Fic: Come Together (1/1)
Title: Come Together
Author: arwen_kenobi
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~8900
Summary: There were three kinds of people in the world. TNs, TKs, and TPs.
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain but this incarnation belongs to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC. Anyone you don't recognize is mine.
Author's Note: Written for holmestice June 2013 exchange for saki101
I'm at Cambridge. It's a relief.
When he'd first come back to himself he'd not known where he was. That was nothing new to him but he'd still panicked a little. He'd recognized the obvious of course; that he was in a library. In a library sitting at one of those study carrels surrounded by parapsychology papers that he can't even begin to understand. He'd reached back, tried to follow the steps to figure where he was and how he got there. When that didn't work he'd gone as far back to that place in the back of his mind and found it cold. No help there. Eventually he'd noticed the textbook next to him. He's quite ashamed, though mostly irritated, at how long it had taken to open the thing and see the Cambridge University Library stamp.
Cambridge. It made sense. The location does, anyway. The books and papers do not. He doesn't think two hours of travel time is worth this collection of works. He waits for the whisper of indignation or confirmation but neither comes. He grumbles and starts flipping through the book and ends up shaking it out in the hopes that some scrap of information is going to fall out. He eventually find his answer in the first paper - "Latent Psychokinetic abilities in World War II Veterans" - coded in the references. It takes him an hour to actually break the code but what he gets is a section number and another book. In there, he supposes is the next step. He doesn't move right away though; the code had also given him a time and that time isn't for another thirty minutes.
The only thing that hasn't come to him is the specific why. Why Cambridge? Why this code? Is this the last step or are there more hoops to jump through.
It will come. It will come or it won't. He'd prefer the former but he's worked with the latter enough times. His efficiency just tends to vary. Once it was not so but times have changed.
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There are three types of people in the world. TNs, TKs, and TPs. If you weren't a TN then it was a fifty percent between winding up TK or TP. That was the general rule. There was the less than two percent chance of getting a dash of PK thrown in to spice up a person's life but most people didn't think about it. Most PKs didn't either.
John Watson falls into the TK third of the population. He prefers, like most people living with either TK or TP, to use it as little as possible. John considers a lot of it just a way to be even more lazy but he's not above keeping a door open a split second longer than he needs it to, or shutting it or opening it when his hands are full, or of sliding his mug of tea just into his reach. There are people out there who are quite theatrical about it. Stupidly so in some cases. There are some people he's met who refuse to carry anything under their own power. The rucksack or purse may be resting on their shoulders but their shoulders are not bearing the weight. They don't reach for things on the top shelf or ask for help - they summon them to the bag or the carts and not their hands.
And John wonders why TNs worry about a hostile takeover. He's surprised that there haven't been any attempts at uprisings or takeovers - there are two thirds of the population with some sort of psychic ability and only one third with nothing. There apparently isn't that much insanity in the world.
If John had a mind to just start moving things around without lifting a finger no one would probably look up. If he'd lifted a car or a bus he'd get a crowd and the police. Really, he supposes, he'd get a show if he was completely open with displaying everything: John's in that miniscule group of the population with PK ability. It's on his medical files and he is listed on the registry but it's something he does his best to forget about. It has yet to come up in civilian conversation because, really, how many situations exist that call for the ability to light something on fire with a thought?
His TK is rated at a B-, which means he has more control than most but doesn't spend hours practicing it and using it like some of the gurus that walk the Earth but his PK is slightly problematic. Where anyone with TK or TP present just before puberty - John had launched his dinner, plate and all, into his drunken father's face at age ten - John's PK had not presented or even been hinted to until he'd been well into adulthood.
The day he'd been shot. The day that he'd saved Greg Lipton had been when he'd presented. He'd sworn that some team with flamethrowers had come in but he and Lipton had been told that there had been no fires there. Only the charred remains of bodies. The display had been terrifying and could only have emanated from one of them. They'd tested Lipton first, a distant relation had had PK so that had been more likely, and when that had been negative they'd tested John. Only John was surprised at the positive results.
His potential is off the chart in comparison to his skill. He's achieved the all important C level that allows him to function and live in society unmolested but he thinks the fact that it's not higher is the reason that he'd been discharged from the army. A doctor with a shoulder wound is problematic but if he agrees to mandated trainings sessions to improve his TK some compromise can be made. A doctor who might incinerate his patient, or anyone else, by accident is quite another issue. Even if the chance is low - a C level does mean 'Competent' after all.
He hasn't tried to light a fire since but he has felt the characteristic itching in his fingers when he's upset or angry. It's happened a handful of times on the job, or at home, with Sherlock but somehow he's managed to keep it in check. Sherlock knows that's he's TK just as well as John knows that Sherlock is TP but he thinks that Sherlock doesn't know that he's PK as well. He's had no reason to suspect this ability and, despite his Grade A level TP, Sherlock is not a mind reader. Since his emotional quotient, and as a result his empathy, is pathetically below average his TP is limited to the power of suggestion and to the ability to engage in mindspeak. His deductions are a product of his mind not his TP. He can read minds in the traditional sense so long as he touches someone and actually tries. It's invasive for both parties and is time consuming. It really is faster for Sherlock to deduce it or for John to convince the subject to talk.
Besides, like John himself, Sherlock prefers to use his gift as little as possible. Sherlock would do anything to avoid having his thoughts anywhere near anyone else's.
In the present, John laughs quietly into his hands.
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Neither John or Sherlock had mentioned their respective situations at first meeting. Like any other health issues or personal concerns one did not just introduce themselves as being one way or the other. Even though John had habits where he'd use it without thinking in the privacy of his own home, Sherlock had never noticed until nearly a month into the partnership when he'd thrown a man across the room. John much preferred to settle a round of fisticuffs with brute strength, especially when against someone he suspected was 'normal, but in this case he was losing and time was of the essence. The flight across the room had been a good ten or twelve feet and John was frankly surprised the man survived.
Sherlock, tied to a chair, and the man who was about to drill a hole in his head had stared at him in open awe. Then John had thrown that man across the room too and had seriously considered setting him on fire. Instead he calmed the itching in his fingers, fighting every effort to rub them together or shove them in his pockets, and released Sherlock from his bonds telekinetically instead.
He'd found out about Sherlock a moment later when he'd asked if he was okay and received the reply without Sherlock ever opening his mouth. John hadn't been all that surprised. "Explains a bit," had been his reaction. Sherlock had ranted about how his deductions weren't because of the TP and this had gone on all the way back to A&E when John had gently, and once again telekinetically, nudged him into a chair.
"I never will get your depths, John."
"I can't believe you never noticed! I use it 'round the flat all the time!"
" Not enough to be noticed!"
"I thought you were all about noticing details!"
This had gone on through the wait and continued with Sherlock in the examination room and John trying to locate some decent coffee. Neither of them had even noticed that the argument was taking place in their minds until they met each other again.
That had basically been that. Nothing had changed. Though John had no compunction about not getting out of his chair to get Sherlock's mobile or laptop anymore. Sherlock still texted him instead of mindspeaking him but every once in awhile, out of pure laziness, Sherlock's voice would enter his head. Always when he was away from the flat and always the same siren call of "could be dangerous."
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He'd tried to stop Sherlock falling off St. Bart's. He'd tried harder than anything and that effort had resulted in burning the pavement around him. When he'd reached Sherlock's side he'd been shocked, however distantly, at how warm he was until he'd noticed this singes on his shoes and on his trouser legs. There'd been a wall, a wall of some sort stopping him from actually reaching around Sherlock and catching him or slowing or whatever he was going to do to save him. That had ended up being Molly Hooper, Grade A- level TK. John had pegged her for a 'normal from their first meeting but he should have remembered his lessons from long ago about appearances being deceiving.
John believes that his PK rating should be upped to a B just on the fact that he did not roast Sherlock alive the second he'd appeared on his doorstep. Instead he'd punched him, and punched him with a bit of added force he'll admit, so hard that he'd knocked him out. He'd then carried, actually carried Sherlock onto the sofa and dumped him there. If Sherlock had smelt the smoke when he woke up he'd said nothing.
John hadn't returned to the flat until he'd felt Sherlock, that was the only word he could say to describe the sensation of someone waiting for him to give permission to speak when they weren't in front of him. When John had given the mental equivalent of a yes he'd been 'shown' why Sherlock had to do what he had done instead. It hadn't complete absolved him but John understood what he was trying to do. He'd said it himself after all: friends protect people.
Again, in the present, John has to smile and stifle his mad laughter again. Friends protect people. Friends do stupid, stupid, insane things to protect people.
So do more than friends, he amends as he thinks of that first contact of their minds and what hints he'd inadvertently seen.
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John can't pinpoint the moment that he'd fallen in love with Sherlock Holmes. He's sure that Sherlock can and knows that Sherlock has told him but he...oh, there it is. Sherlock had fallen in love with him when he'd shot a man for him on that first case. It's terribly romantic and John can now remember having gently mocked him for it before. If John has to pinpoint the beginning for him he supposes he'd have to say sometime after the Pool Incident. Whether Sherlock likes it or not that's when he'd known, known for sure, that Sherlock actually gave a toss about what happened to him.
He supposed that should have been his first clue about Sherlock's feelings. Sherlock did not do things by halves after all. Instead they'd fumbled around each other, and the issue, until nearly three months after Sherlock's return from the grave. There had been no secrets by that point. John knew Sherlock's feelings full well by then, the acts before and after screamed 'I love John Watson' in a language that only they knew, to say nothing of the faint whisper of in his mind when he'd returned. Sherlock had taken a little longer to figure out John's. When John saw that light bulb go off over Sherlock's head it had been a quiet night, of sorts, at Baker Street. John was channel surfing, sans remote, trying to decide between two movies and Sherlock was in the process of dissecting some dead criminal's brain.
"I knew it wasn't you speaking at the Pool."
