This was written in a frenzy this past week, but it should be read as though it was published pre season three. Much as I like Mary, she didn't have a place in this story about John and Sherlock, so I just pretended she never happened. Feel free to use your imagination to fill in the blanks.

Also, I am posting this in segments to make the monstrosity that it has grown into easier to read, but if you are coming in late and the whole thing is up, I recommend you read it as a one-shot, as that was how it was written. If I don't update at least once a week until it is all up please kick me swiftly, because this work is complete on my hard drive.

A friend who dies; it's something of you who dies.—Gustave Flaubert

The ordeal will never be over with. Not really, not even when the last of the mourners straggle away from the gravesite and the cars pull away into the mist (it rains the day of the funeral, which seems fittingly cliché, though not unexpected. They are in London, after all) leaving no one but Sherlock and Mycroft, one standing close to the headstone, hands clasped tightly behind his back, the other hovering somewhere behind, inconspicuous and infuriatingly obtrusive all at once. There is nothing left to do, now, no more relatives to notify, no arrangements to be made. Nothing left but to "move on", as everyone has told Sherlock he will eventually be able to do. Maybe that is supposed to be a comfort, but he has always been blessedly immune to useless platitudes. "Moving on" is a concept he quickly shunts to the back of his mind, to be deleted when he has the necessary concentration. For now he is thoroughly occupied with other notions.

It isn't over with.

1.

The facts of the case are this:

One Wednesday, John Watson wakes up with a cold. One week later, he does not wake up at all. It's the interim, of course, that makes the difference.

Sherlock knew John had been feeling off for two days—had probably known it before John had, though any impressive deductions were made redundant by John's own whinging. Apparently it was not untrue what they said about doctors making the worst patients, as John spends those first two evenings loudly clearing his throat and moaning when Sherlock refuses to abandon his experiments to duck out for paracetamol. By that Wednesday, when he awakens with a full-blown cold, complete with swollen sinuses and inflamed throat, John has become positively unbearable.

Having called in sick, John spends the morning wrapped in a blanket on the couch, clutching a cup of tea and glaring whenever Sherlock moves in between him and the telly. They don't speak much, but Sherlock can tell he's miffed about something (the paracetamol, perhaps? Not worth investigating), so it's no surprise that evening, when Sherlock mutes the whatever crap program John is watching and steps swiftly in front of it, that he receives a less-than-warm welcome.

"Excuse you!" says John, gesturing to the television.

"It was the maid," says Sherlock without glancing back, "it's always the maid. Get dressed. We have a case."

John groans. "Well, first off it's a cooking program. Second, I'm not going anywhere. I'm ill."

Sherlock rolls his eyes and switches the telly off completely. "You already know how to cook," he says, indicating the half-eaten toast and jam John dragged himself into the kitchen to make around lunchtime. "And stop whining. You've barely got a cold. Meanwhile, a man lays dead and his widow and children remain without an explanation. You're telling me you'd cast off the opportunity to bring them some peace because you've got the sniffles?"

John groans again and throws the blanket over his head in an uncanny impression of a petulant child—or of Sherlock himself. "You're trying to manipulate me."

"It only counts as trying if it doesn't work."

There is a moment's pause. "What do you need me for? Can't you gallivant for one night on your own?"

Sherlock is growing restless. He checks his watch and then his phone, uncomfortably aware of the fact that their window of opportunity is closing.

"Fine," he says, rocking back onto his heels before crossing to his chair, where his coat is draped, still smelling faintly of mold from this afternoon's science experiment. "I don't know why I bothered to ask. We both know how swimmingly things tend to go when I go off on my own. And besides, it's only an abandoned chemical factory, how much can go wrong?"

John makes a noise of frustration and flings the blanket off of his head, getting to his feet with far much more noise than is necessary.

"Give me five minutes," he grumbles, though he can't seem to resist glowering when Sherlock claps his hands together with undisguised glee.

"Sherlock."

