TITLE: The Other One
CHAPTER/TITLE: Chapter Seven/ Scream
RATING: T (violence/language)
A/N:
Review please?
Chapter Seven: Scream
"Damn it," John cursed himself for not forcing the kid to go to a hospital.
For the second time that night, John felt Merlin's neck for a pulse. This time, there was no violent drumming underneath his fingers.
This time, there was nothing.
"Help me get him on the floor," John ordered hastily, already grabbing Merlin's upper body.
"Damn it, Sherlock!" John hollered at his frozen friend. "He's dying! Help me!"
Sherlock sprung into action as if snapping awake from some open eyed slumber. He quickly helped hoist Merlin onto the hard ground. The detective thrust the coffee table back out of John's way as the doctor knelt beside his patient. Sherlock could only watch as his friend administered CPR and desperately tried to breathe life back into the boy's body. His eyes flickered from John and then to Merlin - and to Merlin's decorated skin.
"Come on, come on."
He could vaguely hear John muttering useless appeals and encouragement that the unconscious man would not hear. The detective promptly filtered the words out of his head and focused solely on the silence screaming from Merlin.
His own mind was shrieking and reeling, but Sherlock tuned that out too. There would be time for questions later. Any sentiment he felt prickling - okay, maybe pounding - away at his heart was also swept aside. Somehow he found that, this time, his emotions were not easy and idly cast away.
His eyes were now pinned to Merlin's face and chest, silently willing for a gasp, a cough, a rise and fall, something. Anything.
It had been a long time since Sherlock had experienced such fear. Of course, he would never admit to ever feeling any at all. Seeing John strapped to a bomb had certainly given him a taste of a terror and dread he had only once before known.
After minutes that felt like hours, Merlin's heart beat again and the boy breathed once more. There was no dramatic gulp of air or fit of coughs. Merlin didn't even wake. And yet, to Sherlock, it was as though fireworks had erupted inside the flat.
He watched as John did not miss a beat once Merlin was once more among the living. Even Sherlock's quick eyes couldn't catch all of John's movements. That could also have been due to the wet substance swelling in them. Not tears.
"My bag," John commanded, his voice urgent, yet quieter.
Sherlock paused for a fraction of a second before retrieving the doctor's medical supplies. He dropped the bag next to John's kneeling form and promptly exited the room. If his flatmate called after him, Sherlock didn't hear him. The detective marched into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Ripping his mobile from his pocket, he fired off a text, his fingers beating against the touchscreen violently.
"You lied."
The device had hardly began to vibrate by the time Sherlock had it to his ear.
"Do be more specific, dear brother," Mycroft's unamused voice was like a poison in Sherlock's very soul.
"I would be very careful of how to speak to me right now, brother." Sherlock spat slowly. "You know better than any of what I am capable of. The only reason I'm not having this conversation with you in person is because I just might kill you if I see you and I wouldn't want to upset Mummy with the loss of another son."
There was a pregnant pause and a palatable silence.
"Oh, stop being so dramatic. Are you going to tell me what this about?" Sherlock could hear his brother's eye roll in his words. "Or should I have my people check my cameras in your flat and report back to me?"
"Oh," Sherlock breathed the word dangeroulsy with a shake of his head, "I beg you." His voice was as flat and cold as ice - and just as sharp. "Look for yourself, Mycroft. Oh, and don't let me see you for the next, let's say, 72 hours, or I will not be responsible for my actions."
Sherlock slammed the phone on his bed, snarling his trembling fingers through his hair. Without intending to do so, Sherlock found himself sitting atop his bed, his fist burrowing into his pillow. He felt something burning and crawling up from the back of his throat. Not tears. Those were still stagnant pools being stubbornly cradled in his lids, locked there. No, this was something else entirely.
A scream.
Pure, raw, emotion clawed to break free in one splitting shriek.
Sherlock covered his mouth, trying to swallow the unfamiliar and unwanted sensation down. He debated screaming into his pillow as that is what people on those awful shows John watched sometimes did.
No.
He wouldn't let his emotions rule him like this.
He neglected to even admit their existence, and therefore would never allow them to have such a foothold.
How could he have been so blind? Him? He saw everything and failed to see something of this scale. His own -
Shelock surfaced from his thoughts as a scream tore through the flat.