Lestrade's statement was met with a deafening silence.
John sank slowly to his knees, feeling like the ground was falling away beneath him. Sherlock made some sort of exclamation; John could not tell what he had said through the thick fog descending over him.
It was like being underwater. Everything was blurred, and sounds seemed muffled.
Lestrade said something about shock, at which Sherlock tried to pull him back to his feet. John did not resist; he let himself be led from the floor of the manor to the veranda. How fresh air was supposed to ease his despair, he didn't know, but he decided to humor the detective inspector. Besides, there was something in Sherlock's expression that drove him to quiet compliance. The dark-haired genius rarely displayed concern for others, but the fraction of John's brain that had not ground to a screeching halt recognized the worry and self-loathing in Sherlock's features and responded accordingly.
"John."
A series of synapses fired, and the doctor registered that Sherlock was shaking him hesitantly by the shoulder. John turned slowly to face the detective, but his mind was miles away.
"John. I'm... I... I don't know what to say," Sherlock finished lamely, staring at the ground.
John opened his mouth. He closed it, then opened it again.
"I suppose that makes two of us," he said finally.
"John," repeated Sherlock, still staring at the ground, "I need you not to go into shock right now. I... was not exaggerating when I said I would be lost without my blogger. And if we -"
Lestrade approached the veranda. Apparently, he had gone down to his patrol car after seeing the doctor safely outside. John hadn't even noticed.
"Get in," he said, not unkindly. "I'll drive us over to Elvanston Street, shall I?"
Taking John again by the arm, Sherlock led him down the drive to where the police vehicle was parked by the gate. The whole way there, the detective looked as though he were fighting with himself. The little twitches, out-of-place blinks, subtle puckerings of his lips, would have been indistinguishable to the casual observer, but John, who knew him better than most, saw on that usually-expressionless face a veritable battleground of emotions, and for once, the doctor felt he could keep up with the detective's train of thought.
Sherlock did not want him to see his flat, or what was left of it, plain and simple. The detective knew, however, that John required closure, would not rest until he saw for himself what Moriarty had done. So when they reached the police car and Sherlock began to say something presumably awkward and well-intentioned but poorly worded, John stopped him.
"Sherlock. Shut up. I need to see this."
The taller man blinked, his face sliding back into its typical mask of calm composure.
"That's... actually not at all what I was thinking about just now, John, but as you say, I'll not stop you."
The doctor tried for a disbelieving scoff, but suspected it was affected somewhat more with hysteria than he would have liked.
On any other day, John might have marveled at the novelty of sitting in a patrol car without wearing handcuffs; today, he leaned back in the plastic seat and took a deep breath, staring blankly at the scenery as it flashed past.
Elvanston Street was a mess of ambulances, police, and fire trucks. A swarm of curious bystanders were being ordered from the scene where, with a thrill of horror, John realized his flat used to be. When Lestrade stopped the car, the doctor stumbled out, Sherlock catching the door behind him. Donovan was on crowd control; seeing them approach, she cut an aisle through the gaggle of onlookers and let them through, for once in her life saying nothing at all. There was a line of sagging yellow tape stretched across the front of the ruined building. John stood before it on the charred remnants of his sidewalk and tried to take it in.
The bomb had blown a hole straight through the flat, blasting through walls and furniture and joists. Piles of rubble were all that remained of the once-homey place, and everything lay still and saturnine under a shroud of ash. With the ground floor largely decimated, the apartments above were beginning to sink and bow under their own weight. A team was working to erect a support to stop them collapsing altogether, while another was working to smother the electrical fires that sprung up where circuitry had melted.
John ducked hesitantly under the police tape, stepping gingerly on the blackened floor. He could sense Sherlock doing the same behind him, but his focus was all on the scene before him. It wasn't until he rubbed his face and his hand came away wet that he realized he was crying.
Picking a path through the desolate, almost alien, landscape, the blonde man worked his way back to the epicenter of the explosion, which he judged to be the bathroom. Here there was the greatest level of incineration, and it appeared that all the debris had burst in an outward radius from that point.
"Sherlock," John said softly. "Read it for me."
It wasn't as if it was particularly difficult to work out the details himself - the signs were still fresh, still clear, after all - but for some reason he needed to hear the detective say it.
Behind him, Sherlock drew a deep breath.