Sherlock tenses but doesn't turn. He's surprised it's taken Mycroft this long to say something. He lost track of time a good while ago, but the sound of his brother's voice is enough to bring him back to awareness, at least enough to realize that it is growing dark, the chill in the air a little more acute. It's something he's good at, losing track of time. Mycroft, on the other hand, is constantly aware of the passing of the seconds. That he's waited to speak displays more patience than Sherlock is accustomed to. But he does not respond.

"I understand that you'd prefer to stay," Mycroft says, ignoring Sherlock's apparent indifference. "If you'd like, I can have a car take you back here in the morning. But I really do think it's best if we head indoors—the temperature…"

Sherlock smiles wryly, though Mycroft can't see it.

"Why?" he says. "Afraid I'll catch cold?"

Sherlock receives a stiff silence in return, and imagines he can hear Mycroft's jaw snapping shut, his back going a little straighter. He considers standing there for a few more hours, just to make his brother squirm. But he quickly dismisses the idea, sighing.

"Don't bother with the car," he says. "I doubt he'll be expecting me."

"There is nothing wrong with mourning, Sherlock."

"Not inherently, no," says Sherlock, stuffing his hands into his pockets against the cold and chuffing his feet on the false grass still surrounding the grave. The new sod will probably be laid tomorrow, when the rain has let up. "But there's nothing inherently beneficial, either. Take me home, Mycroft, and then do me a favor."

Mycroft hesitates for a moment. "Anything."

"Leave me the hell alone, will you?"

Finally Sherlock turns and gives Mycroft a sweeping glance. He is dry where Sherlock is soaked, for he had the good sense to open his umbrella when the downpour began. Sherlock reads the unfulfilled snide response threatening to escape in his stance, the tightness of his jaw, and the whisper of grief in his brow. Unjustified. He and John kept acquaintance because of Sherlock, and the dissolution of that acquaintance—through death or other means—is no reason for remorse on Mycroft's part. They were not friends.

Sherlock stalks over to Mycroft and thrusts a hand out. Mycroft hesitates again, not because he does not understand but because he is considering. Then he takes the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and presses one into Sherlock's hand. Sherlock snatches it, lights it, and takes a long draw, ignoring the fact that the paper instantly becomes soggy between his lips.

"Sentiment, Mycroft," he says, exhaling. And he leads the way to the waiting car.

"Well this is lovely," says John when they arrive at the edge of the fen, their ankles already sinking into the muck before they can even begin to venture into the tall grass which edges the innumerable small pools of stagnant water that surround them. "Bit less homey than I was expecting, but I've heard the fens are lovely in the daylight this time of year."

"Oh, wonderful, more griping," says Sherlock, already charging into the muck. John had not ceased his complaints once on the way here, and though Sherlock has an inkling that many may have been justified, he had rather been hoping that they would cease once the actual work got underway. "Come on, we're running out of time."

John follows him into the mud, their feet squelching and sinking a little deeper with each step.

"Time to do what, exactly?" he says. He has his arms crossed over his chest as though cold, though the summer night is in fact uncomfortable warm and muggy. Swarms of insects follow them as they make their way toward the centre of the fen. "Murders have a timetable on being solved, do they?"

"You know perfectly well that they do."

"Yeah, well," says John, sniffing. "This looks a lot less like a factory than I was led to believe. I'd have worn different shoes."

"You wouldn't have come if I had told the truth."

"Anything else you'd like to tell me now that I'm here?" says John, sounding a bit more resigned. "Don't tell me the wife was made up as well."

Sherlock has the decency to arrange his face into a look resembling guilt, though he's fairly sure John can't see it. They are at the edge of dusk, the fen almost completely obscured by darkness, but he doesn't want to risk pulling his torch out and being spotted.

"The wife may have been an exaggeration," he says.

"What did you exaggerate?"

"Only her existence."

"Sherlock!"

Sherlock throws his hands up, the last of his already precarious patience slipping away.

"You wouldn't have come!" he repeats. "I needed you to come, John, I need two pairs of eyes! Now, keep yours open for once, we're running out of time!"

