CHAPTER 12: OF OLD WOUNDS AND NEW

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2015

Lestrade left the room in its semi-chaotic state, trusting that Donovan would re-establish order again. She knew how to take the reins, and he'd been passing them to her a lot lately. So leave it to her to finish articulating the Yard's objectives and assigning tasks. She was good at that sort of thing: she neither participated in nor tolerated overreactions of any sort from anyone, especially not from officers of the Met. She was a workhorse, and he knew exactly when to use her as one.

He held John's phone in one hand, his own in the other, and jogged down the hallway, ignoring puzzled looks from the officers veering out of his way. He had received no text messages himself, and neither had Donovan, and they seemed to have been the only ones. But he didn't have time to think about the rhyme and reason behind that right now. He was headed for the lifts. Sherlock and John couldn't have gone far. He had to find them, apologise, explain—

But before he reached the lifts, he heard them, voices echoing from behind a closed door to the loo at the end of an off-shoot, seldom-trafficked hallway. He recognised them by their voices: Sherlock's, deep, even rhythms, a study in equanimity developed over the last several weeks; and John's higher-pitched, afflicted cadences, a turmoil of sound. Their words, however, were indistinguishable from where he stood. The nearer he drew to the door, however, the clearer they became. He dropped both phones into his pockets.

'. . . away. Just stay back. Right there. Don't come any closer.'

'I'm not moving. Look at me, John. I'm staying right here.'

Lestrade halted, hand hovering at the door and debating whether he should insert himself in this scene.

'Not a step. And don't— Don't look at me like that. Not you.'

'Do you need me to leave? I'll leave. If that's what you n—'

'You already did that.'

In the long silence that followed, Lestrade closed his eyes and bowed his head, feeling the weight of those words tug down on his heart. What was happening on the other side of the door, he could only guess. He imagined they were standing on opposing sides of the loo, each man's back against the wall, staring one another down. Or maybe they couldn't bear to look at one another at all. All he knew for sure was that both had fallen mute. John's reproof went no further, and Sherlock proffered no defence. Lestrade was just mustering enough courage to enter the scene himself when John spoke again. His voice had fallen quieter, but still brandished a sharp edge.

'What else have they seen?'

'Nothing.'

Another uncertain pause.

'Because that was . . . it was just after . . .'

He didn't have to finish. Sherlock already knew; Lestrade knew it, too. Though neither had spoken it aloud, they had each independently fitted this latest video into the reconstructed timeline of events, based on John's testimony and other evidence. The eighth cutting, on the eighth day, had taken place directly after Moran had given him over to the Slash Man, that first time.

'That video was destroyed,' said Sherlock, softly but firmly. 'It doesn't exist. I promise you. No one has seen it.'

'You did.'

'If I hadn't . . .'

'Lestrade did. And, and . . . Oh God.'

'And no one else. Not a soul. It's gone.'

John wasn't placated by this. 'But they saw this! All of them. How . . . on the floor . . . how it was, with him. They saw—' His voice cut and fell again in volume, strangely and alarmingly composed. 'They shouldn't have seen what they saw.'

'I know.'

'The looks on their faces. They were all so disgusted.'

'Not by you.'

John made a noise that Lestrade didn't understand. It wasn't a word, or even an exclamation of anger. It was guttural, fierce but smothered, as if by a hand or cloth. Something raw was trying to break free, but he wasn't allowing it. Then, again, in a peculiarly measured tone: 'You knew, though. What they would see. You knew.'

'We fought it, John. Lestrade and I both. We tried to change the chief superintendent's mind.'

Lestrade hadn't expected that Sherlock would ally himself with him; rather, he had anticipated blame. He was the one who had conceded in the end; meanwhile, Sherlock had kicked over the rubbish bin in Gregson's office.

'But you didn't tell me.'

'I didn't know. Not until I got here.'

'Then why did you leave me behind?'

'I didn't know what I'd see, and Lestrade said it wasn't good. I thought it was best if I—'

'Best?'

'It's been a . . . a punishing week. I thought—'

'Punishing. Hm. Maybe so, but I'm still breathing, aren't I? I still woke up this morning. I wake up every morning. Don't I?'

Lestrade's heart was pounding. He felt guilty, eavesdropping like this, but he couldn't pull himself away.

'I didn't want to add another bad day to the lot.'

