In The Land Of The Blind 1/2
Title: In The Land Of The Blind 1/2
Fandom: Sherlock
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: R
Word Count: 12,679
Warnings: The Apocalypse, possibly disturbing themes, dubious science
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: Sherlock's been acting strangely for days. There's a claustrophobic silence to the flat, experiments tossed aside or abandoned, cases ignored. It's almost as if nothing matters any more. John's determined to know why.
AN: Written for the apocabigbang Thank you to sarren for betaing this for me, and for suggestions that made it considerably better.
Artwork by the amazing cybel on LJ and DW.
"John."
...
"John."
...
"John."
John sighs and gives in, against his better judgment. He looks up, and glares at Sherlock over the top of his laptop.
Sherlock's sprawled on the sofa, half in and half out of his dressing gown. It's as if even getting that on straight had been too much trouble this morning. John's not quite sure what emotion he's going for over there, expression somewhere between irritation and wounded abandonment. The air of suffering is a little overdone though. John's seen how good he is when he actually has to act. So he's going to assume it's just laziness.
"You realise, of course, that I'm not some sort of amusing performing dog, who does tricks to entertain you," John tells him.
Sherlock continues to stare, in a way that seems to be hoping John will be entertaining anyway.
"I'm not," John adds, voice just a little more fierce than before. Because this is a point he's going to be strict on. He's not here for Sherlock's amusement, no matter what Sherlock seems to think. He doesn't exist to pander to his whims.
"What are you doing?" Sherlock asks, though his tone already suggests that whatever it is, it can't possibly be interesting enough to distract him away from Sherlock's terrible boredom. John knows that Sherlock's own personal idea of what's important will forever remain tragically skewed from everyone else’s.
"I'm updating my blog." John can't help but wonder whether giving Sherlock more information is ever a good thing, when he's proven already that he's so very good at using it against you. The fact that he can't seem to help it somehow makes it even more irritating.
"Eurgh," Sherlock says theatrically, a word John knows comes in many flavours, all of them disapproving. Sherlock's arms are flung out either side of him, until one trails the back of the sofa and one rests on the floor. He's doing a fantastic impression of a man who can't think of anything more boring and unnecessary than that. Honestly, he's such a drama queen sometimes.
John relents, pushing the laptop back a little. "It's about you, I know you like it when it's about you, so don't even try to pretend that you don't."
Sherlock makes a huffy noise, but leans his head curiously over the arm of the sofa. "What are you saying about me?"
John shakes his head, because sometimes Sherlock Holmes is amusingly predictable.
"I'm writing about how you solved the Carver case with your Russian doll theory."
Sherlock pulls a face, as if there are already three things he disapproves of in that sentence.
"I told you not to call it that. Besides, you're probably explaining it wrong." Sherlock's pouting, which is not a good look for him. John's getting used to being accused of explaining things wrong. He's not sure he could ever actually manage to explain things in a way that would meet Sherlock's demanding standards.
"I'm quoting you actually," John says. Because that usually makes it better, or at least forces Sherlock to call himself an idiot as well.
"You leave out all the interesting parts, and you have a tendency to dwell unnecessarily on the emotional significance of things." Sherlock drawls out 'emotional significance,' like it's a disease.
"People appreciate emotional significance," John protests, hitting the space bar harder than he means to. "Normal people, normal, ordinary, everyday people. Though I know you disapprove of those. They find emotional significance to be an important point of interest in a story."
Sherlock's noise of disdain perfectly conveys his opinion, that normal people couldn't be trusted to know what the important parts of a story were.
"Is there post yet?" he asks, instead of replying.
John points. "It's on the table."
Sherlock makes a noise of vague, reluctant interest, but doesn't make any attempt to move. "Is it interesting?"
John frowns at his laptop screen, and types a little harder than necessary. "I don't know, I didn't look at it. It was all for you."
Sherlock holds a hand out. John's expression of irritation is completely wasted, because Sherlock isn't even bothering to look at him.
John shoves his chair back, and then leans sideways until he can grab the mail he'd left scattered this morning. He shuffles it into some sort of pile.
"I thought you didn't like mail. You called it slow and boring - apart from that time someone sent you human ears, no, that was like your birthday. You're really not supposed to get that excited when someone sends you human body parts through the post. It gives the wrong impression. It opens the door to more body parts in the future."
Sherlock waves a hand impatiently. John sighs and gets up; he takes the post, and his irritated scowl, over to the sofa. Two seconds before he's about to dump it in Sherlock's outstretched palm, Sherlock presses his hands together and sets them against his mouth.
"Open them, and tell me what they say."
"No," John says flatly. "I'm not your secretary, and I'm not going to die because someone's sent you anthrax through the post because you insulted them, or sent their brother to prison, or called them an imbecile." He tosses the whole lot on Sherlock's chest, where they land with a sad little 'flump' noise. Sherlock lets them slide down in a shower, until they rest in a fan from neck to groin. Then he sighs, like John has been disappointingly unhelpful.
John goes back to the computer and listens to the combination of tearing paper, louder sighs, and then lazily thrown, unopened envelopes, that hit various parts of the wall. He stares at what he'd been writing about the last case they'd helped with, and ignores Sherlock's immaturity. He'd been particularly pleased with his description of Sherlock's original theory for the last case. But now self-consciousness makes him backspace through it with a frown.
"What would you rather I called it then? The case, I mean."
There's a grunt, and a sheet of white paper goes sailing past him - John has just enough time to read 'yours sincerely, Dr. Arthur Ryan' before an envelope lands on top of it.
Sherlock grunts. "I don't care, call it whatever you want."
John can't quite tell whether that's honesty, petulance, or annoyance.
A screwed up ball of paper bounces off the back of his chair, and rolls away into the depths of the flat.
"Could you at least put them in the bin, if you don't want them."
"Bah!" Sherlock offers, which John translates, without too much effort, into 'the bin's too far away.' It's worrying that he can understand so many of Sherlock's noises. Because often there are whole sentences that mean nothing to him at all.
John shuts his laptop and swivels round in his chair, because he's clearly going to get nothing done while Sherlock's in need of an audience. He takes his mug to the sink, which thankfully is as empty as he'd left it the night before. Then he leaves Sherlock muttering to himself, surrounded by the many stripped carcasses of envelopes, while he goes to get ready for work.
Sherlock's still spread out there when he comes back, the papers a little more unsettled, like he'd briefly been a whirlwind of activity, and then decided it was just too much hard work.
"You know I promised I'd see Harry later," John reminds him, trying to pull the collar of his coat out from under his jumper.
Sherlock's only answer is a frown.
"So I'll be back late, possibly very late. No texting me because you can't find your socks, or you need someone to hold something for you. Or because you've gotten yourself kidnapped by fiendish criminals."
"I can only hope something that interesting will happen to me today," Sherlock growls out.
"How did I know you were going to say that," John mutters under his breath, before giving his collar one last desperate yank, and leaving Sherlock to fend for himself for the day.
*****
When John gets back, all the lights are off. It's just gone ten and the whole flat is almost completely dark. There's just the faint glow from the streetlight coming in through the open curtains. He nearly trips over a pile of paper at the top of the stairs; they scatter in one long trail under the thump of his shoe. He rights himself with a hand on the wall, curse caught between his teeth.
"Christ, Sherlock, how many times have I told you -"
The room isn't empty. John can just make up the narrow outline of Sherlock, sitting in the farthest armchair.
"What are you doing sitting in the dark?" John asks. He's trying to stop asking obvious questions like that. But sometimes Sherlock is just creepy. It's best to get them over with, be called an idiot and move on.
Sherlock grunts something in answer that John doesn't catch.
"If you've blown all the fuses again -" John flicks the light, and the flat is abruptly filled with brightness that pinches at his eyes. "Alright, not that, then." He blinks over at the far wall, which is full of bare spaces, pieces of tape and the occasional strip of red or black where a pen missed paper. Sherlock has clearly started and finished (or abandoned) a project today, because it looks like he'd had a hundred or so pieces of paper taped to the wall. But now there's nothing there, nothing but holes in the wallpaper, and a fire full of smouldering ash.
"Mrs Hudson is going to be cross about the wallpaper," John says.
Sherlock's still frowning into the fire, hands held together, fingertips pressed against his mouth. Which is a little bit worrying.
"Everything alright?" John asks carefully.
Sherlock frowns and turns his head, as if just realising John might want an answer.
"I was thinking," he says. Which is one of the more obvious non-answers that Sherlock's given him.
"Deep thoughts, apparently."
"Very," Sherlock says, and his voice is a strange, hoarse sort of low. The sort that it usually only gets in the middle of the night, when he's been talking himself into exhaustion - arguing himself into exhaustion. John's fairly sure the only arguments he's ever lost are the ones he has against himself.
"The type that need to be thought in the dark?" John offers, and takes his coat off. The flat's warmer than it usually is. He imagines it's because of the sheer amount of paper-burning that had obviously been going in here.
"I hadn't realised it was dark," Sherlock says quietly. There's a stiffness to him, something that tells John this isn't just Sherlock being Sherlock. This is something else. John leaves his coat flung over the table. He drifts closer to Sherlock's chair, rests a hand on the back of it.
