Ok, if this confuses you a bit, it means it's working ;)
Chapter 11: Ignorance is bliss
The sound is getting louder, the deep rumble of an invisible engine growling warning sounds through the shadowy space. Dust swirls in the air that is stuffy and warm in the way usually linked to a lot of machinery working constantly in a confined space, like laundry rooms in big hotels. Dark bluish shadows bathe the space in terror and ghoulish anticipation of unknowns that emerge with each new bend and turn. Strip of anaemic neon light cut through the corridors, doing little to illuminate the gloom.
John runs and runs, his loud breathing being distorted into a mutant sound by the metal walls that take it and mix it with echo. He runs, turning corner after corner, no longer trying to remember the way he came. The place – whatever it is – is a maze, convoluted and eerily disorientating. Feet hit the metal plating on the floor, playing a cacophonic march that would put a whole percussion orchestra to shame, and John feels as if his head is going to burst with all the sounds. Air seems to be growing both thicker and thinner at the same time, losing oxygen but gaining on density and crawling into John's lungs like lazy tar. With no signposts in the endless net of corridors, he is orientating himself by the only sound in the space that he is sure isn't coming from him – the deep rumbling of some invisible engine (or so he supposes). Somehow, John knows it is crucial he reaches the source of the rumbling. Something tells him that's where he'll find what he's looking for.
Just as he turns another corner, trying to estimate whether he is running towards or away the sound, another sound reaches John's confused, overwhelmed ears. Somewhere in the corridors he left behind, a distinct sound of water sloshing around between metal walls floods the space. Like a waterfall spilling into a system of tubes. John picks up his pace, running away from the sound and its source.
It should be thrilling, the chase, the danger. He wonders why it isn't. Why it's simply frightening.
The water draws closer and closer, its loud babbling growing unbearably deafening. The wave of raging, foaming liquid breaks around the corner seconds after John's turned it and crashes into John's current corridor. Luckily for John, this corridor differs from all the previous ones by a string of doors on its left wall. John bursts through the nearest door. Bolting the lock behind him, he turns around to inspect the room and is hit by heat that pounces like an angry serpent.
Following the cobalt darkness of the corridors, the room is blaringly orange, a strong glow from the centre of it radiating heat and light. The room is round, with the same metal walls as the corridors John's left behind. The source of the orange glow seems to be a round hole in the middle, supposedly a furnace of some sort. John can register whips of flames that flagellate out of it like solar flares off the surface of the Sun. There is no trace of an engine or turbine that could be the source of the rumbling, but the sound reverberates through the space so strongly that John can feel it in his teeth.
Over the centre of the pit hangs an immobile figure, its hands outstretched to the sides, each hand cuffed and chained to one side of the room via long chains. Its feet dangle over the orange heart of the room and its head is bowed so that John can't make out its face. Despite this, John knows several things.
He knows this is what he's been looking for.
He knows the figure is dead.
He knows it's Sherlock.
Despite the fact that he is dead, Sherlock skin seems to be in an incessant cycle of transformation, as it turns red and burnt, all the way to charred and black, only to grow back pink and new, and then the process repeats. The process isn't the same all over Sherlock's body, but in varying stages in various spots, making Sherlock look like a living mosaic or a patch-work ragdoll.
He looks like he's boiling.
John stands with suspended breath and stares at the body for a few seconds. The rumbling is the loudest here, in the round room, drowning out any other sound. Now that he has a chance to listen to it properly, to feel it in his bones, it reminds John not of an engine but of buildings collapsing in on themselves over and over again, like a skyscraper with an infinite number of floors crumbling into the void at the centre of itself. Yet, the room is so disconcertingly still, apart from the vibrations of the rumbling and the occasional lashing of fire-whips from the pit. The heat is oppressing, a merciless tyrant dominating the room. John can feel it pressing its greedy palms all over his body, drawing sweat like some sort of prize. He wants to turn away and run back into the blessedly cold corridors, but he can't – partly because the corridors are probably still flooded, but more so because he seems to be rooted to the spot by the sight in front of him. The hot air that rises from the pit dances around Sherlock's hanging body like a thin veil, distorting the image a bit. John decides he can't see anything properly from where he is standing by the door, so he decides to move a bit closer.
Just as John moves to step towards the centre of the room, Sherlock's head snaps up.