It took a moment before John registered the capital P in Pool. "I thought the ear piece and the bomb was an indication there."
"Don't pretend to be stupid, you know what I mean," Sherlock went on without looking up from his work. "That wasn't you talking. Moriarty was TP and very accomplished at it."
John doesn't like to think about the violation, the violation that the other mouthpieces had to have felt. He hadn't even said anything to anyone when he'd been debriefed on the situation. In the grand scheme of things, there had been other things on his mind.
"Any reason you're bringing this up now?"
Sherlock gave the most awkward of awkward shrugs. "I just want you to know that I did notice. That I did care. That I did want to rip him limb from limb afterward."
"You did that eventually."
"Not literally but yes...and it was for you in the end."
John doesn't think himself an egotistical man but he knows, they both know, that had John not been threatened Sherlock may have allowed Moriarty to run free. He was a challenge that Sherlock might never meet again and the world was automatically more interesting with him in it. John would much rather Irene Adler fill that role in Sherlock's life than him. "I do think that's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."
Sherlock turns beet red. John thumps the empty spot on the couch. When Sherlock doesn't move he makes him stand up, walk over, and sit down without moving a muscle. He bides his time before he speaks. "I thought you were dead for a year and I've had my time to mourn and to regret. I don't want you to have the same experience."
"You're not dying first."
"Out of fairness I ought to," John retorts. "However that's not going to be our decision. What is going to be our decision is what we do with this." He gestures in between them. "We can go on as is or we can see where this leads us."
The light bulb had come on then. Sherlock's face and eyes had lit up as quickly as John had groaned. Sherlock had always called him dull and stupid and usually not meant it but this had to beat every single time he actually had been dull or stupid. "This is new? Really?"
"You know full well my empathy is not exactly ideal for sensing emotions - "
"No even without that!" John had gasped. "Really. You hadn't even..."
"After you mentioned romantic just now I knew."
John rolled his eyes. "You are such an idiot." It was a statement of fact and not at all venomous.
Nothing much happened that night, or the night before. They took care instead of rushing in like they would in any other case or adventure. This was an important one. They made each day count but didn't act like their days were numbered. It was enough that they knew how each other felt.
John is thankful for the time they took. It has helped him thus far where little else has and it also gives him comfort to know that Sherlock will know how much he is loved, how fucking deeply he is adored, by the end of this even if John doesn't survive this.
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John hadn't expected anything from Mycroft but he figured he'd try. The man did owe him something for the Fall. He hadn't had much to do with it but he had known. He would have collected from Molly too as this point but he didn't want to force her into this position again. It was also something she would oppose with every fiber of her.
"It's just until this is over," John concluded. "To keep him safe."
"You mean to keep him out of the way so he doesn't do something foolish to keep you safe."
Touché, John doesn't say out loud. Out loud he says that he tends to react very badly to stasis. He's only spent a few hours in it as a young man in the army. He'd been sick from that more than he'd been from the actual poisoning.
"Not unusual for one with TK," Mycroft agrees. "The freedom to move, and move objects, at will does not appreciate being confined to a thin, Plexiglas tube."
It's sounds ridiculous but it's true. Telekinetic individuals do not fare well in or out of stasis. Telepathic people are much better equipped to deal with the experience. Apparently the stronger types could communicate, of a sort, with family and close friends depending on the individuals involved. This is not why John would rather Sherlock be the one shoved in stasis and hidden somewhere instead of him. It's because he knows just as well as anyone that he's Sherlock's weakness. Whatever this...this thing that's shoving themselves into people's minds and manipulating them en masse will know. It's someone that knows Sherlock, and how to hurt.
There were the first few victims who were connected loosely, people who Sherlock helped who Sherlock had not wanted to massacre after or during a case. Then they'd gone for Lestrade, and failed. They had managed to get Mrs. Hudson. She's in stasis with the other living victims in some location that Mycroft only knows but not consciously.
Mycroft, like his brother, is TP. His TP's strength, however, is extremely intrapersonal. He can make himself forget things and recall them at the perfect moment. There has to be a code word, John and Sherlock theorize. One trusted person, knowing or unknowingly, who says the right thing at the right time to trigger where he's hidden the bodies or the nuclear weapons.
"Then he'd have to be precognitive too, wouldn't he?" That's rarer than being PK. That's a myth. A legend. A trait that all TP parents tell their children that they have.
Sherlock doesn't exclude it as theory. John does not even want to test it. His knowledge and insight is terrifying enough with the intellect and normal, run of the mill, TP as it is.
"He's afraid whatever this is will get me next. I understand that. I'm more terrified of whatever is getting him and then using him to end me."
Mycroft raises an eyebrow. "And why do you think that?"
"It's what I would do. It's what the entire criminal population of London would do."
"An action that is still possible, and it still fitting, if you are to end him while he's effectively helpless."
John shakes his head. "He can't take him over while he's in stasis, that's proven." This is not the first time in history at TP has elective to murder by proxy. It cannot work on someone in stasis. "This is safer than the other way." John has been and always will be at peace with the likelihood that Sherlock will get him killed one way or the other one day. He would rather it not be at Sherlock's hand and he would rather meet his death with eyes open and fighting than in his sleep. Or stasis-coma.
Mycroft Holmes regards him closely. That itching in his fingers comes again. He hasn't felt this since he and Sherlock first kissed, another reason he thinks his PK rating should be upped. He does not move his hands, look at them, or give any sign to Mycroft that his fingers are bothering him. He still hasn't told Sherlock and if Sherlock knows he hasn't said anything. He can only assume that they know and pretend that he doesn't know they know but he doesn't want to give them evidence. Why he hasn't been open, especially considering he easily could have torched him and Sherlock both on multiple occasions, he cannot say. Maybe he enjoys having this one secret. This one ace up his sleeve. It is his one last surprise he has left and he wants to make it good.
"If there is anything that Sherlock learned from his time away it is that you work best together." Mycroft walks toward him, umbrella stabbing the ground with each tap of his left foot. "It was something you made him promise. No more secrets, no more lies. Did you not promise in kind?"<[>
"This is not a secret or lie," John insists.
"You expect he will willingly lie down into that stasis tube?" Mycroft scoffs, eyebrow raised. "There are two very specific situations in which he will do that and I have no desire to engineer or cause either of them." He studies John for an extra half second and then adds "nor will you. You know what that feels like. You wouldn't inflict the same on him."
John shakes his head. "No," he agrees. "I wouldn't." Any attempt would be seen through instantly. He does not have the skill set to manipulate thoughts and even if he did he wouldn't use it here. Sherlock hadn't even done so to get him off St. Bart's property.
"You can help me," John asks one final time.
"I can," Mycroft agrees. "But I will not."
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John sets the article aside and shakes out his fingers. He steeples his fingers and presses his forehead into the webbing of his joined thumb and index fingers. He breathes as the heat shakes through him. Normally he'd be patting his pockets for the enhanced Aspirin but he knows he's out. It was always a temporary fix anyway. Everyone, everyone who moved in certain circles knew anyway. He'd just hoped that he'd be able to make this temporary fix last.
He shudders, takes a breath again, and looks at the call number he'd deciphered. Then looks at his watch. It's time.
His head pounds and he slams his hand on the chair to keep it from tucking back into the desk automatically. He leaves the book where it lies, not feeling the usual pang for the staff who has to clean up after him. Perhaps it's best that he mostly sits this out. That had probably been the intent the entire time for this point in the game. He doubts that even Sherlock could see that far ahead but, even now, he can't predict how this is going to.
"You're taking the lead," John informs him now, what there is in his head anyway. "Wherever the fuck you are you're taking it. I've done most of the work. You can take him out now."
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Sherlock had always been a very tactile person when it came to John. Sherlock was always pulling him and dragging him and yanking him everywhere. Things had remained very much the same on that front and had marginally increased in some respects. John still wakes up slightly terrified to find Sherlock wrapped around him like a second skin. He is not fond of cuddling himself but he puts up with it because it's Sherlock. The story of a man in love summed up in three words, he supposes. That's why he hadn't resisted Sherlock pulling his forehead down to his, why he hadn't resisted Sherlock's kiss after he'd collapsed, after Sherlock had dropped what he was doing and screamed for someone to knock him out, to sedate him and 'put him away with the others'. John had stepped back because he knew what was going to happen if Sherlock failed to keep control, if those believed titanium mental shields fell...
"John!" It's was gasp and it was really Sherlock so John came forward, accepting the syringe from Lestrade and he walked.
"What is it?"
Sherlock grasped his neck and pulled his forehead down to his. He'd pressing their foreheads so tight and gripped his neck so tight but John couldn't make any sign of discomfort. He felt that feeling of Sherlock standing on the doorstep of his mind. He wants to say something but he's afraid to. As much as it pains him to shut him out John knows he has to.
I'm sorry.
Sherlock takes a step forward but John pulls him the rest of the way in. The mental door that John should have shut in Sherlock's face slams on John's side. John falls to his knees as everything thought and idea he's ever had clashes and argues with all of Sherlock's. He feels Sherlock more completely than he ever has in their infrequent mindspeak conversations and sees himself through what has to be Sherlock's eyes as well. He stabs Sherlock's neck with the syringe and his awareness goes with it.
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The call number takes John to parapsychology, of course. This book quoted is a memoir and study of a man who held his wife's consciousness while her body was reconstructed from a car crash. He'd held on to her for nearly six months and, being as they were both TP, this had been very nearly pleasant for him. The book next to it, John remembers from med school, is about a man who had forcibly had this happen to him under very similar conditions in the military. He had died after two weeks. Died as a near perfect combination of the two men at that.
John has had Sherlock's consciousness in his head for four months and he is surprised that he wakes up each morning. Unlike most people who have attempted this, voluntarily or otherwise, he is not TP. When he'd awoken in a bunker with Mycroft Holmes standing at the foot of his bed he'd been told that he'd nearly decimated NSY. He hadn't meant to come out as PK in quite that way but there was nothing for it. He supposes he could always not count it since he couldn't remember it.
