AN: I sometimes seem to stumble into some especially forlorn form of depressiveness.
When this happens, I try to hone in on whatever it is that I'm feeling, with the understanding that mood problems can be very complicated beasts.
One such topic that fascinates me has to do with how individuals surpass what I call ''covetousness yearning.''
I know I have felt that deep and angry need for impossible happenings (life events being altered, different pasts, and a chance - a great chance - for a radically altered future) and I suspect many of you have, too.
So anyway, when I feel like this, I try to write. Even more so than typical (I also write when I feel absolutely fine, of course). However, the act of writing and the act of trying to capture the essence of that sort of upset actually reduces the cut-off, discombobulated sense of isolation that I find so consistent in depression.
I don't believe that events that are simply ''unlikely'' are the cause of what haunts us, either. I believe that the deepest sadness that anyone faces in life stems from an awareness that what we want - what we have always wanted, or perhaps what we thought we always *needed* - is suddenly or irrevocably cut off from our obtainment. Forever.
To feel as if you need something in your life and yet to understand that the conditions of obtainment remain impossibilities that can never be fulfilled?
Well, that *hurts.*
Much more, I believe, than simply being harmed in one unfair or cruel moment by a single person.
So, in essence, that's what this chapter is about. This chapter is about Sherlock's realization that what he's feeling isn't some base anger over people who may have wounded him once, or twice, or even repeatedly. But a deeper and darker sense of injustice at what he feels he's lost forever. And how likely is it that such anger would have been properly vented, especially when Sherlock is so adept at donning masks and playing roles and considers himself bad at 'getting emotions'?
WARNINGS: for conceptualizations and musings on self-harm. Rather detailed emotionality and speech about psychological duress. Nothing too involved, and really - this entire story deals with self-harm as an undercurrent focus - but this chapter is slightly more detailed on the subject. So proceed with caution.
SHERLOCK'S POV
My feet burn against the icy pavement, and I remember this fact: that coldness, at first, can often feel like a biting heat.
And sometimes, too, the first shock of glass doesn't feel like a slice, but again like heat.
Sometimes the pain doesn't come for an obscenely long time following an injury; more so if the injury is sharp and decisive and made by my own hand, in rage.
When my skin opens up, I sometimes feel a glowing ember of promise in the pain that has yet to arrive.
But here's the thing that I worry about, sometimes.
The thing I am concerned no one else but me alone feels.
When I inflict pain onto myself, it sometimes feels like a warmth I need.
It doesn't hurt like when someone else wounds me.
Not initially, anyway.
Initially the pain is so faint that the sensation of burnt warmth is stronger. And then I realize that it actually feels *good* - that strange warmth. That slicing heat, by my own hand.
Because no one is going to give you the heat that you need, anyway.
You have to provide that for yourself.
I cannot have been the only eight year old to have taken a straight razor to my skin, and to have cut open geometric patterns along my legs.
It is not possible that this only ever happened to me. It is not possible that no one else escaped such a life.
Is it?
No, of course not.
Life can be cruel. People are cruel.
Being a detective has taught me that.
If feels impossible that others could not have sought out the heat and the lines and the geometric redness, too.
The pain becomes a line of crimson that wells up to form a river along my arm, or along my leg, or along territories of flesh far more embarrassing to address, and far more sensitive in their reception of aggression. My inner thighs, and higher still. Places so risky, so revealing - that I've been made hot-faced by the meaning of it all.
I have always been so terribly cold.
Is that perhaps why I am drawn to pain?
Because my body and brain associate pain with heat, and heat with comfort?
For the heat of it? The burn of it as it rouses within me something that paradoxically doesn't hurt - never hurts, exactly - but feels controlled and assured and regimented?
After a few minutes of running, I realize that my arms and cheeks feel frosty.
It's early December and the air nips at my nose and my lungs when I inhale too quickly, so I cover my mouth with my hand.
I've just run down three streets in my socks.
I realize, next, that I've pounded the gravel into the soles of my feet, which sting and feel wet.
So I look down at my feet, and lift up each sole. Inspect the underside.
My right foot looks as if it's blotted up red paint.
(It's been scratched; probably on a rock.)
I am not sure when that actually happened.
