CHAPTER 9: FOUR ON THE SCALE

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015

Sherlock's heart lurched sharply in his chest, trying to escape. As Ewan's own running footfalls echoed in the distanced, he ran in the opposite direction, swiftly covering the short distance to where the cab had been idling just moments ago. When he came to the spot, he stopped and dug his mobile out of his pocket. He hit the number one speed dial and pressed the phone to his ear.

'Pick up, damn it, John. Pick up.'

The line rang, and rang, and rang. John had not yet bothered to set the voicemail on his new phone.

'Damn it!'

He started running again, legs pumping so quickly he nearly lost control of them. He flew down Stoney Street, following the cab's most probable path. Two minutes, he'd said. Why had he left for even two seconds? How had he not noticed when the cab began to roll away? Had John simply decided he wouldn't wait? Or had the cabbie put his foot on the accelerator of his own volition, carrying John away like Anton Willoughby had, that fateful day in mid-October?

Stupid, stupid!

The fears that clouded his mind nearly darkened his sight as he remembered, all too vividly, stepping into the cold, lightless convent, ten days too late, and he stumbled into a short stack of empty fruit crates left on the corner as he rounded swiftly onto Park Street, following the GPS in his head. He had no hope, none at all, of catching up with a moving vehicle, but he was as likely to stop his feet from running as he was to stop his heart from racing or mind from whirring.

He would call Donovan. She had seen the cabbie too, spoken to him, in fact. Maybe she knew something. And if she didn't, she could still put out the word. He remembered the cab number, after all.

But before he could punch her number into his phone, his text alert sounded.

'Oh!' he cried aloud, skidding to a halt. He lifted the phone before his wide, desperate eyes and saw his brother's name.

A stab of disappointment met with an unexpectedly warm sense of hope. He opened the message.

Southwark St, headed
west. Hurry.

Incomplete sentences? Mycroft must have been texting with haste.

He doubled back on Park and hung a quick right back onto Stoney. He erupted out of the darkened street and onto well-lit Southwark like a startled bat, took another right, and scanned the street for a black cab. Instead, he saw, not half a street away to the west, the back of man with a pronounced limp, moving at a surprising speed away from him.

'John!'

The man staggered a little to the right as if the sound of his name was a physical blow, but he didn't turn. He kept on with a determined, if not hampered, gait. Sherlock slowed to a jog, feeling like a great weight had just been lifted off his chest. In moments, he was at John's side again.

Keeping with John's anxious pace, he said calmly, if not warily, 'John. You left the cab. I thought—' But he couldn't voice it.

John shook his head firmly, lips pressing together. A small noise stuck in his throat.

When it was clear that John wasn't about to say anything, Sherlock started to explain himself to the only man who had ever made him feel the need. 'It was Ewan. Homeless network.' He had told John of Ewan's part in helping him learn more about Darren Hirsch, but if John remembered that now, he gave no sign. His eyes were fixed straight ahead. 'He knew the victim, though not much more.' It didn't seem the time to go into the details—the drugs, the name, the accusation, was any of it at all relevant anyway?—but he had to say something. 'Kid looked half frozen. He's been out here all night.' When John still made no effort to acknowledge or respond, Sherlock said, 'I'll get us another cab. It'll be warmer—'

'No.'

John took an unexpected about face and started walking east.

Sherlock took another two steps before he noticed he was walking alone. Taken aback, he swung around and hurried to catch John up, when he heard him saying, 'Not warmer, never warm, can't get warm, cold and quivering . . .'

'The flat is warm,' said Sherlock, reasoning.

'And thirsty. Always thirsty, but not . . . not for that.' His lips pulled down and his brow furrowed in consternation. 'Not that.'

'John, I'm going to get us a cab, and we're going to go hom—' He laid a hand on John's shoulder.

The man came to life.

He twisted his shoulder away from the touch, and with his opposite hand pushed Sherlock away with such force it felt like he had been punched in the chest. There was power in the body and fighting anger in the eyes that Sherlock had not seen in him since his return, and it electrified him with fear and wonder and hope. Nevertheless, he hadn't been expecting to be on the receiving end of it. He stepped back, and John did the same, creating a stretch of pavement between them.

John's breath came in visible swells and audible huffs as he breathed loudly through his nose. He moved the cane for balance. 'No cabs.'

He should have guessed; no, he should have known. I shouldn't have left him, not for anything, he thought, imagining more clearly, now, how John must have reacted, finding himself alone in the back of a cab for the first time since his abduction. However rational or irrational, the memory would have been enough to provoke the threat of it happening again. So of course he had fled.

