AN: Here is the next 'mini' installment of The Colour of Light series. You all have been so encouraging and wonderful, and I know you all have been looking forward to the ASiB redeux. As always I appreciate feedback, and your opinions and comments are invaluable to me.

xxHoney

Disclaimer: Sherlock and characters belong to Mofftiss and the BBC as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

During

Jane and Sherlock hobble out of the taxi in the early morning, trying not to jar their respective injuries. Sherlock straightens stiffly, an arm protectively wrapped around his ribs while Jane balances awkwardly with her cane and air cast. After paying, Sherlock goes ahead to unlock the door. Jane stands for a moment on the pavement outside 221B, hand tightening around the grip of the cane as she watches the sun rise, lightening the sky bit by bit. Her body feels exhausted — being kidnapped by a psychopath, dug out from under a building, and spending six hours in A&E made her want to sleep for years — but she is completely wired despite herself.

"Jane?" Sherlock calls from the open door, and she turns to him. His eyes catch the light like opals, the tension in the corners lend a depth to his iridescent gaze that pierces her straight through. Her heart clenches in her chest as she drinks in the sight of him for the hundredth time since they were pulled from the rubble of the explosion and she was convinced she would never see his face again, unsure if they would be rescued in time before the rest of the structure collapsed. She blinks away her tears, frustrated that there seemed to be an endless supply of them all of a sudden, and bites her lip. He makes his way carefully down the few steps at the front door and comes over to her. "Is it your leg?" he says softly, eyes flickering over her with unguarded concern.

"I'm fine," she says roughly, and storms past as best as she can, the aluminium cane clacking hatefully in her wake. She stops in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at them balefully. It looks like a mountain from where she's standing, and she presses the tips of her fingers into the crease of her brow and lets out a deep breath. Sherlock hovers next to her, and it grates on her frayed nerves. "Will you just —!" she snaps and gestures for him to go ahead. She reins in her temper, and bites her lip again, the small forgotten cut twinging sharply. The pain gives her something else to focus on, and she softens her voice. "I'll be right behind."

"Of course," Sherlock says, clearing his throat. "Tea, I should think." And with that he breezes up the stairs — well as best as he can with three broken ribs. Bloody swan. The image makes her smile a little, and she feels bad for snapping at him. God she needed to hold it together. She shakes out her hand before gripping her cane and mounting the stairs.

"I must really look like shit if you are actually making tea," Jane tries to joke, but it takes energy she doesn't have to sound convincing. She lowers herself delicately into her chair.

Sherlock grunts, and brings over a mug of steaming tea, and she reaches out with her left hand without thinking. The tremor rears up and before she has a chance to realise, she sloshes the hot liquid all over her hand and drops it to the floor.

"Damn it!" she swears and jumps up, forgetting about her leg. Her knees buckle and she lists to the side. Before she can lose her balance, however, Sherlock is right there steadying her. She holds back a traitorous sob and her ineptitude, and rests her head in the middle of his chest, defeated. "Damn my leg," she says weakly. "Damn everything."

"To the furthest pits of hell?" Sherlock quips softly, and a watery laugh gusts out of her.

"To the furthest pits of hell," she confirms, and gingerly wraps her arms around him. He presses his lips to the top of her head and breathes in deeply. She wants to melt into his embrace, but a jittery sort of panic suddenly seizes her, and she pulls away.

"Jane?"

"I think I – I'm just going to go to bed," she says, face burning. She swipes a tear away from her chin with her shoulder and takes up her cane.

"Yes. Right," Sherlock says. "Do you want me to —?"

"Good night, Sherlock," she says, hurrying away. She needs to clamp down on that insidious anxiety before it breaks free and runs rampant.

She makes it to her room, and barely closes the door before she slides down it and collapses in tears. She puts a hand over her mouth and cries silently, mentally screaming at herself to hold it together. She would not have a panic attack. She wouldn't. She angrily stuffs it away back into its battered box, and crawls to her bed not having the energy to stand. She drags herself up and curls on her side, fully dressed, tears sliding off her nose and staining the pillow.

She falls asleep that way before the sun has fully reached the sky.

-oOo-

Sherlock lays on the sofa with his hands prayer-like against his lips sometime later.

"Dreadful, just dreadful," Mrs. Hudson tuts as she dusts the mantle. "I am so glad you both are okay."

"Mm," Sherlock hums, tuning her out.

