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1.
The first time it happens, Sherlock is six years old.
He comes to the family library looking for an Anatomy textbook he’d started reading the day before, and walks away questioning the nature of reality.
When he doesn't find the book on the table where he'd left it, or on any other table in the room, or in the Biology section where he found it in the first place, or even in the Medical and Anthropology sections, Sherlock concludes that the book is not in the library at all anymore – that someone else (Mummy or Mycroft, probably) must have taken it away – and turns to leave. But then he glances around the shelves one more time, and as his eyes pass over the Art section, one of the books calls out to him.
Curious, Sherlock moves closer. And realises that it’s his book.
It doesn’t speak or anything. Actually, the feeling isn’t all that different from the way his attention usually narrows down when he pinpoints an interesting detail. But it’s different enough.
The book doesn’t speak, yet Sherlock can’t shake the impression that it’s taunting him. Saying, are you blind? Aren’t you supposed to be smart? How could you miss something so obvious?
The book is right. It is kind of obvious, now he thinks about it. A distracted servant could easily have taken one look at the illustration on the cover and shoved it in the wrong section without bothering to double-check the assumption.
Sherlock squints at the book distrustfully.
He might be six, but he isn’t stupid. He knows that magic doesn’t exist and that inanimate objects can’t speak. Undoubtedly it’s just his conscious mind’s way of interpreting something his subconscious noticed first.
Still, he is only six, and so a small part of him can’t help but get a little excited.
The book doesn’t do anything else, however. No matter how long he waits, it continues being just another book on the shelf.
+
Objects continue calling out to Sherlock as he gets older. Not constantly, not even frequently – sometimes years go by without it happening at all – but eventually he stops wondering which will be the last time and accepts this quirk of his mind as a fact of life.
As a child, he can’t completely dismiss the possibility of a supernatural cause, even as he sneers at himself for it. As he grows older, he concludes that these occurrences are never impossible, the realizations always apparent once brought to his attention.
Sometimes it happens with details that should be obvious but take him a little too long to figure out. (Six seconds and still no solution? a lamp will say. How disappointing.) Other times it happens when he is at the end of his rope. (I’m right here, you fool, a tiny dot on a painting will say. Was your date with the Golem really so forgettable?) But it’s always something he would have figured out soon enough by normal means anyway.
Sherlock is eleven years old when he finally manages to reject the magical option entirely.
2.
The first time it happens, John is eight years old.
Unlike all of his other daydreams, this one is completely spontaneous. John doesn’t imagine drawing his soul out of his chest; it just happens.
Unknown to most, John has a very vivid imagination. This is hardly unique. He has friends who can spend hours talking about their dreams and fantasies – trading ideas, building worlds, playing out fantastical scenarios. What might be unique is that John never joins in.
By day, he doesn’t exercise his imagination at all unless there is a practical purpose. The real world is more than interesting enough to hold his full attention; there is no need for him to retreat into his mind. Not to mention that his dreams – simple and innocent as they may be – feel too private to share.
At night, however, John allows his imagination to run free. When he lies in bed, fairies and aliens peer at him from his open window as trees and flowers push up through his floor. Sometimes he stays there, watching the toads and bats and rats setting up home in his bedroom. Other times, he leaves his body behind to fly to the moon, catching an asteroid train to make the journey quicker and jumping off onto the trampoline moon station when he gets there because naturally asteroid trains can’t stop.
Some of the images are so sharp and complex that John manages to half-convince himself that they are real, but that’s a fantasy too. He knows what’s real and what isn’t.
Then he wakes up in the middle of the night to see his soul floating above his chest.
It looks like a hazy golden glow about the shape and size of an egg. There is no reason for John to think that it’s a soul at all, but somehow he knows.
It’s different from his usual fantasies. Normally, the things he imagines stay firmly inside his mind. They only layer themselves over reality after reality passes through his eyes and into his brain. Now it feels like the superimposition is happening on the outside.
When he wakes up again in the morning, his soul is gone, and he decides that the whole thing must have been a dream.
But he can’t forget the warm, safe feeling looking at his soul had given him. So dream or fantasy, he hopes it happens again.
