Author's note: So, after what has probably been the longest I've taken between updates since I started to split the chapters, I return. Some things will be half-explained here, and we will continue with the story line after the brief character exploration on the update prior to this one. So, Allons-y!
CHAPTER 7: THE PENANCE. (Part 2)
If you had to pin-point exactly the moment when Sherlock's life became a living, scorching, and consuming hell, that statement would be it. The detective hadn't acknowledge it yet. He couldn't believe in the deception the criminal was feeding him, if only because he refused to let even some part of him accept that reality.
"T-that's not true." He whispered, daring the maniac to contradict him, to try and get a word edgewise which allowed it to be in anyway possible. "That's not true, that's not true!" He yelled over and over again, his chest rising and falling with a heart beat which threatened to rip out of his shirt like a caged bird.
"You actually, truly forgot." The criminal observed with a taunting smirk across his face. Looking fascinated at the display of bafflement and denial being demonstrated by the person in front of him. The detective, who was usually above understanding his surroundings and who never showed any sort of vulnerability, was now the paragon of confusion. "Though, I guess "deleted" would be a more accurate term."
Sharp eyes glared at the psychopath through raven wet curls. The current silver gaze cutting through bone like a knife to butter. Hatred pouring out of every pore of his skin and the thirst of revenge spilling from his narrowed glare. He awkwardly reached a hand to grab a fistful of the criminal's suit and brought their faces centimetres apart. "What did you do to him?" He asked in a low tone which would have made a lesser man shiver with fear, but Moriarty wasn't impressed.
"That's the best part," He started with an expression of utter elation that could only be decent at a carnival. "I never laid a hand on him." Sherlock's brow furrowed, trying to assess the real meaning behind those implications. If Jim hadn't had one of his mindless beasts to neutralise his blogger then who?
It was not as if the scientist believed him, no. But he reasoned there had to be some level of logic behind the lie the consulting criminal was so obviously telling. He knew for a fact that Moriarty was all too aware of his genius, and if there was to be some inconsistency in his story there wasn't even a slight chance that he would buy it.
"No, I had nothing to do with it," The Irish man continued, as if narrating a bed-time story. Running his machiavellian eyes over the other's blatant suspicion. "You messed this one up all by yourself." Having finished, he stood up and away from the boffin quickly. Striding to the door where he retrieved two half full wine glasses from one of his henchmen and returned to sit cross-legged in front of the shivering detective.
He swirled the liquid in one, while stretching his arm to offer the detective the second. The younger man ranked his eyes in skeptical suspicion. It couldn't be poisoned, that much he knew, it would be terribly anti-climatic to envenom him now, specially after what he just "revealed". He analysed the contents once more, and even if he knew better than to accept anything the criminal gave him, he reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers around the slender part of the glass.
"Let's have a toast for Doctor John Watson." And he raised his wine expecting the boffin to click and toast with him. It won't happen, of course. He won't give him this, not after everything else he had taken away from him as well. When the criminal realised the desired celebration wouldn't happen any time soon, he clashed his glass lightly against the one in the detective's hand; and then resumed to down the drink in one gulp. "Such a killjoy." Sherlock heard him mutter quietly while wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. "Drink." He ordered, and since the curly-haired man is in no state —mental or otherwise— of arguing, he obeyed.
He feels the somewhat cool, but still warmer than him, liquid travel down his throat, snaking its way through his cavities. It tastes stale and quenches the last little flame of hope he had left. As the thick red substance finds its road to his stomach, leaving all promise in articulo mortis, he thinks of blood and crimson and suddenly feels the need to get it out. To banish it from his body with the surge of nausea he was experiencing. He had liked good wine before all of this, had even bought a few bottles for the flat and drank sporadically. But as with everything else, the situation and factors involved changed his perception on the subject. He knew some things he enjoyed before were always going to be revolting from then on, wine was the paragon.
"Ughh, I'll have someone clean that mess up." James said rolling his eyes, as if he couldn't believe Sherlock was reacting like that. Said detective raised his face a bit after he stopped heaving and glared daggers at the demon in front of him. He took what little he had of spark and poured it all in one look. There was little to no probability that it would work, but maybe if he intimidated the madman enough he would spill the truth. Would take back all his words, all his actions and prove to him it was nothing but a long and unbelievably graphic nightmare. He needed to believe in that possibility, it was the only reality which sounded appealing; so he dared what he was convinced was a vision to disappear.
Still, the apparition wouldn't cease its presence before him and took to talking as if explaining the reason his world had come tumbling down. "You know, the moment you jumped from Saint Bart's, it almost killed him." Jim said taking a look at his own hands in disinterest. "Now you managed to finish the job." The expression of pensive fascination on the criminal's face was enough to send the other man reeling. He launched himself to the brunette in what would become his first attempt to ever physically violate his greatest nemesis. He should have known better than to play mad games with the madman. He had already lost so much, and he was through with playing.
The Irish man managed to evade his aim, making the enraged scientist miss his target completely. As Sherlock was laying on the floor, shaking slightly with the final tails of his hypothermia, Moriarty straightened his suit outraged, but below the surface the ever perceptive detective noticed a glint of smugness at his actions, like he had won some unknown match. This made him sag a bit, and somewhat exchanged his wrath for helplessness, nothing he seemed to try was ever effective anymore. It didn't seem to unveil the reality of the situation. Because it was no true, and he was sure of that, there couldn't be an existence in which what the other man was telling should be anywhere near acceptable. The world had no need for sinners like himself, but it would be a grey world without a John Watson.
"I get it now," Brown pits of destruction danced in the middle of the psychopath's eyeballs gauging every reaction of what would become his masterpiece. "No wonder you don't have many friends." He paced to the entrance. He rapped something at the door, and soon after one of his scum was unlocking the door for him to make his grand exit. "You claim to care about them when all you do is put them in danger." And he was out.
The last statement lighted another bulb in the boffin's mind, and he could recall a sentence of what he could only assume was the same conversation he kept forgetting. —"Is it, though? Are you sure there are no other intentions? Are you sure you would act like this if you didn't think Mori- that that sick bastard is out there?— And this time it was clear who and about what was talking, and it somehow did nothing to ease his troubled mind; for he felt more and more at a loss with each thing he managed to remember. Could it be true? Had he provoked what he thought he did?
Just then did Sherlock realised the song had stopped playing. It had driven him insane, up to the point of wanting to rip open his scalp and cover his ears from the inside; but now that it was gone he couldn't decide if the silence was in any way relieving. As it dawned in him, the light in the room seemed to preen on the fullness of the dramatic behaviour being displayed, but then it suddenly dimmed, and the world seemed darker, grey.