I know, I disappeared on you, I am sorry.

I hope you find the chapter worth the wait.

Summary:

"The decision to jump in front of Sherlock was not a decision per se. Maybe it was muscle memory. Maybe guts."

CHAPTER 19

It all happened very fast.

In the split of second it took John to spring into action, he was hit by the thought that those guys didn't have any idea the police had the building covered. They were probably trying, dumbly, to erase their connection to Michael.

The cellar door behind which he and Sherlock had crouched was placed exactly between Michael and Lily and the five gang members who were scattered around the room. Before the man next to Michael and Lily could fully raise his weapon, John jumped in the middle of the room, shouting to Pearson that he should protect Lily and take cover on the other side of the room.

John heard Sherlock breathing steadily by his side and wondered how natural it felt for Sherlock to aim a gun at another person's head now.

"Who the hell are you?" One of the criminals shouted. "What the fuck are you doing here?" He reached for his own gun even before he had finished his question.

John's eyes scanned the room for a way of saving Lily, but their situation wasn't any good. He and Sherlock would only have time to kill two of them before they themselves were shot, maybe fatally, and that didn't leave a good time window for them to get the girl to safety.

There wasn't any other way out of there. John would cover them while they ran to the cellar. He might be shot, but it was their best chance. Lily's whimpering somewhere behind him was enough to make him decide.

Before he could look for a way of letting Sherlock know of the plan without really voicing it, the detective beat him up to it. Of course he had a plan of his own.

"The police are already here, you have no way out," Sherlock said, and he sounded so unbearably calm that John thought hysterically that his plan might consist of infuriating the criminals into letting them go.

Sherlock was fucking mad.

The leader snorted and Sherlock fixed his eyes on him, giving a humourless laugh of his own. "Oh, you still think the police aren't aware of the kidnapping?" Sherlock asked, mockingly. He looked sideways at John, but returned his gaze to the sour looking men ahead. "Remember what I said about them not being simple-minded Londoner criminals?"

John cringed internally, but nodded because he knew Sherlock was stalling for time.

"Well, I take it back," the detective shrugged. "They are as thick as it gets."

The distinct "click" of a gun being cocked was heard in the room. John doubted Michael or little Lily would be able to recognize the sound, but he and Sherlock sure as hell could.

"Let's see how funny you think you are with a bullet in your knee," one of the guys spat and shot in Sherlock's direction.

The decision to jump in front of Sherlock was not a decision per se. Maybe it was muscle memory. Maybe guts.

The thumping of his heart made him deaf to the sound of the bullet that missed them – and it did miss them for more than a feet.

Oh, but he was going to have words with Sherlock about this. Fucking idiot.

And said idiot was... grinning. Grinning. Bloody lunatic.

"Thank you," Sherlock said, simply, to the man who had shot in their direction.

Before John's brain could work that out, there was a loud bang and the front door came crashing down revealing the heavily armed Yard team. Lestrade ran in wearing a vest, aiming his own gun at the leader's head, who still hadn't recovered from the shock of being proved an imbecile in front of his crew.

John's instincts made him move immediately. He crouched in front of Michael and Lily, who held each other tightly and looked like a bundle of limbs in the back corner of the room. John felt more than heard Sherlock crouch beside him.

"Are you okay?" John asked Lily, who seemed too shocked to say anything and just nodded, a thick tear rolling down her face. "It's over now, all right?" She nodded again.

Sally surrounded them and gave a stiff nod. Michael's eyes went wide, but that had been the deal. He too was guilty of everything that had happened.

"Stay with us for a moment, okay?" John said to Lily, trying to distract her from the scene of Pearson being handcuffed. "Can you stand?"

When she did, John checked her more closely for injuries. One of the officers handed him over a bottle of water and he offered it to girl, who shook her head. He brushed away the hair that had stuck on her face by her drying tears, and was gifted with a grateful, but small smile.

She observed the procedures around her wearily. Her shoulders recoiled slightly when a team of paramedics moved to approach her. John reassured them that she was physically fine, so they agreed to give her more time before all the poking and prodding that would have to be done, nonetheless.

Sherlock stood pressed to John's side, which reminded him–

"What the hell were you thinking?" He tried to whisper to the detective, but wasn't fooled for a second that Lily couldn't hear.

