Chapter Text
Chapter One: Protection Detail/Bargains with Mycroft Apt to Frustrate
The man cloaked in shadow (and the added precaution of a good coat) watched the shorter man in the shorter coat cross the street, naked with daylight.
Exposed. Troublesome. Sherlock rolled his eyes to himself. Getting poetic, are we? he mused silently. Getting as bad as John. Still. Good image. He cast a glance at the edges of his shadow, still contoured with the edge of the building behind him. Still hidden. Good.
John, as usual, suspected nothing. He never stopped, looked over his shoulder. Never seemed to feel for instant that he was being watched, followed. Guarded. It was almost disappointing. Surely he’d learned to be more observant during that year and a half in 221B Baker. Perhaps he’d simply put the possibility out of mind altogether. Safer that way. John liked to believe that he preferred safety; his recurrent limp said otherwise.
Sherlock waited, allowing for a half-block’s lead time, then eased around the corner, crossed to the opposite side and resumed trailing John. Headed to Harry’s, that explained the extra measure of reluctance in his gait, leaning a little harder than usual on the cane. Ridiculous thing. Far too short. Want to destroy it. No, the other part of his mind said. He thinks he needs it. Let him have it for now.
That part wasn’t really optional; he couldn’t cross over, wrench the ridiculous thing out of John’s hand and chuck it in a skip. Mycroft had been quite specific about the terms of his disappearance; it would only work if John in particular believed it to be true. His was the only life it really changed; Mrs Hudson and Lestrade and the rest would carry on as usual. He liked to think that Mrs Hudson would be a little sad. He wondered if she’d taken down the cow skull. Mycroft would have rescued the lab equipment, at least. Or would he? He’d better have done. Yes. Likely. Probably had the MI6 all over it. Probably never see it again. Sigh. Meanwhile: John. John moved out, Mrs Hudson presumably let the flat. Sherlock hadn’t been back himself; somehow it felt wrong to be there. Pointless. Tedious. (Sentiment? Perish the thought.) John’s new flat (and somehow he still resented that such a thing existed) was all right, better than the dismal bed-sit he’d lived in before Baker Street, but then, anything would have been. Regardless, he didn’t spend much time there. He slept on the short, inadequate sofa at the surgery occasionally, at the flat occasionally, and the rest of the time, it was Mary’s.
Mary’s: South Kensington, rather posh. Completely unlike the John Watson he knew, possibly quite like the John Watson which John Watson believed he wished to become. Sherlock hated it unreservedly, the white-pillared Georgian monstrosity with ivy crawling up the pillars like an infection, butler to answer the door. Mary had money, obviously. Was John marrying that? No. Reassess. John was marrying the notion of safety and comfort and domesticity and other (ridiculous) notions of marital bliss. (Incomprehensible.) Of course he was prone to spend nights there; he was marrying the woman in four weeks, after all. It was everything he thought he wanted. (Possibility that it was indeed what John wanted? Consider. No.)
(Doubt.)
(Fear. Delete immediately.)
Sherlock blinked and ducked behind his collar in passing a woman walking her terrier, hastened to resume his pace; somehow he’d slowed down for a moment. No need to hurry: John was not about to win any county races at this speed, but he shouldn’t have let his concentration slip like that.
Of course, he was hardly about to let Mycroft dictate everything; they’d agreed on a certain period of time. That was Mycroft’s doing, otherwise Sherlock would hardly have agreed to three years. Three years of safehouses and dodging Mycroft’s heavy-handed protection detail (and Mycroft himself), but it was nearly over. Finally. They complained sometimes (frequently), the morons Mycroft sent to tail him, as if between the CCTV and squadrons of idiots dogging his every footstep would actually enable them to keep tabs on him at all times. It wasn’t hard to evade them, just required a little creativity sometimes. Odd, how the sorts of people who went into the British Secret Service and other similar types of work nearly always seemed to be so appallingly lacking in creative ability. So two-dimensional in their thinking. As if the only exits to a safehouse were through its doors and windows. Morons. It grew tedious occasionally, having to always think of new ways out (occasionally dangerous, mental note about roofs pitched at more than forty-five degrees while wearing shoes designed for the creation of an image rather than maintaining footing on slate roof tiles), but if he was going to maintain his own protection detail, it was simply necessary. An inconvenience easily overlooked, irrelevant the instant it had finished.
