Chapter 7: The Experiment
The cab ride to 221B Baker St. had been a silent one. Sherlock kept his eyes fixed outside the window, obviously in no mood for a conversation. He hadn't said a word since he had seen the girl's body, nor had he shown any inclination when John offered to take him to the wreckage of the Business Square's North building. John watched him closely, looking for…well, he didn't know what exactly he was looking for. What he wanted to see was that spark in Sherlock's eyes; that brilliant moment when everything just clicked for the detective and the doctor would have to ask "and how exactly did you figure that out?" But that was a high hope; in reality, John observed him for the things he prayed would never show: tremors, headaches, twitches, blank stares, signs of brain dama—
No, John stopped his thoughts. There is nothing wrong with Sherlock; there can't be. He just needs rest. But as he glanced over at Sherlock once more, still focusing resolutely on the people they passed on the street, doubt slipped into his mind. What if he had missed something? What if there was something indeed wrong with Sherlock's brain? Amnesia after brain trauma wasn't uncommon, and for most people, it was only temporary. But Sherlock wasn't "most people;" he was too…incredible. And Sherlock was not suffering from normal amnesia; normal amnesia would mean forgetting everything about the event, not selectively missing all the details. The damage—no, not damage; the problem—was in his skills of deduction. But there was nothing to do but wait it out, leaving John to sigh and think about how to keep Mrs. Hudson from annoying Sherlock with redundant questions about his health.
When the taxi finally stopped in front of the flat, Sherlock practically leapt out of the cab and strode into 221, letting the door slam behind him. John paid the cabbie quickly, met Mrs. Hudson at the foot of the stairs (giving her the calm suggestion of "leaving Sherlock alone for a while to rest"), and bounded his way to the door of flat B. Upon entering the flat, he was greeted by the familiar sight.
Sherlock had already found his way to the windowsill, his violin in his hands as he plucked away at its strings. From behind, he looked completely normal; the dark curls, the erect stance, the lean shadow cast across the living room in the early afternoon light. From across the room, most of the minor cuts on his arms weren't visible; the larger gashes already looked like purple scars. It was as if nothing had happened; John had just popped out to see Harry and now he was back. But too much had happened for either of them to ignore Sherlock's three day absence from their home.
"So, welcome back," John smiled awkwardly, shutting the door behind him. Sherlock remained taciturn, choosing silence as the conversation. Somewhat used to that reply, John made his way to the kitchen, starting up the kettle and reaching into the upper cabinet for—
John groaned as he remembered; they were out of tea. He meant to pick some up from the store the night before, but for the past three days, he had been…preoccupied, to say the least. Although he could wait, what would Sherlock's home-coming be without tea?
"Sherlock," he called out, swiping his phone and his wallet off the counter and going towards the door. "I'm going down to the store. There's some left-over Chinese in the fridge from last night if you want some, although you'll have to take the eyeballs out of the microwave to heat it up. Do you need anything?"
"Not at the moment," he replied vaguely, still looking out of the window.
"Are you sure? I can stop by the pharmacy and—"
"I said I don't need anything," Sherlock rushed on. "I'm perfectly fine."
"Alright then," John sighed reluctantly. "Just do me a favor and take it easy. Oh, and no exploding experiments while I'm gone; you've had enough explosions for the next couple weeks."
With that, he left the flat, hopping down the steps and practically jogging out the door. Not wanting to be away from Sherlock for too long, he made a mental note not to have a row with "the machine."
Sherlock smirked the moment he heard the door slam shut. Of course they were out of tea; it was the third Thursday of the month and he had the suspicion John would forget to buy a new box. As much as he did want John's tea (which he would never admit to his flat-mate, the general preference for his tea rather than any other tea), it was pity tea.
Sherlock could tell when he was being coddled. Perhaps coddled wasn't the right term for it, but that was what it felt like. It was the same as when Sherlock had returned from three years of playing dead; John wouldn't let him out of his sight. And John's constant monitoring and worrying and babysitting was annoying. He did want tea, though. The lack of tea, however, provided Sherlock with an opportunity; with John gone, he had the flat to himself, which was exactly what he needed. What better place to reorient the Mind Palace than 221B Baker Street?
