John steps out of the tube, limping slightly, and heads towards the stairs. Ping. His mobile sounds a text message alert as he climbs up and out of the tunnel into the dull cold of the London night. He makes no effort to dig his mobile out of his coat. There was a time when he would have begun scrambling through his layers immediately, he would already have the mobile out in his hand by now, and it would be Sherlock, with some urgent, asinine request. But now, there are no texts worth scrambling for. Whoever it is can wait until he gets home, or until morning, it doesn't matter.

He's exhausted. It's been a long, busy day at the surgery. Which is perfect. No time between patients, no time for proper lunch or tea, no time for anything until he is numb with fatigue and then he can put one foot in front of the other until he is on his sofa, letting the buzzing light of the telly wash over him, until he opens his eyes the next morning to do it again.

300 meters, turn left, 100 meters, left again, 150 meters, turn right, 70 meters and stop. John's mobile rings as he unlocks the door and continues to ring two, three, four, five times as he steps into the lift. He watches the numbers flit by above the lift door. It's a nondescript building, newer construction, poor quality, won't last. He can afford the rent with his pension as long as he keeps getting shifts at the surgery, and he has been. He's been picking up as many shifts as he can, covering for other doctors, taking all the holidays, dreading his days off.

Ninth floor, the lift stops with a lurch as if it remembered just in time. The doors slide open and John trudges under flickering fluorescent lights toward his flat at the end of the hall. He steps inside, closes and bolts the door behind him, hangs up his coat, and sets his keys on the table without turning on the light. He can do this because he knows the table is still there, and he also knows his keys will still be there in the morning. Living without Sherlock means things are always where he put them, his laptop doesn't disappear while he's in the loo, small carcasses don't suddenly turn up among the breakfast dishes, his toothbrush is always and only used for teeth.

The light still off, John turns away from the door and toward the sofa, lit by the streetlights from the window. Mid-step, he freezes. There is an armchair facing the sofa, and extending from the armchair, two impossibly long legs.

In one painfully slow motion, the legs uncross and rise from the chair. John swallows and forces himself to look at the rest of the body, which is the body of a dead man. John doesn't believe in ghosts. The face staring at him looks all wrong, pale skin made grotesque by blue and red and green flashing from the street, shadows hollowing out the eyes and cheeks, ghastly, but very much alive.

"Hello John." That voice is unmistakeable. He clenches his fists, bites the inside of his cheek, and reaches behind him to turn on the light. The bluegreen eyes are burning into him. One corner of the mouth starts to twist, tentatively, into a smile. "I'm back, John. I'm alive." The dead man steps forward, so slowly, as if he's afraid of startling a small animal. "John, it was the only way. I had to fake my –"

Sherlock anticipates the right hook and ducks just in time, but that only brings him closer to the left uppercut, which he doesn't see coming, doesn't expect that blow to throw his face back into the right fist, and his arms are up to block the next blow, but then an elbow drives into his stomach, throwing him to the floor. John is straddling him in an instant, driving the left hook down against Sherlock's face, feeling the satisfying crack of knuckles against cheekbone, and bringing his arm back to strike again, but this time he sees a bloodied white face, dark curls, still grey eyes, he knows this too well, that blood streaked across that face, the image that is always floating at the edge of his mind, always threatening to take over, only this time the grey eyes are looking at him and they blink.

John jumps up and staggers back. Sherlock stands, traces his long fingers over his temple and cheek, across his bottom lip, under his chin, quickly inventorying all the places John's fists made contact, and examines his fingers to see the blood he has wiped away. He clears his throat, "Yes, you're upset – "

John turns away.

"John, you must let me explain."

"Shut. Up. Let me think."

Sherlock opens his mouth to suggest that John should stick to what he knows and leave thinking to professionals, but considers that this might not be a good time, and sucks in his breath sharply instead. He notes how John's back tenses in response, and concludes that he made the correct decision.

John takes ten very deep breaths and turns toward the kitchen. "Kitchen" is a generous term. There's a hot plate, a microwave, a minifridge, and a very small sink. It's good for making tea and not much else, but John needs to think, and making tea is calming. He puts the kettle on to boil. He needs to think. About what? He can hear Sherlock breathing behind him. Sherlock is breathing. He needs to think about this: Sherlock being alive, here, in his flat, what the hell is he supposed to do with this? He turns the kettle off. Whiskey, not tea. He grabs the bottle and a glass from the pantry.

"I'd prefer tea," announces Sherlock casually, perhaps trying a bit too hard.

"Make your own bloody tea," John replies.

He sits in the armchair, pours himself a double, knocks it down, and waits. Sherlock decides the tea can wait until John is in the mood to make it for him, and sits on the sofa. Ping. John doesn't move, because the only person who he might like to see a text from is dead, and is sitting in front of him.

John pours another and drinks it a little slower. He is staring at the floor, at Sherlock's feet. This seems safe enough. Just a little at a time. Those shoes are poorer quality than anything he's seen Sherlock wear; in fact they're coming apart at the sole and are covered in mud. John is sure the feet must be cold and wet and in the back of his mind he thinks, Sherlock would never have cold wet feet. His eyes slowly climb up the legs – such ill-fitting trousers, and worn at the knees even? – to the long pale fingers tapping nervously on his thighs. Stained fingernails; he's smoking again. Conscious of the attention, the fingers leap up away and come back together, clasped, below the chin, and then there's the mouth, soft lips pulled tight, worrying the bottom lip. John pauses there. He's not ready to hear the voice again, but this is a dead end, he can't go forward without information.

"Start talking," John says.

Sherlock starts. Moriarty had snipers trained on John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade, he explains. Life was the final problem and Moriarty was bent on Sherlock's suicide.

John is trying to listen, but half his brain is still buzzing with anger and confusion and adrenaline, while the other half is drinking in the details of the dead man's face. And now that he's really looking, he sees the eyes are flashing blue with intensity, but they're also slightly bloodshot. He notices the drops of sweat on the forehead and upper lip, and attributes it to the fight. But then he thinks, it should not have been that easy to pin Sherlock down. He notices too that Sherlock's speech is off, limping just slightly. John leans forward and reaches his hand inside the collar of Sherlock's coat, beneath his curls at the back of his neck, and finds the skin there so hot he draws his hand back abruptly.

"You have a fever," he says accusingly, the anger in his voice unabated.

"Mm," Sherlock acknowledges, annoyed to be pulled away from his story, which is really quite impressive, he thinks. "Yes, between 39.2 and 39.5 degrees. Anyway, obviously Moriarty was – "

"Shut up."

Sherlock pauses, reminds himself, John is upset. He anticipated this, and indeed, John is quite upset, and also stronger and faster than Sherlock remembered and he might decide to attack him again. The most efficient strategy will be to allow John to throw his tantrum. That way Sherlock can gather more data about John's irrational response, and then stop it. Humor John.

"Why do you have a fever?"

Sherlock sighs. Humoring John is already tiresome. "Honestly, John, you provoke serious misgivings about the British medical education. The hypothalamus detects pyrogens in the bloodstream and signals the body to produce –"

"Sherlock, why do you have a fever?"

"The infection, obviously," he replies, gesturing vaguely at his torso. He would really like to get back to explaining his ingenious plan.

John grits his teeth. "Infection?"

