Needing is One Thing (Getting is Another) 1/2

[ladyflowdi]

1.
Moriarty throws them into a game of cat and mouse that culminates in a proper old-west showdown in a darkened swimming pool.

John has never been one to believe in coincidences - he’s far too much a pragmatist for that - but for that one second as Sherlock raises John’s gun level with the vest that had been strapped to his person not even two minutes before, he can’t seem to get over that he’s been in this situation before.

And he thinks, then, of the circumstances that led him to this very moment - putting ink to paper and signing his life to the British army, barracks living, training as a doctor in the field, and the emergency exercises his superiors had known he needed and which, at the time, he’d found an utter waste of time.

In that moment, heart beating a stucco-rhythm against his ribs, John is more tired than he’s ever been, exhausted by the very act of living, while simultaneously more alive than he can remember.

Sherlock is so very young, at times, even though only a handful of months separate them in age. For all his knowledge and all his insight he’s achingly naïve when it comes to the simple business of staying alive. Or perhaps more correctly, at the root of himself Sherlock doesn’t care one whit if he blows them all up in the process of getting rid of Moriarty - would consider it a job well done - but John’s not quite done living.

The last time it was a land-mine, a man barely out of his teens and fifteen soldiers shouting for him to stay on it, stay on it don’t move your leg don’t move your foot don’t fucking MOVE. John can still hear himself screaming it in his head, the commander throwing himself at the boy so hard he’d broken the boy’s ribs and arm and shoulder, but he’d saved his life, saved it when John had thought all was lost.

He doesn’t feel terror this time, only a deep, centering calmness. Time slows down until he can barely hear Sherlock over the roar of his own blood, see anything other than the blinking green of the vest Moriarty had strapped him in and which Sherlock had just as violently ripped off of him.

Sherlock smiles. “Checkmate,” he says as he pulls the trigger, and later John won’t remember tackling Sherlock around the knees, and he won’t remember getting swallowed by the water, and he won’t remember Sherlock hanging on to him like lifeblood, eyes enormous and so green they fill his entire face.

What John will remember is the sudden realization that his therapist was wrong for ever suggesting that he put Afghanistan behind him, that Sherlock had been right all along, and that John is apparently more than willing to follow Sherlock down, down, down the rabbit hole, regardless of where it leads.

2.
John thinks that Sherlock doesn't have any self-preservation instincts, that they went the way of his social skills and any sense of perspective. Sherlock doesn't necessarily disagree, though he would perhaps couch it in different terms. It's not a death wish - John himself covers that territory with frankly alarming regularity - but more a distracted and at times criminal negligence, a natural result of the distance from his mind to the mundane realities of everyday existence.

They spend a minute and six seconds submerged in the pool, and Sherlock is forced to ignore the minor game of semantics so he can reevaluate his entire argument. John holds him down, stares at him, calm, so strangely calm, like he knows what will happen next when that's patently impossible.

Tell me why you're like this, Sherlock thinks. What do you know that I don't? Debris crashes into the water, a slab of ceiling slamming John in the back and neck, cracking his head into the wall.

Sherlock spends the next two days turning John's hospital room into a base camp. The subsequent evidence prompts him to scrap his entire thesis, after a fashion. The nurses hate him, the doctors avoid him, the orderlies mouth off at him because they aren't paid enough to care. John would love it, if he were awake to witness the chaos.

Sherlock stares at John, long hours in the night, wondering. He reviews Moriarty at the pool, barely-suppressed mania and unbridled inhumanity; his own actions, damning them all to the consequences; John instinctively saving both their lives.

Sherlock has never come quite so close to death before. Even while he dragged John across cracked cement and shards of plexiglass in the back of his mind he was grateful for the additional data.

John would die for almost anyone. Sherlock, pressing hard on John's chest, trying to force out dirty pool water, realized he couldn't say with certainty whether there had been anyone at all for whom he would willingly do the same. He was capable of things no one else could do, was unique even unto the principle of individuality. His continued existence above others made sense. His interests in survival had extended at least that far.

Then John sputtered, and vomited, for all intents still unconscious. Sherlock manhandles John’s body, puts John’s head across his lap and attempts to accept that now, at least, there was.

