A/N: Many many thanks to teahigh and lifeonmars for their beta work and sanity management. I TOLD YOU THIS BUGGER OF A STORY WASN'T DEAD.

"A favour," Mycroft repeated as though the words were new to history. He spun his umbrella on its point. "Twice in one week. Are you quite certain you've contracted no terminal illnesses I should know about?"

Sherlock deflected the sarcasm with a curl of his lip. Mycroft was being facetious, of course, but then again he wasn't. Beneath the cynical suspicion lurked honest concern, which put Sherlock on thin ice. For Mycroft, suspicion was workaday. Worry might actually stir him off his arse.

As that was the one thing Sherlock couldn't afford, he cloaked himself in all the exasperated distaste he could summon up for Mycroft, and admitted readily, "I need to go to a warzone."

"No." The word popped out. Mycroft's brows furrowed in shock in its wake.

Sherlock wasn't sure whether his brother was surprised by the request or by being driven to speak before he thought. Either way, he absently chalked up a point to himself on his mental scorecard, and pushed himself up out of his chair. "Fine, then."

It was a calculated move, but not a bluff. If Mycroft decided to stand behind his refusal, then Sherlock would find some other way to get himself onto an army base in Afghanistan. If he couldn't get there in time to find John, he'd do whatever it took to learn where he'd gone and follow after him if he had to.

But then again, Mycroft knew from experience that Sherlock giving in that easily after such an outrageous request meant that he had alternatives, which in turn meant that asking Mycroft for help was most likely more a courtesy—a concession, in Sherlock's opinion—than a need. So he wasn't surprised when Mycroft, eyes fluttering closed in pain, lifted his fingers and said, "Wait."

Sherlock dropped back into his chair. He suspected he looked smug. He certainly felt smug. "Assign me to a case at Camp Bastion," he began eagerly. "I'll be an MoD consultant, it'll give me all the leverage I need and you'll get your repayment into the bargain. I'm sure you've got at least three problems out there that you could use me on, and in my free time I'll deal with my own concerns."

Mycroft's face had gone blank under the onslaught of words. Even Sherlock couldn't read him. "And your case is?"

"Watson, of course." Sherlock flicked his fingers dismissively. There was as little point in trying to hide Sherlock's aim as there was in Mycroft's even asking. He already knew what Sherlock was interested in. "I need to find out if he's really who he is on paper." It wasn't even a lie, in the strictest sense.

Another moment of perfect stillness from his brother, and then Mycroft dipped his chin fractionally. "An excellent plan."

Sherlock let himself preen a bit. He'd combed through every detail and possible iteration of this talk last night. Everything Mycroft needed to see and believe, everything Sherlock needed to be in order to convincingly portray his younger self: brash, reckless, arrogant and utterly self-absorbed, craving his casework with a fanatical fervour more powerful than drug addiction. God, he'd been an arse at this age, but the illusion was flawless, everything he needed in order to get what he wanted here.

"I have a second condition," Mycroft said to his cuticles. Sherlock let the annoyed resignation show. He'd foreseen this, too: a second concession, probably of a more personal nature, since it was, after all, a massive favour and Mycroft was nothing if not obsessed with keeping Sherlock in one piece.

He'd been prepared for everything, in fact, except for Mycroft to say, "Tell me why you care so much about John Watson."

It was less than a heartbeat of freezing up. One fatal blink, and then he realized that of course Mycroft didn't mean it like that, but it was too late. His all-seeing brother's features were already slackening in shock.

Damn it. Fuck. If Mycroft stood in his way, Sherlock would lose everything. In the breaths between the dawning realization in Mycroft's eyes and the hardening of his jawline, Sherlock's mind flew as fast as it ever had in his life.

"Sherlock." Mycroft's eyes were mercilessly clear. "Tell me the truth."

Sherlock drew in a deep breath and began to talk.

The transport plane was loud and boring. The casefiles Mycroft had thrown together for him had kept him occupied for almost an hour, and the men and women around him had distracted him for perhaps another; while tediously predictable as individuals for the most part, en masse they had furnished him with some useful insights into the military mind. Inevitably, though, his mind eventually strayed back to the subject of John.

