could_be_dangerous | next summer I will return, I'll be back, you'll crash and burn, now it's your turn to crash and burn

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next summer I will return, I'll be back, you'll crash and burn, now it's your turn to crash and burn

When it had come down to the line, when it had all come together in Sherlock's head and he'd acted, responded in the only way he'd known how, it had seemed so clear. None of the complexities inherent in the negotiation of it had been apparent. Had mattered. The likelihood that he'd succeed was slim enough anyway, and so it hadn't occurred to him until suddenly he was staring it in the face that the matter of his resurrection was not a simple one.

He'd not anticipated the eggshells, the broken glass, odd metaphors suddenly blindingly clear, yet here they are.

The first footstep he'd taken back onto British soil had been a week ago. Sneakers. Canvas and lace. Not brand name, though meant to resemble it. Unremarkable. That's the secret: to be unremarkable. How many men look like him, across the world? How many slump their shoulders and pull up their hoods and scuff the soles of their well-worn, dirty shoes against how many stretches of sidewalk? Thousands. Millions. Like this, distinctive hair cropped short, equally distinctive manner of dress wholly abandoned, who would notice him?

He could be anyone. A gangly secondary school boy. A drug addict. A graffito. Shop clerk. Vagrant. Book seller.

It's safe. It's safer to hide graceful, sensitive hands within the pockets of a sweatshirt than to reach out for something that might hurt.

And there the ongoing problem. When he'd permitted himself to fantasize Sherlock had imagined walking up to the door of 221B Baker Street, had imagined letting himself in, walking straight through out of the cold and into the warmth and letting all the old familiar things sweep over him. Scent of tea Mrs. Hudson's perfume stain on the wallpaper by the floorboards – coffee, previous tenants – John's shape pressed into his chair even when he's not sitting in it, like a ghost, like it remembers; third step up creaks glassware in the kitchen heads in the 'fridge the scent of his own shampoo on his pillow on the sofa but not on the pillows on his bed and the shower is always so touchy–

And they'd welcome him back without a word. He'd step back into his life as though he'd never left it and some night as if sharing the same thought he and John would wordlessly rise from their chairs by the fireplace and go out into the city, go out and take a crowbar to Sherlock's tombstone until his name is as indecipherable as the correct progression of events is now.

It simply isn't possible. It never would've happened that way. And he must've known in some comfortably unconscious place, or he'd never have taken the risk with the letters.

They're in his bag. He really ought to throw them out. Words on a page can't account for all these long months of absence. They can't undo wounds which have scarred, circumstances altered; Sherlock immersed his old life in formaldehyde but the people in it don't seem to have noticed. They've gone on and his place has gone with them.

It leaves him in the uncomfortable position of lacking a position entirely. Jesus never had it so bad. He was meant to come back. But Sherlock Holmes? Easier for everyone involved if he'd stayed dead, perhaps.

And so he sits in a grimy room in a shady, wholly unofficial hostel and smooths his fingertips over worn, much-folded paper. They're scraps, notes, not letters proper. He's read them over as many times as John was meant to. They're an odd collection of the useless and the meaningless, things he would've said, texted, something, if he could've and plenty of things he wouldn't have. Notes to self, deductions, points of interest which have no meaning in context, impressions which have too much meaning in context.

They're abhorrent.

Meant to tell you not to throw out the fingernails in the top right cupboard. Should last until I get back.
-SH

Russia colder than expected in all possible meanings of the word.
-SH

Chrysanthemums.
-SH

Shot a man today. Wish I could've taken your gun. You'd put it together.
-SH

You can't read Mandarin but this receipt is for a cup of tea. Not as good as yours.
-SH

Pneumonia is twice as annoying in Istanbul as in London. Interesting. Warrants further investigation.
-SH

Calais is boring. Foggy. Can't see Dover. Take Molly Hooper for coffee; she deserves it.
-SH

Tired.
-SH

Almost died properly today. Wonder if anyone would've identified my body. Hope not. Better you didn't find out.
-SH

Left-handed.
-SH

Warehouse by the docks.
-SH

You haven't updated your blog. How am I supposed to know what you're doing if you don't blog about it? Homeless network only tells me so much. Rather know what you're thinking.
-SH

Walked past the flat today.
-SH

Saw you at my graveside after, did I tell you? Don't know what you said but you probably shouldn't have.
-SH

So many others. Receipts, napkins; pens, pencils; once a gum wrapper in crayon. Only the handwriting persists. Like this: Sherlock finds a mostly-empty pack of rolling papers in a drawer and smooths one out on the nearest flat surface with dirty fingers. Pen cap in his mouth is comforting, benignly plastic. He has to be careful with the delicate material; appropriate, allegorically. This time it's only numbers, just that, a numerical string. Meaningless alone, essential all together: a telephone number.

Maybe soon he'll go home. Maybe soon home will turn him away.

His feet carry him as they've been carrying him for a long time now: detached, impassive, a tool for taking him where he needs to go. Whatever pleasure there might once have been in being embodied faded once he was no longer supposed to be. So too the hand that worries at another stray scrap of paper – a folded bill – in his pocket. Information comes, deductions come (quality of the paper, age, frequency of circulation), but then they go and nothing changes. The balance doesn't shift.

And that's safer, so much safer than handing it across is (post office clerk doesn't recognize him but then she's too distracted thinking about the date she has tonight to notice much of anything or even give him correct change), than taking the bland beige envelope and writing John's name across it in letters taller than Sherlock feels. Paperclipping letters together in chronological order.

It's so very much safer than the sensation of wood under his knuckles, than walking away with shoulders slumped from the doorstep and the envelope and the opening steps of negotiating the end to his own captivity.

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John is in the process of running late when he hears the knock. He gets up, annoyed with yet another set back and promptly knocks his tea over in the process. He leaves it and moves to the door, the tension is tight in his back and shoulders as he swings it open.

There is no one there, but the envelope falls inside the door at his feet and he picks it up, the pinched annoyance on his face giving away to curiosity and then something else when he recognizes the handwriting.

His breath catches and he looks blankly up and down the street for the ghost that he's been begging back into existence for months. The street is unassuming, full of people going about their daily business. His eyes flit from face to face, but there's no hint of the one he's looking for.

Somehow he forces himself to shut the door, ripping open the envelope and pulling out it's contents. He reads each of them thoroughly, taking in the curve of the handwriting and feeling his chest constrict. Then he reads them again and again and again. Always ending at the string of digits that promise him something that he'd all but given up on. One last miracle.

His morning's obligations are all forgotten, as is the tea seeping into the floorboards as he picks up his phone and dials the number. It rings and then there's silence.

"Sherlock?" His voice is gruff and he clears his throat to soften it. "Is it really you?"

By no stretch of the imagination can Sherlock Holmes be said to be a man of few words. Normally he knows exactly what to say, or exactly what he wants to say, appropriate or no. Normally it's easy, like breathing with a few extra steps, not thoughtless but hardly ever actively difficult.

The problem with now is that there's either nothing to say, or so much to say that the sheer weight of it stops him up, holds him still, suspended in spacetime like the weight of an arch does its keystone.

So for a time he does little more than breathe, breath fogging the air. Didn't get far before the borrowed mobile rang. Before the inquiry. He's not convinced it's a question he can answer. Too conceptually loaded. Sherlock Holmes is dead, even to himself.

His heart pounds, though. That's got to count for something. Has to be something like life.

The corners of his mouth draw back in a mirthless smile and he huffs out an equally humourless, nearly silent laugh. Look at me; I'm afraid.

So maybe so. Round up. "Yes."

His voice is a rasp. Stupid. Sentiment. Waste of time and energy.

And where to go from there? Where can they go from there?

Sherlock should've waltzed back in and taken his life back. Accepted no arguments. Should still, but he knows he can't.

There's something more, besides. One more obstacle in the way. One man left. That's more important than all the rest; that's life or death, and not Sherlock's. Sherlock's has ceased to matter, but he's not done all that he's done over all this time just to see it fail now.

And so he knows what to say... and he knows John will hate him for it.

"Yes, and I need your help." His breath flutters in his chest like moth's wings. Just a diaphragmatic spasm. Nerves. Physiological response to psychological input. Interesting, distantly. Still unpleasant.

The silence grows heavy and John's mind turns on his heart and begins berating him for momentarily believing something that's impossible.

But then he hears that voice, that wonderful, familiar voice and a heavy sigh of relief and grief escapes and travels over the line.

John leans heavily against the chair, trying to process the impossibility that has just become a reality, his mind spinning with questions. Already he can feel the sharp pain of anger and hurt moving up through the relief and joy.

"You need my help?" John repeats, blinking blankly at the statement. The pain gets a little sharper, settling in his chest.

"Sherlock, you faked your death and you need my help?" The tone is incredulous. Even he must know how much this is asking of John right at this moment.

John's hand tightens on the phone and the chair. His next words are tight and clipped. "Where are you?"

Sherlock knows. No, he doesn't know, but he comprehends some of it. There's no choice, though. None whatsoever. It's checks and balances, exchanges. A more comfortable homecoming is discarded to increase their mutual chances of success. And maybe it'll be the wrong way, in the end. Maybe John will never want to see him again after this and that will be that.

It's still better than the alternative. They need to move.

"Yes," he says quickly. The faint sound of the sole of his shoe scraping on the pavement fills the gap between that word and the next. He's on the move again. "Not for me. I can't explain, not like this, no time but I need you to do something."

There are contingencies, of course. Alternatives. It's just that the plan he's got now, this plan, has the greatest chance of success. It is a matter of need.

And so there's no please, no self-effacement, just this.

"I want you to do these five things in this order: I want you to fetch your gun. I want you to unlock the door to the flat and leave it unlocked. Then I want you to go upstairs and I want you to write. Update your blog. I don't care how you say it, but say that I'm back. I want you to call the Yard, tell them to come to the building across the road. Get Lestrade if you can. Tell them there's a man with a gun, tell them you saw him in the third storey window."

He takes a breath. "And then I want you to take Mrs. Hudson and go down into 221C and stay there. Stay... stay out of the line of sight of the windows. Do you understand?"

No. No, probably not, no. Maybe a bit of it; this isn't Sherlock failing to give John even a bit of credit. He's missed a lot though. A great deal.

That Moriarty was exactly what he seemed ought to have been clear the instant the gunshot wound was demonstrated unequivocally to be self-inflicted. The rest of the story, the whys and wherefores of Sherlock's apparent suicide, those had been less clear. The press was content to label him a fraud and let the thread of his life drop with hardly a whimper, that one last indignity aside, and Sherlock couldn't smell a bit of Mycroft's hand on it. On his return he'll bear with him evidence of the elaborate plot that'd lead him to jump, clear his name, prove himself – in the eyes of the law, anyway, which is all he needs to come back.

