the insomnia meme

[sockerball]

the i n s o m n i a meme
It happens to everyone - sometimes, you have nights where you just can't fall asleep, no matter what you do. It could be for a number of reasons, or no reason at all. And this is what's happened now: you've been laying in bed for what feels like hours, just tossing and turning, and nothing seems to help. So what's left to do? Get out of bed and go wake someone else up, of course. If you're not getting any sleep, then why should they?


i n s t r u c t i o n s
• Post with your character (note the name and fandom in the subject).
• Other people reply to you by generating a number from 1 to 10.
• Have fun!


o p t i o n s

01 • FEAR.

Maybe you're hearing strange, indeterminable noises; maybe there's a severe storm happening outside; maybe you watched a scary movie before bed? Whatever the reason, you're terrified and it's keeping you awake. You just want to wake someone else up so they can protect you from the monster in your closet.

02 • HUNGER.

Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.

03 • PAIN.

Your body is completely worn out, be it from exercise, battle, sickness, or what have you. Either way you're in enough pain to keep you from sleeping, so maybe someone else has a home remedy or something, or can at least help you take your mind off of it.

04 • SOLITUDE.

For some reason, your bed just feels so empty at the moment. You're feeling terribly lonely and really just want someone to keep you company for a while. Maybe it'd be easier to fall asleep if you're with them...

05 • DISCOMFORT.

Your room is an oven. Either that or a freezer. Or maybe this bed is just really uncomfortable? Who knows why you can't get to sleep, it feels like it could be anything. Why even bother trying? Maybe someone else can preoccupy you until you feel tired enough to ignore your discomfort.

06 • PENSIVE.

Something's on your mind, and no matter how hard you try to focus elsewhere, it's just not going to work. Your body may be tired, but your mind is incredibly busy and it's virtually impossible to get to sleep. Surely, talking it out with someone else will help?

07 • SADNESS.

Something terrible has happened that day, perhaps; or you could just be severely depressed. Either way you're trying your hardest not to cry yourself to sleep, and it's not working at all. Better find a way to get it out of your system somehow; you need a shoulder to cry on.

08 • ANGER.

You are just... fuming. Who knows why - that annoying dog is barking again, or maybe the people next door are getting busy and keeping you awake. Whatever the reason for your ire is, you'd better put an end to it so you can get some damn rest already! Go wake up a friend so you can complain to them.

09 • RESTLESS.

You're far too energetic to sleep right now. Maybe you're just trying to do so out of necessity - you have to be up early tomorrow! But you just don't think you'll be able to fall asleep for a while now, so why waste the time trying to sleep when you could be doing something else? Namely bothering someone else - you're totally jealous because they're getting more sleep than you.

10 • WILDCARD.

Choose one of the options above, or make up your own scenario.

Comments

rolled a 7

[astudyinviolet]

[ There is a soft, hesitant knock on the door as if the person on the other side is a few seconds away from changing his mind and bolting. ]

[conclusively]

[someone better be dying. or kidnapped. or kidnapped and dying. there's a muffled groan on the other side of the door, before the sounds of Mycroft getting up out of bed. the fact that they haven't come in suggests an oddity of sorts, but that also rules out several disastrous reasons for awakening him. small knock, so the person is checking to see if he'll respond - not fully committed to waking him. overthinking? or nerves? potentially both.

when he opens the door, it all makes sense.

dim as it is, since he lit no lamp, he can still tell a few things from posture.]

What?

[please tell him there's a reason. please tell him he got up for a reason.]

[astudyinviolet]

[ Sherlock's about to step away when the door open. He's still in his dressing gown, hair mussed from tossing and turning in bed. Even then, his voice catches in his throat. This was a bad idea. It doesn't matter that this Mycroft is more willing to listen. He's never talked about something like this with anyone beyond Jon, and he's gone. This topic was always taboo for a number of reasons. ]

Could you tell me something about your father? Anything?

[ It certainly doesn't seem like a topic that needed to be address this moment, but Sherlock is almost hugging himself with how tightly he's crossing his arms. ]

[conclusively]

[there's a small, petty part of him that wishes this could wait until the morning. there's a greater part that quiets it down. his shoulders slump minutely, and he gestures that Sherlock should come in. he'll light a lamp, then - no sense having this conversation in the dark - and find his own dressing gown, since he won't be going back to bed any time soon.

take an armchair. he'll do the same. the fire's not lit, but they'll manage.]

How many hours have you been unable to sleep?

[give him a moment. parents are always a difficult subject.]

[astudyinviolet]

[ At the permission to enter, Sherlock does but remains standing by the wall as if he's some awkward teenager (again) until Mycroft sits down. Then he follows suit, curling up with his feet on the seat cushion and knees to his chest. ]

Are you referring to sleeping tonight or in general?

