The Dancing Man Part 7

By GE Waldo

Rating: Mature.

Pairing: John/Mary and Sherlock/OMC (sort of), and eventually Johnlock but probably nothing especially sexually graphic. Take warning though just in case!

Summary: Mycroft and John square off on a quest to keep Sherlock safe from what Mycroft see's as his brother's reckless judgement which he believes is endangering his life. Plus two murder cases that not only challenge Sherlock's incredible abilities but pushes him to his mental limits. A continuation of The Glass Heart. (Slightly AU (In this universe Irene Adler and Moriarty are dead for sure and the story is set during a time of limbo after Sherlock is back from the dead but before Watson and Mary's wedding).

Disclaimer: Not mine but a fantasy never hurt anyone. Edited though I'm confident I missed things. Please do tell and I shall repair.

XXX

Mary insisted on a Church wedding even though neither of them was particularly religious. No parents attending were mentioned by either of them. Harry had been sent her invitation but had not responded and John felt a wave of depression sweep over him. It had been not two months since Mycroft's murder and Sherlock's voluntary retreat to his mother's somber country estate although John could barely imagine it as such. More like a prison for Sherlock's genius.

"What do you think of this one John?"

Another cathedral of stained glass and numerous statues of pious saints looking down on him with eyes of - he imagined - profound disapproval. It smelled of incense, wood oil and un-dusted corners. "It's fine."

Mary looked at him and, finally exasperated, "Look, we don't have to get married at all if this is the way you're going to be." She accused and then with uncertainty "You did say you wanted to. I did give you time and you said yes. You said you were sure this time."

He looked at her. A statue of a bleeding Christ was there over her shoulder hanging on the cross, his stone face twisted in sorrow. What sort of loving order would willingly display the tortured, dying body of its greatest saint? One, two breaths and -

"Oh Jesus..." A thrill of horror shot through him. "Oh Christ..." His heart pounding hard and screeching to an almost stop before it then took off out of the gate like a spring filly with the rush of adrenaline pouring into its pounding hooves. Jesus...no, it can't...no, no, you're wrong John Watson, you're wrong. You. Have. To. Be. Wrong. You're not a detective and it can't be that. But with the sudden weight of the world crushing his chest... Could it be?...no-no-no...but what if it is? Holy-flying-fuck...it can't be.

But of course it was.

John turned to Mary who was right there and, suddenly, as she stood looking back at him with hopeful eyes, he knew he did not love her. Not enough. Not properly and with a deep conviction and certainty that it would last and that they would grow old together. I'm a bastard and an idiot but if nothing else at least I can be honest. "Mary...I'm an idiot. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry." He placed the car keys in her frozen fingers, trying not to look at her stunned face but it was her car after all, he would take a cab home and there was no time to waste. "This isn't going to work; not for me. I can't do this and I am so sorry. You don't deserve it, any of it, but I have to go. I have to go now."

Exited through the heavy doors and out into the fresh air! Once free of the oppressive weight of the cathedral John texted Greg.

I THINK I KNOW WHAT THE 'T' IS. NOT A LETTER OR A CROSS BUT A CRUSAFIX. TEXT MORE LATER WHEN I'M SURE. JW

Once back at Baker Street he quickly made his way to Sherlock's bedroom and sorted through the things in his bedside drawers. Finding the book he thought would contain them he flipped through and found the list. At least he ought to go with some of their names on his tongue. People were more willing to help you if you remembered their names.

Next he sifted through his own bedroom closet and found he still had a cardboard box from his move in nearly three years ago. Tossing out the few soiled clothes he found there-in, he then located a good pair of shears from the kitchen's 'junk' drawer and cut the box up into several large squares, leaving them in a small pile on the worktop. Next he located a dark marker and wrote out in clear block letters what he thought would best do. Messages only one man would understand if he was looking.

Tucking the six squares of cardboard under his arm and checking his wallet for cash, he set out to trace the locations of where he might find them, casting his mind back to the places he had trailed Sherlock on this case or the other.

The first person he went to he knew better than the others.

"Teresa!" He called.

She turned and spotted him. She had good eyes. "John Watson." He announced when he caught up to her on the sidewalk, drawing her to one side so the other pedestrians were not impeded and so they could speak more privately. "Do you remember me, I'm-"

"I'd never forget a bit of a' upstart." She growled in her street brogue. "Wha' d'ya' want?"

He explained and when she seemed hesitant. "Look, I know you don't know me from a hole in the fence but this is for Sherlock. He's sort of...in trouble. I think this may be the only way to help him." He took out a wad of bills. "I can pay you and some of the others...um...I'll have to find them." He thrust them at her.

Teresa snorted but her eyes fixed on the money in his outstretched hand. "You'll not find 'em, only I know where they all hold up."