'No cabs,' Sherlock agreed.

John nodded stiffly and began walking again. This time, Sherlock walked a step behind and just within John's periphery.

He calculated quickly. They were now heading north, apparently to cross into North London by the bridge. Even by the most direct route, they were still four-and-a-half miles from Baker Street. John might have been running on adrenaline now, but it wouldn't last him much longer, and he'd begin feeling the pain in his leg before long, if he wasn't already. Besides, the temperature was hovering around freezing, maybe a little under, and the sun was still hours away from warming the sky. Even maintaining this pace—which he knew they couldn't—the walk would take the rest of the night. Neither the buses nor the tube was running yet, and a cab was out of the question.

Sherlock pulled out his mobile.

London Bridge. Three
minutes.
SH

As they walked the point-three miles remaining until they reached the bridge, Sherlock noticed John's limp getting worse and worse—his body demanded that he slow, but John wasn't obeying. He watched John's breath rise as fog in the streetlamps: quick huffs, short breaths. Each exhalation was coming in shorter intervals and smaller volume, characteristic not of exertion but of hyperventilation. If this kept on, his system would quickly deplete its carbon dioxide levels, and he knew what would come next, having witnessed John experience symptoms of a panic attack many times before, too many: headache, dizziness, chest pains. His mind and body were perilously juxtaposed. The one urged him to flee; the other pleaded that he rest. But it was the body that was yielding, and if Sherlock did nothing, both would fall together.

They reached the bridge and started across. Sherlock now walked at his side, prepared to steady him if the dizziness set in. He floundered for something to say, something distracting but innocuous, to sway John away from the brink.

But John Watson had become an unpredictable entity. Of his own volition, he came to an abrupt stop; his breathing went from rapid and shallow to deep and laboured. Sherlock stopped, too, stood at arms' length, and faced him squarely.

'John?'

'I thought I saw him,' said John, staring at the pavement between Sherlock's feet.

'Who?'

He closed his eyes and held his breath. Then he spoke. 'Daz.'

Sherlock took an apprehensive half step closer. 'Where?'

'There. At the crime scene. Just after Anderson . . .' He couldn't voice it. He screwed up his face and looked away, over the water. 'I blinked, and there he was. Standing just over your shoulder.' He shook his head in dejection. 'I ran.'

Now Sherlock understood. Another hallucination. Another damned intrusive image.

'But you would have seen him, right? If he had been real? You would have noticed.'

Sherlock nodded slightly but reassuringly. 'Not real, John. He wasn't there.'

John hung his head. His fingers were bloodless around the grip of the cane; the other clenched and unclenched at his side. 'I knew he couldn't have been,' he said softly. He inhaled long and loud through his nose, straightening. 'I can't make it to Baker Street, Sherlock. But I can't take a cab. I just can't.'

The apologetic tone, the shame-filled eyes, made Sherlock want to strangle something—Anderson, preferably. He parted his lips to reassure him, but at that moment he saw headlights in the distance, drawing nearer.

'Fortunately for us both, John, we are not without friends.'

John followed his gaze, and when he saw the car, he tensed. But Sherlock was ready:

'Lestrade,' he said. 'Rather good timing, too.'

John turned back, a look of fresh alarm in his eyes. 'Don't tell him what I saw.'

'Wouldn't dream of it.'

The car overtook them and rolled to a stop, brake lights aglow. The driver's side door popped open, and Lestrade jumped out, looking anxious. A question was on his lips, but Sherlock gave him a hard stare and quick motion of the head, and he swallowed it.

'Ah, inspector,' he said. 'I see you are on your way home. Swinging by Baker Street?'

Baker Street was decidedly not en route to his own home, or even to the Yard, but Lestrade cottoned on quickly. 'Of course.'

Sherlock opened the back door for John. To his consternation, however, John just stood there, staring at the empty back seat. Then he nodded, not in gratitude but resignation, and he stepped into the car. Sherlock circled around to the other side, 'Quickest route, Lestrade,' before opening his own door.

During the short ride to Baker Street, not a word was spoken.

He sighed into the phone and ran a hand through his hair, feeling the oils grease the skin between his fingers. 'I don't know if I can do that again.'

'Hush, you're doing fine. You did well.'

'I thought he was going to kill me.'

'Nonsense. He didn't even touch you. No harm done.'

'No harm? I've been suspended for three days. Three days! For one harmless quip! Plus a mark on my permanent record. And after that, two weeks doing desk work and sensitivity training. I'm not allowed in the field. I'm to be nowhere near this case. That's not even to mention all the looks I'm getting—'

'Stop your whinging. I told you, you did well. You found his pressure point.'

