Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Two years.

Naturally, Sherlock knows that time passes at a constant, but he can’t help but feel that it has been an eternity since he’s last seen London’s grey skies. Now, sitting at Heathrow and watching the endless packs of tourists and business travellers flow by him, the proximity is almost unbearable.

There’s this inane habit where people who have been away from a place for some time reflect and mull over how they’ve come back as a changed person and how life continuing on without them makes them feel out of place. Sherlock doesn’t believe in that. There is no reason to treat a city like a living being, and obviously it’ll be different after a time, since it’s only natural for people modify their surroundings to fit their own needs. It’d be ridiculous to expect otherwise, and Sherlock knows that he only needs to go through the city once to grasp and memorize any major changes.

Besides, Sherlock himself – he’s still the same. His hair is a bit shorter than when he left, his chin is covered in a short stubble, and there’s a scar on his thigh from when he got grazed by a bullet and a few more from a knife on his arms and chest, but those are all just transport. The integral parts – his mind and intellect – remain as they were.

Nevertheless, he can’t help but feel a stirring excitement run through him when he thinks about returning to those familiar streets. They are his hunting ground after all, where he belongs now that the bigger hunt is over.

He’s home.

Moriarty’s web had taken a long time to collapse, and Sherlock feels reluctant respect towards the late spider of a man. Even with the consulting criminal dead, the different strands of the web had been so skilfully weaved and so carefully hidden that it had taken him a while to untangle and subsequently destroy them. There had even been a couple instances where Sherlock thought he wouldn’t make it back home at all. A run-in with a colectivo in Venezuela, which left him fleeing for his life in the dark jungle. Catching the flu in Russia in the middle of winter, where the little hole he was inhabiting held little to no heat and going to a hospital was impossible without risking being exposed.

It was the consequence of having to work quietly, alone, and with little to no support, but he had prevailed. Still, he can’t help but wonder if things would have been different, were he accompanied by his blogger.

The decision to leave John behind had been the only correct and logical one. If Sherlock was willing to go so far as to fake his own death to save the doctor, there was no reason to endanger his life again to drag him on a guerrilla mission across the world. Sherlock could work more quickly and efficiently alone, and it was easier to adapt to changing situations when he didn’t have to think of anyone but himself.

Still, he can’t deny that he missed John. His brilliance shines even more brightly when reflected off the doctor, and John always seems to know the right questions to guide Sherlock’s thoughts to the correct route, in addition to being the only man that seems to be able to bear Sherlock on the daily, to actually care for him. After all, his friend already killed a man for him the second time they met. With John, Sherlock doesn’t seem quite as estranged from the rest of the world, doesn’t rub the people around him quite as wrong.

Hence, he’s now here, sitting at the airport. His original plan had been to head straight back to Baker Street, where he could rejoin with John and Mrs Hudson, falling back to his life from before. John would of course demand an explanation for his alleged ‘death’ and his time away, but Sherlock would explain his reasoning and eventually his friend would calm down. John could never stay mad at him for long. Mrs Hudson, on the other hand, would only be too happy to have him return, and he’d get away with a little chastisement at most.

Six months ago, however, he had received word from Mycroft that John had enlisted on a half a year deployment to Middle East with Doctors Without Borders. The updates on John he had received from Molly up until then had been sporadic at best, so Sherlock couldn’t piece together why the doctor would suddenly want to leave England. In the end, he chalked it up to John being an adrenaline junkie and unable to bear the lack of excitement while Sherlock was gone.

Today marks the day John’s assignment ends and he’s coming back home. Sherlock received the information about his flight from Mycroft as soon as it was booked and timed his own return to match John’s. However, his flight from Morocco arrived a couple hours prior to John’s, and thus he has to wait.

Sherlock taps his fingers on his chair, first completely randomly but then inadvertently settling on the rhythm of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in D major. He checks his watch and deduces some passersby for fun (the chubby middle-aged is lady is back from Spain, where her second daughter had just given birth to her firstborn; the young businessman is suffering from a yet undiagnosed herpes that he got from visiting a prostitute during his work trip; the married couple has just won the lottery or one of them has taken up drug dealing – no – definitely lottery). Once he bores of that, he goes to the bathroom before returning to the terminal lobby. He goes out to smoke a cigarette and airs out properly before going back inside, sniffing his coat for any lingering smell. He orders an overpriced takeaway tea just to have something to occupy himself with, and soon it’s 16:35 and John should be landing in three minutes (the plane is on time, Sherlock has checked from his mobile).

People flow out of the customs area in a steady line. Sherlock knows it takes a while to finish the border formalities and pick up your luggage, so he waits patiently, combing through the crowd with his eyes to spot a glimpse of the familiar dark-blonde hair. He wonders if John will be able to recognise him immediately, what with the changes to his appearance and unusual getup, but Sherlock’s sure he won’t have the same problem noticing the doctor.

By 17:30 there’s still no sign of John, but maybe he’s being delayed by some issue at the border control. By 18:00, he thinks John must have a lot of luggage with him and there must be a problem with the baggage handlers, they are on strike all the time anyway. By 18:30, he sends a snappy text to Mycroft, saying that he’s given Sherlock the wrong information on the flight, to which he receives a swift reply that it was indeed the flight from Beirut arriving at 16:38 that Dr John Hamish Watson had been listed as a passenger on.

But John is not there.

***

John sits on his bed, absentmindedly turning the pages of his book. Pale rays of light shine through the curtains to his bed, lighting up the mint green of the sheets, which clashes horribly with the peach tint of the walls. In one of the corners of the ceiling, just opposite the bed, a spot of mould has been spreading, escalating the war of green and orange. John’s not entirely sure who’s winning yet, but the mould has been steadily gaining territory.

The book he’s been reading is quite boring, but he woke up early this morning and has had time to kill. He’s debating whether he should try to get through a few more pages or just leave it for today, when the door opens and Sebastian steps in. He’s wearing sweatpants and a loose T-shirt, a relaxed attire completely in contrast to his angled face that has a mean scar stretching from the corner of his left eye down to his chin, and the military crew cut of his hair.

“Good morning, Doctor Watson,” he says with a jovial smile on his face. John doesn’t reply, but that doesn’t faze Sebastian.

“I see you’re up and about early today. You must be feeling peckish already, how about you wash your face, and we head out for breakfast?”

Sebastian closes the distance between the door and the bed and extends his arms downwards to John, stopping there with an expectant look on his face. John stares at his book for a couple more seconds until he marks the page with a bookmark and sets the novel down on his side. He then raises his hands and pulls himself towards Sebastian, wrapping his arms around his neck so that the younger man can pick him up.

Hard muscles contract and dig painfully into his sides and back as the ex-soldier raises him in the air and carries him lightly to the wheelchair in the opposite corner of the room.

“You’re so light these days, it’s like lifting a doll,” he states with a chuckle.

John hangs on, humiliated, until he’s put down in the chair and tucked under the blanket. Sebastian wheels him to the sink and chatters away while John washes his face and brushes his teeth. John’s thankful that he already had time to relieve himself this morning, so he won’t have to do that under Sebastian’s gleeful gaze.

“Jim said that he has a surprise for you today. Bet you can’t wait! I’m not spoiling it for you though, so you’ll have to be patient until he decides to bring it up. Although, if you ask him really nicely, he might be persuaded to tell you…”

It can’t be anything good. The surprises never are, and John thinks he’d rather just not hear it at all. However, he knows that it’ll come up sooner or later regardless of his wishes, so maybe it would be better to just rip off the plaster instead of enduring the gnawing anxiety for the whole day.

Resigned, he decides to take it up by himself as Sebastian wheels him towards the dining room. He braces himself to entertain his host as the doors to the dining room open and a familiar Irish lilt welcomes him:

“Johnny-boy! I’ve been waiting for you…”

The doors close behind him with finality.

Chapter Text

John checks through his travel documents one more time. He’s done it three times already, but he wants to make sure everything’s in order for the first proper objective he’s had in one and a half years, mentally priming himself for heading to Lebanon.

“Keep your eyes fixed on me.”

Those had been Sherlock’s words to John, right before he fell. It’s like he didn’t even realise that he had been John’s point of fixation ever since the moment they met.  He couldn’t help but be awed by the genius’s brilliance, endeared by the child-like excitement over being presented with a new, interesting case and the way he preened under John’s words of praise. Sherlock had brought back thrill and purpose to John’s life when it had been stagnant and drifting after his injury and discharge, and he was proud beyond belief to be called the enigmatic man’s friend. Probably the only one on Earth bestowed such a title. He had been happy to train his eyes on the flourish of that Belstaff, and follow the figure covered in the dark coat to whatever adventures he’d lead them on.

It also meant that once Sherlock was gone, John’s eyes lost their focus. Suddenly he couldn’t see anything anymore; he didn’t know where to look or what to do. Places previously filled with meanings and purpose turned empty, and that emptiness was painful. The streets of London, their hunting ground, turned foreign and hostile. Baker Street, lacking the life that made it comfortable and home, breathed hollow. John’s gaze wandered, and what he saw only reminded him of his friend and companion.

Associating with the people from that previous life hurt. He paid Mrs Hudson the courtesy calls custom and politeness required, but their grief rubbed together in a way that made it all the more inflamed. He couldn’t forgive Mycroft for handing Moriarty the keys to Sherlock’s destruction. He couldn’t forgive Lestrade for losing his faith in the genius and turning his back on them. He couldn’t forgive Molly for not stopping Sherlock from going to the roof.

But most of all, he couldn’t forgive himself for not being there when his friend needed him the most.

It took a while to even begin picking up the pieces and remake them in the shape of a man. Longer still to find a new direction for his life that had been so violently pushed off the course. But he is here now, choosing a new road. It helped to remember that as a doctor he still has the power to heal others, never mind how broken he might be himself. He can aid the lives of others to make up for the one he was unable to save, and maybe one day that hole can be filled with something new.

The reflections make the journey pass by quickly, and before he notices, John is getting off the plane in Beirut. The dry, hot wind feels familiar on his face and takes him momentarily back to the time before it all, and it’s a relieving thing not to be reminded of Sherlock by everything at every moment.

A driver has been sent to fetch him from the airport, and John finds him holding a sign with “John Watson” written on it in the lobby. He introduces himself as Samir and leads John out to the car, where he helps load the luggage inside before holding the door open for John to enter.

As the car slides off, John lets himself be filled with fluttering anticipation while watching the rows of houses flowing past. He’s on his way again, soon to meet his new colleagues and patients, and while the empty hole inside his chest still aches, the bone-deep weariness that has filled him for the past one and a half years is gone.

The streets seem like a maze, and John has no idea where they are when the car unexpectedly slows to a halt in a side alley. He assumes that there’s a traffic jam or something halting their advance, but then Samir opens the door by the driver’s seat and leaves the car completely. Confused, John watches him walk out of the alley and to the main street without so much as a word in his direction. Determined to catch up to him and ask what’s going on, John releases his safety belt and goes to open his door, but it’s yanked open from under his hand.

John stumbles, catching a glimpse of a bulky, Middle Eastern man before he is grabbed by his lapels and pulled out of the car. Adrenaline surges and the ex-army doctor sends out his hand to reach for the attacker’s nose and eyes, and as the man tries to avoid his clawing fingers, he braces his other hand on the man’s back and drives one of his knees to the man’s groin.

The attacker grunts and doubles over, his hold on John’s shirt loosening. He tears himself free and raises his left hand to deliver a fist to the other man’s chin, but is grabbed from behind by an accomplice who had circled around the car. With one hand around his fist and an arm choking his throat, John tries to struggle free by pushing the man holding him to the wall, but the grip is tight and the attacker in front of him is recovering. With clear vindictiveness in his eyes, the man straightens and throws a heavy slap against the side of John’s face. His head snaps to the side and he blinks a couple times to clear the buzzing in his ears, only to have his breath driven out by a punch to the guts. John sags, gagging for air, and is unable to defend himself when he feels a needle being pushed into his neck.

The sparkles in his vision give way to black as his consciousness fades to the dark.

John can’t really tell much about what happens next – his reality turns into scattered shards of wakefulness, where he can sense being stuffed into some small, dark space while the world around him trembles; hands grabbing him and maneuvering his unmoving body around; glimpses of the blue sky and coarse fabric under his cheek and crumbling plaster walls.

When he finally returns to his body, he’s sitting up in a chair. His head is drowsy and smarting, and when he tries to raise his hands to check for any injuries, he finds them tied to the back of the chair. The room is dark, with a single, flickering ceiling lamp shining light on the cracked concrete walls. With a brief turn of the neck that sends a twinge of pain through his head, John verifies that the room is empty aside from him and the chair. In front of him is a heavy metal door that he assumes is tightly locked, shutting him inside.

John tugs his hands a couple more times to see if there’s any slack in the rope (there isn’t), and then tries to move his feet, only to find out that they, too, are tied to the chair. He sighs with a groan, breathing through the pain in his head and resolved to see through whatever might be coming.

He doesn’t have to wait too long – after a while, he can hear the sound of a key turning in the lock, and the door pushes open with a group of four men filing in. They are a mixed bunch of West-European and Slavic looking people, led by a man with short blond hair and a scar on his face. John tries to prepare himself mentally for interrogation, or blackmail, or whatever else these men might have abducted him for, but all his efforts to steel himself wash down the drain as he hears a familiar voice ring out. It’s one he never believed he’d hear again, and one that immediately raises his hairs on their ends and makes his pulse race while images of swimming pools, bomb vests and Sherlock falling flash through his brain:

“Well well, Doctor Watson, if it isn’t a pleasure to meet you again.”

***

The table is a bit too tall, so John has to hike his shoulders up to be able to eat from his wheelchair. He’s not offered anywhere else to sit on, it’s just one of the little cruelties Jim and Sebastian pile on him on a daily basis.