Sherlock looked at him as if he had grown another head.

"You could have been shot, for God's sake!"

Sherlock snorted arrogantly. "No, I couldn't have. He was short sighted and had a faint tremor on his hand. The hostages were out of immediate danger and I knew he could not kill me."

John fought the urge to strangle Sherlock right there and was already planing his trip back to the Yard in the same car as the other man who had also tried to kill Sherlock. He considered for ten seconds before deciding it wasn't really worth it. He could at least do it without the entire police force as witnesses.

"Well, don't do that again or I'll shoot you myself."

"You look like Batman," Lily said, in a trembling voice, startling them both.

John had to make an effort to hear the sentence at all, and the absurdity of what she said didn't make understanding it any easier. He frowned at the girl only to notice she wasn't talking to him. She was looking at Sherlock with nothing less than awe in her little blue eyes and she held one end of his coat loosely in one of her hands.

"I beg your pardon?" Sherlock said. He frowned at her, interested. "A bat?"

"Batman," she corrected him, her voice sounding stronger than before.

"Hm," he hummed awkwardly. "I have no–"

"He does, doesn't he?" John interjected, giving Sherlock a look for him to play along.

She nodded vehemently. John smiled at her and then at Sherlock, who looked dumbstruck.

Well, it was an amusing look on him.

"Er... Thanks...?" The detective said, unsure, glancing at John for confirmation that he was doing things right.

"It's the coat, don't you think?" John asked her. He would do anything to take her mind off what had just happened to her. He was almost sure she didn't know about what had happened to her mother yet. His heart tightened painfully in his chest at the thought.

She nodded, but considered Sherlock intently. "And the voice," she smiled up at him.

The look on Sherlock's face was worth every bit of this marvellous chat. John looked at her and nodded. "You are absolutely right, you know," he smiled looking at the detective too.

"Batman is a smarty pants, too," she said and promptly looked coy. That was probably an expression her mother didn't let her pronounce freely.

John snorted. He looked at Sherlock and the detective scowled unconvincingly. Not even he could deny that the girl had grasped his personality perfectly.

"And you," she eyed John, "You could be Robin," she said, seeming satisfied.

John squinted his eyes at her dramatically. "Oh, I don't know. I'm more like Alfred," he told her.

She thought it through and nodded. "Okay." But then seemed to remember something important. "Alfred doesn't fight."

"I'm a younger version of Alfred. I fight. But I also make tea," John said. It startled him how true that comparison felt.

Next thing he knew Sherlock would be driving around in a car that resembled a tank and Mycroft would be Lucius, God help them all.

Lestrade approached them and it brought John back to the seriousness of the situation. They would have to leave Lily soon.

"And how are you feeling?" Lestrade said, crouching to speak to Lily. She recoiled from him, her shoulders tensing under John steady hands.

"That's okay," John said. "He is Gordon," he encouraged her.

Lestrade was confused for a moment, but picked up quickly when John mouthed the word Batman to him and pointed at Sherlock.

"You are Robin, I suppose?" Lestrade asked John, amused.

"Alfred," Lily corrected him, and she seemed to feel safer now that the conversation had come back to the previous topic.

"Ah," the DI smirked. "Of course." He stood up. "I think you are Robin," he smiled down and her. "Did you know in one of the comics Robin is a girl?"

She shook her head, seeming interested despite herself. John thanked God for Lestrade.

"It's true! And you were very brave today. You are a very good Robin," he patted her head. "Can you come with me? You can help me lock all these bad guys away."

Lily seemed unsure. She grasped Sherlock's coat more tightly.

"Don't worry," Lestrade reassured her. "Batman will be just behind us, okay?"

When John and Sherlock nodded at her, she let go of the detective's coat somewhat reluctantly and went with Lestrade.

They had been at Scotland Yard for about an hour.

John waited near the coffee machine while Sherlock talked to Lestrade in a corner. He didn't feel like joining in.

The day sat too heavily on his shoulders.

They hadn't seen Lily at the station yet, what with all their statements and interrogations. From what he had gathered from Lestrade, the police had been expecting a distant cousin of her father to arrive so they could talk to Lily about what had happened. Chances were that the girl wouldn't be staying in England after that, and John couldn't really blame the family for trying to get her as far as they could from all the mayhem that had ended her mother's life.

