Just Johnlock- The Big Book of One Shots

You'll Never Forget: Part 1

          

Sherlock only noticed the strange man during TV time- he was quite sure he hadn't noticed him before. He was sitting with Major Sholto, a curious old man who always tried to convince the other patients that the gunfire on the TV was coming from outside of the windows. He always caused quite a stir, that's why they only let the elders watch game shows or the weather station. Half of them didn't know what was going on anyway, they wouldn't notice a difference. They were delirious, all of them, however Sherlock felt like he couldn't say anything against them because he felt like he had just woken up himself, woken out of some very odd dream. Sherlock tried to look at the clock and yet he must have misplaced his glasses, for all he could see was a very blurry white circle on the wall opposite, providing nothing but absentminded ticking and no time whatsoever. Maybe it was early in the morning, maybe it was late in the evening, oh but no one noticed, not really, because it wasn't five o'clock, it wasn't twelve o'clock, it wasn't one o'clock...it was TV time. Sherlock hated growing old, he had always feared it as a child and now here he was, with his aching joints and his useless eyes, with veiny hands and annoyingly long ear lobes, degraded and destroyed from his younger more beautiful self. The thing is, no matter how old he got, he would still be treated as helpless, like a toddler, only with nothing to look forward to. He wished he was a baby, still with a life ahead, now all he and the rest of his fellow elders in armchairs had only the grave to hope for. It was never a sad occasion whenever one of them died, of course tears were shed and funerals were held, and their room was sanitized back to its white beauty and the dead were replaced just as quickly with another young one who had been dumped by their family. However when one died people weren't necessary mourning their loss, they weren't thinking about how much of a shame it was, how they had so much left in their life, simply because they didn't seem to have a life anymore. They had no family, at least not any family that actually cared about them, and no purpose. They withered here, they died here, and people cried because they were jealous of the dead. Everyone here wished they could just die; it would be a lot less effort. Whether or not death led to Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, or simply blackness, wouldn't it be preferable to this? A life of armchairs and game shows and Jell-O with children's bibs protecting their freshly ironed sweater vests! Oh if only these nurses knew Sherlock in his prime, if only these inmates (sorry, patients) had seen him when he was beautiful! They wouldn't treat him like this, of that was for sure. He had been beautiful, that was one of the only vivid things Sherlock could remember from his youth. He would never recognize himself; no one would at that, if they saw what he had turned into today, what a hideous monster that stared back at him in the mirror! And to think this withered beast had descended from such an angel. He used to have curly black hair, now grayed and thinning, he used to have beautiful, shocking green and blue eyes, now dulled and covered in cataracts, his white teeth were replaced with dentures and his cheekbones were hidden by sagging wrinkles, oh what a shame, what a tragedy! He had been the desires of women and the envies of men, presumably. He couldn't quite remember the details.
                "Why are my photographs gone?" Sherlock wondered as he sat in his bed, the blankets being pulled to his chin by a nurse who he didn't recognize. Maybe she was new. The frames that used to decorate his bedside table had seemingly disappeared, replaced with a bouquet of flowers that was already starting to look dead. These rooms were much too depressing than should be legal, the white walls made him feel as though he was in a hospital and the scratchy blankets made his chin itch as he tried to sleep, and now all of his photographs, gone! Stolen! He tried to remember what had been on them, people; presumably, he was probably in a couple. And yet he didn't know what they were, what an agonizing memory block!
"They got very dusty, remember? They're being cleaned." The nurse assured with a smile, tucking her lock brown bangs back into her little white nurse hat and going to push Sherlock's little slippers under the bed where no one would notice them.
"That sounds like a lie." Sherlock decided.
"Why would I lie to you? Now are your dentures out?" she wondered. Sherlock growled, however he barred his gums to show her that his teeth were very much misplaced. She smiled in satisfaction, smiling at him like he was a child who had remembered to pick up his toys or something. If only.
"Anything else I can get you Mr. Holmes?" the nurse wondered as she wandered to the door, only asking that question to be polite, having no intentions of course, to help him with any of his other whims. This was one of the very few places that existed where the young didn't respect their elders.
"Yes, nurse, could you tell me if we have a new patient here?" Sherlock asked quickly, his mind jumping back to the stranger he had noticed at TV time, a stranger who had stuck in his degrading mind for the remainder of the day. It was odd, that a man could make such an impression on him, and yet here he was, finding that man stuck in his vivid memory once more.
"No, no new patients. Why do you ask?" she wondered, walking a couple of steps back into the room and yet she made no efforts to look like she wanted to stay. She hovered half way to the door, as if ready to make her dashing escape as soon as this conversation had ceased.
"There was a man...a man I've never seen before." Sherlock murmured, balling up some of the blankets in his wrinkled hand in annoyance, he didn't like feeling stupid, or delirious. Her smile made him feel stupid.
"Maybe you could describe him to me?" the nurse suggested, obviously doing her best to help despite her lack of caring. Sherlock sighed heavily, trying to think back to the man and what he had looked like. He remembered the moment, and the spot in which the man had been sitting, and yet for some reason that man somehow blended in with the rest of the men whenever Sherlock tried to pull out any describing features. They were all old, all bald, all wrinkled, how could he describe that man when he looked like every other man here? But there had been something; he knew there had to be something, maybe not physical but most certainly emotional about that man that separated him from the masses.
"I'm tired now." Sherlock said flatly, rolling over in his bed with some difficulty to try to cue the nurse to go away. He had given up on the hunt; he would try to find the man tomorrow. The lights went off and the nurse left, and Sherlock slept with the hopes that the strange man would still be there tomorrow.