Author: tigersilver
Rating: R
Pairing: S/J
Word Count: 4,200
Warnings/Summary: This was (is) extremely difficult to write, and there are triggers for rape, dub-con and non-con, drugs and so forth, so I beg your pardon in advance. Warnings specifically for post-rape aftermath and reaction, angst, splintered text fragments and very poor grammar/formatting, for I struggled to make this work for you, as I see it in my head. I may've failed, or perhaps I have not. You tell me, then, please? And this is all I can say in Summary: 'There are worse things than dying, John, and one of them is living.' 'You think I don't know, Sherlock?'

Sherlock's quiet as he can be, easing himself from the bed and making his way to the flat's cramped loo.

His penis is sticky, flaked with dried ejaculate, a trace of waste, and blood. John's blood and he would keep it as a badge of honour, a mark of (maybe, yes, right) shame, if he could, but John has always preferred Sherlock neat and snappy, sharp-edged and clean cut, so he isn't allowed to keep them, those traces of John. [He wants to; it irks him, to let go of John particles to a simple warm washcloth, dampened with pedestrian water. Undeserving drains.]

Though he took them.

[[He hears the water running in the loo, distantly, through a fog in his head.

Sign of life, then; the alien rises once more and it's earlier than expected. John's in a bad horror story, isn't he?

Oi, Sherlock? Do you not stop, even now? What…what will you bring. Me…to me.]]

[He fancied himself a pirate, once, meant for the taking of things—clues, words, toys, tools, crumpets or whatever—and piracy was far more effective then wasting his precious time with unnecessarily distracting manners and platitudes; that's all, full stop. That has always his elder brother's bailiwick, and Sherlock didn't begrudge him it, not at all. But he's learnt since pirates may trespass unforgivably, and that manners are not always to be despised when discovered outside their useful—to his specific purposes—latitude.

And regret…it is horrible. Horrible. It fucking well scours his insides with acid. Unbearable. Make it stop?]

[[Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock, and it defines his spaces, even as they are now, fragmentary: Sherlock.}}

[[Dark thirty, even as dawn is rising.

Darkness, spreading.

Despite light across the blinds, not counting his being here.

Dark.]]

He is not exactly a prize on the outside, though, even cursorily tidied. A dead wan face greets him in the loo mirror, the bruises beneath his eyes dark and purpling, casting the changeable hue to a shade of eerie dulled violet. His mouth is apparently now permanently cast down in set, soured and thin. There will be no smiles in John's flat this fine morning anyway; it hardly matters.

[Sherlock only wishes he had a better, shinier, lovelier transport to show off to his good doctor. He wishes—and wishes are foolish, they change nothing—he'd not been struck so. Bloody hypodermic; it'd been hardly noticable. Should've expected it, after The Woman; it's how they operate, sneak, cheeky scum. Bloody Moran, may he rot in Hell, then. Throat gaping ripped over his exposed esophagus, dome n a by a jackknife; damn him to eternities of Hell, when Sherlock was through. Blood everywhere, but he'd washed that off his hands before coming…oh, coming. Right. He'd come straight to John, naturally enough. Should've waited, though. Should've waited. Bloody needle; what was in it? Later, then. Samples—there should be traces left. He'll ask John to take a little draw—oh, right. Right. No.]

(It's good to be in a proper frame of mind once more. It is not-good to be on this side of it. Before was good. None of this is good. Sherlock can't see how it might be.)

[[Sherlock, why even? And for me? My love, my own, my dead…body…Sherlock? Why, is it, you have done…this for me?]]

One way or another, Sherlock must go out there.

It's a battlefield.

Down then, and on his knees.

He's down and on his knees before he even whispers ('John?'), right there on the outer edge of the sitting room, where the lino stops and John's current orbit begins. It suits—Sherlock should be low, snake-belly low, as John is not a tall man and John is sitting, and Sherlock full well understands this particular language, if no other. [He should do. Freak, alien. Don't come here.]