"Do you want some tea?"
Sherlock looks up at him fully, then. There's a frown on his face that looks like it's been there for a long time.
"I think I would most definitely like some tea, thank you."
"One of those vexing, complicated things I expect," John says cautiously. He's not really expecting Sherlock to explain. He almost never explains before he's got it all straight in his head, when he explains it at all. At the moment he looks like he's still thinking.
"Something very much like that, yes."
Whatever Sherlock had been working on, it had been fairly big. At least eight feet across, given the marks on the wallpaper.
"On second thoughts, Mrs Hudson will probably be fine," John says calmly. "She was only mildly cross about the bullet holes after all."
Sherlock looks up at the wall, quickly, as if for a second he forgets that he'd taken down whatever he'd had taped up there. Then he nods.
John goes to put the kettle on.
*****
Tuesday doesn't start off much better. John knows that Sherlock hasn't been to bed, because he's wearing the same clothes and his hair has that slightly demented look it gets when he's been dragging his hands through it. Then rolling it back and forth across the back of the armchair, like he might be able to convince his brain to work better through the wonders of static electricity.
It's not just that this morning though. There's a frustrated and angry - but directionless - motion to him. There are cups strewn about the living room, some sort of ceramic invasion that occurred during the night. Some are cold and completely full. Some are tipped on their sides amongst the paperwork, leaving John to hope that they weren't originally full. He nearly breaks his neck on his way from the stairs to the kettle on one. Sherlock himself is on the couch, surrounded by torn paper and strewn open books, spines broken, pages torn out and screwed up. John has to wonder, while he quietly makes toast and debates whether to actually say something, if this is the start of one of Sherlock's vicious downward spirals. The ones he'd mentioned before. Or maybe it's something worse, something dangerous, some disturbing and horrible case, that Sherlock wants to keep to himself. John can't help but worry that he'll go to work - only to come back and find a bullet-ridden corpse where his flatmate used to be.
The idea bites at him, while he quietly crunches his toast, watching the tense line of Sherlock's back, shoulder blades looking sharper than usual through the back of his shirt. He's still staring at the empty space on the wall, the marks left from the sellotape still obvious against the wallpaper.
Sherlock doesn't move at all until John puts his coat on, finds his keys. He rolls his head back to look at him, and John's oddly self-conscious because Sherlock has that way of judging you when you're least expecting it.
"I'll bring back Chinese," John tries.
"Fine," Sherlock says. John gets the impression that he could have said absolutely anything at all and gotten exactly that response.
*****
Things are no better, days later. It's only the fact that Sherlock's wearing a different shirt which stops John from seriously worrying. Though he's half-certain that Sherlock did it on purpose, because his eyes are still bruised, fingers restless. It's almost as if he's made the effort to stop John worrying, but nothing else. John's honestly not sure if that's a good sign or not.
It's not exactly easy to cheer Sherlock Holmes up. Though John can't help but try, over breakfast, because that seems to be the only time they run into each other in the light of day. He rustles the paper he's reading open wider.
"How about this then, 'man drowned in mysterious circumstances.'"
Sherlock's still staring at the wall, like he hasn't even heard. His feet are balanced on the terrifyingly unstable mountain of books and paper that the coffee table has become. John turns his head and rustles the paper a little more obviously. Hoping the lure of newsprint and gruesome death will tempt Sherlock out of his funk.
"You like that sort of thing," John presses, when the silence drags on. "Murder, mysterious circumstances, puzzles. I'm surprised you're not pestering Lestrade to look at all the dead bodies you've missed already."
Sherlock still stubbornly refuses to even make a dent in the conversation. John turns the paper around, so Sherlock can read the text. He's briefly encouraged when Sherlock snags the paper out of his fingers.
"It's not important." Sherlock screws up the whole paper, and then tosses it across the room.
"Not important," John says incredulously. He stares for a second at the crumpled remains of the paper, wondering whether to bother retrieving it and trying to flatten it out. Instead, he sighs and frowns a question at the other man. "Are you working on something? Is that what this is about? Do you have a case you haven't told me about, that you don't want me to know about?"
"I'm not working on anything," Sherlock says, too flatly and too fast.
John waits, but Sherlock doesn't offer anything else. He has no choice but to stumble on, helplessly. "I've never known you to be this quiet. It's not even like you're depressed. You're acting like something's broken and you're refusing to fix it."
Sherlock hums quiet agreement in his throat. It's reluctant and John doesn’t even think he means to give that much.
"Talking to you is like pulling teeth at the moment. But I feel like I should get points for trying, at least."
Sherlock glares at him from under an errant, and particularly ludicrous, curl of hair. John shakes his head and picks up the paper, intending to carry it to the bin. He's stopped by Sherlock's voice.
"What if your whole life was completely pointless? Everything you've ever done, everyone you'd ever met, every achievement you'd ever made, completely and utterly pointless. What would you do?"
John looks around, and finds that Sherlock has slipped down in the chair, chin pressed against his chest. He's wearing an expression that's almost impossible to define. John crumples the paper he's holding. He's oddly thrown by how carefully Sherlock offers the question. Not just curiosity, there's something else underneath the carefully bland question.
"Isn't that how everyone feels at some point?" John says after a pause. "Like nothing they've done is worthwhile, that it's all just not going to matter in the long run."
The noise Sherlock makes in his throat is irritated. "I don't mean philosophically, nothing so abstract and dreary. I mean everything, a lifetime of work, of connections, of purpose - reduced to nothing. Everyone you've ever known, completely expendable. Things you've always taken as a universal constant - erased." Sherlock manages to sound petulant and disgusted at the same time, while making no sense at all.
John flounders for something helpful to say.
"You've done amazing things, and you're going to do amazing things -" John stops, because Sherlock shoves the whole pile of paper off the coffee table with his foot, shaking his head roughly, dismissively. John watches it fall, watches it all crash onto the floor, slithering across the carpet in a messy stream.
"No, I'm not," Sherlock says and he sounds half furious at the interruption. He presses his mouth shut, and pushes his fingers against it. John carefully moves one long foot aside and sits down on the table, listens to it creak under his weight. He's genuinely worried about the sharp crease in Sherlock's forehead. The one that's been there for days, never smoothing out, never quite sharpening into focus and curiosity. Like he's sitting on a problem he doesn't know how to solve. John's seen Sherlock frustrated, he's seen him angry, but never this, something that feels lost.
John wraps a hand round his ankle, for want of anything else to grab. "What's the matter, Sherlock, and don't tell me that nothing's wrong. You've been like this for more than a week now, and you keep putting me off. But I know it's something."
Sherlock remains stubbornly quiet.
"Look - just - I'm here if you want to tell me what's wrong, if you want to let me know. I could help. I could try and help, if you give me the chance."
"There's no point," Sherlock says flatly. "There's no point at all."
"Sherlock -"
Sherlock waves a frustrated hand. "Just go and do whatever it is that people do." Sherlock leaves the armchair and the living room in a rush of movement, like he's sick of the sight of them both. He slams the door of his room so hard that the hinges shake.
John exhales into the silence. "Yeah, that went fabulously well."
*****
The week is a busy one at the clinic, and John's lucky if he has enough enthusiasm to eat and find the kettle underneath Sherlock's collection of ever more bewildering books and science papers. He doesn't have the extra brain power to worry too much, though he feels slightly guilty about that. But Sherlock isn't actively trying to get himself killed. He just seems completely apathetic to everything.
John does wonder, when he spills rice all over something on black holes on Friday, whether a scientist has been murdered - something classified maybe. He knows that Sherlock's worked on classified cases before, cases he hasn't always told John about.
It's just odd to be left out of the loop when it feels important.
He hates feeling useless.
*****
Nothing odd happens until Friday afternoon. John manages to get out of work an hour early, and finds Mycroft and Sherlock together. Sherlock is dressed, and looks as if he's at least made an effort to rejoin the world. John doesn't know whether Mycroft, of all people, is the one responsible for that. But he'll take miracles where he can get them. He hovers in the background, not entirely sure if he should say something, or even continue up the stairs. Especially since they seem to be staring at each other. Sherlock has one arm looped around his violin, lazy and careless, bow bending in a way that looks dangerous on the arm of the couch. Mycroft is leaning forward in his chair, like he's trying to convince Sherlock of something.
"I'd hate to part on bad terms, Sherlock," Mycroft says carefully and there's a vibration there, something almost human.
Sherlock stares at his brother for a long time over his violin. "We won't," he says finally, almost reluctantly.
John catches what looks like the beginning of surprise on Mycroft's face. But then it's gone, wiped away in an instant, like it was never there. Mycroft seems to have decided not to push his luck, rising from the chair in a way that shouldn't be possible given the sand-like properties of the cushions. He stretches a hand out to John, and John's shaking it before he's even realised that's an odd thing to do with someone you're used to finding in your armchair cushions. Not that Mycroft hasn't always been oddly formal.
"It's always good to see you, John," Mycroft says, and John has no idea how he manages to sound bland and genuine at the same time. He releases him, and then smiles, and it's oddly not quite the same as his usual bland, and terribly convenient smiles. It's slightly uneven; it's the sort of smile that a public figure would spend their entire life training themselves out of, because it's just crooked enough to be real. John watches him all the way down the stairs, feeling like he's missing something. Sherlock doesn't glare, or even offer an insult. He simply stares through the doorway until the front door shuts.