Luckily John was reasonably predictable. Reasonably? Utterly. Even this marriage. When Mycroft said three years, his absolute, immutable condition before consenting to anything, Sherlock had known. Known it the moment he consented. One word – the most reluctantly given yes to escape his lips in Mycroft’s presence to date. One yes and with a lift of Mycroft’s hand, the full weight of the British government had been unleashed in a floodgate of plans, precautions, networks of safety (ignore all of it) and Sherlock was free to go his merry way and die.
Dying hadn’t been so bad. Having to do it in front of John – more painful than anticipated. Pain. He hadn’t thought before, hadn’t considered that sentiment would get the better of him then, in what should been nothing more than a very convincing performance. But John always could, couldn’t he. Get past the walls. What legions of verbal contortions from past associations could never elicit from him, John could, in two words. You could. Staunch refusal to believe the lie that had been so hard to tell, the arguments to back it slicing open his trachea as he forced them out. Idiot, John. Just take it. But he wouldn’t. You could. Mycroft said later that John had been “most touching”, irritatingly. Trust him to ruin it, or do his best. He’d added, snidely (everything Mycroft said was snide), “I see why you fancy him so, Sherlock. And he’s clearly besotted. Pity.” Pity? When they both knew that with Sherlock’s yes, the real price was this: losing John. Losing John to Mary. He’d have had more respect if John had gone over to Moriarty.
But it was utterly predictable. John was, much as Sherlock was loath to admit it, still wounded. Needy. Needier than either of him wanted him to be. He had relied on Sherlock too much, perhaps. Surely his therapist had told him that, after. After the fall. He’d gone back. Sherlock had wanted to hate that, too, but with the framework he’d come to depend on taken so suddenly away, he was in need of something. A stand-in. Someone to talk to, not that a therapist was going to work, not when John wouldn’t have put himself through the ridiculous motions of talking about his feelings with a near-stranger. He knew as much as Sherlock that therapy was nonsense (Sherlock hated therapists on principle), he just needed a temporary stand-in until he found a permanent one, which he had. Mary.
Sherlock stopped. He’d almost drawn even; John was already at Harry’s and ringing the bell. He stepped back into the shadows under a balcony and settled himself to wait until John re-emerged.
***
He’d been tempted, on occasion, to allow himself to drift into John’s field of periphery. He’d tried it once or twice, but Mycroft was merciless. Each time he deliberately placed himself in John’s view or lingered just a little too long, one of Mycroft’s omnipresent, unmarked black cars would swoop alongside and nab him directly off the sidewalk, sometimes detaining him for hours. He’d learned not to do that. Too difficult to pick up the trail again, and meanwhile, he doubted Mycroft was being as vigilant about John’s safety.
He had left, of course. Mycroft hadn’t needed to gang-press him into helping track down other players in the huge network of players still in action. Moriarty was gone, yet the dance continued. He’d been on the continent, in grimy back alleys of Prague and Sophia and Moscow and Warsaw. He’d threatened Mycroft, told him, You have to watch him, make sure he’s not followed, do you understand? It was pointless. By someone other than you, you mean? Mycroft, oily as ever. Sherlock could only ever glare. At least he couldn’t call Mycroft’s people incompetent, per se, but he doubted that Mycroft cared sufficiently to see that much effort was applied. He’d always found John a relatively useful asset insofar as he felt John a good influence on Sherlock, or someone else he could use as leverage against Sherlock. No love lost between them since the beginning, and Sherlock never knew whom of the three of them was most to credit for that: Sherlock for having somehow gained John’s loyalty from the beginning, John for his staunch refusal to play Mycroft’s little spy games, or Mycroft himself for being so intensely repellent. The third. Definitely the third.
Meanwhile, if he didn’t want to be snatched off the streets by government cars, he would just have to content himself with watching John from the shadows. The time for revelation, however, was drawing near.