A sudden commotion snapped John out of his thoughts. From a nearby interrogation room came a devastating sound – a child's cry of despair that clouded everything else around John.

That was it, then. They had told Lily everything. Barely half a decade in this world and that girl had already suffered one of the most difficult emotional traumas anyone could endure. It made something tug very painfully in John's chest.

He allowed himself to feel it. He sat at a bench and brought his elbows to his knees, concentrating on Lily's screams and sobs.

He closed his eyes, and sighed. His heart was beating fast and erratically. It was impossible not to remember that he himself had been in a similar position years ago. Never mind he had already known Sherlock was dead, never mind he had neither kicked nor screamed. Lily was voicing a large part of everything John had felt on that particular day.

She was a fighter, though. John had been washed over by all the guilt and helplessness that would be like a second skin to him, maybe forever. John had never once voiced his agony like that. And it wasn't because he wasn't a child, but because he had felt too weak even for that.

It was too much. That place, those walls. How many people had suffered inside that building just like little Lily was suffering now? How many people had lost almost everything here, just like John? How many people had been tricked, how many had been left feeling alone in the universe just here?

John rubbed his face and straightened his shoulders, ready to flee. But he couldn't just leave and turn his back on Lily like that. They'd promised her–

A tall shadow fell over him and he looked up, feeling almost as lost as he had felt the day he watched that coat fly from a rooftop.

Sherlock's eyes flashed brightly.

He wasn't just looking at John. He wasn't just assessing him, deducing him.

John felt undone. He couldn't think of another word for it.

They held each other's eyes. John liked to believe they were having a silent conversation, even if maybe it was just wishful thinking.

Sherlock was showing John he was there – John liked to think so. It meant the world to him.

Sherlock was saying he understood, that he was at least trying.

Even after stripping John bare of all his defences, after dissolving John, of making him almost into a ghost–

He was saying again and again that he was there. He must be.

Sherlock in all his immaterial presence. Sherlock, who so many times had seemed to John more like a mirage than a person. Sherlock was there, towering over John, watching over him.

Maybe as ever.

And Sherlock was the only thing keeping John together at that moment.

John closed his eyes and accepted it for what it was: a caress, a hand. He jerked his head, indicating that Sherlock should bloody well stay near.

Sherlock gave him a short nod and flopped down on the bench beside him, closer than usual, but not close enough for anyone to notice. Not that any of the officers around would give them a second glance these days.

They sat for a full minute without speaking before Lily's Lily's screams had died completely.

The door of the interrogation room opened and John stood up automatically. Sherlock stood beside him, a comforting weight by his side, reminding John that he had been given a second chance.

They were there side by side – and wasn't that the most glorious thing John could have ever wished?

A thin pale woman was holding Lily's hand, keeping her close, trying to protect her from everything around her. John felt vaguely glad for the gesture. He hoped she was good enough for the girl.

Everybody seemed to be holding their breath, watching them pass by. The room felt charged with sadness and John suspected not even Lestrade, experienced as he was, had been immune to Lily's reaction.

Suddenly, the woman halted. Lily was trying to let go of her hand, tears leaking numbly from her eyes.

Finally free, she walked over to John, who was stunned into shock by it and could only sit down again so he could be closer to her.

She climbed onto his lap silently, and threw her arms over his shoulders, burying her face on his neck. He couldn't do much but hug her back, tightly.

She hiccupped, her body shaking with grief.

"I'm so sorry," John told her, massaging her back, trying to soothe her.

But how could anyone soothe that much pain?

"I'm so sorry," he repeated, his voicing almost cracking. "You are not alone."

His eyes wandered to Sherlock's.

Was it fair the he was so goddamn lucky?

Sherlock and John sat in silence in the cab, while Scotland Yard got smaller and smaller in the distance.

John had no idea what time it was; he could not remember the last time he had eaten.

A raw sadness clawed his insides, like a beast trying to get through.

Not even Sherlock had stayed indifferent to Lily. John reckoned it had been simply impossible to anyone with half a heart.

The doctor looked sideways at Sherlock, who held himself stiff in his seat. His long fingers grabbed his own knees forcefully, as if he were trying to stop himself from reaching for something.

