Molly, of all of them, suddenly took charge and hustled everyone out of the room, leaving Sherlock and Nicky alone together. It was, after all, only the two of them who understood what they had been through, and what this news meant. John made a conscious effort not to hear what was going on inside the room.

After 5 minutes, a subdued Nicky opened the door and gestured for them to return. She said nothing, just climbed back up and sat protectively beside Sherlock at the head of the cot.

Sherlock's face was blotchy and his eyes red. But it was immediately clear that he was going to act as if the past few minutes never happened. Thankfully, everyone in attendance seemed more than willing to go along with that approach.

Greg decided to pick up the gauntlet. "So, where were we?" he began. "Molls, were you done?"

Molly bobbed her head. "Yes, I…nothing more. Just…the samples and Dr. Lee together should be enough to convict anyone connected with this. They can never claim they didn't know."

Nicky cleared her throat. "So they go to jail. After they left poor Daisy behind like that, like the rubbish you pick up last when you move out of a flat." She looked at Greg challengingly. "What exactly will happen that's bad enough for that? You know prison isn't enough, you know that." Her voice cracked a bit, and Sherlock silently reached out and put his hand on top of hers.

Mycroft shifted a bit. "Well, as to that," he said smoothly. "Because of the international connection, certain of the principals have been remanded into government facilities and will follow the, shall we say, more stringent legal process that entails." He looked down at his fingernails thoughtfully. "As it happens, however, there is something of a mystery involved. Allan Cumberland, the primary investor, was in the midst of transfer to the holding facility when his vehicle deviated from the route. He has yet to be located." He looked up blandly. "It's most concerning," he said with absolutely no attempt at being convincing.

Greg Lestrade flinched but said nothing. John happened to look over at the right time, and noticed the tiny lift at the corners of Sherlock's mouth that was the Sherlockian equivalent of a true grin. He was stunned to see that Mycroft now bore the identical expression.

Nicky's face did something interesting, caught between scandalized and pleased. "Uncle Myc," she finally said. "You're scary sometimes, you know that?" But the final, fond expression on her face took any sting out of it. Mycroft just looked mildly pleased with himself.

Lestrade shook his head. "She's just as mad as the rest of you, isn't she?"

Sherlock sighed theatrically. "It's that old argument. Nature versus nurture." He gave Nicky an almost-smile, and she leaned carefully against his shoulder. She stayed there, quiet but content, until the others left and Sherlock's next dose of pain medication sent him back to sleep.

Nicky was released the next day, though she still ended up spending considerable time afterward in Sherlock's room. Sherlock spent a total of 5 days in hospital; he was initially due to be released once his chest tube was removed, but by that time had started showing signs of mild pneumonia, which his doctors took very seriously indeed based on John's summary of Sherlock's recent history.

Those extra two days were unpleasant in the extreme. John came by each day at least once, and Mary joined him one evening. But Sherlock felt just well enough to be irritable and bored, but not well enough to actually do much to entertain himself.

By the dawn of the 5th day, everyone concerned—the hospital staff, John, Mary, Nicky, anyone who had contact with Sherlock, admitted defeat and agreed it was time for him to go home.

Sherlock had originally agitated to return immediately to Baker Street, but was foiled by Mrs. Hudson's absence—that redoubtable lady was visiting her cousins in Wales for the next week, and even Sherlock realized he was going to need some help the first couple of days. Mycroft offered his home, of course, knowing he would be refused and waiting only to see how violent that refusal would be (relatively mild, surprisingly—Sherlock must be feeling indulgent towards his brother, but not indulgent enough to agree to spend time in "that plastic Victorian mausoleum" Mycroft called home). In the end he came home with John and Mary, who ignored his protestations that he was "fine" and just loaded him carefully into the car as he continued to whinge.

To say that Sherlock was still irritable would be to understate the situation: Sherlock, as Greg Lestrade put it after his visit that afternoon, was in a "pisser of a mood". Relieved to be out of hospital, certainly—the 4-hour nap he took as soon as they arrived was evidence of that, since it was completely without the need for pain medication—but still off-kilter in some undefined way.

"Maybe it's the antibiotics," John said wearily to Mary that afternoon, after their house guest stomped off in a sulk after being forced to let John change his dressings. "God knows he rarely has a standard reaction to any other medication."

By evening Sherlock had mellowed a bit, but there was still an odd undercurrent to his mood that was unsettling. He sat on the couch next to Mary, a pillow clutched to his chest to support his sore ribs, and watched the Avengers movie on DVD. Actually watched it. As in, no shouting at the more absurd scientific lapses, no theatrical sighs, no throwing of hands in the air in despair at the general idiocy of it all.

