Broken Child

Chapter Ten

Did you miss me?
Surprise!  Not dead. Simply suffered from a serious overdose of reality. Had no time to write! But worry not, I have come with a chapter...ish. Sort of thing. Well more like a teaser for what is to come. I have had a sudden spurt of inspiration and creativity and have been writing a lot more recently. I hope you have all not lost hope in me as I am going to try and update more frequently.

I have done something in this chapter that I may or may not regret. I have given it thought. I may have made you all hate me and the story, but I am strongly hoping for an opposite reaction. Enjoy!
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"Molly..."

An image of his wife, lying limp in a hospital stretcher grips his mind. She is so small, so innocent. Resting her body, weary from birth. She looks so tired, the name of mother still new to her. It's all he can think of. And all he can think of to say.

"M...Molly..."

His eardrums rang and his body felt the weight of smoke and fire and wood...or perhaps a body, but not his own. He couldn't tell, for his judgement was clouded by the hammer in his brain, slamming, exploding, slamming, exploding inside his head over and over like a cynical song.

"I...I can't..."

Sherlock opens his eyes.

"Molly I can't..."

"Sherlock!"

He hears the familiar voice of his friend but cannot identify a face anywhere. He cannot identify anything. There is...nothing. Not the nothing in the abstract sense that Sherlock felt in his heart before he met his wife. No...it was a literal, terrifying nothing that surrounded him and completely and utterly submerged him in darkness. Like his eyes had been replaced with a thick film that distorted and blurred like melted candle wax dripping into his sockets. Everything was gone. Everything was foreign. He couldn't think of anything except for that he couldn't...he can't...

"See...John...where are you...I can't...see. I can't see...John I can't see!"

"I'm here Sherlock, Christ I'm bloody here!"

Sherlock feels hands press against his head and his shoulders and he grips onto them wildly, as if it was the first time he had touched anything. His trembling fingers trace the outline of an arm, a shoulder, a face etched with firm wrinkles that must have belonged to John though it wasn't there in front of him like it should've been.

"My eyesight is gone I...I can't see John, I can't see you!"

"We're getting us out Sherlock, we're getting us out...you hold on to me and don't let go, you hear me?!"

Sherlock barely has time to respond before he feels himself lifted from the ground in one violent motion. His throat tightens and he sputters at the abrasive inhalation of smoke.

"Don't breathe, damnit!"

Watson hollers as Sherlock feels his body being slung over John's shoulder aggressively. Sherlock feels his chest heave and feels the sting of smoke cutting open his lungs. He tastes the acidic qualities of vomit escaping his mouth unable to control it, and listens to the fire sirens wailing sadly outside, and smells a metallic tinge as all his senses work in overdrive to compensate for his lack of sight. Sherlock seemed a stranger to his body. The cuts around his eyes that poured warm blood down his face he could feel intensely, a hotness raging in his flat echoed a terrible heat that seemed to bake his skin, the limpness of his own body lying like a potato sack over Johns back as he struggled to find an exit. He could feel and smell and listen and gag at the taste of smoke but he could not put a picture to these details. His strongest sense seemingly vanished in the explosion. Everything was too intense to his remaining four. Too overwhelming. Too much.

"John..."

Sherlock mumbles, but he wasn't talking to the man carrying him.

"My boy...my John..."

Sherlock dug into his memory and pulled out an image of his son, cradled in his arms, dreaming away. He saw his black curly locks. His pale little fingers. His tiny smile. It was all he was going to remember about him, Sherlock thought. Sherlock clung to the image like it was his last breathe. He barely noticed the air around his nose abruptly becoming thinner. A pale blue replacing the black, beginning to coat his eyes like a paint, unable to put the image of black London birds or white paste clouds to it. A breeze tickled his skin and raised the hairs on his arms. The symphony of sirens burst into his eardrums. The voices transformed into a more crystalline melody above the sirens. Sherlock felt something cold and slippery misting about him. It was water freckling over his tattered shirt and he shivered. He felt his weight shift from Johns back into many, many hands, grabbing his wrists and clawing his back and he nearly fell due to the change of balance. The melody of voices asked him in colorful tones to calm down. To look at them. To count fingers that weren't there. To see a light that wasn't there. You're in shock, the voices reassured in an unconvincing way. You're in shock. Sherlock instinctively thinks to deduce them but can't. His sight was lost, and therefore he was lost.
Sherlock froze, his limbs jolting, turning to ice. He belted out a long yell, topping the chorus of voices and sirens and cackling wood that he knew was burning his flat to a crisp. He heard John call out to him, and then he passed out.