Science and Faith

 

I’m swearing if I go there now

I can change your mind, turn it all around…

 

I wanted words but all I heard was nothing.¹

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

John first notices the skull on Wednesday. If he’s honest, he mostly moves about his flat like a ghost. Sherlock would have said—but no, it won’t do any good to think about that. The point is, he doesn’t always pay attention to his surroundings. Seeing but not observing has become a way of life since…well, since.

 

In any case, he is reasonably sure the skull was not there Tuesday night. He is absolutely sure it wasn’t there on Monday, when he alphabetised the medical journals on that shelf. But there it sits, grinning sardonically from where it’s nestled between Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases and Archives of Disease in Childhood.

 

He lets out a slow, quivering breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He thinks about touching it, but decides he likes his sanity intact, thank you very much, and that touching an object that shouldn’t be there is not the best way to keep the cracks in his psyche from fracturing further.

 

He makes himself a cup of tea and turns on the telly, refusing to glance at the bookshelf for the rest of the evening.

 

***

“How are you holding up?”

 

“Fine. Yeah. I’ve been well.”

 

“John.”

 

He looks up at her, eyes so deeply blue they are nearly black. She is always asking questions to which she already knows the answer. He supposes that’s her job—but surely a therapist shouldn’t be so obvious about it. A muscle in his jaw twitches, and he realises his teeth are clenched around the words she wants to hear.

 

“Yesterday was three years,” she says. The cap of her pen has been gnawed on. For a moment, John contemplates taking her apart. He wishes he could see her the way Sher—well, he wishes he could really see her. What scars are buried in her heart? What old wounds that he could rip open, fill with poison, stitch up again? How would she like it, her personal tragedies strewn about the room like last year’s Christmas presents, forever on display but no longer interesting. Dull.

 

He clears his throat instead. “Was it? I’ve stopped keeping track.” His smile is polite and endearing and not at all reminiscent of a cornered panther baring its teeth in challenge.

 

“You know it was.”

 

Should he tell her about the skull?

 

“Yes, well. Three years. Seems about time to think about something else, doesn’t it?”

 

Something else, like the things that have not abandoned him, the things that have not left a gaping void—no. No, John. You dare not go that way. He has Mary, for Christ’s sake, and she’s wonderful, and he has work, and he has nights out at the pub with Lestrade, and on top of all that he has the curious case of the Apparating skull—

 

No, John. No, no, no. That way lies the abyss.

 

She is still watching him, waiting for everything he cannot say, when the hour runs out.

 

***

Thursday evening he has dinner with Mary at her flat in Kensington. He makes risotto and she makes casual conversation. After eight months together, they don’t have to try anymore to fit into each other’s space—it just happens. She moves around him in the kitchen, grabbing plates and pouring wine, and the spaces between them are not awkward, but easy.  Comfortable.

 

He keeps telling himself that as he ignores her sidelong glances and smiles at her. She knows about yesterday, knows its significance, but she can’t decide if she should ask or not. John can see her weighing the choice in her mind. She’s much easier to read than his therapist. She is responding to every noise he makes, watching every movement. He feels like he can hear each thought, like they are written in her eyes and the lines of her body.

 

He gulps his wine too quickly, and the corner of her mouth tightens: Are you drinking to forget, John? He laughs at a joke she’s made, and her shoulders relax: If you can laugh like that, you must be all right. He tells her about the patient he saw yesterday who tried to explain how he’d contracted genital herpes by sharing a drinking straw, then touching his mouth, then touching his cock. Her laughter is bright but her eyes are dark: Yesterday, John. Do you want to talk about yesterday? You ought to talk about it.

 

After dinner they are on the couch. She is leaning into him, his arm around her shoulders, his hand resting comfortably near her right breast. He is contemplating closing the distance, turning her face to his and losing himself in her. She can make him forget about the delusion of a silly old skull on a cheap bookshelf.

 

“John, I know you’re trying not to talk about it.”

 

He tenses.

 

“It’s not good for you to keep it in,” she says. Her voice is soft. Her hand on his leg is gentle, feeling for his reaction, reassuring him that she’s there. He needs her gentleness, needs her care. He wonders how little he can say and still keep her there.

 

That’s not how it’s supposed to be; he’s sure of that. He doesn’t deserve her. But he does want her, and so far it’s been enough.

 

“I, uh—” He coughs. “Look, it’s not that easy.”

 

She looks up at him. Her eyes are brown. Not the drab, lifeless brown of his flat, but the warm brown of soil drenched with sun.

 

“I know.” Her fingers squeeze his leg. “Did you go to the grave?”

