Chapter 21 - Disruption Part 4
Something intense pulled Sherlock out of sleep.
When he opened his eyes for a moment to scan his surroundings – the Victorian asylum's dayroom – he realised that nothing was out of the ordinary. He closed them again and tried to chase what caused the intense disquieting feeling.
There was something deep rooted and heavy that seemed to weight him down, mentally and physically.
Emptiness and sorrow was pooling somewhere in his mind and the black mass wasn't just there, it had run wild in a reoccurring disturbing dream.
It was vague, but not foreign. He had had it for weeks.
The only thing he really remembered about it when awake was the echoes of the horrible sounds John had made right after Mary's death. He kept hearing them even when awake.
With his eyes closed, he tried to extinguish the unsettling feeling he had identified as loss.
It dimmed a bit but didn't leave.
It never left these days.
Mrs Hudson had made him understand that at some point that losing Mary had been traumatic for him, too. Not only the events surrounding her death but the gaping hole that was in her place nowadays felt like a raw wound.
Although he had failed to understand what was happening to him, 'it' made him physically sick on two occasions. Mrs Hudson's thesis was that it was probably from the shock and the grief - and the fact that he didn't process feelings like normal people did. They might therefore seek a physical outlet.
At first, he hadn't believed her, had only shaken his head while she held a bucket for him.* He was sure it was more likely guilt.
It was his fault after all. He had failed to protect Mary.
She had protected his life instead and he felt nothing but guilt for that.
Over time – and after googling how grief was perceived by normal people – he came to the understanding that Mrs Hudson might be right, at least partially.
He was grieving.
Sherlock tried to accept that knowledge, breathe deeply, clear his mind.
The heavy sadness was messy and confusing and following him everywhere. There was no escape.
In addition, it was worsening the headache he was suffering since he woke up in the asylum.
He kept his eyes closed. No matter where he was, he knew why he felt so bad and that he just had to endure it until it was over.
Then a wave of intense cravings crashed into him, he should have seen it coming. The cravings were a permanent companion, too. Maybe they were linked, because in the weeks of John's absence he had buried his grief under a drug frenzy.
Both issues at once were like a physical blow to the stomach, though.
Resignation followed close behind.
His will to persevere was breaking. It was a slow and painful process and he had fought so hard to keep it from happening. But now he just had no strength left to adhere to a positive attitude.
When he squeezed his eyes shut to push away the mental agony, he felt wetness on his face.
Shit.
His fingers twitched involuntary and he felt the velvety padding of the unfamiliar armchair under his hand.
He bent forward, curled in on himself, rubbed his hot face with his cold hands. Tried to block out his surroundings, while he kept his eyes firmly closed.
"Mr Greenbaum?"
"Leave me alone," he grouched.
"It is time for the evening meal. We need to go down to the dining hall."
"I don't care. Go away."
Sherlock felt shaky and sensed how odd his breath tasted. He felt as if he had run a marathon, overexerted himself.
Why didn't they just leave him alone?
A few moments later the man did exactly that - he left.
Once more, Sherlock tried to leave his mind palace, but it brought no result, he remained in the Victorian era.
The omni-present fatigue had made him sleep in a sitting position - through the entire afternoon.
He was desperate to stay in the darkness and be unaware of the situation around him.
The headache was still there. The pain was originated in the back of his head. He lifted his right to rub the area with his fingertips, hoping it might bring some relief.
With horror, he found his fingers met wetness and hard edges.
His heart seemed to skip a few beats and his thoughts went into a perturbed overdrive.
Had he shot himself?
Had he a hole in his head like Moriarty?
For a moment, he thought he felt the edges of protruding bone and suddenly his pulse was so fast and loud it floored all other input.
Some aspect of him was too afraid to investigate further, afraid he might find he had killed himself.
He knew that suicidal tendencies were a side effect of withdrawal from more than one of the drugs he had taken en masse.
Then his sanity stepped in and reminded him how very stupid all those thoughts were. Of course, he wasn't dead.
This must be a nightmare.
Was he still asleep?
He tried to ground himself by exhaling slowly.
If he had shot himself, he wouldn't be here to think about it, because that was the point of shooting oneself!
Except... something had gone wrong and he was in a coma, vegetating in some Intensive care unit.
What was meant as logical reasoning did the opposite.
The rational thoughts were supposed to ground him, ease the distress. Instead, it renewed anxiety that once more threatened to overwhelm him.
The panic shifted up a gear.
Irrational apprehension and horror scenarios that always hinted at the worst possible outcome seemed to be allured by his current state.
But that knowledge and the energy to keep those thoughts in check were abandoning him.
