sherlockfic: only an afterthought

I'll think of a title later.

Only an Afterthought
Fandom: Sherlock/Inception



"I think," Arthur says slowly, watching through the crystal-clear bulletproof glass woven in strips of brilliant silver netting and trying not to shiver, "that our client left out something."

Cobb's utterly fascinated, and when Arthur can fight down the freaked the fuck outed-ness enough to think objectively, he can understand why. Normal dreams may be of less consequence than any Freudian cigar, but when they're sharing them, they always mean something. Arthur's lived in the minds of the most literal, pedantic of thinkers, their tiny, tedious dreams hazy-edged and colorless; the figuratives dream like life lived in metaphor, dragons curled behind ordinary walls; impossibly perfect, oversaturated summers in countries seen only in pictures and television tucked in closets, waiting to be found. There's the common to the fantastic and everything that ever existed in between, the breadth of human imagination in its entirety and still only the smallest part of all that the human mind can conjure, but this, this is new, like the first time he dreamed lucid and realized the possibilities were endless.

Shivering, Arthur steps back, looking away from the too-vivid presence inside, black hair and grey eyes and constant, ruthless circles of the padded white room. The entire goddamn place is like this, and for all Arthur sometimes feels there's nothing that can unnerve him, this too-precise reality is doing just that. Walls meet in corners as sharp as well-honed razors, stark white paint reflects the merciless glare of clear white lights, and every shadow is as deep as a starless night. It's freezingly cold even under the three thin blankets that Arthur stole from a series of empty, anonymous rooms, and the headache started the moment he was trapped in this tiny universe of endless, brutal white. The man in the room seems like the only life and the color left in what feels like all the world, any world.

Which, Arthur thinks, may be the entire point.

It's so unsettlingly simple: a room furnished with nothing more than a chill metal bed stripped of sheets to bare mattress and a flat mound of pillow; a space made of four stark walls, a metal-framed observation window, a locked metal door: a man in white scrubs so vivid it's hard to look at anything else. For a job that should have been a standard in and out, as it turns out, there's a real possibility getting out may end up the actual goal.

"Still no smells," Cobb says thoughtfully; Arthur wonders if Cobb has blinked once since they found the guy after what felt like miles of echoingly empty corridors. He hasn't gotten to the point to taking Eames' bets on the emergence of Cobb's purely academic fascination with dream sharing, but it's looking like Eames was right as usual, the fucker, and he's going to be losing money regularly, drunken weekends in Monaco not required. "I wonder," Cobb says slowly, eyes narrowing and leaning closer; from what Arthur can work out from the precise design of the dream layering the maze, this is a one way mirror, and he should take more comfort from that than he does when the mark looks back at them. Arthur waits for Cobb to finish, but apparently that's all the deathless wisdom he's going to get while his fingers and toes slowly approach zero.

If this, Arthur thinks blankly, is someone's idea of an imagination under ruthless control, God help them all if they find out what it's like unrestrained. The level of detail is unsettling, from the stereo sounds of their sensible shoes on the cheap tile floor to the antiseptic taste of the air. Arthur would give a lot for the duller yellow-greens of actual institutional lighting that makes everyone look softer and faintly jaundiced. Or fuck, bring on the disco ball; who the hell can stand this? It's hyperreal and too-real, dragging on his nerves the way that surrealistic landscapes and buildings bending against spacetime never have. The ruthlessly sharp angles, maybe, or the lighting, or the ruthless precision of it all; increased detailing during a dream isn't common even when lucid, but Arthur's not surprised the guy is pulling it off. Arthur can do it, and God knows, Cobb can strip them down and back like he thinks, but Cobb's a fucking nut and only believes in limits as they apply to things he's not doing himself.

The increasing cold isn't the only thing; from experience, a subject's emotional state can influence all aspects of a dream, but if he's right (and he is) this is an exercise in control. The deepening contrast, comic-book intense, the way that the subject's made a black and white movie with himself in high definition technicolor in the center of it isn't subtle--hello narcissistic personality, right on target--but it's also far too methodical for someone who isn't working lucid and Arthur doesn't like the feeling that the the safe is empty and they've been locked inside without even knowing it.

It was supposed to be a simple enough job. Big brother's untouchable, but little brother is anything but, trampling through London with a cell phone and the casual sense of entitlement the British upper class have turned into a high functioning personality disorder. Under big brother's surveillance but slipping it as easily as he breathes, and it took a while for Arthur to be as impressed by that as their employers had been. Three potential complications other than big brother: a flatmate, a former military doctor; a widowed landlady whose deceased ex-husband made the front page of every newspaper in the western world with his predilection for rentboys in their component parts; and a typical Scotland Yard detective with an atypically high solve rate.

This isn't the most complicated job they've ever done; it's not even the most difficult. Little brother's drug habit may be former (not so much, actually), but only just, and while his contacts had been surprisingly reticent, some of the other customers hadn't been. They hadn't risked meeting him as themselves first to get a better sense of his personality; that much the record had warned for, an eidetic memory, high deductive reasoning, and a stratospheric IQ combined with a hobby investigating and solving complex crimes. That, Arthur thinks, might have been a mistake, but then again, Arthur can't say that any number of meetings would have led him to anticipate this. They're at four hours subjective time and counting and little brother hasn't said a goddamn word; what he's saying with this dream is not something Arthur thinks he has any desire to be qualified to understand.

Arthur takes a deep breath and nearly coughs as Cobb's observation drifts through his mind. He's right; the air is devoid of scent, even antiseptic, and with taste still intact (antiseptic, impossible without scent, and yet) he's jumpier than he can ever remember being on a job. Maybe even more so; stripping a sense out like that in the subconscious means something, and Arthur has a feeling that whatever it is, they sure as fuck aren't being paid enough to deal with it blind.

Abruptly, the temperature begins to rise from what had to be sub-zero, stabilizing somewhere north of instant hypothermia, and their mark stops short, head snapping up sharply to stare through the one-way mirrored window, acknowledging it for the first time. Expressionless blue eyes seem to meet Arthur's for a single, uncomfortable moment before the man turns sharply away.

"Did you do that with the temperature?" Arthur whispers hopelessly; he knows Cobb didn't even before he shakes his head. Their mark is learning, and Arthur doesn't really like it when they do that; it makes things more unpredictable than they need to be. "We're running out of time," he murmurs; four hours, fuck that, they need four days just to figure out a goddamn approach. "What--"

"Where is John?" the man asks abruptly, eyes fixed on Arthur like he can actually see him; the way this is going, it's possible he can.

Cobbs hesitates, eyes narrowing, then pushes off; it looks like he's decided it's time for interaction, and despite the fact that's the entire goddamn point, Arthur is nearly overcome by the impulse to tackle him to the floor, kick themselves out of here, and blacklist the fuckers that hired them, and that doesn't make any kind of sense.