'Pressure point?'

There was a sigh of exasperation. 'John Watson, of course. Should have been obvious from the start. Insult Holmes all you want, he'll barely flinch and just toss the invectives back. But so much as give Watson a dirty look . . .'

'From ice to fire in a blink of an eye, I know, I've seen it more times than I like to think about. Right then. That's enough, is it? That's all you need?'

A pause. 'It's not that simple. You need to do it again. You didn't push it hard enough.'

'Hard enough?'

'Not much of a reaction, really.'

'I told you the look he gave me. There was murder in his eyes, I could see it!'

'All I got from you was that you ragged his boyfriend and he went crying to daddy to sort it out. There's no story in that.'

'But—'

'Holmes needs to be exposed as the sort of violent and dangerous man he is.'

'Of all the things he is, he's not stupid. He's not about to attack me in full view of a dozen officers.'

'We need witnesses, darling. And I'm willing to wager that he's not as stable as you give him credit for. You push that pressure point hard, and he'll snap, police or no police. But do yourself a favour—don't let Daddy Detective overhear you this time, eh? Do try to be a little discreet.'

He worried his lips between his teeth, unable to answer. He wondered whether his pounding heartbeat could be heard through the phone.

'Don't fret. People will realise you were right about him all along in the end. You'll expose him again, and heroes are seldom chastised for their three-day suspensions earned in opposing villains. They're applauded.'

'I suppose you're right.'

'Of course I am. Now don't call again until I've got my story.'

As days went around Baker Street anymore, this was a bad one.

They returned to the flat with an hour left before dawn. Though both were accountably exhausted, neither tried to sleep. John went instantly into the kitchen to put the kettle on, and Sherlock, wondering whether this was one of those situations where he should give John his space or whether they ought to try to talk about . . . it . . . pulled out his laptop and settled himself at the kitchen table, his way of finding the middle ground between two uncertain courses of action—he wouldn't broach conversation, but he made himself available for it. Once, he had had John to model or outright instruct him in how to behave in uncomfortable or sensitive circumstances; but now that such circumstances were, at their core, about John, he fumbled.

An unspoken rule existed in 221B: Sherlock and John dealt with John's condition; they never talked about. Not directly. John didn't like being asked how he was feeling, or whether he'd taken his medication, or whether he'd dreamt last night, or why he wasn't seeing a therapist. Doing so—as both Mrs Hudson and Lestrade learnt early on—was a sure-fire way of rendering him incommunicative at best, infuriated at worst. It was the quickest way to sour a level mood and topple a stable emotional plane. And it always invited tension into the flat. Not that there wasn't enough of that regardless.

So they didn't talk. Sherlock missed the way they once had. He missed John's easy laughter. He missed his no-nonsense handling of Sherlock's eccentricities. He missed the companionable air and unspoken but complete understanding of one another. He missed—

The thought never fully formed because he wouldn't let it: Sherlock missed John.

After a few minutes' shuffling about, John set a cup of tea at Sherlock's right elbow. Black, two sugars.

'Thank you,' said Sherlock. He tapped the side of the cup with his fingertips to gauge its temperature. Another ninety seconds to let it cool. He returned to the laptop where he was researching hemlock. Was it even important that it was hemlock? Might it have been clovers or nightshade or bluets or bulbous buttercups? Why the rose petal? Still too many questions. The poisonous element of the flower might have been a red herring, or it might have been the key to the puzzle. Was there a puzzle? Had the flowers been placed there? Or had the victim for some unfathomable reason put them there himself. This seemed least likely. Maybe this was actually a matter of botany: Jefferies had been placed in a tree, a horse chestnut. This victim had been carrying flowers. Or, equally plausible, Sherlock was grasping at straws.

He scrolled and clicked a few more pages, then sipped from the tea and set it on his left-hand side.

Lost in thought, he didn't notice John again until when, several minutes later, John set a second cup of tea at his elbow, as he had the first.

He looked at it in surprise, then turned on the stool to observe the kitchen counter. Two pots, two brews, and four unfilled teacups. John was at that moment reaching into the cupboard for numbers five and six.

'Thank you, John,' Sherlock said again, uncertainly, 'though I haven't quite finished my first cup.'

John turned at the sound of his voice. A dazed look lifted from his face like a gossamer veil as his eyes found and settled on the two full cups already on the table, both steaming. 'Oh,' he said. 'I didn't realise you'd already made tea.'

'I—' He bit his tongue, taken aback. Did he really not remember? He switched tracks. 'Did you want one?' He noticed that John had not poured himself anything from either brew.

