---
title: "We'll Keep Running For Our Lives"
author: "Basser"
lang: en
id: "CRV-10"
series: "Can't Rewind Verse"
series_part: 10
fandom: "Sherlock (TV)"
rating: "Teen And Up Audiences"
warnings: ["Graphic Depictions Of Violence"]
words: 86492
chapters: 18
date: 2013-07-07
status: "in progress"
written_by: human
summary: "Following the events of Can't Rewind Now, a wandering Sherlock finds himself in Florida. He soon discovers not all is as it seems in the lives of an elderly couple named Hudson."
---

# We'll Keep Running For Our Lives

## Chapter 1: First

**««**

It was far too bloody hot for this nonsense.

Sherlock scowled to himself as he crashed headlong into a thicket of damp shrubbery, nearly stumbling over the roots therein, and grabbed the thin trunk of some sort of fern-looking tree to swing himself round in the other direction. Here he was, quite possibly running for his *life*, and all he could concentrate on was how disgustingly warm the weather was. Excellent focussing abilities, brain. Very helpful.

After a short pause to get his bearings he took off once more through the tangled leaves. Behind him he could clearly hear the sounds of his pursuers tearing through the foliage as well; to be honest this really hadn't been a well thought-out escape plan. In his defence, however, it did have the advantage of being in the fucking  *shade*, which was a stark improvement over his previous path across bare city pavement. Not that the lack of direct sunlight was providing much relief from the sweltering humidity... ugh, bloody horrendous swampland. Why in hell had he ever thought venturing this far south would be a good idea?

"Heeeeere, faggot! Here boy! Come on out, ya faggot-ass white boy!"

Another deep scowl - when had he even  *hinted* that he might be gay? Or were they simply using it as an all-purpose insult? Morons. Under more favourable circumstances he might have been tempted to stop short and treat them all to a lecture on proper heckling techniques whilst dodging blows. That would have to wait for a day when he wasn't feeling so perilously close to passing out with the heat, though. Also preferably when he wasn't being chased by a half dozen enraged behemoths baying for his blood.

Displaying an uncanny knack for fucking him over his mind of course took that opportunity to focus on entirely the wrong aspect of his surroundings. Running through mud and scrub-brush under a canopy of unfamiliar leaves, the crash of a half dozen angry Americans behind him, and the one thing he found most interesting to look at was a goddamned abandoned tyre off to his right. What was it doing there? Twenty metres from the nearest roadway at  *least*, how on earth did a car tyre end up in the middle of a swamp thicket? Someone must have-

His frustratingly off-topic thoughts were cut short as, having not been watching his feet, he stepped squarely in a patch of slick mud and went sprawling face-first into the dirt.

"Aw shit, white boy fuckin' caught his own damn self!"

A chorus of laughter above him signalled in no uncertain terms that Sherlock was about to have an extremely unpleasant experience. Likely one which would end in either death or permanent disfigurement. He took a moment to wonder what in hell's name had ever possessed him to bother with these idiots in the first place before reluctantly propping himself up on his elbows and lifting his head to regard his adversaries. Above him a well-muscled young black man had crouched down to Sherlock's undignified level; white teeth flashed between dark lips as the man grinned smugly down at his cornered prey.

"You gonna regret fuckin' with us, white boy."

Well he already did regret that quite a lot, to be honest, but Sherlock couldn't exactly voice such sentiments aloud. Instead he canted his head slightly to the side and raised an eyebrow in a condescending look.

"Perhaps if you didn't make yourself such an obvious target for ridicule you'd have escaped our little confrontation with your fragile ego intact."

The man barked out an amused laugh and turned toward one of his nearby companions. "You fuckin' hear this shit? All a sudden this faggot's talking like the goddamn Queen of England."

Sherlock glared as the two bulkiest of the group grabbed him by the biceps and hauled him to his feet. Their apparent leader took a step forward and smacked him not-quite-gently on the chest.

"You puttin' on a show for us now, cracka? Wanna go out sounding fancy?"

"I'm British. This is my natural accent," Sherlock explained in an irritated deadpan. Gratifying to know his attempts to mimic the American vernacular had apparently fooled a group of natives, but half-dead of heatstroke and about to have the piss kicked out of him he found this minor success really didn't cheer him in the slightest.

"Huh," the other man nodded slowly in understanding, faking a look of intrigue. Half a second later he dropped the false sagacity and grinned again. "I ain't never beat the shit out of a foreigner before."

"First time for everything, Jay!" one of the others yelled.

"Damn straight!"

Next thing Sherlock knew he was bent double, an wave of acute pain spreading flashfire from his abdomen alerting him to the fact that he'd been punched in the stomach. He choked as his suddenly-frozen diaphragm refused to draw air. Almost immediately the first blow was paired with an uppercut to the jaw, where the side of his tongue made unfortunate contact with the space between his teeth. The cloying metallic taste of fresh blood filled his mouth as white stars exploded in his vision.

Grimacing, he lashed out with his foot and managed to catch the shin of one of the bastards holding him upright. The young man yelped in pain but didn't loosen his grip; instead he jerked Sherlock's shoulder roughly to the side, nearly dislocating the joint as his cohort on the other side threw his weight in the opposite direction. Sherlock grit his teeth, just barely remembering to avoid his injured tongue, and summoned all the willpower at his disposal to remain as stoic as possible. Idiots might very well kill him, but damned if he was going to give them the satisfaction of seeing him break.

Next blow was a right hook to the face - far too predictable. He managed to shift his head enough to let the fist glance off his cheekbone, saving himself from a probable fracture, and took advantage of the leader's momentary skewed balance to try kicking again. This time he caught the idiot square in the groin; the man let out an agonised screech, followed by a string of rather colourful curses. Raucous laughter and a flurry of goading catcalls erupted from the small group now gathered around them.

"Hahaaa, holy shit!"

"Faggot's in for it now!"

"Fuckin' shank his ass, Jay!"

"Stick him like a hog!"

Jay seemed to force himself back upright, slowly returning to a standing position. All trace of joviality had vanished from his features as he advanced toward Sherlock with a furious, almost psychotic-sounding snarl.

Sherlock made a token attempt to yank himself free of the men holding him in place. They just pulled the near-dislocation trick again, forcing him to stand still or risk having his shoulders popped out of place. Seeing no alternative he did his best to fix an unimpressed expression on his face and tried to ignore the cloying sensation of stagnant blood beginning to pool in his mouth as Jay approached.

"That," the man said, face a mask of pure unadulterated rage, "was  *not* a good idea."

From the back pocket of faded jeans the man produced an ivory-handled switchblade. Sharp steel flashed dangerously in the speckled light filtering through the canopy of leaves overhead.

Sherlock eyed the weapon warily. A sense of irritated resignation began to settle in his chest - so this was how it was all going to end, was it? Not assassinated by some terror group or kidnapped for use as blackmail against his brother; not even graced with the brief giddy thrill and final spectacular flare-out of a massive cocaine overdose. No, he was simply going to be stabbed in the gut by some two-bit criminal in a bloody swamp on the outskirts of Tallahassee. What a poignant fucking legacy.

Jay was within inches of Sherlock's face now. The man's features split into a wicked half-smile as he brought his knife up to Sherlock's throat, pressing the point into the space under his chin. Sherlock forced his expression to remain neutral and met his soon-to-be murderer's gaze in a level stare.

"Any last words, white boy?"

Sherlock sneered. Milliseconds stretched by in static silence.

Then with a sudden jolt he wrenched himself forward and spat a gob of blood straight into Jay's face. The man reared back with an angry yell, swiping at his eyes, but almost immediately lurched back forward with another savage snarl. Quick as lightning he grabbed Sherlock by the right shoulder and rammed a knee solidly into his diaphragm.

Sherlock choked again and instinctively tried to curl in on himself. Before he could so much as gasp for breath the hand left his shoulder to instead fist in his hair; he grimaced as his skull was yanked upwards by the scalp, cold press of the knife now at his jugular.

*Going to slit my throat, then, not stab me,*  he found himself thinking in a sort of detached, stress-fogged daze. Jay was saying something - probably a threatening speech of some sort, cement his status as the leader. Meant to intimidate his victim and impress his cohorts. Sherlock was far too busy being distracted by his own brain to bother listening.

*... suppose that's really the best option, anyway. Quickest death. Acute blood loss should be interesting to experience firsthand - is it like falling asleep, or more drawn out? Likely won't be conscious for long either way, vasculature probably dilated thanks to elevated temperature. Should speed up the bleeding. And oh good lord speaking of the heat that bastard's wearing a bloody leather jacket, how is he not dead of hyperthermia!? It feels like we're in a damned oven! Who in god's name would choose to live in this atrocious excuse for a habitable climate?*

A brief scowl crossed his face as it occurred to him that he was spending his last few precious moments of life being annoyed by the weather. That would be him, then: chronically off-topic right to the bitter end.

From somewhere off to their left came the short, clipped wail of a police siren. Jay's hand jerked away from Sherlock's neck as the man stiffened up and whipped his head toward the tree line like a spooked gopher. All around them other members of the group did the same.

*"Fuckin' cheese it!"*  one of the boys near the back shouted, and with a suddenness that felt very much as if the ground had dropped out from under him Sherlock was free of his captors' grips. Startled, he collapsed into the dirt in a graceless heap. Above him he heard the group of men scatter in frantic retreat.

Merciful serendipity. Would have been nice to have it arrive a bit sooner, though, Sherlock mused... like perhaps before he'd been kneed in the stomach. He turned his head to the side so as not to be inhaling mud, coughed up a thin trickle of blood - hopefully stemming from his cut tongue rather than anything more serious. Ugh but  *god* , wouldn't that just make this day one perfect fuck-up? A sodding internal bleed on top of everything else.

Oh well. At the very least a police officer would likely come through the area within a few minutes, probably pack him off to a medical facility of some sort. That meant an easy meal, proper bed, clean clothes... all alarmingly scarce resources of late. Silver lining to the whole mess, he supposed.

Of course he'd still have to escape the hospital in a day or so to avoid having his forged travel documents scrutinised too carefully, but that wouldn't be difficult. Far preferable to going to the bother of evading detection right now, at any rate. Best just lie here and wait.

A stretch of seemingly-endless time later, however, and Sherlock was forced to come to the conclusion that the police were not, in fact, headed his way. Evidently they'd chosen to pursue the crowd of fleeing men instead of venturing into the small wooded area. Made some level of sense, considering the lot of them had run off toward the city and not further into the trees, but it was still rather unfortunate. Meant Sherlock was going to have to pick himself up.

Alright, well... that was fine. He'd manage. Sod the police anyway.

Sore, bloodied, exhausted and covered in mud Sherlock slowly forced his uncooperative body into a standing position. Good start. Next, walking. Stumbled into a tree here or there as he made his way to the pavement, nearly tripped over a rock. Probably looked like a drunken idiot. Not that anyone noticed, of course - no sign of either law enforcement or street gangs anywhere nearby.

Probably for the best, really. Though he'd have appreciated the cops hanging around to check for potential victims at the very least. Wasn't that their job? Protecting citizens? True he wasn't  *technically* a member of their jurisdiction, being a foreign national, but they'd have no knowledge of that. Might have left a true-born patriot to bleed out in the mud for all they knew. Incompetent morons.

Upon reaching the street he staggered sideways and leant heavily on a telephone pole as his knees threatened to give out on him. Dizzy, starting to feel faint. Hadn't eaten in around a day and a half now, likely wasn't doing himself any favours expending so much energy to remain upright. Not much choice in the matter though. Keep moving or die.

Despite the grim finality of this mental ultimatum his legs decided to choose that moment to fold underneath him. He slid down to land in an undignified slouch on the pavement, spine digging painfully into the black-tarred wood of the pole behind him. So much for walking, then. With a slight groan of pain he tilted his head back, stared up into the perfect blue of a clear sunny sky.

Cloudless, empty save a lone passing bird... nothing at all like England. And how could it be that even the  *atmosphere*  looked different here? It was the wrong shade of blue. Everything about this place was just so alien and unwelcoming... christ, should have never left New York. At least among the skyscrapers he'd been nearly able to fool himself into thinking he was back in London.

These thoughts occupied him for about a minute before he closed his eyes and let his head loll to the side. Sod it all, might as well fall asleep where he sat. Maybe the gang would come back and finish what they'd started. Sherlock doubted he could even muster the energy to flip them off at this point.

Fog drifted in tendrils through his mind as his brain began to lose its grip on consciousness. Still frankly dying of heat, but that was a minor complaint in comparison to the sour taste of blood in his mouth and the dull ache of a million bruised muscles. Perspiration dripping down his chest, too, soaking through the thin cotton of his t-shirt… he wondered vaguely if it were possible to sweat to death. Likely to find out in an hour or so.

He huffed a tired sigh and waited for oblivion.

"Oh good graces, dear! You've had a rough time of it, haven't you?"

