There is no such thing as 'too insane' unless others turn up dead due to your actions. -Mahatma Gandhi


Molly found him after he finished eating.

"Hey John. Can we talk?"

"If this is about yesterday, I am sorry," he said. "And it really won't happen again."

She shook her head. "It's not about that. It's something that I think you should know."

John frowned. "Not about Sherlock, is it?"

She laughed, and shook her head again. "No matter how much he'd like to think it, not everything is about him."

John smiled and followed Molly to her office.

He sat in the chair, and Molly leaned against her desk anxiously.

"A resident died last night," she told him. "It's looking like natural causes, and there was nothing indicating suicide, especially considering who the patient was."

It took John a moment to remember how to talk. "Who?" he managed to say.

Not Sherlock because I saw him this morning, oh god please not Lestrade, not the piano player, what was his name, James, not the man who loved trains oh god please none of them, please god let-

"Lillian," Molly said quickly, perhaps noting the terror mounting on his face. "The elderly woman who was blind."

John sagged with relief. It was awful, but he was thankful it wasn't one of his friends, wasn't one of the young people who had shown so much progress in their recovery, so much promise. Because Lillian's death was awful, yes, but she was old and there was no one left in her life.

He winced at himself for thinking it.

"Right," he exhaled, nodding. "Thank you for telling me."

Molly smiled a little. "You deserved to know. You were very kind to her."

John attempted a smile as he remembered his first day.


He'd been angry, so angry at Harry for sectioning him. He was a fully grown man and a doctor, he knew better than any of them about PTSD and what he was going through.

But then the police showed up, and that decision was effectively out of his hands.

He refused that he needed hospital care, and they sectioned him.

He did get one choice though, he wanted a normal hospital.

Harry, Clara, and the police were sitting at the kitchen table with him.

"I don't want to go to the RCDM," he said firmly. "I don't want to go anywhere with military ties."

It was the only thing that they ended up agreeing upon before the paramedics showed up, which John rolled his eyes at. "I don't need that," he pointed out. "I'm not being admitted voluntarily, but I am cooperating."

The police shrugged. John only sighed. It was obviously much too complicated for them, and he was done with dealing with people. And machines. It was sort of why he shot one. If only the police hadn't taken his gun...

In the end they agreed on a non-military associated psychiatric hospital, which was how he ended up an hour and a half from Harry, in a smaller facility in Sussex.

He met Lillian on the second day. She was sitting in a chair by the window, basking in the sun.

John sat next to her. He didn't know what the protocol was for speaking to people. Were you supposed to ignore each other? Pretend they didn't exist? Was there some sort of signal?

In the end, she spoke to him first.

"Are you my Walter?" she asked him. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

John hesitated. "No, I'm John. Who is Walter?"

"Oh, that boy," she whispered. "Always getting into trouble. Did he get into trouble again? Is that why I'm here?"

John's heart sank. "No," he lied, hoping that it was at least partly true. "But he's not here. Would you like me to sit with you?"

She smiled in his direction, and that was when John noticed her eyes. Blind.

"That would be lovely dear," she said. "I've been so lonely."

He hesitated, but placed a hand on top of her paper thin one.

She beamed at him, and set her other hand on top.

"You always had such strong hands Walter," she murmured.

"Yes," John agreed.

"And so big now. I remember when your hands could only grab one of my fingers." She smiled.

Son then. Walter is, or maybe was, her son.

John sat with her for an hour before a nurse came to get her.

"Thank you for visiting Walter," she told him.

"It was no problem," John told her. And indeed, it wasn't. He hadn't had grandparents before, they'd either died before he was born (or could remember) or were so far estranged that he never met them.

It was nice though, being with her. He imagined that was how it was to have grandparents.


"She was a lovely woman," he said finally.

Molly nodded. "That she was."