Chapter one

Tunnels

White.

Though he supposed it was more of a cloudy grey.

The walls were covered in it, as was the floor, the furniture, even his clothing, his skin.

He'd given up speaking long ago, for first, he'd spoken to himself, recited sonnets, Shakespeare's Henry V, but then they'd stopped him. They'd stopped him from speaking and now he could only think.

He lifted a pale arm he couldn't identify as his own and felt the tug of the thorns. The thorns that'd stopped him from moving since they'd locked him up; closed the door to his tower, his chamber, his prison, only opening it to refresh the poison.

The poison slowed him down, made him sluggish (and who would want him when secreting slime everywhere he went,) locked him up, made everything white and fuzzy and forced him to crawl into corners of his mind of which the doors had grown rusty and as heavy as his eyelids. Corners, dark and littered with vermin he'd tried to exterminate.

At first, he'd tried to fight them off, but the men were wizards and he was but a rat.

They'd enchanted him; cursed him and now he was stuck with a pumpkin and could only count the seconds to midnight.

The beads of sand slipped through his unmoving fingers and, as hard as he tried, he could not grasp them and was forced to leave another shred of the sanity they claimed he did not have on the steps of the palace stairs, as if he'd abandoned his entire foot and lodged his ankle into the sharp pebbles in an attempt to get away.

Time was irrevocable, his brother used to say before the wolf ate him whole, so he could not spare a minute unplanned, yet Sherlock had learnt time was a treacherous mistress, ticking away while he lay asleep in bewitched dreams that did not give him rest.

He groggily moved his arm in an attempt to swat the cockroaches away, only for it to halt mid-air, stopped by countless prickers piercing his pale skin.

Blood trickled down his limbs and joined the bugs crawling in and out of corners he did not remember seeing though he'd spent a significant amount of his time staring at the walls, at the forest that surrounded him and the dark spaces in between the trees, full of eyes that looked at him day and night and would tell the wizards when he misbehaved.

Then again, he supposed staring was not seeing and seeing was not observing.

Centipedes littered his feet and worms fell from a ceiling too high for him to observe, fell into his hair and down onto the floor, where they returned to the cracks.

Countless spiders ran up his arms and he screamed and flailed, swatted, but his clenched fist never managed to hit any of the countless scratchy, hairy legs.

He felt the sharp pain in his arm which in the back of his mind was screaming, yelling, freedom, but only seemed to produce more red, sticky, stinking liquid and more and more until he felt he would drown in the disgusting and wrong and he couldn't move.

Tied down, the blood, the poison and he couldn't do anything.

Couldn't grow out his hair in order to throw it down and escape his tower for that only worked in fairy tales and they'd cut off his hair when he tried. Couldn't jump from the window, for that only brought pain and the claws of the dragon awaiting him at the bottom.

A door opened. Somewhere. He could hear, but he couldn't see, nor stare, observe. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep and for a moment, all he saw was light; light that he knew not to be the freeing warmth of matchsticks.

Sherlock had never doubted his happily ever after more.

So basically, Sherlock is a mental patient. I'm sure you deduced /that/ part. It's always good to start the day with some angsty angst, don't you think? The pairing is Sherlock/John, which I've dubbed 'HoTson', both for my own convenience and amusement.

This story is dedicated entirely to CorvidCoccinelle, who dragged me through times I didn't even think capable of ever being able to survive. And then dedicating her writing to me, also! WHAT IS THIS. I love you, woman. Thank you so much for everything. You're my rock in the slipstream.

With love,

Mary-Jane