An Experiment, Of Sorts [2/2] - Sherlock - John/Sherlock

[toestastegood]

Part One

One week later, John is sitting in the very coffee shop that Sherlock's case leads him to. There's no one sitting there with him, but there are two drinks on the table and a woman's handbag at his feet, large and made from cheap leather. Sherlock doubts it belongs to John himself.

He puts aside his plans to stride into the kitchen to investigate the brand of butter that they use on their sandwiches (very vital - a man's freedom depends on it, but that man can sit in a jail cell for a minute or two longer) and corners John at his table instead, taking a seat. It's still warm, uninhabited for only a few moments.

At his presence, he sees the way that John splutters his dismay. "This has to stop, Sherlock," he hisses between clenched teeth, with his palm slapping down against the table hard enough to make the surface shake. Sherlock's eyes dip down to track the movement, but he doesn't find himself alarmed: surprised, perhaps.

"I'm here for a case," Sherlock says - and the look in John's eyes is downright dangerous, to the point that Sherlock is rather glad that John doesn't have his gun here with him. He doesn't understand what exactly is so infuriating, which merely frustrates him twice as much: after two years spent thinking of John, it is surely about time that his over-sized brain managed to work him out. "I don't imagine that this is a coincidence, however."

"Your 'nemesis', right? Moriarty?" John sounds weary rather than worried. He must be failing to grasp the gravity of the situation - and Sherlock can't blame him, really. His mind is far too small for it. "Leave me out of it, alright? I'm not getting involved with any more of your madness."

Sherlock listens to him, genuinely listens with all of his attention focused to a pinpoint on John in this moment: his words, his expression, every twitch and gesture. It's all important, and he's never bothered to pay proper attention before. John used to exist in the margins, taken for granted, before Sherlock's desire for his work and for answers drove him away. "You're already involved," Sherlock says. "Moriarty is pulling the strings here, not me."

John makes a snorting sound through his nose and looks past Sherlock's shoulder, over to the bathroom. He's checking the door for the female toilet, waiting for his companion to return. "Really, Sherlock. You have to go. Please. Don't make me deal with you here."

"You haven't 'dealt with me' anywhere," Sherlock says - and he surprises himself with the quiet lace of irritation in his voice, the indignation that comes from being pushed aside as if he isn't important. "If I want your attention, I have to be right in front of you."

"My - my attention?" John says, choked and high-pitched as if Sherlock has said the wrong thing. "Is that really what the problem is here? That I'm not worshipping you enough?"

"There's a girl in the bathroom," Sherlock says. "You're overlooking an important threat to your life because you're distracted with a romantic engagement."

"I'm - You - Jesus, are you really that stupid?" John snaps. Sherlock sits up straight, brow creased. He's been called all sorts of names before, but not that. Never stupid. "I'm sitting in a cafe with the man who - with - " John's face is colouring and his voice is faltering and his hands are trembling. His voice drops to a point where it is barely audible. "With the man who raped me. Why do you think I want you to leave?"

"I'm not going to do it again," Sherlock says. He even rolls his eyes to demonstrate what a ridiculous idea that is. "Besides, we're in public. Even if I had reason to do it, I wouldn't be so foolish."

John looks for a moment as if he wants to throw one of them out of the window, and hasn't yet decided which one. In the end, he shakes his head and gets to his feet so sharply that the chair wobbles behind him. After hovering for a second, it clatters to the ground and John jumps, startled: it's far from the steely nerves a soldier would usually be blessed with. Dumping cash onto the table, he looks in the direction of the bathroom. No appearance of his missing date.

And yet he doesn't wait.

Someone so polite, so restrained, that he had complained every single time Sherlock's texts had led him away from his 'real' life is walking away from a date without a single word to the woman he is abandoning.

Extraordinary.

Sherlock instantly forgets what he had come into this place to find out, and he chases after John, walking at his side along the street. It's easy for his long legs to keep up with John, even when he's striding at top speed. "I should call the police," John says, shaking his head. Sherlock thinks that he must be talking to himself, because it doesn't seem like much of a threat.

"They wouldn't believe you," Sherlock answers. He shoves past a few pedestrians that don't manage to get out of their way in time.

"They wouldn't..." John repeats, before he swears loudly and places his hands against his temples. "Don't you feel any remorse? At all?" he snaps.

Sherlock frowns. He isn't quite sure how he's supposed to answer that. He wishes that it hadn't happened; the consequences have dragged on for far too long and he still can't escape that certainty that something simply isn't quite right with the whole thing, an underlying gnawing worry that tells him to return to the first case, that that is where the answers lie. "Regrets are pointless," he answers when it becomes clear that John expects him to say something. "I'm disappointed it didn't help the case, if that helps."

