AN: I can never seem to keep my promises about quick updates... Anyway, Enjoy the new chapter!
•••
'Brother mine?'
John had never been more confused. This man standing before them was certainly not Mycroft, the only other Holmes brother that John was aware of, yet there was no denying the resemblance he bore to Sherlock. The same crystal blue eyes that could look startlingly like discs of ice, the same unreasonably prominent cheekbones. He even had the dark curls, though his hair was a deep shade of brown as opposed to Sherlock's black.
The man, ignoring John entirely for the moment, smirked at Sherlock.
"Indeed... Perhaps I am 'supposed' to be dead," he nodded, "but then, when have I ever obeyed the rules?"
•••
Two little boys sat on a colorful patterned rug, arguing. One of them had bare feet, the other wore 'The Periodic Table of Elements' socks.
"But why do you always get to be the hero?" The bare-footed one whined.
"Because," the other replied, "I'm seven and you're only six, and so that means I make the rules."
"That's not fair."
"Too bad." The boy wearing the periodic table socks stood up. "Let's play."
"No. I don't want to be a Bond villain. I want to be Jessie James."
"Jessie James isn't a hero. He's a bad guy too."
"Shut up. I like him."
"Fine."
The older boy took off, followed closely by the other. He ran down their hallway and around a corner, then imitated the sound of a gun being cocked and waited, pointing the imaginary weapon at where his brother would come into the room.
Instead, a small hand reached around and aimed in his general direction.
"Bang!"
The little boy walked in, grinning.
"Ha ha, I got you!"
"No you didn't."
"Yes I did. I said 'bang'."
"That doesn't mean anything." The boy folded his arms. "You shot around a corner without looking. At that angle, with that gun, you actually hitting me is a statistical impossibility." He paused. "You should have been a Bond villain."
"But cowboys are cool," his little brother protested.
"Of course they are," he retorted, "but that doesn't make their guns accurate."
"Mycroft! Sherrinford!" Their mother called from the next room, "Stop arguing and come here. I want to talk to you."
The boys shrugged at each other, giggled in that ridiculous way that children have, and raced to the living room.
They headed full-speed for their mother, but their father crouched down and scooped one of them up in each arm before they could run into her clearly pregnant stomach.
He placed a kiss on the top of each of their heads and then set the laughing children down, tousling their hair.
"I still beat you." Mycroft claimed.
"Did not!" Sherrinford protested.
Their mother smiled, sitting carefully on the sofa so that she was closer to the height of her two boys, and took their hands in hers.
"Now, boys," Mrs. Holmes began, "you know how much I love you, don't you?"
"Yes, Mummy." Mycroft responded.
"And you know that, no matter what, I will always love you the same?"
"Yes, Mummy."
"Mummy, did you eat the seeds from a watermelon?" Sherrinford suddenly asked, looking at her belly.
"That isn't how that works, stupid," Mycroft said, elbowing his little brother in the side.
"You don't know."
"I do so."
"Did you conduct an experiment?" Sherrinford asked defiantly, hands on his hips.
"Yes, actually." Mycroft retorted, mimicking his stance.
"Oh." Sherrinford looked a bit crestfallen. Mycroft shook his head scornfully.
"She's pregnant, obviously."
"Don't hit your brother, Mycroft," their mother scolded, and then, "Sherrinford, he is right. Soon, the two of you are going to have a new baby brother."
She smiled hesitantly, monitoring their reactions. Mycroft seemed entirely unfazed, but Sherrinford scowled and stomped his foot.
"But I don't want another brother!"
•••
Sherrinford paced slowly, menacingly around John and Sherlock, never looking away from them for a second. John didn't like the cruel, cold, hungry look in his eyes.
Sherrinford was like an animal of prey. He was the cheetah, and they were the antelope.
John was hesitant to so much as turn his head, but he glanced sideways to look at his husband.
Sherlock was unmoving, not even following his brother with his eyes. His face was completely blank; John could practically see the circle spinning above his head with the words 'Buffering- Please Wait'.
The man was shut down.