"Sherlock..." John trailed off. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know if he wanted to say anything. They didn't talk about feelings, and John was clueless as to what to do.

The look in Sherlock's eyes resembled the one he had used to get when he felt overwhelmed by the information in his Mind Palace, as if he had suddenly understood too many things and couldn't handle the data. But there was more to it this time.

John frowned at the utter terror written in Sherlock's grey eyes. He had seldom seen Sherlock look so devastatingly young and vulnerable like this and it made his throat clog right away.

How broken were they? It was the question that never really left John.

John was broken, all right. He knew that, and Sherlock did, too. And Mary, she knew.

But how broken was Sherlock? After destroying the most powerful criminal organization in Europe by himself, after turning his back on the life he loved, after nearly bleeding to death under the Moroccan sun–

John jumped to the edge of his seat and told the cabbie they had changed the plans. They had to stop somewhere first. He gave his address quickly and sat back comfortably on his seat.

Sherlock looked at John, confused.

John smiled sheepishly. "Well, I have to pack a bag. I don't think Mrs Hudson has kept my toothbrush all this time."

The vulnerable look on Sherlock's face made John want to scream. The detective looked disbelieving. John's heart ached with the idea that Sherlock hadn't even considered that John might accept his offer and stay with him at Baker Street.

John could fool himself that it was only for Sherlock's benefit, that he didn't want Sherlock to be alone tonight, but the truth was so much simpler and so much more selfish than that.

John himself ultimately needed it. Needed him. Keeping Sherlock in his sight was the best reassurance he could get.

He focused his eyes on Sherlock's, trying to do the same thing the detective had done for him earlier. Trying to be everything at once. In the end, John thought it came naturally to them.

"Okay?" He asked.

"I–" Sherlock squinted at him again, deducing. John let him. He had never been able to stop it, anyway.

"Yes," he nodded. "More than–" he cleared his throat. "Yes."

After taking another detour to buy some Chinese take away, they finally got to Baker Street.

Crossing the threshold of the flat holding a bag was too much.

John was caught off guard by the hush of emotion that it spiked through him. Not only comfort, but all the sadness that became hard to separate from it. It wasn't only the familiar furniture, but also how he missed those old traces of his presence here and there decorating Sherlock's life.

The single armchair didn't alarm him anymore – he had forced himself to get used to it – it just left a dull ache in his chest. He tried to ignore both the empty spot in front of the fireplace and the one inside his own heart.

He gave himself a shake and refocused his mind on getting food in his body. He dumped the bag on the couch and followed Sherlock to the kitchen.

They sat in companionable silence. John was warmed by the rare sight of Sherlock eating without being told to. The detective tried to roll his eyes at John – of course he could tell when John was being an insufferable mother hen – but the look on his face was fond. The doctor smiled slightly and continue to dig into his food.

"Mrs Hudson left a pudding for dessert," Sherlock said between mouthfuls. He pointed to the fridge with his fork.

"No head?" John asked, smirking.

He was sure the smile he received could be described as a bit manic.

"No, but there are ears."

John groaned dramatically. He would never admit how embraced he felt by the Sherlockness of that statement. "Ear pudding. Delightful."

"And eyeballs for tea," Sherlock added.

John giggled. "Of course, we can't forget that."

After eating the dessert – which fortunately was ear-free, thank you very much – John stood up and brought the dishes to the sink. He told himself that he would wash them the next day, hoping that Mrs Hudson didn't burst in and clean them before he had the chance.

He stretched his back and moaned at the sensation.

God, he was getting old. He couldn't wait to take a shower and go to bed.

Oh.

A bed that he didn't have anymore.

He walked into the living room, eyeing the offending couch. Well, he had slept on it plenty of times before, it had never killed him. It wouldn't kill him this time.

"Do you have a spare blanket and a pillow?" John said, absent-mindedly, not even sure if Sherlock was in the room.

After a moment without answer, he turned to look for the detective and found him perched comfortably on his armchair, looking back at John with his brows frowned in confusion.

John sighed. Of course Sherlock wouldn't understand basic human needs. "I'll be needing them, Sherlock, so I can set myself up on the couch."

"The couch," Sherlock repeated after a moment, tipping his head in a gesture that was as good as any question mark.

