Chapter 4: Of Broken Homes~
The ride in the cab to New Scotland Yard was a very quiet one. Sherlock could read from the way John held his shoulder tight, and the tense way he leaned forward to peer out the windows ,when they were taking a very familiar route through the City, that he was keyed up about seeing his sister.
Sherlock's soul was deeper than his mind. To have even caught a glimpse of it through all his Darkness, you would have to be an extremely special person to him. It's just like the life going on in the depths of a lake, when the surface is frozen solid by Winter. Under his steel exterior, and almost cold-blooded ways with people, he was very human. Felt great amounts of caring, and generosity. Truly wanted to help his fellow-man. Felt an agony most people cannot fathom from watching suffering, this being the impetus that had driven him to seek justice for it...
There was no suffering he felt like John Watson's pain. The man was the candle of his spirit, if John's world, his light, started to go dark, it left Sherlock in an abysmal Blackness one could feel emanating off of him for miles. This deep brooding Darkness, roiled like a storm-cloud in him now, growing heavier with thoughts of what traumatic things were set on the scales of John's heart.
Like a shadow looms across a familiar room, and no one pays it any heed, Sherlock had always been there, in the backdrop of John's life. The Shadow always hears more because he tells you nothing...sees more because no one observes him. He had been watching at every heart-break of John's life, he had been weighing the scales of the pain that his brother endured, and a great load of it, yes, even,daresay, the brunt of it, he had taken upon himself.
Sherlock had told John "everything" about his torment experiences when they had been in Helsinki. Or ,at least, so John had been lead to believe. But at that moment in time, Sherlock only told John what things he had vividly remembered. He did not tell him the things that were still hazy to him, because of their utmost severity. But as time wore on, and he was home for longer, and away from Moriarty's battlefield, and breathing in the London fog again, he began to remember every hour of agony that he had endured, in photographic detail.
Only Sherlock Holmes knows the true story of the days of dealing with Moriarty's Network. Only he knows the depth of the exquisite pain that he has experienced, and experiences still, in varying degrees. And only he knows the absolute enormity of the sacrifices he very willingly made for John's safety. The sacrifices he is prepared to make for him again ,a trillion fold if need be...
Harriet. He has always secretly despised her. She had come to visit at the School after class ,once. That had been the first time Sherlock had met her. He wouldn't see her again, until he and John were adults, living together in Baker Street, when he had taken the case that connected her to laundering money to a mansion in the finer neighbourhoods of London, that had doubled as an illegal club.
He had always known that Harry was conspiring something purely wicked. As if she was looking for a way to bring her snobby ,high-class, military personnel ,reputable family to a very creative ruin. He always knew that this case would come,eventually.
Oh, how he loved, how he HATED to be right!
And what was worse...John would be the one to suffer for this. He had come from a broken home. And the home Sherlock had provided him had been broken up by criminal activity, and death.
They stepped out of the cab. John paid the driver. Sherlock studied John. Worried for him. Loved him more than John could even imagine. It took his breath away, most of the time.
The rest of the time it was his driving force. His absolute will to live, was to see that John got the war hero's honor, the respect, and the well-being that he honestly did deserve.
Because while heroes as a general rule didn't exist, John was an exception to this rule. And while Sherlock wasn't an angel ,he was most definitely on their side. He swallowed the knot of pain and self-loathing that rises incessantly in the pit of a torture survivor's stomach, one more time as always, and set his mind to the task. How to catch an angel, to keep him from falling. How to trade places with a falling star. Sherlock was no angel, he was a scapegoat, and he esteemed no ledge too high to leap from for this man's security...
They step into a room with no windows, two dark doors, and a long black table.
There sits Harry, obviously related to John, but her hair is more auburn than his dirty blonde, and her eyes are a bit more green. She licks her teeth like a hungry wolf.
"Oi...Jonny!It's been ages ,sweetheart!...Lizard...I suppose you're the one who called me in ,then?"
Lizard. That was Harry's personal name for Sherlock. It was a favorite pastime of hers to come up with abusive names for Sherlock, and to run him down. Much like Sally Donovan, and if the two ever met, they might actually be fast friends... John shivered and sat down.
"You know why we have called you, Harriet. Let's not waste time, then. Why did you put the program on our mobile phones?..." Sherlock began.
Harry roiled with laughter..."Why does any one do anything, Lizzy?"
Sherlock beat his fist on the table. He hadn't even a quarter of the patience John did, when it came to people.
"You learned those words from someone else...didn't you? Well...let me tell you for fact...for absolute surety. Your master is dead...So is the Accomplice, and the Kingdom of Terror has fallen. There isn't any piece of the puzzle of chaos that is left for you...I am sorry..."
"Oh, Lizzy, did you honestly think I CARED about what Moriarty's actual reasons were?"
"What? What's going on? You worked" John's head is spinning. Sherlock closed his eyes, feeling as if his spirit had become a wormhole inside him, sucking his whole sentient being into its Black Hole pull.
Of course, John would have to be here of all places ,right now. Of course John would have to be let down again. Failed again. Betrayed again...
Perfect, honest John. Who deserved nothing but good, and received nothing but bad, because that's what people do...And yet...we care about them anyway? (Oh, the tragedy and beauty at once, that is love...)
"You worked ...for Moriarty?"
"It's really funny how Lizz here can take just a little wisp o' something, like what I just said, and turn a whole case out of it, and arrest people! Wizard ,that. Really, better than Scooby Doo, I'd buy it any day. Yes, John. Yes. I worked for Moriarty, but not in any of his great life's works type things. I was his bartender. That club you and Sherlock flushed me out of like yesterday's oats? That was old Jimbo's favorite..."
Sherlock and John both sat there, utterly stunned.
"Oh yeah...It was lovely. I could forget about Clara, so long as I had Jim. All I had to do was tell him secrets all about you ,John. I was his VIP, he sought me out personally, on account of you! And he treated me like a queen! I inherited a big bit of his business, you know? That's when I met up with the pirates...You know the Rum Runners, the "Estuary Trade"? Oh, yeah, you guessed right, Lizzy, I've bugged the lot of you for them too, good luck figuring out how to fix that! Now, I don't know exactly what they want with you...But I made a deal with the devil, and it's all yo ho ho and a never empty bottle of rum for me as long as I launder the secrets of the World's Only Consulting Detective, and his little pet."
John stood up dizzyingly fast, and stormed out of the room.
Sherlock rose more slowly, cold and black, having been crowned "Icarus, King in Terror" for a very good reason.
"You've been most helpful ,Harriet. And I will see to it that you are hanged rather soon." he smiled, almost charmingly, and spun on his heel, shoes tapping like nails in the coffin, against the floor.
Harriet smirked, and let herself slip back into her chair,
"Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!" she cried out in the dim room, letting her voice echo off the walls, and into the empty silence.