Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When it hits him, he is alone in a sea of dying men. There is mud in every crevice of his body, blood spurting in tired bouts from every other space. His foot has been infected for weeks, and if he wasn't the only doctor himself, he would have had to amputate the limb. Not that it matters much, anymore. He iss bleeding in the rain, listening to the wail of sirens and the whistle of bombs flying overhead. To his right, a man gurgles through a bullet hole in his gullet, trying to form the name of his wife.

Humans die easily, they said. You won't be any different.

Arrogant in his gleaming armour and immortal bones, he had dismissed such warnings. How could something indestructible die at the hands of mere humans and their pathetic machines? He was eternal.

Of course, that was before a bullet dug its way into his shoulder, and he lay in the mud bleeding to death, feeling very human indeed. He clenches his hand in the muck, smelling the putrid scent of burning flesh. The trenches are on fire. Men are screaming, howling in pain. This is how he dies, in the blood-stained mud and under a grey sky of miserable rain.

When he was born, the songs had promised a death of glory and light, in fields of gold where armies clashed against soldiers of the darkness. The songs had spoken of his beauty and his honour. He was Uriel then, the son of fire, a general of the Mighty, an archangel.

Well, shit, he thinks faintly. This is a jolly good excuse of a life, isn't it?

'It is,' remarks a voice at his head. He recognises the sound before the face swoops into vision, dark eyes and dark hair knotted back against her head. She is all in white, and the blood and the muck stain the hem of her dress as she kneels down beside him. Her hands are cold on his forehead, colder than the rain. She smiles with her lips and not her eyes, but that was how she always was. 'Does it hurt much, Uriel?'

He coughs harshly. She uses the old name not in spite - she only knows the old truths of things - but it does not make it hurt any less. 'Of course it does,' he growls through gritted teeth.

She shakes her head in what would be dismay, if she was capable of any emotion. 'You chose this path,' she reminds him. 

He remembers. He remembers the choices he made. He does not need her to recite these words. 'Why are you here?' he demands hoarsely.

The rain does not touch her, for she is protected. She cups his face with her hand gently, tracing her pallid fingertips against the weathered surface of his feverish skin. She is a paradox amongst these fallen soldiers, a figure of plump health, the beauty that these boys will never see again. 'I am here to make you an offer, Good Soldier,' she smiles. 'There is a man who needs a Guide. You must go to him. We will give you a new face, a new name, a new life.' She draws her fingertips against his lips. 'You will not have to die, Uriel. You can live.' 

A Guide was a role he had not chosen. He chose to be a soldier and to fight away the darkness with weapon in hand, whether it was a sword, a rifle, or a scalpel. It is not in his nature to be a teacher, or a figure in the dark to push a human with subtle words and silent actions.

He swallows, and all can taste is smoke and bile. The pain is clouding his mind, swamping all other understanding. Anything but this, anything but this cold, empty torment. 

She nods, for his pain is sufficient confirmation. She bends her head carefully to seal the deal with a kiss. Always a kiss, for those that wander between the realms, for her and her sisters.

The mud turns into sand. The rain sharpens into harsh, blistering winds armed with grains of sand. The sun burns a hole in his vision. The pain is explosive, cracking into his spine and ricocheting inside his skull. He roars in pain, muted by the sputtering cracks of a machine gun. Something explodes in a rush of light, but he is protected by the hulk of a tank. Someone shouts a name. Figures dance in and out of sight, heads covered by helmets and scarves to protect faces against the sandstorm, and hands press against the hole in his shoulder. The pain is like lightening.

She watches from behind them, her face calm, her hands covered in the blood of the innocent and the tears of the murderers. She smiles at him and nods in farewell.

The world blackens. He dissipates into nothingness.

.

He wakes up bandaged and aching, tongue thick with morphine. A woman in uniform tends to the wounds in his leg. Her face is tanned by the sun, and a white scar edges down to her jaw, almost hidden by golden twisting curls. When she meets his eye, he recognises her from thousands of lives before. She offers an apolagetic smile, perhaps for her heavy hand, or for his cursed existence. She presses her forefinger and middle finger against his wrist as if to take his pulse, but she is bleeding life into him, days and months and years and decades of insignificant facts. She distributes a mundane name to him, and a torturous history to explain the pain in his eyes and the tightness at the corners of his mouth.

When it is over, she presses her palm against his back to calm his racing heart.

Boots thud against the floor. Worried faces accompany uniformed bodies. 'Christ, Watson,' one of the men whistle. 'We thought you were done for, mate.'

He can do nothing but smile wearily at the soldier as his memory readjusts accordingly. 'I'll be fine,' he promises, because he is still a doctor, and still a soldier. 'Flesh wound.'

Another man - Bill, is his name - pats the woman on the shoulder gently. 'You take care of him,' he says gravely. 'He's a hero.'

Because she has watched from the beginning of time, and she knows the secrets of the universe like her own bones, she holds the hand of the newly formed John Watson tightly. 'I know,' she says.

Captain John Watson is honourably discharged from duty. He walks with a limp, and his shoulder aches when it rains, as though in remembrance. The men that know John Watson as a hero disappear from existence. One dies in a raid. The three other are in a Jeep with five American soldiers when a car bomb explodes underneath them.

.

He is limping his way through a park, attempting to clear his head, when a voice calls out his new name. He almost ignores it, but then he remembers that he is no longer the soldier dying in the mud. The world is much different here, and the old smoking machines have been replaced by sleek things that hum and glide. He must become John Watson.

The man he greets is halfway through his lifespan, introduces himself as Mike Stamford, whose face is also imprinted in John's memories. In this age, humans can afford to be fat and content. John can see this in the way Stamford bends his head, blinks owlishly through his glasses, and moves around his weight with the ease of one much accustomed to such a disposition. He expresses his hatred for young students with a laugh, and John can only respond with a dry laugh.

Humans will always be young, impervious and foolish.

John finds it difficult to accommodate himself in London, with his funds being a bare minimum. Soldiers were never paid well in any era. Stamford suggests a flatshare.

John has nightmares of every single war. He remembers blood, and mud, and the smell of singed flesh. He knows the sound that children make when they call for their mothers. He remembers battles where scales and fangs burned, and battles where black blood oozed thick over the land.

'Come on,' he smiles humourlessly. 'Who'd want me for a flatmate.'

Stamford begins to tilt his head. Across from them, a young woman with curly blonde hair fastens her coat tightly about her waist. She glances once at John and her lips curve slightly in a bashful smile.

Almost apologetic.

'Well, you're the second person to say that to me today,' Stamford is saying. 

'Who was the first?' John questions, his eyes drifting back to the young woman.

The young woman nods, and John understands. It is time for him to meet the man he must Guide.

John does not hold any expectations. He has learnt not to, with the ever-changing nature of humans. He imagines he will find something lost, perhaps, or something that has yet to understand that it is lost. He does not expect to find a young, beautiful fledgling crouched over a microscope, shadowy wings dancing wildly behind his back. Four wings, four black-feathered wings that only those like John can see. John does not know how to react to this, so he stares.

John offers the fledgling his phone, because it is needed. He does not know how to Guide one of his own.

The fledgling talks in rolling rush of words, incoherent thoughts that are not formed for common understanding. It is not normal for him to communicate in obvious terms. He decides, in a sweeping decision, that they must live together. 

'We don't know a thing about each other,' John growls. He is angry at being forced to be a Guide for something that will eternally remind him of what he used to be. He is outraged that such a young thing is forced to exist here, in the world of men, where no one could possibly understand what it was like to know everything. 'I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name.'

But the fledgling knows everything about John, but then, it is only expected. When he draws closer, John recognises the colour of rain in his eyes, and this makes John a little afraid and a little saddened. Fledglings are meant to be full of hope. This man holds nothing but loss, death, and the icy feeling of mud seeping into the lungs of drowning men.

He is arrogant, which annoys John, and he is brilliant, which annoys him even more. He pauses by the door, inky feathers whirling in his wake, and meets John's eye. 'The name's Sherlock Holmes,' he informs John calmly, 'and the address is two-two-one B Baker Street.'

And then he winks, bids Stamford farewell, and is gone.

Stamford finds it amusing. John remembers the last time he was this enraged. He had burned a forest to the ground, and caused the clouds to tear apart with screaming lightening. This time, he shifts uncomfortably from leg to leg, feeling pain whisper through his limb.

.

John ends up traveling to the flat. He is met at the door by Sherlock, who is far more civil this time. They are both greeted by a homely woman decorated with soft clothes and a lovely smile. She folds her arms about Sherlock in the most comforting of methods, and it is then that John recognises her. She nods at him slightly as he walks up the door. Whether she is here to help John or to watch over Sherlock, John does not know. He only knows that her duty is only to observe, as is the duty of her other sisters. She is introduced as Mrs Hudson, but John knows that this is only a life she has taken in order to remain close to Sherlock.

John takes note of the skull, amused by the fledgling's choice of toys. He might be an adult in human terms, but in truth, he was no more than a squealing babe. Everything is a mess, a hurricane of it, and when he mentions the thought, Sherlock attempts to rearrange things in embarrassment. John finds it oddly endearing.

Mrs Hudson mentions something about suicides, ambling in the doorway. She limps because she once rose up against the decisions of the Mighty, so they punished her accordingly. Now she is eternally old, and every movement she makes is plagued by anguish. She has learned not to disobey, and it hangs in her demure posture.

Then, the police arrive, lights flashing in darts of colour against the curtains.

'Not three,' Sherlock notes, 'but four.'

A grey-haired man leans tiredly in the doorway. There are scars on his heart where he has seen the bodies of children, but his love is still large enough to swallow a world. People like him are rare among humans. John watches him with interest.

'What's different?' demands Sherlock, glee dancing in his eyes.

Ah. Right. Rejoicing in the fall of humanity. John understands why the fledgling requires a Guide. It was easy to laugh at the demise of mankind, when one did not experience these pains firsthand.

Of course the grey-haired stranger knows that this is inappropriate behaviour, but he sighs and accepts the statement. 'We need you,' he states solemnly. 'Will you come?'

Sherlock calmly accepts, but once the man is out of sight, he dances about and announces that it's Christmas. His wings beat heavily against the air, almost forming solid shape. 

John watches with growing panic. Not only is the fledgling rejoicing, he is publicly celebrating death. This is not John's salvation. It is clearly some form of twisted punishment.

But damn it all, he is beautiful in the dark, grinning like a cat with its prey. John remembers another fledgling with the same colour wings, and the same sharp smile, the same dark beauty, and his heart hurts with an ache he has not felt in two thousand years.

With a joyful flourish, Sherlock bounces away, and John is left alone with Mrs Hudson. He taps his cane against the floor in a short burst of frustration. Normally he would have attempted to follow the mad creature, but this time the ache in his knee had turned into agony.

'Did they do that to you, too?' Mrs Hudson asks meekly, gesturing to John's knee. 'Was it punishment for leaving, Good Soldier?'

A rush of white-hot anger roars through John. He slams the cane against the floor. 'I was not punished!' he snaps.

Mrs Hudson draws away, trembling with fear. John realises that his hands are on fire.

John breathes slowly, calming himself. The fires die out. He smiles weakly at the old woman. 'I'm sorry,' he apologises. 'My knee still hurts.'

Mrs Hudson smiles back. She forgives easily, for if she did not, she would be bound by all the mistreatments thrown upon her. 'That's alright,' she soothes, pressing her palm against her chest. 'My sister told me you were in pain. It's only natural that you're angry.' She claps her hands softly, and the agony fades into a dull thud. 'There,' she smiles. 'Let me make you some tea. Only this time, though,' she laughs, nodding at John's knee. 'I'm your Watcher, not your helper.'

That answers that. She's here to watch John, not Sherlock.

John sighs. He must be calm. He is living with an old woman and a child now. This is not the battlefield. This is a new terrain, and he must adjust himself to it. He studies the newspaper in search of more information on the suicides, and why Sherlock would be involved.

Naturally, this is when the man himself bursts back into the flat. 'You're a doctor,' he states.

Yes. Have been for the past five hundred years.

'Yes,' is all John allows himself to say.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. 'Any good?'

John reminds himself that he is dealing with a child, and must be patient. 'Very good,' he replies steadily, clenching his hand around his cane.

The black-winged fledgling watches him in avid delight. 'Seen a lot of danger?' he teases.

John remembers the dead, and the smell of blood mixing with rain-beaten mud. He remembers the smoke, and the feeling of sand digging into his open wound. 'Enough for a lifetime,' he says quietly. His shoulder throbs in response.

A smile drags dangerously across Sherlock's face, and John cannot breathe. He forgot how intoxicating a brother's happiness was, or how infectious the desire for a thrill was. He has spent too long separated from his kind. He wants the blood on his sword. He wants fire to bloom wherever he touches. He wants wrath, and he wants to bestow on others the sort of pain he feels. He wants the chase, and he wants the charge of the battalion. 

'Want to see some more?' Sherlock asks.

'God, yes,' John grins.

Downstairs, Mrs Hudson despairs for the fate of mankind.

Chapter Text

John didn't really expect Mrs Hudson, but he can understand one of the watchful sisters present in Sherlock's abode. What he cannot understand, however, is the dark-skinned woman standing guard in front of the crime scene. Her eyes flash towards Sherlock in distaste, and in that moment, tawny wings loom over her body, beating once in a threatening stance. John notes the lack of an official weapon. A Guide.

'Hello freak,' she sneers. Her hand clutches at the radio in her hand possessively. Whoever is at the other end must be the human she is Guiding. Her gaze sweeps over to John, and her eyes widen slightly.

Of course she recognises him. There isn't an angel that cannot. 'What are you doing here?' she demands. Her eyes flash towards Sherlock. 'Why is he here?' she hisses, jabbing her finger in John's general direction.

In the dark, Sherlock's black wings creep over every light and drift on the cold wind. They are endless in size and girth. It is as frightening as it is enchanting. They envelop John in their dark embrace. 'Shut up, Donovan,' Sherlock replies icily, lifting the tape for John to pass. 'He's with me.'

For a moment, it seems that something in the Guide's mind has twisted and broken. Donovan stares after Sherlock's receding back with her mouth agape. John takes pity on her, knowing the volatile creature that the fledgling seemed to be. He settles his hand on her arm and offers an apology in Sherlock's behalf.

Donovan sets her jaw determinedly. Her tawny wings fold into a more submissive position. 'I didn't know they'd make you babysit him,' she grumbles. 'Good Soldier, of all people.' She cocks her head, narrowing her eyes. 'I thought you were in the trenches, getting shot at. What happened?'

For them, time does not exist in a single line. It is a morphing element full of twists and turns, and secret corners that the sisters know well.

'I got shot,' John responds dully. The words are barely enough to describe the agony of flesh parting for such a small amount of metal, or the sick fear of finally falling into the darkness.

Donovan is saddened. To her, becoming a human seems almost like dying. Becoming a cripple is an even worse punishment, but it seems no one will understand that John's disposition is not punishment. It was a choice he made long ago, a choice that he lives with as best he can. 

Donovan stands aside to let him pass. 'Be careful,' she warns him anxiously. 'He's dangerous. He's not like us.' She nods towards the house that Sherlock disappeared into.

John smiles. 'I know.'

Inside, Sherlock is arguing with the grey-haired man. It seems his name is Lestrade, or at least, that is what Sherlock is calling him. The grey-haired man notices John's existence and gives a sigh of utter despair. John notices the radio in his hand and draws a conclusion. This man - Lestrade - is who Donovan Guides.

'He's with me,' Sherlock insists, and the man frowns at him disapprovingly. Sherlock turns to John with a bright smile and introduces the man as Detective Inspector Lestrade. 'Who's on forensics?' Sherlock demands.

'Anderson,' is the tired reply.

Sherlock curls his lip in disgust. 'Anderson won't work with me,' he announces. John suspects it is the other way around, which is unsurprising. 'John will be my assistant.'

Lestrade is unamused, but he allows the decision to pass. Sherlock bounces excitedly up the stairs as John is given a form of quarantine gear to wear. John struggles a little due to his knee, but Mrs Hudson's treatment has eased his progress a lot.

'Donovan calls you Good Soldier,' Lestrade notes calmly. 'Why is that?'

John stares at him, momentarily stunned. Then he understands. 'You're a prophet.'

Lestrade smiles thinly. 'Not really,' he replies. 'I'm more of a witness.' He tilts his head slightly, offering John a pair of  gloves. 'So why Good Soldier?'

John cannot smile back. He looks at his feet and feels the ache of having physical form. 'It was a joke amongst my brothers,' he explains softly, so that no one will hear. 'It is only funny in our tongue,' he adds, shrugging.

Lestrade studies him carefully, brow contracted in a frown. 'Here I was thinking it was because you were a good person,' he says wryly.

John looks him in the eye, tightening his grip around his cane. 'I am many things, Detective Inspector,' he replies, 'but I am not good. You should remember that.'

They climb the stairs together in silence.

Sherlock is practically grinning with excitement by a door. More inappropriate rejoicing. John will have to talk to him about this. 'You're very slow, John,' he scolds. 'It's agitating.'

John thinks about tearing his wings off slowly and stuffing each jet-coloured feather into Sherlock's throat. He smiles awkwardly and mumbles something semi-apologetic about his knee. Of course, this does not impress the taller man, since he has already concluded that the limp is nothing more than psychosomatic. He sighs heavily and pushes through the door, ignoring the looks received from the forensics team wandering up and down the stairs.

It is not a sight for the faint-hearted. A middle aged woman lies collapsed on the floor, dressed in an alarming shade of pink and drowned in her own blood. Already it has started to form and coagulate, and the air is thick with the sickly sweet smell. There is a thick smear of brown on a dresser, and in the mirror the letters RACHE have been drawn in blood. The last letter is covered by a handprint. Lestrade covers his nose with a handkerchief, but this is a scene that John has seen too many times before.

Sherlock bends over the body, running his gloved hands over her coat, pulling out a pocket magnifying glass and peering at the woman's fingertips. He observes her jewelry and the soles of her shoes. He raises her hand slightly, causing her arm to pop out of the blood with a sickening squelch. He frowns, bending to inspect the woman's wrist. 

'Suicide, obviously,' drawls a voice from the doorway. There is a distinct nasal drone to it that causes John's hair to stand on end. He turns to find a thin, pallid-looking man leaning against the door with a smirk plastered on his face. 'Slit her wrists. Fingerprints on the razor.'

Sherlock rises from his place, wings unfolding threateningly. John tries not to react, but he cannot quite believe how far the fledgling's wingspan seems to stretch. 'Very intuitive, Anderson,' he retorts, sarcasm dripping from every word. 'Apart from the fact that the cut on her right hand is too deep for a right-handed person, especially when she would have previously sliced her left wrist.' He mimes the motion using his pocket magnifying glass. 'Her tendons would have been completely severed. Isn't that right, doctor?' he presses, nodding at John.

John frowns. 'Well, yes,' he replies. 'Severed tendons make it hard to hold anything. She would have dropped the razor.'

Anderson immediately focuses his wrath on John. His eyes dance over the letters scrawled on the mirror. 'Well, maybe it's a form of revenge,' he offers, pointing at the bloody message. 'Rache. That's revenge in German,' he adds proudly.

John imagines burning the smarmy little bastard to a crisp. He finds himself entertained by the image of Anderson aflame, but then, anything set on fire eases his mood. 

Sherlock seems more annoyed than John, because he strides across the room and slams the door closed in Anderson's face. This draws a slight chuckle from John, but he hides it quickly in a cough. 'Give me five minutes,' Sherlock instructs Lestrade.

The Dectective Inspector begins to protest, but Sherlock cuts him off quickly. 'You need me,' he reminds the older man smugly.

Lestrade meets John's eye. 'I do,' he agrees quietly. 'God help me.'

Direct contact with humans, then? Is that what Sherlock's duty is? John still does not understand how to Guide when he still doesn't know what the fledgling's purpose is.

Lestrade clears away the lingering forensics team and all other members of the police, throwing one last warning look at John. Sherlock nods towards the body expectantly. 'Well?' he asks expectantly. 'What do you think?'

John laboriously skirts the pool of blood, props his cane against his knee and squats in an awkward position to try to handle the dead woman without disturbing the coagulating crimson pool. He lifts the wrists, finding confirmation that her wrists have been completely severed, tendons, arteries, veins and all. Humans have been capable of dangerous feats under the influence of narcotics, so John bends to test the woman's breath.

That is when he smells it, almost drowned by the blood and the remnants of the woman's perfume, thick and sly: sulphur. He grits his teeth. Demons do not walk so boldly amongst the living. Like Guides, they are only capable of the mere suggestive word, or the manipulation of a situation. They cannot possess a human. The balance is tilting, the rules are being broken.

John suspects that being a Guide is not the only reason he has been sent here. He wishes for his sword, but he gave that up when he fell.

Then, he notices the cracked skull. He lifts his gaze to the dresser and makes the connection.

'Well?' demands Sherlock, impatient. 

'She did cut her own wrists,' John reveals with a sigh, 'but she was definitely under an outer influence.' He nodded towards the dark smudge on the dresser. 'She didn't die from the bleeding though. She slipped and hit her head on that dresser.'

Sherlock's mouth twitched with pleasure. 'What influence?' he demands.

John smiles thinly. 'Not drugs.'

This seems to annoy Sherlock. 'Obviously' he growls. He does not like to be kept in the dark. 

The fledgling is hardly ready for a showdown with demons. John decides to keep his knowledge to himself, offering an altered version of the truth. 'Madness,' he offers.

Sherlock is disappointed, and his attention diverts away from John back to the body. He is only interested in that which is new and exciting. John rises from his place, returning to the door. Lestrade appears instantaneously, watching Sherlock over John's soldier with an odd mixture of awe and disapproval. Sherlock notices and rises from his place, whipping a phone out of his pocket and typing away furiously.

'So?' Lestrade asks, crossing his arms over his chest. 'What do you know?'

'Everything's out of place,' Sherlock frowns, eyes fixated upon his phone. 'She didn't die from cutting her wrists, like the other victims, but from hitting her head on that dresser. There is no feasible reason that she would still be conscious after losing enough blood to slip on it, so why was she? She was certainly coherent enough to try to write Rachel on the mirror.' Sherlock gestures quickly at the mirror, having delivered the entire deduction in one breath. 'She was smart, too. A serial lover, by the look of her jewelry. Every piece has been cleaned except her wedding ring, shows the state of the marriage. Consider her obsession with appearance despite her age, unfaithful. But why is she here, and not with one of her lovers? She wasn't traveling far. Her coat is still wet. Why is it wet when she has an umbrella?' Sherlock questions, pulling the mentioned article from the woman's coat pocket. He is a teacher, and John and Lestrade are the dutiful students. 'The wind was too strong. So, given weather conditions and time period, she came from Wales, therefore she only needed a small suitcase.' He frowns then, and sweeps his gaze around the room. 'So where is it?' he demands crossly. 'Where did you put it?'

Lestrade looks confused. 'Put what?'

John is still catching up the whirlwind of information. His heart beats in a flurry, knowing that Sherlock's own organ is   whirling to the same dance. Only a few hours next to the man, and they are already aligning. It is survival, for an older creature to absorb the existence of a younger one in his own kind. Only natural.

'The suitcase,' Sherlock repeats, growing annoyed. 'Have you moved it?'

Lestrade shakes his head slowly, glancing back at the woman. 'There was no suitcase.'

Apparently this means something to Sherlock, because his mouth falls open in a brief epiphany. The moment is soon over, and he darts past John through the doorway. A flurry of feet against the stairs, and Sherlock is almost halfway down. He pauses, commands for Lestrade to find Rachel, and is gone.

John is abandoned, angry, and very much confused. The pain in his knee is beginning to return. Mrs Hudson's alleviations have worn off.

'Forgive him for it,' Lestrade advises him kindly. 'He's easily distracted.'

John manages a smile, although he is currently wishing he could strangle the damned fledgling. He struggles on the descent. When he is finally out in the open air, all he has left of Sherlock is a single black feather floating on the wind. When he reaches Donovan, she looks pitying.

'He doesn't care about anyone,' she tells him, her wings folding gently around them to fight away the wind. 'He likes the chase. He likes the game. They made him like this, you know, on purpose. Cold on the inside. He's an experiment the Mighty concocted, and just like Morning Star, this will come and bite us all in the ass.'

John feels a piece of his heart draw taught at the mention of his lost brother. He drops his gaze to his knee.

Donovan breathes in a soft gasp. 'I'm sorry,' she apologises. The motion is sincere. 'You loved him.'

John shifts his grip on his cane and brushes her wings away. He does not need to be coddled like a babe. He is far older than she is, and he would prefer it if she could treat him as such. 'Everyone loved Morning Star,' he replies quietly. He glances up the street into the dark, noting the silence and the splash of colour that the lights cast on these walls. 'Do you know where I could get a cab?' he asks. 'It's just, my knee.'

Donovan nods understandingly and suggests he find a taxi at the end of the street. John smiles at her because he must be courteous to one of his own, and he limps a winding pathway to the road. The night grows colder as it ages.  John does not get very far before he is intercepted by a mark on the wall: a dark rune branded against the red brick. To a human it is meaningless, but to John it is a command. Once, it would have meant a call to arms, but those days are dead.

He runs his hand tiredly over his face and sighs heavily. He isn't surprised by the black car that pulls up beside him. When he climbs into the car, he finds himself sitting next to the watching sister who stood over him in the mud and the rain, who offered him the life of John Watson. This time she is not dressed in white, but in complicated swathes of black.

'John,' she greets with a false smile.

'I thought you were only meant to watch,' he states.

'And transcribe,' she adds, showing the phone in her hand to John.

John looks at the city moving past, and he ponders on the amount of the ether that circulates Sherlock. He wonders dimly if the fledgling ever notices. 'I suppose you have a name, too,' he hums. 

'Anthea,' she offers, but she is lying. 

John suspects that she always lies, so he does not ask where they are going. He knows it does not matter where they are going, because he already knows who calls.

