Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter VIII - We All Fall Down

-Emily-

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I pause by the door to the late night Internet café, eyes shut, waiting for my surroundings to cease their nauseating rotation.

It takes me a long minute to regain enough self-control to press forwards.

I can't allow myself to waver again.

No sooner had I reached my unprecedented decision, doubt unleashed a counter-attack that targeted my shaky resolve and ate away at my conviction, telling me that I was delusional, desperate, drugged with fear and loathing and craving my criminal fix. I told myself that begging for help in the form of the individual responsible for my alcohol-washed agony was suicide in itself, and that seeking him out would only confirm that the Emily Schott who wore red dresses to weddings and brought friends back from the brink of addiction, was dead.

And so, in an attempt at shutting down the warnings and the mental deterrents, I started to drink.

It took twenty minutes to finish the first bottle. I sat on that same bench and downed mouthful after mouthful, until I felt the sensible voices soften and fade, and the knot in my stomach harden. I reminded myself that the Emily in my head would never have let herself stand on street corners and straddle strangers to fund her alcohol problem. She certainly wouldn't have believed that she would lose the few friends she had to a well-crafted lie and an accumulation of unpaid bills.

I came to an unfocused conclusion; if I was no longer the woman I had been striving to protect, then what exactly was stopping me from indulging myself on my merry descent to hell? I didn't know why I felt that actively tracking down this man was a better alternative to taking my own life – but I did not dwell on it for long because I had decided that, with gaps for friends and a bottle of vodka for my integrity, I might as well prepare myself for eternal damnation by greeting the devil with a smile on my face.

Then came the small question of finding him.

It was luck and luck alone that had me stumble across an Internet café on Pentonville road. It didn't look particularly high-priced with its flickering light fitting and hastily written note reading 'open 24/7' stuck to the glass but, considering that I had a mere fistful of pound coins to my name, the lack of expense played to my advantage.

A passing car startles me back to the present. For all my conviction, I have not managed to coerce myself to enter the building; I'm still outside the door, slick with cold sweat and trying to convince my stomach not to empty its minimal contents onto the pavement.

Attempting to come across as clear-headed when I am so intoxicated I'm struggling to remember my own name is proving more difficult than I anticipated. I lift my chin, square my shoulders and, with a backwards glance at the carefully concealed vodka bottle behind a parked car, I step into the Internet café.

My sophisticated entrance is marred only by the way in which I catch my foot on the step and fall heavily on my hands and knees, to the wide-eyed surprise of the man behind the counter.

I apologise in a loud voice that doesn't sound like mine and haul myself to my feet, holding my head in both hands as the room sways on its pivotal axis. The man raises his eyebrows but says nothing, too caught up in scrolling through pictures of scantily-clad women to notice or care about the drunken prostitute standing in his establishment.

I sit down, welcoming the stability of the chair after the unsteady roll of the ground beneath my feet. It's been several months since I last had access to a computer – or indeed, technology of any sort. Carver took my phone on the night I entered the brothel. I sold my laptop to a technician in exchange for money I then used to purchase my red dress and stiletto shoes, and my PC tower was taken from me on the day the bailiffs came to clear my flat.