Title: Soldier On
Characters: Sherlock, some John, bit of Mycroft
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for TRF, conjectural S3 spoilers which will no doubt become non-canon, basic ACD references to EMPT.
Word Count: 5180
Rating: K+ for death references
Summary: Four melodramatic ways Sherlock dreamed of finally returning to London, and the one rather boring (but a Bit Good) way it actually happened
A/N: Trying to ease my way back into this fandom after a long hiatus by finishing up old WIPs, with some h/c and fluff to offset all the angst still floating around.

Four melodramatic ways Sherlock dreamed about finally returning to London, and the one rather boring (but a Bit Good) way it actually happened

V.

He starts daydreaming the night after Mycroft texts him for the first time since his departure from London. No words, just a single photo, but the body is very recognizable as one John Clay, Moriarty's third-in-command and the primary London-based threat against them (Moran, he knows, is still on his way back from a drugs deal in South America, though he was present in London three months ago when it all went to Hell).

The body is also very obviously dead, as no man can live with three bullets through the heart (not the head, Mycroft would know that he would need solid proof and it's a bit hard to do full recognition through a one-inch picture screen and when the corpse is missing half his frontal lobe). Brother dear is, both fortunately and unfortunately, quite capable when he puts his mind to things, and apparently exterminating any and all remnants of the Moriarty syndicate does rank high amongst those things.

The fact that it's in the British Government's best interests to rid the world of the worst crime boss in years and his organization, is rather lucky for him and John, he thinks, and shudders when no one can see. Sherlock has become no more than a soldier in a war far bigger than his little Games, and the thought is a disquieting one.

But Moran is still far beyond their reach, he has absolutely nothing to go on at the moment, and he misses London and all its teeming life so much it's rather disgustingly maudlin – he has nothing left but daydreams.

And so daydream he does.

John has lost a bit of weight, but then again it's been a rough few months so that's only to be expected. The newspapers and tabloids have only just begun finding other topics to splash across their pages, now that his name has been cleared of previous accusations and the interest of the so-called tragedy has waned in favor of newer scandals.

He has no intention of announcing himself right here, in front of several dozen people in a Tesco, of all places, but after twelve hours of diverting Mycroft's surveillance so that he can spy on his former flatmate – dare he call him friend, after the events of four months ago? – and judge his mindset before the Big Reveal, he is getting sloppy.

Too sloppy. John glances up unexpectedly after choosing a box of breakfast cereal, and Sherlock isn't quick enough to dart around the towering stand of flavored oatmeal. John goes white to the lips and drops everything in his arms, which gets them a few strange looks from surrounding gawpers, and Sherlock…

Sherlock panics.

One well-aimed nudge and the entire towering stash of oatmeal cascades down in a resounding thump of cardboard, effectively blocking the path between them, and then he runs, not heeding John's shout or the startled "Oi!" from the nearest stock boy, who is no doubt bemoaning the state of his oatmeal.

It's eight hours later when he finally gets his nerve back up, and goes back to Baker Street.

He doesn't make it up the stairs before John is slamming him with all the force of a tiny cable-knitted freight train against the wall, shouting something inches from his nose that sounds suspiciously like he's about to cry. Then Sherlock's head bounces off the wallpaper and John looks so suitably horrified that he begins to laugh.

And then they both can't stop, sliding down the wall to the floor in a fit of giggles so welcome after four months of stress that it's more therapeutic than any twelve therapists John knows.

His mobile chimes sharply, startling him from his reverie.

Moran sighted in Brixton
23:00 last night. Your
flight leaves 18:30.
M.

He sighs, and begins throwing his few possessions into his unmarked, nondescript carrier bag.

The Game has turned into a War, and there is no place in it for daydreams.

IV.

He's on the run for nearly six weeks after that. How high his hopes had been, that this might be over so soon – and how unrealistic that hope had been; such an error is unforgivable from a mind like his.

