The Art Of Corruption ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book III}

Chapter 29- Splinters and Suicide

Millie's POV

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"Sherlock?!"

Emily stays where she is, too shocked to dart out of the way, rocking slightly on her heels as the gun is pressed to her forehead. I follow the arm back to Sherlock, who is standing, shaking, his hair dark with rainwater and eyes red-rimmed. He's holding the gun with both hands, so tightly his knuckles are almost white with strain. But, although the firearm is trained very deliberately on Emily, his eyes are on me.

I can't move.

I can't think, I can't react, I can barely breathe.

He heard.

Everything. I can see it in his face. All those careful steps taken to erase the faults and the cracks that tarnished my neutral exterior have been useless.

"You," he says, and through the disbelief I hear coldness. "It was you."

I open my mouth to speak, but I know that trying to vocalise the sick, heavy sensation crushing me from the inside is an unachievable feat. He watches me for one long minute, his eyes impossibly cold, impossibly calculating, before turning his attention back to Emily. She flinches when his fingers tighten around the trigger, then raises her hands slowly, speaking very carefully:

"Sherlock, listen to me. Don't do this."

"Don't talk to me," he says sharply, refusing to drop his stance.

"Put the gun down."

He shakes his head, almost frantic, and his eyes are focused on a point in the distance that we can't see.

"He'll hurt if I hurt her."

Emily looks at him very strangely. She almost smiles, laughing softly, incredulously:

"No, Sherlock. That won't work. You know it won't."

"Stop it," he shouts, making me start. Emily tenses, but doesn't step away. "Stop it. You sound like him."

Emily draws back fractionally; the comment has riled her. But she continues trying to reason with him.

"I know you're hurting. I'm hurting too, Sherlock. I didn't want Irene to die, not like that. No-one did. But trust me when I tell you that harming me will have no affect on Moriarty's psyche whatsoever."

"It will," snaps Sherlock. "I know it will."

"He'll be irritated, because you'd have taken away that fundamental control. But he won't hurt. I'm not that important," she adds, coldly. "Just think-"

"I'm always being told to think. To analyse, to scan, to observe. I can't think anymore. It won't work," he says, gesturing agitatedly at his head. "I've tried. I can't order things anymore; they're too lucid."

"Grief, Sherlock," says Emily, simply. "That's all it is."

"I don't grieve."

His breathing is rapid, uncontrolled, and his eyes can't stay still. They flit, from the gun in his hands to Emily's face, to different points around the room. Anywhere but me. I want to say something; I want to tell him that it's all been a mistake, that I'm still the Millie he thought I was, I want to lie. But I can't. Because he's heard me confess it, a piece of unwavering, concrete evidence that has undoubtedly been categorised in his head for all time.

Emily's still pleading with him, trying to rationalise Sherlock and bring him back from whatever brink he's teetering over. I can't listen to them. I've always found it remarkably cliché, when people talk about their "world crumbling", but that is the only phrase that fully describes the situation I have found myself in. Everything is breaking away. My grip on my own stability is slipping.