Making~
The Work resumed not long after that. Sherlock, once he started taking his medicine again, seemed to be on the mend. He even had most of his energy back and chased after criminals much the same as he once did. He only stayed winded longer after. John saw it as progress.
Yet for every balm the earth provides, there is always a fly to fall into it. That fly was Sergeant Donovan. No one knew exactly how she came by the information. If Sherlock's scars had become visible when he'd removed one of his thick leather gloves on a case where small items must be handled with bare fingers to properly deduce them. Perhaps it was the article John had submitted to the Telegraph correcting the libel that Charlotte Chase had printed. No one knew what exactly drew her interest. Donovan was intrigued, still far more vicious than before, to pry into the torture chamber that was Sherlock's mind and pick it for answers.
Her interrogation was several folded pages of human cruelty. It was the Hanoi Hilton. It was the ferocity of Cabanatuan. It was Sunday morning_ A church in the background shaken by a violent robbery where the choir had been held hostage. Sherlock knelt beside the altar, checking the floor for strands of wig hair. How he had deduced that the robbers were wearing wigs was not entirely clear to anyone. If anything, Sherlock's skills had actually sharpened since he'd been away. They marveled at this. He'd been stellar before but now he played in a League above what Scotland Yard could fathom.
So, perhaps it was jealousy when Donovan crept behind Sherlock on the floor. John had turned to talk to Anderson about a blacklight Sherlock requested. When he turned back, he saw Donovan with her Taser on a low setting. She was holding it close to Sherlock's ear, making his hair prickle up.
"Maybe you ought to use this, Freak. Draw the hair up off the floor…" Donovan gloated when Sherlock's whole body tensed, spring-like, mind immediately snapped back to a reality than no one in the room could totally fabricate in their imaginations_dark as some could dream.
"What...are you afraid of it, Freak? You? Afraid?...Thought you didn't have anything human in you." Donovan gasped. To which, Sherlock grabbed her wrist, spun her around his back and landed her by her collar and her hair on the altar face down. The whole investigation stopped, horrified by the sound her Taser made as it went off against the floor, by the little clucking noise she made out of the horror that he had reacted so spontaneously.
"Before God, Sergeant! Before God...In a church, and for the love of Christ! The church is not the place for this. A pity for you, that I am past caring, past saving_The lesson must still be learned." The room tensed.
"Sherlock, what-?" When Greg saw what Donovan had done he froze. It was his hair that was standing on end.
John felt his knees growing weak. He didn't realize the Father had caught him until he had to take him around the waist to keep him standing and several of the parish members had to hold him by the arms to keep him from flailing free, fury having burst his blood in so many different cells.
"Sherlock...Sherlock, please…"Donovan begged actually afraid of him now as he knelt closer to her, fingers constricting in her hair until he pulled her head up and made her look up at the Christian cross suspended over the scene like an emblem of cruelty and sacrifice. It was cruelty and sacrifice that had driven them to this moment.
"To answer you, once...Only once. I will never discuss this again with you_because it is none of your affair. No. No, I am not afraid of your pathetic Taser gun, Sergeant Donovan. I have been christened with constant voltage myself, baptized in currents." Sherlock ripped the glove from his free hand and rolled the sleeve down exposing welted, miserable Lichtenburg Figures, the purple velvet of the scars made so much more livid by the sudden shock he had received, by the gaping horror of the room.
"But to put to rest your constant moral dilemma...Your philosophic question that never yields to the more pressing matters of criminal investigation_which is the only relation we have to one another…" Sherlock forced Donovan to look at the scars on his hand. She tried to wrench free, but he twisted his hands in her hair like one might a horse's mane. She yelped and he nodded, head and neck tilted at a viperous angle that frightened even John.
"Look at me!" Sherlock's voice echoed off the pipe organ. One of the choir's ladies chirped near to tears. The room was anxious like bees and violins singing together. A pin could drop. Donovan looked defiantly into the cutting eyes.
"Do you think it was the first time? Do you think it was even the second, the third? Did you assume to know facts, know details, when you came to your conclusion? No one is born anything less than human, woman! Use your head for half a moment and not your petty wit...Freaks are not born, foolish girl! Freaks. Are. Made…" Sherlock let Donovan go with a fierce additional jerk. She fell backward off the altar and landed hard on her shoulders, panting, clutching at herself to make certain she was still intact.
Sherlock stomped the battery pack of her Taser so hard with one blow of his foot that it broke into several pieces. Then, he spun on Anderson vicious for a moment, face livid, gathering pales and reds all at once like a storm at twilight. Anderson jumped nearly dropping everything in his hands. They had seen Sherlock snarky, witty, rude, cold, hateful before. All of this was android though, and they realized they liked the stoic Sherlock much better. They had never seen his wrath before. For a moment, a picture, a glimpse of the savage world from which he'd come. A place none of them would ever care to visit.
"Fetch me the damned blacklight. Now!" Sherlock snapped his fingers. Anderson nodded, anything to comply with him, and ran back to his station.
Sherlock shook his head, wheeling away. For a moment he caught John and Greg's eyes. The look he gave them was so cold, so unlike him, that for a moment it seemed some demon had taken the form of their friend. But then, he knelt back to his work and minded his own business barely acknowledging Anderson as he brought him the device with shaking hands.
John excused himself, dove outside to the church's garden, and vomited in a trash receptacle. He stood there shaking, knees knocking until Greg came up behind him.
"It's...um...He solved the one bit. We have somewhere else we gotta be now. I couldn't keep up all the way." Greg's voice, shaking sheepish. John nodded.
"Okay. Yeah, okay…"John stood up and puffed, hands clenching and unclenching. Greg let a gasp and then he asked.
"Do you know? Do you know what they did to him to...That would...you know, make him...So...ehh…"Greg couldn't find words for what just happened.
"He won't tell me. Only says that he was protecting me somehow when it happened." John turned to face Greg.
"Oh...Oh my God…"Greg covered his mouth. John nodded.
"I'm...I'm in trouble, see. I've a dilemma. I want to know, but then...Then I don't. You see?"
"Yeah. Same…" Greg nodded. Sherlock swept outside then. He resumed almost all of his composure save his hand tremors had returned with violent noticeability.
"If the both of you are done with your schoolyard gossiping, then?" He snarked, the same old rude Sherlock they were used to. John looked at Greg. Greg looked at John.
"Okay, right. Lead the way, then." Greg shrugged. They three continued to pretend there were no elephants storming through here, wafting dust enough to bury them. Sherlock and John exchanged curt smiles and then they all fell instep as Sherlock again began to explain his deductions.
"The wigs were fabricated with a thick skull cap insert, treated with a wax, a Turkish brand. Only one factory in London uses that as a result of a direct supply chain agreement….It's near the Thames, two blocks removed…"