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"Hello, John." Molly all but whispers into the phone. These days, everyone talks to John like he's a house of cards, or dandelion fluff, or spun glass.
"Hi, Molly." He smiles, even though she can't see him. "I, ah. I was just. I. You were the one who, ah, who worked on Sherlock, yeah? At the, the morgue."
"Yes." Her voice is very small.
"You know about, about his will, then?"
"What about it?" Molly sounds bewildered.
"About his brain. Donating his brain to some neuroscientist in America."
"Oh. Oh. That. Yes. Yes, I, I packed it. It's here. Packed. Ready to ship."
John rubs the back of his hand across his nose. "I was wondering if I could, um, see it. Before you send it off. To, um. To say goodbye." God, that sounds cracked. Sherlock's been a worse influence on him than he thought.
"Oh. Of course." Molly sounds perfectly understanding. "I'll just. Um. The courier comes at three, so if you can come before then..."
"I'll be there," John promises.
-----
The lights in the morgue are cold and blue-white and fluorescent. It's cold. John tries not to look at the floor too closely. Molly comes out in her lab coat, bumping a thermosafe polyfoam container against her thighs as she walks. She heaves it onto one of the tables and pulls off the top. Under the refrigerant bags, inside the bucket of ice, is Sherlock's brain, wrapped inside two plastic bags. There's a file in the cooler too, which contains all of Sherlock's medical history, his age and weight and IQ, all the numbers spilling over into an imperfect sum. John swallows down the lump in his throat.
"I'll just give you, um, a moment," says Molly. She turns and walks swiftly out of the room, hands in the pockets of her white jacket. John reaches inside the bucket and lifts out the brain. It looks just like any other brain: pink and white and soft, covered with wrinkles and crevices, surprisingly intact for the, the blunt force trauma. Dr. R. Douglas Fields, or some other scientist, will cut thin slices from Sherlock's brain and study it under a microscope and make notes about the glia. Sherlock's brain will live in a refrigerator somewhere, or they'll fix it in formalin, or freeze it. They'll give it a number and publish articles in scientific journals, where they'll refer to it as a sample number, white male, 34 years old at the time of death.
John opens up the bag he brought with him, one of those thermal lunchbags that promises to keep the lettuce on your sandwiches crisp and cold. He just bought it from Asda today, along with a calf's brain. He double-bagged it, just like the one that's on ice now. John rips the label from Sherlock's brain, sticks it on the calf brain, and buries it in the ice. Sherlock's brain goes in his bag. He's just putting the lid back on the polyfoam container when Molly comes back in the room.
"Had enough?" she says with false brightness. John forces the corners of his mouth to go up.
"Right," says John. "Thanks. So much. I'll." He clears his throat. "I'll just be going now."
-----
He wakes up the next morning wondering if the previous day was just a dream. Then he opens the wardrobe.
Not a dream, then. John runs his thumb over the label, smoothing down the corners where it curls away from the glass a little.
HOLMES, SHERLOCK
DOB 6 JAN 1976
The jar is not actually the correct size for the brain, so that it's pressed up against the sides a little, wrinkles flattening out into white planes. John's not about to go searching for a larger jar, though, and even if he found one, he's trepidatious about moving the brain. It'll have to do. He was fortunate enough to find a large quantity of formalin and a large enough jar in the flat. One of the conveniences of living with a self-made scientist. Well, when he says living--
"I'll have the rest of you sent to a body farm," he says, quietly. "Like you wanted."
-----
"I'm home!" John calls, then feels a bit silly. He goes into the bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt as he goes. He doesn't look in the direction of the wardrobe as he prattles on. "Saw six patients today. One sinus infection, one ear infection, one flu, one what I suspect is a slight case of anemia. The other two were just routine checkups. Nice to see people engaging in proper preventative care."
He gets into the shower. Before Sherlock, he used to start his day with a shower. After Sherlock, he learned to grab a shower whenever he could, as Sherlock had a tendency to haul him out of bed in the middle of the night, and late nights meant hasty mornings. Sometimes he showered twice or three times in a day, if they'd been digging around in skips or diving into the Thames or chasing suspects through the sewers.
Now, he's just in the habit. He's washing off the boredom of the day. He tells himself the hot water feels good on his leg.
He remembers when his uncle died, his aunt used to sit there with the television on. Not even watching it, just had it on as she cooked dinner or read the newspaper. When they called her, to see how she was, she'd reply, "Oh, I'm fine. Just watching television with Robert."
-----
"Who're you talking to, up here?" Mrs. Hudson calls. "Thought I heard voices."
John comes out of the bedroom. "Nothing. Just myself. Gets a bit quiet. You know." He gives Mrs. Hudson a tight smile.
"You really ought to get yourself a new flatmate." Mrs. Hudson peers into the kitchen. John shuts the door to Sherlock's bedroom behind him. Sherlock's glassware is still scattered all over the kitchen table, but the sink is clear of dishes.
John stumps his way around the table towards the sitting room. "The rent won't be a problem." Not now that all of Sherlock's assets belong to him. He doesn't know why Sherlock needed a flatmate in the first place.
"I know, but it's not good for a body, is it, living all alone? Drives one a bit dotty. That's why I wanted tenants." Mrs. Hudson gives a firm nod.
"I know." John stops in the doorway that separates the kitchen from the sitting room. "It's just. Right now."
"Oh, I know, love," Mrs. Hudson sighs. "Here, why don't you sit, and I'll make us a cuppa."
John sits and tries to ignore the absurdity of his landlady making them tea in his own home. Mrs. Hudson likes feeling useful, he tells himself. There isn't much else for her to do, these days.
"Milk and sugar, love?" she calls from the kitchen.
"Yes, please," John replies.
