Once more thanks to Ernil i Pheriannath/ Sparkypip for her beta work and feedback! But after she beta-ed this chapter I made major changes and rewrote a lot of it, so if this is a mess it is entirely my fault.

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Chapter 11

Morning of Day 5 in 2016

Two hours later Greg heard Sherlock enter the bathroom, or maybe more sneak into it. The morning commuter traffic almost drowned out the low noises and it was clear Sherlock was trying to avoid meeting anyone.

Greg just listened, trying to hear if his friend was in distress or doing anything suspicious. He knew the cravings were intense, but he had seen Sherlock handle them before. If he was determined to honestly go through with withdrawal his strong will would keep him from taking something secretly, it had been this way the last time Greg helped him through it.

But back then, he had strong motivation. He wanted to be allowed to do cases with Lestrade.

Unfortunately, currently Sherlock seemed to be too fed up with life and its struggles in general, not having much motivation left.

Greg therefore didn't really trust him not to do anything stupid. On the other hand, Sherlock knew very well that in case this wasn't successful Mycroft would cart him off to a rehab facility and Sherlock would do almost anything to prevent going through that.

When ten minutes later it had been silent for almost four minutes, Greg stood up and walked down the hall, then stopped in front of the bathroom door.

He could hear nothing.

What the hell was Sherlock doing?

He knocked carefully, but there was no response.

"Listen, if you don't answer right now I will come in."

"Hmmm," came Sherlock's answer, after almost twenty seconds.

"Right. Can I come in then?"

When no response came, Greg steeled himself for the bad things that might lie behind the closed door and turned the knob.

Dim light made it hard for him to see at first. They had installed a special dimmable light bulb so Sherlock wouldn't suffer from the bright light.

When Greg's eyes had finally adjusted, he spotted his friend, who sat sunken and leaned sideways against the bathtub. A wet washcloth was on the ground near his knees.

Slowly, Greg knelt down next to him, eyeing him carefully.

His friend was shivering and looked dishevelled.

"Sherlock?" he whispered. "What's happening?"

Another hum, neither a yes nor a no.

"Do you feel sick?"

"Nope," came a hoarse reply, barely hearable.

"Why are you sitting on the bathroom floor, then?"

"Got dizzy," the detective explained in a hoarse voice, then cleared his throat and continued,

"The wallpaper seems alive and the periodic table spread its elements all over the walls of my room. Hallucinations are starting."

"Well, you can handle them. You always do. Your mind knows it's not real, just keep reassuring yourself that," Greg tried to empower him.

"I do. I am. But I needed a break. It was too much," Sherlock seemed to pale even further after this admission.

"What are you not telling me?"

"If you are aware that there is something I don't want to tell you, I don't see why you ask me to do so anyway." Sherlock's speech had improved in the past moments, it was a bit easier to understand him now.

"Hey, I am worried. Please tell me what is going on."

"I just told you, wasn't that humiliating enough?" Sherlock murmured.

"Yeah, sorry. Thank you."

"For what?"

"For trusting me enough to tell me."

A long silence followed, in which Greg inspected all surfaces of the room for anything suspicious.

"Oh for God's sake, I was just... I was not..." Sherlock stuttered in annoyance. Although his eyes were closed, he was aware what the DI was doing.

"You were just...?"

"Fine, if you... I was trying to... I had a bad dream," he stifled his own try to explain.

"How is John?" Sherlock added a moment later.

He hadn't opened his eyes, yet.

"That bad?" he asked when the DI hesitated.

"He's... Christ, I'm not sure..." Now it was Greg stuttering, trying to understand all that Sherlock had just said.

"Tell me, Greg," Sherlock insisted with a weak voice, the chills were intensifying.

Greg was so surprised by both, being called by his name and being asked about John, he momentarily didn't know what to say.

"He's not having a good time, mate," he finally explained after a brief silence.

"Did he drink?"

"Yeah."

"How much?"

"Too much."

