John lay on his back on the floor with little recollection of how he got there. His face was stinging around the area of the left eye socket. As he watched the ceiling swimming in and out of focus, he listened to the sounds of a struggle on the other side of the room, and Lestrade's angry voice cutting through like a knife.

"Stop this, right now! Don't you dare - "

A cough, and then Sherlock's ragged baritone fired back, "Let me go!"

Ignoring the surge of pain in his skull, John pushed himself upright. As his vision jumped and settled, he saw the other two pressed into the far corner. Lestrade had Sherlock pinned bodily to the wall, one of his forearms slung roughly across his throat. The detective struggled weakly under the strong hold, and John could hear the rasping, growling sound that meant Greg was pushing just a little too hard on his windpipe.

"Let him go," John ordered as he clambered to his feet.

Greg bristled. "What, so he can hit you again - ?"

"I said, let him go!"

Lestrade stepped back without further argument, moved just enough so that Sherlock could slide to the floor, coughing and loosening his collar.

John, for his part, forced himself to shake off the dizziness of the blow to his head, and stumbled toward the other two. When Greg extended a hand to steady him, he shook it off, and instead sunk down to his knees in front of Sherlock. "Listen to me," he said evenly. "This is a panic attack. You're fine. Look at me." He waited, not daring to touch, as grey eyes swept upward to meet his gaze. There was a barely-perceptible tremor rattling the detective's frame, and John knew that he was right. Mild annoyance over the case had compounded with the withdrawal and become blind rage, which had then spiraled into panic - Sherlock was in a bad way. His breathing was tight and rapid, his whole body so tense that it looked like he might just shatter into a million pieces right before their eyes.

He won't listen to me like this, thought John. I won't be able to reason with him until he's calm. Carefully, John lowered himself all the way to the floor so that he was sitting cross-legged in front of the detective, a nonthreatening position - and notably just out of striking range. He might bolt, the doctor knew, but he needed space or he was likely to lash out again. John had seen enough panic - experienced enough panic - to know the score. "Sherlock," he began again in a low voice, "I need you to take a deep breath for me."

Wordlessly, the detective shook his head. His lips moved, but no sound came out. He was pressing himself back into the wall as though hoping to be absorbed by it.

"It was a misunderstanding, that's all, and I'm sorry it happened, but you have to listen to me right now. Just listen. I know it feels like you're dying, but you're not. What you are doing is hyperventilating, and that's contributing to that feeling - so, I need you to try and follow directions."

Surprisingly, Sherlock made eye contact.

John took it as a good sign. "Deep breath, now."

The detective's chest moved almost imperceptibly, but it was clear he was trying.

"Good. Let it out. Again." He watched the sternomastoid muscles stand out in his neck as he strained to breathe under direction, and murmured encouragement. "That's it, yes. Again."

Finally, Sherlock was able to draw enough breath to speak, and his eyes rolled toward the window. "I need some air," he said hoarsely. He pushed himself to his feet.

John and Greg rose with him, and John felt the DI's hand at his elbow as they stood. "Stay here," John said, meeting Greg's level gaze. Greg's eyebrows went up in surprise and John just shook his head. Trust me.

Sherlock was getting on his coat, and Greg's hand was still on John's elbow. "You okay?" he asked in a near-whisper. He was studying John's face, and it became clear he meant the blow to the head. It must have looked pretty bad from the outside.

"Yeah. Be back soon." John followed Sherlock outside.

The mid-afternoon air was brisk and biting, the sun obscured by thick grey clouds. The scent of rain hung in the air, bearing with it the threat of a sudden downpour to come at any moment. John grabbed his umbrella out of the stand by the door, and met his flatmate on the footpath.

They walked quickly and in silence toward Regent's Park. John's face stung - he told himself it was the cold, but he knew a nasty purple bruise would be forming where Sherlock's fist had met with the side of his face. He'd missed the eye itself, luckily, but had connected just to the side of the socket with a surprising amount of fear-bolstered strength. The whole area ached. He stole a glance at Sherlock, but he was expressionless, closed off, his eyes focused on the footpath.

They stopped when they reached the pond. It was deserted, families and tourists scared away by the chill and the threat of rain. They'd all be bundled into hotels and coffee shops now, huddled round warm late lunches and deciding what to do next. John envied the simplicity of such a thing.

