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In the cupboard next to the room of Interesting Foods was the special area allocated to Those Who Care And Still Somehow Matter. For now, it smelt like scones and hot butter, and perhaps the faintest of whiffs of Oolong tea. John sipped a sample of it in a stained mug that had been mine for the past years, but I willingly let him use it - hold ownership to it, even, if he wished - for the thought that John's mouth would occasionally graze over the areas mine had. This was as far as I allowed my thoughts to stray. I knew well enough that attempts at relationships often ended in either the other party creating as large a separation as possible, or myself injuring them physically or emotionally. John, however, had stayed extraordinarily stubborn throughout my harsh outbursts and self-absorbed moments.
Through all of it, he had stayed.
The Woman had not. But that was inconsequential, as this was not her room. Hers belonged in the alleyway of the Dangerous But Brilliant, marked with a Maybe But Not Again. Never Again.
The window was half-open, letting in a soft breeze that smelt slightly of exhaust fumes and mostly of the freshly-fallen rain. It would be a wet summer, brought down from the storm riding on the coastline and pummeling these grey buildings into new shapes. The dishwasher hummed contentedly, fighting the marks of a recent experiment on the decay rate of pig's eyeballs.
'If I butter this scone,' John started, setting down his mug, 'would you eat it?' In this light, his eyes were marvelously transparent, reinstating his powers of observation. My talents were in the factors that people often missed, and likewise John's talents lay in noticing the obscene details in my behaviour. His talent was me.
I drew my phone out of my dressing-gown's pocket. No text from Lestrade to announce a new case, and yet, no irritating jab from Mycroft either. It was a neutral fact, and so I dismissed it by returning my phone to its original place. 'I have no need for a great amount of sustenance in the early hours -'
'It's half past ten, Sherlock,' John interrupted sternly. He split a scone into two, buttering its jagged surface regardless of my statement. With solid determination, he handed the pastry over to me. Our fingertips brushed for the briefest of breaths. Our eyes met quickly. This did happen, in the real memory. 'You must have felt something,' John continued, leaning back into his chair. He lowered his gaze to his fingertips, rubbing the thumb and forefinger together thoughtfully. 'I did. You can see it now,' he added, lowering his voice slightly, 'can't you?'
The scone broke into a thousand pieces in my mouth. 'I cannot imagine why I didn't,' I replied.
.
For some reason the Classroom was conjoined with the cupboard of Those Who Care And Still Somehow Matter, and this too, smelt of eaten scones and smeared butter. The tea was stronger, thicker, and laced with heavy honey and cinnamon. I knew these spices well from long afternoons spent dipping my fingers into the spices laid out in the shops. People had viewed me as a child with simplistic pleasures, only I was merely fulfilling my growing thirst for universal understanding. Why did spices exude different aromas? What spices were associated with what emotions?
Vanilla, romance, sweet, chocolate, white, innocence, sex.
'Would you like to try some of my tea, Sherlock?' She asked with a bright smile. She had a shawl slipped over Her shoulders, but the dark tassels were not enough to hide the four identical, circular scabs that lay inside Her elbow. Her cheeks had grown sallow and pallid. The soft coral-shaded blush was not enough to hide this. 'It's delicious.'
'You're ill,' I stated quietly. My stomach clenched with fear, but my pulse stayed even. Even then, it was not within me to demonstrate emotions.
Her smile became less convincing, the light dimming slightly. 'You mustn't tell him,' She pleaded, Her fingertips brushing against mine. 'He mustn't know.'
.
John was very far away. He called through the locked doors and thick wooden hinges from the beautiful places I had hid him in. Nonetheless, this was a room I had avoided long enough, and She had brought me here through the bookcase in the Classroom. The door was padlocked, the code a secret even to myself. A few tries allowed me a victory, and I stepped into the room of Unchangeable Mishaps. There were papers strewn on the floor, fluttering like startled butterflies in the wind. He rarely ever raised his voice, but he did now.
'How could you not tell me?' he wept, driving his fist into the wall. The thin plaster broke under his knuckles. There was ash on his shoe. He had been smoking again. A small sliver of red ran down his neck. Did he cut himself shaving or was it purposeful? 'How could you know all along? Why did She tell you?'
I looked down at my hands, to where the various pages of my lengthy report had been torn so quickly they had left long cuts down to the heels of my palms. The pain was thin and weak. 'She told me nothing, Mycroft' I replied calmly, quietly. The tears had been spent into the crook of my pillow for things I could have done, various methods I could have saved her. Years had morphed those feelings, first into numbness, then into ice. 'I deduced it.'
'You and your bloody deductions,' he spat. 'You're an abomination. You have no idea what being human feels like, do you?'
Human sentiment is irrelevant.
Hypocrite. He was a hypocrite, carrying around his pain and throwing it at me. I stood quickly. 'Leave,' I ordered.
A slackening in the face, a movement in the hands.
Guilt. Regret. Anxiety. Fear.
'Sherlock,' he whispered.
'Leave!' I roared, the air throwing itself out of my lungs with a force I had never known.
.
The seam separating the room of Unchangeable Mishaps and the room of Monsters was splitting. Mycroft loomed huge in the shadows, the edge of his umbrella tapping the insides of the walls. He wormed his way into the darkest corners of my palace, eating his way out with sharpened teeth.
It had been ridiculously easy to smuggle the needles and the clear bottle into the room. A sixth former with such high-standing achievements was hardly questioned. The evidence was easy to clear. The fingerprints were nonexistent. The drug tests were easily predicted, as the 'random' allocations was not as random as the school claimed. I rolled up the sleeves of my uniform shirt, pulling the gloves up to wrists. The pain was minute, dulled. The pleasure, however, was immediate.
