Sherlock Fic: Leaving things undone: Day 1: Ignorance
Let's start with day one, guys.
And I just want all you people to know:
I now have a wonderful beta reader: swissmarg. Thank you very much for helping with my translations and for all the little english lessons you're giving me. Much appreciated!
Now have fun with the next chapter, and well, can you guess what will be Sherlocks next move?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Day 1: Ignorance
My skin itches. A light tingling, not right on the top layer of the skin (the epidermis), a few millimetres deeper, somewhere between the loose nerve endings inside the dermis (corium layer). I know what that pruritus means (call it itching, people never understand what you want to say, their minds are hopelessly jammed with things completely subsidiary), I know the categories and I know that my kind of itch won’t fit in one of them. It’s emotional, pure imagination, and the fact that I know and accept that (supposedly the best way to get rid of these kinds of illusion) doesn’t seem to impress the tingling much.
I lift my arm, under the little hair the itching is the worst by far, and then I try to suppress the unpleasant feeling with pure concentration (focusing, sounds like a forbidden voodoo technique, in the end it’s just the attempt to rule your own brain), but it’s no use, my body has always been inferior to my mind. Sometimes I have the feeling my brain only accepts the clumsy mass, the long thin limbs, the dark streaks, the cold eyes because without all that it would be lying somewhere in the blackness without a task. The thought of my mind being separated from my body, and myself somewhere between these two, a tiny little something that nearly vanishes, this thought must be very strange for some people (that’s why I never speak it out loud, they often enough mistake me for insane, although I know full well which things to say out loud and which to keep to myself, turning them over in my mind over and over again).
I lift my other arm, skim along the cool skin with my fingertips, and then I bend the knuckles and the fingernails scratch the epidermis (not deep enough), and so I push the edges deeper, dragging them along the whole forearm down to the wrist (the tingling becomes a burning), leaving angry red traces between white skin. I repeat the process until the itching abates completely, and to be on the safe side I scratch down the arm two more times until the uppermost layer of skin sticks under my fingernails and little red pearls flush the itching out of the dermis.
And then I lower my arm and grab the pen, copy the list I wrote down hastily, creating beautifully curved letters. Seven issues, the notes behind the single words explaining the approach. Then I underline day one. Ignorance, it says, the ‘g’ has a broad downward curve (odd, I don’t recognize my own handwriting).
My arm’s burning (and it’s so much better than the itching).
John makes tea. He scalds his index and middle finger with boiling water (he’s absent minded, of course), but he doesn’t curse, he stays quiet. He prepared two cups, I can’t see it from the sofa but I heard it (two times the clicking of porcelain on wood, two times the rushing of the teapot when it’s tilted and water gushes out), but he doesn’t bring them into the living room. Maybe he wants to prepare me for the time when he’s gone (John, I drank tea before you were here, what makes you think I can’t brew it myself?), but I ignore it, act like I doesn’t know about the second cup and settle back on the sofa, poring over my copy of Gerhard von Cremonas “Das Buch der Alaune und Salze” (The Book of Alums and Salts).
My plan: Ignorance. That worked well with John before (the paradox of the human being: if you give him attention, he doesn’t want it, if you do the opposite, it seems to magically attract him), and I think he will fall for my taciturnity and indifference, and he will sit in front of me, he will speak my name (several times, because I won’t respond immediately; I like him saying my name, he stresses those two syllables like no other), and then he will talk and I will nod and finally he will know for himself that he can’t go. He will stay (because I want him to).
But then John just stands there beside his armchair, the scalded fingers around the hot cup of tea, he inhales the ascending steam and observes me over the rim of the cup (and I can’t look at him for too long, because his gaze, his eyes).
I don’t want to pay attention to him, want to keep up the appearance that I don’t care about the whole situation; I don’t want him to know that it bothers me, that my skin tingles at the thought of being alone soon (and that I scratch it until it bleeds because my mind rules my body like a tyrant). But finally John lowers the cup in his hand, the last sugar pieces that didn’t melt completely sticking at the bottom, and he turns around and wants to go into the kitchen when I feel his name upon my tongue (it tastes of warmth and caramel, John’s name), and I spit it out without noticing.
“John,” I say, I hear it with a delay, the book placed upon my lap.
And John doesn’t even turn around, he just shakes his head lightly and says, “I don’t want to talk about it, Sherlock. It will happen. Let us spend the last week in peace,” and then he rinses the cup (he never does that immediately; it’s a reflex of people who know that they’ll leave soon and won’t come back).
My tea in the kitchen is cold by now, but John leaves it, like a memorial (and I know the formula to calculate the energy loss from a hot cup, but really, I don’t care in the slightest).
Later I’m standing in his room. He sleeps, without nightmares, he’s lying so calmly on his bed, and in the twilight I can see his breathing. Sometimes I watch him for nights on end, a human’s breathing is like a pendulum, it has a mesmerising effect, a constant up and down, back and forth. I don’t sleep much myself (the tyrant won’t let me, he thinks and thinks), but I can gain new strength from watching John do so. When he has nightmares, though, I always leave instantly, I feel uneasy then (and if he knew that I sometimes see him for a few seconds in that moment of weakness, he would probably hate me). But now he’s lying so calm and breathing so quietly that I almost believe he’s died in his sleep (a death many people wish for, which I can’t quite understand). The shelves in the dim light which falls through the closed curtains are empty. Cartons and boxes pile up in one corner of the room.
Ignorance, I think. It’s when someone doesn’t pay attention to someone else, willingly, intentionally (and here I stand inside his room and watch him as if there were nobody else in this world).
