AN: I am so sorry for the delay between chapters. Finals as well as the last few weeks of school have been taking up a great deal of our writing/editing time. I hope you enjoy the chapter and I want to apologize in advance to Olivia, Sam, and Harlie. So sorry Harlie. So sorry.
•••
Sherlock opened his eyes.
He was standing at his bedroom door.
He knew that he was just on the inside, with his back to the rest of his room, yet he could not see anything but the door in front of him.
He knew that this was his own bedroom door, but it did not look as it should.
The paint on it was the wrong color.
It was grayer than it had been before. It did not have that sturdy look about it, that structure that emanated strength and protection, that facade that had always made him feel just that little bit safer inside the four walls. Instead, the wood was twisted and strewn with cracks, warped by something: the elements, or time, or perhaps the pure negativity that had been projected towards it.
The doorknob was cold when he brushed it with his fingertips. Not cold as metal becomes when neglected by human touch for a period of time, but cold as if something was deliberately sucking heat out of the air around it.
It was like ice. It rendered his muscles stiff and difficult to manipulate as he tried to turn it, but eventually, it did.
Immediately beyond the confines of his own sleeping quarters, he found the dead center of the flat. He did not turn to look behind him, but he knew that his door was no longer there. It had ceased to exist the moment he released his hold of it.
Everything in the room was just a bit wrong. His hyper-aware senses were overloaded by all of the flaws, the imperfections in this flat he had often come to think of as perfect. His focus, as always, was drawn to John, who sat reading, with the newspaper held up so that Sherlock could not see his face.
It was strange, though; sometimes John was sitting on the couch, and sometimes he was not.
The furniture seemed to flicker as Sherlock watched, and there were moments when John appeared to be hovering, sitting on a cushion of supposedly solid but still invisible air.
None of the walls were right, either.
The wallpaper was all but gone, leaving bare slates with shreds of black and white lingering, the bullet holes inflicted by Sherlock's boredom plainly visible, their bright, grinning target lost. Those walls, as well as the desk and tables in the room, sported faded photographs that looked as if they had been printed when the ink cartridges were running out.
They were not pictures Sherlock recognized.
The ones he was used to, the images of smiling friends and captured family memories, laid flat on the ground, surrounded by broken glass and the remainders of old frames. These new ones terrified Sherlock, not because the pictures themselves were particularly unusual - indeed, they all showed the same people and occurrence as the one they were replacing - but because of everyone's expression.
No one appeared angry or upset; there was not a cruel or hurt countenance to be seen. Their expressions were blank. Complete and utter indifference, to the photographer, to the viewer of the photograph, to the world. They didn't care.
He was at the window.
As he looked, he had to strain his eyes just to make a single thing out.
It was the middle of the day.
He somehow knew this.
It was summer.
He knew this, too.
However, staring down at the shadow-covered, fog-engulfed street below, he also knew that the temperature was fit for a record winter solstice and the sun was nowhere to be found, even beyond the clouds. There was light, though, from some unholy source, and the eerie silver glow gradually increased until it was the bare minimum of luminescence that allowed the view to be seen clearly.
It was not the normal view.
There was no paved road.
There were no buildings, but for the flats of 221.
There was no Baker Street, and no London for it to be in.
There were only graves, row upon row of smooth black stone with thick letters in all capitals, spelling out names. He had difficulty putting those letters together to comprehend what they said, but he already knew. He could feel it.
'JOHN WATSON-HOLMES'
That was the one farthest away from him. It was larger than the others, a memorial rather than a simple headstone, and Sherlock knew what it read. He didn't feel the others - the closer, less defined graves - reaching out to him, as his own husband's did, but he could still sense the personalities lingering and haunting him.
'MARTHA HUDSON'
'GREGORY LESTRADE'
'MYCROFT HOLMES'
'MOLLY HOOPER'
'SALLY DONOVAN'
'PHILIP ANDERSON'
The list went on and on, reminding him of all the family and friends and innocent civilians he either had already gotten killed or surely would someday. He tried to block them out, but they filtered through his mind's defenses anyway.
