Chapter Text
The train swayed lazily back and forth, ignorant of its passengers, ignorant of their baggage, ignorant of their circumstances. The train knew no more of the fact that it held the world's only consulting detective and his partner-slash-assistant-slash-best friend than it did of how exactly the universe worked and if there was a god spinning it all around. It just knew its duty, go here and go there, rest, then repeat. Go from Prague to Sarajevo, go from Berlin to Prague, go from Bruges to Leipzig, go from Novgorod to Klaipeda…the destination doesn't matter to a train. It, for lack of a better description, simply doesn't know any better.
So it was no surprise to the train that it was unfamiliar to the entanglements of love as well as the tension that occasionally and inevitably springs between two people who love each other, a tension neither is willing to initiate the solution to for fear of looking like a right idiot.
If the train knew what idiots were, it would certainly think (privately, to itself, because it was a train that liked to be polite) that the two men in compartment 22 of carriage 1B were indeed right idiots.
Sherlock and John stared at each other silently, the train that knew nothing of love or idiots rocking onwards, both unwilling to look foolish, although for different reasons than usual.
Sherlock did not want to acknowledge that he had been both right and wrong in this certain situation. John was simply tired of being the first to initiate their peacetalks, tired of being used, tired of Sherlock's callousness, tired of many things, but those were what he could immediately think of. He figured that, after all the time they had spent together and then the three years of exile, Sherlock might have learned how to compromise or at least lay his pride down for five seconds and apologise. He was mistaken, but not for the motives he'd assumed.
Sherlock knew how to apologise. Everyone knew how to apologise. It didn't mean he didn't know what it meant. He just didn't care to. He supposed John would've spoken by now, but he understood the gravity of the previous night's events.
He would understand if John didn't forgive him for a long time to come.
He certainly wouldn't.
They'd started off, generally speaking, well enough. An hour out of Berlin, spent in comfortable silence in their quiet compartment of their considerably empty train. Not many people wanted to go to Prague, it seemed. Prague didn't exactly call to them and beckon them down for a vacation.
"How are they?" Sherlock asked quietly as the train rocked like a calm ocean, breaking the hour's silence.
John looked to him from the window, confusion in his face.
"They?"
"The—" Sherlock cut off, unable to continue, but gestured to John's back, annoyed at his inability to speak those few words that gave a name to what John had suffered through.
"Oh…The doctor in Berlin said most would fade soon. Little to no scarring."
"Good. And the um—your ear?"
"That—that's going to be there a while."
"How long?"
"The rest of my life." John said, the fact that he didn't want to talk about it evident in his voice. Sherlock let it drop.
"John, you know that Mary—"
John scoffed.
"Mary. What do you think I know about Mary?"
"I'm sure she has an explanation."
"I'm sure she does, too. I'm sure it's quite good and explains exactly why she left me with those fuckers, why she left me to have the shit beat out of me, have my back split open, to have—to have…" John trailed off, not wanting to go on. Sherlock gazed at him, knowing not to push him farther.
"I know you have problems with people leaving, John—"
"That's an understatement." John muttered. "I wonder why?"
Sherlock wished he could diffuse John as easily as Mikheia had diffused him.
"I am not the one you're mad at."
"Are you sure about that?" John bit. He didn't know where these words, this anger, was coming from, didn't know from what wound it bled out of and he couldn't staunch it.
"I thought you'd forgiven me."
Sherlock's voice washed water over the angry wound, cleaning it for the moment of spiked irritation and those barbed words that tasted like battery acid and left a bad taste in John's mouth.
"I did." John sighed. "I do." He ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry."
Sherlock felt his envy prickle. John could say it so easily.
"It's alright."
The train rocked on.
Their silence unbroken, they had gone to sleep. Or, rather, John had, stretching out on the seat opposite Sherlock and using his stolen jacket as a pillow. Sherlock merely switched from softly watching him to looking out of the window.
Finally, when he couldn't stand it, he moved to sit beside him. John didn't stir. Good. He didn't want him awake to hear him.
"I'm sorry, John." He began quietly. "I suspect that you already know that, without me saying it, because you can do wonderful things like that, but I—I thought I should tell you all the same." He felt a bitter smile come on his face. "Look at me. I can't even apologise when you're sentient."