John's half way through making tea when he decides to mention the strangeness, because he still thinks that sometimes it's just him. Sherlock seems to make the world crazy by default.
"Was he weird today or was it me?" John asks, kettle still hovering over two mugs in some sort of indecisive confusion.
"You're always accusing him of being up to something," Sherlock points out, dragging his laptop back into his lap like it's a small child he intends to pet.
"Not to his face," John says. "And usually it's more of a Holmes sort of weirdness. Something Mycroft-ish. Today he seems weird in a general, people sort of way. It was very disturbing."
"A non-genetic, non-Holmesian sort of weird," Sherlock hums. "I'm not sure I'm qualified to investigate that."
It's the first almost-joke John's heard from him in days. Which has to be a good thing, doesn't it?
"Funny," John offers over his shoulder. "But seriously, we're not going to war, are we? Or being invaded by aliens? Nothing I should know about?" John really would like to be told if there's going to be an alien invasion. No one wants that sprung on them.
There's a long pause, where John's fairly sure Sherlock doesn't even take a breath.
"No, nothing you should know about," he says at last. Which is such an obvious lie that John's surprised Sherlock can bear it.
He stares at the kettle, and frowns until the sound of Sherlock typing starts up.
*****
Sherlock isn't exactly back to normal, but he's stopped being quite as odd as he was before. It's enough that John stops worrying, though he doesn't stop wondering. Because whatever it was that Sherlock was obsessing over, it's clear he's still working on it, mind turning it over and over. It's something he hasn't dropped, perhaps something he can't drop.
John's getting used to his silent, angry pacing, and his moments of obvious frustration. He's fairly sure that getting used to it isn't a good thing though. He worries about Sherlock, because he's not like other people. Sometimes he'd just like to know how he works, so he can help. John's always on firmer footing when he can help.
"I'm going out," Sherlock announces, just a little too loudly, and there's a strange sort of ceremony in the way he says it. As if it's a pronouncement to a group of people, a statement of intent. When there's no one in the flat but John.
John peers over the paper at him. "Did you want some company?"
"No," Sherlock says, it's quiet but firm. "No, you should stay here."
John doesn't have time to do much more than shoot him a quizzical look, before Sherlock's through the door, steps slow and strangely reluctant on the stairs. After the door thumps shut, John sits in the silence, frowning harder as the minutes tick by.
He looks across the flat, and finds that Sherlock's left the door of his room open. A slant of light from the window streams out of it, and invades the sitting room. John can just see the towers of paper and books, the clutter of science equipment, maps and even the dangling lead of a phone charger. He can see the end of Sherlock's bed.
There's a box balanced there, carefully left half open.
John very slowly puts the paper down on the arm of the chair. Because he's learnt well enough that Sherlock thinks through almost everything he does. There's a reason for everything. Today there's a reason for his door to be open. There's a reason for the box to be settled on the end of his bed, looking nothing like it ended up there naturally, and everything like it was placed there on purpose. Sherlock wants John in his room. He wants him in the box. No, this is something even clearer than that, this is a quiet sort of obvious. This is Sherlock desperately wanting John to find something out. Sherlock wants John to know something that Sherlock can't tell him, or won't tell him.
He goes to the box, prising up the cardboard flaps and opening it up. It's half full of paper and DVDs in sleeves. There's a Dictaphone, a couple of flash drives, and a bundle of half-burnt envelopes.
It takes John two hours to go through. His grasp of particle physics isn't exactly up-to-date, or in any way good enough to understand the graphs and charts. The carefully printed numbers that are ringed and notated in red pen mean nothing to him either. The letters are correspondence between Arthur Ryan and a Doctor John Tilden. Long streams of data, half sentences, gradually growing more and more frantic on Ryan's side while Doctor Tilden's replies become briefer - and quietly mocking.
The DVDs - the DVDs which John slips into his laptop and watches, are clearer. There's nothing especially strange about the nervous man facing the camera. He introduces himself as Dr. Arthur Ryan. He's middle-aged, with dark, untidy hair, wearing a shirt a few sizes too big. He speaks too quickly; excited, complicated sentences, something about invisible particles, experiments. John barely understands a word of it. There's a white board full of calculations. John watches two hours of footage, feeling confused when it cuts, skips ahead hours, or days. It's some sort of scientific video log then?
On the DVD marked 'STAGE 4,' Ryan's no longer smiling, there's a stark shaken-ness to him. Eyes dark, there's also a tremor in his voice that wasn't there before. He's explaining, too quickly - science too in-depth for John to understand - exactly what's happening on screen. Exactly what's happening inside the dull white cylindrical machine he's been performing tests in. It's a long, rambling explanation of wave collapse, the triggering of an 'event,' the odds of it being astronomically unlikely in every calculation.
Doctor Arthur Ryan is wearing the face of a man who's documenting something awful, and for all that he's trying to be as scientific as possible there's a quiet and hopeless horror in his expression. A quiet breathlessness to his words. Eventually, the man runs out of explanations. He stands silent in front of the whiteboard, under the headline 'TEMPORAL EFFECTS POST-EVENT.' The footage cuts to the machine, still and silent, then back to him. John thinks he can see Ryan's hands shaking. Though the camera must be mounted, it's as still and steady as a rock.
Ryan sketches out on the board, in hasty, broken black pen lines, the starting point of the singularity. He explains, voice cracking, in terms even John can understand. He explains exactly what's happening, explains the gravitational effects of the experiment on everything else. What will happen laid on the board in dark pen. He repeats, twice, three times - enough times that John loses count - that it can't be stopped.
"We'll start to feel the effects in twenty days." The hand holding the pen drops away from the white board, hits the calculations on the way down, pulling a stark, black line through them. "They'll be here soon, they'll run the same calculations, they'll come to the same conclusions. I don't even know why I'm making these tapes. There'll be no one left to watch them. There'll be no one to blame me." Ryan sits on a stool beside the work bench and breathes, awkward and slow. John thinks he's going to speak again, but the video file just ends, whatever happened afterwards cut away, or erased.
The only thing left is the Dictaphone that John set on the table. He listens to the quiet whirr of the tape rewinding and then hits 'play.'
"I know there's nothing I can say. There's no way I can make this right. I just wanted someone to understand."
It's Ryan's voice, quiet and earnest. Speaking slowly but clearly into the microphone.
"I wanted someone to understand why I did it. Why I attempted it, what I was trying to do. The odds of something like this happening were so small - I did it because I could, to prove that I could do it when they said it couldn't be done."
There's a pause, then the sound of heavy breathing, like someone trying to keep their emotions in check.
"I never intended our destruction. I never intended - there were safeguards, and the chances of anything catastrophic happening were astronomically small. I wouldn't have - I would have stopped if I'd known it would come to this."
John thinks that's the voice of a voice of a man who knows that lying to himself is the only thing he has left.
"It was a one in a billion chance. I could have run the experiment a thousand times, a million and there would have been no event. There would have been no - God forgive me."
John listens to the rush of quiet that comes after that. The unsettled hush of breathing, quick and shaky. There's a rattle underneath, that he can't quite make out. Science equipment maybe, pulled out of a drawer.
Until something clicks and John knows exactly what that sound is.
It's the sound of someone inexpertly handling a gun.
There's a dead pause, and John holds his breath.
The gunshot is louder than it has any right to be, sharp and tinny and wrong.
"Jesus," John manages.
The rush of silence stretches out. After a space of it, there starts up a quiet 'tap, tap, tap,' that John can't figure out.
Until he can.
He hits the stop button, which clicks in almost too gently. He sits curled over the box, hands drawn into fists, staring at the machine in his hand and shaking his head back and forth. This is insane, this is completely and totally insane. The idea that anyone - that it would even be possible to do that much, to cause that much damage. To end the whole damn - John's shaking and he doesn't know why - fuck it, he does, he does know why. He's shaking because he believes it. He believes it enough to feel sick. Because nothing Sherlock's done makes sense unless Sherlock believes it's true.
If Sherlock believes it's true....
It's too much to process, too much to take in. John's sweating, pulse too fast, body insistent that he do something. Though exactly what he's supposed to do, he doesn't have the faintest idea.
He rewinds the tape back to the beginning. He isn't even sure why, he just does. He doesn’t want to listen to it again, not that. He wants to pack it away and forget he ever heard it, to forget it ever exists, but he can't. He leaves the box on the table, contents spilling out either side. He doesn't bother to pack away the files, the discs, or the tapes. Sherlock obviously wanted him to find it, he obviously wanted him to see it all. There's no way Sherlock will miss it, when he gets back. And John intends to ask why exactly he didn't tell him any of this. Why he hasn't told anyone any of this. Why no one knows this.
John's briefly furious, that he had to find out about this at all, that he knows now. This morning he was trying to decide if he should buy a new jacket, and feeling guilty for not phoning his sister often enough and now.... He doesn’t even know now, what does anything matter any more? But that's the point, isn't it. That's why governments don't tell anyone. Because who wants to see what the world turns into when you tell it that nothing matters any more, nothing you do, nothing you say. What the hell would anyone do if they discovered the world's future could be measured in days? What would everyone do. What are you supposed to do when there's just no time left?
