Sheet Music
In that newfound sense of purpose, Sherlock fell away. He withdrew so deep into his mind palace as to at first be frightening. Yet then, it was intriguing. His mind fired in all-new ways, reimagined by the illness of his injuries, no longer hampered with the persona of arrogance he'd worn when he had been a social being. He would only emerge at night save on an urgent case. When he emerged, it was all at once. It was out of the choir room, out of the chorus, with a renewed sense of wonder and a deliberation.
In golden afternoons, when he was in the flat alone, he converted the sitting room into a massive lab for cases connected mathematically on end with other cases. A web of red strings that set the criminal lords of London in one connective web. They weaved the room like party streamers, photos of faces pinned to buttons hanging from the mesh. That was when the wall had no more room.
John was taking his lunch with a woman now. One called Charlotte. John felt that he would give Sherlock his space, just for a while. Just for long enough to see what would be birthed in solitude, in contemplation.
One afternoon, John came home from a date with Charlotte. The scent of fresh rain wafted downward to him. Sherlock had ascended with a storm that had passed before John emerged from his cab. The storm fell flat in the sitting room, cast about Sherlock's feet. John hurried in and was surrounded by rat sheets, a massive case spread on the wall. They flittered in the wind from a window.
Sherlock stood in the midst of them. In his hand a calligrapher's pen. John gasped. Sherlock's sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. The scars were exposed totally, spreading purple the fanning feathers of the parrots in flight. Sherlock held the pen to them, dripping ink.
When John drew closer, he realized what it was that he was doing. He felt his stomach rise on the wings of Monarchs. As butterflies were reborn, so was the memory of torment. It rose from the cocoon of scar tissue. Alive.
Sherlock was using the scars as stanzas. He was writing sheet music along them, composing a profound piece.
He laid the pen set down. Then, he lifted his violin to his chin again. He looked down at his arm for a moment, like someone does their watch.
All at once a mournful song tore through the flat. It fell on a rich note and droned_ the beekeeper's smoke. It rose and it fell and it twisted around. He had to bow, to hold his arm at an odd angle, so that he may play it and read it all at once. He was a dancer. Poised like punctuation. He was the maker of music as if this was his only purpose.
The song faded into silence, not yet continuing past a certain point.
John applauded.
"Well, that's something new. Honestly, the best you've yet written." John smiled.
"It helps me to think. This case, John. Complex, even for me." Sherlock paused in the music again and brandished the pen. John watched, transfixed.
"What...do you call it?" John swallowed. Sherlock looked up, a vague smirk teasing his lips.
"For John." He nodded. John felt the breath go from him.
Sherlock tilted his head, blinking again at the yawning abyss of the perceived obvious.
"It's the only logical name for it. The title was already inscribed on my body before ever the first note was. Now there are notes to match." Sherlock tilted his chin high, lifting the instrument again to rest beneath it. His eyes were closed now. The notes were just shapes, just place holders to cover. It was true. The music was written on his body. Embossed in electric sparks. Emblazoned on his soul. All of it. The Work, the Game, all of it...
All of it for John.
John sank into silence in his chair. The music swelled around them, cut them and stitched them together, burned them and birthed them. It breathed, it chirped, it roared, all at the twittering pace of compound scrolling Lichtenburg Figures. Their bond composed of Lichtenburg Figures with it…
"The cook! It's the cook, John! Why was that so profoundly hard to see from the first series of variables?! I am becoming profoundly nearsighted!" Sherlock was jostled from his music, propelled, arrow from string, back into the Work.