But something has happened, yet again. And it's something I didn't really feel in totality until after I saw the blood.
I certainly didn't feel the pain.
But I rarely do.
I come to rest under a large cluster of trees near a stop sign.
I'm already feeling chilled, and regret (yet again) my impulsive stupidity.
I always regret it, but rarely seem to be able to avoid succumbing to my mercurial happenings. These mindless ventures out towards something. Something ill-defined.
It's not that I have to run away from others.
It's that I have to run away from myself.
That's the real insanity.
The only thing I can trust and look to for guidance and support are facts. Quantifiable, unchanging data.
Not people, not faces with red cheeks and kind words, because those words can turn cruel without notice.
And never subjective analysis. Not philosophy, nor poetry, nor literature. I can study these subjects academically, and use an awareness of their component parts to help me better make sense of others.
Yet what I need is something that is fixed and firm and grounding. A solidity I can grasp, a certitude I can read in science manuals, in case reports.
The analysis of 240 different kinds of tobacco ash is a safer and realer state of existence for me than one where John loves me at all.
Love is far too wispy. Far too able to shift and depart.
When I was two and a half, I took a bright orange crayon - the colour of a pumpkin - and I scrawled the word ''Lost'' on Mycroft's school planner.
LOST.
I was a toddler, and that was the first word I knew how to spell.
That was the first word that - in a definitional sense - owned me.
I finally reach the end of the stretch of sidewalk, and glance across the road. The houses here are brick and vine-trellised and I find that something inside me wants to curl up under one of the eaves while I try to push all the stuffing back inside my body. The stuffing that has come out of my mouth, run down my shirt, spilled from my eyes so embarrassingly.
It's not a stuffing anyone can actually see, to be sure.
But people more receptive to emotions always seem to feel it.
It's a foamy, sad, unreal pathetic-ness that I feel lives inside me.
And when it leaves my body, like it did a few minutes ago, the inside of my being feels less padded and less numb, and for that alone: far less safe.
Sometimes I think that there is nothing really wrong with me.
Really awful things have happened to me, to be sure.
I know this intellectually.
I can itemize the order of severity in my head.
I can tell myself that there is a twisted and dark wrongness in what happened.
I can remember being a child, and I can remember when he made me bleed, and I can itemize this as a 11 (out of a possible 10) for acts of perversity.
But I can also remember being slightly older, and holding a shaving razor in the palm of my hand, and trying to grasp what the word 'alive' meant.
And cutting myself to see if I could feel the word 'resplendent.'
Realizing that even if I couldn't spell it with any certainty, I could know what resplendence felt like.
(It felt like heat, when seconds earlier you had only felt coldness.)
''Resplendence'' felt like taking back something that should have always been yours.
And even if you were cutting yourself with a razor blade in the downstairs guest bathroom with the lights off, clad in nothing at all but your underpants because you were well aware of how terribly angry the others would be if they knew what you doing - it still felt like a resplendent sort of lashing back against those that wanted to harm you.
It's only later, as an adult, that this very memory fills you with something that you, upon contemplation, might deem as ''sadness.''
Because you are then in a position whereby you must ask: if they knew about your proposal of turned-in defiance, and anger redirected back onto your own searing body, would they have even cared?
And you realize they wouldn't have cared. Not about the pain of it, anyway.
And that's such a low and disarming thought to hold in your mind.
That you scarcely mattered to anyone at all.
Ironically, it was something I would later seek to hide from anyone who might have been able to help me.
Because that's what it means to be enslaved by fear.
That's what slavery is...
Being a slave means being afraid.
Terrible mind-chillingly fear? That is the greatest and most controlling form of slavery, I think.
It means that you are afraid of even the moments you spend in solitude, once they have departed. You are afraid in such a way that you need to blot out the noise and colour of the external world. at all times, not only when you feel preyed upon. You need to get rid of the noises of others, and curl inwards like a wounded animal.
That even once they retreat, the attack continues in your own mind.
There is no rest time, but perpetual alert and guarded suffering.
That's my definition of slavery.
Yuri asked me awhile ago if I could fully accept how badly I had been hurt when I was a child.
And if I could be honest with him, with John - and most of all, with myself - about how much my body had registered this apparent 'hurt'.