John splutters and repeats his words again. He seems to be developing a terrible habit of doing that. "I don't know how I ever put up with you," he says, with a tremble in his voice once more. Sherlock thinks, for one terrifying moment, that John might be about to cry - thankfully, the moment passes with no tears. Sherlock wouldn't have known what on earth he was supposed to do if faced with that.

"You liked me," Sherlock says. It is carefully situated in the past tense; there's no point in fooling himself about the consequences of his actions. "I had to take advantage of that."

"Because of the case?"

"Yes." He can't read the emotions in John's voice, so he sticks to the facts instead, and tries not to examine why his heart is racing from the bare thrill of being allowed to walk at John's side. "A man was shot dead in his friend's bedroom. The friend claimed to have been raped by his victim several times in the preceding week, but his reactions seemed - off. Wrong. I needed to see how another mind react in similar circumstances."

"And?"

"You left," Sherlock says. There's a stitch in his chest when he says it, as if he has been running for far too long. He isn't out of breath. "Mr Turner remained in his home for five days before he took a gun and shot his friend."

John shakes his head, as if Sherlock has been misunderstanding the world this whole time. Sherlock sees everything, knows everything, understands everything - but he suddenly doesn't feel so sure. "People are different, Sherlock. You can't perform 'experiments' on us. It doesn't work."

"I can see that," Sherlock replies dismissively. The experiment had been a resounding failure.

John stops at a bus-stop, although none of the numbers that stop here would take him anywhere he might want to go: Sherlock isn't even sure why he's back in London in the first place. It hadn't been mentioned on his blog, and it distresses him that there are no clues to help him work it out. He's losing his touch. Around John, his mind has started to fog. "I'm leaving now," John says, hiking a thumb at the stop.

"I'll come with you."

"No." Strong, insistent, it's the tone of a commander. Sherlock frowns. "Sherlock, we're not - I don't know what you're thinking right now. I never really did, but especially not now, and having you try and explain it is just - It's making things worse. So you should go. Or, I'm going to go and you can run off and have your adventures with Moriarty. But you need to stay away from me, please. I know you're going to say that it's not your fault you were at the cafe today, and maybe that's true, but - You're smart. Smartest man I've ever met, even if you are a total bastard. Use that smartness to stay the hell away from me. Or..."

He seems to be running out of courage, words tumbling apart and sentiments becoming more spaced. Sherlock doesn't speak at all, his lips carefully pressed together.

"I have a gun," John says, just above a whisper. "Not on me, but... I'm just saying. I understand what your suspect did. I understand it perfectly."

Sherlock nods, deeply, and takes that into account. "I see," he says. John has just confessed that he wants to shoot him. That's certainly something Sherlock hadn't anticipated.

He's finding this conversation difficult and it makes him want to retreat into logic: yesterday, he wouldn't have said that anything could have made him want to abandon John once he was back, especially after the bare tease of having John drunk and sleeping in his bed the week before. "The next bus is due in two minutes," Sherlock says. "I'll leave you to it. I need to see a man about a brand of butter."

The case shifts and forms once more in his mind and he squares his shoulders, walking away as snippets from their encounter replay in his mind.

Back in the cafe, there is a comely young woman sitting in confusion at the table that John had walked away from. A teacher from Ireland, recently moved over to England, probably only been out of teacher-training for a year or two. John does like them young, it appears. Sherlock doesn't bother to tell her where John has gone to or to explain what's happened: he has enough problems to juggle without tossing John's into the mix as well. The thought of helping out John's love life is repulsive to the core: he gets on with his work.

(The butter is Lurpak, exactly as he expected. A man is released from jail as soon as he lets Lestrade know.)

*

Beneath his foot, he hears the snap that means finger bones are cracking. There's something rather satisfying about it.

Lying on his back on the floor, blood staining his face, Mr Turner looks up at him with pained strength in his eyes. He looks far older than the mere two years that have passed, but that might be because of the dirt and the lack of light in this dire room. Sherlock twists his foot and the scream that rings throughout the building is gratifying.

"It would be nice if you would start talking, now," he says without raising his foot or letting up the pressure even a fraction. There's no use for pity with an agent of Moriarty. "As satisfying as it is to listen to your screams, a confession would be far nicer."

"Fuck you," Mr Turner snarls through his teeth.

Sherlock smiles like a vampire and crouches down at Mr Turner's side, digging a set of fingers into a pressure point when the compact, muscular man tries to lunge at him. "Brilliant," he says. "I'd been hoping you'd be stubborn." He's been wanting to do this for years: he's wanted someone to hurt for chasing John away, but hadn't known who to blame. Not himself. He'd had his reasons - and that reason is right here, lying on the floor in front of him. "Your story didn't add up, Mr Turner. Oh, you played the role very convincingly. I was impressed. But the bruises on your wrists - the possession of that gun. The angle of the shot. There was always more to it than that, wasn't there?"