Moran is too smart, too wily, far too cunning to be taken down so easily. Time after time he draws so near, even as he had to Moriarty himself, only to never grasp that vital evidence that would bring the tiger down for good and pave the way to his own freedom in the process. Moriarty had been all about show; he was an actor, a showman to the last – but Moran is clever, far too clever, to be so bold. He has now inherited one of the most lucrative crime syndicates in history with the death of his leader, and is not about to give it up so quickly.

Sherlock's progress is hindered further by the fact that he is forced to work from the shadows, because if even a hint or suspicion of his survival reaches the wrong ears, then the lives of everyone he cares for are forfeit. He well knows he would never make it back to them in time to even warn them, much less save them; Moran is too powerful, seated too intricately in the web, to even grant him that period of grace.

And so he continues, alone, and hopes that they will someday forgive him when he returns, alone.

A year is a very long time to deceive someone, no matter how good the reasons for doing so. He is uncertain as to whether John will fully forgive him now, even if he does end up believing Sherlock's explanation. And why should he? A man who will drug a friend – an only friend – who still has PTSD and occasional flashbacks, in order to test a hallucinatory drug…why would John believe this was any different?

And could he even blame the man for not believing? Has Sherlock ever given any indication that he does, actually, care? He cannot recall a specific instance of doing so, and that is an unpleasant truth which haunts him now – for how is he to convince them that he did what he did not out of mistrust, or desire to play the Game, but to keep them safe, all of them?

Lestrade is hard to convince, but then the DI has known him since he was a foolish junkie just out of Uni, wasting his talent on the streets. He's still not quite sure if Lestrade believes his story, as the man's glare follows him as he makes his way hastily into the teeming masses of London.

The semi-failure does not give him much hope that John will forgive him so readily, either. That he can process, deal with; but if John does not believe him, accuses him of just another experiment with such unbelievably harsh consequences…

John believes him.

Actually believes him, listens to his story with only a sad smile and sadder eyes, and with one breath forgives him and welcomes him home.

Then John turns a ghastly shade of pale, and fumbles in his pocket for a small, nondescript pillbox. He quickly takes one of the tiny capsules inside, and washes it down with a mouthful of tea. It's only then that Sherlock's brain catches up with his mouth, and the observation followed by swift, sickening deduction broadsides him with the force of a hurricane, just as deadly and frightening.

"What is it?" he whispers, because that much is not able to be deduced by observation, no matter how powerful, how fantastic he is.

John looks down at his hands, wrapped as they are around a tea mug as if it's the last stable thing in his universe. "Thoracic aortic aneurysm," he says simply, calmly, as if the three words haven't just brought Sherlock's entire world crashing down around him, burying him under the rubble. "Sherlock, breathe," John instructs patiently, and he vaguely registers that he hasn't been.

Breathing is boring. John, his John, diagnosed with a serious heart condition, is not.

He would so much rather have boring.

"It's not likely to kill me tomorrow, Sherlock," John is saying, as if that makes things any better. "But…well. There won't be much running around with you, hopping over rooftops and chasing criminals across bridges, I'm afraid."

"You could die," he hears himself saying, stupidly.

I will burn you.

"I could," John replies, still in that horribly calm voice. "Perhaps I won't, though."

I'll burn the heart out of you.

He hasn't won the Game, after all, because the Game means nothing compared to this.

A train rattles past his dingy flat, shaking the foundations and rattling the walls. The sound is quite loud enough to wake him abruptly, heart still in his throat and perspiration drying on his brow, soaking his short hair now dyed a horrible shade of ginger for disguise purposes.

In the half-light, that twilight world that belongs neither to the waking nor the sleeping, he almost destroys six months of building up a cover by sending a frantic text to a number he does not have stored in his mobile but can dial in complete darkness by memory.

Instead, he regains himself enough to rationalize the nightmare as just that, a nightmare.

And that fuels his anger enough that he throws himself into the Work with renewed fire, because he is not going to win the Game only to find he has lost his most important playing piece, not going to become a soldier returning home to find he's lost a far more important War.

III.

Thankfully, when Sherlock manages to bring down a good third of Moran's most lucrative drug-smuggling ring in the Middle East, he cripples the man's organization, and Moran goes to ground to regroup.