"I was doing so well," Sherlock said out of the blue. His voice was gravelly, his posture stiff, eyes locked on a flock of ducks paddling across the far side of the pond.

John turned slightly toward him, looked up at him in the hopes of catching his eye, but the detective didn't move in the slightest. The doctor frowned and glanced toward the water again. "You still are," he said. "This wasn't your fault. It's part and parcel to the withdrawal. I know you know that."

Abruptly, Sherlock looked at him. His gaze drifted left of eye contact, scanning the bruise edging his eye socket, calculating, inspecting. "That is."

"What?"

"My fault." He turned back toward the pond and dug into his inner coat pocket, extracting a cigarette and bringing it to his lips. The other hand fished his lighter out of his pocket.

John shook his head lightly, staring down at his shoes and burying his hands in his coat pockets. "I knew better than to touch you. I shouldn't have done. Whole thing could have been avoided."

The detective said nothing.

"It's not that bad anyway," John lied, screwing up his face. The injury twinged with each movement. "I've had worse."

"You've been shot," Sherlock pointed out.

"Well. Yeah, I guess."

"I'm sorry, John."

The two men stood in silence for a few minutes. John tossed a pebble into the water as Sherlock shivered and smoked. Then John remembered something. "Mycroft was here this morning."

This got Sherlock's attention, and he finally turned to look at his flatmate, his expression full of darkness. "Why?" He seemed surprised not to have deduced it himself, but considering the course of events of the day...

"Checking up," replied John. "So he said. But then he asked if I wanted your medical records."

"What did you say?" Sherlock searched the doctor's face, his own expression as unreadable as always.

"I threw him out." John thought that should have been obvious.

Sherlock hummed, a sound that could almost have been a chuckle, if he had had the strength. His face relaxed somewhat. He turned away again, watching the ducks, pulling on his cigarette with a thoughtful furrow between his brows.

Silence again. The scents of the rain and the pond mixed with the sharp odour of the cigarette smoke. John watched Sherlock's breaths being carried away by the crisp breeze, toward the waterfowl paddling placidly at the far edge of the water. He wondered how they'd got here, the pair of them. In the last five days, John had dragged his flatmate out of a crack house, been kidnapped, and now ended up in a physical scuffle in his own sitting room. It felt surreal, except for the very real sting of the contusion spreading on his face. Sherlock would have a matching bruise across his knuckles, he knew. An eye for an eye - or a fist.

"It's… more difficult this time," the detective said after some minutes. His voice was low, but rough with weariness. He took a final drag on his dying cigarette. John could see his fingers shaking.

"Well, you're older, now," John replied. He shrugged, watching the flock of ducks waddle out of the water and away into the shelter of the trees. The first droplets of rain had begun to fall.

"Yes, thank you for the reminder." Sherlock sounded oddly like his brother for a moment. He stamped out his cigarette. "God, my head."

John turned to see that the detective had lifted a trembling hand to his temple, pressing the pads of his fingers into it as though the counterpressure would relieve some of the discomfort. With a hand on his arm, John slowly guided him backward toward the bench beside the path, and Sherlock didn't resist as he sat him down. John felt him shudder as their shoulders brushed one another.

After a moment, some of Sherlock's colour had returned, and the doctor tapped his elbow. "Get you home then, yeah?"

Sherlock nodded wordlessly.

When they arrived home, the mess from their struggle had been tidied up and Greg was gone. Sherlock went straight for the paracetamol and sleeping tablets and went to bed without a word about what had transpired. John didn't blame him. He shot off a quick text to Lestrade and settled down for a quiet night in, steeling himself for whatever the rest of the day may hold.

But, shockingly, it held nothing at all. Sherlock slept right on through the evening, and John found himself at his door once or twice, half afraid he'd either died or left. He'd done neither, thankfully, and eventually John made himself go to bed, as well.

The text came in at 2:49AM. John opened bleary eyes to the crimson digits on his alarm clock, unsure what had woken him. Then another burr from his bedside table brought him all the way round to the present, and he blinked his vision clear, reaching for his mobile. He squinted through the bright light of the screen.

2 New Text Messages
S Holmes

John didn't comprehend at first. Sherlock texting him…? He sat up in bed and navigated to his text inbox, and his blood ran cold as he read:

Downstairs. Help me.