'REDBEARD'
'HAMISH WATSON-HOLMES'
Sherlock broke his gaze away and turned to the newspaper that was still preventing him from looking into the comforting eyes of his partner.
"John," he spoke in a hushed voice, a cross that was something between a statement and an anxious question.
There was no reply.
He took a step forward and knelt before the sofa, laying one hand gently on John's knee.
"John."
His voice was no louder, but a good deal more certain in what it was hoping to accomplish. He did not truly expect a reply this time, and it was no surprise when none came.
"What has happened to my mind palace, John?" Sherlock pleaded, as though his subconscious ought to know something that his conscious thought did not.
"What ever do you mean Sherly?"
That voice was not what Sherlock had been expecting, and it was the last thing he wanted to hear. As the printed pages of daunting headlines lowered, Sherrinford's icy stare looked into Sherlock's own.
•••
John picked up the plate of food with one hand and his laptop with the other, setting Sherlock's dinner on the ground just beyond his tightly shut bedroom door, when he passed by on his way to his room. He paused outside for just a moment, to listen for any audible indicator that Sherlock was awake or moving about or even alive, but, as usual, he heard nothing.
It did not worry him - much - only because the plate he left was always taken into the room and then shortly returned to the hallway, empty, so he clung to that as his sole reassurance about Sherlock and knew with absolute certainty that the plate would once again be empty when he went by in the morning.
Sighing, he continued on until it was his own door that was before him. It gave a soft whine, as though trying to creak noisily but unable to do so, and then John moved inside and sat down on his bed.
The case write-up he opened his blog to was relatively old, but conversations were still being had in the comments, and so he checked it frequently.
'The Personal Blog of
Dr. John H. Watson-Holmes:
The Solitary Cyclery
From the years 2009 to 2013 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man. It is safe to say that there was no public case of any difficulty in which he was not consulted during those five years, and there were hundreds of private cases, some of them of the most intricate and extraordinary character, in which he played a prominent part. Many startling successes and a few unavoidable failures were... [Read More]'
Rather than reading again his own writing, which he considered to be of increasingly lower merit, John scrolled down to the comments section.
'Harry Watson: There you are. We were beginning to wonder.
John Watson: Who's 'we'?
Sauron1967: [Comment Deleted]
Harry Watson: Don't pretend you don't know you've got a fanbase.
Guest: I'll be seeing you soon.
[Read 183 More Comments]
Sauron1967: [Comment Deleted]
John Watson: How the hell do you block people on this thing?
Greg Lestrade: Haven't seen you two in a while. Everything alright?
Mike Stamford: Yeah, mate, how are you?'
John sighed and closed the tab, fully aware that everyone knew how frequently he checked his blog, and might get annoyed when he didn't answer.
"But what am I supposed to say?"
He muttered to himself,
"'Everything's fine. Haven't seen my own husband in weeks, because he's too busy pretending that he isn't having nightmares and hallucinating to come out and see me, but yeah, we're brilliant, thanks'?"
He wasn't in the mood to attempt a convincing lie. Without even bothering to get under the covers, John laid down and closed his eyes.
He was only asleep for long enough to get a snapshot of the dream he might have had - a still frame rather than the full scene. He saw himself standing on an unpaved dirt road, leaning on his cane and staring at an empty covered wagon in front of him, and then a shrill scream shattered the image.
The sounds of Sherlock's restlessness had plagued his nights before, but never to such a degree.
Instantly awake and greatly concerned, John leapt out of bed and flew to Sherlock's room. It just barely registered in his subconscious that the bedroom door was not locked, as he had always assumed, when he burst in and sat on the edge of Sherlock's bed. The ragged noise of failing attempts to take slow breaths met his ears.
Sherlock was laying on his back with one hand behind his head, the other on his stomach. He was facing the far wall and his eyes were tightly shut, yet John knew he was awake.
