a blog, no less!- is the way to heal. Instead, he gives John new nightmares every week, but ones that are, hopefully, easier to take than those which plagued him after his return to Britain.
Sherlock does not have nightmares of bloody things or pain like John does. Sherlock does not have nightmares of situations where he felt afraid, or that he was unable to control anything. Sherlock has nightmares of those times when he was not smart enough, quick enough. When he failed.
Mostly, at least.
Sherlock is not often protective of people. Most people, he doesn’t care about, and the few that he does care about can protect themselves, physically at least. Emotionally, mentally, well, that’s just not his area, and it’s their own fault if they care what others say about them. He even takes pleasure, at times, in perfecting a comment or a lecture that will prove to them his superiority by undercutting their own. It’s a vice, he knows, but he does not feel guilty about it.
Mostly, at least.
Though he will never admit it, the very worst nightmares- the thankfully rare ones- Sherlock has are of times when he had tried to hurt someone and succeeded all too well. Pointing out someone’s flaws may be painful to them, but it’s all in aid of improving them, if it were possible to do so. But a few instances stick out in Sherlock’s memory, times when his arrows were too sharp and his aim too true.
Molly, surprisingly, is the subject of a greater than average amount of these memories. As pathetic as she generally is, Sherlock usually feels like he’s doing her a service in toughening her up, but there have been a few instances where he must have happened upon a weak spot, because the look on her face was one of such shock and vulnerability that he remembers it, sometimes, when he closes his eyes.
As little honest respect Sherlock has for Molly’s intelligence or character in general, he does admire the way she comes back to him every time he hurts her. It’s a sign of bravery, and for that he considers her- not a friend, to be sure, but… somewhat tolerable. Someone, at least, he never means to hurt as much as he does.
Other times, the face haunting his dreams is John. Most of the time, John shrugs off even Sherlock’s most cutting insults, or shouts at him for them. There’s only one time he remembers that he has really hurt John, at least in a way that wasn’t easily forgiven, and that was when he claimed to have no friends. He’d gotten so used to not having friends that he’d said it without thinking. That meant the time he’d hurt John the most was also a failure on his part, making it no wonder the scene haunted his unconscious mind.
But the very worst of the nightmares, the ones that truly make Sherlock stay awake for days and days, make him jerk his eyes open every time he approaches rest, are perhaps not even true memories. Sherlock can’t always tell whether these dreams are memories or hallucinations, and perhaps this lack of control, of knowledge, does make the dreams more potent.
In these dreams, he is on his back. On a floor, on cold, wet grass, on a hospital bed, he usually doesn’t know. The scene is always the same, though. His body is shaking, sweating, screaming to be given back his drugs, the only thing that that can make his mind slow down, make the world slow down, make everything easier to bear. And Lestrade’s- no, Greg, at that point, before he’d deleted it- Greg’s face always watches him, angry and afraid and compassionate and so, so stupid. For taking his drugs away, for his ignorant, optimistic words about how everything will be better and how he can help. Sherlock tells Greg how stupid he is, shouting half the words, slurring the other half as he is gripped by tremors and hot flashes and painpainpain. The man made it so obvious, trying to talk it out and convince Sherlock to share by telling him about his own boring life, like Sherlock wanted to know. Sherlock knows everything about Greg, now, and as his body is tortured because of Greg’s actions Sherlock takes pride in the agony on Greg’s face as he taunts him, tears into him, tears him open, tears his heart out in tiny, trembling strips.
He cackles in vicious glee as Greg’s stupid, stupid ‘morals’ insist that he stays while Sherlock detoxifies, even as he can no longer see Sherlock for the tears streaming down his cheeks and the hunched ways he sits, like the hand of a god is pressing down at the base of his neck. Sherlock feels proud and powerful at bringing down such an unflappable and steady man, and these emotions comfort him for bare instants against the lack that spirals and tears inside his own body.
Sherlock gasps awake. Lestrade’s face, wet and twisted, is still occupying the very front position in his mind. His heart is pounding and he suppresses the urge to gasp. He tosses back his sheets and walks out of his bedroom in only his dressing gown, trying to forget the look on Lestrade’s face.
John is watching late-night telly, avoiding his own demons. He looks up when Sherlock enters the room. “It’s barely been an hour. I thought you were aiming for six tonight?”
Sherlock ignores him. He has plenty of good reasons not to sleep.
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