John quickly filled Mary in (which led to a few tears on her part), then called Greg Lestrade to give him an edited version as well. Mary busied herself with tea after exclaiming over the state of the kitchen ("John. Are these tapeworms in the fridge?") John slumped on the couch, feeling knackered. Mary just came and settled beside him, waiting for him to speak in his own time.

"You know I need to stay tonight. I'm sorry—it seems like I'm always saying something of the sort lately, but it's true. There's no telling when he'll wake, or what state he'll be in when he does."

"Well of course you do. I'd be ashamed of you if you suggested otherwise." Mary paused, considering. "We can both stay, if you'd like. We neither of us have to go in tomorrow."

John looked around the flat, seeing it through other eyes. "You know, it's not really suited to it—the bedroom upstairs is still full of Sherlock's overflow at the moment. But you could stay and keep me company for a bit. Maybe we can get takeaway and watch telly for a while? I could do with something mindless." In the end Mary stayed until about 10. They heard Sherlock moving in his bedroom at one point, but when John went in to check it was clear Sherlock still wasn't back to normal—he gave no real indication of knowing John, but didn't object when John guided him back to bed.

John stayed awake very late, both because he was listening for Sherlock with half an ear and, well, just because. He finally fell asleep on the sofa somewhere towards dawn, and apparently slept like the dead, since the next thing he knew, he heard voices in the kitchen, one of which was clearly Sherlock's. Mary had brought in breakfast for everyone, including (through sheer accident) some of the chocolate pastries from down the street that Sherlock was fond of. And Sherlock, to John's amazement, was sitting at the table in his dressing gown, willingly eating and laughing with Mary.

Mary noticed he was awake. "Well, and about time, too. It's gone 10, you know."

John wandered over and gave her a quick kiss before turning to Sherlock, who was suddenly suspiciously interested in his pastry. "How are you feeling, then? You gave us quite a scare, you know."

Sherlock shrugged a shoulder but didn't look up. "Surprisingly well. Concussion is a considerable nuisance, but no real damage done, apparently. I was telling Mary that you should both feel free to leave once you woke." Mary laughed. "I don't think he means that quite as rudely as it came out." Sherlock's head did pop up at that, with a look of mild consternation—clearly he really hadn't intended to be rude, for once.

John noticed, though, the slight flutter of Sherlock's eyes at the sudden head movement—clearly things were not quite as rosy as Sherlock wanted them to appear. And it was also very clear that Sherlock had no idea what had happened. So John lied, with a clear conscience. "Well, as to that, we have to stay for a while yet. Unless you want to make another run to A+E, I can't let you go with less than 24 hours observation, and we're well short of that still. So you'll just have to put up with houseguests until then."

They settled into a semi-normal morning routine. John went in to shower and change into the clean clothes Mary had brought, Mary wandered about looking at Sherlock's books, and Sherlock busied himself poring over crime scene photos from the prostitute murders and examining trace evidence under the microscope. As morning turned to afternoon, though, Sherlock started to get frustrated. He had tried to text, and then call, Lestrade, and was being ignored. John, of course, knew exactly why Greg wasn't answering, but wasn't about to volunteer that information just yet—Sherlock seemed a little too fragile for arguments. Finally Sherlock spun from his clue wall and strode off towards his bedroom.

Mary looked up from where she was working on the laptop at the desk. "He's about to do something stupid, you know." John sighed. "Oh, yeah. Know the signs pretty well." They heard Sherlock in the shower, and shortly thereafter he came striding out of his bedroom, barefoot but dressed in trousers and a tight white shirt.

"John, have you heard from Lestrade? He's not answering but it just occurred to me he might have contacted you. He may think I'm still incapacitated."

"That's because you are," John said mildly.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "Really?" He waved his arms dramatically down his form. "I believe 'incapacitation' usually requires the victim to be prone and incapable, and I'm neither. What I am is annoyed, so would you please call Lestrade and inform him that I will meet him at the last crime site in an hour?" He looked at his mobile phone again. "He's still ignoring me." John hesitated just a hair too long, and Sherlock instantly noticed.

"Oh, of course. It's a conspiracy, isn't it?" he said flatly. "Well, you can inform your co-conspirator that I will be at the scene nonetheless, whether either one of you cares to come or not." He stood up on the sofa and began pulling items off the wall and stuffing them into his pockets. "I appreciate your concern [yank] but I am completely recovered [yank] and I do not enjoy being treated like a child." He spun back around, stepping off the sofa. His voice rising, he snapped, "And I do not need a keeper, no matter what you, or Lestrade, or my brother may…" His voice cut off and his face went a pasty grey. He sat down abruptly, shooting out his hands on either side to grip the cushions with white knuckles, head down.