He thrust out the bills to her again. "Then will you..? Please? For Sherlock?"

She took the bills explaining "Just so ye' know, I'm not doing this for th' money, I'm doing it te' help him. But the others, they might need a bit 'ah cash. Not easy ye' know, livin' like this."

John nodded anxious for her cooperation. "You remember what to do? What to tell them? They have to hold up the signs at one o'clock precisely and keep them there for as long as they can stand."

"Yeah, yeah, I 'member. I may not be no doctor but I'm no' an idiot."

"No," John agreed. "No of course not."

"Anything for him." She looked at him, and a thread of understanding passed between them. "It's not right, what they did to 'im; in the papers. Lying bastards."

John shuddered a little, his thoughts going briefly back to that terrible time. The papers had not been kind. "No, it wasn't."

"He not in a lot o' trouble is he?" She asked, trying and failing to hide a frown of worry.

"No. And I think he'll be all right, eventually, if this works."

"It'll work." She assured him though she could not possibly know for sure.

"Thanks."

Teresa made her preparations with five others in homeless network and at one o'clock sharp; they held up their squares of cardboard to the CCTV cameras located through-out the core of London.

WE KNOW THE TRUTH!

YOU'RE HURTING HIM

WE WILL TELL HIM

HE'LL BELEIVE US

STOP THIS NOW!

YOU UNFEELING BASTARD!

Slightly over a half hour later, John was not surprised when, on his walk back to Baker Street, a black car pulled up nearby and purred alongside him. It stopped but instead of getting in he walked over and bending down, knocked on the window. A sharp tap-tap.

When it lowered it was Anthea's pretty face behind it. "John." Not as bored sounding as usual, or disapproving, but irked about something. What he couldn't guess, but it was interesting, that change in demeanor.

John swallowed, partly in fury and partly in grinding weariness, because he now knew that he'd been right. Probably. "So I take it our messages were received."

"Please just get in." She said, a bit of fond scolding nestled somewhere in her words. Even more interesting. He piled in. The car pulled away from the kerb and headed away from Baker Street to...he didn't care to guess. Somewhere secluded no doubt. Very clandestine and government-typical hush-hush. Very typical too of Mycroft Samuel Shane Bloody Bastard Holmes.

He did. Clearing his throat once - "So where's he been hiding then?"

Anthea for once, in all the times he had met her, was not staring into her Blackberry, furiously thumbing messages. "That's where we're going." Her arms were crossed and there was tension in the tiny lines of her face near her made-up eyes. She was nervous he realised.

He settled back into the seat but was by no means relaxed. But instead began strategising the solid left hook he was going to deliver to the bastard's sharp nose the second he got close enough. "That son-of-a -"

"-Occasionally yes." Anthea stared out her tinted window, watching the kingdom of her boss go by and responding to her guest's rude remark. "He can be," she said, "sometimes..."

"I imagine you've first-hand knowledge about that."

"As I said, sometimes. But he's also the most decent man I know. And, like his brother, smart of course. As smart as they come."

"Yeah well, bloody goody for Mycroft but not, apparently, smart enough to know when he's gone too far. Sherlock will never forgive him this."

"Oh it'd surprise you to know how much those two have forgiven each other."

"Oh? Like what for example?"

Anthea smiled mysteriously. "I think it best to stick to the issue at hand. Yes, your message was received."

"And so..?"

"Yes, Mycroft Holmes is alive."

John nodded, satisfied that he was right about that bit. Not that he wanted to kill the man any less for it. "Right," He said through clenched teeth. "So why -?"

"I'll let him explain." She answered and then bit her lip. John stared. She was actually vacillating. "But, and this is from me so I'd appreciate you not mentioning it to him...he was wrong."

Fucking right he was wrong. "You think so?" Wasn't she his loyal little Girl Friday - and every other day of the week - fetching and carrying for him, all the boring, ordinary tasks that he couldn't be bothered with?

"I would never voice this opinion to him of course." She said, and again in a way that urged John not to reveal her little confession. "People think Mycroft Holmes is a psychopath," she said in a kind of curious muse. "I suppose he is, but he's more too. More than a man in a three piece suit with his finger on the nation's heart, you know." Now she looked over at him. "He's also a man with a little brother whom he loves – quite desperately in fact. Would do almost anything to protect him; keep him safe. Only this time he miscalculated." She asserted softly, surely, trying to excuse his actions but John wasn't buying it. Mycroft Holmes didn't deserve any consideration. "Protecting Sherlock has always been Mycroft's one constant concern, even above and beyond all those other tiny pulses he has to see to but, still...he shouldn't have done it."

John stared and he knew. "You did it." He said, absolutely sure. Her face betrayed nothing either way. "The 't', " he said. "You did that, the one letter that didn't fit. That was you."

