John's journey back to 2003 was as uneventful as climbing into a time machine and waking up half-delirious ten years later could be. The garden seemed almost completely unchanged, perhaps with the exception of the exchange of one type of flower for another. John had decided on yet a different date—March 21 this time—lest he bump into Sherlock again and arouse suspicion. What would Sherlock be up to now? He might be out of university, mightn't he? Unless he was one of those sorts who dabbled around for years. John imagined Sherlock intentionally failing a chemistry class over and over so that he could continue using the lab. He'd smuggle chemicals for his own use, and do enough research for the professors that they'd look the other way. Or maybe not—maybe his professors, too, hated him. He probably corrected them all the time.

Well, first things first—how would he find Mycroft? John's fists balled up thinking about it—about Mycroft, so concerned, actually concerned about Sherlock, ten years ago, and Mycroft some eight years hence, who would so foolishly and heartlessly strip away all of Sherlock's secrets, all the smallest details of his life, to give to Moriarty. It's your fault, he told Mycroft, in his mind, it's all your fault. Don't you know how to be a good brother? Don't you know?

John didn't know how to be a good brother, either. He wasn't supposed to have to: he was the younger one. But even in his own youth, maybe just in the very year he'd come from, Harry would stumble home weeping, or drunk, or both, and all John could think to do was stare for a few moments and then leave her alone. There was a point at which they'd liked each other—he'd admired her. She was strong, and brave, and a lot of things that a lot of other people in his life weren't. Once, the neighbor boy had started calling John names and, when that didn't get a rise out of John, threw his bicycle at him. John remembered crying on the drive while the other lad stood over him, still not done expressing his opinions, and then he remembered Harry, getting home from school and throwing the kid into the yard. "Don't you talk shit about my little brother," she'd shouted at him, "and don't you hurt him again." It hadn't been a problem after that, until much later, when Harry was gone—but by then, John knew how to take care of himself.

After a point, though, Harry had stopped being strong and brave. Well: she was still both of those things, but they were so far overshadowed by the new parts of her life that they manifested themselves in more painful ways: fights at bars, trouble with boys. John was still too young to understand the reasons for her trouble, only knew that there was something Harry very much needed that nobody seemed to be able to give her. And he couldn't, either. And now, well—after so many years of the two of them being so very convinced they didn't need the other, making up could only be messy, if it was even possible. John couldn't remember how to treat Harry lovingly, only remembered how to lecture her about the dangers of her drinking, which he tried so desperately not to do any time they did meet up but usually failed to avoid, in the end. She hated that he was a doctor. She hated that he was so skilled at picking up girls.

Joke's on me, Harry, he thought. If things don't turn out with Mary, I'm probably never going on another date again.

Mary—what would he tell her if—no, when—he managed to save Sherlock? "Hey, sorry, I love you but I'm moving back in with my flatmate." Well, she would understand. Mary always understood. And she was a fan. She probably wouldn't even ask when John was going to move in with her. "I might just stay at 221B forever," John could tell her, and she'd shrug and smile and ask if he wouldn't mind at least dropping by a couple times a week to say hello.

But she wouldn't, really, would she? Mary was special, she was different, she was understanding—but everyone had limits. She'd draw the line somewhere, and John would have to pick, and it would hurt. It would hurt him no matter what; it would also either hurt her or Sherlock.

And then, depending on what he picked, Sherlock could be alone again. John couldn't do that. He'd said as much to Sarah already: can't let Sherlock run off to something dangerous without someone watching his back. John would have to be there: otherwise, if the case was especially exciting, Sherlock would forget to text John to come meet him, and he'd be running about London and chasing down gangs and they'd tie him up and kill him and John would read about it in the papers the next day.

At least the way it had happened he'd been there and seen it with his own eyes—did that make it better? It made it awful. It made it terrible. Horrifying. But maybe it was better. He didn't have to wonder.

John was a good friend. He was a good flatmate and he would save Sherlock and he would do right by him for as long as he lived to do it.

The thought hurried him out of the machine and over to drink some of the water that had still been left for him. Oh, damn—should he have left some water behind for himself before? John crumpled the bottles and did the best he could to stack them up so that they wouldn't blow away. He nodded to himself and squared his shoulders, looking over the machine once more. Still plenty of power—and by the looks of it, no one had taken off with it yet. He'd have to be more careful, he supposed, anytime after this year. Mycroft would know. John kept a wary eye out as he came along the closest part of the path to the house, and marched along to the main road, the steady deliberateness of his thoughts of the past matching his step.

