In the weeks preceding the trial, Sherlock and John spent most of their time on the sofa. It was a tight fit, but John had to stay close to him at night to know when he was having a nightmare because Sherlock never screamed. The only indication John got that something was wrong was when Sherlock started shaking. During the day, John turned on the telly and tried to find something interesting enough to distract him, but the boy lay still and unresponsive with his upper body cradled in John's lap. It was a difficult task getting Sherlock to eat. John tried not to seem overbearing or controlling, but it worried John the way he could feel Sherlock's ribs through his t-shirt.

One night when John was taking out the rubbish to the bins in the alley, he stopped for a minute to and leaned against the wall. He hadn't realized how much weight was lying on his heavy heart until he allowed himself this short break to be alone and just breathe. However, he wasn't as alone as he thought.

Light spilled out into the dark alleyway as Dannie opened the back door Mrs. Hudson's kitchen. "John? What are you doing out here?"

John sank down to the cold pavement. "Just thinking about how I should be thrown out with the rubbish considering how useless I am."

"Oh dear Lord," Dannie muttered. "I'm gonna go put the kettle on. When you're done wallowing, come inside and we'll have a chat."

The door creaked shut, leaving the alley dark once more. John exhaled slowly and rubbed his eyes. He knew feeling sorry for himself wasn't doing anyone any good, but he was honestly at a loss for what to do, and he didn't want to burden Dannie with his troubles. Still, the fact remained that he desperately needed someone to talk to.

By the time John stumbled into the kitchen and collapsed into a chair, Dannie was busy arranging the milk, sugar bowl, teapot, and a couple of mugs on the table.

"Has Mrs. Hudson gone to sleep yet?" John asked, squinting under the bright fluorescent lights.

"Yeah," Dannie answered. "She's a light sleeper, so we probably ought to be quiet." John murmured his thanks as she handed him his mug. Preparing it the usual way, he added milk to the tea, but he neglected the sugar bowl. "I don't know how you can stand drinking coffee or tea without any sugar in it," Dannie said quietly, emptying a third of the sugar bowl into her mug.

John smiled. "My sister used to say that it's because I'm sweet enough as it is, but I'm pretty sure she was being sarcastic."

Dannie giggled. "Yeah, I can see that. You're actually a bit intimidating, especially when you're angry."

"God, I hope I don't scare you."

"No, I mean that in a good way," Dannie reassured him. "You're not the peacemaking type. You're a fighter, and you're fiercely protective of the people you care about."

From the expression on John's face, Dannie could tell he was thinking about his loved ones, especially the one lying practically comatose in the flat above them. Her big brown eyes shone with concern when she asked, "How is he doing?"

"Not good," John said truthfully. "I'm not sure anymore if encouraging him to testify was the right thing to do. Maybe Lestrade was right, and he would have been better off not getting involved in the case."

Dannie shook her head. "No, you were right. The best thing for Sherlock right now is getting him to talk about what happened to him, even if it seems like it's doing more harm than good. Until now the only way he's known how to deal with it is by repressing it or numbing it away by hurting himself."

John shuddered. "I'm still scared that he'll hurt himself again, or that this will push him too far."

Dannie stared down at her mug and was silent for a moment. Then she looked up at him and said, "John, you know quite a bit about how the human body works, right?"

Unsure of where this question was leading, he nodded. "Yes. I've studied the subject pretty thoroughly."

"Then you know why it hurts when you warm up an extremity that's been exposed to the cold. Low temperatures make your blood vessels constrict to preserve body heat, and the lack of blood supply to your nerves causes numbness. Then when you get warm again, those blood vessels dilate and circulation returns, which causes your nerves to send pain signals to your brain." Dannie sipped her tea. "It's enough to make you want to freeze up again, to become completely numb, but if you do that for too long it can cause tissue damage. In order to deal with pain, you have to allow yourself to feel it."

Finally understanding the point of Dannie's monologue, John rubbed his eyes and gazed at her across the table with fondness. "You're brilliant, you know that? I can see how you and Sherlock became friends."

The girl bit her lip nervously. "It's actually a bit more complicated than that."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

Dannie sighed resignedly and downed the rest of her tea before she launched into the story. "When Sherlock started his first year of sixth form, his parents had to convince the school to let him skip a grade. They gave the excuse that he had missed the past year because he had a serious illness, which was believable because he honestly looked like he had been sick for a long time. The kid was skin and bones. Of course, other people came up with their own theories. Most of them said that he had been locked up in a mental institution. He didn't speak. I think he was selectively mute, but he still managed to scare the hell out of people with the way he looked at them like he knew everything about them. I hate to admit it, but I was a little scared of him too. That changed, though, the day I did this," she said, pointing to her scar.

