A/N: So it looks like there will be one more chapter after this one:)

Thanks once again for the response to this one. I am truly blown away!

Thanks mattloved1 for putting up with me asking her to look these little musings over!

Triggers for Reichenbach

The Impact of Certainty and Imagination

"Who was he?"

The questioned seemed to come out of thin air. There had been silence in the flat, except for the occasional muted sound of traffic and the tapping noise of the keys on John's laptop, as he wrote up their latest case.

"Hmm?" John asked pokey tongue stuck out as he typed. He had no idea of whom Sherlock may have been speaking. Random questions or indiscriminate phrases shouted out were part and parcel of living with the mad genius.

This question was more reflective; there was a note of the personal in the seeming casualness of it. There were layers, even John, distracted as he was, could perceive.

He looked up into the opalescent gleam of a pair of eyes that were busy scrutinising him, stripping him in a way he hadn't since their first meeting.

"Who was who?" asked John just as casually, fingers still typing.

"The one you are reminded of when you watch me."

A pebble thrown into a still pond could not have produced so much chaos as was in John's heart.

Careful, oh so careful, he thought he had been. But there are no secrets hidden, no closely held confidences when one lived with a man who reads your soul by the way you wore a tie. Hard to hide watching Sherlock's hands, his long fingers, their graceful eloquence spoke to him deeply, and he would remember fingers touching his face. His lush mouth caught his eye and he thought of it and wondered at the flavour and texture, wondered if there would be differences, even when the words spoken carried barbs. Sometimes when running through the streets of London he would not smell exhaust, the dirt and grime of darkened alleys and overflowing skips, but instead hints of dried and desiccated leaves, the turning of dirt heated by the sun and beginning to cool in the night air and overall layered the smell of the change of seasons.

John stopped typing and blinked. He did know whether to dissemble or be honest. He chose the middle ground.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Fingers steepled, eyes tracked; John felt their movement across his skin, as Sherlock tried to read what was in his head.

"Unrequited. He loved you; you were afraid to love him. You were scared of him. Perhaps he was violent, maybe not to you but to others. You felt guilty. You ran away." There was a pause and the eyes, the amazing, magnificent and thoughtless eyes widened slightly. "He died, and you are still carrying it. Or perhaps you are still carrying him."

There was the sound of a heart being ripped in two inside an enclosed space, but only one person in the room could hear it. John closed his laptop and stood. He looked at the floor, too furious to speak, too many truths in what had been enunciated in a clear, public school voice to unwrap from where they lodged inside of him. He placed the laptop on the table and left the room. He did not say a word but the anger, the fury of what he felt, rolled through the air, almost visible and it would ignite an outburst that might permanently damage everything he held dear between them if he responded to it. Up to his room to escape the feelings, the pain. He slammed the door hoping to expel some of the hurt.

Breath deepened as he tried to centre his untamed thoughts, but the anger grew, anger at Sherlock, anger at himself.

He turned suddenly and punched the wall, his fist going through the plaster easily, pain blossomed in his hand. The fury drained away as if he had lanced a festering wound.

"Stupid," he muttered to himself, as he checked his hand, in the hopes that the label would make up for other things. No broken bones but bruises and lacerations riddled the knuckle, a gift from the broken wall.

He threw himself on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Although the anger was gone, sadness and regret had taken up residence, and he was still in turmoil. He did feel guilty. He had had a magical creature, a creature created, somehow, brought to life, somehow. His personal protector and he had thrown it away, spurned it, killed it. Yes, it had been horrifyingly frightening and had killed people but it had loved him, unconditionally.

The ceiling held no clear answers as he wiped his eyes and desperately ignored the fact he was crying. He turned onto his side and hugged his pillow to himself, searching for solace that would not come.

The light to begin to leave the room and he thought he might have the energy and courage to go downstairs and ignore Sherlock's disparaging looks. Just at the moment when he felt he was calm enough there came a tentative, questioning knock on the door.

He glanced at the door. Now, what was he suppose to do? Being confronted about what had happened was not something with which he wished to deal.

The knock came again, this time followed by a quiet, "John?"

"Come in, Sherlock." Resignation painted his voice.

The door opened, and the detective stood there, not crossing the threshold as if there was an invisible barrier between where he stood and where John was. John supposed that was marginally true. He could feel the untold story churning in his gut and knew at some point he would have to tell Sherlock at least a half-truth of what he had experienced. The detective was a dog with a bone when it came to new information about his blogger.

Sherlock fidgeted at the door. John took pity and beckoned him inside. He sat up at the same time and noticed the look of relief cross the younger man's features.

"I uh, I am, I am sorry, John," Sherlock muttered, standing as if in trouble with a headmaster for some schoolboy prank. "I can't always turn it off. And it came to me in a wave. It spilled out."

John patted the bed beside him, and Sherlock almost skipped to his side and sat, his long gangly legs curled, reminding John of a character in a book he'd read as a child called a Marshwiggle, all legs and arms. His complexion in contrast to the Wiggle's muddy one was pale and beautiful with a hint of rosiness no doubt due to embarrassment.

Sherlock reached over and sheepishly tugged on John's sleeve. John smiled a watery, tired smile at his friend.

And he then tried to explain.

"What you said, Sherlock, was mostly true. What you don't understand is how much it hurts me to think about…him. I owed him so much, and I abandoned him. I feel so much," and he waved a vague hand in front of his chest. "I can't tell you who or," he paused and swallowed, "Or what he was." Sherlock's eyebrows rose at John's phrasing. "You need to let it go." He continued. "Do you understand me?"

