"Please."
It was a whimper like none Sherlock had ever heard before. And he'd heard all sorts of desperation in his life, some that made even his cold heart cringe... but this was a whole new level. This was primal terror, but also complete hopelessness. This person, this utter stranger that Sherlock had never seen before in his life, could see in Sherlock's eyes that there was no hope. The pleading was empty. He knew it wouldn't save him, but he couldn't help but cling to his rapidly ending life as hard as he was able.
Sherlock hadn't meant to take it this far, not really. He just got a knife and was going to stab someone, make it look like an ordinary mugging. Just as an experiment. The person was dying of lung cancer anyway, so Sherlock wasn't doing much harm.
But then Sherlock found the man, and he knocked him out. And he dragged him to an abandoned warehouse. And he put the man on his side, and he took the knife like it was some sort of scalpel and made an incision between two ribs.
The Surgeon used a paralytic on his victims, so they couldn't move and ruin the procedure, but they could feel it.
Before Sherlock did the same, the man gave the one whimper. The pleading one even though he knew it was useless. Sherlock might have smiled in response.
He didn't have the tools he needed and he knew it. Going online wasn't truly enough to know how to perform a pneumonectomy.
So he didn't. He took the knife and made several more cuts, enough to rip the skin back, to reveal the tissue underneath.
It was different when it was alive. When the lungs were still working, if not rather haphazardly. Sherlock wasn't being careful the way The Surgeon was. This man would die of shock at the amount of pain he was about to feel. Sherlock didn't care. He just needed to know.
He didn't remember grabbing the hammer, or when he decided he was really going to do this.
He brought it down on the man.
Crack.
Sherlock grinned.
Crrrack.
The man couldn't move, not even to grunt.
Sherlock broke each one. Then he put his fingers in the chest… and he heaved. More cracking, one rib was out of his way. Then another. Sherlock didn't know if the man was dead yet. He didn't register anything, not the splatter of blood on his own face, not the slinters of bone being left inside the open side. He just had to get to it.
He tore past all the other flesh until lung was visible. He wasn't enough in control of himself to decide if the man would have really needed a pneumonectomy, or if a lobectomy would have sufficed. None of that mattered. He took his fist around the lung and he tore. It came free more easily than he thought it would. How fragile a human body was.
Sherlock was breathing too hard, as if to compensate for the man who had stopped. His eyes were wide open, unbearable pain his very last sensation.
Oh, pity. Sherlock hadn't watched the life leave his eyes.
Well. He'd just have to try again sometime.
Sherlock shot up, breathing so hard it sounded more like sobs. Maybe it was sobs.
It'd felt real. So real. Now that Sherlock was awake, the whole thing was implausible, from not getting caught in the middle of what he was doing, to the paralytic he magically had on his person, to how uncomplicated it had been to disassemble a body when it would surely take more effort than that. But none of that mattered because Sherlock had been sure it was really him. He was surprised when he lifted up his hands and there was no blood dripping down to his elbows. The thought made him want to vomit.
"Sherlock!" John gasped, taking Sherlock in his arms. "It's okay, only a nightmare," he said.
Sherlock let John hold him, not knowing what to think of what had just happened.
His imagination going wild with him, obviously. He'd never really feel that way if he were doing that to a human being. He couldn't.
"I—need to—toilet," Sherlock said in a sad attempt at the English language, but John just nodded and let Sherlock go.
Sherlock didn't notice the stickiness between his legs until he started walking, but didn't dare look down at it until he had safely locked the door.
He looked in the mirror and sure enough, for the first time since he was fifteen, he'd experienced what they call a wet dream.
Sherlock's breath caught.
This was getting out of hand. He had a dream about—about—
Pictures of it flashed in his mind. The sound of his hands as he rummaged through a chest cavity. The dead, petrified eyes in the man's head.
He likes it. He gets off on it.
He hadn't heard Donovan say the words, but John had told him about the conversation.
His pride flared. No. She was wrong. The Surgeon was wrong too.
He looked down at the mess his pyjama trousers were… and saw that his hand had inched into his pants at his musings.
Sherlock never had the moral compass that other people did, never had the one he should, but he was enough of a human being to feel how utterly wrong all of this was. What was he?
There is nothing more intimate than being someone else's last moment.
"Shut up," Sherlock said aloud at the memory.
He didn't realise when he'd slid to the ground, his hands over his ears like he was being whispered to, but all he wanted was not to hear it.
His hard breathing was irregular again. He vaguely realised it really was sobbing this time.
No. This wasn't who he was.
He heard the words in his head like The Surgeon was right there in the room with him.
No, not who you were. But who you were and who you are, those are two very different things. You have no idea how a person can change, Sherlock. Well, you had no idea. Now you're starting to see it.
"Shut up!"
No. I'll never shut up again and you know it.
Sherlock whimpered, and if it had made a word, it might have been 'please'. And it wasn't so different from the man in his dream. Pleading even when there's no point, when your own fate is out of your hands entirely.