Fic: Another Life to Live

[medorikoi]

Title:Another Life to Live
Rating: R
Warnings: Child abuse, lanuage
Summary: It was almost as if he had died, to look into the eyes of a three year old Sherlock and know that they no longer shared a past, that the memories lived on only in himself. But what if this time could be better? What if this time he could protect him?



For a Tuesday Mycroft found himself unusually grateful to sit down to the relative calm of dinner. He was in the midst of…assisting the Americans with the god awful mess of the GOP candidate primary, and who did Santorum think he was fooling after Mycroft had personally had his assistant write him a note informing him that it would be in his best interests to bow out? He was also quite beginning to lament his bringing the Summer Olympics to London. Conspiracy plots are so wearisome. It would be nice to sit down and enjoy a simple conversation with Sherlock and John.

That apparently, was not in the cards.

It was a dance, one not often seen and executed in complete silence.

Sherlock was eating tonight. Tentative bites, every third fork lift ice-blue eyes fixed on John and then fixed back on his plate. Bites slow and obvious where normally he tried to hide the action of eating, moving quick so he could put down the fork and pretend that he was not consumed by the idea of eating.

John was not eating.

John was also sitting on the other side of the table from Sherlock, the place where he normally sat holding the ghost of his impression. The empty chair like a hole needing to be filled, vast next to the sullen curly haired boy. John, where he did sit, had his legs tucked beneath him and his hands fisted into his lap, his jumper hung oddly from one shoulder.

Odd. To see them not touching. Not trading smiles and silent conversations. Not telling him in overlaps sentences about their day together.

John looked up in between every third glance Sherlock took of him so that their eyes never met.

Sherlock was slumped and defeated, his eyes drooping as if he were half awake.

Mycroft took a deep breath and sat back, waiting for the inevitable.

The gravity of stars themselves lack the power to separate these boys, he had no call to worry there.

The only thing left for him to do would be to pick up the pieces when they were through.

It was a bad month. Sherlock did not measure time in months and days, he said that it was abstract, that the measurement of time was a human coil. Plebeian.

But it was better to think a month than an ongoing experience, a stretch, a period. A month
ends. Months change, they have a beginning and a middle and an end and they turn into something new with a new name and even if circumstances have not changed then, well, you have survived and maybe the next will be better.

Months, John thinks, are a comforting notion. He doesn't care very much that they may be a plebeian human trapping.

This month hurt, but now it was almost over.

This month dark purple rings crept out from under Sherlock’s eyes and even in the warm morning light when they were wrapped in blankets and close enough that their breathes were really just one breath, Sherlock’s cheeks, his closed eyelids which should be warm and peaceful and full of life, were sallow.

Last night still lingers in Johns mind. It is not like the way the writers he loves describe nightmares, it was not a phantom in his mind haunting him, the dream did not bid its time waiting for his thoughts to change so it could slip in and derail his mind, and maybe that is because it is different for him than for the characters in his story books. Maybe the writers have it right and he is something…different. Because Sherlock makes everything different. With Sherlock everything is both better...and more painful.

He heard it from his dreams. The soft muted cry, the kind that takes over when sobbing has become too much effort and there is nothing left of you but a kind of almost silence.

It makes sense in his dreams.

The cry has a home there, overlain with shouting and the dull sick thud of something unyielding meeting flesh which suddenly does yield.

He cannot remember the dream when small clammy hands reach out for him and palm against his chest. But the sick feeling lingers in the back of his throat and tightens in his chest, beating and pulling his heart and lungs. He ignored them, pushed back the dream and climbed out of its harsh embrace, wrenching himself from the sleeping place in his mind, letting the barbs of it tear him apart because he could still hear the soft broken cry.

Sherlock needed him.

John pried his eyes open, the darkness absolute. He could still taste the blood in his mouth, the copper tang from his dream, could feel the cracking ache in his ribs and every breath was a heavy wet agony.

He pushed it away, fought it, and found the hand tangled and reaching for him and grasped it tight, crushing the small hand in his and trying not to panic as his dream tore its claws into him, trying to pull him back under. This time the broken sobs were real and the dream fit in around them, the lingering panic and taste of blood telling him to run. Take Sherlock and run.