"Imagine my shock. I saw it on the telly first thing this morning. I didn't even know you were gone. It was your brother who finally got around to telling me, and if it weren't for him, I'd have worked myself into such a state," she goes on as she takes to beating the dust out of the Union Jack pillow. "It's not good for me, you know. I take to pacing when I'm anxious and I've got a hip."

"Mm," Sherlock says again.

"You couldn't even tell an old woman when you got back. Shame on you Sherlock Holmes," Mrs. Hudson chides, and Sherlock looks at her then.

"It was quite early. Isn't it rude to announce one's presence in the small hours of the morning?" he drawls.

"Oh rude! Since when do you care about being rude? It's not like I was asleep anyway. Up all night pacing," she says and straightens the tartan afghan slung over the back of Jane's armchair with short angry tugs. "I have a hip, you know."

"So you've said," Sherlock snaps.

Mrs. Hudson huffs, her face pinching in indignation. She raises her finger possibly to give him a good scolding. "Listen here, young man," (definitely a scolding,) "I know I'm nobody's mother, but a simple tap on my door would have sufficed —"

Sherlock sits up, ignoring the pain in his ribs. "Mrs. Hudson."

"— just to let me know. It's the least you could have done after all I put up with —"

"Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock says again getting to his feet.

"— fingers in the crisper, holes in my walls, all the shouting and carrying on! Really!"

Sherlock clasps her upper arms to prevent her from manically pacing. (Because she does have a hip, after all.) "Mrs. Hudson. I apologise," he says softly and (surprisingly) sincerely. "We were a bit…preoccupied."

Mrs. Hudson stills and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, her chestnut irises are bright with tears. "I don't know what I would have done if you both…" her voice peters out, and she shakes her head a little. Sherlock pats her awkwardly on the shoulder.

"Er…there, there, Mrs. Hudson. Can't get rid of us that easily," he says trying for levity. It works because she lets out a laugh and tugs his chin affectionately.

"Oh you!" she says. "I'll just be downstairs if you need me. Shall I bring up dinner?"

"That's not necessary," Sherlock says ushering her towards the doors.

"All right. Just give us a shout. Be sure you eat something eventually. It's getting late," she says and makes her way back to her apartment.

Sherlock sighs and rubs the tension out of the back of his neck.

Christ. Everything was a mess, and he spent the whole day trying to figure out a way to fix it. He promised Jane he would, and there had to be a way to salvage the remains of the bond between them that he single-handedly obliterated. (The actual bomb was nothing compared to the way he viciously tore apart Jane's deepest darkest secrets and dissected them ruthlessly to sate his own curiosity.)

The fact that he eviscerated her in the first place isn't what's vexing him, though. The act alone isn't surprising in the slightest. He is a sociopath after all, and behaviour like this is rather typical of his caustic character. No, what is perplexing is that he recognises he's meant to be bothered at all. It signified a paradigm shift, given he normally wouldn't have seen anything wrong with forsaking someone else's feelings in order to cut to the quick of the facts. It was efficient; perfunctory, and the way he's gone about things since before he could remember.

Now, however, he felt an inexplicable urge to protect Jane and her feelings at all cost. Which was ironic because as far as he could conjecture feelings were, and continued to remain, utterly useless in all honesty. (He could attest to the fact himself.)

He lets the air drag itself out of his lungs even though his ribs spark with pain at the motion of his deflating chest. He makes his way back over the sofa to think.

-oOo-

Jane surfaces from sleep to the lengthening shadows of late afternoon and the sound of Mrs. Hudson nattering away downstairs. It's a comforting feeling, the feeling of being home and safe in her own bed, and after dragging herself up to take some pain meds she has stashed in her bedside table, she manages to burrow under the bedclothes and slips back into a pleasant blankness.

The peace doesn't last for long, however, and before she has a chance to wake herself up, the terror wraps its dark tendrils around her and pulls her under, the remnants of her lucidity slipping away.

She can't see, and a loud exploding mortar shakes her to the core. Ironically, the blast induces her vision instead of the other way around, and the world explodes into light and colour.

The Afghan sun is high against a cerulean swath of sky, and she squints up at it through the burning in her head.

The hot sand grits into her knees, and she brings a hand up to rest against her brow, shielding her from the harsh glare. Her forehead and palms are clammy and damp, and she scans the horizon.

