Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter XV - Dripping Red

-Emily-

~~~~~~

I take hold of the silk sheets between the fingers of my functioning hand and my teeth, and I tear myself a long, even strip. I stand up, enter the adjoining en-suite and – clenching my jaw in preparation for pain – hold my macerated hand beneath the tap, rinsing the bloodied mess of skin and tissue and watching the water run orange.

I made a very gruesome discovery, this afternoon.

I woke from my heavy, vodka-imbued sleep to discover the sheets around my arm stiff with coagulating crimson. There was a pain in my wrist that exceeded the dull thump in my head stratospherically. My hand was unrecognisable; the skin had been shredded in short, deep gashes, the layers of tissue beneath made dark by exposure, the edges beginning to harden and form little, crystallised jewels of drying blood and solidified plasma.

I had tears in my eyes as I pulled the stuck silk from the healing wound.

It is now evening, and my recollections of last night are patchy. I recall leaving the penthouse to purchase alcohol and consuming the majority on the curb outside the liquor shop. I remember fragments of the walk back, staggering in my stilettos and shouting wordless abuse at the guards in the lobby. I can think back to snatches of the confrontation; heated exchanges of conversation, 'you sicken me' circling my throbbing head with each intake of breath.

I cannot, however, forget the pain of laceration.

I step out of the bathroom, wrapping the torn silk around my wounds; a temporary bandage. I was lucky not to have severed an artery – I can see the circular cross-section of a cleaved vein when I pull back the raw skin, and I am very aware that, had the glass shards been driven into my flesh with a fraction more force, I would not be standing today. I suppose I ought to be thankful for the wash of vodka, much as it felt like concentrated acid at the time. It proved an effective disinfectant.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, rubbing the circles beneath my eyes.

I will leave tomorrow.

"You took your time to come round."

I flinch at the sound of his voice, and say nothing. He stands in the doorway, clean-shaven, dressed in a new, charcoal suit and seemingly unaffected by the splintering of his remaining sanity last night.

"A little petty, this silence," he says, and I attempt to bite back a sharp flare of pique.

I am unsuccessful in my endeavours.

"Don't talk to me."

"Oh? Are you sulking, Ms Schott?"

I stand up.

"I'll be gone tomorrow."

"Ever the reactionary."

"I mean it."

"Did you mean it last time? And the time before that?"

I spin around, holding up my wrist and spitting, "You have some nerve, James Moriarty. You tell me I sicken you, and yet you do this-"' I press my fingers into the bandage, forcing blood through the silk and letting it carve thin trails down my forearm, "because you don't approve of my drinking habits-"

"Correction," he interrupts, his tone light but face entirely expressionless. "I loathe your drinking habits."

"What is it to you?"

He laughs, humourlessly.

"You are my employee. You have signed my contract. I can't afford to have an intelligence worker with a drinking problem-"