AN: Revised version up now, thanks to my dearest beta ImpracticalBeekeping, who found - and took - the time to clean up this early battle field in the ongoing Comma War ;)
Original AN: All right, firstly: I'm sorry it took me this long to put the next cahpter up but I'm seriously hampered by the fact that my DVDs STILL haven't arrived, and as I saw series 2 just ONCE, it's getting more difficult to be sure about little details, so I was stalling... But once per week is my minimum, so here's the next part. The longest one so far.
Secondly: I was really SO very happy about all your reviews on chapter 6, and the fact that virtually all of you seem to find my setting descriptions into the faaaar background rather a positive peculiarity of the fic. So I won't force myself to write more descriptively which doesn't mean there may not be some point at which I'll include some more.
Thirdly: Deepest gratitude to said reviewers, especially Words-and-bullets whose text was very helpful and of course motivating indeed. And thank you for the lovely PMing (I'll write back soon ;))
To Azlira, as well, who will have to wait for John to really come to terms with anything, I'm afraid...
To xAppleDownx for leaving such a nice review finally ;) Here's your "more"
Thanks to spidertank and his/her praise for my English. I can just rely on your word for it, so I hope you're serious :-) And here's more to observe yourself *g*
And to my truthful reviewer CheyanneChika, thank you so much for sticking with my little fic! This was not ASAP but I hope you'll like it.
I'm thinking about a companion piece from Sherlock's POV. Opinions?
And now. On with the story. Have fun!
7 - The lizard brain
"Good to see you, John." Ella led him to their customary seats. "You look quite..."
"Calm?" John supplied, kicking himself instantly for falling for the oldest trick in the book.
Ella's forehead wrinkled. "Gaunt was what I had in mind, to be honest."
John looked at his hands, taking one slow breath after another. He supposed Ella's assessment was correct because he could not remember eating anything really, apart from Mrs Hudson's occasional pieces of cake and her biscuits. Considering, he now noticed the more marked blue lines of veins running over the back of his hands and the tendons moving beneath his skin. Odd, that he should not have seen it before. Oh, you did see... Oh, shut up, John thought.
"I w-was a bit ill," he lied. The truth was, that he felt like he had lost his sense of time, which made keeping regular hours for eating or anything else pretty much impossible. The last weeks back in their flat had gone by incredibly slowly and in a rush at the same time. Though the rushing did not happen in the right places, always...
"It would seem so." Ella scribbled. She did not believe a word he told her. Well, why should she? "So, what have you been doing, John? Tell me about your routines."
He stuttered through a few meaningless commonplace remarks. The truth was that John spent his days moving through the debris of a past life. Until this day he had not picked up a single item from its place. He just could not. All he had made himself do so far was touching. Letting his fingertips slide over surfaces that were slowly gathering a noticeable layer of dust.
For obvious reasons, this made living in the flat very difficult, since Sherlock's belongings were scattered all over the place, but John managed. He spent his days and nights listening and soaking up all the smells, until he left the place where he was alone and hurting, returning at last to where Sherlock and he had been together and comfortable in each other's company.
"So you still haven't packed your dead friend's belongings." Ella picked out the one thing he had been truthful about with telling accuracy. "Wasn't that what you went there for?"
"N-no." It was what everyone else wanted him to do, but he didn't say that. And now he could imagine doing it even less than before because of the way the flat had become his bubble in reality where the feeling of loss was, if not bearable, at least in some way contained. It was a space that allowed him to go into his abysses and vanish into his own head without it seeming out of place, maybe because that flat had seen a much madder man before him. John felt the sudden urge to giggle but covered it up by coughing. Maybe she'll even buy your sick-story if you take up acting now, he heard the voice mock him.
"It will stay as it is, and I will stay as well."
When he was up in his bedroom, he could – sometimes – even hear Sherlock moving about, his fluttering movements of sudden action, and could fool himself into believing that his friend had just left to follow some lead. Would be back at some unexpected moment, and John was still hoping that one morning he'd find Sherlock meditating on the sofa as if nothing had happened. Hell, he'd even be happy if the man woke him by giving the wall another well-deserved shooting.
And he was also able to smell that slight note of whatever used to permeate Sherlock's clothing. A mixture of chemicals he used in his experiments, detergents and antibacterial soaps that were used at Bart's, and something undefinable John had come to assume was simply the smell that every human being carried with them and that went unnoticed most of the time unless somebody's smell appealed to you or caused you revulsion. As a doctor John knew that this instinctive reaction to another human being was still largely unexplained by biochemistry and psychology – was it just pheromones guiding our actions according to genetic matchmaking?