Please.

John's feet were on the floor in half a second. He snatched his dressing gown on and flew down the stairs, holding his breath, unsure of what he might find and too afraid to imagine.

Sherlock was seated on the sofa, leaning forward, arms braced on knees. He was shaking violently, his hands clasped together in an attempt to keep them steady. Sweat shone on his face, soaking through his soft grey cotton shirt. Before him on the coffee table was an open black roll-up case: syringe, tourniquet, unmarked vial. His grey eyes were locked on it, his expression rigid, tense, and unreadable.

Blind rage was the first thing John felt, but then Sherlock's voice in his mind told him to look, and he saw that the vial was full, the syringe capped, unused. Unused. John pulled in a few steadying breaths. Sherlock had asked for help. He was confronted with the temptation and he'd asked for help instead of giving in. He'd lied to him again, yes, god damn it - but he'd asked for help. Calm, John urged himself. Stay calm.

"Skip the lecture," Sherlock said without looking up. His voice was thin and strained. He wrung his hands. "Take it, get it out of here. Now, John!"

He'd crossed the room before Sherlock had even finished speaking. Quickly, John grabbed the small black case and took it to the kitchen. He was unconsciously bracing himself for a literal fight from Sherlock, but it never came. Using a kitchen knife, he punctured the top of the vial, carving out a small hole in the rubber stopper, and let the contents drain out into the sink. It smelled bitter; morphine, possibly. The syringe he broke and deposited into an empty jar, screwed the lid on, and binned.

The detective was pacing the sitting room when John emerged, his skin ashen. "I have to ask," John began, one hand held up slightly in caution, "was that all of it?"

"Yes," Sherlock snapped.

"...Because that's what you told me last time."

Sherlock stopped, turned, looked at John. He was still shaking badly, quivering as though he'd just been dropped into an icy lake in January. "Yes. That's the last of it. I'd… forgotten about it." His lips thinned, and he resumed his irritated prowling.

John didn't believe for a second that Sherlock had ever forgotten anything in his life, but he decided to leave it for the moment. He could sort that out later. Right now, Sherlock needed help, and he'd had the willpower to actually ask for it. After all the lecturing John had given him on this very topic, he owed it to him to follow through. His eyes tracked the frantic pacing across the room. "Listen, okay, I know what you're - "

"You know nothing," Sherlock cut him off, his tone viciously angry, almost insulted that John had even insinuated that he did. "Even if you actually used half your stupid little mind to try to comprehend for a moment what it's like in my head, you still would not even be capable of understanding."

Steady on, thought John, the rage is just a symptom. He knew that, but for some reason it didn't hurt any less. He exhaled slowly, exercising every ounce of control he had to keep his own anger in check. "You're right. I don't understand. I still need you to calm down and - "

Sherlock rounded on him. "I am calm!"

"Goddamn it, Harry, sit down!" he shouted back, automatically deepening his voice to his best military command snarl.

The detective opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself, frozen for a moment in surprise. "What did you say?"

"I said, sit down, so I can - "

"No, you said Harry."

John ground his teeth. "I didn't." He knew that he had done. He was mentally kicking himself for it.

"You've done this before," Sherlock concluded, quicksilver eyes making easy work of John, as always. He latched on like a viper. "How many times?"

He tore his eyes away from his flatmate's face, but as his gaze ghosted over the sofa, he saw Harriet lying there in a shivering heap, begging for his help and promising never to drink again. It wouldn't last, it never did - a few days, maybe? Alcohol withdrawal is a painful, ugly, dangerous business, and Harry never agreed to get proper help through it. She always caved at the worst of it, seeking any solace from the pain, the nightmares. John had tried over the years, more than once and in different ways, to do for her exactly what he was doing now for Sherlock, but the difference between the two was that Harry didn't want to get better. And that's exactly why it would never work.

"Too many times," John finally replied, gruffly. "Sit down." He turned and stalked to the kitchen, where he ran a flannel under the cool tap, ordering Harry out of his head as the water cascaded over his fingers.

When he returned, Sherlock had done as he was told - he was seated on the sofa with his head clutched in his hands. John placed the damp flannel on the back of the detective's neck as he rounded the sofa. "Right then. You need a distraction and we're surrounded by crates of recently-declassified cold cases. Seems obvious to me." John crossed the room and started going through the boxes. "Murder, theft, rape, good God… er, double murder… What do you want?"

