Sherlock Fic: Broken beyond repair, Chapter Eight
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8. Familiar trust
Through the drawn curtains yellow sunlight falls in and creates wild patterns on the floor. The window behind the fabric is open, fresh air streams through the room, causes the pages of the book in Sherlocks hands to rustle.
John spreads his fingers upon the blanket, observes his hands yet again as if he sees them for the first time, bends his fingers one after another. Sometimes he does that for hours. Sherlock is just sitting next to him on his chair then, leafing through a book or old police records and stays silent.
John does not always react to stimuli, every morning it’s a game of luck. Sometimes Sherlock enters the room and John is back in his catatonia completely, unable to escape from his inside. But on other days his mind is awake, then his eyes are following every movement and he tilts his head when someone is asking something. Sherlock will never forget the moment when John lifted his hand for the first time and pointed at the glass of water. On his good days they can ask him questions, and then he will nod for a Yes or he will shake his head for a No, just like they showed him before. Did he remember what happened to him? A head-shake. Was he in pain? A head-shake. Did he know who he was? A nod. After this questionings he mostly fell asleep.
Today his sister visited, Sherlock promised to call her when John had a good day, and therefore she stood silently in the room soon after, looking down to her brother. When she finally reached her hand to stroke his hair, Sherlock stopped her.
“Don’t touch him”, he calmly said and after receiving an irritated look from Harry, he added, “He doesn’t react all too well to contact. Even the nurses have problems when they want to take a blood sample or stick a needle into the back of his hand.”
“But how...”
“They do it when he’s asleep or when he won’t notice it. On days like this”, he turned away from Harry, one hand ran nervously through his dark curls, “well, I do it then. It doesn’t seem to be a problem when I touch him”, he shortly said and let himself fall into his chair again.
Harry left the room an hour ago, since then John eyed his fingers. Eventually Sherlock sighs, snaps the book in his hands shut and faces the bed.
“John?”
Immediately he looks up, his eyes fixate Sherlock.
“Do you know who just visited you?”
Hesitation, then a nod. Sherlock slightly sways his head. Sometimes it’s difficult to ask the right questions because they can only be answered by Yes or No, end every time they tried to give John a pen and paper, it failed hopelessly. Therefore Sherlock thinks hard about his next questions.
“Who was it? Your aunt?”
John shakes his head.
“Your mother?”
Again a head-shake, John cocks his head almost as if he wanted to ask why Sherlock was acting so stupid. Sherlock smiles.
“Your sister, then.”
John nods. Amazing.
The door gets opened silently, Johns head slowly turns around towards the entrance, a nurse enters the room, her gaze skims from one man to the other. Then she lowers her head, speaks a soft Hello into the chamber. In her hand is a new IV bag, she turns the butterfly-needle between her fingers. Sherlock stands up, approaches her, has a brief talk with her, she nods, thrusts the bag into his hands and disappears.
John knows the procedure, rubs with his fingers above the old puncture where the skin turned lightly blue, then he holds out his hand to Sherlock. He doesn’t grimace when the needle enters his skin. For a while Sherlock stands still, his upper body next to the bed, it’s almost like he bends over the man in it, the wind blows the curtains aside, lets in a little bit of sunshine into the darkened room, John gazes after the sunbeams.
“John?” Sherlocks voice slightly trembles. John doesn’t avert his gaze, counts the streaks of light which fall onto the ground. “You have no idea what happened to you, do you?”
They posed this question frequently and every time the answer stayed the same. John slowly shakes his head. Sherlock thinks, shifts words.
“Do you remember Afghanistan?”
For a while nothing happens, Sherlock can’t see Johns face, but finally he nods, it’s a tough nod as if the memory just fought through his obscured mind. John turns around, lifts a hand and lies it over his shoulder, under the fabric is the scar, he remembers the shot. Sherlock closes his eyes, thinking. And then suddenly he figures it out, he opens his eyes wide, looks down.
“You think you’ve just returned from Afghanistan”, the realisation overcomes him, John’s head nods, a bit hesitating as if he now suspects his assumption wrong. Sherlock stays silent, watches him a long time with wide eyes, so long that John takes his hand off of his shoulder and softly touches Sherlock’s trouser leg, as to awaken him. But Sherlock just swallows, his gaze glides to the curtains and the dimmed sunlight behind them, and his voice is shaking when he says:
“You don’t know who I am.”
John shakes his head.
***
Mycroft pulls on his sleeves, the umbrella swings around his elbow. He thankfully rejected the offer to sit down saying that he was on the hop and just wanted to check if everything was in order. The flat is messy, books and documents are piled up on the floor or scattered across the sofa and the table. Sherlock doesn’t bother to tidy, not if it’s just to keep up appearances for his brother. Exhausted he falls back into his armchair, he eyes the door in which still silently stands Mycroft.
