Chapter Text
They enter the new room and the deductions start forming and spilling from his mind and lips as he views the small, darkened space. There are no windows of course but above them is the light source: daylight, reaching them via a long, narrow chimney, the coffin directly beneath it.
Something about the positioning teases at his mind, but now is not the time. The girl in the plane, he has to focus on saving her, saving the passengers and pilots from whatever it is that Eurus has done to put them all to sleep (he has no doubts that she's orchestrated that unholy catastrophe, just as she's orchestrated their movements toward this place and time for who knows how long).
He speaks, Mycroft speaks, Eurus speaks ("Coffin. Problem: someone is about to die. It will be – as I understand it – a tragedy."), but that feeling at the back of his mind, that sensation of something he's missing, something important, only makes itself clear after he sees the lid.
After Mycroft says something dryly about reading the nameplate and John blathers about The Woman (really, his best friend's more obsessed with her than Sherlock had ever been). The words die in his throat, the deductions drying up in mouth and mind as he looks the plain wooden coffin over again.
Unmarried, practical about death, alone.
The words spring to life in his mind but he can no longer find the breath, the energy, the mere ability to speak. That nameplate (brass, not silver, never silver, not for her), coupled with his other deductions - and that damned chimney above, spilling light directly onto this coffin - makes it crystal clear just who the coffin is for.
Yes, it's for someone who loves him but Mycroft had forgotten, somehow, one vital thing about nameplates on coffins: they're not placed by the coffin's occupant, but by those who are saying a final farewell.
I love you.
He meets Eurus' cold gaze as she watches from the monitor, knows by the tiny nod of her head that she has fathomed Molly's deepest, darkest secret. A secret shared with Sherlock only after Reichenbach, after Moriarty, when he needed her help to save his life in an entirely unforeseen manner.
No one else knows, not even Mycroft, that Sherlock actually almost did die that fateful day, and was saved only by Molly Hooper sacrificing that secret to save him.
And here is Eurus, demonstrating her knowledge of that secret and her ability to destroy Molly, threatening to do so without even speaking, by placing the coffin precisely beneath the chimney, with the lid removed. He moves closer, looks down at the lining, his examination of which had been interrupted by Mycroft drawing his attention to the lid. Yes, there they are; wedged between the sides and the bottom, deceptively fragile looking silken straps meant to hold wrists and ankles in place, but oh, he sees the glint of silver and understands there is no gothic bondage intended.
It's meant instead as a prison for one who cannot stand the direct rays of the sun on their skin for a prolonged period of time. Someone with porphyria, for example, or even...
"Molly Hooper," he says aloud, the words - the name - bursting from his lips as he once again meets Eurus' cold, knowing gaze on the monitor.
"She's perfectly safe, for the moment," Eurus says. Not a reassurance, no; just a simple statement of fact. But it escapes none of them, Sherlock knows, how she says 'for the moment.'
Sweat beads on his brow, his heart thunders painfully in his chest, and he can feel it growing, threatening to overwhelm him: panic, no, not just panic - terror. Acute, debilitating terror. Not for himself, but for her.
The girl in the plane is forgotten for the moment, all other considerations paling at the threat his sister poses to a woman who has done so much for him over the years.
A woman who, yes, loves him - and who, he now realizes, he loves in return.
Much good that realization will do either of them now.
The image on the monitor changes suddenly, no longer showing Eurus in the Governor's office; instead, it reveals a window he knows very well, located as it is in the kitchen of his favorite bolthole. Molly's house is light and airy - all rooms save the secret (he prays, yes, prays) panic room where, once a month, Molly must sleep in the deepest dark in order to restore her strength, sapped as it is by her daily dose of sunlight.
She's always refused to give into darkness, to let it drag her down or change her life in any meaningful way, but today he can't help but wish that she'd simply embraced her fate and lived like the one who had turned her into something...different.
If she'd embraced the darkness as Jim Moriarty had, then maybe Eurus wouldn't have bothered with her.