"I can't think," Sherlock hissed. John looked sidelong toward his flatmate. He was staring at the floor, fingers entangled in his hair. His shoulders trembled, but sweat plastered his clothes to his skin.

John turned back to the crate and pulled out a thick file, flipping through it briefly. "Here we go. A nice murder." Tucking it under his arm, he came back to the sofa and took a place beside Sherlock. He opened the file on his lap and began reading. "Male, thirty-five, found dead inside a water tower in Greenwich."

"Can't think," the detective repeated. His breath came in short, shallow gasps. Pain. He'd have pins and needles dancing along his arms and legs, by now, and no respite from it except in the morphine John just poured down the sink.

"Yes, you can." John reached over and turned the flannel over on the back of his friend's neck, so that the cool side would be on his skin, but Sherlock was shaking his head, his fingers still clutching at his scalp. "You can - don't shake your head at me, I know you can. Lie back and concentrate on this."

"Hurts."

"I know. Just listen. Thirty-five year old male found dead inside a water tower. Cause of death was a lethal dose of methylmercury administered intravenously…" John read aloud through the reports and statements, passing along photos of evidence as he went. Sherlock accepted them with shaking fingers and inspected each one before setting them down on the coffee table in a semi-organised grid.

"The lover, where was he?" Sherlock asked after a time, his arms tucked across his chest. There was a witness statement lying in his lap where he could read it without unfurling himself. "He could have easily killed him, but possibly would have needed an accomplice to get the body into the water tower."

John shook his head. He'd never known Sherlock to be slow, but given the circumstances, it shouldn't have surprised him. He flicked through the paperwork. "No, his statement is… here. His alibi holds up, remember? It was corroborated by several witnesses who saw him at the restaurant that night, and the friend he was dining with."

"No, the lover's twin. He was also sleeping with the victim."

"Come again?" John frowned and shuffled through the file again. "I don't… That isn't in here."

"Nope." The detective licked his lips and gestured toward the photographs of evidence. "The two notes, supposedly written by the victim's lover shortly before his death - the handwriting is different from one to the next."

John leaned forward and peered at the photographs. "Looks the same to me."

"It's subtle, but it's there. It was his twin at the restaurant. He was busy killing Mr…"

"Edwards."

"He was busy killing Mr. Edwards and stuffing him into a water tower."

Shaking his head, John picked up one of the photographs of the notes. "I don't understand - why?"

"Why does anybody do anything?" Sherlock relinquished the statement he'd been reading and settled back against the back of the couch, his body curled in a tight ball.

"Sentiment," John replied, well-trained by now. "Wait, how were they both sleeping with him? Why didn't the brother turn up in the investigation?"

"Why would he have done? He was never mentioned, and all records indicate he lives in Munich."

"Oh." John blinked. "So… they were in on it together? Pretending to be one person…?"

"Evidently."

"And… they weren't happy that Edwards wasn't leaving his husband for... them…?"

"Obviously."

Stranger things have happened. John dug his mobile out from between the couch cushions and sent a text off to Lestrade. "Well, that's a start, isn't it…" he muttered as he typed. He pushed send and snapped the file shut. "Okay. Good. Next one looks like, uh… theft, fraud…"

"My turn."

"Huh?" John looked over.

Sherlock leveled an overbright gaze at him. "Harry."

Sighing, John closed the fraud file and set it on the coffee table. He should have known his earlier attempt to shut down Sherlock's line of questioning would only make the detective more inquisitive about his difficulties with his alcoholic sister. He briefly wondered if there was any merit in a second attempt to avoid the topic, but he'd known Sherlock long enough to be certain that it'd only delay the inevitable. "What about her?" he asked reluctantly, settling back, half-angled toward his flatmate so that he could meet his questioning look.

"When was the last time?"

"The last time… that I tried to help her?" He frowned, but continued at Sherlock's nod. "Must be three years ago, this Christmas."

The detective broke eye contact, reaching up to remove the flannel from the back of his neck. He set it on the coffee table. "What was the result?"