Dark thoughts and feelings he couldn't even name were closing in.
He forced himself to sit upright, try to breathe normally.
Another unsettling thing was, that he had gone through withdrawal several times, but it had never felt as bad as this.
The reason for that might be that he had taken another combination of drugs this time. More than just cocaine and morphine. He had taken a drug he had never used in the past.
Meth.
Before deciding to produce and use it, he had read into it of course. The theory of withdrawal side effects from this particular substance were described similar to those of cocaine.
His current state made him realized they were a lot worse, especially or because of the combination with simultaneous cocaine abstinence.
He had been aware of the risks of meth, and in the beginning had recoiled from taking it, too many undesirable side effects. The reason why he had never taken it before, too. He was a chemist after all, aware of the effects on the human body.
In the end, the easy production process as well as the visible ramifications of its consumption had changed his mind. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have reverted to it, but he had been desperate to get 'results' fast – meaning: looking haggard and close to death.
It was a choice he regretted.
Were his exacerbated mental issues the result of meth use?*
Cocaine had never messed him up like this. In different ways, yes, but not like this.
Predictably enough, he remembered something he had read, but conveniently ignored during the decision making process. The fact that 'some users exhibit cognitive deficits in the areas of planning, attention, mental processing speed, and memory, which don't fully resolve within six months of abstinence'. Lasting effects were possible, because methamphetamine can damage dopamine and serotonin neurons in the central nervous system, which means: brain damage.
But that was only true for long term use, wasn't it?
'Long term use' was such an imprecise phrase.
Had he overdone it?
What if his mental capacities would never return to normal?
What if there was permanent damage?
STOP.
For a very long time just sat there and breathed, trying to keep the depressing truths at bay,
overwhelmed with the irrational shock he felt. The storm of feelings he had woken up to and the abstruse paths his own thoughts were going were increasing.
It was a rollercoaster – chased by episodes of pure horror.
Brief episodes of rationality occurred, in which he asked himself if this was part of the hopelessness and the tendency to jump on the worst possible scenario because of the depression.
In the background, his body kept screaming for relief, or was it his mind?
Whatever was causing the intense distress, he wouldn't be able much longer to keep it at bay.
Something was about to explode.
He was going mad.
He could feel his mind crumple.
Distress rose and he frantically searched for a way to stop it.
More wetness on his face.
Dizzy and breathing heavily he felt the chills return.
Completely depleted of any will to go on he just sat there, tried to shut himself down.
All he wanted was oblivion.
He did manage to drift off into the black emptiness of lethargy, but it was a short-lived relief.
.
Without a warning, cold fingers wrapped around his hand.
So much for blocking out his surroundings.
He was about to shake the touch off when a subtle whiff of Claire de la Lune entered his nostrils.
His eyes jerked open, craving to see something familiar.
Anything.
The sight that met his eyes shocked him.
For a moment, he thought he was confronted with a version of Mary wearing an odd dark wig, and with some kind of cameo on her face but then he realised that what he saw was somehow distorted.
Various things around him had changed colours, but not all of them.
Some elements in the day room had taken on a complementary colour as well. Mary's features where tinted in turquoise and black. The curtains in the room were bright orange, although they were supposed to be in a soothing blue.
Sherlock backed out of the armchair in alarm, trying to get some distance between himself and the apparition of his dead friend.
He couldn't interpret her expression, but noticed dark circles under her eyes. She looked dead.
Had he dragged something out of his nightmares into the mind palace?
To force his brain into re-emerging reality he squeezed his eyes shut.
"This is not real," he whispered.
Or was she another hallucination?
Instead of an answer, a cold hand cupped his cheek, causing him to recoil – and his eyes jerked open. But she followed his movement
It was a gesture of care and worry, but Mary's expression was as if carved in stone.
"This is not real," he repeated.
In typical Mary fashion, she reached out her other hand and pinched him – hard.
He hissed, more in surprise than from the pain.
The hand on his cheek burned ice cold and he met her sad gaze.
"I miss you," he finally stammered. It was the only thing he had not managed to say to her when he had hallucinated her before.
A sudden impact in his chest surprised him.
Puzzled, his regard went down. A moment later he realised it felt similar to the initial moments of being shot.
At first, something like a soft knock against his chest, then pressure.
And more pressure.
Anxiety bubbled up.
Crippling pain followed... and a bright red liquid started to spread over his shirt. Had he been shot again?
With wide eyes, he lifted his gaze to Mary, expecting her to point a gun at him, but she was looking down at her own chest, which was covered in shockingly red blood. As were her turquoise tinted hands, she then reached out with.
