for coloredink: "Among the Secret Things" (1/3)
Original Author: coloredink
Original Story Title: Lacuna
Original Story Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/248274
Original Story Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Original Story Rating: Explicit
Original Story Warnings: None
Remix Author: kate_lear
Remix Story Title: Among the Secret Things
Remix Story Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Remix Story Rating: Explicit
Remix Story Warnings: None (mental illness?)
Remix Story Beta: innie_darling & mistyzeo
Remix Story Britpicker: none
Summary: Sherlock would be the last person to describe himself as given to flights of fancy, but at the look on Lestrade’s face he could swear that something inside him curls up and dies.
"Among the Secret Things"
Prologue
Once upon a time, in a large country house far from London, before Sherlock decided to confine his reading to anything pertaining to criminology, he used to read stories. Adventure stories, and fairytales - the real fairytales, not the sanitised versions approved by adults - and quests, and pirates on the high seas… he would take himself off with a book and a bag of apples and tuck himself away somewhere: up a tree, or in the attic, or on a curtained window seat in an unused bedroom. By the time he was seven he had known every inch of the estate grounds better than the gardener, and the only one who’d ever been able to find him was Mycroft. These days, with both of their parents buried years ago, the only one who knows about Sherlock’s old reading habits is Mycroft. He never mentions them, but Sherlock doesn’t imagine for a moment that Mycroft doesn’t look at his younger brother and remember the small adventurer he used to be.
----------
Sherlock could hardly bear to be outdone by his brother, never mind that Mycroft had had seven more years in the world to learn about things. So when Mycroft came home for the long summer holiday at age fifteen and gently told their mother - whose smile never reached her eyes, and hadn’t in years - that his English teacher was so impressed with Mycroft’s performance that he had set him Dante’s Inferno to read over the summer, Sherlock barely waited for Mycroft to finish talking before announcing that he was going to read it too.
He bristled defiantly, just waiting to be told that it was too long, too complicated for him, but Mycroft only looked mildly surprised before saying ‘Alright. I’m sure there’s a copy in the library somewhere. I’ll help you look after lunch, if you like.’
(Sherlock was too triumphant to pay much attention to it at the time, but several years later the thought occurs to him that it was probably the quietest summer holiday Mycroft ever had.)
There was indeed a copy in the library, its leather cover faded and cracked.
‘You must be careful with it,’ Mycroft said, cradling it gently to his chest as he climbed ponderously back down the ladder. ‘It’s very old, and you mustn’t take it outside or anywhere dirty. Let me see your hands.’
‘I know,’ Sherlock scowled at Mycroft from under his tangled mop of hair, but presented his palms for inspection. ‘I’m not a baby.’
‘Very well.’ After careful inspection Mycroft deemed Sherlock’s hands clean enough, and he handed over the old volume. ‘Go carefully now.’
Sherlock spent most of that summer indoors, or out on the terrace, the book open in front of him and a dictionary open at his side for help with the longer words; Mycroft had offered to tell him the meanings but Sherlock had refused, saying he wanted to work it out for himself, and hadn’t missed the approving gleam in Mycroft’s eyes. The book was in Italian but each page had the English translations on the page facing it, thankfully, and Sherlock worked away at it tenaciously. The multiple references to various historical figures were rather lost on him, but he read the graphic descriptions of their torments with morbid glee. Although he didn’t understand why, for example, violence was worse than heresy, and why both were apparently worse than greed.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ he complained to Mycroft, on a rainy afternoon that found them both in the sitting room, curled up on the sofa and sharing a blanket.
‘Hmm?’ Mycroft looked up from the enormous book he was devouring: Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy.
‘Here.’ Sherlock showed him the pen-and-ink engraving sketch of the circles of hell in the front of the book. ‘Look.’
Mycroft set his book aside and took La Divina Commedia from Sherlock; he was having a growth spurt that summer and his hands were slightly too large, but they turned the old pages delicately.
‘Supposedly the difference is between the active and passive sins.’ He traced a demarcating line though the illustration with a gentle fingertip. ‘Here.’
‘Hmm.’ This explanation lacked a certain scientific rigour, to Sherlock’s mind, but there was something else as well.
‘And here.’ Sherlock took the book back from Mycroft and turned through the pages carefully until he found the one he wanted: the fifth circle of hell, for those who were angry. He pointed out the lines in question, and Mycroft read: ‘“The sullen lie gurgling beneath the water, withdrawn into a black sulkiness that can find no joy in God or man or the universe.”’ He paused. ‘Yes. And?’
‘Like Mummy?’ Sherlock wanted to know.
‘She’s not sulky, Sherlock,’ Mycroft corrected him gently. ‘She’s sad.’
‘Why?’ Sherlock already knew the answer, or thought he did, but he’d rather pretend ignorance than admit he wanted the comfort of hearing Mycroft’s confirmation.
‘She misses Father,’ Mycroft said quietly. ‘Do you remember him much?’
‘A bit.’ Sherlock remembered a tall, quiet man. He remembered parties in the summer, with the large French windows flung wide to accommodate all the guests in the house and on the terrace, and their mother laughing in a bright frock.
‘I don’t believe that sad people go to a special hell when they die,’ Sherlock grumbled. ‘That’s silly.’
‘No,’ Mycroft said quietly. ‘Not when they die. But possibly while they’re still alive.’
Sherlock snorted at this, with youth’s sweet arrogance that it will never find itself in such a place.
‘It’s stupid,’ he announced.
‘Well.’ Mycroft’s mouth twisted. ‘The fourteenth century wasn’t known for its logical approach to mental illness.’
‘I’m going to tell her I think it’s stupid,’ Sherlock decided. ‘Then she won’t need to be worried about it.’
‘No, don’t do that.’ Mycroft rested a hand gently on Sherlock’s hair and Sherlock allowed himself to lean into it, just a fraction. ‘It’s a kind thought, but don’t say that to her.’
Mycroft stretched, marking his place in his book and laying it aside, before saying carelessly: ‘Did I tell you that I’ve worked out how to pick the lock on the attic door?’
Sherlock sat up, medieval psychology forgotten. ‘No! How?’
‘I can show you,’ Mycroft offered, ‘if you want.’
Sherlock was off the sofa before Mycroft could move. ‘Come on!’
In all the ensuing excitement the subject of the Styx, and the damned who were submerged in its mire, was let fall.
Sherlock finished the Inferno, the first third of La Divina Commedia, over the course of the summer, but he didn’t bring the subject up again. That wasn’t to say he forgot about it, though. Like his mother, Sherlock would find in later years that the mire of the Styx was more easily attained than left behind.
----------
Twenty-seven years later
‘John!’ Sherlock bellows at him. ‘John, come on!’
They’re on the deck of the Friesland, which is blazing away like a vision of Hell and John - damn him - is wasting time checking the body of a man on the deck.
Sherlock darts over to him and almost forcibly wrestles John away, blocking him when John tries to return to the corpse.
‘He’s dead, he’s dead! Leave him!’ Sherlock roars at him as John fights like a wild thing to escape.
‘I need to check for a-’
‘No you don’t, he doesn’t have a pulse any more!’ Sherlock shouts into his face. ‘And even if he does, how exactly are you planning to save him? You’re going to have to jump into icy water while fully dressed in the middle of the night; you’re going to have enough of a job to keep yourself afloat, never mind dead weight like him.’
As far as Sherlock is concerned that thug had chosen his fate when he took up with Aylsworth and his gang; he’s not about to risk his life, much less John’s life, for such a man, and John wrests himself free and glares at Sherlock.
‘I’m going to have such words for you back at the flat,’ John snarls, shoving Sherlock none too kindly towards the stern. ‘I fucking well told you to wait for Lestrade but no, you and your massive fucking intellect had to go chasing off-’
‘The police boat is on its way,’ Sherlock says, but John bundles him into a lifejacket and yanks the straps tight until Sherlock gasps reflexively and stops talking.
‘I know the fucking boat is on its way,’ John spits. ‘A bit bloody late now, though. Get over the railing.’
He breaks away to put on his own lifejacket and shouts orders at Sherlock. ‘We need to swim clear of this boat before the whole thing goes up like Guy Fawkes night. Stay out of the centre of the river; if the current catches you you’ll be swept downstream.’
‘I know,’ Sherlock says tightly, looking down into the inky Thames churning in the boat’s wake.
‘It’s going to be cold,’ John says. ‘Try to keep breathing.’
‘I will,’ Sherlock says. ‘John, come on, hurry up.’
John is still fumbling with the fastenings on his lifejacket, but when Sherlock moves to help him John shouts at him.
‘I said get over the railing! We’ve not got long before the petrol tank blows and you need to go.’
‘But you-’
‘I’ll be right behind you, but I’m the stronger swimmer and first I want to see you clear of the boat.’
‘John-’
‘Get in there before I come over and fucking throw you in myself!’ John roars at him, and Sherlock scrambles over the railing.
‘I…’ John has his lifejacket on, at last, and he climbs over the railing next to Sherlock. With John so close, suddenly, Sherlock fumbles for words. ‘I’m sorry, you… perhaps we should have-’
‘I know,’ John snaps. ‘God, you and your fucking bright ideas. Now go!’
And with no more than that Sherlock dives off the back of the boat and into the river, trusting that John will follow a few seconds later.
The cold hits like hammer blows to his head, winding icy fingers into his hair and gripping hard, and as he surfaces it snakes down under his collar and clamps tight around his chest. His heart flutters, deep in his ribcage, and his intercostal muscles spasm at the shock of it; for a moment Sherlock can do nothing but gape, struggling frantically to inhale. A wave smacks him in the face and he coughs reflexively, spitting the Thames out of his mouth and wheezing frantically. He’s supposed to be swimming, and he turns his back to the boat and starts kicking but it’s hard, much harder than it should be. The cold is weakening his muscles and he’s going against the current so headway is slow, but the Friesland’s engines are still running full tilt, so if his calculations are correct then even swimming against the current they should still be clear of the blast radius by the time the fire reaches the-
There’s an enormous roar behind him. The world goes orange and a few seconds later debris starts to splash into the water around him; something lands across Sherlock’s back, shoving him under the water and he gets a mouthful of water when he cries out. The pain is huge and immediate, occupying his whole world, and his back is on fire as he fights his way back to the surface. He sees the police boat, closer now, and he tries to cry out, to make himself heard above the roar of the flames. Off to one side he thinks he hears a cry from John but when Sherlock looks over he can’t see him, and the next instant something smacks him hard across the side of his head.
There’s a warm trickle on his temple, washed away the next instant by a cold wavelet but Sherlock keeps struggling, because the police boat is close enough now for him to see Lestrade’s face and hear him shouting.
‘John!’ Sherlock tries to shout. ‘Get John first!’
