A/N: Reality has shifted for most of us. At this moment in time, many countries are dealing with a pandemic, and their citizens are facing various degrees of lockdown. Life as we knew it turned out to be a fragile reality that fleetingly changes nearly overnight, and we are in the process of adapting to new realities. Some have had a big change, others face uncertainty. In the midst of an undeniable shift, I didn't know how to format these stories anymore. Should I keep the characters suspended in a troubles-free world from our past, or should I have them as examples trying to adjust to a new footing?

In the end, as I'm adjusting, so did they start to show their strength and adaptability. Because I felt the need for them to reflect our present, at least for now.

Know our troubles are not permanent, even if our reality will never go back the exact way it was before – we grow wiser, we lose things that mattered – but our heroes will not have forsaken us. They are the best part of each of us. They can still help bring sense to a changing world.

One last thing, I'll finish Mycroft's story at some point. For now it's on hold. -csf


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Sherlock Holmes is a tall, dark, imposing figure currently standing outside the grounds of one of the busiest hospitals in London. Hands in his pockets, angular cheekbones resting on the sharp edge of his flipped up coat collar, a bright piercing light shinning through the unusually dull and sedated grey eyes. The tall dark haired man is a permanent stark contrast silhouette on the near deserted urban landscape. Every once in a while the street bursts into action with the frenetic dance of ambulances and paramedics, or the stillness is broken by the wide eyed key worker making ends meet fulfilling his job role, or there's a fleeting appearance of a new jogger, looking red in his face and short of breath, trying to outrun his worries. The world's news, Sherlock ponders, the government's advice and the scientific experts voices, may all have changed before the runner has completed his route and returns home. The man runs as if he tries to distance himself from the heavy burden of reality as much as he outruns the breaking news bulletins.

Throughout all these cycles of activity and utterly hateful, eerie quiet – suspended in fearful suspicion and isolation – Sherlock waits. The detective is waiting for the one reason that brought him outside, the one reason that could drag him out of Baker Street these days.

Of course there are still murders, and thefts, and other crimes occurring in London and the wider world, but Sherlock no longer has the free access to them he once had. The net is tighter around the Yard. DI Lestrade will abstain from coming by 221B to hand over well thumbed files and ask for the world's greatest consulting detective's help. Lestrade is just trying to keep Sherlock safe.

Lestrade is an idiot if he thinks he can keep Sherlock safe by starving his investigative mind. But much like stocking up the pantry with food supplies, Lestrade has handed over a meagre lifeline to Sherlock Holmes, by handing him indiscriminately the contents of a cold cases store room's filing cabinet from the Yard's basement. Delivered safely to the doorstep of 221 Baker Street, disinfected thoroughly, dragged upstairs by an over eager detective that never noticed he'd break into a sweat with the workout. Inside, an assorted collection of cases whose witnesses have long died, crime scenes that have been torn down and rebuilt into new dwellings in transformed urban landscapes, and particular crimes that if avenged will benefit nearly no one anymore. Yet Sherlock is secretly thankful – John will have voiced Sherlock's thanks, and Sherlock will have abstained from grunting derisively this time – and so the detective flicks through attentively and solves each case, emailing detailed deductions back to Lestrade , who is in no hurry to taken them up.

Sherlock consumes the cold cases as a heroin addict detoxing on methadone. It's barely enough to keep the edge off.

His secondary addiction is rearing up, equally as strong.

It may be argued that Sherlock shouldn't have come, no matter the precautions. He certainly will berate Sherlock, tell the detective how reckless and childish he's being. John. And Sherlock will listen in his best mock scolded school boy act. The reason he's currently there, at that precise location – nowhere else in the world he'd rather be, except for ward 11 inside that hospital, but Sherlock knows that's too much even for him, that's going too far these days, so he only fantasised on how easy it would be to acquire access to ward 11, he won't do it – is the reason why Sherlock remains in loyal wait outside. Waiting for doctor John Watson to unleash his surprise, anger, relief, worry, and short temper, anchoring both participants with his full blown rant about The Impossible Highness, Mr Sherlock Holmes. How else could it come to pass when John has willingly placed himself in the epicentre of danger? Such disregard for his own valuable life, in the face of Sherlock's desperate need for John to be safe, is borderline abuse of their shared friendship. Yet, Sherlock has been explained. How much John, as a doctor, needs to do his part, to help save lives, lives like those of Sherlock, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade. Lives that may be anonymous but matter so much to someone else, lives like that of John Watson, who carelessly puts himself in harm's way.