Business won't be good. Ruined forever, probably. No cases. Just an endless stretch of tired days. The worst of it is, he's not convinced that really would be better than death, in the long run.

This isn't the long run, though, and Sherlock is not yet done with the other work, the dead man's work, the days carved into his bones like notches on the stock of a rifle to mark each kill.

Soon. Soon, and then he'll see.

"Sherlock..." The name comes out quick and fast like a bullet when it becomes obvious that he's more intent on giving John directions than actually talking about what he's done.

There's less than half a second and then Sherlock is giving him instructions, each one more worrying than the last. John simply listens, his mind racing to catch up with Sherlock's. He's setting the stage of course. Using his return as bait. Which leads to questions of why?

John tightens his grip on the chair and glances out the window, wondering if Sherlock, or the person he's trying to lure is watching him now.

"Sherlock, if you're in trouble, let me help you." His voice is still tense, but the anger has ebbed from it into concern. He knows Sherlock and his plans of course. If this is the course of action that's been decided on the plan will be carried out until it's no longer logical.

That doesn't make it any easier to swallow.

"You don't have to do this alone."

All that and John still wants to help. Oh, Sherlock clenches his jaw so hard he feels his teeth could shatter. Wants them to. Could almost do it. Could sink them into the world and shake like a dog with a rat until everything falls back to where it's supposed to be. Could burn it all down. It isn't fair. It isn't and he's furious, because Mummy told him it wouldn't be but even she couldn't have anticipated this.

Sherlock used to think of what it might be like to take John apart layer by layer, skin and muscle and bone, all component parts, down to the molecule. To take him apart and learn his inner workings and put him back together again, perfect, unharmed, painless. To learn because for all his cleverness and for all he can see Sherlock never understood him. He doesn't understand him now.

“Just--” he starts, all his fury escaping in the violence of the affricate, and he dares to let his eyes close for the span of a few seconds, breathes the city in. Wet pavement. His own sweatshirt, damp with drizzle. “Just do it.”

This time there is a please, just not a spoken one. It's in there, somewhere, hiding between the plosives and the subtle roughness of Sherlock's voice.

“There may not be another chance, or much time.” Certainly if Moran already knows, and how likely is it he's had the phones at 221B tapped? Quite likely. Could be accomplished easily. Foolish not to.

"I'm not alone. I told you what I need; it's important, so do it."

Right. For a second he'd forgotten just who he was talking to. He knows that roughness, he can recall the handful of times that he's heard it and what it meant for the man on the other side of the line.

It doesn't make him feel any better about the circumstances or what's being asked of him, but he does hear that unspoken please. He understands it, as much as he doesn't understand the things surrounding it.

And all it does is make him angrier.

"Right," John says, his tone curt as he straightens up to a military grade posture. "Anything else? Should I call the newspapers? Should I warn the neighbors? You know how they get when there's gunfire."

He knows that he will do whatever it takes if it means that Sherlock walks through that door, but there is a large part of him that refuses to make it easy. Not after the months of hell he's been through.

He can feel some invisible clock ticking in the background, Sherlock's plan unraveling. Did he account for this? Or did he assume John would only too willingly do as he was told?

"I'll do it. But afterwards, you tell me everything. Every detail. Every reason."

“Yes, obviously,” Sherlock responds impatiently, all misdirected fury. The anger helps, though. It covers the fact that he doesn't know for certain that he'll survive this... smoke and mirrors trick, this sleight of hand; it's got to be precise and he hasn't much time.

Moran has to see him. He has to see him, and he's a crack shot. Maybe the best in the world. If one thing goes wrong, one tiny little thing...

“There's nothing else, I told you everything, now go.” There's a finality in it, enough to allow Sherlock to tear the mobile from his ear and end the call.

The first step is a text, an old, familiar number. Lestrade.

take baker st call bldg acrs from 221b 3rd floor empty flat. col sebastian moran.

He doesn't sign it. He doesn't need to. A call to 221 Baker Street is always serious, whether his name is attached to it or no. The Yard does owe John that much.

And now that on record, that call. Sherlock's text to pad it out via less official channels.

His shoes scrape on the pavement as he turns to return to the flat. If John doesn't unlock the door... contingencies, always, and if this one happens to end up with Sherlock dead on the front step so be it; at least he'll be done. A good ending. Excitement, gunfire, and friends protect people. He means to prove that he can.

John stares at the phone for a few seconds before cursing and getting to work doing what he was told. He moves upstairs to retrieve his gun from his desk, sticks it in the pocket of his jacket and then goes back downstairs to unlock the door. It's only when he's climbing the stairs for a second time to retrieve his laptop that he questions his willingness to follow Sherlock's plan to the letter. Of course it's a Sherlock plan, so it must be a meticulously planned one. That in itself is enough to do as he's told, but it's still a bitter pill to swallow.

He logs onto his blog for the first time in months, his eyes sweeping over his final entry and feeling his chest tighten. He remembers all too well how he'd felt when he'd written those words. He swallows and hurriedly types a short entry saying that Sherlock lives. No sooner has he hit enter than the phone rings.

"I just got a text," Lestrade says before he can even say anything remotely like a greeting.

"It's him," John says without an ounce of doubt.

"My God."

"He told me to call in a shooter across the road. Third story."

"Moran. No need, I've got it. We're on our way." Lestrade pauses. "Is he there?"

"No," John says with a sigh. "Not yet."

Lestrade tells him they will be there in a few minutes and John moves downstairs, gathering up Mrs. Hudson and moving her down an apartment. He doesn't tell her that Sherlock is alive because he's not sure how she'll take the news and also because part of him believes that responsibility should lie on Sherlock himself.

Instead he convinces her to go downstairs, steering them clear of the windows and telling her that he's gotten a call from the Yard. The gun weighs heavily in his pocket as he sits with her in the dark, Mrs. Hudson getting more and more impatient as each moment passes.

"I'm going to miss my show," she says reproachfully. John looks over at her and then pushes himself to his feet.

"Damn," he says, moving towards the door, his hand sliding into his pocket. "Mrs. Hudson, stay here, please. Until I have word that the building's safe."

"But what about--"

He doesn't hear the rest as he slips out of the apartment door and heads towards his own.

Sherlock walks with less haste than he feels, allowing time for the wheels to turn. They're moving now, in time to the steady scuff of his feet on the pavement. In this motion he is protected, made safe by some uncertainty principle of the brain which makes it impossible to know too much of his own state of mind so long as he keeps moving. There is a safety in the distance of action, in process, which wholly evaporates given time to reflect.

Fortunately, until this is over there will be none. And so Sherlock's step is measured. Certain. More certain than it has been in some time. He is only a shadow of himself, perhaps, but he's spent so long being other people's that even this is another rung higher, another skin shed. Walking familiar paths draws up familiar things, old arrogances, old mistakes, old victories. All subjective. All his own. All alone, and alone protects him.

At the door he takes a breath. Turns his head, just so, just so. Lets the hood fall back just so, brushes it back to expose his face with an impatient and distracted motion before his hand finds the handle and turns. If it does not turn, soon what was inside his skull will be splattering the paint, leaking out onto the pavement again, again, but the retraction of the bolt is smooth and in he slips. Back in.

For a moment, as he shuts the door behind him, he slips into enough stillness that the sudden wash of familiar sights, scents, sounds, touch of the metal of the handle, creaking of the floorboards beneath his feet, all of it, casts him adrift. There is a profound unfairness in how this, what was once all that was most real to Sherlock Holmes, has become surreal. It is cruel, how much he longs for something as simple as the feel of the smooth wood of the bannister under his fingers.

It's there, and his fingertips trail along it as he climbs the stair. He almost always wore gloves before, didn't he? Gloves to protect sensitive hands. This would always be waiting for another day, this simple thing. Until it wasn't.

And now he takes it back. Spreads some molecules of himself over the surface, insinuates his physical presence back into this space. Just for now. Just now.

He thinks of John, Mrs. Hudson, locked away in that basement flat, and keeps his step light. Brushes a palm over his cropped hair as he rounds the corner, moves for the door of 221B. Closes dirty fingers around the handle and turns it. Slow. Quiet. Somewhere behind him John licks his lips – doesn't, of course, but would, and for a moment he's elsewhere, breaking into a stranger's flat instead of his own, and none of this has happened. All is as it should be.

Sherlock pushes the door open, steps through it and stands, skinny madman, dark circles under his eyes, dirty and ragged, in a flat that was once his own, in a space which John Watson is decidedly not meant to occupy, not now.

Yet is. Yet is, the stupid, brave man, and one moment becomes a thousand, dancing on the head of a pin. Sherlock imagines the glint of a rifle's scope – or sees it, perhaps, in his periphery; there's no time to be certain – and moves. He moves with what strength is left in him to bring John down, down and safe, and to tear this entire foolish game down with him.

He's taken care to stay clear of the windows, Sherlock's mysterious orders cluing him in to that much. That there's a sniper and a threat to himself and Mrs. Hudson is clear, what is unclear is why Sherlock is trying to bait him with himself.

In the end, it's too much for John. He stands back, near the kitchen and waits. He knows that Sherlock will be furious, but he takes a little bit of comfort in that. Let him be the one that's furious for a change.

He stills even further when he thinks he hears the creak on the stairs. His breath catching in his throat at the sound. Would it really be Sherlock that opened that door? Or would it be another nasty surprise? Another trick?

His eyes focus on the doorknob as it turns and a moment later Sherlock is standing there. John moves forward without even realizing it, taking in the weight lost, the dark circles, the shorter hair.

"Sherlock." It's barely a whisper, but it seems to fill the room and fill John's heart, a small smile meeting his lips.

He doesn't realize he's made himself vulnerable until Sherlock is slamming into him, sending both of them crashing to the floor. John hears the sound of glass shattering, the contents of the kitchen table and then the glass partition between the living room and kitchen being brought down by silent bullets.

He lands hard on his shoulder, his first instinct to cover his head from the glass raining down on them and the next is to scramble in pulling Sherlock behind the very little cover of his chair. He's breathing heavily as he looks over at Sherlock.

"I'd ask why someone's trying to kill you, but clearly, they've met you."

Jokes ought to be good. They ought to mean that things are alright, regardless of the circumstances, but Sherlock finds himself baring his teeth all the same, months of frustration and rage coming again to a boil. This isn't Sherlock's flair for drama raising its head. That looks entirely different. This is entirely genuine.

"We've never met," he spits. "If we had he'd be dead already."

Or Sherlock would. He can't say it matters. The presence of the man out there itches at his conscience regardless of the shouts and sirens, regardless of the oncoming of the inevitable. Good man sometimes, Lestrade. The best of a bad lot, not that that's really saying much.

