Three more to go!
Reviews are as neat as kangaroos!
Note to self: Listening to The Jacksons after a lengthy loop of Othello and The Cold Song does not make up for the sorrowful and disturbing chapter.
When John woke up, his hands were tied behind his back with rough, coarse rope, he was sitting on a wooden chair, and the right side of his face hurt tremendously. Next to him was Irene, who was also tied up, her head was drooped and her hair was covering most of her face, but he assumed that she was unconscious. He moaned as he tried to move his bounded hands—to loosen the constraints—and to somewhat move his stiff, sore muscles.
They were in an empty, dark, damp room; the only light coming from a swinging lantern above them, and it was so cold that John could see his breath as he slowly inhaled and then exhaled to remain calm. "Oh, you're awake...finally", a cold, but playful voice came from the dark.
That voice. He knew that voice; he would never be able to forget that voice for as long as he lived, which, in his current situation, didn't seem for much longer, as the dark saw his petrified look and gave a good-humored chuckle. However, John couldn't place where it was coming from. The panic attack intensified as his eyes searched the floor around him for something that could protect him. Nothing. There was nothing.
The voice belonged to, of course, Moriarty.
Escape. He needed to escape, but he had no idea where to go, nor could he figure out how to get away. He felt himself sinking into a dark place, a place much darker than his surroundings.
"I was wondering when you were going to wake up from your"—Moriarty stepped from the shadows, his face scared and twisted from the explosion only two weeks ago—"nap", he said tenderly, but disdainfully.
'Joker' the thought popped in John's mind for some odd reason and he tried to push it out of his thoughts. Moriarty grinned brightly at him, flashing his sharp white teeth—which seemed abnormally strange on his now disfigured face—as if he knew exactly what John was thinking. 'And if he's the Joker, Sherlock is Batman, and then I am surely Robin...God, don't make me Jason Todd, please.'
Irene stirred flippantly next to John and, when she saw Moriarty, she shouted out, "Holy hell! It's Moriarty!"
Moriarty gave her a charming smile, "Hello, my dear Irene", he walked towards her, studying her, "How are you?" he asked her in a sickly sweet voice.
"Ah, well", Irene shrugged and said in a composed voice, "Bit stiff...and my noses itches like hell, but, besides that"— she glanced up at Moriarty out of the corner of her eye and smiled teasingly at him—"I'm super duper."
He strolled around the two, like an animal stalking, his hands in his pants suit pockets, before he stood behind Irene. "Oh, dear sweet Irene", he murmured as he lightly brushed his finger against her cheek, "Dear Irene", she twitched away from his touch.
"Stop that!" John yelled angrily at him, noticing the disgust and dread in Irene's eyes. He tried to sound frightening, "Stop touching her! Or I'll...I'll"—'Trying to sound intimidating and can't even come up with a threat?' he thought to himself, a frown on his face.
Moriarty chuckled mockingly as he rubbed his fingers together, "Oh, the leading man is threatening me?" He threw his head back and laughed, "It would sound more menacing if it was actually coming from the handsome, brooding hero and not the"—he looked at John with a straight, serious face and said flatly—"sidekick."
"Hey! Quit messing with him", Irene snapped at him, her voice firm and motherly, as if she was telling her children to stop fighting.
"Oh", Moriarty placed his hands together, promptly pointed at Irene, and leaned closely to John, "even she sounds more menacing than you are, Johnny boy", and he smirked at John and continued to stalk his prey.
"What do you want, Jim?" Irene growled angrily at him, rage burning in her eyes.
"To send a message", he said curtly and then continued cheerfully, "I return home from recuperation and find that a big job was broken up by Sherlock Holmes and it was all because"—his voice changed into more of a snarl and looked at her—"Irene Adler helped him."
"I didn't help him", she told him, her voice light as she turned her head away from him, "I merely showed him a newspaper article that I found very interesting and he worked it from there", she looked at him, "it's not my fault he's clever and figured it out."
Moriarty gave her another sickly sweet smile, gazing at her for a moment, before turning his attentions to John, "Oh, Johnny boy"; he said in a singsong voice, "Have I told you the adventures that Irene and I have had"...he trailed off.
"No, Jim...no", Irene moaned out in apprehension.
"All the jobs she's done for me", Moriarty smirked and Irene's eyes flickered to John's, but he was looking away from her, his lips pursed in disappointment and shame. "She worked for me, you know."
"Worked", Irene, told him, matter-of-factly, "Worked being the key word."