Sherlock blinked his way out of the clinging wreaths of lethargic mist and squinted up into the dark shadows of a figure standing haloed by the sun overhead. Above him the form shifted, bent forward slightly. Out of the glare of the sun he could now see it was an older woman, perhaps late fifties or sixties, with brownish-auburn hair and a friendly, care-worn face. She smiled down at him and reached out with the arm not holding a shopping bag to place a cool hand on his forehead.

"Goodness, you're burning up! What on earth are you doing sitting round out in the sun on a day like this?"

Sherlock stared blankly up at her. It took an inordinate handful of seconds for his brain to finally catch up to the fact that the cadence of her voice actually sounded halfway normal to his ears for a change.

"… you're English," he remarked in a bit of a dazed mumble. The woman gave him an odd sort of look and patted him on the shoulder.

"Last I checked, yes. Now, where do you live? Nearby? Is there someone I can call for you? Oh, well, I haven't got a phone on me… but I suppose you must do, hm? Young folks with their technology these days."

Sherlock made a halfhearted effort to push himself into a more upright position but was forced to give up as his bruised stomach protested the movement. He curled an arm around his midsection instead and drug one of his legs up to lean his head on his knee.

"Not from the area, haven't got a mobile," he replied to the woman's semi-rambling inquiries in a faint monotone. Ugh, he was starting to feel sick to his stomach.

"Oh! Bless my stars, but you're a London boy!" the woman exclaimed - apparently she'd failed to catch his accent in the slurred mumble of his first words. "Well what are the odds of that, I wonder?"

"Doubtless astronomical," Sherlock responded wearily. He grimaced against the pain now radiating up from his abdomen and hugged his arm more tightly round his stomach.  *Fuck* , maybe he'd sustained an internal injury after all.

Regarding him with a concerned look on her face the stranger shifted her hand to briefly grip his shoulder in a sort of comforting gesture. "You are in a right shape, aren't you?" she murmured, seemingly to herself. After a short pause she nodded in a determined sort of way and moved round to hook an arm under Sherlock's armpit.

"What're you-?" he asked, confused, and lifted his head to blink sidelong at her. She flexed her knees in an ineffectual attempt to lift him up.

"Well come on, then, don't make me do all the work!" she quipped when it became apparent he wasn't going to budge on her strength alone. Sherlock stared at her for a second more, then slowly, obligingly shifted his legs into a better position for standing. Between the two of them they managed to get him mostly upright, though he swayed rather badly and was forced to lean the majority of his bodyweight on her shoulders. Hopefully she was somewhat stronger than her appearance would suggest else they'd both soon find themselves facedown on the pavement.

"Oof! You're a bit heavier than you look, dear," she exclaimed in an amused huff. "My car's just round the corner, then. Off we go."

Sherlock's brain seemed to be spinning itself round in little dizzying circles inside his skull. He tried not to grimace too obviously.  *Ugh* , he was going to have to escape from hospital in this state, wasn't he? Bloody hell.

"I don't need medical attention," he lied, hoping to head off the inevitable debacle of a crowded American A&E and subsequent deportation over his long-expired travel visa. "If you could just drop me off at a hostel or something…"

"Oh nonsense!" the stranger cut over him. "You're dead on your feet, we're getting you to a doctor."

"I really can't afford a hospital visit," he objected. Not strictly true in a logistical sense (he'd simply refuse to pay – on principle if nothing else) but financial hardship made for a far less damning argument than ' *I'd like to avoid being arrested'.*

"Good job we're not headed to one, then, isn't it? Now mind your head, roof's a tad low."

Without giving Sherlock a chance to ask what on earth she was on about the woman reached out and unlocked the small hatchback they'd come upon. Opening the passenger door she all but shoved him into the seat. He complied with a slightly startled noise of complaint as the door slammed shut beside him.

There was a thump as the old woman stowed her shopping in the backseat, then a tick later she came round to the driver's side. With a friendly smile in his direction (which was met by a confused half-glare) she deftly started up the vehicle.

"Mrs Hudson, by the way," she informed him in a chipper, genial tone.

Sherlock quirked a brow - no mention of a first name? - but was distracted from any of a million possible responses by the road they'd pulled onto. Passing cars from the wrong side, entire street completely backwards, everything looking just distressingly off-kilter. No matter how many bus rides he took in this blasted country he still always found himself expecting to crash headlong into oncoming traffic at any moment.

"It does take a little getting used to, driving on this side," Mrs Hudson spoke up. Apparently he'd been obvious enough for her to catch on to the source of his discomfort. "Comes well enough with practise, though, just like anything." She smiled sidelong at him again, then raised her eyebrows in slight disapproval as she turned back to the road. "You know it's polite to introduce yourself back, dear."

"Huh? Oh," Sherlock looked away from the traffic, tried to remember what his current alias was. It had been so long since he'd had a non-confrontational conversation with anyone, let alone been asked for his name… he'd quite forgotten his pseudonym. What had it started with…? An R, maybe, or…

"Not a fake name, if you please," Mrs Hudson said, cutting into his thoughts. She flicked the turn signal and calmly checked her wing mirror as she changed lanes. "Not that I mind, of course, but it's in case you pass out. You'll not answer to whatever silly thing you're thinking up now and it'll be a dreadful hassle."

Sherlock frowned at her. How did she even know what he'd been-? A guess, had to be. He wasn't  *that*  easy to read.

"I wasn't-"

"You clearly were, dear."

He scowled and shifted his head to look out the window. Well… maybe the injuries had undermined his usual façade. Didn't mean he had to admit to it, though. Give her a pseudonym anyway, just out of spite. Glaring irritably at a passing lorry he supplied the first name off the top of his head.

"Frank."

Mrs Hudson clicked her tongue in disapproval. "No, try again."

Sherlock turned back to fix her with an affronted look. "That's my name."

"It isn't, though."

"How would you know?" he snapped with a slight huff. Mrs Hudson quirked a wry smile.

"I was a schoolteacher for a very long time, dear. I know when a young man's lying to me."

He turned back to the window with a glower. Keep trying random names until she gave up, then, or… he caught sight of her vaguely bemused, expectant brow raise out of the reflection off the glass. No, she'd be waiting for that tactic now. What would be the least obvious…? Ugh,  *fuck's sake.*  How was he being predicted so easily?

After an interminable pause Sherlock finally crossed an arm over his still-aching stomach and slouched down grumpily in his seat.

"It's Sherlock," he supplied, voice gone flat and vaguely petulant. Well… whatever. Not like she could get much information on him with just a first name anyway. Even a unique one like his still required a surname to pinpoint family connections.

Mrs Hudson smiled. "Much better, thank you." A second passed, then she smirked to herself. "Fair enough, though… with a name like that I suppose I'd make up an alias too."

"Pleased to meet you as well," Sherlock growled back at her, insulted tone making it clear he'd taken offence to the jab. Mrs Hudson just chuckled.

"Best see if you can rest, it's a bit of a drive yet."

With that she turned her attention back to the road. Sherlock glared at her for a moment, but dropped the expression in favour of wincing at the twinges of pain flashing through his nervous system. He slouched down lower in his seat and blinked away a sudden wave of fatigue. Shouldn't sleep, not trapped alone with a stranger. Focus on breathing instead. In, out, in… out…

Consciousness began to slip from his mind like so much water. Couldn't quite force himself to sit up straighter to ward off the drowsiness - too much work, too painful. He rested his head on the cool glass of the car window instead.

Without really meaning to he closed his eyes. Awareness soon scattered away amid the steady hum of a car engine.

**««**

## Chapter 2

**««**

Sherlock drifted back to consciousness with the cut of the engine. Devoid of the constant low drone of traffic he found himself confused by the sudden silence. *Where...?* He blinked around dazedly for a few seconds before the car door opening with a jolt beside him nearly sent him sprawling out of the vehicle.

"Oops! Sorry, dear, didn't know you were still leaning on it," the cheery voice of Mrs. Hudson said with a laugh. She reached out to steady him before he could fall sideways, but he waved her off. Grimacing for the abuse to his bruised abdominal muscles Sherlock slowly shifted himself to climb out of the car on his own.

"You live here," he deduced after a pause to take in his surroundings. It wasn't much of a guess, really. The house was a two-storey bungalow with a sloping roof and rustic brick-and-mortar construction. Close neighbours on either side were hidden by a thick buffer of trees and well-tended shrubbery, with the main body of the garden taken up by a variety of flowers and berry bushes. Dominating the centre of the lawn was a large shade tree of some variety Sherlock couldn't identify, a whitewashed rope-and-wood swinging seat hanging from its thick branches. All in all it looked a picture-perfect rendition of the quintessential elderly domicile.

Mrs. Hudson *hmm*'ed in warm confirmation. "Been working on the garden this year. Aren't the blueberries lovely? Only the birds make off with most of them, you know. They say you're meant to put nets up to stop them but that just looks so dreadful amongst the petunias."

She was supporting Sherlock by the left elbow now, something he'd have found intolerably annoying were he not in a sorry enough state to actually need the stability. As she spoke she began to gently guide him in the direction of the house's arched entryway.

"Yoohoo!" she called as they walked. "Harold, dear! We've a guest!"

"Maude decided to visit after all, did she?" an American-accented voice replied from somewhere near the open front window. Sherlock noted the shift of patterned lace curtains as whoever was inside moved away from what was presumably a sitting area towards the front door.

"Oh, no, she's still sick off those Mexican pears," Mrs. Hudson replied, sounding as if she didn't entirely sympathise with this 'Maude' character's plight. "I did tell her not to buy anything from that Hispanic fellow, but what can you do?" she added to Sherlock, who merely blinked down at her in blank confusion. What did pears or old womens' purchasing decisions have to do with him?

"Who're we entertaining, then?"

Ahead of them the screen door of the front porch opened, revealing an elder gentleman with a head of thick white hair, wire-frame spectacles and a close-cropped, sand-and-pepper beard. He raised his eyebrows skeptically as he caught sight of Sherlock leaning unsteadily into Mrs. Hudson's side.

"Trading me in for a younger model?" the man asked with a wry, teasing glance to his wife.

Mrs. Hudson flapped her hand in amused exasperation. "Oh hush, you. This is Sherlock, lad's had a dreadful time of it. Make some use of yourself and have a look at him while I get some tea on, won't you?"

"I'm fine, really," Sherlock piped up. He was beginning to feel uncomfortably as if he'd been thrust into a situation he hadn't signed up for. Who the hell was this man...? Mrs. Hudson's husband, doubtless... but then who exactly was *she*? Just some elderly lady who'd plucked him up off the street and decided to cart him off to her home without so much as a by-your-leave... he should *really* get the hell out of here before everything had a chance to go pear-shaped.

"He isn't at all," Mrs. Hudson corrected as her husband's eyebrows lifted once more in a questioning look. "Boy's just being stubborn." She turned to Sherlock with a kind smile. "Harold's a doctor, dear, he'll have you patched up in a blink."

With that she patted Sherlock on the shoulder and all but forced him into the support of Harold.

"You'll be wanting milk and sugar, I expect? Oh I haven't had anyone round who could appreciate a good cuppa in ages!" Her cheerful voice trailed off as she disappeared into the house with her shopping swinging merrily from one arm.

Sherlock blinked after her, then glanced over (and *up*, he was somewhat disgruntled to find) to meet the eyes of the man now assisting his balance. Harold flashed a tight smile down at him, one shoulder lifting in a vaguely resigned shrug.

"You'll have to forgive the wife. Stubborn as hell, that woman." Releasing Sherlock's arm he indicated a plastic seat on the porch to their left. "Sit there, then. I'd invite you in but you're covered in mud."

Sherlock didn't bother replying, too occupied with the business of lowering himself to sit down without making it obvious that his stomach muscles were sending spikes of hellfire through his abdomen with every movement. And ugh good lord the bloody *heat*... though, mercifully, the shade of the Hudsons' front deck seemed to be doing a decent job of keeping the ambient temperature at a near-tolerable level.

Harold clicked his tongue in disapproval as he observed the slow progress of the young man in front of him. "You look beat to hell, son. Get yourself mugged?"

"I, er... may have insulted a street gang," Sherlock explained with a slight grimace. He'd finally managed to arrange himself somewhat comfortably in the plastic-padded deck chair and was now trying to stifle the impulse to curl his legs up to his chest. Muddy trainers on the furniture... probably not a good way to ingratiate himself to his hosts.

"Oh! Well, then, that explains why Bunny dragged you home," Harold exclaimed in surprise, apparently catching his accent. "British?"

Sherlock nodded. "London."

"Great city, met Bunny when I was over there for an immunology conference. Could use less traffic, though... Wait right there a minute, I'll grab the first aid kit."

He vanished into the house after his wife, rolling up the sleeves of his smart plaid buttonup as he went. Sherlock waited until the man was out of sight, then curled over on himself in pained discomfort. Argh, if his stupid abdomen would just quit *whingeing* for a moment perhaps he could gather the strength to make a run for it before this elderly couple abducted him like some sort of disturbing foster grandchild. Not that the thought of a cup of tea and perhaps a bed wasn't unreasonably tempting right now, but he'd been wandering the streets of foreign countries long enough to have developed a healthy wariness of any sort of volunteered kindness. Especially toward the likes of him.