Sherlock sighs again and begins to take off his overcoat. His life of late has required many compromises, and he hates this coat, a hideous mass-produced thing made of cheap, scratchy material, barely lined and already falling apart. The button on the left cuff fell off four and a half days after he bought it, and the bottom hem began to come undone a week later. It's the second one he's gone through since he left his old coat behind on another man's body.

Sherlock pulls the bottom of his shirt up, revealing his right side. John lets out a groan, half sympathy and half irritation. The wound, stretching from his ribs to just below his armpit, is red and festering, purple here and there, and smells terrible. It's not the worst John has ever seen but it's bad. Clearly Sherlock stitched it up himself. John imagines trying to stitch up his armpit with his non-dominant hand while in pain and shock and has to admit it's impressive under the circumstances, but the end result is not. "Idiot," he hisses and gets up to get his kit.

"Chasing a man in Tottenham," Sherlock explains, leaning back in the sofa and closing his eyes. "I thought I'd take a shortcut. Rooftops. Leapt across to another building and I…" Sherlock clears this throat, follows it with a little grunt. "I misjudged."

Coming back with his kit, John raises an eyebrow. He knows that before, he would have had to take a dig at Sherlock for this. He wouldn't have been able to resist. He opens his mouth to do it, but realizes he has nothing to say. Sherlock being hurt is not funny. Sherlock being alive is not funny.

Sherlock has opened his eyes and is watching John intently, waiting. Surely John will not let this go, it's too easy. But John just kneels on the floor beside him, tells him to lie down on the sofa, and begins cleaning his wound.

John doesn't ask, but Sherlock continues anyway. "Hit a fence on the way down, metal one, rather jagged." He looks down at John, whose eyes are narrowed in concentration and anger, and sees him grind his teeth slightly. "No, John, I will not go to hospital. I am still dead and need to remain that way for the time being. The hospital is far more dangerous than the wound or the infection."

John is silent. He has so many questions but right now, he is focused on the wound, the infection, the fever, the things he understands.

"When's the last time you ate, Sherlock?"

"Eating's boring."

"Yeah. When?"

"Had a little something on Tuesday."

John grunts. "Last time you slept?"

"Sleep's boring. Been busy."

"I can see that. When."

It's not a question, it's an order, and Sherlock takes exception to that. Humoring John is becoming extremely dull. Besides, why isn't John acting even a little bit glad to see him? Of course this is a shock, but he is acting stupider than usual, and he is about to tell him that, but then considers that it is good to have someone else tending to his wound. It hurts like hell, but he knows John is being as gentle as he can be, and he appreciates that. "Yesterday," he lies.

"You're lying."

Sherlock snorts. "You don't know that."

"Yeah, actually, I do." Sherlock opens his mouth to argue, but a sudden pain shoots through his side and he draws his breath in sharply. John glances up at his face, then turns his attention back to the wound. He notes how Sherlock's ribs are sticking out, almost grotesquely. Has he been eating at all? His hand brushes accidentally across a smaller scar on Sherlock's chest. Knife fight, smugglers, Tilbury. John had been busy freeing their human cargo, while Sherlock engaged two, then three of them, and would've got a lot worse than this scratch if John hadn't returned just in time with his Browning. He remembers fixing up that wound too, just like this on the sofa on Baker Street. He mentally inventories all the scars he knows on Sherlock's torso, arms, legs – the ones he knows intimately, having cleaned and stitched and monitored them himself, and the ones that predate him, that he's never touched. He remembers standing in Bart's, afterwards, trying to explain to Molly Hooper that he had to see the body. Not that he didn't believe. He'd felt Sherlock's wrist himself, he didn't need proof. What he needed was to see the body, take stock of the damage in a way he could understand. It had to have broken several bones in the impact. John needed to know how many and which ones. He needed to know where the blood came from, the blood on the sidewalk, where exactly the skull had burst open. He needed to know how the body had landed, what hit first. (Sherlock would have known just from glimpsing how it lay on the sidewalk.) He needed to see the scars he knew best, the evidence of the times he had helped this body instead of standing by watching it fall. But Molly had stood firm. He'd never imagined she had it in her. He begged, pleaded, ended up on his knees, and then he drew himself up and got loud, pushed his chest against her and his mouth an inch from her face and yelled like a sergeant, and she didn't even flinch. He hated her. John has never hit a woman (drunken brawls with Harry don't count) but it scares him how badly he'd wanted to throw her up against the wall, crush his forearm against her windpipe, and watch fear take over her face. But he dug his fingernails into his own palms and didn't touch her, and it wasn't fear on her face, it was sadness or more likely pity and finally John gave up. And never saw the body. He pauses, staring at the body in front of him. The festering wound. The knife scar. The pale skin. The blue veins. He counts out the rise and fall of Sherlock's breath.

"It was a cadaver," Sherlock says quietly. "Molly found –"

John can't hear this yet. He pops a thermometer into Sherlock's mouth and silently orders him to keep it in, glaring at him like a superior officer to a new recruit. Sherlock smiles. He's fond of that look, thinks of it as John's army face, and he has missed it terribly. John doesn't smile back. Sherlock is about to spit the thermometer out, to ratchet that glare up to the next level, when he remembers that he is humoring John. Besides, he is suddenly exhausted. He closes his eyes. Why is he so tired? He shouldn't be so tired, he napped on Wednesday. He remembers tea and thinks yes, a cup of tea would help him reorient himself, and yes he can make his own tea and he can make a cup for John too, John would like that, he'd be surprised but pleased, he takes it with milk but no sugar, and Sherlock thinks that the two of them drinking tea together might make John nostalgic, might trigger some chemical reaction so that he can calm down and be just a little bit happy to have Sherlock back. Yes, tea will help. Sherlock starts to get up. Instantly a hand appears out of nowhere, solid against his chest and pushing him right back into the sofa. Everything floats for a moment. A phone rings and rings and he wonders why John won't answer it, that's not like him. He vaguely notices the thermometer leaving his mouth and hears John grunt in annoyance.

"I was right then?," Sherlock mumbles.

"39.4," John replies. Sherlock smirks.

John's voice, gruff and angry – still angry? – is far away: "Sleep."Humor John, Sherlock reminds himself. And he does.

The fever climbs quickly.

John argues with himself at least once an hour. Hospital? Sherlock's in danger either way. John understands the danger posed by a fever climbing above 40 degrees. He does not understand the danger posed by going to the hospital. He has to believe it is real, though, because Sherlock Holmes is back from the dead, so all bets are off. And one thing he does know is that if he brings Sherlock to the hospital, they'll take him out of his sight. So that's the factor that tips the scales again and again.

He calls in sick to the surgery and cares for Sherlock himself. He forces Sherlock to drink fluids and more fluids, no tea, and whenever he feels up to it, to take lukewarm showers. He puts Sherlock in his bed and sits beside him with endless cool washcloths as he fades in and out of sleep. He watches Sherlock's nightmares and wonders if this is new, or if these terrors were always there. At one point, Sherlock is sleeping relatively calmly when he suddenly opens his eyes and stares, not at John but at the space that John occupies. John's heart stops; he's seen that before, broken and bloody on a sidewalk in Smithfield. He bites down the urge to scream and reaches out to touch Sherlock's face, now a riot of colors left behind by John's fist. As soon as his fingers graze Sherlock's cheek, his eyes refocus onto John and close again. His chest rises and falls in sleep. John can breathe.

One night, John is asleep on the sofa when suddenly he hears someone undoing the deadbolt. He leaps upright to see Sherlock, fully dressed and about to head out the door. "Come on John," he says impatiently, "get your coat, the game is on!"