Anthea smiled again ruefully. "It was all I could think of. I needed you to know somehow. Mycroft had chosen the others; letters to match his and his brother's initials. He knew it would titillate Sherlock no end, and confuse him. Bit of ego there, too, of course. Neither can resist playing with the other's head. Straite was an idiot of course, he had nothing to do with any of it and why would any ordinary murderer want to kill Mycroft Holmes?"

Not a 't', not a cross but a crucifix. An exchange. This life for that. A sacrifice. Mycroft dies and Sherlock gives up his dangerous career and goes home, writhing in silent guilt. Anguished but alive. Sorrowing but safe. It was perfect. The colossal prick had planned and executed his own death. The perfect solution: kill himself and Sherlock lives. Not happily but he lives.

The biggest problem with that was...Sherlock would be miserable for the rest of his life. Just a slower death is all, blaming himself for his brother's death. Sherlock - self-absorbed, self-assured Sherlock Holmes - incriminating himself in his own brother's murder for the rest of his days, believing he was at fault because he had not warned him. Mycroft had not foreseen that bit.

Or maybe he had. 'High functioning psychopath'. The words Mycroft had applied to himself.

Jesus God Almighty. What was it with the Holmes brothers and their need to fake dying in spectacularly awful ways? "But how...Mycroft never found out? About the 't'?"

"While he was secluded? No, but he does now of course." A wry smile. "He deduced it. And he's expecting us. I may not have a job at the end of today. I've never...defied him before. I wonder..." she asked aloud, amused, a bit fearful? Both, John decided. "...I wonder what he'll do."

"Give you a raise I should hope." John offered lamely. "He oughta' bloody promote you."

She ignored the comment, and the car drew to a stop. "Here we are."

XXX

Into a high-rise apartment complex in a seedier part of London, then up the elevator to the top floor – and the last floor to go made possible with a key that Anthea inserted in the lock – and then stepping out into a hallway that smelled of new paint and deep pile carpeting fresh from the factory. Ah. Mycroft Holmes had had a loft penthouse built for himself, for his "seclusion". For his pretend death. He's probably still leading M16 around by the snout from here, John thought. They would no doubt have all fell in line with his miserable little scheme.

Mycroft Holmes would seclude himself in nothing less than serene luxury. Not like Sherlock's 'time away' (as the detective liked to call it), no, nothing like it at all, John could well imagine. That had been under far less opulent circumstances, most horrors at which Sherlock had only hinted (circumstances over which John had never pushed far when noticing his friend's elevated pulse and quiet quick breaths whenever he was asked about it. Some lingering PTSD there, John knew. He was after all not only a doctor but intimately familiar with that particular affliction).

Once shown into the spacious living quarters, Mycroft appeared – yes, very much alive as usual – in his three piece suit. No umbrella. Nothing with which to raise a defense. Perfect.

In under two seconds Mycroft Holmes, big brain behind the nation's secret defense network, was sitting on the floor on his backside, sporting a bloody nose and a look of such shock on his face, that John just had to laugh. His knuckles stung and he shook out his hand casually, hoping he'd broken his nose. He flexed his fingers. They still worked. But a broken hand would have been worth it anyway.

Mycroft struggled to his feet as Anthea handed him some tissues from a decorative box on the nearby desk, fussing over him a bit. Maybe it would earn her some points in favour but John doubted it.

Mycroft straightened his suit, dabbing at the blood that stained the vest and looked at John ruefully. "I suppose I deserved that." He said with polished dignity and John shook his head. The Holmes boys were unflappable.

John found his voice easily. "You utter prick!" He snarled. "Do you have any idea how much pain you've caused Sherlock with this fucking stunt of yours? Not to mention your old mum."

In answer Mycroft took his seat behind his desk, waved Anthea from the room and, continuing to dab at the blood still leaking from his nose, spoke. When he did, a bit nasal-y, but still it was with a casual grace as though he and John were having a conversation as colleagues might, as though they met every week for drinks at his blasted club. John seethed but let the man speak simply because he felt if he made another move right then, it would be to beat Mycroft Holmes to a black and blue pulp.

"We had good reason to put together that little show on the roof of Bartholomew's – to save his life." Mycroft said as an opening, "I, Sherlock and about two dozen of his street groupies – those people -" he grimaced "-who were always lusting after him in one way or another." It was a bit confounding, but it seemed Mycroft wanted to start explaining way back somewhere before his little trick of having been murdered in his little brother's flat and letting his brother suffer for it. "Even you lust after him in your own way, Doctor Watson. Which was why the other thing was so necessary – I mean of course my death - to get Sherlock away from you or perhaps the other way around - you away from him– I did warn you after all. I wanted to break the link, the strings that seemed to be binding you to him – but as you know thanks to Anthea - I have been unsuccessful. I had feared as much."

