[[I was feeling some type of way. Text in italics are quotes from "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry]]

S'il te plait, apprivoise-moi.

Please–tame me.

The line echoed in his head over and over. When he was a young child, his mother had read him The Little Prince in every language she could get her hands on. She had made a point of teaching his youngest about his feelings and how they related to others. Sherlock had always considered the book a flight of fancy–a sweet confection made to convince children that the world was bright and loving. Moreover, he never understood the fox's motivations, asking a boy to tame him simply to make a friend; to make him special. He had never understood the need to be tamed until Addie.

His fingers held her small hand in his, careful not to tangle the lines of her IV. "You are forever responsible for what you have tamed." The words has tumbled out of his mouth without so much as a warning. Sherlock felt like the more he reminded Adelaide of her role, the more likely it was she would wake up. There was comfort in the over-simplified ideas of friendship and trust and love. Such comfort had driven the detective to read the same book to Delilah when she was small. He needed that comfort right now.

"If you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine upon my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow." A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, remembering every time Addie's presence had irritated and thrilled him in equal measure. How, no matter how hard he tried, he could not get rid of her. Even on days when she could not stand the sight of him, she returned, knowing that he needed that constant. "For instance, if you come by at four in the afternoon, I will begin to be happy at three. By four, I will be excited and worried-I will discover what it costs to be happy! If you come at any old time, I'll never know when to prepare my heart–"

"Sir, the dog cannot be here." A nurse broke his recitation, and Sherlock snapped his jaw shut harder than necessary.

"He's a service animal, it's fine," he sneered, glaring daggers at the woman who looked nonplussed.

"And what service does he provide?"

"The service of attacking on command, so I suggest you getting the fuck out of this room before I set him on you."

The dialogue was punctuated by a vicious growl that Addie was very familiar with. In fact, she was familiar with the whole conversation–it was the very same she had had with a nurse when Sherlock had taken a bullet of his own. He seemed marginally less aggressive than she had been during that time. After all, she had nearly lost the love of her life before having had a chance to love him (through no fault of her own, but still).

Retreating steps echoed down the hallway and Addie barely managed to wrench her eyes open to see her husband and dog settled on the cot beside hers, hand stretched to close tight around her own. Sherlock was wearing a matching medical robe, though there weren't nearly as many machines hooked up to him as there were to her.

"Stop stealing my threats, Sherlock," she rasped, smirking.

Sherlock gasped, sitting up like a shot and hobbling his way to her bedside, dragging an IV pole behind him. "Adelaide!" He entered her field of view a second later, plopping onto the bed beside her, tears sparkling over those ethereal irises. Her heart sank. He looked tortured. "How dare you!? How dare you steal away in the middle of the night looking for trouble I've brought on myself!? How dare you catch a bullet for trying to reason with a fool!? How dare you try to leave me alone on this wretched planet!?" His voice cracked and he choked out a pitiful sob, his head falling into her lap. His whole body convulsed as he dampened her sheets with his tears, sobbing for several minutes before she decided that she could interject.

"Welcome to my world, Sherlock," she muttered, but it did not have the joking effect she hoped it would. "How is it my fault that a former PC couldn't bother to follow the most basic of gun safety rules? Never leave your finger on the trigger." She tried to run her fingers through his hair, but was so weak she only succeeded in burying the digits into his ebony tresses. It seemed to have an effect, as his sobbing settled and he turned his face towards her, tear tracks staining his cheeks which were deeply flushed. "I'm sorry, Sherlock. I'm sorry I made you worry. Did they tell you how bad the damage was?"

"It missed anything important by some fucking miracle," he croaked shakily. "They were blanks, but you were so close… the blood loss nearly killed you." His voice had hitched again, and Addie found it within herself to trace small circles on his scalp to soothe him.

"I'm sorry, love. I just–I couldn't let you go after him with how you turned up back home." She glanced over at his left leg, his knee in a brace and a dark purple. "I take it you got the knee repaired."

"Yes. I tore a ligament." He looked sheepish for a moment. "John made me."

"And they dare say we never take trips together," she joked, and this time Sherlock managed to crack a smile. "Anderson?"

"Psychiatric facility," he replied, his lip curling in anger.

"His goons?"

"Mycroft is rounding them up."

Addie hummed. "Good. Mary and John?"

"Waiting room. Mary hasn't stopped crying since she got you to the hospital…," he trailed off, more tears threatening to spill from his eyes.

"Sherlock?" There was a whimpering noise that she took as acknowledgement. "The reason Mary can't stop crying is because of something I told her on the ambulance ride here." Sherlock cut his eyes up at her in concern. "In a moment of lucidity I realized I was very late."

The expression on his face did not shift all that much at her confession. Then again, Sherlock very rarely missed a detail such as that. "You lost so much blood, Ad. They don't expect…" His tone was so heavy it nearly cracked her ribs with its weight, but it was delivered so carefully she hardly registered it.

Addie sighed. "I know, love. I just thought I should tell you." Her eyes stung with tears, guilt gnawing at her insides. "I swear I didn't know. I–"

"Never for a moment did I think you intentionally sought to be harmed," he cut in, offended at such a thought, wide-eyed, shaking, and more than a little emotional. "And it may sound selfish and callous, but I'd rather we try again for a child a million times over, if that's what we want, but I can't bring myself to be upset when I-I almost lost–"

"Shhhh," she cooed, trailing her fingers over his cheek, gathering tears while trying to contain her own. It was so strange to be on this side of the conversation–she wasn't sure how Sherlock managed it, half the time. Frankly, Addie assumed that the morphine drip in her arm was doing most of the emotional heavy-lifting for the time being and she would feel a lot more devastated in the sober light of day, tomorrow. "I'm so sorry, Sherlock, but I couldn't let you go."

"Addie, my job is to protect you!"

"And you need to be fucking alive to do that, Sherlock! Because I need you, too! You can't just fucking die because it's the logical thing to do." Sherlock opened his mouth to protest before Addie cut him off. "You were a fox among a hundred thousand other foxes and I was a girl among a hundred thousand other girls. And then we tamed each other and were unique in all the world," she argued and Sherlock swallowed whatever retort he had conjured up in his brain. She had been listening to his recitations. She understood his pain. More than that, she shared in his sentiment. Addie was right, as much as it pained him to admit. "I will apologize for making you worry, but not for what I did. You wouldn't have come back home, had I not."

Reluctantly, Sherlock waddled his way into bed, pulling the knee brace with a heft. Careful as could be, he twined his arms around her frame and hooked his uninjured leg with hers. "I love you more than anything, Adelaide. I should have been more careful; should've told you what was going on. Just, please, don't ever leave me like that again," his voice cracked again at the end, eyes pleading just as fervently as his words.

"I can do that, Mister Holmes." Addie smiled as Sherlock hid his face in the crook of her neck, and tightened his grip around her form, careful to avoid the stitches and bandages around her midsection. "I love you, Sherlock." Comfortable but charged silence fell between them and the only thing heard was the beep of machines around them. "Sherlock?"

"Yes, love?"

"I can see why you did hard drugs. This morphine is cracking."

Sherlock couldn't help the indelicate snort that escaped him, warming her neck with the breath of his laughter. "Wait until they give you the Vicodin."