Epilogue: A Sculpture of Sharp Angles

When John wakes up, in near-darkness, he first feels the familiar wave of disorientation sweep over him, just like he experienced during his weeks of amnesia. But as his eyes adjust to the moonlight shining through the window, the sensation only lasts a few seconds, and his memory successfully brings him up to the present time. Ah, yes… he's in a luxury hotel suite in Dublin, in a ridiculously large bed. Sharing with Sherlock, out of a combination of feeling obligated to keep an eye on his friend and being too tired to care about sleeping arrangements.

He can see the bedside clock easily. 3:22 am. He rolls over and is dropping off to welcome, luxurious sleep again when he hears it. It's probably the sound that woke him up in the first place. Not much, just an audible sniff. But it's followed by the sound of irregular breathing… quiet, but not the sounds of a person sleeping peacefully and deeply. No, these are the sounds of someone who is awake, and is trying to cry – or, perhaps, keep from crying - as quietly as possible.

He sits up in the bed and looks over at the other side.

Sherlock is sitting up, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around his pyjama-clad legs. Even in the dim light, John can clearly see the hugely dilated pupils and the fine tremor of his friend's jaw. Tears are coursing sluggishly down his cheeks, and he raises one hand to scrub at them.

John scoots over, puts a hand on his friend's arm. It's cold to the touch; he must have been sitting like this for some time. "Hey." He smiles, not sure that Sherlock can see much of his expression, but trying to look and sound reassuring. "You know, I usually recommend sleeping at this time of night. Especially for someone who – by his own account – has been up for about three days straight."

Sherlock shakes his head. Robbed of all colour by the touch of the moonlight, he's a perfect study in black and white. He's a cloud of dark hair and huge silvery-grey eyes and a sculpture of sharp angles of elbows and knees. "John," he finally murmurs.

"What?" John decides that the emotional roller-coaster of the last 24 hours – hell, the last few weeks - is enough to justify sliding his arm around his friend's thin shoulders. Sherlock doesn't really react, doesn't relax or lean into him at all, but neither does he shake John's arm off.

"John… in the Army, how many times did it take?"

He tightens his arm, trying to quiet the trembling he can still feel beneath it. "How many times … did what take?"

"Killing people." Sherlock swallows loudly. "How many times before it stopped bothering you?"

So that's what this is about.

"It has never stopped bothering me, Sherlock. Never."

"But our first case together… the cab driver. You were like a rock. Nerves of steel. No regrets."

"I had more time to think about it, Sherlock. More time to tell myself that I would shoot him if he threatened you. And just more experience coping with the aftermath."

He's silent for a few seconds, but John can see the muscles of his jaw still working. "I didn't… I knocked him down, and grabbed his gun, but I didn't think I was going to have to kill him. But he had that second gun…" His eyes stare sightlessly out into the dimly lit room. "I didn't think. I just pulled the trigger. John, he was only a few feet from me."

"I know. I saw." And it's not a sight I'm likely to forget.

"All that blood… and the look on his face, as if he were surprised."

"It was clear self-defence. He was threatening you with a firearm. And besides, he was trying to kill me. And your brother."

"I know," he whispers. "But I would rather not have killed him. Not that way. He was just following someone's orders, John."

"You've … never actually killed anyone before." It's a statement, not a question. "In all this time you've been doing detective work."

"Not directly. Not by my own hand." He shakes his head.

John pulls his friend closer to him, so that Sherlock's head rests on his shoulder. He leans his own head against those tangled dark curls as he thinks, and listens to his friend's ragged breathing. No… while the two of them have dealt with violence in many forms, he's never seen Sherlock kill anyone. Throw a man out a window, yes. Duck out of the way while a booby-trapped safe killed a gunman, yes. Trade punches, knock assailants unconscious with a gun-butt, get half-strangled... all of those things, but he's never actually seen Sherlock fire a gun at anyone.

"All that time you were…" he almost says dead, but thinks better of it, "gone, dealing with Moriarty's accomplices… I guess I always thought you had had to kill some of them."

"No. It never happened. Mostly I turned them over to the locals. When I couldn't do that… I had help. Mycroft assigned me a couple of boys to secretly back me up, do the dirty work, and to keep me from knowing the details. He was always overprotective."

"He wasn't just protecting you, Sherlock, he was trying very hard to keep you human." Especially while I couldn't be there to listen, to do exactly what I am doing now. John pulls away far enough that he can get a good look at his friend's face, and places a hand under Sherlock's sharp chin. "Look at me, Sherlock."

Wide grey eyes, tear-stained, meet his. "All the time we've been working together… I've had to learn that I'm not you, that I can't be you. I don't have your brain, your special genius for putting the puzzle pieces together.

"And you're not me. You've seen and done a lot, but not war. You're not a soldier. Don't base your expectations of how you should react to… to what you had to do today, based on what you see of me. I am wired very, very differently than you.

"I shot a man today too. From a window, with a sniper rifle. But I knew exactly what I was doing and I spent hours preparing for the likely possibility that I was going to have to kill someone. And I knew, at least when it finally happened, that I was doing it to protect your brother." John forces a smile. "He's a bit of a dick sometimes, your brother, but he does have his uses from time to time."

Sherlock twists his chin out of John's grasp to look away, out the window. "Every time I think of it… all that blood spraying out of his chest and all over me, I feel sick."

"That's exactly how you are supposed to feel." Now John moves closer and tentatively wraps his arms around his friend. To his relief, Sherlock doesn't stiffen up but relaxes and slides his own arms around John's back, returning the hug and resting his head on John's shoulder.

"You know, Sherlock, I didn't just patch up soldiers' bodies in Afghanistan." He strokes the beloved dark head and pulls him even closer, feeling an almost overwhelming wave of affection and gratitude. "I had an awful lot of conversations like this with young men and women, seeing – and having to do - horrible things for the first time. It's a normal way to react."

"But I've never been normal," comes the muffled response. "Normal is boring."

John chuckles. "Now you are sounding more like yourself." He pats Sherlock's back, tightens his arms around him until he half-expects to hear ribs creaking, then gently pulls away. "Think you could get some sleep now?"

"Sleep is boring, too," he answers, with a ghost of a watery smile.

John glares at him with mock ferocity, then flops back down onto the bed, rolls over and burrows into the lovely down duvet. "I do have to admit… your brother has nice taste in hotels. I could get used to a bed like this." He looks back over his shoulder. "By myself, though. Without a skinny, bony git like you in it, taking up more than half the room."

He hears a chuckle behind him, then a sigh. "John?"

"Mmm?"

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"John?"

"Mmm?"

John almost jumps as he feels the thin, slightly cool arms slide around him from behind. "Please. Don't ever go missing like that again."

He feels his throat constrict, and grasps the arms that are wrapping around his chest. "Deal."

End! Let me know how you liked it. :)