"Bill!" she calls, and her voice strangely echoes back to her despite the utter wasteland of the desert she currently finds herself in. Her vision swims, and her eyes sting with sweat causing her to wipe her face. She needed to get up, she needed to find the road at least. Where did she leave him again?

She drags herself up and turns in a circle, searching for the outcrop of rock in the distance.

There is nothing but sand and sky for miles in every direction.

"Bill!" she shouts again, her voice getting lost on the wind. She tries walking, a lurching shambling pace, and that was definitely a mistake going by the wrenching pain in her shoulder and abdomen. She cries out and sinks to her hands and knees again. The sand in front of her turns red and thick like mud, and she realises in horror that it's from the gouts of blood pouring out of her.

Her strength drains out of her and she watches as it seeps into the ground. She curls into a tight ball and clamps her eyes closed.

"Please God! Let me live!" she cries, and the sand beneath her starts to rise and swell until it turns to an ocean and her head slips under the waves.

She can't breathe, and she kicks her legs as hard as she can to try and break the surface, salt and blood choking her, sliding thick down her throat. Just when she thinks she will never make it, she bursts into the open air.

Sherlock! Where was Sherlock?

Sherlock! Oh god the pool. Why was she in the pool?

Sherlock! She treads the deep water, whipping around.

"I'm soooo changeable!" comes the sickening sing-song voice of James Moriarty. It ricochets off the stark walls, the glissando scattering and confusing her of its origin.

No!

She knows what happens next, her eyes fastening onto the changing stall across from her. She tries to swim to the edge, tries to pull herself out of the churning water, but it feels as if she is moving through molasses.

A light flickers on at the far end of the pool, and Jane sees Sherlock and Moriarty squaring off, her gun in Sherlock's hand and leveled at his face.

"Sherlock!" she yells, but they can't hear her, and she can't reach them.

The bomb explodes behind her, a silent percussion that she cannot hear, but the fire and heat tear into her regardless, and she is burning, burning, burning a scream trapped despondently in her throat…

"Jane? Jane! Wake up!"

Her wrists are bound and held tight against her chest, strong arms restraining her from behind. The flood gates of her panic are thrown open wide, ripping her apart as her first thought is that she's back in Moriarty's clutches.

"No!" she shouts, and thrashes wildly against her captor. "No! Please god, no, no, no!"

A painful grunt resounds followed by a sharp hiss when her elbow comes in contact with ribs, the low familiar rumble echoing through her own body.

She gasps going rigid, reality crashing down around her, and blinks rapidly to try and dispel the images of flickering pool water and unforgiving sun from her vision. Her room swims into focus. She is on the floor, her back against the far corner next to her wardrobe, the nightmare having propelled her off her bed at some point. She hasn't experienced a night terror of this magnitude since waking up in the hospital all those months ago, and she feels her face burning in shame.

"Sherlock?" she says tremulously, hardly willing to breathe.

"It was just a dream, Jane. It's all right," Sherlock says against her. Her reserve snaps.

"No it's not! It's not okay, oh god, Sherlock!" she says through gritted teeth as the panic ignites her blood full force. Every nerve is alight with an intangible pain as her pulse pounds in her skull. "Let me go. Let me up!"

She struggles against him again, and he releases her. She scrambles upright as best as she can with her cast, nearly falling over again, but she gets her feet under her and hurries for the door.

"Jane!" Sherlock says, getting likewise to his feet. She doesn't wait for him, and makes her way down the stairs, surprised that she didn't go tumbling down them arse over end. When she reaches the landing, she stumbles into the wall for a moment before righting herself just as Sherlock descends the last few steps.

"God," Jane moans putting her hand against the wall, the contents of her stomach or lack thereof, riling unpleasantly. She pinches her lips together breathing harshly out of her nose.

Sherlock only takes a second to assess her before slinging one of her arms over his shoulders and swiftly guiding her in the direction of the bathroom. They make it just in time for her to fall to her knees and retch pitifully over the toilet. There's not much, but her stomach continues to spasm until she's bringing up bile. Tentatively, Sherlock comes up behind her and holds back her hair.

It's disturbingly cliché, and she huffs a laugh that sounds more like a sob. The gesture is uncharacteristically gentle of him, and it does more unpleasant things to her gut.

"I'm not going to break," she rasps.

