Defining Friendship

"I will burn the heart out of you." – J. Moriarty

Author's note: For those of you who do not know, my beta, Eideann, and I are roommates. I'd say flatmates, but we live in a house and, well, we're Americans. To the point, we share a mutual acquaintance, a fair and interesting young lady who was so kind as to introduce us to the fandom of Sherlock. She pushed, we caved, and now we're both hooked. Worse, we were both inspired with far too many ideas for Sherlock fanfic to be contained by our poor, long-suffering brains. Something had to give. Without consulting one another, we both began stories which could be considered tags to The Great Game on the same morning, at roughly the same hour, while located 40.41 miles apart in separate cities. That's 65.0 kilometres for you Brits. Both our stories begin in the hospital, with the same characters in attendance and have extremely similar themes. No one who knows us well would be surprised. The only thing we really argue about in the fandom is which one of us is Holmes and which is Watson. We have yet to reach an agreement. At the moment we are leaning toward my identity as the more socially ept Watson, and hers as the more pedantic Holmes. She sometimes lacks a real world interface. *ahem* Anyway, read and enjoy. If you are Calliope, read, enjoy and then call after you have read both stories! *We didn't warn her we had written these, let alone posted them. We expect squeeing in the near future.* Also, dear readers, we both positively thrive on reviews, and we are highly competitive, so please read and review both our stories, or there may be bloodshed… ours, not yours. Sincerely, your devoted new author, Catslynw.

P.S. Eideann's story is entitled, "A Good Man's Friend."

Chapter 1

Defining Terms

What was a friend? It should have been a simple question. For most people, perhaps it was a simple question, but it left Sherlock Holmes baffled. Was Dr. John Watson his friend? Fingers steepled, grey-blue eyes fixed on the nasal canula that fed extra oxygen to John's brain, Sherlock found that the question had abruptly taken on an unexpected degree of importance.

It was a question. Sherlock answered questions. So why couldn't he answer this one? Part of the trouble was that there were simply too many definitions of the word friend. According to dictionary .com, a friend was a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard. Sherlock's lip curled dismissively. Unacceptably vague. That same inept reference also described a friend as one who provides assistance or patronage. Well, John certainly did that to the best of his ability. Though nowhere close to being Sherlock's intellectual equal, the good doctor was of above average intelligence and assisted earnestly, if not always enthusiastically, with the cases undertaken by the world's only consulting detective. Still, Sherlock was certain that particular definition was meant to refer primarily to people who befriended organizations or causes. Prideful as he might be, Sherlock did not think of himself as a cause. So, scratch the second definition.

The website went on to describe a friend as someone with whom a person was on good terms or not hostile. Utterly useless. Good terms required defining of its own. As for hostile… John frequently reacted in a hostile manner to Sherlock's perfectly rational actions. Why a doctor of all people should have reacted so negatively to finding a dead man's intestines decomposing in the bath was beyond him. It was a scientific enquiry, one that would ultimately help to solve cases. Yet John had wagged on and on about it, blistering Sherlock's ears for four minutes and forty-three seconds. After that, things had been blissfully silent, but Sherlock had been startled the next day to discover that John was still angered. He had, according to Mrs. Hudson, been giving Sherlock the silent treatment. Sherlock hadn't noticed. Pointing this out, in hopes of saving both John and himself future confusion and needless expenditure of energy on pointless emotional scenes, had only seemed to make the doctor angrier. It was all very perplexing.

In other circumstances, Sherlock might simply have overcome his own dislike of anything that smacked of emotional intimacy and asked John outright if he was his friend. At the moment, however, that was impossible. Whatever Moriarty had lined the vest with – the vest he'd bound John into – it had not been the Semtex he'd used with the previous hostages. Though Sherlock could not smell Semtex the way a dog might, he could calculate blast ratios quite effectively, and if the amount of Semtex that the vest appeared to carry had been real, he, John and Moriarty would all have been obliterated when the vest exploded. However, while the final blast at the pool might have been weak compared to what it could have been, it had still been powerful enough to leave John badly injured. The doctor had only briefly regained consciousness since the explosion, and Sherlock had not been allowed to see him before John was summarily sedated by some "well meaning" but no doubt inept locum who believed that the doctor's injures required intubation. This decision had subsequently been supported by an undeniably more experienced surgeon, Dr. Pepperidge, who reminded Sherlock of John in many ways. The man exuded military competence and was everything that John himself might have become had his war wound not left him with nerve damage and an intermittent tremor in his left hand. Difficult to do surgery with shaking fingers.