When a month goes by without, John decides to take matters into his own hands.
He is resting on a soft cloud, the sky above him dark and filled with stars, when he presses his palm to his chest. As he draws it up, his soul follows.
It’s just as there as it was the first time he saw it.
By comparison, the clouds and the stars are completely insubstantial.
+
The older John gets, the less – and the less vividly – he daydreams. The only thing that remains constant is his soul. It is just as easy to bring out when he is thirty as it was when he was eight, even in daytime, and it is just as clear as it was at the start.
When he is young, he thinks it's nothing short of wonderful. As he gets older, he realises that his soul is more hallucination than childish fantasy and starts to worry.
But if it is a hallucination, then as far as he can tell it’s the only one he’s ever had. And he knows that it isn’t real.
It’s harmless and seeing it makes John happy, so he doesn’t worry for long.
3.
Two days after the explosion, John is finally allowed into Sherlock’s hospital room.
John got away with a concussion, a broken arm, and some extensive bruising. Overall, he is surprisingly okay for a bloke who'd had a whole building collapse on him less than a week prior.
Sherlock wasn’t so lucky.
Watching the slow rise and fall of the sleeping man’s rib cage, John comes to a decision.
He pulls his soul out of his chest and brings it to rest over Sherlock’s. He only hesitates for one second before pushing it in.
When John draws away, his soul stays.
“God knows you need all the protection you can get, you reckless idiot,” he says out loud. “And I know that I can’t always be there for you, not least because you won’t let me, but maybe…”
Maybe even just having this small part of me guarding you will be enough, John thinks as he folds his fingers over the back of Sherlock’s hand. Maybe it’ll let me know when you really need my help. Maybe it’ll lead me to you when you’re in the worst kind of trouble.
John knows it’s silly, because it’s not real. But it does make him feel a little bit better.
When a few days later John tries to bring his soul out of his own chest again, he fails.
+
Six days after they put away the right hand man of a local crime lord, Sherlock comes home to a note taped to their front door.
‘An eye for an eye, Mr. Holmes’ is all it says, and Sherlock goes cold.
How stupid not to have expected this, he thinks. How stupid to have assumed that if they did come after one of us, it would be me. It’s hardly the first time John’s been used against me.
Sherlock knows there will be no ransom demands. This isn’t about money. It’s about revenge. They’re going to kill John. But first, they will torture him, which at least gives Sherlock time.
He takes a minute to look through the flat and phone John, in case it’s a bluff, but unsurprisingly there is no answer. The receptionist at the surgery tells Sherlock that John left over three hours ago, and Mrs. Hudson says that he never made it home, so Sherlock contacts Mycroft and Lestrade and then he is off.
He strides along the route John usually takes to and from work. He isn’t sure what he is looking for, but there has to be something.
He stops when a penny on the pavement calls out to him.
This is where it happened, the penny says. A man walked up behind him and pressed a gun to his back. Told him not to make a fuss and to get in the car. They went West.
Sherlock frowns. This has never happened before. Objects may reach out to him when they are relevant, but that’s all. They don’t solve mysteries for him. They don’t provide new information.
This isn’t the time to be standing around thinking about it, however. His ability has never led him astray before, and right now it’s the only lead he has. So he hails a cab and tells the driver to go West, and when at the next intersection a manhole cover shouts that the car he is looking for turned left here, he listens.
4.
“The doctors are calling you a medical miracle,” Sherlock says when John is well enough to stay awake for more than one minute at a time. “With your injuries, your survival should have been impossible, not merely improbable.”
John cracks a smile.
“I gave you my soul, didn’t I?” he murmurs with a slight slur. “How could I die when the most important part of me was still safe with you?”
Sherlock huffs out a laugh.
“You’re high as a kite, aren’t you,” he says, brushing his fingers over John’s forehead.
John closes his eyes and leans into the touch, humming agreeably.
“How did you find me, anyway?” he asks when he starts to drift off again.
“I listened to a penny,” Sherlock says as John’s breath evens out.
+
It’s not proof, and nothing like it ever happens again to either of them, but that doesn’t really matter.
End.