DISCLAIMER - I DO NOT OWN SHERLOCK.

So. Part Two is here. I've decided I need a part three. I have things to add in (including something pointed out to me by 'Arisprite') that didn't work in this chapter. Hopefully you'll understand when you've read. Part Three is written, and short. Anyway. I hope you enjoy this part :)

Outside the rain was lashing down and the wind was blowing in the trees. Inside, Detective Insoector Lestrade was Reading his daughter a bedtime story - Harry Potter. As he gave her a hug she whispered "I do like you Reading to me Daddy, but Stephen Fry reads it better. He does all the voices."

Lestrade laughed and hugged Emily closer. It was then he heard the familiar beeping from inside his jacket pocket. A text. The evening he had planned (a couple of beers, a takeaway, watching Inspector Morse in the sofa with his wife) slipped away from him in one wistful moment as he opened the text.

In difficulties. Appreciate assistance. Come quickly.

- SH

He did, of course. He did it because Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant man, and Lestrade felt as though he was always fighting for him to be a good one. He did it because if he didn't go then no-one else would. Parents dead and Sherlock would rather join them than ask his brother for help. He didn't have friends, he certainly didn't have a girlfriend (Sally Donovan had been given a very firm "I'm married to my work" when she had thrown herself at him when they'd first met). He had Lestrade, who wasn't a friend and wasn't a colleague. He wasn't a mentor and he'd never flatter himself enough to think he was s father-figure. He was just there. He was just looking out for him.

The flat Sherlock was living in at the moment (he got through them at a steady rate) was in Bloomsbury. From the outside it was posh, but inside it was a mess. It smelt like a chemistry lab and an abattoir and looked like a bunker. Sherlock was sat in an armchair, looking at something on the table. Lestrade was shocked - he looked haunted. He was sweating and his hands were shaking. His eyes were red and shadowed. His skin was like milk.

"Sherlock? Are you okay?"

"I'd like you to take this away from me, Inspector." His gaze didn't leave the box on the table. His voice shook like his body. "I want you to throw it out the window or into the fire or down a storm drain."

Lestrade moved over to the box and opened it. Inside were a couple of hypodermic needles, a little box of morphine pills with the Barts logo stamped on them and a packet of White powder. He sighed.

"I haven't taken anything. 2 weeks, 4 days. I'm clean. I got through the boredom, fine. Took the train down to a place I know some old IRA men, poked about s bit. One of them tried to shoot me. Did the trick." He was still looking at the place the box had been. "Now it's the other thing I need, the morphine. It's this new case you've given me - the boarding house one. I can't stop thinking about it. I haven't slept for 3 days. I haven't eaten since yesterday. My brain is moving too fast. I can't cope." He looked Lestrade. "A little bit of morphine and it all goes away, Inspector. I'll go to sleep and my brain will slow down and I can catch up with myself. Not too much. Just a bit will do and I'll be better in the morning."

Lestrade sat down on the chair opposite him. He thought about giving him some - it seemed sensible, it made more sense than the cocaine. That was illegal and Lestrade had spent his first years as a policeman on the drugs squad - he saw what that stuff did to people. But morphine was used in hospitals, wasn't it? That meant it was safe. It was medicine.

"Don't let me have any. I know I've made a convincing argument but don't let me have any. I told you I was going to do this my way and my way is nothing at all." His teeth were chattering.

"So why do you need me?"

"I don't trust myself. And I trust you." Lestrade wasn't quite sure he'd said it -the second he'd closed his mouth he'd opened it again to be violently, horribly sick.

Lestrade spent the next few hours with a man who looked like Sherlock Holmes, but he couldn't actually be him. This was not the same man who curled his lip in the police station, who gave the impression that he could barely cope to be around such idiots as the police force. This was not the man who strode around the place looking like he was had been born in a suit and Bellstaff coat, a man whose emotional range veered between self-congratulation and disgust.

This man was lying crouched on the floor, pulling at his hair, sobbing and screaming like a madman. He looked like he was in a waking nightmare; if you could film this night and show it to teenagers then they'd never touch drugs. He mumbled and muttered things that made no sense but sounded terrible anyway. Lestrade spent his time either trying to cool Sherlock down (his temperature was sky high) or calm him down. More than once he simply thought 'why am I here?' But nearly as soon as he'd thought that another part of his mind whispered 'thank God you are.' This man was a genius, an absolute genius. But at heart this man was a troubled and desperate person who needed something that even he himself couldn't identify. He needed saving from himself and Lestrade was the one who was here to do it this time. One day he hoped that someone else could step in and do it better, because he had no clue how to do it beyond cold flannels and sick buckets.

