Title: Never Let Me Go
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, John, Sherlock/John
Genre: Drama, Romance
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13
Summary: John Watson meets his donor, Sherlock H. Never Let Me Go AU
Disclaimer: I do not own the BBC adaptation of Sherlock or Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
I lie on the hospital bed, with its stainless white sheets. I look up to the ceiling, the vaulted white ceiling with its bright white lights. I numbly reach for my shoulder.
No pain. I am stitched up again, whole. They gave me a new shoulder. But who suffered so I would not? Who lost their shoulder so I could replace mine?
The nurse, Mike Stamford, looks at me, eyes sad.
"I want to know my donor," I tell him.
"Sir, I don't think that's allowed."
"Please. As a favour to me?"
"We keep our donors hidden. This you know."
"They do not need to be hidden with me. I want to give my donor my gratitude."
"He is convalescing. I will bring him in when he is better."
Mike Stamford introduces me to a young man, barely in his twenties. He has midnight dark hair and high cheekbones, and eyes that waver and ripple their colours with the light. His skin is as white as alabaster, partly from the surgery. I see the bandages around his left shoulder. Part of me slumps in sorrow.
"Dr. Watson, this is Sherlock H." Mike smiles. "Sherlock, this is Dr. John Watson."
"Leave us." I wave Mike out and smile at Sherlock. He looks at me nervously, hand unconsciously clutching the bandages where his shoulder should be.
"How are you doing?" I ask.
"Fine," he mumbles, voice hoarse but deep.
"What's the replacement?"
"Prosthetics."
I nod. "Can you move your arm?"
"Not without pain." He looks at me shrewdly, examining me from head to toe. Part of me thrills. "Afghanistan or Iraq?"
"Excuse me?"
"Which one was it? The war in which you sustained your shoulder injury."
"Afghanistan." I look at my hands, which have unconsciously clutched each other on the duvet. "How did you know?"
"Tan lines, which stop at the wrist. The way you tried to sit up to attention when we walked in. Your haircut is still military. You also look at ease in the hospital, compared to other patients I have seen, and Mike did tell me you were an old colleague of his. Army doctor, then. Obvious."
I smile at him, rather floored at how he'd managed to figure out that much about me. "Wow."
He raises an eyebrow.
"That was fantastic, Sherlock. That really was." I smile at him. "You are a very bright young man." For a clone, I add subconsciously. I wonder who he is modelled off of.
"That's not what people normally tell me," he admits, looking away into the distance.
"What do people normally say?"
"Piss off."
Sherlock has a brother, he says. He says it with all the air of a man who is willing to cling to a lie. Lord knows he isn't capable of having a brother. He wasn't even born, to be technical.
I let Sherlock sit by my bedside. He deduces the people passing through the ward and we laugh together, clone and human – but sometimes I forget that he is a copy of someone else's DNA. Sometimes I forget that society wants me to believe that he isn't human, that it's okay for us to harvest organs from him. For me to take his shoulder.
"How many donations have you made?" I ask one morning, after Sherlock correctly surmises that the passing nurse is a lovelorn young woman who has become jaded in her views of men ever since her latest boyfriend was arrested for stealing the crown jewels. He looks at me, alarm in his eyes, and I wonder if I had gone too far.
"That was my first." Sherlock's eyes flit to my shoulder.
"Oh." I say it simply, nodding. My hand reaches for his. He doesn't flinch away.
"I recently started." He says it quietly, after a moment. "I'd been a carer for a year and a half. People thought I couldn't last as a carer for that long."
"Why?"
"They thought I wouldn't be able to care."
"Were you able to?"
He shrugs. "Not really," he admits. "I could deduce what my charges wanted and thus provide accordingly, but I never 'cared' in the… true sense of the word." His voice is hesitant, his eyes downcast. "I don't think I am capable."
Caring. Always a conundrum with clones. Society believes that they are soulless. They cannot feel, and therefore they cannot love. I have been to the Gallery. I have seen the artwork of students at Hailsham. That amount of creative innovation suggests things. Suggests that what we are doing to the clones is nothing but inhumane.
Why? Why do we kill these artists?
