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The first time Martin tried to end his life, something very strange happened to him. (Well, something very typical happened first: he failed. This made it possible for Martin to be aware of other, weirder things happening to him.)
He woke up fuzzily - too much light, have I slept too long again? should fix the ceiling window curtain - and awareness seeped in slowly - white tall ceiling - not home - where am I?
He tried to sit up, and that was when he saw himself. He was looking into his own face, but it was not like gazing into a mirror. This was a dark-haired, haughty version of himself, looking down on him. Martin remembered abruptly what was the last thing he'd done, looked at that gaunt, pale face, almost forcing the adjective "ghostly" on itself, a face filled with a superior disdain he never remembered feeling in his life, and assumed he'd succeeded.
"Oh, God."
He had to be in hell - that was where suicides got to - why didn't he think of that?
Suddenly, the figure in front of him moved and spoke.
"No, you're not dead - obviously. Yes, we have extremely similar facial features, but I am obviously not you; and finally: no, I'm not a mind reader," the not-him rattled off. He looked even more smug after that.
Martin blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the avalanche of words.
"No fair," he muttered. His mouth felt like a sea creature left on the shore too long. He tried to wet his lips, but his tongue was just as dry. "You've been conscious for longer."
"Were you not wondering how I knew exactly what you were thinking?"
"No, I was still stuck on 'dead' and 'hell'," Martin said blearily.
"Oh yes, I tend to forget how slow everyone else is. Obviously, our similarities are strictly physical. I despise theological discussions, but this might be hell according to some definitions - since there's no such thing, the definition implicitly creates it, thus, according to Sartre, this is your hell because I am Other People. You're not good with other people."
"While you must be the soul of the party," Martin muttered crossly, having a look around what quickly became recognisable as a hospital room. Wasn't he supposed to have a desolate moment to himself in which to contemplate his failure, including the latest failure at ending the string of failures that was his life? What he got instead was a lookalike who was an insufferable prat.
That, however, wasn't hell. That was just Martin's life, the one he'd tried to get away from for good.
"I suppose this is why Mycroft arranged for us to room together. Usually I'd have been in a private cell."
"Who's Mycroft? And I think you mean 'room'."
"My brother, obviously, and I always say exactly what I mean. Mycroft thinks that seeing a less successful specimen of me might rekindle my interest in this tedious world. Well, HE IS WRONG!" the man yelled suddenly, wiping the bedside table in a sweeping dramatic gesture.
Immediately and silently, a nurse and a bodyguard entered the room - Martin may have been groggy with the leftovers of 30 diazepam pills, but he knew a bodyguard when he saw one, and a prat with money and family when he heard one.
The nurse bent down to retrieve the metal recipients - his roommate (or cellmate, to use his terminology) must have thrown hissy fits before. Martin tried to get up and help her, because that was what he did, and instantly regretted it.
"Ooof," he said, flopping back on the pillow, the room a hazy vortex of white.
"Oh, you're awake!" the nurse cried. "Don't try to sit up! I'm so sorry, someone should have been here, but-"
"Of course he's awake, did you think I was talking to myself?" not-Martin scoffed.
"Well, it wouldn't be-" the nurse began, but trailed off abruptly. The bodyguard looked at her impassively. "I'll get the doctor," she said firmly, narrowing her eyes.
"Thank you..." Martin strained to read her name on the badge, but his head was swimming and his vision was blurry; it could have been Nancy, Mary, or possibly Heidi.
"My name is Sherlock," not-Martin said. "You can stop thinking of me as a not-you. Aha, and now you were thinking I could read your mind."
"Hoping, rather. There are some things I don't say in the presence of a lady..."
The odd excitement of his unusual roommate had faded quickly, and now Martin was left with the mixed feelings about still being alive despite his best efforts. He was contemplating the glum view out the window, but his dubious peace of mind did not last long.
"You're the oldest of two or three siblings - no one has come to visit you yet; younger siblings are usually beset by the pretence at care from their elders. Your working class family is not supportive of your white collar ambitions, so you fund your studies through menial jobs, mostly manual labour - your physique shows the typical construction worker musculature, combined with cheap and insufficient nourishment. You've just failed your solicitor's exam for the third time, so you thought you'd 'end it all', but your housemates found you in time."
Sherlock looked at him triumphantly. As if he was expecting to be congratulated or something, after reciting the miserable story of his life in a few words. He'd got a lot of it wrong, but the essence of it was too close to the truth. Martin turned his head, remembering gulping mouthfuls of pills with mouthfuls of water. The water had been slightly tepid and tasted of rust; the pills hadn't tasted of anything at all.
"What, what is it?" Sherlock's voice was impatient behind him.
"Nothing," Martin whispered.
"So I got everything right?"
Martin looked back sharply. Sherlock's eyes were sparkling. He was obviously not inquiring after Martin's emotional state.
"Yes, perfect," he snapped. "Commercial pilot, not solicitor, fourth, not third, and I'm the youngest of three, but otherwise - perfect."
"Pilot?" Sherlock's eyes lit up suddenly, and he almost leaped towards Martin. "Whose shirt is this, then?" he asked, poking accusingly at the incriminated garment.