John knows people well enough to know it would be a nightmare.
*****
Sherlock stays gone for almost the entire afternoon.
John drinks far too much coffee, and can't quite think about anything for longer than five minutes at a time. He can't quite wrap his head around the idea of the end of everything, the entire span of human history, coming to an abrupt and pointless end.
He leaves the box on Sherlock's bed, contents replaced haphazardly, papers curling over the cardboard flaps. He can't decide if setting the whole thing on fire would be the right, or the wrong, thing to do. Or whether it would even make him feel better. Maybe it's just the adult equivalent of putting your head under a blanket and pretending the world doesn't exist. The sort of thing you should have grown out of. John spends a long stretch of time certain that he doesn't give a shit.
It's dark when he eventually hears the sound of a door opening, and then the soft press of shoes on the stairs. John had thought it'd been long enough for all the adrenaline to pour out of him, or that he'd at least drowned it all in caffeine, limbs still where he's been sat unmoving on the armchair for hours. But suddenly it's back, all at once, and he feels like he might actually explode.
Sherlock looks far too tall in the darkness, when he eventually reaches the room. He lifts a hand and flicks the light on. John squints, and blinks until he can see. In less than a second Sherlock's taken in the opened box, the way John's sitting, and it's like he accepts it all. He tosses his gloves on the table, and then waits. John realises, immediately, that for once Sherlock is waiting for him, that he's not going to speak until John does. John takes a breath, and finds no moisture in his mouth at all. He swallows roughly, twice, three times.
"I really want you to tell me that it's all a joke, or that you're testing me, something like that. Some sort of psychological experiment to see how I'll react to stress. Because that's exactly the sort of thing you'd do, without taking into account that it would be in horrendously bad taste, or that it might completely destroy someone's world view. Something like that."
Sherlock sighs, so deeply John can see it from ten feet away, but he doesn't say a word.
"Tell me it's something like that," John says - or maybe pleads. He doesn't even know.
Sherlock doesn't say anything at all, and John wonders if he even has the energy to keep pretending. Or whether he's going to break into some sort of hysterical laughter, and never stop. He's a line of tension, completely silent and that's so strange, and so not like him, that somehow John's left feeling like there's no solid ground any more.
"One man can't do this much damage," John says - he insists. "It's unthinkable. This is ridiculous, Sherlock."
Sherlock shakes his head, and turns around, as if he's going to walk away. John reaches a hand out, and snatches at his coat. He physically hauls him to a stop. He watches his narrow frame jolt and then stiffen, and finally turn under the insistence of his fingers.
"What do you want me to say?" Sherlock bites out. "Please, try and have an opinion I haven't considered in the past two weeks. One that I haven't gone over, and over."
John's still struggling for an opinion if he's honest. Something to say, some angry protest about how he could have been left out of this, left floundering while something this fucking big was happening in the background.
"Why didn't you tell me - no, why did you tell me? Why now?" John tightens his fingers and tugs, Sherlock doesn't even resist, doesn't pull away. He lets John have his moment of angry, aggressive confusion, coat crumpling under the twist of his fingers, in a way which probably isn't good for the material at all.
"You had a right to know."
"And I didn't have a right to know when you discovered it?"
John lets him go, and Sherlock uses the pause to take off his coat and throw it over the back of the chair, scarf still curled round his neck. It looks out of place under the sharp tilt of his jaw.
"He invited me to witness him turn the machine on," Sherlock says quietly. "A witness to his experiment. He invited several people, apparently, most of them people in his field. None of them believed he could accomplish what he was trying to do. None of them showed up. I threw the letter in the bin." Sherlock's fingers curl where they're hanging loose at his sides.
"You hardly ever read your mail," John says tightly. "Don't even pretend this could in any way be your fault. Even if you'd gone, the last I checked you don't know anything about particle physics. What exactly were you supposed to do, go with your gut? Questioned the design of his...whatever the hell it was."
"The man just wanted to impress someone," Sherlock says.
"So arrogance is dangerous, you and I both know that's dangerous. It's stupid to be surprised. I'm more interested in why you thought you had to sit on this whole thing by yourself."
"I wasn't sitting on it," Sherlock snaps. "If you can, for one moment imagine going over the evidence and finding no possible conclusion, other than it being completely genuine. Of doing nothing but finding further evidence that corroborated Ryan's insistence that he had set an experiment in motion which couldn't be stopped, that it would, in fact, be the end of everything."
"And you didn't try, you didn't find a scientist -"
John watches Sherlock's jaw flex.
"Who am I talking to, of course you did. You did everything you could, didn't you? I bet you even asked Mycroft for help. Because this isn't about you and him, or some random murder in the street. This isn't a puzzle - this is a fucking countdown." John sighs. "I can't believe we're arguing about this." His voice sounds strangely thin. "I can't believe I discovered the world is ending and we're arguing about it."
He sighs and leans forward onto his knees.
"Why are we arguing about this? I've spent all afternoon in that box, and I can't shake it out of my head. I don't think it's the sort of thing you're supposed to shake out of your head, and I just need to. I feel kind of sick, and awful, and I need to go and shower at least, before it sticks to me, ok?"
Sherlock looks like he's about to say something. But then he shuts his mouth and nods.
John pushes himself out of the chair, stiff and awful and just a little nauseous, still. He tromps his way upstairs, turning the lights on as he passes them. He leaves his clothes on the bathroom floor, and has the shower so hot he feels light-headed when he finally steps out into the chill of the bathroom, walls and mirror fogged with condensation.
He doesn't even know if it has helped or not. But if he'd been looking to burn the whole afternoon away he's probably failed.
When John comes back down Sherlock's still staring at the wall.
John doesn't know what else to do. So he makes them both a cup of tea. Then he carries them over, lays a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, until long fingers lift and wrap round the second mug. Sherlock turns his head, peers up at him curiously, as if he's not quite sure why John's still here.
"Where else am I supposed to be?" John pushes his wet hair into some sort of order, and takes his own mug of tea to the other chair, stares at Sherlock's bright look of accusation. "Mycroft knows, doesn't he? That's what all that was about the other day."
"Mycroft has a disturbing ability to know things the moment they become important."
"The end of the world is important, I suppose," John agrees, over the burn of his mug. He stares at the steam for a minute, before something else occurs to him. "I'm hungry." He looks at Sherlock, who has an eyebrow raised half way up his forehead. "Are you hungry?"
Sherlock shakes his head.
John's never really considered what would be his 'I've just discovered the world is coming to an end,' food of choice. It turns out to be cheese on toast.
Sherlock stays quiet, while John watches cheese bubble.
"You can talk if you want, you know. I'm fairly sure that there is officially no worse, here. And nothing you say right now is going to offend me."
"It might," Sherlock says quietly, and John knows that if he looks around he'll find Sherlock with his chin resting on his fingers.
"Well then, I forgive you for being an arse," he says.
Sherlock still doesn't speak though.
"Mycroft will have people working on it I suppose," John offers over his shoulder.
"I would imagine the greatest minds in the world are straining the definition of the term 'desperate measures' by now. But when the only thing they can seem to agree on is how very fucked we all are, things would seem to be fairly conclusive."
John decides the toast will do as it is, or all the cheese will have melted its way off the toast and made a mess. He pulls it onto a plate, and takes it to the other chair.
"Didn't you insist that you're one of the greatest minds in the world?"
"Particle physics, John, not the sort of thing you can study as a hobby."
John takes a minute to burn his mouth with hot cheese. "But you're good at putting things together."
Sherlock reaches over and steals a piece of his toast, then starts eating it like he has every right to it.
"I'm not sure whether to be flattered you have so much faith in me, or worried that you've become dangerously delusional," Sherlock says with his mouth full.
"I would imagine now would be the perfect time to start living in a world of delusion."
Sherlock shakes his head. "There's a difference between disbelief and delusion."
"And I'm not going to indulge in either of them," John says flatly. "What's the point?"
"I think a lot of people would choose the option, over the truth."
John pushes the cheese back onto the last piece of toast. "I don't think you'd ever choose any option but the truth. So I suppose I'll have to amble along after you, so you don't get into some sort of trouble."
"I'm not sure even I could find worse trouble than we're all already in."
John nods. "I'm going to remind you that you said that, at some point in the future, I'm sure of it." He doesn't say anything about how much future there actually is, how little it matters.
There's a pause that's full of all the things he wants to say, but can't - or can't work out how.
"How long?" John asks at last.
Sherlock stares at the piece of toast he's holding. "Ryan had a mathematical formula up for the collapse of the wave form."
John had read through all the information, watched the films explain wave forms and stability and protons. He hadn't understood a word of it until the phrase 'probability of singularity: 0.004%.' Dr. Ryan had done the calculation nearly a hundred times, scribbled over the careful text already recorded in a journal, trying desperately to prove himself wrong. Or to prove science wrong.
"Thursday, 4:17pm." Sherlock says carefully.
John glances at the calendar, though he knows precisely what day it is. They're not even going to make it to the weekend, then.