On the opposite side of the table, Jim is nibbling on his granola, served with natural yoghurt, a plate of sliced fruits and a double espresso. The man himself looks just as sleek as his meal; face carefully shaven, hair slicked to the back with not a single strand out of place, hands manicured. John imagines Jim looks just as pristine even when he’s asleep – just lays down straight on his back atop the white sheets, pillow under his head and blanket tucked up to his chin, hands by his sides, face expressionless and eyes unmoving. Like a perfect mannequin. The exact opposite of John’s own sleeping habits these days.

John has been served the full English: sausages, perfectly crispy bacon, a sunny-side egg and beans. On another plate, a toast covered in butter and marmalade, and next to it a steaming cup of tea. He moves his fork unwillingly around the plate, drawing abstract shapes.

Jim drones on about some French restaurant he went to earlier during the week, meticulously picking apart the whole experience from the exquisite texture of the cauliflower soup to the slightly slanted pocket square and annoyingly nasal pitch of the waiter, to the twilight ambience that reminded him of the calm after having the throat of some nasty troublemaker slit and bled out.

John is not listening, but try as he might, he can’t concentrate on the whirling mess he’s created on his plate either. When Jim next stops to draw breath, John interrupts him:

“Sebastian said you had a surprise for me.”

Jim’s eyes light up, even as his mouth turns down into a sulking pout.

“But Sebby! How could you ruin it like this? You see how Johnny-boy couldn’t hold his excitement,” he complains, all the while directing a sneering look at John, who keeps staring at his plate.

“You know, Johnny, I wanted to tell you only later today, so you’re going to have to stay patient for a bit longer,” Jim continues, sounding apologetic. John glances at him from under his brows, squeezing his fork in his hand.

“Just tell me now.”

But Jim refuses to give in so easily, dragging the play along with an overacted look of contemplation on his face. John knows full well that Jim has scripted this moment in his head well in advance, and that he knows that John knows. It doesn’t stop him from enjoying every second.

“Weeell, if you truly have such ants in your pants, I guess I can reveal it already now. Do you know what day it is today?”

John isn’t in the mood for games, but he knows that the only way to get anywhere is to play along. So, dutifully, he asks:

“What?”

“It’s the day you’re coming back from your deployment!” Jim declares, and John raises his eyes, startled. What is this now? Jim’s expression turns devious.

“Guess who else is coming home today?”

John clenches his jaw and squeezes his fists even tighter, nails digging into his palms. It’s like his whole body is clamping down, trying to stop the inevitable answer from penetrating his being. Suddenly, Sebastian is by his side and a bunch of photographs flutter down on the table next to his breakfast. All of them depict the same, dark-haired figure.

John turns his eyes away.

“Sherly-boy wanted to be there to welcome his doctor,” Jim continues, his tone now openly gleeful.

“How do you think he’ll feel when you never appear? What do you think he’ll think? Will he expect you to have gotten into some kind of an accident that prevented you from coming? Or will he think that you’ve changed so much that he just didn’t recognise you anymore?”

John is quiet again, and if he were to clench his teeth any stronger, he’s sure they would shatter into a thousand shards, ripping his mouth apart.

Jim doesn’t let up though.

“Do you think he’ll try to look for you? Or will he deem you not worth the trouble and just forget you, continuing his life on Baker Street as if you’d never met?” he asks, leaning over the table as if physically trying to reach John’s mind. John glares at him and grits out:

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

Jim bounces back to his chair and gives him an indulgent smile.

“That I will. Actually, I even left him a little souvenir!”

Before John has the chance to reply, the actor’s mask is back, and Jim is gesturing towards his plate with a proxy of worry.

“But doctor Watson! Do you not find the breakfast to your liking? Do have a few more bites, you could certainly use the calories! You’ve lost so much weight.”

John shakes his head.

“I’m not hungry,” he states, his churning stomach killing even the slightest appetite. The mock concern disappears from Jim’s face, leaving a neutral expression and piercing dark eyes.

“Eat,” he says with no inflection, making a shiver run down John’s spine. Defeated, the doctor picks up his fork and pierces a sausage.

***

Sherlock still waits. People flow past him in steady waves, but he’s only glancing through them cursorily at best anymore, not really expecting to spot the short, sturdy figure among them.

Somehow, none of his plans for his return ever included John not being there for their reunion. In the life they shared, John was always the constant, always the point of stability that helped ground Sherlock’s soaring intellect. Him not being here as planned almost feels like a betrayal to some silent mutual agreement, even if the detective knows it is ridiculous to presume his friend to be able to answer the one-sided expectations of a man he believes to be dead.

Putting foolish sentiment to the side, it still leaves the question of what has happened to John. A quick search on the Internet reveals that there have been no incidents of any English doctors getting into accidents or being captured in the Middle East, which would indicate that John’s disappearance is voluntary. What could have come up that the doctor would postpone his already planned return, not even cancelling his pre-booked flight? Some emergency that no one else could handle? Or perhaps one of his acquaintances at his place of deployment had gotten in trouble and needed help? John had always been affectionate, getting attached and becoming loyal to people around him easily. If he believed he was needed, he would not hesitate to change his plans at a minute’s notice.

Or perhaps – and option Sherlock doesn’t really want to consider – John had gotten romantically involved with someone, and in tear-filled drama had at the last minute chosen not to return to his home but stay with his partner. Sherlock knows that John’s attempts at romance have never been very successful, and finds it difficult to believe that his sensible friend would lower himself to behave like that, even if such a stupid thing sounds like something a person in love might do.

Nevertheless, without clues, it’s all just guesswork. Sherlock sends a text to his brother again, telling him to have his contact in Lebanon find out if John’s colleagues there know where he has gone. Unable to stay put in the meanwhile, Sherlock decides to go check out John’s flat in case it might give him any new angles to track.

A quick text to Molly reveals the address where John lived before his deployment, although she says she hasn’t seen him for over a year, which is disappointing. Almost as disappointing as John having his own flat – his new neighbourhood has nothing on Baker Street, and the rent must be at least as much as what he’d paid to Mrs Hudson. Moving there must have been a downgrade, and it’ll be a bother to bring all his things back to 221B.

It's already 19:16 when Sherlock finally leaves the airport. It makes him feel a bit anxious, as if against all odds John might just appear in the terminal as soon as he’s not there to witness it, but he brushes past the feeling and grabs a taxi.

It takes Sherlock no time at all to deduce the four-digit number code at the building’s main door, and only a moment more to open the door to John’s flat with the help of his trusty lock-picking kit. John’s flat is a simple studio - a bit bigger than his original bedsit, but still only houses the necessary furniture: a bed, a small desk that doubles as a dining table, a wardrobe and a small kitchenette. As could be expected, John has left his flat in immaculate condition, tidied with army-like precision; something he seems to have picked up again after leaving Baker Street (or perhaps he just doesn’t have enough things to make a mess to begin with, since most of the stuff littering Baker Street has always been Sherlock’s, spread around to be easily accessible). Sherlock doesn’t have time to verify this assumption, however, since as soon as he enters, he spots a gift box laid on the bed.

Intrigued, Sherlock steps closer. The gift box is covered in white-and-blue striped wrapping (the same colour as John’s pyjamas), and tied with a large red bow. Sherlock swipes his finger over the box’s surface – no dust. It means that the box has been placed there very recently. But by whom? Someone who was also expecting John to return today, and left the box for him to find as he came home?

There’s a box card attached to the bow, and Sherlock flips it around, only to find his own name written on it in flourished, curvy letters. His stomach clenches, a mix of uncertainty and excitement. Is this some practical joke on Mycroft’s part? Perhaps John had somehow found out about Sherlock being alive and asked his brother to feed him false information about John’s return so he could prepare this game for him. A flimsy act of revenge for not telling him before? A welcome-back puzzle? Mycroft wouldn’t do this kind of a thing on his own – he lacks both the imagination and the capability for playfulness – and no one else knew about his plans in advance.

Sherlock will not hesitate to take on the challenge. He picks up the gift and begins to unravel the wrapping, all the while examining the box in his hands. The paper is in no way particular, the thin low-quality type that can be bought from any Tesco. The bow is a bit more exquisite – real silk, blood red – and Sherlock takes care to slide it off without damaging it. Under the wrapping is a black cardboard box, filled with something relatively heavy. He takes off the lid to unveil an old, wooden cuckoo clock, whose hands are pointing to a minute to six, and the hand for seconds jerks moving as soon as the box is opened.

On top of the clock is a folded card, which Sherlock picks up and turns open. His eyes dart over the words printed there:

“The raven was gone, so a magpie came and stole his treasure. In the empty nest, the cuckoo chick has grown big and fat and ready to EXPLODE!”

Sherlock’s flitting thoughts ground to a halt as freezing mortification takes over his core.

There’s no way. He saw with his own eyes… For over two years, there’s been no sign…

The clock’s second hand hits ten to, and the doors above the clock face open. A bird springs out, but instead of cuckoos, a high-pitched mechanical sound repeats:

“Miss me? Miss me? Miss me?”

Sherlock drops the box and stumbles away from the bed, just in time before the present bursts into a ball of fire, singing his eyebrows. Legs weak, Sherlock backs into a cupboard and slides down its side to sit on the floor, panting. His thoughts converge to one, impossible point.

Moriarty.

Sherlock gets on his feet and flies out of the room.

Chapter Text

Find out where John was last seen. -SH

The message to Mycroft is curt, but Sherlock knows his brother well enough that he’s certain the sense of urgency will be delivered. That should make him push the contact in Lebanon a bit harder, and soon Sherlock should have something to start from.

Although, all things considered, Mycroft should have already known. Sherlock had left him with one request, to look after John (and Molly and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson) while he was away dismantling Moriarty’s network, and clearly his brother had failed to keep his promise.

Just like Sherlock has failed to keep his own, unless the message in the gift box had been left by a phantom, some sort of imitator looking to carry on the legacy of the consulting criminal. The tone felt so familiar, as did the style, but for now he can’t overlook the possibility that there is still some remnant of the network left who has caught onto his hunt for them and is looking to pay back in kind.

Sherlock heads to Baker Street, since if there are more clues to be found for this game, that would be the most likely place to find them. As proven previously, Moriarty has a tendency to utilise places and people with significance to Sherlock, which makes him somewhat predictable.

On the way there, he sends out another text to Molly, asking if anything out of ordinary has happened recently.

Sherlock still has his key, so once he arrives to Baker Street, he can walk straight in. Going up to the entrance, he notices that the door has received a new paint job, shining clean and clinical. It feels wrong, just how John having moved away feels wrong, but there’s no time to examine the feeling more in depth.

Sherlock marches in and directly to the door to Mrs Hudson’s flat. He knocks on it twice and has to wait for his landlady to come open it. Apparently, she no longer keeps her door unlocked.

“Just a second, dear,” a voice calls out from inside the flat, and it fills Sherlock with inexplicable warmth. Then Mrs Hudson opens the door, and she looks alright but a bit weary, and she has just got a haircut but from a different hairdresser than before, and she’s got a bruise on her arm from when she tried to change a lamp by herself and stumbled when coming down the ladder.

Mrs Hudson doesn’t move, like she’s frozen in time, but only for a few seconds before she moans “Oh dear lord,” and leans heavily against the door frame looking faint. Sherlock catches her arm to stop her from falling, but she pulls away, as if he’s a ghost reaching at her from beyond the grave.

Sherlock doesn’t have time for this nonsense.

“Has anyone strange visited you or 221B recently?” he asks, but Mrs Hudson doesn’t even look like she’s heard him. She just repeats “You… you…” while holding her chest. Sherlock gives her a quick look and deduces that a heart attack is not imminent, so he pushes on:

“Get a hold of yourself, woman! Has anyone visited Baker Street recently? When did you last hear about John?”

This time, instead of an answer, the elderly woman takes a brisk step forward and delivers a swift slap to his left cheek. It’s not very powerful, but Sherlock is momentarily stunned by the mere gesture.

“You blockheaded oaf! How could you do that to us! We mourned you! How dare you think you can just walk back here as if nothing’s wrong! Have you even seen John?” she berates him.

“I’m trying to get to him right now,” he answers, and seeing as how he cannot extract any useful information from Mrs Hudson at the moment, he turns around to head upstairs to 221B. His landlady clambers after him, continuing to dress him down, until at the door to the flat he spins again and asks:

“Why did you change your hairdresser?”

The question stops the old woman’s rant, and something seems to melt in her.

“Oh, Sherlock…”

She steps forward and closes the detective in a tight embrace, sniffling. Sherlock isn’t quite sure how to respond, so he gives her a couple light taps on the shoulder and tries to move away from her through the door. The thin, brittle arms stop his retreat.

“She wouldn’t stop badmouthing you, calling you a fake and a swindler. I couldn’t keep giving my money to a person who talks about my boy like that!”

Sherlock is trying to figure out the best way to express sympathy for the clearly overwrought woman so she would let go of him and let him continue his investigation of Baker Street, when his mobile lets out the ping of a message alert. He fishes his phone out of his pocket past the still-crying Mrs Hudson and checks the text.

John cancelled his deployment on the day he arrived in Beirut. Whereabouts since then unknown. -MH

Six months. Moriarty has had John for six months.

***

“You’re dead.”

Moriarty raises his eyebrows as he saunters in, dressed in a black suit and a tie with little skulls on it.

“They should really consider revoking your medical license. I knew you were dull, but I didn’t realise Sherlock would stand being around someone quite so dim.”

John tugs his hands again to see if there’s any slack. He doesn’t really have a lot of hope of escaping with four men and a snake blocking the exit, but it might be worth it for the chance to strangle the snake and make sure he stays dead this time.

He’s so preoccupied with his thoughts and his hands that he doesn’t notice Moriarty having stepped closer, leaning in and staring into his eyes with his own dark orbs.

“Such violent thoughts. Are you a violent man, Doctor Watson? I’m sure we can beat that out of you.”

John doesn’t answer, just glares at the man in front of him. Unease swirls in his stomach, but he refuses to admit that he’s scared. He’s not. He’s army, and he knows how to deal with sadistic dead psychopaths who strap people in Semtex and easily threaten torture to men tied up to chairs in dark dungeons. The adrenaline running in his veins is just his body priming itself to fight.

