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I am not crazy.
Mycroft called today, his voice dripping concern through the receiver of the burn phone I bought. I never gave him the number.
He said he was worried about me, said I looked thinner on CCTV, said that kind of pallor isn't healthy even for someone as pale as I am. I told him it was because his cameras were shit. He didn't laugh; just asked me if I'd been eating. Well of course I have. I eat, then I kill people and following that, I throw up in the tiny lavatory in my hellhole of a flat.
This particular hellhole happens to be in Moscow, on the east side of the city, one of those places you might think abandoned if it weren't for all the people. There're so many, packed tight into doorways, and grubby little butcher's shops, claustrophobic, I hate that, too much input, too much noise, too many people living and breathing, existing, shedding bits of themselves on every surface. I see them all, old, young, filthy, drug addicts and smokers, I look at one there and see he's got some sort of autoimmune disease, probably hyperthyroid judging by the size of his jacket but I can't be sure, he's sort of far and my window is caked in grime from car exhaust and the dirty snow, almost black, that splashes up from the cobblestones.
Mycroft went uncharacteristically silent then. Perhaps I said some of that out loud. I do that sometimes, talk out loud without noticing. My flatmate used to hate it, how I'd mumble things under my breath. He'd throw pillows and books at me, mostly missing on purpose, until I stopped.
The backs of my eyes start to prickle so I swallow and think of something else. Occipital, angular, pulmonary, axillary, brachial-
"Sherlock," I didn't know Mycroft's voice could sound so gentle, careful, like someone talking to a wounded animal.
I count my heartbeats and breathe in-between, in-between, in-between.
"I'm not crazy," I remind him.
He says goodbye and hangs up.
........
The first one was the worst.
It took nearly two months to track him down and when I did, he was cagey and vicious, lashing out wildly in a desperate attempt to escape. I wasn't ready, fumbled with my gun a second too long; got a gash to my temple and another to my left leg from his hunting knife. My muscles twitched as adrenaline and instinct took over and before I really realized what was happening, he was on the ground, choking on his own blood. It bubbled from his mouth like water from a spring, spilling over onto his cheeks, his chin. I'd shot him through the throat.
I stood there thinking, Shoot him again, Sherlock. Put him out of his misery. But I couldn't. Why should I? If I hadn't shot this man it would be him instead, my flatmate, laying on his back, those blue eyes wide with terror, his mouth forming the word please as he gasps around the hole in his trachea, his blood soaking into the carpet our landlady can't afford to replace, spreading under the sofa and up the walls, up and up and up until the sitting room is full.
I opened my eyes and blinked the blood from my lashes. The man had stopped twitching by then. He was so still, just like a crime scene. I walked over and carefully put his limbs right. He had fallen awkwardly, an untidy heap on the floor and something in me disliked that. The disorder of it.
It's the same as crime scenes really, doing what I do, but it feels different. There're no deductions to be made, no evidence to process, no theories, just bullets and knives and the occasional explosion. No time to think, to reason, you just move or you're dead. I hate it. Sometimes I consider just standing still, letting the bullet crash through my skull, paint my brains on the walls like floral print wallpaper but I never do. I have to keep going. I'm not even really sure why anymore, only that I'll lose someone important if I fail.
............
She looks at me sideways, like she can't stand to look at more than one inch of me at a time. I probably don't look so good: it's been a long time since I've done anything like sleep or eat or shave. Those luxuries come sporadically and lately, I cannot afford them. My only constant in life is murder. Some things never change.
Irene always comes with cigarettes. We sit on my bare mattress wherever that happens to be. I smoke, and she stares. Sometimes she talks and I listen. I'm not one for conversation these days but it's nice sometimes, being with a person without thinking about how you're meant to kill them. Not sure why she comes though, to be honest. I'm aware of the fact that we are using her for information but she could do that over the phone with Mycroft instead of coming to me. I think he may have asked her as a favor, perhaps because he worries about me being alone for too long. I suppose that's fine. I'm not allowed to see anyone because I'm dead, but we're both just corpses in the eyes of the law, so I guess it's alright.
Today she starts off by telling a story about some client she had, a ridiculous anecdote involving duct tape and a bullwhip. I almost feel like I could manage a smile by the end of it.
There is a long pause, and I can feel the mood shift, as though the dust particles are being stretched tight like rubberbands, and the air becomes a little too thick. I tense up, preparing for a fight, though I know Irene poses no threat to me.
She picks at her fingernails, feigning nonchalance.
"Mycroft went to see him today. John."
I flinch when she says his name. The monosyllabic pronoun seems to expand below my ribs, filling my chest cavity, carbon monoxide choking my lungs.