"No matter", Moriarty said, a coy smirk on his face, as he moved towards the door, "I'm going to kill you anyways", the door opened, six men entered, and stood behind Moriarty, towering over him.
Irene's face fell in horror and John desperately tried to shift his hands behind his back to loosen the ropes as the six men stepped before them, their huge bodies blocking out the light. One of the men raised his fists and threw a punch at John, striking him across his face. Another man raised his hand and slapped Irene across her face, blood trickling down her cheek.
After Irene and John had received their beatings, and were on the ground, their hands still tied behind their backs, gasping for air, their faces distorted with bruises, cuts, and discolorations, Moriarty stood above them, a cocky smirk on his face and told her, coolly, "This didn't have to happen, dear sweet Irene."
Irene turned her head away from his eyes, still panting for breath, and closed her puffed eyes as tears spilled out. "Why don't you just kill us and get it over with?" John wheezed out, the blood and sweat pouring down his face, and he struggled to lift his head up to look at Moriarty.
"Oh no, no, Johnny boy", Moriarty said as he turned around and walked to the door, "Once I get bored, I'll kill Irene, but you...Johnny boy"—Moriarty turned around and looked John straight in the eye; his eyes cold and his face unreadable—"I'll keep you alive...but barely." The look in his eyes changed and he gave John a friendly smile before turning and leaving.
For the first two days of their imprisonment, John didn't speak to Irene. Hell!—he didn't even glance in her direction. Nevertheless, it's not as if she tried speaking to him either. She mostly kept her dull, lifeless eyes to her bloodied hands, occasionally running her hands through her greasy, blood knotted hair, and letting out bleak, tired sighs. Finally, on the third day after they had had their daily beaten, Irene spoke.
"This is our last chapter, isn't it?" she muttered, her usual animated and confident voice was dreary and weak; she looked up at John for confirmation, but he was avoiding her gaze in anger, embarrassment, pity, and because, deep down, he knew she was right. She continued in the same voice when he didn't respond, "'And in the last chapter things always happen violently'", she sighed and then went back to staring at her hands, "'Perhaps all life is like this'"—she shrugged listlessly—"'dull and then a heroic flurry at the end.'"
There was an odd silence everywhere, even in the other cells; it was as if the whole world had tactfully turned away to avoid seeing them die. "This isn't the good death I've always prayed for", she sighed out as she laid her head against the wall. After an hour of silence had gone by, she spoke again, "John?" curtly, but faintly. John unwillingly looked at Irene, a frown etched on her face, her eyes dead, and, what look like tears, streaked down her gaunt cheeks.
"Yes?" he finally said in a strained, exhausted voice. He had to talk to her and he had to acknowledge her, he told himself. 'I need to at least give her that much.'
"I'm sorry", she looked at him, "All I was for Moriarty was a delivery girl", and she paused and then continued, "That card that I gave to Sherlock in the hospital was really from Moriarty—and I was the one that left Carl Powers' shoes in 221C and, if I had known that they were the lost shoes of a murdered kid, I wouldn't have done it." It was as if she was confessing to John, seeking his forgiveness before she died. It was the only important thing left to do; it was the most important thing as well, "'But, I have done what I have done and it seems, to me, that we can't stir a finger in this world without bringing death to someone.'"
Irene glanced at the cell door as she heard someone stop in fount of the door and the clinking of keys being pulled out a pocket and into the lock. She stood up, looking like a new born horse standing up for the first time and continued in a cool, but gloomy voice, "But, I hope that you don't remember me by that"—their guard entered the room and stepped in fount of Irene, wondering why she was standing up—"and remember me by this", she mumbled softly before she lunged forward and grabbed the guard's jacket. John's eyes widened in terror and shock as the guard promptly pushed Irene against the wall. She shrank and withered to the floor, her hand on the back of her head, before he gave a swift kick to her stomach. She went into the fetal position as she gasped for air and let out a gloomy whimper for mercy.
"Fucking bitch", the guard muttered as he dusted himself off and, as he turned his head to look at the security camera in the corner, he caught John's frightened eyes. John's eyes widened even more in terror—if that was even possible—when he noticed that the guard was looking at him. He gave John a delightfully evil smirk before unchaining him, brutally grabbing him by his elbow, and leading him out the door to the beating room. When John woke up, in their cell and chained to the wall after what he assumed to be an hour, Irene was still in the same position. John remained on his side for the next two hours, trying to think of ways to escape, but, alas, nothing came to mind.