 

John’s eyelids flutter closed and he lets a long breath out through his nose. “No.”

 

Mary sits up, her eyebrows knit together. “Why not? I thought you—”

 

“I just—I thought maybe—It’s time to move on, yeah?”

 

Emotions chase each other ‘round and ‘round her face. Concern in the tightened corners of her eyes, sadness and surprise in the raised eyebrows, and there, in the slightly parted lips—hope.

 

“Really, John?” She seems to realise how wistful it sounds. Schooling her voice, she says, “I mean, do you think that’s best? Do you think—do you think you can? He was so important to you…”

 

John doesn’t trust himself to respond to that, so he just nods. How can he be failing everyone he’s ever cared about? Failing Sherlock by letting go, failing Mary by holding on. He wonders if excessive guilt can bring on hallucinations. Why else would the skull appear on Wednesday, of all days? The anniversary of Sherlock’s death, and the first time John does not go to his grave. It’s the right thing to do, moving on. So why does it taste like betrayal, sharp and bitter in the back of his throat?

 

Mary sees his face and takes pity. She kisses him, soft at first, and then harder. She crawls into his lap and her hands slide down his arms and he lets her take him somewhere else for a while.

 

***

 

On Friday, a sleek black sedan pulls up beside him as he walks home from the clinic. Mycroft has an injured agent that needs John’s attention. John spends eight hours scrubbing tarmac out of a gaping stomach wound, placing various organs back into their proper places and stitching the whole lot closed again. Eventually, the mess on the operating table looks almost like a proper human being again.

 

It’s nearly half past six the next morning when John is deposited back at his flat. He is brutally tired, his leg and shoulder are aching, and his stomach is turning itself inside out with hunger.

 

In short, he is blissfully alive.

 

He half-fries, half-scrambles four eggs. He washes them down with a cup of black coffee and stumbles into bed.

 

It’s not until he wakes at three o’clock that afternoon that he notices the black cow skull mounted on the wall above his television, headphones perched absurdly over its horns.

 

***

John sits in his armchair, clasping his tea with both hands in his lap. His eyes are fixed on the cow skull. He blinks rapidly, even though he knows it’s foolish. He has already gone through all the options: optical hallucinations, there’s a limited number of causes for those. He’s not taking drugs, so that’s out. The mildest possible cause on the list is sleep deprivation. Most nights, the nightmares keep him from sleeping soundly. The nights he’s with Mary are better; he still dreams, but when he starts awake, his vision obscured by images of blood pooling on pavement, he finds her there beside him, grounds himself, and sleep returns. The nights when Mycroft calls on him, the nights of blood and sweat and cheating death, those nights he sleeps like a baby. And there’s enough of those nights to be getting on with.

 

But if it’s not sleep deprivation, the options grow rapidly more terrifying. Epilepsy. Brain tumor. Schizophrenia. John takes a deep breath and makes himself sip his tea. He doesn’t feel crazy. But what does crazy feel like? He could be loony as a March hare, and how would he know it?

 

He stands slowly, placing his tea mug on the table beside him. Maybe he’s not crazy. After all, logically, he knows that these items, these decorations don’t belong here. The human skull on the bookshelf, the cow skull on the wall, these things belong to the morbidly technicolor circus that was Baker Street, not here in his sadly practical little flat with the brown walls and the brown bed and false wood furniture.

 

John reaches out and touches the skull. Its surface is slick under his sweaty fingers. Slick and cool and very, very real. Tactile hallucinations? Is that a thing? He can’t seem to remember.

 

There is no transition between John Watson quietly stroking a cow skull that should not be on his wall and John Watson sagging against said wall, gasping his way through huge, broken sobs. One moment he is one man, the next moment he is the other.

 

***

 

“John! Wonderful to hear from you, dearie.”

 

“Right. You too. Sorry it’s been a while.”

 

He knows Mrs. Hudson’s sad smile so well he can hear it through the phone.

 

“That’s alright, dear. I know it’s hard for you—”

 

“Have you…” He doesn’t mean to interrupt, but the more he lets her talk, the more the talk will turn to things he’d rather not discuss. “Have you been by here at all? In the last week, I mean?”

 

“What? What do you mean, here?”

 

“My flat, I mean.”

 

“Goodness no, John. Why would I go there?”

 

“I know. Sorry. I know it’s silly, I just saw something…” No. He can’t have her worrying about him. “I got some flowers,” he says instead. “There wasn’t a note, and I just thought maybe…maybe it was you.”

 

“Oh. Well, sorry to disappoint, dear. Perhaps you’ve got a secret admirer?”