John nodded. "Mmm. I can tell just how 'capable' you are. And I'm sure we're all properly impressed by that lovely display of temper." Mary made a slight noise of protest at that, but quieted when John shot her a quelling look' "Now," he snapped. "You made me a promise ten days ago. Do you still intend to keep it?"

The dark head didn't rise, but after a moment an indistinct noise was heard. John, however, was taking no prisoners at this point.

"Sorry? Didn't get that."

"Yes," gritted Sherlock.

"Oh good. Glad to hear it. So I should only have to ask this question once, then. Are you well enough to leave this flat?"

"No," Sherlock huffed, and flopped himself down on the sofa, his back to the room in Sulk Position. Ten minutes later, "sulk" had progressed to "boneless" and Sherlock was once again profoundly asleep.

After a bit, Mary suggested that John make a run to Tesco to get something to warm up for dinner, since she'd already done the shopping once that day. John took the opportunity to stretch his legs and put in a bit of thought about something other than Sherlock for a change. After an hour or so, John figured he was now ready to deal with pouting (since that would almost certainly follow that last confrontation), so he was in a better frame of mind as he carted the shopping up the stairs. That lasted until he reached the top and saw Mary. To be more specific, he saw Mary, now sitting in a chair pulled next to the sofa, with her left hand laced through Sherlock's fingers. Sherlock was lying on his back with eyes tightly closed. John started to speak but saw Mary's warning headshake.

"Oh, John, you're back. Good—I was starting to get peckish," Mary said. And then, in a deceptively casual tone of voice, "Sherlock had a bit of a spell. But we talked for a while and things are fine now."

John followed her lead. "Well, really, Sherlock. You'll do anything to get out of helping with the washing up." And was rewarded by Sherlock's left hand drifting up, shaking a bit, with the middle finger firmly extended.

By the time John had thrown together dinner (warmed-over tikka masala with flat bread) Sherlock had recovered enough to gently disengage his hand from Mary's (she had been very careful to find no particular reason to move until he was ready to do so) and wander over to take a plate, from which he ate three bites and then dissected the bread into a neat pile. When Mary finished, she stood up, stretched, and said, "Well, I think I'd better be getting back. I have to go in tomorrow, unlike you two idle types." She threw a grin at John and Sherlock. "You two can stay here and catch up for a bit—you haven't had much time for that these past days." Wandering casually over out of Sherlock's line of sight to pick up her bag, she jerked her head at the door and rolled her eyes at John.

John took the hint. "Right then. I'll just walk you out to get a taxi. Back in a bit, Sherlock." Sherlock gave no indication he'd heard as the two of them headed down the stairs and outside.

John wasted no time. "OK, then, what happened?"

Mary frowned. "Much like the last time, I expect. He was asleep, and then suddenly he got restless and started talking to himself. Couldn't understand him, but he kept getting more and more upset. So I said his name and shook him—that didn't help, so I grabbed hold of his hand. He tried to pull away at first, but then he, well, I guess he woke up and was in a kind of panic attack. It was awful, John—you know how self-contained he wants to be, and this was just…naked. So I just started talking, about all kinds of things. And after a bit he started answering me, like he needed something to concentrate on. And you saw…it worked, little by little. I was so glad to see you when you got back, but I was also glad you hadn't come back earlier. He hates this, you know. He would have hated even more to do that in front of me if you'd been there as well."

John agreed with that, certainly. "Yeah, I can see that. But now I need to try and find a way to convince him that he needs help. And that help's probably going to require him to talk to me, talk to someone, and I just don't see..."

Mary interrupted, in a fierce tone. "You have to help him, John. I've seen this before, in a way. Someone I worked with. He was a vet as well—not Afghanistan, he was a bit older than you. He starting having flashbacks, I guess you'd say. Kept trying to stop it himself—drinking heavily, drugs, really stupid stuff. And then one day it started up while he was driving a group of people to a job, and he crippled himself and nearly killed three other people when he crashed the car." She looked apologetically at John. "It's most likely PTSD—you know that, right?"

"Yeah, the thought had occurred," John said drily. "And before you point it out, yes, I know. It doesn't go away by itself as a rule." In the end, John had known how this conversation would go before he walked down the stairs. Mary rode off back home, and John trudged reluctantly back up. Unsurprisingly, Sherlock was still sitting silently in his chair in the kitchen, staring at his plate. And, also unsurprisingly, he knew exactly what John's conversation with Mary had been about.

