Chapter Three

There were few rooms where Sherlock did not carry his violin with him. He would frequently have it propped against his chest in the common room, fingering the strings with a delicate grace as he seemed to gaze emptily at the other patients. It was ever present during meals, resting at his side as he made a vague show of poking at the food on his tray, eating what was edible. Never was it away from him during his weekly therapy sessions, a constant that was most certainly noted in his file the moment he stepped through the office door.

The first appointment he spent the entire half an hour bowing the strings with every piece of music that he could imagine, and a few new ones that sparked his creativity as the moment allowed. The therapist sat in silence and attempted to hide his indignation at this new means of being ignored, and Sherlock imagined that Mycroft's phone was ringing the moment the session had concluded. The second meeting found his therapist being allowed interludes of silence to ask probing questions, only to have them answered by discordant plucks of random notes and little else. The pen moved so furiously over the paper in his file that Sherlock was certain the friction would cause sparks.

It was difficult not to grin.

The third encounter between therapist and the youngest Holmes was not without the violin, but certainly lacked the stringy music between them. In this brief and sudden reprieve from the melodies and twining notes, a conversation occurred.

"You've been here nearly a month, Sherlock."

Middle aged and greying, though therapists always seemed to be losing the color in their hair, the good doctor sat behind a well-kept desk and lightly tapped the end of a pencil against the wooden surface. The room itself had little for decor, or little of anything really, though it was likely presumed to be kept empty for the safety of the patients and the man that conducted his business within. The only personal effects that occupied any space at all were copies of his medical degrees which hung in precise locations along the wall.

"Are you even interested in getting better?"

"There is nothing wrong with me." He insisted as he always did, craning his head slightly to look out the window as he caressed the length of the strings. The leaves had long started falling from the trees since Sherlock arrived at Wellington, and there were clear signs in the distant sky of the first snowfall. He would have to speak to Lestrade about an extra blanket in his room.

"So you continue to say, but you hardly speak, rarely eat, and you spend your afternoons starring at the other patients while you play your violin. There is also your suicide attempt..."

"Perfectly sound behaviors, though you are entirely wrong about most of your diagnosis." Glancing back at the man behind the desk, he cocked a brow, pursed his lips and firmly plucked a note. "The food is atrocious, so why should I force myself to eat it. There isn't a sound conversational partner in this entire building, short of Lestrade whose inane drivel about the local sports teams is, in fact, enough to drive someone insane, and I am not staring, I am observing. My violin helps me to think and it was not a suicide attempt. I had a headache."

There was a quiet huff from Sherlock's lips, and a vague nod of the doctor's head as he jotted more notes along the blank spaces of his records. "What have you observed?"

"That you are an idiot." The doctor twitched his brow and Sherlock gave a flippant wave of his hand. "Don't worry, most therapists are. You all try to box away the eccentricities of people into quaint little categories when they don't fit into what is normal and acceptable, when you've done that, then they are labeled sick, ill, disturbed, and you try to fix them by filling their blood streams with medication. All that does is make them compliant and mindless; easy to control."

"You seem like a brilliant boy-"

"Your first correct observation, you're improving."

"-but you are wrong."

"And there it is." He rolled his eyes, letting his head loll against the back of the chair he was occupying.

Sherlock watched his therapist take a deep breath, the slow rise and fall of his chest cavity as he pulled in a large quantity of oxygen to quell the growing annoyance. Greying hair was not the only thing all of his doctors had in common. "Your brother checks on you quite a bit, he must care a great deal."

"Wrong!" He sighed.

"Wrong?"

"You are trying to change the subject to something familiar, my brother, in hopes that I will open up about my feelings regarding his abandonment of me. It will be a failed attempt, I will ignore you and you will grasp at straws trying to find another topic." The look Sherlock gave him said no more than 'no different than the others, a complete idiot. Daft, repetitive, can I leave now?'

"John Watson." The therapist said simply, leaning forward to flip back a few pages in the ever growing file. Sherlock said nothing, his hands stilling around the neck of his violin as he flicked his gaze to the man behind the desk. "Ah. I've grasped a straw."

