I neither own nor profit from any of these characters; they are the property of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and the BBC.

If you see something that you think ought to be changed or improved, please feel free to let me know, if you'd like. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Special thanks to Feej and LeDragonQuiMangeDuPoisson for having read this over for me and helped me so much to make it work.

He knew without opening his eyes where he was. Iodine and cleaning solution, hum of fluorescent lighting overlaid with beeps and clicks, starchy roughness of cheap sheets. Hospital.

Sherlock hated hospitals – waste of time. He was about to open his eyes when he felt something else besides the over-clean bedding and the press of the needle (uncomfortably familiar) in the crook of his elbow. Warm fingers, threaded through the cold ones of his own right hand.

Mycroft? Mycroft's hand wouldn't be so warm, his fingers so sturdy. Sherlock opened his eyes.

Of course. John.

Sherlock rolled his head to the right to face his friend, unwilling to lift himself from the crinkling pillow. John looked concerned – what had happened? – and exhausted and slightly ill, but under it all, something more. Sadness? Fear? A smile crossed John's face at the sight of Sherlock's awakening, but it didn't last.

Sherlock would have thought it would have lasted. His frown mirrored John's, pain radiating from what must obviously be a scratched, bruised left side of his face. "What am I doing here?"

John dropped his gaze. "You were hurt, remember?"

"No, I feel fine." The face wasn't even worth acknowledging.

"You don't remember?"

"No." Sherlock tried to shift his legs underneath him, a prelude to sitting up, but they felt heavy with disuse. "How long have I been here?"

"Since yesterday," said John, "but you spent a lot of that in surgery."

"In what?" Sherlock demanded, bringing his hands up to pat himself down, locate the intrusion into his body, but that alone was enough to bring it into view. He let his hands (hands?) fall again, sick at the sight.

"Um… Sherlock…" John shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. But Sherlock had already seen.

The numbness chilled him, and he couldn't stand not knowing everything, the whole story, mapped out in front of him, every muscle, tendon, bone and sinew of his left hand.

"Sherlock!" and John grabbed at Sherlock's right hand, clasping it tightly, pressing him back against the bedclothes by his shoulders. He struggled, had to know, but whatever had happened had left him weaker than usual and John's soldier's strength had the best of him.

He fell back against the pillow, swallowing the nauseating fear of uncertainty as he tried to struggle upright again. "John," he pleaded, "let me see."

"No. You can't take off those bandages. You'll never heal if you don't leave it!"

"John, my hand!"

John held up both of his own as if to ward off Sherlock's panic. "I'll tell you. Just lie back." He added, weakly, "please."

Sherlock did, resisting the urge to tear at gauze and tape and examine the evidence with his own eyes. Instead, he searched John's expression for his answer.

"Two fingers," said John, "and I don't know how much mobility you'll have left in the others. Your hand was shattered, Sherlock. It's amazing they were able to save any of it."

"They?" Sherlock asked sharply. "Not you?"

"I couldn't, Sherlock. I'm not an orthopaedic surgeon. I couldn't have helped."

Sherlock's silence stretched on a little too long.

"Sherlock, I'm sorry. I know it's no good, but I am." He didn't know what else to say. "At least… at least you're right-handed."

He didn't know why Sherlock's face collapsed at that, his expression shifting rapidly from urgency to startlement to a flash of something that might have been pain and then to careful neutrality.

"I think I should rest, John."

It was true, but John knew Sherlock wasn't saying it because he was tired, or because he thought it would be good for him.

"I'll let you get some sleep."

When he left the room, he wasn't sure what to do. He didn't want to be too far from Sherlock when he awoke again, but it was clear that his friend didn't want his company at the moment. Might as well go back to Baker Street and at least shower and change, he thought, as he turned away and walked down the corridor to the elevators; he'd been wearing the same clothes since yesterday, and they were filthy with dust and plaster from the explosion.

He'd gotten off easy. His jumper was a small price to pay in comparison to Sherlock.

Just walking up to the front door of 221B was a relief. The familiar green paint, the scent of lunchtime soup from Mrs. Hudson's small café, were comfortingly mundane. The only thing out of place, and it took him a few moments to put his finger on it, was the lack of anticipatory dread of whatever Sherlock might have done while he was out. It was strange to realize that there would be no surprises today.

Even stranger to open the door at the top of the stairs and be proven wrong.

"Hello, John," said Mycroft, from Sherlock's usual position on the couch.

"Hello," awkwardly. What should he say? Mycroft would know Sherlock wasn't here, which meant he had come to talk to John. He must have been monitoring them, to have gotten here first.

"Do come in."

Why did it feel so natural to be invited into his own flat by someone he barely knew?

"Um, Sherlock's… well, he's woken up."

"I am aware. I don't think he would particularly appreciate my visiting him at the moment, do you?"

