If the truth were to be told, it is not Sherlock's love affair with the White Queen that finally forces Mycroft to put his foot down and throw Sherlock into a rehab center with a world renowned psychiatrist. It is not the filthy little bedsit he stays in, or the needles hidden in hollowed out books, or the empty bottles of booze thrown under his bed. It isn't even the stench of death that hangs around Sherlock's thin frame; a revolting perfume to drive away those who cared about him most.

No. It's the hallucinations. The wild, manic gleam in his eye. The way he rants about people, places, and things that did not, could not, exist.

Raxacoricofallapatorius. Weeping Angels. Earth 2. Bad Wolf. Rose Tyler. The Doctor and The TARDIS.

Madness, all of it.

And so he sends Sherlock away, turning a deaf ear to the whispers and a blind eye to the glances that proclaim the youngest Holmes boy has finally gone round the bend.

He's cold. He's burning up. He's starving. He'll never eat again. His skin feels slack and mottled, his skin feels too tight. The clinic is too loud. The silence is deafening. The lights are too bright and yet he can not see. It's all too...too...too...

Between the fever and the fret he can sometimes see The Doctor in the corner of the room, arms folded across his chest, glaring at him through those glasses of his. Cursing the Time Lord for a devil he turns away, only to look back, see he is alone, and pray for his friends return.

"Come back," he whispers. "Come back."

Sherlock doesn't talk about his time in the clinic. Not ever. He files it away in the deepest, darkest corners of his Mind Palace, buries it beneath the floor and covers it with concrete. It will never to see the light of day again.

He leaves the institution clean, hearty, hale, and pissed off at the world. He travels. Why, he does not know, but it seems like something he should do, so he does. He searches for a sign. He searches for answers. He searches for the why of it all.

But doesn't find what he's looking for and he returns to London a mouth full of bitter ash.

To hell with it, he thinks. To hell with me.

Sherlock stares at the tally marks on his hip sometimes, letting his mind drift back to the day he'd returned – no. He'd never gone anywhere. He'd always been here, in London, he just didn't know it at the time.

But he remembers.

He remembered the day he thought he'd returned home; spitting violently at anyone who came close to him, swearing to himself he'd never forgive The Doctor for using him so; for taking him across the stars on amazing adventures, for telling him he was brilliant and making him feel so wonderful, and then abandoning him on Earth, sentencing him to a life amongst the pedestrians.

How was he supposed to return to his ordinary life after something like that?

Heart broken, he'd flung himself headlong onto a path of self-destruction. He remembers flying high on drugs he didn't even know the name of and smiling as a man in a backroom fed ink into his flesh with a dirty needle.

But it was all an illusion. A trick played on him by his own mind. He'd created a whole life in his head that had never existed. He'd created friends. Imaginary friends.

"God, I'm pathetic."

Lestrade eyes him suspiciously when he first starts showing up at crime scenes. He throws him in a cell a few times, too, before he realizes that Sherlock is an intellectual MacGyver and can catch a criminal in less time than it takes the average person to catch a cold. The DI starts letting him on the other side of the tape, always with a preemptive "Just this once," and a sigh of resignation.

Eventually the "Just this once." becomes "Evening, Sherlock." and the sigh turns to a smile. It's good for Sherlock to be useful, to be needed, and Lestrade prides himself on keeping the Consulting Detective busy and out of trouble.

He doesn't know it, but he becomes the closest thing to a friend Sherlock Holmes is going to have for a long, long time.

And then Sherlock meets a Doctor.

There's adventure in his life again.

There are car chases and criminals and cases to be solved and it's all so familiar that every now and again it hurts.

But it's wonderful.

Because it's real.

It's real and Sherlock could happily never think of the other Doctor ever again.

The first time John Watson says the words "I love you," is at a crime scene and Sherlock feels the space between his ribs go supernova. He's always prided himself on being a logical man, but logic could go hang from the highest tree for all he cared. His mind leaves him and all he can think about is kissing the wonderful man next to him.

And he does.

Ignoring the wide eyes and hanging jaws he presses their mouths together and all of a sudden there is so much more light in the world; the air is sweeter, and every day from that moment on feels like summertime.

John Watson isn't the most brilliant of men, but he sees a lot more than he lets on. He deduces, in so far as he is able. He knows Sherlock had was, still is, an addict. He knows it was a terrifying time in his life. He knows Mycroft sent him away for treatment. And he knows there's much more to the story than he's been told.

He's long given up trying to understand the enigma that is Sherlock Holmes. He just takes the secrets in stride alongside the experiments and the body parts and the bullets that sometimes whizz past his ear, and sometimes he trails his fingers over the tally marks on Sherlock's left hip when the Consulting Detective sleeps, wondering what would possess the most brilliant man in the world to ink himself with something so …simple.

But then Sherlock murmurs in his sleep, names of people John has never met or even heard of, his voice cracking with pain and sadness, and John decides it's better to leave well enough alone.

