How do two people bridge the gap they've created?

AN: MERRY CHRISTMASSSSS! Because I love you all so much and I wish all of you glad tiding of yule tide glee, and stuff, here is the next chapter with 'Afters' immediately updated. Yay back to backsies! And by the way I am sorry for those of you whom I haven't got back to, but just know that your wonderful reviews are much appreciated, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart!


The monitor flashes as permutation after permutation gets discarded on the screen, and Sherlock drags his fingers through his lank curls. He picks up his coffee cup for the third (fourth?) time only to slam it down again when he realises it's empty, and has been for quite some time now. He scratches the back of his neck in agitation, digging his fingernails into flesh to physically restrain himself from texting Jane. He needed her here. She was his conductor of light; a beacon in the darkness. He scowls at the trainers sitting on the worktop, and pulls on a pair of latex gloves.

He picks up the right one and scrutinises it from the laces (skin flakes present; condition – eczema?) to the soles (mud; two different types of clay and silt present) and goes over anything he missed.

Or tries to. He keeps getting stuck in a horrid feedback loop of tracing the stitching with his eyes over and over even though it has nothing of relevance to contribute. His frustration finally boils over when he lingers on the blue stripes on the tongue for the fourth time, and he slams it down on the table top with a wordless growl.

"Bad day?" Molly says cheerfully as she rounds the corner from the mortuary. He doesn't deign to respond to this, and instead peers back into the microscope. She shifts awkwardly on her feet. "Right…I'll just go get those reports, then."

She leaves through the double doors opening them just a hair too wide, making the un-oiled hinges whine in protest. The screech of the metal reverberates around in his skull like shards of glass, and his presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

In his mind's eye, it was almost as if he was staring at a wall filled with hundreds of computer screens of information — all scrolling with useless encrypted data, the shrill buzz of static adding to the chaos tattooing the inside of his skull — with absolutely no way of turning them off.

He's felt this feeling before, and he swallows thickly.

Burn Out.

"Shit," he murmurs, and brings his palms to press like a vice on either side of his head. This was perhaps the most inconvenient in the history of inconvenient timing for his brain to go haywire. He just had to stave off the inevitable collapse until he at least finished with this latest puzzle and then he would deal with the consequences later.

Ignoring the swell of nausea and the repulsive ringing in his ears, Sherlock takes a deep breath, and turns his attention back to the screen.

His coffee cup suddenly catches his eye. More specifically the steam rising incongruously from the rim, and he picks it up. It's fresh. Odd. (Molly must have — when did she —? He didn't even notice —) (Oh hell.) He closes his eyes at the realisation.

He was losing time, and he had to hurry.

The metal door opens with another tortured shriek making his very skin crawl as the terrible noise rakes itself over his eardrums.

He wipes the sweat off the back of his neck, and looks up to find Jane trying to shut the door more quietly behind her. She manages to muffle it slightly.

"Jane," he says, unable to keep the relief out of his voice. His relief fades, however, when he notices the flicker of distress flash across her face, and he narrows his eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Hm? Nothing!" she says, the preoccupied look vanishing instantly, and Sherlock can't be sure it was even there to begin with.

Before he can question her either way, however, the monitor blurts and the word MATCH flashes across the screen.

"Ah!" Sherlock exclaims.

"Any luck?" Molly Hooper says banging back into the room, setting Sherlock's teeth on edge.

"Yes," he says tersely, and motions for Jane to come closer. "It's the pollen in the mud samples. As good as any map reference once you know where it came from."

"Sorry, pollen?" Jane says.

Before Sherlock can explain, that hateful door swings open again and he jolts with the shock of the squealing hinges, slamming his eyes shut.

"Sorry to interrupt…"

"Jim? Hi!" Molly says brightly, if not a tad bewildered. (She's most likely got that doughy look on her face, she fancies him and they've already been on two…no three dates by the sounds of it.) Sherlock's eyes flash open, and he fixes the young man before him with a disdainful glare.

"I hope I'm not imposing," he says though a giddy grin. (Oh look, they even blush the same. How twee.) Sherlock grits his teeth, and tries to focus on something other than the glaring lights, and the clammy heat under his collar.

"No, come in! Come in!" Molly says, and Sherlock has to physically tamp down his irritation by digging his fingers into his thigh. "Jim this is Sherlock Holmes, and his…friend Doctor Jane Watson."

