Everything was a grey haze, inside and out. Nothing seemed to connect anymore, there were no more patterns, nothing he could grasp. Nothing he could see. Staying awake for more than a few minutes at a time was difficult, and so the moments of consciousness seemed inexpertly fastened together. When he was awake, he strained to be aware of everything as much as he could, to make sense of anything.

Was this how other people felt? It was intolerable. The greyness in his mind was matched by the greyness he saw, and nothing else. John told him that he could see shades of difference if someone stood right over him, between him and the light, but what good was that?

Was he learning new nuances in John's voice, or was it the morphine that made him think that? John had also told him that he was functioning better than anyone the doctor had met on the drug.

This was functioning well?

Every moment he was awake, he strained to see something, anything beyond the grey. Sounds seem amplified sometimes, other times muted. He was too tired to speak often. Time had lost any meaning; he had no idea how long he'd been in the hospital, moving between misty awareness and sleep.

When he slept, and dreamt, he dreamt in colour and excruciating, vivid detail. The sharp contrast in colours between sunlit streets and shaded sidewalks. The shifting, changing, oh-so-telling expressions of passers-by who wore their thoughts and ideas and dislikes on their faces as plainly as they wore their clothing. The swirl of a leaf caught in the water of the Thames. The opulence of the London Eye, viewed from far enough away so that the whole structure could be seen. The rising, curling steam from his morning cup of coffee.

John.

There was always an image of John, smiling, laughing, chastising him about something. John, in bed at night, his hair a mess, his eyes languid. John, watching him over his morning newspaper, thinking Sherlock didn't notice. John, surprised – stunned, really – when Sherlock had shown him the wedding bands he'd bought. John, coming through the door, laughing and grinning, after telling Mycroft about their wedding. John, at the wedding, laughing at something one of the witnesses had said while the photographer snapped the pictures. That had been the photo Sherlock liked best. John, asleep on his side, in the dim light before dawn, a sketch of lines in muted dark gold hair and white skin.

Each time, Sherlock felt relief so sharp it was like coming back to life.

Then he would awaken and see nothing.

Was this was despair felt like? This greyness?

John kept saying that it may only be temporary. How long was temporary, when every moment was engulfed in nothing? He had no sense of the space around him, through which doctors, nurses, and orderlies moved without any regard for him. Who were they to judge temporary?

This was everything.

The pain – and there was pain – was secondary. It fell away with sleep and morphine. He could feel how bruised he was, where something had been broken and fixed, but he didn't care. It was all blanketed by a terrible fear.

By degrees, he was learning John's face with his fingertips. Every time he touched his husband, he could feel John's fear, his unwillingness to admit this was real. Mycroft as well, but more slowly, because Sherlock was less inclined to let him into the space he didn't understand, couldn't even claim as his own. But John was always there.

When he dreamt, and even sometimes when he was awake, he could see – no, he could remember the image of the last text message he'd gotten from John. It was the last thing he recalled from before the accident. No squealing of tires, no shouts, no panic, all of which must have happened. Nothing.

Could emotions be like heat, he wondered. They poured off of John and his brother, and of some of the others who visited him. Not the doctors, not the nurses. Sherlock finally managed to get John to admit to why.

The accident had not been an accident, John had told him. Sherlock had heard the words several times, perhaps not all at the same time, before that began to make sense. John had told him about the text message that Sherlock had received immediately following the accident, from the delivery driver's phone. A text from a dead man to a dying one, in the snow and cold. John had told him about the ninth victim, the second delivery driver who had been lost from the scene. The company had confirmed that there had been no one else working with the driver; each driver went out on his or her own.

Despite the morphine, the name had come quickly, and he had managed to say it before John did.

There were police officers here, John had assured him, and Mycroft's people. Despite everything Sherlock thought about his brother's overbearing ways, he was grateful for the security.

Would Moriarty stop now, Sherlock had asked himself during one of his conscious moments. He had gotten what he wanted. Or had he? Had the accident been intended to kill him instead of incapacitating him? How would they find the man now? There was nothing for Sherlock to do; he had been silenced. Could he trust Scotland Yard to do this job? That thought exhausted him – of course not, not this man, not Moriarty. But what choice did they have?

James Moriarty had shaken loose the one chain holding him back.

Sherlock wondered how many of his brother's people were watching, and if they were watching John, too. John had assured him they were.

And will we live like this? Sherlock had wanted to ask, but couldn't find the words, or the energy to speak them. Like so much now, it ended too abruptly, against his will, as sleep claimed him again.

John scrolled through the latest comments on his blog, reading them carefully to help pass the time between Sherlock being asleep and Sherlock being taken for tests. He felt like his life had become an endless cycle of waiting for the handful of minutes when his husband was awake and relatively alert. The times in between, he filled with whatever he could.

Reading his old blog posts was like poking at an open wound, but somehow, he hadn't been able to avoid it. When he'd reread the post he'd made of their first case, "Study in Pink", he'd found himself crying at the end, and had only realized it when he wondered why the screen was blurry. That Sherlock had been stolen; gone was the arrogant, off-handed man who saw more in the blink of an eye than most people did in a day. John had wanted to scream, then, at the injustice of it, but had forced himself to take a few deep breaths and wipe his eyes.

Now, he did his best to keep from reading through the past. He read the comments word by word, to stretch out the time, but also to see if he could pinpoint which ones were coming from Moriarty. John knew the man responsible for this must be keeping track of what was going on, from a distance, masking himself as another sympathetic party of John's story. He was blogging only about the accident, of course, not the police investigation, but John had a feeling Moriarty wouldn't care either way. He wouldn't be worried if public details were posted about him.