This grants Sherlock a small reprieve, which is as well, because he was shot (not seriously, simply inconvenient, and isn't it ironic that now both he and John have been shot at in the same geographic region) during the last mission and then developed a very bad infection due to this horrible province's absolute incompetence when compared with the memory of a fierce little army doctor who never even let his paper cuts develop into something worse.

Sherlock spends a good three days totally out of his head, scaring his poor Turkish landlady half to death, and somehow manages to not text the wrong people and blow his entire cover. Moran has no idea he is behind the huge drug bust, thinks it's just a lucky Interpol operation or something, and for that he's grateful, because it's a perilous enough venture, trying to cripple a tiger; putting everyone at home in danger through his carelessness would be inexcusable. He's a soldier in this as much as John ever was, and he knows the dangers of espionage and the consequences for being caught.

Mycroft's people find him on the third day, and he's flown incognito to a safe house behind British lines to recover. Fever, a mild strain of the dreaded typhoid, if his Google research can be trusted under these circumstances, ravages his traitorous body, depriving his brain of vital oxygen and nutrients, and he thinks that under those circumstances he can be forgiven his fever-dreams, his wishful thinking, his stupidly plodding sentimentalism.

"I warn you, Sherlock, that this is quite possibly a very foolish idea," Mycroft sighs, looking much put-upon through the video chat.

"Noted," he mutters.

"Are you even listening to me? Sherlock?"

"Is that all, brother dear?" he snarls, curling up under the blankets in a protective gesture that does nothing to settle his stomach.

"Sherlock, I am only sending him because you texted him while out of your head from fever and because, quite frankly, I have no time to deal with this colossal debacle. Whatever possessed you to take on the drug lord personally? We talked about this ridiculous predilection of yours to do the work yourself when subordinates are readily available."

Sherlock has stopped listening after "I am sending him," because that is the only important part of Mycroft's conversation. He regrets – how he regrets! – not dumping his phone and laptop in a safe place when he first realized he was becoming very ill. He has dragged the very man he swore to protect straight into the thick of things, with a half-garbled text message sent when he was hallucinating.

Evidently John is still expert at deciphering his messages, because the doctor apparently broke into Mycroft's flat in the middle of the night (after first incapacitating the three bodyguards downstairs and up) to demand an explanation. And then demand a private plane to Sherlock's location. All this, at gunpoint, Mycroft had explained with a grudging respect.

Sherlock lies back with a sigh, arm flung over his eyes. He would not put John in danger for the world, but now that it has been done, he cannot profess to being entirely remorseful about seeing the man again. Being ill is utterly miserable; being ill all alone, with only an impersonal and hideously boring nurse to occasionally check on him is even more miserable.

He drifts off once more, frowning as he automatically blocks out Mycroft's annoyed voice coming from his laptop speakers.

He wakes he knows not how many hours later, to see that the cold and sterile illumination of his room has been dimmed to just the wall sconces and a lamp, warm and glowing with golden light. Soft music, some classical violinist, is floating from his laptop, which has thankfully been divested of Mycroft's Skype presence.

Still aching from the fever, he winces, utters an emphatic curse under his breath as the muscles of his torn arm protest his sudden movement into wakefulness. He slumps back on the pillow with a sigh, blinking in the dimmed light, and flexes his arm more gingerly, hoping illogically that the abused limb will simply obey his brain's wishes instead of its nervous impulses. Naturally, he does not succeed, and he huffs out an annoyed breath, lips pursed in frustration at his own weakness.

Then he starts, as a face appears silently in his peripheral vision, and he turns his head to see that a small figure in a thick knitted jumper is sitting in a chair some inches from the bed, watching him with eyes that still look suspiciously like they don't quite believe their own evidence.

"John," he whispers, because even his fever-addled brain would never come up with that horrible cable-knitted monstrosity in a perfectly disgusting shade of vomit-green.

John still stares him down for another moment, elbows on his knees as he leans forward, watching him intently.

"I can explain," he offers feebly, though he really isn't in condition to do so just at the moment.

