Well, my vacation is over now, and y'all get another chapter!

"Sherlock?" John questioned.

"Yes?" There was something in John's tone that Sherlock didn't like, but he didn't press much further into it. He knew that having all of John's memories back would be a...surprise to say the least, so Sherlock was fully prepared for any questions John might have, and any moods that may change. Mainly the loving, sexual ones.

"How could you do that to me?" Sherlock winced. "How could you leave me like that, and then come back and take advantage of me? There were lines I thought you wouldn't cross, but obviously I was wrong about that. Pretending to love me? Dating me? I've never been into men, and yet, you thought you could play one of your games and change me? I was right before you died, you really are a machine."

"I'm sorry," Sherlock whimpered. He was trying so hard to keep his voice steady, but none of it was working. Sherlock wanted to shrink away from that look John was giving him, the disappointment and anger and frustration and betrayal and disbelief.

John shook his head. "Sorry doesn't cut it. I can deal with the dead body parts in the fridge, and the constant deductions, and the violin at all hours, but this? This is unforgivable."

"I-"

"No, shut up." John rounded on Sherlock, appearing to grow a meter, towering over the detective. "You don't get to speak. I'm done with you, I'm done with the crime and chases and shootings and lies and fake emotions." He picked up a bag at the doorstep, but didn't seem to bend over or get smaller. "I realized that I was really better without you. So, I'm leaving. If you try to contact me, or if your brother does, I'll kill him and get a restraining order for the remaining Holmes sibling. Do I make myself clear?"

Sherlock nodded, tears swelling in his eyes. He blinked them back. John's last image of him was not going to be a weak, crying man. "Yes, John." He bit back the sigh that erupted from him at the name.

"Great." John stormed from the flat, leaving his key on the floor.

Sherlock was well and truly broken now. If he thought his death was heartache and pain in a very large snowball, this was an avalanche. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he couldn't function other than collapsing on the ground and clutching John's abandoned key to his strangely empty chest. His heart had burned out, and a smoking hole was left behind. His ribs were exposed, lungs barely expanding and contracting.

He'd never died before this. This was true death.

Sherlock woke up with tears pouring down his face. Sobs wracked his body as he tried to keep them under control, and he stared at his chest for several seconds, making sure it wasn't torn open, making sure his heart still beat. He couldn't find John, he needed to make sure John was still there, still holding him, still...still loving him. Where had John gone? Sherlock couldn't swore he was right there...

"Sherlock? Sherlock, I'm right here! Darling, look at me!" Hands moved Sherlock's face so that he was turned a certain way. Sherlock didn't see anything. There was nothing; someone tricked him. He wasn't even in 221B, in fact, he'd never been there. He was still in that Serbian torture chamber.

They really knew how to hurt him, using John against him, using his best friend (lover)(boyfriend) to break him. Well, it worked!

The dark, the cold, (he hurt all over), the chest cavity was just that: a cavity, (why couldn't they make it stop), (stop), (stop), STOP.

And suddenly, lips were on his.

Warmth, closeness, someone was holding him, love, sweet nothings whispered, Sherlock, I'm here, and those lips belonged to...John. "Darling, shhh, it's alright, I love you, and I'm not going anywhere, so you will be okay, I promise, as long as I'm alive, you will be okay." Kisses were pressed all over Sherlock's face and neck, kissing the tears away, kissing the pain away. Sherlock had never understood the general premise used by mothers that kisses could heal injuries, but now he did. John could heal anything.

"Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock," John whispered. Just that sound wound Sherlock's limbs back around John's in the dark. Sherlock burrowed his face into John's chest, pressing his ear down to hear a heartbeat. ThuThump. ThuThump. ThuThump.

Alive.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you," Sherlock whispered. Harriet was sleeping upstairs; he hoped he hadn't disturbed her, too.

"No, my love." John dropped a kiss into Sherlock's hair. "It's okay. I had nightmares like this for months after I came back from the war. They stop eventually."

Sherlock looked up at him. "You did?" As John nodded, he shook his head. "Of course you did. PTSD, psychosomatic limp, intermittent tremor in your left hand. Nightmares are common." He immediately regretted saying that, looking at John's quizzical expression. "Who stopped them for you?"