John didn't reply, far away in his subconscious, Sherlock guessed, as he slid down to the REM state.
"I know you've wondered why exactly I left. I've been a bit vague about that, haven't I? I don't think I can really tell you one reason. I suppose the gist of it is that I left you so you would be safe, but you found me anyways. You found me, and now all those three years have gone to hell for nothing because you're more dangerous than I thought you could be. But it's not a bad thing, you know. It doesn't scare me. I think I may actually love you more for it."
A smile with no bitterness came onto his face. John didn't see it.
"It's nice to finally say that, isn't it? I see why you looked so relieved when you said it…it's funny though, that I can say it in any language you'd like except the one you want me to. To be honest, I don't know why I'm so afraid….except that's a lie. I once told myself that I'd never lie to you if it was unnecessary. Did you know that? It was right after that incompetent cabbie. I knew right after, I knew that I'd grow quite fond of you if you stayed. And you did stay. So I do, I do know why I'm afraid. You're so much better than me, John. You are. I knew it'd take one incredibly proficient coping mechanism for me to deal with that, so I told myself that I didn't deserve your small intellect. Can you believe that? Of course you can…"
John's face did not give away whether he believed Sherlock or not.
"Anyways, my undermining of your perfectly adequate mental capacity did nothing to quell how I felt about you, as well as your superiority. Your unworthiness of me morphed itself into my unworthiness of you, and I told myself that you would never truly feel the way you do for me. I felt like I could live like Atlas if it meant I could see you every day. After I left, I felt like everything had collapsed onto me, the whole universe, and I managed to pull myself out of the wreck even though it meant leaving you behind. I think I may have died on some level, but of course that's insignificant since I'm breathing and talking and all that…"
He trailed off, letting the heavy silence back into the room. Sherlock stared down at John, at that pale, relaxed face that looked so haunted in certain light but was peaceful under the moon.
"You're many things to me, John, and anything that I am to you is not even half as worthy. You are a far better man than anything I could be without using brains as an excuse." He exhaled quietly in a way that was not yet a sigh. "I love you, but I don't deserve you." He finished quietly.
He stood and softly pulled open the compartment door before disappearing down the hall in a wisp of cold air and dark coat.
John's eyes snapped open, wide and frozen with alarm.
No, no, no, no it wasn't happening like this, not if he could help it—
"Sherlock…" He murmured. "Sherlock!"
He bolted up from his makeshift bed, pulling on his thin thermal and stolen jacket as he stumbled out into the empty, chilled hall.
The empty hall.
No, no, no…it just didn't work like that. Sherlock couldn't just leave, they were on a moving train for god's sake—
But Sherlock was prone to leap off buildings at impossibly heights and survive. A train would be child's play for him if he had truly planned it out, if he had known that he was going to leave again, leave him, leave John out in an empty compartment without so much as a goodbye.
John was about to round the corner to the lavatory and the next carriage when he ran smack into someone—no—
"Sherlock!" John said, his voice strained, and he wrapped his arms around Sherlock as if he was desperately trying to prove to himself that this man was solid, not an entity.
"John?"
"Don't…don't do that again—you can't just—just—"
"Just what? Use the lavatory?" Sherlock asked calmly, shutting the carriage door. "And do keep your voice down. People are sleeping."
"Oh, don't even give me that. This carriage is empty save for the couple at the far end and you know it."
"Anyways, John, what was so important that you had to rush into the hall and hug me like I was the messiah come to earth?"
John stopped, letting his hands fall from Sherlock, switching his affections off like a powered-down machine. He stood in that sparse carriage with his messy hair and in his stolen jacket, his thin little thermal, and his pyjamas, and he looked so damn lost and alone that for one single terrible moment Sherlock felt like his heart might have actually stopped out of sympathetic grief.
"You can't just leave like that, Sherlock."
"I have to inform you every time I leave a room where I'm going? I didn't know you expected that of me John and I'll try to amend it, but you have to tell me these things you know, I'm not a mind-reader although telepathy has been a long-standing interest of mine—"
"No, Sherlock, I mean—Christ—I mean you can't just say those things you said and then—and then leave."