He had forgiven Irene because, if they were both to die, he didn't want her dying without some clemency and he didn't want to die with guilt. Although, he thought as he exhausted his last escape plan, he couldn't think of any reason why she threw herself at their guard and what she had hope to accomplish. Moreover, as it was 'forbidden to spit on cats in plague-time', he had to forgive her; not forgiving her wouldn't achieve anything and it was just better to forgive and forget, even if it was, in their existing circumstances, only for some time. He fell asleep with a content smile on his face for the first time in a week.
Three hours later, John was woken up to be beaten again and was hastily thrown down on the floor of the cell as the guard roughly chained him back up after he was beaten for an hour. He glanced over to where Irene was—still huddled, her face hidden away, in a ball, her back to him. She didn't look like she was breathing and John furtively craned his neck in order to see her more properly. ´Oh God', he suddenly became very scared and his face dropped in horror and distress, 'I don't think she's moving…I don't see her breathing. Is…is she dead?'
The guard finished chaining John down and, as he stood up and turned to leave, he noticed Irene in a huddled ball, "Oy", the guard snapped in a cruel, angry voice at her figure as he stepped in fount of her and roughly grabbed her shoulders to lift her up. Her head sluggishly rolled to the side, a vacant look on her face, and her eyes closed like she was deep in sleep, "What do you think you're do"—he suddenly stopped talking and his eyes widened in pain as Irene's eyes snapped open in alert and an impish smile slowly encompassed her face. The guard moaned softly before his eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground, a ballpoint pen sticking out of his stomach and blood slowly trickling out of his wound, forming a dull mirror.
Irene glanced and smirked, smugly, at a flabbergasted John; their eyes meeting for a fraction of a second before she quickly bent down beside the now dead guard and searched his pockets. John saw determination, focus, ruthlessness, and intelligence in her lively deep brown eyes and knew, at that moment, that Irene Adler was back, and he very much doubted—as she pulled out the guard's keys—that she ever left in the first place. She swiftly appeared by John's side and immediately and quietly unlocked his chains, "Wh…what…what…" John attempted to say to Irene as she placed the chains aside, but it was very difficult for anything coherent to come out of his mouth as he was stunned and, of course, thirsty.
"Come on, John", she said coolly as she stood up, took out a phone, and rapidly started typing, "We got less than four minutes before they suspect something's amiss", she looked up from the phone, smiled kindly, and held out her free hand to John, "So we better get out of here."
"But, the cameras…" he drawled out hopelessly, however he still took Irene's hand and stood up, "They've got cameras everywhere."
Irene held up the phone, "Already taken care of", she said composedly, then her face took of look of attentiveness and she said in an urgent voice, "Now, we have to go."
They ran out the door, Irene leading the way with the phone in her hand and John's hand in her other. "What's that on the screen?" John asked as they made their way down a long passage, noticing two figures—obviously them—running alongside the wall in grayscale, with the date and time on the lower right corner.
"Security camera footage", she muttered softly and dully as they came to a stop at the end of the hall before turning right. "I hacked into the security cameras and"—they quickly pressed against the wall as a man casually strolled by. She continued talking when the man opened a door and went into another room. "And let loose a computer virus that I typed up"—they continued walking quickly—"that puts their monitors on a ten minute loop so their monitors just keep playing the same ten minutes over and over again while I have the real, current footage", she looked back at him, a self-satisfied smirk on her face, "What do you think I've been doing for the last six hours?"
John rolled his eyes in annoyance, but was smiling in delight, happiness, and comfort, "Did you call for help?" John asked, hope in his voice.
She looked straight ahead, "No", she said in a flat voice after a short period of silence, "there's no phone reception all the way down here. We'd have to get up to the higher levels of the house to send for help", she told him as they started to climb the stairs that led upstairs. "Sh", Irene whispered as some low voices came from down the hall. They paused in fear as they thought the murmuring would stop or come their way, "This way", she pulled on John's hand after almost thirty seconds of uninterrupted murmuring.
As they came upon a corner, John suddenly dropped onto the dirty, wet floor, exhaustion and hurt fixed on his face, "John?" Irene wheezed in alarm, suddenly feeling a limp hand, as she turned her head around, "John!" Irene whispered fiercely at him, as she kneeled beside him and placed her hand under his head. "Wake up, John!" she shook him, "Wake up, John, god dammit…you get up!" her face strained as she fought to lift him up. "Ah."
John groaned in discomfort and winced in pain as Irene struggled to sling his right arm around her neck, "Come on, John", she gently murmured as she staggered forward, "One foot in fount of the other", she walked slowly, John's feet trailing behind and, as they rounded the corner, they bumped into someone. "Oh!" she gasped in dismay.
