If John had to pick one worst day, this was probably it.
He'd just stepped inside the house – hadn't even had time to call out a hello that would have gone unanswered – when his phone rang. Sherlock's number on the screen made his lungs tighten, but that was stupid, he told himself. Sherlock and Lestrade were probably just out somewhere, and Sherlock had been seized by a rare fit of generosity and decided to let John know.
Never mind that Sherlock didn't call, he texted.
And he's probably have made Lestrade do the work.
"Sherlock, hi," he said, forcing his tone to light and unconcerned, gripping the banister so hard with his free hand his knuckles went white.
"John," Sherlock replied, and there was a tension in his voice that made John set his jaw, anxiety tightening his back and shoulders.
"What is it?" John asked, heart hammering, trying to convince himself that everything was fine, absolutely fine, that Sherlock had gone out on some case with Lestrade, that he was calling only because he was annoyed John hadn't magically known and shown up on his own.
There was a pause, too long to be natural, the anxiety of it making John's lungs constrict. He was just about to prompt his partner for a reply when Sherlock spoke, quietly and reluctantly.
"I don't know where I am."
The world narrowed, concentrating itself solely on the sound of Sherlock's voice, on the pounding pulse in John's ears.
"Where–" he started to ask, then stopped himself, cursing the stupidity of the question and the lack of tracking device on Sherlock's phone. Sherlock had installed one on John's but John had never thought to return the favour. "Do you remember what direction you went?"
There was a huff on the other end of the line, almost typically Sherlock, John thought.
"I'm in a park."
"Regent's Park?" John demanded. "Near the flat?"
There was a pause, before Sherlock cleared his throat quietly.
"Yes. Probably."
"Probably?"
"I– don't recall it taking long to get here. And I only had a twenty minute window before you returned home."
John let out a deep sigh, relaxing only minutely.
"Then probably yeah. What do you see? Close by."
"There are people," Sherlock replied dryly. "And trees."
John set his jaw, fingers tightening on his phone as angry retorts lined up on his tongue. A bird's eye view of the park flashed across his mind, well over a hundred hectares of green space full of trees and people.
Somewhere in the midst of that was his partner and best friend, lost and alone.
And Mary was still out there.
"Sher–"
"And a waterfall."
John let out a harsh breath he hadn't known he was holding, not caring if Sherlock heard it over the phone.
There was only place that fit that description, and it wasn't too far.
"Okay," John said, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to think past the panic. "Um– just wait a second. Stay on the line. I'm not hanging up, all right?"
He fished his headphones out of his pocket and plugged them in, freeing up his hands and making Sherlock completely inaudible to anyone else but John himself.
"Okay, I'm coming to get you. Stay where you are. Don't leave with anyone else."
"Obviously," Sherlock drawled, and John repressed a sigh because he could hear the undercurrent of uncertainty, and starting a row wouldn't do any good.
"Talk to me," John said instead, needing to distract Sherlock as much as he needed to distract himself. "Tell me about the people you can see. Give me their life's stories."
That would keep Sherlock occupied while giving John a better sense of his situation – if there was anyone suspicious – Mary or any of her people – Sherlock would pick up on it. They needed to take any advantage they had right now; the thought of Sherlock back in the hospital, or worse, made it difficult to see properly.
John sucked in a deep breath, repressing that fear mercilessly, and focused on his partner's voice and on getting to him.
He stopped at Speedy's, quickly grabbing two takeaway coffees, giving them a bit of a cover. Sherlock rattled off deductions on his ear, John hummed responses and asked questions here and there, trying not to waste too much of his breath on conversation.
The flood of pedestrians around Baker Street and Regent's Park set him on edge in a way it never had before – John was as used to dodging tourists and school groups as any other local, but he felt wedged behind them today, every cluster or more than two people slowing him down, fanning a low burning resentment. He set his jaw, forcing himself to focus on Sherlock's voice while moving as fast as he could, each step somehow taking an unnecessarily long time.
It took less than fifteen minutes but it could have been an eternity, made better only by the constant sound of Sherlock's voice in his ear. John spent the whole way waiting for the monologue of observations to be cut off abruptly, to lose his only connection to the detective without having reached him first.
But Sherlock was there when John arrived, grey eyes tracking his progress intently – probably anyone else would have read it as impatience, but John knew his partner better than that. Impatient was Sherlock's default state of being, but this had a hefty dose of fear and uncertainty mixed in, and no small amount of vulnerability.