"I've been losing time again, haven't I?" he said in a dead voice. His head remained down.

"I suppose that's one way to describe it," John said carefully, pulling a chair up to the table. "What's the last thing you remember before waking up this morning?"

"Coming home with Lestrade from A+E, and then, I suppose, falling asleep. But clearly, with the two of you here, added to my difficulties this afternoon, there's more to it than that."

"I'd say so. You were right out of your head. Greg called me in preference to calling your brother; he was pretty panicked."

Sherlock looked up at that, bitter reproach in his eyes. "But then you did call my brother. You're entirely too calm about this for anything else. So, did Mycroft regale you with the whole story? 'Poor Sherlock, off again'. Did he make sure to point out that he had to come rescue me from uni?" Sherlock's voice was harsh. "He always did enjoy coming to the rescue, even when no one bloody asked him to."

John had had enough. "Look, no one thinks Mycroft's more of a prat than I do. But in this case, he came because I asked him to, he told me what I needed to know and no more, and then he left. End of story. And whether you believe it or not, he had a good suggestion about all of this, which you're not going to like one bit but are going to hear about nonetheless."

Sherlock's stony glare verified that assessment. "Therapy, I presume." His tone made "therapy" an expletive. "Did he also tell you I was sectioned after he collected me from uni? And that therapy did precisely nothing?"

"No, he didn't mention that. But I figured out that therapy wasn't an option all on my lonesome, ta. I can just imagine those sessions—what'd you do, demonstrate a different diagnosis each day?"

Sherlock, before he thought about it, flashed a momentary grin. Of course he had. But—"John," he said hesitantly, dropping his eyes again. "You know that my issues with drugs began when I was at uni. There were certainly other…circumstances in my time there that made them attractive. But they also had a welcome side effect. I stopped losing time."

John waited, but Sherlock didn't say anything else. And then it dawned on him exactly what Sherlock was trying to say. "Please tell me you did not just try to suggest that you resume taking drugs as a viable treatment for this," he snapped. "In what universe does that make sense? It took you years to recover, and you still struggle in the right circumstances."

Sherlock was now wearing what John thought of as The Mask—that cold, affectless face he wore when confronted with something that pushed him past his limits emotionally. "At least when I'm high I know what the hell I'm doing. And I don't generally end up cowering under furniture."

And of course John recognized that a profane Sherlock was Sherlock at the end of his tether. But John also knew that he couldn't let this pass. "No. Just fuck no. And you knew it from the beginning."

Sherlock was silent, and John was content to let that silence stretch as long as it needed to. It was relatively rare that John won a battle of wills with Sherlock, but in the end, he won this one. Sherlock picked up the bread and began crumbling it into even finer pieces. Head down again, he finally huffed, "What do you suggest, then?"

Now it was John's turn to struggle for the right way to say this—the words that would convince Sherlock to do something he would find painful, or embarrassing, or any number of undesirable things. Finally he landed on the simplest explanation. "I think you need to talk to me."

"What?" Sherlock barked, eyebrows popping up under his fringe.

John sighed. "OK, a bit more specific. I think you need to talk to me about what you did over the past two years. I think some of that has come back to haunt you. I know how that feels, and I know that ignoring it doesn't make it go away, it makes it stronger. And I think right now, it's pretty damn strong."

John could read Sherlock's rejection in his body language before he ever said a word. "I did whatever needed doing. It's done with, I'm home, and it's irrelevant."

John really didn't want to drag Mycroft into this, but he had no choice. "Mycroft says that some of your operations were, I believe he said, filled with 'pain and death'. Doesn't sound irrelevant to me."

Sherlock's temper flared again. "Of course he did. As if he knows anything about it. I repeat—it has nothing to do with this, and it's irrelevant to the problem. I've been this way since I was 9, for God's sake."

John, reluctantly, used the last weapon he had. "Sherlock? Who's Pasha?"

The reaction was everything John hoped for, or feared. Sherlock went so pale that John instinctively reached out to keep him from falling from his chair. He blinked rapidly, his throat worked, but no sound came. Finally he spoke in a hoarse whisper. "Where did you hear that name? Mycroft didn't know that name. Anthea promised. Where did you…?" He trailed off and stared at John, whose heart clenched at the misery on that face.

"From you, Sherlock." John waited for Sherlock to work through the implications of that.