Looking down on him, John flashed back for a moment and saw the young version of John Watson, just after the war, before civilian life had become so much like a war in itself that it suited him well. Placing a hand onto the mattress so that he could lean in just a bit, he whispered gently, "Sherlock?"
The other man froze, and it seemed as if time had paused. He did not turn his head to look at John, or move at all, or even continue to make any kind of sound; he held his breath. Then, remarkably slowly, he sat up, still facing away from John.
After an excruciatingly long pause, he did finally turn his head, letting his face remain partially covered by his hair, which had grown out since John had last laid eyes on him, and looked up, shifting only his gaze as his head stayed tilted downwards. With his gaunt, pale skin and the dark rings lining his lower eyelids, the sight of him might have been terrifying if it had not been so confusingly pathetic.
Suddenly, he threw his arms about John's neck and buried his face in John's shoulder. The army doctor hugged his broken consulting detective, trying not to linger on the fact that he could feel each of the man's individual ribs without pressing at all. He smoothed Sherlock's tangled hair and spoke softly to him.
"Hush, love. It's alright, it's alright."
Sherlock pulled away to look John in the eyes again, but John pulled him back in and planted a kiss on his forehead.
"Let's get you cleaned up."
John had to support almost the entirety of Sherlock's weight, though there was admittedly very little of that, as they walked to the bathroom.
While John turned the water on, Sherlock removed the wrinkled clothes he'd been wearing for God knew how long as quickly as he was able, in his state.
John then helped him into the shower, struggling to ignore Sherlock's appearance and save any comments on it for later; Sherlock had never had an ounce more on him than was vital for him to live, but this was unnatural.
It was like looking at a virtualization that put barely opaque skin over a human skeleton.
Chest bones like intersecting roads, hipbones like sharpened stones, collarbones that caught and held the water falling down on them. His shoulders did not need to hunch forward at all for each vertebrate of his spine to be seen. He stood with his feet together, and his legs did not touch at any point. Somehow, all of this made the pale-pink scars that decorated Sherlock's body seem more prominent. John forced himself to block all thought of it.
There was a day when the entire experience would have been something, it would have been significant, but that day was long gone.
It was honestly more like John taking care of a child than anything else; after Sherlock's shower, John found a pair of scissors to trim the other man's hair back to its normal length and dressed him in his usual black pants and button-up shirt. It took John aback for a moment, though he didn't know what he had been expecting: he was so very used to seeing the buttons on Sherlock's shirts strained, but now the clothes hung loosely off his bony shoulders.
So, Sherlock sat in his armchair, a mere shadow of the detective everyone named a genius, staring at the wall blankly as John made tea.
"We need to go shopping later. Get you some new clothes." John called.
Sherlock nodded in response, though it wasn't really necessary; John was commanding, not asking.
Sherlock's cell phone began to ring in the pocket of his coat, which was hanging on the door where he had left it the last time he acknowledged society as existing. It took him a few seconds to recognize the sound, and a few more seconds than it should have to walk over to it.
"Hello, Greg," he said after glancing at the caller ID, though he hadn't actually needed to do so to know who it was. John paused his work in the kitchen to pay attention to the side of this conversation that he could hear.
"Did- did you just correctly call me by my first name?" The voice on the other end asked, sounding more than a little shocked. Sherlock ignored him.
"What's wrong? You wouldn't be calling me if there wasn't any problem."
Greg was silent for a moment.
"How are you two doing? You've not come down in a while, and John hasn't been... Is everything alright?"
"We're..." Sherlock tried to think of the simplest way to answer honestly without having to give any details, "we're okay." Close enough.
"Glad to hear it, mate."
'Mate', Sherlock thought, rather surprised. Lestrade had never really acknowledged them being friends before.
"Well, the boys at the station say they need some help with this one. Will you come?"
Sherlock looked to John and mouthed 'case?' John nodded.
"Of course," he said to Greg, "In fact, I think that'll do us good. We'll see you soon."
"Great. And, Sherlock?"
Sherlock's thumb stopped halfway to the End Call button.
"Thank you." And with that, Greg hung up.
