John was asleep, and Mary sat anxiously by the side of his bed. Her name might have been removed from the list of visitors approved to say after nine p.m. (Sherlock's doing, no doubt), but it was midday on Wednesday, regular visiting hours, and she was resolved to stay until 8:59.

While she waited for him to wake up, she dug into her bag and pulled out her phone. A few clever stokes over the screen and a few would-be top secret codes and she was into the hospital's system. John's file downloaded within a few seconds. (The 'security' at such a 'secure' hospital could stand to be improved, not that the holes in the system weren't currently working to her advantage.) She needed more than the terse, clipped responses the nurses had given her—all they were willing to provide to someone who wasn't immediate family.

According to the report, John had woken up in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and Tuesday had been spent testing his responses in the fleeting windows of consciousness that were to be expected as part of the recovery. The process of waking up was gradual—only brief periods of awareness in the beginning. But she was delighted to read that he'd been rapidly improving. As of earlier today, he was able to maintain awareness for over an hour, as opposed to the mere minutes he'd been able to manage at first. He'd recovered his motor responses completely, and the initial confusion and transient aphasia had mostly faded. After three days in a coma, with such quick recovery, John's prognosis was very good.

Mary snapped her head up from her phone as he stirred, eyes slowly opening.

"John, you're awake! Thank god you're awake!" Mary gushed, throwing her arms around him.

He didn't move. "Where's Sherlock?"

Mary sat up a bit stiffly. "He's not here."

"Where is he? They said he was here last night."

"Not last night," Mary corrected. She'd been surprised to find in the visiting records (confidential unless you knew where to look) that Sherlock had not been in John's room since Monday night. But then she supposed that was Sherlock; he wouldn't have the patience for sitting by a coma patient.

"Where is he?"

Mary felt her lips tightening. "I don't know where he is now."

"I need to see him." John was looking around her distractedly, as though expecting Sherlock to appear in the doorway.

Mary opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again. It was no use. Looking at the insistence in John's face—his mind entirely occupied by one track—she could see the truth. Sherlock would always be John's priority. She and Sherlock had been the two people John loved most in the world, and now that she was out of the running it was only Sherlock. And, if she were being truly honest with herself, it had probably always only been Sherlock. John had started up with her when he thought Sherlock was dead. And in those years everything John did—his actions, his words, his gestures, his abstracted expressions—everything was shot through with Sherlock's memory. Even his proposal to her had referenced him: "As you know, these past few years haven't been easy for me…" It was Sherlock; all the time it was him.

Mary dropped her gaze to her lap. John had been upset with her for deceiving him, but he had deceived her too. Their first date—his heart was available like she was Mary Morstan: not at all. And here he was now, opening his eyes and asking for Sherlock with single-minded desperation. No, there was nothing she could do. Not now, not ever. John had chosen his fate long before he met her.

She stood up from the chair. "I'm leaving now, John. I'm glad you're awake and feeling better."

John was holding his phone to his ear. "He's not answering. Why isn't he answering?"

"Goodbye, John."

Mary shut the door gently behind her. She took a deep, shuddering breath. She'd done all she could. If she didn't want to see John get hurt, there was nothing she could do but not watch. It was over now, and she was determined to hear no more of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. One day, she knew, she would see John's name in the obituaries, or his murder on the news, and at that time she would have to take solace in knowing she had spared no effort in trying to prevent it.

She loved him and he didn't love her back. There was nothing left to do but walk away.

She passed Sherlock's older brother at the front doors of the hospital. They nodded curtly in acknowledgement of each other as they went their separate ways.

John raised the bed up to a sitting position and dropped his head back against the pillow. Why wasn't Sherlock responding? He'd been here in the hospital, not last night apparently, but the night before. When the initial confusion had begun to dissipate, John remembered waking up like a flash from a dream. Sherlock lying with him in the bed, holding him, pulling him closer. He wouldn't have believed it, but the nurse confirmed that Sherlock had been there. In his bed. Holding on to him.

