Fic: Homo homini lupus (part 3)

[mesmiranda]

part 1 | part 2

Sherlock is not in his flat when they get there.

Lestrade had expected to see chaos--things tossed across the room, broken pieces, furniture upended. Everything is still neatly in place: the kettle sits on the stove, the books and bills are stacked up on the table, the shelves are untouched. It's peaceful. It's wrong.

John's leather jacket and shoes are gone, and so are Sherlock's scarf and overcoat. When Mycroft inspects the drawers upstairs, half of Sherlock's clothing is missing. No sign of his mobile, no sign of his gun.

"He thinks he's going to go off after Moriarty on his own," he says grimly, reaching into his own pocket.

"What are you going to do?" Lestrade looks up. Mycroft had forwarded the picture to him on his mobile and now he's looking it over for any clues, any signs, anything. There's no timestamp on the photo, but the sun is shining directly through the windows in the background, a bright flare--this could have been taken earlier in the late afternoon, a warehouse with windows facing onto the west. Sun sets around four-thirty this time of year, if the sun is still fairly high in the sky it might have been around two, two-thirty--

"I'm going to call in a favour," Mycroft replies, already thumbing the text message. "Do you have Ms. Hooper's number on you?"

--

Occipital, parietal, frontal, temporal, sphenoid. Breathe deep. Breathing isn't the problem, you can't suffocate from lack of oxygen when you're not technically alive, you'll never pass out in here. You'll be awake the entire time. Forever.

No no no stop it. Stop it. Ethmoid, nasal, maxilla, lacrimal. Name them. Every single bone in the human body, top to toe. Sherlock promised he'd break every bone in Moriarty's body and he's coming for you, he will find you, you won't be down here for long, you're going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine.

Oh God oh Christ it hurts, it hurts, your skin is touching the silver all over it burns

Zygomatic, palatine, inferior nasal conchae, vomer. Keep breathing. Just keep breathing.

--

"Well, you never asked!" Molly returns, flushing bright pink.

Apparently Greg Lestrade is not only dating a werewolf, but also working alongside a medium. Molly Hooper doesn't just cut open dead bodies--she talks to them. Chats with them. Quite kindly and with a great deal of understanding.

"I mean, really, can you imagine being alive one minute and finding out you're on a slab ready to be dissected the next? It's awful, of course they want someone to talk to about it. Honestly, most of them are just ordinary people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now they're dead and they haven't sorted anything out at all. I just take them aside and listen for a while, it's not bad, it's helpful. I don't mind it."

"How long have you been like this?" Lestrade has never really paid her attention before. No-one really has. She's small and sweet and quiet and plain and completely ordinary, and now she's talking cheerfully about sitting down with ghosts.

"Ever since I can remember. My grandmum passed away before I was born, but she used to sing me a lullaby every night in our old house. It was kind of soothing, actually."

"Ah--can you tell if someone's..." There really, really isn't a good way to lead up to this.

"Can I tell if someone's dead?" Molly blinks. "Well, usually they're floating and transparent and rather whitish-gray--"

"How about undead?" Lestrade says. Blurts out, to be accurate.

She stares. "DI Lestrade?"

Molly takes the news rather well, all things considering. "--oh," she says very faintly at first, looking blankly at Lestrade. "I--oh. Okay. Okay. Oh my God. Um." Her mouth moves for a moment, struggling, and then she rallies. "I--I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you need me to do--"

"I'm thinking if you can speak to the dead maybe you can speak to the undead," Lestrade says urgently. "John's been kidnapped and we can't find Sherlock anywhere."

Her gaze instantly sharpens, her whole face comes into focus. "John first," she says firmly, and shuts her eyes.

--

Anterior superior iliac spine, greater trochanter, femur, patella, medial condyle, lateral condyle, tibia, fibula--

No. No, no no no not voices. No-one is talking to you. Stop it. Malleolus, calcaneum, talus, cuboid, navicular, cuneiform--

"Get out," you scream into nothing, into a small box just barely large enough to fit a human corpse, "get out, get out--"

But why would you imagine Molly Hooper talking to you?

And as the sheer absurdity knocks you flat, breathless and stunned for a long moment, her voice fills your head and she's telling you it's going to be fine, they're going to find you, everything's going to be fine.

There's no breath left in your chest. If you were human you would have died ages ago. All you can do is lie still and listen and hold onto to something. Anything.

Maybe you've already gone mad.

--

The circle isn't perfect. It's a bit lopsided on one side, and Mycroft ran out of paint at one point and had to start again. He wipes his hands clean and fills up the bucket to the brim with tap water, and then pours it out onto the floor.

The water gushes into the circle he's drawn, spilling out in a puddle, and stops abruptly when it reaches the edge of the paint. Mycroft empties the bucket completely, shaking out the last drops, and stands back to survey a still, silent, flat expanse of water.

He speaks a name.

The water starts rising from the floor in wisps of steam, and then great billows. Slowly a shape forms in the mist: an inhumanly tall figure without hands or a face, wavering over the floor as its hair streams down its back and pools on the floor in the ripples of a waterfall.