They arrive at a warehouse, and in the fierce glare of the car spotlights, John sees the four great wings unfurl before he even glimpses the tall figure they extend from. The man's physical form belies the power shifting in his immaterial wings, the feathers gleaming in all the colours of the rising sun. He holds no signs of strength, however in this world, it is not the sword and the arm that wins a war, but it is power, and power he does hold in the expense of his suit. He leans on an umbrella, but when John blinks, it becomes a spear. When he blinks again, it returns to its former innocent shape.

'You could just call me,' John sighs. 'On my phone.'

The man smiles thinly. His wings rustle slightly, and the smell of peaches warming in the summer sun wafts across the warehouse. 'Come now, Uriel,' he presses, tilting his head. 'Do not turn your back on your brothers.'

John grows irritated. He does not like being called by his old name. 'What do you want, Gabriel?' he demands.

'Oh, it's Mycroft now,' the archangel corrects airily. 'And I don't want anything much. I understand that you have inspected the flat. I also suspect your monetary condition is... less than adequate. I can provide you with supplementary funds, provided you cooperate.'

John taps his cane against the ground angrily. A rush of fire bleeds into his hands, warming the air around him. 'Get to the point, brother,' he forces through gritted teeth.

Mycroft pretends to look offended, but they both know it's an act. They both know that living as a human is no easy task, and that in time, one becomes bitter and tired. 'I need you to inform me of Sherlock's actions,' he commanded. 'I am deeply concerned for him.'

John laughs hoarsely. 'Are you?' he grins. 'Why would you put a fledgling in the physical world? He doesn't understand anything.' He shifts his weight off his leg. 'What the hell are you up to?'

Mycroft flinches at the mention of the abyss, but he makes no move to correct John. The choice to fall involved the freedom of expression. He tapped his fingers against his umbrella. 'The higher issues of the Mighty do not concern you,' he says coldly.

John's phone chirps as he receives a message. He discovers that it is from none other than his potential flatmate, the enigmatic damned fledgling himself.

If convenient, come at once. Could be dangerous.

John returns his attention to Mycroft. 'Then I see no reason to cooperate with you,' he retorts pleasantly.

'You are loyal very quickly,' the archangel notes, a strain of confusion colouring his voice.

John flashes the man that was once his brother-in-arms a bright smile. He likes being sarcastic, and he loves being an annoyance to those that might look down on him. 'He's a fledgling,' he replies. 'And I'm his Guide. I have to be loyal, or else I would make a pretty shit Guide.'

He glances down at his phone just as it chirps again.

If inconvenient, come anyways.

'I'm off now,' he announces, nodding at Mycroft. 'I'm going to do my job,' he adds, lowering his voice dangerously. John knows how to be dangerous. It is what he was once renowned for. 'If you want someone to watch Sherlock, talk to the sisters, or the damned fleet of angels you have surrounding him. Leave me out of your schemes.' He taps his cane once more on the ground, leaving his own rune of brilliant red against the grey concrete. His sign is not a call to arms, but a warning of fire and brimstone. 

John is allowed to leave, unsurprisingly. After all, every archangel remembers the first battle, and how John burned a hole in Morning Star's chest before Michael threw him from the heavens. They remember the Good Soldier, and his fiery mark of war.

Of course, when he steps into 221B, Sherlock treats him with such imperiousness that it's infuriating. To Sherlock Holmes, he's nothing more than a retired soldier, an aging man with a psychosomatic limp.

John continues to imagine himself setting fire to Sherlock's dark curls, at least until he realises the madman has tricked him into sending a text message to a possible serial killer. He also finds out that the real reason Sherlock abandoned him was to search the city for a damned pink suitcase, and somehow emerged victorious. He suddenly finds himself amused, and remembers the days he was as brazenly foolish, and smiles to himself. For the first time in centuries, he feels like the Good Soldier again.

Chapter Text

Sherlock invites him into the night so they can watch the cars pass by from a restaurant. The owner - Angelo -  welcomes him happily, announcing that Sherlock saved him a lot of trouble by clearing his name. Sherlock seems displeased with being held responsible for any form of helpful activity. His wings droop against the floor, dancing far across the restaurant.

John wonders if he believes he doesn't deserve praise.

Angelo brings a candle. 'It'll be more romantic,' he explains with a broad grin. John tries to explain that they are not romantically involved in any way, but the man is already nodding and smiling and completely ignoring John.

'Order something,' Sherlock suggests, his eyes darting out the window. 'We'll be here for a while.'

John needs to eat, so he orders a plate of pasta. He knows that Sherlock's disregard for his physical disposition is only natural. Fledglings do not need to feed on human food any more than a fully grown archangel. However, there is a delicate, pained thinness to Sherlock that almost hurts to look at.

His dinner arrives, and John busies himself with food. He remembers the cold remnants of the food he ate in the trenches, and the sick feeling in his gut when the smell of flesh rotting and infecting drowned out the smell of each meal. He is grateful for this heat, and this food, and the fact that he is not being shot at all the time.

After a while, John notices that Sherlock is watching him.

'You know more about the victim than you want to tell me,' Sherlock states grimly.

John sets down his fork. 'I'll tell you what I know if you answer all my questions,' he bargains steadily.

Sherlock considers this briefly, a line appearing between his eyebrows. He nods once.

Good. Communication. Progress. John feels calm. 'What do you do?' he questions. 'Why do you work with the police?'

'I'm a consulting detective,' is the smooth reply. 'The only one. I invented the job.' Sherlock tilts his head slightly. In the dancing candlelight, his eyes are suddenly a deep indigo, and John does not remember what shade they were before. 'When the police are out of their depth, which they often are, they consult me.'

John nods, digesting this information. The fledgling plays a careful, finding those criminals and allowing them to be justly punished, but never fighting, never really having the stain of blood on his hands. He's too young for real battle, but already he is glorious. John cannot fathom how many killers, how many rapists, how many dark-hearted men Sherlock has put away.

'Alright, so how long have you been doing this?' John questions.

Sherlock shrugs, his fingers dancing distractedly over the tablecloth before running through the flame tauntingly. It seems that, as his emotions infect John's, John's own instincts are diffusing into Sherlock. 'Two years,' he replies. He offers no more information. His wings unfurl and loom over them both, not protectively, not threateningly, but in defense.

John narrows his eyes. He knows that Sherlock will answer all questions, as promised. The fledgling would do anything for completion of his knowledge.

'And what happened before that? You don't look young enough to have just jumped out of university,' John observes.

Sherlock's jaw clenches. He hovers his fingers a few seconds too long over the fire, the fleshy pads of his fingertips blushing an angry red. 'I was unfortunately displaced from full sobriety,' he answers cryptically. 

John understands immediately. A fist clenches in his gut.

Of course this would happen. Leave a fledgling in the human world, and things go sour. 

'I am not proud of my actions, but it got... difficult to keep the voices quiet.' Sherlock's eyes flash quickly to John's face, searching for some form of reaction. 'It was the only way I could find. Biological manipulation of the mind.'

John parts his lips, breathes in the air, and it hurts his lungs. Sherlock's face is blank, guarded, but his emotions swirl in a dark hurricane of fear, regret, and anguish. His feathers fall in a heavy rain around them.

'I understand,' John says at last. He does, actually. He is angry that he could not have been a Guide earlier, before so much damage had been done. Or was this part of the experiment as well? How to destroy a fledgling? It made him sick to think about it.

The candle burns a little brighter, but Sherlock does not seem to notice. He is busy staring at John as though the older man has somehow sprouted a pair of butterfly wings.

'What?' John sighs, stabbing his pasta exasperatedly.

Sherlock shakes his head. 'That's not what most people say,' he reveals.

'Most people aren't me,' John replies with a grin.

For a while, the fledgling watches him, his fingers pressed together, resting against his lips. Slowly, a smile spreads across his face, and his eyes light up into brighter, more hopeful shades. 'No,' Sherlock agrees. 'They aren't.'

The candle glows a warmer colour. They both notice, but they say nothing of it. Perhaps Sherlock attributes it to a more positive mentality. 

'So, you'll tell me why the victim managed to cut her wrists,' Sherlock states eagerly.

John nods, dragging his gaze through the restaurant. He sees no angels, no watching sisters, no demons. Angelo waves enthusiastically from his post. John finds himself smiling bleakly in return. He diverts his attention back to Sherlock. 'Fine,' he nods. 'Are you a scientific man, Sherlock, or are you open to other ideas?'

Sherlock raises an eyebrow.

John smiles. He repeats the motion Sherlock went through moments before, slipping his fingers into the candle flame. He holds his hand steady. Sherlock needs this physical evidence for the supernatural before he hears the full explanation. He is a mind that works in such ways, demanding proof for every detail. 'When you bent over the woman, you smelt sulphur, didn't you?' he questions calmly, his voice gentle. He is patient, and the fire warms his cold bones nicely. How long has it been since he has felt this glow?

Sherlocks eyes are wide open, drinking in the impossible sight of flesh settling above flame, unharmed. He is rapt with curiosity. 'Yes,' he murmurs, tilting his head slightly as he watches. 'Yes, but it didn't fit. Well,' he frowned, 'it could fit, if we assume she came into contact with the chemical in a laboratory or whilst passing a construction site, but there is no evidence to support those theories. The smell came from her mouth. Possible links to a tradition of taking sulphur and molasses as a spring tonic, but there was no molasses involved. So why ingest sulphur? It's not too harmful, but it's not pleasant either.'

John shakes his head slightly, smiling. 'You speak from experience,' he laughs.

Sherlock gives him an incredulous look. 'Of course I speak from experience,' he replies, which makes John laugh even more.

Sherlock's eyes draw themselves back to the sight of John's fingertips, still immersed in the dance of the candle. He still does not understand. Fire must burn.

Fire does burn. It does destroy. It also warms and protects. That is why John belongs to such an element.

'The sulphur is a textbook mark of demonic presence,' John continues. At the sound of his voice, Sherlock's attention whips back, elastic in its versatility. 'The woman was possessed.'

Sherlock is silent for a moment. His wings rise above him, stretching out like four points of a compass. The shadows in the room grow longer and darker. His presence feeds the black corners of each room, swallowing away at the light. It is terrifying and extraordinary all at once.

'You are telling me that demons exist,' Sherlock whispers, eyes wide. He is suddenly very young, a child listening to fairytales, believing and wondering and doubting all at once. 

John draws his hand away from the candle, offering his fingers to the other man for inspection. Sherlock grabs them greedily, drawing his pocket magnifying glass out of his jacket pocket.

'And angels,' John says pleasantly.

Sherlock's fingers brush against the the callouses on John's hands and fingers. John has worn many bodies since his fall, and they have all worn different marks and scars. 'Which are you?' Sherlock demands.

John considers the question. He reclaims possession of his hand, setting it on his lap. 'Neither,' he replies truthfully. His pasta is cool, but no less enjoyable, so he continues to eat.

Sherlock seems to have lost all interest in the case. He is now staring at John, as though simply absorbing visual information will provide an answer. John finds it slightly uncomfortable, but it is not the first time he has been so closely observed. He continues to eat until he is finished. Sherlock continues to stare.

'What about the killer?' John prompts, setting his plate aside. 'That text you made me sent, it should make him come right here. So what happens when he appears? How will we know it's him?'

Sherlock focuses immediately, his wings snapping together with a powerful rush of air. The candle goes out. If Sherlock notices this, he makes no mention of it. 'What does a demon look like?' he questions.

'Like a human,' is the frustratingly simple reply. 'They tend to blend in,' John clarifies. 'Like I do.'

This seems to light a spark in the fledgling's mind, because the same look of understanding floods his angular features. 'Of course,' he breathes, 'now it makes sense. Each of the victims are random because they're not picked. There is no underlying link because it isn't the killer that picks them, but the victim that picks the killer. The killer would be a stranger, but a stranger we trust instinctively, and can hide in a crowd. Someone that we seek out ourselves, even.' Sherlock's eyes widen with glee. 'Oh, that's clever,' he all-but gushes. 'But why is it clever?'

This again. John resists the urge to press his palm against his face. At some point, they need to have a talk about appropriateness. It's all a bit not good.

Then Sherlock's gaze drifts over John's shoulder through the window. 'Oh,' he breathes, and it is like a prayer. 'Who hides in a crowd?' He nods at a parked taxi. 'That cab hasn't moved in over an hour.' He rises from his seat in a flurry of beating wings and falling feathers.

John follows without a second thought. The spiral together into the face of traffic, dodging oncoming cars and dashing towards the taxi. It slides away, and they begin to chase. Sherlock must have a map of London in his head, because he darts into a thin alleyway without hesitation, dragging John behind him. Sherlock's coat billows at his calves majestically, cast into deep shadow by the shape of his outspread wings. They end up on a roof, somehow, and the fledgling leaps from rooftop to rooftop like an overgrown cat. John stares down into the ravine, remembering that he does not have the aid of wings or supernatural capabilities. Sherlock makes an annoyed noise, and a rush of adrenaline glistens in John's veins. He jumps over the gap before he even knows it. 

They intercept the taxi at a crossing. Sherlock yanks the door open. A confused face blinks up at him, an American voice demands explanation. Sherlock flashes a police badge gleaned from Lestrade, of all things, and grins. 'Welcome to London,' he chirps, and dashes away with John soon behind.

The tourist calls on an actual police official, and Sherlock drags John into an alley. The hide, half in shadow and half in light, backs pressed against mildewed brick and lungs heaving. One of them begins to laugh - who exactly, John cannot quite discern - and it is infectious. Soon they are collapsing against each other, wheezing and guffawing like complete idiots. It doesn't matter.

John hasn't felt this alive in a long time.

He only notices that he is not using his cane when it is returned to him. Sherlock looks smug. John suspects the entire chase was only to heal his limp, and he feels a rush of thankfulness.

Except when they climb up to their flat, they are greeted with a sobbing Mrs Hudson and half of Scotland Yard prowling and rummaging through Sherlock's things. Lestrade perches on a couch, giving Sherlock a long disapproving look. He informs them both that withholding evidence is a punishable crime, and Sherlock responds in a furious outburst.

'I'm not a child,' he snaps.

Lestarde argues that, yes, he is. John agrees silently, but then their definitions of a child are quite different.

'You don't have a warrant,' Sherlock argues, glancing into the kitchen. 

Donovan discovers eyeballs in the microwave, much to her horror, and is immediately ordered to return them. Apparently, they are an experiment. John is slightly worried by this. Meanwhile, Lestrade is calmly informing Sherlock that he does not require a search warrant, as he is currently conducting a drug sweep. John wonders then if it was Lestrade that pulled Sherlock out of the dark spots in his life. The fledgling himself grows very silent. 

Anderson appears in the kitchen. According to Lestrade, those that are present volunteered. Anderson sneers at Sherlock's experiments, and Sherlock sneers at Anderson's relationship with Donovan. John stares at her then, because he has never heard of copulation between humans and angels being permissible.

Donovan must sense his alarm, for she pulls him aside. Sherlock's gaze follows, his expression unfathomable.

'He's not human,' Donovan explains, glancing at Anderson guiltily. 

'He's a dick,' John states bluntly.

The Guide shifts her wings uncomfortably. 'A bit,' she admits, frowning. 'But they all are, aren't they? Changelings, I mean.' She is guilty about their relationship, especially because is indulging in pleasures of the flesh. 'He has his good points,' she adds desperately.

John knows he should remind her that the Mighty really don't care anymore, but she is unkind with Sherlock, and this makes him resent her just a little. He offers her a tight-lipped smile and advises that she put the eyeballs back in the microwave.

By the time he returns to Sherlock's side, the brilliant creature is rattling away about passwords and how the names of dead relatives were often used as such things, and how they could track the killer using the phone's GPS. John's head hurts with the flurry of technological references. Sherlock produces a laptop from the horrifying mess that is scattered about the flat, and he types fiercely. Of course he touchtypes, John thinks dryly.

'There!' he announces triumphantly. He frowns, peering closer. His lips move as he mutters something, but it is drowned out by a squeal as Anderson discovers a pig fetus next to the milk.

'Don't touch that,' Sherlock barks, leaping to his feet. Pandemonium rages as Anderson rants about the health and safety regulations. Lestrade looks pained.

Mrs Hudson appears in the doorway, trying to tell anyone who will listen that Sherlock's cab has arrived.

'I didn't call a cab,' the irritated man responds.

'Oh, but he's here,' Mrs Hudson sighs. 'I can't just send him away.'

Donovan spots a catalogue of blood spatters and alerts everyone, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the neatly framed photographs. John sighs and protests in the name of privacy, but then it's a little too late for that. He doesn't notice that Sherlock has left until he realises he has been waiting for a scornful attack on Donovan for too long. The flat is terrifyingly empty, despite being full of people.

Cab for Sherlock Holmes. 

John rushes down the stairs. The stench of sulphur hangs thick on the wallpaper. He bursts into the night air, but Sherlock is gone. Black feathers dance on the cold night air, suspended as though hung from a string, drawing a clear path for John to follow.

Molting feathers. A clear sign of distress.

'Fuck,' he utters, and charges after the nearest taxi. 

Chapter Text

John walks silently down the dark corridor towards the soft sound of voices. He is burning with fury now. He has allowed his fledgling to be kidnapped by a rule-bending demon. He failed. He grits his teeth tightly, fists clenched. He does not have a gun, does not have a weapon, but by the Mighty, he would bloody well tear that demon to pieces. He finds the source of the voices, recognising Sherlock's low rumble. The other voice is soft, gentle, almost harmless.

'Oh, I see,' Sherlock sighs. 'You're a proper genius, too.' His words are laced with sarcasm. Anyone that can be caught by his great intellect is not worthy of praise. If only he knew this was a demon's game, to turn one's vices against themselves.

'It's a simple game, really,' the demon whispers. 'Science or magic. Mind or matter.' There is a brief pause, and something metallic scrapes against a wooden surface. 'Logic is strong, isn't it, Mr Holmes?' he teases. 'Let's see if logic can keep me out.'

There is a second scraping sound, a blade being lifted away from the wood. John's heart trembles in his chest. 'This is not exactly a gamble of intellect,' Sherlock says calmly. 'Shall I demonstrate intellect, then?' A chair scrapes against the floor. Sherlock is rising from his seat, he is leaving. Good. Good. 'You aren't playing with human life for fun, or even for revenge. Photographs in the taxi of children, two, and a third person, obviously torn away. A woman, from the shape of her hands, and from the wedding band, an ex-wife. There is shaving cream still hanging from the back of your ear, so there is no one living with you to notice. But you have children.' Steady footsteps draw closer. Sherlock will leave, then, once he has explained the demon's entire history, his motives. 'I cannot imagine the result of a demon and a human procreating,' Sherlock continues, and John can almost see the cold smile in his voice. 'I would assume that your children are not entirely normal. So, this game of yours is for them, isn't it?'

There is a soft, wheezing chuckle. 'We're not supposed to have children, us demons,' the demon admits pleasantly. 'If my boss finds out, he'd kill them. If the angels find out, well, we'd have a war on our hands. But I have a sponsor.The more people I kill, the longer my kids will be kept a secret.'

Sherlock's footsteps stop. 'Sponsor?' he repeats slowly, tasting the word in his mouth.

'Oh, no one says his name,' the demon sneers. 'We wouldn't dare.'

There is a brief, terrifying silence, before the footsteps continue towards the door. 'Pity,' Sherlock remarks. 'Your game is over. The police will be here very soon.'

Oh for Christ's sake, man, get out of there.

'But you'll never know the answer the the great question, Mr Holmes,' the demon calls tauntingly. 'Is your power of logic really more powerful than me?'

The footsteps begin to lead away from the door, slow and hesitant.

'Come on,' the demon purrs. 'Have a taste. Give it a try.' Sulphur fills the air.

No. No. No.

Sherlock makes a noise in his throat, a sentence collapsed before it has even begun.

It's started.

Not going to lose him. No. 

The door splinters at John's touch. Sherlock is collapsed on the floor, his trembling hands clenched over a hunting knife. The jagged blade quivers just a hair's breadth away from his pale wrists. His eyes are wide, blown with terror. The demon is an old man. He could be a teacher, a friend, a father. John falters for a moment.

The fledgling gasps as the knife kisses his skin, drawing a thin, red line. The demon's lips twitch with a smug smile, his eyes too black and too large.

How dare he.

Pure rage explodes through John. It floods his veins, drowns his bones, breaks through his skin. He grabs the demon by the neck. There is a long, keening wail as the demon's skin begins to blister and pop. The skin on the demon's hands begin to crack. Burning flesh sizzles its stench into the air, smothering the sulphur. It's not enough, never enough for hurting Sherlock. John cannot see anymore, the fury is blinding. The demon's face is twisted with fear. He pleads and babbles, but John does not care to listen. He will burn every last molecule of this creature.

A hand grips his forearm. 'Enough, John,' whispers a voice in his ear.

John blinks. The anger is gone. He releases his hold on the demon's neck, and the burned body falls limply to the floor. From the whimpers, it seems that John has not killed it.

Sherlock bends over the demon, still wielding the hunting knife. He presses it against the demon's neck. 'Who is your sponsor?' he asks quietly, coldly.

The demon grits his teeth, eyes fixed on John in fear. He is too young to know what John was before. 

Sherlock breathes out in a little irritated sigh. He presses the knife down against crisp skin, drawing a gurgled cry. 'Don't look at him,' he orders. 'He's not the worst of your worries now. Give me a name.' His wings loom over the demon menacingly.

The demon is slipping, fading. The Good Soldier's fire is something that very few survive. He shakes his head, eyes darting from Sherlock to John, Sherlock, John.

'A name,' Sherlock hisses, dragging the blade slightly. A sliver of skin peels away.

That's not very good. Playing with torture is not something a fledgling should be doing. John is fallen, so he can do what he likes. He can play dirty. But a fledgling is pure, unformed, still wavering at the precipice of reality.

The demon scrabbles helplessly at the floor. 'Moriarty!' he screams. 

Sherlock lifts away the knife, but the demon is already dead. He tosses the knife away. They stand in silence for a while, watching each other warily. John rubs the back of his neck, trying to dispel the heat still burning in his skin.

'You told me you weren't an angel,' Sherlock says quietly.

'I'm not,' John confirms, inspecting his hands. They are clean. Always clean, despite the blood that will always stain his hands. 

Sherlock smiled thinly. 'Then why do you have wings?' he questioned. 

John frowns. 'Wings?' he repeats. The appearance of his wings is strictly impossible. Still, he glances behind him, but he sees nothing. He turns back to Sherlock in confusion. 'I don't have wings, Sherlock. Not anymore.'

Sherlock shakes his head firmly. 'You certainly have them,' he responds determinedly. He glances down at the corpse. 'Perhaps we should remove ourselves from the scene before Lestrade arrives.'

John nods and turns to exit through the door he destroyed. This is when Sherlock reaches out - curiosity, damn curiosity - and touches something that has no right to exist. A shudder of pleasure licks its way down John's spine, and he stumbles against the doorway.

'There,' Sherlock announces, oblivious to the effect of his actions. 'Your wings.' He reaches out and grabs.

Sparks dance behind John's eyelids. He is still descending from the roar of adrenaline and the dance of fire. This much psychic contact is uncontrollable. He forces himself to focus. Long, white-tipped feathers are clenched in Sherlock's fist, ruby, crimson, gold, auburn - all the colours of a tree in full Autumn. His vision swims as Sherlock moves his hand slightly. Oh, Christ. Has it been that long? This is too good. Intoxicating.

'Sher-' he gasps, gripping the doorway, 'S-stop, stop that.'

The fledgling releases him as though he were on fire. 'Did I hurt you?' he demands, anxiety flashing over his face.

John tries to laugh, but it comes out in a strangled croak. 'No, no,' he breathes. Oh, damn. Breathing is difficult. 'But, please, don't touch them.' He tries to glimpse his wings again, but they are gone. Good. Good. This makes more sense.'Touching, Jesus, just don't, okay?'

Sherlock watches him with his strange, shifting-sky eyes. He nods once.

John manages to calm down by the time they walk out of the building. He stands at a safe distance from Sherlock, trying to understand what would bring his wings into existence, and why only the fledgling could see them. Sherlock, meanwhile, paces agitatedly, his wings scraping over every space around him, reaching desperately for something. John's gut lurches when he considers that it just might be his own wings. When the police finally arrive, John has never been more thankful. Then he remembers the burnt body, the knife, and the shattered door.

Lestrade approaches them first, and Sherlock all but runs to his side. He talks in lowered tones, gesturing wildly and excitedly, waving at the buildings and the parked taxi. The Detective Inspector shakes his head. 'You're in shock, Sherlock,' he says gently, pressing his hands on the taller man's shoulders. 'Just sit down for a while, alright?' He nods at John. 'You alright?'

John manages a sordid attempt at a smile.

Sherlock looks incredulous. 'Of course he's not alright,' he hisses. 'Did you not listen to a thing I just said?'

'Sherlock! Go. And. Sit.' Lestrade pushes the outraged man towards the ambulance. 'Your wrist is bleeding.'

Reluctantly, Sherlock sulks over to the ambulance, where he allows himself to be patched up and is given a ridiculous orange blanket. Meanwhile, Lestrade sets his hand on John's shoulder. 'Sherlock's trying to convince me some random spontaneous human combustion occurred before you went in and saved him,' he explains. 'Is that really what happened?'

John looks down at his hands, then back up at the grey-haired man. He does not know what story Sherlock wove together. He does not know if Sherlock simply told the truth.

Lestrade rolls his eyes. 'Right, okay, you too,' he sighs. 'Go join Sherlock.'

John complies, because his head is beginning to throb. He sits next to Sherlock in silence while the other fiddles with his phone. They wait in silence until Lestrade allows them to leave. There is no denying that Sherlock touched his wings. Hell, he actually grabbed them. Therefore, John's wings exist, despite the fact that he willingly gave them up when he made his choice. He cradles his head in his hands.

A paramedic drapes a blanket around his shoulders. Sherlock is staring at him again, cocking his head in an almost reptilian nature. His gloves peer out of his coat pocket, and his sleeve has been cautiously rolled up to give space for the bandage around his wrist. He seems unharmed and completely unaffected by the demon's attempt at possessing him. He is, however, staring with disturbing relentlessness.