Dropping the violin back into its case, he began to pace back and forth along the living room area. It was almost exactly as he had left it three days ago: mugs laid on just about every flat surface, papers strewn about the room, books littered on the floor. The newspaper he had been reading before he had decided to evade his brother's security cameras was still lying on his armchair. The gun was still lazing about above the fireplace, and the case files Lestrade and individual clients had brought to him (none of which scored above a 7; far too easy) dominated John's working table. Organized chaos; Sherlock found himself in the familiar organized chaos, lit by the summer light streaming through the windows.
Closing his eyes, he paused in the center of the room. With John gone, it was time to do an experiment; one he felt he already knew the answer to, but it was an answer he dreaded entirely. Better to do the experiment alone and suffer the consequences without witnesses. Keeping his senses alert to his environment, he lifted up his hands and opened the Mind Palace, returning to the customary point.
The boom of the detonation pulsed under his bones. He watched again as the Business Square descended into pandemonium, the dust filling all the air. The panic of the people, the building's falling concrete, the flying rubble...
I can see it; I can see the explosion perfectly. But it's like I'm a—
His thoughts were cut off by a sound; the faint rustle of clothing as a figure shifted behind him. The innate feeling caused by the presence of another person permeated through his body, like a buzz of electricity. Just as he expected.
"It took you long enough to find me," Sherlock said abruptly, prepared for the possibility of nobody answering him.
"That's not really my fault, now is it?" a light voice replied from behind.
Sherlock turned around, facing her. There had been nothing to indicate her arrival; he hadn't heard her walk up the stairs or even open the door. She had simply appeared, jolt into existence from thin air. But that was impossible: nothing could be created from nothing. Everything had to have an origin point, even a mysterious girl.
"Alice Claireborne."
"Sherlock Holmes," she greeted with a soft smile, crossing her arms in front of her and holding a hand to her lips in thought.
There was a pause as he took in the young woman standing before him. The summer light bounced off her flushed complexion; a musty green dress shaped her athletic build, cinching around a small waist and cutting off just above the knees to reveal long legs. Her long hair was tied back, shorter strands of the dark hair escaping from the ponytail and framing her soft face in muted shadows. Dark eyes watched him carefully, piercing through as they tried to read his initial thoughts. Compared to the corpse he had seen only an hour ago, she seemed much more…alive.
A scowl curled on Sherlock's lips. He scrutinized every aspect of her: her clothes, her hands, her skin, her face, her overall gesture. But there was still nothing; he couldn't deduce a thing about this woman. The facts lingered about in his mind, hovering behind that damn wall he couldn't penetrate.
"You're dead," he stated bluntly.
"It appears so," she shrugged, her tone careful not to confirm or deny anything. She wandered over towards the shelves by the fireplace, Sherlock's eyes never leaving her body. She was hiding something; that he was positive of as she glanced over the medical books. Her graceful movements were too controlled, too restrained, for this to be a simple conversation.
Reaching out towards one of the selections, Claireborne's hand hovered over the binding before pulling away abruptly. She could sense his discomfort, turning around with a troubled expression. Sherlock followed her eyes as they studied his body; the red cuts and gashes that lined his forearms and elongated neck, the scratches that grazed his cheekbones, the white bandage that hid underneath his dark curls. The more she saw, the more concerned her wide eyes became.
Sighing softly, she settled into his armchair, the sound of her dress rubbing against the fabric of the chair rough in the apprehensive nature of the room. Her body sank slightly into the yielding cushion, her legs crossing to keep her balance. She remained strangely reticent under Sherlock's edgy glares. She was infuriating; a void that proved nothing to him. He wanted to grab her, demand her to reveal everything she knew, but if he did that, he would never figure out if his hypothesis was correct. For the sake of his own experiment, he remained silent.
"You still can't deduce anything," she said quietly, breaking the tense silence.
"How would you know?" he countered.
"I just do." She laced her fingers together and rest her chin on her hands, just like Sherlock did in times of deep thought. "I can help you," she added.
"I don't need your help."
"I think you do."
"I'm perfectly alri—"
"No, Sherlock," she interrupted, her eyes soft with worry. She reminded him of John in that moment; no judgment, no condescension, only genuine concern. "You're not alright. Something's wrong; you and I both know it."
"The problem is not with me," he argued indifferently, not at all affected by her statement. "It's with you."
"With me?" she defied patiently.
"You cannot simultaneously be dead and alive," he said coldly, grabbing her wrist, pulling her out of the armchair and closer towards him. At such close proximity, a cool scent floated from her swinging hair. He felt the smooth skin of her inner wrist, the same as when he had caught her in the explosion. This time, though, she didn't struggle against his hold. She stared up at him, her dark eyes just as threatening as his. "I saw your corpse, so tell me: what are you?"