"Nice to meet you," Jane says, polite as ever.

"So you're Sherlock Holmes?" Jim says in awe as he takes a few steps towards him. "Molly's told me all about you. She goes on and on, really."

"Well…not on and on…it's more of a – a just an office thing. Water cooler, banter. You know," Molly stammers. "Jim works upstairs in IT. That's how we met. Office romance."

(Oh god. Of all the idiotic —)

"Gay," Sherlock says rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"What?" Molly says crestfallen.

Jane pokes him sharply in the side, and he straightens in his seat. "Hm? Oh, just…hey," he says with a false smile in Jim's direction as the idiot continues to make it way around, examining the racks of test tubes, and the small Newton's Cradle sitting on the work top.

Jim brightens at the acknowledgement. "So are you on one of your cases?" he says poking the uppers of one of the shoes. "Where are the laces on this one?"

"I would prefer it if you didn't touch that," Sherlock snaps, and snatches the shoe away. "Delicate business. Forensics," he emphasises with a click of his teeth.

"Right, of course!" Jim says with wide eyes, and steps hastily back. He knocks over a metal dish in the process, and fumbles with trying to pick it up, nattering his clumsy apologies all the while. He finally manages the simple task, and giggling nervously, makes his way back over to Molly. He rubs her back affectionately. "I better be going, but I'll see you at the Fox around six-ish?"

"Y-yeah," Molly says, her smile wavering. "Sounds good."

"Bye," Jims says. He turns towards Sherlock. "It was great meeting you."

Sherlock sniffs and types in a few meaningless coordinates into the computer. (Honestly. Take a bloody hint.)

Jane clears her throat. "Ah, yep. Good to have met you too."

Sherlock pauses minutely as the door wails in protest once more, before bouncing back to his microscope. He idly twists the focus, not even really paying attention to the slide.

Finally after another beat of awkward, fuming silence Molly breaks it. "What do you mean 'gay'? We're together."

"Yes. And domestic bliss must suit you, Molly. You've put on three pounds since I last saw you."

She clenches her jaw. "Two and a half."

"Give or take," Sherlock says, and Jane sighs from beside him. He ignores it. He's beyond caring about the trivialities of Good and Not Good at this point especially when the ambient hiss of static inside his head it beginning to reach its peak. He gnashes his teeth at the tinny ring in his ears.

"He's not gay! Why do you have to spoil — he's not," she says, trembling with anger.

"With that level of personal grooming? Please," he scoffs.

"Because he puts a bit of product in his hair?" Jane says and he turns to her in surprise. (He takes a moment to observe her, and how the slight shift in her tone and stance brings out the defender in her; the benevolent guardian. Avenging Angel. It's something that never fails to arrest him.) "You put product in your hair."

"I wash my hair, there's a difference," he says derisively, "No, no — tinted eyelashes; taurine cream around the frown lines; tired clubber's eyes — and then there's the underwear."

"Underwear?" Molly says, scandalised.

"Obvious. Visible above the waistline; a very particular brand. And if that wasn't enough to be getting on with, there is also the extremely suggestive fact that he left me his number under this here dish. So really, Molly, you'd best break if off now and save yourself the time and the pain," Sherlock says, punctuating his point by slapping the mobile number onto the worktop.

Molly snaps her mouth shut, tears welling in her eyes and whips around, a sob catching in her throat as she flees.

"Charming. Well done," Jane says flatly as the door slams.

"I'm just saving her time. Isn't that kinder?" he snaps.

"No, Sherlock. That wasn't kind," she says and follows after Molly, shooting a disparaging look at him over her shoulder before she leaves the lab.

Sherlock watches her go, suddenly gripped with the insane urge to run after her. He wanted to catch her and pin her to the wall like some sort of butterfly so she wouldn't ever leave, because he obviously needed her here if he was ever going to solve anything ever again, apparently.

He pauses. Even he could recognise that this was definitely Bit Not Good Indeed.

Sherlock shoves his notes away from him and surges to his feet in aggravation. He paces erratically back and forth tugging a fist full of his hair to release some of the tension binding his back and shoulders as the vitriol of exhaustion (when was the last time he slept?) and the potency of his anger (mostly at himself) seep into his nerves.

