Author's note: I am currently working on a really, really long AU fic, and my brain just blanked out while writing it, so I went and watched TSOT videos...which lead to oodles of feels...which in turn lead me to pick up this old fic, dust it off and add a chapter to accomodate S3. (spoilers for S3...sort of)

Enjoy! :)

221B, Baker Street, London, W1

I don't know what I am...

It wasn't quite a sunrise. Sunrises were those bright, splendid things that happened in light colours and noble metals, like gold and bronze. This wasn't it. The sky didn't burst, didn't even flinch, as some colour bled into it. Lining clouds with burning ink, soft infant Sun painted their lot across rooftops of a city they took by storm, in their youth – in my youth with them - in days that now hoard in that box neither of them think I know about. It was then that the tin box was first brought. Maybe it wasn't a box at all. Maybe it wasn't made of tin. I couldn't see, there wasn't enough light without a proper sunrise. But I felt it, the cold that could only be metal, and the burdened heaviness of a cramped space forced to carry too much within, that could only be a box.

Hiding it in shadows of an old hallway cupboard, they go about their days now, in an adorably oblivious conviction that I do not know what's in it. Of course I do, I've known since that morning when the sunrise was really a wound in the sky. The morning when, for the first time in a too-long time, I've had them both under my roof, neither only a visitor, but staying.

I am not just a place.

It wasn't the first time he came back, that morning. He came back much earlier, while I was still empty and covered in dust. While I was still a tomb and a ghost-yard. And then he came back again, when the one I thought I'd lost came back, too. The lost one came back, and I knew it was a matter of time until I saw them both again. But while one stayed, the other one always left. He always came around again, too, but never for long, and rarely alone. There was her.

She was nice. Clever, too. But she was that much too heavy for me to bear, that one addition that caused my floorboards to whine and my windows to rattle – a disruption of my equilibrium. She was too much – I didn't have enough space. She never stayed long, but when she left, she took him with her, and the too-heavy became too-light again. Too empty. It was taxing, that constant game of unsettling the scales. My steps groaned and my pipes gurgled rebelliously, but no one seemed to listen.

There was one night when things seemed as good as they once were. My insides rang with laughter, and those looks I always kept secret for them retured. Something else was there - a truth I always knew, but neither of them said, ever. Untill they did. I keep that 'I don't mind' hidden behid the mirror above the mantel. Someday, they might look at themselves and find it again.

But then the night was out and I felt split in half. Everything was done in halves. Only one cup of tea made in the morning – a half of a pair. Only one pair of feet traversing across my floors – a half of a quartet. Only one chair in front of the fire, the other hidden away. Where? It's a secret. Remember, I keep secrets well.

Try balancing on one foot for a very, very long time. It's no balance at all. There's a reason why people have two feet – leave one alone to hold all the weight for too long and after a while you will stumble and fall.

I am not just a place. I don't know what I am, but maybe I'm a limbo.

So many new faces. Things were still in halves – the chairs still separated – but then a new face came, as if to fill the void. It was a wrong face, wrong pair of feet. But she didn't stay long, and she never tried to call me her home, for which I am grateful. I think she knew she was just a guest passing time. She seemed to have been having fun, knowing she'd have to leave. And she did, soon after both of my...what did I call them? Impish and Grounded? Detective and Blogger? I don't think that's who they are anymore. To think that – it makes me sad.

Anyway, she left soon after the one I haven't seen for a month came back. He was so confused, but in my eyes he was as green as my kitchen tile. Such cruel games they play with each other. They hurt each other more than anyone else ever could, and still they're ready to kill for each other at the smallest sign of threat. So, what do I call them?

I am not just a place. I don't know what I am, but I feel like a crime scene. An interrogation room.

There was blood on my carpets that night, from broken stitches. At least the chairs were back together, with another one in the middle. Almost picture perfect, but not quite. I was a crime scene for one too many crimes, not the worst of which involved the blood on the carpet. There was that heaviness again, and this time it was cold and grating, like metal wire, before it turned hot and sticky and painful. Blood doesn't wash away easily.

In a flurry of motion, they all left, and I remembered the other times so many people were here. Those times when they were searching through me, and I hid the looks exchanged and the casual touches that were now so rare. That time when I maybe hid kisses of questionable existence was so long ago. I was so alive then.

I was an accomplice, now. The only thing I hid was evidence of crimes.

I am not just a place. I don't know what I am. But I know what I'm not.

That tin I always wish to ask them about on Mondays and Fridays, that tin that is now on the nightstand, contains all crumbs of their infatuation's childhood and chunks of its adulthood about which they don't want to think. It hosts instants in which one was going to say 'thank you' but didn't, and occasions during which both of them did things worthy of an apology. It hosts words unspoken on too many occasions, out of fear or anger or dread of time lost for good.