What did they want? What were they hoping to accomplish with their help? Nothing, maybe... actions most likely rooted in pity for the moment. But when that sympathy waned, what then? After all Sherlock was only being halfway amenable at the moment because he could do literally nothing else. Give him time to heal up a bit and he'd doubtless be right back to his usual impulsive, tactless brand of fuck-up social interaction. Kicked out of their home, fine - he didn't care about that. But he'd really rather they not take it upon themselves to call the authorities...

"Alright, son. Sit up and let me have a look at you."

Sherlock craned his head slightly to regard Harold, who had returned without his noticing and was now standing over him with a professional-looking first aid kit in one hand and a damp washcloth in the other. Around the man's neck was a worn stethoscope.

"Now, to be fair I'm an oncologist," he informed Sherlock as the younger man reluctantly straightened up from his pathetic curled-up position on the chair. "So patching up vagrant kids isn't exactly my specialty... Bunny's adamant, though, so we'll do our best."

"Thank you," Sherlock offered, feeling like he should probably at least make an *attempt* to not be a complete arse right off the bat. Best to remain civil until the doctor determined whether or not he was likely to die of internal injuries, at any rate.

Harold didn't reply right away - he was too busy studying Sherlock's left arm, which he'd taken hold of to check for a pulse. A look of intense disapproval pulled at his aged features as he regarded the pale limb. With a start Sherlock realised his skin was still marred by a small collection of faded needle scars, clearly visible in his current short-sleeved attire. He made to tug his arm back and was relieved when the man released it without a fuss.

"First stray cats, now she's dragging home junkies," Harold muttered irritably to himself as he turned to dig through his medical kit. Sherlock's expression darkened.

"I'm not a junkie," he snapped defensively.

Harold huffed a sigh as he turned back to his erstwhile charge. "No? Injecting insulin straight into your radial vein, then?" he said in a tone of withering sarcasm. "Listen, son, I've been on city ER rotation more times than I care to remember. You're a drug addict if I ever saw one."

"*Ex*-addict," Sherlock asserted. "I quit four months ago."

"Oh, four whole months!" Harold snorted, plainly unimpressed. "Yeah, yeah. Listen: if I find anything even *resembling* dope in my home I'll have you locked up faster than you can blink, got that? My wife might have it in her head everyone's a good soul in need of her tender care but I'm not about to end up on the wrong side of a drug war for the sake of some roughed-up street kid."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sherlock retorted with a sneer. The insulted, defiant expression on his face unfortunately lost a lot of its impact when he was forced to drop it in favour of a pained wince - he'd shifted his upper body too quickly and set his muscles cramping again.

Harold's stern features softened marginally. After a short pause he gestured to Sherlock's t-shirt. "Strip that off so I can see, then. Where exactly were you hit?"

A few acutely uncomfortable minutes passed during which Sherlock found himself poked and prodded in a not-entirely-gentle manner as Harold checked him over. The doctor *hemmed* and *hawed* over whatever information he was managing to pick up through his stethoscope and probing ministrations, disinfecting cuts here and there and applying sticking plasters where appropriate. Sherlock, for his part, simply tried to remain as still as possible.

"Tea, dears! How goes it?" Mrs. Hudson's over-chipper voice cut in. The elderly woman had appeared in the front doorway with a tray full of what looked like tea and biscuits.

"Badly bruised diaphragm but nothing to suggest an internal bleed. Definitely dehydrated, and I'm guessing half-starved." Harold leant back on the stool he'd perched on and nodded matter-of-factly to himself as he accepted a chocolate biscuit from his wife. He flashed Sherlock a smile that didn't quite seem to reach his eyes. "Think you'll live, son."

Sherlock wasn't sure how to respond and settled for a vague nod in lieu of speaking. What now, then...? He didn't suppose he'd be asked to stay, considering the less-than-warm reception of Mrs. Hudson's husband upon catching sight of the needle scars. Would it be rude to ask for a lift back to something approaching a city centre, though? Didn't fancy having to find his own way out of some labyrinthine American suburb. Not in this weather.

His internal questions were promptly rendered moot however when he realised with a start that Mrs. Hudson appeared to have made off with his shirt. Harold laughed good-naturedly at Sherlock's sudden scandalised expression and passed over the tray of biscuits and tea his wife had left with them.

"She'll be back with one of mine, don't worry. Not that you really need a shirt in this weather, eh? Eighty seven degrees last I checked."

A bolt of alarmed confusion shot through Sherlock's brain at the absurdly high number - *eighty seven!?* - but it waned as quickly as it had come upon remembering the existence of the Fahrenheit scale. Oh, right... Harold meant it was around thirty out. Bloody Americans. With a slight annoyed frown for his own lapse in memory he leant carefully forwards and plucked up what looked like a glass of ice water *(hot tea in this climate... ugh, no thank you)* and a biscuit. Trapped here for the moment, it seemed, unless he wanted to abscond shirtless into the blistering afternoon sun. Might as well make the best of things.

"So how old are you, then? Late teens I'm guessing?" Harold had settled back into his deck chair and was now watching Sherlock eat. A somewhat disconcerting look of intense speculation pierced sharp through the lenses of his spectacles - almost as if he were waiting for his guest to screw up somehow, give him an excuse to toss him out... or worse. Sherlock swallowed and tried not to let the creeping sense of wariness show in his body language.

"Twenty," he supplied.

Harold clucked in disapproval. "And already hooked on heroin? Didn't waste any time, did you?"

"It was cocaine," Sherlock corrected, an offended scowl stealing over his features. "And I only started last year, I was clean before then."

"Except for the cigarettes," Harold countered with a bland nod to the half-empty pack of Marlboros beginning to work its way out of Sherlock's jeans pocket. Sherlock glanced down and shoved the box back out of sight.

"Nicotine doesn't count."

Harold chuckled humourlessly to himself, shaking his head in clear disagreement. Before he could reply however a beaming Mrs. Hudson bustled through the open doorway carrying a small stack of clothing.

"The shirt'll be a bit loose on you, dear, but the trousers should fit. I found an old pair of Joshua's." She said this last to her husband, whose expression darkened fractionally before smoothing back to something more neutral. Mrs. Hudson didn't seem to catch the shift in his demeanour, too distracted by her self-appointed mission of dragging Sherlock out of his seat and towards the door. "Trainers off, then, so you don't track mud in. Now the bathroom's down this way..."

Sherlock was too bewildered to really object as he was led rather forcibly down the hall *(white carpeting, powder blue walls, a multitude of framed photographs and a crimson vase on a table holding a bouquet of white carnations and ferns)* and found himself deposited in a tidy little guest lavatory at the back of the house. Mrs. Hudson patted him happily on the shoulder before turning to leave the room.

"Just set your things on the counter and I'll add them to the wash later!" she called through the door as she closed it behind her. Sherlock was left alone in a strange bathroom clutching an armful of unfamiliar clothing, blinking at a framed arrangement of pressed flowers on the back of the white-washed wooden door now shut in front of his face.

Er... alright then. Apparently he was to have a shower.

Figuring out how the damned tap worked proved to be a bit of an ordeal, but with a bit of finagling he managed. Half an hour later he emerged feeling much less like he was about to drown in his own perspiration. Clean clothes, too, which proved to be an unexpectedly welcome change. He'd been forced to wear the same outfit for going on three days now, having lost his knapsack to some enterprising young thief during a night spent unadvisedly sleeping on a park bench. Luckily being an accomplished pickpocket himself meant he'd long since taken to carrying his passport and other important documents tucked securely into the waistband of his jeans, money and cigs stowed in a front pocket where he'd be likely to notice them missing. Didn't mean he hadn't been *severely* miffed over the loss of his nicotine patches, clothes, and the scant collection of books and other knickknacks he'd been toting around, however.

Though to be perfectly honest he'd been most dismayed to lose his Oxford sweatshirt... ragged and in desperate need of repair it had been, yes, but the thing held some measure of sentimental value. He and that hoodie had been through a lot together, after all. Accepting the reality of never seeing it again had formed a large portion of his dawdling in finding a thrift shop to replace his belongings. Perhaps he could find the thief, he'd thought - accost them and get his things back...? Couldn't be *that* difficult. How far could they have gotten?

But of course Tallahassee was an enormous, spread-out jumble of a city, and no matter how much Sherlock wandered the back streets looking for a likely suspect he'd come up empty-handed. Sniping back at a heckling street gang as he passed their corner had been an act of frustration in his final hours of fruitless searching. An impulsive choice which, as per usual, had landed him in far more dire straits than he'd started out with.

Say what one would about the numerous downsides of cocaine, but the longer Sherlock went without the stuff the more he found himself desperately missing that blessed peace of knowing he wasn't about to do something enormously stupid with each and every decision. Without the enforced self-discipline of drugs he was back to that age-old game of roulette; just waiting moment by moment to see how badly he'd fucked himself over this time.

Being on his own and thus relatively free of the hassle of human interaction mitigated the usual bouts of crippling social anxiety, granted, but a certain baseline level of stress still lingered. Too many opportunities for him to ruin things, too many thoughtless actions sneaking through before he could exert enough willpower to stop them. Seemed there was nothing for it, though... he'd simply have to get used to living in constant dread of his own idiocy.

But that was fine, really... he'd dealt with it well enough before discovering coke, hadn't he? That feeling of sick trepidation and wary mistrust of himself had defined his life for *years.* Just because he now knew how easy things could be didn't mean he wasn't still fully capable of accepting the inherent difficulties of his existence.

The trousers Mrs. Hudson had foisted on him were actually quite comfortable - loose khaki-type things - and the t-shirt was indeed oversized but softer than the one he'd been wearing before and not entirely unbecoming. *(Though the logo of some cancer foundation emblazoned on the front was a rather distractingly garish shade of violet on white.)* He didn't bother trying to find a comb for his hair, which had by this point grown long enough to actually need one, and instead did his best to pick out the tangles with his fingers while he cautiously stuck his head around the open bathroom door in search of his hosts.

Within minutes of the shower tap shutting off Mrs. Hudson appeared in the hall.

"Oh, much better!" she exclaimed cheerfully, catching sight of him. "You do make a handsome sight without all the mud."

He furrowed his brows slightly (*handsome...? was she mocking him?*) and turned his attention toward the laundry bag in her hands. She smiled blithely and bustled past him to scoop his discarded garments into it, leaving the small pile of miscellaneous objects he'd emptied out of his pockets untouched on the tiled countertop.

"Now I expect you're knackered, so don't worry about sitting down for supper. I'll bring something in for you." Gesturing for him to pick up his belongings (cigarettes, lighter, passport and travel documents along with a scant few dollars in change and a handful of random baubles) she herded him down the hall once more and into what appeared to be a spare bedroom. The décor was mostly done up in pale blues and greens, with the same white carpeting as the rest of the house and a tan quilted bedspread. He paused in the doorway, only just now noticing that the air indoors was a very comfortable 20-odd degrees and that the sweltering humidity that had plagued him ever since his first ill-advised foray toward the southern states seemed to have vanished. *Air conditioning*, he realised... christ, what a godsend.

"This is Joshua's old room," Mrs. Hudson informed him. For the first time since he'd met her the energetic smile on her aged face seemed to droop a few notches. She took a step forward and gently touched a framed photograph sitting on the nightstand.

Sherlock followed her into the room (slowly, still, as his stomach hadn't stopped aching) and regarded the picture over her shoulder. A young man in perhaps his late teens or early twenties, with short reddish-brown hair, wide celery green eyes and a face full of freckles stood grinning in a set of graduation robes with a rolled-up diploma clutched in his hands.

The freckles and general shape of the face sparked an unexpected flash of memory in Sherlock's mind, and he spoke without really meaning to. "He looks like my ex-boyfriend."

Immediately he scowled at himself and resisted the urge to smack his forehead in exasperation. *Fuck's sake*, what had prompted him to say that? His short, doomed foray into romantic prospects was none of this woman's business. *Particularly* considering the country he was in, which boasted an exceptionally poor track record of tolerance when it came to same-sex couples. *Learn to keep your bloody mouth shut, idiot.*

Mrs. Hudson didn't seem to acknowledge his gaffe, though. Instead she just smiled wistfully and hummed a little to herself. "He was a good lad, Joshua. Harold's sister's boy. We took him in when his parents passed, bless their souls. Lived here for about five years before, well..."

"He died?" Sherlock asked, forgetting in his lingering irritation with himself to try and be tactful.

"Oh no, dear!" Mrs. Hudson exclaimed with a short laugh. "No, no... well, not that I know of, anyway! Last I heard he was in Michigan. He and Harold had a bit of row, you see, and he left last August. I do miss the boy terribly."

"Oh." Sherlock frowned and wondered if this meant he was being appropriated as some sort of bizarre replacement nephew. Supposed it didn't matter if he was... still meant free food and a bed, after all.