[Low, low, as he feels it. It pains him to feel it. He is used to being tall. But…low. Low. For John's sake. He's a supplicant, and there's an altar he's desecrated.]

[[Oh, god he cannot see this; John closes his eyes, tight shut. Closing, closing; he'll not know, no, never.]]

{Mycroft, again, and bloody sod off Mycroft. This is difficult enough without also Mycroft.}

…And thus he's crawling once again; he's never stopped, really, only just slowed up, faltering, and across the bland, tan, fibrously unattractive carpet meant to sustain heavy traffic. Needs a thorough hoovering; he'll sneeze if he's not careful—no, no, he cannot afford sneezing, not now. Don't draw attention to himself, but also do. Do.

Knee, knee, hand, hand and his head well down, chin tucked, finding his way across a wasteland by tracking John's telling breathing, for if he glances up—if he dares meet John's eyes—there might be a message in them telling him to keep away. [For it also suits. This, for his John. He'll do this, and gladly.]

[[Clenched fist, cannot help it. Would like to hit, to strike out, to harm, but who is…who is?

The one to harm? This one.]]

Not to come. [He cannot go.]

{Please don't say that.}

[[To see him crawling.]]

[It's not all that easy as it looks, hand over hand, kneecaps rubbing friction into synthetic pile, and he aches from the inside out, it's unbearable, really. So…so horrid. Appalling. Please don't let me, is the refrain in his brain, oh, don't let it, John, and that's horrible too. Stop me now? Sherlock doesn't even know what he's not allowed, these days. (He was not allowed that.) Except it's got to be a lot, and he recalls Henry, that wimpy little whey-faced bint-in-man's clothing, and he recalls Moriarty, so…so much him, and that's not—that's not? Not him, not even now…but close. Boast-A-Lot? Close enough. Oh, god. Pathetic…oh, John?]

{And he can't.} He cannot even, even for John. [He can't look up; he daren't. Don't ask him to.]

~~Not stopping~~

[[If only he could see him clearly, as it's been so long…and so long…and long again. But he can't quite…recall. He wants to recall. There was a way in, once.]]

It's all Sherlock can do to keep a clear head shuffling, even though most of the remnants of the drug Moran managed to jab into his upper arm are flushed down the toilet. Mostly. Water would help; he doesn't have any. His arm stings still; his ribs ache yet, he's a bit wobbly from lack of nourishment and some prolonged period of dehydration, but the worst thing by far would be for John to look at him as blankly as he's been staring at the dusty blinds and the excess of sunshine flooding into the flat from behind them.

[[Don't come closer. But…do?]]

Hours now. What's meant by hours?

[[Sherlock. Thinking about nothing and nothing is thinking, and John wishes he could stop it, but he cannot.

He thinks of his arse, jacked open by force, and then spit on a palm, and then Sherlock right up and it hurt, it hurt him. To the core, not expecting. Blood. Not…expecting. Not. What. He thought. No.]]

[If Sherlock had the patience to appreciate life's little ironies, he'd be doing it, right this minute. But he doesn't. Again—that would be Mycroft. Wrong sibling.]

John's chair is the end-goal, and the lap of the man in it. If Sherlock makes that lap and lays his supplicant head in it, then…then…?

The journey ends too soon, and not soon enough.

[[Head on his lap—nothing meant by it; he's done this before, ever so long ago…But? What did he mean by it, Sherlock? What…did he mean? Now.]]

[Oh, no matter. He's meant to be coming here, in the end. Wasn't he?]

Home. Sherlock lays his head there as soon as he may, with no nonsense about it. Locates it—home again, cheers—and is at rest, immediately, no hesitation.

[[Sherlock! Sherlock? So…much and never like this. Sherlock, what is it you need from me. What is is it…you want.]]

"I am."

John's two matched thighs are solid, and he has a tea-warmed mug resting at angle off to one side of one, and his other hand clenched into a tight fist laying atop the other, and there's barely room there for any part of Sherlock but he still takes it, what there is of it, that small enough space. It is his—or it was, once. Theoretically. Prosaically—oh, he'll claim it, in the cause of bravado.