It's a sudden movement, but, for some indecipherable reason, John knows Sherlock is still dead – even in face of fact-defying evidence. He knows it the way he knows Sherlock's name or the fact that he loves him. Honestly, despite the abruptness of it, there is nothing scary about the movement.
Not until Sherlock's eyes open.
Eyelids retreat quickly, revealing two eyes, unerringly familiar yet terrifyingly altered. Also, asymmetrical. And of all the things, this one frightens John.
Because in that moment he knows this is Sherlock, but isn't Sherlock, as well.
He knows Sherlock, his Sherlock, is lost.
Sherlock's left eye is red, while his left one is blue, but not the radiant, light blue that John's gotten used to over the years (he not so much got used to it but fell for it, that first week they spent as flatmates, really). It is the listless blue of stale vein blood seen through layers of pale skin, several shades too deep to be right.
The non-matching eyes stare their dead stare at John and John can't move. He is physically pinned by the gaze. The rumbling vibrates around him, blending with the thunderous beating of his jack-rabbit heart, the sound of which echoes around John's skull the way his footsteps echoed in the corridors earlier. A cacophonic march. A Funeral March for a Fallen Soldier. John can't discern whether it is playing for Sherlock or him.
Sherlock's eyes that aren't really Sherlock's eyes manage to glower at John in a way both dead and fierce. There is something almost beastly in those eyes, wild, raw, and wounded. Accusing. If looks could talk, then this one would howl like a wounded animal in throes of death. John wishes Sherlock would blink, but wishes are as useful here as a glass of water in fighting the fire that bubbles below Sherlock.
Tremors shake John's body as the rumbling continues to grow impossibly louder, forcing John to press his palms against his ears in order to muffle the sound. Only, he finds that the moment he does so, the sound becomes even louder. Momentarily disorientated, it takes him some time to realise that's because the sound isn't coming from somewhere in the room. It was never coming from anywhere in the complex, in fact.
It is coming from within John.
It is verging on violent now and John can feel his bones begin to crack, a narrow fissure cleaving apart his sternum. He can feel himself preparing to collapse in on himself, into the void. He looks down at his chest, as if he can see the cracks opening below his skin. Hopeless panic bursts from every fracture and John raises his head back up to look at Sherlock again. There is a ghost of a malicious grin on Sherlock's dead-but-still-dying face.
John can feel the first vestiges of destruction, of infinite decay coming to claim him, and then...
...then...
...John snaps awake, his head jerking against the plane widow where he rested it before falling asleep. The engine on the wing on the other side of the window hums its deep working rumble. John doesn't even bother to pretend that the fear he feels is just the residue of the nightmare. There's no one there to sham but himself, and he knows that wouldn't go over well, anyway.
The private plane commandeered by Mycroft a few hours earlier glides over the international sky like a sparrow on a mission. Abandoned by sleep on the cold, hard doorstep of reality, John lets the gravity of what's happened in the past few hours settle in.
Nine hours earlier, Brixton
Darkness of his and Mary's old flat feels like a soft drink gone stale, all fizzy bubbles gone, the sugar and artificial sweeteners already decaying into unpleasant goo. It feels wrong. All of it. The darkness and the flat that isn't the Flat. John, here, away. John away from Sherlock. This choice which isn't a choice at all, which is an act surrender to faith (or Mycroft...at times, it's hard to distinguish between the two).
Despite the fact that Mycroft believes John's finally made a choice equivalent to Sherlock's, it doesn't sit right with John. There is something missing. A visceral feeling of wrongness gnaws at John's insides. It feels like emptiness. Like betraying, lying, deceiving. John wonders if Sherlock felt the same that day he chose to fake his death and leave John behind. He wonders how hard it must have been...and how much help Sherlock must have had.
A thought punches John in the gut, half relief, half dread. All of it sheer resolve.
Mycroft.
Mycroft may know Sherlock and John and the way of functioning of all of human race, but he is wrong when it comes to this. All of this is wrong.
And if Mycroft is so brilliant, he must be able to come up with a different plan.
Three hours earlier, the Diogenes Club
"There has to be a way, Mycroft." John voice is unyielding, not like metal, but like ages old carbon pressed by the weight of the world into a hard jewel.
"There is one." Mycroft's tone – too neutral, too reserved – and his eyes – failing to stay empty, their uncoordinated, mismatched signals tell John that whatever is about to be said doesn't bode well for him.
