Sherlock's Vivarium

John Watson and Gregory Lestrade were a dangerous combination sober. Drunk, they were enough to drive even Sherlock Holmes out of his own flat. There was a football match on that afternoon and as goals were made, alcohol was consumed, and by half-time, Sherlock was grabbing his belstaff and silently leaving them to their slight drunkenness in a whisk of black and bright blue. He could care less about sports, and didn’t have the desire to start now. “Going out, Sherlock?” Mrs. Hudson said, coming out of her small kitchen to water the plants by the front door.

“Just getting some fresh air. Maybe visit the morgue for a bit.” He turned to glare at the stairs when the two men in the living room started cheering loudly.

Mrs. Hudson chuckled a little. “Only you would constitute a morgue as ‘fresh air’. But if you didn’t, I guess you wouldn’t be Sherlock, would you? The rest of us will never know what goes on in that funny little head of yours, but, personally, I’d like to keep it that way.” She laughed outright now.

Sherlock’s features smoothed from the hard glare he’d been giving the door to 221B into the caring smile he reserved only for his landlady. “That would be in everyone’s best interest, I’m sure.” Then he excused himself and slipped out the door.

Upstairs in the flat Mrs. Hudson had let to a detective and a doctor, John’s team was winning, and Lestrade’s was close behind. The next hour was spent cursing at each other in their good-natured way, and giggling in their slight buzz. Finally, the final goal sealed Lestrade’s fate, and he was slapping ten quid in John’s outstretched hand. “You shouldn’t bet me anymore, mate. I seem to always be taking your money.” John had won the last four bets the two had made. “I mean, I don’t mind taking all your paychecks. I’m just looking out for you, after all.” He laughed at his own sarcastic joke.

“Shut up.” Lestrade mumbled. He kicked the football on the floor next to him and the white and black sphere connected with John’s shin. John leapt up and sent it back. Lestrade returned it, and it led John to push the coffee table out of the way and open up the center of the room. “You sure this is a good idea?” Lestrade asked.

“We’re not going to hurt anything by kicking a football back and forth, Greg.” John scoffed and passed the ball to his friend across the room.

“Alright, it’s your flat, not mine.” And the ball started dribbling back and forth across the living room of 221B, as the inebriated men tried not to topple over with their new lack of balance.

The miniature match was getting more aggressive and out-of-control every second, until John accidentally kicked the ball a little too hard, and it went sailing through the air. It flew right into the curio shelves behind Sherlock’s leather sitting chair. There was a sound of shattering glass and the crunch of something being crushed. “Shit!” John was suddenly very sober as he lunged across the room to see what he’d broken. He had smashed the glass pyramid that Sherlock had recently brought home and placed next to his black plastic globe, which was now, thankfully still intact, on the floor.

“What’d you break?” Lestrade asked, peering over his shoulder at the mess of sand and moss and shells.

“I don’t know, but whatever this thing was, it was Sherlock’s. He’d gone on that trip a few months ago, remember?”

“Yeah. Said Mycroft was forcing him to attend something family-related.”

“Well, he brought this back with him, and wouldn’t answer me when I asked what it was. He got all defensive, for no real reason at all. I figured he was just being Sherlock and just let him be. It must be something ‘off limits’, which are few and far between in this flat with him around.”

There was a long, slightly tense  silence, before Lestrade finally said, “Well, looks like you broke it.”

“Yes thank you, Greg!” John rolled his eyes. “Now, go get a bowl from the kitchen and help me clean it up.

The two men picked as much glass out of the sand as they could, and threw the hazardous material away. Then, they scooped the wet sand and moss into the bowl, set the shells on top, and wiped up the water that had been inside. “Hey, wait, is that part of it?” Lestrade pointed at the floor where something white was laying on the carpet.

John picked it up and saw that it was the head of a beautiful water lily, the petals on one side were crushed and a few were torn. “Yeah, I think so. I guess that explains the water.”