Reaching back further, John remembered the fog; he was surprised to find he remembered the coma dream with vivid clarity. It wasn't like other dreams where the details slipped away with consciousness, leaving only remnants of vague impressions. He remembered everything as though it were a memory and not a dream. The voices—Sherlock's voice: "You are everything to me."

Could that mean—did it mean—It must, mustn't it? Sherlock had lay down in his bed, held him. Even for someone as enigmatic as a consulting detective, a gesture like that couldn't be ambiguous.

And Sherlock had told him he loved him, hadn't he?

No he didn't, John reminded himself sharply. The young version of Sherlock he'd met in the garden was a figment of his own imagination. It was a highly realistic figment, based on the childhood photographs he'd seen (the outfit the boy was wearing was the same one he wore in a photograph on his parents' living room mantel, the ten-year-old glaring at the camera as though whoever touched the button would have hell to pay) and his memories of what Sherlock had told him ("Mycroft hasn't been any fun since he gave me lasers to play with," Sherlock had complained after one of Mycroft's unwelcome visits to Baker Street), but it was an illusion all the same. The words the child had spoken were inventions of his own mind.

But John, I love you more than anything. John winced as the frankness of the declaration bit into him. Why had his brain given Sherlock those words to say? Was that what he wanted?

John suddenly found swallowing difficult as he understood that unquestionably it was. Whatever uncertainty had previously been lurking around the question had fallen away in the dream. When Sherlock told John he loved him, John's heart had skipped a beat; the veil of fog in his mind lifted and he knew absolutely it was what he had unconsciously been wishing, wanting, needing to hear all the time. There had been no need for hesitation when he told Sherlock he loved him too.

And in retrospect it was obvious. It had been obvious to everyone but the two of them all along. There had never been anyone more important to him than Sherlock Holmes, and hadn't some part of him always known there never would be?

John closed his eyes, replaying the dream-sequence from the garden and seeing Sherlock as his brain had imagined him. He was so young. Why? He thought for a moment and it occurred to him that the answer might be quite simple. Sherlock had to be a child in the dream because John was incapable of imagining the adult Sherlock saying any such things. The child could be vulnerable—the child could say what the adult couldn't.

It was all true from John's side. He knew that now. But whether Sherlock's lines held any weight in the real world was a different story. The scene had been nothing more than a fantasy, possibly even as hollow as wishful thinking. But perhaps John was not as hopeless at deduction as Sherlock despaired of him to be. Perhaps his brain had gleaned more than he was aware of from his observations of the detective's behaviour—deducing Sherlock's feelings without being consciously aware of it.

John's eyes fluttered shut as he attempted to turn his focus inward. He needed to bring up to conscious thought what previously had been nothing but murky, subliminal hints and innuendo. In order to determine how Sherlock thought of him, he would have to think like Sherlock. Evidence. He needed to sort through the evidence to gauge what was real and what was not. It was all there in his memory, but he'd never dared look at it too closely for fear of what he'd find. Now he'd have to haul all of it up out of the dark rivers of his subconscious mind.

John drew in a breath, attempting to block his awareness of his surroundings like Sherlock did.

From the beginning.

It began with silence. Unless Sherlock was lost in deep concentration, the detective filled nearly every waking hour with monologues of thought, complaints, musings, insults—he had a snarky response for anyone brave enough to direct a comment his way (anything ranging from the standard "obviously" to his more creative flourishes, e.g. "you lower the IQ of the whole street"). He could outlive god trying to have the last word. But there was one significant exception. From the very start, Sherlock had never once corrected the dozens of people who'd assumed he and John were a couple. The silence in those moments—the entirely uncharacteristic lack of snide remark—was strange enough to lodge itself at the periphery of John's awareness. Sherlock lived and breathed just to correct people, yet not even once—

And then there was the way Sherlock looked at him, the way he watched him. John felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickle remembering the sharp brilliance of those exceptional eyes and the way they moved over his skin. He'd caught them lingering on him more than once at crime scenes or in reflections. John wracked his memory to think of any instance where he'd seen Sherlock look at anyone else like that, but he came up empty. Even his gaze on Irene Adler had been different, his expression suggesting something more like uncertain curiosity, grudging admiration, and intellectual appreciation than whatever it was when he looked at John. There was want there, John understood, swallowing. Nothing so obvious as lust, but undeniably more than what he'd told himself was merely the cold scrutiny of an inquisitive mind. No, the instinctive tensing of his muscles under that gaze was a reaction to the burn in the scientist's eyes that had nothing to do with the dispassionate calculation he used on clients.

