CHAPTER 32: ONE LAST FAVOUR
Sherlock collapses to the ground, howling. Giulia witnesses the shooting and drops the wooden table that crashes loudly on the floor. Yet, not a sound seems to reach her: a furious ringing is attacking her ears, and she cannot perceive anything else in that instant. She is in utter shock.
When the bullet from the following shot misses her by inches, she is forcefully awakened from her trance and brought back to that frightful reality. In a moment of lucidity, she runs by Sherlock's side, slides her hands under his armpits, and heaves his torso up, struggling to drag him across the threshold of the rear door. She stares, horrified, at the crimson stain spreading across his chest.
"Oh God, I didn't see it coming," she whines as fear and horror get hold of her, causing an unbearable tingling in her extremities. It feels as if she is detached from her own body; her hands are still gripping Sherlock's clothes, but she has no perception of it. She has the impression that the whole world is spinning around her. Is she about to faint again?
"Neither did I," he grunts more annoyed than worried; he is not referring to him being shot, though, but what he has just discovered about her.
She takes his left arm and passes it over her shoulders, helping him stand up and walk unsteadily away from the house as fast as possible. They stumble while crawling on the cobbled path in the garden.
"Don't worry. We'll get to the hospital. You'll be fine," she says, panicking once they reach Mrs Hudson's car in the driveway. They take cover behind the car as Fred comes out of the front door and keeps shooting at them, chipping off the car paint from one of the rear-view mirrors.
"Take these." Sherlock throws the car keys at her, and she catches them mid-air, too stunned to protest. Then she lowers her eyes to the foreign object in her hand and gives him a confused look.
"You want to take me to the hospital, don't you?" He implicitly points out the obvious: he is in no state to drive.
Giulia nods rapidly, realising suddenly what that means: driving on the left side of the road, something that she is not used to doing. She told him earlier; she joked about running into a tree, but not entirely.
She helps Sherlock climb in the passenger seat, then slides in the driver's place and starts the engine of the sports car, mumbling under her breath, "I can't do it. This is the wrong side of the car and the road."
At that moment, a bullet shatters the back window; she screams at the top of her lungs, pushing her foot down on the gas pedal and making the car jerk in reverse out of the driveway in a cloud of gravel.
"Yes, you can. I'll lead you. Now breathe, put in the gear, and drive as you would normally do. Just try to do everything the other way around," Sherlock encourages her as the car stops in the middle of the main road.
She exhales and does as instructed: she peels out and springs forward towards the highway. She is holding so tight onto the steering wheel that her knuckles turn white.
"It's complicated. And the road sign we've just passed indicated that the nearest hospital is 30 miles away. I'm not sure I can go on for that long."
"Oh no," Sherlock exclaims.
She turns towards him, alarmed. "What?"
He pokes his finger into the hole pierced by the bullet in his clothes.
"This was my favourite coat," he whimpers.
She rolls her eyes. "You're so dramatic. If we both survive, I'll buy you another one."
He gives her a condescending look. "Do you have the slightest idea how much it costs?"
"You know, I'm not a doctor, but I think you should save your breath right now," she snarls at him.
"Doctor," he repeats and realises, "We should call John."
She fishes her phone out of her pocket and speed-dials him. Phoning while driving: as if her driving style wasn't illegal enough already.
It rings endlessly, but John doesn't answer.
"Pick up, please, pick up. Come on, John, I need you," she hisses at the mute line before leaving a message to the voicemail. "John, it's me, Giulia. I'm with Sherlock, he is... injured. Badly, I fear. We were in the town of the murder and are now on our way to the nearest hospital. Please, hurry."
She ends the message and shoves the phone in her pocket, placing both her hands on the wheel again: not much of an improvement, anyway.
"You're terrible at communicating information," Holmes says, trying to lessen the tension, but the slightest movement sends jolts of pain throughout his body, and he wails monstrously.
Whenever she hears him groan and suffer, her chest tightens, hardly able to breathe. She steals a preoccupied glance at him and swallows hard, struggling to fight the numbness in her head at the sight of his desperate conditions.
"It's alright. You're going to be okay," she whispers in a quivering voice.
"You're terrible at reassuring, too. Also, this is the wrong side of the road," he mumbles feebly.
His voice is barely audible over the roar of the powerful engine, and she frowns, expecting another insult.
"What else is there?"
