(no subject)

[alldeduction]

Who: || Sherlock and Open
Where: || District 2 Suites
When: || A few days after the network blackout
What: || Sherlock is sulking in the most melodramatic way possible, but he has his reasons.
Warnings: || None, save Sherlock being a brooding child


It had been nearly two days, since he had left his rooms. Longer than that, since he had been fully dressed, or spoken to anyone. He'd extracted himself carefully and quietly from daily life in the tribute tower, wallowing in the blackest mood he could summon.

Punchy was missing. Sherlock had few friends, fewer still ones he could accurately describe as having greater expertise in a subject than he did, and Punchy was one of them. Despite the bizarre dialect in which he spoke, Sherlock knew the boy was brilliant when it came to computers, and hacking network systems in particular. So when their comms had been hacked, the message of rebellion spread, Sherlock had immediately wanted his opinion.

Only to find he had disappeared.

He wasn't allowed to investigate, of course - wasn't even allowed in Punchy's room - but it didn't take the world's greatest detective to be able to deduce what had happened to him. Idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot. Sherlock wanted to shake him, hard, if only he could find him first. But there was no point in looking. Punchy had almost assuredly been taken deep into the Capitol's crooked heart.

He only hoped the boy would still be alive when he was brought out of it.

Comments

[alldeduction]

He was indeed a mess, and an unrepentant one, and by the time Joan found him he had already been 'looked in on' both by people he didn't mind and by people he did not want to see in the slightest. Joan may have been in the former category but that didn't mean that he really wanted to see her either. He didn't want to see anyone. So he tried to ignore her, until she made that impossible.

Head hanging off the arm of the couch, he resolutely stared at the ceiling instead of looking at her.

"I've been on vacation," he said, in almost an exactly copy of her tone.

[formersurgeon]

"Apparently on vacation from showering and shaving, too." She approached him until she stood beside the couch, looking down at him.

"Look, we can do this song and dance and waste both of our time, or we can accept the fact that I know something's wrong, and you can tell me what it is."

Still mild, but this time with a thread of steel. Just because she's quiet doesn't mean she'll put up with lies or brush-offs.

[alldeduction]

"Explain to me exactly what inclines me to owe you an explanation," Sherlock said flatly, without meeting her eyes.

Punchy's disappearance had made it all too clear exactly how safe the Capitol was, and how safe his friends were in it.

And how much safer they would likely be if they kept their distance from him.

The thought had been weighing heavily on his mind, the last few days. John he could not save by distancing himself. But Joan...

[formersurgeon]

Joan's work with addicts had frequently required her to push past polite boundaries and walls her clients put up in order to pull them out of depression and spirals that would lead to relapse. She had no qualms about doing the exact same thing here.

"Because it's pretty clear that whatever it is, it's hurting you," she answered. "Because you're my friend and I care about your well being. And because I'm not going to leave you alone while you're like this, so you might as well tell me what's up and get it over with."

[alldeduction]

"I'm not hurt," Sherlock lied, to her and himself, with venom. "I am merely thinking, and until I have come to any conclusions on the subject I don't see why I can't keep such thoughts to myself."

[formersurgeon]

"Okay, that's demonstrably not true. My Sherlock frequently wears the same shirt day and night for a week, and if I saw him looking like you look right now, I'd be worried. With you? Seriously, there's no deduction needed."

[alldeduction]

Sherlock pressed fingers against his eyes. "Joan. I am fine." He turned his head to look at her again, his gaze flat.

"I am simply tired of the constant circus and ritual required to live here."

[formersurgeon]

"Except you've been here for a while. This is a dramatic change. Which means something triggered it."

She sat on the edge of the couch next to him.

"Does this have to do with those messages?" she asked, her voice softer.

[alldeduction]

"I have moods," He says, "You can ask John." True enough, in its own right, especially with little else to occupy his mind, but her guess is also surprisingly accurate.

Not, of course, that he can tell her that. He looks away.

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

[formersurgeon]

Well, there's a yes.

"Just because you have them doesn't mean they're not caused by something. Or that they're not cause for concern. And I seriously doubt that John wouldn't be just as concerned were he here."

[alldeduction]

"Oh what does it matter!" He cried, exasperated. "Whatever good intentions either you or John may have, it hardly changes the circumstances." He scrubbed at his face. "Your concern is noted. But I am fine."

