Archive of Our Own ^beta

He'd been smoking, John had caught him smoking, John had left, and then Sherlock had kept smoking.

Finishing the whole pack had made him feel ill for two hours, compounded by the fact that he felt he could barely move for the lack of John's presence. Now he had no way of proving to John that he was quitting again. No package full of broken cigarettes of leave on the table, and he certainly wasn't leaving the empty package for John to find. That would only make things worse.

He'd missed John with every single breath that afternoon and evening and night. Sherlock hadn't known that missing someone could be such a devastatingly physical sensation – not until Sibyl had died. Now that emptiness was doubled with John's absence. It was too much. Somehow numbing and excruciating. He could hardly stand it. He couldn't stand it.

He'd managed to force himself to shower to get rid of the smell, and to change. He'd binned the jeans and the blanket he'd used on the roof and run John's t-shirt through the laundry twice, sitting in the downstairs hallway in front of the dryer while the shirt had been in the wash, switching places once the shirt was drying. Mrs. Hudson had thankfully not come out during this entire time – or she wasn't at home. Sherlock had no idea and did not even care that he didn't know.

He'd folded the shirt very carefully but hadn't put it back in John's drawer. He doubted John would want it anymore, but didn't want to bin it, just in case.

Then he'd crawled into bed and curled up, hoping for sleep. He rarely used sleep as a release, even after his mother had died, because it was just as likely as not that he'd dream of her. This time, he wanted to forget everything and considered getting drunk but realized that would only make things worse if John came home.

When, when, when, he reminded himself. John had said that he would.

Sherlock had resisted calling and texting him. Each time he reached for his phone out of habit, he dragged his hand back, closing his eyes, focusing on his breathing. It was so difficult. He hadn't rung Tricia either, but it was easier to make himself avoid that – he had no desire to talk to her, because he could all too easily imagine what kind of reaction he was going to get.

He was not going to avoid that confrontation, he knew. But he could at least delay it.

Sleep had eluded him; whenever he closed his eyes, he saw John's face with that deep hurt and disappointment, and it made him bite his lip as if that could keep everything inside or erase it. He could feel that he'd worried his lower lip enough that it was raw and cracked, but didn't care.

What did it matter, if John was gone?

He told himself over and over that John was coming back because he'd promised he would, but he couldn't control the twisting fear that John would realize that it was just easier not to return home.

John had left once after a row to go to Sarah's and had turned up in a Semtex vest at the pool at midnight.

Sherlock knew that wasn't going to happen, but couldn't stop the anxiety. He'd hurt John and John had left. His traitor brain seemed happy to supply him with ways in which this could be made so much worse. He tried desperately to stop himself, but his mind subverted him, running liberally through dozens of scenarios from the mundane – John in a vehicle accident, struck in a crosswalk by a cab or a bus – to the ridiculous – John being abducted for some madman's plans again.

The reality, that he was at Tricia's just talking to her about this, was even worse.

Sherlock watched the minutes change on the clock in agonizing slowness, and July gave way to August. With every minute, every second, every heartbeat, he waited to hear the familiar tread on the stairs, the sound of the door opening, John's footsteps and movements in the flat.

But the minutes crept into hours and Sherlock kept staring at the clock, feeling a dull ache in his stomach.

He couldn't fix this.

Not without John.

At two twenty-eight the door opened, the sound of the locks as echoing as loudly as they had been when John left, and Sherlock stilled suddenly, holding his breath, listening. Of course it was John, and he heard the locks being shut again, then the faint shuffling of fabric as shoes were removed.

Sherlock bit his lower lip again, ignoring the mild pain. There was a moment in which John was divesting himself of shoes and keys and then footsteps again – on the stairs going up to the spare room.

Sherlock froze.

The empty space in the bed beside him suddenly seemed a yawning chasm. He felt the air in the bedroom pressing down on him as he tried to deny the sound of the bedroom door upstairs opening and shutting gently.

There were faint forgotten creaks on the floorboards as John moved in the unused room and settled onto the spare bed.

Sherlock stared blankly into the darkness.

John had kept his promise and had come home, but he may as well not have.

Without intending to, Sherlock curled further in on himself, the clock forgotten. He squeezed his eyes shut and wrapped his arms across his chest so that he was holding his shoulders and drew his knees up to his chin. He felt small for the first time since he'd had his growth spurt as a teenager.

Small and insignificant and useless.

He lay that way for a long time then raised his head again to check the clock. Opening his eyes made him feel raw and dry and moving made him ache.

It was four in the morning.

He unfolded his long limbs carefully and got up, moving silently through the flat to stand at the base of the stairs, staring up into the tunnel of darkness.

Six years and nine months ago, minus five days, he had stood in this same spot, making the same decision to go up. Then, he had been certain of what he wanted but not at all certain how it would play out, because it was John, and John was an endless puzzle. He had argued with himself, tried to talk himself out of it, had failed but had wanted to fail. He had gone up and woken John and changed their lives.

Had he changed their lives again now, only for the worse?

Sherlock hesitated before putting a hand on the banister, taking the steps slowly and quietly, avoiding all of the creaks from memory. John knew how to do this, too, but rarely bothered. Sherlock rarely bothered either. No reason to.

He pushed the door open and slipped inside. Part of him had intended to crawl in next to John – not to touch, not until John wanted it and said it was all right, but he desperately missed the presence of his husband sleeping beside him and it had been only a single night.

But John wasn't sleeping on one side of the bed as he had been all of those years ago; he was curled up in the middle. Not enough space for Sherlock to lie down without touching or disturbing him.

The detective stood in silence, feeling his heart break a little bit more, knowing he'd deserved it. He watched John sleep for several long minutes, listening to the regular and familiar pattern of breathing. Everything in him wanted to reach out, to climb in and curl up next to John as he did almost every night when he slept.

Silently, Sherlock crossed the room and leaned down enough so he could feel John's breath on his face, smell it. It smelled of nothing in particular – no alcohol.

Sherlock would have felt better if John had come home drunk on that ghastly gin he and Tricia drank even now because it was what they'd drunk in Afghanistan. But he hadn't been drinking. That made the situation somewhat worse. He'd been sober and talking to Tricia. Sober and disappointed.

Sherlock closed his eyes and drew away. He knew it was better that John wasn't turning to alcohol when he was upset, because of Harry's addiction, but part of him wanted John to do something stupid like Sherlock had. The same part that had wanted John to yell and curse and rant. The part that wanted anger and bad decisions instead of just quiet disappointment.

He went back downstairs and curled back into bed, closing his eyes.

When he woke up with a start, it was shortly after seven-thirty in the morning and the flat was silent. Not in the way it had been when John had been sleeping. He was gone now because he had work.

Sherlock lay still for a few minutes, then dragged himself up. He felt stiff and raw – dehydrated. Not good. The package of cigarettes combined with having not eaten or drunk anything most of the previous day made his mouth taste like ash: bitter and dry. He made himself go into the kitchen and fetch a glass of water.

There was an empty mug and an empty bowl beside the sink, a spoon lying forlorn in the basin, stainless steel against stainless steel. Sherlock stared at it in dismay; he almost always made breakfast for John, but had overslept and John hadn't woken him.

There was another mug of tea sitting on the counter, still full. When Sherlock picked it up, he could tell it had gone cold.

But John had left it for him.

Five and a half years ago, after the crash, Sherlock had taken to doing this to let John know he was home and sleeping. He'd leave his phone and a mug of tea on the coffee table for the doctor and John had drunk the tea even if it had gone cold. Sherlock had never asked why, but he thought now he understood as he sipped the room temperature beverage. Pouring it down the sink would be unthinkable. John had made his for him. It was a small gesture. Sherlock had done it for the same reasons five and a half years ago. To indicate that he was still there.

There was a note on the counter beside the mug.

I'm at work. I'll be home around five. John.

Not "love, John". But he'd left a note, even though Sherlock knew that John had to work and what his schedule was. He thought of the tubes and delays and if they needed groceries or if they'd order in and then felt too tired to care. All he wanted was for John to come home so they could put this right.

So he could put this right.

But he had no idea how.

He'd stop smoking again, obviously. Sherlock ignored the craving for a cigarette that the thought of smoking immediately awakened; he couldn't quit if he kept it up. Plus, he had no more cigarettes and didn't want to go anywhere to buy any. He didn't want anyone to see him. He didn't want to talk to anyone who wasn't John.

He remembered John bringing him cigarettes the night Sibyl had died and smoking only three of those. Should he be angry at John for helping him get started again? But no. He hadn't intended to start smoking again back then. He remembered Sam in their flat smoking one of those French cigarettes that Veronique smoked, trying to get Sherlock to associate the smell with someone who had attacked him. He'd offered to do the smoking for Sam, who had never been a smoker and clearly hated it, but Sam and John hadn't let him and it had been easier to resist anyway.

If he went out, he'd buy a package and smoke it. And he'd keep doing it.

Sherlock picked up the note and took the mug into the living room. He set the mug on the coffee table but kept the note with him as he went into the bathroom and fished out a package of nicotine patches. He didn't want to use them because it seemed somehow like cheating, like he was trying to prove to John he was quitting again. But he was going to need them.

He went back into the living room and applied two to each arm, hoping it would help. He settled into his chair, drawing his legs up, and sipped the cold tea. Sherlock kept the note on the arm of his chair and read it repeatedly, hanging onto the little bit of contact John had made. He sat, watching the hours slip past on the little digital clock on the DVD player, and waited for John to come home.

After four days, Sherlock could no longer stand it.

He'd barely been able to eat, doing so only when John was watching and then only in small quantities. He knew he'd lost weight but John had said nothing and no one else had seen Sherlock to comment on it. He hadn't left the house and had ignored all phone calls from anyone who wasn't John – and John hadn't called him while at work. This wasn't entirely unheard of, but he would usually send a text on his way home regarding take away or enquiring as to where Sherlock was. Now it was just silence, both in the flat and electronically. John hadn't posted anything on his blog either, which may not strike anyone else as odd. He did often went days between entries, especially if they were working a case.

And because Sherlock had been steadily ignoring all calls, there were no cases. Lestrade had called him several times and Sam had tried to call him too, probably on the DI's behalf. He didn't care.

It was enough effort to drag himself out of his empty bed in the mornings, fix John breakfast like he usually did, shower and shave and change, ensuring he wasn't always wearing the same clothes or staying in his pyjamas all day. When John was at work, Sherlock would sit in his chair and simply stare blankly at the wall or the dark telly screen, the hours slipping by.

He didn't know what to do.

It was maddening and terrifying. When he was uncertain about how to approach some problem that involved the tricky and sometimes tiresome puzzle that was human interaction, he asked John for advice. On those rare instances when he needed to know something about John he couldn't deduce on his own, he asked Tricia.

He couldn't talk to either of them about this. How to ask John to help him resolve the problem he'd created with John? He was sure that would only make things worse. He had no desire to speak to Tricia, who would be angry with him and disinclined to help.

Once he may have asked his mother for advice.

Now he couldn't and the fact that he could no longer speak to her lay at the crux of this entire problem. He hurt because he missed both her and John, the two most important people in his life.

He supposed he could talk to Mrs. Hudson but he didn't want her knowing what he'd done, how bad things were. Let her assume he was consumed with work, too busy to be seen. That fiction was better than the reality that had him curled up in his chair, arms folded across his stomach, legs drawn up to his chest.

Sometimes he'd fall asleep in this position, only to jerk himself awake when the front door opened and John came home.

It was almost worse when John was there. Almost. When Sherlock was alone, the silence was his. When John was there, the silence was unnatural because it was theirs. They still spoke about small, regular things, like bills in the post and what would be for dinner, but that tended to be the extent of their conversations.

John seemed to be waiting for Sherlock to do something. Sherlock had put his considerable mental power to trying to figure out what, but had been unable to do so. It was maddening and made him feel ill. This was John. His husband. His best friend. He should know.

After four days, the loneliness that seemed worse when John was there felt oppressive and made him slightly nauseous. He was wearing nicotine patches too much now, even when he slept, which was in fragments at night and sometimes during the day. It was impossible to sleep properly without John in the bed beside him, without that familiar presence that had become as necessary as breathing.

John was still sleeping upstairs.

Four days after John had caught him smoking, the tread on those stairs made Sherlock break.

"Don't," he said, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them, before he'd properly thought them. "John, don't go upstairs. I can't stand sleeping without you."

He held his breath suddenly, turning his head ever so slightly to see John stopped on the stairs, right foot on the second one, left foot on the first, a hand on the banister. The doctor was still for a moment and Sherlock was certain his heart was going to stop beating if John continued up the stairs. He knew he wouldn't be able to take that explicit rejection.

But John turned, his expression unreadable, and nodded.

"All right," he said. His voice was flat, as closed as his expression, and Sherlock wanted to rail against that – how could he, Sherlock Holmes, not be able to judge someone's body language and tone? How could it be so hard? How could John be keeping so much from him?

John came back down the stairs and Sherlock exhaled in a rush, relief so strong washing through him that he felt light-headed and faint. He closed his eyes, feeling the muscles around his eyes and lips tighten, pulling slightly.

John was silent a moment, then said simply:

"I'm going to bed."

Sherlock managed a nod. He listened as John went into their bedroom and shut the door behind him and wondered if he could move now for the relief. He stayed where he was for several long minutes, just focusing on his breathing, trying to get the adrenaline rush to abate.

He got slowly to his feet, stiff from days of inactivity, lethargic from the lack of food and the constant tension. Sherlock fairly crept into their bedroom to find John already in bed, on his right side, back to Sherlock's spot. This wasn't unusual and they often slept with Sherlock pinning John, John's back to his chest, but he had the distinct impression this was a barrier now, rather than an invitation.

He put on a pair of his own silk pyjamas and slipped into the bed, relieved at John's presence, terrified of doing the wrong thing. The night was warm enough that John had kicked off the light duvet and was only using the sheet, and the window to the fire escape was open, admitting the gentle breeze. Sherlock had fixed the screen back into its place that first horrible day, wanting to seal it shut but knowing it had to be easily removed in case of an actual fire. He'd tried to devise some visual means of letting John know it hadn't been taken down again, but had been unable to do so.

He remembered standing in front of it for half an hour, his normally energetic mind blank and silent, offering no ideas.

So he'd left it in the end and John hadn't asked about it.

Sherlock lay on his right side, facing John, aching to reach out and touch him but not daring. He listened to his husband's breathing, that clearly indicated he was still awake. He was waiting for something.

But what?

"I quit," Sherlock blurted out.

"Did you?" John asked, his voice curiously flat.

Sherlock nodded, the fabric of the pillowcase rubbing against his hair and cheek.

"Yes. That day, John."

John was still and silent for a moment.

"How much of the rest of the pack did you smoke?" he asked after a long minute.

Sherlock caught his lower lip between his teeth – he'd desperately hoped that John wouldn't ask that, but hadn't really believed he'd avoid it.

"The whole thing," Sherlock replied quietly.

He saw John tense a bit then force himself to relax.

"Why?"

Sherlock closed his eyes. He did not want to answer that. He didn't want to talk about it. It was obvious anyway. John knew why Sherlock had started again; he'd said so. He could figure out the why for this, too. He was a smart man – of course he was, Sherlock would never consent to being with anyone who wasn't.

There was a change in John's breathing, a sigh that carried disappointment. Sherlock's heart twisted; he'd made another mistake. Before he could answer, John rolled onto his back, then shifted carefully onto his left side, adjusting his pillows to take some of the weight from his left shoulder.

"I'm sorry–" Sherlock started.

"Yes, you're sorry," John interrupted, not harshly but in that same flat tone he'd adopted, the one that was worse than any anger. "Of course you're sorry. You're sorry you got caught because it makes everything complicated. Sherlock, do you understand that I'm not angry at for you doing it? I'm hurt that you didn't tell me."

Sherlock closed his eyes and nodded; yes, he knew that. John was silent for a long moment.

"Why did you smoke the rest?"

"John–"

John cut him off again with a sigh, such a soft one, and Sherlock's eyes flew open.

"Why don't you trust me?"

The question made Sherlock's breath catch in his chest and he curled forward slightly, feeling as though he'd been punched squarely in the stomach.

It was John who should have lost the trust here. Not the other way around. It wasn't the other way around.

"I do trust you, of course I trust you." You're the only person I trust.

"No," John said. "You don't." Sherlock could hear pain slip into that curious flat tone, just for an insant.

"Yes," Sherlock hissed. "Yes, John, I trust you."

John was watching him with a level gaze but it was not cool or uncaring – Sherlock could see the hurt in his eyes, too, even in the near darkness of their bedroom.

"But you couldn't tell me you were smoking and now you can't tell me why you finished the pack on Monday." John's lips twitched minutely, but not in any sort of smile. "I don't mean you don't trust me with your debit card or your chemistry set equipment or on cases. I mean you don't trust me. When you were hurt, you lied to me. Why?"

Sherlock stared at John, lips parted, eyes wide. He managed to shake his head once – that wasn't it. Didn't John understand?

John gazed at him a moment, then sighed and closed his eyes, starting to roll onto his back.

"No!" Sherlock exclaimed forcefully, grabbing John's right shoulder, keeping him there. "John, I didn't tell you because you are the only good thing I have in my life, how can you not understand that?"

John stared at him and Sherlock saw a flash of shock override the hurt for a moment.

"No, Sherlock, I'm not. You have your work, you have friends–"

"Because of you, because I know you," Sherlock interjected, shaking his head. "John, stop. When I'm with you I don't want to be upset or dwell on my mother's death. I don't want you to have to be careful, to have to take care of me. I want things to be– normal."

John's lips twitched again and for a moment, Sherlock saw the ghost of a smile there at the word "normal". Then it was gone, and John was searching his eyes.

"It's not all good times, Sherlock," he said softly. "I never expected it to be – that's not how life works. That's not how relationships work. But if you don't let me see the bad things, then you're only giving me part of yourself. Would you want that from me?"

"Of course not," Sherlock replied hotly.

"Then why do it to me?" John asked. "What does it get you?"

A smoking habit, Sherlock thought dully.

"For better or for worse," John said softly. "You got me through things like this, Sherlock. Harry's death. Nightmares. My shoulder. The worst news from Afghanistan. But you won't let me do it for you."

"I don't want it to always be bad," Sherlock hissed.

"Do you think it has been?" John asked.

Sherlock parted his lips to answer but found his voice caught, and shook his head. No, of course it hadn't been. But it had felt that way since Sibyl had died.

"I just want – things to get better," he managed.

"They will."

Sherlock shook his head again, curling in on himself a bit more.

"It hasn't yet," he said, his own voice taking on that curiously dull tone. He felt suddenly numb inside, as if none of this mattered any longer. He hadn't wanted the atmosphere in their flat to be permeated by Sibyl's death. He wanted things to be normal again, to be the way they had been before. He didn't want John watching him carefully, evaluating his words and actions and expressions.

"But it will. It takes time."

"I don't want time," Sherlock snapped. "I want–"

"You want things to be like they used to be."

"Yes," Sherlock hissed.

"And you couldn't say that to me. You couldn't say 'John, treat me normally'. You couldn't do that. Instead, you started smoking and you didn't tell me. You lied, Sherlock. Because it was easier for you."

Unable to meet John's eyes, Sherlock nodded.

"Yes," he whispered. He was silent for a long moment and John was too.

"I want things to be normal now, John," he finally said. "I hate this." It's killing me.

"So do I, Sherlock," John said and Sherlock raised his head quickly, hope flaring in him. "But it won't be normal, not for a while."

He felt his faint hope dashed and his heart twist again, felt cold and small and useless all over again.

"I quit smoking, John," he said quietly but with a definite urgency in his voice.

"It wasn't the smoking, Sherlock. You need to trust me."

Sherlock closed his eyes, biting down on the retort that he did, knowing John was right.

"And until you can, how can I trust you?"

Sherlock squeezed his eyes all the way shut, his left hand bunching into the sheet that covered the mattress as he tried not to gasp at that.

"I'm so sorry," he moaned.

"I know. It's a good place to start, Sherlock. But we have to go through this. We can't avoid it."

"I don't want to go through it," Sherlock said before he could stop himself.

"Neither do I," John said with a sigh. "But that's how it works. If we really want to fix things."

If you really want to fix things, Sherlock heard in the unspoken subtext.

He forced himself to nod.

"It'll take time," John said.

Time. Time for John meant something so different than for Sherlock. It had already been four days. Wasn't that time enough? How could it not be? It felt like an eternity.

"All right," Sherlock forced himself to say.

John sighed and was silent for a moment.

"Good night, Sherlock," he said, and rolled onto his right side again, facing away from his husband. Sherlock managed to nod, not trusting his voice, knowing John could hear the faint sound of his skin and hair against the pillow. John shifted around before settling down, then Sherlock very hesitantly reached out, putting his left hand on John's waist. It was barely any contact, and so much less than he wanted. He ached to wrap himself around John as he normally did, feel that warm and compact body encompassed by his, but he knew that was too much. He wasn't even sure he'd get this.

But John didn't brush his hand away. He didn't do anything to encourage the touch, but he didn't push it off, either. Sherlock let out a silent sigh of relief and lay awake, listening as John very slowly fell asleep.

He was trying to work but his thoughts seemed to slip past him and dissipate like mist. When he tried to catch them, to form them into something coherent, they were simply not there. Now and again, he still felt a flash of anger at the road workers who had damaged the water pipes and had ultimately got him caught. That lasted less than a second before he shook it away. He couldn't deflect the blame.

The sound of the key in the lock made Sherlock look up with only mild curiosity, because he knew it wasn't John. John was at work and unlikely to have another day cut short due to some minor catastrophe. He thought he should have been annoyed at the intrusion, especially since he didn't know who it was. He hadn't even heard anyone on the stairs because he hadn't been paying attention.

He growled, dipping his head into his hands, then recomposed himself the moment before the door swung open.

Sam let himself in, moving assuredly. Sherlock felt a stab of surprise and raked his eyes over the Interpol agent who was evaluating him with the same quick appraisal. Sherlock thought that was inappropriate; that was his job, and Sam had no business being in his flat anyway. It appeared Sam didn't like what he saw because his eyes narrowed a touch and his expression darkened around the edges.

Sherlock resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He felt irritation replace the frustration at not being able to work and let it out a soft sigh between his lips.

"You don't have a key to our flat," he said bluntly.

Sam arched a light eyebrow and threw the deadbolt closed behind him.

"You gave me one so I could take care of your fish if you're away," he said and there was a slight mischievous gleam in his green eyes.

Sherlock stared at him.

"We don't have fish," he said.

"Yes," Sam sighed, crossing the room to sit himself on the coffee table in front of Sherlock. "I know. Mrs. Hudson gave me her keys."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed hard.

"Why would she do that?" he asked icily.

"Because she knows who I am – I make sure to talk to her every time I see her and ask after her sister. I told her I hadn't heard from you in over a week and I was a bit worried. She had no problems giving me her keys then."

As proof, he held up a set of keys that, indeed, belonged to Sherlock's landlady. Sherlock did roll his eyes now.

"I could have had the police break down your door," Sam pointed out. "I almost wish I did, because they'd have called an ambulance just in case. Sherlock, what the hell is going on? You look like shit."

"You break into my flat on the rather feeble basis that I haven't spoken to you in several days and now you insult my appearance. You're not earning any kind gratitude, Agent Mitchell."

He saw Sam's nostrils flare and felt a stab of fear and regret – he'd made another mistake, angered someone else. Sam's green eyes flashed but he smoothed over his expression with that blank look he did so well, then relaxed.

"You can snap at me all you want," he said almost kindly and the tone made Sherlock more irate.

"Sam, just leave," he sighed, glancing away.

"No."

Sherlock's eyes darted back to the younger man who was watching him with calm equanimity.

"What?"

"I said no," Sam replied.

"I could telephone the police," Sherlock pointed out coolly.

"Fine, do. I'll remind you I'm on a first name basis with some of the brass – one of the perks of being an Interpol liaison officer. They're not going to arrest me. You, on the other hand…"

"They can hardly arrest a man for sitting quietly in his own home."

"No, but some well placed calls, including one to Lestrade, could get you into a hospital overnight for observation, although given that John's a doctor, I'm going to guess you're not sick. Seriously, Sherlock, what's going on? Nine days I haven't heard a single thing from you."

"I'm not required to keep in regular contact with you. You're neither my minder nor my secretary. If I choose not to speak to you, that is my decision."

Sam laced his fingers together, resting his elbows on his knees, eyes flickering over Sherlock's face.

"Yes," he agreed. "Except that, since I came back to London, the only time you've gone more than five days without talking to me was when I was on my honeymoon and your mum died, which is understandable. You always want something, Sherlock, even if it's just to make sure Interpol hasn't put me back undercover somewhere and you'll never see me again."

