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Conversation hit a lull for a time. Sherlock hadn't had much information to offer about his grandfather - the sum total of his knowledge amounted to the man's full name (Alphonse Cauchois), his rough age (mid-80s), that he had three children (Bernard, Hubert, and Violet), five grandchildren (Reine, Mycroft, Alethea, Corin, and Sherlock), was wealthy enough to own a home on the French Riviera, and that on the rare occasion he spoke aloud it was always limited to short one- or two-word phrases. Josh had no good theory as to how his uncle might know the man, and didn't recognise any of the names, so they'd hit something of an impasse. Seemed as good an opportunity as any to turn to the business of trying to sort though the disaster his mind had made of itself over the past several hours, so Sherlock stretched out on the uneven floor of the van and stared at the fairy lights until he fell into a detached, trancelike state.

Amongst the debris littering his mind-field he found an old memory, something shaken loose by the mention of Grand-père's name. Recollection of the time the man had somehow intimidated Siger into leaving Sherlock alone for the remainder of the trip, which Siger inexplicably continued to honour every visit thereafter. Holidays in France thus gained an unfamiliar (and to be honest sometimes quite confusing) quality of feeling safe. Debated mentioning this to Josh. No, too difficult to explain without discussing a load of childhood trauma. Didn't understand it himself, anyway, as he'd never been able to figure out why Father should care what Grand-père thought of his parenting methods. Could've asked someone, maybe, but a dark streak of paranoia had slithered into his brain and convinced him that verbally acknowledging Grand-père's protection would anger the man and prompt him to rescind it. Hadn't seemed worth the risk.

Conjured up a box and packed the memory neatly away. Still accessible, so he'd not have to go digging later. But nothing to be bothered with for now.

Over the next however-long Sherlock made decent progress sorting things out. Hit a bit of an annoying snag when one of the memories scattered about turned out to be all the words to that bloody folk song Eric had played on repeat for a few days, and picking that up caused the song to begin playing in the background on loop. Couldn't figure out how to turn it off, so he set to tolerating it the same way he'd tolerated Eric playing it over and over the first time - by relegating it to a subconscious section of neural circuitry where it could meander around without bothering him. Shifted instead to trying to collect together any relevant information he could find on his other maternal family members, starting with trying to remember what his uncles did for a living.

"Is that Iron & Wine?" Josh asked suddenly, voice cutting through Sherlock's mental space like a jagged knife. Sherlock blinked and shot the man a questioning, irritated look. Josh was still sat on his plastic-bag-turned-beanbag-chair, but rather than scribbling in his notepad as he'd been doing when Sherlock lay down, he'd produced a set of pencils, a sketchbook, and a small lantern from somewhere and seemed to be drawing something under the stronger light.

"The song you were singing to yourself just now," Josh clarified, not looking up from his sketching. "It's by that Iron & Wine guy, right?"

Sherlock scowled deeply in an effort to mask a flash of embarrassment. Hadn't been consciously aware of having started to quietly sing the words until Josh pointed it out. With short huff of a sigh he painfully propped himself up on one elbow and dug his cigarettes and lighter out. Clearly one fag's worth of nicotine hadn't been enough to stop his body acting of its own accord when he wasn't watching it.

"Trapeze Swinger, I think?" Josh went on, apparently not caring in the slightest if Sherlock failed to participate in the conversation. "Penny dragged me to a couple of that guy's shows last year trying to hear that song cause it was, like, mad hipster cred to learn the words before the EP dropped. You in that scene?"

"No," Sherlock grumbled, having only the faintest idea what Josh was even on about. Sherlock had by now caught on to the man's immensely irritating habit of responding to one-word answers with a stream of vapid chatter, so before Josh could become seized by the urge to speak again he reluctantly elaborated. "I don't know what song it is, Eric found it on the internet or something and I never asked the name. Just gets stuck in my head sometimes because he kept playing it on loop for whatever reason."

Having got his cigarette lit, he lay back down again and turned a petulant scowl on the fairy lights above. Hoped that had been enough information to satisfy Josh's bizarre compulsion to engage in pointless conversation.

"Who's Eric?" Josh asked idly. Fucking talkative bastard.

Sherlock grit his teeth but answered anyway. "My ex."

"The one your dad got arrested?"