"I was at my locker getting my books out for the next class, and some random bloke came up to me and pinned me against the wall. I don't really remember what he said to me. It was something idiotic and perverted. Next thing I knew he was snogging me. He only stopped because Sherlock threw a squash ball at his head." Dannie smiled. "It was actually kind of funny. The thing bounced off of the guy's ear. I would have laughed, but at that point I was in the middle of a seizure. As soon as he saw Sherlock, the guy bolted. Then Sherlock walked up to me. He looked like he was trying to ask if I was okay but couldn't get the words out. I wouldn't have been able to answer anyways. I just ran away and hid in the loo."

"I had thought about doing this before," she muttered, pointing to her scar again. "I knew it was a terrible idea, but I wasn't thinking clearly at the time. It was probably also a terrible idea to walk to the next class with my face sliced up." Dannie paused a moment before she said, "The thing is, Sherlock was in that classroom."

"You can imagine everyone's reaction. The teacher screamed her head off, and all the other students just sat there and gaped at me, but Sherlock calmly got up from his desk and walked with me to the nurse's office. He actually had to carry me most of the way, because I could hardly stand and I was dripping blood everywhere. The nurse screamed her head off too when she saw me, but at least she had the sense to call 999. The paramedics let Sherlock ride in the ambulance with me, which was fortunate because I had about three more seizures on the way to the hospital, and Sherlock held my hand the whole time. Everyone around me looked at me like they were horrified and repulsed when they saw what I did, but Sherlock seemed as though he understood, as though he was familiar enough with that kind of trauma to not be shocked by it."

"Mrs. Hudson came to the hospital, and the first thing she saw when she walked in was Sherlock sitting in the waiting room with my blood all over him. He must have looked a fright, because she started dabbing at him with a paper towel and yelling for the nurses to help him. They told her that he was fine and that he had just come in with another trauma victim, and she asked them if that was me. Apparently the school had called her and said that there had been some kind of accident, but nobody was willing to tell a kind old lady in her sixties that her foster daughter had carved up her face, and so it was left up to the kid who couldn't talk to explain to her what happened. Sherlock wrote it down for her on a piece of paper. After she read it, she cried on his shoulder for about an hour, this strange boy she just met. He finally managed to calm her down by turning over the paper and writing on the back, 'Dannie's going be okay. She hasn't lost her mind. She's just scared.' When Mrs. Hudson let me read that, all I could think was, 'How did he know?'"

"I stayed home for about two weeks until they took my stiches out. During those two weeks, Mrs. Hudson invited Sherlock over for dinner a few times. Her intention was probably to try to get as much food into him as possible. He still didn't speak a word, but she treated him like he was one of her own kids. To this day she has never believed all that 'high-functioning sociopath' nonsense for a minute. On my first day back at school, I was really nervous about walking through the halls with everyone staring at me like I was a freak. Then I ran into Sherlock while he was on the way to class, and I heard his voice for the first time. What he said was, 'Just so you know, you're not the most fucked-up kid in this school. That title has already been taken.'"

John chuckled and shook his head. "Well that was tactful."

"I'm pretty sure he meant that to be comforting, and in a way it was, but it also worried me a bit. I can't imagine what it's like for someone like him to live with PTSD, what with his superhuman senses and eidetic memory. We were decent company for each other, I suppose, but he must have still been terribly lonely trapped inside his head. You were the first person to get him to really open up."

Dannie sat quietly and allowed John to finish his tea as he processed this. Then she got up and placed their empty mugs in the sink. "I think it's time to turn in for the night."

Careful not to wake up Mrs. Hudson, the two of them stepped quietly into the hallway. Then before Dannie turned to go downstairs, she flung her small arms around John's middle and hugged him tightly. "I'm thankful everyday for the day he met you."

With a glow of warmth in his chest, John smiled and hugged Dannie back. "I am too." He leaned down and kissed the top of her head lightly and bid her goodnight.

Though his conversation with Dannie had been considerably helpful, John's heart grew heavy again as he climbed the stairs. The trial was tomorrow, and so this was his last chance to talk to Sherlock and make sure that he was really ready to go through with it. Worst-case scenario, the court would postpone the trial if they decided that Sherlock wasn't currently fit to take the witness stand. Gathering his courage, John walked into the dimly lit sitting room. As it turned out, though, Sherlock wasn't on the sofa where he had left him.