3.
This is what John becomes aware of first - the mechanical beep of machinery, worn, washed cotton against skin that felt papery and thin, something tight around his legs. He is tipped at an angle, just enough that it threw his entire sense of balance off. His shoulder twinges uncomfortably, a memory of an ache, but he doesn’t smell desert, the dirty-comforting tang of uniforms worn too long, the antiseptic they used by the barrel. He breathes and there is London rain, the comforting acid-sharp disinfectant, lemon, that was used in city hospitals.

He isn’t in Afghanistan, and his shoulder is nothing more than a rippled and ugly scar, but the circulation socks are familiar, as is the turtle-slow movement of the mattress beneath him inflating and deflating, even the beeping by his ear. What is less familiar is the man sitting beside him, chin down and face hidden by a shaggy head of dark curls, arms crossed over an almost too-thin chest. John stares, Harry, but no, that isn’t quite right, his sister has blond hair, wavy and messy and much shorter. Those curls are distinctive, hardly the norm, and he wants to reach out but the IV nips sharply at his hand, reminds him of its presence.

As if he’d spoken the man looks up, eyes a startlingly cat-green. A dozen emotions cross his face in a flash, too many to process. The man doesn’t move, but his eyes travel over John’s body before settling, piercingly, on his face. “Awake, then.”

John breathes in, lets it out slowly. “Sherlock.”

His friend doesn’t move, but John can see the way his fingers tighten in his shirt, where they’re crossed over his chest. He thinks Sherlock would be embarrassed if he knew John could see the very visual sign of his tension, so all he says is, “What happened?”

“What do you remember?”

“Not what I asked.”

“You’ll find that is neither here nor there,” Sherlock says, and leans his elbows on John’s bed, steeples his fingers. “What do you remember? ”

“You. Shouting at bad telly.” He thinks a moment. “Writing a blog entry. I can’t recall what it is I was writing. I was thinking about going round to Sara’s, see if she wanted to go for tea.”

He thinks perhaps Sherlock is in a bad way indeed, because he can’t quite seem to control his expression, though like before John has absolutely no idea what it is he’s thinking. “I suppose that’s for the best then.” ”What happened? ” John asks, but even as he asks it he feels a wave of tiredness sweep over him. He can barely keep his eyes open, and that’s when he realizes a nurse is standing at his other side, smiling at him kindly, syringe still in hand. He missed her under the white bandage he’s sure is wrapped, mummy-like, around his head. The pain he hadn’t even realized he was feeling recedes, and he mumbles, “Sherlock.”

“Quiet,” Sherlock says in kind, leans back in his chair, and John gets the distinct impression that if Sherlock weren’t so… Sherlock he’d say, I’ll be here when you wake up. John thinks it’s a lucky thing that he is Sherlock, and doesn’t have time for any of that rubbish, as it saves them both the embarrassment.

At least, right up until Sherlock casually laces their fingers together, tight and sure and somewhat terrifying, because Sherlock had told him he was married to his work, hadn’t he? And there’s Sara to think about, and his job, and what in the world he’s going to do when it doesn’t work out, because he rather likes the flat and Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock, always, always Sherlock.

“Sleep,” Sherlock says, and the IV aches in his hand, and Sherlock turns on the telly, and John falls asleep to the news, reporting on the evils of the world.

4.
Sherlock is so bloody annoyed he has to go harass Anderson until Lestrade physically shoves him out the front door with orders not to come back until "The Doctor is himself again." He thinks about abandoning his patches and reaching for something stronger, picking at all these problems with his brain flying three times as fast as normal. He wants to go back to the hospital like that, full up to the point he's nearly twitching, just to watch their reactions. Deliberately walk by the security cameras so Mycroft can sit in his office and tut, get so distracted he misses his chance to start the next war.

But John is already confused, and Sherlock is already late.

The medication they have John taking isn’t working as well as it should. There are increasingly long periods when John is forced into consciousness by the pressure in his skull and the incredible pain of his swollen shoulder. He never complains about it, but in general he seems to have some sort of personal investment in remaining as stoic as humanly possible. Sherlock occasionally wants to remind him that this isn't Afghanistan, that he's not about to die. John would probably find that out of character though, so he doesn't ever bother bringing it up.

He does stride into the room right as John has finally managed to blink the world into order again. John pauses, like Sherlock just appeared out of thin air. "Do you wait in the hall timing your entrances?" He asks mildly.

