TITLE: Bound Into the Fire
CHAPTER/TITLE: Chapter Two/ Dragon In My Soul
RATING: T (language, content)
A/N: Sorry for the long wait! Couple more chapters to come!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Sherlock. All credit to Doyle, Gatiss, and Moffat - and fire.
Chapter Two: Dragon In My Soul
Fire,
It burns in all of us,
It burns deep in my soul,
I fell it when I'm told no,
Fire,
or you would not under stand,
That you are too young,
Flame brakes,
out like wild fire,
I look at the world in away that most adults are blind to,
I sit in my corner,
day,
night,
hoping.
Hoping that I will be free,
free from my age,
Cinders start to flame,
I look at the earth,
poisoned,
Fire,
poisoned by the adults,
Fire,
The government is a place that the idiots go,
Fire,
to control us,
Fire burns deep,
They make bad decisions,
Fire
Pass laws that make no sense,
Fire
but we have to listen,
Fire
we have to do,
Then the fire burns,
My soul is ablaze,
Anger,
Hate,
Sadness,
Fire,
I understand what you are saying,
That's why I argue,
Fire,
louder,
Fire,
Until I am yelling,
Until the fire is flaming out of my mouth,
Coming from my lungs,
My soul is on fire,
Anger,
hate,
sadness,
Dragon In My Soul by Shadrach Knight
As soon as Sherlock saw the flames devouring the pyre, the cage, the detective knew what horror was happening.
John was going to burn.
"Burn the heart out of you."
Amazing how everything in his life seemed to come down to this raw, raging substance.
How he purposefully set his brother's hair aflame with a chemical compound. How one of his experiments had exploded when he was a teenager, singeing his eyebrows and burning half of the lab down. The drugs he had turned to after his boredom nearly burnt down an entire building with people inside it. The substance was like fire itself, coursing hotly through his veins.
Meeting John. Of course, there had been no fire then. Not tangible anyway.
Sherlock Holmes oftentimes compared himself to the flaming beat in his mind. Wild, unbridled. Passion and fury. Single minded. Selfish. Destructive. Deadly. Powerful. Temperamental. Not easily extinguished. How he felt others glancing away. Primitive, savage, yet intelligent. Simple and complex. He found himself not distinguishing between friend or foe, unfeeling as he swept up anyone who happened to be in his path. All could fall prey to fire's whim, to Sherlock's sight. Prone of lashing out. Quickly kindled and raging and then suddenly smoldering.
Sometimes he couldn't help any of it.
Sometimes he wasn't even fully aware of his burning effects.
His mind was also that inferno. Sparks would set out, synopsis snapping and cracking. He couldn't put the fire out. It needed to consume something, anything. Needed to be fed. If it wasn't, if tedium plagued Sherlock's mind for too long, it would lash out. Burning him and all others around him.
It was always there.
Scratching, scalding, just underneath the skin.
No one had ever been able to understand.
Not even Mycroft.
If Mycroft was the Ice Man, then Sherlock was surely fire.
The elder Holmes lacked the burning that nearly drove Sherlock mad. The constant fire pumping through his blood. He couldn't comprehend. Couldn't do anything to control it or help his younger brother.
There had only been one single solitary human being that was able to accomplish this.
John Watson.
The quiet, unassuming man had limped into Sherlock's life and somehow slipped through the flames and into his heart.
John was like a balm or a calming blanket. Something. Sherlock wasn't good at flowery metaphors.
The blaze inside of him never died, but John somehow helped Sherlock to contain it. The soldier even took some of the heat onto himself to spare Sherlock and others. But Sherlock could still burn his friend. And it wasn't always by his scorching tongue.
The life Sherlock lead was another kind of fire. Unpredictable danger waited behind every corner. Just by being near the detective, well, you were bound to get burned one way or another.
Sherlock cursed himself for coming back. For ever talking to Mike Stamford about flatmates. If John had never met Sherlock, he would be safe. Not in constant danger. Not currently being burned alive.
Burning.
It wasn't just John that was burning though, as the pain in Sherlock's heated heart brought him back to the present.
Girl. Screaming. Irrelevant.
He needed to help John. He needed to break through the blasted crowd and save him.
Sherlock shoved past bodies, barely aware he was shouting his friend's name as he sprinted forward.
Another shriek. Woman's. John's name. Mary.
Mary was behind him.
"Help!"
The single word simultaneously granted him more energy and stole from him more suffering than Sherlock could have imagined.
He blinked, trying to detach himself from the horror at hand, slipping into the detective division of his mind.
Bonfires. Bonfire. Bonefyre. Bonefire. Large, contained, outdoor fire. Used for warmth, celebrations, signals. Name derived from original purpose of burning bones.
Not helping.
His inner voice slipped into John's at that.
The most common cause of death due to fires is smoke or toxic gases inhalation.
Even if John's body was being mostly protected from the flames by the shape of the structure for now, it might be too late. The blaze would devour the wood first, thus trapping John further until the fire consumed him. Burned his bones.
No. Stop. Think. Focus.
His mind was slipping as it sped through these thoughts at lightning speed. His heart hurt too much. Sentiment was clouding his brain. He wanted to scream. Or maybe he was doing so already. He wasn't sure.
Think! Detach! Move! Help John.
He separated his mind and body. His hands tore away at the pyre while his head stayed distracted.
Right. Toxic gases. Carbon monoxide. Carbon dioxide. Hydrogen cyanide.
What if John has already stopped breathing?
No. Focus. Okay. Distraction. Other gases. Helium. Neon. Argon. Krypton. Radon. Xenon. Nitrogen. Fluorine. Keep going. Methane. Germane. Butane. Arsine. Diborane. Oxygen.
Oxygen. John.
Stop.
States of matter. Solid. Liquid. Plasma. Gas. Van Helmont. Pressure. Volume. Number of particles. Temperature. Boyle. Macroscopic. Microscopic. Dalton.
His skull felt like it was splitting open. Or was that his heart?
The flames danced around him, everywhere. He could only vaguely feel the heat as he dismantled the structure.
A cracking cough tore through the noise, ripping away at Sherlock's very being. It was the sound of his friend choking. Of John dying.