[ That is an answer in itself. Sleep has not visited him in any lasting manner. The dark circles around his eyes only add evidence to that. The redness in Sherlock's eyes shown by the lamplight suggests something else. He's been crying. ]

[conclusively]

[weeping? Sherlock, weeping? the idea sends funny little twists through his chest - should he mention it, or would it overstep in pride? is it more prudent to pull back, even though they both would know it would be obvious? it's difficult to know.

by way of buying himself some more time:]

All of them is the answer, then. Though not for lack of trying.

[the hair is enough evidence of that.]

[astudyinviolet]

Would it terribly disappoint you if I said that I don't know? I might have fallen asleep at some point. I cannot say with how my thoughts race.

[ Along with tears of frustration, of dawning horror, of grief. Sherlock knows he looks a wreck, but even if he had tried to put himself together, Mycroft would be able to observe the minute details and learn the truth. Coming as he is simply saves them both the time and trouble. He's a mess. He knows it. No need to put on appearances. Move on. ]

Mycroft, I am not asking for some long tale or anything grand. I know our fathers likely differ, but I need something that might spark some latent memory.

[ He speaks in a rush but then falls softer, betraying more of his inner turmoil. ]

Please...

[conclusively]

[Father. the mental image he has of the man is far different than Sherlock's - he knew strict discipline, being told not to cry in public, hands on his shoulders when his brother was born - you're his older brother, that means you have to look out for him. he knows an ideal he is meant to match up to, and exceed if possible. a country house that is maintained, a reputation upheld. a presence, a parent who saw his words done.

a man who had heard Mycroft talking about going to Downing, and gave the remark that it was the intelligent choice. the swell of that compliment had stayed in him for two days.]

He spoke to us in sentences, even when you were young. As if we were already born with the ability to comprehend complex vocabulary. No nicknames - but then again, why would we need them? [Mycroft shrugs.] We engaged each other as teacher and student as much as family.

[a pause, and then, added a touch more quietly:]

You look like him, in the right light.

[astudyinviolet]

[ Listening with his eyes closed, Sherlock concentrates and searches through the attic that is his mind for the tiniest detail prompted by each fact of Mycroft's father. His brows knit together tighter and tighter until he relents and blinks back tears. His findings remain largely inconclusive. Sherlock cannot match anything he knows to each fact Mycroft brings up. ]

Do I really?

[ Sherlock cannot tell if learning that makes him happy or all the more troubled. ]

Mycroft is the one who looks like him, and he has the same serious expression I see of Father in the family portrait or the photographs which still exist.

[ He swallows thickly. ]

That is the only way I can picture my father's face. Mother called him gentle with bright eyes and a kind voice. A voice I cannot recall. Her grief was so strong that their marriage had to be built upon love. Did that nature extend to his children? Did he call me "Sherry" like Mother did? Did he hope we would follow him and Mother in their professions as archeologists, authenticators, and historians?

I... I do not know my father. I was six when he died! I should know something, shouldn't I? And yet when I analyze everything I know, it's all from another source. I don't think I have any true firsthand account of him. What I remember are reconstructions from others at best, forgeries at worse. Is he another part of my childhood that was all a lie, a trick my mind played on me in some false way of coping with his absence?

[conclusively]

[something in the sentiment of the man being remembered as gentle makes Mycroft's heart ache in a way he refuses to think about too closely. there is so much he cannot reassure Sherlock of, cannot declare with authority - the things Sherlock has been through can distort memory, but equally so, he could have been as absent as many fathers are.

logically, he will never know. the dead give up no answers, even when one wishes for it. Mycroft knows this all too well, for questions with no ability to be resolved float around in his mind often enough. but Sherlock knows that as well. it's why he's come asking for a story, a hand-me-down remnant that might invoke a father's affection. if only it was that simple.]

The possibility is there, I admit. We cannot travel back through time and bear witness to the events. But consider the information you do have, Sherlock. What does it tell you?

[a woman does not call her husband gentle without good reason. but the request is also an exercise to try and calm Sherlock, to help him find solid ground again. think through the facts, if they are facts.

there is no true reason for his father to be a lie. not with how grief would cast a pall over a childhood.]

[astudyinviolet]

[ There is an indescribable pain to know that someone so intimately connected with the course his life is also an indescribable absence in both recollection and trust in those recollections. Sherlock only has a small portion of his mind attic dedicated to his father. Jon came into existence the same year his father died, and his detachments from reality started then. ]

I kept his pipe, going so far as to steal it in secret from my father's cabinet in London without Mother's knowledge. My father collected coins, which I continued.

[ He leaves out that Mycroft borrowed some of them to hide around Cordona as some sort of game and to teach Sherlock about the world. He didn't have a chance to find them all before everything fell completely apart, and he had been upset about it. ]

When I found an old skull on Cordona, Jon and I pretended it was my father's and buried it...