Sherlock started and stared but Sam kept speaking.

"You think I don't know? You spend all of your time observing everyone else but never think about who might be observing you in return. Granted, you're much better at it and I'm not a genius, but nor am I an imperceptive idiot. I have training in this, you know. Pretty extensive training. And you're my friend. Why wouldn't I want to know things about you? Right now, I have to say, I'm not happy with what I see – a man who can't afford to lose even one pound and you look like you've lost about five. What's happening?"

Four, Sherlock thought dully.

"Nothing," he replied in a clipped tone.

"Bollocks."

"Nothing that concerns you."

"I'd have to say I'm pretty concerned when you look like death warmed over, Sherlock. When was the last time you ate anything?"

Sherlock shrugged one shoulder – it might have been at breakfast with John, but he may have just pushed his food about on his plate while the doctor ate. He didn't remember because it wasn't important.

He had hoped that when John had returned to sleeping downstairs again that things would begin to go back to normal, that John would start to trust him again, but John remained distant, closed off, as if waiting for Sherlock to do something. And Sherlock had no idea what. How did he regain John's trust? John, the one person left whom he trusted completely.

But John had said this wasn't true.

It didn't feel untrue.

He didn't know how to explain that to John, to get his husband to understand. Sherlock knew why John thought this, but he couldn't comprehend it. He knew he shouldn't have lied, but even during each careful step, it had not felt entirely like a falsehood. It had felt like he was sectioning off an unpleasant part of his life from the good parts, giving it only the smallest of spaces in which it could exist so that it could no longer overshadow everything else.

He became aware that Sam was no longer sitting in front of him but now in the kitchen, uninvited, pulling open cupboards and then the fridge. Sherlock turned his head toward the sound and simply watched; he could make out Sam moving about but didn't know what he was cooking.

He came back a few minutes later with a plate of beans on toast and passed it to Sherlock, who just looked at it neutrally.

"Sandra's the cook, not me," Sam said, half apology, half statement of fact.

"Not hungry," Sherlock replied shortly, a scowl flashing across his features.

"Eat it anyway or I'm not leaving."

"If I eat it, will you leave?"

"No."

"Then I see no reason to do so. The outcome is the same regardless."

"Don't make me cut it into small pieces and feed you," Sam said in a dark voice. "Because I will. You want to act like you're three and having a tantrum, I can treat you like that."

Sherlock's lips curled in distaste but Sam didn't move, standing in front of the detective with the plate in hand, a pointed look on his face. Sherlock wavered inwardly for a long minute, then sighed to admit defeat with bad grace and took the food. He ate slowly, glaring at Sam the whole time, but the Interpol agent just sat back down on the coffee table, seemingly unbothered by the fact that this was not an appropriate place to sit. He watched Sherlock eat as though keeping score.

"Good. Now tell me what the hell is going on. I know John's okay at least physically, because I checked."

At this, Sherlock's nostrils flared and Sam held up a hand to forestall any protests.

"I checked, Sherlock. I didn't send one of my people round to check for me. I know how you feel about that because of Mycroft. I didn't let him see me, I just wanted to make sure he was upright and breathing and all of that."

"That was unnecessary," Sherlock snapped.

"Was it?" Sam asked, arching an eyebrow.

I'd have called you if something had happened to John, he thought, and then was surprised by the thought. He hadn't called Sam when Sibyl had died; he'd let John do it. But if there were no John… Sherlock gave himself a mental shake, unable to finish the thought.

"Did you two have an almighty row or what?" Sam asked.

Sherlock sighed, eyes flickering away, and he heard Sam echo the sigh but with a different tone and tenor.

"Really? All right, let's have it, what happened?"

Not "what did you do?" Sherlock noted. He was vaguely surprised by the lack of immediate judgement since he'd been heaping it on himself the past week and he was certain John and Tricia were as well.

"Nothing," he replied.

Sam snorted and the sound made Sherlock's eyes flicker back with irritation. Sam held his gaze hard, green eyes locked with grey and Sherlock scowled, trying to get Sam to back down, to let the matter drop.

"Believe me," Sam said softly, almost gently, "I've sat through worse with myself. You can't make me give up."

Sherlock's eyes shifted away then back and he expected triumph in his friend's expression but there was only patience. Nothing like the look Mycroft would have given him if he'd known; Sherlock was suddenly grateful he'd leveraged the cessation of surveillance years ago. He had no desire to explain this to his brother.

Nothing like the look he was sure to get from Tricia either.

So he explained in a flat, detached tone, keeping his voice level and his words neutral. Sam listened without interruption, his expression still without reverting to that blank look at which he so excelled. When Sherlock finished, Sam stayed silent, his eyes shifting away thoughtfully. Sherlock waited, forcing his hands not to tense on the arms of his chair.

"Well?" he finally snapped.

Sam returned his gaze.

"Do you want my advice?" he asked simply.

Sherlock opened his mouth to snap back a retort then stopped, realizing what had been asked. A lifetime of living under Mycroft's overbearing good intentions made the question come as a surprise. In his experience, people were always willing to provide advice utterly unasked for and unwelcomed.

He closed his mouth again, hesitated, then gave a curt nod.

"Okay," Sam said, then looked away again, frowning. He was silent for another moment before looking back. "Is there anything else?"

"What do you mean?" Sherlock snapped.

"Is there anything else that you should be telling John that you haven't?"

"Why would there be?"

Sam just raised an eyebrow, his expression still fairly neutral. Sherlock held his gaze hard.

"No," he said flatly.

"Then you need to tell him that. Straight out. You can't just let him assume it, especially not now."

Sherlock stayed silent, glowering. He disliked that Sam was probably right.

"If you want things to go back to normal, it's on you," Sam sighed. "Don't just sit here, Sherlock. Go back to work. Do the things you normally do when John's at work because he doesn't need to know you're just sitting here all day. Then, when he gets home, do things with him. Talk to him. I'm not saying sit down and hash this out every night, but frankly, you're an expert in the silent sulk and it's really not his place to have to make things right. Pay attention to him."

"I pay attention to John all the time," Sherlock growled.

"And this past week?" Sam asked pointedly.

Sherlock glared and tried not to fidget. Now he just wanted Sam to leave again.

"If you want things to be the way they were, it starts with you. Believe me," he added forcefully. "I know. Listen, John loves you. He loves you, get it? The man who runs about like a brilliant madman. If you need things to be normal again, that's up to you. I know it's hard after something like this – I mean both the row and your mum's death. And things won't always be good; they aren't meant to be."

"That's what he said," Sherlock snorted softly.

"Well, he's right. He's a smart man. You wouldn't have it any other way. Stop waiting for him to give you clues as to what to do. You know what to do. You maybe don't want to do the work is all. Because it's hard and it's not fun."

Sherlock caught his lower lip between his teeth and sighed.

"And start eating again. I mean it. Or else I will keep getting on your case and I'll do it in my very specialized Interpol agent kind of way. John doesn't need to add worrying about your health to his list of things that concern him at the moment. You haven't been taking proper care of yourself, which started this whole thing in the first place. Don't make him work for it. That's your job right now."

Sam gathered the plate Sherlock had emptied and stood, going back into the kitchen and leaving Sherlock to consider his words. Sherlock heard the sound of the faucet being run for longer than necessary to rinse the dishes, then heard the faint click of the kettle being turned on. Sam was back with a cup of tea for him a few minutes later.

"All right?" he said, passing off the mug.

Sherlock took it with a faint scowl.

"All right," he muttered.

Sam nodded.

"Good. I'll talk to you in a few days and you will call me, unless you want me breaking into your flat again."

Sherlock sipped his tea and didn't reply. Sam let himself out, locking the door again from the other side, and Sherlock listened to his tread on the stairs. A few minutes later, the front door open and shut again.

He finished his tea, forcing himself to think about what Sam had said even though he was inclined not to. The idea of putting in any effort right now was exhausting. What would John do? What if he dismissed any attempts to set things right as insufficient or just uninteresting? Sherlock could not even tell which was worse.

His phone distracted him and he pulled it quickly from his pocket, happy to see a text from John, then disappointed at the message.

Meeting Tricia for coffee. I'll be home in a couple of hours.

Sherlock stared at it a minute then realized John would want him to reply. He wavered on what to say, wanting to snap back but that would certainly not help matters.

Have a good time. I love you. SH.

John didn't reply again for a few minutes and Sherlock told himself this was likely because he was busy finishing up his work for the day. Normally he would not even notice the delay, but each second that slipped by came with a dull, constricting fear.

Love you too, John finally texted back.

Sherlock put his phone aside and finished his tea, returning the empty mug to the kitchen. He did the washing up Sam hadn't done, resting the dishes in the drainer next to the plate and cutlery Sam had cleaned. Then he cast around for something to do, wondering if something else needed to be cleaned. John usually knew, but Sherlock felt it would be defeating the purpose if he had to ask.

He managed to occupy himself for almost an hour with tidying random things while trying to keep his mind quiet. The silence in the flat was almost deafening and Sherlock refused to check the time repeatedly. John would be home when he said he'd be home.

His phone rang again and Sherlock snatched it out of his pocket then scowled, hitting the ignore button. He had no desire to speak with his brother. Mycroft would determine immediately that something was amiss and insist on coming round and making things all the worse with his presence.

A few minutes later, his phone buzzed with a text message. Sherlock checked it with a sigh, unsurprised that it was from Mycroft. But he thumbed it open nonetheless, because it didn't require him to respond immediately. Or at all.

It was a picture, which was somewhat surprising – Mycroft was usually not given to texting and especially not to picture texting. But the contents were not his usual fare, either.

It was a picture of a wall, someone's house and the house of someone fairly wealthy, judging by the painting hung on the wall, the skill with which it had been framed and the quality of said frame. The wall itself was painted an unassuming off-white, but someone had taken a blue permanent marker to it. The writing looked as though it had been done quickly, almost as an afterthought, but Sherlock doubted this, given the message.

The word "hello" was written in block letters above a brief sketch of two houses, the style Sherlock recognized easily even now. Two squares each topped with a triangle for a roof, smaller squares for windows, rectangular doors and chimneys with a squiggle of smoke emerging from them.

Hello, Holmes.

He stared the picture a moment, then read the message Mycroft had sent with it.

We have a problem.

Tricia was waiting for him when he got off work and she'd come from work herself, judging by her grey trousers, short-sleeved white blouse and the sensible black flats that she could wear all day on her feet. She raised a hand to shade her eyes from the sun when she saw him, even though she was wearing sunglasses, and John was struck for a moment as his memory overlaid an image of her standing the same way in Afghanistan in her fatigues, her helmet on her head, her medkit on her back, the Red Cross patch standing out in contrast to the dull earth tones of her uniform.

It had been so long now and he was so used to her in her civilian clothing that he sometimes forgot, then felt guilty about forgetting.

"Hi, John," she greeted him and he smiled, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

"Hi, Tee. How are you?"

"Good, glad to be finished up for the day; it was a bit busy overnight."

"Yeah?" John asked.

"A set of twins that needed to come by C-section – the mum was pretty upset about that and I don't blame her. We were on stand-by for a couple other potential problem cases, too, but they were okay in the end. Nothing traumatic."

No limbs blown off young men, of course, but what she meant now was no pregnant women who'd been in accidents or who were having mid- or late-term miscarriages. John sometimes wondered if she was happy having chosen a women's hospital. She'd said that she was sick of watching young people die and wanted to see people being born. But they still died, even here. Although he supposed if she was really through with it, she'd have quit being a doctor. Henry made more than enough money for them to live on his income alone. But he couldn't see Tricia ever giving it up.

John shook off those thoughts; he was in a maudlin mood today. Not surprising, really – he had been all week.

"How are you?" she asked.

He gave her a smile.

"Okay," he replied.

"Yeah?" Tricia asked.

"Yeah," John replied, shutting off his phone then slipping it into his pocket. "Come on, let's get some coffee and something to eat, I'm starving."

She fell into step beside him, adjusting the strap of her shoulder bag slightly.

"How are things at home?" she asked carefully.

John hesitated, then sighed, giving her a rueful look.

"Pretty much the same," he replied. She looked as though she might say something, but John shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it, Tee, not right now."

"You sure?" she asked.

John nodded.

"Yeah. But thanks."

Tricia touched his arm lightly, giving him a concerned look, but nodded.

"How's Jo?" John asked and Tricia grinned. He hadn't seen his niece since the previous week and he hadn't been in much of a state of mind to enjoy her company, although he thought he'd faked it well enough. It had helped to simply play with a three-year-old girl for awhile. He'd even read her a story and put her to bed that night before staying up and talking with Tricia. Henry had left them be for which John was grateful. He didn't feel like dragging his problems out in front of everyone.

"She's brilliant, as always. She keeps asking me when she's allowed to go back to the proper French school. I have her in a summer playgroup that's run partly in French but apparently it doesn't meet her exacting standards of the French government school."

John laughed. He had no doubt his niece was going to be bright – she already was. With her parents and the adults that surrounded her, this wasn't surprising. He was pretty sure that Sherlock was already teaching her to memorize the pattern of the streets and traffic lights in the blocks that surrounded her flat.

He shook off thoughts of his husband, not really shocked that he kept coming back to them. It had been a long week full of silences that weren't normal for them and John could tell Sherlock was really trying to figure out what to do. Normally he'd be the one to give Sherlock some clues about this sort of thing, but he felt no inclination to help right now.

John refocused on the present when Tricia led him into a café. The place was air conditioned far too much for his liking but there were several vacant tables outside and he left Tricia with his order while he claimed their seats. A few minutes later, Tricia joined him with tea and scones for both of them and John grinned.

"Don't suppose you have any of that gin in your handbag?" he joked.

She winked at him.

"Portland doesn't look so kindly on keeping alcohol stashed with your personal effects," she replied with a grin.

John laughed.

"A far cry from being able to leave it sitting beside your bunk, eh?"

Tricia scoffed.

"I could never do that because Jamie would always just come by and nick it."

"Yeah," John said with a grin, spreading clotted cream on his scones, "But he only ever did that so you'd have to find him and spend time with him."

Tricia stopped in the act of stirring sugar into her tea and looked at him quickly.

"Oh, lord," John said. "Tee, I'm so sorry, I thought you knew."

She put down her spoon and reached across the table, curling her fingers over his.

"I didn't know that, but it's okay. I'm glad you told me. It's nice to know, even now." She smiled, her expression softened, but there wasn't really any sadness in there. "It's been almost eight years, John. It's all right."

He sighed, still feeling mildly guilty, and squeezed her hand in return.

"No ghosts today," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"No ghosts today," Tricia agreed, giving his hand another squeeze then withdrawing hers and finished stirring her tea. John bit into his scone and shook of a silent reprimand to himself – he really didn't need to make himself feel worse than he already did.

"Jo wants you to come over and put her to bed again soon," Tricia said with another smile, this one brighter. "You've been voted 'better than Mummy' at doing the voices, although you haven't quite displaced Daddy yet."

John laughed.

"If anyone ever displaces Henry, I think hell would freeze over," he commented.

Tricia laughed.

"Well, give it another ten years and then it will be all 'God, Dad, you're soooo embarrassing!'"

John chuckled and was about to make a remark about teenage girls when he heard his name being called. It took him a moment to realisz that it was actually him being addressed – there were no shortage of Johns in the world – and that the voice was familiar. He looked up quickly and found the person addressing him.

No ghosts today, indeed.

But Sarah wasn't a ghost, she was still there, real and smiling. John felt surprise flash through him and then he smiled back, waving her over.

"Sarah!" he greeted as she wound through the tables to join them and Tricia twisted in her seat to look up in surprise. Tricia knew who Sarah was, of course, but by the time Tricia had returned from her second tour in Afghanistan, John and Sarah had long since parted ways.

He hadn't seen her since then, he realized. Almost seven years.

And she still looked the same, as if the intervening time hadn't really touched her, maybe a bit around the eyes and the lips but not much more.

"John, how are you?"

"I'm good," he said. "Sarah, this is Tricia Remsen, we served together in Afghanistan. Tee, this is Sarah Sawyer."

"Yes," Tricia said, shooting John an evil grin. "I remember from your blog."

"Oh, the infamous blog," Sarah said with a grin of her own and John wondered if she still read it. He kind of hoped not, but he had no control over who read it. Half of Scotland Yard did, in part of keep up with what Sherlock was doing, but John kept writing anyway. He enjoyed it.

"You want to join us?" John asked. Sarah looked surprised a moment, then checked her watch.

"Yes, sure," she said. "I have some time. Let me get some tea of my own, won't be a moment."

John nodded and Sarah left. Tricia turned back to him, raising her eyebrows.

"Oh, for god's sake, Tee," John growled but there was laughter in his voice.

"I didn't say anything!" she protested.

"You never say anything," John said.

"Not true," she replied. John sighed and rolled his eyes, but she was right. She'd straight out told him to shag Sherlock the first time he'd told her he was interested in his flatmate. He was glad she didn't say so right now, though.

Sarah came back to join them and John was pleasantly surprised that catching up with her was enjoyable and not at all awkward. After they'd broken up, he'd wanted to remain friends but they'd drifted apart despite that, neither of them quite wanting to put in the effort. When John had got together with Sherlock, he'd been guiltily relieved that he and Sarah weren't really close because he hadn't wanted to explain that to her. He was also glad their breakup had nothing to do with Sherlock – well, not specifically. Sherlock had always been cool toward her as it was and, looking back, John knew why, even if neither of them had known it at the time.

Sarah did ask after Sherlock briefly and John lied and said he was fine and the conversation wound away at that point. He found out Sarah was married and had been for about four years now. John wasn't surprised – she was a wonderful woman and it was not astonishing to learn that someone had snatched her up when given the chance.

When she found out Tricia was a doctor, too, Sarah was delighted and their conversation turned to medical topics and the state of the NHS. John found himself enjoying the company immensely and felt a bit bad for forgetting how much he liked actually talking to Sarah. He realized suddenly that he'd have to tell Sherlock he ran into her – two weeks ago, he'd have mentioned it but more in passing and Sherlock probably would have arched an eyebrow in that dry, amused way of his and said nothing and wouldn't have given it further thought. John pushed down on an image of Sherlock from two weeks ago, because it was coloured by the lie. He'd seen precisely what Sherlock had wanted him to see, not knowing there was more there that Sherlock was keeping carefully concealed from him. John refused to get distracted by that awareness and refocused on the conversation, keeping his mood deliberately light.

After about half an hour, Sarah gave her apologies and said she had to go.

"Me too," Tricia said, checking her watch. "I need to collect my daughter."

John bid Sarah good-bye and she admonished him to keep in touch and he promised he would and meant it. When she was gone, Tricia gave John a quick look and he returned it with a quirking smile. She watched him for a moment, then nodded, apparently assured that he was fine after meeting a former girlfriend while things were not fantastic at home.

"Call me if you need anything," she said and John smiled again.

"I will," he promised, giving her a parting kiss on the cheek. John watched her go, then made his way to the tube station. His afternoon tube ride was a routine he half treasured, a small parcel of space between his work and his home, between two places where things could be busy and unpredictable. Now, he knew, it was a bit of a way to postpone getting home, since the trains were crowded at this time of day and prone to delays.

But he made it back to the Baker Street station in fairly good time and realized with a bit of a sinking heart that this disappointed him. Coming up the street to the flat, he turned his mobile back on. He knew Sherlock hated it when he had it off, but he hadn't wanted his outing with Tricia to be interrupted.

He fished his keys out and unlocked the front door, stepping from the warm air outside into the cooler air of the entry way. John shut the door again and locked it, then frowned as his phone beeped at him, indicating he had a message.

It was, in fact, a flurry of messages from Sherlock, which surprised him. His husband had been very reluctant to call or text the past week, as if doing so would cause more tension. John had to admit he missed it, even if he was still hurt and angry. Sherlock had had a tendency to message John with whatever came to mind, so that John would often find texts about needing milk, followed by texts suggesting what he'd like to do to John when John got home, followed by texts exulting or complaining about the results of some experiment, often within minutes of each other.

He had voicemail, too, probably from Sherlock, but he checked the texts first.

The first one was enough. It was a picture of a wall on which someone had drawn a crude message in permanent marker. Below the word "hello" were two childish houses, all boxes and triangles, complete with chimneys with squiggles of smoke. It took John less than half a second to work out the message.

Along with that, Sherlock had included the address and the message Please come. SH.

It was enough. John was out the door again, slamming it shut behind him and wincing at the noise, hoping Mrs. Hudson wasn't home, then forgetting about that immediately as he hailed a cab.

John was surprised by the complete lack of police cars in front of the building when the taxi dropped him. The place had been cordoned off but instead of the cruisers with their flashing lights and the familiar uniformed officers, the building was surrounded by Royal Military Police vehicles and the perimeter was being guarded by Redcaps, all of whom eyed him suspiciously as he approached the barrier.

"Sorry, sir, no admittance," a sergeant said, holding up a hand while two corporals shifted their guns in a manner that wasn't threatening but which indicated it could become so very quickly, if John gave them any hint of a reason.

"Doctor John Watson," he said. "Let me show you my ID."

Now the two covering him did raise their guns, their eyes following his movements, their weapons steady. The sergeant to whom John had been speaking gave a curt nod, kept his own weapon down, and watched John intently. John moved slowly and deliberately, pulling his wallet from his back pocket and extending his driver's licence. The sergeant stepped forward, accepted it, and stepped back. He scrutinized it, then at John, before handing it back.

"Sorry, Doctor Watson," he said. "They've been expecting you."

I bet they have, John thought. It was a wonder Sherlock hadn't come storming into the café to get him or that one of Mycroft's cars hadn't rounded him up – because if it was Redcaps and not police, then Mycroft must have arranged it. This whole thing had started with Mycroft wanting Sherlock to look into the Murray case, after all.

At a gesture from the sergeant, the corporals lowered their weapons just enough that they could be brought back up at a moment's notice. John ducked under the barrier.

"Nash, take Doctor Watson up to the flat," the sergeant said. One of the corporals nodded and gestured for John to follow him. John drew a breath – it had been awhile since he'd been escorted by military police and never before in London. They'd accompanied his unit more than once, usually when treating or transferring an important patient.

Bad day for remembering the war, he thought, but shook it off. Nash was talking on his radio, alerting whoever was inside that he was bringing Doctor Watson in. A clipped voice gave an affirmative answer and John was surprised that Sherlock didn't instantly commandeer the radio to start yelling instructions at him.

But what could there be to do? Sherlock had texted him almost an hour ago now, and the fact that he'd stayed on a scene this long was unusual. Normally he blew through them like a whirlwind in a fitted suit and dark curls. Mycroft must be really upset for Sherlock to still be hanging about.

He tried not to stare as they were admitted to the building. It should have been less impressive than it was because he was somewhat used to the manor house in which Sherlock and Mycroft had grown up, but the opulence always managed to overwhelm him and he wondered if any of these people thought about what it was like to grow up in a normal house or flat furnished with a mix of new and old things, to not have staff and cooks and things.

He was transferred to another corporal who took him into the lift and rode with him up to the fifth floor. John wondered how many other flats there were in this building, and if those people had been evacuated.

"Stop right there!" he heard Sherlock yell at him the moment they were through the door. He halted abruptly behind the corporal, looking up. His husband was at the top of a set of curving stairs gripping the railing with nitrile-gloved hands and leaning forward. Mycroft was standing beside him, looking intensely displeased.

John looked away for a quick assessment of the scene – there was a body of a man lying at the foot of the stairs and he had either been pushed down the stairs or the impact of the bullet to his head that had clearly killed him had unbalanced him and he'd fallen. In a small flat, the stairs down which he'd fallen would have been a spiral staircase but space was not an issue here, so the stairs curved gracefully up to the second floor, not quite winding back on themselves.

John glanced to his right and saw the message scrawled on the wall and a young woman not in uniform examining it carefully. She was also wearing gloves, and would occasionally raise a hand as if the touch the image but not actually do so. John frowned, then placed her.

"Holly?" he asked.

She stopped and turned, then smiled. John stared at her a moment, taken aback by seeing the forensic artist here, but then realized Sherlock would have called her in.

"Hi, John," she said, giving him a bit of a rueful look and casting an uncertain glance at the body on the floor. She'd adjusted a lot in the two years since he'd first met her, but she was used to dealing with witnesses and victims, not corpses, and was clearly trying to ignore the body as best she could.

She turned away from John and the corpse, looking up the stairs.

"Sherlock, I don't know what you think I can tell you that you can't figure out on your own!" she called up. "I do sketches of suspects, not analyses of materials! I'm not a crime scene person."

"Anything you can tell me!" Sherlock replied and John saw Mycroft making his way down the stairs towards John although Sherlock hadn't moved.

