With nightfall came the silence, terrible silence that awoke the darkest corners of Sherlock's mind. He sat alone in his room trying to control the chaos in his head. It had been a little over a year now since the ordeal ended, but he was still haunted by it every night. The rumpled bed sheets under his fingers felt as soft as the rumpled bed sheets he had laid on facedown, a strong hand on the back of his head pressing his face into the pillow as he struggled to breathe, fighting against the handcuffs shackling his wrists to the bed. Everything was rough hands and cigarette smoke and pain and terror.

A cool breeze drifted in from the open window, stirring him from his waking nightmare if only for just a moment. He climbed out onto the roof and stepped onto the ledge. Partly out of habit, he stretched out his arms and took a deep breath. He felt the push tonight, the great ball of tension in his chest goading him forward, daring him to take the leap. Still, something was holding him back. He thought about it for a minute, but he couldn't figure out what it was.

When Sherlock clambered back inside, his heart was still hammering against his ribs. He felt the room spinning, and he needed to make it stop. Sherlock reached into a drawer in his desk and pulled out a razor. The clean, sharp metal glinted in the lamplight.

The chemistry was simple enough. As he pushed the corner of blade against his skin and pressed down, he felt a rush of endorphins, endogenous morphine, not quite as powerful as the drugs that he used to inject into his arm, but enough to give him a sense of calm. Each stroke of the razor drew blood, and he indulged in his vice as much as he could without going too deep, meaning not as much as he wanted to. After making four cuts, he put the blade away, and he did so just in time.

Sherlock heard footsteps in the hallway and managed to pull his sleeve back up right before the door opened and Mycroft stepped inside.

"Do you not understand the concept of knocking?" Sherlock asked irritably.

"Nice to see you again too, little brother," Mycroft responded, leaning his black umbrella against the wall. "I'll be staying for a few weeks while Mummy and Daddy are away."

"For goodness sake, I'm seventeen years old. I don't need a babysitter."

"You are aware by now that I always keep an eye on you, even when I'm not home."

"Yes, it's rather annoying. Plus it seems a bit unnecessary in addition to forcing me to take a drug test every six weeks."

"I wouldn't have to do either of those things if you would simply talk me, give me some insight about what's going on with you. I need to know that you're not a danger to yourself."

"I'm fine," Sherlock spat. He gripped the hem of his sleeve and hoped that the blood spilling from his arm wouldn't drip through the material of his shirt and soak into the sheets.

Mycroft studied him silently for a moment. "Have the nightmares stopped?'

Sherlock didn't answer. Even if he said yes, it was unlikely that Mycroft would believe him. "You had no right finding out about it in the first place."

"It would have been difficult to remain ignorant about what happened to you once the police got involved. Of course after they screwed up and let the man get away I had to take matters into my own hands."

"You could have handed him back over to the police. You didn't have to have him killed." There were still so many things that Mycroft didn't know. The man whose execution he'd ordered wasn't the only one who had hurt Sherlock, and he wasn't the one Sherlock wanted dead.

"You underestimate, little brother, how dangerous I can be when someone threatens your safety."

Sherlock's heart was pounding again, and he would need to make another cut if this conversation didn't end soon. "I'm tired. You can leave my room now. I don't have any drugs stashed under my bed."

"Yes, I checked before you got home from school," Mycroft said, smiling ruefully. He turned to go. "Goodnight, Sherlock. Sleep soundly."

After the door closed shut, Sherlock ran to the door and turned the lock, angry with himself for not remembering to lock it before. He threw himself down on the bed and pulled down his sleeve to admire his handiwork. The blood had smeared and coagulated, but he could still make out the straight lines of severed flesh, each gaping open slightly. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, but they soon snapped open again.

Lying on his back, Sherlock stared up at the ceiling and blinked for a few minutes. For some reason the image of John Watson's face had flickered before his eyes, and now he couldn't make it go away. He saw John standing next to him on the roof asking him to step down from the ledge.

I don't get it, Sherlock thought to himself as he turned off the light and crawled underneath the covers. Why would he care?


John got to see where Dannie lived after he finally received a text from Sherlock about the next study session. The three of them took the underground from Paddington Station and got off at Baker Street. Then they stopped in front of a door with silver letters above the doorknocker spelling out 221B.

A short woman with graying Auburn hair answered the door. "Dannie, you've brought another friend home," she said brightly, ushering them inside. "Who's this, then?"

John stepped forward and introduced himself with a firm handshake. No sooner had the woman let go of John's hand, though, that she took hold of Sherlock's arm and turned him to face her.

"Goodness dear, you look even more emaciated than usual," she said, reaching up to stroke his cheek in a motherly sort of way. "If you're hungry, I have some tea and biscuits in the kitchen."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson, but I don't eat when I'm working," Sherlock replied. "Digestion slows me down."

"Well you'll have a bite to eat before you leave, and I don't want to hear any arguments from you about it," she called after him as Sherlock dashed up the stairs to the flat on the second floor. Mrs. Hudson shook her head and turned back to John, "What about you, dear? Feeling peckish at all?"

"Not at the moment, but thank you," John answered politely. "We'll be upstairs then, I suppose."

"Make yourselves at home."

