Untitled Sherlock S3E1 fix-it

[fyrefly]

“Are you going to see him?”

It had seemed like an absurd question - the man that up until yesterday evening John Watson had considered to be the greatest he had ever known and the best friend he was ever going to have had managed to expose a litany of faults so grievous no one could possibly blame him if he never spoke to Sherlock Holmes again.  Falsifying his own death, lying about it for two years and leaving John to grieve. And the cherry on top of it all, butchering his supposed best friends’ engagement dinner for his own ego trip.

Yet here John found himself, oscillating back and forth on the pavement in front of 221b, not entirely sure why he was here but unable to leave.  The blinds on the second floor were tightly closed and no light was obvious within.  It was possible Sherlock wasn’t even in.  It was equally possible he was staring at severed fingers in the kitchen solely by the light of his microscope.  The doctor made a sharp huff of frustration, disgusted with himself for even saving space in his mind for the Sherlock’s habits.  He turned quickly, ready to go home, his real home, and very nearly ran into the detective.

Sherlock actually took a step back as though startled.  Fair enough, he’d know John on sight but after last night even he had to understand the doctor was furious.  By the light of the streetlamps John could see the massive black eye he sported.  At least something had made an impression.

The taller man stared at the smaller for a few long seconds, until it became abundantly clear that John was not going to begin this conversation.

“I didn’t know you were coming.  I would have been here.”

“I wasn’t.  I’m just passing through.”

That transparent lie was met by a series of rapid blinks that John watched impassively, idly wondering if his former flatmate would turn it into a monologue about his true motivations that quite frankly, he wasn’t in the mood to hear and that he knew would probably drive him to turn on his heels once more and leave for good.  Instead, he was surprised.

“I see.  I just bought tea,” Sherlock remarked, lifting a shopping bag John hadn’t noticed until now.  “Would you like to come up?”

John pursed his lips, considering the offer.  On the one hand he really wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to talk to Sherlock right now, no matter what the other man did to try and make good.  On the other, he’d come here with the intention of...what exactly?  Doing just that?

“...Fine,” he eventually said after a long pause.  It was cold out.  He would have some tea, warm up, see if there was any reason to even continue this, and go home.

Sherlock nodded, looking equal parts puzzled and relieved, and moved to unlock the door, ushering John in ahead of him so he could secure it behind them.

The seventeen steps to 221b seemed to pass entirely too quickly and John was hanging his coat on the stand by the door and found himself standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room before he had completely released what had happened.  Sherlock had already left him for the kitchen, reaching for the kettle.  His jacket seemed to be impeding his movement some - odd given that the detective’s suits were immaculately tailored but it had been two years and it wasn’t as though he’d left any room for weight fluctuation in them.  John moved to retrieve mugs as Sherlock was shrugging out of the garment and his view upon turning back around was enough to make him stop in his tracks.

The back of Sherlock’s normally pristine dress shirt was mottled with streaks of blood.

John set the mugs down with more force than was strictly necessary.  “What have you done to yourself?” he demanded.

Sherlock froze.  His head slowly turned and he regarded the blood seeping through a seam in his shoulder for a moment before speaking.  “It’s not important.”

“Bloody hell it’s not, look at you!”

The detective didn’t say anything and turned his attention to the table, clearly longing for an experiment or some other excuse to ignore this line of questioning.  John scowled; squaring his shoulders he strode over purposefully and inserted his body firmly into his former flatmate’s line of sight.

“No.  You don’t get to do this again, you have no right.  You aren’t allowed to ignore any more of my questions and if you don’t remove your shirt right bloody now so help me God I am going out that door and I am never coming back!”

Sherlock raised his eyes to meet John’s for just a second before looking away.  His eyes darted back and forth as though reading something John couldn’t see and he appeared to be chewing the inside of one cheek.  Finally, wordlessly, he unbuttoned his cuffs and set to work with the buttons on the front.  John’s scowl deepened as the remnants of a large yellowing bruise came into view over the detective’s ribs.  When the shirt was open from collarbone to belt Sherlock made a movement as if to shrug it off but stopped short with a wince.  He looked at John with an displeased expression that John was able to see as a plea for assistance only by virtue of his years of experience handling the detective.

Moving behind Sherlock John carefully grasped fabric and began gently working the shirt off of the younger man’s too-thin frame.  He got a vague impression of torn, inflamed skin but ever the soldier, he was more mindful of completing the task currently at hand (and causing Sherlock as little pain as possible) than anything else so it wasn’t until he stepped back to discard the shirt that he got a proper look at the damage.