John heard Holly sigh.

"It's blue permanent marker and it was done by a right handed person and judging by how dry it is, I'd say it was done this morning at the latest."

At this, Sherlock clattered down the stairs, overtaking his brother and bypassing the body, giving John an impatient gesture to join them. John stared – apparently any problems between them were forgotten. Then he huffed an irritated sigh at himself. There was a man lying murdered on the floor in front of him and the killer was someone they'd encountered before. He wasn't going to let Sherlock's deception go, but he could deal with the fact that this was not the time nor the place.

"And someone about five-ten, five-eleven," Sherlock said, standing beside Holly. "Look here, the pen marks are less certain at the top of the letters than at the bottom, indicating he had to reach because–", he held up a hand without touching the wall, "this would be a comfortable starting point for someone my height but the bottoms of the letters are smooth, indicating he was reaching less at the point. Anyone taller than him, closer to my height would show an opposite pattern. Same thing with the drawing of the houses; he starts at a comfortable height and has to bend over to draw the bases, so the lines are somewhat rougher. Right handed, yes, I think you're correct, because there's no smudging, although– John, could you do this without smudging?"

"If I held my hand properly," John replied. "Or wrote backwards."

"No, no hesitation on the wording. If he were writing backwards, we'd see more irregularities in the lettering because he'd have to think about it. This was done quickly and efficiently and he didn't have to concentrate. Look at the body, John, please."

John repressed a sigh and crouched down carefully next to the corpse. Mycroft was standing over him a moment later, extending a pair of gloves that John snapped on easily. It made it simpler to examine the corpse although he wished he had something to cover his mouth and nose – it was cool enough in the flat but the man had been dead the better part of the day. Since nine thirty-seven, if the broken watch on his wrist was any indication.

He was a mess. The blood from the exit wound on the back of his head had congealed on the carpeted floor along with what John knew were bits of brain matter. It angered him suddenly that no one had cleaned this up yet, that the man had been left lying where he'd died like some sort of sideshow exhibition.

"Shot at point blank range by a hand gun," John said. "He was dead before the fall, so he either fell when he was shot or he was pushed."

"Pushed," Sherlock said.

"What?" John asked, looking up. "How do you know?"

"He wasn't shot close enough to the top of the stairs to have fallen down them, or at least not that far on his own. He was deliberately pushed."

"Why would you push a dead body down a set of stairs?" John demanded.

"To send a message," Sherlock replied crisply.

"He shot a man in the head so he could say hi to you?" John snapped, anger flaring through him again. "Mycroft, what the hell is going on? Who is he anyway? Why am I here?"

"Benjamin Laurence, Minister of State for the Secretary of State for Defence," Mycroft replied in a hard voice.

John looked up at his brother-in-law again quickly, noting the anger in his eyes he hadn't spotted before and realized suddenly why Mycroft was here and why it was the Redcaps outside, not the police.

John looked down again quickly and checked the body for bruising, needle- or ligature marks or any other signs he'd been hurt or held before being killed.

"He was also friends with James Murray," Mycroft said.

John raised his head again quickly.

"Oh, you're kidding," he said softly.

"I am not," Mycroft replied. "Sherlock, enough. John, upstairs. This is why you're here. Ms. Adams, please stay down here if you would be so kind."

Holly nodded and John peeled off his gloves, leaving them beside the body as he pushed himself to his feet. He followed Mycroft up the stairs, Sherlock right behind him. John could feel his husband's presence and body heat and he expected to feel the light touch of a hand on his back, but Sherlock didn't get any closer to him. John couldn't tell if he was disappointed about that or not.

Mycroft must know something's going on, he thought with an internal sigh. Thankfully the case was taking priority at the moment.

It wasn't hard to peg where Laurence had been shot, given the splatter on the floor and the lower part of the walls, and Mycroft led them carefully around the worst of it. John wondered if they were contaminating any evidence or if there had already been a military forensic team here. Given that Mycroft seemed to have taken charge, he was willing to bet that Sherlock was the first expert on the scene and Mycroft was waiting until his brother was finished before letting anyone else have access.

Mycroft led them down a wide corridor with a Persian rug running its length then stopped in front of a door that was being guarded by another Redcap corporal. He gestured for John and Sherlock to go inside and John stepped hesitantly into the study and library, looking around, then turned back.

"Where's everyone else?" he finally thought to ask.

"Laurence was the only person who lived here," Mycroft replied.

"No staff or anything? In a flat this big?"

"No full-time staff," Mycroft said.

"We're five storeys up," John protested. "How did he get in here?"

"Sherlock?" Mycroft asked.

"Working on it," Sherlock replied, striding past John and heading for the windows. John followed him with his gaze, then saw something lying on a small round mahogany table next to a leather armchair. It caught his attention because it was the only thing that seemed out of place in a room in which everything else was neatly stored. Whatever else Laurence had been, he'd been organized.

"Yes, that's it," Sherlock said vaguely without looking back. John walked over to it and picked it up carefully. The paper itself was familiar, that same parchment-coloured stationery on which he'd been sending letters the last ten years.

On it, in pink pencil crayon, was a circle of carefully drawn roses. John stared at it, then look back up at Mycroft.

"A circle of flowers?" he asked. "A wreath?"

"A ring of roses," Sherlock corrected, drawing back from the windows and looking up at the frames with a pensive expression on his face.

John stared at the image again for a moment, then pressed a hand over his eyes.

"We all fall down," he muttered. "And he 'fell' down the stairs."

"Indeed," Sherlock said crisply and Mycroft shot his brother a dark look. John put the paper back down and tried to swallow on his anger at a killer who was taunting them with nursery rhymes.

---

If he had expected Sherlock to be finished shortly after he'd arrived and Mycroft to let them go quickly, he was wrong. John didn't know how much time had passed but it felt like several hours as Sherlock combed the whole flat as thoroughly as John had ever seen him do and Mycroft had quiet conversations on his cell phone. Holly was dispatched in short order and John watched her go with no small amount of envy – the scones he'd had before coming here were a poor substitute to an actual dinner and it had been a long time since the hasty half a sandwich he'd had for lunch in between seeing patients.

He listened with half an ear as Mycroft and Sherlock argued about something. Mycroft probably wasn't giving them all the information but that wasn't surprising. It was Mycroft, after all. John examined the body again but found nothing he hadn't seen before.

Finally Mycroft let them leave, sending them home in one of his cars. John settled in the back, grateful that the driver was removed from them by a pane of darkened glass. He sank into the leather seat and leaned his head against the headrest.

"Why this, why now?" Sherlock muttered to himself, stretching his long legs in front of him. "It's obvious why Laurence, but why wait? Why delay? The timing must be important – it always has been in the past."

"What do you mean, why wait?" John murmured. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sherlock give him a sharp glance.

"Weren't you listening to Mycroft?"

"Not really, no," John said.

He felt Sherlock staring at him and turned his head enough to see his husband's grey eyes in the dim interior of the car. Although the sun was still up, the darkly tinted windows made the passenger seats feel like a small private world.

"Laurence was rather vocal about delaying the vote given the reason for Murray's absence in April," Sherlock replied. "He was apparently quite displeased that it went ahead and spoke out to the press about it."

"Oh," John replied.

Sherlock stared at him. John looked at the roof of the car and sighed.

"Yeah, sorry I'm not that enthusiastic right now," he said, hearing the hint of sarcasm slip into his voice, unable to stop it. He was hungry, tired, and couldn't shake the hurt and disappointment no matter how distracting a murder investigation should have been.

He remembered Sherlock's face when they realized that the killer was giving them a choice between finding him and finding Kelsi Murray's body. And Anna Anderson's and Jon Kipling's. That complete impotent frustration. And then the way they all looked when they realised they'd been played and the killer had led them to the grave and had walked away just as unknown as he had been ten years previous.

He was just toying with them again. Probably not even with them, but with Mycroft. "Holmes" didn't have to be Sherlock, after all.

Sherlock fell silent as the car purred through the evening traffic. John closed his eyes, just hoping they'd be home soon so he could have something to eat. Probably nothing more than a can of soup. It seemed somehow fitting for the way his marriage felt right now.

"There's nothing else," Sherlock said after several long minutes. John frowned.

"You mean it was only Laurence who spoke out about the vote going ahead?" he asked with a sigh.

Sherlock didn't reply and John cracked an eye to see him looking surprised.

"No, John, I don't know. I meant there was nothing else that I was keeping from you."

John opened both his eyes now and raised his head. Sherlock was giving him an uncertain look and pressed his lips together. He hesitated, fiddling absently with the fabric of his trousers, before speaking again.

"Sam said I needed to tell you that."

John felt a flash of irritation and perverse amusement. Apparently it was full disclosure time to the point where Sherlock had to tell John who'd suggested this to him. He was annoyed that Sherlock had been talking to Sam about it, but realized that was not at all fair. He had Tricia to talk to and he had been talking to her a lot. It was unreasonable to expect that Sherlock couldn't get help from a friend of his.

John just wasn't feeling very reasonable at the moment.

He met Sherlock's gaze and held it for a moment.

"All right," he said finally, hoping Sherlock was telling the truth. He paused for a moment, then added: "I ran into Sarah today."

For a moment, Sherlock looked stricken, then smoothed over his features as best he could. John sighed.

"I ran into her while I was having coffee with Tricia. We chatted. That's all. I'm not about to run off and have an affair with her or with anyone. I'm not trying to get you back because that would be childish and unjustified. I'm not going to cheat on you because I'm angry at you, and you don't have to think that you've got to accept it because you hurt me. It's not an eye for an eye, Sherlock. I'm just telling you because I think you should know."

Sherlock held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded and looked away. John had never seen his husband look so uncertain and chastised and was startled to realize he didn't really feel bad about it.

They spent the rest of the ride to the flat in silence and trudged up the steps together. John went into the kitchen immediately and made some soup and toast, setting half of it aside for Sherlock. He sat at the kitchen table and ate in silence, not surprised that Sherlock didn't join him. When he was done, he rinsed his dishes and went back into the living room.

Sherlock was not sitting in his chair but standing near the desk, fiddling with something from his chemistry set – John couldn't see what. He looked up when John came in and put whatever it was down on the table before crossing the room. John watched him with some surprise since he'd rarely seen Sherlock out of his armchair all week.

Sherlock stepped up to him until he was standing half a pace away and looked down, uncertainty scrawled all over his features. He searched John's face then raised a hand, hesitating before carefully touching John's cheek. When the doctor didn't pull away, he ran his thumb lightly over John's lips then dropped his hand, bent down, and kissed him softly.

John didn't move for a few seconds, then kissed back. They stayed that way, barely touching, barely moving, for a long moment. Sherlock pulled away carefully and met John's eyes again, then kissed him a second time. He deepened it slightly this time and John let him, parting his own lips a bit. He felt Sherlock's tongue dart over his lips, over the front of his teeth, but didn't give him any more access. Sherlock ran his tongue over John's bottom lip again then caught it lightly, sucking on it.

John shifted slightly and Sherlock moved minutely toward him. He felt Sherlock's hands on his waist after a moment, resting against his shirt just above his belt. They stayed there for a few seconds then skimmed very lightly upward, his fingertips tracing John's chest then the skin on his throat where his shirt parted and his flesh was exposed. He felt goose bumps at the contact but also felt curiously disconnected from it. A week ago, the sensation would have gone straight through him, making him want more.

Now he wasn't sure he wanted anything.

He moved closer and felt Sherlock's fingers undoing the first two buttons on his shirt. Sherlock pulled out of the kiss then kissed him again, lightly, before trailing his lips across John's jaw. John titled his head, feeling the fabric of his shirt pushed aside, feeling Sherlock's cool fingers against his skin. He closed his eyes, waiting.

Come on, John, he told himself.

It felt familiar and it felt good, but he didn't want it.

He searched for the feeling but his body seemed shut off. John pressed his eyes closed a bit more tightly, putting his own hands on Sherlock's hips, hoping that would help.

He wanted to want it. He just didn't actually want it.

The realization made him snap his eyes open and he must have tensed because Sherlock stopped and drew away, searching his face, his expression questioning and vulnerable.

John inhaled deeply and reached up, wrapping his fingers around Sherlock's, drawing the detective's hands away from his body. He saw the hard flash of hurt and shock in Sherlock's eyes.

"I'm sorry," John said quietly. "I just– can't. Not yet."

Sherlock stared at him a heartbeat longer then closed his eyes. He gave a single nod and stepped back, pulling his hands lightly from John's grasp. They stood frozen, then John made himself say:

"Why don't you get a start on the case? Mycroft will appreciate your help."

Sherlock set his jaw and kept his eyes closed for several seconds, then opened them and nodded again.

"Of course," he replied and his voice sounded taut and raw, and John could hear the strength he was trying put into it. He felt a flash of guilt but it dissipated quickly; it wouldn't help matters to force himself to do something he didn't want to do, and Sherlock would have figured it out. And if he hadn't figured out until it was too late, he never would have forgiven John. They didn't need any more resentment going around.

"I'm– going to shower," John said. Sherlock gave another abrupt nod and John hesitated before making himself move away. He shut the bathroom door behind him, not bothering to lock it.

He stripped down and turned up the hot water as high as he could tolerate then climbed in. He immersed himself completely under the spray before leaning his head against the cool tiles on the wall, lacing his hands together on the back of his head and closing his eyes. John just stood there, letting the water pour over him until it went cold and he had to shut it off and get out.

The overcast skies gave way to rain sometime around midnight and it drummed steadily on the windows, rattling against the glass. From outside, the murmur of traffic was muted and Sherlock couldn't hear the sound of John's breathing from the bedroom where he slept. Not that he could have anyway; the door was shut and John was not prone to snoring, but Sherlock noted it now and felt its absence.

The yellow light from the lamp pooled on the table and mixed with the blue-tinted illumination from his laptop's screen and John's, making the darkness outside the windows seem deeper. Sherlock sat pushed back from the desk, palms pressed together, fingertips resting on his chin, and stared at the open book in front of him. He'd had Anthea deliver a new copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales and had been researching nursery rhymes online.

Without any success whatsoever.

Sherlock gazed at the open book, not really seeing the spread pages with the colourful images and his own handwriting already dominating the margins, not noticing when John's laptop screen went dark to conserve power.

Where was he leading them?

And there was no doubt they were being led. The man behind the killer, this puppeteer, was pulling their strings – but whose? His or Mycroft's? Both?

Where did the stories fit in? The nursery rhymes from this time and last, the fairy tales, even the legend of the Greyfriar's Bobby. In Edinburgh the stories had led them places – but not all of them. Was this ridiculous rhyme supposed to lead him somewhere now?

He flicked a finger across his laptop's trackpad to keep the screensaver from activating and glared at the browser page. There were several variations on "Ring a-Ring o' Roses", including in other languages. He read the German version and looked at the Gaelic version before reading its translation.

But which one?

He closed his eyes, fixing the most common version in his mind. A ring of roses, yes, that had been drawn on the letter, the one that was now spread out on the table above the book. And Laurence had been pushed down the stairs – "we all fall down", as John had said.

But could it be that simple? Given the choices, should he choose the most common? If so, what did it mean? Was it leading them anywhere or was it simply taunting them?

What if it were the German version? He'd considered in Edinburgh that the killer might not be British – and several of the fairy tales he'd used were German in origin. But the story about the Greyfriar's dog was from Edinburgh itself. The crooked man rhyme was English. 'Little Red Riding Hood' could be traced back to France and Italy. There was no pattern – and none of it necessarily even suggested a European. He could be from anywhere; these stories were not uncommon or inaccessible. And Sherlock was certain the killer was only delivering the messages, not planning their content.

Where do you want us to go? he asked, opening his eyes again. The laptops and the book sat mutely in front of him, offering no answers. Sherlock had attempted to find some link to Murray but even if this were directed specifically at him, Mycroft had put guards on him immediately, before Sherlock had arrived at Laurence's flat. A quick argument with his brother had ensured the same security for Inspector Anna Anderson and her daughters in Edinburgh. They could take no chances.

He pushed himself to his feet, walking instinctively toward his violin before stopping short, tensing his muscles as he hauled himself back, eyes darting to the closed bedroom door. John was asleep. In the nearly seven years they'd been together, it had always been difficult to resist playing when John slept, sometimes more so than others. Now it seemed like sheer effort to distance himself from his instrument but, at the same time, part of him suddenly realized he could not stand to open it and see the small brass plaque with its heartfelt engraving from John.

Sherlock turned away, raking his hands through his hair.

They were being played, and not in the way Moriarty had played them, because Moriarty had wanted to draw Sherlock out and meet him. To encounter the enemy who was on his level.

Whoever was behind this didn't want to be found. He simply wanted to wreak havoc, to force them to chase him around uselessly.

Someone who knew how to elude Mycroft. The realization made him shudder.

He stalked back to the table, bent over the letter again, tried to tease some hint from its silent surface. It stayed resolutely the same.

The buzz from his phone startled him upright, the sound loud in the silence that permeated the flat, the same silence that seemed to have taken up residence over the course of the past week. Sherlock snatched up his mobile, unlocking it quickly, and a text message from a blocked number winked onto the screen.

You've got the words a bit wrong.

Sherlock stared at it a moment, then sucked in a breath and hit the reply button.

How so? he demanded, holding the phone between his taut fingers, waiting for a reply that did not come. He exhaled in a hiss and was crossing the flat before he knew it, pushing open the bedroom door, letting in a shaft of light that followed him from the living room.

John was asleep on his back and that very image stopped Sherlock in his tracks – since they had returned to sleeping in the same bed only a few days previous, John had slept on his right side each night – his back to Sherlock as a barrier. Now he lay on his back, his left arm curled onto his stomach, his right arm folded over his head, his face turned slightly toward the door.

Sherlock stayed frozen for a moment, everything inside of him urging him to put the phone down, to crawl in beside John, to take advantage of this. He took another deep breath and put the desire aside, crossing the room softly and swiftly, crouching down beside John.

"John," he whispered quietly.

The doctor stirred slightly, a soft sigh escaping his lips, but didn't awaken. Sherlock hesitated, then reached out with his right hand, resting it on John's chest above his heart, feeling the slow and steady pulse against his skin. He stared at his hand for a moment, then shook his head, refocusing.

"John," he said again, somewhat louder this time. "John, wake up."

John inhaled sharply and his muscles tensed. He reached up instinctively, curling his left hand over Sherlock's right, and Sherlock felt the cool kiss of metal from John's wedding ring against his skin. John half sat up, blinking and confused. Sherlock closed his eyes at the unexpected contact, pressing his lips together to keep them from trembling.

John's fingers tightened over his for a moment, then slid down, along the back of Sherlock's hand before dropping away to help push himself up. Sherlock removed his hand as well, opening his eyes again, meeting John's gaze.

"What is it?" John asked and there was genuine concern in his voice and none of the irritation at being woken that Sherlock had expected.

Sherlock extended the phone wordlessly and John took it, reading the message, his brown eyes widening in the near darkness.

"You have to call Mycroft," the doctor said, not even needing to ask who had sent the message. He put the phone back in Sherlock's palm, running his fingers over Sherlock's as he drew his hand away. Sherlock felt a faint shudder go through him and closed his eyes again.

"Sherlock," John said, patiently but firmly.

Sherlock snapped his eyes open, nodded, and called up his contact list. He thumbed through it for his brother's number, about to select it when his phone rang, startling both of them slightly with the unexpected sound.

Sherlock met John's eyes; the doctor had seen Mycroft's name light up on the screen.

"Mycroft," Sherlock answered, holding John's steady gaze. "He's just contacted me."

"And he's killed someone else," his brother replied, a sharp note in his otherwise overly patient voice.

"When?" Sherlock demanded.

"An hour ago," Mycroft replied.

"Text me the address. We're on our way." He hung up without preamble and pushed himself to his feet, John's eyes following him.

"Get up and get dressed, John. There's another victim."

---

John was tired but hadn't complained, although Sherlock could see clear regret at the loss of sleep with a full day at the clinic looming in front of him. He had cast one enquiring glance at the doctor in the cab but John had only given him a tight smile and a brief nod. In the pre-dawn darkness, with the raining easing up and the orange glow from the street lamps, John's features were cast in shadows, illuminated here and there with bright lines at the angles – his cheekbones, his nose, the line of his forehead in profile. The smile he'd given Sherlock had been delineated mostly by deeper shadows caused by the shifting of muscles.

Unsurprisingly, there was already a military police vehicle there and a sergeant and a corporal were establishing a perimeter around the house, moving with silent precision, speaking to each other only with gestures and nods. No lights were flashing, no attention was being drawn – at three-thirty in the morning, Mycroft was attempting discretion. There were no neighbours gathered around like there would have been if the Met had been called to investigate and a quick glance down the block with its darkened detached homes indicated most of the inhabitants were still safely asleep.

The sergeant examined their identification and let them pass. Sherlock saw John's gaze linger a moment. Did he miss this? Was he experiencing nostalgia or simply accessing memory? Sherlock couldn't tell and the realization made him suppress a growl – his attention was needed elsewhere.

Mycroft met them at the front door and Sherlock evaluated the house upon stepping in. A couple in their late fifties; married thirty to thirty-five years judging by the style of dress in the framed wedding photo that hung on the wall. Still married, given that the picture was still on display but a bit dusty – they were used to seeing it and used to giving it no thought. He thought suddenly of the framed wedding picture that sat in his flat on the small table beside the couch. How long had it been since they had cleaned it? He resolved to do so when he got home.

Three children, all adults now, and more photos in the corridor and in the stairwell going up to the first floor confirmed this. Two daughters and a son – the son was the middle child. Grandchildren from both daughters but not the son, although there was a framed photo of him on a small table in the corridor holding a tiny newborn baby – the first grandchild. Beside that a more recent picture of the couple with all of their grandchildren – a young boy, a toddler girl sitting on the man's lap, and a baby held by the woman.

A happy family by all appearances and perhaps appearances did not belie the truth here. The wife was not involved in this and nor were the children. He repressed a snort – not the grandchildren either, if only by virtue of their age. He glanced around again. The house well cared for: fresh paint on the walls within the last two years, clean carpets and floors, the oak banister had seen some dusting recently. A house that was well maintained and loved.

"Where?" he asked and Mycroft gestured up the stairs. From an unseen room Sherlock could hear the sound of someone crying. The wife was at home, then.

He took the pair of proffered gloves, snapping them on as he climbed the stairs. John was behind him, close enough that his presence was palpable. Sherlock ignored it, following Mycroft into the master bedroom.

The victim lay on his back, eyes open to the ceiling, blood soaked into the pillow and sheets and trailing down toward the floor. Not entirely congealed or dried. Mycroft had said an hour on the phone; his brother's assessment was probably correct. The victim was on one side of the king bed and the side closest to where they stood was untouched. The sheets were somewhat rumpled where the victim's movements in his sleep had disturbed them, but they hadn't been turned down.

"Where was the wife?" Sherlock asked.

"Just got back from Austria. One of the children lives there," Mycroft replied. "She's the one who found him."

"Who is he?"

"Arthur Kenton. Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs."

"Friend of James Murray's?"

Mycroft's hesitation was barely there but noticeable and Sherlock snapped his gaze to his brother.

"No," Mycroft replied.

"There's something you're not telling us," Sherlock said sharply. "Withholding information on a case like this, Mycroft? Do you wish me to make any progress or have you called me here simply because you think I might find this entertaining?"

Mycroft's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, displeasure flitting across his normally solicitous features.

"There is certain – sensitive information regarding this case that I've kept from you until now, yes. I'd rather hoped Laurence's murder was motivated by his friendship with Murray and his public denouncement of the refusal to delay the vote in April. This would have been far simpler for me– for all concerned."

"But it's not," Sherlock said.

"No," Mycroft said again, pursing his lips. He sighed and stepped fully into the room, shutting the door and then heading for the window.

"Leave it," Sherlock said.

"I cannot risk being overheard, Sherlock. I've had the place checked for listening devices but I won't have myself compromised by someone simply eavesdropping through the window."

"Then let me examine the scene first," Sherlock said. His brother stopped and gave a curt nod.

"John?" Sherlock asked and John stepped away from him, circling the bed carefully. He crouched down next to the body, eyes sweeping over it in an initial investigation. Sherlock joined him, evaluating the room, judging the distance from the open window to the bed, noting the footprints – one set heading toward the bed, still showing faint traces of dampness from the rain, another set overlying and obscuring the first, tinged with blood near the toes. Heavier marks than he would expect – not a heavy man; whoever did this needed to be agile enough to climb to get in through that window. Deep treads, so boots. Heavy-duty boots. Hiking or work boots.

An odd choice for breaking in, he thought.

"There was a security system panel on the wall near the door," Sherlock said. "Was it armed when the wife came home?"