Surely even an idiot must realise that the person they can’t see is a greater priority than the one they can, who appears to be conscious and making decent efforts to swim, but perhaps they’ve already got John because they turn towards him.
Sherlock’s back is one enormous world of pain; he’s never been so glad in his life to see Lestrade, even when the man snags his lifejacket with a boat hook and heaves, hauling him over the side and onto the deck in an inelegant sprawl of limbs. He lands with a thump that makes his back scream at him but he shoves the feeling to one side in favour of rolling over to scan the small boat.
‘John,’ he says. ‘Where’s John, have you got him?’
Sherlock would be the last person to describe himself as given to flights of fancy, but at the look on Lestrade’s face he could swear that something inside him curls up and dies.
----------
INFERNO
Limbo
They did find John eventually, floating unconscious on his back with only the lifejacket keeping him face-up. They hauled him aboard to find him bleeding copiously from a head wound, and Sherlock had thundered at the hapless boat pilot to take them upriver to Guy’s Hospital - that stood practically on the banks of the Thames - while Lestrade called ahead to ensure that there was a team waiting. John had been cold as death and Sherlock had knelt by him the whole way there, cradling John’s precious, damaged skull in his hands to stop it being jostled with every judder and thump as the boat roared back up the river, and gritting his teeth against the white-hot pain in his back.
In hospital, Mycroft comes to see them both. They’re not together, John being in the ICU and Sherlock in a general ward, since there’s deemed to be nothing wrong with him barring cuts and bruises - most notably a cut on his scalp that requires stitches, and some bruising to the bone of his left shoulder blade - and a raging ??gastroenteritic illness from swallowing Thames water. He spends most of his time either huddled around a cardboard bowl, retching, or locked in the toilet; eventually he gets his own private room but Mycroft doesn’t do a thing, it’s purely by dint of the other ward occupants complaining that he’s unfit to be in company.
After a day or so of this there’s nothing left in his body to expel and he’s reduced to dry heaves that leave his stomach muscles sore and jar his shoulder blade horribly, and the staff put him on an IV to slowly drip electrolytes and fluids back into him. It’s annoying but Sherlock can’t summon the energy to protest about it. He’s weak as a newborn kitten; it’s not quite as bad as going through withdrawal had been but it’s a close second, but it doesn’t stop him asking after John.
No-one will tell him anything beyond meaningless admonitions not to worry and at last, in frustration, he decides to go and find out for himself. He carefully extracts his IV, gritting his teeth, and presses a wad of sheet to the tiny puncture mark until it stops bleeding, before shuffling out of bed and down the corridor. They’ve stolen his clothes but Mrs Hudson had been by to drop off a bag of his things, including his pyjamas. It’s the plain grey pair, that look vaguely like some sort of hospital scrubs, enough to let him pass more or less unnoticed as long as he holds his head up and looking like he knows where he’s going. He strides through the corridors, refusing to accept protests from his watery knees, and gets to the reception desk of the ICU before he’s discovered. Mrs Hudson hadn’t thought to bring any sort of footwear, and the woman on the desk takes one look at his bare, pale feet before examining him suspiciously.
‘John H Watson,’ Sherlock says, trying for his best commanding tone.
She refuses to be budged, and Sherlock is drawing himself up for a really spectacular argument that is completely and utterly derailed when he doubles over and retches into her wastepaper bin.
And just to add insult to injury, at that moment Sherlock hears familiar footsteps and looks up, with watering eyes and a thin trail of saliva hanging from his lower lip, to see Mycroft emerging from John’s room. How marvellous.
----------
Back in his room, Mycroft lectures him from the foot of the bed while the nurses flutter over him and try to tuck him in, plugging the IV back into his arm.
‘I do wish you’d listen to Dr Watson,’ Mycroft sighs, checking his watch. ‘This might all have been avoided.’
‘Fuck off,’ Sherlock growls from his bed. The knowledge that this is all his fault eats away in his gut like acid: goodness knows he’s been injured enough times in the course of his work to accept it, but it’s unbearable that John should be lying deathly still in the ICU, hooked up to various machines that are keeping a constant watch that he’s still alive.
Sherlock tries to roll away from Mycroft but the IV tugs warningly at his arm and he subsides, settling for turning his face away and closing his eyes. He hears Mycroft inhaling as if to speak, but he stays blessedly silent and there’s only the soft tread of his shoes walking away. Sherlock opens his eyes to see Mycroft approaching the nurse washing her hands at the sink in the corner, and who Sherlock recognises as the leader of the team of fluttery, white-cotton nuisances who never stop poking and prodding him. Mycroft waits courteously until she’s finished before drawing her outside and starting to speak to her.
The door is closed but no matter. Mycroft is angled so that Sherlock can see his face and Sherlock has known how to lip-read since he was seven; Mycroft is saying something about ‘relocating’ and ‘Dr Watson’ and ‘exceptional circumstances’. The nurse’s voice is strident - so strident, its been hammering its way into Sherlock’s ears like a drill - and as she glances over her shoulder Sherlock catches the word ‘disruptive’.
But Mycroft shakes his head. ‘If he’s with Dr Watson, then I promise you he’ll be quiet as a lamb.’
Sherlock closes his eyes and turns his head away again. He doesn’t care to witness the occurrence of yet another thing for which he has to be grateful to his brother; Mycroft is wearing his Look, the one he first developed at age twelve, and Sherlock knows that Mycroft is going to get whatever he wants.
They move him up to John’s room later than day, wheeling him up in a wheelchair as though he hasn’t got two legs of his own that function perfectly well. The room isn’t large enough for two full-size beds so they’ve set up a rough cot for him in the corner, and he fusses at them until they move it to the other side of John’s bed. That way Sherlock can lie on his right side and face John: tentative experiments have shown that his stomach is emphatically Not Happy with him lying on his left side, as his internal organs slide over to rest heavily on top of it.
John is in a coma, his chart says, but the doctor who does his rounds tells Sherlock that his signs are excellent.
‘So much of the brain’s functioning and resilience is still poorly understood,’ he says, with a shrug. ‘It’s a marvellous organ; sometimes it can stand up under the most aggressive abuse and sometimes a mere knock is all it takes.’
Sherlock is lulled to sleep that night by the beeping of John’s heart monitor and the slow, steady rhythm of John’s breaths. He talks to John, feeling foolish at first but persevering until it feels oddly like being back in Baker Street. He’d always talked to John when he wasn’t there, after all, but there’s a vast gulf between John being silent because he’s not there to reply, and John being silent because he can’t.
After a couple of days Sherlock comes off the drip, once he’s shown he can keep down plain boiled water and some sort of disgusting tasteless pap; if ever there was an incentive to get well enough to be discharged then hospital food would be it. Lestrade comes to visit John, and does an entirely unflattering double-take at the sight of Sherlock.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, horrified. ‘God, you look like a scarecrow.’
Sherlock glares at him. He’s been avoiding the bathroom mirror, but he hasn’t missed the way his ribs and iliac crests feel starker under his hands.
‘You’re hardly a shining example of health yourself,’ Sherlock says snidely.
The loss of the Friesland and all the documents aboard her means that Lestrade’s case has become infinitely more difficult and painstaking to build; it would be impossible if not for the memory stick Sherlock had snatched up and stuffed deep into his coat pocket before jumping overboard. The creases in Lestrade’s jacket and the traces of stubble on his face speak of nights spent sleeping at the office, and Lestrade rubs a hand over his face and says ‘Point taken. I still look better than you though. When you’re out of here I ought to take you out for a meal. Feed you up a bit so you don’t scare the horses.’
Sherlock’s stomach quivers warningly at the thought of plates of rich, greasy food, and he says quickly ‘That won’t be necessary. I’m sure John would appreciate it, though.’
‘Yeah.’ Lestrade turns his attention to the motionless figure in the bed. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘Fine.’
Sherlock had been doing the joint-flexing exercises that were necessary to stop John’s muscles atrophying - infinitely more interesting than the physiotherapy exercises they’d given him to ensure his bruised shoulder blade kept a full range of motion as it healed - and he picked up John’s right hand again and resumed his work. The nurses came round to do it daily but he’d watched them until he could replicate their actions perfectly, and surely the touch of familiar hands would be more pleasing to John than cold, clinical ones.
‘Right.’ Lestrade transfers his gaze to Sherlock, entirely too sharp for Sherlock’s liking. ‘And how are you?’
‘Also fine, thank you for your concern.’
Thumb: curl it completely in on itself, hold, and allow to relax. Repeat with index finger. Now the middle finger.
‘He’ll wake up, you know,’ Lestrade says.
‘Yes, thank you for stating the obvious,’ Sherlock says crisply. He finishes John’s fingers and clasps his hand to rotate it firmly on its wrist. So strange, the limpness of a still-living body whose owner was momentarily absent. There was nothing quite like it. ‘Do you have anything further to add? Any more platitudes?’
Sherlock fully expects Lestrade to rub his hand over his face and sigh, as he always does when Sherlock is being obnoxious. But no, this time he’s silent and Sherlock looks up to find Lestrade watching him thoughtfully.
‘No,’ Lestrade says at last. ‘Nothing more to add. But you know where I am.’
A sharp rejoinder seems like too much effort, when Sherlock is coaxing John’s arm - the one without the IV in it - into the deepest flex it can manage, and Lestrade leaves without further comment.
Later that day Anthea arrives with a large bag, smiles vaguely at him, and departs, leaving the bag at the foot of John’s bed. Sherlock inspects it and finds that it contains some clothes. Suddenly the idea of a shower - a real one, with all the hot water that Baker Street’s old boiler can provide - holds incredible appeal, and once he’s finished John’s exercises then Sherlock dresses, careful of the bandages over the cuts on his torso, and signs himself out of the hospital.
There’s a new phone in there too, since his is now at the bottom of the Thames, and Sherlock grits his teeth and makes a note to transfer the money for it to one of Mycroft’s many accounts. He’ll be damned before he’s beholden to his brother for anything. Perhaps he’ll also send a small token to Mycroft’s office. One of Harrods’ largest and most indulgent chocolate cakes ought to do it.
Mrs Hudson hugs him when she opens the door to him, exclaiming in dismay at how much weight he’s lost. He tolerates her for as long as he can before putting her fluttering hands from him - gently, as she looks alarmingly close to tears - and refuses her invitation to dinner.
‘I’m going straight back,’ he says, and her mouth purses in worry.
‘Of course you are,’ she says. ‘How is he doing?’
From Lestrade or Mycroft, this question would have been ample justification for tearing a strip off them for asking such a stupid thing. But Mrs Hudson’s eyes are faintly pink, and so Sherlock bites his tongue and says gently ‘Very well. The doctors say that his chart looks very promising.’
‘Good, that’s good,’ she says, quickly pressing a fingertip to the outer corner of an eye. ‘And of course he’s young, and very strong.’