***
It was as though Mycroft knew, could sense his thoughts from across the city. Damn the man. Sherlock was sitting in a café at the corner of Mary’s street when Mycroft dropped into the seat opposite without so much as a by-your-leave. Smug bastard.
“What.” He didn’t bother lowering the paper.
“Please.” Mycroft dripped sarcasm. “You know how easy it is for me to find you.”
The paper didn’t move an inch. “What do you want.”
He could always see through it, though, and Mycroft never wanted nothing. There was no such thing as smalltalk where Mycroft Holmes was concerned. “Put the paper down. I’m sure whatever foolish disguise you’ve affected today is still in place.” As if he hadn’t seen it on hundreds of cameras already.
Sherlock twitched the paper aside. “I’m reading,” he said, with some annoyance.
“Nothing new.”
“Or important.”
“My point exactly.”
Sherlock sighed, folded the paper, and waited.
Mycroft studied his face. “Can you actually grow a beard that thick?” he asked mildly.
“Never tried. What do you want, Mycroft?”
“Don’t say my name in public. I afford you the same courtesy.”
“You afford me the same protection,” Sherlock returned, sarcasm heavy on the final word. Try as he might to escape Mycroft’s little games, it was always futile and always terribly, terribly frustrating. The fact that he couldn’t hide that was the worst of all. That Mycroft knew all of the above was worse still. “What. Do. You. Want.”
Mycroft’s eyes narrowed. He leaned forward over the small marble-topped table. Finally. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t. It’s not time yet.”
Breath escaped heavily through his nose. “And when,” Sherlock bit, “do you think it might be time?”
“When I deem it safe. I will let you know.”
“What makes you think it will ever be, as you put it, ‘safe’? I refuse to live this way forever. It isn’t – ” Sherlock stopped.
“Fair?” Mycroft finished, lifting those supercilious eyebrows. “To whom, exactly? You?”
Sherlock heard the implication, felt the anger rising. Helpless to restrain it. He swallowed. “Yes,” he ground out. “To me. I will not be coddled and safehoused and followed for the rest of my natural life, doing your bidding. That was not the agreement.”
Mycroft smiled placidly. “But you agreed, and now you’ll just have to let it play out naturally, in its own time. There is a piece of the puzzle left yet. Let’s not get hasty.”
Sherlock hardly heard him. John and Mary had left the flat and were walking toward the café, not slowing, not planning to come inside the café. Going for dinner somewhere. Getting a taxi at the corner, then. (Predictable.) He wanted to leave, but knew that if he said it (didn’t need saying, Mycroft would have already anticipated this), Mycroft would only stall him deliberately.
“He still hasn’t chosen a best man, you know,” Mycroft said, still in that half-amused, half-bored tone he had. “The wedding’s only four weeks off now. Is that why you’re getting impatient? You want to make your grand return to the land of the living at John Watson’s wedding? Interesting. Terribly sentimental, really. I can’t say I didn’t anticipate this. I have suspected all along.”
Sherlock tuned him out, or made a valiant effort to do so. John and Mary rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Sherlock wondered if he kept the pistol on him even for dinner. He should do. One never knew. But Mary, Mary didn’t like the gun. It was always Mary. (“You’re a doctor,” in protesting tones. “You’re supposed to save people, not shoot them!” “A military doctor,” John corrected, but rubbed at his eyes, fatigue: concession.) Sherlock turned back to Mycroft. “Hardly. Not really my area.”
“I’m sure you can read him your toast later,” Mycroft went on, more amused than ever. “‘To the only man I have ever known foolish enough to involve himself in my life – ’”
Sherlock stood abruptly, his chair skittering back, felt the heat boiling beneath his skin. Without a word, he picked up the paper and walked out of the café, Mycroft chuckling to himself behind him. (Infuriating.)
He went to the corner, but John and Mary were already gone. Very well: if his restaurant guesses proved to be inaccurate, he would simply wait outside the flat.
***
Continuation of three-year argument held with self: how and what to tell John.