Sherlock watched him, absorbed what John was saying through his skin, his eyes, all of his senses, consuming the words that weren't spoken and swallowed the words he couldn't say. John could almost see Sherlock filing away what he had been able told and learn from what had happened.

A brief nod and one last raking of his eyes, he stopped when he saw John's bruises. He looked carefully at the damaged hand and took it up in his own. He gently rubbed his thumb across the back and looked at John with sorrow. Then, not taking his eyes off of him, he raised it to his mouth and placed a chaste kiss on the back. John's stomach flipped, and his breath quickened.

As if nothing had happened, as if there had never been a problem, Sherlock stood and moved to leave. John supposed in his mind there never had been an issue; he'd dismissed it as inconsequential. The detective danced out the door, shouting back up the stairs. "Come, John. There's been a murder."

John rolled his eyes and followed after his loadstone. What else was there for him to do?

oOo

One morning, after another fight with Sherlock, this time about something far less personal, a bomb blew up the building across the road and began a turning point.

They chased a shade, a dark reflection of Sherlock, until events cumulated in a nighttime visit to a pool, the weight and dread of a rigged vest holding John captive.

There came an instant, just the barest moment while he stood there, laser light glow on his heart, mouth dry, all the unspoken certainties and thoughts whispered inside him, that John glanced at Sherlock and saw…something. A dark rage, a visible anger. John saw it glint in the other's eyes, and he was reminded of an autumn night. He had wondered in his heart when he first met Sherlock if he was the living embodiment of the scarecrow and here were the first glimmerings of confirmation. Sherlock was uncompromisingly furious with Moriarty. He was scared and livid, and it filled his eyes. John could read the measure of emotion barely glimpsed. He was incised that someone had touched John, had put him in harm's way. But it was gone just as quickly, and he wondered if it was the adrenaline speaking to him.

The night ended with the two of them walking out alive from the building. They made their way home, climbed the seventeen steps and stepped through, into the flat. John found himself shoved up against the wall before the click of the closing door was even heard.

A growl was ripped out of a pale throat. "Mine."

And then Sherlock was kissing him, hard and desperately. And John let him. And he tasted summer's last memories, the promise of fall's crispness, the sweetness of ripe apples. He tasted the wonder of the longing of birds in flight searching for a winter home. He gasped in bewilderment and closed his eyes letting Sherlock explore and ravish his mouth as he shut down the part of his mind that questioned how this was possible.

Sherlock led him to his bedroom and slowly, methodically took John apart at the seams and carefully, lovingly put him back together again, stitched him and cleansed his soul until John felt he was new and whole again.

Breaths caught and arms securely wrapped around and holding the most precious thing he owned. A curly head lay on a scarred and damaged shoulder.

John asked one question, "How?" as he stroked smooth, lust warmed skin.

A beloved face looked up at him, eyes still wide, lips still parted. "Perhaps what you thought you imagined was not what was real. Perhaps it was an echo of possibilities. Maybe he was what you knew, inside, you'd find in me."

He laid his head back on John's shoulder. John tightened his arms around him and breathed in the warm, autumn scent of Sherlock's hair and left it at that. Some truths are meant to be held deep inside.

Months passed; more cases, more things not spoken of in the quiet of his heart, things not bearable to mention. Nights spent not chasing down the criminal elements were spent enfolded in each other, as they explored, savoured, tested their boundaries and they found there were no limits to the way they felt.

Only one other time did John see what Sherlock was capable of when truly enraged. Questions of what was tangible and what was not danced out of range once more.

Captive and hurt, head wound bleeding freely as he swam in and out of consciousness; John had begun to give up hope of anyone finding him alive. It had been days he had been missing, and he knew there was little time left. His tormentors had spent a good deal of time carefully breaking him down. Pain was a constant companion.

There was a crashing noise of a door splintering. John woke briefly from the twilight in which he was living. He could only barely perceive a figure rampaging through the room and bodies thrown everywhere; screams cut short. Memories of a cold night intruded and overlapped until he wasn't sure in his haze of pain where it started and ended. A sudden silence and a shape crouched in front of him; tender fingers touched his face and wiped at the blood.

"John?"

John looked up at Sherlock and smiled before he passed out. When he awoke in hospital, it was to hear soft arguments about how not one of the kidnappers had survived. They had all died of broken necks, and their bodies looked like they had been mangled and ripped.

Lestrade's eyes were weary with worry and concerned, but nothing more was said. It was laid aside and forgotten.

Months more passed and then came the time when John's repaired heart was shattered once again. Sherlock was caught in a tangled web of half-truths and full lies and forced to stand on a roof and jump.

John, heart-pained pieces of grief floating throughout his bloodstream, was forced to watch, as Sherlock fell to the pavement. He bargained with himself and whoever would listen and told them he could repair him, stitch him together and hold him in his arms until he breathed again. The whole time he made his way to Sherlock's side the word 'No' was building in his mind. The distraction of it prevented him from hearing the sound of the cyclist until he was hit. Then there was only the ringing of denial in his ears.

Moving through a haze of confusion and fear, he reached Sherlock's side, his fingers brushed at his coat, hands hand felt for a pulse before he was pulled away.

After, alone in the flat, shoes off, waiting to be cleaned of all too real blood, John realised he was holding something in his hand, something he had grabbed at and had not acknowledged until he was safely somewhere he could fall apart.

He stirred enough to slowly open his hand.

Something disturbed his broken heart, hope perhaps, wonder again, but there was too much agony wrapped around him to question the enormity of what it meant.

There, lying on his palm, a mix of golden brown and rusted red, lay a single piece of straw.