Chapter 8: The Appledore Trials Convene~
Mycroft had moved them all to hiding in the train-tunnels, whilst his people arranged for a private jet to take them to New York.
Currently Molly and the Major were killing time by (accidentally) joining a freestyle dancer's private club video. A smoke machine that put off hot pink mist breathed its emissions into their hovel, but for once Mycroft didn't complain, leaning against a wall, a current newspaper leisurely spread across his knees, eyes trained to the sky, mouth hanging open like some one who sleeps with their eyes open.
" Well at least it might provide us with extra cover." Mycroft said, looking pleadingly heavenward.
"At least...say, when do I get to put proper clothes on again?" Greg piped up, weary of his awkward hospital gown.
Meredith sniffed, " The sooner the better." she hissed, spitefully.
"You know you used to be attracted to me. I suppose that was before you started getting involved in weird feminist cults, and trying to shoot me. I guess the divorce isn't moving fast enough for you." Greg sighed, and tried not to look at his soon ex-wife.
"Oh, the sooner Donovan gets Anderson here the better! Domestic rubbish!" Mycroft moaned, trying to tune out the techno music that the dancers were jamming to, hearing Molly and Major singing along at the top of their lungs.
John sat a little farther down the tunnel, on the edge of a curb made into the pavement ,holding Sherlock almost like one would hold a baby, having wrapped him in one of those orange blankets they use for shock patients. Monitoring him closely.
All of this, had happened WAY too fast.
Getting Sherlock back. Finland. Finding out about his Dad's murder, and being marooned on Baskerville Island! And now-now this haunting of Pandora and the Woman.
All of this on top of learning that Sherlock had been brutally tortured to keep him safe. That this current situation was only agreed to on his behalf.
His heart was squeezing in his chest, chest pains causing his throat to throb. Love for the man in his arms crept through him like every blood cell was a boulder the size of the Stone of Gibraltar. HEAVY, and almost painful.
Sherlock shifted in his sleep, face twisted in misery, something he was seeing in his sleep troubling him greatly. John fingered his face...
"Shh..." he whispered to him. "Hey, mate, it's ok. This'll be over soon! Heck, we don't have enough people we've actually fraternized with to have any more domestic tragedies after this...you know?"
Silence.
"Sherlock?...I promise..."John couldn't finish the sentence, just swallowed a gasp, and tried to smile, hands twitching nervously ,and then resumed fingering Sherlock's face , drawing a thumb over his trembling mouth,as if trying to make it be still.
Whether in response to his name, or to the feeling of John's hands on his face, John didn't know, but Sherlock started talking in his sleep.
"Doll..." he mumbled.
"Come again?"
"His doll...Youngblood..."Magnusson"...whatever...his doll. The Exterminator's doll..."
"Oi, take it easy. What are you on about?"
Sherlock suddenly drew up like a tiny child would in John's arms, pressing his face into his chest, and then the young doctor realized that he was still asleep, if only fitfully. John let a soft breath through his nostrils,and drew him protectively closer.
"What doll, Sherlock? What are you talking about?"
"Me. I am...the Doll. Was...how he...tortured me."
Oh.
There had been parts, whole chapters of the Hiatus, that Sherlock hadn't told John earlier,because he hadn't remembered them.
He was about to get the truest confession from Sherlock ever disclosed.
His guard was only let so perfectly down when he was asleep in the doctor's arms.
"Hyper-active induced sclerosis..." Sherlock hissed, and shifted painfully, and hand shooting up, and batting at John's chest. John gathered him closer, reaching and clinging to that stray hand for dear life...
"Ok. What...does that mean,exactly?"
"What he called it...What he did to me...Mary...she brought me to him. For the bargain, that we made...about John...About...obtaining my Box, or not...She won't have it though...She won't because of my motive...have reason...to keep it locked up tight...Too tight...for her to get in...even with-" he moaned, his train of thought changing mid-stream.