"Sherlock, don't cry." John whispered across the darkness.

John slid into the hollow place between them where the sheets were cool against his overheated skin and gathered the dark haired boy into his arms, fighting with blankets until it was just them and he could tuck Sherlock against his chest and kiss the tears from his face. He was still dreaming, tears stealing from behind closed eyes. He whimpered quietly as he settled against John, bottom lip trembling and then easing.

John let out a sigh and cuddled closer, resting his hand on his friends dark curls and ignoring the nausea which climbed up his throat.

It was better if Sherlock did not wake up.

It was not that Sherlock was not strong or that John did not desperately want him to open his eyes and tell him that everything would be okay and ease the pain in his chest and convince the nausea to go away.

It was the fact that he was. That he would.

When Sherlock wakes up in the night he is not just afraid, not just lost in the place between dreams and wakefulness where pain exists seamlessly and all fears are real. Sherlock is upset; frustrated that when morning comes he won’t be able to eat or he will flinch away when someone he loves reaches out to touch him and that everyone around him will suffer for him. Because of him.

Even if no one else sees it like that. Because they don’t.

They would never.

But Sherlock won’t hear that.

He sees Nanas face when he flinches away from her, he sees Mycroft watching him not eat, and he sees their pain, that instant before they hide it away when he can see their hearts breaking.

He thinks it’s his fault.

He wakes frightened and hurt and frustrated and angry and then no matter how hard John tries to hide it Sherlock would know that he had been stuck in the other worlds as well, that he was suffering too.

That was the worst.

To watch Sherlock stuff all of the pain back until his face was cold, to watch him swallow his agony and then reach out to John to comfort him.

John swallowed and took a deep, careful breath and the nausea was mollified for another moment, the panic raging in his chest soothing slowly with the even lilt of Sherlock’s breath against his collar bone.

It was better when Sherlock did not wake up.

That morning Sherlock did not say anything about dreaming and John secretly sent out a wish into the universe that maybe this was one of those rare days when Sherlock would not remember. Sherlock smiled at him, the soft sleepy look he always gave him when he woke up to find that somehow in the night he had found his way into Johns embrace. He curled tighter into him for a moment as if strengthening himself for the day ahead and kicked his way out of the sheets and blankets, crawling to the edge of the bed and purposefully tumbling down.

John smiled as Sherlock threw off his sleep clothes and dug around the once organized wardrobe for something to wear.

Maybe this could be the start of a good month, or maybe just a day.

John pushed what blankets remained on him away and watched Sherlock finish de-organizing and dressing before standing up. Sometimes it took a moment for his knees to remember how to work and for his hands not to shake so obviously.

Sherlock’s footsteps trotted away, socks on carpet thudding purposefully towards the kitchen. Hardly more subtle than going into the kitchen and yelling for Nana or Mycroft but then again adults are kind of oblivious, even if they do rule the world.

It was hot in their room. Sweltering even if you opened the container Sherlock had built around the heating vent with bits of metal and a lot of aluminum foil. John chose not to open it.

Never open active experiments before breakfast.

It took a moment but his knees eventually remembered how to stand and the pain in his leg faded as he told himself in an inflectionless voice that nothing in the other world could hurt him here. Like a mantra he used in the night.

You are okay. You are okay.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

His hands did not shake as he reached for the drawer of his wardrobe, not even a little.

The t-shirt Sherlock had picked out for him was on top, his in green, Sherlock’s in blue (John had made him take the blue). They could match today. Nana would like that and Sherlock would be proud.

Mycroft would roll his eyes like he always did at the silly anatomically incorrect picture of a skull and the phrase written in messy script.

‘My parents told me I could be anything so I decided to be a Pirate!’

John closed the door with a satisfying click, pulled his sleep shirt off and shivered despite the heat as it fell to the ground in a heap.

The nausea gnawed at his stomach and his chest ached so fiercely that he looked down half expecting to see the spreading purple bruise.

