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The violin was out of tune, and even if it wasn't, John didn't know how to play. He didn't even know anyone left that did know how to play it. Eurus, maybe, but she reportedly had taken advantage of the first chaotic outbreak that hit Sherringford and vanished. Maybe she was still alive, John liked to think that she was clever enough to be, maybe even stimulated enough now as well.
But then. He'd considered Sherlock to be smarter than that as well.
He picked up the violin though. He regarded it with a jerky cocked head. Sometimes he even performed the smooth motion of putting it to his shoulder. Muscle memory, maybe; an action so ingrained into his tissue that he could perform it without thought. Sherlock couldn't grip the bow, though, the hold too delicate. And there were the missing fingers to factor in. Nothing even close to melodic sound came from that instrument any more.
Still, Sherlock didn't destroy it. John left it with him, in the living room, next to his chair. Everything else in the vicinity was destroyed; swept to the floor in rage or in shambolic accident. Leather of the chair chewed and shredded, stuffing pulled out, reduced to a metal frame that Sherlock still awkwardly sat in sometimes, palms together, fingers pressed silently to his chin.
The skull, the old friend, smashed open and picked through for gelatinous meat that was already long gone.
But the violin. It was almost looked after. Dropped, yes, and tripped over frequently. But not destroyed. And that was the thing that made John's heart ache and twist and sob in his chest when he was done with outwardly crying, more than anything else.
***
It was Spring, May, John supposed, going by the weather and the swifts nesting above the window. Their migration was a waste of time now, and he did feel bad for their efforts, but fresh eggs were fresh eggs, no matter how small. He was a man of survival, after all.
The winter had been harsh, but he'd scavenged and scrapped and survived. He knew how to hunt and wasn't sentimental for long about what he caught. Not a part of them were wasted, not a single part. The smell in the typically British spring heat wasn't as bad as it had been the previous autumn either. Meat only stank in the first stages of decay, in the clouds of flies, in the crawling white thrum of maggots. Eventually it faded, eventually what was left toughened like leather and mummified.
Sometimes he dared to touch Sherlock, to get in close and find the ragged edges near his mouth, near his still perfect teeth. He marvelled at how soft the flesh was, not at all stiff, not parchment brittle at all. Cold meat. If Sherlock stayed still for him, watching him with pale, pale eyes, like the universe at the end of it all, the stars collapsing back in on themselves, he would run his finger over the crevasse of his cupid's bow and consider...
... And then that mouth would pull like a kind warning, the mouth that had never smiled nearly enough for him in his memory, and he would jerk his hand away before those teeth snapped. John would tumble back and land on his coccyx with a well bruised bump by now. Just out of reach and laugh the same unsteady words, like a ritual.
"I know. I know. You want one of my fingers to make up for yours. Well, maybe next time I'll let you, Sherlock. Maybe next time..."
Maybe soon.