A/N: Good grief, it's finally finished! I wanted to have this up months ago, but guess what: real life happened, as did a very annoying case of writers' block. Still, it's done, and before Christmas at that! This is the first multi-chapter fic I've ever completed, and hopefully it won't be the last. Anyway, a big thank you to those fifty-two followers who have stuck with it, and everyone else who's taken the time to read it, especially you lovely reviewers! Now, without further ado, here's the final chapter (for now- who can say what inspiration the next series will bring?) of 'Of a Broken Symphony', and I hope it was well worth the wait!

Disclaimer: You really ought have realised by now that I own absolutely nothing. Though I did have some cheese on toast for my lunch (on non-mouldy bread, I hasten to add).

The Time That Wasn't

He had no idea what was coming for him. That much was obvious from the way he continued to eat his… lunch, judging from the shadows on the ground and Sherlock's own knowledge of Kenyan day length. Though it was of course debateable as to whether human concepts of mealtimes could be applied to a grazing animal such as a zebra. Either way, it was clear what was going to happen: the lioness would pounce, but the zebra would escape. They were only half way into the programme, after all.

The lioness pounced, and the zebra ran away.

Sherlock threw the remote at the television. It made a very satisfying thunk as it collided with a precarious tower of John's paperbacks, sending them cascading to the floor.

"Oh, Sherlock, really!"

Ah. Mrs Hudson.

A tray was balanced carefully on the coffee table, and Sherlock eyed the chocolate digestives with suspicion.

"I thought you weren't my housekeeper?"

Mrs Hudson grimaced.

"Yes, well; just this once." She sighed and surveyed the newly-instated carpet of trashy novels. "Honestly, the mess you boys make…"

Sherlock picked up a biscuit and turned it in his fingers, watching as she slowly bent down to pick up the remote.

"Hip giving you trouble?"

Mrs Hudson turned off the television, cutting off the presenter's tantalising remarks about starving lion cubs, and touched a hand to the offending joint.

"Nothing unusual there, Sherlock. Do you know, I went to the doctor last week-"

"-Yes, Mycroft invaded and there was no one to rescue me-"

"-And he's put me on the waiting list for a replacement."

"Hm." Sherlock took a bite from his digestive.

"Won't be for months yet, but I think I'll ask my sister to come and stay, help me out a bit."

Sherlock swallowed.

"I'm sure John would look in on you, he… seems to enjoy things like that."

"I can hardly expect him to, though, can I?" She disappeared into the kitchen. "And anyway, he'll be back with Mary soon, mark my words. Those two were meant for each other."

"Hm."

"Now, there's still some of that casserole in the fridge, why don't you heat that up for your tea? Might be enough for John, too, if you make up some Smash to go with it; I think I've got some downstairs-"

"Mrs Hudson."

"-I'll go and get it; and some frozen peas, that'll make a nice dinner for you both-"

"Mrs Hudson!"

She turned to him with a startled hop.

"Thank you for the tea," Sherlock ground out pointedly.

"Right. Right, yes, I'll just be going. Just your landlady, after all." She bustled out of the flat, but stopped on the landing and poked her head around the door. "If you need anything, though…"

"Yes, thank you, Mrs Hudson."

Mrs Hudson threw up her hands and shook her head as she disappeared down the stairs and out of sight. Sherlock closed his eyes and listened for the bang of her flat door closing behind her. When it did, he let out a long, slow breath.

This was torture. Utter torture.

Lestrade was refusing to give him any cases, saying he needed 'time to rest and recuperate', or some such nonsense. On top of that, Mycroft and John seemed to have formed an unholy alliance hell-bent on keeping him caged in the flat, with Mrs Hudson on strict instructions not to let a single private client further than the bottom stair. But what really got on his goat was how John had started taking both their laptops, and Sherlock's mobile, to work with him, in an effort to prevent Sherlock from even checking his emails.

Yes, he'd been shot; yes, he'd nearly died. But really, he was perfectly capable of solving a few elementary riddles from the comfort of his sofa. The entire situation was absurd.

Sherlock shoved the rest of the digestive into his mouth, sulkily sucking the chocolate from the biscuit. No cases of any description (not even Magnusson's, now they'd made their deal), and no hope of getting any more, until either John deemed him fit or went back to Mary- and though he'd accepted that the latter had to happen at some stage, he'd still rather it was the former. So, for as long as Sherlock's wounds still looked more like wounds than scars, he was stuck with atrocious daytime telly and the utter trash that John called literature.