-----
John doesn't know what to keep. John doesn't want to throw anything away. But it's not as if he can wear any of Sherlock's clothes, or finish any of Sherlock's experiments, or play Sherlock's violin. So he donates the clothes to Oxfam and gives the chemistry equipment to a local school. He keeps the violin and the remote control to Sherlock's penis. He tells himself that it's not unhealthy, and that they don't take up very much room.
Sentimental, Sherlock's voice sneers inside John's head.
"As if you're one to talk," John tells the jar in the wardrobe. He found a custard dish in the desk drawer where Sherlock kept his mobile phone collection. A custard dish, an evidence bag containing snipped sutures, a used condom (tied at the end), a single sock with bloodied heel, and a sticky note in John's handwriting: Love you too, you mad wanker.
-----
"Hello," says John.
"Hello," says Mycroft. He has a cup of tea and a saucer. It must have come from Mrs. Hudson. John does not serve tea in saucers, and if he did, he wouldn't serve it to Mycroft.
Mycroft smiles brightly at John. It looks as unnerving on him as it did on his younger brother.
A year ago, John might have asked, "To what do we owe the pleasure?" but there is no 'we' anymore, and he's not going to offer the pretence of pleasure. He says, "Get out," and goes into the kitchen.
"Just dropping by to see how you're doing," Mycroft calls after him. "Sherlock would want--"
John breaks a mug in the sink. "What the fuck do you know about what Sherlock would want?" He braces himself against the counter with both hands and takes two deep breaths through his nose. "Get out of my home. Out. Out. Out!"
-----
The label on the jar has started to fade from the number of times John has run his fingers over it. He isn't sure how he feels about that. On the one hand, he hates to see anything of Sherlock just...disappear. On the other, it isn't as if he doesn't know who it is.
"Molly never called," he says. He always talks to Sherlock in a near-whisper, as if he's sharing secrets. "She must have gotten a phone call from that scientist in America, the one you were sending your brain to. 'Why'd you send me a calf's brain?'" He falls silent, smoothing his thumb over the label on the jar again and again. "I was the last person to, to see you. She's not stupid, you know, no matter what you thought. So she must know. But she never called." He presses first his cheek, then his forehead and his lips to the cool, smooth glass. "I suppose she understands."
-----
"I can't believe you did this. Not only did you, did you leave, but you, you were going to give away the best part of yourself. You left me everything except the thing that was most important."
-----
John finds the book in Sherlock's collection, which he has not yet finished sorting yet. He takes it with him into the bedroom, opens the wardrobe, and sets the book down on the shelf, open to a diagram of the brain. He reads for a moment, then rotates the jar.
He cannot see the nucleus acumbens. It's inside the brain, near the centre, part of the basal ganglia. John traces the various pathways with his finger: dopamine, seratonin, oxytocin. They all trace back to the nucleus acumbens, the pleasure and reward centre, the addiction centre. Bits of him are in there too, he realises. His amino acids. His carbon. John Watson in his brain.
"Here." He taps on the jar, where in all the fat and tissue are two little clusters of neurons that played such a vital role in pleasure and laughter and food and sex. "Here is where you loved me."
-----
"Sherlock," John starts, already unbuttoning his collar. He stops.
Sherlock is in the bedroom. His body is in the bedroom, too. It is standing in front of the wardrobe, wearing clothes and a surprised expression.
John turns around and leaves the room. He stands in the middle of the kitchen and thinks, Well, this is it. I've gone mad. He knows that visual hallucinations are very rare, but what other explanation can there be for seeing a dead man standing in his bedroom, looking at his own brain in a jar?
"John," says the hallucination, so clearly it is auditory as well as visual. John begins making mental plans for who should be responsible for his care. Harry will probably have him committed.
The hallucination comes out of the bedroom and stands next to John. It reaches out a hand and touches John on the shoulder. It feels quite solid and real and warm. And now that John is closer, he can see changes: more prominent cheekbones, shorter hair, a scar above the left eyebrow. And those clothes are not from Savile Row, but a tattered jacket and torn jeans, the laces missing from one of his trainers.
"John," the hallucination says again, pleading this time.
John swallows. "Whose brain is that, then?" The question comes out high and thready.
"I don't know," Sherlock confesses.
John swallows again. He clears his throat. Then he goes into the bathroom, where he is sick in the sink.
-----
"You're mad." Sherlock says it in the way a small child might exclaim upon seeing Santa Claus, but that Sherlock would probably use upon seeing a locked room murder where the victim has been drained entirely of their blood. Ordinarily John would feel somewhat flattered, but at present he is drinking a very weak cup of tea and trying not to think about what is in their bedroom.
"Yes. No. Yes." John rubs his hand over his face, mashing the heel of his palm into his eyes as if they'll clear his mind. "You are real, aren't you?"
"Are any of us?" Sherlock replies, an unusually philosophical response from him. John blinks, but before he can question his sanity again, Sherlock continues, "But by common definition, yes, I am. The death was faked, it's a very long, very tiresome story that you'll doubtless want to chronicle on your blog, and."
First, a philosophical answer, and now a hesitation. John looks up. His heart stutters at the sight of Sherlock in his old chair, even if he looks like a vagrant that one would see panhandling at a Tube station.
"It would appear that I need to make some alterations to my last will and testament." The words come out slowly, and over enunciated, as if Sherlock is practising.
John saw Sherlock's last will and testament. It was a napkin, scrawled upon in blue biro. It said, beyond the usual preamble about being in sound mind and body, 1. Nothing to Mycroft. 2. My brain to Dr. Douglas Fields at the University of Maryland 3. Everything else to John Watson. The last was written in black ink, and more neatly, as if it were added later. Everything was properly witnessed and notarised.
"Yes." John licks his lips. "Yes, I think. I think so."
---end---