Chapter 34 - Disruption Part 11

Walker showed up twenty minutes later, but instead of rebandaging Sherlock's leg, the carer just removed the old bandage, inspected the fresh scar and informed him he would be escorted to the baths.

Sherlock had heard that the weekly 'bathing' was infamous and wondered when it would be his turn.

As soon as he entered the hall, it was immediately clear why the rota bathing was unpopular.

Enfolding before him was a bizarre scene, about fifty men, waiting in their undergarments in several rows, each line obviously assigned to one of about ten bathtubs.

Shower stalls were lining the left hand wall.

Walker dragged him towards a row of waiting men, who were in different states of undress.

With reluctance, Sherlock watched the proceedings unfold.

The men at the front of the lines were helped by junior assistants who completely undressed them and once they were in the tub, immersed them completely. After that the patients had to stand and carbolic soap was applied. Coarse brushes were used to scrub the skin clean. Sherlock relaxed a bit when he saw that whoever was able to do the procedure on his own was allowed to do so.

"Move it," Walker reminded him and gave him a nudge towards the shortest line.

The smell of unwashed warm bodies washed over Sherlock when he stepped closer. He felt his body go into a very unwelcoming alarm mode.

Odours like old sweat and urine had made his skin crawl since Serbia. In the years after his return to 'life' he had learned to manage the post traumatic distress. It was a familiar beast, something he had learned to live with. Over time he - and John - had figured out his triggers and - when it was reasonable - to evade them. John… he missed John so much, the physical sensations his body threw at him when he thought about his friend felt overwhelming and unpleasant.

Until a few weeks ago he had thought he was doing fine, trauma-wise.

Witnessing Mary die affected his mental stability enormously, as did the drugs.

Grinding his teeth, Sherlock decided to get through the bathing without much fuss. He wasn't shy and he had endured worse. Having to bathe in a room full of people was uncomfortable, but he would manage.

Sherlock spent the next ten minutes watching the proceedings and memorising which behaviours from patients or staff caused undesirable reactions. He was relieved when he realised that between patients the water was drained and fresh water was poured in.

At two lines on the other end of the hall, clean hair was combed, nails were clipped, and some men were shaved, all in a mass processing way.

In one line were the men who did it themselves and the attendant was supervising; in the other, men were given the treatment who couldn't do it on their own.

He planned ahead and projected his own behaviour for different events that might occur.

Waiting for his turn grated on his nerves. When it was finally his turn he hurried, followed the personnel's instructions as fast and accurately as he could. Thereby he prevented them from yelling at him the way they did at so many others. He not only washed as rigorously and fast as he could, he also successfully kept his mind out of any danger zone.

It worked well until one of the attendants decided Sherlock was too slow rinsing his hair and 'helped' him the nasty way. The man had stood close the entire time and Sherlock was very aware of that, his senses on high alert. What Sherlock didn't see was the man raising his hand, barking an order. Before the word's meaning reached Sherlock's muddled brain, the

carer plunged Sherlock's head under the murky water.

Sherlock's mind dropped into the flashback immediately.

He had no time to rationalise what was happening or remember that there was no real danger. Panic mode took over and all rational thoughts were gone.

He flailed desperately.

A nasty laugh echoed through his mind when the sensation of water entering his mouth and nose threatened to overwhelm him. Desperately, he tried not to breathe.

But the coughing reflex abruptly ended his effort when some of the water reached his windpipe.

The experience was eerily familiar. The sense memory of soapy water entering his lungs was vivid and reawakened old horrors. The sensation of something forcing its way into his airway, of his chest feeling full and stuffed, resulted in an adrenaline rush that did both, worsening the panic and slowing things down.

Blindly, he fought his assailant, pushed against a hard surface and was suddenly free. He rolled over, fell over an edge and landed on his side. Before he had made a conscious decision, he was on his hands and knees and tried to scramble off, away from the water, driven by panic.

Yelling from all directions.

Some eerie singing in the distance.