Her voice is stuck somewhere between asking him and telling him, and Sherlock says ‘Strong as a carthorse. And stubborn as a mule.’
After all, you invaded Afghanistan.
Sherlock shakes his head to clear the phantom memory and says ‘Mrs Hudson, I really must-’
‘Of course, of course, I’ll not keep you.’ She steps back, with a last pat to his arm. ‘Call me if you need anything, won’t you.’
‘I will,’ Sherlock says, and turns away to the stairs.
His own soap and shampoo make him feel more like himself than he has in days, even though he’s hampered by his attempts to keep the stitches in his scalp mostly dry, and he wipes the condensation from the bathroom mirror with a corner of his towel and shaves. He stares at himself for a long moment when he’s done.
Being so ill has taken resources from him that he didn’t really have to spare, and the bones of his face are starkly visible under his skin. Turning around, he glances cautiously over his shoulder to see that his left shoulder blade is a starburst of colours; he flexes it through the exercises they’d given him and sets his jaw against the twinges of discomfort. His hair is heavy and dark with water, already starting to pull into curls as it begins to dry, but all Sherlock can see is John’s hair, dark with grease from several days of not being washed. It makes him look uncared for, unloved, and after Sherlock has re-applied bandages to the various lacerations on his torso that look as though they still need them he strides out of the bathroom in search of deodorant, clothes, and a bag.
He arrives back at the hospital barely two hours after he left, albeit - thank Christ - as a visitor and not as a patient. He’s also come armed with food: Angelo had been surprised to see Sherlock without John in tow but willing to make him a takeaway box of angel hair pasta once Sherlock explained.
Sherlock’s cot is gone from John’s room but he commandeers a chair and side table from the visitors’ lounge and sets up camp in the corner.
‘Don’t think that lying around here exempts you from being of use to me,’ Sherlock tells John tartly, as he switches his laptop on and hangs his coat on the back of the door. ‘I’ve not checked my website in days; there are bound to be endless posts from idiots bleating about how they think their partners are cheating on them, or how they’ve lost their cats.’
His laptop finishes powering up and Sherlock swiftly logs on.
‘Oh look, here’s a good one.’ He settles himself further into his chair, grunting a little at twinges of discomfort from his various injuries, and begins to read aloud: ‘“Dear Mr Holmes…”’
He goes through all of the posts, his only audience the slow rise and fall of John’s chest under the sheet and blanket, and types out responses to a few.
Sherlock, the John in his head says, just before he hits ‘Send’ on one particularly scathing reply, you can’t say that. Be nice. Sherlock can almost feel John poking his shoulder in reproof, and he glares at John’s body lying in the bed but deletes his reply.
When there’s no more amusement to be had from his website or John’s blog, and Sherlock has ordered a large chocolate gateau from Harrods’ for one Mycroft Holmes - paying extra for same-day delivery - Sherlock pushes his laptop to one side and fishes out his battered copy of Dante’s Inferno to read aloud. Not the one he’d read as a child; Mycroft had bought him a newer copy as a gift when he finished reading it for the first time, and Sherlock finds the ebb and flow of the familiar words soothing.
Mycroft, however, disagrees. He appears that evening just as Sherlock reaches the fifth canto, summoned as though by dark arts, and raises a sardonic eyebrow at Sherlock as he sets a glass of water down at Sherlock’s elbow. Sherlock ignores him but drinks the water. His throat is dry from speaking for so long without a break.
‘Really, Sherlock? You think that an account of the journey into the deepest circle of Hell is an encouraging text to read to a coma patient?’
Sherlock narrows his eyes at him. ‘I’d offer to cede the place to you, save that listening to you droning on about affairs of state would probably make him slip further under.’
Mycroft’s mouth actually tilts up at one corner at this, which wasn’t what Sherlock was aiming for at all. ‘I confess that there are moments when it takes me that way also.’
He strolls over and rests his hand on the lump of John’s foot under the blanket; Sherlock spares it a narrow-eyed glance and resists the sudden, possessive urge to pluck it away.
‘You never told him, did you,’ Mycroft says quietly, and Sherlock develops a sudden and profound interest in the wall above John’s head.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I rather think you do.’
Mycroft pats John’s foot absently, before gently nudging it aside to perch on the edge of John’s bed.
‘Caring serves no purpose,’ Sherlock says coldly, abandoning his study of the horrible mint-green paint to glare at Mycroft. ‘You told me that. At Mother’s funeral. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
‘And yet.’ Mycroft’s glance takes in Sherlock’s coat on the back of the door, his laptop, the change of clothes visible through the opened zip of his shoulder bag. The discarded box of Angelo’s food that Sherlock brought and then could only nibble at. ‘Here you are.’
‘I think better aloud,’ Sherlock says. ‘Mrs Hudson took my skull again.’
‘I find myself quite content in my own company,’ Mycroft says, as though Sherlock hasn’t spoken. ‘But it would seem that the same cannot be said of you.’
Sherlock merely glares at him again. ‘I manage perfectly well alone, thank you.’
Mycroft raises an eyebrow but gets up off the bed, straightening his suit fastidiously. ‘Spare me the charade. You forget that I’ve known you almost since you first drew breath.’ He passes behind Sherlock’s chair on his way to the door, and pauses for a moment to rest his hand on the back.
‘Remember that the first circle of hell is limbo,’ he says mildly. ‘Those who, in life, lacked courage to reach for something greater than their everyday condition.’
‘I know,’ Sherlock snarls, turning sharply enough that his shoulder throbs, but Mycroft is already at the door and straightening his cuffs.
‘By the way, my interns would like to thank you for the cake,’ Mycroft says. ‘I believe they now think of you as some sort of benevolent provider of luxury baked goods.’ He smiles thinly. ‘Do drop by my office any time, won’t you. I’m sure they’d love the chance to thank you in person.’
And he leaves before Sherlock can find something to throw.
Alone once more, Sherlock opens the book again and continues to read, slumping down in his chair when his head starts to nod. He tugs the chair close enough that he can kick his socked feet up to rest on John’s bed; at some point the nursing staff come to flutter around him and twitter anxiously about going home to rest, promising to call him should anything change. But he only stares at them mutely, not deigning to respond, until eventually they fall silent and go away.
At last, when his yawns disrupt the flow of his words and his eyelids are too heavy to hold up, Sherlock lets the book slide gently onto the floor and his head loll back against the chair, sinking into sleep gladly.
----------
Sherlock wakes the following morning, and almost immediately wishes he hadn’t. He has a crick in his neck from sleeping in the wretched chair, his shoulder is in knots, and his mouth feels truly disgusting. He levers himself out of the chair, fishes his toiletries bag out of his overnight bag, and disappears in the direction of the nearest toilet. After the application of toothbrush, deodorant, and hairbrush he feels slightly more human and he returns to the room.
‘I hope you’re happy,’ he grumbles at the beep of John’s heart monitor. ‘I feel absolutely dreadful, thanks to you. And you a doctor, too.’
He settles himself in the chair, biting back a groan as his shoulder twinges painfully. ‘I’m going to have to find somewhere to take a shower later, and God only know what that experience will be like.’
The book is still on the floor, left where it had fallen last night, and Sherlock finds the last lines he remembers reading.
‘And don’t imagine that this isn’t massively tedious either,’ he adds sharply. ‘We’re getting to the best parts, you might at least listen to it.’
He begins to read, letting his voice rise and fall with the inflections of the text, and before long he grows absorbed enough in it that he forgets where he is. They could almost be back in Baker Street, with Sherlock reading an interesting article to John, and so when he pauses and John grunts, he merely carries on reading.
A couple of lines later realisation dawns belatedly. John grunted. Sherlock looks up and John makes another noise; his heart rate climbs as his body struggles toward consciousness, and Sherlock moves quickly to stand by his bed, repeating John’s name in a firm, clear voice. John frowns, his eyes still closed. He grunts again - a rough, unintelligible noise - and Sherlock dares to touch his shoulder, hoping that the contact will help.
‘John.’
John’s eyes open, finally, and Sherlock’s heart gives a great bound of joy as John blinks and focuses on him.
‘Just lie still,’ Sherlock says, knowing that John would want information above anything else. ‘You’re fine, just lie still. You’re in hospital and have been in a coma for a few days, but you’re awake now and everything’s going to be fine.’
But the rapid-fire information doesn’t seem to be helping; John looks bewildered.
‘I…’ His voice is rough, scratchy, and Sherlock instantly reaches for the cup of water on the side table and holds it so John can drink.
‘You…’ John looks around, biting his lips. This close his breath is sour from illness but Sherlock has never cared less about anything in his life. He could kiss John to see him awake and sitting up.
‘Do you work here?’ John demands, looking past Sherlock to glance around the room. ‘This doesn’t look like the base hospital; did they transfer me while I was out of it?’
Sherlock can only stare at him, lost for words, and John frowns at him.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he snaps. ‘And what’s wrong with my shoulder, why isn’t it strapped up-’
He starts tugging at the neck of the loose gown he wears, and swears violently when he shoves a hand inside to touch his bad shoulder.
‘What the fuck’s going on? Who are you?’
‘I’m… I…’ Sherlock can’t seem to catch his breath. John looks fierce, as though he’d like nothing better than to shake some answers loose from Sherlock, but they’ve been in some tight spots together and Sherlock knows that look, knows it’s the one John wears when looking scared isn’t an option.
‘I’m…’ he tries again, but he’s delayed too long: John’s heart rate is climbing higher and higher, spiking with panic and disorientation, and Sherlock flings out a hand to hit the red button that will bring the nurses running.
Sherlock steps back, allows them to push their way to the bedside, speaking to John in their too-loud, artificially bright voices as John repeats his demands to know where he is and who’s in charge. And then, in all the uproar, Sherlock quietly collects his belongings and flees.
----------
He hadn’t been prepared for this. John was supposed to wake up and shout at Sherlock for getting them both into such a mess. Sherlock was supposed to apologise, looking suitably chastened, and then distract John with more of the Inferno, which perhaps would lead to Sherlock telling John about the case he’d solved regarding a forgery of an eighteenth-century book, based purely on the fact that the type it was printed in hadn’t been cast until 1890. Doctors always made the worst patients, and John would surely need the distraction.
But this… it felt like part of Sherlock had died, somehow, when John glared at him with nothing but that look of suspicion on his face. All the little moments of camaraderie, of slowly growing affection, of the occasional - the very occasional - instances where they were both drunk on exhaustion and adrenaline and it seemed almost as though John was going to take it further. He’d stand too close to Sherlock, looking up at him, and Sherlock would force himself not to make a sarcastic remark or turn away or even break John’s gaze, his heart pounding and a strange mix of elation and terror twisting through him.
Until John’s eyes would shift away and he’d turn his back on Sherlock, muttering some nonsense about how tired he was, while disappointment sagged heavy in Sherlock’s chest.