"No no no," John slides his body between Sherlock and the door. "The game is not on, you are going back to bed."

Sherlock's eyes are glassy and manic, his face and hair and shirt drenched with sweat. He looks at John incredulously. "Bed? Jesus, John, what goes on in your simple mind? Moriarty's given me this perfect puzzle and you think I should go to bed?" He shoves John aside and reaches for the door.

He's still very weak and John easily grips both his arms to his sides. "Sherlock," he says as calmly as he can, "you are ill. You are delirious. Moriarty is dead." Sherlock snorts. John flicks on the light. "Look around you. We are not on Baker Street. This is my flat. Moriarty shot himself and you jumped off Barts and faked your death and left me here alone" – damnit, he didn't want that to come out that way, nevermind, just pretend it didn't – "and now you have a very high fever and you are delirious."

Sherlock takes a moment. "I'm delirious," he repeats, watching John carefully. John nods. "Then you're a hallucination too," he says.

"No," John says softly, "I'm real."

"Hm." Sherlock folds his arms and taps the fingers of his left hand against his lips. "That's not impossible, but it's extremely unlikely. There is no rational reason for me to be here with you now. And I do think of you often. No, the most probable explanation is that you are another figment of my fevered mind."

John has to agree that makes sense.

"I'd hope for a less predictable hallucination, but you're pleasant enough," Sherlock adds, swatting his hand towards John in a feeble attempt at an amiable pat on the shoulder and missing by a wide margin. "It's very good to see you." He grins broadly. John can't help it, he grins back.

"Alright, Sherlock. Back to bed with you."

Later that night, Sherlock tries to leave again, and John, usually such a light sleeper but tonight so exhausted, doesn't hear him slip out into the hallway. Sherlock turns back before he reaches the lift, though, insisting John must come with him immediately, he's desperate, they are not safe, they must go into hiding, and this time it takes much longer to talk him down.

After that, John sleeps on the floor of the bedroom, blocking the door with his body.

On the fourth night, John wakes up and knows that Sherlock will be alright. He stands up slowly, stretches, cracks his spine, walks over to the bed and watches Sherlock sleep. Peaceful. Though he doesn't need to, he puts his hand on the back of Sherlock's neck and confirms that the fever has broken. He sighs, grabs his blanket and pillow off the floor, and heads to the living room to sleep on the sofa.

John wakes up to see Sherlock emerging from the bedroom in the blue early morning light. His chest fills with gratitude – Sherlock, alive, and walking, and going to be ok – but then he remembers Sherlock forcing him to stand below and watch his body fall, to see his bloodied face and still grey eyes night after night after night.

Sherlock watches, fascinated, as the emotions roll across John's face until finally a neutral non-expression lands there and settles in.

"How're you feeling?" John asks.

"Hungry," Sherlock responds, clearly astounded by that fact. "Ravenous." He starts to walk towards the kitchen but stumbles and has to catch himself against the wall.

"And a bit wobbly?" John's words are friendly, but his voice is hollow.

Sherlock grimaces. "A bit."

"Well. Hungry is a good sign. Very good. I'll just get up and fix you something, you sit here."

Sherlock sits. He waits quietly, noticing how it feels to be back in his body, his side finally healing and not tearing into him each time he breathes, his limbs more or less obeying his commands, his brain, his beautiful precious brain, free and beginning to hum back to life. And his stomach, growling.

"Afraid I don't have much," John calls from the kitchen. He knows he should go out for groceries. And possibly to go to work. And Sherlock will be needing more antibiotics. But obviously he couldn't leave the flat while Sherlock was in danger. He can now, most likely, but the question at the moment is breakfast. "You shouldn't try anything difficult to digest anyway. Let's take it slow. Toast for now, I'll fix some soup later."

Sherlock grunts in response as he scans the flat, devouring and cataloging every piece of data he can find about John, this John without him. This John is obsessively neat, military discipline, a place for everything and everything in its place, each item at 90 or 45 degree angles. This John spends very little time at home, there's nothing on the walls, he treats it like a hotel room, but when he is here, watches a great deal of telly – the proximity of the telly to the sofa, the placement of the remote control – no, doesn't actually watch it, just keeps it on, see how the power button is worn but the channel and volume keys are not, and it's a relatively new telly, it's not the one from Baker Street, in fact nothing here is from Baker Street, nothing at all, John must have left all his things behind, was it too painful to go back or did Mrs. Hudson offer to take care of everything? Must ask him about my coat, Sherlock thinks. And obviously he will have kept the violin. When did this John start drinking so much whiskey? The rings on the table tell that story, as well as the easy, resigned way John reached for the whiskey bottle last night – no, not last night, how long ago was that? Damnit, Sherlock winces and clenches his jaw, losing time means losing information and losing control…

"You ok?"

John is standing over him with a plate of toast and a glass of water. Sherlock grimaces. "You're feeding me bread and water, John. Am I your prisoner?"

John shrugs. "You're welcome to make yourself a gourmet brunch if you'd like. Are you in pain? You made a face."

Sherlock takes the plate and glass. "Fine. How long have I been here?"

"Four nights." Sherlock tries to hide the horror on his face, but it's too late. John sighs, "Sherlock, without medical care you could've died. Again. I intend to kill you with my bare hands as soon as you've fully recovered, but I'm bloody glad you decided to come here."

Sherlock falls quiet and stares at the toast in his hand, calculating in the back of his mind the precise temperature required to achieve just this shade of brown. "I shouldn't have. Obviously my judgment was already impaired by my fever when I decided to come here. Imbecile! What was I thinking? I've put you in danger, John, four nights is enough time for any child to find me, the only question now is why haven't they?"

"Who? What are you going on about, Sherlock?"

"Leaving," Sherlock replies, shoving the toast in his mouth and preparing to stand up.

"The hell you are." John is standing over him with his army face again. "You are seriously ill, your wound is not healed, you can barely walk, and you still haven't told me what the hell is going on."

"True. My explanation was interrupted and you weren't paying attention anyway." Sherlock hesitates. He would hate to leave that story unfinished. "Do pay attention this time, John. And then I really must leave. This is dangerous for you."

John shrugs, settles into his armchair, crosses his arms, and says again, "Start talking."

John has to admit it's incredible. As Sherlock explains all the intricate machinations required to fake his death, John's eyes widen and he has to stop himself from breathing "Oh that's brilliant." Because it's not. It's really not. It is the most horrible thing that ever happened to him, and that's saying something. But he doesn't have to say it, Sherlock reads it across his face and feels it warm his blood and fill his lungs, he has missed this so much, has had no one to watch him with amazement, no one to tell him how fantastic he is, and it shouldn't matter in the slightest because he knows he's a genius, he doesn't need anyone to tell him that, but when he sees it on John's face, everything hums and his voice gets just a little faster, hits its rhythm, rises and falls, and he loves this, he loves himself like this, all he needs is an audience, the only audience he needs is John.

"Bastard."

"What?"

John's face does not say "brilliant" anymore. "You're a sodding bastard."

"I saved your life." Somehow it sounds petty.

"Saved it for what?" John takes the dishes to the kitchen and begins washing up.

