Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter XCII - Russian Roulette

-Emily-

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Ivan makes a startling reappearance. It is like watching some terrible possession; the man in front of me – this lethal, knife-wielding stranger, fingers damp with Molly's blood and eyes dark – softens rapidly, reverts, transforms back into the Ivan who smiled his way through unspeakable acts of manipulation and span with me through the streets of Red Square. The bloodlust simmers and stills. The hunger in his expression is replaced with grey-faced terror.

It matches my own.

I feel myself undergo a similar transformation: a plug is pulled, the anger and adrenaline drains, a new fear solidifies in my stomach. Millie is on her hands and knees, skin glistening like wet white stone and mouth open in an exclamation of agony that is beyond sound, beyond vocalisation, so strained it tips into silence. Her fingers contract at their joints: she grips the concrete with such force I see little beads of blood at her cuticles, the crescents of taut skin at the base of her nails cut on the gravel. I watch her for a small eternity, shock-stunned. Realisation dawns. I am caught in this snapshot of time; fixed by an unseen taxidermic pin, behind my display glass, held down, helpless, Molly lying glaze-eyed on a sheet of red glass and Sherlock motionless, Trisha's killer gone, Ivan Yakovich stock-still, experiencing an identical self-paralysis.

Millie takes a shuddering inhalation, and then she looks up, her eyes wide and wild and utterly animal.

I am granted the luxury of motion once more.

I'm at her side, kneeling down, my hands on her shoulder, her arms, her skirts, warm and saturated with blood. She grips my wrists. I wrestle with panic. Panic is fatal; it is a gunshot, a dart, a shot of venom that hits the bloodstream and floods the senses with a wonderful, terrible toxin, a poison, rendering the body incapable and the mind irrational. For the sake of the dying woman on the alleyway floor, I cannot afford to be pierced by panic. Ivan is kneeling beside me now – I can see his shadow in my peripheral vision, smell the cologne, the blood – and there's a brittle clatter. The ivory knife is abandoned, tossed to one side. I succeed in laying her down. He tears her skirts at the waist. I clear a space. He rapidly unlaces the corset. Together we prepare this pavement theatre.

Millie makes another inhuman noise, her back arched – and then without warning she sighs, softens, and slips out of consciousness.

I slap her across the face with as much force as I am capable of delivering.

Ivan flinches as if I have struck him. He recoils from me, just as Millie's eyes open. She moans something wordless. I glance down. While my knowledge of childbirth is somewhat lacking, I know that there is far too much blood, an excess, to the point where I can watch it run in black rivulets in the cracks of the brickwork, following a geometric path to the drainage system in the street. I sit back, hopeless and helpless.

"I don't know what to do." I can taste copper on my tongue. "I don't know what to do."

There's no response. I look to Ivan, desperate in my desolation – and then I stop. He's doubled over, clutching the fabric of her skirt in his fists: the material is sopping, and I can see the blood gathering between his fingers. It falls in a stilted spattering of scarlet. He draws it out. At first, I think this is some panic-induced nervous breakdown, but then he turns his face to me, and any hope of co-operation is dashed to paper pieces. Conflict is a violent understatement: it is the expression of a mind torn in two, caught in a vicious tug of war, ripped clean down the middle. I see terror. I see lust.

"Ivan."

He drops the fabric. Millie's blood runs down his wrists. He looks at them, looks at her – glorious in her own gore, glossed with red as if dipped in molten ruby – and then turns back to me, wild-eyed. I am witness to warfare: a bloody struggle between Ivan and Trisha's killer, John's Iris, Aika's Howaito shi; I see it all in a grim cycle of want and hatred and fear and desire, and, as the first crystal droplet of sweat beads on his forehead, I begin to establish a victor.