'I don't take sugar,' said John, though with an air of confusion, as if he weren't sure if this was true. He stepped away from the kitchen and into the sitting room, where the first grey lights of dawn rested against the windows. He pulled the curtains closed.

For the rest of the morning, John moved restlessly, room to room. He stared at an open search window on his laptop for twenty minutes without touching the keyboard; he stood at the edge of each window, curtain pulled back slightly, and monitored the activity on the street below and in the building across the way; and he wandered back and forth between flat and landing as though waiting for someone or expecting to see something different each time he came back. It was driving Sherlock crazy, but mostly because he didn't understand it.

After Sherlock cleared away the evidence of the first two pots of tea and re-established himself in the sitting room, John set about making a third, and like before, he poured a cup for Sherlock and none for himself. Sherlock accepted the cup with wide, worried eyes that John failed to observe before hobbling back into the kitchen and looking around in bewilderment as though he had misplaced something or forgotten why he had gone in there. Then, without touching a thing, he continued on to the hallway bathroom where, seconds later, Sherlock heard him start the shower.

Shucking off all pretence of unconcern, Sherlock put aside his study of hemlock and opened new search windows. He had already spent countless hours researching John's condition, everything from PTSD to rape trauma syndrome, phobias to panic attacks, mood swings to hypervigilance, and how he might best help someone who refused to see a professional therapist. But maybe there was something he had missed, something that could help him now.

He was in the middle of revising new literature that linked suppression, dissociation, and bewilderment when his phone sounded in his pocket.

'Sherlock Holmes,' he said.

'We've got a positive ID on the victim,' said Lestrade.

Holden, thought Sherlock.

'Name was Holden O'Harris. Age thirty-five, originally from Shepherd's Bush. And you were right: he worked as practice nurse at a GP surgery in West London. They sacked him almost three years ago—five months before he lost his flat—because he came to work high on heroin. A habit he never broke, evidently.'

'He was high when he died.'

'Yeah. Traces of heroin in blood, urine, and hair. And—I probably don't even need to say it—no evidence of hemlock poisoning.'

Sherlock already knew it and didn't deign to respond to that point. 'And DNA? Tell me some good news, Lestrade.'

'Still waiting on the lab results for that one. But don't worry. Molly found ample samplings of . . . everything. We'll have conclusive proof soon.'

'How soon?'

'Next few hours soon.'

'I'll come down to Bart's. I'd like a second look at . . .' But he stopped. He couldn't leave Baker Street, not right now, not without . . . And there was slim chance John would want to come. Even if he did, Sherlock knew it wouldn't be a good . . . 'On second thought, text me the results when you get them.'

Lestrade correctly interpreted the pause. 'How is he?'

'Resting.'

He heard John kill the shower.

'I asked how—'

'Fine. He's fine.'

'I can't even begin to say how sorry—'

'Don't bother.'

'I've put Anderson on suspension and gave him a strong reprimand—'

'Doesn't matter.' Besides, he thought, it was a lot of things, not only Anderson. None of us did right by John, me least of all.

'Maybe it was a mistake, this contract business.'

Sherlock huffed a sigh of irritation. 'It's done. It's signed. We'll just have to be more—'

His breath caught: from the bathroom came a loud crash and the sound of tinkling glass.

Without saying goodbye, he ended the call and jumped up from the chair. 'John?' he called as he passed through the flat. When he reached the bathroom door, he half expected it to be locked; but the handle turned. Before he pushed in, he announced himself. 'John, it's me. I'm coming in.' He waited half a breath longer and entered.

His first step inside the bathroom brought his shoed foot down on a fragment of glass. The tiles were scattered with them like shards of ice; the rest had ended up in the sink or still hung in the frame of the mirror. He found John standing against the wall, half hidden behind the open door. His head was bowed and eyes shielded with one hand; his other trembled and dripped blood at his side.

'Oh god,' said Sherlock, stepping swiftly over the glass to lift John's right hand by the arm for examining. John didn't pull away, didn't so much as flinch. But he couldn't tell much. The thick blood spreading over the knuckles and down the fingers obscured the severity of the cuts. 'Kitchen sink,' he said. 'Come on.' He steered an awkwardly pliant John out of the bathroom and back to the kitchen.

John hissed when the cold water from the tap hit his skin, but he didn't pull away. He even let Sherlock roll his sleeve halfway up to his elbow and pull the largest slivers of mirror out of his skin. This acquiescence was almost as unnerving as the repeated tea making or vomiting behind a lorry; he barely knew what to do with it and was almost certain he would do wrongly.

