Nothing made sense. The photos, the maps, the lines, none of it, none of it linked together in a way Sherlock could see. It spread on the wall like a disease, pinned over stained and peeling 70s wallpaper, mocking him, patterns hidden in there that refused to reveal themselves to him.
And he was so tired. Three days he had been awake for, three days running and hiding, hunted across some middling Serbian city, not stopping to sleep, barely eating. He could barely see straight, let alone find the weakness in the gang, but he couldn’t sleep. Everything was so tightly wound, like he was spread too far, too thin, trying to watch his own back and stay alive and stay a step ahead of the other factions he had his eye on and get into the Serbians, but he just... couldn’t.
Sherlock’s back hit the wall, and he slid down it, eyes still on the wall. He wanted to tear it all down, get rid of it, burn it, never look at it again, but that would be failing. Staring at it, though, and being unable to see where the last piece of the puzzle fitted, that was failing too. Long hair fell across his face as his eyes slipped down to his feet, and his hands where they rested against his thighs. They were shaking, and he hadn’t even noticed. It was cold, unbelievably so, the flat he’d holed himself in without power. Turning on a light could be too dangerous, especially when the flat was supposedly empty and there were men with machetes hunting him like he was a wild animal, to be exterminated.
He pulled his legs to his chest, head thumping back against the wall, clenching and unclenching his hands to try and keep feeling in them. With his eyes shut, he could almost pretend he was back there, warm and dry, tea magically appearing beside him, disgruntled noises coming from across the room as John read a politically charged article he disagreed with. It was late night in London, the city would be changing, slipping from the bustle of the day to the dangerous, dark, intimidating night. He liked it best, then. The atmosphere was heightened, and all manner of criminals crawled out of alleyways, on the prowl. He itched to return, to be there again, but it could not be.
We solve crimes, I blog about it...
He could not do this. Not any longer. Not alone. He couldn’t even fathom one gang, let alone finish his task and get back to London, to John. And if he couldn’t do that, then what good was he at all? All this, it had been the best game he could find, stalking the globe to pull apart the most elaborate criminal web he could find, and now he was hopelessly entangled himself, stuck living like vermin on the fringes of a society that barely accepted him anyway.
There are lives at stake, Sherlock, real, human lives!
Oh, so what? They didn’t care. None of them cared. Sherlock flapped a hand in front of his face, dispelling the image in his head, and pushed himself to his feet. Somewhere, hidden in here, there was a small glass vial, and he knew just how much he wanted.
Seriously, this guy, a junkie? Have you met him?
I'm pretty sure you could search this flat all day and you wouldn't find anything that you could call recreational.
“I said be quiet!” Sherlock froze, voice echoing in the empty flat, heart hammering in his ears. He strained to hear if anyone was coming, but all he heard was the street below, muttering to each other in a language he just about understood, and the creaking of the pipework around him. He released the breath he’d been holding and carried on, going to the bedroom. Or rather, what passed as a bedroom, it simply being another brown room amongst brown rooms, metal bedstead squeaking in the corner, a filthy mattress offering no comfort whatsoever, and one, pathetic-looking sleeping bag rolled up at the foot of it. The vial was in the rucksack he carried with him, along with a needle. He’d put them there, just in case.
Because if he couldn’t do this, if he couldn’t solve this, then what was the point? He’d be defeated, caught and tied up and tortured violently until he was forced to beg for a mercy he knew he would not receive. He would not be reduced to that. He himself would chose when to go, and this game, it was no longer fun. He couldn’t go back to London. He’d never get back to John.
And it would only be one dose. He’d barely even noticed. His body was far too exhausted to process the drug, and god, he’d fly, the toxin flowing through his bloodstream and giving him that one last high he’d been craving for years. Everything would seem so big, so colourful and clear and obvious and his thoughts would be like slicing through butter, instead of trudging through the quicksand he’d been caught in for days. Maybe one last high would give him the answer, and he could text Mycroft. He’d sort it. He always sorted it. It was only the thought of John, disappointed and angry, that had kept him from using it anyway, and really, what good had that done him? John would not know. John would never even know he’d been here, in some musty flat in the north of a country he did not care about. He wouldn’t know it had come to this, Sherlock desperate and alone. It was hopeless. He had failed. He was desperate.
Please, god, let me live...
Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut, pushing it away. No, not the time. He shut that part of his mind off, closing the door on the section marked ‘John’, shook his head, and his sleeve was already rolled up, the crook of his elbow exposed and the vein showing itself through pale, scarred skin. The tip of the needle rested there, cold, though he could barely feel it. His thumb rested on the plunger. His right hand shook, and he clenched the fist to stop it, electing once again to ignore whatever it was that revealed about the state of his psyche.
No. Alright, stop it now.
“I can’t, John, I can’t...”
He threw the syringe away, shaking – actually shaking, he held a hand up to his face, watching the tiny vibrations in his fingers that he had absolutely no control over. Not when he could hear John’s voice, over and over in his head, yelling his name, and he couldn’t put him through that and leave it. He couldn’t, he couldn’t-
Sherlock pushed himself to his feet, grabbed his coat from the wall. Everything else, he left. He didn’t need that any more. Fuck infiltration. He’d knock on the damned front door. The simplest way in, and once he’d been left to sleep for a while, well, then he’d work out an escape plan. As long as he was there, he was winning. Pulling a lighter from his pocket, he lit the corner of one of the maps he’d pinned to the wall, the fire catching and spreading slowly through the damp paper, but it all went, leaving no trace that Sherlock Holmes had ever been there. He was desperate.
