Playlist: Peter Gabriel - Red Rain
Holmes showed Sebastian the surveillance from when Lorna woke up, and it did things to his gut that he didn't care to acknowledge, especially in front of the sneering eyes of his captor.
He was allowed to keep watching as they fought and struggled for freedom with much less vigor than they had had previously. He tried not to let it bother him, but that wasn't working out very well.
She slipped up again not that much later, sloppy with grief, got sliced open down the arm, making it all but useless for days. It somehow hurt both more and less, knowing that Sebastian likely knew about it. Her arm was more numb, but her chest... her chest hurt so much more.
That day he had tried his best to kill his guards.
Mycroft had strapped him down, made him watch as they injected Lorna with a depressant before releasing her and Jim into the field.
When she woke she was so... so slow.
The gouge she'd caught in her arm had been luck (she could have died). The one he'd put in his own had been a sharpened bed post (he was beginning to wish he had.)
Things were harder after that. Time was strung out, sounds were off, her reactions skewed; the best she could make of it was that they were keeping her on a steady supply of drugs. That, or she was going crazy. Neither of which she could do a damn thing about. It was all she could do to keep up, to keep fighting, to eat because she had to, to drink what she was given, even though everything felt the same in her mouth now, whether dirt, blood, food, or water. She kept dipping into the edges of withdrawal, too, the hits so far apart it felt like she was turning into glass, hot and brittle. That, and the fact that she hadn't actually laid down to sleep since the nightmare had begun.
Inasmuch as she was a valuable resource, Jim was... concerned about Harrison's spiral. However there was little he could do while he was struggling to keep himself from tailspinning after her. He felt like he was clawing at a sandy ledge of sanity, barely managing to scrabble a new hold before the old one crumbled away to naught in his fingers.
It was a bit before she realized she would switch sides to be with Sebastian again in an instant. No matter the fact that he'd sold them all out. She would have, before. The only question was whether or not he would want her to.
He'd been doing his best to keep track of the days, but they spent so much time unconscious that by now his best guess was between four and six months. Harrison was nearly skeletal, and he was little better. They were both covered in wounds and bruises and scars, and he had a shaggy beard that he despised and a constant pinched nerve in his back from sleeping on the floor.
He felt less human every day, but he wasn't sure he minded.
She wasn't sure when the last time she'd exchanged more than two words with Jim was. They had nothing to say.
Months passed by, slowly, painfully.
Moran became docile. Holmes started ignoring him. Started growing lax.
He knew how to manipulate readers, had been doing it for years. And soon, he had plan.
The dosages were being altered.
She knew this because the high was always the same. It never lessened, it never grew, it remained exactly the same. This was far too much time for them to have not grown a tolerance for the stuff, although, she never asked Jim how he was feeling. She didn't care to know. She had her own pain to worry about.
He counted days carefully. And he knew the day that Mycroft would come to him, would tell him to make his choice. He also knew he wouldn't be making one.
When that day came, Mycroft was indisposed. Or rather, his brother was. Sherlock, found in a drug den, a block away from some commotion caused by Moriarty, and that was dangerous. So he passed on his directions, and went to collect his brother.
When he saw them up close for the first time, his gut went tight with anger. They were emaciated, and bruised, and their arms were peppered with needle marks.
He took a slow breath, looking around him slowly.
The scalpel was in his hand in two seconds. The guards were dead in eleven.
He was losing his touch.