Chapter 8: Do You Trust Me?

Sherlock woke up, right as John had finished cleaning the blood off of him,and was about to add plasters.

"Wait..." Sherlock groaned, and grabbed John's wrist.

John flinched ,and looked up at him, with eyes as wide as an owls. It was the first time,since they had been reunited,that Sherlock had reached out of his own volition,and touched him. His hand was cadaverously cold, and trembling. John reached around with his free hand,and clutched the one at his wrist.

"Yeah?"

"The plasters...you can't...you can't bandage me ,John..."

John. He was starting to remember him.

"No-no you need plasters, all these wounds will break open and bleed the first time you shift..."

Sherlock laughed a hoarse squeak. "I appreciate your compassion, I really do. You can't,honestly, begin to know how ...ummm...useful it is to me. But..."he shifted,and just as John had said, blood began to weep from him again. How much could he possibly have left?

"But ,I promise you, he will open them again, in fact, I can hear him shifting around inside the church. When he's had another glass of gin, he'll be ready to go at it again...And the other thing you have to calculate- even for a brute like him, it will be quite obvious I didn't bandage myself. Even cleaning me up is a little risky, but he will blame the children for that, and he needs them to be in top form , for the look out, so he won't abuse them. He can't know you're here yet, that will make it next to impossible to smuggle the others out,and you've got around 29 more to go. So, you've...you've gotta lay low for a while,alright?"

This was TOO MUCH to ask. It was one thing to force him to watch him die. It was one thing more to turn up miraculously alive, but in captivity that made the thought of hell seem like holiday. To make him leave him on that post was almost impossible. To make him stand back,and listen while he was beaten within rags of his flesh?

But not to allow him bandage him?Which is what a doctor is supposed to do?John just...can't.

He starts to panic, years of building PTSD coming to a head.

"You can't-you cant be serious! You could bleed to death, this is insane!" John is hyperventilating. Turning blue around the lips. Eyes blinking almost like he were having a seizure, fighting unconsciousness, with all the pent up anger and pain inside him.

"YOU MADE ME WATCH YOU DIE ONCE!" he would have shouted, and given it all away, but his voice was nearly gone.

Sherlock nodded, "I know...I'm ...I'm starting to remember. With something paramount to my life before,... or in this case someone, I can't delete the individual...you ,in particular, for lengthy periods of time. I don't remember much, but I know...what you're talking about...I need..." he coughed,and John caught him,

"You need a bloody hospital! You can't expect me to leave you here, like meat on a peg, with flies, and nasty rot, -not to mention wild animals smell fresh blood-you're outside in the elements, you!-"

"I need you to trust me, John. Do you trust me?"

John blinked wildly...Did he? After?

Sherlock nodded, "I know, it's presumptuous. I guess that's...how I am...and I'm sorry...for being ..like that..."

"No, no, I trust you...with my life. Your brother-Mycroft-your brother...he told me..."John was in tears now, trying not to let them out, but it was proving impossible. Even soldiers must have a breaking point. Dead men ,however, do not. They are already broken.

Sherlock stretched his chained arms out,and reached,and awkwardly embraced him, not really thinking about all the blood he was getting on him. John gasped,and fell into his arms, trying not to hurt him, that proving almost impossible.

Oh ,what had he done now?Now that he was in his arms, how would he ever let him go again? This...it was...just...

"This has all been for you..."Sherlock whispered, into his ear, and that didn't comfort him at all. It only made the tears harder to tame. Sherlock nodded ,like he knew...

"You know you're human if you can do that...so don't...don't fight...But I need you to be able to walk weeping, you understand? I'm going to have to ask you to do something impossible for me ,ok? I wouldn't ask you, if I wasn't willing to do it myself. John,that rooftop, doing that to you-I didn't...I couldn't...I ...it was impossible..."

"God, it's ok, I forgive you now!"he gasped in the side of his neck, shaking.

Sherlock nodded, in tears now himself, but having a better handle on them, only because he absolutely must, so he could speak,

"What I'm asking you isn't right to ask you, but it will be absolutely neccesary. Trust me, John...I know my enemy better than I know my friends, now. I'm going to have to ask you to let me go, to turn a blind eye,and go back to the little ones. Use your first-aid on them. Rest them while it's day,and take off with them at night...because the night.." Sherlock smiled, grimly,

"The night is when we go to the Game Room ,as he calls it, and he plays his games with me...And it would be easier, for you, and for them...if you weren't here...for that..."

"You..you..you're,...I?"

"John...Trust me..."

John sat up, took him by both sides of his face, panting raggedly.

"Ok...Ok,...I can do that...But...I've gotta ask you to do something for me in return..."

Sherlock smiled grimly, "I'd do ...anything...for you..."

John nodded, "I know..." he swallowed the sob that was building like a mountain's erruption,inside of him,

"Even die for me...I know. And now...now that you're suffering, that might be easier than what I'm asking of you...Promise...me... , that you'll survive. That you'll fight..."

John just COULD NOT finish what he was saying.

Sherlock nodded. "I swear it. Go now..I hear him coming."

Impulsively,John bowed over, took his head in his hands, and kissed him in the middle of his wild hair.

And then..he left him AGAIN. Right when the evil man that he wanted to just turn around and kill mercilessly- knew how to kill mercilessly- came back out for round 2 with the chain.

"Maybe ...you will remember better now...Oh, look the brats cleaned up your blood? Don't like messes, do they? Well, I'll give them a real something not to like, won't I?" the man growled in Serbian.

Sherlock flashed one of his cold ,silver green eyes ,out from behind the wild raven veil,

"There isn't much red left to splatter...poor devil," he mocked in the same language.

John heard the tone in Sherlock's voice, even if he didn't understand the words, and he knew what he was trying to do.

"Oh God, I'm not ready." he thought, but marched ,like the soldier that he was ,back to the kids, who were cowering in fear behind their Sister's graves.