"He's decided to tell him about you after all. Tell him you're alive."
I had forbidden myself from saying it out loud. Over two years and I hadn't even thought it, as though it would somehow conjure him up and I'd have to face the hate in his eyes, but I never could manage to stop thinking about him not for a minute nor an hour, even elbow deep in another man's entrails I couldn't stop, so I took away his name hoping to forget a life that wasn't mine anymore.
"He went this morning. He- Mycroft -arranged for you to meet with him. After you're through of course."
Ah yes. My final assignment. Three of them this time, all at once, very dangerous, maybe if I die I won't have to do this, won't have to see him. I am almost sure that my heart is going to explode, pop, like an overfilled balloon.
"Sherlock?" She is looking at me now, clearly concerned.
I want to see him so badly it hurts.
"...I hardly recall what he sounds like anymore." My voice hisses from my throat in broken syllables, as though I leaked the words more than I said them. I'm not really sure why I said it at all.
After she leaves I sit in the dark counting and breathing in-between, in-between, in-between.
It doesn't help.
..........
"He's angry, yes, but he wants to see you, he's been very fair minded about all this."
"Mycroft, I can't."
"Yes, you can. He deserves this much, surely a conversation isn't too much to ask."
"No."
"Sherlock-"
"He'll hate me. It doesn't matter why I did it, I left him, I lied, he'll hate me Mycroft, do you see he'll hate me and I'd rather die than have him tell me he hates me."
"He doesn't hate you, he's just-"
"Please..."
"I don't understand what you think he'll do. It's not as if he plans to shoot you on sight."
"...I wouldn't mind."
"Don't talk like that."
"Why?"
"Don't."
"...."
"Just...meet with him. Five minutes."
"...I'll call you when it's done."
..........
I am hiding in the rafters on the fifth floor of a gutted hotel. I breathe shallowly and wait, gun in hand.
This is the last time.
It's hours later, but finally I hear three sets of shoes, echoing through the empty space as they hit the concrete. They are walking in a line, talking, a business deal of some sort. I steady the Browning with my left hand and take aim, waiting for them to walk within range.
I shoot the man on the left through the head. I don't bother watching him fall; it was a fatal hit. I fire again but miss, hitting my new target in the shoulder. There is shouting now and I have limited bullets. I must finish quickly.
I jump down from the rafters, behind the taller of the two men. I stay down as he swings above me then come up, the heel of my hand connecting with his nose. He reels, stumbles back. His colleague across the room is reaching for something on his hip. Stand still I think. Stand still and it's over.
But my body moves before my brain can tell it not to, and the bullet misses, grazes my right arm instead. It is a fiery sort of pain but I ignore it. He is slow and I shoot him through the heart, right ventricle judging by the trajectory. He does not scream, merely crumples.
A thick, wool clad arm wraps around my neck and squeezes. I struggle, try to twist around in his arms but his grip is too strong. The edges of my vision start to go dark but I hold onto consciousness. I free my right arm and blindly fire behind me. My captor lets go, screaming in pain, while I fall to my knees, my chest heaving and head pounding. I turn to see the man clutching the left side of his head, blood seeping from between his fingers. I can't tell for sure, but I think I shot his ear off.
I stand up on unsteady legs and walk toward him, aiming for his chest. Once through his right lung, then through his stomach. I miss the next and hit his thigh. My hand is shaking a little. I keep shooting until I'm out of bullets, walk until I'm standing over him. His blood spreads until it's touching the toe of my shoe.
Just like that, it's done. I could go home now if I wanted but I don't remember where that is.
It's been ages since I've felt at home anywhere.
.........
Mycroft has put me up in a hotel for the night. He wanted me to see a doctor for the bullet wound, but I told him I could handle it myself. He left after that, presumably to make a phone call or topple a South American drug cartel. Perhaps both. It's hard to know for sure with him.
The room is clean, with a desk and a television and a lamp with a shade. The bed is covered in a very white comforter, so white that I feel dirty just looking at it. I go into the toilet and check my reflection in the mirror. The gash on my bicep is worse than I expected and there is a dark bruise starting to spread across my neck and collarbone. I clean up the blood then turn on the shower as hot as I can stand it. The grime of weeks past comes off quickly but I wash twice anyway. Once dry, I dress the wound and bandage it, then wash my hands again to get the blood from under my nails. I wash them again and again until the skin on my knuckles is red and flaking.
Some stains don't come out no matter how hard you scrub.
Mycroft returns a few hours later with a bag of what smells like Thai. I am sitting on the floor watching the television. He asks why I don't sit on the bed.