"I know," he says, placing another hand on her back as she retches and spits one more time. She slumps over, resting her forehead atop her arm, and focusses on getting her heart to settle back down to a normal rate. After a moment, Sherlock kneels down beside her. "All right?"

"Yeah," she says shakily. "It's my fault. I should know better than to take narcotics. They always mess with me."

Sherlock hums in agreement, and she turns to look at him. He's staring at a spot over her shoulder, lost in thought, and Jane spots a mottled bruise beginning to bloom on his cheekbone.

"Shit. Did I do that?" Jane says reaching for him. He tries to brush her off.

"It's nothing, Jane."

"Sherlock, dammit, let me see," Jane says gripping his chin and holding him steady. A sickening thread of guilt uncoils in her gut, and if her stomach wasn't well and truly empty she would probably be sick again.

"I think your hand faired worse," Sherlock says. She glances at her knuckles and notices some blood beginning to dry from when she broke open the scabs again. "You managed to hit the headboard pretty hard before I could get to you."

Jane stares down at her hand, a thought occurring to her. "How did you even get in? My door was locked."

"Yes, well…" Sherlock says getting to his feet. "Let's just say Mrs. Hudson will be giving me an earful in the future."

Jane shakes her head. "Did it ever occur to you that I locked my door to keep you out?"

"That's generally the purpose of locking one's door," Sherlock says tersely. He walks over to the sink and fills a glass with water.

She takes it from him, irritation spiking through her.

"I see. So you aren't oblivious to personal boundaries, you just choose not to observe them," she snipes.

"Precisely," Sherlock emphasises, his top lip curling back to reveal a hint of teeth in his disdain.

"Well isn't that just the argument we've been having all along? What ever it takes to get your kicks, is that it?" she says bitterly, picking herself up to sit on the edge of the tub.

"Given what you know about me, and what I have repeatedly demonstrated to you in the past I can see how you would be led to believe that I would simply break into your room just to 'get my kicks' as you so eloquently put it, but I can assure you that was not the case," Sherlock clips, his hackles raised. It gives her a perverse sort of pleasure backing him into a corner for a change that she barks out a laugh.

"Come on. Don't pretend this isn't all one big game to you!" she goads. "People to take apart and put back together again. Experiments, puzzles of the human condition which you claim to be wholly sterilised of — which we both know is a crock of shit by the way — and then when you're done; when they have been all but hollowed out and examined and thoroughly analysed, it's off to the next intrigue!"

"That's not —" Sherlock tries to say, bright patches of colour high on his cheeks.

"Bullshit it's not!" she yells. She knows her wrath is somewhat misplaced, but she is in too much pain and much too shaken to care. She's just so damn tired of keeping it in. So, so tired. "What happens after, hm? What happens when there's nothing left of me and your god damned curiosity runs out?"

"Jane —" he says again, but she bolts to her feet and shoves him hard in the chest.

"What happens when this game between us is over?"

"Don't you get it?!" Sherlock finally explodes, grabbing her forcefully by the arms and giving her a sound shake. "It's not about games and puzzles anymore, Jane! It stopped being a fucking game the moment a bomb was strapped to you!"

Jane reels back for a second in shock, Sherlock's words ringing out against the stark tiles of the bathroom like a hammer to an anvil. Sherlock hardly ever deigns to use such crass language, so that in of itself is enough to render her completely speechless.

The furious expression on his face suddenly melts to one of horror, and he abruptly releases her as if he was burned.

"Sherlock…" she says.

He flinches, even though her voice is soft and fragile. He retreats, banging out of the bathroom leaving her bereft and somewhat chilled by his absence.

Guilt immediately crowds in as the anger begins to fade, and it gnaws at her already shredded stomach. Her words were reckless and harsh, said in the moment when all she could think about was hurting someone else. Which in retrospect, didn't make her feel anything other than the stinging lance of the knowledge she was pushing away the only person she had left. God her past was like a poison, infecting everything it touched, and there was no containing it.

She scrubs a hand over her face, angrily swiping at the tears she didn't realise were there, and limps to the sink. She gingerly washes the dried blood off her knuckles, hissing when she uses some of the antibacterial soap, the pain reminiscent of the barbs she had hurtled at Sherlock. Christ, what was wrong with her?

She soaks a flannel under the cold water from the tap and wrings it out.

