Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LXXXII - Archvillain

She is beautiful in sleep.

He turns over, just to watch her. She's lying on her side, her back to him, her hair across the pillow and her breathing quick and shallow. He marvels at how white her skin is. Sometimes he wants to break her open – he wonders if he'd see blood, or if she'd be hollow inside, her interior surface painted pale pink. Perhaps it would have an iridescent quality; multi-faceted like a shell. Such porcelain perfection doesn't seem entirely natural.

He props himself up on his elbow and continues studying her in earnest: her ribs could be cut-throat razors, her collarbone a knife edge, her fingers thin and blue-tinged at the tips. She looks so sharp, but she is soft to touch. He enjoys contrast. In the lamplight, he can see the pale brown hairs on her forearms, the smattering of near-translucent freckles across her back, the occasional scar, the skin raised and glossed and woven like silk; a nick below her left shoulder blade, a small crescent on her side, endless pinpricks collecting around the crooks of her elbows. There's discolouration – her skin has bruised magnificently on contact with the needle, deep, rich, royal pigments. He wants to peel them off her, cup them in his hands. Little mementos.

Of course, he has plenty of his own bruises to examine – he just doesn't wear them quite as elegantly as she does. His knuckles are marked too, violently so, and he has the odd dark imprint on his arms, where Emily Schott managed to strike back.

He sighs, and picks up a lock of her hair, pressing the curl between his fingers until the strands separate.

They almost caught him. They almost took her away. Someone must have called the police – he dimly recalls shouts from the restaurant, the sounds of mass panic. They recognised him. He'd had to cease his intimacy mid-euphoria and gracelessly carry her to a stall in a fumble of limbs and satin, lock the door, wait in silence with his ear pressed against the wood as a man stormed in, saw the blood, shouted out, left for the hunt.

He was unable to stop himself from continuing where he left off.

It was a risk that very nearly didn't pay off, but he couldn't hold back. He was high on it. He'd started to doubt her, doubt the authenticity of their shared affection – but then she kissed him, and he still feels the tentative passion, the fervour. The emotion hummed between them. When they'd finished and the room was sufficiently silent, he re-laced the back of her dress and pushed open the door: the bathroom could have been a crime scene, all red handprints and streaks and red-washed tiles. He'd looked around at it with a strange sense of detachment. He didn't remember there being so much blood. She'd started sobbing then – exhausted, burnt-out sobs – and he realised he was running out of time: with her pressed against his side and the broken towel rail as a weapon, he'd edged his way to the door, checked the surroundings, and lifted her out into the corridor.

They had to use the kitchen as means of an escape route. He stumbled in like a madman – hair slick with another woman's blood, shirt untucked from his coital encounter – much to the horror of those at work: there was a moment of mutual shock, and then he swung the bar at the head of the chef within arm's reach. He ensured the others had fled the vicinity before he drew a kitchen knife from the nearby block. He felt safer with it. It was a familiar weight; a silver reassurance. She was still sobbing when he kicked open the back exit and staggered into the alleyway. He knew those backstreets well, and, albeit slowed with her additional weight, succeeded in navigating their way to his car.

He was reaching for the door when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

They'd been tracked, as it transpired, by one of the waiters who waylaid him: he could have only been nineteen – a student at most, still in his ill-fitting tuxedo. The boy tried to talk to her, begged her to come with him, said the police were on their way. Between the sobs, she told him to go. He took her white arm in his hand.