(no subject)

[impishtubist]

Title:  “The Fall of Gods” (1/24)
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Mycroft, Ensemble
Pairings: Established John/Lestrade
Rating: PG-13
Warnings (this part): Language, angst, mentions of suicide
Word Count: c. 1,000 (this part); c. 70,000 (total)
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Spoilers: through “Reichenbach”
Beta: Many thanks to canonisrelative and list_of_lists for their suggestions and guidance.

Summary: Sherlock finds an ally in death and begins the slow process of dismantling Moriarty’s network, not knowing if he’ll ever be able to return home. Meanwhile, John and Lestrade mourn, remember, and move on.

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Notes: Everything will be warned for in this fic; there will be no surprises. That being said, do keep an eye on the warnings with each installment, as they may change. The rating will go up with subsequent chapters, and pairings will also be added.

This is set in the same universe as "Liaisons," though it's not necessary to read that first, or at all. It merely establishes the J/L relationship.

Further Author's Notes will have more details.

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“When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

                                                                                                                          --John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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Sherlock wakes up on a slab in the morgue.

Cold pricks his skin. The chill burns and flares along his limbs, which fail to respond to his brain’s instructions to move. Dimly, he is aware of a woman’s voice, but his assessment of his body’s condition overwhelms his senses and he does not immediately register her words.

Two broken bones. Dislocated shoulder. Numerous cuts and bruises. Dried blood on forehead and in hair.

“Sherlock?”

Someone swipes a cold cloth across his forehead and then begins to clean his face. The movement aggravates an injury he had not noticed at first, and he winces.

Pain across zygomatic. Possible fracture.

“Can you move your fingers?”

Fingers numb and unresponsive. Breathing difficulties. Classic signs of panic attack.

“Sherlock?”

Darkness closes in.


The next time Sherlock wakes, his shoulder is back in place. The bones have not yet been set.

“Broke your arm,” Molly’s voice tells him, “and fractured your ankle. I’ll have to set them here. I’m sorry, I don’t have any anesthesia or... or anything to give you. Never really needed them down here, you know?” Her laugh is nervous and, even Sherlock recognizes, completely out of place, given the circumstances. But her blunder is so normal, so Molly, in a world that has been turned upside-down that Sherlock nearly weeps at the sound. What comes out, however, is a groan.

“Do it,” he croaks. He wets bone-dry lips with a sandpaper tongue and adds, “Need to bite... something.”

A leather strap prevents him from cracking his teeth and stifles the worst of his screams. By the end, he has broken into a cold sweat and his jaw aches from biting down, but the bones are set and bound.

He passes out again soon thereafter.


When Sherlock comes to for the final time in the morgue, long shadows from the setting sun have cast the room in deep shadow. It is the evening of his death.

He wonders what John is doing now.

Molly gets up from a nearby table when she notices him wake and goes to his side.

“How long?” he rasps.

“A few hours. I figured you needed the rest.” She pushes the hair out of his eyes and adjusts the blanket she had thrown over him earlier. “How do you feel?”

It is remarkable how much her manner towards him has changed in a matter of hours. She has gone from fawning over him to mothering him, and he doesn’t know which is worse.

He opens his mouth to say Fine and says, “Awful,” instead.

“I found some painkillers. You should feel their effect soon.” She helps him into a sitting position. He sways when she lets go, and so she wraps an arm around his shoulders to hold him in place.

“Molly -”

“They’re safe,” she whispers, answering his unasked question. “Moriarty’s dead, and they’re all safe.”

“Mrs Hudson? Lestrade?”

“Everyone.”

“John?”

“Everyone, Sherlock. I promise. It worked. They’re safe.”

Under the cover of darkness, they relocate to her flat. Molly sets about making a meal they both know Sherlock won’t eat and fixes up the sofa for him to sleep on. He takes advantage of the respite from her worry and limps into the loo.

The floor is cold against his bare foot and the light bulb overhead buzzes incessantly. He is still weak and groggy from both his ordeal and from the painkillers, and when the nausea he’s been fighting all night finally kicks him in the gut, he makes it only as far as the sink. The toilet seems a mile further.

Sherlock hasn’t eaten in hours and there is nothing for him to bring up. He retches anyway, his stomach doing its valiant best to tear itself from his body. He rinses his mouth and splashes cool water on his face, and then makes the mistake of lifting his eyes to the mirror.

His face is a map of bruises. The top button of his shirt is undone, and he can see even more on his chest. His eyes are bloodshot and his face is sickly pale. Dried blood still clings to the ends of his hair and is splattered across his face. There is more under his fingernails. He finds a flannel and begins to clean himself more thoroughly.

There is a radiator rattling in the other room, a steady rat-rat-tap that starts to sound more like pop-pop as Sherlock listens. He winces. When he closes his eyes, Sherlock watches a man shake his hand and then die because of it, his chest blown out and his blood landing on Sherlock’s face and lips.

Rat-rat-tap

The room lurches violently and he is in a free-fall, the ground too far away and closing in much too fast. He collapses on the floor, presses his uninjured hand against his face and breathes sharply through his nose.

Safe, safe, he is safe.

But what is safe, anyway?

He has just jumped six stories off a building and must play dead for the foreseeable future so that the others can live. John and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson are perpetual walking targets. They will all be killed in an instant should his ruse ever be discovered. Molly has put herself in the firing line just by helping him; Mycroft has always been under suspicion, by the fact of blood relation alone.

Moriarty is dead, but his web remains.

Safe. What is safe?

Safe is conditional.

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Part 2

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