Dr. Pepperidge had treated John's injuries: three cracked ribs, two badly broken ribs resulting in flail chest – a condition that killed half of the people who suffered from it – contusions, abrasions, first-degree burns to his left hand and jaw, assorted other minor problems, multiple marks from a stun gun, proving that John had not gone quietly when Moriarty's henchmen took him. It was the flail chest that had filled Sherlock with a brief, blind panic, but John's case had been declared not serious by the surgeon, and the intubation had ended some hours ago. Sedation was being continued as a form of pain management that would allow them to avoid the use of the more traditional narcotics which did not mix well with flail chest. Sherlock had tried to argue with Dr. Pepperidge about it, desperately wanting to speak with John, but it was pointed out to him in scathing tones that he had no medical rights whatsoever where Dr. Watson was concerned. Harriet Watson held John's medical proxy, a fact that utterly appalled Sherlock and which he intended to alter the moment John was lucid enough to sign the necessary paperwork. Happily, Harriet, most likely too gattered to find let alone answer her cell phone, had not responded the hospital's calls, so the surgeon was at least determining his treatment based on his own considerable skills and not the hysterical and selfish choices of an inconvenienced "loved one." Should Harriet show up at some point, Sherlock feared he would have to call in a favor from his ally of last resort, Mycroft. It would humble him, but he would do it for John's sake. Or… perhaps he could simply have Lestrade arrest her if she arrived at the hospital even slightly inebriated. Lestrade liked and respected Watson, so it wouldn't even have to be presented as a favor for Sherlock.

Sherlock grinned smugly, but the smile quickly faded as he continued to watch John's chest rise and fall, a slight hitch in his breathing indicating pain that even the sedation could not entirely suppress. It was so damned unfair. Unlike John, Sherlock had literally walked away with nothing more than a concussion and assorted lacerations and contusions. Moriarty, the utter bastard, had vanished entirely without being so good as to leave so much as a blood sample behind. A considerate villain might have left a limb for him to gloat over and experiment upon. But no… no. All Moriarty had left was… John, battered, bloody and barely breathing.

"I can stop John Watson, too," Moriarty had bragged, using an unwilling, but choiceless John to do it. "Stop his heart." And stop it he had, for exactly ninety-six seconds. The paramedics had quickly enticed the organ to resume beating, but that ninety-six seconds had been, subjectively, the longest in Sherlock's life. Fighting off his own overly solicitous attendants and dodging orange shock blankets, he'd clung stubbornly to John's side throughout the ambulance ride, only allowing himself to be shunted aside when they actually wheeled the other man into surgery.

At the point, the medical staff had descended on Sherlock like the vultures they were, poking, prodding and pestering him with pointless questions. Then, the waiting had begun. Sherlock had wanted to go haring off after Moriarty, to find and end the villain for damaging John in this way, but something had stopped him from leaving the hospital… and it wasn't Mycroft's imbecilic guards no matter what his brother might think. If Sherlock had been determined to go in pursuit of Moriarty, nothing that his officious brother could have done would have stopped him, certainly not a trio of mental deficients with tasers. The question was moot as Sherlock had no intention of leaving. The matter was not irrelevant, however, as why Sherlock was not leaving had a direct bearing on his current preoccupation with the question of friendship.

In the course of his machinations, Moriarty had threatened scores of hapless civilians and had killed at least a baker's dozen. None of those deaths had impinged on Sherlock in any particular way except to irritate him as a sign that he had yet to defeat the self-proclaimed criminal mastermind. He had been annoyed, frustrated and intrigued, but he had not been particularly angry. Not before. Not until Moriarty had taken Dr. Watson, had dared to use Sherlock's… flatmate as the final hostage in his great game. Sherlock's jaw clenched, his teeth grinding together as he remembered the look on John's face when Moriarty had toyed with him, making him say things designed to embarrass any man with an ounce of dignity. It was maddening.

