Fill: Find a Way to You - Chapter Twenty
Story Type: Prompt Fill
Fandom(s): Sherlock/The Swan Princess/Swan Lake
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Molly, Moriarty, Moran, Mycroft, Harry, Ann Watson, Vienne Holmes, Mike Stamford
Pairing(s): Sherlock/John, suggested Moriarty/Moran, very twisted semi-Moriarty/Sherlock
Warnings: Violence, torture, abduction, coersion, Jim Moriarty with access to magic.
Summary: The final part of The Swan Triad, following Till Now I Never Knew and Interlude. Sherlock struggles to escape Moriarty's prison with the help of two fellow prisoners. Meanwhile, John devotes every waking moment to a search and rescue of the man he loves.
A/N: If you're wondering why this took so long, it's because this chapter is more than 8.5 thousand words long. Yeah. And were not done yet.
Chapter Twenty
He spotted her before she spotted him. He stilled his pacing and for a frozen instant they just looked at each other, scarcely willing to breathe for fear they would shatter this fragile reality. Then the moment snapped, and Sherlock was rushing forward and Vienne was opening her arms and they crashed together, shattering and mending at the same time in one another's grasp.
'Sherlock!' She cried, pressing him as close as she could, forcing words through her tears, peppering his face with kisses. 'Mon bébé…ah mon bébé chéri!'
Sherlock buried his nose in her hair, gripped her tight about the shoulders and waist. 'Maman.' He wept. 'Je suis désolé, je suis si désolé.' He pulled away just far enough to press their foreheads together, bracketing her face with his hands. 'I'm sorry.'
She shook her head, covered his hands with her own. 'Non, petit. Don't apologise. You're here. That's all that matters.' She pulled away and brushed the tears from his cheeks, chasing each one with a kiss. 'But where is your brother? What's this about John? What's happened?'
Sherlock tensed and he shrank away. 'He…the doctors…they had questions.' His throat was closing around his voice, and he had to force himself to say, 'They won't tell me anything. Just that he's still in surgery.'
'Sherlock, my love. What happened to him?' Vienne asked as she guided her son to one of the uncomfortable chairs lined along the wall.
'He--he was shot.' Sherlock choked. 'When he came for me. His shoulder. It--it was his shoulder.'
'Oh, God.' Vienne breathed. 'Is he--'
Sherlock shook his head. 'I don't know. He was…he was unconscious by the time we got here. Mycroft is trying--but they aren't saying anything.'
She shushed him and pulled him to her breast. 'There now,' she said. 'Ann and Harry are coming, the doctors will speak to them. I'm sure he'll be alright.
'Mother, I…'
But Vienne shook her head. 'No, Sherlock. Not now. Give me this one moment before I have to think about…all of this.'
'Mummy…' They both turned at the sound of Mycroft's voice. He'd aged fifteen years in the last hour. He looked exhausted, his face ashen, his lips pale. They stood, and he began to walk toward them. He just made it to his mother and his brother before his knees sagged and he had to lean on them for support.
'What did they say?' Sherlock breathed.
Mycroft shook his head. 'Too little. He's still in surgery, he's alive. They just don't know yet.'
He looked up at his brother with eyes wider and more frightened than Sherlock had ever seen. 'Sherlock, if they suspect--he bled so little. If they notice,' He shook his head. 'I don't know how much I can cover up.'
'What do you mean? What's happening?' Vienne asked, but Mycroft shook his head again.
'Stay with Sherlock, mother. I have to go. There's--there's so much to be done. The police, my superiors.' He rubbed his temple. 'And I need to speak to your companions, Sherlock.'
He moved to leave, but Sherlock shot out his hand to stop him. 'Are they--what will happen to them?'
Mycroft shook his head and tried to move away again.
Sherlock tugged him back. 'You can't be hasty with this, Mycroft.' He insisted. 'They've got nothing, he's got absolutely nothing, and don't forget it's been six years since--'
'Sherlock, enough!' Mycroft snapped. He took a breath and prized his brother's hand from his arm. 'I will, see to it.' Sherlock opened his mouth but Mycroft held up a hand. 'No, Sherlock. I will see to it. Don't ask me how because I've not the slightest idea, but I will ensure your friends are cared for. Please, Sherlock. Trust me.'
'Friends?' Vienne asked, reclaiming Sherlock's attention. Her eyes were shining and wide. 'Your friends?'
Implications cascaded through his mind, and he found himself nodding dumbly. 'They were,' he cleared his throat. 'We were…kept. Together. They…helped me.'
Vienne's mouth moved into something which, in any other setting, would have been a smile. Here in the hospital, however, it was still mostly tears. 'Oh, petit.' She pulled him tightly into her arms and he lost himself in the warmth of her. She smelled like home.
What came next sounded even more like home.
'You unbelievable tosser!'
He barely had time to glimpse the golden blonde hair flying like a pennant, the smart pinstripe suit, the angry set to the cherry-red lips, before Harry's arms were wrapped around him in a vice-like hold and he was struggling to breathe. A moment later and she'd pushed him back, glaring into his face. 'What the hell happened last night?' She demanded. Sherlock opened his mouth but Harry cut him off. 'No! Shut up!' And the vice was back as she hugged hard enough to add to his collection of bruises.
Gentle, work-scarred hands slipped between them. Harry softened and stepped back.
Ann moved in front of him, holding him at arm's length as she looked him up and down. He became hyper aware of the blood and grime coating his once white shirt, a shirt she'd bought for him during a compulsory shopping trip memorable mostly for how she'd interrogated him about her son and their plans together. He was aware of his bruises, his cuts, his rat's nest of hair, and he wanted to hide from her. She wouldn't let him.
She didn't say anything, and neither did he. The spectre of John hovered between them, cradled in the space between Ann's arms, and it was Ann who dared press through it, and for the third time in the last half-hour he was pulled into a hug so tight it hurt.
He began to weep, his shoulders heaving in apology for what he'd caused, for everything that had happened to their family since he was taken, for not seeing John for who he was until it was too late, for everything he couldn't articulate as her hand soothed along the stark lines of his shoulder blades, the grooves of his spine. She didn't shush him, she didn't make any sound at all, but she held him and let him bleed sorrow as she had always done.
'Mrs Ann Watson?' Called a voice behind them. Ann pulled away just enough that Sherlock could lean against her shoulder.
'I'm Ann Watson.' She said. Vienne came up beside her and took the hand not wrapped around Sherlock's waist, clutching it tight. Harry wrapped her arm around her mother's waist, the other holding firmly to Vienne's free hand.
The surgeon had pulled down her mask so that it hung loosely about her neck and she was carrying a small packet of papers. There was blood on her scrubs. She was smiling. 'John is going to be just fine.'
Ann sobbed in relief as Harry grinned and tucked her face into the crook of her mother's neck. Vienne freed one hand and held Sherlock's arm, beaming. Sherlock stood numb, unsure how to react, afraid to move as the world righted itself under his feet.
'It's incredible, actually.' The surgeon went on. 'I've never seen a bullet wound so clean. No shattering, no damaged arteries. It's as close to a best-case scenario as you can get with gunshots.'
'When can we see him?' Ann asked, her voice slightly too steady.
'He's still under from the anaesthesia.' The surgeon replied. 'He should wake up in anywhere from ten to thirty minutes. Someone will be by to fetch you.'
'How many of us?' Harry asked in a slightly sharpened tone.
'And you're…' She checked her papers. 'Harriet Watson, yes?'
Harry nodded. She looked about to speak up again, but the surgeon beat her to it.
'Just one at a time for now. He'll be groggy from the anaesthetic.' Her eyes turned to Sherlock, though he hadn't said anything. In fact, he'd hardly moved from the moment she'd walked into the waiting room. Perhaps she'd just been doing this for a long time, because when she spoke, it was directly to him. 'He is going to be just fine.'
~~~
It took just about all John had to blink his eyes open, and when he did, the blurry shape in front of him resolved into a mop of curly brown hair, a pale face, and glacier eyes.
He frowned. 'You were Harry a second ago.'
Sherlock smiled tightly. 'Does it hurt?'
John shook his head. 'Th' stuff. 's good. Gave me a button.' He brandished the morphine control with a vague smile.
Sherlock scoffed. 'You're high.'
'Yep. God you're beautiful.'
Sherlock's face fell. He looked away. 'This is all wrong, isn't it? It shouldn't have ended like this.'
John shifted slightly, keeping weight off of his left shoulder. Even with morphine the pain was hovering just beyond his perceptions and he didn't want to have to push the button again while he was trying to talk. 'Who said it was over?'
'But--I'm free, you did it. Greg and Molly are finally out of the lake and you and I--'
'Yeah, all that, but listen.' He fumbled for Sherlock's hand. 'All of that…shit, it was all leading up to this. This is where it starts. And, sure, it may be a crap beginning in some ways, but we're both here. See?' He held up their joined hands. 'Touching and everything.'
'I want to kiss you.'
'I'm not stopping you.'
'I don't want to hurt you.'
John snorted, even giggled a bit. 'Come on, love. This is nothing. We've both suffered worse for less.'
Sherlock shook his head. 'I should've said yes that night. I should've taken you upstairs and refused to let you go in the morning.'
John sighed. 'You couldn't have stopped me. I honestly don't think I could've stopped him.' He didn't, and that hurt, deeper than the morphine could touch. 'He would've come for you, Sherlock. At least this way I stood a better chance of getting you back.'
Sherlock leaned over then, cupped John's cheek in one smooth hand and kissed him. The sensation was fuzzy through the drugs, but still sweet. Hungerless, like their first, a kiss content in itself.
'Lie down with me.' John whispered once their lips had parted.
Sherlock's eyes widened. 'John…we can't--'
'Idiot.' John chided. 'I just want you to lie down. Can't hold you like this.'
Sherlock smirked and, moving with that still surprising grace of his, carefully manoeuvred his body over and across John's until he could nestle between John's right side and the railing of the bed. With care, a bit of cursing, and no little help from Sherlock, John managed to turn over onto his right so he could meet Sherlock's eyes as they shared the pillow.
'Would be my left arm.' John groused. 'Typical.'
'Mm, serves you right for being abnormal. That's my job.'
'Oh, blatant right-handed bias.' John scolded him. 'Not enough the whole world is designed for you, you've got to trod on the rest of us poor sods.'
Sherlock laughed, and John spared a moment to just listen to it.
'I love you.' He'd probably never admit it out loud, but he quite liked it when the words came out on their own like that, surprising them both.
Sherlock smiled and snuggled in closer. 'Tell me about our flat.'
John blinked. 'You know about that?'
Sherlock nodded. 'Greg told me.'
John tamped down the now-familiar surge of anger he felt whenever he thought of Lestrade and forced himself to ask, 'How is he?'
Sherlock shook his head. 'I don't know.' The words seemed to pain him more than usual, and John didn't have to guess why.