"You are on the wrong side of the road. This is not how you approach a roundabout in England. You should turn clockwise. Now, move to the left, for God's sake," he yells, staring in horror while they rush against traffic. Two cars honk furiously at them, steering away from the racing car's trajectory.
Once out of the roundabout, she swerves violently, guiding the car back into the correct lane.
"Sorry, it's so difficult. My brain is playing against me."
After a few seconds of unusual silence, she comments ironically, "Don't you have a witty comeback to belittle my intelligence?"
She turns her head to Sherlock, only to find him unconscious in his seat. Little does she know he has just entered his mind palace.
Inside Sherlock's mind palace
A replica of Mycroft appears in front of him and contemptuously looks around the corridors of his mind palace.
"Brother mine, what are you doing here?"
Sherlock cringes at that figment of his imagination.
"I'm dying. I need to find a remedy," he affirms as if it were plainly obvious.
Mycroft sniggers, "Gosh, you always were the slow one. There is nothing you can do about it now. You can't find a way out of the pain. You're quite the expert on human bodies and death; you should know that much. Haven't you figured it out yet? Right now, all you need is a reason to stay, to live. Something to hold on to."
Sherlock flares his nostrils. He hates to admit that his brother (or rather, the most rational part of his brain that he subconsciously associates with Mycroft) is, in fact, right.
"Let me look for it, then," he says, shoving that vision aside and rushing down the corridor. He desperately throws open a few doors, peeking inside.
One door opens onto a random crime scene. Nothing special, no particular case, just a crime scene like many others: this is his mental room dedicated to his beloved work. He adores being a Consulting Detective, solving mysteries, feeding his restless brain with enigmas and riddles, and putting Scotland Yard to shame. It's all very entertaining, but it is not enough. Not enough for him to stay.
He steps out of the room and bursts another door open. This time, he is catapulted into the middle of a street with an ongoing car chase. He instinctively smiles at the familiar tickling sensation at the end of his fingers. Oh, how adrenaline pumps through his veins!
The rush of excitement washes away as his eyes follow the cars heading to the riverbank. He gazes at the Thames and looks around at Westminster and Big Ben. This is the room devoted to his London: the battlefield only he sees when he travels across his hometown. London: his favourite setting for any decent crime. He furrows his brow at that sight: That is still not enough. To him, a city—even his city, is not worth the burden of surviving.
Sherlock reluctantly leaves that scene behind and heads toward a black, unmarked door. He carefully lowers the handle and steps into a room mostly plunged into darkness. Nearby, a candelabra sheds some tremulous light over velvet-covered walls. He rolls his eyes at his vivid imagination. Theatrical and excessive; now, that is one hell of a room.
The dim glow of the candles casts vermilion shadows on a figure in the centre. As Sherlock walks closer, the features of a well-known face emerge from the darkness: Jim Moriarty. The 'Napoleon of crime' is lying peacefully on a Roman triclinium while sipping champagne from a flute. When Jim meets Sherlock's eyes, he raises his glass to him in a mocking salute. This is how Sherlock imagines Moriarty inside his mind palace. He raises a brow at that scene playing inside his head. Theatrical, indeed. Still, what else could be expected from two overdramatic personalities such as theirs?
Holmes fixes his eyes on his enemy while circling around the triclinium. Moriarty holds his gaze and a mischievous grin dances on his lips.
Sherlock finally talks. "Why are you here?"
Jim brings a hand over his heart, offended by his rhetorical question.
"In your mind, you mean? Oh, Sherrrlock," he rolls the r on his tongue lasciviously. "You know why. I am your nemesis, your greatest mystery. You might consciously think of me as a mere diversion to kill off boredom, but we both know the truth: you haven't defeated me, you haven't solved our dilemma. So, you won't stop thinking about me. That's why you put me in your mind palace. The thought of our enthralling duel will keep haunting you until we meet again."
Sherlock slowly shakes his head.
"You might be my greatest challenge, I'll give you that. Confronting you, playing a game with you, it's enticing, but it's not good enough a reason to live."
As that realisation dawns on him, he spins around and marches out of the room, slamming the door and leaving that ghost of Moriarty with a desolate expression on his face.
Now Sherlock is in the corridors of his mind palace again and is suffocating. His whole body is in pain. He gasps for air and takes his head in his hands, murmuring disconsolately, "Nothing. There is nothing of value here. Nothing important enough to make it worth surviving for."
Mycroft appears again in front of him. His brother: the image of the most rational part of his brain—the one that keeps reasoning even when he is losing a lot of blood and spiralling out of control.