He doesn't remember seeing Sherlock in stasis one final time before fleeing. He doesn't remember getting Mycroft to agree to hide Sherlock and make himself forget where he was.
He doesn't remember getting Mycroft to get all of his friends to forget what they had seen and who he was. The man was a marvel but, despite having the effectually spiritual presence of your best friend in your head, John has never felt more alone.
Sherlock is in his head, yes, but it's not like he's conscious and talking to him. His skills, memory, and intellect are there but they come out on their own and with no pattern to it. When that happens John isn't himself nor is he Sherlock, he is himself if he had Sherlock's abilities. There's no communication with Sherlock, no messages, no nothing. Everything he understands about what happens when he's not 'there' in the present moments comes to him, eventually, when he comes back. Sometimes he sees it on CCTV. Mycroft had given him the tools to do that much before he'd erased John Watson from the minds of those closest to him.
The plan as John knew it was to track down Jim Moriarty. Again. Because, apparently, Jim Moriarty doesn't know how to die. Moriarty had shot himself but he'd taken precautions. He'd had people who were quite willing to be possessed by him and he jumped from body to body to body as Sherlock had rampaged across the world and killed each and every one of his hosts.
John has been chasing him down host by host. A man who is occasionally possessed chasing possessed people. It's terrible but exactly the kind of fun that they would both appreciate. There's no Sherlock to hurt and getting into John's head is highly unlikely - there are already two people in it. From what he can understand and monitor, Moriarty has made no attempt to locate Sherlock's body. This game is much more amusing.
He could kill them both at once and yet they both would be alone. Or John would die on his own. The human body is not meant to house more than one personality. The body, the mind, eventually fights the alleged infection. Fever, dizziness, blackouts, seizures, and a myriad of other symptoms await the eventual collapses whatever barricades keep the two personalities from merging into one. When those fall, both die.
Sometimes, according to the literature, the host personalities dies anyway. Even if the other personality is removed. It all depends on the person and how the 'disease' progresses.
John has had a fever for two of the four months. The pills he takes help calm that, he thanks Mycroft or Sherlock or whomever for the foresight to get that sorted. He cannot say for certain which blackouts are proper blackouts and which are simply the Sherlock part of his brain taking over anymore. Seizures of a complex nature haven't happened yet but he strongly suspects that he has had partial ones twice in the last month.
He is running out of time. They are running out of time.
He opens the book and follows the code from the previous article. It's a meeting place and an address. He's noting it in his mobile when it chirps. Another address and another meeting place. This one closer and in twenty minutes. John pulls up the hood of his sweater and tries his best not to run out of the library.
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Sometimes, if he shuts his eyes and thinks he can remember exactly what he's supposed to do and how to do it. Sometimes he remembers why exactly Sherlock had shoved himself into him before he'd been sedated. Was it to make him useless as a possession candidate? To make it so that if he were found that he could not be revived? Or was it because he knew that John would have to end this? That it was only a matter of time before Moriarty came after him and if John was already 'occupied' he couldn't use him against Sherlock? Was this a favour to him?
He has no idea. Has had no idea and has no idea if he ever properly did. He can't be angry though, even on the nights when he's vomiting his entire digestive system up in some dingy motel a world away from London. Even when his head is pounding and pounding as if Sherlock was banging on his skull demanding to be set free.
He snaps at Sherlock those nights. He throws pillows against his head, with hands and without, and sometimes even whatever newspaper is lying about. He doesn't know anything anymore and half the time he doesn't know how he got where he is.
I'm sorry, John.
He hears this, and other things, that he's not sure if they are memories or communications. They're likely the former. Shades of Sherlock's, or even his, memories where he's apologized or calmed him after a nightmare. Or anything. Maybe even shades of what John himself has said to Sherlock in similar circumstances.
He doesn't know. He can't know anything for sure. He only knows the next step of the mission whenever he remembers.
No matter what though he can't hate Sherlock for what he's done. Yes John had pulled him in at the last but he hadn't understood what was going to happen and Sherlock likely would have barged it anyway. He can't hate him or even be that angry with him He may not remember much or be able to keep past, present, or point of view straight most of the time but he remembers the fear. He remembers the trepidation. He remembers damn the well that Sherlock doesn't like using his abilities for the simple things let alone something massive like this.
He takes pride in the fact that Sherlock somehow believes in him to survive this when every single TK who has had this happen to them has never recovered. Death or madness but usually death.
He owes it to them both, to Mrs. Hudson, to the thirty five people that Moriarty has possessed, and the twenty that Moriarty has killed to try.
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Moriarty is on his last jump. He has to stay where he is for good or ill now. One more jump and he is dead and gone forever. It's a pattern that John has noticed over the past four months. Like signal deterioration, the more times Moriarty jumps the less of himself he becomes. In a way it has been a boon but the cost of the lives the sanities makes John's stomach turn. Somewhere he tastes fury and bile and he actually is unsure whether to credit that to Sherlock or himself. He settles with both.
Moriarty would be happy being nothing but a malevolent thought or instinct in someone's mind but having enough consciousness to be aware of a victory is part of the fun after all. Ian Palmer is his last host and, John has to admit at this point, will be the twenty first victim of Moriarty's body switching madness. The real Ian Palmer had been a quiet and gentle type. Very trusting as well; John expects he was gone within thirty six hours of takeover.
He kicks the ground and grits his teeth, part in pain and part in frustration and fury. He takes a quick peek at his watch. Five more minutes before Gemma turns up. He adds on an unwanted leeway of half an hour depending on which branch of law enforcement she has to avoid this week. Or private investigators.
The first time he'd met Gemma Verdenelli he'd had no idea who she was. He'd actually stood her up and then wasted a fair amount of time trying to lose her when he'd spied her tailing him for two days straight. Eventually, once they'd had guns pointed at each other they'd sorted out that the Sherlock part of his brain had made the call and not him. Despite John having no memory of the call and not knowing who the hell she was he was still able to answer each and every question about their past history that she asked of him.
Whatever the story it was certainly a good one. In two parts - one before John had met Sherlock and another during the Fall. What John did know was that Gemma was an Italian born-Irishwoman (she'd moved from Verona to Kilkenny at eleven) and was a paramedic. Due to a series of events involving theft and drug trafficking she'd ended up under Sherlock's radar and had been one of the very few criminals that Sherlock has allowed to go free. She will not say why and John knows it is something he will probably never know. Gemma, however, in the years since first making Sherlock's acquaintance, has been busy building lives and building a network. Unfortunately whatever network she sets up tends to last a year or two. John suspects that that's probably just the way she likes it.
Right now, actually two weeks ago, her current tenure as a paramedic has expired and she's already rescheduled their meeting twice.
She's only ten minutes late this go around and as usual John doesn't notice her until she's directly in front of him. He's never asked why Gemma always works as a paramedic or a nurse or in health based professions when the pattern is so obvious that John thinks he could see it on his own. One theory as to how it's worked is that Gemma is an expert at fading into the background.
She's wearing jeans and a hoodie, nothing attention grabbing. The jeans are faded and worn as is the once emerald green hoodie. She carries no purse - she believes that everything of worth and importance should be able to fit in your trouser pockets - and she wears no makeup. Her mousey brown hair is in a bun right now and her blue eyes are muted. She looks just like everyone else and even when she opens her mouth - her accent is Irish mostly but her sharp consonants tell you where she spent her childhood. John isn't sure if he or Sherlock has sorted whether she's T-anything or not but either way she's a perfect person to fade into the background and does not feel or seem like a person form whom an employer would go into invasive background checks for. Not that they'd find anything anyway. Not right away.
"Sorry," she apologies. "It's been a week."
"Or two." John doesn't mean to sound snappish but doesn't bother offering an apology.
She reaches into the waistband of her jeans and pulls out a palm sized syringe. "Small but mighty," she assures him. "That'll dissolve him, I'm told."
"Dissolve?"
"Technical term for a when a disembodied person ceases to exist."
John takes the syringe and places it his waistband as well. "Does it matter where?"
"Neck's best." Gemma's scuffing off her shoes and pulling up her hood. The wind is kicking up. She tucks her hand into her hoodie pocket and hands John a pill bottle. "Those should do you for another month if you need it."
"You mean if I survive that long."
"If you wait until that long to challenge him that's your own problem." John does not volunteer the information about the meeting later. It's actually in nearly half an hour.
"I don't suppose I'll be waiting that long."
Gemma nods and extends a hand when he shakes her hand she goes a little bit tense and looks at him much more softly than she has before. "Get him to contact me when you're better," she asks. John says he will and she leaves.
There's something itching in the back of his head again. He expects for the world to darken and to end up back at the library or at the meeting place with no memory of how he got there but the feeling passes. That's new and it's a symptom for something very not good.
"Oh no you don't," he curses as he shakes out one of the enhanced Aspirins and takes it dry. "Get up here," he growls quietly. "You can make the introductions." He's reached for Sherlock there before but never actually found him there. Not the way he's felt Sherlock when he's mindspoken to him, or how he'd been just before he'd thrown himself into John's head for safekeeping. This time there's something. There's almost a presence and almost a mental voice.
John doesn't have to time to think on it and doesn't have time to rejoice in it. He grabs it and throws it into control. This time he goes willingly into the black.
=====================================================================================
Coming to feels different this time. He hears a distant voice. An unfamiliar and a familiar one at that. It takes him forty seconds to recognize Moriarty speaking through Ian Palmer. He shares a private hell, he releases in that he knows what it sounds like to hear one person speaking with the voice of another as well as what it feels like.
Something stops his thoughts from wandering. He actually finds thought beyond the present moment impossible. He's not fully in control at the moment, he's just under half. The action half while Sherlock, he assumes, has control of the brain half. No way to ask and no way to tell at the moment - that part of his being isn't in his control at the moment.