He twists his fingers a little deeper in the muscles of Mr Turner's shoulder, and is rewarded with a singing scream. No words, but the sound speaks for itself.

"The angle of the bruises you had wasn't conductive to the position you'd said you were in: ringed evenly around the wrist. Struggling in the position you were in, you would expect heavier bruises on the back of your wrist: blood, scabs where you struggled especially hard." He remembers John's wrists, even if it had been too dark to examine them properly as he had removed the cuffs. They had been nearly ruined, and must surely have taken several weeks to heal completely. "And that gun - it's difficult to get your hands on something like that in this country. Nonetheless, a man in a situation such as yourself might certainly have tried - but the shot. The wound." As he speaks he keeps his fingers pushing deeper and deeper against that muscle, switching around to the opposite shoulder only when he gets bored. "It was very clean work. Your hands mustn't have been shaking at all."

He wants the man to argue with him; to splutter and complain and call him mad, because that's what they do. That's what they all do.

Mr Turner, however, lies on the ground and pants desperately for air as if he is dying. It's just a shoulder wound and a few broken bones. Painful, but not life-threatening. Sherlock withdraws his hands all the same, because it's no fun when there are no answers forth-coming.

"It was a very professional shot - nothing emotional about it." He has studied enough gun-shot wounds in his time to know exactly what each motive looks like when it is painted in blood and meat. At a single glance, he can read a thousand details about the shooter: and nothing on his victim had said that this was a crime of revenge or self-defence.

Execution, that's what it had said. He'd been too distracted at the time: John's fault, all John's fault.

"I know you're working for someone," he says, and he makes himself smile as politely as he can do. It makes him feel like a puppet with fraying strings. Smiles don't suit him. "Would you like to tell me who?"

Mr Turner's breath shudders on its way into his lungs. "He attacked me," he wheezes. His breath hitches. "So I shot him. What do you want?"

"Who do you work for?" Sherlock asks. He looks up and around Mr Turner's apartment, taking a quick glance: nothing there speaks of any personality whatsoever, no life lived or embraced. It is a holding station, somewhere to sleep and nothing more. "Moriarty?"

It all comes back to him, eventually. Everything in Sherlock's life is starting to wind its way back to that mysterious name, and it's driving him mad. A mystery several years brewing ceases to be intriguing and rather becomes irritating.

Mr Turner shakes his head frantically. "I don't know who you're talking about."

The panic in his eyes tells Sherlock enough. "So it is him," he concludes. Someone wouldn't have that reaction if they didn't have the fear of god in them - and Sherlock has seen in the past what Moriarty does to his contacts. He has chased a dying man into blind agony just to access that name and nothing more. "Why? What's his stake?"

He looks up, eyes lingering on the empty bookshelf even if he doesn't take anything in, thoughts racing instead. Setting up a crime like this, impossible for Sherlock to understand or decipher, must have been designed to create the very outcome that it had: the need for an experiment, the need for him to explore all possible avenues. It had made him push John away, hadn't it? Arranging this crime had pushed John from their apartment - and that must have been Moriarty's purpose all along, surely, must have been what he was aiming for. They were too good, together, too efficient. Sherlock had been getting close to his real identity, to unmasking the villain, and that had to be stopped, had to be prevented - and it had worked, John had gone and he had slowed down, had stopped, had started to stew -

And Moriarty had brought him back into the game.

Boredom. It's the all-defining killer.

At his feet, Mr Turner rolls onto his stomach, clawing at the ground and crawling in an attempt to get to the door while he is distracted. Idiot. He's never that distracted. He watches with keen eyes and marvels at how inept Mr Turner is, for a hired killer. He barely put up a fight at all when Sherlock came to 'talk' to him, and he appears to have an incredibly low pain tolerance, even for a soldier - for a brief, uncertain moment, doubt flares in Sherlock's belly, the feeling that he might be piecing things together the way that he wants them to be rather than the way that they are. It goes against all of his methods, and against the very science of deduction that he lives by. Evidence must come before conclusions. Don't hunt for answers, look for clues.

"If you try to escape, I'll kill you," he tells Mr Turner before he has managed to make it even half a metre towards the door. Instantly, his movements stop. Sherlock looks at him for a few moments longer, trying to work out from the expression on his face what is going on. There is still blood smeared from where Sherlock had hit him after first entering the flat, and there's a burning anger beneath the fear that dominates.

Sherlock is right, he decides, even if he can't confirm it beyond reasonable doubt - lost, for once. Moriarty's hand is at work in this.

"You should be thankful that I'm leaving you alive," Sherlock tells him. He's never killed anyone on purpose before, but if he was going to start this would be a good time for it. Mr Turner would have earned it: a quick, unheroic death.

He doesn't get it. Moriarty will no doubt see to it himself.

