It's that part of the story again. I won't be leaving author's notes until a bit later so that I don't distract, but I'm still reading all your reviews and enjoying them greatly. Thank you guys so much, you're all very wonderful.

If anything is confusing, let me know, I'll try to clear it up.

It's been a busy month for all of us, with the new troops rearranging and settling into their stations. But today was a good day. The nurses' assessment went well, and Dr. Roth seems more relaxed now that everyone's been adjusted. Ed and Olivia are talking again, I saw them across the hall discussing something or other. Didn't seem too tense, so I won't worry about them. Now that the major is all healed up, I think John's starting to ease up a bit, too.

This afternoon, I saw the two of them strolling around the outer boundary, just chatting and enjoying each other's company. It was good to see them together again, after such a long time fighting. It was only a few weeks, looking back, but here, with not much else but work to occupy us, it felt like ages. The privates wanted to start another poker tournament to officially welcome in the new soldiers, and that drew the two of them in. But John didn't play this time. He stayed back, talking with Theresa, Ed, and Roth, hovering around Sholto as if he had a gravitational pull.

I'm not sure what it is about the two of them that keeps me so entertained, but they're not like the other pairs that appeared sporadically around the camp. I could care less about Ed's flirts, or Mary's, or Larson's odd dealings with the opposite sex. Sholto and John, though, they were something different altogether, and it wasn't the fact that they weren't heterosexual. There was a sort of innocence to them. They preferred to keep their relationship private, yet couldn't help but meet each other's eyes every so often, offering the smallest touch of the wrist or shoulder, like a shooting star.

While the cadets whooped and whistled, I managed to get Sholto alone for a short time, to bring up the topic of John. He only said a few words, but they've rung in my ears through the rest of the evening. He said, "John is easy."

"Easy, how?" I asked.

"Easy, in everything." He answered. "Easy to answer. Easy to listen. Easy to stand beside. He doesn't try to be complex, he doesn't try to be a hero. He just is. He takes what he gets and he moves forward, no hesitations, no questions asked. He doesn't need to figure people out. He sees what there is and works with it. Maybe that's what makes him such a good doctor. He heals people."

I tried to move as nonchalantly as possible while curving up behind you, peering gently over your shoulder as you read. You flipped through pages quickly, ignoring the dates unless your eye caught their color. Violet atypically meant that something suspicious had gone on within camp, you tended to ignore those. A green hexagon marked all the dates where she traveled anywhere outside of camp. But there was no blue triangle on the symbol chart. And thank God there wasn't. There were, however, blue triangles scattered throughout the journals tying Sholto and I and injuries together, and I was going to try my hardest to keep you from catching on.

"What are you looking for, John?" You asked, making me jump.

"Oh, nothing, just... browsing," I bit my cheek. "Can I, er, see Macie's book?"

You glanced up at me, but grabbed the book from its strewn corner and handed it over. "Return it when you're done."

"I will." I quickly turned through it.

Macie had designed the layout of the address book to match up with the major periods of her life. Therefore it wasn't in alphabetical order, it was in chronological. I found my name and previous address, then, under it, my Baker Street address, scribbled in. "Watson" was underlined in blue marker. Both Sholto and Roth were listed as friends of mine, and alternate page numbers directed to their addresses. Sholto got a dark blue marker for his name (similar to mine, I noted). There was a blue triangle near my name, with "S.I." written nearby. I briefly wondered what that stood for, but since I already knew what the triangle meant, I wasn't going to waste much of my time.

"Did you find anything?" Miranda asked, coming up beside me. I glanced at her and briefly shuffled toward you, closing the book quickly. Her gold eyes investigated me about as suspiciously as I investigated her. "What are you doing, Dr. Watson?"

You looked up toward us, and I tried to cover myself. "I found a symbol that's not on the chart," I explained, "I thought maybe I could figure what it was."

"What was it?" She asked.

I stammered. "Black diamond."

"The only diamond shape I've found has been the orange," You said. "It connected her to a nurse named Betty Evans."

"A grey diamond means suspicion of deceit," Miranda said, her eyes narrowing. Her smell of thick spice and weed dragged around her feet, and I wondered how you could stand it.

I flexed my jaw. "That must be it, then."

"Glad I could help."

She didn't smile. I nodded and turned, leaving the address-book beside you on my way back into the library. Miranda followed just a few steps behind, leaning on the sunroom frame with the corners of her lips curled.