The flat on the second floor was charming and cozy, or at least the sitting room was. The kitchen looked like some kind of laboratory with all the instruments and glassware and chemicals on the table. Many questions rose in John's mind, but the first to come out of his mouth was, "Does someone live here?"

"No," Sherlock answered. "Mrs. Hudson is still looking for a tenant, but for now I'm paying her fifty quid a month so that I can keep all my forensic equipment here. My parents won't allow any of it in the house, especially not the body parts that I borrow from the morgue. Well, I don't think Mrs. Hudson knows yet about the bag of human thumbs in the fridge."

Dannie rolled her eyes. "I have the whole basement apartment to myself. Mrs. Hudson gave up on renting it out a long time ago. When you run out of room up here, though, I'm not letting you use my kitchen for storage space."

"There's some nice furniture up here at least," John said, taking a seat on the sofa. "I could imagine living in this flat."

Reviewing for the exam took all of about twenty minutes, or in Sherlock's case, five minutes. Dannie had written up a very detailed study guide, and all Sherlock had to do was scan it briefly. John and Dannie sat on the sofa and continued to quiz each other as Sherlock retreated to the corner and picked up his violin.

"Do you mind if I play for a bit?" Sherlock asked them. "It helps me think."

"That's fine," John answered. "Go right ahead."

He couldn't help but be a bit distracted by the sound of Sherlock's astonishingly skillful hands coaxing music from the violin's strings. John found himself thinking about Sherlock's hands, the pale, translucent skin stretched over bone and the long, slender fingers, his thumbs still hooked through the holes in the hems of his sleeves. John wondered how hands so skeletal could be so beautiful. He also wondered what it would feel like to hold one of those hands in his own.

John realized suddenly that Dannie was watching him watch Sherlock. "He's really good, isn't he?" she whispered.

John cleared his throat and turned back to the study guide. "Alright, what number are we on now?" When she didn't respond, John looked up. "Dannie?"

The girl was sitting up now and staring straight ahead with dilated eyes. Her breathing had become shallow, and she was gripping the arm of the sofa so hard that her knuckles had turned white. John said her name again, and she turned slowly to him and whispered, "It's happening."

"Sherlock. Sherlock!" John called urgently. The sound of the violin stopped. "Something's wrong."

"Oh God, here we go again," Sherlock muttered, rushing over to the sofa.

"What is it? What's happening?" John asked, slightly panicked.

"She's having a seizure." Sherlock unhooked his left thumb from the hem and tugged down the sleeve enough to expose his palm. "Lean back," he instructed Dannie, laying the hand on her forehead. "Try to relax."

"God, your hands are cold," she said, gasping for breath.

John had witnessed someone having a grand-mal seizure before, but he was unfamiliar with this kind of epilepsy. "What do we do?"

"There's nothing we can do except wait for it to stop," Sherlock said softly. "It'll be over in a few minutes."

Dannie gripped the cushions and uttered expletives under her breath. "Fuck. Why… why do I smell blood? Why do I always… smell blood when this happens?" she murmured faintly between labored breaths.

"It's an olfactory hallucination," Sherlock explained. "There's a direct link from the olfactory bulbs in the frontal lobe to the hippocampus in the temporal lobe where memories are stored."

"I know. Shut up," Dannie muttered, her whole body tensing. "Dammit."

Sherlock stayed at arm's length from her. He wasn't the type to offer a hug, and he knew Dannie was often avoidant of physical contact. He felt along the crevice of his own neck for the carotid artery and found his pulse. Then he took Dannie's hand and pressed the tips of her fingers there. "Just keep breathing and focus on the rhythm," he said gently.

After another minute Dannie began to relax. Sherlock let go of her hand, but after regaining her senses, she took hold of Sherlock wrist and threaded his thumb back through the hole in his sleeve. Sherlock glanced away guiltily as she shot him a dark look.

"Are you okay now?" John asked apprehensively.

Dannie sat up. "Yeah, I'm fine, sorry about that."

"I'll go ask Mrs. Hudson to make you a cup of tea," Sherlock said, turning to go downstairs. "Do want anything John?"

Dannie interjected, "Just have her send up the whole tray. You need a bit of nourishment yourself. You're looking a bit peaky."

John exhaled deeply when Sherlock left the room. "You sure you're alright?"

Dannie nodded. "I can still smell the scent of hemoglobin, but it'll go away after a while."

"Jesus. What are these things like?"

"I just see a lot of bright light and I feel like I've fallen into a dream. For some reason that causes me to panic a bit. I know it looks like I'm having a panic attack, and that's how it feels, but there's no external stimuli that causes it, just abnormal electrical activity in my right temporal lobe. Sometimes anxiety can make it act up a bit, but usually it just happens out of the blue."

John massaged his eyelids. "How often does it happen?"

Dannie smirked. "You sound like a doctor already. Sherlock said that's what you want to be when you grow up."

John chuckled. "I never told him that." Of course he didn't have to. Sherlock just knew these things.

"He thinks you have all the makings of a fine doctor already, and so do I. That's why I figured you'd be good for him. He needs someone like you."

"He needs…a doctor?"

"I don't know if you've noticed by now, but he's not well."