He let out a sigh, consciously relaxing his shoulders, and closed the remaining distance between them, forcing a small smile.
"Hi," John said, faking a casual tone and half wondering how he was pulling it off. "Sorry I took so long. I brought coffee."
John was coming.
John was coming, and that was the only thing that mattered. Everything else paled in comparison to that fact, because Sherlock was no longer alone and adrift in a city of eight million people. He was tethered to the rest of the world, to his life, to everything that made sense, to the one person who was truly important.
It made no sense that the fear hadn't dissipated, that the trapped, vulnerable feeling clung to him, hemming him in, making him acutely aware of everything and everyone around him – more so than normal, so much so that it was almost painful. He wasn't alone, but he felt alone.
It was a stupid feeling, he told himself.
John was coming.
Everything was right in the world.
Except it wasn't, he knew it wasn't, even as he obeyed John's instruction to observe those around him. John's reasoning behind that was obvious – it kept Sherlock occupied and alerted both of them to any potential threats.
Did John know that Sherlock himself was a potential threat?
How could he continue like this, with his mind so willing to sabotage him? How would he be able to take on cases if, without warning, all the connections would shatter, leaving him lost and bewildered, not knowing where to go next or how to get there?
What would John do with him?
In the months – years? – to come, would John put up with this? How would he manage? Would he stop working, follow Sherlock around until the adventure and exhilaration of a case became routine and suffocating? Until he wasn't with Sherlock because he wanted to be, because he craved the speed of it all, the insanity, the adrenaline rush, but because he had to be?
To keep Sherlock from getting himself lost.
What about today? What would John do today? Would he be angry? He hadn't sounded angry on the phone. He'd sounded afraid.
Terrified.
But terror was an immediate, instinctual reaction to the situation at hand. An eons-old response evolved to identify threats and means of escape.
Anger came after, when the threat was neutralized, when it was evident how stupid that threat had been, how it had been self-inflicted.
One of Mary's people was watching him.
Sherlock realized it in the blink of an eye, clamping down on the nearly catastrophic comment and diverting John's attention from any unexplained gaps in his observations by focusing on a woman pushing a buggy while being harried by a small toddler.
The woman encumbered by the children wasn't Mary's – children only made a good cover when they were easily controlled, which, even in Sherlock's limited experience, he knew toddlers were not.
It was the man sitting across the small river from him, under the shade of a tree, reading a book on a bench.
He'd just arrived, seemingly innocuous, and Sherlock's gaze had danced right passed him at first, but a second glance revealed it all – his posture, the way he held his book, the tilt of his head, the colour of his shoes. He might as well have been wearing a sign announcing it, except that it was only Sherlock's awareness he wanted.
If he even wanted that.
He didn't care, Sherlock decided. Neither of them could reach the other before their target had time to flee. He wasn't armed, and he was alone.
This wasn't a trap.
It was simple observation.
Mary letting him know she was watching.
But for what? Did she have a reason?
His continued good health? He could have stopped her right there if that was the case – the blow to his head had devastated his memory, and the damn bruises around his eyes were slow to fade.
If his health had been her concern, she'd have been better off not inflicting the concussion in the first place.
Was she providing an alternate solution in case John hadn't been available?
He'd told John if she'd wanted him dead, he would be – but how far would she go to keep him alive? Was he necessary to her somehow, or simply convenient?
Or maybe just not inconvenient enough to let go of.
She certainly didn't need to help him. Even without John, Mycroft would have had someone round him up within an hour.
Sherlock considered – briefly – that the reader might be one of his brother's people. But no – he wouldn't be allowed to keep his dignity this way. Anyone working for Mycroft would have approached him and been insufferable at him the way his brother always was.
Sherlock was certain Mycroft hired people exactly like him, for the express purpose of making Sherlock's life all the more irritating.
Something tugged at his attention, not anything observable or conscious, but something more instinctive than that – John's presence registering on his senses. Sherlock hated that he couldn't quantify it properly; there had to be some logical, scientific explanation as to why he was so much more aware of John than he was of anything else.
There was the obvious emotional connection, of course, but it seemed to go beyond that, to something approaching a visceral awareness. Which was absurd. He was in control of his mind, of what he perceived and observed. His brain didn't have the right to do things without his express permission.
It did anyway.
It was how he'd ended up here, watching John close the distance between them, bearing coffee as a cover, the lines around his eyes and between his eyebrows screaming of a tension that no one else would pick up on. Particularly when he spoke, greeting Sherlock with a feigned lightness that award-winning actors would have paid to learn to emulate.