If this was another Architect, another Extractor, Arthur thinks vaguely, he'd think maybe that was the entire point.

"Dom--"

"I have an idea," Cobb says, all crazy-eyed fascination, and Arthur can't even bring himself to be surprised; the more they've stared into that room, the more that Arthur's sure that he's looking at everything backward. That room is dangerous, but not in any way it should be, not in a way that will end with waking up via strangulation or blunt force trauma either.

Which is why Cobb's going in, after all.

The subject turns when Cobb opens the retinal-scanned door--what the fuck, Arthur thinks again, retinal scan? Really?--and a white-coated, white-suited psychiatrist as insane as their inmate and just as suddenly, painfully vivid, is strolling into the room. It takes a second for Arthur to recognize the numb feeling of his tongue is the abrupt cessation of taste.

Cobb grins, of course; he felt it, too. "So we should talk."

The man looks at Cobb, evaluative like a butcher faced with a small herd of cows and a sadistic imagination; a cold war scientist given carte blanche, a prison of war criminals, and a fully stocked lab; a man who never met ordinary facing one who forgot the meaning of the word. This can end badly in a lot of ways, and some of them have nothing to do with dying ridiculously in a literalist's mental hospital of a mind.

The man doesn't answer; in his pristine ice-white scrubs, colorless bare feet poking from beneath the ruler-straight edge of the pants, there's nothing to look at, nothing to hold onto but intense blue eyes; it takes a second for Arthur to parse everything together (Cobb, the fucker, never did learn to share), but he's not sure if it's supposed to be a relief that this might be the work of someone who knows they're dreaming lucid or a reason to escalate panic to, fuck me there be dragons, run now. Three senses in working order, if you could call this working; it begs the question just how much this guy can strip his own senses, how much he could want to.

It occurs to Arthur, uneasily, that they have at least a couple of hours left in subjective time and they really don't want to test if their subject can create a perfect sensory-deprivation hell for them. If it comes to that, he and Cobbs can probably get everything back on track, but the fact he's using the word 'probably' is a sign that there's no good reason to let it get that far.

"Where is John?" the man asks again, unyielding.

"No idea." Cobb looks around the room. "Nice place you've got here."

The man doesn't respond for a moment; for all his focus is on Cobb, Arthur can sense that he's still tracking him through the window. "I've been here before," he says finally, slowly; Arthur almost wants to ask what sadistic fuck built a real place that's anything like this, then understands. Here, this, this place, and hearing it confirms what their employers had told them; Arthur sifts through their intel on big brother and feels a strangely hollow sensation low in his gut. Black market PASIVs haven't penetrated the borders of Britain, but the government would still have their original prototypes; big brother would have access. Hell, if Arthur's read the intel right, he might have been in on the project himself.

There's a lot of ways little brother may have gotten access, but once you learn how to lucid dream, it's not something you ever forget, and this guy wouldn't have forgotten if he had a choice. If he's been here before, it wasn't because he chose to be.

"Yeah, kind of figured." Cobb leans forward, elbows on knees. "Let's go with conversational classics. My name is--"

"Dominic Cobb, CIA operative and interrogator, retired, suspected of the murder of his wife Mal Cobb, cleared of all charges after a two year whirlwind manhunt. Currently wandering itinerant in Europe with his children, sources of income unknown. At least, unknown until I became a method by which you receive it, I suppose."

Cobb's smile widens; he always falls for the crazies, Arthur thinks a little despairingly.

"Nice job. Got anything else?"

"Three," the man says slowly, eyes focusing inward. "Oxford, September 2005, graduate psychology experiment in lucid dreaming, ended abruptly, no paper released to current date. St. Bartholomew's Hospital, November 2006, voluntary drug trial; seventy subjects were accepted from the homeless population. Fifty-four have been accounted for, thirty of whom committed suicide within six months, no investigation into the whereabouts of the remaining sixteen. January 2007--" the man stops there, eyes focusing on Cobb. "Select inmates of St. Bartholomew's psychiatric ward were made the subject of an experimental trial of a new anti-psychotic combined with what was considered a revolutionary treatment, details unknown; when it was suspended, all patients were accounted for. There were eighty participants that met the requirements for the trial; of the original eighty, ten committed suicide within six weeks of cessation of the trial, twelve entered and remain in a catatonic state, and five showed dramatic improvement and were eventually released."

"You ever wonder why you were one of the five?"

The man ignores the question. "What is the time differential?" the man asks.

"One to eight, exponential increase the farther you go down," Cobb says softly. "Which you already guessed; you've been counting with the temperature and detail changes, haven't you? It was too regular to be just testing the parameters of lucid dreaming."

"You have a three hour window before I would be missed and if you did your research--which I assume you did--you would be aware you would have very little leeway to complete the interrogation and deposit me somewhere easily discovered. That is, if you planned to release me at all." The man tilts his head infinitesimally. "I never guess, Mr. Cobb."

Cobb looks thoughtful; Arthur realizes that his hand's closed around his gun in the pocket of his coat and almost sighs in relief. At least he's being a careful idiot.

"What do you want to know?"

"How much you remember of what happened to you during the third trial." Cobb gets up, walking past the man to touch the wall curiously. "They asked the wrong question; it would have been a better idea to ask me to just test you and see what you could do. The Haldol and LSD they were spiking you with was enough to kill short term memory retention, and even lucid dreams fade eventually. What were you committed for, by the way?"

"I was diagnosed with schizophrenia untyped two years after starting University," Sherlock says calmly, watching Cobb with focused attention. "Despite medication, my condition continued to degrade until I entered an almost constant state of psychosis. My brother petitioned for custody and had me committed. The terms of my commitment were at Her Majesty's pleasure; for Americans, you might say a life sentence."

"Ouch."

"Which you already knew," the man says coolly. "You're unsurprisingly well-informed."

"You would have taken the gun you know I'm carrying and shot yourself if you didn't think I could answer your questions," Cobb answers mildly, and Arthur almost sighs. "I thought I'd better be ready for when you're ready to start asking them. After all, I did notice the only doorknob in this room is on the inside."

Abruptly, Arthur can taste again, antiseptic and bitter, edged with something coppery like fresh blood. It's not a memory, he thinks, not exactly, what this man's creating; it's a symbol. Arthur tries to think of how long the trial could have lasted--two weeks, probably, maybe four. In context, the room makes sense; one door , a room stripped of color and texture, minimization of all external stimuli, a room where the doorknob exists only on the inside, the world cut off and cut out; Christ, this is this man's sense of safety, security, rationality when the real world was none of those things.