John heard a clattering noise and turned towards the hallway. From the sound of it, Sherlock had taken the bag of ice from the freezer and was emptying it into the bathtub. John sighed and collapsed onto the sofa. Hopefully conducting an experiment would keep Sherlock's mind off things for now, and there would be time to talk to him in the morning after dealing with whatever horrors had been left in the bathtub. Utterly exhausted, John lay down and closed his eyes.

He wasn't asleep for very long, however, before he woke up shivering. Bleary-eyed and groggy from his brief nap, John got up and checked the thermostat. He blinked and squinted at the little blue light that read 15 °C. "Honestly, Sherlock," he called down the hallway, his voice rough with sleep, "is it really necessary to turn our whole flat into your own personal refrigerator?" He didn't get a response, but knowing Sherlock, he would probably take that question as rhetorical. Trying another approach he added, "I'm turning on the heat now." Still nothing. "Sherlock?"

The flat was eerily quiet, and the silence unnerved him. Small slivers of light shone through the cracks in the bathroom door as John slowly drew near it. He jostled the handle, but the door was locked. Panic rising in his chest, John knocked a few times and called Sherlock's name. He's fine, John's mind supplied feebly. He never answers me when he's working. He's fine. He hasn't hurt himself. He's fine.

Even as these thoughts whirled around inside his head, John banged harder on the door and yelled, "Sherlock, I swear to God, if you don't open this door right now I will break it down!" All John heard was the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears as he backed up to the wall and rushed forward, throwing his shoulder against the door until the handle broke off and it swung open.

At first glance the bathroom appeared empty. Hundreds of ice cubes drifted on the surface of the bathtub, which was filled to the brim with water. The moment John stepped forward to get a closer look, his whole world came to a crashing halt.

Sherlock was lying at the bottom of the tub.

"Oh my God," John yelped, flinging himself against the edge of the tub to pull the boy out. For the most terrifying five seconds of his life, John thought he was too late until he heard Sherlock coughing and gasping.

"Jesus Christ, Sherlock. Jesus fucking Christ." He lifted Sherlock's ice-cold, naked body out of the water and laid him down on the tile. Sherlock was shivering uncontrollably, and his lips were tinged blue, but he was still conscious. John needed to warm him up as quickly as possible. With trembling hands, he stripped off his damp clothes and held Sherlock tightly to his chest.

As soon as he was steady enough to stand, John carried Sherlock into the bedroom. He climbed into bed and pulled the covers over both of them, keeping their bodies pressed together to try to restore circulation.

"You promised," John whispered brokenly. "You promised me you would never do that."

For the first time in what seemed like ages, John heard Sherlock's voice, as strained and unsteady as it was now. "I wasn't… I wasn't trying to kill myself."

"Then what were you trying to do? You could have gone into hypothermic shock and drowned."

Sherlock trembled and buried his face against John's shoulder. "I was just… trying to make it stop."

"Make what stop?" John asked, but they boy fell silent once more. "Sherlock, please. You can't keep hiding from me what's hurting you. I know it's hard, but I need you to trust me."

"I do trust you, John. I just," Sherlock swallowed, "I hate seeing what it does to you."

"It's alright, Sherlock. When someone you care about is in pain, then you feel it with them. That's how love works." John cupped Sherlock's cheek and tilted his face up towards him. "You've had to deal with this on your own for so long, but you're not alone anymore. We can get through this together, but only if you tell me what's wrong."

The shivering gradually lessened as Sherlock's core body temperature returned to normal. Sherlock lay still a while and studied John's face, reading the lines of worry etched in his features and the intense emotions radiating from those blue eyes with a ring of hazel around the middle. He couldn't look at him and say it.

Closing his eyes, Sherlock pressed his face against the pillow and whispered. "I can still feel his hands on me."

John exhaled slowly, his throat tightening. Tentatively, he reached up and stroked back Sherlock's damp curls. Then he planted a kiss on both of his eyelids. "Can you do something for me, Sherlock?" John said softly. He paused for a moment as the boy's eyes opened again. "Just keep your eyes fixed on me."

Sherlock's skin was still ice-cold and unable to sense John's touch. John gently brushed his thumb against his cheek. Then his fingers slowly moved down over his neck to his shoulder. John held his gaze, watching his face to make sure he wasn't causing the boy to tense up. Sherlock merely breathed deeply, his lips slightly parted. John slid his other arm underneath him and laid a hand on his back. After a few minutes, Sherlock's skin warmed enough under John's tender touch to feel his strong, gentle hands caressing him, holding him, protecting him.

"Go to sleep, love," John whispered, kissing his forehead. "I've got you."

John continued stroking his back until Sherlock drifted to sleep. Then he closed his eyes and succumbed to slumber as well. Whatever tomorrow would bring, they were going to face it together.