Sherlock was silent for a moment. Then—"Oh. I see." But that was all—he sat still, eyes back down, mouth in a mutinous line.

John thought about it, and reluctantly came to a decision. "Right, then. How does it sound if I go first? Would that make it easier?" Silence. Head still down, fingers still nervously working the bread crumbs. John sighed. "Mmm. Where do I start? Oh, I know. Did you know that I was planning to kill myself the night we met?" he said in a conversational tone.

That, at least, got a reaction. Sherlock jerked as if he'd been slapped, his eyes coming up to lock on John's. John looked away—he could do this, but only if he could distance himself a bit from that horrified scrutiny.

He'd done this before. He kept his tone of voice as dispassionate as possible—he knew it wouldn't last, but it was better to start that way, to get through as much as he could before emotion intervened. "You know about my nightmares. God knows, you've heard them enough times. Before I met you, I'd reached the point where I'd do anything—anything—to make them stop, and I very nearly did. But I never told you where they came from. I guess it's time I did."

John was going to walk Sherlock through his last day as a combat surgeon. It wasn't his only source of nightmares, but it was certainly the one that had brought him to his knees four years before.

Helmand Province, Afghanistan

It had been a normal enough day, if "normal" actually existed in those circumstances. Hellishly hot, of course. Grit in every possible bodily orifice, and the tedium of driving along the same bloody goat tracks you'd already seen a thousand times. Scenery consisting of rough wasteland, mud houses, the occasional farmer with a donkey. The medical staff took these voluntary patrols in rotation—made a break from the routine of the hospital. Some of John's fellow surgeons hated these tours and refused to do them, but John enjoyed the mild adrenaline rush of climbing into the vehicles and driving off into the unknown.

The agenda for the day was to meet up with some local village headsmen in the hopes that they'd be less likely to turn a blind eye to insurgents in the area if they connected British or American soldiers with good things—help with wells, medical assistance, and general security. John's job today was primarily to offer basic medical services as part of the package—infant checks, eye care, that kind of thing. No one expected any kind of action on this particular mission, and for their first two stops that was certainly the case.

Their last stop was at a place that was halfway between a village and a true town. It actually had a few buildings of more than one story, and two semi-fortified ones that were used as headquarters for tribal groups. John's patrol of two armored vehicles had pulled into the walled compound of one of these buildings and were just starting to unload supplies when John began to get an uneasy feeling. It was hard to decide what bothered him at first, but then he realized—all of the children, the kids who normally swarmed over them at every stop, had vanished. And the men who normally crowded around to help them unload were edging away, leaving the vehicles isolated in the middle of the compound.

The first shots, deep and booming, came from a sniper on a nearby hilltop overlooking the town. John, afterward, realized that he actually heard the sound of the shots after the two other officers, Major Campbell and Captain Alford, jerked and fell. Major Campbell had been looking over at John as the shot struck; John would always remember the view of the shot taking off the Major's ear and the right side of his head.

John was glad that he hadn't panicked; that his first thought, once he saw that he was now the sole surviving officer, surgeon or not, was to get his men to a defensible position. They were all well-trained, and their immediate reaction on coming under fire was to grab essentials (weapons, ammo, radio) and retreat. John realized, though, that they were currently in a kill box—the high compound walls made a direct escape impossible, they were completely exposed, and they now had fire coming in from two sources. The vehicles would protect them only so long as no one had an RPG to fire at them, and John had no intention of waiting until one showed up. One of the vehicles had already taken multiple shots to the engine compartment, so driving through the attackers wasn't really an option.

Like many local fortified houses, this one had an exterior staircase leading to the roof, which had a small parapet wall around it. John made the snap decision to get the men up there—if they could clear it, they could defend it until they could call in a helicopter. An RPG round would still take them out, but he could only hope the locals would be unwilling to destroy their headquarters unless they had to.

The plan, such as it was, worked. There were 9 surviving men, some veterans, some not, but none were raw—they understood the situation as well as he did. They took it in groups—2 men ran for the stairs as the rest laid down covering fire. They encountered three locals on the roof and took them out in a quick flurry of automatic fire, and then took over covering fire for the next two men. John was the last man up.

The upper parapet was roughly 3 feet high, and thick; tall enough to give cover from the shooters on the ground, but useless against the sniper on the hill. The first shot came as John reached the rooftop; the bullet blasted through the foot-thick mud wall and missed Private Carmichael, currently shouting into the radio, by a hair. Carmichael, to his credit, kept shouting and made a rude gesture in the general direction of the shooter.