"I want."

(He cannot do worse for himself…can he?)

[Oh, now this is it: heaven. He's fanciful; it calls for fancy; he's at home again. Fancy rules, even upend the laws of piracy, they. But there's still the words—the worst of it all to move along through, with the words. He's done 'goodbyes'. Can he manage 'hullo's' then? In these…circumstances? And apologies, how to manage those?]

"I…regret," he starts again, immediately, gruffly [Sherlock desires deeply to manage those, the…] and only barely notes that John's removed the fist and shifted the mug, he has his face cloaked so perfectly by his own trailing sleeve. "That I."

[[This is. This is. Apology? Now?]]

Sherlock stops. John Watson inhales sharply—and says nothing. Nothing.

[[No.]]

"I…am…sorry?"

Sherlock swallows.

[[Now?]]

He's not expecting to be doing this without an active audience; it stills him. His mouth is dry as dust but from some reason it's also awash with the gush of sour-salt laden saliva (all but drowning the Words, no!) This is the same mouth that he has used to kiss John's mouth with; it was once the same mouth he employed to dazzle and detail and declaim—and not only for John Watson, but for everyone he deemed not too tedious to bother with (but then again especially John Watson; and there's that horrible twist in his chest, panging. His chest won't stop with it; he should ask of John—angina? Early onset? Oh, please let John answer and in the old way…oh, please? He's not ruined that, too?)

[[One day, a miracle, and now this, and this is not a miracle, and yet, Sherlock's here.]]

He regrets, truly he does. Sherlock regrets. More now than ever. He regrets that the loss he is suffering is apparently both tactile and subjective; that his own loss is horrendous, that John's loss is even more so, relatively speaking—that they've both killed a man, now, and both been scarred permanently. [What's he done, in the kitchen? John would hate—John must hate?]

[[There's a resurrected dead crow on his doorstep, a Detective who defies all reality, and there must be—there must be?

Someone, out there somewhere, to blame for this malfeasance, this staggering catastrophe….someone.

Someone. He'd quite like to laugh. No laughing matter.]]

[He resonates with distress. What he's done? He cannot even begin to comprehend what John is thinking of him, but it cannot be Good. There is so much Good he has lost, and not had, nor taken, these last years. John…John won't like that. (Him.)]

[[He's not—he cannot be—Sherlock would never—but he…has. He has. His body says he…has.]]

[[Was that meant, or an accident, merely, Sherlock? What does this mean, oh Detective? …Tell me?]]

[Sherlock has no regrets whatsoever Moran is no longer of the living. NO regrets at all; he'd have danced on the corpse if there'd been time enough for it. As it was he'd stumbled off, one great drive burning in the scope of his fuzzy mind, upper arm singing in that particular way. One room empty in the Palace, crying out. John—John.]

[[In human-speak, Sherlock.]]

Fire escape. Flimsy lock. John, in the kitchen, all unaware, till Sherlock makes him so. In all the wrong ways, there are so many. Oh, no, oh, yes, oh, god. Oh, no?

[[Human. Like me.]]

[That there are no angels, no take-backs and no erasures. He's not, but he's on their side—does John even know he said that once? John cannot know and he? He cannot blink, either; it'll all spill out if he does. John—John?]

Words. Right. Those things. Measly, tedious, insufficient. [Burrow his head in a little farther till his temple bumps up against the lump of belt buckle and he can hear John's stomach gurgling, and that's lovely. That's…better.]

[[You touched me, invaded—took, raided. Why is it that you keep on trying to touch me, even now? Decency, Sherlock. Talk, damn it.]]

"John, I do truly regret and am sorry—"

[Inhalation. Exhale. Long and slow: torturous.]

[[What, now? What do you even want? What's even left to give you?]]

[[You taken it all, the heart out of me.]]

"I…have wanted so very much to approach you, it hurt me not to be—I?"