Gone, all gone: meals out after cases, and violin concerts to an audience of one when John couldn’t sleep, and John’s face when Sherlock would make dinner for him (as though all cooking wasn’t chemistry, when it came down to it, and achievable by any idiot who could read). Such memories now only existed in Sherlock’s head, which history had demonstrated wasn’t a good place for warm, nice things, and he wished desperately that he’d paid more attention while the events were happening, had hugged every tiny detail greedily to himself.
It’s like losing something precious, like seeing his beloved Stradivarius lying in pieces, and for the rest of that day Sherlock drifts around the too-silent flat. Trying to sleep in bed summons memories of John manhandling him into bed when a case had left him almost too tired even to stand; sleeping on the couch reminds him of John throwing cushions at him and ordering him out of his pyjamas while telling him that his hair looked like a rat’s nest. His researches into the bisulphate of baryta hold none of the critical intrigue they did previously, and on the following afternoon Sherlock gives into temptation and hacks into John’s medical records.
He skims them quickly. John seems to be doing well, if one leaves aside the fact that his last clear memory is of getting shot in Afghanistan. Amnesia varies enormously between individuals, Sherlock knows. John’s memories might be triggered by the sight of familiar surroundings or they might be lost forever, although Sherlock obstinately refuses to countenance the idea that John won’t remember Baker Street: his chair, his RAMC mug, the skull on the mantelpiece…
But the thought arrives that John might not want to come back to Baker Street at all, and Sherlock sits back in his chair. Financial straits had forced John to seek a flatmate in the first place; now that he had semi-regular locum work - that could doubtless become more regular if he stopped spending so much time with Sherlock - he was more financially stable. There was certainly no guarantee that John would want to move in with someone he didn’t know, now that he wasn’t under the pressure of a dwindling Army pension.
The realisation drives Sherlock upstairs, to John’s room, where he stands in the doorway and looks around. It’s all exactly as John left it when Sherlock rousted him out of bed to go to the Friesland, even down to the bedclothes that John had flung back haphazardly and the pyjamas he’d torn off and dropped on the floor, while Sherlock had fought to conceal his interest in John’s naked torso. A better man would perhaps have left the room to allow him to dress in privacy, but Sherlock never made any pretensions to being a good man and he stood there and carried on talking while John stripped out of his clothes not six feet away from him.
Now Sherlock sinks down to sit on John’s bed. He tugs the crumpled pillow straight and, on impulse, leans down to find that it smells of John. He presses his face to it, and closes his eyes, swinging his legs up to lie on the bed. In a minute he’ll get up and do something very important, since he has many important demands on his time. But not just yet.
He wakes with a start. The light in the room has changed and it’s clear that it’s now some time in the middle of the night; Sherlock has no idea what time exactly - John always said that a clock-radio was an unnecessary luxury and John’s watch, like its owner, is buried somewhere in the depths of Guy’s Hospital - but it hardly matters. He pulls a fold of duvet over himself, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.
----------
The following morning Mrs Hudson pops up to the flat to see if he wants to come when she visits John later that day.
‘No thank you.’ Sherlock can’t shake the memory of John glaring at him, suspicious and utterly devoid of recognition. ‘I have… well. Things. To do. Important things.’
Mrs Hudson looks sharply at him and Sherlock busies himself with rearranging the clean glassware sitting in the draining rack.
‘If you’re sure,’ she says. ‘I was going to take him some biscuits.’
‘What sort?’
Such details are important; if anyone has ever deserved nice things it’s John, now, and when Mrs Hudson begins ‘I bought one of those nice assortments from M&S,’ Sherlock is already shaking his head.
‘No, that won’t do. Here.’ He opens a cupboard and pulls out a packet of chocolate HobNobs. ‘These are his favourites, take these instead. Or as well.’
‘That’s kind of you.’ Mrs Hudson smiles at him as she accepts the biscuits thrust imperiously at her. ‘I’ll tell him you sent them.’
‘No, don’t do that.’ Receiving gifts from a total stranger who seems to know you better than you know yourself must be one of the most disconcerting things ever, and Sherlock tries to sound unconcerned as he turns away and says ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that. Just let him think you picked them up yourself.’
She doesn’t say anything further, only looks at him, and Sherlock keeps his attention firmly on the table until he hears her leave.
----------
Mrs Hudson is back that evening, clucking at the mess he’s made - unavoidable, when one is investigating the scatter radius of bags of flour dropped from different heights - and the fact that he’s not made it out of his pyjamas in two days now, before adding ‘You’ll have to get it cleaned up before John sees it tomorrow.’
Another bag of flour drops - this time unintentionally - but lands with a soft, harmless thump on the countertop.
‘John’s coming home tomorrow?’ They can’t let him out so soon, surely.
She shrugs. ‘Apart from the amnesia they say there’s nothing wrong with him, and they think his memories stand a better chance of returning at home. Familiar surroundings, you know.’
‘But it’s not… I’m not…’
Sherlock looks around at the mess in the flat, and runs a hand through his unwashed hair.
‘Well then.’ Mrs Hudson moves toward the door. ‘I’d best leave you to it. I’ve a Hoover downstairs, dear, if you want to borrow it.’
----------
By the time John arrives home the following afternoon Sherlock has cleaned up the flour, changed John’s bed sheets (with hospital corners, just the way John likes them), done two loads of laundry, and attempted to clean the general clutter of the flat before giving it up as a bad job. He puts himself through the shower and dresses in clean pyjama bottoms and his second favourite dressing gown, the one that John always called ‘mouse-coloured’, before lying on the sofa. He presses his palms together to stop himself leaping back up to start tidying again, and makes himself lie still. This sight is one with which John is intimately familiar, and Sherlock tucks his hands under his chin and closes his eyes, in the hope that it might spark a memory.
“This miserable state”, he recites to himself silently, “is borne by the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.”
The tick of the clock, the rumbling purr of the old gas boiler, the noise of cars passing in the street outside; all much alike until one slows, stops in front of the house. The distant noise of the front door, the murmur of voices, and then-
‘Sherlock!’ Mrs Hudson calls up the stairs. ‘John’s home!’
Sherlock takes a long breath, and forces his voice to be deep and unhurried as he calls ‘That’s fine. Send him up.’
A moment’s silence before the noise of John’s feet on the stairs drifts up to him, and Sherlock closes his eyes and digs his bare toes against the smooth, cool leather of the armrest.
John’s feet reach the top of the stairs; Sherlock opens his eyes, meets John’s gaze, and begins.
‘Afghanistan or Iraq?’
‘What?’
‘The haircut, the way you hold yourself, said military. Your face is tan, but no tan above the wrists, you've been abroad but not sunbathing. The limp was really bad when you walked, but you didn't ask for a chair when you stood, like you'd forgotten about it, so it was at least partly psychosomatic. That said the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic, wounded in action, then. Wounded in action, suntan, Afghanistan or Iraq.’
John sucks in a breath and leans against the doorframe. ‘Afghanistan. But you knew that already.’
‘Yes.’ Sherlock sits up, leans forward. John looks tired and worn, and Sherlock wants to push him into his chair and make him tea. This is his fault; he has to fix this somehow, but he can’t think how. ‘But did you remember any of that?’
John licks his lips, pauses, but shakes his head, and Sherlock sinks back down onto the sofa. It’s wrong, it’s utterly wrong: John, not Sherlock, is the one who’s been cut loose from his memories, but Sherlock has never felt more adrift in his life.
----------
Anger
John was carefully polite the rest of that afternoon and the morning of the next day; like a stranger, even when Sherlock deliberately didn’t label the butter tub that contained used surgical implements to distinguish it from the one that actually contained butter. He merely exhaled a pointed sigh, and Sherlock hunched over his laptop and typed faster to suppress the tightening sense of failure in his chest.
But in the afternoon Sherlock is roused from meditating on a possible line of enquiry in the Davis case by a shout of ‘Fuck!’ and the sound of breaking crockery. He startles up off the sofa, and looks into the kitchen to see John leaning with both hands on the counter, head sunk between his arms.
‘In the hall cupboard.’ John looks over at him and Sherlock clarifies, ‘The broom and dustpan,’ wondering if John has any inkling at all of how rare it is that he’ll clarify a statement without a snide comment on how people should use their brains.
Sherlock lies back down on the sofa and tries to ignore the rustle of John sweeping up but it’s no use, his concentration is completely shot to hell, and when John goes to put dustpan and brush away Sherlock follows him.
John stows dustpan and brush neatly, closes the cupboard door, and turns. ‘Jesus!’
Sherlock takes a step back. Perhaps he had been standing rather close. ‘What were you upset about?’
‘Nothing,’ John mutters, and at Sherlock’s look he sighs. ‘I have amnesia, Sherlock. I woke up three days ago thinking I was still in Afghanistan. I don't know who the Prime Minister is. I'm going to lose my temper once in a while. It's nothing to do with you.’
Doesn’t John understand? Sherlock is never going to be able to fix this if he doesn’t have enough data to work with. ‘Everything about you has to do with me. And I never know who the Prime Minister is; it's hardly necessary information. Now: what upset you?’
John looks to the side, mouth twisting. A better man would step back, allow John to slip away to make his tea as he so clearly wants to do, but Sherlock stays obstinately where he is until John admits ‘I wanted to make tea, but there wasn't any milk. I thought, all right, I'll just pop out for some milk, then. But then I realised that I didn't know where the closest shop was. Where I could buy milk.’
Did John think he couldn’t just ask this sort of thing? ‘It's not as if you've forgotten how to use the Internet. You can easily look that up. Or ask Mrs. Hudson. Or me.’
Did he really appear so unapproachable, and to John of all people?
But John snaps ‘That’s not the point!’ provoked into outright glaring at Sherlock. ‘The point is that I don't even know which of my keys are which. I don't know where we keep the toilet roll. I didn't even know where my bedroom was.’
‘But you worked it out,’ Sherlock says, trying to sound encouraging in the face of John’s frustration.
Clearly the wrong thing to say, though, as John’s hands bunch into fists. ‘I have this entire life that I don't remember, and it's a bit frustrating, all right? I read my blog, and it's like it happened to someone else. Well, glad he seemed to have loads of fun, because I'm not.’
Even as John complains about everything being unfamiliar his annoyance makes him look more like himself than he has done since he woke up and Sherlock can’t stop his expression softening into something gentler, more affectionate. You’re not an idiot. You’ll catch up.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ John sighs, shoulders dropping. ‘Excuse me.’
And he edges politely around Sherlock to go off and make his tea. The old John would have gripped Sherlock’s biceps firmly and almost bodily shifted him if he didn’t move quickly enough for John’s liking, but this one merely raises his hands to shape the air between them, trying to guide Sherlock out of the way without actually touching him, and Sherlock steps aside and watches John leave. At least John hadn’t forgotten his temper.