A silence worked itself between them, spreading itself thin in the process.
"You heard me." Sherlock said calmly. It was not a question because he didn't need to ask.
"Of course I heard you." John smiled weakly. "You can't go up to someone and talk in their ear and expect that they won't hear you."
"I meant it all, John. It's unnecessary for me to lie to you right now, and I don't much feel like it anyways."
An understanding smile came to John's face. It seemed sad to Sherlock.
"I know you did."
Sherlock stepped forward, bringing a hand to outline John's face as they stared at each other. John let his fingers lace themselves with Sherlock's.
"Why is that an unhappy realisation for you?" Sherlock asked quietly. John thought his eyes were shaded like the thin line that separated the dark side of the moon from the one that shone down on them now.
"It's not, Sherlock. That's the thing."
"Then why do you look unhappy?"
"Because being in love feels like that sometimes."
"You think your love for me is negative?"
"No, but it's been through some negative things, just like yours."
"I suppose this is an 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' type of thing?"
"I wouldn't call it that," John said with a small smile. "But it'll do."
John kissed him then. Sherlock liked it, liked the warmth and softness.
"I'm glad you're here, John." Sherlock said quietly as they broke apart, resting his head on John's as he shut his eyes, hoping John would read between the lines.
He opened his eyes again and found John quietly looking into them. He knew.
"So am I."
They both smiled. Sherlock let his head dip down, let his mouth graze John's as they stood in that second-class train compartment with signs in a language neither was particularly good at as it rocked gently like a boat amidst calm waves, one hand tightening in the other's while the other snaked around the backs of their necks.
As the train rocked a little too much and they swayed, suddenly the kiss grew harder, more insistent on asserting itself as something that was permanent and not fleeting, not leaving, just staying. The train rocked again and Sherlock was knocked back against the seat, coming to rest with John sitting over him, the moonlight brushing his fair hair, his weight warmly pressed against him, reminding Sherlock that this man was real and alive and choosing to be with him. There were so many things he needed to know-
"John—" Sherlock started, but was cut off as John kissed him, running his tongue lightly along the edge of his lip. He groaned, settling back into the seat before sliding back so he was lying all the way across the seat.
"Yes?" John asked, kissing the spot on his neck where his pulse yammered itself away like it didn't know how to quiet itself in the situation. He leaned back, looking down at Sherlock expectantly, and the light hitting his face, illuminating such a haunted man when he looked peaceful, seemed to punch Sherlock straight in the heart like a spasm of electricity.
Sherlock let his brain turn off and just stared at him for a moment. As long as he lived, he'd remember how John's face looked in that moment, a calm happiness glowing from him, a smile moving behind his lips before it dawned.
"Never mind." He decided.
"Alright." John shrugged, letting Sherlock pull him down for another kiss before breaking apart as the detective's hands began to move. "Ah, sorry, hold on—" John leaned back, away from Sherlock, and started to work his way out of his jacket.
"I think it suits you well, you know." Sherlock said, watching John struggle and feeling his chest grow cold from John's brief absence.
"That's good." John smiled, quickly adding another kiss to its predecessors. The jacket was halfway off. "Mycroft asked me to give it back."
"Really?" Sherlock grinned. Another kiss. "And what did you say?"
"Told him to sod off. I felt bad about it at the time, but that's what he gets for asking me when I'm getting antiseptic poured on my back by a doctor who was having trouble with English…I feel better about it now, though."
Sherlock chuckled and John smiled as he tossed the jacket to the floor before returning to his previously occupied spot. He let his hands roam over Sherlock's face and felt like a blind man reading braille from the way he could feel Sherlock's pain and sadness and quiet loneliness and tense pleas that had been hardening layer over layer for the past three years.
Sherlock's hands pushed past John's shirt and grazed over the bandages on his back, thickly applied and properly secured by the doctors in Berlin, much stronger than their makeshift clinic in Mycroft's guest bedroom.
He stopped as John groaned.
"Does it still hurt?" He asked quietly.
"No," John replied. "No, that felt…good."