[Inhale only. Accelerated pulse rate. Sherlock's fingers clutch and scrabble at those thighs—dear thighs.][Ram his head in to the lovely convex of middle-aged gut, where it's warm and it's his heartbeat come alive again.]

[[Sherlock. I would.]]

"You don't have to forgive—I don't expect you to forgive—it was a very bad thing I did." He will talk yet more, speak aloud, this jumble. "I know that. Now."

[[Have.]]

[Involuntary jerk of arm muscles; the tea sloshes. He's so stiff, even when yielding, John Watson. Oh…John. No, please?]

[[Sherlock! I…would, if I—]]

"Now. I know." He laughs, wildly, muffled. Yes, he admits. Bit barking. Not himself. There's nothing to laugh about. His very eyes are leaking, aren't they? That's unusual. "John, John?"

[[Had known. ]]

All the will in the world will not prevent a human body from reacting to stress. Duress.

[[You? Like this? Really, Sherlock?]]

"Can you even [despair] hear me?"

[[Not . You're not…the one I know.]]

"John?" [John][John….] "Oh, don't, John, not now. Not when I'm back again—I've come back again—please not now. Don't now. Please?"

[[You are not. You're… not mine. You're different and alien and—I. No.]]

[Clamping teeth above; Sherlock hears them grinding, and can recall clearly the solidly-set jaw that produced that noxious grating sound. He knows John, forwards and backwards, and that is a tell, of the very worst sort. Hullo, Doom.]

[[Alien.]]

"John, don't—John, please."

No…please. Not John Watson. Not John Watson. Sherlock needs John, does the world not comprehend that? He can't go, he won't go; he's a ghost already, in the making…[Does not John realize this?]

[[…Sherlock?]]

"Do not. Just…do not? John?"

[He's fresh out of 'sorrys'; descended into rank pleading.]

In all his life, as a pirate, as an imbecile, socially, Sherlock's cried just the three occasions, maybe. His eyes, they were only wet atop St Bart's.

"I beg you."

[[Sherlock. Sherlock—think. When a ghost rapes you, when a dead man fucks you over—and over, Sherlock (my head, my head, my arse)(you never do stop, do you?), it makes it no less Bad.]]

His eyes, Sherlock's eyes that he uses, that he needs to see, his tools in trade. They've been perhaps a bit damp here and there over the last three years, never more than that; it's atrocious what's happening to his eyes now. His eyes are weeping, strained, hot and gritty. And the corneas are likely red-veined and the world's gone blurry and he can't detect much past his own sorry sniveling, but John doesn't necessarily see the whole of it, what a shabby picture Sherlock makes of himself, blubbering and lolling his head about in John's lap like some puling infant. Impulse, unfiltered, in dissonance, all of this.

"I couldn't have. (Have stopped myself, climbing right inside you, that's what people do, John. Can't you— can you not see?) John?"

['Not wanted you, not needed you, not—not.](Do you hear me, John? I could not have prevented it. 'Boast-A-Lot', John—I was caught! I have failed you. I have failed me, John.)

[[Sherlock…?]]

And why—why? Does not John say a word? [But only breathe, in and out. Dull, and so important, like that. Always respire and exhale, John—never don't breathe.]

[[Are you…really, Sherlock? Still...him? Still…mine? That man. The one. Mine.]]

"I…I can't have helped it. It was—and you were there—and I wanted. Wasn't thinking. John—I wasn't even thinking! Do you know how—John, how it was?"

[[Cannot be. Too many—too late, too little. Don't—please don't cry and cling; that's not like you, Sherlock.]]

Not a word.

"I was nothing—nothing more than a body, John! Transport!"

"You are—you, John."

[[Is all I can say.]]

"…Impulse. Something—something went wrong, a chemical reaction, John. I am resistant, but—"

"Not. This. Time."

"…Sorry, so sorry. I regret—"

It's a void, the greatest one, and it's as unpleasantly prickly-painful as the teapot shards he's shook out of his cheap trousers. As the damp-sticky was, on his penis, after—as the look on John Watson's dear face was, as he viewed (not viewed) the flat's blinds, for hours, positively hours on end, all the time Sherlock was sleeping in his bed, and only grudgingly allowed to even be there.

