Chapter 11: When He Forgives~
John stared wide-eyed, as the building began to blaze, veiling Sherlock and the Mistress in an ocean of fire.
"My...God!" Mycroft whispered, the horror at last of what torment had rendered Sherlock finally coming home to him in full.
Gretel was staring at her brother, who had been woken by the commotion, and was staring in wide-eyed wonder himself, at the blaze.
They could hear them shouting from out of the Inferno.
"DEMON!"
"What did you expect to find ,when you called upon the Dark powers ,witch? Did you expect a knight?..." ( a flame hissed)
"A gallant young knight-a prince from a FAIRY TALE!"(one of the walls crumbled from out of the house)
"DEMON, VIPER, GO BACK TO HELL!"
"NOT WITHOUT A RESULT!"
"DAMN YOU, SHERLOCK HOLMES!"
"ALREADY BEEN DAMNED, WITCH!"
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"
"YOU CALLED ME UP FROM THE DEAD. NOW PERFORM THE SEANCE! SPEAK WITH THE GHOST, AND ANSWER MY QUESTION! DID YOU KILL THE BARONESS YEATS?"
"YES , I DID! I STRANGLED MY SISTER WITH MY TWO BARE HANDS, RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE BRATS SHE HAD WITH MY LOVER!"
There was sudden silence, and then, Sherlock emerged from the fire, with the Mistress under his arm.
Set her on her feet, respectfully straightening her cloak on her shoulders.
"Thank you. You've told me everything I needed to know. We'll have you arrested and promptly sent to England for trial. Well, you anyway. Gretel is staying with us. Don't you have something to say to your brother?"
Gretel turned to Hansel, with tears in her eyes. Hansel looked crushed.
"I'm...sorry."
Hansel wavered for a moment.
"How can I trust you now?"
"You can't..."
There was silence. John's mouth opened and closed rapidly, wanting several times to call Sherlock out on the fire, but paying John no mind, he started pulling pieces of ginger bread out of the walls, and dripping the melting chocolate in between the pieces, and then taunting Mycroft by taking huge mouthfuls of it. Mycroft was so furious, his face truly looked rather Ice-Mannish ,having turned a dull blue, and his lips were quivering. A large peppermint rolled to Sholto, and he smashed it with his cane, and started crunching the little pieces.
"If I don't forgive you, I let her win. She is the one who bewitched you. It's alright now, Gretel."
"Ah, good, if only all domestic issues were solved so easily. Very well,Mycroft, I suppose you have the authority to bring her back to town so we can arrest her. Would any one want to bag up this candy before we go? I think it would be lovely if we used it for a large Trojan pinada." Sherlock cried.
He then stepped over the smouldering s'mores, and heat-exploding peppermints, and molten gum drops, heading back towards the Jeep, although it was dark out now.
John's hand closed around his arm, like pincers.
Sherlock slowly turned to look at him, breathing smoke out of his nostrils, muttering:
"Oh for God's sakes, John. Yes, it may have been a bit scary for her, but it got her to talk ,didn't it?"
"YOU COULD HAVE BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED!"John growled.
Sherlock just stared at him, wondering why that mattered. John realized in that moment, being seriously injured was standard procedure for Sherlock, and he really didn't care if he lived through this case or not. John was livid, and mortally hurt all at the same time. He chose to let the more compassionate part of his nature win out this time, knowing that Sherlock honestly wasn't in his right mind at the moment.
"Look at the bright side ,John!" the Major called, taking fistfuls of melting candy." This will burn all night, and keep us warm! And give us something to eat , though it may well also give us belly aches or even Irritable Bowl Syndrome!"
"And possible obesity and tooth decay." Mycroft added.
"And how is this looking on the bright side?" John asked, shutting them both up. Doctor Watson wasn't taking this situation lightly.
"Here, let me have a look at these..." he muttered, indicating the slices on Sherlock's face. Sherlock was searching him, brows drawn tightly together, fighting to hide that he was deeply upset, but John saw right through him. He knew he had done something a bit not good, he just didn't know what.
John instantly forgave it, and smiled at him..."Don't want you to bleed out,...step to, come on..."
The candy lodge burned many bright colors and blended in with the Northern Lights. And oddly enough, this evening in the ice-glazed Finnish forest, with a criminal handcuffed and seated in their midst, John had the most fun he'd had in years. For the Major had taken it upon himself to give Hansel and Gretel as much real-people/real-world information as he could come up with. Sherlock laid down next to John, wrapped in one of the blankets from the shed that shockingly had not caught on fire, and before the night was even half way spent, he ended up asking the majority of the questions about real people and their real lives, seeming to know even less than the Yeats siblings, who had been raised in the deep woods! Mostly Mycroft was quiet, crunching on bite-sized pieces of the smouldering building. Mostly John teased Sherlock unmercifully all night long, about his lack of people skills, which Sherlock countered with logical theories of how " real lives" and the "real world" were wrong. The Mistress just sat back and scowled, and by the time they started nodding off to sleep, Gretel was even laughing, and cutting up, and saying to Sherlock something like:
"So for a freaky undead Detective-Vampire geek, you aren't really half so bad as all that rot before, yeah?"
To which Sherlock replied, "Oh no, I'm far worse. Shut up and go to sleep."
John laughed quietly to himself for an hour after that, watching Sherlock as he curled up almost like a fox ,trying to conserve warmth, and nodded off,sleeping for the first time in days, because he had solved the case, (mostly anyway).
Discreetly, lest people talk, John reached an arm around him, and pulled him closer to himself, so neither of them would be cold, wrapping his own blanket as well as Sherlock's around the both of them, and himself falling fast asleep.