Title:Needles and Thread
Characters: Sherlock, Mycroft.
Rated: T
WARNINGS: contains lots of angst, drug use, implied violence, and a dark past. So dark!fic I suppose.
Summary: It's not that he doesn't feel. It's that he doesn't want to. Post-Reichenbach. Sherlock travels the world in search of the Network. But old habits die hard without support.

The hot potatoes and the fish and chips warmed him. Didn't quite feel so clammy or famished anymore.

Mycroft had a schedule for him after the meal. He would shower first, and then rest. The painful part of the process would begin.

He took the longest he possibly could in the shower, letting the water thrum into his skin, the dirt crumbling down the drain. He stood under the spray long after it had run cold and his skin puckered with the moisture, before he finally emerged, feeling small in the nightshirt he'd been given for "the process."

Detox implied there was poison that could kill him. He knew just what amount of poison he could take. Besides, that also implied it was permanent. This situation was only to please his brother. Mycroft must have been some sort of sadist for liking his moments of weakness. Sherlock never had liked that, even told Mycroft so one time.

The calm reply was he shouldn't have gotten himself into that situation in the first place. The conversation seemed finished after he stated that he couldn't bloody well help it if he got bored. Mycroft then gestured he should be in bed instead of talking about pointless things. The restraints were not well appreciated. Mycroft told him it was so he wouldn't injure himself.

Sod injury. Sod this. Sod stupid bloody Mycroft with his bloody duty to pointless morals.

The first day wasn't terrible. Boring, yes - incredibly boring. The ceiling told the story of water damage, repair, a shooting - or perhaps suicide, and perhaps an explosion of some kind. Likely gas because of the green residue.

The second day passed. He'd counted backward from a thousand two thousand times. He tried ignoring that his hands constantly shook.

The morning of the third day the convulsions started.

By evening he was shaking and shivering so much his teeth were rattling in his head.

At 2AM he whimpered at a phantom, prowling him with it's long teeth, threatening to rip his body apart. Tear flesh from bone.

I will burn you, Sherlock Holmes. I will burn you and you will burn with me.

By 5 he was screaming. But most of the language was incoherent.

"John... can't lose John... have to warn John... tell John to run...John! get the hell out of there it's a trap... "

Then, sobbing. "No, John - you... don't die... It was my fault, I should've..."

His brother hadn't moved from his position by the door. Clearly looked about 10 years older if he would have been coherent enough to observe.

Sherlock cursed him. Called him every damned bloody thing he could think of. And whatever children he might have. And all his associates.

At 9 in the morning the whimpering started.

"I'll never touch the stuff again, please...just one... 5 cc's... please. I'll do anything... " he was gasping like a fish - desperate for water.

Mycroft gave him a few sips of water every 10 minutes, but stayed silent. Sad, even.

Once he spit it back in Mycroft's face, wanting to provoke a response, but his brother just took out his handkerchief and dabbed it away. Sitting back down in his guard duty by the door.

By 3 in the afternoon he was retching uncontrollably, even when there was nothing left - the dry heaves wracked his skinny frame until he trembled with exhaustion and dehydration.

This time he took the water gratefully - only to have it come up again within a few minutes.

Time became blended into nothingness. Nothingness between terrors so strong he couldn't shake it.

He screamed at phantoms tormenting him. Sobbing, begging for them to stop tearing his name to bits.

Shercock is a girl! Shercock is a girl!

He's a psychopath. You better stay away from him. He's going to kill someone.

The girl screaming at him as though he were a monster.

You're a machine. Sod this.

"Stop, stop, please... just shut up, please...stop the noise, it hurts... I can taste it.. " Sobbing turned to whimpering - then the cycle began again.

Once he thought he felt his head buried against Mycroft's chest - but he could have been imagining that as well.

Finally his eyes closed from exhaustion and he slept.

He awoke to a dark room. The cuffs gone, his hands were folded on his stomach. He sighed.

The process would start itself in time - the longest he'd ever gone on only the patches had been when John was - didn't matter now.

All evidence that Mycroft had even been there were gone. Save a note on the nightstand.

Fiyero Black. French Quarter. Jerusalem.

Take care of yourself.

The note was in Mycroft's hurried style, as though he'd been called away. The last line was underlined for emphasis.

There were clean clothes draped over the bed. He shed the damp, dirtied nightshirt and put on the clothes.

There was a plane ticket in the pocket of the coat over the door. And a few pounds.

Sherlock left in a whirlwind, not letting his brain consider the events of the past day. He was too busy being occupied with the next case. He would make sure this one properly suffered. He would study.

In this country, putting needles under one's fingernails was a common practice in search of information.

He settled into the brief flight, noticing a man behind him with a woman that was quite distinctly not his wife, and another passenger that was clearly drunk and trying to prove that he wasn't. It was amusing, if one could call it that.

The past events threatened to surface as the plane landed. He had no time for the bothersome feeling that he should have left a note for Mycroft even though he hadn't done that since before Mycroft left for uni. He refused to put a word to the endorphin that rushed through his brain at a dizzying rate, even though the word came to his mind anyway. Unbidden, unwanted.

Shame.