"Now Sherlock, you just lie down and get some rest." Again with the steering him about, Mrs. Hudson all but forced him into a sitting position on the bedspread. If she weren't a pleasant little old lady he'd have verbally eviscerated her by now for all the uninvited touching. As things were he was merely starting to get a tad annoyed... not quite enough to say anything, though. Too tired and sore to bother.

Humming to herself, Mrs. Hudson left the room with her laundry bag. Presumably she was off to see to the wash. Sherlock watched her until she was gone from his line of sight, then glanced over to the photograph of Joshua again.

In all objectivity the man really didn't look *that* similar to Eric. It was just the freckles... perhaps the shape of the eyes at a stretch. Sherlock frowned deeply and reached out to turn the frame so it was facing the other way regardless. He'd been doing well these past few months in avoiding any thought of the brief period he'd spent in Stockwell. Resisting the all-too-frequent temptation to look up how his former partner was faring, find out what he was doing with his life. Had he invested the money Sherlock had given him wisely? Gone back to school, or perhaps bought a house... started a business? There had been more than enough cash to do any of those things and more.

Discovering the answers wouldn't be difficult - commandeer a library PC for a few hours, break into some government records, (perhaps screw around with one of Mycroft's projects while he was at it) - but it wouldn't help anything. Sherlock would only be reminded of the life he'd left behind... too tempted to book the next flight back to England, seek out Eric and apologise until they could be together again. For good, this time.

Ugh but *no.* It would never happen, you bloody idiot. Stop dwelling on stupid nonsense.

Removing his hand from the photo frame he dumped his collection of items on the table beside it and let himself flop (gently) into the fluffed pillows of the unfamiliar bed. Eric hadn't liked *him*, he reminded himself sternly - he'd only liked the person Sherlock was with cocaine. Same as everyone else did. Without drugs Sherlock Holmes was nothing more than an impulsive, tactless git with a head full of useless knowledge and zero common sense. Bullied and shunned for the majority of his life, and rightly so, because he tended to behave like a complete lunatic while sober. Eric would tire of his eccentrics within a week and then he'd be right back where he'd started: facing the inexorable choice between social isolation and chemical dependency.

He'd already been down one of those paths. And being an addict hadn't worked in the slightest, so he was left with the former option as his sole recourse. Which meant that thinking of Eric - or anyone back home, really - was nothing but a pointless waste of time. Only logical action was to stop immediately.

Sherlock rolled over onto his side with his back facing the nightstand and forced himself to do maths in his head as a distraction. Chemical reactions, physics...

He barely made it through half a dozen equations before his eyes began to slip shut of their own volition.

For the second time in as many hours he lost himself to slumber.

**««**

## Chapter 3

**««**

The first thing Sherlock became aware of was a disgusting, metallic taste in his mouth and a niggling itch in his throat. Following that there was the sensation of a blanket tucked neatly around his shoulders, a pillow under his head, weak light filtering through his eyelids... and above all else a deep, insistent desire for a cigarette.

He frowned and reluctantly opened his eyes. All around him the soft palette of an unfamiliar bedroom stood bathed in the cheerful bright light of an early spring morning. Sunshine fell in stripes over his midsection through the slats of half-opened venetian blinds, a sense of peaceful tranquillity seeming to cloak the very air. The entire house was quiet and still, faint chirping warble of birdsong outside the only sound to break the silence.

At some point during the night someone had covered him with a thin, sage-green quilt, which for whatever subconscious reason he'd tugged partially over his head in his sleep. The fabric now draped across his face smelled vaguely of moth balls and that peculiar earthlike scent of wooden storage chests. Not entirely unpleasant, but he shoved it away regardless. Too strong a sensation to process this early in the morning.

Moving turned out to be a rather poor idea - every muscle in his body seemed to have gone sore and stiff overnight. He gasped a tiny hiss of pain upon attempting to uncurl his midsection and immediately went still again. Alright, wait, wait... probably best to take things slowly. Or... perhaps not at all? The thought of simply refusing to move ever again was sorely tempting; he could just tug the blanket over his head again and go back to sleep, wouldn't that be easiest? Ignore the whole problem until it went away of its own accord. Maybe then this uncomfortable scratch in his throat would fade away as well.

The portion of his brain responsible for being absolutely dependent on nicotine didn't seem too keen on that plan, however. Barely a minute had passed before he found himself grimacing against the stabbing ache caused by rolling over onto his back. Blindly he tossed out an arm for his cigarettes and lighter abandoned on the bedside table the afternoon previous. Just one fag, his nicotine-starved brain insisted, then he could curl back up in bed.

Instead of the smooth cardboard of a cig packet, though, his hand bumped into what felt like a ceramic plate. He opened one eye from the squinting wince his face had twisted into and glanced over, trying to figure out what exactly he was touching. It was indeed a covered serving dish, with a note neatly folded atop it.

Confused, he snatched up the small card from its place on the white china and rubbed his eyes tiredly as he tried to decipher the lines of tidy, over-embellished handwriting decorating cream-coloured paper.

*Sherlock -*

*Harold's off to the hospital for the day and I've some errands to run. I'll be back in an hour or so - make yourself at home. And do try to eat something, you're far too thin for a boy your age!*

*Mrs. Hudson*

He blinked at the message a few times in blank befuddlement *(what did his weight matter to anyone?)* then turned his attention to the serving dish. A careful upward nudge of the lid revealed a tray full of sliced fruits, a small bowl of some sort of oatmeal mixture and what appeared to be a boiled egg. A glass of once-chilled orange juice stood on a woven coaster next to it.

Sherlock wasn't particularly hungry - he rarely was first thing in the morning - but he grabbed a few slices of fruit and the glass of juice regardless as he retrieved his cigarette pack. Muscles protesting vehemently but he managed to drag himself to a sitting position without undue fuss. Mrs. Hudson had gone to the trouble of attempting to feed him, might as well take advantage of it. He scrubbed a hand through his hair *(fluffed up in messy ringlet curls now thanks to having slept on it wet... Mycroft used to tell him he looked like a sheep when it did that)* and, yawning, stood up to shuffle blearily toward the front porch.

The morning was admittedly rather gorgeous. It seemed he'd slept for a ridiculous length of time - it was now well past sunrise, the light shimmering over dew-coated grass, air not yet given the chance to heat up to that unbearable sweltering temperature he'd grown to so thoroughly despise. Must be going on seven in the morning, he guessed... could have found out for sure but he wasn't motivated enough to bother finding a clock. Not like the exact time was important, anyway. All that mattered was that it was early, quiet... and cool enough to bloody *breathe*.

He ate the few slices of apple he'd picked up, listening to the birds chirping high in the trees. Swatting irritably at a passing mosquito he leant his elbows on the railing of the deck and finally got round to lighting a cigarette. With the first inhale a tide of blessed nicotine washed through his consciousness; dense fogbanks of fatigue and a small fraction of general aching soreness from his muscles ebbed away with the flow of chemicals. He took a sip of juice to rinse out the general disgusting taste of sleep, stale blood, and tobacco from his mouth, coughed into the crook of his elbow, then slouched his body forward over the deck rail to stare out at the garden.

Over in the far corner a small flock of sparrows were busy making off with the majority of Mrs. Hudson's blueberries. He took another drag off his cig and idly watched their antics. One of the larger ones appeared to be trying to browbeat a younger bird out of the way of the largest berry clusters, all frenzied chirping and sharp talons. Violent little bastard.

"Hey! Who're you!?"

Sherlock startled badly and snapped his eyes away from the bickering sparrows, the entire flock taking flight in a sudden flurry of wings in response to the shout of a childish voice. There in the middle of the stone walkway off to his right stood a young girl, perhaps six or seven years old, with honey blonde hair cut in an off-centre bob and a grass-stained yellow sun dress. She was holding a flower-patterned knapsack in her arms and frowning at him suspiciously.

"Are you Mrs. Hudson's grandson or something?" she asked without giving him a chance to answer her initial question. Her short hair bounced slightly as she looked him up and down with an appraising expression on her small face.

"No, just a houseguest," Sherlock explained. He glanced to the cigarette in his hand and shifted his wrist so it was at least partially hidden from sight - didn't fancy having to explain what it was to a primary school child. "Er... Mrs. Hudson's not in right now."

For some reason the girl's expression brightened at the sound of his voice. "You talk funny just like she does!"

Sherlock frowned. "It's not 'talking funny', it's an English accent."

"*Towk*-ing," the girl mimicked with a giggle. "What's your name?"

"... Sherlock," he replied, voice slightly distracted as he attempted to surreptitiously pinch out his half-finished fag behind his back and tapped the unburnt tobacco out into the flowerbed below. He hesitated a moment before shoving the spent filter into his trouser pocket - didn't want to drop it into the garden... hopefully the fabric wouldn't absorb the scent of smoke.

"'Sherlock'...?" the little girl repeated dubiously. "That's a weird name."

"I'm aware," he deadpanned. Looking up, he realised she'd been walking forward the entire time they'd been speaking and was now standing on the grass just below him. A set of wax-and-wire orthodontics flashed like metal scaffolding on her teeth as she fixed him with a wide, enthusiastic smile.

"Sounds kinda like a superhero! *Sherlock, the Avenger!*" She giggled again and shoved her knapsack onto the porch through a space in the railings, then followed it up by climbing through the adjacent slat. "I like it!"

"... Really?" Sherlock asked, furrowing his brows with a puzzled blink. That... wasn't quite the reaction he was used to.

"My name's Hayley," the girl informed him. She'd unzipped her bag and was now pulling out what appeared to be a florescent pink tea set made entirely of moulded plastic. Each piece was set reverently on the small patio table standing between the Hudsons' deck chairs.

Sherlock turned and leant on the porch railing as he watched Hayley unpack her satchel. She seemed to have an entire collection of tiny pink china. "What are you doing?"

"Mrs. Hudson said we could have a tea party today so I brought my tea stuff!" Hayley explained cheerfully. "You're a boy and boys are icky but you can be in the tea party too cause you talk like Mrs. Hudson."

"It's... nowhere near tea time," Sherlock countered, beginning to feel a bit bewildered. Who was this girl and what on earth was she doing here? Belatedly it occurred to him that perhaps asking her directly might be the best way of finding those things out. "Why are you wandering about the neighbourhood at this hour? Do your parents know you're out?"

Hayley scoffed childishly up at him. "*Duh*, yes! Mrs. Hudson teaches me reading and stuff on Thursday mornings."

"You don't learn that in school?"

The girl rolled her eyes and took a few steps toward Sherlock to take uninvited hold of his hand. He startled as she began tugging him insistently toward her tea set with enough force that he nearly overbalanced.

"Daddy says school fills your head with Satan's lies," she informed him matter-of-factly. Sherlock blinked and tried not to look too unsettled... *was she bloody serious...?* A half second later however he gave up and just fixed her with a disturbed expression. Oh sod being age-appropriate. This wasn't *his* child - he had no responsibility to entertain religious delusions for the sake of not traumatising her. Particularly not when she was now literally *forcing* him to have a seat at her garishly-coloured tea set.

"Your father is an insane person," he told her seriously. Hayley had finally succeeded in getting him to sit in a deck chair and shoved an undersized plastic teacup into his hands. The accompanying saucer was moulded to look like a circlet of tiny flower petals.

"Nah, he just loves Jesus a whole lot." She smiled blithely up at him, completely ignoring the disgusted, vaguely alarmed look on his face, and bent down to produce a teddy bear wearing a frilly lace dress from her knapsack. With reverent care she placed it on his right thigh and patted its furry head with a self-satisfied little nod. "This is Clarabelle, she's a real Southern lady so be polite."

Sherlock had no idea how she expected him to offend a stuffed bear. Neither, for that matter, could he fathom why the thing had to be *on his lap* of all places. His attempt to relocate it to the table was met with a savage glare from Hayley, however, and fearing she'd retaliate with a tantrum he quickly put it back where she'd left it. Far too early in the morning to deal with a small child screeching at him over moving her toy, he decided. Best just go along with things.

With the bear safely replaced Hayley turned her attention to pouring the contents of a butterfly-patterned thermos into the pink teapot, humming a happy tune to herself.

"Mister Sherlock, would you like some tea?" she asked in an extremely poor imitation of an aristocratic accent. She held the now-full teapot out to him with her hands arranged in what she evidently thought was proper pouring form - obviously parroted from some television programme or the like, it mostly just looked ridiculous.

"You're doing that all wrong," Sherlock told her before he could think not to. When Hayley's ecstatic expression melted into a pout he deliberated for an awkward second before setting his little plastic teacup down to take the pot from her. Sod it... might as well show her how it was meant to be done. Wasn't like he had anything better to do with his time. "You have to hold the lid so it doesn't spill, see? Like this."

Hayley's eyes lit up as he properly poured the tea *(was it, though...? no, couldn't be, it was some sort of cloudy off-yellow liquid; juice, maybe)* into her cup for her. She hopped up and down a few times in excitement.

"Oh! Neat, do it again!"

