Author's Note: This story is dark stuff. Includes sexual violence, humiliation, psychological distress, alcoholism and M/M sex. Don't like, don't read. DAILY UPDATES.
Since he came home, he hasn't been right. I've watched him. Yes, he goes through the motions, he's as brilliant on a crime scene as ever, but something is missing. The fire has gone out of him. I catch him watching me sometimes. There is pain in his eyes. I know he is aware of how much he hurt me. Or at least a little of it. How can he know the real truth? How could he know when he wasn't there? At the graveside? Through the long nights?
I say nothing.
Nothing about his suffering. Nothing about mine.
He has started going out at night sometimes, disappearing for hours at a time. When he comes back, he looks terrible. Sometimes there are bruises. He won't talk about them. He'll sleep afterwards for days at a time. Then says nothing. Just watches me across the room when he finally gets up, eyes sunken and smudged blue, skin drawn back against his skull.
I can't comment. It's not as if I'm unscathed. I know he is aware that I am drinking. There are bottles stashed all over the house. I don't just hide it from him. I hide it from myself. I'm as broken as he is. I've lost my bottle (oh, the irony). I'm the adrenaline junkie who's lost his nerve. The nightmares dog me. I watch him bleeding out on the pavement every night. I stand by his tombstone every day. The marker of my life lost for three years. The marker of trust destroyed.
We revolve around each other in the flat, going through the motions, a pair of gyroscopes digging our own separate grooves.
Tonight, he seems visibly strained. I can see something is desperately wrong. It's not the way it was before, when he'd get wound up and I could shout at him, or calm him, or take him out and find a case to distract him. There is something in him that I can't reach now, some hard kernel that is beyond boyish banter or bickering or friendly admiration. I am afraid I am watching him nose dive, and I can't stand it anymore.
Tonight, I follow him.
I am doing the unthinkable. Don't trust him? Damn right. Why should I, when he tricked me all that time? Besides I've got a flask of Dutch courage in my breast pocket. A few drinks these days and I'll tackle anything. Including Mycroft.
I follow Sherlock through the evening streets, the pavements slick and shiny with slews of reflected shop lights. Everything shimmers. It is a fortnight before Christmas and London is lit up, but Sherlock is like a black hole, six feet of velvet anti-matter that sucks in light and melds with the darkness.
I follow his scent: the cinnamon of his aftershave, the damp wool of his Belstaff overcoat, the green apple of his shampoo, the stench of his misery. I follow him doggedly to a back alley between warehouses, a ghost-town since the banking crash. Now these hangars are used for raves and unlicensed boxing matches and all manner of fleeting goblin markets. I watch him slip inside like the thief that he is, and I settle into a doorway to wait.
Cars start to pull up, disgorging passengers, some women, mostly men; elegantly dressed, an expensive clientele. Bouncers appear to man the doors, but they are not the average either. Expensively dressed like the punters, and smooth skinned, these are the kind of men for whom this is a quick moonlighting job, a little extra pocket money on top of their usual round of celebrity protection. I can smell their sickly synthetic aftershave from my shadows.
A black limousine draws up just short of the door, but this one I recognise. The door opens wide and I get in.
Mycroft, in heavy woollen overcoat, leather gloves and serious face.
'This is not something you want to do, John.'
'You know what's going on, don't you?'
'You need to understand that you can't save him from this.'
'You mean, if you can't, you won't admit I can.'
'This is a side of my brother you do not want to see. I know how you think of him, how you revere him. Please, don't go in there.'
'Are you begging me, Mycroft?'
'Would there be any point in doing so?'
'I don't know.'
'Then yes, I'm not above begging. This as much a plea for your sake as for Sherlock's. You make him twice the man he once was. Without you, he is nothing, and he knows it. To go in there now will risk all of that. Every man has his darkness, John. You know that better than anyone. Perhaps you should let him alone in his, as he does you in yours.'
I don't take my eye from his while I pull the silver steel flask from my pocket and drink. If he knows already, I'm not going to hide it from him. I'll flaunt it if I have to.
'So you want to self-destruct too?' He raises an eyebrow, sad not sardonic for once.
'Mycroft, you tell me if you're so clever. If Sherlock's out to self-destruct, what's the point in my not following his lead? That's what everyone thinks I do anyway.'
'But we know better, don't we? You and I?'
I examine him carefully. I don't know if he is playing me, flattering, manipulating me the way he always has, or if he is really as genuinely concerned as he looks. There is a deadness about his eyes these days. Does he know he has already lost his little brother? Is he really so prescient?
'We should rename you Teiresias,' I tell him, and get out of the car.
He follows me, calls out one last time. 'Don't do it, John. You'll always regret it.'
I don't look back.
Tomorrow, John finds out what is in the dark room…
