whatofthewarts | (no subject)

He pulls himself up to sitting, and then stands. The kicked foot gives badly when he tries to put weight on it, so he moves quickly towards the chair.

"I had a nasty childhood, as well. You know how the children can be; they're no different in this time."

He's not going to give up on these testy subjects.

"Why didn't you learn to stop them."

"Oh, please, I had hoped we were pre-Freudian. Psychoanalysis is so boring."

Sitting back down at his notes.

"Are you quite through yet? Every breath I waste on you keeps me from him."

"It's not me keeping you from him. It's Moriarty and your own inadequacies."

He picks up a slim wooden stirrer.

"And it wasn't psychoanalysis, I know everything about your mental faculties that I need. It was a legitimate question. Why didn't you stop them?"

"To whom are you referring?"

He ignores the fiddling, picks up a pen. Starts to jot down, in a spidery scrawl, what bodyparts on the bee are missing, how to better stabilize the process next time.

"Anyone. The children. Moriarty. Me."

He throws himself in there last, because he doesn't want to go down the 'Moriarty is better than you' path again. He's only just got Sherlock talking again.

"Because I'm not here for you to toy with. What happens? I fight, you subdue me, I fight, you break my bones to humble me? Thank you, but I'd rather work."

Into the pages.

"Alone."

Clarifying.

"Because you're wasting the resources you do have. And you are so disappointingly narrow-minded. Fighting is not about humility. It's not about proving a point, not when we both already know it."

"Really? You didn't throw me there to silence me?"

Challenging. Replaying the words in his own mind, he knows Holmes is too.

"I'm used to it. And please, enlighten me, what resources am I supposedly wasting?"

"Me."

Obviously.

"I know this world. You do not. I have strings to pull that you haven't got the skill to make on your own. And...no. Not precisely, no, I wasn't out just to silence you."

Although that had been the initial motivation.

"You don't like me, you aren't going to help me, and I don't believe you."

He informs him, in short order, though he's at least looking at him now, still faintly wary.

"Wrong on two of three counts. You do such shoddy work, it's a wonder you're still alive."

He smirks at him, smug and superior this time.

There it is once more, the moment where his breathing stops.

It's Mycroft, he realizes suddenly. He sounds like Mycroft, who Sherlock has resolutely not thought of since this began.

He's back in his papers with a slow turn of his body.

That wooden stirrer reaches out, slowly, slowly and begins to pull the papers away from him.

Because Holmes does get so irritatingly childish at the drop of a hat.

Fuck you, Holmes, in that case he's out of the chair and headed for the door.

If he won't leave, Sherlock can.

Except for when that stick digs into that nerve at the top of the back of Sherlock's thigh, deep enough to make the leg go dead.

"I do hope I'm not so thoroughly unpleasant as you are. Perhaps you'll grow into someone more like me."

He starts to stagger again, panic constricting tight in his chest. This is bad, his brain supplies, and his body twists and lashes out, less in control this time as his leg gives.

He takes a flailing hit across his cheek, in exchange for getting an arm around Sherlock so he can pull him back against his chest. His leg slides between Sherlock's, and he uses that as a guide as he twists Sherlock off balance and takes them both to the ground. He grasps Sherlock's wrists and holds him as if with a straightjacket, while the taller man's legs are splayed out in front of them.

"There is a very curious thing about this position. Can you guess what it is?"

Bad, bad bad, and he thrashes, wrenching one shoulder rather badly, legs fighting, scrabbling against the floor.

Whatever he's supposed to be guessing, he knows breaking away isn't going to happen. So he stills, and then moves again, a fresh wave of adrenaline propelling him into another massive jerk forwards, wrists grinding, protesting down to the bone.

"You can get out of this! Think!"

Holmes snarls, staying with him as stubbornly as a terrier. Panic can lend inhuman strength, and so he takes a quiet split second to calculate. To predict, to plan. He wants to push Sherlock, and he's not going to make it easy on him.

He's still, but not for thought, yet, just gasping for a lungful of air, then another, waiting for Holmes to move, for a chance to break free.

Despite the advantage of knowing Sherlock's mind, Holmes can't actually tell if he is still panicking or beginning to work through it.

He wonders if he was ever really this young (he was worse, if Watson was to be believed).

"What is the one thing that will get you out of this?"

He doesn't hear a word of that. His whole body is starting to shake from the adrenaline hit, skin like ice where his wrists are being held. He's pliant, now, and still. Very nearly submissive.

He's decided how he'll proceed from here, and it gives Holmes a different sense of power. He relaxes his hold on Sherlock's wrists, just to see.

The degree of freedom seems to worry him more, somehow, shifting uneasily against the space, clear that he oughtn't to bolt, but still shaken badly.

But still, for the moment.