PARA/DOX

The Brain and The Lost Boy

"What about darkness?" Sherlock wondered. "Firelight, electric light? Why can I see at night too?"
"I don't know." John admitted. "You're the biggest mystery of them all. Even the scientists couldn't fit you together. All they know is that somehow you used to do this all on your own, uncontrollably."
"Used to?" Victor clarified. John took a breath, looking towards Sherlock with a look of utmost pity.
"I opened your file, Sherlock." John admitted. Sherlock nodded, remembering that in the traveler's world he had succeeded in mutilating his eyes. In fact that was the traveler's main purpose, to save Sherlock's most precious vision.
"Pictures, I imagine?" Sherlock muttered.
"Yes." John agreed, spitting out the word as if the very thought of it turned his stomach. Sherlock clenched his jaw, though he remained silent. He never admitted to anyone from this time period what he had been prepared to do, and even now he didn't feel the need to explain it. In John's mind that was a tragedy of another world, something entirely avoided on their plane of existence. Perhaps he never considered just how similar their worlds were, perhaps he never understood how well timed the time traveler's visit had been.
"What's he on about? What is this, some sort of alternate universe?" Victor wondered, looking towards both guilty glances to salvage any sort of truth in it.
"Yes, in a way." John agreed. "I can't seem to find any major differences, that is except the one." John admitted.
"The time traveler...he was well timed. I should think our universes were fated to be the same." Sherlock muttered, tapping his fingers against his elbow and keeping his eyes downcast towards the rug. Victor looked between them both, in the end taking a step towards the computer as if to find the knowledge himself. John didn't try to stop him, in fact he only held his hand up to his chin, pulling at the air as if he was used to a beard being there and ready for fidgeting.
"It's really not something I like to see." John admitted. Victor's scrolling was depicted on the monitor, each one of the files names having been reorganized and retitled to fit John's pattern of knowledge. What used to be identified by numbers were now lengthy descriptions, all starting with 'the one with...' as if John was unable to recognize the folder without a long explanation in his own words. Well of course only two were unchanged. Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft Holmes. Both untouched, as if there was nothing more to add. Victor went ahead and clicked upon Sherlock's file, though Sherlock watched the man closely as he scrolled past the older Holmes's name. His chest seemed to constrict, for a second too long his back did not rise with breath, his jacket stayed still upon his bent spine. Sherlock watched closely, watching to see if the man had momentarily lost himself upon seeing the name, if his heart had skipped a beat. It was a curious idea, though as Sherlock grew to know more of his strange bodyguard he was beginning to cherish it. Was Victor always fated to be in his life, one way or another? The first to pop up was a photo, one which even Sherlock had not seen. It was grotesque in its thumbnail, though even worse when Victor clicked to magnify it. No one could keep their eyes upon the thing for long, in fact as soon as it enlarged all three of them averted their gazes, Victor allowing a low groan of disgust to come creeping from his parted lips. Sherlock was the first to look back, he was the first to stomach the idea. It was something of a mugshot, taken perhaps as a recruitment photograph. His hair was short, his face looked young. It might have been the photo for his ID card when they first recruited him, in a universe where his letter opener had succeeded. Where his mutilation had not been interrupted. Sherlock clenched his fist to stare into those eyes, or rather that mess of scar tissue that made up for a lack of them. The boy in the photograph was foreign, he was unrecognizable. He may have had the hair, the jawline, the body; though his face was so mangled that Sherlock would not have been able to pick him out as his own self. The sockets were not empty, in fact they were full of a red mass, a wrecked contraption of skin and blood vessels that had taken over the destroyed eye cavity. There were still eyelids, they were visible though they obviously would not close. In the picture they must have been extended as far as possible, coming halfway overtop of the disfigured bulge without much hope of making it all the way across. It was perfectly grotesque, a picture that Victor Trevor could hardly look at for two more seconds without closing the laptop screen and forcing both laptop and monitor to go dark.
"That's...that's enough for me." Victor admitted. Sherlock stayed silent, down casting his eyes as if he was suddenly very interested with the pattern of John Watson's carpet.
"You meant to do this? You meant to...to disfigure yourself?" Victor clarified, rising to his feet and stretching to full height. He had his angry face on, that squished look when his eyebrows sunk all the way down to his cheeks and his frown downturned enough to display his whole row of front teeth. Sherlock retreated a single step, unsure what to defend himself with other than pointing to his eyes, his existing eyes.