He doesn't ask Sherlock if he's sure.
Part 2...
Fandom: Sherlock
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Rating: R
Word Count: 12,679
Warnings: The Apocalypse, possibly disturbing themes, dubious science
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: Sherlock's been acting strangely for days. There's a claustrophobic silence to the flat, experiments tossed aside or abandoned, cases ignored. It's almost as if nothing matters any more. John's determined to know why.
AN: Written for the apocabigbang Thank you to sarren for betaing this for me, and for suggestions that made it considerably better.
Artwork by the amazing cybel on LJ and DW.
"John."
...
"John."
...
"John."
John sighs and gives in, against his better judgment. He looks up, and glares at Sherlock over the top of his laptop.
Sherlock's sprawled on the sofa, half in and half out of his dressing gown. It's as if even getting that on straight had been too much trouble this morning. John's not quite sure what emotion he's going for over there, expression somewhere between irritation and wounded abandonment. The air of suffering is a little overdone though. John's seen how good he is when he actually has to act. So he's going to assume it's just laziness.
"You realise, of course, that I'm not some sort of amusing performing dog, who does tricks to entertain you," John tells him.
Sherlock continues to stare, in a way that seems to be hoping John will be entertaining anyway.
"I'm not," John adds, voice just a little more fierce than before. Because this is a point he's going to be strict on. He's not here for Sherlock's amusement, no matter what Sherlock seems to think. He doesn't exist to pander to his whims.
"What are you doing?" Sherlock asks, though his tone already suggests that whatever it is, it can't possibly be interesting enough to distract him away from Sherlock's terrible boredom. John knows that Sherlock's own personal idea of what's important will forever remain tragically skewed from everyone else’s.
"I'm updating my blog." John can't help but wonder whether giving Sherlock more information is ever a good thing, when he's proven already that he's so very good at using it against you. The fact that he can't seem to help it somehow makes it even more irritating.
"Eurgh," Sherlock says theatrically, a word John knows comes in many flavours, all of them disapproving. Sherlock's arms are flung out either side of him, until one trails the back of the sofa and one rests on the floor. He's doing a fantastic impression of a man who can't think of anything more boring and unnecessary than that. Honestly, he's such a drama queen sometimes.
John relents, pushing the laptop back a little. "It's about you, I know you like it when it's about you, so don't even try to pretend that you don't."
Sherlock makes a huffy noise, but leans his head curiously over the arm of the sofa. "What are you saying about me?"
John shakes his head, because sometimes Sherlock Holmes is amusingly predictable.
"I'm writing about how you solved the Carver case with your Russian doll theory."
Sherlock pulls a face, as if there are already three things he disapproves of in that sentence.
"I told you not to call it that. Besides, you're probably explaining it wrong." Sherlock's pouting, which is not a good look for him. John's getting used to being accused of explaining things wrong. He's not sure he could ever actually manage to explain things in a way that would meet Sherlock's demanding standards.
"I'm quoting you actually," John says. Because that usually makes it better, or at least forces Sherlock to call himself an idiot as well.
"You leave out all the interesting parts, and you have a tendency to dwell unnecessarily on the emotional significance of things." Sherlock drawls out 'emotional significance,' like it's a disease.
"People appreciate emotional significance," John protests, hitting the space bar harder than he means to. "Normal people, normal, ordinary, everyday people. Though I know you disapprove of those. They find emotional significance to be an important point of interest in a story."
Sherlock's noise of disdain perfectly conveys his opinion, that normal people couldn't be trusted to know what the important parts of a story were.
"Is there post yet?" he asks, instead of replying.
John points. "It's on the table."
Sherlock makes a noise of vague, reluctant interest, but doesn't make any attempt to move. "Is it interesting?"
John frowns at his laptop screen, and types a little harder than necessary. "I don't know, I didn't look at it. It was all for you."
Sherlock holds a hand out. John's expression of irritation is completely wasted, because Sherlock isn't even bothering to look at him.
John shoves his chair back, and then leans sideways until he can grab the mail he'd left scattered this morning. He shuffles it into some sort of pile.
"I thought you didn't like mail. You called it slow and boring - apart from that time someone sent you human ears, no, that was like your birthday. You're really not supposed to get that excited when someone sends you human body parts through the post. It gives the wrong impression. It opens the door to more body parts in the future."
Sherlock waves a hand impatiently. John sighs and gets up; he takes the post, and his irritated scowl, over to the sofa. Two seconds before he's about to dump it in Sherlock's outstretched palm, Sherlock presses his hands together and sets them against his mouth.
"Open them, and tell me what they say."
"No," John says flatly. "I'm not your secretary, and I'm not going to die because someone's sent you anthrax through the post because you insulted them, or sent their brother to prison, or called them an imbecile." He tosses the whole lot on Sherlock's chest, where they land with a sad little 'flump' noise. Sherlock lets them slide down in a shower, until they rest in a fan from neck to groin. Then he sighs, like John has been disappointingly unhelpful.
John goes back to the computer and listens to the combination of tearing paper, louder sighs, and then lazily thrown, unopened envelopes, that hit various parts of the wall. He stares at what he'd been writing about the last case they'd helped with, and ignores Sherlock's immaturity. He'd been particularly pleased with his description of Sherlock's original theory for the last case. But now self-consciousness makes him backspace through it with a frown.
"What would you rather I called it then? The case, I mean."
There's a grunt, and a sheet of white paper goes sailing past him - John has just enough time to read 'yours sincerely, Dr. Arthur Ryan' before an envelope lands on top of it.
Sherlock grunts. "I don't care, call it whatever you want."
John can't quite tell whether that's honesty, petulance, or annoyance.
A screwed up ball of paper bounces off the back of his chair, and rolls away into the depths of the flat.
"Could you at least put them in the bin, if you don't want them."
"Bah!" Sherlock offers, which John translates, without too much effort, into 'the bin's too far away.' It's worrying that he can understand so many of Sherlock's noises. Because often there are whole sentences that mean nothing to him at all.
John shuts his laptop and swivels round in his chair, because he's clearly going to get nothing done while Sherlock's in need of an audience. He takes his mug to the sink, which thankfully is as empty as he'd left it the night before. Then he leaves Sherlock muttering to himself, surrounded by the many stripped carcasses of envelopes, while he goes to get ready for work.
Sherlock's still spread out there when he comes back, the papers a little more unsettled, like he'd briefly been a whirlwind of activity, and then decided it was just too much hard work.
"You know I promised I'd see Harry later," John reminds him, trying to pull the collar of his coat out from under his jumper.
Sherlock's only answer is a frown.
"So I'll be back late, possibly very late. No texting me because you can't find your socks, or you need someone to hold something for you. Or because you've gotten yourself kidnapped by fiendish criminals."
"I can only hope something that interesting will happen to me today," Sherlock growls out.
"How did I know you were going to say that," John mutters under his breath, before giving his collar one last desperate yank, and leaving Sherlock to fend for himself for the day.
*****
When John gets back, all the lights are off. It's just gone ten and the whole flat is almost completely dark. There's just the faint glow from the streetlight coming in through the open curtains. He nearly trips over a pile of paper at the top of the stairs; they scatter in one long trail under the thump of his shoe. He rights himself with a hand on the wall, curse caught between his teeth.
"Christ, Sherlock, how many times have I told you -"
The room isn't empty. John can just make up the narrow outline of Sherlock, sitting in the farthest armchair.
"What are you doing sitting in the dark?" John asks. He's trying to stop asking obvious questions like that. But sometimes Sherlock is just creepy. It's best to get them over with, be called an idiot and move on.
Sherlock grunts something in answer that John doesn't catch.
"If you've blown all the fuses again -" John flicks the light, and the flat is abruptly filled with brightness that pinches at his eyes. "Alright, not that, then." He blinks over at the far wall, which is full of bare spaces, pieces of tape and the occasional strip of red or black where a pen missed paper. Sherlock has clearly started and finished (or abandoned) a project today, because it looks like he'd had a hundred or so pieces of paper taped to the wall. But now there's nothing there, nothing but holes in the wallpaper, and a fire full of smouldering ash.
"Mrs Hudson is going to be cross about the wallpaper," John says.
Sherlock's still frowning into the fire, hands held together, fingertips pressed against his mouth. Which is a little bit worrying.
"Everything alright?" John asks carefully.
Sherlock frowns and turns his head, as if just realising John might want an answer.
"I was thinking," he says. Which is one of the more obvious non-answers that Sherlock's given him.
"Deep thoughts, apparently."
"Very," Sherlock says, and his voice is a strange, hoarse sort of low. The sort that it usually only gets in the middle of the night, when he's been talking himself into exhaustion - arguing himself into exhaustion. John's fairly sure the only arguments he's ever lost are the ones he has against himself.
"The type that need to be thought in the dark?" John offers, and takes his coat off. The flat's warmer than it usually is. He imagines it's because of the sheer amount of paper-burning that had obviously been going in here.
"I hadn't realised it was dark," Sherlock says quietly. There's a stiffness to him, something that tells John this isn't just Sherlock being Sherlock. This is something else. John leaves his coat flung over the table. He drifts closer to Sherlock's chair, rests a hand on the back of it.
"Do you want some tea?"
