Chapter Text
In the weeks after that Wednesday, John finds a new rhythm – or rather, he works to create one. Now that every day is not a detraction from the time he has left, but rather an addition, John is learning to add things to his schedule as well.
He sets up something a bit more regular with Magpie: a loosely formed schedule of doctor’s hours evolves, during which John does what he can for those who have no recourse to more official assistance. Sherlock fusses about having to ‘make do’ without John roughly twice a week, but never actually demands that he cease his own brand of locum work. In exchange, John receives more brown goodie bags from Magpie – grudgingly at first, but he has to admit finally, the prospect of never having to go to another Clinic is too appealing to forswear. With that last bit of acceptance, and now out from under his analyst’s judgemental eye, John exits the post-augmentation grid: self-sufficient and without externally imposed timelines or deadlines chopping his time up into other people’s property or business.
John also begins the search, after the fourth week, for an actual therapist. He makes progress in fits and starts – finding someone willing to work outside analyst bounds with post-two-year-mark augmentation recipients proves difficult – but Leicester knows someone, who knows someone, so John thinks it might come together at some point.
And of course, John still accompanies Sherlock on cases, an ‘indispensable’ part of the process, according to Sherlock. It is there, amongst the yellow tape and red blood and murky motivations that John continues to discover, day to day, how life and the living of it can change.
There are days that Sherlock is the weird one, the freak, the intolerable presence amongst the remnants of death and dismemberment – and John is simply the victim, the collateral, the bystander in the slow motion catastrophe that is the consulting detective in a Met-induced Mood. Some days he’s even seen as the calming handler to a deranged beast, and he can see the thanks and surprised gratitude in the eyes of the officers on duty.
And then, in balance, there are the days that John, with his metal bones and his polymer muscle, with his difference, is the threat and the unwanted. He’s the feral unknown, and all he can find in the others’ eyes is guarded caution and tolerance, and barely even that.
It’s not perfect – but it works, and John will take that for as long as he can.
It’s after a particularly harrowing case one week – a case that had them running all over town, slipping and sliding through muddy alleys and clambering through a series of refineries – that John comes to a decision.
He’s just finished his third shower, finally having gotten the stink out of his different skins, when he looks up at the fogged mirror.
He hasn’t properly looked in – well, in far too long, actually.
With a deathly calm hand, he reaches out and wipes away the condensation, and meets his own eyes – or tries to. Instead, he finds himself staring at his chest plate’s ‘skin’ covering. The colour of it doesn’t quite match the rest of his skin, which is now slightly less tanned after his long absence from the Afghan sun.
John reaches up a hand and pulls at the securing edge, slips his finger in and under, careful not to put too much strain on the area that had been damaged by Effie all those weeks ago. The ‘skin’ finally pops loose, flops into John’s left hand like some sort of oddly coloured rubber chicken.
John swallows the odd laugh that wants to burble up. This is part of me, he thinks – then frowns.
But only if I want it to be.
John looks up at himself again – then wipes away the renewed condensation and really looks.
His face is the same – older, more lined, but still his eyes, his mouth, his shaggy civilian hair. His chest is his chest – except for the metal plate imbedded in his chest and surrounded by delicately scarred and textured skin, a maintenance and repair window into his thoracic cavity, behind which his heart beats, aided by a network of plastics and metals.
John places a hand over it, over the sensing surface, and breathes.
This is his chest – has been for a while, but right now feels potent.
He looks down at his cyberthetic leg. It doesn’t take him long to remove the ‘skin’ – he’s had plenty of practise lately, thanks to a certain somebody.
With all his ‘skins’ removed, John works up his courage, then looks up at the mirror again – only to have to wipe the fog from the mirror yet again, this time with a bit more irritation.
But when he’s done, his eyes meet their own reflection before taking in his chest and then lingering on his leg. His legs. His – well, yes, his legs.
One flesh and blood, the other metal and mesh and all sorts of cutting edge fibres. Or at least, it had all been cutting edge tech over two years ago. John is certain Exagon will have moved on to better and more sophisticated designs since he was released from their tender post-operative mercies.
John runs a hand over his left thigh.
It’s still a sensitive limb, exceptionally good at relaying tactile information – but it no longer blares its signals at one frequency, a jarring discomfort no matter the touch. With Sherlock’s sometimes clumsy help, John has settled into it, has learned to interpret what his leg relays.
John looks down to where he’d set his ‘skin’s down on the counter. Steam has dampened them, and John suddenly has absolutely no desire to put them back on – and no need. Carefully, John uses a clean towel to dry them, and instead of putting them back on, he carefully folds them. He’ll store them somewhere safe – upstairs in his old bedroom, where they’ll be out of the way – but nothing as dramatic as binning them or rending them seam from seam.
After all, who knows? John may need them as part of a disguise or something one day – but that’s all they will ever be: a disguise, an eloquently wordless lie.
John wraps the towel around himself, then tucks the skins under his arm.
With a final glance at the finally defogged mirror showing him his own skin glowing – or gleaming, now, as the case may be – John nods.
He walks out into the world.