Title: The Dumb Star Gazer
Pairing: None
Rating: Uhh…a horrific PG. Look out, world.
Warning: Unbeta'd, not really read, written out as a distraction, based on real life ennui. This shit is heavy man , if you have felt it. Swearing, too, but that's mostly me. Sorry. Ahh, and drug use.
Word Count: 2,946
Disclaimer: Nooo. Well, technically, yes, but not this incarnation.
Summary: Sherlock wished to be among the stars.
A/N: ISSUES.
Sherlock often wished himself an idiot, because he wanted to be alone.
Such was the dream of clever people, with no one to care for and no care to feel such emotions in the first place. Cold and detached, it was little wonder Sherlock held the world an arm away and watched it with contempt and boredom, because it was repetitive and tedious, ugly and wonderless, brimming with life which served no purpose, following a god who had ceased to exist. Such were the motions of every day peoples- the comings and goings peculiar, and Sherlock resented that those of the same species as he could be so pitiable.
Had Sherlock been anything less than a genius he would have left the city for emptier pastures at the first chance, which was always. No one was stopping him from getting up and leaving; in fact, Sherlock rather suspected they'd like for him to go. Rather, the only thing standing still in his way proved to be himself and the daunting hassle of a mind stagnate without the work, without the puzzles, without the mysteries, without the murder. People fuelled his lifestyle, hurting each other and performing evil deeds, delighting Sherlock with their irrationalities and hard kept emotions, and also they served as the stunned audience as that whom stood upon the stage pulled an answer from seemingly nowhere, yet if they dared to look hard enough even they may see the strings.
Such a mind needed applause, and if not applause, then at least an ear to gloat into, to whisper impossible truths and to show that he was that genius, and that the mind he was hiding was not a parlour trick, nor a joke. Sherlock himself may be on the verge of a classic super villain, but his mind was worth nothing short of hero worship. A fact he'd always love to think to himself until someone in fact started to worship as he wished.
But then with that mind comes the ennui of kings, or more than kings, because kings are only human. Sherlock was so much more than that, so much higher, so much more powerful, so much more devastating. He could bring down kingdoms with some well placed words, but before that he'd have to wait for the words to exist, and that waiting killed him every time.
Sherlock was not a patient man. He was twitchy, he was quirky, he was queer and incomprehensibly quick and such personality traits did not cope well when faced with reality and the lives, not the deaths, which others experienced. Having turned to drugs before, he knew he wouldn't stay with them long, and it seemed that while they enhanced his perceptions and cognitive skills exceptionally, they also fine tuned Sherlock's brain to the boring surroundings which offered up nothing to appease his suddenly intensified upper functions. He would fidget all the more, making up his own cases, giggling and texting Lestrade and confusing the poor man so easily and playing hide and chase with Mycroft's henchmen all over the damn city, and while Mycroft may have cameras watching the whole of London, he wasn't a walking London A-Z. Sherlock won these races at least six out of ten times, and considering Mycroft was the British Secret Service and the MI6 and the Government when it took his fancy, they were statistics to be downright gleeful about. Sherlock took such an attitude when he was high, and found it all the more wonderful when Mycroft's own manner when faced with his brother in such encounters was as contrary to Sherlock's as one can truly be delighted from.
Needless to say, Mycroft's attempts at keeping Sherlock off the drugs fell to selectively deaf ears, though when faced with the choice of no more cases offered when Lestrade finally figured the drugs habit out, along with a sterile environment funded by Mycroft which paraded falsely as a rather charming little inn placed in the middle of a nowhere village (the image, though, rather ruined by the bars keeping what was out, out and what was in, securely in), in which Sherlock could spend a lot of time contemplating his lack of cases while he also enjoyed the simply divine effects of sudden lack of drugs all at once. Sherlock endeavoured to work himself off pushing the needle into his veins. That, or get more sneaky about it.
The drugs fully stopped when the cigarettes took their sacred hold over the detective. Sherlock had always been an occasional smoker, but he hadn't had so many as to become addicted until he found a pack lying around, carelessly left by his flatmate who Sherlock didn't feel the slightest guilt in stealing from, and Sherlock himself was feeling, understandably, like shit. A puff of a cigarette didn't help until his forth one when he started to realise why so many people got so broke on these ridiculous little things. But even a poor substitute, Sherlock supposed, taking out a fifth in thirty-five minutes, is still full of drugs hurting his more irrelevant bodily functions. Breathing had always been boring, after all.