Sherlock couldn't quite stop a small bemused smile as he poured a cup of whatever-it-was for himself as well, then handed the pot back to Hayley. She mimicked his actions with a huge grin on her face and poured out a third cup, which she then shoved abruptly toward her teddy bear. Sherlock was forced to grab the saucer with his unoccupied hand before it could spill all over his trousers. Hayley nudged at the cup until he'd relented to holding it in place at approximately the level of the bear's forelegs.

"You gotta stick your pinkie up like this when you drink so it's fancier." In demonstration Hayley took a sip of her beverage with her smallest finger extended comically out like a flag. Sherlock bit back a small laugh and, deciding it couldn't hurt anything to play along for the moment, obligingly copied her.

"This is grapefruit juice," he realised as he took a small sip. Hayley shot him an offended look from her place across the table.

"Nuh uh, it's *tea*," she asserted haughtily. "Cause we're having a tea party."

"No... this is definitely grapefruit juice." Sherlock took another sip and scrunched his face up a bit for the sour taste. "It's not even very good grapefruit juice."

Hayley opened her mouth to retort, but was distracted by the sound of a car pulling up at the other end of the house. Sherlock looked up and was vaguely mortified to see Mrs. Hudson climbing out of her vehicle. The elderly woman was busy patting out the wrinkles in her floral-patterned dress as she walked up the path to her front door.

"Hi, Mrs. Hudson!" Hayley exclaimed cheerfully. In reply Mrs. Hudson looked up toward the porch with a smile... then stopped in her tracks and put a hand to her mouth in a poor attempt to cover a burst of laughter. Sherlock could feel his cheeks flushing. Here he was sat in a deck chair in his bare feet, hair fluffed up like a bloody sheep, holding a pink cup of juice with one hand while the other supported a flower-shaped saucer for the benefit of a frilly-dressed bear. *Oh lord please don't let her have a camera handy.*

Mrs. Hudson started walking again, still chuckling, and fixed an indulgent smile on the both of them. "Having a tea party, dears?"

"It's a grapefruit juice party," Sherlock corrected in an embarrassed mumble. He coughed slightly as he set aside his garish pink cup along with the bear's. Across the table Hayley huffed indignantly at him.

"It's *tea*," she snapped, then turned to Mrs. Hudson instead. "Sherlock's bad at pretending."

"Oh I'm sure he just needs practise is all," Mrs. Hudson assured the little girl. She stifled another laugh at Sherlock's aggrieved look and, reaching their spot on the porch, bent down to pick up Hayley's miniature teapot. "How about we fill this with something more proper, hm?"

"Yeah!" Hayley exclaimed happily.

"I'll, er... just go back to-" Sherlock started, making to rise from his seat, but Mrs. Hudson cut him off with a sharp tut.

"We'll be having none of that, young man. Did you eat your breakfast?"

"Um," Sherlock paused... couldn't exactly *lie*, not when the tray was still clearly full back in her guest bedroom...

"Of course not," Mrs. Hudson answered for him with a small exasperated shake of her head. "Well, come on then, both of you inside. We'll cook up a nice proper meal together."

"Cooking!" Hayley echoed in an excited shout. She sprang up from her chair, grabbed Sherlock's hand and proceeded to drag him bodily off toward the front door. Once again he just barely managed to avoid landing face-first on the wooden deck - the girl's centre of gravity was far lower than his and apparently perfectly calibrated to pull him right off balance.

"Be polite, please, Hayley!" Mrs. Hudson admonished from behind them. "You'll have poor Sherlock's arm off if you tug any harder."

"Oh." Hayley glanced over her shoulder, meeting Sherlock's annoyed glare, and flashed him a sheepish grin. He extricated his hand from her viselike grip and straightened up into a more normal standing position, only to have her latch onto the side of his trousers instead.

Mrs. Hudson just chuckled again at their subsequent silent bickering over what exactly constituted not being an obnoxious leech of a child *(why did she feel a need to be grabbing him at all times!?)* and herded them both into the house ahead of her.

Sherlock soon found himself set with the task of slicing fruit in the cool morning atmosphere of the Hudsons' kitchen. Beside him Hayley was enthusiastically stirring a bowl full of pancake batter. Mrs. Hudson had bustled off to retrieve something or other - related to Hayley's reading lesson, he'd gathered, but she hadn't really explained beyond that.

"Is Mrs. Hudson teaching you how to read too?" Hayley piped up. She was seconds away from knocking her bowl of mix over with the frenzied intensity of her stirring - Sherlock reached over to steady it before it could topple off the counter.

"I already know how to read." He frowned as she continued with the manic insanity of what she apparently thought 'stirring' looked like. "Stop flailing like a lunatic, you're going to spill batter all over."

Hayley stopped her activity and looked up at him with a confused expression. A second later she turned back to her bowl and began to stir the batter again in excruciatingly slow, careful circles.

"Is she teaching you math, then?" she continued. Her tongue had poked out from between her teeth as she apparently concentrated all her efforts on stirring properly.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and went back to slicing up an apple. "No."

"French?"

"I'm fluent in French."

Hayley was starting to look confused. "Why're you here if she's not teaching you stuff?"

"I have no idea," Sherlock admitted in a vaguely irritated monotone. He stopped slicing apples for a moment to sneeze into the crook of his elbow, grimacing for the accompanying painful spasm of his abdomen. Ugh... the scratchy discomfort from earlier had progressed into a full-blown sore throat now. Of all the rotten bloody luck, he just *had* to come down with a cold on top of everything else.

"Daddy says sneezing is when the devil leaves your body," Hayley informed him cheerfully. He fixed her with a disgruntled expression.

"You're going to grow up to be one of those psychotic evangelical tragedies of a human being, aren't you?"

Hayley just blinked up at him, bewildered. After a pause she seemed to give up on deciphering what he'd said and just answered the bits she understood. "I'm gonna be a zoo keeper."

Sherlock snorted to himself. "Clearly."

"What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

"I'm already grown up," Sherlock replied blandly, moving on to slicing up an orange now. Hayley seemed to have completely forgotten about stirring her pancake batter and was just holding onto the wooden spoon like some sort of boat rudder. She looked him up and down again.

"So what are you then?"

Sherlock paused. "I'm..." he trailed off, looking down at her. What *was* he...? A chemist, once, but he'd abandoned that path ages ago. A drug addict...? Not anymore, not if he could help it. A traveller, then... a vagrant. Some sort of ghostlike, wasted potential of genius.

... nothing.

With a shake of his head he swallowed down another cough and turned his attention back to the fruit on the cutting board. "... I don't know."

Hayley gave him a miffed look. "You can't *not know* what you are, that's dumb."

"*You're* dumb," Sherlock retorted childishly. Hayley stuck her tongue out at him and in a fit of pique he retaliated in kind.

"Oh honestly! Am I going to have to separate you two?" Mrs. Hudson's amused voice drifted into the kitchen behind them. She'd finally returned bearing a small stack of books and a tape recorder in her arms, which she deposited on the patterned cloth of her dining table.

"Sherlock started it!" Hayley cried, pointing an accusing finger at him.

"I did not, you liar," Sherlock snapped.

Mrs. Hudson just shook her head. "Go on and set the table, then. I'll finish up here."

She shooed her guests away from the counters with a stack of cutlery, and Sherlock was reduced to the task of trying to get Hayley to stop rearranging the forks and knives so every place ended up with multiples of the same implement. Soon enough everything was in order, and Mrs. Hudson presented each of them with a plate of blueberry pancakes, sliced fruit, and cottage cheese. Hayley dug into her meal like a starving waif while Sherlock merely picked at his with a fork. He *really* wasn't hungry.

"Sherlock, dear, if you don't start eating properly I'm going to have to ask Harold to bring home one of those feeding tube contraptions."

Sherlock looked up from where he'd been prodding at a pancake. "I'm fine."

"Nuh uh you're super skinny!" Hayley chimed in. Sherlock shot a glare her way.

"No one asked you."

"*Behave*, both of you," Mrs. Hudson said sternly. Sherlock and Hayley both shut their mouths and snapped their gazes toward her, only to be met with a fond smile. "Let's just have a nice meal and then get on with our reading lesson, shall we?"

"Yes, Mrs. Hudson," Hayley chirped, returning to her food.

"Why would I need a reading le-" Sherlock started, but Mrs. Hudson raised her eyebrows in clear disapproval and he cut himself off. With a frown he looked back down at his breakfast, huffed a bit, and speared a square of pancake. Well... at the very least it tasted better than his usual bin-scrounged fare.

Twenty minutes later their plates had all been cleared away and Sherlock was trapped at the table with Mrs. Hudson and an overenthusiastic little girl as they got to the business of choosing a book to read. Stifling the intermittent coughs of his irritated throat was beginning to get the better of him, much to his displeasure. If there was one thing he hated more than being ill it was *letting on* that he was ill - but try as he might the bruised diaphragm and sore jaw were making it difficult to be subtle.

"Oh Sherlock, are you not feeling well?" Mrs. Hudson asked with a pitying pat of his hand. He'd been right in the middle of trying not to cough and ended up jerking his limb away from her in an instinctual startle reflex - forcing back the accompanying vicious glare took an enormous amount of willpower. Ugh, was there a polite way to ask someone not to touch you unexpectedly?

"It's nothing," he answered a bit more snappishly than he'd intended. Across the table Hayley grinned; the metal wires on her teeth made her face seem oddly mechanical.

"He's got a *cold!*" she crowed happily. "Daddy says-"

"That a benign viral infection indicates some sort of demonic possession by Satan, thank you for the scintillating insight," Sherlock sniped before she could finish her sentence. Mrs. Hudson shot him a sharp look and he slouched down in his seat in vague chastisement.

Hayley didn't seem the least bit perturbed, however. "No it's cause you didn't pray enough."

Mrs. Hudson smiled sweetly *(though the expression seemed a tad forced)* at the girl before turning back to Sherlock. She'd just opened her mouth to say something when a shrill ringing cut through the quiet background noise of the house.

"Oh! That'll be the phone," the elderly woman exclaimed. She rose from her chair and paused to wag a finger at them. "You two *behave yourselves*."

With that she disappeared into the other room.

"What book do you wanna read?" Hayley piped up immediately. "I like the one about the fish."

Sherlock bit out a sigh and let himself slide further down in his chair. God, he was beginning to get a nicotine headache. Shouldn't have wasted half that cigarette. He covered his eyes with a hand and tried not to dwell on the looming prospect of having a smoke while his throat felt like sandpaper. "I don't care."

*"Oh my lord, is he alright!?"*

Sherlock and Hayley's heads both snapped up at the sound of Mrs. Hudson's exclamation. They glanced back at each other in tandem before Hayley jumped up from her seat to rush toward her tutor. Sherlock bounded after her and caught the girl around the midsection before she could burst screeching in on what sounded like a fairly serious conversation.

"Lemme go!" Hayley smacked ineffectually at his arm.

Sherlock shushed her with an annoyed scowl and carefully poked his head round the edge of the doorframe. In the hall Mrs. Hudson was standing with the phone pressed tight to her ear, covering her mouth with a teary-eyed expression. Hayley twisted around in Sherlock's grip and peered around the corner as well.

"What's going on?" she asked in a whisper.

Sherlock furrowed his brows as details picked themselves stark white out of the kind old woman's appearance. *Posture, facial expression, stricken tears... touching her wedding ring.*

"Something's happened to her husband."

**««**

## Chapter 4

**««**

"It'll just be a few hours, dear, they said he'd likely be free to leave by noon."

"But I don't think-"

"Oh hush, honestly. You'll be fine."

"But-"

Mrs. Hudson turned, purse in one hand and keys in the other, and fixed Sherlock with a stern, no-nonsense expression. He snapped his mouth shut on instinct, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his borrowed shirt as he stood awkwardly in the hallway with Hayley clinging to the back of his trousers.

"Sherlock, I'm not about to bring a little girl into a hospital where there's all manner of diseases lurking about. Not to mention you're coming down with something and we hardly need to be spreading a cold round to all those sickly patients, now do we?"

"You're planning to leave *someone else's child* in the care of a twenty year old vagrant you just met *yesterday!*" Sherlock's voice came out a bit of a scandalised yelp, overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all. "That's insane! I could be a... a murderer, or something! I could be mad! I *am* mad!"

"You're not *mad*," Mrs. Hudson replied with a half roll of her eyes. "You're a very responsible young man and I've utmost faith in you." Sherlock opened and shut his mouth a few times, trying to come up with a coherent response besides *you're bleeding mental*, while Mrs. Hudson bent down to address the girl hiding half-behind his legs. "Now Hayley, dear, be a good girl for Sherlock, won't you? I'll only be gone a few hours. You can show him round the house, hm? Read a few of your books?"

Hayley nodded shyly. "Okay Mrs. Hudson."

"I- I could just leave!" Sherlock tried, his last ditch effort to get the woman to see sense. Because *honestly* this was *not* an acceptable solution to Hayley's parents being unavailable - trusting a bloody *homeless ex-junkie* with criminal tendencies and a forged passport to look after a little girl was a horrendous act of negligence. "I could walk out right now and no one would ever even know I was here! She'd be all alone!"