Sherlock looks up at him fully, then. There's a frown on his face that looks like it's been there for a long time.
"I think I would most definitely like some tea, thank you."
"One of those vexing, complicated things I expect," John says cautiously. He's not really expecting Sherlock to explain. He almost never explains before he's got it all straight in his head, when he explains it at all. At the moment he looks like he's still thinking.
"Something very much like that, yes."
Whatever Sherlock had been working on, it had been fairly big. At least eight feet across, given the marks on the wallpaper.
"On second thoughts, Mrs Hudson will probably be fine," John says calmly. "She was only mildly cross about the bullet holes after all."
Sherlock looks up at the wall, quickly, as if for a second he forgets that he'd taken down whatever he'd had taped up there. Then he nods.
John goes to put the kettle on.
*****
Tuesday doesn't start off much better. John knows that Sherlock hasn't been to bed, because he's wearing the same clothes and his hair has that slightly demented look it gets when he's been dragging his hands through it. Then rolling it back and forth across the back of the armchair, like he might be able to convince his brain to work better through the wonders of static electricity.
It's not just that this morning though. There's a frustrated and angry - but directionless - motion to him. There are cups strewn about the living room, some sort of ceramic invasion that occurred during the night. Some are cold and completely full. Some are tipped on their sides amongst the paperwork, leaving John to hope that they weren't originally full. He nearly breaks his neck on his way from the stairs to the kettle on one. Sherlock himself is on the couch, surrounded by torn paper and strewn open books, spines broken, pages torn out and screwed up. John has to wonder, while he quietly makes toast and debates whether to actually say something, if this is the start of one of Sherlock's vicious downward spirals. The ones he'd mentioned before. Or maybe it's something worse, something dangerous, some disturbing and horrible case, that Sherlock wants to keep to himself. John can't help but worry that he'll go to work - only to come back and find a bullet-ridden corpse where his flatmate used to be.
The idea bites at him, while he quietly crunches his toast, watching the tense line of Sherlock's back, shoulder blades looking sharper than usual through the back of his shirt. He's still staring at the empty space on the wall, the marks left from the sellotape still obvious against the wallpaper.
Sherlock doesn't move at all until John puts his coat on, finds his keys. He rolls his head back to look at him, and John's oddly self-conscious because Sherlock has that way of judging you when you're least expecting it.
"I'll bring back Chinese," John tries.
"Fine," Sherlock says. John gets the impression that he could have said absolutely anything at all and gotten exactly that response.
*****
Things are no better, days later. It's only the fact that Sherlock's wearing a different shirt which stops John from seriously worrying. Though he's half-certain that Sherlock did it on purpose, because his eyes are still bruised, fingers restless. It's almost as if he's made the effort to stop John worrying, but nothing else. John's honestly not sure if that's a good sign or not.
It's not exactly easy to cheer Sherlock Holmes up. Though John can't help but try, over breakfast, because that seems to be the only time they run into each other in the light of day. He rustles the paper he's reading open wider.
"How about this then, 'man drowned in mysterious circumstances.'"
Sherlock's still staring at the wall, like he hasn't even heard. His feet are balanced on the terrifyingly unstable mountain of books and paper that the coffee table has become. John turns his head and rustles the paper a little more obviously. Hoping the lure of newsprint and gruesome death will tempt Sherlock out of his funk.
"You like that sort of thing," John presses, when the silence drags on. "Murder, mysterious circumstances, puzzles. I'm surprised you're not pestering Lestrade to look at all the dead bodies you've missed already."
Sherlock still stubbornly refuses to even make a dent in the conversation. John turns the paper around, so Sherlock can read the text. He's briefly encouraged when Sherlock snags the paper out of his fingers.
"It's not important." Sherlock screws up the whole paper, and then tosses it across the room.
"Not important," John says incredulously. He stares for a second at the crumpled remains of the paper, wondering whether to bother retrieving it and trying to flatten it out. Instead, he sighs and frowns a question at the other man. "Are you working on something? Is that what this is about? Do you have a case you haven't told me about, that you don't want me to know about?"
"I'm not working on anything," Sherlock says, too flatly and too fast.
John waits, but Sherlock doesn't offer anything else. He has no choice but to stumble on, helplessly. "I've never known you to be this quiet. It's not even like you're depressed. You're acting like something's broken and you're refusing to fix it."
Sherlock hums quiet agreement in his throat. It's reluctant and John doesn’t even think he means to give that much.
"Talking to you is like pulling teeth at the moment. But I feel like I should get points for trying, at least."
Sherlock glares at him from under an errant, and particularly ludicrous, curl of hair. John shakes his head and picks up the paper, intending to carry it to the bin. He's stopped by Sherlock's voice.
"What if your whole life was completely pointless? Everything you've ever done, everyone you'd ever met, every achievement you'd ever made, completely and utterly pointless. What would you do?"
John looks around, and finds that Sherlock has slipped down in the chair, chin pressed against his chest. He's wearing an expression that's almost impossible to define. John crumples the paper he's holding. He's oddly thrown by how carefully Sherlock offers the question. Not just curiosity, there's something else underneath the carefully bland question.
"Isn't that how everyone feels at some point?" John says after a pause. "Like nothing they've done is worthwhile, that it's all just not going to matter in the long run."
The noise Sherlock makes in his throat is irritated. "I don't mean philosophically, nothing so abstract and dreary. I mean everything, a lifetime of work, of connections, of purpose - reduced to nothing. Everyone you've ever known, completely expendable. Things you've always taken as a universal constant - erased." Sherlock manages to sound petulant and disgusted at the same time, while making no sense at all.
John flounders for something helpful to say.
"You've done amazing things, and you're going to do amazing things -" John stops, because Sherlock shoves the whole pile of paper off the coffee table with his foot, shaking his head roughly, dismissively. John watches it fall, watches it all crash onto the floor, slithering across the carpet in a messy stream.
"No, I'm not," Sherlock says and he sounds half furious at the interruption. He presses his mouth shut, and pushes his fingers against it. John carefully moves one long foot aside and sits down on the table, listens to it creak under his weight. He's genuinely worried about the sharp crease in Sherlock's forehead. The one that's been there for days, never smoothing out, never quite sharpening into focus and curiosity. Like he's sitting on a problem he doesn't know how to solve. John's seen Sherlock frustrated, he's seen him angry, but never this, something that feels lost.
John wraps a hand round his ankle, for want of anything else to grab. "What's the matter, Sherlock, and don't tell me that nothing's wrong. You've been like this for more than a week now, and you keep putting me off. But I know it's something."
Sherlock remains stubbornly quiet.
"Look - just - I'm here if you want to tell me what's wrong, if you want to let me know. I could help. I could try and help, if you give me the chance."
"There's no point," Sherlock says flatly. "There's no point at all."
"Sherlock -"
Sherlock waves a frustrated hand. "Just go and do whatever it is that people do." Sherlock leaves the armchair and the living room in a rush of movement, like he's sick of the sight of them both. He slams the door of his room so hard that the hinges shake.
John exhales into the silence. "Yeah, that went fabulously well."
*****
The week is a busy one at the clinic, and John's lucky if he has enough enthusiasm to eat and find the kettle underneath Sherlock's collection of ever more bewildering books and science papers. He doesn't have the extra brain power to worry too much, though he feels slightly guilty about that. But Sherlock isn't actively trying to get himself killed. He just seems completely apathetic to everything.
John does wonder, when he spills rice all over something on black holes on Friday, whether a scientist has been murdered - something classified maybe. He knows that Sherlock's worked on classified cases before, cases he hasn't always told John about.
It's just odd to be left out of the loop when it feels important.
He hates feeling useless.
*****
Nothing odd happens until Friday afternoon. John manages to get out of work an hour early, and finds Mycroft and Sherlock together. Sherlock is dressed, and looks as if he's at least made an effort to rejoin the world. John doesn't know whether Mycroft, of all people, is the one responsible for that. But he'll take miracles where he can get them. He hovers in the background, not entirely sure if he should say something, or even continue up the stairs. Especially since they seem to be staring at each other. Sherlock has one arm looped around his violin, lazy and careless, bow bending in a way that looks dangerous on the arm of the couch. Mycroft is leaning forward in his chair, like he's trying to convince Sherlock of something.
"I'd hate to part on bad terms, Sherlock," Mycroft says carefully and there's a vibration there, something almost human.
Sherlock stares at his brother for a long time over his violin. "We won't," he says finally, almost reluctantly.
John catches what looks like the beginning of surprise on Mycroft's face. But then it's gone, wiped away in an instant, like it was never there. Mycroft seems to have decided not to push his luck, rising from the chair in a way that shouldn't be possible given the sand-like properties of the cushions. He stretches a hand out to John, and John's shaking it before he's even realised that's an odd thing to do with someone you're used to finding in your armchair cushions. Not that Mycroft hasn't always been oddly formal.
"It's always good to see you, John," Mycroft says, and John has no idea how he manages to sound bland and genuine at the same time. He releases him, and then smiles, and it's oddly not quite the same as his usual bland, and terribly convenient smiles. It's slightly uneven; it's the sort of smile that a public figure would spend their entire life training themselves out of, because it's just crooked enough to be real. John watches him all the way down the stairs, feeling like he's missing something. Sherlock doesn't glare, or even offer an insult. He simply stares through the doorway until the front door shuts.
