Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LXIII - White Fear

"Where is she?"

I blink, taken aback. "Who?"

He turns quickly; violent in his frustration.

"Schott."

"Emily...?" I repeat. "I haven't seen her in months."

He curses, and I jump, flinching at the sound. The main road looks a very long way away.

"She hasn't come back to you?"

"Back? Where was she?"

"Russia."

"Russia?"

"Haven't you heard?" He smiles, darkly. "She married the Commie. Slimy little bastard. Changes his name more times in a day than I can count."

I can only gape at him.

"Emily would never marry–"

"She married him, all right." He runs a hand through his hair, and I take a cautionary step backwards. I don't like the intensity of his emotion. "And now he's lost it. Batshit crazy."

"She isn't with Moriarty?"

"Is she hell. Left three months ago, the bitch – and now I've got to deal with the consequences. You should hear him ranting. I can't keep up with it, anymore. He tells me he wants her dead, then he wants her back, he wants her hanged, he wants to give her Yakovich's head on a platter. Or his heart. Or his lungs. I've heard it all."

"Yakovich." I recognise the name. "Who is he?"

"Conman. So he says."

I remember the man in the hospital. "Does he have blue eyes?"

"That's the one."

"Why Emily?"

He laughs, then. "Why do you think? She couldn't keep her legs together. Yakovich likes his women well-used. If they get knocked up, he can blame it on someone else." He leans against the wall. "You know the type."

The acrimony in his tone is palpable; the anger hums, vibrates in the air, pulled out thin, taut under pressure.

I try to draw the conversation away from Emily, in the hope of making an imminent departure. "I've heard his name a lot."

"I bet you have," says Sebastian. "He's everywhere – in your work, in your home, in your head. Guaranteed you'll know someone with ties to pretty Mr Yakovich."

I begin to feel the wall behind me, gauging the distance between my current position and the corner.

"I saw him," he continues. "At the dinner. You should have seen the look on his face when he wasn't smiling like he owned the place. There's something off about him. I know it. Jim knows it too. He keeps telling me to wait. Wait, he says. Wait for it to click. Wait for her to see it. Doesn't tell me what 'it' is." Sebastian raises an eyebrow at my expression. "What?"

"You were at that dinner," I say, a little hoarsely. "When the chandelier dropped."

The weight of my statement resonates. He stops moving.

I regard him with a growing sense of white fear, and begin calculating the time it would take for me to push past the arm currently blocking my exit and turn the corner: from there on out, it's a straight sprint to the main road. I could do it in five seconds.

"Please," I say, as I edge towards the corner. "Stop."

"Stop what?"

I speak slowly, meaningfully, praying he understands. "All of this."