“What do you want from me?” he grits out, and Moriarty gives him a mocking smile, starting to walk a small circle with his hands in his pockets.

“What would I ever want to do with you, John? I can call you John, can’t I?”

He stops again in front of the doctor and shakes his head.

“I want nothing from you. I do, however, want everything from Sherlock.”

“He’s dead.”

John’s words are firm. He knew the man was crazy, but not this off the wheels. Maybe that comes with dying.

Moriarty purses his lips together regretfully.

“I don’t think so, unfortunately,” he states, and John repeats:

“Sherlock’s dead. I took his pulse.”

Right there, on the pavement, as blood puddled around Sherlock’s brilliant brain.

Moriarty sighs and shakes his head again.

“As I said, a lousy doctor. Has it not crossed your teeny-tiny mind that if I managed to fake my death, so might have your genius consulting detective?”

“He would have told me.”

And John truly does believe so. Sherlock might have been socially inept and sometimes seem uncaring, but he wouldn’t have held this from John. He wouldn’t have made his best friend believe he was dead and mourn and suffer for over a year for no reason. They had trusted each other more than that.

The regretful look is back on Moriarty’s face. He slips his hand inside his suit jacket and pulls out a bunch of photographs, laying a couple in John’s lap.

“Seems like he didn’t appreciate his little lap dog as highly as you thought,” he drawls. John catches a glimpse of dark hair in the photos and looks away, closing his eyes in refusal. A sigh of exasperation is followed by a clipped call: “Seb!”, and soon John’s head is grabbed from behind by two big hands, forcibly straightened and fingers digging into his face to spread his eyes open. He has no choice but to look at the pictures, and in them he is greeted by a painfully familiar face, his hair cut short and clothes strange but still undeniably Sherlock. Sherlock walking about in a Mediterranean-looking city. Sherlock sitting by a desk in a small room, photo taken through a window. Sherlock on a boat in a cerulean blue sea.

John tries to shake his head, but the hands holding his face prevent him from doing so. The photos must be fake. From before the Fall, or manipulated with some sort of program. Moriarty’s just trying to psych him out for whatever nefarious reason. John notices his breathing accelerating again, short pants that don’t seem to bring enough oxygen to his brain.

“Don’t believe me? Well, not like I really care,” Moriarty states, shrugging his shoulders. “This is not about you, after all. It’s about Sherlock.”

The psychopath starts another circle around the dungeon floor.

“He thought he could cheat me. Take me and my web down. Took me a while to spot him, in fact, which I guess is quite commendable. But once I did, it was easy to direct him towards the people I needed cut off. The network needed pruning, and for the past one and a half years Sherlock has dedicatedly worked to shave off all the inefficient parts, the ones planning to step out of line. And the rest, they are just so grateful that I’ve kept them hidden and safe!”

Moriarty stops in front of John again, but this time he steps closer, so they’re almost touching.

“But he still tried to cheat, and no one is allowed to cheat in a game with James Moriarty.”

He leans forward to press his right hand on John’s chest, and John fights the instinct to flinch from the touch.

“I once told Sherlock that I’d burn his heart out, and that promise has stayed unfulfilled far too long.”

Never mind hyperventilating, now it’s like John can’t breathe at all, like the other man’s hand is stopping his lungs from expanding altogether.

“I will break you, John Watson. I will break you and leave him to pick up the pieces, and it’ll break him too. He’ll know what a foolish thing it was to have a heart in the first place , and then – then I will have him gone.”

The corners of John’s eyes feel a bit wet as he spits out:

“Fuck you!”

Moriarty lifts his hand and shrugs again.

“I think we could start off with a little less spirit. I, unfortunately, have other things to do, but I’ll leave you to make acquaintance with my good man Sebastian Moran and his little friends. Boys - Johnny here does look pretty pitiful, but don’t be too lenient on him!” the consulting criminal sings and saunters back out of the room. The hands holding John’s head let go, and there’s movement and shuffling as the men around him fish out brass knuckles, short pipes and other sorts of weapons.

It doesn’t take long at all for the physical pain to overshadow the sting of betrayal.

***

Jim’s revelation at breakfast has made John feel nauseous for the whole day and he doesn’t really feel like having dinner, but his opinion is disregarded as usual. It is actually quite uncommon for Jim to see him twice on the same day, but John guesses the man wants to gloat over his miserableness.

In the dining room, there’s a tablet next to John’s plate, and he takes it in hand with trepidation. The screen is showing a loop of Sherlock getting into his old flat, opening some sort of a box and fire bursting out of it. John’s stomach does a flip and he tries to make out if Sherlock got hurt, but the clip stops right before he can see the aftermath. Sherlock had stepped away just before the box blew up, so even if the fire reached him, any injuries shouldn’t be that bad? John doubts Jim would want to seriously hurt the detective (yet), but sometimes he wishes he had a similar brain as the two geniuses, just to be able to deduce the truth and be rid of the uncertainty.

Sebastian brings him a plate full of creamy carbonara that smells delicious, and John would like nothing more than to throw the plate across the floor. He wants to ask if Sherlock is okay, but suspects he won’t get a real answer, so instead he asks:

“What was in the box?”

Jim looks up from his dinner, as if just now noticing that John was even there, and smiles indulgently.

“A message. I let him know that I’ve been looking after his beloved pet.”

John doesn’t reply and begins to stuff his face with the food. It tastes like ash, but at the least the motion gives him something to focus on.

So here they are, they’ve finally reached the endgame. It’s time for Sherlock to be broken, and there’s nothing John can do to stop it.

“So, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, are you? Dropping my corpse at the end of it?”

John hasn’t used such a defiant tone with Jim for a long time, but there isn’t much to lose anymore. He knows how the consulting criminal plays, and he’s always known how this particular game would end. Ever since he was caught in the first place.

Jim chuckles and puts down his fork, takes a swig of red wine.

“Oh Johnny, Johnny. I’m not going to kill you. I’ll give you back to him just as you are! And instead of being the kindle that makes him burn bright and scorch down my network and everything around it, you’ll become the anchor that drags him down into the depths.”

A wave of paralyzing nausea uncurls in John’s stomach and flushes through his body, and suddenly the carbonara is climbing back up his esophagus. He retches over the side of his chair, taking heaving gasps between.

“No… You can’t…” he gasps, but Jim just chuckles again and rises from his chair.

“Sherlock thinks this is the game, but no, this is just the prelude. The real game begins once you’re back with him, and oh what fun it’ll be! How long do you think it’ll take him to go back to his favourite medicine? For him to self-destruct because of you?”

Jim rounds the table and stops next to John, who’s clutching the armrests of his chair with white knuckles and trying to stop himself from shaking.

“But you have to stay patient. I still want to see him dance for me first,” he says and places what is meant to be a ‘reassuring’ hand on John’s shoulder. The doctor jerks away against the table and exclaims:

“Don’t touch me!”

But he should have known it would only provoke the bastard. Jim plasters himself to his back, pushes one hand down inside the collar of his shirt and wraps the other halfway around his throat – no pressure, just the weight of his fingers – and swipes his thumb up along the side of John’s neck.

“Why?” he whispers so close to John’s ear that the doctor can feel the movement of his lips against the bridge of his ear. “What are you going to do about it, Johnny-boy? How are you going to stop me?”

John presses his eyes closed and waits unmoving for the nightmare to pass. Eventually Jim lets him go, but John doesn’t open his eyes until he’s heard the steps leave the room.

Chapter Text

After finally managing to extract himself from Mrs Hudson, Sherlock leaves Baker Street. There’ll be nothing there. John’s already been gone for half a year, and Moriarty wouldn’t risk spoiling his game by leaving a message where Mycroft might spot it ahead of time.

Instead, he heads to Lestrade’s. If Moriarty is targeting the same people he did last time, the police officer is equally on the list. He might be able to glean some clues from whatever the criminal has planned for the DI, and stop anything worse from happening. Besides, he needs something to bounce his ideas off of, and though not nearly as effective, now that John is indisposed Lestrade will have to do.

Sherlock remembers staying over at Lestrade’s flat after the DI’s divorce and long before John, pouring over the files of a particularly tricky case. The older man hadn’t been arsed to bring the files over to Baker Street despite Sherlock’s badgering, so he had made the exception and gone to him instead. Lestrade hadn’t seemed too happy to see the detective behind his door, but had let him in regardless and sat by his table with a long-suffering frown on his face while Sherlock launched into his deductions and rhetorical questions. After a while, however, the DI seemed to grow tired of his own brooding mood, and started to take interest and participate in the detective’s one-sided conversation, asking for clarifications and being all-round stumped by the case as usual. When Sherlock left in the early hours of the next morning to hunt for more evidence, Lestrade had invited him to stop by again sometime, although a bit earlier in the day the next time around.

The DI’s single flat is on the second floor of an apartment building along the District Tube line. Sherlock knocks on the door – it’s almost nine, Lestrade should be already back from work, although Sherlock’s more than ready to lockpick his way in if need be. It shouldn’t take him more than twenty seconds, given how old and elementary the locks in this building are.

He doesn’t need to, though, since flat owner comes briskly to open the door. Once he sees who’s behind the door, he recoils away from the door looking stunned (a very familiar look for Lestrade).

The DI looks older. The silver of his hair has begun to encroach further into his hairline, and the years have drawn deep lines on his face. He’s still wearing his button-up (slightly crumbled) and jeans – just back from work a bit over an hour ago, ate the leftovers Indian from the fridge for dinner and slumped into his sofa to watch some TV.

Lestrade finally seems to wake from the trance seeing Sherlock put him in, and tries to slam the door in the detective’s face. Sherlock stops it with his arm and pushes his way inside the flat, while noting sarcastically: “That’s not how you usually greet a friend, is it Gavin? Or an old acquaintance?”

Lestrade covers his face in his hands and paces into the living room, where the TV is still droning with some basic drama series running.

“No, no, no nono…” Lestrade mumbles to himself, frantically moving around the room, until he approaches Sherlock again with barely restrained energy.

“Wanker! You absolute bloody tosser! WE BURIED YOU! How the hell are you standing there?!”

Lestrade is clenching his fist and moving his arm up and down, as if debating whether to punch him or not, but Sherlock has learned his lesson with Mrs Hudson and moves away from the door so he has plenty of space to dodge if needed.

Weren’t people supposed to be happy if a person they thought dead turns out to be alright?

“Come on, Gavin, don’t be a drama queen,” Sherlock scoffs.

“It’s Greg! My name’s GREG, goddammit!”

The burst seems to eat out the sudden energy boost, and Lestrade slumps on the sofa with his head back in his hands. He takes a few deep breaths, until he looks up again at Sherlock.

“Why are you here? I can’t imagine this being just a little courtesy call to let me know you’re still breathing, god knows how that’s even possible.”

“John’s been abducted,” Sherlock says in way of answer. Lestrade stares at him for a while, quietly and with an inscrutable expression on his face, until finally relenting:

“So, you need my help.”

Sherlock wants to correct him, say that he’s actually here just to look for clues and help Lestrade out if he needs it, but something stops him. They look at each other in silence, until Lestrade turns back to his hands and sighs.

“Fine. Fine! What happened? How can this old copper be of use?”

Sherlock explains to him how he was waiting for John who never arrived, how he went to John’s flat and found Moriarty’s message, and how it’s only logical to assume that he would also be targeting Lestrade based on the criminal’s earlier behaviour.

The DI’s looking at him like he’s a lunatic.

“You’re completely bonkers. Richard Brook shot himself through the mouth, there’s no coming back from that. Or maybe it’s me that’s finally gone around the bend, seeing as I’m talking to another dead man.”

“Clearly, we’ve underestimated Moriarty,” Sherlock expresses condescendingly. “Seeing as how he managed to deceive me, I have no doubt that Scotland Yard’s finest wouldn’t be able to see through his ruse.”

Lestrade grimaces, looking again like he might punch him.

“Bonkers,” he repeats, and clearly this conversation isn’t going anywhere.

Luckily, it’s interrupted by a ringing resounding through the flat. Sherlock stares sullenly at the DI, until he grows impatient and demands:

“Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

Lestrade frowns, looking confused.

“That’s not my phone, I thought it’s yours.”

It’s the next stage of the game. Sherlock knew it, he was completely right to come to Lestrade. He begins rummaging through the flat, looking for the source of the sound and ignoring Lestrade’s indignation at the mess he’s making.

He finds the phone behind a couple of old photo albums in the bookcase, a place Lestrade would be unlikely to accidentally find without the noise. The phone is a familiar pink, identical to the one from Sherlock and John’s first case together and the one from the ‘Great Game’. It quiets down as Sherlock takes it in his hand.

Lestrade’s quiet now, his face blanched. Unhesitating, Sherlock flips the phone open and presses the voice mail alert.

You have one new message.

The robotic female voice is followed by five slow pips.

A countdown, and this time Sherlock knows what he’ll find at the end of it.

***

John is sitting on the toilet seat while Sebastian starts the tap to draw him a bath. As the water begins to slowly fill the bathtub, he comes close and grabs John under the chin, easing his head over the sink.

“Let’s get you all clean and tidy for your detective,” Sebastian says and picks up a razor. He spreads the shaving cream evenly around John’s chin and neck. Then he presses the blade down by the doctor’s right carotid artery and looks down at him, expressionless. John swallows. He knows Sebastian is only going to shave him, they’ve done this many times before, but he still can’t help but be conscious about the sharp edge against his major blood vessels. As Sebastian begins to scrape off the hair and the foam, he half expects (half hopes) the razor to dig into his neck at any second and leave him bleeding to death.

But it doesn’t. Sebastian finishes shaving him completely normally, washes off the residue of the shaving cream and wipes him dry. He turns to close the tap, and nods his head to the side in a way that John interprets as “Get in the bath.” It’s a chore but he manages, and despite Sebastian standing by and watching the whole operation from the side, the warm water still feels somehow soothing.