John is still angry, Sherlock reflects. He quickly compiles a list of all the reasons John might be angry – this is much easier now that he's not thinking through a fever – and begins ticking off all the impossible reasons, sorting out the improbable ones, and is left with a short list of promising theories. Certainly Sherlock's death would have been painful for John. He'd understood that ahead of time, and wished it didn't have to be, but there was no other way. Ah. Perhaps John doesn't understand that. Like most people, he does need things spelled out to an agonizingly simple degree.

"John," Sherlock calls into the kitchen, "there was no other way. I narrowed it down to 17 ideas that had at least a 5% chance of success but in the end there was only one that could possibly be called viable."

"Sod off, Sherlock."

Hm. Eliminate that from the list then. Could he be jealous? John is a man who loves adventure, who was starving for it when they met, but here Sherlock has abandoned him to an excrutiatingly boring life in an ugly flat and a monotonous job at the surgery. God, John's life is dull. Yes, this could be it.

"John," Sherlock calls, "I wished I could have taken you with me. I thought about that everyday." The noises in the kitchen pause for a moment. "But I had no choice." A dish clangs into the sink. "It's not as if I was gallivanting about on holiday, I was tracking assassins…" No, no, reverse course, that's not good. "… and sleeping under bridges, and just sitting and waiting for days on end at times… really, sometimes my life was as dull as yours."

A loud snort from the kitchen prompts Sherlock to cross this theory off his list.

Sherlock thinks harder. John in the cemetery. That was… extremely upsetting. Sherlock reviews that memory, dissects it, puts it back together, shakes it, turns it upside down, rolls it around between his palms, smells and tastes it, searching for the kernel of information that he's sure is contained there. Thinking out loud with John around is very often helpful, he recalls, and he's missed it so much. It's astonishing sometimes, the little flashes of light that the man can reflect back without even realizing. Sherlock thinks it's worth a try.

He shakily stands up, walks over to the kitchen, and leans against a wall where he can get a good view of John's profile as he washes dishes.

"Before I left," he says, "I saw you and Mrs. Hudson at the cemetery." John freezes. Sherlock clears his throat and considers his options. He could play this sentimental, summon up some tears and sob his way through the telling, or just let one or two tears slide silently across his cheekbones. He could play it manly, which John would probably appreciate, overly awkward with a punch on the arm at the end. He could play it whispery, as if in awe of the raw power of John's emotion. Or he could play it cruel, mock John's grief and see how far that would push him, learn how he would react. He likes that one and scolds himself silently, he knows that is not good. He's really not sure which one is good though. He decides to try and do this as Sherlock, although he's not at all sure that's a wise strategy.

Sherlock tells John what he said at his grave, verbatim, as if narrating the scene. He tells him when his voice cracked, when the tears came, when he touched the headstone, how he set is jaws and shoulder when he turned on his heel and left. Sherlock's voice is as fast as normal, straightforward and matter of fact because he is, actually, reporting matters of fact. But it's also oddly gentle. John stares straight ahead and listens.

After Sherlock finishes the story, John continues to listen and hears only the rustle of fabric, Sherlock fidgeting. "Well?" John says, finally. "And what did you deduce from this?"

Sherlock sighs in irritation. John does need everything spelled out for him, apparently. "That you didn't go to my funeral, though I already knew you wouldn't. That you'd been staying with your sister, that you hadn't been eating but Mrs. Hudson forced you to have tea with her just before you came to the cemetery, but not at Baker Street, she came to your sister's flat and brought sandwiches, I'm not sure what kind. That you'd been having nightmares about Afghanistan, that you hadn't been to work since my death. That you adore and revere me, though I already knew that, and that losing me caused you great pain. John. If I could have spared you from both pain and death, I would have, believe me, but it could be only one." Sherlock almost launches into a monologue in defense of his actions because really, he thinks he's been both noble and clever and has not received nearly enough recognition for that. But then he remembers John hasn't reacted well to that approach and wonders again, what will John react well to? What does he want? Sherlock turns the full force of his gaze on John, as if he can, just by looking, slice away layers of convention and artifice and society until there's nothing left but the pure essence of John. But it doesn't work. What Sherlock had hoped would be a dramatic pause has now stretched into an awkward silence. He deeply regrets his choice of strategy on this one, because if he'd chosen to play a part, he would've known where it was going.

Finally John seems to take pity on him, sighs, and turns to face him. "Are you trying to apologize, Sherlock?," he asks in a very tired tone.

Sherlock curses at himself silently, because of course that is exactly what he should have been trying to do. He never thinks of apologies, such irrational and arbitrary conventions. If a thing has already happened, and the outcome was undesirable, what good does it do to drag yourself back through it? Why wouldn't all parties want to just move on? Pointless. He doesn't understand why apologizing for his actions should make John happy. After all, he doesn't regret it in the slightest. He would do nothing differently. He saved three lives and sacrificed none (Moriarty doesn't count; not Sherlock's fault). The math is unflinchingly on his side. And yet, he does not like the fact that John is angry with him and/or still in pain. Seeing him at the cemetery that day was nearly intolerable, and watching his face right now is not pleasant either. He has to admit, he was tempted at the cemetery, for just a split second, to walk out of the trees and say hello. Make his pain go away, just like that. Now he wants make it go away again, but apparently showing up and saying hello is inadequate. And John has told him exactly what he wants, so this is the most probable solution. Therefore, no matter how preposterous it might be, this is the course of action to pursue.

"John. I am so. Sorry."

John's eyes widen in surprise. He didn't expect to actually hear an apology, did he? Sherlock feels smug. Oh, he'll show him he can apologize. His voice drops a register and his eyes wash a watercolor blue.

"I caused you pain, and perhaps you think I don't take it seriously. But your well-being is of utmost importance to me, John. To cause you so much pain, that's… maybe that's unforgiveable. To do this to a friend. My only friend. It hurt me… deeply… to see you like that at the cemetery, and I've thought about it constantly since then. I never wanted to hurt you. Please believe me. And if you can, please forgive me."

John stares him down. "Laying on a little thick, aren't we?" he asks.

Sherlock is indignant. "I am giving you a very sincere apology. I'm sorry if it's not good enough for you!"

John shakes his head, turns away, puts his hand over his face. "Do you actually feel any of that?" he asks. Sherlock has no idea how to answer this question, so he says nothing. Then, "I'm sorry." He's not. But he will say it if it will make John's anger and/or pain go away.

John turns back around, his face worn and tired, and says, "Yeah, ok, that's enough apologizing for today. As your doctor, I am sending you back to bed." He pushes him toward the bedroom and the firmness of his hand on Sherlock's back is not exactly forgiveness but Sherlock hopes it's close enough.

He doesn't object to going to bed because truthfully, he's exhausted. Already. Again. He inwardly admits John's right, he can't go back out there just yet and expect to survive. But he can't stay in here much longer and expect John to survive. He'll take a powernap and then figure out a plan and execute it. He's asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.

It's late afternoon when John hears a knock at his door. No one has ever knocked at his door. Since his best friend is dead and asleep in the flat, he assumes there are only two other possibilities: an assassin or Mycroft's people. Oh. He suddenly remembers the insistent text messages and phone calls the night Sherlock showed up. Once he switched into doctor mode he stopped hearing them entirely, picking up his mobile only to call in sick to work, and at some point they just stopped. The door slowly swings open and John just stands there. If it's an assassin, there's nothing he can do about it. If it's Mycroft, there's also nothing he can do about it.

An umbrella, a pin striped leg, and then all of Mycroft towering in John's flat. John hasn't seen him since the day Sherlock… since that day, and John suddenly realizes, with a violent surge, just how much he hasn't missed him.

