John leaned his head against the cold glass window of the taxicab. His head ached after a long night without any sleep. He had left right after Greg who had offered to give him a ride back to his apartment. John declined, however, in a manner that was maybe a little too eager. He just wanted to take a nap which was delayed by the fact that he had to make a quick stop to the pharmacy before finally returning to his flat.

Upon returning, John noticed that he felt ill. His stomach twisted in all sorts of directions. Dread coursed through his veins. He felt for the first time that his statement marked the point of no return.

Then he squeezed the orange plastic bottle in his hand, feeling how his blood pulse in his palms as he pondered. No. This may be exactly what Sherlock wanted him to feel. It was so typical of Sherlock to do so. It was something he already attempted to apologize for.

When he arrived home, he slowly dragged his feet to his bed and collapsed into his bed.

His dreams were a mixture of horrifying events. And with every scene, a screechy violin tune was always there. Lingering in the back of his head. The shrieks scratched at his skull, entering his ears with a stabbing pain. It's tone became almost deafening and his ears began to bleed. John woke up with his teeth clenched and grinding.

John Watson didn't remember the last time he had had a dream so vivid. His mouth was extremely dry and his throat was parched. At first John thought he was still asleep when he heard the violin playing, but then he realized that he wasn't imagining it.

His stomach sank. He wasn't yet ready to face Sherlock after the argument in the hospital. The side of his face hurt and he had an awful ringing in his ears. John shook his head violently in an attempt to shake off the remnants of the ghosts of his previous headache.

John walked out of the room and peeked into the living room. Sure enough, Sherlock Holmes was playing there— violin in hand. He wondered which point of he had came into the house while John was asleep.

John leaned back against the wall and quickly before the detective could turn around and face him. He sighed. "Poker face," John whispered to himself. It was with this pathetic self declaration of encouragement that John stepped out into the living room and cleared his throat to assert his presence to the detective. The gesture seemingly fell on deaf ears.

"Here's your medicine," John proclaimed, setting the container filled with cylindrical porcelain pills onto the table the notes usually were on. The table that was missing a once evident journal.

The violin played on, paying the shorter man no mind. Although something was different about it this time. The notes lacked precision and the once steady tone now wavered unevenly within John's ear.

It then suddenly stopped. Sherlock was now tuning the instrument and flipping through the sheet music.

"Sherlock. Why did you leave?" John asked after moments of the awkward silence with the exception of randomized violin tones and the sound of sheet music flapping. The tension was making his awkwardly standing body ache. It was an attempt to make something...anything come out of the detective. But the army doctor was also slightly curious as to why Sherlock would want to hastily return to the initial area of their fight.

"I had to leave. They kept trying to sedate me." Sherlock still hadn't turned around. John decided to take a step closer to him as he tuned the A note.

"Probably should have stayed there then." John asked. "What about Greg?"

"What about him?" Sherlock asked as he looked up from his violin sheet music, irritation evident in his voice.

"Surely he would've checked back on you."

What little coherent noise the violin was making halted with a screech as the detective turned to look at him. That was the closest thing to a glare that Sherlock have ever looked at him with. John knew the words had stung, but he was genuinely curious. Greg didn't seem to be the type of person that would leave Sherlock's side no matter how upset he was. He expected him to return to the hospital after he calmed down. Wasn't that why Sherlock trusted him so much?

"He's not too concerned about me now, John," Sherlock mumbled bitterly. "In case you haven't noticed." Sherlock was seemingly nurturing the thought of Greg blowing up on him. He now seemed to be thawing himself in anger after Greg's voice froze him. And now he was releasing it onto John. "Don't ask questions you know the answer to John. He left the hospital right before you. And before you ask, no, he has not picked up his cell, work phone, nor his pager."

The detective set down his violin and sat down in his customary thinking position— putting his hands together in front of his face in the usual position as if he was about to pray. He then sighed shakily. "He's still cross with me."

Sherlock pursed his lips but said nothing else. Neither did John. He just stood there and studied Sherlock. He was disoriented even though his high should have ran out a long time ago. He was mumbling silently to himself and his eyes darted back and forth aimlessly. Greg's outburst obviously bothered Sherlock, but he was not the type of person that was likely to admit it.

For once, Sherlock couldn't think his way out of this one. And it was evident in his posture. His drooped head, hard breathing… and his shaking hands.

John rolled his eyes. It all made sense now. The unfocused violin notes, the mumbling, and now his shaking hands.