"Uh, well, the marks in the soot suggest that - that Mary stood here when the bomb went off. Probably Semtex; Moriarty's used it before - you'll remember that, of course. We can't say for sure until they run the tests for the airborne vapor tagging agent, but it's a common enough explosive for building demolition (it's also a tightly controlled substance, but that doesn't mean anything to a man of Moriarty's means), so that seems safe to hypothesize. This was your bathroom; obvious to anyone familiar with the standard layout of the rooms in this building, or to anyone who's been here before, as well as there being the telltale presence of melted shards of glass over there from the mirror. Ah, the ceramic chips on this side came from the toilet, and... the cast iron is from the bathtub. Um..."
"Sherlock," John said in the same quiet, flat tone of voice, "where is my wife's body?"
"John, I don't know that that's a good -"
"Just tell me, Sherlock."
The dark haired detective took another, shakier breath.
"Well, if she was standing here -" He stepped around John and planted his feet on the faint marks on the sooty floor he'd indicated earlier "- the blast appears to have been a particularly strong one - you have entire walls laid out here - but emanating from a small, concentrated area. Balance of probability suggests that she was facing the bomb when it went off, as she'd sent you a text, so she clearly understood what was coming. Relating the size of the blast radius and your wife's BMI, the explosion will have carried her -" He turned and pointed to a spot twenty-odd feet away, where a mass of rubble was piled, "- there."
John turned himself and began walking stoically toward the indicated pile.
"John," Sherlock insisted, catching him by the arm. "I really don't think you should see this."
"I'm a doctor, and a war veteran," John replied stonily. "I've seen people killed in explosions before."
"But this is your wife," the detective pressed. "It's different. There's a sentimental element that -"
"That you wouldn't know anything about." John wrenched his shoulder from Sherlock's grip. "I have to know that she's dead. I have to know that she's not going to come waltzing back into my life two years from now, cool as you please, like nothing is wrong. I have to know she's not coming back." His voice broke on the last word as Sherlock's eyes widened in comprehension; he had meant to hurt Sherlock, wanted him to feel some infinitesimal slice of his pain, but it only hurt all the more to see that he had succeeded.
Brushing brusquely past the stunned detective, John began tearing through shattered beams and crumbling drywall. He said nothing to stop Sherlock waving Lestrade over, only dug with a greater furor.
The first thing he uncovered was a hand. That alone brought him close to losing his nerve; the flesh was horribly burned, a scarlet-brown-black that was positively skeletal in appearance. It had been several years since he'd last had the misfortune to examine a mortar victim, and found he needed to re-steel himself against the sight. He had held that hand only last night, traced the faint pattern of blue veins under pale skin.
Breathing harder, John pushed more of the dross out of his way, revealing a mangled torso and an appendage that once had been a head. It was undoubtedly Mary.
Lestrade took that opportunity to approach cautiously.
"Er, John," he began, "if it's alright, we'll run some DNA tests and the like - make sure it's not... er... you know, another one of Moriarty's tricks..." He trailed off uncertainly.
"Run your tests if you like, Greg," John said softly. "But it's Mary. I know my wife when I see her."
And he could see her, could see her beautiful face reconstructed over that lurid corpse, knew how the plates of that skull were supposed to be fused together. His doctor's vision took it all in, analyzed it, and John found in that moment that he had absolutely no idea what to do.
He allowed Lestrade's team to move the body, remaining in place, kneeling and bent over the broken fragments of his life which had, only that morning, seemed so intriguing and full of promise.
"Sherlock," he said quietly, knowing full well that the detective was standing just behind him. "Why her?"
Sherlock shifted his weight uncomfortably. "How do you mean?"
"Why is she dead? Convince me that this isn't my fault. Tell me why Moriarty killed her, and not me. She wasn't even involved."
It was several minutes before the taller man spoke. When he did, his voice was cool and unaffected as ever.
"When I came back after my 'absence', you said you didn't care how I'd done it. Your question was why I'd done it. I told you then that the why of it was harder to explain. This... This is why. I believed Moriarty was dead; to this day, I am not certain how he survived. But at the very least, I knew Moriarty had a powerful global network that had the potential to get to me if they knew that I lived, a network I was set and bound to unravel from the inside. So I did the only thing I could do - I disappeared. I could not even tell you that I was alright because you yourself had to be totally convinced by the deception, else you were in grave danger. You see? If you knew I was alive, if your mourning me was in any way contrived, Moriarty's people would have figured it out as well, and would have hurt you to get to me. Every day I worried that someone would discover my deception, that I would get a text from Mycroft saying you'd been kidnapped or shot. When at last I'd torn apart the roots of Moriarty's network, I returned to London, thinking it was safe, just in time to sort out that terrorist attack on parliament with you. You'd met Mary, were happy, and everything seemed calmer than it had in a long while. But then Moriarty came back. Apparently, he took a page out of Magnussen's book, using Mary against the both of us instead of you against me. So, what I am attempting to convey, however unsuccessfully, is that this is really my fault. Not yours. And... I am sorry to have been the cause of your misfortune."