At about 4 in the morning Sherlock began to settle. He pulled himself off the floor and onto the settee, laying spread-eagled in his pyjama shorts. Lestrade couldn't help but look at his forearms. Sherlock had been telling the truth - there were scars and bruises on his veins but they were old. He hadn't been shooting up. He could see his bony ribs through his chest and stomach as his breath heaved in and out. The man needed to eat more - the fact he was often malnourished wasn't helping anything. He mumbled something.

"What? What do you want?"

"I'm scared."

Lestrade didn't know what to say. "Of what Sherlock? There's no-one here. It's fine."

"I'm here. I'm scaring myself. I don't want to feel like this anymore." His voice was cracked and dry.

"You won't. You're giving them up - you won't have to feel like this again. You don't need to be scared." Lestrade was hideously uncomfortable and inexperienced. He wasn't a bloody therapist. That's what this man needed. Not him - a 47 year old policeman with a vague horror of vulnerability in men. "Let's get you into bed, Sherlock. Have a sleep, have a lie down." He helped Sherlock into bed. His room was oddly neat. He wondered if that was because he didn't use it very often. As he looked at the world's first and best Consulting Detective lying on a pillow, pulling the duvet up to his chin, he realised how young he still was. 25, 26? Something like that. Young anyway. Young enough to be scared by what he was going through. Young enough to be scared by his own brilliance, however much he usually covered it up.

"Will you put the radio on? The World Service, please. I like to hear what they're saying..." He was asleep (thank God) before Lestrade had got it tuned properly.

Mooching quietly out into the kitchen he put the kettle on. He wanted a big mug of string black coffee. He also wanted to pluck up the nerve to telephone someone he didn't really want to.

As the phone connected he cleared his throat.

"Hello."

"Hello?" Lestrade managed to be thrown by the way the other man had answered the phone. "I mean, hello. Is this Mycroft Holmes?"

"Yes. Is this Detective Inspector Lestrade?" The man sounded bored. He knew exactly who was on the end of the phone.

"It is. How – how did you know?"

Mycroft Holmes laughed. "Please. I was waiting for you to telephone since you had the misfortune to be summoned to my brothers flat last night."

Lestrade thought that Mycroft sounded like Sherlock except with more of a sneer. "Yeah. Well. I think you should visit him more often yourself. Have you any idea what kind of state Sherlock's in right now?"

"I should imagine he's asleep after a drug-addled night." The bastard actually yawned.

"He's off them."

Mycroft made a noise of interest. "Really? How did you manage that? Mummy tried for years, ever since he first started stealing the morphine from the hospital."

"I told him I'd stop using him unless he got clean. But that's not what I'm ringing about. I think he should come and stay with you for a bit, while he's going cold-turkey." Lestrade ran a hand over his face. "I don't mind helping him out now and then, but he needs someone there all the time and I can't do that. I have a family and I live on the other side of London. He could really do with some support."

"You don't think that I have a life of my own as well?"

"He. Is. Your. Brother." But you wouldn't bloody know it.

"Arrangements have been made."

"Excuse me? What does that mean?"

"It means that tomorrow morning somebody will come to collect my brothers belongings and move them into my apartment in Knightsbridge. He will be looked after in a way both he and I will find acceptable."

"Right. Well. That's good then. I'm glad." Lestrade nodded. "I'll let you get on then."

"Thankyou, Inspector." Mycroft put the phone down first.

Lestrade grimaced. What kind of upbringing created children who grew into people like Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes? His phone beeped again, it was a text from Mycroft Holmes.

If he has nightmares then he likes being read to. At least, he did.
- MH

Lestrade stared at his phone for a minute. Maybe Mycroft hadn't completely forgotten Sherlock was his little brother. He walked back into Sherlock's bedroom and picked up the book on the bedside table. When he looked at the title he smiled for the first time all night and took a big gulp of coffee. Even though he was still asleep, Lestrade cracked open the book and began reading from the first page. "Mr and Mrs Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive were perfectly normal, thankyou very much."

I hope the end wasn't too cheesy! I imagine that he's reading because of some case he was working on. If you enjoyed this then please tell me, but if you want to point out things I can improve then please do :) AND I love that lots of people favourited/alerted this story (it's really flattering) but maybe if you did that it would be nice to let me know why you've done it by reviewing, please.

Next Part up tomorrow :)