"Good evening John," Mycroft says with a genteel nod.

"Mycroft."

"Where is he?"

John doesn't know whether Mycroft is supposed to know Sherlock is alive and here, but he clearly does know, and John's not going to bother to pretend otherwise. "Bedroom."

Mycroft raises an eyebrow.

John rolls his eyes. "What are you doing here, Mycroft?"

Mycroft's eyes widen in an expression of innocence. "Seeking out my lost little brother, of course. He was seen entering this building five days ago. I have been trying to reach you since then, but you have ignored my attempts" Mycroft sniffs delicately as a commentary on John's manners. "I've had a car waiting for one or the other of you to step outside, but you have not done so. I didn't want to come here and bring undue attention on your home, but I was left with little choice. When neither of you emerged for five days, I concluded I'd find you in an amorous embrace or else something was very wrong."

John coughs out a laugh. "Well, if the former was true, then the latter would be true as well. But in this case, it's only the latter. He's been very ill, the fever's broken, he'll be ok, but he needs his sleep."

Mycroft nods with a smile that seems to be acting like it thinks a smile is supposed to act. "You've nursed him back from the brink of death. I am forever in your debt."

"Well, technically he's still dead. I'm not a miracle worker, you know."

"Indeed." Mycroft smirks.

"So. Been keeping me under surveillance, have you?"

Mycroft eyebrow floats up again. "Of course. Why wouldn't I? This is the first place he'd go. If," he adds in a mocking tone, "he was being incredibly obvious." Mycroft turns around to face Sherlock, who has appeared in the bedroom doorway behind him. "Good evening, Sherlock." John steps to the side so that he can see Mycroft's face and catches it, an instant of softness, gone as quickly as it appeared.

"It is obvious. I shouldn't be here," Sherlock replies, his tone casual but his eyes, locked with Mycroft's, deadly. "Neither should you."

"Neither should I?" Mycroft pretends to be taken aback. "But I'm not the one scurrying around in darkness. Now that you've emerged into the light, do I take it that you're quite done with your little spectacle?"

"My 'spectacle' saved three lives."

"Oh. Three?" Mycroft's voice carries just the slightest tinge of amusement and John has to clench his fists to restrain himself from lunging at him. Across Mycroft's shoulder, Sherlock throws him a knowing look and John takes a step back.

"Shall we sit?," Mycroft asks, gesturing towards the sofa.

"Oh yeah, please come in, do make yourself at home," John mumbles under his breath. He crosses his arms and leans back against the wall.

Mycroft sits in the armchair while Sherlock folds himself onto the sofa and asks, "What do you want?"

"To see you alive and well, dear brother." His voice drips with sarcasm, and yet there it is again, a look in his eyes that someone might have while taking a deep breath of joy and relief, but Mycroft is doing nothing of the sort, his mouth is set in a line like an iron bar and he is breathing as little as possible. He flutters his fingers at Sherlock, indicating the fading bruises on his face.

"John was surprised to see me," Sherlock grumbles. "I was sick," he adds hurriedly.

"Indeed. I was a bit surprised myself, I might have thought you'd contact me upon returning to London."

"Why bother? It's not as if I can avoid you."

"No. So tell me, how have you been spending your time?" He sounds like he's talking to a 20 year old who dropped out of uni to backpack across China.

Sherlock stretches languidly and contemplates the ceiling. "Killing people, mostly. Criminal masterminds, assassins, the sort of people a proper government might be interested in controlling. As opposed to giving them exactly what they want and releasing them back on the streets." He swivels his head and meets Mycroft's stare.

After a moment, Mycroft closes his eyes and sighs. "I underestimated Moriarty. It was… a miscalculation of very grave proportions. You must know that I –"

Sherlock snorts. "You're sorry, are you? Don't debase yourself any further. Your mistake, as you call it, was staggering, absolutely breathtaking in its stupidity. What could you possibly say? What will your apology accomplish? What," Sherlock's voice drops an octave and slows, "do you want?"

Mycroft taps his umbrella handle. If he is experiencing an emotion, it doesn't show. "I helped you with your magic trick. I will help you again. But I cannot if you do not communicate with me. This –" he waves in the direction of Sherlock's wound "– could easily have been avoided. Accept my help."

"Forgive me, Mycroft, but I do not trust your help as much as I once did. I'll get by without it."

"You will accept it eventually though. When you find it convenient."

Enunciating very clearly, Sherlock replies, "It is not convenient."

Mycroft rises and bows slightly. He pauses at the door, taking in the picture of Sherlock again before he leaves. John watches carefully, wondering if Mycroft also has a hard drive and if he's taking a moment to save the image. John has fantasized, countless times since Sherlock's death, about slowly carving the smirk off Mycroft's face, cutting down his height by shooting his kneecaps and then standing on them, pulling his fingernails out one by one and sliding them behind his eyelids, devising new forms of torture even Mycroft himself hasn't imagined. But now, watching the man stare at his dead brother, he realizes that Mycroft has already been torturing himself quietly and effectively, as he does all things.

"John." Mycroft says without looking at him, by way of goodbye.

"Oi, Mycroft!" John replies, grabbing a notepad and pencil off the table. "Could you send someone round with some groceries? I haven't got much left and Sherlock's not eaten for days." He doesn't need to hurt Mycroft anymore, but he's not going to just let him walk away either. He begins scribbling on the notepad. Soup… Bread…

Mycroft stretches to his full height and raises his eyebrows, calling to mind a cobra before it strikes. His voice almost suggests amusement but his eyes do not. "I am not," he says, "an errand boy. I will not ask why you can't do your own shopping."

"He's afraid I'll leave," Sherlock calls from the sofa, again addressing the ceiling. "He thinks if he steps out for a moment, I'll be gone when he returns. It's not unreasonable."

John shrugs, writes Oranges… Biscuits… what's that brand Sherlock loves, in the blue box?

"Is my help already convenient, Sherlock?" Mycroft sneers.

Sherlock closes his eyes and gestures towards John, as if to say, this is between you and him.

John finishes the list. Sugar… Milk. "Just a few things," he says, folding the list into a small rectangle and tucking it into Mycroft's breast pocket, in front of a red silk handerchief. "Cheers."

Mycroft narrows his eyes and stares down at him as if the line of his nose was the scope of a sniper's rifle. But John's never been intimidated by that look before, and he's not going to start now, with a dead man on his sofa.

"Will you bring him a gun, while you're at it?" Sherlock asks casually.

"What?"

"John seems to have misplaced his gun. It won't do."

"You are my responsibility, not John. I fail to see," Mycroft hisses, turning toward the door, "how his gun is my problem."

"Oh you do, do you?" Sherlock sits up and leans toward Mycroft, his eyes flashing. "You fail to see how your profoundly stupid actions caused mortal danger that any moron could have predicted? The least you can do is give him a fighting chance to defend himself. Or perhaps you're worried he'll turn his anger to you; he's a better shot than you ever were."

Mycroft sniffs sharply and leaves.

As the door clicks behind him, Sherlock leans back and asks, "What happened to your gun, John?"

"Sold it," John replies. "Alright, you may as well tell me about all this danger now."