He twisted off the tap and wrapped John's hand in a tea towel. 'Sit,' he directed, now steering him to the table. Then he went to fetch the first-aid kit, fill a bowl with warm water, and grab a bottle of paracetamol and a glass of water. Sitting opposite John, he instructed him to take the painkillers, then pulled his hand halfway across the table and opened the towel. Already, though the tea towel was soaked red, the blood flow had lessened considerably. Sherlock took John's hand in his own and counted the cuts—seven of notable length, and several more minor nicks and scratches.

'Anything broken?' he asked.

John shook his head no and balled his hand to prove it before relaxing it again in Sherlock's. But when Sherlock prodded a little more with his thumbs, John sucked in air through his nose and sat up straighter. Sherlock cocked a sceptical eyebrow, but John shook his head emphatically. 'Just tender,' he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

'Still. An x-ray would tell us for sure—'

'No. No hospitals. It's fine. I didn't hit it that hard.'

The mirror wasn't just cracked, Sherlock thought. It was shattered. But he kept it inside a closed mouth.

He pulled out his magnifying glass and rotated John's hand at the wrist slowly, clockwise, anticlockwise, occasionally wiping fresh blood away with the towel to search for other slivers of glass, which he extracted with a pair of tweezers and set on a Petri dish that happened to be nearby. While he worked, he noted the slight, irregular curve of John's little finger where the break hadn't set quite right. He also took the excuse to surreptitiously inspect the mean-looking scar on John's wrist, a remnant of the wire cuffs, which John had so diligently tried to hide from him over the past eleven weeks. He resisted a tactile examination of the dark pink, raised skin.

'I read,' John said as Sherlock performed his inspection, 'that they put more than ten units of blood in me that night.'

Sherlock's eyebrows rose in surprise—John almost never even alluded to either his time in captivity or the immediate aftermath. Whenever he did, it was never in direct reference to himself: never an I or a me was spoken. This was important—was it important? It felt important—but John continued on placidly, staring at his injured hand, and Sherlock contained any greater reaction on his own part to follow suit.

'I'd already lost quite a lot, even before I was shot.' His voice shook a little, but only a little. He swallowed. 'They had to replace more than fifty percent of my blood volume within six hours. A massive transfusion. All donor blood, of course. Strangers who didn't even know . . . Kind of makes me wonder whose blood I'm spilling now.'

Satisfied with the cleanliness of the cuts, Sherlock unscrewed the cap on the bottle of surgical spirit and wetted a cloth. 'A red blood cell passes through the heart every forty-five seconds,' he said. He gently tapped the stinging cloth against the wounds. John winced with only the first dab. 'Your heart. Within a minute, all that new blood belonged to you.' He raised his eyes to meet John's. 'Any donor DNA from white blood cells would have disappeared within seven days anyway. This is all you.'

'I know,' said John. 'Just doesn't feel like it.'

'What do you mean?'

'Nothing.'

As Sherlock began to dress the wound, winding a bandage around the limp hand, he puzzled over this, and when he could come to no clear answer, he asked, 'Why did you punch the mirror, John?'

John's eyes flicked up from where Sherlock was working on his hand and fell away again just as quickly. 'I don't know.'

'What were you doing in the bathroom while the water ran? You weren't showering.'

The evidence was obvious: he hadn't changed clothes; he still wore his shoes; his hair was dry; the towels were dry; the air in the bathroom was not humid—he'd been running the water cold.

'You never really shower. Do you. Just spot cleaning. One area at a time. Is it so you don't have to undress? It's not unusual, John, for one to feel vulnerable, exposed, after—'

John suddenly pulled his hand away to finish securing the dressing himself.

'John,' said Sherlock again, steeling himself.

'Hm?' John responded, attention fixed on his hand.

'Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea . . .'

'I should put this on ice.'

'. . . to work through these anxieties . . .'

'Twenty minutes every couple of hours.' He rose from his chair and opened the freezer. 'Ward off any swelling, bruising. It's not broken. But.'

'Mycroft could help. He would know of some competent, discreet psychotherapists.'

John threw the freezer door back in place; the whole fridge shook. 'I'm fine, Sherlock.'

'The evidence speaks to the contrary.'

'If I tell you I'm fine, I'm fine.'

'I'm not saying you're not handling things well, all things considered—'

'Just not well enough for you, is that it?'

Sherlock blinked. 'I didn't say—'

'That I'm more of a burden than you bargained for? You didn't have to. Should've let well enough alone then, eh? Then you wouldn't have to deal with this'—he gestured to himself, up and down, with a furious hand—'mess.'