With her heart tightening in her chest, she timidly hobbles out into the sitting room hoping that Sherlock didn't already barricade himself in his room. It quickly becomes clear that he didn't get very far at all, having all but dropped himself onto the sofa with his head buried in his hands. He doesn't look up when she limps closer, and instead clutches at his hair like he does when he is particularly distressed. It makes her ache.

"Sherlock?" she says, voice losing power at the end, her throat trashed from the shouting and crying and bitter acid.

He doesn't say anything, so she sits on the edge next to him and gently pulls at his wrists until his releases his grip from his hair. He looks up at her as if in a daze, mouth twisting downward in misery.

"I couldn't not, Jane. I heard you and I – I couldn't just sit there and listen." His irises flash magnesium bright before skittering away, and she bites her lip.

"It was just a nightmare," she says, tone unconvincing even to her own ears. The dream she had was frighteningly realistic; the sand, the heat, the blood, the water. In fact she fancies that if she were to concentrate hard enough, she could smell the scent of chlorine hovering still in her memory. She swallows hard and brings the cool cloth to the side of Sherlock's face to try and soothe the slight swelling. He finally looks her in the eyes.

"You…you were shouting," he says.

"Yeah. I do that," Jane says giving a half-hearted grin.

"You were shouting my name, Jane," Sherlock says, his words weighted with stones. He brings her hand away from his cheek. "You've never done that before, but tonight you did. You were calling for me and I couldn't get to you, so yes, I broke down your bloody door."

"It's not about the door, Sherlock," she says looking down at their interwoven fingers.

"I made a mistake at the gallery. One more deduction than I was anticipating. Overstepped, as it were," Sherlock posits hastily.

"No, it's not that," Jane says the truth of the matter finally swimming to the surface, now that she wasn't finding someone else to blame for the hurt inside her. It was so clear now, and she couldn't ignore it any longer. She takes a breath. "Well…yes what you did was a dick move, but it would have come out eventually." She finds the courage to meet his gaze.

"The real issue is me, Sherlock. I need to stop using you as a drug to anesthetise me from my past. Everything about you, the danger, the way you look at me…it's a medication I've grown dependent on." She licks her sore lips before pushing on. "And I think…the same goes for you." Sherlock opens his mouth to argue, but she cuts him off. "No, listen. I know what you said about needing and wanting, how they are the same, but they're not, Sherlock. I want us to be together because of us not because of some warped addiction we have towards each other."

"But I do want it!" Sherlock protests.

"How do you know?" Jane challenges.

"Jane…" he starts. "I am not a man prone to sentimental declarations. But I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that what we have is something no chemical can replicate. I should know. I've tried nearly all of them. They don't last, none of them do. But this is different. From the moment I met you I knew it was different, and don't pretend it wasn't the same for you."

She sucks in a breath. He was right, she knew he was. From the moment they met they seemed to be falling into each other in a chaotic orbit. It made sense for them to be together. But she couldn't shake that one question, sowing its seeds of doubt that had taken root in the back of her mind since she realised her feelings for Sherlock.

"How do you know it will be enough, though?" she croaks, heart trembling. It suddenly took an enormous effort to keep herself upright, and she slumps, shoulders sagging.

Sherlock purses his mouth into a thin line at this, Adam's apple bobbing as he visibly tries to come up with an answer. After a moment, he looks away and she closes her eyes, heart turning over painfully in her chest.

She's about to get up and make her way back to her room, when a gentle hand circles around her wrist. She looks at him and reads the uncertainty in the creases around his eyes and she pleads silently with him. For what, she doesn't know, but it doesn't seem to matter because in the next moment, Sherlock is drawing her into a careful embrace and reclining to where they are both curled together on the sofa.

The silence enfolds them in a quiet shroud, and they breathe together, synced in everything, even this. Sherlock traces little patterns on the crest of her shoulder with his fingers, and she counts the steady beats of his heart thrumming against her.

"I'm going to my sister's tomorrow," Jane says sometime later, breaking the respite.

Sherlock tenses behind her. "For how long?" he asks woodenly.

"I don't know," she says. He goes to pull his hand away, but she catches it and wraps it over her chest. He's still stiff at first, but gradually relaxes until they are melded into each other.

"Okay," he breathes into her hair at last, and she presses her lips against the tops of his knuckles, relief unfurling within her and thawing her anguished bones.

Neither of them sleep, afraid of missing the sunrise as if by doing so, they would lose the other to the dawn.