"Yes," Sherlock spat. "Stop asking so many fucking questions." His tone came out far more pissed off than he'd intended - couldn't help it, ever since seeing him in that surreal morphine dream earlier every thought related to Eric had been accompanied by a piercing bolt of complex emotional pain he'd no hope of understanding. Josh had triggered that stabbing wound so many times by now it had begun to feel like an icepick lodged in his chest.

Sherlock resolutely ignored Josh's bemused smirk his direction by taking a drag of his cig. Smoking whilst lying on the floor was a little awkward, but he wasn't about to sit up if he could help it. Needed to give his bruised abdomen as much rest as possible before he inevitably found himself running for his life again.

After a few silent beats Sherlock saw Josh shake his head out of the corner of his vision. The man made a small, frustrated noise, then leant back on his seat to fix Sherlock with a hard stare. Sherlock waited a few seconds to see if he'd stop, then with a roll of his eyes finally deigned to turn his head to meet the man's gaze more properly. Matched Josh's intense stare with one of flat disinterest.

"Alright, fine," Josh said after a few seconds' staring. "Look, the reason I keep… I dunno, trying to chat or whatever, is cause I've been trying to figure out how to ask something that's gonna come off really fucking weird and… well I guess I was just looking for an opening."

Sherlock's flat look morphed into a baffled one instead. "You've been interrupting me every ten bloody minutes over not wanting to come off weird? What exactly gave you the impression I even have a metric for that?"

Josh huffed a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "Yeah, fair enough. Then… fuck it." He took a steadying breath. "So, you said both your parents were in foreign intelligence. Did they… try to make you like them? Like raise you to be a spy?"

This wasn't asked in a tone of idle curiosity, but instead one of flat desperation. Clearly implying Josh himself had been raised as such and hoped to find a peer in some dishevelled, useless junkie he'd found chained up like a dog a few hours ago. Sherlock opened his mouth to reply with a scathing 'What kind of ridiculous question is that? Of course not' , but before he could transfer thought into speech something buried deep within his brain broke free.

Awareness shifted with a sensation like stepping through a patch of thin ice and plunging into frigid water. Sinking down through a kaleidoscope of different, yet horrifically similar memories. Eight years old, nine, ten, eleven. Different versions of himself stood nervously next to Father trying very hard to pay attention and not forget any special instructions beyond his usual role. Always to keep himself as unobtrusive as possible and observe every person they encountered - on the lookout for blackmail material, ways to thwart security, identifying tells of foreign intelligence agents. Siger's trained rat.

In Sherlock's early childhood, back before Mummy retreated fully into herself, she'd set time aside to teach him various skills she'd deemed 'fundamentally necessary for the sort of life you're going to lead'. First was how to turn his tendency to pick up a constant stream of extraneous details into a habit of deducing things, something she'd also taught Mycroft. This was very important, she'd said, because without it people like them would go mad. Next came pickpocketing, and then lockpicking, which were things Mycroft hadn't needed to learn. Mummy said they'd only be useful to Sherlock, because his brother hadn't inherited the storm of restless curiosity which filled up all the spaces in his head and drove him to the sort of situations one might need to pick or steal their way out of. Lastly, how to avoid being seen. Because, Mummy told him, being good at disappearing was going to be his only means to protect himself. From what, she'd not explained.

After Mycroft left for boarding school Mummy's interest in interacting with anyone fell sharply away, leaving Sherlock quite suddenly alone. Being too young to know better he'd sought out companionship in the other parent. At first Father had simply ignored him, but with persistence Sherlock managed to severely annoy the man - not yet to the point of physical violence, as that wouldn't start up for another year or so, when his impulsive chattering began to reveal the secrets of houseguests. Instead he'd found himself locked in a broom cupboard. That was alright, of course, because he always carried his lockpicks. But in letting himself out, and then in trying to appease the anger caused by doing so, he'd revealed what Mummy had taught him. Shown his potential to be useful. A mistake, of course, but then he'd only been six. Didn't yet know to be wary.

Over the next few years he found himself conditioned into the role of Father's little spy, accompanying the man on any business endeavour he could plausibly drag a child into. Sherlock hadn't ever known quite how to feel about this. Because while many of the places they went were dangerous or frightening, paying attention to so many details for such long stretches of time was profoundly exhausting, and being near Father felt like waiting for a viper to strike, doing well on these outings sometimes earned him a word of praise. So on balance it came out a bit of a wash.