Doesn't stop Sherlock wanting to put his fist through something either. His hands shake with it. This, this isn't one of their cases, this isn't something he can just walk away from and joke about like it's nothing.

"He has met James Moriarty though. I suppose there was some exchange of funds, which even you should've been able to work out. I didn't think it would be too much to ask for you to apply yourself for whatever minuscule bloody stretch of time it would take to reason out that if I'd been his intended target he'd have shot me on that rooftop ages ago. Apparently I was wrong," he snarls, more vicious than he should be but the truth is he has had someone want him dead. Several someones, and one succeeded, which isn't nothing.

It isn't. It's everything he has been for too long now for him to have escaped unmarked.

Sherlock presses his thumbs to the bridge of his nose, hands still trembling, and squeezes his eyes shut. Sucks in the air, the warm scents of the flat dying underneath the the cold street air drifting in through the perforated window.

"Where's Mrs. Hudson?" he asks, voice quiet, but the tension in it hardly abated. "It was to be you, her, and Lestrade, that was the exchange. You were supposed to stay with her." There's blame in his words. Why wouldn't there be? This entire mess is as much John's fault as it is Sherlock's or Mycroft's. It was his blog that had given Sherlock a name to ruin in the first place. John is implicit, however unintentionally, and Sherlock had given him a role to play in fixing it, a role which he'd summarily ignored. It won't matter, not when this is done and fixed, but now it means everything.

What little bit of familiarity there was vanishes instantly from John's face as he looks back at Sherlock. He knows that look, he's seen it, but it's never been directed at him in full force before. It's breathtaking in it's contempt. The sound of sirens and shouting drift up from Baker street. He's sure that whoever took that shot is fleeing and yet he can't make himself move. He can't stop staring at Sherlock.

He clenches his jaw, his fingers curling up into fists at his sides. John has shot and killed men in the line of duty. He's had bad days. But he has never felt the urge to strangle someone as strongly as he does now. Instead he goes as still as a statue, color draining from his face as he fights to keep control over himself. There are more important things at stake at the moment. Their lives for one. Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade.

The pieces come together and arrange themselves in a way that John has never imagined. His mind is spinning, turning everything to look at the events of the past in a new light that goes a long way in explaining, but hardly very far in justifying.

"Downstairs," John manages. He closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath, letting it out slowly. When he trusts himself to speak he looks over at Sherlock. "This was your brilliant plan? I keep Mrs. Hudson safe, Lestrade brings half the yard and you what? Dodge a sniper's bullet?"

He lets out a huff of air, swallowing before rubbing at his shoulder. "Brilliant. Cheers. I'm sorry I didn't follow your implicit and completely vague instructions more closely. I'm sorry I'm not a robot."

Things would be so much easier if he were. If he could just shut down these feelings coursing through him, if he could just be more like Sherlock maybe none of this would bother him. Maybe none of it would burn him from the inside out like it was now.

Edited 2013-03-21 19:23 (UTC)

"Wasn't planning on dodging," Sherlock snaps. "Wasn't planning to have to."

He digs harder at the bridge of his nose, nails leaving quickly-reddening crescents in the delicate skin near his eye socket. Outside are sounds of a scuffle. Satisfying. Hopeful.

"Didn't expect you to be a robot, either. Thought you might be done killing me; no, stupid, stupid of me. Why would you listen? Spent–" A spasm runs through one of his hunched shoulders, turning the breath he sucks in shuddery.

"Spent months finding them all." Every last person who might try to hurt them. John. "Eaten scraps out of rubbish bins, when I ate at all, slept under bridges, snuck – have you ever tried being dead? No papers. No passport, no credit card, no bloody bank account. I crossed the Russian border in the boot of a bloody car, been shot at, been... can't go to a doctor for stitches when you're dead, can you?" So contempt, no, not exactly. A bit, maybe. He still did it all.

"I, mm, I died for you, would've done it properly if I'd had to but that's not enough, not enough for you to listen to me just once, not enough to stop you laughing at me either," the words are clipped and rapid, distasteful. More than he should say. More than he would say were the thought of a moment more of this not completely intolerable.

"I expected you to think about that for a fraction of a bloody second but that was clearly overly optimistic, I should've died properly, obviously; spared you the indignity. You're s– I'm sorry I listened." Friends protect people. He'd known it already, of course, had been doing it, but how else to recall the phrase? He doesn't want to say it, not now, not like this, couldn't get the words out even if he tried. Trite. Foolish. Doesn't even know what it means anymore, besides.

Sherlock's mouth is set in a miserable line when he finishes. Not a pout, not exactly, just all the tense unhappiness of a profound disappointment. This is... cracking. Months of anticipation dashed, which isn't unexpected but it wasn't supposed to happen like this. If his hair weren't so short he'd work his fingers into it and pull, test himself for fractures, narrow everything down to that sharp, painful edge. All he can do now is breathe in all this poison, suck it in to reticent lungs in the deep but rapid inhalations of a drowning man.

He is drowning. There's nothing left for him to do and he's floundering in that emptiness and John, John is pushing him further out to sea; why?

How could this not have changed him? Changed things? He'd thought he'd wanted it, things going back to normal, but it doesn't just vanish. He can't just laugh at it. Not just yet.

"Stupid. Everyone who knows me wants me dead, said it yourself; hilarious. I don't care. I'll go back to it after this, fine, as long as it's done." And perhaps John recognises it, that resignation, that doubt. The fear, the tension. He's a soldier; maybe he does. Sherlock doesn't know. He doesn't care to try to know. His eyes remain shut.

There's not much more than John can do other than watch Sherlock unravel in front of his eyes. The anger is still pumping strong and steady through him, but each one of Sherlock's words makes it ebb just a little bit, sending out in all directions.

Though of course the implication that he should've actually died spikes it again and John forces himself to look away from his estranged best friend. Forces himself to control the words that he wants to shout into the shot up apartment before marching downstairs and out of 221B despite the possibility of a sniper or snipers or assassins.

Sherlock is impossible. Frustrating and stubborn and unwilling to consider any way but his own. John knows this. Remembers it as if no time has passed and maybe that's the most frustrating part of all of this. Not the danger. Not the absurdity. But the fact that there's a part of him that is so willing to write off a faked death and months of suffering as another eccentricity. The fact that a part of him wants to be done with it and go back to normal. After everything - everything - this thought is the most infuriating. Especially since Sherlock seems to have no idea what that's meant for him. It's not that John isn't sympathetic to what it's like being a dead man, it's that to a certain extent he feels as if he's been living as one all these months also.

"Yes! Stupid, Sherlock!" John says, turning his eyes back on the other man. Studying his face. "You are an idiot." John presses his lips together into a thin line. "I never asked for you to die for me! I never wanted any of this. Do you have any..." John's voice catches and he turns his head away from Sherlock. He clears his throat, when he speaks his voice is flat, level. "I've mourned you for months. I defended you. I...' He swallows and shakes his head. 'It's more than a small indignity, Sherlock. I thought you were dead. My best friend.'

Sherlock's expression twists and he slams his palm down against the floor. Part of him wishes it'd go right through, take him with it. Part of him wishes every bone in it would break, that the shockwave from the heel of his palm to the joint of his shoulder would tear him apart.

“Friends protect people.” Each word is low, dangerous, carefully enunciated.

“You didn't ask me, you told me. And I did. I let you. You know as well as I do that the only reason he was able to tear me down was because you built me up, you and your damned blog; last thing a detective needs is a name but I let you do that too.” His fingers curl against the floor, nails dragging along the wood, but he's no name to scratch into it. No message. Nothing worth recalling that isn't already here, and that's the point.

“Bound to kill me eventually; you can't tell me you didn't know.” Sherlock certainly had, but it was better than the alternative, wasn't it? It was up until it wasn't, until he wasn't ready to go. And he hadn't gone, he'd laughed in the devil's face and won, which doesn't make him an idiot, not a bit.

“Obvious that it would, wasn't it; get me recognized at the wrong time, or this, something like this.” If nothing else ruin his work, and his work is everything but he'd let that happen too. Which is obvious, it's all so obvious; Sherlock thinks better of John than that. He must know, must have seen, and must have known what Sherlock's reaction – lack of reaction – to it all meant.

He'd wanted John there regardless. Wanted his companionship and his attention regardless. Sherlock had thought that was understood. He'd not been subtle.

Which is perhaps why he looks so wounded now. Betrayed. It isn't as though he'd given nothing. Isn't as though he'd only taken. Isn't as though he'd wanted any of this.

“It was-- what I did, it was the best possible choice.” He says it quietly, with conviction. It's true. It's... what else was there? “Out of what I was given, it was the best.”

Friends protect people.

He remembers the words. The conversation and Sherlock's response to it. They glue him in place for a moment longer as he watches Sherlock's expression shift and change. "You think this was my fault?"

It's not as if the thought hasn't occurred to him. It's not as if John hasn't blamed himself for Sherlock's death too many times to count. He'd warned Sherlock about fame, but he hadn't ever actually stopped participating in the proliferation of it. Would Moriarty have found him without the assistance of John's blog? Would they ever have started their game of wits if John hadn't broadcasted Sherlock's accomplishments for the world to see?

Hearing it from Sherlock himself was something that John wasn't prepared for. Especially since he knew what had really happened, especially now that he knew the conditions that Sherlock had been living in since his death. Maybe his grief was making him selfish, was trying to punish Sherlock for a decision that had been the only one available to him at the time.

John's mind tried to navigate the logic and the blame. Tried to narrow down the practicality of Sherlock's decision, the knowledge that the man acted on reason and practicality in all things, but his heart refused to listen. It refused to accept the fact that Sherlock could cause so much pain and show so little remorse. Stubborn in the thought that he'd done the right thing by destroying John's. Though it was clear by his presence here and the genuine hurt in his expression that he hadn't gotten out completely unscathed himself.

John took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to push down the jumble of emotions threatening to overtake him. He nodded sharply, though it was unclear if he was agreeing with Sherlock or merely putting himself in check. His expression is drawn and tense when he looks back over at Sherlock, though he doesn't quite get to eye level.

"I understand," John says slowly. He's cut off from saying anything further by the sound of footsteps running up the stairs. John pulls out his gun and holds it steady at the door.

Having to pull the trigger might actually steady his nerves at this point.

John doesn't understand. If the set of his face and the lines of his body convince Sherlock of anything, it's that. And... and the bloody gun be damned, footsteps be damned; he wants to shake it into John, the truth of the matter, the whole of what it felt like and why, why this isn't wrong, he didn't get it wrong, not this time. But maybe, maybe if he's lucky the footsteps will do that of their own accord, maybe the pounding will shake everything into place, such things as the necessity of callousness, of the need for efficiency, of the reasons for the quest, the all-encompassing quest.