"It's a natural talent." Sherlock replies, dropping into his chair. John looks like only pain is keeping him from rolling his eyes. "What do you remember now?" Sherlock suddenly presses.

"The same thing I remembered five hours ago: nothing." John replies, weary. "I wish you would just tell me."

Sherlock finds he has to stand, starts stalking around the room, muttering more to himself than John. "No, no. Not yet. It would be useless."

He knows John has a temper, and isn't particularly surprised when it rears its' head, peering out behind bandages and inflamed skin. "I have a right to know." Sherlock waves a dismissive hand in his direction. "You have a right to your recovery first. Did you know that apparently Anderson has the gall to-"

“Sherlock." John interrupts. He's rarely felt the need to be the center of attention (of course not, he's smart enough to know his skills don't generally warrant it) but he knows how to attract it when he needs to. Sherlock can't look away.

"I have. A right. To know." Sherlock actually has no idea what look crosses his face but it's unusual enough to make John look surprised. Sherlock snatches up a cup full of ice water and without warning chucks the contents at John's face. The results are instantaneous.

John flinches from the water, and the ice, and then he flinches, deep, like all the pain his body is in has just reached his brain in one massive implosion. He doesn't try to wipe the water off and instead foolishly tries to climb out of the bed, setting all the monitors off and causing the most ridiculous ruckus. Sherlock's already moved to hold him down, keeping a steady, even pressure, repeating John's name until it finally sinks in. He's aware of the nurses in the background, ignores them all, watching John's eyes dart around and finally settle on his own. "Sherlock, " he gasps.

“Just breathe," Sherlock replies, and holds on.

5.
It’s a while before he can breathe properly again.

There are a lot of voices - women yelling, his somewhat competent doctor speaking furiously, and beneath them the noise of Sherlock’s gaze, loud and grating and sharp, like his violin in the evening quiet of their flat. He’s looking at John as if he holds all the answers, but John’s not like Sherlock; he doesn’t even know which questions he should be asking. All he can think about is the clanging in his head, the cold settling into his hospital gown and dripping into his ears.

He’s shivering, but he doesn’t think it’s the water.

They shove Sherlock out of the way, escort him right out the door, and the moment is broken. John wishes that the person moaning would stop so he can hear what Sherlock is shouting.

When it comes to him, it’s less of a surprise than he thought. It’s later, later, after the sun has finally gone down and his bed has been changed and he’s blessedly warm. He’s drifting, sleepy under the medication, and he thinks about what Sherlock had said, about what John himself had said. The last thing he recalls with any sort of clarity is sitting in the flat typing at his laptop, the sound of the floor heater as it tried to kick on.

The realization, when it comes, startles him as sharply as the glass of water to the face.

Sherlock comes back the next day. He isn’t sheepish - Sherlock does not do sheepish - and he certainly doesn’t apologize. Neither does John, when he says, “You just want to know how he did it.”

“I always want to know why people do what they do, but I’m afraid in this instance you’re going to have to be more specific,” Sherlock says, though he knows, he knows.

“You don’t want me to remember for my sake. You want me to remember so I’ll tell you how Moriarty snatched me, just like he snatched all those other people.” John’s not as good as Sherlock about reading faces but even he can see the traces of annoyance, written like invisible ink over Sherlock’s expression. He wonders at that, at the emotions Sherlock is doing an ill job of concealing, if it’s another of Sherlock’s ploys to get John to remember.

“Of course,” Sherlock says.

It hurts, more than John expects. “You’re a right pillock, you know that?”

“They never found a body.”

“What?”

“Moriarty. Moriarty’s body. Lestrade and his laughable team of dancing monkeys have been at the swimming pool for the last two days - they can’t find a trace of him.”

John thinks on that, considers the implications. Wonders at how he became okay with being such a distant second to someone he holds in such high esteem, then decides he’s not offended. Sherlock is who he is, in all his fucked-up glory. “You think he survived. That he’s going to kidnap again.”

“What I think is irrelevant,” Sherlock says. “I simply need you to remember.”

“I can’t give you what you’re looking for,” John says, but sits up a bit in bed, settles himself upright. After a moment of staring at each other, he says, “Well? Tell me about the crime scene, then.”