Sherlock waits. He glances at his wristwatch from time to time, but he knows, he expects, delay. Shift times are vague guidelines at times where there just aren't enough healthcare workers, and John's beautiful generosity means he'll linger and stay some more, far beyond his human ability and his emotional and mental structures are depleted of their usual strength. He's John.

The detective in wait – if Sherlock such a thing, a detective, when he's not fully focused on useful cases anymore – is just holding onto his friendship's warm glow, using it as a lit beacon of light that John can latch onto, and may it guide him home faster. Because Sherlock knows, from experience, that John will (eventually) leave the hospital. Exhausted to a near drunken-like state. The horrors he lived through in his working hours, he'll carry in him for a while to come. And Sherlock will try to shield John from those vivid memories that fade only with time, lulled to sleep by the constancy and safety of 221B, but they never really disappear before the next hospital shift. They go into dormant hiding somewhere inside the doctor's core, far distant from his friend's grasp or influence.

Sherlock fears for John's physical and mental health, but he can't keep John from being the hero he is. Sherlock can't stop John being himself. So he won't fake an illness (not that one, not even Sherlock's sociopathic streak is that callous), won't blow up the kitchen with the liquid nitrogen he keeps hidden in the pantry cupboard, won't plead to the doctor to hold back and stay home safe – even if, selfishly, it's all Sherlock really wants to do.

Sherlock suspects that it's also what John wants to do, deep inside.

The obsessive detective keeps himself engaged by reciting the figures of numbers of infections, published daily since the start of the outbreak, insisting on stripping them of their meaning. Just numbers. Digits aligned to represent a measured quantity. A curving line in a direct reference, or a straight line in a logarithmic scale graph. He won't give the plotted points faces, names, lives, humanity.

It's John's job to do that. To give clients a personality in recounting their biographies, and to romanticise the habits Sherlock deduces from the traces in their appearances, to give subjective value to their professions and their amorous entanglements.

Sherlock is slowly losing the ability to remain an independent observer of facts in this world sized social experiment. Sherlock fears for his sanity. Maybe he's not such a good sociopath as he's trained himself to be.

Maybe Jim Moriarty was right. People die; that's what people do.

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Sherlock is outside. Again. The unmistakable dark cloaked figure is a very still silhouette tonight, just outside the lamp light hallo drawing a circle on the pavement as night descends upon London. Sensibly distanced from the hospital gates entrance where the paramedics rush up in ambulances with dire state patients. The hospital is crowded like never before. Drowned by the constant stringent melody of trolley wheels, heart monitor beeps, ventilator whooshes, and rubber soled footsteps from the medical attendants.

I've barely finished my shower, got dressed, I'm heading out. I don't know how long I've spent under that shower spray, washing away the vivid memories. I've been a medic in the war, none of this should shock me, not this much...

It feels like the war has come home.

Sherlock is my secret weapon, the one who could always cast away the shadows of my nightmares, he now works his magic openly in daytime, protecting me, grounding me.

My friend is the hero here, keeping me safe, bringing me home.

So I walk out of the building.

I think I can sneak up on the detective in the worried shoulders and tense muscles. Sherlock is a bit off his game these days...

.

'What the hell are you doing here?'

John. His John. Sherlock turns around in immediate attention. John. The smallish doctor is pale, dishevelled, red lines rimming around his eyes where the goggles rested for relentless hours against his skin, patchworked with laughter lines and temper frown lines by time. John, his John, looking splendid and powerful in the role of the anonymous hero he has dedicated his entire life to be.

John's alright. He's a short statured, tense ball of anger and worry and relief, so very John-like that immediately Sherlock feels at home. John is like that, an immediate anchor.

Jim Moriarty was wrong. This is what people do. They endure, they fight, they hope. People live.

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I think Sherlock knows. He could always read my inner thoughts, unscramble them and return them to me by means of his quick scans. I see the exhaustion and near breakdown reflected in his eyes. I also see something else. Something that always keeps me going. Sherlock sees something good, something heroic in me. I may not see it myself, but right now I trust my friend's insights better than the dark thoughts my exhausted mind conjures for me.

