Ingenium (✓) | Sherlock Holmes

🎓 23*offering

"I presume you are about to tell me something that will weaken my knees even more than they already are." My voice managed to sound stern, although the anticipation of her news brought a certain anguish to my already bruised countenance.

Rhea supposedly fidgeted with the hem of her shirt – a gesture that could only be a product of my guessing, for my eyes betrayed me in a manner I was yet to unearth.

"Are you familiar with the term conversion disorder?" Rhea inquired, her tone turning impersonal without delay.

"Vaguely, why?"

I knew exactly what it meant, but I was curious how Rhea would be able to handle the entire situation.

"Well, this is exactly what you are experiencing right now. You only have one symptom, which is blindness. There is no medical explanation, but it is linked to the trauma caused by the explosion."

"Do you actually believe that explosion was traumatic to me? You treat me as if I were an impotent patient who has no clue regarding the world he lives in. I need neither your help, nor my brother's or any doctor's. The door is right over there." I pointed towards a direction, even though I was unsure if I grasped it correctly.

Of course I would not become an exponent of a cliché story where I, the damaged individual, would be fixed through the power of love and caring. Albeit my peculiar relationship with her, she had to comprehend that my structure, as decayed as it had grown into, was somehow preserving my defence mechanism.

"I assumed you would push me away, but you have steeled my resistance, therefore I am staying. You can curse all profanities ever existent in the history of Terra, but under no circumstances am I leaving. You cannot treat this disorder without aid, and since you loathe psychologists with every fiber of your body, I have decided to take the matter in my own hands."

Her voice did sound as if it had been forged in steel. However, it left me completely unimpressed.

"No doctor would ever consider you as a replacement."

"I also have relations in the hospital we have just transferred you from. We are currently at my home. With Moriarty gone, this location is safe." It amazed me how skillfully she could pull that professional mien off. Not even I could turn into a cyborg so rapidly.

Maybe she retreated into her shell because you hurt her. Again. My enchanting, not-at-all irritating conscience vociferated. And maybe you, my dear internal voice, could finish your plea before I end up my recently-turned pathetic life just to escape you.

"Let me sum up, then. We are to stay in your house until the Holy Spirit descends from above to cure me through your magical therapeutic talent. Well, pardon me, Little Miss I-force-my-good-deeds-on-others, but I shall leave."

I stood up from the chair – or sofa, the difference was unimportant – but my knee collided with the corner of a table, making me bend over it to regain balance. I gripped a carelessly displayed object – a flower vase of some sort, based on its weight and texture – and thrusted it into the closest area I could find, about which, later on, I found out it was Rhea's praying altar.

"Calm down, Sherlock."

"Calm down?! For a woman who likes to role-play, you sure as hell have no idea that no contusive object shall be found in the proximity of a blind man! How bloody well-prepared you are!" I screamed my lungs out, my carotid throbbing murderously.

I clutched my heart while trying to steady my pants, but failure proved its existence once more. I could not stand being temporarily blind. Even the term itself, temporary, meant suffering without any valid purpose whatsoever. I was a detective, I invented the bloody job myself, and now I was supposed to detach myself from my entire life of deductions in order to spend a dreadful bunch of days, maybe weeks, in the company of a wannabe nurse with a license to drive me insane?