'That's not what I said, and you'll never hear me say it. All I'm saying is that a therapist may help you to—'

'Help me? I help me. I do, Sherlock. Not once has one of those quacks done a damn bit of good to help me with anything. Not after mum died. Not after Afghanistan. Not after you d—' He stopped and shook his head in frustration. 'Why am I even telling you this? You of all people know how useless they are. I mean, look at you! They didn't fix you!'

If John had slapped him, he wouldn't have been more astonished. The faces of Sherlock's six childhood psychiatrists flashed before his eyes, and he scowled. 'There was nothing wrong with me.'

'Oh, nothing wrong, that's a laugh. And Donovan calls you freak because of your third eye and lobster hands, is that it?'

The unexpected vitriol left him stunned and without response, feeling no inclination to fight back. John was right, after all. About all of it. He had never given much credence to psychology, not after ten years of being shepherded from child shrink to child shrink in his mother's vain attempt to figure out what was wrong with her odd little boy. Six different diagnoses and six different treatments from six different therapists—all of them hacks. At fifteen, he had refused to go back. And oh, how Mummy cried. The way she looked at him after that . . . like he was the ghost of whom she had wanted to believe was her angel child. And she had always abhorred ghost stories.

'You don't trust me,' John said.

'I trust you more than anyone,' Sherlock countered. He was unable to follow John's train of thought—where were these accusations coming from?

'Except for Lestrade. And Molly. And Mycroft. And—'

'More than anyone,' he repeated.

'You didn't believe me when I said that I saw Daz.'

Sherlock laughed shortly and without humour. 'That was a dream. You didn't believe it either.' Why were they arguing this? They had already both agreed that the presence of the Slash Man had been impossible.

John snapped; all sense of reason and logic shattered like the mirror. 'Not a dream! I was awake! I was standing there!'

'An intrusive image, I mean. You've had them before, John.'

'I'm telling you, I saw him! He was watching me!'

Sherlock slowly stood. 'Then why couldn't I see him?'

'He was behind you, all the time behind you! If you had only turned your bloody head!' John's face was red with fury, his eyes glistening with betrayal.

'John, listen—' He took a deep breath, hardly believing he was siding with Donovan on this one. 'Maybe you should just . . . rest. Take a step back from this case—'

White spots appeared along John's jawline from where he clenched it so tightly in his rage. He snatched up a teacup from the countertop that he had earlier that day pulled from the cupboard, and hurled it at Sherlock's head. Sherlock ducked just in time, and it exploded into porcelain dust against the wall behind him.

'It's my case, damn you! How dare you tell me . . . ? How dare you think I can't . . . ?'

'Because you're not well!' Sherlock shouted back.

John took a ragged breath that might have been a gasp for air, might have been a sob. 'I didn't ask for this! Any of this! I didn't ask to be taken out of that box! I didn't ask you to leave me the key! What business was it of yours, what happened to me, Holmes? Why couldn't you have just stayed dead?'

He hurled another teacup, but this time with enervated strength; his aim was poor and didn't come anywhere near Sherlock's head, but it smashed all the same. Then he left the kitchen through the door to the landing. Next moment, Sherlock heard his uneven steps climbing the stairs to his room, and the door closed with a resounding crash.

Sherlock lowered his face into his hands, then dragged his nails roughly across his scalp, frustrated beyond release. What the hell was that? He realised his heart was racing. He shouldn't have said a word. Not a damn word. John had been trying to tell him something—hadn't he? Only Sherlock hadn't understood what. In his need to get to the heart of the matter at hand, the mirror, he had missed something greater.

He waited two minutes, then stood, filled a bowl with ice and fetched a clean tea towel, and ascended the stairs. He knocked.

'John?'

'Piss off,' he heard beyond the door.

Sherlock complied. But first, he set the bowl on the floor, loud enough to be sure John would hear it. 'Ten minutes before the ice melts,' he said through the door. Then he retreated to the first floor. There, in the sitting room, he threw open the curtains to let some January light into that winter-cloaked room. Only then, as if the light were air, did he feel as though he could breathe again. At last, he set about to clear away the shards of shattered mirror, to wipe down the kitchen table, and to think.

They didn't speak much more the rest of the day. John reappeared when he needed more ice, then again when he needed a glass of water. He spent some time sitting in his chair with the telly on, but he clearly wasn't paying any attention to the BBC News at Six. Sherlock, however, kept an ear cocked for any mention of O'Harris' murder, which never came up. He also kept waiting for a text from Lestrade, confirming Darren Hirsch as the killer. That also never came.