I had sat tight-lipped (read: ashamed) in his office.
I had told him that I didn't feel pain when I thought of my past.
That it didn't matter now. Because the past was gone.
The past was dead.
It was never meant to be for me, anyway. Some idealistic Norman Rockwell childhood?
Did I honestly think that was something that I could have ever had in any time-line?
Of course not.
So why should it hurt? Why should the excessive displays of a dramatically indulged childhood - of unabashed trust and stupidity heralded as naiveté - why should that even matter to me, anyway?
I was a scientist, and as such - I only came into my own being, fully and with open interest, once I left the tiresome hurt of my childhood in the past.
Once I had killed it in my own mind, perhaps.
That's what childhood came to mean to me, I guess.
Something that required a strong, dedicated acceptance of developmental-euthanasia.
Because I can accept at some level that being small and vulnerable was something that I needed to snuff out.
Needed to put down.
Like Redbeard, with his cancer.
It's what you do when someone is suffering.
Even if that someone is you.
Right now I want to close my eyes and feel warmth, and cease my running and stop the physical burning in my lungs.
So I press against the metallic cross-walk sign. Press the button. Ignore the shuffled, scraping sound from behind me.
''Sherlock!,'' the voice pants out. This person has raced. Run after me.
It's not John's voice, however.
It's Yuri's.
I turn around slowly, the heat of my flesh melting the frost on the sidewalk beneath the soles of my feet.
Making my feet start to writhe with an ache of cold and the slight sting of where I've cut my sole.
''Sherlock,'' Yuri rushes forward - his hands outwards. Splayed in some laughable and almost-alien gesture of peace.
''Stop, Sherlock. Please stop,'' Yuri pants - out of breath - now pacing closer and closer to where I've crouched down.
I look past his face - past his normal face and his normal, understandable expressiveness - and I look at the house besides me.
The roan brick house. The frost on the windows. The lace curtains.
There is a marmalade cat lurking near the frosted glass, holding me in her sight.
And what of that little home?
Would there be a fire burning inside in a fireplace? A heat that was safe in how it enveloped a person?
Not the heat that I bring to my body with rage and neglect and sharp things? But a friendly and enveloping warmth? Accompanied by the scents of cooked food, and the sounds of normal family life?
And is it so wrong to want the heat of a home? One that is tied to a number on the door, rusted and long-standing?
A number you know is your number, your place of purpose and safety in a disorganized universe?
Is it so wrong to want those things?
''Are you going to come back with me without a fight?,'' Yuri asks in utter seriousness, and my mouth quips up in amusement.
Without a fight?
Without a fight?
I snort, my teeth cutting into my lip because I can't help but find such a vocalization to be anything other than hilarious.
And as I laugh, I see Yuri's face cloud in concern.
''Because I can take the next step, Sherlock, if I deem it necessary. I can call for emergency aid, if you can't come back on your own.''
In his left hand, I can see his black mobile phone.
My mind locks in on his phone; it morphs and becomes altered in my brain.
It becomes a snake, and it hisses with the promise of ''reigning me in.''
Because I am unwell, he'd say.
That's how he'd account for the wandering paths my brain takes.
My creative divergence from normalcy or predictability.
''Why are you doing this to me?!,'' I grit out suddenly, the humor leaving as quickly as the heat.
Because it's not like I asked him to follow me.
And I already assured him - assured them both - that I wasn't suicidal.
I always feel it deep down. Under the cold masquerading as heat.
It's always there.
My rage.
Yuri is currently watching me in a manner I don't appreciate.
Because he feels that I am the very thing I have repeatedly told John I am not.
Because he thinks that I am sick.
S-I-C-K.
And deep-down, sometimes, I wonder if he's right.
''I am not doing anything to you, Sherlock. Neither is John.''
And did I ask this question of him?
Did I really?
My body is drawn to a rhythmic motion, and always has been in times of personal stress.
But I refrain now; it would look like a stim.
It would look odd and something worthy of yet another diagnosis.
So I quell the impulse to rock.
''Can you leave me alone, please?,'' I ask carefully, my throat tight.
Yuri's breath hitches, and he comes to sit down besides me on the sidewalk pavement, outside the little roan house with the number ''417 Ashkin'' on the door.