But that never served to ease the lethargy caused by the tedium of constant monotony which ate at him in a way physical drugs never could because it killed him mentally, turning him into a vegetable on a convenient settee, or even a rug, or woe forbid, the floor which was bordering on interesting on those particularly lonely days. He could roll about and try to giggle, toss a bouncy ball about, play violin as loud as he could, see how high he could jump to touch the ceiling, measure how much force it would take for him to break the back of his sofa. It was nothing compared to a puzzle, and even the 'Killer Sudoku' was naught but a waste of energy while he waited for something wonderful, like a serial killing or a vicious carving of flesh, or the hanging of one using the entrails of another. And that was all exciting and far, far away and what Sherlock hated more than the dullness was the anticipation. He wondered if he may be led to do it himself out of sheer bloody boredom.
Sherlock slept too much when he was bored, and ate when he remembered it was something he could do to pass the time. He made tea without blowing up the kettle because he was capable of it, despite what Mycroft thought, and if he did blow it up then he would need someone to buy a new one because he wasn't going to and Mycroft had never done such a kind deed and his mother was still upset at him and hadn't spoken to him since she heard he was getting off the drugs. That he had been on drugs in the first place was news to her, and she was angry and vicious towards him when she visited that once, three months previous to where he stood in front of the kettle, watching it start to whistle. She had been livid and spitting fire, but behind her anger Sherlock saw the fact that she simply had always expected this, but had foolishly hoped the boy above it all in the end. Sherlock's mother was clever, most definitely, like his father had been, but she was also optimistic, was Sherlock's mother, and that made her foolish.
Sherlock even answered the landline when he had nothing else to do but wonder if he could fit a stress ball into his mouth. He could, as he later learned.
"Hello?" He had wondered into the receiver as he'd put the ball to the side. Sherlock was honestly not quite sure who on earth would call his landline when he had a perfectly good mobile which was closer to him (the number of which was definitely on the website. Sherlock's landline wasn't even in the Yellow Pages). Honestly, people never thought straight; their minds just a jumbled mess of outlandish ideas, and urges and impulses and bodily needs and it was truly ghastly.
"Oh, Sherlock? Sherlock Holmes, is that you, dear?" And the voice on the other side was no one but Mrs Hudson, and never could be mistaken for any other old biddy Sherlock had the pleasure to not associate himself with. He felt himself smile at the memory of the kooky bat knocking on his door those few years ago, asking him if he could assist her in something, the police won't do a thing of course, useless as they are, and to be honest, she'd like to keep this one on the quiet side if you know what she means.
"Hello, Mrs Hudson." He had replied as jovial as his current state of mind could possibly allow. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Oh, no, Sherlock, I'm still the one that owes you. You see, my room has just gone out to rent – the couple I had before needed somewhere bigger, they have little children you see, and London is too expensive and all that. I heard you were looking for somewhere new."
Sherlock hadn't needed to wonder to know where she would have heard that news. Mycroft liked Sherlock to know when he had his eye on him.
"Where is it?" He asked, though he believed he remembered, but then again Mrs Hudson's address had always seemed a little insignificant in the big picture.
"Baker Street." She said. "Might be a bit pricey, but I can always give you a deal if you like it, considering all the lovely things you've done for me. Please think about it, dear."
"Of course I shall," Sherlock said, feeling somewhat brighter at the news, but still, when he thought about it properly as he thought about little improperly, of course, such things such as where he resided were insignificant when faced with the passionate hatred of the grey world which only looked bleaker every time he watched it pass him by out the mucky windows he owned.
Later that day, quite impossibly, he found himself wondering into a bus station and paying for a coach to Leicester. He sat in the bus, quiet and withdrawn, not even mentioning the fact the woman he was squished next to was suffering from a mental breakdown, and such a journey would not be good for her health, especially since she was stalking her ex-boyfriend, fiancé even, who was further up the front of the bus with his new arm candy. Sherlock rather suspected, if she had known he knew, she may have even been grateful for his not speaking out loud.
They arrived, and Sherlock followed the crowd into the Space Centre where they were parked outside. It was tacky and ridiculous on the outside, and inside was nothing if not worse. The café was immediately accessible, though, and Sherlock revelled in the chance for a tea which he hadn't been forced to make himself to appease his needs.
It was relatively boring in there, and Sherlock found nothing which he had any interest in, with no information which held relevance, and all of which he found himself forgetting as soon as he read it. He enjoyed himself, though, more than he expected, because it was a break away from London and an entrance into a world which wasn't so black and white for the first time in recent memory.
It was only when he stepped into the Space Theatre, though, when he found himself enraptured.
Something happened as he watched the thirty minute film entitled 'Astronomers Now' in the planetarium and it wasn't so much what he had learnt (nothing), but the experience he gained from sitting in that theatre and looking up and seeing stars and nothing else around him, stretching on for millions of miles, alone, in the darkness, stretching out and feeling nothing and never would again. Here, his thoughts dimmed to a whisper if anything at all, and he felt free for the first time as he experienced the joy in the loneliness for what came with it was the knowledge of nothing, nothing ever again, with no one and no fears and no cares, and it was beautiful.