John's body bounces as turbulence tickles the plane. Now that he thinks about it, Mycroft's solution was so logical. He should have thought of it himself, John ponders. He wonders why he didn't.
He wonders if he knew all along, but pretended he didn't.
John wonders a lot, because he can. Because it's inane – wondering won't change anything.
John wonders about by-gones and hypotheticals, because it's all that's left. The future, so very not hypothetical but actual, real and concrete, has already been mapped out.
So, John wonders about what could have been, just to pass the time.
It's not regret. It's just curiosity. It's determination.
It's a choice.
Two and a half hours earlier, The Diogenes Club
"Get me there."
"John, you must consider..."
"No, Mycroft. I'm don't considering. I'm done choosing. This is my choice."
Two hours earlier, Heathrow airport, Private hangars
"Just one thing, Mycroft. Was this – me, doing this – a part of some mind game? Did you orchestrate this? Knew I'd react like this and counted on it? "
"No, John. Not this. Not this time."
Mycroft's face is serious. John would even go as far as to call it sad. He wonders if it's genuine, if Mycroft's telling the truth. It doesn't really matter, in the end. It doesn't change anything.
Mycroft doesn't say anything else and John boards the plane.
The plane lands on a strip of dark grey among lush green and dull, wet brown. It taxies shortly and then halts to a stop, softly, softly, as if it will wake the world if it does much else. John can feel the flinch of his body resisting change of position as inertia works its magic and for a moment, he wonders if it is some sort of subconscious resistance on a cellular level.
He can feel blisters on the backs of his heels forming despite the softness of his shoes. Sore, red stop signs forming on skin. John ignores them and strides towards the black car on the side of the taxiway. Looking out the tinted window, as the car moves swiftly and efficiently along the road, John wishes his reflection would stop being distorted in a way that his skin is several shades to pale and his face much to slender to be his own. He wishes he could stop seeing Sherlock staring back at him.
(But he doesn't, not really. All he wishes is Sherlock staring back at him. He doesn't know whether it would be too much or not enough. Probably both. Definitely unhelpful. Destructive.)
John exits the car just as the sky blanches and then blushes with the revived blood flow of the oncoming day. The hotel is small but visibly high-end. Surprisingly, it doesn't really conform to the low-profile requirements of most cases John's been privy to since knowing the Holmes brothers. A strange but mesmerising amalgam of a relic and cutting-edge wonder of modern architecture, it stands half carved out of the great slate of rock and half towering over a crack between two mountains, overlooking a raging river a couple hundred meters below. Shimmering glass contrasts the dull grey of rock, polished so hard that it gleams even in the still-sunless half-light of 7:12 am that accompanies early-spring mornings in the shadow of the Alps.
Drowsy like the swirl of milk in a cup of Earl Grey, the world seems reluctant to wake, either completely oblivious to or successfully ignoring the bundle of nervous energy and internal conflict that is John Watson standing on a gravel path in the middle of the pellucid Alpine air that feels like a gulp of cold water. In the motionless silence, a distant hum of water collapsing from a great height whispers and murmurs the myths and legends of kobolds and the White Hunt, who still linger on in the water spray-mist hovering over rocks that shatter cascades into beads of unstable shine.
John, robbed of the ability to appreciate the wild, unadulterated beauty that surrounds him, trudges up towards the hotel's entrance, feeling the exhausting alertness of a man kept awake too long by an inescapable stimulus, like caffeine. Or adrenalin. His bones are lead and his eyelids must be coated with sanding paper, if the feeling he gets with every blink is anything to go by, but his mind is achingly awake, relentless in its spasmodic grip on John's whole being. As he marches a defeatist's rhythm against the gravel, the shrinking distance rushes to reveal detail and intricacies of the edifice ahead. But of all the carvings and almost-seamless transitions from ancient to newborn, rock to glass, and wood to steel, what catches John's wearily hyperactive eye is a shadowy blotch on the muted pastels that will soon become loudly vivid with vulgar touches of sunlight. A human-shape blotch. The figure stands on an observation deck over the canyon, downhill from where John's making his way up to the hotel.
Ignoring the pang of longing, John starts down the hill, eyes still on the mid-distant figure.
He knows this is what he's been looking for.
He knows the figure is alive.
He knows it's Sherlock.
...
He knows everything depends on how he plays his next move.