Sherlock felt a grin come on his face and he kissed John once more. He wondered if this was what happiness felt like. If it wasn't happiness, he'd have to think of a new name for it, for this comfortable bliss that so reminded him of being a kid coming in from the cold and taking a warm bath, like every inch of his skin became hot and prickling as the cold melted away.
"John…"
In that one second, that one moment of warmth and soft harmony and fogged vision, John swiped his hand to wipe the fog off and had a moment of clarity. He read many things in the way Sherlock said his name, in the way half of their clothes were laying on floor, in the way Sherlock was looking up at him, in the way his hands rested on the curves of John's neck, and he shut the book.
"Sherlock," He began in a hoarse whisper. He was going to hate himself so much, but if he didn't do this, he'd hate himself so much more. "I don't think this is what you want."
"Don't be stupid, John." Sherlock said, pressing a kiss to his bare unmarked shoulder. "It doesn't become you."
"No, Sherlock," He needed a different approach. "I mean…really? You want this to happen here? In a train? "
"Yes." Sherlock said hoarsely.
"I'm sorry." John said, his lips grazing Sherlock's before he pulled himself away. "That's not how I want it to go. And once that brain of yours catches up, I don't think you will either."
Sherlock stared up at him, his cheeks flushed. John liked seeing colour on his face. It was a nice change, one where he could see it rise to Sherlock's cheeks instead of seeing it spill freely over them, unleashed past split skin like at St. Bart's.
"You're right." Sherlock muttered softly. "You're right."
"I'm sorry, Sherlock." John repeated. "But it just wouldn't be right. We'll come back to it later, yeah? At a better time and place?"
"Do I need a reservation or something? You're making it seem like a five-star restaurant. And I don't want there to be a list, John, I really don't—"
"No," John laughed. "No, you idiot." He leaned down and placed a soft kiss on Sherlock's forehead. "There's no list. Just one name." Kissed his nose. "Only one." Kissed his mouth, first his upper lip, and then the lower one.
"Good." Sherlock pushed up and back to lean against the seat, his legs splayed out under John. He laid his head against the wall and arm rest. John liked seeing the few dark locks of hair that had matted to his head with sweat.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm perspiring more than usual, to be honest, which is quite abnormal so you should feel proud of yourself, but other than that I feel quite…good, as you so eloquently put it."
Good was an understatement for both parties involved.
"No, that's all well and good, but…aren't you disappointed or upset or mad or something? I'd understand if you were, it wasn't the best thing to do, but it was right, I mean, think of all the people that have sat here for god's sake—"
"John."
"Yeah?"
"Be quiet."
John fell silent, letting the both of them immerse themselves in that quiet moment in that dark carriage under that bright and softly-smiling moon that shone down on them as the incognizant train carried them farther away from that bloodied past that was so like a nightmare, full of shadows and strangers and that special boy with a special spider scar who now had a webbed scar to give the spider a home and whose story was far from over.
They sat there in that humming darkness, letting themselves comfort the other in silent affection. For the first time in a long time they felt safe, and it wasn't in some bunker deep underground or in a thickly protected fortress with cold iron walls, it was found it was found in a second-rate carriage on an old train in a foreign land within two pairs of arms, one thin and bird-like with hollow bones, the other gentler and stronger. But, in Sherlock's arms, John felt like it may as well have been an impenetrable fortress made of wrought iron, which, though beautiful to view, with its elegant, twisted dark limbs, looked laughable, yet it did its duty well. And, in John's embrace, Sherlock felt surrounded on all sides by an unbreakable wall somewhere deep in the warmed womb of the earth that smelled of pillars of salt and solidly-packed sand. He felt like crying in that moment as John held him, if only to convey to John how he truly felt in that moment. But John wouldn't want his tears, even if it proved his longstanding theory that Sherlock was not the inhuman robot that he claimed to be. Sherlock grinned at the thought.
Moriarty was right then, in a sense. Sherlock had been a fake.
He let his hands tighten around John.
He'd remember it all later and go over it detail by detail as if his life depended on it, after the encounter the next day in Prague. He'd remember, and try to find a way for John to forgive him.
