(no subject)

[impishtubist]

"Beyond the Stars" (6/6)

Summary: “You have a choice to make, Sherlock Holmes. Your friend... or your lover?”

Forty years ago, humanity left behind a dying Earth and fled to the stars. But life in space is fraught with danger, and some of it is found inside the very walls that are supposed to keep them safe.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Sherlock can’t remember the last time he saw so much red.

It pours from Lestrade’s body, pools around him, drenches Sherlock’s trousers and soaks his hands as he tries to apply pressure to the myriad wounds. And there is red at the corner of his vision, angry flames that crackle and hiss as they eat away at the computers and snake across the floor towards them.

And then Sherlock blinks, and he’s standing on the wrong side of a glass window, staring blankly into the operating theater while a slew of red-uniformed doctors try to piece Lestrade back together again. Sherlock’s shirt is sticky with blood and more of it has already dried on his arms, and none of it is his own. The copper smell makes his stomach lurch, but he can’t compel himself to move just yet.

A blanket appears around his shoulders, and Sherlock half-turns to see Molly standing at his side. Her face is lined with strain, but when she looks at him her eyes are too understanding.

“Hello,” she says softly, and all he can do is nod. She adjusts the blanket, wrapping it tighter around him until he finally takes it from her, gripping the ends and folding his arms tightly across his chest. It’s only now, enveloped in the warmth of the fabric, that he realizes that he’s been trembling. “He’s going to be all right. I’ve just spoken with Sarah.”

“Mmm,” is all Sherlock can think to say.

“Would you like me to sit with you?”

Sherlock shakes his head.

“That won’t be necessary,” he says at last. “I’ll not be staying.”

He makes a move towards the door when her voice stops him again.

“I can call, when he’s woken up.”

Sherlock turns and stares at her a moment, unseeing.

“No,” he decides. “I’d rather you didn’t, actually.”

“Don’t you want to see him?”

She actually appears surprised, and Sherlock can barely contain a bitter laugh.

“No. I don’t.”



John finds Sherlock in their cabin.

It’s just past four in the morning. From Sherlock’s rumpled clothing and the slump of his shoulders, John can tell that he hasn’t been to bed since the accident, even though he must be weary beyond exhaustion. John, for once, does not chide him for this, nor for the fact that Sherlock is smoking in their rooms.

“Hello,” John says softly.

He peels off his shirt and reaches for a t-shirt he had thrown over the back of a chair yesterday afternoon. It’s not much of a change, but it’s enough to start to ease his overworked mind and frayed nerves. He has been on-duty for hours; perhaps even for a full day. He’s not entirely sure, in all honesty. He can’t count the number of patients that have crossed his operating table, nor the number of gruesome injuries he's seen. But the number of casualties passing through his doors finally started to slow around midnight, once the technicians broke through the final seals on the ship and freed the rest of his medical staff. John has been granted a six-hour respite because of this. It’s not much, but he will take what he can get.

“John.” Sherlock’s greeting is automatic, and just as quiet.

“How do you feel?”

His cabinmate doesn’t answer him. There’s a butterfly bandage at the corner of Sherlock’s left eye, holding together the skin after a piece of flying metal split it open. A few millimeters to the right and he’d have lost his eye, but it’s still the only injury Sherlock has from the explosion. John escaped with only a few bruises.

Greg was not so lucky.

“Hungry?”

Sherlock shakes his head. John’s not either, and though he doesn’t feel it yet, he knows that it will catch up with him in another couple of hours. The same goes for Sherlock, who hasn’t eaten in longer. John is surprised that he’s still standing, in all honesty.

“If I make something,” he asks gently, “will you eat it?”

Sherlock snorts derisively.

“No,” he says at last.

“Okay... um. Well. We found Mycroft.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says absently. “I know.”

“He’ll be fine in a few days,” John continues, pressing on even though he knows Sherlock would like nothing more than to be left alone. “No lasting damage at all. He’ll be hooked back into the ship in no time.”

“Mmm.”

“They’ve found and disabled the rest of the bombs,” John goes on. “And, well, looks like it’ll take them nearly a month to get the computer restored. The bullets were quite... thorough. But... it can be done. The ship’s been saved, Sherlock.”

John hesitates a moment, and then adds, “He did it.”

“Nearly at the expense of his own life.”

Sherlock’s voice is hollow, and wavers slightly on the last word.

“Greg’s resting comfortably in the Infirmary right now,” John says in a low voice, trying to reassure. “There’ll be some pretty bad scarring, but he’s fine. It was damned lucky those bullets didn’t hit any vital organs, God only knows how they missed. He was even awake and asking about you.”