John's half way through making tea when he decides to mention the strangeness, because he still thinks that sometimes it's just him. Sherlock seems to make the world crazy by default.
"Was he weird today or was it me?" John asks, kettle still hovering over two mugs in some sort of indecisive confusion.
"You're always accusing him of being up to something," Sherlock points out, dragging his laptop back into his lap like it's a small child he intends to pet.
"Not to his face," John says. "And usually it's more of a Holmes sort of weirdness. Something Mycroft-ish. Today he seems weird in a general, people sort of way. It was very disturbing."
"A non-genetic, non-Holmesian sort of weird," Sherlock hums. "I'm not sure I'm qualified to investigate that."
It's the first almost-joke John's heard from him in days. Which has to be a good thing, doesn't it?
"Funny," John offers over his shoulder. "But seriously, we're not going to war, are we? Or being invaded by aliens? Nothing I should know about?" John really would like to be told if there's going to be an alien invasion. No one wants that sprung on them.
There's a long pause, where John's fairly sure Sherlock doesn't even take a breath.
"No, nothing you should know about," he says at last. Which is such an obvious lie that John's surprised Sherlock can bear it.
He stares at the kettle, and frowns until the sound of Sherlock typing starts up.
*****
Sherlock isn't exactly back to normal, but he's stopped being quite as odd as he was before. It's enough that John stops worrying, though he doesn't stop wondering. Because whatever it was that Sherlock was obsessing over, it's clear he's still working on it, mind turning it over and over. It's something he hasn't dropped, perhaps something he can't drop.
John's getting used to his silent, angry pacing, and his moments of obvious frustration. He's fairly sure that getting used to it isn't a good thing though. He worries about Sherlock, because he's not like other people. Sometimes he'd just like to know how he works, so he can help. John's always on firmer footing when he can help.
"I'm going out," Sherlock announces, just a little too loudly, and there's a strange sort of ceremony in the way he says it. As if it's a pronouncement to a group of people, a statement of intent. When there's no one in the flat but John.
John peers over the paper at him. "Did you want some company?"
"No," Sherlock says, it's quiet but firm. "No, you should stay here."
John doesn't have time to do much more than shoot him a quizzical look, before Sherlock's through the door, steps slow and strangely reluctant on the stairs. After the door thumps shut, John sits in the silence, frowning harder as the minutes tick by.
He looks across the flat, and finds that Sherlock's left the door of his room open. A slant of light from the window streams out of it, and invades the sitting room. John can just see the towers of paper and books, the clutter of science equipment, maps and even the dangling lead of a phone charger. He can see the end of Sherlock's bed.
There's a box balanced there, carefully left half open.
John very slowly puts the paper down on the arm of the chair. Because he's learnt well enough that Sherlock thinks through almost everything he does. There's a reason for everything. Today there's a reason for his door to be open. There's a reason for the box to be settled on the end of his bed, looking nothing like it ended up there naturally, and everything like it was placed there on purpose. Sherlock wants John in his room. He wants him in the box. No, this is something even clearer than that, this is a quiet sort of obvious. This is Sherlock desperately wanting John to find something out. Sherlock wants John to know something that Sherlock can't tell him, or won't tell him.
He goes to the box, prising up the cardboard flaps and opening it up. It's half full of paper and DVDs in sleeves. There's a Dictaphone, a couple of flash drives, and a bundle of half-burnt envelopes.
It takes John two hours to go through. His grasp of particle physics isn't exactly up-to-date, or in any way good enough to understand the graphs and charts. The carefully printed numbers that are ringed and notated in red pen mean nothing to him either. The letters are correspondence between Arthur Ryan and a Doctor John Tilden. Long streams of data, half sentences, gradually growing more and more frantic on Ryan's side while Doctor Tilden's replies become briefer - and quietly mocking.
The DVDs - the DVDs which John slips into his laptop and watches, are clearer. There's nothing especially strange about the nervous man facing the camera. He introduces himself as Dr. Arthur Ryan. He's middle-aged, with dark, untidy hair, wearing a shirt a few sizes too big. He speaks too quickly; excited, complicated sentences, something about invisible particles, experiments. John barely understands a word of it. There's a white board full of calculations. John watches two hours of footage, feeling confused when it cuts, skips ahead hours, or days. It's some sort of scientific video log then?
On the DVD marked 'STAGE 4,' Ryan's no longer smiling, there's a stark shaken-ness to him. Eyes dark, there's also a tremor in his voice that wasn't there before. He's explaining, too quickly - science too in-depth for John to understand - exactly what's happening on screen. Exactly what's happening inside the dull white cylindrical machine he's been performing tests in. It's a long, rambling explanation of wave collapse, the triggering of an 'event,' the odds of it being astronomically unlikely in every calculation.
Doctor Arthur Ryan is wearing the face of a man who's documenting something awful, and for all that he's trying to be as scientific as possible there's a quiet and hopeless horror in his expression. A quiet breathlessness to his words. Eventually, the man runs out of explanations. He stands silent in front of the whiteboard, under the headline 'TEMPORAL EFFECTS POST-EVENT.' The footage cuts to the machine, still and silent, then back to him. John thinks he can see Ryan's hands shaking. Though the camera must be mounted, it's as still and steady as a rock.
Ryan sketches out on the board, in hasty, broken black pen lines, the starting point of the singularity. He explains, voice cracking, in terms even John can understand. He explains exactly what's happening, explains the gravitational effects of the experiment on everything else. What will happen laid on the board in dark pen. He repeats, twice, three times - enough times that John loses count - that it can't be stopped.
"We'll start to feel the effects in twenty days." The hand holding the pen drops away from the white board, hits the calculations on the way down, pulling a stark, black line through them. "They'll be here soon, they'll run the same calculations, they'll come to the same conclusions. I don't even know why I'm making these tapes. There'll be no one left to watch them. There'll be no one to blame me." Ryan sits on a stool beside the work bench and breathes, awkward and slow. John thinks he's going to speak again, but the video file just ends, whatever happened afterwards cut away, or erased.
The only thing left is the Dictaphone that John set on the table. He listens to the quiet whirr of the tape rewinding and then hits 'play.'
"I know there's nothing I can say. There's no way I can make this right. I just wanted someone to understand."
It's Ryan's voice, quiet and earnest. Speaking slowly but clearly into the microphone.
"I wanted someone to understand why I did it. Why I attempted it, what I was trying to do. The odds of something like this happening were so small - I did it because I could, to prove that I could do it when they said it couldn't be done."
There's a pause, then the sound of heavy breathing, like someone trying to keep their emotions in check.
"I never intended our destruction. I never intended - there were safeguards, and the chances of anything catastrophic happening were astronomically small. I wouldn't have - I would have stopped if I'd known it would come to this."
John thinks that's the voice of a voice of a man who knows that lying to himself is the only thing he has left.
"It was a one in a billion chance. I could have run the experiment a thousand times, a million and there would have been no event. There would have been no - God forgive me."
John listens to the rush of quiet that comes after that. The unsettled hush of breathing, quick and shaky. There's a rattle underneath, that he can't quite make out. Science equipment maybe, pulled out of a drawer.
Until something clicks and John knows exactly what that sound is.
It's the sound of someone inexpertly handling a gun.
There's a dead pause, and John holds his breath.
The gunshot is louder than it has any right to be, sharp and tinny and wrong.
"Jesus," John manages.
The rush of silence stretches out. After a space of it, there starts up a quiet 'tap, tap, tap,' that John can't figure out.
Until he can.
He hits the stop button, which clicks in almost too gently. He sits curled over the box, hands drawn into fists, staring at the machine in his hand and shaking his head back and forth. This is insane, this is completely and totally insane. The idea that anyone - that it would even be possible to do that much, to cause that much damage. To end the whole damn - John's shaking and he doesn't know why - fuck it, he does, he does know why. He's shaking because he believes it. He believes it enough to feel sick. Because nothing Sherlock's done makes sense unless Sherlock believes it's true.
If Sherlock believes it's true....
It's too much to process, too much to take in. John's sweating, pulse too fast, body insistent that he do something. Though exactly what he's supposed to do, he doesn't have the faintest idea.
He rewinds the tape back to the beginning. He isn't even sure why, he just does. He doesn’t want to listen to it again, not that. He wants to pack it away and forget he ever heard it, to forget it ever exists, but he can't. He leaves the box on the table, contents spilling out either side. He doesn't bother to pack away the files, the discs, or the tapes. Sherlock obviously wanted him to find it, he obviously wanted him to see it all. There's no way Sherlock will miss it, when he gets back. And John intends to ask why exactly he didn't tell him any of this. Why he hasn't told anyone any of this. Why no one knows this.
John's briefly furious, that he had to find out about this at all, that he knows now. This morning he was trying to decide if he should buy a new jacket, and feeling guilty for not phoning his sister often enough and now.... He doesn’t even know now, what does anything matter any more? But that's the point, isn't it. That's why governments don't tell anyone. Because who wants to see what the world turns into when you tell it that nothing matters any more, nothing you do, nothing you say. What the hell would anyone do if they discovered the world's future could be measured in days? What would everyone do. What are you supposed to do when there's just no time left?