"He chained me...to the wall...somewhere...think it was...in Cancun...The Mexican cartel...supplied him with a lot of smuggled drugs...from...America...substance traceable to Area 51...didn't want to start a War with the allies..left that one alone...Chained me to the wall...Said..." With toxins..I can do anything,Sherlock, I can make anything true, I can make anyone believe, or do,or think, or feel, or become whatever I want to. Gonna turn you into a doll...Porcelain doll..." Then...he...he stuck a crown of needles, on my head. They ...went through my skull...direct injection...some poison...refined from an unnamed alloy they found in...space. Said...he could do anything, said he'd harvest the stars...said he'd be a god...and I'd be his doll...his voodoo doll, the target of all his blackmail. Said he was just using Mary...like a puppet, said he'd get my Box...and use it...on the world. Can't have it...John...that would kill him...all the secrets I keep...keep them for him...to be safe..."
John is trying not to cry. Trying to be steady for him, because he is the one that needs help right now, whether he'd admit it, if he could, or not.
"But...drug...it..mmm...Attacked myelin sheath in nervous system, like MS does...Made it hard, and brittle too, actually literally started transforming it...into ...a porcelain like...substance...Rapidly...hence the name...Painful too,...indescribably painful, past the chart of what brain is supposed to handle...Had serious bout of epilepsy...for 3 days...chained to the wall...
When...when I woke up...couldn't feel. Very numb, very exhausted..He showed me ..a mirror. My flesh...had literally turned...been stimulated to turn itself...hard...and brittle...and it was...off- white...like porcelain..only a tiny bit...softer...mmm...I was...his...doll...And what did he do with his doll?
Beat his doll...Broke it up, like one does and egg...smashed it...tissue still kinda sticky, didn't break,..just cracked...everywhere...Then he gave me the reverse agent drug...Cured me...but hurt...worse than being made sick...Hurt...I was burning, nerves come back to life. And seizures...brain was over-heating,...too high fever...so another drug...Should have died, probably...Drove me temporarily insane...Thought I killed him...thought I crushed his skull, his mind palace...Said he had one...called it the Appledore Vaults. But got to thinking...Nobody as cunning...as ...Magnusson...would only have mental storehouses..information...mmm...Has to be actually at Appledore...in disguise...Hologram...Think it's hologram...have...reasons...Anderson..I need a forensic...One that I know...is better...Forensic to search...Appledore for signs...whilst I draw out the demon...behind the witch..."
He let out a soft snore then, and twisted tighter in on himself..."Said he'd make a master poison...The cat-glove, straight to the heart kind...is always...more unpleasant...Has a unique chemical in the gland of his brain that produces fear...Even a psychopath has fears...just keeps them under lock and key...Gonna use it to make a "Master" poison..To dredge the "bones" up...Two can play at that game...gonna convene...Appledore Trials...Going to burn him..."
John looked at heaven, his breath frozen under forty layers of red-snow rendered blood.
"Oh-...Oh my...God...Sher-" his voice dies in his throat.
What Sherlock has just told him, until this moment, should not have even been scientifically possible.
His friend, his brother, has been tormented for his sake!, beyond the understood capacity of modern science?!
It was all just too much...
John gathered Sherlock closer yet...
"Ok...ok...just...You...just...shhshhoosh...go back to sleep, ok? Shut up, and go to sleep...or deeper sleep,as you seem to actually be somewhat asleep right now..Anderson will get here soon, and the bloody game will be afoot again. But I can't-right now I can't! Do you understand?...Just...let me hold you for a while, ok?...Let me hold the man who died for me in my arms, while he's still breathing..."
Sherlock leaned against John and smiled a bit, as his dream turned to something contented again,
"S'Alright...John...will be alright...Won't...won't...give in...Promised him, made...uhmmm...one of those...vow things. He'll never take the Fall...never..I'll do it...S'Alright."
"Shhhhh! No, no...not this time. Go to sleep! Please, will you just...sleep. Only asleep, for God's sakes! Not tortured, not dead, not dying, not in trouble! Just please be asleep...like a little kid, here in my arms. Wake up and snap at me; insist you're not a child, and don't need me looking after you. Go back to being you...just let all of this stop...please..."
He laid his face in his hair, and begged God to let him live. Just this once, let him live...