Sherlock knew he really should have just not gone back again at all. It wasn't outrageous. He could tell people that he 'just couldn't handle seeing his sister like that'. That's something people would do, right?
Either way, it didn't matter what he would have done, because that was not what he did. After work that day, he found himself mysteriously lead back to the asylum, unable to turn away and go home. He sighed, cursing at himself as he headed for the door.
"Sherlock!" a voice hissed. He halted, looking around. "Or- uh- Peter, whatever! Over here!" he looked around to the opposite side of the building, to find none other than the Doctor standing there, looking around as though afraid to get caught. Sherlock turned to face him, creasing his eyebrows. After a moment, he followed after him, behind the building.
"Haha, you came!" he said, excitedly slapping his hands on his shoulders, "So good to see you, it's been a while."
"I was here yester-"
"Come on!" The Doctor hurried to the side of the building in a wild sort of run. Sherlock took a moment to remind himself that he was still mentally ill, however much he did or didn't act like it. He followed him over to the wall, wondering what he had planned. He watched as the Doctor bent over, digging his fingers into the grass and tugging up on it. An entire patch came up, grass dirt and all set on a base of plastic, and he set it aside. Sherlock looked down into the pit it left, seeing a rough staircase made of dirt leading down into the darkness.
"Let's go!" The Doctor cried, slipping casually down into the makeshift staircase. Sherlock cautiously followed after, stepping down into the hole that the grass left. The Doctor let him pass by, as he grabbed the patch of grass from beneath and shut them in, leaving them in total darkness. Sherlock stared at the blackness before him, the ground beneath him soft and uneven. He could hardly believe he was stupid enough to walk blindly into some situation. Suddenly, a light burst out of the darkness, and Sherlock squinted his eyes to see that it was the Doctor, holding a small, LED torch. His childish smile truly revealed his insanity in this shade of torchlight.
"The nurses hate it when I go through here," he giggled, "My very own secret entrance to anywhere in the asylum."
"You made this- you?" Sherlock asked, looking around at the dirt the flashlight reflected. "How did you manage that?"
"I'm clever and easily bored. A very helpful combination of attributes. Now, come on!" he turned and pushed past Sherlock, hurrying down the staircase. It was really more sliding than walking, as the landslide of the dirt helped him to reach the floor. Sherlock tried to keep himself from tripping on the clumps of dirt or hitting his head on the ceiling in the dark. At one point his foot caught on something and he felt himself thrown forward, only to his hard, even ground. He groaned, getting back to his feet as the Doctor continued forward. He looked up behind him at the tunnel, noticing the detail and hard work involved. He couldn't help but be impressed.
"Come on!" The Doctor reiterated. Sherlock took a few steps forward, hitting his head on something in the process.
"Ah!" he groaned, putting his hand to his aching head and trying to see what he had hit his head on.
"Careful!" The Doctor warned. He flashed the flashlight up at the ceiling, showing Sherlock what he had hit his head on. Like a running maze, huge walls jutted out of the low ceiling, building a matrix above them. Little words were written on with sharpie, and Sherlock could recognize the Doctor's writing. Names and rooms, Helen's room, main office, cafeteria. He looked around. An underground matrix of the whole building.
The Doctor ducked down and to a place a little past the middle of the room, knowing exactly where he was going. He jumped up into one of the tunnels, reaching out his hand and remaining in midair, evidently holding onto something in that one specific tunnel.
"Coming?" he asked.
Sherlock didn't answer, only following after. He looked up to see what the Doctor was holding onto, to find an old rope ladder going several stories up. This must have been inside the walls. The Doctor heaved up further onto the ladder, climbing up. Sherlock did the same, grabbing the bottom rung and then managing (after a few tries) to get himself up into the thin space above him. The Doctor continued climbing as they passed markers in the walls, more people and places. Finally, he stopped at two words that said My room.