"Feared? Feared what?" The conversation was bizarre in the extreme, but he was morbidly curious.

"That it is already too late," Mycroft stated. "He is already in love with you. Too far gone, as it has turned out, for any action on my part to detour it." Mycroft sniffed audibly, and had to audacity to appear affronted by his brother's perniciousness in not reacting as Mycroft had calculated he would. For being weakly human enough to fall in love.

"So you decided to solve your problem – the problem of keeping Sherlock safe by no less than tearing his heart out. Your mother told me all about it you know, the charge she set on your shoulders as a teenager. Maybe one you've gotten tired of." John seethed. Curiosity being what it was though - "How did you do it anyway? You had no pulse..."

"Use your brain, Doctor Watson, clearly you do have one. It was of course simple. I know a man, an expert in arranging such special effects...fake flesh at my throat so you would feel no pulse, the ends tucked into my shirt, fake blood, fake hole, carefully placed bullet in the wall and of course, misdirection. I knew you would be too busy worrying over Sherlock to look too closely."

"And the ambulance? One of yours?"

"Of course."

"And the medics, and the muscle...all of course in your employ too - bloody hell." He spat. "All to get Sherlock to give up the work and return to his mother's house. To save him maybe but mostly so you would be relieved of your responsibility over him at last." Something struck a chord in John's mind, something as crisp and as clean as a church bell on a bright Sunday morning. "Oh my God..." he said to Mycroft's puzzled face. "Oh. My. God. And that's not even all is it? Christ - I must be barmy. Why didn't I see it before? Jealousy."

"Jealous of you?" He snorted. "Don't be absurd."

But there had been a shift in the man, a lift of a brow, a blink of an eye, a twitch of one foot. Not much but enough to convince John that he was right. That he had hit it dead on the mark. "No - not of me, you ice-cold prat. You're bloody well jealous of him." John said. "You're jealous of your own brother – of Sherlock and there's no point in denying it, Mycroft, I know a bloody green headed monster when I see one. You are jealous."

John felt a sudden elation at the revelation. He was almost giddy. He couldn't wait to share this news with Sherlock. It ought to go a long way in easing his friend's wrung-out heart. "But then it makes perfect sense, the surveillance at all hours of the day and night, why you're always popping in to chastise him for his life style and his friends and his lack of doing things your way."

Mycroft lifted his nose. "You are fantasizing."

"No, I'm as sober as the day I was born and you are jealous of Sherlock, I mean, really, of course. You might have a few centimeters on him in height but that's where the similarity ends doesn't it?" John's mind was swimming with the details, alive with them like electric eels ready to wrap around the other mans cortex and fry him but good! For the first time, he wondered if this was how Sherlock felt when his mind had all the tricks and treats of a crime uncovered and laid out for him in neat little rows. Easy to see it now, so easy.

"I mean Sherlock's nothing like you at all is he? Other than a better man all around I think."

"You don't know my brother at all."

"I'd say I know him a damn sight better than you do."

"Oh really? And what has he told you about his childhood? Anything? Nothing? Do you know he didn't speak until he was four and a half years old? Our parents thought he was deficient. At the time so did I. They almost sent him to a school for challenged children. But one day we were all at the breakfast table and daddy said something a bit –shall we say – idiotic. Sherlock opened his mouth and disputed what father had said in perfect English, listing the reasons daddy was wrong and Sherlock was correct about all of them - I checked. Later I taxed him on it and he said he had heard the stilted way the other children were talking and hadn't wanted to speak until he had mastered the language. Mastered at five."

John shook his head, waving a scolding finger. "Stop trying to change the subject. No, no, you might – no, not might, you do, I believe, love Sherlock. He's your little brother, your only sibling, and you do love him, I believe that. In fact I think you feel almost a sense of ownership of him...but you are jealous; absolutely yes. But then why wouldn't you be jealous - yeah? Sherlock's young and fit, better looking, not a grey hair on his head - and a hell of a lot more of it. And by god can't he pull of a black Italian suit like there's no tomorrow? And you with your grey and brown suits and your umbrella that you carry everywhere rain or shine – even your briefcase is boring. You're a walking cliche' Mycroft." He walked to the desk and leaned over it, putting his face right into Mycroft's. "You, as Sherlock would no doubt put it, are dull, dull, dull."

"A very good try John."

