A/N: More season three scene requests! I must admit I really have missed writing Sherlock's brain on drugs. So... flowy.

May have overdone it a bit. Morphine. Perhaps not a good choice.

With the cocaine he still knows his limits, can still tell when the boundaries of his flesh begin to buckle by the ringing in his ears and the tightness of his jaw. But the opiates... he's been off them for so long, he's forgotten. Body and mind reset to the blank slate of days long since buried. There simply hasn't been a reason to chase the languid pleasure of depressants these last few years. It's been focus, focus, focus for an eternity now. Life or death dependant on the sharpness of his mind and the quickness of his reflexes.

Work, first, then the running. Always running. Being chased through jungles of concrete and leaves and wood, captured, chained up, shouted at in languages he can't even begin to remember how to speak. Only he always does, somehow, because he either dredges up the lost words from his palace somewhere or he learns it all anew. The feats his brain is capable of honestly frighten him at times. Giving him knowledge and skills well beyond his years, tapping into deep, deep wells without his ever knowing how they got there. How many words does he know, now, in how many tongues? Is it even possible to count? Does he want to?

Vague scenes of what might be memories swim in front of his eyes as he lies curled up on a filthy mattress, thoughts meandering where they will. There's the snow of Serbia overlying the frosted glass lake of a cocaine high - oh and he'd done a hit of that, hadn't he? Not too long ago. Even though he'd been already lost to the shifting summer winds of poppy fields. Forgotten or dismissed the danger; morphine's gentle sunlight makes it so easy not to care. Now he's got a winter tableau lit by quiet dawn. Beautiful. Deadly. Good christ... so easily fatal. But beautiful.

Now if only he could just relocate all this lovely scenery, get it the hell out of Serbia. Because soldiers keep looming at the edges of his vision and he can't quite muster the energy to run.

Voices behind his back, that dark-skinned idiot with the earrings who can't handle half a syringe without speaking like a quarter-speed recording. Shut up, god. Learn to hold your drugs, you bloody twat. But then... oh, hmm, another voice. A familiar one? Is he hallucinating, now? Maybe. Sherlock rolls over to check, curious. Oh, hello John. Well then. Not hallucinating. Pleasant surprise. A bright ray of gold-spun warmth to go along with the winter sunlight in his brain.

But John's golden glow turns quickly into a crackling lightning storm.

Sherlock gets dragged up by his arm - ow, bloody hell, stop, not the left one for god's - and then there's shouting, a lecture he only identifies by the tone of voice because he's long since learnt to tune the words out. John had come to collect the daft idiot beside him, not Sherlock (- of course not Sherlock, why would he, who would want to collect him of all-) and the younger man weaves a stumbling exit ahead of them whilst Sherlock stays behind with his gold-warmth-fury-lightning-rage melting vast ragged holes in the ice he'd been enjoying. Clouds roll over the sunlight, chilling him to the bone. John's upsetting the entire scene. Bastard.

Right, no. Doesn't need this. Sherlock stalks off toward a door he's fairly sure should lead outside, shoves a bit too hard and somehow manages to fling an entire sheet of plywood straight out onto the stairs. It lands with a satisfying crash, echoing the frustrated growl of his own words like a bolstered shield against John's tempered electricity behind him.

A case! This is for... it's for something. He knows it is. He's... undercover. Or he had been - under the cover of snow and gentle warmth, you arse, until this light-that-isn't-his-no-not-anymore had to turn up and ruin it all. Oh, but of course there's another point, somewhere. Letters and baiting the shark, but that's inconsequential. Other plans in motion for that. Going so far with the backup strategy hadn't been necessary, really. But then... sometimes, damn it. Sometimes he still needs the quiet snow. It had been helpful at one point. Comforting. Like this golden light had once been until it decided to abandon him for weddings and orphansecrettattooskipcodeliars. And the sunlight helps, too. It does, really. Even the danger of both is worth it. They balance each other.

Or they would, without this nagging storm upsetting their harmonic waltz.

Shoved uncomfortably in the middle seat, with the idiot who can't handle heroin to one side and that half-sober stubblefaced sitter to the other. Legs scrunched up. Vaguely painful. It takes a moment to register precisely what John's on about with the pee in a jar but like a tendril of mud through the cracks in his ice it catches on to buried knowledge of drugs tests. Oh god's sake, he doesn't... why? He'd been so content back on the awful little mattress, why hadn't he just kept his mouth shut? Stupid morphine blurred out the consequences, too bright and hazy to see the sketched-out future his brain could have built if not for all the snow.

Bloody pointless, running tests. He already knows full well... but, then. No, let them waste their time. Serves them right. Wasting his. Wonders vaguely around sparks of frigid annoyance just how massively positive the results will be. How long has he been high, anyway? Just the night? Since yesterday? Several hours at least. Plenty of time for the drifts to trickle out his mind and settle through to the kidneys.

Pain, suddenly, across his face. Doesn't really register. Not much of a sting, not compared to steel boots, hard fists and chains. Snows of Serbia again. Since when has his mind palace had so many trees? Oh but it's Molly, isn't it. Not a soldier. And the hard metal of a ring didn't slice his flesh. Engagement's off, then. Sorry. Not really. A little, actually. Can't admit that. Sarcasm instead. Defuses trite lectures. When will they accept he's a lost cause?