"I have no interest in John." He tried, closing his eyes and shifting his leg up over the arm of the chair. His hands barely twitched against the strings.

"Yet, he brings you tea when your mood starts to slip and you play your violin every night, despite what must be a thick haze of sleep medication, in the moments before his night terrors. Quite successfully on several occasions, I am told, as there have been times where he has slept through the evening, completely undisturbed."

"It was an experiment."

"An experiment you continue despite continued warnings of the rules regarding lights out."

"Science has no regard for rules."

Sherlock flicked his hand through the air, and his doctor smiled before jotting down a series of notes. "Certain patients have been known to show improvement with their illnesses in shared living environments. You seem to have a silent rapport with each other, and I expect there to be no dangers for either of you with a new living arrangement. I would like to move you and John into a double room. What do you think?"

"I think I don't have an illness, so your idea seems rather pointless." Sherlock stood from the chair with the flourish he was so fond of, clutching his violin tenderly against his chest. His back turned to his doctor; he furrowed his brow and clenched his jaw. "Have we wasted enough of each other's time for one week?"

"You are trying to run away from this conversation, Sherlock. Why is that? I thought you would be pleased that you will be sharing a room with John." Patiently, he folded his hands together atop the desk and studied every single twitch in the wiry frame of the boy in front of him. "Are you worried that he will not like you?"

"Why would I care what he thinks of me?" He snapped, turning slightly.

"Because you're not dissimilar to John. Because everyone wants at least one person to like them?" He pressed his fingertips together and steepled them beneath his chin, taking careful note to the very slight way that Sherlock's shoulders straightened, forced rigid and tight. "Are you worried he will discover the secrets you've locked away in your heart?"

There was a scoff that sounded more like a choked laugh and the boy's shoulders relaxed momentarily. In these seemingly innocuous movements, a thousand little tells were being revealed about the youngest Holmes. The more relaxed and casual that Sherlock was, the more closed off he seemed to be. Only when he became cold a rigid did he seem to reveal any honesty about himself. The doctor silently noted all of it. "I have been reliably informed that I do not have one."

"By who?"

"Everyone." He offered an empty smile and strode to the window, his violin resting casually against his thigh as he watched a few patients mill about on the grounds beneath. Restlessness was beginning to crawl beneath his skin like an army of ants, itching and biting away at the core of him. He plucked a discordant note and let his forehead rest against the cool of the glass. Whatever it was that the doctor had tried telling him next, he tuned it out in favor of the hissing static of his own thoughts. They raged on as they always did but the constant flow of medication in his system was making them easier to tolerate, and the headaches less severe. It did nothing to quell his disdain for nearly everyone else that shared his breathing space, but he doubted that would ever change.

Like the disconnected scenes of a dreamscape, Sherlock was in his room with his things being carefully packed back into his bags before he could acknowledge that he had walked across the hospital. The much loved violin resting back within its case, propped delicately against the folded blankets from his bed. Clothing from the Holmes household precisely lay within the burgundy suitcases, and his books, edges worn from repetitive reading, placed on top. He glanced over the collection of personal belongings, waiting to be relocated, and wished for just a moment that he was leaving Wellington all together instead of moving to a different room.

"Going somewhere?" Moriarty crooned from the doorway, a delicate brow raised as he eyed Sherlock's belonging. Discontent rising within the chest of youngest Holmes as he watched the young Irish boy move to the bed to caress the case of his violin.

"Hm."

"I thought we were friends, Sherlock." He frowned, "I know I haven't been around much, been a bit busy, but that doesn't mean you should go and leave me."

"We are not friends." He moved quickly to snatch the case from beneath Jim's petting, holding it protectively at his side.

"That hurts, Sherlock. It really, really hurts." Jim sighed softly, taking liberty to lie on the bare mattress as Sherlock stood by and simply watched him. "I was going to invite you to play a little game with me too, but now I just don't feel like it."