"No… I suppose not. He didn't seem to want…" John suddenly realized that he was still standing just in front of the doorway. The kitchen, he thought. Like always. "Tea?"

"No, thank you." Ordinarily, the refusal would have carried with it a tinge of condescending amusement. How domestic; tea is the answer to everything. Today, Mycroft's voice was devoid of even that trace of humour. "Sit down, please, John."

"Look, I know you think…" What did Mycroft think? "It's… I couldn't stop him, you know how he is. It was all I could do to keep up with him."

"No one blames you for the accident," Mycroft assured him. "There was no way you could have known."

"Right." Well. If he wasn't about to be blamed for what had happened, then why was Mycroft here?

There was only one way to find out, so he sat down in his favourite chair. His clothes were in a right state – he was going to get plaster dust all over the upholstery. It didn't help that he was seated, fragments of drywall in his hair, next to Mycroft's polished shoes and crisply pressed suit.

Mycroft, he realized, was holding Sherlock's violin.

He waited.

"This was a gift from our mother," he said. "It used to be hers, you know."

"Yes, I…" John nodded. "Sherlock told me she taught him how to play."

"'Play' being only a loose description for the torture Sherlock brings to bear on this violin."

Privately, John felt the same, though he suspected Sherlock could play properly if he wanted. He suspected Mycroft knew this as well.

"I never learnt to play an instrument," mused Mycroft, turning the bow over in his hands and running his fingers along the winding. "I found other things took up all my time."

For a man who had no use for music, John thought, Mycroft was being astonishingly reverent in his treatment of Sherlock's violin.

"Sherlock was captivated, though. He used to beg Mummy to let him stay up and listen to her play."

John had never even given thought to Sherlock as a child. He found that, even thinking about it, he couldn't envision the standoffish consulting detective as anything other than the tall, angular man he was now. Then again, Mycroft as a child was, if possible, even more difficult to imagine.

"He was so overwhelmed when she gave him this. It was almost as if, for all the time he had spent listening, making the music himself had never even crossed his mind."

Sherlock, overwhelmed? It must have been a cold day in… well, anyway.

"Do you play an instrument, John?"

"No. Well. I learnt the clarinet in school. Not anymore, though."

"I see."

Well, he'd been busy, John thought defensively. There had been the matter of medical school, and a war, and then Mycroft's bloody brother to keep from getting killed. Which he had accomplished, mostly. He'd done a less-than-perfect job.

"Then you may not understand what it is like to love, truly love, an instrument, so that it fills your entire being. The violin was the only thing that could calm Sherlock's mind, sometimes."

Was?

John hadn't kept Sherlock completely out of danger, but he wasn't dead. He just…

Oh.

Oh.

And in the silence that followed John's realization, plainly written across his face, John could have sworn he heard his heart break for the loss of tortured strings and sleepless nights.

Mycroft laid the violin and bow down on the couch, then rose and nodded.

"Perhaps I'll visit my brother later, when he is more… socially inclined."

The door closed silently behind him on his way out.

John was left staring at the violin resting on the dull, greyish leather of the couch.

Gently, he picked it up. It was lighter than he might have expected, fragile in his hands. He wondered how it survived the abuse Sherlock gave it whenever he was particularly frustrated by a case – it seemed as though the delicate wood might shatter under the violent crashing of bow against strings. Maybe Sherlock's playing was more deliberate than he had thought.

He ran his hands along it, feeling the smooth curve of polished wood under his fingertips, cold where it had lain on the couch, warm where it had rested against Mycroft. The texture of the strings reminded him inexplicably of precision surgical instruments, finely milled to improve grip. He plucked experimentally at one, startled at the clear, piercing tone in the afternoon silence of the flat. Another pluck. Another vibrant note.

John had seen Sherlock play before, and now he lifted the violin to his own shoulder, certain he was doing this all wrong. It felt strangely like a violation – he doubted Sherlock would ever have let him touch the instrument, had he asked – but he had to know.

Bow. Right. On the couch. Pick it up, hold it… how? Not in his fingertips. Not clasped in his hand. He settled on something in between the two, laid the taut horsehair to the strings below his chin, and drew his hand back.

A rasping scrape, a thin squeal that sounded like the worst of Sherlock's midnight crimes against music.

Again. Hold it level. Slowly.

The same grating noise, but then, just for a moment, a warm, rich sound, dark brown, that filled the air and vibrated through John before fading into a shriek of protest.

Ah.

That note, then, that sound, was what Sherlock effortlessly brought forth, even when it seemed to John like he was just seeing how much noise he could produce with only four strings. The sensation of it, curling around in his brain and heating somewhere deep in his chest. That must be what Sherlock craved when he stood by the window at night and kept John far from sleep.

He looked at the violin still on his shoulder, his left hand curled around the neck, the bow hanging loose in his right.

He thought of the look on Sherlock's face in the hospital, when he'd said that stupid, stupid thing, and understood.