The fingers in his left hand itch. He realises that he can't understand what Moriarty is even saying. No language use, he grumbles. Really? Could it not be useful for me to know anything about what he's saying? He's not sure if the lack of a response is on purpose or not though, for a second, he thinks he catches 'the' and 'I' before they fade back into incomprehension.
No matter, he decides. Sherlock has to give the signal, technically, for muscles to move and for the syringe, or the gun, to be used. He doesn't need any English language skills for that. He can read enough in the body language - it's Moriarty's purely of course - to know that whatever he's saying is not good. There's no mistaking anything about Moriarty. He's become very accomplished at reading Moriarty's actions through the bodies of others over the past few months. That being said he still wishes he could understand what he, and himself, are saying. He also wishes he was a touch better a reading lips.
He knows the moment when it comes, however, and he moves. He moves before any signal tells his brain to move his legs. Moriarty, like Sherlock, is better on a mental playing field than a physical one and John does not play fair. His punches are enhanced and he brings Moriarty to his feet without touching him and does it again. The itching in his fingers is reaching critical mass and he thinks he sees sparks between his fingers as he fists Moriarty's shirt in his. He channels that energy into calling the syringe to his hand and stabbing fast. Just as he hears the faint click of the syringe unloading its payload the doors of this already cramped headspace fly open.
John distantly feels the both of them fall to the ground but the physical is of no matter right now. Moriarty shouldn't be able to jump but he has and it seems, and it's confirmed as he hears Moriarty's delighted laughter in his mind, that Moriarty will perfectly accept near nonexistence if it means it ruins them all.
Why couldn't you have just died properly like a normal person?
Well that's just boring, Johnny-boy.
John thinks about grabbing him and throwing him. Somewhere he hears Ian Palmer's body hit something several feet away and he growls. He's not sure if it's in pain or in frustration or in anything but he reaches for Sherlock. He's reached him once today, he can reach him again.
Help me, he orders and pleads. Let me borrow some or help me.
John is not resigned to dying. He'll fight with everything he's got because he doesn't want Sherlock to feel even a tenth of the pain he did. While John acknowledges the high likelihood that he will not survive this losing Sherlock along the way has never been an option.
Nor is losing you, John. I wouldn't have done this if it meant your life.
John is far too shocked at hearing Sherlock speak and knowing full well that it's him to actually appreciate it or to respond. He feels the sense of someone beside him and then a shock of electricity that certainly isn't Moriarty. The charge is shared between the two of them and two of them push mentally at the same time. They shove, Moriarty shoves back, they throw, he pushes. John can smell burnt something - clothing, flesh, who knew at this point - and can feel a faint ripple of surprise at that revelation. He ignores it and curses the fact that burning the body is going to help absolutely no one.
He's not sure whether it's him or Sherlock who tells him that there's nothing to stop him from burning Moriarty in here. At the end of the day this is still his mind. At the very least it's his and Sherlock. If his body can react to Sherlock as if he's an illness he can certainly use that here in a mostly controlled environment.
He lights Moriarty ablaze, starting with his heart. Moriarty, surprised as well by this development, tries to put himself out. Something brushes past him and surrounds Moriarty. That something echoes John's earlier plea for help. As the shield, the same shield that Molly Hooper had used to stop John from catching Sherlock as he fell, surrounds Moriarty, John thinks as hard as he can about keeping the thing anything proof. While he focuses on that the flames around Moriarty get higher and brighter. Sherlock, as would be expected, is much better a PK than John.
Moriarty, weakened by fire and his own existence, screams out his denial until the very last. Any strong empathic TP would surely be knocked off their feet at the feeling of triumph racing through him. That feeling of triumph his replaced by his coming aware properly now. Whatever there is of Sherlock nearly slips away but John holds him tight in place. He flees the now ruined building, knowing there have to be police on their way, and pulls out his mobile.
He sends Anthea one word as a text message and hopes he gets back to the hotel in time. He does but he feels as sick as he ever has. This is worse than the fever he'd dealt with after being shot. This feels like he has set himself on fire. He pulls off his hoodie and shirt hoping to give some relief but he thinks that makes it work. When he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror he thinks he realises why people give him wide berths in crowds and why Gemma had stood so far back.
John has avoided looking in mirrors since Sherlock moved in. He tries to look in his eyes to see if there's anything different or anything changed. It's strange staring at himself knowing that he's not completely himself and he avoids it. He has become quite adept with shaving using his warped reflection in various kitchen implements.
He looks like he should be hospitalized. He probably should have been once he'd clued in to the seizures. He turns to get on with that when his stomach revolts and he ends up on his knees emptying bile into the toilet. John shudders and shakes and he tries to breathe. Tries to take control of what is happening here. He's relaxing now that the main danger is dealt with. He snaps a command to his body and his mind, both of them, to keep a grip on themselves. The main mission is complete but they are far from finished.
His body's response is more retching and a fresh round of sweating. He strips completely and turns the shower on. Cool down, he wills himself, cool down. Cool down.
The more he wishes the hotter he feels and the more he wills the fainter he feels. That little shadow in the back of his head reaches out for him. Not to push him into the back and take charge but to press him into place. It's trying hard but it doesn't know what it's doing. John really appreciates the effort but he can't stop toppling over and falling into true and proper unconsciousness.
It's a relief despite Sherlock's screaming.
=====================================================================================
When John next is aware of himself he's sitting in the sitting room at Baker Street. It's precisely the way it was the morning that he and Sherlock had left for Scotland Yard that day. He's sitting in his chair and Sherlock is sitting in his, discarded breakfast dishes are perched precariously on stacks of books or chair arms and the remains of that last experiment is still all over the couch.
Sherlock regards him carefully. "Finally." It his usual exasperation but there's relief there if he chooses to notice and see it. And he does. John definitely does.
"Sorry," he mumbles. "Lost it a bit at the end there."
"You seized. Twice."
John bites his lip. "Damn."
"Not the word I would choose."
John doesn't ask for that word. He stands up, stretches out a cramp, and paces around the flat. "My safespace is quite detailed." John smirks at the silence. "Of course I know where I am. Mrs. Turner would never leave the place like this for four months."
"Mrs. Hudson has been out of stasis for some time now and it has been six months," Sherlock corrects.
John's easy smile falls to the floor and he whirls to face Sherlock. "SIX?" he chokes.
"As I said," Sherlock begins. "You seized twice. I managed to get control enough to call for an ambulance and text Anthea about our status. She revived Mycroft, who revived everyone else and sent you back to London. Then they woke me up. Physical me."
Images of grown people, vacant of expression and confused, flash unbidden across his mind's eye and then those images become Sherlock. He shakes his head to clear it but an image of Sherlock being helped to sit up and looking at him with no recognition refuses to vanish. The hands reach out for his face and John swears he can feel it.
"You pulled yourself out," he says slowly as he takes in what he is remembering. "Or you jumped out."
"The former. We were too weak for anything else. It took some time."
"You realise that the studies say that's impossible." Normally it takes an intermediary to separate two people into two bodies in this way. This was of course in the few cases where both had survived at all.
Sherlock tuts and reaches for his hand. "So was you surviving at all. Yet here we are." Again there's the usual smugness but there's something else there. Especially when their fingers intertwine.
"What happened?" John asks, gently. He squeezes the hand gently and pulls him closer.
Sherlock rests his forehead on John's shoulder. "The more I came back the more you went away. When I was myself again you weren't awake. Everyone said you needed time b--"
"I wasn't moving fast enough for you, was I?" John rests his free hand on the back of Sherlock's neck. Sherlock shakes his head vigorously and then suddenly pulls him close. If they weren't safe in his safespace John would have worries about being crushed to death. He wraps his arms around his friend and holds him gently.
"You were moving as fast as you could; I could hear you. You wanted help."
John hears that around them but doesn't feel Sherlock's mouth move or his breath on his neck. He hears the sound around him but not in his head because he's in his head right now. But he'd heard Sherlock like this before - now he's not literally sharing consciousness with him so what's this.
Sherlock says two words ("It's this") and a gentle sort of tidal wave hits him. He feels Sherlock's relief and anxiety and overwhelming love and care for him. He can hear Sherlock talking to him, encouraging and shouting, to follow him. To get back to the waking world and get back to work.
"Is this...is this what I think it is?"
"A Link," Sherlock confirms. "Usually reserved for couples or families where both parts are TP. In our case it is a result of the time spent in one mind and the stress involved. Or so I'm told. More tests will have to follow once we wake up."
We wake up. He thinks about those snatches of conversation and the amount of time that has elapsed and it's his turn to hold Sherlock tight to him. "How long have you been trying to get me back?"
"Two months." Sherlock kisses John's forehead. "If you think you were determined to not lose me I assure you that I am at least six times more determined not to lose you. Especially not because of something I forced on you."
John wants to argue that it was hardly forced, not entirely anyway, and he doesn't blame him for it, but he saves that for another day. Instead he cherishes this one, very private, admission and declaration from Sherlock. As he pulls Sherlock's head down for a kiss he does his very best to send his own wave of affection and recollection and understanding and forgiveness. He smiles into the aggressively deepening kiss and knows that his message has been received.
A part of him, a rather large one, wants to stay in this safe space forever. Move into this place in John's head and just be with each other. It would be boring though. There's only so much imagination the both of them have and reality has proven to be continually stranger than fiction. There's also this link between a TP and a TK/PK that has to be explored. John is just as curious as Sherlock is.
John pulls out of the kiss and takes Sherlock's hand again. "Shall we?"
Sherlock nods. "We shall."
Together they wake, hands stretched across the empty space between their hospital beds. As commotion reigns supreme they smile at one another. To the credit of the medical staff around them no one tries to separate them. Probably because they don't want to interfere with anything that may be occurring between the two of them. Neither of them objects.