The magic was broken as he left, and with it went all the knowledge of the Universe he had ever cared to learn throughout his life. Smoking, though, had lost its significance all at once, and he chucked his pack away without more than a brief thought how he would really regret that later that night.
Later, he found himself at home again, and he fell asleep on the sofa, with dreams of empty seas and empty lands and endless fields of nothing, void of life bar Sherlock, and the son shined on his face, and he sat and he was tranquil because nothing disturbed him, and in his deep and meaningless happiness he was never bored. He was floating, smiling, drifting, dumb and unaware and it was marvellous.
Mycroft woke him the next morning, prodding him at arm's length with his umbrella. Mycroft knew he wasn't high, but that didn't mean he wasn't disgusted at his brother's habits for living and looking like filth anyway. Sherlock felt ill, and needed a cigarette, but knew there was none accessible to him, especially not after Mycroft had a raid of his home.
"You have a potential landlady to see." Mycroft said crisply. "Did you enjoy the space centre?"
"No." Sherlock answered. "Nonsense, drivel, boring."
Mycroft handed him a steaming cup of tea which he had not made, and Sherlock accepted it, figuring it was bound to be divine if Mycroft's new secretary had been the creator of the perfumed Earl Grey.
"Would you like to be alone, Mycroft?" Sherlock asked his brother outright, not without a hint of disdain, but knowing Mycroft would be the only one who would ever understand. Sherlock was willing, for a moment, to put aside his derision and condescension of his brother out of the painful curiosity which ate at him even as dreams faded.
"Of course." Mycroft said, eyes blank but serious, taking his brother as sincerely and literally as Sherlock needed and in the same way Mycroft always had done. Mycroft constantly took Sherlock's word as that of God, because he understood in a way no one else did, as Sherlock's older brother, that Sherlock was not a child, even when Sherlock was seven. "But it is not I who needs their standing ovation," Mycroft continued with a bored flick of his wrist. "And with it the constant reassuring cries, cementing to you your audience's call for for an encore." And turning to leave, sufficiently appeased of his brother's state of wellness, and happy with his answer of Sherlock's question Mycroft didn't offer the younger Holmes a farewell greeting, much less a final look back.
"Liar." Sherlock called back to him, pointedly ignoring the address Mycroft had left on his table, which sat innocently next to a box of nicotine patches.
But he found himself at Baker Street later, anyway, and Mrs Hudson was overjoyed at his presence so soon. He had liked the flat well enough, wondering aloud after the price and knowing he would never be able to afford it on his defined lack of a paying job. Occasionally, it was true, Sherlock accepted money, but it wasn't a regular thing and nothing which could keep up with what Mrs Hudson was asking every month.
"Perhaps a flat share." She suggested, and such thoughts made Sherlock wince. No, it was impossible. Not only had Sherlock yet to find another human being with the balls, the nerves and the patience to put up with him, he also had his own aversion to others of the same race, and had yet to find the patient, courageous and possibly demented human which Sherlock could put up with in return.
He tried to find someone, but the search was half-assed at best, for Sherlock had nothing if not a defined lack of faith which was encouraged by Sherlock's own deductions that the likelihood of his finding a perfect flatmate was one to thirteen hundred, at least, even in a city like London. Coincidences may happen, of course, but Sherlock made sure that they were never to happen to him. He spread the word instead, amongst associates and his own brand of Intel and still came up short accurate as always to his own predictions, even four days later. But, on that same day, PC Jane Downing text him with a curious case which he took to his liking. Still half drowned in the misery of world-weariness which had almost made him send himself off into space alone without a suit or shuttle, he was eager to answer her pleas of assistance as if he a superhero and she the damsel in distress.
He'd told Mike Stamford offhand of his woe in the flat share front the day after he took Downing's case, when he found himself nearing on an answer for the PC and the time was exciting. He had some work to do in the morgue with the body, or at least a body, didn't matter who, and a few more chemical tests to run, but on the whole he felt the case wrapped up.
Later that day he had met John Watson, and there was nothing special about him.
Sherlock didn't realise he had felt the floor beneath his feet for the first time in weeks until he'd left the lab to collect his forgotten riding crop and the uncomfortable sensation of mindless floating started up again.
End
A/N: How curious is the wish to be alone which plagues only the clever and the desperate. Yet, it is those who need the surrounding people to hear their pleas for without them they wouldn't be the desperate or the clever. Funny, then, how it is a singular human who makes us want to stay on earth, when for all the power within us, we wanted to run away from the disgusting creatures called the human race.
One dream of a million. My more morbid wishes to be alone send me to Matawi Tepui to get lost in labyrinths of rock, disappear and never be seen again.