Author: In which Hannelore-Grace says, "Screw the canon!" and rewrites minor details of TGG to suit her purposes. Nothing major, just little quirked details.
John was thankful that his hands were too occupied taking care of Jim for him to strangle Sherlock and Sebastian. Because he would have; he really and truly would have loved to knock their heads together and maybe even give them each a good kick in the chest, just so they would have an inkling of how badly they had mucked things up.
"Honestly, John, I don't see how this is my fault. Sebastian was the one that attacked me without any proper cause."
"Proper cause? You were getting ready to kill him!"
"I was not. You merely failed to observe that my hand was around his chin, not his neck. If you would take a moment to collect all the data before jumping to erroneous conclusions, we might have avoided our little spat."
"And if you would stop sticking your nose in places it doesn't belong, then we wouldn't have these misunderstandings in the first place."
"Please, it is my business to investigate when a certain flatmate of mine lies to me and takes a criminal mastermind under his care."
Gritting his teeth, John spun around to turn the full force of his glare on the two bickering idiots. "I honestly don't give a damn about who started it. You're both at fault here, and thanks to your stupidity you've likely set his recovery time back by weeks. Now he's got three broken ribs, a bruised sternum, and an increased risk of respiratory infection to deal with on top of everything else."
Sebastian at least had the decency to look guilty. Sherlock, on the other hand, simply continued to peer over John's shoulder at Jim as if he were a particularly interesting new specimen of bacteria.
"What were you even doing here in the first place, Sherlock? You could've just asked me if it was Jim; I wouldn't have lied then."
"Oh, so we're on a first-name basis now?"
"Don't be a child."
Sherlock scowled, but he was obviously anxious to start spewing whatever deductions he had made and therefore chose to ignore John. "Yes, I could have come to you and asked, but then I would have lost the valuable experience of examining Jim with my own eyes. You see, I had ample opportunity to peruse his file which you openly left in plain sight. Really, John, if you don't want me going through your things, you should at least take better care to not leave them in the lounge."
"Yes, please forgive me for assuming that my flatmate has the decency to not rummage through my possessions."
"Anyway, from the file I was able to garner a significant amount of information and form a hypothesis regarding our dear friend Jim's peculiar behavior. However, I couldn't support this hypothesis without further data. Since you can hardly be expected to observe the important details, John, I took it upon myself to come and make the observations myself-"
"Hold on," Sebastian cut in. "You keep talking about his file, but that's a fake, obviously. We've got a whole bin of falsified medical records and other paperwork of the like. Jim would never be dense enough to just give you that sort of personal information."
"Yes, I was curious about that myself, too. However, my questions on that count were answered when I arrived here. Clearly, his condition was very severe when you left your living quarters, causing a great deal of panic on your part. Nobody likes it when their boss and potential lover starts having seizures-"
"Hold it! He's not my potential lover."
"Only because he's incapable of reciprocating your feelings towards him. Now would you please stop interrupting? Thank you. Anyway, in your panic you didn't look too thoroughly at the file you took from aforementioned bin, and thus made the mistake of grabbing the real medical file. Jim, of course, would have wiped any data servers of this information, but would be incapable of completely destroying it due to the fact that it chronicles his childhood in a way that he can not. So he kept the hard print copy due in part to practicality and in part to sentimentality. Similar to how he kept his original first name when constructing his new identity. James Adair Doyle, now there's a stereotypical Irish name if I've ever heard one. Clearly, his name stems from a whole line of Doyles, thus showing why he would keep the first bit of his name; like the medical file, it acts as a link between his present self and the past self that he can't recall."
"Now you've lost me, Sherlock. You keep talking as if he has amnesia, but there's nothing there to support that."
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, John. There's plenty here. But the amnesia is just a symptom; let's start with the cause. Now I'm sure that even you, John, have drawn the conclusion that Jim was a victim of child abuse; it's clear enough from his medical history and the fact that he referred to himself as "Daddy" when speaking to his self-proclaimed arch nemesis. You also have probably determined that he had bipolar disorder with psychopathic tendencies-not actual psychopathy, mind you, that comes later. Given that he suffers from a mental disorder, it is very likely that his mother did the same. These sorts of things run in families, you know. So, a single mother working to raise a child with multiple mental deficiencies all the while suffering from her own depression and paranoia? More than a bit not good. She becomes convinced that her child is evil, that she has spawned some terrible beast of a human. Half-correct on that count, but only just so.