"Mycroft already did." John's tone is gentle, and Sherlock relaxes on instinct at the sound of his voice, after so long, so many nights of running scared through the world on his self-imposed exile.

"And?"

"You're a bloody idiot, you are," John says roughly, and he pretends not to see the telltale gleaming of a tear behind the hand that swipes almost angrily across the doctor's face, before it settles gently on his brow, feeling for fever in the old-fashioned, comforting way.

"I doubt that has ever been in question," he mutters, and there's no way in the world he can stop smiling, really, because whatever hell he's lived in for a year now is worth it, for this one moment, no matter what happens tomorrow.

"Also your hair is rubbish, Sherlock. I mean." John's hand skims playfully over the cropped curls, lips twitching in a small grin as he ruffles the ginger mess. "This is ghastly with your complexion, really."

Sherlock tries to look miffed, and suspects he only looks slightly high, which is actually half-true, given the stiff antibiotics and painkillers he's been fed the last two days or so.

"Sorry for that text," he finds himself saying, as his head droops in weariness, scrunching into the pillow.

"Not half as sorry as you will be when you're feeling better," is John's dry response, and Sherlock doesn't even care that the doctor is probably quite serious.

They have a mess to sort out, certainly, and the next few months are going to be hell for them both – but for tonight, this is enough to send him to sleep with a smile on his face for the first time in months.

He wakes up, stiff and aching but relatively content, and it is a good twenty minutes before he realizes, from the horrid bright fluorescents overhead and the stiff, no-nonsense nurse that administers his morning antibiotics…

…it was all a dream, brought on no doubt by fever and side effects of the medication.

Just a dream.

He's still in a British safe house somewhere on the Afghanistan border, still with a healing gunshot wound from his last coup against Moran, still being hounded by Mycroft's people about getting out before word gets back to London that he is even alive.

Still alone.

II.

He is so close, the next time! So very close to taking down Moran for good. So very, very close.

But the tiger is clever, more so than his master before him, and he is not going down without a fight. Sherlock's progress is hampered by the fact that Moran does not, so far as they know, suspect he is alive; he cannot work overtly, even in disguise, for the man is perceptive, and back in the Moriarty days knew Sherlock's work like an expert can identify an artist by his brush stroke. Sherlock must be just as clever, even more so, if he is to catch out his prey.

Moran's organization has taken four very solid hits in the last five months, all due to Sherlock's unceasing efforts and a little well-aimed help from brother dearest (with the aid of Interpol and the American forces on that continent, shutting down the biggest trafficking ring in Central America in years). But Sherlock is so close, so very close –

And Moran slips through his fingers once more. He's destroyed perhaps half of his organization, got most of the smaller fish with little difficulty; but the big fish has escaped the net once again, leaving him back where he started.

Alone, and without an idea of how to proceed.

The Game is no longer a game; it is a war, and he a soldier in it. A soldier wearying of the fight, tired of carrying a standard for an army of one, one man against the power of an organization so dangerous he dares not reveal himself even to his own family, or what constitutes family (because Mycroft is brother only in blood; one cannot recognize as family a man one is privately a little terrified of).

He is a soldier, and a hopelessly outnumbered one at that.

He sits in a small villa in the South of France one night, and smokes his way through a pack of cheap cigarettes, trying to think through his next actions. Mycroft is preoccupied with a minor war in South Africa, and is unable to give him any sort of assistance until that matter is taken care of. Sherlock could simply wait it out –

But he is so tired of waiting! It has been nearly sixteen months since he last saw any part of London other than Heathrow airport, and that only because he was trying to track down one of Moran's lieutenants. He scoffs mentally at the idea that he is homesick, because it is a ridiculous notion – and yet, he finds himself unusually bereft tonight, feeling very much alone and wishing he were at least in familiar surroundings.

Is there not some way he could simply force Moran's hand?

