Title: Full Circle

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)

Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: 3 people, 2 episodes, 1 theme. John Watson and trust come full circle.

Written: Original idea: 11/28/13. Written and edited: 12/7 – 12/8/13.

Notes: After a period of work-related stress where I couldn't even think about writing, I changed jobs, went back to my evening shift hours, and soon found this story coming to life, seemingly out of nowhere. It was an interesting one to write as it ended up being very particular in its structure – from the bookend episodes to the arrangement of the characters, with Sherlock always being in the center. Quoted dialogue from the episodes does not belong to me. As always, I hope I did the characters justice. Thank you for reading and for your continued support. I cherish every response.

A Study in Pink

1. Ella

"How's your blog going?"

The question was as routine as the dance - John's dry, muted response and Ella's calling him out on the obvious lie – that followed it. John appreciated the consistency, in a way, almost as much as he appreciated Ella's method of delivery: it was honest, but non-clinical, with a hint of the same muted sarcasm John himself used, the words chiding but neither condescending nor demeaning. And underneath it all was the subtlest undercurrent of two colleagues talking; a hint of a doctor-to-doctor joke regarding the frustrations of noncompliance.

John appreciated the reminder of his value as a doctor while using another one of those skills – multitasking – to study her notepad. "You just wrote 'still has trust issues.'"

"And you read my writing upside down," Ella countered. "You see what I mean?"

Touché.

Ella encouraged the blog again, reminding John of its clinical value in his recovery. John deflected and despaired, his "nothing happens to me" bitter, raw, and hopeless after a life that had been very much its opposite.

They set up his next appointment, hopeful for improvement, but wearily resigned to stagnation.

But then something changed. John opened his blog one night as sleep eluded him and looked at the blank page with a clinical eye for its potential rather than dismissive frustration and insistence that it wouldn't work for him. He started to strip back the calloused layers of reluctance and self-sufficient 'I can handle this myself' stubbornness and began to trust his gut, both professionally and personally; began, by extension, to trust Ella's clinical judgment. Because John knew, deep in his gut, that he wasn't handling this transition well, that he was in a very dark place. If a patient presented to him in such a state, he would immediately refer them to a specialist such as Ella; now he had to let himself be referred, to trust her assessment and plan. Trust her assurance that his blog entries didn't all have to be public, that he didn't have to go from reticent and private to one of those over-sharing Internet idiots. Trust that what words came were what needed to come, to help him breathe through the suffocating clouds of loss and change.

He slowly typed out "nothing happens to me." Promptly erased it.

But it wasn't long after that something happened. Someone happened.

John began to write.

And Ella watched as the world listened.

2. Sherlock

Months after being thrust into the whirlwind that was Sherlock Holmes, John would look back and recognize countless little moments of almost unconscious trust between them; would marvel that a man as distrustful, depressive, and tightly controlled as he had been almost immediately gave Sherlock his hard-earned trust. Because showing up to meet Sherlock – a stranger who had stripped his life bare with one look before haring off to a mortuary - to look at a flat was trusting. Not only considering the flatshare, but staying at 221B for tea while Sherlock hurried off in a fit of glee to investigate four serial suicides, was trusting.

But the big moment of trust, the one that John would later pinpoint for its significance, came in three words that rushed from his lips without a single thought: "Oh God, yes." Because when Sherlock asked, "want to see some more?", it had been with an underlying calculated, almost clinical, assessment; that as much as John had seen more than his fair share of "injuries, violent deaths, and a bit of trouble too," he needed it to survive, to be who he was. The doctor in John apparently recognized the prescription and filled it without conscious thought – because off he went, hurrying after a man he barely knew into God knew what, like a dying man to a newfound cure.

His limp had never been so far from his mind.

The night John moved his things into 221B, Sherlock ordered Chinese takeaway while John washed the powder burns from his fingers.

"You were going to take that damn pill, weren't you?"

"Of course I wasn't. Biding my time. Knew you'd turn up."

"No you didn't."

Sherlock likely was full of it – simply a risk-taking idiot trying to prove he was clever, as John had said. But maybe part of Sherlock really had unconsciously trusted John to keep him safe. Just as part of John had maybe trusted that Sherlock was worth saving.

When the food arrived, John reached for the rice with his gun hand, fork poised in his left.

Both were perfectly steady.

3. Mycroft

Mycroft's method of introducing himself – abduction via Orwellian surveillance, isolated locations and interrogation through posh, condescending omniscience, thinly veiled, deeply personal threats – didn't exactly make John interested in trusting him. Insulting John by asking him to spy for money, even less so.

But threatening him with his own illegally and unethically obtained therapy notes? Well, that was just not on.

John knew Mycroft's sort; knew exactly how to deal with them. And when Mycroft saw that John wouldn't back down, nor would he be intimidated, he went for bringing John's most personal darkness to light.

"'Trust issues,' it says here."

"What's that?"

"Could it be that you've decided to trust Sherlock Holmes of all people?"

"Who says I trust him?"

"You don't seem the kind to make friends easily."

"Are we done?"

And they were done; John stopping the threat in its tracks despite both of them knowing the true state of his trust. Because not only was Sherlock actively texting John at the time, but within an hour of Mycroft's departure, John was tracking a murderer at Sherlock's side, running after him on the echo of a smugly accurate "and I said 'dangerous,' and here you are."

Damn it, indeed.