John lifted his head to stare at the detective, his eyes red and puffy with saltwater.
"I'm going to kill him," he said. "I am going to kill him. And no-one is going to stop me. Are we clear?"
"Crystal," Sherlock replied briskly. "Does that mean you're going to help me solve this 'final problem'? It is definitely going to be dangerous, at best."
"Moriarty can do his worst," John spat, grabbing Sherlock by the hand and pulling himself up. "I've not got a whole lot else to lose, have I? And what little I do have is in danger for as long as he's alive. So help me God, I'll see him buried six feet under if it kills me, too. And you are going to help me, Sherlock."
"Yes, John, I am."
They're conversation was interrupted by the conspicuous arrival of a sleek black car at the crime scene. Sherlock glared across the decimated landscape at the tall figure disembarking.
"Marvelous," he growled. "I was wondering when he was going to show up."
In a flash, John remembered Mary's text: Don't be mad at Mycroft. What did he know about this? John was finding Mary's instructions rather hard to follow as he began to wonder if this was somehow preventable, if Mycroft could have stopped his wife dying. Now glaring as well, the doctor crossed his arms and contented himself to stare at the man picking his way through the ashes, occasionally knocking an inconvenient bit of debris to the side with the tip of an umbrella.
When Mycroft reached them, he retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket, dabbing daintily at his nose.
"The dust in here is simply loathsome," he grumbled. "It's playing havoc with my breathing."
"You're sure it's not the two pounds you've added to your middle since last I saw you?" Sherlock asked snidely.
The elder Holmes tutted. "Pound and a quarter, brother-mine," he corrected, replacing his handkerchief.
"Bathroom scales never provide wholly accurate readings, brother-mine. Two pounds."
Mycroft chose to ignore this, turning instead to John.
"Dr. Watson. So sorry to hear about this mess. Truly, a nasty business."
"What do you know about it?" John asked shortly. If there was one thing he had no patience for just then, it was Mycroft's little verbal games.
"Not much, I'm afraid," the politician sighed. "I received a text from your wife early this morning - interrupted my morning jog."
"You never jog in the morning," Sherlock interjected.
"- and she requested a favor," Mycroft finished doggedly. "She said she needed someone to look after the baby for a few hours. Didn't say why, and out of respect for her privacy, I didn't inquire any further."
"So much for discretion" John said bitterly, to which Mycroft snorted.
"My dear John, I assure you I hadn't the foggiest indication that Moriarty was planning to blow your flat to smithereens. You know Mary's background, or at least the gist of it; surely you can see why I assumed she had some personal business of a sensitive nature. I felt it imprudent to pry."
"So you're babysitting my daughter?" John asked, his eyes narrowing even further.
"Well, not me personally," Mycroft clarified with a small shrug. "MI6 is looking after her."
"Using her for target practice, more likely," Sherlock said under his breath.
"Oh please, Sherlock, don't be melodramatic. England does need her blunt instruments, even if they lack your... subtlety. Sheryl is perfectly safe."
"Where is she?" asked John.
"I'm afraid I cannot disclose her location at present; too much danger of someone listening in. Why don't you drop by the Diogenes Club tomorrow and we'll chat. I've a case I need Sherlock to look at, anyway."
"Related?" the detective asked.
"Possibly. There's no evidence to suggest a connection so far, but one never knows with Moriarty. Shall we say 10:00 tomorrow morning?"
John nodded. "We'll be there."
"And exactly where are you staying tonight?" Mycroft asked keenly. "You can't hardly sleep here, now can you?"
"He's coming back to 221B," Sherlock said immediately.
"Am I?" John asked in surprise. It was true, he needed lodgings for the evening, but he wasn't sure yet whether he was angry with Sherlock or not, and did not know that he wanted to spend a night in the same flat.
"Aren't you?" the detective asked with a frown. "My brother, insufferable as he is, is quite correct; you can hardly spend the night in this place."
"Yeah, funnily enough, I'd figured that out," John snapped. "But I can room in a hotel for the night."