In all his years, he could never remember being this bored.

Neither could he remember being this desperate to get high.

Sherlock scratched the faded bruise on his arm, and listened carefully for any sounds from downstairs, then checked the time. The communal areas were silent, and John wasn't due for several more hours.

The coast clear, he got up from the sofa and padded quietly to the bathroom, locking the door behind him. Carefully, he lifted the lid off the toilet cistern and fished out a square of pink foam, turning it over to reveal the zip-lock bag taped underneath. He shook off the excess water and slid open the seal, pulling out a box of cigarettes. Opening it, he grimaced in dismay. Four left.

He took one before replacing the whole set up in the cistern, making sure the lid was on straight. Weaning him off the morphine had been enough for Mycroft, but not for John, and the doctor had scoured the whole flat for anything that could possibly contain drugs, leaving only a box of paracetamol and a packet of nicotine gum. He'd even taken the bloody cough mixture and binned an ancient packet of Strepsils, though admittedly that might have had more to do with Sherlock's causal remarks about dropping them in hydrochloric acid than Operation Get Sherlock Clean. Regardless, Sherlock had concluded that if he wanted a cigarette (and by God, he wanted much more than nicotine-laced tobacco, but that would have to do for now), he'd have to hide them, and be careful about it. It was highly unlikely that John would think to check the cistern, and even if he did, he'd probably assume that the pink foam was part of an experiment and not delve any further.

Sherlock clambered onto the bathroom windowsill with a pained hiss, and pushed the window open before lighting his cigarette. He took a heavy drag and expelled the smoke with a sigh, aiming for it to blow out of the window so its odour wouldn't give him away. John's routine after getting back from the surgery was always the same: turn on the kettle, then head to the loo whilst it boiled. Hopefully the bathroom would have aired out by then.

He raised the cigarette back up to his lips. The nicotine helped, it always had, but in an ideal world he'd need to be on the equivalent of nearing thirty-five a day to cope with this level of torturous monotony, and he only had three left. That would have to last him until Friday, when he'd arranged for his local Chinese to slip some in with the prawn crackers that John never ate.

Having smoked the cigarette down as far as he dared (he really didn't want to have to explain to John how his right thumb and forefinger ended up with shiny burns), Sherlock walked over to the sink and stubbed it out on the plughole, then washed the remains down the drain. As he washed his hands and chewed on a piece of spearmint gum, he gave the prospect of waiting serious thought. There were three days before the delivery- one cigarette a day. Could he cope with that?

Sherlock dried his now citrus-smelling hands and sprayed some air freshener in the direction of the window. Very quickly, he decided that the answer was no. The buzz from the cigarette he'd just smoked would probably have dissipated by the time he'd left the bathroom, and then it would be back to having nothing to keep his mind occupied. To Sherlock, the boredom wasn't merely annoying; it was dangerous. If he didn't start doing things (usually crime solving, but more often than not, the 'things' were controlled substances), his mind would latch on to thoughts that he really shouldn't be thinking, and then…

Well, it had happened before, and Sherlock really, desperately, didn't want it to happen again.

So to conclude: no, he couldn't survive on one cigarette a day.

As far as Sherlock could see, he was left with two choices (the choice to go on as he was having been mercilessly abandoned): get out of the flat and onto a case, or get out of the flat and find a reputable dealer. There was no chance of getting a case; Lestrade would never let him onto a crime scene, and John would have his head if he tried to find one privately (if Mycroft didn't get there first, that is). That left the dealer.

Sherlock shut the window and ran a hand through his curls. There wasn't time for him to find a dealer and return to the flat before John did, not with the bloody gunshot wound- as much as he hated to admit it, it was causing him problems, particularly with moving around; problems that couldn't be remedied thanks to John Watson's vendetta against painkillers. No, Sherlock resolved, he'd have to wait one more night, try and get Mrs Hudson out of the building, and find a dealer in the morning. John would be at work all day, and Sherlock could get his fix and come down from the high by teatime. The doctor would never even know he'd left the flat.

Reasonably satisfied, Sherlock checked his watch, and immediately reopened the cistern. Three cigarettes wouldn't last him until Friday, but they'd do until John came home with something else to distract him.