John wasn't a good brother and probably he never would be, with the state of his and Harry's relationship.

Well, no: He was a good brother for a while. He had tried very, very hard for a while. When he started trying he thought Harry hated him for that; when he stopped, she hated him more.

"Harry," he'd say, as she got ready to leave the house, clearly in a mood. "Please, don't."

"Don't what, John?" she'd snap.

"Drink, Harry. Please."

"Piss off," she'd spit, and storm out the door.

But over the course of the next couple of years, he'd found it more and more difficult to plead with her each time, knowing it would be to no avail. Eventually, he stopped. Harry would pause by the door—John didn't look up, but he could always hear the hesitation, Harry's breathing as she waited. He glanced up once to see hurt in her eyes, and couldn't bring himself to do it again.

"Harry," he'd knocked on her door once, some time after that.

"John," she'd answered quietly.

And he'd just stood there, back slumped against her door, for half an hour.

"I miss you," he finally said.

"Piss off," she said. Softly.

But things continued to pile between them, John's enlistment not the least among them, and so, even though it had happened years before, that was the last pleasant moment they'd shared before he went off to Afghanistan.

What was the last pleasant moment he'd shared with Sherlock?

He'd called Sherlock a machine. Before he went and jumped off a building. God.

What was their last moment?

He didn't really want to think about it. Maybe later. Not now. He was already thinking of what a rubbish brother he was; he didn't remember the thousand signs he should have seen of what Sherlock was about to do. Maybe later.

Sherlock might be consulting by now, mightn't he be? Well, maybe it was a bit early. That wasn't what he was meant to be focusing on now, anyway. He needed to find Mycroft. He'd tell him what he needed to tell him, and he'd get on his way. How to locate the man? He'd obviously done it before—well—it was obviously manageable, if he'd already given the instructions to Mycroft to give himself, or if he was already going to, or whatever the appropriate phrasing was for knowing that in the future you'd go to the past and tell yourself something. How high up was Mycroft in the government now? Maybe he'd held that same minor position for a decade. Maybe John could just wave at every camera he passed and eventually catch somebody's eye. Of course, if it was the wrong person's eye, things could get rather inconvenient.

There was always the Diogenes Club; that had been the place so far. Perhaps that was why Mycroft had taken him there before. Or at the very least, Mycroft seemed to prefer the club. Well, it was just up Mycroft's street: quiet, stifling, and it made John just a bit uneasy. Maybe more than a bit.

He was, though, far enough from the Diogenes Club that walking was not going to be an option. A taxi it would have to be, then.

... ... ...

John entered the building as quietly as he could, keeping a sharp eye for Mycroft. If he had his own room here, and was currently in it, John would have to wait at the door. He got dirty looks from a few of the patrons as he ambled about. Ah, damn. No luck. No Mycroft. Maybe waving at the cameras wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Well, he could try back later. He'd walk around a few streetes, keep an eye out, and come back. If it came to it, he could piss them all off and start asking around until one of them answered him, or threw something at him, or whatever.

There was a pastry shop nearby: maybe Mycroft would be there, John thought, smirking to himself. It was conveniently located near the Diogenes Club. Ah—in fact, John recognized the name, although the storefront was a bit different now than he was used to seeing. Sherlock, apparently, hated the place. Once, when Sherlock and John had been on the way to the Diogenes Club to drop off some case files Mycroft had left with them, John had suggested going into this shop for a bite. Sherlock had grumbled about the shop, insulting its goods and its employees and its customers, and steered John away. Ah, but of course, John deduced—Mycroft must have always frequented it. Sherlock would want to avoid it in case Mycroft happened to be there. In this case, then, this was exactly where John wanted to be.

When John entered, there was no one at the counter—no one, indeed, anywhere in the shop, no one queued up to make a purchase or seated at one of its two small tables. No Mycroft, unfortunately, which was a thought that John would never have expected himself to have. There was, however, whispering from the back room. John craned his neck, but could make out none of the figures; he hadn't even any idea how many there were.

"Oy!" said one of them, leaving the back and approaching the other side of the counter. "What can I get you?"

