Dear readers,

Just a little warning about this story. This is the last chapter that you will get from me in at least a month. Exam session is here again and unless I choose to forgo eating, sleep and all attempts at maintaining personal hygiene, I won't have the time to write anything until May. All I ask is for your continued patience and in return I shall endeavour to reward you - within reason - in any way that you see fit. Apologies.

Read on:

Waiting was such an inexpressive word, so flat and benign and utterly inapplicable for moments such as these. Waiting conveyed a state of tedious dormancy between the end of one activity and the commencement of another. Sherlock knew what waiting was, he had done it – in varying degrees – his entire life. But this was not waiting. The word wasn't adequate enough to express exactly what this was. He doubted that there was a word in the English language that could even attempt to define it. Feeling, perhaps, was the only medium through which he could succeed in describing what this moment was.

It was an ache that ebbed from the middle of his stomach to the hollow between the rungs of his ribcage. It throbbed like blood beneath a vicious bruise, hurt so badly that it made movement or any degree of complex cognitive function virtually impossible. Time passed as slowly as liquid molasses through a hole the size of a pinprick and Sherlock could feel every dissolving second as acutely as he could feel the own throb of his heart in his veins. Nothing had ever taken this long. He was sure that man's evolutionary acquisition of opposable thumbs had been quicker than this.

Everything was turning colourless: the people in the waiting room, the chairs upholstered with faux leather, the reception desk and the tired nurses who sat behind it, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, it all looked sun-bleached. The colours were so weak and the sounds were so quiet, everything was being diluted to a mere fraction of the intensity that it once was. This had happened before, the problem with the fading colours and the muffled sounds. It's what had initially driven him to cocaine. It's what had sporadically driven him to morphine. He couldn't stand the world when it was like this. The white noise made living in his own skin feel like torture, it made his veins feel over filled and turgid, it made him want to cut open his own skull just to let it breathe a little.

He couldn't think like this. He couldn't be brilliant and he needed to be brilliant now, the most brilliant that he had ever been, because John Watson was about to die and he was going to have to work out how to continue living. It was the most complex problem that he had ever had to solve.

There would be the funeral to plan for starters, flowers to buy, people to call. Then there would be the lead up to the burial. He would have to return to the flat, it's the only place he could go, of course Mycroft would insist on him staying at his house in Pall Mall but Sherlock would refuse. He would go home. He would sleep in John's bed with John's clothes until they stopped smelling of John and started to smell of Sherlock. Then he would throw them away because they would just be useless pieces of fabric, only fit for a body that lay six feet beneath the surface of the earth.

And then he would have to eulogise John during the service. It would be expected, they had lived together for three years, had been best friends – secret lovers in everyone else's eyes. He should be the one to give John the final farewell. But he would fail at every attempt at crafting a worthy eulogy, he didn't have the skill – he doubted that anyone did. You couldn't condense John Watson into a page of text, you couldn't send him to the grave with a few clichéd niceties and a poem written by some syphilitic poet who had been dead for over a century. He'd rather flay off his own skin than commit such an act of sacrilege.

He'd written a eulogy once before, almost a decade ago, for his father. It had been sickeningly easy to write, had taken him less than an hour to type out a few lamenting anecdotes interwoven with a few references to a higher power, an afterlife and something about being very much beloved and already missed. He'd even ended it with a rather nice Shakespeare quote, he couldn't remember which one – probably from Hamlet, something about filial bonds and grief induced madness. His mother had wept throughout his reading of it and at the end of the service she had kissed him repeatedly all the while sobbing about how much his father loved him. It was a lie of course but it was one that she desperately needed to believe and he had pretended to believe it too because he couldn't bear the thought of hurting her. The eulogy had been written for her sake, not his father's, and in an outwardly unacknowledged way she had known that.