His fingers reach out and grasp my own.
A moment later I realize his motioning has a point, an end-goal distinct from merely offering me comfort.
His fingers encircle my wrist. His fingers press against my wrist, and take my pulse.
''Your heart is beating incredibly quickly. Too quickly.''
I pull my hand away from him, upset.
I feel used somehow, even as I know I am being ridiculous.
''Please go away,'' I bite out.
I want to stare up at my little 417 Ashkin home, and study the forms in the windows and the placement of the plant life that the homeowners have selected for the living room and watch as the marmalade cat cozies up to the window ledge and falls into a napping state.
I want to imagine what it could feel like to grow up from the time I am very small and to live here throughout all my early years, and to emerge from childhood without euthanasia on my mind.
In essence, to grow up and to be okay.
How the wood paneling would appear and feel as you walked over it each morning, and how the objects would singe into your memory with comforting familiarity. How the decorations of the house would become a background hum in your mind, and how the white-painted bathroom with the lemon-yellow soap would smell like cleanliness, and not of threats.
Perhaps there would even be a bedroom inhabited by a little boy who liked reading books about pirates, or poisonous plants, or chemistry.
Just as I did when I was a child; when I sketched with charcoal pencils and painted with water colours.
I didn't know then, of course, that what I was actually painting were dreams.
Impossibilities.
''I can't go away, Sherlock,'' Yuri says a moment later, and I am connected enough to the moment to know that he feels what John would call ''empathy'' for me.
''Why can't you?,'' I whisper.
The cat has awoken and has now moved away from the window, and has rustled the lace-detailed curtains in the process.
In my mind's eye, a little boy of about three years has now propped himself up against a lounge chair and is looking out towards me over the crazed-white patch of frosted winter grass.
In his hand, he's holding onto a stuffed bear - the colour of molasses. One amber eye of the toy is lost, but he loves it all the more because it's injured.
He has to; it's only right.
The teddy bear hits the window's edge, and the little boy reaches down - out of sight - for his friend.
I name the little boy Sherrinford, and urge him to remain seated with the marmalade cat for just a while longer.
Even if I can no longer see him.
Even if I could never really see him, as such.
'I can't leave for several reasons. The most pressing being that it's below freezing, and you're dressed in nothing more than jeans and a cardigan. You're not even wearing shoes, Sherlock. You need to return to the house.''
Voices hiss a warning that I've always heard under the surface of my outwards form - below the atrium of my heart, the pleural lining of my lungs.
A voice throughout my whole body, louder in it's silent rantings than John's pleadings and Mycroft's offerings and bribes.
And, of course, no one else could have ever heard it.
The voices were only meant for one person.
The voices were only ever meant for me, alone.
Yuri suddenly removed his jacket, and holds it out to me.
''Put this on. Now,'' he responds gruffly, and I take the article, stare at it.
He then passes my shoes over to me.
I didn't even realize he had run down the street with them, but obviously he had - since there they are with him, in his arms, right now.
Right in front of me.
Yuri looks past me, his eyes fixing on something, and he stands.
Holds out his hand for me to take.
''Get up, Sherlock. Get up off the ground.''
I stare at him, tiredly.
Get up...
Get up off the ground.
And is that what I am doing, anyhow?
''I'm not even cold,'' I mumble, resignedly.
I don't know where this mood is coming from - this sudden apathy.
And I don't know why I am lying about not feeling cold, either.
I am freezing.
I don't recall a time when I haven't been terribly, infuriatingly cold.
I want water bottles and hot tea and a thousand layers.
I need the comfort of feeling and being warm enough, and I am aware of this.
But I don't let myself have this.
And I don't know why.
Yuri points at a blinking sign infused with neon halogens, and so I follow his glancing. See an image of a crow against a blood-red moon.
''Charley Crow's'', the sign reads, the letters electric yellow, the crow cartoon soot-black.
Underneath the glowing sign front, a smaller sign reads: ''Thick-cut chips. Piping hot burgers. Ice-cream Floats. Brooklyn-inspired Egg Creams...and more! Come on in and see for yourself what all the crowing is about!''