How much Sherlock wants it to end, and why that matters more than anything, more than his place here, more than the work, more than John's regard for him.

If the ridiculous man can't see the terror, if he can't drown under the surface of months of work, essential work, the only work, on the cusp of being dashed. John's life was here, and maybe he was rotting in it too, but he still had all of this. All of it. Sherlock has narrowed himself down to this single point, this solitary goal, this one reason for being; it is the whole of him, the whole of his world, all that matters.

It's selfishness. It is. He knows. But it's sacrifice, too. Sherlock knows better than anyone that the two coincide more often than not. What does it really change?

Nothing, nothing, but circumstance changes everything. He tears his eyes away and fixes them on the door, moving to a crouch, legs drawn up underneath him, tense, ready to pounce. Slowly, he raises himself higher, still bent low, and uses the cover of the noises outside the door to hide his own movements, scurrying across the flat on light feet to take up a position alongside the door. He'll be hidden when it opens, hidden well enough to have the advantage over whoever comes in, should it become necessary.

Hand on the doorknob. Sherlock's eyes seek to catch John's, to recapture some of how this used to be, the waiting in the dark, the knowing. They used to understand one another. He suspects John thinks they still do. Sherlock knows better.

He'd say it, too, if not for the sliding of the bolt in the lock. Later. There's bound to be a later.

John is so focused on the footsteps that he misses Sherlock's initial movement. By the time he's aware that the other man has moved at all he is rising slowly.

"Sherlock." It's a warning breath, little more than a whisper and before he's even finished uttering it, he knows it's useless. He watches as Sherlock moves through the flat, keeping low and settling himself beside the door.

John meets his eyes and he can read the message there. The plan. Just like the old days. As if nothing has changed. He gives a barely perceptible nod, lining up his shot. He might only get one. He needs to make it good if he can.

The door bursts open and Lestrade steps through, looking around wildly. He seems to do a double-take when he sees John's gun aimed at him. His brow furrows.

"Where is he?"

John swallows and lowers his gun, slipping it into his pocket. He wearily pulls himself to his feet behind the chair, nodding towards the door.

Lestrade. Of course. The man always did have a terrible sense of timing. At least the news is good, judging by the set of his shoulders. Sherlock sets his mouth thin and pushes the door shut behind their – his – John’s guest to announce his presence. This is going to be intolerable, he can tell already, which is why the first words out of his mouth are what they are.

“Someone should go find Mrs. Hudson. Tell her it’s alright.” And there, yes, there it is, already intolerable, just as he’d expected – silence. As though it’s inappropriate that he should be more concerned about sorting all of this out than explaining himself. Funny how the tune changes with the times; normally they’d tell him he ought to be less concerned about himself and more about other people.

Normally. None of this is normal, but the hypocrisy still stings. Can’t do a bloody thing to their satisfaction, can he? Not even this. Sherlock shoves shaking hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt and sucks at his teeth.

“Well, I can’t do it, can I?” And by that pointed look he means for Lestrade to go, means that there’s unfinished business, which any git could surely see, and they can all catch up later, can’t they? Can they not?

In lieu of that he shoots John a look, something quick and guilty and pleading: don’t forget. There’s more to say. If forced to pretend it never happened, to try to pretend, Sherlock thinks he’d go mad. He might just try it, if it means coming home, but he can’t pretend the prospect isn’t a painful one.

John finds it a little more difficult to read Lestrade. Obviously, if they were still in danger the detective would be acting accordingly, but just because they're not being shot at now, doesn't mean that the culprit has been captured. Still, even if he can't necessarily read Lestrade, he's surprisingly good at reading Sherlock, and it's clear that Sherlock is already pushing on to the next task at hand.

He and Lestrade stare at Sherlock, and watch him as he pretends as if nothing unusual has happened. Maybe for him it hasn't. Except for the fact that John knows that's not true. Sherlock isn't an easy read, even for someone who knew him as well as John, but John had seen enough since he'd stepped through that door to know that he hadn't been completely untouched by this experience.

He gives Lestrade a pointed look and John can't help but follow it, meeting the baffled expression of Lestrade's kind face. He suddenly feels extremely grateful that he's not the only one completely bewildered by Sherlock's reactions. That shared look brings another wave of familiarity and old comfort with it and John struggles to keep it in check.

"Where have you been?" Lestrade asks, completely ignoring Sherlock's suggestion. "I went to your funeral."

Lestrade looks at John, who can only shake his head the tiniest bit and give a small shrug. His eyes meet Sherlock's though and he catches that look. It makes his chest tighten the tiniest bit, knowing that this isn't the end of it. It's only the beginning.

"I almost cried," Lestrade says.

John clears his throat. "I'll get Mrs. Hudson," John says, suddenly not sure if he's ready to hear what that look implies. He moves towards the door, but stops. "How exactly do you plan on breaking this to her? I suppose you have a plan for that as well?"

"Everywhere," Sherlock responds sharply, posture tensing, shoulders drawn in. It's sullen, but it's also protective; he looks more cornered than arrogant and irritable. Perhaps it's alien. Maybe it isn't. He wouldn't know. He feels it often enough, though never like this. Never a bit like this.

"Dead. Saving you lot; suppose you worked that out, did you? Be nice if you told him." He jabs his head in John's direction, and his shoulders draw in all the more tightly as he backs against the wall. His gaze shifts to the target of his current ire and he inclines his head just slightly, mouth set in an unhappy line.

"That was the only plan. Fixing it. The rest doesn't matter. You don't have to tell her anything; isn't as though I'm staying, is it? I got it wrong, coming back was a mistake. There was no time, I improvised and I got it wrong. You don't want me here." Though really, he doesn't know what he expected. That it would just be alright? That he'd be alright, that nobody would notice?

"Him, maybe," he adds, meaning Sherlock Holmes, the living man, not the dead one. "Not me. So."

He levels his gaze on Lestrade, angry, full of all the desperate defiance of a man with his back against the wall and a knife at his throat. "Are you going to take me in, then, for... what? Faking my own death? Don't suppose that's legal. Impeding an investigation? Suppose I did that; go on, I don't care."

It doesn't matter, none of it; that's the point. All that matters is that it's done, and if John can't connect those dots, if he can't see where the lines meet up, tie caring about the task with caring about all these other complicated things, home and life and him, then Sherlock doesn't know what else to do. There's certainly nothing else to say; it isn't as though sorry would mean a thing, even if he did have anything to apologise for. He doesn't and his tongue is still pressed down with the weight of all of that sorry, all that ballast keeping him low in the water until a burst of anger lifts him up again and gives him his words back.

There's nothing, in truth, that could begin to approximate. Certainly not his expression, not the glowing iron bands around his chest; they bite and burn at his skin and as all of this goes even more wrong, as the hollow in his chest grows colder and colder they cool too, and shrink, and soon his ribs will snap under the force. It'll kill him, he thinks, and that's pointless dramatism -- he's gone on so far -- but isn't wishing it would the same thing? Isn't it?

It isn't the airiness of that question, its inanity, which is making Sherlock's head light, though. He presses clammy palms to the wall behind him, steady thing; it'll keep him from sinking. It'll...

Edited (oh gdi I wasn't done with that) 2013-04-17 01:39 (UTC)

"Of course you're staying." The words tumble out of John's mouth before he can even think to stop them, his voice full of reproach. After all of this, did he really think that he could just leave afterwards? That John would just let him walk out of his life again?

John takes a step forward, putting himself between Sherlock and Lestrade as Sherlock keeps talking, his words coming out fast and sharp from the corner he's backed himself against.

John gives a small huff of disbelief, unsure how someone so brilliant can get things so wrong. "I don't want you here? That's your... that's what you believe?"

He catches Sherlock's meaning and his face suddenly goes blank. He looks at Sherlock and then away from him. He doesn't know what makes him more angry. The fact that Sherlock has assumed that he wants him gone or the fact that he's afraid he's right in some respects. He knows the man who died, the man in front of him seems considerably.... no. John drops that line of thought. No, this is exactly what Sherlock would do. How he would act. He may seem a bit frayed around the edges and considerably incapable of understanding just why John would be so angry at him, but there's no doubt that the man before him is Sherlock Holmes.

Lestrade furrows his brow and looks at John and then back at Sherlock. "I wasn't planning on it," he says at length. "I'm not sure faking your own death is entirely legal, but it's clear you had your reasons. The capture of Moran doesn't hurt anything either." He glances towards the window, with the flashing of the police car lights reflecting off the building across the street. "Might need you to come down to the station, though. So we can sort this all out."

It might be instinct or or possibly even the fact that he's getting better at observation, but it's impossible for John notice the sudden change in Sherlock's color, or the way he seems to be propped up by the wall. The careful, blank expression turns into concern as he strides forward, reaching out for Sherlock's arm.

"Are you alright?" He asks, taking a good look up close. He can see something there, that he didn't before. A kind of wild look that he hasn't seen since that night that Sherlock had admitted to seeing something that was impossible to see.

John swallows, putting a guiding hand under his elbow. "Sit down." It's not a request.

"Inspector?" John glances towards the doorway where a police man in uniform has suddenly appeared. "We need you downstairs, sir."

Lestrade looks at John and Sherlock and then nods. "Right, I'll be back." He moves out the door, his heavy footsteps creaking on each step.

Sherlock doesn't want to sit. He wants to leave, slip out of here, forget the entire foolish enterprise. Not possible, of course, and so he goes, not meekly but with all the weight of a corpse in the slump of his shoulders and his weary, heavy step. The chair, his chair, has bits of glass on it but he sinks into it all the same, awkward and uncomfortable not because of the shards but because he isn't certain any of this is really his anymore.

"Of course you want me to go," he says finally. "Nobody likes anybody for no reason; there's always an exchange and I can't anymore. There's no... no work, nothing to shoot at; nothing. I had no time to do it properly, so I've ruined it now."

He stares sullenly down into his own lap, down at his own sweaty palms, lightheaded and resigned. Unwilling, for the moment, to meet John's eyes, afraid both of confirmation and of contradiction. Better he'd just left well enough alone.

"You're not dead; that's the last thing I needed. May as well finish me off yourself now. I'd let you." He'd watch, as much of it as he possibly could. It'd be fascinating.

Sherlock sighs heavily. "That's why, for the record. That's why all of it. The work doesn't matter." A lie. A lie, but only when viewed head on. Relative to this, it doesn't. Clearly, as he left it behind. Could've kept it. Could've lost the rest and kept that, and if it had weighed more he might've done.

