Side of the Angels ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book II} *UNDER EDITING*

Chapter 54- Sheets

Emily's POV

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We drive back to my apartment in silence. It's closer than 221B, and we want to get indoors as quickly as possible to release the fear and questions that have been building up inside us all.

I'm mentally and physically exhausted.

The fight with Moran has left me battered and cut and bruised, and the back of my head is starting to throb painfully.  But my conversation with Moriarty has left me feeling drained and empty. I can't pinpoint my emotional state; it's somewhere between anger, at being used as a tool against my friends, shock, because I now know that every event and trauma I have experienced was part of an elaborate game, and something else I don't fully understand.

I choose to ignore that last one.

The taxi pulls up outside my apartment block, and Sherlock, John and Millie follow me up the grubby flights of stairs to the top floor. I ram my shoulder into the door, forcing it open, ignoring their questioning looks at the lack of a lock, and breathe in the familiar smells. I close the door behind them, and turn on the fan, in an attempt at getting cool air circulating round the stilled room. They sit down, still oddly silent, deeply immersed in their own thoughts. 

"What do we do now?"

Their heads snap up at the sound of my voice. I shift around uncomfortably at the sudden attention.

"We don't do anything. We can't do anything," says Sherlock, flatly.

I raise my eyebrows at his defeated tone.

"Oh for god's sake. I'm no optimist, but surely a change in tactics isn't enough to justify such defeatism?"

"You don't understand, Emily," he says, his eyes fixed on a point in the corner of the room.

"Evidently not. Enlighten me."

"He's won."

I have to suppress a laugh at this. 

"Listen to you- you're being so dramatic. He hasn't won anything."

"He has been controlling every emotional interaction since the day we met you, Emily. He's weakened us. And I didn't notice. How could I have been so unobservant?," hisses Sherlock, suddenly angry, "I pride myself on being able to pick apart the things that ordinary people do not see. And yet I have been played like one of them. Now look at me and tell me that he hasn't won anything."

"Sherlock, don't you think it's strange that he gathered us there only to tell us that he'd changed the game?"

He pauses, in spite of himself, and looks at me with curiosity.

"I don't know how his mind works. No-one ever will. He's tipped over the edge of sanity, and it gives him an advantage- not caring means he feels no guilt, no loss, no sense of conscience. But even he doesn't want to play a one-man game. It's boring. Yes, he's changed tactics. And yeah, so he might be winning, at the moment. But he told you all of that for a reason; he wants you to play too. He hasn't won. He's giving you the chance to regain yourself, so that he can take more pleasure in the victory."

Sherlock is staring at me like I've just told him I'm carrying his child.

"How did you do that?"

I look at him, confused.

"How did I do what?"

"Just then. You gave me what was probably the most accurate insight into the inner workings and motivations of Jim Moriarty that I have ever heard. How?"