John moved away, the smell of blood making him a bit nauseated. "No that's it. I thought this over-protectiveness was just you trying to be a good brother, overbearing, self-righteous, controlling bastard of a brother but...hell, I was a good margin off wasn't I? This is more a sibling rivalry taken to a ghastly proportion. All this really is, is you black with jealousy over your more interesting, prettier younger brother." John strolled around the room now, taking in the high end glassware, the carefully placed ornaments, the rich carpets and the over-priced furniture that was new but built to look old. Everything said Money and Power and Don't Fuck With Me, and it was all polished and austere and boring-boring-boring and very Mycroft Holmes down to his collar-stays.

All the while he continued to talk, feeling potent that he could, that he, John Watson, was not one whit frightened of Mycroft Holmes. He really wasn't scary at all anyway, especially with a bloody nose. "And the sad thing is it doesn't even end there. Sherlock's made a name for himself. He's in the public eye, he has notoriety and respect. People love him and the women! Oh the women really love him and half the men too and what's more – what sticks in your dull, boring craw most of all – is that Sherlock won't bed a single one of them and that drives you crazy because you would. Oh the envy. Oh to be like Sherlock, because oh my yes you'd take on those ladies if only they looked your way even once. But no one wants to bed you, do they Mycroft? No one wants the boring government dog who labours behind the scenes, un-noticed, un-interesting, un-admired, un-loved."

Mycroft was quiet, not for long but long enough that John knew his words had struck a chord in Mycroft as well. The man was all but holding his hands over his ears to keep out the din.

John honed in for the kill shot. "Sherlock is everything you aren't. He's...he's..."

John wasn't sure he had a word for it; for what Sherlock really was. The lesser words that described the man floated before his eyes as bright as the stars: he was noble, if sometimes reckless, in his relentless pursuit of the criminal of mind, he showed a reserved and occasionally disdainful manner around the vulgarly sexed, he manifested (what at least appeared to be) shyness around those who overtly expressed their friendship toward him – or their sexual interest in him - a thing which often left him looking a little unbalanced. Sherlock displayed silent discomfort and occasionally even anxiety with social situations and yet endured them when necessary, even in his melancholy violin playing, his star-bursting brilliance and last but not least his still youthful and elegant features there was encased elements of this one descriptive that fit Sherlock so well. All of these things John found fit compactly and perfectly into a single word.

Sherlock was...

He had it and it was indeed correct.

"...beautiful."

Mycroft was silent for a moment and then..."Yes, he is." He said very softly. "And thus he will die." He wiped his nose and glanced to the brolly set against the door. The umbrella, John thought, was a tic. A thing Mycroft Holmes did when he had been pushed emotionally off-balance. And it was too far away for him to take it up and twirl it. Now on his features, John was astonished to see, lay a stark grief and every syllable the older Holmes spoke shrieked truthfulness. "My brother, 'The Beautiful', will die while still a young man, John Watson." He looked at John, his features resigned to what he truly believed was the eventual reality and John felt a thrill of fear ripple through him, nudging aside his short triumph of being right. Because the certainty in the older Holmes's eyes chilled him to his core.

It was as though prophecy had been uttered. Some day in the not too distant future, reckless, danger loving, self-neglecting Sherlock Holmes was going to turn the wrong corner at the wrong time, face down someone even more dangerous than Moriarty; someone without the patience of Moriarty; someone who didn't care a whip about the game; someone with no conscience and little soul, probably someone who wasn't particularly smart either. Most likely it will be the worst sort of criminal; the sort with nothing to lose. And this someone will be waiting for Sherlock holding a gun in his steady hand. This someone will be ready - eager even - to kill and he will then shoot his weapon without remorse or hesitation. And at the right spot too, and Sherlock's brain or his liver or his heart will explode and he will fall down and die without another sound.

"You know it's true, doctor." Mycroft said grimly, resigned, his lips a thin line of profound disappointment in his brother's former flat-mate.

John almost swooned with the thought of it. Christ, he did know it too. Whatever jubilation he had felt at beating Mycroft Holmes at his convoluted game and telling him, finally, exactly what he thought of him, withered into a cold, dead, stone in his stomach. The truth of it, of Sherlock's pending death, was proverbially staring into his eyes, and he was ashamed to realise too late that he was a fool. That rooting out Mycroft had certainly sealed the fate of Sherlock.

"My brother will die while in his prime of life and now, thanks to you, there's not a thing either one of us can do about it."

John shoved aside his fears. It was done after all. Only one thing left. "You're going to your mother's house right now and you're going to tell him, Mycroft. You're going tell him and then beg his forgiveness." John said with steel in the words. "Or I'll take him away from you forever." Then added "And you know I can."

Mycroft stared for a moment but even he knew the game was up and it was time to admit defeat. He nodded solemnly. "Yes. We'll take my car."

XXX

Sherlock was in the living room, fully dressed though it was clear he intended on going nowhere. When John entered the room Sherlock was smoking. The air was blue with it. "Sherlock..." He had no idea how to prepare him. Even knowing what he knew, even when Sherlock had appeared seemingly out of the grave to greet him, he still had no idea how to advise him.

