My Sun, My Moon

"John?"

"Yes?"

"Your blog is ridiculous."

"Oh. Right. What makes you say that?"

"I am not 'ignorant of simple facts'."

"You forgot that the Earth orbits the sun, and not vice-versa. What am I supposed to call that?"

"I didn't forget; I merely deleted it. It was irrelevant."

"Sherlock, it's the bloody solar system!"

"I'm aware of that, John."

"How is that 'irrelevant'? It's primary school material!"

"It's clutter. It clogs my mind, slows me down. Trivia is a deletable hindrance."

"So you…"

"I removed it."

"Right. Do you do this often? Delete… things?"

"If they aren't necessary."

"Of course. Like the solar system."

"Yes."

"Huh. When'd you start?"

"I fail to see how that could possibly be relevant to your inquiry."

"Jesus, Sherlock, I'm not putting you through a formal interrogation! I'm just… curious, I suppose."

"In primary school."

"You deleted the solar system in primary school?"

"No, that was in Uni. I began removing other information as a child."

"Such as..?"

"Inconvenient memories."

"Why would you want to delete a memory?"

"I assume you can imagine that the other students were less than benevolent towards me. It can be described as being in a room with twenty Sally Donovans for eight hours each day."

"They harassed you."

"Yes. The memories were not particularly pleasant. Mycroft told me to just ignore it and wait."

"Did that help?"

"No. It was beginning to affect my cognitive abilities, so I decided to forget the incidents entirely."

"So you, what, wiped your memory? Just like that?"

"It helped. Why?"

"Because – because you can't just go around deleting memories!"

"No, John. You can't. I, on the other hand, am perfectly capable of doing so."

"That's not what I meant. I mean, well, where do you draw the line? How do you not, I don't know, delete something that you'll miss later?"

"'Something …?"

"Yes Sherlock, those pleasant little moments that keep the rest of us ordinary people sane."

"I don't have those."

"Oh, come off it. You must have been fond of something as a kid. You mum seems to be on good terms with you."

"That was largely over-shadowed by Mycroft and my peers."

"But… but you can't just delete emotion!"

"Why not, John? Emotion is nothing but a liability."

"Oh, you're hopeless! What I'm trying to say is that, well, you're not doing yourself any favors. People don't go turning themselves into emotionless machines and expecting to come out of it alright!"

"Relax, John; I have already taken all of that into account. Normality is a relatively small sacrifice in exchange for stability."

"You really don't get it, do you? I'm not talking about giving up bloody normality, stability, or whatever it is you've got, I'm talking about how you've barricaded yourself off from the rest of the bloody world!"

"The world is past caring, John."

"Well, believe it or not, some of us aren't. Sherlock, you can't just delete us! There's still people who care about you, and it's more than a bit not good if you just erase us – I mean, them – from your Mind Palace, or whatever the hell it is, because we – they – might actually…"

"…John?"

"…"

"Oh, John…"

"Just forget I said anything. Delete the whole bloody conversation, or whatever it is you're 'capable of doing'."

"John."

"What?"

"I'm not going to delete you."

"Oh. That's, erm… good. Very good. Thanks, for that."

"Yes. You're – you're quite welcome. And, for the record…"

"Yeah?"

"In my mind, you're far more important than the solar system."