He starts at the hand on his face, touching him softly right below his eye.

"Wake up, Captain Watson." Came the soft voice, thickened with a lilting English. "Time to wake up."

He groans. His head feels as if its clamped in a vice. Something within him is still submerged, just below the surface, but not altogether unaware.

"The drugs are leaving your system, Doctor. We need you awake and present. Can you do that for me?"

"Piss…off…" He murmurs, his head lolling against cold stone.

"Not quite yet. Come on, up you go."

Hands grasp him under the arms, hauling him up into a sitting position. He tries to squirm away, fight back, commit any revolutionary reaction, but his hands and feet are both bound, and his body is slow to react, sluggish with the silty remnants of whatever they've pumped into him.

It's the sound of the drill that brings him fully to attention. There's a soft laugh in front of him, but he doesn't need to open his eyes to know they've bagged him. The burlap warms with each breath.

"My apologies for the interruption." The man says, his voice as calm as before. "We've had some last minute changes to our scheduled programme."

A smooth, soft hand takes his gently, almost reverently. Using the excuse of reflex, John clenches his hands with a silent relief; they were still intact, though that could change. Anything could change—that was the game they were playing, the one he was trapped in. This was war, had always been war. He must be prepared for any eventuality.

"I've decided to spare your fingers, Doctor. It seems we still have need of them."

John tries to tear his hands away, but the grip tightens.

"Do not mistake me," the voice says sternly. "I can just as easily change my mind again. You're a smart man—I'm sure you know that."

"You said you wouldn't touch me." John manages to get out in a raspy voice rattled with dryness and sleep.

The man chuckles and John can feel him retreat to some farther space away from him as he stands. "I don't have to lay a hand on you to break you, Captain Watson. Come now: I can show you."

Strong hands pick him up by his limbs; he's never felt so useless, so like a rack of meat, even when it had been a friend dragging him through the sand, bloody and dying.

"Take him to his new office, gentlemen, if you will."

-/-

The warmth of the new room soaks into him as they lay his body on the ground. He hadn't realised just how much his knees ached, how numb his shoulder was, how many pins and needles prodded at him as his cooled restricted blood until they began to reawaken. He could hear the hollow rush of oxygen being sucked into a fire, the crackling of wood, feeding the flames that were somewhere out of reach.

"Now, Doctor, here is our situation: in about…fifteen minutes, New Scotland Yard will be in flames. Oh, don't look so distraught—it's all for show, merely superficial. Our dear Sebastian does love his theatrics. Boys will be boys, and all that. After the explosion, he will allow himself to be taken by your friend, Mr Holmes, and that Detective Inspector you're both so fond of. I imagine they will treat him quite brutally, wouldn't you say? They're very keen on getting you back; I can't say that greater men wouldn't resort to violence if they thought it was necessary, and I can tell you that at the moment your friends are thinking it quite a necessity."

"They're not saints." John corrects, irate at the thought that somehow the man who had kidnapped him and then begun a psychological torture session decided he had the moral high ground to remark on anything that Sherlock or Lestrade did in a time of crisis. War had no rules, nor fingers to point with.

"How right—forgive me: none of us are."

With that, the burlap sack was torn off him, flung to the ground. A blinding, bright light shone in his face, concentrated straight into his eyes. He couldn't make out anything, even in his periphery, but shadowy shapes and blurred forms. One moved in front of him, looking vaguely like a man. The voice, then, of whoever he had to thank for his captivity.

"Listen to me now, Doctor Watson. You are bound by duty to aid those in need of your help. This was your oath, was it not?"

John squinted against the light; it seemed to drain his energy, made him tired, dried his eyes out.

"Soon, we will have someone who needs your medical service. You will comply. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Do you agree—will you help?"

With no knowledge of where he was aiming but judging on the direction of the voice, he spat.

"Piss. Off."

The voice laughed, full and loud. "Oh, I do like you."

Footsteps. The light blaring into his vision turns to a cherry red. He shuts his eyes against it, but it burns through his eyelids; just like looking towards the sun with your eyes closed.

"You're tired. You're dehydrated. We can help you, but of course you have to help us first. Your duty—"

"Don't insult me by appealing to my sense of duty." John snapped, his head aching at the red light, at his too-sluggish responses, at the knot in his gut. "My oath as a doctor doesn't involve saving the life of a psychopathic gun-for-hire who's only goal in life is to hurt other people, so you can save the argument because it's absolute shite."

Silence, then the voice sighed.

"I do wish you'd agreed, Doctor Watson. Very well…we have other means."