As Sherlock got older Father and Vasily became more open about what exactly they did with the agents and assassins he spotted for them. Perhaps they'd thought he might find it as entertaining as they did. He didn't. He'd been cursed with far too much empathy to find it anything but horrifying. Learnt instead how to retreat to a far-off place in his head where he didn't have to process what was happening and wait for them to finish their business. Thankfully this translated into a vacant stare Vasily found unsettling, which meant he usually ordered Sherlock to go wait somewhere else. Small comfort, since even if he didn't have to bear witness he still knew he'd condemned some stranger to a terrible fate.

Lying to protect people hadn't ever been a plan that was going to work, but he'd felt obligated to at least try. Father caught on immediately, of course. Reacted as expected. Tried for a time to break Sherlock of this ridiculous compassionate streak, but it turned out he couldn't turn off his empathy without also turning off the ability to see people's secrets, so that hadn't worked. Declared him instead too unreliable for pure intelligence work, set him to more physical lessons. Weapons, combat, interrogations, how to resist torture. Got very good at resisting torture.

For a brief moment his perception seemed to wage a small war between realities. One in which he was currently frozen in place fixing a blank stare on the roof of a rusted-out van whilst his cig burnt down between his lips, the various injuries he'd taken to ignoring having arisen from being beaten half to death by a load of pissed off Americans in a swamp. Another where his wounds had been inflicted by means much more painful, to a body much smaller, and he was lying on his back in the grass under the willow tree, staring up into the gnarled branches and wishing he could vanish into cracks in the bark like the insects did. These two offset planes rippled and touched but couldn't quite merge, leaving him caught in motionless suspension between the two states.

In a spark of clear cognizance he realised he must have fallen into one of those dissociative fits Eric always used to break him out of. Couldn't usually tell when they were happening - impossible to distinguish from having simply got caught up in his thoughts. But Eric had always known, somehow. And knew how to get him back out again. If only he were here.

With that thought his perception lurched again, shifted rapidly towards the willow tree reality. He found himself suddenly in his mind-field, lying under the willow in his head. And the ghostly apparition of Eric lay in the grass next to him - same strange, translucent figure as in the dream earlier. Sherlock looked over to him quizzically, and ghost-Eric met his eyes with a smile.

"Hey, Sherly. Git stuck again?"

Without thinking Sherlock shifted his hand in search of Eric's, was deeply relieved to find it rendered solid by the memory of their fingers intertwining. Watched as the hazy translucence of the rest of Eric's body coalesced into a faithful recreation of the man by the same mechanism.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe."

Not-Eric gave him a look of fond exasperation. "Well, did y'get tossed in here cause y'got overwhelmed or did y'do it on purpose to avoid sommat?"

"I… the first one, I think," Sherlock recalled in his strange wordless mind-voice. "Josh asked about something I must have buried, I guess. Got hit with a load of memories all at once. Too much to process."

"So yer stuck," Eric not-said with a shrug. "And yer gonna stay that way til yer brain thinks it's safe t'come out."

Sherlock sighed, looked out through the willow boughs to the roiling sea of emotion looming beyond. Didn't want to go out in that, but he knew he couldn't stay hidden in his head forever. If nothing else because his cigarette would sear his lips when it burnt down.

"Well, that's unfortunate. I've a lit cig in my mouth."

Eric laughed at him. "How many times did I tell ya t'stop fuckin' holding 'em in yer lips if y'were gonna keep spacing out? Daft prat."

Despite his unconcerned tone not-Eric hefted himself up, rolled over so he was half on top of Sherlock and cupped his jaw in one hand to kiss him. Sherlock realised it was the left hand on his face and drew away slightly to glance down - this dream version of Eric didn't have a cast on. Wondered vaguely how he remembered the pattern of freckles on skin he'd only briefly seen uncovered.

"Sherlock, hey. Look at me." Eric's ghost commanded. Sherlock looked back up, met warm brown eyes, and the world around them vanished.

Sherlock blinked. Looked around.

Fairy lights casting a weak glow in the darkness, background hum of an unfamiliar forest, cigarette filter burning acrid between his lips.

Had… had he just summoned Eric's ghost like some sort of deranged spirit animal to break himself out of a dissociative episode? Was that allowed?

Before he could dwell much further on this new development in his general state of insanity, Josh spoke up. He appeared to have teleported from his seat on the far side of the van to kneeling next to Sherlock, apparently having been shaking him by the shoulder.