"Oh—ah—just—popping in to take a look," was all he could think to say. The goods were expensive: definitely not what he'd be spending his limited funds on, if he could help it.

"Vincent?" came a muffled voice from the back. "Who'sit?"

"Nobody," the man at the counter called back. "Some bloke who don't even know what he wants to buy. Well?" he turned to John.

"Wha's he look like?" the voice was louder this time. Oh—oh. That was—just back there—that rumbling tenor was familiar even with its slurred words, temporarily transporting John back to the memory of hefting a drugged Sherlock what felt like half a street uphill but was actually only the steps up to 221B after Irene had drugged him. Even with the extra cigarette-roughness, John recognized the source of that voice, and if he—if Sherlock—was given enough reason he could peek out and see John and—

"Sorry, don't think I'll be buying anything today," John said quickly, and turned on his heel to exit the shop. Mycroft wasn't why Sherlock hated the place. It was this, it was the drugs and the memories and all of the things that by the time John knew him Sherlock must have been so desperate to escape. Sherlock didn't want to think of what he'd done here, didn't want John to be a part of that—or maybe, worse, something awful had happened to him here. This was a piece of Sherlock's past that Sherlock didn't want to revisit.

John made it a few steps down the street before some burly brute collided with him. The fellow grabbed John by the arm.

"Come here, nice an' easy, sir."

"What'd I—" he tried to jerk his arm out of the man's grip, but his hands were massive. The one that held him was wrapped almost all the way around John's certainly non-negligible upper arm. Before he could protest further, a strip of cloth was slipped through his mouth and another over his eyes. He was being directed—somewhere. John tried to count the steps and their direction. Back where he'd come from, for a bit of the way, and then a sudden right into what had to have been the unassuming little antique shop he passed, based on the sound of the bell on the door. Good deduction, Sherlock-over-his-shoulder said, except his voice was a bit muffled, a bit out of sorts, a bit fuzzy, just as it had been from the back room of the pastry shop.

When John was released, he wasn't in an antique shop at all: it was a small room that had perhaps originally been storage for such a shop, but it was now empty and bright and clean.

"This will all go significantly more expeditiously if you don't waste time lying." Oh, damn, and of course it was. John's blindfold came off. Mycroft.

"Sorry?" was all John could think to say.

"You and I both know what you were doing in that shop."

"In—what, in the pastry shop? I don't know, I was standing around and deciding everything there looked like rubbish." Sherlock had been on something in that back room, had been bleary-eyed and dizzy and high.

"You left in quite a hurry."

John shrugged. "Yeah."

"Why?"

Well, that would be a difficult one to explain, wouldn't it? Still: it was an easy opening. Mycroft had said not to waste time lying. "I think your brother was just about to recognize me, which," Mycroft opened his mouth but John continued, eyes daring him to speak, "which is something I'm avoiding for completely different reasons than whatever you think."

"Oh? I am a difficult man to surprise. What is your connection to my brother?"

"Friend." John could at least enjoy this a bit. Let Mycroft suffer in confusion for a while. He deserved it.

Mycroft's mouth curved down in disbelief, but he did not target John's word choice directly. "Yet you say you were avoiding him."

"Avoiding him recognizing me, anyway, yeah. Because, Mycroft—" That earned him a quick blink of surprise. "Because we're not friends yet. Will be, though."

"My brother doesn't have friends."

"But he will have f—a friend."

"You seem terribly certain. Have you met him? You may yet change your mind."

"I have met him, and I won't, no."

"And when did you meet him?"

"Well, let's see." He couldn't hold back a smirk now. Mycroft was clearly peeved at being led around by some bloke he'd obviously hoped to pull off the street for reasons related to Sherlock's…habits. "I met him two years ago. I guess for you that'll be in about seven years."

"Stop talking nonsense." Mycroft frowned, but then his eyebrows rose in recognition. "Ah," he steepled his fingers. "I see it now. You have suffered brain damage from drug usage."

"You're worried about Sherlock," John pointed out, feeling a bit like the man himself. "You think I just sold him some drugs."

"Yes. That is what you did, is it not…?" he paused, waiting for John to fill in his name.

No harm in that. "John."

"John. Yes. Is that not what you did?"