"She says it was," Mycroft replied and Sherlock's eyes flickered to John, who was examining the victim's head carefully, fingers moving through the greying hair to better see the wounds. "She reset it when she let herself in."

"So our killer disabled it before entering then reset it after he left – possibly remotely."

"Yes. I've got Anthea checking with the security company to see if there were any external disruptions in the service."

"Assuming he doesn't know someone who works there who could have done it for him."

"Assuming that," Mycroft said, nodding.

"John?" Sherlock asked.

"Blunt force trauma to the skull," John replied. "An hour, an hour and a half ago. Looks like four or five good blows – whoever did this didn't pull back, didn't hesitate."

"He wouldn't," Sherlock agreed.

"Looks like something broad with an edge – not a hammer or the butt of a gun."

"May I?" Sherlock asked and John stood, stepping away. The detective pulled out his hand lens, smoothing one hand into Kenton's hair and pushed the strands aside with his thumb and index finger.

"Bits of white paint and… " He drew back carefully, pinching something carefully between his gloved thumb and finger. "A splinter of wood. Something broad with an edge made of wood and painted."

He glanced over his shoulder at John, who met his eyes squarely.

"A cricket bat," John replied.

"Precisely," Sherlock said, pushing himself to his feet.

"Is he a cricket player then?" John asked. "Those blows were certain – he'd have to be familiar with using it."

"He's a professional killer, John. Wielding a weapon like that, he probably only needed a few minutes to adjust to the weight and the grip before feeling comfortable enough with it to deliver blows like this. He may play cricket but I wouldn't count on it – not with his level of expertise. He's referencing the Murray case by using the bat."

Sherlock turned, indicating the tracks on the floor.

"He came in through the window after the security system had been disabled. No marks on the frame, nor is the screen ripped or broken, so he didn't a grappling hook, however, the tree outside is ideal for scaling and entering undetected. He took the time to remove the screen and replace it after leaving, which indicates he was confident in his work, quick but not rushed. He was wearing boots, something heavy, and given the size of the footprints – assuming he reflects the general trend and his foot length is approximately fifteen percent of his body height – he's five foot ten or five foot eleven. So, unless we're dealing with multiple men of the same height and skills, the same person who murdered Laurence."

He turned back to Mycroft.

"And now you need to tell us why."

Mycroft sighed and crossed the room, closing the window and then the drapes, blocking them from view. He turned back, displeasure colouring his features.

"You must understand what I'm about to tell you is highly classified. As of later today, expect your security clearances to be increased dramatically."

He paused again, as if hoping Sherlock would bow out and allow him to stop there. Sherlock kept his silence and John watched Mycroft carefully, waiting.

"Following the events in April leading to James Murray's absence from the vote and the recovery of Kelsi Murray's body, a committee was formed to investigate both the initial crime and the more recent circumstances in hopes of identifying why Murray was being targeted and to identify the responsible party. This sort of thing is not treated lightly, Sherlock. An MP has been harassed, threatened and a member of his family has been murdered in an attempt to bully him into compliance. This goes beyond pressure or even simple intimidation and has no place in a civilised society or in our government. Benjamin Laurence sat on this committee, as did Arthur Kenton. As do I."

Sherlock sucked in a deep breath.

"How many other people?" he demanded.

"Aside from myself, Laurence and Kenton, six."

"Then all of those people and their families are potentially at risk. You have to assign security to them, let them know of the threat."

"I've already done so – although we cannot risk telling the families of the committee members why they are potential targets. The nature of this committee must be kept classified in order for us to have any hope whatsoever of identifying the guilty party. He's been operating utterly unknown for a decade now, which suggests to me that he was well placed and influential in political circles ten years ago. He will only be more ensconced now."

"What about Kenton's wife, then? She didn't know?"

"No," Mycroft said, shaking his head. "James Murray doesn't even know, although he will later today."

"I need to talk to her, the wife," Sherlock said.

Mycroft sighed again.

"Downstairs," he replied, leading them from the room and back through the house.

Kenton was in the living room, curled up on the couch, still dressed in the clothing in which she'd been travelling. An abandoned suitcase resting near the archway in the corridor. She'd slipped off her high heels which lay on the carpet and had her legs drawn up onto the white leather, feet tucked under her knees. A box of tissues rested on the arm of the couch beside her and her cheeks were streaked both with tears and faint black lines from her mascara. She was approximately five years younger than Arthur Kenton had been, Sherlock judged – or time had been somewhat more lenient with her.

"Mrs. Kenton, we need to ask you some questions, if that's all right," Sherlock said gently. He caught John's look of surprise at his tone but ignored it – she was not a woman who would respond to confrontation right now.

With a deep, shaky breath, she managed to compose herself somewhat, dabbing her cheeks with a balled-up tissue, and nodded.

"Yes, yes of course," she replied.

"What time did you arrive home?"

"Just before two-thirty," she said. "I remember checking the clock in the cab, thinking I haven't been out this late in years."

"And you were coming straight from the airport?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"Heathrow."

"Quite a late flight, isn't it?"

"It wasn't meant to be, not this late anyway. We were delayed leaving Austria because of the weather here. Heavy rains, they said. And then the traffic was slow going because of the rain. I remember– I remember being surprised when I landed that we actually made it in one piece, that we hadn't skidded off the runway, because it was absolutely pouring."

Sherlock froze.

"It was pouring," he said softly.

"Yes," she replied, nodding. "I thought that Arthur would be happy for the rain– they'd be good for the flowers…"

Sherlock closed his eyes momentarily.

"Sherlock," Mycroft said in a warning tone.

He snapped his eyes back open.

"It was raining. Pouring in fact. Again! And he didn't have to write anything down this time, oh no. I suppose that probably dismayed him but– oh! So obvious."

"What is?" Mycroft demanded.

Sherlock jerked his head toward the hallway and stepped out, aware that Kenton was in no state to hear this, not wanting to risk his brother's ire by explaining it in front of her, if only because then Mycroft would be inclined to be more obtuse.

"Nursery rhymes again, Mycroft; he's communicating to us in stories. He has been this entire time and this is no different. It's raining, it's pouring, yes?"

Mycroft stared at him and John gave a small groan, pressing the heel of a hand to his forehead.

"You're bloody kidding," the doctor whispered.

"Not in the slightest," Sherlock said.

"And he went to bed and bumped his head and couldn't get up in the morning," John sighed.

"Precisely. Mycroft, I need the names of the other six committee members, their families, and anyone else who may possibly know if their involvement in this matter."

"I told you, no one knows but us."

"Really?" Sherlock said, cocking an eyebrow. "Does Anthea know?"

He saw his brother start to answer "well, of course" then stop himself before giving a curt, displeased nod.

"If Anthea knows, then others know," Sherlock said simply. "The list, Mycroft, by nine this morning. If you want me to have any hope of solving this, I need you to cooperate. This goes beyond a personal vengeance."

"You'll have it," Mycroft promised.

"Good. John, come on, let's go. I think we're done here."

John nodded, heading to the door, but Mycroft forestalled Sherlock.

"A word with my brother if you don't mind, John?" Mycroft asked. John cast a questioning glance at Sherlock who nodded. He saw the look of displeasure flash across John's face but the doctor stepped outside, shutting the door gently behind him, and Sherlock heard his footsteps retreating down the path.

"Sherlock," Mycroft said in a low voice. "I need you at your best on this. If you require someone other than John to assist you, you need only say so. I'm aware things have been rather strained between you two and given the degree of intimacy you normally share–"

Sherlock cut him off with a growl, anger flaring in him, tensing his muscles, tightening in his stomach.

"How dare you?" he hissed, his voice low and dangerous. "How dare you suggest that to me, Mycroft? How dare you presume that this is any of your business?"

"You're my brother. Of course it's my business."

"No, it most certainly is not! Nor are you welcome to make it your business based on what you evaluate from our actions during this case – which you asked me to take, I will remind you. I'm well aware that you thought John and I would last no longer than a year at best and so, what? Are you feeling vindicated now? Would it make you happy to be right?"

Mycroft rolled his eyes with a weary sigh.

"Of course not, Sherlock," he intoned. "You assume I'd take pleasure in seeing your relationship with John disintegrate?"

"I don't care in the slightest what you find pleasurable and what you don't," Sherlock retorted. "If you want me to work this case, you will allow me to choose with whom I work. And you will keep yourself out of my personal life and my relationship with John because it really, really does not concern you. The list, Mycroft. Five hours."

He yanked open the door and stepped out, shutting it again behind him harder than necessary so that John looked up from his position at the end of the walk, somewhat startled.

"Sherlock?" he asked as Sherlock strode toward him then past him, jaw set, eyes blazing.

"Come on, John," Sherlock snapped, giving an impatient gesture. He kept moving to put as much distance between himself and his brother as possible. "We're going home."

Now the flat was his again, the silence transformed from oppressive to productive. This was familiar and easily broken by the sound of his violin or the sound of his own voice as he spoke to the skull, chasing down ideas in his own mind, muttering to himself as he leaned over files or narrowed his eyes at information pinned to the wall.

Mycroft had made good on his word; in this respect his brother was trustworthy. Sherlock had been given files on the other six committee members, their families and their close associates, including their assistants. For the first time, he had a file on Anthea – Karen Johnson – that was legitimately obtained – although the information contained therein was no more than he'd acquired for her when she'd first begun working for Mycroft.

He'd moved his laptop and John's to the coffee table and spread out the files on the desk before deciding there wasn't enough room and clearing some space on the kitchen table as well. He'd taken the basic facts sheet for each committee member and fixed them on and around the doors between the kitchen and the living room so he did not have to move back and forth between the rooms on a regular basis. He'd also spread out a map of London on the floor and circled the residences they maintained when they were in the city. Not all of them represented constituencies in London, of course. One of them wasn't an MP but sat in the House of Lords, and Sherlock was unsurprised to learn that his primary residence was in Buckinghamshire, not far from where Sherlock himself had grown up. Another was from Wales, representing part of Cardiff. The other four were MPs for various areas in England. He'd dug out his map of Britain as well and circled their permanent homes for completeness' sake, although he strongly suspected that there would be no connection to places this time. The link lay in their participation on the committee that was investigating the threat against James Murray.

John had left for work at his usual time and Sherlock had refocused himself long enough to bid him a proper farewell rather than a distracted good-bye, sensing this would be inappropriate. He had also cooked breakfast as he normally did, making a particularly strong pot of coffee to go along with it. John's truncated sleeping time had left him looking bleary eyed even though he'd managed to sleep another hour or so after they'd returned home.

Sherlock paced the length of the flat then stopped and tilted his head back, tugging his fingers through his hair, exhaling a sharp sigh. He returned to the table and bent over the last letter again, eyes tracing the circumference of the ring of roses, taping a finger irately on the parchment-coloured paper.

He'd had Mycroft trace the number from which the text had been sent. It was no surprise to learn that it had been sent from a prepaid mobile that was most likely at the bottom of the Thames by now, or scattered about the city in pieces. The man was a professional killer; he'd not leave himself open to being traced.

But what had he meant? What words was Sherlock getting wrong? Which version of the rhyme was he supposed to be looking at? Where was it leading them? There were too many variables, both in terms of individuals and adaptations of the rhyme. It seemed the rhyme could vary not only from country to country but from person to person, depending on what one remembered learning as a child.

It was logical to assume the killer would strike at another committee member next because that had been his pattern so far. But he'd deviated from the pattern previously by kidnapping and murdering Kelsi Murray rather than going directly after her father. Each of the committee members had family – including Mycroft. Sherlock realised with some shock that he and John were probably back under surveillance and that Angela and David were most likely under guard in Edinburgh as well.

It could be anyone, anywhere, any time. There was no reason to assume he'd move quickly now, even though the first two murders had been less than twenty-four hours apart. He had them where he wanted them – they'd recognized the pattern and were trying to break it. He may be disinclined to provide more information now. Or he may keep up his current pace. Sherlock had no illusions that a man who could gain entry to the homes of two MPs in the space of a day without being detected at all could get past any security Mycroft could assign. He already had. He'd confounded Mycroft for ten years. He was not about to expose himself now.

He wanted their attention and he had it. And they were at his mercy.

Sherlock sat back with a growl. He had told John in Edinburgh that they would be at the whims of a professional assassin and his employer. He felt a flash of regret that he had not known then how true this would be months later. They had played his little game and ended up precisely where he'd wanted them: standing over Kelsi Murray's gave, not a single step closer to knowing who had killed her.

The craving for a cigarette was so sudden and sharp that it made him gasp, his eyes widening. Sherlock bit down on his lower lip and pushed himself to his feet, striding into the bathroom. He grabbed a package of nicotine patches and tore into it, pressing two onto the skin of his right forearm. There was no instant relief, no rush of relaxation that would have come with inhaling cigarette smoke, but he forced himself to stay crouched down and focus on his breathing for several minutes. The craving abated to the point where it was tolerable, and Sherlock put the box on the counter before going back into the dining room.

The light on his phone was blinking, indicating he had a text message. Sherlock scooped it up with a sigh – he had no desire to speak to his brother and Mycroft probably knew that and was resorting to texting him. He doubted it was John; they had fallen out of the habit of texting one another, although Sherlock sorely missed it. He realised suddenly he'd been waiting for permission to resume their regular communication again, but maybe John was waiting for him. He'd text his husband as soon as he'd dealt with his brother.

He unlocked the phone and opened the message, then took a step back from the table as if distancing himself would somehow help.

Still haven't got it? Not the British version. Ring around the rosey, A pocket full of posies, A-hush-ya, a-hush-ya, We all fall down.

Sherlock reread the text message again, then started to reach for his laptop before stopping, frozen.

A-hush-ya, a-hush-ya? he thought. I hush you? We all fall down?

He sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the silence of the flat pressing in on him, suddenly aware that he was alone, aware of the guards Mycroft must have posted. Acutely aware that the killer and his employer had been leading them every step of the way and that they both knew about the committee.

Which, according to Mycroft, was meeting to discuss the situation and how to best approach it.

All of them in one place.

All of them needing to be silenced.

His breath caught as his lungs constricted, a shock of cold coursing through him. The first two had been– what? A warning? A clue? A taunt?

Manipulation to get them all to the same place at the same time, to let them know they were being hunted, to get to them while they planned to keep themselves safe.

He rang his brother's number without hesitation, pressing the phone hard to his ear, cursing when the call went through to voicemail.

"Mycroft, it's Sherlock. Get out of the building. Wherever you are, get out. He wants all of you. For god's sake, call me back!"

He hung up and sent a text message then a second one, then rang Anthea.

"My brother, where's my brother?" he demanded before she could even greet him. There was a hesitation on the other end of the line and Sherlock snarled. "Karen, my brother! You need to tell me where he is now and you need to get him out of there immediately. Right now!"

---

He wondered what the public would think if they knew how much of their tax money was allocated to the purchase of tea and biscuits for committee meetings. Mycroft was certain they'd gone through half of their annual expenditure in this meeting alone – which had not been productive by any stretch of the imagination. Tempers that were stretched by Laurence's murder had snapped under the realization that it wasn't his friendship with Murray that had put him in the crosshairs, but his participation on the committee itself. Anger was being used to stifle panic, but not productively. It was astonishing how people could talk over one another and still understand themselves. It was less surprising that they'd accomplished very little and that two of the members now wanted to leave.

Yes, he thought, We should give in, shouldn't we? Bow to what is essentially terrorism, albeit a very focussed and specialized form of terrorism, directed only at us.

Directed ultimately at the British government, too. He was not going to stand for this threat to the oldest Parliament in the world, not while there was any fight left in him whatsoever. He'd assured Angela and David's security in Edinburgh and knew that Angela could call in her own favours as well. He didn't worry about them more than necessary – after David's abduction, both Mycroft and Angela had invested a significant sum in increased protection.

He'd also put guards on Sherlock and John – his brother would figure this out in short order and probably identify all of them. Mycroft would count it as a victory if Sherlock didn't out them and start haranguing them in public about their job and his privacy. He was particularly concerned now with his younger brother's inability to be reasonable. This row with John was affecting Sherlock's judgment, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Mycroft knew less about this than he'd like but far more than Sherlock would want. Taking up smoking again and doing so without telling John… Mycroft was not unfamiliar with the need to keep secrets – and nor was Angela, which made everything between them much easier to navigate. John, on the other hand, had overcome trust issues after being sent home from Afghanistan and was one of those men who firmly believed in open communication with his partner.

Well, so be it. It kept Sherlock honest.

Except, of course, when Sherlock got it in his head to lie.

Mycroft sighed, shaking his head, dismissing these thoughts. Worrying about his younger brother was a full-time job – two, really – but he had more pressing matters on his mind at the moment. He pulled his mobile from his jacket pocket and turned it back on as he left the conference room. They had all agreed to cut off all communication during the meeting, because this made it more difficult to trace their whereabouts. But he needed to contact Anthea immediately to see if anything had come up during the course of the meeting. Thankfully, none of them had been murdered – that would have been fairly obvious – but there was still a risk to their families.

His phone chirped at him, indicating waiting texts and voicemail messages. Mycroft frowned. He called up the text messages and found a deluge from both Sherlock and Anthea. Alarmed, he opened the first one from his brother, certain something had happened to John Watson, then stopped short.

Mycroft, get out. He knows where you all are.

Mycroft raised his eyes from the phone, evaluating his location. He was in the atrium of the building in which they'd met, one of the many that served to house offices for MPs or various government functionaries as well as meeting rooms and storage for forgotten records. A non-descript government building filled with non-descript government employees.

He was alone, he realized. Not alone in the atrium, but alone without any of his aides, without Anthea, without even a driver. The others had gone, all of them scrambling to get back to their families. He was isolated.

Mycroft looked around slowly, trying to identify anyone out of place. Various aides, assistants, and officials were crossing the tiled floor; hard soled shoes and high heels clicking loudly, voices rising and falling as they moved closer to him, then away. Some in pairs, laughing and chatting. Others on their own, looks of concentration on their faces, files in their arms or phones glued to their ears.

Not alone, he realized.

One of the others – McKinney – was standing off to one side of the doors, on his phone, half turned away from Mycroft, a concerned look on his face. He was nodding to someone on the other end of the line, someone who could not see him.

Two of us, Mycroft thought, suddenly cold.

And on the other side of the entryway, drawn into the corner of the doorframe, was a small ring of roses done in red permanent marker.

"OUT!" Mycroft roared. "Everyone out! Now!"

McKinney looked up at him quickly, stunned into immobility for a moment, then dropped his phone without question, breaking into a run as soon as he'd cleared the doors. Mycroft heard shouts and panic behind him but ignored them, racing through the doors and out onto the pavement, slowing for a precious moment and squinting into the dull sunlight that filtered through the blanket of clouds.

Where, cover, where? he asked himself incoherently. Trees and benches: not good enough. There were several vehicles on the road parked just outside the loading zone in front of the building. He veered toward them with barely a thought, running faster than he had since he'd been a boy, dodging onto the road, ignoring the oncoming traffic. He dropped to his stomach and rolled under one of the cars, pressing his face against the asphalt, wrapping hands over the back of his head and closing his eyes.

There was white light, there was deafening sound and then there was nothing.

"There's been an explosion and Mister Holmes is missing."

For a single endless moment, John had thought the sinister, suited man meant Sherlock before realizing that "Mister Holmes" was reserved for Mycroft.

Sherlock was already there by the time John arrived. Following the sergeant who'd been sent to collect him where the car had dropped him off, the doctor was led past the military police barricade and the Met police cars with their flashing blue lights, toward the rubble and chaos that looked so familiar it jarred him. He felt dislocated in his own life for a moment, remembering so many similar scenes in Afghanistan– he could almost hear the distant whump-whump of chopper blades in the sky. John craned his neck back and saw he was not mistaken. A news or police helicopter was passing overhead.

He refocused on the scene. Surveying the wreckage, blocking out the sounds of sirens and cries with practiced habit, he found Sherlock.

His husband had either been given or appropriated a hardhat, a high visibility vest and a pair of work gloves and was already knee-deep in the debris, his face and arms smeared with dust and sweat. The fact that he was kitted out told John how bad this was – he hadn't even bothered to argue, just taken the gear and put himself to work.

John accepted the same equipment from the sergeant, as well as two pairs of safety goggles. He put on his own, then picked his way with care to where Sherlock was labouring with a small team of rescue workers. He didn't even glance up when John arrived, but scowled and tried to swat John's hands away when John attempted to put the glasses on his face.

"You need these," John said gently, keeping his voice quiet and reasonable without being condescending. He'd used this tone plenty of times on wounded soldiers in Afghanistan, men and women who were in shock. And the signs of shock on his husband were clear. Clearer still was the fact that if he tried to stop him working it would be disastrous.

Sherlock paused, consenting to let John adjust the glasses on his face, then set his jaw and resumed his efforts. John drew a deep breath and joined him, taking direction from the rescue worker who was in charge of their small group. Whenever he could, he watched Sherlock's face and hands carefully, looking for any hint of unsteadiness.

When someone brought them water, he made Sherlock drink it, using the same soothing tone when the detective began to grumble and fidget impatiently.

"You need to do this," John murmured. "Or else you won't be able to keep working."

It was enough. Sherlock drank the water then tossed the bottle aside uncaringly, returning to shifting rubble around him. John finished his water and joined him, working side-by-side with him in silence.

He didn't need Sherlock to meet his eyes to know what written in them. As angry as he had been with Mycroft this morning – and for good reason, because John suspected Mycroft had tried to give some well intentioned but cocked up advice – they were still brothers.

Sherlock couldn't afford to lose another family member, not now.

Not like this.

John prayed like he hadn't prayed since he'd been shot, hoping like hell that a man as resourceful as Mycroft Holmes had managed to get himself somehow to safety and was not lying broken and bloodied under the remnants of the building that now surrounded them.

---

John wasn't there, then he was. Sherlock had no idea how much time had passed – each moment existed only within the length of a breath, within the time it took to move a piece of debris, to clear one more small space.

Too late, too late, too late. He heard the words repeated as a rhythm that matched the pulse of his own heart.

He'd been too late. Anthea had been too late. He didn't know where she was now – didn't care. Dealing with some aspect of the crisis. It didn't matter. The only important thing was finding Mycroft.

Not like this, he thought. Not like this. He realized he couldn't picture Mycroft dying, not ever, not really. Not under this mess of ruined brick and stone and concrete. Not here, not today.

They wouldn't win. They would not.

There was so much noise but it seemed distant, unreal, existing so much in the background that did not matter. Sirens, voices, horns, helicopters. The sounds overlaid one another and blurred into each other, becoming a din that could be pushed away. Occasionally the voice of the woman in charge of their small team cut through this and he acknowledged her commands with a nod, never looking up. Other voices came in and out, bringing more orders, giving details of how things were progressing elsewhere.

He didn't care, not unless they found Mycroft somewhere else. He had no idea why he was working here in this spot, they had simply put him there. It seemed as good a place as any. There wasn't enough data to make an accurate judgment as to whether somewhere else would be preferable. No one knew where Mycroft was. Sherlock tried to evaluate it, but it was impossible. Had he been inside the building in the blast? Outside? If outside, where had he been standing? Had he taken cover? Had he managed to deduce what the threat had been?

No information. No data. No Mycroft.

He remembered the last time he'd talked to his brother. Not earlier that day, not the argument they'd had about John. The last time they'd spoken when they hadn't needed to say anything at all, sitting in silence in the middle of the night. Sherlock had been curled up in the darkness on the stairs leading up to his flat, Mycroft had been in Edinburgh with Angela and David. They hadn't spoken because there'd been no need. They'd shared the same loss.

John put safety glasses on him and Sherlock tried to push him away. John's voice cut through the barrier, calm and assured, familiar and warm.

"You need these," he said. His words were gentle, not pushy, not condescending. Just stating the facts. He needed the glasses. They were uncomfortable and slipped on the sweat that beaded on the bridge of his nose and on his forehead. He had to stop every so often and push them back up, losing precious seconds. Each time it made him want to snarl and snap, to take them off and pitch them away, but someone would just come with a new set.

John pressed a bottle of water into his hands and Sherlock moved to throw it aside, but John's fingers closed over his wrist and hand, keeping it there. He had one of his own, Sherlock noted, as did the other rescue workers. Someone was talking to the woman in charge, something about the temperature outside and paramedics. Irrelevant.

"You need to do this," John murmured. "Or else you won't be able to keep working."

Sherlock glowered, but John held steady, putting his own water aside to snap the cap open on Sherlock's bottle. He picked up his own again and started drinking. Sherlock looked at the clear plastic bottle with its transparent fluid, then drank it in one go before tossing the bottle aside. He resumed working. After twenty-five breaths the others started back up, too.