"I'm not an imposter," she hissed lightly, returning the same energy. "I am Alice—"
"I didn't ask who you were; I asked what you are."
"You know exactly what I am."
Sherlock released her wrist, but she didn't move away from him. Everything he saw inclined a real physical being, a person indeed standing in the middle of his living room. The sounds, the scents, the touch of her skin, it was all too real. There was no way she was really—
He could hear her steady breathing as she lifted her hand and brushed it against his forearm. The nerves in his arm tingled lightly at the stimulation. "Why do you keep avoiding the answer?" she asked, her voice rising with mild frustration. "You knew exactly what I was the moment you saw my body in the morgue. You've been conducting this experiment just to validate my being. Why don't you just accept me for what I am?"
"Because to accept your existence would be admitting to insanity," he snapped murderously.
"Just because you're hallucinating doesn't mean you're insane, Sherlock."
He fell silent, the air now thick with heavy tension.
"You're right," she said quietly, her aura starting to relax. "I'm not real. I don't exist beyond your mind. But you're not crazy; there is a logical explanation to this, you know that."
Sherlock glowered at her; of course he had already taken into consideration why he had been hallucinating Alice Claireborne for the past two days. That was why he had conducted the experiment to begin with; to figure out her associations. No doubt she knew he knew, but she continued on regardless.
"You saw the brain scan; when you were knocked over, part of your frontal lobe was damaged. It was a minor dot, but often that's enough. To compensate for the injury, your brain had to minimalize its activity long enough to recuperate. For a normal person, that could mean temporary loss of memory of the event leading up to the injury. Like Mycroft said: amnesia.
"But you aren't normal, Sherlock; your brain functions differently, especially when you take into consideration your use of the Mind Palace. When you went unconscious, your brain converted the memory of the explosion into the smallest file possible, maintaining only the stimuli: the auditory, visual, and touch sensations that were felt directly in the moment. In short, you can't experience anything beyond your first person view. That's why whenever you try to access it in the Mind Palace, you hit a wall. It's like being a bystander; you can see everything, but you can't act. You can't control what or how you see things either. Your usual habits of immersion have been disorientated."
"Then why am I seeing you?" Sherlock muttered, although he had already figured out the answer to that as well.
"You compacted the memory and fixated it onto the last thing you fully deduced, which happened to be me," she replied coolly, backing away slowly so she could look up at him with her dark eyes. "That was your experiment: confirming the correlation between a girl and your thoughts. Every time you've tried to manipulate the explosion in your mind, you get me."
When Sherlock didn't reply, Alice wet her lips and pushed on, trying a different angle.
"The real reason you don't want to accept me is because I am proof that something really is wrong with you."
"No," Sherlock contradicted. "You don't exist, Alice Claireborne. You're just a glitch in my Mind Palace, and I don't need you to lecture me—"
"I'm an extension of your Mind Palace," she argued, trying to persuade him to believe her. "I am you, Sherlock Holmes. Every thought, every fact you know, I know. I know everything about you because you know everything about me, and I know there is really nothing wrong with you. You deduced Dr. Frobisher perfectly; is that not enough evidence of your well-being? The questions Mycroft asked you earlier… Sherlock, I exist only because you need me to. It's all in your head, and I can show it to you. Let me help you."
"How?"
"Close your eyes," she said, her eyes beseeching him to listen to her.
"Is that really necessary?" Sherlock groaned.
"It's a metaphorical gesture; I suggest you go along with it."
"No," he pronounced stubbornly, glaring at her dangerously.
"Do you want to know what happened, or not?" she retorted, stepping closer to his towering figure.
He paused, momentarily wondering what would happened if he ignored his own hallucination. No doubt it would keep pestering him until he at least tried, and the last thing he needed was her as a distraction. "Fine," he grumbled as he closed his eyes, swallowed by darkness. He felt her cool hand slip into his, and the sound of her voice floated through his mind.
"Now try to access the explosion through your Mind Palace."
With his free hand, he waved through the intellectual archives he had built throughout the years. Facts, biographies, reference points, puzzles, old Scotland Yard cases; he brushed through everything he had ever experienced and everything he had ever known. Suddenly, his hand jerked up, pausing at what he had sought for: the explosion in the Business Square. He hovered slightly over the memory, for the first time feeling doubt underneath all the skepticism. If this didn't work…
"Open your eyes," she whispered.