Fic: Everything else is just transport
Sherlock did not need to eat. Not really. He was well aware of his body’s limits and he knew he could go three days without eating a meal. Dizziness and weakness would set in after 72 hours and he would be forced to eat something to keep his body going, but until that point, he could function perfectly well. He didn’t need digestion slowing him down, didn’t need food in his stomach affecting his speed. Sherlock didn’t need to eat.
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Sherlock did not need to sleep. Sleeping was dull, anyway. And wasting time in some pedestrian dream meant losing time in the real world. He had once gone a week without sleeping. It may have been a little excessive, in hindsight - his body had finally given out on the seventh day and he had collapsed in the middle of a crime scene, annoying Lestrade and amusing the forensics team. So he slept the minimum his body could take, and spent the rest of time doing much more useful things. Sherlock didn’t need to sleep.
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Sherlock did not need to talk. People - the world at large - couldn’t seem to stop themselves. They talked and talked and talked and eighty-five percent of it was nonsense, with no bearing on anything whatsoever. Sherlock did not let social convention affect him that way: he was happy in silence. At the age of twelve he had gone a whole month without speaking a word. He hadn’t noticed the difference, really. His mother hadn’t been too pleased though. Neither had Mycroft, but that just made it all the more enjoyable. So when he wasn’t needed to explain the minutiae of someone’s life to the idiots at Scotland Yard, he was happy to spend days in silence. His mind enjoyed the silence, made it easier to think. Sherlock didn’t need to talk.
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Sherlock did not need to care. Caring didn’t change anything. People claiming to ‘care’, people who said they ‘loved’ each other, did horrible things to one another every day. Divorces, abuse, murders; he’d seen it all. And if he cared how a dead woman ended up in a skip, or why a schoolteacher committed suicide, it didn’t change the fact that they were dead. So he remained detached, uncaring - and operated better for it. Sherlock didn’t need to care.
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Sherlock did not need to do anything. The population appeared to be obsessed with sex. Every night of the week every restaurant, every bar was filled to the rafters with people looking for sex. Sex could sell anything from underwear to a vacuum cleaner. Pictures, videos, toys, websites - it never seemed to end. Sherlock was above that sort of thing. Mostly unhygienic, anyway. His body, of course, suffered from the same irritatingly human weaknesses as other men his age but Sherlock was well used to ignoring those urges. Mind over matter. And his mind didn’t need to be sullied by that kind of activity. Sherlock didn’t need to do anything.
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Sherlock did not need to be alone. It came as a surprise, of course. He was used to being alone, to scaring off everyone he came into contact with. After the fifty-eighth time it had become amusing, something like a game, seeing how quickly he could drive people away. And then he met this man, this doctor, John Watson. And John didn’t run off scared. John stayed. And it was irritating because John was so insufferably human: John ate, he slept, he talked, he cared… And eventually, because of John - and his persistence, and his patience - Sherlock started to eat. Started to sleep. Started to talk. Started to care. Started to see maybe he’d been wrong about the other thing too. Transport was all well and good, but at the end of the day, Sherlock didn’t need to be alone. And that changed everything.
THE END
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