"So you're still using eh?"

Sherlock looked up at him momentarily with an unreadable expression before returning his gaze forward. The look of dread was etched in his expression. Even still, Sherlock didn't seem to have learned his lesson even after the risk to his life the previous night.

John shook his head. "Typical," he said starting to go the other way. "Your medicine's on the table."

He started to head for the door. Maybe he should have followed Greg's lead. It was futile to help Sherlock Holmes and ludicrous to have even tried. John was just about to head out the door when he heard Sherlock say something. A snide remark that was so low that John almost missed it.

John stopped. "What did you say?"

"Nothing John." Sherlock said. "Just go away."

"Go away?" John turned around and laughed incredulously. Was Sherlock trying to test him again? He felt another burst of anger trapped inside of himself. "Oh," John said after a pause. "Is the great Sherlock Holmes angry?"

"That's a deflection. You're projecting your anger onto me so you can feel less guilty about blowing up on me." Sherlock spoke slowly.

John acknowledged what Sherlock said with an insincere, thoughtful nod, then proceeded to make his way to the door.

Right before he reached the door, he heard Sherlock call his name. "John."

John stopped nearly on his way out, eyes stinging as he forced his frustration down.

"I'm no longer using."

"Right." John laughed incredulously as he spun from the door. "You really think I'm that stupid?"

Sherlock pursed his lips. "I didn't think you'e be that bitter with me to the point where you think I'm lying." Then Sherlock shook his head quickly as if he thought of something. "Or is it that you just feel guilty about reading my journal? You'd rather think that I'm always this way so that you wouldn't feel accountable or responsible for the recent spike in my usage?"

"Don't try to put this on me. Why else would Greg get so mad at you? You've been like this for a while. It's always been in you. It only took a situation like this to finally bring it out of you once again."

John eyed him, intensifying his breathing to stifle the apparent already evident annoyance. Why couldn't he hide his emotion so effortlessly like the detective that sat before him? He only truly knew what Sherlock felt when he spoke it and spoke it he did to the surprise of the shorter man.

"You're wrong." the detective finally said.

"I'm sure I am," John said bitterly. "I'm always wrong aren't I? Completely incapable of knowing anything until you point it out, hm?"

"Do you really want to know the answer to that?" Sherlock replied. John glared at him and Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment, taking in a shaky breath. Then reopened them, sighing. "I don't want you to think of me that way. That I'm some druggy." Sherlock said. "Things would be a lot easier for you to figure out if you weren't so damn…" The detective's voice cracked. "So damn simple minded."

John paused at the sincerity of his voice. Surely his words weren't as soft as they were supposed to be like someone in his position. But something was different about the way he said it. Sherlock had tears in his eyes. He was speaking out of frustration.

However, John wasn't quite ready to accept what Sherlock said. Over the past few years, John had seen the consulting detective assume other personas with convincing facades of emotion and even though it was a stretch to assume that that was even possible in this situation, his bitterness had slightly clouded his judgement. In a way, John's defiance to listen right away was mocking the detective's proud logic— daring him for an explanation.

"Your hands are still shaking." John finally pointed out before allowing himself to fall too quickly into Sherlock's words. "If your drug habits wasn't the reason then what was?"

"The shaking," he replied. "They were the cause, not the effect."

John read the words over and over again in his mind helplessly. "Sherlock… I'm not sure I follow."

"My hands," Sherlock let out an uncharacteristic noise. "I expected them to stop shaking. I got high to make the shaking stop. To take my mind off of things so that I could have a moment of peace. So that I wouldn't do stupid things like this— !"

Sherlock abruptly stood, making John wince at the speed. In a flurry of awkward movements, Sherlock ripped off his shirt.

John gasped. Sherlock revealed an array of self inflicted welts and scrapes on his torso. Slashes of slightly curved red lines travelled along his upper arms, shoulders, and stomach. It was then that John realized something else. Sherlock's shaking fingernails were caked in blood and the scars on his body moved with his harsh breathing.

"I can't control what I do. I ended up doing this while I slept in the hospital. I can't even play—," Sherlock abruptly slapped his violin onto the floor. "This bloody instrument properly."

John winced as the violin collided with the floor. The strings cried as they hit the floor. John worried that Sherlock had broken it.

"Are you satisfied with the answer now?" Sherlock yelled, his fury melted into small sobs.