•••
A now seven-year-old Sherrinford Holmes laid in bed, awake for hours after his bedtime, watching the shadows shift across the ceiling and wall as his mother moved throughout the house. Once he had heard her close the bedroom door, he slipped out of bed, first checking carefully that Mycroft was asleep in the room's other bed, and tiptoed down the hall.
Pushing open the door at the end, he stepped inside and looked around as his eyes finished adjusting to the near-total darkness, which was lightened only by a small nightlight shaped like a star in the far corner of the room.
"What are you doing in here?"
Sherrinford jumped at the sound of his older brother's voice and turned around, startled by the figure that had suddenly appeared behind him.
"I thought you were asleep, Mycroft."
Mycroft ignored him. "What are you doing in here?"
Sherrinford sighed and looked back at the crib that stood against the far wall.
"It's my room. I can be here if I want."
"It's not yours, anymore. It's Sherlock's now."
Sherrinford didn't respond for a moment, but continued to glare at his brother in the crib.
"It's his fault," he almost whispered.
"What are you talking about?"
Mycroft asked, giving Sherrinford a strange look.
"He's the reason Daddy's gone," Sherrinford responded, and Mycroft shook his head at him.
"A man with a gun is the reason Daddy's gone," Mycroft told him bluntly, "not an infant. Certainly not this infant."
Sherrinford folded his arms and scowled. "It didn't happen until he-" as he pointed a finger at the sleeping baby Sherlock- "got here. It's his fault."
"Really, Sherrinford," Mycroft scoffed, "I think he's a little young to be charged with homicide, don't you?"
Sherrinford was silent. "But it isn't fair," he said, finally. Mycroft sighed.
"What have I told you about 'fair', little brother?"
And with that, Mycroft turned and left the room, apparently confident that Sherrinford would follow.
However, he did not, but rather approached the crib and stood on his toes to look over the bars at his brother.
Sherlock's short, thin black hair gave the impression of a translucent veil across his eyelids, beneath which his eyes darted back and forth rapidly, as he dreamed of whatever a child that young dreams of. His chest rose and fell gently, making the embroidered otter on his fuzzy blue blanket appear to be swimming. It was quite a serene picture to behold.
Sherrinford thought something ought to be done to correct that.
He tried to reach down into the crib, but found his arms to be too short and instead crouched and slid a hand through the bars. Sherlock's blanket was tucked into the mattress on both sides, so Sherrinford untucked it, pulled it up over Sherlock's head, and began to walk out of the room, without a second glance.
"Night, brother," he spat over his shoulder, before stepping out into the hallway and closing the door behind him.
By the time he was back in his own bedroom, however, Sherlock's subconscious had noticed and taken control of the fact that something was prohibiting his breathing, and after a few kicks of his domino tile-sized feet, the blanket was back in its proper place, laying across his stomach.
•••
One day, as their mother was preparing dinner for the family, the three Holmes boys sat in the living room of their home, each minding their own business.
Mycroft leaned back against a pile of pillows, flipping through an encyclopedia - not a children's encyclopedia, mind you, but an adult's.
Sherrinford lay on the carpet with a pad of paper and some crayons, sketching out legitimate battle plans in Crayola colors such as 'Bear Hug' and 'Friendship'.
Sherlock was crawling back and forth across the room, interspersed with the occasional few steps on foot, despite having just reached the age at which most children could sit up on their own.
The doorbell rang, though none of the boys paid it any mind, calling Mrs. Holmes from the kitchen sighing and wiping her hands on a dish towel. Upon opening the door, she found her own mother standing there and made an attempt to smile pleasantly.
Mycroft, Sherrinford, and Sherlock were not listening to a word of the conversation that then transpired between their mother and grandmother, but had they been, they would have heard something along these lines:
"Mother! It's lovely to see you, of course, but now really isn't the best time-"
"Yes, yes, I apologize, dear. I just stopped by because I have something for Sherrinford."
"Oh? And wha-"
However, before she could continue the thought, her mother pushed inside, revealing what she had been hiding behind the door: an Irish setter puppy. It looked up at the two women, wagging its tail, and gave a soft, excited "Woof!"