Sherlock leaves him lying on the floor and strides out of the flat without a backwards glance, having confirmed all his own suspicions. Moriarty - behind everything, just as he always is. And that shouldn't give Sherlock a thrill, shouldn't make him happy, but it does: it means it wasn't his fault.

Need to speak to you.
SH

He sends the text to John and walks through the London streets with a bounce in his step, wind tugging at his hair, as he thinks that this ordeal might finally be reaching its end.

*

John doesn't reply to him, but that is to be expected: Sherlock doesn't even wait for it. He heads straight for the station and washes specks of blood from his hands in the train's bathroom as it rattles along, taking him out of the city. He's known John's new address since he first moved there, keeping tabs on him from afar - it's only right to do so. John's well-being has been his responsibility since Moriarty first took an interest in him. If John won't take the threat seriously, Sherlock has to.

It's very tiring. Very irritating. Very necessary.

The trip to Bristol leaves him bored and twitchy, but once he is there he climbs into a taxi and finds himself in front of a dire apartment building in short stead. He doesn't tip the taxi driver - because he knows he didn't take the most efficient route, knows he could have done a much better job without even being a native of this strange city.

At John's apartment building, he doesn't press the buzzer for flat number five, where he knows that John lives by guessing the password of his Amazon account and seeing where the most recently used delivery address had been.

(and he really does have to ask John about his taste in music - buying 'the Best of the Corrs' is simply embarrassing).

Instead he relies on an old technique and manages to get someone else to bring him into the building through a few lies and faked smiles, rushing up the stairs - he takes two at a time in a rush, with a giddy charge throughout his cramped legs after being contained in that tin-can of a train for far, far too long. His knocking on the door is long and extended, not stopping until it is answered, refusing to leave until this is over.

Slowly, eventually, hesitantly, the door is opened a simple crack, with a safety-chain preventing anyone from simply barging in. John peers at him through the gap, with alarm written in his wide eyes and on his slack face. "Sherlock, how do you know-"

"The Corrs, John," Sherlock answers, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I sent you a text."

"I know," John answers. "I changed my number. Several times, actually. That should give you a hint."

"It's too easy to find the new one," Sherlock says. Far, far too easy. John is never more than a few minutes' work away, so it is impossible to resist the temptation to follow him wherever he might go. "I need to talk to you."

"You don't," John counters, flat and certain. "You really, really don't."

"It's about Moriarty," Sherlock says, but that only makes John roll his eyes and begin to close the door. Sherlock shoves his foot in the gap to stop himself from being shut out. It hurts when John slams the heavy wood against his boot, but he doesn't back off. "He made me do it; he arranged everything."

John blinks at him as if he is a mad-man, as if he is losing his unsteady grip on reality. Sherlock doesn't know: maybe he is, maybe John's right, but he feels as if he really is seeing clearly now.

"You what?"

"The rape of Mr Turner - it was a set-up. Don't you see? A trap: something designed to push you out of London."

"You - you - " John looks like a robot that is malfunctioning. Sherlock can't be surprised; John's brain is so very small, so very weak. It's a wonder that anyone can make it through the day when they can't think like him.

Behind him, Sherlock hears the sound of one of John's neighbours opening their door to leave their apartment - and Sherlock seizes the opportunity, twisting upon John's over-sensitive sense of propriety and embarrassment. He raises his voice. "That's what made me do it - I fucked you because Moriarty wanted you to leave."

Down the corridor, a mother tries to hustle her two children out of her flat. Sherlock looks towards them and smiles: waves. He hears John muttering in his scandalised way and Sherlock knows that he's won his invitation inside the apartment. One step forward. It's enough for now.

"Right, right, come in before you scar my neighbours for life. But just for a second, alright? I'm not interested in - well, in any of this."

Sherlock withdraws his foot so that John can close the door and undo the chain, opening up so that Sherlock can walk inside. He looks around as soon as he does, taking in every detail: it's a pitifully clean apartment, with none of the character that Baker Street provides. But for a few pairs of shoes and woolly jumpers lying around, it might be impossible to tell that anyone lived here at all.

Except - no. Not quite.

Perfume hangs in the air, something cheap and sweet, and there is a wide mirror hanging on the wall that certainly isn't used by John himself. On the back of a chair rests a woman's jacket, and Sherlock tries not to allow his disapproval to show on his face. How many women has John sought comfort in since that shattering event that chased him from London? It doesn't matter now. Sherlock has solved the mystery, finally: it's time for him to come home.

"Well?" John says, all too expectant and combative. He crosses his arms over his chest and raises his eyebrows. "Aren't you here to tell me how it all isn't really your fault? You're innocent, right?"

"Far from it," Sherlock confesses. "I accept my small section of the blame. Nonetheless, I'm far from the mastermind behind events. Moriarty wanted this, John. Can't you see?"

