All That We See or Seem
Prologue
"So tell me how this works." Her voice, low and supposedly soothing, wormed its way into John's ears like the antithesis of comfort.
"I don't know." It came out sounding cold. He was uneager to approach the topic at all, and even less so on her terms. It wasn't that it was too new, or that he needed time to adjust. His entire life had become the adjustment - this was the familiar part. This was why his gun stayed in its drawer, and this was why he never took more than his prescribed dosage of Rozerem. This was his and his alone, and he wasn't ready to share it.
Ella leaned forward, forcing him to duck his chin into his jumper in an obvious effort to avoid her probing stare. He was an truthful man by nature, and for all the betrayal his body had proven itself capable of, his eyes remained stubbornly honest.
"Just start at the beginning." Gentle, reassuring, and somehow a world away from helpful.
"I close my eyes, I open them, same as you." The words came carefully, after a full minute's pause. "It's like nothing has changed." He broke off for another moment, hesitating to reveal the extent of the situation. Ella kept her eyes fixed on him, clearly willing to draw things out with absolutely no concern for how John felt about it. Therapists, he thought, were supposed to take your money and make things easy for you. There was nothing easy about this.
"We run around London, solve cases, have dinner. We laugh, Sherlock gets bored, we fight, same as ever."
"And then what?" Well, the woman was nothing if not persistent. He supposed that was a worthwhile trait in a therapist, and he couldn't very well tell her to stuff it, not for that kind of money. He heaved an unnecessarily heavy sigh and glanced up quickly, hoping to see at least a little guilt. His efforts were rewarded with the shadow of a smirk – deserved, he supposed. The sigh had been a bit dramatic.
"I wake up and I'm alone again. Everything is different. Wrong."
His voice broke. Just emotion this time, no theatrics.
"Cold."
"And you're not sure which is a dream? You can't tell whether you're awake or you're asleep at this very moment?"
He went back to staring at his toes, unwilling to give her a full confession. It was too personal, had become too integral to him. He shook his head, just barely, leaving ample room for ambiguity and provoking Ella into letting out an impressive sigh of her own.
"I can assure you, John, this is not a dream."
Okay, so maybe she wasn't as big on subtlety as he'd thought. Her voice had been careful but left absolutely no room for argument. He smiled to himself, just barely, the expression cynical and distinctly lacking in warmth.
She saw it though, of course she did. "What?"
John stood up, gaining the welcome advantage of his full height. Ella might be costing him an arm and a leg, but wasn't that all the more reason to stop seeing her? John was a reasonable man, and a smart one. He understood how his situation sounded, probably would have shrugged it off just as quickly had he been in her place. Things had moved past cushy armchairs and textbook psychology. Half his life, and he wasn't at all sure which one, was unequivocally a dream. It was, quite honestly, lunatic. He was thankful to Ella in a way, for pointing it out.
He turned back to her as he reached the door, struggling to find words for why therapy has instantaneously become so utterly useless to him.
"That's exactly what the other therapist said."
And then he walked out.