'So there are bad days!' John suddenly bellowed. His voice rang clearly, and Lestrade threw a glance over his shoulder to see if anyone else had heard. A woman paused as she strode by; he gave her a sharp jerk of the head to keep moving. 'I have good days, I have bad days, you know that. That's not new. But you promised me. Good, bad, and worse. You promised.'

'I know, but—'

'I thought we were partners in this.'

'We are. We are, John! But I never agreed to knowingly put you in a situation that might trigger another waking nightmare. I figured, that's not what friends do.'

For a moment, all sound was suspended. Then: 'I said partner, Sherlock.'

'There you are!'

Lestrade nearly jumped out of his skin as Donovan, who had been running down the hall, skidded to a halt upon seeing him around the corner. She started toward him.

'Call just came in: There's been another one, one of his. We're moving. London Bridge, south end. What's wrong, what are you doing?'

He was frantically waving an arm at her, to hush her, and grabbed her elbow to pull her away from the loo. But they didn't get far before the door swung open. John came out first, followed closely by Sherlock.

'Oh,' Donovan said under her breath, as close to rueful as he'd ever seen her.

'London Bridge, did you say?' said John tersely as he passed them up, moving pretty damn quickly for a man with a cane.

'John—' Lestrade began.

'We'll meet you there.'

Then came Sherlock. His face was stone, his eyes dark, and as he passed in front of Lestrade he leant close and said in a low, hard-edged voice, 'Get an earful, inspector?'

Though he was shorter than she, and though nearly every memory of him set him alongside and so in physical contrast to a towering Sherlock Holmes, Donovan had never thought of John Watson as a small man. She wasn't sure why this was so, exactly, why the descriptor had never occurred to her. Short, yes, but small? Never. Even in the beginning, before she had gotten the measure of him, she had always regarded him as the sort of man who could hold his own, who was outwardly placid but couldn't be bullied, and who, when push came to shove, wouldn't hesitate to shove hard. She barely remembered that when she had first met him, he had relied on a cane; that memory was eclipsed by the one of his socking the chief superintendent square in the nose before escaping police custody and bolting for the alleys. At the time, she had been scandalised. Of course she had been! Watson might have been a decent chap once upon a time, but then he had taken up with Sherlock Holmes. He was no good, they were both of them no good beatniks who had thought themselves grandiose men, above their fellows, above the law, even. 'Small' never came into it.

It wasn't until she saw him that day in hospital, on the other side of hell, in a body crushed and starved and a spirit wearied and wrecked, that the word first entered her mind. And it hadn't left.

She watched him now, getting out of the backseat of Lestrade's car. To no one's surprise, Lestrade had insisted that the pair of them ride with him rather than take a cab. This, of course, after his feeble protests that they not come at all, to which John, a spark of his former self flaring to light, had a ready argument: 'You need him; he needs me.' Oh, and one other: 'You can't stop me.'

Donovan saw both as high debatable.

And still, all these weeks after the hospital, to her eyes he looked small. Smaller than he had before the convent, that was, as if he still hadn't regained himself. He may have recovered the better portion of the weight he had lost while in Moran's prison, but he remained slight of figure, like a stiff breeze could knock him over and his hollowed bird-bones would shatter. It seemed to her that the skin of his face was wrapped on bone, not flesh, and where there was a scar or blemish, she was almost certain it must have been impressed into the bone underneath, too. Tonight he wore a coat disguising his skinny frame, but at their flat, the night of the shooting, when she had seen him in only a shirt buttoned to the collar, she had marked how thin his neck had seemed, how bony his shoulders, how gaunt his face; she could only imagine the damage and thinness hidden underneath all his layers.

It amazed her how a mere ten days could ravage a man. That said, it was no wonder Sherlock watched his every move like a hawk. But watching closely was one thing. It was unfortunate, really, that John had entrusted himself to Sherlock's clumsy care.

As they drew closer—John, surprisingly, in the lead—Donovan caught the tail-end of a conversation that had begun in the car.

'I've used that trick before,' Sherlock was saying.

'Yes, but how?'

'Research, Lestrade. It's simple enough. I thought you had it figured out. I inputted the mobile numbers of all the reporters from the press conference list—they're of public record—and sent a mass text. See? Easy.'

'Police phone numbers are not of public record.'