"Mum..." Mrs. Holmes began.
"No, no," her mother interrupted, "hear me out. Alright, now look: you simply do not have the time to spend all day playing with your children. It's not your fault, you have to work to feed a family of four, I understand. But, regardless, they need someone to play with when they're at home or while you're busy."
"I thought you said it was for Sherrinford."
"Well, yes, as the middle child, I worry he'll be feeling a bit neglected, but of course it would be all of theirs."
The woman glanced back at her children and sighed again. "It's a nice idea, Mum, really, but you said yourself that I don't have time for anything. How could I take care of two little boys, a baby, and a dog? I can't do that. I certainly couldn't ask the nanny to watch them all when I'm at work all day."
"Oh, come now," her mother insisted, as the puppy began to chase its tail at their feet, "your children are seven- and eight-going-on-forty. They can take care of a pet fine."
At this point, the Holmes children would hypothetically have heard their mother consent to keeping the dog, at which point their grandmother would nudge the dog inside and hurry back out to the waiting cab.
Mummy Holmes stood at the doorway with her arms folded, studying the scene before her and deciding whether or not she was alright with it.
The children had begun to take notice of the apparent new resident in their home.
Mycroft could not have cared less about a dog, but he appeared to understand that, as the oldest, he ought to keep an eye on it.
He watched as Sherrinford approached the puppy, overjoyed, only to have it shy away from him. Sherrinford then sat down beside his older brother with a huff, while the puppy stepped up to baby Sherlock and sniffed him uncertainly.
Sherlock giggled, leaned forward onto his hands, and began crawling around the puppy in circles. It appeared to be confused by this for only a moment, and soon it laid down on its stomach and dragged itself along with its front paws, crawling beside Sherlock. The two of them had clearly just formed an unbreakable friendship.
Mrs. Holmes exchanged a knowing nod with Mycroft and, satisfied that things would be alright until she finished the children's dinner, returned to the kitchen.
Sherrinford watched to make sure that his mother was gone, and as soon as she was out of sight, he leapt up and grabbed Sherlock's arm, jerking him back so that he stopped crawling.
"I hate you," he hissed into his little brother's ear, "As long as I'm breathing, your life is going to be Hell."
It was at this point that Sherlock began to cry, and the puppy, who was apparently very loyal, very quickly, jumped at Sherrinford and snapped his sharp puppy teeth, intending to bite him. Sherrinford backed away just in time.
"What are you doing, Sherrinford?" Mycroft called in an annoyingly older brother tone from the couch.
"Nothing, Mycroft," he responded, as he let go but continued to glare at Sherlock.
•••
Sherrinford pushed past John to stand with his face inches from Sherlock's, staring into his eyes.
Sherlock leaned away, but didn't dare take a step back.
"I'm disappointed," Sherrinford whispered icily, "I'm disappointed in you. How could you have just forgotten me? Did you actually think I was gone?" He laughed, "You see, if I'm gone, then I can't hurt you anymore."
Suddenly, he turned away from Sherlock to grab John and throw him to the ground.
Sherlock didn't flinch, barely even breathing enough to make his chest move, and his voice wavered uncertainly.
"Stop that. Please. Just stop, leave him out of this."
Sherrinford, placing one foot on top of John to keep him pinned down, tilted his head and stared defiantly at Sherlock.
"Don't tell me what to do, little brother. I can do whatever I please. Your little fuck-toy not excluded."
"He is not a toy, you bastard. John is my husband, and I love him." His voice was steadier now, but not much louder.
"No, you really don't," Sherrinford scoffed,"If you loved him, you'd have pushed his sorry ass out of your life a long time ago, before he found out how fucked up you are."
•••
Sherrinford sat on his bed, tossing folded shirts into a suitcase angrily, glancing every now and them to the opposite side of the room. All that was there now was a bed, with only a mattress.
Mycroft had never been very sentimental when it came to keeping items around, but of course he had needed his clothing and what-not at uni, so his half of the bedroom was completely empty now.
