… and here's the second one for today.

Hollow Man

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his hands. He suppressed a sudden urge to smash the window with his fist. Where did this paralysis come from? Why could he not speak? Why? Whywhywhy? Words never failed him, he was never at a loss for an answer, what had John once called him? He's Mr Punchline. He will outlive God trying to have the last word.

Abruptly, he turned around and sat down, elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of his face. He had just screwed up on a truly grand scale. By refusing to talk. Usually, people became upset because he talked. They were annoyed by what he said or the way he said it or his timing of saying it – but not by him remaining silent. Surely, this was a new record: blowing up a relationship in less than five minutes by remaining silent. Bravo.

Suddenly, he became aware of a stabbing pain in his hands – surprised, he unclasped them, realizing that he had been digging his fingernails into the flesh, drawing blood. Annoyed, he fumbled for a tissue in his coat, but finding none, he rummaged in his suit jacket instead. Suddenly, the room felt stifling hot and he jumped up, tearing off coat and jacket and dumping it on a chair.

His phone fell out. Sherlock slowly picked it up, staring at the reflection of his pale face on the black screen. He closed his eyes for a moment, organising his thoughts. He could not speak, but he could write. Had done so for a long time, when there was no John to talk to. For three years he had written down what troubled him on his phone, only to lose it in Russia. He could do it again. John had to know, and if he could not tell him, he would have to read it. Some day.

Suddenly, his heart beat faster and he broke into a sweat. He briefly wondered whether the bloody pneumonia was giving him a fever now but instantly decided to ignore it. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves and touched the screen of the phone. It lit up in brilliant colours. He hesitated for a second, but then opened a text document and started to type, his fingers flying over the keys as they had done countless times before.

John,

when you came in, I almost froze with fear. I never meant to greet you with my back turned, what sort of a welcome is that? But I didn't know what to do and in all this indecision I failed to do anything – which was a bit not good, as you would say.

I felt the tension coming from you, how you racked your brain trying to think of something harmless to say – and failing, you stated the obvious, that I'm alive. I was about to snap obviously – it's a reflex, and at the very last moment I realized how aggressive that would have sounded, so I remained silent, and that was the worst possible thing to do.

I wanted to say: I've missed you. Your voice, the quiet way you move, the looks you give me – amazed, annoyed, worried, even furious - but never indifferent. I never knew how much that meant to me until I lost it.

But I said nothing. There were so many lonely nights when I desperately tried to recall your voice and your presence from my memory.

But a memory only leaves you aching for the real thing. And now that you're here, it is almost too much, it is overwhelming and I cannot process it and it physically hurts when I find myself with everything I wanted in one instant, and so I just stand and stare. I'm like a starved man being served the most opulent dish, too weak to lift the hand to the mouth.

And then you called me by my name.

I love the way you say Sherlock. Not many address me by my first name, and those who do either say it in annoyance or in confusion or to warn me off. This is how they see me, I guess: a problem, a nuisance, a threat. You, however, see the human being in its complexity, strengths and weaknesses and all.

You have twenty-three different ways of pronouncing my name, varying in stress and pitch, and each version has at least five different degrees of intensity, relaying all your emotions – those two syllables hold as much information as if you delivered an entire speech.

I must make an effort and speak to you. I owe you so much and failed to give a single word. So I try to remember all the polite ways in which conversations can be opened – I have catalogued them all; and what came to my mind? How's your wife?

A bit not good, given I almost killed her.

John, I never meant to harm her. I didn't know it was her. When I came across her, out on the wasteland, she was checking the man I had shot for signs of life. Your wife, John, is not as unobservant as average people: she actually spied me coming – and instead of panicking, she grabbed the man's gun and ran inside the building to hide from me. I have no doubt she would have shot at me – she does have courage and that convinced me that she worked for Moran. I never knew it was her, John, I thought your wife was an ivory-tower academic who teaches ancient languages at the university – how stupid, stupid of me! She was bound to be a formidable woman – you married her. Or rather, vice versa.

I have no excuse for what happened next. All I can offer is my point of view.

I found her hiding place. I ambushed her and wrenched the gun from her hand, and Lord, did she put up a fight – she is quite a handful, and passionate, I can't help but imagine the two of you … no, this is none of my business.