'And crime scene evidence doesn't just disappear from police lockers. You already know that the Yard is not as secure as you would like to believe.'

Lestrade sighed. 'So how did you know when to send those texts? You weren't at the press conference.'

Donovan saw Sherlock's lip quirk. 'Wasn't I?' It faded again just as quickly. 'Whoever sent those texts today must have had them on a sort of timer, sending them at perfectly spaced intervals. But to send three different messages all at once? I'm wagering that there were three phones involved, all from untraceable numbers. That's not the most disturbing part, though.'

'The seating.'

'Precisely, Lestrade. Precisely.'

Donovan stepped into their path, which meant cutting John off midstride. The foot of his bad leg skidded a bit on the pebbly pavement, and he had to hop on the good leg to re-establish balance. John glared at her, but she refused to feel guilty—this needed to be done.

'Here's what we know,' she said.

'You just got here,' said Lestrade.

'A touch faster than you did, so listen up.' She half expected Sherlock to protest and charge ahead to see the body, so she was surprised that he did not but instead halted and waited for her to continue. 'The victim is a white male, looking to be in his late twenties, early thirties. No indication yet of who he is.' Now, to prepare him. 'No clothes found on or anywhere near the body, except for shoelace binding his hands.' She was speaking directly to John now. 'He's pretty busted up, like the last one. Bruising, contusions, likely a few breaks. And those scratches.'

'Where is he?' asked Sherlock.

'Hanging just below the bridge.'

'Hanging?' Lestrade echoed.

'By the neck. They used cabling.' She looked over her shoulder, nodding in the direction she meant, behind Glazier's Hall. 'We've not taken him down yet. We're still sectioning off the crime scene, scouting for witnesses, just beginning the sweep for evidence. I imagine you'll want to see him in the state we found him.'

Before she had even finished talking, John was already moving around her, determinedly heading for the scene.

'That would be preferable,' Sherlock said, though lacking his usual enthusiasm. His eyes tracked John's resolute steps before falling in behind him. Then Donovan's eyes met Lestrade's. When John was just out of hearing, he said to her in an undertone, 'I know it's not good. But considering the threat, and with officers swarming the place, this may be the safest place for him right now. Just don't let him out of your sight, all right?'

They passed through a tunnel and down some concrete stairs where officers in knee-high wellingtons sloshed carefully through the near-freezing shallows of the Thames. The rest milled about up and down the narrow bank. Donovan herself came to a stop on the bottommost concrete step, letting Lestrade and the others continue on. She meant to survey the full scene, but her eyes returned to the poor bugger suspended below the bridge not two metres from the shoreline, wrists bound tightly in front, his bare feet dangling less than half a metre above the surface of the water. Naked, broken, and gently spinning in the breeze.

Above them, evening traffic continued on its merry way.

She watched as John came to a stop at the water's edge, and though she saw only the back of his head, it was clear that his attention was riveted on the hanging corpse. He leant heavily on his cane, which sank into the wet, grainy earth. He replanted it, but only to repeat the same effect. So he lifted out of the ground and rested all of his weight on his one good leg, using the other for balance. Already, Donovan wondered how long he would last tonight.

Sherlock charged straight into the water.

'What is it, boy? Trouble?' quipped one of the officers further down the bank from Donovan. Other officers laughed, and she felt her jaw muscles tighten.

But Sherlock ignored it completely. 'His face!' he shouted. 'Show me his face!'

At the signal from Lestrade to go ahead, two officers standing in the shallows took hold of the victim's ankles and, with care, turned him about. Sherlock circled around impatiently, seemingly impervious to the frigid water that engulfed his legs to the knee. He dug into his pockets for a small torch, as the provided light was insufficient, and when he fixed the beam on the man's face, his body stilled; his mouth opened as though to speak, but no sound came out. Sensing that something was wrong (more so than before), Donovan stepped off the concrete and came nearer.

'Sherlock?' Lestrade was saying. 'What is it?'

'Who is it?' John asked, more softly.

Sherlock let the torch fall. His shoulders sagged. Then he turned around. Donovan was almost surprised to see his face so grim. In her experience, Sherlock usually wore one of three expressions at crime scenes: annoyance, haughtiness, and delight. To see him in any state close to morose was unsettling. He trudged out of the water, coming toward John and Lestrade.