Sherlock shook his head. "Save what you've got in the bank. We'll need it later if we're going to see Moriarty to the fate he deserves."
"But I -"
John stopped mid-sentence. What was the point of arguing with him? He'd only end up out-logiced and agreeable anyway. Sighing, John threw his hands up.
"Alright. I'll go back to Baker Street."
"Good," Sherlock said, as if that settled matters. "Come, Mycroft, and give us a lift."
Driving to the flat of the younger Holmes cemented some of the situation's reality in John's heart. He was returning to 221B for an indeterminate length of time. Mary was gone. His flat was gone. Sheryl was... elsewhere, but at least she was safe. John chuckled faintly to himself, wondering if Sherlock would mind sharing the flat with a baby. The answer was almost certainly "yes".
Mycroft did not see them to the door. Rather, he nodded a cordial, politely sympathetic goodbye, and motioned to his chauffeur to walk Sherlock and the doctor inside.
Mrs. Hudson rushed to meet Sherlock at the door, exclaiming in pleasant surprise when she saw John was with him.
"Oh, John dear, I haven't seen you in -"
"Now is an unideal time, Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock interrupted.
John murmured hello and began climbing up the stairs, pretending that he did not notice the very slight limp catching his foot on the steps. Below him, he could hear Sherlock explaining the morning's events to their landlady, and Mrs. Hudson's own cry of shock and horror.
Sherlock was not one for casual visitors, and both men had been so busy of late that it had been nigh on six months since the doctor had set foot in the Baker Street apartment building, but the dingy walls were the same green-grey he remembered. Apartment B opened to his touch, and John felt a bizarre pang of nostalgia and affection sweep over him as he surveyed the unkempt living room, his own reddish armchair across from the detective's, and the fireplace submerged under the trappings of some new experiment. There was a new scorch mark in the center of the kitchen table, and it seemed that Sherlock had taken to having Mrs. Hudson dust even less frequently than usual, but otherwise, the small apartment too was unchanged.
With what felt like his hundredth sigh of that day, John sank into his chair, grabbing the Union Jack pillow and burying his face in it. Everything was wrong. He was passed shock, passed tears, so this was... what? Numbness? Denial? Doubtless, his therapist would have a thoroughly unhelpful label for it. He could hear the door creak as Sherlock opened it, perceived his removing his long coat and hanging it on the wall. John did not look behind him as Sherlock strode into the kitchen, nor did the detective make any attempt at conversation.
John did look up, however, when he heard the clink of a glass on the table next to him. There was a green mug of steaming tea resting on the old wood, and Sherlock was in the midst of raising a similar glass to his lips. He saw John looking, and something softened at the edges of hard grey eyes.
"Black with no sugar, am I right?" he asked, turning to face out the curtained window.
"You remembered." John lifted the mug, cradling the hot ceramic vessel in his hands. "I thought you would have deleted it."
Sherlock shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"After the Baskerville case, it seemed like prudent information."
John glanced suspiciously at his tea.
"This isn't drugged, is it?"
Sherlock chuckled. "No. Not unless you're counting the natural caffein content of tea leaves a drug. There are some pills on the counter, though, if you'd like to sleep."
John raised his eyebrows. "You're being awfully considerate."
"It is possible for me to be, you know," the raven haired man replied, drawing his violin case from under a stack of newspapers. "Most people just aren't worth the trouble."
John sipped his tea, sensing a warmth he hadn't felt all day unfurl in his chest. Sherlock Holmes was a dick, granted, but he certainly hadn't had to offer John a place to spend the night, and his making tea without being threatened at gunpoint was practically unprecedented. As Sherlock began playing (Debussy's Reverie, unless he was mistaken), John felt himself beginning to nod off.
A pillow hit him in the face. Startled, he sat upright, finding Sherlock staring at him amusedly.
"You would have regretted falling asleep like that," he said. "Bad for your neck. Could get a cramp."
"I wasn't sleeping," John said irritably.
"Slower breathing. Pulse decreasing. Eyes closed for an extended period of time. You were dozing. Go up to bed. I'll stay down here and play for a while."
Too fatigued to put up a fight, John dragged himself down the hall and collapsed in his old bed, ignoring the cloud of dust that rose from the disused sheets. Below him, Sherlock picked up where he had left off, letting the melancholy notes roll off his Stradivarius.
The doctor was in mourning and he had been up since dawn. Sleep was not long in taking him, even as mid-morning daylight poured through the window.
