1. The Incident.
T: In which I leap, eyes tightly shut, into a brand new fandom! Warnings of spoilers for 'The Great game' backwards, possible random characterisation and that things will get slashy down the line! Sir Arthur owns the original, the BBC, Mr Moffat + Mr Gatiss own the modern verse spin and I own the plot!
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Ugh, why the hell had his body decided to wake him? I mean it's not as though there's any form of daylight somehow working it's way past the extra thick curtains on his bedroom, or as if he's got anywhere to be today…
He frowns hard at that last thought, at how self pitying, how depressive, it sounds and how it's true all the same.
He'd been taken to one side a week ago, told that people were starting to worry, starting to notice the not shaving; the chattering to himself; the thinness of his temper. He'd been asked if everything was alright, the question followed by 'they tell me you were involved in an explosion' at which point he'd snapped.
Because though the conclusion to the matter of the bombings had been…dramatic…it's was nothing worse than what he'd faced while out on the field in Afghanistan. Ok so one couldn't quite roll out of a building that'd just suffered a massive explosion entirely unscathed, not even when you'd had the foresight to hurl yourself into the vast body of impact absorbing water contained within said building. Still a fractured hip really wasn't the end of the world, even if it did decide to remind him of its presence whenever the air temperature dropped even minutely and he'd been sent home from the hospital only a week after the incident.
He'd coped with the bomb, hell he'd even coped with knowing that the entire thing had been somewhat pointless being as Moriaty had also gotten out alive, but he hadn't coped at all well with everyone else assuming he was going to be some form of emotional wreck.
Oh he'd smiled as they'd coddled him, the thing all teeth and clear 'leave me the hell alone' signal that'd somehow gone over even Sherlock's head.
He'd thought because of his flatmates blind spot in the matter of social protocol, thought that as Sherlock had seen everyone else fussing after him and he accepting that fussing, it was the done thing.
Then…
Sherlock had stumbled onto a case while flipping through one of the many cheep magazine's he'd suddenly started having delivered to the flat, a simple little thing centring about some confidence tricksters that'd somehow ended up with him being shot.
The bullet had barely even grazed his skin, the mark left by its passage more burn than actual wound and yet Sherlock had reacted to the entire thing as though he was dying.
It'd almost been worthy of laughter until the younger man had turned on the suspect, eyes alight with the wild fire of anger, and struck him solidly about the head with some object or another.
Sherlock had loomed over the man's unconscious form for a long while after that, face entirely blank, before simply walking away.
It was a typical Sherlock move and, though the younger man's behaviour had been somewhat…unusual…he'd sort of stuffed that fact away for later contemplation. He really wanted to shout at the man for leaving him to clear up his mess again and there was no way he could do that guilt free if he thought that oddness through with any sort of firmness at that precise moment in time.
So he'd psyched himself up, had thought of all the terrible things his flatmate had put him through recently in order to get just the right hint of resignation there to give the whole speech validity and then the text had come through.
'WC1N 3BG. There has been an incident.'
He remembers frowning at the thing, remembers how the Taxi Driver hadn't quite been able to meet his eyes after he read out the postcode and how silent he'd been.
He remembers the rain…the sound of it on the pavement as he'd stepped out of the car…of how he'd caught the sign on the building in front of him and suddenly that sound had shut entirely away.
National Hospital For Neurology & Neurosurgery.
There is a void in his head after that, a days worth of memories pushed deep into his hindbrain along with all the other darker recollections…the memories that contain the blood and the bodies…
Then…then he's told exactly what'd happened and though he knows that sometimes life isn't fair or logical, that sometimes people just die, he knows that it's a lie.
As he watches the casket lowering into the ground all of a day later, listens as Mycroft reels off an empty, scripted, eulogy, he remembers the stillness of Sherlock's face.
At which point he suddenly realises that the lie is being told for his sake, that he's watching some random guy being buried in a grave that will bare Sherlock's name, because it's the best way to keep him safe.
Quite how he felt about what that meant for Sherlock's apparent lack of care was somewhat complicated, how he felt about Sherlock assuming him weak enough to need such mollycoddling, however…
He'd repressed that emotion along with the rest, pushed it to the back of his head with everything else and he'd started setting out feelers in the hopes of finding something to prove that he wasn't going crazy.
He started staying up late, started to forget the simple basics of eating and washing with any form of regularity, started voicing his thoughts out loud in the hopes that somehow they'd make more sense that way…
…Oh of course now he could see how it would look to people outside of his head and can even concede that it'd make more sense to link his apparent decent into madness to the matter of the bomb than to the death of some guy he'd only known for two months.
At the time, however….
Ok so his head was now, officially, circling about the same thought and of course that means trying to switch it off is utterly impossible which, in turn, means he can kiss goodbye to trying to get back to sleep.
He wills himself up and out of bed, secures his fluffy dressing gown and wraps himself tight amid its plush, warm, embrace, before shuffling, some what lopsidedly, down into the kitchen.
It still feels odd to not have to rescue the milk from behind some random Sherlock experiment or another…to not have to sniff at the tealeaves before he places them into the kettle for safety's sake.
Strangest of all is the silence…which is strange in itself considering how little Sherlock had talked during their 'down time', yet he constantly finds his ears stretching out for the sound of clothing shifting against the fabric of the sofa; of fingers tapping some rhythm or another against some spontaneous surface; of the rustle of plastic and cardboard as another nicotine patch is set free it's 'cage'; for a thousand other little noises he'd hadn't even realised were there until suddenly they were gone.
He can't let himself think too hard about what that means either, because he's all ready very aware that it's a veritable can of worms.
Someone is buzzing the flat.
It can't be Sarah because she'd basically been avoiding him since the funeral, had even ended things with little more than a casual text message and it's most certainly not a cold caller given their reputation…
Curiosity eventually wins out and he works his way, slowly, to the intercom
"Who is it?"
"Paterson Guthrie, Dr Watson, Mr. Holmes sent me."
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T: 'Paterson Guthrie' is the lead in Quinn Fawcett's Mycroft Holmes novels but I'm changing him enough here that you're really not going to have to have read them to get the best out of the fic! Next chapter next week, until then review?