When John finally learned who Mycroft really was, he still didn't trust him. But he did trust that the animosity between the Holmes brothers actually was a childish feud, as Mycroft had alluded. That Mycroft may have been both the British Government and a touch of criminal mastermind, but that there was, somewhere within the folds of the polished suits, some real concern for Sherlock's well-being.

And that was something John could work with.

The Reichenbach Fall

1. Mycroft

After knowing Mycroft for over a year, John trusted him to be a manipulative, omniscient, condescending bastard who would use his considerable status to spy on John and Sherlock under the guise of concern. Yet John still trusted that some of that concern was real and that like any childish feud between siblings, it stemmed deep down from, maybe not love and devotion in the Holmes brothers' case, but some degree of brotherly connection and sense of responsibility to one another. That neither really wanted to see the other harmed.

"This is what you were trying to tell me, isn't it? 'Watch his back, 'cause I've made a mistake.'"

John trusted that Mycroft's circuitously admitted mistake regarding Moriarty was made because Mycroft trusted John to help keep Sherlock safe – a mutual goal between two otherwise very different men.

Trusted, even in his simmering, icy rage, that Mycroft had told him in time.

As he strode out of the room – angry tension channeled to focused purpose - he never once considered that Mycroft's "I'm sorry" was an apology, not to Sherlock, but to him.

That they were already too late.

2. Sherlock

Sherlock was on the roof.

John had trusted him to be clever, to reset Moriarty's true identity, to have a plan as he always did.

But there Sherlock was, on the roof of St. Bart's, delivering a painfully human suicide note via mobile phone, punctuated with lies John was too shocked to do more than recognize as being such.

John heard the emotion in Sherlock's voice; trusted that it was real. Trusted Sherlock to hear between the cracks of John's own responses; growing fissures evading their usual tight control, betraying memories of having lost friends this way before. To hear everything behind John's final plea – "no, don't" – and not force new nightmares upon him.

He trusted Sherlock not to jump.

Sherlock jumped.

3. Ella

It was raining; a gray, melancholy day broken by distant rumbles of thunder too weary for building-shaking rage.

Ella made him say it. She knew why he was there after an eighteen month absence; knew he was honoring their agreement to have that absence by coming back when he truly needed help.

But she still made him say it.

Anger bit through tightly controlled tears. He could hardly breathe through the grief filling his lungs like some emotional pulmonary edema; barely swallow against the memories, both new and old, constricting his throat.

"What happened, John?"

His inner clinician found a foothold there, gasping for air as it pinpointed the use of therapeutic communication: an open-ended question, leaning forward to show interest and empathy.

But then grief swept back over him, drowning the professional comfort.

"You need to get it out."

Gentle. Not an order, not a demand, but a reminder; an attempt to give him back that physician's foothold, to verbalize the diagnosis so treatment could begin.

John nodded around another hitching breath. He knew - he knew - he had to say it. He had seen it, which was so much worse; saying it shouldn't be that bloody hard, should it?

With each word, each breath a crack closer to completely shattering, he got it out. "My best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is dead."

And with that, shock's numbness splintered and fell away, pushing John to finally, finally break down.

Rain swept at the window, nature's white noise shielding his private grief.

Ella remained silent, letting the anguish, the loss, the anger, guilt, exhaustion, doubt, and soul-deep hurt, shake through him. She didn't speak, nor did she touch; simply stayed present as John let it out.

When John regained control, it was to a body slumped with bone-deep exhaustion, a voice scraped raw from tightly held sobs, burning, blurred vision no number of tissues could fix, and an emptiness that went deeper than the sum of his corporeal parts. He knew that emptiness well; had been there before, in the breath before Sherlock became part of his life. And he knew in his gut, with sickening familiarity, that he wasn't handling this transition well, that he was in a very dark place; knew how quickly, how insidiously, that darkness could become inescapable, and looked up at Ella with the hollow, red-rimmed eyes of a man intimately familiar with being left behind by that darkness' wake.

Eighteen months ago, she had trusted him to be safe. Now he was trusting herto keep him that way.

"There's stuff that you wanted to say…..but didn't say it."

"Yeah."

"Say it now."

He couldn't. She knew he couldn't.

"No. Sorry, I can't."

John Watson was many things – a soldier, a doctor, a loyal friend and fierce protector, a writer. Ella knew the blog would truly help John; that writing would be a perfect outlet for such a multifaceted, private man. And it had been – John had thrived and the world had gained a magnificent storyteller. As she had always told him, words on a blog were still words spoken, weights unburdened. Whether anyone else saw those words was his choice; he could trust his words to the world or keep them for himself. It was all fine.

And what John needed most in this crisis, where his tight emotional control had just betrayed him, was something he could control.

So when John finally looked at her again, a soldier's unwavering focus and expectation of orders mixed with a grieving man's grasp at hope, she knew what to say. To many, her words would have been a non sequitur, maybe even flippantly cruel. But to John, they offered a sense of desperately needed control and release; a quiet reminder that if he couldn't say it, to write it. And it brought him back to the early days of their sessions, to a comforting dance that he knew the steps to; a give-and-take that eventually saw him trust Ella's expertise and begin writing against the darkness, filling the emptiness with his words.

John's lips quirked into a ghost of a smile, fists unclenching and spine straightening as he picked up on Ella's layered prescription, eyes clearing just enough to gift her with a patient's thanks and a colleague's respect for the keen assessment.

Because Ella found him through the emptiness; looked right at him and, with four words, brought them full circle.

"How's your blog going?"