He stumbles backward, reeling from the punch to the face he's just received from a man who he knows can kill with his bare hands, and reminds himself that he rather deserved that, for other things – just not this one, but then John has no way of knowing that at the moment. From John's point of view, it is just another of Sherlock's games, another experiment upon humanity, one that has had consequences that even he has not fully grasped.

He wipes blood away from his lower lip, which caught on his teeth when John punched him, and doesn't even have time to lower his hand before John has him by both lapels.

"How could you do this, Sherlock?" John shouts inches from his nose, shaking him furiously. "Just another game to you, was it? Keeping an eye on all of us from afar, watching us dance to your tune while you were swanning off God knows where, looking for your next arch-nemesis to play with on a bloody rooftop?!"

"John, listen to me, there was a very good reason –"

"I don't care what your reason was!" John is shaking now, from reaction more than anger, and Sherlock is actually worried that the man might just faint, because his face is white as a sheet and his hands are trembling as they give Sherlock's lapels one last furious shake. "You were dead, Sherlock! Dead! I talked to your grave every S-sunday," and the last words are more a sob than anything else, as his friend's knees suddenly buckle. John collapses against him, face buried in his coat, and begins to cry silently, bitter and angry tears that are more shock than anything else.

Sherlock has no idea what to do, because this is definitely not his forte, and so he can only tentatively bring his arms up in support around John's thin – too thin, he's lost weight he didn't have to spare in the first place – figure, squeezing gently, experimentally, and hoping he's doing it Right.

John's breath hitches, and his hands suddenly snake around Sherlock's body in a grip so hard it is actually painful.

"I'm sorry, John," he says, and it is sincere, because though he would not change a thing he does regret the pain it caused this most undeserving of men.

"Shut up," is muffled into his shirt-front, along with some choice language that makes him grin, now that he can understand Farsi after three months spent in the Middle East.

"I can explain –"

"I said shut up, Sherlock," John snarls. "I am getting my bloody hug and you are not going to ruin it by opening that great yawping mouth of yours."

Sherlock wisely shuts up.

He does, however, decide that he needs to rather explain the events of the last year or so before asking John to come along with him tonight, on his final problem – luring Moran and his expensive air-rifle back to Baker Street with the aid of a very lifelike shop mannequin and Mrs. Hudson's invaluable assistance.

He has gone through the entire pack of cigarettes without even realizing he was smoking them. The plan would be foolishly transparent; Moran would never fall for it. And still, there remains the death penalty for at least three people should any hint of Sherlock's survival ever reach Moran's ears. Even here, in Montpellier, Sherlock would never make it home in time, if Moran were to carry out Moriarty's last orders.

He tosses the empty pack into a nearby bin with a snarl of disappointment

John would be disgusted by his relapse, anyway.

I.

In the end, it's so anticlimactic that he feels rather cheated. He has worked tirelessly for nearly a year and a half on this, poured every ounce of his body and mind as well as the heart and soul everyone thinks he doesn't have into the case – gave it everything, every moment of every day.

And in the end, Mycroft finally manages to simply remove Moran from the picture, by means which Sherlock is better off not knowing.

Sherlock's actually in England at the time, spending a few days in Portsmouth trying to track down a possible informant who might get him on his way to producing proof against Moran, to put him behind bars for at least thirty years or more. He's staying in a decent hotel for once, not up to his usual standards but his disguise is good enough after all this time that he thinks he can get away with not residing in a hovel. The bellboy knocks politely at his door, and delivers a message, addressed to him and using the code words which indicate it is from Mycroft.

Inside, is a police report, a coroner's report, and several photographs.

They are unmistakably genuine, and he suddenly slides down the wall to the floor right where he stands, as the realization hits him – it is over. The war is over, the battle won; the game forfeited, stalemated, but he does not care. It is over.

He can go home.

He's on a train within an hour, because renting a car is too time-consuming and he has his identity to deal with. In the nearly-deserted train car he makes himself more presentable; he cannot change the color of his hair, darker now but still definitely brown rather than black, but he was able to wash out the disgusting amount of wax he had used to slick it down and back at the hotel, and now it is drying in the humid air, turning slowly into his usual curls. He is still wearing the form-fitting hoodie and designer jeans which comprised his disguise, that of a Uni student on holiday, but he has no clothing to change into which will make him feel more like himself.