For all his preparation, there was so much about this situation beyond Sherlock's ability to predict. He was off his home turf in an unfamiliar country, dealing with an organization infamous for its insularity and talent for throwing up obstacles. Not to mention the factor of John himself; they had changed so much from the men who properly belonged to 2007. How would he react to being known by a seemingly total stranger? Should Sherlock pretend not to know him? Would John even like him?

Not trying, though, was unthinkable. This case: arms inventory going unaccounted for. Surely John would want to help? No matter what else may hold true about him, John's moral compass was unwavering. He'd never say no to a bit of bringing criminals to justice. Three days would be more than enough time to settle the question, and once they'd solved a case together, broken the ice...

Sherlock shook his head at himself, lips pressed against his teeth. He knew better than to base his hopes on emotional twaddle, no matter how appealing an argument 'because it's John' might sound to him.

In Kandahar, Sherlock switched vehicles, got velcroed into body armour, and acquired an escort of an SAS Colonel and two members of MI-6 who knew his name, assignment and ulterior motive. "Oh, good," he drawled at the taller one. "I was worried Mycroft had let me go off without a babysitter."

The shorter one's mouth twitched. "No, sir. He wanted us to assure you that you'll be well looked-after."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her and privately vowed to deduce how each of their first romantic relationships had failed.

Sherlock had visited Kabul once, cradled in the foothills of the Himalayas up north. The landscapes there were magnificent; dizzying vertical extravagances of blue, green and white. The southern deserts, in comparison, were nothing to write home about. He disembarked from what felt like the inside of a giant flying maraca onto the landing pads at Camp Bastion to find himself standing in a fishbowl of molten white sky, row upon row of Conex containers whose riot of bright colours had all faded to drab yellowish tones under the dust, and the smell of rubbish incinerators and burnt motor oil hanging in the air. A thin veneer of orange dust coated everything that slowed down long enough to give it an opportunity.

Which, in fairness, excluded quite a bit. The tarmac was in bedlam, built up into a miniature city of shipping crates, vehicles that would've chewed up the streets of London for breakfast, and swarms of people mostly wearing desert camouflage, shouting like auctioneers around the miniature mountains of cargo.

The Colonel pulled Sherlock aside, out of the path of traffic, to start pointing things out to him. Sherlock listened to the rundown of layout and procedure with half an ear. The chaos around him was far more informative. He filed away the jargon words he heard, and memorized the networks of unofficial deference laid bare by the observation of who yielded to whom in their mad dashes.

"...Escorted if you need to move between buildings—"

Sherlock's attention bounced back. "What?"

"It's procedure, sir." The Colonel met his displeasure stonily.

"And precisely how am I meant to do my job with a parade following me everywhere I go?" Sherlock snapped. "It's going to be hard enough getting straight answers out of the people I need to talk to. Do you think they're going to greet me with gifts of flowers and self-incriminating information?"

"Keen on lone wolf encounters with criminals armed and trained to fight like pitbulls, are you?" the Colonel drawled. He jerked a thumb at the two Royal Military Police, and then at the Secret Service agents. "This lot'll take you anywhere you need to go that you've got clearance for, and this lot's got clearance for anywhere you need to go. Between them, Mr Holmes is reasonably confident that you'll manage not to get yourself shot. If you'd do us all the service," he added with a dryness that sucked the little remaining humidity out of the air around them.

Sherlock's mouth was shaping a retort when he heard his name shouted.

He didn't deliberately turn; he was simply pointed abruptly in the other direction.

And there, one foot up on a box to give himself a better view, fair hair glinting in the sun, was the only man in Afghanistan who could possibly have reason to shout Sherlock's first name. Sherlock was aware of moving closer because the hand that lifted to shade John's eyes grew in detail. The way his foot came down off the box to plant firmly on the ground. The five or so different expressions that managed to occupy his face at once, flowing in the silent, impossibly expressive language of John's features, every line and wrinkle forming a phrase for Sherlock to read.

He was close enough to smell John's sweat when he froze, vibrating, on the realization that his next action if he allowed himself to take it would be to grab John and crush him close till Sherlock could feel every bone and muscle and thought in his body.

"You know who I am." Impossible. Ridiculous. Unlikely to the point of magical thinking. That this...time travel had happened once was unbelievable; to allow himself to believe it might have happened twice— "John?"

Stunned recognition in eyes so familiar, wide and well-bottom blue. They blinked, once—Sherlock came humiliatingly close to making a protest—and then his arms filled gloriously with John, flinging himself at Sherlock's chest with a choked-off sound.