'What is it?' John sighs heavily.

'The connection between your body and your wings is clearly cut off by the blanket,' Sherlock notes, indicating with his hand, 'but the shape and positioning of your wings have not changed. It is as though the blanket and the wings exist in different dimensions, and yet, I am able to experience both.' His bare fingertips drag delicately over John's wings. A long line of flame-coloured feathers fabricate themselves into existence in their wake.

John hisses as pleasure courses through his body, crackling in his fingers and his toes. He bats Sherlock's hands away quickly. 'I said not to touch me,' he growls. 

The fledgling grabs John's wrist, pressing his forefinger and middle finger against his pulse. His eyes widen and his mouth opens in a silent 'oh'. 'You become sexually aroused,' he observes.

John flushes a startling shade of pink. 'No, I don't,' he snaps. 'It's not like that. That - that's not what it does.'

Sherlock tilts his head slightly. 'All the symptoms are present,' he argues. Perhaps he is disgusted, but he has yet to relinquish his hold on John's wrist. 'Your pulse is elevated. Your pupils are dilated.'

'I'm not bloody horny,' John whispers, very much aware of the paramedic now watching them. 'It's just how wings work, alright? They don't exist in this dimension, they exist in another, where our emotions exist. When you're touching my wings, you're touching my soul.' He leaves out the fact that, since he is no longer amongst the angels, he should not have wings.

Sherlock's forefinger draws a half-circle against John's still-sensitive skin. His lips are parted, his eyes still wide, a cat fascinated by a dancing pinprick of light. 'To have direct access to your soul would be very inconvenient,' he reasons. 'Controlling emotions would become near impossible.' He wrinkles his nose in distaste.

John watches the fledgling's pale finger trace idle patterns against the inside of his wrist. 'Sounds about right,' he smiles wryly.

The paramedic kneels beside them, clearing his throat uncomfortably. John expects Sherlock to withdraw from physical contact, but his fingers remain pressed against John's pulse. The paramedic turns his attention to John, very possibly because Sherlock was stroking thin air not too long ago. 'Does your boyfriend suffer from any drug allergies?' he questions briskly, routinely.

John frowns. 'He's not my boyfriend,' he corrects. 'We're not together.'

The paramedic looks surprised, then embarrassed, and glances unconsciously down at Sherlock's hand still gripping John's wrist. 'I'm sorry, I thought, I mean, of course you're not,' he stammers, swallowing nervously. 'But, not that it's wrong, I mean, it's fine, it's all fine.'

'I know it's fine,' Sherlock interrupts calmly. 'And no, I am not allergic to any drugs. Please leave us alone. We have no further need for you.'

'Sherlock!' John cries reproachfully.

Sherlock argues that they really do not require any more assistance, since John himself is a doctor. Neither of them are in shock. He then proceeds to discard his blanket and saunter away. John has to follow. After all, Sherlock is his responsibility. They have only walked a few steps when Sherlock reaches towards John's invisible, impossible wings. John dodges quickly, swearing loudly. Sherlock begins to chuckle.

'Stop it, Sherlock,' John says exasperatedly. 'We can't act like five-year olds at a crime scene.' He is beginning to giggle despite himself.

They are laughing in the face of danger. John knows that this can only lead to another disaster. He also knows with complete certainty that he has not felt this young or brazenly idiotic since he felled Morning Star, and it fills his heart with horrible joy.

Let the fledgling be many things, John prays. Let him be mad, even, but do not let him be a second Morning Star.

Chapter Text

Unfortunately for John, the cab killer incident is not the last time Sherlock tried to touch his wings. At times in the morning, when John is calmly making himself tea, the fledgling would creep up behind him. Of course, the soldier notices shadowy wings spreading about him in a deathly trap, and immediately locks the fledgling's arm in an iron hold. Other times, when they peer over a corpse, Sherlock feigns a nonchalant pat on John's back. It results in John cursing, Sherlock sporting a wicked grin, and Lestrade looking terribly confused.

It seems that no one can see John's wings but Sherlock, and John, on the rare occasion that the fledgling emerges victorious in his battles.

Sherlock continues to drag John along during cases, insisting that he requires an expert opinion. John suspects that the eccentric man simply requires a confirmation that the supernatural world is not interrupting his balanced universe of science. Luckily for the both of them, the cases that Sherlock receives - although spectacular and bizarre - are performed solely at the hands of humans. Sherlock produces a detailed explanation from a footprint, a woman's tube of lipstick, a walking stick, a damp patch of moss on the wall. John never ceases to be amazed at the accuracy of his deductions, and he often utters the occasional exclamation. Sherlock seems pleased by these moments.

Sherlock seems pleased a lot when they are together. His wings fold in a subdued manner against his back, rustling slightly as he speaks. He does not molt anymore, and in turn, John's knee never bothers him.

John calls it a healthy relationship. Donovan tries to convince him to seek another human to Guide, but they both know these positions are as exchangeable as one's immortal soul.

.

They are having breakfast on a Sunday morning - or, at least, John is eating whilst Sherlock sips tentatively at his tea and plasters nicotine patches to his arm - when Sherlock offers a barter system.

'What do you mean?' John frowns, looking up from his paper.

Sherlock looks faintly annoyed.

'You know I can't read your mind,' John states, shaking his head. He sets down his paper and waits for a proper explanation.

Sherlock taps his fingers agitatedly against the table. This is a disappointment to him. He has no idea how strong their emotional bond already is, thank the Mighty, or John would have to contend with further experiments at his expense. 'I understand that it is commonly expected for an intimate action to be returned with another,' he reports with the precision of one reciting a list that one does not fully understand. 'If I want to be allowed to touch your wings, and hence, your soul, I must allow you to do the same. I have thought of the different methods of simulating such an experience, however I believe that electrode insertion into my spine and brain will not please you.'

John gives him a long disapproving glare.

Sherlock responds by scrunching up his face in a childish expression. 'I have, however, devised a seemingly appropriate method,' he continues, relaxing his face into its original impassive state. 'For every time I touch your wings, I will tell you one personal fact about myself. I do not often reveal my history to other people, and as such, it will provide you with a privilege that others may not experience.' He nods once as if to conclude.

John stares at him. It could be a very good idea, or the worst he has ever heard. But John is Sherlock's Guide, and without the normal cues John could have used with a more emotive, expressive fledgling, a personal history is key to John's understanding of Sherlock.

'Fine,' John pronounces slowly. 'But under one condition.'

The fledgling watches him expectantly.

John pushes his breakfast to the side and crosses his arms. 'This happens when and where I say,' he says firmly.

Sherlock nods, impatient. 'And now?' he demands, already rising from his place. 'Is now good?'

John smiles then. 'No,' he replies calmly. He lifts his paper from its place and continues to read.

Black wings scrabble at every surface in the flat, desperate and pleading. Shadows dance agitatedly, structured forms losing their silhouette in rapid succession. A thick knot of discomfort grows in the centre of John's chest until he finds himself reading the same line over and over again. He sighs heavily and gives up. Sherlock watches him, his nails picking at the corner of a nicotine patch. At the crook of his elbow, John notices the circular scars. Perhaps this exchange is worth it, after all. He wants to know how his fledgling fell apart so that he might piece him together again.

John rises from his chair and indicates for Sherlock to follow into the living room. He finds himself a comfortable seat in the sofa and gestures for the eager fledgling to sit beside him. Usually, such contact is performed in the moments of peace between brother and brother, in a gesture of fondness or even pleasant communication. It is also a ceremony for days of jubilation, but John has very little reason for jubilation in his life. He is no longer one of his brothers. Now, his only family is Sherlock, so he calms himself and prepares for the contact.

Yet, Sherlock watches him with wide eyes, the iris shifting into a shade of weeping skies and tired waters. His hand reaches out tentatively. 'May I?' he questions softly. 'Please?'

Surprised at the sudden shyness, John nods.

Sherlock lowers his hand over the back of the sofa gently until it stops. A soft, shimmering whisper of clearest ecstasy dances up John's spine. He produces a guttural sound, tipping his head back. With hooded eyes, John watches in dazed amazement as red feathers bleed into life, shifting between Sherlock's splayed fingers.

'Your wings are beautiful,' the fledgling whispers. His voice echoes through the marrow of John's bone, humming behind his lungs.

John manages a garbled mess of words. His fingers clench into the sofa in an attempt to resurface, but Sherlock's fingers are moving, stroking slowly. Red dashes of light draw themselves against the back of John's eyelids.

Sherlock places his other hand over John's chest, warm and very much physical. A good anchor for a drowning mind.

'Mm, ahm, you, tha's good,' John mumbles, closing his eyes.

Maybe Sherlock laughs. Maybe he smiles. They feel the same to John: a long, glittering stream of blue moonlight dancing across his heart. Oh, that. John could live off that.

'My part of the bargain, then,' Sherlock says quietly.

A heavy knife draws a pattern through John's chest, digging into his wrecked shoulder. It hurts. Whatever past life Sherlock is about to reveal, it is locked with deep sorrow.

'When I was little, I was often mocked for my observations,' he explained. 'I was able to notice details that children my age could not. I also was incapable of behaving according to social norms. It scared some people, disgusted others. My mother, a prime example, thought it necessary for me to be diagnosed by a psychologist. I suppose it was better than admitting her suppressed belief that I was not truly her child.'

Christ. The fledgling was actually raised like a human. No wonder he is so withdrawn.

But Sherlock's narration is not over. 'The psychologist announced my condition as Antisocial Disorder,' he continues steadily, despite the stabbing in John's chest. 'That translates as a child sociopath. I have often considered the diagnosis astute, and yet.' He trails off, his hand tickling the most delicate of feathers. He whispers something else, but John cannot hear him.

What he would give to hear him.

There is a long silence as Sherlock breathes slowly. His hand does not move from where it settles on John's wing, but the pleasure cannot compete with the sorrow and the pain. John wants, needs to alleviate this agony, but he does not know how, so he waits and listens, his eyes closed.

'Thank you for agreeing to my terms,' Sherlock says finally, his voice clipped and composed. 'I hope I did not cause you too much discomfort.'

He withdraws his hand, and it takes all of John's strength not to reach out and draw him back. John has to hold him, protect him, enfold him with wings that do not and should not exist, promise him in the Old Tongue that there is nothing, nothing wrong with him. But John's mind clears. He remembers that Sherlock is not a man of physical demonstrations of affection.

He sits and watches the mask settle on the fledgling's face, while around him, feathers fall in a storm of dark tears.

.

They walk past a demon on the street, but she is only a little girl with a tin cup clasped in her hands. She asks for change for tea. John is unsure as to how this might tempt humans into sin, but she is a very pretty little girl in a very bad part of London. When she catches sight of John, she clenches her little tin cup tighter, biting her chapped lips.

Sherlock passes a fiver to the girl, and she passes a folded piece of paper to him. Her eyes remained fixed on John's face, wide and frightened.

'Homeless network,' Sherlock explains. 'Far more efficient than the Yard will ever be.'

John studies her for a while, then pulls a few coins from his pocket. 'What are you doing here?' he asks, not unkindly.

The girl swallows nervously, glancing at the fledgling behind him. 'Um, um,' she stammers. 'The King asked us to watch over him. Make, um, make sure he's safe. And help him.' She fiddles frantically with a corner of her jumper. 'We're not hurting him, I promise.'

John frowns. 'Morning Star asked you to protect him?' he demands, lowering his voice. 

The girl nods, squeaks, and flees. Sherlock watches her progress with slight confusion.

'She's a demon,' John explains, tucking his hands into his pockets. 'Not like that cab driver, though. I'm not sure what she wants.' Or, for that matter, what the Devil himself would want with his fledgling. John glances at Sherlock. 'How many do you have in your network?' he questions.

Sherlock shrugs, naming a very accurate number in the mid-hundreds. John wonders how many of them are demons. Whatever this is, if it involves both Gabriel and Morning Star, it cannot come to any good.

.

Sherlock dives recklessly into danger very often. He even dives into the river Severn to retrieve a hat, claiming it is invaluable evidence. Of course, it helps solve a triple homicide and save another young woman's life before she too is taken as a fourth victim.

John forces the insane fledgling to spend an hour in a warm bath, then the entire night wrapped in blankets to avoid pneumonia, forgetting that angels are not capable of contracting human diseases. Sherlock seems amused, and in a sleepy slur, reaches his hand out towards John's wings.

Because he is tired and worried, the doctor lets him have his way.

Later that night, John dreams about fire, and the feeling of soft hands on cheeks. He hears a familiar, sweet voice whispering in his ear, telling him the secrets of time. He is enveloped by feathers the colour of the depths of twilight, the mulling scent of wine, like the darkest of royalty, and the secrets of weeping widows.

He wakes at three in the morning with Morning Star's forgotten name on his lips, tears in his eyes, and an ache in his chest that refuses to fade. He forces himself to breathe.

Sherlock appears at his bedside at three-thirty. He says nothing about the ragged tracks running down John's face, or the fact that the doctor can barely speak. He places his hand on John's knee and speaks quietly. He tells John about a lonely childhood and a resentful puberty, leading to a life in university that either involved complete solitude or momentary scornful exchanges. He mentions a man - Sebastian - that he thought he loved, but alienated and injured instead.

'What happened?' John asks quietly.

Sherlock smiles bitterly. 'I'm a high-functioning sociopath with an obsession with intriguing deaths, John,' he replies. 'Relationships are not really my area. Besides, I was not so much in love with him than in love with the challenge and the puzzle he provided me.'

John sets his hand above Sherlock's, hoping that he can somehow squeeze hope into that abyss of loneliness. 'I'm sure you are capable of love,' he states firmly. 'Maybe the right recipient just hasn't come along.'

Sherlock watches him until he falls asleep with something akin to tenderness.

.

'Do you love him?' Mrs Hudson questions, when they are alone and Sherlock has gone hunting in dustbins.

John cuts a slice out of the cake she baked them. 'Yes,' he replies honestly, because he does. He loves as a mother must love. 'I'm his Guide.'

The old woman shakes her head slightly, colourless eyes dancing with old knowledge and new mysteries. She is everywhere at once, this sister, and yet she is the most stable. 'That's not what I meant, dear,' she presses, handing John a small plate. 'Do you love him?'

John is silent for a while. He moves the slice from cake to plate carefully. 'I don't know,' he says quietly. 'I don't think I'm allowed to.'

He was married once, in a time long since faded. The war paused long enough for it, and she was pretty and kind and very sweet. She never asked why he had such terrible nightmares, and she would sometimes kiss him like he was the most precious and delicate thing in the world. He had been young then, newly fallen and easily coddled. The Mighty punished him, of course. She died with the Summer wind, and her fragile bones were stowed away beneath a brooding oak. The Good Soldier went back to war, and remembered not to love a human again.

Sherlock is no human. He is a fledgling, a dangerous plaything of the archangels, stuck in the very middle of a web of terrors.

John cannot love something like that and not pay the price.

Mrs Hudson smiles sadly at him, patting his hand. 'You are fallen, Good Soldier,' she reminds him gently. 'You are free.'

John tries to smile back at her, but he cannot. 'No one is ever free,' he replies.

Chapter Text

In the memories he was given, John remembers the first time he entered the Bart's morgue, trailing behind a tired-looking professor and a load of fellow students. This time is much different, because he is following Sherlock's steady stride into the morgue, and there is only one body set out on the slab, covered in a white sheet. A young woman - barely more than a girl, really - stands beside the body with a clipboard in hand. She smiles bashfully at Sherlock, her cheeks tinting a pretty pink.

'I thought you would like this,' she explains in a soft voice, gesturing towards the body. 'Honestly, none of the doctors know what to make of it. But,' she laughs, tucking a strand of mousy hair behind her ear, 'you would.'

Sherlock lifts the corner of the sheet, peering at the corpse. He wrinkles his nose and nods towards John. 'What do you make of this?' he questions, inviting John to his side to inspect the body.

John is greeted with a disturbing sight. The corpse's face is sunken inwards, the skin hollowed as though decayed, the flesh white and taught. The skin around the mouth is pulled so tight that the lips peel up over the corpse's teeth, revealing deadly sharp canines. When John pulls back the eyelids, he discovers that the pupils have completely swallowed the iris. The rest of the body is barely decayed, the beginnings of rigor mortis setting in. From the general anatomy, John decides that it was a woman, or female, at least.

'Well?' Sherlock prods. His agitation seeps through their bond in sharp, repetitive jabs. 'What is it? Is it a demon?'

The girl - Molly, was it? - breathes in sharply.

John drops the sheet over the dead woman's disfigured face. He glances at Molly, but Sherlock waves his hand dismissively, because it is suddenly acceptable to alert humans of demonic presence on the face of the earth. John sighs wearily. 'No, it's not a demon,' he replies. 'First of all, demons can only take a physical form that resembles humans. My best guess would be that she was fey. Probably a Changeling.'

'A fairy?' Molly utters disbelievingly.

The fledging sighs irritatedly. 'Yes, yes, do keep up,' he says, pulling away part of the sheet to reveal a slender foot. He produces his pocket magnifying glass and peers at the sole of the dead Changeling's foot. 'Supernatural creatures apparently do exist amongst us,' he lectures impatiently, as he always does when he expects the world to have automatically updated its knowledge to match his. 'John himself is an angel-'

'Fallen,' John corrects automatically, then swallows the word in his throat. Molly is an outsider. He runs his tongue against his lower lip anxiously, studying her face for any alarming responses. 

The girl stares at him with large, doe-like eyes, however it is not instinctive fear that sits in her face, but wonderment and fascination, like a child seeing the stars in their full glory for the first time. Her hand flits instinctively to the little medallion hanging between her collarbones - a saint of some kind, but John cannot quite discern the words or the picture - and her lips twitch upwards in a meek smile. Every part of her is so purposefully subdued that she successfully hides her undeniable courage.

'John,' Sherlock frowns, giving him a pointed look of disapproval. 'Please do not flirt. We have pressing matters to attend to.' He nods towards the foot he has been inspecting.

John recognises the mark instantly: a lotus flower printed in neat black print. His jaw clenches. The first time he encountered this mark was whilst treating a wounded soldier in the Crusades  - oh, the things that man does in their God's name - and learning that the mark had been branded with an iron poker. Iron is poison to the fey, which is why that flesh never heals, and never ceases to pain the marked for the rest of their existence. 'It's the mark of exile,' John explains quietly, angrily. 'They are forced to live in the human world. She must have done something to anger her Queen.'

Sherlock pounces on this new species and attacks John with an endless flurry of questions, barely giving the man enough time to respond. John explains as best as he can. He does not meddle with the fey, and in turn, they do not give him trouble. His knowledge is therefore limited, and this displeases Sherlock. The fledgling's wings dance frantically across every surface, leaping out of the shadows and prancing over the dead Changeling's body. Molly watches, absorbing quietly.

When Sherlock moves to dissecting the fey with extraordinary skill, the girl approaches John. She smells faintly of pressed violets and a subtle hue of vanilla. Pleasant, timid, and safe. John wonders why she tries so hard to appear appeasing and timid, and almost fears to discover what her facade is hiding.

'He likes you,' Molly states matter-of-factly.

John blinks. 'Sorry, what?'

'He likes you,' she repeats patiently, a smile forming on her lips. They are strangely thin for such a pretty little thing, as though the force that had moulded her suddenly became jealous in the middle of their task. 'He looks at you a lot for approval. He doesn't do that with anyone. And he likes to be close to you. He doesn't like physical contact either,' she adds secretively.

'Oh,' is all John can say, because he always notices these things, and he wishes that he could ignore the way his chest is painfully contracting.

Molly allows her gaze to drift back to the fledgling, who is currently inspecting the corpse's spleen with unhealthy interest. 'I don't know what I really think about angels and demons, John,' she admits nonchalantly, 'but I do know you're a good man.' She looks at him then, straight in the eye, steel and iron and dark fire all present in terrifying enormity. She plays the lamb because she is a lion. 'You won't hurt him,' she states firmly, almost a command, 'and you'll love him just like this, the way he is. He needs someone like you, John. Don't leave him.'

The Good Soldier smiles tiredly, brokenly. 'And why would I do that?' he questions, because he is not only bound by his formal duty but by the thickest of his heartstrings and every fibre of his being, every last feather of his nonexistent wings. 

Molly smiles too, and a universe of devastation is reflected in her eyes. Something flickers in her face that is too old and too great to belong to a girl, and suddenly John remembers the fleet of tumbling angels in the terrible battle, the thousands that followed Morning Star into the abyss.

'Other people do,' she explains quietly.

John grins as an old conversation springs to mind. 'I'm not other people.'

There is a quick burst of laughter, and the timid girl returns. 'No, no, you're really not,' she agrees, shaking her head. She glances at Sherlock, who is beginning to work on the dead Changeling's contorted face. 'This might take some time,' she warns. 'Would you like some coffee?'

John accepts. He decides he likes this unusual girl.

.

After a long series of interviews, John finally gets a job outside of his daily Sherlock-induced hassles. His future employer is a pleasant, aesthetically-pleasing woman. She promises him a life of boredom. He tells her that a little boredom is good, but leaves out the vivid description of his blood-bathed life. He walks home in high spirits, finally having a source of income that will finally allow him to pay for the groceries himself.

As he walks into the building, he notices that Mrs Hudson is not in her flat. Sherlock's violin wails a cacophony of unforgivable noises resembling the cries of a tortured cat. John frowns, climbing the steps. He will have to remind Sherlock that the neighbours do not appreciate such harrowing experiences. The screeching halts momentarily. Sherlock's recognisable rumbling voice murmurs something incoherent. Another voice replies in turn, drawling and lighter in tone.

John identifies the voice even before he opens the door, but that does not stop his horror at seeing Mycroft sat in his favourite couch, his umbrella leaning against the arm of the couch. Opposite him, Sherlock is perched on the sofa, a look of utmost contempt smeared on his face and violin brandished threateningly in his hand.

'John, tell him to leave,' Sherlock growls.

Mycroft sighs heavily, his wings spreading about him in complacent authority. As his feathers rustle, the smell of warming pies on the windowsill of a grandmother's cottage swamps the flat, drowning out the usual smells of Sherlock's chemical experiments. He is demonstrating his ownership. John hates it. 'Come now, Sherlock,' he says in a reasoning tone, 'this is hardly appropriate behaviour.'

The fledgling's wings spread outwards in violent retribution, claiming his half of the room back from the impervious archangel. His lips curl back in a cruel smile. 'How's the diet going?' he jabs.

Mycroft's jaw clenches. 'Fine,' he replies delicately. 'How is your relationship with Doctor Watson going?'

Sherlock narrows his eyes. His bow hovers above the strings of his violin in an obvious threat. John notices that he has yet to change out of his sleepwear and his blue dressing-gown. This was a surprise visit, or else the fledgling simply did not care to impress his visitor.

'Honestly, Sherlock,' Mycroft reprimands. 'What would Mummy say?'

'I believe it was you that upset Mummy,' is the quick retort.

John blinks. 'Wait, what?' he frowns, closing the door behind him. 'Mummy?'

Sherlock rolls his eyes. 'You see, John, I have the misfortune of having Mycroft as a miserable, cake-hogging elder brother,' he reveals, dragging his bow across his violin in a dramatic minor chord.

'I see,' John says quietly. He understands now how intricate the entire conspiracy is. Not only is Sherlock convinced he is human, but the great archangel Gabriel himself has stooped to playing the part of a human in order to make this flawed reality believable. This is direct cruelty. It is punishment against a fledgling that has not committed a crime above the simple act of existing. 

Mycroft notices. His wings loom over threateningly, but they both know that even the greatest and oldest of the angels all feared the Good Soldier once. They would be wise to fear him still.

'I think it's time you told me exactly what you're doing,' John commands steadily. 'And tell Sherlock,' he adds. 'He deserves to know.'

Mycroft looks disapproving. John cannot care less. 'The higher issues of the Mighty -'

'My only concern is for Sherlock,' the Good Soldier interrupts. He is no longer friendly, jumper-wearing John Watson, but the old being of fire and flame, the angel of fury that burned a demon to a crisp without even the aid of his weapon or his wings. 'And do not threaten me again, or I shall retaliate. You would not want that, would you?'

Sherlock sets down his violin. He is watching John with renewed respect and perhaps the slightest traces of satisfaction. Perhaps it is the sudden change in accent and speech, or the way the smaller man has strangely gained a foot in height, or perhaps it is merely the fact that Mycroft is obviously more powerful and John just does not care.

Mycroft shifts uncomfortably in his seat. 'Very well,' he sniffs. 'There have been recent events which have threatened the peace treaty between the Mighty and Lucifer. The suicide murders is a prime example.' 

'I assume the Mighty refers to what literature calls God,' Sherlock intervenes, strumming his violin idly. 'It is therefore safe to assume that Mycroft is an angel. Therefore, you are either not my brother, or you have fabricated an entire life history for me to develop in.' He smiles then. 'Very clever.'

'We have pinpointed the main orchestrator of these events to a single name,' Mycroft continues. 'Moriarty.'

Sherlock and John exchange a glance.

'We believe that he is very possibly Morning Star himself, and that he is seeking to start a second war,' the archangel explains lightly, despite the grave nature of his accusation. 'We needed a method of allowing us to identify him in the human world. A fallen angel's wings are not visible to our kind, as your souls no longer exist in our dimension. We required a tool that would exist in our dimension with the sight of your dimension, thereby being controllable.'

Red is beginning to cloud John's vision. Not only has his fledgling been crafted as a sick experiment, but Sherlock is also incapable of seeing his own wings, his own soul, for Christ's sake. And after all of this, Mycroft still has the nerve to call him a tool, a method. A life is not a weapon unless it chooses to be.

'John,' Sherlock says softly. 'Your hands.'

They are aflame, tongues licking up to John's elbows, burning away his jumper and his shirt. Good. Very good. Mycroft looks alarmed. Oh, that's even better.

'Get out,' John whispers, but it is a bellow that echoes across the galaxy. There were tales that the angels whispered after Morning Star fell, of how his strength did not evaporate with his beautiful wings, of how he could still bend the night skies to his will, and how his songs would never fade. 'Get out, or I will burn you.'