That earns him a wince, and John instantly regrets his words. To anyone else, Sherlock’s being here now would seem callous when Greg is lying severely wounded in the Infirmary. But John knows--as does Greg--that this is how Sherlock copes with grief.

And guilt.

John shifts his feet, considering the benefit of his next words, and then adds, “It was quick. I doubt he really even felt it at the time. He doesn’t remember it, certainly.”

“Oh, who the bloody hell cares,” Sherlock snarls abruptly, turning back to the porthole and his cigarette. “Does that change the fact that it happened at all?”

“He’s alive, Sherlock. Focus on that.”

“Why should I?’ Sherlock growls. “What’s the bloody point? It still happened!”

“The point is,” John says gently, calmly, “that it was worth it, to him. It was his decision. You are alive and safe, and... and he’d say that made it more than worth it.”

“Would he now?” Sherlock asks dully.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Even knowing that I was the one who led him into danger?”

“It was his choice.”

“It was idiotic.”

“Not to him.”

The light glints off Sherlock’s hand as he raises the cigarette to his mouth again. He’s wearing a ring. Another moment of contemplation is spent before John realises that it’s Lestrade’s.

“This is horrendous,” Sherlock announces before John can comment on it. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth and gives it a moment’s thought. “Truly. Whoever thought that low-tar cigarettes were a good idea?”

“Doctors, for one.”

Sherlock grunts. He sticks the cigarette back in the corner of his mouth and shoves his hands into his pockets, and for a while there is silence once again. John’s almost decided to leave when Sherlock starts to speak, his voice hollow and words flat.

“He gave me a choice. Moriarty.” He drops the cigarette to the floor and presses it into extinction with the heel of his shoe. “You, or... or Lestrade. My friend, or my lover.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“No, you aren’t,” Sherlock says bitterly. “Before the main control room, before I found you... Moriarty contacted me privately. He told me I could only choose one. I could only choose one of you to save. And I made that choice.”

“Ah,” John says in soft realization, because when Sherlock stumbled upon him in the access tunnel, he had been alone. “Oh, well, I’m sure you made--that is, I’m sure you analyzed the situation logically and -”

“Logic,” Sherlock repeats derisively. “Logic doesn’t even begin to come into it. It was pure chance that I came upon you first. I didn’t mean to. I chose Greg, John.” He searches his pockets for another cigarette and comes up only with his lighter. He spends a long minute fiddling with it before adding, quietly, “I will always choose Greg.”

“That bothers you,” John says in some surprise. Sherlock snorts.

“You spend all your time trying to justify me; trying to make me appear human for your readers. Sometimes, even I can believe it.” Sherlock sighs through his nose. “But you should know... in the main control room, had Greg given me the chance to do so, I would have chosen him.”

“Why are you telling me this?” John asks quietly.

Sherlock gives a huff of disbelieving laughter.

“I don’t know.” His face hardens. “No, I do know. Write about this; don’t write about this. Say I refused to make a choice; say I would have betrayed you in a heartbeat. I don’t particularly care, it’s all much the same to me. But whatever you write, at least you know the truth. I am not the man either of you want me to be. That’s all.”

John swallows, unsure of what to say.

“There’s nothing wrong with having made a choice,” he says finally. “Especially that one.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer him. For a while there is nothing but the ticking of the clock on the wall; the faint sputter of the engines beneath their feet. Crews have been working around the clock in order to get them back into working order. Absurdly, one of the most disconcerting things about the whole ordeal was how still everything had been. John can’t remember another day in his life when the engines weren’t working. Feeling them beneath his feet again is a relief.

“We didn’t find his body,” John ventures when the silence becomes too much.

Sherlock shakes his head slowly.

“Moriarty’s? No, you won’t,” he says at last. “There never was a body to find. Moriarty didn’t just hook himself into the computer like Mycroft, John, he was the computer. His consciousness was in there. He discarded the body long ago. I saw the amount of memory he was attempting to access in the main control room. It was massive, almost unbelievably so. He erased hundreds of programs in order to make room for it all, and the integration had lasted hours already when we interrupted it. There’s only one thing that would need that much room in the computer, impossible though it may seem: his mind.”

John is quiet for a moment as he absorbs the enormity of what Sherlock’s trying to say.

“Do you think we’ll hear from him again, then?” he asks finally. “I mean - Greg blew up the main computer. If Moriarty was housing his mind in there, he’d be gone. Right?”

There is a lengthy pause before Sherlock answers.

“Yes,” he says absently. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

Somehow, John isn’t reassured by those words, but he can sense that the conversation has drawn to a close.