John's face twitches, the kind of twitch that displays the difficulty he has with controlling his anger. "I don't see anything. You're looking for excuses, that's all."

There's no excuse, Sherlock can see, not for John. No explanation; no answer. It's a terrible way to live a life.

He looks around the apartment and sees the faint traces of a life lived without him, books he hasn't read and cereal he doesn't eat. "This apartment has one bedroom," he says, twitching with a frown, "yet most of the belongings here aren't yours."

He knows John well enough to know that he doesn't read romantic novels, and that he doesn't eat sugary cereal; he knows that he doesn't wear floral clothing and he doesn't wear perfume and he doesn't spend so much time in front of the mirror.

He leaves John and walks further inside the apartment, investigating all the signs that are waiting for him, the miniature circles on the carpet that are evidence of high heels and the comfortable echoing bumps of two people on the couch. "You live with someone," he says. That hadn't occurred to him, before.

"What?" John asks. He looks around and sighs. "Yes. I know. You nearly met her, remember? The cafe you chased me out of?"

"I thought that was a date," Sherlock says. A first date. When John had been in London, it had rarely gone any further than that.

"It was. We've just- We live together. Have for a little while. She's a really nice girl." John nodded to himself and it made Sherlock want to tell him that he was wrong: he wanted to find out every single hideous secret that this woman possessed and bring it into the light, anything in order to bring John back. It is an unfamiliar desperation that makes his palms sweat, his head ache. "I don't know why I'm even talking to you about this."

"I'm your friend," Sherlock says. He's never got used to that word, and though it has been gathering dust for two years it is still true. John is really the only friend that he has, has ever had -

And he laughs.

An empty, broken sound, John laughs as if Sherlock has made the wittiest joke imaginable, laughs in a way that Sherlock has ever heard. It isn't a sweet sound. Isn't gentle like he remembers John being. Isn't even hard like he was when he was hidden behind a gun.

It's fractured. Broken and shattered and split apart, as if Sherlock has done something irreversible, and it might just be the most horrid sound in the world. Sherlock needs it to stop.

He chooses the method that suits him best, that gets him what he wants, and places his hands on either side of John's head, holding him still and covering his giggling mouth with his lips, drinking down that glass-like sound, so sharp it might cut his lips. The noise stops instantly and he feels John's hands against his wrists, tugging backwards; he doesn't let up. He holds John where he needs him to be and kisses him as much as he dares, licking against his lips. They're dry, closed, and he tastes like tea. He's never got to kiss John before; never had the chance they should have had.

He coaxes at John's mouth - it's been a long time, such a long time since he has bothered to do this with anyone - but it doesn't happen like it should: John doesn't melt against him, doesn't give in, just keeps shoving at his arms and shoulders until Sherlock stops struggling with him. He steps backwards, breathless, and John puts as much space between them as he can. "Get out," John snaps, pointing at the door as if he is trying to shoot it with his finger. "Now. Out."

"John." There's a shake in his voice, something that is escaping beyond his control. "I can't think any more."

"Get out," John repeats, and he starts rooting in his pocket for his cell phone. "I'm calling the police in one minute if you're still here."

John isn't looking at him, his attention down on the phone instead, and Sherlock thinks that if he could just get him to look up, to pay attention, then this might work - they might still be able to make this work. "I think I need you around," he says. It feels like clawing out his eyes to say something like that, so against his nature, but it's John. He'll do it: he'll do anything.

"I don't care," John tells him - stark and blunt and honest. "Please. If there's any part of you that can feel, any part of you that gives a damn, then leave me alone. Don't come here again. Ever."

Sherlock wants to tell him that he's got it all wrong: he feels. He feels strongly and intensely and he doesn't know what to do with it all, bubbling up inside him and clouding his vision. It stops everything from working the way that it should, and it had never been like this when John was around, at his side. It had never been like this before John either - only now, only after. It's all because of him.

"Go," John repeats.

Sherlock doesn't say anything. He wants to kiss him again, force him to respond, but he turns around and sweeps towards the door instead. Outside, he hears the sound of chains sliding and bolts locking. There is layer upon layer of security, something that John never felt the need to have when they lived together in London.

It's his fault.

It's all his fault - and Sherlock is starting to see that now, starting to have a third eye opening upon the world. He doesn't like it; he really doesn't like what awaits him in this new, emotion-filled vision. There is pain and guilt and the silent throb of loneliness.

Reluctantly, he leaves the building.

He turns his back - and he tries to work out what move should be made next.

*

"What would you do?" he asks the skull.

It isn't very forthcoming with answers.

