"The truth…it is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution."

-Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"So they're sending you back."

The words hang dull, heavy on the air. Expected, unlike the ones that follow.

"After everything," John says. "After Serbia."

How—

How is not a question I am accustomed to asking aloud. Any more than I am prepared for the single thought exploding, crashing and echoing through my mind palace with all the force of…

A Semtex vest, perhaps. Or a time bomb.

No! doesn't echo from the throes of imagination, however. No is a familiar shout, an overused bleat—at least in my mind. In that broken tone I remember well. When I care to. Which I don't.

Been coming across an unnerving quantity of things I don't care to recall, recently. 'Déjà vu' is perhaps a better term than 'memory', since they have a habit of plastering themselves into reality.

I make my voice cold, robotic. (Since when was it an effort to make it cold?)

"Mycroft told you."

I see the laugh coming, although it never quite chokes its way into the audible spectrum. John's face has a way of cracking, contorting in a way that is too human not to be terrible.

"No. He didn't. Something you have in common."

And there it is. Raw, unvarnished, a nerve scraped once too often—pain, another definition I learned recently. Pain, an unambiguously logical cause for avoiding this conversation, my brain supplies helpfully.

"So tell me, doctor, what do you know about Serbia?"

"Just the tip."

The ambiguity, whether self-defense or his own way of lashing out, sends a flash of irritation through me.

"Care to elaborate?"

Impossible that he knows if Mycroft told him nothing, he even knows it was Serbia, for—but no, stop, reign it in. The last thing this ghastly conversation needs is the useless clutter of emotion, particularly not from me. John is more than adept at providing that.

An irritating reality that he has the gall to reaffirm, the next moment, by leaning forward and—no, what are you doing—taking careful hold of my wrist. I stiffen and don't pull away. Like most of John's actions, this has 'inevitable' written all over it.

And then there are gentle fingers prying at the cuff of my shirt. I've always worn button-down sleeves, old habit from the smattering of ridiculous boarding schools I attended in my youth—inconvenient children are as well worth the expense as ambitious ones, though for different reasons—but only recently have I come to appreciate their utility in concealment. A function that chooses this moment to betray me. When I force my eyes open the fingers are still there, a doctor's touch running across scars that have yet to fade completely, sending a crawling chill down my spine.

I wrench my wrist away from John.

"What's your point?"

In the sudden absence of the angry red marks that held him captivated—ha, ha—the blue eyes flicker up to meet mine.

"The point is that whenever there's anything you're not clever enough to hide, I know it's only the tip of the iceberg."

Spare me John and his addiction to poetry.

"I was clever." Automatically.

I'm always clever where evasion is concerned but the instant the words leave my mouth I wince. Probably best not to point that out right now. Besides which the last few months have made it patently obvious that cleverness isn't enough.

John's gaze is steady; not a trace of the rage that possessed him the last time I concealed from him anything of moment. Though in fairness, I probably deserved it then.

Not this time, though. I didn't make him watch me chained to a wall and beaten half to death; that's precisely the point. Besides, the role of spectator was filled by another.

"Serbia."

"What?"

"You said Serbia. Why?"

John raises an eyebrow. "You talk in your sleep."

Ridiculous. "No, I don't."

"Didn't. Past tense."

Well, he would know. A lot of things are past tense nowadays. Tension regarding the past unfortunately not among them.

"So I was speaking…Serbian?" I know the reply before he gives it, know because of the creeping dread hollowing out my stomach. The answer comes as a blow anyway.

"Speaking is one way of putting it."

Lovely.

"You're telling me you can tell Slavic languages apart by ear?" When someone's screaming in their sleep is what I don't say, but the incredulity in my tone is clear. Focus on the detail, inject enough skepticism, and maybe everything else will fade out. It works at crime scenes, and during experiments. It hasn't worked in real life yet.

"No, but I could tell it was Slavic. And from there…"

Anger boils up again.

"Mycroft told you."

"Not in so many words, no."

And what is that supposed to—

"The first time I woke in the middle of the night to you—" John looks away and doesn't complete that thought. "I came downstairs, but couldn't wake you up. Couldn't do anything, really. So I've been keeping an eye on you, which may or may not have included reading your phone password over your shoulder at the earliest opportunity. I think you were distracted berating Lestrade."