'Molly?'
Sherlock closed his eyes and turned his face away. 'They're gone. Both of them, the moment you freed me. I haven't seen them since we got here.'
'Molly's free?' John asked. 'I don't remember much past taking the shot.'
Sherlock nodded.
'How?'
Sherlock smirked. 'She showed Jim mercy.' He let out a harsh laugh. 'I would've killed him, right there. Not her. She let him go, and the lake took him in her place.'
John let out a low whistle. 'Poetic.'
'The Old Man was an artist, it seems. I regret I never got to see him work.'
'He did kidnap and imprison a thirteen year old girl, Sherlock.' John chided. 'And corrupted Moriarty into…whatever it is he became.'
'Jim didn't need any help there.' Sherlock said. 'I know he was a bad person, John, that doesn't change how impressive his skills were. He let Jim choose his own demise, trapped him with his own source of power. That's gorgeous.'
'Sick, though.'
'Yes. But look at Smallpox under a microscope and it looks like something Van Gogh would have painted.' Sherlock pointed out. 'Sick and beautiful don't always have to cancel one another out.' He focussed his gaze on John, locked their eyes together. 'Not if you look closely enough.'
John forced a smile. 'You're going to save the world with thinking like that.' He said, then he closed his eyes long enough to find the words he had to say. 'I killed people, Sherlock.'
'Yes.'
'I don't regret it. I'm…glad. It feels right.'
'Yes.'
'Where's the beauty in that?'
'It's gone eleven in the morning.' Sherlock said.
'What?' John whispered.
'The sun rose hours ago. I was holding your hand as I watched it. I am still holding your hand. I am looking into your eyes, I am speaking to you with words you can hear, I am lying here, beside you, and I am me.' He pressed a kiss to the corner of John's mouth. 'I can think of nothing more beautiful than that.'
John let that sink in for a moment, and then he found he was kissing Sherlock breathless, which seemed the best way to respond.
Sherlock was beaming at him when they separated. 'Now, about this flat of ours…'
~~~
When Sherlock woke, the light from the window had gone dim. John was pressed tightly against him, sleeping the sleep of the fastidiously drugged, and someone was standing in the doorway.
'Visiting hours are over.' Sherlock yawned, blinking the sleep from his eyes.
'I am aware.' The voice froze him, and he paused to let his vision focus and adjust to the backlighting.
'Father.'
Basil Holmes stepped into the room. He was tall, of a height with Mycroft, so Sherlock had to look up to meet his eyes. His hair was so dark as to be nearly black, like Sherlock's, but straight and meticulously combed and ordered, and his nose was sharp and aquiline like Mycroft's, where Sherlock's was a bit snubbed like his mother's. He was carrying a cane, but not using it. It wasn't entirely decorative, though. Sherlock had seen him use it on steep stairways and hills several times.
'He will make a full recovery.' Basil observed, without so much as a glance at John's prognosis chart.
'Yes.' Sherlock could almost fool himself into thinking he'd kept his voice low for John's sake.
'Mycroft has informed me of your predicament these last few months.' Basil went on. 'It is…impressive, in hindsight, to see all he has done when one knows what he was to face.'
'Why are you here?'
Basil lowered his eyes at that, and rested the cane on the lino at his feet. 'Because I am the sort of fool who arrives at his destination too late to serve his purpose, and thinks himself punctual. I am here as I should have been, and never was.'
'You're a busy man, you can't--'
'Wrong, but dutiful, my boy.' Basil lamented. 'A man has family, has ties to the world he cannot loose, even should he wish to. I have striven for years to be something other than a man, and I have found myself cold. For when a man ceases to be a man he has generally become a corpse. Though it is true I was a frightfully busy one.'
'You didn't damage me.' Sherlock told him. 'I'm told I’m terribly well adjusted in spite of myself.'
Basil nodded. 'Yes, Dr Langtree, I'd imagine. Such an annoyance when soft science practitioners prove themselves capable.' He swivelled his cane a bit. 'But, alas, I remain incurably selfish. The damage is all mine, I'm afraid, and it seems I cannot ignore its symptoms.'
He paused, looked up. 'I lost you, four months ago. I found in your absence a silence I no longer relished, a solitude from which I could take no comfort. I found myself envisioning a world without your brother, or that meddling Watson woman with that annoying tendency to be right all the time. And that could only lead to thoughts of a life without your mother in it, and I found that unendurable.' He started to smile, but never quite finished. 'And I remembered the moment I fell in love with her. I do love her, you may be pleased to know. And I remembered the night of your party, and seeing you kiss a boy I thought you hated, and I realised in that moment that you had become a man, a whole one, while my back was turned.
'I…failed to observe so much. I am getting older, son. I have lost so much that I can never regain, and I will die with far less than I was entitled to. It galls a man, Sherlock, to wake up in the morning and find himself victim of his own stupidity. You see, genius, my boy, is a disease which seeks to eradicate its own cure. It feeds on itself, and blots out reason. I let myself be consumed by it, and now it is too late. And yet I persist in making my volleys into deserted camps.'
'The flat.' It was strange to Sherlock to speak so little, almost as strange as it was to hear his father say so much.
'Too little, far too late. At least I proved useful in reclaiming you.'
'You saved my life.'
'That man, there,' He pointed his cane at John, still blissfully medicated into oblivion. 'Saved your life. I merely handed him the sword.'
'We could never have done any of it without you.' Sherlock insisted.
'Perhaps not.' Basil conceded. 'And perhaps if I had taken notice of your obsession with that dead boy you would not have had to.'
'Father,'
'Your room is waiting for you at the house. You may stay as long as you like, until you and John are ready for whatever comes next. The flat will remain available to you, should you wish for it. And,' He stepped back through the doorway for a moment and leaned over to where Sherlock knew a chair sat against the wall. He returned with a stack of clothing in his hands. 'Young Miss Watson insisted I give you these.'
It was only John's body in the way that kept Sherlock from falling upon the clothing like a starving man on a steak. When the fabric was in his hands he may have cried a little. He wasn't sure. He felt a bizarre urge to cuddle the stack to his chest like a soft toy. He settled for bringing the soft material close to his face, inhaling the scents of home.
'Thank you, and her, of course.'
Basil nodded. 'Of course. I'll leave the pair of you to rest.' He turned to go.
'Father.'
Basil halted and looked over his shoulder.
'For…everything. Thank you.'
It was a small smile, but genuine, if a bit sad. And with it, Basil left his son to watch over John in the dark and the quiet of healing.
~~~
'So you're the Eyes of Britain, then?'
Mycroft folded his hands on the table between them. 'I do have rather unprecedented access to the CCTV network, if that is your meaning.'
Greg snorted. 'Should've seen that. John said as much, before. I mean, I wasn't there or anything but Sherlock showed me.' He tapped his head. He felt shaky, like his bones were rattling about under his skin. The gaping chasm in his head was deeper and wider than ever before, endless, really.
'Police Constable--' Mycroft began, but Greg stopped him.
'I'm not.'
'Sorry?'
'A PC. And you never used my old rank before, always "mister". You were right. I haven't been a copper in two years, and it's not like the Met's been saving a spot for me, is it?'
'Very well, Mr Lestrade, we must--'
'Sorry, no chance of a fag, is there? It's just…I could really use a cigarette just now.'
Mycroft frowned. 'I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, if we could--'
'Where is she?' There was a note of pleading in his voice, he hardly cared. 'Just…just where is she? 'Cause she's alone and, you know she doesn't say it but she's scared and…where is she?'
Mycroft sighed, but his face softened. 'Miss Hooper is in the care of some of my most trusted associates. Her medical check is so far exemplary, and she is undergoing the first steps to reintroduction.'
'To what?'
Mycroft met his eye, then he pulled a clipboard over to him from the corner of the little table in their over-lit little consultation room. 'Reintroduction. To society, Mr Lestrade. Miss Hooper has been isolated for quite some time, it is best to reacquaint her with the outside world gradually. It is feared that too much stimuli would overwhelm her and hinder her recovery.'
'But she's okay?'
Mycroft set down the clipboard and pushed it over to Greg. 'She appears indomitable.'
Greg looked at the papers, the contents of Molly's body and mind written out across standardised forms. 'Damn right she is.' He looked up to Mycroft. 'What about your brother?'
'He's with John.' Mycroft said, with finality, as though that said all that needed saying. It probably did. 'May I ask why you're so diligently avoiding the subject of your own situation?'
'Cos I'm scared.' Greg said with a shrug. 'It's been two years of waiting and worrying and now it's all in my lap and you put it there.' He said with a point to Mycroft. 'And now you're just…just sitting there. Talking to me like you didn't just hand me my freedom on a silver bloody plate and expecting me to deal with things and I--I can't.'
'At the time I had no idea what I was doing.' Mycroft told him, and some of his stiffness fell away. 'What I did, and it's still difficult to believe I did anything, was done entirely in ignorance and with minimal peril to myself. You, on the other hand, embarked on your every heroism with eyes wide open and your life on the line. Which of us is the more deserving?'
'It doesn't work like that.'
'Why shouldn't it?'
Greg sighed and folded his arms on the table, resting his chin on his sleeve. 'Can you make me a cop again?'
'I can help you reclaim your position, yes.'
'Why?'
Mycroft blinked. 'What?'
'I mean, are you doing this as part of some official directive or is this more of that shite about rewarding me for not acting like a complete dick and leaving your brother to rot at the lake?'
Mycroft fiddled a bit with a ring on his right hand. When he spoke, his voice was a bit distant. 'When we were children, very young, Sherlock often resented the measures I took to protect him. He was born far too soon, you see. The beginning of a life intimately interwoven with death.' He smiled sadly, his eyes still on the featureless ring as he twisted it round and round his finger. 'When I was twelve, the Watsons came to stay with us for the first time, and I found in Harriet an indulgent damsel to my white knight compulsions. It didn't put me off hovering over my brother, but it did divide my focus enough to let him breathe. Probably saved our relationship, in hindsight.'
He looked up, and he was still smiling that tight smile. 'All of my life, Mr Lestrade, I have felt the need to keep him safe, to protect him from any harm, even himself if it came to it. Several months ago, I failed.' He took a breath, it sounded like it hurt. 'I am a resourceful man, Mr Lestrade. And I am rapidly becoming a powerful one. But that day, I was forced to face the reality that I cannot protect him from everything. Soon he will move to London, a city which has become my home, and I will watch over him and John as best I can, but…I need help.
'You risked your life to save his. You put yourself in peril time and again to keep him from harm. You worked yourself to exhaustion securing his freedom with no guarantee of your own.' He met Greg's eyes then, unwavering. 'A man like that, a man who would do so much for a relative stranger, that is precisely the man I want protecting my city.'
Greg took a moment to let all of that sink in. When he'd had a chance to sort through it all, he looked up, and extended his hand.
'My name's Gregory.' He said. 'You can call me Greg if you like.'