John found it very disturbing. Mary laughed at him when he mentioned it as they were getting ready for bed. Sherlock had chosen to stay in the lounge and watch a documentary on Roman Britain ("it's much more interesting than what we just watched, John. And I slept all day—I'm not tired in the least!")

John reacted first, though he later realized that Mary had moved almost as quickly. Before he was really aware of it he had rolled out of bed and was pulling his gun out of the nightstand before darting down the hallway towards the lounge. The lounge, where someone was bellowing in an incomprehensible language while (apparently) throwing furniture around. The place where Sherlock was last.

And that, of course, was what pulled John up short, and lead to his handing the pistol carefully to Mary behind him—he knew instinctively that showing Sherlock a weapon right now would be a very bad idea indeed.

Because of course, the one shouting, screaming almost, and throwing furniture (or falling over it, evidently) was the detective himself. He was huddled in the far corner of the darkened room, chairs and the large stuffed ottoman tipped on their sides to form a barricade of sorts. Sherlock was crouched behind it, eyes wild and unfocused, periodically issuing a challenge in some Eastern European language that John didn't recognize.

John instinctively started forward, holding his hands out in as unthreatening a manner as possible. Sherlock froze and shouted again, his voice abruptly cracking as the lingering pneumonia sent him into a coughing fit. Sherlock whined with pain and pressed one hand over the bandages under his shirt—the shirt John was concerned to see was stained with blood.

John started to move forward again, saying soothing nonsense, when Mary abruptly grabbed his hand. "Wait," she said, and moved out from behind him. Then she spoke to Sherlock in what appeared to be the same language—not exactly soothingly, but in a calm and matter-of-fact way. When John gaped at her, she muttered "Hungarian" under her breath while continuing to focus on Sherlock, now quiet but warily observing from behind his furniture redoubt.

John and Mary edged forward, while Sherlock watched them like a wary guard dog, his eyes darting around the room, clearly seeing things they did not. But Mary continued this unlikely conversation, the tone of her voice edging more into a soft, lilting mode. When they were almost within touching distance Sherlock stiffened and backed up as far as possible. Mary reached out her hand, slowly, slowly, and then switched to English. "Sherlock," she said softly. "Where are you?"

Sherlock answered her in Hungarian, hesitantly. Then he blinked, and blinked again, before he suddenly said "Oh," in a surprised way, and sat abruptly on the carpet.

John scrambled over the barricade of chairs, shoving them out of the way as he went, and slumped to his knees beside his friend. Sherlock was clearly shocky—trembling heavily, deathly pale, his breaths labored and raspy. "Bring my bag. And some water," he said over his shoulder to Mary, as he ran hands quickly over the bandages to try and gauge the amount of bleeding. He was pleased to see that it wasn't extensive—perhaps a stitch popped, then, but no more.

By the time Mary came back with his kit and a large glass of water, John had managed to half-lead, half-carry a woozy Sherlock to the couch and tuck a pillow under his head. He felt Sherlock's icy hands, swore, and pulled the afghan from the back of the couch, tucking it tightly around his patient. While he took Sherlock's vitals—both heart rate and breathing unacceptably fast—he gently tried to check his orientation.

"Do you know where you are?" he asked gently. Sherlock slowly turned his head to look at him, and finally whispered, "Yes". He closed his eyes and swallowed heavily. John pushed the edge of his soft t-shirt up to reach the damp bandages, glad to see that the bleeding had largely stopped. Two stitches needed replacing—most likely damaged when Sherlock was stumbling over the furniture.

While he injected a local anesthetic (with Mary acting as scrub nurse beside him) and then starting replacing the stitches, he asked the question he was sure he already knew the answer to. "Did you have a flashback?"

Sherlock shuddered. "Apparently so," he said in a rasping voice, before lurching up to cough painfully again. That pained whine came again, and made John's decision for him. He reached into his kit and prepared a syringe—a low dose of morphine, not enough to put Sherlock fully under, but enough to offset the pain from the fall and this continued coughing. After a few minutes Sherlock gave a relieved sigh. "Thank you, John," he croaked. He managed, very slowly and carefully, to sit back up with John's help.

Mary had hustled into the kitchen while John was finishing up, and now came back with three mugs that smelled fragrantly of hot chocolate. "I thought it would be better than tea, at half-three in the morning," she said as she handed them out. Sherlock took his but made no move to drink any. His hands were still trembling, as was the rest of him.

To give him time to compose himself a little further, John turned to Mary. "So," he said quizzically. "Hungarian?"