The lower font is brown and orange and a retro cartoon crow winks at me. The wink is nearly eternal, because the sign is illuminated by lights that pulse in and out to 'animate' the cartoon in red-expressiveness. A red cartoon eye opens, then winks shuts, and progresses to do the same thing all over again not a moment later, and then again the moment following, and so on. Ad infinitum.
A thought assails me, foreign and torn from a reality I cannot easily place but sense I have, at some point, lived: a cross, illuminated in red electricity, scorching a purpling night-sky.
I shake away the image, feeling disjointed and afraid in my inability to place it's existence.
Because I never went to church as a child (and certainly never when older), and I never believed in God. Beyond that the memory is old and stale, too. I can sense as much. But I can't place it, and as such I cannot organize it, nor attach any context or date or importance to the clip.
It serves only to infuriate me, as do all sense-memories when I can't contextualize the meaning behind their history.
Red religious icons, flickering away in some barely touched dust-filled wing in my Mind Palace?
Well, that's not even the worst of it.
Eerie, perhaps. But not scary in that segmentation alone.
What scares me is that accompanying the red-flickering cross and the night and the wasted sense of hope I can suddenly recall a scent, too. A memory-scent of antiseptic. And a memory-taste of blood.
Blood running down the back of my throat.
And like a rush of water in my head, drowning out the noise of the street - the sound of cars honking, of an ambulance a mile off, a creaky Radio Flyer wagon being pulled across the street by a little girl - the past becomes renewed.
Blood - mine! (when? and from my throat? coming up!) and coughing.
Mycroft's voice. Younger, and less deliberate. Less accustomed to precision and put-upon solemnity and devoid of his current smarmy, too-aware-of-himself nature.
'That's it, brother. Just like that. Over the bucket.'
A sense impression, too: Mycroft's arms around my belly, helping me bring up blood into a bucket.
(And it makes no sense! None at all! I never was abused in such a manner. I was never hit!)
Chills roll up my arms, and play a game of gooseflesh snakes and ladders - hopping around my flesh as I try to breathe in the late-autumnal air and determine if I can, indeed, smell heme. Smell iron and metal and the scent of bleach and linen and pain. Smell blood, and wonder why.
Push away the decades-old image of a red, blazing electric cross and wonder when and how and why.
''Get up,'' Yuri repeats, and I do.
I follow him to the edge of the lane, away from 417 Ashkin, and to the periphery of the 1950's themed establishment.
Everything in the restaurant is the inverse of fog. Not misty whiteness, but a misty darkness.
It comforts me, though. It's warm, and dark, and smells like chips, malt vinegar, sarsaparilla, and barbecue sauce.
Yuri ushers me to a seat with plush fabric - and I sink into the padded body of the booth.
I feel warm, dark, enclosed.
I feel better than I did outside, in the white-winter sunlight and the frost.
My hands reach out for a bright red bottle of ketchup on the table, before moving onto a bottle of HP Sauce. Picking that up too. Letting my thumb graze over the sticky bottle. Read the ingredients for something to do. Here a slight clicking sound. Fingers against plastic.
And I look up.
Yuri instead, appears to be texting.
Undoubtedly, he's texting John.
('OH, Sherlock - the mess you've made.')
I replace the HP sauce and go back to staring at the condiment bottles, and imagine what it would be like to just pick them up with the intention of actually using them. Without the fear of doing so.
Just douse chips with malt vinegar. Ketchup. A smattering of sea salt and lemon.
Eat the damn basket of them.
And not feel sick after.
Not feel agitated.
Not feel the keening need to cry.
Yuri's putting his phone away now.
Gives me a terse smile.
''Warmer?''
I look about the establishment. Catch one of those hackneyed ''Keep calm and carry on'' posters on the wall.
Feel something sort of quietly doleful in my belly.
Keep calm and carry on.
Over and over again, until you die.
Carry on.
Carry on.
''Yes,'' I say suddenly, surprising myself. ''I'm warmer.''
My psychiatrist nods, eyes open. Unguarded.
''Thank you,'' I whisper. Knowing it's the 'done' thing. ''For your coat.''
The coat is too short for me. My wrists extend by several inches.
But it heats me up, and in a strange way, I am starting to feel fatigued.
Even drowsy.