Someone screamed nearby, then Sherlock was brutally slapped.

He spluttered, coughed, fought for air, expected another assault, but none came - only more yelling and more shouts of "Greenberg!"

Getting in oxygen was the only thing he was interested in - and spitting water out. He found he was crouched on the ground, his hands raised in a defensive position. He was cold and wet and naked, but those things only registered after he had managed to suck in a few gasps of air.

"What is this tumult!" an angry voice boomed through the hall-like room.

In the distance there was still someone singing.

Sherlock pried his eyes open and found himself in the asylum.

That fact was a shock itself. It took him a moment to get his act together and remember how he got there.

The flashback's remnants mingled with reality; sorting out which was which was becoming a problem.

The singing suddenly changed from an anxious male voice to a high pitched young girl's. He tensed up.

"Look at me, Greenberg! Get your arse up and rinse off the soap!" Hughes barked.

Sherlock sat up and tried to wipe the soap water from his eyes. The sensation of the dirty wet concrete under his bare flesh made him grimace.

"What happened?" Hughes barked and the distressed murmur in the room rose. Several voices answered, but Sherlock didn't even try to listen, he was too busy finding his way back to this reality. It took quite some effort to stand up.

He could not afford to look weak any more than he already did, so he focussed on looking as tall as he could. He slowly walked with as much poise as he could put on display. It had the desired effect. People scattered around the room stepped back to make way for him.

When he reached the bathtub, he found the brutal carer sitting on a stool with a sour expression on his face. Someone was tending to either his forearm or wrist, Sherlock's couldn't tell which.

"That stupid Bastard broke my arm!" he exclaimed, much to Sherlock's consternation because he couldn't remember how that had happened.

To Sherlock's surprise several voices started talking in the crowd of men.

"You decked him," one person said, obviously agitated. Sherlock cringed. He didn't want anyone being punished for speaking up for him.

"He deserved it," someone else spat, obviously meaning the carer did.

"He likes hurting us," another voice added.

Several carers around Sherlock tensed up and tried to spot the speakers, but the crowd didn't reveal them. Apparently, hidden tensions were high and if not halted the situation might head into a revolt within minutes.

"Silence!" Hughes barked and the room abruptly quieted due to the harsh tone. It was obvious, the patients were afraid. The pent-up tension was palpable and it worsened Sherlock's barely controlled panic.

Keeping his outward calm took more effort than Sherlock could afford. His fight or flight response was overwhelmed. With a wildly beating heart he walked to one of the shower heads on the wall and turned it on, then he stepped under the spray. He was the only one in

the room moving and he felt the crowd's eyes on him.

He rinsed off and then stepped back to his asylum-issued possessions. Demonstratively calm and not looking at anyone, he picked up his towel and wrapped it around his hips. The urge to flee was hard to fend off, but he managed.

Sherlock forced himself to step over to his assailant and Hughes.

"I am sorry if I hurt you. It was not my intention. It was a mere reflex

to protect my life. I have been tortured in the past and pushing me under the water woke my basic survival instincts. I am sorry," he addressed them in a low, kind voice.

The hatred on the wounded carer's face told him the accusations of some of the patients and their reluctance to bathe was - at least in part - directed at this individual.

For a brief moment, he experienced a wave of panic when it occurred to him that his collected demeanour might actually have the opposite effect of what he aimed for. He wanted to put his clarity of mind and his lack of aggression on display but his behaviour might well be interpreted as ignorance or arrogance.

To his surprise, one or two of the carers seemed to sympathise with the crowd; it was showing in their body language. Another few of them were just trying to figure out what had happened. But the rest, which was the majority, demonstrated clearly that they thought Sherlock deserved severe punishment.

"Get back to bathing, people!" Hughes yelled and the mob of patients scuttled back to looking busy. Hughes then addressed the wounded attendant, "Go to the infirmary and have that looked after," he ordered and the wounded carer left, pissed expression on his face.