John reaches towards the shampoo bottle, but Sebastian slaps his hand away and takes it himself. John doesn’t protest when he spurts some shampoo onto his hand and begins to spread it through the doctor’s blond strands.

“Do you think we should cut this a bit? Your hair’s gotten longer than it used to be, your Sherlock might find it difficult to recognise you,” he muses, examining some of John’s hair as if measuring its length. John could tell him that a couple centimetres of hair wouldn’t make any difference to Sherlock, but he doesn’t, since that’s not the point of the conversation. He stays silent and allows Sebastian to work his hair.

After the shampoo is rinsed off, the mercenary takes out a sponge and starts to lather John’s back. The doctor endures the touch, but it becomes much more difficult once Sebastian decides to keep talking:

“Would you run away if you could, Captain Watson? We’re giving you back, but you’d still flee if you had the chance, wouldn’t you? You’d run to stop him from seeing you like this.” Sebastian pushes his hand underwater to squeeze John’s thigh, and he recoils. The ex-soldier leans closer to his ear. “Will you try to run once you’re back with him?”

John tries to lean down as far away from him as possible, just a couple inches away from the water’s surface, while trying to get his breathing back under control. Suddenly there’s a hand on his neck, not pushing down but not allowing him to get back up either.

“Want to take a plunge, Captain Watson?” Sebastian’s voice echoes in the bathroom, and John can’t see his expression, but imagines the scar-faced man leering down at him with a sadistic glint in his eyes. He doesn’t dare move, but his right hand clutches the side of the tub.

“No,” he pushes out, “please.”

A few seconds more, and the hand leaves his neck, with Sebastian letting out a low and hearty laugh.

“I’m just joking! I wouldn’t do that to you,” he says and continues to wash John. But he would, and he has, and John takes deep breaths as he tries to calm himself. Couldn’t this all just finally end?

***

His chance is now.

Now when he hasn’t yet grown too weak from the continued abuse, his lungs only slightly sore from the repeated drownings two days ago. Now when his captors haven’t yet discovered the splintered piece of wood he has managed to extract from the frame of the little window of his cell.

The window is up by the ceiling and way too small for a grown man to fit through. Even if it wasn’t, it’s barred by three sturdy steel poles, so John can’t reach the glass to break it. Still, the window is surrounded by a little wooden frame, so darkened that it is difficult to tell apart from the dirty concrete walls, and with insistent effort he has been able to break away a part of it with his spoon (he isn’t allowed forks or knives).

He spent time sharpening the splinter into a keen point, and although the wood won’t stand a proper fight, in a surprise attack it can pierce soft tissue, like the neck or the eyes or even the stomach, and deliver sufficient damage.

Now his makeshift weapon is hidden in the part of the window frame where he had taken it from in order to cover the lighter wood revealed underneath. If he takes it away to keep it on him in case for a chance to attack, someone might notice the broken frame and they’d gang up on him and take his weapon away. So, John has to choose his moment right. He has one chance to get free, and if he decides to use that chance, he’ll have to go through with it until the end.

There’s of course also the problem of his leg being shackled to the cot, which in turn is bolted to the floor. The shackle is only removed when Moriarty’s men come to take him away for the beatings or some other torture. The only other time he even sees anyone is once a day when one of his guards comes to take his dishes away – the food is always delivered on a tray through a small opening at the bottom of the cell door.

There are four people looking after John: First there is Moran, the former soldier who leads the group, and a mean bastard. He likes to demean John by calling him Captain Watson, and seems to always take the greatest pleasure in his suffering. He and Moriarty are truly a match made in heaven. However, Moran is also highly disciplined and skilled in violence, and John isn’t foolish enough to think he could take on the man shackled and unarmed as he is.

Then there is Duke, whose name is probably the furthest away from his character that is possible. A short bull of a man with a smelly breath and a laugh that sounds like he’s snorting snot down his throat with every inwards breath. It’s disgusting, but unfortunately he likes to laugh every time John tries (and fails) to resist.

Jace is a pathetic asslicker, acting like Moran’s every word is the height of human wit and eagerly throwing himself into fulfilling his every command. Whether he truly believes so or is just playing a role to advance in his questionable career is still a question mark, but it’s dangerous regardless. Dangerous because he’s also a gym rat, and while Moran’s violence is always tightly controlled, in his enthusiasm to impress his commanding officer, Jace always hits a bit too hard, keeps John’s head underwater for a second too long, twists his joint a bit too far. Having Jace sicced on him means more pain and extended recovery periods, and John would rather avoid seeing him if possible.

Finally, there’s Tommy. John quite honestly has no idea why Tommy is in this line of work in the first place, since he seems entirely indifferent to both hurting the doctor and the other men in the group. He just takes care of his assigned tasks with neutral efficiency. Maybe he’s in it for the money, or he’s working back some sort of debt he owes Moriarty or something – heck if John knows anything about the man’s hiring practices.

Nevertheless, the thing about Tommy is that compared to the other guys, he feels normal. He’s not particularly muscular, rather on the slimmer side, the kind of slightly taller type that never really filled their frame. He manhandles John with sufficient determination, but lacks the careful training or the unrestrained force of the rest.

For John, that makes him a target. For weeks, he’s tried to seem meek and powerless when Tommy’s around to make him think he’s been broken and drop his guard.

The watchers (other than Moran) take turns coming to clean up after John. Today it should be Tommy’s turn, and John’s ready to strike. Moriarty and his goons will be reminded that he’s not just a doctor, but also a soldier.

After the last meal of the day, he fetches his spike and prays to all gods that nothing will change from the usual, that they won’t come together to drag him out to hurt him tonight or that Tommy hasn’t gotten a stomach ache or something and sent someone else in his stead. But even if he has, if the one to pick up the tray is Duke or Jace or even Moran, he still needs to try.

The piece of wood is painful in his palm when he squeezes it, knuckles white.

Apparently his piety is rewarded, as in a moment John hears Tommy’s voice from behind the door:

“Doctor, I’m coming in. Step back to the cot.”

Given the shackle on John’s leg, his range of movement doesn’t allow him to get to the door. He can reach the trays set down right inside it by going down on the floor and stretching out, but when Tommy comes in, he always leaves them in the middle of the room. The first time he had done that, Tommy had given him an annoyed and suspicious glare, but as John obediently sat on his cot while the guard came in and picked up the plates, it’s become a new routine.

The lanky young man steps inside John’s cell, and after closing the door, casually flashes the taser that he always carries with him as a reminder to stay put. Today, John has set the trays down a little to the side, so that Tommy will have to turn his back on him as he kneels down to pick them up.

John moves like the wind, whirled on by adrenaline and desperation. Tommy hears the clinking of his chain and starts to turn around, but then the army doctor is already on his back, wrapping his left hand in a strangling hold around his neck. The guard tries to buck him off and pry his arm away from his windpipe, but John pushes the splinter against the skin of Tommy’s side under his shirt and growls in his ear:

“Don’t move, or I’ll stab you. And it won’t be a pleasant way to die.”

Perhaps Tommy hears the steel-like intent in John’s voice, as he stops struggling for a moment – just enough for John to get a better hold around his neck, blocking both of the arteries taking blood to his brain, and it doesn’t take many seconds after that for the man to slump and fall unconscious.

John’s hands are almost shaking from the adrenaline, but he can’t stop now. He searches the guard’s pockets for keys to his shackle, but the only ones he finds are too big for the cuff. John stares at the chain leading to his cot, and despair threatens to overcome him. What now. He’s stuck, and he can’t get out, and someone will come in and notice what he’s done and…

Tommy begins to stir, and it kicks John back into action. He grabs the taser and drives it into the other man’s side, who jerks for a little bit and falls still again.

Lockpicking. Sherlock taught him a little bit of lockpicking, didn’t he? The shackle looks quite old and simple, surely John can deal with it even with his limited skills. Searching for a suitable lockpick, he frisks Tommy’s clothes, but finds no bobby pins or paper clippers (why do all lockpicking guides always assume that those would be handily available?). Then his eyes stop at Tommy’s black leather belt, complete with a heavy metal buckle, and he slides it off his trousers.

Making sure that Tommy’s still securely unconscious, John sets to work on his ankle. He pushes the pin on the belt buckle into the cuff, hoping the locking mechanism is similar to that of handcuffs. He first turns the pin counterclockwise until it doesn’t move anymore, and then twists it in the other direction. Nothing happens. Trying to control his nerves, he tries again, and again. The cuff is so small, it looks completely undeserving of being the insurmountable obstacle it has become for John.

More frantic twists, turns and air forced out through teeth pressed together, and finally there’s a click that fills John with relief. For a second, he feels like his muscles will just give up, until the acuteness of the situation catches up with him again and he springs up, now free from the chain. He takes the taser with him, and Tommy’s set of keys, and let’s himself out of the cell.

He’s in a small hallway with a dim, flickering light – clearly a basement of some sort. There are stairs leading up to another door, and John takes them without hesitation. He opens the door as quietly as possible and looks around to see if there’s anyone else, but doesn’t see anything. On the left side of the door there’s a dark and quiet kitchen, and the right seems to lead to the rest of the house. There’s a quiet noise of television coming from somewhere, and it feels strangely domestic after weeks spent in the basement, like John has stepped into another world entirely.

He tries to move quietly, but he can’t help the feeling of urgency buzzing through his body. Turning the corner, the hallway opens into a living room, where there’s a figure sitting on a sofa and watching some evening reality show.

“Finally!” Jace’s voice rings out, and John is moving before he even knows what he’s doing.

“You took so long I thought you’d stayed behind to have some fun with Watson…”

As he talks, Jace turns his head to look at who he thinks is Tommy, but instead sees John storming towards him. His eyes go wide, but before he has a chance to react, John is thrusting the taser into his neck. Jace jerks and screams, and John is flying again.

He needs to get out. There’s no way everyone else in the house didn’t hear that, and soon they’ll all rain down on him like a landfall.

Luckily the door outside is right next to the living room, and John doesn’t stop to put on shoes as he shoots out of the house. He’s not in the city – the house is surrounded by a small field and forest, and despite the settling darkness he can see the form of mountains rising up in the distance. The air is fresh and cool and smells like moist earth, but John doesn’t pause to contemplate his location more deeply as he beelines towards the edge of the forest.

If only he can make it to the trees, he’ll be able to disappear into the darkness and hide. John heaves oxygen into his breathless lungs, freezing and burning, and the little rocks and pine needles covering the ground are biting into his bare feet, but he can’t stop, he won’t stop…

Pain bursts in his left shoulder and he trips and falls from the impact. His cheek presses into the cool and moist dirt, but his mind is addled by panic and disorientation, and suddenly he can see piles of golden yellow sand, smelling the hot desert wind. John tries to push himself up, but his left arm won’t support him, and a burning ache he cannot quite tell if it’s real or not spreads from the shoulder that was hit. He needs to take cover, he needs to support his team, they need their medic…

The sun is blinding, but John feels darkness begin to fall. He knows he’s bleeding out, but he doesn’t want to die, not here in the deserts of Afghanistan, so far away from home. He thinks of London, of a messy little flat with a yellow smiley face spray-painted on the wall, of a tall man playing violin by the window, and he wants to see them again.

The abyss, however, won’t heed his wishes, and John falls in the dark.

Through the fog dulling his senses, John thinks he can hear the mocking voice of Moriarty next to wherever he is laying.

“Oh Johnny, you naughty, naughty boy,” the phantom of the criminal says. John tries to turn his head and locate the man with his eyes, but the surroundings are so blurry he has little success.

“I did wonder if you’d try to run or just accept your fate. Too bad for you that Seb is the sharpest shot on this half of the globe.”

There are more shadows moving at the edges of the doctor’s vision, surrounded by white, but he can’t quite make out if they are real or not.

“Still, you must’ve known that running would be breaking the rules of the game. And you know how I hate cheaters!”

Suddenly the voice is right next to his ear, and with startling clarity John can smell the nauseating sweetness of the bubblegum the other man has been chewing. With a chilling undertone of exhilaration, almost breathless, Moriarty whispers into his ear:

“Let’s make sure you’ll never run again.”

Chapter Text

The pips are accompanied by a photograph. It shows two teenage boys on a beach, smiling widely at the camera and with arms around each other’s shoulders. Both look athletic, although the other is a slight bit shorter, with blond curly hair that the wind has swept over his face. The taller boy has short, dark hair and has bent down a bit from his waist to be closer to his friend’s level.

“I need to find out who these two are,” Sherlock states, while Lestrade comes to peer at the picture over his shoulder.

“That’s Darren Winnicot,” the DI comments. Sherlock glances at him over his shoulder.

“What?”

“The blond one. Darren Winnicot. He died a couple weeks back, been on the papers. Drowned in his school’s swimming pool. The investigation’s ongoing.”

Sherlock glares at the photograph, dissecting the face behind the shiny curls.

“And the other?”

“I don’t know, never seen him.”

“You need to get me into the investigation,” Sherlock says, turning as if to head straight to the door.

“Can’t. That happened in Liverpool, it’s outside my jurisdiction.”

“Then take me to Liverpool,” Sherlock simply states, and Lestrade runs his hand through his hair, exasperated.

“Dammit, Sherlock! I can’t just abandon my work to cart you off to god knows where the moment you decide to come back from the dead to haunt my poor soul!”

Sherlock raises one eyebrow.

“Yeah? Unless you’ve completely changed your habits over the past two years, and I know for a fact that you haven’t, you never use most of your paid holidays. Tell them you’ve got a family emergency and need to take a couple days to settle it. You aren’t quite as incompetent as the rest at New Scotland Yard, but I doubt even they will manage to make the whole institution crumble down in just two days.”

Habitually ignoring the insult, Lestrade still doesn’t seem convinced.

“I can’t lie about my family like that…” he starts, but falls silent at Sherlock’s murderous glare. They look at each other for a while, but Lestrade knows that he’ll never win a staring competition against the man-child in front of him – he’s already lost, and might as well admit it.