Mrs. Holmes had told Sherrinford that he could get rid of the bed and move into the rest of the room, now that he had it all to himself, but he hadn't gotten around to it. It didn't matter anyway; he wouldn't be there much longer.
A knock came at the door. Short, soft, hesitant: Sherlock. Only he knew enough to be just slightly frightened of Sherrinford.
He didn't answer the door. Sherlock entered anyway, though, if rather slowly.
"Sherrinford?"
He sighed in annoyance at his little brother and continued to pack. "Did I fucking say you could come in?"
"Sorry. But Mummy wanted to know if you need anything from the store. She's gone out to get the shopping, but-"
Suddenly, Sherrinford leapt up and spun around. "Do I NEED anything?" He pushed Sherlock to the ground, knelt with a leg on either side of him, and held a hand over his mouth. "Do you know what I fucking need, little brother?"
Sherlock was too terrified to move, or even pry off Sherrinford's hand, despite not being able to breathe.
"Answer me!" Sherrinford screamed, internally laughing at the irony of Sherlock having essentially given him the go-ahead not to worry about their mother hearing.
He released Sherlock's mouth and gripped his chin, jerking his brothers head from side to side. "No?" He leaned forward, so that his lips brushed Sherlock's ear. "I need you to be dead."
Pulling a switchblade out of his pocket, Sherrinford drew it across Sherlock's arms several times, and then made a long, shallow cut along his jawline, just for good measure.
"So put that on the shopping list, you worthless piece of shit."
He smacked Sherlock in the side of the head with his full force, the last straw to knock him out, and stood up again.
Sherrinford finished packing, calmly, and snuck out of the house with his things before their mother came home.
•••
Sherlock grabbed his brother and pushed him down, freeing John from under his foot. The look in his eyes frightened John; he was hysterical. John had never seen him like this, in anything he'd seen him go through.
"If I am fucked up, it's because of you! You did this to me!"
•••
Sherlock stood in the center of his older brothers' now empty room, simply taking in the fact of their absence.
Mummy was having difficulty coming to terms with Sherrinford running away, but she knew that he was eighteen, so technically, he hadn't really run away, but left, and she had no legal precedent to keep him there.
Sherlock, on the other hand, was honestly not surprised. He had always felt something of this caliber coming, in the very back of his mind.
Certainly, he had known that Sherrinford had never been very happy.
It was his fault. He had known that too. If it weren't for him, Sherrinford would have stayed. He might have even had a pleasant, normal childhood - or, at least, as normal of a childhood as a Holmes boy could have. As Sherlock's gaze drifted to the floor, he noticed a small object laying there; Sherrinford had left his switchblade behind.
Sherlock picked it up and spun it around in his hands.
•••
One day, Sherlock made the mistake of wearing a shirt that was too loose for his bony frame, and the sleeves fell halfway down his forearm if he lifted his hands. He was in the middle of a conversation with his mother when she suddenly halted her sentence and grabbed his wrist.
"What is this?" She asked softly, pushing up his sleeve.
He couldn't meet her eyes, but his lying voice, at least, had become more steady.
"Nothing. It was just Redbeard. He didn't mean to."
Mrs. Holmes gave him her patented look, the one that meant she did not believe him, but also wouldn't contradict him.
"Alright," she said flatly, and released his arm.
Redbeard was put down a week later.
•••
Sherlock dragged his feet as he walked down the sidewalk to school, alone; it was customary, after all, for the Holmes children not to have many friends, and being two years ahead didn't help. He didn't mind, though. He'd grown up antisocial, and had no intention whatsoever to change it.
The sky was a murky combination of black clouds and patches of glowing silver where sun managed to pierce the veil. Rain drummed its fingers on the buildings, the sidewalk, and Sherlock himself, producing a cacophony of discorded thuds. It was no more annoying than the constant chatter of ordinary people that he was forced to fear, however, so it didn't bother him much.
What did bother him was the fact that his hoodie was now soaked and clinging to his poorly insulated, thin body. He hugged the line of buildings, keeping under their awnings when he could.
