Falling For You

Darkness

1:30 am.

Darkness consumed the room.  Sherlock was finally asleep after worrying about John nonstop.

1:43 am.

John started to shake in his bed.  His body flailed rapidly back.  

He was silently dying. 

A peaceful death in a jarring society.

1:45 am.

Sherlock heard the sound of the heart rate monitor flat lining.  He woke with a start and rushed over to his love, a nervous sweat trickling down his forehead.  He tried shaking him awake, but the vial beeping of the monitor reminded him that John was gone forever.  The nurses came in and had to drag Sherlock away from John Watson's body.  It was hard and they almost had to sedate him to calm him down, but he collapsed briefly after a nurse explained to him softly that John was dead and that he was on his way to the morgue to be examined.

6:21 am.

Sherlock woke up in his flat.  He wasn't sure how he got there but he was in his bed.  He felt someone beside him and smiled to himself.  It had all been a dream.   But then Sherlock realized that the person in the bed next to him wasn't John at all.  It was Sherrinford with his red circular glasses perched on the end of his nose.  He was on his side, looking at Sherlock.  Well, he was facing Sherlock but he was blind so the only thing he saw was darkness.  He always saw the darkness, and he'd been alone with it for so long that it had forced its way into his heart.

"Morning, Sherl," Sherrinford smirked.  

Sherlock was tired, but that didn't stop him from immediately pouncing on his older brother and tackling him to the floor.  Instead of crying out in pain as his head slammed against the floor of Sherlock's bedroom, Sherrinford sniggered, his cackle like a knife piercing the tortured sadness inside of Sherlock.  He fought harder until there was someone at the door.

"Enough," the voice said.  Sherlock looked up and saw Mycroft standing at the door.  He swung his umbrella impatiently in his hand.  The rage in the youngest brother grew as he put two and two together.  Mycroft and Sherrinford were working together.  They killed John to prove that he was nothing but an unnecessary weakness.

"I should have known," Sherlock huffed with a roll of his eyes.  He knew that he would have been able to take both of them.  Sherrinford may have been strong, but he was blind.  Even though he had heightened senses, Sherlock knew he'd be able to surprise his older brother and quickly win a fist fight with him.  Mycroft was slow, so he'd be easy to take down too.  But Sherlock didn't want to fight.  He was tired of fighting.  If they wanted him to stop feeling, he would.  He had nothing to care for anymore.  Not even Redbeard would be able to cheer him up.

"It's for your own good, Sherlock," Mycroft said cautiously.

"How do either of you know what's good?  You've never loved," Sherlock countered, his eyes shooting lasers.  

Mycroft shifted uncomfortably.  "I know enough to know that it's a weakness," he replied.  Sherrinford nodded in agreement, smiling to himself.  Sherlock thought about Moriarty.  He thought about how he would take Jim Moriarty instead of his eldest brother. He thought about how Morairty seemed like a dream.

"That's where you're wrong," Sherlock hissed.  "Love kept me off the drugs.  Feeling is no weakness, Brother Mine."

Sherrinford, who was still on the floor sitting like a child, stood.  He readjusted his suit collar and spat on the floor, a bit of blood trickling from his lip. "Shut up," he begged.  He waited to see if anyone would challenge him, but nobody did.  He smiled.  "Now that you two know where you stand, I'd like to make a proposition."

"I won't help you," Sherlock said.  "And there's nothing you can do to threaten me because you've already taken all I care for away."

Sherrinford leapt across the room at Sherlock and shoved him against a wall, his face so close that Sherlock felt his older brother's warm breath upon his cheek.  "I can make you bleed, Sherlock," he warned.

"Calm down," Mycroft advised solemnly from the doorway.  Sherrinford huffed and pushed himself off of his younger brother. Sherlock turned.

"I have been assured that a large sum of money is being transported out of London in three days," Sherrinford said.  "A client has asked for a way into the truck with the money, and he is willing to pay a good amount for a plan."

Sherlock smirked to himself. "A consulting criminal, just like Moriarty," he sighed, remembering what Morairty had called his job.  

Sherrinford's smile fell. "Who do you think he answered to?"