The extremely talented Y0do of deviantArt gave me permission to use his artwork as prompts for oneshots. This piece here was inspired by his eerie but beautiful piece called "Hands": tinyurl .com /3tpuvyg (remove spaces).

Everyone go and make sure to shower his artwork with love! He makes Sherlock pieces among other things, and all of them are quite beautiful.

Physical Manifestation of Thought

Nobody else could sense them but him, but he found he preferred it that way.

He had once, when he was thirteen, attempted to tell Mycroft that hands would materialize when he was thinking to clear his head and soothe him and encourage him as his mind raced. His elder brother had looked at him peculiarly and shrugged it off as the usual Sherlock eccentric and theatrical behavior.

That was a time when he had still trusted Mycroft and looked up to him as the invincible big brother; now that the elder Holmes was trying to make things right between them Sherlock tended to blow him off, thinking him a pest and a snoop.

He told no one else of the hands; they were his secret.

He was nothing if not a master of observation and recognition; it took him little time to realize that the hands would slip into his consciousness in different embodiments. The first pair of hands he recognized were Mummy's, when he was fifteen. Hers- elegant and soft, gentle and slender, with long, tapering fingers and curved nails, with the faint scent of her jasmine lotion lingering in the air around him- smoothed the worry lines from his brow and stroked the curls back from his face, melting away the sludge-covered anxieties from his heart. She came to him in times of frustration, sorrow, and fits of rage, always ready to soothe his frayed nerves and pull his emotions back into his control. Sometimes, when he missed her, his own hands- pale, long, lissome like hers- would reach up to hold the delicate wrists and warm fingers he expected to be there, only to grasp blindly at a tantalizing ghost of his imagination.

He had largely taken the hands for granted before that time, assuming that it was "normal." As far back as his memory stretched, the hands had always been there, with him at almost every hour but truly taking form when his thoughts focused like a laser or his emotions flared. Once he'd realized that it was not a usual occurrence to have fingers stroking his hair and mending the cage that held the brilliant creature that was his mind, he took greater notice of them.

Hands became recognizable, appearing in their strongest, most physical form when they were needed most. His father's- broad, masculine, calloused from violin playing- came to him to give him the oft-necessary push into the mindset he needed to succeed: he was lazy and required his father's practical, moral hands to give him the firm but caring guidance that was characteristic of his nature. Mycroft's obnoxious, manicured ones were the tiresome, trying hands that tugged on his curls or ruffled his hair the way he did when they were children. It was endlessly vexing- Sherlock didn't like Mycroft's hands and avoided them whenever he could. The usually only came when he was being smug about something, as if knocking him back to his place.

Mycroft's were the first that Sherlock learned to control.

For a time, the hands had been ever-present specters that ghosted at the edges of his consciousness, appearing uncontrollably, but once he encountered Mycroft's hands, he fought to dominate them a little more. Sometimes he would sit alone for hours in his room, fingers steepled, brow furrowed in concentration as he manipulated the emotions that would cause the hands to stir and prod at the walls of his perception. At the beginning, they made it through the atmospheric envelope that surrounded him but after a time, he'd strengthened himself enough that they couldn't pass through unless he allowed them to.

That didn't mean he was immune to them, no. Quite the contrary: he often gritted his teeth in wry frustration at Mycroft's fingers tapping at his walls, as if they were purposely trying to bug him and saying, "Come now, Sherlock, don't be such a child..."

Every time a new pair of hands appeared, it meant a whole new training regime in which he retaught himself- and taught the new hands- who was the master. As he got older he became even more focused and coached himself patiently in the art of having the hands obey him to his advantage. If he used one of Mummy's hands, one of Father's, and one of Mycroft's he managed to maintain a bullet-like efficiency- calm, driven, and eager to solve any puzzle laid before him to snark that damned brother of his. They touched at the vast reservoirs of his brainpower and at the same time rested on his shoulders, on his head...a presence physically and mentally.

