Title: Someone To Watch Over Me
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Raiting: PG 13
Words: ~2000
Warnings: angst
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Beta: Laren

Summary: Mycroft worries about Sherlock. A lot.
Sherlock/Dollhouse crossover. Written for a prompt on the Sherlock BBC kink meme.

Someone To Watch Over Me

"I'm sorry, Sherlock."

Sherlock didn't react to the soft voice or the hand that tentatively touched his shoulder. All he could see, all he could concentrate on at the moment was the body of the Active, reclined on the imprint chair. John's body.

How could he have been so blind? How couldn't he have noticed...? He should have known. The way he and John had just clicked from the very first moment, the way John had fitted into his life, to Sherlock like he was meant to be. Like he had always been there. Like he was the missing part of his soul.

But that was the purpose of those dolls, wasn't it? To be exactly what the client wanted, to the letter, and better than every real person ever could be. He should have known, from the moment that Mycroft stopped showing his concern for Sherlock's safety. He should have known. But somehow he hadn't.

He hadn't known, not until the moment John collapsed. One second he had been answering his phone, the next second he was lying on the floor, blinking up into Sherlock's concerned face and asking Did I fall asleep? in a childlike voice that didn't have any of John's intonations or enunciations. It hadn't sounded like John at all.

"I should have known it," Sherlock whispered angrily to himself.

"Sherlock?"

Mycroft's voice. Mycroft, who had orchestrated all of this. Who had been in front of their flat only moments after John collapsed, to whisk them away to the nearest dollhouse so John could be fixed. Mycroft, who bought him a doll.

Sherlock whirled around and dislodged his brother's hand from his shoulder.

"What do you want?" he hissed. "Are you happy now? Congratulations, for once you managed to outdo me. You completely blindsided me, but please, could you go and gloat somewhere else? I'm not in the mood for it now. In fact, I never want to see you again."

"I'm not here to gloat, Sherlock," Mycroft chided, looking slightly hurt. "I'm here to help you."

"Help me?" Sherlock asked incredulously. "Help me? Haven't you helped me enough already? You bought me a doll!"

"Yes," Mycroft nodded.

Sherlock could only stare at him. He didn't even deny it, and somehow that made it even worse.

"Why? Why would you do something like this, Mycroft? Do you really hate me that much?" True, he and Mycroft never had a very loving relationship, but he was still his brother and that should at least count for something, shouldn't it?

Mycroft sighed. "I don't hate you, Sherlock. You are my brother, and I worry about you – especially with the kind of work you do."

"So what, you thought you could just – what, buy me a nanny? A bodyguard? Couldn't you have just hired someone? Did you have to go and program a doll to – better spy on me? Did you have to make me think he was my –" Sherlock stopped, throat burning. His colleague, his friend, his lover. His John. But it had all been a lie; nothing of it had been real. John had just been programmed to act like that, to feel like that. It had all been a lie.

"But that is the point, Sherlock," Mycroft interrupted his thoughts. "Don't you see? I didn't want to have another spy, or a bodyguard or even a nanny. I made extremely sure that John couldn't be bought, that he would be honest and loyal. Yes, I think you need someone to look after you, but you had to trust that person as well or it would never have worked."

"Yes, well, you succeeded," Sherlock wanted to rant, to rage, to tear something apart. Instead he just paced the corridor in front of the imprint room. "I trusted him. I trusted John, or whatever his name is. I thought he really was my friend. Instead he is just a doll, programmed to be a friend for me. For the freak that has no friends, who no one in their right mind would want as a friend. Thanks a lot, Mycroft, but I neither need nor want that."

Mycroft tilted his head. "What do you want, then?"

For a very long time Sherlock just stared at his brother. Then he said, "I want someone who genuinely likes me. Who wants me." Like he thought that John had. Sherlock shook his head slightly. He hadn't even known how much he wanted that before he met John. Even though he knew now that it never had been real, that it all had been a lie, it had felt so unbelievable good at the time to have someone really like him. And now he didn't know if he could go back to how it was before his brother bought him a goddamn doll.

Mycroft smiled. "Didn't you listen to what I explained to you earlier, Sherlock?"

Sherlock paused. Yes, he remembered Mycroft talking to him when they first arrived at the dollhouse, but he had been too concerned with John and what was happening to him to listen to it.

Mycroft shook his head slightly. "I'll just repeat it, then, alright? John wasn't programmed to become your friend. Not in the manner you think. Yes, he was imprinted per my specifications with the personality traits I thought best suited to you, but that is no guarantee that it will actually work. He could have just as well taken a look at you and hated you on the spot. Why do you think I tried to bribe him to spy on you for me? I had to test him."

"To see if you really got what you paid for," Sherlock interrupted him snidely. "After all, you couldn't pay good money for a flawed friend for your little freak of a brother!"

Mycroft sighed wearily. "You're still not listening, Sherlock. I didn't buy you a friend; I bought you a companion, a colleague. Nothing more. If he is your friend – and even more – then because he chose to be, Sherlock, not because he was programmed to be."