John gives a long, loud sigh and turns his head to the ground.

"Honestly, Sherlock, the fact that you think I'd only care that a man had been murdered if he had a wife and kids is frankly a little insulting."

Sherlock keeps his eyes down and does not reply. John, so oblivious to what surrounds him, so perceptive when it comes to Sherlock, notices.

"Sherlock," he says firmly, his voice made deeper by the rasp in his throat, "there was a murder, wasn't there?"

"Not…as such."

John's mouth falls open and stops abruptly.

"Keep moving!" Sherlock is all but shouting now. "We're running out of daylight!"

But John holds his ground. "What am I doing here, Sherlock?"

Sherlock may not be as attuned to people as John is—not even to John himself—but he has known the doctor long enough to know when he is adamant. Typically, Sherlock would argue back, because John ought to know by now that there is a reason, of course there's a reason, and it's always a good one, but they really are running out of time now, so for once he concedes.

"One of my homeless network tipped me off," he says. "The new strain of meth that's making the rounds in London, the one Lestrade won't shut up about—he says he knows a man who buries his stash here. I've been trying to get my hands on some for weeks now—not to try, don't look at me like that—because if I can break down the composition I may be able to trace it back to its source. But if we don't get moving Hairy Frank is going to be none too pleased to find us here when he comes to check his stockpile. So come on."

But John does not move. Instead he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as if by doing so he can squash the scene in front of him away.

"So you're telling me," he says slowly, "you dragged me, ill, into the middle of a bog so that we could steal meth from a homeless drug addict named Hairy Frank?

"It's a fen," Sherlock corrects, and then, catching John's chastening glare, adds, "but…that's probably not important. Just—come on, if you want to leave then help me finish."

There is no more time for objections, so Sherlock charges on, scanning the ground in the fading sunlight. After a moment, John comes trudging up behind him.

Thankfully it doesn't take much longer to find what they're looking for: a single flower near a large pool of stagnant water, out of place not only because it is in full bloom but also because it is made of silk—false. Sherlock sets to digging while John stands watch, but the task proves more tedious than he anticipated, because every time he scoops out a handful of muck another sloshes in to take its place. John does not help matters. He keeps his own hands tucked firmly in his armpits and turns in slow circles while the darkness slowly becomes absolute, snuffling and clearing his throat alternately and without pause.

"If you'd really like to be helpful," Sherlock snaps after fifteen minutes of unsuccessfully sloughing through the mud, "then perhaps you could cease your mewling. It is extraordinarily distracting."

"I am not mewling," John says, looking down at Sherlock for the first time since they arrived. "And perhaps I would be feeling better if someone had had the decency to get me some paracetamol when I asked."

"I knew it!" Sherlock throws up an accusatory finger, flecking John's shirt with mud. "I knew you would hold that against me! And you say I'm the unreasonable one—"

"It's just decent, Sherlock, when your flatmate asks—"

"The purpose of the experiment is to observe the mold in all stages of growth, though I wouldn't expect—"

They are so wrapped up in the argument that neither notices the figure rising from the mud behind them, nor the knife in his hand, glinting in the light of the warm evening's first stars.

Mrs. Hudson has gone to bed by the time Sherlock arrives, dripping rainwater all over the front entrance and the stairs, though in true fashion she has left a plate of food—cold now—and a pot of tea—also cold—on the kitchen table, both of which Sherlock promptly throws away. He doesn't turn on any lights as he moves about the apartment, stripping wet layers of clothing as he does. The coat lands on his chair, the scarf and the shirt on the couch. His belt—which will be withered and ruined by morning—takes the place of the uneaten meal on the kitchen table, along with his shoes and socks. His trousers go last, landing in a heap by the dormant fireplace. He leaves his pants, though not because they are dry (they aren't). He does so rather because there is nowhere left to toss them that isn't John's chair.