"Well I hadn't actually done it!" Sherlock defended. "You can't punish me for something I never did!"
"You intended to." Victor repeated. "Knowing how precious you were, how important."
"I didn't want to be important! I didn't want to end up like Mycroft! Better to go blind than work for the agency, at least in my mind then." Sherlock insisted. Victor took another step forward, this time moving too quickly for Sherlock to duck out of the way. The man moved quickly, lunging like an animal as his twisted face began to fly forward, the straight white teeth of a privileged young man shining like a leopard. Sherlock couldn't help it, he yelped as if he was being attacked, he nearly screamed as Victor's arms flew around his neck. Sherlock had expected to have his ribcage misplaced by a sudden blow, though as he got pulled into Victor's chest he began to wonder if these aggressive hugs were much better. Victor was a strong man, stronger than he realized, and his love language was something equivalent to wrestling. In Victor's mind if he did not use the whole of his strength in an embrace he was holding back on the transfer of emotions. Because of this Sherlock's frail body was nearly snapped in half. In fact the poor boy was lifted completely off the ground, held so tightly within the arms of his bodyguard that he was in danger of both asphyxiation and a concussion upon release!
"Sherlock you stupid creature!" Victor exclaimed. "To think I had caused you such harm, I'll never forgive myself."
"I haven't done anything!" Sherlock defended again, taking a sharp breath overtop of Victor's shoulder and kicking his feet madly above the ground. Victor seemed to come to, realizing at last that his affection was bordering upon abuse. He hastily let Sherlock fall back to the ground, though he didn't let the boy escape without tearing off his glasses and running his fingers admiringly over his healthy, untouched eyes. Sherlock kept them shut for obvious reasons, though he could hear John's footfalls coming closer as well. It would seem as though both men felt entitled to stare upon the structure of Sherlock's face, one which was not so mangled.
"Don't even consider escaping by such means." Victor pleaded. "And if you ever, ever have thoughts of harming yourself, you come to me."
"I know! Victor, come on! It was a low point!" Sherlock defended.
"But we need to address it all the same." Victor cooed, running his thumb one last time overtop of Sherlock's eyelid before he slid the glasses back over the boy's nose and allowed him to take a proper part in the conversation. As Sherlock opened his eyes he saw both men wore nearly identical expressions of worry, the sort of patronizing you might find in the face of your mother. He sneered, a defensive maneuver of course, and back peddled far enough from his companions to draw a proper breath.
"It would seem as though it wouldn't have worked anyway. I'm glad I was interrupted." Sherlock admitted at last.
"I don't think that's the point." John muttered, taking the words right out of Victor's mouth. Sherlock hummed, staring between the two men's shoulders and pondering the idea of it all.
"How is that possible, I wonder?" he asked at last. "I thought you said time was a snapshot. So what is that, like...Photoshop?"
"To him yes. To us...no. I imagine by now that traveler does not exist. He may have erased himself and all that came from him." John presumed.
"That's why he gave you the flash drive." Sherlock guessed.
"Yes. He may have understood that his legacy was in jeopardy." John agreed. Sherlock nodded slowly, wondering how this traveler had the chance to change time itself. Especially if time was such a practical thing, a scientific substance.
"He would sacrifice everything he knew, everything in his universe...for me?" Sherlock clarified. John took a deep breath, sinking his hands into his pockets as if that very idea had come to his mind as well.
"Perhaps he thought your eyesight was worth it." Doctor Watson suggested.
"Or he didn't want you to suffer." Victor added on top of that, feeling the need to offer an empathetic reasoning rather than a scientific one. The man glanced towards the laptop again, as if a sudden thought had erupted in that mostly empty brain of his. "Doctor...you don't know if that's the only thing that changed?"
"To my knowledge Sherlock's eyesight was the only inconsistency." John agreed. Victor descended on the laptop again, opening the lid and clicking past Sherlock's photograph to go back to the folders. Each one named with its purpose, and only one supposed file that would be of interest to the young man.
"In this world, is Mycroft alive?" Victor dared whisper, clicking upon the file labeled with his friend's name. It wasn't so generous of a folder, perhaps worse suited for public eyes than Sherlock's. For the first photo, where the mugshot was supposed to be, allowed no such comfort of the boy's smiling face. Instead it was merely a brain, snapshotted upon the table. A brain cut in half, exposed. The brain of Mycroft Holmes. Victor shut the screen again, turning aside and falling silent for the rest of the evening.