The Dragon
PenPatronus
Chapter 4 of 10
Dungeon Scars
Sherlock was in his childhood library – the one with the giant mobile of airplanes hanging from the tapered ceiling. He sat cross-legged on the wood floor with his back against the history section. It was Winston Wednesday, as his father liked to call it. Sherlock was allowed to read anything he wanted, encouraged to read everything, but his father always insisted that Wednesdays be reserved for at least one biography of Winston Churchill.
"You call this a Mind Palace?" Sherlock looked up to see James Moriarty leaning against the shelves. "There are kids playing computer games and a bum using the Harry Potter series for a pillow. You call this place a palace?"
Sherlock held his eyes shut and made a wish. Moriarty was still there when he opened them. "How did you get loose?" he asked.
Moriarty shrugged off the rest of his straightjacket and smoothed down his gray suit. "I didn't. You released me, remember?"
A frown slid down Sherlock's face. "Why would I do that? You're dangerous. You should stay locked in the dungeon."
"Dungeon?" Moriarty snorted at the word. "Is there a moat, too? Let me guess – John's the jester?"
Sherlock climbed to his feet and backed away. "John's not here. He's supposed to stay outside."
A thunderclap of a laugh launched out of Moriarty's throat. "Like a stray dog?"
"John Watson keeps me right," said Sherlock. "The voices that live in here are the ones I don't usually listen to outside. Hard to tell the difference between the mind and reality if you let them blend together." Sherlock scooted further away. The book was a shield between him and Moriarty. "I always listen to John. I always hear him. And he hears me."
Moriarty's eyes seemed to follow a rainbow above Sherlock's head as he thought. "Mycroft, Anderson, Molly, me… I should feel insulted, shouldn't I?"
"I don't intend to listen to you either way. How did you escape?" Sherlock demanded.
"Like I said, you released me." Moriarty suddenly batted the book out of Sherlock's hands. "You released me the moment you pulled the trigger and murdered Charles Augustus Magnusson."
"No," Sherlock whispered. His eyebrows formed a "V." "This is my mind and I control it. The only time I haven't been able to control it was when…"
Moriarty's giggle resembled a small child's. "When you were dying! Brilliant. If you can't control this then you must be dying right now!"
The bookshelves started to crumble. Airplanes crashed around them. Sherlock backed up until his heel hit a wall. "I'm not. I'm not dying so I must… I must be dreaming."
Moriarty's eyes flashed and Sherlock knew he'd hit a nerve. "Knowing you're in a dream doesn't mean you can control it," he said. "Just because you know you're asleep doesn't mean you can wake up."
Suddenly, a straightjacket entangled Sherlock's arms. A blink later and he was in the padded cell, the dungeon, and Moriarty was chaining him to the wall. "No, no!" Sherlock gasped. "I'm in control of my mind – not you, not you!"
Moriarty seemed taller, healthier, stronger. "Not anymore," he said as he exited. "Not anymore." The door locked. The lights disappeared.
"John!" Sherlock screamed. "John!"
Sherlock woke up with shackles around his wrists. He lashed out, fueled by fear and adrenaline, and his fists hit flesh, dug like shovels into dirt. A gasp, an "Ooof!" and the world flipped over. He fell onto a floor that was definitely not padded.
"Sherlock – Sherlock!"
It was Moriarty's voice – or was it? Sherlock suddenly remembered that he could open his eyes. His mind immediately registered and analyzed everything he saw: a crisscross of black and gray cotton and the seam of a sweater collar. The bed he'd fallen out of was on his right and blurred, pixelated. His sense of touch confirmed that the shackles around his wrists were actually hands. Nostrils started to work. Familiar scents calmed him: ink, antibacterial soap, deodorant.
"Sherlock?"
For a brief moment he thought that ghostly hands were clawing his bare skin but it was just one hand, one palm, gently rubbing his back from his hip to his neck. Up, down. Up, down, in time with his heartbeat – or was his heartbeat in time with it? The slower the motion, the slower his pulse. Winston Churchill's bedroom came into focus. Relief replaced terror and the fight went out of him. Sherlock's body deflated and he collapsed into the embrace, his bare chest squished against a ribcage, his nose against a collarbone. "John…"
"Got you," John whispered breathlessly in his ear. "Just a nightmare, mate. You're ok. It's ok." Sherlock gathered a fistful of John's sweater and clamped his teeth around it. It stifled the scream but sound still escaped through his nose. Sweat – the type that's both hot and cold – sprung from Sherlock's pores. John held him tighter. "I've got you," John repeated over and over. "I've got you."
Sherlock focused on John's hand on his spine: up, down, up, down, up, down. The rhythm, the reality of it, the consistency of it, relaxed him. But, suddenly, fingers replaced the palm. They started to poke and prod instead of rub. "Jesus, Sherlock, are those scars?" John shifted Sherlock's body clockwise to get a better look at his back. "Oh my God…"
Exhausted physically, emotionally and in every other way imaginable, Sherlock stayed in John's arms and let the doctor examine the year-old wounds. It wasn't until John's breathing got louder and his body started to tremble that Sherlock realized he was genuinely upset. "Who did this to you?" John whispered. "You were tortured – Jesus, Sherlock – you were tortured." When Sherlock didn't answer, didn't even move, John resumed rubbing his spine. "Never going to happen," John whispered. Every other word was enunciated with a hiccup. "Swear to God I will never let anyone hurt you again."
The click of a cocked gun made them both look up at the door. A woman in police armor stood in the bedroom doorway with a pistol pointed at them. "Touching scene," said Sally Donovan, "coming from two murderers."
To Be Continued