#heretherebefandom

Sherlock Holmes met his best friend on possibly the worst day of his life.

He heard a beeping. It was incessant and annoying. At first he thought it was just his alarm clock, but when he tried to open his eyes, he couldn’t. When he tried to rub them open, he realized he couldn’t feel his body. It was like he was just a ball of energy, floating through space with no body. There was nothing around him. Nothing except for the incessant beeping. It just kept going. Beep. Beep. Beep. He listened to it for what seemed like hours. He listened, and willed himself to see, to feel anything. Time passed along a current Sherlock was not sure of. He ticked time off by the beeping and created his own system. He noticed that after so many beeps a long one would go off, and it was always the same amount of beeps, never any more, never any less. He assumed the beeps were a second in between, and so he was able to keep a rough graph of 24 hours. If his calculations were correct, he had been in this state for 2 months, 8 days, 5 hours, 3 minutes and 6, 7, 8 seconds. It had become a second nature now to keep track of the beeping. He thought of his life before… this, while faintly counting 10, 11, 12.

He tried to remember his family. He had two brothers. Both worked in the government. The eldest basically was the government, while the youngest watched his back. He remembered his mother. She was fond of smoking, had a slight figure and long hair that was always pulled into a bun. Whenever he remembered her, she was always smoking, even when he was a baby. He would have smiled, if he had a mouth, when he remembered what trouble he used to give her as a child. She loved to garden and he loved to investigate. 32, 33, 34. He would always pluck a flower to see the pollen inside, or see what species of bugs were crawling around on it. She hated that. She would frown down at him, with the smoke curling around her head and say “Sherlock. How many times have I told you not to do that? If you keep it up, I will be forced to punish you.” But she never did. She would just take him to the kitchen, wash his hands and send him to his room to play with a warning of “remember, don’t touch the flowers.” Sherlock loved his mother. When she died… when she died he hated his younger brother for years. He blamed him for her death because when he was born, she died. Sherlock didn’t understand at the time there was nothing anyone could do and later learned, from his older brother, that the doctor advised her to not get pregnant after him. She was just too fragile. He was nine when she died. His father knew nothing of raising a child and turned to drink. After she died, he was never around. He always locked himself in his study and wouldn’t come out till late at night, after Sherlock’s bedtime. His elder brother took care of his younger and left Sherlock to himself. He grew distant towards the world and viewed it with contempt. As he grew older it got worse, until he was forced to be examined by a doctor. They told him he was a high functioning sociopath. It was always inside of him they said. He left the office with his head held high. If it was always inside of him, it meant it was who he was, and he didn’t want to change anything about himself.  56, 57, 58. He remembered he had been going to college. He didn’t have any friends there, and kept his nose in his books. One time he decided to trust someone, to let them into his life. They proved that the world was a cruel place. They showed Sherlock how harsh human beings could be, and he had never let anyone affect him that way again. He thought he felt water on his face, but that was impossible, he didn’t have a face.  14, 15, 16. He would have shook his head if he had one. No. he would not let it get to him, after all this time.

2 months, 12 days, 11 hours, 5 minutes and 1, 2, 3 seconds he counted off. He didn’t feel like he was floating anymore. There was something that was attached. It was almost like a string was anchoring him to his body. But he could still hear only the incessant beeping. He thought more upon his life. Remembering things he never knew he did. When he was thirteen he put a potato with hair stuck in it in a sealed box. He had learned somewhere that if you do this, the potato will shrivel up, suck the hair in and look like a face. He waited and waited for the time to come to open it, but eventually he forgot about it and three years later his younger brother found it.

2 months, 18 days, 6 hours, 34 minutes and 48, 49, 50 seconds. There was no string anymore. He was inside his body. He could feel it. he could feel his toes, fingers, hips and head. He couldn’t move them, not yet, but he knew he would. Time was no problem. Not where he was.

2 months, 24 days, 14 hours, 2 minutes and 12, 13, 14 seconds. He felt water on his face. He had been thinking about his mother, and he felt it again. This time was different though. He could feel the tear roll down his cheek, catch at the edge of his lip, run along the lines of them and fall off his chin. It travelled down his neck, loosing speed as it went, until it pooled inside the dip in his clavicle. He felt something soft touch the path. It traced it down, down until it reached the dip and sucked up all the moisture. He had felt something. Finally, he had some reassurance that he had existed, was alive, was a human being. Finally.

2 months, 26 days, 5 hours, 59 minutes and 56, 57, 58 seconds. There was something touching his toe. It irritated him and before he knew what was going on, he moved it. It was just a small reflex, but it was something.

2 months, 27 days, 3 hours 1 minute and 27, 28, 29 seconds. He heard something. It wasn’t the beeping. He heard it again. It sounded unnatural at first, but then became clearer and clearer, until he realized it was words. Someone was speaking. “One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it…” for the first time, Sherlock got tired, and his mind shut down.

??? Sherlock opened his eyes. There was a blinding light that was pointed directly into them. He couldn’t see anything beyond the light.

“Are you awake?” a voice asked him.

“y-yes.” He whispered back. His throat didn’t want to cooperate and seized up. He started coughing.

“Here, have some water.” He felt a cup touch his lips and opened his mouth to drink. The water soothed his throat when it went down.

“Better?” the voice asked. He nodded his head.

“Oh, I suppose the lights right in your eyes.” He said. A moment later it clicked off. Sherlock looked around slowly. He was in a hospital, there was a cast around his left leg and a sling around his left arm. The beeping was a monitor that was connected to a bag of fluids. The voice spoke up.

“You’re one lucky man.” It said. Sherlock looked to where it came from. There was a man sitting on a hospital bed next to him. He was short, slightly stocky and had a faded looking blonde mop of hair on his head.

“Why?” Sherlock asked. He struggled to lift his head up.

“Don’t you remember?” after Sherlock shook his head he continued.

“You were in a car accident. Hit by a semi they said.”

“They?”

“Your family. Brothers they said. Mycroft and what was his name…”

“Q. He likes to be called Q.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“So who are you?” Sherlock tried to prop himself up, but couldn’t.

“John Watson.” He smiled. It was a nice smile.

“Why are you here?”

“I… I have Hodgkin’s Disease.” He looked down at the floor, half smiling. It was broken this time, but still lovely.

“It’s not that bad. I guess. I mean, I’ve had it for a long time now.” He looked back up.

“Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

“Not exactly, but somewhere around three months.” He nodded his head.

“You were admitted on June 9th. Today is August 4th.”

“How do you know?” it was getting hard for him to talk and he was getting tired.

“Your brothers talked to me about you a lot. They used to visit almost every day. I got here on July 10th.” Sherlock’s vision was getting blurry around the edges.

“Doesn’t anyone ever visit you?” he asked slowly.

“Yeah. My mum, but she only comes about once a week and reads bible passages. Says it’s good for the spirit. I’m not that big on spirituality, but it helps her, so I let her read.”