-x- ]=[ ]=[ -x-

At precisely 7:03 am, Sherlock heard John's bedroom door open. He himself had been up since 4:52, studying the file of particularly vexing (and grisly) cold cases he kept hidden in plain sight among his toxicology texts (his flatmate was still very unobservant). Hearing footsteps on the stairs, he shoved the file under his bed and collapsed on top of the mattress, just in time for the expected knock on the door.

"Sherlock?"

The door opened a crack, and Sherlock shut his eyes, careful to even out his breathing. When the door closed again, he waited a few seconds before rolling onto his back. At the sound of the kettle being filled, he began to count.

At 7:36, right on schedule, John entered the bathroom, leaving it three and a half minutes later. Thus, at exactly 7:42, the flat door clicked shut behind the doctor, followed quickly by the front door downstairs. Sherlock waited another fifteen minutes, enough time to ensure that John was definitely on the Tube, and wouldn't be returning to Baker Street for a forgotten Oyster card.

By 8:02, Sherlock was standing at the kitchen table, syringe in hand, poised to inflict grievous bodily harm on the Warburton's family-sized wholemeal loaf (John ate a lot of toast, Sherlock used a lot of toast as petri dishes). It didn't take long to artfully inject the bread with just the right amount of blue food colouring to make it look all nice and mouldy.

The plan was simple. He'd show the bread to Mrs Hudson, bemoaning how he'd really fancied some nice cheese on toast for lunch, and since he couldn't possibly eat mouldy bread, could she be a dear and pop out for another loaf? Oh, and seeing as she was going out, perhaps she could take his best shirt, the one he accidentally covered in ketchup, to the dry cleaners? He'd go himself, of course, but he was still Convalescing.

Anyone else might voice suspicions, but with Mrs Hudson, a woman who'd been practically bending over backwards for him since he'd been discharged?

Fool proof, surely.

Sherlock finished carefully scraping the best before date off the wrapper (it wouldn't do to present 'mouldy' bread that was supposedly good 'til Sunday), and picked up the loaf, padding down the stairs in his dressing gown to knock on the door of 221A.

"Just coming!"

There was the scrape of a bolt being pulled back, and the door opened, revealing Mrs Hudson in her-

In her overcoat? At barely ten-past eight?

Mrs Hudson's face split into a surprised, but warm, smile.

"Good morning, Sherlock! Bit early for you, isn't it?"

"Mrs Hudson!" Sherlock plastered on a charming, and sincerely false, expression of cheer, and held up his bread. "I know it's terribly early, but I was about to make some toast when I noticed that the bread's gone mouldy."

Mrs Hudson frowned, and Sherlock held out a blue-speckled slice for inspection.

"Dear me," she tutted, "the whole loaf?"

Sherlock nodded, and proffered the rest of the bread.

"Well, you're more than welcome to borrow a couple of slices from me, if you don't mind granary; my niece says the seeds are good for you, you know, help with-"

"Thank you, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind popping out for a new loaf of wholemeal? Only John will be needing some for his sandwiches, and it would save him a trip."

Mrs Hudson pursed her lips and shot a furtive glance down the hall.

"Oh, Sherlock, really; I'm not your errand boy!"

Sherlock stretched his face into the largest fake smile he could.

"Please. I would be ever so grateful."

Mrs Hudson made a noise that was some sort of cross between a sigh and a tut, and picked up her handbag from the little table by her door.

"Alright, just this once." At Sherlock's poorly-disguised look of relief, she added, "Only because I'm going out anyway, mind you; my friend Val, poor dear, she's hurt her back. Fell over one of her cats, apparently." Mrs Hudson shooed Sherlock back down the hall so she could lock her flat. "Can't leave the house, bless her, so I said I'd get a bit of shopping in, you know, some of those microwave meals they do these days.

"Of course," she went on, heading for the front door, "it'll mean I'll be a good few hours, so I hope you weren't expecting to have an early lunch."

"A late lunch will be more than fine, Mrs Hudson," Sherlock said with a smile. "Take as long as you need; I completely understand."

"Bless you, Sherlock." She paused in the doorway for a moment, one eyebrow raised. "Now don't you be getting up to anything while I'm gone!"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

The door clicked shut behind the landlady, and Sherlock sauntered back upstairs to change.