There was nothing. Pale skinny chest, arms without a scratch or bruise.

He reached past the t-shirt and pulled out the striped sweater that was two sizes too big, the one he would not let Harry return for a smaller size. He pulled it on and it was too hot and the sleeves fell over his hands so that only his fingers peaked out and it fell past his hips in stripes of black and white.

He looked at the t-shirt and thought, maybe tomorrow.

When he walked into the kitchen he let Nana see him first, let her kiss his cheek and hand him a cup of juice, delaying the inevitable. He kissed her back and smiled, not for the juice but for her silence. It was bad enough to look up and see Sherlock’s shoulders slumped, to see the way his hands lay limp on the table while his eyes tracked Johns every move.

Sherlock did not say anything but when John sat down beside him Sherlock reached out under the table and fingered the soft material of his sweater where cloth ended and revealed the hint of a hand. When John looked again Sherlock offered him the smile John knew well but still made his heart skip a beat every time and took his hand, letting the material fall over both of them.

‘Everything is not okay. But you have me.’

Classes were okay, education was something distracting and fun and something that made Sherlock shine and forget about everything else, but Tuesdays lacked one of John’s favorite subjects. It was not that history was particularly interesting in and of itself, most of it was depressing, no one tells stories about the good days, or about moderate periods of peace where people were just generally happy and getting married and having babies. History was about wars and rulers and death. History was selfishness and advances in science and medicine due to war. Mathematics made machines of killing.

But despite all of that John liked history. Their tutor would teach them what he could, poor thing did not seem to know much and sometimes their questions made him open his mouth like he was imitating a fish and rub his temples like Lestrade, and then he would leave always saying things like ‘genius’ even though Mycroft hated when tutors said things like that. And then Mycroft would take them into his study and let them roll out his maps and pull out his books and play with them as he asked them what they thought really happened.

They were good at this game. Guess the motives, the conspiracy and the cover-ups, and it was fun to be sworn to secrecy every time as if they had not just deduced the right answers. Not every seven year old in the world had top-level security clearances for Great Britain. John was a little bit better at it than Sherlock because whenever a question was a little too shrouded in mystery Sherlock would roll his eyes and say ‘Mycroft did it’, even if usually that was mostly true. John was pretty sure Mycroft could not be implicated in things like the possible sexual favors to cement the adoption between Octavian and his future adoptive parent Julius Caesar.

But that was usually on Wednesdays.

On top of not having history on Tuesdays they had languages, which would be fine, but it meant that he would not see Sherlock for hours at a time. Or in fact anyone except his tutors.

Sherlock was reading Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (which he hated) and Victor Hugo (which he hated slightly less) in their native tongues and chatting with Grand-mère on the phone to “perfect his inflection”.

John was still struggling not to sound like a six-year old speaking French. Harry told him that it was perfectly reasonable for a seven-year old but John knew that was just making up excuses.

Sometimes though after lessons Sherlock would teach him and he was kind and repeated things as often as John asked him to, both of them huddled at the table together, leaning over the same book. And they would practice at their football games to frustrate Lestrade which was fun. They made a game of using it around the older man as much as possible. They heard him telling Harry one day that it was ‘frustratingly as close to comprehensible as they were ever liable to get’.

But one of John’s favorite things in the world was when they would curl up on the couch under soft blankets and without being asked Sherlock would begin to read aloud whatever it was he was reading. John did not care if it was half way through a book or on the last page. It was beautiful.

Spanish they were at pretty much at the same level and could share a tutor. Other languages they were picking up piecemeal from documents Mycroft was not technically ‘letting’ them read and conversations they were technically not ‘supposed’ to hear. John found he had a surprising aptitude for Afghani but did not ask for a tutor yet.

John was not needy, at least, he didn’t think so. He could spend hours alone, hours with people he did not love and then without a break and as much as a hug, go to football and fencing and Hopkido and be with groups of people so big it was still like being alone. It was just life, and he was learning so much and it was always fun, but when it was over, when Nana or Harry or Lestrade collected them and took them home and all of a sudden the mad rush of hours slowed and it was just Sherlock and him waiting for the bath to draw he wanted one minute of peace. One minute to know that even if they went for hours or even days and weeks alone, that they were not actually alone. That they had each other.