"You didn't hide any of the answers; you wrote them into yourself. That's a new one." Cobb glances at the window, eyes meeting Arthur's. "So you finished marking time; I guess that means you think someone's going to find you and you wanted to give them time to do it. Big brother, I assume?"

For the first time, Arthur feels the dream shiver, right down to the base structure; years, Arthur reminds himself, four weeks could have meant he was here for years, and he might not remember, but he knows. All this control is instinct and genius level intellect working in tandem, not actual remembered experience, but that just makes this entire thing that much more unstable.

When Arthur looks at the walls, the glaring white almost seems to glow; it's like staring at a stereo picture, looking for the picture inside, white on white on white, like being snowblind. This man hid everything right in their faces, built it around them in white walls and small rooms; they were given all their answers freely, except--

"'I'm disappointed, Mr. Cobb," the man says mockingly. "It seems you didn't do your research after all."

Cobb's eyes widen, and Arthur actually feels the 'oh fuck' start before everything dissolves; when he opens his eyes again, he's staring groggily down the barrel of a gun held by a former army doctor with uncomfortably steady hands and Arthur thinks yeah, they could have done better research. He can feel the zip ties around his wrists, and not for the first time, he wonders how the fuck this can be his life.

"Who are you," John Watson says, his voice as precise and cold as that white room. "And what did you do to Sherlock?"

---

There's nothing as dangerous, Arthur reflects sourly, as a gifted amateur with psychopathic tendencies. Combine that with a wounded veteran with diagnosed PTSD and an illegal firearm, and this story can end in many ways and most of them bad. He's pretty sure they won't be shot out of hand--Cobb's a decent barometer for dealing with the crazy--he doesn't worry when sane people should, but also tends to do his best work when nothing should make any sense at all--but that's still a gun and the safety is off.

"I still can't believe you didn't know about this" Cobb says to Arthur, an hour and a carefully tense semi-interrogation later. "Wounded army doctor and fucking marksman on the side? Oh, and let's not forget he found us in under three hours, which--actually, how'd you do that?"

Arthur turns his head enough in a slow 'fuck you', more to distract Cobb from a potential recruitment than anything else, because this is so not the time. "He watches soap operas with the landlady and takes out her trash on trash day. Tell me what about that screams carries illegal gun and seems to like using it?"

John doesn't so much as change expression, but Sherlock Holmes, their unexpectedly complicated target, smiles slightly. "It's in our best interests that John's abilities remain somewhat--how would you put it? Under the radar. I was aware I was under observation, so it was simple enough to decide the most convenient time to allow myself to be taken."

"Now you're just being condescending," Cobb complains, sighing.

"I texted him while you were measuring the sedative."

"You were unconscious," Arthur says flatly, because Arthur checked him personally, several times, while Cobb says, delighted, "While it was in your back pocket. I knew I should have taken your phone," but Arthur can't get over that, continuing, "The dose I gave you--"

"I have an extremely high tolerance to most common sedatives," Sherlock says, faintly ironic. "I would have said that information would have been impossible for you to acquire, but in light of this situation, it seems there are still records in existence after all."

John's eyes flicker to Sherlock briefly, then back to survey Arthur and Cobb with chill attention. He's the most ordinary, unassuming man that Arthur's ever seen; he'd vanish into any crowd even if he was a crowd of one. A very ordinary, well-armed man who just found out his flatmate's elder brother might very well have used him for clinical trials on experimental lucid dreaming while under psychiatric care at that; Arthur supposes Cobb has reason to look so ridiculously relaxed zip-tied to the chair. If anyone's going to see the wrong end of that gun, it will be Mycroft Holmes.

"You don't remember any of it," John says again, not disbelieving, more filing away the confirmation for later; definitely a soldier, right down to the perfect posture and faint air of potential homicide. The blue eyes fix on Arthur again, apparently finally recognizing which of them will actually answer his questions without descending into dream theory; that only took an hour of unmitigated aggravation. "A secret clinical trial at St. Bart's six years ago? Why did they want to know if he remembered? At this point, why would it even matter?"

"Knowing why wasn't part of the contract," Arthur answers honestly. "And before you ask, it was a blind job; we don't know who hired us, just that they were willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for the information."

John glances at Sherlock, who's left them to John's tender mercies to sample everything in the room. Theoretically, Sherlock can't build his own PASIV from memory, but Arthur wouldn't place any bets on that from the way he stares at it.

"If I were guessing," Cobb says, never one to be deterred by imminent violence when he could be expounding on theory, "someone thinks there was something unusual about that trial, and they can't get it from the government. If there's any records left."

"There are," Sherlock says, looking at them with gleaming grey eyes; it's like watching Cobb at work, happily lost in research and theory. He and John haven't shared an understanding glance, but Arthur has a feeling it's really just a matter of time. "They may not be in a conveniently portable form, but they will be there."

Mycroft Holmes of course--untouchable by any sane man's standard: more importantly, even by Cobb's completely crazy ones.

"I'm sure he considered the risks worth the potential reward," Sherlock answers dismissively. "I was an embarrassment to the family; the timing of my commitment seems to imply he believed I could be of use in the the trials."

John doesn't answer, but his hand tightens worryingly on the hilt of the gun. Arthur jerks at that; it hadn't occurred to him that Sherlock's commitment might have been specifically time to qualify him for that trial.

By the look on Cobb's face, he'd just thought of that, too. "What can you remember?"

"I had begun to experiment with cocaine my second year at university soon after I was diagnosed; by the time I completed my studies, I was an addict. Drug dependency had already degraded my impulse control, and in response to the increasing frequency of disordered thought, I increased my dosage; the psychosis that resulted was inevitable," Sherlock answers without interest. "Two years after I left university, I suffered a complete psychotic break; the six months that followed that before my eventual commitment are fragmentary at best. Until now, I had assumed the retrograde amnesia was a result of both the psychosis and subsequent treatment."

"Cocaine," Cobb says out of nowhere. Sherlock looks at him curiously. "Interesting choice."

"Cocaine was far more socially acceptable in my family than something as common as amphetamines, despite the far greater ease of acquisition, as I could synthesize it myself." Sherlock answers. "You were specific in what the subconscious filters in the dream state: psychotropics and depressives. Stimulants, I assume, are a different case."

Cobb grins back. "I see why they call you a genius."

Arthur turns his head to stare at him; what the everloving fuck.

"I spent a lot of time with the criminally insane," Cobb says conversationally. "And not just the ones in the military I was supposed to be training or interrogating. They had the men hopped up on stimulant cocktails like insomnia was a workable lifestyle choice. Amphetamines and meth were the baseline; the combinations got creative after that. Most of them, it raised the potential for violence, stripping away impulse control and lowering inhibitions; pretty much ideal for what they wanted their guys to do. But once in a while, there were these guys that took it a whole other direction. They got really quiet, focused, really goal-oriented. It took us a while to figure it out, but it wasn't a bug after all; this was a whole new feature, and we found it by accident."