So the great archangel leaves.

John does not look at Sherlock, then, because he does not want to be feared. He lets the fires die out, and he becomes John Watson again, pulling the form over his shoulders like one of his comforting jumpers. Just like Molly, he must play the lamb for Sherlock's sake.

There is a brief silence. Sherlock lifts his head and focuses his gaze on John, forces him to meet his eyes. 'Am I an angel?' he questions quietly. 

He is calm on the surface and a storm of fear and confusion beneath, inky feathers dropping in a storm about them, covering every surface with dangerous shadows. John wants to hold him, to promise him that this means nothing, that he loves him completely, but he stands his ground. He must not allow himself these tender motions. He cannot allow Sherlock to be punished for his weaknesses.

John nods once. 'You're a newborn,' he replies.

Sherlock bites his lip, his fingers tightening around his bow. 'So I have wings,' he concludes.

John nods again. He wants to tell the fledgling how magnificent they are, like whispers behind clouds that beckon to dying hearts, like the briefest of moments after lightning strikes and blindness ensues, like the soft welcome of sleep, and the gentle offer of death. He wants to explain how no fledgling is quite as beautiful or as spectacular as him. The words do not come, and John is mute. He drowns in Sherlock's self-hatred, his betrayal and his pain.

The violin slips from Sherlock's long, pale fingers and drops onto the sofa. 'I see,' he breathes. He looks up at John. His eyes are like the unforgiving rain and the devastating chill. 'Please leave me alone.'

His wings stretch towards John yearningly, battling away everything in their path.

But what can John do but comply? He is a coward in his own home. John walks up to his room, closes the door, and tries not to feel the burn in his throat and the ache in his ribs. He remembers the taste of mud and the searing streak of fire across the heavens, and the fall of a black-winged love.

John does not weep. He has lived too many lives for that. Instead he waits for sleep, and prays for dreams to evade him.

Chapter Text

Because he cannot sleep, John decides he will sit in the darkness instead. Mycroft believes that this Moriarty is Morning Star, however the demon Moriarty sponsored tried to kill Sherlock. It does not fit with the fact that Morning Star is trying to protect Sherlock. Besides, anyone who fought the old war has long since grown tired of the fallen comrades and the look in a brother's eyes when steel clashed against wing. Furthermore, Morning Star established clear rules on demons procreating with humans, insisting that those that dared go against this command be executed. There was no reason he would suddenly decide to protect the children of a human and demon.

Mycroft is being played a fool, and the cost will be too high. 

John sighs softly, running his hands through his hair. It is growing long again. He decides he will cut it, because he will never stop being a soldier.

Footsteps brush over the floor in front of his bedroom door. Breath moves the air.

John lifts his head, watching the shape of the door, listening to Sherlock's lungs expand and contract. 

Finally, the door edges open. Sherlock's figure is barely visible in the gloom but for the silhouette of his form, outlined in the softest gold. His head tilts in a silent question.

'Come in,' John responds, nodding at the edge of his bed. There are no chairs in here - Sherlock broke them for an experiment - and the desk is covered with books that have overflown from the other bedroom.

The fledgling approaches, his wings folded at his back. Suddenly they are small and compact. He perches just out of reach with his head slightly bent. There is nothing but loneliness now, and the feeling of suddenly being lost in an endless ocean. The light traces the curve of his lips, the bridge of his nose, each individual eyelash. He is devastatingly beautiful, molting all over the floor as he is, and John wants to cup those painful cheekbones in his hand, trace their line with his thumb, and promise the sunset and the sunrise to him.

Sherlock breathes in. He breathes out.

There are stories that claim angels are made of air, but that is far too redundant an assumption. They are made of the energies that hold each molecule together, and all that seeps through the cracks of the universe.

'The only instant where you are capable of seeing your wings is when I come in contact with them,' Sherlock states softly. 'Logically, the same rule would apply to mine. My wings.' He lifts his gaze, and he is young and small and too unprepared for the terrors of existing. 'Would you,' he begins, almost faltering only to tilt his chin up in a more characteristic show of pride, 'touch my wings?'

John fights every desire to immediately reach over and bury his fingers in those drooping wings, burn his love into a scar on the fledgling's heart so that he might never forget. He digs his nails into his thigh. 'Are you sure?' he questions gently. 'I will be connected to your soul. I will invade your heart. Whatever happens, I can't just erase it.'

Sherlock makes a low, irritated noise. 'I have considered this carefully, John,' he snaps. 'I would not be here if I had not.' His wings snap outwards and fidget restlessly.

Cautiously, John extends his hand to hover over an expanse of Sherlock's wings. Part of them have no shape or form, drifting into shadows. Part of them is illuminated in careful detail, each gentle feather gleaming like oil, a shimmering cascade of colour forming swirls and absent circles of pink, green and panicked blue. He lifts his gaze to meet Sherlock's.

The fledgling nods.

John reaches forwards, closing the breach. Sherlock gasps, his eyes blowing wide. His feathers are like the softest silk, cold like the first rains of Spring. John moves his hand slightly, and a row of glittering strands follows his movement like disturbed mica glinting in the sun. As he drags his fingers across the expanse of the fledgling's wing. It is like drifting his fingers through a cold lake in the heat of summer, knowing that fathoms and fathoms below, some leviathan might be rising from slumber. 

'Incredible,' he utters, staring at the shimmering pattern.

Sherlock's hands are trembling, so John captures them with his own. He stares at his feathers tickling over John's fingers, at the soft glow that surrounds each of them. 'How can these compare to yours?' the fledgling murmurs.

John draws his hands away from Sherlock's, pressing his palm against the fledgling's chest. He feels the heat radiate through his body, so very different from the pleasant chill of Sherlock's wings. He is neither here nor there, a fleeting image dancing between the spectrum of a rainbow, and when one stares too long he might suddenly disappear.

'You are unique, Sherlock,' John tells him firmly. 'Do not compare yourself to anyone.' He suspects that if he does not voice this as a solid statement, he will not be understood. He smiles then, because one of them must hold enough happiness to feed both of their hearts. 'Besides, you're young,' John adds wryly. 'Still got time to grow. Me, I'm done. These wings are what I'm stuck with.'

He still cannot completely wrap his head around the fact that these abandoned limbs have returned to him. He is like Sherlock, existing in one plane, looking into another. As reflections, the only way that they can exist is by watching each other. John decides there is a tragic poetry to this.

Sherlock shakes his head. He reaches out. John knows what he wants, but he also knows what it means. He catches Sherlock's hand before it comes into contact with his wings.

'Why?' Sherlock demands in a soft exhale. There is a desperation in him that is frightening, it is so uncharacteristic. 'I'm cold, John. I need -' he cuts himself off, blinking at John.

John realises he has been stroking patterns on the back of Sherlock's hand as well as his wings. He stops, looking down at their interwoven fingers. He remembers what he told Mrs Hudson but suspended in a world of blacks and golds, with his fledgling's wings folding slowly around him, none of it matters. So he lets it happen. He lets Sherlock's hand go.

And they collide.

It is a flurry of quiet, suppressed sorrow, and a wave of dark love that sears across John's vision. He is not sure which is his emotion and which is not. Ecstasy and agony are one. Perhaps he whimpers. Maybe Sherlock groans. He cannot separate one from the other. The nebula explodes against his retinas. The world is singing to him in the hymns of the Mighty, and dark wings ripple against the stars.

John crashes back into his body, feeling the warm, fleshy shell constrict about his body. He feels lips press hungrily against his, clumsy and blind but warm and good. Fingers dig into his wings, painful and breathlessly wonderful. John comes to the conclusion, much to his bewilderment, that Sherlock Holmes is kissing him, and that he is kissing right back with equal fervor. John pulls away, trying to breathe.

'Urgh, breathing,' Sherlock growls, catching his thoughts effortlessly. 'Breathing's boring.' He thrusts his wings forwards, pinning John underneath their crushing strength. 

It seems that the universe is gifting him with several impossibilities, because he can feel the sensation press against his wings as though they are part of him again. He tilts his head slightly in confusion. This is when he sees them for the first time in centuries: rippling rivers of red dancing across shades of auburn, gold, red, tangerine and warm yellow, white sleek tips glimmering with celestial light, and the longer, broader feathers that make up his primaries and secondaries, the colour of old anger and thick blood, edged with gleaming gold blades. This is why they call him Good Soldier. This is why they fear him. The base of his soul is full of war and weaponry. It has been so long he almost forgot, but now he remembers.

Sherlock watches him with acute rapture, his fingertips slipping down the curve of a gold-edged feather. 'They all should be terrified of you,' he breathes dreamily, pupils blown impossibly wide. 'All the angels. All the demons. All of them. They should all worship you.' He giggles, bending his head to knock their foreheads together. 'So dangerous,' he breathes against John's lips. 'So beautiful. So, so. I don't know what you are. Can't figure you out. Why? Why? Why are you here?'

John feels dampness on his face and piercing daggers in his heart. He cups Sherlock's face in his palm. 'I'm your Guide,' he states foremost, because it is the simplest of explanations. 'And I love you.'

In all manners.

Quietly, yet equally violently and devastatingly, Sherlock begins to sob.

.

John's wings light up the living room, and Sherlock's own fit in the careful spaces between, forming a tent for them to hide in. Sleep will not come to them, but tears are long since gone. Sherlock made John hot cocoa, and he has finished half of the mug. John Watson is more of a tea man, but he lingers in the feeling of the cold press of his fledgling's wings against the back of his neck.

Sherlock informs John that he is like the sun.

John responds with a joke about Sherlock's brazen ignorance of the solar system. 'And if I am the sun,' he adds, his voice growing gentle, 'you're the rest of the universe, and all the stars that sit in between.'

This pleases Sherlock, and his contentment drifts underneath John's skin in trickles of gossamer cerulean. 'When one angel touches another angel's wings,' he says softly, 'it is the equivalent of direct contact with that angel's soul. What does it mean when this action is carried out by both parties towards each other?'

John smiles, looking up at his wings. The marginal coverts glow with a ember warmth. 'It means we make a full bridge,' he replies, dropping his gaze to meet his fledgling's. In this odd light, Sherlock's eyes seem a shifting shade of amber. 'I can feel what you feel. I can see what you can see. It lasts approximately a fortnight,' he adds for clarification. He does not have to state that it is the boldest statement of love that he was ever taught, when he was still made of unbreakable bones and an ethereal heart.

Sherlock's lips curve upwards. Oh, that smile.

John continues to explain the full nature of wings, and how they are an embodiment of one's soul and their core elements. He wonders at the shifting, complex architecture that makes up Sherlock's being. There are secrets there that he might never understand. He also explains that four wings means an archangel, two means a lower ranking angel. He reveals that Donovan herself is a Guide for Lestrade.

Sherlock hums, nodding. 'It provides a suitable explanation for her hostility towards me,' he muses. 'If she were protecting Lestrade, then it is quite obvious that I am a source of danger.' He raises his eyes to meet John's. 'I am similarly dangerous company for you,' he adds quietly.

This makes John laugh. 'I live off danger,' he grins. 'I have a reputation for it. Why do you think Mycroft is so terrified of me?'

Sherlock smiles reluctantly. 'The look on his face was certainly worth the trouble,' he agrees. 

They grin at each other for a while like the idiots at they are, because only the most foolish would find rousing a powerful archangel funny. Even if they are fools, John surmises that the universe has been requiring a few brave fools for a while. 

.

'Is he actually humming?' Lestrade frowns, standing beside John as they watch Sherlock bend over a corpse. It washed up onto the shores of the Thames this morning.

John smiles and shrugs, even though he knows every last cadence and every note of the symphony Sherlock is humming. It has been a week, but their bond is still strong. When they chase down criminals in the dark, John's wings still burn their path into the bricks in a long crimson trail, leaving behind the faint scent of burnt spices. Sherlock makes deductions out loud, but John has already seen each piece of evidence light up as his fledgling notices each in turn.

Lestrade's brow wrinkles as he frowns. 'You're not shagging him, are you?' he questions.

'No,' John replies laughingly.

Sherlock leaps up from his inspection, brandishing a folded paper flower. 'Look, John!' he exclaims happily. He hurries to his flatmate's side, revealing it to be a black lily. He studies John's face expectantly.

John lifts the paper flower from Sherlock's gloved hand. 'This is like the girl's tattoo,' he observes, remembering the Changeling's corpse in the morgue. 'You think they are connected.'

'Yes, yes, of course they are connected,' Sherlock announces gleefully. 'Oh, this is brilliant! This is spectacular!' He then grabs John's face and plants a great, smacking kiss on his lips. He practically whirls away, hands spread to the sky, wings stretching outwards over the waters in celebration. Sherlock's happiness infects John. He forgets that he was once frightened by the colour of his fledgling's eyes, and the taste of mud and blood. 

Of course, this is the last thing that either of them needs. Angels do not meddle with the fey, and likewise, the fey do not interrupt an angel's course. But John is fallen, and Sherlock is mad. What more damage can they do to themselves that has not already been done to them by the great forces of the Mighty?

'Are you sure you're not shagging?' Lestrade asks again, amused.

John can only shake his head, pressing his fingertips against his lips. He does not know if they are, or if they ever will indulge in those forms of physical deliriums. He only knows that they climb into the same bed at night. He knows that they talk in quiet voices, and sometimes they do not talk at all, but kiss to keep themselves mindful of their bodies of flesh and bone. He knows they still drink tea together, and that Sherlock is still infuriating and John still complains about scratches in the woodwork and bullets in the wall.

The grey-haired Detective Inspector smiles warmly. It is the first time John sees this expression on his face. It suits him. 'Well whatever it is, I'm glad for it,' Lestrade announces, pushing his hands into his pockets. 'I'd say you're good for him, but you're both as bad as each other.'

They laugh at this for a while until Sherlock insults them both for not paying attention to his clever explanation about underground societies and mafia.

Chapter Text

'Soo Lin Yao,' Sherlock announces over his steaming cup of tea. 'The female Changeling that Molly introduced us to. That's her name.' He toys with the little folded paper flower. He stole this from the Scotland Yard's evidence, but Lestrade has yet to notice or at least charge in demanding its return. Perhaps he lets Sherlock keep the item as a form of inspiration to remain working on the case, although Sherlock pinpointed the cause and time of death five minutes after inspecting the corpse that washed up on the shore. Apparently it was poison. A concentrated dosage of very rare treefrog venom, in fact, placed in the victim's system by a thin, pointed needle in the poor man's neck.

Lestrade called it cruel. Sherlock called it clever, adding that it was a painless death anyhow.

Their link has finally faded, and John can no longer feel his wings or sense every turn of the fledgling's thought process. Of course, the damned youth offered to reconnect their binding, but John insisted that sort of thing was a bit of a once-in-a-long-while thing, and to repeat such events in such short periods of time was just crude. Sherlock suggests that sleeping in another man's bed is also considered an inappropriate section of their life, according to human society rules. However, come the depth of night when John retires to his bed, Sherlock follows dutifully and settles in beside him. They also still share soft, lingering kisses. These kisses have recently become spontaneous: in the dangerous shadows of a stakeout, in the drifting light and black rectangles of a London cab, after a whirling chase through the streets of London, and once in front of a very shocked Donovan over a stack of evidence.

John cuts through his bacon. He is spending every luxury he can afford, especially when it is Sherlock's card which pays for their food. The bacon he was forced to contend with before his life as John Watson was a pitiful state of affairs. 'What about her connection to the victim?' John prods. 

Sherlock's eyebrows dart upwards. His wings stretch habitually towards John's in an attempt to make contact, to share the information in seamless, efficient streams. John frowns, shaking his head in reminder. Their bridge is broken. The binding has ended. They should remain distanced for a while, at least until John can reign in his thundering emotions and compress them into a neat, bearable packet. He does want to love his fledgling, but the recent fluttering emotions are dangerous.

The fallen must not drag down those that are superior, and whatever has been stated about him, Sherlock is still superior to John in every manner.

Sherlock presses his lips against the rim of his cup. John remembers how they felt against his, and feels a painful warmth stab into his chest. Damn it all to hell, he thinks. The fledgling's adam's apple bobs. John wants to feel it between his teeth. He wants to taste blood as he digs his fingers hard into Sherlock's wings. He wants his fledgling to understand this form of pain that is so intoxicating, it becomes a twisted addiction. He wants to show that he really is not a good man, and never could be, because once an angel has fallen they can never return to their initial mentality.

'Soo Lin was previously employed at the National Antiquities Museum,' Sherlock explains, setting his cup down in its saucer. 'It was there that she met our beach corpse, Brian, and they established a romantic relationship.'

John smiles fondly. 'You mean they fell in love,' he corrects.

Sherlock crunches his nose up in something akin to disgust. 'Yes, yes,' he sighs. 'They went as far as to bear offspring together,' he adds calmly.

John chokes on his food. 'Sherlock!' he gasps. 'You can't call, you just, don't call children offspring. And how do you even know that? They're not even married!'

The fledgling looks incredulous. His wings move quickly, agitatedly. 'Technicalities,' he dismisses. 'And, as for your question, the corners of Brian's sleeve had two obvious signs of caring for a child. One: stains of milk. If it had been instant milk, then it would suggest single parent without a mother, but this was milk straight from the source. From a mother, John. So obviously there is a baby involved, possibly not quite teething yet, otherwise there would not be so much mess from feeding. Also, the stain patterns align with a habitual rolling up of the sleeves.' Sherlock rolls up his own sleeve in clear demonstration. There are no scars of an addict there, but Sherlock is so careful, always. He likes to hide himself away.

John is not sure why that fact drags a knife through his ribs.

'The second sign,' the fledgling continues, returning his shirt to its original disposition, 'is baby lotion, highly oil-based despite the obvious issues involved. When applying one would roll up their sleeves, but this was an afterthought, something he forgot to do. With that level of inexperience, he's obviously a new parent.'

John sets his cutlery down onto his plate. He does not think he can stomach his food. Many of the fey live among humans, and some even fall in love. This much is common knowledge. But, like other people with other dimensional origins, it was a breach of several laws for any children of mixed race to be born. 'Interbreeding is illegal,' John informs Sherlock gravely, 'among any of us. That's probably why the two of them were killed.' These affairs are matters of the Changeling's Queen and court. They should not intervene.

'As punishment,' Sherlock nods. He presses his fingertips against his lips, eyes focusing on a distant point in his mind's eye. A streak of glee rumbles through the air, knocking John full in the chest.

Oh no. He knows this emotion well as it bleeds through their connection. Sherlock is going to be clever, and he needs to listen.

The corners of Sherlock's lips pull upwards into a delighted grin. 'He's slipped up!' he exclaims, throwing his hands into the air. 'He's finally made a mistake!'

John inquires as to what that mistake might be. He rescues the cup of tea before his mad fledgling topples it over and ruins their last good tablecloth.

'The baby,' Sherlock growls irritatedly. He seems outraged that John has not grasped this yet. He does not fare well without the binding. His brain moves too fast and his wings beat against the furniture in maddening rushes and he searches for what he may not have. 'The baby is still alive. Two idiots can't hide a great secret like that on their own, so they need help. Who is the only one we know with the power and intellect to do that? Who showed interest in the last half-human set of children we came across?'

'The cab killer's sponsor,' John says quietly, realisation dawning on him. 'Moriarty.'

Morning Star once defied the laws of the Mighty, but this is different. This is not defiance. It is a slow poisonous tipping of the scales, a corruption of the borders between races. Moriarty is breaking several rules by allowing these breaches of the set laws, and eventually, the cracks in these foundations will cause chaos. It is all wrong, and John knows it deep in his bones.

'If we find the baby, we find him,' Sherlock announces happily.

John stands from his place, taking his unfinished breakfast with him to the sink. 'I don't think we should find Moriarty,' he informs the sink.

Sherlock hears, of course. 'You think I will be doing exactly what Mycroft wants,' he states quietly, as though his hypothesis is already a conclusion. 'You think I'm letting myself be used. It's completely idiotic, John. I'm doing this for the game.'

John sets the dishes down and tries to breathe through his anxiety and his anger. Inappropriate glee at crime scenes is something he is used to. Playing a game with an extremely dangerous and very influential creature is stupid. Innocent lives will be lost in the crossfire, and the joy that dances in Sherlock's rain-coloured eyes is not far from cruelty. John will not accept this from his fledgling.

'And what happens when you meet him?' he demands softly. 'What happens when he tears you apart? What if you fall, Sherlock?' Oh, damn. His voice is shaking now, and his throat constricts. He holds himself upright by pushing against the sink. 'Do you know what falling feels like?'

Sherlock is very quiet. The shadows of his wings grow small and subdued. 'John?' he calls. 'John, turn to face me. Please.'

John cannot comply. He does not know how to look into his fledgling's eye. He is terrified of losing these early mornings and the nights when Sherlock moves against him in slumber, the sulks and the complex explanations.

There is a silence that lasts a lifetime for John. To the rest of the universe, it lasts precisely three seconds.

'If I fell,' Sherlock rumbles, 'then I would simply have my soul in the same dimension as yours. I see no loss in falling.'

John closes his eyes and focuses on the movement of his lungs. The exhale. The inhale.

Sherlock breathes out in a little sigh. 'You need to understand that you are the only thing I care about,' he continues. His voice is infuriatingly calm even when his wings snap upwards uncertainly.

John shakes his head. 'No,' he snaps, turning to Sherlock. 'You care about the game.' And he dries his hands on the dishcloth and he walks out. 

He leaves because he has no words to say, and he cannot fall in love this way when he is so close to being the cause of his own beautiful, brilliant fledgling's destruction. It is too late, anyways. He already is irrevocably in love with the bastard. He paces down the streets. He is angry at himself mostly for allowing it to move so far so fast, but it is effortless. Like falling into the sea and drowning. He pulls angrily at his coat collar, digs his hands into his pockets, and walks faster.

Unnoticed by John, a scattered piece of torn newspaper catches flame. It drifts upward to the grey sky in curling wisps of black ashy remnants. A wind casts it down again towards the swiftly moving pedestrians. A hand lifts from the crowd, catching it carefully. A young woman observes her prize. As the wind shifts again, it pulls away her curling, golden hair away from her jaw, revealing the thin white scar that mars her simple prettiness. She lifts her gaze to the disappearing figure, his bowed head and angry steps, and smiles.

She can be everywhere at once. She is the least solid of them all.

John is startled almost out of his skin when she appears in front of him, a spectre rising from the mist. He curses briefly. She smiles at him amicably.

'Clara,' she offers, extending her hand.

A confusing series of memories sifts between the contact, glistening mischievously between his other mundane memories of being plain John Watson. John frowns at her. 'Sister-in-law?' he utters. 'And I have a lesbian sister with an alcoholic problem? Harriet Watson?'

'Harry, actually,' the watchful sister corrects pleasantly. 'We're back together again. And no, Good Soldier, this isn't a joke on Gabriel's behalf. I'm afraid it's a very serious movement indeed.' She links her arm through his and tugs encouragingly. 'Come on then, John,' she says brightly. 'Let's go have lunch with your sister.'

.

Sherlock is restless on his own. He used to love it, but in the previous weeks he has grown almost addicted to the sensation of being mentally linked to John's stable mind. He has too much noise ricocheting in his cranium. John's head has the right amount of quiet, and the right amount of hidden secrets and locked passageways. He is interesting, and now Sherlock has gone and pushed him away.

Agitated, Sherlock tosses his phone into the air and catches it with his fingertips. Normally he would hate relying on Mycroft's assistance. Now that he knows they are not even properly related, and that he is little more than a tool for his brother, Sherlock's blood boils at the thought of even hearing the man's voice. He spins the phone idly in his hand.

There must be some way of getting John to come back.

Or he could follow John. The fallen angel does not notice it, but in his moments of anger he leaves an obvious trail of insignificant objects burnt to a pile of ash. To an ordinary, unobservant eye, it would look like nothing more than shadows, but Sherlock is anything but ordinary.

So he gets his coat, and heads out onto the street to find his Guide.

.

At first John does not recognise her. She sits in the corner of the little cafe, her eyes darting over the latest stock figures, fingers dancing over the numbers idly. Her hair is short, straw-coloured, and hangs rather dully around her square jaw. She is not as pretty as Clara, that is for sure, and apart from the oddly delicate shape of her nose, she would even be considered a masculine-looking woman. She dresses for warmer weather, but sits as though she has yet to notice the cold. As they enter the cafe, she lifts her head to watch them enter.

This is when John sees her eyes, green and glittering gold, and the sharpness of her smile. He remembers.

'Oh,' he gawps stupidly. 'You.'

'Harry, you great berk,' the woman grins devilishly, motioning for him to sit opposite her. 'You'd think you learned some manners after all these times.' She pats the seat beside her, and Clara drops gracefully into place, offering her cheek for a chaste kiss.

John watches in dazed amazement.

'Now, I think we should have a little talk,' Harry initiates. 

This is when he recovers, blinking furiously. 'Yeah, yeah,' he growls. 'I think we really should, General.' He leans forward, lowering his voice. 'What the hell are you doing, parading as my sister? And why are you female? Why are you - Jesus. Are you in this with Mycroft?' John's voice grows strained, his features tight. 'I expected it from him,' he hisses, 'but you? Michael, he's a fledgling. He shouldn't be used in your bloody politics!'

He falls silent then, realising that he has used an old name for another member of the fallen. He immediately begins to apologise, but the General waves her hand.

'I understand that you're angry,' she nods. 'And I haven't seen you since you fell.' She orders herself a pint of beer, to which Clara reacts by throwing her a disapproving glare. 'To answer your questions, I'm trying to keep an eye on you. Protect you. Make sure you don't end up getting killed. And I'm female because I like it. Most importantly, I have not had anything to do with Mycroft's schemes since I fell.' She wrinkles her nose in disgust. 'I hate the little brat.'

John laughs. He remembers the General in her full glory, how she had always believed in the old ways. She had fought the war before Morning Star fell, and blacker evils lurked in the bowels of the primordial soup of the earth. None of this eroded when she lost her wings.