The doctor ran his fingers through Sherlock's curls. "I don't know. One night, I heard violin music through the flat. I stepped outside my bedroom to see where it was coming from, and I saw a man in a dressing gown playing. The way the moonlight fell on him, it looked like he had wings spreading from his back. He never turned around, and when I woke up again I thought I'd dreamed it, but there were a few pages of sheet music on the couch in the morning."

Sherlock reached up to run his fingers over John's cheekbones. "Like an angel?"

John smiled. "Yes, like my very own guardian angel. Kind of like you, actually."

The detective almost laughed. "I'm not an angel."

"Oh, of course. Not an angel. My angel."

Sherlock was about to protest, but John cut him off with a finger. "What did you see?"

He wasn't sure how he could answer that so John wouldn't know anything but also be truthful. "Shut up."

"What?"

John rolled his eyes. "Love, you're thinking too loudly. If you can't tell me, that's alright, but it's really better if you do."

Sherlock looked at John with apprehension. "I didn't see anything real. It would never happen, I can see that now."

"It doesn't matter if it was real, you still saw it," he replied.

Sherlock felt like laughing. It wasn't funny at all, but he felt like laughing. Perhaps it had to do with aftereffects of the vision (he refused to think of it as a prediction. "Look at me, John. I'm afraid. I'm so afraid of something that isn't real. He would think I was going soft."

John shook his head. "He isn't here, so it doesn't matter."

"I need to keep myself distant from it," Sherlock murmured. "From him. He wouldn't understand why it is so scary because he didn't see and interpret what I saw and interpreted. No one could ever leave him but me, and even when I did, it wasn't how my dream went." He paused. "There is something wrong with me, thinking about him when I'm with you." The old John would be back, and Sherlock couldn't think about that. He had to pretend like time wasn't ticking away to the moment John would realize Sherlock wasn't good enough for him.

"There is nothing wrong with you," John said. "He's gone, you loved him, it's normal to think about him. The nightmares come from your fears and previous traumatic experiences mixing together in a big pile of brain goo. This experience, you leaving him, was traumatic and led to other traumatic incidents, so when your brain gets a subconscious reminder of those things, it reorganizes it into something that the brain can then reanalyze." John broke off, blushing slightly. "Nothing strange at all."

Sherlock grinned. "I love when you talk medically."

"I am a doctor, after all." John kissed the tip of Sherlock's nose.

"My doctor."

"Yes, I am." Sherlock captured John's lips sweetly. This was one of the reasons he loved him. John never patronized him, or made him feel small. John protected him in his own way, with medical talk and walls of warm limbs and gentle kisses. He would never hurt Sherlock.

Neither one of them pulled away for minutes afterward, but the kiss went no further than the soft movement of lips.

John opened his eyes when he found lips on his. He hadn't woken up like this since...maybe Grace. His usual conquests left before he could make breakfast, and never woke him up when they went. So who would do this?

Sherlock had his arms wrapped around John's neck, and sat in his lap, kissing him.

Wait, rewind. Sherlock?

John broke the kiss, staring at the detective. When had this happened? John didn't even remember coming into Sherlock's room, much less in the middle of the night, much less to kiss him. Yes, he was sort of crushing on Sherlock, but who didn't do that? It turned out John didn't have to say anything.

"You don't remember, do you?" Sherlock asked. His voice was so sad, like he was used to this happening, like people forgot him all the time. Who could ever forget you? John wanted to scream.

"I'm sorry, I don't." He wasn't sure what he could say that would fix things. John probably kissed Sherlock and Sherlock just reciprocated to experiment with feelings.

"I was having a nightmare, and you came in to see what was wrong. The dream..." Sherlock paused, looking down at his hands. "The dream was just fear, completely irrational fear. You calmed me down and then...then I kissed you. I'm-" He broke off. "I'm very sorry. It was sentiment-related, and I shouldn't have thrust my volatile state upon you." He made a move to stand up, but John pulled him back.

"No, Sherlock." John twined his fingers through the detective's. "It's okay."

"How, in any way, is this okay?" Sherlock didn't try to walk away, though. "You don't feel anything for me besides friendship."

John couldn't take it anymore. He leaned forward and placed the tiniest kiss on Sherlock's full bottom lip, then on his top lip, and then kissed him fully, but not long. "Do you want me to? Because I do."

Sherlock looked shocked, but John couldn't stop now. He ran kisses up Sherlock's jaw and those bloody cheekbones, and the crease in his forehead. "I want to kiss you more, but if you don't feel that way, I can stop."

