Oxygen- Part Three:
Ozone- O(3) a reactive allotrope of oxygen that is very destructive and damaging.
"Why can't I see him?" Mycroft had just arrived home for the Easter Break, three weeks away from the academic hot-house of Balliol. He'd enjoyed the second term content and its focus on current UK politics; it gave him a chance to focus on something other than the gaping hole left by his grief. His mother had died one week after the new term had started, but he had permission to delay his return to Oxford until after the funeral. He'd caught up easily enough, but the demands of doing so meant he had little time to think about things he'd rather not think about.
His father was standing at the fireplace in his study. He was a tall, imposing figure; his face betrayed absolutely no emotion at all. He turned his dark blue eyes on his elder son and heir, who had inherited the Viscount title on his mother's death. "Because there is no point, Mycroft. No purpose would be served for either of you."
"I don't understand why you won't even tell me where he is."
"Because then some sentimental weakness might lead you to think you should go see him or try to communicate."
Yes, well- he is my little brother. Mycroft was trying to hold his temper, but finding it hard in the face of his father's implacable refusal. "Family loyalty is not a weakness, father."
"In his case, it is. There is nothing you can do. He was born defective. He can't be held responsible for that, but there is no need for you to feel obliged in some way. I won't have him hold you back. You have more important things to think about, young man. He's where he can be cared for, by people who are specialists in dealing with people like him. That's all you need to know. This family has done its duty; time to move on."
"Mother would be …distressed by your treatment of Sherlock."
Playing that particular card was a mistake, as Mycroft realised when his father's face contorted in anger and he crossed the space between them. Now looking down into his son's eyes, Richard Holmes said very quietly, "You will not take that tone with me, young man. Caring is not an advantage. It's because of him that she neglected her own health. I should have made her send him away years ago. If I had, she might still be alive."
Mycroft stood his ground. His own anger drove the reply, "Pancreatic cancer is highly lethal, Father. She was unlikely to survive it, with or without Sherlock. You're not being fair."
"Fair?" The older man's sneer was evident. "What's fair about a wife spending all of her time with a retarded child? What's fair about that parasite sucking all the life and energy out of her? Life isn't fair, Mycroft. I would have thought you'd have figured that out by now."
In for a penny, in for a pound. He took a deep breath. "I have figured out that the distance between you and mother was not all one sided. Your infidelities helped."
He could feel the barely supressed rage, and watched his father's right fist clench. Are you going to hit me, the way you do Sherlock? That would be new for you and me, but perhaps it's only fair.
"You have no idea what you are talking about."
Mycroft tilted his head and looked puzzled. "Don't I? Ever since that memorable occasion at the dinner table when Sherlock outed your relationship with…what was her name? Ah yes, Sharon Williams, your marketing director…I know there have been others. Mother knew, too."
The anger burned incandescent in his father's eyes. "Maybe when you are older, have a family of your own, you will realise that it takes two, Mycroft. When one partner in a marriage is totally consumed by a child's needs, the other is often driven to find company and comfort elsewhere."
Richard Holmes turned back to his desk. "Now, that is enough of this conversation. I won't dignify it by wasting any more breath. Oxygen just feeds a fire. So, there will be no further talk about the boy. He's gone. And you need to focus on your studies."
But Mycroft couldn't let go; he just couldn't. When his father made him return to university a week after the funeral, Sherlock had just been sedated by the family doctor. He couldn't say goodbye because his brother was finally asleep after almost a week of continuous crying. The boy hadn't eaten or slept, wouldn't tolerate being touched and had stopped speaking. As much pain as Mycroft felt about his mother's death, leaving his brother in such a state was almost worse. At least her suffering is over. He'd called home the day after getting back to Oxford, and been told by the housekeeper that his father was away "indefinitely" on a business trip. Sherlock had been moved to a clinic, where he could be cared for. She didn't know where, because she hadn't been told.
So he faced his father now, and asked the question that had nagged at him the whole of the academic term. "You mean him to stay institutionalised -what, forever?" He sounded incredulous.
"It's not your concern. You are to focus on university, young man. You have a future. He doesn't."
It was as if there had been an electrical discharge; the air tingled. Mycroft couldn't bear to be in the same room with his father any longer. Without a word, he just turned and left. He went upstairs, packed his bag and called down to the chauffeur. "I need a lift to the train station, Michaels. Could we leave right now?" He didn't say goodbye to his father.
oOo
John surveyed the devastation. The flat was normally shambolic, chaotic and untidy, but the living room now looked like a tornado had swept through. Books were thrown off the shelves, piles of papers kicked over, whatever was on the dining table when he left was now the floor, including Sherlock's laptop. It was still on, half open, so John started by picking it up and closing it properly.
He looked over at Sherlock, who was sitting – well, not actually sitting- in the chrome and leather chair by the fireplace. The tall brunet's knees were drawn up to his chest, one of his long arms wrapped around them, and his head buried in the space between his legs and torso. All John could see of his head was the mass of dark hair, looking even more unruly and dishevelled than normal. Sherlock was a picture of misery.
"It's not your fault, Sherlock. He was intent on killing his children, no matter when we got to him. He'd timed it all out. Getting there any sooner would have just made him do it quicker."