"Hi," John said, extending one of the takeaway cups to Sherlock before plunking himself down on the bench. "Sorry I took so long. I brought coffee."
Sherlock took the coffee readily, but John didn't miss the way his partner's hands trembled, ever so slightly, as he closed his fingers around the cup.
John sat down next to him, feeling caught in a maelstrom of tension and relief – both his and Sherlock's – as they sat silently, sipping coffee and pretending to the rest of the world that absolutely nothing was wrong.
"Good day at work then?" Sherlock asked, and John heard the steadiness in his voice, the indifference to a subject he only cared about because it pertained to John – and he knew the tone was deliberate. It was only slightly too brittle for Sherlock, who would normally ask that question in a wearied drawl, less interested in John's response than in a way of breaking up his own boredom.
"Yeah, fine thanks," John replied, keeping his own tone hearty, a smile on his face. "Any clients today?"
"No," Sherlock replied. John wondered if that were true – Sherlock rarely went a day without clients. But occasionally he went a day without bothering to see clients, too wrapped up in something else.
Of course, without his experiments, there probably wasn't anything else demanding his attention, unless he'd been composing.
They sat for a few minutes in what would pass for companionable silence to anyone else, then John nodded, clapping a hand on his knee.
"Right. Shall we go?"
"Yes," Sherlock hissed emphatically, the word almost lost against the rim of his coffee cup.
John led him back through the park, aware of the tension pouring off of Sherlock as he kept step with John but utterly dependant on the doctor for direction.
The tension dissipated suddenly and John heard Sherlock whisper a quiet "oh", relief washing through the doctor as Sherlock abruptly remembered where he was and how to get home from there. Silently and without really trying, John passed the lead to Sherlock, letting the detective get them back to Baker Street.
Upstairs, he made Sherlock sit through a quick medical evaluation, checking the responsiveness of his pupils, taking his pulse, quizzing Sherlock on his memory prompt from the hospital, which visibly annoyed the detective, but at least he answered. Sherlock suffered through it with glowers and huffs but no more strenuous protests, and John was glad he didn't have to channel his old rugby skills because he really wasn't above pinning his partner down right now, and not in an enjoyable way.
"Tea," John said once he'd finished, more of a pronouncement than a question. Sherlock nodded, fidgetting slightly, but stayed seated on the sofa when John gave him a warning look. The doctor went into the kitchen, trying not to stalk, and flipped on the faucet, taking a moment for a long, deep breath, fingers curling around the edge of the counter.
Right, he told himself, giving one firm, curt nod, ignoring the faint tremors he could feel in his hands. Right. It's fine. It's all fine.
He pulled down two mugs, filled the kettle and switched it on, then bent double over the sink, gripping the edges of the metal basin, sucking in harsh breaths through his teeth.
He was not having a panic attack, he told himself. He really wasn't. He just had to get himself back under control. Just needed to convince his body that everything was fine. And he could do it, he absolutely could, he just needed a bit of time and to concentrate, not to breathe so quickly despite the fact that his body was screaming for oxygen he knew it was getting.
It's fine, he told himself again, somehow managing a shaky, baffled laugh because it so clearly wasn't and if Sherlock were there, he'd point out how ridiculous conclusion was, based entirely on false premises, and Sherlock was there, John reminded himself, he was and he was fine, or would be fine, everything would be fine–
And then Sherlock was there, solid and real, looming in the kitchen doorway, presence filling the room, accented by an undercurrent of his cologne and the smell of water, which was still pouring from the tap.
"John?"
"Oh Christ," John managed, and folded in on himself, sinking to the floor, one hand gripping the counter as if it might keep him up, or perhaps as some sort of lifeline. Sherlock had crossed the kitchen and crouched down in front of John almost before he was aware of moving, far more focussed on his partner's body than his own. John was breathing hard – too hard, beginning to hyperventilate, shoulders heaving, hands shaking visibly.
"John–"
He was cut off when John threw his arms around Sherlock's shoulders and crushed the detective to him, fingers digging almost painfully into Sherlock's back. Sherlock blinked, mind stuttering maddeningly under the shock, and he nearly pulled away, alarmed, when John's gasping breaths dissolved very suddenly to sobs.
