It was late, mid morning when he woke. The sun was streaming into his room and the day was already warm. He lay there enjoying the calm, waiting for the overwhelming sense of doom to arrive, but it didn't come. The voice in his head was quieter too. This morning he could easily ignore it; push it into one of the rooms off the corridor in his mind, and shut the door, so that it could only mutter behind it without interfering with his thoughts.

Matt came in as he was eating breakfast, hungry for the first time in weeks. 'Thought you were going to sleep all day,' Matt grinned at him. 'Better?'

'Much better, you were right. I wrote it all down, and it feels - real, true.'

'Then I think that it almost certainly is. So what now?'

'Now I get better and work out what I'm going to do next - but Matt -' he broke off.

'I wont tell anyone, I swear. I think you're right. You need to keep it under wraps until you get out of this place, I agree.'

Matt left Sherlock that afternoon with a clear conscience. He was going on a course the next week, and wouldn't be back until the following Monday. He had worried a little about opening a can of worms and then buggering off. Had even considered if he should take Clare into his confidence if things had looked as if they were going the wrong way, but now he wouldn't have to.

Sherlock was lying on his bed, reading later that afternoon, contemplating for the first time in months what the future might bring. He could, he thought, finally see a way past this. See a way to get out of here, get back to school or maybe college and more than anything get away from his father. Mycroft would help, he thought, because there was no way he was going to live in the same house as his father again. He wondered if he had any money of his own, money left to him by his mother, perhaps, some way that he could break free from his father. He did remember, he realised, brief flashes of what his father had done to him, of what had happened, and there was no way that he was ever, ever going to risk that happening again.

If it meant leaving home and getting a job, then fine he would do it. He had no idea what he could do, but he would find something, anything. Matt might help, he thought. Matt of all people would understand why he had to get away.

He was startled out of his daydreams by the buzz and click of the door. Too early for dinner, and Clare had only checked on him five minutes previously. Someone different then, but the last person he expected to see was Neil Simmonds, and in his hand he was holding Sherlock's box file.

He sat up quickly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, then just stared in disbelief at the box file in Dr Simmond's hand. His first thought, irrationally was that it might not be his box file. It had been hospital issue stationary after all, it might just be an identical one. Unable to help himself he reached over and opened his bedside locker. Empty. He sank back down on the bed and closed his eyes.

'Thats mine,' he said, trying and failing to keep his tone neutral, 'You have no right to have that. Its private.'

'You are a patient under a section,' Neil Simmonds said calmly, 'nothing is private.'

'No! Dr Harrison promised me. He promised me that nobody would read it.'

'But I am not Dr Harrison, and my methods, as you will find are more traditional than his.'

'What do you mean?' Ice crept down the back of his neck and he was starting to feel dizzy. This couldn't be happening.

'I mean that I after careful consideration I am taking over your case. You will be my patient from now on.'

The dizziness was getting worse, and the room was starting to fade out at the edges. 'Why don't you lie down, you're looking very pale.' Dr Simmonds voice was not without concern, as he came over to sit on the chair by the bed. Sherlock, not wanting to end up in a heap on the floor did as he suggested; he lay down and waited for the dizziness to stop.

He was expecting to see Clare, coming and fussing over him with the blood pressure cuff as she had when this had happened before, but she didn't appear. This then was to be a private conversation.

Dr SImmonds gave him a few minutes, and waited until Sherlock opened his eyes and said flatly. 'You've read it, haven't you.'

'Some of it. The bits that are in English. The rest I'm going to have translated, unless you'll tell me what it says.'

'Please, don't. It was all written a long time ago, while I was still paranoid. It probably doesn't even make any sense.'

'But some of it is what the night staff report you writing so passionately last night. The story at the top of the box I would imagine. Am I right? The story about your father.'

Desperately Sherlock tried to come up with an alternative explanation, words tumbling over each other in his haste to stop Dr Simmonds from discovering the truth which was already all too obvious. 'Its just a story,' he said, 'I was going to do others; write out all the possibilities.'

'But you didn't, did you. You just wrote the one. The one that you believe.'

'No.'

'Sherlock if I'm going to help you, then you need to be honest with me.'

Grasping his last chance, Sherlock said, 'What if it is true.'

'It isn't'

'How do you know that?'

'Because I know your father. I've known him for a long time, Sherlock, and he is not a man who would beat his son. Besides, we have accounts from numerous people stating that they saw you fabricating injuries and then attempting to blame your father.'

'What if he paid them off, or they said that because they were scared of him too. Its a possibility, isn't it? You have to see that its a possibility.'

Neil Simmonds sighed. 'This is paranoia, Sherlock, and a symptom of your illness. I'm sorry, but Dr Harrison was too soft on you for too long.'

'Why won't you listen to me?' Sherlock was aware that he was shouting, sitting up on the bed now, but he didn't care. 'I'm not paranoid. It happened, it was real. I can remember.'

'False memories, planted there by Gemma Haynes, and much as I hate to admit it, inadvertently reinforced by Neil Harrison who came to false conclusions. It is paranoia, Sherlock. It never happened.'

'But it did, please, you have to believe me.'

Clare came into the room, alerted by the shouting. 'What happened, are you okay?' she put a hand on Sherlock's shoulder and he turned into her, gripping her arm and sobbing. '

'Clare, please, tell him, tell him that it was real, that my father really did beat me, please he won't believe me, but I remember.'

Clare looked at Dr Simmonds in confusion. He, however ignored her and continued to address Sherlock in calm, measured tones. 'Apart from it didn't Sherlock, it never happened. You made it up and your illness has made you confuse that with the truth.'

'No!' Sherlock screamed, lashing out with his hand and sending the over the bed table and its contents flying across the room. The water jug capsized, hitting Dr Simmonds in a deluge of water, and the plastic cup skittered across the floor.

'It happened, you bastard, it fucking happened, and you can't tell me that it didn't. You're just trying to protect him, just like everyone else. Why won't anyone listen to me?'

Running feet, the sound of an alarm in the background, then too many people in the room. Hands, holding him down, kicking, screaming, biting, not caring who he hurt and then the sharp stab of a needle again, and Clare cradling him as the room faded and everything went dark.