"Games are for children."

"You would have liked it. We would have had so much fun together."

"Sorry to ruin your fun."

"Oh!" He sat up and the grin that curled his lips was anything but playful. "Oh no, I am still going to play. I worked so hard to set all the pieces up; I worked so very hard to put it all just how I want it to be."

"Has anyone told you that you're completely insane?"

"Constantly." Moriarty grinned, leaning back slightly to rest his weight on his hands. They regarded each other in silence until the sound of approaching footsteps broke from the cacophony of the hallway. Sherlock with his maelstrom of genius and madness swirling about in his mind, and Jim with the darkness in his eyes and the lazy grin that never quite reached them. "If you change your mind."

"Sherlock?" Greg raised a brow at the boys as he entered the room, eyeing Moriarty carefully while he gathered together a few of the bags and tugged them off the bed. "Ready?"

John's room at the end of the hall, as Sherlock discovered, was already a double room that simply lacked someone to occupy the second bed. He also discovered, upon entering the room, that it was unlike anything he expected. It completely lacked anything that said John Watson had lived there for the last few years. There were no photographs attached to the walls or propped up on the dresser. There were no books, no trinkets, no gaudy stuffed animals or memorandum from his home life. The only thing that existed in the room that said anyone lived there at all, was a pair of shoes lined up perfectly at the foot of the bed and a closet full of clothing all precisely hung and folded along the flooring. Even the bed was meticulously made, perfectly turned down with the corners tucked just-so. It was almost unsettling how little information could be deduced from the room, and yet how much of a story it told when combined with what he already knew.

Not twenty minutes had passed as Sherlock emptied his things into the secondary closet before he heard a nervous shuffling of sneakers outside the door, and another five before John slowly limped his way into the room and immediately sat down on the bed. He expected to spend the entire evening in silence, since he had not heard a peep from the blonde in nearly a month, and was nearly startled when the quietest of sounds escaped from his lips.

"I'm John..."

"Yes." Sherlock raised a brow at him, pausing in the middle folding one of his shirts to give him a quick glance. John sat on the edge of the bed with his shoulders straight and rigid, his hands folded tightly together in his lap. Every now and then he would flex the fingers of his left hand as if fighting off an ache, his jaw clenching beneath a few remaining layers of baby fat that rounded out his cheeks. The curly mop of hair fell into his eyes, but he made no move to brush it aside, content to stare at Sherlock from behind the strands.

John shifted, almost uncomfortably, his eyes constantly darting towards the door despite it having been shut behind Sherlock when he entered. The silence between them grew thick, but not awkward, each simply lost in their own thoughts as the moments ticked by. John shifted again, and Sherlock turned, half poised in the process of hanging up one of his shirts.

He set aside his clothing in favor of sitting at the edge of his bed. John nodded, but said nothing as if the words were stuck firmly within his throat. There was no reason for his hesitation, none that Sherlock could see, as the young blonde had spoken to him [albeit briefly] on several occasions.

"Why are you here?" He nearly whispered it, clenching his left hand so tight that his knuckles paled.

"They felt we would do better as roommates."

"We know nothing about each other. How do you… they… know this is better?"

Sherlock smiled ever so slightly, his gaze flicking about the room to take in the smallest of details. He knew so much from so very little, and it all thrummed within his head as loud and steady as his own heart beat within his chest. "They're doctors, it is what they do. Isn't it?"

"I suppose so, but I'm not-"

A slight cacophony of noise from the hall interrupted their conversation, loud voices shouting for the orderlies who, in turn, shouted for the doctors. Sherlock's attention was diverted, and he was on his feet at the door before another word could be spoken between them. A stretcher being pushed passed the door caught his attention, not because of the rapid pace at which it was being shoved, but by the sheet covered lump of a [likely] deceased child. Inquiries and whispers rose up in the wake of the excitement from both staff and patients who were coherent enough to comprehend what had just happened. The looks on the faces of the lingering orderlies spoke volumes of how unusual the circumstances were, and Sherlock was instantly enraptured by the possibility of intrigue. More so, when glancing down the hall, he caught sight of Moriarty lingering off to the side as he often did, a curiously malicious grin on his lips.