It was endless but he would not tire. They would set up spotlights to work through the night when it came time. They would bring food for the workers. Someone would likely try to force him to stop, to rest or even to sleep. He would not. Those things were unnecessary, extraneous.

He would stop when they found Mycroft. Not a second before.

"Sherlock," John said. Sherlock grunted and kept working, eyes focussed only on the debris in front of him. One piece at a time. Evaluating the chaotic puzzle formed by the fragments of the building, judging which piece came next, how to move the blocks so that the structure would not collapse and pin anyone who may be trapped underneath.

"Sherlock," John said again, and one of his hands wrapped around Sherlock's. Sherlock shook him off and kept going.

He felt a hand on his face and scowled, reaching up to push John away, but the grip tightened and his chin was raised and his head turned so he was no longer looking at the remnants of the building around him, but past them. Looking up the street at the shattered shell of a car and a team of paramedics easing someone onto a stretcher.

Mycroft.

Sherlock yanked off the blasted safety glasses and clambered over the rubble, moving as fast as he could. He could hear John's harsh breathing as he sought to keep up but didn't slow his own pace. He cleared the worst of the debris and started running, scrambling between two ruined vehicles, nearly tripping on a bumper that lay on the ground, just managing to right himself.

"Stay back," one of the paramedics warned but he was ignored and shouldered aside. Behind him he could hear John say something about being a doctor. Sherlock's eyes scanned his brother quickly – he was unconscious and badly bruised, bleeding from several wounds on his head, face, and hands. His normally immaculate clothing was torn and singed. His skin and hair were coated with dust. His right shoulder was at a bad angle, likely dislocated, and the crooked set of his nose and the blood on his upper lip suggested it was broken. Sherlock could not make out anything else, not with the clothing covering the rest of Mycroft's body and the relief hammering along with the pulse in his ears.

Mycroft was breathing, shallow gasps, but breathing.

"John, I don't want anything to do with the NHS," Sherlock said, ignoring the paramedics altogether.

"We have to," John replied, his voice patient and gentle. "He needs an A&E."

Sherlock managed to glance over his shoulder at John, startled to realise for the first time that John was in search-and-rescue gear, partly hidden by his hardhat and his safety goggles.

"He won't be happy," Sherlock said.

"They can transfer him to a private hospital after. But we need to go, Sherlock. You need to let them take him."

"You can ride along," one of the paramedics said. Sherlock focussed on her, then gave a curt nod.

"St. Mary's," John instructed as Sherlock stepped away, letting them manoeuvre the stretcher through the rest of the debris to their ambulance, scrambling in the back after them, tossing his hardhat aside. John climbed in behind him, and Sherlock settled on a wheel well as they paramedics secured the gurney.

"John, look at him," Sherlock ordered, waving a hand, leaning back and closing his eyes. He felt the shudder as the ambulance was put into gear and they were inching forward with agonising slowness, the sirens wailing.

"I'm a doctor, trauma surgeon," he heard John explain as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, the vibration from the engine humming through his skull and down his neck.

---

John managed to get Sherlock calmed down at the hospital when they refused to let John himself take charge as Mycroft's doctor. He avoided having the nurses call security – but only just, he thought. Sherlock finally listened to him, reasserting some control with a significant amount of effort, jaw set, teeth clenched.

John was surprised the nurses hadn't just called security upon seeing them – Sherlock looked like some vision from a nightmare; his clothing and skin were smeared, his face a mask of dust that clung to his skin and mixed with his sweat, leaving circles of white skin around his eyes that made his irises look even paler and more striking. His hair was flattened on top from the hardhat but curled around his ears and cheeks and along the back of his neck, streaked with soot. He had scratches all down his arms and several small cuts dotted with dried blood. He was still wearing the high visibility vest over a dark green silk shirt that was torn here and there, utterly ruined. He towered over the nursing staff, grey eyes flashing, expression indignant as he spoke with a deep snarl, his lips curling in disdain, his tone verging on the edge of snapping.

John eventually just dragged him into a bathroom and locked the door. He cleaned Sherlock's face and hands methodically, using the repetitive motion to get the detective to refocus, and made his hair look something approaching normal. When he was done, Sherlock was still standing taut and rigid, eyes flaring, jaw locked, but at least his breathing had slowed somewhat and he looked a bit more human. John cleaned himself off hastily and led them out again, finding a small waiting area that was tucked away, making sure that Sherlock heard him tell the nurses where they were.

"I'm going to get some water and something for us to eat from the vending machines down the hall," John said, taking care to be very specific. "You need to sit down."

Sherlock stared at him as though he was speaking gibberish, then gave a curt nod, folding his long body into one of the padded plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor around the edge of the tiny room. He sank his head into his hands and John waited a moment to make sure he wasn't going to collapse, then went for food and water. The selection of snack foods was dismal but he bought two bags of crisps and two chocolate bars in addition to the bottles of water. It was a poor supper at best, but he'd be lucky if Sherlock ate anything at all.

He was right – Sherlock set the food aside immediately without opening it, but he at least drank the water all in one go, putting the empty bottle beside the disregarded junk food. John drank his water more slowly and stayed standing, moving back and forth to keep the stiffness out of his legs and back. He doubted he'd have the chance to get in a proper stretch that evening and would be feeling the effects of the physical labour come morning.

Sherlock remained seated, pressing his palms together, resting his thumbs against his nose and his index finger against his forehead. He leaned forward slightly, his elbows propped on his knees and his eyes closed. John could see his eyes flickering beneath his eyelids and wondered what he was thinking, what rapid assessments he was running through in his mind.

As John finished his water and moved to put his empty bottle next to Sherlock's on the small table, Sherlock made a noise at the back of his throat and reached out, eyes still closed. John stepped in front of him without hesitation and Sherlock wrapped his arms around John's waist, pressing his face into his abdomen. John laced his hands into his husband's hair, holding tightly, then dropped one hand to the back of Sherlock's neck, squeezing lightly. He felt Sherlock pushing his hands under the netted material of his high visibility vest, fisting them into the fabric of his shirt and pressing against the small of John's back.

"Tell me," Sherlock ordered, his voice muffled against John's stomach.

"It all looked fairly superficial to me. Superficial for a bomb blast. I think he figured it out, Sherlock. He was on the far side of that car from the explosion and given the injuries to his face and hands, he was lying on his stomach with his face covered. Believe me, I've seen plenty of people hit by bomb blasts; I know what someone who knows the survival tricks looks like. If it was a low yield explosion, he should be in good shape."

"And if it wasn't?"

"Then a strong possibility of internal injuries that will require surgery," John said, not mincing words.

Sherlock nodded, eyes still closed, face still buried against John. John combed his fingers through his husband's hair then leaned down, pressing his cheek against the top of Sherlock's head. Sherlock exhaled hard and John could feel the warmth of his breath through his clothes.

They stayed that way long after John started to get uncomfortable, until the doctor came in.

"Mister Holmes, Mister Watson?" she said, looking between them.

"He's Doctor Watson," Sherlock growled, turning his face but keeping himself pressed against John. She nodded and John knew he'd get a better report on Mycroft's condition from her because of Sherlock's correction.

"Your brother will be fine, Mister Holmes," she said, fixing her dark brown eyes on Sherlock. "He was lucky – his injuries are relatively mild given the circumstances but he does need minor surgery. We need to put a pin in his right clavicle and some plates in his right forearm. We'll also need to remove some cartilage from his shoulder. We've reduced the dislocation but it won't heal properly if we don't take out some of the damaged soft tissue. "

"Whatever needs to be done, please do it," Sherlock said coolly.

"What else are we looking at?" John asked.

"Multiple fractures in his right radius and ulna, several broken ribs, broken nose, a hairline fracture in his right tibia, lacerations to most of his exposed skin, a concussion, and possibly whiplash, although we won't know that until he wakes up. And extensive bruising, including some deep soft tissue haematomas. Very likely some loss of hearing, although it may be temporary, and again, we won't know until he wakes up. He was lucky."

John felt Sherlock stiffen against him but he nodded, smoothing a hand in Sherlock's hair. That was lucky. But he suspected Mycroft made his own luck.

"You're welcome to wait," the doctor said. "Although if you'd prefer to go home and clean up, you have more than enough time to do so and get back here before he wakes up."

John let Sherlock go when the detective unfurled his long body and pushed himself to his feet. He pulled out his wallet and snapped out one of his business cards, extending it to the doctor.

"Please call us when he wakes up," he replied in a cold voice. "I see no reason to wait here, not while there's work to be done. Come on, John. He expects us to stop now but I'd rather not give him the satisfaction. We're going to find him and we're going to put an end to this."

There were times when John worried that the surgery might get fed up with him and fire him for the amount of work he missed, but he suspected that Mycroft may have subtly exerted some influence in that regard. And, he supposed, an explosion that had injured his brother-in-law was a valid reason to miss part of one day and very likely the next.

Most of his energy was taken up worrying about Sherlock, however.

He'd been working all night with a frenetic energy that John usually associated with an adrenaline high that was about to crash. He'd seen it before, had gone through it himself – a post-catastrophe buzz made up of residual panic and the utter relief that things were all right, that he had survived, that everyone he knew was alive. He'd been watching Sherlock in this state for hours and it was making him tense. He could feel the muscles in his shoulders knotting, the scar tissue in his old wound protesting. That, along with the exertion of moving rubble earlier in the day, was going to make for a painful tomorrow.

John had managed to get Sherlock to shower and put some antibiotic ointment on the scratches on his arms, but that was it. Nothing else he tried on the detective worked, no admonishments to eat, no questions about whether he'd like a cup of tea, not even his attempts to stand in front of Sherlock and block him from prowling the flat. Sherlock would simply shorten his pace or move around John if possible. John could see the gleam in Sherlock's eyes that meant he had no interest in anything not immediately relating to the case.

John hated to admit to himself that this stung, just a little.

After a week of awkward silences, strained conversations and the hollow sensation that he was alone even when Sherlock was in bed next to him, John felt he should have welcomed this frenzied energy that was so familiar, so Sherlock-on-a-case. But he wanted some peace, a respite from the tension that wasn't just a different kind of tension.

It worried him, too, because it had a sharper edge than usual – Sherlock was never as good with the cases that involved a personal element. He'd seen that for the first time just over seven years ago, when he'd shown up at The Pool at midnight with Semtex strapped to his chest. Seeing that terrified dismay on Sherlock's face had been jarring, nearly stopping his heart without Jim Moriarty's help.

John was seeing that same shock now but it was transmuted into manic frustration rather than frozen horror. Sherlock had been working like a madman all evening, poring over the files that belonged to the other six committee members. He'd appropriated John's laptop so that the doctor had no means of assisting until Sherlock dumped a pile of files in front of him and told him to summarize the information about the committee members' families and the aides that they kept in their confidence. John had done so without comment but had worked slowly enough to keep an eye on his frantic husband.

Sherlock hadn't even stopped to talk to Anthea when she'd called, tossing his phone to John with an angry scowl. He relayed the news that Mycroft was out of recovery and doing as well as could be expected. He didn't miss the flash of relief behind the grey eyes but Sherlock just glared at the phone in John's hand, pointing one long index finger impatiently.

"Tell her to have him transferred to Princess Grace as soon as he's stabilized."

John repeated the information then rung off, returning to his work. Sherlock was muttering to himself about one of the other committee members. John couldn't catch his words, but watched as Sherlock flipped quickly through a file before moving across the living room to stand in front of the fact sheets, a pen flicking between his right index and middle fingers. The motion was agitated but he cut it off abruptly by raising the pen to his mouth and pressing the end against his lips.

John tried not to notice that he was holding the pen like a cigarette.

As if reading John's mind, Sherlock turned abruptly and went into the bathroom, coming back with two patches plastered to his right forearm. He went back to staring at the facts sheets and John got the sense that Sherlock was deliberately avoiding his eyes in that moment.

He jumped when Sherlock's phone rang again. His husband didn't moved.

"Want me to answer that?" John asked.

Sherlock only grunted, which John took as an affirmative. With a sigh, he picked the phone up off the coffee table and put it on speaker.

"Hello, Anthea," he said and Sherlock spun fast, eyes focusing on the phone with frightening precision. John saw the sudden tightness in his jaw and the minute loss of colour and felt the apprehension mirrored as a weight in his stomach.

"Is Sherlock there?"

"Yes, I'm here," Sherlock snapped. "What is it?"

"Information on William McKinney," she replied and John let out a slow sigh, sinking back against the couch cushions. Part of him kept expecting the worst, even though Mycroft's condition had been good for someone who had survived a bomb blast and the surgeries he'd required were expected and relatively minor.

"He's come out of surgery as well and just went into recovery. His surgeon expects he'll be in the ICU overnight. Then to a private room when he's ready."

"No, have him moved to Princess Grace as well," Sherlock ordered. "Keep them together and make sure the police and the MPs are sent with their ambulance transports and are stationed outside their rooms at all times. No one goes into those rooms without at least one MP escorting them, either. I want the same treatment for McKinney in recovery and in the ICU. In fact, two MPs at all times until he's transferred. Vet every single doctor, nurse, and orderly who might come into contact with either of them."

"It's already being done. I'll put through the paperwork for the hospital transfer."

"Call me when either of them are moved," Sherlock said.

"I will."

He nodded abruptly and turned away, apparently satisfied. John sighed quietly and rubbed a hand through his hair.

"Thanks, Anthea," he said.

"Good night, John," she replied with more warmth in her voice than he'd ever heard. He'd never actually heard so many words come out of her mouth – and in such a focused tone, too. He was used to the short distracted sentences that were her trademark. But tonight, if she was glued to her mobile, it was to arrange security and keep Sherlock updated, not to text or whatever it was she was forever doing otherwise.

He rung off and put the phone back on the coffee table and felt his head nod toward his chest. John dragged it back up and heard Sherlock click his tongue disapprovingly.

"Bed," his husband said without turning around.

"What?" John asked.

"Bed, John, go to bed. You're of no use to me if you're falling asleep over your work. I can manage without you."

John stared at the back of Sherlock's head. For a moment, he was tempted to stand and run his fingers through those dark curls but then the thought of getting up seemed too exhausting.

Sherlock turned abruptly and took one stride toward the couch. He bent down in a fluid motion and slung John's right arm over his shoulder before straightening and effectively pulling John up with him. John staggered slightly at the sudden change in position then found his feet. Sherlock gave him a cool look and led him to the bedroom, letting John slump to seated and crouched down, pulling John's shoes off smoothly.

"In," Sherlock said crisply.

"But you need my help," John protested.

"Your help, yes," Sherlock agreed. "Falling asleep and cracking your head on the table is not very helpful. I'll be fine."

"But you– and Mycroft– "

"Mycroft isn't in immediate danger anymore; Anthea will see to it that he's well guarded, and I imagine Angela will be in London shortly, if she hasn't arrived already. If Anthea misses anything, Angela will ensure it's done. And I'll be fine if you allow me to continue working to determine who tried to kill my brother."

John thought about protesting again but it came out as only a sigh as his eyes drifted shut. He managed to shuffle himself up onto the bed fully and lie down on his back. Sherlock pulled the blankets gently out from under him and then covered him lightly. John opened his eyes blearily and watched Sherlock watching him, still and silent for a moment before leaning down, pressing his lips gently to John's forehead, straightening again and leaving the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

---

Sometime after three in the morning, John drifted awake again, biting his lip to repress a groan. The muscles in his back, shoulders, and arms were already complaining, limiting his movements as he pushed himself up to sitting. He grimaced and rolled his shoulders, which made him wince hard, then listened.

There was no sound in the rest of the flat so he swung himself out of bed as quickly as his stiff body would allow and padded back into the living room. The lights were still on, both laptops were still open on the desk in low-power mode, their screens blank, all of the files and maps were still spread out everywhere.

And Sherlock was asleep on the floor, leaning against the couch, his head slumped against his right arm, which was bent enough that his fingers had curled into his dark hair.

If John thought he was feeling sore, Sherlock was going to feel so much worse if he kept sleeping like that – although he'd probably deny and ignore it.

John clicked off the lamps, keeping an eye on Sherlock to make sure the sudden absence of light didn't wake him. When the flat was bathed in darkness, he sat down on the couch, leaned forward, and wrapped his arms carefully around Sherlock's torso under his shoulders.

"Come on," he said softly.

"Hmnmhmm," Sherlock murmured in reply, his head dropping back away from his arm, his face turned toward the ceiling, his neck extended.

"I know," John whispered. "Come on."

He tugged and lifted lightly and managed to manoeuvre his sleeping husband up and onto the couch on top of him without waking Sherlock. The detective sighed and shifted and John repressed a wince – Sherlock was flopped almost entirely on top of him. John managed to adjust their positions so that he was more comfortable and worked his left arm between the back of the couch and Sherlock's body so he could rest it on Sherlock's back. He'd probably still lose all sensation in it, but at least this way he wasn't entirely pinned.

It wouldn't help his muscles come morning, he knew, but it would ensure Sherlock got a few decent hours of sleep. John closed his eyes, turned his face slightly so that he could feel Sherlock's hair tickling his nose and cheek, and drifted back to sleep.

---

When he awoke again with a start, lifting his head before he was even fully awake, Sherlock was already up, showered, dressed, and back at work. He was sitting in front of his laptop with several files spread out around him and a cup of coffee in one hand.

At least he's drinking something, John thought, then blinked himself awake fully. He shifted then groaned, wishing he hadn't moved as his stiff muscles registered their protests.

"There's fresh coffee," Sherlock said without looking over. John wondered how much coffee had been consumed if he was using "fresh" as a qualifier – but he didn't seem to have the caffeine shakes and was firmly focused on his work.

"Thanks," John said. He stood slowly and half limped into the kitchen to fix himself a cup. It was sheer relief to lean against the counter and sip it slowly, feeling the heat chase away some of the aches in his muscles. Eventually he felt motivated enough to make some toast for himself. No chance of having Sherlock assume his normal breakfast duties, but John was willing to let it pass given the events of the previous day.

He sat at the kitchen table and ate in silence then tidied up his small mess before going back into the living room. Sherlock was reading something in one of the files, scrawling notes in the margins of the sheets, and reached out to snap his laptop shut when John came back in.

"Shower and dress," Sherlock instructed without looking up. "We're going to the hospital."

"Princess Grace?" John asked.

"No, St. Mary's first. I need to speak to William McKinney. He's still there."

"Why McKinney?" John asked and Sherlock raised his head finally. "I mean, not why do you need to talk to him, why him and Mycroft and not the others? What was it about both of them?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out," Sherlock replied. "Which is why we need to speak to him."

John sighed inwardly. McKinney wouldn't be in great shape but that was unlikely to stop Sherlock. It wouldn't stop the military police or the Met, either. He could tell Sherlock wouldn't be distracted from this.

He got ready as quickly as he could, forcing movement from his stiff muscles, but Sherlock was still waiting impatiently for him by the time he emerged from the bathroom. The trip to the hospital was fairly quick even in the morning traffic and, as they were arriving, Sherlock got a text message from Anthea informing them that McKinney had been moved from the ICU to a short term care ward while he awaited transfer to Princess Grace. McKinney's room wasn't difficult to find, guarded as it was by Redcaps and police constables. Sherlock consented to have his identification checked by both the guards in the corridor and the one inside the room. He endured with long-suffering impatience, rolling his eyes and exhaling noisily, ignoring the warning look John shot him.

McKinney was awake when they entered and looked worse for the wear, but probably not as bad as Mycroft looked, John suspected. His face was a patchwork of bruises and stitched cuts, as was the exposed skin on his right arm. His left arm was in a cast and his right wrist was bandaged. He had an oxygen tube running under his nose and the shallowness of his breathing told John he had at least one broken rib, probably several. Given that he was bruised and cut everywhere that was visible, the pattern undoubtedly continued under the hospital gown and the light sheet that covered his legs. He had a glassy look that John associated with a pretty serious concussion, which was no surprise.

There was a sophisticated woman in her sixties beside his bed – John put her at about a year or two younger than McKinney, but Sherlock probably could have given him an accurate count in months. She was well dressed in a sharp black suit, her grey hair pulled elegantly back from her face, but she'd been wearing the same clothes and hairstyle too long and looked like she'd been up most of the night. Her dark eyes narrowed at them suspiciously when they came in, but McKinney looked unsurprised after a moment of slow consideration.

"Mycroft's brother, right?" he asked, his voice weak and raspy but the smallest of smiles playing on his lips. John saw Sherlock stiffen slightly – he hated being relegated to that role. But he gave a tight nod.

"Sherlock Holmes and John Watson," he replied coolly.

"Yes, Mycroft's aide said to expect you sometime today. Your brother all right?"

Sherlock gave another curt nod and McKinney sighed, turning his head slightly to look at his wife again. He squeezed her hands lightly and managed another small smile.

"Get some breakfast, Mary," he said. "No sense in you feeling as bad as I look."

Mary put a hand on her husband's face, very lightly, and leaned over to kiss his forehead.

"Are you sure, darling?"

"It's just a few minutes," McKinney replied. "Take the Redcap with you."

"I'll be back soon," she promised and he raised one of her hands to his lips, kissing it lightly. "Please don't wear him out too much. He needs to rest."

Sherlock nodded and Mary left the room, her stride confident despite the obvious fatigue and the weight of the situation. The military police sergeant followed after a moment's hesitation and a glare from Sherlock, shutting the door behind him to give them some measure of privacy.

"Mister McKinney, I'm a doctor," John said. "Do you mind if I have a look at your chart?"

"Please," McKinney whispered, waving a hand, really no more then a small flex of his fingers. John crossed the room and picked up the chart from the end of the bed, eyes skimming it with professional ease.

"What's the last thing you remember before regaining consciousness here?" Sherlock asked. John glanced up from the chart, watching McKinney's face carefully. Surprisingly, the older man huffed a faint, dry laugh.

"Don't mess about, do you, young man? You and the detectives and the military police. I– was inside the building, I think. We'd just had a meeting. We– " he paused, clearing his throat then coughing weakly. Sherlock poured some water from the bottle beside the bed into a small plastic cup and held it steadily to McKinney's lips for the older man to sip. McKinney drank it slowly, then let his head drop back against his pillows with a sigh.

"I remember standing by the doors, inside. Then your brother shouting something, telling everyone to get out, I think. I didn't think about it. Just ran."

"Do you remember where you ran?"

McKinney shook his head slightly. Anthea had told them that he'd been found between two parked cars, in the opposite direction from where Mycroft had been recovered.

"How long have you known my brother?"

"Must be fifteen, sixteen years. Don't know him very well, though."

"And was it he who asked you to serve on the committee?"

"No. That came through more – official channels."

"How well do you know James Murray?"

"Not well at all," McKinney said, then gestured for more water. Sherlock gave it to him, waiting patiently as the injured man drank. "I think he and I have been on opposite sides for most issues."

"Yet you agreed to serve on a committee investigating a threat against him."

"Disagreement is the foundation of democracy, Mister Holmes," McKinney said and John heard a hint of strength in his voice when he said that. "We have every right to disagree. But this – this is uncivilized."

At this, Sherlock smiled slightly and John repressed a soft, derisive snort. While he agreed with that, he knew Mycroft sometimes saw the value in a well time assassination if it made things tidier. He often tried to ignore this knowledge; it was too frightening not to.

But Mycroft didn't support it this time. Not in this case.

McKinney closed his eyes for a moment and John kept a sharp and experienced eye on him. He was getting tired and the doctor doubted they'd have much more time.

"Do you remember anything else? Impressions, images, smells? Did anyone seem out of place or suspicious to you?" Sherlock asked.

McKinney managed another rasping chuckle.

"Young man, it was a government building. You could take your pick of suspicious looking people."

Sherlock's lips twitched again.

"Hay in a haystack," he murmured, echoing Inspector Anderson's words. John was surprised Sherlock remembered she'd said that; it seemed like the sort of thing he would have deleted.

"Your brother yelling – that's the only thing that stands out. I've never heard him raise his voice."

"No," Sherlock murmured in agreement. "He's very good at getting what he wants by pointed remarks alone."

McKinney managed another smile and his eyes fluttered. John could tell he was struggling now.

"Thank you, Mister McKinney. You should get some rest," he said. Sherlock flashed him a displeased look but didn't argue when John returned it with his best captain's glare. The MP nodded and closed his eyes, his expression relaxing into sleep almost immediately. John put the chart back on the end of the bed and followed Sherlock out of the room.

"Got what you wanted?" he asked when they were out of earshot of the Redcaps and the police.

"No. I did get what I expected, however. A hazy and inaccurate recollection of the events immediately before the blast."

"I'm surprised he even remembers that much," John said. "It's impressive – most people don't remember anything so soon."