The screen flickers back to his sister. "The sun's rays are about to pour through that window, Sherlock," she says, while Mycroft and John stare blankly at the screen; he can feel their curiosity, their confusion, but banishes them from his mind, focused entirely on what his sister is saying. "Full strength, unfiltered - oh, sorry, did I forget to mention that the glass has been replaced? No UV filters embedded in the panes, UVA or UVB." She sighs in mock-sympathy. "All that expense she went to undone in a morning's work."
"Why does that matter?" John asks, obviously bewildered.
Both Sherlock and Eurus ignore him, her attention as laser-focused on Sherlock as his is on her. "Eight minutes, Sherlock," she says softly. "She has eight minutes to live." The screen changes again, this time the camera angle showing a view of Molly's kitchen from somewhere above the window.
She's on the floor, wearing nothing but a skimpy bathing costume, over 90% of her flesh exposed, bare of foot, her hair pulled up to fan across the tiled floor away from her neck and throat. "It takes eight minutes, does it not, Sherlock? Isn't that what she told you? Eight minutes and then no more long-term hopes, however forlorn, for poor, pathetic, lovelorn Molly Hooper."
Breathing heavily, Sherlock demands, "What, Eurus? What do you want me to do? Obviously I can't save her in eight minutes, not from here! So what is it you need me to do? Just tell me, get it over with!"
The monitor shows her face again; she blinks twice, rapidly, as if in surprise. "Why, nothing!" she says, eyes wide in feigned innocence. "There's nothing you can do, of course! Except…" She leans forward, as if about to impart a secret; he leans forward as well, fingers twitching on the trigger of the gun as if he'd like nothing more than to shoot her where she sits.
When she remains silent he grinds out the question she's obviously waiting for him to ask. "Except what?"
"Except ask me to call someone to save her. Your little pet at NSY could make it in time, if we reach him within, say, the next three minutes or so. Of course," she adds, straightening back up with a shrug of her shoulders, "that would mean exposing her little secret, since he'll hardly be able to ignore the smoke or singeing as her flesh starts to smoulder. She told you once, didn't she, how horrible a death it was for one of her kind?"
"What does that even mean, one of her kind? What are you talking about?" John breaks in impatiently. "What did you do, coat her with some toxin that'll interact with the direct sunlight? Why are you doing this, torturing an innocent woman just for the sake of your sick games -"
"Do be quiet, Doctor Watson," Eurus says, not bothering to look at him. "Molly Hooper is hardly an innocent and even if she was, well, you know how I feel about the differences between the innocent and the guilty by now." She shrugs unconcernedly. "So what will it be, Sherlock? Shall we make the call and expose Molly Hooper for what she really is - possibly causing her to end up somewhere not unlike Sherrinford or Baskerville undergoing a lifetime of government experimentation? Or allow her to die in peace - well, physically she'll be in agony, of course, but a much briefer period of agony than she'd experience at the hands of the so-called medical professionals and scientists I've had to deal with for most of my life."
She shoots Mycroft a venomous glare, the first time she's so much as acknowledged her elder brother's presence since the three of them entered the room.
If Mycroft returns her glare, Sherlock neither knows nor cares. "Call him, call Lestrade," he says without hesitation. "Call him now, Eurus." He pauses, then lets out a strangled, "Please."
She tilts her head to one side. "Curious. I thought for sure you'd honor her request of you, that you'd take her secret to the grave. So much for your word." She shrugs, reaches down and, presumably, presses a button off-camera.
Sherlock hears a phone ringing, then Lestrade's voice. "Yeah, Sherlock, is it important? Cause I'm not having a very good day."
"Greg!" Sherlock calls out, frantic to get the man moving, to save Molly; the first three minutes have almost passed and only five remain before it's too late. "You have to get to Molly Hooper's address, it's a medical emergency!" He hears Lestrade's startled swearing but interrupts him with Molly's address. He repeats it, makes sure Lestrade knows where he's going, tries to tell him what to expect but all he hears is silence: Eurus has cut him off.
