Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, as usual.

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This was hard to write.

I wrote it the morning after the episode, but it was so raw and even in the days that followed I couldn't manage to finish it, although I stared at it every day since the episode was aired.

TFP brought back a lot I thought I had managed to deal with. So writing this about how childhood trauma can manifest and haunt a person in adulthood was quite difficult.

I also stayed away from anything on FF or AO3 that had to do with 4x03.

I am not really happy with this, but after one week of trying to... whatever, I am at least ready to let it go. Also I want to start reading what others might have written about the episode, maybe it will help me understand.

Constructive criticism welcome.

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Musgrave - Part 1

John had just climbed out of the well, freed by his best friend and the first thing they had done was checking out if the other one was okay.

Sherlock had stopped the water going in after Eurus had told him how to do it and then ran to the hidden well to get him out, the key to the chains in his coat.

John was exhausted when Sherlock finally arrived and wasn't able to dive long enough to open the lock at first. It took John several tries until he managed to unchain himself.

The rope made it easier to breathe and gave him time to catch his breath. Once his ankle was freed he was glad for his military training, it enabled him to climb out of the pit only with the aid of a rope.

After a few speechless seconds filled with both their panting, Sherlock finally spoke.

"How long do I have to continue to keep it together?" Sherlock huffed.

"Depends. Is she secured?" John grinned stupidly, unable to do anything else and unsure if the question was a sarcastic remark or meant as a bit of desperate humour in a bad situation.

"She's in her room, I better get back there."

"You okay? Where's Mycroft?" was the next thing the doctor asked.

"Mycroft is still in Sherrinford. My phone is gone but I am sure we can use her computers to call for help."

"What the hell happened? I kind of lost track when the water was so high I had to fight keeping my head above the water…"

Sherlock's face contorted, he shook his head violently in reaction to whatever was happening in his head. Then he force himself to relax his features, it took a visible effort, even for untrained eye.

"Sherlock?"

"I… Can we not talk about drowning right now?"

"Err… OK, but you need to get a forensics team down there later."

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut once more.

"Sherlock?"

"I… I need to take care of her. She can't be alone for long. We can't afford that she changes her mind and disappears."

"This was a call for help, right? I mean like she..."

"Yes... she wanted company and being allowed in. She never had friends and if I got it right she was jealous and angry at me for having one. So she removed the thing to make me alone again so I spent time with her," Sherlock explained while they headed back to the ruined family home. "But I am not good at interpreting emotions, especially not hers, they are a maze."

"Sherlock, you were a child. It was not your fault. What she did was wrong."

When the other man didn't react he added.

"You never had friends before me and you didn't hurt others because they were your friends."

"Maybe I didn't dare to because I feared they'd be harmed, without even knowing why," Sherlock deadpanned, revealing something John hadn't expected he'd be able to share this easily.

"I better keep her company until she is secured."

To John it was obvious that Sherlock had to work hard to shake away an unnamed sentiment that he had shoved into the deepest cellar of his mind palace while being threatened by his sister. He was right, this still wasn't over, not until they all were safe back home and she was back in Sherrinford.

Some aspect of John feared that she might be gone when Sherlock returned to her room.

But saving John must have seemed more important to him.

Instead of starting to walk back to the house, though, Sherlock's gaze became unfocused and distant.

"Hey, hey, stay with me," John ordered, military like, although shivering extensively.

"The amount of lose ends about this case is alarming. The threads, hanging dangling in the air, some dropping with blood, some with liquids I can't identify, they are mocking me,"

Sherlock answered.

John wanted to make him explain that and reassure him he had done the right thing, but securing Eurus was top priority right now.

"I assume Mycroft was able to witness this. She probably made him watch, aware it would cause a great amount of distress. Therefore emergency services alarmed by him should be here in a few minutes."

While still breathing harshly, Sherlock slipped out of his coat, then shoved it into John's hands.

John just stared at it.

"What?"