"Do you not see? It's so obvious! JOHN!"

[[No, no.]]

[[No.]]

There's a gap. In the universe. Sherlock cannot possibly begin to fill it. He is not elastic. He is no hero. There are no wings to carry him.

[[No…no. Can't be.]]

"I…"

Sherlock, he weeps, and not so gently now, into John's clean trousers. Snuffles and makes a mess, what with the nose drool and the dribble oozing from the corners of his lips when he opens them wide in a silent shout. It's a bit…it's a bit soggy. And sad. He's felt sad before, this is infinitely compounded, this sort of sad. Yes. Bodily fluids bloody everywhere. Hasn't he done that enough, already? Why more, now? Oh…why?

"Don't?"

So—he waits, stuffing back the sobs (they are impossibly impertinent; they'll do his cause no good.). [As he has been, all this time. Waiting. ]

It takes ages, relatively.

Sherlock wishes he weren't so aware of time passing, but then again…all the time spent touching John is Good Time, and he doesn't want it end. He rubs his head in, smearing stray tears and maybe some saliva and snot, but John doesn't seem to care for that and both the denims and the shirt Sherlock's pulled untucked from John's belt are absorbent and forgiving.)

[[Is…it? Sherlock? Life's a big bloody question, all of it, every part. My time spent ticking over and waiting to breathe. Your time, off somewhere; what were you even doing with it, your time? How far away had you gone, Sherlock. ]]

"Let me…"

[[Tell me now. Tell me true. Listening.]]

[Please, no ends, only beginnings. Don't let that bastard win, John!]

[I killed a man for you…remember? Just now. Are we even on that, at least? If not the other.]

"Don't. Please don't. Leave me."

The universe remains stubbornly in pieces. For centuries, in Sherlock time. Until.

[[Talk to me?]]

"Go. John."

(((Do not leave me go.)))

[[Sherlock? What is it you—how can I—why are you such a great tit, always and ever? What will it take to ever sort you out, to force you into a box, something I can stick my fingers in, stick my head around, when all you ever so is burst out and blind me, again and again. Sherlock? Useless, useless. Oh…here, then. I'm a fool, aren't I. And you're worse even than I. 'Regret', my arse. Come back here. Fool.]]

A hand comes down, ever so slowly, sifting fingers across Sherlock's hair. Gentle, firm, too; fingertips gouging in, like a mild punishment. Or…a prod.

[[Here, then. Better? I should say so, not that you deserve it…except I really probably think you do. I'm not the fool, Sherlock. I. Know. You.]]

It does prod; he's instantly back on again, on stage, shocked alive, as if John's gone and plugged him in to live feed, fed him a million volts.

"John. I am…sorry." {He remembers now, what it is he is meant to say; he'd been drifting before. He cannot afford it, the sorrow is too large and unwieldy inside.} "I regret deeply." {He will speak this sentence for ever after. He knows all the words, now to make them truth. Absolute. Outside his skin and not only just inside it.} "Please don't—please don't say to go." {He will not go, of course, and not close his mouth on these sounds he's making, disjointed, nor bite back all he desires to say aloud to John—never again, while he lives, will he allow a man like Moriarty to stifle him, or his truths. They are real, as alive as he is, knowing John is right here, safe and furious. Damaged, yes, but his John. He. Will. Say.

[[…Sherlock. Stop that.]]

There are fingers, just there, in the first voluntary touch John has offered Sherlock in three years—they are undeniably present, floating atop his hair, his scalp, his consciousness, and Sherlock is transported.

"Sherlock."

And it's a wealth, right there, in that one word, and it is not forgiveness (that will be a long time coming; but? He has time again—the world has restarted its stupidly important spinning) and it is not exactly…precisely…capitulation, but it is…something.

"Jo—!"

[From John.]{To Sherlock}

"I've only just come! (Ah, life's little ironies). Just..come. Don't say to go—John."