I open my mouth but no words come out. Hard to say which is harder to come to terms with: John's obvious confidence in the poetic justice—oh, shut up—of it all or his recently developed devious streak. The fact that I saw neither coming sets off alarms all on its own.

He meets my eye with his Captain Watson face on: not the slightest hint of trepidation.

"As you've pointed out, we're not all as clever as you, Sherlock. I can't just deduce it."

At least there's truth in that. Twelve and a half seconds was the record, I believe.

"So the…" I grit my teeth, realizing I've sat in silence too long. "Next time."

"I couldn't wake you again," he admits, left hand clenching and uncurling on his knee. "So I stole your phone and read your texts from Mycroft. You should delete your messages more often."

Stupid. Stupid. I definitely should've noticed—

John reads my mind. "You ask me to pass you your phone so often I figured you wouldn't notice a few extra fingerprints on the screen."

"You've been spending far too much time around me."

John straightens and offers me a broken smile. "You know, I didn't think anyone would ever tell me that again."

…no.

We're not going there.

I voice the question that has to be asked, if only to prevent John from stewing in a miserable and unpardonably caring silence until hell freezes over or the tea runs out, whichever comes first. Remind me why I ever thought saying goodbye was a good idea?

Right. Because last time I didn't.

Last time there was a chance of coming back. This is all backwards.

Shutupshutupshutup just ask the question and maybe he'll shut up too…

"And where did your investigations lead you, Doctor Watson?"

John takes several deep breaths, lets them out slowly. It's like he's—like me, I realize. In control, for once. Getting at dry facts without the usual meaningless hurricane. Small mercies.

Unsettling, though, that it's happening now.

"You were imprisoned, presumably in Serbia, by someone in Moriarty's network. Chained and tortured for…upwards of a week, I think."

Technically correct. I let it pass.

"You'd have been thoroughly incapacitated by that point, so I assume Mycroft's agents got you out. I imagine you have scars all over—I haven't seen you walking around in a sheet since you returned, Sherlock, which is a bit of a warning sign in and of itself. You zone out more frequently, call it the mind palace or whatever you bloody well like, but I don't think it's voluntary. You make jokes and smile too much, either to regain some sort of equilibrium or to cover up the fact that it's lacking. And you have dreams I can't wake you from. Night terrors." His voice drops. "I've been through this, Holmes, or had you forgotten?"

My heart is sinking lower and lower into my ribcage—metaphorically, one can only hope—but I spare the energy to raise an eyebrow at my surname. And I make one more effort to hold my voice to its normal inflection.

"My apologies, John. I hadn't realized you'd been tortured in Afghanistan. Though that's putting it rather generously; I do imagine the bullet did more damage. In Moriarty's absence the whole thing was appallingly sloppy, the Serbs in particular could've done with some coaching…"

"Stop." John's voice has gone from forced calm to taut as a wire. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to downplay this, or attack me, or whatever the heck you're trying to do. You've been doing that since you got back, and I let you. I thought you were happier not addressing it. I let myself believe you were fine. And now—"

There's so much loathing in John's tone that I could cut it with a knife, but it's unclear whether it's directed at me. I open my mouth without knowing what to say. John cuts me off.

"And now here we are."

The implication hits me and I choke on my rage.

"That has nothing to do with this," I hiss.

John's face says it all for him.

"It doesn't. I killed him—"

John flinches, as though the man with the blood of a hundred armed assailants on his hands still hasn't come to terms with this. Or perhaps he didn't expect me to articulate it. Don't form expectations of me, John. Most who do live to regret it.

…or don't, but that's a fairly recent category.

I press on. "I killed Magnussen because it had to be done. Make no mistake, I would have done it with or without the involvement of yourself and Mary…"

Not remotely true, but far preferable to the alternative of him not believing it. I never promised I wouldn't lie to John Watson.

"In the end, that had nothing to do with you—and it certainly has nothing to do with this." I brandish the scarred wrist again, of my own volition this time—novel idea, that, it seems a long time since free will came into anything.

"They can't send you back there." His voice is barely audible, and for some reason that's unbearable. I get up and pace to the window so I don't have to look at him.