Author: arwen_kenobi
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~8900
Summary: There were three kinds of people in the world. TNs, TKs, and TPs.
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain but this incarnation belongs to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC. Anyone you don't recognize is mine.
Author's Note: Written for holmestice June 2013 exchange for saki101
I'm at Cambridge. It's a relief.
When he'd first come back to himself he'd not known where he was. That was nothing new to him but he'd still panicked a little. He'd recognized the obvious of course; that he was in a library. In a library sitting at one of those study carrels surrounded by parapsychology papers that he can't even begin to understand. He'd reached back, tried to follow the steps to figure where he was and how he got there. When that didn't work he'd gone as far back to that place in the back of his mind and found it cold. No help there. Eventually he'd noticed the textbook next to him. He's quite ashamed, though mostly irritated, at how long it had taken to open the thing and see the Cambridge University Library stamp.
Cambridge. It made sense. The location does, anyway. The books and papers do not. He doesn't think two hours of travel time is worth this collection of works. He waits for the whisper of indignation or confirmation but neither comes. He grumbles and starts flipping through the book and ends up shaking it out in the hopes that some scrap of information is going to fall out. He eventually find his answer in the first paper - "Latent Psychokinetic abilities in World War II Veterans" - coded in the references. It takes him an hour to actually break the code but what he gets is a section number and another book. In there, he supposes is the next step. He doesn't move right away though; the code had also given him a time and that time isn't for another thirty minutes.
The only thing that hasn't come to him is the specific why. Why Cambridge? Why this code? Is this the last step or are there more hoops to jump through.
It will come. It will come or it won't. He'd prefer the former but he's worked with the latter enough times. His efficiency just tends to vary. Once it was not so but times have changed.
==========================================================================
There are three types of people in the world. TNs, TKs, and TPs. If you weren't a TN then it was a fifty percent between winding up TK or TP. That was the general rule. There was the less than two percent chance of getting a dash of PK thrown in to spice up a person's life but most people didn't think about it. Most PKs didn't either.
John Watson falls into the TK third of the population. He prefers, like most people living with either TK or TP, to use it as little as possible. John considers a lot of it just a way to be even more lazy but he's not above keeping a door open a split second longer than he needs it to, or shutting it or opening it when his hands are full, or of sliding his mug of tea just into his reach. There are people out there who are quite theatrical about it. Stupidly so in some cases. There are some people he's met who refuse to carry anything under their own power. The rucksack or purse may be resting on their shoulders but their shoulders are not bearing the weight. They don't reach for things on the top shelf or ask for help - they summon them to the bag or the carts and not their hands.
And John wonders why TNs worry about a hostile takeover. He's surprised that there haven't been any attempts at uprisings or takeovers - there are two thirds of the population with some sort of psychic ability and only one third with nothing. There apparently isn't that much insanity in the world.
If John had a mind to just start moving things around without lifting a finger no one would probably look up. If he'd lifted a car or a bus he'd get a crowd and the police. Really, he supposes, he'd get a show if he was completely open with displaying everything: John's in that miniscule group of the population with PK ability. It's on his medical files and he is listed on the registry but it's something he does his best to forget about. It has yet to come up in civilian conversation because, really, how many situations exist that call for the ability to light something on fire with a thought?
His TK is rated at a B-, which means he has more control than most but doesn't spend hours practicing it and using it like some of the gurus that walk the Earth but his PK is slightly problematic. Where anyone with TK or TP present just before puberty - John had launched his dinner, plate and all, into his drunken father's face at age ten - John's PK had not presented or even been hinted to until he'd been well into adulthood.
The day he'd been shot. The day that he'd saved Greg Lipton had been when he'd presented. He'd sworn that some team with flamethrowers had come in but he and Lipton had been told that there had been no fires there. Only the charred remains of bodies. The display had been terrifying and could only have emanated from one of them. They'd tested Lipton first, a distant relation had had PK so that had been more likely, and when that had been negative they'd tested John. Only John was surprised at the positive results.
His potential is off the chart in comparison to his skill. He's achieved the all important C level that allows him to function and live in society unmolested but he thinks the fact that it's not higher is the reason that he'd been discharged from the army. A doctor with a shoulder wound is problematic but if he agrees to mandated trainings sessions to improve his TK some compromise can be made. A doctor who might incinerate his patient, or anyone else, by accident is quite another issue. Even if the chance is low - a C level does mean 'Competent' after all.
He hasn't tried to light a fire since but he has felt the characteristic itching in his fingers when he's upset or angry. It's happened a handful of times on the job, or at home, with Sherlock but somehow he's managed to keep it in check. Sherlock knows that's he's TK just as well as John knows that Sherlock is TP but he thinks that Sherlock doesn't know that he's PK as well. He's had no reason to suspect this ability and, despite his Grade A level TP, Sherlock is not a mind reader. Since his emotional quotient, and as a result his empathy, is pathetically below average his TP is limited to the power of suggestion and to the ability to engage in mindspeak. His deductions are a product of his mind not his TP. He can read minds in the traditional sense so long as he touches someone and actually tries. It's invasive for both parties and is time consuming. It really is faster for Sherlock to deduce it or for John to convince the subject to talk.
Besides, like John himself, Sherlock prefers to use his gift as little as possible. Sherlock would do anything to avoid having his thoughts anywhere near anyone else's.
In the present, John laughs quietly into his hands.
=====================================================================================
Neither John or Sherlock had mentioned their respective situations at first meeting. Like any other health issues or personal concerns one did not just introduce themselves as being one way or the other. Even though John had habits where he'd use it without thinking in the privacy of his own home, Sherlock had never noticed until nearly a month into the partnership when he'd thrown a man across the room. John much preferred to settle a round of fisticuffs with brute strength, especially when against someone he suspected was 'normal, but in this case he was losing and time was of the essence. The flight across the room had been a good ten or twelve feet and John was frankly surprised the man survived.
Sherlock, tied to a chair, and the man who was about to drill a hole in his head had stared at him in open awe. Then John had thrown that man across the room too and had seriously considered setting him on fire. Instead he calmed the itching in his fingers, fighting every effort to rub them together or shove them in his pockets, and released Sherlock from his bonds telekinetically instead.
He'd found out about Sherlock a moment later when he'd asked if he was okay and received the reply without Sherlock ever opening his mouth. John hadn't been all that surprised. "Explains a bit," had been his reaction. Sherlock had ranted about how his deductions weren't because of the TP and this had gone on all the way back to A&E when John had gently, and once again telekinetically, nudged him into a chair.
"I never will get your depths, John."
"I can't believe you never noticed! I use it 'round the flat all the time!"
" Not enough to be noticed!"
"I thought you were all about noticing details!"
This had gone on through the wait and continued with Sherlock in the examination room and John trying to locate some decent coffee. Neither of them had even noticed that the argument was taking place in their minds until they met each other again.
That had basically been that. Nothing had changed. Though John had no compunction about not getting out of his chair to get Sherlock's mobile or laptop anymore. Sherlock still texted him instead of mindspeaking him but every once in awhile, out of pure laziness, Sherlock's voice would enter his head. Always when he was away from the flat and always the same siren call of "could be dangerous."
=====================================================================================
He'd tried to stop Sherlock falling off St. Bart's. He'd tried harder than anything and that effort had resulted in burning the pavement around him. When he'd reached Sherlock's side he'd been shocked, however distantly, at how warm he was until he'd noticed this singes on his shoes and on his trouser legs. There'd been a wall, a wall of some sort stopping him from actually reaching around Sherlock and catching him or slowing or whatever he was going to do to save him. That had ended up being Molly Hooper, Grade A- level TK. John had pegged her for a 'normal from their first meeting but he should have remembered his lessons from long ago about appearances being deceiving.
John believes that his PK rating should be upped to a B just on the fact that he did not roast Sherlock alive the second he'd appeared on his doorstep. Instead he'd punched him, and punched him with a bit of added force he'll admit, so hard that he'd knocked him out. He'd then carried, actually carried Sherlock onto the sofa and dumped him there. If Sherlock had smelt the smoke when he woke up he'd said nothing.
John hadn't returned to the flat until he'd felt Sherlock, that was the only word he could say to describe the sensation of someone waiting for him to give permission to speak when they weren't in front of him. When John had given the mental equivalent of a yes he'd been 'shown' why Sherlock had to do what he had done instead. It hadn't complete absolved him but John understood what he was trying to do. He'd said it himself after all: friends protect people.
Again, in the present, John has to smile and stifle his mad laughter again. Friends protect people. Friends do stupid, stupid, insane things to protect people.
So do more than friends, he amends as he thinks of that first contact of their minds and what hints he'd inadvertently seen.
=====================================================================================
John can't pinpoint the moment that he'd fallen in love with Sherlock Holmes. He's sure that Sherlock can and knows that Sherlock has told him but he...oh, there it is. Sherlock had fallen in love with him when he'd shot a man for him on that first case. It's terribly romantic and John can now remember having gently mocked him for it before. If John has to pinpoint the beginning for him he supposes he'd have to say sometime after the Pool Incident. Whether Sherlock likes it or not that's when he'd known, known for sure, that Sherlock actually gave a toss about what happened to him.
He supposed that should have been his first clue about Sherlock's feelings. Sherlock did not do things by halves after all. Instead they'd fumbled around each other, and the issue, until nearly three months after Sherlock's return from the grave. There had been no secrets by that point. John knew Sherlock's feelings full well by then, the acts before and after screamed 'I love John Watson' in a language that only they knew, to say nothing of the faint whisper of in his mind when he'd returned. Sherlock had taken a little longer to figure out John's. When John saw that light bulb go off over Sherlock's head it had been a quiet night, of sorts, at Baker Street. John was channel surfing, sans remote, trying to decide between two movies and Sherlock was in the process of dissecting some dead criminal's brain.
"I knew it wasn't you speaking at the Pool."