Harry smiles at him warmly. 'I haven't heard you laugh in centuries,' she admits wryly.

John bites his lip, staring at his hands. 'Sherlock's made me laugh a lot,' he reveals, his voice barely louder than a breath.

Clara raises an eyebrow. She knows, of course, the shape and measure of John's affection for his fledgling, but she will not speak. She believes that secrets are meant to be left unspoken, until they are stumbled upon. 

But Harry knows John better than the depths of the universe. She knows him through to the core of his fiery heart and his warrior's mind. They were both old soldiers, once, and now they wander with their armour stripped and their honour abandoned. Her smile fades slightly. 'You really do love him,' she notes quietly, 'don't you?'

John bristles. 'I have to,' he snaps. 'I'm his Guide.'

Harry shakes her head. 'No, that's not it, and you know it,' she says firmly. 'You love him so much it hurts, doesn't it? I know what that's like, John, believe me.' Her hands shake only slightly as she reaches for her pint. Clara intercepts her motion, threading their fingers together. 'Why do you think they threw me out?' Harry laughs bitterly. 'It wasn't the drink. It certainly wasn't the war. We were the best, John. We really were, but we loved too much and too often, and these are bad times for lovers.'

Clara kisses Harry's knuckles then, and the trembling subsides.

'I know what Mycroft's done to Sherlock,' Harry continues steadily. 'I also know he won't find Morning Star. Our brother has had a long time to get good at hiding. Besides,' she adds, shrugging nonchalantly, 'us old folk have had enough fighting. No, Moriarty is someone else, and we're all going to be in deep shit if Mycroft doesn't pull his fat head out of his arse.'

Clara makes a mildly disapproving noise, but the two siblings burst into uproarious laughter at the image of the pompous, well-dressed man in such a contorted position. They continue to prod at their brother's uptight disposition, sniggering like a couple of schoolboys about to wreak havoc on unknowing innocents.

John misses this banter, these coarse jokes. He misses this more than anything, but he cannot laugh for long.

Moriarty is a greater threat than Sherlock believes, and John fears it will be his fledgling's undoing.

Chapter Text

John is halfway through lunch when Harry finally decides to tell him why she fell. She narrates the story quietly, stopping every so often to sip from her pint of beer in a manner that suggests control after long battles with alcoholism. John knows the signs. He has watched men in the trenches with the same problems. They drank to escape the bombs, the mud, the stench and the filth, and to forget the homes they left behind and the peaceful lives they would never know how to live again. The great General was glorious. She was the first to be born out of the galactic fungus that formed the first days of the universe, all steel and war and glory and blood and fury. She was the only one that knew how to love so fully that she would kill for it.

The General fell in love, of course, with man. The original order was to bow and serve this fragile race, but over the centuries the General had watched the tenderest of moments. In the traditional battles, she fought with a great fervor for her beloved humans, because she knew that the light that burned within them was unquestionably greater than any the Mighty had created. When the war changed, so did the General's trust in the Mighty. She wanted men to be left alone. They deserved free will.

To rebel is to fall, and so she fell.

Clara holds her hand throughout this, rubbing her thumb against the back of Harry's hand soothingly. 

'I'm sorry,' John whispers. It hardly feels adequate, but it is all he can offer.

Harry smiles. 'It's better this way,' she assures him. 'I have Clara.' At this note, her supposed wife kisses her gently on the cheek, and a burst of warm affection floods her face.

John always thought the watchful sisters were not meant to intervene, but then no one is playing by the rules anymore. Besides, of all interventions, one of comfort and care is hardly harmful in a world grown cold and unforgiving.

Of course, this is when Sherlock Holmes sweeps through the door of the cafe, his overcoat billowing dramatically at his calves. John feels a burst of possession, anger, and anxiety buffet him all at once. In the reflection of Harry's empty glass, Sherlock's wings spread outwards in what seems to be a very impressive attack. John sighs in a quiet little huff. If Sherlock's ability works instantaneously then he already knows what Harry is. The fledgling comes to a stop, standing beside John with his hand resting on the smaller man's shoulder. He looms above them all, his wings forming a protective tent around John's body in clear defiance of Harry's presence. Sherlock's eyes dart over Harry, taking in her features, her clothes, the pint sitting on the table, and Clara's hand intertwined with hers. He raises his eyebrows. 'John,' he intones, dropping his gaze to his flatmate, 'who are this?' He nods at Harry, who is watching the fledgling's actions with great interest.

John tilts his head slightly, bemused. 'I would have thought you could deduce that,' he remarks.

A look of irritation twists Sherlock's face. 'Yes, of course I can deduce,' he growls, his grip on John's shoulder tightening. 'I know she's a recovering alcoholic, which is why her wife is here to support her despite the fact that they were previously separated. I know she has two cats, one which is blind, the other crippled. That's all very well, John, but I cannot deduce her name or her relationship with you.'

John is surprised that Sherlock has not said anything about Harry's wings. He considers the possibility that Sherlock cannot always see a fallen angel's wings. 'This is my sister, Harry,' John introduces, nodding at the General, 'and that is Harry's wife, Clara. And Harry, this is Sherlock Holmes.'

A look of subdued amusement plays on Harry's masculine features. She extends her hand. 'Pleasure to meet you,' she grins. 'I've heard quite a bit about you.' She gestures towards the empty seat beside John. 'Now that you know we aren't a threat, how about you take a seat?'

Sherlock pulls his phone out of his coat pocket, glances at it, and returns it quickly to its previous placement. 'No,' he replies bluntly, 'we have to leave. They found another body. Another black lotus.'

John wants to tell Sherlock that the affairs of a fey Queen and her court are not matters to be trifled with. Those which tried to intervene in the past were punished severely. The lucky ones were transformed into crows, while the unluckier few were thrown into the fey arena, where they were clobbered to death by a troll. John is perfectly capable of protecting himself against a few fey if needed, but he has never seen a troll. He wants to keep his experience limited. But if Sherlock commands him to do something - anything - he will comply. 'Where?' he questions, rising from his seat.

Something flashes over Sherlock's face that is neither triumph nor glee. It surprises John so much that, for a moment, he cannot identify it. 'In his apartment,' he replies. 'And we have to hurry, or else Anderson will get to the body first and spoil everything.' He wrinkles his nose, and John laughs.

John apologises to both Clara and Harry, offering another meeting at a later date, and follows Sherlock out. As they climb into a cab, John realises what he saw in Sherlock's face. Relief. Sherlock was relieved.

.

Sherlock insults Anderson throughout his entire sweep of deductions. Lestrade looks pained, but bears it, because Sherlock is being incredibly smart. Now they know that the victim was taking care of a baby, being paid for his efforts in installments from an anonymous donor. Neither Sherlock or John takes much time in guessing who this anonymous donor might be. The victim was killed by concentrated dosage of very rare treefrog venom through the use of a similar weapon that killed Brian. A quick scan of the victim's browser history reveals that he found this anonymous donor through a third party consultant: a mysterious woman known as Irene Adler. Sherlock makes a cruel remark on the stupidity of some people in keeping their browser history unchecked. Lestrade looks uncomfortable, and Sherlock stops his mockery very quickly. Despite everything, John knows that his fledgling cares about the DI very much.

Sherlock contacts his homeless network as they leave the crime scene, informing them to keep an eye out for Irene Adler. John is not sure whether he should be relieved or terrified. Sherlock is not chasing after the fey court, but he is chasing after Moriarty. Both lead to death, but John knows how recklessly Sherlock throws himself into his work. He knows it is the only way Sherlock can feel alive, and it burns a terrible course of poison through his veins to think that he is not enough.

.

'You think Moriarty will kill me,' Sherlock murmurs, sitting with his knees pressed against his chest.

It is a dark, hollow morning, and the radiator cannot keep out all of the cold. John woke due to the lack of his fledgling's warm body pressed against his, black wings enfolding them both in a tender embrace. John wants to pull Sherlock close, to bury himself in the strange scent of chemicals and fresh laundry, and the underlying level of pheromones that belongs to no one else. He wants to dig his fingers into those dark curls, to kiss the sharp rise of his cheekbones, to taste Sherlock's dreams through the twists of their tongues. John wants many things, but he will never allow himself to indulge in any of his selfish desires.

'Yes,' John says, his voice loud and crude against the softened silence. 'I think he will.'

Sherlock's forehead wrinkles. 'Then why would he make this game?' he demands. 'Why hasn't he killed me already?'

John shakes his head slightly. 'Why does a cat play with a mouse before eating it?' he questions in return. 'I won't stop you. I know I can't. Just, Sherlock, please. I don't know what I'd do if you were hurt.' His lungs constrict and his breathing grows short. He clenches his fingers in the covers and the duvet, but he cannot control the flood of images. Of an empty flat. Of a life of dull existence, pretending to be human and waiting obediently for the end of John Watson's life. Worse, of returning to his duties as the fallen, shameful Good Soldier, fighting among man in the front lines, ravaged shoulder and all.

Sherlock unfolds, his wings spreading into the deepest of shadows and colouring them an inky silence. He reaches for John's hand, claims it as his own, and kisses the heel of his palm tenderly. 'You would do what I would, if you were hurt,' he informs John quietly, his voice vibrating through John's hand and into his heart. 'I would tear everything to pieces. I would make them scream.' 

John stares at him, swallowing the thickness in his throat. Yes. That is exactly what he will do. If Moriarty dares to even touch a hair on Sherlock's head, he will burn the heart out of him. He will abandon the morals he has lived by millenia for  for this brilliant, beautiful fledgling, and he feels not a scrap of regret for it.

Sherlock's fingers slip further up from John's hand, allowing his forefinger to press against John's pulse. 'Whatever Moriarty does,' he whispers, 'I will not let him touch you.' He lifts his other hand and cups John's face in his palm, gently, carefully as though the Good Soldier is fragile and versatile. 

A period of time must pass, in which certain unconscious actions must be taken, because John is suddenly aware that they are kissing and Sherlock is gripping him like a drowning man. 'No one else,' Sherlock breathes into John's mouth. His voice slurs into a deep, resonating growl, accentuated by the presence of Sherlock's hands on John's lower back. 'No one else, don't you dare, only me.' 

That goes right to John's groin, and he produces a strangled gasp. Well this is fitting, remarks a miraculously sentient part of his brain. Good Soldier, you are having a human reaction to a human ritual of procreation.

And it's so fucking good.

'Only you,' John repeats faintly, blinking rapidly. He utters a curse that would make demons blush when Sherlock presses his open mouth against his neck. Teeth graze his tendon, then a lazy stripe of tongue. 'Oh, oh Jesus. Jesus. Sher-Sherlock,' he gabbles, hands scrabbling in attempt to push his fledgling away. 'We shouldn't. You shouldn't. It's, it's not. It's not right. You're not meant to -'

But then clever, incorrigible Sherlock rolls on top of John, pinning him against the bed with his weight. Their hips smash together and John bucks automatically, his body replying naturally to what it was denied for so, so very long. 'Don't tell me it's not right,' Sherlock orders, pressing his palm against John's chest. 'You want this.' His hand slips upwards, resting on the patch of bare skin at the top of John's shirt. His lashes are thicker and heavier in the dark, as though he swallows the night and feeds off its offerings of moonlight and icy air. His pupils have grown impossibly big. 'I want this,' he adds, barely above a breath. 'I want you.' 

John closes his eyes and focuses on the steadying of his breathing. At least they are not binded, or else any form of self-control will be impossible. 'If we do this, Sherlock, I'm tainting you,' he states bluntly. 

Sherlock's lips twist with characteristic disbelief. He captures John's hand, draws it upwards through the impossible eternal space, and places it against his wings.

Oh. Oh, that is beautiful.

Rippling streaks of the most glorious cerulean dancing over the vast sweep of quiet, rolling waves. The darkest of skies ripped open at the seams, and the rivers of the universe are breaking through, because Sherlock is Everything, and he feels everything that the sisters see, but he will never admit how eternally wonderful he is. The aurora weeps over darkness, and it is all because of the pulsating heart in the centre: an pulsating organ of fire and folded swords, grasping at the emptiness with rolling arms of brilliant crimson and orange, each beat a roaring exclamation of its own existence.

John pulls his hand away, trembling. 'Bloody hell,' he whispers, numb with disbelief. 

There is an action of affection that angels perform, other than the binding. It is an old demonstration, one which is terrifying and irreversible for its permanency, and has been banned since the war with Morning Star. It is painful, but it is also one of the most beautiful of performances in the universe. Ancient humans amongst their sacred stones and carved hieroglyphs have watched from the mortal realm, recording these as marvelous storms, beautiful dashes of light, or even the voice of their gods speaking to them. It is far simpler and private than that. It is an angel offering their heart to another. Literally. If the action is not responded to in similar motions, it can result in excruciating pain for the party making the offering. 

That's his heart beating in Sherlock's internal cosmos. John is not even sure how it happened. It is the sort of thing one notices, usually.

'Do you know what this means?' John questions softly.

Sherlock's lips drift into a broader smile. He pulls John's palm back to rest against his wings, and drops his own fingers determinedly into the air behind John's shoulder. This time, the binding is not so much of a shocking explosion than a falling sensation of relief, as though too many strings have been stretched out taught between them. John's wings explode into existence, and he can see that the expanse of his secondary coverts - the very middle, dependable feathers of his wing - are now the purest of whites, like untouched snow, tipped with a gentle shade of indigo. It is a breach in his fire, but it is gentle and beautiful nonetheless.

'I've formed a hypothesis,' Sherlock replies, cupping John's face in his hand. His fingers are cool.

White, like snow. Like a frozen heart. A demonstration that is hardly subtle, because Sherlock doesn't know the art of subtle, he's blunt and stupid and he doesn't care if the whole world will see. He wants the world to see.

'Oh,' John utters thickly. 'You gave me yours.' He glances again at his wings, and the feathers that are not his but somehow fit as though they always existed their. 'You, you gave me your heart.' Tears sting at his eyes. Oh, no. He simply doesn't cry. He didn't cry when he was lying, half-dead and cold in the mud. He didn't when he fell, or when his wife from lives ago died alone. But this is Sherlock - cold, manipulative and maddening Sherlock - and he has given John his heart. 'You're an idiot,' John says, and it is comes out less weaker than he intends. 'You're a bloody idiot. And, so help me, I love you.'

His fledgling laughs silently. He kisses John so that they both taste like saltwater and agonised affection.

'I love you too,' Sherlock informs him, which is obvious, but he never said it out loud before.

John drags him down into a searing kiss, and forgets momentarily that he only argued the inappropriate nature of their actions moments before. He remembers soon enough, and orders Sherlock to sleep on the opposite side of the bed. His fledgling complies reluctantly.

When the sun finally rises, they have returned to each other's arms like planets must return to their orbital paths.

.

Days pass, and there is no news about Irene Adler, and no deaths worthy of Sherlock's attention, which makes him extremely fidgety. Clara decides to take John out for coffee. They sit together in the cafe, watching people pass by and identifying those which are not quite human. John finds it surprisingly entertaining, and Clara confesses that it is one of her favourite pastimes. She also notes the change in John's wings, of course, because she can be everywhere at once, and a fallen angel's soul is not a mystery to her.

'It's a good thing,' she tells him pleasantly.

John smiles wryly. He thinks it is a great thing, but that does not necessarily mean it is a good thing. They have both done something which is not only forbidden, but also incredibly brave and thereby undeniably stupid.

This makes Clara laugh. She has one of the most beautiful laughs in creation. 'Sometimes, certain actions of stupidity have to be performed in order for the strings of fate to be followed,' she assures him. She presses her fingers against the inside of John's arm. 'It's a brave thing you did, Good Soldier. A wonderful thing.'

'Maybe,' John agrees, nodding. He laughs, peering into his paper cup. He peeled off the plastic cover because its obnoxious warning sign irritates him. Sherlock is infecting him with all forms of bad habits, and it should infuriate him. It only makes a warm trickle of happiness glow through his veins. 'It really is amazing,' he laughs, 'isn't it?'

Clara squeezes his arm, wrinkling her nose as she grins. 'It is,' she winks.

She doesn't tell him that the storm John dreads is very, very close.

Chapter Text

They are watching reruns of some idiotic documentary on religion. John performs Sherlock's usual task, feeding his fledgling brusque corrections and pointing out each misinterpretation of the old tongue. It's all wrong and all the more funny for it, especially when Sherlock throws his head back and laughs. That neck, that neck can make the best of men fight each other. He is the most beautiful thing John has ever seen, and he belongs to him and to him alone. Then Sherlock turns to him, catches the back of his neck with the tip of his wing, and pulls him in for a soft kiss. They forget the documentary for a while. John tells Sherlock how the world was born, knowing the insufferable git will delete this information later, but that means John can tell the story over and over again. Sherlock tells him how wonderful, magnificent, how endless he is. John laughs and shakes his head. There is nothing endless about being fallen, even if you have the heart of a fledgling. There is a poetic irony to that: an ancient thing carrying the most innocent and therefore precious artifacts of them all.

Sherlock's phone blips with a happy exultation. He draws out of John's arms, his attention instantly riveted on the screen. His relaxed look of contentment snaps into vicious glee. John's happiness shrivels.

'They've found her,' Sherlock announces. 'They've found Irene Adler.' He rises out of his seat, his wings folding with precise neatness behind him. He is aware of their motions now, and like he controls the rest of his mind, he controls their actions with uncanny skill. 'Just as we expected, non-human entities contact her when they require assistance their formal and informal leaders will not provide. She is also involved in plenty of human scandals.'

John knows there is no salvaging their cozy evening. He lifts himself from the sofa and busies himself with finding his jacket. 'Where are we going then?' he asks, pulling his jacket from underneath a pile of books.

Sherlock mumbles an address, thrusting a quick map into John's mind with something that can only be identified as sheer laziness, but John tolerates it. He follows Sherlock into the street and then into a cab. His fledgling floods his mind with theories and pieces of evidence he has gleaned off his various contacts on this Ms. Adler. Apparently her fame is the sort that infects society in the most parasitic form, leaping from host to host, catering to each individual's particular needs. Sherlock gives a very visual presentation of these needs with the calm indifference of an observing scientist, allowing John to spend the rest of the taxi ride to learn that the Prime Minister's cousin has a kink for dominatrices and barbed wire. Thankfully, the cab stops before John finds out what various sex positions the Head of the Met likes to indulge in. 

As soon as John sees it, he knows exactly which house Ms. Adler lives in. A simple wreath hangs from the door that would appear like an early attempt at Christmas decorations, but is actually intended to ward off the fey. If one deals with fooling a fey court, one would certainly need to keep them out. John points this out to Sherlock, of course, who in turn, points the thin line of salt behind the window, almost concealed by the hanging line of the curtain.

'Very clever,' Sherlock grins. 'But it won't keep either of us out.'

John raises an eyebrow. He hopes that Irene Adler is not old enough to remember him, even if she is perfectly capable of seeing Sherlock's wings. He follows the fledgling up the steps and waits patiently as Sherlock jabs at the doorbell. He hears footsteps approach the door.

A small-limbed, rather pretty woman opens the door, dressed in a polite black dress with her hair knotted neatly back. As soon as her eyes meet John's she smiles knowingly. 'Good Soldier,' she greets pleasantly. 'We've been expecting you. Please, come in.' She isn't a demon, or one of the fallen, or even a member of the fey, and yet she knows.

John identifies what she is after a moment's hesitation. They don't exist much anymore, if they are not immediately snatched up and made prophets or witnesses - like Lestrade. They were once called oracles, or gurus, or mediums, or wise-women. At some point, they were called witches and hunted out of exterminated. 

Perhaps Moriarty is a collector of rare goods. Or else he finds her a good watchdog.

They are guided towards a living room and are instructed to wait there. Sherlock fidgets, of course, pulling out his phone and tossing it into the air, then placing it back in his jacket pocket. His wings intoxicate the shadows around the fireplace, teasing the horseshoe shamelessly nailed there as though to mock Ms. Adler's paranoia. They are everywhere - these little trinkets - and hold off against the strangest of creatures too, some that John knows have already gone extinct.

'Who were you?' Sherlock growls, irritated that he hasn't deduced this yet, although evidently every single stranger seems to know him on sight.

John sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. 'Later, Sherlock,' he offers, because they are in the lion's den, and it is no time for old stories.

An hour passes until Ms. Adler appears. Like the woman who answered the door, she is in a simple black dress. She greets them pleasantly enough, extending an offer of tea, which Sherlock rudely rejects and John politely accepts. He sees the empty blackness of her eyes, feels the disgusted twist in his gut, and understands. She is only half, and there is not enough illusion in her blood for her to smoothen over the instinctive repulsion one feels when presented with a demon. She is, however, very beautiful. She holds the same sharp, dark allure that Sherlock does, and it hurts to see the reflection of one twisted creation in another.

'I understand you are investigating the deaths of a certain unfortunate couple,' Ms. Adler begins courteously, tilting her head. 'I am happy to cooperate. I'll answer any questions I can.' She pulls her lips further apart to reveal needle-like teeth. Her eyes are fixed entirely on Sherlock. 

Sherlock narrows his eyes, his mind whittling through deductions at breakneck speed. He wants to catch her out, beat her at her game. He loves the danger and the challenge. 'You've placed the child somewhere safe,' he states calmly. 'Of course, you won't have it here. Look at your shoes. You love control too much. But you won't put her too far, you're paranoid and you want this job done yourself. You were meant to give it to Moriarty, weren't you, but you didn't. Why didn't you?' Sherlock's mouth parts in a silent 'oh'. Another epiphany. 'You're scared of him,' he announces gleefully. 'You want leverage; this baby is perfect ammunition. He provides your safety, too. He has for a long while, too, and if he wanted to, you would be dead in a second. That's why you're always so afraid of everything, because you know he'll come for you.'

For a fragment of a second, Ms. Adler's smile wavers.

But it is only a brief moment, and she leans towards him suggestively. 'Ooh, very clever,' she praises, raising her eyebrow artfully. 'It's just... sexy.' She lets her eyes drag all the way down Sherlock's body, then whisper back to his face. Underneath the thin veil of seduction, her predatory hunger is alarmingly obvious. 'You might be terribly clever, Mr. Holmes,' she sighs, 'but it won't help you with Moriarty. In this sort of game, the player with the least to lose will emerge victor. You know nothing about Moriarty and he knows everything about you.'

John knows his wings are spread in attack, the armored feathers hovering only inches from the damned woman's face, but they won't harm her. They don't exist. Instead, John clears his throat and straightens his shoulders.

Ms. Adler's attention snaps immediately to him, and she bares all of her teeth in a snarl. She doesn't seem to know that if they fight, he will win. Luckily for her, fighting is the last thing John wants. He forces himself to withdraw, but he cannot possibly control his soul as well as Sherlock seems to.

He leans forward slightly, palms pressed together. Appearing smaller will make him look less aggressive, and that automatic need to kill in Ms. Adler's inner demon will dull. 'What does Moriarty want with half-human children?' he questions, softening his voice. 'Isn't he afraid of what the Mighty will do? Or of Morning Star?'

The woman's lip curls back even further, revealing skeleton and gum and too much. 'We do not call them the Mighty,' she returns cordially. 'They are not our gods. As for Lucifer, he's been missing for years now. He is irrelevant' She leans back into her chair, uncrosses her ankles and crosses them again. As easily as she performs these polite motions, her features fall back into place, and the beautiful haughtiness decorates her high cheekbones the way jewelry must decorate a woman's throat. Expressions and subtleties are her weapons.

Sherlock loves the details. He is drinking them in, his eyes bright as they dance over each of Ms. Adler's reactions and words. He is not intimidated by her at all, and her half-formed threats. He seems to love her arrogance, but then they are both arrogant children, after all.

John hates feeling jealous, he really does, and he never should. Sherlock gave him his heart, for all that is Mighty, and that alone is clear declaration of eternity. And yet, his fledgling will always walk with one foot in the shadows, and Irene Adler is one of the most fascinating shadows John has ever seen.

He does not have much time for jealousy, though, because soon enough there is a scream from upstairs, followed by a hollow thud. Ms. Adler's face turns from porcelain to bone-white. In one liquid-silver motion, she is on her feet and charging out of the living room. Sherlock and John are fast, of course, and so is she - like midnight creeping across the world, like all of the stars extinguishing at once, like the death of one's beloved - but they are not fast enough. The medium likes crumpled in a heap in the middle of a bedroom, the neck of her dress torn open to reveal the red imprint of strong fingers, her lips parted and her eyes wide, unseeing as they stare at the ceiling. Her calves are twisted outwards, still fighting against an invisible assailant, and her hair is unbound and cascades endlessly about her face neck like a disfigured halo. Ms. Adler chokes, clenches her hand in a tight fist and presses it against her heart as she tries to regulate her breathing. Now there is nothing demon about her at all. She is hopelessly human and it stabs like a poisoned knife in John's lungs that she is tortured so.

Sherlock bends in one swoop, lifting something from the medium's open hand. His lips tighten. He extends the retrieved item to John.

A single black lotus. Not a folded paper trick this time, but a real one, an impossible act of nature.

Sherlock drops the lotus into John's hand.

'It's an invitation,' John explains immediately. The courts never invite anyone anymore. They used to have elaborate balls and shows, and they celebrated the existence of all things. They would mingle with angel and demon both, for their flesh could be shared without a child ever being born.

Sherlock watches the half-demon as she stares at the corpse almost blindly. 'Yes,' he nods, 'for us.' Then he is silent. 

He remains silent when Lestrade arrives, silent when Anderson trips over the corpse's leg, when Ms. Adler slaps the incompetent changeling so hard it burns three scratches down his sallow cheek, when Anderson burns himself on the talisman and cannot understand why, when they finally get into a cab and go home. Sherlock is so silent, it is almost as though he does not exist but for the soft whispering as his feathers molt.

.

John wakes in the middle of the night to find Sherlock perched at the edge of the bed, watching him. He drags himself out of slumber, rubbing away the sleep from his eyes. He extends a wing, taking care to embrace Sherlock only with the softest of his feathers. Fear and anxiety whispers at the edge of their bond.

'You were having a nightmare,' his fledgling informs him softly.