When didn’t really matter. When it felt right. (Dubious. Unsure. Hate being unsure.) Problem: faking own death and subsequently not coming out of hiding going on three years now bound to cause certain reactions. John Watson: prone to choose emotional responses over logical ones, willing to allow sentiment to affect decisions. Still seeing his therapist, despite having successfully located a placeholder (Mary) in his life. He had grieved. He would respond with anger at first. For whatever gaps Mycroft, John, and – well – everyone else thought of his knowledge of human relationships and their function (lack of knowledge, rather), he knew John Watson. Knew from repeated reactions when something he’d done or said was a bit not good, or when he’d become a little too engrossed in the work to pay sufficient attention to the sentimental bits that everyone else treasured so. Those sidelong looks of John’s, the dry, semi-exasperated little reminders (“try to remember that there’s a woman’s life/people taken hostage/kidnapped children here”), to keep him socially acceptable. If he was thinking about it, of course he could gauge John’s reactions. He just didn’t usually think about it.
This, however, was more than a bit not good. He knew that. And he knew that John was not going to be happy with him. He’d thought about it. If it were anyone else, he wouldn’t care. Happiness be damned. He’d stopped trying to please people a long time ago. They all knew his opinions on sentiment. But John. John was different. And John would be angry.
He’d failed before. He knew that. Years of experience of people’s typical reactions to him had built in him certain types of responses, certain automatic defences. Most people hated his deductions, even Lestrade and the rest, even when they needed them, relied on them to solve cases, keep their jobs. No one liked it outside a crime scene. People always said piss off. Only John had been different. Amazing. Fantastic. Brilliant. Sherlock could still remember the startled inner reaction he’d had that first time, in the taxi. John, frankly astonished, which wasn’t unusual, but a positive reaction. Praise. He didn’t consciously angle to get John to say it after that – the temptation to do so was strong, like a cat leaning into a hand – but John would say it anyway. It never failed to cause that same reaction: startled, pleased, warm. It was unusual. John was unusual. Centered enough within himself, despite his surface self doubts, to express things like that without suffering embarrassment. If he thought Sherlock brilliant, he just said it. No beating around the bush. No backhanded compliments. No taking it away a moment later with something twice as stinging as the compliment had been pleasing (Mycroft).
And he’d failed repeatedly. Dartmoor stood out in his memory. Spectacular failure, that. He’d been drugged, out of his mind with fear and doubt, twitching, reactive, unnerved and irritated. Barely aware of John trying to calm him with rationalisations and good sense, but nonetheless brushing his experience aside, invalidating it. Vaguely reminiscent of teachers and professors years ago. People never believed him. Usually John did, and that time he hadn’t, and Sherlock had shouted at him, told him that he didn’t have friends. John’s face hadn’t changed much, but there had been a certain set to his mouth, a little harder than before, a flicker of something in his eyes, and then his tone. Too resolutely steady, biting out his little retort. I wonder why. Confirming what everyone else had always said. Sherlock had gone too far. And John had left. (Left him alone. Forget that. It was well deserved.)
He’d been rather too aware the next day that John had only just forgiven him, too. He hadn’t thought about it much at the time; there was a case and he needed John cooperative enough for the lab experiment, but after he’d remembered, considered it quietly for a long time. John was indeed different: a friend. A real one. Apparently friends required more caution, less directness. John was a military man, surely he could appreciate a straight truth. That wasn’t it. He required less bluntness to the truth. Perhaps it wasn’t always necessary to say exactly what he thought. I needed to test it on an average mind. Yes. That could be too sharp. Good to bear in mind.
Alone protects me, he’d said. He hadn’t said I need you to leave me for your own safety. So that I can protect you. John never would have gone. The grief needed to be real, and John was too honest, too open to be able to pretend real grief. But perhaps he should have done some part of it differently. He didn’t know, and Sherlock hated not knowing.
He’d tried out different ways the conversation could go in his head. Most versions still resulted in John punching him or refusing to speak to him again. In one horrifying version, John cried. No. Steer it differently. John had cried enough, before; John, who always resisted falling apart, kept the nightmares at bay, stood his ground. John had cried when he died. It had been painful to watch. More painful than to die himself, to witness John’s reaction to his death. Pain: part of the deep well of things he’d deleted. (Tried to delete. Some things refuse to be deleted altogether, only pushed away and ignored.)