If he'd only known that Mrs Hudson would be going off on some charitable mission, he wouldn't have spent valuable time desecrating a perfectly decent loaf of bread.

Nor would he have ruined his best shirt.

-x- ]=[ ]=[ -x-

When Sherlock opened the front door, package safely secreted in an inside pocket of his coat, he was very pleased to find no trace of footprints in the flour he'd carefully sprinkled on the hall floor on his way out. Mrs Hudson was still out with her friend, the unfortunate ailurophile.

After re-locking the door behind him, he stole nimbly across the now-snowy carpet, and back up to 221B. All was reassuringly as he'd left it- he wouldn't have put it past his brother to send a couple of ninjas from an MI5 special branch in through the bathroom window. Sherlock removed his coat (a dark pac-a-mac he often donned when wanting to pass through the streets incognito) with a poorly concealed wince, and took out the paper bag that had been so much effort to procure.

Jenga, his dealer, hadn't been on his usual turf near the playground by Hampstead Heath, and Sherlock had had to use his homeless network to track him down. Finally, after a very tedious journey in a tube carriage packed with frustratingly transparent tourists, he'd caught up with Jenga outside the Starbucks on Grosvenor Street, only to find that, for once, the dealer wasn't carrying.

Fortunately, Jenga did have plenty of gear stashed under the backseat of his car, and was only too happy to give his 'good mate Shezza' a 'lift home', to the tune of several hundred pounds (cash, naturally).

Sherlock put the paper bag on the coffee table, and went to shove his coat back into the dark corner of his wardrobe that it usually inhabited. When he came back out of his bedroom, sans shoes, and with his dressing gown draped across his shoulders, it was not to a sight he particularly wished to see.

Actually, it was to a sight that he most definitely did not want to see, especially at that particular moment.

Mycroft was sitting in his chair.

Sitting in his chair, Sherlock's paper bag in his lap, twiddling a long, thin object in his pasty fingers.

Sherlock froze at the edge of the room.

"Sherlock," said Mycroft, softly.

It was not the tone of enraged condemnation that Sherlock had been expecting, and he wet his lips slightly.

Mycroft had turned his eyes away from his brother, and was now looking intently at the object his fingers continued to toy with. Momentarily irked at the elegance with which those fingers moved, it took several seconds for Sherlock to realise that Mycroft was playing with a hypodermic syringe.

The same syringe that Sherlock had purchased from Jenga; a syringe, one of several, which had been in the paper bag.

"Interesting move with the flour, brother," Mycroft went on. He spoke as if they were merely discussing chess, and Sherlock had sent his bishop on a particularly brave excursion. "Though I doubt dear Mrs Hudson will look upon her newly-whitened carpet with as fond an eye as I."

Mycroft paused, but when no reply was forthcoming, continued.

"She called John. He already knew she'd be going out, of course, but rather naively thought you'd behave yourself. Mrs Hudson saw that business with the bread- yes," he said, at Sherlock's look of surprise, "I know all about the bread. Anyway, she saw your trick for what it really was, and thought John ought to be informed. He in turn thought you needed a babysitter, so here I am."

Sherlock scowled.

"John was wrong. I'm not a child."

Mycroft's eyes snapped back to stare into Sherlock's own. Their heat was painfully at odds with the so-far calm, even nonchalant, exterior.

"John was right."

Mycroft casually tossed the paper bag back onto the coffee table and stood, dropping the syringe alongside it as he stepped over to the window and looked down onto the street below.

"I've tried, Sherlock," he murmured, forcing Sherlock's ears to strain in order to hear him. "We both tried. John and I." He reached up to place his palm flat against the glass. "Weaning you off the morphine; keeping you indoors, away from temptation…

"I've tried so hard, Sherlock. To protect you. To keep you away from all of this. And I know you don't care about me, Lord knows you never have, but I would have thought you'd care about John." A hardness had crept into Mycroft's voice. "That man has been through so much, Sherlock, sacrificed so much for you, and this is how you repay him? By sneaking out of your flat like a petulant teenager, and coming back with a bagful of heroin?"

Sherlock licked his lips again.

"You don't understand."

At Sherlock's proclamation, Mycroft span away from the window, all traces of his usual icy demeanour gone.