Sergeant Ashton crouched next to John. "He's most likely not trained as a sniper, really. No spotter, and probably not much ammo, so he'll limit his shots, but that won't do us any bloody good if the chopper can't get here. He just has to keep us pinned down until we run out of ammo ourselves, or until he hits enough of us that the ones on the ground can overrun us." John grimaced. "Yeah, I'd worked that out. How long on the chopper?" Sergeant Ashton looked inquiringly at Carmichael, who'd put the radio down and was huddled against the parapet.

"Well, Cap, they said as how they'll do their best to get here quick. Fifteen minutes, minimum—maybe as much as thirty. I told them they might be able to land here on the roof—looks big enough, even if we have to get on the stairs long enough for them to do it. We have some smoke we can make to lead them in and a couple of flares, and they can take out the sniper from the air if he doesn't bugger off. No help till then, though—no other air support in range." Carmichael pointed out across the compound. "We're going to have trouble with those fuckers over there though—think they're trying to figure out another way to get up here, and there's more of them than there is of us."

John and Sergeant Ashton divided the men up into two groups—one, led by Ashton, consisting of those that had both weapons and ammo readily available, took the forward position facing the group firing from across the compound; the rest, including John, moved diagonally opposite, to the top of the stairwell to the ground. The first full attack came against the forward group, a concerted charge towards the abandoned vehicles. Some bright spark on the attacking side had realized that the top of the Humvees would give them the height to reach their targets on the roof.

The attackers had more men, but John's people were more disciplined and (as John's training instructor had once put it) "highly fucking motivated". The attack failed and the Afghanis withdrew, dragging multiple casualties and leaving several dead behind. The cost was high for John's men as well, though—two injured, one dead. John and Ashton quickly shuffled the men—moving the injured over to him, moving the able-bodied over to take over the position, and weapons, of those downed. John did a quick triage of the wounded. Corporal Hackett had a bullet in his lower abdomen; severe bleeding that John suspected he wouldn't be able to stop. John shoved handfuls of gauze laced with coagulant into the hands of Private Bosworth and shoved those hands down onto Hackett's abdomen, hard. "Keep that there. Don't let go no matter what." Bosworth, face a pasty white, nodded so hard his teeth clattered.

The other casualty was Carmichael, who was still clinging grimly to the radio. He'd taken a bullet through the thigh, and John assumed, based on the apparent malformation in the leg and Carmichael's extreme pain, that the femur had likely been hit if not shattered. For both his patients shock was a critical danger, but he could do very little about that—his gear was still down in the Humvee, so all he had was his backpack of combat essentials. He dosed Carmichael with morphine while he worked to stabilize the leg with stretch bandages and an ancient rifle dropped by one of the original defenders of the roof. He glanced over at Hackett; he was already unconscious, and John was afraid that morphine would suppress his breathing too far. Trying to control the bleeding was the best that could be done without surgical capability.

Hackett died five minutes later, never regaining consciousness.

The roof continued to come under fire from the leading group, enough to keep all of John's men pinned in position. The sniper fired roughly once a minute—apparently Sergeant Ashton had been correct about the low ammo. He was good for someone untrained, certainly—hadn't managed to hit anyone else directly, but his shots were always close enough to throw debris from the parapet wall over the intended victim. John took over the radio; the morphine was making Carmichael too stoned to hold the mike, much less speak coherently.

Roughly 15 minutes in, the radio sputtered again, and let John know that the helicopter was 5 minutes out. Sergeant Ashton made smoke to guide them in. About that time, though, the attackers realized that their prey might be slipping through their fingers, and changed their approach.

John's group still huddled at the back of the roof next to the entrance to the stairs, with a view of one corner of the compound but very little sightline of anything else below. John could hear movement, though, in between gunshots from the other side of the roof. He drew his pistol and held it loosely in his hand, while directing his remaining uninjured soldier, Private Bosworth, to take Carmichael's weapon. Wouldn't help much—Carmichael only had a partial clip of ammunition left. But John had three clips for his pistol with him and no false modesty—he was very good with that pistol, divisional champion in fact. Not typical for a doctor, of course, but it had come naturally to him from the day he first picked one up, and he enjoyed the competitions so he'd kept it up. He never expected, though, to be the sole line of defense in this kind of situation.

It was just about this point that things moved into the starting arena for John's nightmares. He could remember, and was painfully aware of, every sensation, as if they were drawn on his brain cells in indelible ink. Every memory, every dream, recreated those images in perfect and identical detail. He remembers the smells—blood, gunpowder, sweat, manure, and onions from a cooking fire. The hot breeze in his face, lifting little bits of grit and dried mud off the roof. Sounds—he thinks he can hear, very distantly, something that may be the thrum of the helicopter. Carmichael, only half-conscious, muttering to himself and reaching fitfully for the radio.