"Here we are," he said. He reached forward and pushed against the wall. It swung open, leaving yellow light to flood into the tunnel and pour over the Doctor's grinning face. He launched himself at the entrance, going inside the small door. Sherlock followed, climbing up the ladder and then carefully shifting into the room. If he fell from here he would most likely die or be gravely injured, which was something he'd rather not do. Once he had got in, he looked around the room.
It was a fairly normal looking room for an asylum. Or at least, it looked like it was. The walls had once been white but were now scribbled over with (what looked like several layers) of sharpie, splattering the walls with drawings of planets and aliens, mathematical figures, and short reminders or descriptions. Little of it he could even decipher.
The bed was pushed away from the wall, tilted at an odd angle, as the 'secret entrance' was evidently hidden by the back of it. There were only three things in the room: the bed, the little side table, and some huge white rectangular object taking up the rest of it, draped in a long white sheet. The Doctor turned around and offered Sherlock a hand. He took it and stood, looking around while the Doctor swung the panel closed again and pushed the door into place. He then reached briefly under the bed, pulling out a few papers of little drawings he'd done, placing them along the wall behind his bed, covering along the crack that the panel made. When he was finished and the crack was totally gone he stepped back and grinned at his work.
"Pretty cool, right?" he asked, "Plenty of the people here hang pictures on their wall, the nurses would never suspect it was covering my secret entrance." Sherlock turned around to see the sloppily drawn pictures taped to the wall. It was fairly clever.
"So," Sherlock said, peering at the walls around him, "This is what you do on your spare time?" he asked.
"Yep," The Doctor responded, popping the 'p'. "All planning, this. Lots to do!"
"I take it the nurses don't like you doing it going by how many times the marker's been scrubbed off," Sherlock said, casually gesturing around the room.
"And as you may be able to tell going by how many times it's been rewritten, I don't really care what they think," the Doctor responded. Sherlock raised his eyebrows. Fair enough. He nodded to the bulky object beneath the white sheet.
"I take it that's your spaceship?" he asked as though it were something totally normal.
"Yes, but more on that later!" The Doctor said grinning, "Take off your coat! Make yourself at home! Sorry I don't have any chairs, they don't let you have chairs. Last time they gave me one it became the doorframe for the spaceship, so I suppose it was a rather logical decision that I didn't get one again, anyway. Worth it after all," he said. Sherlock somehow found himself obeying, his trench coat and pulling of his scarf, putting them over in the corner on the floor.
The Doctor sat down, strangely enough not on the bed but on the floor just in front of it, crossing his legs and leaning back on his hands. Sherlock followed, kneeling down in front of him.
"So, we've got what? 20 years to catch up on, at the very least?" The Doctor said, leaning forward excitedly, "How've you been, what have I missed?"
Sherlock hesitated for a moment, finding it a little strange that he had remembered him and thought of him so highly for all this time, "You don't want my life story," he said.
"Oh, but I do! Tell me everything!"
"Let me rephrase: I'm not telling you my life story," Sherlock responded more honestly. The Doctor didn't exactly seem like one to keep a secret, and he was still supposed to be Peter Abbott. He couldn't afford to tell him much of anything.
"Oh, well, alright if you insist," The Doctor said.
"How have you been?" Sherlock asked after a moment, a smile going over his lips, "In the building of your… spaceship?"
"Not bad, but either way, why would I tell you? You won't believe me, you just get a kick out of hearing me talk," he said with a playful smile.
"Why would I get a kick out of hearing you talk?" Sherlock asked, admittedly amused.
"Because crazy people are much more interesting to talk to than sane people," The Doctor confessed, then added, "Well, you think I'm crazy."
Sherlock scoffed slightly, "Interesting deduction," he said.
"So you do like talking to me?"
"Won't know that until you do some talking."
"But you just said you wouldn't believe me."
Sherlock shook his head, "Humor me," he told him. The Doctor smirked, and then looked up at the decorated wall, delving into some old memory.
