Disclaimer: This fanfiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Not beta read so all mistakes are mine. Takes place directly after "The Final Problem."
THE COFFIN-MAKER'S LULLABY
He has nightmares about it on the helicopter ride back.
Sherlock had assumed sleep would be impossible; The noise of the damn helicopter would see to that, as would the revelations of the day. Even his injuries should have made it impossible to sleep, the adrenaline running through his body making him twitchy. Sharp. It feels like there's a livewire running under his skin.
And yet, sleep he does.
Dream, he does.
He closes his eyes and drifts off- His body can take only so much apparently- and then he's in blessed oblivion, pain disappearing. It feels so... safe, after everything that's happened. So much horror has visited him in this damnable, dark year. His rest is like drowning in ink. In darkness and warmth and unspun memory... He could stay like this, oh, he could stay like this forever...
And then he feels the cold.
The wind and sea come next, howling like a hungry ghost.
Wood murmurs against his fingertips, stone whispers beneath his bare feet.
He opens his eyes and he knows where he'll be.
He sees the coffin.
He's touching the lid.
Those words- I Love You- they're sharp against his fingertips. Hateful. Trapping. Exhilarating. He feels it come rushing back, that screaming rage, that explosive, mindless, aching, vicious thing he calls love and he has to. There's no choice. He smashes his fist into the pale wood. Splinters tear open his hand, scratch scarlet against his skin.
He hears a gasp. A small sob.
The coffin lid cracks open, the halves separating like two sides of a theatre curtain and there inside lies Molly Hooper.
She's pale. Bleeding.
Small and perfect and terrifyingly, bewitchingly ordinary.
She looks up at Sherlock with wide, beseeching eyes and it' s only then that he realises his fist in inside her chest. He's torn through bone and sinew, pushed his hand right into her body. Her heart is thumping, a bloody mess of meat and muscle and bone and he can't, it's too much, he has to do something, he has to stop it-
He comes awake with a gasp. A shudder.
Immediately John is at his side, asking if he's ok.
The helicopter lands in London soon after; he's driven home and he falls into bed. He doesn't try to sleep and he doesn't want to, but what he wants doesn't seem to matter.
He wishes he could tell Molly that but he doesn't have the words.
He comes with Mycroft to see his parents, the next day.
To say that Mummy and Daddy are less than pleased with their eldest is something of an understatement: They rail. They rant. Mummy swears she's going to kill her elder brother, Rudy, for facilitating Mycroft in this charade. It doesn't matter how clever he is, he hadn't the right to do this-
Sherlock does what he can.
He defends his brother as he knows he must.
The thing is what it is, he says, and it's telling that both Mummy and Daddy understand what he means by that. (Mycroft doesn't seem to.)
When he finally wanders back to John's he falls into the spare bed.
He doesn't bother to take off any of his clothes, not even his shoes.
He wakes up screaming and immediately feels a pang of guilt, because his histrionics have woken Rosie.
John sees to his daughter and pretends he believes Sherlock's glib, "I'm fine."
The next morning, however, when Sherlock comes down to have his breakfast, he finds Molly Hooper waiting for him.
She looks tired.
Wan.
Beautiful.
Mollyish.
She's eating a piece of toast, a cup of coffee at her elbow.
As soon as she looks up at him she blushes and looks immediately away.
The silence between them is loud and hard.
"John told me," she says eventually, the words spoken directly into her mug. "He said- He said your sister was playing a game with you. That she made you ask me. That she made you say it. You thought there was a bomb in my flat and you wanted to keep me safe so you- you-"
"I had to." His voice is soft and he doesn't know why, he just knows he doesn't like it. "Eurus- My sister, the one who did all this- Eurus was trying to make a point-"
"And what point was that?" There's anger in her voice now; her shoulders twist, hunch, as if fearing some blow and Sherlock belatedly realises that that's what this conversation feels like to her. A Boxing match. A fight. A fight for survival?
He thinks maybe he understands that.
"She wanted me to hurt someone I cared about," he says quietly. "She wanted me to hurt you because she knew that it would hurt me."
"So it was- I was-" Her throat works but she can't say the words. She can't say she was just a means to an end. Suddenly her eyes are bright with tears and Sherlock can't help it, he doesn't remember deciding to do it but suddenly he's beside her, pulling her against him in a ramshackle attempt at a hug-
He needs to her to be close.
She presses her face into his side, he hunches his tall frame over her. If this is a fight for survival, he finds himself thinking, then he'll give her every advantage. He'll give her all he can. Her tears come and he feels it again, that rage, that helpless, lawless, howling thing his heart calls love- How can something so horrible be thought to be wonderful?-
He doesn't understand it, but then he never has.
She pulls away from him eventually. Spent. Embarrassed.
She murmurs something about needing to go and she rises. Looks around distractedly for her coat. As if on auto-pilot Sherlock finds it. Holds it open for her. It seems to swamp her, there in the middle of John's kitchen. In the middle of Sherlock's wake.
He's starting to suspect he's not thinking straight.
She looks up at him with eyes that are scared and hurt and dark. "It'll ne alright, Sherlock," she says. "It will be- Eventually I'll- I mean, we'll-" She sighs. Shakes her head. "It will be ok," she says softly and she holds out her hand to him, offers it. She's distracted enough to want to shake hands goodbye.
Sherlock takes the hand that is offered. Shakes it. He keeps his eyes on hers the entire time. She pulls away and as she does she sees the scrapes on his knuckles from the Sherrinford coffin- Or rather, what was left of it.
She frowns. Looks at them more closely.
"Is there something you want to tell me?" she asks.
The words rise, fill his mouth with their sharpness. Their realness. There's meat in them, bone and sinew and heart. He wants to tell her about tearing apart the coffin. He wants to tell her he knows he's had her heart in his hands for years and all he's done with it is rend it to shreds.
But he can't. Not yet.
This thing inside him, it' s still too raw to make words from.
When she's gone he pulls out his violin. Starts to play. He doesn't care if his knuckles sting, he knows he has to do this.
The tune he plays is Molly's and someday... Someday she'll know it for what it is.