There were several new posts from former army friends, some still in Afghanistan. John was always pleasantly surprised to see how many of them supported him. Some of them had questions about the whole thing, of course – John had asked himself a lot of questions in the beginning, then stopped doubting everything and simply lived it. He was lucky to have found the person he wanted to be with, and that was all there was to it.

The support now was overwhelming. Calls were being made from Afghanistan when possible and they always brought John up short, unable to express his gratitude. He knew what things were like there on a daily basis, and it startled him that his friends who called were more concerned about his situation in London. Friends from work sent emails and text messages, and Harry had even come by, hesitantly at first, but John had welcomed her, thankful to have her there. When he counted the days from his wedding, she counted her days sober, minus one. She had read the post that evening, then checked herself into a rehab centre late that night, calling John from the patient's phone the next morning to congratulate him.

The sound of Sherlock waking up made him look up from his reading and stand from his cot, stretching wearily. The other man stirred, then blinked himself awake. John recognized the look of shock, then dismay, that crossed Sherlock's face when he realized, yet again, that his vision hadn't returned. John crossed the room and sat down on the bed, carefully. Despite it all, Sherlock looked much better. The bruising on his face was fading to green and yellow, except around his eyes, which were sunk with deep purple circles, a consequences of the swelling in his ocular nerves. His head was still bandaged, changed routinely, several times a day, and John wished they could remove those bandages and wash his husband's hair. John knew, even though Sherlock had never said as much, that one of the other man's favourite sensations was John's fingers woven into his hair, his hand resting against the back of Sherlock's head. The expression he wore when John did that spoke volumes for him. The gesture was comfort and safety and love and muted desire all in one, and now John couldn't give him that.

Sherlock turned his face to where he could hear John's breathing and reached out, finding John's right temple and forehead with his fingertips. John closed his eyes, at once relishing and rejecting the sensation. He did not want this to be how Sherlock saw him from now on. But he let Sherlock do it, because he needed to, then closed a hand around Sherlock's, kissing his palm. Sherlock lay back, but John noted with an experienced eye that he seemed more alert.

"How long has it been?" Sherlock asked.

"Since the accident, or since you were last awake?"

"The accident," Sherlock replied.

"Nine days."

Sherlock was silent a moment, staring at nothing, his face turned away toward the window he couldn't see.

"When do they stop telling us this is temporary?" he asked.

John thought then that any heartbreak he believed he'd endured before had been trivial. To hear those words delivered in such a bleak voice tore something in him and he swallowed hard, tilting his head back, trying to fight down tears.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock said. "I've upset you."

John let out a shaky breath, part sob.

"Sherlock, you had a serious head injury, among many other serious injuries. It is far too early to give up hope."

Sherlock closed his eyes and was silent for so long John thought he's slipped back into sleep. It was often like this; conversations ended abruptly, but John knew how normal that was for patients recovering from serious injuries. As a doctor, he'd experienced it many times, but it was so much harder as a family member.

"Are you saying that because you're a doctor, or my husband?"

John managed a small smiled, lined with tears, and leaned forward, carefully cupping Sherlock's face with his hand.

"A bit of both," he replied. "Believe me, Sherlock, I have seen people recover more surprisingly from much worse. The human body is an amazing thing, but you need to give it time. I know it's difficult, but you need to be patient."

Sherlock reached up and took John's hand, holding it tightly. He turned his face back, so that he was looking toward the sound of John's voice.

"I do believe you, John. And I will try."

Another MRI, but the first one for which he was awake. Sherlock listened to the sounds of the hospital as the orderlies wheeled him through it. It was never the same twice. Today, they were heading in a direction he'd never taken, at least not while conscious, but the trips to neurology and ophthalmology were different each time, as well. He wondered how anyone negotiated it on a daily basis, sight or not, without stopping to marvel at the shifting nature, the constant newness. He kept his eyes closed, because he could see nothing and the greyness distracted him from the sounds, which he appreciated, at least during these brief trips.

The MRI would be loud, the radiologist had warned him, probably more so than normal. There was nothing to see anyway, but Sherlock would be without any sort of visual cue system, which may accentuate or exaggerate the sounds. He had slept through the previous MRIs and wished he could see the results, to see the image of the nerves that were doing this. It was appalling that something so small could have such a profoundly negative effect on him.

He could tell they were in the MRI room the moment they passed through the door. The officer assigned to watch him took up his station outside; Sherlock heard him stop as the orderlies kept moving. But it was the change in the air and the sound quality that told him they'd arrived. It was quiet and still and cool, without the clamber of the corridors or the sometimes-overwhelming smell of disinfectants.

"All right, we're going to lift you now and transfer for you to the scan bed," one of the orderlies said. "We've done this before, so just relax, try not to help us."

Sherlock waited while he was shifted; this wasn't the first time he'd been moved from his bed, and he wished he could do this on his own, but what use was a blind man on crutches? Even if he had the energy or strength to stand, he couldn't see where he was going. But they moved him expertly and quickly, then one of them patted his shoulder.

"Tech's already here, so you're in good hands, and we'll be back to pick you up when you're done."

The sound of the gurney got quieter and then vanished as the door closed behind them. Sherlock lay in the silence for a moment, then heard another, closer door opening and the sound of footsteps crossing the room toward him. John had explained the layout to him before they had brought him over: the MRI machine was in a single room, with a smaller control room for the technician that adjoined, but was closed off to protect the computer equipment from the electromagnetic radiation.

The footsteps stopped next to the foot of the bed and, instinctively, Sherlock turned his eyes in that direction, but it was useless, of course.

"Ah, Sherlock, my old friend," said an all too familiar voice. "How nice to see you. So sad that you cannot say the same."