Sherlock was in the middle of one of the most beautiful silences of his life before the sun rose and they arrived in Prague and he had to wake John all too soon to change trains. But how he loved watching those blue eyes open, watching sentience pour into them like water, a smile blooming on John's face as he stared up at Sherlock from where his head lay on his lap. He decided then and there that he would like to see it happen every morning.
In the moment of John waking and John smiling, Sherlock could find no trace of the cold, effectively lethal assassin that he had seen not a week ago, when he had laid eyes on John for the first time in three years and John had stared back blankly in his detached, isolated state whose lone focus was the shedding of blood of the people who threatened himself or his friends or his…lover?
The term sounded clunky to Sherlock, because he was sure that, of all the things he and John were, they were not lovers. And not only because their relationship was unconsummated; there were scores of lovers that had relationships that went without consummation for very long periods or none at all. It was just that the term connoted two people who had nothing else to do but love each other, and that was most certainly not John or Sherlock since they had many things to do like solve crimes and shoot people and snog, if he could address it so simply. Loving each other was almost an afterthought, something they did alone after the adrenalin had worn off and the danger was over and they were mending their wounds.
He looked down at John, still half-asleep in the pale dawn's light.
They were certainly alone now.
He dipped his head and let the tip of his nose brush John's.
"Morning, John."
John smiled at him and let Sherlock kiss him with a warmth that felt like the rising sun that shone on them.
"And a good morning to you too." John muttered as they broke away.
"We're about to pull into Prague." He noted, looking out the window at the oncoming station.
"Fantastic," John said, sitting up. "I'm starving."
"Would you mind picking up the food then while I run to the bathroom?"
"But there's a bathroom here."
"Yes, but the sink is broken and I'd like to wash my face and perhaps shave while I'm at it. I'm almost entirely sure that you're not a fan of whisker burn."
"Well, I wouldn't know unless you decided to grow a beard." John said as he stood.
"Didn't your girlfriends ever say anything?"
"Never gave them the chance." John replied, shrugging on a new shirt. "Have you ever seen me with stubble, Sherlock?"
"Once, when we first met."
"Well then that was one time too many."
"You should try it, John. It could look good on you—"
"Doubtful."
Sherlock smiled, stepping closer to him. He liked that he never faked smiles around John.
"—or I might like it."
John considered it for a moment, making a thoughtful face before pulling Sherlock's face down to his and kissing him, letting his hands run over the faint stubble that had indeed appeared on Sherlock's face.
They broke apart as the train stopped.
"We'll see about that."
John couldn't help it. He was suspicious. Maybe it was Sherlock's history of thinly veiled lies or excuses or his track record of just what he said he'd do and what he actually did.
John followed him, clutching the sandwich he had just bought for them to share in one hand (he'd done quite a lot of pointing and gesturing to get it).
The crowd was thick at the hour. John was just short enough that if Sherlock looked back in a glance he wouldn't stand out, but there was no mistaking that tall, lean frame for someone else.
But Sherlock didn't look back. His actions seemed innocent enough that he thought he wouldn't be followed or that John would take his word on his plans. John was about to give up and just go eat.
Then Sherlock bypassed the men's room.
His curiosity was piqued now. Although he could hardly read Czech it was certainly a bathroom judging by the sign and a quick check told John it was unlocked and empty. So where was Sherlock going, then?
He ducked back into the crowd, just barely catching that head of dark curls, that blue scarf, and that pale skin before the man they belonged to rounded a corner.
John watched him go into a little in-and-out café and take a seat across from someone.
Unbelievable. Sherlock hadn't noticed him at all. Either his stealth was superb or Sherlock's mind was somewhere more important. John's bet was on the latter.
John moved to look in through the window.
"Good." Sherlock said as he sat. "You're here."
Mary looked up at him.
After an hour's search, Sherlock found John in an empty men's room, which was normal enough; he believed it was the one he had passed on the way in to meet Mary. It was best that John didn't know, at least not until he could explain it all—
It was odd though, how he found John curled against the wall in the handicap stall, asleep. He had certainly slept well enough on the train…why would he be tired?
Sherlock knelt before him.
"John?" He asked, nudging him awake.
John opened his eyes. There was something heavy, something blurred and distant that Sherlock couldn't quite place.
"And so the prodigal son has returned—" John said blearily as he stood.