But then Mycroft put an end to his problem by stepping into the room after him. His nose had stopped bleeding but it was swollen. "Sherlock..." He said softly.

Sherlock stared, stood up, took a step back, looked at John, looked back to Mycroft standing very much alive before him, took a step forward, opened his mouth...

Nothing came out.

Then he was on Mycroft like a mad feline, grabbing hold of his lapels and shaking him, hissing into his face "What the hell is this? What the fuck-what the fuck?" Sherlock stammered and shut his mouth, releasing his brother and stepping back, shaking like a leaf, his face puce with rage, his eyes leaking tears but whether in grief or fury John wasn't certain. Probably both was his guess.

"You..." Sherlock said softly, "You goddamn fuck." He said his voice-box strained with holding back but his face, his face...

Showed everything.

Greif. Shock. Devastation. His world had been rocked once more. "You bastard!" He shouted, shaking from head to foot, "YOU MADE ME THINK YOU WERE DEAD!"

And then, as though an invisible cord had been violently tugged between them, Sherlock's face turned to John's, who stood some distance away from the brothers, silent and waiting for the storm to ease. John stared back, understanding in an instant the cause of Sherlock's sudden, stunned silence. Something dawned on the detective's features, and they twisted, this time in sorrow, and then in apology. He stared at John for many seconds, his chest heaving and his next words emerging, painful sounding, from his dried up throat "Please forgive me..." He whispered desperately. Begging. Pleading. To John. He'd said the words to John, not to Mycroft, but to John Watson.

John bit his lip and nodded firmly. "Always." Quietly spoken, and words only for Sherlock said softly so not to startle. Yet firmly enough to reassure, to reach his friend from across the cold room. He so wanted to embrace Sherlock at that moment so he would know, understand that ...of course...always. Always! But he didn't move.

Sherlock swallowed his grief and rage and whatever else had surfaced without invitation and unwelcomed, and left the room through the glass doors to the garden. It was raining but he snatched up his cigarettes on the way out.

Mycroft moved to follow but one look of warning from John and his feet stayed.

"Don't you fucking go anywhere," John warned.

"Take care of him, won't you John?" Mycroft said with a sigh, settling himself in a high backed chair and pouring out a tall whiskey.

John followed Sherlock out into the rain.

Sherlock didn't even flinch when John sat down beside him on that iron bench. Sherlock was already soaked from the rain and was protecting his lit cigarette by cupping it in his downturned palm, the cherry turned upwards. Smoke trailed between stiff white fingers. His hair was flat against his head and his expensive suit sopping. John sat down right beside him, so their thighs brushed, and their knees knocked together a bit. He waited until the atmosphere was...comfortable and conducive to quiet talk.

Sherlock deduced this of course; that John, not Mycroft, would after him to offer comfort; to talk; to try and get him talking. Over that third one John would be disappointed because when one could hardly breathe for the phantom pain in one's chest, talking was a whole other world away. Sherlock did his best to listen, but it was difficult over the wailing in his chest.

But still it was John, and John deserved some acknowledgment for coming to find him, for being the kind friend he was to his loyal core, and so Sherlock offered up what he was capable of.

"I didn't realise," he said quietly, looking out into the grey day. "I thought I did, but I didn't." Then he whispered so softly, a ghost from his lips "Eighteen months..."

John nodded. Sherlock was not referring to his brother's betrayal or his manipulation. Sherlock, John understood, was experiencing what he John had felt when he thought Sherlock was dead all those horrible months. Eighteen of them. Sherlock comprehended now. At last John knew his friend understood what it was to lose someone and then to get them back only to know they had not been dead but left you to grieve over them anyway; and how it tore into you, rent you limb from limb, squeezed your heart until it was dry. He was feeling this now, and John wondered if it might be the first time in the detective's life, experiencing that aching emptiness. And now, on this cold bench, a fellow feeling; empathy.

John sucked in a startled breath when Sherlock shifted his left hand and covered John's right with it, digging in until their half- tangled fingers found purchase in each other. As Sherlockian gestures went between them, this one was a new born; and so all the more precious for its ethereality. One wrong move or too many words and John felt positive he would lose his delicate hold on the man. He knew Sherlock was processing. He had just been delivered a tremendous blow to his, of late, already tremulous psyche and he needed some quiet and calm to absorb it all.