"Well, you know how the first try went, not great. After that, I tried again in the hospital using I.V.'s and cotton balls, that ended badly. Went to some quote-on-quote 'special schools' after that, tried a bit more, most of them I can't remember. Didn't really have any friends, I mean, I had a few who sort of helped. Nice girl named Amy, guy named Rory, this other girl Clara. Never really close friends. Let's see… the first school I went to I almost burned down using an electrical circuit, the next one I flooded because I needed a piece of the plumbing, the one after that one of the other kids got hurt because they cut themselves open with one of my building tools, absolutely not my fault, by the way…" he rubbed the back of his neck, "My first adult asylum, I think I burned that down, or at least part of it. Then, since I was an adult I was charged and had to go to court and I spent a little term in prison, not too long though. Hard to build in there, especially since my roommate was not very nice. And then after that I got out, got moved to another asylum, tried flying again and broke both of my arms and knocked out a tooth, got it filled though, so you can't really tell… and then, um, I was moved here. I like this one so far, got some friends. Me and Neil have had some pretty good talks. He's convinced he's Neil Armstrong, and you know, at first I thought he was just nuts, but it could actually make sense, I've got some theories." He casually pointed at Sherlock, shooting him another of those not-so-sane glances, "So, yes, I'm constantly in solitary confinement for breaking the rules, but that's little price to pay as this is the first place to actually let me use my tools and materials! It's just cause I fixed the plumbing in the sink and proved to them I could use them without hurting myself. Nice guys. Don't like me though, not many do. But yeah. As far as the ship, I'm getting close, Sher! I'll be flying soon, I just know it! That last place was my last time falling out of a window, next time I'll never hit the ground!" he hesitated for a moment, "Do you believe me?" he asked.
"No," Sherlock said obviously.
"Oh, humans," The Doctor said, rolling his eyes, "You're so closed minded! Come on, you won't even give it a chance?"
"To do that I'd have to reevaluate everything I've ever learned," Sherlock told him.
"I know," The Doctor responded with a wild grin. Sherlock frowned, thinking for a moment.
"So, what about you?" he asked him, "You seem fairly certain of your past. Don't you ever doubt yourself?"
"Oh, yes, of course," The Doctor said, raising his eyebrows and shifting his position slightly, "You don't think that every time I took that leap of faith, literally, or felt my bones breaking as I hit the ground again that I didn't question it? Of course I did, anyone smart would."
"But you stand by it?"
"Of course."
Sherlock thought about that for a moment. It made sense, or, it didn't, but he was delusional. There was only one thing he really didn't understand. Well, he understood it scientifically, but he found he wanted to hear what the Doctor's view of things were. It was interesting, the mind of someone insane.
"So, why me then?" he inquired officially, "Why show me all this?"
The Doctor grinned at him again, that sort of smile again that said 'I'm so glad you asked'. He leaned in a little bit, "Now this will really make you think I'm crazy," he confessed with a giggle, "Can I tell you a secret, Sherlock?"
"Go ahead," Sherlock responded curiously.
He leaned in even closer, looking back and forth like he did when he was a little kid. "I don't think you're human," he confessed.
Sherlock creased his eyebrows and scoffed. Now that was truly outrageous. "I'm not human?" he asked, "And if I wasn't what exactly are you proposing I am?"
"Time Lord," The Doctor said with a shrug.
"Alright, so what's your proof?" Sherlock asked. The Doctor looked him over for a moment like he was reading a road sign.
"Nothing solid," he confessed, "But there's just something about you, I can see it in your eyes," he leaned back, a gentle yet indecipherable look on his face, "No human on Earth looks that homesick. Not all the time, anyway."
Sherlock leaned back too, admittedly rather taken aback by this. He snapped his answer back incredulously, beginning to get defensive but unable to help it.
"Homesick? Why would I be-"
"Oh come on, Sher, you don't have to hide it from me," The Doctor said, shaking his head, "I could see it in your eyes, ever since I met you. You wandered through that place, you'd memorized every leaf, every cloud, every blade of grass on the bloody ground, but you didn't know it. They way you hold yourself, straight-backed, uneasy, eyes passing over everything taking it in all at once. Always a stranger in a strange land, always, ever since you were little." He smiled, "Even now. You know how these things work, the way you sit back, kneeling, hands on your knees, like you're afraid to touch anything. Of course you're uncomfortable, Sherlock, you're an orange in a room full of apples. Of course people think you're weird. They think you're human."