"Do you remember being shot?" Sherlock asked bluntly.

"Yes, but it's been almost eight years. I didn't remember it very well immediately afterwards, either. He'll probably remember more later on."

"Then we'll talk to him again later on," Sherlock said, hitting the lift button impatiently. "At the moment, we're going to speak with my brother."

With the possible exception of Sandra, the quality of the staff at Princess Grace was far superior than at St. Mary's. The atmosphere here was quieter and calmer and the hospital's employees seemed to accept that if Sherlock were there, he had a right to be.

Of course, there would still be military and civilian police to contend with. His brother would not take these kinds of threats lightly. When it came to Mycroft's life, nor would Sherlock, although he would be damned if he would admit that aloud, even begrudgingly. Mycroft would never stop gloating.

They made their way to the lifts, Sherlock ignoring the twinges and aches in his muscles. Judging by John's stiff gait, he was having a more difficult time doing so and Sherlock hoped his husband's left shoulder wasn't bothering him. At any other time, he would have happily stopped what he was doing to work some of the stiffness out of John's muscles for him, but they were on a case. There was work to be done.

And, in the back of his mind, he knew that offering to do so now came with the risk of rejection. John might not want Sherlock to touch him, for all that Sherlock had awoken that morning sprawled on top of John on the couch. Waking up with John's face half buried in his hair and John's left arm wound round him had made Sherlock forget about the previous day's events for a few precious minutes. It had been tempting to kiss John – their faces had been so close together that it would have required almost no movement – but he'd held back. John had clearly needed the sleep and Sherlock had no idea how the doctor would have reacted.

The idea of John pulling away again, saying no, was too painful to bear. He scarcely wanted to imagine it. So he'd done nothing but get up carefully and go back to work.

He put these thoughts aside firmly as the lift doors opened. Despite the condition in which he was likely to find Mycroft, his brother would still pick up on any discomfort immediately. He hadn't forgiven Mycroft for his comments about John. About Sherlock, really. He knew where Mycroft was laying the blame.

He felt John's fingers curl around his – only lightly, only for a moment – as the lift doors slid open. It was enough to re-centre himself and he gave a curt nod of thanks. They stepped out and made their way down the corridor then Sherlock paused in mid-step. The action made John stop as well, turning back to glance at him curiously, but Sherlock kept his eyes on the young man standing in front of the vending machines.

More of a boy, really, caught in that cumbersome stage where he was no longer a child but not yet an adult, thin but with a hint of wiry strength that was masked in part by his slouching stance and the fatigue around his eyes. He was athletic and would never be bulky, but he would be tall. He hadn't hit his growth spurt yet but he was already above average height for his age. Sherlock remembered very well what that felt like – uncomfortable, awkward, clumsy. Playing sports would help, though – he had the wrong build for rugby but was well designed for football. The physical activity – which Sherlock had always despised as an adolescent – would make his height easier to bear, balance it out somewhat.

He had short, curly light brown hair and when he finally noticed them and turned, grey eyes that matched Sherlock's own met his gaze. Sherlock heard John gasp softly but only raised an eyebrow slightly. It took a minute for the boy to figure out who they were, but Sherlock had recognized his mother in those features instantly.

"Oh," David said. "You're Sherlock, yeah?"

He sounded far different than the last time Sherlock had spoken to him – gone was the terrified little boy and in his place was a tired and edgy young man. His grey eyes raked over Sherlock quickly – far too quickly to absorb anything of significance – then over John. He still spoke with a Scottish accent and his voice was a touch deeper. It hadn't changed yet, but it would soon.

"Hello, David," Sherlock replied, nodding.

The boy gave a dry huff, almost a chuckle.

"I was wondering when you'd get here. Dad thought you'd be waiting when he woke up, ready to ask all sorts of questions."

Sherlock felt John shift slightly in surprise but ignored this.

"Is he awake now?"

"Yeah. Mum's in there with him. I was just getting something to eat. Come on. I'll show you where."

He selected a Mars bar from the machine then turned and walked away, apparently not even considering that Sherlock wouldn't follow. Well, they were there to see Mycroft. It was a reasonable assumption.

"Christ," John whispered beside him, his voice loud enough to reach Sherlock's ears only. "Mycroft is 'Dad' now?"

Sherlock's lips twitched and he swallowed a chuckle of his own.

"God save us," John muttered and Sherlock rolled his eyes. He gestured with his head for John to follow and trailed David toward Mycroft's room and its contingent of military and police guards.

The guards let David pass without comment but Sherlock and John had their identifications checked again, both by the military police and the Met officers. While they were waiting, Angela emerged with her son. She gave Sherlock and John an appraising glance – Sherlock ensured she could read nothing in his expression but John was probably giving away any number of hints.

"I appreciate that you're attempting to find this assassin and the man behind him, but be aware that Mycroft is injured," she said, fixing Sherlock with a firm gaze. He nodded coolly and Angela put a hand on David's shoulder.

"If you need me, I'll be at his flat. He has my mobile number in his phone."

"Of course," Sherlock replied. Angela held his gaze for another moment, a silent warning in her eyes, then moved away, David with her. Sherlock glanced over his shoulder to watch them leave, then stepped into the room.

"You," he said to the Redcap inside the well appointed private hospital room. "Out."

The sergeant glowered and stood his ground and Sherlock heard his brother give a faint, rasping chuckle.

"Ever the subtle one, Sherlock," Mycroft commented dryly, his voice soft, weaker than it would normally be. "You can go, Sergeant."

The sergeant held Sherlock's eyes for a moment longer than was comfortable. Sherlock met the man's brown eyes effortlessly, keeping his gaze level and neutral until the other man's expression darkened somewhat. He gave Mycroft a curt nod and strode out. Sherlock closed the door pointedly behind him.

Sherlock's eyes flickered over his brother in rapid assessment. Like McKinney, Mycroft was covered in bruises and cuts. Most of the right side of his body was encased in casts; his entire right arm and shoulder and his lower right leg. He'd have bandages on his ribs and he had two strips of plaster across his nose. This prevented an oxygen mask, so he was wearing a tube that ran beneath his nose. Sherlock scanned the equipment monitoring Mycroft's heart rate and blood pressure, able to evaluate the readings thanks to his own time in the hospital following the crash.

Someone – probably Angela – had changed him from the hospital gown into a pair of pale grey silk pyjamas and he was covered with a crisp white sheet and light yellow blanket. Buried as he was beneath the covers and the equipment, he seemed almost small. It was the second time Sherlock could remember his brother looking reduced. The first had been when David had been abducted. He recalled taking some satisfaction at seeing Mycroft taken down a peg.

He did not enjoy it now.

It came as a shock to realise he had no desire to have Mycroft die on him, despite how much Sherlock enjoyed when his brother wasn't meddling in his life. Nor could he imagine what it would be like if his only immediate biological relative was his father. It would be like having no family left at all.

John picked up the chart and scanned it with quick professional efficiency.

"Looks pretty good," the doctor said and Mycroft actually managed a ghost of a smile. Sherlock thought it must be painful – his brother's face was bruised enough that any movement would smart.

"I'm glad for your reassurance on the matter, John," Mycroft said and sounded sincere. Sherlock wondered darkly what his brother had picked up from John's face, if he could tell they'd slept together on the couch. The first time that they'd genuinely slept with one another in over a week was no one else's business, but knowing Mycroft, it had already been laid bare.

"How do you feel?" John asked and Sherlock realized that he should have been the one to enquire.

"Well enough for someone who survived a bomb blast, I'm sure," he replied. "In your experience, John, how do I look?"

"Bloody amazing for someone who survived a bomb blast," John replied honestly. Mycroft managed to twitch an eyebrow up at that, his grey eyes amused for a moment. Sherlock wondered what painkillers he was being given – his eyes were fairly clear, although they had the same sort of glassiness as McKinney's. No surprise there, given that Mycroft had also suffered a concussion.

"There is a rather unpleasant ringing in my ears," Mycroft said. "They tell me it should fade."

"It probably will, but you should be prepared for the fact that it might not."

"Yes," Mycroft sighed. "They told me that as well."

Sherlock took a deep, silent breath and exhaled it slowly. He had spoken to McKinney. He could interview his own brother.

"What do you remember from yesterday before the blast?" he asked, keeping his voice level and as inflectionless as possible. Mycroft's grey eyes slid to him, ringed with fatigue. John put the chart away and poured some water, taking over the nursing duties this time. Mycroft accepted a few small sips, then nodded.

"Getting a text message from you," he replied. "Telling me to get out."

Sherlock nodded; he'd sent about a dozen of those between frantic voicemails.

"What else?" he pressed. He saw John's eyes flash to him with a doctor's warning but they were not going to get anywhere by coddling the intended victims or by waiting. At the last count Anthea had texted him early that morning, there were twenty people dead and seventeen reported missing. Both numbers would have jumped in the intervening three hours.

Mycroft sighed weakly. Doubtless he'd already been through this with the military and civilian police officers – and probably with Angela as well.

"There was something above the doors – one of his symbols. The ring of roses. That's how I knew."

Sherlock opened his mouth to say something, then shut it abruptly. He pulled out his phone and called up the text message he'd received from the killer the day before and held the phone out for Mycroft to see. Anthea had run the number for him already and had come back with the same result as last time: a prepaid mobile, although a different one this time.

Mycroft read the unfamiliar version of the rhyme slowly, then gave his head a slight shake.

"I'm not familiar with that one," he said.

"Nor am I," Sherlock replied. "But the message is clear nonetheless. We all fall down, Mycroft? He knows who you are. This is someone on the inside."

Mycroft managed a nod.

"I've considered that," he replied.

"What else do you remember? What about William McKinney?"

"He was standing by the doors, on his phone, I think."

"What else? Anything, anything at all? Unfamiliar people, anything out of place, an odd smell or sound?"

Mycroft closed his eyes with a faint sigh and Sherlock smoothed over the mild shock at seeing his brother look so weary. It took him back to the morning their mother had died when the grief and lack of sleep shown around the edges of Mycroft's expression. Sherlock put that aside with some difficulty. He waited a moment, wondering if Mycroft was going to fall asleep.

"No," his brother said then, opening his eyes. "No, Sherlock, nothing else."

John gave him some more water and Mycroft sipped it carefully.

"Give it time," John advised. "These things tend to come back."

"And in the meantime a professional killer is loose and our identities have been compromised," Mycroft said. His voice was weaker now and Sherlock could tell he was struggling. This time, however, he was not going to bow to John's wishes and wrap things up early. This was his brother. For all the grief Mycroft had given him in the past, he could take some of his own now, particularly since it might help catch the man who had tried to murder him.

"McKinney said he was recruited for the committee through official channels. Was it at your suggestion?"

Mycroft looked surprised behind the fatigue and the bruises.

"You've seen him?"

"We were just there. He's being transferred here later today."

"How is he?" Mycroft asked.

"Better than you," Sherlock replied. "Although he remembers no more than you do."

"Better than me," Mycroft mused. "Yet I was transferred first."

"Yes," Sherlock said simply. Mycroft managed to arch an eyebrow again, a knowing look in his glassy eyes but Sherlock kept his expression blank. He had far more pull with medical decisions concerning his brother than he did with a stranger, and he knew Anthea had exerted her influence as well.

"No, Sherlock, I didn't recruit him. This is quite a bit higher than me, as much as I know you won't believe that. My name was submitted to the Speaker of the House as were the others on the committee. It was his decision as to the final participants."

"Did you know the committee was being formed in advance?"

"I did, but the others didn't," Mycroft replied. Sherlock didn't need to ask why – that was Mycroft's job.

"Are you certain about that?"

"I was," Mycroft murmured.

"I'll need to talk to the Speaker of the House, Mycroft. I have to know who else was being considered and how many people were involved in the planning for this committee. It's no longer enough to simply have the information on the committee members themselves."

Mycroft looked amused.

"I do appreciate your faith in my ability to arrange this from a hospital bed, Sherlock," he said with a hint of wry humour in his voice.

Sherlock shrugged one shoulder.

"Given that you and McKinney were intended targets and he's already murdered two other committee members, this shouldn't be difficult. You're a resourceful man, Mycroft. You overrode the entire command structure of the Lothian and Borders Police to get us evidence, weapons, and Inspector Anderson in less than twenty-four hours."

Mycroft frowned, his lips twitching downward, then he hissed gently and tried to smooth his expression to avoid the pain from his cuts and bruises. John gave him more water and gave Sherlock a meaningful look, which the detective ignored.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Surely your painkillers are not that potent," Sherlock commented. "You do remember asking me to take the Murray case in Edinburgh."

"Of course," Mycroft said with only the barest hint of annoyance. "But what do you mean I obtained permissions for weapons for you?"

Sherlock hesitated suddenly, meeting John's eyes again. The doctor's dark gaze was puzzled and Sherlock felt a flash of suspicion course through him.

"When CI Kipling received the paperwork from you, it contained instructions that I should have access to the evidence, that Inspector Anderson should work with us, and that we be given handguns. We had to do quite a lot of paperwork for those. I remember it rather well."

"Sherlock, I arranged for Anderson to work with you and for the evidence, but not weapons."

"What? Mycroft, are you absolutely sure?"

"I took care of that personally, Sherlock. I would have obtained weapons permission for you if you'd asked, but I was content to leave it until you did so. I was somewhat surprised you didn't demand them but I was quite happy to let it go."

Sherlock stared at Mycroft then raised his gaze to John, who was meeting his eyes with a stunned expression.

"Someone got us weapons," he said. Mycroft was watching him carefully, some of the fatigue forgotten now. Sherlock narrowed his eyes and ran through the memories, analyzing them carefully. He could picture Kipling, Anderson, and John, their facial expressions, their stances – nothing out of the ordinary there. Irritation from Kipling, resigned confusion from Anderson, surprise from John. He tried to recall precisely what had been said, then snapped his gaze up to John who was watching him with confusion and concern.

"Kipling said the guns weren't standard for the L&B and you said they were SIGs but not the type used by the British military."

John nodded.

"Yeah, we use 226s and 229s. Those were 225s."

"But you also said they were used by some allied forces. Which ones?"

John frowned and shook his head.

"I don't know," he replied.

"Think, John, think! It's important!"

"I don't know!" John snapped again. "I've seen them before not often! I'm sorry, Sherlock, but I'm not an arms expert, especially not for other armies."

"Mycroft?" Sherlock asked, looking down at his brother.

"Not especially my area of expertise," his brother replied.

Sherlock growled and withdrew his phone from his jacket pocket and searched for the model number and its use by military forces. He felt John and Mycroft's gazes on him. The doctor's was far more concerned, Mycroft's was far less sharp than it should have been. Whoever had done this might not have succeeded in killing Mycroft but had levelled the playing field somewhat by putting his keen intellect out of commission.

But he still had to contend with Sherlock.

"Oh," the detective hissed and grinned a brief, brittle grin.

"What?" John snapped, but Sherlock shook his head. He couldn't be sure, not yet. He opened the text that contained the unfamiliar version of the nursery rhyme and copied it into the search engine. It was less than a minute's work to find where it came from.

"Oh, well done," Sherlock said, grinning again, looking up. "You may accuse me of not being subtle, Mycroft, but he is. And he's clever, isn't he?"

"What? Why is he clever?" John snapped.

"He's been telling us where he's from," Sherlock explained, feeling a sudden rush of adrenaline. He laughed, ignoring John's glare, ignoring Mycroft's cutting look.

"What? Why would he do that? And where is he from?"

"He's doing it because he can, because he knows it's not enough information. Oh, very clever, indeed. The nursery rhyme, John. It's only the slightest variation on the version typically used in Canada – enough of a deviation to be what he thought he was hearing as a child when he learned it. And the guns – SIG 225s, oh yes. Used by the Canadian Military Police. Mycroft, this explains everything – the boot prints on the floor in Kenton's house, the confidence and skill with which he murders his victims, his ability to move undetected – he's ex-Canadian Special Forces."

"I thought you said it was the Military Police," John protested.

"Yes, but they also use SIG 226s. Had he arranged for us to have that type of handgun, it wouldn't point us in the right direction. It's a hint, a signal. Oh, brilliant, absolutely brilliant! This whole time, he's been telling us where he's from."

"And I thought you said he doesn't want to get caught!"

"He doesn't. He's taunting us. He's clever but– oh, he's not me." Sherlock grinned brightly, feeling a flood of triumph. This, he loved this – the small mistakes that people made in the name of vanity or boredom, thinking they were safe, that they were untouchable. Thinking they were devious and more intelligent than everyone else.

But this one was more cunning than most. Sherlock met John's eyes and saw worry reflected in them now, but it didn't matter. They could find this man because even a professional had his pride and wanted his work to be noticed. He thought he was clever, and he was. He thought he was more clever than Sherlock Holmes, and he was wrong.

"Mycroft, try and remember as much as you can regarding the explosion and have Anthea arrange for us to meet with the Speaker if you can't do it from here. Come on, John, we have work to do."

He pocketed his phone and turned to stroll out, grinning to himself, nearly humming with energy and excitement.

Got you, he thought brightly.

It had been eight days since the explosion and, if John hadn't known better, he'd have thought a second one had occurred in their flat. He was used to dealing with Sherlock's messes, particularly when the consulting detective was on a case. There had been times when he'd had to dig his chair out of if he wanted to use it and Sherlock would make pointed comments under his breath. Normally this just meant he needed John's help.

This time it was different. This time, John wasn't allowed to use his chair.

When he wanted to read or just relax, he took himself upstairs to the guest room, which was at least free of clutter pertaining to the case. It saved him from listening to Sherlock's relentless muttering and pacing as well. He offered to help as much as he could but he wasn't much use right now – as far as Sherlock was concerned, anyway. There had been a two day stretch where Sherlock hadn't spoken a word except a single grunt in response to John's enquiry about his health. And that hardly counted as a word. Work was interspersed with the typical violin playing – thankfully not while John was sleeping but he wondered if that would last – and talking to the skull.

Not that he didn't want Sherlock to find the killer, of course. He had from the beginning. John was acutely aware that he'd asked– no, he'd demanded that Sherlock take the Murray case in Edinburgh. He'd just never expected it to go this far and consume so much time.

Or consume so much of Sherlock.

He understood, he really did. Mycroft had been amazingly fortunate to have survived with such relatively minor injuries. But he was still in the hospital and under guard. John suspected he'd be released soon, although he wasn't sure how easy that would be. Because his right shoulder and arm had to be immobilized, he couldn't use crutches for his broken leg. John wondered how long Angela was planning on staying in London and if she was going to take care of Mycroft. Not that he couldn't hire a private nurse, John supposed.

The fact remained that Mycroft had been targeted by their killer and could very well have died. Sherlock had just lost one family member. He couldn't lose a second. And he wouldn't be defeated, not this time. It had been too much of a blow in Edinburgh.

But he was making no progress. Figuring out that the killer had served in the Canadian army was one thing – that narrowed it to thirty-five million people. John had checked on the military figures – almost seventy thousand active personnel, to say nothing of former soldiers.

Needle in a haystack, he thought, remembering Sherlock had said that in Edinburgh. What had seemed like a starting point a week ago now seemed tauntingly inadequate. John remembered how energized Sherlock had been when he'd deduced the killer's nationality. Now, he was just frustrated and exhausted.

They had no more information on the assassin and he hadn't so much as tripped anyone in the street in the past week. He had them where he wanted them and they were waiting. Waiting on his whims, Sherlock had said in April.

They were doing it again.

He could tell it was eating at Sherlock, this inability to uncover anything else combined with the killer's sudden silence. The detective spent every waking moment scouring the stacks of files and searching the Internet. The information Mycroft and Anthea had given him had been added to by the Speaker of the House, who had provided them with the names of all those who had been considered for the committee and everyone who had knowledge of it. Sherlock had thrown himself headlong into running down any possible leads he'd gleaned from that information and had come up against dead ends each time. John had the sense from what Sherlock had told him and the reading he'd done himself that this wasn't because someone was hiding something, but that the people involved in the committee weren't behind this.

Which meant someone else knew and they had no idea who it was.

That narrowed it down to the entirety of the British government.

Brilliant, piece of cake, really, John thought.

He managed to make Sherlock eat at least once a day but the energy that vibrated through the detective when he was sitting down for a meal probably cancelled out any calories he was consuming. He'd already lost weight – John had noticed but hadn't commented – and now he'd lost more. John put it at about six pounds. And still he didn't say anything. Whatever he said about it would be construed as criticism. Or just unnecessary data.

He slept alone again now, but not by choice this time. Sherlock was barely sleeping, only snatches here and there. John would occasionally find him passed out on the sofa and would tuck a blanket around him, unwilling to settle down with him again lest it wake him up. He didn't want to push his luck. The bed felt large and empty.

He felt lonely.

But what was he going to say? Please stop trying to find the man who tried to murder your brother?

So he slept alone, ignoring the noise coming from the rest of the flat with practiced ease. He still had to work, after all. The other doctors were sympathetic but he had patients and his colleagues couldn't take his workload indefinitely. They covered for him enough as it was.

He just wanted some peace and quiet. The normality that Sherlock had been so desperate to reclaim two weeks ago was eluding John now. He tried to remember when the last time that things had been really good. There were moments in late July that came to mind, and he'd thought they were good at the time, but when he looked back now, they were coloured with the knowledge that Sherlock had secretly been smoking.

That whole time. And John hadn't had any idea.

He'd scoured his memories, looking for some hint or sign, trying to figure out if he'd suspected anything, even deep down, even in passing. But there was nothing. He hadn't known because Sherlock had ensured that he hadn't known.

It had been Sam and Sandra's wedding, he realized. Four months since the last really good times. After that, there had always been something. The Murray case, Sibyl's death. John tried to remember that it hadn't been all bad, but it was hard from where he was standing. He was low on sleep himself and already in a bad mood from the problems he was having with Sherlock. Adding two murders and two attempted murders hadn't helped.

Something started to smell. He looked down and realized he was standing in front of the stove, stirring the pot of soup he'd been making for himself. His thoughts had run away on him and he'd just stood there, absently shifting the wooden spoon back and forth, until all of the broth had boiled away and the pot was gently smoking. With a muttered curse, John turned off the gas and pulled the pot away from the element, tossing the spoon in the sink. Any other time, this would have earned a question from Sherlock as to his well being, but John could see him at the desk, intent on some stack of files.

With a sigh, he put the pot in the sink as well and fetched another one. He pulled down a new tin of soup then stared at it.

Oh, to hell with this, he thought.

"I'm going out to get Chinese," he said, striding through the living room. "I'll be back in twenty minutes. What do you want?"

There was no reply and John spun.

"Sherlock!"

The detective raised his head, glancing over his shoulder with a mild scowl.

"Nothing, John, I'm working," he snapped.

"Yeah, well you need to eat, too. I'll just get the usual."

Sherlock gazed at him for a long moment, his expression cool, then gave a curt nod.

"Fine," he agreed and turned back to his work. His voice had been neutral – no hint of irritation that he was being forced to eat. Just a brief dismissal. John stared at the back of Sherlock's head for a moment, then sucked in a deep breath. He let himself out of the flat, shutting the door behind him a little louder than necessary.

---

"This makes no sense!"

John sighed and shut the door behind him. Sherlock was standing in front of the kitchen doors now and had rounded on him when John had come back in. His hair was dishevelled, curling in all directions, clear evidence that he'd been running his fingers through it in frustration. He looked paler than he should have, expression drawn around the edges.

"I know," John replied.

"Why? Why would he do this? He killed three people – that we know of – cleanly, without witnesses. He made sure they were dead. This doesn't fit his pattern. Two at once? And why Mycroft and McKinney at the same time? Why not any of the others? Is he working his way through the men first? But that makes no sense either! We know he had no qualms about killing a young girl."

John sighed again and went into the kitchen. He dished up the food, making sure to heap it onto Sherlock's plate, then held it out to the detective.

"Here," he said, keeping his voice calm despite the fact that he felt inclined to snap. He knew that was just frustration and low blood sugar, but Sherlock rehashing the same facts over and over wasn't helping. He'd been hearing the same analysis for a week now. "Please eat. For me."

It worked and John felt a twinge of guilt for knowing that it would work and using it. He knew Sherlock was carefully evaluating his actions with John now and John knew he was using that against him. But it was the only thing that would make him eat. Given how gaunt the detective looked, it was worth it. When this was over, it was going to be two weeks of fish and chips and milkshakes.

Sherlock took the food and ate it standing up, barely bothering to chew before he swallowed.

"Slow down," John said. "I may be a doctor but I don't want to have to do the Heimlich on you. It could break your ribs and land you in hospital."