There is a woman and a hound and a reporter and suddenly everything has gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

Sherlock contacts Mycroft after Moriarty blows his brains out and he himself swan dives off the roof of St. Bart's Hospital. He needs resources to destroy the Consulting Criminal's web and his brother is just the person to provide those resources.

The look of shame and regret that flashes across Mycroft's face should have been enough to warn him, but the takes the file labeled TORCHWOOD anyway.

It's been almost fifteen years since he's seen Jack Harkness and yet the man hasn't aged a day. He's still the same flamboyant, flirty, time agent. Sherlock studies his face, remembering all the times he'd kissed that mouth and stared into those eyes while the TARDIS zipped through space and time.

He realizes Jack knew about everything. He knew The Doctor had left Sherlock behind, knew about the drugs, about Mycroft and the psychiatrist, knew about his searching, knew about Baker Street and John.

He knew it all.

Sherlock punches the Captain in the face, because that's the only thing he can do.

He catches Jack examining John's picture, but the man isn't even remotely ashamed of being caught. He simply looks up at Sherlock and says, "You never cease to amaze me."

He snatches the picture from Jack's hands. "Entertaining you is not my idea of a good evening. Get out."

"You see, I'm just trying to figure it out," he says conversationally, laying back on Sherlock's narrow, rickety bed, and crossing his legs at the ankle. "We fucked for five years. Relatively speaking. You know. The time travel thing. But you wouldn't even help Rose find me when I stuck on Caprofaxis 6 being hunted by Markotraxians. And yet, you're willing to fake your own death, travel across the world, and risk getting yourself killed for someone you've known for, what? Eighteen months?"

"What's your point?"

"You're in love with this guy."

"Excellent deduction. Get out."

Jack chuckles, then grows serious, and turns his big brown eyes to Sherlock. "I know you were hurt. I know they made you think it never happened, but Sherlock, you still believed. Some part of you still believed, still wanted it to be true."

Sherlock folds his arms across his chest. "And how did you come to that conclusion."

"Because, for being the greatest mind the world has ever seen, your psychology is remarkably simple sometimes," Jack sits up straight, a wicked grin on his face. "You searched the world over for the barest trace of The Doctor and I and when you couldn't find it, when you gave up, you went out and found a man who was both a doctor and a captain. Are you seeing it yet? No? Doctor and Captain. Friend and Lover. The whole package wrapped up nicely in a beige jumper. Bit short, but he's a crack shot from what I've read."

"Stop talking about John as if you know him. You know nothing."

Jack throws his a weary look. "You're right. I don't know him, but I do know you. You've let him in. He's chinked the armor. That means he's gotta be something special. That's why I'm here, Sherlock. You I have my team chasing human criminals half way around the world because Mycroft ordered me to? Torchwood is above and beyond all forms of government. No one orders us to do anything. I'm here because of you, because you care about this guy and whether he lives or dies."

"Do you expect me to fall on my knees and thank you?"

"I've had you on your knees. Or did you forget who taught you how to give a blowjob?"

"I won't sleep with you out of gratitude."

"I don't expect you to. All I want is your forgiveness, Sherlock. Whether or not you forgive The Doctor is between you and him, but I don't want to live the rest of my life with you hating me. I think too highly of you."

"I don't know if I have it in me to forgive."

"You do. You will."

"Once we have Moran, what will you do?" Sherlock asks him one day.

Jack arches a brow at him and sets down the map he's holding. "Go back to catching aliens."

"And what? Wait for The Doctor to return so you can ask him your big question?"

"Don't be so harsh. I'll at least buy him a drink first," Jack smiles his wicked smile.

"But do you think you can find him? Do you even have an idea?"

"Sure," he says, and Sherlock waits patiently for an explanation, his face a practiced mask of disinterest. Jack laughs at him and points out the window at he twinkling night sky. "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."

Sebastian Moran winds up with his very own seat on a Prison Ship headed for Orcofraticorious.

Sherlock heads home.

The sun is setting on Baker Street when he returns. The flat is empty. Mrs. Hudson has gone to stay with her sister, so he wanders through the cold rooms, tracing the bullet holes in the wall with his index finger, smiling to himself. He'll take a few days to tidy up and get new furniture before he lets Mycroft contact John.

He drifts slowly past the window, eyes fixed on the spot by the mantle where he'd tacked the Cludo board to the wall with a knife, mind hopping from one memory to the next. He never sees the Blue Box on the other side of the street, nor the man who stands in front of it, gazing up at the lanky figure packing back and for the past the windows.

He doesn't hear the words the man whispers to his companion, a lovely read headed woman with a quick smile and quicker temper, when she asks where they are.

"221B Baker Street. Residents: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, and their children. Hamish and Cossette. Hamish will be Earths first ambassador to another planet. Jupiter, if I remember correctly. Cossette will become a doctor, like her father, and will study alien illnesses in an attempt to find cures for Cancer and AIDS."

"Does she do it?"

"I don't know," he says, turning to her. "Let's find out, shall we? Allons-y!"

Once, in the Summertime, when Hamish had gone off on his gap year and their parents had disappeared to Surrey for a lovers weekend, Cossette met a very strange man with a blue box.