Yuri waves to one of the employees of the restaurant; a man situated at the far side of the restaurant whose currently cleaning up a sticky table. Loading used dishes smudged with Tabasco sauce into a green plastic bucket.
The man saunters over, black apron tied loosely around his waist. Seems to recognize Yuri, and gives a slight smile. Looks quickly to me next, and tries to inconspicuously 'scan' me.
My teeth solidify into a lock-jaw tension, and the man turns his gaze back to Yuri.
I have to give him credit, though; he's fairly adept at pretending he isn't looking, even when he is...
I zip up Yuri's jacket. The loan-jacket. Zip it to my throat, immediately embarrassed.
''Hey Jake,'' Yuri starts calmly, as if I'm not tensing up awkwardly and not drawing attention to myself.
''I'm wondering if I can put in an order for two baskets of chips. Say, medium for both? And a Coke for myself. Sherlock?,'' Yuri asks suddenly, ''Want something to drink?''
My throat works reflexively.
From times past. So many times, and my answer is rushed. Auto-pilot.
''Coffee,'' I request primly. ''Black. Two sugars.''
Yuri nods to Jake, then quickly adds. ''Can we make that a decaf please, Jake?'', while I fight an impulse to squirm in my seat.
*Decaf, please.*
Because I am no longer 'allowed' caffeinated beverages, apparently.
Jake nods, then saunters off to get our Coke, coffee, and two baskets of chips.
I look back down to the smudged table. Little fingerprints cover my end of the plastic-topped furniture. I place my own hands next to the smudges.
My hands dwarf the smaller fossilized markings of a tiny, tiny human and I stare at the record in mixed emotionality.
Realize I feel some rush of faint, unmistakable anger when I consider the reality of the ghost child.
The shadow child.
The child that had been lurking around me now was, in my mind's eye at least, happy and fat. Gobbling chips and wiping greasy digits on the 1950's themed table-top in impetuous, normal self-abandon.
He was being treated, and someone took him out to an establishment that was ''family friendly.'' Let him make a mess from his high chair. Let him giggle and throw about his food, and gorge himself on junk food.
'Spoiled brat', my mind stresses, sibilant. 'Little fucking fat brat', it adds a moment later.
I know that this sentiment is rather mean.
I know I'm being unfairly and immaturely mean right now.
I know I am also unreasonably angry at the shadow child.
'Spoiled pig.'
I frown at my imaginings, my undeniable bitterness.
My anger edging towards something cruel.
Look back to the white highchair, smeared in condiments. Such a mess.
Such a normal, toddler-mess.
'A toddler,' I hear John's voice intercede. 'Little more than a baby. Really, Sherlock? Really?'
Always so damn reasonable.
'You can't honestly be angry at an innocent toddler, Sherlock,' imagined-John replies patiently when I don't answer. 'Babies never hurt you. Babies never hurt anyone.'
And part of me knows it, too. Maybe even feels it as truth.
But a loud part of me rants and screams inside.
Because I never got away with anything.
Never got away with anything...
Never got away...
Never got...
never, never, never, never.
Look back down to the tiny smudged reminders of other childhoods being lived out in real time.
Consider the minuscule little thumb print. The babyish whorls and ridges of the fingerprints.
Realize that I'm torn between envy and an unnameable, swirling mass of emotion.
Then, just as quickly, I erase the fingerprints with my own hands. Wipe away the physical reminders that a child was ever here at all. Wipe away at the greasy palimpsest with serviette paper. Push the mass of paper off to the side of the table, as if it's infectious. As if it's contaminated and could make me sick.
Realize time is passing, and I am not speaking, and Yuri's not speaking.
So I look up, and catch Yuri studying me.
''Don't,'' I warn, pulling back into my mind.
''Sherlock,'' he mumbles, looking sad.
''This place is filthy,'' I vent, aware my emotions are on display. Aware it's worse than that, perhaps: my slipping mind is on display because Yuri's a psychiatrist.
And a damn good one, even if I want to pretend that he's clueless.
''I can get Jake back here to clean the table,'' he says evenly, reasonably.
I glower at the serviettes.
''I've cleaned the table now,'' I assure my doctor. Wanting to put my head on the table and close my eyes and sleep.
Yuri goes back to his quiet-routine, and I stare at the table that I've just 'cleaned.' Feel something bite at me, from inside.