'It's Ewan,' he said. He kept his back to the body. The officers had released it, and it began to rotate slowly at the end of the cable once again.

'Ewan?' said Lestrade. 'From the pub? One of your—?'

'Yes.'

'Drinking mate of yours, Holmes?' a nearby officer asked.

'Didn't know the man drank,' said another.

And a third, 'Didn't know he had mates.'

'Get to work, you berks!' Donovan barked. Then, to Sherlock, 'Ewan who?'

He cocked his head at her, bemused. 'I don't know.'

'You just said you knew him.'

'He never told me his surname. I never asked. We were merely acquainted. I knew things about him. But I didn't . . . know him.'

John looked down at his feet and shifted his weight.

Sherlock coughed into his hand. Then he straightened, sniffed, and began. 'He was homeless, like the others. Born in Bexley, according to his particular brand of cockney, though he's restricted himself more or less to Central London for the past dozen years, which has muddled it a bit. Thirty-one years old, drug habit, likely an abusive past—my guess is the mother—no training or skills beyond pickpocketing and a memory for faces. Streetwise. Useful, that way.'

He looked back at the hanging corpse, and his face twisted in repulsion. 'Get him down,' he said. 'There's nothing to learn by leaving him up there. We know who did this.'

Ewan Nichols, as it turned out, was in the system, having twice been cited for public urination; he had been high both times.

By the time Sherlock and John left the crime scene, Sherlock could feel nothing from the knee down. His trouser legs were still damp and his socks still sopping with river water, but until he slid into the back of a cab, he gave no notice to these things. The numbness had been welcome, and the pain could wait—there was too much to think about.

One end of the cable had been secured to the railing that ran along the pedestrian path on the bridge above. The other end, of course, had been attached to Ewan. To get him down, they had used bolt cutters. As before, Sherlock got first crack at examining the body, though he had never felt less keen. In the end, he had learnt two things: one, Ewan's body had been thrown over the side of the bridge, plummeting some fifteen metres and ending in a cleanly broken neck; and two, Ewan had been alive, right up until the cable snapped taut.

He was the third victim of the Slash Man in three weeks who had all suffered the same fate: hands bound with shoelace, beaten, raped, murdered.

Sherlock couldn't the images to clear from his head.

'Don't do that,' said John softly, staring out of the window as the cab took them back to Baker Street. Lestrade had offered to take them, but John—disturbingly stoic tonight—had refused.

For a moment, he was confused as to what John meant. That's when he realised he was scratching again, and he pulled his hands apart and cupped his palms around wet knees. But John wasn't even looking at him and hadn't noticed his hands.

'You didn't know he was a target,' John said to the window, and Sherlock realized that John was watching him in the reflection of the glass. 'So how could you know what would happen to him? You can't save everyone. You haven't, in fact. You're not some kind of hero. Remember?'

Sherlock unglued his teeth and focused on keeping them from chattering. 'I spoke to him. Maybe that was enough to mark him.'

John didn't reply, but his silence was neither concession nor repudiation.

He had had no overt reaction to what he had seen at the crime scene, and for the better part of an hour, while Sherlock worked and Lestrade asked questions and Donovan barked orders, John had remained a voiceless onlooker. Posture, rigid. Expression, stolid. Now, he rubbed his leg at the knee, indicating a notable amount of pain (he had missed his six o'clock pain meds), and Sherlock saw, too, how the other arm was slipped inside his coat, and he held himself around the middle. A portion of his shield was crumbling; the physical strain was manifesting. Nevertheless, his face remained a deliberate exercise in passivity.

A few minutes later, Sherlock spoke again. 'John, about the video—'

'We don't need to talk about that.'

'You should know that Lestrade and I never intended to keep you in the dark. We had planned to tell you directly after the briefing.'

'So I heard.'

'If I had known more before I left—'

'Sherlock, stop. This isn't new. I know what he wants with me. I've known all along, all right? One more iteration of it doesn't matter.'

'I should think it would matter a little, the first real word from him since—'

'Well, it doesn't.' John was squeezing his leg now with a bloodless grip.

Sherlock let things fall quiet between them again, bracing himself for what he would ask next. Then: 'What he whispered into your ear . . . Will you tell me what he said?'

John cringed. 'No,' he said firmly. Then, 'It's not important.' Then, immediately on its heels, 'I don't remember.'

