Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this.
Memento Mori
What do you want? it asks.
His reply is simple and succinct. He does not want knowledge, for that is easily obtained through other, less arcane means. He does not want wisdom, for that will come eventually, if he stays around long enough. What he asks for is a way of thinking, the ability to observe and not merely see, to deduce things from the observations, for he knows that everything should be obvious if only you know how to look.
He has some small skill at this already, but it's not enough. He wants to be better, to become the best at it, unparalleled, the only one of his kind in the world.
The price, he is told, is that he will have to come when he is called. His life, in short, or rather his death, when it is asked of him.
It's a lighter price than he expected to pay, and he agrees to it readily enough. All things die eventually, and he would rather die young having had the Gift than have to live forever in blind, idiotic stupidity. He says as much.
Amber-gold eyes meet his own, their expression unreadable. It does not ask him if he means it because he does, and it does not ask him if he is ready because he is.
The deal, the bargain is sealed with a kiss, and the thing's lips burn against his like living flame.
It's one hell of a first kiss.
Memento mori, it says before leaving him stunned and senseless on the mess of symbols he has drawn on the floor, the spilled offerings of milk and honey and blood.
xxx
His mother is upset, and Mycroft does not approve of what he has done. Sherlock thinks that he should understand at least, because he knows his brother made a bargain of his own – how else could he be rising so quickly through the ranks of the British government? – even if he doesn't know, doesn't want to know what he asked for, and what price will be paid.
Memento mori is a susurration in his head, a soft accompaniment to the sound of his footsteps as he storms away from their first fight.
It is the first of many.
xxx
Memento mori he reads tattooed on the wrist of a dying ex-con.
It's his first case, the heist of the Gloria Scott, and he is exultant, viciously delighted at seeing everything with delicious clarity. He doesn't mind the reminder.
This, this, is what he asked for, and it's worth it.
xxx
Memento mori is a constant beat at the back of his mind during the rest of his time at the university, a rhythm played out by the ticking of the clock in the tower, the one with VLTIMA FORSAN unsubtly engraved into its face. The message is underscored by the winged Death's heads in the chapel. It is driven home by the long-limbed cadaver in Anatomy who could have been him but for the age and the color of its eyes.
Sherlock does not waste time. He becomes notorious for it. He sleeps only when the alternative is passing out from exhaustion, eats sparingly (heavy digestion diverts blood flow from the brain), and goes out with friends – for lack of a better word – only because he knows that the lack of a fundamental understanding of how people act, live, think will be detrimental to him in the long run.
He does not form any actual attachments as they are messy, irrational, inconvenient. This is why he does not have sex. Things would become messy and inconvenient if people started to form attachments he never meant for them to have.
He tells himself that he has no time for relationships or friendships or tact, not with the work he wants to do, not when he could be called away at any day, any moment. What he is not telling himself is that attachments would be awkward things to leave behind, unfinished bridges hanging out to nowhere, frayed ends and tattered edges. Messy and inconvenient and hurtful.
xxx
He hears it in the rustle of the papers as he searches for interesting cases, stories that only he can map out from beginning to end, the pictures in his mind forming like a vividly detailed child's connect-the-dots drawing done with stars. He hears it as his pen scratches when he writes his letters, in the click of the keys as he types his emails and texts, pointing things out to the sadly befuddled police force. It echoes in the wake of his steps as he walks through hallways, through mortuaries, through the streets of the many cities he comes to inhabit in the course of his work.
.
Shut up, he tells it. I know.
It doesn't stop, and he learns to work around it. He doesn't have much of a choice.
Oddly enough – or perhaps expectedly so – it's the murders that attract him the most, the lives cut short and ended too soon.
xxx
He wasn't counting on the boredom, the awful tedium that engulfs him when there are no cases worth more than a passing glance. He's tried increasingly complicated codes and ciphers, music, boxing, even theater, but it's all too easy. Nothing works, and it gets worse after he graduates from the university, when he no longer has to spend a fixed amount of time at loggerheads with his professors.
He never thought he'd miss that.
He gets sotted on coffee and pure caffeine. He starts on cigarettes, claims they help him think, and they do a little, with the nicotine soothing his nerves and the smoke rising like an offering – his breathing in exchange for a moment of calm. The added risk of a colorful array of diseases takes the edge off the ennui.
It soon grows old, and he starts on other things of more questionable legality. If he can, even for a little while, pretend that the whispers of memento mori are no more than part of a hazy, drug-induced dream, so much the better.
xxx
Sherlock meets the detective inspector on a drugs bust. It's embarrassing – he was only at the flat in question to gather data for a case, but the substances and paraphernalia they find on his person are truly his, even if he'd only brought them with him to gain access to the place (he's not that stupid, of course he's not). It all works out for the best, however.
He tells Lestrade exactly how to convict one of the dealers not only for possession, but for two murders, and he gets let off with only a warning and a glare from the (supposed) forensics expert.
His stash isn't returned – for his own good, Lestrade assures him – and he hears memento mori in the rustle of the D.I.'s suit as he is shooed from New Scotland Yard, but it doesn't bother him as much as he expects it to.
Lestrade calls him when he needs help with the next case, and the case after that. It becomes a habit, almost. Even if Sherlock rubs everyone on his team the wrong way, even if he blatantly disregards authority and due process, he gets the criminals caught and convicted, which is what matters.
They exasperate each other no end, but Lestrade freely admits that he needs Sherlock's help, and, on some days, sometimes after he's had more to drink than is wise, he will even admit that he likes the strange, infuriating man. And if Sherlock was in the habit of thinking of things like that, he maybe, just maybe, might have let himself think of Lestrade as a friend.
xxx
Memento mori is in the swish-smack of the riding crop and the gentle rush of liquid from the pipette on the day he meets Dr. John Watson. There is, logically, no reason for things to be any different – just another man he might share a flat with, God knows he's had enough of those – but later, much later, Sherlock wonders at that.