"What else is there, John? Prison?"

He knows that would be worse. We both know.

"It's just six months. Mycroft is doing me a favor. About the only useful thing he's ever done."

In an effort to block out John's presence I press a hand against the icy pane and stare through the glass. There's an unexpected relief in tracing the street with my eyes, memorizing its contours against the indirect aura of filtered sunlight. The image is familiar, comforting: food and drink to me once; perhaps more, as I have never placed much store on either. Memories are a strange thing, I muse—will they matter more this time, or less, considering…?—and then John's voice sounds at my shoulder, and I try not to flinch away.

"So you're coming back."

"Of course."

A lie is the only acceptable answer, and we both know it. But then his forehead presses lightly against my shoulder, and I wonder what's written on my face that's so terrible he can't bear to look. I turn back to the window. Neon light glows in the window of a dreadful little diner down the street. It's been there for the past decade and is frequented mainly by pigeons, for good reason. Sometimes the smell is enough to put me off food for a week.

"I'm hungry," I say. It's a battle cry that usually spurs John into action, but now he only raises his head, wearily.

"I wish you'd just tell me."

I am hungry, and, more singular, aware of it without the usual internal debate. John is still standing too close; out of the corner of my eye I watch him almost raise a hand to my shoulder.

"We should get takeout."

"Sherlock."

"I know a place on 9th Street. Thai. The owner..."

"…owes you a favor, yeah. Sherlock, tell me what happened. I don't think Magnussen was the first—"

"They do a good panang. I don't usually care for curry."

"I don't blame you, you know. For any of it."

"And coconut shrimp, though I'd stay away from their peanut sauce. Hardly authentic."

"Not just Serbia. All of it. So I don't have to wonder."

"You won't like it."

The crack in my voice is slight, as indiscernible as a bruise in dim light, but I hate it all the same.

John runs a hand along a rare unmarred strip of wallpaper. "It's only fair—"

"In the past thirty-six years I've encountered great number of arbitrary spectrums for that value. Real life conforms to none of them."

"It's only fair," John presses, "since you can't tell me what happens from here. And it can't…it can't be as bad as what I'll imagine otherwise."

I step away. "I wouldn't be too certain."

John is not above other forms of emotional manipulation, withholding tea prominent among them, but he only whispers when his voice gives out entirely. I heard John's whisper in a lab, once, beneath the claws of a fabricated monster. His voice failed him in the face of a definite, false death and later an impossible, real resurrection. It gave out in a bomb carriage buried in the heart of London's lies and mine. It does so here, now, in a curtain-shrouded winter silence that does not belong to this city, does not belong in a flat on a street that has witnessed more gunshots and explosions and fencing matches than the Tower of London itself.

It is chaos that reigns in Baker Street—always has, always will, however many new players it may take to set the stage. This aching, tranquil silence is different. It belongs to—a lonely hotel room in Moscow, perhaps. An almost-accidental syringe, and a white packet flushed down the toilet. A bullet-pocked, stainless-steel database in Asia, emptied minutes before my arrival of life, though not of information. A half-deserted military compound in Serbia, its darker aspects invisible beneath frozen ground.

"Tell me," John whispers.

So I do.

He doesn't pull me into an embrace. He doesn't join me on the sofa, or try to bury my head in his shoulder, or any other such inanity. He just settles into his old chair and listens, straight-backed, straight-faced, and for that I am grateful. I can relax, infinitesimally; I can drop my hands at my side and ignore the itching longing for my violin, can turn my gaze from the case in the corner (to say nothing of the other, much smaller, ensconced beneath a loose panel in the mantlepiece). At least for now I can almost forget the words emerging from my mouth.

When I finish he stands to leave. I see him in my mind, tramping through the park with his jacket drawn about his shoulders, crunching through the settling layer of evening frost, and trying not to think.

He comes back an hour later. The sun has already sunk low over the horizon, and there is a muffled squeak from something square and white and ghostly in his hands.

"Takeout?" John says.

A/N: What do you think? I originally thought of posting this as part of my Chiaroscuro story, but thought it would stand better alone. If you like post-HLV stuff then go check that story out, it's a little more in-depth.