The cab rolled to a stop in front of 221.

'You're half frozen,' said John, pulling the latch and opening the door with his good foot. 'Take a shower and get your body temperature back up. Not too hot or you'll be in a heap of pain.'

Sherlock sighed and pulled out his wallet. He paid the cabbie through the window as John opened the front door and disappeared inside. Sherlock followed slowly, allowing John to disappear up both flights of stairs without having to exchange another word. He supposed he should be relieved that John was handling things so well. Well being a relative term. He was upset, clearly, but after having seen and heard all he had today, Sherlock had rather been anticipating another intrusive image or panic attack to mark the night. He supposed he should be grateful that John was merely angry. But he couldn't seem to muster a feeling of relief.

His body was beginning to ache with the cold, even the parts that weren't wet. He wanted to get on the laptop and revise his notes, or call Mycroft and shout at him, or even just make himself a sodding cup of tea; but he knew that all of these things were just distractions so he wouldn't have to think about Ewan, his horrific final hour, or the last things the streetwise kid had said to him. He decided to follow the good doctor's direction and take a warm shower and scrub and scrub until he had destroyed every last nerve down to the synapse, until he could feel nothing at all.

John collapsed. He didn't even make it to the bed. His legs gave out just two steps into the room, and he fell forward, arms outstretched, and caught the edge of the mattress. It broke his fall, and he landed almost without a sound, but for the clattering of the cane. Bony-weary he sank, and exhausted, he had no power to rise. He stayed on the floor, settling himself with his back against the wall by the head of the bed, legs drawn in, head bowed low.

Whatever face he had presented to Sherlock, to Lestrade, and to a good portion of the Metropolitan Police, he was a churning sea beneath the untextured surface.

Though he had known of their existence, he had never seen the mobile photos for himself, nor had he wanted to. He hadn't even asked for the details. Now the images swam like sharks before his face. To see himself like that, to know that the pathetic mess of a creature on that screen was him, and to know that it accounted for mere seconds of hundreds of hours of anguish—it was unbearable. He had entered that room only seconds before the tech guy left and the door closed, and in the hum of noise and movement he had hidden himself in the back behind taller men and women. The panic of the tube ride had lessened considerably and the anger had returned, and each passing second stoked the flames a little higher. Until, that is, Lestrade had said the words John Watson's old phone. At once, he felt his gut clench, and though he had wanted to shout at Lestrade not to continue, or to bolt right then for the door, he found, to his horror, that the words had incited not his fury but his fear, and he was rendered paralysed. His breath faltered at the mention of his Mary. A pounding in his head escalated each time Lestrade clicked the remote and a new image burst onto the screen. His arms and legs numbed when Lestrade spoke his new and despised name, Johnny boy.

Then the video, and oh God, he thought he would faint.

He had been out of his head, fighting to see the colourless walls of a room at Scotland Yard and not the dripping red-on-stainless steel of a basement kitchen, but the images of bloody walls and flickering fluorescent lights swam in and out of his vision, solidifying, shimmering, fading, and solidifying again, and he didn't know whether he was standing on his own two feet or lying flat on the cold tile floor. All he knew was that his legs trembled and threatened to fold, and as the cacophony of mechanical bells erupted around him like sirens, he heard in that distorted music the haunting, whistled tune O Danny Boy and Moran's dark and inescapable laughter. It swirled around him, all those sounds, like a cyclone, and on that fell wind, debris that sliced, cut, stabbed, and burned.

Until his own familiar tone sounded in his pocket, shattering the spell. Gone were the damnable noises, the bleeding walls, and only the throbbing pain in his chest and pulsing in his thighs and stinging in his back remained. The room and its one hundred eyes stared at him in horror and revulsion and indictment. He had to get out.

But those same eyes followed him to the crime scene. They're not here, they're not here, he thought as they cut the cables and lowered the stiff body onto a tarpaulin. He needed to build the walls higher, thicker, so no one could see him, so they would forget the man and see only the fortress. Then, when that same terrible laughter penetrated those barriers, he thought, Not real, not real, not real. And while they set Ewan's body on the bank of the river, he had to remind himself, Not me, not me, not me. The forensics technicians' bulbs burst in blinding flashes of light as they snapped photo after photo of the devastated corpse, and meanwhile Sherlock began his own examination.