A scowl came to Sherlock's face as he self consciously looked at his body movements, changing them slightly, but he found they'd shift back to what they were before. He knew the Doctor was right, he could feel it in his heart, he always had. He had always figured it was just him. Could it be possible that he simply wasn't like the rest?
No. Absolutely not.
"That's outrageous," he snapped, "You're insane, why do I even bother?" he demanded.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sher-" the Doctor started.
"It's. Peter!" Sherlock responded sharply, casting him a furious glance. The Doctor held up his hands, trying to calm him back down.
"Peter," he addressed gently, "You know what, you're right, I'm sorry, I was going to tell you all this later. I'm sorry, I'm going too fast, my fault. Don't worry about it. You may very well be human, it was just a theory. Let's just see the ship, okay?" Sherlock wanted to argue, but for some reason, he found the Doctor's words to be fairly soothing. He pressed his teeth together in the anger that still remained and sharply nodded.
Immediately the Doctor's face was again brimmed with a smile and he leapt to his feet.
"Cool!" he said, and his voice sounded exactly like it did when he was young. Sherlock stood too, quickly calming down from the incident before. The Doctor grabbed the end of the sheet. "I present to you," he began. He pulled the sheet off and threw it aside, "The TARDIS."
Sherlock looked it over.
It was impressive.
Or at least, for having been built in a mental asylum.
It was similar to the first he'd seen, a blue box modeled after the old London Police Boxes, only now it was made of wood and big enough for someone to fit into while standing. It was painted and cut surprisingly well, with functioning doors with windows on the front. On the front were the precisely painted letters "Public Call Police Box" and on the top was taped down an electric lantern. Sherlock looked it over. It wasn't particularly interesting, but it still had a sort of… feel to it. He would describe it as magic, but he wasn't nearly foolish enough to fall for that. It was probably just nostalgia from when he first met the Doctor, that was all. Of course it was.
"What do you think?" The Doctor giggled. Sherlock began to speak, but the Doctor cut him off, "TARDIS, that's Time And Relative Dimension In Space, in case you didn't know."
"Not particularly impressive," Sherlock confessed, considering it was supposed to be a spaceship, "How is it supposed to fly?"
"Not fly, exactly, use black holes to skip into various places in the universe," The Doctor said, "But I already explained all that."
"Right," Sherlock remembered. The Doctor didn't speak for another moment, tucking his hands in his pockets and looking at the spaceship with wonder and hope filling his eyes like sunlight. His eyes glimmered even though there was no window. It was a strange thing.
After a moment, he looked down and finally spoke.
"You will come, won't you?" he asked softly, not looking back at him, "It would truly mean a lot."
Sherlock didn't respond for a moment, not knowing what to think. He probably should have said there was no Gallifrey, if that was what he called it, no spaceship, no aliens, and that the Doctor needed to gain some sense. Of course he wouldn't go. But somehow, he found himself saying,
"I never make promises I can't be sure I'll keep."
"Ah, well, I suppose that's fair. Good policy," The Doctor admitted. He was silent for a moment, but Sherlock didn't speak. He could tell by the shifting of his eyes and weight that he still had something to say, he just was too nervous to say it. Sherlock looked expectantly at the Doctor
"Say, Sher," he finally said.
"What?" Sherlock asked.
"When we get to Gallifrey," he began, fiddling with his fingers, "Have you made any plans for what you'll do?"
"Of course not, why?" Sherlock answered.
"Oh, you know, I was just curious," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "And I mean, you know, also because I had sort of been wondering if you'd… like to stay with me?" he looked up nervously at Sherlock. His eyes still had that same tone of insanity as before, but it was less wild, more controlled, more sincere. Sherlock kept his face emotionless, but truly couldn't believe that he would ask something like this. He barely knew him.
