He never uses without a good reason.

No reward without risk. In his veins, they feel like the same thing—at least, for a little while.

.

He used to rave at Mycroft, it's safer this way. Safer to let his mind run wild in a parallel universe; safer to turn the room sideways instead of the world.

It isn't safer for you. And that was his brother, all pinched practicality and something that might have been affection but that never made it quite past his teeth.

I can't, Sherlock had said, disdainful even while he was seeing two of everything, two Mycrofts, two points of light, four hands—I can't always be worrying over myself.

Don't you dare call this unselfishness, Sherlock.

Sherlock knows he is selfish.

As if that was the sort of thing that mattered.

.

Everyone hates him, and everyone worries about him, so they never work either feeling out completely. This is what he tells himself, and he used to chalk all that up in safe white lines of cocaine and disdain for human emotion, but he can't do that anymore.

Mary-not-Mary is shaking her head at him over an upside-down teakettle. Mary is saying, try harder, Sherlock. Only this time trying harder means teetering to that precipice edge that Mycroft swore him off.

Then again, Mycroft never shot him in the heart.

Mycroft always fumbles for the heart when they play Operation. Electric shocks and this is a child's game, Sherlock. As though he isn't fascinated, endlessly, by trying to tug out the very center of a person.

Mycroft never shot him in the heart. Mycroft doesn't know much about hearts.

Not Sherlock's.

.

Mary knew where Sherlock's heart was. It is with John, and with Rosie, and with Molly though that only comes along when he's high enough to stop caring about pretenses—and it was with Mary, too, so if there is an afterlife (he only admits that, too, when he's high) some part of it followed her there. The part the bullet nicked, most probably.

That would be poetic.

Shakespeare was smashed, anyway. Must have been. Poetry is all about being just the right amount of addled.

.

He has to go to hell.

Sherlock Holmes does not believe in heaven, but everyone who knows anything could tell you about hell. Mary sent him there, and he deserved it. Mary told him to go through, to go beyond, and that is where the game is.

(But it's not a game anymore.)

.

The room is not only sideways. The room is all the wrong colors. And Sherlock's pride is a story of all the wrong moments, and then just one.

.

He only thinks himself noble when his mind is somewhere else. For John, he thinks. For the John who died along with Mary. There is a method to this madness. There is methadone somewhere in this madness, too. Heroism and heroin. In his heart, they feel like the same thing.

At least, for a little while.