Trinity
Disclaimer: The characters involved in this fic belong to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, not me (for one thing I'm neither dead nor male), and the particular version of Sherlock that I'm borrowing belong to the BBC. Promise to return them all in near-working order :P Quote at start of fic is borrowed from T.'s "The Hollow Men." Rating for descriptions of torture.
Sherlock is perhaps not as sociopathic as he should be, but decided he could cope with a little bit of emotion every once in a while :D Just a short little bit of fluffy fun. Not set within the series, therefore assumes that John and Sherlock both survive the end of The Great Game (which, come on, we know they will) and are happily carrying on solving crimes etc. Enjoy.
Estelle Tiniwiel -x-
This is the way the world ends… he thought, chest straining against the crushing weight of his own ribs, arms stretched crucified beside him, the ropes digging in to his arms. He'd run off, left John behind, bewildered and offended again, and hadn't thought to take a gun. Hadn't thought that there were hundreds more ways for a man to defend himself than the ones he knew, and that maybe the man attacking him knew more than Sherlock did. He regretted it now. Cursed himself for creating a new level of stupidity, different from the ones he saw in Lestrade and Anderson and sometimes John, a type of creative stupidity that surely only a genius could invent. Caught up in the chase. In the case. Always caught up in it, and now reduced to this.
He'd always known he was alone, and never cared. But now he found he cared a lot.
It was as the killer reached towards his bare belly with the shining tip of the dagger and placed it cold against sweat-slicked white skin that he heard the door slam back to John's gruff shout of "Stay still! You are surrounded by armed officers!", followed by the slow tap of an umbrella point on concrete and Mycroft's smooth voice informing the room that "He's telling the truth, you know. All SAS – or Army – trained, at that. And we wouldn't want this to become messy, now, would we?"
Sherlock felt the weight on his chest lift as callused fingers brushed at his wrists, loosening the ropes, and gasped in as much air as he could.
Yes. He was alone.
But perhaps not quite so alone as he had thought.