Didn't, though. Didn't, and that matters more than anything. All that matters is the work, he'd said, and here's something worth more.

"There'll be a court case," he says abruptly, after several long seconds' pause. "I'll have to stay in the city until it's finished."

Edited (OH MY GOD I DID IT AGAIN I have to stop writing these in the reply box) 2013-04-24 02:36 (UTC)

John is listening to the words, but he's not quite sure he can believe them. His look gets darker and darker after each one.

He crosses his arms over his chest, his brow furrowing more and more, his look saying more and more clearly "You idiot." if Sherlock could be bothered to look at it.

As it is he waits until Sherlock apparently runs out of steam or latches onto a new idea before speaking. He understands. Maybe not all of it, but enough of it. He understands how Sherlock justified it. How he thought about it, what he thinks of it now, but it's all so convoluted, it's difficult to strip it down to the real meaning underneath it all.

"Just so we're clear. You did all of this for me?" John lets out a deep breath. "But obviously because I was only in it for the danger and excitement and since you've been ruined and there isn't likely to be any more consulting work, I would want you to go?"

He grinds his teeth together and looks up at the ceiling as if beseeching some invisible presence for help.

"Is that everything or is my average brain missing a piece of the puzzle?"

Sherlock sets his lips thin, gaze still sullenly fixed on his own hands.

“Only the important ones.” There’s more bite in it now than those words usually carry, a weary, defensive ire which might be directed at either of them, or perhaps both.

“I had no time. I’ve done it wrong. I wasn’t careful. That’s why.” Not that he’d have been angry if it were the other way ‘round. Nobody likes anybody for no reason, he’d said it, and he’d not meant it badly. It’s only how things are. The reasons can be complicated, less straightforward than this – than what Sherlock’s line of work has to offer – but there’s always an exchange. When the costs outweigh the benefits significantly enough, though…

Sherlock wouldn’t have expected any less. He doesn’t think it cruel, shallow, unfair. No more than anyone else is, anyway.

“I had to tell you what to do and you had to do it, no time for niceties, couldn’t explain. Waste of time; you’d only have ended up shot and I’d have… months. Everything.” His entire life. Not a wager he was willing to lose.

“I couldn’t…” His brow furrows and he sucks in a hesitant breath, mouth opening and then shutting again into a frown. Be gentle. He couldn’t be gentle, whatever that might entail.

“It’s not… no. Got it wrong. Not out there.” He gives a fussy wave of the hand at the broken windows. The outside. Everything. Slowly, very slowly, he taps his temple, shoulders hunched. Sherlock Holmes, admitting to weakness. To mental duress. Not with words; even if he knew how to say it he doesn’t think he could. Besides, words are only likely to be misunderstood, as they have been so far, as they no doubt will continue to be.

“I wasn’t… ready.” Hadn’t yet managed to slip into a mindset which might have allowed him to carry on as though everything was the same as before. “No choice, though. Had to make you angry. Only way to make you listen. That’s why. I made you angry and you want me to be the same even though I died. I can’t, and I haven’t got the work to make up for it. That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?”

To fill in the gaps. To make up for Sherlock’s own failings; that’s the role it’s always played. There was never a fight that wasn’t remedied by a case, and now there aren’t any of those… now there’s only Sherlock. Sherlock and his profound inadequacies, which might’ve been buried before by his brilliance, by all the things he could do -- but now he can’t. Now he’s just… the annoying dick. Not even the machine; a machine is useless without a purpose. Take away his trappings and Sherlock Holmes is only a madman, certifiable, can’t relate, can’t be related to, probably isn’t worth the trouble anyway. Even the psychopath is gone. All that’s left is what he was as a child, as a young man: an addict with a brain wired all wrong. So little, and none of it worth keeping.

"I told you," he adds, voice unsteady, throat tight. "I got it wrong. I don't know what else you expect me to say."

John lets out a slow breath, tightening his hands into fists at Sherlock's insult, but as he watches Sherlock struggle to find the words, barely talking in complete sentences he can feel his anger ebbing away into concern.

He doesn't look well at all and if the letters that John received earlier are any real indication of the places he's been and what he's been through - which John has no reason to doubt - then he's been pushing himself for a very long time. Whatever John might be feeling and whatever kind of closure he wants on all the things that were never said or the apologies that aren't likely to ever be spoken, he can see that they won't be taken care of in this moment.

Sherlock is here in front of him. A living, breathing, stubborn Sherlock and though John is eternally grateful as much as he's completely put out by Sherlock's inability to apologize or even seem to understand the effect that it's had on John, he can tell that things have shifted inside of him. John can see the difference in him, even if he doesn't understand all of it. He's pushed himself too far this time. He's run out of steam and as much as John wants to get into all of the reasons why he shouldn't just adjust to this reappearance without any consequences his resolve is melting with every passing moment.

Sherlock hasn't looked up at him once and the decision that takes John closer to him and his chair is an instantaneous one. John's knees creak as he lowers himself in front of Sherlock in a squat, his hand reaching out to rest on the arm of his chair for balance. The frustration in his brow has smoothed out and now as he looks back at his friend it's with a mixed temperament of concern and weariness.

"You're crap at apologies," John says, his eyes moving over Sherlock's face. Though he suspects that in Sherlock's mind this is as close as he'll come to one. He understands that Sherlock's not apologizing for the things that John wants him to. He imagines in Sherlock's mind there's no need for one. He'd done the only logical thing there was to do and while that by no means made the results any less painful, John can understand the black and white thinking behind it. He sucks in a breath and holds it.

He wants to tell him there are much better ways to get him to listen without making him angry. That some people might find someone deciding that they know best to be completely condescending. That they might mind that someone would rather go through all of this than simply tell them what was happening so they could help, if not at least be at peace in the knowledge that their best friend hadn't thrown himself off a rooftop because of some psychopath.

"Just say you won't leave," John says, the majority of his pride washed out by the fear that the moment he turns his back Sherlock will slip out the door. He'll have to stay in the city for the case of course, but after that there's no duty keeping him there. No rope to keep him from drifting, since he seems to think the one with John has been severed. "Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not until we figure out what's best for... everyone."

It's selfish of course, but it's clear Sherlock's not well. Maybe it's John's turn to decide what's best for once.

Sherlock presses his lips thin, turning his head stubbornly away. “You don’t want me to stay,” he repeats, and that’s true enough. It’s not just concern, after all. “And I’m not crap; you’re not listening, and besides, I couldn’t possibly. Could you?”

His eyes trace the arm of the chair opposite. Not the one on which John’s hand rests; that’s too near and too human for the moment. Sherlock hasn’t spent all this time entirely devoid of human contact; they teem, nearly anywhere in the world one might think to go, there they are, waiting. In a sense it’s hopeful: where there’s people, there’re the sort of problems Sherlock knows how to solve. It’s when they all go away, nice as that might be for a while, that the trouble really starts.

This, though, this is different. This is intimate in a way Sherlock doesn’t know if he should accept. It’s tenuous and unsafe, tightropes of spiders’ silk, an altogether too easy pathway to cruelty of another sort. Sherlock is a monster. He’s bottomless. He takes and takes and will only continue to take the more John gives, so it’s best not to start. Certainly not now. His fingers curl protectively against his own thigh, and Sherlock remembers the errant curiosity that had struck him once, after the night at the circus, the abandoned railway, at the sight of John’s bloodied temple. Something had twisted in his gut, a quiet rage and something else. Sherlock wants to know. Sherlock has always wanted to know, to collect minutiae, like how the taste of John’s blood might vary from the memory of his own, fists and mouths and split lips, hot and sharp and ferrous. Such things, purposeless things. Something twists in his gut now. A quiet rage. And something else. He wants to take John apart down to the atom and build him back up again, because all of this is impossible.

Maybe if he got down to the chemistry of it all, it might be easier to sort out.

“It’s too… big.” Much too big to be compacted into words, into sounds approximating meaning – and not very well; English has been broken for ages, or more likely Sherlock has. Either way, it’s inadequate. What could would sorry do, even if he had felt like saying it?

“Whatever else you’re thinking, it’s wrong.You try. Tell me how far you get. It’s not possible.” And maybe he’s not making any sense; it’s difficult to tell what’s right and what’s wrong without a moral compass, and his is currently furious with him. No good if they’re spiteful. Not infallible. They get things wrong too. Sherlock trusts John on most things, but not this, not now. Maybe he’s been on his own too long. Maybe he’s just talking to himself, working out the frustrations bounded up in his own head.

Maybe they aren’t good, he decides defiantly, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make them any less real. That’s the point of it all, the point of half of their arguments: Sherlock is real, what goes on in his head is as real as what goes on in John’s, as heavy, as potent, as dangerous. They don’t coincide. It doesn’t make him wrong, it doesn’t, not that alone, and even if it did it wouldn’t change the fact that he feels it. Maybe that’s not satisfying. He expects not, but it’s not satisfying when John doesn’t follow, either, when Sherlock can’t even speak well enough for that, when it seems as though the words are all twisted up and backwards to everyone but Sherlock himself. It's not fair. Not a moment of any of this. But it's not his fault.

"I'm asking you to stay," John says, not taking his eyes off Sherlock. He's not sure how else to make Sherlock understand. "I want you to stay, Sherlock."

Sherlock's not looking at him, though. He's locked up inside his own head and only a fragment of it is actually coming out in words. Words that John doesn't entirely understand.

"What's too big?" John asks, trying to keep his tone level. As much as he hates that look, he'd give nearly anything to get it now. "You're going to have to explain it to me, Sherlock. To spell it out, because I'm not getting the whole picture. I'm wrong about what? What's not possible?"

They won't have this moment forever. Mrs. Hudson still needs to be told the news. Lestrade will return, or send one of his men. And after that, John doesn't know what will happen.

Still, he can't push Sherlock. Not the way Sherlock is able to push other people. He sighs and pushes himself to his feet. "Right."

He wants to threaten to call Mycroft. To do anything that will get a reaction, but a familiar reaction. Something that he knows how to deal with. Instead he moves to the kitchen, broken glass crunching under his feet, and puts the kettle on.

"Pay--" Sherlock slams his open palm down on the arm of the chair and sets his lips thin, an act he immediately regrets.

"Pay attention," he finishes quietly, lamely, even that much noise making him wince. "You said I'm crap at apologies. I'm not. It isn't possible. There's too much."

The breadth of it all is exhausting, far too much to possibly be encompassed in a single sweep of the arm though Sherlock attempts anyway. The broken glass is hardly the start of it, and there's a thousand shards of apology right there, lying on the floor, taunting him. He shifts his foot, presses down to grind a handful of shards into a thousand more. There. There's more, even more, in and of itself still too much.