"Oh thank fuck," he barked in a tone equal parts relieved and upset. "Thought I triggered a sleeper agent or some shit."

"You triggered something," Sherlock growled, hoping the tone would convey he'd very much prefer Josh never ask him anything like that again. He angrily took the burned-down cig from his lips and stubbed it out as he pushed himself into a sitting position.

Josh, of course, was not an especially empathetic individual, and either didn't catch the intent of Sherlock's tone or (perhaps more likely) didn't care.

"Is that your way of saying 'yes, I was traumatically raised to be a tiny little child spy and I don't want to talk about it'?"

"Yes," Sherlock snapped.

"Well, great." Josh huffed a sigh and rocked back on his feet to land with a soft thump on the floor, now sitting on his bottom with his legs bent loosely in front of him. He leant his elbows on his knees. "I mean… not great, obviously. But… kind of a relief? I mean cause the reason I even wanted to ask is-"

"Because Frank subjected you to harsh training in preparation for a career in the CIA, resulting in a traumatic childhood, and you wanted to confirm I've a similar background before committing to telling me anything of actual substance," Sherlock supplied irritably. Didn't need it spelled out, for god's sake. He'd enough nicotine in his system now to piece things together.

Josh flashed him a flat, humourless smile. "Yeah, pretty much." Before Sherlock could reply he elaborated further, nattering on in a way that seemed oddly nervous, "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I get that it was a fucked up thing to ask, especially with all this stressful shit going on, it's just… I dunno, I guess I wanted to be sure you'd understand before I explain what I'm aiming to do."

Sherlock knew what Josh was hinting at before he'd even properly registered the man's words - there was only one realistic goal a person could have whilst stuck under the control of a hyper-competent psychopath, after all. One he himself had fixated on at various points in his life. He set a resigned stare straight ahead and stated the obvious in a flat monotone.

"You're trying to get Frank killed."

Josh didn't react with surprise, or dismay, or any of the other things people usually did to prove Sherlock's wild leaps of logic correct. Instead he just confirmed with a quiet nod and a determined glare.

"It won't help," Sherlock went on without really meaning to. Instinct was to drop the topic and try to deflect, not reveal deeply personal emotional struggles, but for some reason his brain felt a need to warn Josh what success would mean. "Nothing gets better afterwards. It just… creates a void. Where the anger was. Consumes everything else like a black hole."

"Makes you travel to Tallahassee for no reason?" Josh asked blandly. Sherlock said nothing. Unspoken motives settled heavy in the silence between them.

"I don't fucking care," Josh finally said, voice gone low and bitter. "Doesn't matter what happens to me. He'll get what's coming to him and won't be able to hurt anyone else. You're not gonna convince me to give that up."

"Wasn't trying to. Just letting you know."

Unbidden, a hazy memory of Mycroft in the car after shooting Father rose to the surface. Face a mask of placid serenity, excusing his actions with a simple 'it was necessary'. And then Eric, near tears, screeching how nobody deserved to die. Diametrically opposed moral stances of the only two people whose principles had ever mattered to him. Couldn't honour one without letting down the other.

As was apparently his habit, Josh tolerated only a scant minute or so of pensive silence before attempting to fill it with a stream of nervous chatter.

"Look, it's not like I've got, like, a solid plan or anything at this point. I only really started thinking about it when Ally showed up. Because when a literal French assassin gets involved that's when you know shit's gone significantly sideways, right? And I figure, since Frank still thinks I'm on his side, that puts me in a good position to catch him off-guard. Like right now as far as he knows I only helped you escape as a way to establish trust and get you alone to build up a rapport or whatever. Won't be expecting anything else."

Sherlock's brain had jumped to a ludicrous conclusion over the combination of the name 'Ally' with 'French assassin', but he resolutely quashed it. No. He was not going to entertain the notion of one of his cousins roaming about Florida with a rifle taking out hits on people. Alethea having competed in youth sharpshooting tournaments when they were children didn't mean she'd grown up to become a bloody assassin. God's sake.

Rather than think further on the topic he shot Josh a disgruntled look instead, because he realised the man had just said something profoundly stupid.

"Wait… helping me escape and establishing rapport is literally exactly what you've done," Sherlock pointed out. "You were hoping to catch Frank off-guard by doing what he expects?"