[formersurgeon]

"As much as you want me to believe you're fine, it hardly changes the circumstances," she shoots back. "I'm not leaving you like this. Not until you tell me what's going on at least."

[alldeduction]

He glared at her over his hands, tongue pressed firmly to the roof of his mouth.

How much, exactly, could he say that the Capitol would already know? That they wouldn't glean any extra information from? They already knew that he knew that Punchy was missing. They weren't idiots, they knew they had allied before. So his disappearance was one thing. It's relation to the rebellious messages... Well he would leave that out.

"A friend of mine is missing," He hissed lowly, finally. "And if I were home I would have already investigated and found him. Happy? Is my mood validated?"

[formersurgeon]

She pulled back a little. It couldn't be John. If John were missing, Sherlock would not be here moping, he'd be out in the Capitol tearing the place apart. But this was someone close enough to Sherlock that it put him in this state.

"It explains a lot. Can you tell me who?"

[alldeduction]

"... Punchy," He said eventually, rubbing his eyes. "Is it really necessary we discuss this?"

[formersurgeon]

Her expression immediately shifted, registering shock and concern. Even fear. Punchy was a friend, and if he's gone missing here...

"Oh my god."

She wanted to ask him questions...how long had Punchy been missing? What could have happened to him? But Sherlock was clearly not in a state to be inundated with questions, especially not questions that Joan could investigate herself.

"Sherlock...I understand why you're upset. And I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't be. I am going to suggest that doing what you're doing isn't going to help anyone."

[alldeduction]

"Because I've been forbidden from doing anything that could help anyone," he snapped, glaring. "I've been forbidden from ever doing anything that could help anyone. I have been rendered completely and utterly useless and my fri--" He cut himself off, bit his tongue. His friends suffered for it.

"What I do with my uselessness is no one's business but my own."

[formersurgeon]

"That's not true. You're important to people here. If you can't see that, at very least think of John. You know that he's important to you. He is your Watson, and every Sherlock needs their Watson. Remember? It is just as true that every Watson needs their Sherlock."

[alldeduction]

He glared at her, petulantly, before turning his face and rubbing his eyes.

"... He needed the work," He said sullenly after a moment. "As I do. His limp is back. I got rid of it and now it's back."

[formersurgeon]

"His limp." She glanced away, shook her head a little. She knew there was something about that limp that was more than John was saying. "He told me it was a war wound, that it flares up from time to time."

[alldeduction]

Sherlock let out a long breath. "A partial truth. The war was its cause, certainly, but not a wound. He was shot in the shoulder." He touched his own, to mimic.

"The limp is psychosomatic."

[formersurgeon]

"Psychosomatic."

She sighed, glanced away. "That makes sense." It explained a lot. Why he didn't have the limp in the arena but developed it now. She wondered, with a pang of guilt, if it had anything to do with her death.

"If he was in the army, and was shot, and developed a psychosomatic limp, then he's probably struggling with PTSD. And considering what he's had to deal with here, it's no surprise he's having trouble with it again. Which is exactly why he needs you now more than ever."

[alldeduction]

"Not probably. He is most certainly. And yes, this place can only make it worse." He paused, narrowing his eyes at the ceiling. "Even I am beginning to feel the psychological effects of repeated exposure to the arenas." He said it as one might say 'Even I get wet in the rain', but it was a much more difficult admission than he could possibly imagine otherwise.

The fact that his mind, the part of himself that was the most important, above everything, could be damaged in any way was utterly terrifying.

But he would never show it.

"But I cannot help him. Not how I did, back home. I have no distraction to offer, no purpose, no focus."

[formersurgeon]

She rolled her eyes.

"And so you're going to give up and do nothing. Because that will be so much better for you and John. Look, I get it. All this? It sucks. It sucks to be under 24 hour surveillance. It sucks to be forced into the arena. It sucks to watch bad things happen to our friends and to feel powerless to help them. We can't control our circumstances, here or anywhere else. What we can control is what we do about them. Every day, every moment, is a choice. A choice to lay down and take it, or a choice to rise up and fight."

It's the sort of argument she would use with addicts, but it worked in this situation, too.

this tag could be summed up with a four year old saying "you don't know me!!", sorry :P

[alldeduction]

She's right, of course, but Sherlock is neither in the place to hear it, nor to acknowledge it, so he just glares petulantly like a four year old and turns his back so that he is curled inwards to the couch.

"You'll forgive me if I don't have a white flag to hand."