"No, Sherlock," he said, making a very obvious effort not to shout, "I don't understand. You have friends, who care about you; you spend your days doing what you've always dreamt of. Why would you throw it all away?"

"I'm not throwing anything away-"

"For heaven's sake, Sherlock, be quiet and listen!" Mycroft raised his voice, abandoning any attempt at reasoned civility.

"No, Mycroft," Sherlock spat, "I've had enough of you, and John, and everyone else treating me like I'm some porcelain marionette, unable to think for myself and in dire need of protection-"

"We've only been doing what's best for you!"

"You've kept me from my work!"

"Because you've been shot! You need time to recover, and haring about London won't do you any good at all." Mycroft ran a hand through his immaculate hair. "Please, Sherlock; listen to me. Drugs aren't the answer."

"Perhaps not, but the two things are practically synonymous."

Mycroft frowned and took a step towards Sherlock.

"I refuse to let you throw your life away." He cut off Sherlock's protestations with a raised hand and quelling look. "Because that is what will happen, Sherlock, if you start using."

Sherlock sneered at him.

"It would hardly be the first time. And oh, look- I'm still here. I need it; I know what I'm doing."

Mycroft shook his head repeatedly, bracing himself on the back of Sherlock's chair.

"You don't. You never have." He laughed humourlessly. "For a while, I thought you did. That this was to be your vice, your refuge, and that you could control it."

"I can control it."

"No. The very fact that you bought heroin, of all things, proves that you can't." Mycroft ran his hand along the chair's dark leatherette, and lowered his tone. "I was wrong, back then; foolish. Still just a boy. I should never have let things get as far as they did. And the worst part, Sherlock, the very worst part, is that if what I'd found in that bag had been marijuana, or even cocaine, I would have let it go. Now what does that say about me? As your brother?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to interject, but Mycroft got in first.

"Don't." He swallowed. "You have no idea what you've done, Sherlock. What you are doing. Perhaps it's through ignorance, perhaps through malice; it matters little. 'You see, but you do not observe'. A fitting dictum for a man who never sees the damage he causes."

Mycroft looked at Sherlock.

"I was there, Sherlock," he said, gravely. "I remember it, so clearly. That night. You called me for help, because you'd made a mistake. You thought you were going to die; you would have died, if I hadn't got to you in time. I would have lost you."

Sherlock's instinctive derisive remark died on his tongue at the look on Mycroft's face.

"I thought," Mycroft went on, "in the hospital, after, that we'd finally got somewhere. That you'd at last seen what you were doing to yourself, to the people around you, and you'd stop. For good." He closed his eyes, and took a shaky breath. "But it wasn't to be, was it, Sherlock? You won't stop," he said bitterly, "not for our parents; certainly not for me. Not even for John. A man who would die for you."

Sherlock didn't say a word. His brother passed a hand across his face, recomposing himself. By the time Mycroft straightened and smoothed down his suit, only the defeated hollowness of his eyes could connect him with his next statement.

"I care, Sherlock. About you. I really do." He shook his head sadly. "But I can't help you if you refuse to let yourself be helped, no matter how much I might want to."

He picked up his umbrella from where it leant against the coffee table. In doing so, his eyes fell on the paper bag and syringe.

"I won't do this anymore," he said, after a moment. "If you want my help, you need only ask for it. I'll always be there. But I will no longer try to force it upon you."

Mycroft made for the door, but paused on the threshold. He gestured back at the coffee table.

"I may as well leave those with you." He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but stopped himself. At last, he simply said: "Good day, Sherlock. Brother."

Sherlock watched him leave. He listened to the front door close downstairs. He walked to the window, watched his brother get into a car that then drove off down the street. Watched it turn the corner, and vanish out of sight.

He turned back to the room, and his eyes fell on the back of his chair.

The photograph had been carefully pinned to the leather.

It depicted two boys, one tall and wise-looking, one short with messy dark hair; both in the unmistakable uniform of a boys' boarding school. The short one was scowling at the camera, but the tall one looked at him fondly, his hand placed reassuringly on his companion's shoulder.

Sherlock stared at it.

-x- ]=[ ]=[ -x-

By the time John came home, the syringes had been thrown, unused, out of the bathroom window, and the remaining soluble contents of the paper bag flushed down the toilet.

The photo was safe between the pages of a file of cold cases, hidden in plain sight among his toxicology texts, where nobody would ever think to look.