His mother loved the romance of life, the thrill of it, the poetic licence of literature, the invocation of the poet to his muse. She believed in soulmates and fate and spirits – not God though, to her that was utter rot – and she had yearned so desperately for Sherlock and Mycroft to believe in these things too. False declaratives and contemptuously churned out eulogiums didn't wash with Mummy. You either loved with all the blood in your veins and marrow in your bones or you didn't love at all. To feign to have love where it had never grown was almost as hateful as the act of sadistic murder. That's why he had lied and had pretended that deep down, passed all the things that had happened, he really did love his father.

Only Mycroft had known the truth – he was the only person in the world who managed to hate their father more than Sherlock did, which was somewhat impressive. After the service they had silently celebrated the old man's brutal demise, under the pretence of mourning, by drinking a few glasses of very expensive wine and burning one of his prized medical journals in the fireplace. It hadn't been as cathartic as it should have been. His father's death hadn't liberated him; it had simply shackled Sherlock with a set of irreversible memories and the inability to prove to his father that he did, in fact, have feelings.

If only he could see him now, looking so destroyed and wrecked, his body practically disintegrating under the weight of impending grief. He must look so human, so discomposed and raw wearing a set dark green hospital scrubs that Molly had given him, his feet clad only in socks, his hair still damp from having recently washed John's blood off his skin. Sherlock closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall behind him. An image flickered behind the skin of his eyelids:

His father standing in the kitchen, early morning light filtering through the bare window making the cream walls glow yellow. His mother – wearing her beautiful silk turquois dressing gown, her hair tied into a messy bun at the nape of her neck – standing opposite him, her face flushed with anger. They were arguing, trying to be quiet because of the early hour but failing hopelessly.

This memory was one that he usually kept deeply buried in the basement of his mind palace. It had taken him a number of years to tuck it safely away from the general stream of his thoughts but now here it was again, resurfacing like blood suddenly flooding out of a wound.

He had been fourteen – home for the summer holidays, silently pining for Mycroft to return from Oxford so that he would have someone to talk to. He had been studying the flight patterns of moths for the past two weeks and had therefore turned himself into a nocturnal creature too. He usually didn't get out of bed until gone midday but on that particular morning he had been woken at six thirty by the sound of his father shouting downstairs. Bleary eyed and on sleep deadened feet, Sherlock had slipped out of his room and had laid his body down across the landing so that his head could peak over the edge of the stairs. He had watched the fight unfold between the rungs of the banister.

"I refuse to let you bully me." His mother had snapped, her tone taking on a rather dangerous edge – one which Sherlock had never heard her direct at either him or Mycroft.

"Bully you? If I was capable of bullying you then we wouldn't be having this conversation, if I was the one with the deciding vote in this house I'd have already sent him."

His mother's eyes – the exact same shade of blue as his own – had flashed brilliantly with anger, "When you talk like that I find myself wondering if you're the one who lacks empathy. Do you have any idea what that would do to him? To be sent to a place like that, to be mentally dissected and labelled like a butterfly pinned to a cork board? He's your son for Christ's sake, where's your compassion!?"

"It's not my compassion that's the problem, Violet. The boy has no feelings other than those which arise from some deeply ingrained desire for self-preservation."

"There is nothing wrong with him_"

"That boy is a sociopath." His father had hissed, desperation causing blood to rise across his cheeks, "I'm telling you there's something wrong with him, the way he slinks around carryout those nasty little experiments, interfering with the corpses of animals_"

"He's just inquisitive, he's bright, he loves learning. Mycroft was just the same at his age, always picking up things off the floor and examining them. Remember his stone collection? He was obsessed with that thing."

His father's eyes had grown wide with disbelief, "Having a stone collection is not the same as sticking your entire head into a live bee hive."

"He wanted to see how the bees made honey, that's rather sweet_ he was only six!"

"Oh, good lord, woman. I know that you dote on the boy but even you can't delude yourself into believing that he's normal. He still hasn't made a single friend_"

"That's because you insist on sending him to that stuffy boarding school. They are all bigoted fools, little Hitlers in the making, Siger! Did you know that they physically abuse him? He hasn't said anything about it but I saw two circular bruises around his wrists and a nasty cut on his upper arm."

"What does that prove? For all you know the boy was just carrying out one of his ghastly experiments."