Evidently Josh hadn't yet recognised this - the man went abruptly still, met Sherlock's gaze, flicked his eyes down to the floor as if considering his own actions, then muttered a quiet, disbelieving "fuck".

Despite the tense atmosphere Sherlock couldn't help a small laugh. "Alright, well now I don't trust you at all."

"God damn it, you shouldn't," Josh said with a groan. He brought his hands up to cover his face.

Probably just Sherlock projecting his own experiences, but he was fully inclined to trust that Josh hadn't meant to follow Frank's script for him. How many times had Sherlock found himself played similarly by Siger, after all? Become all too familiar with that crushing feeling of realising far too late you'd been dragged along on puppet strings.

And come to think of it… that actually made perfect sense. A piece of the grand puzzle of his life quite suddenly fell into place.

"Oh… I suppose that must have been the point," he muttered absently. Josh peeked out from behind his fingers with a questioning noise, so Sherlock took pity and elaborated. "Moulding a child into your own little…agent, or whatever. Creates something predictable, easy to control. That's why he decided to get rid of me after I started doing coke. Addiction made for too much volatility."

"So you're saying I can free myself from Frank's influence by getting hooked on hard drugs," Josh replied in a tone of flat, dejected sarcasm. He'd dropped his hands from his face and leant back into the wall as if exhausted.

"Er… yeah, probably?" Sherlock conceded. "For a bit, anyway. Father did get back round to me eventually. And if I'm honest about it, being controlled by dealers instead was… quite a lot worse."

A small, sardonic smile flitted across Josh's face, then dropped. The space fell quiet for a few moments before the man spoke again.

"Well now I'm fucking paranoid anything I decide to do is gonna be exactly what he's predicting."

Sherlock had nebulously been thinking about that. Trying to imagine how he might go about trying to outmanoeuvre Siger in a similar scenario. All he could come up with was the vague idea that Eric had always seemed to approach problems exactly the opposite way to anything Sherlock might consider logical, and how that usually ended up creating something like a workable solution between the two of them.

Feeling very silly, he turned his focus inwards for a moment and let the ridiculous apparition of Eric materialise in his mindscape again. Gave his absurd construct access to all available knowledge regarding the situation and received a faintly alarmed, bewildered stare in response.

"Why th'fuck are you in bleedin' Florida?" Eric asked in the strange, indefinable not-voice afforded by being a figment of Sherlock's imagination.

"I conjured you to help me come up with a plan, not ask stupid questions," Sherlock snapped back. Hoped he'd done so only in his mind, and not aloud, since having to explain who he was talking to would be absolutely mortifying.

"Alright, christ, calm down," Eric not-said with a roll of his eyes. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and bit his lip in thought. "Er, well… I reckon that old lady seemed nice enough? An' she didn't seem too pleased wit' the Frank bloke fer acting like he were gonna shoot her, but weren't all that upset neither, like maybe she expects that kinda shit from 'im. So I'm guessin' she don't like him much. An' also, if you're right 'bout her recognising ya cause she knew yer dad, then it prolly means she were fond of him. No one's gonna stop an' help out a kid what looks like someone they hated. So, um… I guess find a way to lure th'Frank bloke out so y'can talk to her alone? See if she's secretly on yer side, or get her to answer a few questions at least."

Sherlock stared blankly ahead as he shifted focus back into the material realm. Spent several long moments trying to decide if he was seriously about to suggest a plan he'd come up with by consulting the imaginary ghost of his ex-boyfriend.

"We should lure Frank out of the house so we can talk to your aunt alone," he finally said.

Continued to stare at the far wall. No, shut up. It was fine. He'd still come up with the plan himself, he'd just done it through a bizarrely convoluted mental abstraction driven by a stupid sentimental attachment to an idiot he'd never see again. Didn't matter. Just never breathe a word of it to anyone.

Josh lifted his head to fix him with a dubious look. "Why?"

"She has information we're missing, and being caught talking to her seems unlikely to arouse suspicion about your loyalties in the event things go awry."

Josh stared at him a few beats. Finally he lifted his shoulders in a resigned shrug. "You know what, fuck it. Not something I'd think of, Frank might not expect it. Worth a shot."

"We'll need a plan to get him to leave the house."

"Already on it," Josh said. He'd flipped to a new page of his sketchbook, laid it on the floor, and began drawing a layout of the house. "Alright, so this window over here is the best way to get in without being seen…"

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