Mary took a sip of her chocolate and smiled before she answered. "I spent a summer in Hungary when I was 18," she said. "I had this ridiculous idea of joining a charity organization there that worked with displaced people." She cocked her head to one side and chuckled. "Turns out I wasn't quite as charitable as I needed to be. The third time some tatty pensioner pinched my bum I decked him. They sent me home the next day."

"Can't imagine why," Sherlock said drily. John found himself giggling rather more than the story called for—relief that nothing truly serious had happened, probably.

But what happened had been bad enough, and needed to be addressed. As the laughter trailed off and Mary left to carry the cups back into the kitchen, John picked up the threads of the earlier conversation. "So, the flashback. Can you talk about it?" he said quietly.

Sherlock was silent for a minute, clearly considering ignoring everything once again. But John could almost see the thought process—the point at which Sherlock remembered that he had promised to talk, even if he didn't really want to.

"It wasn't exactly a flashback, at least not as I understand such things," he began, voice a little blurry now that the morphine had kicked in. "It was…it began as a nightmare, I believe. At least I'm fairly sure I had been asleep. It had to do with Hungary. But it wasn't anything that actually happened. Pasha was there, at first, and then he wasn't, but I couldn't find him and didn't know why. And someone, Aron and his people I think, had chased me, and I had hidden in an abandoned building. But I thought I heard them coming in. I shouted at them to tell them I had a gun. I didn't, but then I did." His breathing was becoming agitated again, and John reached out to place a soothing hand on his knee. Sherlock paused, but then looked troubled.

"I don't understand," he almost-whispered. "How can I be upset by something that didn't really happen?" He looked cold, and bewildered, and miserable.

"Because your brain made you think it did happen, was happening right then," John said simply. "It took real things—your losing Pasha, the escape from Aron—and melded them together with other things, and came up with something new but still unsettling. It's a nightmare, Sherlock—they don't always make sense, but it doesn't make them any less frightening."

Sherlock puffed himself up a bit, clearly preparing to claim he hadn't been frightened. But then he just as quickly deflated, realizing that hiding behind the furniture was its own indication of the state of things. There was a longish, uncomfortable silence while he stared at his feet, and John tried to remain still and open. And Sherlock finally gave a shaky sigh, and breathed, "I hate it."

Sherlock stayed two more days, unusually quiet days for the most part. Of course the first day he slept quite a bit—the 3am flashback/nightmare had taken a great deal out of him, and it wasn't until the evening that he perked back up again, feeling well enough to join John and Mary in watching a rather dull movie. But he was still uncharacteristically subdued the following day as well. He fitfully corresponded with Mycroft on some minor loose end from the abduction case, and had a snarky exchange or two with Lestrade that John, hearing only Sherlock's end of the conversation, could tell was in relation to a case Sherlock really couldn't be bothered with. Outside of that, though, he spent far too much time just lying on the couch, and not in a "I'm-in-my-mind-palace-go-away" mode. This was more of a "I'm-lying-here-thinking-of-nothing-and-not-enjoying-it" affair.

On the third day, though, he evidently reached some sort of accord with himself, and came striding into the kitchen for breakfast dressed and ready to go. John was pleased to see some of his old sparkle, for lack of a better word—that indefinable air of banked excitement that made Sherlock, Sherlock. "That case of Lestrade's is rather more interesting than I first thought," he said while munching absently on the toast Mary dropped in front of him. "There's apparently someone hiding valuables in corpses, well coffins, actually, transported by air. And the interesting thing is, none of them originate in the same place, nor have they gone through the same airports at any time until reaching London. Given that a Heathrow baggage crew are the ones who first reported it—a casket was inadvertently dropped off the ramp and came open, displaying both the unfortunate corpse as well as an unexpected cache of emeralds—it's unlikely that they are responsible either." He beamed.

John was a bit envious—that did sound intriguing. But— "Mary and I have shifts at the surgery today," he said regretfully. "Will you be OK on your own for a while? Want me to drive you back to Baker Street on my way?"

"I'm fine," Sherlock said dismissively. "And don't worry about transportation. Lestrade will be by to pick me up shortly. I told him that otherwise he would have to pay my cab fare back into the city." Not a mild threat, that—John knew from experience that the long cab ride could easily rack up a £75 bill before tip.

Ten minutes later Greg Lestrade honked out front, and Sherlock picked up his small bag and flitted out the door, coat swaying as usual.

John looked around the empty kitchen, and was amazed how the man seemed to suck all of the air from the room as he left it.