"Stay on-task, doctor." She called. "We can't waste time with sentiment."

The color marks and the shapes were the easy part of the deciphering. Within the sections detailing Macie's trips to the Afghan villages, she had felt the need to include various clues within the writing itself that kept us constantly whirring. For example, Macie always chose purposefully not to mention the weather unless it served a specific purpose. So, then, if the village was described as being dry or desert-like, it meant that she had been met with some kind of hostility or frustration. If the village was described as being rainy or wet, it meant that she was not welcomed at all, or that her help was refused. Either would be important. Both wouldn't really be noticed at first glance. Luckily, they were on the chart already.

Sholto and I were searching for the green hexagons within our allotted journals and did our best to pinpoint any worthwhile details for you and Miranda. But I couldn't help myself but split my attention. Every time a blue triangle would come up, I would get a sick feeling of dread in my stomach.

On one of the pages, I was particularly worried. A number was written on the corner of a page in Sholto's hue of blue. I asked him if he knew what it could be, but he wasn't sure. I didn't want you to see it, but I had to figure out if it was something important.

"Sherlock?" I crouched down beside you, folding up my injured leg carefully. "Do you know what this means?"

You glanced over, following the line of my finger toward the blue numbers. "It's code."

"For what?"

"An entry in another journal." You turned back.

"Well, which journal?"

"Reverse the numbers and follow the dates." You took the journal from me, and I bit my tongue. "The last number is the first, and so on. It's a date stamp, with a page number following. Find the journal with the correct date, then find the page, it should be color-coded as well." You looked closer at the number. "What importance does blue have?"

"Nothing," I answered. "I've just been seeing it a few times, I wondered what it meant. Thank-you."

"Mm-hmm." You handed the book back. "Have you or the major found anything interesting?"

"Just the same," I said. "Lots of stories, lots of new names. You?"

"There are a few recurring titles but not much beside that," Miranda said. "I'm looking over her most recent journals now."

I shifted on my weight to look at her. "Didn't you work in these places, too?"

"Yep."

"Do you recognize these names, then?"

"Some of them." She grabbed up another book. "If you run across a name that's Mazhul, I know him. He's one of the bigger boys. His name gets you places. Shabat and Eliha were my friends, they got treated by Macie in the little Khales village."

"And, evidently, you're good at poker."

I glanced back at you, and you held up the journal you had been reading. Thankfully, there was no blue triangle, but I did catch my name.

"I can see a lot of similarities between your writing and hers. Did she teach you?"

"We wrote together sometimes, yeah."

"Will I find some of your handwriting in these, too, then?"

"Oh, no. She never let me write in her journals. Not even read them." I shuffled. "The only parts I was able to hear were the ones she actually read to me. I never saw a page."

"Interesting." You glanced back down.

"Is there a hexagon on that page?" I asked.

"No, not this one. I just saw your name and thought I might stick my nose in." You smirked at the book. "I hope you don't mind."

"I don't mind," I replied. "Just tell me if she's badmouthing me behind my back."

I creaked back out the door, the journal in my hand, a writhe in my chest.

In a way, James had the easy job. He got to go through and relive the introductions, both serious and laughable, and to enjoy Macie's impressions of the people around her. He tried to lighten the mood by reading some of the passages, one of which where she called me a "stick-up-the-arse", and another where she referred to Sholto as the "bachelor of captains". Every so often he would come over to my side of the room to show me something, momentarily brushing his hand against my shoulder to give me some reassurance. I guess I looked as strung out as I felt.

My section, I realized, was the bulk of what I had to worry about, and that made me feel a little better. At least you weren't combing through this. I to trudge through the rough midpoint of Macie's deployment, where stress levels were constantly on the rise, and where exhaustion was intense. Sharp stones were mixed in with long fields of nothing, and that meant there was nothing to cradle the mental onslaught. Some parts made me chuckle, sure. But the rest of it just made me tired.

There were reasons that I preferred not to talk about this time of my life. I liked to keep them to myself, buried up, so that the good parts stayed good and the bad parts stayed quiet. Their unearthing jumbled them. One page would be Macie detailing the brief karaoke of the cleaning crew as we swept up the med room, and the next would be imprinted with her thoughts on the soldier they lost that evening. Onslaught is a kind word.

But that didn't even touch on the blue triangles. I remembered that during the bad times at camp Macie kept a close eye on me, but I still wasn't prepared for her honest descriptions. I had unconsciously brushed off the bulk of it, as I soon saw. Her records were a kick to the teeth.