"It doesn't matter. They're only sounds. Just constricted air; what bloody good is that supposed to do? I still jumped, didn't I?" He pushes himself to his feet, roughly musses his own hair, and steps around the glass as best he can on the way to his hall, to his room. Everything in boxes, no doubt, but he wants to see it, wants to open the door on the lot of it, as though it might illuminate something.

"There," he calls, looking in at the bare walls, the empty stretch of floor. A bed. Made. Unused. Even a bit dusty.

"There, you see?" Sherlock slams the door shut again and marches back to the kitchen. "I gave you my life in boxes and it's still not enough. What else is there; there's nothing, do you see?"

But of course not, of course he can't. Sherlock doesn't have much hope that John will ever be able to see because he's no hope he'll ever be able to communicate it. So he stands in the doorway to the kitchen instead, worn and helpless. He wants to take all these familiar things and smash them, save himself having to process them all. It's too much all at once, something he should've weaned himself into as much as John. It's far beyond exhausting. Something else entirely. Sherlock digs the heel of his palm into his eye socket, as though that might somehow drive it away.

The gesture does win John's attention and he watches Sherlock as he goes on, following him with his eyes as he moves down the hall. He steps after him more out of a compulsion to keep him with in his sight than an actual conscious thought. He can see the boxed up room beyond him before he slams the door. He doesn't see, but the words I gave you my life in boxes strikes a chord within him. He thinks he's beginning to understand.

John crosses his arms and stands against the hallway for a long moment, studying the thinness of Sherlock's face and the exhaustion there. Those cheekbones are much more pronounced now than they were before. He looks too sharp, as if someone could cut themselves on him. As if he's cut himself.

"You gave up everything to save us," John says slowly. It's obvious when it's spoken outloud, but he's beginning to see the significance of it. The weight of it. This wasn't another one of Sherlock's games. He didn't fake his own death for the novelty of it, or to prove he was more clever than everyone else around him. He didn't give up his life thinking that he could come back and step into it. He knew. He knew that he wouldn't be able to do so. He knew that his credibility would be shot, that he was sacrificing his livelihood and the only thing that had made life somewhat worthwhile for a genius that was too smart for his own good.

And he did it anyway, because there was no other choice. Because when Moriarty came after the people he cared about, Sherlock did what was necessary, even if that meant destroying everything he had.

The realization hits John fast and hard, leaving his mouth dry. He hadn't seen the sacrifice for what it was before. All he'd seen was Sherlock deciding he was cleverer and better than everyone else and being completely unconcerned with the reactions that others would have to his actions.

John sucks in a breath and holds it, regarding the man in front of him. There's a bone deep weariness that seems to settle over him. "Sherlock..." He hesitates. "This isn't the end. You've still got work to do."

And it's nothing like what he wants to say, but he thinks it might just be the most comforting thing he can think of for someone like Sherlock. He licks his lips, in an attempt to wet his mouth. His voice is still soft, but there's more conviction to it. "We still have work to do."

“Yes,” Sherlock replies tersely. “A court case.”

Over which he finds himself in truth more than slightly uneasy, a state for which he feels he can’t be blamed, given how the last one went and where it ended. Worse, though, is after that. What follows.

This, here and now, this is bad too. He’d said his bit and watched the gears turn, watched that wonderfully expressive face guide him through the vague ghosts of John’s thoughts and reactions. None of it had been as satisfying as he’d hoped. What actually came to the surface, slipped from John’s mouth, had been more painful than reassuring.

“Several, probably. Records need amending. Might go to prison; technically criminal to fake one’s own death. Fraud. Plenty of other things. Even if I don’t, isn’t as though anyone’s going to consult me again after all the rest, is it?” He says it almost gently, guiding John along through the implied reasoning to the inevitable conclusion. He’s done. That phase of his life has ended. He dragged what scraps of his professional name remained off of that building with him.

And it’s not ended, either. “The press…”

Will have a field day, obviously. Sensationalize whatever they can grasp hold of. Hound the both of them incessantly, he expects. They’re going to hear about it eventually; someone’s going to let it slip and then…

“Bothered you before. It’s going to be worse now. You do know that.” He must; John is very good at overlooking what makes him uncomfortable but this can’t have escaped him. Can it?

Sherlock’s fingers curl in towards the palm, a reflexive motion enacted for want of something else to do with them. What would the appropriate thing be here? What does one do, returning from a long absence? From the dead?

People embrace at baggage claims the world over but they’re not in one now, and it isn’t as though they ever have before, besides. I missed you is as inadequate as I’m sorry; the words won’t do either. Missing is trite, old, and far too shallow for what Sherlock felt.

Still feels. Maybe they’ve neither of them managed to cross that particular hurdle entirely just yet. Maybe they never will.

So there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. He could reach out to touch his fingertips to the fabric of John’s jumper just there at the shoulder, just above the scar tissue (which he knows must be magnificent), and in doing so mean to say never again, not once more, and a thousand other things besides – could, but doesn’t. Even that’s not enough, and Sherlock is left standing under a shroud of his own inadequacy, fingers slowly curling inwards as it sinks into his skin, worming its way to places deeper and far more insidious.

No, a court case wasn't what he'd meant, but he can see how Sherlock's brain took him there. He listens as Sherlock goes on, his brow furrowing.

"Technically, yes, but Mycroft wouldn't let you serve any time." Would he? Would Sherlock be stubborn enough not to accept his brother's help or connections in this respect? He's seen first hand what their stupid rivalry is like. "Mycroft owes you," he says, his voice gaining strength. In some ways, this whole thing is Mycroft's fault. Moriarty never would've been able to do what he'd done with his help.

John doesn't like the gentleness of Sherlock's voice. He thought he would like anything better than the sharpness of it before, but this just feels as if Sherlock is gently leading him to the slaughter. To the punchline of a future already laid out before them.

"I don't care about the press," John says and this time it's his voice that's sharp. Yes, they're a nuisance and they'll bleed them dry if they let them, but like all stories this will blow over in time. John doesn't care about being annoyed if it means Sherlock is back where he belongs.

For a moment they just stare at each other and John thinks that Sherlock seems more bare and yet more untouchable than ever.

But he's there. He's physically there and if it kills the both of them, John is keeping him there. It occurs to him that they've done nothing but fight since his arrival. That John's said none of the things that he thought he'd say if he ever saw Sherlock Holmes alive again.

He lowers his gaze to Sherlock's chest and lets out a slow breath. The kettle whistle sounds and he turns half towards it, but doesn't move yet.

"Whatever happens," John said slowly. "I have faith in you. I've always had faith in you."

He never had stopped believing. Sherlock had tried to tell him everything was a lie, but he couldn't believe that. He'd never been able to accept that. He knew otherwise.

"And I'll be right here."

Sherlock could be cheered by that. Maybe he should be; it’s so bloody difficult to tell under the circumstances. As it is… as it is he sets his mouth in a thin line and looks away. As it is it only stings, highlights his own inadequecies. He’s not very good at empathy, maybe, most days and in most capacities, but he’s perfectly capable of making comparisons.

“Kettle’s boiling,” he says lamely, as though it isn’t wholly obvious. He takes up position in the doorway to the kitchen, stands at the threshold of two familiar places. He feels most appropriate between them now, not quite in -- the flat isn’t his anymore. He can’t help that it’s become, in its way, strange to him, even if he hates the way that settles between his shoulders and makes them tense.

“Mycroft,” he says finally, examining the dents and scratches in the doorjamb, “can shove it up his arse. Had enough of his assistance.” Sherlock would rather go to prison, frankly. The more Mycroft’s connection to the entire affair had come to light, the more Sherlock had grown to despise him. They’d never trusted one another. Not after the incident with their father, anyhow. Not after the cat. Not after Mycroft had gone away to school and discovered he could apply his cleverness and his ruthlessness to secure his own gain, and had come back the pompous prat he is today.

Had gone away. Had left Sherlock entirely alone in a world in which nobody understood him, in a world in which he hardly understood anyone else. He’d promised.

But that was ages ago. The bitterness that has settled in since has more to do with a thousand other trespasses which have occurred in the interrim than with that initial betrayal. Still, it set a precedent, the culmination of which saw Sherlock on that rooftop. Sees him here now. Mycroft has always been a poor brother. So has Sherlock, but he’d never have played it like that. He might harbour no love for his sibling any longer, but he’s never wished him dead. Never considered him expendable.

Could probably do with having his nose broken, though. If he tries to interfere, Sherlock just might break it for him.

“Hardly any new marks,” he murmurs. “What a dull life you’ve lead without me.”

And what a dull life they’ll continue to leave, once all of this quiets down, no doubt. There will be things to which to apply himself, Sherlock supposes. Can’t be all bad. Maybe he’ll finish his chemistry degree… or maybe he’ll manage to find something worth doing. Experiments. All sorts.

Barring the odd explosion, though, it really won’t be the same. Inquiry, understanding, but meaningless enquiry and understanding, with nowhere of worth to apply it.

Still. Still.

And if nothing else, there’s always the rest of the world. John would’ve loved Hong Kong.

Until then, there’s the ritual of the tea. Sherlock never was very good at it; it’s only chemistry, only requires attention to detail, but there’s a patience to it of which Sherlock has never been entirely capable. John doesn’t measure it all out in seconds, doesn’t seek the sort of precision that’s useless when each batch varies along so many parameters. He’s calm. He’s careful. Capable of intuiting when all the factors have come together perfectly, or as near to perfectly as Sherlock has ever experienced.

Watching it is in its way an act of worship, or at least of quiet appreciation. Sherlock has done it dozens of times before, hovered here or there to observe the motions of John’s hands or the shifting of subtle expressions across his face or the way the movement pulls at his clothing. When he tilts his head down sometimes Sherlock can see the protrusion of the vertebra prominens at the base of his neck, if he’s watching from the right angle, and he doesn’t think it strange at all that it produces in him the sort of emotional reaction he associates with beauty. It is beautiful. The body is a clever machine, and John’s is all the more precious for housing his brain. It isn’t like Sherlock’s, not a bit, but for all of his protestations and fits of frustration Sherlock doesn’t want it to be, not really. In his fits of grandiosity he thinks himself something to aspire to, but when things are quieter he knows better. He wouldn’t wish a brain like his on anyone, least of all John, who is in his way a stranger and rarer thing than Sherlock will ever be.

John studies his expression for a long moment before turning towards the kettle and removing it from the burner. He glances over at Sherlock when he begins talking about Mycroft, watching him as he examines the doorjamb.