"What the hell was that all about?" John demands - of Eurus, of Sherlock, of the world at large? Sherlock has no idea, nor does he care, but apparently Eurus has decided to enlighten him.
"Situational ethics," she says. "Something all three of you are very familiar with. I'm interested in seeing what you make of Sherlock's choice after he explains this particular situation to you."
"Good golly, Miss Molly! What's your secret?" Jim's face flashes onto the screen, his voice blaring and eyes comically widened as he repeats the question before vanishing again.
"Yes, Sherlock, do tell us," Mycroft said. "However hard that was…"
His brother ignores him, focusing once again on Eurus and the crisis of the girl in the plane. Whatever the fallout from his betrayal of Molly's secret, he'll face it once this torturous series of trials his sister has set have been completed. "I've won, Eurus."
She says nothing, simply looks at him. "Come on, play fair. The girl on the plane: I need to talk to her." Still silence from his sister. Exasperated, emotionally frazzled, he insists, "I won. I saved Molly Hooper."
Eurus gives him a disparaging look. "Did you? Do you really call that winning? No, no, brother, I insist you finish this game before moving on to the next." She nods at first John, then Mycroft, standing just behind and to either side of him. "Tell them. Tell them Molly's little secret or neither she nor Detective Inspector Lestrade will leave her flat alive. It's rigged with explosives," she adds, almost carelessly.
"They won't believe me," he says flatly but with a certain amount of resignation; clearly she's determined to make him say those three little words, the words that will destroy them both, implode their friendship and their whatever-else-it-could-someday-be. He's resisted speaking them and had hoped to continue to do so, to concoct some far-fetched but believable explanation for what Lestrade and the ambulance crew will discover - have already discovered - upon reaching Molly's side. If he can just avoid those three words-
But Eurus is having none of it. She sits back in her chair, watching him. Waiting. "Three minutes, Sherlock," she says softly. "Three minutes and you'll have gone through all these complicated little emotions for nothing. Or have you changed your mind, is that it? Does the notion of Doctor Hooper and the detective inspector dying in an explosion assuage your conscience? Make you feel better about betraying her?"
"She's a vampire."
The words burst from his lips without premeditation, without any sort of preamble or attempt at some kind of introductory explanation. There's no time for any of that, not now. Not with more lives at stake.
More blood on his hands.
John makes an abortive sound, a sort of scoffing laugh quickly choked off as he remembers how much danger they're all in. Still, he can't seem to help stop himself from saying, "A vampire. Really. Molly Hooper. Even if there were such things, Sherlock, come on! We've seen her out in daylight before!"
"Have you?" Sherlock whirls to ask him angrily. "When? For how long? Under what circumstances? I can assure you that I have, and she's always well covered; it's always for brief periods of time, never more than an hour and less than that at the sunniest time of the day. I believe you've only seen her at the flat once and at Bart's the rest of the time-"
"Your funeral."
John's quiet words stop Sherlock's rant dead in its proverbial tracks. "Yes, well, it was overcast that day," he mutters, hurrying on before John catches on to the fact that he, too, had attended his funeral. "At any rate, you'll just have to trust me on this, John. Molly Hooper is a vampire. Vampires exist, Molly is one of them, and - you're very quiet, Mycroft," he interrupts himself, spinning to face his brother. "How many of them do you have here, hidden away from public view?" His lip curls in a mockery of a smile. "How many 'cannibals' are actually creatures of the night, hm?"
"Only one," Mycroft admits, his tone mild, but Sherlock knows his brother, and he is far from easy at making such an admission. "I imagine it's how you discovered Miss Hooper's 'interesting condition,' Eurus, am I correct?"