 

He hopes his chuckle sounds genuine. “Yeah, probably. That’d be something, wouldn’t it? Don’t think Mary would like it much.”

 

She laughs. “No, I don’t imagine. Are you doing all right after Wednesday? I thought I’d see you at the cemetery, but I must have missed—”

 

“Yeah, sorry, Mrs. Hudson, that’s the door. I’ll ring later.”

 

John hangs up before his voice can betray him. The skull on the wall stares at him balefully. The skull on the shelf just grins.

 

***

He phones Lestrade because he’s the only one left to phone. And because if he’s going to talk about something strange, some mystery of Sherlockian proportions, it helps to talk about it with someone who knew the man, who at least grudgingly respected him.

 

“John?”

 

“Grab a drink tonight?”

 

“Not even a hello, then? Christ, John, it’s been weeks.”

 

“Sorry, hello. Grab a drink tonight?”

 

“You’re bloody persistent, I’ll give you that. What’s happened?”

 

“What makes you think something’s happened?”

 

“Really, John, in spite of everything Sherlock told you, I would hope you know by now I’m not actually an idiot.”

 

John laughs. It’s mostly genuine.

 

Lestrade says, “You don’t phone for ages—”

 

“I really am sorry—”

 

“—and now you’re so desperate for a chat your phone etiquette’s gone all to shit. Out with it.”

 

“Honestly, I’d rather say in person. Can you meet tonight or not?”

 

“Oh, fine then. I can be at the Swan in an hour.”

 

“I’ll see you there.”

 

“Cheer—”

 

John rings off before he realises he forgot to say goodbye.

 

***

The pub isn’t usually so crowded, but it’s Saturday night. John finds Greg at the bar. Taking the stool beside him, John orders a pint and holds it between his hands, wondering how to start.

 

“How’s Mary?” Greg asks.

 

“Hmm? Oh, fine. She’s great, thanks.”

 

Greg rolls his eyes. “Alright, so what do you want to talk about?”

 

“Something happened on Wednesday.”

 

“Oh.” Greg’s eyes widen. “You went to the—”

 

“No,” John interrupts. “This happened at my flat.”

 

“You didn’t go to the—”

 

“I said I didn’t.”

 

“Right.” The DI shifts in his seat. “So what was it?”

 

John takes a deep breath. “You remember that skull that Sherlock used to own?”

 

Lestrade smiles. “Yeah. Christ. You should’ve seen him before he met you. Carried that thing around he did. Not all the time, but every now and again, you look up at a crime scene, and there he is. Like fucking Hamlet.”

 

John has a vision of the man, skull poised in hand, coat swirling around him dramatically. It should be ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But it is also heart-wrenchingly, gut-twistingly Sherlock, in a way that is so bittersweet he has to bite back a moan.

 

The smile he offers Greg is pained, but real.

 

“So what about it?” the DI asks.

 

“When I got home from work on Wednesday, it was on my bookshelf.” John wonders if saying it out loud means admitting that he’s gone ‘round the bend.

 

“What, you mean one like it? Who got it for you?”

 

“No, I mean the actual skull. Same one. Real human skull, not a fake.”

 

“Christ.”

 

“As for who put it there…I’m open to theories.”

 

“Mary have a key to your place?”

 

“Jesus, Greg. It wasn’t her. She hardly knows any of the details of my life with Sherlock, and she just—she just wouldn’t.”

 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—we always start with the loved ones, that’s all. Not likely a stranger popped around to poke at old memories, is it?”

 

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I’m still not convinced I’m not imagining it.”

 

“Well—are you?”

 

“There’s more.”

 

“Christ.”

 

“I was out all night on a call for Mycroft. Got in early this morning, slept ‘till afternoon. When I woke up, that bloody awful cow skull was on my wall.”

 

“Cow skull?”

 

“The one from the sitting room at 221B.”

 

Lestrade’s grimace might be amusing, if they were discussing something less insane. “The one with the headphones? The hell was that about, anyway?”

 

“As if I knew.” John drinks. “That’s not the point. The point is, I’m either so mental or so riddled with tumors that I’m redecorating my flat with Sherlock’s things in my imagination, or…”

 

“Or what?”

 

John waves a hand vaguely. “Or someone’s actually putting the things there.”

 

Greg blows out a breath, looking as thoroughly mindfucked as John feels. “Christ,” he says. He’s a far cry from an idiot, but the man could expand his vocabulary a bit.

 

They finish their drinks.

 

***

 

The glass in his hand is filled with scotch this time. A double, and he knows he shouldn’t, but he hasn’t got work tomorrow, and a pint with Lestrade is hardly going to get him as entirely pissed as he needs to be to deal with this.