I trust Sherlock, an instinctive response; an automated reflex I can never help. He's the greatest detective in the world and I wait for Sherlock to make sense of the mess I'm left with on the inside, and hand me the solution, the fix.

He nearly always does.

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I'm investigating, John', the detective quips mildly, glancing disinterested to their surroundings.

Okay, so Sherlock panicked. He couldn't tell the truth, couldn't detail the way his insides were trapped by fear of abandonment, they always are when John disappears out of Baker Street and round the corner, to the epicentre of an ongoing medical war.

John buys the lame excuse, and immediately it derails his anger, and his exhaustion is layered by innocent curiosity, perked up by the chance that Sherlock might actually be on the trail of a new case.

Sherlock almost makes one up on the spot, fruit of years of exposure to gruesome and captivating crimes. He could lure John's tired mind along the swirls and furls of intricate mysteries, adding clues and minor puzzles, distracting John from the obtrusive, heavy reality around them.

But John is exhausted and Sherlock won't goad him. It'd be cruel in the face of John's selflessness.

Sherlock gives John's heroism the time to shine it deserves, and only later, by the lit fireplace of a late march chilly evening, will Sherlock lull John's thoughts into the safe plains of the current cold cases.

'And checking up on you, John', Sherlock adds, almost despite himself.

'Whoa! You admit that? Could I have that in writing?'

The doctor's smile is bright sunlight in the grey pasty tones of his drained complexion.

Sherlock allows the briefest smile, amused.

'Don't be an idiot, John.'

There, he said it. If Sherlock Holmes ever comes close to a true and conscious compliment, this is it. John is no idiot. "Don't act like the masses, like an idiot, John. You are better then the rest of us."

But then John does the most painful thing. He sighs, deflated, and his shoulders bend, broken, exhausted. He further daggers Sherlock's feelings, unknowingly, as he looks away, in preparation to say:

'Sherlock, this is reckless and dangerous. I don't want to— I couldn't bear to see you there', he points resentfully at the hospital behind him, 'sick'.

'It won't happen. Don't be so exaggerated, John.'

'Why? Is this virus so afraid of your sharp cheekbones? Of your cloak and dagger coat? Of your pristine reputation?'

Sherlock knows it's rhetoric, but can't help answering: 'Definitely the latter.'

John breaks, incredulous over the detective's trademark cockiness. He gulps, chokes on his own upcoming words, clears his throat, looks around them and (just before Sherlock's heart clenches fatally) he bursts into high pitched – farfetched but so real – giggles.

'Besides, I came to drive you home, John. Mrs Hudson is homebound, she's lent me her car. I told you I was her favourite all along. And so I thought you'd rather a lift than a Tube ride home.'

John shakes his head, catching his breath, tears stinging his eyes. 'I hear it, you took precautions, but London is the epicentre of a large outbreak right now and I'd rather you stay safe at home.' John worries his bottom lip a moment or two, his cobalt blue eyes sticks on Sherlock's with a piercing intensity that is surprisingly uncomfortable on the detective. Sherlock is still not thoroughly accustomed to caring. But this is John, and he'll let John care, he's safe in John's care. 'Sherlock, I worry about you.'

'Ditto.'

'I know first-hand what this illness can do. I want – no, I need – you safe.'

'Ditto.'

'I'll move out of Baker Street and go live inside the hospital if you are reckless, Sherlock.'

'Same.'

John gets derailed. Blinking at the rate of his exhausted, sluggish thoughts. Sherlock almost could smile in victory. Heck, these days victory is so short lived and far between that Sherlock smiles anyway.

And so he turns to walk the distance to Mrs H's car.

'I'll cook dinner tonight, John.'

'You don't know how to cook.'

'I'm a certified genius, how hard can it be?'

'I'll keep the fire extinguisher handy.'

'Don't use it all up, John. I've got this carbon dioxide foam decomposition experiment—'

'Multitasking again? Clever!'

'Always, John', Sherlock states smugly. Only there's not the usual gloat and superiority in his remark. His calmer now. He's got John. His John can make it all okay till the next day.

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