So Sherlock tells him about Moriarty's web, and how, without Moriarty it is weaker, yes, but it survived. Others have tried to emerge and Sherlock has been able to slap them down but someone is still tugging the lines of the web, he's heard the name Moran, could be something, could go nowhere, too soon to tell. He's eliminated all three snipers but believes there may still a conditional order for the killing of John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade, and if so there must be a recall order. No, he doesn't have a lead at the moment. He did, but it turned out to be a dead end. Then there was that utter waste of time in Tottenham. Anyway, they know he's alive now; he's killed more than enough of them to attract their attention. They must have seen him come to John's flat. Mycroft did. What was he thinking, coming here? That sodding fever. He never would have come otherwise. And that's why he must leave, as soon as possible.

A knock at the door. John jumps in surprise. Sherlock meets his eyes and gestures toward his overcoat, hanging next to the door. John slowly reaches into the pocket, feels a gun – oh, it's been a long time since he held a gun in his hand, he should be disturbed by how comfortable it feels – and silently positions his shoulder against the door. He opens it quickly, gun raised, but no one's there. There's a shopping bag in the hall.

John brings it into the kitchenette and starts putting things away. Everything he asked for, plus an unusually heavy box of cereal. He reaches inside and pulls out a Browning, exactly like his old one. He turns it over and over in his hand, running his fingers down the metal, marveling at the similarities. Could it… no. There's a serial number on this one; his was filed off, beautifully. He remembers the night Sherlock took that job upon himself in the kitchen on Baker Street; the number was already filed off when John bought the Browning, but very poorly, and Sherlock took great offense at such shoddy worksmanship, so it had to be fixed, right in the middle of dinner, tiny metal filings ending up in the mussaman curry. He slides his finger around the trigger, feels the weight of it in his hand; yes, this feels like home.

"What happened to your gun, John?" asks Sherlock. He's leaning forward on the sofa, watching John hungrily.

John can tell from his voice that Sherlock doesn't know yet, and he's not really asking, he's savoring the puzzle in the moment before he starts solving it. Which he will do in seconds, so may as well tell him. "Threw it into the Thames so I wouldn't kill myself."

Sherlock blinks. John furrows his brow. Could Sherlock actually be surprised by this?

"Kill yourself? Why in hell… you idiot! After everything I did to save your life, you would've just blown it away?" Sherlock leaps off the sofa and begins pacing about the living room.

"You were dead at the time," John breaks in flatly.

"I know that!" Sherlock yells. "I know, I put enough bloody effort into it, didn't I?

"Yeah, with your genius scheme, isn't that what this is all about?" John interrupts, his blood beginning to boil. "Your beautiful, perfect plan, your last dance with Moriarty, it's all about you, you never thought how I would –"

"Never thought? Of course I thought. I just never…" Sherlock stops in his tracks and groans as he covers his eyes with a hand. "Obvious." He shakes his head. "So obvious. A veteran, recently returned from the war, injured in combat, in therapy, psychosomatic limp. Almost certainly post-traumatic stress disorder, the vivid recurring nightmares are consistent with that diagnosis." John crosses his arms uncomfortably, imagining Sherlock back at Baker Street, listening to his nightmares, were they really loud enough to hear in the living room? Or could Sherlock have been standing at his door? Or over his bed? John cringes. Meanwhile, Sherlock is hitting his stride and his voice picks up speed. "Suicidal ideation is a likely symptom. Actual suicide attempts?" Sherlock pauses for a moment, pivots to face John, and squints. "No. Not yet. But close. He thinks about it constantly. Why else would a depressed, unemployed doctor own a gun? And it would have to be a gun. The soldier was always so sure he'd die in the heat of battle, but now there will be no more battles. He has to still believe he'll die by a bullet. Now, he's just marking time. And then… he meets someone who gives him an excuse to kill a cabbie in cold blood" – John opens his mouth to object to this characterization, then decides to let it go – "And he's back in battle again. Danger! Adrenaline! And the soldier is sure, again, that he'll die on the battlefield. At my side." Sherlock stops pacing and turns again to John, greenblue eyes locked onto him.

"But then, suddenly, there are no more battles." He steeples his fingers, taps them three times against his lips, and clasps them behind his back. "I misjudged," he announces. "The data was all there, but the premise was faulty."

"And what would that be?"

Sherlock clears his throat. "That you were the sort of man who… just goes on. The way normal people seem to do."

"Ah." John's eyes fall to the floor. "Very faulty, yes." Shame burns in his stomach, his chest, his throat. "I suppose you can't imagine being so weak, wanting to just... leave your life completely. Your actual life, I mean."

"I don't have to imagine wanting it." His voice is suddenly quiet. "I just never imagined you would."

John looks up and meets Sherlock's eyes, green disappearing into blue disappearing into grey. "What did you think I would do, Sherlock?"

"Live. And feel sad and miss me of course, and keep living. I didn't think about it much, John, it was irrelevant." Sherlock punctuates the word with a wave of his hand and notices John's nostrils flare and eyes narrow. He shoves the offending hand into his pocket. "You're making me repeat myself, you know this. I could kill myself or kill you. Yes, I suppose I would've killed myself if I'd had to – oh don't look at me like that. I don't know, I didn't have to decide, so there was no reason to dwell on that. And no reason to dwell on how you would respond, because there was no other option. I knew I would find a way out, and I did. I found... One. Way. Out."

"Hm." John purses his lips and rocks on the balls of his feet. "You did. You did. You always find a way out, don't you? But you left me with no way out. You can think your way out of everything, I suppose, but us mortals…" John shuts his eyes, wonders why he should care whether Sherlock understands.

Sherlock wants to understand. He remembers a time when he lost something precious. His best friend was taken from him. The friend that was always there, always welcoming, the only one that could quiet his mind when it spun out of control. He wouldn't let them do it, so he broke out of three rehab centres until finally, he was shut up in a room with only Mycroft watching over him, standing in front of the door, silent and immovable. Sherlock remembers his howling desperation and the feeling that he would do anything, anything to get out of that room. "I have had an experience like that," he says. "No way out. Locked room. Nothing to be done."

John is a little surprised. "Really?"

"Yes. Really. But it was a chemical reaction." He raises both hands in front of him. "Addiction," left hand. "Withdrawal," the right.

John sighs. The analogy will have to do; it's about as close as Sherlock is likely to get. "Yes. Well. Emotions are physiological too, as you know. And people can be… habit-forming."

Sherlock looks at him oddly. "That's true," he says with a little tinge of surprise. "Are you saying you went into withdrawal?"

No, John thinks, you emotionally stunted twat, that's not what I am saying at all, but then he thinks, maybe it is a little bit. "Yeah, I missed you, Sherlock. Yes, I've missed the battle and the adrenaline and all of that, but I also missed you."

"Physiologically?" Sherlock looks genuinely curious.

John clears his throat awkwardly. "Yes, I suppose… yes. An emptiness. Physiologically. And when I closed my eyes or let my mind go quiet, I saw your body falling and then the blood on your face, the blood on the sidewalk, and that's what the future held for me, forever. No way out."

"I see," Sherlock says, and hopes it's true. He steps closer, greyblue eyes scanning John's face. "Two more questions. How far did you go?"

John looks down at the gun on the counter. His jaw clenches involuntarily and he knows that with that he's given himself away. He imagines Sherlock scanning through a slideshow, stopping on an image of John sitting on the floor in a dark room, the Browning in his mouth, his thumb clicking the safety off, his finger just beginning to squeeze the trigger.