“Should we keep the contents? I mean, it’s just some sand.” Lestrade turned the bowl a little in his hands to look at it all.

“Yeah, just in case.” He set the flower in a tea cup filled with water and set the bowl and cup on the coffee table, which was now back in it’s original place. “I hope this doesn’t upset him. He’ll throw a fit and sulk around the flat for days, weeks maybe. I mean, I know it’s my fault, but the man can’t handle his daily routine being interrupted, can he?”

The door downstairs opened and they heard Mrs. Hudson say, “Back already, Sherlock?”

“Well, it’s been fun,” Lestrade began to hurriedly collect his jacket and wallet. “But I really must be going.”

He scuttled out the door. “You’re such a coward, Greg Lestrade!” John yelled after him.

Sherlock came inside the living room, and John stepped in front of his mess on the coffee table. Sherlock smiled in greeting, and pulling his coat off asked, “Why? What’s he done now? Skipped out before paying you that ten quid you bet?” John just pursed his lips in response. “What?” Sherlock asked again.

John took a deep breath and hoped and prayed he hadn’t broken anything important. “Look, Sherlock, Greg and I were kinda... kinda inebriated and being a little stupid. We were kicking the football around and I--” He paused and stepped out of the way so Sherlock could see the bowl and the cup. “I accidentally smashed your glass pyramid.” Sherlock stopped smiling and walked slowly to the contents of his pyramid. “If it was important to you, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break it.”

Sherlock picked up the bowl and looked at it for a second, before bringing the cup up to the same level. His face was deadpan. The same face John saw on crime scenes, or when Sherlock was lost in his mind palace. He couldn’t read it for the life of him, but John could see the wheels turning in his friend’s mind. Then, without saying a single word, or even glancing in John’s direction, Sherlock stiffened, and carried the kitchen items to his room, using his foot to shut the door behind him.

John felt suddenly guilty. He knew now that the glass pyramid must have meant a lot to Sherlock, by the way he acted, and he had smashed it. He was going to brush it off, remembering all the time Sherlock had purposefully destroyed his property. But then he admitted to himself that Sherlock had never dismantled anything that was special to him, and that Sherlock never showed any specific attachment to his things. Until now. With a heavy heart and a deep frown creasing his face, John did the only thing he knew how to do when he messed up: he put the kettle on.

Sherlock set the water lily-filled cup on his dresser and looked at all the items again. The lily was crushed and bent, and one of the shells was split in half. He frowned and sighed deeply. He couldn’t blame John or do anything other than forgive his friend. It was an accident after all. He poured the water from the cup into the bowl and set the lily on the wet sand. Then he folded his legs up on the duvet of his bed, held the memories in his lap, and just stared at them in silence for a while. It wasn’t John’s fault. Sherlock almost blamed himself. He had hesitated leaving his only item of sentimental value out in the living room, almost bringing it in to put it on his dresser. But the glass pyramid looked more at home next to his globe.

Faintly, he heard the hiss of a kettle going off. John was no doubt making him tea to say sorry, and sure enough, a timid knock came a few seconds later. Sherlock considered telling him to bugger off and leave him alone, but he was still too shocked to do anything but say, “Yes?”

John poked his head in cautiously. “Sherlock, I really am sorry. I can’t believe I’ve destroyed something that’s obviously important to you.” Sherlock set the bowl on his nightstand, and reached for the cup of tea. John shifted awkwardly and his tongue rolled over his bottom lip, a tick that occurred more often than not. “I didn’t mean--” Sherlock held a hand up to silence him, motioning for John to sit next to him. Hesitantly, John mimicked his friend’s position on the duvet.