Every now and then, there was a break in the buildings, and an alleyway stretched for ten feet or so, but it was nothing to take particular notice of- until it was.
Sherlock noticed a shape lurking in the back of one of these alleys, but he brushed the thought of it aside; with a hyper-aware mind like his, that 'gut feeling' most people have was unnecessary, and so Sherlock did not have this instinct to tell him not to keep walking.
He was grabbed by his hood and thrown back, knocking his head against the wall.
"You'll not get away from me so easily, little brother," a voice hissed in his ear, and then a right hook was swung just forcefully enough to knock him out.
When he woke up, he could already see the bruises forming on his arms and legs.
It continued this way, on and on throughout the school year. Sherlock would walk in the center of the road no matter what, and he had even taken to hanging around other teenagers for the sake of safety, but it made no difference. He was always alone at some point, and there was no saving him then. His mother would ask, of course, when he was careless enough to let her see the bruises, but he just shrugged the question off and mumbled some nonsense about there being bullies at school and it not being a big deal.
Over the summer, Sherlock finally had the choice to stay indoors at all times, unless he was forced to do otherwise, and in those cases he was always with family. On his first day as a fifteen-year-old student in his final year of school, he hunched his shoulders as he walked, curling himself inwards in anticipation of the attack.
But it did not come.
Nor did it the next day, or that week, or the next two months. Sherrinford would not have stopped if he still had a breath left in his body; Sherlock knew what that must mean.
•••
Sherlock tried to ignore John when he stepped forward to pull him away from Sherrinford. In fact, he pushed John back, and continued to advance towards his smirking brother until John simply placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered, "Don't."
His voice was so laden with fear that Sherlock did stop, and look to see what was frightening John. Red circles of light dotted his chest and face. It was such a familiar scene, the laser sights of sniper rifles. A little too familiar for his liking, actually.
Sherrinford chuckled softly to himself. "Oh, I see now why you've kept him around, little brother," he said, "Perhaps you have met your match." He paused, pushing himself to his feet and standing up. "He's the smart one, isn't he?"
There was not a sound in the building except Sherrinford's footsteps as he walked closer. He shook his head, and his tone was lower, darker, when he spoke. "You did this to yourself, Sherlock. I may have put certain... things on the table. Opened certain doors." He smiled again, watching Sherlock out of the corner of his eye. "But just because I baited you doesn't mean you had to bite."
•••
Sherlock sat in his dorm room one Friday night, when everyone else was out, staring at his laptop for ten minutes before he realized that he hadn't opened it yet.
Being a sixteen-year-old college student wasn't exactly easy. In fact, it was one of the most frustrating things in the world.
It wasn't that the work was too difficult for him, certainly. Most of the time, it was still too easy, but they couldn't just have him skip a year at a university. He was bothered, though, by the way that everyone looked at him. Having his classmates call him 'Freak' on a daily basis was rather annoying, as was having his professors grade him on a scale twenty times more difficult than the other students, and then being frustrated when he ended up with the best grade in the class anyway.
Eventually, Sherlock sighed and opened the laptop; he had a thesis to complete for each of three different classes and a research paper for four. None of it would take him very long, but it was about time he got started. When the screen at last lit up, Sherlock was greeted by a pop-up ad - or, rather, what appeared to be a pop-up ad.
But this one was rather different from any other he'd seen.
'WILLIAM SHERLOCK SCOTT HOLMES-CLICK HERE'
And that was all. He knew that things like these were never anything but a scam, yet he was essentially as safe as could be under these circumstances. Because it was his, the laptop was just about as coded and protected as it could get. He had never once stored any personal information on it. Besides, as was often the case, his curiosity was getting the better of him. He clicked on the link.
Immediately, a web browser was opened up - not one he used, but one he recognized as being a Deep Web browser.
That alone was intriguing.
When the page loaded, there was a picture of a substance entirely familiar to him - simply by the fact that he had lived on the planet earth for a decade and a half - just slightly off-center. In the very top left hand corner of the page was the image of a man sitting on a camel.