"Because you chose her." John felt his chest tighten almost painfully as he recalled the consulting detective's expression in that moment, cold mask of aloof detachment stripped by exhaustion and pain, and what John saw there was powerful enough to haunt his dreams. He'd been too upset at the time to properly consider what the emotion in those normally guarded eyes meant (having just learned everything he knew about his wife was a lie), but he'd had plenty of time later, lying awake at night or sleeping fitfully. The vision came back to him again and again.

John's jaw tightened as he tried to push aside the memory of Sherlock, nearly broken, on the verge of collapse even as he negotiated John and Mary's reconciliation. The detective's heart was failing. "You chose her." John flexed his hands from where they'd clenched into fists around his sheets. He breathed. He had to refocus his thoughts or lose himself to the futile frustration of bitter regret.

Focus.

The kiss from the alley flashed his mind, sending a wave of heat out through his muscles. Sherlock had only done it to prove a theory. But when John gripped his wrist hadn't he felt the detective's pulse quick beneath the delicate skin? John willed the memory back to him. Yes, he was positive: it was quicker than it should have been considering they'd only been walking. John hadn't registered it at the time (too overwhelmed by being kissed without warning by Sherlock Holmes in an alley), but his subconscious must have recorded it, because the sensory memory came back now in full: Sherlock's pulse beating fast and hard against John's hand as he was pressing John's shoulders into the wall and kissing him. John felt his heartrate increase now in equal measure.

He saw an image of Sherlock's face in the street—the last thing he'd seen before the fog of the coma. John had fallen and Sherlock had caught him. He would never forget that expression. He'd do it all over—the poison and everything—if he could see Sherlock look at him that way again. But near-death experiences are ephemeral. A momentary, fear-induced sentiment is not reliable for predicting whether it would be sustainable long-term. Sherlock had been afraid of losing him. But now that he wasn't dying—What now?

Concentrate.

Why was there space in Sherlock's life for John when there wasn't for anyone else? What had convinced the consulting detective to take him on as a weakness when he'd had so few?

"We're not a couple."

"Yes you are."

John was Sherlock's biggest weakness, according to the criminal world. And they were right. They'd confirmed it more than once with Semtex and American agents with guns and fire. They were right.

"But look how you care about John Watson."

He wasn't the only person Sherlock cared for. There was Lestrade and Molly and Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft (yes, Mycroft; Sherlock would scowl and deny it but John, who was not a petulant child, could see the admiration and respect the detective held for his older brother that ran deep beneath the childish feud). In a more wilfully blind time John would have grouped himself in with the rest of them—just another of the select few Sherlock tolerated: the allies who balanced around the edges of his life, ready to aid when called. But it wasn't true. He knew with deep-seated certainty that he wasn't in the same category. Lestrade's place was Scotland Yard, Molly's was Barts, Mrs. Hudson's was Baker Street, and Mycroft's was the inner-workings of England itself. But John's place was at the heart of all of it, with Sherlock—at his side, always—inextricable in a way the others weren't.

John scrubbed a hand over his face. The whole thing was scarcely believable. Him, Sherlock… But the evidence was there. What was it Sherlock was always saying to him? When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

However improbable.

John pressed the button for the nurse. He had to get out of here. Now. He needed to get back to Baker Street. He needed to wrap his arms around his detective and never let him go.

"I assume Sherlock isn't responding."

Startled, John looked up from his infuriatingly unresponsive phone. Not a nurse. "Where is he?"