"My John," the words rang exultant in Sherlock's head, or maybe out loud, he didn't give a damn. He just held on tight as life and rocked the living, breathing, moving body in his arms. "My John."

"Sherlock," John whispered into his shoulder, squeezing back just as tight. If his voice was suspiciously thick, Sherlock would never tell.

"I guess you two know each other, then?" somebody else said nearby.

He could have killed whomever spoke as John lunged back out of Sherlock's arms so fast that Sherlock nearly fell over.

They'd accumulated a crowd during their little display. The gathering included Sherlock's escort and a few people wearing patches that matched John's, standing in a semi-circle, watching with varying arrays of impatience, confusion, and amusement.

"Hopper!" Visibly pulling himself together, John addressed the Lance Corporal wearing a Logistics insignia. "This is Sherlock Holmes." He turned back to Sherlock, eyes still wide with shock. "He's...an old friend."

The man apparently knew John well enough to detect the shaken tone in his voice despite the background clamour of their setting. Sherlock met the man's curious glance with a challenging stare that chased some of the amusement off his face. The Lance Corporal promptly looked back to John. "Enthusiastic mode of greeting you got there, Doc. You think he was dead or something?"

John's throat bobbed in a swallow, features setting into a hard discomfort that had the Lance Corporal drawing back a bit more in wary respect. "Yeah. Actually, yeah. I did."

"Heartwarming as this is," the Colonel broke in, eyes flicking between them all with a cooler, more professional kind of curiosity, "Mr Holmes, you've got a schedule to keep."

Jaw jumping, John spun in the man's direction to snap off a salute and then pivoted back to Sherlock almost before the Colonel had returned it. It was as though they'd got snagged on each other. John seemed no more able—or maybe inclined—to move or look away than Sherlock.

He looked a little different. His hair was bleached to a brighter gold by the Afghan sun, face and hands tanned tawny, his eyes a polished blue in the bright light, as though the desert had infused him with colour that London had sucked away. A thin layer of the ubiquitous dust settled into the crevices of his face, exaggerating his lines and wrinkles; but it looked good on him, not so much older as handsomely weathered. It was his glow that did it, a core of satisfied contentment that Sherlock had only seen in brief flashes in their time together.

Sherlock coveted it with a fierce and sudden jealousy. That sun-kissed look of belonging should be his to put on John's face.

The last time he saw this man, an explosion had been ripping them apart. John knew him—his John—and now Sherlock was expected to just let him walk off again? When his entire body prickled with the desire to tug him close and tuck him under an arm so Sherlock could never lose him again?

John held his head cocked to the side, watching Sherlock's face with the same fascinated intensity he'd worn constantly for their first few weeks of acquaintance. Sherlock wondered what he was seeing, and what invisible signal made his lips twitch and began to rouse him from their mutual hypnosis. He pulled his discipline back on like a uniform, something sad—regret? apology?—softening his eyes. "I'm off shift at 2030," he said. "You'll find me at the cookhouse. Sir." He aimed another salute in the Colonel's direction. At the man's nod, he and his friend turned and headed off toward a waiting cargo vehicle. John's shoulders were rock-hard the entire way, struggling against the impulse to turn around.

Sherlock knew the feeling. He watched John go, teeth gritted, the urge to chase him down a physical pressure between his shoulder blades. It wouldn't get them anywhere. He drew as deep a breath as he could manage without inhaling a lungful of silt kicked up from yet another helicopter taking off, and turned back to his escort. "Well, there's no point in standing here until we melt."

Her Majesty's Army had invented Hell, and wallpapered it with impenetrable PowerPoint slides. It was well past 2030 when Sherlock finally escaped; he refused to use a term as inaccurate as 'briefing' for that interminable nightmare. Seven hours of presentations and lectures when all the time, the thing that mattered was less than a kilometer away, doing his patriotic duty in the hospital.

John had said he'd thought Sherlock was dead. It caught like a hook in Sherlock's chest, because he knew precisely what John meant. For all he'd spent much of his life alone, he'd never conceived of a loneliness like the knowledge that there was a John Watson in the world, but that when Sherlock found him, he'd know nothing of all they'd shared and done together.

While the British Army had been doing its best to extinguish his cognitive ability, Sherlock had tuned out the droning and used the time to evaluate. John knowing him would simplify matters, which was a good thing considering the bulk of his first day had just been wasted.