They won't, will they. Idiots. It's for a case, then, wasn't it in the beginning? More or less. The snow was, at any rate. Turn it round back on John, a bit of unexpected help from... who the hell is that bloke, anyway? Looks a bit like... no. Doesn't really. But he's good, decent at least. Nope, nope, nope, not your name. Billy. Fine. Scruffy bloke is Billy. He tucks that information up amongst half-melted snow. Right next to the sharpening imagery of John's involvement with that bandage on Bill's arm. Addict, John. Hypocrite.

Message alert on his mobile. Finally. Something further to work with. Janine's wondering where he's got to. Best let her know. She'll catch on, tell her boss, elegant perfection.

As he leaves the room snow begins to kick up in flurries through his mind again. Sunlight permeates in soft beams of hazy brightness, and he lets himself get caught up in the light winter chill. So much easier to think this way, god. All his information's frozen in place, he can just pluck it shimmering off the boughs of his branching trees of connections, no need to go haring about his mental space. Like an orchard, perhaps. Should make a new row.

When he glances up from the task of planting more lines of flowering trees he quite abruptly realises he's somehow in a bloody taxi now and hang on, weren't there other people?

Just John here. Had he filtered the rest? Probably. Hadn't been paying attention. Doesn't need to, though, does he? He's got a head full of warmth and snow to focus with. Everything else just gets buried under drifts. Dig it up later, when he needs it. Never will. Straightened door knocker. Usually askew. Damn it.

What's he doing here? Who phoned him? Oh god damn it, John, why can't you just keep your bloody- wait, we? We!? For god's sake! People in his sodding flat why the hell can't these bastards ever leave him alone!?

Anderson? And some... other bint? And who the hell is that little pillock? Get out of my chair before I rip your damned arm off. Sherlock grits his teeth - doesn't want to deal with this. He had a head full of brilliant white snow, damn it, and it's all melting away in muddy rivulets now. The sun's too bright. Lightning storm ruined it. Curls up sideways in the lone half of an armchair duo and tries in vain to retrieve some of the comforting warmth he'd found so fleetingly back in the den surrounded by all the starving lost souls.

But all he can see is the kitchen, idiots riffling through it, the path unblocked by red fabric.

He'd gotten rid of it, John's spot, the chair, because it turned out the constant reminder of solitude wasn't something morphine could erase. Not whilst he looked at it, anyway. But looking at nothing's been worse, somehow. There's no way to win. Mix the sunlight with the frost, then, and forget there was ever anything to see.

Mycroft's nattering on and he ignores it for a while - nothing, nothing, no, nothing to find. Not in here, anyway. He's not that stupid. And even if he were the majority of contraband's pretty well all safely ensconced in his veins now. Tolerance is a fickle thing. But then the fat ponce is off toward the bedroom and oh, wait no no no can't let him find her. That's something. A hollow something utterly devoid of meaning but it's still there and it shouldn't be caught. Not yet.

Okay, just stop, point made. Let them believe it's what they want. Put them off the scent of the reality he's carefully woven. His case.

And right, honestly, this all really did have a bloody point. Well before the siren's song of frosted light got to him he'd been doing all this for a reason. Say it, form the name in his throat, show Mycroft the shark's circling shadow and all this will stop.

Oh how it stops. Dead halt like a train coming up against a rockslide. Should have done that minutes ago, can't remember why he hadn't. Probably some justification but then there's another flurry of snow and he really doesn't care. More fun to watch Mycroft channel a dead man in a fit of paranoid rage. Up against John, though... pfft, hah. No. Not a chance. John, the unstoppable force smiling blandly at an immovable object.

Sherlock's unstoppable, too. Has been since the day he was born, and even moreso whilst coasting merrily along on the still-slick dunes of melting snow in his head. Mycroft can do the voice and the posture and the steely glacial stare all he wants, isn't going to work. Hasn't worked in years. And anyway it's far past time for the self-important git to leave, now. This is all just stupid, pointless, going nowhere. Bye bye.

Unwise, brother mine.

... no.

No. Not in that voice. Not with that look. Not now.

Not when caution and decorum still lie half-muted under ice, when Sherlock can so effortlessly take out all the frustrations he's held tamped so far down for so long and let them bubble to the surface like a geyser. Unwise? Unwise...?!

Remember unwise. Remember who ran hunted through the frigid tundra, brother mine. Who spat blood with wrists rubbed raw by chains while the other sat idly by and watched. Who knows every weakness of the human body because he's had no choice but to learn them all or die. It's not the ponce in the suit with the brolly, is it? Playing at control. No. It's the wildfire with the head full of sunlit blizzard who'll destroy the whole of creation if it pesters him long enough. Who'll destroy his own mind if he sees fit. Because who the hell can stop him?

Sherlock is chaos and tragedy and all the wrongs which fester dark beneath the surface of a turbulent river. Mycroft is the naive child struggling to stem the flow of raging rapids. Mycroft, straightening a crooked door knocker. Mycroft, meting out threats that hold no weight without a web of whipped lackeys behind him. Mycroft, mirroring a man he'll never admit to idolising. Even now.

And Mycroft. With his wrist twisted back, a snapping stretch of cartilage and his façade cracking so easily. Torn asunder by just that tiny bit of pain. Pathetic.

Don't appal me when I'm high.