“Alright then, for John’s sake. But just a couple days! And just so you know, they might still refuse to release any information on the case, just because I’m from the Metropolitan Police doesn’t mean I have unlimited access to everything.”

“Let me worry about that,” Sherlock answers nonchalantly. “Now hurry up, the game is on!”

They leave the house to get Lestrade’s car and begin the long drive to Liverpool. Lestrade wanted to wait until morning, but Sherlock was unbending. At least the man agrees to drive, so Lestrade settles on the passenger seat, gives the Chief a short call about his “family emergency” and tries to catch some sleep, since he knows they’ll only arrive in the city sometime after midnight.

He can’t sleep though, the reason being the pale, quiet man next to him staring intensely at the road as he drives. His hair is shorter than before, the curls still pushing through. Lestrade has no idea how long he’s been looking for John, but his chin is covered in dark, coarse stubble, indicating that the detective hasn’t shaven for a while. It almost hides the sharpness that has taken over Sherlock’s features during the time he was away.

Greg doesn’t know how to feel, what to think. He hasn’t had a moment to process the shock of Sherlock actually being there. He was just swept away in the consulting detective’s hurricane, just like always, but the DI can’t help but feel that this time the hurricane won’t be able to just blow past without anything breaking.

However, that can wait for later. He can feel the worry emanating from the detective, in a manner completely atypical for Sherlock. Greg still doesn’t quite understand what’s going on or how Moriarty could still be alive, but he knows that Sherlock’s concern is real and somehow, perhaps due to habit or some unquestioning trust, believes him to be right. They have to find John first. Everything else can come after.

They drive through the night and arrive to Liverpool in the small hours, taking a room at a small hostel downtown. Greg manages a few hours of rest, where Sherlock probably got none, and they head for the Merseyside Police first thing in the morning.

At the station, Sherlock steers them promptly to the reception desk.

“DI Lestrade, Metropolitan Police, and Holmes, MI5. We’re here to talk to the detective in charge of the Winnicot case,” he introduces and flips out a badge, and scrambling to follow Lestrade takes out his own. He leers at the badge in Sherlock’s hand from the corner of his eye, trying to determine where the sleuth had nicked it from, but it truly seems to have his face printed on it. A clever counterfeit, perhaps? The clerk looks confused.

“Ah, um, did you have an appointment? I’m unfortunately not certain if Detective Sergeant Caldwale is in at the moment.”

“No, but our business is urgent. Please call Mr Caldwale and tell him we’d like to meet with him pronto,” Sherlock continues with the same, no-nonsense demeanor, and the clerk folds under the pressure of both the MET and domestic security. Lestrade catches Sherlock’s eye and raises his eyebrow, but the detective ignores him, seeming to rather content himself by tapping an erratic rhythm at the desk’s surface.

It appears that the detective sergeant is indeed in, as after only 15 minutes he’s come to meet them in the lobby.

Caldwale is a stocky man with a thick mustache and piercing eyes. He takes his visitors in with a skeptical glance, but isn’t outright wary.

“William Caldwale. So, what can I do for you gentlemen? It’s a long way from London, here,” he says and offers his hand to both men. Sherlock seems to have his excuses thought out beforehand, so Greg lets him take charge of the conversation.

“You’re currently investigating Darren Winnicot’s death, correct?” Sherlock ascertains, and at the other man’s nod continues: “We’re here to ask a few questions about the case.”

Caldwale frowns.

“Why would the MI5 be interested in a drowned teenager?”

“There’s been a similar case in London, and we have reason to believe this might be a part of a larger chain of crimes,” Sherlock explains, and apparently it’s enough, since Caldwale grunts his assent and leads them further into the station to a meeting room.

“The body of Darren Winnicot, 17, was found drowned in his school’s swimming pool on the morning of the 11^th by a student coming in for morning training,” the Detective Sergeant begins after they’ve taken their seats. Sherlock seems to be listening intently, much more intently than Greg remembers him doing before when he was always full of snark remarks and impatience. Greg can only assume it’s because this time John is on the line. Or has something more profound changed about the detective while he was gone?

Caldwale continues, and Lestrade tries to focus.

“The autopsy revealed remnants of sleeping drugs in his body, but there were no signs of physical altercation. The time of death is estimated to be late evening of the previous day. The case is being investigated as an accident, but we’re also looking into potential motives for homicide.”

Sherlock asks some more detailed questions about the circumstances and the sleeping drugs, and finally pushes the pink mobile with the photo over the table to Caldwale.

“Who’s the other boy in this picture?” he questions. The Detective Sergeant frowns.

“Where did you get this picture?” he asks and tries to take the mobile, but Sherlock swipes it back before he can and places it back into his jacket pocket.

“It doesn’t matter. Answer the question, please, Detective Sergeant.”

Caldwale frowns again, but relents.

“That’s Evan Summers, classmate and friend of the deceased. He and Winnicot had apparently been dating for some time, but had broken up just recently before his death. We interviewed him as a possible suspect, but he had an alibi for the evening.”

“Give me his address. We’ll go talk to him,” Sherlock commands. Caldwale’s goodwill towards him and Lestrade seems to be quickly fading thanks to the detective’s blunt manner, but he still yields the information. They leave, Sherlock exiting through the door in a flourish while Greg stays behind to thank the Detective Sergeant for his cooperation and to promise to let him know if they find anything new or connected to their imaginary “own case” back in London.

In the car, heading towards Evan Summers’ flat, he wonders why his presence here is even required. It’s like he’s just Sherlock’s glorified chauffeur. Was it the same with John? He glances from the corner of his eye at the other man, who’s sitting in silence and tapping concentratedly on his phone. Sherlock doesn’t budge until they arrive at the apartment building at the designated address, at which point he jumps out of the car and heads inside without even checking if Greg follows.

Greg lets out a long sigh and runs his hand through his hair. He’s going to have a few more grey strands by the end of this all, he’s certain.

He catches up to Sherlock knocking on a door. Soon it’s opened by a tall young man with short dark hair, who looks at them through the gap apprehensively. Behind him, Greg can spot the figure of another, ginger-headed boy hovering in the room.

“Evan Summers? Police, we’d like to ask some questions about Darren Winnicot’s death,” Sherlock flashes his badge again and the boy frowns.

“The police already came by. Why do you need to question me again? Has something else happened?”

Greg pushes next to Sherlock and gives the boy a reassuring smile before Sherlock has the chance to say anything inconsiderate.

“There’s no need to worry, Mr Summers. We’re only trying to clarify the circumstances around Darren’s passing to make sure nothing has been overlooked. This would not be an official interview, just a short chat. We’d really appreciate your help.”

Evan glances behind himself to share a look with the other boy, and then turns back with pursed lips.

“Fine. But only for a little while. Please come in.”

Greg and Sherlock are let into the small flat. Evan, having barely finished his A-levels, lives in a small studio with just a bed, a desk, a table with a couple chairs around it and a small kitchen area. The boy shows them to take a seat in the free chairs, while he and the ginger boy sit next to each other on the bed. A closer look at him shows a tired and haunted look on his face – dark circles under his eyes, hair clean but not stylized as in the photo, back slightly hunched.

“So, Mr Summers, could you tell us a little about Darren? What had he been doing and how had he been faring recently?” Greg starts, taking care to keep his tone gentle.

“Darren and I…” Evan begins but stops short, moisture rising into his eyes. The ginger boy looks at him with a concerned expression and takes one of his hands into his own, holding it in his lap. Evan takes a deep breath and starts again.

“As you’ve probably heard, Darren and I dated. We got to know each other at swimming practice when I moved to Liverpool two years ago. We were together for almost one and a half years, but a while back, we started arguing more and more and the relationship got a bit shaky. He was adamant on pursuing swimming professionally, but the pressure was too much for me and I was losing motivation, wanted to focus on something else… Wanted to try something new. It all got so suffocating, so when I met Rory, it felt like the perfect answer to break it off with Darren…”

The young athlete sobs again and swipes a stray tear off with his free hand. The new boyfriend, Rory, squeezes his other hand in a supportive manner. Sherlock has a look of impatience on his face that tells Greg that he has zero interest in Evan’s relationship troubles and is seconds away from saying that to his face (probably in some extremely offensive way), so Greg pinches his side and continues before the detective has a chance to speak:

“And how did Darren take the break-up?”

“Not well. He couldn’t believe I was leaving him for another and we argued – all the basic stuff, yelling, insults, threats. He wasn’t in a very good place to begin with, his scores at competitions had started to dwindle and it didn’t seem like he was able to improve at the same rate as before, but I never thought… They think he committed suicide, right? I never could have imagined…”

Evan sobs again, and the rest of the words seem to get stuck in his throat. He turns his face away to stare out of the window, and Greg can see the guilt eating at him, undeserved as it is. He can understand it, feeling responsible when someone close to you passes away, especially if it was by their own hand. There were many days and nights after Sherlock’s fall that he told himself he should have believed in the detective more, supported him more, done something, anything so the end result wouldn’t have been what it was, but in the long term it wasn’t a healthy mindset to have. Everyone makes their own decisions, and ultimately it isn’t possible to always anticipate or control what someone might do.

On the grounds, naturally, that Evan’s guilt isn’t caused by something else.

“You have trouble sleeping?” Sherlock breaks the silence, and Evan seems to return to the moment. At his questioning look, Sherlock indicates the half-open medicine box sitting on the desk.

“Do you have a prescription for sleeping drugs?”

Evan bites his lip and nods.

“As I said, I had been feeling stressed because of all the pressure recently. The medicine helps me rest at night.”

“How long have you been using it?” Sherlock asks.

“Three or four months, maybe? Quite long before I decided to break up with Darren.”

Sherlock seems to accept the answer, falling silent again and quietly examining the room and its occupants. To avoid the silence turning awkward, Lestrade continues:

“And where were you on the night of Darren’s death?”

“I was at Rory’s house, in Kirkby. I stayed overnight, as I told the other police. Both Rory and his parents can confirm it.”

“I see. And you had no contact with Darren prior to the incident? Do you know if he had been around anyone else at the time?”

“No, the last time I saw him was three weeks ago when he came to pick up some of his things from my flat. I have no idea what he had been doing since.”

Greg glances at Sherlock to see if he has any more questions, but the detective is looking at his phone again and doesn’t seem to be paying attention. The DI takes this as a cue that they’re done here, and stands up.

“I understand. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Summers, this has been most helpful. We’ll be sure to be in touch if any further information is needed.”

Sherlock also gets up and Greg goes to herd him out of the door, but is stopped by Evan’s uncertain voice.

“Officer… Do you think it was wrong of me to leave him like I did?”

The look on his face is so lost, and he’s such a young boy… But that question is better left for a counsellor to deal with, so Greg is conjuring up some reassuring platitude when Sherlock pipes up:

“Well, he probably wouldn’t have felt about it as strongly had you not immediately found someone else to replace him with. Not that I blame you for having looked for another source of comfort when the previous one no longer worked out.”

The words are said in Sherlock’s usual, factual tone, but Evan looks stricken, face lax and white, and Rory jumps up from the bed red in the face and roughly gestures at the door.

“Out. Get the fuck out!”

Greg drags Sherlock out, mumbling apologies, and barely avoids the door slammed into his face.

“Did you really have to…” he starts with a long-suffering sigh, but Sherlock just shrugs his shoulders.

“He asked.”

Greg wants to protest, but the detective has clearly already moved on, probably already having deleted the previous interaction from his mind palace. Not like his intervention has ever changed the genius’ behaviour anyhow. They return to the car, and when Greg asks where he should drive, Sherlock tells him to head back to London.

“But why? Are you giving up on the case? What about John?” Greg says, shocked.

“It’s a suicide. There is no case.” Sherlock replies, face dark.

“But what about Evan’s sleeping drugs? They were the same kind that were found in Darren’s body and the box was brand new, shouldn’t we…”

“He already had those before the incident, Darren probably snatched some for himself at the time. I checked while you were talking, and there’s no way he would have made it from Kirkby to the school and back without anyone noticing he’s gone, so his alibi holds. Besides, there’s no motive – Evan was the one who left Darren, and seems to be quite happy with his new arrangement.”

“But what about the threats? What if he somehow got in touch with Darren and got him to take the pills and go to the pool, so even if he wasn’t there himself…”

“No such communications were found on Darren’s phone. In fact, there were no calls or text messages prior to the death, and nothing to indicate any antagonism on the part of anyone else. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of a message, but I guess it’s possible that he wasn’t actually planning on committing suicide but somehow fell into the pool by accident. Regardless, it’s clear that no foul play is involved. There is no case.”

“But why would Moriarty…?” Greg begins to ask, but Sherlock is no longer listening. Instead, he’s staring out of the window with an intense look in his eyes. Greg sighs again and starts on the long and quiet journey home.

***

Moriarty hasn’t provided any way to contact him, so Sherlock follows the modus operandi from the case many years ago, and opens John’s blog to post his findings there. His eyes pause shortly at the title of John’s last post from almost two years ago: I believe in Sherlock Holmes. An undefinable feeling lurches in his stomach, but there’s no time to spend on deciphering it.

He clicks open a new post and writes: D.W. attempted to find a new love through his hobby, but dove too deep and didn’t get back up.

He wonders if Moriarty will accept the roundabout phrasing as a real answer, but Sherlock doesn’t want to draw too much attention to John’s blog by explicitly mentioning a suicide that the media has been clamoring over. Who knows if the blood hounds from the press are still following him in hopes of adding something to the Reichenbach scandal.

Soon the phone rings again. There’s no hostage, no bomb – Moriarty knows that he doesn’t have to bait Sherlock to play the game this time – just four more pips and another photograph. It depicts a normal terraced house, with a wreath that has “Welcome” written inside a heart in the middle of it hanging on the door.

Lestrade looks at him with a face of despair, but whether it’s from the game continuing or them not being allowed any rest, Sherlock doesn’t know. The detective, conversely, is burning with determination. He’s on the trail. He’ll soon be able to free John from Moriarty’s clutches.

(Six months too late.)

