Chapter 10: A Foregone Conclusion

Sherlock woke up in a haze of being. He felt weak and sick and tired.

He realized that he was back in his cell, the party was over, and there was a commotion upstairs. It was a fairly loud commotion, too, because Sherlock hadn't before heard anything from the room or rooms upstairs. It was Moriarty and Moran. They seemed to be…fighting, almost.

"How could they know?" Moriarty snapped. Sherlock heard the man's dress shoes on the wooden floor upstairs. "Little sniffer dogs in blue'll ruin all my hard work, Seb! He's there! Broken! I've got him where I want him!"

"You'll get him again, sir," Moran reassured him with a calm, soothing voice. "You always get what you want."

"Shut up," Moriarty growled. "Let's just get out of here!"

There was the sound of a door slamming and then silence. Sherlock sat still on his bed, listening.

Maybe an hour passed—he wasn't sure—before there was the sound of several people breaking down a door. And his heart leapt for joy in his chest upon hearing familiar voices.

"This is the place!" Lestrade.

"Bloody hell." Anderson. Why did it have to be him of all people? He wasn't even a bobby!

"Right. So where's the freak?" Donovan. Sherlock had never been so happy to be called "freak."

"We need to find him. He might be hurt." John.

"John," Sherlock's voice began huskily, full of emotion. John: his best friend in the whole world! A doctor, and a very good one, too! Sherlock needed medical care, although his wounds seemed miles away. He called out again, his voice louder, stronger. "John! In here, John!"

"I hear him!" John called to the Yardies. "Don't worry, Sherlock! I'm coming!"

"John!" Sherlock cried. He could imagine the doctor nursing him back to health with his favorite dishes. Pasta, soup, roast lamb…mmm! Sherlock's stomach did a flip inside him, much too empty to growl or grumble. Somehow, the feeling of hunger was worse than the actual noise of it. Sherlock felt ill, like he might throw up, he was so famished!

And then, just as he was about to see John's face…

He woke up.

And Sherlock Holmes, a man of infinite strength, power, and sheer force of will, almost burst into tears upon realizing that his rescue…had all been a dream.

Overcoming the sorrow upon waking up from the best dream he'd had in all his life to date (that he could recall, anyway) and shaking off as much of the sleepiness as he could under the circumstances, Sherlock surveyed his surroundings.

The first thing he noticed was that he was sitting in a comfortable chair. It almost resembled a throne—red velvet plush seat cushion and back cushion, stiff posture which encouraged one to sit up straight rather than slouch to be comfortable, ornate gold inlays in the legs and arms and probably the head, too. Sherlock tried to raise his arms, but realized the heavy chains still weighed him down. Moriarty had to have been right about their weight, then. Sherlock guessed (an educated one, but a shot in the dark, really) that together, all the chains weighed about seven stone.

Now, Sherlock estimated himself to be about eleven stone when healthy, though probably a little less than that. Considering how long he'd been starving for (the last count was fourteen days, one will recall), he estimated his current weight to be more along the lines of about nine stone. Sherlock's head reeled as he did the math. He was now three stone from a recommended weight for someone of his height. He dreaded the amount of food needed to return such nutrients to his body, and grew sick at the thought. He didn't have much time to ponder, because Moriarty appeared.

He was dressed again in a Westwood suit, but looked disheveled and hung-over, dark bags underneath his eyes. But Sherlock didn't care about his sickly nemesis, no. What had drawn his attention like a moth to the flame was the smell of food.

Sherlock groaned, because he knew the scent right away. Crêpes. He smelled honey and maple syrup and deduced that the delicious French pancakes were filled with fresh honey and topped with maple syrup. Of course, he then smelled the fresh strawberries and cursed Moriarty, cursed him with every terrible oath he'd been taught as a child to never say or think, and his mouth began to water.

Moriarty sat in a chair across from Sherlock and held the platter in his lap. The criminal yawned and settled into his chair until he was more comfortable. Sherlock bit his tongue firmly, glaring at the consulting criminal with as much malice as he could possibly force out of his feeble body.

"Did you enjoy the party, Sherlock?" Moriarty began conversationally, scratching his belly lazily. "I know I did. But God!" He squinted, massaging his temple with his free hand. "I do wish hang-overs would just stuff it, don't you?"