"It is not what I did. If you'd been watching me this whole afternoon you'd know that I wandered down your own street at about two fifteen and caught a cab to the Diogenes Club—figured you'd be there; you usually are, at least when I go looking to find you—" he paused, and smirked a bit at the twist of Mycroft's mouth, "popped in, and left. I wandered around for a bit, stopped into that shop, heard your brother in the back, and left."

"Because you didn't want him to recognize you."

"Because we aren't supposed to meet yet. Because I've traveled back in time from 2012."

"You'll forgive my complete disbelief of your story."

John's lips flattened as he thought. Mycroft had to eventually accept this, right? What angle should he take? "Oh, wait, see this," he dug his wallet from his pocket and passed it to Mycroft. "Take a look through my money. I think I've got a few other things in there with the date on them as well."

"Fabricated, then," Mycroft thumbed through them, but paused at one of the notes. "Not a very convincing twenty."

"It's real. That's how they look now. We stopped using the other ones, what, must've been two years ago…well. You know. Two years ago for me."

Mycroft narrowed his eyes, apparently processing something, and turning the note over. "You couldn't have known about this."

"I really didn't."

"Well," Mycroft's eyebrows were now raised, "that certainly is at least somewhat compelling." He appeared to evaluate John again. "So, supposing even a fraction of your incoherent babbling is true, you traveled here using some sort of a device?"

"Yes."

"May I see it? It would certainly make your case a more convincing one."

"No."

Mycroft's eyebrows knitted. "Well. I daresay I am not in the practice of taking people at face value."

"Tell you what, you can find me wandering around town, then, and see that there's two of me here right now."

"Worthless, if you have a twin."

"An identical twin ten years younger than I am? Anyway, you can look me up in your records. I don't look all that much like my father, and I don't have any brothers. Maybe there's somebody else in the world who looks a whole lot like me, I don't know. Just look and you'll see."

"And how do you suggest I find this fellow who you allege is you?"

"Well, I'd have been leaving St. Bartholomew's right about now. You could probably find me in the coffee shop just across the street. I usually chatted up some girl or another after my shift. It was a pretty regular thing."

"Mm," Mycroft nodded, and seemed to be placing a call. "Yes, the one you see just now," he said to whoever was on the other end. "And—yes. Is he? Really. Very well. Do me a favor," and the intonation was cold and threatening, "and forget we spoke about it." He turned to John. "There was a man of almost your exact physical appearance crossing the street just a moment ago."

He'd probably passed just the spot he'd been at when Sherlock fell. He walked over that spot every day, and couldn't have had any way of knowing how important it would be, what devastation he'd experience just there, years later.

"Well, that was me."

"Or a very elegant ruse."

"Yeah," John sat back, rolling his eyes, "I was planning on getting manhandled halfway out a pastry shop whilst I ran away from your dead brother, just so I could tell you to watch some bloke made up to look like me cross the street and impress you with my bloody awful fake notes."

Mycroft cleared his throat. "My dead brother, you say? Is that a threat?"

"Oh, I hadn't mentioned that yet, had I? Well, here's the thing, Mycroft. Where I'm from, your brother jumped from a building and offed himself. Right, and it's actually all your fault."

"Even if you had any way of proving that true, I doubt it is the case. What is your business with my brother?"

"He's—he was—my flatmate."

Mycroft grimaced. "My apologies. He was awful enough to live with in our youth, I can't imagine…"

"He wasn't awful. He was—yes, he did once transfer his ligament experiment to the crisper drawer without telling me, and he did tend to leave the—he wasn't awful, Mycroft."The example seemed to go at least partway to convincing Mycroft that he knew just who he was talking about: the man's posture eased slightly.

"I shall be pleased to do nothing more than take your word for it."

"Shall you? I don't think you shall."

Mycroft's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing in response to that comment. Probably, John thought, he was already dreaming up ideas for surveillance, if he wasn't in the habit of installing some form of it in his brother's quarters already. "So, if I opt to believe that you have, in fact, managed to somehow travel from a time where my brother has friends and shares a flat with someone who doesn't kick him out after two months—what are you doing here?"

"I'm going to undo the mess you made and keep Sherlock from dying, that's what. I had to pop by here to give you a few instructions."

"Instructions?"

"Yeah, you're gonna see me again. Except, it'll be the first time I'll have traveled back."

"I take it you knew me before having traveled?"

"Well, yeah. Always with your nose in Sherlock's business—it was pretty unavoidable, wasn't it?"