He lounges on his couch with the curtains drawn shut, his dressing gown wrapped around him and a few mugs of untouched, cold tea scattered around the room. He isn't interested in drinking anything but he keeps making it, trying to perfect the exact dilution that John used to drink: as if the ideal cup of tea might be enough to bring him back. He feels like laughing at himself - except, no, he doesn't. Not at all. Not after hearing the sound of John's laughter when he'd gone to face him.

"If you'd done something bad, something rotten..." The skull probably has done such a thing in its life - but it won't answer him now. Eye sockets stare like black holes. "How do you fix it?"

From the doorway, there is the sound of someone clearing their throat. He looks up, moving his eyes without moving his head, and sees Mrs Hudson standing in the door-frame, practically hugging the wall. "If you need someone to talk to that might talk back," she says, with a sad smile on her face and a twinkle in her eyes, "Holby City doesn't start for an hour."

One hour: how could one ever encapsulate the mistakes he had made in such a brief span of time? Especially without saying something too incriminating?

"What's the worst thing you've ever done to someone?" he asks, almost out of curiosity than any genuine need to know.

She slithers a little smirk at him, and walks into the room, settling down in one of the chairs - the chair that used to be John's chair, the chair that Sherlock won't allow his new, annoying flatmate to go anywhere near. "I got a very smart man to make sure my old husband was executed, love. What about you?"

His mouth twitches in amusement. Sometimes it is far too easy to forget that she is not quite as kindly as she likes to appear. Everyone has claws.

"I did something. To John."

"'Something'? That's a little bit vague for me."

"I can't tell you the details," he says. He could - but he thinks that she might throw him out of the flat if he did, regardless of how much she owed him for that little trick with her husband on death row. She'd always liked John, hadn't she? Everyone had, if they ever bothered to notice him.

"Worse than usual, though," she guesses. As deductions go, it's hardly a leap. Sherlock nods. "Have you said you're sorry?"

"I've said little else." Perhaps that isn't true - but it should be. John should know. "I don't think it makes a difference."

She is staring at him as if with a little effort she might be able to peer right through and see his thoughts, printed plainly for all to see. It doesn't work like that, not even for him. "And it's why he moved out - why he doesn't want to know you any more."

Sherlock swallows. "You're not very comforting, Mrs Hudson," he says.

"I'm your landlady, not your therapist." As she says it, they both smile. She is so much more than a landlady. Always has been. She sighs and rests in John's chair more thoroughly, sinking down as if she would like to fade right through it. "I'd like to have him back, you know. He was a nice man. Quiet."

"Yes," Sherlock murmurs.

"But sometimes, I think, sometimes you have to let go. If you've tried your hardest and it's not enough, then maybe -" She doesn't finish her sentence. He's glad for that, because 'letting go' isn't in his nature. "Oh, Sherlock."

She says it in a way that makes him feel guilty, makes him feel like a schoolboy in his rector's office: he wants to apologise before he knows what she is accusing him of.

He looks down at his hands, pale and folded in his lap, and he says, "I miss him. I didn't know I could 'miss' anybody."

He hadn't known and he doesn't like it, not one bit. He doesn't like thinking that John has managed to warp his thinking, and the strength of emotions in his gut alarms him. He can barely understand how other people can handle this for their entire lives.

Mrs Hudson stands up and pats his hand on the way out, her touch warm and tender - it's not something he's used to. His fingers curl inwards. "I'll make you some tea," she suggests, and he doesn't point out that he already has half a dozen untouched cups around him. She wants to do something; he's happy to let her fuss around if it makes her feel better. It's not for him, after all. It's for her own conscience.

Yet she is gone for a long time, far longer than it takes for the kettle to boil and tea to brew. Lying on the sofa, he doesn't bother to look for her. He stares at the ceiling instead and imagines that he is waiting for John to come home from the shops, grouching about the check-out machines or the current price of milk. It makes him feel like a love-sick teenager, yet he never had feelings like this at that age. It's new and world-shattering and he hates it; he really does.

Half an hour passes - and then his phone rings.

It's on the opposite side of the room, in his jacket pocket, and for a few moments he glares at it as if that alone might make it appear in his hand. His palm even waits, empty. The phone, irritatingly, doesn't come.

With great put-upon reluctance, he gets to his feet and trudges across the room, answering the phone just before it is diverted to his voice mail. "Lestrade," he says, having taken a split-second to look at the Caller ID. "Where is it?"

The body: a new murder, a new case, a new investigation to keep Moriarty entertained with him. The rest of his life is starting to look monotonous if this is how it is going to be from now on. Case after case after case. It's no fun when he has to take everything that comes his way.

"I don't actually need your help," Lestrade says - and Sherlock makes sure to snort loudly, just for effect, just to make him bristle. He can still wring a little fun out of his life, it seems. "I need you to come down to the station, Sherlock. It's about John."