~~~
The hospital room had a shower. Sherlock had long ago grown accustomed to the privileges of wealth, private hospital rooms being merely one of them, but just now he felt he could fall to his knees and capitulate to the gods of conspicuous consumption, that he could experience this and still have John resting twenty feet away.
The water was hot, enough to pink his skin. For the first long moments after stepping under the spray Sherlock sagged against the plain white wall and let the heat sluice over him, coating his skin, drenching his hair, until he was possibly wetter even than when he'd been submerged in the lake.
He felt his muscles soften under the onslaught of heat, his legs going slack, and he lowered himself to his knees on the floor of the shower, resting his elbows on the seat provided for patients who couldn't stand, and let the water wash away.
He closed his eyes and listened to the hushed roar that was this water's only voice, marvelled that he had no connection to it, even as it seeped into his skin. He was loathe to move, only the prospect of John's warm, solid skin under his fingers enticing enough to bring him to his feet and make him take up the bottle of aggressively bland shampoo.
And this! Soap! His skin tingled where the chemicals touched, his scalp all but twitching as he worked the gel into a lather. He couldn't say how long he stood there, just rubbing the foam through his hair, feeling dirt and grease and oil and grit sloughing off onto his hands, then down, down to the slick floor to be washed away, remnants of his prison swept out and forgotten.
Applying the bar of soap to his skin was nearly orgasmic. He honestly hadn't realised quite how much of his darkened skin tone was simply caked-on dirt. If anything he was even paler after months of never seeing the sun without a barrier of feathers. He scraped off one layer of grime from his forearm and actually whimpered. He felt like a reptile, shedding an ill-fitting skin.
He saved the conditioner for last, which was probably wise, because the sensation of running his fingers through softened, smooth hair as the water cascaded over his body was entirely too much and he had to sit on the bench, breathing heavily, clutching at his biceps until he could convince himself he wouldn't wake, that the heat and the comfort and the clean were all real, that the world which supplied them would not vanish should he open his eyes.
When he turned off the water, steam hung around him like a fog. Stepping out of the shower, the mist seemed even thicker, both the mirror and small window utterly obscured with a thick coating of condensation.
Sherlock felt his arm and hand respond to months-neglected muscle memory, rising to wipe a large stripe through the fogged glass and reveal for the first time in a very long time, his reflection.
His hair was longer, hanging in heavy, dripping curls to the hinge of his jaw, the very back falling very nearly to his C4 vertebrae. His skin was sallow, almost grey, his face gaunt. He looked unhealthy, but his eyes were bright. He'd recover.
'You're gorgeous.'
Sherlock whipped round, stumbling backward and groping blindly for a towel to cover himself. John stood impassively in the doorway with his left arm in a sling, smirking. 'You'll need to start shaving daily soon.'
Sherlock got hold of the papery, rough textured towel and jerked it around his waist. 'You shouldn't be up.' He scolded. 'Much less sneaking about.'
'I woke up and you weren't there.' John said, as blankly as he might say, 'There are clouds covering the stars tonight' or 'telly predicted rain today'. It was a fact, vaguely lamentable, but unarguable.
'I was coming back.' Sherlock insisted. 'I just had to--' he gestured feebly at the shower.
'No, I know you were.' John said, his voice trailing. 'If I had to drag you, you were coming back. But I thought I'd come to you instead. You don't need to cover yourself from me.' He nodded at the towel.
'How's the pain?'
John shrugged with his right shoulder. 'Painful.'
Sherlock tilted his head. 'Are you all right.'
John looked off into the distance and was silent for a moment. Then, 'No. I'm not. I need you to touch me.'
Sherlock was moving before John had even finished speaking, stepping close and bracketing John's face with his hands. 'I'm here.' He breathed. 'I'm here, I love you so much, I'm right here.'
John raised his right hand to cover Sherlock's. 'Just…just stay, okay? Just stay with me.'
'Always.'
'Grow old, Sherlock.' John commanded. 'You owe me that much. Promise me you'll go grey and wrinkled and start walking with a hunch and you'll die a liver-spotted old man in your sleep.'
'Only if you're there with me.'
John looked up to meet Sherlock's eyes. 'Always.'
~~~
John was, for once, grateful that the world revolved around the right-handed. No one accidentally tried to offer him a left-handed handshake or extended their left hand to help him out of a car. He was used to a certain amount of ambidexterity, even preferred his right hand for shooting, so it wasn't such a terrible inconvenience to have his dominant arm trapped in a sling.
So he automatically leaned his right shoulder against the doorframe of Sherlock's room as he watched his lover rediscover his old sanctuary.
Sherlock moved cautiously, like an archaeologist exploring a newly unearthed palace. His hands ran over everything, gentle as a whisper. He deftly handled what remained of his on-going experiments, spared a moment to boot up his computer, though he didn't do anything with it once it was on, and stroked each individual spine of each book.
He came to the tiny shelf of comic books and paused, hand poised to touch.
'You've been reading my Gaimans.' He said.
John ducked his head. 'Couldn't sleep.'
'You don't like Neil Gaiman.' Sherlock pointed out. 'You said he was too distant from his characters, and he didn't explain things properly.'
John waggled his head noncommittally. 'I don't dislike him. And you love him, so…'
'I admire his detachment and unflinching detail.' Sherlock corrected. 'He turns abnormality into poetry.'
'You're beautiful enough on your own, love.' John told him.
Sherlock turned a full 360 degrees, his eyes scanning every inch as though he'd never seen any of it before. He came to a stop, his body preternaturally still. After a moment he shook his head and let out a long breath. He collapsed onto his bed with enough force to bounce the springs and flopped backward, his arms spread-eagled, and closed his eyes.
'Anything I can help you with?' John asked, unashamedly raking his eyes over every taught and inviting line of Sherlock's splayed body.
'What happens now?'
John lowered his head and shrugged. 'To be honest, Sherlock…I don't know. I always sort of skipped ahead to the marathon sex and waking up together part.'
'I scarcely dared imagine anything.' Sherlock said. 'Mm, I could make such a nest of this.' His fingers splayed out and stroked the duvet luxuriously.
'Is that what we did it on? Your nest?'
Sherlock shrugged. 'I usually slept on the water. But sometimes the weather made changing at night impossible so I'd move to the shelter with--' He cut off, and John pretended not to notice. Sherlock cleared his throat. 'Nesting was a natural instinct. Helpful during storms.'
Taking that as his cue, whether it was or not, John flopped down on the bed beside him and, mindful of his bad arm, pulled Sherlock to him as best he could. 'You will never have to endure those storms again.' He murmured. He dropped a kiss onto Sherlock's nose. 'No more nests.'
Sherlock smiled. 'Sleep with me tonight?'
'With you or beside you?' John teased. 'Best to define your parameters clearly, my love.'
Sherlock snorted. 'Beside me, you git. You were my first, I hardly trust myself not to hurt you in my inept bumbling.'
'Hey, you did very well for a first time. I've got no complaints.'
Sherlock shoved him gently, grinning. 'Please, I was horrid. Even I know elbows are meant to keep themselves on the periphery of sex.'
John giggled. 'For your information, you have remarkably sexy elbows.'
'Psh. You think everything on me is sexy.'
John shrugged. 'Can't fault my eyesight.'
Sherlock turned fever-bright eyes to him, and John's pulse kicked up another gear. 'Kiss me.' Sherlock commanded.
'Well, if you insist.'
'Oh, I do. Emphatically.'
~~~
John was a sweet oblivion, one Sherlock could cheerfully lose himself in for the rest of his life. But John was still human, and so like all the rest of the household, John needed to sleep.
Sherlock did, too. His day had consisted mostly of John's arms and John's lips and John's heat, but it had also contained a large portion of Mycroft's papers, maman's tears, Harry's dazed questions, Ann's fussing, and Basil's contrition. It was enough to wear him down to bone slivers.
Even so, he couldn't sleep. He and John had been the last to retire, dallying in the sitting room even after Mycroft had stumbled his way, blinking and yawning, upstairs to his room.
It had begun so perfectly, the trials and pressures of the day weighing heavily on his eyelids, John's hand pulling him to his feet, coaxing him along to the bed they would share. The first bed they would ever share. The night trailed into kisses, lazy caresses, a crisis of shuddering and panting into each other's mouths, a short break to tidy up, and then Sherlock had slipped into silk pyjamas and slid between the covers with John, hot and solid, curled against him.
Heaven. Soft, gossamer fabrics stroking his skin; post-orgasmic lassitude loosening his joints; his body sinking ever deeper into the soft, rosy light of contentment. He wrapped himself around John, closed his eyes, and waited for sleep to come.
Sleep never came.
There was no clock in Sherlock's room save the digital one by his bed, but there was a grandfather clock in the hall outside his door, and it ticked like a hammer pounding on Sherlock's skull. The waxing moon, silver-white and piercing, shone through his window and bathed his skin in a light he could no longer feel, though he almost imagined he could.
Sleep remained beyond his reach.
A phantom scent, like leather and dust, filled his nose for a moment, then fled, leaving him bereft and searching. The ghostly sound of lapping water played at the shell of his ear before it, too, vanished back into memory. And despite the duvet and John's skin so close, he began to shiver into the darkness.
He tried not to toss and turn, still mindful of John's injured arm, but his body was growing tight and tingling sensations of restlessness were creeping up his legs, so that he longed to kick, perhaps even to run.
The sights, the sounds, the phantom sensations, they all began to whirl and collide inside his head, creating a near silent cacophony under his skull so loud it drowned out his urge to scream. He whimpered instead, folding his arms around himself and holding tightly, as though to keep himself from collapsing into pieces.
Presently, a new sensation rose behind the din. His stomach was tensing and clenching, with a few sloshes and gurgles thrown into the mix.
Ah. This, at least, was something he could deal with. A simple problem with a simple explanation and a simple solution. With one thing and another, he hadn't eaten since the hospital. Gingerly, he slipped out of the bed and crept out of the room and downstairs to the kitchen.
It was a great comfort to Sherlock, that he could still make his way to the chrome and teak hub of their lives in the dark and with a minimum of unintentional noise. After years of adolescence-driven midnight raids, his body remembered each step and motion required to reach the refrigerator, and his hand fell on the familiar cold surface in the exact same way it always had done. This, truly this, meant he was home.
He was almost giddy at the prospect, and he couldn't hold back the smile as he yanked the door open, the vacuum seal giving way with a soft wumph.
The smile froze on his face, contorting itself a millimetre at a time into a sort of ghastly rictus. The fridge was full of food, his favourite foods, from the paper-thin sliced turkey to the wheel of camembert to the bunch of bananas Mycroft insisted on keeping cool rather than leaving them in the fruit bowl with the oranges and the pears.
