Chapter 4: Let's Show Them~
She slowed to just a trot, when at last they turned. Sherlock's expression visibly darkened, and John drew closer to him, out of a sort of protective instinct, and folded his arms.
"Hello, Freak." she said, stopping short.
"Sergeant Donovan." Sherlock said, flatly.
"So, not dead, yeah?"
"Not quite."
She smiled, like a witch given power to the world.
"Mmm, So ,how'd you do that, then? Convince the whole world you were dead? Made some of them mourn. Some of them celebrated. I celebrated..."
"I'm sure you did." Sherlock nodded, "Extensively. Suppose the party's over now?"
"Bloody well right it is! Let's go, Sherlock!" John growled, taking Sherlock's arm in his firm grip.
Sally followed them. "But you didn't answer my question. How'd you do it? Sure it was exciting. And what did you do for all those years you were gone, then?"
Sherlock stopped dead in his tracks. John turned, and snapped,
" Enough. Will you -just-go away!"
"I'm only curious. Doesn't he like to show and tell? Isn't that what you get off on, Freak?"
"Sherlock?" John asked, noticing how tensely he'd drawn up.
He slowly turned.
"Really, don't you have somewhere else you have to be?!" John snapped, patience siphoned from him now.
She pulled a little watch-on-chain-out of her shirt pocket, and opened it,
" Nope. Got all night."
By now a small crowd had gathered.
"Well, we don't. Come on...Sherlock?"
Sherlock had frozen, eyes practically zeroing in on the watch.
"What? You like it? I bought it on line. Good for hypnotism..."she smiled, nastily, as if she knew she was on to something.
Sherlock's mouth opened and closed ,defensively.
"John!" he gasped suddenly.
"I'm here!" John gasped, suddenly horrified.
Sherlock stumbled in a circle, "You have to get out of here, John. Get out of here..."he wailed, and stumbled in a circle.
The people started to waver, afraid.
"Oi, what's he on about?" Sally asked, voice crackling like thorns into the anguish.
John immediately realized what was going on.
Sherlock was having violent re-experience symptoms of PTSD.
"Everybody on the ground." Sherlock shouted to the police officers gathered. They stared in confusion.
"Everybody on the ground!" he shouted, like a drill sergeant giving command.
"Why?" Anderson asked , nervously.
"Do as he says!" John wailed.
Slowly the police officers got down on hands and knees.
Just then Lestrade came out of the laundry room.
"Oi, Sherlock, what the bloody -? "
"GET ON THE GROUND!" Sherlock shouted, and John, voice agonized, wailed from behind him:
"Greg, listen, he's having an episode...of PTSD. Just do what he says, and let me talk him down."
Greg felt his stomach clench as if filled with liquid iron, but did as he was told.
Sherlock stood staring at them all, or appeared to be staring at them all. And then he said,in a voice loud enough that everyone could hear.
"John."
"I'm here, Sherlock."
"You need to get out of here...Moran,...he's come...he's come for me."
"Sherlock." John said firmly, "I'm not leaving you."
Sherlock looked up at heaven, repeating the words Moran had said, when he'd loaded him in the back of a truck out of Serbia,
"Tick tock,tick tock, It's time to go,John! Time for you to go...Home... for me to go...Go there..."
His face crumbled in horror, and his eyes filled with a strange light.
"Back. Back there. Anywhere they can make my blood flow, bright red. You know, it's actually pretty, it's dripping down my face. Down through my hair, slicks my hair down, gets hard, now it's stuck, and it hurts more, when he grabs me by my scalp, hard tug! And it's all over me, like red paint, dripping down my chest, I can't , I can't even feel the lacerations yet, cuts are so clean...John."
John has very slowly ,very cautiously crept up behind him, and laced his arms around his waist, laying his face gently on one of his shoulders.
"Right here..."he mutters.
"Did it to protect you. They were gonna kill you, had snipers, would have fired, if I hadn't jumped...Then that belt, nearly cut me in half. I'm bleeding, John! Always bleeding. It's stupid, how much I need his squishy red to be INSIDE of me. Without it, the world swims. I swim too because I'm laying in a puddle of it. In a basement, and voices, I think, sounds like Russian? No Serbian, I'm in Serbia. But a little girl brings me water. Mercy-the little girl's name was...-what happened to her ,John?"
He spins violently about, and grabs John by the shoulders, shaking him.
"Is she...alright?"
John smiles, "She's fine...She's ok, she made it. They all made it."
"No...not all of them." Sherlock's eyes shift.
"NOT ALL OF THEM!"
He spins about, "FOR GOD'S SAKES,GET ON THE GROUND. DON'T YOU PEOPLE KNOW A TRAIN IS FALLING AT OVER 100 MILES AN HOUR, RIGHT DOWN UPON OUR HEADS?! PROPELLED THERE,ON PURPOSELY CUT FROM WHERE IT CRASHED IN THE TREES! OH LOOK, 3 MORE! BUT IF YOU GET ON THE GROUND..."he's out of breath, from shouting..."Low...on the ground...You'll be low enough to miss it, when it passes over us. You just might live through the shrapnel...I did. A piece of it struck me in the throat; I almost died! But I held it in, until I could drag myself to town. And then they helped me...They didn't deserve to die...for helping me..."
"Alone...Is what I am...Alone...keeps people safe...from me..." he gasps, hands going to his neck, where the injury still was, if only in his mind.
He bolts off into the night.