It was that very anger which had forced this mental self-evaluation on Sherlock. The instant rage on John's behalf, the… fear when he believed that John might be killed as some of the other hostages had been killed, all of it left him with the very profound and difficult question of what constituted a friend.

Though it galled him to even consider the thought, Sherlock could not help wondering what Moriarty knew that he did not. When making his penultimate threat, the consulting criminal had promised not to kill Sherlock, but to burn him. More specifically, he'd promised to, 'burn the heart out," of him. Sherlock had countered automatically that he had no heart, though he must possess one in a strictly literal sense. It was in the emotional sense, in the realm of feeling that other's viewed him as impaired and claimed he did not possess a heart at all. Over the years, Sherlock had come to agree with the masses on this one subject. Besides, it was really of very little importance to him. What did he need with a heart, after all? As a high functioning sociopath, he lacked empathy, but this seemed to him to be a boon to his work rather than a hinderance. How could he concentrate on solving the puzzles that crime presented him if he were preoccupied with the emotional and physical well-being of the very people he was trying to save?

And yet… yet… Moriarty seemed to believe that he had found Sherlock's heart, found that spark of empathy that had been missing for all of his thirty-three years. There could be little doubt that Moriarty meant –

Sherlock's eyes narrowed as he heard the door to the private hospital room open behind him. The man who entered was whisper quiet, his hand-stitched Oxford's making almost no noise as he glided across the industrial linoleum, but a whiff of cologne and a hint of hand cream identified him as readily as a retinal scan, and there was no need to turn around.

"Have your lackey's found him yet?" Sherlock demanded without prelude, not taking his eyes from John's pale face.

"No. He has disappeared from London most effectively," Mycroft replied, his accents even and untroubled sounding as always. "Really, I am quite put out with the gentlemen I had on your surveillance detail. They should have focused on capturing Moriarty rather than stopping to fish you out of the pool."

"I couldn't agree more," Sherlock said, remembering all too clearly the rush of air that knocked him backwards, the impact of his head striking the side of the pool, the water that closed so quickly over him, making his lungs burn. Worse, he could recall in vivid detail, concussion or no, the moment when he was dragged back to the surface and opened his eyes to see, through a haze of chlorinated water and smoke, John laying unmoving against the wall, shattered glass and plaster scattered about him, one long metal beam resting atop his torso, pinning him to the concrete. He hadn't needed Mycroft's minion to help boost him out of the pool. He'd practically levitated out of it in his rush to reach John. It was his fault that John was involved in the Moriarty mess, his fault that John was injured. He'd pulled the damnable trigger himself.

So what was it that he felt? Responsibility or regard? Intellectual interest or emotional attachment?

He needed data. He couldn't solve a puzzle without data, but that blather off the internet was useless. He couldn't ask John. He couldn't even ask Moriarty. And to ask an ordinary person… people were so disorganized, so imprecise, so irrational.

Twinging, knowing what he had to do, Sherlock ground his teeth. Really, there was no point in putting it off and no one else to ask. Annoying as he was, Sherlock's brother was capable of rational thought upon occasion, and he'd always been able to explain the idiosyncrasies or normal people in a way that Sherlock could almost comprehend.

Swallowing his pride – and lord, what a mouthful – Sherlock blurted out, "Mycroft, have you ever had a friend?"

"That is an unexpectedly personal question from you, little brother."

"Well?" Sherlock pressed impatiently.

"I suppose the answer to that question depends entirely on what you mean by friend," Mycroft temporized, sauntering into view, the umbrella twirling carelessly in his long fingers. "Define your terms, Sherlock. If Mummy told you once, she told you a million times to define your terms."

"Eight hundred forty seven," he corrected. "She also told us to be precise."

"I was not always present when Mummy admonished you for your tendency to leap to faulty conclusions due to the imprecision of your variables. I can hardly be expected to know the exact number of times she said it."

"Yes, you can," Sherlock snapped irritably.

Mycroft sang a soft hmm. "Yes, I suppose I can."

"Yet you use a generalization like 'millions' and then lecture me on impression."

"Hyperbole, Sherlock. It's a form of communication that ordinary people seem to find reassuring. Too much precision unsettles them."

"I am not an ordinary person."

"No, of course not."

"So be precise if you please, and answer the question."

"As soon as you define your terms."

"I am… uncertain how to do so."

"Well, what sort of friend are you referring to?"