Sherlock stands, mostly naked and shivering in the dark, staring down at the chair as time slips by. As at the graveyard, he doesn't know how much passes before he decides that the chair has to go. It's taking up space that could otherwise be put to valuable use, and besides, it's a gaudy, ratty old thing. Now that there's no one here to beat the dust out of it every once in a while, the chair will serve no purpose other than to aggravate his sinuses. So yes, it most definitely has to go.

He pushes it toward the stairs first, makes it all the way to the landing before he realizes that the damned thing is too heavy to lift on his own, and besides, he's mostly nude. Not that he's ever been modest, but he's absolutely certain Mycroft has the place under especially stringent observation tonight, and he doesn't care to supply his brother with any reason to come swooping in to mother him. The stairs are out, then.

Next he drags it to the window, thinking he might just throw the thing out. This will prove no less dramatic to his observers, of course, but Mycroft will be expecting him to smash things; he's done it before. He thinks he'll be able to lift it high enough to leverage it over the sill, but when he begins to heft it an image of the frame littered about the sidewalk, upholstery torn, stuffing spilling like brains from an open skull, he halts. For whatever stupid, emotional reason, he cannot bear the image. It will have to go upstairs. John never kept anything in his room, anyhow, there is plenty of room there. He doesn't intend to clean the bedroom out, but at least there it will be unseen.

He hates himself with a furious fervor when he makes it to the foot of the stairs and realizes that he faces the same problem as before. The chair is too damn heavy. He hates that he cannot figure this out, this problem which manual laborers and ruddy-faced boys in moving vans solve every day, hates it so much he wants to tear his own hair out and scream until the neighbors send for the police. Again, the idea of Mycroft—and possibly Lestrade—halts him. He settles instead for kicking the chair with all his might. His big toe makes a small but satisfying pop as it breaks against the wood. It doesn't hurt as much as he wants it to.

The problem presents no solution. He wakes up who knows how many hours later, still pondering, curled up in John's chair. Somehow, it has returned to its usual spot beside his own.

Sherlock can't help but gloat a little as they arrive back at the flat, both dripping and sullied but otherwise unharmed. He didn't really think he'd need another excuse to get John out of the house for his more ridiculous cases, but he'll certainly be using this one in the future—it's just too good to pass up.

You have to come, John, what if another meth addict attacks me with a knife?

Hairy Frank—who had become Muddy Frank for the purpose of guarding his stash—had of course attacked the most immediate threat to that end: the man digging through the mud searching for it. Sherlock was still crouching, half-sunk in the muck, by the time either of them spotted the scrawny, bedraggled man lunging out of the fen, and so had not had ample time to react. True to form, John had acted on his behalf and tackled Hairy Frank before he could so much as scratch Sherlock. Both had landed in the retention pool, and John had earned himself a snort of warm, murky water, but no worse: Hairy Frank had the element of surprise on his side, but not much else. In the end he was just another meth addict, scrawny and weak, and when Sherlock dragged them both out of the water a moment later the homeless man had relented, and had even offered Sherlock a—very, very—small sample of his stash in exchange for their silence.

All in all it was the best outcome they could have hoped for, but for some reason John had refused to speak to him as they rode home with the most disgruntled cab driver Sherlock had ever met, and when Sherlock tries to hint at their fortune—perhaps a bit smugly, but he is right, after all—John stomps noisily to the bathroom without a word, clearly oblivious to the fact that Sherlock is just as in need of a wash as he. In fact, he doesn't say anything to Sherlock until the next day, when he emerges from his room around noon.

Sherlock is sitting at the kitchen table, and he keeps his eyes on the half-dissected pig's spleen on his plate as John enters, determined not to speak until he can gauge the other man's mood. John spends a moment making a dramatic mug of coffee, turns to leave, thinks better of it, and says,

"I'm not going to get the smell of pond scum out of my nose for weeks, you know."

Sherlock tries and fails to keep a smile off his face, his eyes determinedly still on the spleen.

"Did it clear up your sinuses?" he says.