The search soon takes them to another recent case: Amalia Banks, found dead from blunt head trauma five days ago in her own home, husband suspected of homicide. The neighbours had heard loud arguing from the apartment the previous night, and the morning the husband called for an ambulance for the clearly beaten-up body of his wife, he had been suffering from a sizable hangover, claiming not to remember anything. Of course, Moriarty would never direct Sherlock to such a clear-cut case, and indeed it turns out that although the husband was an abusive bastard, the wife had in fact flung herself down over the stairway railing and hit her head to the corner of a heavy wooden cupboard, rather than having been pushed, as proven by the angle and power of the killing strike, as well as the unusual finger prints on the railing. Most likely she had had enough after the latest time she suffered under her husband’s fists, and decided to end it in a way that would land him in jail.

The third case follows along the same lines: an elderly man, who died in a crash when the brakes of his car stopped working. Sherlock finds proof that the brakes had been tempered with, and that the man had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness with a short life expectancy that would have prevented his recently acquired life insurance from being paid out to his son, whose family was economically struggling caring for their special needs child. Lestrade seems almost regretful when Sherlock presents his deductions to the case, but the consulting detective is too distracted to pay mind to his useless sentiment.

Not only does he find it incomprehensible how people are able to find so many senseless reasons to off themselves instead of looking for actual solutions to their problems, but also wonders why Moriarty is leading him down this trail. None of the cases have the consulting criminal’s handprint on them – it’s more like he’s pointing Sherlock to certain existing cases to prove some kind of a point. Are they in reference to Sherlock’s own ‘suicide’ that he forced John to witness? Is the consulting criminal trying to show him the hypocrisy of his fall, or perhaps to mock his inability to notice the falsehood of Moriarty’s own death? Is it to imply that this, John’s disappearance and the ongoing game, are all a consequence of Sherlock’s failure to take the events of Reichenbach to their intended conclusion?

The fourth case is almost too easy, now that Sherlock knows what they’re looking for. It is also the most heart-breaking: two spouses who had been wheeled into ER after a major traffic accident. One had succumbed to his wounds shortly after, but the other would have survived, had the cord of the life monitoring system not been accidentally plugged off and the postoperative internal bleeding gone unnoticed. The case had been ruled as malpractice, but further examination revealed that it had, in fact, been the woman herself, who in a spout of lucidity after the surgery had plugged herself off to join her spouse in the afterlife.

After the case is solved, Sherlock and Lestrade sit back in the car, but instead of starting the engine, Lestrade worries his lip.

“Sherlock, you don’t think…” he begins, glancing at Sherlock from under his eyebrows.

“No. John would never do something like that,” the detective replies before he can finish the question. His voice sounds sure, but deep down, a gnawing anxiety is carving a space in his heart.

There is only one pip left.

***

This time, Moriarty doesn’t send the clue immediately. It is most likely because for once, he doesn’t have something ready to just point Sherlock towards, but has to set up this final puzzle himself. It’s promising, since it means that John’s corpse isn’t just lying in a ditch somewhere for Sherlock to pick up.

Nevertheless, he finds it impossible to wait patiently for the contact. Lestrade had to get back to work, with a promise he’d be there to help as soon as they had something to go on with. Sherlock had also returned to Baker Street and paces the living room, untiring. The pink phone is waiting on the coffee table, ominously silent.

Sherlock had first checked the flat for any other ‘gifts’ from Moriarty, but nothing was there, nothing to distract him from his welling thoughts. What condition would he find John in? Would he be alive? Tortured and beaten up? Unharmed but full of righteous anger towards Sherlock, who had lied to him and caused his kidnapping? Would he be Sherlock’s John, or would Moriarty have changed him, or made him lose his memories, or something else to torment the detective?

With nothing to fixate on, his mind is striking around blindly, constructing one terrible scenario after another. Thus, he almost startles when the message alert finally sounds.

The phone is in his hand before the sound stops, and with an almost imperceptible tremble in his hand, he clicks open the received message.

His first feeling is of relief. John is clearly visible in the picture and looks at least apparently unharmed. His hair is longer than before and he’s got slight bags under his eyes, but there’s no clear signs of abuse or starvation on his face or shoulders. He’s staring at the camera sideways from under his brows, the angle of the image a little downwards, and his look is of discomfort and apprehension, but not acute distress.

The next thing that catches Sherlock’s eye is a led screen on a wall behind John, attached to a thick packet with a bunch of wires. 2:57:58, the screen displays.

This time, they’re on a timer.

As soon as Sherlock recognises the bomb, his synapses start firing rapidly, eyes flitting over the screen to capture any other details and clues from the picture. The angle of the sunlight shining in from the window next to John shows that the picture was taken at most a little before it was sent to Sherlock, and thus the countdown is likely also real, and not just a taunt that’d be impossible to actually make. It also means that the window is facing south-west.

The image doesn’t show much else – John’s face and shoulder, an angled view of the window, opposite wall and a corner of the ceiling – but Sherlock is still able to pick up multiple vital details. The position of the mullions, putty-lined casement and the height-width ratio of the window frame, together with the approximated height of the room, refer to pre-war architecture at the latest. The walls are painted with a light, slightly greenish color, but the shade is uneven and worn, which means that the place hasn’t been renovated for a while or is outright abandoned. An abandoned building would also make sense, since John would need to be kept in a place where he can’t easily be found by any random passersby, and he’s not gagged and can thus make noise to get help.

The view from the window is obscured, but Sherlock can make out a sliver of a red-bricked wall and a glimpse of greenery and clear sky. No road or ground, so the room is likely on the first or second floor, but the lack of buildings in the background is also revealing – the place must be next to a park or some other open area.

Pre-1940s industrial or public building with at least two floors, northern or north-western side of a park or another open space. Likely abandoned. Three hours. SH

Sherlock texts both Lestrade and Mycroft simultaneously. Technically, it’s also possible that John’s in a private flat, but since he could easily call for help if that’s the case, Sherlock finds it improbable. And with such a limited timeline and little clues, it wouldn’t be like Moriarty to give him a task like trying to single out one flat from all of London based on one photograph, near impossible to do with even unlimited resources.

Unless he never meant you to solve this puzzle. Unless it’s not a game but a punishment.

Sherlock shuts off the doubts, they’re not a productive use of his brain power at the moment. Instead, he grabs his Belstaff and heads out. He might not have unlimited resources, but he has some, and he needs to get them all moving right now. There’s only two hours, forty-five minutes and twenty-eight seconds left.

Soon his homeless network is scouring the city for any promising locations, and suggestions start to flow into his phone. One after another he discards the options as unsuitable and crosses them out on his mental map of London.

Lestrade comes to pick him up in a police car. Hiding his disgruntlement for getting into a panda, Sherlock jumps in and straps himself with the safety belt.

“Any clues yet?” Lestrade asks with a pinched look on his face. Sherlock shakes his head and continues to follow the stream of texts on his phone. With a sigh of grim determination, the DI heads towards New Scotland Yard, but Sherlock stops him as a name on the list catches his eye.

St George’s Hospital, Havering. Opened in mid-1930s and closed just half a year ago, when legionella was found in the hospital’s water systems. Located near the Hacton Meadows in Hornchurch, on the north-eastern edges of London.

“Drive east,” he commands Lestrade, who glances at him and grabs the wheel tighter.

“You found him? Where do we go?” The DI’s anxiousness is now underlined by a hint of excitement.

“I’m not certain yet. Just drive east.”

There are also a couple other potential places, but Sherlock’s gut feeling tells him that this is the one. He still needs confirmation, but Hornchurch is almost an hour’s drive away, even with the lights on, and they’ve got less than two hours left. It’s a gamble, but one he needs to take at this stage – there’s no more time to sit around doing nothing. He’ll depend on Mycroft to prepare teams to check the other places, even if it costs Sherlock in the future.

Check for any traffic at St George’s Hospital, Havering, in the past hours. SH

After informing his brother, he clutches the phone in his hand. The wait feels intolerable, and he quells the instinct to shout at Lestrade to drive faster. He imagines John in the room with the bomb, restrained and unable to do anything but wait. Does he know someone’s coming for him? Or is he expecting to die, as a plaything to a mad criminal that’s tormented him time and time again. Has he prepared his heart for an inevitable demise, brave and undaunted like the soldier he is, or is he shouting and praying for help? “Please God, let me live.”

A group of construction workers was confirmed to have entered St George’s Hospital today at around midday. No sightings of anyone matching John’s appearance.

Sherlock’s pulse quickens. He’s right, he must be! He checked the papers online and there was no information about any redevelopment plans for the hospital at the moment. Moriarty must have disguised John and his crew to smuggle him in.

“St George’s Hospital in Hornchurch. Faster!” he barks at Lestrade, who flinches at the sudden noise, but dutifully accelerates and puts on the emergency lights.

“You should also get a bomb squad ready.”

“Bomb squad? Sherlock, you never mentioned a bomb!” Lestrade sounds flustered. “There’s no way they’ll get in there in time!”

“It doesn’t matter, as long as we do.”

Sherlock will be able to get John out, bomb or not. Or if he won’t, Moriarty will never have meant for him to be able to.

The car’s tires screech as Lestrade brakes to a stop in front of a large, red-bricked house in a quiet residential neighbourhood. Sherlock is out of the doors almost before the movement has stopped.

“Stay here to guide the reinforcements,” he says as Lestrade scrambles to follow him.

“Sherlock, stop! You can’t just barge in there! I’ll come to support you.”

“No. If Moriarty has left some sort of a trap there aside from the bomb, you’re more likely to get in the way rather than help.”

You were also on his list of victims, Sherlock thinks but doesn’t say out loud.

“All the more reason to not let you go alone,” Lestrade retorts.

Sherlock huffs impatiently – there’s no time for this, but at the same time, he needs the DI to stay here.

“Greg. Please wait here. I need to be able to trust that there’s someone competent leading the action if something goes wrong.”

Lestrade blinks a couple times, but then his expression softens.

“Fine. But you must at least take this,” he takes his gun out of his holster and hands it to Sherlock. “I won’t have you dying on me for a second time, you hear me?”

With a slight smirk on his lips, Sherlock accepts the weapon.

“Fool you twice, shame on you.”

Then he turns around, face serious again, and heads into the abandoned hospital.

Thanks to the picture, he knows where to go. The park was ahead and to the right from the car park, mostly blocked by a side building. The main building only has two floors, and its south wing should only have a few rooms where the view would match the one from the image.

He strides up the staircase two stairs at a time. The upper hallway is shadowed, the only light coming from a pair of windows at the end of the aisle. The rays reflecting off the painted walls are tinted green.

It turns out it’s not necessary to guess the right room – on one of the doors, the third last on the right side of the hallway, is painted a big yellow smiley face, with the words WELCOME HOME written right below it. It shoots a sense of trepidation down Sherlock’s spine: Moriarty expected him to find this place.

He dries his hands to the sides of his pants and adjusts his grip on the weapon. Before taking the door handle, he carefully examines it for any kind of tinkering. Not finding any, he still covers his hand with the lapel of his coat and takes a deep breath before pushing the handle and letting the door fall open.

It reveals a room that is empty aside from the bomb (35:43 the timer says) and a bed that John (it’s John) is sitting on. His legs are hidden under the covers, but the hands are placidly set upon the blanket, fingers curled in loose fists. He’s looking at Sherlock from under his eyebrows, but he doesn’t look surprised (Moriarty must have told him), afraid, or distressed, only distraught and… resigned.

“Sherlock,” he states, and in that word there’s a forlorn note that Sherlock can’t quite decipher. Vigilant of stepping into the room and triggering some undetected trap, he calls out to his apparently unrestrained partner:

“John, get off the bed and come here.”

“I can’t, Sherlock,” John replies with a small shake of his head. Sherlock frowns and examines the bed more closely.

“Are you chained to the bed? Will the bomb explode if you move?”

John turns his eyes away and purses his lips, as if he cannot suffer to look at Sherlock any longer, and gives another small shake. His reticence confuses Sherlock.

“Then why? Get over here, John!”

“I can’t!”

Desperation is clear on John’s face, and suddenly Sherlock needs to know, he needs to know. Heedless of the danger, he steps close to John, close to the bomb. John’s whole body tenses and his fists clench the blanket, but Sherlock doesn’t care as he rips it from his hold, uncovering the bed.

When he sees what’s beneath, his brain short-circuits.

Where there should be John’s legs are just two, short stumps.

Chapter Text

It had taken Sherlock a moment to come out of his stupor, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the shattered look on John’s face when he witnessed the detective’s shock.

Without saying anything else, he carries John out. He needs to get John away from the bomb and the godawful bed, and so he picks him up, one hand bracing the back and the armpits and one carefully under the upper thighs. He’s so light, too light, not at all what the stocky but well-built doctor should be like.

John makes a wounded sound when he’s lifted in the air, but doesn’t resist, and in a moment brings his own arm around Sherlock’s shoulders to help balance. After a few seconds, his fingers squeeze Sherlock’s shoulder harder, and John lets out a shaky exhale.

Sherlock carries him out and lays him down on the pavement, far enough from the building that he shouldn’t be in the immediate field of the explosion. A worried-looking Lestrade is striding towards them, but John sobs and turns his head away, moisture shining in his eyes, and Sherlock rises up to meet the policeman halfway. He briefs him on the situation indoors, and as the bomb squad arrives, the DI is distracted with aiding the operation.

The ambulance arrives shortly after, and John is lifted to a stretcher. He answers the ER nurses’ questions calmly and patiently, although everything about his body screams tension. Sherlock asks if he can get on the ambulance with them to accompany John to the hospital, but John shakes his head and the detective is left to wait until the bomb operation is finished and Lestrade can extract himself to chauffeur him.

John is taken to Queen’s hospital in Romford and is undergoing examination when Sherlock and Lestrade arrive. The doctors agree to brief the DI when he introduces himself as the responsible officer for John’s case, but Sherlock is not allowed to participate, and instead paces anxiously in the waiting room.  He curses the doctors and the nurses and the entire hospital staff quietly in his mind, because he needs to know and isn’t it clear for everyone that he needs to know and can’t face John without knowing.