He always seems to be watching Sherlock, waiting for what he's going to do next. This, at least, is no different than before. He swallows down the words that move up into his throat about how Mycroft owes him. John still blames him in large part and hasn't done any less. He sent the car for him once. John hadn't acknowledged it, even though it had followed him for eight blocks at least. He has no doubt that Mycroft could have brought him in if he'd really wanted to, but it would not be within John's will. Still, Sherlock hadn't seen him at the funeral. That look on his face... Or had he? Had Sherlock been there?

John doesn't want to think about it. He doesn't want to keep being angry, even though he knows that's an emotion that he's never let go of easily. Even if he understands more, it doesn't change the things that John felt in his absence. Nothing can touch that kind of loss, not even, apparently having your best friend return from the dead. There had been days, weeks when he had trouble getting out of bed. Sherlock had given him a second life and when he'd gone, he'd taken that with him.

He swallows and focuses on the tea at Sherlock's tease. "Things have been considerably more dull, yes." He doesn't mind admitting it. He busies his hands and his attention to the tea, unaware of Sherlock's eyes on him. This at least feels more normal. More like their old life, the one he's been mourning without even realizing just how much. The one that he's beginning to understand might be over forever.

Still, he refuses to believe that this is the end. Sherlock is alive and Sherlock has always been capable of anything. If he wants his reputation back. If he wants more cases. More danger. John will do whatever it takes to make sure he finds a way to it. Already he is thinking of how his friends, how Sherlock's friends can aid him and assist him. If Sherlock won't or can't ask for himself, John will.

He sighs lightly as he hands Sherlock a mug of tea. "You look like you're about to fall over," he says, his eyes moving over him. "When's the last time you ate something?"

He's not entirely aware of how much like a mother hen he sounds, but if Sherlock mentions it there's always Mrs. Hudson if he'd rather deal with her instead.

Mycroft might owe him — and Sherlock is in truth well aware that he does — but there are some debts on which he has no desire to collect. To do so is only likely to set him up for further trouble, on the one hand. On the other, he's never in his life stooped so low as to accept the help of the man who killed him, and if he can help it he never will.

But these thoughts aren't foremost in his mind, mercifully, when he reaches out to take the cup from John's hands. He's dwelling instead on the surreality of nostalgia, on how much he hates that he doesn't know what to do with any of this anymore.

"Yesterday," he says in response to the question. "Morning. I think. Doesn't matter; gone longer before."

But he is tired. Bone-weary, but it's the sort that comes from carving notches into them to count the passage of days. One down. One more, and another, 'til eventually he's down to the marrow, and each cut further is excruciating. Something like that, maybe. In plenty of senses it's hyperbole, but that's how it felt, in the quiet when he'd allowed himself to sense the whole of it.

It wears a man down. He never wanted a pretty house with a pretty garden -- snatches of song, and anyone else might get the impression of children playing, of how watching them feels, some quiet contentment but Sherlock only imagines burying himself alive in the backyard, because at least that wouldn't be boring. No, he never wanted that but at the moment he'd not mind a chair by the fire.

At least there's the tea, the mug he handles like some precious, delicate thing, long fingers of both hands curling around the ceramic as though in prayer, as though drawing warmth from it. Hardly a calorie, but maybe there's some sort of spiritual sustenance to be gleaned from this warm inundation back into the familiar. He sips at it and it's just tea, just tea but there are so many things infused in it. Camellia sinensis (aged and oxidized), the termination of a too-long journey, graveyard soil, books and crap telly, cordite, a host of improbable dichotomies: the doctor more at home with a gun in his hand than a scalpel. It's just tea, Sherlock can't smell all these things mixed in, can't taste them, can't quantify them, but there they are, spread out in the web of associations that flash across his neurons. If it were possible to capture them all and keep them there, every last bit of data that makes up his brain, perhaps some abstract, artificial version of himself could experience this moment, all these binary switches in precisely this configuration, forever.

It wouldn't be the best thing to store for posterity, and that does sting, that nobody had managed it when things were good.

"I'm fine." Not fine, not a bit fine, but he's not in any immediate danger, which qualifies under the circumstances. "Not slept much, that's all."

If the look on John's face says anything, it's the fact that it does matter that the last time Sherlock's had any kind of real substance was yesterday morning. It's not enough to be dangerous of course, but the man is thin enough already.

John begins rummaging through the cupboard. He actually hasn't been shopping in a while. He's reminded of the science equipment that Mrs. Hudson gave away. They'll need to replace it of course. Get a nice head for the fridge and things will be back to as they were.

He finds a box of biscuits and opens it, a very real look of determination on his face as he holds a handful out to Sherlock.

He can see that Sherlock is anything but fine. He's not sure anyone who even knows Sherlock can fall under that category this evening.

"Then you should sleep," John says, resolutely. This is easier, dealing with right now and not thinking about tomorrow or yesterday. He glances towards the living room, covered in glass and then back at Sherlock. "Your room..."

Well, he's already seen his room, hasn't he? Seen the desolate order it's been in for months. It seems wrong somehow to send him into that unwelcome space. John swallows, moving his tongue over his teeth behind his lips. "Needs a bit of tidying. You can have my bed for a bit."

Edited (I can't grammar.) 2013-06-28 23:55 (UTC)

Sherlock wants to crawl up inside himself and leave this place. To drop dead; that might be easier than trying to navigate the politics of this, of that face and all the things it makes him feel he ought to do. Long, dirty fingers take one of the biscuits almost gingerly. This is not how things are meant to be. He's supposed to fuss and frown, be all bluster and irritation, take up more space than he takes up, be... good. Brilliant. Mad.

Now he's just the latter, and worse than ever. Still, he nibbles at the edge of it without any real appetite, mouth too dry for the dryness of the food itself to be anything more than unpleasant.

"My room needs untidying," he corrects. "You seemed to be of the opinion previously that I'm quite good at that. Don't know why you're bothered."

Perhaps because it's uncomfortable having someone wander through the scars and stitches left when you threw some portions of them out with the trash in an attempt to forget. Maybe.

"Think I'll take the sofa, though." Broken glass and all. "It's fine. Slept worse places."

Missed it, anyhow. All of this. That much he couldn't possibly say.

"Could do with a shower." It's almost mumbled, as though he's ashamed of it. He isn't, really, there's just something terribly vulnerable about the process, about going through it alone, back in this familiar space. He can feel it tightening in his chest already and though it's an inevitability he does hope John won't hear the hitching, when the time comes for that. Catharsis is rarely quiet, where Sherlock is concerned, but perhaps the spray will hide the evidence.

John feels the lack of response. It's not quite as empty as the space that was there before tonight, but it's not nearly as full as it used to be. Sherlock used to fill up a room, whirlwind his way around it, so that there was no mistaking that Sherlock was there and in charge and working on a plan. The man in front of him looks more than a bit lost. Too quiet. Too out of place.

It's unsettling. He is bothered by the fact that he hasn't kept Sherlock's room just as it was. That he didn't throw dust covers over everything and wait for Sherlock to return to him the way he'd asked. There is his skull, and there is his chair, and there are the patched holes in the wall where he shot through it but everything else has been packed up. Set aside. Sherlock's mark is far from gone, John hasn't even been able to get rid of the majority of it, just shut it up in Sherlock's room, but he's afraid of what it says about him. That tried to move on, even if he didn't entirely succeed.

"The sofa?" John repeats, wrinkling his brow as he looks at the mess of the living room. The sounds from the street can be heard through the broken window and shards of glass glitter on the floor and furniture.

"No," he says, shaking his head resolutely, his tone taking on a briskness. "You're not sleeping on the couch."

He turns back towards Sherlock, something in his face making his attention shift completely from the trainwreck of the living room to the man in front of him.

"Yeah, okay," he says, his eyes focused on Sherlock. "You do that. And I'll get this sorted." He swallows. "Are you alright? Do you.... need anything else?"

"No." Which of the questions that is meant to answer even Sherlock isn't entirely certain, initially.

"Maybe. Change of clothes." These are... safe, comfortable, trustworthy, but they're also filthy. He's certain he must smell truly remarkable. The biscuit disappears slowly, in fractions, swallowed down almost audibly by a dry throat.

Everything, everything breaks. Sherlock contributes, grinds portions of their lives like the bits of broken glass beneath his feet into dozens of even smaller pieces, hopelessly and inextricably shattered by clumsiness, scapegrace, callousness, jealousy, rage, fear, boredom; all the things of which he is made combined into a destructive force he can't stop.

He takes and he takes and he won't stop taking, not ever, and that's enough reason he should never have come back.

Has now, though. Can't undo that. His jaw is set as he turns away to fetch a towel and shuffle into the washroom, shutting the door behind him with less abruptness than he means to. It's difficult. He doesn't trust in the safety of any of it yet, the safety of any of them. He can't, can't possibly. It was hard enough before, and now...

Sweatshirt and the t-shirt underneath peel away together. His ribs didn't used to show quite so much. He's leaner now, any softness he'd gained over his association with John gone. It reminds him of too much; the mirror gets hardly more than a glance.

There's a jagged red line over one hipbone, an ill-healed cut sustained on razorwire; it isn't infected, not anymore, but the scar it's left behind will be slow to fade. A few others have appeared during his time away, marks he's glad he doesn't have to talk about.

The taps still squeak when he turns them, they're still too touchy, but it doesn't matter as much now. Sherlock hasn't been able to afford pickiness for a while now.

It is stunning. Itchiness, oiliness, dirt washing away, running down the drain in water which is at first visibly darkened by the mess on his hands and forearms and in his hair. He scrubs at it furiously with whatever is on hand, John's shampoo. Might have lice. Wouldn't be surprised. Probably has fleas, but this ought to take care of those, at least.

Every inch of him is scraped at, scrubbed at with unsentimental roughness, and the raw, tingling skin which is revealed underneath stings under the hot water in a way which feels deserved, which feels alive and renewed and that, that is the beginning of it, the tightness in the throat, the way the breathing doesn't come quite as easily as before.

He recalls being a child on his mother's lap, the world an incomprehensible blur of input he couldn't process, motivations he couldn't understand, yeses and nos that made no sense to him. The lines between the permissible and impermissible were more jagged than they were blurred, each twist and turn sharp and unexpected. He had wept often and bitterly, meting out in tears and sobs what he couldn't express in words: that he was alone, that he was trapped, that the world pressed in on him like a vice and he felt not merely small but squashed, compressed ever more towards a horizon past which he could no longer see, some singularity of the soul.

This isn't like that. He'd cried for himself then and he does so again now, but not solely for himself. Every moment of it is hateful; his nose begins to run and he tries to tangle his fingers in cropped hair to pull. His nails drag across his wet scalp, leaving angry reddened lines beneath the dark locks, but that does no good. He could tear himself to pieces and it would do no good; he is unsalvageable, sinking, an anchor tied to his ankles; the dark beneath the water presses in on him and forces a soft noise of frustration from his lungs, a huffed and restrained sob.