John watched as Sherlock slowly slipped his phone into his back pocket, drew a deep breath, and pushed the baggy sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. His arms looked as though he had once seen about ten million of the Silence and noted it with a razor. It made John shudder to remember, but at least they were scars now. Sherlock looked back over his shoulder and held out a hand. John took it and linked his fingers through Sherlock's, and together they walked silently out of the flat.
•••
John looked up at the building that was apparently their crime scene with a bit of curiosity. It sat at the end of a generally empty street, abandoned like so many crime scenes, but with a distinct difference. This building did not look abandoned.
It appeared, from the outside, to be any normal grouping of flats. A couple of steps leading up to a door with a crooked knocker and a number in dull plated metal, which John noticed was followed by the letter B, though the actual numeral address seemed to fade, an unimportant detail. Still, despite the crime scene tape barricading the flat, it was perfectly easy to imagine that someone was actually living there; in fact, John had a perfectly exact idea of the type of people that might hypothetically live there.
Once they had made their way up the steps and in through the door, Sherlock loosened his grip on John's hand, and John let go instinctively. This work was the puzzle into which Sherlock fit perfectly as a piece. It was all him, now, and of course John had to let him do what he must.
"Look who it is..." An overly relieved voice said from their right.
Lestrade stepped in front of Sherlock and hugged him. Sherlock appeared not to know quite what to do with that, but he awkwardly hugged him back.
Lestrade then moved to give John a hug as well, though more of the 'This bloke is one of my best friends' type than the 'I was genuinely worried he might have been dead' type, as it had been with Sherlock.
"You two look like hell," he said quietly to John.
"Yeah," John responded, "Feel like it, too." He attempted a joking smile, but his heart was plainly not in it.
When they both turned back around, they saw Sherlock kneeling by the body- that of a teenage boy with sandy blonde hair.
Sergeant Donovan, walking in from the other room, began to greet Sherlock with, "Hello, Fre-" but stopped, stumbling over the word and seeming to find herself unable to insult the man while he was in such a state. "Hello, Sherlock," she corrected herself, though it likely didn't make any difference to him, one way or the other, considering the fact that he didn't glance up or even appear to hear her.
Anderson followed her shortly, and was opening his mouth to make some presumably rude remark when she held out an arm to block him.
"Don't." She ordered flatly, indicating Sherlock and his frightful appearance, and by some miracle, Anderson obeyed.
•••
Sherlock's body remained absolutely motionless as his eyes scanned the corpse before him and he filtered out the important facts from the slew of information that presented itself.
There was cheap drugstore powder foundation lining his bottom eyelids, to hide the darkening circles; the boy had barely been sleeping at all. The skin around his fingernails was raw and torn, and plainly looked like it had been bleeding, peeled and scratched subconsciously, out of anxiety. It was bad enough to have left scars, if he'd lived long enough to let it, yet there were no scars to indicate this had happened in the past; it had begun recently. Long sleeves and wristbands, though a glance showed that his wrists held only fading scars; he wore the things out of habit.
A white plastic cap peeked out of the boy's front pocket. Sherlock grabbed the bottle of prescription pills and looked at the label with a sigh of recognition.
The pills were antidepressants - to be specific, they were the same antidepressant that he and John now took. He shook the bottle, thinking it felt a bit light, and heard that it was indeed empty; he also knew that in fine print, just below the warning about the maximum number of pills to be taken per day, the list of side effects that may occur from an overdose included death.
On a hunch, he slipped a finger through the boy's belt loop and tugged it down about an inch, just enough to expose his left hip.
"Oi, Freak!" He heard Donovan, who had apparently abandoned her earlier reservations, call, "Haven't you got a husband for that?"
Sherlock shifted his position so that she could see the group of fresh cuts that covered this hidden patch of the boy's skin.
"How did you know?" she asked after a beat of silence.
Sherlock gave a hollow laugh, and continued to look at the boy.