"Dom," Arthur says incredulously, "shut the fuck up."

"Those guys," Cobb says, ignoring Arthur in a fit of rare predictability, "they go into dreamland, not a lot of sex harems and visiting their dead mothers. Lots of controlled environments though, high realism. They navigated reality and dream levels without even breaking a sweat; that type didn't question what was real and what wasn't. They knew. You couldn't shake them or confuse them no matter what you did. Five seconds in, they knew where they were like they knew how to breathe. Right down to the level. They didn't know that wasn't standard; they couldn't understand why no one else could do that."

"What I want to know," John says, looking back at Cobb with flinty eyes, "is why you're telling us this."

Sherlock picks up one of the IV lines thoughtfully. "I think that's fairly self-evident, John," he says; from the corner of his eye, Arthur sees Cobb roll his eyes, and this time, John looks right at him and yeah, this is their lives, welcome to it.

"It's not self-evident to me," John says patiently, while Arthur just looks at Cobb, because really, smug satisfaction so isn't sexy or cute when you're zip-tied to a goddamn chair. "Take us through it, if you would."

"I believe that Mr. Cobb--"

"Dom," Cobb says expansively.

"Dom," Sherlock allows, with a faint, actual smile; Arthur hadn't realized he could do that, "didn't take this job merely for the money he was offered."

Of course not. Sometimes it's just an excuse to find new and creative ways to be an insane genius in dreamspace.

"He was curious why of the many people involved in the three trials, it was so important that a participant from the third trial be questioned, and why I was specified. There were many much easier targets without the complications associated with acquiring me. He is assuming--correctly, I might add--that there is something important that resulted from the third trial, above and beyond the recovery of five patients who had been deemed incurably insane." Sherlock pauses. "Because that part they were not interested in at all, were they? It was something else."

"Bingo. They were specific. They wanted one of those five released cases; two men, three women, by the way, which I'm guessing you already know. Funny thing; none of the earlier trials had anything like you five. Or at least, not anyone that was released back into the general population as a well-defused bomb; since the second trial involved a portion of the homeless population, there had to be a percentage with a major mental illness, so why was the third trial different? Those four aren't exactly easy to find, much less ask; we wouldn't have risked taking you this time if we'd had a more accessible option."

Cobb's smile fades, and a lot of the crazy goes right along with it; abruptly, Arthur's sitting by the army's most successful interrogator, the most skilled extractor in the world.

"Like I said, some of those guys got in dreamscape, not a lot of fantasy and playing god emperor of Dune; they weren't visually creative, they didn't have the spatial training to do any basic architecture, they didn't imagine up Babylon on a Friday night; everything was either an exercise in minimalism or a very specific recreation of a memory. We don't use memories; too easy to get lost in them. We stopped trying to tell them to stop, though. They knew to the second the time they were in, the differential, and they knew what was real, even the projections. You couldn't fuck them up. They lived in reality even when they were dreaming."

Arthur doesn't like where this is going.

"If you want a navigator, someone who could get through the entire level, every level, and never lose their touch on reality, they were who you grabbed. There just aren't many of them; we don't even know what makes them able to do that." Cobb's eyes are fixed on Sherlock in something very like wonder. "In what appears to be an unrelated story, five people walked out of St. Bart's effectively cured of an incurable mental illness. Five completely unrelated people with the same tenuous diagnosis, by the way. They didn't put you under for four weeks and be done with it, so that's multiple trips, and standard procedure in all the trials is five minutes, ten, twenty, then anything goes, and from the way you were in there, I mean, anything. That alone makes you interesting to anyone who knew about the third trial. A trial, by the way, that even we didn't know about until this job."

John swallows. "How could they know--know that they could--do what you were talking about? How do you even know?"

"Sherlock," Cobb says casually, "how long were we in there?"

"Forty nine minutes," he answers without hesitation, then stills. "The differential was seven point three six eight. You rounded up."

"Three and a half hours, relative time, roughly" Cobb answers, meeting Sherlock's eyes. "Like I said, they always know. They know real time and they know the differential. Three, four, five layers in, never fucks them up. They just know."

Cobb meets Sherlock's eyes. "Right now, we're limited by our grasp of reality; the longer you're in, the harder it is to tell the difference, much less believe it. Now, if I wanted to put someone under for a ten year run, for whatever reason, anything long term, I get a convenient navigator, someone who could live there and not ever forget where he was and still manage not to go crazy. Until now, not many people could do long term lucid without side effects; no one could do it indefinitely. But you--you just changed the rules. Not that I want to test this or anything, but I bet you could wait out Limbo if you had to and never notice eternity."

Arthur sucks in a breath, understanding what Cobb's getting at; the greatest danger of dreaming in levels is that the human brain loses its hold on reality so easily, so quickly. Active use of long-term dreaming--decades, maybe even centuries--that doesn't just change the rules, that changes how the rules are even made. What they can accomplish, how many levels they can navigate, how much time that can be spent there are up for review.

"They asked me," Cobb says, "to find out what you remembered. Because if I'm right--and I am, trust me--that trial successfully created at least one and as many as five fully functional navigators. And they want to know how to reproduce it."

"Five out of eighty," John says flatly.

"That's a very acceptable result to get someone that can do what he can."

"You won't--" Cobb's staring down the barrel of John's gun; for the first time, he starts to look nervous. There's a very real possibility John might just do it. "I won't let you--"

"I wasn't paid to evaluate, and in this case, I'd lie anyway. But I'm pretty sure whoever hired us is not the only one who's curious about five institutional patients who woke up sane for all the wrong reasons. And when they get the balls to put you under--and they will, you're ridiculously interesting just on the theory level--they'll realize what you are. You can try and hide it, but I'm not the only one who knows about navigators. When they do, you five aren't just a curiosity; you're valuable. Valuable enough that no number of powerful big brothers will be enough to stop them from trying to get you, and to use you, and to figure out how to make even more of you."

John slowly lowers the gun.

"That's what you're dealing with," Cobb say quietly. "So now, we'd better think what comes next. It's going to happen. The only question here is when, and what we're going to do about it."

Arthur hopes Cobb won't say it; what's not said, not ever, isn't true.

"'We'," John says flatly.

"I lied; there are seven of us that can do that," Cobbs says, easy, easy. "So let's say it's in my best interests to see that this doesn't happen, or we'll all be spending the rest of our lives hooked up to an PASIV. In British, by the way, that means 'forever'."