And then, when he was twenty-four, he found his freedom.

Shooting up was a glorious respite from the constant awareness of the hands. The first time, it had frightened him, and in a desperate, panicked haze he had searched for his mother's soothing touch that was suddenly absent. The first time had been a lonesome yet exhilarating experience, one that had left him empty with longing for the equilibrium and familiarity of the hands and at the same time liberated of the constant toying and fidgeting and movement at the cusp of his mind. He felt peculiarly sharp and hazy at the same time, plagued by insatiable hunger both mentally and physically.

When the effects of the drug had worn off, they'd appeared again, like the inevitable headache after the drinking. They were there again, unchanged fundamentally but stronger in force, preying on his wearied, cocaine-addled mind while its defenses were down.

He'd fought them for years once he'd discovered his release. Once he'd tasted freedom, he never wished to let it go. He called on the hands only in times of need or when his beast was being properly occupied with some new puzzle, but otherwise he shut them out.

That was how Lestrade found him.

Sherlock wasn't grateful for the forcible removal of his escape and the resurgence of the hands, delving into his mind now that it was weakened by constant drug use. It had been another year of retraining himself and the hands, and when he began working for Lestrade, a dozen more appeared. It was an exhausting, vexing process that left Sherlock craving for his drugs. He had tasted deliverance and he wanted it back.

Nicotine patches were a poor substitute, giving him almost no relief from the hands, but recreating a small portion of what the drug had once given him. In some ways, ways that he almost appreciated, it was better; he could focus his mind without getting rid of the hands. While troublesome, he'd forgotten how much they could help him.

He functioned like that for years, gaining skills in mastering the hands to the point where a new pair appeared and he needed little time to force them into submission. They were all the same at the beginning: prying, desperate to make contact. He let them in briefly, familiarizing themselves with the other, but just as quickly he shoved them out and showed them his superiority. You come when I need you, his mind whispered.

Then, along came John Watson.

An unexpected pair of hands came from the unremarkable veteran. His hands were like is eyes- curiously guarded but at the same time unspeakably vulnerable. Sherlock puzzled over him for quite a while, long hours into the night.

John's hands did not behave as others did. They made no lunge at his consciousness, instead lingering at the farthest reaches that they could go while still being connected to him. Sherlock reached with his mind, morbidly curious, but they resisted his advances, noiselessly staying stock still at the edge.

It was when John followed him in a wild cab chase across the streets of London that their influence began to seep forward.

Sherlock and John had leaned against the wall of Mrs. Hudson's lower flat, laughing at their mishap, the adrenaline still coursing through their veins. Sherlock had just called to Mrs. Hudson that John would be taking the room upstairs and John had just taken his cane back from Angelo, looking over his shoulder through the open door and smiling unguardedly at his new flatmate, when Sherlock felt them.

When they had made it past his barrier, he had no idea, but curiously, they were there, quiet and still, but nonetheless present inside his consciousness.

More stunning than their silent permeation of his defenses was his inability to make them leave.

For the rest of the night, a small portion of his mind was completely focused on removing John's hands from his awareness, but he couldn't seem to make them move. He tried force, he tried coaxing, he tried trickery and violence and kindness, but they were firmly entrenched.

When he realized, several hours later, that it was the innocuous John that had shot- killed- a man to save his life, the hands had seeped throughout his mind and had filled his entire body with a strange warmth and connection to the unremarkable, yet strangely fascinating and captivating, John Watson. Sherlock Holmes was utterly lost to them.

"Dinner?" he'd asked, glancing down into those midnight blue eyes.

"Starving," was the response, given with a smile- and then he was lost to John Watson too.

Over the course of their friendship, Sherlock would learn that John had a thousand- no, a million- different smiles, different frowns, different faces, but one thing would always remain the same:

His hands, resting gently and comfortably in Sherlock's mind, the only pair that never really left.

But, then again...Sherlock hadn't truly wanted them to leave in the first place.