For some reason, John had a feeling that Sherlock already knew the answer to that. He would have deduced it shortly after he had come home from Harry's on Boxing Day that year. It was true that they had never spoken of it - John had never even mentioned where he was going, just that he was spending a week with Harry around Christmas. But Sherlock knew these things, or noticed them, as he'd say; and although John didn't always know rightly how, he knew that he figured them out. So why was he asking? "She was sober for four days," he stated, keeping his voice as level as possible. He scratched his nose absently and crossed his arms again. "Sherlock, why do you want to know about Harry all of a sudden? You've never asked me before."

"Four days," the detective repeated thoughtfully. "Why was that the last time?"

"What d'you mean?"

Sherlock's lips thinned to a line. "Of all the times you tried to help her, why was that the last time? Why did you draw the line there, at that time? In fact, you've hardly spoken to her since."

John shifted uncomfortably and sat more upright, watching his flatmate curiously. He wasn't sure he liked where this was going. "She told me, in no uncertain terms, stone-cold sober, to fuck off. That she didn't want my help." He let out a slow breath through his nose and said, cautiously, "I didn't give up on her, if that's what you're thinking."

The alabaster expression slipped just a little and the detective shook his head.

"Sherlock, Harry didn't want to get better. She didn't want help getting better. That's not…" He leaned forward and tapped the coffee table for emphasis, causing his flatmate to look up. "That's not this."

"Maybe some people can't." He fished his cigarettes out from under the case paperwork on the coffee table and the ashtray from under the sofa, groaning slightly with the effort of bending double.

John knew he would sound like a twelve-step, but he said, "Don't make excuses for her behaviour. Or yours. Recovery is a choice."

"Addiction is a disease," Sherlock returned acerbically, his speech altered by the cigarette pinched between his lips. The lighter flared, casting orange light and sharp shadows over his bruised, angular features for a moment. He dragged and exhaled away from John, shoulders quaking slightly as he moved. "Bit of a contradictory message. Narcotics Anonymous really ought to revise their leaflets."

John hummed. "Yeah, maybe so."

"Does she still…?"

"Drink? Probably." John had told her not to call until she was ready to get better. She hadn't called. He bit the side of his tongue and watched Sherlock's profile, but he had hunched over again, elbows on knees, eyes on the floor. The cigarette smouldered between his fingers. With a sigh, John pulled the case file back into his lap and leafed through it. "Well, anyway. Theft, fraud… Whose statement do you want first?"

Sherlock and John worked three cold cases before they both agreed to call it a night. Two of them they solved outright; the third they concluded with a hypothesis but no concrete closure, as everyone involved was dead and the evidence spotty at best. Sherlock mumbled something about having Mycroft unlock a file on the MI-5 database as he drifted off on the sofa. If John was being honest, he couldn't have cared less about the case.

In his room, he lay on his back, staring drowsily at the ceiling. Sherlock had broken his trust. He shouldn't have been surprised. Lestrade had tried to warn him this would happen, and John hadn't believed him. He didn't think the detective had had it in him. He'd let John in, after all - had been candid with him about all of this, as much as he was able. Perhaps hiding that stash had given him a sense of control in a situation that was otherwise uncontrollable. John wanted to feel angry, the way he had when he'd gone downstairs and seen him sitting there, staring at that needle, but for some reason, he couldn't quite get there. Perhaps he was just too exhausted. Or, more likely, perhaps he was too relieved. They'd avoided a relapse tonight. That thought circled John's mind like a neverending chant, a reminder of how fragile this whole process was. If things had gone just a little differently… there was no telling what could have happened.

Somewhere underneath the safety of that relief, though, there was an ember of anger burning gently, waiting to be fanned into a flame.

That morning, when he finally fell asleep, as the sun was just beginning to peek through the curtain of clouds, John dreamt of Harry.

"I can't, I can't. You don't understand, John. I'm sick."

"Please don't do this. I mean it, Harriet - listen to me. You're coming round the worst of it. I promise you that."

"What do you know about it? Nothing!"

"I won't watch you do this to yourself. If this is what you're going to do, I won't be a party to it. I am serious, Harry."

"Oh, go fuck yourself. You can't control your stupid bleeding heart."