Sherlock was a novice with emotions, or at least accepting that they existed in him, and John recognised the closed down expression on the detective's face that he was off in his Mind Palace, shifting things he thought he knew into the rubbish bins and replacing them with angry, sweeping scripts on a blackboard: "Mycroft. Lying. Hurting. Lying. Fucking. Fat. Lying. Bastard. Mycroft. Is. Not. Dead...I! Hate! Him! I! Love! Him! I! Hate! Him! I! Love! Him! Bastard! Sherlock was not deaf or blind when he was like this, simply removed from all other distractions but emotions could not be written upon a blackboard and he was in agony.

But Sherlock could still hear him and so John took a soft breath, gathering the words to explain from his own knowledge what Sherlock needed to hear. "I know you don't want to talk right now, Sherlock, and that's fine. It really is. So I just wanted to – I want to say something to you and I hope you listen to me with at least part of your mind." John plucked the decomposing memories from the bottom of his soul and brought them up to the light again. "I understand, you know, what you're feeling right now." Did he understand it? Oh yes, so very, very well. "You know I do because it's what you're feeling. When you...died, when I thought you'd died, it felt like someone plucked my heart from my chest and took it somewhere. I spent over a year trying to find it again, and I almost did..."

Mary. Mary had helped a lot. Not in every way but almost. She had helped him see life again, and not just pain. Not entirely, not altogether or wholly, but enough to take those first few steps away from the gutting sorrow of losing Sherlock and, in consequence, everything he had erected around him, in his life and in his heart.

John had healed, pretty much, under Mary's insistent hands and welcoming smile. She had opened up a part of him he had closed to the whole world for the second time. "I know what it's like, that pain. It's..." He tried to think of a word with enough meaning to convey the depths of the agony he had gone through after Sherlock jumped from that roof, but he was just a doctor, not a poet, "...it's just so horrible. And now..."

And now.

"And now you've just learned that Mycroft is alive and well and it was all a ruse; one of his games, just him trying to control you; just another attempt to rein in his little brother. Some good behind it, yes, some brotherly feeling there I've no doubt, as misguided as it was, but still, you feel played for the fool. For all his apologies, he may as well have eviscerated you." Cut out your kidneys, lungs, heart - pulverised it all and then stuffed it all back in. John sighed because the recollections of that terrible time were becoming almost physical. "Anyhow, I know that's what it feels like, I get it, trust me on that."

But he also knew something else, a thing far more important than the rest, than the betrayal or even the pain... "Mycroft did it because he loves you, as screwed up as that it. As hard as that is to recognise right now. And you will, I know you will, find some way to forgive him. Because as much of a bastard as he is, he just wanted to keep you safe. Bloody stupid way to go about it, mind you, but there it is." As for the revelation of Mycroft's jealousy, he would keep that to himself. Sherlock probably had already guessed that much years ago.

Sherlock remembered, in the space of a breath, his two years away, fighting to protect that which he considered his and then coming home to John's disapproval and fury. Whatever had been murky to him was now as clear as crystal. Whatever he had dismissed as mere over-reaction on his friend's part now seemed perfectly justified. Deserving in fact.

"How long," his voice cracked and he grimaced, hating that the weakness was showing itself so gleefully. "How long did it take you?" Sherlock looked at him now, his hand not moving away but gripping tighter. "How long did it take you to forgive me? I mean really forgive me?"

John smiled just a bit, the warmth replacing whatever shards of pain had crept up in his soul. "Right away my friend, the second I saw you standing there alive, breathing - still as cocky as hell, ya' bloody git. In an instant."

A tiny pinch of confusion appeared between his shapely brows. "But...you were so...violent...so very angry with me."

John looked away, at bit embarrassed at the memory of his temper. "Yeah, sorry about that," He shrugged helplessly. Sherlock did bring it out of him. "I didn't say I wasn't bloody upset with you." He added, "But do you think I would trade having you back for anything?" For what? So his mourning wouldn't have been for nothing? It was so laughable he had to turn his face away to hide his mirth at the ludicrous notion. Having Sherlock back was the greatest gift he had ever received and he'd been giving silent thanks every day since.

They were both soaked to the bone. "You feel like going in now? Maybe talking to him?"

Sherlock sighed heavily. "I suppose. When mummy gets home she will be very upset with him." He smiled at that, enjoying the thought. It was the beginning of compensation.

John nodded. "I suppose she will, yes." He stood, keeping his hand locked around Sherlock's. "Come on; let's get this over-with."

XXX

Sherlock found his way to John's room just off the kitchen in his mother's house. He knocked and entered.

John was sitting up in bed, reading an article in one of Mummy Holmes' gardening magazine about growing Gardenias. "So?" He asked.

Sherlock took a seat on the edge of the soft mattress and turned sideways so he could face John. "He's gone home now. I made him promise to remove all cameras and other devices from the flat, although the CCTV camera will stay trained on the front step."

"Sherlock Holmes compromising. I'm impressed." And it didn't hurt to have the comings and goings of clients and potential criminals on record just in case.