"Far," John replies, and looks up to see Sherlock staring at him with a strange expression he doesn't quite recognize, something akin to fear, but quieter, his eyes wide, very pale and very still. "Second question?"

"Second question," Sherlock says softly. "It would seem you had… no apparent reason to live." John chuckles humorlessly and Sherlock feels certain he's misstepped, though he's not sure how. "What stopped you?"

John turns the gun over in his hands again, drums his fingers against the barrel, licks his lips nervously. "It sounds mad, but… you did. I thought… of how disappointed you'd be in me."

"But I was dead." Sherlock is confused and slightly irritated. He wants very badly to understand this, but he suspects it's pointless. He'd hoped for a better answer, thought John would be above such inane superstition.

"Yeah, you were. Quite dead." The laugh starts in the base of John's throat and creeps up to his mouth before he knows what it is. By the time he recognizes it, it's too late, and he can't stop it from escaping in spurts. "Your… dead opinion…" he snickers, "of my dead… self… was very important to… me." He can't explain why this is funny, but it is clearly absurd and he can't stop. He looks up and sees Sherlock giggling too, and then laughing, his shoulders shaking and his left hand held tightly over the wound on his side. They break eye contact and their laughter starts to settle, until Sherlock suddenly snorts and they look at each other and both lose control again into full-bodied laughter. Eventually they share a familiar silence.

"You were right, obviously," Sherlock says in an easy, conversational tone.

"Yeah, obviously."

"I saved your life again, then?" Sherlock smirks.

John rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I suppose so. What of it?"

Sherlock shrugs. "I'll continue to do that," he says, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. "I'd prefer you not take it unnecessarily."

"Hm. I reckon I'll continue to save your life too, you selfish wanker. How's this. I wont kill myself again if you don't kill yourself again."

"Agreed." Sherlock makes no effort to hide his grin. "Tea?"

And John takes the biscuits out of the shopping bag and puts the kettle on to boil.

The next morning John wakes up to find Sherlock standing in the living room, triumphant.

"Ah. You found it then." John can't stop the smile spreading across his face.

"I knew you'd keep it for me." Sherlock tightens the belt, pulls the collar up with an elegant flourish, and pivots, letting his coat swirl around him. "I'll collect the violin later. Must be off."

"Bloody hell!" John leaps to his feet and reaches the door just before Sherlock. "You got your bloody coat and you're leaving, just like that? Where? What… Sherlock, sit down!"

Sherlock is unsure for a moment. Things are becoming complicated, and not in the way that he likes. He turns and sits in the armchair, gathering his coat around him, and sighs. "I told you, John. I can't be here. It's dangerous for you."

"Did you lose your memory in the fall? It's always dangerous for me. Where are you going?"

"To track down the nerve centers of Moriarty's web, as I've previously told you." Sherlock taps his fingers together more rapidly, getting anxious.

"I'm going with you then. Just give me a minute to get dressed."

"No." Sherlock stands and head for the door again.

"Sherlock." The urgency in John's voice stops him in his tracks. He feels a chill down his spine as a thought occurs to him. "John… Should I take your gun?" The image flashes in front of him, John on the floor of this flat, the Browning in his mouth, flicking off the safety, squeezing the trigger, and he sees Moriarty's head pop back, the look in his eyes at the last moment of laughter and pride and, of all things, surprise, and the noise, the bang that seemed to follow after his body hit the ground.

"Sherlock… no. Jesus, it's not… You're alive. And that's good. And I still need to beat you to a pulp for what you did to me, but you're alive. So… no. But…" John suddenly thinks, and can't believe this never occurred to him before, maybe he doesn't want to work with me anymore.

"I do. You're most helpful, John. It's odd, I worked quite well without you for years, but now I realize that working with you often enhanced my capabilities. I think better when I can talk to you, especially when you don't reply too much, and you're very good at shooting my enemies and treating my injuries, and you've surprised or amused me on multiple occasions. I've missed you, naturally. But as I told you, this is dangerous. Shouldn't you go to work, you haven't gone in what, six days?"

John narrows his eyes. "Sherlock, it's always dangerous. Make sense."

Sherlock sighs and stares at the ceiling. "If you died, it would be… unacceptable."

John raises an eyebrow. "Unacceptable?"

"Intolerable. No way out."

"Yes." John clears his throat and nods. "I survived for 39 years before I met you, Sherlock. I survived my father, my stepfather, and three and a half tours in Afghanistan. I've been shot and I've been sick and I've been beaten within an inch of my life. I've walked through minefields. I've watched friends die in front of me. I've killed a number of people. I've tried to save lives and sometimes I've succeeded and sometimes I've failed and felt them die under my hands. And I reckon you've been through some absolutely unbelievable scrapes as well, without me around. So we can both take care of ourselves, can we not?"

Sherlock grunts.

"And we're more effective when we help each other."

"That hypothesis is far from proven."

"What the hell do you mean?"

"You made me weak." Sherlock hears Mycroft's voice in his head: Caring is not an advantage. We are not like other people, Sherlock, let it go.

Silence. John's face is red and he opens his mouth to say more but chokes on the words. Sherlock's stomach ties up in confusion. He has only said what is true, so how can it be wrong? And why does he care?

"John, don't be like that. Moriarty got to me through you, that's obvious. It's like you said last night. People can be habit-forming. I've become dependent on you. It's very important to me that you're alive and well, and you are, more or less. And now I need to wean myself off this dependency. It's obviously not healthy."

"Healthy! Since when have you cared about healthy?"

"Well, you do. And you'd agree anything that forces me to jump off a building is not good for my health."

"You bastard. I did not force you to jump off that building. Bloody Moriarty forced you to jump off that building. I'm the one who protects you, that's…" John falters, he wants to say, that's what I do, but he suddenly feels pathetic, like there's nothing left of him after all this. He closes his eyes for a moment and looks back at Sherlock, who has narrowed his eyes in concentration.

"I have been dependent, to varying degrees, on heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, morphine, oxycodone, and nicotine. I'm intimately familiar with the symptoms of addiction and withdrawal and I'm an idiot for not noticing it earlier, until you pointed out the connection yesterday. You, John, my conductor of light. While we lived together, I became gradually more and more dependent on you – your assistance and your presence. I've also missed your pancakes. And our separation has been difficult. For both of us, apparently. But experience has taught me that addiction dulls my senses, slows my brain, makes me vulnerable. Experience has also taught me that the most effective way to end an addiction is a clean break." He thinks again of dry-heaving on his hands and knees, clawing his own skin in a room with no doors, just a silent, immovable brother. "It's quite simple, John. Be reasonable."

"Be… reasonable?" John grabs his head in his hands, trying desperately to force his brain into a usable form. "Ok. Ok. You love the game, right? How do you feel when you have nothing to solve?"

"Bored," Sherlock says, and thinks that this conversation is about to become boring and he really should go.

"Bored, yes. And restless and agitated, to the point of destructive and self-destructive behavior at times?"

"At times, yes."

"And how is that different from withdrawal?"

He pauses. "It doesn't hurt."

John stares at him. Sherlock has the oddest way of flickering, sometimes, like a radio station going in an out of range. His face may be completely impassive, his eyes taking in everything but transmitting nothing, and then suddenly the signal comes in crystal clear and blaring and there it is: fear. And then it flickers back to static.

"Sherlock…" John licks his lips and swallows. "I think this thing that you are calling addiction… is what other people call..." John swallows again. He knows the fear is blatant on his own face. "…love? Not romantic love," he adds quickly. "Love between friends, you know. It's… normal," he adds weakly, because what does normal have to do with anything where Sherlock is involved?