6.
Sherlock talks for quite literally an hour about the crime scene and what it all means, with occasional digressions into how the underdeveloped minds of the entire forensics team seem only barely capable of sustaining the bodies' automatic functions, which is a shame and yet renders their every breath a miracle of science. John tries his best to follow, though there's a fifteen minute period towards the end where he drifts off before startling back at one of Sherlock's more enthusiastic comments. Sherlock's not offended; the man does have a rather serious head injury.

"Sherlock..." John says, rubbing his eyes with the hand not trapped beneath a needle and too much tape, sounding like he's finally given up the ghost. "It's... it's like you're talking about something I wasn't there for. There's just - nothing." He shrugs incrementally with his good shoulder, as though it's not really important. Someone with less patience would have started yelling; Sherlock just narrows his eyes. John's expression makes it clear he knows it means the same thing. Sherlock's words are measured, each one neatly defined. He shouldn't be holding himself so carefully, it's only going to make the later explosion worse, but he can't seem to respond any other way. "John, I can not solve this without more data."

"I don't have it." John says, his tone similarly annoyed.

"You haven't really trie-"

"What the bloody hell else do you think I do in here?" John interjects, throwing all his lagging energy behind the words. Sherlock gives up the argument as a lost cause, which is ridiculous. Not even Mycroft can make him cave as often as John does, usually without actively trying. John rubs at his eyes again, this time like he's in pain. Since there’s nothing else he can do Sherlock just pages the nurse.

John glances at Sherlock's hand then back up, pale and drained. Even his eyes seem empty, all the blue sapped out, and what's left behind is something almost crystalline. "How did you even get back in here, anyhow? I thought the words 'Banned for Life' meant you had to wait at least a day."

Sherlock should lean back but he doesn't. Does John remember the first day he was here at all? Does he remember the things Sherlock did then? He's tired of conversations around John's memory, tired and bored. Instead of replying with a real answer he favors John with a slightly disappointed look that says you should know better. "Those kinds of threats rarely work for me." He snags John's IV-free hand again, just because, just to see what John does.

John smiles a little, and doesn't pull away. His look says I do. "So you phoned Mycroft then. That was nice of him." Sherlock frowns automatically, and John's smile gets a little wider.

The hospital phone rings, and Sherlock picks it up with his free hand and passes it over to John, who looks entirely put-upon. "Probably Harry again." He presses the on button and holds the phone up to his ear despite the IV, or the way the blood pressure cuff on his arm creaks at the movement. "Yes?" He sighs.

It takes Sherlock all of four seconds to realize this isn't Harry.

7.
”Sooo, how’s it going?” someone says on the line, high and grating and somewhat effeminate.

“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong number.”

"Oh, I don’t think so, John-Henry-Watson-the-second,” the man says as John is about to hang up, and it sends a chill up John’s spine, alarm bells ringing in his head. Tell me, is Sherlock there? He’s got to be, he’d never be far from his pet doctor.”

He is, fingers clamped so tightly on John’s his joints are creaking, but he doesn’t move to take the phone. Doesn’t so much as move a muscle.

“Who is this?”

”Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten our evening tryst! Moonlight, candles, a hypodermic to the neck. Ever so romantic, ” the voice sing-songs, and John smells the peonies that grow by the door at Baker street, the chip shop’s evening pull. Sees the pavement moving towards his face with a sickening lurch, and feels bright, stinging pain.

He thought about the morning before, when his nurse had tutted at him for the small, infected puncture wound on his neck.

John says, with utmost care, “I’m going to put a bullet in your brain.”

That startles a laugh out of the man, and he goes on for some time, enough for John to see red, fury bright and hot and boiling like fire through his every muscle. “Oh John, John, John. What have I done to offend you so?”

“You killed the old woman. You kidnapped a child!” John snarls down the line, and he can't seem to stop tugging on Sherlock's hand. "Like it's some sort of bloody game! "

"Of course it's a game," the voice says, matter of fact, and John wants to reach through the phone and wrap his fingers tight around Moriarty's throat. "Now put Sherlock on the phone, there's a lad."

8.
John holds the phone out to Sherlock, the line on his IV taut. The grip they’re maintaining wouldn't be out of place if one of them were hanging off a cliff.

Sherlock takes the phone; he hangs it up.

It rings again almost instantly, surprising no one. Sherlock stares at it, weighing the potential for information against the anathema of being manipulated. He can hear John breathing, the overly-controlled manner, like he’s next to a bomb, like he’s strapped to one all over again. Sherlock pushes the on button.

