In this chapter:

"Only someone who had shared a dangerous life with him could really appreciate the sight of a living and breathing Sherlock Holmes. Only someone who had seen him with his head smashed and his eyes dead cold could know the relief of hearing his voice.

Maybe John alone knew how to appreciate a safe Sherlock. He alone knew how rare that was."

CHAPTER 16

With a strained breath, he pushed the heavy door. The metal ripped its way through the floor. The sound petrified his blood, clawed at his ears.

Faint drag of the chains. Acrid smell of death.

His limbs felt burdensome, hanging awkwardly off his body. He needed to run, but the air scarcely entered in his lungs.

Thuds of fists meeting a body – the unmistakable sound of violence. Tear of flesh and drip of blood.

He felt his body quiver and the fear grow paralysing. His feet seemed glued to the ground.

He would run, he had to, he told himself, uselessly. The voices become acute screams.

Grave. The place had become a grave.

Sherlock, he thought, painfully.

It was already too late.

John opened his eyes, startled. It felt like reaching the surface of a freezing pond. He closed them again. He couldn't move.

Breathing deeply, he told himself over and over again than it had been just a dream. Not a particularly graphic nightmare, nor anything related to the fall. He told himself to be glad that it hadn't been worse.

John felt a ponderous dread sit over him, cover his body like the lid of a coffin, like the weight of a muzzle. He felt crippled.

It hadn't been like the other nightmares. He hadn't screamed, hadn't felt any panic attack folding his body. What John felt the most – the only thing that could turn his person into nothing – was fear. The worst kind of fear, the fear of not being able to stop Sherlock from being killed.

Another difference from his other nightmares was that his brain hadn't shut down completely. He told himself it was a good thing, but the truth was that his mind was running in all the worst directions, repeating a dozen times everything Mycroft had told John the day before. Every abuse Sherlock's body had suffered, every person he had pissed off and who could now be trying to hurt him.

He couldn't shut up the voice that told him again and again that Sherlock could be being murdered at that exact moment and John wouldn't even know.

Fear.

John Watson, former captain in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers had been reduced to a puddle of terror.

It was the same kind of helplessness Sherlock had always made him feel, but magnified by the death threats he was receiving. And the distance between them.

He managed to swing his legs and plant his feet on the floor. He straightened his back and cracked his neck, grabbing his phone to check the time. Little past three in the morning.

John stood up and walked to his bedroom, just to check on Mary, who seemed sound asleep. He was glad to have fallen asleep on the sofa. And that was more proof that his nightmare had been a silent one. Just to think of it made alarm coil in his belly again. He closed the bedroom door and went to the kitchen to give himself something to do. Trying to get back to sleep would be pointless, he knew that much.

While the kettle didn't boil, he let all the information he had gathered from Mycroft bounce inside his head. Every day that Sherlock had been out there fighting for his life pounded in John's skull like a hit of a hammer. The detective had been travelling through continents alone, putting himself in line of danger. A line that consisted only of him – him and his unbearable sense of indestructibility.

Fucking Sherlock Holmes. Fucking William Sherlock Scott Holmes, for that matter.

John filled his mug with hot water and watched it darken from the tea leaves. He thanked heavens for not feeling sick as he sometimes felt after a nightmare.

He leaned on the counter and took a deep breath, trying to get his head straight. He held the mug with his two hands, letting the warmth ground him.

John was addicted to danger, yes, but he was addicted to the danger he could fight with his training. He was addicted to the danger he could overcome and paint with justice instead. He wasn't addicted at all to the general sense of dread that seemed to be tying his legs and arms.

At that very moment something could be happening. And he couldn't just run down a flight of stairs and crack Sherlock's door open to see for himself that everything was right in the world. He had done it many times.

So maybe he was a little bit over protective, but who could blame him? He had been trained for that kind of life, he had been almost programmed from his mother's womb to be like that. He had to defend himself and the people around him more times than not; it was natural to him.

He looked at the clock hanging sadly on the kitchen wall.

He remembered when Moriarty had showed up in their lives. He remembered the day he had slept on Sarah's couch and woke up to the news that Sherlock could have been blown up to dust. He remembered feeling small.