"I-I mean, just because I'll get there and I won't know anyone, like, anyone, and it may be kind of hard to get settled, and you're really the only one I could ever ask, of course, you haven't got to, just if you want," The Doctor pointlessly stuttered, "I mean, I assume there are ceremonies for it there, different ones, but we could do it the way they do it on Earth if it would make you more comfortable. Or any other way, never was one for tradition, I mean-"
"Ceremonies?" Sherlock asked, creasing his eyebrows, "What kind of- ah." he stopped, smiling softly in understanding. He raised his eyebrows in amusement, smiling at the Doctor. "Is this a proposal?" he asked, rather smugly. The Doctor giggled at the word like a little kid.
"If you're interested," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. Sherlock scoffed. To think he was socially inept.
"My God, you have no idea how marriage works at all, do you?" he asked, "I've seen you twice, once when I was seven and once now."
"So?" The Doctor asked. He shrugged, giving him a sunny grin, "I know I like you and I know I want to spend my time with you. What else is there?"
"Most people tend to want to date the participant for several years and move in together first, and usually make a rather big deal of the proposal," Sherlock explained coolly.
The Doctor reached out and confidently held Sherlock's hand, his eager grin still remaining. Sherlock didn't stop him. "Aren't normal people funny?" he asked. Sherlock just stared for a moment. He shouldn't have gone forward, but he felt himself incapable of moving back. For a passing second, it was a very attractive idea. But of course, it quickly went back to outrageous again.
Suddenly, a knock same at the door and both their heads whipped around. The Doctor's hand left Sherlock's and he clenched his hand into a fist and then opened it again. His hands were suddenly very cold and he found his heart was racing fast. How odd, he thought. He took in a heavy breath, purposefully slowing his heart rate.
The Doctor froze, his eyes going wide.
"John, come out now," a deep male voice from the door came as someone knocked again, "You're missing group therapy."
"Crap," The Doctor hissed, "I drew on the walls again. And you can't be here!"
"Well that's not my problem," Sherlock responded casually.
"Oh, you're no help!" The Doctor responded.
"I'm coming in, John," the voice said with a sigh. Both of them froze as the door opened, revealing a rather buff guard with short brown hair and an exasperated look on his face.
The Doctor hesitated for a moment before leaning back and grinning like he was an old friend, "Todd!" he cried, "Is that a new haircut, because may I say, you look just stunning-"
"Don't bother, John," he said with an angry smirk. He looked around the room. "Writing on the walls. You know what that gets you."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "24 hours of solitary confinement," he droned, having recognized the punishment, "But not now! I have a friend over!"
"And that's the other thing," The guard, apparently Todd, continued suspiciously, "How did he get in here? It wasn't that matrix of yours was it, you told us you'd shut it down."
The Doctor froze. "Er-" he finally began, but sherlock cut him off, pretending to be very distraught.
"No, it's not his fault i-it's me, I'm sorry," he said through tears he was resurfacing in his throat. He shifted his weight to one foot and grabbed his arms, hugging himself nervously, "I'm Peter Abbott, I came at first to see my sister but when I found out my old… er, friend was here too I was heartbroken. I didn't sign in, o-or out, I'm sorry, I just needed to see him. It won't happen again."
The Doctor glanced at him in vague surprise, but quickly went along with the illusion.
"Right," he said, "Sorry, it was just really good to see him after so long," he said. It wasn't hard to act, that was all the truth.
Todd squinted between them, before finally sighing. "Well, that's still solitary confinement for writing on the walls," he said finally, "But you're cleaning this all off!"
"Fine," The Doctor said through a heavy sigh, "See you, Sh- Er, Peter." He headed over to the hallway, dragging his feet and pouting like a child who'd been told to go to his room. Sherlock figured that an escort would probably be there in about two seconds, but he didn't want to wait. He pulled on his coat and left out the door, quickly signing out and heading out the front door. He had planned to go out to a bar today, add to his persona, but there was too much to process. This visit had been like a windstorm, and all he wanted was to get home and think.