That caused Sherlock to blink at him, obviously even the low light was too bright for him.

His bloodshot eyes were filled with pain, probably physical and mental alike.

Greg also saw the overextension and desperation there.

Sherlock looked so very lost it shocked Greg. He had seen his friend having hard times before, but the expression in his eyes reminded him way too much of the time shortly before Sherlock had overdosed years ago.

"Sherlock, be honest with me. Do we need to put you on suicide watch?"

The other man's eyes closed again and he lowered his head, which Greg found very not reassuring at all.

"Don't be ridiculous. I am fine. The issue is solved, the case is finished. I succeeded in... Mary's request. Everything is great!" Sherlock displayed an overdone tone of happiness.

For a horrified moment Greg remembered the tape from the hospital, remembered how Sherlock had asked Culverton to kill him, and how later his voice had broken when he told him he didn't want to die.

The intense memory of his tone caught up with the DI once more. When he had heard it the first time, he had been glad he was alone, because it brought tears to his eyes.

All of them were aware that suicidal thoughts and actions were part of the withdrawal side effects, therefore they were watching out for the signs. Greg was well aware that he probably would never get an honest answer to the question but the reaction to it and showing care were things that send messages both ways.

"You saved John... And now... it is time that you allow him to save you, because that issue is not finished, yet."

"You are wrong, this is over."

Sherlock's response was either denial or fake, Greg realised immediately.

"No, Sherlock. No. This is a very important part of John saving you. If not for you then for him. You both need to get through with it. You can't stop here; you might as well undo all you have gained if you allow the gap that is forming now to widen."

Greg paused for a moment to let this sink in.

And then a sudden realisation hit him. Was Sherlock distancing himself from John because he feared that as soon as withdrawal was over John would return to his flat and his daughter and forget about him?

He remembered that Mary had called him during the wedding planning, asking him to involve Sherlock and John in a case to reassure Sherlock she wasn't taking John away from him. The case they had solved had been named 'The Poisoned Giant' afterwards.

At first, Greg had found the request a bit odd, but knowing the detective, he understood it.

In hindsight, after he had heard the speech at the wedding and seen what had happened afterwards it wasn't odd at all any longer, Mary seemed to have understood a lot about Sherlock.

"Have you ever told John about how hard her death hit you, too?"

Sherlock's silence answered that question immediately.

"Why not? You need to."

"No."

"Sherlock, this is important, he needs to know what it means to you that she died. That is a conversation that needs to happen."

"I dislike stating the obvious."

Sherlock's breathing was suddenly off and Greg moved his right hand towards his friend's head, hovered it over his scalp to sense if he was having a fever, making sure not to touch him.

He had learned that the hard way the last time he had helped Sherlock with this. It had led to a full-blown meltdown when Greg had failed to fight his own impulse to comfort a suffering friend by touch. The lack of alternative things that might comfort the man added to feeling so damn helpless. Seeing Sherlock like this was not easy, he knew why it got to John sometimes.

"Please don't touch me," Sherlock groaned.

"I won't, don't worry. I am just trying to find out if you are running a fever. It seems you are."

"I know... My skin burns although I am freezing."

"I think we should get you back to bed, mate."

"Don't touch me..." he moaned out in a weak desperate plea.

"I won't, I won't. Can I get a blanket to pull you up with?"

"No. I can do it."

Very slowly and with painstakingly uncoordinated, slow movements, Sherlock started to shift his weight. He sat up straighter before he placed one palm on the ground and the other on the doorframe, then he carefully tried to lift his buttocks off the ground.

It actually took four tries until he even managed to get into a half kneeling half sitting position, but Lestrade didn't interfere, although his heart ached seeing this.

Almost four minutes later Sherlock had finally managed to drag himself up, using the door handle and the frame.

On shaky legs, he shoved one foot forward, then the next, barely able to keep himself upright.

Greg moved with him, followed him closely. It didn't escape his attention that the other man was sweating profoundly.