Sherlock's stomach twisted and groaned, and he reached his hand out for the jam--
Stopped. The lemon custard instead--
No. Carrots could be--
There was a plate of sausages, if he put them in the microwave he could--
Risotto. Ann had made risotto, he could tell because only Ann could make little rosettes out of tomatoes, and--
His hand and his eyes flew from one item to the next, wavering, unsure. What do I want? What do I want?!
A full thirty seconds had passed before he realised he was actually waiting for an answer, for someone else to pop up inside his head and offer him suggestions.
But there was no one in his head. No one but him. He slammed the fridge door closed in disgust and turned to the freezer: ice cream, at least two in his favourite flavours. How was he meant to decide with so many fucking choices?! He shoved the freezer back into place and rounded on the cupboards. Each one, each and every one, loaded with food. Snacks, ingredients, ready meals, taunting him. Mocking him.
He could make a curry, or warm up a frozen pizza, or bake a cake. They had red velvet mix for Christ's sake! Options, decisions, possibilities, they all crowded into his brain and shouted at him, loud and insistent and everywhere. He clutched his hands to either side of his head and sank down to the floor where the worktops joined at the corner of the room.
He was crying. Jim's games of torture, isolation, and terror had taken months to reduce him to this, and now here he was blubbering like a child from a common kitchen. He sat in the dark, curled up as tightly as he could, holding his knees and crying as his stomach continued to make its senseless demands and the burden of choice hammered under his skull.
I don't know. I don’t know. I don't KNOW!
Three months. Wooden boxes delivered each and every evening. Resorting to cooking fish over the fire when Jim took away their rations. Three months, never choosing, eating to survive, eating what he could get, and he'd forgotten how to prefer. Too many choices, no ramifications save that if he ate this he would not be eating that and what if that turned out to be the better option, or neither was the better option and he actually should have gone with a third? Or a fourth? How to narrow the field? How did he begin to choose with nothing, absolutely nothing, to go on?
Help me. Please say you hear me and HELP ME. I don't know…
His mind echoed back at him, silent and endless, like a black desert with no horizon.
He was alone. Completely alone. Locked away from the only people who could--
Oh he was an idiot.
The way back to his room was just as ingrained in his muscle memory as his foray into the kitchen, and had a much sweeter reward at its end. He crept through the sleeping house and slipped, shadow-like, into his bedroom, greeted instantly with the soft susurrus of John's unconscious breathing.
He began by kissing John's cheek, simply because he could, then he gently took hold of John's right shoulder and gave him a shake. John's breathing stuttered but he slept on.
Sherlock shook him again, this time calling his name in a stage whisper.
John made a soft, confused noise, causing Sherlock's heart to give a giddy kick and jump briefly to his throat. Sherlock kept shaking the shoulder and calling John's name.
'Hm? Wazzat…?'
'John. John, I need you to help me.'
'Sh'rlock?'
'Please. I need your help.'
John sat up instantly, blinking the sleep from his eyes then rubbing them with his hand. 'What's wrong? Are you hurt?'
Sherlock cocked a condescending eyebrow, John shrugged. 'Try me in six months and maybe I'll have figured out how to stop worrying about you.'
'I'm hungry.' Sherlock's stomach burbled in agreement.
'Then eat. I'm sure you know where the food lives.' John teased.
Whatever look was on Sherlock's face, it seemed to drain the mirth out of John in an instant. 'What's wrong?'
'I can't--there's so much. I don't…know…'
John nodded. 'Right. Right, I think--I think I know what you're saying. Not much room for decisions in captivity, right?'
'One of the many drawbacks.'
John manoeuvred himself out of bed with only a brief, steadying hand on Sherlock's shoulder. 'Right.' He said. 'Come with me. We'll sort this.'
John didn't creep through the house. He strode. He switched on lights where he wished and moved with the absolute confidence of someone for whom crowds existed to be pushed through. He walked like a soldier, still: briskly and without apology.
He flooded the kitchen with light, chasing the shadows from each corner and crevice, and all but shoved Sherlock onto one of the chairs at the table.
'Right.' Said John with a brisk tone that said he would be rubbing his hands together if he could. 'Any guidelines?'
'I'm hungry.'
John nodded. 'Good start. So…something substantial? Or more of a midnight snack?'
'I don't know.' Sherlock admitted, frowning.
'O…kay. Sweet? Savoury? Juicy?'
'I don't know.' He said, gritting his teeth.
'Right. Um…hot or cold?'
'John, stop. Any question you're planning on asking me, I can guarantee you the answer will be the same.'
Rather than wilting under this, John drew himself up to his full height. 'Right.' He said decisively. 'You sit there, and leave this all to me.'
'You're going to take care of me?' Sherlock smirked.
John tipped an invisible Stetson atop his head. 'Damn straight, little fella.'
'Do that again, and I'm sending you back to your room.'
'Empty threats.' John scoffed. 'You know you can't get enough of me.'
Before Sherlock could respond, John was tearing through the kitchen, gathering dishes and utensils and slamming his way through the cupboards, the fridge, and the freezer.
'Right…start with…Almond Mocha ice cream. God, do you remember when you ate some of this while we were on the phone? Christ, the sounds you made…'
Figuring his role in the conversation was an observational one, Sherlock sat back and watched John, well, take care of him. The view was spectacular, particularly when John bent down to retrieve the carton of ice cream from the freezer drawer.
'Chocolate sauce or caramel sauce…caramel. I love the way you say caramel.' John seemed increasingly giddy, extolling Sherlock's virtues with every selection.
'Let's see…ooh! Grapes. Do you know, there were nights in the barracks where I'd imagine you draped over one of those long chairs-- chez longues I think-- wearing nothing but a bed sheet while I fed you peeled grapes? You'd make a frighteningly sexy hedonist.'
'Biscuits…no, wait, I think Harry and Mycroft baked some cookies the other night…yes! Um…white chocolate macadamia squares. Yeah, that'll do. Remember when you were fourteen and you said white chocolate tasted like silk? I still don't know what you meant by that.'
By the end of it John had constructed a towering, sugary monstrosity inside of one of the biggest serving bowls in the kitchen. This he set with a flourish, or as much of one as he could manage with only one arm, in front of Sherlock. 'Eat up.'
Sherlock eyed the mass critically. 'You'll make me ill.'
'Yep, and a good old fashioned tummy ache will remind you all about making intelligent choices about your food. Now eat.' He forced a spoon into Sherlock's hand with a cheeky grin.
'Help me?'
John climbed, with surprising ease, atop the table and took up a tailor's seat directly in front of Sherlock's Great Thing of Sugar. He brandished his own spoon and dug into one of the more ice creamy sections of his creation. Sherlock followed suit, snagging a grape as well for no particular reason, and took a bite.
He immediately decided he would never eat grapes or Almond Mocha ice cream independent of one another again.
He moaned very nearly pornographically. 'I love you.' He told John, who grinned.
They ate for a while in silence, occasionally pausing to set down their utensils and reach out to touch one another. A brushing of hair out of Sherlock's eye, a trailing finger along the line of John's wrist, small touches for no reason other than to be touching.
'So I guess it's not a fairy tale after all, is it?' Sherlock said at last.
John paused, spoon still slightly between his lips. 'Whoever said it wasn't?'
Sherlock gestured to the kitchen around them. 'Well, this. Not exactly "happily ever after". I mean, it's all right now, but…we're broken, John. The pair of us. Damaged.'
John shrugged. 'Maybe we're mending. Anyway, there's no such thing as "happily ever after". Not even in fairy tales. "Happily ever after" just means nothing else ever happened, and that's a load of bollocks from the start. At the end of it, nobody walks off with the love of their life into the sunset with a big smile on their face and just…stays that way. Fairy tales don't want to show the stuff that happens after, when the people involved have to re-learn how to live their lives. Nobody wants to know that the handsome prince and the beautiful princess find out two weeks in that they can't stand each other and quietly go their separate ways, or that the knight in shining armour goes on slaying dragons until he meets the one dragon just that bit hungrier. So the storyteller just slaps "happily ever after" on the end and everyone pretends that it works, but it doesn't. Life has to go on, and people have to keep living it, even when the magic part is over with.'
Sherlock eyed him over the pile of sweets. 'Exactly how many of my Gaimans have you been reading?'
John snorted. 'Actually I think that one's more Pratchett than anything. But it's true. You know I'm right.'
Sherlock poked at the confection with his spoon a bit sullenly. 'I miss them.' He whispered.
'I know.'
'I can't sleep. It's not just being hungry. I don't know how to sleep at night anymore.'
'You'll figure it out.'
'I'm afraid of the sunrise. Terrified. I don't…I'm not sure how I'll handle it when it comes.'
'I'll be right there the whole time.'
'I want to fly.'
John froze, then his body deflated. 'I…I don't think I can help you with that.'
Sherlock shook his head and forced himself to bite into one of his cookies.
He swallowed, and it hurt a bit. 'My boyfriend is using my newly acquired neuroses to avoid dealing with his own mental and emotional problems.'
John sighed. 'Spotted that, did you?'
'You were a soldier a lot longer than I was a captive, John. And you brought the army with you when you came back. Tomorrow…it's your first real day as a civilian.'
John closed his eyes. 'I'll have to get used to it. I'm finished with the army, anyway.'
Sherlock scoffed. 'Nonsense. I read your medical report, John. Molly's power circumvented any real nerve damage, the surgery was a complete success, with physical therapy there's no reason why your wound should cause you any noticeable difficulty.'
John turned his head away. 'No, Sherlock. I mean…I'm not going back.'
Sherlock looked up at him. 'What?'
'I'm…I'm not re-enlisting, Sherlock. I'm done. Whatever happens with my shoulder, I'll never be a soldier again.'
Sherlock widened his eyes, his mouth hanging slack. 'But--but you've always wanted to be a soldier. And army doctor, that was the plan. Since we were kids. Like your dad.'
'And look what happened to him!' John snapped. Sherlock rocked back in his chair.
John slumped. 'You--you were taken while I was away. I couldn't be there to help you. I never even got to fight for you. If I go back, I'll have to go back. I'll have to leave you again.' He didn't open his eyes. 'I can't do that, Sherlock. I just can't.'
'You said yourself. There was nothing you could have done.'
'I could have tried.' John insisted. 'I didn't even get the chance to do that. Most of a continent away and completely useless. Well, I know what I'm doing now and I refuse to leave you on your own.'
'You can't cast aside your dreams for me, John!'
'I have no dreams but you, Sherlock.' John said. 'All of that, that life I had planned out, it's worthless if you're not in it. Don't ask me to say good bye to you, Sherlock. I don't have it in me.'
Sherlock hung his head. 'Don't ask me to watch you shrivel up inside.'
John sighed. A finger pressed against the bottom of Sherlock's chin, pushing his face up so he could meet John's eye.
'I'll be happy as a doctor, Sherlock. I don't need to carry a gun. If I'm with you, I've got everything I need.'
Sherlock smiled sadly. 'I think that's the prettiest lie I've heard all year.'