---

Sherlock ends up being the one to untie them; John's as healthy a paranoid as Arthur, and Arthur can't help but sympathize at the way his grip tightens on his gun. Cobb post-psychotic-guilt is an uneasy mix of the man he was before Mal's death and a perfect stranger to even Arthur; an outsider has no hope of understanding the fast, mercurial swings of mood and personality. The CIA interrogator is still there, the Extractor, and sometimes even the young, idealistic genius architect who can still make breathtaking leaps that only Ariadne could ever hope to follow; the theorist and makeshift scientist who knows the dreamscape that is a part of him but no longer defines him, Arthur's best friend and greatest trial.

"You could have said something," Arthur hisses as soon as Sherlock wanders off with John to explore their apartment, doubtless looking for anything else that might give him more context to what he was and had happened to him.

"Didn't know for sure," Cobbs answers. "It was a guess; closed job, high reward, and all they want is a memory like that? There had to be something else. I thought about his file when I was watching him; once he started stripping sensory information, it made sense. We've had synesthesians; they manipulate sensory data instinctively in the dreamscape. Stripping it out is new, but if that's the way he trained himself to focus, by eliminating distractions, it made sense. God knows for a two to four week trial, he would have had the time to learn."

Sometimes, Arthur wonders if Cobb ever listens to himself. "Dom--"

"He was in there three and a half hours," Cobb says quietly, "and never lost his hold on objective time. That much I could tell just watching him."

Arthur takes a breath; yeah, there's that.

"You're sure."

"He's a literalist; he doesn't just believe it's not real, he knows it's not. He may experience subjective time, but he's only affected by objective time. It's--" Cobb hisses, frustrated with the limits of language. "I don't know if I can do that like he can; not really interested in testing it long term, but it's easier now to come out without feeling time disorientation. And it gets easier every time I do it."

Arthur nods; he'd noticed that. It's one of the many things they don't talk about. "And Saito?"

"Pretty sure," Cobb says after a moment of thought. "Not that he's going to want to be a test subject for it anytime soon."

Arthur sighs. "You could have said--"

"I didn't know if it was just me," Cobbs says finally. "If it wasn't--something else."

Something wrong, Arthur translates. If this was a sign of instability, if maybe two trips into Limbo had done more damage than he could ever admit. "You're an idiot," Arthur mutters, sighing. "You know, there's something about this that's bothering me."

Cobb raises an eyebrow; yes, more than everything so far?

"I don't understand," Arthur says slowly, "what they were doing in that third trial. The earlier ones didn't tell them--or us--anything we didn't already know. That third one was targeted toward a specific group, a group that would be by definition useless for objective data gathering. The fact that they were let go indicates that whoever was in charge of this had no idea what they had on their hands, so either they epically missed the entire point or it wasn't for that at all. So what the hell were they trying to do?"

"Probably would help," Cobb says thoughtfully, "if we knew who ran the trial and who was involved in taking them under. Someone gave them basic training so they knew the principles of building if Sherlock is any example. And whoever it was had to have noticed something, even if they didn't know what they were seeing." Cobb's mouth tightens. "The answer to the question probably is also the answer to why there are people so interested in these five former patients."

The implications are both staggering and utterly worthless; they have nothing to work with, not yet. "We need those records," Arthur murmurs. "If it's even possible to find them now."

"I think," Cobb says slowly; when Arthur looks at him, he's staring at Sherlock, "that isn't going to be a problem."

---

---

John's not surprised that they end up at St. Bart's, given entrance by a sweet-faced nurse whose brother owes Sherlock his freedom. She leads them down the numerous corridors as Sherlock studies them blank faced. They've been here before, of course; questioned suspects in these small, cold rooms, in the wide public area the inmates are permitted to gather. The nurse brings them files and dates that have no meaning; the St. Bart's experiment had terminated in three and a half weeks. There are no names given, only numbers; there's no way to know who was who except by process of elimination; patient 14 was a man diagnosed with schizophrenia untyped, anti-social personality disorder, and permanent psychosis and then abruptly freed.

"I remember," she says confidently as she leads them back after Sherlock has looked at every corridor, every open room, touching the padded walls like his own memories can be found written into the dingy white material. "Quite sad. There was some improvement with the others; the catatonic patients were removed for further treatment."

Sherlock nods and John follows him back to the cab; he has too many questions to know where he can possibly start, or even if he can. "Did you--" he stops.

Did you find anything here? Did you every guess what had happened to you? Did you ever investigate it? Did you ever plan to tell me?

"I knew I wouldn't remember," Sherlock says, staring out the window. "No, I had no intention of telling you I had been committed. It was so successfully buried that I saw no reason for disclosure."

Which leaves John trapped; there's no way to say it's important, because it is, but he's not sure how to explain to Sherlock the reason why. He's shared a flat with this man for almost a year; Sherlock's never hidden what he was. It shouldn't make any difference at all, and yet--

"It does make a difference," Sherlock says. "The knowledge of a diagnosis that led to involuntary commitment makes it far harder to ignore."

"I wasn't--I mean, I didn't--"

"Don't reproach yourself; I did encourage it, even though it raised expectations of me in you that I could not hope to fulfill."

John swallows. "Who else knows?"

"Lestrade. Donovan, of course, and I suppose Anderson learned it from her. Lestrade and Donovan were both present at my hearing."

It's stupid, even John knows it, but he can't help the flare of anger; Sally at least shows her hostility openly. Lestrade, however, still asks for Sherlock's help, and might even be something more than a colleague.

"He was only there as an observer," Sherlock says, giving John an amused look, but the grey eyes flicker away too quickly for John to read them. "The dosage of thorazine they were forced to administer before I was fit to appear before the judge was massive; it's a wonder I remember anything at all. He spoke to Mycroft, quite unhappy, God knows why. He was witness to enough of my behavior at the time to be aware of the logic of Mycroft's actions. After they were finished, he came to me."

There's a baffled look on Sherlock's face; John wants to ask, but instead he lets the silence stretch as Sherlock watches the grey night out the windows.

"He told me that there were too many cases that needed my attention, and they wouldn't wait for me. So I had to hurry." Sherlock's mouth tightens. "Idiot. He knew what the hearing meant; I would never work with him or Scotland Yard again. Even in the unlikely circumstance that I was released and capable of caring for myself, the record of my diagnosis and psychiatric commitment would follow me. I could never testify on any case and be believed; his superiors would forbid my involvement altogether." Sherlock pauses. "He knew that. He had to."

John watches Sherlock's profile. "He meant it, though, didn't he?"

Sherlock doesn't answer for a long time; John lets himself relax back into the seat, seeing Sherlock in that small room as his life was taken from him, the grey eyes dull and glazed, Mycroft signing the papers that would trap Sherlock behind four walls and lost in a drug haze that would erode everything that made him the person he was, and Lestrade….