Sherlock consented to eat a little more slowly but still polished off his large plate before John had got halfway through his food. The fact that he'd eaten it all told John how hungry he really was, how much he was ignoring his body's demands while trying to solve this case. With a sigh, the doctor took his husband's empty plate and put it in the sink. He leaned against the counter, finishing his own supper at a more sedate pace.

"Maybe whoever's giving him orders wanted him to do two at once," John said.

"But why?" Sherlock hissed. "Why change now? What do Mycroft and McKinney have in common?"

John just shook his head, poking a piece of broccoli with his fork. Sherlock had been asking that for a week as well and had chased down every possible lead, no matter how insignificant it had seemed. He'd come up with the same result each time. Nothing. Yes, Mycroft and McKinney knew many of the same people but that was not surprising. They were both well connected in the government. But none of those links panned out into anything substantial. But someone had decided to try to eliminate both of them at once. He had failed, but in the end, their killer had murdered twenty-seven people outright and put another thirteen in hospital.

Isn't that enough? he asked himself.

Sherlock stalked away again, pulling his phone out of his pocket as John finished eating. The doctor rinsed their dishes and put the leftovers in the fridge, thinking about ringing some old army mates and going for a pint. It might be nice to get out of the disaster zone he called his home.

When he stepped back into the living room he saw Sherlock standing utterly still, staring at his phone.

"What?" John asked immediately. "Did he text again?"

"No," Sherlock said in a distant voice. He paused, his eyes not leaving the phone's tiny screen. John waited, wondering if more was forthcoming. He was just about to ask when Sherlock said:

"Do you remember what Mycroft said McKinney was doing immediately before the blast?"

John frowned, tugging his lower lip between his teeth in concentration.

"Standing by the doors, wasn't he?"

"Standing by the doors on his phone."

John's frown deepened.

"Yeah, and?" he asked. "Mycroft was on his phone, too; he told you that the first time you talked to him. Because you and Anthea had been trying to call him."

"Yes," Sherlock replied, nodding slowly. He kept his eyes on his phone a moment longer then snapped his gaze up to John. "Why didn't William McKinney ever mention this?"

"Post-traumatic amnesia," John sighed. "Look, Sherlock, he was in a bomb blast. It's been a week. It's not surprising he wouldn't remember a detail like that. In fact, he and Mycroft remember a lot more than most people would have. The information you've got from them – it's really good for what happened to them."

"But not good enough," Sherlock replied. "Think, John. Mycroft remembered being on the phone."

"Yes, because it's what saved his life!"

"But who was McKinney on the phone with?"

"His wife?" John suggested.

"Yes, yes, I assumed so, too. And why not? They'd just been in a meeting in which their mobiles were all turned off and he had good reason to fear for his family. But in none of the statements she made did she indicate that she had spoken to him right before the blast."

"Maybe it slipped her mind."

"No! No, John, that kind of thing wouldn't be forgotten! Not if it was her husband! Would you forget a thing like that?"

John stared and Sherlock stopped short, his expression shifting from focused on the question to realising what he'd just said. John swallowed hard but made himself stay calm. Sherlock had been angry at him in Edinburgh for asking to him to think of how he'd feel if John had simply vanished. But this had been unintentional. Sherlock wasn't trying to guilt him, just make him think about the circumstances that surrounded the explosion.

"No, I don't think I would," John answered levelly.

Sherlock exhaled slowly then nodded sharply.

"Precisely. So to whom was he speaking?"

"An aide, another family member? Mistress?"

"It could be," Sherlock agreed.

"But you don't think so."

"He was standing right next to the doors, which made it easy for him to get out of the building immediately and run up the street. But still inside, where Mycroft would see him. John, our killer is not stupid; he managed to break into two alarmed homes and murder two grown men in the space of twenty-four hours. He could have simply shot Mycroft."

He paused and paced away a few steps, holding his phone between his palms and pressing his thumbs against his lips. Then he stood still for a long moment before turning back, his grey eyes brighter than John had seen in a week.

"But he didn't. He rigged an explosion that didn't detonate until after he'd sent me the words to his version of the rhyme. He left me figure it out first and gave me enough time to contact Mycroft. Because of that, Mycroft survived. So did McKinney. He had all of them right there, cut off from communication, but he focused on Mycroft and McKinney. And neither of them died."

"So you think McKinney set this up? He got himself injured in a bomb blast to deflect suspicion from himself?"

"I don't know," Sherlock said, unlocking his phone. "But Anthea can check his phone records for me. I strongly suspect in the moments before the explosion, we will find he was speaking to someone on a prepaid mobile."

John hoped Sherlock would be wrong.

He knew that was fairly useless – and he knew that the detective was banking on being right. But he couldn't bring himself to want Sherlock's deductions to work out, not this time. It was too grim.

Twenty-seven people were dead.

No, thirty, he corrected himself, watching the dark city slide by them outside the cab's windows. Benjamin Laurence, Arthur Kenton, and Kelsi Murray brought the count up to thirty. That they knew of.

He glanced at Sherlock who was looking impassively out his own window. Anyone else would have seen precisely what the consulting detective wanted them to see: a calm, unconcerned man, vaguely bored, waiting for the cab to drop them off. He'd given the cabbie their destination in a casual tone of voice. Nothing in the set of his muscles or the way he spoke indicated any kind of tension, but John knew him better than that. He could see it in the spark of those pale grey eyes, the almost imperceptible tightening of his mouth. No one else would have spotted it, except perhaps Mycroft. But John spent a lot of time looking at Sherlock's mouth – not to mention doing other things to it – and he hated seeing it even slightly tense.

Sherlock's gaze didn't so much as flicker but John knew he was being observed even more than he was observing. Whatever Sherlock was seeing, though, he kept it to himself. With a tired sigh, John turned his head to look back out his window.

Anthea had called them fifteen minutes ago, confirming Sherlock's suspicion. The last number dialled out from William McKinney's phone was not in his list of contacts and came up as a prepaid mobile. She'd given Sherlock the number to ascertain that it was neither of the numbers which had been used to contact him. John wasn't surprised – this man wasn't about to let himself be found so easily.

It made him feel sick. He'd seen people in Afghanistan used as human shields or forced into being suicide bombers or gunned down simply because they were in the way. There were times when the war felt distant and other times when it felt like it was right here, all around him, being re-enacted with a different cast. The idea that someone would set himself up in a bombing to deflect suspicion was terrifying but all too believable to John.

The cab dropped them off at the main entrance to Princess Grace and Sherlock dispensed with the fact that it was well past visiting hours by simply ignoring the staff and acting as if he had every right to be there. McKinney had been transferred to the same ward as Mycroft and John suddenly realized what that meant. He wondered how long Sherlock had been thinking about it. But Mycroft was under guard, he reminded himself.

Of course, he'd been in the middle of a public place when someone had tried to blow him up.

Sherlock stood in stony silence while the guards scrutinized their identification. They'd been through this several times with Mycroft already – sometimes with the same guards. John appreciated that they were doing their job, but it was difficult to confuse a pale, dark-haired, six-foot-two man with anyone else. They were checked for weapons after their IDs had been inspected and then admitted to the room. The guards thankfully didn't seem to care that it was already nearly eleven at night and McKinney was sleeping.

John watched Sherlock carefully, wondering what he'd do. He was half afraid the detective would startle the older man awake – if he was really the one behind this, John had no pity for him, but what if it were a coincidence and he'd just happened to be talking to someone he knew who owned a prepaid mobile? It wasn't like their killer had a monopoly on those. Maybe he did have a mistress and he'd bought her one so no one could track her down.

Plus, despite it all, he had just been injured in a bomb blast. The doctor in John didn't want to subject McKinney to any more shock.

Sherlock stood near the foot of the bed and John stayed a few steps back. In the semi-darkness of the private hospital room, the detective's pale eyes were gleaming. His expression was unreadable in the dim lighting but John could see how rigidly he was holding himself, how his muscles were all defined by sharp angles and stark lines. The shadows blurred his features, making him look younger than he normally did.

John had seen that kind of look and stance before, too many times. He drew a breath to warn Sherlock to stay calm, but the detective spoke before he could.

"Mister McKinney."

Sherlock's voice was deceptively soft but John heard the core of steel underneath it. He held up a hand, shooting Sherlock a warning look, but the detective ignored him.

"Mister McKinney," Sherlock repeated.

McKinney stirred, blinking himself awake. He turned his head slightly, squinting in the low light, trying to focus on Sherlock's shadowed figure at the end of his bed.

"Mister Holmes?" he asked groggily. John was suddenly struck by how badly they could be wrong about this and took a step toward the gurney.

"Who is he, Mister McKinney?"

McKinney blinked again, looking genuinely puzzled.

"Sherlock–" John started but Sherlock didn't acknowledge him, keeping his gaze on the injured man. McKinney shifted on his bed, using his right arm to push himself up somewhat.

"Who is whom?" he asked.

"The man you hired to kill Kelsi Murray, Laurence, and Kenton. The man you hired to try and kill my brother, Mister McKinney. Who is he?"

McKinney stared at him.

"I don't know," he said, casting a quick, confused glance at John. "Mister Holmes, I'm not involved in this."

Sherlock took a step toward the head of the bed, his tall frame looming in the darkness. John kept a sharp eye on him.

"You were on the phone right before the blast," Sherlock said in a low voice that was almost a murmur.

McKinney looked puzzled.

"I don't remember–"

"Yes you do, of course you do. Standing conveniently next to the doors, on the phone. Where Mycroft would see you and be able to warn you. Where you'd be able to run."

"Young man–"

"Speaking to someone with a prepaid mobile. Admittedly a different number than the two he's used to contact me so far." Sherlock took another step forward and John felt his muscles tensing in response, an instinctive reaction preparing him to intervene.

"I wondered why that didn't fit the pattern. Oh, I thought Mycroft may be behind all of this, because it wouldn't be beyond him, but not after the explosion. My brother values his comfort, you see. He would find a way to deflect suspicion that didn't leave him injured and confined to the hospital. But you… You're not my brother."

His voice remained quiet, almost soft, and John had the distinct sense it was the calm before the storm.

"Sherlock," he hissed softly.

"Who is he?" Sherlock repeated.

"I don't know," McKinney managed, his voice hoarse with fatigue and confusion. "I wasn't–"

"He killed Kelsi Murray, Laurence, and Kenton up close, quickly, without witnesses. Neat jobs – aside from all the blood, yes – but not this. He had all of you in the same place. He could have taken you all out at once, but he waited. Waited for the others to leave, waited until I'd figured it out. Then he tried to kill my brother. He murdered twenty-seven people in an attempt to kill Mycroft. A bullet would have been far more reliable, Mister McKinney. But this made you look like an intended target."

He paused, leaning down slightly.

"Who. Is. He."

"I don't know!" McKinney hissed.

Moving too quickly for John to react, Sherlock reached out with both hands, pressing his left palm firmly over McKinney's mouth and splaying his right hand against the man's ribs, pushing down hard. McKinney's sudden cry was muffled by Sherlock's hand.

"Jesus Christ, Sherlock!" John protested, stepping toward the bed fast, wrapping his hands around the detective's wrists. Sherlock's eyes snapped up to him and there was so much rage in them that John let go without thinking, taking half a step back. Sherlock's lips twitched, fighting down a snarl. The doctor stood immobile for a moment, too shocked to react. He'd never seen that much anger in Sherlock's expression before.

"Tell me," Sherlock hissed, leaning down so he was almost nose-to-nose with McKinney. The other man grunted, shaking his head desperately. "Tell me!"

McKinney managed something muffled and Sherlock pressed down harder. John winced at the whimper and stepped forward again, grabbing Sherlock's wrists with no intentions of releasing him this time. But Sherlock tensed his body, bearing his weight down onto his palms, making it impossible for John to get good leverage.

"Sherlock, stop!" John snapped.

"Who is he, Mister McKinney? I can press so much harder."

McKinney shook his head again but there was a different tone to it this time, a flash of acknowledgement in his eyes.

"If you call for the guards, I'll make sure your ribs are broken again," the detective threatened. McKinney nodded, breathing hard. Sherlock eased his left hand away but pushed down hard with his right. John wrapped his fingers around Sherlock's right hand and managed to pry it loose.

"I don't know his name," McKinney gasped. At this, Sherlock straightened slightly and dropped his left hand to take the place of his right, but John had already relaxed his grip when he heard the admission. McKinney hissed again, trying to arch away. "I don't, I don't! I've never met him – only spoken to him on the phone or via email."

"What do you know about him? Where is he?"

"Don't know," McKinney gasped. "There was as little contact as possible – gnh! I'm telling you the truth! I gave him the orders, he carried them out!"

"We need to find him!" Sherlock snapped.

"You can't," McKinney groaned. "You can't."

Sherlock pressed harder and John cursed. This was getting to be too much like torture – he knew the police occasionally used limited force and physical discomfort but this was excessive.

"Let him go!" he ordered, sharpening his voice to his best captain's tone and Sherlock's eyes flickered up for a moment. He eased on his grip but didn't remove his hand.

"All the way," John growled in a tone of voice he scarcely recognized as his own.

Sherlock shot him a dark look but pulled his hand away. McKinney gasped again, breathing hard, a dark smile ghosting over his lips.

"You can't find him," McKinney repeated. "Not unless he wants you to. Everything was done at a distance. Safer that way."

"Safer," Sherlock echoed, his voice hollow. He leaned over again. "Why?" he hissed.

"This country, Mister Holmes," McKinney replied and John felt cold at how reasonable his voice sounded below the pain. "Your brother would understand."

John redoubled his grip on Sherlock's hands the instant before they twitched and managed to hold his husband back.

"You said that disagreement is the foundation of democracy," Sherlock replied in a dangerous voice.

"Yes," McKinney replied, managing a nod. "And occasionally, democracy is the wrong sort of government. Occasionally, things simply need to work."

Sherlock straightened abruptly, startling John. Without a word, he spun and stalked from the room. John hurried to keep up, feeling stunned and numb. Mycroft had made the same argument to him years ago. He'd vaguely assumed that that Mycroft wasn't alone, that there were other people in the government with the same sort of power and ideas. For some reason, he'd always felt like he would never encounter them, that maybe knowing Mycroft would keep them at bay. He should have suspected the opposite – that knowing Mycroft made it more likely that he would meet them.

"Arrest him," Sherlock said, pointing back toward the room. The two military police officers turned to look at John, who was standing in the doorway.

"Not me!" John snapped.

"William McKinney," Sherlock clarified, his voice like ice. He paused, then suddenly gave them one his bright, cold smiles that sent a shudder down John's spine. "You've been guarding the man behind all of this for a week."

"Sir?" one of the officers said.

"Thirty people have died because of him," Sherlock said flatly. "I appreciate that he may not fall under your jurisdiction, in which case I suggest you call the Met and have them arrest him. It may be in your best interest to at least handcuff him to the bed, for appearances' sake."

"He just confessed," John said, not adding that he'd done so under duress. It wouldn't matter – confessing to Sherlock wasn't a legal admission anyway. He'd have to talk to the police, but John was certain that he would. There was no getting away from it anymore.

Although once Mycroft found out, McKinney would probably just quietly disappear.

He shuddered again, unable to stop himself.

The Redcaps stepped into the room, closing the door firmly behind them, leaving John and Sherlock alone in the corridor. John was suddenly grateful that Mycroft was in another section of this ward, his room not visible from where they were. There was a nurse at the nurses' station just down the hall – John could just make her out sitting behind the high counter, but she wasn't paying them any attention.

"We need to tell Mycroft," John managed. He inhaled slowly, counted to ten, then exhaled.

"Yes," Sherlock replied in a clipped voice. John ran his hands into his hair, trying to displace the tension and the adrenaline. Sherlock stepped away and John felt suddenly drained.

"Sherlock–" he said and his husband stopped and turned back, his expression unreadable, his eyes bright. John cast around for something to say, realising suddenly that he didn't know what to do. "Maybe we should leave it until tomorrow?"

Sherlock stared at him.

"We've just apprehended the man who intended to have Mycroft killed and you want to leave it until morning? Do you think he would appreciate that?"

John shook his head.

"No," he admitted. "No, I can't imagine he would. But– that–" he gestured uselessly back to McKinney's room.

That had been Sherlock working.

"John, if you're tired, you can go home and sleep," Sherlock said and there was a hint of something in there – warmth. Concern. It was familiar and unexpected and sent a jolt through John. He managed to shake his head.

"No, I–" don't want to leave you. "I should go with you."

"Very well, then come on."

John stepped forward and joined his husband who turned to fall into step with him again, then paused, frowning. He fished his phone out of his jacket pocket and John froze with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Moving carefully, as if the text might vanish otherwise, Sherlock opened the message. He read it then extended his phone to John, who peered at the tiny screen.

So sorry for the delay, family holidays, you know how it is.

John stared.

"Oh," Sherlock said suddenly and John looked up to see the blank expression of realisation on the detective's face a moment before it flashed through a mixture of anger and admiration. "Oh, stupid, stupid. Obvious. McKinney told us."

"Told us what?" John demanded.

"He gave the orders, our killer carried them out! Of course, of course! It was him. All of this, the past ten years, it's been him!"

"What do you mean?" John pressed.

"Anderson told us in April! The nursery rhymes and fairy tales, John!"

"What?" John asked, aghast. "You think she had something to do with this? Sherlock, she spent a decade of her life trying to track this man down!"

"I know, I know!" Sherlock hissed. "She's not involved in this! But she told us in the hotel that she recognized the Crooked Man rhyme because she had children and the stories had stayed with her!"

John nodded.

"Yes, so?"

"Family holidays, John. Family holidays. A entire set of clues built around children's stories. John, think! William and Mary McKinney – how many children do they have? Think about their files!"

John frowned then felt the muscles in his face relax with shock.

"None," he said flatly.

Sherlock nodded once, holding up the phone almost like a talisman.

"Family holidays! He does have children. I was wrong– we were all wrong. We thought if we found the man behind him, we'd have all the information we need, all the details. But McKinney hired him, John! Gave him the orders. He told our killer what to do but not how to do it, nor how to communicate with us! And why not? Another step removed. Safer," he spat, glaring at his phone.

"So that means–" John started, then cut himself off, shaking his head.

"Yes," Sherlock agreed. "We have the man behind this, but he won't know who's next or when or how. We don't have the means of catching the killer. We don't have the pieces to his puzzles. He's still out there, John, and we have no way of finding out who he is."

"He has kids," John said in a hollow tone.

He knew it really wasn't the most important piece of information here, but it was the one his brain had latched onto.

"Yes, it explains the–"

"So he goes home every night, reads them stories, then goes out and kills people," John interrupted, staring at the wall past Sherlock. He half felt, half saw the detective hesitate and switched his gaze back to his husband, whose expression was equal measures dark and hesitant.

"What?" John snapped.

"He was a soldier," Sherlock said simply.

John stared at him then shook his head.

"We don't–" he started, then cut himself off, swallowing hard. "It's not– I don't have kids," he settled for saying, knowing that it was irrelevant.

"Tricia does," Sherlock replied.

"She's a doctor, she never–"

But yes, she had, he realized.

"It's not the same!" he said hotly, feeling a surge of anger accompanied by fear and discomfort that only made him angrier. Because Sherlock had a point. But it wasn't the same, he told himself. He set his jaw and felt his hands tighten into fists.

"You misunderstand me," Sherlock said, his grey eyes flickering over John's face.

"How?" John demanded.

"I mean, he was a soldier. That was a job, this is a job. He was trained to kill people and that's what does. He simply does it for someone else now."

"We don't all do that!" John shot back.

"I didn't say that you did, John."

John stared at his husband, realizing that he was breathing hard. And then remembered two windowpanes shattered by a bullet and a dying cabbie. He remembered a gun pressed to Jim Moriarty's throat, and he would have done it, too, to save Sherlock, if Sherlock had only had the sense to run when told to. And he remembered Tricia in her kitchen, standing over the body of the woman who'd held her hostage, the assassin's own weapon in her hand.

"It's not the same!" he hissed again, but to himself this time. He saw the flicker of confusion and concern on Sherlock's features but before the detective could say anything, the sound of his phone startled both of them in the near silence of the hospital corridor.

John saw Lestrade's name pop up on the screen and cursed under his breath. Sherlock stiffened but answered the call, putting it on speaker.

"Inspector," he said in a cool voice.

"We've got another one of yours," Lestrade said without preamble.

"Where are you?" Sherlock demanded as John felt a chill run down his spine, grounding him to the floor.

"The Victoria Embankment, Sherlock," Lestrade said. His voice had the hard and clipped tone John recognized as true anger, barely contained. "Underneath the Westminster Bridge."

---

It was one of the rare times that John's skills as a doctor were needed at the scene – but not for the victim. He had found himself crouched behind one of the police cars, bathed in the alternating blue-and-red lights, helping a couple officers sip some water. Sally Donovan was there, on her feet but leaning over, hands on her knees, head bowed. Whether she was keeping an eye on the officers who'd thrown up or was keeping herself from being sick, John couldn't tell. He met her eyes and she returned his gaze blankly, her expression tight. He passed her a bottle of water without comment and she took it with a nod.

Despite everything he'd seen in Afghanistan, he was almost grateful to be behind the shelter of the car, away from the body splattered on the road.

Splattered was a good word. John had seen it – only for a few seconds, but they were long enough for a trained trauma surgeon. There was no way to survive a fall from that height, not onto asphalt. The impact had half crushed him, smearing blood and brain matter and skin across the road. Even the officers who were there were looking green and keeping back.

John pushed himself to his feet.

"All right, Sergeant?" he asked Donovan.

"All right, Doctor, thanks," she replied, nodding again. Steeling himself, he turned and left her with the other officers, circling around the car and walking steadily toward the body.

Everyone was keeping back – everyone except Sherlock.

He was crouched down next to the corpse, for once wearing a sterile suit. It had the effect of making him look even thinner than he'd become, and the glow from the street lamps and the emergency lights made his skin look paler. He was looking up at the bridge, a frown of concentration on his face. As John moved closer, Sherlock pushed himself to his feet and walked around the corpse then away from it, toward the bridge, never lowering his eyes.

Lestrade stepped up to John, blue eyes gleaming darkly.

"Want to tell me what's going on?" he asked in a low voice. John frowned and glanced at him.

"There's a–"

"I don't mean the killer, John; we have some idea about that, even if the military police have been handling it. I mean with him." He nodded at Sherlock and John followed his gaze. "I haven't seen him this skinny since – well I think since he met you."

At this, John felt a flash of guilt then anger. That wasn't really his fault. He drew a deep breath and reminded himself that Lestrade hadn't said it was.

"Someone did try to murder his brother," John pointed out.

Lestrade sighed but nodded. John felt a moment's relief at not having to go into their personal life – as much as he liked the DI, he really didn't want to hash out his marital problems with Lestrade. He had no desire for anyone on the Met to know about what was going on, either. It would only make it harder for Sherlock to work with them – and Sherlock would know if they knew.

"Just–" the DI started, then glanced over his shoulder when a car door shut behind them. John looked round as well when Lestrade swore under his breath.

"Please tell me Sherlock did not call him," Lestrade muttered then, moving away to intercept Sam as the Interpol agent approached the scene. John stared. Sherlock had been on the phone in the cab on the way over, texting someone, and John had assumed it was Anthea because Sherlock had said he was going to contact her. He probably had. He'd evidently contacted Sam as well.

John saw Sam stop, look at the body, look up at the bridge, and go pale. He held himself very still for a moment, then set his jaw, giving a sharp, contained nod.

"Why am I here?" he asked in a hard voice.

Good bloody question, John thought, glancing back as Sherlock approached them again.

"Maxen Brace, forty-nine, Shadow Secretary of State for Health. From Cardiff. He's Welsh– well, he was. A Welshman murdered in England technically qualifies as a crime that crosses international borders."

"And the killer is Canadian, Sherlock," Sam snapped. "This already qualified. It qualified when Kelsi Murray was murdered – although admittedly we didn't know that – but it also qualified as soon as this man started killing in England after committing murder in Scotland. Interpol's already on this."

"There you are, then," Sherlock said dismissively. Sam stared at him but the detective had already lost interest and was looking at Lestrade. "What's up at the top?"

"What?" Lestrade demanded.

"Where he was pushed!" Sherlock snapped. "What's there? Any indications of the precise location?"

"Yeah," Lestrade huffed and pulled out his phone. "Graffiti." Sherlock held out a hand expectantly and the DI passed the phone over with a pointed look that was entirely ignored. Sherlock scrolled back and forth between some images and then grinned brightly. The suddenness of the smile startled John – it jarring with the body in the background behind Sherlock and the tension of the officers that surrounded him.

"Brilliant!" the detective murmured, the grin still tugging on his lips. John felt a flash of shock course through him, followed by sudden lightheaded feeling.

Sherlock was enjoying this.

"Yeah, tell me what it means, Sherlock," Lestrade ordered.

