CHAPTER 7: THE PENANCE (Part 4)

After all, no matter how many times you told Sherlock the truth, if you were lacking proof, he will probably never believe you. However, as he saw validation of his worst fear stored inside his mind palace -which was now destroyed beyond recognition- he didn't have any choice but to consider it.

And like a bucket full of water, reality was bestowed upon him with such savagery that it made his whole body shiver. All the truth started dancing in front of his eyes like a sick merry carrousel; the fight, the chase, the finality of the now high definition memory of a wail ringing through the air. Oh, how wrong he was to think that this captive life was nothing short of a mirage. A dream from which he would wake soon enough. When in reality, he felt awoken from a nightmare-filled unconsciousness to an even worse existence.

Guilt, a projectile which drove into his marred skin and ripped open his flesh, was making him panic. He took hold of the wall behind him and he felt how the bullet was piercing him and destroying everything in its path. Not unlike any other shot wound, it started bleeding before the shock allowed it to hurt; Once the pain came, the tides rushed over him strongly and the current took him away completely.

He felt like falling, plunging deep into a sea with his hands, pockets, stomach, full of stones. Swiftly traveling through the waves and tides, almost suspended while going under fast unto the long and careful arms of the ocean. With a burdensome ball and chain accelerating his descent. The detective was choking, trying to find air to breathe in the suffocating room which seemed to be getting smaller. His throat constricting with the walls, and his lungs shamelessly collapsing inside his chest. Filling themselves with water and slowly dying from the excess of liquid inside. Drowning the plea from his voice.

He tried reaching out, moving his heavy limbs up to try and grasp the remaining scrape of sanity he possessed; but his cavities kept on filtering in water, and his being kept on ripping through it. He was losing his mind, drunk in the need for something onto which he could hold, the only hope he had left slipping through his fingers.

Before, he could feel something inside his fist. Some sort of smooth fabric which he could use to keep him afloat in a pond of poison, keeping it between his digits like a lifeline. But now, after being aggressively shoved into dirty waters he did not want to swim, his hand had lost all its ability to seize it, and he knew in order for Moriarty to see how far he could sink, he just had had to make him let go.

Clutching his abdomen to try and keep it from attempting to retch the food he hadn't consumed, he slid down the wall. Feeling as if he had been shaken until all his bones had disassembled and all his arteries had been tied into tangled knots. Grossly weeping like his life depended on it.

And that right there, was the punchline for the biggest joke: Sherlock Holmes, the man known for acting like a machine half the time, and being a heartless bastard the other half, was crying. Shamelessly mourning something he thought he would never have to lose. Contrition and pain being spilled like blood in war, while he helplessly poured stream after stream hoping his eyes would just go dry.

In his remorse-ridden daze, the silver-gazed man could hear steps getting near his current position. Hands grabbing his dark curls and yanking so his head would raise. He didn't really know what was happening, and he particularly did not care. They could do whatever they wanted to him now, he was too preoccupied with trying to invent a way for the ground to open a crack and then convince it to let him slip through it and reside there in the subsoil.

He heard a faint gasp, and a pair of amused chuckles once the present saw his red-rimmed eyes, tear-stained cheeks and his haunched position as sobs racked his frame. "Don't cry, sweetheart." One said with as much venom and ridicule he could muster. The other figure in the room already fully laughing, and muttering under his breath something along the lines of Pathetic Scum. "Come on," The first one urged. "Open that mouth for me." He grasped the man by the jaw and after squeezing to get it to widen, he snatched the bottle from the other man and poured some substance down the musician's throat.

"Good boy." The second one commented, while the other pat him in the cheek after releasing his abused mandible. The crumbled form on the floor watched them with resentful eyes, but didn't say anything back. The two goons stood up and walked away. Disappearing into the silence, while the detective was still trapped inside the dream-like walls that now seemed to surround his existence.

Demented in his self-loathing, having betrayed one of the only true things he had in his life. Because he had promised the heavens and the trees to protect that man until his last breath, from himself, from all the criminals they chased, from all the beasts and demons they could encounter. But he had failed to anticipate what he would do to defend him from the ones which had always lived inside of him.

Even when he was younger, Sherlock never expected dying and going to heaven -if there was even one. However, this time he was positive. There would be no eternal salvation for him when he was to depart from this life, not after what he had done to John. All the blogger ever did was loyally follow his every step, to believe in him when no one else would, and that was the way the detective had repaid him. He didn't deserve forgiveness, and honestly, he was glad not to get it. He knew he will be going to hell for this, and he will readily welcome it with open arms.

Author's notes: I hope you all really liked it. I want to thank all my loyal readers. Let me know what you think.