"Takes one to know one, Sally," Sherlock said, then stood to face her. "Tell Lestrade that he got it wrong. This time, a suicide was actually a suicide."
He turned to John, who stood watching him with the same calculated, paradoxically neither blank nor emotional look. "Let's go."
•••
Somehow, as the earth turned on its axis and orbited round the sun, its gravitational pull seemed to coax Sherlock and John back into normal life.
Well, their version of normal life.
Whatever is considered the standard for a gay consulting detective and a bisexual army doctor - that is the normal to which they returned.
Sherlock awoke one morning and rolled over, with the full intention of falling immediately back into sleep. The past unpleasantness was recent enough that it was still a pleasant surprise when he was reminded that John was lying asleep next to him.
The richly pigmented light of dawn shone as a backlight to create a perfect silhouette of John. Sherlock propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at his husband. Suddenly, a childish kind of smile spread across his face.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" He whispered, "Thou art more lovely, and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath far too short a date. Sometimes, too hot the eye of Heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed, and every fair from fair sometimes declines, by chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed. But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, while in eternal lines of time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee."
"Did you just quote Shakespeare at me?" John murmured without opening his eyes. Sherlock jumped to realize that John was awake.
"I quoted Shakespeare to you," Sherlock corrected, "not at you."
"Whatever." John opened his eyes and turned so that he was facing his husband. He shook his head and laughed. "I do not understand you, Sherlock Watson-Holmes."
"Good," Sherlock teased, "Let's keep it that way." He dropped his head to kiss John, who wrapped an arm around him and silently sent an internal thanks to God that it now would be difficult to try counting Sherlock's ribs.
He had closed his eyes and was perfectly ready to abandon consciousness when Sherlock, who had not yet even laid back down, spoke.
"I'm sorry, John."
"Hm?" he responded, at least half asleep.
"I'm sorry you always have to be the strong one. I'm sorry I'm so... so incapable of anything on my own."
This caught John's attention, however, and he sat up immediately.
"Oh, love," he whispered, smoothing Sherlock's hair, "No." He pressed his lips gently to the other man's and then laid back, pulling Sherlock with him. "Don't think that. You and I, we're not cut out to face the world alone. Either of us."
Sherlock smiled; he still disagreed, but it warmed his heart just to hear John say it.
Some hours later, when the sun had risen fully and it was properly daytime, Sherlock returned from shopping and entered the flat carrying a few bags. John, who was sitting at his laptop, didn't seem to even register his presence. As Sherlock approached to see what it was on the computer screen that could possibly be so interesting, the words on the website's page became readable.
'Dr. Milverton' took up the entire width of the screen in bold letters, and below it were a few paragraphs of nonsense about him being the best therapist in the world, incapable of failing to help someone, and the like.
"What do you think?" asked John, who apparently was always acutely aware of Sherlock's whereabouts and actions, whatever it seemed externally.
"I don't know..." Sherlock said hesitantly, distrustfully eyeing the photograph of a man with a ghost of a smile. He made Sherlock uneasy, tugged at something in the basement of his degrading mind palace that he was unable to place. "Are you sure?"
"I am. I mean, unless you don't want to. But I really think we need this."
"Alright", Sherlock agreed, though every cell in his body told him not to. "Why not?"
•••
When the cabbie pulled up and dropped them off at the largest, most grandiloquent building either of them had ever laid eyes on, John drew the paper on which he had scribbled the address from the website out of his pocket to double- and triple- and quadruple-check that it was correct.
"I told you, you didn't need to write it down, I've got it. This is the place," Sherlock said over his shoulder to John, who had continued hovering on the curb while Sherlock began making his way to the door.
"And his office is-"
"The penthouse. Yes." Sherlock gave a short nod and held the door open for his husband.
"Good lord," John said under his breath as he walked in.
After a stressfully slow trip up in one of the spacious lifts, the two of them found themselves staring down a long hallway with a single door, at the end, which held a plaque reading 'Dr. C. A. Milverton'. John glanced at his watch and, seeing that they were perfectly on time for their appointment, decided to knock on the door anyway.