Stuff. Sherlock knew the meaning of the word in context. Yes, of course he did. But his empty stomach was telling him that 'stuff' meant 'to fill.' And God almighty did he want to be stuffed! He bit his lip and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes.

Moriarty grinned, then laughed. This startled Sherlock, and the consulting detective returned to being rigid and hateful of his worst enemy in half a second. Moriarty raised an eyebrow, surprised himself that Sherlock could move so fast. He'd forgotten that the thin man was more than capable of besting him physically. Even now, when the man's torn shirt was stained with his own blood, dark bags under his eyes, ribs standing stark against his skin, pants exposing not even underwear but bony hips, cheekbones severe in the elegant face, Sherlock smacked of power, of control, of a deep, inner strength unaffected by his state of extreme starvation.

But wills could be broken. Moriarty had turned many a good man to crime, and he would turn many more before the end of his life, so he wasn't stirred by the (what he thought was) false bravado from his enemy. "You're hungry, aren't you, Sherlock?" There was a moment of silence. Sherlock sat back in his chair, his eyebrow raising, obviously curious. "Come on," Moriarty leaned forward slightly, as much as he possibly could with the crêpes on his lap, "you can tell old Jim," he grinned, his dark eyes betraying a strange friendliness that one would be wise not to trust.

Sherlock weighed the options in his mind, but before he could properly think or control his actions, he spit out in a voice much weaker in reality than it sounded in his head: "I am. A little." He leaned forward, towards the smell of food, but woke up before he fell out of his chair and did his best to erase the entranced look from his starved-thin face.

Moriarty giggled. "Good! Because I had my personal chef—" Oh! A personal chef? How could Moriarty afford such luxuries? "—make it just for you, one-hundred-percent poison-free!" The consulting criminal lifted the top off the platter with a flourish and revealed exactly what Sherlock had expected to find: crêpes oozing with honey, drenched in maple syrup, topped with fresh strawberries.

Our poor, starved, wounded, suffering consulting detective simply couldn't take it anymore. Fifteen (at least—who knows how much time had passed since the party, or how long Sherlock had been asleep, unconscious, or too tired and weak to be paying attention?) days without food, at least fourteen days in captivity—he was beyond hungry, starving, famished. He couldn't even think of a strong enough word to describe the desperation coursing through his body, making him weaker with each passing second. His head, and in fact his whole body, felt light. Too light. Sherlock didn't even feel grounded. He felt like a helium balloon that would've floated away some time ago were it not for the chains keeping him grounded. He would've given anything to feel full—! And for a moment, this clouded his judgment, hid his powerful exterior mask, and revealed to his enemy a starved, wounded, human Sherlock Holmes.

Which is why Moriarty went on. "You can have this delicious dish, Sherlock. This warm, soft, filling breakfast. You can have every last bite of these light, fluffy, beautifully sweet crêpes. I won't hesitate to give them to you…" Sherlock's subconscious wasn't waiting for the coming condition. It was keening "yessssss" so loudly that it was all over his face, apparently, because Moriarty grinned his reptilian grin when he said, "…if you join me."

That was enough to draw Sherlock back, realize this affair was actually bigger than himself and certainly bigger than his monstrous but not necessarily unmanageable hunger. Sherlock sat back, rigid again, his back straight as a long, lean rod of barley. Despite the effort it took, he clasped his hands on his lap and crossed his legs. "No." He said, his voice determined, commanding, strong—certainly stronger than he felt. "Never. I won't help you destroy London."

Obviously, this wasn't the answer Moriarty was expecting. His face fell, and then grew dangerous. He threw the platter against the wall next to Sherlock's head and stood up. "Fine!" He growled. "Go to hell! Starve, you bastard!" And with that, he swept out of the room as if he was wearing a long cape, and went up the stairs at a crisp pace.

Sherlock contemplated his victory a moment, then got up with some difficulty and dragged his tired limbs over to his coat, which still lay in the middle of the floor. Then, weak beyond repair, he toppled weakly onto the stone floor and fell asleep, the pain from his broken ribs colliding with the floor numbing his subconscious mind, leaving him blissfully dreamless.