"John? Are you alright?" Sherlock asked as John pushed past him out of the stall to the sink.
It was far too early for John to be drunk, not to mention that not enough time had elapsed for the intoxicated state he seemed to be displaying.
"I saw you with her, you know." John slurred as he washed his hands. "With Mary."
Sherlock froze, one hand on the stall door. John looked up at him in the mirror.
"I followed you and I was about to turn back because I thought maybe for once you were actually doing what you said you were going to, but then—then I saw you sit across from her." John turned around, leaning against the sink. "Mind telling me what's going on?"
"John—"
"Did you think I was stupid, Sherlock? Is that it? That my puny little brain couldn't possibly catch up to your massive intellect and I'd just wait on the train with a bloody sandwich for us to share like a good boy?"
Sherlock ducked as John tossed said sandwich at him.
"John, listen to me…" He paused, waiting for John to react.
"Well," John gestured with his hands. "Out with it then."
"Mary is not your enemy."
"Really?" John laughed bitterly. "Then why'd she leave me in Bruges?"
"She didn't leave you. Mycroft removed her."
"Mycroft…?" John breathed.
"Mary has never worked for your agency, at least not directly." Sherlock continued. "She works for Mycroft, my dear, doddering, disingenuous brother. It was under his orders that she let you be taken into the Kremlin. It was under his orders that she 'rescue' you when you slipped out of his hands."
"Mary told me that the agency had put me in the Kremlin."
"She wasn't lying, exactly. Didn't you ever wonder who the head of your agency was?"
John groaned. "Of course." He ran a hand blearily through his hair, messing it up further. "Mycroft was the one that put me in the Kremlin?"
"Yes."
"And he knew what was happening to me?"
"I believe so."
John began to laugh, much to Sherlock's confusion. He laughed until his face began to turn red.
"John?"
The manic smile faded from his face.
"Well, you two make a right pair, don't you?" John asked with no mirth in his voice, only an acidic sharpness. "The Holmes Brothers: helping the helpless, but only if it's convenient. The slogan just writes itself—"
John cut himself off as he smashed his fist into the nearest mirror, sending glass showering onto the floor and slicing through the skin of his already flayed hands. Sherlock nearly jumped at the sound of smashing glass and the smell of fresh blood and the sight of John, his John, in the midst of an emotional meltdown.
"John, what are you doing—?"
"Do you know how hard it's been for me to get control of my life since you threw yourself off the roof of St. Bart's and I heard your body hit the street?" John asked, his voice cracking.
"Technically it was the sidewalk—"
"And do you know—" John continued. "How much of myself that I've had to sacrifice to protect myself? And not just from other people, from me. Do you know that I used to lie awake at night and tell myself that it was my fault that you were dead—my fault—because I fell for the trick about Mrs. Hudson, because I wasn't as stupendously brilliant as you to figure it all out in time?"
He smashed the next mirror just as calmly as he had the first, blood running down his arm.
"Even though Moriarty was dead, he had still won because he took you from me, and I knew deep down that if our positions were switched, you would have saved me in no time flat, like with those Chinese gangsters or whatever the hell they were—"
He smashed the next one, sending a cut that was almost deep enough to slice down his radial artery. Almost, but not quite. Sherlock needed to stop him, needed to stop him now, before he could do any more damage. He could tackle him, but the floor was so littered with broken glass that it made a full frontal assault a terrible idea. He needed to do this safely.
"John, calm down, you're hurting yourself…" John didn't listen, and advanced to the last mirror.
"And do you know how it felt when I thought I finally had control of my life and then you come back and royally fuck it all up?" Sherlock couldn't stop the destruction of the final mirror. "I thought I was the one in charge of my life, Sherlock! Not you, not Mary, not bloody sodding MYCROFT ! Christ, I mean, have I truly done anything on my own without anybody meddling?" He headed to send another fist into the already smashed glass. With the sharp edges and the velocity the tissue damage would be so hard to repair—
"John, John—stop!" The sheer forcefulness of Sherlock's voice stopped him. "Mary left Bruges because I told her to." Sherlock said calmly, hoping it was enough to stop him, hoping that the information was heavy enough to distract him.