It took a moment before John registered the capital P in Pool. "I thought the ear piece and the bomb was an indication there."
"Don't pretend to be stupid, you know what I mean," Sherlock went on without looking up from his work. "That wasn't you talking. Moriarty was TP and very accomplished at it."
John doesn't like to think about the violation, the violation that the other mouthpieces had to have felt. He hadn't even said anything to anyone when he'd been debriefed on the situation. In the grand scheme of things, there had been other things on his mind.
"Any reason you're bringing this up now?"
Sherlock gave the most awkward of awkward shrugs. "I just want you to know that I did notice. That I did care. That I did want to rip him limb from limb afterward."
"You did that eventually."
"Not literally but yes...and it was for you in the end."
John doesn't think himself an egotistical man but he knows, they both know, that had John not been threatened Sherlock may have allowed Moriarty to run free. He was a challenge that Sherlock might never meet again and the world was automatically more interesting with him in it. John would much rather Irene Adler fill that role in Sherlock's life than him. "I do think that's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."
Sherlock turns beet red. John thumps the empty spot on the couch. When Sherlock doesn't move he makes him stand up, walk over, and sit down without moving a muscle. He bides his time before he speaks. "I thought you were dead for a year and I've had my time to mourn and to regret. I don't want you to have the same experience."
"You're not dying first."
"Out of fairness I ought to," John retorts. "However that's not going to be our decision. What is going to be our decision is what we do with this." He gestures in between them. "We can go on as is or we can see where this leads us."
The light bulb had come on then. Sherlock's face and eyes had lit up as quickly as John had groaned. Sherlock had always called him dull and stupid and usually not meant it but this had to beat every single time he actually had been dull or stupid. "This is new? Really?"
"You know full well my empathy is not exactly ideal for sensing emotions - "
"No even without that!" John had gasped. "Really. You hadn't even..."
"After you mentioned romantic just now I knew."
John rolled his eyes. "You are such an idiot." It was a statement of fact and not at all venomous.
Nothing much happened that night, or the night before. They took care instead of rushing in like they would in any other case or adventure. This was an important one. They made each day count but didn't act like their days were numbered. It was enough that they knew how each other felt.
John is thankful for the time they took. It has helped him thus far where little else has and it also gives him comfort to know that Sherlock will know how much he is loved, how fucking deeply he is adored, by the end of this even if John doesn't survive this.
=====================================================================================
John hadn't expected anything from Mycroft but he figured he'd try. The man did owe him something for the Fall. He hadn't had much to do with it but he had known. He would have collected from Molly too as this point but he didn't want to force her into this position again. It was also something she would oppose with every fiber of her.
"It's just until this is over," John concluded. "To keep him safe."
"You mean to keep him out of the way so he doesn't do something foolish to keep you safe."
Touché, John doesn't say out loud. Out loud he says that he tends to react very badly to stasis. He's only spent a few hours in it as a young man in the army. He'd been sick from that more than he'd been from the actual poisoning.
"Not unusual for one with TK," Mycroft agrees. "The freedom to move, and move objects, at will does not appreciate being confined to a thin, Plexiglas tube."
It's sounds ridiculous but it's true. Telekinetic individuals do not fare well in or out of stasis. Telepathic people are much better equipped to deal with the experience. Apparently the stronger types could communicate, of a sort, with family and close friends depending on the individuals involved. This is not why John would rather Sherlock be the one shoved in stasis and hidden somewhere instead of him. It's because he knows just as well as anyone that he's Sherlock's weakness. Whatever this...this thing that's shoving themselves into people's minds and manipulating them en masse will know. It's someone that knows Sherlock, and how to hurt.
There were the first few victims who were connected loosely, people who Sherlock helped who Sherlock had not wanted to massacre after or during a case. Then they'd gone for Lestrade, and failed. They had managed to get Mrs. Hudson. She's in stasis with the other living victims in some location that Mycroft only knows but not consciously.
Mycroft, like his brother, is TP. His TP's strength, however, is extremely intrapersonal. He can make himself forget things and recall them at the perfect moment. There has to be a code word, John and Sherlock theorize. One trusted person, knowing or unknowingly, who says the right thing at the right time to trigger where he's hidden the bodies or the nuclear weapons.
"Then he'd have to be precognitive too, wouldn't he?" That's rarer than being PK. That's a myth. A legend. A trait that all TP parents tell their children that they have.
Sherlock doesn't exclude it as theory. John does not even want to test it. His knowledge and insight is terrifying enough with the intellect and normal, run of the mill, TP as it is.
"He's afraid whatever this is will get me next. I understand that. I'm more terrified of whatever is getting him and then using him to end me."
Mycroft raises an eyebrow. "And why do you think that?"
"It's what I would do. It's what the entire criminal population of London would do."
"An action that is still possible, and it still fitting, if you are to end him while he's effectively helpless."
John shakes his head. "He can't take him over while he's in stasis, that's proven." This is not the first time in history at TP has elective to murder by proxy. It cannot work on someone in stasis. "This is safer than the other way." John has been and always will be at peace with the likelihood that Sherlock will get him killed one way or the other one day. He would rather it not be at Sherlock's hand and he would rather meet his death with eyes open and fighting than in his sleep. Or stasis-coma.
Mycroft Holmes regards him closely. That itching in his fingers comes again. He hasn't felt this since he and Sherlock first kissed, another reason he thinks his PK rating should be upped. He does not move his hands, look at them, or give any sign to Mycroft that his fingers are bothering him. He still hasn't told Sherlock and if Sherlock knows he hasn't said anything. He can only assume that they know and pretend that he doesn't know they know but he doesn't want to give them evidence. Why he hasn't been open, especially considering he easily could have torched him and Sherlock both on multiple occasions, he cannot say. Maybe he enjoys having this one secret. This one ace up his sleeve. It is his one last surprise he has left and he wants to make it good.
"If there is anything that Sherlock learned from his time away it is that you work best together." Mycroft walks toward him, umbrella stabbing the ground with each tap of his left foot. "It was something you made him promise. No more secrets, no more lies. Did you not promise in kind?"<[>
"This is not a secret or lie," John insists.
"You expect he will willingly lie down into that stasis tube?" Mycroft scoffs, eyebrow raised. "There are two very specific situations in which he will do that and I have no desire to engineer or cause either of them." He studies John for an extra half second and then adds "nor will you. You know what that feels like. You wouldn't inflict the same on him."
John shakes his head. "No," he agrees. "I wouldn't." Any attempt would be seen through instantly. He does not have the skill set to manipulate thoughts and even if he did he wouldn't use it here. Sherlock hadn't even done so to get him off St. Bart's property.
"You can help me," John asks one final time.
"I can," Mycroft agrees. "But I will not."
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John sets the article aside and shakes out his fingers. He steeples his fingers and presses his forehead into the webbing of his joined thumb and index fingers. He breathes as the heat shakes through him. Normally he'd be patting his pockets for the enhanced Aspirin but he knows he's out. It was always a temporary fix anyway. Everyone, everyone who moved in certain circles knew anyway. He'd just hoped that he'd be able to make this temporary fix last.
He shudders, takes a breath again, and looks at the call number he'd deciphered. Then looks at his watch. It's time.
His head pounds and he slams his hand on the chair to keep it from tucking back into the desk automatically. He leaves the book where it lies, not feeling the usual pang for the staff who has to clean up after him. Perhaps it's best that he mostly sits this out. That had probably been the intent the entire time for this point in the game. He doubts that even Sherlock could see that far ahead but, even now, he can't predict how this is going to.
"You're taking the lead," John informs him now, what there is in his head anyway. "Wherever the fuck you are you're taking it. I've done most of the work. You can take him out now."
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Sherlock had always been a very tactile person when it came to John. Sherlock was always pulling him and dragging him and yanking him everywhere. Things had remained very much the same on that front and had marginally increased in some respects. John still wakes up slightly terrified to find Sherlock wrapped around him like a second skin. He is not fond of cuddling himself but he puts up with it because it's Sherlock. The story of a man in love summed up in three words, he supposes. That's why he hadn't resisted Sherlock pulling his forehead down to his, why he hadn't resisted Sherlock's kiss after he'd collapsed, after Sherlock had dropped what he was doing and screamed for someone to knock him out, to sedate him and 'put him away with the others'. John had stepped back because he knew what was going to happen if Sherlock failed to keep control, if those believed titanium mental shields fell...
"John!" It's was gasp and it was really Sherlock so John came forward, accepting the syringe from Lestrade and he walked.
"What is it?"
Sherlock grasped his neck and pulled his forehead down to his. He'd pressing their foreheads so tight and gripped his neck so tight but John couldn't make any sign of discomfort. He felt that feeling of Sherlock standing on the doorstep of his mind. He wants to say something but he's afraid to. As much as it pains him to shut him out John knows he has to.
I'm sorry.
Sherlock takes a step forward but John pulls him the rest of the way in. The mental door that John should have shut in Sherlock's face slams on John's side. John falls to his knees as everything thought and idea he's ever had clashes and argues with all of Sherlock's. He feels Sherlock more completely than he ever has in their infrequent mindspeak conversations and sees himself through what has to be Sherlock's eyes as well. He stabs Sherlock's neck with the syringe and his awareness goes with it.
=====================================================================================
The call number takes John to parapsychology, of course. This book quoted is a memoir and study of a man who held his wife's consciousness while her body was reconstructed from a car crash. He'd held on to her for nearly six months and, being as they were both TP, this had been very nearly pleasant for him. The book next to it, John remembers from med school, is about a man who had forcibly had this happen to him under very similar conditions in the military. He had died after two weeks. Died as a near perfect combination of the two men at that.
John has had Sherlock's consciousness in his head for four months and he is surprised that he wakes up each morning. Unlike most people who have attempted this, voluntarily or otherwise, he is not TP. When he'd awoken in a bunker with Mycroft Holmes standing at the foot of his bed he'd been told that he'd nearly decimated NSY. He hadn't meant to come out as PK in quite that way but there was nothing for it. He supposes he could always not count it since he couldn't remember it.