Sherlock's grip on his cell phone tightens. His mouth is dry and he hates talking on the phone because of this, precisely because of this: reactions must be immediate. There is no time to think and evaluate and pull himself together. "What's wrong? Is he okay?"

"He's - Well, he's fine. Will you come in? I want to talk about this here, and I'd rather not come over there to bring you in myself."

"Are you going to arrest me?"

He's oddly intrigued by the idea, by the thought that John might have solved his dilemma of what to do now by taking action himself. He's not sure if he would even fight in a court case. Mycroft would pull all the necessary strings, of course, but Sherlock wouldn't do a thing; he doesn't think that he has the right to do so.

"Should I?" Lestrade counters.

Sherlock is carefully silent. He won't say a word until he knows what is going on, and when John is in the picture it is currently too difficult for him to deduct a damn thing.

"I'll be there," he says, after Lestrade waits for him to say something, refusing to be the one to break their silence. "Give me time to get across town."

"If you're not here in twenty minutes I'm sending a car for you," Lestrade tells him, with the air of someone who knows that they are giving him too much leverage as it is - Sherlock isn't surprised. Lestrade has always been so eager to bend the rules for him.

"See you soon," Sherlock says, hanging up in a way that almost sounds cheerful.

He doesn't feel 'cheerful' at all.

He slips out of his dressing gown and changes his clothing in a rush, far from as immaculately pressed and cleaned as he usually likes to be seen. Desperate times; rushed measures. On the way out of their apartment, he slams the door behind himself - and fondly remembers a time when John would have scolded him for the noise.

*

He's never felt quite so uncomfortable in a police station in all his life. Usually, he barges in and makes it his home, but today he is sitting opposite Lestrade's desk with a pair of disappointed, angry eyes boring into him. The office door is closed but it isn't locked. They aren't in an interrogation room; that's encouraging.

"You don't have anything to say for yourself? There's a first." Lestrade is filled with worried energy, and the sight of it makes Sherlock wonder precisely what John has said to him to wind him up that way. "John got in touch about half an hour ago. Said he wanted me to get you to back off."

Sherlock keeps his face impassive. Calculating the time line, he thinks he can work out the series of events: Mrs Hudson calling John for a 'chat' about Sherlock's mood, John calling Lestrade for advice and help, and Lestrade calling him into the station for a sit-down chat and a stern frowning fest. Cause and effect.

"Noted," Sherlock says. He tries not to look at Lestrade for longer than is strictly necessary.

"He's not seeking legal action yet, but if you persist... Well, I'll have to put him in touch with a lawyer."

Sherlock looks back at Lestrade, tilting his head an inch to the side as he tries to work out what was going on here. A lawyer. John hasn't told Lestrade of the source of their separation, that much was clear, or Sherlock would have been receiving something a lot harsher than a mere talking to. "He wants a restraining order?" he asks.

Preposterous.

Even if he had one it would do little to stop Sherlock, which is hardly the point. Throwing around litigation is so - unBritish.

"No, actually, he doesn't," Lestrade sighs. "But he should. I read his blog, Sherlock."

The way that Lestrade says it makes it sound as if he has read a disastrous school report about him. "So do I," Sherlock protests. It's only updated once a month and the entries are never about him. He can't see the relevance.

"He's got a new one," Lestrade tells him. "He knows you read the old one so he moved everything."

"Childish," Sherlock grumbles. It's easy to pretend that he isn't shaken. "He could have asked me to stop."

"He's changed his phone number, several times, and you always find the new one." Lestrade sounds exasperated at this point, talking down to him, and it makes Sherlock feel like he's at school again, sitting in the head-teacher's office and being scolded for his bad behaviour. There's a difference, this time. Back then, he had never felt guilty. "You found his new address and showed up on his door-step! It's not acceptable behaviour."

For Sherlock, the lines and boundaries of 'acceptable' have always been rather fluid and uneasy. They exist for others, but not for him - but now...

He doesn't know what's going on any more.

Lestrade's hands fold together on top of the desk. There's an expression on his face that Sherlock has never seen from him before, despite all of the years that they've known each other. "I don't know what you did to cause this, but something tells me it wasn't legal. John won't press charges, though maybe he should. It's good for my department that he doesn't."

They still need him. Lestrade looks at him as if he is a serial killer, but London needs him. It's gratifying, in its own empty way. "You can't arrest me," Sherlock says. "There's no crime."

"There's no reported crime," Lestrade clarifies. He doesn't smile in the way that John might have done when making such a clarification. "Devil's in the details."

Sherlock meets his gaze and doesn't allow his face to twitch, not once. It's usually Donovan that doesn't trust him. She's usually the one that is convinced he's one step away from a killing spree: Lestrade usually has a little more faith.

Until now.

"You and John," Sherlock muses, when Lestrade holds his eyes and glares. "You're friends?"