"He didn't hurt himself! They hate him_"

"And why is that? Don't you think that that might have something to do with him?"

Sherlock had watched the contraction of his mother's throat as she swallowed slowly, "What exactly," she had said quietly, "do you mean by that?"

His father had braced his arms against the kitchen counter and had turned his face towards the window, squinting against the bright morning sunlight. He had been quiet for a few moments, obviously mulling over his choice of words, before he had said,

"Some animals are able to smell illness in human beings, they respond to that on a visceral level. They can't explain why exactly but they know instinctively that something is wrong and they attempt to destroy it before it has a chance to destroy them."

His words had hung in the air thickly for an innumerable amount of time. Something in Sherlock's throat had felt like it was ballooning up and he had stared at his mother, his eyes growing hot, stomach clenching around itself, as he had waited for her to say that it wasn't true, that there wasn't a sickness in him that people could subconsciously detect. That he didn't deserve to be hated.

His mother had been practically vibrating with rage, her thin frame trembling beneath her robe, her knuckles turning white from the strain of being bent viciously into fists,

"There is nothing wrong with my son." She had said with such venom that Sherlock's father had actually flinched.

"So now he's your son?"

"Yes, currently, as you seem so unwilling to own to him."

"I'm just concerned, Violent_"

"You have no need to be. I know my Sherlock, I know his heart_"

"Oh, don't bring hideous metaphors into this. Don't try and dress him up as some sort of Byronic hero or tortured soul that just needs to be understood. Doesn't it strike you as just a little strange that he's never showed any interest in girls? He never brings any to the house, never goes out to meet them, spends all his time in that blasted room making notes in that horrid journal you brought him. Can't you see how that's abnormal? I wouldn't even mind if he was an invert but he seems just as disinterested in boys as he does girls."

"He's fourteen, still practically a baby. Would you be happy if he was fucking everything with a pulse?"

His mother never used crude language. The word had sounded wrong in her mouth and for a second Sherlock thought that he was watching a rather awfully acted play.

"I would happy to see him feel something for someone_"

"He does. Haven't you seen the way he is with Mycroft? They completely and utterly adore each other – not that the stubborn headed fools would admit to such a thing. Remember how he used to insist on holding his hand every time they left the house? Or the way that he cried when you sent Mycroft off to that God awful boarding school? And he loves me_

"I mean other people, Violet, people who he hasn't lived with his entire life, people who he isn't conditioned to feign love for. It's not normal, the contempt he has for the rest of the world. It's dangerous, he's dangerous, aren't you the least bit concerned that he could end up hurting something, that he could enjoy hurting people?"

"Oh, now you're being utterly ridiculous. You've jumped from calling him a sociopath to a sadist in a matter of minutes, complete rot. If you spent any time with him, instead of condemning him, you'd know, Siger, you'd know just how pure his intentions are. He just doesn't fit in, all the best people don't, he's unique and special and I'm glad that he's not the sort of fool who goes throwing around his affection like it's worth nothing more than dust. He just needs someone who understands him, someone worthy of his time… maybe at university, he'll find some like minded people. One day he'll find himself a friend and all this worry will be for nothing. One day he will fall in love with somebody truly extraordinary – similar to the way that he is truly extraordinary – and they will live a truly extraordinary life and he will be happy and loved in return for all the excellent qualities that he has. One day he will prove you wrong, Siger, and then won't you feel like such a fool for saying all of this?"

His father had smiled at her sardonically and had said, "One day they'll be a dead body lying in the middle of a crime scene and you'll have to deal with the fact that it was your son who put it there. Then won't you feel like such a fool for believing that he was capable of being anything more than a machine?"

The image faded. The strands of memory dissipated into darkness and Sherlock was left staring at the blackness of his closed eyelids. He was trembling violently with rage. Something hard and solid was expanding inside his stomach, threatening to burst through his skin, threatening to consume him. He swallowed against the lump in his throat and cradled his throbbing head in his hands. His hands were damp with sweat. They vibrated against either side of his head like pieces of metal struck against concrete. The outside world was silent, the waiting room and the hospital and the streams of passing patients had become diluted white noise. All he could hear was his shallow breathing and the whispering strings of his thoughts.