The younger man took a sip of his tea, and couldn’t help but smile. John knew which was his favorite. “When I was a teenager,” He said, his voice was barely above a whisper, but John was so focused he could hear it all clear as a bell. “I got into a little bit of trouble with drugs, as you already know. My parents didn’t find out, even Mycroft was oblivious. It started small, of course. Nicotine and alcohol, typical sixteen year-old experimenting. I even tried marijuana once.” He scoffed. “Once was definitely enough. I was just looking for a quick way to escape my own head. Help me sleep at night, help me focus the racing thoughts a little, too. But eventually, you stop getting that pleasant buzz from cigarettes and nicotine patches, and that’s when I started looking for something else. When I was eighteen, I found it. Cocaine was fun. It was exhilarating and quick and easy to self-administer; got into your system faster than nicotine, that’s for sure.”

The whole time Sherlock spoke, he didn’t take his eyes off the wall across from him, his thumb rubbing the rim of his cup thoughtfully. “It also gets under your skin faster, too. Addiction to anything can only take a few moments, John, and within two highs, I was caught. It still took a while for my family to notice anything was wrong. But, my father was the one that found me out. I thought I was home alone and, stupidly, tried to inject in my room. Father had just gotten home and needed to ask me a question, and when he opened the door, neither of us were prepared for it. My mum cried. Mycroft blamed himself for not noticing. My dad wouldn’t speak to me anymore. See, even genius has it’s stupidity, and that was definitely mine. Strength and weakness, all wrapped up in a plastic bag and a shiny little needle.”

John nodded grimly. He’d seen one too many teenagers admitted to the hospital for drug use in his time, and the mental image of Sherlock in that state suddenly formed in his mind. Eighteen, gaunt, mumbling, itching, his sweaty curls sticking to him as he shook and screamed at the nurses who tied him down and-- John licked his lip nervously again and dropped his face to the duvet to stop the image.

Sherlock took another drink of his tea. “They needed to do something about me. ‘Handle me and my situation’, as my father put it. So, Mum brought up my Aunt Kyrie, suggesting they send me away to her and her secluded home for a while. The very next day, I was in the family car headed to Swansea Bay. Father sent the driver to take me, no one came along, no one even said goodbye. I knew I had messed up, but I didn’t know they would hate me that much.”

Sherlock paused again for another sip of tea. Even though his eyes remained on the wall, and his posture rigid, John could tell the story was getting more difficult to recount. “My Aunt Kyrie accepted me with open arms, and showed me to my room. She lived in a beach house, surrounded by white sand and my bedroom had a nice view of the ocean. I really didn’t care. I just locked myself in it and sulked for a few days. Barely eating, barely speaking. Just glaring at any object I could. Aunt Kyrie didn’t push me, just smiled and spoke to me as she always used to at family parties and gatherings. With love and acceptance and grace. She had a special fondness for me, one I didn’t feel from anyone else in the family.

“I didn’t know how bad I was going to need that. Withdrawal hit me hard two days after I got there. I woke up screaming from a nightmare. I was shaking and sweating and I felt destructive. I actually put my fist into the drywall in an attempt to feel something. I needed a hit. That’s what I yelled, screamed, at her when she came in to see if I was alright. She simply told me no. Her calm demeanor and firmness shocked me and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I just slumped to sit on the bed. Aunt Kyrie came and pulled me into a hug. ‘Do you like feeling this way?’ she asked me, and that’s the first time I’d cried in years. I’ll never forget what she told me next. ‘You don’t have to do it by yourself, because we all trip and we all fall so, so hard, though we never think we ever would. We’re all flawed, but we can all be an example of starting over.’”

Sherlock closed his eyes and paused, falling back in time. “From there it was only up. I stopped lashing out at her, and she helped me recover. She brought me tea and blankets when I woke up with shakes and cold sweats. She was the one who taught me how to build my mind palace, to store memories and facts away for easy recollection and distraction. Whenever I would start to think about sneaking away to slip back into my habit, I’d go to the room in my Mind Palace that was filled with her words.” He smiled, and looked at John now. “I spent an entire summer there. I helped her cook and clean and we read and walked on the beach together.”