John had kept his jumper on all day, putting uniforms over it because the ache was still there and the cloth was the only thing holding him together enough to finish the day. He was disgusting and hot it was only Sherlock here with him and that was okay. Sherlock could see him.

John pulled off his jumper and let it fall into a heap at his feet. It was okay.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

He looked at the locked door and resisted the urge to try the knob, just to test it.

One deep breath and then another and nothing terrible happened. It was still okay. Sherlock waved at him from the tub, clumps of white bubbles clinging to his hair.

He quickly shucked the rest of his clothing and climbed into the bath where the bubbles were so thick there seemed to be more soap than water. The empty bubble bath bottle floated like a buoy next to Sherlock.

One minute of peace.

They laughed as the toy duck accidentally sunk the pink bottle buoy and then buried itself in the fog of bubbles, never to return.

They told each other about their days, how Sherlock had snuck away in a fit of pique and played his violin in the closet for an hour before he was caught. John was a little upset he had missed the performance until he realized that to hide Sherlock’s performance was played in silence, bow never touching strings. John told him about his side trip on the way to his new tutor (who did not have the security clearance to come to the flat), which involved a rather small yippy dog and the marriage proposal of a couple they met in the park.

Today was a good day.

And then John kicked the plug to the tub out, water level sinking quickly around them.

He might not have noticed at all but the split second of panic on Sherlock’s face. The way his hand flew to his other arm.

John let the plug bounce against his foot, water draining into nothing.

The bath had been warm and the room was almost steamy but he was cold as he stepped out of the bath and dried quickly, wrapping the towel around himself like a sheild.

“John-” Sherlock’s voice was soft and pleading and any other time John would have melted and run to him.

He did not turn around.

He dressed, throwing the clean green t-shirt he had picked to the ground, watching it soak in the puddle he was standing in. He pulled his dirty sweater over his head, pulling it viciously over his hands.

Only then, fully dressed and freezing cold did he turn back to Sherlock.

“Show me.”

“John-”

“Show me. Now.”

Sherlock held out his arm, still in the bath, kneeling in a wasteland of bubbles, almost diminished with soap still clinging to his curls.

The cut was even and deep, torn into the soft flesh which would hide beneath a t-shirt sleeve. There were no hesitation marks. The ice in John turned to fury.

John had taken hold of Sherlock’s wrist as he examined the wound. He dropped it and stepped back as if the touch burned. As if Sherlock were something foul.

He left him there. Naked and alone and calling out for him John left him.

He ran to their room, tearing open the door and trampling the clothes Sherlock had left out this morning. John did not use the hinge on the container Sherlock had built around the vent. He tore it apart. The metal pieces snapped in his hands and tore chunks of flesh away, metal and skin and tape fell apart around him.

A thermometer blinked at him as the temperature fell, the gust of trapped heat billowing into his face. He stood there until footsteps, wet and quick, came up behind him, stopping just inside the door.

He was glad Sherlock did not touch him, did not try to come closer.

John thought that if he had, he might shatter. Or explode.

John did not let Sherlock touch him as he left the room. He did not look at him.

He left Sherlock with his petri dishes of blood.

Sherlock could clean up his own bloody experiments.

There was nowhere for him to go. Suddenly there were too many people. Too much family.

John ran. I did not matter where he went. Just that he would be alone.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

He tore open the cabinet and crawled into the dark, closing the door behind him. Almost too small for him now, crushed in with cleaning supplies and hand towels. He tucked his legs against his chest and tried to slow his breathing.

He had to be invisible. Silent.

His hands stung.

Had he left any bloody handprints that would give him away? Too late to check. He curled his hands tight into fists and pulled them into his sleeves, praying that the blood would not stain to the outside of the cloth.

He tried to stop his heart from beating. It was too loud. It would give him away. He would hear-

And then the world crashed around him all over again.

He was not getting too big to hide in the cabinet; he had never been in it. That was in the other world.

