"My room is not very far, come on." John said, practically carrying Sherlock across the halls. "I can fix that for you."
"Oh, that won't be necessary."
"Can you not see the trail of blood you're leaving behind?"
"I can manage on my own."
"You can barely walk on your own. God, you're stubborn."
And to John's bedroom they went. He started to look for some bandages in the wardrobe, and Sherlock sat on the corner of the bed. Only then he actually looked at the wound, and, if he hadn't dissected numerous rats and pigeons on his free time, he probably would have felt sick at the sight of the opened flesh visible through the knee of his now ruined trousers. But calm and cold as he always was when facing blood, he merely sighed in annoyance at the inconvenient injury. John was back in a heartbeat, with bandages, a piece of cloth and a bowl of water from the sink in the bathroom. He was about to kneel next to Sherlock, but the pitch haired prince took the supplies from his hands and started to clean the wound himself. The blonde let him took it, making a "as you wish" face and sitting next to him on the bed.
"Do you think that guy really is related to the fire?" John asked, watching as Sherlock pretended to know exactly what he was doing.
"I think that was the reason he was arrested in the first place. He must have been sentenced to death, but then his ally told the guard about his 'other plans' before he was executed. So he was brought here tortured, but refused to speak a word. I honestly don't know what the fuzz is all about. The guy's not even a good terrorist; it's not like anyone actually died at that fire, anyway."
But the moment he said that, John looked away in a snap. Sherlock bent his head trying to see the blonde's face.
"Is it? John?" But he didn't turn around. Sherlock wondered if he'd stepped over the line; he didn't have that regulator on his head that filtered inappropriate comments, so he'd constantly get offended looks from the people he spoke with, without knowing where he'd gone wrong. This time, even though there was no way he could have known, he saw he'd hit a soft spot - and he felt bad about it.
"I'm sorry, I didn't-"
"It's okay. ...I guess it would have come up some time." John sighed, turning around. He opened his mouth to talk a few times, but a while passed before he actually said anything. "I used to share a room with my sister, on the first floor of our old castle. My other siblings barely ever talked to me, but the two of us were pretty close. At the end of the few days we didn't spend together, we'd talk about what had happened and what we had done, and... We could just tell each other anything, you know?"
He didn't know. Sherlock hadn't even dreamed about being that opened and close to someone; he wasn't even sure he'd like that. But still, he thought that John made it sound quite... Pleasing.
"The night of the fire..." He continued. "She woke me up in the middle of the night and said she was thirsty. She asked me to get her a glass of water. At first I told her to go get it herself, but she kept asking, so eventually i went. When I was in the kitchen, I smelled something burning, coming from the first floor. I ran back to our bedroom, and started to see smoke when I went down the stairs; I first saw the fire when I got to the first floor. I have no idea how the flames spread so much and so fast, but they did. I got to see her, sleeping in her bed, as I ran to her. She... Had no idea. I was about to scream her name when the walls across the hall crumbled down. She was trapped in there. What a piece of shit of a castle, huh?" He laughed, his voice failing. "I kept running. Not sure why. But my father grabbed me from behind and picked me up, running with me to the back exit. I screamed, and I kicked and I punched, and I would do it again. And this time I would get my father to let me go and I would run back to her. I don't know what I'd do, but I would not let her die alone."
After he finished the story, there was a moment of deep silence. Sherlock was, for once in his life, speechless. He wasn't used to having people telling him anything, specially something as personal and scaring as the death of a sibling. Mostly because he was shit with advises, and he always told the truth to people who wanted to be lied to.
"Why am I telling you this again?" John asked, and it was pretty much what Sherlock was thinking too. "I mean, I literally just met you. Yesterday."
"And we got into more trouble in two days than I had alone in months. And I blew up the kitchen last week."
John laughed a bit, and Sherlock smiled at the sight of it. It was true, though. What the hell had happened on the last 36 hours for them to be that close? Not that either of them was complaining.
By the third time Sherlock attempted to make a decent bandage, John lost his patience. "Alright, that's it. You suck at this. Let me do it." He said, taking the rags from Sherlock's hands; the bandage was perfectly done in less than a minute, though it was time enough for the pitch haired prince to get distracted by John's blonde strands, wondering if they were as soft as they looked.
"My mother taught me." John explained, when he saw that Sherlock was slightly surprised at a young kid's first aid abilities. "I don't think you can walk by yourself just yet, though. Come on, I'll walk you to your room."
And he was indeed still limping, so he crossed the castle leaning once more on John's shoulder. And they talked about conspiracy theories, mad men, and whether or not there'd be pudding after dinner.
-:-:-:-:-:-:-
When it was almost midnight and Sherlock was already sleeping for a change, light steps echoed in the quiet of the night, heading to the prince's bed. The figure leaned in and kissed his forehead, leaving behind a single tear that fell with a muffled sound on his pillow. But that wasn't the only thing that was off - the man's perfume didn't match any of the scents cataloged by Sherlock, he didn't have even the slightest stubble, and his steps were much more subtle than usual. No, it wasn't the boy's father that had returned from his trip and came to greet him with a kiss, but his brother that, aware of their little tradition, had come to his room to finish what their father couldn't. And if only Sherlock had been awake, he'd have been able to deduce his way to the not yet spoken truth, and he would've have wept and mourned that night like his brother did alone.
Mycroft had lost two of the only three people that had ever mattered to him within a range of two days, and now Sherlock was all he'd left. He hadn't cried since the day his mother passed away, a decade before, and he had definitely not missed the feeling. Everything he'd managed to keep inside about what had happened with Greg simply exploded, broke apart like the walls of a dam. And after he left Sherlock's room, he tried to keep it together at least until he had got to his own bedroom, where he leaned against the wall and slid his back until he was sitting on the cold marble floor, his throat aching from trying not to cry.
And there he was, the seventeen year old soon-to-be-king orphan, crying for the first time in ten years, deprived from love and comfort, and weighed down by the heaviness of the world on his shoulders.