"So she seeks out someone to help. The years of therapy haven't thus far, and each psychiatrist has persistently assured her that her child just needs more time adjusting to society. So she goes off the map and hires someone more willing to take drastic actions. While uncommon, there are those that still practice electroshock therapy, for a price, obviously. If performed correctly, it can actually help some patients, but it gathered such a bad reputation in the mid-twentieth century that it is rarely used today. Anyway, Mrs. Doyle hears of this and hires a practitioner of her own. Something went wrong, however, which leads to our little Jimmy being brain damaged.
"The evidence of the abuse of the electroshock therapy is clear. First there's his medical record, in which it states that he was taken to the hospital after having suffered electrical burns on his hands and skull. His mother likely added the burns on his hands to cover the oddity of the ones on his scalp, and since Jim already had a history of playing with electricity, it wasn't questioned too thoroughly. The doctors didn't scan for brain damage at that time, either, because they believed that the skull hadn't been directly affected by the shock. Odds are that Mrs. Doyle told them Jim had been wearing protective goggles at the time which had metal bits on them, hence causing the burns on his head. These scars are now mostly hidden by his hair and the fact that they are seventeen years old.
"Now, since you, John, most kindly provided me with Jim's CT scans, I can be so bold as to say that, as a result of the botched electroshock therapy, Jim suffered damage to his frontal lobe, thus tipping him over the edge to psychopathy. First we consider his therapist's records, which note a distinct increase in his willingness to talk during their sessions. Increased talking overall is a side effect of damage to the frontal lobe, as is an impaired ability to recognize right and wrong and social norms. Given our past experiences with Jim, I believe we can check off those symptoms as being accurate. Furthermore, a loss of sexual interest is common in patients with frontal lobe damage. Considering that Jim obviously has yet to reciprocate Sebastian's advances, despite the fact that Sebastian is an attractive and trustworthy partner, coupled with how openly he uses sex to manipulate others, as if sex is meaningless and just a tool to be wielded when necessary to Jim, we can conclude that this is true of him also. Finally, there's his anosmia."
"Anosmia? Sherlock, there's nothing here that says he's lost his sense of smell."
"No," Sherlock sighed, his frustration at being thrown off his deduction making evident in his rolled eyes. "But there was plenty to support it back at the lab the first time we met. If you recall, there were some rather pungent chemicals sitting on the lab table, and yet he didn't even wrinkle his nose when he stooped right next to them to drop his number under the dish. Then there is his cologne. It is expensive, and yet not strong enough to cover the stench from his marijuana habit. Given how cleverly he manages to conceal every other bit of personal information from the casual observer, we can conclude that he has no means of telling whether or not he has completely masked the smell. And finally, there's his cologne itself. A nice brand, but not a scent I believe that Jim would choose for himself if he could. No, it's too fruity and effeminate. He would want something that smelled of dominance, something more musky and masculine to help project the image of control and preeminence. This means that he entrusts his choice of cologne to someone else's expertise." Sherlock rounded on Sebastian with a raised eyebrow.
"What? So I help him choose his cologne, it's not like that says much of anything. Maybe he's too busy to do it himself."
"Interesting." Sherlock smirked. "When given the chance to decide what your potential sexual partner will smell like, you chose a scent with feminine undertones. Not necessary a girl's scent, but not something that a strong, domineering man would wear. Is this the first time you've been attracted to a man then? Subconsciously trying to rationalize your newfound homoerotic fantasies by immasculating the object of your affections?"
Sebastian's hands were clenched firmly at his sides and his jaw was tightly set with the strain of not lunging at the detective. "Shut up." At this point, John couldn't say with utter certainty whether or not he'd stop Sebastian from pummeling Sherlock into the ground.
"Alright, Sherlock. This is all very interesting, but none of it proves that he has amnesia."
"Right. Well, from the other evidence we've gathered, the extent of the damage is fairly clear. A shock that both wiped out his sense of smell and his perceptions of risk and rule-abiding could easily have caused damage to the memory cortex, also. Then there's the way he collects mementoes. If you recall, your dog tags went missing directly after the incident at the pool, John; Jim could have easily nicked these while strapping you up in semtex. Then there's the case of my missing watch. Since I had been knocked unconscious following the explosion, it's probable that Jim snagged it while making his exit. I'm sure that even Sebastian, dim as he is, has noted Jim's peculiar talent for hoarding objects he deems have sentimental value." Again, Sherlock looked at Sebastian questioningly.