"But that's not the point, Mycroft!" Although it did help a little bit to know that not all had been a lie. "John isn't real! He isn't a real person! He's just an amalgam of miscellaneous people, nothing else."

"That's not so different from a real person," Mycroft shrugged. "We're all amalgams. We're all composed, defined and shaped by different experiences, different people."

When Sherlock didn't react to that, Mycroft sighed. "The doll I commissioned for you was only designed to be your companion," he repeated. "Whatever else John is to you, it's not a lie. His feelings for you, be they friendship or love, they are genuinely his own."

Sherlock didn't know why he was surprised that his brother knew about him and John being lovers, but he was. They hadn't made the transition from friends to lovers that long ago; it was still new and certainly not something he would have told his overbearing brother. He sighed and turned around and resumed staring into the room across the corridor where John was still lying in the imprint chair.

"So who's his handler," he finally asked. He had known about the dollhouse before this, not from personal experience, but he knew enough to know that every Active always had a handler. "Donovan? Sarah? Mrs Hudson?"

"He doesn't have a handler," Mycroft answered. "He's not a temporary imprint, he's a permanent one. The permanent ones don't have handlers."

Sherlock turned back around, suddenly furious again. "What do you mean, he's a permanent imprint! What about the real person that body belongs to? You can't just erase him!"

"I'm surprised you care," Mycroft answered with a raised eyebrow.

"You know how I think about tampering with people's minds." Sherlock scowled at him.

Mycroft smiled again. "I do," he said. "But don't worry; there is no other person in that body."

"What?" Sherlock was taken aback.

Mycroft shrugged. "That there," he gestured to John, "is really John Watson, at least his body is. He really was a military doctor, he really was in Afghanistan. He just didn't exactly survive his injuries. He was as good as brain-dead, at least personality-wise, even though his body was still intact. He could even breath on his own and everything, which made him the perfect candidate. I brought him here, they imprinted him with everything he needed to be John Watson – luckily he isn't that close to his family and every memory gap could be easily explained by trauma – and they added the personality traits I wanted. The John Watson you got to know is the only John Watson that still exists."

Sherlock shook his head again. The meddling and manipulations of his brother apparently didn't know any limits, it seemed. "So what happens now," he finally asked, suddenly weary of everything. There was only loneliness waiting for him, and memories and regrets.

"That depends entirely on you," Mycroft answered.

"On me?" Sherlock answered with disgust. "It's your doll."

"I might have commissioned him," Mycroft answered, smiling knowingly. "But you are his friend, his lover. It's your decision."

"My decision." Sherlock felt numb. He couldn't, he shouldn't, but oh god, how much he wanted. He wanted to be selfish, he wanted everything to be just a bad dream, he wanted to wake up with John curled around him, comforting him.

He wanted to kill Mycroft, or at least hurt him as much as he'd hurt Sherlock.

"What is going to happen to John Watson?" Mycroft continued in a tone of voice as if he was talking about something completely abstract and not the future of someone he knew. "There are several possibilities. We can scrub him clean and he'll become one of the many dolls, being imprinted again and again to satisfy different clients day after day. Or he can die properly this time; maybe even get a hero's funeral. Or..." and with this Mycroft turned fully to Sherlock and pinned him with his stare, "... or we can re-imprint him with his John-Watson-personality. And everything will be as before."

"He..." Sherlock swallowed. "He would be just like in the beginning. When we first met. He wouldn't remember me. It wouldn't be like before." That didn't mean he'd already decided, he just needed to know every aspect.

Mycroft smiled that knowing smile again. "He is a permanent imprint. Whatever made him fall into his Active-persona, it didn't wipe his imprint. It's still there. If you decide to keep him, they'll just have to activate it again and it'll be as if nothing happened."

Sherlock swallowed again and closed his eyes. He knew what he should do. He should let John go. Oh, not as an Active like Mycroft's first possibility suggested, but to let him die. It would be the right thing to do. John Watson died in Afghanistan, and he should let his body follow. But... Oh, what a huge but it was. To have John back, his friend, his lover, his John. The only person to ever be there for Sherlock, the only person to ever love him. He would never find anyone else like John again, who knew him, who understood him, who didn't put up with all of Sherlock's crap but still didn't hate him. Sherlock snorted. Of course he wouldn't find anyone like John again. John was one of a kind, custom-made so to speak. There wasn't anyone else like John. Only him.

"I want him back," Sherlock blurted out and opened his eyes to stare at his brother. "I want him back and I don't care how. Do it."

Mycroft nodded, not in the slightest surprised, and turned around to the imprint room.

"Mycroft," Sherlock called after him. Mycroft turned his head to look at him over his shoulder. "I will never forgive you for this," Sherlock said quietly.

Mycroft smiled, but this time his smile was sad. "I know. But you won't need me anymore. You'll have John. And that is something I can live with." And with those words Mycroft entered the imprint room, to give the go-ahead to the reactivation of John Watson's imprint.

The End