Horrified to see her dying again, covered in blood, Sherlock did a step back.
He was gasping, panicking.
Mary's face distorted in pain and horror and her movements sped up. She followed him, grabbed his arm too keep him in place.
She then pressed her bloody hand onto his wound.
Sherlock cried out in pain, tried to free himself, but she didn't let go.
His vision tunnelled, turned cyan, then bright red mingled in and he shook his head frantically to clear it.
Something sneaked into him, spread into his chest cavity, started to fill him.
The sensation was so ugly and yet so mesmerizing that he failed to breathe.
His heart had started hurt. It struggled to keep beating.
He tried to fight it, tried to shove her away, but she then embraced him and held tight to keep contact. Pressed her hand into the wound that seemed to be a lot larger than the one he had obtained when she shot him.
He couldn't fight her off, she was too strong.
All of a sudden, the touch changed. Multiple pairs of hands were clasping his arms and shoulders, dragging him down and the eerie silence erupted into a storm of loud voices.
He went down, unable to resist the enormous force.
Surrounded by a room full of people, pinned to the ground.
Unrecognisable silhouettes leaning over him.
Gasping for air with a violent urge, he tried to understand the sudden change.
He wanted to scream, break free, demand to be left alone.
However, all that happened was that something was shoved in between his teeth and deeper into his mouth.
He tried to move his head away, but found it held in a vice like grip. Something had grabbed his jaw hard and kept it open.
He tried to kick away hands and legs surrounding him.
This was not real.
They were in his mind, he couldn't hurt anyone, there was no one here but himself he could harm.
A very foul tasting liquid hit his soft palate and tongue.
The try to spit it out was futile, he was completely helpless, more liquid followed. His nose was blocked somehow and the only way to keep breathing was to swallow. He tried to keep it from happening, but it was a fight he would lose sooner or later.
Adrenaline kicked in and enabled him to struggle harder but the strength of the brutal hands overpowered him easily nevertheless.
To his astonishment, he felt something else mixing into his anxiety, attenuating it.
It took him a moment to understand what it was.
He wanted it.
All he needed to do was to let it happen and they would drug him.
He closed his eyes again.
Whatever medication there was in this ward, any would either give him the high or the oblivion he craved.
The raw need was so sudden and so intense it was hard to remind himself to fight what they were doing.
His body betrayed him and gulped, without his permission.
More liquid in his mouth.
He gulped again.
All those bodies this close by caused intense fear and black spots started to spawn in his field of vision. He was completely at their mercy.
Without conscious thought, he stopped fighting them. His body went limp.
They tilted his head back, fed him more of the drug.
Sherlock begged the medicine to work fast.
Their loud movements, their breathing, their feet close to his head, their agitated voice he couldn't understand, it all was too much.
He needed to get out.
Desperately, he tried to block out his surroundings.
It didn't take long until he started to feel heaviness weight him down.
A cosy rush went through his body, he welcomed it.
He allowed his mind to fully fall into the warm haze.
The brutal hands gently lifted him from the ground and carried him somewhere.
He ignored them.
It felt good.
So good.
Safe and warm and fuzzy.
And the worry and tenseness just evaporated.
For the first time in days, he felt all his pain and distress ebb away.
Bliss.
He let the voices wash over him, they didn't mean anything.
Much sooner than expected, he was dragged into the nothingness between consciousness and sleep. He felt himself drift and a strong lure to give into sleep followed.
He allowed it to happen, surrendered to it.
Welcomed oblivion.
It was dark there and no one could follow him there, not even ghosts from his mind palace.
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* Originally, I hadn't planned to name the drugs Sherlock might have taken in TLD (other than cocaine and morphine, which are canon) since they were not really mentioned in the series. However, even without naming them, my research was about cocaine and meth withdrawal. I thought it better to leave the choice of drugs as open as the show did, afraid I might do it wrong.
But the more research I did the clearer it became that not naming them might confuse readers and make the symptoms seem random. Additionally, Mycroft does mention the 'meth lab'. When I saw the episode for the first time, I assumed he meant it figuratively. When I recently thought about Mycroft's precise speech and the chemical on the table (Hydrochloric acid, which is needed for meth production) and I finally decided to use the name of the drugs.
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The drug Sherlock was given in the end of this chapter is chloral hydrate, which was mentioned in an earlier chapter already. Though invented in 1832, chloral hydrate wasn't promoted for medicinal purposes until 1869. It calms anxiety and sedates patients quickly. It became widely used rather fast because it was cheap and had little side-effects (that's what people thought back then). It was used a lot in asylums in the last decades of the 19th century. I took a bit of liberty with the years in this case, obviously.
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