[ He falls silent. Try as he might, only darkness fills that part of the attic, and in truth, all he can say with certainty could fit into a small drawer. Were all his thoughts of his father tied to physical items? Did he have nothing else? ]

There must be a reason why I held onto those items. Speaking of my father only ever brought some form of pain, so if I dared to keep something, the reason outweighed the risk of discovery.

[conclusively]

[the reason, to Mycroft, is as obvious as the color of Sherlock's hair or the fabric of his clothing. the reason that would burn and drive someone to ask questions years later, from a brother who knows he is but a substitute for another.

it's the same reason Mycroft still hopes that one day he can bring forth his father's approval again. it is a love born of knowing someone, of clinging onto the scraps of their existence even as the world might try to tear them away. it is why Douglas gave his school the name of his son, and it is why Mycroft knows there are certain pieces of his own correspondence he will never let go of.]

You knew him enough to want to bury him. You knew him enough that your affection would bring you to risk what you might. Those are not the actions of a son who lacked his father. The information suggests as much.

[he will not torment him, make him guess his own father's existence. if Mycroft's authority can be trusted on anything, then he'll use it for this, and speak with the certainty of the elder.]

[astudyinviolet]

[ All at once, Sherlock's forms grows heavier. He sinks into his chair, closes his eyes, and rests his head on his forearms and knees. ]

I feel I have no choice to but to grasp at shadows upon a cave's wall and cast by the objects he left behinds. Leaving the cave will not show me the truth. There truly exists nothing more outside that cave for Father is not there to observe. Yet I fear the creation of a false truth to suit myself.

[ Sherlock laughs, but an old poison laces the sound. Once, he wanted a brother to tell him the truth about Mother because everything he learned thus far left him shaken. Another brother also hid the truth but guided him until finally learned all... and then left. Now, he's asking still another for permission to believe in something that might be nothing but shadows because he can never know the truth for certain. ]

Family, I let go of the best part in Cordona. Now I am left with the worst in my Mycroft. Am I merely a child wishing for one family member who didn't hurt me and creating a story to make that true?

[ He looks up, eyes shimmering. There is another question Sherlock asks, one who's answer will affect all others. ]

Can I trust your superior powers of observation and deduction with the facts provided to prove that I'm not repeating what I've done in the past?

[ "Can I trust you?" ]

[conclusively]

[he knows what Sherlock is asking him. he can feel it in his very bones, and the weight of it frightens him. can he step into that role of authority, when the brother he's had still pulls away from him, when he set up walls he thought would protect him? when he had to be both sibling and parent in his considerations, looking after affairs when others couldn't?

does he deserve this trust? does he want, desperately, to show up this other Mycroft and prove what a Holmes should be?

Mycroft doesn't know. but like he has before, he steps into the role placed before him, letting it settle across his shoulders. maybe he's here to make sure he doesn't make mistakes that otherwise will leave scars. maybe his heart is simply, as ever, a weakness.

grey eyes find their mirror.]

If I believed you were retreading your past faults, Sherlock, I would tell you, and in no uncertain terms. The facts are less conclusive than anyone would like, and your mementos scant, yet even if I examine them in the lens of the utter pessimist, I cannot easily erase enough possibility to lead me to judge it all as your own fancy.

[childish desire to believe one's parent was above critique could not explain everything, after all.

they look to deduce, and infer their certain conclusions. but sometimes...they must engage abduction instead. sometimes, one can only ever get to good enough. to likely..]

I do not think your father is a fiction.

[astudyinviolet]

[ No one should be placed in the position Sherlock asks of Mycroft just as much as Sherlock should not have been placed in a position where he can never be certain what is real or not in his memories. Perhaps that is part of what makes a Holmes across these different worlds, a similarity that is enough to make them recognizable as different versions of each other. They are placed in positions normal people would not tread, but they are placed all the same because they are part of the troubled Holmes Family. ]

Very well.

[ Sherlock takes a breath that stutters. Having an answer--even without complete certainty--takes a weight off Sherlock's spirit. This Mycroft can logically reason the available evidence and has no reason to create a fiction in order to hide a darker truth. The memories of his father have a basis in reality. ]

Very well. I...

[ The relief of not having deluded himself yet again overwhelms Sherlock. He's clearly trying not to cry. He's supposed to be ruled by logic, the mind. The best he can manage is to turn his head and hope he can swallow his sobs and calm his trembling shoulders. He can't show Mycroft he appreciates his honesty this way.

The heart is Sherlock's weakness as well, even if he thinks it to be an unstable mind. Perhaps one of the Holmes Brothers must bear that weakness; it does not matter which. ]