Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter XLIX - Murder Most Foul

-Emily-

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There is a pain at the back of my head.

It's not a crippling pain, or a stinging pain – it's soft; a muted, blurred pain that cradles the curve of my skull in its upturned palm, dulled by morphine but not dulled enough.

I become aware of my own consciousness slowly, in patches. Fluid thought becomes solid, the hint of metal at the tip of my tongue becomes a taste, and I recognise my dark surroundings as the back of my eyelids, closed in swollen sleep. My chest is heavy. I can hear movement.

Something sharp pricks my arm.

Initially, I dismiss it as a doctor administering further medication – I know I'm in a hospital; I was half-conscious when they scraped my broken body from the pavement – but I feel it again, a pinch, metal piercing muscle, and then a thumb, the nail cold against my skin and pressing down on the pinprick. Curiosity prevails: I take a quick, bracing inhalation and attempt to shake myself free of the remnants of sleep, forcing my eyes open through the raw bruising and the tug of stitches–

Mary Watson looks back at me, her face very calm, lips red and eyes outlined in bronze.

The room is empty.

"Don't speak," she says, evenly. "It'll start working soon."

It takes me a moment to process her words and the sinister intent behind them. Mary is sifting through the contents of her bag, her fingers quick and ruthless, and I turn my head, struggling against exhaustion. The urge to sleep won't leave – it's artificially smothering, and I can feel the fatigue increase; lapping my head and throat with each, narcotised beat.

She's got a needle in her hand.

I try to move, but whatever she's injected into my bloodstream is holding me in place, keeping me silent. My tongue feels heavy in my mouth. I can't form letters. My eyes are dry, but I fear blinking. I'm unresponsive. Mute. My struggles stop. She retrieves a small vial from her bag and lifts it up to the light, inspecting the opaque, white liquid and shaking the glass to mix the contents. There's another needle – this one smaller, lethally compact – and Mary flicks the syringe, removing the cap with her teeth.

She takes the plastic pouch currently connected to the vein in my left arm, shifts in her seat, and looks at me steadily.

"You know why I'm doing this."

I laugh, humourlessly.

"You wouldn't keep quiet," she says. There's loathing in her tone – whether it is directed at me or herself, I can't tell. "I gave you a choice, a chance to wipe your slate clean. You could have started again. You could have been anyone."

I look at Mary Watson very, very carefully. If I were mobile, I'd take her head between my hands and wrench it back until her hair brushed the base of her splintered spine – and do so with a genuine satisfaction – but, seeing as I am currently pinned into place by a combination of morphine and an unnamed chemical, I content myself with a look I know conveys the intensity of my fantasy. Mary herself is blank-faced; she's alert, on edge, but still controlled, practiced in this art of feather-light fingers and homicide.

"You don't have children. You won't have children. You won't marry. You won't know what it's like to care about a person so much, so deeply, it rots you to know that they love a facade. But I'd die to keep that facade alive – I'll take lives. I live an illusion, and there is nothing I would not do to make that illusion a reality. Nothing."