Book I : Fantàsticque :: The Estranged Trilogie ::: A Sherlock Fanfiction

XIX. Escalation of Panic

To Val. Because Moricesca. And we do love to see the world burn.

He felt a sharp prick in his neck.

Sherlock's eyes widened considerably when a blackness materialized in front of him. A loud crash and an uproar of car horns and sirens rang up in a cacophony.

Venticelli clucked his tongue unappreciatively. Perhaps just an apparition, but Sherlock was yet still shocked stiff. Or perhaps the magician was rendering him immobile.

"I expected more from you, Holmesie. It wasn't on accident that I allowed the fogging of your accent-discernment ability to be a lot lighter than full force. You should have worked through the clouding."

Sherlock's breaths turned shallower, and the world began spinning as the cloaked figure in front of him drew back a white-gloved hand wrapped around a syringe.

Sherlock lunged forward, partially in loss of equilibrium and partially in anger.

With a dizzying spin of the world around him, Sherlock found himself back at 221B Baker Street.

~

It was entirely her fault that she now sat in a cellar, unmoving, barely breathing. Francesca knew that she should not have left alone. Ever since she was little, Il n'est pas en sécurité la nuit, Francesca. Tellement de problèmes, Chesca. It is not safe at night, so much trouble, Francesca.

She did not realize that these rules applied to a grown up knife-wielder also.

Francesca froze in her steps. That lilt of the voice, so familiar. She knew full well who this was.

"Come to question me, Jim? Or kill me?" The man's shark-like grin stretched wider and in a split second, replaced his smile with a hurt frown.

"I'm only here to greet you. My rep gets ahead of me." His Irish accent could not have angered Francesca further at that moment. And vice versa: he despised her too.

"He liked you a lot, you know."

"I'm not why he abandoned you."

"That's not the problem here. I abhor sentiment. And you've struck too many closely targeted deals with me, recently." Moriarty got a little closer to Francesca. "And sweetheart? I don't like that."

He took a step back and a hand out of his pocket.

"So I have to remove you for a while and confuse little Sherly." He snapped his fingers. "But I won't kill you. After all, I'm the perpetrator of this elaborate game and you all are only my violent little pawns." Francesca's heart leapt in fear when a sudden blackness smothered her senses.

That conversation would explain why she was bound in ropes, surrounded by an odor of sickly sweetness and unconscious on cold, rotting floorboards, having nightmares about a hand caressing her cheek and accompanied by the many voices of Moriarty.

~

Back at the flat, Sherlock collapsed onto the carpet, and with one last convulse, lay still.