...
When he woke, the bedroom was no longer bright.
When he woke, he was screaming.
It took John a moment to realize that it was his voice letting off that horrible din, and once he did, the scream was slow to die, not eager to be cut off and repressed inside. John could hear feet in the hall; Sherlock had surely heard him cry out and was coming to see what was the matter. The doctor couldn't bring himself to care.
Nightmare-images were still flickering at the edges of his vision.
Men with guns. A desert wasteland, still hot under the glow of the young moon.
Red sand. Sand and blood. Explosions. Gunfire. Men screaming. Men falling.
Memories - but not memories, because now the soldiers had the wrong faces, and it was Sherlock lying dead in the sand, and Moriarty pointing the gun, and Mary was - Mary was -
John let out a choked sob only to discover, much to his discomfiture, that Sherlock was perched on the edge of the bed's foot, staring at him with the intensity he generally reserved for particularly tricky problems.
"You were dreaming," Sherlock said. It was not a question.
Silently, wiping his face on the eiderdown, John nodded.
"A nightmare," the detective continued.
John nodded again.
"You haven't had one in a while, and this dream was particularly intense."
"Is there any point," John began, half-laughing through his distress into the sweat-stained fabric, "in asking how you know that?"
Sherlock cocked his head slightly. "It was more an estimation than my usual. You had nightmares the first two weeks or so after moving in with me for the first time. Then they faded. They started again after the incident at the pool. Fear-induced, then, and only by highly charged situations. Playing the violin seemed to help eliminate them, and it wasn't long before you slept through the night again. Your time with your wife worked wonders for your sleeping habits - the circles under your eyes had disappeared entirely after a month with her, even when you and I worked night cases. I could only conclude that yesterday's events caused the dreams to reemerge, and though I was playing the whole time, you still woke in a state of agitation. Thus, it must have been worse than usual."
"You really are brilliant, you know that?" John asked shaking his head.
"Yes, I know," Sherlock smiled. "But then, so are you. It's not every man who'll move back in with someone who indirectly caused his wife's murder."
John laughed mirthlessly. "It's also not every man who takes another under his roof when said person is at risk of going the same way as his wife. You do realize that for as long as I'm under your roof, this place is at risk of blowing up, too? Moriarty's bound to come after me next."
"Yes, he is," Sherlock said frankly. "Which is why it's all the more vital that you stay with me. Moriarty doesn't want me dead yet - he wants me to suffer in my guilt awhile, first. He won't plant a bomb in 221B when there's a danger of my being killed prematurely."
"Lovely," John groaned, leaning back against the headboard. "Now we really will have to be inseparable. People are bound to talk."
"People already talk," Sherlock said dismissively. "And if they can't understand your wanting to be nearer your friends after your loss, then they aren't worth your time."
"You got that from a book."
"Where else?"
The doctor leaned over, squinting at the red numbers on the digital alarm.
"What time is it?"
"2:34 in the morning. Go back to sleep. I'll play violin for a while yet; I'm composing."
Sherlock stood to leave, but when John hesitantly held up his hand, the detective stopped in his tracks.
"Yes?"
How he knew John was motioning him to wait was as irrelevant as it was immaterial.
"Would you... sit in here to play?" the blonde man requested. "I think I might sleep better."
For a moment, Sherlock said nothing, and John was afraid he might refuse. But then the taller man nodded shortly and said, "This is a sentimental thing, correct? Human presence as a basis for comfort?"
"Yes."
"Then of course. Let me just get my case."
John sat in bed, irrationally fearful that the last certainty in his life would disappear on its brief journey to the living room. Sherlock returned momentarily, however, and stood himself next to John's dresser. The detective set his bow against the strings of his violin, looking to John for a cue as to what exactly he was supposed to be doing.
The doctor laid back down against the pillows, drawing the comforter close to his chin. He felt uncommonly vulnerable, but then, who wouldn't, after the sort of day he had had?
"What shall I play?" Sherlock asked, his features glowing white in the faint moonlight.
"Anything's fine," John mumbled. A few bars of music floated across the bedroom. Frowning, the blonde man asked, "Is that Lady Gaga?"
Sherlock chuckled softly. "Haven't the foggiest. Lestrade had it playing on the radio this morning. I was just wondering if you'd notice."
Switching tunes, he began to play Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. John blinked heavily, falling at last into a dreamless sleep, holding nightmares at bay until morning's light.