Sherlock's mouth twisted a little and his eyebrows affected their own little shrug. "I also told him that he's not ever to arrive uninvited to our home again, and to deposit fifty thousand quid into our joint account as compensation for being such a lying prat."

"Nice touch." John said. Our home. Our account. Warm, good things. Shared things. God he loved this man.

"Mummy's going to disinherit him from the estate." He said gleefully, clear admiration for his matron over that.

"Really? So you'll inherit then."

Sherlock shrugged. Money was never high on his list of things to be concerned over. "Oh, she'll give it back to him eventually. It's just to make him sweat a little." He shuddered a little. "I certainly don't want it."

John could imagine Sherlock never wanting to come back here after the events of the previous months.

"Tired?" He looked tired. Strung out actually. John did not want Sherlock going back up to that empty chamber with the cold fire-place and the drapes heavy with memories around the bed, cloistering him in. Even though Sherlock had been raised here, grew up here, this house of dusty corridors and pinched sadness wasn't home now and it didn't suit Sherlock anymore. Maybe once upon a time he had fit in, being surrounded by all this cold money and restrained affections, but not now. Now Sherlock's place was beside his blogger and friend John Watson and John approved of this whole-heartedly. He would in fact accept nothing less.

For once the detective nodded, rubbing sleep deprived eyes.

"Have a shower. Get changed." John said patting the space on the mattress beside him. "Plenty of room."

Sherlock looked quizzically at John but when John didn't flinch even once he answered with a small upward twist of his mouth and a nod, rising to enter the en-suite, leaving the door open. An unspoken gesture; if you're mine now, then I am yours. We belong and there is no shame in it.

Words would be superfluous at this point. John revelled in that he could look at Sherlock now, naked, exposed and open to being reached for. Touched. And Sherlock could now let allow himself the luxury of looking back, unafraid of what was growing in John's expression. This is what they were to each other now. What months had transpired under frustration and heart-sickness had now been re-written in this wonderful, loving instant of time.

John watched, unabashedly, as Sherlock stripped beautifully nude and stepped into the soapy tub.

Right now. This moment: Sherlock naked in his bath and John in bed waiting for him. It was a moment John felt certain he would remember for the rest of his life. It might even become their anniversary.

Theirs; this here and this now.

And when Sherlock, smelling like soap and clean skin, slipped into bed beside him, it was as a man slipping into his rightful place, a connection made correctly for the first time; as someone sealed and packaged next to him as he ought and as he should have been from the beginning. A man, this marvelous man, fitted perfectly into his bed and beside his body like he was meant for him and none other. He, John Watson had been built for Sherlock and Sherlock just for him and him alone.

Obvious.

XXX

Lestrade was, to say the least, astounded by the turn of events, once Sherlock laid it out for him; the whole thing. The killings had been unrelated, as he had thought, but the cryptograms left behind, the work of another; his own brother, all of it a ruse. Sherlock also revealed his speculation that Mycroft had engineered Rupert Straite's escape from jail so to use him as a pawn, as the culprit in his faked murder. Greg cursed a blue streak about the elder Holmes until he was out of breath. Then he made Sherlock and John promise to come down NSY to make a statement in a few days if he wouldn't mind doing so.

Baker Street was quiet. It was morning. A good second sleep behind them, this time with some lovely kissing before bed, and John was never so happy to be home.

Their home.

Sherlock stuffed his cell phone back in his trouser pocket. "Mycroft has made a new enemy I think. Graham is not pleased."

"Er – Greg, Sherlock, for the last time, it's Greg." John huffed, reading the morning news, and feeling more content than he had in months. "Your brother'll weasel his way back in I'm sure."

Sherlock didn't dispute it and took his own chair. "Does Mary hate me now?" He asked. She didn't deserve the pain he had caused her.

"No. Mary's not like that. She understands." And even if she doesn't it, there's no going back when you finally understand your rightful place. John folded the paper and let it slide to the floor. Mary had to understand because he had made his choice with no regrets. "I think she saw how I was, where my feelings were, long before I did."

"Hm."

John got to his feet and walked over to Sherlock's chair, squatting down in front of him. "So...just so we're clear...I'm going to go ahead and say the words, Sherlock, alright? I know it makes you uncomfortable, so you don't have to say them back right away, it's okay with me if -"

"Of course I love you John. Do keep up." He said lifting an eyebrow at his flat-mate's slowness. "Obvious."

John supposed he should have deduced it sooner. He reached up and kissed him, lingering on those soft lips, promising more. There had not got there yet but soon. Much more later. But here was fine. Here. Now.

And tomorrow too. And after that... "Me too, just in case you were wondering," John said. "Me too." And the next day and every day after that, he deduced.

Elementary.

XXX END