~~~
Chapter Twenty-One
Fandom(s): Sherlock/The Swan Princess/Swan Lake
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, Molly, Moriarty, Moran, Mycroft, Harry, Ann Watson, Vienne Holmes, Mike Stamford
Pairing(s): Sherlock/John, suggested Moriarty/Moran, very twisted semi-Moriarty/Sherlock
Warnings: Violence, torture, abduction, coersion, Jim Moriarty with access to magic.
Summary: The final part of The Swan Triad, following Till Now I Never Knew and Interlude. Sherlock struggles to escape Moriarty's prison with the help of two fellow prisoners. Meanwhile, John devotes every waking moment to a search and rescue of the man he loves.
A/N: If you're wondering why this took so long, it's because this chapter is more than 8.5 thousand words long. Yeah. And were not done yet.
Chapter Twenty
He spotted her before she spotted him. He stilled his pacing and for a frozen instant they just looked at each other, scarcely willing to breathe for fear they would shatter this fragile reality. Then the moment snapped, and Sherlock was rushing forward and Vienne was opening her arms and they crashed together, shattering and mending at the same time in one another's grasp.
'Sherlock!' She cried, pressing him as close as she could, forcing words through her tears, peppering his face with kisses. 'Mon bébé…ah mon bébé chéri!'
Sherlock buried his nose in her hair, gripped her tight about the shoulders and waist. 'Maman.' He wept. 'Je suis désolé, je suis si désolé.' He pulled away just far enough to press their foreheads together, bracketing her face with his hands. 'I'm sorry.'
She shook her head, covered his hands with her own. 'Non, petit. Don't apologise. You're here. That's all that matters.' She pulled away and brushed the tears from his cheeks, chasing each one with a kiss. 'But where is your brother? What's this about John? What's happened?'
Sherlock tensed and he shrank away. 'He…the doctors…they had questions.' His throat was closing around his voice, and he had to force himself to say, 'They won't tell me anything. Just that he's still in surgery.'
'Sherlock, my love. What happened to him?' Vienne asked as she guided her son to one of the uncomfortable chairs lined along the wall.
'He--he was shot.' Sherlock choked. 'When he came for me. His shoulder. It--it was his shoulder.'
'Oh, God.' Vienne breathed. 'Is he--'
Sherlock shook his head. 'I don't know. He was…he was unconscious by the time we got here. Mycroft is trying--but they aren't saying anything.'
She shushed him and pulled him to her breast. 'There now,' she said. 'Ann and Harry are coming, the doctors will speak to them. I'm sure he'll be alright.
'Mother, I…'
But Vienne shook her head. 'No, Sherlock. Not now. Give me this one moment before I have to think about…all of this.'
'Mummy…' They both turned at the sound of Mycroft's voice. He'd aged fifteen years in the last hour. He looked exhausted, his face ashen, his lips pale. They stood, and he began to walk toward them. He just made it to his mother and his brother before his knees sagged and he had to lean on them for support.
'What did they say?' Sherlock breathed.
Mycroft shook his head. 'Too little. He's still in surgery, he's alive. They just don't know yet.'
He looked up at his brother with eyes wider and more frightened than Sherlock had ever seen. 'Sherlock, if they suspect--he bled so little. If they notice,' He shook his head. 'I don't know how much I can cover up.'
'What do you mean? What's happening?' Vienne asked, but Mycroft shook his head again.
'Stay with Sherlock, mother. I have to go. There's--there's so much to be done. The police, my superiors.' He rubbed his temple. 'And I need to speak to your companions, Sherlock.'
He moved to leave, but Sherlock shot out his hand to stop him. 'Are they--what will happen to them?'
Mycroft shook his head and tried to move away again.
Sherlock tugged him back. 'You can't be hasty with this, Mycroft.' He insisted. 'They've got nothing, he's got absolutely nothing, and don't forget it's been six years since--'
'Sherlock, enough!' Mycroft snapped. He took a breath and prized his brother's hand from his arm. 'I will, see to it.' Sherlock opened his mouth but Mycroft held up a hand. 'No, Sherlock. I will see to it. Don't ask me how because I've not the slightest idea, but I will ensure your friends are cared for. Please, Sherlock. Trust me.'
'Friends?' Vienne asked, reclaiming Sherlock's attention. Her eyes were shining and wide. 'Your friends?'
Implications cascaded through his mind, and he found himself nodding dumbly. 'They were,' he cleared his throat. 'We were…kept. Together. They…helped me.'
Vienne's mouth moved into something which, in any other setting, would have been a smile. Here in the hospital, however, it was still mostly tears. 'Oh, petit.' She pulled him tightly into her arms and he lost himself in the warmth of her. She smelled like home.
What came next sounded even more like home.
'You unbelievable tosser!'
He barely had time to glimpse the golden blonde hair flying like a pennant, the smart pinstripe suit, the angry set to the cherry-red lips, before Harry's arms were wrapped around him in a vice-like hold and he was struggling to breathe. A moment later and she'd pushed him back, glaring into his face. 'What the hell happened last night?' She demanded. Sherlock opened his mouth but Harry cut him off. 'No! Shut up!' And the vice was back as she hugged hard enough to add to his collection of bruises.
Gentle, work-scarred hands slipped between them. Harry softened and stepped back.
Ann moved in front of him, holding him at arm's length as she looked him up and down. He became hyper aware of the blood and grime coating his once white shirt, a shirt she'd bought for him during a compulsory shopping trip memorable mostly for how she'd interrogated him about her son and their plans together. He was aware of his bruises, his cuts, his rat's nest of hair, and he wanted to hide from her. She wouldn't let him.
She didn't say anything, and neither did he. The spectre of John hovered between them, cradled in the space between Ann's arms, and it was Ann who dared press through it, and for the third time in the last half-hour he was pulled into a hug so tight it hurt.
He began to weep, his shoulders heaving in apology for what he'd caused, for everything that had happened to their family since he was taken, for not seeing John for who he was until it was too late, for everything he couldn't articulate as her hand soothed along the stark lines of his shoulder blades, the grooves of his spine. She didn't shush him, she didn't make any sound at all, but she held him and let him bleed sorrow as she had always done.
'Mrs Ann Watson?' Called a voice behind them. Ann pulled away just enough that Sherlock could lean against her shoulder.
'I'm Ann Watson.' She said. Vienne came up beside her and took the hand not wrapped around Sherlock's waist, clutching it tight. Harry wrapped her arm around her mother's waist, the other holding firmly to Vienne's free hand.
The surgeon had pulled down her mask so that it hung loosely about her neck and she was carrying a small packet of papers. There was blood on her scrubs. She was smiling. 'John is going to be just fine.'
Ann sobbed in relief as Harry grinned and tucked her face into the crook of her mother's neck. Vienne freed one hand and held Sherlock's arm, beaming. Sherlock stood numb, unsure how to react, afraid to move as the world righted itself under his feet.
'It's incredible, actually.' The surgeon went on. 'I've never seen a bullet wound so clean. No shattering, no damaged arteries. It's as close to a best-case scenario as you can get with gunshots.'
'When can we see him?' Ann asked, her voice slightly too steady.
'He's still under from the anaesthesia.' The surgeon replied. 'He should wake up in anywhere from ten to thirty minutes. Someone will be by to fetch you.'
'How many of us?' Harry asked in a slightly sharpened tone.
'And you're…' She checked her papers. 'Harriet Watson, yes?'
Harry nodded. She looked about to speak up again, but the surgeon beat her to it.
'Just one at a time for now. He'll be groggy from the anaesthetic.' Her eyes turned to Sherlock, though he hadn't said anything. In fact, he'd hardly moved from the moment she'd walked into the waiting room. Perhaps she'd just been doing this for a long time, because when she spoke, it was directly to him. 'He is going to be just fine.'
~~~
It took just about all John had to blink his eyes open, and when he did, the blurry shape in front of him resolved into a mop of curly brown hair, a pale face, and glacier eyes.
He frowned. 'You were Harry a second ago.'
Sherlock smiled tightly. 'Does it hurt?'
John shook his head. 'Th' stuff. 's good. Gave me a button.' He brandished the morphine control with a vague smile.
Sherlock scoffed. 'You're high.'
'Yep. God you're beautiful.'
Sherlock's face fell. He looked away. 'This is all wrong, isn't it? It shouldn't have ended like this.'
John shifted slightly, keeping weight off of his left shoulder. Even with morphine the pain was hovering just beyond his perceptions and he didn't want to have to push the button again while he was trying to talk. 'Who said it was over?'
'But--I'm free, you did it. Greg and Molly are finally out of the lake and you and I--'
'Yeah, all that, but listen.' He fumbled for Sherlock's hand. 'All of that…shit, it was all leading up to this. This is where it starts. And, sure, it may be a crap beginning in some ways, but we're both here. See?' He held up their joined hands. 'Touching and everything.'
'I want to kiss you.'
'I'm not stopping you.'
'I don't want to hurt you.'
John snorted, even giggled a bit. 'Come on, love. This is nothing. We've both suffered worse for less.'
Sherlock shook his head. 'I should've said yes that night. I should've taken you upstairs and refused to let you go in the morning.'
John sighed. 'You couldn't have stopped me. I honestly don't think I could've stopped him.' He didn't, and that hurt, deeper than the morphine could touch. 'He would've come for you, Sherlock. At least this way I stood a better chance of getting you back.'
Sherlock leaned over then, cupped John's cheek in one smooth hand and kissed him. The sensation was fuzzy through the drugs, but still sweet. Hungerless, like their first, a kiss content in itself.
'Lie down with me.' John whispered once their lips had parted.
Sherlock's eyes widened. 'John…we can't--'
'Idiot.' John chided. 'I just want you to lie down. Can't hold you like this.'
Sherlock smirked and, moving with that still surprising grace of his, carefully manoeuvred his body over and across John's until he could nestle between John's right side and the railing of the bed. With care, a bit of cursing, and no little help from Sherlock, John managed to turn over onto his right so he could meet Sherlock's eyes as they shared the pillow.
'Would be my left arm.' John groused. 'Typical.'
'Mm, serves you right for being abnormal. That's my job.'
'Oh, blatant right-handed bias.' John scolded him. 'Not enough the whole world is designed for you, you've got to trod on the rest of us poor sods.'
Sherlock laughed, and John spared a moment to just listen to it.
'I love you.' He'd probably never admit it out loud, but he quite liked it when the words came out on their own like that, surprising them both.
Sherlock smiled and snuggled in closer. 'Tell me about our flat.'
John blinked. 'You know about that?'
Sherlock nodded. 'Greg told me.'
John tamped down the now-familiar surge of anger he felt whenever he thought of Lestrade and forced himself to ask, 'How is he?'
Sherlock shook his head. 'I don't know.' The words seemed to pain him more than usual, and John didn't have to guess why.
'Molly?'