John smiles. 'I was,' he confirms. 'I've had them for a long time, Sherlock. I'm sorry if they woke you up.'

Sherlock shakes his head once. His hand reaches tentatively across the distance between them, perching on the edge of the rumpled duvet. John laughs with a soft huff and covers Sherlock's hand with his own, squeezing it firmly. 'Honestly, Sherlock,' he whispers. 'Come here.'

The fledgling complies with an appalling shuffling until he is leaning against John's chest, his back pressed against the puckered scar on John's shoulder. John sifts his fingers through Sherlock's mad rage of curls soothingly. Even if he has the nightmares, Sherlock swallows the panic and anger whole, translating it with his own over-powered mind until he has analysed even the most insignificant of details.

John will never understand how something so devastatingly beautiful could ever be his. He tells Sherlock this, pressing his lips against the nape of the fledgling's neck. 

'Well, I will never understand why you do not consider yourself beautiful,' Sherlock retorts, almost pouting.

'I'm an invalided soldier,' John offers. He brushes his fingers along the rise of his fledgling's collarbone, his other hand dropping to caress the scapulars of his innermost wings. 'A cripple.'

Sherlock twists, then, and sears a biting kiss onto John's neck. 'I love you,' he whispers, over and over again into John's skin as though by some miraculous osmosis it will drown every other thought out. His clever, clever fingers dance over the most sensitive areas of John's wings.

John wishes these moments could last forever. He wants it so much he feels his ribs peel back and his heart expose itself to the laughing heavens. He wants, even though he knows the inevitable death of beautiful moments.

.

Again, John is walking back from buying a fresh supply milk - 'Experiments, John! Surely you must understand the relevance of milk to mythical lore of fairies and how it appeases them!' - when a suspiciously familiar black car glides to a stop beside him. The window rolls down to reveal Anthea's smiling lips and indifferent eyes. John climbs in, preferring to avoid Mycroft's appearance at the flat. He knows Sherlock has a gun - illegal or not, he never asked and never wants to - and would rather like to avoid the wallpaper being torn up. 

This time, there is no intimidating ride to an abandoned warehouse. He is taken to a respectable looking building, one that he recognises from his life before the trenches. For a moment, he is reminded of the thick smear of death on his brow, and the dull ache of a foot infected beyond curing. He remembers the shuddering breath of a boy as he smothers his tears, knowing he will never see his love, that he will die once he rushes over the top with the rest of the men. For a moment, John almost limps. Then, he remembers who he is meeting, and straightens his back in immediate military stance.

At some point, he must have gone from fighting for the Mighty to fighting against them. Love does silly things to one's logic.

Mycroft sits at a table with an elderly man, playing a quiet game of chess. The elderly man is winning, and he performs his victorious move with a gentle smile on the corner of his lips. He notices John's presence and nods politely. Mycroft merely glares at him.

'I suppose you'll be wanting this seat now, Good Soldier,' he remarks nonchalantly. 'Go ahead. He's a sore loser, though.' He rises from his seat, straightens his jacket, and leaves through the still-open door.

John watches him leave, intrigued. He always knew that politicians were demons, really, but he never saw the proof until now.

'Five souls,' Mycroft announces sordidly. He waves his hand, and the chessboard dissipates. No, it was never there in the first place. 'They are winning, John, and we have very little leverage against them.' He says this part like an accusation.

'Not my war, Gabriel,' John replies icily. No, John fell long ago. He does not play for souls or fight for the freedom of humanity. He is not even a soldier anymore.

Mycroft's thin eyebrows rise. 'Really, Uriel?' he responds. He has the nerve to use John's old name. 

How dare he? How dare he? After everything that John has done, and everything he has suffered. He will not be another pawn to be sacrificed for the Mighty. He has bled his share of blood and tasted enough gunpowder for an eternity. He is Sherlock's Guide. Nothing more. Nothing less. He is no Messiah, no leader, and he does not fight for mankind anymore.

But John says nothing, because this is his war. It will always be his war, because Sherlock will always want to play the game. He doesn't care that it will be exactly what Mycroft wants, or that Moriarty will destroy Sherlock when he's bored.

Mycroft sneers. 'Go see the Queen of the Black Lotus, John,' he instructs. 'She will lead you to Moriarty. The enemy of my enemy, hm?'

John is dismissed. He returns to the car and sits fuming silently, knowing that he will do exactly as Mycroft wants, because his little brother was always so good at twisting and pulling at people's strings. Anthea reminds him that anger will never lead to anything constructive. In return, John politely suggests she retain her advice lest he burn her pretty face off. They are both silent after that.

Chapter Text

A fey court is not difficult to find, if you know where to look. Morning Star showed John how, when time was too young to know the belly of war. They danced with the fair folk all night, with garlands in their bright hair, drunk on nectar and wine. Now there are three of them, even though John expressly forbade Sherlock from bringing Ms. Adler along. She is too angry and too eager for revenge. Sherlock suggests that it would be useful to bring her along in case they should require an easily activated weapon.

'Bit Not Good, Sherlock,' John sighs, shaking his head.

The Black Lotus is a dismal court, very unlike the glittering cave of wonders that John was first invited to, before he was even the Good Soldier, when he was merely Uriel. It is a three-floored office building, with a dingy lobby decorated by ancient posters of Chinese beauties advertising packets of second-rate cigarettes. A bored-looking receptionist sits behind the counter, her attention glued to the glossy pages of a magazine. For the most part, she is as unimpressive as her surrounding, apart from the eerie green of her knotted hair. It takes her precisely sixty-four seconds to notice she is no longer alone.

She wrinkles her nose in disgust at Ms. Adler, who bares her needle-like teeth in return. 'What d'you want,' the receptionist drawls.

Sherlock reaches into his coat pocket and produces the flower, now shriveled and rotting.

The receptionist breaths out a little sigh, rolls her eyes, and slaps her magazine onto the desk. 'Right, yeah, good,' she grumbles. 'Second floor, third door to the right.' She begins reading her gossip article again, signaling that they are no longer needed.

Two floors later, three doors down, John follows Sherlock into a dusty office with cluttered oriental furniture and a disturbing amount of preserved body parts. He begins to wonder exactly what happened to the gleeful spirits that were the fey. This all used to be so much more magical than this. All the beauty is gone, it seems, and creatures cling onto the seams of the worlds they once ruled. In the centre of the office sits a beautifully carved desk, and behind that, a stern-faced woman dressed in a neat Chinese robe drums her ringed fingers impatiently against the polished wood.

'Sherlock Holmes,' the Queen pronounces, narrowing her eyes. 'So good of you to come.' Her eyes move swiftly onto John, and the drumming skips a beat. 'Good Soldier,' she greets.

Ah. Old enough to remember. Immigrant, then, if she doesn't have a cave of her own. Or else land's become too expensive even for the fey.

'And Irene Adler,' she continues, a thin smile stretching her thin lips. 'Assistant to the demon known as Moriarty. I know all about you. Do you know anything about me?'

The half-demon's eyes are pit-black. 'I know you're at war with five other colonies,' she replies sweetly, 'and your resources are running low. You do not have the magic you once did to watch all your Changelings. You don't control them. Soo Lin's baby was your fault. I know that you only have one knight left. The others are at home in Mongolia, running the court you were kicked out of. I know your knight has a taste for arousal through strangulation.' She plants her hand against her hip and smiles, her lips closed over her teeth. 'I know what everyone likes, you see,' she reveals. 'It comes in handy.'

Sherlock looks quite impressed, even if he already knows she extracted this information through manipulation and not deduction. She is still smart, and this dangerous type of smart always scores well in Sherlock's books.

John tells himself he isn't jealous, even though he really, really bloody is.

The Queen's lips thin into a puckered line. Her glamoured apparel shivers momentarily, a veil rippling in the wind, and mottled grey skin dances around the corners of her beady eyes. Sherlock's eyebrows raise a little. Maybe he believed the stories humans tell their children about the fair people.

'It is hardly impressive,' the Queen responds icily. 'You have built yourself a web of associates, yes. You have debtors and creditors. Business, Ms. Adler, is not honour.' She lifts her chin regally. Electricity snaps in her old bones. She might be running low, but she is still the Queen and therefore the most powerful fairy in the building. 'Where I come from, honour is most important. It is why we do not have children with humans. They spoil our blood, make children that can only see and cannot produce magic.' She shakes her head in disgust. 'That baby is a curse. By saving it, you are destroying centuries of history and culture.'

John almost imagines they are standing in a proper court, and not a dingy office on the second floor of a ramshackle building in the dodgy part of London. The moment passes, however, when he glances out the window and notices the thick layer of dust deposited against the grimy glass.

Ms. Adler folds her arms stiffly over her chest. 'The baby is a baby,' she replies curtly. 'There is nothing wrong or different with her. She deserves a life, just like anyone else.'

The Queen laughs. The sound is like nails dragging leisurely over slate. Sherlock winces, but John remains impassive. He knows their song can be much worse. 'Is that what Moriarty told you?' she grins. 'Is that what he whispered to you as a child, to make you feel better? He lies, Ms. Adler. Moriarty always lies.' She clasps her hands together calmly in front of her.

The half-demon falters visibly, swallowing thickly.

Sherlock snorts. The Queen smirks. Ms. Adler retracts into herself. 

Only John feels the fire approaching, but even then, it is too late. The Queen lets out a wailing scream as black flames engulf her.

Hellfire is very different from John's fire. It isn't hot. It is so cold, it burns away the flesh and peels out the soul. It does not take its time, but screams and latches onto its victims and swallows efficiently. Hellfire is the cleanest of killers. There is nothing left of the Queen of the Black Lotus but a small pile of ash. 

Sherlock's mind whirs into action, snapping onto a conclusion before John can actually process the scene. 'Irene!' he shouts, reaching for the half-demon.

A ripple of hellfire spreads from her temple down to her shoulders, shimmering like water over her ivory skin. The flames catch onto Sherlock's fingertips. John grabs his arm and yanks him as far away from Ms. Adler as possible, but the damage is already done. The pads of the fledgling's fingertips are grey and shriveled. John feels the screaming agony in his own fingers.

'No,' the half-demon whispers, looking down as the fabric on her dress splits into threads. She lifts her gaze to stare at Sherlock. 'I never had a full soul to take,' she pleads. 'There's nothing to take.'

Sherlock jerks forward again, her name forming on his lips. John yanks him back again, lockings his arms tightly behind him in a vice-like hold.

Ms. Adler's eyes grow empty and cold, and she abandons her body. Something else takes over, stiffening her limbs and contorting her face into a twisted grimace. Her lips curve upwards, twisting over her pointed teeth. 

'Did you like my first puzzle, Sherlock?' Ms. Adler's voice articulates monotonously. 'I thought it was awfully clever. You lead me right to the court.' She digs her fingers into her cheeks, drawing thick, black blood. It drips down her chin and coats her neck. 'Shall I tell you? Or are you good enough to figure it out?'

Sherlock's jaw twitches. He loves a challenge but he hates being undermined. 'Moriarty,' he greets icily. 'So good of you to join us.'

'So, so good.' Even if Ms. Adler's voice is still droning on blankly, they can almost hear the leer behind the words. 'So good that you did exactly what I wanted, and you don't even know how.'

Sherlock's wings loom overhead threateningly, the size of the universe and all the emptiness that exists between. The shadows lengthen and become bottomless. 'The Queen didn't kill Soo Lin or the human,' he retaliates quickly. 'The two first victims died due to insertion of poison through very thin needles. This does not follow the behaviour of an individual with tendencies towards strangulation, as it would have meant a painless death. Fairies like to inflict pain. No, you framed the Black Lotus so that we would investigate further until we came across Irene.' He smiles thinly, shrugging. 'We found the Queen, and you gained access to her through the use of Irene's demon blood.' But this makes no sense, because demons cannot possess demons.

Suddenly it hits John hard in the gut and he understands.

'By the Mighty,' he utters softly. 'You're her father, aren't you? You're Irene's father.'

Ms. Adler's tongue dances against her lips, catching her blood and tasting it gleefully. 'I prefer to think of her as offspring,' Moriarty grates out in his borrowed voice. 'No sentiment there.' John can almost see him through the wavering lines of Ms. Adler's body, a hard, cold slate with hollowed eyes and a cruel sneer.

Something very old in John is awake. It is alive and it is bloody well not going back to sleep, and it's about time someone burned to a crisp.

Sherlock glances at John, and for a moment, his lips fall apart in an unguarded gape. The moment passes in a flash, and Sherlock's attention is fixed on the possessed woman once more, his features composed. 'I won't ask you why you're doing this,' he says calmly. 'I already know. But, really, were you that bored?' His tone becomes mocking, teasing. Playful.

Don't play with hellfire, fledgling.

I heard you the first time, John.

Ms. Adler's fingers have pulled so much flesh away that bone is appearing. 'Oh,' she mutters. 'You have no idea.' She rolls her shoulders, tips back her neck and spreads her arms outwards, calling to the heavens. Black stains her dress, swallowing the sharp rise of her thin bones. 'Enough chit-chat,' she rasps. 'Daddy's had enough now.'

The hellfire explodes outwards, armed with teeth and fang and the howling of demons still bound to Hell. Sherlock throws up his hand to protect his face, forgetting the ruined state of his skin.

No. You. Don't.

The Good Soldier reaches into his wings, into the abyss of his broken soul, and retrieves what has always been his. The sword - his sword - clashes against the black flames in a brilliant stroke of burning white light. 

White for the innocent. White for the anger. White for the steel and white for the flame.

A rippling shield rushes around them, gold and silver. The black screams and pounds against the shimmering barrier, but it cannot come in. The white sword holds. The Good Soldier is an inferno and his sword is his shield for it is only through attack that he can defend.

'Oh,' Sherlock breathes. 'This is what you were.' His eyes are brilliant, cat-like blue, and the flames colour his pupils brilliant amber.

A last angry roar echoes through the Good Soldier's bones, but he is the burning core of the Earth and he will not be moved by an insolent demon. One beat of his outer wings, and scorching heat scours the office. There is nothing, then, but blinding light.

White is my name, for God is my light.

.

How they find their way back to the flat, John cannot say. One moment he is complete, the next he is standing with Sherlock leaning heavily against him, their wings entangled in solace of each other, and his mouth tastes like bitter metal. He wonders faintly if he imagined it all. No, that's impossible, he decides. If it wasn't real, then Sherlock's hand wouldn't look like a mummified limb.

He sighs heavily, tries to knock the ringing out of his ears, and digs in his pocket for the keys.

Sherlock's lips press against his neck. He is ice-cold. The hellfire is in his blood, but this is easily chased away. He has treated many soldiers before in the wars, when they were unfortunate enough to chance upon a demon sour enough to employ such means. Mrs. Hudson should be able to help with the pain. He finds the keys, much to his jubilation, and then proceeds to fumble with the lock.

'What does it mean, John?' Sherlock mumbles into the crook of John's neck. 'White is my name,' he giggles. 'White is, is, God is my light. It's funny. It's funny, you know?'

John heaves a patient sigh as he manages to get the door open. 'Really, I'm sure it is,' he agrees tolerably, 'but we need to get you inside and treated before you get pneumonia.'

Pneumonia from fire. That's heavenly irony for you.

He drags the fledgling's body up the stairs, trying to ignore the stream on nonsense spouting from his lips - something about white, and wings, and a sword - and wondering how someone so thin could weight so much. Just as he reaches the top step and extends his hand towards the door, it swings open and he is suddenly facing a teary and very furious Molly Hooper.

'Where have you two been?' she demands, wiping at her reddened eyes. 'What happened to you? I was looking all over for you, no one said where you went, Mrs. Hudson said you were on a case but there's no case and what happened to Sherlock's hand?' 

John winces at the sudden rise in pitch. He rolls his injured shoulder, which is beginning to throb for no apparent reason, and tries to orientate around Molly. He deposits Sherlock on a couch, tugs off his jacket and throws it to the floor. He rolls up Sherlock's sleeve so that he might survey the damage.

'Hellfire,' he explains simply, lifting his gaze to meet Molly's. 'And, maybe you should look away. I'm going to burn it out of his system.'

The girl's eyes darken. She kneels beside him on the rug, pushing his hands away. 'If you do that,' she argues quietly, 'then it'll drive him mad. He's not strong enough for it.' The steel is back, and with it a calm tone of authority that settles in her small shoulders and straightens her back. For a moment, underneath her gentle vanilla perfume, a sharp, seductive aroma rises to the surface, like the mulling scent of wine. 'There's a treatment for this,' she explains. 'I can make it with Sherlock's things. One injection should do the trick.'

'Right,' John nods.

She rises gracefully, her skirt rippling at her calves, and she moves about Sherlock's makeshift laboratory with the practiced ease of a person at home. She works in Bart's. Of course she knows her way around a laboratory. But it's more than that. It's the precise way she tips chemicals into a flask without measuring, the way she steps around the tables like she is dancing to a forgotten tune, the way she sometimes looks up at John, and they are not here but a million miles away with the wailing sirens and the loud cacophony of explosions causing a different kind of silence.

She delivers the injection and helps John feed Sherlock sleeping pills. She sits there at Sherlock's feet, her legs folded comfortably beneath her, her palms folded on her lap. Sherlock's hand drifts, wandering in his falling slumber, and rests in John's hair.

'Who are you?' John asks the girl softly.

She smiles at him. 'Molly Hooper,' she replies. 'I work at Bart's. Remember?'

John shakes his head. 'No,' he says firmly. 'Who are you?'

Her smile falters, and a piece of the world dies in her large, dark eyes. You could sink into those eyes, John thinks to himself, and never know you were drowning at all. She might wear a pretty form, but underneath she has the intoxicating beauty that all sorrow carries.

'The question is, John, who are you?' she responds, barely above a whisper.

John remembers without really remembering, the truth in his fragmented mind trickling in from the bridge between his fledgling. He closes his eyes and remembers the first songs that were sung when he was born. 'My name is White,' he murmurs. 'I am God's light.'

There is a soft exhalation, air parting for air. Molly presses her small, smooth hand against his own coarsened palm. Soft feathers brush against his forearm, enfolding and soothing away the wars and the endless pain. 'My name is Woman,' she reveals, gently and sweetly as though imparting the dearest of secrets. 'I lead you home.'

Chapter Text

John knows a lot of things. He knows a lot of stories.

When he was married, his pretty wife used to tell him one story, about the moon and the sun, and the sky. The moon and the sun were once brothers, she would whisper to him, and the flat earth became jealous of this endless, undying love. The earth threw them apart and lay herself down between them, so they would circle forever and ever in the darkness, never to glimpse each other's light. But the sky, who was everywhere and knew everything, pitied the moon and the sun. On some days, the earth grows tired and sleeps, and in  those secret days, the sky folds its wings, and the moon and the sun are thrown together.

'Those are the days when the sun goes black,' she explained, brushing dust from John's hair. 'He turns his back to the earth. He will only look at the moon.'

John would laugh at this, and inform his wife that an eclipse had nothing to do with love or wings, or even jealousy, but only the shift of the moon's silhouette drifting between the sun and the earth. An occurrence which only lasts an hour. A natural event. No brothers, no loving sky, just the vast expanse of energy and mass, and the lack of it.

Watching Molly sift through darkness and light, the soft whisper of feathers heard but never seen trickling like starsong in her wake, he wonders if his departed beloved had known the future all along.

It isn't love. Nothing like it, no, not the burning coals that scream in his chest every time he sees Sherlock smile, not the intoxicating bewilderment he finds himself in when his fledgling's wings brush tenderly against his, not the way Sherlock feels in John's arms in the blue, apologetic light of the early morning. What John feels echo in his bones is more like the memory of a motion he used to know. Molly is a song he forgot, but a melody that digs deep into his marrow and refuses to let go. She is the small, evasive moon, and endless, endless Sherlock brought her to John. 

Molly makes him coffee. She always makes coffee, it seems, and not tea, the way Sherlock generally does when he has been especially impolite to John. 'There's no sugar,' she notes with a shrug.

John smiles into his mug. 'Sherlock used it to lure ants into a book,' he explains.

Molly makes a soft noise of understanding. John hums in response, and sips at his coffee. He likes it better without sugar anyhow. 

'Why did you fall?' John asks nonchalantly, setting the mug down on the table.

Molly laughs a little at his brusqueness. He is being rude, of course, but neither take it seriously. After all, they both are closely acquainted with Sherlock's blatant disregard for human consideration. She rests her chin on her hand. 'My ideas were wrong, so I got tossed out,' she replies. 'That's all.' She grins then, and suddenly John is so reminded of Harry that something behind his borrowed heart twists savagely.

Where has Harry gone? Where did they all go, the beautiful and dangerous brethren? Was the Mighty done with all of them, keeping only the politicians in their place and whispering half-formed instructions to lunatic humans instead?

Molly covers John's hand with her own. She is only slightly below average temperature, five marks below John's own fiery warmth. 'Don't think about all of that,' she says gently. 'Don't look back at it. It'll only hurt. Just think about life now. We're happy, aren't we?' She tilts her head back at the fledgling sprawled across the sofa, his lips parted, dark lashes drawing heavy lines down his cheeks. His wings spread so far across the living room that, even though the lamps are turned on, the room is stilted in sleepy darkness. There is no light but for the strange amber glow radiating from Sherlock's shoulders.

John smiles fondly at the sight. 'Yes,' he agrees. 'We really are.' And it's quite alright, because they both love his fledgling, and even if Moriarty isn't done with them yet, tonight they have found the eye of the storm.

.

Sherlock finds consciousness somewhere near sundown, awoken by the soft sound of a spatula hitting a frying pan, and the strange sizzling sounds of something cooking. John never cooks. He never has the time, dragged at breakneck speed around during their chases. Sherlock's mind whittles away at all the possibilities, dancing impossibly long over Irene. He remembers her face, her wide eyes and the hopeless look in her eyes as she realised the utter inevitability of her fate, the depth of Moriarty's betrayal. And yet, her survival is impossible. Everything burned in John's flame.

Black joy digs through Sherlock's borrowed heart. He remembers this too.

John, furious and powerful, his wings lifting about his body in a spiral of gleaming blades and incandescent light, reaching with his left hand into his wings - impossible, impossible splendour that he is - and pulling out a sword. Sword is perhaps the greatest of understatements. It was nuclear fission. Chemistry. Magic. Power. Magnificent. Terrifying.

And John loves him.

Sherlock never believed in miracles, but since John limped into his life and became doctor and soldier to his war, he suddenly finds that the impossible happens daily. Maybe he will never be happy, since happiness is a state of being that is forbidden for monsters like him, but Sherlock will always be full of emotions. He used to scorn them, but they are so delicious. He should have tasted them sooner.

There is a soft burst of laughter - female - and a low murmur of continued conversation - male, John's voice - and the sizzling sounds stop. Cutlery taps against their plates. Not the best plates, so there is familiarity in the visitor.

Sherlock trundles into the kitchen. Nausea hits him in the gut, and the blood pounds angrily at his temples. He leans against the doorway.

Mollly is scooping a small section of stir fry from a plate and offering it to John. He is laughing, shaking his head as though embarassed, but already his mouth is opening to take the bite. There is nothing small, pale, or meek about Molly. Her cheeks are glowing, her hair hangs low and loose down her back, her movements indicate the assuredness of someone well-practiced in the acts of domesticity. Like John is home. She sets her hand against his arm. Her thumb traces the line of his muscle, over his vein, and even through the jumper she knows exactly where each ventricle is. She knows him, and she adores him.

Sherlock growls. That is his place. John is his.

Molly starts, her round, dark eyes widening and her lips parting. Sherlock can see the soft red rim on the inner part of her mouth, usually hidden by fatigue and badly-chosen cosmetics. She is wearing nothing today, and somehow this nakedness that women often avoid is what gives this little laboratory mouse the greatest charm of all. She is beautiful in the subtlest way, and Sherlock can suddenly see everything she so cleverly hid from him before.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

John's face jerks quickly towards him. He knows. Of course he knows, they are bound together, and instantly he is anxious and worried, but not guilty. Not guilty at all. And yet he was leaning forwards - yearning for physical contact - his tongue darting over his lower lip - nervousness, indicating a long separation or a party he wishes to impress - and most of all, smiling that special, warm smile he only uses for Sherlock.

'Hullo,' Molly greets brightly, setting the spatula into the frying pan. 'The hand's better, I hope.' 

Sherlock glances down at the appendage. 'Yes,' he nods, remembering the burn. He remembers an injection through a haze of pain and delirium brought upon him through the fever in his blood. 'You cured it?' he demands, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. Molly is many things, but none of them include an inventor of ingenious cures to magical maladies.

'She cured it,' John confirms gravely. He lifts his chin and meets Sherlock straight in the eye.

But he is jealous and suddenly he hates Molly, even if she has saved his life by offering him obsession after obsession when he would have probably drowned himself in the rush of chemicals bleeding into his blood and his brain. She taught him how to love the dead human body. She whispered secrets into his ear, promising him to show new medical monstrosities, if he would throw away the needle and pick up a magnifying glass instead. She was there when Mycroft refused to be, when Lestrade ran out of patience, when even the doctors and the psychiatrists gave up.

Molly saved Sherlock. But she is in love with John, and he is in love with her, albeit subconsciously, therefore Sherlock despises every fibre of her being.

'Sherlock,' John says quietly, standing from his seat. Molly's hand slips away from his arm. 'Sit.'

Because it is his John that commands this, he complies. 

John takes Sherlock's hands in his and squeezes gently, lifting them to his lips. Assurance, tenderness, and gentle whispers drift through their bridge softly. John knows Sherlock's head must hurt from the aftermath of the chemicals. 'Molly and I are not together,' he explains patiently, cupping Sherlock's face in his hand. 'I'm with you. I love you. Only you, Sherlock. You know that.' He sighs softly, his thumb dropping down the line of Sherlock's jaw, sending a shudder of sweet sparks down to the fledgling's gut. 

Sherlock closes his eyes and breathes. His heart is quiet but his mind will not rest. It picks and prods at the minute hints of emotional contact, screaming the blindingly obvious signs of destruction. Sometimes he thinks there is something terrible about his architecture, that it pleads so continuously for tragedy and the malfunction of every relationship in his life.

