Chapter Text
Sherlock sat cross-legged on the cool, wooden floorboards of his bedroom. The silence hung heavily in the air; Mrs. Hudson was asleep, and John wasn't in the flat. Sherlock gritted his teeth. Tonight was 'date night', and John was out with Sarah. Sherlock hated thinking of John with that cow, he could do so much better. John was special, Sarah was dull, boring, worthless. He spat the word in his head, the tone laced with venom. The same word in the same tone his father had used with him, on his mother, on Mycroft, on anyone who would believe it.
"Freak." Sherlock flinched at the noise in his head.
"Freak." "Freak." "FREAK!". A hundred of that word, uttered, whispered, screamed. All aimed at him. A hundred separate voices, Sally Donovan (or, 'the bitch', as he referred to her in his head. Never aloud, though, he wouldn't stoop to her level.), his schoolmates, his dealer, and his father yet again. His father was never as vicious as the bullies, the insults tamer and fewer, nevertheless, they stung a thousand times worse. Because it was his father. A member of his own family. The one that was supposed to protect him, to tell little Sherlock that he was loved, that the cruel children were just jealous, that Sherlock was most definitely not a freak, or worthless, or anything other than unique. But no, that was not the man he lived with. The man he lived with was too busy working or drinking to care about the feelings of either of his sons. And his mother wasn't about to be defending anyone. She couldn't even defend herself. "Weak," Sherlock thought bitterly. He didn't know who was the weakest. His father, for drinking, for hurting his family with his sharp words and for not taking any responsibility for any of his actions, or his mother, for standing by, helpless, useless as her husband drank his life away and bullied her family. Or was it Sherlock himself, for caring, for crying, for fueling the flame with his hurt feelings. Sherlock decided it was in fact he himself that was the weakest of the lot. After all, bullies prey on the weak. And that's what he was, what he is, what he's always been. Weak, worthless FREAK.
Sherlock took the lid of the shoebox. Ah, there they lay. The keys to his sanity. Odd, just like him. A school compass, a few razor blades, and a fair amount of tissues. Sherlock didn't smile, no, that would be too cliche. He knew that what he was about to do to himself was wrong, he knew that if John ever knew- no. Sherlock would never let John find out. He couldn't find out. Sherlock would never let John, his John be hurt by what he did to himself. He had already hurt John enough. Because for some inexplicable reason, he cared about John. And for some unfathomable reason, which Sherlock couldn't figure out for the life of him, John cared about him too.
Sherlock grimaced. Too many thoughts, swirling around his brilliant mind, stringing themselves together, one after another in nonsensicle manners, all of them fighting one another for dominance. When he lost control, it was madness inside that head of his, and it had been far too long. He needed to quiet those thoughts. All he wanted to do was to calm them down, just for a while. The thoughts he banished, pushed down to the deep, dark corners of his mind were escaping, rising closer to the surface, like bile in the throat.
Sherlock reached for his compass. It proved a better distraction than the blades. A razor wound'll bleed a whole hell of a lot, but when you make that cut you can barely feel a thing. A compass on the other hand...
Those compasses you find in the pencil cases of children, if you just touch the point to the skin, just drag it across lightly, not even enough to break the skin, it hurts. It stings. Imagine the sweet, sweet pain when you bear down hard, drag it through the sensitive skin of the underside of your forearm. And again. And again. And again. The same line, hacking through your own flesh until the blood flows freely, the stinging pain overruling those thoughts you just don't want to think anymore. This is what Shelock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective, quite possibly the greatest mind in all of Great Britain does so very often, to push away those darkest, most overwhelming of thoughts.
So many pretty lines decorate Sherlock's pale forearm. Scars, scabs, and all stages in between, covering the delicate flesh. And the smaller number of lines on his thin wrists, from the times when he grabbed a razor blade, simply because he wanted to watch his blood beading up, trickling down the crease of his wrist, then flowing freely from his self-inflicted wounds. Because he hates himself so much, and sometimes he just wants to watch himself hurt, to bleed out on the floor of his bedroom.
But for now, he didn't care about the self-hatred, he disregarded the guilt. Right now, he simply needed to clear his mind. He couldn't think. He needed to flush out his overcrowded mind palace. He lifted the simple school supply and placed the sharp tip against his left forearm.
Scrape. He heard the horribly beautiful scraping as he dug through the skin of an old scar, opening it up once more. Slashing, again and again, deeper and deeper, until blood seeped through the skin, staining the sharp tip. Time to move on to a new spot. So mechanical. All part of the ritual.
Angry tears spilled over, streaming down his face, emotions ruling Sherlock as he tried to tear them up and and bleed them out of himself. All the thoughts he couldn't quite manage to delete bubbled up to the surface. Why couldn't he control this? He was all about control. But all he could think about were those horrible things.
"Get out of my sight! Sherlock, get the FUCK out of my sight! Don't you fucking DARE tell me what I think, you little FREAK! What makes you think you can say that to Me? Huh? You have no right, you friendless, worthless FREAK! Now, I don't want to have to say it again, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT!"
Many different one sided conversations aimed at him, taking place during many different stages in his life, but as soon as all his thoughts escape to fly around loose in his head, those drunken words his father screamed at him all those years ago always end up making an appearance. Everything hurts so much.
Again and again, Sherlock attacked his arm. So many thoughts, so many feelings, so much pain, please, please make it stop! The screaming inside his head. The drugs used to help, but when Lestrade found out about it, he said it was the cocaine or the cases. And above all else, Sherlock needed the cases. He had to distract himself somehow. He needed to keep his mind occupied. But sometimes it was weeks, even months before Sherlock could get his hands on a case. And in those gaps in between, he just couldn't cope. That was all there was to it. Too frail, too weak to even stand living with himself.
Blood on pale skin. Probably the most beautiful (terrible) thing he had ever seen in his entire life. His scars, so lovely (disgusting) in his eyes. But they didn't matter. The bad thoughts were locked back up in the deepest, darkest dungeons of his mind palace (for now). Everything was right (so, so wrong) again. All good (so very, very, bad) for the time being.
Sherlock pulled out his tissues and mopped up the excess blood, pressed some more against the cuts to staunch the bleeding. When it was all over, all cleaned up, Sherlock balled up the tissues and chucked them in the bin. He didn't worry too much about John seeing them, John rarely entered Sherlock's room, and even if he some blood on the tissues, he would just assume that it was the cleanup from some sort of expiriment. Sherlock rolled his sleeve back down, covering up his scars and fresh wounds (Sherlock never bothered with bandages for wounds inflicted with the compass), hiding all evidence that anything ever happened.
All part of the ritual. All just part of the ritual.