He can’t face him not knowing how badly he has failed his friend.

Lestrade comes back after far too long a time, trying to project an air of assurance, but he’s a terrible actor and entirely unable to hide his disturbance.

“Well?” the detective asks as soon as the DI has sat down with a cup of dark coffee in his hand.

“He’s fine, Sherlock,” Lestrade replies. Sherlock shoots him such a look of disbelief that the DI turns red and splutters:

“Well, not fine, obviously. But there are no acute injuries, and no signs of disease or malnourishment. The… His…”

For this next part, Lestrade seems to be at a loss for words, but it’s exactly what Sherlock needs to know. He stares intently at the older man, ignoring his discomfort, until Lestrade caves in.

“The… amputation scars are almost all healed up. John says that he’s taken the necessary antibiotics, so there’s little risk of infection at this point. They say they want to keep him for a couple more days for some additional examinations and a psych eval and later schedule regular check-ups to monitor his state, but otherwise he’ll be free to go.”

Cold floods Sherlock’s stomach, and he almost misses everything after the first sentence. That means months. Moriarty didn’t take John’s legs as a final, spiteful act upon Sherlock’s return. John’s been missing his limbs for months now. Did Moriarty cut them off as soon as he got his hands on the doctor? Was it a torture visited upon John over a long period of time? What else has he been subjected to, so vulnerable in a madman’s clutches?

“Why?” Lestrade asks, when Sherlock doesn’t seem to react to the news. “Why would Moriarty mutilate John like this, and then let us take him away? Why not just kill him and come after you, if he knew that you were alive?”

For once, Sherlock doesn’t have an answer.

Since John’s condition is stable, he’s allowed visitors normally now that the initial examination is finished. He’s been placed in a general ward, but although the room houses four beds, he shares it with just one elderly woman, who’s sleeping as Sherlock makes his way in.

John is sitting up on a bed in the back, staring out of a window with a distant look in his eyes. He glances at Sherlock when the detective takes a chair beside the bed, but turns back to the window right away.

“Hello, John,” Sherlock starts, because he doesn’t know what to say or how to say it.

“Hello, Sherlock,” John replies, eyes fixated on the window.

Sherlock should ask how he’s feeling, because that’s what people do, isn’t it?, but he doesn’t need to. Now that John is here in front of his eyes, he can read it in the lines of his face, etched deep and making him look years older than he is. He sees it in the slight tremble of his lip when he says Sherlock’s name.

He wants to question John about Moriarty, about how the psychopath is still alive and what happened during his captivity, but there are several enormous whys hanging in the air between them so that there’s no space for any other words. Sherlock finds himself unable to speak, and John doesn’t jump in to fill the silence either.

They spend the evening like that, in quiet unease. John steals regular glances at Sherlock but refuses to meet his eyes, while Sherlock unabashedly examines his friend from head to toe and tries to deduce everything that stays unsaid. When John is brought dinner, Sherlock uses the chance to inform Mycroft of the current situation and tells him to make the preparations for when they return home.

The sun has already gone down when John next opens his mouth.

“He’s looking to destroy you,” he states neutrally, staring out of the window again.

“Of course, that’s obvious,” Sherlock replies. For the first time, John turns his head to meet the detective’s gaze. His eyes are the same calm blue as before, but unlike their previous expressiveness, they now pierce him impassive as they search for something. He doesn’t know if they find whatever they were looking for before John turns away again. Clearing his throat, Sherlock starts:

“John, I… He was threatening to have you all killed. I had to…”

“I know,” John interrupts him, the words underlined with some emotion that he can’t identify. Somehow, it doesn’t sound like I know, I forgive you.

***

John returns to Baker Street.

It’s almost not even a discussion. When the nurses tell him that he’ll be let off in the afternoon, Sherlock announces that he’s already had Mycroft transfer John’s belongings to their flat.

“But I don’t live on Baker Street anymore,” John says, and Sherlock gets that expression on his face when someone says something so incomprehensibly stupid that his brain just cannot compute.

John relents.

And so they return, the prodigal son and the cripple. Mrs Hudson greets them at the door, all teary-eyed and fussy. John tells her that it’s good to see her well and that he’s alright, but she can’t stand looking at him for more than two seconds before turning away and making a sound like a wounded animal.

“Oh, my boys…”  she cries, tapping at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief. “You shouldn’t make an old woman worry like this.”

She seems to take Sherlock’s resurrection surprisingly well, but then again, Sherlock told John that he’d stopped by Baker Street previously. Maybe she’s gotten used to the idea.

It’s been six months, and John still can’t.

Mycroft seems to have been busy with more than just moving John’s things: a small ramp has appeared to the front door of 221B, and somehow a stair lift has been installed in the three days John’s been at the hospital. They’ve also prepared him a second wheelchair upstairs, so they won’t have to carry it up and down. John would be moved if he didn’t feel so much like shit.

He’s also given Sherlock’s bedroom. Somehow, out of all of it, it’s what feels the most wrong. Sure, it makes sense – can hardly ask a guy with no legs to take a flight of stairs to go to the bathroom at night – but Sherlock’s bedroom has always been off-limits. The detective’s one private sanctuary that John’s hardly ever been to, aside from that one time Irene Adler drugged Sherlock and he and Lestrade had to drag the mess of a man to bed.

Now he stares at the periodic table on the wall, feeling so utterly out of place. Mrs Hudson deep cleaned the place after she heard that John had been found, as if it didn’t occur to her, either, that there would be any other place to go now that Sherlock is back. Not a speck of dust remains to signify the two years of emptiness, of grief.

John was never meant to come back.

All is the same, and nothing is.

They go back to normal, or at least close to whatever ‘normal’ is thought to be.

Sherlock immerses himself in the hunt for Jim, flitting about and rattling out facts and possibilities to an invisible audience, or laying on the sofa silent with his fingers steepled under his chin. He doesn’t leave the flat much, rather preferring to have the materials delivered to him, reports and recordings and such. Might even be legal for once – according to Lestrade, the detective’s apparently joined the MI5 while he was gone.

His resurrection makes it to the papers, and for a few days the outside of the flat is swarming with reporters and paparazzi and people still calling for his incarceration and judgment for the crimes Jim framed him for, even though he was publicly exonerated after his ‘death’. Mrs Hudson is almost drowned by the mass of people when she tries to get back home with their groceries. John feels bad for her, but also exceedingly relieved that he doesn’t have to face them himself. Not like the previous time.

People come to visit, people John knew before but hasn’t seen in ages. Lestrade, who’s trying to keep the spirits up, but is visibly overwhelmed by it all. Trying to act like Sherlock wasn’t dead for two years, or John abducted for six months without him even noticing. (John had asked Donovan to take his formal statement.)

Molly, who tries her best to hold a genial and slightly awkward conversation, but can’t look at John and can’t keep her eyes off of Sherlock, as if to confirm that he’s really there.

Mycroft comes along with one of the report deliveries.

“Good day, Doctor Watson. I’m glad to see you’re… well, not ‘well’, but as fine as anybody could hope for. My sincere condolences for your ordeal.”

John doesn’t care for his platitudes, nor does he address the fact that even Mycroft didn’t care enough to notice he was gone, even though with his surveillance network it should have been more than possible. (Or, he noticed but just couldn’t be bothered to act.)

Instead, he asks:

“Did you know?”

Mycroft meets his eyes expressionless, until his face transforms into a sympathetic smile.

“Dear Doctor, some choices are unavoidable.”

John is saved from replying by Sherlock stomping down the stairs and greeting his brother with a “why did you drag your fat carcass here?”. They start to discuss some arbitrary flight schedules and cargo movement. John tunes out.

Even Sarah calls, having seen on the news that Sherlock was back and surmising from that that John must be as well (his ex-girlfriend, for god’s sake). John doesn’t tell her anything, and when she welcomes him back to the clinic if he wants to, he thanks her and says that he’ll think about it.

John doesn’t do much. He watches the TV, reads some books, stares at the yellow smiley face on the wall and the skull on the shelf, in its usual place. Sherlock shows an incredible measure of patience at John’s newly limited mobility, helping him move around in the flat and even bringing him tea whenever he remembers to make some. Except for the few times he’s focused on something and calls out to John to bring him one thing or another, raises his head frustrated after a while when nothing happens, and freezes when he sees John staring back at him from the sofa. A moment of silence, and he clambers up to fetch the thing he wanted by himself, and John goes back to whatever he was doing.

It's uncomfortable at first, to be attended to like that by his best friend, but in time he gets used to it.

They don’t talk about any of it.

Sometimes, when Sherlock’s turned away, frantically tapping on his mobile or leaned over the microscope, John looks at the back of his head and blinks away the images of red blood pooling under the dark curls.

It’s harder to accept now. Yes, Jim showed him the photographs and the videos, but at the time John could still hold on to the belief that they were just elaborate fakes, created to dismantle his crumbling mind. It is different now, with Sherlock being undeniably there. A bit more muscular, more angular, more rugged than the figure lying limp on the concrete, but still moving like Sherlock, talking like Sherlock, looking at the world with simultaneous disdain and fascination like Sherlock.

Sometimes, John hates him so much. He still can’t stop watching him, Jim’s words echoing in his mind.

Sherlock’s still alright.

One day, Sherlock is working on something by the kitchen table and John stares listlessly at some irrelevant afternoon program. The ads come on, and John realizes the uncomfortable pressure in his bladder.

“Sherlock,” he calls out. He receives no reply, the detective completely focused over the experiment he’s hunched over, so he calls out again:

“Sherlock!”

“What?” Sherlock raises his head with a flicker of annoyance.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” John says.

“So? Your chair’s right there. Surely you don’t need me to witness.”

John freezes. Sherlock, noticing his tone, blinks and goes to soften the words:

“I mean, did you need help, or…?”

John turns away, sucks in a breath. He feels the flush rising up his neck, and wrangles his body and the useless stubs into the wheelchair. In the bathroom, he similarly pushes himself up on the toilet seat, now equipped with arm bars to help him support himself.

John lowers his face into his hands and takes a deep breath to stop the tears from falling, the shame from overwhelming him. He just needs to keep it together and breathe, breathe. Breathe. Just breathe.

***

John really shouldn’t be surprised that although outright torture seems to be out of the table now, Jim and Sebastian would still find joy in making his life as difficult as possible.

They moved him to a new room last night, out of the medical room he’d stayed in for his recovery period. He was transferred in a wheelchair that Sebastian placed him in. The ex-soldier had pointedly looked at the chair and John and then declared to no one in particular: “Right, guess you need a bit of help with moving about now,” before grabbing him from under his armpits and picking him up. John startled at the sudden manhandling and flushed at the embarrassment of being maneuvered like a child, but didn’t dare resist under Jim’s cold and gleeful stare.

He swallowed his pride and went to take the sides of the wheels to move himself forward, but Jim just tutted and expertly placed himself behind the chair, giving it a forceful push. John quickly evacuated his hands to avoid his fingers getting pinned between the spokes.

Fine. Message received.

The same performance was repeated in the new suite, a small bedroom with little to no furniture aside from a bed, a small bedside table and an ensuite. John sat on the bed where Sebastian had lowered him, and asked with helpless defiance:

“So is this to be my new cell then?”

Jim just smirked and said:

“Do you need a cell, John Watson? The door is not locked.”

John didn’t answer, instead taking the time to survey his new surroundings.

“Well, I’ve got no time to babysit you. Sebastian will fetch you for dinner.”

They left him alone, sitting on the bed, until Sebastian returned hours later to move him to the dining room. It was along the same hallway as his room, and as they rolled past a narrow stairway leading to the lower floor, John stared at the offending steps, frustrated.

Of course the fuckers had to locate him on the second floor.

This morning, they are yet to bother him, but Sebastian moved the wheelchair to the opposite corner of the room before leaving for the night yesterday. It means that if John wants to use the bathroom, or leave the room or anything else, he’ll have to crawl.

Which, fine. He’s spent enough time shackled to a bed recently, unable to do anything for himself. If Jim and Sebastian want to derive some perverted enjoyment from watching John further debase himself through the camera surely hidden somewhere in the room, John can stand to oblige. There’s not much pride for him left to lose.

John carefully lowers himself on the floor. He’s allowed enough pain management to keep him functional (although John knows it’s not at recommended levels – Jim seems to consider the pain an apt reminder of John’s failed escape attempt, or maybe just relishes his suffering. Nevertheless, John would be worried about what the constant pain would do to his rehabilitation, if he actually believed he would still be alive at the end of this stint). Still, he’s terrified of injuring his stumps again and letting Jim’s doctors back anywhere near with their surgical tools. Maybe next time, they’ll just remove everything up to his hip bones.

He tries to drag himself backwards towards the bathroom door, but notices quickly that it’s easier to shift his weight from one hip to another to shuffle along. It’s a sign of his declined physical state that he’s out of breath after just a few metres.  

John heaves himself up to the toilet seat to relieve himself, and uses the small towel and toothbrush that were prepared beforehand to freshen up. Afterwards, he feels a bit more human, and takes the moment to gather the strength to make his way back out.

Jim had made a point of telling John that he’s not locked in, so he’ll do just as well to test that information. John drags himself to the wheelchair and pushes up. It takes a bit of tinkering to get the brakes disengaged, but once he gets the wheels moving, it almost feels like a relief.

Maybe he can learn to deal with this.

He gets to the door, and taking the handle fills him with trepidation.

It would be like Jim to lie even if there’s no point to it. John won’t be disappointed or aggravated even if it doesn’t open.

The handle turns, and John is overcome with something dangerously close to hope.

Maybe now that there’s no longer danger of him escaping, they won’t feel the need to restrain and torment him like before. Maybe he’ll be able to recover a semblance of himself while waiting for the last shoe to fall.

The door swings open, and behind it stands Sebastian. John can’t stop himself from flinching, which makes the other man smirk.

“Heading for breakfast, Captain? I was just coming to pick you up.”

