NOTE: A lot faster this time! Back on track for now. Enjoy.
Chapter 27:
An attempt in letting something go
Sherlock shuddered under the icy cold spray of the shower though the water managed to clear his head and eased the pain of the torture in his whole body for a few merciful minutes. Reluctantly he stared at the joints of his fingers that Gemma had meticulously set back in their right position. It was still painful but he could move his hand properly again and that at least was a good thing.
Everything else around him was not. Just in the other room a man was probably already tortured and his inner John told him that that was morally and ethically problematic, well that man tried to kill him not an hour ago… Still he felt uneasy. His mind began to wander while he started to scrub the remains of last night off.
The moment he´d realized in his merely conscious state back in the prison that Gemma had actually shown up and was alive just as he´d suspected, he´d felt a strange tingle in his gut maybe something along the line of happiness or relief even. It was fatuitous. Even more so because the mere fact that she´d shown up displayed her emotional entanglement and every single deduction he´d been able to make since had just proven this point. Gemma Moriarty had missed him, had grieved over his loss to a point that´d endangered her web. Sherlock was torn between the reminiscent sentiment for her and his original plot.
He´d loved the game but it was obviously over the curtains had fallen and there would not be a sequel. They knew each other too well by now, he mused and it was most obvious to Sherlock that Gemma was not interested in playing anymore. Slowly he began to find her tedious and mundane in her attachment to him, all her actions that once were bright and vibrant in colour to him now had a dull aftertaste. He honestly dreaded the fact that it hadn´t ultimately ended on the rooftop. Their affair should have never become ordinary.
Sherlock would have liked to leave, go back to London to his old life and leave her behind, to await her return in a few years with a new dazzling case created just for him. And maybe the circle would begin anew when they would both have matured. But he couldn´t do that since she´d destroyed his life with so much commitment.
There was only one thing for him left to do here. Drag her back to England, to Mycroft to be more precise and force her to undo all of it.
Methodically he stored all the unwanted feelings he still held for her in the deepest darkest place in his mind-palace and locked them away. Not without encountering remorse since he´d savoured the tiny flower that had grown inside him and he now condemned to die in a place where the light of his consciousness would never reach it again. Gemma had been the first to plant the idea of a deep, passionate, all-consuming love into the workings of his mind. It had been enjoyable for the time being but has lost its purpose. Just an irrelevant new fact to be encountered, labelled as pointless in itself and stored away maybe for a later reference, maybe someday deleted.
The aim was clear again, so he thought until a second later he found himself confronted with the memory of her shivering body pressed against his side with tear-streaked cheeks and his name slipping in a whisper from her lips. Her weakness had somehow been endearing to him and while his thoughts unasked revisited that scene in the foreground of his mind something else clicked into place.
Sherlock stepped out of the shower his lips almost completely blue and his limbs trembling. Inside the cupboard next to the bedroom door he found a white shirt and jeans that fitted him well enough for now while thought after thought, memory after memory formed precise deductions.
Pieces of a puzzle he hadn´t yet seen to be one placed themselves and formed a new picture, a terrifying one that good Sherlock´s mind racing and his heart pumping in the best of ways. There was a case right before his eyes and he´d been too preoccupied to realize it. A dangerous scheme plotted by someone unknown to lead him and Gemma here.
"Brilliant!" He exclaimed but stopped in his tracks back to the main room with his hand hovering above the door-handle. Not his case he reminded himself ruefully not his at all. His goal needed to be to get his life back he could not involve himself in Gemma´s affairs. The hesitation lasted only a moment longer before he marched through the door.