“Get some sleep, Sherlock,” John says before he departs. “You look like hell.”



Sherlock pulls out his mobile when John has gone and brushes his thumb across the display, reading again the words that have seared themselves across his mind since he first received the message hours ago.

See you again very soon, darling.
    xx JM

It’s not over.

And, truth be told, Sherlock isn’t entirely sure that he is sorry about that. He may be the reason why Lestrade gets out of bed in the mornings, but the promise of future puzzles is what keeps him going through times of hellish tedium.

But he’s not proud of that, not anymore, not when every time he closes his eyes he sees Lestrade in the crosshairs of six different snipers. He wants to change and knows he can’t and someday, someday, simply wanting won’t be enough anymore.

Having exhausted his supply of cigarettes, Sherlock makes himself a drink. The liquid burns its way down his throat, the sting unfamiliar and the taste bitter. But he quickly grows warm and numb, his mind going blissfully blank as the alcohol hits his empty stomach, and turns back to the porthole.

Outside, the vacuum slides by as they move through the inky void, and somewhere beyond them, far beyond where he can see, stars are  burning.

“Here’s to you, love,” he says gruffly, bitterly, before downing the rest of his drink. “I hope it was worth it.”



And later, in the Infirmary, Lestrade takes Sherlock's hand in a too-weak grip, tugs his mouth into a mere approximation of the smile Sherlock is used to seeing, and brushes his thumb over the ring that sits on Sherlock’s left hand.

“Yes. Of course it was worth it.”

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

As soon as I saw that this had updated I rushed over to find it. It's wonderful - the whole AU is great. And this final part: firstly you saved Lestrade, and then Sherlock's reasoning and John's total understanding, all great.

If you ever had any doubts about this story, I would echo Lestrade's words "Of course it was worth it."

[impishtubist.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you! This is my first real venture into a true AU, so I'm glad you liked it! And I'm also glad you liked the ending, with Sherlock's doubts and Lestrade's understanding.

Thank you for following this all the way through!

[list-of-lists.livejournal.com]

This is a fantastic ending (and a fantastic entire fic)! The last lines, especially, and Lestrade's “Yes. Of course it was worth it.” and Sherlock's confession to John. I've definitely enjoyed reading it all (even with the cliffhangers!).

[impishtubist.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you put up with the cliffhangers and liked Sherlock's confession. That means a lot!

[opal grey (from livejournal.com)]

Oooh, that message!

You're good at cliffhangers, but also very good at satisfying endings.

[impishtubist.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I do enjoy cliffhangers. But I'm happy this ending was satisfying, too, after all of that :)

[rusty-armour.livejournal.com]

Apologies once again for the delay! I kept meaning to read the rest of this story, but didn't manage to finish it until today. Anywaaaaaaay, I think it's wonderful! :-D I believe I said this in my previous comment, but the premise for this AU is absolutely brilliant. You take a very sci-fi concept and give it a unique Sherlock spin. I think it's a stroke of genius that Mycroft has taken his surveillance one step further and has actually connected himself to the ship's computer. And Moriarty would be insane enough to try to become the computer and seize control of the ship. There's something seriously creepy about storing your mind in a computer, and I think you present the full sinister horror of it.

As always, you do a fantastic job of showing what makes all of these characters tick, especially Sherlock. You add an extra layer of darkness to the story when you have Sherlock confess to John that he would have chosen Lestrade. Then, it becomes darker still when you reveal that Moriarty isn't dead, and Sherlock is secretly glad because he needs the puzzles Moriarty supplies. That almost made me shiver, but in a good way.

BTW, I'm so happy Lestrade survived. I was sure you were going to kill him. *g*

[impishtubist.livejournal.com]

Don't worry! I apologize in return for my delayed response.

Thank you for liking this little universe! I'm glad it had both a sci-fi feel and a Sherlock feel to it. That's what I was aiming for! I'm also happy that Moriarty's storing his mind in a computer worked for you.

Yeah, I had quite a few people convinced that Lestrade wouldn't survive. Hence all my author's notes going, "The warnings are accurate, I promise!" :)

Thank you for reading and commenting!

[archea2.livejournal.com]

Apologies for reading and commenting late - I was finishing a fic of my own and I can't read the pairing when I'm writing, too afraid to get influenced!

But that was a lovely reward - I loved that Mycroft can be wired again and that Greg finally made it through. And Sherlock's toast was one sweet ending touch. A little jewel of an AU, well done once again!

[impishtubist.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean. I also try to avoid reading S/L when I'm writing it. :)

Thank you very much! Glad you liked the toast and Greg's survival :) Thank you for reading and commenting!