So he stands, and he doesn't know for how long: head bowed beneath the spray, shoulders hunched, clutching at his skull, nose and eyes stinging and running, lungs expanding and contracting in helpless and fitful jerks, rocking gently back and forth.

It can't be done. He can't wire himself shut like a broken jaw. He can't clap his hands over his ears to drown out the sound of himself. He rocks back and forth as once he was rocked and if the motion calms him it takes a long time to settle in. Exhaustion hits first.

The tears dwindle. He feels empty, hollowed out, dull, and turns the water sharply to cold, letting it fall on faintly swollen eyelids to lessen the inflamed red. To hide. Just one more thing he has no particular desire to discuss.

John listens to the bathroom door creak shut and lets out a long sigh, running his hand over his hair and trying to think of what there is to do now. Here, outside of Sherlock's presence the laser focus he had given the other man dissipates leaving confusion and chaos in it's place.

There are a million things that need to be done. Practical things. Things for their safety. Things for Sherlock's well being. Explanations that need to be made. A flat that needs tidying.

He's saved from trying to decide where to start by a knock on the door. Mrs. Hudson is on the other side, looking a bit pale but steady as she moves past him with a tray full of sandwiches and fruit. John had almost forgotten the woman entirely in his dealings with Sherlock.

"I had to run to the shop," she said in explanation. "I was nearly out of bread. I knew you didn't have anything. You never do."

John wrinkles his brow. Does she know? Did Lestrade or one of the other policemen tell her about Sherlock's return?

She sets the tray down on the table and then looks towards the mess of the living room and the shattered glass that lie between it and the kitchen. She gives a small gasp and then a stern look. "Where is he?"

John swallows, not sure how Mrs. Hudson is taking Sherlock's return a million times better than he. "He's taking a shower."

She studies him for a moment, her expression softening. He can see a touch of red around her eyes. She's been crying. She lets out a low sigh and pulls her coat closer about her. "Tell him to come see me," she says. "But not tonight. I'm tired. I'll let you boys have tonight." And with that she moves towards the door, pausing to smile and look over her shoulder. "I'll make a roast."

John moves after her, watching her make her way down the stairs to her own flat and only closes the door when he hears her shut her own door. He takes another deep breath and looks around the flat. Unless Sherlock's shower habits have changed he has a few minutes more before he'll be needing his change of clothes. He takes advantage of the time to try to sweep up as much glass as he can, though he steers clear of the couch not intent on giving Sherlock any reason to sleep there when a bed is available.

He moves down the hall to retrieve a change of clothes, the steady fall of the shower making it's way out from behind the bathroom door. It takes him forever to find all the clothing items necessary in the boxes lining Sherlock's wall. When he returns to the bathroom door, he expects Sherlock to be waiting impatiently on the other side. Instead he can hear the steady fall of water on a shower that must have turned cold several minutes ago.

He could open the door a crack and balance the clothes on the edge of the sink so that Sherlock will have them when he's ready, but instead John presses an ear up against the door, listening. Sherlock had looked weak but steady, now however John is wondering if he miscalculated just how bad off his friend's condition was.

"Sherlock?" His concerns are evident in the sound of his voice. The question of are you okay understood. Though with a twinge of guilt he has to acknowledge that Sherlock answered that with a negative before moving towards the shower.

He knocks on the door and is moving to push it open before he's even finished his warning. "Sherlock, I'm coming in."

He gets the door open wide enough to see the mirror over the sink and Sherlock's thin form beyond the nearly transparent shower curtain reflected in it. He is standing, but the thinness startles him. He had felt it through Sherlock's sweater, but seeing it like this is completely different.

He stops, unable to draw his eyes away from the Sherlock shape beyond. "Everything okay?"

He knows he's hovering. He knows he's being what would've been unbearable to the old Sherlock. Maybe part of him wants to be snapped at. He doesn't know.

"Fine." The word is quiet, half a sigh, full of weary exasperation, and just nasal enough to betray the state of his nose. Sherlock's hand curls around the bar from which the curtain hangs.

It's a lie. Of course it is; John must know that. It must be obvious, and not just because the reasons his nasal passages might suddenly find themselves blocked are few and far between already. He hates it, having even this small portion of his mental state laid bare, made obvious. It inspires questions, inspires talking about it, and he can't imagine how it isn't obvious that he can't, wouldn't know where to start.

He reaches out to shut the water off, the hollow in the pit of his stomach filling in with something heavy and complicated as his arm snakes out from behind the curtain to snatch up a towel. Before all of this mess he might simply have stepped out, unselfconscious even on the worst of days, but now his body tells stories of things even he shies away from. There's not much, he's not been torn apart, not been shredded, but even the meager handful of raised, pink marks, even the two faded bruises on thigh and shin tell stories he's not terribly keen on recounting.

Then again, maybe he should. Perhaps it should be made obvious that way, if words won't do. It's with resolve that he rubs himself dry cursorily and wraps the towel about his hips before stepping out, head inclined and back straight, as though not a thing is wrong. As though daring John to say anything, anything at all. Implicit in the dare is the desire that he refrain, but Sherlock – and perhaps this is comfortingly familiar – has never been one for taking the easy route where anything is concerned, much less an expression of his own limits. To say outright that he doesn't want to discuss any of it at the moment would be to admit to too much.

Matters of practicality are easier. He eyes the clothes in John's hands, rivulets of cold water running from his hair to drip onto the floor or dribble down the back of his neck. They'll do. Of course they will; he's not yet recovered well enough to be picky. From there his eyes stray, wandering over familiar things, picking up clues.

"You've not cleaned off the sofa." That from the set of John's jaw and how intransigence intertwined with memory to sketch cause and effect. Not terribly difficult to work out if one pays attention. Sherlock can't, in truth, say he blames the fellow. He doesn't want to be further from John than he has to, for the moment. If circumstances were reversed he would be equally stubborn. Will be; that's the problem, really. Taking any more than he has to is equally intolerable.

"I could tell you I've missed it, if that would make you more inclined." Inclined to permit him, inclined to let the matter drop, and all others with it, the whys and wherefores of preference. He holds his hand out for the clothes, just one more small request clinging to the coattails of all the rest.

It's clear even before Sherlock speaks that he is not fine. John can see it in the thiness of the figure behind the curtain, in the set of the shoulders and the incline of the head. Even before he hears it in his voice, he sees it and it makes his chest tighten.

The water shuts off and John thinks he should leave, but he doesn't. He waits for the curtain to be pulled back, Sherlock's towel slung around his waist, his eyes taking in the visible marks. Marks that are too new and too fresh to have been there before. He takes in the sharp collar bones and the silent dare that Sherlock's whole persona seems to be firing at him as he approaches.

John's eyes move upward to meet Sherlock's, his jaw tensing the slightest bit in response when he notes that the sofa hasn't been made ready for him.

"It doesn't," John says, his voice matter-of-fact. He hands Sherlock the clothes without comment. There are so many questions he wants to ask. So many explanations that he needs to try to put together, but he knows what exhaustion looks like on Sherlock. And he knows that this is a hundred degrees worse than anything he's seen before. His primary objective is making sure he got some rest before anything else.

Even still, he's so focused on Sherlock that it takes him a moment to realize that him standing there wasn't entirely conducive to letting Sherlock dress. He remembers when Sherlock would move about the flat in nothing but a bed sheet because he couldn't be bothered to dress. How much he took that kind of freedom and familiarity for granted. Now each piece of clothing feels like a piece of armor, keeping John and the rest of the world at bay. He minute Sherlock pulls on those pants, that shirt, the more of him that's covered. Hidden. Hiding. That's the impression that John gets as he stares at him and one that's not easy to shake off.

John forces himself to step back, but can't quite bring himself to leave the bathroom just yet. He finds himself irrationally wanting to draw out the moment. To stall.

"Mrs. Hudson brought some food. She said for you to see her in the morning."

It's an odd thing, familiar fabrics, clothes that still fit but not like they used to. His eyes are downcast as he slips into the clean pair of underpants John offers, pulling them up under the towel before he discards it, less out of modesty and more out of defensiveness, though they're still not enough to hide the angry red line that curves up above one hipbone, a poorly-healed scratch, not deep but the raising of the flesh bears the mark of infection. It's not bad now, but it clearly was once.

Sherlock merely counts himself fortunate that he'd seen fit to have kept up to date with his tetanus vaccinations.

"Fine," he says flatly, dispassionately, agreeing just to agree. He doesn't want to. At the moment he wants nothing more than to be left alone, or at least the loudest and most conscious part of him does, though there remains the undeniable fear running beneath it all: that if he is left alone, he will remain so. That it will all disappear. Irrational, but probably inevitable after all this time.

He swallows thickly and reaches for the trousers.

It isn't that he doesn't mind John's presence. The process would be best enacted alone, more slowly than this, but Sherlock doesn't think he can stand an instant more of that curiosity, or that pity.

"I'm fine," he snarls as he does up the button. He's not fine. They both know he's not fine, but that's not the point. He's not going to drop dead, he won't keel over. Hasn't done so far, won't now. "Stop looking at me like one of your patients; it makes my skin crawl."

He's not that. He never meant to be that, at least. Something to be pitied, cared for because there's nothing else to do, because one is supposed to and nothing more.

"How should I be looking at you?" John says, voice terse. "As a ghost?"

Because that's a far better adjective for the man that's standing in front of him. He'd much rather be able to consider him a patient. At least then he could being to try to diagnose what was wrong. He has vague ideas, but until Sherlock is ready to give him details, his hands are tied.

He's had enough. He's gone from angry to concerned to confused and back again. He's tired and he's afraid that Sherlock will sleep a couple of hours and then simply disappear again. He's almost convinced that somehow the detective has it stuck in his head that this is the best solution for everyone. It isn't.

"You're here," John says. "You're home. And you're not sleeping on the couch. And you're not sleeping in that room with your things piled to the ceiling in boxes. You're sleeping in my room, we're sharing a bed and I don't want to hear another word about it!"

Granted, if anyone else had been present to hear these words there was a lot that could've been heavily misinterpreted, but John didn't care. It would be the easiest way to ensure he didn't get up and leave in the middle of the night.

His stare was intense as he met Sherlock's, containing a challenge of his own. He softened his voice, uncurling his hands where they had unconsciously balled up into fists at his sides.

He swallowed and let out a slow breath. His voice calmer but tired. "We'll sort the rest out in the morning, Sherlock. It's just for tonight."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

next summer I will return, I'll be back, you'll crash and burn, now it's your turn to crash and burn

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I'm so sorry this is so late

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brace for phone tag, sorry for short, I could not wait

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