Chapter 10: I'm On Your Side~
John stood at the flight of the stairs listening.
This had been the third time he had swung back by Baker Street to check there for Sherlock since he'd been searching for him.
He held his breath, realizing that for the first time in 2 years it had really hit home. He was alive.
He was home.
And then John had taken to his heels. Flying up the stairs, feeling as light as water colors, with the relief that he was there.
Sherlock jumped, standing with his head ducked in the refrigerator, looking for something to drink.
"Oh, hello. So, you're probably a bit...not happy with me...for going off on my own...I , ermm, had a last-minute case, while you were talking with Mycroft."
Sherlock would never forget ,not all the years of his life, the kind of chill that went through him at John's reaction to this.
He sailed across the room like a dark ship through ice-scabbed waters, dark look on his face gathering blackness, like the grey wisps of storm. Sherlock slammed the fridge, and nervously started to back away.
John swooped down on him like the falcon on the field mouse, and for the first time in his entire memory Sherlock felt truly helpless.
John had pressed him into the wall of their kitchen, careful not to slam him because he was wounded, but needing to cut him off.
Leaned into him, looking up into his eyes, looking so deep into his eyes that Sherlock felt like he were being cut open under the surgeon's scalpel, like lightning cuts the sea open to revel all the secrets in the Chasm of the Deep.
"I know about Donovan." John said, low in his throat.
Sherlock swallowed, "How much do you know?"
"The business call?"
There was deep, ghostly silence, and Sherlock swallowed, mentally rehearsing what he was going to say. How he was going to explain...
"Don't say a word." John said suddenly , and Sherlock's eyes lit up ,confused.
John was out of breath, looking as if he could fall to the floor comatose for the rest of time, eyes fluttering. He swallowed, and beginning very carefully he said,"
"Whatever else has happened, whatever happens now...if it counts for anything...I'm on...your side ,Sherlock..."
Silence,...a waiting silence...Sherlock drew a shaky breath, and John shook his head, not done.
"Let me help you. Put the past behind us...put everything behind us. Let me in. I can help, and I want to. Just come clean to me..."
A calm entreaty, promising the same warm companionship they had all those lifetimes before, once upon a time, when they lived here together on Baker Street. Same kind smile, forgiving everything.
Sherlock smiled back, but felt his chest aching...
"I...need to keep you in the dark...to keep you safe..."
"No you don't...We're safer together. Friends protect people."
This time those last three words were said with more understanding, knowing that was exactly what Sherlock had always been trying to do. Promising to do the same, if he would only let him.
Sherlock shivered, "Would you look at me, John. I'm afraid!" he laughed, bitterly. "Afraid to let you in, afraid to let you help...Afraid because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and as torment goes Sally Donovan-the lover of Sebastian Moran since their teens, and the Red-Handed League, as the street gang they used to belong to are called, have actually, dare I say, perfected Sebastian's art, and out done him..."
John blinked, as if punched in the gut..."Out done...As in the past tense? What...what did they do to you?"
He reached, suddenly almost violent, to unbutton Sherlock's shirt, and Sherlock grabbed him by his wrists...
" They want to kill you. Sever your head, and put it in the Queen's bed... It's a protest John, against the Afghan war, and you are the soldier they picked expressly, because of your involvement with me, because I am the one who brought down Moriarty!"
John fights with him, "Show me what they did..."
"I made a deal with the Devil that the gang could try the torments leading up to your death out on me first. It would take a series of experiments, and a span of many months, and if I survived, which I am determined to, then that would give me more than enough time to bust up the gang. I already have enough evidence to take down most of them. Save for Sally Donovan, I will have to dig very deep for her, and prove that she is the one who hired the Circus Assasins...The problem is, usually I take the evidence and find the criminal. I have the criminal first this time,and must sift through evidence the press has tampered with,to get sufficient evidence for a group hanging...John?!"
John is leaning into him heavily, softly crying now.
Looked up,and seized him by both sides of his face.
"You...are an idiot, though, aren't you?"
"What?"
"It's safer to involve me where I know what's going on, than to leave me in the dark, and thus involve me, and I get killed trying to help you 'cause I'm clueless, huh? Because either way, I will not stop until you are safe again. They can cut my head off, they can cut my arms, and my legs, and every last bloody one of my fingers and toes into little pieces, and torture me from now until Kingdom Come...I will not rest until you are safe again, I swear to God!"
Sherlock looked like he'd be sick, but finally he nodded almost imperceptibly, and John swept him up into a titan embrace...careful not to hold him too tight, not wanting to hurt him.
He stepped back, when he felt Sherlock's fingers reach up and start undoing the buttons on the front of his shirt...
He stumbled, and crashed into the table, and knocked a tea pot off and broke it to bits, to see the wounds beneath the fabric.
Sherlock stood holding the fabric open, and off the wounds that were bleeding now, and can't be described for the ghoulish nature of his abuse.
"We never stop do we...Safety has a price ,John, and I still have an agreement..."
John staired , panting, trying not to surrender to unconscious.
"No, no you don't. 'Cause I've just gone to War!"
He nodded, and beckoned with a shaking hand, to Sherlock who's face visibly frosted ,truly frightened at the thought of John in harms way.
"And he won't be marching alone." said Mycroft from the door way, in the company of Lestrade, Anderson,and several other gawking policemen...