"It's too clean," I reply.
He looks at me for a very long time.
...........
The wind has picked up considerably by the time I make it to our meeting place, a park that I don't recognize. Then again this whole block looks different, unfamiliar, like coming home and realizing all the furniture's been replaced. I look around and, relieved to see he's not arrived yet, I shove my hands in my pockets and find a bench next to a coffee stand.
I've never felt more terrified in my life.
Originally, I wasn't going to meet him at all. I sat in that hotel room debating whether or not I should just jump from the balcony or drown myself in the bath. Dying's really not so hard if you know what you're doing and I figured no one would mind since I'm meant to be dead in the first place. Except he might because he's likely been looking forward to doing the honors himself since he found out I was alive.
A car honks down the street and I jump, automatically reaching for my gun. Mycroft asked me to leave it with him, but I refused. I feel vulnerable without it, though I'm not sure exactly what I'm afraid of. Logically, I know I've already murdered all the people that would've killed me. The spider's web is gone now, the spider himself lying in an unmarked grave somewhere in Scotland, per Mycroft's instructions. Logically, I know I'm perfectly safe.
Logic is doing little to combat the flutter of panic in my chest.
I try and fight it down, reciting the Periodic Table backwards but I keep getting hung up somewhere around Tungsten. Passersby are looking at me strangely and I want to assure them that I'm not crazy, just nervous and a little winded but otherwise perfectly fine, just please stop staring. I close my eyes as though that will hide me from view because I know they're all looking at me, staring like I'm some sort of freak. They can probably smell the blood on me, the scent of rust seeping from my pores, breaking me down from the inside, oxidized parts dissolving in oil. You machine he tells me. You machine.
"Oi, mate. You alright?" I feel a light pressure on my left shoulder.
Suddenly the gun is in my hand and I am having trouble processing why that is. The man looks at me wide eyed. Put the gun down, Sherlock.
"Don't. Touch. Me." I hear the words from a distance, as if they came from another man, a man whose thumb is depressing the hammer of a gun, a man who is aiming for vital organs, ready to pump a barista full of bullets because he's afraid.
Put the gun down, I think, but my mind is no longer in control of my body.
The man is staring at me, hands raised, still wearing food prep gloves. I need to put the gun down but all I can see is a man in a wool jacket with a hole in his neck. Logic tells me this image is incorrect. The man in the wool jacket is dead. The man who is in front of me makes coffee in a park. He startled me is all.
Put the gun down, you machine.
"...Sherlock?"
His voice sounds muffled like it's underwater but it is familiar the way an old song is even if you haven't heard it in a couple of years.
"It's just me okay? It's John."
I can hear him coming up beside me but I can't see him yet because I'd have to turn my head, and you don't take your eyes off of a target ever, not even for a second. I am aware now of a small crowd surrounding the bench, the fear obvious on their faces. I wish they would stop staring at me.
"I'm going to come next to you on your right side, yeah? Then I'm going to take hold of your shooting arm. When I say so, you're going to let go of the gun. Can you do that?"
There is a moment of hesitation on my part and I hear his shoes scrape against the pavement as he inches a bit closer. I wince as his hand touches the bullet wound through my coat but otherwise I stand still. He asks me for the gun again but my fingers feel welded to the handle, frozen. He exhales, his breath a warm wave breaking over my neck.
"Sherlock, I know you've done a lot for me already but just do me this one last favor, okay? Let me take the gun."
Slowly, I loosen my grip and he carefully wraps his hand around mine, easing the Browning from my grasp. Then he quickly tucks it into the waistband of his trousers before beginning a whispered conversation with the barista. I put my hands to my eyelids, pressing them closed. For the first time I notice my breath rushing in my ears.
.........
The next things I am cognizant of are the smooth leather seats of a police car. I am hunched over with my arms wrapped around my abdomen and there are hands on either side of my face.
He is pleading with me.
"Sherlock, please, come on, I need you to open your eyes. You just had a panic attack, for god's sake. Hey. Look at me."
I can't look at all of his face at one time because he's too close but I try anyway. He is as I remember him except he's got more grays and and his eyes are sad as he looks at me. My vision blurs suddenly, and I blink hard to clear it. I wasn't done looking at him.
It's been two years since I've dared to think his name but now I test the weight of it on my tongue, the sound barely making it past my lips.
John smiles a little, as though he doesn't quite remember what smiling is like.
"Yeah, that's me." He puts his arms around my neck and squeezes and I don't mind that he's hurting my bruises.
"You scared me," he whispers.
I don't answer, just press my face into his shoulder, count his heartbeats and breathe.