Lestrade doesn't give him much in the way of clues, but the sigh suggests that his guess isn't far wrong. "We keep in touch. He's a good bloke. And, to be honest, I want him on call if I need someone to pull you into line when you go too far."

Sherlock wishes he could smirk: if Lestrade thinks that John will be willing to be his contingency plan, he isn't much of a friend at all. That knowledge makes him feel quietly, pleasantly smug.

"I promise to stay away from him," he says, though the words stick in his mouth like unpleasant fruit.

The angle of Lestrade's head implies that he doesn't believe him. "This is serious, Sherlock. It isn't something you can just ignore and run off to do your own thing."

"I'll behave," Sherlock promises, with a sigh. 'Behave'. Already it sounds dull.

"First time for everything," Lestrade mutters in annoyance, before he waves towards the door to his office. "Alright, we're done here. I'll be checking in regularly."

"Above and beyond the call of duty. I'm sure John appreciates the personal level of care," Sherlock says. Even if he's bitter, even if he's angry in a smouldering way he's never encountered before now, there is a part of him that is glad that John has someone there to watch his back for him: Sherlock can't do it, any more. He apparently no longer has the right.

He leaves the office with very little fanfare, not even taking the time to swish his coat on the way out, but in the corridors he is subjected to more cold stares than usual, to more whispers and unhappy frowns. Gossip. The whole place is gossiping about him, and not only in the vague 'did you hear about the freak?' whispers that warn every new recruit that has to encounter him. This is something new, something altogether more vicious and judgemental. It's a wonder that Donovan or Anderson haven't come to add their thoughts to Lestrade's warnings.

He manages to escape the police station and out onto the pavement, where he grounds his mind in observation and fact: the number of pigeons on the ground and what that tells him about the pedestrians that have passed there in the last few hours, the flow of traffic tells him what is happening in the streets within a one mile radius, and the colour of a woman's handbag allows him to mentally piece together the details of her background.

It helps. Working out boring puzzles helps him to clear the rest of the dross from his mind. It allows him to breathe.

He finds a fountain that is choked with tourists and takes a seat on its edge, listening to the gurgle of water behind him. There's a temptation to let his body go slack and fall back into the grotty water, to close his eyes and float while he waits for the future to come. It's the kind of thing that John would disapprove of heartily. It is also, of course, the kind of thing with no real point - so he restrains himself. He is not the kind of man who gives in easily to his urges when they serve little purpose.

His hand plays with the phone inside his pocket, as he tells himself that he isn't going to do anything rash. He won't phone John to try to make him hear his point or his apology - not when he remembers the broken sound of John's laughter, and not when he can still feel John's hands struggling to push him away when he had tried to kiss him. John wants him to leave him alone. Perhaps after all that Sherlock has subjected him to, the danger and the pain and the final harsh betrayal, obeying this order is the least he can do.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and stares at it, at all of the scratches and marks that detail it as his. His brother would have a field-day with this phone, picking out and deducing what every single blemish says about it his life. It makes him glad that he hasn't encountered Mycroft in some time: he would be able to read everything about the current situation with a single glance. In all honesty, Sherlock thinks that he probably already knows. Mycroft has eyes everywhere.

No advice, however. For once, he's left well enough alone.

With a sorry pumping of his heart, Sherlock drafts and re-drafts a single text message. Every word is selected with care, as few as they are.

I think this ought to be goodbye. I'm sorry.
SH

He decides that it is to be the last text sent to this number. If he has the will-power, he will avoid looking up the fresh details of John's life: it may not work, but he'll try. If he fails, he has no doubt that John or Lestrade will stop him in whatever way in necessary.

Sitting in the London sun, watching passers-by rushing back and forth on their own tired missions, it is easy to forget what started it all: a single, musty night and a pair of police-issued handcuffs. John's unheard cries and appeals for mercy, his demands for Sherlock to stop. His own lack of consideration for John's thoughts, feelings, rights. It's easy to experiment when one doesn't give any thought to the consequences. Sherlock had never been one for medical ethics. This takes it a step further.

He cups his phone in his hands and stares at the cracks in the pavement for a few moments, breathing through his nose in a way that is supposed to keep him calm. It doesn't work.

His head jerks in surprise when his phone suddenly beeps and buzzing, vibrating between his hands.

New message:

From: John

Goodbye.

Simple as that.

Nothing more to it; straight to the point. John has always had a talent for brevity.

Sherlock takes his time to stare at the message and read all that he wants into that single word - yet he is not foolish enough to envision forgiveness in its seven letters. It is an end, a full stop, and that perhaps is the most that either of them can dare to hope for.

On long legs, he stands from the edge of the fountain. He tucks his hands into his pockets and begins to trudge home, shoulders hunched, eyes searching for new mysteries and adventures to keep himself occupied. Life goes on - hollower than before.

.fin