"John..." Sherlock stated softly, stepping back within the room as the door clicked closed behind him. "I believe someone was just murdered."

Lestrade was anything but forthcoming with any information whenever Sherlock had a moment to ask him about the incident. He was stubbornly tight lipped, but he was a terrible liar, and had notable tells whenever Sherlock's questioning breached close to the truth.

"I don't know why you don't just tell me, I've already figured out most of it." He sighed in frustration as he paced the floor, his fingertips furiously twitching together. "There was a young boy, approximately twelve years old, who had been found in the lower boiler room, having apparently killed himself despite not having ever shown signs of being suicidal. The only things I haven't figured out yet are how he managed to get somewhere he never should have been, how he was murdered, and what he was originally admitted here for."

"The entire time you've been here, Sherlock, the first time I see you look genuinely happy is when someone has just killed themselves…" He frowned, shaking his head as he watched the young boy walking back and forth across the dining room tiles.

"Murdered." He nearly snapped, never faltering in his steps. "It wasn't suicide, it was murder. …but how…"

"It wasn't murder, Sherlock. He took a lethal combination of pills; there were absolutely no signs of a struggle."

"No…that's not right…" He huffed slightly, turning away from Lestrade as his steps diverted for the hallway. "I need to think, please do try not to interrupt me."

He gave a flippant wave of his hand as he walked away, disappearing into the room at the end of the hall. John had been reading a book when Sherlock reappeared, and though he lowered it in anticipation of a conversation, no words were exchanged between them. The taller boy simply picked up his violin and began to play. The music was soft and sweet, played so perfectly that there was no doubt that he had been in lessons since he was old enough to properly hold a bow in his hands. Soothing as it was, John had started reading again, but found himself nodding off into a sudden sleep before he was able to finish the fifth chapter.

"John." Sherlock said suddenly, waking him with a jolt as the dreamless nap was abruptly shattered. "There's another, John! Isn't it exciting?"

"Another?" He frowned, taking a moment to let the haze of sleep disappear from his thoughts and the ache in his neck from the awkward way he had been sitting fade to a dull throb. "Another what?"

"Murder, John! They keep saying suicides, but it was identical to the first! A girl this time, in the women's building. They found her an hour ago."

"An hour? How long was I asleep?"

"Awhile. I didn't want to wake you since you haven't been sleeping at night." He smiled slightly, carefully setting aside his violin as he settled on the foot of John's bed. "The murders, John, they're fascinating. They're being found in places they never should be, they take poison pills all by themselves. No one ever sees anything. And I thought my mind was going to rot in this place. I must solve this. I know Moriarty is behind it somehow, but he's had an alibi for both of the murders."

"Moriarty?" John furrowed his brow significantly, nearly curling into himself as he pulled his legs up to his chest. "He's dangerous, Sherlock…"

"Yes. More than I anticipated." His lips quirked slightly as if the possibility of dealing with someone dangerous was actually appealing, tapping his fingertips together. There was a hesitant moment of silence as Sherlock made careful plans and plotting, the sound of sheets whispering as John shifted on his bed. The tall brunette glanced at him, his jaw clenching as he contemplated numerous thoughts all at once.

"It could be dangerous, indeed, John. Dreadfully dangerous."

"What is?"

"We're going to catch ourselves a murderer." He grinned, delighting in the mystery and the excitement. Inching open the door to glance into the hallway, Sherlock did little more than wiggle his fingertips to signal his roommate to follow. John shifted up from the bed awkwardly; there was a new light in his eyes as he limped to Sherlock's side.

Author's Note: I apologize for my very long hiatus, but I am hoping that I am back now that the dust has settled. You can reach me on tumblr, if you're ever wanting for discussion or RP. I'll even accept anonymous nagging to finish my fics. My URL there is this-is-a-fandom-blog