"Sherlock… " John choked on his words. He didn't know what to say.

"I've realized something a long time ago." Sherlock smiled bitterly. "You can escape something but it will always find a way to haunt you one way or another."

"Why are you saying this?"

He continued. "When I first heard of the mind palace, I thought it was an absurd notion. But when your body is no longer yours and you're no longer able to control what happens to it, your mind becomes that much stronger."

John was speechless. He had absolutely nothing to say to this. He had not realized the extent to which Sherlock was internally tortured. He thought he had an idea whilst he looked through his journal. But in reality he had no fucking clue. How had he let this go over his head?

"I couldn't keep him off of me but I could keep him out of my mind. In that… place. You can keep your mind intact and let your body go to ruin, because your mind is all that matters. It made sense why I never had control over it."

"Sherlock." John was quivering at how little self worth Sherlock had for himself. "Stop… saying this. Please stop."

"But I've left that place. I was free. I had control again. I thought he couldn't get to me. I never thought I'd feel so helpless ever again. I thought…" Sherlock breathed "That he'd never be able to get into my head."

He then laughed again. "Well last night proved that wrong didn't it? This," Sherlock gestured to the scars on his body. "Proved that wrong."

There was a long pause.

Sherlock lowered his voice to a whisper. "I'm just as helpless as all those nights. I haven't escaped him. He's won."

It seemed like that last statement took all of Sherlock's energy away. John hastily walked up to him and guided his lulling body to the couch. He then flipped him to his stomach and looked at his back and arms. It looked a lot worse from up close. John had always wanted Sherlock to tell him things. He had envied Lestrade and looked into his personal journal for that same reason. However, he wasn't quite prepared for this. Nothing could have prepared his mind of Sherlock scuffing his own skin from anxiety and fear. John didn't know what to do or say to make this better.

After the detective calmed a little, John left the room quickly, cellphone in hand and called the only other person that knew Sherlock better than him.

The silver haired man arrived a lot quicker than John expected. He wondered if this would be a cycle. Something will go wrong with Sherlock and John would be helpless to stop it and would be forced to call Greg, the man who was now gasping at the sight of Sherlock. There was a look on his face that he couldn't quite grasp. As if all of his anger, sadness guilt and regret all rolled into one.

"Sherlock?" He asked stepped towards him.

The detective still lied in the position that John had put him in. No response.

"No no." Greg whispered as he quickly knelt by his side. "Not again. He should have just stayed in the damn hospital."

"So this has happened before?"

"Never to this severity. He's never drawn blood before. It's probably going to scar." Greg bit his lower lip as he eyed the detective. Obviously, he was looking for a response but he wasn't receiving one. Sherlock's face was buried in the couch. "Geez Sherlock, what have you done to yourself? We're gonna to go patch you up okay?"

Sherlock didn't reply. He only let out a muffled groan.

"John," Greg said.

John looked at him.

"I'm gonna have to cut his nails to the point where it's impossible to scratch anything." Greg said. "Could you get some bandages and— ."

"I know what to get," John muttered. He was a doctor after all. Receiving instructions from someone else on medical protocol didn't bode well with him. Then again he didn't follow his usual protocol because it was Sherlock and he was always too fearful to tamper with his perfect porcelain flesh. Not to mention that the only reason he really called Greg here was because he knew that Sherlock preferred Greg's company over his.

"Well get on with it then." Greg hastened. Not impolitely, just impatiently.

John looked through the cabinets until he found the right materials and set them on a tray. He paused when he realized that his muscles were tense. This was bothering him a lot more than he was letting on and it was finally starting to take a toll.

When he returned back from the kitchen, alcohol and bandages on a tray in hand, he found Sherlock in the same position: lying on the long couch faced down. Only this time Greg was kneeled next to him stroking his hair and whispering to him tenderly. John felt his hands ache as they squeezed the tray.

"Right," John announced after . "Shall we get started or would you like to continue not disinfecting his wounds?"

Greg looked up at John, unphased by John's shameless display of the envy. He was about to make his way towards the material John brought out when Sherlock brought his hand up to grab onto the hand that Greg used to stroke his hair. Greg, temporarily halted from movement once again leaned in.

"Greg," Sherlock whispered. "I'm sorry."

"No, Sherlock," Greg replied. "I am."