It was a hectic week. There was a particularly virulent strain of gastrointestinal illness that was making the rounds, and the entire staff of the surgery worked long, difficult hours as a result. John managed to break free one evening and spent a few hours chasing around after Sherlock, who seemed focused but tired, with ever-increasing dark circles under his eyes. John wasn't sure if that was the typical "I-don't-sleep-when-I'm-on-a-case" exhaustion, or something more troubling. Sherlock was clearly enjoying himself, though, and Lestrade seemed pleased by the progress they were making, so John shoved his mild worry to the back of his mind.

By the time John was able to be fully involved again, Sherlock had been working the case for almost 10 days. Things had suddenly taken an ominous turn when another coffin turned up at Heathrow, this time with both a bag of jewels and a fresher-than-expected corpse. Not embalmed, but bludgeoned, and stuffed in the coffin (appallingly) while still alive, since the cause of death was asphyxiation.

Sherlock was shaken, though he denied it. The idea was horrible, of course. But for a claustrophobic this was particularly unsettling. Molly and John watched the color bleach from his face while they stood over the stainless steel autopsy table. Molly cleared her throat and continued, with visible reluctance. "He apparently regained consciousness at some point—there was damage to his hands."

"Christ," John muttered.

Sherlock gave himself a little shake, then cleared his throat. "Yes, well," he said. "Evidently a falling out among thieves. Though I suppose it's possible he was an innocent party—the rightful owner of the gems, perhaps. But it's more likely this is intended to send a message to the recipients—perhaps retaliation for pilferage."

"That seems a trifle ... harsh," John said. "Beating the crap out of them, yeah, I get that. Killing them, even. But sealing them up alive?"

"These are not reasonable people, John," Sherlock sniffed. "They are dealing in regular shipments worth millions of dollars each. How often do reasonable people get involved in that kind of thing?"

John had to admit that was true.

The problem they were encountering was the apparent randomness of the shipments—all from different regions of the world, all (as it turned out) unidentifiable corpses with falsified documents. The intended recipients were also nonexistent, so it had always been clear that the clues must lie in where the gems originated, and where they were actually intended to go. Sherlock was quite sure that evidence was being lost when the loading crews opened the caskets before the police arrived—though no one (at least so far as they knew) had actually taken any jewels, they had been far from careful in their handling of the coffins or the corpses. Of the three found in the past six months, none had yielded any useful information.

Since the episode with the less-than-dead corpse, all of the baggage crews had strict instructions. Any coffin, shipped without an escort, that was not picked up within 20 minutes of arrival was to be quarantined and held, unopened, in a locked, guarded room.

The first of these had occurred two days ago, and had been a disappointment. "Someone's poor old grandad," Greg sighed. "The granddaughter got caught in traffic in Uxbridge and was an hour late meeting the flight. The folks at the origination airport in Libya didn't speak English and filled out the customs forms wrong, so none of the names matched. A total tits-up all around."

Sherlock had just snarled and flounced out.

Today, though, was much more promising. Flight origination was Hamburg, but the paperwork (the Germans were always meticulous with their paperwork) indicated the coffin had travelled by ground from somewhere in Ukraine. The intended recipient proved to have been dead for 3 years so it was unlikely they would be showing up to claim the body.

Just as they were preparing to hail a taxi to the airport, though, John got an urgent phone call—one of his longtime patients had been admitted to hospital and had asked for him. John looked helplessly at Sherlock, torn between two duties. "Go," Sherlock barked. "You'll be of no use to me like this anyway. You can meet us when you're done."

And John, reluctantly, went.

Three hours later, John was just finishing up with his patient (doing well, thankfully—not quite a false alarm, but not as serious as originally feared) when he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. Over the next ten minutes, while he finished up entering orders and chatting with the staff, it buzzed two more times. He chuckled mentally—apparently this was taking too long for Sherlock's comfort. When he walked back out to the carpark and opened his phone, though, he got something of a shock. Only one message, the first, had been from Sherlock. The next two were from Lestrade.

Call me, can you? Important, said the first.

The second, sent five minutes later, was more insistent.

It's a bit urgent. I'm going to have to call Mycroft next if I don't hear from you.

John dialed as quickly as he could. Greg picked up on the first ring.

"What's wrong?" John said quickly. This couldn't possibly be anything good.

"I…look, can you come pick up Sherlock from Heathrow and make sure he goes home and stays there, at least until tomorrow morning?" Greg said, something uncomfortable in his tone. "I could call Mycroft, but Sherlock's already…I don't want to, OK?"

"But what's happened? Is he hurt?" John asked, confused.

"Now it's not quite how it sounds," Greg said hesitantly. "But he, well, he sort of attacked one of my officers."