He managed to get his arms around John in return, holding on tightly and wincing against the strength in John's grip. Surely no one shaking that hard should be able to hold on so tightly, but John clung to him as if letting go meant plummeting to his death – although maybe, to John, it did right now.
"It's all right," Sherlock said, which only served to worsen John's anguish, nearly dragging them both down before Sherlock could steady them, muscles in his legs burning with the effort of keeping them steady and crouched.
He bit his lip against any more useless platitudes and rubbed John's back, trying to give his partner some grounding in reality, some voiceless reassurance, as his mind spun, prodded on by itself, trying to devise a solution. Should he call 999? Was it possible to induce a seizure or dislocate a joint this way? How long could someone sustain this kind of hyperventilation before losing consciousness? Was cerebral hypoxia a concern?
He wanted to ask John, because under normal circumstances he would, but he couldn't now, and his training with the dead eclipsed his experience with the living, leaving him at a loss for what to do other than to let John cling to him, sobbing. He'd never encountered a reaction this severe, even after rescuing clients from the brink of death.
Even after faking his own suicide, having trusted himself to a fall from several stories, when his life had seemed to slip away from him, tumbling into nothing until he'd hit the safety net, and everything had snapped, abruptly but also delayed, leaving him curled up in a foetal position that night on the floor at Mycroft's, entirely expecting to die just from the shock of it.
Sherlock braced himself carefully, able to rock John slightly, wondering if it helped at all – certainly there must be something behind it, some vestigial connection to infancy, but if it made any difference, it wasn't obvious; John clutched at him, face buried against Sherlock's neck, soaking Sherlock's shirt, racked by deep, rasping sobs.
Guilt settled in Sherlock's stomach, spreading outward in rapidly growing tendrils until it constricted his lungs. This was his fault – if only he'd listened and not wandered off, if only he'd programmed their address into his phone so as to be able to retrace his steps… If only he'd stopped to think, the one thing at which he truly excelled, that set him apart from the seething mass of humanity with whom he had to share the city, then he wouldn't have sent John spiralling over this cliff, terror swallowing the reality that Sherlock was fine (now), that nothing untoward had befallen him.
"It's all right," he murmured again, not intending to speak the words, but recognizing them as echoes of how John had reassured him in the hospital, when he'd been untethered from everything but John, convinced he'd slipped back into the drugs, or simply unaware of anything that had happened at all. "I'm right here."
John jerked away abruptly, violently, and there were hands on his face before Sherlock could react, pulling him into a bruising kiss. Sherlock nearly lost his footing, struggling to keep his balance despite conflicting reactions at the sudden intensity, the shock stifled almost immediately a stab of lust that burned across his nerves when John growled, a primal, predatory sound.
He pushed Sherlock backwards, and the detective felt his heart stutter before slamming back into action, acutely aware of their positions and of the refrigerator right behind them; if John off-balanced them enough to push Sherlock beneath him, he'd hit his head–
A strong arm around his shoulders stopped that, pulling Sherlock back the other way, John shifting without breaking the kiss, adjusting them so that Sherlock was straddling him. John's right hand slid down to hold Sherlock's chin, keeping him in place as John rummaged through a drawer with his free hand, the growl of triumph that finally broke them apart making Sherlock feel weak, legs giving up what remained of his balance to sink the rest of the way, letting John take all his weight.
John grinned, dark and feral, shoving the lube at Sherlock, who took it, fumbling only slightly as fingers went to work on his belt and trousers. The abruptness of it almost hurt, the flare of discomfort followed by a sharp stab of pleasure that made him drop his head back, sucking in a deep breath through gritted teeth.
He made a strangled sound when John palmed him roughly through his pants, reaching out blindly to grab the edge of the counter for support. John huffed a warning, and Sherlock managed to raise his head again, forcing his eyes open to find the doctor watching him, unwavering gaze breaking something else down inside of Sherlock as his body picked up the rhythm of John's hand, pleasure burning down every nerve.
John grinned again, a hand on the back of Sherlock's neck pulling him into another kiss. Sherlock made a small noise of protest when John pulled his left hand away to undo his own jeans. He wrestled the lube from Sherlock's fist, breaking the kiss to grasp the small tube between his teeth, expression intent, eyes gleaming, as he freed them each from their pants.
John met Sherlock's eyes again, raising one eyebrow, and Sherlock tried not to shudder at the possessiveness of that expression. He managed a small nod, eyes fluttering closed when John grinned, popping the cap on the lube to coat his hand.