Sherlock reached out and pulled the water lily from it’s bowl and held it out to show his friend. John looked at the crushed and broken flower with a bit of curiosity. “She had a small greenhouse, and one of the things she grew was water lilies. Every week I was clean, we’d set one out into the ocean; she said it was a metaphor. That the pure flower was breaking free of the chains of it’s vines to float away, and live to it’s true design. It was cheesy and... sentimental, but it was also comforting and helpful. My Aunt Kyrie was the only person I’d ever trusted. Before you, obviously.” John felt a tinge of guilt again at destroying the flower.


The lily went back into its bowl. “After the summer was over, I went back to London to attend Uni. I never even told my parents I was there. Mycroft found me eventually, but I would have nothing to do with him; he and I have such a strained relationship now because I never forgave him for abandoning me when I needed him most, like our parents had.” It was silent for a minute as Sherlock thought about what he did and didn’t want to share next. Finally, he continued. “Every time I felt like slipping, every time I was tempted to get just one more hit, I’d call her and sit in the closet of my dorm room, like a frightened little kid, and tell her everything. All the stress I was under at that time, and that it was a Danger Night. She would listen, and at the end she would always tell me that I was doing so well and to stay strong. That I shouldn’t let those lilies be uprooted in vain.”

His gaze shifted more prominently to John. “I left on that trip a while back because I’d gotten the word that she’d passed away. I went out to the funeral on her beach, and I sent her to follow our lilies. Afterwards, after everyone had dissipated, I was still standing on the beach. The pyramid was called a ‘vivarium’, and I had filled it with sand and shells and a bit of moss I had found on the beach. Then, I’d gone into the greenhouse and found just one last water lily growing there.” He looked over at the bowl, then shook his head roughly. “But it was stupid. Just, sentiment. Nothing really.”

John shifted awkwardly, clenching and unclenching his fists against his knees. “It’s not--”

“I just want to be alone now.” Sherlock said, cutting him off again. “Please.”

John just nodded. He stood and left without another word. Just before he shut the door behind him, he heard Sherlock say, “I do forgive you, though.”

John closed the door with a gentle ‘click’, and walked up to his bedroom. But he didn’t sleep. He knew Sherlock had forgiven him, but he also knew that his friend would feel no remorse over damaging, say, his army uniform. John, though, had a natural tendency to care. Sherlock often wrote the quality off as weakness, but John never listened to Sherlock’s rants about feelings anyway. He wanted to make it up to him; to fix the situation he had, literally, broken. He slept a little, only a few hours, before he had an idea, and suddenly knew what he could do for Sherlock. He pulled open his laptop and began typing.

******

Sherlock slept later than he had in a long time. His head still hurt when he woke up, and it took all his willpower not to look at the bowl on his dresser and to go straight to the shower instead. He let the hot water run over him, and started to feel better as the steam cleared his head from the dreams of the night before. After he’d gotten ready for the day, he went out to the kitchen to make himself some tea and maybe a piece of toast. John was sitting at the table, and he smiled when the detective came into the room. “Good, you’re up. C’mon, our cab is waiting.”

“John, I don’t want to go out. Today is a Mind Palace day. The couch calls.” And he quickly changed direction and strode over to his favorite piece of furniture, throwing himself onto it and placing his fingers under his chin in his favorite imitation of a chapel. He knew what John was trying to do, but he just wanted to forget about the whole thing.

John rolled his eyes. “For gods sake, Sherlock. Just get up and come outside.”

Sherlock cracked one eye, and noticed the dark circles under the doctor’s eyes. John hadn’t slept last night. Finally, he gave in. “Alright. Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

A few minutes later they were in the cab John had called, flying out of London and in the direction of the address the good doctor had given to the cabbie. Sherlock watched the scenery in silence, spacing out completely, until he suddenly recognized where he was. He sat straight up and looked out at Swansea Bay. He would have asked John what they were doing there, but for once, the genius was caught of guard and at a loss for words.