He was running so late that he wondered if John would still be waiting for him by the time he reached the canteen. He couldn't afford to waste more time trying to find John again when, between John's duties and Sherlock's task here, they had only a matter of hours as it was.

But when he arrived at the canteen, there was John, sitting at an aggressively utilitarian plastic table he'd obviously chosen for its line of sight to the door. When he caught sight of Sherlock, he dropped his feet from the chair he'd propped them on and stood to come to him.

He looked far more composed than he had that morning on the landing pads, though a fragile quality still haunted the corners of his eyes. Sherlock could sympathize; John's presence ached like a wound that had just been stitched closed. When he curled his fingers around John's elbow, giving in to his own urge to touch and affirm, he felt a little of the tension drain from both their bodies.

John tipped his face up to meet Sherlock's eyes. "I thought you'd died," he said again, his voice light and vibrant with aching undercurrents.

Such a simple statement, to express so much. In the face of that, of this unexpected restoration of John into Sherlock's life, the only adequate response Sherlock could find was, "So did I."

He watched John's lashes veil his eyes as his chin dropped; modesty or, more likely, emotion, John's interior privacy pulling closed like a curtain. John half-turned to glance around the dining hall. "This is a rubbish spot for this."

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow in agreement. The canteen wasn't packed, but it was populated enough to grate when he wanted nothing more than to have John all to himself somewhere private, and it resonated with an irritating hum of conversation that interfered with any attempt at quiet conversation.

John tugged on Sherlock's arm. "Come on. I know a better place."

The base was well-lit, and still alive with people even after sundown. Sherlock followed John along gravel-paved lanes lined by tents and shipping containers, paying close attention to note the details that kept every direction from looking identical. Walls of gabions and cement blocks lay at random, meant to channel traffic or to offer shelter in the event of an attack. They lent the base a rat-maze air, but John moved with confidence, sure of his path and lacking the residual lopsidedness that his gait had held ever since Sherlock had met him.

They stopped when they reached a converted green ISO container that looked nearly identical to all the containers around it. John opened the door and followed Sherlock inside.

"Belongs to one of the engineers." John leaned against a workbench and waved vaguely at the stacks of file boxes and battered tables. "He's up near Kabul, doing something with the Germans."

Sherlock rounded on him. "I don't care!" After all this, John was spouting inanities? Sherlock crowded him, ignoring the familiar reproachful purse of John's lips. "You're here." His hands had drifted, of their own volition, up near John's face. Sherlock flexed his fingers, resisting the urge to touch.

So much time, so much thinking, and now all he wanted to do was push the sensation of having John back into John's brain with his fingertips. John didn't know what Sherlock's last few weeks had been like without him. What the absence of him felt like. What needing him felt like.

John's stupid, startled face was turned up toward him, eyes wide and unsuspecting of the bone-deep ache he could settle in Sherlock's body, and Sherlock infuriatingly had no words. This man had reduced him to knotting his fingers into fists by John's shoulders and repeating like some idiot parrot, "You're here."

The crinkling collapse of John's features was poetry; the mathematical beauty of crumpling paper. His hands came up to cradle Sherlock's wrists.

"Do you know what happened?" John asked at last, eyes dark and solemn. "How this happened?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Theoretical physics isn't a field I've ever had any interest in. I haven't the least idea how it happened, and even less how to fix it."

John's hands tightened on Sherlock's as he drew in on himself. "I don't know if I want to fix it. We died, Sherlock. Didn't we? I remember... I felt it."

Concussion like the angry hand of gravity, the first sting of flaying shrapnel... That they were standing here was impossible. That they were standing here together could almost force Sherlock to revisit the idea of an afterlife. If there were such a thing, if he had in any way earned acknowledgement from the universe, this was as good as anything he might have asked for. He squeezed his eyes shut, and shook memories and fantasies both out of his head.

When he opened them again, John was regarding him with a quiet sorrow. "Sherlock, you can't stay here."

Sherlock huffed a laugh. "I'm not planning to, John." He raked hair out of his eyes. The release of a week's worth of tension left him feeling hollow with exhaustion. He threw John a tired grin, acutely glad for his presence. "Convincing you was going to be the hard part. I just need to clear up this inventory issue for Mycroft and then we can go home."