But something was wrong with Sherlock—his movements and deductions were as perfunctory as ever, but John noted a tightness in his mouth and lines of stress furrowing his brow, and his eyes were restless in a way that had nothing to do with his keenly incisive brain. He blinked far more rapidly than was his wont. This night had shaken him, though John wondered if he alone could see it.

And it wasn't fair. He needed Sherlock to be cold and detached, the man who had once treated dead bodies with the same deference as a head of lettuce, not the man who had regretted the supposed death of a woman who would one day take pleasure in hand-feeding him to ravenous wolves. He needed that old Sherlock to serve as coal to heat his own anger. But he found it impossible to hate a man in his grief.

He shivered against the wall, holding his head in his hands. He couldn't let Sherlock know how deeply Moran's words penetrated, or what words they recalled to his mind, words whispered menacingly into his ear as the stink of peppermint filled his nostrils. He tried so hard to forget them that the thought of reciting them aloud was unbearable. They took him back to hard orange tiles and unspeakable pain and a longing to die. And always, in the close distance, Moran's voice, calling his name. Johnny boy. Just a dog. Johnny boy.

'There you are, Johnny boy.'

His head snapped up from his knees. On the other side of his bedroom, in the corner by the door, stood Sebastian Moran. His eyes were as dark as midnight, his mouth slanted in a malevolent grin. Between his thumb and forefinger, he rolled a silver scalpel.

John let out a breathless cry. There passed a moment of paralysis, but then a surge of adrenaline—born of terror—flooded his stomach, and next moment he scrambled up to his knees, threw himself at the headboard of his bed where, in a drawer, hidden during the day lest Mrs Hudson should find it, rested his loaded pistol, already hot as iron. He didn't think; all he could do was act. He seized the pistol, and in one swift movement, flipped off the safety, aimed at the man in the corner, and fired.

The bullet punched through Moran's chest, straight through the sternum, and he rocked back at the impact. But he did not fall. The grin slid away, replaced by an expression of utmost hatred that sent John reeling backwards until he fell against the wall. There, he slid, quaking, back to the floor, the gun held unsteadily before him, his finger a pressure on the trigger, ready to squeeze again.

Somewhere far away, he heard a mangled cry of dismay: John!

'You'll want to play nice,' Moran said.

There was a pounding, footsteps on the staircase, racing nearer.

'I'm not through with you yet.'

His own rapid breaths filled his ears like a windstorm.

Moran touched the bloodless bullet hole in the exact centre of his chest. 'Little fucker. I'll give you over to Daz for that. Here he comes.'

The handle on the door turned. John's head twitched first, then a split second later his arm came around, and he fired again.

The wood exploded. From the other side of the door, he heard a heavy collapse.

Moran stepped forward. John fired a third round, aiming for his head, which flew back, but only briefly, before settling itself once again with a deadly eye fixed on John.

'John, don't shoot!'

He gasped at the voice calling his name, as familiar as his own but one he hadn't heard in more than three years but in his dreams. His chest constricted, and his eye darted quickly to the door, which was opened a crack, just enough for him to see, at the foot of the door, Sherlock, on hands and knees, looking in.

'It's me! It's me!' he said, a hand raised in supplication.

'Sherlock, run!' John cried. His eyes had returned to Moran, pulled there with magnetic force.

'I'm coming in.'

'Stay out! He's here, oh God, he'll kill you! Run!'

But Sherlock was rising to his bare feet and pushing open the door. His hands were splayed and held out in front of him as he stepped gingerly into the room. He was half dressed, droplets beaded his shoulders and slid down his chest, and his hair was shining with water. 'It's just me,' he said in a low, tense voice. 'Please. Put down the gun.'

John trembled. His vision swam. The gun wobbled, but he readjusted his grip and took aim at Moran, who stood perfectly still in the corner with his silver instrument in a closed fist. And he was no longer looking at John, but at Sherlock. He raised the scalpel like a knife about to plunge.

For the fourth time, John fired. The bullet buried itself once again in Moran's chest, but this time he didn't even flinch.

Sherlock jumped away from the line of fire. 'John! Stop! It's me! No one's there. It's just me!'

'He'll kill you, he'll kill you,' John sobbed. He refocused the gun, aiming for Moran's heart.

