When he sleeps, he drifts between the real and fantastical.
His old surgical table, a patient bolted upright ready to be operated upon- but certain details are wrong. Someone's let a dog in. His hands are shaking. He holds a scalpel and it digs into his skin. The dog barks.
His cape is draping across his shoulders, cool metal clinking and resting cold against his chest. He can feel something swelling within him, an energy given life and force. It's pressing against his breastbone and it hurts. Wong is sitting at a table, reading a book, observing him with eyes that are bleeding.
"It hurts," says Wong, and he nods frantically when the magic sticks his tongue down, yes, it does hurt. A dog barks.
He is everywhere and nowhere, and a twisted god wearing his voice is taunting him. For some reason, he's still performing surgery, and the scalpel is so far into his hand it's within his shaking index finger, shivering with the effort of digging into his bone. Metacarpal, scaphoid. He stands up straight and feels the pain and he doubles over again as he feels the familiar oncoming death, and then-
-did you miss me?-
-He is awake.
He learnt how to lucid dream as a boy, and while these days he prefers to just let the dream go by, it's a skill he can call upon at will. He likes the choice of control.
Most of his dreams, uncontrolled, are wholly abstract- strange shapes, flowing patterns, connecting objects together and moving and showing him something new. He can feel the world clicking into place as a satisfying whole, swirling thoughts becoming a regimented pattern. He stops, observes, then lets it play again. He thinks his subconscious mind is trying to put together the look John gave him in late May with the start of a cold-shoulder routine that John began erratically observing for the week afterwards. He's not certain as to the why. He's a dead man anyway-
He stops.
Stop.
Stop, stop, stop, stop!
He's a dead man.
He stops the dream in place, freezing a million connections with as much conscious control as he can muster, and tries to gasp to life, and he can't. It's like sleep paralysis; he can feel his limbs, can writhe them, but he can't feel them, can't open his eyes, can't form words with his mouth. He tries to stay calm.
He does not.
Gasp, gasp, gasp, gasp.
He does not wake up.
Is this death?
He pulls back. Occam's Razor, limbs moving, limited conscient mobility, a dream state.
A couple things swirl red and orange and click into place around him.
1. The jump from the building did not kill him, but he is dying, and fast, as he lies on the tarmac.
2. He's being operated on in hospital post-jump, and the anaesthetic is wearing off.
3. This is what death feels like; a constant perpetual drowning in a half-awake nightmare.
4. This is a lucid nightmare, Moriarty was a construction of his imagination, and he'll wake up from sleep paralysis any second.
He gasps, gasps, gasps, tries to wrench his waking head from side to side and break through.
His eyes open.
He is wrong.
He is floating in deep space, and something is watching him.
It smiles.
"Did you miss me?"
-He is awake.