"Yes," Sherlock says slowly. "He meant it. I think he may have even believed it." Then, "I didn't forget it, even when I forgot everything else, even him. When I was released, there was a message waiting at my brother's house asking me to come examine the crime scene. Sally was terribly disappointed to see me again," he adds, pleased. "Soon after, I discovered that the records that detailed the terms of my commitment had been sealed. The witnesses had been sworn and perhaps for the only time in memory, their oaths before the court were enforced, though doubtless my brother was responsible for reminding them." Sherlock hesitates. "When my brother gave his consent for my participation in the St. Bart's trial, Lestrade filed a protest; it was a pointless exercise, of course. He had no standing to do such a thing. I should have thought he'd know better."

John leans his head back against the seat. Of course Lestrade had filed, John thinks; yes, he knew better, and better than he supposes Sherlock would entirely understand, because the petition would not have been filed with the expectation of a hearing or even the attention of a particularly activist judge. That petition, John thinks, had been meant for the attention of Mycroft Holmes and Mycroft Holmes alone.

"He visited only once, the night before the trial was to begin. I was five days into detoxificaiton in preparation and was in restraints. During moments of brief lucidity, I would sometimes be able to make sense of the words, if not the meaning. In the three months before the trial began, I was treated with a staggering array of anti-psychotics, benzophenidates, mood stabilizers, and sedatives when controlling the psychosis was impossible otherwise. The moments of lucidity were increasingly rare, but when they came upon me, I was able to track the progress of my degeneration and the probable conclusion if I did not take action while I was still capable of doing so." Sherlock's expression changes, the confusion returning. "His departure coincided with one of my periods of lucidity. He waited until I was able to focus on him, and he told me something. It has always bothered me that I was unable to retain the memory."

John swallows.

"Lestrade was remarkably sentimental," Sherlock says, almost indulgent. "It was doubtless something trite such as see you soon, or good luck. You are as sentimental as Lestrade, so I rather thought you would appreciate the story."

"You didn't delete any of it," John says, ignoring the tell-tale huskiness of his voice. "Must have kept it around for something besides amusing yourself at my expense. And his."

"I retained few memories of that period of time, and they are uniformly unpleasant. The amusement these provided me made them very valuable indeed." Sherlock pauses. "At the time, it did not occur to me to be surprised by his presence; now, I wonder why he came. He couldn't have predicted that I would be able to recognize or even understand him, much less respond."

"People do strange things," John says lazily. "I would have broken you out myself, but each to their own."

"I was surprisingly proficient at dissection," Sherlock says, turning to look at John with expressionless eyes. "Though I admit that I hadn't progressed past contemplating the eventual dismemberment of lower animals, I'm sure escalation was inevitable. I will admit I would have regretted it if you had been my first victim."

John meets his eyes and means every word. "Sounds dangerous. I like that sort of thing, you know."

"You really are an idiot," Sherlock says, turning away and settling against the seat, almost pouting. "I wonder if we gave him enough time; it's only been two hours and we must allow for traffic. I would hate to keep him waiting, however."

"Who?" John says as they pull up in front of their flat; following Sherlock onto the sidewalk, John follows the flat, expressionless gaze to the car across the street. "Right, stupid question." Low in his stomach, something thick and heavy shifts, settles, and John takes a deep breath before he follows the billow of Sherlock's coat to the stairs. "You should have told me," he tells Sherlock's back and is rewarded with the faintest stiffening, the merest miss of his step. "It wouldn't have changed anything. Not with us."

Sherlock looks back only once, a slash of silvery grey before he starts up the stairs. "I will keep that in mind."

"See that you do."

---

John had known he was angry on an intellectual level; the hot burn hadn't diminished since they'd left Cobb and Arthur in the warehouse; set aside, yes, of course, but the unyielding force of it hadn't seemed to diminish. Strange, then, how seeing Mycroft in their small, shabby living room, there's nothing for a moment but pure, burning rage, making everything before it feel like nothing more than mild annoyance.

"Mycroft," Sherlock says, hanging his coat and scarf before taking the seat across from Mycroft. "I assume you are here with more information on the St. Bart's trial."

Mycroft's pleasant expression doesn't change; John realizes his hands are fisted at his sides, fingers rapidly growing numb, and it's all he can do to remain still and not cross the room and punch that bland face until there's nothing left of it.

"The original records of all three trials were destroyed, but for the first two trials, I did have copies secured," Mycroft answers. "There was little discovered that the Americans had not already documented--"

"So we repeated their mistakes," Sherlock answers, with the faintest, the very faintest, trace of irony. "Well done, us."

"Unfortunately, yes," Mycroft answers with a faint moue of distaste. "We closed investigation into the PASIV and it was relegated to obscurity, or so we thought. Imagine our surprise when they began to appear on the black market. We've been successful so far in preventing them from crossing the border, but I suspect that our efforts will prove inadequate within the next six months, if that."

"Dominic Cobb was able to pass immigration unnoticed with a French passport under a rather unimaginative alias; what are they teaching our border guards these days?"

"He was cleared of all charges," Mycroft answers coolly. "Without the PASIV, he is not dangerous."

"Your first mistake is to assume that there could ever be a time he is not dangerous."

Mycroft hesitates. "And he brought with him the PASIV, of course. I really must see to our borders." Tapping a finger on the arm of the chair, Mycroft studies Sherlock. "You utilized it."

"Not entirely willingly," Sherlock answers dryly. "I was surprised to find that the experience was far from unfamiliar or unique."

Mycroft's fingers still. "The information was classified, Sherlock," Mycroft answers mildly. "By the time you were fully cognizant and I arranged your release, the PASIV had been reduced to less than rumor at even the highest levels of government. It seemed--prudent--to limit the knowledge of its existence, much less the effect it had on you and the four of the other patients. Even a hint of such a thing reaching the general population would have been disastrous."

"Twenty-seven, you mean" Sherlock answers tonelessly. "Ten committed suicide and twelve entered a catatonic state that as far as I can ascertain they have yet to emerge from. Though it can be argued that all of us were affected; the others, I assume, merely have not manifested it so dramatically."

Mycroft's eyes sharpen. "Dominic Cobbs is the most skilled Extractor in the world, and that is not an easy claim to make considering the quality of those who now act as mercenaries and sell their dreaming skills to the highest bidder. The Americans trained many of their most skilled Architects in interrogation techniques, both those supported and those forbidden by the Geneva Convention, and Dominic was their most successful recruit. He is also highly unstable, even by American military standards."

"We do have that in common, yes," Sherlock answers. "He was employed to question me on my memories of the St. Bart's trial. That I had none turned out to be irrelevant; the reason for the question was a skill I did not know I possessed."

"He did not know who hired him, or you would have told me." Mycroft's eyes lose focus. "It seemed of little importance, as none of you would be exposed to a PASIV again."

"You knew."