This whole god damn case was a disaster, and nothing was sparking properly in his mind, especially now that he'd gone and shoved away his only fixed point amid the tempest in his head.

And now it was all he could bloody well think of, (Jane, Jane, Jane) and how much he had grown to depend on her. It was ridiculous. He functioned just fine on his own for the past thirty-three years of his life, for crying out loud.

(Well…fine was a broad term.)

(He functioned decently without her.)

(No, that wasn't right either.)

(Functioned?) (Yeah, barely.)

(Fuck all.)

He reaches for his coffee more for something to do with his nervous energy than out of desire to drink it, and in his haste sloshes the boiling liquid over his hand.

He curses avidly, dropping the paper cup to where it splatters all over the floor. He runs to the sink and twists on the cool water guiding his hand gingerly under the stream. His skin was already turning an angry red, and would probably blister later.

The door to the lab opens once more, and the grinding of the hinges practically sounds like a blood curdling scream at this point, his nerves flayed beyond his usually austere control, and he flinches violently. His eyes screw shut as his brain tries to parse through the hurricane of sensation around him, and for the moment he's actually grateful of the pain in his hand, the sharp sting cutting through the fog slowly descending over him.

So focussed is he on not succumbing to the dark chaos in his head, he doesn't even register Jane calling his name until she places a gentle hand on his shoulder. He inhales sharply trying to compose himself.

"Sherlock?" Jane says again. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," he says lowering his head. His hand shakes as he holds it under the stream. "Spilt my coffee."

Jane sighs, and moves over to one of the cabinets opening a few before she finds what she's looking for.

"Let me see," she says, and Sherlock shuts off the tap. The fierce bite of the burn settles in immediately away from the cool water, and he clenches his fist automatically. "Don't do that," she reprimands, and he relaxes his fingers.

Sherlock looks up at her as she gently takes his hand and clicking her teeth in exasperation as she inspects the abused flesh. She palpates it lightly causing him to hiss in pain. She darts a disapproving look at him from under her lashes, before dabbing it lightly with a towel. She tears open a small packet of ointment, and squeezes some of the viscous cream onto her middle finger, and massages it into the skin on the back of his hand. The ointment has a cooling effect to it, and combined with Jane's ministrations, Sherlock's eyes close of their own volition.

"You owe Molly an apology, by the way," she says softly. She tears open another package, and Sherlock opens his eyes as she fixes a bit of gauze around his wrist, crisscrossing over and under his palm. She ties it off in the crook of his thumb.

"Do I?" he muses, transfixed on her fingers lingering on the underside of his wrist as she continues to hold his hand.

"You know you do," she sighs, and with one last tentative brush of her thumb, steps away.

"I'll get her a coffee," he says dismissively.

"No. You are going to get her a banoffe pie. It's her favourite," she says firmly.

He narrows his eyes at her. "Jane Watson, I will make Molly a banoffe pie if we can please get back to the case."

Jane snorts. "I'll hold you to that," she says and follows him back to the work bench.

Sherlock sits back on the stool, and slides one of the shoes towards her. "There you are. You know what I do, off you go."

"Hah, oh no. I'm not going to stand here so you can humiliate me too," she says bluntly.

"An outside eye is very important to me," he says, having to swallow around the suddenly cotton-y state of his mouth.

"Yeah right."

"Really," he says and she tosses him a disbelieving look. "Please," he says at a loss for anything else to say. (How could he explain to her the intense laser-like focus she brought to the work?) He takes a breath. "You aren't the most luminous of people —"

"Ta. Thanks for that —"

"— but as a conductor of light you are unbeatable," he finishes stridently.

"I…oh," Jane says the wind deflating from her surly sails. She regards him curiously.

"Go on," Sherlock says and holds the shoe up for her. She eyes it, sceptical still, but takes is and turns it over in her hands.

"Well they're just a pair of sh — trainers," she says.

"Yes. Good," Sherlock says watching as her bright eyes track over the soles.

"Um. They're in good nick. I'd say pretty new but…the soles are worn down so the owner must have had them for a while. Er, they're very eighties. Probably one of those retro designs."

"You're on sparkling form, what else?" he says pulling up a web page on his mobile. (Well loved, true. Well taken care of.)

"They're quite big, so I'd say a man's…"

"But…?"

