Evil's Root
36
Spring turned into summer; it was inevitable.
When the sky truly brightened and the weather edged towards hot, it signaled many things.
Chiefly, the end of term.
Sherlock grew quieter, more withdrawn; Mycroft watched him carefully, fully aware of the reason.
End of term meant going home.
And going home meant…
Facing him.
**
Bang!
K-chk.
Bang! K-chk.
"I swear, I'm going to keep doing this until I hit the thing a hundred times in a row at three hundred meters," Sebastian hissed.
"Dull," Radovan commented, sprawled out on his back, alternating between watching clouds go across the sky and examining the minute flaws and warps of the skin on his right index finger.
"I'm going to be the best damn shot in England- fuck it, why not Europe, one day, Radovan. You just wait and see."
"Good luck with that," Radovan said airily.
"You bloody try it then!" Sebastian spat, throwing the rifle at his companion, who caught it.
Radovan stood, then dropped to a knee, sighting through the scope, compensating for the hundred-and-fifty meter distance.
Bang!
He put another round in the chamber.
"Dead on." He smirked. "You've got something psychosomatic going on, Seb."
"Fuck," Sebastian muttered. This time, he bothered to focus; sighting carefully, compensating.
Bang!
"And again, dead on," Radovan said. "You're overestimating yourself. Take it down a bit, earn your way up to the manic level you've been forcing yourself to accomplish."
Sebastian gave him an odd look as he collapsed back onto the grass.
"Italy is boring," Radovan complained.
"No arguments here," Sebastian agreed, firing off another shot.
"At least Slovakia was a place where you could torture the ghetto cats and nobody would notice," Radovan muttered. "Italy, there aren't any ghettos. Why aren't there any ghettos?"
"Beats me." He paused, mentally phrasing a question. "How did you start?"
Radovan turned his head. "Eh?"
"How did you start? I mean, what triggered you? What pushed you to become… like this?"
Radovan considered.
"I was abused when I was younger, by my father," he murmured, threading his fingers together. "It… it was a way to throw off the rage, the fear, the emotions I felt that kept just building inside of me. It kept me from turning on him, from fighting him, because he was strong enough to kill me, but I wasn't sufficient to beat him. So, I started small… I'd play with the mice I caught in traps, pretended that their squealing was him. I moved to that cats that stalked the ghettos, then the dogs, and then anything nonhuman I could get my hands on. One hundred and forty-six kills, I told you, before I made my way to Britain. I found Lino, Lukas, Francesco, Sergei and Dagmar, people who finally understood the way my mind worked. It wasn't so bad, then; I could channel myself into our plans, blackmail, thievery, the various lot of it. I was the brain, the one who held the reins.
"It was a heady feeling.
"And then they started disappearing, one by one; and a better game, Seb, has never been had, this intrigue of Sherlock Holmes. Just before I started killing cats, I realized something.
"I wasn't just throwing away excess emotion. I was in love with the thrill of the kill."
He smiled faintly.
"It's a feeling like no other, to know that you've just ended a life; Lydia was the best. To know that I'd outwitted both of the Holmes brothers, that despite everything they had between them, I'd turned out to be superior? To know that I had just killed someone, outlived her, and survived to tell the tale? To fight my enemy, to defeat him, He Who Walks Alone, in fair combat? Ach, there is no greater feeling than victory."
**
Just before entering Sherlock's dormitory, Mycroft paused.
The sound of the violin could be clearly heard; not sorrowful, this time, but intense, fast-paced, anxious.
It made his hair stand on end.
The second he entered, it broke into a new note, trembling; then dove into a series of equally unnerving tones, the muscles in Sherlock's arm rippling with the effort.
A pause; three solitary notes, followed by three more; one, three, one, three, one, three, one, and again. Five, three, and now much deeper; back to the trembling warble, now back to the hair-raising repetitive series; again, again, again, picking up pace- a pause. More intense than even before, now, frantic… and the end.
Now a different tune, lower, quick, now raising in pitch. Hints of fear, perhaps; lower, now, and slower, each note sounding individually.
Wait for it…
It held that individuality-centered pace, but picking up speed now; now growing quieter, as the rhythm gradually slipped to an end.
With a swift motion, Sherlock set the violin down, the bow beside it; he fisted his hands several times. Mycroft noted almost absently that the skin on his fingers was raw.
"Well?" the younger Holmes demanded.
Mycroft raised an eyebrow.
Sherlock cursed under his breath, dragging a hand through his hair. "For Christ's sake, say something!" he snapped. "I can't sleep, for Christ's sake, because it feels like somebody's taken my muscles and pulled them tight. Is there anything worse than this accursed waiting?"
Mycroft was silent.
Baring his teeth, Sherlock collapsed into a chair.
"Do you think that maybe he's changed?" he asked quietly. "Maybe he won't…"
"Don't lie to yourself, Sherlock," Mycroft said, his tone indescribable. "It's the highest crime one can commit."
Sherlock closed his eyes.
"Do you think I could take him?" he wondered. "Do you think, seeing how I've gotten stronger, gained more skills, that if I fought him outright, I could take him?"
Mycroft adverted his gaze to the window.
"Not so much," Sherlock muttered. "Yeah, I thought so, too."
"Arbor fructus non resurrexit odio acerbius quam," Mycroft replied. No fruit is more bitter than that of a tree raised on hate.
Sherlock stared.
"What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?"
**
The Latin part just sort of stumbled into my mind. I tried to think of a proverb, then I made one up.
To clear things up: we have still not seen present day Sherlock. John is the only thing present-day. This is all flashback, young Sherlock.
This was originally the chapter "Remember the Enemy", which revealed Mycroft's words to live by. But then ThoroughlySherlocked asked for a backstory on Radovan, and between us, we threshed out this theory. This is what happened.
So yeah. Conclusion: Sherlock's afraid, Radovan's human.
The songs Sherlock played: the first, Hunger Games: Overture, by Sam Cushion. The second: Happy Hunger Games, by the same author. Both can be found in the same video on youtube, by looking up "Music of Panem: Beginning of a Rebellion". The video is 1:24:36, if I remember correctly; almost all of the themes inside can be applied to Sherlock.