It was an odd tradition, he supposed. But in some twisted sort of way, it suited them.

He remembered rushing out of Sarah's flat, not trusting phones to assure him of anything.

He remembered running up the seventeen steps to 221B to be presented with the sight of Sherlock facing Mycroft in the living room.

The marvellous sight of Sherlock in one piece, unharmed. Clever and cunning as ever.

Only someone who had shared a dangerous life with him could really appreciate the sight of a living and breathing Sherlock Holmes. Only someone who had seen him with his head smashed and his eyes dead cold could know the relief of hearing his voice.

Maybe John alone knew how to appreciate a safe Sherlock. He alone knew how rare that was.

He felt his heart tug painfully in his chest. He felt handicapped, something similar to what he used to feel months after Sherlock had died. When all the desperation and anger had given room to the dull ache and general emptiness that never went away.

Maybe it never would.

John took his mug of tea to the living room and sank on the couch, trying to get some warmth back in his body. He looked sideways to his phone and sighed. To call Sherlock at three in the morning for no apparent reason would be insane.

But then, again, not knowing if everything was fine would also drive him insane.

John sighed again, relenting to his overprotectiveness. He wouldn't make a habit out of it, he promised himself. He wouldn't start calling Sherlock every night to know if everything was okay.

He let the phone rest by his side on the couch, and observed it as one observes a wild animal. He felt vaguely like a teenager in a first relationship. It was bloody ridiculous, for Christ's sake. His worry was absolutely reasonable, and he hadn't talked to Sherlock after leaving Mycroft's office at the Diogenes. Not that that excused anything.

No. He wouldn't call.

That would be ridiculously unnecessary. Mycroft would contact him if something was amiss, he knew that much. The elder Holmes had learned to trust John through the years, and he knew John would do anything to keep his little brother safe.

John grew more restless by the minutes. The sounds of his nightmare seemed to be getting louder in the silent of the night time.

Something could be happening.

It was a fair possibility. Mycroft could have his hands so full that he wouldn't have time to contact John. And Sherlock and Mrs Hudson were alone in that building, no help would be as efficient as John could be, if just he were there.

Fuck it, he thought, grabbing the phone and pressing 1. It rang two and a half times before John could hear Sherlock's voice.

"John?" The detective said, sounding more distressed than John would have imagined. "John, what's wrong?" He didn't sound groggy, probably hadn't been asleep, just as John figured.

The baritone made his legs turn to liquid. Sherlock was fine, being Sherlock, experimenting on body parts or lying bored on the couch.

"John!"

Oh. John should probably answer that. It was probably looking creepy as fuck. "Hi, I'm here," he said, idiotically.

Sherlock's breath seemed quick and tense. "What's wrong?" He asked again.

"Nothing," John tried to reassure him, but it sounded weak in his own ears. His voice was strained, he didn't sound like himself and he knew Sherlock could notice everything through a simple phone call. Fuck, he could probably tell if John was wearing socks or not.

Their lives forced them to be always ready for the worst. Sherlock's quick response at picking up the phone revealed someone who was ready to get dreadful news at the most ungodly hours.

John hated that. And he hated that Sherlock made him feel as vulnerable as this.

"Vatican cameos...?" Sherlock asked, and by his tone John knew he was trying to deduce what had happened.

"No," John sighed, but his lips curled slightly up. That was their life. Ready to get to their battle stations in no time.

The problem was that John was himself too far from his station. He was trying to reach it through a phone call and it felt weak and dire.

"Oh," Sherlock breathed over the phone. John could almost see his mind palace bursting with everything he had on John and organizing a hypothesis for the phone call. John let him do it because it soothed him. For the first time since their lives had been turned upside down.

"Oh," Sherlock said, again, now more firmly. He had probably deduced that John had a nightmare, worsened by everything Mycroft had told him.

They were silent for a moment. John knew it was ridiculous, but he let Sherlock's breaths dictate the rhythm of his own. He had been agitated since he had woken up, and just now he could feel calm enough again.