"Walker, escort Greenberg to his room. He won't be allowed to join the evening entertainment this weekend," Hughes said in a loud voice so everyone could hear.

"But, Sir…!" one of the carers started to protest, and on other's faces there was open hostility and indignation. Apparently, they deemed the punishment to be too mild.

Sherlock's delight about the order was carefully hidden and he did his best to look disappointed. In truth, he experienced the numb and diffuse mental mist that would be termed dissociation decades later. He felt separated from himself, as if he were observing his actions from a distance. He seemed to desperately hold on to the empty shell of his

body so as not to give away his vulnerability and distress.

Walker held up Sherlock's jacket and only then he realised that he had been about to leave the room clad only in the towel, his clothes forgotten.

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When they reached his room, Sherlock felt drained and messed up. He was glad when the door locked behind him and he was finally alone. For some long moments he just stood in the middle of the room, his thoughts wreaking havoc in his mind.

After a while, the tickling of the water from his hair brought him out of his stupor. He padded his hair dry, slipped into fresh pyjamas and curled up on the bed, burying himself under the blanket.

He knew from experience that trying to only clear the mist of dissociation from his mind was not enough; it wouldn't leave him alone.

Instead, he focussed on the arduous task of dissecting what he remembered of the episode.*

The first step was to stop fighting off the distress, and instead embrace it, feel it. He took a deep breath and mentally leaned back, ready to allow the wild chaos in that constantly tucked at his mind.

To his surprise, it turned out to be difficult. It took a lot more effort to allow it in, as if the barrier his own mind had created was hard to cross. He had done this before - much to John's dismay - he could do it again.

Lying down turned out to be a bad idea, so he adopted a meditation pose he had learned in Nepal.

He concentrated on slowly recalling the episode and its triggers from before. When his mental fingers ghosted over the agony, it was an unsettling sensation. He reeled back at first, surprised by the ugly intensity.

Most of it was definitely caused by torture. Being shoved under water was a trigger. Consciously recalling was stressful and it took some time before Sherlock had sorted it out. Finally, he found there were two distinctive facts he couldn't link to anything from Serbia. Both were slightly alarming.

First: The disgusting feeling of warm soapy water passing his uvula and epiglottis that pushed down into his air pipe. Like a solid mass that invaded his body with unexpected brutality.

Second: the singing. There had been another inmate singing a nursery rhyme in distress, but the child's voice he had heard had mixed in and had sung something different that was eerily familiar.

He wasn't sure, but the first thought he had was that he had dreamed about it before, maybe when Mary had drugged him. The singing felt threatening, overwhelmingly so.

Was that it?

The missing link?

Was he trapped in the asylum because he had been drugged in real life?

Was Moriarty behind this?

Was he unable to wake up because Moriarty had somehow managed to poison him?

Or drug him?

Was what he remembered even his real life?

Or was it the illusion?

His thoughts derailed and found his body was hyperventilating.

STOP.

Was this the paranoia speaking? Paired with anxious overanalysing?

This was a symptom of withdrawal, he had to keep his thoughts straight or he would

really go mad.

Back to the original task.

Conclusion: there were more stressors, Serbia wasn't the only element in this. There were layers, and underneath the immediate, there was an old familiar horror.

He only realised that because he remembered that - while being tortured in Serbia - it hadn't been new. Back then, he had been in no state to analyse that, but now he remembered. He gagged when he tried to focus on what he had felt when he experienced something that should be new, but turned out to have familiar aspects.

The problem was, it was too diffuse, the only thing he knew was that it was really old. Almost as old as he was. He had known it for all his life. He couldn't pinpoint it, it was just a rollercoaster of negative physical sensations coupled with ugly emotions.

The night passed slowly and Sherlock was plagued by nightmares that left him in an even more depressed state of mind than his default mood.

.

During breakfast, Paterson asked him to take part in the evening entertainment the next weekend and play a few pieces on the violin. For some reason the idea filled him with dread and his first impulse was to flee. Then politeness took over and he declined.