The two men stood outside of the flat once the detective was patched up and asleep. The silver haired man offered John a cigarette once they got some fresh air, to which the shorter man declined. They both sat on the porch, breaths making pale ghosts in the air as if they were smoke itself. The taxi to take Greg home would be arriving in any minute. It took moments before Greg finally spoke.

"I shouldn't have yelled at him." Greg placed his face in his hands; an audible curse muffled from behind them.

"I've never seen you so angry," John said reminiscing the events that happened earlier that day.

Greg nodded, leaning in to light a cigarette. "I just hate it when he's like that. I've seen it too many times before and each time I saw it, it terrified me." He gazed up at the night sky for a moment until he looked down. "John I do apologize and admit that my reason for getting angry were selfish."

"I-it's okay. There's no need to apologize," John replied slightly confused. Selfish? If anything, Greg was a much better friend to Sherlock than he. In what ways was he selfish?

Greg continued on as if he hadn't heard John. "I always think back to that place. I won't be able to cope if he took the easy way out. If he would rather rot his brain just to escape rather than facing it. That's not the Sherlock I know and it would make me lose the last shred of hope of making that place burn if he spiraled out of control again."

Greg was obviously mumbling to himself while he reflected in such remorse. The last few words Greg said lingered in John's head. He still had little knowledge of the history between the two. Perhaps this was the perfect time to gain that knowledge. He waited for a moment before saying, "You said he promised never to take cocaine again." The silver haired gentleman looked at him with confusion. "Back at the hospital," John clarified.

"Oh." Greg's voice was muffled when he returned the cigarette in his mouth. "Now that I think back I shouldn't have been surprised that he broke it. It wasn't the first time he did that. When he stayed in my flat I've seen him fall back on that same promise over and over again." He bitterly laughed to himself, sadness etched into his features.

John would have the same look on his face if Greg's statement hadn't caught him off guard. "You guys shared the same flat?"

"Hm?" Greg said distracted by his thoughts. Then finally caught up with the conversation. "Oh! He used to live in mine after both of us left that dreaded academy. He told me that he wanted to leave all of our pain behind. We worked on cases together to pay for the flat. I thought he'd help me...I thought we'd help each other. But he started depending on drugs for comfort and left me alone. I eventually had to get a job at an actual law firm to support the both of us."

"It was that bad?"

Greg side eyed him with sadness. "He doesn't act like himself when he's using, John. He acts like a scared child afraid of the boogie man in the closet. He did things...scary things when he was under the influence. He once tried to dig out his own throat with his nails." John thought back to how Greg was so adamant about cutting his nails. "I would wake up at night to find his body twisted at strenuous angles. And he would make theses sounds…" Greg paused to catch his breath. "Sorry, I'm rambling. Our relationship just couldn't really work out between us with everything going on."

"Relationship?" John whispered slowly as the word sunk it.

"Well it was best that I stopped dating that unstable," Greg sighed. "It wasn't good for either of us."

John gulped in an attempt to slow his rapid heart. "Dated?" He knew he shouldn't have been surprised seeing how close they were and how well they fit together while they were inside the flat, but everything up until that moment had just been guesses. It never hit him until now.

"Yes," Greg laughed incredulously at John's apparent constant flow of questions.

"Well you two must have had a great time," John said, instantly regretting the amount of bitterness he let spill into his words.

"It wasn't all happy-go-lucky like you'd think." Greg took another drag of his cigarette. "I mean it's Sherlock, go figure. I was used to that. I rather liked his haughty arrogant attitude. It was the fights we got into daily about his drug habits that ruined everything. If he'd just talked to me it wouldn't have gotten as bad as it did."

It was obvious that Greg was dealing with the pain from the memories he was now reminiscing in. "Where did things go from there?"

"Eventually he'd gotten worse. He doubled his doses. I'd scream at him. Hold him down. Force food down his throat so that he wouldn't starve. It had gotten in the way of my work. I had to stay home most days because I was scared that he would have killed himself while I was gone. I was close to losing my job so…" Greg sighed. "So I had no choice but to send him to rehab."

"You… sent Sherlock to rehab?" John said in a judging tone. A childish deflecting.

"John, he wouldn't talk to me. I didn't know what was wrong with him." Greg said in a tone that made John hush up. Greg's eyes were so sincere and John would have let his jealousy get in the way of understanding him if he had not also experienced the way Sherlock had shut him out. "He would lock himself in his room either using or working on a case that he wouldn't let me in on."

"Maybe it wouldn't have escalated this far if he had just let it go back then." John whispered, now realizing it for himself.