----------
on to 2/3
Original Story Title: Lacuna
Original Story Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/248274
Original Story Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Original Story Rating: Explicit
Original Story Warnings: None
Remix Author: kate_lear
Remix Story Title: Among the Secret Things
Remix Story Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Remix Story Rating: Explicit
Remix Story Warnings: None (mental illness?)
Remix Story Beta: innie_darling & mistyzeo
Remix Story Britpicker: none
Summary: Sherlock would be the last person to describe himself as given to flights of fancy, but at the look on Lestrade’s face he could swear that something inside him curls up and dies.
"Among the Secret Things"
Prologue
Once upon a time, in a large country house far from London, before Sherlock decided to confine his reading to anything pertaining to criminology, he used to read stories. Adventure stories, and fairytales - the real fairytales, not the sanitised versions approved by adults - and quests, and pirates on the high seas… he would take himself off with a book and a bag of apples and tuck himself away somewhere: up a tree, or in the attic, or on a curtained window seat in an unused bedroom. By the time he was seven he had known every inch of the estate grounds better than the gardener, and the only one who’d ever been able to find him was Mycroft. These days, with both of their parents buried years ago, the only one who knows about Sherlock’s old reading habits is Mycroft. He never mentions them, but Sherlock doesn’t imagine for a moment that Mycroft doesn’t look at his younger brother and remember the small adventurer he used to be.
----------
Sherlock could hardly bear to be outdone by his brother, never mind that Mycroft had had seven more years in the world to learn about things. So when Mycroft came home for the long summer holiday at age fifteen and gently told their mother - whose smile never reached her eyes, and hadn’t in years - that his English teacher was so impressed with Mycroft’s performance that he had set him Dante’s Inferno to read over the summer, Sherlock barely waited for Mycroft to finish talking before announcing that he was going to read it too.
He bristled defiantly, just waiting to be told that it was too long, too complicated for him, but Mycroft only looked mildly surprised before saying ‘Alright. I’m sure there’s a copy in the library somewhere. I’ll help you look after lunch, if you like.’
(Sherlock was too triumphant to pay much attention to it at the time, but several years later the thought occurs to him that it was probably the quietest summer holiday Mycroft ever had.)
There was indeed a copy in the library, its leather cover faded and cracked.
‘You must be careful with it,’ Mycroft said, cradling it gently to his chest as he climbed ponderously back down the ladder. ‘It’s very old, and you mustn’t take it outside or anywhere dirty. Let me see your hands.’
‘I know,’ Sherlock scowled at Mycroft from under his tangled mop of hair, but presented his palms for inspection. ‘I’m not a baby.’
‘Very well.’ After careful inspection Mycroft deemed Sherlock’s hands clean enough, and he handed over the old volume. ‘Go carefully now.’
Sherlock spent most of that summer indoors, or out on the terrace, the book open in front of him and a dictionary open at his side for help with the longer words; Mycroft had offered to tell him the meanings but Sherlock had refused, saying he wanted to work it out for himself, and hadn’t missed the approving gleam in Mycroft’s eyes. The book was in Italian but each page had the English translations on the page facing it, thankfully, and Sherlock worked away at it tenaciously. The multiple references to various historical figures were rather lost on him, but he read the graphic descriptions of their torments with morbid glee. Although he didn’t understand why, for example, violence was worse than heresy, and why both were apparently worse than greed.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ he complained to Mycroft, on a rainy afternoon that found them both in the sitting room, curled up on the sofa and sharing a blanket.
‘Hmm?’ Mycroft looked up from the enormous book he was devouring: Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy.
‘Here.’ Sherlock showed him the pen-and-ink engraving sketch of the circles of hell in the front of the book. ‘Look.’
Mycroft set his book aside and took La Divina Commedia from Sherlock; he was having a growth spurt that summer and his hands were slightly too large, but they turned the old pages delicately.
‘Supposedly the difference is between the active and passive sins.’ He traced a demarcating line though the illustration with a gentle fingertip. ‘Here.’
‘Hmm.’ This explanation lacked a certain scientific rigour, to Sherlock’s mind, but there was something else as well.
‘And here.’ Sherlock took the book back from Mycroft and turned through the pages carefully until he found the one he wanted: the fifth circle of hell, for those who were angry. He pointed out the lines in question, and Mycroft read: ‘“The sullen lie gurgling beneath the water, withdrawn into a black sulkiness that can find no joy in God or man or the universe.”’ He paused. ‘Yes. And?’
‘Like Mummy?’ Sherlock wanted to know.
‘She’s not sulky, Sherlock,’ Mycroft corrected him gently. ‘She’s sad.’
‘Why?’ Sherlock already knew the answer, or thought he did, but he’d rather pretend ignorance than admit he wanted the comfort of hearing Mycroft’s confirmation.
‘She misses Father,’ Mycroft said quietly. ‘Do you remember him much?’
‘A bit.’ Sherlock remembered a tall, quiet man. He remembered parties in the summer, with the large French windows flung wide to accommodate all the guests in the house and on the terrace, and their mother laughing in a bright frock.
‘I don’t believe that sad people go to a special hell when they die,’ Sherlock grumbled. ‘That’s silly.’
‘No,’ Mycroft said quietly. ‘Not when they die. But possibly while they’re still alive.’
Sherlock snorted at this, with youth’s sweet arrogance that it will never find itself in such a place.
‘It’s stupid,’ he announced.
‘Well.’ Mycroft’s mouth twisted. ‘The fourteenth century wasn’t known for its logical approach to mental illness.’
‘I’m going to tell her I think it’s stupid,’ Sherlock decided. ‘Then she won’t need to be worried about it.’
‘No, don’t do that.’ Mycroft rested a hand gently on Sherlock’s hair and Sherlock allowed himself to lean into it, just a fraction. ‘It’s a kind thought, but don’t say that to her.’
Mycroft stretched, marking his place in his book and laying it aside, before saying carelessly: ‘Did I tell you that I’ve worked out how to pick the lock on the attic door?’
Sherlock sat up, medieval psychology forgotten. ‘No! How?’
‘I can show you,’ Mycroft offered, ‘if you want.’
Sherlock was off the sofa before Mycroft could move. ‘Come on!’
In all the ensuing excitement the subject of the Styx, and the damned who were submerged in its mire, was let fall.
Sherlock finished the Inferno, the first third of La Divina Commedia, over the course of the summer, but he didn’t bring the subject up again. That wasn’t to say he forgot about it, though. Like his mother, Sherlock would find in later years that the mire of the Styx was more easily attained than left behind.
----------
Twenty-seven years later
‘John!’ Sherlock bellows at him. ‘John, come on!’
They’re on the deck of the Friesland, which is blazing away like a vision of Hell and John - damn him - is wasting time checking the body of a man on the deck.
Sherlock darts over to him and almost forcibly wrestles John away, blocking him when John tries to return to the corpse.
‘He’s dead, he’s dead! Leave him!’ Sherlock roars at him as John fights like a wild thing to escape.
‘I need to check for a-’
‘No you don’t, he doesn’t have a pulse any more!’ Sherlock shouts into his face. ‘And even if he does, how exactly are you planning to save him? You’re going to have to jump into icy water while fully dressed in the middle of the night; you’re going to have enough of a job to keep yourself afloat, never mind dead weight like him.’
As far as Sherlock is concerned that thug had chosen his fate when he took up with Aylsworth and his gang; he’s not about to risk his life, much less John’s life, for such a man, and John wrests himself free and glares at Sherlock.
‘I’m going to have such words for you back at the flat,’ John snarls, shoving Sherlock none too kindly towards the stern. ‘I fucking well told you to wait for Lestrade but no, you and your massive fucking intellect had to go chasing off-’
‘The police boat is on its way,’ Sherlock says, but John bundles him into a lifejacket and yanks the straps tight until Sherlock gasps reflexively and stops talking.
‘I know the fucking boat is on its way,’ John spits. ‘A bit bloody late now, though. Get over the railing.’
He breaks away to put on his own lifejacket and shouts orders at Sherlock. ‘We need to swim clear of this boat before the whole thing goes up like Guy Fawkes night. Stay out of the centre of the river; if the current catches you you’ll be swept downstream.’
‘I know,’ Sherlock says tightly, looking down into the inky Thames churning in the boat’s wake.
‘It’s going to be cold,’ John says. ‘Try to keep breathing.’
‘I will,’ Sherlock says. ‘John, come on, hurry up.’
John is still fumbling with the fastenings on his lifejacket, but when Sherlock moves to help him John shouts at him.
‘I said get over the railing! We’ve not got long before the petrol tank blows and you need to go.’
‘But you-’
‘I’ll be right behind you, but I’m the stronger swimmer and first I want to see you clear of the boat.’
‘John-’
‘Get in there before I come over and fucking throw you in myself!’ John roars at him, and Sherlock scrambles over the railing.
‘I…’ John has his lifejacket on, at last, and he climbs over the railing next to Sherlock. With John so close, suddenly, Sherlock fumbles for words. ‘I’m sorry, you… perhaps we should have-’
‘I know,’ John snaps. ‘God, you and your fucking bright ideas. Now go!’
And with no more than that Sherlock dives off the back of the boat and into the river, trusting that John will follow a few seconds later.
The cold hits like hammer blows to his head, winding icy fingers into his hair and gripping hard, and as he surfaces it snakes down under his collar and clamps tight around his chest. His heart flutters, deep in his ribcage, and his intercostal muscles spasm at the shock of it; for a moment Sherlock can do nothing but gape, struggling frantically to inhale. A wave smacks him in the face and he coughs reflexively, spitting the Thames out of his mouth and wheezing frantically. He’s supposed to be swimming, and he turns his back to the boat and starts kicking but it’s hard, much harder than it should be. The cold is weakening his muscles and he’s going against the current so headway is slow, but the Friesland’s engines are still running full tilt, so if his calculations are correct then even swimming against the current they should still be clear of the blast radius by the time the fire reaches the-
There’s an enormous roar behind him. The world goes orange and a few seconds later debris starts to splash into the water around him; something lands across Sherlock’s back, shoving him under the water and he gets a mouthful of water when he cries out. The pain is huge and immediate, occupying his whole world, and his back is on fire as he fights his way back to the surface. He sees the police boat, closer now, and he tries to cry out, to make himself heard above the roar of the flames. Off to one side he thinks he hears a cry from John but when Sherlock looks over he can’t see him, and the next instant something smacks him hard across the side of his head.
There’s a warm trickle on his temple, washed away the next instant by a cold wavelet but Sherlock keeps struggling, because the police boat is close enough now for him to see Lestrade’s face and hear him shouting.
‘John!’ Sherlock tries to shout. ‘Get John first!’
Surely even an idiot must realise that the person they can’t see is a greater priority than the one they can, who appears to be conscious and making decent efforts to swim, but perhaps they’ve already got John because they turn towards him.
