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Fandom: Riftverse, Sherlock and Luna
Rating: General
Cheryl's prompt gave me an idea. I gave her feels. She demanded fic. This is what happened. Warning for zombies and character death I guess.
Everyone had laughed a little when it started, to be honest. Zombies? Just another thing that Chicago had thrown at them because the monsters needed a little something extra this week. But they kept coming, and the first person that died didn’t step through a Rift the next day disoriented. Normal people were falling, not just wanderers and supernaturals. Whatever thing protecting the tower that Sherlock didn’t quite understand apparently didn’t apply to zombies and there was precious little time between when they discovered that fact (Zombies crossing the perimeter) and when they made it into the stairwells. Many of them didn’t make it out.
John wasn’t there, having been treating someone with a flu at the Sanctuary when the outbreak hit. Sherlock was able to hold his own with a gun but when they came crowding up the stairs he thought that was it. Then Luna found him and tugged him the other way, breaking a window and doing something with her wand that made them both fall, feather-light, safely to the ground. He wouldn’t have made it out if not for her.
But the Sanctuary, just a simple walk on a normal day, was so far away when the streets were teeming with the undead. It took them almost a full day of sneaking, shooting, hiding, sprinting, to make it and they were within sight of the building when they met up with other survivors fending off a mob. Most of them were a lost cause, Sherlock and Luna helped and thinned the group where she could but only two of them made it to the door along with them. They were inside the barricaded door, panting with exertion and grinning like idiots from the adrenaline high when they both noticed the bite on Luna’s shoulder.
They had to isolate her, but not before Sherlock took samples of saliva, blood, tissue. There was some medical equipment at the Sanctuary and vaccines and there had to be something he could do. But by the next day she’d gone all grey, shivering and sweating and shaking all at once. He kept telling her to hold on, there had to be an answer somewhere but by the third time he said it, in the evening, she shook her head.
“I can’t wait anymore. I’m going to hurt people if you let me stay here.” Her eyes were full of tears and Luna never cried. Sherlock opened his mouth to disagree again and she silenced him with a firm shake of her head. “Please, Sherlock. Don’t let me turn into one of them.”
And so he nodded and left for the medbay. Got into a rousing argument with the man who’d put himself in charge that while using medical supplies to try and find a cure was all well and good they had no idea how long this would last and he couldn’t just use their supplies on someone who was already lost. He cocked his gun to make his point and two minutes later he was letting himself into Luna’s room with a sleeping pill and a glass of water.
She gave him a questioning look. He thought of making some sort of joke about how once she didn’t even know how to take a pill but it felt heavy in his mouth, so he just said, “It will put you to sleep so you don’t feel anything.” The undercurrent of fear Luna probably didn’t realize was showing on her face slowly softened.
Sherlock had to help her get it down; she couldn’t hold the glass, and after he just held her to his chest. “Is there anything I can do?” he said after a moment.
“I love you, and I know you never noticed and that’s okay. But John loves you too and I want you to love him, okay?” Sherlock gave her a shocked look and opened his mouth, about to say something, he didn’t know what but she barreled onwards, “It’s okay, really. You’ll figure out the cure and you’ll both be happy and that makes it okay. But… if you could just hold me until I’m sleeping and maybe sing something I think that would make it easier.”
He swallowed and there were a thousand things that should be said and all of them are too difficult so he just held her a little tighter and reached down with one hand to squeeze hers. Sherlock didn’t sing so much as hum, he went through a little Mozart because even if he thought there are better pieces this one was uplifting and gentle. As her eyes started to slide shut he leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, murmuring “Goodnight, Luna.”
She fell asleep with a smile on her face and for once he couldn’t look as he brought the gun to her temple. He kept her necklace and her wand and they burned the rest. When John asked him later if he was alright, Sherlock blamed his watery eyes on the smoke.