Sherlock's eyebrows rose in some surprise. "There's more than one kind?"

"Surely you know that? You must have made some study of interpersonal relations for the sake of your detecting if nothing else."

"I have confined my studies to amorous relationships. They have a far greater tendency to lead to crime, and especially to murder."

"I see," Mycroft said thoughtfully. "Well, perhaps in that area I can assist you. To begin with there are varying degrees of connection that one person may have with another, of which friendship and amorous entanglements are only two. There is association, which is – "

"Stick to the forms of friendship, if you please. I don't have all year to figure this out."

"Really, Sherlock," Mycroft rebuked, a slight frown creasing his forehead. "You have always been so impatient."

"Mycroft," Sherlock snapped, entirely too aware that he sounded like an angry, whiny child. Was he to be spared no indignity today?

"Oh, very well," his elder brother said with what he viewed to be an unnecessarily dramatic sigh. Then, folding his hands in his lap and assuming an air of resigned authority, Mycroft began. "All friendships, regardless of type, share certain common elements. Empathy and compassion, for one, the tendency to wish the best for the other party, mutual understanding and enjoyment of one another's company, reciprocity, trust and, finally, honesty – including the right to speak unpleasant truths that would never be tolerated from a mere associate, co-worker or family member."

Sherlock rolled his eyes at the ironic lilt with which Mycroft said family member. Honestly, not everything was about Mycroft. The world revolved around the sun, apparently, and not his brother, though Mycroft's ego was certainly of sufficient magnitude to create the requisite gravity well. "Go on."

"In ancient Rome, trust was considered the single most important hallmark of a friendship. According to Cicero – "

Sherlock snapped his fingers rapidly and repeatedly at Mycroft. "Quicker, shorter and skip the entire Roman period."

"According to Cicero," Mycroft repeated emphatically, otherwise entirely ignoring Sherlock's interjection, and earning a growl from his younger brother, "friendship could not exist without utter truth, honesty and trust. Cicero believed that all evil in the world stemmed from ignorance, so a real friend would always be entirely honest and speak the truth, no matter how painful that truth might be. If a man were about to commit an evil action through ignorance, it was the friend's responsibility to enlighten him and prevent him from damaging his honor through an unworthy act. Friendship would, therefore, only end if one party, ignoring the other's counsel, continued to act on ignorance and chose the path of evil."

"Mycroft!" Sherlock said desperately, now not even trying to keep the pleading tone from his voice. That Cicero business was ridiculous, utterly irrelevant… and it hit entirely too close to home. He remembered a moment from his first case with John, the one that his flatmate had so ludicrously dubbed A Study in Pink. Sherlock had said… something. He couldn't quite remember what, but his pronouncement had been met with a resounding silence and the appalled stares of several Pcs and DIs. Acting on an instinct he hadn't stopped to question, he had turned to John – a man he'd known less than two days – and said, "Not good?" Fixing him with an uncomfortable but thoughtful look, John had replied, "Bit not good, yeah." How had John become the standard by which Sherlock measured right and wrong so quickly? Did that mean they were friends, or at least that they would have been friends in ancient Rome. Damn, Mycroft!

Entirely unaware of his damnation, though undoubtedly aware of his brother's frustration, Mycroft had gone on. "—but that, of course, has little bearing on your relationship with Dr. Watson, since the Russian tradition of referring to every man by his given name and patronymic does not pertain in Britain."

"What?" Sherlock asked, puzzled.

"You are paying attention, aren't you?" Mycroft demanded. "My time is valuable, and I have no wish to waste it if you aren't going to attend."

"Yes, yes, do go on.'

"In many Asian cultures, friendship is considered a state in which two men, being equal in position, intelligence and other important regards, nevertheless respect one another in a manner they would normally reserve for someone of superior status."

"John isn't my equal," Sherlock said when his brother paused for a breath. Mycroft frowned at him disapprovingly, and Sherlock hastened to add, "In intellect. He is not my equal in intellect. Few people are, and I don't like any of them." Mycroft's frown deepened, his eyes narrowing disapprovingly.

"Dr. Watson may not be your equal in intellect," Mycroft said censoriously, "but he is your superior in a number of other areas."

Sherlock shrugged, not disputing the point.