"Well, thank god you called!" Sherlock whined, as if the first bit of their conversation had never happened. It was a relief. "This must be the dullest night in the history of nights everywhere!"

John smiled. Trust Sherlock to say the right thing to dissipate the awkwardness that hanged before. He sighed, letting the familiarity of Sherlock's voice and complaints embrace him.

"People normally sleep at night," John said, falling easily back on their usual banter. They used to have this conversation three times a week when John had still been working with Sarah. Sherlock had always been outraged by the fact that John had to sleep to wake up early. Not that he used to respect John's sleeping schedule, of course.

"Ugh, sleeping. As I just said: boring," Sherlock complained.

"What are you doing, then? Tell me you haven't been shooting the walls again," John asked, lying back on the couch to give his body some rest.

"No, I've been saving that for a special occasion, but thank you for the reminder," the detective replied and John could hear the smile in his voice. "I've been reorganizing my notes on the experiment I was doing earlier."

"The one with the eyes? What are the conclusions then?"

"First of all, don't use an eye for tea, it really adds nothing to the taste," Sherlock replied, seriously.

John laughed out loud and then promptly put his hand over his mouth. He didn't want to wake Mary. "Oh, no, you didn't."

"It was an accident!" Sherlock tried to defend himself, but laughed heartily. "And Mrs Hudson wasn't here to replace my tea with a fresh one. It was all her fault."

"Obviously," John said, still laughing. "It is her fault if you are completely nuts." He could bet Sherlock was probably shrugging. Not even Sherlock himself could deny the fact that he was crazy.

John heard as the other man's laughter died down slowly. He didn't feel the need to fill the silent with nothing else. It had always been like that with them. No small talk, just a general sense of fulfilment being around each other. Something that John had never been able to explain, really.

Well, Sherlock did occupy more space than any other thing in the world. He seemed to have the mass of a whole planet is John's life.

"What about the violin, then?" John asked apropos of nothing. For some reason, he had been thinking about that frequently. He needed that to happen again soon – needed at least that piece of normality back.

"I wouldn't really know," Sherlock replied, quietly.

"What do you mean?" John frowned. He thought Sherlock would jump right on it again the minute he saw himself out of that cast. John knew that his hand was okay, but worried about it, nonetheless.

"John, my hand is fine. I'll play the violin soon enough."

"Soon enough?" John asked, mockingly. "Come off it, that's not even an actual amount of time."

"Right. So I will play the violin in thirteen days, twenty-three hours and eleven seconds, give or take, not considering the eventual cases that will demand my expertise," Sherlock's smile was a constant presence in his voice.

John tried not to get lost in it. He suspected he was also the only one who knew not to take for granted a smiling Sherlock Holmes.

"Is that better?" The detective asked, amused.

John cleared his throat. He had absolutely no idea of why Sherlock needed almost two weeks to play the violin again. "No, it's not. Are you in any pain?"

Sherlock tutted – actually tutted, the git. "No, Doctor Watson, I am not. Do you want to control my violin too? Isn't this a bit too much?"

No, John thought. He laughed because he couldn't not to, really. He had to agree with Sherlock, he sounded a bit deranged.

"You just have to play the violin again," John said, trying to sound nonchalant, but knowing he wasn't making much sense. Sherlock had to play the violin, yes, if he felt like it. Not just so John felt normal again, just so John felt one more piece of his life coming back to place again.

Sherlock sounded thoughtful. "I'll do my best," he said, with an intensity that John could not interpret.

John closed his eyes and thought about being at Baker Street, on his armchair with a warm cup of tea in his hand while Sherlock stood near the window, playing the violin. He tried to remember how many times that had happened, but he knew it would be a useless task. People took for granted those little moments in life – those little moments when the simplest kind of happiness made everything feel just right.

And now that all that was over, he felt as if he hadn't valued it enough.

"John?" Sherlock called his attention. "Are you asleep?"

"Nah," John replied, "that isn't happening tonight." He rubbed his face.

"Uh," Sherlock let out a dubious sound.

John could hear some unidentifiable background noise. It seemed as if Sherlock was walking around the flat.

A sharp sound of breaking glass on the other side of the line made John jump to his feet. "Sherlock!"