John rocked back a little, hands sliding from Sherlock's. "Just that easy, eh?" Sherlock twitched his head in confusion, but the lines in John's face only engraved themselves deeper. "You're here now, and that's the important thing? And I'll just pick up and leave my entire life here, shall I? Saunter casually out of the military?"

Sherlock jerked his head back. "Don't be ridiculous, why on earth would you want to stay here?"

"Because these are my people, Sherlock!" The words rang trapped in the metal walls in the ensuing stillness. Sherlock felt frozen into statuary, unable to look away from the wounded anger shimmering in John's eyes. He drew in breath to speak, then blew it out again when the angle of John's chin rose challengingly.

"These are my men," John added when he saw Sherlock wasn't going to speak. "It's my duty to protect them, to heal them, to save them. Do you think I can just walk away from that? Have I ever struck you as that sort of person?"

"And shall I go home empty-handed?" Sherlock snapped. Am I easier to walk away from? He choked that down; he had his pride, he wasn't going to beg. He closed in on John, crowding him back against the workbench, and forced down the claustrophobic panic clawing at his throat. Three years of his life relived; three years alone, in an ill-fitting life that belonged, for all intents and purposes, to another man. He'd go mad. "Do you have any conception what I've gone through to get you back?"

"Get me back." Unperturbed by being cornered into a cup of Sherlock's personal space, John leaned back on his hands in order to meet Sherlock's eyes. "You thought I was-" He stopped and pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. "You thought the same thing I did, didn't you? You came all this way to, to persuade me..." His tongue flickered out over his lips. "What did you think you were going to do?"

Sherlock cocked his head impatiently. "What was I going to do, John, wait for three years and hope that nothing had altered in the interim enough to preclude our meeting?" John was here to get shot. He'd nearly died the first time, and he was a different man now; like hell was Sherlock going to wait around to learn the outcome the second time through.

John's chin came up, a hot spark of anger in his blue eyes. "Don't make it sound like I'm the irrational one. You just traipsed into a warzone to find me, Sherlock!"

"Is that what you would have wanted?" Sherlock sneered over John's interruption. "To go through life, never even knowing that we'd missed each other?"

John stiff-armed him backwards. Sherlock staggered over a metal folding chair and caught himself on the opposite desk. "You prat! You know what else I wouldn't want? For you to wander into a warzone and get shot, looking for me!"

"What do you want, then, John?" Sherlock kicked the bloody chair out of the way, and then drew himself up to turn the full force of his glare on John. "What do you think you can do here?"

"I." As though he'd punctured a balloon, the tension drained from John's body in a deep sigh. He rubbed his hands over his face. "I have things to do here." He sounded small, reluctant. "I save people's lives, Sherlock."

"You save mine." The words were out before Sherlock even knew he was thinking them.

John looked stricken. "What do you want from me?" he whispered.

He'd misread. That wasn't anger in John's eyes; not when it caught and ached in Sherlock's throat like this. John squared his shoulders when Sherlock took a step toward him, visibly bracing for another round. Sherlock shook his head. "I don't want you to die."

Still watching him with those dark, deep eyes, John bit his lip, hurt transmuting into thoughtful sorrow. No. No. Sherlock knew that face. "I'm not leaving without you," he snapped before John could open his mouth to say the deadly thing Sherlock could see waiting on his tongue.

The terrible resignation vanished in a puff of irritated astonishment. "What, you're planning to just follow me about Afghanistan? Don't be ridiculous, Sherlock, you can't just..."

But John knew better. Sherlock could do anything if he was determined enough. When he saw that realization flit through John's eyes, Sherlock stepped in closer and took hold of John's collar. "I'm not leaving you."

Twice now he'd faced John's loss—once when he'd felt the explosion consume them, when at least he'd thought they were going together, and again for the past three weeks in London. Not again. He'd do anything it took. "There's nothing in this world for me except you," he muttered at the top of John's head, and then met his eyes as John's head snapped up. Taking it wrong; he could see John misinterpreting it, face going soft and shattered and achingly earnest, but that was alright, Sherlock could mean it that way too, as John came up on tiptoe and pulled Sherlock down to him till their mouths met, caught, then tangled together into a union of warmth, breath, need.

Sherlock's hands tightened on John's collar and waist, just to make sure he didn't get any foolish ideas about going anywhere.