Salvation
In the end, Mycroft was not hard to persuade. John took Sherlock back to Baker Street, despite the ailing young detective's multiple protests.
Mrs. Hudson hugged him hard enough to break him. Had it not been for his coat, it would have been quite painful. John watched from a few feet away hoping that he would not need to intervene. The dear elder lady needn't know about the figures. Those were Sherlock's unhappy secret to keep.
All at once, and softly, a snowfall of events, Sherlock came to live again in Baker Street. He behaved for a moment as a guest. A refugee clinging upon salvation with the tips of his fingers. John watched in silence, pondering each day. One day it would need to break. He would need to fall apart again, and let it be for what it was.
One night, the rain fell. At first softly. The windows were flustered, leaves made of glass. Sherlock stared at the soft rain, fingering the scars that lingered on his arms through the fabric of his shirt. A black shirt now. Bought to be too long in the arms to almost completely hide his hands.
John watched him. Tracing, always tracing the path of great resistance electricity had taken through him. It was love, carved into the fabric of his skin, closer than the love of marriage, chiseled within divinity to the greater purpose of sacrifice.
The rain came down. Hard. Tsunami in a bottle shot through a small tube-like hole in the London fog. With it, bottled, lightning erupted. Volcanic in shape, angelic in spectrum. Lightning that rendered the man in the window white in an aura celestial.
To John's amazement, Sherlock did not shy away from electric currents that shook the whole of the flat like Olympus was leaping. Rather, he turned. Slowly, clothed in light. John held his breath. White light fell into darkness and left the traces of silver walking the room, the power shut off.
"Salvation."
John drew closer.
"What?"
"I thought it was killing me. But it wasn't...It was...Saving grace. To have fallen. To have been remade." Sherlock stood quiet in the dark for a moment. The rain screamed with the sorrow of Styx wrung from a dishcloth.
"You...you mean?" John laid his hand on Sherlock's wrist. Even in the dark, he could tell that he had pulled the sleeve up just enough to reveal the meandering infinity loops made of sheer power.
"I mean it was you. It was saving you that saved me, John. A currency I've no idea now how to spend or repay."
The lights came back on. Sherlock was smiling. Then, he dismissed himself, to some experiment or some case, John did not know.
He stood watching it rain now himself, wondering what Sherlock would do. What could anyone do in a place like that? Remade entirely. Reborn in the current.
John leaned into the light as another lightning bolt fell. Strange, it brought the room closer and the surging lights sang within ambiance.