Dreams and nightmares and reality and the other world and this world all crashing together and none of it, not one bit was okay.

He felt something rise in his throat, not the nausea that had plagued him all day or the tightness that lingered in his chest like a bullet hole. It was a sob as much as it was defeated broken laughter.

John closed his eyes and pretended he did not exist.

The clock chimed and John forgot that he did not exist. Forgot how to make his breath silent and how to make the stinging in his hands nothing.

Dinner would be soon and if he did not go they would come looking for him.

The other world, the nightmares, were too close to let anyone look for him. He could not give up his hiding spot.

He pushed open the cabinet and the light of the bathroom was too much, too bright. John closed his eyes and crawled onto the floor with closed fists still trapped in his sleeves and the knees of his jeans soaking through when they touched the shirt he had left there.

It was easier this way, he told himself. If he was already at the table when the others walked in they had less to analyze. Less reason for them to look at him.

His heart was pounding as he slipped into a far chair, away from where Sherlock would be. He was furious and heartbroken and not sure yet if the feeling in his chest was one of desperation to see Sherlock or to hide from him.

He tried not to think about it.

Mycroft and Sherlock came in together. If either was surprised to find him there John could not tell, not with his eyes trained on the dark wood of the table directly in front of him.

Mycroft dished out the food from the take away bags they always had delivered on the days Nana was not there to feed them. John could hear Sherlock slide into his normal seat, across from where John was now. Far away enough not to feel. Far away enough to be alone.

Food slid into his line of vision. He contemplated picking up his fork but his stomach revolted at the thought and the stinging in his hands reminded him that he had not taken the time to wipe away the blood on his hands. As long as he did not move Mycroft would not have enough clues to figure out what had happened.

He did not want to betray Sherlock. Not even now.

In a few minutes dinner would be over and he could be alone.

He could be invisible again until he figured out what he wanted to do.

Because there was a chance that if he asked Sherlock not to experiment on himself he wouldn’t listen and there would be nothing he could do.

And every day he would wonder.

And every day would be a little bit worse.

The clink of a fork was enough to make him look.

Today, Sherlock was eating.

John watched in glances as every scrap of food disappeared from Sherlock’s plate. More than he had eaten at dinner in weeks. More than even John would have eaten.

Sherlock cleared his throat and when John looked up blue eyes were looking straight into him.

“Your hands-“

John looked at Mycroft and back to Sherlock but his blue eyes had never moved. Sherlock knew exactly what he was doing.

“Please -John.”

Mycroft was silent as he watched their exchange, calmly waiting behind his untouched plate.

John began to shake his head but then stopped. His own name ringing in his ears. The same pleading as he ran away. The same heartbreak.

A new thought crept into his mind. One shining and bright and ringing that refused to be pushed into silence.

Sherlock crumpled under his gaze, his eye wide open and too bright, the way his eyes would have looked this morning if he had woken up when tears had already spilled, his mouth red where he had been biting his lip.

“I’m sorry. Please, John, I am sorry. I won’t-”

Sherlock had never even thought of a reason not to do his experiments with his own blood until it was too late.

John shook his head, forcefully. No need to tell Mycroft and get Sherlock in trouble. It was okay. He smiled. It hurt the muscles in his face, it felt tired and small, but it was real.

Sherlock did not look away from John as he pulled his shirt sleeve up and showed Mycroft the cut he had made on his upper arm. He shrugged lightly, a ‘guess I am in trouble again’ that was so familiar that John could have done it himself. Sherlock’s answering smile was fragile. Tentative in a way Sherlock never was.

John let the sleeves fall away from his hands, the soft dirty cloth sliding up his forearms. His hands cracked with dried blood as he opened them and fresh blood seeped out of opened scabs.

Sherlock was up and around the table in a second, hands grabbing his wrists and holding them in place as he examined his open palms. Then, without warning, John found himself in Sherlock’s arms; a hand tangling in his hair to hold him close as a voice that he could feel against his own chest began whispering, fast and so honest that it hurt.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You are okay, everything is okay. I have you. John-’

Today was a good day.