John asked himself hysterically if maybe that had been too much food at once and Sherlock's thought process had been damaged by it. It made him snort stupidly.

"Did you think I would be spending the night awake or am I supposed to sleep on the kitchen table?"

Sherlock scowled at him and rolled his eyes. John just opened his arms, helplessly, showing him the bare couch. Surely Sherlock couldn't be that much of an idiot.

"You have a bedroom, John, if I am not mistaken," he said as if John was the daftest creature in the universe. "It's upstairs, in case you have forgotten."

John felt himself getting angry by the simple mention of it. "And I am supposed to sleep on the floor, am I?"

Sherlock's attitude changed in a heartbeat. His face was soft, somewhat embarrassed. "No," he cleared his throat. "The bed– everything, really– the bedroom is ready for use," he managed dully.

John couldn't mask the bewilderment he felt then. He kept looking to the ceiling as if he would be able to get a clear view of his old bedroom.

"You kept my bedroom," he said before he could stop himself. It still didn't make any sense to him.

And okay, maybe it made sense that he hadn't minded John's bedroom – he had hardly any reason to get up there – but it just seemed off. Sherlock took up as much space as he could get, and John had thought he would jump at the chance to set up a larger office for himself, to keep his papers and science junk or whatever the hell he might have been piling up in his bedroom and in the kitchen.

Maybe it had become a guest room. John didn't know if it would do him any good seeing his old bedroom turned into something as cold as any bedroom.

Sherlock growled, frustrated and it brought John right back from the depths of his own broken mind. "It's your room, John. The one you left, the way you left it!" He said, loudly, standing up and pacing to the window. "'You kept my bedroom!'" he mimicked John. "How could you– Of course I kept your bedroom!" His voice had become angry shouts and John was worried they would end up waking Mrs Hudson.

"'Of course?'" he replied. "Look around! I used to have an armchair, a desk, I used to have a lot of things! Things it took you no time to throw away without bothering to –" John stopped short.

He had absolutely no idea how the fuck they had come to this again. He had to let go. He couldn't keep resenting Sherlock for redecorating, for Christ's sake. He had absolutely no right.

"Without bothering to what?" The detective demanded angrily. His figure was being illuminated by the faint light coming from the street, giving him a dramatic aura.

Of course, even Baker Street worked to Sherlock Holmes' mystique.

John just felt tired. He had had a fairly terrible day. He had seen a little girl become aware that she had lost her mum, had almost broken down with the reminders of losing Sherlock.

He wanted all that to stop.

"Without bothering to tell me," John said, honestly. He was so damn tired of keeping everything inside him. He just wanted some peace and comfort. He lowered his voice and sat on the couch. "I don't expect you to understand this, but those things were important to me. They meant–"

Oh, fuck, they meant so much. They meant so, so much. They meant lazing around during the afternoons without cases and drinking tea while Sherlock played the violin still in his pyjamas. They meant comfortable silence and blogging about their life.

They meant the best part of John's life, if he was honest to himself. And he was too drained to lie.

"Yes," Sherlock said. "They mean all this. I know," he sounded exasperated.

Of course he knew. Of course he had thrown everything away on purpose. He had tried to delete John from his life, for goodness' sake.

Of course he knew.

"How can you be so stupid?" Sherlock growled at him. "You have a whole new house – which has absolutely nothing to do with me!"

John was hit by the memory of that morning. God, it felt like ages ago. Sherlock standing awkwardly in front of his door. Sherlock, who had brought him coffee and had made sure John went along to the Yard with him, but who refused vehemently to step into John's new house.

His new home. Something that shattered the very core of what Sherlock and John used to have.

And John refused to let himself feel bad about it. It wasn't his fault. He had had to survive, to try to move on. Sherlock would never understand that. Had he expected John to be simply waiting for him?

And would he have waited? John asked himself. If he had known Sherlock was alive... Would he have just–

But it didn't matter. That was neither here nor now.

"You are right," John said, rubbing his face. "You are absolutely right. I have no right–"

Sherlock snorted bitterly. "You have every right, that's the worst part, you have every right," he said, defeated.