Mycroft nods slowly. "One of our consultants mentioned that you and the other four were adept at distinguishing reality from the dreamscape." At Sherlock's faintly sardonic nod, he sighs. "I should have anticipated the possibility. Mr. Cobb's career as a mercenary Extractor was carefully followed, but there was no reason to assume that any of them would be interested in those involved in the trials. God knows the Americans documented everything.."

"With the exception of that ability," Sherlock answers. "Was it common knowledge among your--consultants?"

"The consultant I appointed to head the project was the only one who would have been able to recognize it as such. We spoke only once of the matter and agreed that there was no reason for it to be noted. He believed that if it was known that the trial had produced five individuals with this unusual skill, there would be unfortunate consequences."

John wonders if he'd ever thought there was any possibility that Mycroft hadn't originated this project; he must have, he thinks hazily, or he wouldn't feel so shocked.

"I was told an infinity tied to that machine was a potential consequence, so I agree." Sherlock folds his hands together, eyes flat; he'd known, of course. "Who else would have known?"

"The project head was an American; my investigations indicated he was among the original group who first discovered the potential of lucid dreaming and underwent the initial training. The members of the team were kept ignorant of that aspect of your recovery. The medical professionals I employed were not present at either of the earlier trials, and their skills were utilized solely to adapt the chemical compounds you were exposed to."

"What was his name?" Sherlock asks.

"His common alias was Victor; the Americans confirmed his alias and his training with them, but he, like many of those involved in the project, were buried beneath more security than I needed or desired to navigate once I had confirmation. Mr. Cobb was among the original participants as well; he should be able to assemble a list of those who were involved in the initial research. There is no footage from the St. Bart's trial," Mycroft continues, "but I can have one of our more talented sketch artists send you an approximation of how he appeared during his involvement."

"Records?"

"They were destroyed," Mycroft answers. "I can, of course, reproduce an overview and the relevant conclusions from memory; I will have it delivered to you with the sketch. Is there anything else?"

"When I have more information, I will have more pertinent questions," Sherlock says, rising to his feet. Mycroft follows suit. "I assume you will be in reach for the next week?"

"Of course." Turning, Mycroft takes a step toward the door, then turns to look at Sherlock. "I expected you to ask me why I permitted you to be introduced into the trial group."

"Your trial was exclusively composed of those with mental illnesses that were untreatable by conventional medicine and had been relegated to institutional care," Sherlock answers coolly. "I qualified in the necessary criteria and I assume my condition was degrading quickly enough that there was no reason for my exclusion. It could not be anticipated that it would lead to recovery, but it is fact that my inclusion was the reason for my recovery." Sherlock smirks. "Thank you, Mycroft, for the privilege of being one of your lab rats."

Mycroft nods, but the blue eyes study Sherlock with an intensity that surprises John. "I am pleased as well," he says mildly. Before John realizes what Mycroft intends, he's already closing the door, and that cant' be right.

He isn't even aware of following when abruptly, he's pressed against the wood, Sherlock's hand around his wrist, tight enough that he can't turn the doorknob. "There is no reason to delay his departure, John. Let go."

After a moment, John relaxes. Sherlock takes a step back, enough for John to turn around, but still close enough to slam the door shut should John try again. "You let him get away with it."

"It has been several years; my reaction now would not change what was done then." Sherlock frowns slightly. "My participation is why I am not still confined to St. Bart's in either a persistent psychotic or vegetative state. Whatever the reasons were, they were of direct benefit to me."

John stares at Sherlock for a moment. "He was your brother. He was your guardian, trusted to care for you and work in your best interests. That it worked out well doesn't change the fact your best interests were not the reason you were included."

"I was a sociopath in a constant state of psychosis that even the more experimental forms of treatment were progressively failing to control. If I had been asked for my consent, my condition made consent impossible, even had I been competent enough to understand what I was told, much less articulate enough to answer. Mycroft took practical action. If I had been able to give consent, I would have."

"Practical," John breathes, staring up at him, but Sherlock's certainty penetrates, and the implications settle deep and uncomfortable. Psychosis. Vegetative state or psychosis under constant sedation. That brilliant, unique mind not merely lost, but wasted until there was nothing left of him.

"Mycroft has never been sentimental," Sherlock answers, stepping back with an indulgent smile, one that John has never seen Sherlock turn on another human being (and hopes, irrational, jealous, that he never will). "It is one of the very few subject on which we have never had disagreement."

John wants to argue, but it's depressingly true. As Sherlock starts to step away, John remembers something he'd wanted to ask. "Wait, I forgot--you said you knew you going to St. Bart's wouldn't trigger any memories." Sherlock raises in eloquent reminder that stating the obvious is the work of lesser intellects, which is everyone ever. "So why were we there?"

"Oh, that," Sherlock says, losing interest. "I just realized that I'd never measured the thickness of the padding on the walls."

---

John spends the two days before Cobb and Arthur's next contact reading the anonymous cardboard boxes of documentation on the lucid dreaming experiments; Mycroft had been unsurprisingly thorough in erasing any digital copies. The laboratory data and the dry trial minutia he leaves to Sherlock, instead focusing on an overview of what exactly was accomplished and the various uses it was put to. It's fascinating if uncomfortable reading, with staggering implications in practical application. All of the original participants are mentioned under alias only, but even brief familiarity makes it easy to recognize Cobb in them, the innovative dreamer whose research hand in hand with his father-in-law and wife had shaped so much of what lucid dreaming would be utilized to achieve.

There's nothing, however, to explain what happened to Sherlock and those four other participants at St. Bart's, even by implication. The navigation ability is rarely mentioned other than as a useful but dangerous quirk; a glance at the records of those who had shown the ability and their deterioration makes it clear that while there had been mild interest in trying to discover the source of that talent, the cost/benefit analysis had come down firmly against ever attempting active experimentation. Even the most innovative researchers had been unable to establish any sort of pattern; the most innovative, that is, with the exception of Dominic Cobb, whose absence in this branch of ongoing research is a glaring anomaly in a field he almost single-handedly created.

Distantly, John is beginning to think it's possible Cobb had understated the danger entirely.

The records of British trials are excruciatingly boring in comparison; part of it is the sheer repetition of reproducing identical results to the Americans, as if the separation of the ocean would suddenly cause a massive difference in human biological and psychological reaction. Part of it is the uneasy feeling John always gets when he brushes too close to Mycroft's world. For all Sherlock is dangerous and sometimes terrifying, larger and more brilliant than life, but nonetheless not a little insane, Mycroft's frightens him far more. That they're brothers isn't in dispute, but sometimes, no matter the similarity in behavior and talent, the distance between them gapes as wide as the space between stars, between the cold, practical man who lights up like a bonfire when he's proven again that the world is a rational place where wrong things can be righted and the warm, amiable man whose life is devoted to assuming a world devoid of all but what he can make it become.