At that moment he didn't think about it, but during another boring walk in the park a bit later, his idle mind brought back his reaction to the conversation.

His reaction seemed completely normal, evading an audience was what he did. Then - for the first time - he wondered why and found he didn't know. He analysed it further, tried to find more memory fragments for this second puzzle.

He clearly remembered that he had been told so often in his youth that his violin play was lacking expression and passion that at one point he decided to only play when alone. Mummy had worked months to convince him to go back to the lessons he had loved earlier. The problem was, Sherlock couldn't remember who had excoriated his playing so persistently that he lost all motivation. At first he thought it must have been Mycroft, simply because there was no one else who could have done it. He had no friends or peers in school.

Had there been an incompetent teacher?

The fact that there seemed to be missing information unsettled him.

Why were his mind's storage shelves empty concerning this? Or was he locked out of the room the information was in?

Discovering he couldn't remember things he should was very unsettling.

A side effect of the drug use?

Was he finally paying the price for needing peace and quiet in his mind when the world was too overwhelming? Was losing memories the answer to his need for calm?

He had chased an ordered psyche his whole youth, when neurotypical therapists explained that his mental creativity and hypervigilance was treatable and needed to be tamed with discipline. Maybe one of them was the reason for this?

He knew he had resumed going to lessons at some point, but he never performed willingly after whatever happened.

Playing was his own private thing, done only in the safe haven of his own home. Mrs Hudson and John were the only people allowed to see him this open. It certainly helped that they stepped into his life at a point where he had finally started to learn to tolerate his own presence.

He never had friends before. He had always been the one who stepped on everyone's toes, the one who was bullied because he could do things others didn't understand. No matter how much he tried to be kind and behave appropriately, he had never been part of a friendship that lasted long enough to develop into a close one.

When he had realised this in his youth, his strategy had been to try to collect proper behaviours and reactions in to a mental database. It had taken him years to organise and learn things. Although it made him more socially acceptable on a superficial level, he always reached a point at which people started to dislike him because he blundered. When he tried

to be of help he insulted people because he was too honest, too direct.

Little by little he lost all hope to ever be a proper human being.

In his late teens he finally realised that the database would never be enough to handle people appropriately, and that he was damaged goods.

All his desperate attempts to adapt to society failed, he was an outcast and a freak. No one would ever waste their time with him or - god forbid - like or even love him. He unintentionally hurt people's feelings no matter how much he tried. It was futile. He was defective. He was the factor that destroyed harmony.

That was when he gave up. He stopped using the database, locked it away with the help of drugs, dulled his mind with chemicals.

Mycroft had tried to hammer it in that caring was his one big weakness that would be his undoing. Only the drugs made him stop caring, but Mycroft had never understood that this was the only way. They also switched off his pursuit for the truth. Peace and silence in his own mind was a side effect he started to enjoy, too.

Over time, his relationship with John withered as all things did, due to his lack of understanding neurotypical human emotion. He had made mistakes he didn't understand, and therefore couldn't prevent. He overdid it or failed to do it; whatever he tried, it was always the wrong thing.

Striving for acceptance was a waste of time. For a while, he thought John accepted him, but apparently he had just been a means to an end.

The same trap he had stepped in so often in his youth. Back then, his mother had - sooner or later - informed him that it wasn't friendship he had found. He was just exploited. Over time, he learned to prevent being used, but in the end, it also left him without any social contacts.

"Sherlock, stop this," a gentle voice intruded. He didn't bother to look up, he knew it was Mary. "This is the depression talking." He heard her familiar steps on the path behind him but he walked on.

"No, it isn't. It's my life experience. I never had real friends. No one ever wanted to waste their time with the freak. Whenever I thought I had found a friend it turned out they just wanted something I had. No one was ever my friend for the sake of it. I was always just something to exploit or a tool to use."

"John values your friendship," she said while she caught up with him.