Something Good. To be kept.

"No, no."

{Not stolen}

"You…great…"

Fingertips sweep his one ear, and they are all that is John Watson, every molecule. Sherlock loves them, as he understands 'love' to be (and it's different from the experience in the kitchen, and his memories of Before; so completely different, and likely MORE, and then also Better.]

"Sher…lock."

[[Sherlock.]]

And Sherlock can cry, perhaps a bit more; no, a great deal more. Great heaving gouts of it, as he's never done before, nor allowed himself to for ages and ages, and John can rub that hand, that palm and those fingers, through his lank oily hair, and express care.

It goes on.

"Sherlock. You will pay for this, pay and pay, you know that, right? I'm not letting this go, Sherlock Holmes. You great bastard. Look at you, just look."

[[Bastard! Mine. Lost…and found again. Idiot. Sherlock. Miracle.]]

Express 'care'. [John's a doctor; that's what they do!]

[[Git. Mine. And never not.]]

"I don't what they did to you—assuming it was a they? Moriarty's dead, but it had to be him—his fault. I don't know, Sherlock, and you'll be telling me all about it, don't even think you won't, and you're not allowed to say another word out of that bloody mouth of yours till I have a real chance to look you over in hospital—"

John grasps Sherlock's scalp firmly, hauls his head by two buzzing, ringing ears and treats him to an all-knowing, all-searching stare, very clinical and terribly, forthrightly stern, before he unceremoniously drops Sherlock's head back onto his own lap. His fingers follow, though.

"Do you understand? Sherlock."

Sherlock wriggles under the unrelenting grip to his hair, exultant and feeling wonderful, really very …good—like himself?—and welcome safe home again, which is nonsense, because home is a place, it's flat or a house, not a human being. But John defies that and he is everything home to Sherlock.

He makes a noise at John's thigh that's wordless and mindlessly happy, as sharply 'up' as he was cast down, and thoughts rush about his Palace garden like a carousel of teddy bears, frolicking. First this one and then the other; so absurd.

"This is your last chance, Sherlock, so don't muck it up again, don't even go there—oh, fuck, who am I even fooling?"

And…perhaps it is that Sherlock will never have John's arse again at his wanting (sex, as a thing to do, it was good, it was John; he could do that again and sober would be better yet, likely, having all his faculties), and perhaps it is that they will never again kiss, and that is a pity [he would want that, and so much, having been rudely awakened, as it were, (not his choice, but then impulse, unleashed)] but that's all right—just his transport again, branching out unwanted, as he's explained over and over again to so many people, but especially John—he'll always talk to John, even if the words are all wrong, wrong, won't he? There some truth, that] and perhaps…perhaps it will be years, literally, before he and John are what they were again—once? Before John trusts him willingly again. Before he accepts regret is a state normal boring people have to live with but still continue breathing.

(John is amazing; he can manage to live this way. Sherlock can learn, though, he's sure. For John.)

And perhaps (Sherlock's an unrepentant pirate; he'll grow bored with waiting to understand all of this pain and sorrow; it's inevitable) he might force it, one day, when the day bodes Good. If John allows it, or even hints he might be agreeable. No! Not what he did this morning, never that.

But a kiss, just a kiss. From his lips to John's lips. Or perhaps to cheek, or hair, or maybe this lovely belly he's his chin tucked in, all this wonderful weight and give what he's got his red damp face buried against, it's so comforting, so alive…Right, a kiss, that's all. Something simple, stupid. Keep it simple, stupid.

[Maybe.] [Maybe not.] [Binary code.]

[[Mine, again.]]

"I do hope you're actually listening to me, Sherlock? You are, aren't you? Better be. Hospital. Food. Sle—"

Sleep, yes. Rest the weary. For now it is enough for Sherlock to lay his head in John's lap, and know it is John's and no other's. For no other's will ever do.

[And he will breath in and he will breath out, and it is dull, tremendously so, and he's never been quite so grateful for doing so. Never.]

Fin.