John didn't turn around. Not yet. He must have heard wrong.
"What?"
"Mary left you in Bruges because I told her to." Sherlock repeated, his voice as smooth and cold as ice.
No, John had heard right.
Blood dripped onto the floor, on wet tiles and shards of shattered glass that made an abstract of two men, one bloodied and tense, the other desperate and still.
"Sherlock, what…I don't—I don't understand."
"When you arrived at the door to Mycroft's summer home, bloody, barely-alive, and in a state that I never desire to see you in again, you managed to say Mary's name before you passed out. I became suspicious, so I called her and discovered, among the many other things she said in her upset and panicked state, that she was under Mycroft's payroll. She told me that Mycroft had ordered her not to interfere with whatever happened to you. She told me it was because I had called him."
"You…called—?"
"Yes, I called him before you arrived because I was worried. It was the first time we had talked in nearly two years, since I called him in Shanghai for clean food. I asked him if he knew where you were, he said he didn't, and I told him to keep you in Bruges if he could, so you wouldn't run into any trouble. I called him out of a blind despondency to ask that he keep you secure, and he took that to mean that as long as you didn't physically leave Bruges then anything could happen to you inside and he wouldn't stop it."
"What—what else did Mary tell you?"
"Just now? Everything that had happened since I left you, and not just in Bruges. Everything since the day you began working for the agency. Every assignment you've had, every talk the two of you've had in the café I believe is called The Drop-Off, every city you've been to, which, coincidentally, we tended to occupy at the same time and remained unaware of each other. I believe that, through information supplied by Mycroft, Mary took it upon herself to assign you cases that correlated with wherever I was at the time in the hopes that we might run into each other."
"How…how did he know where you were?"
"Mycroft is Mycroft. He will always meddle where he is unwanted, and he is annoyingly effective."
"Annoyingly effective?" John repeated indignantly as he spun around. Sherlock was almost cowed by the anger in his face. Almost, but he knew John wouldn't hurt him. "Annoyingly effective? Your brotherdrugged me for three years with pieces of fucking gum, let me kill dozens of people, locked me in a medical facility in Russia, had me tortured, and you call that annoyingly effective?" John scoffed. "And what's more is that you knew and you didn't do anything." His face fell. "You didn't do anything, and you knew what they were doing to me."
"I didn't know at the time." Sherlock corrected as John stumbled to the sink to wash the blood off his arm. "I knew later, after the fact—"
"But you had your suspicions, didn't you?"
"I was considering your feelings on the matter, John. I did not think you would care much for my investigating your close friend."
"For fuck's sake, Sherlock!" John said exasperatedly, turning the water higher. Sherlock did not miss his wince as the steaming water hit him.
John pushed his sleeve farther up to avoid the water and it was then that Sherlock noticed the faint rash on John's arm. It was then that Sherlock began to piece it all together. The significant change in his personality, the maladjusted behaviour, the constriction of the pupils…
John wasn't drunk, but he wasn't sober either. Sherlock had rarely felt so incredibly stupid, so incredibly dense…he'd observed, but why hadn't he seen—
"John…what else did you take that the agency gave you?"
John didn't answer, watching the blood sluice off his arm in the water and disappear down the drain.
"John—"
"They're called...drivers." John said quietly, sounding as if he was about to be sick. "The agency gives them to clippers—people like me—as a bribe or complimentary...or whatever. It's an opioid cocktail in pill form. I took my first one a month after I started working and had insomnia and roaming hallucinations for half a week...so I never touched them again. I just took my second one an hour ago...after I saw you with Mary. I thought maybe you were in on something together. I thought—well, I don't know what I thought, but it wasn't anything good…" John trailed off in a hysterical fit of giggles.
Sherlock shut his eyes.
"You haven't developed an addiction, then?" He asked quietly.
"No."
"That's good."
"You're one to talk." John scoffed, taking his arm out of Sherlock's hand as he attempted to walk away. He managed to wobble a few steps before his knees collapsed out from under him. Sherlock caught him before he hit the ground.
"I speak from experience, John." Sherlock said softly as he hauled him to his feet.