And I think that never before has someone ignored someone else so actively (and failed so completely).
And I just want all you people to know:
I now have a wonderful beta reader: swissmarg. Thank you very much for helping with my translations and for all the little english lessons you're giving me. Much appreciated!
Now have fun with the next chapter, and well, can you guess what will be Sherlocks next move?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Day 1: Ignorance
My skin itches. A light tingling, not right on the top layer of the skin (the epidermis), a few millimetres deeper, somewhere between the loose nerve endings inside the dermis (corium layer). I know what that pruritus means (call it itching, people never understand what you want to say, their minds are hopelessly jammed with things completely subsidiary), I know the categories and I know that my kind of itch won’t fit in one of them. It’s emotional, pure imagination, and the fact that I know and accept that (supposedly the best way to get rid of these kinds of illusion) doesn’t seem to impress the tingling much.
I lift my arm, under the little hair the itching is the worst by far, and then I try to suppress the unpleasant feeling with pure concentration (focusing, sounds like a forbidden voodoo technique, in the end it’s just the attempt to rule your own brain), but it’s no use, my body has always been inferior to my mind. Sometimes I have the feeling my brain only accepts the clumsy mass, the long thin limbs, the dark streaks, the cold eyes because without all that it would be lying somewhere in the blackness without a task. The thought of my mind being separated from my body, and myself somewhere between these two, a tiny little something that nearly vanishes, this thought must be very strange for some people (that’s why I never speak it out loud, they often enough mistake me for insane, although I know full well which things to say out loud and which to keep to myself, turning them over in my mind over and over again).
I lift my other arm, skim along the cool skin with my fingertips, and then I bend the knuckles and the fingernails scratch the epidermis (not deep enough), and so I push the edges deeper, dragging them along the whole forearm down to the wrist (the tingling becomes a burning), leaving angry red traces between white skin. I repeat the process until the itching abates completely, and to be on the safe side I scratch down the arm two more times until the uppermost layer of skin sticks under my fingernails and little red pearls flush the itching out of the dermis.
And then I lower my arm and grab the pen, copy the list I wrote down hastily, creating beautifully curved letters. Seven issues, the notes behind the single words explaining the approach. Then I underline day one. Ignorance, it says, the ‘g’ has a broad downward curve (odd, I don’t recognize my own handwriting).
My arm’s burning (and it’s so much better than the itching).
John makes tea. He scalds his index and middle finger with boiling water (he’s absent minded, of course), but he doesn’t curse, he stays quiet. He prepared two cups, I can’t see it from the sofa but I heard it (two times the clicking of porcelain on wood, two times the rushing of the teapot when it’s tilted and water gushes out), but he doesn’t bring them into the living room. Maybe he wants to prepare me for the time when he’s gone (John, I drank tea before you were here, what makes you think I can’t brew it myself?), but I ignore it, act like I doesn’t know about the second cup and settle back on the sofa, poring over my copy of Gerhard von Cremonas “Das Buch der Alaune und Salze” (The Book of Alums and Salts).
My plan: Ignorance. That worked well with John before (the paradox of the human being: if you give him attention, he doesn’t want it, if you do the opposite, it seems to magically attract him), and I think he will fall for my taciturnity and indifference, and he will sit in front of me, he will speak my name (several times, because I won’t respond immediately; I like him saying my name, he stresses those two syllables like no other), and then he will talk and I will nod and finally he will know for himself that he can’t go. He will stay (because I want him to).
But then John just stands there beside his armchair, the scalded fingers around the hot cup of tea, he inhales the ascending steam and observes me over the rim of the cup (and I can’t look at him for too long, because his gaze, his eyes).
I don’t want to pay attention to him, want to keep up the appearance that I don’t care about the whole situation; I don’t want him to know that it bothers me, that my skin tingles at the thought of being alone soon (and that I scratch it until it bleeds because my mind rules my body like a tyrant). But finally John lowers the cup in his hand, the last sugar pieces that didn’t melt completely sticking at the bottom, and he turns around and wants to go into the kitchen when I feel his name upon my tongue (it tastes of warmth and caramel, John’s name), and I spit it out without noticing.
“John,” I say, I hear it with a delay, the book placed upon my lap.
And John doesn’t even turn around, he just shakes his head lightly and says, “I don’t want to talk about it, Sherlock. It will happen. Let us spend the last week in peace,” and then he rinses the cup (he never does that immediately; it’s a reflex of people who know that they’ll leave soon and won’t come back).
My tea in the kitchen is cold by now, but John leaves it, like a memorial (and I know the formula to calculate the energy loss from a hot cup, but really, I don’t care in the slightest).
Later I’m standing in his room. He sleeps, without nightmares, he’s lying so calmly on his bed, and in the twilight I can see his breathing. Sometimes I watch him for nights on end, a human’s breathing is like a pendulum, it has a mesmerising effect, a constant up and down, back and forth. I don’t sleep much myself (the tyrant won’t let me, he thinks and thinks), but I can gain new strength from watching John do so. When he has nightmares, though, I always leave instantly, I feel uneasy then (and if he knew that I sometimes see him for a few seconds in that moment of weakness, he would probably hate me). But now he’s lying so calm and breathing so quietly that I almost believe he’s died in his sleep (a death many people wish for, which I can’t quite understand). The shelves in the dim light which falls through the closed curtains are empty. Cartons and boxes pile up in one corner of the room.
Ignorance, I think. It’s when someone doesn’t pay attention to someone else, willingly, intentionally (and here I stand inside his room and watch him as if there were nobody else in this world).
And I think that never before has someone ignored someone else so actively (and failed so completely).