'Silk Road-Anonymous Marketplace,' it said just beside that. Above the larger picture, of the white powder, were the words:
'10 G Cocaine - 80%
Brought to you from: Netherlands
Posted by: Pinocchio'
And below that was an amount of money in coins that most people would not recognize the value of, but which Sherlock knew to be reasonably expensive.
Rather uncharacteristically, he barely gave the origin of this offer he was being made any thought before moving the cursor to the 'Add to Cart' button.
•••
Sherlock sat on the awkward stiff chair in the office of his doctor, whom he had never met, beginning to wonder why he had come. He never went to the doctor's. Of course, he was also never sick.
The last time had been was about twenty years ago, when he was six-years-old and got chicken pox from Sherrinford, who brought it home from school. Sherlock had never been convinced that it wasn't intentional, either.
He was an adult now, though, a grown man, and he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to anymore.
Apparently, he didn't even need to have a proper job to get by, since he was managing fine without one, and he certainly didn't have to wait in an overly sterilized room for a man with half his IQ to tell him what was wrong with him.
Having already made up his mind to leave, he stood and was turning towards the door when something caught his eye.
In one of the cabinets, only partially hidden by the door, which the doctor had left ajar, was a cardboard box whose label claimed that it was filled with individual scalpel blades.
Sherlock paused for a moment, slipped the box into his pocket, and continued to the exit.
•••
He woke up on the floor of his flat sometime later, rather disappointed.
It had turned out that the wounds he had inflicted up and down his arms, and legs, and torso were not quite enough to produce the endorphin-induced euphoria that he had to work harder and harder to find, but they had been more than enough to deprive his brain of so much oxygen that he lost consciousness.
The body was a funny thing.
It was a last resort that he tried to avoid using, because he couldn't afford to pay his rent and have a drug habit, but there was a decent supply hidden in a hollowed-out book on his shelf.
He felt neither joy nor regret as he removed the rubber tubing, needles, and of course the substance itself from their place. This simply was; his unique mind required, every now and then, a release from the limits and confines that being a human man went along with, and he would find it by whatever means necessary.
A few minutes after that whole matter was over and done with, Sherlock went and found a rope in one of his cupboards, because what kind of civilized man in his twenties didn't have rope - and grappling hooks and hunting knives and other things of that nature - just laying around.
He didn't know whether it was the thoughts that were now buzzing at ten times their usual hyper-speed through his head or the impaired way he seemed to perceive at that exact moment or simply the fact that his brain was not used to being quite so high, but he found himself unable to tie a noose.
•••
One day, as Sherlock was browsing through other members' profiles and other listings of abusable substances on the Silk Road, he decided to stop feeding the source of his impending bankruptcy, at least for the time being, and opened up another tab to read a few online news articles.
There was one in particular that bothered him, because it was the account of a police investigation and how it had been resolved, but they obviously had the wrong man.
Sherlock could tell just from the photo of their 'murderer' that took up most of the front page. He thought he ought to fix it.
Just below that photo was another, smaller picture of a man's face, with the caption 'The primary in this case, DI Lestrade.'
•••
Sherlock sat in his flat, fingertips laid together under his chin as he stared at the wall. Lestrade had found not found it strange that he had left Scotland Yard so quickly, since he often did, but there had been something different today.
It replayed over and over in his mind.
He had solved the case; he never failed to solve the case. But that didn't matter so much, because he had been too late. She had died anyway.
Everyone else had been affected, of course, but they were used to it, and besides it wasn't their fault. It was all on him, and he knew that. He was supposed to be a genius. He called himself one, anyhow, but he still hadn't been able to stop it.
Stupid.
Death of the innocent was always so pointless.
It have him little peace of mind to know that the man responsible had been caught, for the law never gave people quite as severe punishments as they deserved.
He had been clean a while now, having given up his harmful habits for solving cases, so anything obvious had been tossed out months ago. Somewhere in his subconscious, though, he had always known a day of relapse would come, and so he had told himself that things such as paper cutters and pencil sharpeners were necessary to have around.