The angels made him wrong, Sherlock decides. Only John makes him right.

John hears everything. John always does. He smiles sadly with corners of his lips, the motion drawing wrinkles from the corners of his kind, kind eyes. He leans forward, pressing his forehead against Sherlock's. 'My silly, silly fledgling,' he laughs. 'She does love me, yes, but that's because she's fallen, too.' 

Sherlock blinks, stares at Molly, then stares at John. 'What?'

John grins at him, almost delighted, and that makes no sense at all. 'You can't see her wings,' he states happily.

'No, John, I can't,' Sherlock states bluntly. He stares at Molly again, who is now watching them both with a sense of bemusement. 'I didn't see your wings at first, either,' he adds as a form of explanation. In fact, he already has a hypothesis about this symptom of his supposed ability to spot Lucifer. Sherlock can only see their soul after they have willingly exposed to him, just like John did when he killed that demon.

John is grinning even wider now. He is so stupidly happy it is frustrating. 'Don't you get it, Sherlock?' he presses, shaking his head. He draws a line from the base of Sherlock's scull to the first rise of his vertebrae. His fingertips are calloused, and all the scars are beautiful because they all hold secrets, and Sherlock could spend forever focused on those puzzles. 'If you can't find Lucifer, maybe Mycroft will leave you alone,' John explains.

Sherlock drops his gaze. Unfortunately, he already knows that this will not come to pass. He knows the persistence with which Mycroft follows his items of interest, and if he has a use sculpted for Sherlock, then Sherlock shall be made useful in this organised manner. If Sherlock fails to accomplish his given task, he is at risk of being obsolete, and Sherlock does not need to guess what a manipulative hog like Mycroft does with broken toys.

Sherlock finds solace in the hollow of John's neck. Strong, strong John. John will protect him, won't he? 'If I can't find Lucifer,' Sherlock whispers, 'Mycroft will kill me.'

'No,' Molly voices, startling them both. Her eyes blaze with unholy light, almost as furious as John's impossible sword, and her body is immovable steel. 'He will not.' Her hand tightens around the spatula until her knuckles whiten. 'I will not allow it.'

Sherlock can see the family resemblance now. For the most part, Molly would seem harmless, just like small, jumper-wearing John, only they both can turn devastatingly terrifying in a breath, like their idle harmlessness is only a mask that can be torn off. Mycroft certainly isn't as good at playing his power down. He's much too self-obsessed for that. Somehow, this dangerous part of Molly makes Sherlock uneasy inside.

John needs danger to survive. What if Molly is more dangerous than Sherlock? What if she's the right sort of danger? What if John leaves.

Thick daggers stab Sherlock's abdomen, and he bleeds into himself. No. No. No. No please no.

Can't lose John. Can't. Can't can't can't he's essential I needneedneed John.

So Sherlock clings tighter to John, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, and wills Molly to return to her previously unassuming self.

.

Sleep evades them tonight. They sit together in the cluttered kitchen, Sherlock trying to memorise the smell of John's jumper, and the Good Soldier trying to ignore the various mental images of Mycroft striking his fledgling down with his spear, as he struck many a demon down before. Mycroft is not one to fight. He is the bringer of messages, the over-dressed bearer of the Mighty's proclamations, but he is merciless.

Molly left, of course. There was no conversation to be held. The lion was roaring too loudly to be mistaken for her usual lamb. Sherlock was inconsolable. Is. Is inconsolable, the beautiful child, still burrowing his way to John's sternum in search for a place of final refuge. It's endearing, which is inappropriate, but John's concept of inappropriate behaviour is warped. The night is dark and quiet, and the lamps have died out. Sherlock's emptiness is more contagious than hellfire.

A car passes the flat, its intrusive headlights giving life to every object in the room. The elk head watches them with brightened eyes, its antlers oddly elongated in the swiftly passing light. From the fireplace, the skull grins blankly at the wall. Inanimate objects, the lot of them, all containing an element of intimacy they had no right to own. Each part of this flat was like a removed section of Sherlock's identity, written in code for the world to see. No one would ever understand the complex language except John, but that was alright, since it was his message to interpret, after all, and there was nothing Sherlock created that John wouldn't eventually understand.

His fledgling's fingers clenched the back of John's shirt. Nails dug into skin.

But that's fine, because you'll take the pain too.

'What happens to me,' Sherlock whispers, 'if you fall in love with someone else.'

John closes his eyes. 'I can't,' he responds, barely above a breath. He doesn't trust himself with any more than that. Any louder, and the thick object lodged in his throat will dig in, and he will surely break. 'I can't love anyone else anymore, Sherlock. I really am yours, and I can't change it. That's what giving someone your heart means, for us. It's permanent.' 

Forever. Forever and ever and until the stars all die out, I am yours.

The thin body in his arms shakes. Oh, God, the way it seems so fragile and small against his scarred chest. It cleaves him in two, and he is ripped at all his badly gathered seams. Sherlock never believes it, and it must be because every other being regards him with nothing but disgust and resentment, and John wants to boil their marrow, slice their veins open so they might understand.

A lot of things matter. They always do. Yet nothing is as important as this moment, this sliver of time when the universe evaporates and only the walls of 221B exist, and the shadows that Sherlock's curls make on the nape of his neck.

'Why do I feel like she has something I don't?' the fledgling grits through his teeth, frustrated at his own fall to sentiment and the weakness of caring too much. 'Why, why does it feel like she's going to take you away?'

John stares out the window, over Sherlock's head. He thinks about the soft glow of familiarity, compares it to the wild adrenalin-pumped moments sprinting through dark alleyways with his mad flatmate. He grins crookedly. He was always better fitted for danger anyways.

John pulls away from Sherlock, far enough so he can cup the fledgling's angular face in both hands. 'Well then,' he says softly, smiling mischievously, 'let's give you something Molly will never have.'

He waits patiently as Sherlock clears away the clutter of emotion, blinks, and realises the implication. Then, with a strangled noise that is part laugh, part agonised groan, Sherlock grabs a fistful of John's shirt and grinds their lips together.

Chapter Text

John never knew how much his room had come to hold signs of them both, the scattered notebooks piled on the bedside table with Sherlock's notes and snippets inside, the discarded clothes at one end, the indentation of two bodies instead of one, and a single black curl resting on John's pillow. But here, as he pulls off his jumper and his shirt in turn, and his wings extend as a rippling roof of golden light, ruby, blood, and amber fire, every object glows with the scattering of colours. A gasp of tangerine light bleeds from one feather to the next, reflecting over Sherlock's cheekbones and filling his eyes with brilliant light. His wings are elsewhere, spread on the ground, swallowing the lamplight that dares to filter through the drawn curtains. Shadows are not often soft, nor are they appealing, but they envelop each line on John's body. His scars grows smooth. His skin loses age. He is taller, slimmer, not so eaten by war and pain and nightmares that drag him awake, tasting of mud and rotting flesh.

Sherlock's body is all muscle and ivory skin, painted crimson, claret and ember from John's wings. As he lowers his trousers, John sees the thin, neat scars breaking white with pink down the inside of his thighs. Where else does someone slice when they don't want other people to see?

Sorrow mutes John's desire. He presses his fingertips against these careful, careful incisions, and sighs softly. No words. How can words describe what he feels? He is disappointed in those that caused Sherlock so much pain he had to find distraction in blood and steel. He wishes he could have been there, to bear the pain, to hold Sherlock through the empty nights, to bear these scars.

A small, sad smile breaks out on Sherlock's face. He places his own palm against John's puckered shoulder, draws his roughened fingertips against the rising white flesh and the dip of the bullet wound. 'We all have our battles, John,' the fledgling tells him softly.

John brings Sherlock's hands to his lips and kisses them. 'You're too young for this kind of war,' he murmurs.

Sherlock raises his free hand and sinks his fingertips into the cascading light of John's feathers. Brilliant, sapphire joy trickles through John's heart. Sherlock leans forwards and they are kissing, slow and sweet, gently easing themselves together. His joy gives way to darker, indigo lust that shudders hungrily down John's spine to his groin. Then they aren't kissing sweetly anymore, and it's all need and want, groping hands and a quick fumbling with John's belt and his pants and they are as naked as the day they were created.

Usually physical contact reminds John of his body. This time, all it does is drench him in euphoria. He pulls Sherlock slowly towards him, drinking in the sight.

Beautiful.

His fledgling's eyes are wide and dark, their attention darting fluidly from John's wings down to his chest, then further down. His lips curve upwards. 'I think you're far more beautiful,' he reveals. His fingertips run down the sharp edges of John's primaries and secondaries, lips falling apart almost subconsciously.

Shivers of pleasure curl John's gut and pool in his knees. He closes his eyes, focuses on breathing. Not yet. He cannot lose control. 

His fledgling's hand drifts upward, to the secondary coverts where all the feathers have been replaced with Sherlock's heart. 'I never believed in heroes,' he whispers, his voice echoing in John's mind. 'However, I have decided that I will make an exception to the rule, since you are most assuredly mine.'

John laughs dizzily. He opens his eyes to find his fledgling looking down at him in admiration. The shadows are dancing with secrets. Glimmering shapes form and dissipate into the darkness. He forgot how beautiful love can be, smothered in the memories of the wars, and the look on Morning Star's face when the Good Soldier struck him down.

But this is no place for old memories. Here, there is only Sherlock.

And all the spaces between.

He tilts his face upwards, closes the gap between them, and tastes the blood still clinging to the inside of Sherlock's lips. If they will ever be awarded eternity, they will spend the rest of the ages racing after danger. Neither will ever be safe, not really, except here. If all other moments are torn apart with Moriarty's hellfire and his sneering words, John will always have this: the shimmering cascade of fire caressing Sherlock's bare skin, down to his scars, and the way the shadows are pulling him in.

Languid, loving kisses turn into sweet, plunging motions of devastation. John's fingers trace the rise of his fledgling's spine. Fragile, fragile bones and dark sweeps of feathers enfold him. They are close, so close that their skin presses into each other and John can feel the burn of Sherlock's arousal on his stomach, and oh. Oh that is.

Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock's lips on John's neck. Sherlock's fingers digging into his borrowed skin, into his scar until it hurts - a good hurt, not the cold of the rain and the smell of mud but fire - and his teeth nipping the veins because Sherlock knows where everything belongs. Sherlock knows, and John wants him to, and it's all fine.

They don't move. They don't dare to move, lest their bodies give way. John closes his eyes and breathes, his forehead pressed against Sherlock's collarbones. He wants everything. He wants to taste and touch and feel his fledgling grow closer, envelop him and enter him all at once. If they will make love as humans do, then John will have it all, impossible or not.

His thoughts earn a soft chuckle from his fledgling, the dark head of curls shaking with fond disbelief. John replies with a frown and a soft, unvoiced demand as to what is so amusing.

'Nothing,' Sherlock whispers into his ear. 'But it isn't impossible. All of that, all of it, I can do for you.'

Oh, for the love of the Mighty, I would do anything for that voice.

John will do anything for his fledgling, of course, but that is hardly the issue. The issue is Sherlock's long, slender fingers, and how the fledgling is licking them, and how heavily hooded his eyes are. They're not amber at all, his irises, but the same cat-like blue from before. His mouth is no longer occupied with his fingers, of course, because they are kissing violently now, all teeth and tongue. John needs his fledgling closer than their skin will allow. He clenches his fist in Sherlock's hair, pulls him down and crushes them hard against each other. Firecrackers pinwheel behind his retinas. Too good, but all good is better than the silence.

John has had enough of silence. He wants the muffled sound of a violin in the middle of the night. He wants gunshots, he wants screams, he wants the arguments and the beautiful gasps his fledgling makes when they move against each other, like now.

Sherlock's fingers slide inside him, and John lets out a strangled moan. His head tips back. Teeth nip the bared expanse of skin. More noises slip from his lips, unbidden. Nails dig in so deep, they draw blood. John's fingertips are wet. Sherlock's blood is warmer than expected, so dark it edges on devilish maroon. It sinks into John's creases, lines all of the lives he lived, all the wars he died in. Sherlock was always there, the shifting darkness in the corner of his tent, the exact shade of the rain, the whisper of the disease that was kindest to feverish, bruised boys weeping in the dark.

Sherlock's fingers curl. John's eyes roll back and he falls.

But he doesn't fall far. This time, his fledgling catches him, and inky feathers enfold about him gently. Pressed into the sharp rise of a collarbone and the soft concave beneath, he can smell the soft musk of Sherlock's skin. His tongue tastes the sweat. Everything about him is wonderful. Everything.

'John,' his fledgling utters softly. He moves inside John - only his fingers, but by the Mighty's mercy, it's enough. 'John, John, John.' The syllable is a praise, not a mundane human name given to a mundane human man. 'John, I'd take you. Oh, oh you'd like that. Of course you would. Joined, here -' he twists his fingers and John bites hard into flesh ' - oh, here, and it would only be part of what I need. I need to know the bones beneath your wings. I need to know how much blood sits on those blades. How much pain is in your heart, Good Soldier?'

The old title draws grief. It also drags a sweet, succulent note across John's borrowed heart, and he can do nothing but close his eyes and fill his lungs with shortened breaths.

Sherlock's lips trace his scar. 'How much love and sacrifice brought you to me?' he questions. There is a tremour in his voice, so slight that it is almost unrecognisable, but John knows everything Sherlock feels.

His fledgling, so dispassionate towards everything, gleeful to watch every gory crime, is terrified of the pain the Good Soldier endured in becoming John Watson, invalided soldier. Terrified.

So John forces himself upright, although he would prefer to melt onto the floor and dissolve into the endorphin-blinded haze, and cups his fledgling's sharp cheekbones in his palm. 'All worth it, love,' he smiles. He means it. He means it with ever fibre of his being and every feather on his wings.

Invalided soldier or not, you always want me. And I always need you.

Sherlock blinks. He blinks again.

A fluid motion, and the rush of wings beating against the taught air, before John finds himself deposited on his back, on the bed, with Sherlock's lean body looming over him. Teeth graze on his shoulder. Hands pin his wrists down. Sherlock kisses and bites and sucks and John is moaning helplessly, his wings battling against his fledgling's larger, heavier wings. Every moment black feathers grazes red, both bodies shudder uncontrollably with searing paths of pleasure. Lust ricochets through their connection. Sweat and semen coats John's stomach, and he closes his eyes in joyous fear.

He has not felt this much since he fell.

He murmurs his love in the old tongue, tasting the runes form in brilliant crimson on Sherlock's sternum. English is too vulgar. Latin is too formalised. Hebrew is perhaps an acceptable replacement, so John translates as best as he can, alternating from the tongue of the Mighty's Children to Pashti. When Sherlock slicks his fingers with mysterious gel and twists them inside John again, he decides all human languages are simply insufficient. He goes back to cursing in his old tongue into his fledgling's shoulder. Ivory skin decorates itself with the Good Soldier's colour, with his coarse proclaimation of violent love.

Sherlock notices. Of course he notices, he's the smartest creature in London. His eyes fixate on the curling runes stretching over his chest and shoulder, and his lips fall open. Red tongue, red runes, red heart.

So bloody beautiful it hurts.

'More,' the fledgling demands. His forefinger drags over John's prostrate, and the Good Soldier arches his back as he bites back a howl. 'I want more.' The whisper is soft, low, and swirls like smoke in John's delirious mind. 'Mark me.'

John's eyelids flutter. Another drag, gentler this time. He breathes through his teeth. Oxygen burns his lungs. Too much. Too much air. Not enough, either. 'Don't, oh, oh Christ,' he babbles when Sherlock's fingers disappear. 'Don't know how, how it works.' Because it isn't a spell, or even a ritual. It is more like breathing, or drawing his impossible sword from his impossible wings.

Then Sherlock is inside him, completely, and they both forget the human necessity of respiration.

Time holds its breath. The night is silent. Nothing moves.

John opens his eyes. His fledgling holds himself up, torso inches from John's. Sherlock's muscles strain against his skin. Thick blood drips down his prominent ribcage and circles a nipple. A single maroon drop is suspended there, burned a bright amber by the shocked light of John's outspread wings. Every single feature is highlighted in gold, every hollow swallowed by empty black. Sherlock's pupils are blown so wide his iris is nothing more than a thin ring of sapphire.

This is no lost, abused fledgling. This is a full-grown angel, and he is glorious.

The fledgling pushes damp hair from John's forehead tenderly. He bends his head to kiss the bared skin. His lower body follows in the motion, and John groans a series of obscenities in coarse English. Hot breath sears his brow, his cheek, his parted lips. Their bodies move in an old rhythm, one that neither mind understands. John finds his hands released. He digs them into Sherlock's sides. He is sliding, drifting, and everything is aflame.

'Brand me, Uriel,' Sherlock whispers into his mouth.

That name, from those lips, and the Good Soldier is dragged screaming into climax.

The thundering in his ears is so great it drowns out the roar of his fledgling fast behind him, and the whiplash sound of enormous wings unfurling through humid air.

.

The soft blue light of early morning casts across John's body, rousing him gently from his slumber. Sherlock's long limbs are draped carelessly over his. Getting out of bed will be too difficult for his aching body.

I'm getting too bloody old for this, John tells himself. Of course, he is only half-serious. If not for his damned shoulder, John would have a thousand more tries at this. No wonder humans ramble on about it so much.

So John smiles at the ceiling and counts the cracks. He enjoys the burn in his back. He relishes the stench of sex in the air. They are physical signs. They are real, and yes, he is fallen, but to hell with it all. If they already lead a twisted existence, why not corrupt themselves in ways that are bloody brilliant?

'Stop thinking,' Sherlock mumbles into his hair. His shoulder slips out from under the duvet. The gloomy light colours the spiraling runes a blood-red. They have not faded in the night.

John laughs as quietly as he can, reading the runes quickly. He really has to do something about his foul mouth. If Donovan sees these, he's doomed. 'I can't stop thinking, Sherlock,' he reasons pleasantly. 'It's a bit of a natural state.'

The corner of his fledgling's lips twist upwards in an unformed snort. 'Go back to sleep.'

John grins at Sherlock's shoulder, stupidly happy. 'Can't.'

An eye cracks open, as pallid-grey and sleepy as the light tumbling in past the curtains. 'I will drug you if you do not desist that awful noise,' Sherlock growls in drowsy, rumbling tones. He is only half serious, his wing already tucking around John's body. As he moves, his shoulder ripples and the runes twist and turn about each other.

John traces the patterns with his eyes. He wants to feel them. Will they be warmer than Sherlock's night-cooled skin? Will they be rough or as smooth as silk?

His fledgling opens both eyes. He brushes an idle hand over the dark runes. Apparently they aren't rough or smooth, but they are 2.5 degrees Celsius higher than Sherlock's natural state. This seems to delight him. John doesn't understand it. John doesn't understand any of it. Angels cannot alter the reality of a fellow angel in this way. The fallen are capable of far less than they were when immortality sang loud in their blood.

Sherlock does not question the runes. He does not seek for how. He does not ask why. They both know the answer. It is written in thick, red letters along the rise of Sherlock's spine.

'Could you translate it?' his fledgling asks. His breath moves the minuscule hairs on the side of John's neck. Goosebumps, but the good kind. 

John frowns, concentrating on the various array of languages Sherlock would most likely know. The Germanic languages certainly hold an appropriate amount of harshness, but the decadent beauty of anger is lost. 'Too difficult,' he decides.

Sherlock hums softly. His fingertip circles John's shoulder. Collarbone. Shoulder. Nipple. Sternum. Collarbone. An endless spiral downwards to his heart. 'Why can't I understand this language if it is the common tongue for angels?' he questions, mildly annoyed.

John laughs at this, and kisses him. 'Because it's a very difficult language,' he explains kindly. 'We learned it from the stars, back when they used to sing. They got quiet after Morning Star fell.' Oh, that memory hurts. The entire universe resonated with the first war. Bloodstains on these stars would never fade. 'He could sing just like them,' John murmurs. 'That's why we called him Lucifer. He was one of them.'

Sherlock's eyes fasten on his face, analysing, understanding. 'You loved him,' he states, and John knows enough not to avoid the truth.

So John smiles a thin, tired smile, and wonders why he feels so old at times. He remembers too much, and in remembering too much, he knows too much. 'I did,' he admits calmly. 'But there is something you have to understand, Sherlock. Everyone loved him. He was the most beautiful creation the Mighty ever made.' John smiles bitterly. 'Flawless.'

Sherlock's forehead wrinkles, confusion and hurt cascading through their bridge in harsh white strands.

John chases away his frown with forefinger and thumb. 'I was young, Sherlock,' he soothes. 'Idiotic.' He brushes a stray lock out of his fledgling's face, feeling fierce fondness well up inside him and press against his throat. 'I love you. You. And you're mine.'

And John would rather lose a thousand Morning Stars than ever have to give his crimson-marked fledgling up.

Chapter Text

Lestrade turns up the following day. Sherlock insists he has already sent a report to the Met explaining the various scientific details of hellfire, if anyone was ever interested in the external realms of science that included the form of magic and multi-dimensional entities, which they probably weren't because Anderson was still infecting people with his stupidity. Lestrade stares at him for a moment, trying to process the various arguments, before running his hand over his eyes. John notices the heavy shadows beneath his eyes, the slight tremble in his hands.

'I need to tell you this before you find out on your own,' Lestrade informs Sherlock gravely. 'You have personal involvement, so you can't be directly involved. We'll do this as clean as possible. Photographs. Reports.' He breathes in, lifting his gaze to the roof. 'I'm saying this so you stay out of it, Sherlock. You need to stay out of it.' 

Sherlock doesn't sit up in his chair, but his eyes focus. He isn't just looking at Lestrade now, he is observing closely and processing every single detail in that vast mind of his. But John doesn't need to. He already knows what is happening. He bites down on the words in the frail hope that the silence will hold away reality as long as possible.

Lestrade lifts his chin with a sense of finality. 'Right,' he nods. He passes a thin file over to Sherlock, who pulls out the contents carefully. 

Sherlock's eyes lose their euphoric blue, leaking into a washed grey. He clenches his jaw, closes his eyes, and exhales. 'The victim is in his early-twenties,' he reports smoothly, 'a natural blond, hair was dyed after death, he worked in the botanical gardens of Birmingham until lately when he started his own marijuana plantation. Lives alone, no relatives, no one to notice he was gone. However, I cannot discern whether the scarf was stolen in the past week, or before.' He extends the photograph towards John, who reaches for it despite the image which is already leaking behind his retinas.

The photograph is captured with scientific apathy. The victim lies on his back on a clean, white bed, hands folded over a book on his chest. John instantly recognises it as the King James' Bible. The victim's hair has obviously been dyed, the dark curls too black to be mistaken as real colour. The scarf knotted around his neck is dark blue, bleached on one end with mild acid. 

Sherlock's scarf.

John's gut twists with disgust. How did Moriarty find his way into their home? They thought they were safe. Two archangels should be more than enough to keep any sensible demon out, even if one was fallen and the other a mere fledgling. But then, Moriarty seemed far from sanity. That he should invade something so private as Sherlock's personal belongings sickened John. Perhaps it should have frightened him, but the Good Soldier never associated home with safety. He built his various abodes in the cold interiors of dugouts, in wind-beaten tents that need to be collapsed and dragged onwards. His heart attaches itself to the threat of steel, to the looming presence of death.

But a demon has walked in the place he has, touched that which should belong only to him, if not to Sherlock. John finds it hard to suppress his rising anger.

Yet Sherlock is calm, dangerously so, as though facing the beginning of the end is merely another calculation. Maybe it is. John will never truly understand the incredible workings of that mind. It is part of the allure, of course, for a creature as old as he is, to discover something entirely new and mysterious.'

Sherlock inquires as to whether anyone has inspected the bible. Of course, Anderson has performed a thorough examination on it, eager to prove his worth, but Sherlock dismisses this as irrelevant. Whatever chemicals are present on the bible, it has nothing to do with the murder. The bible itself was stolen from the office of a civil engineer currently employed in Tasmania.

'Yes, alright, we figured that out, thank you,' Lestrade frowns, folding his arms. 'What we discovered, though, was that one page was missing. Page 12, Corinthians -.'

Sherlock's eyes flash upwards to the grey-haired man, his eyebrows lowered in a frown. 'The book is irrelevant, as is the text,' he interrupts quietly. 'An efficient message. The Word of God is thereby irrelevant to my behaviour. It is the number which is important, Lestrade.'

John knows. He knows because he holds the entirety of his fledgling's history in the palm of his hand. 'That's how old you were when you solved your first murder,' he states.

Moriarty is telling Sherlock his gifts of observation and deduction have nothing to do with the Mighty. This is not a threat, nor is it a game. It is a trial, and if Sherlock succeeds, then the demon will swallow John's fledgling up in his dark embrace. This is a slow corruption and subtle theft of Sherlock's mind.

John will not allow it.

The tea bursts into flame. Lestrade shouts. John blinks, and the fire dies away, leaving behind the faint smell of singed milk.

'Oh,' John utters mildly. 'I'm so sorry.' He stands and offers a bland smile to the unfortunate witnesses to his outburst. 'I'll make us some more tea. Would you like some, Greg?'

He receives a long, shocked stare. He takes it as an affirmative, and sets about washing the mugs and putting the kettle back on. He imagines he hears Lestrade whisper something about safety and chemicals in tea. 

White for the anger.

Does Mycroft know what he has created? Sherlock is not only capable of seeing fallen angels, he is also able to give them back their wings.

If this is the reason Morning Star needs to protect Sherlock, then the storm is darker and wider than John anticipated. This frightens him. He will face demons, yes, and the rest of the Mighty for his fledgling, but to face his fallen brother will sear too many knives into his scarred heart.

The kettle whistles. John ignores it for a while, and remembers the beauty that was Morning Star, and the sorrowful acceptance the Good Soldier had to see in his star-filled eyes when the General finally struck him down, and he tumbled from the heavens to the abyss below. He closes his eyes and the figures of this violent play change, and it is Sherlock that falls while the Good Soldier's sword juts from his chest.