"Please don't breathe that loud. Also, I can feel your breath on my back," Sherlock complained, voice now shaky, too.

The distance between them was over a metre.

"Gee, Sherlock, if you fall I need to catch you, deal with it. And I can't stop breathing just because your senses are all wound up. Sorry," Greg said in a gentle voice.

In slow motion, Sherlock continued to move towards his bed, leaning on the bedside table and carefully taking care of keeping his balance.

When he finally sat down on the edge of the bed, Greg held out his hand.

"Wait. Before you lie down, I need you to take your temperature, can you do that?"

The other man's face contorted as if in pain, but he nodded.

Greg fetched the thermometer from the kitchen counter that currently held all the medical supplies.

He was relieved that Sherlock was no longer as angry as John had described. Right now, all agitation seemed to have left him, was replaced by overwhelming exhaustion and resignation. Sherlock's tone was very monotone. Nothing he had said in the past minutes had contained any emotion at all.

When he came back, Sherlock was struggling to remove his sweat-soaked long sleeved shirt. He had seen the bruises on Sherlock's side at the hospital, but they made him wince again.

Holding out the in-ear thermometer, Greg asked, "I assume you want a new shirt? Which one?"

"Dark blue, top shelf, second row from the left."

It took Greg a moment to find it, despite the exact statement of place. Most of Sherlock's clothes were dark and the dim light wasn't helping.

He unfolded it and placed it on the bed next to Sherlock. "Anything else you need? When is your next dose of morphine scheduled?"

"Few hours. Get me the small yellow pills," Sherlock muttered, while slipping both arms into the sleeves.

Greg fetched the medication John had prescribed on a 'if necessary' basis and noted the dose on the sheet of paper they used to record all medication Sherlock was given. The printout of the medication regime confirmed that Sherlock had spoken the truth about when his next morphine dose was due.

Back at his friend's bedside, he handed Sherlock the thermometer. It needed only seconds after Sherlock finally managed to press the button that started the reading.

They then exchanged the blister for the thermometer.

Lestrade read the display.

Elevated temperature, but no fever.

Sherlock fumbled with the blister to break the silver foil, but the pill fell out of his trembling fingers twice before he finally managed to put it into his mouth. After he swallowed it dry, he carefully sank back into the pillows, still breathing heavier than normal and looking totally spent.

Greg pressed the remote control for the LED bulb in the bathroom, to turn it off. The bedroom darkened and now the room was only lit by the lamp in the hallway.

"Take care of John, will you?"

"Of course, yeah. I will. Just rest okay. I'll take care of everything. Don't worry," Greg reassured him.

A sarcastic huff was the only answer and the DI assumed Sherlock was very well aware what had led to the hard drinking.

Like everything else, Sherlock had probably deduced the issue even before he had arrived at John's therapist.

The day after Culverton's arrest, when Greg had visited him in hospital, Sherlock asked him to keep an eye on John and his drinking habits of late since as long as he was incapacitated. It was a very unusual request because Sherlock had formulated it as 'needing a favour'.

Greg knew Sherlock was having a hard time right now because he was well aware that this night's behaviour had pushed the issue, but was helpless and too drained of everything to do anything about it.

"John is sleeping it off on the couch. He'll be fine, but probably have a bit of a hangover in the morning. I'll be in the kitchen. Try to get some more sleep, mate."

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A few hours later Greg hurried into Sherlock's room again, when he heard unsettling noises.

"Sherlock? What's wrong?"

His friend was still on his back in the bed, staring at the ceiling with a shocked expression and a frown on his face.

"Sherlock? Can you hear me?"

Pressing his lips into a line, Sherlock's face seemed to threaten to crumple. Then, after he squeezed his eyes shut forcefully for a moment, his features relaxed and he opened his eyes.

It was obvious that he needed a lot of energy to force his features into a neutral look. He made no efforts to sit up at all or move otherwise.

"Something resurfaced in my dreams... The south wall of my room... it looked a lot like the wall with... eugh... Molly's refrigerators."