"I cannot leave this place," the marid says.

"That was the general idea, yes."

"We have done battle before."

"I'd rather not do it again, wet dog smells are awful."

"Release me."

"Only after you do one thing for me."

"I will kill you for this," the marid promises, drawing close to Mycroft's face at the edge of the circle.

"Oh, I'll be terrified of my tea-drinking in the future, I assure you." Mycroft taps his umbrella gently against the floor. "Taking a bath will be simply dreadful. But for now--release John Watson and bring him here. At once."

The water streams away from the blank face and drips down onto the floor, flowing down the sides of its head. Mycroft wonders for a moment if he can discern eyes, the shape of a mouth. He nearly died the last time they met.

Then the marid speaks in turn. It's deep and distorted and slow, echoing from leagues beneath an ocean. And behind him, there's a thud as John crashes into the ground, landing hard on his back and sprawling out.

"He is disgusting," says the marid flatly, as Mycroft rushes to John's side. John's back and legs are flayed open, covered in raw blisters and rough burns--his hands, the soles of his feet, anywhere that's been touching silver. He doesn't move when Mycroft touches his face. Mycroft feels his breath leaving him in a sudden punch to the gut.

"He's a member of my pack," he says on a low growl, gets up and kneels down by the edge of the circle. "You're dismissed."

He rubs out a thin line, paint smearing away on his fingers as the circle breaks. The marid hisses with outrage--a car splashing through wet roads--and disappears as water floods out everywhere, the knees and cuffs of Mycroft's pants soaked through.

--

"Sherlock hasn't answered me at all," Molly says over the phone. John is wrapped up in the back of the car and barely breathing, his face drained of all colour.

"Tell him John's safe, I've got him and I'm bringing him to a healer now."

There's a long pause, then a muted cry and scuffling noises. "Wait--wait, please, I need to--just hang on--" much more loudly, "sorry, he's--he's answering, he's yelling at me. He wants to know where you're taking him."

"Tell him I'll let him know when he lets me know where he is," Mycroft says grimly.

Another, longer silence. "I'm sorry, I'm not getting anything from him."

Mycroft rolls his eyes and glares balefully at the ceiling. "All right, I'll join you as soon as I can..."

"Mr. Holmes, I can--should I try Jim?" Her voice cracks.

He frowns. "Did he ever tell you about his condition?"

"No, of course not," Molly says bitterly, and then clears her throat briskly. "If I make it seem like an accident somehow, like I'm trying to talk to someone else but I got him by mistake, maybe I can get some information--"

Mycroft thinks it over, elbow leaning against the window frame, as John's head lolls and the driver brakes at the intersection. "Wait until I come to you," he says finally.

--

Jim Moriarty is sitting alone in a very expensive hotel room, tapping away at a laptop computer with his feet propped up on the coffee table. He's in jeans and a T-shirt, the stubble on his chin unshaven, and his eyes are their normal black and his teeth are all even and regular length. He's got a cup of coffee sitting next to the lamp. With a sigh he shuts the laptop and hops to his feet, yawning and heading for the kitchenette.

Two seconds later he's pinned flat on his back.

"How long have you been here?" Jim says, very slowly, feeling hot ragged breaths at his pulse point. The wolf snarls instead of answering, every last tooth bared, eyes the blinding white of an explosion.

Fortunately he was expecting this.

There isn't even a blur of motion--it's a blink. One second he's lying still, the next he's got a silver knife in one hand and he's plunging it between Sherlock's ribs.

And that should do it, that should kill him, because werewolves are stupid and slow and weak and silver kills. But the wolf howls and tears at his throat with claws and teeth, and for the first time in a very long lifetime Jim Moriarty is fighting to survive. He throws Sherlock across the room. Sherlock skids across the floor with a screech of scraping claws, charges at him and knocks him over again. He stabs the silver knife into Sherlock's foreleg. The wolf breaks his wrist with a snap of his jaws, and sends the knife flying, and then warps.

Jim grunts as a solid knee is driven into his stomach, clutching his wrist to his chest and spitting bile--no blood, he hasn't bled in decades. He curls up as a foot stomps into his ribs, mouth opening in a silent gasp, and stares up at that face in wide-eyed shock.

Sherlock is wobbling on his feet. He's covered in blood and his clothes are torn. He looks like he hasn't slept or eaten in weeks, there are thick purple-black bruises under his eyes and his face looks like a crumpled piece of blank paper. His eyes are demonic.

Jim drags himself up, reaching out for the silver knife, and freezes. There's a voice speaking to him. It's not Sherlock's, it's not any of the ones he normally hears. He has to take a minute in his state to identify it, as it rattles against the inside of his head in short, hard knocks.

"How?" he pants out thickly, listening, and then, "A marid?"

The pause is one minute too many. Sherlock has moved, and when Jim shakes the voice loose from his skull Sherlock has knelt by his side with all the grace of a dancer. There's a wooden stake in one hand; it's hawthorn, states a distant clinical voice in his mind.

"I have it all planned out," he mumbles. "A scenic cliff-top over a waterfall somewhere, a fight to the death. It would be magnificent."