"Ah."

"I'll be disoriented and dehydrated. You're going to pick me up from wandering around on the streets and have a bit of a chat with me and give me some water. Got it so far?"

Mycroft buried his face in his hand momentarily. "This is ridiculous. Very well, let us say that all this comes to pass. What then?"

"Well, you need to tell me a couple of things. Get out a pen."

"What?"

"You'll read them straight to me from that notebook you always carry about in your right jacket pocket."

"I assure you my memory will be more than sufficient. But if you insist," he removed it from his pocket, glanced up, and waited.

"Okay, right. Well, first, I'm going to think I'm asleep or completely loony. So uh, tell me that I said that I'm not, and this is actually happening." He paused and waited for Mycroft to finish. "Right. Also, tell me not to talk to Sherlock—say I can't talk to Sherlock. Say that I say not to talk to Sherlock. I don't want to screw everything up and have a conversation with him too early on. Right, and tell me to also not make eye contact with him. It seems like he'll maybe glimpse me enough times that he could recognize me, so…"

"I see, and so you fled the shop, thinking he would see you and the universe would collapse around you, or some other such foolishness."

"I just don't want to not meet him."

"I believe most people would make an effort to avoid meeting him, if they had the choice."

John decided not to grace that with a response and tried to remember if there was anything else he had to tell himself. Right, the not talking, the not making eye contact…the fact that he had really time traveled…but of course what had mattered so much to him in the first place had been…of course. God, had he already gotten so used to the idea already? It had felt so much like returning to the way things were supposed to be when he finally did see him, and right now the last thing he wanted to do was place himself back in the shoes of the man who could only think of Sherlock as dead. No, he would fix that and never think of it again—and he needed to make sure his past self knew that it was okay, it was fine, it would all be okay—he could get exactly what he wanted, he could see Sherlock again, alive. He could replace memories of paling lips (they had been paling, hadn't they?) and no pulse with something so much better. "But tell me that I can see Sherlock, that's fine."

"I take it, then, that you have already done so before—" he cleared his throat, "today."

"Yes," John nodded. "Yes, I have."

"When?"

"None of your business."

Mycroft lifted an eyebrow and scribbled a few more things down.

"Right," John tried to ignore Mycroft's note taking. "So, you'll want to look for me at Peckham—near the Criterion Café I s'pose—on May sixth in five years. You don't have to believe that I've actually traveled through time right now, just do that and you'll see. Oh!" John pulled the coordinates from his pocket. "Give me these, too. They're a safe place to land. Your mother's garden, in fact, but don't even think about touching the machine." The corners of Mycroft's mouth lowered. "I'm the only one who knows how to keep your brother from dying, so if you want him to still be alive after 2011 leave it be."

"And after you 'save him'?"

Note to self, John thought, destroy the machine the second you save Sherlock. "We'll see," was all he said, which seemed to please Mycroft enough.

"This is utterly ludicrous," Mycroft said, though from what John could tell he seemed much more prepared to believe it. "You're quite certain you didn't simply stop into that shop to sell Sherlock some sort of hallucinogen?"

"Quite certain," said John.

"And that isn't something you'll be doing in the future?"

"Never." John swore he caught a glimmer of genuine—gratefulness, or thanks, or something—in Mycroft's eye. "Oh, and in case you do want to check against your records, my name is John Watson—Doctor John Watson. I'll be shipping off to Afghanistan in May 2006."

"And my brother truly considers you a friend?"

"Truly," John answered. "I'm going to do whatever I must to save him."

"How was it that I caused his death?"

"You gave somebody very dangerous far too much information." Best not to mention Moriarty by name—what if Mycroft went off and killed him right now for good measure, and so there was never any cabbie, never any chase through London, never any leaving his cane at Angelo's and realizing just how much being Sherlock's flatmate and friend would do for him? "He used it to make Sherlock look like a fake."

"A fake what?"

"Oh, right," John hoped Mycroft wouldn't somehow use the fact that he had this knowledge beforehand against Sherlock. "He's going to start consulting for Scotland Yard. As a detective. Well, not just for the Yard; individuals come to us too. Well—him—then us. He's…he was…he'll be…brilliant at it."

"Ah," said Mycroft, and John couldn't tell if it's because Mycroft would expect nothing less than a certain degree of cleverness of Sherlock, or if he didn't believe John, or if he really didn't care.