You didn't think that I had a heart did you? Not a real one, nothing recognisably human. What did you think was there instead? Something shiny and metal, like what you would find inside a clockwork toy? Did you ever dream about opening up my sternum, taking a rib spreader and looking inside the cavity of my chest? In your mind did you see nothing but a set of functioning lungs and a dark absence of where something vital was supposed to be? You didn't think that there was anything there but you were wrong. I might not have a heart of my own but I believe that I stole one from my friend – because I do have a friend, it only took my thirty-two years but I have one now.

The first day we met I told him that I was a sociopath and he didn't even blink. He didn't think that I was a sickness. He didn't leave, he didn't hate me, instead he helped me solve a string of murders by shooting a crazed cab driver dead through two sheets of glass and then he took me home and made me tea. And that was the first night that I felt it, when we were eating Chinese takeout cross legged in our new living room. He had said,

"That was mental! What we just did. Your life can't always be like that, can it?"

And I showed him my past cases, laying them all out on the carpet like we were making a giant mosaic, and he had oscillated repeatedly between looking fascinated, bemused, horrified and utterly amazed all night. And then, at about five in the morning, when strands of muted light had started to flood through the curtains and we had heard the sounds of the world waking up, we had fallen silent and he had stopped looking at the files, instead favouring to look at me.

And that's when I had felt something inside my chest contract and relax. It was like the first blip on an ultrasound and it was succeeded by the feeling of ridiculous accomplishment and awe of the fact that now I could feel something inside of me growing out of nothing, I could feel it throbbing in a previously empty space.

His heart in my chest is what I felt and, as disgustingly poetical and metaphoric as that statement sounds, it's true. So I might be a machine but I contain within me a piece of John Watson and because he is so achingly human I must be partly human too.

Through the strands of thought Sherlock became distantly aware of the fact that someone was trying to speak to him. His eyes slid open and he squinted at the bright, colourless waiting room in front of him. A quick examination of the clock on the opposing wall informed him that six hours had passed since he had slipped into his self-induced trance. He could see the sky through the window, it was black and still thickly shedding snow.

A few feet to his right a doctor was standing, staring at him with a mixture of mild concern and irritation.

"Mr Holmes." He said – going by the tone he was using he'd obviously been trying to gain Sherlock's attention for a number of minutes.

Sherlock stared at him: Forty-seven, happily married for fifteen years despite two affairs – on her part not his – owns three parakeets, no children, recently started golfing - for pleasure? No, he detests the sport, business reasons then, golfing with the bosses to ensure that he's considered for a promotion – promotion at his age in the medical field must be vying for chief of surgery. Egotist. Patients not living entities, only bodies to fix and play God with. The prize is not saving the life it's saying that you were the one who saved it. There's a spec of blood on the inside of his right wrist, left there on purpose – he's meticulously clean – he left it there to remind himself, to remind others, what he is, what he does. He plays God. Look at how many hours I've spent trying to save a life. Aren't I marvelous? That blood belongs to John and just that tiny drying drop of it is more worthy that the man who's parading it like some sort of trophy.

Sherlock looked away from that fragment of John and stared at the doctor's face. He was waiting for Sherlock to speak, he was getting ready to perform the practiced speech that all those in his profession were taught to regurgitate in a monotone at moments like this. But Sherlock didn't need words. He knew what had happened – just like he knew about the doctor's egotism from the blood on his wrist and the state of his marriage by the shine on his ring. He was predominantly a machine after all and machines were brilliant at forming correlative links in split seconds.

The human in him wanted to collapse on the floor and release the scream that had been building inside him since he had first watched Moriarty thrust the knife into John's body. But Sherlock was made of more metal than flesh so he kept himself silent and still. He turned his face from the doctor and closed his eyes. He didn't need confirmation in the form of words. Sherlock knew what had happened to John Watson and now he had to work out what he was going to do with that information.