Martin looked down at himself. "My brother's. What does that have anything to do with-"
"Of course!" Sherlock went off again. "Pilot, well, that's moderately less boring. Fourth, hm, you must be more resilient than I took you for, good for you. Your brother's. Damn. There's always something." He clicked his fingers, presumably in frustration.
"Yes, you see, this tends to be a common thing among the common people," Martin said testily, somewhat less intimidated now that Mr "I'm not a mind reader" Sherlock had proven that he was, indeed, not one. "Younger brothers get the old things of their older brother. Funny how that works for these 'working class families'."
Sherlock looked at him with those cold, bloodshot eyes. "It's stupid to be offended by the way things are. Mycroft's things would have been too big for me, anyway. Both of us could fit in them and there'd be place left."
Martin was surprised that a half-snorted laugh somehow made its way through his nose. "We're not exactly-"
"-representative. True." An alien smile warmed Sherlock's face a little. "But tedious. It's more fun to imagine Mycroft in one of his fat phases."
"That's... not a nice thing to say about your brother."
"Being nice is stupid! Look where it got you."
Martin was surprised. "I'm not particularly nice."
"Oh yes, you are disgustingly nice. 'Can I help you with that, Mrs Miller?' 'I'll get that for you, Mr Smith'."
"No, I..." Martin looked out the window again. "I'm not nice to my family. My dad wants me to give up the pilot training and exams. My mum wants me to be happy - well, it's not like I disobey her on purpose. Simon and Caitlin want our father to be happy. Why are you here?"
"Deduce," Sherlock said promptly. "With all you know about me it should be painfully obvious, even for someone of average intelligence."
Martin didn't bother to spend too much time thinking. He had his own prejudices, so what? Let Sherlock do- what? Insult him some more? He was fairly sure by now that this was Sherlock's way of communicating with the world. "Junkie. Bored of too much comfortable life, and crushed by your own superiority complex."
To his surprise, Sherlock smiled - just as alien as before, but wider. "See? And that was just by spending a couple of hours around me. And since they took my skull away, there may be some value in continuing to interact with you."
Not everything Sherlock said made sense, but Martin focused on the most outrageous (to him) part. "Am I supposed to take that as a compliment? Interact later, I want to sleep now."
"Sleep is boring!" Sherlock scoffed. "You only want to wallow in your own misery, anyway." He crossed his arms and sulked, but he did give Martin peace until the nurses came to lead them to their mandatory psych appointment.
"Your first time?"
"Pardon me?"
"Your first attempt?" Sherlock clarified, no less impatient and patronising. Martin found it strangely soothing, after the ostentatiously careful treatment he was now getting from everyone else.
"Yes. Not the first time I thought about it."
"Of course not. But the amateurish way you've gone about it suggests you haven't really planned it. If you'd lain down in your attic instead of the main room..." It was rare for Sherlock not to finish a phrase, no matter how cruel or insensitive it might have appeared to others, and just as rare that he wouldn't find his words. No, there was something else. Martin looked at his face and saw the tell-tale unfocused look of deducing taking place.
"Ah, yes, of course. You are self-effacing and considerate," Sherlock mused in a blank tone. "You wanted to be found before you started decomposing."
Martin didn't know what to feel about that. It was true. Thinking about it like that was... It was weird. His body, detached of meaning, detached from him.
"So you cared," Sherlock pursued. "You cared what would happen after. If you're doing it right, there won't be an after. As long as you still care, you don't really want to do it. You just want the pain to end, not to be truly gone from this plane of existence."
"If you really want to do it, this is how you'd do it properly."
Sherlock seemed to know a lot about ways people could die by their own hand. He also went off on a tangent about how people could be killed and made to look like suicides; that part made Martin rather uncomfortable. (Which earned him a "Would I be telling you if there was a chance I wanted to do it and get away with it?" accompanied by an eye-roll.)
"You know, Sherlock, I don't think our shrink would appreciate our conversation topic very much."
"Our shrink doesn't appreciate many things, including children's cartoons, zebras, and broccoli. It's not like I told you to do it. But if you really want to, it's best to know the most efficient and painless ways. If you really want to do it, you'll succeed eventually with or without my advice."
Martin snorted bitterly.
"I only wish the same were true about my pilot's exam."
"Of course it is. I predict two or three more tries before you get it."
Martin gaped. He knew Sherlock never said things he didn't mean in his deducing voice, but what he'd said... He also knew Sherlock despised being asked to repeat himself, and the people who tried to make him do it, but he had to.
"You..." He bit his lip. "You really think I'll get it eventually?"
"Yes," Sherlock said simply.
"I..." Martin was hovering between a hysterical giggle and a hopeful smile. "You're the first person to ever say that."
"I am also the most intelligent person to express an opinion."
"You don't know who were the others."
"It doesn't matter."
"Definitely not the most modest, though. But... thank you. Really. Thank you."
Sherlock frowned. "It wasn't a compliment. I don't do compliments."
"I know," Martin said. "That's why it's worth even more, coming from you."
The thoughts circled Martin again the next two times he failed his exam, but he used Sherlock's certainty as a support, rather than Sherlock's advice about how to end it quickly and painlessly. He could only hope that the other man had found something similar to support him through life.