Sherlock closed his eyes and turned his face away. 'They're gone. Both of them, the moment you freed me. I haven't seen them since we got here.'
'Molly's free?' John asked. 'I don't remember much past taking the shot.'
Sherlock nodded.
'How?'
Sherlock smirked. 'She showed Jim mercy.' He let out a harsh laugh. 'I would've killed him, right there. Not her. She let him go, and the lake took him in her place.'
John let out a low whistle. 'Poetic.'
'The Old Man was an artist, it seems. I regret I never got to see him work.'
'He did kidnap and imprison a thirteen year old girl, Sherlock.' John chided. 'And corrupted Moriarty into…whatever it is he became.'
'Jim didn't need any help there.' Sherlock said. 'I know he was a bad person, John, that doesn't change how impressive his skills were. He let Jim choose his own demise, trapped him with his own source of power. That's gorgeous.'
'Sick, though.'
'Yes. But look at Smallpox under a microscope and it looks like something Van Gogh would have painted.' Sherlock pointed out. 'Sick and beautiful don't always have to cancel one another out.' He focussed his gaze on John, locked their eyes together. 'Not if you look closely enough.'
John forced a smile. 'You're going to save the world with thinking like that.' He said, then he closed his eyes long enough to find the words he had to say. 'I killed people, Sherlock.'
'Yes.'
'I don't regret it. I'm…glad. It feels right.'
'Yes.'
'Where's the beauty in that?'
'It's gone eleven in the morning.' Sherlock said.
'What?' John whispered.
'The sun rose hours ago. I was holding your hand as I watched it. I am still holding your hand. I am looking into your eyes, I am speaking to you with words you can hear, I am lying here, beside you, and I am me.' He pressed a kiss to the corner of John's mouth. 'I can think of nothing more beautiful than that.'
John let that sink in for a moment, and then he found he was kissing Sherlock breathless, which seemed the best way to respond.
Sherlock was beaming at him when they separated. 'Now, about this flat of ours…'
~~~
When Sherlock woke, the light from the window had gone dim. John was pressed tightly against him, sleeping the sleep of the fastidiously drugged, and someone was standing in the doorway.
'Visiting hours are over.' Sherlock yawned, blinking the sleep from his eyes.
'I am aware.' The voice froze him, and he paused to let his vision focus and adjust to the backlighting.
'Father.'
Basil Holmes stepped into the room. He was tall, of a height with Mycroft, so Sherlock had to look up to meet his eyes. His hair was so dark as to be nearly black, like Sherlock's, but straight and meticulously combed and ordered, and his nose was sharp and aquiline like Mycroft's, where Sherlock's was a bit snubbed like his mother's. He was carrying a cane, but not using it. It wasn't entirely decorative, though. Sherlock had seen him use it on steep stairways and hills several times.
'He will make a full recovery.' Basil observed, without so much as a glance at John's prognosis chart.
'Yes.' Sherlock could almost fool himself into thinking he'd kept his voice low for John's sake.
'Mycroft has informed me of your predicament these last few months.' Basil went on. 'It is…impressive, in hindsight, to see all he has done when one knows what he was to face.'
'Why are you here?'
Basil lowered his eyes at that, and rested the cane on the lino at his feet. 'Because I am the sort of fool who arrives at his destination too late to serve his purpose, and thinks himself punctual. I am here as I should have been, and never was.'
'You're a busy man, you can't--'
'Wrong, but dutiful, my boy.' Basil lamented. 'A man has family, has ties to the world he cannot loose, even should he wish to. I have striven for years to be something other than a man, and I have found myself cold. For when a man ceases to be a man he has generally become a corpse. Though it is true I was a frightfully busy one.'
'You didn't damage me.' Sherlock told him. 'I'm told I’m terribly well adjusted in spite of myself.'
Basil nodded. 'Yes, Dr Langtree, I'd imagine. Such an annoyance when soft science practitioners prove themselves capable.' He swivelled his cane a bit. 'But, alas, I remain incurably selfish. The damage is all mine, I'm afraid, and it seems I cannot ignore its symptoms.'
He paused, looked up. 'I lost you, four months ago. I found in your absence a silence I no longer relished, a solitude from which I could take no comfort. I found myself envisioning a world without your brother, or that meddling Watson woman with that annoying tendency to be right all the time. And that could only lead to thoughts of a life without your mother in it, and I found that unendurable.' He started to smile, but never quite finished. 'And I remembered the moment I fell in love with her. I do love her, you may be pleased to know. And I remembered the night of your party, and seeing you kiss a boy I thought you hated, and I realised in that moment that you had become a man, a whole one, while my back was turned.
'I…failed to observe so much. I am getting older, son. I have lost so much that I can never regain, and I will die with far less than I was entitled to. It galls a man, Sherlock, to wake up in the morning and find himself victim of his own stupidity. You see, genius, my boy, is a disease which seeks to eradicate its own cure. It feeds on itself, and blots out reason. I let myself be consumed by it, and now it is too late. And yet I persist in making my volleys into deserted camps.'
'The flat.' It was strange to Sherlock to speak so little, almost as strange as it was to hear his father say so much.
'Too little, far too late. At least I proved useful in reclaiming you.'
'You saved my life.'
'That man, there,' He pointed his cane at John, still blissfully medicated into oblivion. 'Saved your life. I merely handed him the sword.'
'We could never have done any of it without you.' Sherlock insisted.
'Perhaps not.' Basil conceded. 'And perhaps if I had taken notice of your obsession with that dead boy you would not have had to.'
'Father,'
'Your room is waiting for you at the house. You may stay as long as you like, until you and John are ready for whatever comes next. The flat will remain available to you, should you wish for it. And,' He stepped back through the doorway for a moment and leaned over to where Sherlock knew a chair sat against the wall. He returned with a stack of clothing in his hands. 'Young Miss Watson insisted I give you these.'
It was only John's body in the way that kept Sherlock from falling upon the clothing like a starving man on a steak. When the fabric was in his hands he may have cried a little. He wasn't sure. He felt a bizarre urge to cuddle the stack to his chest like a soft toy. He settled for bringing the soft material close to his face, inhaling the scents of home.
'Thank you, and her, of course.'
Basil nodded. 'Of course. I'll leave the pair of you to rest.' He turned to go.
'Father.'
Basil halted and looked over his shoulder.
'For…everything. Thank you.'
It was a small smile, but genuine, if a bit sad. And with it, Basil left his son to watch over John in the dark and the quiet of healing.
~~~
'So you're the Eyes of Britain, then?'
Mycroft folded his hands on the table between them. 'I do have rather unprecedented access to the CCTV network, if that is your meaning.'
Greg snorted. 'Should've seen that. John said as much, before. I mean, I wasn't there or anything but Sherlock showed me.' He tapped his head. He felt shaky, like his bones were rattling about under his skin. The gaping chasm in his head was deeper and wider than ever before, endless, really.
'Police Constable--' Mycroft began, but Greg stopped him.
'I'm not.'
'Sorry?'
'A PC. And you never used my old rank before, always "mister". You were right. I haven't been a copper in two years, and it's not like the Met's been saving a spot for me, is it?'
'Very well, Mr Lestrade, we must--'
'Sorry, no chance of a fag, is there? It's just…I could really use a cigarette just now.'
Mycroft frowned. 'I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, if we could--'
'Where is she?' There was a note of pleading in his voice, he hardly cared. 'Just…just where is she? 'Cause she's alone and, you know she doesn't say it but she's scared and…where is she?'
Mycroft sighed, but his face softened. 'Miss Hooper is in the care of some of my most trusted associates. Her medical check is so far exemplary, and she is undergoing the first steps to reintroduction.'
'To what?'
Mycroft met his eye, then he pulled a clipboard over to him from the corner of the little table in their over-lit little consultation room. 'Reintroduction. To society, Mr Lestrade. Miss Hooper has been isolated for quite some time, it is best to reacquaint her with the outside world gradually. It is feared that too much stimuli would overwhelm her and hinder her recovery.'
'But she's okay?'
Mycroft set down the clipboard and pushed it over to Greg. 'She appears indomitable.'
Greg looked at the papers, the contents of Molly's body and mind written out across standardised forms. 'Damn right she is.' He looked up to Mycroft. 'What about your brother?'
'He's with John.' Mycroft said, with finality, as though that said all that needed saying. It probably did. 'May I ask why you're so diligently avoiding the subject of your own situation?'
'Cos I'm scared.' Greg said with a shrug. 'It's been two years of waiting and worrying and now it's all in my lap and you put it there.' He said with a point to Mycroft. 'And now you're just…just sitting there. Talking to me like you didn't just hand me my freedom on a silver bloody plate and expecting me to deal with things and I--I can't.'
'At the time I had no idea what I was doing.' Mycroft told him, and some of his stiffness fell away. 'What I did, and it's still difficult to believe I did anything, was done entirely in ignorance and with minimal peril to myself. You, on the other hand, embarked on your every heroism with eyes wide open and your life on the line. Which of us is the more deserving?'
'It doesn't work like that.'
'Why shouldn't it?'
Greg sighed and folded his arms on the table, resting his chin on his sleeve. 'Can you make me a cop again?'
'I can help you reclaim your position, yes.'
'Why?'
Mycroft blinked. 'What?'
'I mean, are you doing this as part of some official directive or is this more of that shite about rewarding me for not acting like a complete dick and leaving your brother to rot at the lake?'
Mycroft fiddled a bit with a ring on his right hand. When he spoke, his voice was a bit distant. 'When we were children, very young, Sherlock often resented the measures I took to protect him. He was born far too soon, you see. The beginning of a life intimately interwoven with death.' He smiled sadly, his eyes still on the featureless ring as he twisted it round and round his finger. 'When I was twelve, the Watsons came to stay with us for the first time, and I found in Harriet an indulgent damsel to my white knight compulsions. It didn't put me off hovering over my brother, but it did divide my focus enough to let him breathe. Probably saved our relationship, in hindsight.'
He looked up, and he was still smiling that tight smile. 'All of my life, Mr Lestrade, I have felt the need to keep him safe, to protect him from any harm, even himself if it came to it. Several months ago, I failed.' He took a breath, it sounded like it hurt. 'I am a resourceful man, Mr Lestrade. And I am rapidly becoming a powerful one. But that day, I was forced to face the reality that I cannot protect him from everything. Soon he will move to London, a city which has become my home, and I will watch over him and John as best I can, but…I need help.
'You risked your life to save his. You put yourself in peril time and again to keep him from harm. You worked yourself to exhaustion securing his freedom with no guarantee of your own.' He met Greg's eyes then, unwavering. 'A man like that, a man who would do so much for a relative stranger, that is precisely the man I want protecting my city.'
Greg took a moment to let all of that sink in. When he'd had a chance to sort through it all, he looked up, and extended his hand.
'My name's Gregory.' He said. 'You can call me Greg if you like.'