Still eyeing Sherlock critically, Mycroft said, "In the modern, Western world, friendship has been broken down into a number of overlapping categories. There is the acquaintance, the mate, the pal, the bro, the frenemy, the drinking buddy, the best friend, the BFF, the – "

"The what?" Sherlock interrupted, his attention caught. "What is a BFF?"
"I believe the acronym has two meanings, Best Friends Forever and Best Female Friend. In both cases, it is a term used by women or young girls to refer to their closest and oldest female friends."

"Oh," Sherlock said, feeling faintly disconcerted and not certain why. "I somehow don't think that applies here."

"Perhaps not," Mycroft agreed. "Now, as I was saying, there are a great many ways to categorize friendship. The terminology is forever changing. For example, there are a host of ways to describe friendships which exist only or primarily online. There is the Friend's List, the Buddy List, the chatroom – "

"Oh, for God's sake!"

"Yes, I quite agree."

"None of this is helping! None of it tells me what makes someone a friend! The closest you've come was that ancient Roman nonsense!"

"Do lower your voice, Sherlock. You may wake Dr. Watson."

"How? He's wankered!"

Mycroft shifted uncomfortably. "Sherlock, really, your language. Mummy would never have approved. Besides, it is not, strictly speaking, true. Dr. Watson is sedated. What you are implying – "

"Damn what I'm implying," Sherlock hissed. "Mycroft, I have to understand what's happening here. Moriarty targeted John because of me. I need to understand why. I need to understand what Moriarty saw when he looked at us and whether it's going to continue to put John in mortal danger. I need more data, but nothing you're telling me is to the point."

"Perhaps if you could be more specific in your questions…" Mycroft trailed off, fixing Sherlock with an encouraging look.

"I asked if you'd ever had a friend."

"Yes?"

"You have?"

"I've had many friends of varying types."

"Have you ever had one who was willing to die for you?"

Mycroft's brows rose abruptly. "Does a bodyguard count?" he asked, sounding startled. In any other circumstance, Sherlock would have been delighted to have caught his smug elder brother so entirely off his guard, but he had no time for that now. He had no time.

"No. Someone who's been hired for the purpose is well outside the definition of a friend. Even I know that."

"Then, no," Mycroft said slowly. "I have not had a friend of that sort. Is that how you define a friend, then, Sherlock? Someone who is willing to die for you? I must say, it's a rather narrow definition."

"I prefer to think of it as precise," Sherlock countered.

"And based on that definition of your terms, you have come to what conclusion?"

"That John Watson is my… friend," Sherlock said, a shade uncertainly.

"You didn't think so before?"

"I told you I lack a clear understanding of what constitutes a friend. It makes it difficult at times to understand John's behavior… and my own."

"Why did you suppose that he's been chasing about after you all over London if he was not your friend?" Mycroft asked, clearly exasperated.

"He might have been curious about me or interested in the crimes themselves. He was a soldier, and he may have felt some obligation to protect the innocent by assisting me in apprehending criminals, or he may have simply needed something… anything… to take his mind off of Afghanistan."

"So," Mycroft drawled, "morbidly curious, unwillingly obligated, exceptionally bored or extraordinarily desperate. I must say, your reading of his motivations is less than flattering to either him or you."

"Flattery does not interest me."

Mycroft snorted delicately. "Give me leave to doubt that."

Bristling, Sherlock leapt up from his chair and walked over to the bed where John slept on. He hoped devoutly that his flatmate… his friend… was not trapped in some dreadful nightmare about the war again. He'd certainly had a number of such dreams after moving into 221b, though they'd seemed lately to be tapering off.

"Sherlock?" Mycroft said hesitantly, but Sherlock ignored him. "Sherlock!" Mycroft repeated more insistently, and Sherlock turned with disgusted flourish.

"What do – " he started, but broke off when he saw his elder brother staring down at a small red dot of light floating in the centre of Mycroft's chest.

tbc

Author's note: You can blame the cliffhanger (in both stories) on Calliope. She neglected to tell either of us that The Great Game ended in a cliffhanger. Yes, we are holding a grudge. Series two can't come soon enough. Now, quit reading and REVIEW! We shall be posting in tandem hence forward, btw.

P.S. For those of you who read our Supernatural fanfic, we are both still actively working on our stories. Do not panic!