Mycroft looks down on him with an air of superiority.
"Of course, it isn't here, brother dear. You will not find a reason to live in your analytical mind. You would never allow such sentimental issues up here."
Sherlock raises a questioning look at him. Mycroft snorts, annoyed at Sherlock's slowness—which means that Sherlock is annoyed at himself and his lack of comprehension.
His brother prods him with the tip of his umbrella.
"I'll ask my first question again. What are you doing here? You won't find a reason to live inside your mind palace, you silly boy. All you need right now (your only reason to stay) is currently sitting next to you in a car that she doesn't know how to drive, on the verge of panic. Time to wake up, Sherlock."
He regains consciousness and is overwhelmed by a stabbing pain in his arm (in the same spot where Mycroft was poking him with his umbrella inside his mind palace): Giulia is painfully shaking him by that arm with one free hand, trying to wake him up.
She screams, "Sherlock! No, no, no. Wake up. Stay with me. Stay awake."
His eyes flutter open, and he groans, "Easy. That hurts."
She turns her head to him, her eyes brimming with relief.
"I'm sorry, but I can't let you lose consciousness," she says as her trembling hand lets go of him and clings back to the steering wheel.
He takes some fast breaths and asks, "How long have I been out?"
"Just a couple of minutes, but it looked like forever. Don't do it again, please." Her voice falters. She turns to look at him again, and they lock eyes. There are a thousand unspoken words between them, and it's a chasm that a one-second look can't close.
Giulia averts her gaze to pay attention to the road but isn't quick enough: Sherlock has noticed that she is misty-eyed. No matter how many times she clears her throat, she can't hide that she is getting more choked up with each passing second.
She gulps and murmurs, "You can't close your eyes now. Stay with me. Try not to—"
"Die?" He talks over her and lifts a brow.
She glowers at him. "I was going to say sleep."
"Yeah, death is a particular kind of sleep, quite a permanent one. Could you go any faster, please?"
She shifts to a higher gear, retorting, "I'm trying to, but this is quite new to me. And frankly, I'd like to avoid having us both killed in a car accident."
"I'll die anyway if you don't hurry," he protests and fixes his gaze on her, studying her every move.
She is panicking but isn't losing her mind. She struggles to keep a cool head and dominate her emotions. She has definitely been trained to respond to emergencies, which unleashes a long streak of questions: Who drilled her and why? Is it the result of the time she spent with the British Secret Service? Is she really the daughter of an Italian diplomat, as John has just discovered? And if so, what truly happened one year ago? Did she fake her death? That seems improbable, given that both her parents lost their lives in that explosion of the Consulate, as John had gathered from the newspaper article. The whole family could have faked it and survived, just like she did, but he knows it isn't the case. She told him her father was dead, and it is likely that her mother died, too. She didn't look like she was lying: she would have had no interest in lying about that.
Then why was she the only survivor, and how? Is she a threat? Is she dangerous? There must be a good reason if she wants the world to believe that she died a year ago. So, ultimately, who is she?
Sherlock stares at her unflinching expression; she passes a hand under her watery eyes and regains her composure. She is determined to save him, or at least attempt at it.
He whispers, "No matter what, no matter who you are. Right now, I trust you."
Giulia turns her head to him and smiles weakly. "Good, because I've just had a terrible idea."
She pushes her foot on the gas pedal while the car speeds up, rumbling.
He furrows a brow and jests, "I thought you were ruling out our suicide in this car."
He notices a police car sitting by the side of the road a few metres ahead when she replies, "Suicide is out of the question. But prison is still on the table."
At that moment, Mrs Hudson's sports car hurtles in front of the police car, which immediately turns on the flashing lights and chases after them. Giulia checks the situation in the rear-view mirror and accelerates even further. The police pursue her until she suddenly hits the brakes and pulls over. She turns off the engine as two policemen jump off and stride closer, commanding the driver to get out of the vehicle.
She opens the car door and stands up slowly with her hands in the air, pleading, "Please, help me. There's a man in the passenger seat. He is wounded and in desperate need of medical assistance. I'm on my way to the hospital. You've got to help me."
One of the police officers comes menacingly near her, while the other approaches the passenger side of the car.
"You have far exceeded the speed limit." The first officer scowls at her.
"I know. I'm terribly sorry, but we need to hurry. He is dying. I'm just trying to save his life."