"So rude!" Moriarty announces, sounding perversely pleased. "Your puppy had much better manners, Sherlock."

"What do you want?" Sherlock bites out. He's fighting the impulse to just hang up again, damn the consequences; he's no longer willing to play by Moriarty's rules, much less be quite literally at his beck and call.

"Just to check in on my favorite playmate, dearest. Things were so exciting for a moment, don't you think?" John's eyes are searching Sherlock's own, mining for things Sherlock doesn't know he's capable of providing.

"You haven't scared me off." He assures Moriarty, who laughs delightedly. "Good! I would hate to see things end so quickly. But remember, darling - you need to stay out of my way for now. Even someone as special as you has to come second to daddy's day job."

"Do you really expect me to sit by and watch as you commit criminal, treasonous acts?" John looks furious on Sherlock's behalf, which is a sentiment of so wholly unknown a quality that Sherlock finds he has absolutely no idea what to do with it.

And because Moriarty has made Sherlock his own obsession he knows exactly where to follow him, and just how far to go. "You know Sherlock, your poor, wounded puppy is looking a little tired. Think the medication is wearing off? It's been long enough. Someone should probably come and give him a little relief." Before the last word is out of his mouth a nurse is walking in, syringe in hand, an unassuming expression on her face.

"I'll find you." Sherlock replies, voice as low and menacing as he's ever pitched it. "And when I do, I'll make sure John is the one to put a bullet between your eyes."

John blinks at him, the only expression of his deep surprise. The nurse - hired via third party, clearly in this to pay off student debts and support her two young children, has no idea what she's signed up for - gasps in horror. Sherlock hangs up the phone.

The nurse wavers between John and Sherlock, clearly unsure who she should be addressing. "It's time for your - his - next dose."

Sherlock stands up, forcing himself to let go of John's hand, and stalks around the bed to loom over the woman. John tells him to stop but he doesn't, enjoys the petty victory over this pathetic woman, cannon fodder sent to punch through Sherlock's defenses. "What you're going to do," he tells her, "is drain that down the sink, then unhook him from everything."

"Sherlock-!" John snaps. The nurse tries to muster up an argument - "His condition's not stable enough" - but Sherlock overrides them both. "Do it now or I incapacitate you, lock you in the bathroom and messily disconnect him myself." She swallows but does what he says, turning off machines and untangling wires.

John watches, worried but unafraid, even now. "What's going on?" He asks and, god, that he wants this, finally something Sherlock can give him.

"You're still a hostage as long as he's got you laying here, damaged." He moves and tosses John his long wool coat. "I'm breaking you out."

9.
If John’s life were a movie (which isn’t that far a stretch, considering the fantastic nature its taken recently) he’d have titled the two hours that followed Moriarty’s little phone call Escape From St. Barts. Some things just didn’t happen in real life -- case in point, walking brusque and barefoot through a hospital with a coat that was wearing him rather than the other way around, with a man who had John’s service revolver and absolutely no problem using it.

Of that, John doesn’t remember much, the pain in his head so pounding and bright he’d felt a bit like a man gone off the bend, staggering drunken and grateful for Sherlock’s arm cinched too tightly around his waist. He remembers a lot of voices shouting, and signing something, and wondering at the cold floor under his bare feet. He remembers the way the coat seemed to fill up the entire car, smelling of London rain and something distinctly Sherlock, lovely and warm and hideously expensive against his skin.

John says, “Was the police escort really necessary?”

Sherlock doesn’t glance up from his phone, and John catches Lestrade’s eye in the rearview mirror for a brief moment. “Of course it was necessary, what part of ‘hostage’ do you not seem to understand? No, no, please, explain what you mean so I might expound on the danger you’re in.”

“Sherlock.”

“Oh, enough of you and your ‘Sherlock’, you sound like my mother.”

“Sherlock. I haven’t any clothes on, and as we passed the turn for Baker Street ten minutes ago I’m assuming we’re not headed home.”

“Of course we’re not ‘headed home’,” Sherlock says, in a tone that implies it’s a good thing John is reasonably attractive because nothing seems to be going on between his ears.

“Oh well, thank you for all of that sterling information. I’ll just apologize for my near nudity wherever we stop, then.”

Sherlock doesn’t even grace him with a look, and John feels not unlike he did when he was a boy and wanted attention. He doesn’t think jumping around and flailing his arms is becoming for a man looking at thirty five, but a small part of him doesn’t care.