Sherlock’s back is one enormous world of pain; he’s never been so glad in his life to see Lestrade, even when the man snags his lifejacket with a boat hook and heaves, hauling him over the side and onto the deck in an inelegant sprawl of limbs. He lands with a thump that makes his back scream at him but he shoves the feeling to one side in favour of rolling over to scan the small boat.
‘John,’ he says. ‘Where’s John, have you got him?’
Sherlock would be the last person to describe himself as given to flights of fancy, but at the look on Lestrade’s face he could swear that something inside him curls up and dies.
----------
INFERNO
Limbo
They did find John eventually, floating unconscious on his back with only the lifejacket keeping him face-up. They hauled him aboard to find him bleeding copiously from a head wound, and Sherlock had thundered at the hapless boat pilot to take them upriver to Guy’s Hospital - that stood practically on the banks of the Thames - while Lestrade called ahead to ensure that there was a team waiting. John had been cold as death and Sherlock had knelt by him the whole way there, cradling John’s precious, damaged skull in his hands to stop it being jostled with every judder and thump as the boat roared back up the river, and gritting his teeth against the white-hot pain in his back.
In hospital, Mycroft comes to see them both. They’re not together, John being in the ICU and Sherlock in a general ward, since there’s deemed to be nothing wrong with him barring cuts and bruises - most notably a cut on his scalp that requires stitches, and some bruising to the bone of his left shoulder blade - and a raging ??gastroenteritic illness from swallowing Thames water. He spends most of his time either huddled around a cardboard bowl, retching, or locked in the toilet; eventually he gets his own private room but Mycroft doesn’t do a thing, it’s purely by dint of the other ward occupants complaining that he’s unfit to be in company.
After a day or so of this there’s nothing left in his body to expel and he’s reduced to dry heaves that leave his stomach muscles sore and jar his shoulder blade horribly, and the staff put him on an IV to slowly drip electrolytes and fluids back into him. It’s annoying but Sherlock can’t summon the energy to protest about it. He’s weak as a newborn kitten; it’s not quite as bad as going through withdrawal had been but it’s a close second, but it doesn’t stop him asking after John.
No-one will tell him anything beyond meaningless admonitions not to worry and at last, in frustration, he decides to go and find out for himself. He carefully extracts his IV, gritting his teeth, and presses a wad of sheet to the tiny puncture mark until it stops bleeding, before shuffling out of bed and down the corridor. They’ve stolen his clothes but Mrs Hudson had been by to drop off a bag of his things, including his pyjamas. It’s the plain grey pair, that look vaguely like some sort of hospital scrubs, enough to let him pass more or less unnoticed as long as he holds his head up and looking like he knows where he’s going. He strides through the corridors, refusing to accept protests from his watery knees, and gets to the reception desk of the ICU before he’s discovered. Mrs Hudson hadn’t thought to bring any sort of footwear, and the woman on the desk takes one look at his bare, pale feet before examining him suspiciously.
‘John H Watson,’ Sherlock says, trying for his best commanding tone.
She refuses to be budged, and Sherlock is drawing himself up for a really spectacular argument that is completely and utterly derailed when he doubles over and retches into her wastepaper bin.
And just to add insult to injury, at that moment Sherlock hears familiar footsteps and looks up, with watering eyes and a thin trail of saliva hanging from his lower lip, to see Mycroft emerging from John’s room. How marvellous.
----------
Back in his room, Mycroft lectures him from the foot of the bed while the nurses flutter over him and try to tuck him in, plugging the IV back into his arm.
‘I do wish you’d listen to Dr Watson,’ Mycroft sighs, checking his watch. ‘This might all have been avoided.’
‘Fuck off,’ Sherlock growls from his bed. The knowledge that this is all his fault eats away in his gut like acid: goodness knows he’s been injured enough times in the course of his work to accept it, but it’s unbearable that John should be lying deathly still in the ICU, hooked up to various machines that are keeping a constant watch that he’s still alive.
Sherlock tries to roll away from Mycroft but the IV tugs warningly at his arm and he subsides, settling for turning his face away and closing his eyes. He hears Mycroft inhaling as if to speak, but he stays blessedly silent and there’s only the soft tread of his shoes walking away. Sherlock opens his eyes to see Mycroft approaching the nurse washing her hands at the sink in the corner, and who Sherlock recognises as the leader of the team of fluttery, white-cotton nuisances who never stop poking and prodding him. Mycroft waits courteously until she’s finished before drawing her outside and starting to speak to her.
The door is closed but no matter. Mycroft is angled so that Sherlock can see his face and Sherlock has known how to lip-read since he was seven; Mycroft is saying something about ‘relocating’ and ‘Dr Watson’ and ‘exceptional circumstances’. The nurse’s voice is strident - so strident, its been hammering its way into Sherlock’s ears like a drill - and as she glances over her shoulder Sherlock catches the word ‘disruptive’.
But Mycroft shakes his head. ‘If he’s with Dr Watson, then I promise you he’ll be quiet as a lamb.’
Sherlock closes his eyes and turns his head away again. He doesn’t care to witness the occurrence of yet another thing for which he has to be grateful to his brother; Mycroft is wearing his Look, the one he first developed at age twelve, and Sherlock knows that Mycroft is going to get whatever he wants.
They move him up to John’s room later than day, wheeling him up in a wheelchair as though he hasn’t got two legs of his own that function perfectly well. The room isn’t large enough for two full-size beds so they’ve set up a rough cot for him in the corner, and he fusses at them until they move it to the other side of John’s bed. That way Sherlock can lie on his right side and face John: tentative experiments have shown that his stomach is emphatically Not Happy with him lying on his left side, as his internal organs slide over to rest heavily on top of it.
John is in a coma, his chart says, but the doctor who does his rounds tells Sherlock that his signs are excellent.
‘So much of the brain’s functioning and resilience is still poorly understood,’ he says, with a shrug. ‘It’s a marvellous organ; sometimes it can stand up under the most aggressive abuse and sometimes a mere knock is all it takes.’
Sherlock is lulled to sleep that night by the beeping of John’s heart monitor and the slow, steady rhythm of John’s breaths. He talks to John, feeling foolish at first but persevering until it feels oddly like being back in Baker Street. He’d always talked to John when he wasn’t there, after all, but there’s a vast gulf between John being silent because he’s not there to reply, and John being silent because he can’t.
After a couple of days Sherlock comes off the drip, once he’s shown he can keep down plain boiled water and some sort of disgusting tasteless pap; if ever there was an incentive to get well enough to be discharged then hospital food would be it. Lestrade comes to visit John, and does an entirely unflattering double-take at the sight of Sherlock.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, horrified. ‘God, you look like a scarecrow.’
Sherlock glares at him. He’s been avoiding the bathroom mirror, but he hasn’t missed the way his ribs and iliac crests feel starker under his hands.
‘You’re hardly a shining example of health yourself,’ Sherlock says snidely.
The loss of the Friesland and all the documents aboard her means that Lestrade’s case has become infinitely more difficult and painstaking to build; it would be impossible if not for the memory stick Sherlock had snatched up and stuffed deep into his coat pocket before jumping overboard. The creases in Lestrade’s jacket and the traces of stubble on his face speak of nights spent sleeping at the office, and Lestrade rubs a hand over his face and says ‘Point taken. I still look better than you though. When you’re out of here I ought to take you out for a meal. Feed you up a bit so you don’t scare the horses.’
Sherlock’s stomach quivers warningly at the thought of plates of rich, greasy food, and he says quickly ‘That won’t be necessary. I’m sure John would appreciate it, though.’
‘Yeah.’ Lestrade turns his attention to the motionless figure in the bed. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘Fine.’
Sherlock had been doing the joint-flexing exercises that were necessary to stop John’s muscles atrophying - infinitely more interesting than the physiotherapy exercises they’d given him to ensure his bruised shoulder blade kept a full range of motion as it healed - and he picked up John’s right hand again and resumed his work. The nurses came round to do it daily but he’d watched them until he could replicate their actions perfectly, and surely the touch of familiar hands would be more pleasing to John than cold, clinical ones.
‘Right.’ Lestrade transfers his gaze to Sherlock, entirely too sharp for Sherlock’s liking. ‘And how are you?’
‘Also fine, thank you for your concern.’
Thumb: curl it completely in on itself, hold, and allow to relax. Repeat with index finger. Now the middle finger.
‘He’ll wake up, you know,’ Lestrade says.
‘Yes, thank you for stating the obvious,’ Sherlock says crisply. He finishes John’s fingers and clasps his hand to rotate it firmly on its wrist. So strange, the limpness of a still-living body whose owner was momentarily absent. There was nothing quite like it. ‘Do you have anything further to add? Any more platitudes?’
Sherlock fully expects Lestrade to rub his hand over his face and sigh, as he always does when Sherlock is being obnoxious. But no, this time he’s silent and Sherlock looks up to find Lestrade watching him thoughtfully.
‘No,’ Lestrade says at last. ‘Nothing more to add. But you know where I am.’
A sharp rejoinder seems like too much effort, when Sherlock is coaxing John’s arm - the one without the IV in it - into the deepest flex it can manage, and Lestrade leaves without further comment.
Later that day Anthea arrives with a large bag, smiles vaguely at him, and departs, leaving the bag at the foot of John’s bed. Sherlock inspects it and finds that it contains some clothes. Suddenly the idea of a shower - a real one, with all the hot water that Baker Street’s old boiler can provide - holds incredible appeal, and once he’s finished John’s exercises then Sherlock dresses, careful of the bandages over the cuts on his torso, and signs himself out of the hospital.
There’s a new phone in there too, since his is now at the bottom of the Thames, and Sherlock grits his teeth and makes a note to transfer the money for it to one of Mycroft’s many accounts. He’ll be damned before he’s beholden to his brother for anything. Perhaps he’ll also send a small token to Mycroft’s office. One of Harrods’ largest and most indulgent chocolate cakes ought to do it.
Mrs Hudson hugs him when she opens the door to him, exclaiming in dismay at how much weight he’s lost. He tolerates her for as long as he can before putting her fluttering hands from him - gently, as she looks alarmingly close to tears - and refuses her invitation to dinner.
‘I’m going straight back,’ he says, and her mouth purses in worry.
‘Of course you are,’ she says. ‘How is he doing?’
From Lestrade or Mycroft, this question would have been ample justification for tearing a strip off them for asking such a stupid thing. But Mrs Hudson’s eyes are faintly pink, and so Sherlock bites his tongue and says gently ‘Very well. The doctors say that his chart looks very promising.’
‘Good, that’s good,’ she says, quickly pressing a fingertip to the outer corner of an eye. ‘And of course he’s young, and very strong.’
Her voice is stuck somewhere between asking him and telling him, and Sherlock says ‘Strong as a carthorse. And stubborn as a mule.’