It will have to do.

His phone rings when he's still at least two hours out from London.

"I told him, Sherlock," Mycroft's voice is calm, composed, giving no indication that he's just in the last six hours executed a man without trial for the sake of his baby brother.

"You what?!" His shout draws the attention and disapproval of the other occupants of the train car, and he hastily gets up to move the conversation into the small lavatory.

"Sherlock, the doctor has been through enough and he is not getting any younger; do you really think a dead man showing up unannounced to a traumatized war veteran is really the smartest plan?"

Ah. "Well, if you put it that way," he mutters, shouldering the mobile as he catches sight of his reflection in the tiny mirror. No amount of finger-combing is going to fix the mess his hair is, unfortunately, and he finally rolls his eyes and just hangs up on his brother.

Honestly. He supposes Mycroft was correct, and John really needed the news broken to him gently, and it's probably best that he understands the reasons for everything before Sherlock just shows up to surprise him. But it is just like his insufferable brother, always taking the fun out of everything!

He is admittedly in a terrible mood by the time he gets off the train, due partly to his irritation with his plans being spoiled, and the rest due to his unease; because John has not contacted him, not sent him so much as a message or even a death threat. Three hours, since Mycroft told him the news, and John is still processing it?

Or does that mean John simply has no desire to talk to him? Sherlock would not really blame him; eighteen months is a very long time, though he had hoped to be away no more than ten or twelve originally. It is possible that John is too angry to even care that he is returning, equally possible that John thinks the whole thing was just another Game.

Every scenario his overactive mind has ever conjured up for their reunion, many of them thoroughly unpleasant, plague him as he stumbles off the train along with the rest of his fellow passengers, laptop case (containing no laptop, just part of his disguise) slung sloppily over one shoulder, iPod and earphones stowed in his pocket now that his disguise is no longer necessary.

London.

The sights and sounds and smells are unmistakable, and he would know them anywhere. Even after a year and a half, he can name every street and neighbourhood in this beloved city by heart, for they are each deserving of a place in his mind-palace. This is his city, and he has never felt so utterly at peace as he does now, stepping down into the drizzle and the fog and the countless people scurrying about with umbrellas, trying to catch their trains and cabs and sort their tickets and meet their families.

He belatedly remembers, as he is struggling through the crowd into the expanse of the station's main hall, he has no Oyster card or credit cards (too traceable) and only about three pounds cash on him, and it is rather a long walk to Baker Street.

And then he stops dead, freezing so suddenly a woman with a rolling briefcase trundles into his back and then huffs off, cursing young people these days, etc., etc.

He barely notices the people pushing around him, giving him irritated looks as he rather is in everyone's way – but his attention is fixated on a small, nondescript figure seated on a bench only a few yards away, the only seat which gives the occupant a clear view of every exit terminal.

John hasn't seen him yet.

Sherlock would swear he hasn't changed much at all, perhaps a little greyer at the temples, a little older around the eyes, and he does not miss the presence of that accursed cane leaning against the armrest of the bench. But John looks so ordinary, so quietly innocent in his simple brown jumper and jeans, just sitting there munching on a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps and eagerly watching the crowds of people hurrying to and from their destinations.

It's so ridiculously John, from start to finish, that it makes something weirdly tight in his chest, and Sherlock breaks into a senseless grin before he can stop himself.

Which is, of course, the moment that John's eyes suddenly scan past him in his disguise and then whip back to him, widening comically as their stares meet.

A security guard yells an indignant "Oi" as both crisps and cane are discarded on the floor, but the next instant Sherlock has an armful of laughing army doctor, and he's grinning stupidly down at John's head, and people are staring at them, and teenaged girls are squealing in the background, and one moron actually catcalls their direction, and somebody is filming them on his iPod and it probably will end up on YouTube, and Sherlock doesn't care one bit because they're all idiots and no one is going to spoil this for him.

Every soldier deserves a welcome home, after all.