“Jesus,” he breathed, and for a time couldn’t do anything but stare.  The detective’s upper back and shoulders were a wreck.  The skin was angry and inflamed and it was a mess of ruined skin weeping blood and fresh tender scabbing.  His wrists were mottled with dark purple bruises and older ones littered the rest of his torso.  He gently took Sherlock’s left hand and checked for any spraining in the wrist with gentle fingers.  His companion didn’t fight him - he stood mutely while John conducted his examination.  He was about to relinquish the hand when something caught his eye.  He traced the shape of Sherlock’s little finger, and his eyes flicked up to meet the detectives’, or they would have, had he not been putting forth such an effort not to look at him.

Sherlock’s grasp of anatomy and his self-control were practically inhuman, but he was no doctor.  The repair was very good but John had no doubt that Sherlock had set that finger himself.  And what was he doing that resulted in breaking that finger and nothing else?

Torture.  It was a dangerous thought, distracting him from the present and attaching questions to each new mark he saw on the other man’s body.  Yellowing bruise suggesting the shape of a boot print in the small of his back, definitely.  Scar on his temple from self-suture, how was the wound inflicted?  He longed to trace his fingers down Sherlock’s chest and feel for broken ribs, but even as he reached out his hands the detective sharply inhaled and John withdrew, remembering himself.

Sherlock was looking at him now, wary, clearly bracing himself for something unpleasant.  The army doctor wanted to a hundred things at once, shout, stamp about, and more than anything else he felt the growing urge to find every single solitary person who had done this and pay the favor back tenfold.

But he couldn’t do that, and it wouldn’t help Sherlock.  There was one thing he could do.  He was a doctor, and his best friend was hurting.

He grabbed a kitchen chair and spun it around backwards.

“Sit,” he commanded.  Sherlock obeyed wordlessly, straddling the chair and resting his chin on the back.  The detective’s eyes were once again fixed on some point far away, his mind somewhere that John could not reach him.  At the moment that wasn’t important.  He had work to do.

The alarmingly well-stocked first aid kit was in the bathroom where the had left it, complete with a thick coating of dust which told him that Sherlock had not even bothered trying to care for his wounds since returning. There was a pile of saturated gauze in the bin - clearly someone had performed some basic care (was Mycroft responsible?) before setting him on his way but the dressing had not been replaced.  But then, who was there to do it?  Sherlock clearly couldn’t do the job himself and he would never ask Mrs. Hudson.  There was no one else.

John swallowed the lump in his throat and returned to the kitchen with the box of supplies.  It thankfully didn’t take him very long to locate a clean bowl and some fresh towels, the bowl he ran full of warm water before taking his place behind Sherlock.

“Let me know if you need a break,” he said as warning before wetting a towel and slowly, carefully, beginning to wash the dried blood from his friend’s back.  The muscles tensed under his hand but other than that Sherlock was silent.

It was hard to tell if cleaning off his work surface made the situation better or worse.  Easier to see what had to be done but also far easier to see the individual lashes.  The hydrogen peroxide was next and this time Sherlock could not help the occasional hiss of pain, his hands clenching on the chair.  Mercifully it was done soon enough and John was able to properly cover the wounds.

When he was finished, John finally broke their silence.  “Go lay on your front,” he said softly.

Sherlock looked confused but moved to the couch and did as he was told, about to question it before John stopped him with a clean towel and an ice pack over his back and what would have been a protest turned into a quiet moan of relief.

John sat by him.  It was impossible to break the silence, equally impossible not to want to know every last detail.  He’d missed something - spent the last twenty-four hours believing he was somehow not good enough, that Sherlock had decided London wasn’t exciting and had run off to who-knows-where in pursuit of adventure.  Probably at the behest of his brother who only brought him back when there was something sufficiently interesting came up.

“Mycroft didn’t know,” Sherlock said suddenly and John was brought back to the present, suddenly aware that the younger man had been watching him.

“Not at first.  I think he had his suspicions after a time but he didn’t come for me at first.  I’m still not sure if it was concern for my welfare of he needed me for his terrorism problem.”

John opened his mouth, about to ask a question that he was not even sure he had formed correctly in his head before Sherlock cut him off.

“I made a miscalculation.”  His expression was shame, frustration, anger - such a thing had clearly been an unacceptable failure.

“The last time he used you to manipulate me and I fell for it.”  There was no question as to who “he” could be.

“I thought if I met him on his terms without your being present I could find a solution.”

“That’s why you tricked me into going home,” John interjected, and tried not to feel pride at Sherlock’s look of approval.

“Yes.  But you weren’t safe.  None of you were and there was no winning.  He had people and connections I could never dream of and the only way to keep you safe was to play his game.  He made his ultimatum and shot himself before I could anything about it.  I was standing on the roof with a corpse behind me and you below me with a sniper trained on you with orders to shoot if I didn’t jump that could never be recalled.”