It took Lestrade a moment to realise that he didn't mean the one at her home but in the morgue. Additionally, the stuttering distracted him for a moment.

Then he noticed that Sherlock had said 'a lot' which meant something, Sherlock was not using language like this if it wasn't true. Over the years, Greg had learned to listen for details like this and things he wasn't saying.

"Right. And what did it look like exactly?"

Sherlock huffed, it sounded like a sarcastic laugh, but the insult Lestrade expected didn't came. His friend seemed frozen but breathing hard.

"I see her," he pressed out in a low voice.

"What? Who?"

"I... Mary... my wall... the morgue."

It was not making a lot of sense and Greg grimaced, then it hit him that Sherlock had just spoken in present tense and he wondered how much of this was another hallucination and how much that was affecting his friend's mental faculties.

He tried to imagine what Sherlock was describing before making a comment that might make it all worse.

His wall had shifted into a morgue wall with refrigerators...

A moment later it hit him.

The morgue John had beaten Sherlock - seriously injured him - it was a lot more likely that he was seeing that one.

It must have been a moment of earth-shattering understanding for Sherlock that everything he had planned was failing. John had describes him as 'horrified' and 'shocked by something unknown' that had then made him freak out and grab a knife.

Although Greg had tried to understand Sherlock's and John's statement about what exactly had happened, it was still not clear to him. Both statements were a mess and none of it made a lot of sense.

"Was it Culverton's morgue?" for a moment Greg feared to be corrected for using the incorrect terms concerning property but it didn't happen.

Sherlock just nodded silently.

"And you saw Mary back then, there, or just now here? I mean, was it a memory or did it just happen?"

"Here," Sherlock huffed, his tone made clear he didn't want to speak about it.

"What did she do?"

"I don't know. She was talking, but I couldn't understand her."

"Is she still here?" Greg wanted to know, and caught himself gazing through the room.

"She's looking out of the window, back towards me now."

Greg sucked in a breath and couldn't help but stare at the covered with curtains window. Suddenly he felt the hairs on his back and arms raise, goose bumps were forming.

The situation was a bit like seeing a ghost through Sherlock's eyes and it was distressing even for him.

What Sherlock was feeling, exaggerated by his condition must be a lot worse.

When he lowered his gaze again to look at his friend's face, he saw Sherlock had closed his eyes and the slits between his eyelids looked rather soggy.

Greg bit his lips, he felt utterly useless and helpless.

There was nothing he could do.

No means to comfort the man.

"Would you like to get up and sit in the living room for a bit?" he suggested, well aware Sherlock had spent most of his days since the return from the hospital in his room.

"John is upstairs, sleeping again. Mrs Hudson took Rosie to day care."

Sherlock nodded and sat up, his movements on edge and tense.

His body was not happy about the sudden movement and Greg saw him fight vertigo for some moments, but Sherlock lifted his legs out of bed and slowly stood up.

"Easy, easy."

"Bathroom."

When Sherlock swayed, he couldn't help but grab his upper arm.

After a moment of horrified hesitation, Greg realised that Sherlock was not trying to shake him off. But his shirt was once more clammy from sweat.

"Eh... You feel sick? You need to go there fast?" Greg wanted to know.

"No. This is not withdrawal from morphine – yet."

The knowledge that this was just the first half of the ordeal and another, physically way more difficult withdrawal was ahead of him after this, must be adding to Sherlock's gloom.

"There are other reasons that might make you feel sick... stress for example."

"And for that I took the pill a few hours ago. You gave them to me, they do help. And it would also help to get out of here, now!"

The detective started to shuffle towards the bathroom door, Greg moved with him.

When he reached for it to open it, Sherlock finally shook him off.

"I can manage it from here. Make some tea?" he asked. And before he closed the door after him, Greg saw him look over to the window once more.

The brief expression of relief he saw in Sherlock's eyes told him he was no longer seeing Mary there.

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A/N:

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Constructive criticism welcome.