'Look at me, John.'

He couldn't.

In two long strides, Sherlock crossed to him, lowered himself to a knee, and took John's head between his hands. 'Don't look at him. Look at me.'

'No. No!'

'He's not there. Trust me. No one's there. Only me.'

'But I see him. I see him.'

'Look at me.'

Moran threw back his head and laughed, and John's hands twitched around the grip.

Sherlock's fingers tightened around his head. He took quick, shredded breaths, shook his head to clear it, and said, 'All right, John. It's all right. Keep looking at him. Tell me what you see.'

'What?'

'Describe him to me. His face, describe his face.'

'It's, it's . . .' He was breathing so hard his ribs ached. 'Dark. Black eyes. Sharp and, and hungry . . .'

'Does he have a scar?'

Moran was fingering the holes in his chest. His eyes were fixed on Sherlock, and he looked murderous. But there was no scar.

'N-no.'

'The real Sebastian Moran has a scar running from cheek to cheek across the bridge of his nose. I know because I gave it to him. I slashed him across the face with his own carbon-steel knife. Do you see it?'

'No.'

'That's because he didn't have it when you knew him,' Sherlock said, his voice urgent, pleading. 'The Moran you see is a memory, a dream. Your mind is recreating only what you yourself have seen, John. The Moran in this room? He's not real!'

The vision before his eyes shivered, but only just. John's arms suddenly felt very heavy. The gun lowered by increments.

'Are you real?' he asked breathlessly.

'John, look at me.'

It seemed to take all his strength, but slowly, John's eyes pulled away from the corner of the bedroom and found Sherlock kneeling beside him, eyes bright and hands strong and steady around his head. His left ear was full of red and dripping onto the floor. He looked real, but John continued to doubt. So Sherlock dropped one of his hands from John's head, turned his torso and bent his head to the side to point to the scar on his neck, an ugly seam of gnarled skin. With his other hand, he maintained the connection to John. 'I didn't have this before,' he said. 'Remember, John? Tell me where I got it.'

The thought came slowly, conjured from another world. 'Libya,' John said. 'The weapons smugglers.'

'And here?' He pushed back his wet fringe, showing John a sealed gash along his hairline.

'That's where . . . He hit you. With the gun. The night you found me. Molly stitched you up.'

'Yes! Now tell me—am I real?'

'. . . Yes?'

'Tell me where you are, John.'

'I'm . . . home.'

'Where's home?'

'Baker Street.'

'Good! Good. Baker Street. In our flat, and Mrs Hudson's on her way home, and we're going to ask her to tea and maybe watch some telly. Because it's just a normal night. A quiet night.' He nodded fervently at John, tried to smile, failed. 'Now, is he still there?'

John swallowed and looked back to the corner of the room. Moran smirked and lifted a finger to his closed lips; the black eyes were filled with warning, daring him to tell the truth. John's eyes returned to Sherlock's. He nodded subtly, fearfully, hoping Moran wouldn't see. His fingers, hot with sweat, slipped along the gun.

'That's all right, don't worry, you know he's not real. You know it. So we're going to make him go away.' He replaced his second hand on the other side of John's head again, encouraging John's focus to centre on him, and not the shadow in the corner. 'I want you to close your eyes.'

'I can't!'

'Trust me, John. Please.'

He felt like he was being asked to dive into deep, choppy waters, and he didn't know whether he'd be dragged down or be able to stay afloat. He's not there, he told himself. Sherlock says he's not. He took a deep breath, let the gun fall to the floor, and with both hands gripped Sherlock's forearms near the wrists. He closed his eyes. With his sight cut off, his other senses were enhanced, and all he could feel, hear, and even smell was Sherlock.

'I want you to remember our first case together. Do you remember it?'

John nodded in Sherlock's hands.

'Tell me.'

'The pink lady. The cabbie. He was going to kill you.'

'But you stopped him, John. You barely knew me, but you came after me anyway. You killed him to save me.' His hands tightened around John's head, warm and sure. 'You have to know that I would do the same. You have to know that if he were in this room, I swear I'd tear him to pieces. But it's us, just us. You and me. We're home, on Baker Street, and we're safe.'

John nodded, but his eyes remained squeezed shut. Some small part of him understood, logically, that Moran couldn't be in the room. Sherlock, however, wasn't appealing to logic; he was trying to satisfy a deeper need entirely. John continued to tremble, but for different reasons now.