The departure alarm rang out through the station as he dragged John out of the bathroom, trying to look wholly inconspicuous and partially failing. It was hard to carry a drugged hitman-slash-army doctor through a train station without earning a few glances, but the crowd was relatively large and Sherlock had no trouble getting them onto their train and into an empty carriage.
He hastily threw their things onto the other bench and collapsed into the seat, resting John's head on his lap just as they had been not two hours ago, except everything had changed. How? How could it just reverse so quickly?
As the train began to leave, as Sherlock glimpsed a flash of Mary's face, half-hidden in shadow, as the two of them headed onwards with John passed out, exhausted from his drug-induced meltdown, his mind raced.
John was awake when Sherlock opened his eyes again a few hours later, sitting across from him.
"I can't sleep." He said quietly, squinting into the bright sunlight. "It's a side-effect of the driver."
"Well you took it against your better judgment—" Sherlock began and John felt his anger rise.
"And whose fault was that?" He snapped.
John recognised the hypocrisy of his statement then chose not to address it, feeling that it sounded much more guilt-inducing if he blamed it wholly on Sherlock. Except it had been John's decision, albeit driven by Sherlock's actions. After he had come to, he had felt a little contrite about leaving the detective to carry him through a train station alone before he remembered that some part of him had wanted that, to see Sherlock panicked and worried, if only to see some sort of emotion cross that solemn alabaster face.
Sherlock shut his eyes. "John, let me explain—"
"There's no need, Sherlock. I know you, remember? Was it an experiment? I bet that was it. You wanted to see how far you could go without me finding out, right? I was just the little mouse in the maze."
He wished John would yell at him, hit him, make him hurt for what he had done, but there was no anger in his voice, just broken glass, hollow of what it once contained.
"John, please."
John looked at him, his eyes heavy and dark with fatigue, looking skeletal shaded against the light pouring in through the window. Scenery as happy as the fields they sped through shouldn't witness the misery that was briefly passing by it.
"You said that Mycroft didn't stop them from taking me in Bruges until he realised I was no longer there, right?"
"Yes."
"So he wasn't the one who tortured me?"
"No. I'm afraid we don't know who."
John scoffed. "That's a shame…because I do."
"You do?" Sherlock sat up, his interest edging higher. "Who? Is it someone working under Moriarty? Is it Moran? Someone else? Where can we find them? I have a contact as far away as Reykjavik if we need them…"
He trailed off as John stared at him blankly, his mouth slightly open and twisted in a frown as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Do you think you could at least give me 24 hours to recover from the simultaneous collapse of my trust in you and my subsequent drugged stupor before I answer?"
Sherlock let himself fall back, slumping against the seat. "Yes." He answered numbly. He hadn't fully registered, hadn't really considered just how far John's faith had fallen.
"Just…" John sighed, rubbing his eyes. "I need to be alone right now, Sherlock, alright? I just need to be alone, where I can be in control and no one can treat me like a puppet so I can come to my own conclusions. Let me go to my mind palace." John grinned bitterly. "Oh, sorry, I forgot it's not a palace, it's more like a lean-to isn't it? Someone of my intelligence can't be capable of such brilliant buildings."
Sherlock turned from where he picked up his discarded scarf. "John, I never thought your intelligence was lagging—"
"I can't deal with this right now Sherlock…" John said quietly. "I can't deal with you." He added, his eyes heavy with sadness. "Maybe I was wrong." He muttered.
"Wrong about what?"
John didn't answer, his eyes fixed on the opposite seat.
"John, you think you were wrong about what, exactly?"
"Us." He murmured softly.
Sherlock took a step back, his omniscient eyes taking in everything; John's hunched posture as if he wanted to collapse in on himself, the emptiness of his voice, the darkness in his eyes, the sudden twitch in his leg, everything. He knew in that moment that he had done irreparable harm to the person he loved most and who loved him and he knew in that moment that the one seemingly insignificant breath he had blown all the way back in Bruges had hit them both like a gale-force wind and sent their house of cards crashing down.
And it was all his fault.
He did as John asked him and left, leaving John to his doubts, leaving him to simmer in Sherlock's unintentional quasi-betrayal, in his deceit and the fact that, once more, John had been lied to, had been used, by someone he trusted.
It was all his fault.