 

He can’t avoid the obvious questions forever. He can make an appointment at the hospital next week, find out if something is seriously wrong with his brain. But he really ought to rule out the less savory options, that someone he knows, someone who knew Sherlock, could actually be doing this to him.

 

He hasn’t spoken to Harry in weeks, and this is hardly her style. Besides, she was never inside 221B. How would she know about the skulls? He’d probably mentioned the one, the skull he’d replaced as Sherlock’s sounding board, but the cow skull? He and Sherlock had hardly even mentioned that one to each other.

 

Mycroft? He was clever enough, cruel enough to do it. But to what end? Drive John Watson mad, and what did he gain? John can’t see any sense to it.

 

Anderson? John almost laughs. Anderson and Donovan combined wouldn’t have the devious intelligence to pull this off. And their ire had been mostly directed at Sherlock anyway. The only emotion they had ever shown John Watson was pity. His stomach curdles.

 

So what then? If he believed in ghosts…

 

Oh yes, his mind whispers. He could do it. It’s exactly his style, in fact. Innocent and vicious all at once. Subtle, manipulative, entirely devoid of empathy. One might even call it sociopathic.

 

John stares at the cow skull, and the cow skull stares back. Its voice in his head is chocolate dark and velvet smooth. Surely you’ve not forgotten me, John? Errand boy for Mycroft now, but you were my John first, remember?

 

The glass shatters against the wall before John realises he’s thrown it. He blinks. His hands are trembling. A bolt of pain shoots through his leg. His limp has never come back, not enough to warrant the return of the hated crutch, but the ache comes and goes.

 

“Is it you, then?” His voice is too loud in the empty flat. Stupid, John. Of course it’s empty. It’s empty and you’re alone.

 

“You selfish bastard, would you tell me if it was you? Would you, Sherl—” He chokes on the name, the word dissolving into a shuddering breath.

 

***

 

Sunday morning, John wakes up in his armchair. He makes himself toast and coffee and washes the dishes before sweeping up the remnants of his shattered scotch glass and depositing them in the bin. He hesitates a moment, then crosses the room with swift, certain steps, grabs the skull from the bookshelf, and throws it in the bin as well. The cow skull is only hanging by a nail, so wrestling it off the wall is not as difficult as John imagined it would be. He wraps the headphone cord tightly around the skull and dumps the whole messy package unceremoniously into a plastic bag, to be taken out with the rest of the rubbish.

 

He is admiring his work, congratulating himself on not letting this alarming little development derail his efforts at normalcy, when he hears a scraping at his door.

 

He leans around the corner to see a piece of paper lying on the floor, for all the world as if someone has just pushed it through the crack under his front door. Should he be surprised? He doesn’t feel surprised. He feels nothing.

 

But as he reaches for the paper, he realizes that’s not entirely true. There is a whole ocean of nothing in his chest, but like all oceans, it has a bottom. And that bottom is teeming with life, with a riot of emotions that are difficult to name. Excitement and anger and terror and loneliness and oh god hope, hope so bright and fragile he’s afraid to breathe lest it break, shatter itself, shatter him.

 

His fingers grasp the paper. He wonders, after he reads it, if he already knew what it said. He thinks he did, but after the magician reveals his trick, you always imagine you saw it all along. Hindsight is always right, and is always a lie.

 

He is still standing, staring, when the second piece of paper is pushed under the door. He almost laughs, because of course there’s a second piece. He picks it up and holds it by the first, marveling at how his hands refuse to tremble. The spidery handwriting sharpens in his vision, the rest of the room becoming vague, blurry, somehow less real. He reads them, these letters from the dead, side by side.

 

Baker Street. Come at once if convenient.

 

If inconvenient, come anyway.

 

John wrenches open the door, and the hallway is empty. There is a sound, fading, like impossibly long legs taking several stairs at a time. And outside his door, the scent of expensive shampoo and wet wool and tobacco.

 

Bastard. John shouldn’t be giggling. His fingernails shouldn’t be digging into his palms hard enough to draw blood. He looks down at the papers, crumpled in his fists and stained with sweat. He shouldn’t be so thrilled to be finally losing his sanity.

But is he? As he grabs his coat, John Watson asks himself, is he really so ecstatic, so absolutely furiously chuffed to be racing headlong toward madness? Is this blind rage he feels building, is it really something he wants to explore?

 

And his answer is the only one he knows.

 

Oh god, yes.

 

***

1. The Script. Science & Faith. Sony Music Entertainment UK, 2011.