John knows people well enough to know it would be a nightmare.
*****
Sherlock stays gone for almost the entire afternoon.
John drinks far too much coffee, and can't quite think about anything for longer than five minutes at a time. He can't quite wrap his head around the idea of the end of everything, the entire span of human history, coming to an abrupt and pointless end.
He leaves the box on Sherlock's bed, contents replaced haphazardly, papers curling over the cardboard flaps. He can't decide if setting the whole thing on fire would be the right, or the wrong, thing to do. Or whether it would even make him feel better. Maybe it's just the adult equivalent of putting your head under a blanket and pretending the world doesn't exist. The sort of thing you should have grown out of. John spends a long stretch of time certain that he doesn't give a shit.
It's dark when he eventually hears the sound of a door opening, and then the soft press of shoes on the stairs. John had thought it'd been long enough for all the adrenaline to pour out of him, or that he'd at least drowned it all in caffeine, limbs still where he's been sat unmoving on the armchair for hours. But suddenly it's back, all at once, and he feels like he might actually explode.
Sherlock looks far too tall in the darkness, when he eventually reaches the room. He lifts a hand and flicks the light on. John squints, and blinks until he can see. In less than a second Sherlock's taken in the opened box, the way John's sitting, and it's like he accepts it all. He tosses his gloves on the table, and then waits. John realises, immediately, that for once Sherlock is waiting for him, that he's not going to speak until John does. John takes a breath, and finds no moisture in his mouth at all. He swallows roughly, twice, three times.
"I really want you to tell me that it's all a joke, or that you're testing me, something like that. Some sort of psychological experiment to see how I'll react to stress. Because that's exactly the sort of thing you'd do, without taking into account that it would be in horrendously bad taste, or that it might completely destroy someone's world view. Something like that."
Sherlock sighs, so deeply John can see it from ten feet away, but he doesn't say a word.
"Tell me it's something like that," John says - or maybe pleads. He doesn't even know.
Sherlock doesn't say anything at all, and John wonders if he even has the energy to keep pretending. Or whether he's going to break into some sort of hysterical laughter, and never stop. He's a line of tension, completely silent and that's so strange, and so not like him, that somehow John's left feeling like there's no solid ground any more.
"One man can't do this much damage," John says - he insists. "It's unthinkable. This is ridiculous, Sherlock."
Sherlock shakes his head, and turns around, as if he's going to walk away. John reaches a hand out, and snatches at his coat. He physically hauls him to a stop. He watches his narrow frame jolt and then stiffen, and finally turn under the insistence of his fingers.
"What do you want me to say?" Sherlock bites out. "Please, try and have an opinion I haven't considered in the past two weeks. One that I haven't gone over, and over."
John's still struggling for an opinion if he's honest. Something to say, some angry protest about how he could have been left out of this, left floundering while something this fucking big was happening in the background.
"Why didn't you tell me - no, why did you tell me? Why now?" John tightens his fingers and tugs, Sherlock doesn't even resist, doesn't pull away. He lets John have his moment of angry, aggressive confusion, coat crumpling under the twist of his fingers, in a way which probably isn't good for the material at all.
"You had a right to know."
"And I didn't have a right to know when you discovered it?"
John lets him go, and Sherlock uses the pause to take off his coat and throw it over the back of the chair, scarf still curled round his neck. It looks out of place under the sharp tilt of his jaw.
"He invited me to witness him turn the machine on," Sherlock says quietly. "A witness to his experiment. He invited several people, apparently, most of them people in his field. None of them believed he could accomplish what he was trying to do. None of them showed up. I threw the letter in the bin." Sherlock's fingers curl where they're hanging loose at his sides.
"You hardly ever read your mail," John says tightly. "Don't even pretend this could in any way be your fault. Even if you'd gone, the last I checked you don't know anything about particle physics. What exactly were you supposed to do, go with your gut? Questioned the design of his...whatever the hell it was."
"The man just wanted to impress someone," Sherlock says.
"So arrogance is dangerous, you and I both know that's dangerous. It's stupid to be surprised. I'm more interested in why you thought you had to sit on this whole thing by yourself."
"I wasn't sitting on it," Sherlock snaps. "If you can, for one moment imagine going over the evidence and finding no possible conclusion, other than it being completely genuine. Of doing nothing but finding further evidence that corroborated Ryan's insistence that he had set an experiment in motion which couldn't be stopped, that it would, in fact, be the end of everything."
"And you didn't try, you didn't find a scientist -"
John watches Sherlock's jaw flex.
"Who am I talking to, of course you did. You did everything you could, didn't you? I bet you even asked Mycroft for help. Because this isn't about you and him, or some random murder in the street. This isn't a puzzle - this is a fucking countdown." John sighs. "I can't believe we're arguing about this." His voice sounds strangely thin. "I can't believe I discovered the world is ending and we're arguing about it."
He sighs and leans forward onto his knees.
"Why are we arguing about this? I've spent all afternoon in that box, and I can't shake it out of my head. I don't think it's the sort of thing you're supposed to shake out of your head, and I just need to. I feel kind of sick, and awful, and I need to go and shower at least, before it sticks to me, ok?"
Sherlock looks like he's about to say something. But then he shuts his mouth and nods.
John pushes himself out of the chair, stiff and awful and just a little nauseous, still. He tromps his way upstairs, turning the lights on as he passes them. He leaves his clothes on the bathroom floor, and has the shower so hot he feels light-headed when he finally steps out into the chill of the bathroom, walls and mirror fogged with condensation.
He doesn't even know if it has helped or not. But if he'd been looking to burn the whole afternoon away he's probably failed.
When John comes back down Sherlock's still staring at the wall.
John doesn't know what else to do. So he makes them both a cup of tea. Then he carries them over, lays a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, until long fingers lift and wrap round the second mug. Sherlock turns his head, peers up at him curiously, as if he's not quite sure why John's still here.
"Where else am I supposed to be?" John pushes his wet hair into some sort of order, and takes his own mug of tea to the other chair, stares at Sherlock's bright look of accusation. "Mycroft knows, doesn't he? That's what all that was about the other day."
"Mycroft has a disturbing ability to know things the moment they become important."
"The end of the world is important, I suppose," John agrees, over the burn of his mug. He stares at the steam for a minute, before something else occurs to him. "I'm hungry." He looks at Sherlock, who has an eyebrow raised half way up his forehead. "Are you hungry?"
Sherlock shakes his head.
John's never really considered what would be his 'I've just discovered the world is coming to an end,' food of choice. It turns out to be cheese on toast.
Sherlock stays quiet, while John watches cheese bubble.
"You can talk if you want, you know. I'm fairly sure that there is officially no worse, here. And nothing you say right now is going to offend me."
"It might," Sherlock says quietly, and John knows that if he looks around he'll find Sherlock with his chin resting on his fingers.
"Well then, I forgive you for being an arse," he says.
Sherlock still doesn't speak though.
"Mycroft will have people working on it I suppose," John offers over his shoulder.
"I would imagine the greatest minds in the world are straining the definition of the term 'desperate measures' by now. But when the only thing they can seem to agree on is how very fucked we all are, things would seem to be fairly conclusive."
John decides the toast will do as it is, or all the cheese will have melted its way off the toast and made a mess. He pulls it onto a plate, and takes it to the other chair.
"Didn't you insist that you're one of the greatest minds in the world?"
"Particle physics, John, not the sort of thing you can study as a hobby."
John takes a minute to burn his mouth with hot cheese. "But you're good at putting things together."
Sherlock reaches over and steals a piece of his toast, then starts eating it like he has every right to it.
"I'm not sure whether to be flattered you have so much faith in me, or worried that you've become dangerously delusional," Sherlock says with his mouth full.
"I would imagine now would be the perfect time to start living in a world of delusion."
Sherlock shakes his head. "There's a difference between disbelief and delusion."
"And I'm not going to indulge in either of them," John says flatly. "What's the point?"
"I think a lot of people would choose the option, over the truth."
John pushes the cheese back onto the last piece of toast. "I don't think you'd ever choose any option but the truth. So I suppose I'll have to amble along after you, so you don't get into some sort of trouble."
"I'm not sure even I could find worse trouble than we're all already in."
John nods. "I'm going to remind you that you said that, at some point in the future, I'm sure of it." He doesn't say anything about how much future there actually is, how little it matters.
There's a pause that's full of all the things he wants to say, but can't - or can't work out how.
"How long?" John asks at last.
Sherlock stares at the piece of toast he's holding. "Ryan had a mathematical formula up for the collapse of the wave form."
John had read through all the information, watched the films explain wave forms and stability and protons. He hadn't understood a word of it until the phrase 'probability of singularity: 0.004%.' Dr. Ryan had done the calculation nearly a hundred times, scribbled over the careful text already recorded in a journal, trying desperately to prove himself wrong. Or to prove science wrong.
"Thursday, 4:17pm." Sherlock says carefully.
John glances at the calendar, though he knows precisely what day it is. They're not even going to make it to the weekend, then.
He doesn't ask Sherlock if he's sure.
Part 2...