“What of the phone call?” Sherlock asks Lestrade.

“We tried to get a trace, but he bounced it from several different towers all over the city - impossible to get a proper signal,” Lestrade says. “I’ve got Anderson and his team looking through the surveillance footage from the last two days, if what you said is true.”

“What who said?” John asks.

“Moriarty was there,” Sherlock says, dark and angry. He slams the phone down on his knee. “You don’t have to apologize.”

Before John can ask just what he’s apologizing for he realizes they’ve stopped in front of a lovely row of flats, fantastically old and nauseatingly rich, and that Mycroft is standing at the door to 31C, waiting for them.

10.
There are too many things happening for Sherlock to take note of it all. Relevance has taken on innumerable - occasionally contrary, often contradictory - definitions for him in the past. Right now relevance has been whittled down to include two concepts: survival, and leverage. He needs the latter for the former, and this need is the only thing that convinces him to acquiesce to Mycroft's assistance.

There are other moments he will have to dissect later, when relevance has once again become a bloated, distended mess that frustrates him even as he relies on it to function. The way he snarled at Lestrade for attempting to help John out of the car, somehow turning the words don't touch him into a threat. Mycroft's expression, almost impressed even as it stayed unamused - of course Mycroft could never just do one thing at a time, even in regards to his own emotions. The way John faked focus exceptionally well; his eyes were dilated from pain and he was probably staring at Sherlock through pinwheels of color, yet he kept trying, mentally lugging himself along.

"You're a doctor." Sherlock reminded him. "You know what a bad idea this is."

"Being at the mercy of Moriarty is probably worse."

"Probably?"

"I've never been trapped with two Holmes before." John smiled and Sherlock flashed his own, quick and painless.

The elegance of the warm sitting room is not lost on John, who settles into the sofa with the sort of finality that suggests he plans on never moving again, and should he die he'd like to be buried with it. Sherlock eyes Mycroft, who is watching the two of them with a cat ate the canary expression that is going to get Sherlock yelling in about four minutes.

"Thanks, Mycroft, for everything." John mumbles, dragging his eyes open through sheer force of will. Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Please, John. You really can't think they'd bestow all this on one injured pensioner.”

John purses his lips and quickly slides into a small, self-deprecating smile. "No, I suppose not." He's making the wrong inferences, which means he's either dumber than Sherlock gives him credit for or his short term memory is damaged and he's already forgotten the way Sherlock yelled on his mobile at Mycroft's assistant all the way to the car.

"Just, sit." Sherlock orders, then stands up and walks out the door to argue with Mycroft in the hallway. "That was unduly harsh." Mycroft starts, before Sherlock cuts him off.

"Oh come off it, just get to the part where you admit Moriarty is upsetting your international agenda in some way. I'm not helping unless I know everything you have on him."

Mycroft looks at Sherlock like he's a charming but stupid pet, or a child to pat on the head and send off with a few biscuits and some milk. "I hadn't expected this, you know."

Sherlock tries to cut through this line of conversation so they can get back to the more important topic. "I would have thought you'd be approving; you always said I was too isolated."

"There are no half-measures with you, are there?" Mycroft inquires, almost to himself. Clearly that will give him more intelligent feedback than actually asking Sherlock.

"There are even odds on which of us Moriarty will contact next, but it will be one of the two of us." Sherlock warns. "If you want our cooperation you're going to have to admit what you know."

"Please, Sherlock. I know you're distracted but do try and think this through," Mycroft admonishes. "I need do nothing of the sort. What matters to you is whether I allow you to continue playing the game. Keeping you appraised on the life-stories of the other players is unnecessary."

Sherlock involuntarily looks back down the hall, to where John is no doubt only moments from sleep. "I can win this on my own."

"You're not on your own." Mycroft announces, as though they weren't both already aware.

Sherlock sets off down the hall, intent on asking John if any of this has finally sparked his memory. He stops at the entryway.

John is gone.

11.
This is what John realizes, quite suddenly and without ceremony: he's thrown himself in with the wrong lot. Or perhaps more correctly, Afghanistan has warped John beyond recognition and the people he's chosen to befriend reflect some battered part of his psyche. All he knows is that the therapist he fired weeks ago would have had a field day with this, a visual representation of all that is fundamentally wrong with him.