Mrs Hudson showed up at seven with dinner—lentil soup and sourdough bread—and though neither of them mentioned the broken mirror or their earlier row, she did notice John's wrapped hand and sensed something amiss. But her query about his hand was answered with barely a shrug and three words: just a cut. Then he hid his hand in his lap and continued pushing beans around in his bowl, not eating. He hadn't eaten a thing all day, and just that morning he had emptied his stomach of whatever he'd managed the day before. His skin colour was off, his eyes glassy. Sherlock might have been concerned about dehydration, except that, as always, John had been drinking tap water liberally throughout the day, like a man dying in the desert coming upon an oasis.

After dinner, John resumed his place in his chair but didn't even reach for the remote control or pick up a book to feign distraction. He just sat, and stared into nothingness. Mrs Hudson removed the copious leftovers to the fridge and tidied up a bit in the kitchen. When she began to wash dishes at the sink, Sherlock joined her to help dry.

As they worked side by side, with the tap still running, Mrs Hudson elbowed him gently in the ribs to pull him out of his dark, absorbing thoughts, and when he looked down at her, she nodded to John with concern in her eyes. Bad day? she mouthed, and Sherlock held up four fingers—it was their silent code on a scale of one to five. She frowned and shook her head mournfully. He returned his attention to the drying, but soon she was patting his arm insistently to recapture it to herself. She indicated John again, then mimed playing the violin. He shook his head emphatically, thinking it wasn't a good time, that John wouldn't appreciate such a blatant attempt at appeasing his despondency, but she urged him. Go on, then, she mouthed. She took the towel out of his hands and turned back to finish the washing-up on her own.

In the end, he decided that doing nothing was more maddening, so he obeyed her direction and walked lightly, cautiously, into the sitting room, passing in front of John to reach his case. In his peripheral vision, he watched for any signs of objection as he lifted the instrument, golden-wood shining in the firelight, and strummed the strings with his little finger, but John gave no response whatsoever. Once he decided it was well enough in tune, he tucked the violin beneath his chin and began to play a variation on Brahms because, once upon a time, John had expressed a particular liking for his Brahms. Again, no overt reaction. But he kept John in the corner of his eye as he played and moved around the room, filling the air with the sweetest strains he knew how to render.

The effect may have been missed by eyes less keen than his, but Sherlock observed it all clearly: the way the lines disappeared from John's forehead; the way his shoulders transformed from squared to rounded; the way the tensed muscles in his chest and arms and legs melted into the chair; the way his breathing deepened and steadied. It had been the right call—not a cure, but a salve, temporary, yes, but soothing all the same. Like honey in his tea.

Mrs Hudson flicked off the kitchen light, softening the atmosphere in the flat; the fire in the hearth cast the room in a tempered red glow. She stepped to John's side where she sat herself on the armrest of his chair. As she listened to the sighing vibrato emanating from Sherlock's violin, she rested a hand on John's shoulder. When it seemed he had accepted her touch, she reached down, took his bandaged hand, and rested it in her lap, where she gave his fingers a tender squeeze. She lightly caressed the exposed skin of his thumb with her own. Though it was almost imperceptible, Sherlock noticed that, after a moment, John tightened his fingers around hers and held on.

They continued that way in congenial silence a few minutes more, while the euphonious narrative swelled and diminished and coloured the air with its mellifluous measures, until at last Mrs Hudson arose. Before returning to her own flat, however, she kissed John on the top of the head, brushed her fingers through his hair with soothing strokes, and whispered words so low that Sherlock almost missed them: 'We're here, love.' Just that. There were no empty assertions that things weren't as bad as they seemed, no assurances of a better day tomorrow, no promises that might be broken or lies that would quickly show their cracks. Just a simple truth, and though John made her no response, neither did he reject her words in expression or body language. Instead, when she had gone, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Sherlock thought he saw, from the corner of his eye, a line of wet on John's cheek, shining in the firelight.

Sherlock continued to play, twenty minutes more, thirty minutes more, forty, afraid to stop and break the spell of tranquillity cast by each downward stroke of the bow. He had transitioned to a nocturne, his own take on Chopin's Nocturne Op 9. The music was transformative—the dreadful, choking disquiet had dissipated, and the air was breathable. Time and space curled away: the broken mirror was miles off in the distance, the dead body of Holden O'Harris, years. And the horrors of the convent belonged to other men's lives, not theirs. Now was a different plane of being, floating on a stradavarian wind. Now was a warm hearth and a violin invoking a serenade to the night, and nothing existed beyond.