"Look at the way he landed," Sherlock said, pointing at the body, then striding back toward it. He turned to glare at them when they didn't move to follow. John cast a look at Lestrade, who sighed and joined Sherlock to stand over the mangled corpse. Sam stayed several steps behind and John didn't blame him.

It was the closest he'd seen the body yet and it was the shock that kept him rooted to the spot because every other instinct inside of him wanted to move away. It was worse than it looked from a distance – the impact had broken so many of the man's bones that he was limp, as if he were made of putty. He had landed face down, but his face was turned slightly to his left. He was unrecognizable, however, his features lost in a mess of blood, his skull crushed. His arms were oddly pinned under his body – John thought he would have instinctively held them out. As if that would somehow have helped. The angle of his back told John his spine was severed and the odd list of his legs below his hips indicated his pelvis was shattered. His clothing was torn here and there and he had compound fractures cutting through his skin.

And there was more than John could see that he knew because he was a doctor. That much damage to the skeleton meant the internal organs were obliterated. Not that it would have mattered if they hadn't been. There was no surviving that.

Tearing his eyes away, John looked up at the bridge through the near darkness.

God, he must have been terrified, he thought. Then he looked back at Sam, who was watching Sherlock stonily. The Interpol agent met his eyes, but only briefly.

"Look at the way he's lying," Sherlock said, crouching down, not at all concerned with the state of the dead man at his feet. "Face down, hands beneath him. If he'd been forced off the bridge backwards, he would likely have landed on his back, face up. He wasn't thrown off – that sort of action is awkward and difficult. We know our killer is between five-foot-ten and five-foot-eleven. Brace was six feet. Not impossible to imagine he could have been picked up and thrown over, but unlikely. It would take more effort than necessary."

"So what?" Lestrade asked. "He was pushed facing the railing?"

"No, because then he could have grabbed hold of the railing – or he'd have been able to, had his hands not been tied. That's why they're pinned underneath him." He tapped the body absently on its shoulder and glancing up at the bridge again.

"And if he'd been facing the railing when pushed, he would most likely have tumbled midair and landed on his back as well. This wasn't a struggle. He was forced over, not pushed over."

"How?" Lestrade demanded.

"Gun, most likely," Sherlock said, in a slightly bored tone, as if this detail was tedious. "Probably the same way he was forced from whatever function he was attending. Formal clothing, good suit, but a bit late for business meetings. And he'd have taken Brace from somewhere public."

"Why?" the DI sighed.

"To prove that he can," Sherlock said. He glanced up at Lestrade and grinned.

"He's showing off," the Inspector murmured.

"Yes, I imagine he is, but he might qualify it as taking pride in his work."

"He's playing with you!" Lestrade snapped.

"No, he's been given orders and is carrying them out creatively and efficiently." He glanced up at the bridge again. "We all fall down," he murmured, that familiar smile playing on his lips. John wanted to close his eyes or take Sherlock by the shoulders and shake some sense into him – he was appreciating this. Not the death, John thought, but the detail. Without meaning to, he turned his head slightly, catching a glimpse of Donovan out of the corner of his eye.

No, he told himself firmly, turning back.

"Kenton didn't fall anywhere," he pointed out, keeping his voice steady, locking his eyes with Sherlock's. After all John had seen in Afghanistan, it came as a shock to realise he'd never seen the body of someone who had fallen from a height before dying. He'd seen people who'd tumbled off buildings after being shot. They had dealt with jumpers in the army, too – suicides – but John had never personally witnessed one.

"No," Sherlock agreed. "But his death agreed with his story."

"What?" Lestrade demanded.

"What's the message?" John asked at the same time.

Sherlock extended Lestrade's phone, which he was still holding, and John took it. He glanced down at the picture and then dropped his head back, closing his eyes. On the pavement above, their killer had drawn two ovals in permanent marker – one complete one, one that was missing the top half, the break delineated by a jagged line. On the complete one, he'd even drawn little stick arms and legs.

This is sick, John thought, echoing Anderson's words from April.

"He was sitting," he said through gritted teeth.

"Precisely," Sherlock said, his voice far too bright.

"Do you plan on telling me what's going on?" Lestrade snapped.

"Humpty Dumpty," John replied, lowering his head again and returning the phone to the DI.

"He was sitting on the parapet before he was pushed off," Sherlock explained. He pushed himself to standing, stripping off his sterile gloves. "It explains the position in which he landed – he was sitting facing away from the bridge. And here we are, unable to put him back together again. However, we can put together where he was and how he got here."

John pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead. Mycroft's going to be furious, he thought.

Lestrade sighed, shaking his head.

"We're already working on that," he said. "Maybe we'll get lucky – maybe someone saw him this time. If he took Brace from some sort of event, then someone had to notice he was missing."

"Hmm, doubtful," Sherlock replied. "Oh, yes someone will notice Brace has gone, but I can't imagine our killer will have let himself be spotted."

"Then what do you suggest we do?" Lestrade snapped. "We're sitting on our hands waiting for him to pick off people one by one!"

"I suggest you clean this up," Sherlock replied, his voice suddenly hard, his eyes narrowing and flashing, reflecting the blue from the police cars' lights. "And find out where he was and how he got here. I will deal with establishing the pattern."

"Pattern? What pattern?"

"He's killing members of a Parliamentary committee, Lestrade, and the less you know about that, the better. The men he's killed so far – there may be a reason he's choosing them in this particular order. You can stand here arguing with me or you can tidy this up and let me find him! I don't need to waste my time answering your questions – just do your job."

He stripped off his sterile suit and left it on the ground, stepping around the body.

"Sam, I'll need access to some Interpol files. I'll text you with the details once I've established them. Come on, John, we're not accomplishing anything here. We've seen all he wants us to see."

Sam didn't respond to Sherlock's comment and John met his eyes. He had the look of a man who was facing several sleepless nights and who was all too aware of it. He gave a curt nod and Sherlock breezed past, dragging John in his wake.

"He got past the guards on Brace," John snapped when they got closer to the police cars. "Sherlock, this is insane! Lestrade's right – we're just waiting for him to pick them off one by one!"

Sherlock rounded on him, expression cold and bright.

"Then we increase the guards and don't allow them to go anywhere public where there's any possibility that they can be caught on their own," he snapped. "Would you like to stand here and complain to me about his capabilities, John? I know what he's done!"

"And you think he's clever!"

"He is clever!" Sherlock shot back. "And while you stand here moaning to me about his intelligence, he's walked away from this. The longer you make me wait out here, the more time he has to plan the next one. Stop dithering and come with me, John! We're going home. I need to establish his pattern."

John stared at him then forced himself to nod, falling into step behind Sherlock. He was livid and he recognized it was because he was terrified. No one knew who their killer was, even the man who had hired him. He was running circles around them, getting in past security everywhere and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

And the only person who wasn't frightened by him was Sherlock.

John was sitting at the desk, cheek squashed against his left fist to keep himself braced and upright. He was listening to Sherlock pace their disaster zone of a flat, muttering to himself, sometimes directing comments at the skull or at John, sometimes plucking notes on his violin, filling the air with snatches of music. The monologue had changed since earlier that evening – or yesterday, John wasn't even sure anymore. They had more information now, but it still seemed useless. William McKinney didn't know who his hired killer was or how to contact him. They had no idea who would be next. A shudder ran through John as he realized he'd thought that.

We can stop there being a 'next', he told himself.

He was resting his eyes, thinking of their bed. The chair in which he was sitting was getting uncomfortable, but his own armchair was buried and off-limits. The surface of the desk was hard against his arm even if it was somewhat padded with files. But their bed wasn't covered in files. The bedroom remained steadfastly a work-free zone. John had drawn the line in the very early days after finding Sherlock in bed next to him one morning with a bottle of hydrochloric acid and some Litmus strips.

He thought about hauling himself up and walking through the litany of rambling words that his husband was spouting into the bedroom and crawling into bed. Maybe he'd slap his hand over Sherlock's mouth on the way by and force the detective to come with him. They could… John didn't even know. He was too tired to do anything but realized with a mild jolt that he sort of wanted to. He wondered if Sherlock would be offended if he fell asleep halfway through. Or a quarter of the way through. Or right at the beginning.

Best not, he told himself with an inward sigh. They had enough problems already. Maybe in the morning, after John had got some sleep. Before work. In the shower. Or in the bed.

Yes, the bed. He thought about it again with a sleepy smile. He could just get up and go to bed. Sherlock didn't need him. He was talking to the skull, something about McKinney and Canadians and the army and poppies and the inadvisability of buying Chinese take away from hospital vending machines…

He'd just put on his pyjamas and curl up or maybe sleep naked – Sherlock liked that and John frankly liked it too. He sighed, pressing the weight of his head harder against his cheek.

Maybe tomorrow he didn't have to work. But no, it was already tomorrow, wasn't it? Maybe it was Saturday – he felt like it could be Saturday. Did he have a Saturday shift that week? There were so many patients, he hoped Mycroft didn't need to come in and see him…

"John!"

John snapped his eyes open suddenly, jerking upright, and blinked in confusion. The detective's blazing grey eyes narrowed a bit when John was able to focus on them.

"It is time for work?" John asked, his voice blurry from sleep – he hadn't even realized he'd drifted off. How long had he been dozing?

"Hardly," Sherlock sniffed. "It's just past two. I've been speaking to you for several minutes now."

"Oh," John said, leaning back slightly in his chair, glancing around the flat. He'd almost hoped that by some miracle it would be clean again. He thought of their bed and the downy pillows and the sheets with that high thread count Sherlock liked so much…

"John!"

"Right, right, I'm awake," he said, nodding to keep himself moving. "What is it?"

"They found the cabbie."

"The cabbie?" John asked, confusion coursing through him. He had a moment's disorientation, as if seven years had been removed – of course they'd found the cabbie, he'd died in that empty college classroom – why were they looking for a cabbie? He'd thought it was an ex-Canadian special forces soldier. Was he moonlighting as a cabbie? He thought about the moonlight – the kitchen often caught it but their bedroom didn't…

"No, John, wake up," Sherlock snapped, slapping the desk, and John jerked himself awake again. "The cabbie that drove Brace and our killer to the river."

At this, John came fully awake, blinking off the remnants of sleep.

"He's at the Yard with Lestrade," Sherlock said.

John heaved himself to his feet, feeling regret at the loss of another night's sleep.

"Let's go," he said.

---

Lestrade was looking harassed; it was an expression he adopted entirely too often as far as Sherlock was concerned. If he'd wanted a quiet life, he should have taken some menial job with no responsibility and no interaction with the public. And he should hardly be worried about this case. The military was handling it by and large, relying on the Met only for assistance and additional security, so really, it wasn't as though Lestrade had to expend a great deal of energy into catching this killer.

That was Sherlock's job anyway. The Met couldn't do this – at best they could chase their own tails and accomplish nothing. They didn't have the resources or the connections. Sherlock knew all too well that Mycroft would see to it that this remained a matter dealt with by the military police, if only to keep it largely out of the public eye. Somehow, he had even managed to keep his name out of the papers as the intended target of the explosion and was only numbered among the injured.

But they'd at least found the cabbie and had rounded him up. Sherlock let his eyes flicker over the driver through the one-way glass before he entered the interview room. The man was in his early fifties, of Indian descent, and obviously irritated that he'd been pulled off the job. He was scowling, not in the manner of someone on the defensive because he was surrounded by police officers, but in the manner of someone being inconvenienced.

Sherlock stepped into the room, followed by John. The cabbie's eyes flickered over both newcomers with disinterest, registering them then dismissing them. An experienced cabbie, then, used to acknowledging faces and not remembering them. Sherlock frowned – that didn't bode well.

He had faint calluses on his fingers where they gripped the wheel of his car for hours on end and was occasionally rotating his wrists to ease the stiffness that came from repetitive strain injuries. In all probability, he had observed that neither Sherlock nor John were intoxicated and were likely to pay their fares – but little else.

"Mister," Sherlock paused, picking up the cabbie's licence which the man had placed on the table for some police officer or another. "Ajid. My name is Sherlock Holmes, this is Doctor John Watson. I'd like you to tell me about the men you had in your cab earlier this evening. Maxen Brace and the man accompanying him."

"I've already talked to him," Ajid replied, nodding irately at Lestrade. "And that Sergeant Donovan. Told ya, I don't remember what he looked like."

"Could you describe him to a sketch artist?"

"Well yeah, if you want me to waste my time!"

"Mister Ajid, there is a professional killer in London at this very moment who pushed Mister Brace off of the Westminster Bridge after getting out of your cab, so I suggest you stop thinking about the money you could be making right now and start actually providing some details," Sherlock snapped in a cold tone, putting in all of the haughty authority that was his birthright. He so rarely had to use it – generally just a touch was enough – but he was running low on both time and patience.

It worked. Ajid stiffened and scowled but gave an ungracious nod.

Sherlock cast a quick glance at Lestrade.

"Call Holly Adams and have her come in."

"She's not on shift right now, Sherlock," Lestrade sighed.

"Pay her overtime then," Sherlock replied, bored with having to argue about it. "She's already done some work for me on this."

"What–"

"Do you have some fascination with asking useless questions?" Sherlock snapped. "Would you like to give our killer more time to plan his next assault? I'm sure no one will mind that, particularly as his attacks have become steadily more violent."

"Sherlock," John muttered under his breath but the detective ignored his husband. He didn't have time for niceties right now – the Met were dragging their feet on everything, slowing him down.

"Go!" Sherlock said, waving Lestrade out the door.

"Sherlock–" the DI began to protest and Sherlock threw his hands up in the air.

"Why am I even here if you don't want me to work, Lestrade?" he spat. Lestrade's eyes flickered to John, who was probably making some sort of conciliatory gesture, then back to Sherlock. He searched the detective's face, looking for something. Sherlock kept his expression neutral, making sure Lestrade didn't find it.

"All right," the inspector sighed. "Fine."

He left the room and left the door open. Sherlock didn't care – as long as more idiots didn't come in to interrupt him, it didn't matter who overheard.

"Describe your other passenger to me," he ordered, turning back to the cabbie. The man shot him a glare that Sherlock matched with one of his own, then Ajid sighed.

"I already told 'em, I don't remember. He was just some bloke."

"'Some bloke'? No, no, Mister Ajid, he was not just 'some bloke'. Think!" he smacked the table for emphasis, visibly startling the cabbie and John. "He looked like something! He wasn't simply a faceless stranger. Images, sounds, scents – whatever you remember!"

Ajid sighed, scowling.

"Average," he replied. "He was an average looking bloke. Not too tall, not like you, but taller than him," he nodded at John. "Mid forties, brown hair. That's all I remember."

"What shade of brown? Dark? Light?"

"Lighter. Like his." He nodded at John again.

"What about his voice, what did he sound like?"

"Nothin'. He didn't say anything."

Blast! Sherlock thought, biting his lower lip. He wouldn't have. Not if it would have identified him as being a foreigner because that was more likely to be remembered.

"What about Brace? What did he say?"

"Just told me where to go and that's it."

Sherlock drew back slightly, pausing for a moment. He had given the cabbie their destination, knowing he was going to die. Sherlock wondered if Brace knew how he was going to die, then suddenly realized how frightened he must have been. He glanced quickly back at John out of the corner of his eye again – the doctor had probably already thought of that.

Irrelevant, he told himself. Can't change it.

"Anything else? Any smells? Any scars or tattoos or piercings?"

"No! Look, I told you. Just a regular bloke. No glasses, no scars, nothin' interesting. No different than arf the people that get in my cab."

Except half the people who get into your cab are not assassins with military training, Sherlock thought. This was getting him nowhere. From the man's description, it may as well have been John, only taller. That didn't narrow it down much – in terms of colouring, John was not that distinctive. If he were sitting in the back of a cab, his height would probably go unremarked as well.

Just a regular bloke with the ability to get past Mycroft's security measures, Sherlock thought. Brilliant.

He saw Ajid's eyes flicker away from him back to the door, a somewhat startled expression on his face and Sherlock turned as Holly said:

"You know it's the middle of the night, right?"

He cocked a dark eyebrow at her.

"And you weren't at home sleeping, given how quickly you arrived and your questionable attire."

"That doesn't stop it from being the middle of the night, Sherlock," Holly sighed, folding her arms over the fabric of her short black dress. "And I was off duty, you know."

He shrugged. This was more important than some club. Holly stared at him, then shook her head, resigned.

"Mister Ajid, my name is Constable Holly Adams – although I appreciate I probably don't look like a constable right now. I'm a forensic artist. I'm going to work with you to get a sketch of the man you saw."

"The description he's provided is inadequate at best," Sherlock warned.

Holly sighed again.

"I'll see what I can do. First, though, I'm going to change and get my things. I'll be back in a few minutes."

She cast a glance at John that clearly commiserated with him about the late hour then ducked out of the room. Sherlock turned back to Ajid.

"I suggest you wrack that inferior memory of yours, Mister Ajid. You're the first person to see our killer and come out of it alive, so it's particularly in your best interests that he is caught."

The cabbie's eyes widened with alarm and Sherlock resisted the impulse to roll his own eyes – maybe that would force the man into cooperation. He gestured to John and left the room. Lestrade was standing down the hall with his arms folded, leaning against the wall.

"Got what you wanted?"

"Hardly," Sherlock sniffed. "As imperceptive as he is, it's a miracle he's not run anyone off the road."

"It's probably because he's paying attention to the road that he doesn't remember his fares," Lestrade sighed. "Holly will get what she can out of him."

"Yes, send me a scan of her sketch when it's complete."

"You're off?" Lestrade asked.

"Nothing more to do here. I've got to go speak with my brother."

"It's the middle of the night!"

"So people keep telling me – what do you expect me to do with that knowledge? Is repetition going to change the fact that Mycroft has yet to be informed? Perhaps if I stand here listening to it long enough, it will no longer be the middle of the night and therefore an acceptable hour to see my brother? Honestly, Lestrade, two in the morning, seven in the morning, what difference does it make when I go? Shall we ask our killer to conduct his business during regular hours? Oh, I'm sorry, we can't. We don't know who he is or where he is and thanks to Mister Ajid's inability to be observant about anything whatsoever, we barely know what he looks like."

Lestrade gave an exasperated sigh and Sherlock felt John stiffen and shift beside him. He strode away from the DI and hoped he wouldn't run into Anderson on the way out of the Yard – he'd wasted enough time already.

John hurried to keep up with him and when they'd left the building, Sherlock hailed a cab, holding the door for John. His husband looked at him, puzzled.

"Aren't you coming? I thought you said we were going to see Mycroft."

"No, I am going to see Mycroft. You are going home to get some sleep." He held up a hand to forestall the argument that was forming on John's lips. "You have work in the morning, John, and you're of no use to me half asleep, which you have been almost this entire time. You're also of no use to your patients in this state, as you've often pointed out. Go home."

"But–"

Sherlock sighed – had the entire world banded together and decided it was a day in which to argue with him?

"Go home, John. Get some sleep. You're dead on your feet."

John stared at him a moment longer, then nodded. He slipped into the cab and put his hand on the door handle but hesitated, looking up at Sherlock as if expecting something. Sherlock looked back down at him and nodded.

He gave the cabbie the address, leaning down slightly to catch the man's eye. "I'll see you later," he said to John. John sighed, nodded, and shut the door. Sherlock watched as the cab pulled away, ensuring it turned in the right direction and that John wasn't going to redirect it to Princess Grace. Satisfied that his husband was actually listening to him for once, he then stepped into the street, raised his hand, and hailed a cab of his own.

---

Anthea had already been to see Mycroft about Brace's death and McKinney's involvement and arrest, and Mycroft was still awake when Sherlock arrived. The detective was admitted to the room after a more thorough examination of his identification and a pat down for weapons. He suffered it silently but rolled his eyes several times. He was Mycroft's brother, after all. If he wanted to shoot Mycroft, he could easily do so when he was no longer in the hospital and under guard. Pointing this out had earned him a further delay.

Mycroft's injuries looked minutely better but he himself looked worse than he had since the bombing. He was tired, his eyes rimmed with dark circles, his face pale. He turned his head slowly when Sherlock came in the room – not in his normal languid, impassive way, however. This movement was tired and resigned.

It made Sherlock pause, a flash of anger coursing through him. No one had robbed Mycroft of his self-assurance before. Even when David had been abducted, he'd retained some of that unthinking superiority, that certainty that he was in the right regardless of the circumstances.

Now he simply looked exhausted.

But he managed to push himself to a somewhat straighter sitting position when Sherlock entered the room. Mycroft gestured for some water and Sherlock gave it to him without comment.

"Where's John?" his brother asked.

"At home sleeping," Sherlock replied curtly. "I have new information for you."

His brother nodded, sipping his water slowly. The faint wincing each time he swallowed meant the broken ribs were still bothering him. There had been talk of releasing him from the hospital, but Sherlock hoped Mycroft had the sense to stay until he could start walking on his leg again. He wasn't about to play nursemaid and he wasn't sure if Angela would. It was possible, he supposed.

He filled Mycroft in on the scant details that Ajid had provided to them, watching his brother's frown deepen. Sherlock promised to send Holly's sketch to both Mycroft and Anthea via text when he received it.

"I will need whatever additional information McKinney provides," Sherlock added when he'd finished briefing his brother.

Mycroft's frown twitched and deepened more.

"Sherlock, I think you need to turn over all of your information to Anthea."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes somewhat and tilted his head fractionally.

"Oh, I see. You want me to let you pursue this now."

"Yes," Mycroft said.

"Now that we have some concrete information and a possibility of catching him, you want me to abandon it."

"No, not abandon it," Mycroft corrected. "I'll take it from here."

Sherlock fought down a surge of irritation and regarded his brother with as level an expression as he could manage.

"Ten years now, Mycroft. Ten years you hounded me to take this case and when I did so in April, I came up with nothing."

"You found Kelsi Murray's body."

"But not her killer! And now I have the chance to do so, to capture a man who has at last known count murdered thirty-one people, thirty of those within the last week and a half. For a decade you knew nothing about him until I got involved."

"That's precisely why I want you to step back," Mycroft said. "He's interested in you."

"He should be – I'm a particularly interesting person. In that alone, at least, he has good taste. Mycroft, this is a weakness. Exploit it! That's what you do best! I will find him because he finds me fascinating. What would you do from your hospital bed anyway?" He gestured at Mycroft's recumbent figure, eyes raking over the casts and bandages. "I'm your best option and you've known that for a decade. Now that I've agreed to do it, you want me to stop."

He shook his head, pursing his lips.

"This is my case, Mycroft," he said simply. "See to it that Anthea gives me the information I need. Unless you no longer want it solved."

"Of course I do!" Mycroft snapped and Sherlock heard the edge of irritation overlying the exhaustion in his brother's tone.

"Then let me do my job. I'm certain the doctors would tell you that your priority is to rest and recover." He gave Mycroft a small, tight smile. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. Information from Anthea. I mean it."

Mycroft managed a slight nod.

"If you're sure, Sherlock."

"Of course I'm sure, when have you ever known me not to be? Good night, Mycroft. Do try and get some sleep. It will do you a world of good."

He let himself out of the small private room, clicking the light off on the way. Once in the corridor, he shook his head at Mycroft's idiocy and wondered if perhaps the painkillers were to blame or if Mycroft simply wanted the accomplishment for himself. That wasn't like him, though, so it was undoubtedly the drugs. He'd have to talk to John and find out what Mycroft was on and if it should be substituted for something that would allow him to think properly. Sherlock really did not need his brother's medications creating more problems than they already had on their hands at the moment.

---

Mycroft watched Sherlock leave, shutting the light off behind him. The sudden darkness silhouetted his brother in the doorway for a moment before Sherlock shut the door, leaving Mycroft alone. His outline, suddenly stark against the light from the corridor, was shocking.

Mycroft wondered if Sherlock knew.

The row with John and the case had left him haggard with bags under his eyes and had taken six pounds from him – six pounds he didn't really have to spare. Mycroft hadn't seen him this thin since the car crash, but he'd put the weight back on quickly then after being discharged from the hospital, eating under John's strict supervision. And that had been understandable. He'd been badly injured; he was bound to lose some weight.

This was different. This was Sherlock barely eating and sleeping. Mycroft didn't think his brother had taken up smoking again after John had caught him out – and he was fairly certain that Sherlock would not go back to the cocaine.

But fairly certain was not the same as entirely certain.

It had been a long time since he'd seen Sherlock operating on sheer adrenaline rather than a combination of adrenaline, something approaching a proper diet and adequate sleeping patterns. He was paler than normal and looked drawn and far too young.

Underfed, overtired, and pallid.

The same way he'd been before meeting John Watson.

Mycroft wondered what would happen to his brother if John left.