Something hurts.
Because I just eradicated 'him.' And he wasn't doing anything wrong, either.
Damnit, damnit, damnit.
''Sherlock,'' Yuri says softly. ''You need to talk to John. Properly. About this thing that is scaring you. Because he can't read minds.''
I pick up the ketchup bottle and draw a red smiley face on a serviette. Realize it looks rather furious for a smiley face. Poke at the ketchup with my finger, until the face is blotted out into a red mass.
'It was a fatal-automobile-accident, my dear sir.' my mind supplies, my eyes seizing on all the red, and wanting to think of other topics, other things. Even ridiculous things. 'We're so sorry for your loss, but we couldn't save him.'
I smirk at the napkin, and push that off to the side, too.
''And you can?,'' I whisper. ''What do you even KNOW about it?,'' I ask rashly, a nanosecond later. ''You make these assertions! Like I am not being forthright, like I'm not trying!''
Yuri looks as if he's about to speak, but refrains as our waiter approaches - a Coke in one hand, a black (decaf!) coffee in the other. Both items are deposited in front of us, and I pick mine up greedily. Not hungry, I don't think, and definitely not thirsty - but wanting to hold onto something warm. Something with which I can fidget.
I pick it up, inhale the scent of coffee, and let my lips taste the beverage. It tastes too sweet for two lumps of sugar.
Put it back down, my heart beating furiously.
Two sugars, my ass.
''What have I ever done or said that gives you an impression that I don't think you're trying?,'' Yuri asks me reasonably, taking a sip of his cola a second later.
I scowl at the coffee mug. It's also fashioned to look like a crow. The beak is somewhat chipped.
This is certainly not an establishment that Mycroft would ever voluntarily enter.
''You don't think I am, though, do you?,'' I whisper, tentatively, not even asking a question. Not really. ''You don't think I am trying at all,'' I whisper, sad.
Yuri stops drinking, and places his white tumbler off to the side.
''I definitely do think you are trying. I think you are trying extremely hard,'' he says evenly, carefully. His eyes try to make connection with mine, and I look away, suddenly embarrassed.
Stare at my mug, not thirsty, not hungry, terribly sad.
''You said,'' I whisper, looking about for Jake-the-watchful, and realizing he's gone back to the dish-room. ''You said I have to talk to John about something. I don't understand-,'' and my voice breaks off, cleanly. I pause, and reconsider what I need to say. ''What is it that you don't think I have shared with John? What do you think I am hiding?,'' I grit out.
Yuri's eyebrows raise in immediate surprise.
''I don't think it's about trying to hide anything from him, Sherlock. I think it's about fear as to how he'll feel, or how he'll respond. I think it's about rationalizing that it's not a huge source of anxiety for you, and pushing it out of your mind. But I don't feel that's going to work, in the end. It's only going to delay the inevitable.''
I nudge my crow coffee mug over to the side of the table.
''Inevitable WHAT?,'' I stress, anxiety making my voice strident. ''There are so many things about my life which would bother John, Yuri. You'll have to clarify.''
Yuri takes another sip of his beverage. His eyes squish up in contemplation. Then he lays his hands down against the formica.
''How much have you told him about Victor?,'' he asks carefully. Deliberately. ''Really told him, I mean?''
A sour lump presses against my windpipe.
''I've told him about Victor,'' I wheeze. ''Told him we were together. Even - you know - even like *that*.''
Yuri gives me a hard look, unyielding. Not unkind, but too-knowing.
'''Like that','' he mumbles to himself, looking thrown by my word choice. Glances back up to me. ''Have you discussed what he did? How it actually unfolded?''
I shake my head rapidly.
'No, no.'
No.
Take a deep breath.
I'd even eat chips right now, if it meant getting my psychiatrist to shut up.
''Victor didn't 'do' anything to me,'' I murmur, voice-low. Mostly spoken in my head, with very little exiting my mouth. ''I did it all to myself.''
Yuri's eying me oddly.
''Sherlock-''
I shake my head in dismissal.
''I did it all to myself.''
After that, I am silent, and there is nothing to listen to save for the beeping of a Juke-box in a corner, requesting change periodically, and the buzzing hiss of the electrical red signs for the diner.