John, I failed to deduce it was Mary – God, you must think I did it on purpose, the oh-so-observant consulting detective not being able to deduce that the woman was just an innocent bystander. Perhaps you think I tried to kill your wife to get rid of her.

No, you don't. I'm sorry.

If you believed that, you wouldn't be here, trying to speak with me. You know me better than that. Sorry for getting it wrong again. I get a lot of things wrong, lately. Maybe it's because there's something wrong with me, and of course you have noticed it.

I find it hard to explain. I hope I'm making any sense here.

It was the perfume. I don't know whether you're aware of it, but Mary wears an excessively expensive perfume, hand made and hard to get. Until this day I thought it was a bespoke perfume and therefore unique – I thought I would never smell it again, certainly not on another person. For various reasons I associate the smell with some extremely stressful situations. It triggers an instinctive reaction in me, entirely irrational but almost impossible to control.

God, I sound so clinical. I'm trying to explain, but it means calling up memories I prefer to leave untouched for a while. They are too unsettling to deal with at the moment.

I have to.

I can't.

I will tell you later.

Let me cut this short: I was tortured, and the perfume triggers that memory. Unfortunately, you also smell faintly of that perfume – probably because you hugged your wife. Hence the attack on you. I'm sorry for that, I know you tried to help me, and I fear I have given you another traumatizing experience, with me falling from a dangerous height yet again. There are some things you don't get used to, I suppose.

But I think if anybody understands the mechanics of flashbacks, it is you. I assume you already guessed that I was tortured, and I believe you also inferred from my reaction which procedure I was subjected to.

It left me oversensitive, John, hence I avoid being touched. In an unexpected situation, normal touch can cause me acute physical pain. Somehow, my whole system has been thrown off-balance – sometimes, the world is far too loud, the lights are too bright, the voices become indistinguishable and it all comes crashing down like a huge wave, threatening to drown me. Drowning is a frightening experience; you can't think, all rational thought is stifled, you just struggle and lash out blindly.

I have had problems with sensory overload as a child, but I learned to channel the endless flow of data. Until recently, I was perfectly able to control it. Somehow, that mechanism has been damaged, resulting in violent overreactions.

Lately, the smell and texture of food makes me sick, which is ridiculous since I managed just fine during those three years – you taught me the importance of taking care of my transport, so I did. I keep trying, but everything is more difficult these days.

At least I still enjoy my tea. I'd probably lose the British citizenship if I didn't.

I will get better, I promise – I do not want to cause you even more concern, and I dislike being a walking threat. Well, at least to those who are important to me. I wouldn't mind hitting Mycroft, you can't go wrong with that. Though I have to admit he has been an invaluable help to me during the hiatus, and I do not consider him my archenemy anymore. You know who that is.

Now you come round the table and approach me. I know you won't grasp my shoulder, I'm sure Mycroft has warned you, and you're too considerate to satisfy your need to touch me – you must feel an overwhelming urge to hug or punch me. I think I'd prefer to be punched – a punch is meant to hurt, it would be a relief, it would feel right. A hug that causes pain is an abomination I cannot tolerate in my memory – everything associated with you should be good.

Did I flinch? Really? So I hurt you again. It hurts me more, John, if I could only tell you. But I remain silent.

And now I can almost hear how your mind is reeling, and all those memories must come flooding back, all the times I insulted you, misused you, hurt you in the most abominable way, highhandedly placing my needs above yours and trampling all over your feelings just because I think sentiment is a weakness.

I am weak now. Too weak to express sentiment.

Moriarty is only partly to blame for what happened; you could say I had it coming. You are in so many ways much stronger than I am, John, and I know I owe it to Mary that you are still the person I left and not just a hollow man.

Now I finally say something. Is that my voice? I suppose so, but it sounds alien. What am I saying? That we're hunting Moran and that everything else has to wait.

This is the one moment when silence would have been better. Of course it is the very moment I choose to speak, ruining everything with a perfectly sensible and totally callous comment.

And there's more: I insult you, horribly, and on purpose. I am being cruel, I know, but John, I need to stop you from prying further right now. I can't handle this, not now, I simply can't. I don't want to lie to you, though I know I'm deceiving you anyway.

I'm sorry.

It is pathetic that I have to write instead of saying this to your face. I've lost my words and it seems I'm losing my mind: half-way through this silly explanation I switched to present tense, reliving every single moment of it.

So be it. I live in hell. It's my own fault.

I hope you can forgive me.

S