He doesn't remember seeing Sherlock in stasis one final time before fleeing. He doesn't remember getting Mycroft to agree to hide Sherlock and make himself forget where he was.
He doesn't remember getting Mycroft to get all of his friends to forget what they had seen and who he was. The man was a marvel but, despite having the effectually spiritual presence of your best friend in your head, John has never felt more alone.
Sherlock is in his head, yes, but it's not like he's conscious and talking to him. His skills, memory, and intellect are there but they come out on their own and with no pattern to it. When that happens John isn't himself nor is he Sherlock, he is himself if he had Sherlock's abilities. There's no communication with Sherlock, no messages, no nothing. Everything he understands about what happens when he's not 'there' in the present moments comes to him, eventually, when he comes back. Sometimes he sees it on CCTV. Mycroft had given him the tools to do that much before he'd erased John Watson from the minds of those closest to him.
The plan as John knew it was to track down Jim Moriarty. Again. Because, apparently, Jim Moriarty doesn't know how to die. Moriarty had shot himself but he'd taken precautions. He'd had people who were quite willing to be possessed by him and he jumped from body to body to body as Sherlock had rampaged across the world and killed each and every one of his hosts.
John has been chasing him down host by host. A man who is occasionally possessed chasing possessed people. It's terrible but exactly the kind of fun that they would both appreciate. There's no Sherlock to hurt and getting into John's head is highly unlikely - there are already two people in it. From what he can understand and monitor, Moriarty has made no attempt to locate Sherlock's body. This game is much more amusing.
He could kill them both at once and yet they both would be alone. Or John would die on his own. The human body is not meant to house more than one personality. The body, the mind, eventually fights the alleged infection. Fever, dizziness, blackouts, seizures, and a myriad of other symptoms await the eventual collapses whatever barricades keep the two personalities from merging into one. When those fall, both die.
Sometimes, according to the literature, the host personalities dies anyway. Even if the other personality is removed. It all depends on the person and how the 'disease' progresses.
John has had a fever for two of the four months. The pills he takes help calm that, he thanks Mycroft or Sherlock or whomever for the foresight to get that sorted. He cannot say for certain which blackouts are proper blackouts and which are simply the Sherlock part of his brain taking over anymore. Seizures of a complex nature haven't happened yet but he strongly suspects that he has had partial ones twice in the last month.
He is running out of time. They are running out of time.
He opens the book and follows the code from the previous article. It's a meeting place and an address. He's noting it in his mobile when it chirps. Another address and another meeting place. This one closer and in twenty minutes. John pulls up the hood of his sweater and tries his best not to run out of the library.
=====================================================================================
Sometimes, if he shuts his eyes and thinks he can remember exactly what he's supposed to do and how to do it. Sometimes he remembers why exactly Sherlock had shoved himself into him before he'd been sedated. Was it to make him useless as a possession candidate? To make it so that if he were found that he could not be revived? Or was it because he knew that John would have to end this? That it was only a matter of time before Moriarty came after him and if John was already 'occupied' he couldn't use him against Sherlock? Was this a favour to him?
He has no idea. Has had no idea and has no idea if he ever properly did. He can't be angry though, even on the nights when he's vomiting his entire digestive system up in some dingy motel a world away from London. Even when his head is pounding and pounding as if Sherlock was banging on his skull demanding to be set free.
He snaps at Sherlock those nights. He throws pillows against his head, with hands and without, and sometimes even whatever newspaper is lying about. He doesn't know anything anymore and half the time he doesn't know how he got where he is.
I'm sorry, John.
He hears this, and other things, that he's not sure if they are memories or communications. They're likely the former. Shades of Sherlock's, or even his, memories where he's apologized or calmed him after a nightmare. Or anything. Maybe even shades of what John himself has said to Sherlock in similar circumstances.
He doesn't know. He can't know anything for sure. He only knows the next step of the mission whenever he remembers.
No matter what though he can't hate Sherlock for what he's done. Yes John had pulled him in at the last but he hadn't understood what was going to happen and Sherlock likely would have barged it anyway. He can't hate him or even be that angry with him He may not remember much or be able to keep past, present, or point of view straight most of the time but he remembers the fear. He remembers the trepidation. He remembers damn the well that Sherlock doesn't like using his abilities for the simple things let alone something massive like this.
He takes pride in the fact that Sherlock somehow believes in him to survive this when every single TK who has had this happen to them has never recovered. Death or madness but usually death.
He owes it to them both, to Mrs. Hudson, to the thirty five people that Moriarty has possessed, and the twenty that Moriarty has killed to try.
=====================================================================================
Moriarty is on his last jump. He has to stay where he is for good or ill now. One more jump and he is dead and gone forever. It's a pattern that John has noticed over the past four months. Like signal deterioration, the more times Moriarty jumps the less of himself he becomes. In a way it has been a boon but the cost of the lives the sanities makes John's stomach turn. Somewhere he tastes fury and bile and he actually is unsure whether to credit that to Sherlock or himself. He settles with both.
Moriarty would be happy being nothing but a malevolent thought or instinct in someone's mind but having enough consciousness to be aware of a victory is part of the fun after all. Ian Palmer is his last host and, John has to admit at this point, will be the twenty first victim of Moriarty's body switching madness. The real Ian Palmer had been a quiet and gentle type. Very trusting as well; John expects he was gone within thirty six hours of takeover.
He kicks the ground and grits his teeth, part in pain and part in frustration and fury. He takes a quick peek at his watch. Five more minutes before Gemma turns up. He adds on an unwanted leeway of half an hour depending on which branch of law enforcement she has to avoid this week. Or private investigators.
The first time he'd met Gemma Verdenelli he'd had no idea who she was. He'd actually stood her up and then wasted a fair amount of time trying to lose her when he'd spied her tailing him for two days straight. Eventually, once they'd had guns pointed at each other they'd sorted out that the Sherlock part of his brain had made the call and not him. Despite John having no memory of the call and not knowing who the hell she was he was still able to answer each and every question about their past history that she asked of him.
Whatever the story it was certainly a good one. In two parts - one before John had met Sherlock and another during the Fall. What John did know was that Gemma was an Italian born-Irishwoman (she'd moved from Verona to Kilkenny at eleven) and was a paramedic. Due to a series of events involving theft and drug trafficking she'd ended up under Sherlock's radar and had been one of the very few criminals that Sherlock has allowed to go free. She will not say why and John knows it is something he will probably never know. Gemma, however, in the years since first making Sherlock's acquaintance, has been busy building lives and building a network. Unfortunately whatever network she sets up tends to last a year or two. John suspects that that's probably just the way she likes it.
Right now, actually two weeks ago, her current tenure as a paramedic has expired and she's already rescheduled their meeting twice.
She's only ten minutes late this go around and as usual John doesn't notice her until she's directly in front of him. He's never asked why Gemma always works as a paramedic or a nurse or in health based professions when the pattern is so obvious that John thinks he could see it on his own. One theory as to how it's worked is that Gemma is an expert at fading into the background.
She's wearing jeans and a hoodie, nothing attention grabbing. The jeans are faded and worn as is the once emerald green hoodie. She carries no purse - she believes that everything of worth and importance should be able to fit in your trouser pockets - and she wears no makeup. Her mousey brown hair is in a bun right now and her blue eyes are muted. She looks just like everyone else and even when she opens her mouth - her accent is Irish mostly but her sharp consonants tell you where she spent her childhood. John isn't sure if he or Sherlock has sorted whether she's T-anything or not but either way she's a perfect person to fade into the background and does not feel or seem like a person form whom an employer would go into invasive background checks for. Not that they'd find anything anyway. Not right away.
"Sorry," she apologies. "It's been a week."
"Or two." John doesn't mean to sound snappish but doesn't bother offering an apology.
She reaches into the waistband of her jeans and pulls out a palm sized syringe. "Small but mighty," she assures him. "That'll dissolve him, I'm told."
"Dissolve?"
"Technical term for a when a disembodied person ceases to exist."
John takes the syringe and places it his waistband as well. "Does it matter where?"
"Neck's best." Gemma's scuffing off her shoes and pulling up her hood. The wind is kicking up. She tucks her hand into her hoodie pocket and hands John a pill bottle. "Those should do you for another month if you need it."
"You mean if I survive that long."
"If you wait until that long to challenge him that's your own problem." John does not volunteer the information about the meeting later. It's actually in nearly half an hour.
"I don't suppose I'll be waiting that long."
Gemma nods and extends a hand when he shakes her hand she goes a little bit tense and looks at him much more softly than she has before. "Get him to contact me when you're better," she asks. John says he will and she leaves.
There's something itching in the back of his head again. He expects for the world to darken and to end up back at the library or at the meeting place with no memory of how he got there but the feeling passes. That's new and it's a symptom for something very not good.
"Oh no you don't," he curses as he shakes out one of the enhanced Aspirins and takes it dry. "Get up here," he growls quietly. "You can make the introductions." He's reached for Sherlock there before but never actually found him there. Not the way he's felt Sherlock when he's mindspoken to him, or how he'd been just before he'd thrown himself into John's head for safekeeping. This time there's something. There's almost a presence and almost a mental voice.
John doesn't have to time to think on it and doesn't have time to rejoice in it. He grabs it and throws it into control. This time he goes willingly into the black.
=====================================================================================
Coming to feels different this time. He hears a distant voice. An unfamiliar and a familiar one at that. It takes him forty seconds to recognize Moriarty speaking through Ian Palmer. He shares a private hell, he releases in that he knows what it sounds like to hear one person speaking with the voice of another as well as what it feels like.
Something stops his thoughts from wandering. He actually finds thought beyond the present moment impossible. He's not fully in control at the moment, he's just under half. The action half while Sherlock, he assumes, has control of the brain half. No way to ask and no way to tell at the moment - that part of his being isn't in his control at the moment.
