thecapitol | (no subject)

Who: || Sherlock and Open
Where: || District 2 Suites
When: || A few days after the network blackout
What: || Sherlock is sulking in the most melodramatic way possible, but he has his reasons.
Warnings: || None, save Sherlock being a brooding child

It had been nearly two days, since he had left his rooms. Longer than that, since he had been fully dressed, or spoken to anyone. He'd extracted himself carefully and quietly from daily life in the tribute tower, wallowing in the blackest mood he could summon.

Punchy was missing. Sherlock had few friends, fewer still ones he could accurately describe as having greater expertise in a subject than he did, and Punchy was one of them. Despite the bizarre dialect in which he spoke, Sherlock knew the boy was brilliant when it came to computers, and hacking network systems in particular. So when their comms had been hacked, the message of rebellion spread, Sherlock had immediately wanted his opinion.

Only to find he had disappeared.

He wasn't allowed to investigate, of course - wasn't even allowed in Punchy's room - but it didn't take the world's greatest detective to be able to deduce what had happened to him. Idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot. Sherlock wanted to shake him, hard, if only he could find him first. But there was no point in looking. Punchy had almost assuredly been taken deep into the Capitol's crooked heart.

He only hoped the boy would still be alive when he was brought out of it.

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"Why? So you can carve it into my scalp?" Sherlock asked, the words sharp. "I see absolutely no reason why I should explain myself to anyone, let alone you. If you find the sight of me so disconcerting then by all means do us both a favour and kill me at the next opportunity."

"Do you not see the difference between there and here? I have no reason to see thee hurt here, not when you're real and you count. Would you keen better to an apology? Because I should not have humiliated thee."

That was as close to a real apology as Cuthbert got outside of a life or death situation. And if he wanted Sherlock could hold that over his head for a long time. He felt terrible seeing his victim like this.

"The only difference between here and there is that here death is permanent," Sherlock said, his words sharp, before he turned his eyes.

"It's a game as much here as it is there." He bit himself off before he said more. He already had a bracelet shimmering around his wrist - he didn't need to make himself even more of a target.

"So it is, and that is a big difference, say true."

There was truth in his words and even Cuthbert knew it. But he wasn't foolish enough to say it out loud either. But he can still spur Sherlock on.

"Are you giving up both games so easily?"

"God, what does it matter?" Sherlock finally snapped, glaring at Cuthbert.

"What does it possibly matter to you what I do, or don't do? You've already proven that you are perfectly capable of the task they have assigned you to. Does it surprise you that some of us find it tedious?"

"It isn't often a man gets to see the after effect of taking a life and it sits worse with me than the act of killing. That's what it matters to me. It matters because I am not happy to have broken thee in a way I can't fix. Those who stay dead at least find peace."

Bert was trying to keep his cool, but this was a difficult subject and he wasn't prepared to spill his guts about it.

Sherlock paused, for a while, watching him, and then slowly began to chuckle, turning his head away.

"Ah. Aaahh. Now I understand." He pulled himself up until he was sitting upright. "You think this is about you. That's almost cute. No, you can let your precious conscious rest. You weren't even my first, let alone the worst, though you did manage it twice."

Cuthbert blushed, embarrassed and upset to find out he was wrong all along about this whole thing.

"Then I was a fool for worrying over something that is obviously no real bother to thee. Mayhap you can cheer yourself with that fact. You've made a fool out of a man who tends to only do such to himself.

I have no further need to try and help thee. Rot here, if that's what makes you happy."

And with that he turned to leave again.

"Then I shall, as shall you," Sherlock called after him, laying back down on the couch and staring up at the ceiling.

"As long as we remember who we're rotting for."