“Well?” the aforementioned says and raises his eyebrows.
Sherlock stays quiet. Too many thoughts are in his head, he doesn’t have the time to order them, and secretly he longs for his 7% and the resulting silence, but he knows that he can’t do it, impossible to shut down now.
Finally after some minutes of taciturnity, Mycroft sighs and puts on his head. Just when he wanted to turn around and wordlessly leave the flat, Sherlock sits up, props up his arms on his knees and lays his head between his hands.
“He doesn’t even know who I am”, he quietly says, almost to himself, “So why am I the only person he seems to trust?”
Mycroft hesitates, looks at the ground, then up again. “He always trusted you. No matter how risky that was. After one day he trusted you more than he trusted his sister after a whole life. A part of this faith seems to have remained in his mind. He might not know who this stranger is he’s trusting”, Mycroft shortly smiles and his gaze drifts away into his memories, “but well, it wasn’t any different when you two first met, I reckon.”
Sherlock shakes his head, his fingers grab his hair tightly.
“How am I supposed to help him?” he whispers, “I don’t know how to care about people. I’m not even able to take care of myself. How can he expect that I can help him?”
Mycroft looks down to his younger brother, his usually serious and controlled countenance suddenly becomes soft.
“There are moments in life...” he begins, hesitates for a second as if he forgot what he wanted to say, starts again. “Sometimes, Sherlock, we need to make decisions. These decisions are very important. You’ve got two options now. Either you pull yourself together and start acting like a human being. Or you forget him and return to your old life.”
Sherlock looks up, his gaze frozen, watches through his older brother, in his head he turns over decisions, ponders, thoughts flash up, disappear again into the vortex of his mind.
“Two options, Sherlock. Choose wisely.”
Mycroft tips his head, than he leaves through the door. His steps on the wooden stairs sound heavy.
***
The visiting hours are long over and from early attempts Sherlock knows that even with good words they can’t be changed. All his acting talent was useless against the ward sister, she always threw him out.
But this time the urge, the invisible pull to John is too strong, therefore he sneaks through the empty corridors of the hospital, in his nose the smell of disease and disinfectant, a smell he always cherished, but now leaves strange feeling in his stomach. Carefully and silently he reaches John’s room, pulls down the handle and with his eyes on the hallway, he enters the chamber. After he closed the door he turns around. And his heart cramps.
At the window, in the gray light of the shimmering metropolis, stands John, one hand pressed against the glass, staring out onto London. His body slightly trembles, as if he was a little bit unsteady on his feet, he put one arm around his stomach, he stays mildly hunched.
Sherlock opens his mouth but no words are leaving it, his feet are moving on their own, he slowly approaches him, reaches out his hand for John, John who is standing there at the window like he often did in 221b Bakerstreet when he felt sleepless, when his shoulder hurt or the adrenalin kept him awake. And Sherlock thinks, Now everything is back to normal. He touches Johns shoulder.
John spins around, grabs Sherlocks arm and twists it around and behind his back in a fluent movement, a sharp pain goes through his muscles, Sherlock moans in surprise. The grip is tight, but he feels John still shaking, and so he wriggles himself out of the clasp and struggles backwards, lifting his hands soothingly.
“John“, he starts to say, but John grabs his arms yet again and pushes him further backwards until he crushes against the wall. A clenched hand hits his face with such a force that Sherlock sees black spots, he numbly shakes his head, half-heartedly lifts his arms again, looks through them into John’s eyes, inside them there flickers fear, even more, sheer panic, and something different. Anger. Despair. John keeps silent, no sound comes out of his mouth, but he lifts his fists again and again and strikes out, and eventually Sherlock lowers his defence and endures the strokes and thinks it’s exactly what he deserves. He can understand the anger, and the pain causes a wonderful calmness inside of him.
John’s energy doesn’t last for long, soon his hits become weaker, and finally they stop completely. Breathing heavy he stands in front of Sherlock, and when Sherlock looks up and wipes the blood from his lips with his sleeve, he sees something new in John’s eyes.
Cognition.
John lowers his arms and looks into the face of the other one, his eyes wide open as if he suddenly realises what he had done. And then, very slowly, he takes the missing step to Sherlock, his whole body trembling terribly, and wordlessly leans his head against Sherlocks shoulder, and his upper body shudders, silent hot tears run down his cheeks and drip soundless into Sherlocks shirt.
Sherlocks hands are hovering aimlessly beside his body for a while, his throat feels like it burns, he swallows hard.
And then, at last, he lifts his hands, wraps them around Johns shaking body and holds him tight.
There are a lot of emotions in Chapter Nine...are you ready?