After all, you invaded Afghanistan.
Sherlock shakes his head to clear the phantom memory and says ‘Mrs Hudson, I really must-’
‘Of course, of course, I’ll not keep you.’ She steps back, with a last pat to his arm. ‘Call me if you need anything, won’t you.’
‘I will,’ Sherlock says, and turns away to the stairs.
His own soap and shampoo make him feel more like himself than he has in days, even though he’s hampered by his attempts to keep the stitches in his scalp mostly dry, and he wipes the condensation from the bathroom mirror with a corner of his towel and shaves. He stares at himself for a long moment when he’s done.
Being so ill has taken resources from him that he didn’t really have to spare, and the bones of his face are starkly visible under his skin. Turning around, he glances cautiously over his shoulder to see that his left shoulder blade is a starburst of colours; he flexes it through the exercises they’d given him and sets his jaw against the twinges of discomfort. His hair is heavy and dark with water, already starting to pull into curls as it begins to dry, but all Sherlock can see is John’s hair, dark with grease from several days of not being washed. It makes him look uncared for, unloved, and after Sherlock has re-applied bandages to the various lacerations on his torso that look as though they still need them he strides out of the bathroom in search of deodorant, clothes, and a bag.
He arrives back at the hospital barely two hours after he left, albeit - thank Christ - as a visitor and not as a patient. He’s also come armed with food: Angelo had been surprised to see Sherlock without John in tow but willing to make him a takeaway box of angel hair pasta once Sherlock explained.
Sherlock’s cot is gone from John’s room but he commandeers a chair and side table from the visitors’ lounge and sets up camp in the corner.
‘Don’t think that lying around here exempts you from being of use to me,’ Sherlock tells John tartly, as he switches his laptop on and hangs his coat on the back of the door. ‘I’ve not checked my website in days; there are bound to be endless posts from idiots bleating about how they think their partners are cheating on them, or how they’ve lost their cats.’
His laptop finishes powering up and Sherlock swiftly logs on.
‘Oh look, here’s a good one.’ He settles himself further into his chair, grunting a little at twinges of discomfort from his various injuries, and begins to read aloud: ‘“Dear Mr Holmes…”’
He goes through all of the posts, his only audience the slow rise and fall of John’s chest under the sheet and blanket, and types out responses to a few.
Sherlock, the John in his head says, just before he hits ‘Send’ on one particularly scathing reply, you can’t say that. Be nice. Sherlock can almost feel John poking his shoulder in reproof, and he glares at John’s body lying in the bed but deletes his reply.
When there’s no more amusement to be had from his website or John’s blog, and Sherlock has ordered a large chocolate gateau from Harrods’ for one Mycroft Holmes - paying extra for same-day delivery - Sherlock pushes his laptop to one side and fishes out his battered copy of Dante’s Inferno to read aloud. Not the one he’d read as a child; Mycroft had bought him a newer copy as a gift when he finished reading it for the first time, and Sherlock finds the ebb and flow of the familiar words soothing.
Mycroft, however, disagrees. He appears that evening just as Sherlock reaches the fifth canto, summoned as though by dark arts, and raises a sardonic eyebrow at Sherlock as he sets a glass of water down at Sherlock’s elbow. Sherlock ignores him but drinks the water. His throat is dry from speaking for so long without a break.
‘Really, Sherlock? You think that an account of the journey into the deepest circle of Hell is an encouraging text to read to a coma patient?’
Sherlock narrows his eyes at him. ‘I’d offer to cede the place to you, save that listening to you droning on about affairs of state would probably make him slip further under.’
Mycroft’s mouth actually tilts up at one corner at this, which wasn’t what Sherlock was aiming for at all. ‘I confess that there are moments when it takes me that way also.’
He strolls over and rests his hand on the lump of John’s foot under the blanket; Sherlock spares it a narrow-eyed glance and resists the sudden, possessive urge to pluck it away.
‘You never told him, did you,’ Mycroft says quietly, and Sherlock develops a sudden and profound interest in the wall above John’s head.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I rather think you do.’
Mycroft pats John’s foot absently, before gently nudging it aside to perch on the edge of John’s bed.
‘Caring serves no purpose,’ Sherlock says coldly, abandoning his study of the horrible mint-green paint to glare at Mycroft. ‘You told me that. At Mother’s funeral. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
‘And yet.’ Mycroft’s glance takes in Sherlock’s coat on the back of the door, his laptop, the change of clothes visible through the opened zip of his shoulder bag. The discarded box of Angelo’s food that Sherlock brought and then could only nibble at. ‘Here you are.’
‘I think better aloud,’ Sherlock says. ‘Mrs Hudson took my skull again.’
‘I find myself quite content in my own company,’ Mycroft says, as though Sherlock hasn’t spoken. ‘But it would seem that the same cannot be said of you.’
Sherlock merely glares at him again. ‘I manage perfectly well alone, thank you.’
Mycroft raises an eyebrow but gets up off the bed, straightening his suit fastidiously. ‘Spare me the charade. You forget that I’ve known you almost since you first drew breath.’ He passes behind Sherlock’s chair on his way to the door, and pauses for a moment to rest his hand on the back.
‘Remember that the first circle of hell is limbo,’ he says mildly. ‘Those who, in life, lacked courage to reach for something greater than their everyday condition.’
‘I know,’ Sherlock snarls, turning sharply enough that his shoulder throbs, but Mycroft is already at the door and straightening his cuffs.
‘By the way, my interns would like to thank you for the cake,’ Mycroft says. ‘I believe they now think of you as some sort of benevolent provider of luxury baked goods.’ He smiles thinly. ‘Do drop by my office any time, won’t you. I’m sure they’d love the chance to thank you in person.’
And he leaves before Sherlock can find something to throw.
Alone once more, Sherlock opens the book again and continues to read, slumping down in his chair when his head starts to nod. He tugs the chair close enough that he can kick his socked feet up to rest on John’s bed; at some point the nursing staff come to flutter around him and twitter anxiously about going home to rest, promising to call him should anything change. But he only stares at them mutely, not deigning to respond, until eventually they fall silent and go away.
At last, when his yawns disrupt the flow of his words and his eyelids are too heavy to hold up, Sherlock lets the book slide gently onto the floor and his head loll back against the chair, sinking into sleep gladly.
----------
Sherlock wakes the following morning, and almost immediately wishes he hadn’t. He has a crick in his neck from sleeping in the wretched chair, his shoulder is in knots, and his mouth feels truly disgusting. He levers himself out of the chair, fishes his toiletries bag out of his overnight bag, and disappears in the direction of the nearest toilet. After the application of toothbrush, deodorant, and hairbrush he feels slightly more human and he returns to the room.
‘I hope you’re happy,’ he grumbles at the beep of John’s heart monitor. ‘I feel absolutely dreadful, thanks to you. And you a doctor, too.’
He settles himself in the chair, biting back a groan as his shoulder twinges painfully. ‘I’m going to have to find somewhere to take a shower later, and God only know what that experience will be like.’
The book is still on the floor, left where it had fallen last night, and Sherlock finds the last lines he remembers reading.
‘And don’t imagine that this isn’t massively tedious either,’ he adds sharply. ‘We’re getting to the best parts, you might at least listen to it.’
He begins to read, letting his voice rise and fall with the inflections of the text, and before long he grows absorbed enough in it that he forgets where he is. They could almost be back in Baker Street, with Sherlock reading an interesting article to John, and so when he pauses and John grunts, he merely carries on reading.
A couple of lines later realisation dawns belatedly. John grunted. Sherlock looks up and John makes another noise; his heart rate climbs as his body struggles toward consciousness, and Sherlock moves quickly to stand by his bed, repeating John’s name in a firm, clear voice. John frowns, his eyes still closed. He grunts again - a rough, unintelligible noise - and Sherlock dares to touch his shoulder, hoping that the contact will help.
‘John.’
John’s eyes open, finally, and Sherlock’s heart gives a great bound of joy as John blinks and focuses on him.
‘Just lie still,’ Sherlock says, knowing that John would want information above anything else. ‘You’re fine, just lie still. You’re in hospital and have been in a coma for a few days, but you’re awake now and everything’s going to be fine.’
But the rapid-fire information doesn’t seem to be helping; John looks bewildered.
‘I…’ His voice is rough, scratchy, and Sherlock instantly reaches for the cup of water on the side table and holds it so John can drink.
‘You…’ John looks around, biting his lips. This close his breath is sour from illness but Sherlock has never cared less about anything in his life. He could kiss John to see him awake and sitting up.
‘Do you work here?’ John demands, looking past Sherlock to glance around the room. ‘This doesn’t look like the base hospital; did they transfer me while I was out of it?’
Sherlock can only stare at him, lost for words, and John frowns at him.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he snaps. ‘And what’s wrong with my shoulder, why isn’t it strapped up-’
He starts tugging at the neck of the loose gown he wears, and swears violently when he shoves a hand inside to touch his bad shoulder.
‘What the fuck’s going on? Who are you?’
‘I’m… I…’ Sherlock can’t seem to catch his breath. John looks fierce, as though he’d like nothing better than to shake some answers loose from Sherlock, but they’ve been in some tight spots together and Sherlock knows that look, knows it’s the one John wears when looking scared isn’t an option.
‘I’m…’ he tries again, but he’s delayed too long: John’s heart rate is climbing higher and higher, spiking with panic and disorientation, and Sherlock flings out a hand to hit the red button that will bring the nurses running.
Sherlock steps back, allows them to push their way to the bedside, speaking to John in their too-loud, artificially bright voices as John repeats his demands to know where he is and who’s in charge. And then, in all the uproar, Sherlock quietly collects his belongings and flees.
----------
He hadn’t been prepared for this. John was supposed to wake up and shout at Sherlock for getting them both into such a mess. Sherlock was supposed to apologise, looking suitably chastened, and then distract John with more of the Inferno, which perhaps would lead to Sherlock telling John about the case he’d solved regarding a forgery of an eighteenth-century book, based purely on the fact that the type it was printed in hadn’t been cast until 1890. Doctors always made the worst patients, and John would surely need the distraction.
But this… it felt like part of Sherlock had died, somehow, when John glared at him with nothing but that look of suspicion on his face. All the little moments of camaraderie, of slowly growing affection, of the occasional - the very occasional - instances where they were both drunk on exhaustion and adrenaline and it seemed almost as though John was going to take it further. He’d stand too close to Sherlock, looking up at him, and Sherlock would force himself not to make a sarcastic remark or turn away or even break John’s gaze, his heart pounding and a strange mix of elation and terror twisting through him.
Until John’s eyes would shift away and he’d turn his back on Sherlock, muttering some nonsense about how tired he was, while disappointment sagged heavy in Sherlock’s chest.