John woke with a start, drenched in a cold sweat that made his t-shirt cling to his skin uncomfortably. His room was bathed in warm, golden sunlight, but he shivered with a bone-deep chill as he shoved the duvet off himself. He could hardly remember the details of the dreams he'd been plagued with, now. Harry, Sherlock, death. Vague feelings of unease pulled at him from the dreamworld, and he shook his head to clear it. He breathed slowly and deeply, pressing his feet into the floor, listening to the sounds of the flat and the traffic outside. They brought him back to the present and helped him to shake away the clinging shadows of the nightmares. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, careful to avoid the now-spectacularly purple shiner Sherlock had given him the morning before. He didn't feel like trying to get back to sleep now.

He still felt shaky when he finally crept downstairs, but he told himself it was low blood sugar. Rest had done him some good, but he needed to eat, as well. And a nice cup of tea would be bracing, he thought.

Voices in the sitting room. John stopped on the third stair and listened, wary of walking in on a Holmesian feud, but after a moment, he identified Lestrade's cool tones. He stepped down to the landing and stood quietly in the doorway, peering round the corner.

Greg was kneeling on the floor beside the sofa, where Sherlock lay on his side, facing him, his body curled in on itself. The detective was trembling despite the sweat shining on his brow and in the vee of his collarbone. His eyes were closed, but he made a soft listening sound to whatever Lestrade was saying to him - John couldn't quite make it out from the threshold and didn't try. Part of him felt as though he were intruding on a private moment - even more so when Greg placed an affectionate hand on Sherlock's shoulder and squeezed, speaking with a reassuring timbre. After a minute of this, the DI stood and turned, and John silently waved him over when their eyes met, leading him into the kitchen.

"Hey," Greg said softly, "sorry, I didn't hear you come down."

"I thought you might be Mycroft," John answered, shaking his head as he filled the kettle. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Half eleven." Greg's fingers closed around John's elbow suddenly, causing him to pause as he set the kettle down. "John, you okay? You look terrible."

John depressed the kettle's 'on' switch and turned to face his friend, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "Yeah. Well… no, not really." Something occurred to him to ask. "Did he call you?" he questioned, pointing toward the doorway and their friend.

"No, I let myself in. Came round to get the cases. What's wrong?"

He folded his arms again. "Sherlock nearly had a relapse last night."

Greg's eyes widened. Then he sighed, blinked the surprise off his face, and asked, "Nearly?"

"I intervened. He asked me to."

"Asked you to."

John nodded. "He asked for help. It was all right there, he could have…" He trailed off and let out a controlled breath, torn between admiration and frustration. "He asked for help instead."

Thankfully, Greg did not waste any time telling John I told you so. Instead, he rubbed at his left temple with his fingertips, pursing his lips into a grim line. "Good that you were here, then," was all he said at first. He seemed to be lost in thought. Brown eyes scanned John's face and he chewed his tongue. "Are you okay?" he asked again.

"I'm fine," he replied, but he suddenly realised that there was a pressure in his head and it had reached critical mass. He wondered if his brain was about to swell out of his skull. He insisted again, "I'm fine." He wasn't fine and no amount of repetition would make it true.

Lestrade slid a hand under John's arm and steered him toward a chair at the breakfast table in the centre of the kitchen. Just as soon as he did, the kettle beeped, and he reached over and turned it off.

"It could have all gone wrong," John said numbly. He had been naive and stupid to trust Sherlock's word in the beginning. He clasped his hands to stop them shaking.

"It didn't, though, did it," the DI observed, leaning on the worktop. He craned his neck to see out of the kitchen doorway, then returned his gaze to John's.

John's blue stare was blank.

"He trusts you, more than he's ever trusted anyone, I think. He asked for your help. D'you want to know how many times he's done that, with anyone, ever? I can count 'em on one hand."

He lied to me, and it could have killed him this time, John retorted silently, that seething anger threatening to blaze anew. He tamped it down, but nothing he did would quiet that voice: He lied to me.

Author's Note: Thank you for your patience. I had another baby last April, and she and I have both had a few health problems which have kept me from wanting to devote time to writing such a long and complicated piece. (She is doing much better now, but I am not, so I don't know how often I will update.) I appreciate all the messages I have received about this story and will be continuing it. We are reaching the conclusion now and I want to thank every single person who has reviewed or sent messages begging me to carry on with it. It really does make me smile to know that you're enjoying this story. Please look for its conclusion in the coming weeks. I am going to work hard to finish it very soon. All the best to all of you.