Okay, here's chapter 37! It's my brithday today, so I decided to give you this nice, long one. As always, I'm not sure this is medically possible...
Enjoy!
Mycroft calls me every day the following two weeks. I don't know what he knows, but I am still constantly on the run. Irene isn't with me, she's staying with one of her clients, because she says she isn't made for something like this, and I understand. It is easier this way. I steal what I need, and if I am caught, I run. I'm getting better and better at that. I also have another phone, a cheap one with neither a camera, any other fancy stuff or GPS, so it is harder for Mycroft to track me. My old phone is always off.
It is Wednesday, exactly two weeks after I shot Sherlock, and my new phone rings again. I know it is Mycroft, but this time I decide to answer.
"Mycroft." My voice is calm, but on the inside I'm shaking like a frightened child.
"Kiara! Where have you been? What have you done?" Mycroft is furious, but then again, he has every reason to be. I start running through the streets and get a cab, telling him to drive, to drive as far away as possible. I know Mycroft is tracking me, but I don't want to be caught.
"I'm sorry, Mycroft. How is he?" I ask.
"How dare you asking that? I will find you, Kiara, and when I do, you will be wishing you had never met Sherlock!" He threatens, and I disconnect. I knew this would be how our conversation would end, and I don't need to hear any more. I smile at the cabbie, and take out my
I-phone. I hope Sherlock's phone is on, and I try tracking it. Sherlock and I installed it a few months ago, after the incident in Russia. And I am lucky. It is on, and tell me he isn't far away, in a small private hospital. Of course, Mycroft wouldn't let him stay with ordinary people. The cabbie only smiles when I tell him the address and turns.
Three hours later, I'm ready to go to Sherlock. The cab-ride cost me nearly all my money, as I don't dare getting any from my bank-account, but I managed to steal a scarf in a small shop, as to hide my face. It is nearly dark now, eight pm, and I stop for a second to admire the irony. Exactly two weeks ago, I shot Sherlock. Now I'm visiting him and hoping that he will at least understand, even if he doesn't forgive me.
The hospital is dark and quiet. I expected the front-door to be locked, but it isn't, so I go right in. Somehow, nobody sees me when I walk through the corridors after I took a quick look in the receptionist's computer. It was almost fun, hacking into something again, like I did when Father was still alive and then afterwards with Sherlock. His room is on the second floor and someone, maybe Mycroft, thought it would be funny to put him in room 221. I think it is tasteless. Sherlock misses Watson so much, and the number must remind him again and again.
The door has a small window, so I can look into the room. It is white, as I expected, and there are no cards and flowers, also expected. But he's got many books and his laptop, and something which looks like case files as well. The moon shines through a window on the bed and I can see Sherlock. He is pale, but then he always was, and looks mostly the same as I remember him from Tuesday two weeks ago. He's lying on the blanket, in his grey pyjamas, with his eyes closed, but something tells me he is awake.
With a last deep breath, I open the door and step in, but don't go any further.
"What do you want, Mycroft?" He asks calmly, without his usual bite in his voice when he talks to his brother. Well, how he talked to him before her. Somehow this makes me happy. It means that maybe, just maybe, they will get along a bit better when all this is over.
"Sherlock." I say and he opens his eyes wide, shocked and surprised and, if I'm not mistaken, scared? He looks at me for a second and I just look back, not knowing what to say. Then he jumps out of the bed and is next to me in less than a second. For a moment I think he will hug me, but I scold myself for it a moment later. Of course he won't, I shot him, after all!
Instead he pushes me against the wall, with his arm against my throat. I choke, but he obviously doesn't care. He is surprisingly strong, but the wound wasn't as serious as it could have been.
"You!" He snarls, "What do you want, Moriarty?" It hurts that he is apparently ready to kill me, but that he calls me Moriarty hurts even more. He called me Kiara ever since I told him so nine months ago in the flat in Paris, and even though I still love Father, I know what it means to him when he puts me on the same step as Father.
"Please, Sherlock, let me explain," I croak, but he only glares.
"Why should I?" He hisses, and I can see how angry he is now. He is blazingly furious, enough to kill me without a second thought. And I know he will if I don't stop him. By the way he moves it is obvious that the wound is still hurting him, but I can't use that. If I want him to understand and forgive, I mustn't destroy the last bit of trust he might have.
"I don't know. I'm sorry," I whisper, but somehow he hears it. He loosens his hold around my neck, but doesn't let me go at first. The tears which were in my eyes since I entered the hospital start falling, and Sherlock seems to realise that I'm not faking them.
"Why should I believe anything you say?" asks Sherlock, but he lets go of my neck. My knees can't hold me any more, so I sink to the floor with my back to the wall and Sherlock towering over me.
"I'm sorry." I whisper. Sherlock opens his mouth to answer, but in that moment the door opens.