Sherlock looks at me with sadness in his eyes, and then he abruptly gets up and leaves. I stare at his retreating back for the longest time as it fades into the shadows of the corridor.
"I was from Hailsham," Sherlock tells me at yet another meeting. Finally I am allowed to move about the hospital, and Sherlock accompanies me to the shock of everyone around us. He cuts an imposing figure, clad in a dark coat with a blue scarf wound around his alabaster throat.
How I wish to kiss it.
"I've seen the artwork from Hailsham. They're very good."
He smiles ruefully. "My work was never good enough for them," he says.
"Really?" I frown.
"My artwork," he elucidates. "Music is another thing entirely."
He brings a violin to the next meeting. He plays for me, slender fingers gripping the bow and eliciting such sorrow from the strings that I am moved to tears. His prosthetic shoulder doesn't trouble him any more than his shoulder is troubling me. I reach for it once he is done. He closes his eyes and shies away, almost like a wounded animal.
"Sherlock," I murmur quietly. "I won't hurt you."
He opens his eyes, and the light hitting them makes them look sea-green. I have never seen such beautiful eyes in my life.
Sherlock, when amongst his fellow clones – no, people – is disdainful and aloof. I notice the change in every fibre of his being, the shift from hesitancy to confidence.
It almost thrills me.
His carer is a woman named Molly H. She smiles at me kindly as I enter his room, but it's obvious that she wants me to leave. Sherlock looks at her disdainfully and tells her to fetch him coffee. He takes a seat at a microscope on his desk and starts looking through it.
"He's always wanted to be a consulting detective," someone tells me at the door. I turn to see another man, slightly more aged. "Like how I've always wanted to be police."
I smile sadly at him. "If I knew how to change it, I would," I reply. It's the most truthful thing I've said.
"I'm Greg L.," the man adds. "It's nice to meet you."
"John."
Molly returns with coffee. Sherlock takes it without question. Molly takes a seat next to him and reads his observations, but it's obvious that her heart isn't in it. Her heart is focused on him – in a way, she loves him and knows he cannot love her back.
"Greg," I say, and the other man looks at me, questions darting around behind his keen dark eyes.
"What?"
We go out into the corridor.
"Is it ever possible for one of you… to fall in love?"
"We want to believe that it is," he says, shuffling his feet. "Rumour has it that a… special offer… is extended to Hailsham students. People like Sherlock."
I raise an eyebrow. Greg continues.
"If a couple can prove to the right people that they're in love, then they may be able to defer their donations."
"But Sherlock has already started his."
Greg looks at me, brows knitting. "Are you…?"
I touch my shoulder. "I don't know," I admit, and I'm not sure what his question was but I must have answered all of them.
"I see." Greg smiles at me. "Strange, for one of your lot to… take a fancy to one of ours." He shifts from one foot to the other again, obviously nervous. "And for Sherlock, too. He's the last person you'd expect…"
"Why?"
Sherlock is the perfect clone, they say. He almost looks inhuman with the cheekbones, the way his features work in harmonic chaos. His intelligence is high enough to rival the greatest scientists and philosophers. But most importantly, he doesn't care.
The other clones look at me funny when I ask them about Sherlock. "He doesn't have a heart," Sally D. tells me. "He's almost a psychopath."
"High-functioning sociopath," Sherlock retorts at her. "Do your research."
In the short time that I have known him, I have seen many facets of him. As we walk away from Sally, I see his shoulders slump slightly. He looks at me, fear and sadness in those beautiful eyes.
"My original had no heart," he says after a moment. I frown, and he continues. "I was seventeen. I went to search for my original. I found him as he was about to drown himself in a pool. He was a cocaine addict."
I look up at him, concern etched into my features. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I thought I had no heart, John. I thought that because my original was a crazy sociopathic junkie who cared for nothing more than his next fix, I would be like him as well. Not to care about anything, anyone, other than the little time I have left."
"And what made you change your mind?"
"You."
That word is simple, but enough. I close the distance between our lips.
He kisses back and clings onto me, as if he will never let me go.
Sherlock says he has a brother. His brother's name is Mycroft.
Mycroft Holmes is the man who oversees the entire operation. He is a brother to all of the clones, if only nominally. He smiles kindly at me as I take a seat in his office. I can see though, that his kind smile doesn't reach his eyes.