"You don't think I wanted that? At first I thought it did him good because I thought it would distract him from his cocaine addiction. But it only strengthened it. The deeper he delved, the more he used. I wanted him to stop the obsessing. I wanted him to stop locking himself in the room and not letting me in. Do you know how terrifying it is to be on the other side of a locked door, not hearing a noise coming from inside the room? Not knowing if the person inside is dead or not because of the uncanny silence? Or to randomly wake up in the night to hear screaming?" Greg's voice was a harsh whisper now. "I would have done anything in my power to make sure that he would stop obsessing over this particular case so that he would stop killing himself... Until I finally figured out why he was so obsessed with it."

"What do you mean?"

"I was looking around the flat and cleaning up while he was gone. I had managed to unlock the door of the room Sherlock kept himself in." Greg paused for moments. Constantly opening and closing his mouth from not wanting to speak of the events that caused him so much pain. Then he finally spoke. "He had a box under his certain."

John tensed as he sensed the pain now manifesting itself into Greg's physical being. He was visibly shaken. He continued. "There were these pictures that he had— of what they did to him. A whole stack. Many within each envelope sent over the course of a few months. Each with a message calling him Shirley. That's what they called him." Greg gulped. "This was why he couldn't leave all the pain behind. He was obsessed with this case because even though he wanted to escape those memories, they wouldn't let him. They did everything in their power to make sure that he remembered."

John froze. The contents of the journal were now back and stronger than ever. The part of the pages that John was too cowardly to read were what Greg had witnessed head on in those fowl pictures.

"Once I saw them I got him out of rehab." Greg sighed. "I don't completely regret my decision. I mean he did clean up somewhat after that."

Greg was rubbing his hands together now— the cigarette now long been finished, his hands had nothing to do. He finally put them in the pockets of his pea coat for warmth. "But he never regained his trust in me."

John mused on the word trust. In a way he felt contempt— happy that Greg Lestrade was capable of emotionally betraying Sherlock. It seemed that Greg wasn't the perfect friend after all. But oh he was more than a friend to Sherlock and what he did was unintentional.

"Now we're talking again. But he talks to me like we've never had anything. Like we were just life long friends." Greg shrugged. "I would be lying if I said it didn't hurt. But at least he's looking a lot better. Well, until last night that is. I guess that was the main reason I blew up on him. I was angry that he was using, yes, but everything else spilled out."

John remembered how Sherlock froze once Greg left him at the hospital. Sherlock had never done that when John had screamed at him with frustration over other things. Then again those things weren't as intense as this situation.

"He asked me to help him with the case even though I'm the reason I've set his progress back for a long time when he went to rehab. I don't know why he decided to pick it up again but I didn't hesitate to help him. I want to find those bastards and make them pay for what they did to him." A determined look was now etched on his face.

"He didn't always dress like that, you know," Greg said as he leaned in to light another cigarette. "It was after he left the academy where he started to cover up— wearing long sleeves, putting on ridiculous amounts of layers, a scarf, a huge trench coat to hide his body. I hated it when he started to dress like that. They changed him in so many ways. He started seeing his body as transport and nothing else."

Greg was rambling on again. John let his thoughts saunder off into what their relationship was like. If Greg's yelling was enough to hurt Sherlock to that extent, they must have been close. But in what ways? Was it only emotional. Were they intimate? The question slipped out before John could stop it. "What did you guys end up doing while you lived together?"

Greg tilted his head to the side. "What do you mean?"

It was too late to take anything back so he continued. "Did you guys ever do anything… physical?"

"Oh…" Lestrade cleared his throat from nonexistent flem and averted his eyes. "Well uh… we…" It seemed that he couldn't quite possibly get the right words out. The silver haired man's face reddened. "...Why?"

"Nothing. No reason. Sorry. That's none of my business." John said as he watched relief wash over the silver haired mans face. He didn't want to know the answer to it anymore. He wasn't interested in the details of how they engage in coidus. But he was interested in another thing. "Did you love him?"

A pause.

"Yes," Greg said. He smiled faintly and chuckled. "I did."

That wasn't so surprising to John in light of everything that he had just learned about and how he spoke of Sherlock.

"Did he love you?" John finally asked.

The taxi was finally pulling up. Greg stood up as it neared. For a moment, John thought that he wouldn't receive his answer. It wasn't until the taxi was in front when he finally spoke.

"I don't know."