Summary: "Every person has their pressure point... Someone they want to protect from harm." - Jim Moriarty
Sebastian Moran is locked away in prison, but he plots to escape and seek revenge on Mycroft Holmes. Meanwhile, Sherlock and John are dealing with a change in their relationship, trying not to fall apart. And as ties are tested and allegiances altered, events unfold in the streets of London that threaten both the Holmes brothers and everyone they care for. Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock. Rated T because reasons... Reasons like intense themes and torture.
Warning: this is the chapter where the reason for the rating becomes apparent. Also, a canon character reveals himself! There, I warned you.
Pressure Points
Chapter Three: Vitriol
oOOOo
When Sherlock woke, he woke to excruciating pain. He tried to keep from crying out, disoriented and confused. Where was he, and what was that terrible burning pain on his arm? Instinctively, he retreated deep into his mind, trying to keep himself distant from the agony. The last thing he remembered was being injected with something and being kidnapped. Maybe it would have been better if he had stayed unconscious for a bit longer, he mused from the safety of his mind. Whatever was happening to his body was most certainly not good.
"Sherlock! I know you're awake! Look at me!" came a voice, a rough voice Sherlock thought he might recognize. But the pain was starting to infiltrate even the deepest parts of his mind palace, so he couldn't be sure. He felt his lips purse from the stinging, burning, biting feeling.
Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and looked up into the face of Sebastian Moran. The sniper smiled at him, and it was a look reminiscent of Jim Moriarty. Sherlock stared back, teeth gritted in the effort to not show his discomfort.
"Don't try to hide it, it doesn't take a genius to figure out it's painful," Moran snorted, looking amused. He knelt down in front of Sherlock, and the consulting detective took the opportunity to glance around the room.
Despite whatever Moran was doing to his arm, he was still able to notice some things about the room. Mainly that even with all his keen deductive skills he could tell nothing truly distinguishing about where he was being held. It seemed to be a completely featureless room, except perhaps the intriguing, slight curve to the walls. But there was no way, especially in the near-darkness, to tell where he was. It was eerily silent as well.
"Hey," Moran said sharply. "Look at me, not at the walls. It's not like looking will help you."
Sherlock grudgingly looked down at him, pleased to feel the pain receding. It was manageable now; if he concentrated, he would be able to ignore it fully. That thought only lasted a few seconds, however, as a renewed bout of searing hurt shot through him. It was so unexpected he gasped, sweat beading out on his forehead as he tried to keep from screaming.
"What are ... are you doing?" he hissed at Moran, who was laughing. He held up a small bottle with a dropper before Sherlock's eyes, filled with a clear liquid.
"Chemistry, Holmes. You're a student of chemistry, aren't you?" he smirked. "This is sulfuric acid."
"H2SO4," Sherlock supplied automatically. "Colorless, odorless, historically known as vitriol. It can be highly damaging to skin, especially if concentrated. So you plan to torture me, is that it? What information do you want from me?"
"All in time," Moran whispered, and there a dangerous edge to his voice, different than the almost playful tone he'd used before. "Right now, you're too defiant. We've got to make you... talkative."
He lifted the dropper from the mouth of the bottle, filled with acid, and slowly brought it to Sherlock's arm, where there already were streaks of ruined skin, made when Moran had awoken him. Sherlock tensed involuntarily, but his arms and ankles were tied to the chair they had placed him in, so he wouldn't have been able to escape if he had tried. Moran hesitated, as if considering.
"You have oddly lovely hands," he commented while Sherlock watched him warily. "An artist's hands, or a musician's... Not the hands you'd expect of a detective. Most people would expect your hands to be scarred from the work you do. Now wouldn't that be a shame?"
The dropper hovered over his left index finger tantalizingly, teasingly. Slowly, Moran placed a drop on the tip, where it instantly started eating away at Sherlock's flesh, making him feel like he had again been dipped in fire and bee stings. The acid burned through at least two layers of skin, but before he could observe more, Moran dipped the dropper back into the bottle, and Sherlock was forced to watch - through his blurring vision - as his violinist's fingers disappeared, replaced by ruined, gnarled things he could barely call fingers.
Moran was laughing. "I thought you enjoyed chemistry, Sherlock!"
oOOOo
Sherlock bit down on his lip again, feeling yet another bout of pain shoot through him. How much acid did Moran have anyway?
"Tell me, Sherlock, I'm not going to ask again," Moran hissed, his lips a millimeter from Sherlock's ear. "What is your brother's email address?"
Sherlock found it in him to snort. "What are you going to do, give his computer a virus?"
"Just tell me." This time, instead of acid, Moran used his fists. Sherlock rode out the beating, though there were black spots in his vision and blood on his face. When Moran had satisfied himself, he looked back up at the sniper, feeling genuine hatred for the man.
"Whatever you're planning, Mycroft will find out and put a stop to it. He's more intelligent than I am," Sherlock willingly admitted it, because it was the only hopeful thought he was clinging to at the moment. Mycroft might be able to get him out of this.
He saw Moran reaching for the acid bottle again, the second one he had opened by now, and a jolt of terror coursed through Sherlock's veins like blood. Before his brain caught up with his mouth, he had spouted off the email address frantically, unable to keep the pleading tone from his voice. What was happening to him? He was always so in control of himself, yet here he was, whimpering and begging, giving a criminal what he wanted just to avoid some physical pain. Despicable.