Then, with the force of a lightning strike, the harmonies shattered.

For the third time that day, Sherlock's ears rang with the sound of shrieking glass, and in that very instant his violin exploded in his hands. He gave a cry of alarm and jumped backward, dropping the bow even as fragments of wood and dust showered down on him and the sprung strings curled at his feet.

He whirled, angling toward the window, and saw a single hole in a pane that was split like a spider's web. He moved forward to investigate the scene on the street, but he hadn't taken even a full step toward the window when he felt himself tackled to the ground even as another explosion rocked the air and glass flew like rain in a gale. He landed hard on his back and the wind rushed out of his lungs. He gasped but couldn't regain his breath: John's weight was crushing his ribcage.

'John!' he cried without air.

John's only response was to wrap his arms tightly around Sherlock's head as a shield.

He could feel John's heart racing wildly as though a shot of adrenaline had been injected directly into the susceptible, aching muscle. It pounded against Sherlock's own chest and resounded throughout his entire body until it ached in his head and down to his ankles and he couldn't distinguish his own throbbing heartbeats from John's.

But something more was wrong: John's breathing came in rapid, shallow bursts next to his ear; he felt the muscles of John's diaphragm clench and shudder in irregular patterns with each torturous breath; and he wasn't responding to his own name. With the shattering of the window, John had been thrown into instant and gripping panic.

And there were Mrs Hudson's hurried steps, ascending the stairs.

Bracing himself with one bent leg, Sherlock encircled John in his arms, heaved, and rolled, pushing John off of him and easing his back to the floor just as Mrs Hudson appeared in the doorway, already in her nightdress.

'Sherlock! I heard a terrible noise! Sounded like—'

'Gunshots. Two of them, straight through the window,' said Sherlock, kneeling over John, who had begun to hyperventilate in earnest. He scratched at Sherlock's arms as though seeking something to hold onto.

'Oh lord!'

'We're not hurt.'

'But John—?'

'Panic attack. I've got him. Call Lestrade.'

'Will he be all right? I can ring for an ambulance.'

'Lestrade, now!'

As she fled back to her flat to use the landline, he called after her, 'Keep away from the windows!'

John writhed on the floor, unable to breathe. His face was purpling, and his eyes were wide with fear. 'Breathe, John,' said Sherlock, infusing his voice with a steadiness he did not feel. He took John's head in both hands and tried to get his eyes to refocus on him. 'Calm. Breathe. We're okay. We're okay.'

But whatever reality was before John's vision, Sherlock wasn't part of it. His eyes were fixed with terror on a spot past Sherlock's right ear. He continued to scratch at Sherlock's arms and pull his sleeves into his fists as tears of fear spilt from the corners of his eyes and into his hairline. He was entirely unable to draw air—it was as if his lungs had collapsed. The muscles in his neck were strained like taut ropes, and a pronounced vein in his forehead broke out in sweat.

'All right, all right, I've got you,' said Sherlock as he pulled John's upper body off the floor, nearly into a sitting position. He situated himself behind him, kneeling low, and pulled John in close so that his own chest and stomach pressed against John's back. Then he wrapped his arms securely around John's torso: one hand splayed against John's chest, the other over his diaphragm. John's head fell back, weak against Sherlock's right shoulder, so he spoke directly into his left ear: 'Feel my breaths. Breathe with me, John.'

He inhaled slowly, letting John feel his lungs expand and fill with air as he pushed out his stomach into John's back, a breath held low and full. He held it for two counts, and steadily exhaled.

John twisted and jerked involuntarily in his struggle for air; his left hand came around to grip Sherlock's arm above the elbow, and he hung on with bruising strength.

'Breathe in with me. One, two, three, four, five. Hold.'

John tried. Each breath drawing up his chest and throat sounded like the teeth of a hacksaw against rough wood. But when Sherlock heard a short sob escape John's throat, the tightness in his own chest lessened—John had at least enough air to cry.

'Good. Good. Now breathe out. One, two, three, four, five. You're breathing with me, John. You're okay. Nice and slow. Breathe in. One, two . . .'

He coached him, guided him, and as the seconds wound round and round the clock, John's own breathing began to match his. It was a labour, but as the oxygen returned to his bloodstream, to his brain, he began to calm. Even so, John's grip on Sherlock's arm didn't slacken in the slightest. Sherlock held him just as firmly in return, an assurance that he was there. Amidst the ruin of the once-beloved violin, they sat together, breathed together, even as Mrs Hudson returned and the reflection of distant blue and red lights first flashed against the broken glass of the window.