'I need you to breathe. Slowly in. Slowly out.'

He hadn't realised how rapid and shallow his breaths were, how tight the muscles in his abdomen or how painful the burning in his chest. But when Sherlock began to count, and as he followed him as if he were a symphonic conductor, the feeling of constriction loosened. Only then did he know for himself that he really was on Baker Street. He opened his eyes. The corner was empty.

'Are you all right?' Sherlock asked, slowly removing his hands from John's head, and John released his arms.

He felt as though he were awaking from a terrible nightmare. He looked at Sherlock with wide, shining eyes.

'Jesus, Sherlock, I almost shot you.'

'I'm lucky your aim was off, for once.'

But Sherlock's levity did not dispel the horror of what had almost happened. 'I might have killed you. Dear God, I might have . . .' He looked again at the bloody ear.

'But you didn't.'

'Sherlock—' He made to touch the ear, to clear away the blood and discover the damage.

'You're thirsty,' said Sherlock. 'Come, John. Let's go downstairs.'

Indeed, he was horrendously thirsty. He hadn't even realised until now. So he let Sherlock pull him to his feet and leant against him for balance. They left the gun behind, on the floor, with the cane, and as they passed out of the room together, John saw three bullet holes in the wall in the corner of the room, and one that had blasted through the door. He felt sick.

He had come to a decision. It was something he should have done in the beginning, he knew it, but he had simply lacked the courage.

But now, after what had happened tonight, he had no choice. He was dangerous. He understood that now. And not just a danger to himself. He had proven himself a danger to Sherlock. And he could hardly stand that.

So something had to be done.

The bullet had only grazed the antihelix and outer auricular tubercle of Sherlock's ear, flaying open the skin and likely damaging the cartilage below. It had also left a burnt streak across his cheek that was barely noticeable but which drew John's attention as though it were flaming red. Minimal damage, Sherlock had said, flippantly, as John silently cleaned the wound and packed it with disinfectant and gauze. But John felt miserable about it. One inch to left, he thought, and Sherlock would be dead. The collapse he had heard would have been a body falling senseless to the ground, not a live man throwing himself to the floor to be out of range of a second possibly lethal shot.

It was now well past midnight. Fearing further nightmares, John made no move to go to sleep, despite the weariness that weighed down his every limb; so Sherlock did not either. And though Sherlock made noodles rather than send for takeaway, John couldn't eat. He spoke little, and only of filling the holes with plaster repair polyfilla, applying a new paint job, and replacing the door before Mrs Hudson could discover what he'd done. But other than that, neither said much at all. Finally, John put on the telly and pretended to watch, and Sherlock with him. But it was clear to John that Sherlock's thoughts were engaged elsewhere within that brain. He knew he was thinking about what had happened, maybe even working up a list of solutions. It was only a matter of time before he proposed one of them. So John had to beat him to it.

He snapped off the television.

Sherlock lowered his templed fingers to rest in his lap, observing John from his own chair. John, who had been ready to say what he knew he needed to say, found himself suddenly unable, so he began picking at a stray thread on the armrest and worrying his tongue against his teeth, steeling himself to speak. Sherlock simply waited.

At last: 'I'm taking myself off the case,' he said. He lifted his head, hoping his eyes conveyed his resolution, but he felt them burning, instead, with shame. 'For a time. While I get . . . help. And until . . .' He swallowed, wrinkled his nose. 'Until I have things . . . under control.'

There was no immediately reaction. Then, with a slow nod of unenthusiastic acquiescence, Sherlock responded, 'What do you need from me?'

'Nothing.'

'Try again.'

They stared at one another a long time without speaking. There would be no surrender from Sherlock, not in this. John realised that he was glad of it.

So he tried again, as best he could. 'Talk to me.' Don't keep me in the dark. 'Tell me what you learn, the important things. But not everything.' I'll leave it to your judgement, what I need to know, and what I shouldn't. I'll try to trust you. 'And, when I'm ready, bring me back on.' And be here when I need you, and make sure I take my pills, and help me breathe, and pull me out of nightmares, and don't give up on me, no matter how bad things get. Don't send me away, and whatever you do, please, oh God please, don't leave.

'Deal.'

End of Part 1