"Thank you, Sherlock," Moran said companionably, smirking at someone over Sherlock's shoulder. The restrained detective tried to turn to see this newcomer, but he didn't have to. Another man, with muscular arms and a threatening aura, stepped around so that the light trained on Sherlock also fell on his face. The mental encyclopedia of criminals Sherlock kept helped him recognize him immediately, but it did nothing to help him feel reassured.
"Charles Milverton," he greeted with a nod. Milverton smiled back, but beneath the welcoming smile, Sherlock saw the ferocity that had earned him the title of third most dangerous man in England, a liar and a blackmailer who had ruined dozens of people's lives. Though now that Moriarty was dead, Sherlock supposed he was now in second place. Second only to Sebastian Moran. Sherlock's luck seemed to need some improvement, he thought ruefully.
"Pleased to see me, Holmes?" Milverton asked, raising a camera and snapping a photograph.
"Not particularly," Sherlock replied laboriously, feeling as if his chest was constricted. Moran seemed to have broken a rib or two. Yes, definitely two, and perhaps cracked another. "What's the picture for, your diary?"
Milverton chuckled, glancing at Moran with an amused look. "Your brother probably wants to see what's going on with you. Maybe I'll send it to John as well. Luckily we already know his email address."
"How?" Sherlock asked before he could stop himself, his heart stilling at the mention of his flatmate. What else did they know about John?
"None of your business."
Sherlock sighed, rolling his eyes in usual Sherlock-y fashion. Still, he couldn't suppress a twinge of fear. Were they planning something involving John as well? Was he in danger? And what did these two want with Mycroft, really?
So right then and there, Sherlock made a silent vow to protect them both, his brother and the man who might as well be, before these cruel men could so much as touch them.
oOOOo
"Excuse me, Detective Inspector?"
John looked up from the depths of his coffee cup to find Mycroft's assistant, Anthea or whatever her real name was, standing in the doorway of Lestrade's office. Lestrade looked up from his computer, and apparently recognized her, since he leaped up instantly.
"Is Mycroft on his way?"
She shook her head, glancing down at the phone clutched tightly in her hand. "He is trapped in a meeting at the moment, but luckily this is his own phone, well a clone of it really."
"He can't come?" Lestrade raised his eyebrows, glancing at John incredulously. "This is his brother we're talking about!"
"What Mr Holmes is doing is critical, and also classified," Anthea said with an uncertain shrug. "He is not permitted to leave until it is over, which may not be for hours."
"Alright fine," Lestrade gestured for her to sit next to John, turning back to his desk, muttering something about the blasted government. "So what do you have for us? I'd assume it's something on that cloned phone of his?"
She nodded, give John a small, polite smile in greeting. "He received an email a half hour ago and managed to get word to me during the meeting to come relay it to you." She handing the phone to Lestrade, who looked intently at the small screen for a moment, then looked up in worry at John. The doctor immediately knew something was extremely wrong.
"What is it, Greg?" he asked, standing and trying to peer over the desk to get a glimpse of the email. But the DI turned the phone away from him, his dark eyes full of concern and something John thought might be fear.
"John-" he said in an almost pacifying tone. "Maybe it's best if you let us deal with this..."
"I don't think so," John snapped, trying to grab the phone. "He's my flatmate, Greg, and this is almost certainly Sebastian Moran's doing. You've got to let me help you. I know I'm not a consulting detective like Sherlock, but maybe I can do something? Please, what is it?"
He was pleading, and they all knew it, but John didn't care. When he had seen that shattered mobile phone and the taunting message back in Baker Street, his heart had skipped a beat or two, fear jolting through him and immobilizing him. All his anger and frustration with Sherlock faded and were pushed to the back of his mind as the realization came that he had been kidnapped. It didn't matter that Sherlock didn't care about John; John cared about Sherlock, despite trying desperately for two weeks to convince himself otherwise. John cared, whether he liked that or not, and it had never been more clear to him than when he stood in an empty flat in horror, the silence closing in on him.
"Greg," he implored again. "What is in that email?"
Lestrade swallowed, gave an uneasy look at the silent Anthea, then handed John her mobile.
A grainy photograph of a single figure met John's gaze. A dark thin someone was sitting in a chair, illuminated by a single light source somewhere above him. Blood was running down the person's face, bruises spotted the porcelain skin, and something looked terribly wrong with his hands, even in the low-quality picture. The person, obviously, was Sherlock.
John bit his lip so hard he almost tasted blood, and his breath came in shakily. Lestrade gripped his shoulder tightly. He looked up at his friend and saw the same worry, anger, and fear for Sherlock he himself was feeling.
"I'm going to kill them," John whispered, his breath hitching. "We're going to find them, and then I'm going to kill them for this."
He looked back at the photograph, and the helpless, vulnerable eyes of his best friend looked back up at him, boring into him. All John wanted to do in that moment was take Sherlock away, hide him somewhere safe, and never have to see that look on his face again.
"We'll find you mate, I swear."
A buzz in his hand made him jump, and the other two in the room fixed their eyes on it, startled. Another email had appeared, and John looked up at Lestrade and Anthea in surprise and apprehension. His fingers were unnervingly steady as he opened up the email and watched the progress bar fill as the data downloaded onto the phone. The silence in the room was palpable as the three waited with bated breath.
And then the silence was shattered as the sounds of Sherlock's screams filled the room, radiating shockingly clear from the phone's speakers.
Mr. Cumberbatch, if you ever read this (gosh, I'd be mortified), I apologize for ruining your beautiful hands.
Please review, dearies!