"Sherlock?" Mycroft's voice is worried, probably because he couldn't see Sherlock through the window in the door. Then he sees Sherlock, and then me. We are both looking at him, me on the floor and Sherlock standing before me and somehow all of us are frozen for a second. Then Mycroft's eyes narrow. He pushes Sherlock out of the way, grabs me by the collar of the jacket I'm wearing and pulls me up. He is angry as well, but while Sherlock's anger is hot and wild, Mycroft's is usually as cold as ice. That doesn't stop him now, though.
"How dare you?" He shouts and shoves me against the wall. "How DARE you?" He shouts again, and this time his voice breaks.
His hand comes out of nowhere, and my cheek stings. He hits me again and again, and I duck my head and close my eyes in a vain attempt to protect myself. I don't realise at first that I am crying again and that my cheek is bleeding until Mycroft stops, obviously feeling the warm fluid on his palm, seeing the red above the white scars that litter his hands. This seems to kick him out of it, as he stops with a look of horror on his face. He lets go of me as if he burned himself, and I can't be bothered to stay up, so I slide down the wall to the floor again. Mycroft looks shocked. I never expected him to have something like this in him, but while I know that I deserve it and didn't exactly expect a warm greeting, Mycroft is looking at his tear- and bloodstained hand in horror. Sherlock puts a hand on his arm and Mycroft seems to calm a bit, then he looks at me again.
"Explain, Kiara, would you?" he asks and his voice shakes a bit. It is very unusual, so I look up at the Holmes brothers, really look at them and see hurt, betrayal, fear, tiredness. Both of them look down at me and I feel trapped. I know they won't do anything now, but their coldness scares me even more. Strangely, they look more alike than ever before now. Swallowing, I look down at my shoes again and start thinking. How can I tell them? How can I explain? I don't think Mycroft knows that Irene is still alive, but I will have to risk telling him. Sherlock definitely knows, and he saved her life once, so he might understand. Eventually I look back up.
"I'm sorry." I whisper, and when Mycroft opens his mouth to shout at me again, I shake my head and continue.
"I'm so sorry this all happened, and let me say this, Sherlock, I would shoot myself before I shot you. It is true now and it has been like that since we met in Paris."
"Why aren't you dead then?" Sherlock interrupts, and even though his comment hurts, I know how he means it.
"Because I didn't choose to shoot you. It wasn't my idea, it wasn't me. Scottson, he called me. In the little shop just around the corner..." It sounds pathetic in my ears, but I continue, and all I say is true, I leave nothing out and put nothing in.
"He had Irene. He proved that Irene was at his mercy and gave me an ultimatum. Forty-eight hours."
"And you chose Miss Adler." Sherlock states in a cool voice, but I can hear the pain in his voice. At the same time Mycroft speaks as well.
"Scottson? Irene Adler? She's dead!" He sounds confused now, and I can feel that he doesn't believe me.
"Henry Scottson, one of the threads. He is the last one, besides Moran and Daunt. And no, Irene isn't dead. Sherlock saved her from the terrorists. And before you ask why she means so much to me that I would shoot Sherlock, she's like a mother, a sister and a friend to me. It's hard to let someone like that be killed, you know?"
Mycroft just frowns about the information that Sherlock lied to him about Irene all this time and looks at the detective, but Sherlock shrugs. Somehow I have the urge to giggle.
"And no, Sherlock, I didn't. I couldn't do either, killing you or letting Irene die, so I went for the only possible solution. I organised entry to the warehouse. I asked you about the arteries and organs. I made the deal with Scottson that he would let Irene go if I sent him a picture of you, dead or dying. I called Mycroft minutes before you came, so an ambulance would be there soon enough, and then I called you. I didn't want to, Sherlock, it was one of the hardest things in my life. But I had a plan ready. I shot you instantly so you wouldn't have time to figure anything out and try to do something. With that I ensured that the shot would not definitely be a fatal one, and you would easily live long enough so that the paramedics could save you. And then came the hard part. I knew Scottson was probably watching me, so I couldn't help you or tell you why I did it. But I couldn't leave you alone. I didn't want to, and maybe you would have tried to move. I don't know what might have happened, so I stopped you. And the only way I could think of was to say all these things, but I didn't mean them, Sherlock, I really didn't!" My voice is cracking while I'm speaking and my face is shining with tears, but I don't hide it. I look up to Sherlock and hope he will see that I'm not lying with those sparkling grey-green eyes of his, but he keeps staring down at me and after a minute I lower my eyes.
"I'm sorry," I whisper again, but neither Sherlock nor Mycroft say anything for a while. Suddenly I hear some movement, and when I look up, I see the door closing.
Both Mycroft and Sherlock went out of the room and I am left sitting here. I don't move, I only lower my head again. It went better than I expected, but still. In my heart, there had been that hope that all would be well again, the hope, that Sherlock would forgive me just like that. Of course I knew that that hope had been only a highly improbable fantasy, but I wasn't able to suppress that hope.
Tears run down my face, mingling with the blood and dripping to the floor and on my clothes, staining them, but I don't care. I know it was the only thing I could have done, shooting Sherlock, but it still hurts and I don't want to think about it at all. And as the time passes, I fall asleep.