"Come in," the man inside the room called, with a rather thick Danish accent.
John did so, and they were greeted by a smiling man with a receding hairline and a pair of wire-framed glasses perched on his nose.
"Ah, Sherlock and John Watson-Holmes. So nice to finally meet the two of you. I've read quite a lot about your... adventures." He paused, glancing back and forth between them as if to size them up, and despite his friendly countenance, Sherlock did not like the look of him. Something about this man still threw him. "I am glad that you seem to be over most of... that," he said delicately, gesturing at Sherlock's forearms. "Now-" he placed his hands beneath his chin in a familiar fashion "-where to begin with you."
John, at last willing to admit that he was shaken, attempted to be discreet with the wordless message he threw Sherlock.
"No, no," Milverton assured them, "Please, do not be worried about a thing. We are more alike than you may think, you know," he told Sherlock, tapping the side of his head with two fingers, "although, I assume our Mind Palaces differ in a few aspects."
Sherlock reminded himself that this man could not possibly know, or mean what he immediately thought of, but this comment still sent shivers down his spine.
"Now, it's perfectly clear just how much you two adore each other, but in order to address any possible problems you may be having, I need to speak with each of you individually."
John again looked back uncertainly at Sherlock, but he found the other man to be looking at Milverton, nodding, as if at last he'd said something that made sense. It was Milverton that now exchanged a glance with Sherlock, who seemed to understand that he was supposed to leave the room first, and did so without a word.
"Please, sit," Doctor Milverton said to John, gesturing to the sofa across from him, and John obeyed, if rather gingerly.
"I had heard that, in the past, even the especially recent past, things were not going well for you two?" Milverton asked, as though looking for confirmation. John merely nodded for answer. "But now..?"
"Better," John said, "There were rough patches, I'll admit, but as you said yourself, Sherlock's back to being healthy now. Well, relatively, anyway."
"And what about you?" The therapist did not appear to care about the specifics of Sherlock's health, physical, mental, or otherwise.
"I'm... Fine. Good. I am now, at least." The other man said nothing, but slightly moved his head in acknowledgement. John could just imagine him jotting down notes in that supposed mind palace of his.
"Really," John added, when he had the feeling that Milverton did not believe him, but he realized after saying it that it only made him sound less convincing.
"But these things, these bad times - they happened after you two got together, yes?"
John bit the inside of his cheek; he didn't know where this was going, but it didn't feel right.
"Well, partly, I guess. Yeah."
"Partly?" Milverton raised an eyebrow.
"I mean... Okay, a lot. But that's not exactly to say my life was very nice before."
"Mmhm..." The other man mused, watching John over the top of his glasses. "Has he done anything that's affected you positively?"
John blinked; it had never entered his mind that there was even a question, but suddenly he found himself reviewing the past several years.
A phantom pain shot through the remainders of scars on his arms as he thought of the psychological impact each and every one of Sherlock's particularly bad times had had on him, of all the times he'd had either a gun barrel or a laser sight fixed on his forehead, of the injuries he had suffered in torture. And then, suddenly, these thousands of specific instances that made up the larger pictures focused into a single thought: a coffee cup, shaking. But oh, how much more it was than just a coffee cup. John held his left hand flat in front of him and watched it remain still in that position before reestablishing eye contact with Milverton.
"Absolutely."
Milverton just shook his head. "It is unfortunate that you think that."
"I don't understand." John was beginning to regret having this idea in the first place.
"John, how many times have you seen your husband become bored with something?" He barely seemed even to try to appear sympathetic as he spoke. "It's only to be expected. He is a sociopath, after all, or near enough. Sociopaths don't feel love, but I'm not yet convinced that he does, either."
"I still don't understand." Or perhaps he did, but he preferred not to.
"Sherlock may love you a bit, John, but ultimately, he will tire of you. In the end, you will be deleted, just like everything else he sees as beneath him. Not that I'd worry much on that."