"You won't, though." Snatching up a light crochet jumper *(the hell did she need one for in this weather?)* the elderly woman bustled off toward the front door. Nothing Sherlock said could seem to penetrate past her single-minded mission to see her husband. "Ring the hospital if you have any trouble, dears, the number's by the phone! I'll just be a tick!"

And with that she was gone.

Sherlock remained standing in the hall, expression caught between sheer outrage and a sort of creeping horror. Oh no oh god he'd been left alone with a *child* and it was entirely *his responsibility* to make sure she didn't die or injure herself or burn the place down and no no *no no no* who ever said he was cut out for something like this!?

"I hope Mr. Hudson's not hurt too bad." Hayley's chirping voice cut into the short stretch of silence which had settled over them in the wake of Mrs. Hudson's departure. Sherlock barely heard her, still staring at the door. The girl looked up to her erstwhile caretaker with a frown and tugged on his trousers to get his attention. "Hey, what's *ass-all-ted* mean anyways?"

"It means someone attacked him," Sherlock explained vaguely. He glanced down at the little girl, then back up to the door, brought an arm up to his face to smother a cough and grimaced. Oh *hell* talk about a bloody pile-up of shit... alright, but, well... fuck, hang on... first things first, right? But then no no no oh god he didn't even *know* what should come first! He'd never looked after a child in his life! This was completely mad!

Dropping his arm Sherlock bit nervously at his lip, scrubbed fingers through tangled hair, then looked down to Hayley. She was blinking up at him with a curious, slightly confused expression on her round little face.

"Is that bad, then?" she asked when it became clear he wasn't going to elaborate on the definition. "Cause you look kinda freaked out."

"I- what?" Sherlock realised his hands were currently tangled up in his hair like a nutter. Self-consciously he shifted them to his trouser pockets instead, tried to appear less like he was about to have a panic attack over something so stupid as being entrusted with the care of a young person. This *wasn't* a big deal. It wasn't. *Really.* "I'm not *freaked ou-* why would I be... ugh, no. I'm... fine. Everything's fine."

"If you're scared you can just say so, you know." Hayley gave him a concerned look and patted his thigh in a childish gesture of comfort. "Daddy says it's important to let the demons out when they get inside your brains and the only way they can get out is if you tell somebody they're there. So you should just say so if you're scared."

Sherlock scrunched up his face in a mixture of confusion and annoyance. "Are you suggesting *emotions* are caused by...? Ugh, no, don't answer that. Your entire sense of reason's been tainted by parental psychosis."

Hayley didn't react to his words beyond a slightly befuddled smile, apparently her default response whenever he said something she couldn't quite process. And, hrm... but she *was* rather resilient in the face of most anything he said to her, wasn't she? Maybe it would be easiest just to speak to her as a fellow adult, then... treat her as if she were an accomplice in this whole absurd situation? Was that even *allowed?* Probably not. Should try regardless, though, as it was just about the only way he could think of to find a second opinion on what to bloody *do* with her because damned if he had any clue whatsoever.

"Alright... look," he started. As he spoke he finally took a step away from the spot he'd been rooted to for the last five minutes, cast about for a direction to move in. Where...? Kitchen, back to the kitchen. That was closest. "I'm not... freaked out, or *scared*, or whatever, because there's nothing to be scared of and that would be moronic." Reaching the dining table he all but shoved the girl into the same seat she'd occupied for breakfast, then took the chair across from her.

"But you're acting super freaky," Hayley pointed out with a frown.

"I am not- that's-" Sherlock huffed, ruffled his hair again, then leant his elbows on the table and rubbed at his forehead. Ugh, christ, he was really going to need a cigarette before too long. "That's *anxiety.* And I am justifiably *anxious* because I've never been called upon to look after a child before, I have no idea what to do, and I don't feel it was wise of Mrs. Hudson to put her trust in me so quickly."

Hayley just gave him a confused look. "You're scared 'cause you don't know how to take care of kids?"

"Yes!" Sherlock threw his hands up. Thank god, she actually seemed to be able to understand a portion of what was said to her. "There's this whole mess of *rules* and things concerning how you're supposed to interact with children but I don't know any of them and it's not like I can just copy what my *parents* did when I was your age because that would be horrendous and my brother and I spent most of our time together having *science* lectures which would probably classify as Satanic under your mad little indoctrinated mental paradigm so that's out too and I just..." He huffed and dropped his arms to his sides, fixing Hayley with an aggrieved look. "I'm *really* not the right person for this."

Hayley scrunched her face up and drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "Well... usually when I have babysitters and stuff they just play games with me. So I guess do that?"

Sherlock shook his head and grimaced around another cough. "*Children's* games, I'm guessing? Which I've never played. No. *God* this is ridiculous."

"You never...?" Hayley echoed with a bewildered look. "You mean like tag and hopscotch and stuff? You never played those?"

"Of course not." Sherlock shoved a hand through his hair again, then leant partially forwards as he tried to elaborate. How much of his intended meaning was actually managing to get through Hayley's juvenile little mental processor was a complete mystery, but he didn't much care. So long as she got *some* of it, that was good enough. "Look, I had a... a *less than ideal*, shall we say, childhood. I didn't have regular contact with anyone my own age until I was sent to boarding school at thirteen and no one there would have been caught dead playing *tag*, or conkers or whatever it is normal children do to waste time between classes. Not with me at any rate."

Hayley's face was now a comical picture of exaggerated pity. "What about hide-an-go-seek?"

"Hide and what?" Sherlock asked, blinking. Had he ever...? No. Read about it, though, maybe... that was the one where you had to find people, right?

Across from him Hayley's mouth had dropped open in shock, appalled by his apparent lack of knowledge. Then abruptly her expression shifted into a look of staunch determination. Before Sherlock could say anything else she'd hopped out of her chair, grabbed him by the hand and threw her weight backwards in an ineffectual attempt to drag him from his seat.

"If you don't know how to play hide-an-go-seek then I gotta teach ya 'cause *everyone* knows how." For some reason this whole issue seemed to be a point of real distress for the girl. Sherlock furrowed his brows and reluctantly allowed her to tug him out of his seat.

"I don't think it's wise to play a game involving *hiding* when I haven't learnt the layout of the house," he pointed out quite reasonably. Hayley, however, didn't appear to be listening to him - she was far too busy rattling off the rules of hide-and-go-seek over her shoulder as she herded him towards a far wall.

"Okay so you gotta be the seeker first so you can see how to hide good and it's super easy you just cover your face so you can't see nothin' and then you count to a hundred but *no peeking* and if you don't know how to count to a hundred you can just count to ten ten times and when you're done counting you gotta come find my hiding spot!"

She shoved him face-first into a bare corner of the kitchen. He looked down at her with a flustered, slightly irritated look of exasperation - when the hell had he even indicated that playing a game was the appropriate-? He'd just been asking for her opinion on what to do! But beside him the little girl had put her hands on her hips and was now *glaring* with such venom that Sherlock relented to pressing his face into his forearm against the floral pattern of the wallpaper without daring to object further. Sod it, fine, just avoid sending her into a tantrum.

"If you manage to get yourself injured-" Sherlock started, but Hayley cut over him.

"Count to a hundred!" she ordered sternly. The shift in volume of her voice indicated she'd already darted off toward the hallway. "And no one's allowed to go outside so don't even think about it mister!"

"Why would I-"

*"A hundred!"*

Sherlock bit out an annoyed sigh but reluctantly did as he was told. It was this or continue to sit around fretting about not having any idea what to do with children, after all... might as well go along with things.

Counting turned out to be rather unbearably boring, so to keep himself on-task he began switching languages at every tenth digit. Finally some few minutes later he'd at last gotten to '... *dziewięćdziesiąt dziewięć**...* *sto**'* and with an irritated huff shoved himself away from the wall. Well *that* had been utterly tedious. Game was certainly off to a brilliant start, then. What had she said to do next?

Oh, right... apparently now he had to find her. Of course. Couldn't be too difficult.

He turned to lean his back on the wall he'd been counting against *(stifling another cough, ugh his throat might as well be sandpaper)* and scanned the room around him. Scuff marks from her shoes on the floor, arranged in such a way to suggest she'd sprinted for the hall... he made his way in that direction. Carpet fibres misaligned just *there*, another few to the right, the decorative cloth on that table sported a slight wrinkle where it hadn't before. She'd tried hiding under the vase arrangement, then, and decided it was too open. Moved on to...? Ah, second door on the left - smudge marks on the handle, hadn't been shut at the same time as the others judging by the divots on the carpet. Had to have gone through there.

Opening that door turned out to lead to a small office-like area Sherlock hadn't seen before. Several framed documents lined the walls above a bookshelf to his right, stacked high with medical texts. A desk dominated the centre of the room with a modestly-sized window to the right open to receive a shaft of morning sunlight. This was clearly Harold's study.

Sherlock paused in the doorway and scanned the area. Very slight shift of the leather rolling chair behind Harold's desk... obviously Hayley had curled up on the seat to stop her legs being visible in the gap between the desk's back and the floor. She was hidden underneath the desktop, then. This wasn't a very challenging game.

Biting back a sigh Sherlock made his way over to the desk. He'd *meant* to yank the chair out and tell Hayley her idea of hiding was complete rubbish... but before he could do so he found himself distracted by the papers strewn haphazardly over the glossed wood of Harold's workspace. A small pile of documents; patient case studies, it seemed, though none of them recent. The latest was from a few years prior. And every one of them had "outcome: deceased" written in the subject header. That was interesting. Odd, perhaps? What had Harold been researching?

Slight snickering coming from below; Hayley evidently thought he'd failed to notice her, perhaps under the impression her clever hiding spot had left him lost and confused. Not bloody likely. Sherlock's face settled into an annoyed frown - focus still trained on the papers strewn across the desktop - and with a free hand he shoved the chair back to reveal the little girl curled up in the seat like a cat.

"Hey!" she cried indignantly. "No fair, that's cheating cause you heard me laugh!"

"I already knew you were there." Sherlock's voice had gone a bit sidetracked as he flipped carefully through the case files, being sure not to move any too far from their original positions. They all seemed to be write-ups of patients who'd had adverse reactions to a particular brand of chemotherapy drug. In red ink Harold had gone through and circled all the dosages mentioned, scrawled notes alongside with comments like *'reasonable? check double',* and a scattering of other illegible fragments hovered around all the passages detailing the progress and possible causes of fatal side-effects.

Probably all to be expected on the desk of an oncologist, cancer treatment research. But then, strangely... a large section in nearly all the papers had been left free of written commentary; the suggestions for alternative treatments were all conspicuously skipped over. And off to the side, a list of pharmaceutical vendors...

"What're you looking at?"

Sherlock blinked over to Hayley. Abruptly he realised he was standing round snooping through some doctor's paperwork for no good reason - probably not the best of behaviours to be role-modelling to a child. He dropped everything back into the exact places he'd found them and took a step away from the table to thwart himself getting distracted by anything else. Honestly, what was with his brain latching on to anything that looked even remotely like a pattern? Fuck's sake he didn't even have a working knowledge of cancer treatments - this was not only none of his business, it was nigh-incomprehensible besides. Idiot.

"Papers. Nothing important." He flipped a hand dismissively, then quirked a questioning brow down at Hayley as something occurred to him. "I've won the game, then?"

Hayley scoffed. "Uh, *no.* I still gotta find *you*, dummy. Then whoever found the other faster is the winner."

"I found you in less than two minutes, you're not likely to do better than that," Sherlock pointed out, but Hayley was already pushing at his legs to get him to walk towards the hall again.

"Don't be a butt-face!" she snapped. Sherlock obligingly let her herd him back to the kitchen. Once there she positioned herself against the same wall he'd been stood by earlier and shot him a stern look. "Okay so now *I'm* gonna count and you hide and *don't* go outside, remember!"

"Alright, alright." Sherlock raised his hands placatingly, rolling his eyes as Hayley shoved her face into her hands against the wall and started counting. Ugh, right then... hiding... in an effort to amuse a child foisted on him by an old lady whom he'd met in the street less than a day ago. Obviously. Good lord this whole situation was absurd.

Hayley was taking her sweet time just getting to ten so Sherlock leisurely ambled out into the hall, considered his options. Well, the room he'd been in this morning had had a closet, hadn't it? He supposed he could... stand in there, or something. It was the only place he could think of right off hand and he didn't much feel like dashing about the house looking for another likely spot. To Joshua's room, then.

The covered meal Mrs. Hudson had left for him still sat on the bedside table next to the rumpled pile of blankets he'd left, so he appropriated another few slices of fruit from the tray to nibble on in hopes they'd take some of the edge off his sore throat. Coughing would doubtless give away his location, after all. Not like he cared, of course... *(though damned if a little girl was going to beat him at such a stupidly simple game - he was four times her age he'd bloody well better win.)* Opening the sliding closet door without it squeaking proved to be a bit of a trick, but he managed. Closed the mirrored panels behind him, stood in the darkness therein leaning on the far wall with a slice of apple still half-out his mouth. Beginning to feel a bit of a pillock, really. Nothing for it but to wait though... at least it didn't smell too badly of moth balls in here.