"Oh, piss off," says John, but the humour has returned to his voice. He walks into the living room, calling over his shoulder, "I've lost count of how many times I've saved your arse, but I think you owe me one."

"Noted," Sherlock murmurs.

It's what he likes about John: the drama never lasts long.

Sherlock likes to think he knows a thing or two about death. He deals with it almost daily, after all, and even faked his own once. He knows what to expect in almost every deadly situation, from decay rates to bruising patterns to the best time of day for interment—but he's wholly unprepared for this. The things that happen to the not-dead, the people left behind by the deceased. He doesn't like being surprised, so he's put off, to say the least, when his doorbell won't stop ringing the day after the funeral. There is a sudden flood of casseroles and photographs and boring stories about John from people he's never met nor had any desire to, and he hates the way every one of these people looks at him, glossing over the fact that he hasn't changed out of his dressing gown or washed or shaven, patting him on the back and wiping tears from their eyes while searching his own for similar signs of grief, suspicious or more sympathetic when they find none. He receives them all stiffly until Mrs. Hudson comes to relieve him, patiently but firmly shuffling them out the door when she sees Sherlock's expression go sour. He loathes each one of them. He supposes John went through it all when he "died", but he also suspects John did not have the added inconvenience of having to move his half-decayed pig's spleen to accommodate yet another lasagna in the fridge.

"Why are they doing this?" he shouts at Mrs. Hudson in between visitors. "They're acting as if I was his husband rather than his flatmate!"

"Is that what you were, Sherlock dear?" she says.

It is the first time she's asked, rather than assumed. The question immediately deflates him, and he feels the urge to kick something again, because yet again he has no answer.

"Tea, Mrs. Hudson," he says. "Make it downstairs, will you?"

Mrs. Hudson nods, but she can't resist placing a teary kiss on his hair before she goes.

Not long after, the doorbell rings again, and Mrs. Hudson, caught up in crying and tea-making, no doubt, fails to address it despite Sherlock's shouts. After the third ring he flings himself out of his chair and goes to the door himself, ready to turn whichever army pal or long-lost aunt has come to seek comfort in the guise of giving it. But when he opens the door it is only Molly, red around the eyes but no longer crying, and carrying nothing but an old, unwashed mug that Sherlock immediately recognizes as John's.

"I wanted to bring something more…something better," says Molly, sitting on the couch a moment later. "It seems so silly, it's just his old coffee mug. I used to make him a cup whenever you were working…Anyway, I'm sorry it's not a bit…better."

"No," says Sherlock, clutching the mug in both hands and staring at the ground. "No, it's quite…quite nice."

A heavy silence descends.

"Oh," says Molly, just when Sherlock is sure she's about to leave and finds himself wishing that she wouldn't. "Your toe."

Sherlock is barefoot, not only because he doesn't see the point, but also because he couldn't imagine trying to cram the swollen, purple mess of his toe into any sort of shoe at the moment. Otherwise he's almost forgotten about it.

"Here." Molly reaches out, and after a moment of hesitation Sherlock proffers his foot, placing it tenderly on her knee. She probes it gently, apologizes when he hisses, and then busies herself making a cold compress in the kitchen. After a fair amount of digging she finds where John stashed the first aid kit and cobbles together a splint as well.

"You should get it set," she says, "and take some anti-inflammatories."

He's glad she didn't say paracetamol.

"Maybe," says Sherlock.

Molly dismisses herself a few minutes later, ducking out with a murmured word of sympathy just as Mrs. Hudson comes bustling up with the tea, her makeup valiantly but obviously recently reapplied. This time she doesn't linger.

Sherlock receives just one more visitor that day. It is Lestrade, and, with a surprising amount of composure and lack of emotion, he delivers the only gift Sherlock has been craving. A case.

"Have you been burning dead things again, Sherlock?"

It's Saturday, and they haven't had an interesting case since the meth addict, though Sherlock is still working on that one. It's gotten to the point where he can't do much without the resources of the police, and so he's spent the morning deliberating over whether he wants to attempt to hack into their databases or if it's perhaps time to let them in on what he's uncovered so far. He's fairly certain he knows how the meth is made, but tracking the maker is going to be trickier without a shortlist to work with.