John felt he ought to be leaping up or shouting in anger, but he couldn't manage that much. "You're wrong," he said flatly. "Sherlock does love me, whatever you think, and I love him. I believe in him. He'd never do that."
The therapist only sighed. "Oh, John. I thought you had understood my implications. I don't think you're quite focusing on the final question: are you certain that what you feel for Sherlock is love- or is it an obligation?" He paused. "Thank you, John. You may go."
John was nearly shaking as he stood to leave.
Sherlock had saved his life, on too many occasions to count. And without him, Sherlock would surely fall apart. Could John, perhaps, feel obliged to stay with him, to pay off whatever debt he owed, or even to keep him alive? No. No, surely not. He loved Sherlock, and that was the end of it. Still, John couldn't help but worry. Instinct told him that Milverton knew from experience what it was to delete and forget someone he no longer had use for.
•••
Sherlock sat much as John had, but staring at the wall rather than fully acknowledging Milverton. The previous questions of "How have you been feeling?" and "How is John?" and "What about you?" were met by deaf ears and answered with a dull hum that sounded as if meant to be words.
"Sherlock," Milverton said, "if you've something to say, do speak up about it."
Sherlock had not realized just how absent he was being, although it would not have bothered him if he had. Now, though, he felt he needed to answer.
"I, uh... Something's gone wrong with my mind palace."
"I see," he nodded, "When did the trouble begin?"
"Well, I suppose when... when things were bad, most recently. It's been out of sorts before, see, but it always corrects itself once we're back to normal."
"And, not so this time?"
"No."
They sat in silence for a moment, each turning over the facts.
"My best guess," the therapist said at last, "would be that your bad memories have gotten to the point of outweighing the good, greatly enough that the tipping of the scales, if you will, is eating away at the security of your mind palace."
"Then how do I fix it?" Sherlock asked, distraught, "I need- If I haven't got my mind, I haven't got anything. I've always functioned with it as a computer on its hard drive; I need to think properly."
"I'm afraid your problem is beyond repair. All that is left is to rebuild, and to do that you must first destroy. Delete all that is damaged."
"But John-"
"It will be alright. His job is to help you, as yours is to help him, in any situation. He'll help you to remember, to replace the memories you lose."
Sherlock nodded, slowly. It made sense, what Milverton was saying.
"Just be absolutely certain, before you carry it out. You know how this works. There is no 'Undo Delete' button. You cannot go back on this."
"I know," Sherlock responded solemnly, "but I'm not the person John needs if I'm falling apart like this. I have to."
"Then make it so."
Sherlock closed his eyes.
He stood on the roof of St. Bart's, looking down at the interior of a nonexistent building that was a combination of 221B and the Roland-Kerr Further Education College. A box of matches appeared from the air, and Sherlock struck one. He dropped it onto the memories below.
"Goodbye, John."
When Sherlock again opened his eyes, everything was different; he could think properly and see everything with absolute clarity, but that wasn't the whole of it. He knew where he was and what had happened, but not why. Looking back days, weeks, months, he remembered the basics, but not details. It was like reading a book with every other word blacked out. The story made sense, yet he knew that somehow it was empty.
Without another word to the therapist in the opposite chair, he got up and walked out. A man passed by him on the way in, and Sherlock felt the man looking at him strangely, but he paid it no mind.
•••
John re-entered the office, trying not to be concerned by the look on Sherlock's face as he had left, not registering John's presence.
"So..?" John asked.
"It would seem that his mind palace required a bit of... redecorating. He deleted the nonessentials, and apparently that included you. Oh, and he mentioned that if you want him to remember, that's your responsibility, and your choice. He isn't bothered either way."
John shook his head, refusing to accept whatever cruel trick it was this man was trying to play on him.
This time, he was able to jump up, and he ran out to the hallway, where Sherlock was on his way to the lift. He grabbed his husband by the shoulders and kissed him, but was met only with a terribly confused look when he pulled back. No words could have made his heart drop quite the same as the next words Sherlock spoke.
"Do I- Do I know you?"
•••
AN: Please Review.