John asked for a massage this evening. It had been bothering him all day, but he couldn't quite get the kink out, he told me, so I worked a while on his shoulder before going to bed. I had him lay down on one of our cots and loosen his shirt so that I could get a better look at it. There was a bruise poking up at his collar which ran down, blue and purple, toward his shoulder-blade, and it made me pause. He said to ignore it, that it didn't hurt. That was his first lie.

He's had so many more injuries lately that it's starting to scare me. Even little cuts and bruises, things that wouldn't bother me an ounce if Ed had them, make me nervous when I see them on John. I don't think he's someone who would hurt himself, but I also don't think he's someone to sit quietly while someone is hurting him. It's just so hard for me to wrap my head around. Why would someone want to hurt John? And why is he trying to protect them?

I don't know why he keeps lying to me, but I don't know if I'd like to find out, either.

I swallowed and set the journal against my ankles. Dammit, Macie. James was out of the room, so I wasn't afraid to slump my shoulders back against the wall for a minute, just staring at the ceiling. Protecting him. Was that what I was doing? Was I protecting James? Or was I protecting you?

After another hour or so, I had to put the journals down. I was only gone a minute to get a glass of water, but you had slipped in and was now standing over my pile, picking through the books. I nearly had a heart attack. "Sherlock, what are you doing?" I asked, quickly.

You didn't look at me. "I found another symbol," You said, "It was the same blue color you found. Where was the date stamp?"

"I'm not sure, it could be in any of those." I swallowed. "What symbol was it?"

"A triangle." You answered.

"I've seen some of those, usually it's just irrelevant stuff." I set my glass down. I could feel Sholto's eyes on me, but ignored him. "It's not what we're looking for."

"Alright." You continued flipping through my journals.

I changed feet nervously. I had to figure out some way to get you off the scent, but nothing came to mind. You picked up the journal with the date stamp, and Sholto cleared his throat.

"Macie went to Khales pretty often, didn't she?"

"Yes," You said.

"Did she mention any Cemals in your journals? I see she's mentioned him here... twice, I think."

You glanced up at him. "I think so, actually. He was a priest, or something?"

"Yeah, yeah." He turned a few pages. "He had the wife who miscarried."

You put down my journal and moved over to James, leaning over to read the pages and comment on them. I moved back into my spot, shaking with relief, and quickly the moved the sought journal out of sight. You eventually left to continue working on your own section, buzzed with the new information, and I gave Sholto an appreciative glance. He returned it with his own.

I'm starting to get very worried about John. He's not acting like himself anymore. He's quiet, disconnected from others, guarded and careful all the time, even when no one's watching. He looks tired, and he tosses and turns throughout the night, murmuring sometimes, trembling. I think the stress is getting to him. It's getting to everyone.

Roth and I have been trying to help, but the camp morale is going down after such a long period of inconsistency. One day there'll be a battalion coming in and the med bay will be overflowing. The next, a virus will sweep through and knock out our antibiotics supply. Then, nothing. It's a tightrope, all the time, every day. The nights, too. We never know if we'll be getting a full night of sleep or if we'll be woken at four A.M. with an amputation or a handful of limb injuries. As soon as we got used to a routine, something would shake it up again, and it wasn't good for the men.

Sholto has been waiting for overhead direction for the past week to figure out if his troops are going to stay put or move on to another camp. We really need him here, and I think he wants to be here. But he's not able to decide that right now, and where the overhead sends him, he goes. John told me that he dreads having to say good-bye to the major again. After the close call Sholto had on his last leaving, I don't blame him. But war isn't a place for relationships, no matter what the nature, and John knows that.

Nevertheless, he's still weak. In a way, he reminds me of Richard, from Bastion. Richard had only been on the field for a year, but I got to see his last month, and it was heartbreaking. He developed severe PTSD after some of his unit friends were killed, and was raked by nightmares until his rational mind was all but stomped out. He had to be shipped back to London for psych treatment and rehabilitation. It was not the best way to start my deployment.

John's hands have begun to shake. His voice is low, his eyes are hazy and distracted. He's struggling, and he needs help.

"John, you alright?"

I looked up. James was watching me, his book on his knee, lips drawn up flat. Night had fallen, and the room was illuminated by the ceiling lights, speckled with crystals. I nodded. The journals had been really Afghan-focused, and all the stories of the people and Macie's reactions to the people had made me a bit heartsick. I had drawn out a list of all the names of the villagers she'd mentioned, but not many of them seemed to overlap, so it felt like I was wading through a deep sea of memories with no real shore to find.