Sherlock dug his fingers into the unyielding surface of the counter at John's sudden grip, the doctor setting a hard, merciless pace, stroking both of them together. Fingernails bit into his back and it was too much, the sensation of being trapped between John's hand and John's cock, but it wasn't enough, not yet – he could feel himself hurtling towards the edge but resisting it almost instinctively, half desperate for, half terrified of the intensity of it, and he could taste John here and now but smell the crisp Welsh breeze–
John snarled, fingers curling into Sherlock's hair at the base of his skull and tugging hard, and Sherlock came with a startled shout, nowhere to go as his orgasm swept through him at the same time as John's, the doctor's hand working them both through it roughly until the world went grey around the edges of Sherlock's vision, pleasure peaking without any hint of breaking.
It did, suddenly, leaving him gasping, curling downwards towards John, who managed to catch him, one handed, his own shoulders heaving. For one moment – one delicious, sublime moment, no longer than the space of heartbeat – there was nothing but his body and John's, his mind ecstatically blank, processing only the two of them, the heated air between them, the smell of sex, the serious expression on John's face as he watched Sherlock intently, eyes rimmed red, cheeks tear-streaked.
Sherlock inhaled slowly, deeply, using the moment and the oxygen to kick his brain back into high gear. They needed cleaning up – this was hardly the ideal way to have this conversation, messy and half undressed, but there was something that needed to be said first. Sherlock took John's face in his hands, as John had just done to him, but carefully, without any demands or fury.
"I'm sorry," he said. And meant it.
John stared at him as if he'd spoken Greek, and Sherlock did a quick scan of the words to confirm that he hadn't, baffled by his partner's reaction.
"You're sorry?" John demanded. Sherlock hesitated and nodded, scanning John's face, trying and failing to find all of the little hints that would explain the confusion, unable to follow the reasoning behind John's dry laugh, the way blue eyes skittered away from him before being drawn back as John shook his head.
"Sherlock–" John fumbled, for words and for a towel; Sherlock managed to snag the tea towel from the stove, passing it to the doctor who wiped them both down before pitching the towel away and tucking himself back into his clothing. Sherlock straightened himself back up as well, kneeling between John's legs, uncertain and despising that uncertainty, trying to cajole his mind into understanding but failing.
He felt a moment's fear that it was the concussion, but no – he'd felt this way before, once, when he'd first met the Woman. He'd been able to read John then, and he could still pick up all of the mundane thoughts and experiences etched into his partner's features, but he didn't understand this, the dry almost-amusement and confusion that mixed into John's expression.
"You're sorry," John repeated, voice almost weary, and Sherlock nodded, hesitantly. John gave a short, barking laugh, looking away again as if it would provide him with whatever answers he was looking for. "You're sorry?"
"Yes," Sherlock said, on the basis that it was both true and probably the right answer.
"Christ," John said, dropping his head back to rest against a cupboard door, covering his face with his hands.
"You don't get it, do you?" John asked, raising his head again. A small, wry smile quirked the corners of his lips and he shook his head once. "How do you not know?" he asked, the words dragging Sherlock back immediately, the way John so obviously knew they would. "Sherlock, how do you not know?"
Fingers closed around Sherlock's wrists before shifting upward to grip his hands.
"Was this the first time you went out on your own?" John asked.
"Yes," Sherlock replied. Blue eyes raked over his features, and Sherlock let John see the truth to that statement.
"Until now, you've listened to everything I said? Done what I've told you and what the neurologist told you?"
"Yes," Sherlock said again. "Mostly."
"Mostly," John echoed. "But nothing like this."
"No."
John laughed again, that harsh, unpleasant laugh, sitting forward, forcing Sherlock back onto his heels.
"Sherlock, you're a bloody observational genius. You're fucking brilliant at it but Christ are you bloody blind when it comes to yourself. You wandered off by yourself today and got lost – how do you not understand how this makes me feel about Mary?"
Sherlock blinked, startled by the sudden turn in the conversation, and John seized the moment, cutting Sherlock off before he'd had the chance to draw a breath to speak.
"This is the first time you've been out on your own? The first? I expected you to have done it the day after we got home! Do you think I want this, Sherlock? Do you think I want to tell you that you can't do all the things that make you you, that you can't do your experiments and set fire to the kitchen or that you can't run off at a moment's notice after some bad guy, leaving me to catch up, trusting – no, just knowing that you can do it, that you won't – I don't know, somehow break in the middle of all it and forget what to do and get lost – or worse?"