'I never thought it was true,' John murmured in my ear. He was misplaced. He did not belong here, but in memories where my clarity was non-existent, logic could evaporate as well.
I did not know what parts of me were not filled with parts of him.
'I never need this when I'm with you,' I inform him with a smirk.
He does not need his cane when he is with me.
John's fingers felt like ice on the sides of my neck. He looked across the room, over my shoulder, at the stacked books on my desk. 'You needed it here?' he questioned, without a trace of judgment in his voice, as though he understood the torment I suffered from the ice inside in these years. If I was not chasing something, pushing my intellect, then it was silence in my head. My heart was no longer a relevant organ.
Human sentiment is irrelevant.
'I wish I knew you here,' I informed him matter-of-factly. I wish I had known him in all the moments of my life, in the empty moments in the Classroom where the other children pulled with their words at my deficiencies, in the hallways of the school where people took my intellect and disinterest, and created a mockery of me. They called me names I barely cared for, but when I looked up into the translucent eyes that had always watched me, watched me, I wished that events had unraveled differently.
But the haze was thick, and my tongue was loose and slurred, and my mouth tasted like blood.
'I will know you,' John promised with a smile.
I scrambled for him, but my hands only tangled with the duvets. Sweat broke out at my brow, but it didn't matter. I was climbing, climbing, and at the back of my skull Mycroft howled like a wounded beast the way that he would never allow himself to. He was ice, just as I was. 'Every second I spend without you is hell,' I whispered.
'Every second I spend without you,' John repeated, closing his eyes, 'I'm not even breathing.'
.
'You need to stop this,' Mycroft pronounced icily, tapping the tip of his umbrella against the inside of my leg. The needle was still embedded in my arm, the poison coursing delightedly through my veins.
Anger. Sorrow. Products of loss. Pain. Arousal. Fear. Flight, or fight. Always flight, of sorts, from emotion.
Human sentiment is irrelevant.
Is irrelevant.
Is irrelevant.
Mycroft's lip curled in distaste at the smell and the state of the room, of the flat. Lestrade had called him, obviously. No one else would have. He was exceedingly unlikeable, and the distasteful personality grew as he aged. 'You're a disgrace, Sherlock,' he informed me coldly. Always a disgrace, always a disappointment. 'You should be employing your considerable talents in productive activities.'
Hypocrite.
'Since when have you cared?' I laughed, tipping my head back. It was ridiculous, the whole affair, and yet in that moment I had offered no scathing words, no scorn. I had explained about my position as advisor to Lestrade, only to find out that Mycroft had found yet another roundabout way of keeping his eye on me. However, in this room, in this place of Monsters, my fight was my own. 'You betrayed me in the end,' I added quietly, pulling the syringe out of my veins. 'You caused all of this. You were the one who hurt John.'
Slowly, steadily, Mycroft dripped into the room. He filled it in with his harm, his staged indifference, his externalised pain and his words. He overtook all that was meant to be one thing, and charged it with another. He deserved as little space as possible. John owned the rest.
John owned it all, all of it, all of it.
The cocaine crashed as Mycroft charged a different syringe into my chest, charging blood back into my ears and jump-starting my heart. My lips were bleeding, although the reason behind the unfortunate development was a complete mystery to me. When drunk on my poisons, my mind could finally be silent, but with the rush of adrenalin the whirs and the cogs pulled me into focus.
.
I escaped the only way I knew how, by sharpening my attention on the room that was least destructive to me. The room of Good Things opened happily to me. John was stirring milk into my tea calmly, his back turned away from me. A rectangle of skin was exposed between his hair and the edge of his sweater.
'I don't want milk in my tea,' I announced regally, sliding into my place on the couch. This was where I had been sitting for hours, my hands pressed against my lips, too preoccupied with my thoughts to fully appreciate what John was doing.
What would cinnamon be doing in a plate of human ash? Saliva, no saliva. Thought: who keeps urns in the kitchen? Must experiment with John and Mrs. Hudson's reactions to human ash. Hygienic? Probably not.
John stood in front of me, extending the mug patiently. 'Just trust me, will you?' he pressed tolerantly, the way he often did when I was ill and especially stubborn.
Illness never meant a change in mental state for me until the fever peaked, at which point the disturbance was merely temporary and I would soon recover. I ignored him.
'Sherlock,' John sighed, almost paternalistic. 'Be less of a git, will you? I'm demonstrating human compassion for your poor stomach. You don't want ulcers.' The mug swooped closer. The edge was chipped. He had dropped it once or twice before, perhaps in the shocking discovery of something I had forgotten to clear away in the sink, or in a rush of fatigue. In fact, he was so attached to this mug that he rarely parted with it, but he was offering it to me.
Sometimes, the easiest way to make people happy is to make them tea.
A soft wind whispered through the open windows I did not remember opening.
Frangipani soap.
I extended my hand to receive his gift, a smiling slowly. 'Of course,' I said softly. 'I must always listen to my doctor.'
John nodded stiffly in confirmation and returned to pour himself a cup of tea. He was never one to bask in congratulations or praise, never one to be easily fooled. He was irreplaceable, absolutely precious.
'I can't afford to lose you,' I informed the back of his head. 'That's why I had to do it.' These explanations would never be voiced. He would never know, but here and now I was allowed to bend the rules for some peace of mind.
'Have you ever considered,' John replied, voice steady, 'that I can't afford to lose you, either?'
Human sentiment is irrelevant.
Mycroft's umbrella tapped on the door disapprovingly. His presence ate its way over the palace, gnawing at the rooms he had no right to touch. Soon his shadow would take John away from me, and all battles would be lost.