"She's telling the truth. This man is severely injured. He needs to reach the hospital immediately," the other police officer intervenes, peeking through the car window.
"Help him out of the car: we're giving them a lift," his partner says. "You, inside the car." He points a finger at Giulia.
"Yes, sir. Thank you, thank you so much." She obeys and climbs in the backseat where a pale, suffering Sherlock takes place next to her, aided by the other officer.
He doesn't even have the strength to smile at her as he murmurs, "I'm almost impressed: you realised these gentlemen would drive much better and faster than you, thus giving me higher chances of reaching the hospital in time. I must admit, it wasn't your most idiotic idea." That's his peculiar way of complimenting another human being.
Giulia bites down on her lower lip, desperately trying not to break down in front of him. She remembers the basic rules of first aid and applies pressure to his wound, pressing her hands against his blood-stained shirt. Sherlock winces and stifles a cry. Then he places one of his hands on hers: she immediately feels how cold that is. He is losing too much blood, she realises. His touch feels so foreign to her and yet somehow calming. She wishes she didn't have to worry about stopping his blood flow. She wishes she could hold his hand and tell him that everything is going to be okay. But she is so hopelessly unsure.
Why are things always so messed up between them? Every time they touch, the odds are invariably against them; the circumstances are always wrong, like when he took her hand to help her lay down in Baker Street when she was about to faint, a few hours before. Or like now, when she is pushing her quivering hands against his chest to keep his life from slipping out of him.
"Sherlock, I've never asked anything of you, not a single time. I never told you to shut up when you were annoying. I never complained about your violin sessions at 3 a.m.—" she starts off, but he interrupts her.
"I thought you loved listening to me playing."
She nods frantically. "I did. I do. And I want to hear your violin again and again, regardless of the hour, despite our neighbours. I wouldn't argue with Mrs Hudson, though." She forces a smile, and a corner of his lips lifts faintly.
"Neither would I."
"Since I've always been so obliging, I think I have every right to ask for something now."
He arches a brow. "Right now? Can't you wait for a more suitable moment?"
"No, this is the moment. Please, survive. I never asked you anything, and just this once you can't let me down." She squeezes his cold hand as if she were trying to make sure he is still real, still alive, next to her.
"I could've made you a cup of tea if you'd asked me, you know," he jokes, trying to suppress a grimace of pain.
She fights against a lump in her throat and breathes out, "I'm asking this, instead. As a personal favour: stay."
At that moment, the police car stops in front of the ER, and the officers rush out and place Sherlock on a stretcher with the aid of some paramedics. She runs inside the hospital beside the stretcher, incapable of taking her eyes off him.
When the doctors come to a sudden halt, demanding her to leave them and stay in the waiting room, she bends over to give him one last look. Sherlock lifts a hand to caress her face streamed with tears and props himself up, drawing closer to her with great effort. His lips brush against her cheek as he whispers in her ear, "I told you. The Wizard of Oz was right: breakable hearts are so impractical."
When his stretcher darts through the glass doors of the surgical room, Giulia's eyes follow his curly head until the last moment. Then she lowers her gaze on her blood-spattered hands and clothes.
As if she had just woken up from a confused dream only to sink into a real-life nightmare, she suddenly realizes that what she has on her hands is Sherlock's blood and eventually passes out on the hospital floor.
This time, there is no one there to stop her from fainting. No talking about the periodic table, no ill-timed sarcasm, no clumsy sociopathic detective to hold her hand.
The last thing she can think about before she faints is that Sherlock is not by her side at that moment, and he might not be there ever again.
Author's note: Dear readers, I hope you enjoyed this emotional chapter. I know that I have been consistently leaving you with huge cliffhangers, but that's just my mischievous nature... What good is a mystery story if it doesn't have a tad of mystery?
I have one question for you before you murder me: was the mind palace part clear enough? I loved the scenes in Sherlock's mind palace in His Last Vow, and I tried to recreate a similar atmosphere. I hope it was easy enough to follow.
To the amazing guests who are leaving reviews on this story (only a few of you used a name, so shout out to "mr. clever", and "Mia", and to one anonymous Hamilton fan). Since you logged in as guests, I cannot reply to your reviews, so I'll do that here: Thank you for all your love and support.
If you manage to create an account, we could also be able to have a chat and message. I'd love to hear more about you!
More broadly, a huge Thank you to whoever took the time to review this story: it means the world to me.
Any kind of feedback (and constructive criticism as well) is highly appreciated.