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

Chapter 63 - Smokescreens and Sin Itself

Emily's POV

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I'm scrubbing at my knuckles under the tap, watching the water – made orange with the remnants of dried blood – collect at the bottom of the sink, when the screen of my phone lights up.

I drop everything, wipe my hands roughly on my shirt, and pick up the phone, swiping at John's name. I ignore the grisly smears of rusted liquid on the glass, and hold it up to my ear, talking with a low, desperate urgency.

"John? I've been trying to contact you all morning. I need to speak to-"

"You're not speaking to anyone," he interrupts, coldly. "You've done enough damage to last us all a lifetime."

"Please, John-"

"No, you listen, Emily. Listen, and don't say anything. I'm not calling you to help you build bridges. This isn't an opportunity for you to apologise – though God knows you're going to need more than an apology to fix this." He pauses, collecting himself, and when he speaks again his voice is measured; a strained civility. "Millie is back at Baker Street. We've been in hospital for the best part of the evening."

Something cold knots inside my chest, and I look down at the bloody sink, the mottled bruising across my knuckles representative of a sinister confirmation. I swallow, and force myself to ask the one-worded question I don’t particularly want to know the answer to. "Hospital?"

"Broken jaw. Fractured skull. Severe concussion. You went all out, didn't you?"

"John-"

"We had a tough time preventing the hospital staff from getting in touch with the police. GBH enquiry, they said."

"I need to speak to Millie."

"I told you, shut it. I've been filled in on the details, and I don't want or need your opinion. I'm giving you an update. Nothing more. And don't you even think about turning up uninvited."

"But-"

"Look, Emily," sighs John, and I close my eyes, running a hand through the snags in my hair. "Let things simmer down. We all need to process this, and you turning up guns blazing at Baker Street isn't going to help anyone."

“I just want to apologise. I won’t start anything.”

“Yeah? Is that what you said last night, before you lost it?”

I stay silent, my head sore and pounding with a combination of potent guilt and post-drinking punishment.

"Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"Right. Well, I'll be in contact. Take care, Emily. And for God's sake, slow down with the drinking."

The line cuts off, leaving me sick, shocked and stinging with self-loathing. I don't move for an undefined amount of time, just standing, phone loose in my hand and arms slick with watered-down scarlet. When it chimes in my palm for the second time, I am filled with a false hope, made buoyant with the irrational optimism that I am going to be allowed back into the lives of the people who, until this moment, have provided me with an unwavering source of stability; a frame of mind that I simply cannot access without their company, and without which I find myself turning to the whispers curled stubbornly at the back of my mind, packed tight with images of dead-eyed smiles and laced with the softly accented voice of sin itself.

However, this fragile peak of hope is quickly and efficiently dismembered by the flash of an unknown number. I toss my phone aside, irritably, and hoist myself up onto the kitchen counter, sitting with my back to the walled cupboards, head pressed against the chipped wood, watching white spots prick behind the black of my eyelids.