Mycroft sat down in the chair next to the bed. "At Baker Street, I believe."

"Then why isn't he—"

"It was necessary to… remove him from your room. He was very much in the way of the medical proceedings."

John narrowed his eyes. "What did you do?"

"Just gave him something to help him sleep. He should be up by this evening."

"Hasn't he been drugged enough lately?"

"Yes, I'm sure he would have responded nicely if the doctor had simply asked him to leave, don't you think?"

John leaned his head back against the pillow. "How long are they going to keep me here?"

"They want another few days for observation, but I negotiated an option for you to be discharged today with the necessary supplies to maintain an outpatient status."

John stared at Sherlock's older brother. "Really?"

"You can leave this evening, if you'd like."

John's lips parted in amazement. "Why would you do that for me?"

"It's all about balance," Mycroft explained breezily. "Sherlock is bound to be displeased with me for sending him home the other night. However, if I send you home early the balance is restored."

"It's always games with you geniuses, isn't it," John said, though he couldn't help the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. He could go home. Sherlock would be there. At home. Baker Street. Their home.

This was the best part. After they made it through a case, scraped and bruised they could laugh about the whole thing over whisky and takeaway. Not that John's stomach would be up for either any time soon, but they'd get there. They had time now. Eventually they'd get there.

"Don't be absurd, John. Life is not a game"—Mycroft stood and re-buttoned his suit jacket—"And anyway, I intend to win." Mycroft arched an eyebrow as he gave him a half-smile and John wondered if what he'd just witnessed was as close to a real smile as Mycroft Holmes ever came.

"One question," John asked as Mycroft was turning to leave. "It might just be the coma, but I could have sworn— When Sherlock found me in the street he was talking to me, but I could have sworn he wasn't speaking English. Do you have any idea what that could be about?"

Mycroft stopped at the end of John's bed, tapping his hand on the rail. John watched the brief tension in his shoulders—not entirely dissimilar to Sherlock's posture in the minute pause before a quick decision. Mycroft turned around.

"Sherlock was a mistake," he said.

"Wh—I don't—"

"My mother was forty when Sherlock was born. My parents had already had two children many years before and they certainly hadn't planned on a third."

John gaped. A hundred questions vied for the spot in his mouth but the strongest won out. "Sherlock has another brother? Sister?" Complete disbelief rang in his tone. "There are three of you? But—I mean, where—"

Mycroft held up his hand. "It's another story for another day. Perhaps you can ask Sherlock to tell it to you at bedtime."

John shot him an annoyed look and Mycroft smirked.

"Our parents were too old for a child like Sherlock," he continued, straightening his posture (if it were possible for it to be any straighter) and clasping his umbrella behind his back. "He was a terror, if you can imagine." John nodded. "Yes, I'm sure you can. They hired a nanny for him. They hired many nannies for him, in fact, all of whom eventually left in tears until one didn't. She was Czech—only twenty-two years old, blonde hair, very pretty. Her name was Eliška Mila. She seemed to hold a kind of spell over Sherlock. She spoke to him in Czech and he was quiet, listening—he was two years old then. She played with him, sang to him, kissed him—I believe she loved him, and, incredibly, he was almost docile in her presence. She could quiet his tantrums by holding him in place, looking into his eyes, and speaking to him in Czech. Sherlock, being what he is, learned the language quickly enough that it nearly rivalled English as his first language."

John was listening with rapt attention. This was more about Sherlock's childhood than he'd ever heard.

"She left a few years after he started school. I'm sure our parents would have kept her on longer"—Mycroft scoffed—"I'm sure they would have kept her on through his university years. But she had made arrangements to return to the Czech Republic. He cried when she left. He spoke nothing but Czech for a week in protest, believing our parents were responsible for sending her away. I was the only one who could talk to him then. I hadn't spent much time with the nanny, but as a precaution I learned the language as soon as Sherlock started to speak it."

"It's incredible," John marvelled. He had always known Sherlock's childhood must have been nothing short of extraordinary. "So you think—that night in the street—you think he was speaking Czech?"