I see a lot these days.
"What can I do for you, Dr. Watson?"
"I would like to request a deferral for Sherlock H."
Mycroft looks down at his desk, biting his lip. Expression uncomfortable.
"Is there not a deferral, Mr. Holmes?" I ask. "For Hailsham students? If they can prove that they're in love, don't they get a deferral? I would like to apply for a deferral on behalf of Sherlock H. I love him."
"I won't even ask how you managed to come into contact with him," Mycroft mutters.
"I am asking something simple, sir." I look at him, and once again I see the truth.
The resigned slump, albeit slight. The look in his eyes. There is no deferral.
"It is not that simple, Dr. Watson. I cannot give you a deferral." Mycroft coughs uncomfortably. "However, I can give you the opportunity of being his carer."
I take it. It's my only chance.
Sherlock's next donation is his leg, his right. He gives it to a soldier who was shot in the leg during the war. I sit by his side after the surgery, watching him sleep. He looks angelic, peaceful.
The clones call what we share "going under the umbrella". Many of them frown upon it. Sherlock doesn't care, and for the first time in my life, neither do I. Before the leg donation, he and I had been able to have sex. The first time, he told me he had never done it before.
I tried my best to make it the best he's ever had.
But now, with his right leg reduced to a stump, he cringes whenever I touch him down there and tells me he's tired, that he can't get into the mood. I tell him not to worry, even if I don't push the situation further. Even with one leg, he is beautiful.
These are the moments when I wonder why society insists that there is a difference between us and them. There clearly isn't. He is just as human as me – if not more. He may have been the perfect clone before, but I have seen his humanity tucked away safely in his heart. I am proud to say I changed him. Blurred his lines.
Still, no one believes me.
"You will complete after this donation," the nurse tells Sherlock. I sit in the room with him, my heart numb. Sherlock looks at me, grips my hand. I squeeze it tightly.
Sherlock must give up his heart to a man named James Moriarty, who had his burnt out in an industrial accident a couple of minutes ago. So far, machines have been able to keep him going. But he needs a heart transplant, and fast. Sherlock's is the first one they find.
I look at Sherlock, willing down the lump in my throat. I nod quietly. He looks at me, sea-green eyes swimming with tears.
"Can I have a moment?" he asks the nurse.
"A moment. Be quick. Moriarty's life is on the line." She leaves the room. I take Sherlock's other hand in mine.
"I suppose this is goodbye," he tells me. I shake my head.
"It will not be goodbye, you big fool," I tell him, trying my best to smile for him.
"But I will complete after this."
"It doesn't matter. You will be in a better place." I look at him seriously. "Sherlock, your entire life was dedicated to this. Your upbringing, your time as a carer. They never taught you anything useful, because in their eyes you were nothing more than an organ repository."
He looks at me, resigned. I continue.
"But I have seen that you are more than that, Sherlock. Once this life ends, you will have escaped all of this. All of this meaningless nonsense. If I was trapped in a life like yours, I would have searched for the fastest way out, too."
"You're looking at it from the other side of the fence." His voice is quiet.
"I know you are human. I know we are treating you and your friends, compatriots, call them whatever you will – I know we are treating all of you wrong. You do have a soul, Sherlock H., and it doesn't belong here. It belongs in the body of a great consulting detective – the only one in the world."
He smiles through his tears, and I smile back, leaning in to kiss him one last time.
"And I promise you this, Sherlock. I will never, ever let you go."
"Promise?"
I nod and smile against his lips. "Promise."
Sherlock completes after his donation. I watch from the window as they pull the sheets over his peaceful, smiling face.
I leave the treatment facilities and head for marshland, to see the abandoned boat. When I get there, I clamber onto the structure and look out towards the horizon. Sometimes I wish I could have visited this spot with Sherlock. He would have loved it.
And as if in answer to my prayers, I see a figure lurking at the edge of the moor. Tall, dark, handsome. As I watch, he gets closer and closer but he never fully materialises before me, never smiles at me in a way that crinkles up his entire face. Never scrutinises me with his beautiful eyes.
I know it is a hallucination.
I savour it anyway.