The seconds of indistinct noise and nothing more felt like a lifetime of doubt in John's perception.

"I'm here," Sherlock said, sounding a bit out of breath. "I might have broken a few glasses."

John tried to smile, but his face changed into something ugly and pained. He was going mad. He was getting on edge by a mere unfamiliar sound.

What the fuck was happening to him, he asked himself. When the hell was this going to stop?

It was hard for him to reconcile Sherlock Holmes, the obnoxious genius, with the guy who gave up on every bit of the life he loved – and he bloody well loved being the only consulting detective in the world – to go on a man hunt that cost him two years of his life. He had trouble reconciling all this with Sherlock, his best friend Sherlock, who was now talking to him on the phone in an empty flat. A flat that they used to share. A flat where there used to be tea and violin and science and papers everywhere. Where John had a comfy armchair and a family.

John's head was spinning. He didn't know how to make it stop.

"John," the detective said, soothingly. John asked himself if that had been on purpose. Maybe Sherlock didn't know what else to say.

John didn't know either.

"I talked to your brother, you know," John said, trying to school his tone to something less broken. He wasn't sure he had succeeded. "He told me what you did, what you've gone through."

"John–"

"Just– Just hear me out," he said out of breath. "You should have told me before. I can't believe all that was happening and I didn't know!"

"You couldn't–"

"I know, I wasn't supposed to know, but bloody hell, Sherlock," John said through his teeth. "You could have died," he said numbly, his breaths ragged.

"I was already dead," Sherlock said, bluntly.

Heartless arsehole. John shut his mouth to stop himself from telling Sherlock to go fuck himself.

"I'm not dead anymore, obviously. It was the best outcome."

At what cost? John asked himself. He asked himself every day.

"For how long, hm? For how long will you stay alive, Sherlock? All these letters, what if they aren't 'nothing', what if the person behind this decides to actually kill you?"

"This is pure conjecture. We can't know before–"

"Before we have all the data, I know," John smiled bitterly. He knew Sherlock would say that. It was something usual to their dynamic; the more desperate John got, the colder and more distant Sherlock got. It was a sort of counterbalance, but dear lord, didn't John hate it. "Let me tell you what is going to happen from now on."

"John, this is hardly–"

"Shut up. Shut up and listen. What is going to happen now is: anything that happens, you will tell me. Anything out of the ordinary that you observe, I want to know. If a new letter arrives, you will tell me, are you listening to me?"

Sherlock huffed. "Honestly–"

"Are you?"

"Yes," Sherlock complied.

"Good," John nodded. "If you have a case, you will let me know. If you are to run to a rough part of town at an ungodly hour, I want to know. And you will. Tell. Me. Do you get it?"

"Copy that," the detective said, sounding bored. "Anything else? You sound like Mycroft."

"No, I don't. I am asking you to tell me. I'm not going to spy on you to know any of this. Trust, do you remember about it? Trust. I am trusting you to do what I am asking. Cause–" John's voice became thick with everything he was trying so hard not to show.

Because he needed to know.

Because he needed to have the chance to do something.

John took a deep breath. "You will tell me. Everything," he finished.

"I will," Sherlock answered. And he actually sounded like he meant it.

"I'll be there tomorrow," John told him, trying to shake off the heaviness that had sat between them. "Okay?"

It was strange to ask permission to be there.

"Of course. I hope there is an interesting crime scene for us to visit. Or we can have dinner," the other man suggested.

"By dinner you mean I will eat while trying to force you to do the same?"

"Just so," Sherlock smiled. Again, it filled John's ear like the one of the melodies he used to play on the violin.

"Works for me," John shrugged.

It had been working like that for a long time.

The next time he woke up, John surprised himself to notice he had actually fallen asleep again. He sat up on the sofa and squinted at his phone, lighting up the screen to see the time.

"You seemed peaceful," Mary's voice came up from his side, startling him. She smirked.

John yawned and thought that she was right. He hadn't slept that well in a long time. It seemed awfully strange that he would have such a good – half – night sleep right when he'd discovered the truth about the threats Sherlock was receiving.