"Love?" Sherlock scoffs, his face twisted into a grotesque sneer, and John has to act quickly to throw up a wall in his mind, to remind himself, this is Sherlock, don't react, it doesn't mean what it would mean from other people, it's Sherlock. "You're aware that I've been diagnosed as a sociopath?"

"You've mentioned, yes."

"When I was initially diagnosed at age 14, sociopathy had its own entry in the DSM, but today it is considered a subset of antisocial personality disorder." Sherlock's voice is sharp and fast, as if running through the evidence at a crime scene. "I'm sure you remember the definition from medical school, John. Failure to conform to social norms as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest." He rattles it off as if reading it off a page, ticking off a check mark in the air as he goes. "Deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure." Here, he throws John a crooked, stomach-twisting smile. "Impulsiveness. Irritability and aggressiveness. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others. Consistent irresponsibility. Lack of remorse."

Sherlock pauses and raises one eyebrow. "Wouldn't you say I have all of those? I only need three. Plus, of course, conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years, and I assure you, that criterion is well satisfied. Furthermore, depending on which of my shockingly simple and unimaginative psychiatric files you look at, you might read that I have reputation-defending antisocial personality disorder with narcissistic features, risk-taking antisocial personality disorder with histrionic features, nomadic antisocial personality disorder with schizoid and/or avoidant features, or some combination of the above. Differential diagnoses bestowed upon me – depressive disorder, impulsive disorder, substance-related disorders of course, histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and the ever-popular borderline personality disorder – commonly coexist with antisocial personality disorder and have often been considered correlated in my particular case. The clear conclusion of a veritable army of your brethren in the psychiatric field is that I am incapable of affection or empathy. I don't care about others. I do not love."

John takes a deep breath. "Well, then." He tilts his head and meets Sherlock's eyes. "You really are an extraordinary actor. You may have missed your true calling."

"I acted in school," Sherlock replies. "It was easy. Tedious."

"You're also a complete moron."

He regards John with some curiosity. In point of fact, he's never thought that much about his diagnosis. The day he initially received it (of course he wasn't supposed to know, but stealing his file was child's play, literally), he read everything he could find on the subject. He quickly determined that it was largely irrelevant, deleted most of it beyond the definition, and devoted little time or energy to the subject after that. Of course that had not been his first psychiatrist and it was not his last. Over the years, he was dragged to another and another and another, each more intellectually deficient than the last. At first, he amused himself by playing games with them. He convinced one Dr. Shankar to diagnose him with schizophrenia, a Dr. Greene to diagnose him with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anorexia nervosa, and a Dr. O'Brien to diagnose him with dissociative identity disorder (13 distinct personalities and two compound). He was also diagnosed with Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified twelve times. He found psychiatry rather dull, however, and tired of the game, turning his attention instead to evading the appointments altogether or if he failed, shutting down completely and retreating to his mind palace. Still, he interacted with each psychiatrist just long enough and just honestly enough to see, out of mild curiosity, if they would agree with that first diagnosis. They always did. It didn't bother him; if anything, he considered it an asset. Sanity is boring, the epitome of boring. Sociopathy sets him apart from and above the ordinary people. It allows him to do his work. There is no proven correlation between his diagnosis and his genius, but he notes anecdotally that the most intelligent people he has ever met – his father, his brother, Moriarty – all share certain qualities, chief among them a notable lack of empathy. Still, he hasn't actually questioned the diagnosis, and its conclusions, since he was 14. Interesting.

John continues. "You care about Mrs. Hudson. You threw that American out the window because he hurt her."

"I was irritated. It would have been exceedingly inconvenient if our landlady was killed."

"But she wasn't killed, so you had no reason to be irritated about that. And you weren't irritated, you were homicidal."

"If I was homicidal, that American would be dead," Sherlock replies. "I don't like it when men hit women," he adds in a low, dark voice.

"I see," John answers quietly. "I don't either." After a pause he adds, "If you don't care about me and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, why not just let us die then? As you pointed out, you've gone to an awful lot of trouble to keep us alive."

"I've explained already," Sherlock replies condescendingly. "An addict will go to great lengths, even risk his own life, for his fix."

"Your fix." John makes an uncomfortable noise in the back of his throat. "That's me then." Sherlock eyes him carefully. Is John angry or pleased? Neither reaction matters, but he has no idea whether this should be considered "good" or not, and he's wholly intrigued by the ambiguity in John's face. And, he realizes with a start, maybe it does matter. Maybe he's gone about this conversation all wrong.

"Are you saying Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade were irrelevant?" John continues. "You wouldn't have saved them if I wasn't part of the package?"

Sherlock tries to wave the question away casually, but his hand trembles ever so slightly. John notices. "Don't know. That hypothetical is irrelevant, so I've never considered it."

"Ah. But. I wasn't just your fix, was I? Because you told me yourself, you didn't even know you if you were going to see me again. So you threw yourself off a building, faked your own death, put Molly Hooper through god knows what, went into hiding, and started methodically hunting down assassins around the world because you are an addict and you needed to keep your fix alive in case maybe, sometime in the future, you might possibly come back to retrieve it. And then when you do, you decide to quit cold turkey. Is that about the size of it?"

"As I said, addiction slows my brain," Sherlock replies imperiously. Then, "I need a cigarette," and he sounds pitiful. John hasn't allowed him to smoke since he arrived and for some reason John can't comprehend, Sherlock has humored him.

"Fine," John sighs. His chest hurts and his head hurts and he doesn't understand this conversation.

Sherlock shoots John a sad, grateful smile that pulls his chest even tighter. John brushes past him to the kitchen to get his whiskey as Sherlock grabs his new coat, the horrid one, off the hook, and pulls a pack of Dunhills from the pocket.

They sit on the sofa together. John sips his whiskey and watches Sherlock enjoy the first drag. He pulls the smoke in, luxurious, eyes closed, and lets it swirl slowly out of his mouth.

John clears his throat awkwardly and drinks some more. "Have you ever considered –"

"Yes."

John rolls his eyes. "… that you are a piss poor sociopath? Is it possible that your diagnosis is… not altogether accurate?"

Sherlock looks sideways at him. "You're a doctor. I would've thought you'd put more stock in it than that."

"And you're the world's only consulting detective. I would've thought you'd put less. I'm surprised you care so much about what a bunch of doctors think." He tries to smile. "You never care what I think."

Sherlock turns to face him, eyes blazing blue. "You're wrong." He turns his attention back to his cigarette.

"Sherlock…" John racks his brain for more arguments. He is trying to be reasonable. But there's nothing left. "I am not your fix. I am your friend. Please."

Sherlock shrugs. "You can be both," he says, like he's doing John a favor.

Right, John thinks, that's as close as the wanker will ever get to admitting he's wrong. Close enough. "I'm coming with you," he announces. "And if you don't let me, I'll track you."

Sherlock snorts derisively. "And how would you do that, John?"

"Mycroft."

"I hardly think Mycroft will take your view on this. He's forced me to get clean before."

John sighs. Time to play dirty, he decides. He can't afford the alternative. "If Mycroft won't help me, I'll track you by myself. How do you see that working out, Sherlock? Do you think I'll get myself killed?"

Worry flickers across Sherlock's face.

"Right then. Where are we going?"