"But there's ink on the tag inside from a name. Adults don't write their names inside their shoes, so these belonged to a kid."

"Excellent. What else?"

"…That's it."

"That's it?"

"Yeah. How did I do?" she asks. Sherlock arches an eyebrow. "Oh don't give me that look, go on then, Mr. Clever."

He chuckles as she shoves the shoe into his hands. "The owner loved these, scrubbed them clean when they got dirty, whitened them when they became discoloured, changed the laces three — no four times. Even so there are traces of his flaky skin where his fingers came in contact with them, meaning he probably suffered from a skin condition. Shoes are well worn, more so on the inside which suggests he had weak arches. British-made, twenty years old."

"Hang on…twenty years?" Jane says.

"They're not retro," Sherlock says, and holds up his mobile so she can see the picture of the shoes. "they're original. Limited edition, two blue stripes: nineteen eighty-nine."

"But…" Jane says picking up the shoe again. She picks at a dried patch of dirt near the toe, "they look brand new. There's still mud on them and everything."

"Someone's kept them this way," he says moving over to the monitor and pulling up the map reference, "Quite a bit of mud caked on the soles; analysis shows it's from Sussex with London mud overlaying it according to the pollen in the soil. They're not retro, they're original."

"Yes you…you said that already," Jane says, and scrutinises him.

Sherlock averts his eyes, and fiddles with the zoom on the screen. "Did I?"

"Yes." A beat of silence and then, "Sherlock are you —?"

"The point is," Sherlock says over her, "the kid who owned these came to London from Sussex twenty years ago and left them behind."

"So what happened to him?" Jane says after a moment.

"Something bad," Sherlock says. "Remember, he loved those shoes, he wouldn't let them get filthy and he wouldn't leave them behind unless he had to. So: a child with big feet gets…" he trails off, the salient points of light sparking suddenly into existence. "Oh."

"What?"

"Carl Powers," he whispers.

"Who?"

"Carl Powers, Jane." Sherlock gets up from the stool suddenly restless and walks a few paces away. With his back turned he brings his shaking bandaged hand to cover his eyes for a moment trying to hold the seams of his logic together as he struggled to make this final piece fit somewhere amid everything else.

"Who is Carl Powers?" Jane says coming towards him.

He can feel her standing behind him, her concern radiating off of her like a furnace. He swallows hard as the ground under his feet suddenly sways, and he presses his palm against the wall in front of him.

"It's where I began," he says.

-oOo-

Jane watches Sherlock from her place next to him in the cab. Aside from barking at the cabbie to take them to New Scotland Yard he had been silent, his face pale and drawn and arms tightly crossed over his chest in an attempt to hide the subtle tremor that had picked up in both of his hands.

A car horn blares as it drives past making Sherlock flinch, and Jane can't take it anymore and pries one of his hands away so she could clutch it. He tenses at first, not able to meet her eyes, but then he sighs and tangles their fingers together more securely.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Jane says after a while.

"Not important."

"Sherlock. You're practically on the verge of falling over. When was the last time you slept?"

Sherlock makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat. "Does it really matter when there's a crazy bomber running around London?"

"Sherlock. When?"

"Belarus."

"You are a massive idiot," she says. He chuckles but breaks off in a groan, his other hand coming up to shield his eyes. "Let me see, love."

Sherlock drags his hand away, and pries open his eyes so she could take a look. Just as she suspected, the left pupil was blown wide while the right remained relatively normal.

"What's my diagnosis, Doctor?" Sherlock says trying for humour, closing his eyes again.

"You need to sleep."

"Can't. I sleep and the old lady dies."

Jane bites her lip. "What can I do? I want to help."

"I need to find the connection between Carl Powers and the bomber," Sherlock says leaning his head back against the leather seat. He clutches her hand even tighter, rubbing his thumb almost feverishly against the crook of hers.

"Do you have a theory?" Jane prods knowing that getting him to talk aloud sometimes helped him draw his conclusions faster.

Sherlock grimaces, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Nineteen eighty-nine, a young kid — champion swimmer — came up from Brighton for a school sports tournament…drowned in the pool. Tragic accident. You wouldn't remember, why would you? Accidents like these happen all the time and nobody looks twice."

"But you did?"