He sucked in a hard breath, shaking his head when Sherlock opened his mouth to speak.
"Mary did this to you, Sherlock. She set you up to fake your own death to get rid of Moriarty, she played Harry and abandoned her, and then she did this – she took you away from yourself, and you think I'm angry at you?"
"John–"
"Do you think I don't worry every goddamn day that your memory won't come back fully? That you won't be the way you used to be? Sherlock, for god's sake, I want you to be breaking these stupid rules! I want you to give us all the slip and end up brilliantly solving some amazing case – I want you to figure out where a kidnapped French author is when no one else can bloody find him and storm in and save the day – and you did save him and you were brilliant and don't you understand that she left you bleeding from your fucking head in a burning building? She left you to die, Sherlock, and you think I'm angry because you took a little walk?"
"She didn't–" Sherlock began.
"She did," John snarled. "You were in her way and she got you out of it and it could have killed you." He paused, muscles in his jaw jumping, blue eyes blazing.
"She tried to take you from me."
It finally clicked, all of it, the last sentence linking everything in a way that should have been obvious – would have been obvious if he'd been in full command of his faculties, no, that wasn't true because his observational skills were fine.
Obvious to everyone else.
Not obvious to him.
John bundled Sherlock to him again, chin digging into Sherlock's shoulder, fingertips tiny points of pressure on Sherlock's back.
"How can someone so bloody smart be so bloody stupid at the same time?" he asked, but there was a fondness underlying his words, one that made Sherlock's lips curl into the ghost of a smile. John pulled away carefully, fingers splayed on Sherlock's cheeks, meeting his gaze squarely if somewhat hesitantly. "How do you not know, Sherlock?"
"I–" Sherlock began before words failed him, stopping him from saying he understood. John huffed quietly, pulling him into another hug; bewildered, Sherlock wrapped his arms around his partner, trying to comprehend what John had said. Not the words, but the depth of it.
He should have known. He should have realized it ages ago. John had said as much when Sherlock had said he'd never been waiting for anything better to come along.
"Yeah. Me neither."
Sherlock had accepted that as fact, but it hadn't occurred to him precisely what John had meant then – not other potential romantic partners, because Sherlock had never had any interest in that beyond John and couldn't actually fathom ever doing so – but to those who wanted to challenge his brilliance, to play with, or perhaps against, the world's only consulting detective.
He understood Mary as much as he'd understood any of his opponents, as much as Moriarty or the Woman. Not in precisely the same way, because the connection wasn't really there, or wasn't really the same – Moriarty was like him on levels that transcended rationality and stirred no small amount of unease when Sherlock thought about it. Moriarty had been bored, desperate for distraction in a world that didn't understand him, couldn't keep up with him, and the Woman– the Woman… Sherlock understood her as deeply as Moriarty because she wanted the same things, but where Jim wanted distraction, she wanted connection, and Sherlock knew that feeling too, to the very core of him, but he'd meant it, every syllable, when he told John he'd never been waiting for anything else.
She'd found him after he'd already found it, before he'd had it fully but knowing it was there, and taking it utterly for granted.
Mary, on the other hand… Sherlock understood the practicality, the necessary mathematics. John did, too, in his own way – he was a trained surgeon and a former soldier. The decisions that had to be made in hard, bloody moments were as calculated as those Sherlock made, the ones that made him seem cold to people who operated entirely on sentiment, but that were balanced, considered, logical.
She'd had no real ill-will toward him, but no warmth either. He'd simply been in her way, then he hadn't.
And, he realized abruptly, that was precisely what the Woman had done to them with Wales.
Sherlock had been in her way to Mycroft, and John had been in her way to Sherlock. She'd needed something and found the simplest, most effective way of getting it. Separating Sherlock from Mycroft, and John from Sherlock.
The calculation hadn't been as cold, he knew that, but perhaps it didn't matter.
Mary had made the same calculation and come to a conclusion with which John would never, ever agree.
John drew away gently, resting his forehead against Sherlock's, hands on Sherlock's shoulders.
"She doesn't get to make that decision," he said. "She doesn't have the right. No one does. Okay?"
Sherlock's lips twitched and he managed a tiny nod without displacing his partner, closing his eyes and inhaling slowly, re-committing John's smell to his somewhat erratic memory, storing it where he knew it could never get lost, in the sprawling rooms dedicated entirely to John.
"Yes," he agreed. "All right."