"This person made it look like Sherlock set up all the cases that he solved, like Sherlock hired this arsehole to play the 'bad guy,' made him look like he wasn't actually a bleeding genius at what he did. And I don't know why, but somehow because of it, Sherlock killed himself. He told me he was a fake and jumped." John took in a rattling breath. "He wasn't a fake. He was a bloody genius. He was…"

Mycroft didn't seem to be listening anymore. He scrawled a few notes onto his page, and then grabbed his mobile again. "Could you set up an account for one Dr. John Watson? Yes. Yes, five hundred should be sufficient."

"Sorry, what?" John asked as soon as Mycroft hung up.

"If you'll wait just a few more minutes, my assistant will be in with a card for a debit account for any spending you need to do after this year."

"You don't trust me not to use the wrong notes."

Mycroft smiled. "Just trying to be of assistance to my brother's," he paused, rolling a word around on his tongue to get a feel for it in its current context, "friend."

John briefly considered refusing the offer and leaving—probably Mycroft was just using it as a means to keep tabs on John's whereabouts, or, as it had been the first time they met, was some sort of a test—but using this would mean that he didn't have to travel back to 2012 to get more money, or steal it from whatever arsehole was giving Sherlock a hard time at that point in his life. And it was unlikely turning this down would send some signal of untrustworthiness to Mycroft; at least he hadn't been asked to spy on Sherlock. John would still have to worry about money during years before this, but this would help. Anyway, he didn't have to use it if he suddenly found himself with sufficient means not to.

"By the way," John thought to add, "the time you first meet me is the thirtieth of January, 2010. I won't know anything about this then, so…treat me as much like a stranger as you can."

"No one is a stranger to me," Mycroft leaned back into one of the laughs that was so unnerving it nearly drove John to fidgeting in his seat. Perhaps it was manufactured for the specific purpose of making others squirm as if there was cold sweat sliding down their backs. "I am sure I will have known a certain number of things about you by then regardless."

"Right," was all John could think to say. "Yes. Not creepy at all."

... ... ...

John left with the card and a distinct sense of relief. Good: as far as he was aware, that was the last time he'd have to speak with Mycroft about any of this. He had the urge to go back to the pastry shop and hide behind a newspaper and see if Sherlock was still there—but if he was, he would probably take good note of what John looked like, and that would be it, he'd be remembered and everything would be ruined.

Anyway, John wasn't about to pretend that he wasn't made the slightest bit nauseous by the idea of a drugged-up Sherlock. Yes, he knew he'd done—well, something, anyway, in the past, both from the few times Sherlock had alluded to it and from seeing Sherlock in the Chinese restaurant later—earlier, all strung out and coping poorly. But hearing Sherlock speak with anything other than his usual crisp enunciation and sharp words was painful. John was reminded of Baskerville, the combined panic of seeing Sherlock in such a state and the sting of his words. He had worried that night that whatever Sherlock had seen, or whatever had caused him so much doubt, had taken permanent hold of him, and that Sherlock would never return to his old self. It was a bit of a foolish fear, in retrospect, but at the time it was present enough in John's mind that when he had curled up in bed at the inn just hours after solving the case, the drug took hold of him and carried him through the night with horrible visions of Sherlock becoming a shell of himself. One of the nightmares had placed him in Afghanistan, which in and of itself was not an unusual subject for him to wake up to frozen in sweat, with Sherlock. Sherlock miscalculated the range of his target and hit John instead, hit him in the shoulder. After that, all Sherlock would do was curl up and cry. They came home and John was fine but for the shoulder and Sherlock was hollow, was Sherlock on the outside with nothing in the center, was literally hollow, his guts and his brain scooped clean out, and John volunteered to carry Sherlock's heart in his own chest while they fixed up a spot to put it back into Sherlock's. They used John's chest cavity as a mold for how to form Sherlock's.

"Your friend's doing a very good thing for you," one of the doctors said to Sherlock. John realized after waking up that the doctor had been himself.

"I don't have friends," said Sherlock, and then he turned to John, to chest-heaved-open John, not surgeon-John. "I'm afraid," he said. And then John woke up.