"It's cold, you are wet. The coat is warm and dry."

"You want me to put it on."

"Of course I want you to put it on. Stay close."

They hurried back to the house and stopped at the foot of the stairs.

For now Sherlock needed John to be safe and make sure Eurus hadn't hidden any traps and wasn't leaving.

Would be like Moriarty and her to leave booby traps. After what his sister had plotted in Sherrinford he didn't doubt she had taken precautions. She would have wanted neither Sherlock nor John to escape from the premises, before she made her point.

Better be safe than sorry.

He stopped and frowned, wondering where he had caught that uncharacteristic trait.

"Sherlock?" John reached for his shoulder with one hand, a worried expression on his face.

"You're shaking. Can I please check you out?"

"No, I need to... go to her. Contact Mycroft," he pointed at the large screen and the headset.

Sherlock felt the tide of emotions was becoming harder and harder to fight while he climbed the stairs.

The dark surroundings disappeared for a moment while he tried to keep it at bay.

Although unwilling, he needed to talk to her now, reassure her that she made the right decision, explain to her what no one ever had taken time to do.

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After a while John managed to establish a video call connection. It was all preset, since Eurus had used the equipment there for her communication.

John talked to Mycroft; simultaneously he listened carefully to what was happening upstairs.

Later, he wandered through the floor level of the house.

The home seemed to have been left quiet untouched after the fire. Things were littered everywhere, everyday household things, parts of the roof, remains of furniture.

It was quite spooky to be in the house of Sherlock's childhood like this, seeing it so destroyed and cold.

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Three hours later Eurus was on her way back to Sherrinford.

Lestrade had arrived and Sherlock had vanished into the house with a forensic specialist some time ago.

John had been checked out and given a superficial statement to one of Lestrade's men. Finished with that he went to search for Sherlock. He found Lestrade in front of the main entrance talking to someone he had never seen before.

"Greg. Where's Sherlock?"
"Haven't seen him in the past twenty minutes, thought he was with you."

"No... Is the building clear?"

"Yes, searched in depth from both, Scotland yard and MI6 specialists."

"Alright. You happen to know where Sherlock's room was?"

Greg's mouth opened, a look of alarm on his face.

"Not sure. There are two more children's rooms to the left, the top level. Roof is not safe, so be careful."

"Alright. Floor is stable?"

"Yes, though not in her room. Can't miss that one, forensics still in there."

John headed up the stairs.

Loud voices and people bustling around greeted him, which made the whole scene less spooky.

Briefly gazing into a room full of people, he captured the scene, nodded a greeting and then continued down the hall. It was a bit darker there since the emergency lights were not pointed in that direction.

Then he stood in front of a blackened door with a small sign at the eyelevel of a five year old that said 'lair', the word was almost unreadable.

John carefully pushed open the door and peeked inside.

The light from the hall shone onto the burned remains of a cot and a small desk next to it.

The ground was littered with damaged books, roof tiles and debris, parts of the roof were missing.

It took several moments until his eyes had adjusted to the dark and he glanced through the room in search for his best friend. It wasn't really dark, the large lights the police had installed outside lit the room to a certain degree.

When he spotted Sherlock hidden behind the door his breath froze.

Sherlock was in the same position he had been after his meltdown in Sherrinford, sunken against a wall, his knees up, his arms resting on his knees. The only difference was that his head was hanging so low his face was completely hidden.

"Sherlock?"

There was no recognition of his presence.

Carefully, the doctor went down on his haunches, then placed a hand on Sherlock's upper back.

"You okay?"

To his shock John felt him tremble, those rhythmic little movements that happened when a person cried, just that Sherlock didn't make a sound at all. He was completely silent - not even breathing heavily.

Shit, very shallow fast breathing.

The doctor decided he needed to figure out what was happening, crying like this would be a first, shock might be another option, or an injury?

"Hey, breathe," John told him.

All muscles in Sherlock's body tensed and the shaking stopped by the sheer tension.