"Because of the early age at which Sherlock learned the language, and because of Miss Mila, Czech seems to be tied to an emotional part of Sherlock's mind. If he were ever to find himself in great emotional distress his brain might use it as a defence mechanism—an attempt to comfort the way his nanny used it to comfort him as a child."

"He's fascinating," John breathed.

"Is he?" Mycroft's indolent sarcasm snapped John's awareness back to centre and he felt a slight flush in his face. He had forgotten who he was talking to.

"Now I really must be going," Mycroft said, checking his watch. "My best wishes for a quick recovery."

John found himself staring at the space one of the most important men in England had just occupied for more than a few seconds before he remembered to blink.

Sherlock pulled his eyes open and found himself face down in his bed, fully clothed except for his shoes. Stiffly, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and did his best to bring the symbols on the display into focus. Six p.m. Wednesday. Wednesday.

He sat up fast and the room swam around him. Drugs. He had been given more than morphine at the hospital.

He struggled to order his sluggish thoughts. Why? Why was he back at Baker Street? He was supposed to be in John's hospital room. They had moved him here. Why? They wanted him out of the way. Or perhaps there was something they didn't want him to see—

John.

Something had happened; something had changed.

John.

Sherlock leapt off the bed and groped around the floor for his shoes. Images of a flatlining monitor, nurses pulling him off the bed and trying to restart John's heart, Mycroft barking orders for Sherlock to be sent home—Sherlock nearly choked, bile threatening to surge upward from his stomach.

But hadn't he remembered John's hand in his hair? John wrapping his arm around him when he had climbed into John's bed? No, but he was dreaming. He was asleep then.

Finally he managed to get his shoes on with trembling fingers. He flung open his bedroom door. He had to get back to the hospital.

He had just grabbed his coat from the couch where it had been tossed when he heard the doorknob turn. He stood stock-still as it opened, and he dropped his coat to the floor when he saw who was standing in the doorway.

John barely had a chance to get a good look at Sherlock before his flatmate collided with him. He was swept into a bone crushing embrace and John staggered back at the force of it. As soon as his muscles could react he leaned into Sherlock to steady them, wrapping his arms around the detective in turn. He felt Sherlock's hands gripping the back of his coat in fistfuls—needy, desperate: I was afraid. I thought you were dead.

John held Sherlock tightly: It's ok. I'm here now.

Sherlock shifted his hands on John's back, pulling him closer, though John hadn't thought it was possible: Never leave me again.

John closed his eyes: I won't, Sherlock. I chose to be here. I had a choice and I chose you.

John leaned into his flatmate's wiry, sturdy body, thinking of the road through Hell they'd taken to get to this point. Walking through the door of 221B just now had felt like coming home from Afghanistan—wounded and weary, but this time he had someone to come home to. And not just anyone. The person who held him now was his comrade in arms, his flatmate, his detective, his scientist, the man who had saved him again, this time by inventing an impossible antidote, and by simply being who he was: genius, beautiful, inexplicable, infuriating, endearing, intimidating, immature, challenging, wonderful—someone to die for, but more importantly someone to live for.

It was the second time John had made a conscious decision to live for him, and he would do it again every time.

John didn't know how long they stood there like that in the doorway, but finally he pulled back, separating them just enough that he could see Sherlock's face. The expression in the detective's eyes made John's words catch as he spoke them. "Thank you."

Sherlock blinked, unresponsive as though he didn't understand.

"You saved my life." John struggled to get the words out under the intensity of Sherlock's stare, which hadn't moved from his face since he'd separated them.

Sherlock's only reaction was to pull John in tightly, wrapping his arms around his back. He ducked his head, curls brushing John's cheek as he buried his face at the base of John's neck, nose brushing the exposed skin above the collar of his coat. He breathed deeply and John could feel the tension in Sherlock's muscles ease.

John closed his eyes, relaxation spreading through his own body as he held Sherlock like he was everything in the world worth holding on to.