A chair creaks. The lights change to a bright jaundiced yellow.

"I'm going to ask you some questions now. If you blink, if you do not answer to my satisfaction, if you do not cooperate fully, we will begin again. Do you understand, Captain Watson?"

John's jaw tenses, but he nods stiffly.

"Wonderful. Let's begin."

He'd been tortured before. Basic training, deployment, arrival—all had been baser forms of torment, psychological and physical. It was a necessary evil, to prepare him for what was to come. In Qurya, in Kandahar, Baghran, Lashkar Gah, there had been torture; the elements, the insurgents, surprise ambushes and the cautious tip-toe around landmines both new and old. The back in your mind feeling of never being able to really relax, the guard always up; the sleepless nights; the fear.

He'd been taken hostage only once, after he was shot. He and Murray, alone in the wild, his friend desperately carrying his body through the sand, willing him not to die. The rebel group that found them had almost shot them, until they saw John's insignia, the red cross next to the union jack. They'd needed a doctor, and in his fevered haze he'd managed to convince them that Murray was his medical assistant, shadowing him for training.

They'd spared his life, wrapping him in gauze and pumping him full of painkillers. He doesn't remember most of what happened, or it comes to him in bits and pieces that he has to put together. They were uneducated and desperate, their Pashto as limited as their English—he remembers that. They held a gun to Murray's head as they ordered them to save the life of a turan who'd been bombarded with shrapnel. Together, John's body burning with fever and a setting infection, he murmured instructions to Murray as they pulled piece after twisted piece of metal from the man's body. The curlicued ones were the hardest to remove, sucking and sticking at the muscle and viscera as they were tugged out. John remembers the sweat dripping down his face as he sewed his enemy back together, the impotent rage and hopelessness warring throughout him as he tried to save a man's life who would do no such favour to him had their circumstances been reversed.

Later that night, they loaded him and Murray into the back of a commandeered Soviet truck, out of date and falling apart, and dropped them in the middle of the desert, with no food, no water, no supplies of any kind. Murray told him that he'd stripped them of their undershirts, managed to flag down a passing Blackhawk sometime towards dawn.

There had been no humanity in it. That was what overwhelmed him when he bothered to look back on it: they had spared him not because war had rules, not because he wasn't a threat to them with his injuries, but because he was useful. And the minute he hadn't been—though they were lucky, fucking lucky, that they didn't kill them then and there—they both had been left in the desert to die.

He had learned his lesson, and learned it well: being an asset kept you alive longer than being a handicap. That didn't mean, however, that he liked it, or preferred it over the alternative; that didn't mean he never had a choice, didn't mean he'd relegate himself and his existence in terms of how valuable he was.

The situation he'd found himself in now was different; this time, he had only himself to worry about. He knew his limits, his knew this kind of pain, and knew it well. He had someone to get back to after all this was said and done.

There was a refinement to it all. Whoever the voice was, however associated he was with Moran, he had a finesse that John hadn't quite seen since Moriarty, and even then the madman was more often than not lost to his own devices and personal pursuits. This man had a clarity of purpose, and that frightened John the most.

Five minutes in with that yellow light, he couldn't think properly. He could hardly say he was even able to when it started, or since he'd been wherever the hell they'd taken him. The flu, the drugs, the deprivation…it wasn't as if that all added up to his health and good fortune.

And he wasn't passing with flying colours, that much was certain. Already they had restarted the lights twice, that clear white, the red, the yellow, flashing before his eyes—never in the same pattern twice— and making his brain cramp at the stimulation.

"What is your name?"

"John Hamish Watson."

"Again."

"John. John Watson."

The yellow turns to an amorphous blue, the colour of light sparkling in clear water. Dots begin to appear in his vision, joining those crystal sparks that warn him of his own dehydration. Tea, violin. Sherlock, his voice. A fire. Tea. Violin.

"How old are you?"

"39."

He's trying to sink back into the recesses of his mind, trying to shy away from this constant onslaught of light, but it's burning him, burning right into his brain, coring him down to a supreme consciousness that can't seem to be evaded.

He's trying to think of Sherlock, but he can't get the face right. Were his eyes always shaped like that? And his hair, always so formless? Why can't he remember? Why can't he see?

"You're going away from me, Captain Watson. I need you to come back."

John can't help himself; he shuts his eyes.

"Ah, ah, ah." The voice tsks. "None of that, sir. Restart the programme."

A low whine escapes him as the white returns, blasting through his eyelids. The red, the yellow, blue…his existence rendered into nothing but sheer colour. His eyes are darting back and forth uncontrollably, trying to find something—anything—to hold onto so he might pull himself out of this pit of chaotic abstractions.