The fingers in his left hand itch. He realises that he can't understand what Moriarty is even saying. No language use, he grumbles. Really? Could it not be useful for me to know anything about what he's saying? He's not sure if the lack of a response is on purpose or not though, for a second, he thinks he catches 'the' and 'I' before they fade back into incomprehension.
No matter, he decides. Sherlock has to give the signal, technically, for muscles to move and for the syringe, or the gun, to be used. He doesn't need any English language skills for that. He can read enough in the body language - it's Moriarty's purely of course - to know that whatever he's saying is not good. There's no mistaking anything about Moriarty. He's become very accomplished at reading Moriarty's actions through the bodies of others over the past few months. That being said he still wishes he could understand what he, and himself, are saying. He also wishes he was a touch better a reading lips.
He knows the moment when it comes, however, and he moves. He moves before any signal tells his brain to move his legs. Moriarty, like Sherlock, is better on a mental playing field than a physical one and John does not play fair. His punches are enhanced and he brings Moriarty to his feet without touching him and does it again. The itching in his fingers is reaching critical mass and he thinks he sees sparks between his fingers as he fists Moriarty's shirt in his. He channels that energy into calling the syringe to his hand and stabbing fast. Just as he hears the faint click of the syringe unloading its payload the doors of this already cramped headspace fly open.
John distantly feels the both of them fall to the ground but the physical is of no matter right now. Moriarty shouldn't be able to jump but he has and it seems, and it's confirmed as he hears Moriarty's delighted laughter in his mind, that Moriarty will perfectly accept near nonexistence if it means it ruins them all.
Why couldn't you have just died properly like a normal person?
Well that's just boring, Johnny-boy.
John thinks about grabbing him and throwing him. Somewhere he hears Ian Palmer's body hit something several feet away and he growls. He's not sure if it's in pain or in frustration or in anything but he reaches for Sherlock. He's reached him once today, he can reach him again.
Help me, he orders and pleads. Let me borrow some or help me.
John is not resigned to dying. He'll fight with everything he's got because he doesn't want Sherlock to feel even a tenth of the pain he did. While John acknowledges the high likelihood that he will not survive this losing Sherlock along the way has never been an option.
Nor is losing you, John. I wouldn't have done this if it meant your life.
John is far too shocked at hearing Sherlock speak and knowing full well that it's him to actually appreciate it or to respond. He feels the sense of someone beside him and then a shock of electricity that certainly isn't Moriarty. The charge is shared between the two of them and two of them push mentally at the same time. They shove, Moriarty shoves back, they throw, he pushes. John can smell burnt something - clothing, flesh, who knew at this point - and can feel a faint ripple of surprise at that revelation. He ignores it and curses the fact that burning the body is going to help absolutely no one.
He's not sure whether it's him or Sherlock who tells him that there's nothing to stop him from burning Moriarty in here. At the end of the day this is still his mind. At the very least it's his and Sherlock. If his body can react to Sherlock as if he's an illness he can certainly use that here in a mostly controlled environment.
He lights Moriarty ablaze, starting with his heart. Moriarty, surprised as well by this development, tries to put himself out. Something brushes past him and surrounds Moriarty. That something echoes John's earlier plea for help. As the shield, the same shield that Molly Hooper had used to stop John from catching Sherlock as he fell, surrounds Moriarty, John thinks as hard as he can about keeping the thing anything proof. While he focuses on that the flames around Moriarty get higher and brighter. Sherlock, as would be expected, is much better a PK than John.
Moriarty, weakened by fire and his own existence, screams out his denial until the very last. Any strong empathic TP would surely be knocked off their feet at the feeling of triumph racing through him. That feeling of triumph his replaced by his coming aware properly now. Whatever there is of Sherlock nearly slips away but John holds him tight in place. He flees the now ruined building, knowing there have to be police on their way, and pulls out his mobile.
He sends Anthea one word as a text message and hopes he gets back to the hotel in time. He does but he feels as sick as he ever has. This is worse than the fever he'd dealt with after being shot. This feels like he has set himself on fire. He pulls off his hoodie and shirt hoping to give some relief but he thinks that makes it work. When he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror he thinks he realises why people give him wide berths in crowds and why Gemma had stood so far back.
John has avoided looking in mirrors since Sherlock moved in. He tries to look in his eyes to see if there's anything different or anything changed. It's strange staring at himself knowing that he's not completely himself and he avoids it. He has become quite adept with shaving using his warped reflection in various kitchen implements.
He looks like he should be hospitalized. He probably should have been once he'd clued in to the seizures. He turns to get on with that when his stomach revolts and he ends up on his knees emptying bile into the toilet. John shudders and shakes and he tries to breathe. Tries to take control of what is happening here. He's relaxing now that the main danger is dealt with. He snaps a command to his body and his mind, both of them, to keep a grip on themselves. The main mission is complete but they are far from finished.
His body's response is more retching and a fresh round of sweating. He strips completely and turns the shower on. Cool down, he wills himself, cool down. Cool down.
The more he wishes the hotter he feels and the more he wills the fainter he feels. That little shadow in the back of his head reaches out for him. Not to push him into the back and take charge but to press him into place. It's trying hard but it doesn't know what it's doing. John really appreciates the effort but he can't stop toppling over and falling into true and proper unconsciousness.
It's a relief despite Sherlock's screaming.
=====================================================================================
When John next is aware of himself he's sitting in the sitting room at Baker Street. It's precisely the way it was the morning that he and Sherlock had left for Scotland Yard that day. He's sitting in his chair and Sherlock is sitting in his, discarded breakfast dishes are perched precariously on stacks of books or chair arms and the remains of that last experiment is still all over the couch.
Sherlock regards him carefully. "Finally." It his usual exasperation but there's relief there if he chooses to notice and see it. And he does. John definitely does.
"Sorry," he mumbles. "Lost it a bit at the end there."
"You seized. Twice."
John bites his lip. "Damn."
"Not the word I would choose."
John doesn't ask for that word. He stands up, stretches out a cramp, and paces around the flat. "My safespace is quite detailed." John smirks at the silence. "Of course I know where I am. Mrs. Turner would never leave the place like this for four months."
"Mrs. Hudson has been out of stasis for some time now and it has been six months," Sherlock corrects.
John's easy smile falls to the floor and he whirls to face Sherlock. "SIX?" he chokes.
"As I said," Sherlock begins. "You seized twice. I managed to get control enough to call for an ambulance and text Anthea about our status. She revived Mycroft, who revived everyone else and sent you back to London. Then they woke me up. Physical me."
Images of grown people, vacant of expression and confused, flash unbidden across his mind's eye and then those images become Sherlock. He shakes his head to clear it but an image of Sherlock being helped to sit up and looking at him with no recognition refuses to vanish. The hands reach out for his face and John swears he can feel it.
"You pulled yourself out," he says slowly as he takes in what he is remembering. "Or you jumped out."
"The former. We were too weak for anything else. It took some time."
"You realise that the studies say that's impossible." Normally it takes an intermediary to separate two people into two bodies in this way. This was of course in the few cases where both had survived at all.
Sherlock tuts and reaches for his hand. "So was you surviving at all. Yet here we are." Again there's the usual smugness but there's something else there. Especially when their fingers intertwine.
"What happened?" John asks, gently. He squeezes the hand gently and pulls him closer.
Sherlock rests his forehead on John's shoulder. "The more I came back the more you went away. When I was myself again you weren't awake. Everyone said you needed time b--"
"I wasn't moving fast enough for you, was I?" John rests his free hand on the back of Sherlock's neck. Sherlock shakes his head vigorously and then suddenly pulls him close. If they weren't safe in his safespace John would have worries about being crushed to death. He wraps his arms around his friend and holds him gently.
"You were moving as fast as you could; I could hear you. You wanted help."
John hears that around them but doesn't feel Sherlock's mouth move or his breath on his neck. He hears the sound around him but not in his head because he's in his head right now. But he'd heard Sherlock like this before - now he's not literally sharing consciousness with him so what's this.
Sherlock says two words ("It's this") and a gentle sort of tidal wave hits him. He feels Sherlock's relief and anxiety and overwhelming love and care for him. He can hear Sherlock talking to him, encouraging and shouting, to follow him. To get back to the waking world and get back to work.
"Is this...is this what I think it is?"
"A Link," Sherlock confirms. "Usually reserved for couples or families where both parts are TP. In our case it is a result of the time spent in one mind and the stress involved. Or so I'm told. More tests will have to follow once we wake up."
We wake up. He thinks about those snatches of conversation and the amount of time that has elapsed and it's his turn to hold Sherlock tight to him. "How long have you been trying to get me back?"
"Two months." Sherlock kisses John's forehead. "If you think you were determined to not lose me I assure you that I am at least six times more determined not to lose you. Especially not because of something I forced on you."
John wants to argue that it was hardly forced, not entirely anyway, and he doesn't blame him for it, but he saves that for another day. Instead he cherishes this one, very private, admission and declaration from Sherlock. As he pulls Sherlock's head down for a kiss he does his very best to send his own wave of affection and recollection and understanding and forgiveness. He smiles into the aggressively deepening kiss and knows that his message has been received.
A part of him, a rather large one, wants to stay in this safe space forever. Move into this place in John's head and just be with each other. It would be boring though. There's only so much imagination the both of them have and reality has proven to be continually stranger than fiction. There's also this link between a TP and a TK/PK that has to be explored. John is just as curious as Sherlock is.
John pulls out of the kiss and takes Sherlock's hand again. "Shall we?"
Sherlock nods. "We shall."
Together they wake, hands stretched across the empty space between their hospital beds. As commotion reigns supreme they smile at one another. To the credit of the medical staff around them no one tries to separate them. Probably because they don't want to interfere with anything that may be occurring between the two of them. Neither of them objects.