The case had been horrible. An estranged husband kidnapped his own children- a son and daughter- because the wife wouldn't allow visitation rights. She'd applied for a court order to keep her husband away, but the police were not always around, and she'd never anticipated such extreme steps by the man she married. That his schizophrenia wasn't diagnosed didn't matter. She was hysterical with fear when a child's ear was delivered in a box through the post. She came with it to Baker Street and begged them to take the case.
Sherlock proved it wasn't from the son or daughter even faster than a DNA test- "Ear shapes, John, are unique. Look at the photos supplied by the wife. The antihelix, helix and concha for both of her children are different from the sample supplied."
"But where would he get an ear- a fresh ear at that?"
"Now you are finally asking the right question!"
After a number of false starts at hospital morgues and funeral homes, Sherlock eventually found the answer- a crematorium- and tracked down which one in a matter of hours. A visit indicated that there'd been a break-in several nights previously, but "nothing was stolen apart from some embalming fluid, so we just assumed it was kids doing a bit of thieving to pump up their marijuana smoking."
That had seemed a dead-end (no pun intended), until Sherlock deduced a link between the crematorium and the husband, whose mother had been cremated there four years before. John and he eventually found the care home where the woman had died- now closed. They arrived at the abandoned building, and searched it with a police team. After twenty minutes, they found them in the attic. The two children's bodies were still warm; their father unconscious, but he died before the ambulance arrived. The note attached to the man's coat was blunt. "They are my children and I won't let you have them."
"I should have known, John. We wasted time looking at morgues and funeral homes, when it was obvious that the man would want to cover his tracks. He simply removed an ear from a body due to be cremated the next morning. Pull the girl's hair down over where the ear had been, and there'd be no reason for the crematorium attendant to stop. The body is burned, and combustion removes all evidence."
When they returned to the flat, Sherlock disappeared into his bedroom and didn't emerge until the following morning. He was terse and tense, but when John was called by the clinic and asked to come in for a few hours to cover for an illness, the brunet waved him off. "Go, at least one of us should be useful today."
When he got back, it was to the ruins of Sherlock's rage about his failure.
"Sherlock?" John's voice was gentle, but insistent. "Please, look at me." He was worried about the total lack of response. Was this the aftermath of a meltdown? Yeah, what else? And I was stupid enough to leave him alone. He glanced into the kitchen and saw the devastation of broken glass. Sherlock's experimental kit lay in shards and splinters. The microscope was on its side under the table. That's when the doctor's nose detected a scent that was an occupational hazard for a medical professional- the metallic tang of freshly oxygenated blood.
"Sherlock, what have you done to yourself?" This was more insistent, not as gentle. Looking at the brunet in the chair, John realised that he'd tucked his right hand in-between his knees and his body. "Have you hurt your hand? Let me see."
There was no response. He knew Sherlock loathed being touched, but needs must. He put a hand on the man's shoulder, and when there was no flinch or reaction, he then reached in to try and pull Sherlock's right hand free. He couldn't see it, but knew by the wet touch that he'd found the source of the scent; the hand he grasped was slick with blood. It's a unique texture- warm, wet, and yet with a viscosity distinctively different from plain water.
He pulled the hand out and grimaced at the sight. Sherlock's palm had a jagged gash, about the size of a fifty pence piece, right in the middle. It was very deep and it was bleeding heavily. The front of his pyjamas, now visible to John for the first time since he arrived, showed that the bleeding had gone on for some time.
Sherlock was strangely passive. He let John check for tendon damage, clean and suture the wound, and sat absolutely still through the whole procedure, unmoved and unmoving. He had not lifted his head to make eye contact once since John had arrived. But he didn't stop John from seeing to the injury, and when it was done and bandaged, John got him a glass of water.
"You are lucky that I came home when I did, otherwise you would probably need a transfusion. Drink it, Sherlock. You need to replace the fluids."
Awkward with his left hand, Sherlock complied obediently, and then held the empty glass in front of him, eying it with a strange expression on his face. His grip started to tighten around the glass, as if testing to see when it would break under the pressure. John quickly snatched it from his hand.
"You want to break glass. Why?"
He didn't really expect an answer, so was surprised when he got one. "It puts the fire out."
The doctor's head tilted as he scrutinised his friend. The tone of voice was utterly flat and quiet. There was no evidence of a fire in the flat, nor that there had been one. No charred scent, no smoke alarm, no fire extinguisher residue. "What fire?"
Sherlock blinked. "When I get so angry that I can't control it, then smashing glass works. The noise, the…sensation, the pain- it removes the oxygen feeding the fire in my brain. It just …goes out."
"It also results in blood and destruction, Sherlock. Can't you see that?"
Sherlock glared at him. "Save the sanctimonious preaching, John. Surely you were awake in med school when they covered NSSI. Non-Suicidal Self Injury- it's not rocket science; it's amygdala activation and stimulation of the limbic circuitry. Think of what I do as a form of self-medication. I am using the glass breaking as a form of conditioned neural stimulation. Believe me, the consequences are far less damaging than letting the fire rage unchecked."
John rolled his eyes at his friend's explanation. In one sense, he was glad for the sarcasm and cutting edge to Sherlock's explanation. Sarky he could deal with; silence was more worrying. Looking up at the ceiling, the little red light on the smoke alarm up there caught his attention.
"Sherlock, next time you feel that self-combustion is a possibility, give me a warning of some kind. I'll hang around and make sure that you don't have to resort to such drastic measures."
