His ribcage seemed set to crack under the pressure of his heartbeat. He could feel his breathing becoming ragged, and could hear the laborious breaths of the man beside him slicing through the din like a knife. The pain, the pressure, the noise. It all dissolved in the face of this new blinding light running through his veins. Unprecedented and unequalled; finally Sherlock had found something to tame the rapid forest-fire in his brain. It was bliss.

He welcomed the cold invasion under his skin, tearing him open and baring his insides for scrutiny and display. The foreign entity colonised, sweeping his body and taking it for his own. It made him its home, and he learned their language; the pleasant buzz and all consuming clarity. Nothing before had been so all-consuming, so much like drowning himself in quiet. The emissary of the entity, the quiet, the drug, was beautiful. Victor had rakish hair, and piercing green eyes. In his haze he sometimes imagined Victor dressed in brocade, with flowing hair like a long-dead Venetian. When he tried to say this out loud he reached the part about Victor being dead, and would freeze, he would fix him with a steady gaze and refuse to speak for days. He was learning the invaders language, and its sweet music.

They continued much like this, with Victor bringing new invasions into his blood, each with its own language and music, making his very body sing with chemicals both natural and immoral, for what felt like years. Time became a fluid entity, slipping steadily through Sherlock's cupped hands. Several times he tried to reason with Victor, tried to get him to leave and "take it with you. It rots my brain, makes me weak. Get out! Get OUT!"

Sherlock would brood, arms wrapped around his frail frame, thoughts slowly but surely beginning to catch up with him. To race and scream and tumble over themselves. He would call Victor back, hours or days after the words had already been said. He would beg him. And sometimes, just to serve him right, Victor would return. And they would start again.

"...is the last time...I swear to God Sherlock...die because of your own...smack you three ways from..." The voice seemed familiar, and if it hadn't sounded so angry, it could have been described as fond. Familiar in a way that reminded him of being young and small and vulnerable and finding a blue box and knocking on the door. He was being moved, buffeted and shoved. Fingers pinched and dragged against his skin, his bones felt soft and stretched. Lifting. He was being lifted away. Before...nothing. Finally, he slept.

"I'd wake up...can't keep on...Sherlock?...Sherlock!...Sherlock!"

Sherlock opened his eyes, vision clearing as faces above him swam into view. One he knew, he could name...if only he could make his tongue cooperate. The world seemed to even out a little, his body feeling less like it was floating. More like it had crashed back to Earth, burying itself underground. He felt as though his brain was clawing its way out of the cold, clammy earth. But the voices were becoming clearer. Voices. There was more than one. And they were discussing him. Their tones hushed and worried.

"I'm afraid I can't allow-"

"Detective, I can assure you he would be in the best care. I am more than qualified-"

"You call yourself his doctor? A doctor of what? You haven't been here the last three times this has happened-"

"I know, there was a problem with timing-"

"Timing!" Lestrade hissed, almost angrily.

Sherlock groaned in discontent, his throat feeling as though he hadn't spoken for an age. The voices stopped. He smiled in a vague sort of way, once again centre of his own little world.

"Fine," Detective Lestrade said, waving a hand towards the strung out junkie on his sofa, "Take him...doctor?" He narrowed his eyes at the gangly man, with thick glasses and messy hair. He wasn't entirely certain about his qualifications, but he'd had ID with him. Who was Lestrade to argue?

"Just 'The Doctor'," The Doctor grinned, leaning over Sherlock's limp body for a few moments before stretching and hauling him up underneath the elbows, "Uh, Detective?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Could you help me get him downstairs into the car?"

The next morning Sherlock was curled up on his own sofa, the debris of the previous night all too evident among the mess that constituted his floor. His nose crinkled delicately at the sight of it all. And finally, after all that had happened, it sickened him.

"You came back," Sherlock murmured, eyes riveted to a particular scrap of paper by The Doctor's foot, "You came back. But not to take me with you." His gaze burned into The Doctor's cheek, still refusing to look him in the eye. It looked as though The Doctor might speak. He did not.
"You could have let me die," Sherlock's voice was calm and even, cold, "Why didn't you?"

The Doctor rubbed a hand through his hair, smiling tightly, before turning his head ever so slightly.

"It was not your time."