"These things are so dark put into perspective," I murmured, flipping a page. "Any of these people she's talking about could've taken her. All of them are suspects."

"Just try to distance yourself." He said. "Objectify it."

"It's not that easy, for me."

He sighed and came toward me, sitting down with his legs just dodging the books. "What is it."

I moved the book through the air, then dropped it back on my lap. "I don't know, James."

"You're going to make yourself sick if you keep up with such a depressing attitude."

"I am depressed," I bit back.

He studied me, shadowed by the light. He looked more piteous than concerned, probably part of his "objectifying", but it made me mad. I didn't ask for him to poke into my thoughts. "Maybe if you focused less on hiding from Sherlock you would be able to focus more on finishing this case."

"I can't stop hiding from him. You don't know how he is." I grumbled. "He doesn't care, he isn't like me. He'll skin you alive."

"I kind-of deserve it."

"James, I'm not kidding. He'll kill you before you get a word in."

"Why?"

"Because he's jealous, and because he's overprotective, and because he's a cock."

"Is that your type, then?"

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Sholto raised his eyebrows with a little smile, as if pressing on for a joke, but I wasn't quite sure if I found it funny.

Myself. I was protecting myself. There was nothing I wanted, nothing I needed more than to keep my past separate from my present, and if you got hold of this, I could be certain that it would never be separate again. I felt tears bulging into my eyes, pressing against my chest, and although I gritted my teeth to keep it in, Sholto's smile instantly disappeared.

"I'm sorry," He said.

"This isn't just about you, James, or us," I seethed.

"Alright, I'm sorry, John." He reached over to cup my face, and until then I didn't even realize I was trembling. "I'm sorry."

"Ugh, goddammit." I curled up, and he moved his hand, still watching me, but retaining a few inches of distance. I pressed my hands to my forehead. "Don't make me panic."

"Do you need medicine?"

"No, just let me calm down."

I leaned forward to press my elbows on the floor, and Sholto moved his hand along my back, rubbing smooth circles from my shoulders to my waist. I steadied my breath, focusing on its measure, but then his hand disappeared, and I felt the shadow of another presence on my head. You lowered yourself to my level, sinking to your knees, but didn't touch me. "John?"

"I'm alright, give me a minute," I said, refraining from looking up for fear that I still had tears in my eyes.

You hummed, then turned to Sholto. "Tell me what happened."

"The journals have been bothering him," He replied. "They're a bit difficult to-"

"Tell me what happened on the night of August 7th, 2009."

He was silent. I could feel the heat from your glare even before I looked up. You had nearly burned a hole clear through him. Had I missed something? Had Miranda ratted me out? How did you have a date? Even I didn't have a date.

"Uh, I'm not sure," James answered. "Where is that date from?"

You held up a book. "Year 2009, months June through September."

Oh, God, no. That was it. You knew. You definitely knew. It was over.

Sholto straightened himself. "You tell me, then."

I was going to faint. Your face turned dark, and you stood, walking back toward James' pile with the 2009 journal held near the small of your back. James sensed your anger and stood as well, even when I grabbed his arm to tell him not to. He brushed the creases out of his shirt and stepped around my books, his shoulders set but his arms relaxed. He had been prepared for this confrontation. But I wasn't.

"Sherlock, what did you read?" I asked, my voice wavering.

"Most everything," You replied. "Although I did skim some parts. Ms. Lowdry is incredibly, sometimes gruesomely, detailed."

"I understand how you feel, Sherlock. I honestly do," Sholto said.

"Do you?" You asked, turning around. "Because I think you're incapable of it."

Your tone was terrifying. I could see the white fire in your mouth as your lips arched in disgust, hardly even able to look at Sholto without rage boiling up to your shoulders. He saw it and retreated, muscles tense, knees unbuckling. Electricity raced through the walls, and I pulled myself up, walking toward you with my shoulders bent forward.

"We'll talk, Sherlock."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Please, just leave with me. Okay?"

"No, John." Sholto said. "Let him deal with this how he wants."

You smirked at him. "That's awfully brave of you. Tell me, when you were doing those things to John, did you feel anything at all? Any shame, any sort of remorse?"

"No," He responded.

"Good. Then I won't, either."

Without hesitation, you swept forward, your gritted fingers slamming into Sholto's jaw.