And then, far too close, scuffling sounds from the bottom of the staircase. The sounds resolve into sight—two men, crouching and darting from side to side, push a third form towards the base of the stairs. As John's arm holding his pistol jerks up, he realizes two things simultaneously: first, the third person is holding a grenade in one hand as he darts toward the bottom step; and second, that person is a child—a boy of perhaps twelve, eyes wild with terror.

John, without time for real, conscious thought, aims at the child's wrist. No time for anything else; he can't, won't, kill a child knowingly. But he can't let that grenade land on this roof, and he can't be sure that shooting the grenade itself won't have essentially the same effect. He snaps off the shot, and watches in what seems slow-motion as the child's hand flies up, fingers thrown open, and the grenade pops straight up rather than flying off across the compound. John has just enough time to shout "grenade!" but not enough to duck completely down below the parapet wall before the grenade hits the fourth step and explodes.

John always thought it odd, afterwards, how much the brain could record under those circumstances. In the space of what could have been no more than a second, he saw, clearly saw, the boy torn asunder, as well as the two men huddled behind him. He felt the slamming, percussive blast hit the side of the building, tearing chunks from the parapet wall and sending them whistling across the roof. He felt himself thrust violently to the side, felt the sharp burn as tiny bits of mud wall tore themselves across his cheek and forehead.

He became aware that people were shouting, not because he could hear them (he couldn't) but because they were suddenly looming over him, patting him, looking for injuries. He was deaf, completely deaf, could hear nothing but a high-pitched, continuous ringing in his head, but was otherwise mostly unhurt. Small cuts across his face but the bleeding stopped quickly. He realized, though, that something didn't seem right; he watched his troops huddle around him, checking Carmichael (still stoned, completely unconcerned about the explosion) and Bosworth (largish laceration to left arm, bleeding freely but probably not serious), but it all had the air of watching a play in a theater. It didn't seem to have any real connection to him—he was a spectator, nothing more.

He sat up and pushed off his rescuers, telling them (probably too loudly—how could he tell?) that he was fine, just deaf. Almost immediately thereafter, Sergeant Ashton confirmed that John had indeed heard the helicopter—he started quickly moving men, and bodies, over to John's corner of the roof to give the chopper a clear area to land. Two men stayed in place along the front wall, laying down sporadic covering fire to deter any last-minute attacks. John's hearing was starting to clear a bit—he couldn't actually hear the copter, but he could feel a rhythmic pulse against his eardrums as it grew closer. He felt a dim pleasure that it looked like they would actually get out of this clusterfuck alive, but no more than that.

As the chopper touched down, rotors still turning, Sergeant Ashton organized the loading. But when he tried to lift Carmichael, John stopped him. "No, I have to do it—his leg is too unstable. I'll carry him—you hold onto the rifle barrel to keep it still. If the artery is nicked, too much movement could make it open up further." John bent and swung Carmichael up over his shoulder—thankfully Carmichael was a skinny kid, probably no more than ten stone. Ashton paced beside them, carefully holding the rifle barrel bracing Carmichael's leg. John was two steps from the open door of the copter when he felt a tremendous blow to his back and heard a distant boom. Carmichael made a strangled huff, and John felt his knees go as Carmichael slid off his shoulder. Then there was pain, massive, surging, suffocating pain. And then there was nothing.

John swiped his hand over his damp cheeks and looked over at Sherlock, ghostly pale and staring from across the table. "Of the 12 men who pulled into that compound, 5 died, and I almost joined them. I was left partially crippled in one arm, forced to stop doing the job I loved. It took a very long time for me to accept that there was nothing else I could have done. A child died. I shot him, but the men who pushed him up those stairs with a grenade in his hand killed him just as much as I did. I know that when I'm awake. I don't know that when I dream, and I probably never will."

"Working with you helped me, certainly—gave me some breathing room, something to focus on. But getting to the point where I could tell that story all the way through with my therapist helped more. This makes four times I've told it, now, and each time it gets a little easier. Maybe someday I'll be able to tell it without crying. I doubt it, but maybe. And maybe someday the dreams will go away."

John breathed, long and deep. "So. I showed you mine. Can you show me yours?"

Sherlock looked at him silently for the longest time. And finally, quietly, reluctantly—"All right."