~~~
The hospital room had a shower. Sherlock had long ago grown accustomed to the privileges of wealth, private hospital rooms being merely one of them, but just now he felt he could fall to his knees and capitulate to the gods of conspicuous consumption, that he could experience this and still have John resting twenty feet away.
The water was hot, enough to pink his skin. For the first long moments after stepping under the spray Sherlock sagged against the plain white wall and let the heat sluice over him, coating his skin, drenching his hair, until he was possibly wetter even than when he'd been submerged in the lake.
He felt his muscles soften under the onslaught of heat, his legs going slack, and he lowered himself to his knees on the floor of the shower, resting his elbows on the seat provided for patients who couldn't stand, and let the water wash away.
He closed his eyes and listened to the hushed roar that was this water's only voice, marvelled that he had no connection to it, even as it seeped into his skin. He was loathe to move, only the prospect of John's warm, solid skin under his fingers enticing enough to bring him to his feet and make him take up the bottle of aggressively bland shampoo.
And this! Soap! His skin tingled where the chemicals touched, his scalp all but twitching as he worked the gel into a lather. He couldn't say how long he stood there, just rubbing the foam through his hair, feeling dirt and grease and oil and grit sloughing off onto his hands, then down, down to the slick floor to be washed away, remnants of his prison swept out and forgotten.
Applying the bar of soap to his skin was nearly orgasmic. He honestly hadn't realised quite how much of his darkened skin tone was simply caked-on dirt. If anything he was even paler after months of never seeing the sun without a barrier of feathers. He scraped off one layer of grime from his forearm and actually whimpered. He felt like a reptile, shedding an ill-fitting skin.
He saved the conditioner for last, which was probably wise, because the sensation of running his fingers through softened, smooth hair as the water cascaded over his body was entirely too much and he had to sit on the bench, breathing heavily, clutching at his biceps until he could convince himself he wouldn't wake, that the heat and the comfort and the clean were all real, that the world which supplied them would not vanish should he open his eyes.
When he turned off the water, steam hung around him like a fog. Stepping out of the shower, the mist seemed even thicker, both the mirror and small window utterly obscured with a thick coating of condensation.
Sherlock felt his arm and hand respond to months-neglected muscle memory, rising to wipe a large stripe through the fogged glass and reveal for the first time in a very long time, his reflection.
His hair was longer, hanging in heavy, dripping curls to the hinge of his jaw, the very back falling very nearly to his C4 vertebrae. His skin was sallow, almost grey, his face gaunt. He looked unhealthy, but his eyes were bright. He'd recover.
'You're gorgeous.'
Sherlock whipped round, stumbling backward and groping blindly for a towel to cover himself. John stood impassively in the doorway with his left arm in a sling, smirking. 'You'll need to start shaving daily soon.'
Sherlock got hold of the papery, rough textured towel and jerked it around his waist. 'You shouldn't be up.' He scolded. 'Much less sneaking about.'
'I woke up and you weren't there.' John said, as blankly as he might say, 'There are clouds covering the stars tonight' or 'telly predicted rain today'. It was a fact, vaguely lamentable, but unarguable.
'I was coming back.' Sherlock insisted. 'I just had to--' he gestured feebly at the shower.
'No, I know you were.' John said, his voice trailing. 'If I had to drag you, you were coming back. But I thought I'd come to you instead. You don't need to cover yourself from me.' He nodded at the towel.
'How's the pain?'
John shrugged with his right shoulder. 'Painful.'
Sherlock tilted his head. 'Are you all right.'
John looked off into the distance and was silent for a moment. Then, 'No. I'm not. I need you to touch me.'
Sherlock was moving before John had even finished speaking, stepping close and bracketing John's face with his hands. 'I'm here.' He breathed. 'I'm here, I love you so much, I'm right here.'
John raised his right hand to cover Sherlock's. 'Just…just stay, okay? Just stay with me.'
'Always.'
'Grow old, Sherlock.' John commanded. 'You owe me that much. Promise me you'll go grey and wrinkled and start walking with a hunch and you'll die a liver-spotted old man in your sleep.'
'Only if you're there with me.'
John looked up to meet Sherlock's eyes. 'Always.'
~~~
John was, for once, grateful that the world revolved around the right-handed. No one accidentally tried to offer him a left-handed handshake or extended their left hand to help him out of a car. He was used to a certain amount of ambidexterity, even preferred his right hand for shooting, so it wasn't such a terrible inconvenience to have his dominant arm trapped in a sling.
So he automatically leaned his right shoulder against the doorframe of Sherlock's room as he watched his lover rediscover his old sanctuary.
Sherlock moved cautiously, like an archaeologist exploring a newly unearthed palace. His hands ran over everything, gentle as a whisper. He deftly handled what remained of his on-going experiments, spared a moment to boot up his computer, though he didn't do anything with it once it was on, and stroked each individual spine of each book.
He came to the tiny shelf of comic books and paused, hand poised to touch.
'You've been reading my Gaimans.' He said.
John ducked his head. 'Couldn't sleep.'
'You don't like Neil Gaiman.' Sherlock pointed out. 'You said he was too distant from his characters, and he didn't explain things properly.'
John waggled his head noncommittally. 'I don't dislike him. And you love him, so…'
'I admire his detachment and unflinching detail.' Sherlock corrected. 'He turns abnormality into poetry.'
'You're beautiful enough on your own, love.' John told him.
Sherlock turned a full 360 degrees, his eyes scanning every inch as though he'd never seen any of it before. He came to a stop, his body preternaturally still. After a moment he shook his head and let out a long breath. He collapsed onto his bed with enough force to bounce the springs and flopped backward, his arms spread-eagled, and closed his eyes.
'Anything I can help you with?' John asked, unashamedly raking his eyes over every taught and inviting line of Sherlock's splayed body.
'What happens now?'
John lowered his head and shrugged. 'To be honest, Sherlock…I don't know. I always sort of skipped ahead to the marathon sex and waking up together part.'
'I scarcely dared imagine anything.' Sherlock said. 'Mm, I could make such a nest of this.' His fingers splayed out and stroked the duvet luxuriously.
'Is that what we did it on? Your nest?'
Sherlock shrugged. 'I usually slept on the water. But sometimes the weather made changing at night impossible so I'd move to the shelter with--' He cut off, and John pretended not to notice. Sherlock cleared his throat. 'Nesting was a natural instinct. Helpful during storms.'
Taking that as his cue, whether it was or not, John flopped down on the bed beside him and, mindful of his bad arm, pulled Sherlock to him as best he could. 'You will never have to endure those storms again.' He murmured. He dropped a kiss onto Sherlock's nose. 'No more nests.'
Sherlock smiled. 'Sleep with me tonight?'
'With you or beside you?' John teased. 'Best to define your parameters clearly, my love.'
Sherlock snorted. 'Beside me, you git. You were my first, I hardly trust myself not to hurt you in my inept bumbling.'
'Hey, you did very well for a first time. I've got no complaints.'
Sherlock shoved him gently, grinning. 'Please, I was horrid. Even I know elbows are meant to keep themselves on the periphery of sex.'
John giggled. 'For your information, you have remarkably sexy elbows.'
'Psh. You think everything on me is sexy.'
John shrugged. 'Can't fault my eyesight.'
Sherlock turned fever-bright eyes to him, and John's pulse kicked up another gear. 'Kiss me.' Sherlock commanded.
'Well, if you insist.'
'Oh, I do. Emphatically.'
~~~
John was a sweet oblivion, one Sherlock could cheerfully lose himself in for the rest of his life. But John was still human, and so like all the rest of the household, John needed to sleep.
Sherlock did, too. His day had consisted mostly of John's arms and John's lips and John's heat, but it had also contained a large portion of Mycroft's papers, maman's tears, Harry's dazed questions, Ann's fussing, and Basil's contrition. It was enough to wear him down to bone slivers.
Even so, he couldn't sleep. He and John had been the last to retire, dallying in the sitting room even after Mycroft had stumbled his way, blinking and yawning, upstairs to his room.
It had begun so perfectly, the trials and pressures of the day weighing heavily on his eyelids, John's hand pulling him to his feet, coaxing him along to the bed they would share. The first bed they would ever share. The night trailed into kisses, lazy caresses, a crisis of shuddering and panting into each other's mouths, a short break to tidy up, and then Sherlock had slipped into silk pyjamas and slid between the covers with John, hot and solid, curled against him.
Heaven. Soft, gossamer fabrics stroking his skin; post-orgasmic lassitude loosening his joints; his body sinking ever deeper into the soft, rosy light of contentment. He wrapped himself around John, closed his eyes, and waited for sleep to come.
Sleep never came.
There was no clock in Sherlock's room save the digital one by his bed, but there was a grandfather clock in the hall outside his door, and it ticked like a hammer pounding on Sherlock's skull. The waxing moon, silver-white and piercing, shone through his window and bathed his skin in a light he could no longer feel, though he almost imagined he could.
Sleep remained beyond his reach.
A phantom scent, like leather and dust, filled his nose for a moment, then fled, leaving him bereft and searching. The ghostly sound of lapping water played at the shell of his ear before it, too, vanished back into memory. And despite the duvet and John's skin so close, he began to shiver into the darkness.
He tried not to toss and turn, still mindful of John's injured arm, but his body was growing tight and tingling sensations of restlessness were creeping up his legs, so that he longed to kick, perhaps even to run.
The sights, the sounds, the phantom sensations, they all began to whirl and collide inside his head, creating a near silent cacophony under his skull so loud it drowned out his urge to scream. He whimpered instead, folding his arms around himself and holding tightly, as though to keep himself from collapsing into pieces.
Presently, a new sensation rose behind the din. His stomach was tensing and clenching, with a few sloshes and gurgles thrown into the mix.
Ah. This, at least, was something he could deal with. A simple problem with a simple explanation and a simple solution. With one thing and another, he hadn't eaten since the hospital. Gingerly, he slipped out of the bed and crept out of the room and downstairs to the kitchen.
It was a great comfort to Sherlock, that he could still make his way to the chrome and teak hub of their lives in the dark and with a minimum of unintentional noise. After years of adolescence-driven midnight raids, his body remembered each step and motion required to reach the refrigerator, and his hand fell on the familiar cold surface in the exact same way it always had done. This, truly this, meant he was home.
He was almost giddy at the prospect, and he couldn't hold back the smile as he yanked the door open, the vacuum seal giving way with a soft wumph.
The smile froze on his face, contorting itself a millimetre at a time into a sort of ghastly rictus. The fridge was full of food, his favourite foods, from the paper-thin sliced turkey to the wheel of camembert to the bunch of bananas Mycroft insisted on keeping cool rather than leaving them in the fruit bowl with the oranges and the pears.