His decision was made before he so much as moved to get out of his armchair.
The next morning, Sherlock was retroactively grateful to himself for having marked up his thighs rather than his arms, so he needn't tug suspiciously at his sleeves. Not that it would really have made any difference.
Immediately after waking, he took a cab to St. Bart's. It hardly seemed strange to anyone, since he was so often there to work on cases and the like, and so no one paid him any mind, or even wondered what he was doing there as he walked straight into his usual lab.
The nice thing about being a genius with every imaginable substance readily at your fingertips was that you had both the knowledge and the means to create a toxin that would induce an entirely pain-free death.
And so, he set about doing just that.
He was so absorbed in his measuring of substances and examining reactions under a microscope that he hardly noticed when the door opened, but he did glance up.
Mike Stanford was walking into the room, and beside him, a small man with sandy-blonde hair, leaning on a cane.
•••
With the traces of that final laugh still lurking on his lip, Sherrinford reached for where he thought he had a gun strapped to his hip, only to discover that it was gone. His eyes widened and darted to his younger brother, who stood before him with a patented smirk on his face.
Sherlock raised the weapon and put a bullet into Sherrinford's brain without a second thought.
The next sequence of events occurred so rapidly that Sherlock could not be entirely sure what order they happened in.
A light shone at him from somewhere above, a higher floor or perhaps even out the widow.
John stepped in front of him, and there was the sound of a gun being fired, but very faint, as if shot either from far away or from very close, with a silencer attached.
And then John was on the ground, and Sherlock with him, holding him in his arms as blood began to soak his shirt, and all the immediate shock and sorrow and desperation were overpowered by his anger.
"Idiot!" He shouted, "That should have been me! It was supposed to be me!" He bowed his head as though to hide the hot tears rolling down his cheeks, though from who, he wasn't sure. "You've got to stop doing this," he whispered.
•••
Sherlock stared around at the familiar room, as John slept in the narrow bed, thinking vaguely that one of these days, it would be not a hospital, but a morgue that they found themselves in. A doctor walked in, one whose face Sherlock had become too accustomed to by now.
"So, what exactly happened this time?" He asked familiarly. Sherlock sighed.
"What do you think?" He responded, attempting a sad smile.
"Of course." The doctor had clearly known it would never be anything else. "So, he was in front of you, then? When he took the bullet?"
After a beat of silence, Sherlock nodded.
"Good thing he did, then."
Not exactly expecting this from a doctor, Sherlock looked up, startled.
The doctor quickly explained, "He's going to live. But the angle he was shot at- you would have died." And with that, he walked out of the room.
Sherlock looked back to his husband and gently took his hand.
•••
Months later, when life at 221B Baker Street was just beginning to turn back to its normal course, John began to worry about Sherlock. He almost wondered whether he had started something again, but despite not having his husband's deduction skills, he knew this was not the case.
Sherlock wore short sleeves now, and there were no cuts or puncture marks to be seen. He shaved with an electric razor, just to prove the point.
Agora wasn't even bookmarked on his computer anymore, and John had continuously checked.
Nevertheless, things were not right.
Sherlock also spoke much less now, and he often opted to sleep alone. Had this been a normal relationship, John would have worried that something was wrong between them, but he knew what that was like, and this was not it.
This problem, whatever it was, was entirely Sherlock's own. He only wished he could help. Sometimes, he would go into Sherlock's room, because he had heard something, and he'd find Sherlock in a fitful sleep, tossing and turning restlessly as some unknown terrors plagued his subconscious.
God knew John was familiar with nightmares, but he sensed that Sherlock's were worse than even his had ever been.
Sherlock would see things, too.
He never mentioned it, not once, but John caught him, on several occasions, looking at a random point in space as though he could actually see something there, and it usually took a while for him to be able to focus on something else.
John genuinely didn't understand.
They were safe. No matter what happened, no matter how many people died, they were-
Oh.
The both of them were safe. And everyone else was gone... because of them.
•••
AN: It only goes downhill from here. Please review! Thank you!