Gone, all gone: meals out after cases, and violin concerts to an audience of one when John couldn’t sleep, and John’s face when Sherlock would make dinner for him (as though all cooking wasn’t chemistry, when it came down to it, and achievable by any idiot who could read). Such memories now only existed in Sherlock’s head, which history had demonstrated wasn’t a good place for warm, nice things, and he wished desperately that he’d paid more attention while the events were happening, had hugged every tiny detail greedily to himself.
It’s like losing something precious, like seeing his beloved Stradivarius lying in pieces, and for the rest of that day Sherlock drifts around the too-silent flat. Trying to sleep in bed summons memories of John manhandling him into bed when a case had left him almost too tired even to stand; sleeping on the couch reminds him of John throwing cushions at him and ordering him out of his pyjamas while telling him that his hair looked like a rat’s nest. His researches into the bisulphate of baryta hold none of the critical intrigue they did previously, and on the following afternoon Sherlock gives into temptation and hacks into John’s medical records.
He skims them quickly. John seems to be doing well, if one leaves aside the fact that his last clear memory is of getting shot in Afghanistan. Amnesia varies enormously between individuals, Sherlock knows. John’s memories might be triggered by the sight of familiar surroundings or they might be lost forever, although Sherlock obstinately refuses to countenance the idea that John won’t remember Baker Street: his chair, his RAMC mug, the skull on the mantelpiece…
But the thought arrives that John might not want to come back to Baker Street at all, and Sherlock sits back in his chair. Financial straits had forced John to seek a flatmate in the first place; now that he had semi-regular locum work - that could doubtless become more regular if he stopped spending so much time with Sherlock - he was more financially stable. There was certainly no guarantee that John would want to move in with someone he didn’t know, now that he wasn’t under the pressure of a dwindling Army pension.
The realisation drives Sherlock upstairs, to John’s room, where he stands in the doorway and looks around. It’s all exactly as John left it when Sherlock rousted him out of bed to go to the Friesland, even down to the bedclothes that John had flung back haphazardly and the pyjamas he’d torn off and dropped on the floor, while Sherlock had fought to conceal his interest in John’s naked torso. A better man would perhaps have left the room to allow him to dress in privacy, but Sherlock never made any pretensions to being a good man and he stood there and carried on talking while John stripped out of his clothes not six feet away from him.
Now Sherlock sinks down to sit on John’s bed. He tugs the crumpled pillow straight and, on impulse, leans down to find that it smells of John. He presses his face to it, and closes his eyes, swinging his legs up to lie on the bed. In a minute he’ll get up and do something very important, since he has many important demands on his time. But not just yet.
He wakes with a start. The light in the room has changed and it’s clear that it’s now some time in the middle of the night; Sherlock has no idea what time exactly - John always said that a clock-radio was an unnecessary luxury and John’s watch, like its owner, is buried somewhere in the depths of Guy’s Hospital - but it hardly matters. He pulls a fold of duvet over himself, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.
----------
The following morning Mrs Hudson pops up to the flat to see if he wants to come when she visits John later that day.
‘No thank you.’ Sherlock can’t shake the memory of John glaring at him, suspicious and utterly devoid of recognition. ‘I have… well. Things. To do. Important things.’
Mrs Hudson looks sharply at him and Sherlock busies himself with rearranging the clean glassware sitting in the draining rack.
‘If you’re sure,’ she says. ‘I was going to take him some biscuits.’
‘What sort?’
Such details are important; if anyone has ever deserved nice things it’s John, now, and when Mrs Hudson begins ‘I bought one of those nice assortments from M&S,’ Sherlock is already shaking his head.
‘No, that won’t do. Here.’ He opens a cupboard and pulls out a packet of chocolate HobNobs. ‘These are his favourites, take these instead. Or as well.’
‘That’s kind of you.’ Mrs Hudson smiles at him as she accepts the biscuits thrust imperiously at her. ‘I’ll tell him you sent them.’
‘No, don’t do that.’ Receiving gifts from a total stranger who seems to know you better than you know yourself must be one of the most disconcerting things ever, and Sherlock tries to sound unconcerned as he turns away and says ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that. Just let him think you picked them up yourself.’
She doesn’t say anything further, only looks at him, and Sherlock keeps his attention firmly on the table until he hears her leave.
----------
Mrs Hudson is back that evening, clucking at the mess he’s made - unavoidable, when one is investigating the scatter radius of bags of flour dropped from different heights - and the fact that he’s not made it out of his pyjamas in two days now, before adding ‘You’ll have to get it cleaned up before John sees it tomorrow.’
Another bag of flour drops - this time unintentionally - but lands with a soft, harmless thump on the countertop.
‘John’s coming home tomorrow?’ They can’t let him out so soon, surely.
She shrugs. ‘Apart from the amnesia they say there’s nothing wrong with him, and they think his memories stand a better chance of returning at home. Familiar surroundings, you know.’
‘But it’s not… I’m not…’
Sherlock looks around at the mess in the flat, and runs a hand through his unwashed hair.
‘Well then.’ Mrs Hudson moves toward the door. ‘I’d best leave you to it. I’ve a Hoover downstairs, dear, if you want to borrow it.’
----------
By the time John arrives home the following afternoon Sherlock has cleaned up the flour, changed John’s bed sheets (with hospital corners, just the way John likes them), done two loads of laundry, and attempted to clean the general clutter of the flat before giving it up as a bad job. He puts himself through the shower and dresses in clean pyjama bottoms and his second favourite dressing gown, the one that John always called ‘mouse-coloured’, before lying on the sofa. He presses his palms together to stop himself leaping back up to start tidying again, and makes himself lie still. This sight is one with which John is intimately familiar, and Sherlock tucks his hands under his chin and closes his eyes, in the hope that it might spark a memory.
“This miserable state”, he recites to himself silently, “is borne by the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.”
The tick of the clock, the rumbling purr of the old gas boiler, the noise of cars passing in the street outside; all much alike until one slows, stops in front of the house. The distant noise of the front door, the murmur of voices, and then-
‘Sherlock!’ Mrs Hudson calls up the stairs. ‘John’s home!’
Sherlock takes a long breath, and forces his voice to be deep and unhurried as he calls ‘That’s fine. Send him up.’
A moment’s silence before the noise of John’s feet on the stairs drifts up to him, and Sherlock closes his eyes and digs his bare toes against the smooth, cool leather of the armrest.
John’s feet reach the top of the stairs; Sherlock opens his eyes, meets John’s gaze, and begins.
‘Afghanistan or Iraq?’
‘What?’
‘The haircut, the way you hold yourself, said military. Your face is tan, but no tan above the wrists, you've been abroad but not sunbathing. The limp was really bad when you walked, but you didn't ask for a chair when you stood, like you'd forgotten about it, so it was at least partly psychosomatic. That said the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic, wounded in action, then. Wounded in action, suntan, Afghanistan or Iraq.’
John sucks in a breath and leans against the doorframe. ‘Afghanistan. But you knew that already.’
‘Yes.’ Sherlock sits up, leans forward. John looks tired and worn, and Sherlock wants to push him into his chair and make him tea. This is his fault; he has to fix this somehow, but he can’t think how. ‘But did you remember any of that?’
John licks his lips, pauses, but shakes his head, and Sherlock sinks back down onto the sofa. It’s wrong, it’s utterly wrong: John, not Sherlock, is the one who’s been cut loose from his memories, but Sherlock has never felt more adrift in his life.
----------
Anger
John was carefully polite the rest of that afternoon and the morning of the next day; like a stranger, even when Sherlock deliberately didn’t label the butter tub that contained used surgical implements to distinguish it from the one that actually contained butter. He merely exhaled a pointed sigh, and Sherlock hunched over his laptop and typed faster to suppress the tightening sense of failure in his chest.
But in the afternoon Sherlock is roused from meditating on a possible line of enquiry in the Davis case by a shout of ‘Fuck!’ and the sound of breaking crockery. He startles up off the sofa, and looks into the kitchen to see John leaning with both hands on the counter, head sunk between his arms.
‘In the hall cupboard.’ John looks over at him and Sherlock clarifies, ‘The broom and dustpan,’ wondering if John has any inkling at all of how rare it is that he’ll clarify a statement without a snide comment on how people should use their brains.
Sherlock lies back down on the sofa and tries to ignore the rustle of John sweeping up but it’s no use, his concentration is completely shot to hell, and when John goes to put dustpan and brush away Sherlock follows him.
John stows dustpan and brush neatly, closes the cupboard door, and turns. ‘Jesus!’
Sherlock takes a step back. Perhaps he had been standing rather close. ‘What were you upset about?’
‘Nothing,’ John mutters, and at Sherlock’s look he sighs. ‘I have amnesia, Sherlock. I woke up three days ago thinking I was still in Afghanistan. I don't know who the Prime Minister is. I'm going to lose my temper once in a while. It's nothing to do with you.’
Doesn’t John understand? Sherlock is never going to be able to fix this if he doesn’t have enough data to work with. ‘Everything about you has to do with me. And I never know who the Prime Minister is; it's hardly necessary information. Now: what upset you?’
John looks to the side, mouth twisting. A better man would step back, allow John to slip away to make his tea as he so clearly wants to do, but Sherlock stays obstinately where he is until John admits ‘I wanted to make tea, but there wasn't any milk. I thought, all right, I'll just pop out for some milk, then. But then I realised that I didn't know where the closest shop was. Where I could buy milk.’
Did John think he couldn’t just ask this sort of thing? ‘It's not as if you've forgotten how to use the Internet. You can easily look that up. Or ask Mrs. Hudson. Or me.’
Did he really appear so unapproachable, and to John of all people?
But John snaps ‘That’s not the point!’ provoked into outright glaring at Sherlock. ‘The point is that I don't even know which of my keys are which. I don't know where we keep the toilet roll. I didn't even know where my bedroom was.’
‘But you worked it out,’ Sherlock says, trying to sound encouraging in the face of John’s frustration.
Clearly the wrong thing to say, though, as John’s hands bunch into fists. ‘I have this entire life that I don't remember, and it's a bit frustrating, all right? I read my blog, and it's like it happened to someone else. Well, glad he seemed to have loads of fun, because I'm not.’
Even as John complains about everything being unfamiliar his annoyance makes him look more like himself than he has done since he woke up and Sherlock can’t stop his expression softening into something gentler, more affectionate. You’re not an idiot. You’ll catch up.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ John sighs, shoulders dropping. ‘Excuse me.’
And he edges politely around Sherlock to go off and make his tea. The old John would have gripped Sherlock’s biceps firmly and almost bodily shifted him if he didn’t move quickly enough for John’s liking, but this one merely raises his hands to shape the air between them, trying to guide Sherlock out of the way without actually touching him, and Sherlock steps aside and watches John leave. At least John hadn’t forgotten his temper.
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on to 2/3