His opponent, predictably, was taking bloody *forever* to figure out where he'd gone. Thankfully she was loud enough in her frenzied dashing about that one could deduce her location in the house just from her footfalls, so Sherlock felt relatively safe letting her wander about where she would. Not like it was his problem if she destroyed any breakable objects, anyway. Idly he picked at a bit of peeling wallpaper next to his hand and wondered how long he'd have to remain cramped up in this stupid closet before Hayley either found him or admitted defeat.

The piece of plaster he'd been picking at shifted, pulled free from the wall with a soft *shuff* noise and he startled, thinking he'd actually torn the entire section off. *(Bloody hell he hadn't been pulling* that *hard!)* But when he looked down it was to find instead that a square section of the wall *itself* had actually come loose in his hand - some sort of jerry-rigged trap door? The plaster was cut in straight corners all the way through, as if by a knife or box cutter, and behind it...

Intrigued, Sherlock crouched down to peer into the little alcove he'd inadvertently uncovered. Pitch-dark inside, but with the scant bit of sunlight filtering through the cracks in the closet door he could almost make out a bundle of objects. A hidden stash? This had been their nephew's room, hadn't it? Contraband, then? Interesting. Fascinating, even. He grabbed the bundle and squinted at it in the half-light. Couldn't see a thing. Too dark...

*Get out of the closet, then, you idiot.* Oh, right.

"Hey! You're supposed to stay hidden!" Hayley exclaimed indignantly as Sherlock re-emerged into the bedroom. She'd been on all fours searching under the bed, apparently not having considered that his height would make it impossible for him to fit under there, and was now glaring up at him like he'd committed some horrid atrocity by breaking cover.

"You've lost anyway, it's been longer than two minutes." As he spoke he moved over to the bed and dropped the little bundle onto it. The string holding the makeshift pouch together came loose and a small assortment of items along with a rolled up sheaf of papers tumbled over the quilt.

"Where'd you get that?" Hayley asked curiously.

Sherlock picked up a small photograph of a dog. "It was hidden in the wall."

"Neat!"

He let her fiddle with the odd little handful of plastic cars and dinosaurs from the collection while he unfurled the stack of papers. Rolled fairly tightly, some yellowing at the edges - clearly they'd been behind the plaster for quite some time.

The topmost item was a note:

*Aunty H - if you've found this I'm sorry. I know you said I should stop prying into this stuff, but I can't just ignore it. Someone's gotta do something. He needs to be stopped. Even if it means I-* (the next few words had been hastily scribbled through in black ink by a shaking hand) -... *I know he'll try to convince you I'm crazy again. And maybe I am a little. But please, aunty, I know it's hard but you have to believe me this time. I've got proof now. If he finds out I got this stuff I'm dead but I'll make as many copies as I can before he notices. The police won't listen, but someone needs to know. Someone has to...*

The rest of the missive had been torn off, the paper crumpled and worn. Sherlock flipped wide-eyed to the next page and found a thick stack of what looked like official medical documents - purchase orders, dosages, nurse logs... and buried at the very bottom a summary of Harold Hudson's malpractice insurance pricing. He scanned that page in particular, noting the number of patient fatalities. Was that high, for an oncologist? How was one to know what constituted a normal death rate? The insurance premiums, maybe... abnormally raised? Damn, couldn't tell without a baseline to draw from...

"Did Josh leave this stuff here?" Hayley piped up, cutting into his thoughts. Sherlock glanced down to find her pretending to ramp a toy car off the rear end of a dinosaur.

"Apparently." Besides the troubling sheaf of papers there didn't seem to be much else of interest in the stash. Half a dozen small toys, a short glass pipe *(still smelt of marijuana - he grabbed that and tucked it back out of sight before Hayley could do something stupid like lick it)*, a few photographs of school friends and a newspaper clipping of a smiling couple with a dog. Presumably all normal hidden treasures of a teenage boy.

Hayley's expression had fallen as she continued to push the toy car around. "I miss Josh... he was really nice. He used to read books with me and do all the monster voices."

"How long ago did he leave?" Sherlock asked as he flipped back to the nurse logs, trying to decipher the hasty notes scrawled into the margins. Mrs. Hudson had already mentioned something about the boy disappearing last August, he recalled vaguely - it would be interesting to see if their stories matched, though.

Hayley shrugged. "I dunno. A long time ago... like a year I guess? He said he'd call me when he got to Michigan but he never did."

This fact seemed to dampen her spirits considerably. Without warning she dropped the car she'd been holding onto the quilt and looked up to Sherlock with a slight quiver to her lip. "Do... do you think he doesn't like me anymore?"

She sniffed forcefully, eyes welling up - oh christ *she was going to cry.* Sherlock baulked and cast about frantically for something to say that might mollify her. Think, think... she wanted to know Joshua hadn't forgotten her, right? Why hadn't the man called, then? Had to be some explanation, something that would...

"He didn't mean to abandon you," Sherlock realised in a flash of insight as he shifted the papers in his hands, caught sight of the note on top. "He's probably been killed."

Hayley fixed him with a horrified expression, choked on a strangled little gasp, and Sherlock's eyes widened in response his own words. *Shit*, wait, that... hadn't come out right. Why had he-? Argh, no, try again you daft idiot!

"That is, er..." He brandished the papers in his hand, trying to force back the wince for his own utter lack of tact. "These documents indicate he was collecting sensitive information, so it would make the most sense to assume he's been... erm. Well either that or I suppose he may have gone into hiding? But that's generally quite tricky to pull off without significant resources to fabricate a new identity, so..."

"J-Josh isn't *dead*!" Hayley screeched, her expression gone furious. "Why would you-!? H-he went to Michigan like he said he was gonna!"

"Do you have any proof of that?" Sherlock asked before he could think not to. Would be quite enlightening to find out the answer, actually... perhaps Mrs. Hudson had a phone number on hand? Could it be cross-referenced? How had they been informed of his whereabouts, anyway, before losing contact? Or *had* they lost touch, even? Perhaps Mrs. Hudson had spoken to him recently? And what about Harold? If this was all in relation to some malfeasance perpetrated by the doctor, then he could be...

"You're one of Satan's *liars*!" Out of nowhere Hayley hurled a toy car at his head, sobbing, then bolted out of the room in tears. Sherlock was taken off-guard enough to forget to dodge - he yelped in surprise as a plastic wheel hit him square in the face, clapped a hand over his nose with a pained grimace. Oh fucking *fuck,* why had she-!? Right on the sodding *bone*, christ, if it was bleeding he'd-... Oh no, hell, where'd she gone!?

"Hayley, hang on... wait!" Sherlock dropped the sheaf of papers onto the bed and turned to chase after her. A coughing fit stopped him mid-step, however, forcing an arm round his spasming abdomen as he doubled over in pain. Argh, *fuck*, just ignore it, ignore it... find the girl. Injuries weren't important.

Down the end of the hall he finally stumbled into was the front entryway of the house - a screen mesh with a heavier wooden panel for security, veranda and garden beyond. Mrs. Hudson hadn't bothered to lock either of them when she left.

Both doors had been flung open, now, swinging on their hinges.

*Shit.*

***««***

## Chapter 5

**««**

He bolted out into the garden and almost immediately realised he'd forgotten his shoes.

No time to retrieve them, however, and they were still coated in mud besides. Instead he simply vaulted off the porch into the soft grass and cast his gaze about for any clues as to where Hayley'd gone. Crushed grass in the shape of small footprints leading off towards the tree with the wooden swing. Said swing swaying in an anomalous figure-eight pattern, as if someone had shimmied up one of the ropes... ah, she was in the tree. Hadn't gone far, then, thank hell.

Cautiously, his heart hammering in his chest for some ridiculous reason, Sherlock made his way across the still-damp grass. Worst-case scenarios flitted through his mind - Hayley deciding to jump to escape pursuit, breaking a bone or hitting her head, the parents blaming him for killing their child... he wasn't sure why exactly he *cared* about any of that, since after all he could always just skip town, but it was alarming regardless. Mostly the mental imagery of a kid with her skull smashed open. Unsettling.

Shoving such useless thoughts out of his mind he came to the base of the tree and peered up into sun-speckled branches.

Hayley appeared to have deftly hidden herself somewhere up amongst the foliage. Sherlock couldn't so much as make out a shadow of where she might be. He grimaced, lifting an arm to stifle a cough. With his physical health in the state it was in he *really* didn't want to have to climb a bloody tree. Perhaps he could coax her down instead? Make her do all the work? Worth a shot.

"Hayley!" he called, but of course found himself met with no answer. He rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck, casting his gaze about for anything that might plausibly help him. There was nothing. Fucking hell, how did he even keep getting himself into these ridiculous situations? Trying to talk a little psychotic American girl down from a tree, christ. With a short huff (and a wince for the effect that action had on his injured abdomen) he looked back to the mass of leaves overhead.

"I, er... I'm... sorry?" he said hesitantly. *Apologising*, really? When was the last time he'd willingly done *that?* Still he grit his teeth and soldiered on. "I didn't mean... well, that is, I shouldn't have said things so... bluntly, I suppose? I'm... not always the most tactful of... well, but then to be fair it *was* the most logical conclusion so really I... erm."

He cut himself off and in a moment of complete loss bit his lower lip, an expression of baffled helplessness. Good lord, he *really* wasn't much good at this, was he? Best quit while he was vaguely ahead. Maybe he'd done well enough to assuage her anyway...?

From above came the faint sound of someone hiccoughing. Ah, no, Hayley was still crying, then. He frowned and shifted his weight uncomfortably.

After a long moment of deliberation Sherlock finally sighed to himself. He took a second to size up the tree - straight trunk, mostly bare with few lower handholds... but there was a branch around ten foot up he could probably reach if he jumped. Would doubtless be quite painful in his current state... but then, sod it, he'd been through worse.

A bracing breath through his nose *(leading to a poorly-stifled cough - god he hated being ill)*, then in a burst of action he launched himself towards the trunk. Bare feet made for much better traction on the bark than he'd otherwise have had and so it was a simple matter to run a few steps up the side to catch hold of the low-hanging branch.

Of course the next part of the whole process would be hauling himself up to a place where he could start to properly climb, which would require rather extensive use of his abdominal muscles, which would be fucking hell on earth. Wasn't going to let himself be thwarted by a few stupid bruises, though. He grit his teeth against the stabbing protests of his stomach, pushed the pain to the back of his mind to be steadfastly ignored, and forced himself upwards.

A second or so later he'd gotten up on the branch, grabbed the one above it, and with a few more decidedly uncomfortable metres upwards finally found his miserable little charge.

She was sat curled up in the fork of two branches close to the tree's trunk. Obviously been up this tree many times before, knew exactly where the best spot to sit was. Sherlock, meanwhile, was left to hastily glance around looking for a limb that might plausibly hold his weight.

A few inches to Hayley's right and perhaps a foot below her he spotted one, and gingerly perched himself as close to the base as possible so he could lean on the trunk and catch his breath from the uncommonly-difficult climb. *Not* doing that again anytime soon if he could help it. In fact, not doing *anything* for as long as he could possibly manage, upset six year olds be damned. Should have stayed in fucking bed this morning, god's sake.

Silence stretched between them for several moments. Sherlock, of course, had no plans to break it. Hayley sniffled a bit and buried her head in her arms, then finally spoke.

"Josh showed me how to climb the rope to get up here," she mumbled, her voice a quiet, sad little muffle. Sherlock glanced up from where he'd had his aching head pressed against the tree and frowned at her.

"Er... good on him," he replied blankly. Wasn't quite sure what conveying that information was supposed to accomplish. What did it matter to Sherlock how she learned to scale a tree? Before he could say anything more on the topic however the little girl was glaring over at him, face tearstained, a sudden snap of childish rage clear in her expression.

"When Gramma died, Daddy said it was because we didn't pray enough for her," she informed him, tone startlingly cold for such a young child. "Josh can't be dead cause I prayed for him *every day*. I prayed a lot! He's alive 'cause God wouldn't let him get killed. Saying he's dead means you're a liar and you're evil."

Sherlock opened his mouth, brows raising in bewilderment, but quickly shut it again. His gaze flitted elsewhere for an instant as he strove to come up with an appropriate response to that jumble of madness. Christ, what was he supposed to say to refute something patently insane?

Finally he gave up and, looking back to the girl, just shrugged.

"I have no idea how to respond to that," he admitted in complete honesty.

Predictably Hayley's eyes seemed to well up a bit, her glare becoming more unsteady with unshed tears. "Say you're sorry for lying!" she insisted angrily. "Say you take it back and Josh isn't dead!"

"I..." Sherlock trailed off, grimacing a bit, and rubbed at a sudden stabbing ache in his temple. Nicotine withdrawal. If he'd just thought to bring his cigarettes... ah, but! A spark of memory lit up in his brain at the thought - had he ever put them back in the bedroom? Hastily he patted down his pockets. Relief flooded like a tidal wave through overwrought neurons the instant he felt the hard corner of a familiar cardboard pack under thin fabric.