It wasn't fair to either of them. John had had to move on, it was natural, it was the only possible survival strategy. He wouldn't have been able to linger at 221B, feeling the weight on his shoulders grow heavier and heavier as Sherlock's scent became fainter and fainter around the house.

John couldn't let himself wallow in misery because there would have come a day when the misery would have become too much and he couldn't –

"John," Sherlock's voice pierced through his thoughts. "Your bedroom is still your bedroom. It's not a guest bedroom, or a private lab, or any other stupid rubbish you came up with." The words sounded heavy in the living room, even though Sherlock's lips had turned slightly up. "Mrs Hudson wouldn't let me hear the end of it otherwise."

He looked at John and it seemed so sincere. It made John's insides squirm, but he couldn't look away.

That was something about this place, about 221B, that brought everything to the surface somehow.

There was a part of them that would never be home anywhere else.

There was a part of John that would never be home with anyone else.

It gutted him.

"I'm going to take a shower," Sherlock said, turning hastily away from John when the silence got unbearable. John just nodded dumbly.

Alone in the living room, John started walking about, trying to get over what had just happened. He kept stealing glances at the flight of stairs that would take him directly back home.

He was afraid, of course. For once, he wasn't afraid of the nightmares, he was afraid of the sense of contentment that would grab him by the throat and show him once more how his all this was. It was deeply unsettling.

He looked out of the window, letting the view calm him down a bit. His back ached and he felt glad for having a comfortable bed to sleep in.

He came to a halt in front of Sherlock's desk, peeping casually through the papers. He squinted at a sheet of paper that read "Guest List" in Sherlock's familiar scrawl. Sure enough, by the looks of it, it was the guest list of John's wedding.

John didn't know what to think about that. He ran through the guests on his side of the list and of course the list seemed perfect. Sherlock had remembered everyone – even those John had absolutely no memory of ever telling him about. In another sheet of paper lying beside this one, Sherlock had drawn circles that represented the tables and the guests were organized with perfect acuity.

It was heart-warming. In fact, it was more than that. Sherlock had really always cared for him in his own way.

He returned the papers to where they had been before, making a mental note to discuss the list with Sherlock on the next day. It should be fun.

He was about to turn back to the couch to get his bag when a brown envelope caught his attention. The double take felt unnecessary. He knew quite well what it was.

He took a deep breath and held the manilla envelope in his hands. It wasn't the same one he had seen before.

He knew it was a new one. A new death threat Sherlock had kept from him.

He refused to think twice before opening it. Sherlock's privacy be damned. He unfolded the square piece of paper. There in newspaper's headlines clippings and printed words read:

November Equals deadliest month of Afghan War

15/11/2009

Under these apparently random informations – but they weren't random, they would never be random to John – there was a piece of an official looking document. John's breath got caught in his throat by the wrongness that something so intimate had been exposed like this.

'Heavy Taliban assault on troops based in Helmand. Bomb and (redacted) snipers. (redacted) casualties. (redacted) injured.'

Lower still, another official looking document. His eyes fled through it. He knew them by heart. Random words glued themselves to John's retinas.

Gun shot wound to the shoulder.

.303 calibre's fragments retrieved.

Infection.

Multiple surgeries.

John gripped the edge of the desk, trying to get air into his lungs. This–

This was his fucking life. This person didn't have any right–

At the very bottom of the page, John read:

2, 4 inches. (But you had already calculated that, didn't you?)

And John didn't need to be a genius to understand that, really.

Less than two and a half inches from his heart.

He tried to ignore the fact that his chest cavity felt hollow. He put the envelope hastily back where it had been badly hidden, grabbed his bag from the couch and ran up the stairs by instinct alone.

He could not bring himself to open his eyes.

Oh my god, you guys, I am so very sorry for going on a hiatus without telling you. It was not planned, you see... Things just got in the way.

This chapter was a bitch, Archie had to work hard on it, cause my english was a mess. I don't know what happened. It was awful, haha. I rather take a month to post a nice chapter than post a really shitty one. I hope you understand.

How have you been? I've been reading and working like crazy. I am also learning russian, which is very exciting. (I'm from Brazil, by the way, hi there, I like learning other languages.)

It won't take me another month to update again. Things are just getting exciting in this fic!

Byee

PS: I'm told this was a very emotional chapter. What did you think? Don't hate me, okay?