"Maybe I did manage to find one or two people who genuinely wanted to be my friend for a time, but I never see all the details. I always miss the cues. I never know when to shut up. I will never learn how not to trample on everyone's feelings on a daily basis. People can't stand it in the long run. They will leave because I said the wrong thing one time too often," Sherlock whispered in a choked, hopeless tone. "I will never learn how not to blunder, no matter how much work I put into it. He is better off without me."

"You can't abandon him like that. He needs you. God, Rosie needs you," Mary tried to argue.

"She'll be far better off without a crazy godfather who is a failure as a role model. I taint everything I touch."

"That's BS. I value your strong moral compass…"

"I thought John was my moral compass," Sherlock interrupted bitterly.

"…and your fight for truth and justice, you know that," Mary retorted.

"No one wants to hear the truth. The truth is not something desired by society but a disturbance in people's illusions they have about themselves. To stick to it does more damage than good. But I can't let go of sticking to it. Look what that did to you." Sherlock's voice broke when he uttered the words and he felt nameless but crushing emotions rise up. The urge to run was suddenly overwhelming.

"Sherlock, you need to keep going. Do not fall into this pit of despair. You need to get out of here!" Mary urged.

"I can't," Sherlock choked on his own words and stopped dead in his tracks. Walking had turned into an effort. He felt exhausted and ill. "I tried, again and again." Now there were desperate tears in his voice, but he didn't care.

"Yes, you can. Use your brilliant mind."

"I have no energy left. I am weak. I can't even think straight," Sherlock whispered, feeling the heaviness pulling him down. It felt like a physical weight. He stumbled towards a bench a few steps away and slumped into it.

"There is no use," he mumbled. "Real life is no better than this. No need to molest anyone with my obnoxious presence."

"Thinking that this is easier to endure than the problems you and John are facing is an illusion," Mary said in a gentle tone and sat down next to him.

He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. Her understanding was disgusting. He could feel her hand on his back, just resting there.

"You needed the drugs to keep going, I know. I understand. They made you alert, more aggressive and fearless. You needed all that to survive. But now, your fear of losing John has mounted up so high you can't manage any longer. You are close to the breaking point, but hiding in depressive thoughts will do the opposite of what you want."

"I am not hiding!" Sherlock hissed wearily.

"You need to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. No one else will do it for you. Your depression is severe, it has you in a tight grip. Therefore, your thoughts are taking all the negative routes and what you need is new positive thoughts."

"I can't. I lost them. There is nothing positive left," Sherlock whispered, expecting Mary to chide him for uttering how fragile and lost he felt.

"John is in a very bad state," Mary said, close to his ear.

Sherlock wished this fact would make him fight harder to find a way out, it had in the past. But now he just felt numb, abandoned and rejected by John.

"You know enough about psychology to understand that those things are not intentional," Mary reminded him, "They are side effects of grief."

Sherlock's mind then presented him with another disturbing thought.

What if John was the reason he was in here?

Was John administering drugs to keep him this way? To not have to endure him?

"For god's sake, Sherlock! That's bullshit!" Mary's voice was indignant for a moment, but then changed in tone suddenly, "You know what this is? This is the paranoia setting in… Which is completely normal at this stage of withdrawal," she added in a soothing tone. "So, this is your body going through these changes to find its way back to normal. Don't let those symptoms rule you. They will go away. Keep your cool until it's over. John is out there waiting for you. You need to hang on."

Sherlock felt her stand up, take his head in her hands and kiss him on the forehead.

"I know I have said most of this before - your thoughts are running in circles… I also know you might need to hear it again and again and again before this is over. I will be here to kick your arse as often as you need it," she added.

The forehead kiss was a sense memory that brought him back to the wedding and he was overwhelmed by the loss of the two people in his life that mattered so much.

"Fight, Sherlock," she whispered, and then she was gone.

Sherlock sat on the bench and the emotions overwhelmed him.

He buried his face in his hands and wept.

.

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* Sherlock and John used the mind palace to dissect Sherlock's memories in order to help him cope with his PTSD after he came back from Serbia. This happens my story 'Define Vulnerability.