Sherlock woke up grumpy - and in all probability withdrawing; a side effect of the naloxone. By blocking the opiate receptors, John knew, it effectively sent addicts used to a constant background level of mu opiate receptor activation into cold turkey. Of course, Sherlock wouldn't admit this was why he felt unwell, and by John's estimation, the withdrawal should be mild. Sherlock had gone through the all-singing, all dancing version of it while he was incarcerated at Her Majesty's Pleasure the previous week, although of course he hadn't admitted that was what it was that time either. John had only found that out from a careful phone call to the medical officer at the high-security unit he'd been incarcerated at. He was unsurprised to discover that Mycroft had arranged for him to have access to all of Sherlock's medical records. He really was handing over responsibility for Sherlock to John.

'Morning,' John said cheerily as Sherlock rolled over, opened his eyes, stared at John, groaned, and then buried his face in the pillow.'

'Bit hungover are we?' John asked, determined to make the most of the situation.

Sherlock's eyes snapped open and he glared at John.

'Where am I?' he asked.

'St Mary's. You're on the short stay medical ward. Under the circumstances, I assumed your desire to keep this from Mycroft would outweigh your preference for a room in the private ward. This was the best that I can do under the circumstances.'

'When can I go home?'

'When you can stand up without falling over and when you can continue breathing off the naloxone infusion.'

In answer, Sherlock reached across and turned off the pump next to his bed.

'Oh, and you've also got to convince the mental health team that you weren't trying to kill yourself,' John realised that he was being over-compensating for an uncomfortable situation by being ridiculously cheerful, and added more soberly, 'And me for that matter. What were you trying to do Sherlock? I mean, I know that we argued, and I said some harsh things. I was being an idiot, and I'm sorry, but I never meant -'

'Relax John. Of course I wasn't trying to kill myself. I just miscalculated the dose, that was all. My tolerance must have dropped more than I'd anticipated during my time in prison.'

'That was a hell of a miscalculation then,' John told him. 'You were barely breathing. If I hadn't come back...'

'But of course you were going to come back. You always come back. How long did it take you? Forty-seven minutes?'

'Fifty-three, ' John said, making a quick calculation.

'You must be slowing up in your old age. It's that extra seven pounds that you're carrying. Mary's the only one meant to be eating for two, you know.'

'Sherlock, I'm being serious. You could have died.'

'Unlikely, I told you. I knew that you'd come back and find me.'

'I nearly just went home.'

'But you didn't.'

'No, I didn't. I went for a walk round the park, then realised I'd been a stupid arse and came back.'

'Well if you choose to put it that way, who am I to disagree with your elegant rhetoric?' Sherlock replied sarcastically.

'I'm trying to apologise here.'

'Apology accepted.'

'You haven't asked me what I'm apologising for.'

'For storming out like a teenager, I would imagine,' Sherlock said with a yawn.

'Jesus, will you listen to yourself? I'm not the one who's just ended up in A&E because I mainlined a Class A drug.'

'So you think that I should be the one apologising?' Defensive again, why did he always retreat to this?

'Yes, no, I don't know.' John sighed and ran a hand through his hair. 'Sherlock, help me out here. I'm trying to be supportive. I want to help, but this thing is way out of control.'

Sherlock stared at him for a long moment and then closed his eyes, muttering something so quietly that John couldn't make out the words.

'Say that again?'

'I said, I know, John. I know that I'm out of control.'

'Well thank fuck for that,' John said. 'That's the -'

'If you dare say first step, then I will hit you, I swear.'

'So what can I do to help?'

'Well, you can stop treating me like one of your patients for a start. I've done this before, John, remember? I know how it goes.'

'How many times have you -'

'Come off heroin? It's okay, John you can say it. Many times.'

'Give me a ballpark figure,'

'Three times in rehab, more than twice that number on my own.'

'And when they locked you up and cut off your supply last week?'

'Did I withdraw? Not properly no. I told you, I was using, I wasn't addicted.'

'And the illness documented in your hospital records? The shaking, the sweats, the nausea, the abdominal pain, that was all -'

'Influenza. Correct.'

'They tried to put you on methadone didn't they? When your tox screen came back as positive for opiates and you got withdrawal symptoms. Why didn't you just take it?'

'Firstly, because I hate methadone. Secondly, because I knew that Mycroft would try to find a way to get me out of prison and onto that mission. And thirdly because even the withdrawal was better than the boredom of staring at the same four walls twenty-four hours a day with no human contact and just a tray of inedible food shoved through a hatch three time a day.'

'Bad?' John asked quietly.

'The food or the solitary confinement?'

'The solitary confinement.'

'It was just boring,' Sherlock said shortly.

'And the withdrawal?'

'Was unpleasant but served as a distraction.'

'You're talking bullshit, Sherlock and you know it.'

'Fine. I didn't want to be labelled as an addict. I told them that I'd taken oramorph after I was shot for residual chest pain from the thoracotomy, and that was why my toxicology screen was showing up as positive for opiates. Many of the other positives could be explained by my recent hospital stay in a similar way. Fortunately, they believed me.'

'No, they didn't,' John wanted to tell him. 'It just suited them to use your explanation.' But he realised that now wasn't the time to explain that to Sherlock.

'So you lied because you wanted to go on that mission?'

'Correct. It was a far more palatable option that the alternative option of incarceration. At least, I would be able to work. Which left me with another problem. I knew it's would be difficult enough to survive it with all of my faculties intact. I couldn't go into it with a habit of withdrawing. Either would have resulted in me being dead within weeks.'

'And yet you still used before you got on the plane.'

'One last hit. I needed something to get me through that.' John chose to avoid the uncomfortable implications of that statement.

'So why did you agree to go?'

'Because I have a James Bond complex, apparently.'

'I'm serious, Sherlock'

'How do you know that I'm not being serious? Perhaps I enjoyed tracking down Moriarty's network so much that I wanted to go back for more.'

'Did you?'

'I don't know. There was a satisfaction in immersing myself completely in something. In not having to care about anything or anybody else, it was just about the mission.'

'You sound as if you're disappointed to be back.'

'Perhaps in a way I am.'

'You don't mean that.'

'Don't I? It would have been simpler, John. It would have been a clean break.'

'It would have been suicide. You told me that'

'You know how much I enjoy beating the odds,'

'And I also know when you're talking shit.'

'Perhaps.' Sherlock looked at his watch but found himself staring at his bare wrist instead. 'How long has it been?' he asked.

'Since when?'

'Since I turned the pump off.'

'Forty-five minutes,' John said.

'Excellent,' Sherlock said, swinging his legs out of bed.

'Where are you off to?' John asked.

'Shower. I presume there's an en-suite to this place?'

'Yes. Because it's really designed for patients with infections.'

'Excellent.' Sherlock contemplated the plastic tubing attaching him to the pump for a moment before simply snapping it off and tying it in a knot.

'Oh for heavens sake,' John muttered, grabbing a pack of gauze odd the bedside locker and removing the cannula for him, securing it in place with a piece of tape.

'Find my clothes for me will you?' Sherlock said as he shut the door of the bathroom behind him.

'You can't just leave, you know,' John shouted at him through the door.

'Why not?' Sherlock asked, sticking his head back through the door, the sound of a shower already running behind him.

'Because you need to see the mental health team first for a start.'

'But I've already had a full psychiatric assessment from my own personal physician and been deemed to be appropriately repentant for my actions, and of no risk to myself or others. See to it will you, John? We've got work to do.'

John's ensuing string of expletives were fortunately lost behind the sound of the shower and the closed door.