"You wouldn't deserve it," says Sherlock, his voice nothing that of a human's, and brings the stake down.

--

It's much later. There's a hospital bed, and John's lying in it.

His skin is still raw all over, it'll hurt for a long time. The healer has done his best and the only signs are some faint scars, a couple of rough patches. He looks a bit more battered and weathered than before, nothing huge. But his face is slack and grey and the healer has him up on a morphine drip. Sherlock takes his hand like it's made out of candyfloss or paper-thin crystal, and holds his breath and sits utterly still.

His brain won't operate, not even at the most basic level. Nothing. There used to be a time he thought it'd be nice to have a clear, empty mind, just for once.

The door clicks open, and he registers the tap of an umbrella. "What were you saying to Jim before?" he says without turning his head.

"Through Molly?" Mycroft's voice is in that same gentle tone from when he told Sherlock he couldn't escape from what he was. Sherlock hasn't decided if he hates it or not yet. "I told him that we'd rescued John Watson, and that there was nowhere he could hide John Watson ever again that we wouldn't find him, and nothing we wouldn't do to get revenge. If you take on a werewolf, you take on his entire pack."

"I killed him after that. It was making him stop for a moment that did it, I couldn't have kept fighting him otherwise."

Mycroft looks at the bandages taped along Sherlock's side, the bulk wrapped around his leg. "I hope he's in hell."

Sherlock should had rolled his eyes and said something scathingly sarcastic about that. Mycroft dearly wishes he had, because the next question is, "Why haven't you made Lestrade a werewolf yet?"

Mycroft's teeth go click. "He deserves a normal life."

"Without the burden of being a freak." Sherlock turns over John's hand like he's examining it for fingerprints, tracing the life line along John's palm with his thumb. "Without getting shot or burned by silver. Mycroft, what have I done to him?"

His voice doesn't change, and that knots Mycroft's stomach up tight. "He chose it. He chose you."

"I should have stopped him. You've stopped Lestrade."

"It's not about what you want--"

"It's about keeping him safe. Suicide is illegal, if they catch you at it they can commit you involuntarily."

"He invaded Afghanistan," Mycroft points out quietly. "He shot a man through a window and slit a vampire's cheek open. I don't think he wants safety any more than you do."

"I can't watch him get hurt." Sherlock's voice is thinner than Mycroft's ever heard it.

"Welcome to empathy," his older brother says simply. Sherlock makes a noise at that, half-unidentifiable, and both of them sit in silence.

--

Probably as thanks for the whole setting John free thing, Sherlock doesn't say, you're being a hypocrite.

He doesn't need to. As soon as the door shuts behind him, Mycroft calls Lestrade on his mobile and tells him to meet him outside.

They are standing on a bridge nearby. It's very symbolic and meaningful, but the real reason is that Lestrade has brought cups of coffee in a paper tray and the thing's tipped over, spilling one on the ground, and Mycroft caught up with him while Lestrade was swearing and attempting to clean up the mess. It's cold and overcast and the wind cuts through every layer of clothing.

"You've seen the worst thing a werewolf can go through," Mycroft says first thing, without warning, without preamble. "You've seen what it did to his mate. You may never be safe again, you'll definitely never be normal again, and you'll go mad each full moon and the only way to die will be from a silver bullet and burning your corpse to ashes in the end. You'll be stronger and faster than any human being in existence, and your senses will be on a whole new level, and you will always have an interesting life, but some people say that's a curse. I'm--I'm rambling, Christ, I'm tired--I'm putting this choice in front of you because I don't want to hold it back from you, the choice is there and I want what you want, and no matter what happens I'll always throw over the entire world for you, because I can't imagine being without you. I'm helpless against you." He manages to take a breath. It's shaky. "You're it. I'm done. There's nobody else ever. You'd be my mate if I could choose."

A jogger trots by with her earbuds on, shoes slapping against the concrete. The regular world crashes back down on him full force--the sounds of traffic, the blink of an aeroplane flying overhead, seagulls crying--and Mycroft tightens his hand protectively around the handle of his umbrella.

Lestrade opens his mouth.

--

The first time Sherlock shifts back into were form, after Moriarty's death, he's alone. It's two in the morning and he's heading down a side street unnoticed, sticking to the shadows, padding as noiselessly as possible.

There's a faint whuff behind him, the sound of a dog panting. A silvery-tawny wolf comes up behind him, tail wagging gently, and bites at his ear. The black wolf cuffs him about the head and they wrestle, trying to pin each other down, and the smaller wolf tries headbutting the larger one two or three times. It doesn't work.

When they stop playing, the silvery wolf's tail is wagging furiously and his tongue is lolling out in a toothy smile. He whisks away ahead, running down the street with barely a limp, and the black wolf slips quietly after him.

("I wouldn't trade it if I'd spent a hundred years down in the box," John says in that infuriatingly calm, soft, warm voice of his. "It's part of who I am. I don't regret choosing it or you for a minute because I love both, although I really would like it if you could stop experimenting on the morphine drip.")

--

The second time he shifts into were form, there are three wolves following him.