The detective shook his head. "It's not you. I'll inevitably fuck this up, and I don't want you to be caught in that."

John sat back. If Sherlock used a swear word, things were serious. "I won't care. We've done enough dangerous, stupid things that nothing you do can scare me away. Even breaking into Baskerville again."

Sherlock looked at John again, with a different, more decisive expression. "If you're sure..."

The doctor nodded. "I'm sure."

And Sherlock Holmes smiled, shyly and brightly. "Kiss me."

Sherlock knew it wouldn't last. John didn't love him before, probably didn't now, he just was lonely. But Sherlock also knew that if John was taken from him again...He'd die, really and provably. He was convinced his heart would stop beating, be torn out like it was in the nightmare, if John left.

Love would be his undoing. But it didn't matter if it was John.

So Sherlock kissed him back, running his fingers through John's short blond hair. Baskerville, the second time going into Baskerville, would be the next memory, and Sherlock would help him through it. He couldn't believe he'd done that to John before, tricked him into seeing the hound. But he'd make up for it this time around.

Sherlock had so much to be forgiven for; it was unlikely to happen.

"I need to see Major Barrymore right away, so you need to search the place. Start in Stapleton's lab, see if there are any large dogs."

John nodded. It was probable that he would start with the sitting room as Stapleton's lab and Sherlock would have to make the hound noises again. God, this scared Sherlock, seeing John so scared. But it would be over and done with soon enough, and Boyfriend-John would come back.

The doctor left Sherlock's (their) bedroom, and began looking around the sitting room, sliding an invisible key card through a window frame and opening the window. He inspected the outside and inside of the window, a trail of fog coming into the flat. That would be the drug, Sherlock thought.

John closed the window, and Sherlock turned on the brightest light in the house, momentarily blinding the doctor. John then tried sliding the invisible key card back along the window frame, but Sherlock left the light on. He had to get this right. If he didn't, there was a great potential for John's brain compensating for the skewed memory and bring them all back at once, hurting John and destroying Sherlock. That could not happen, John could not be hurt anymore than Sherlock already had hurt him.

He turned the lights back off; John fumbled for a flashlight in his pocket. And this was where it started. Sherlock made rattling noises against the metal in the bathroom, and the doctor looked around. The detective screeched like a monkey, and John, startled, went back to the window, trying his key card again. Sherlock knew he had John trapped well and good.

John called Sherlock on his mobile, whispering, "Don't be ridiculous, pick up." Sherlock didn't answer. "Damn it!" He put the phone back in his pocket. John ran to another window frame to try it, but before he could, Sherlock let out a growl.

The doctor immediately stopped in his tracks. Sherlock hated this so much, but he had to do it. Get through the next few minutes, and then you can go to him, Sherlock thought to himself. Only a few more minutes. John started breathing heavily, but he put a hand over his mouth to muffle it. Running to the couch, he sat on it, and mimed closing a cage door. Sherlock got his phone out and called John back.

"It's here," John breathed. "It's in here with me."

"Where are you?" Sherlock asked, even though he knew the answer far too well.

"You've got to get me out of here, you've got to get me out. The big lab, the first lab that we saw." Sherlock pulled his mobile away from his mouth and growled, louder this time.

"Sherlock?" he squeaked.

"I'll find you," Sherlock whispered, saltwater making his voice hoarse. He had to stay calm, he had to stay in character. "Just keep talking."

"I can't, it'll hear me."

"Keep talking," he repeated. God, if John stopped now... "What are you seeing?"

John went quiet for a moment, staring into nothing. "I can see it." Sherlock let a few drops trickle from his eyes. He wanted to make it stop, he wanted the hound to leave. He wanted this to never have happened so he wouldn't have to see that look on John's face.

Sherlock stepped in, pulling John from his invisible cage, and evidently the memory. The doctor fell asleep in Sherlock's arms.

The detective looked down at the bundle of human beauty in his arms. There was nothing he could do now but put him to bed, and wait. Wait for all the memories to come back, wait for the fear to come back. Because it would.

Everything lost would be found. All would be returned to its original state. Sherlock fell asleep thinking of circles, and how he desperately wanted for this one to never close.

There was some serious freaking angst in this chapter, holy crap. Wow. Anyway, you know the drill. Read + review!