John carefully applied the antiseptic to the gaping cuts in the girls back then held out a hand for the suture. Sherlock passed it to him without a word.
"Strange when you do it" John commented as he passed the needle down the length of the first cut.
"Hmm"" Sherlock asked
"Pass over things when I ask"
"Well you are the doctor John, you'll do it neater" John grimaced as he reached the end of the first injury.
"He really laid into her didn't he?" he said as he began on the next on the next one. Sherlock nodded and didn't take his eyes off of her.
"How are you John" Squish asked through gritted teeth, "How's Molly and Mrs Hudson?"
"Extremely worried about you, now this is going to really hurt ok!" She nodded and John began on the final slash. It was going to hurt more because it was jagged and to sew it up completely John would have to do it very slowly so as to harm the other stitches. Squish could feel it every single time that the needle pushed through her skin and balled her hands up into a fist. Eventually John was finished.
Sherlock helped her to sit up and gave her some water. She looked down at herself, her front was bloodstained and she was only in her bra which was luckily black and therefore still usable. She laughed and looked at Sherlock who was still shirtless.
"Well I'm glad that Donavon isn't here" she said
"What?" Sherlock sounded incredulous.
"She already thinks that there's something weird about us. If she saw the pair of us topless, I think we would both be in handcuffs." He looked at her weirdly for a moment, and then laughed. John looked at them and then sat down next to her.
"I have been very worried about you" he said, "and I think that your consultant will kill you for breaking the stitches"
Squish looked at him very seriously, "I think he'll be more worried about the fact that I've been kidnapped twice within two months by the same person."
"There is that" John agreed. He noticed that she was very pale, "Go to sleep ok, you need to rest and the sooner you're back to normal, the sooner we can get out of here."
John saw her look at him oddly for a minute then nodded. She curled up on Sherlock's coat and closed her eyes, within minutes she was in a deep sleep.
Sherlock looked at her for a minute then stood up and began pacing. John watched him as he walked back and forth between the four walls of the room.
"And you" he asked, "How are you Sherlock?" The taller man turned to him with something akin to anger in his eyes.
"Why are you here John? I was hoping you would be able to get some form of help to us or at least prevent yourself from also being taken. But it would appear that I overestimated you. Did you blog about where you were or did you just walk into the waiting car?"
John looked at Sherlock with shock on his face, "Sherlock I've been worried sick about you and Squish. Lestrade has been searching up and down the country for you and Mycroft. Well he's been the least composed I have ever seen him."
Sherlock exploded, "Least composed? I have watched my child John, my only child be beaten into unconsciousness by a hyper aggressive maniac. I have been forced to be unfaithful to the woman I love, yes love John, in order to get medical supplies so that she doesn't bleed to death and you expect me to be grateful that my brother has lost his composure?"
John looked at the taller man with something like pity. The taller man's head was bowed and he knelt down by Squish's side, "I let her down."
John touched his shoulder, "He made you watch?"
Sherlock looked at him his brown eyes were darker than usual, "He made me choose John. I had to choose whether I let my daughter be raped or whether let her be Moran's plaything for twenty minutes. And then he made we watch."
"I'm sorry Sherlock" John said, "I can't imagine what that was like"
Sherlock didn't say anything, "She's all I've got John" he whispered, John nodded.
"She's going to be ok Sherlock" John said, "There's no reason why she won't make a full recovery"
Sherlock didn't say anything and then he sighed and leaned against the wall. Whne he next spoke his voice sounded weary and sad.
"When I was a kid my father used to take me and Mycroft out shooting. Once Mycroft got shot in the foot, it was an accident but my father didn't really care, Mycroft was still locked in his room for two days. One day he took us out. There was this clearing in the middle of the woods on the estate. He took me and Mycroft there and he said he has something to tell us. He said we had to learn not to care. That caring was a weakness. So he sat down on the ground put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger."
John looked up at Sherlock, he suspected that his mouth was hanging open and John made an effort to close it.
"Oh don't looked so surprised" Sherlock said, "You've always wanted to know whether or not I had a traumatic childhood so shut up and listen ok?" John nodded
"Thank you Mycroft accepted it all of course, assumed the role of 'little man of the house', and Mother was of course devastated, played up the deserted widow angle before assuming all of my father's estates and money. You'd like me to tell you tats why I'm like I am wouldn't you John? That Sherlock's cold and calculating as a defence mechanism due to childhood trauma. Well sorry to disappoint you John, but that's wrong, this is who I am. So much so that when I left university I adopted a child because I was bored."
John tried to say something here, "Sherlock…"
"John I said shut up. He was right you see, Jim. She was an experiment; I wanted to know whether it was possible to raise someone to be like me. Whether there was something wrong with me specifically or whether it was something that I had learnt along the way."
He reached out and stroked Squish's hair gently.
"I never expected that I would actually care about her. I thought she'd just be another cadaver, not a person. I didn't think that I would change as a result of her John"
John looked at the pair of them. The sleeping girl and the tall man who looked at her with such concern.
"What happened Sherlock?" he asked, "What changed?"
Sherlock looked him with look that said, 'isn't it obvious?', "I began to care John. Suddenly there was someone who needed me to look after her and that made me… feel"
John still felt baffled, Sherlock sighed.
"Until her John, I didn't care how other people felt. I didn't care how I affected people. Then she came along. And I care so much about if she's scared, happy, or sad. And right now I see her scared and hurt, and every time I see Moriarty or Moran I want to kill them." John looked at him and Sherlock sighed. "But that's not going to get her out is it?"