John has never been naïve; that he understands Mycroft better than he understands Sherlock is something he will never cease to amend. Mycroft says that Sherlock sees London as a war, and that's true, but it's a war that Sherlock has no doubt that it is possible to win; John wants the day to come that he will see that, believe that, too.

Opening one of the folders from the second trial, John wonders how late it is. "I never asked. How did you discover the trial among the homeless near St. Bart's? Did someone request your services?"

"I ran out of money," Sherlock says absently, flipping a page, eyes flickering down the impossibly small text like he's committing the entire thing to memory. Which he very well might be.

"Pardon?"

"When we were approached, I had been clean for forty-eight hours and rather put out at that," Sherlock answers, starting another page. "The man who was attempting to recruit us was rather unclear about the purpose or the extent of the trial; I declined on our behalf and threatened him with home invasion and premeditated homicide if he persisted. He went away without his wallet to compensate for wasting our time." Sherlock hesitates. "When I went to my dealer, I discovered that other groups had been approached and many had accepted; by the time I was able to ascertain their locations, the participants had already been selected and taken."

John puts down the folder and rubs his eyes. "Why were you--wait, were you living among the homeless of St. Bart's?"

"Yes, of course." Sherlock looks up with a faint aura of genuine surprise. "Was that unclear?"

John thinks about it. "Suppose not. How long?"

Sherlock tilts his head back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "Seven months," he says. "Minus sixteen days, at irregular intervals."

"Sixteen--" John stops himself, but he can't help but try. "Sixteen days for the times Mycroft caught you and dragged you home. No one else could manage it."

Sherlock smiles. "Very good. But also brief periods of commitment to St. Bart's, though that, I admit, was more often voluntary than not." Sitting back, Sherlock looks at John. "In any case, I was eventually directed to those who had been present during the attempts at recruitment but refused to join the trial and interviewed them to try to acquire more detail before investigating the identification of the wallet I had acquired." Sherlock looks faintly annoyed. "I had only begun to establish my network among the homeless population, so my information was provided far too late for direct observation."

"Stolen," John says, amused. "You stole his wallet."

"Acquired is a perfectly acceptable term, and in any case, it was handed over quite willingly," Sherlock answers. "The name I found on his identification was of course an alias, but the picture was an obvious copy of his faculty photograph at Oxford."

"The bloke that ran the Oxford dream study?" John says, feeling reckless with his deductive acumen. Sherlock's smile widens. "Working a drug trial."

"It was less than subtle; his classes were deathly dull, so it is really no surprise he lacked imagination even in subterfuge. When I investigated, I discovered he had been the advisor for the Oxford study. While no students who participated went missing at the time, five left university before the completion of their degree, while ten left for a term and then returned. Of the fifty students, eight have confirmed suicides, though none have been even indirectly linked to their participation or even their time at university. Eight were reported as missing one year after the study; five more reported a year later; fifteen have suffered from erratic employment, most often attributed to sleep disorders."

"That's--" John considers those numbers. "How far are those outside normal? Wasn't it noticeable?"

"Yes, it was. To me. And to Lestrade."

Lestrade. Of course.

"When I was released, the case he gave me to investigate was a man who had frequented the St. Bart's location and was regularly arrested for public intoxication; he was something of a fixture to many Scotland Yard officers in that area and rarely followed the known migration patterns of the homeless population. His disappearance was noticed and documented."

John pauses at that. "I wouldn't have thought that an officer on patrol would--" John stops himself. "Notice migration patterns." Or care, for that matter. John sees the corner of Sherlock's mouth twitch. "Lestrade was the patrolling officer."

"Very good," Sherlock says with surprising sincerity. "It was considered a closed case; it was also one I had worked on before my commitment. The memory of the man who had recruited for the second trial was intact enough for us to follow the trail to Oxford. It was simple to discover a two week psychology experiment was initiated by him, with the assistance of two visiting American professors. Lestrade contacted as many of the families as he could find and documented what they told him. It was very little, but intriguing: they had very few memories of the experiment, and all of them suffered from insomnia the first six months after the trial; for most, that dissipated by the end of the year."

"The other ones--didn't." John breathes out. "The suicides, the ones that went missing--"

"While most had not had an official diagnosis," Sherlock says, "the families that were willing to speak to Lestrade mentioned they suffered from insomnia. The ones who had been diagnosed had been prescribed long-term sedatives that all of them used consistently."

Sherlock frowns slightly, easing back in his chair. "Lestrade mentioned something unusual, though at the time while intriguing, seemed insignificant. When he was able to interview a participant, a few of them told him they no longer dreamed."

Right, then. "Not so insignificant, then. What about the homeless that returned?"

"I receive regular reports on their movements and whereabouts. Excluding three murders and four accidental deaths, the remaining participants do not appear to deviate from statistics for the mentally ill and drug addiction among the homeless."

John thinks about that for a moment. "Sherlock," he says carefully, "how many of them were mentally ill before they participated in that study?"

Sherlock's eyes flicker up. "You understand that my deductive skills were compromised during my time with them, so I cannot say for certain. But to the best of my knowledge, the selection process excluded anyone who showed signs of a diagnosable mental illness. Of those who remain and can be located, all of them do. However, I can state with certainty that none of them were addicts."

"The dealers would know," John breathes. "They regularly contact you, I assume?"

"In exchange for not spending the rest of their insignificant lives in prison, yes," Sherlock answers, dramatically ignoring any other reason one would keep contact with drug dealers. "They tell me what is purchased, in what quantities, and how often. The first case I worked when I was released from St. Bart's was never solved, despite my best efforts. Only Scotland Yard retired it; I never have." Sherlock reaches out, fingers skimming the folder. "I asked Lestrade to have his investigators query each of the Oxford participants on their sleep habits; when they were able to answer, some reported sleep disorders and some did not. It never occurred to me to have them ask whether they could dream."

Sherlock tapes the folder. "There is a great deal of theory about REM sleep and its effect on the health of the brain, all very tedious of course. However, there was a rare sleep disorder that at the time I found--confusing. Those that suffer from it are increasingly unable to attain sufficient REM sleep, with matching degradation in cognitive function and mental stability, with a high rate of suicide."

"All sane things dream," John says; that sounds too familiar.

"Sorry?"

John frowns. "Literature class, gothic horror. Never mind. You were saying?"

Sherlock doesn't look away from the folder. "No matter the length of time between periods of sleep," he says slowly, "I always dream. I remember each one as clearly and precisely as a memory. When I was first diagnosed while studying at Oxford, the psychiatrist who evaluated me noted that I had said I never remembered my dreams, though that had not been true when I was a child or during my adolescence; after my release from St. Bart's, I have never forgotten a single one."

Part II