Summary: There aren't many cases that can get through to our usually emotionally detached detective. But this particular case hits a bit too close to home for everyone involved. Takes place after His Last Vow and after the Moriarty thing has been resolved.

Warnings: References to sexual abuse/violence against children and dead children.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock.

The Unbreakables

After successfully avoiding most of Mrs. Hudson's fussing, to the elderly ladies' dismay, John ran up the stairs to 221B in a hurry. He could hear the sound of the violin coming from the room as well as the sound of a man's voice. Mycroft, he realised. From the sound of it there was nothing unusual about the situation at hand. Mycroft pressing on the younger Holmes brother while the latter completely ignored the other's presence. Or perhaps there was something different this time.

"Sherlock…," Mycroft started and John was surprised to note that there was a certain softness to his voice where he usually chose a much harsher and more condescending tone with his younger brother.

As John walked into the room, the sound of the violin stopped abruptly. There he found Sherlock standing uncomfortably close to Mycroft and there was an unusual shadow of genuine rage across his best friend's face.

"Get. Out. NOW," Sherlock hissed to Mycroft.

The elder Holmes sighed, nodded his head to John in greeting and left as if his younger brother had not just kicked him out of his flat. Sure, the two Holmes brothers were drama queens and often played up to it during their mutual conversations but this was different. This time around Sherlock wasn't being overly dramatic just for the sake of annoying his brother; whatever it was that Mycroft had told him seemed to genuinely upset him. John had only ever seen Sherlock react this aggressively to Mycroft on one occasion, when he was under the influence of drugs.

Sherlock returned to his violin, playing a few soothing noises. It was a melody John had never heard before, so he assumed that Sherlock had been composing. There was a certain kind of sad quality to the music and John took in his friend's appearance. Sherlock who had already dressed up into one of his trademark suits despite the early hours of the morning seemed unusually dishevelled and his potsure seemed to be incredibly tense.

"You alright, mate?" John finally asked.

Sherlock stopped playing for a while and looked up at John. John fiddled with his hands uncomfortably as he felt Sherlock scanning him from head to toes, cataloguing every bit of new information. By now he had probably figured out what John had had for breakfast, the fact that he had lost two pounds in the last few weeks and that he had had a rather heated argument with Mary this morning. Nothing serious, just John being overprotective and too worrying. At least that's what it was according to Mary.

"A tough case?" John asked a different question since he was unlikely to get an answer for the first one. He noticed the plate with the food on table that Mrs. Hudson must have had left at least several hours if not days ago by the state of it and which didn't even seem to be played with yet alone eaten. John had learned to identify what that meant in his time spent living with Sherlock. When Sherlock wasn't on a case he'd at least play with his food out of boredom even if quite often he would fail at eating much of it. Completely untouched food meant a case and combined with the dark lines under Sherlock's eyes that implied sleep deprivation it was probably a tough one.

Sherlock ignored John's question once again, instead opting for posing one of his own: "So how is Mrs. Watson today?"

"She's good," John answered trying to ignore the way Sherlock's eyes pierced into his, telling him that he knew very well what went on in the Watson's household today. Jesus, and Mary thought that John was the overprotective one. John had nothing on Sherlock when it came to ensuring the harmony of the Watson's marriage and their safety. John thought it better not to look into the implications that this fact meant for his relationship either with Mary or Sherlock. He could tell that Sherlock was trying to change the topic and to distract John from dwelling on the subject of his case too much. The thing John couldn't understand was why. Sherlock rarely could stop himself from sharing his thoughts on a case with John and he had requested that John come help on this one after all.

"Sherlock, what's going on?" there was a hint of annoyance in John's voice. If all Sherlock had brought him here for was to talk about John and Mary's marriage, which to be fair would not have been the most ridiculous reason for which Sherlock had ever called him to come, he would have preferred to go to work instead.

„Any moment now," Sherlock said watching his phone intently. The first tone of the ringing didn't even finish before he answered it.

„How old?" Sherlock asked before the party at the other hand of the conversation, Lestrade John assumed, had a chance to speak.

John would swear that he could see Sherlock's face turn into an expression of disgust but before he could address this, Sherlock's usual mask was back in place. However the glee that usually seemed to accompany the news of yet another corpse found seemed to be missing this time around.

"We'll be there in 15 minutes, make sure the morons don't compromise the crime scene, Gordon."

John rolled his eyes as he muttered „it's Greg" under his breath, he knew that it was pointless to remind Sherlock of this fact. A part of him almost believed that his best friend knew the first name of the DI very well but he just secretly enjoyed trolling Lestrade. Sherlock didn't even give Greg the chance to protest against Sherlock's most recent invention of his first name before ending the call.

„Let's go, John."

„Go where exactly?" John asked once they were on the street.

„You'll see. The game is on, " Sherlock half smiled as he waved for a taxi. John wasn't probably the most observant person out there, at least according to Sherlock's standards and considering that he had married a former assassin without ever noticing, this assertion probably wasn't that far from the truth. However one thing he could always tell that he had learned thanks to the prolonged exposure to the detective was when Sherlock was faking emotions. And that smile certainly was a fake one. For some reason, this particular mystery didn't seem to wake the kind of thrill for the chase in Sherlock as most others did. The first plausible explanation that occurred to John was that the case was simply too boring. But if that were the reason, Sherlock would have either abandoned Scotland Yard to their own means or solved the case in minutes in order to boast about it and to ridicule the Scotland Yarders. It was all very curious as John put two and two together and realised that Mycroft had likely insisted on Sherlock dropping this case during his little visit. Was it something like Magnussen once again, a case where Sherlock was punching above his own weight? But surely if Sherlock was still working on the case out of malice to his brother, he would definitely show much more glee at this fact. No, it seemed to be a completely different force that was driving Sherlock into this particular case. This seemed to be something that was much more personal and hit too close to home for his usually emotionally detached friend. John gulped as he wondered what it possibly could be that could have such an effect on Sherlock Holmes. He was bound to find out very soon and he was quite sure that he wouldn't like the revelations and implications of this case one bit.