John thought about asking Sherlock if he'd had horrifying dreams the night after they'd shot the dog. Sherlock was already awake when John snapped out of sleep; he had stripped the blanket from his bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. Sherlock was staring out the window, but John noticed him tapping his fingers on the sill as if he was playing violin. It was driving Sherlock mad, then, that he couldn't soothe John's nerves while he slept with some sound. Sherlock had actually already done so, had already soothed John in his own sleep from the other bed not so many feet away. He had thrashed about and occasionally mumbled, what John could only assume were deductions. John had drifted off into his own nightmarish slumber sometime around what he swore was the mention of a decapitated teapot.

"Still rather early," Sherlock mumbled from beside the window. "You should get back to sleep, John."

"You, too," John argued.

"Your noise awoke me. Were you having nightmares? What about?" Investigation, apparently, not particular concern for John's feelings.

"Afghanistan." It was true enough. Sherlock didn't need to hear the rest.

"Ah." Disbelief. Had John cried out, had he said Sherlock's name?

"Sorry for waking you."

Sherlock waved a hand dismissively. Then, apparently struck with an idea, he strode over to his nightstand and picked up his phone, intensely focused on it for a moment.

"What is it?"

"I thought I had…ah." He set the phone back down and tapped it again, settling onto the edge of his bed. A melody—tinny, thin, but definitely a melody—drifted from Sherlock's phone. Violin?

"Is that you?"

Sherlock averted his gaze, and it was just dark enough that John couldn't discern whether he was blushing, or even if he was smiling or frowning. "Yes."

"Why is that on your phone?"

"Go back to sleep, John."

He felt like he'd gotten barely any rest, as if the nightmare had been all waking hours and he was only just now lying down to sleep. Sherlock's was a compelling argument. John tucked the blankets back over his shoulder and curled up. "You too, Sherlock," he muttered. He'd drifted off with his eyes fixed on Sherlock's knees, bent over the edge of the bed. Whether Sherlock had returned to sleep as well was a mystery: when John woke up in the morning it was late, and Sherlock was already downstairs. Like so many things, they never discussed it. There was no real reason to; they were both ready to set aside the memories of being so torn down by that sodding drug.

When John had the same dream as at Baskerville again after Sherlock had fallen, it went farther. After Sherlock turned to him and spoke with frightened eyes, John said, "Take my hand," and stretched his left hand toward Sherlock. Sherlock took it in his right.

And then John tried to scoot toward Sherlock's gurney but fell off his bed instead, and Sherlock fell with him, their hands still intertwined, their unfinished chests wide open and spilling out organs onto the hospital floor. "Now people will definitely talk," Sherlock said, nodding down at their entangled entrails, and John woke up just as the hot rush of death surged over him.

No, John decided, he likely couldn't bear the idea of watching Sherlock destroy himself in any way, drugs or otherwise; he would rather not see him so desperate for escape or fun or camaraderie or whatever it was that he got from whatever drugs he did that he would stifle down his fantastic mind to do it. John only wanted to see a Sherlock that could cut him down, that would wrinkle his nose and ask John to please not try to wear the same shirt for a third day before washing it again; he only wanted to see a Sherlock with fingers dexterous enough to breeze through any sheet music placed before him.

Except that wasn't quite true: Because while he had time to do it—and he wouldn't later, because he would be destroying the machine the instant he finished what he had to—and while Mycroft had no idea of his existence before 2003—there was something else John wanted to do. He wanted to see Sherlock before the drugs and the cutting remarks and the violin and tell that Sherlock, in his mind even if he couldn't aloud, that everything would be fine, that Sherlock did have friends, or at least a friend, and a damn good one, a friend who would do anything for him if Sherlock could only say what it was that he needed. He wanted to tell that Sherlock that everyone was going to be wrong about him while he grew up: he wasn't a freak, not even close. He wasn't a freak or a fake or even a sociopath; he was the most brilliant, the truest and the most alive, the most feeling person, the most human human being. Little Sherlock would look up from his building blocks or sand castle or microscope slides or half-dissected rabbit, and he would hear these things and know that everything everyone else was ever going to say to him was wrong, that he was worth it, he was worth so much. John felt like he was on the hospital floor again, organs heaving from his open chest. He'd show little Sherlock. "The second you meet me, give me this," he'd point to the extra heart he was holding onto, that had just fallen out with everything else, "and I'll keep it safe for ever and ever." For ever and ever: like fairy tales, little Sherlock, but real.