He hadn’t found the right hypothetical conversation. Predictable as John Watson was, Sherlock could not predict him in this. (Natural enough: new situation. Quite new. He’d never come back from the dead before.) It was troubling. But it was time to found out. Mycroft be damned.
***
To his surprise, there was a car waiting two blocks from the safehouse, on the way to Mary’s flat. Mycroft seemed to have learned that if they could not detect Sherlock’s escape from the safehouses, they could at least predict his directions. He would need to add more variety to his routes. Or perhaps not.
“We captured Tom Blakewell last night,” Mycroft said without preamble.
Sherlock half-turned on the seat. “Who?” He felt the crease at the bridge of his nose contract.
“Part of Moran’s crew. Expert in explosions and extortion.”
“Where?”
“Libya.”
Libya. He hadn’t even known the operation extended into northern Africa, though it was hardly surprising; den of terrorists there. Shaky, corrupt governments. Of course. Obvious. “Moran?”
“Still gone to ground. We haven’t heard a thing in over two years now. He may,” Mycroft allowed grudgingly, “be dead. We may never know.”
“What are you saying?” Sherlock felt himself holding his breath, muscles tensed.
“You may tell him,” Mycroft said, as magnanimously as he possibly could. “You may tell them all. Carefully.”
Sherlock turned his face toward the window to conceal any emotional reaction. Resurrection. He was finally being granted resurrection. “How soon?”
“Tonight, if you wish.” Mycroft was studying him carefully; he could feel it.
“Conditions?”
“No conditions. I assume you’ll want to show yourself to Watson before he hears about it from someone else.”
“Mrs Hudson?”
“I have already let her know,” Mycroft said smugly.
Sherlock’s head turned without him intending it. “What?”
“I felt it for the best,” Mycroft said, irritatingly superior. “At her age, the shock of seeing you without warning might have been too much. She said you may take up residence in 221B again if you wish. After all, I have been paying the rent to keep it vacant for you.”
This was new information. Welcome information. “Thank you,” Sherlock said, turning back to the window.
Perhaps Mycroft was surprised. “I know it has been a long time,” he said, more gently than usual. “But be careful. Don’t become sentimental now. Moran may return at any moment.”
“If he does, I’ll be ready.” He raised his voice for the driver. “Baker Street, please!”
***
He sat in the sitting room, willing himself not to fidget, not to play something to pass the time, to just wait. It was torture. He went over his carefully planned words, rehearsing. The violin was there on the desk, had been there all along, as if nothing had ever happened, as if he had never died. Everything was just as it had been, only cleaner. Mrs Hudson had straightened out all of the papers, cleaned the kitchen, dusted regularly. He’d seen her only briefly; she’d cried and tried to pretend she wasn’t (mysterious; it was altogether obvious, so why attempt to disguise it?), beat at his shoulders and told him he was impossible, then hugged him, released him and told him to go on and take his things upstairs all before he’d been able to react.
The violin was calling to his fingers (three years without playing, he’d be in terrible shape) but it had to wait. Everything had to wait. Presumably Mycroft had dispatched a car to get John. He wasn’t supposed to say why. Sherlock had left it up to him to invent a suitable reason to get John to come to Baker Street on a Tuesday evening in May, just out of the blue. Not his problem.
He waited. Finally, he heard it: the sound of the smoothly running engines of one of Mycroft’s fleet of cars. Heard the bell, heard Mrs Hudson’s thrilled voice, quavery with tears. And John’s voice. There it was again, that same, startled burst of warmth. He couldn’t hear their words, just the tones (anxiety in Mrs Hudson’s, confusion in John’s), but it didn’t matter any more. He felt his heart racing. John was here. Here. At Baker Street. At last. There were steps on the stairs (automatic mental count to seventeen), steps with a pronounced (psychosomatic) limp. John. Sherlock rose, straightened his coat. Breathed. His heart was in his throat.
The door opened, and John was there.
“Hello, John.”