Somewhere in the distance, a timer rings. The sound is jarring, cuts straight through him.

"Look at that. Our session is done."

The lights turn off, and John wants to cry in relief. His mind is so overwhelmed, so awash with feeling, that his head is shaking, tremors running up and down his spine. He shuts his eyes, but the light follows, swimming in his line of sight no matter how much he wills it away.

He feels soft hands lift his head, drawing the burlap over his head. Once more, he is shrouded in darkness, a blessed darkness.

"How long have you been in this chair, Captain?"

He is silent. He doesn't think he can speak, let alone process what was asked of him. His heart is racing, disorientation and adrenaline playing hell with his primal reactions.

The voice chuckles, and he can hear the amused smile. "You can answer me now, John, or the lights are going to come back."

"I don't know." He blurts through gritted teeth. He doesn't know; he wants his body to be still for five fucking seconds; he wants to be alone so he can pull himself together again.

"You have been here, in this room, for twelve minutes, my boy. Twelve minutes. One-Two."

That's all, he thinks. That's all it's been. There's no way. It's felt like hours. He was being lied to. He could not have fallen apart like that in only twelve minutes.

"I see you don't believe me. A pity…I've been perfecting this for so many years, I have it down to an art. Short wavelengths do wonders to prolong exposure and not damage the anterior eye or its corneas; a low ESI and a high visual performance renders a subject such as yourself very susceptible to short-term exposure."

The voice comes from somewhere away from him, and there's a great clutter of sound on the far end of the room as new logs are added to the fire.

"Would you like to know the average time it takes for me to break someone down to their very essential parts? Two days, five hours, and three minutes. Now, keep in mind, this is my average. I do hope to keep that number low in the future…"

The chair creaks as the man sits back down. "However, Captain, we have some other pressing matters to deal with for the moment. Are you capable of speaking?"

John doesn't trust his voice, so he nods, one time.

"Yes? Good. Listen to these instructions carefully: if you disregard them, if you give any indication of dissent, I will have no choice but to leave you in this chair for the rest of the night. You've seen what twelve minutes can do, so I would advise you to follow my orders, and follow them closely.

We are going to ring your friend Mr Holmes shortly. I will allow you to talk with him under my supervision. You will not tell him where you are, who I am, or anything about what has happened to you here. You are to say the phrase 'It lies in each idol's diamond eye'. Can you repeat that for me now, please?"

John glares at the burlap covering his face, but he hears himself echo: "'It lies in each idol's diamond eye'."

"Very good. Remember my rules, now. Ready?"

A weight holds itself against his ear, and a jauntily happy ringtone buzzes in his ear, mercifully cut short as the line picks up. A deep baritone fill his mind and he feels himself rise through the mire of distorted sound and light.

"You've reached Sebastian Moran, Sherlock Holmes speaking."

"Sherlock."

There's a pause, one belying a supreme shock, then: "John."

He shuts his eyes, jagged shards of dancing light pressing against him.

"'It lies in each idol's diamond eye'." John repeats, hating himself, hating this weakness that has begun to eat at him.

"John, John, are you alright? Are you hurt?"

He can't speak. His head is swimming. Focus…focus! Sherlock is talking to him, it's Sherlock, and this might be his only chance to hear his voice for the rest of his life, if he can't get out, can't escape this—

"Tell me where you are, please," Sherlock says to him, his voice strained. "Please tell me where you are."

"I don't know." John replies, hating his voice, so quiet and unobtrusive, but he knows what he needs to say. No matter the consequence, he must say it: "I don't know, Sherlock, but you can't come for me. They'll kill you, or worse. You have to leave me here. Okay? I love you. Leave me here. I—"

The phone is removed from beside him. It's done. He's done. He'd said what he wanted to say, and now they could do whatever they wanted to him. Kill him. Torture him. Break him. It didn't mean anything now, now when he knew Sherlock had heard him.

He rests his head against the seat.

"Mr Holmes," The voice says, "Sebastian will tell you what we want, and you will comply if you want to see John Watson returned to you. I can assure you, however, that if you waste any more time it will be in body only. Goodbye for now, Sherlock Holmes."

John hears Sherlock's voice—angry, shouting—and then the call disconnects.

"I thought we were clear on your instructions, Captain."

John smiles under his hood. "I told him what you wanted me to, didn't I?"

"Ignorance does not become you. You understood the rules."

He braces himself as the cloth is removed from his head again. A heavy weight settles against his face—whatever machine it was that they were using.

The lights turn on again.