“Thanks, but I have no need for a PA,” John replies warily. Sebastian’s smile widens.

“Oh, we saw! You take to crawling so well, Johnny.”

He steps closer and takes John by the shoulders. The doctor suppresses a wince.

“Actually, since you’re so keen on taking off with no aid…”

One hand moves to seize John’s shirt by the back of his neck and he’s raised up in the air like a kitten being scruffed. John instinctively pulls the shirt with one hand to stop himself from choking, and the other goes to clutch at Sebastian’s grip on him. The ex-soldier flings him in the hallway, and John barely manages to twist his body so that it’s his left shoulder that hits the floor first and not the remains of his legs as he crashes down.

Pain radiates from the old war wound as John struggles to regain his bearings, getting up on his elbows and raising his face to find Sebastian looming right next to him.

“C’mon Captain, breakfast awaits.”

His captor nudges him in the side with his shoe. John can’t help curling up to protect his chest. He knows from experience that those combat boots are steel-toed, and broken ribs hurt like a bitch.

“Get going.” Sebastian’s tone still sounds jovial, but there’s a sadistic glint in his eye that stirs John to start moving. The doctor’s heart is beating out of his chest as he tries to regulate his breathing while reaching with his arm to start dragging himself forward. The stumps of his legs are tingling. If Sebastian decides to get violent, John has no way to evade it, no way to defend himself.

It’s not like the situation is any different from when he was chained up in the basement, equally helpless, but it sure does feel so. John grits his teeth and focuses on the movement. One arm forward, pull the torso to follow. The dining room wasn’t that many doors away, was it?

Sebastian doesn’t seem to mind the snail’s pace as long as he’s moving, but keeps close alongside John’s body, whistling as they go. As the immediate threat of violence abates, the fear makes way to rage and helpless humiliation. If they didn’t want John doing things without permission, they could have just said so!

But there’s nothing to be done about it, not when his movement is reduced to the wriggling of a worm. He’ll just grit his teeth and bear it, like he’s born every other torture dished out on him, until he’ll no longer have to bear anything at all.

Chapter Text

John is not getting better.

He sits around doing nothing in the flat, pretending to watch TV and staring at Sherlock whenever he thinks he doesn’t notice. The rest of time, he acts as if the detective is not there at all, except when he needs help with some task, and if Sherlock tries to initiate a discussion, he gets angry. He already did before, but he’s been even more tetchy ever since the bathroom episode.

Just this morning, Sherlock brought his head up from the case files to find John preparing a cup of tea for himself. Even just looking in the direction of the kitchen had John bristling and sending a hateful glare at him, so Sherlock swallowed his request to make a cuppa also for him, and instead turned back to the papers.

Learned dependency, quite obviously, not that he’s said as much to John.

The doctors recommended trauma therapy, but John refused on the grounds that he was already familiar with PTSD and knew how to deal with it. He goes to physical therapy and the regular check-ups to monitor the healing of his legs, but refuses to even consider prosthetics. He says it’s because he’s not been able to use compression bandages to avoid tissue swelling and prepare for the prosthetic sockets, so it’s already too late without further surgery (which to John, naturally, is out of the question).

With anyone other than Sherlock, John bears the socialization with a polite smile and empty chatter, talking as little as possible about himself and deflecting any show of concern. He’s taking the bare minimum of pain medication, although the tense lines around his eyes belie the non-absence of pain. He never asks to go anywhere, never asks Sherlock how the investigation is going.

It’s as if John is waiting for something to inevitably crush his new reality, and thus refuses to fully engage with it.

Seeing John in his limbo gnaws at Sherlock’s gut, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. Maybe doesn’t even have the right to do anything. John’s behaviour has made it plenty clear that while Sherlock is welcome to help with his physical needs, psychologically he only has an adverse influence. Even his more discreet attempts at aid, such as leaving leaflets and magazines on trauma counselling and rehabilitation easily available at the flat, have just had them discarded in the bin and John refusing to speak to him even the little he normally does for a while.

Sherlock wants his friend back, but it feels like any action he takes only pushes John further away.

The worst thing, and something Sherlock doesn’t think he should admit, is that he himself is slipping. This is not what he was supposed to come back to, and for some reason experiences from his hunt for Moriarty’s web that never bothered him before have started to revisit him in the dead of the night, filling his head with memories of hurt and fear and cold. It scares him, because he can’t help John if his mental faculties don’t operate at full capacity.

John’s not getting better, but Sherlock is keeping a keen eye on him getting worse. Self-destructiveness is after all something that Moriarty heavily hinted at, and the detective must be ready to intervene if John tries to do anything radical. Thus far there’s been no signs to that direction, but Sherlock did find something worrying when checking the browser history on his flatmate’s laptop one night. Apparently, John had been looking at flats in different parts of London, and it didn’t seem like a part of any kind of investigation. Some kind of coping strategy, perhaps, but one that filled Sherlock with anxiety, because any thoughtless plans to relocate would make it so much harder for Sherlock to protect John. Still, he knows he can’t bring it up, since John will only end up refuting him.

As wildly ill-equipped as Sherlock is to help John with his mental battles, he dives headfirst into what he can help John with, which is catching Moriarty. He pours over the data provided by Mycroft to find any connections, any indication of where the criminal genius is or what he’ll attempt next.

Because, without a doubt, there will be a next. It wouldn’t be like Moriarty to first hide himself for two years just to goad Sherlock in such a dramatic way and then fall off the Earth. No, it’s a game, even if Sherlock’s yet to figure out the rules.

Nevertheless, in the end he’ll win. He always wins. (Even if he’s not quite sure if Reichenbach could be considered a victory.)

Besides, the investigation is one of the only ways Sherlock has found to get John to talk about his captivity. Direct questions about his treatment just make the doctor shut down, so Sherlock has to frame his inquiries in a way that refers more to the circumstances of the abuse, something that the detective could use to identify the place(s) he was held in or the people involved.

This way, Sherlock learns about the basement and the shackles and John’s escape attempt (from John’s short description, he deduces the house to have been located somewhere in Central Europe, probably close to the Alps). Asking about surveillance, he gets approximate timeframes how much John was kept ‘company’ during his imprisonment, by whom, and how much he was left to his own solitude.

He understands the differences between the ‘before’ and the ‘after’. He comes to know of the close involvement of Moriarty himself and the henchman, Sebastian Moran (Mycroft has an extensive file on the man – former Colonel of the Queen’s army, exceptional sniper, dishonourably discharged, lost surveillance soon after. Sherlock can’t help but wonder if he’s the one who also held the rifle during his and Moriarty’s meeting at the pool, or at the roof).

There are two topics John omits completely: when he lost his legs, and whatever Moriarty told him about Sherlock, although the detective can infer some of it from how clear it is that John knew about his fake suicide and evidently also much of what he’d been doing afterwards, given that he hasn’t asked a single question about Sherlock’s ‘time away’, as Lestrade has started to call it.

John’s traipsing around the topic also this time, after Sherlock asked him about the final days before his release for the third time. John’s sitting on the sofa, Sherlock purposefully situated opposite him, so he can catch any and all body language. This time he demanded that John leave no details out to make sure Sherlock hadn’t missed something, and although the doctor was seemingly frustrated, the detective kept bugging him until he conceded.

“Jim had me eat breakfast with him. It wasn’t that uncommon, so I didn’t think much about it, and the way he acted was the same nasty self as normal. Jim was talking about some restaurant he went to, and Sebastian was standing a little behind me as usual…”

It’s been grating on Sherlock ever since John’s return, and now he’s no longer able to hold himself back.

“Jim. Jim. Why do you keep calling him Jim? Moriarty’s threatened your life multiple times and locked you up in a basement for months, so I truly doubt your relationship warrants the degree of familiarity required to be on a first-name basis.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Sherlock can see John physically close up.

“He told me to,” John scathes, his face pale except for two burning spots on his cheeks. The response irks Sherlock: as if it explains anything, his John is not one to just do as he’s told. And hearing John call Moriarty with a name that indicates such closeness – it burns something in Sherlock’s chest that he cannot name.

“Oh, yes? You do realise that such coercion was most likely aimed at dismantling your mental defences, to manufacture a semblance of familiarity between you and subsequently make you more prone to showing your vulnerability and construct a psychological…”

“THEY CUT OFF MY FUCKING LEGS, SHERLOCK!”

The bellow cuts off Sherlock’s tirade, and he falls silent. John is red in the face and panting, his fingers clutching the arms of his chair.

“I wasn’t keen on telling him no after that.”

***

John’s been awake for a few days now. He’s propped up on the bed with a few thick pillows, half-sitting. There’s no moving anywhere else: his arms are strapped down to the sides of the bed, loose enough now for him to reach for a glass of water and scratch his nose on his own, but too tight to be able to open the straps or leave the bed.

Pain radiates from his lower body, a swirling storm barely held in check by the meagre amount of pain medication he’s been allowed. He refuses to look down to the bandaged mess in front of him, instead staring through the small, long window at the top of the wall, through which he can see a sliver of the blue sky.

He hears the door opening, but doesn’t turn his eyes away from the tiny crevice to the outside world. His engagement is not needed, the nurses and the doctors are perfectly capable of attending to him without his input and have apparently also been ordered by Moriarty not to talk to him unless necessary.

That’s why he continues to count the clouds passing the window, all the way until a sound of clipping heels reaches him and a forceful hand grabs his chin and turns his head.

John jerks and tries to rip the hand away, but the straps yank his arms back. His eyes meet empty black orbs that spark and are accompanied by a wide smirk as they observe his reaction.

“There you are, Johnny-boy! I was worried that I had lost you for a moment.”

“Fuck off, Moriarty,” John spits out. The criminal’s been to see him just once since the… incident, right after the operation, and John would have been happy to not see the madman in a suit ever again. But of course that was too much to ask.

“Don’t be like that, Johnny! You’ve been staying as our guest for long enough, do call me Jim.”

“I think ‘fucking bastard’ works well enough.”

John’s trying to appear stoic, but his heart is racing under Moriarty’s expressionless gaze. Suddenly, like a snake, his hand shoots out while John’s speaking to pinch his tongue between two unforgiving fingers.

“Such naughty words, doctor. The way you’re speaking, I’m not sure if you learned anything at all from your previous mistake.”

John glares at Moriarty and tries to pry the hand off but can’t get enough leverage. His captor clucks his tongue.

“Tsk tsk, Doctor Watson. So reticent. I was trying to be kind by just removing your legs to stop you from running again, but I don’t really need any of your other limbs either. Shall I take your insubordinate tongue next? Those arms that dare grab at me? Those defiant eyes? Maybe I should take away everything that’s not vital and return you to the Holmes brothers as a living, senseless torso, unable to move or communicate or sense through anything else but touch. Do you think Sherlock would allow you the kindness of death, or would he hook you up to some machine to suffer eternally as a reminder of his failures?”

There’s a gleam in Moriarty’s eyes, as if he’s really considering his own words, and John can feel them cataloguing every inch of the fear that fills him. His fingers slip off the pristine suite sleeve, and after a moment Moriarty lets go of his tongue.

“So, how’s it going to be, Doctor Watson?” he asks with another cold smile. John struggles to gather himself through the jackhammer of his heartbeat, images of his own, limbless torso flipping through his mind.

“Fine. Have it your way, Jim.” he replies in a scathing tone. The criminal looks down at him for a few more moments before seemingly getting bored and sauntering out of the door. John slumps down on the pillows, all energy suddenly leaving his body, and presses his eyes closed hoping he could go far, far away.

***

Sherlock is trying so hard to compute. John can see the invisible gears turning in that magnificent brain, putting in order his own words and John’s reaction to them and the emotions causing that reaction and the results of that and what he should say to de-escalate the situation.

He’s trying so hard, and failing, and it hurts.

But it’s not like John’s not to blame in equal measure. He’s the one unable to control himself and flaring out when others go poking at the festering spots and the memories overflow.

It’s just so heavy. And it hurts.

It’s like John’s been in constant pain for the past two years.

Sherlock’s still looking for the words, his expressionless face only disturbed by intermittent blinking, until he finally settles on two:

“I’m sorry.”

It sounds foreign, coming from the detective’s mouth. John thinks he could probably count with one hand the times Sherlock’s apologized to him. Actually, has that even happened before? Maybe that one time with the head in the fridge?

He deflates. He shouldn't have lashed out, anyway.

“It’s fine. You couldn’t have known,” he says. A platitude, one they both know is at least half-fake. (Because Sherlock should’ve known. Isn’t that his whole thing?)

Sherlock uncharacteristically hesitates. He’s uncomfortable, can’t look John straight in the eye.

“No. I mean… for everything. For the fall. For everything leading to… this.”

John blanches. Sherlock must see that the reaction is not what he wanted, because he tries again:

“I’m sorry.”

And the pain flares into smoldering rage again. There’s so much in that apology that should be picked apart and smashed and ripped into pieces that John doesn’t know what else to do but let the blaze out.

“No! Don’t be sorry! You don’t get to sacrifice yourself in a mad attempt to take out a psychopathic criminal and fail and come back to tell me you’re fucking sorry!”

Sherlock opens his mouth again, closes it. Lost for words – John never thought he’d see the day. A sliver of pain passes the narrow face, and it doesn’t make John feel any better. If anything, it makes him feel worse, and he turns his face down. Sees from the corner of his eye Sherlock clenching his fist.

That’s how it’ll happen. They’ll just be stuck in a downwards spiral of hurt, their own pain amplifying the other’s.

“This is how he’ll break you. He told me.”

“No, John,” Sherlock refutes. “This is how you break me.”

John raises his head, ready to yell at the detective, but there’s nothing in his eyes but sincerity and sadness. In that moment, John hopes, really hopes that he could get up from the chair and stomp up the stairway to lock himself up in his bedroom, but it’s not possible, so he contents himself with glaring hatefully at Sherlock until the other man leaves instead.

The hollow reality stares at him in the yellow smiley face on the wall.

Sherlock is still alright, but John isn’t.