The morning when the sky was a wound was the morning when wounds were re-opened, but in a way that was necessary for them to heal. Two pairs of footsteps, two cups of tea. The chairs in their places. They both walked like men nursing wounds, but they were careful of each other, never bumping into each other, never touching for too long, least they cause more injury. Perhaps it helped that the box was always between them.

Dormant hours of a Sunday six weeks ago, that Sunday that will stay burnt into my brain, with all its trepidation – that's what is in that tin. They add up to a pair who subsists in its habit of abandoning things that long ago stood full of import to them. But they might just be learning their way back to them.

They are both so close now, within a hand's reach of each other, and yet their own hands discard fractions of them that so stubbornly fight to stay. Full of fantastic, shadowy thoughts, their minds construct a polygon on which their thoughts run chasing each other (as dogs run chasing cats – on instinct),until a switch occurs and victims turn into assailants.

But it is only thoughts that they allow to carry on with this vicious conduct, unsaid thoughts.

One puts a ban on words, this misty glass you stuck across the other's mouth, stops any and all failings he would want to admit, just as the other's downcast lashes act as a parasol against the first one's radiant and brutally truthful opinions. Funny, how they've switched roles now. It was always the other one who could harm with words and undiluted truths, but not anymore. He is softer, in some ways that I recognise – the fall of his steps, the way he no longer stomps on my floors with a stubborn disregard. It is the softness of a man who dares not move to fast, because it hurts. A broken rib, perhaps.

We co-exist, the three of us, and it's not like before. But it's better than it was for a long time, even if it tastes bitter like plaster dust, and my walls go damp from the lack of usual warmth. They and I align in a syzygy of a star, a moon, and a cosmic carcass that acts as a joint habitat of two said barbarians.

I think I remember their names. I don't think I ever forgot. But I don't know what I am. What do they call me now?

I am not just a place. I don't know what I am. But I know what I am not.

I am not a home, either.

The box on the nightstand gets heavier, and I wonder what they put in it. Again, I wonder if it's a box at all. It's getting heavier, but warmer, too. Perhaps the tin is too close to the hearth, stealing the warmth of the fire? But the nightstand is so far away from the hearth, rooms and rooms away.

Days pass but they still walk like wounded men, which is worrying, because they should have healed by now. Why didn't they? Somehow I know it has to do with the fact that the box is still closed.

The box is driving me mad. I need to examine it more closely. I let my curtains billow in the drought, trying to feel its contours. I let the water droplets drip from that damp spot in the ceiling, trying to catch the sound they make upon hitting it. I find nothing. And yet, I feel I should know what it is.

If I do, maybe I'll know what to call them, again. Maybe I'll know what they call me.

I am not just a place. I am not a home, either.

But I would like to be.

I find out when I give up trying. One evening, I get petulant, and I refuse to keep them warm. I cut their heating and I watch them shiver and I don't care in the slightest. I am angry and tired and nameless, so I make them shiver in the cold. And I'm glad I do.

Because the cold drives them to the fire. They sit in their chairs for as long as they can, until it's so late that it's already early again, and they are both too tired to stand. But one manages to stand, either way, but he doesn't leave for bed. Instead, he walks to the bedroom – his, on the first floor, closer – and walks back out, with a swaddle of blankets. He drapes all but one over the figure in the other chair, assumedly asleep, arranging them with meticulous care.

As he stands to move away, though, a hand catches his wrist and I can feel the aching that was once something lovelier, I can feel it in my bricks the way he feels in on his skin. The hand tugs, and they end up sitting on the floor in a nest of fleece, with their back propped against the red chair. They're close, and if they hold hands, that's alright because the blankets tangle as much as fingers do.

And if there's a kiss, that's alright because the fire makes it look like a game of shadows.

So, that's when I find out what the box is. I find out because I feel the lid slip just an inch, enough for it to betray itself.

Oh. It is not a box, after all. You must forgive me, I am old and out of practice. Literally rusty. It is not a box at all, but it felt like one, cold and heavy and tight-lidded for so long. It was even sharp, like anything with edges. You too would have mistaken it for a box.

Sharp, and cold, and heavy. So full of things unspoken. Silly me, how could I have not known it? I've seen it so many times before, although warmer, softer, and then broken in a way I thought was beyond repair. That's why I didn't expect it – one does not expect things which are presumably irreparably shattered.

I don't know what they call me now, but I'll call them by their names, and maybe that will mean something. Even if it doesn't, I can't do anything else. Not when the box isn't really a box. Not when it is actually John's heart, beaten up and hardened, still full of voices he refuses to sound.

I am not a home, not yet, but I am something close to that. Sherlock calls me a home, now that John's here, but John doesn't call me anything yet. I think he is still angry. I'd offer an apology, but I don't know what for. He won't tell me. He won't tell anyone, yet. But I have a feeling he might, one day, soon.

I have them back. I have their names. Soon, I shall have my name back, too.

I am not a home.

But maybe, one day, I might be one again.

I think I'm getting there.

221B, Baker Street, London, W1