John awoke to pain. His head hurt, and his stomach felt like it was inside out and tied in a knot, presumably an effect of the drug. But those weren't the main source of pain.
A man towered over him, and John watched in terror as he plunged a knife into the army doctor's arm. He yelled as white-hot pain gripped his arm. Blood poured from the wound and trickled down John's arm, leaving a dark, warm trail.
"Alright, Moran. Let me have him for a bit." A voice spoke from the shadows. The figure hovering over John stepped away, and the knife was pulled from his arm. John immediately put pressure on the wound, his hand clutching his limb.
"Oh, Johnny, did that hurt? Did that bad man hurt you?" Jim Moriarty said, pouting. "Well, little dog, there's much more where that came from." With that, he grinned, his eyes cold and dead.
John was hauled up and thrown against the wall behind him. The cold rock connected with the back of John's head, and he stifled a groan as his head seemed to split in half and the world spun before his eyes. He felt hot, constricted - his limbs felt heavy and bile rose in his throat.
The man called Moran lifted John's hands up and latched them into the metal handcuffs that were attached to the wall. He did the same to John's feet. Because of the doctor's height, his arms quickly got tired of being lifted that high, and John's shoulders started aching. The cold of the stone seeped into his back and he leaned his head against the wall, trying to block out what was going on around him.
"Oh, we are going to have so much FUN!" shouted Moriarty, clapping his hands, then rubbing them together in anticipation.
OoOoOoO
All John wanted was a release.
Time seemed to stop existing. There was no day, no night- only pain. It was the worst period of John's life. Worse than when his parents threw Harry out for being a 'dirty little hag,' worse than when they died in a car crash, worse than Afghanistan.
Pain. There was constant pain.
When he wasn't being stabbed, punched, kicked, or hurt in any other way possible, John was being psychologically tortured.
Usually, the mental part was done by Moriarty himself. John would curl up into a ball in the corner of the room as Moran played with knives, brass knuckles and chains, and Moriarty would talk.
He would prod into John's past on the better days. Talk about Afghanistan, going into detail as he read reports about the attack on John's garrison. Ask how it felt to be shot in the shoulder, while Moran carved away at the already torn flesh over his collarbone.
On the worse days, Moran would hack at John for hours, until he and the torturer both were exhausted. Those days, Moriarty would approach John as he hung by shackles on his wrists, walking around him, examining every inch of his body. He would whisper in John's ear how much Sherlock hated the doctor, how he was simply a pet, an experiment. One day, he even picked up one of the knives himself and carved a line down John's face, from the left side of his forehead, over his nose, just missing his right eye, and down John's neck, ending mid-chest.
Those days, John begged for death.
But nights were the worst.
Somehow, Moriarty's men had created a drug. Every night, as John hung limp strapped to the wall, a burly man came over and injected something into his arm before carrying the doctor to his cell.
The drug would take effect. John would start hallucinating. Vividly. He would 'dream' he was back in 221B, working his day job, solving crimes at night, and loving the crazy detective with all his heart. He felt a physical ache when he was with Sherlock - a longing, desperate need.
Of course, he didn't actually dream. The drug wouldn't allow that. It deprived John of sleep in a way he had never experienced before.
He barely slept at all. And the few hours he was able to get were riddled with nightmares and screaming.
Whether that meant freedom or death, he didn't really care. His whole life revolved around pain. In the day, physical. In the night, after he had stopped the bleeding to the best of his ability, mental pain. He could almost feel himself coming apart at the seams, losing himself.
All he wanted was a release.
