Sherlock passed out rather quickly after all the screeching he'd done. His body had just gone limp, and for a moment Sebastian thought he'd been cutting off his air supply accidentally. He hadn't. Holmes had shut down like a computer, made a few last sounds and then the screen went blank. Seb slowly released him, shifting him so he lay flat on the floor. His forefinger reached out to touch the carpet burn on the detective's cheekbone and he pulled a mobile from his own jacket pocket. He toggled through the menu, other hand gently splayed over the side of Sherlock's face, and opened the most recent recording in the mobile phone Sherlock had left on the rooftop of Bart's three years earlier. There were a few minutes of muffled verbal foreplay and then there it was, that lilting voice in a phrase that Sebastian knew by heart.

"I see. You're not ordinary… No. You're me. You're me!"

Moran paused it just there and rolled forward, his forehead pressing into the floor.

Jim is not gone.

He's here.

He's right here.

Sebastian slid down to lie on his side, staring at the detective's profile. He was thinner than he remembered, pale skin stretched tight over his features. It had always been from a distance, through a scope or in photographs, but Seb knew he hadn't always looked so… lifeless.

As if the mere thought had flipped a switch Sherlock's eyes opened. His lungs expanded and his lips parted, but Sebastian was quick and moved his hand back over the detective's mouth.

"It's done. Stop screaming," He pressed against his mouth once, then pulled his hand away. Sherlock did as he was told and after a long silence he darted up, legs pushing him off the ground and away from Sebastian towards the kitchen. The blonde sat up slowly and stretched, before standing and following after him. A kitchen drawer rattled open and metallic shuffling followed, so it came as no surprise that Sherlock held a weapon, a scalpel, in an outstretched hand when Seb approached him.

"You killed my… You killed John."

"You're the genius, Holmes, you're probably right," He leaned against the refrigerator and stared at him blankly, eyes never dipping to the blade pointing towards his chest.

"You… It's… You shot him in his chair. You killed him in our…" Sherlock trailed off, stumbling two steps forward.

"I sure did," Seb nodded, guiding him through it patiently.

"I have to kill you, now. I have to. I-"

"But you won't." Sebastian moved forward, closing the gap between them until the scalpel pressed into his chest through the thin fabric of his flannel shirt. Sherlock looked down at it and then back up into his eyes. For someone Seb had always seen as relentlessly pompous, absolutely confident, Holmes now looked more childish. More hollow than anything, really.

"Why not?"

"Because you need a soldier," He paused nodding his head at Sherlock slowly, "And I need a genius."

Moran watched him as it sunk in.

Waited.

Emotions flickered over Holmes' face, easily readable despite the sullen-faced composure he'd had back in different times. Sebastian knew well the feeling that was rippling over Sherlock and leaving him no better than skinned, like his muscles and nerves were exposed to the words he heard. Seb had felt it, too, three years earlier, when the attention was elsewhere and he was staring down at blood sunken into the pores of the concrete roof. It felt like being burned alive, kneeling down and checking that it was real, that it was really Jim with his skull shot through and not some illusion the little Irish genius has conjured. It had not been an illusion. But he'd had time to toughen again, and he'd had a purpose the second he'd pressed play on that recording Holmes had so conveniently left behind. So he'd waited while the detective sleuthed his way through the empire, watched him kill and maim and hunt.

He became obsessed.

Setting up a fake version of himself for Sherlock to kill had been a little too easy, disappointingly so, and he'd done it without more than a phone call from an old burner out of his gun case. He'd wanted a challenge, a distraction from the all-encompassing need. To have him, to take him apart and put him back together as some blurred consultant amalgamation of the two men who'd shaken hands before the world fell apart. Sebastian had spent much of his life looking through a scope and now his whole mind seemed to settle into that format, Sherlock Holmes as the target. When he'd seen the incredible satisfaction the man had gotten twisting a knife into his decoy (tall, blonde, military, scarred, violent, perfect) he'd felt it himself, pressing a hand to the flat expanse of his chest and feeling the sticky coagulation of blood that wasn't really there. He'd followed Holmes from Belarus to Paris, to Province, to a tiny, nameless town in the snowy Russian desert and he still slid his fingers over his heart to make sure it was still whole and undamaged.

Of course it wasn't.

So now, when Sherlock's face finally settled into a look of wary acceptance, Seb felt the old phantom wound dry up, knit back together. He breathed in deeply, clearing the dried blood he'd felt caked in his lungs all that time, and the scalpel dug into his skin. Holmes' eyes widened, as if somehow he too had felt the skin reconfigure under the sharp point of the scalpel and the tool dropped to the floor with a faint whistling before the clatter. It narrowly missed their feet, though neither bothered to watch its descent, staring at the more present danger (safety?) before them. Sebastian raised a hand to his shirt and wiped at the hint of blood gathering beneath it, a grin hitched one side of his lips when he raised the two fingers up, showing Sherlock what he'd accomplished. He leaned forward just slightly and placed the bloodied hand on his shoulder, steadying himself against the man he had stayed a step behind for so long. His voice came out low and cracked, a genuine tone three years out of use.

"Welcome home."