But why then would very similar rules be at work among people of the same gender? Imperceptible data determining our 'choice' of friends, lovers, enemies... What information exactly did we get slipped this way? And should we feel manipulated? Yes, he was digressing, but John could not help but wonder what happened in those lizard parts of the human brain, because he had recently discovered how strongly he reacted to smells. (Though this was nothing new in him, he had realised, noticing only now that what he remembered most vividly about Afghanistan was actually the smells of burning tyres, as well.)
"John? John, what is it about the flat and those things that you believe you need to protect?"
"Right: forgive me that I'm not able to throw my best friend's belongings away just like that!" The anger at Ella's words bubbled up from somewhere. He would have liked to slap her for damning, negating his only consolation like that.
"John, it's only... things. You don't need them to keep what was really important about him."
"Is." Mistake.
"That is it, isn't it? It's present tense for you. Do you still not see how bad living there is for you? You build a world of your own, one that you may think is helping you but it does not help you recover. It will only help you to lose yourself in there."
The worst thing was, John could not deny the truth of her analysis.
After three weeks back at the flat he had finally found the courage to slip into Sherlock's bedroom, feeling utterly foolish at first. The clutter matched the one present in the living room the only difference being that here it was mostly clothes littering floor, chair and bed. And then he'd drawn a shaky breath – and his eyes had closed of their own accord.
Time seemed to vanish, and he sank back on the large bed, overwhelmed by the feeling of someone being present who would never inhabit this room again.
John felt the ugly tremor in his hand creep up his lower arm and sighed wearily. "Maybe you are right," he conceded.
Weird how someone so keen on appearing ethereal and aloof could elicit so physical a reaction, even after... Weirder still, how someone whose physical appearance seemed to be as much part of their personality as Sherlock's had always seemed strangely unphysical at the same time.
Sherlock had actually, pretty early on in their acquaintance, struck John as one of the most un-physical people he had ever met – and he did not count himself among those who sought physical contact actively or particularly frequently. Sherlock, though, took this to a totally different level. He rarely let himself be touched and hardly ever offered so much as a handshake (unless he hoped to gather information about someone that way, obviously). Recounting those two past years, John reached the conclusion that he might actually be able to count each and every instance of physical contact – almost every single one necessitated by some sort of serious event or other.
Well, if you thought of your own body as transport for an intellect, then this attitude might make sense... And Sherlock was serious about this, as was thoroughly proven by the way he was able to starve himself, or deprive himself of sleep if necessary. This completely maniacal behaviour was the only convincing sign of Sherlock's purported 'sociopathy' that John had ever noticed in him. Being an incredibly rude dick did not equal sociopath in John's book.
Maybe that was something Ella could help him with; she was a psychologist after all. But John was sure beyond a doubt that that had just been Sherlock's lovely way of telling people to fuck off and mind their own business instead of even attempting to get to know or understand him...(Funny, had he ever tried to make John believe that diagnosis? He could not remember.) After all, he knew that Sherlock could act differently. John would never forget Sherlock kissing Molly that Christmas evening. Or how he could sometimes act around good old Mrs Hudson. Though, maybe... Maybe it was something that had grown gradually over time, changed...
So, Sherlock was not anti-physical, just... un-physical by nature, John decided. You only had to remember his – non-existent – response to naked Irene Adler. John still couldn't suppress a smile whenever thinking about that. It also brought back a clear-cut memory of an almost naked Sherlock standing in Buckingham Palace with no modesty to speak of.
And then, there was that evening, standing out from his memory. Again, sheer necessity had made them run hand in hand, like children taking off, encouraging each other to keep going by the strength in their linked hands. Another thing imprinted on John's mind and filling it whenever he looked at his naked palm for too long these days. Sherlock had instigated it, had asked – well all right, ordered – him to take hold of his hand and John desperately wanted to believe that his best friend, too, had felt stronger, better, for it and had been aware of the warmth and energy they shared. He would never know now.
But could Sherlock have jumped, left him like that if he had felt it?
The disappointment of opening his eyes after some indeterminable length of time (the sun had set by then, so it must have been more than two hours) and not seeing him as well was like a slap but John, from vast experience, had seen this one coming. Didn't do much to soothe his fluttering nerves though which leapt with hope every time he opened a door in the flat, turned a corner or opened his eyes in the morning.
"John, I understand that you have seen his body."
And it was like he had run against a wall at full speed. Her words conjuring up that last image John would ever have of Sherlock as precisely and clearly before his eyes as if she had put up a poster.
"Wh-what the f-" he made himself stop there but it was a close call. Maybe he should be cancelling the treatment anyway.
"The way you are trying to anchor him in reality, how you seek physical... connection so to speak. It mostly occurs in people who have never seen the remains of the deceased. You see, it's often a factor in not truly accepting someone's death."
"I-I... I saw him." John forced out, his voice like sand.
"So you know." Ella waited in vain for him to acknowledge this.
Four months gone. A full third of a year.