Whatever the reason, there's no getting around it. John's surrounded by psychopaths.

"Sociopaths, actually," Sherlock says suddenly from behind him, and John doesn't jump, he doesn't, only he kind of does. His voice doesn't even sound like his own when he says, "Did you know your brother collected guns?"

"Of course I do, why do you think we’re here? At times my reasoning skills are the height of finesse. Sometimes, they're not."

"I can see that." And he can. Mycroft's home looks a bit like a magazine spread, all fine linens and velvet curtains and Persian rugs. In fact, if one looked past all the guns mounted on the walls one would think the home staged for Martha bloody Stewart. "You never told me Mycroft was a hunter."

"He isn't," Sherlock says, brusque, and takes hold of his elbow. "We're to have the eastern wing, and are expected for breakfast come morning, eight a.m. sharp."

The very thought of food makes John's stomach turn unpleasantly. "Sherlock, I don't have any clothes,” he reminds him, pertinent information.

"I'm sure we'll find you something," Sherlock says darkly, and John doesn't understand but he's far too tired. Leaving the hospital, while a necessity, is looking like less and less of a good idea as the night goes on.

At least he's got jim-jams, that's something. He'd graduated from the air-conditioned gown the day before, thank Christ. He doesn't think he could have handled this adventure with his arse hanging out. "Your brother's got 'wings', then?"

"And three levels. Never underestimate the depths of the government's pocket book," Sherlock says, ushering him along. John would normally have something to say about being dragged everywhere like a bit of luggage, but he can't quite say no to the steadying wall of heat Sherlock has suddenly become.

John's got tunnel vision, but he's sure the rooms are very nice, as tasteful as the bed is soft. He doesn't even know how he got to the bed, only that someone's lifting his legs up onto it and he's still got the coat on, warm and woolen and comforting. A blanket now, too, and Sherlock a moment later, stretching out long beside him. John hears himself say things, the first things that pop into his head, and feels Sherlock beside him, and tomorrow he won't be sure, but he could almost swear he could feel fingers in his hair, stroking soft.

12.
Sherlock has to concede that there are only so many options open at this point. The thoughts align themselves as he stretches out beside John, who doesn't drift off to sleep so much as drop into it like a pile of rocks. He'd mumbled at Sherlock; incoherent things, random things, impossible things. Trying to tie them together, anticipating what was next - it was a mindless way to pass the time, genially amusing even.

He doesn't mean to fall asleep, though he does. Hadn't planned to be awake at five fifteen either, but he is. John snores softly beside him, seems to barely have moved in the intervening time. Sherlock stares at John, wrapped up in a coat that has devoured him and leaves only the top of his head, the edge of a bandage, the very tip of his up-turned nose. It's when he's with Mycroft that Sherlock notices how bizarre his life is, how easily novel and unique flips into strange and unpredictable. He knows what brings John to his side time and again; he has no idea what convinces him to stay.

At five twenty-three he walks out of the room and down to the study on the main floor. At five thirty he makes a phone call.

It only takes three rings. "Clever, clever boy," Moriarty answers, voice low - a disturbing attempt at seductive.

"We make a deal," Sherlock says. His tone makes it clear this is not a negotiation. "You and me. That's it. You get what you want, you get my attention. You don't make obvious attempts to bother my brother, you don't insult my intelligence. You leave John Watson alone."

"You think I'd give all that up just for your 'attention'? " Moriarty replies.

"Yes." Sherlock announces, entirely devoid of inflection.

"You're right, I would." Moriarty giggles. The sound of it is infuriating; Sherlock wants to reach through the phone and squeeze his throat shut. "I am going to miss messing with your puppy. You have no idea the fun we had together."

It's unfortunate the line to John's former room has been tapped by now, but that's unavoidable. "I will let Mycroft take you down if you choose not to agree. He's not remotely as relaxed as I am, you won't have anywhere near as much fun."

Moriarty heaves a hugely put-upon sigh. "Fine, fine. Though I don't know that I like you changing the rules." And here is the menace he had brought by the pool, the fury that Sherlock, even at his darkest, has yet to match. He doesn't know that he'd still be himself if he could. "Don't think you're in control, Sherlock Holmes. I will win. I always win."

Sherlock smiles. "Not anymore." He hangs up.