"He does have rather a lot of nick knacks," Sebastian said resignedly.
With a smirk, Sherlock continued. "Such behavior is common in patients with amnesia. They feel like their situation could have been avoided if only they had kept better record of their lives before the incident, and thus they habitually catalog any moment that could possibly be important. I'd even go so far as to wager that Jim has a thoroughly well-guarded journal kept somewhere in his home, probably in an encrypted file on his computer. I doubt he has full amnesia, as that is quite rare and almost never occurs without significant damage to other processes of the mind too. This leads me to believe that only bits and pieces of his childhood were erased due to the shock, but to Jim, whose mind rebels at the idea of any knowledge being inaccessible to him, the loss would have been intolerable. Probably when he figured out that his mother had been the cause of this loss was also when dear little Jim decided to murder her."
"How do you know that he murdered his own mother?"
"I can't say for sure without further evidence, but his mother's date of death was noted in his psych file shortly after he was tested for Ebola. Obviously, these two incidents are connected; the mother was probably diagnosed with the virus, and he was tested to make sure that he hadn't contracted it. She died just a bit afterwards. Considering our friend's penchant for poisoning people's skin creams, we can infer that he was the one that infected his dear mother with this rare and deadly virus. With good cause, I suppose, but it was still unnecessarily dramatic. The virus is noted for the violent way in which it kills victims. I'm sure that watching the hemorrhaging it caused in his mother was quite cathartic for Jim."
A silence overtook the room once Sherlock concluded his deducing. John was feeling deeply appalled, although at what exactly he couldn't be sure. It was a deep, gut-clenching sort of revulsion, possibly simply directed at the world in general, at the fact that so many could turn blind eyes to what was going on behind closed doors. He liked to imagine that, if he had been one of Jim's doctors, he would have intervened and protected the boy from further harm. Even now, John felt the urge to act as a shield for Jim against all things bad. He knew it was illogical, knew that this revelation didn't condone any of the lives Jim had taken, but he still couldn't shake the image of a beaten and broken Jim waking up to find half his past erased.
"Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. It's possible that I misread the information not printed in the file. Doubtful, but possible."
Sherlock's admittance that he could possibly be wrong was enough to illustrate how he felt about the matter. It showed that, in some deeply buried recess of that brilliant mind, a part of Sherlock was distressed enough to want to be wrong, for the whole story to have been fictionalized. John knew that Sherlock would never admit to it, but reading the subtext of Sherlock had become a talent of John's, and he could see it as clearly as if the detective had written it on a poster a held it above his head.
Sebastian merely took his seat next to Jim once again. He sat quietly with his hands tucked into his lap and avoided looking too closely at the bandaged body laying next to him. Now that Sherlock had pointed them out, he couldn't stop seeing all the scars. He had always assumed that they were from some of Jim's less successful shenanigans prior to enlisting Sebastian's help. Now he couldn't stop imagining new stories behind those marks, stories involving belts and fists and knives all wielded by a mother that was supposed to protect Jim. He wished that Jim hadn't killed the bitch, just so that he could go and do it now. At least then he would be doing something helpful, not just sitting here on his thumbs, unable to relieve Jim of his burden.
"Well, it's pretty late, and I would like to get some sleep eventually tonight, so I suppose you and I should be off, Sherlock." John turned to the detective with a forced sort of smile. The one that person gives when trying to be okay, but obviously failing. Yet again, and for the first time since Afghanistan, John had realized that he couldn't cure everyone; that some people were just permanently broken, and would either learn to live with it or die under the strain. Jim was taking the long way of doing it, but he certainly fell into the latter category.
"Right." Sherlock stood in the threshold of the doorway, casting Jim one last look. John couldn't read the significance behind his expression, but it was too dark and brooding to be meaningless.
"Call me if anything changes. Especially if he develops a fever."
"Will do." Sebastian seemed to sink lower into his chair as he cleared his throat. "And, um, Sherlock...Sorry about, you know, choking you. And all that other...stuff."
"Consider it forgotten."
Once Sherlock and John had finally vacated the room, Sebastian scooted his chair just a bit closer to Jim's bed. This way, he reasoned, it would be easier for him to see the early manifestations of a fever in the dim light. It would also be easier, he told himself, to feel for a fever through physical contact. As such, he assured himself, it was perfectly reasonable to hold Jim's hand once again. And if his fingers stroked through Jim's hair a bit while he was checking for heated skin, who could blame him? It was purely accidental, he told himself.