Okay, sorry this doesn't further the story at all, but is necessary, and something I've felt was true since the original airing of The Fall. So let's have a moment with the 'in-laws' ;P

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Post comforting hug from his 'older sister', John pulls away and walks a few steps closer to the table Sherlock is lying on, focused on the bare feet sticking out the bottom edge of the cloth John misses a quiet approach.

Suddenly Mycroft is looming in John's peripheral vision and John starts, visibly jerked out of his contemplations he waits for Mycroft to gloat over sneaking up on him.

It doesn't happen, and John is forced to realise, as he studies Mycroft, that he isn't the only one scarred by 'The Fall'. Mycroft was also kept in the dark about his brother's trick until Sherlock could be sure there were no leaks in his organisation, it took him eight months.

"It's quite something isn't it?" Mycroft's voice is so small, a mere thread compared to the usual authoritative tones, "I never thought to be standing over his body again..."

John shifts from foot to foot, leg twinging a bit, "Have you talked about the F... well... about the last time with anyone?" Rolling his stiff shoulder he pulls his eyes away from the still form of his best friend and raises them to meet that man's brother's.

The sarcastically lifted eyebrow does a bit to dispel the raw emotion in Mycroft's face. He seems torn between saying, 'are you mad?' and 'non of your business!'. John nods to himself and is about to suggest talking with Greg when Mycroft starts talking.

"I spent the first month in the front room of the club. I didn't go home, I have no idea if I slept, all I can remember is the startling realisation I came to while reading one of those news rag exposés. If I left the room I'd never stop screaming, till the end of my days."

John, who at the beginning of this speech had whipped his head around to stare at Sherlock, doesn't miss the flinch that makes the cloth rustle a tiny bit. He keeps his gaze on the empty expanse of the cloth, allowing his vision to blur, trying to will himself to be the kind of support he thinks Mycroft needs right now, a sympathetic, quiet ear.

"Of course I continued to work, or so it seemed to my superiors, I have a lot to thank Anthea for. I answered texts and emails sure enough, but I wasn't able to... talk for months."

Rubbing absent-mindedly at his jaw muscle, "I developed horrible problems with my molars and my jaw because it was always clenched shut. A condition that only got worse as I tried to force myself back out into the world. I kept up this pattern for five months, at which time Anthea came to me and said there was something odd going on."

Placing a hand on John's shoulder he draws the ex-soldier's eyes back to him. "It was the first whispers that something was going on in the criminal underworld. With the first whispers, months before, we assumed it was the natural power struggle after Moriarty's death. This was of course not true, and when she came to me that day a small spread of hope bloomed in my heart and the compulsion to scream began to fade."

John searches the man's face as the anguish fades in his eyes and a tiny smile fights to be free. "After all Sherlock excels in being where and when neither of us imagine he could have been."

John huffs a humourless self depreciating laugh, "He certainly does, I've never been so happy to be wrong than I was the night he came home."

Mycroft's hand clenches tightly over the muscles of John's shoulder for a moment and then turns and swans off.

Watching for a moment as the imposing man once again became a meek cook, John shakes his head ruefully, "Bloody hell Sher, what did you do to us all?"

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Sherlock cannot believe what his ears are telling him. Quickly, using his other senses he verifies the identities of the people standing with him. John was easy, Sherlock could almost see a John shaped blob through his eyelids, and his ears are full of the little movements and sounds John makes.

Not to mention the smell of his flatmate, the combination of his Radox sea mineral shower gel and the comforting warmth of woollen jumpers with the aromas of black teas mixed in. 'Home.'

A little perplexed he checks the identity of the second person, even in his costume Mycroft is unmistakeable, so tall and 'At the moment,' slim. The distinct blend of lavender and lemongrass in his bespoke moisturiser mingling with the crisp sent of his cotton costume wafts over to Sherlock. It can be no other.

This makes their conversation even more frightening. Sure he'd known Mycroft was happy, in his understated 'caring is a disadvantage' way, to be contacted by his presumed dead little brother. But Sherlock hadn't for a second believed that his brother had been inconsolable during his 'death'!

He resolves to have Greg find out if it's as bad as it all sounded.