At five-forty five the building's security cameras record Sherlock leaving. He's in a dark blue shirt, black trousers, black shoes. No coat, despite the chill. What they don't see are the instructions on his bed, with John, who is still asleep.

Sherlock makes new mistakes all the time. What he doesn't do is make the same ones twice.

13.
Despite popular opinion, the Holmes brothers aren’t infallible.

Those who describe their techniques as such operate under false assumptions. To claim their reasoning skills and powers of deduction are flawless would be the ultimate in delusion - to err was human, and the Holmes brothers, despite evidence to the contrary, are men of flesh and bone. Granted, Mycroft often wowed those around him as if he were performing parlor tricks, and Sherlock had the science of deduction down to an art form, but aside from their minds being cut from a cloth above the common plebian hive their conclusions are perfectly sensible.

They aren’t infallible. Their margin of error is just ludicrously tiny.

Sherlock, as he has often said, doesn’t count technological malfunction in that margin -- phone, fax, internet, or that laughable room of monkeys Laustrade liked to call his tech department. Sometimes someone wrote numbers in the wrong order, misspelled an email address, misheard a name, because human beings are barely cognizant apes running about letting emotion get in the way of cold, hard facts. Sherlock doesn’t hold that against them, even when it made his job harder.

Mycroft, on the other hand, does count common errors in that margin. Seven years elder, he likes to think of himself as a bit more seasoned than his impetuous younger brother, can see his own hand in the mistakes that play out around him. He counts common errors in his margin because he knows better. He counts common errors because they make him normal, and unlike his brother he revels in those small, glimpsing moments of humanity he has managed to retain despite all evidence to the contrary.

Mycroft knows the moment his younger brother leaves his home; he can hardly believe Sherlock would think otherwise, really, but his brother so often gets caught up in his own cleverness that he forgets there is one other who matches him wit for wit.

Or perhaps now two people.

He understands the irresistible need to know because he feels it too. He’s curious, can’t help but be, because Moriarty is the man his brother would never be, and yet could have easily been. Moriarty is what Sherlock might have turned into if Mycroft hadn’t saved him from their mother’s clutches, taken him in at nineteen and never looked back until his brother had insisted on the flat on Baker Street.

Mycroft even understands something he’s sure his brother doesn’t, and that makes him unbearably sad. Mummy’s reach had always been a little too long, and she’d warped his ideas of love into something grotesque and heartbreaking.

He hopes, for John Watson’s sake, that it isn’t so.

He looks at his pocket watch, waits.

In time - in fact, as soon as the sun crests over the edge of the windowsill -- he hears a muffled bang, a thump, a wild, terrified curse from upstairs. Very suddenly John is there in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing Sherlock’s coat, the coat Mycroft bought him all those years ago, his eyes horrified. John is so overcome with anger that the paper rattles in his hand, creases under the tension in his fingers - he looks wild, possessed, and Mycroft knows what Sherlock sees.

“Your brother is a damned fool, and he’ll be lucky if I don’t shove my foot up his arse when I find him,” John seethes, voice thick with rage, and whatever doubts Mycroft might have still had about him fade like smoke.

14.
Sherlock takes the roundabout way to his destination, changes cabs in four of his brother's most obvious blind spots just to be sure. When he finally arrives it's only just midday, a chilly spring sun breaking through the clouds. Inside he finds everything already in order - a desk and a laptop, a mobile blinking at him with ominous intent. There are no creature comforts, no signs of life. There's a coat in the corner, at once a joke, a gift, and a blatant insult. Sherlock ignores it.

He clicks the phone on to find a picture of a blindfolded young woman, blandly beautiful, tear tracks lining both her cheeks. The subject line says Eight Hours.

He gets to work.

Seven hours and forty-eight minutes later he's as close to frantic as he ever gets, eyes skipping over everything while his brain hurls down one dead after another.

Ten minutes later he's forced to call the only number already programmed in the mobile. "I need more time." He bites out.

The silence manages to be both insulting and condemning. "It's hard to solve a crime with both hands tied behind your back." He throws out, though that must be readily evident. He can't go to the Yard, has to avoid Mycroft's near omniscient gaze. He doesn't do excuses, but he might as well have been asked to flap his arms and fly.

The laptop flashes and suddenly the woman is on the screen, still tied up, still blindfolded. She whispers her last words brokenly in the direction of the camera. "You... failed."

Master Post || Part 1 || Part 2