He gave her a small smile. "Good morning to you too," he said stretching his back and neck. He stood up and walked to her embrace. She smelled of soap and body lotion.

Her breath smelled like tea, which made his stomach grumble in response. He supposed a good sleep made him hungry. He wouldn't remember, really.

After filling a mug of hot coffee for himself, John sat with Mary at their kitchen table, watching while she buttered a toast for him. It was good to have someone take care of him sometimes. He often forgot that.

Though happy for the deserved rest he'd got, John's head was already going back online and he couldn't help the tension that came naturally with it. He became hyper-aware of the clock ticking and of the faint noise of their neighbours. He asked himself how many of them were actually neighbours and how many were Mycroft's minions.

Shouldn't all of them be focused in protecting Sherlock and Mrs Hudson at Baker Street?

"John?" Mary called him, not for the first time. John's eyes refocused on his fiancée's. "I said, do you want another toast?"

John sighed. Carrying all those secrets inside him wasn't doing them any good. "Yes, love, thanks."

"Don't 'love' me," Mary tutted at him. "You always 'love' me when you've screwed up. Instead, tell me what's wrong."

John knew denying would be useless. If there was something Mary was, it not was stupid. That woman could probably smell bullshit from miles away. He was glad he wasn't planning to have an affair.

However, he didn't want to worry her. Mary was strong, sure, John knew she could handle the truth. But he also knew their relationship was not at its best moment. To lay all that information in front of her would only complicate things even more. She would walk around looking over her shoulder, which could tip off the whole scheme Mycroft had set up to protect Sherlock and themselves.

John reached out and grabbed one of her hands. He wished he could tell her everything, but he couldn't.

And at the same time, he knew all those secrets would end up driving them apart. He didn't want that. He knew he could trust her – it gutted him that he couldn't risk putting her in even more danger.

"Something is happening," he told her. It sounded lame in his own ears.

"So you keep saying, John," she squeezed his hand. "Can't you tell me at once what is happening?"

John shook his head. "It's not safe, Mary, I'm sorry."

At that information, her whole posture changed. John found it a bit out of character, but it wasn't, not really. She was being dragged into something she was not used to, it was only normal she would feel defensive.

"What do you mean, are you in danger?"

"No," John said, quickly.

Maybe.

The truth was that it didn't matter.

He knew his face showed the confusion of his thoughts.

"John, tell me what's happening," Mary said in a voice that left no room for arguments. He had never heard that urgent tone before. He thought his own captain self must have been rubbing off on his fiancée.

It made something warm unfurl in the pit of his stomach – showing him that he was part of something. Not only running around after Sherlock, trying to work with whatever scrap of information the detective allowed John to have. It was kind of nice being the influence for once.

He squeezed her hand back and brought his other one to land on top of their joined hands.

She deserved his trust.

"Sherlock is receiving death threats," John started, thinking about how much he could tell her without making her life miserable.

"I thought this kind of thing was common in his line of work."

"Yeah, but these ones are different. Seem more serious."

Mary's face showed she wasn't satisfied in the least. John could feel all the apprehension pouring out of her.

"Moriarty could be involved," he said. It wasn't exactly accurate, but she would understand the seriousness of the situation well enough.

Mary stood up abruptly and paced back and forth once. "You told me he was dead. Moriarty is dead." She tried to recollect herself. "Isn't he?"

John stood up two. "Yes, he is, but he's got associates, he always had. It's a possibility."

"A possibility?" She asked, trying to sound like herself again, but John could see how affected she was. It pained him that he had to put her through this.

"Yes, Mycroft is digging into it. Look, love," John whispered in her ear after embracing her. "Everything is going to be fine, all right? I'm sorry to throw this on you, I shouldn't have."

Mary looked at his eyes and she had a strange glitter in her stare. As if she had some unknown force inside her. John hugged her tighter.

"Yes, everything is going to be fine," she said, voice dead cold.

hey you all, thanks for continuing to read and follow this story! Sorry about the delay.

it has been kind of slow, cause i'm working like mad and reading harry potter like mad, so you all understand!

please, let me know what you think, tell me about your theories about Mary.