"Yes. Something wasn't right about the whole thing. I read it in the papers. The boy, Carl Powers, had some type of fit in the water and by the time they got him out it was too late and he drowned. But there was something fishy about the whole thing, something I couldn't get out of my head. It was his shoes."

"The shoes?"

"Yeah. They weren't there. He'd left all of his clothes in his locker but there was no sign of his shoes. I tried to get the police involved, but they wouldn't listen. I was just a kid myself at the time, and as you may have noticed I have been known to be quite difficult on occasion. I made a fuss, and they threw me out. Case closed. His shoes never turned up, though. Until now."

"You started young didn't you?" Jane says, and Sherlock looks at her, a sly smile playing on his lips. She frowns, however, something niggling at the back of her mind. "So how did the bomber get the shoes then?"

"Carl Powers's murderer obviously kept them as some sort of trophy all these years. Given the facts," he states carefully, "I am inclined to believe that the bomber and Powers's murderer are the same person."

Jane inhales sharply, an icy fear sliding down her spine. This, whatever this was — the dark musings of a twisted obsessive fanatic — had been years in the making. The fact that someone had been essentially keeping tabs on Sherlock for over a decade was highly unsettling, and made her nauseous. This kind of patience — of meticulous planning something like this would have had to have taken was insanely terrifying and left her feeling helpless until she could hardly trust the solidarity of the earth beneath her feet. She felt as if she were standing in the midst of a surreal reality where everything degenerated and nothing made sense, melting clocks and everything. It reminded her of the futility of her dreams, especially the ones as of late that left her useless and sinking in quick sand while the one person she wanted to protect most was torn away from her.

The fact that she was questioning her nightmares against the reality of her actual life was overwhelming in its own right.

"Jane?" Sherlock says, pulling her out of her thoughts. She jumps lightly before turning to him. "Are you…all right?"

"Yes. Fine," she says a bit too fast. The image of the threatening text messages comes to her mind, and she pushes them away while trying to give him a casual smile.

Sherlock continues to search her face before being forced to close his eyes again. He bows his chin towards his chest and lets out a harsh breath that sounds a little like a sob at the end. "You're lying but I – I can't…see. There's too much — too many screens and I don't—"

"Hush, love," Jane says and pulls him in so he could bury his face into the welcome darkness of her shoulder. "I promise. Everything's all right. You trust me don't you?"

"I do," Sherlock says barely above a whisper.

"Then listen to me. You just need to focus on this case so we can go home, okay?" she says.

Sherlock doesn't answer at first, and he remains stiff against her seemingly afraid to move, but after a moment he all but melts against her side. He wraps an arm around the back of her waist, drawing comfort and seeking closeness, and ashamedly Jane soaks it up like a parched man in the desert.

"The distance," he finally says, "it's not good."

"What's that?" Jane says.

"Between us," he murmurs taking a deep breath through his nose and releasing it slowly.

"I…" Jane starts, and her pulse picks up. She wanted to hope, oh she really did, but Sherlock wasn't thinking clearly. "You're not yourself right now, Sherlock," she says trying to swallow back the sudden tightness in her throat.

At this he lifts his head so he could look at her. He still manages to look condescending even through his grimace of pain.

"Do not tell me what I am or am not," he says with a conviction that takes her by surprise. "I am still capable of logic regardless of the ridiculous notions my transport deems to inflict upon me."

"But…you said we couldn't," she falters. "It's too dangerous."

"Since when has danger ever stopped you, Doctor Watson?" he says, lips twitching into one of his pure honest smiles. She tries to smile back, but the insidious text messages she received in that elevator prickle the back of her neck in a cold reminder. Some things were just too important. Some people.

"We can't Sherlock," she says at last, heart sinking to the bottom of the cab. Sherlock's face falls, and he pulls away hands coming to grip the edge of the seat as he is forced once again to squeeze his eyes shut against the torment in his head. It feels as if she's dying as the draught his absence leaves behind seeps into her.

"I…yes. You're right. Forgive me," he replies, and it takes everything in her not to drag him back into her arms and retract everything she just said.

She tucks her hands under her thighs, and tries to keep her chest from breaking open.

The silence is like drowning.


I'm sorry this one isn't so warm and fuzzy, but this chapter was getting way too long and so I broke it up. The next one will be better, and will have some reconciliation! :D