Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter CI - Bravo

-Millie-

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I try to sit up a little straighter, but my body decides that such strenuous activity is impossible, and I remain leant heavily against the chair back. The recent morphine hit could be a physical restraint for all the leeway it offers me; an invisible bond across chest and wrists and ankles, keeping me here, keeping me sedate, keeping me in a state of calm detachment. I feel myself easing into sleep, and so I shake my weighted head and look around, at these strange new people, in order to maintain consciousness.

Opposite me is a man. His face is unfamiliar, and therefore I dislike it intensely; his square jaw is unlike the jaw I know so well, his eyes too dark, his nose too curved, his hair too light. He is grotesque; a mimicry of what I once knew as human. He speaks in an accent that is foreign in its uncanniness. They all do. American, I think. I don't remember what American sounds like. It twangs, pulls at chords, skips over the syllables he struggles with. I turn away, nauseated. There's another man, another gargoyle, and to his right is a woman. She unnerves me. My memory of femininity is shaped by what I see in my reflection, and this woman could not be more different: she is alien in her voluptuousness, swelling at the chest, with arms that can lift and legs that can support her weight. They are funfair people, warped-mirror humans. They don't look like me. They don't look like him. They are brazen with their deformities.

I sit beside him in a dress that isn't mine. We drove to a country estate – he told me that these were three individuals he'd known for years, as secure as they get, and that he needed to negotiate a deal face to face. I only retain snippets of his explanation; the morphine makes my mind porous, so that words and phrases slip through.

The man laughs a strange laugh and takes a drink; it's his estate, I think, judging by the easy familiarity of his posture. He claps his hands once. The woman smiles and points to a map scattered with red pinpricks; the other man sits in silence, watching her finger circle a building. They don't seem particularly alarmed by his presence: on the contrary, when he speaks, they listen, and laugh, and nod their heads in agreement. After a while, someone gets out a pack of cards. They play and drink, and I lose interest in the flurry of quick fingers and technicolour dealing. I suppose the underworld is full of schemers and perverts and serial killers. There's no one putting a price on crime, no one setting a value: in white-collar culture, money is placed above sanity.

I suddenly become aware of someone's gaze on my skin. One of the men is staring. It's a visceral, visual dissection, and I tense, holding onto the satin of my skirts with both fists. My discomfort makes him smile.

"Is this your newest addition, Yakovich?"

He speaks with a classic Californian drawl; uninterested and casual, but blatantly disapproving. The second man decides to weigh in with his opinion.

"What happened to that Spanish model – the one with the lips? Carmen? Camilla? She was a real beauty."

"Don't upset the man," says the third voice. It's the woman. She runs her tongue along her teeth – I notice gold capping her canine – and continues, "We all know where his loyalties lie. You read the papers. This one's half dead already."

They laugh in unison. Beside me, I see him turning a single card over in his hand, rotating the paper quickly and to a rhythm I can't hear. He doesn't join in with the laughter, but he doesn't react; he sits very still, save for the cartwheeling queen, with a distant smile on his face. He doesn't blink. He doesn't move, until the laughter stops – and when it does, he lays the queen on the table with deliberate purpose.

"We are here to talk money, yes?" Silence ensues. He gestures around the table, still smiling, still unblinking. "Good. Then let us talk money."