"Perhaps." Eurus' voice has the faintest tracing of mockery in it. "I had believed you to be ignorant of her condition as well as Doctor Watson, but it seems I was wrong." Her expression turned pondering. "Curious; I'm so rarely wrong I'm not sure what to think about it." She shrugs. "At any rate, it doesn't matter."
John, still clearly struggling with the fact that his reality has just been upended, shakes his head, mouthing the word 'no' over and over again.
Sherlock, unheeding of his friend, ignoring his brother and sister, walks past the coffin, the pistol dropping from his numbed fingers to clatter to the cold, stone floor. He stops directly in front of the lid, still leaning against the wall.
On screen, Eurus sits back in her chair. "Now, please, pull yourself together. I need you at peak efficiency. The next one isn't going to be so easy." One of the doors slides open; Mycroft turns to look at it as the screen returns to the scene of pouring water it showed when they first entered this...hell-hole of a room.
Sherlock ignores him. Picks up the lid and turns and walks towards the coffin while Mycroft and John head for the open door. John is still shaking his head but his shoulders are squared; he seems to have decided, as has Sherlock, to worry about the implications of this forced confession at some time in the future when he has the time to process it - or, perhaps, deny it all and bury it deep in subconscious, so deep he'll never remember it. Just rewrite his own memories into something more innocuous, like Eurus forcing Sherlock to make Molly say "I love you" or save her from suffocation inside the coffin.
He's still holding the lid; slowly, reverently he places it on top of the coffin, hiding away those restraints, symbolically protecting Molly from the threat of the sunlight even though he's been unable to protect her from whatever fallout will occur from the exposure of her secret. He feels John and Mycroft's eyes upon him as he rests his hand atop the lid and slowly draws it back, toward him, in a caressing motion.
He breathes out a quiet sound, almost a sob, hears John's voice. "Sherlock?"
He turns away, then back, fingers automatically reaching to unbutton his jacket as sudden fury overcomes him. "No," he says. "No."
His face twists with rage as he pulls back his right arm and smashes it with all his strength down onto the lid, shattering it. He draws back his hand and then slams both fists down onto the lid again and again, then seizes the side of the coffin and lifts the whole thing before smashing it down repeatedly on top of the trestles, disintegrating the box into pieces while he cries out over and over again in rage, grief and frustration. Eventually he lets out a long anguished scream which echoes upwards into the chimney and up into the air above the prison. The rain has arrived and pours downwards, while lightning flashes and thunder rumbles.
Some time later (how long? he has no idea, lost as he is inside his own internal storm), he hears footsteps. John, he deduces from where he's sitting against the wall, knees up and hands dangling over them. Another sound; the pistol being picked up. Still John, he can tell by the sound he makes as he clears his throat and continues walking. Closer, closer he comes.
Sherlock doesn't look up even when the footsteps stop directly in front of him. His head is lowered and he stares at the floor in front of him, breathing heavily. A small noise from the door Eurus opened tells him where Mycroft is standing.
John speaks, quietly but firmly. "Look, I know this is difficult and I know you're being tortured, but you have got to keep it together."
Without lifting his head, Sherlock responds. "This isn't torture; this is vivisection. We're experiencing science from the perspective of lab rats."
He breathes out loudly and raises his head to rest it against the wall behind him, gazing blankly upwards. He can feel Mycroft's concerned eyes on him; he glances in his direction without turning his head, then swallows and looks up at John. "Soldiers?" he asks.
John nods. "Soldiers." He bends down and holds out his right hand to Sherlock, who takes it with his own right hand. John pulls him to his feet. Sherlock buttons his jacket and John blows out a breath as they walk side-by-side to the doorway, John holding out the pistol and Sherlock taking it as they go. Just as they reach the doorway the lights turn red and , and the last thing they hear before leaving the room is Jim's voice over the speakers.
"Tick-tock, tickets please!"
At least, Sherlock thinks grimly as he passes through the door on the way to his sister's next twisted experiment, he has the satisfaction of knowing that Jim Moriarty is truly dead now. He'd seen to that himself.