In the days that passed, Sherlock Holmes became increasingly restless. He lacked his natural edge of vivacity. He felt patronised, why wouldn't these people stop fussing and let him go home? John watched helplessly as the days turned into weeks, the hours of each day for him punctuated with frequent visits to his friend. He had established that the reason Sherlock had been moved was because he 'distressed the other patients'. "It's not my fault!" Sherlock had exclaimed, "They are intolerably dull people who insist on telling me their exhaustive and boring life stories. It was as if I had not already ascertained this from the stain on their ties and the parting of their hair or the particular very suggestive scar on the inside of their wretched elbows. What is it with humans and their excessive tedium? Why must every silence be filled with their nonsensical babbling?" Here John had to take a moment to remind Sherlock of the fact that he too was human, Sherlock had dismissed the subject.
John did his best, he even brought Sherlock his beloved violin, watching his friend pluck contentedly at the suffering strings as they talked. That hadn't lasted. Apparently the hospital staff and patients had some objection to Tchaikovsky at three in the morning. Unable to communicate fully with Lestrade on the most alluring extant case, Sherlock was confined to the poorly memorised snatches of intelligence John could gather. Even a dusty Rubik's Cube John had unearthed from one of the startlingly numerous boxes of junk took him less than one minute to solve. John watched in fascination as the detective's dexterous fingers pressed against the coloured squared and adjusted their locality. Nimbly swivelling and occasionally wrenching, with a crease betraying his concentration furrowing his brow, the rows of red, blue, white, yellow, green, and orange from their disarray until they coincided with one another to form regimental blocks of the appropriate colour.
Sherlock stared blankly at the ceiling. In this claustrophobic, bland room there was little for him to observe or deduce, except for the fact that he was certain the sour faced nurse was mentally plotting various unlikely but no less effective instances in which to kill him. Predictable. There were scratchy sheets and a chlorine smell and the incessant tapping of a fly beating its dying wings against the grubby windowpane. Sherlock could sympathise with that fly. He too felt trapped, helpless, he longed for a release. Though, unlike the fly, he reasoned that someone might notice if he died. The fly's carcass would eternally lie on the sill of the window; its legs contorted and constricted against its body in death, its minute glassy wings and hairy torso a testament to perseverance, and a grim warning to others of its kind. Sherlock's body would be buried, or bludgeoned with rocks, for there was a great deal of people who would take pleasure in that too. The fly had nobody in the world who wanted to bludgeon it with rocks. How dull one's existence must be without enemies.
Caught in this endless cycle of boredom and angst, it was getting to the point where a small part of Sherlock almost regretted his remarkable recovery, and he harboured a twisted musing of what it would have been like to die. There was certainly no one he would have been happier to die in the place of, save for Irene. He loved John, loved him like he had never loved another man, as unconditionally as he loved Irene, though in an entirely different context. He felt sure that the life he had spared for John would be a good one, and he was happy to be a part of it. He recalled the feeling of being ready to let go, as the blood poured from his body, soaking John in his frantic attempt to save him from passing out. "John" He had whispered, like a chant, like a prayer. Had John sung to him? He couldn't remember. It may have been a dream. He had held his hand, rocked him, and all Sherlock could remember before slipping from consciousness was the squeeze of another's fingers entwined with his, their unbreakable bond.
Sherlock pressed the heels of his hands into the sockets of his eyes, watching the colours dance and swarm over his vision, feeling the erratic twitch of his eyeballs beneath his hands, following the patterns the colours traced across his closed lids, a kaleidoscopic pool of light and spots of brilliant hue. He counted four continuous days and nights awake now, watching the stars, just watching. So beautiful, so vast. He should sleep.
Irene visited him too, mostly at nights. Of course he knew how she got in, though the visiting hours had long passed there always seemed to be a way around security. With Irene nothing was too much, and he would wait for her every night. The moon had just begun to show through the clouds, casting a beautiful silver ribbon through his open window. The night was still and the warm delicate breeze ran soft fingers through his hair as Sherlock perched eagerly on the side of his uncomfortable bed. He started at every rustle in the foliage and every creak in the foundations of the building. He shifted in his position, two, maybe three times in anticipation. Irene pushed her way through the flower beds; she felt the scratch of the thorns on the blushing crimson roses, they tore at her bare arms as she parted them gingerly. She trod carefully in the soft earth, sodden by the recent rain, coming to rest just outside Sherlock's window. Irene could see him, seated on the bed, gazing at the moon with a distant, respectful awe. She stayed where she was, watching Sherlock in his rapture. It wasn't often that Irene could escape Sherlock's sharp senses; he should be able to tell she was there, concealing herself within close proximity behind the glass of the open window. Instead, he was lost to the sky. Suddenly he stood, planting his feet purposely on the sticky floor and padding to the window. Irene held her breath, reluctant to be caught spying on her lover. He sat on the window ledge and swung his legs over so they dangled adjacent to the red brick wall. She could see his beautiful, almost ethereal face in the darkness, the perfect bow of his soft lips, sharp, high cheekbones, his gentle eyes as they came to rest on her face. He smirked, and, reaching down a long arm, took her hand and helped her out from the bushes.
She blushed as he handed her inside. They stood for a moment just looking at each other, his heart thrummed against her flattened palm as she pressed it against his chest. He captured her lips briefly and steered them to the bed where he slid beneath the covers. Irene folded herself next to him on the single bed, mindful of his injury. Sherlock attempted to put an arm around her shoulders but stiffened with the pain of his wound. Irene lifted a tentative hand, letting her fingers creep under his shirt to smooth the coarse material of the bandage against his skin. He let her, all the while keeping a reproachful watch of her face as it creased with displeasure at the sensation of the intrusive furrow in his flesh. Sherlock hissed audibly, shying away from the burning heat of her touch. Irene withdrew her hand, startled by his sudden outburst. Sherlock cast an apologetic glance at her, shifting so he could lean away from her as he carefully unbuttoned his shirt. He slid the material over his shoulder, exposing his chest which was swathed in the white gauze. Slowly he detached the end of the bandage and began to unwind it from his body. Irene watched as the layers were peeled away, until he parted the last strip and revealed the inflamed red tunnel through his body. Sherlock frowned, probing gently with his fingers until he could stand it no longer. He willed it to heal; he wanted the scar, like John had. More than anything he wanted everything to be as it had been before.