Then, very slowly Sherlock drew in a wet breath.

But he didn't exhale; instead, the trembling returned.

John had seen Sherlock cry, several times in fact, though not like this. Usually Sherlock's sorrow seemed to happen without him being aware.

Whenever he had cried in the past John had no doubt he was in severe distress, but somehow the tears were all that was visible on the outside.

Of course, Sherlock's voice was sometimes different in those moment, had even broken while standing on the roof of Bart's, but he seemed to ignore his body's reactions. He just went on with what he was doing, as if ignoring the fact that his eyes were leaking.

He had never cried and been a sobbing mess before.

And he wasn't now, at least not at first glance.

John had wondered in the past if his friend could even name the emotions or was aware of them that caused his body to cry, had wondered if he experienced them like he did. Sherlock's emotions were intense, he had always known that, but they were also a source of confusion and not sensed by Sherlock like by the average person.

His friend was a bit disconnected from them and had trouble describing them. Normal words seemed not to fit, either because they felt completely different from his way to perceive things or because the words most people associated with them just didn't fit from Sherlock's point of view.

Also, they unsettled him sometimes.

It was as if Sherlock was aware of the more general things, like sorrow, frustration, and anxiety, sometimes even happiness, but not of the finer distinctions.

Although his frustration could be intense he lacked to distinguish between what he felt when he accidentally dropped his mug from when somebody yelled at him in anger.

John feared this was similar, it was without doubt very intense, but probably Sherlock was just stunned by the thing itself, unable to sort it out.

He was surely in severe distress about all that had happened, since John had problems sorting that out himself he couldn't blame the detective for his reaction.

A few hours ago Sherlock had once more made the decision to rather die himself than allowing his loved ones to get hurt. John had no doubt he'd have the nerve to actually pull the trigger and the memory of the situation caused a desperate and anxious shiver to run down his spine.

Then a sudden insight hit him.

Mycroft had said he is the man he is because of what had happened in the past.

Could it be that Sherlock subconsciously remembered how it was to lose a friend and that whenever faced with the situation he chose that dying was less bad than going through that again.

The perception made him gulp overwhelming emotions of his own.

Getting the tension out now that the situation was over was necessary from John's point of view, telling Sherlock to calm down would only led to pushing the raw things back down and being internalised, which might do harm later on, so John didn't.

"Come on, Sherlock, breathe," he said again when he registered Sherlock's breathing continued to stagger to long halts in between the shallow breaths.

"Hey?"

The other man's trembling became so intense John feared he was about to have a fit.

It worried him a lot and finally the doctor's fingers sneaked around his wrist.

The pulse was so fast it made him curse silently.

Tachycardia, way over a hundred.

On one hand Sherlock needed to get this out of his system - after the past hours he was overdue – but on the other John wasn't sure this was a healthy way to do it.

Sherlock had actually said it, hadn't he? Asked for permission to mark this as over so he was no longer forced to keep everything in.

The last time when Sherlock had pointed out his distress - after being shot by Mary and before collapsing – came to John's mind. He winced, he had failed to notice the severity that had made his friend actually voice his affliction.

He reminded himself that Sherlock did things way more intense than normal people, and considered which good outcome it might have to allow this form of venting to go on, supervised by a medical professional – him.

Then, after what must have been almost a minute Sherlock took a deep breath for a change, his airway sounded constricted, as if halfway blocked, not by the usual crying-induced mucus though.

Observing him closely, John frowned.

The other man's breathing continued to be alarmingly odd.

After three or four irresolute minutes John decided that he needed to make a diagnosis, collect more data. He needed to find out what was happening.

Crying or something else?

"Sherlock, I need you to answer me. Come on."

But the answer was only silence.

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A/N:

Sorry, that I divided this into two parts, but I already updated this story two days ago and this is really really difficult. Although I pondered over this for days, in the end I made no changes content wise from the original version I had written on Monday, the 16th.

I hope to post the second chapter later this week.