"It's called cooking, John," he says, plucking idly at his violin while he is sprawled on the floor, "and you know I haven't."

But John continues to wander around the room, taking great sniffs of the air, brow creased. His cold has abated enough that he is able to do this, but he hasn't yet had an appetite, and the shaking from low blood sugar is apparent to Sherlock even across the room.

"Odd," says John. "I could swear I smell something burning. Something rotten."

"Unlikely," says Sherlock. "My own olfactory capacity far exceeds your own, and I can't smell a thing."

John turns to him, nose wrinkled.

"How do you know?"

"Hm?"

"How do you know your olfactory capacity exceeds my own?"

"Because I have trained mine," says Sherlock. "Being able to discern between the subtlest smells is essential to my work, and the olfactory nerve must be exercised in order to stay in peak condition. Like a muscle."

"Except it's a nerve."

"Don't get smart," says Sherlock. "Whatever it is, you're imagining it."

"Yeah, except—"

But Sherlock has lost patience with the conversation. He is thinking about the meth and the police and John is a distraction, and so he lifts the bow to his violin and plays an unending, screaming note until John shakes his head and retreats upstairs.

When he comes back down for dinner that evening, it is with a frown on his face.

"Still imagining smells?" Sherlock asks.

John shakes his head. "No," he says. "Though I do feel a bit…" He trails off and shakes his head again, as though trying to rid his ears of water, then switches subjects. "Any headway with the methamphetamine?"

"None whatsoever," Sherlock says with a scowl. "I think I might ambush Lestrade at home tomorrow. I'd rather not get Donovan involved this time, she's been such a brat lately, and for no reason at all."

"You mean since you revealed that you faked your own death and totally humiliated her?" says John, poking through their bare cupboards. "Can't imagine why that would bother her." He sighs in frustration. "We're out."

"Of what?"

"Everything. Care to order in?"

"I couldn't possibly eat."

"Pad Thai?"

"With chicken."

He allows John to order and to pay, too distracted and frustrated and certain that he won't be able to sleep until the pieces of the puzzle fall more neatly into place. He's especially restless because checking police records feels too easy—like cheating. Later he'll recall wishing for a distraction, if only for the night, and the memory will make his intestines wither.

The food arrives and Sherlock digs in without ceremony because he hasn't eaten in thirty hours and he is human too, no matter how fervently he denies it. He only notices that John isn't eating on his second bite, and only because John is usually the first to start and the first to finish. But he is just sitting there, staring at the carton and frowning.

"I can't smell it," he says, catching Sherlock's pointed look. He flips a noodle into his mouth and continues to frown as he chews and swallows. "Can't taste it either."

Now there's a distraction.

Sherlock is on his feet in a moment, peering into John's face—paler than usual, the circles under his eyes perhaps a little darker—taking his pulse—a little too rapid, but not enough to be concerning—and doesn't heed John's attempts to garner his attention until he slaps Sherlock's wrist.

"Sherlock," he says firmly. "What are you doing?"

"Anosmia," Sherlock says.

"I'm familiar with the term. One of us is a doctor. Have you forgotten which?"

"It's rare," says Sherlock, unable to keep an edge of excitement out of his voice. "Perhaps you sustained head trauma when you tackled Hairy Frank? Have you been exposed to any chemicals lately?"

"Not counting the meth you've been tinkering with in our kitchen? Get off, Sherlock, and let me call a proper doctor."

"I thought you were the doctor."

"Not for myself. I'm not a science experiment, Sherlock. Leave it alone."

There is more arguing, of course, but in the end John wins out, and he schedules an appointment at the clinic for the following Monday. Sherlock grumbles about it and ends up going to bed with yet another mystery floating in his head unsolved. He is so preoccupied that he fails to notice the fear in John's voice, nor the worry that creases his forehead as he slowly walks to his own room that night.