The cabbie stopped at the end of the driveway to the little ocean-side cottage. The evening sun was glinting off the ocean, the waves acting as diamonds in a bed of greens and blues. The white sand was as pristine and undisturbed as freshly fallen snow, and the small cottage looked inviting, even though it was empty and abandoned. Sherlock still didn’t say anything. He just got out of the cab and walked slowly toward the ocean.

John paid the cabbie, and grabbed the gift he’d hidden under a blanket in the front seat, before following Sherlock onto the sand. His friend had made it all the way down the beach and was standing only a few feet from the water line. With his hands in his pockets, he stared out at the ocean, lost in his thoughts and his past. John walked carefully up to his side, and slowly reached down and grabbed his wrist.

Sherlock let John pull his hand out of his pant’s pocket, but when something cold and flat was being set in his open palm, it broke him from his reverie. He looked down and a brand new pyramid vivarium was in his hand. He took it and stared at it for a few seconds before looking up and asking, “How did--”

This time, it was John who put a hand up to signal for silence. “I searched the internet for hours, before tracking this down at around seven this morning. I had to drive a while to get it, so you’d better be grateful. And I called your brother to get the address.” John licked his bottom lip again. “I figured, if I broke it, maybe I can fix it?”

Sherlock smiled and gave his only friend a large hug, holding him for a few minutes, before breaking away and looking down at the sand around his feet. John walked back up to the road to give Sherlock some privacy as he picked up shells and scoops of sand to fill the glass container. A half hour later, John walked back down to find Sherlock sitting on the back porch of the cottage, the new vivarium filled with sand and seaweed and shells of all sorts of color. A layer of sea water swam around inside its transparent home, adding a blue charm to the sand and vivid seaweed. “We used to sit out here and drink lemonade after we sent out the lilies.” Sherlock looked over at the wire table still on the porch. “I used to pick on her for letting sea water erode the table, and for allowing it to collect rust, but now I see her point: it looks less industrialized this way.”

“Your Aunt must’ve liked her pastoral furniture.” John put his hands in his pocket, and tried to make casual conversation.

Sherlock just nodded. “She was definitely a nature person. That’s why she grew all sorts of plants and flowers, like the lilies. I just wish I had another one to put in this time. I checked the greenhouse, and they’re all gone.” He shifted his gaze from the ocean to his feet.

“Dammit.” John frowned.

“It’s OK, John, really. I--”

“No, it’s not.” The military man turned sharply and walked away before Sherlock could object or stop him again; the lily was the most important part of all of this. To John, it was only a flower, but to Sherlock, he realized, it was a symbol of strength and starting over. And he had crushed the hell out of the last one. He went around the side of the house to the little window-filled shed and spent twenty minutes lifting every potter, scouring every patch of dirt, only to find green, red, pink, but no white. Just as he was about to give up, though, he found it. There was a small water lily desperately trying to grow under the shade of a larger, green plant. John picked it, and carried it back to the porch, trying very hard not to crush or bend it. But, when he rounded the cottage and saw the porch, Sherlock wasn’t there anymore.

John looked around, and through the glare of the setting sun, he saw him again. He walked down to the dock and sat at the end, once again folding his legs pretzel-style to mirror the genius. “Here. I promised you I’d fix it.” He held out the tiny flower.

Sherlock looked at it silently, the white petals reflecting the purples and yellows of the sunset before them. He put the flower in and shut the lid lovingly. Then, he looked back out at the sunset. He didn’t say anything, but John didn’t need him to. He had done his best, and if he didn’t fix it, at least he’d tried. He did more than Sherlock would, had their roles been reversed, but John wasn’t focused on that. The sun was starting to slip under the water, the deep colors stretching across the sea and reaching like fingers for the friends on the dock. Just as the red and pinks drowned in greens and blues, John felt Sherlock nudge his shoulder with his own, and he heard a very soft, very sincere, “Thank you.”