So this is the storm.

The Good Soldier has seen his fair share of wars. Only now is he afraid.

.

He walks out into the dead city by himself, leaving Sherlock drifting through slumber, liquid nightshade feathers dancing in sleepy trickles up the walls. He knows the way this city used to feel, the way the stench of piss and death used to cling to every brick. This city was the banquet of demons, and the horror of those that were brave enough to be Guides. Now, it is full of old bricks darted with dried blood long since washed away by the eternal rain. The lights still illuminate the cobblestones, and where the tarmac has replaced the dirt, the ground remembers grit and filth and spit. This is a dirty city, but by the Mighty, it is Sherlock's city, and his wings envelop it in a dusting of secret night.

Sometimes, like now, time stands still, and the storm holds its breath. Danger pretends to sleep.

The demon girl is still where John first met her. She holds out her little tin cup towards him and smiles thinly. He drops a handful of coppers in. He can feel his wings burning the air, warming the space around them. He knows she can feel it too, even if she cannot see.

She smiles up at him with such heartbreaking sadness. He suddenly wonders how he could hate demons so. 'You know,' she states.

John sighs, digging his hands into his pockets. 'Lucifer wants to have wings again.'

She laughs then, and shakes her head. She beckons him closer, looking up into the sky as though unseen ears will hear her. They cannot. This is the dead part of the city, the hollow bottom of sin from which the Mighty have averted their eyes. 'Not at all,' she reveals in a whisper. 'The King doesn't want anything anymore. And Sherlock's not a weapon. He creates. He heals.' She presses her icy fingertips against John's cheek. 'He healed you.' She drops her hand and her smile fades. 'That's what the King wants,' she informs him solemnly. 'The King wants you to be well.'

John looks into her wide, hazel eyes, and sees the subtle shift of colour. The darkness is there, yes, and the glimmer of sharp teeth and claw. She is one of the creatures the Good Soldier himself was created to defeat, but the endless millenia that roared by evolved her into something else. Something mild. Something a little tired of the old ways and the new madness.

Something like me.

Even if they were both created to hate each other's substance, they cannot ignore that they are both old soldiers, tired of the battle.

'Moriarty will make him a weapon,' John warns the demon.

She runs a thumb round the edge of her cup. The nearest street lamp flickers momentarily, casting half her face into shadow. Her cheek hollows out into skeletal sallowness, long, needle-like teeth pressing against her lower jaw. Demons do not expose their true face often, even if it is just a glimmer. They only show their true form to those they trust.

There is a lot of power to a creature's name and nature. This old being trusts him, a fallen angel, the killer of demons and destroyer of blackened souls. Moriarty must be a terrible adversary indeed.

'Stop him,' she advises. 'Kill him.'

John produces a sharp, twisted smile, because he will.

.

The next corpse is a teenage girl, and it is immediately obvious who she is meant to impersonate, from the intentionally nude shade of her lips and the unassuming ponytail. The girl's eyeballs have been removed cleanly from her eyes sockets and placed in her left palm. John excuses himself from the room and spends the next few moments staring into the sink, trying not to empty the contents of his stomach into the drain.

'The lipstick is Molly's,' Sherlock informs Lestrade, his eyes drawn towards John's hunched back. 'The laboratory coat, however, is cheap costume, online purchase. But the shoes, those are Molly's. A size too small, never returned to the original point of purchase, kept in the back of her office at Bart's. The lipstick itself can also be found in her office. Her home should be safe, however I would suggest a thorough search through your autopsy reports. They may have been tampered with.' He presses his fingers against his lips. 

Moriarty is clever. He infiltrates everything - the most efficient of toxins.

Lestrade suggests the possibility of protective surveillance, even if they both know that no amount of human steel or force can keep demons out. Sherlock suspects Molly can take care of herself anyways, if she is anything like John.

'What do the eyes mean?' Lestrade ventures.

'So she can't see' John replies, breaking through whatever suggestion Sherlock was about to make. 'And she can see Sherlock's wings, so she can see his soul.' He smiles tersely. That is enough information for Lestrade. Anything else is in danger of passing to Mycroft's prying ears, and it would not do well for Gabriel to discover another member of the fallen. He has enough pawns to play with. 'Moriarty wants Sherlock all to himself,' John adds quietly.

A love affair of bodies and cruelty. How very fickle.

Sherlock's lips purse, and his eyes glimmer with a familiar light. 'There's a pattern,' he mutters, his voice rumbling in his chest. 'First solved murder, first friend.' He lifts his gaze to meet John's. 'First lover.' He darts from the sofa in a liquid motion, fingers pressed against his lips. 'The next victim will have a similar appearance to John. Late thirty's, same build, military background. Considering the purchase of the previous victims, dishonourable discharge. He'll have his heart cut out and placed in his hands, if we don't find him first.'

So he can't love. Oh, Sherlock, I could never stop loving you.

Lestrade makes no move to leave, holding the case file loosely in his hand, his eyes traveling from Guide to fledgling slowly. In moments like these, when he seems decades older, John remembers that he is a witness to the terror that is the Mighty's war. He has no choice but to watch and bear the weight of a human heart. 

Most witnesses lose their minds. Lestrade goes down to the pub for a pint.

Sherlock grows impatient and ushers Lestrade out, insisting that he has provided a sufficient description for the Met to use. He paces through the flat, wings dragging through shards of sunlight, refracting light in places they should not belong, crystal shards of brilliant pink and absent-minded green. Anger and fear drift through their connection, swamping John's heart with the bitter taste of acid and the colour of the weeping sky. The Good Soldier watches quietly from his place at the edge of the lounge, his arms still folded over his chest and not reaching out to his fledgling. He wants to hold Sherlock, promise him things that are not entirely true, pretend that his beautiful miracle is an innocent child easily fooled. 

Oil-coloured feathers drift upwards to the ceiling and sink into unattended cracks, filtering through the rafters. John tries to follow, but his feathers are rooted into his spine. He cannot change, and Sherlock is forever volatile, water slipping through the foundations and drifting away.

Would the storm sweep him away for good?

And the darkness, it will disappear, and what is light without his darkness?

John closes his eyes and - for the first time since he started wearing human skin - calls out to the Mighty. He whispers in his old tongue and begs, pleads.

But the Mighty do not listen to fallen heroes.

.

Some of his fledgling's dark markings ripple with delicate ruby light. They are pressed against each other, Sherlock's lips buried in the receding peak of John's hairline, breathing in faint syncopation. The Good Soldier's wings drape lazily over the bed, half-covering a long, ivory leg and the scars there. Sherlock draws his fingertips over John's shoulder blade carefully, his nails dragging through the blood-coloured scapulars there. He receives a soft hiss of pleasure for his efforts, and smiles triumphantly.

But this fades, and he digs his hands into John's spine. 'I won't let him take you,' he growls.

John smiles good-naturedly, even if his heart is ripping into shreds and he can feel the waters close in over his head. He draws his finger along his imprinted confession. They were never made for moments of peace. They are creatures of battle. of gunshots, of smoke and blood and fire and poison. 'He won't have you either,' he whispers. 'You're mine.'

The fledgling exhales in a long, soft, sigh of relief. 'Yours,' he breathes, the syllable a fervent prayer on his lips.

John remembers a prayer he made not so long ago, and closes his eyes. He has more faith in this love than the love of his absent creators, even if it is this love that will be their undoing.

.

When it happens, it happens quickly. Almost painlessly.

Effortless, in a way.

And he bleeds, because he is of flesh and blood, and if he is cut he must empty his life onto the ground. But there are hands, and a magic that tastes like sick and mud, leaving a ringing familiar to bombshells discarded between barbed wire. Curved little lines appear on his arms. He is cursed and claimed. Tainted. 

If that is even possible anymore.

Sherlock will not want him as a Guide after this. His mouth tastes like tar. His eyes water and his vision swims. These veins have a new scripture written inside them, one that even Morning Star would never stoop to write. And the laughter is so sweet, so mocking, yet so faint.

He deserves this, for being so blind. He should have known. He should never have left. But he failed Sherlock, and now they will both pay the price.

'Oh, Johnny boy, we're going to have so much fun,' laughs the victor. 'Wait till he sees you like this, his precious dog. Pretty pet. Pretty, pretty pet.' And he can't see John's wings but they are molting, crisping into black wisps of memories, and he is going to die like this, gagged and bound.

The Good Soldier despairs. The last game will be played soon, but the cards have been dealt and Moriarty wins.

Chapter Text

He ends up beside a swimming pool, with a jacket covering the black marks of the curse. John hardly understands the relevance of the place. He tries to reach across London for the chain that binds his fledgling to his borrowed heart, but there is too much noise. The curse twists around his ribcage and digs in, venomous icicles drawing lines across his lungs. He lets out a thin hiss.

'Oh, Dr. Watson, stop struggling,' the demon sings in his mind. 'It'll just make it worse.' Ghostly fingers tickle the back of his neck. Bile rises thick in his throat.

Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong.

He needs his fledgling. This precious heart he carries in his chest is too pure to be damaged by these sickening chains.

'I saw what you did to that hellfire,' the demon continues to purr. 'I've made sure you can't play that little trick again. I'm afraid you've rather showed your hand there.'

He is the tar, thick and heavy, falling over John's fire, and he is gagging on the stench. He is clever, so very clever that even Sherlock's incredible mind cannot save them. The Good Soldier lowers his head, drops his arms, and closes his eyes. Oh, the chains hurt, yes, and the gag, but nothing hurts more than the fact that he failed.

It hurts more than the fall, more than the emptiness of a grey sky and the taste of blood, vomit, and mud.

The empty blank ripples with a shard of angry ultramarine. John forms his fledgling's name on his lips just as the door swings open, revealing the tall, familiar shape. He cannot speak. He cannot call. He can only do what Moriarty commands. Sherlock's gaze fastens on him immediately. The fledgling takes in everything - the way John is shivering slightly from the pain, the pile of curled ash at his side, and the rust forming on his bladed feathers - and his eyes narrow dangerously. Oh, oh. John can feel it, at last, this beautiful cascade outrage and possession coursing through their bridge. The darkness retracts. The Good Soldier's fiery heart is near, and thus the fire strikes up once more in John's blood. The bonds weaken and start to withdraw.

Yes. Yes. I will burn you, demon.

Elsewhere, Moriarty shifts uncomfortably.

But the victory is brief. The curse tightens, digging into his forearms viciously. John lets out a pained wheeze, and immediately his fledgling's face blanks with panic. The expression is gone just as quickly as it came, and Sherlock's wings sweep upwards into a definite threat, filling every space beside the pool. The shadows between each ripple quiver with barely compressed rage. 

The fledgling lifts his chin, raising an eyebrow arrogantly. 'Well?' he calls, tipping his head slightly. 'I'm here.' His hand trembles slightly, and he clenches his fist even tighter. The Good Soldier knows how much this hurts his fledgling, to bow to Mycroft's intentions, to act as a pawn in this ridiculous war. 

You can't outrun the storm forever. No one knows this as well as John.

There is a silence, filled only by the gentle sound of water lapping at the edges of the pool. Sherlock's gaze meets John, and there is a finality there that should not be worn by something so young and bold. John knows that look well. He saw it in lives past, in the slackening of the jaw and the death of brilliance, when boys that have barely become men know they will never go home again, when soldiers accept their fate. John remembers white scars on the inside of Sherlock's legs, and he wants to scream.

The doors behind him swing open, and polished shoes click smartly against the tiles. 'Sherlock!' a voice announces luxuriously. 'I'm so disappointed. So hurt.' He rolls the last syllable around his mouth, almost purring. He stops directly beside John, strenghtening the curse with his mere presence. 

The shell Moriarty wears is small, with unassuming features, but he wears his power in the form of money and expensive clothing. He is meticulously dressed to the point of pained vanity, choosing the best not because it demonstrates power, but because he can. This sort of arrogance is terrifying. 

'I thought you would play my game,' he continues, pulling his teeth upward in a grin made of too many teeth.

Sherlock's eyes travel over him quickly, efficiently collecting evidence and categorising it. His lips twitch slightly, and an eyebrow arches mordantly. 'I was under the impression that I was playing,' he replies curtly. John realises he is unimpressed and tries to smother his sudden rush of relief. His fledgling senses it nonetheless, throwing him a look of faint disappointment. 'I interpreted the pattern to your killings and located the third victim. He is now under police protection, including that of a certain Sally Donovan. I am informed that she is perfectly capable of warding off your -' Sherlock waves his hand as he searches for an appropriate term '- various accomplices.'

'That's not playing,' Moriarty whines, pouting. 'You're meant to give him to me.'

Sherlock narrows his eyes. 'What?' he says softly.

The demon places his forefinger against John's spine. White hot agony sears through his bones, ripping through his wings. Dashes of black drown out his vision. John bites back the howl of pain, digging his fingers deep into his palms. 

Sherlock swallows. It is a minute response, but a response nonetheless, and Moriarty's leer widens impossibly. 'You take away my toys, I take away your heart,' he hisses. 'Useless, ugly little thing that he is.' He drags his forefinger up to the base of John's skull and taps it gently.

The pain disappears. John exhales through his gritted teeth.

The fledgling's jaw tightens. The shadows tremble - but not with fear. Why should the fledgling be afraid of anything? An old heart beats in his chest, a heart that has never been afraid of darkness or light, a heart that laughs at the beasts and strikes them down. Sherlock's shoulders draw a solid line within his coat, his eyes turn dangerously dark - black, but for a thin rim of angry sapphire. What was frighteningly beautiful is now magnificent power. Something akin to lightning, or perhaps the absence of it, screaming across the sky once that spark of energy has coursed through the hungry earth.

The Good Soldier shivers, and this time, it is not because of the demon or the pain. All this time walking in John Watson's shell, he almost forgot the warrior's delight. He looks up at Moriarty and smiles.

You don't stand a chance.

The water stills. The echoes die out. The aging smell of dried roses colours the air, smothering the stale smell of chlorine, followed by the sharp sting of gin. A lightbulb screams as it explodes. Shattered glass smashes against the tiles. Sherlock's eyes gleam in the dark. His lower wings gleam with a metallic sheen, blazing silver and onyx all at once. His higher wings are endless. They fill every vacuum in the world. They seep across the room, trickling down the cracks and filling the empty lightbulb with treacle thickness. The fledgling's hand hovers above his wings.

John's gut lurches. Sherlock is going to draw his weapon. 

Moriarty's grin widens. 'Are you going to fight me?' he taunts gleefully. 'Really? Do you know who I am?' His features shift quickly in the manic light, eyes too big and teeth too square.

The fledgling smiles thinly. It is all menace and violence and so very dangerous it makes the Good Soldier roar within his chains. 'I assumed you were Moriarty,' he replies calmly, 'demon mastermind and grand puppeteer of the masses.'

The demon spreads his arms. 'I'm ancient,' he proclaims. 'Old as the sky, old as the sea. I was there before you, light-bearer,' he spits, whirling upon John. 'I was there when the so-called Mighty crawled out of the Mother's belly.'

The chained soldier looks into madness' eyes and is calm. He knew this before.

Disappointed, Moriarty turns to a more responsive audience. 'The ones that made you, Sherlock,' he jabs ruthlessly. 'Even they aren't as strong as me. As old as me. They don't know the secrets I know.' He presses his finger playfully against his lips, bats an eye almost flirtatiously.

The Good Soldier laughs at this, because he suspects the old demon does not know Sherlock is Everything.'You have no idea,' he grins devilishly, 'do you?' He spits a gob of black sludge on the floor. The gag is broken, useless in its spent form. 'You're going to die, and it won't be Mycroft or his hounds, it won't be me. It'll be Sherlock Holmes.' 

The demon descends upon him, snarling. The binds tighten around him, cutting deep into his skin. Blood pools at his wrists. 

The taint is so deep it is permanent. There is no cure. His wings are trembling stumps, blades rusted on the floor. John couldn't care less. He stares at his fledgling, face illuminated with eerie cyan fire, and remembers another love, millions and millions of lifetimes away. 

Sherlock reaches into his wings. 

Moriarty releases his grip on John's neck. A tendon in his neck twitches - just above his neatly pressed collar - as he prepares to turn. 

Cold silver sings through the air before it is silenced. Moriarty's eyes widen. The pupils dilate, extend, and swallow the iris. Moriarty turns his head slightly.

And further.

Further.

And off.

The decapitated body slides to the ground. John stares at the figure and the blank eyes staring up at him, too dark, too large, the mouth still open wide in a horrific snarl.

'John,' whispers a soft voice.

Like a song you know the music to, but never the lyrics, never the steps.

John looks up at last. He whispers his fledgling's name on his lips, but he knows what stands before him is no longer that. He is old, yes, so he has seen fledglings become angels. This is different. This is so, so different. The shell is the same, the curve of his lips - the ones John once kissed in the dark  - the sharp angle of his cheeks, the dark arch of his eyebrows, the concave resting between his collarbones. But this is not Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, tortured fledgling. Not anymore.

This is the angel with eyes the shade of the ever-changing sky, immortal and fragile. This is the angel with wings that are no colour at all, but the ghost of all visions that ever pass the human eye. This is the angel that holds neither spear, sword or shield, but a silver scythe. This is the angel that is beautiful, because as life is ugly and terrifying, that which ends it must be wondrous, magical, magnificent. This is Endless, Everything, and End.

John swallows the sandpaper sensation from his mouth. It all makes sense. All of it. How could Mycroft create an angel, when it was the Mighty alone that could draw miracles from the universe? Of all things, how can an angel exist in a suspended reality and see only the souls of the fallen? How can Sherlock love a broken warrior with the stench of death at his heels?

'John,' the angel smiles, relieved. 'You aren't hurt. Good.' His expressions are the same. Even his rumbling voice is the same. He reaches out with his free hand. Blood glistens at the edge of his scythe.

The Good Soldier rises to his feet. He has no wings, anymore. His arms are covered in black spidery ink, his veins filled with tar. Moriarty may be dead, but his magic is old and strong. John smiles thinly. 'I suppose you understand now, don't you?' he rasps. His throat is raw. 'Do you understand who you are? Why they took you here? Made you Sherlock Holmes? Gave me to you?' He covers his face with his hand, smearing blood thick across his forehead. 

That's fine. Not the first time. Breathe. Keep breathing, John. 

'This was all a trick, all a trick, all of it,' he hisses. 'Mycroft wanted to kill two birds with one stone. Not to find Moriarty, no, that's easy enough. He wants to be found.' He glances at the severed head on the ground. 'Mycroft wanted Moriarty dead, but how do you kill something older than the Mighty? You find something older than that, older than all of that, something so ancient and endless it doesn't need an identity. You give it an identity, a purpose.' He is verging on hysterical, but that's fine. It's all fine. 'That's what I was, Sh-no, no. That's why I was brought to you. You would love me because, oh for the love of the Mighty -' he breathes in raggedly '- I would love you. And I love you. And this is where we are. Because you will kill for what you love, and you love me, and I love you, but I'm going to die.'

Ash piles at the Good Soldier's feet. His cheeks are wet with tears but he cannot stop speaking, even if the last words he ever speaks to this glorious creature is nothing more than drivel. They cannot touch. If they touch he will stumble and it will all be for nothing.

'I'm going to die,' he whispers again. There is fear in the angel's eyes, and the hand gripping the scythe tightens. 'So please, please. Humour me.'

The angel looks at him because there is nothing to say, nothing to do. They are both only capable of destruction. Neither can create. Neither can heal.

John lifts his chin, straightens his shoulders, and draws his heels together. 'My name is White,' he pronounces. 'I am God's light.'

Tilting his head slightly, the angel parts his lips. He closes his eyes, shakes his head slightly, and moves his lungs as though to draw breath. 'My name is Death,' he replies quietly, barely over a breath. John hears him all the same. 'God is my aid.'

The Good Soldier smiles broadly. Blood lines the inside of his throat. He cannot feel his fingers. It's fine, though. 'I had a bet, you know, with Morning Star,' he remarks to no one in particular. 'I knew you came for us too. I knew you would.' He falls then, but only because he can no longer stand. The curse is in his legs, too.

Soft fingers thread through his hair. Lips brush his forehead. He is home. He is home, in these arms, and he is so tired. The Good Soldier cannot fight anymore.

So tired.

'Uriel, please,' whispers the angel. 'Stay with me. Please, please John. Stay.' Fingers flutter at his temples, desperate with panic. Rain falls. Rain? How can it rain indoors?

'Azrael,' the tired soldier whispers, closing his eyes. 'Goodbye.'

If his wings were anchor, then he is set free. Maybe he should have stayed in the place where he and Sherlock were safe, and time stood still. It's too late now.

Darkness comes with the scent of mulling wine, a kiss he never feels, a promise he never hears.

.

He wakes to rippling light, and a strange itching ache down his spine. His head pounds a manic beat and his tongue feels like lead. He knows he is not dead, because death could not possibly be this painful. That, and the fact that he is tucked up under his sheets, snug and warm. The window is slightly open, and a soft summer breeze sneaks in through the light curtains.

Oh fucking well, John thinks to himself faintly. Guess they weren't going to let me die after all.

He attempts to sit up and is rewarded with a searing pain down his ribs. He groans, falling back against the pillows. He stares at the ceiling in confused defeat.

Cold fingers feel his wrist while a palm rests against his feverish head. 'I wouldn't do that again if I were you,' advises a familiarly gentle voice. 'The toxin is still in your bloodstream, and if you disturb Michael's concentration you'll end up with your feathers in the wrong place. She's on enough whiskey as it is.'

John turns and looks up into Molly's beaming face. He notes the red rims of her eyes, the slight tremble in her smile, and the wilderness of loss in her wide eyes. He looks into her, and for the first time, realises how blind he always was. Why hadn't he recognised this perfume before? It had been the scent of the stars, after all. How else did she know how to heal, and to love, and to hold the world's sadness within her small bones? 

He laughs weakly only to regret it after another jab of white-hot pain in his chest. Blinking away the tears from his vision, he covers her small hand with his own bandaged one. 'You're here,' he whispers.

She smiles blankly at him. 'Of course I'm here,' she reprimands, pretending to swat his shoulder. 'Where else would I be? Sherlock's been completely beside himself, and Mrs Hudson has been making too much tea, and don't even get me started on your sister.' She rolls her eyes. 'Honestly, you would think she's never treated demon wounds before, the way she's been carrying on,' she sighs.

John squeezes her delicate fingers once, shaking his head. 'No,' he says firmly. 'I mean you were always here. Watching him. When I couldn't.' He smiles at her, and in the depths of his scarred soul, a thousand weights are lifted. 'You always knew what I wanted better than I did, didn't you?'

Molly tries to retain her cheery smile, but her eyes are brimming with saltwater. 'John,' she whispers. 'John.' She shakes her head and glances away.

Painstakingly - because his bicep feels as though someone has run it through a grinder - he brings her hand up to his lips and kisses it. 'I'm so sorry,' he mumbles into her skin, 'Morning Star.' 

She bites her lip, closing her eyes. Her fingers tremble against his lips. A single tear traces a crooked path down her cheek.

The child of the universe, forever saddened by the tragedy that is.

'Never,' she whispers, squeezing his hand once. 'Never apologise to me. Never.' She opens her eyes, and they are as full of secrets as he remembers. 'I'm so sorry for what I did to us. I'm, I'm so sorry. So sorry.' She drops down against him, her face buried in his neck. The tears sting in his wounds, but he welcomes them. 'I wanted you to be well. I wanted you to be well and I wanted you to be loved, because I love you, Soldier, I always have.'

Her hair feels like silk under his fingertips, and her eyelashes murmur against his skin. He remembers now why he loved her so. It was not for the beauty, nor her song, but it was for the tragedy she always understood. Maybe she fell first because she knew that they would all have to fall, someday. Maybe she always knew that John would need someone to protect his heart, when it was his turn.

So the Good Soldier forgives the silent moon that was once his radiant brother, and kisses her damp cheek. He tells her he loves her too, and that he always will. There is nothing to forgive, because she is finally here.

.

Harry visits him often to ensure that her reconstruction of the Good Soldier's wings is going accordingly. Molly calls her by her old name, and John's sister retaliates good-naturedly by calling Molly by hers. This ends in a brief session of bickering, while John stares at the door and wonders why Sherlock will not visit.

Eventually, he is well enough to walk down to the lounge. Sherlock is perched in his usual chair, the scythe lying nonchalantly across the coffee table, violin in one hand and bow in the other. His wings are folded neatly behind him, but his eyes have an inwardly vacant state to them. When John crosses the threshold, however, Sherlock's gaze fastens on him.

For a while, they just look at each other. John knows he looks harried, ten years older, even, and his feathers are a little too bright in the sun - Harry seemed to think a hue of green was appropriate - but he is walking and the curse is nothing more than a scar. Sherlock has dark circles beneath his eyes, and his clothes are uncharacteristically rumpled. A wall shivers between them, a million miles thick, and all John can think of is the angel that simmers under his lover's skin. Death will always be there under the surface, but the Good Soldier has always loved danger.

So he smiles.

Sherlock abuses his abilities. One moment he is by the fireplace, the other, his lips are pressed tightly against John's and his fingers dig deep into the still-tender feathers. Not that John cares. The pain can hardly drown out the savage pleasure tearing through his purified blood. He grabs a good handful of Sherlock's hair and drags him downward, relishing the taste of silver and eternity.

'I would never have taken you,' the angel whispers against John's tongue brokenly. 'Never. Do you understand me, John? Never. As long as this reality exists, I will never let you die.' He takes in one agonising, shuddering breath. 'I love you.'

John closes his eyes. He breathes in the scent of stale cigarettes and worry. He relishes the taste Sherlock leaves on the inside of his cheek. He has this day, this extra day. He has the miracle of a kiss, of a familiar touch and the particular note when Sherlock's voice breaks with emotion. He has the rise of skin against his lips, the soft sigh of relief, the touch of water when he feels like he has been walking an eternity through the desert.

It doesn't matter that another battle will inevitably arise. It doesn't matter how many days of darkness may follow.

Death has promised eternity. The Mighty can sod off.