Sherlock's stomach twisted and groaned, and he reached his hand out for the jam--
Stopped. The lemon custard instead--
No. Carrots could be--
There was a plate of sausages, if he put them in the microwave he could--
Risotto. Ann had made risotto, he could tell because only Ann could make little rosettes out of tomatoes, and--
His hand and his eyes flew from one item to the next, wavering, unsure. What do I want? What do I want?!
A full thirty seconds had passed before he realised he was actually waiting for an answer, for someone else to pop up inside his head and offer him suggestions.
But there was no one in his head. No one but him. He slammed the fridge door closed in disgust and turned to the freezer: ice cream, at least two in his favourite flavours. How was he meant to decide with so many fucking choices?! He shoved the freezer back into place and rounded on the cupboards. Each one, each and every one, loaded with food. Snacks, ingredients, ready meals, taunting him. Mocking him.
He could make a curry, or warm up a frozen pizza, or bake a cake. They had red velvet mix for Christ's sake! Options, decisions, possibilities, they all crowded into his brain and shouted at him, loud and insistent and everywhere. He clutched his hands to either side of his head and sank down to the floor where the worktops joined at the corner of the room.
He was crying. Jim's games of torture, isolation, and terror had taken months to reduce him to this, and now here he was blubbering like a child from a common kitchen. He sat in the dark, curled up as tightly as he could, holding his knees and crying as his stomach continued to make its senseless demands and the burden of choice hammered under his skull.
I don't know. I don’t know. I don't KNOW!
Three months. Wooden boxes delivered each and every evening. Resorting to cooking fish over the fire when Jim took away their rations. Three months, never choosing, eating to survive, eating what he could get, and he'd forgotten how to prefer. Too many choices, no ramifications save that if he ate this he would not be eating that and what if that turned out to be the better option, or neither was the better option and he actually should have gone with a third? Or a fourth? How to narrow the field? How did he begin to choose with nothing, absolutely nothing, to go on?
Help me. Please say you hear me and HELP ME. I don't know…
His mind echoed back at him, silent and endless, like a black desert with no horizon.
He was alone. Completely alone. Locked away from the only people who could--
Oh he was an idiot.
The way back to his room was just as ingrained in his muscle memory as his foray into the kitchen, and had a much sweeter reward at its end. He crept through the sleeping house and slipped, shadow-like, into his bedroom, greeted instantly with the soft susurrus of John's unconscious breathing.
He began by kissing John's cheek, simply because he could, then he gently took hold of John's right shoulder and gave him a shake. John's breathing stuttered but he slept on.
Sherlock shook him again, this time calling his name in a stage whisper.
John made a soft, confused noise, causing Sherlock's heart to give a giddy kick and jump briefly to his throat. Sherlock kept shaking the shoulder and calling John's name.
'Hm? Wazzat…?'
'John. John, I need you to help me.'
'Sh'rlock?'
'Please. I need your help.'
John sat up instantly, blinking the sleep from his eyes then rubbing them with his hand. 'What's wrong? Are you hurt?'
Sherlock cocked a condescending eyebrow, John shrugged. 'Try me in six months and maybe I'll have figured out how to stop worrying about you.'
'I'm hungry.' Sherlock's stomach burbled in agreement.
'Then eat. I'm sure you know where the food lives.' John teased.
Whatever look was on Sherlock's face, it seemed to drain the mirth out of John in an instant. 'What's wrong?'
'I can't--there's so much. I don't…know…'
John nodded. 'Right. Right, I think--I think I know what you're saying. Not much room for decisions in captivity, right?'
'One of the many drawbacks.'
John manoeuvred himself out of bed with only a brief, steadying hand on Sherlock's shoulder. 'Right.' He said. 'Come with me. We'll sort this.'
John didn't creep through the house. He strode. He switched on lights where he wished and moved with the absolute confidence of someone for whom crowds existed to be pushed through. He walked like a soldier, still: briskly and without apology.
He flooded the kitchen with light, chasing the shadows from each corner and crevice, and all but shoved Sherlock onto one of the chairs at the table.
'Right.' Said John with a brisk tone that said he would be rubbing his hands together if he could. 'Any guidelines?'
'I'm hungry.'
John nodded. 'Good start. So…something substantial? Or more of a midnight snack?'
'I don't know.' Sherlock admitted, frowning.
'O…kay. Sweet? Savoury? Juicy?'
'I don't know.' He said, gritting his teeth.
'Right. Um…hot or cold?'
'John, stop. Any question you're planning on asking me, I can guarantee you the answer will be the same.'
Rather than wilting under this, John drew himself up to his full height. 'Right.' He said decisively. 'You sit there, and leave this all to me.'
'You're going to take care of me?' Sherlock smirked.
John tipped an invisible Stetson atop his head. 'Damn straight, little fella.'
'Do that again, and I'm sending you back to your room.'
'Empty threats.' John scoffed. 'You know you can't get enough of me.'
Before Sherlock could respond, John was tearing through the kitchen, gathering dishes and utensils and slamming his way through the cupboards, the fridge, and the freezer.
'Right…start with…Almond Mocha ice cream. God, do you remember when you ate some of this while we were on the phone? Christ, the sounds you made…'
Figuring his role in the conversation was an observational one, Sherlock sat back and watched John, well, take care of him. The view was spectacular, particularly when John bent down to retrieve the carton of ice cream from the freezer drawer.
'Chocolate sauce or caramel sauce…caramel. I love the way you say caramel.' John seemed increasingly giddy, extolling Sherlock's virtues with every selection.
'Let's see…ooh! Grapes. Do you know, there were nights in the barracks where I'd imagine you draped over one of those long chairs-- chez longues I think-- wearing nothing but a bed sheet while I fed you peeled grapes? You'd make a frighteningly sexy hedonist.'
'Biscuits…no, wait, I think Harry and Mycroft baked some cookies the other night…yes! Um…white chocolate macadamia squares. Yeah, that'll do. Remember when you were fourteen and you said white chocolate tasted like silk? I still don't know what you meant by that.'
By the end of it John had constructed a towering, sugary monstrosity inside of one of the biggest serving bowls in the kitchen. This he set with a flourish, or as much of one as he could manage with only one arm, in front of Sherlock. 'Eat up.'
Sherlock eyed the mass critically. 'You'll make me ill.'
'Yep, and a good old fashioned tummy ache will remind you all about making intelligent choices about your food. Now eat.' He forced a spoon into Sherlock's hand with a cheeky grin.
'Help me?'
John climbed, with surprising ease, atop the table and took up a tailor's seat directly in front of Sherlock's Great Thing of Sugar. He brandished his own spoon and dug into one of the more ice creamy sections of his creation. Sherlock followed suit, snagging a grape as well for no particular reason, and took a bite.
He immediately decided he would never eat grapes or Almond Mocha ice cream independent of one another again.
He moaned very nearly pornographically. 'I love you.' He told John, who grinned.
They ate for a while in silence, occasionally pausing to set down their utensils and reach out to touch one another. A brushing of hair out of Sherlock's eye, a trailing finger along the line of John's wrist, small touches for no reason other than to be touching.
'So I guess it's not a fairy tale after all, is it?' Sherlock said at last.
John paused, spoon still slightly between his lips. 'Whoever said it wasn't?'
Sherlock gestured to the kitchen around them. 'Well, this. Not exactly "happily ever after". I mean, it's all right now, but…we're broken, John. The pair of us. Damaged.'
John shrugged. 'Maybe we're mending. Anyway, there's no such thing as "happily ever after". Not even in fairy tales. "Happily ever after" just means nothing else ever happened, and that's a load of bollocks from the start. At the end of it, nobody walks off with the love of their life into the sunset with a big smile on their face and just…stays that way. Fairy tales don't want to show the stuff that happens after, when the people involved have to re-learn how to live their lives. Nobody wants to know that the handsome prince and the beautiful princess find out two weeks in that they can't stand each other and quietly go their separate ways, or that the knight in shining armour goes on slaying dragons until he meets the one dragon just that bit hungrier. So the storyteller just slaps "happily ever after" on the end and everyone pretends that it works, but it doesn't. Life has to go on, and people have to keep living it, even when the magic part is over with.'
Sherlock eyed him over the pile of sweets. 'Exactly how many of my Gaimans have you been reading?'
John snorted. 'Actually I think that one's more Pratchett than anything. But it's true. You know I'm right.'
Sherlock poked at the confection with his spoon a bit sullenly. 'I miss them.' He whispered.
'I know.'
'I can't sleep. It's not just being hungry. I don't know how to sleep at night anymore.'
'You'll figure it out.'
'I'm afraid of the sunrise. Terrified. I don't…I'm not sure how I'll handle it when it comes.'
'I'll be right there the whole time.'
'I want to fly.'
John froze, then his body deflated. 'I…I don't think I can help you with that.'
Sherlock shook his head and forced himself to bite into one of his cookies.
He swallowed, and it hurt a bit. 'My boyfriend is using my newly acquired neuroses to avoid dealing with his own mental and emotional problems.'
John sighed. 'Spotted that, did you?'
'You were a soldier a lot longer than I was a captive, John. And you brought the army with you when you came back. Tomorrow…it's your first real day as a civilian.'
John closed his eyes. 'I'll have to get used to it. I'm finished with the army, anyway.'
Sherlock scoffed. 'Nonsense. I read your medical report, John. Molly's power circumvented any real nerve damage, the surgery was a complete success, with physical therapy there's no reason why your wound should cause you any noticeable difficulty.'
John turned his head away. 'No, Sherlock. I mean…I'm not going back.'
Sherlock looked up at him. 'What?'
'I'm…I'm not re-enlisting, Sherlock. I'm done. Whatever happens with my shoulder, I'll never be a soldier again.'
Sherlock widened his eyes, his mouth hanging slack. 'But--but you've always wanted to be a soldier. And army doctor, that was the plan. Since we were kids. Like your dad.'
'And look what happened to him!' John snapped. Sherlock rocked back in his chair.
John slumped. 'You--you were taken while I was away. I couldn't be there to help you. I never even got to fight for you. If I go back, I'll have to go back. I'll have to leave you again.' He didn't open his eyes. 'I can't do that, Sherlock. I just can't.'
'You said yourself. There was nothing you could have done.'
'I could have tried.' John insisted. 'I didn't even get the chance to do that. Most of a continent away and completely useless. Well, I know what I'm doing now and I refuse to leave you on your own.'
'You can't cast aside your dreams for me, John!'
'I have no dreams but you, Sherlock.' John said. 'All of that, that life I had planned out, it's worthless if you're not in it. Don't ask me to say good bye to you, Sherlock. I don't have it in me.'
Sherlock hung his head. 'Don't ask me to watch you shrivel up inside.'
John sighed. A finger pressed against the bottom of Sherlock's chin, pushing his face up so he could meet John's eye.
'I'll be happy as a doctor, Sherlock. I don't need to carry a gun. If I'm with you, I've got everything I need.'
Sherlock smiled sadly. 'I think that's the prettiest lie I've heard all year.'
~~~
Chapter Twenty-One