He shifted his body so he was sitting straddled across the branch, his back to the tree's trunk where previously he'd been leaning against it sideways, and with a little tricky maneuvering managed to complete the whole process of lighting a fag without dropping anything or falling. Hayley was watching him the whole time, her face a cross between frustration and curiosity.

"What's that?" she snapped, trying but mostly failing to sound stern. Sherlock coughed into his elbow and grimaced for the burn of his throat, then propped the cig in his mouth to re-adjust how he was sitting.

"A cigarette," he answered, then promptly remembered he wasn't exactly supposed to be introducing children to narcotics and added, "Er, they're bad for you, don't... copy me or whatever it is impressionable children do."

"If they're bad for you why are you eating one?" Hayley countered dubiously. Sherlock exhaled, blowing the smoke as far away from her general vicinity as he could manage, and rolled his eyes.

"I'm not eating it, I'm smoking it, and if I explain any further I'll doubtless get shouted at by someone so kindly stop asking."

Hayley didn't seem to have a response for that. A short silence passed between them. Sherlock smoked a good quarter of his cig and internally vowed to never go more than two hours between smokes again. Blessed nicotine had smoothed over the jagged edges of illness and injury to leave him feeling more or less like his normal self again. That a simple chemical could have such power... remarkable, truly. A wonder of creation.

Beside him Hayley had drawn her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her lower legs. She kept darting little smouldering glares Sherlock's direction like she expected him to say something. After about the third or fourth round of this nonsense Sherlock finally frowned at her.

"What?" he asked, flicking the ash off his cigarette to be swept away by the morning breeze. Hayley huffed unhappily.

"You didn't take it back. You're supposed to say you're a liar and you're sorry," she spat somewhat bitterly. Sherlock resisted the urge to roll his eyes in disgust. Instead he took a drag, continued to contemplate the effect of acrid tar filtering through lung tissue, the swirling sensation of nicotine round his skull caused by direct manipulation of neural structures. Fascinating. As he let his thoughts meander his gaze strayed in a similar idle manner off over the Hudson's well-manicured lawn.

"Would an apology really change anything?" he asked after a long pause. "I wouldn't even mean it, you know. I'll just say whatever I think might stop you crying."

Hayley seemed a little confused by his words. She knit her brow indecisively, then shook her head. "It... if you don't say it then God's gonna be mad at you and you'll go to hell."

Sherlock smirked in a small laugh. "Fairly sure I've been there already."

"No you haven't," Hayley countered in an offended tone. "Hell's where sinners go when they die. You can't be in hell until you're dead."

"Now which of us is the liar?" Sherlock muttered, watching the smoke off his dwindling fag dissipate into a thousand microscopic specks of air pollution. Before Hayley could come up with some stupid reply he huffed a flat sigh and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Look, I already said I was sorry for being insensitive. I don't feel a need to be coerced into any more ridiculous apologies."

"But-" Hayley started, but Sherlock interrupted her by suddenly standing and hoisting himself up onto a branch overhead. He'd spotted a likely-looking series of thicker limbs bunched up close to the tree's trunk above them and wanted to see if he could reach a spot where the leaves were sparse enough to get a decent view.

Shuffling behind him made him turn just in time to spot Hayley attempting, for whatever absurd reason, to follow him. She wasn't nearly tall enough to reach the branch he'd grabbed and was now pouting up at him like a pathetic little urchin on a street corner. His cigarette was as good as out anyway so he stubbed the ember on a patch of rough bark and slipped the spent filter into his trouser pocket. After a brief deliberation he reached down a hand for the girl below him.

"Come on, then," he said with an unimpressed look, though perhaps tinged with a hint of amusement. Hayley eyed him dubiously. A second later though and she'd grabbed on with both hands. It took a bit of a heft, which did not at all help Sherlock's general pain level, but between the two of them they managed to get her up on the highest branch they could both plausibly fit onto. Once there she nervously balanced herself by leaning back into Sherlock's abdomen, sitting directly in front of him on the gnarled wood.

Complaining about the uninvited close proximity was sorely tempting, but Sherlock swiftly decided it wasn't worth bothering over. He'd been the one who'd offered to help her get up here in the first place, after all, so he really had no one but himself to blame. And besides which it was just some silly little girl. Not exactly a threat. It was far more productive to spend one's energy taking in the view, anyway. Closer to the tree's top the leaves were spaced much more sparsely, and from this particular vantage point one could see clear out over the Hudson's sprawling suburban neighbourhood to the city beyond.

"It's pretty," Hayley mumbled. She sounded a bit unsure, preoccupied - perhaps warring with her own lingering sense of indignation, the fear of being up so high, something Sherlock had done or said to upset her again. Any of a hundred childish things. Who knew, really. Sherlock just hummed in vague agreement as he set about committing the surrounding topography to memory. If he could get a sense for how the neighbourhood was arranged he might be able to get back to the city without needing to beg for a lift.

"Are you gonna leave?"

Sherlock blinked, distracted from the road he'd been trying to trace out to a main street. He glanced down at Hayley, who'd by now ensconced herself securely against his chest. She was staring questioningly up at him.

"Not until Mrs Hudson gets back," he replied, thinking that was an obtusely obvious question to ask. Even for Hayley. Of *course* he'd be trapped here with her until the adult of the house returned.

Hayley's expression seemed for some reason to go uncommonly sad. "When she gets back you're gonna leave, though."

"Well I'm hardly going to be welcome for more than a night or so," he answered with a shrug. His gaze flitted back upwards to study the far-off buildings of Tallahassee. "I've enough money to get out of Florida, I think. Buy a bus ticket to some other state. I suppose a freight car would be cheaper, though, if I could find an unguarded rail yard. Bit more dangerous that way but safety's not really important."

"You should stay," Hayley mumbled. Sherlock furrowed his brows and looked down to the girl again. She was pressing her back firmly into his chest, clutching the branch with both hands, and seemed to be staring morosely out at the view ahead of them. Sherlock glanced up, then back down to her, then frowned.

"You want me to..." he trailed off, shook his head in utter confusion. "No, hang on - ten minutes ago you were crying because of me. I'm an evil liar, remember?"

Hayley sniffed and rubbed at her face with one hand, expression crumpling. Sherlock felt a flash of alarm. Oh bloody hell she was going to burst into tears again, wasn't she? And halfway up a tree this time... without really meaning to he shifted an arm to pin her lightly against his chest. Wary of the girl falling to her death should she be stupid enough to repeat her insane attack-and-retreat strategy from earlier. It occurred to him only belatedly that the action might be construed as one of comfort - Hayley had immediately clutched onto his arm and buried her face against his shoulder. Gah, no, that was *not* what he'd-

"Er... I wasn't... I hadn't meant this to be a *hug*, actually, I was just trying to make sure you wouldn't fall if you did something stupid," he said awkwardly, feeling this point very much needed to be explained. Hayley didn't seem to hear him. Mercifully, though, she also didn't seem to be crying. She was just... sitting there, snuggling into him like an oversized stuffed bear. Sherlock swallowed nervously. His brain had chosen that moment to remind him, quite unhelpfully, that this was the longest bout of unbroken contact he'd had with another human being since leaving Eric.

The resultant pang of loneliness through his chest was both starkly unpleasant and entirely unwelcome. He hunched his shoulders a bit and glanced elsewhere, doing everything in his power to beat down the familiar sense of isolation beginning to creep up his spine. The inexorable knowledge that the entirety of the species lived interconnected by spider-silk strands of social connection; all but him, standing alone at the untethered edge.

Usually it was enough to remind himself that he'd willingly separated from the lot of them. Just a load of useless morons anyway. He'd cut ties for the mutual good of all involved parties.

Moments like this, though.

It was difficult, that was the simple truth of it. A cruel reminder of those few he'd been able to fool into liking him enough to offer brief companionship. Friendly human contact. Something he'd sworn off months ago and, frankly, something he didn't particularly appreciate being reminded of the existence of. Better to never touch anyone ever again than to have to constantly cut out these pitiful social instincts and nagging desire for company.

There wasn't much he could do about any of his human-contact-related issues at the moment, however. Shoving Hayley away would only result in her breaking her neck on the grass below. And for all that Sherlock may have been a complete, remorseless arse, he drew the line quite firmly at ever harming a child. Imitation of Siger Holmes was not a path he'd suffer treading.

Hayley sniffled again and snuggled further into his shirt, making him wince and determinedly glance elsewhere.

"You're nice," the girl muttered, breaking the minutes-long silence between them. "Like Josh was."

"I'm not nice," Sherlock objected somewhat exasperatedly. Hayley didn't respond, and rather than continue to argue such an obvious point he cast about for a change of subject. "We should really get out of this bloody tree..."

Noise from the street below suddenly caught his attention and he trailed off to look for the source. A vehicle slowing down in the road. Mrs Hudson was home already? She'd said a few hours, not... oh, but it was too large to be her car anyway. Who, then?

Keeping careful hold of Hayley he leant forward to shove a sprig of leaves out of the way in an effort to see the kerb more clearly. Down below them a nondescript brown van was pulling into the Hudson's driveway. Emblazoned on the side of the vehicle was the logo for a pest control service.

"Did Mrs Hudson say anything about exterminators coming round?" he asked quietly, frowning at the two men who were now climbing out of the cab. They were both heavily muscle-bound, though one was much thinner than the other, and appeared to be of hispanic descent. The uniforms they wore were obviously ill-fitting and seemed to be causing the both of them some discomfort. Clearly not clothes they wore on a regular basis. Whomever they were they certainly weren't professionals of any sort.

"... no?" Hayley answered. She'd finally taken her face away from Sherlock's shirt and was now also looking at the two men, though with a far less wary eye than Sherlock. Together they watched as the strangers approached the door. The shorter one was griping at his companion.

*"Más vale que sea la casa correcta, idiota gorda."*

Sherlock leant so far forward on his branch trying to hear that he very nearly overbalanced, causing Hayley to squeak in alarm and grab onto his shirt. Distractedly he muttered a quiet *sorry* and steadied them by gripping a nearby branch with his free arm, still focussed on the muffled conversation taking place below. Spanish wasn't a particularly difficult language for him, similar enough to English and French to pick up quickly, but he'd never had much of an ear for the various dialects. Especially not those of the Americas. And though he'd been learning some of the nuances of Caribbean Spanish over his last few weeks of wandering southwards he'd somehow not heard this form spoken before.

"What accent is that? Cuban?" he mumbled, mostly to himself, though of course with their current proximity to each other Hayley overheard him.

"They're dirty wetbacks," she answered promptly. Sherlock blinked, distracted from one of the men now fiddling with the Hudson's front door, and looked sharply down at her.

"They're *what?*"

Hayley shrugged, sniffed and rubbed at her still-damp eyes. "That's what Daddy calls people who talk Spanish like Mexicans do."

"Mexican! Of course!" Sherlock whispered excitedly. Trying to keep his voice down, since he had no clue what the 'exterminators' might really be here for, but the thrill of figuring something out made it hard to remember to be quiet. Discovering even more information wouldn't be too difficult, of course, just had to... without further thought he swung his leg over the branch he'd been perched on and made to climb down, unintentionally leaving Hayley stranded up on their high perch.

"Hey! I can't get down!" the girl hissed. Apparently she'd caught on they were meant to be quiet now and was whispering just as Sherlock had done. Sherlock paused, half hanging off a branch just below, and looked up at her. Ah, hell... she'd not be able to reach any other handholds without his help. He glanced back over his shoulder at the Hudson's mysterious home intruders, frowning in anticipation of finding out who exactly they were, then impatiently regarded Hayley again. What would be the fastest way to...?

"Here, just..." he gestured vaguely towards his shoulders, reaching out for her hand. Hayley seemed to get the hint and gingerly lowered herself from her branch, only to slip at the last minute and find herself saved by Sherlock grabbing her tightly round the midsection. He glared slightly - *christ sake be more careful!* - but Hayley had already scrabbled around and latched onto him like a monkey. With a bit of awkward shuffling he managed to get her in a position where he could climb down without dislodging the death-grip she now had round his shoulders.

Less than a minute later he dropped silently *(if somewhat painfully - adding the full weight of a little girl on top of his own body mass wasn't exactly doing his bruised abdominal muscles any favours)* on the soft grass. They'd come down specifically on the far side of the tree from the door, and he leant sideways to glance around the trunk. The so-called exterminators were nowhere in sight, presumably having disappeared into the house.

"What are they doing?" Hayley asked curiously. Sherlock hadn't the slightest, of course, and shrugged in response.

"No idea. Doubtless something nefarious, though. The whole exterminator van thing's really a bit cliché."

Hayley's only reply to that was a blank stare, prompting Sherlock to sigh and grudgingly amend his language. The undertone of withering scorn in his demeanour was clear as day, however. No matter if she was a young child - why couldn't people just have a bit of *vocabulary?* First it was Eric not knowing the meaning of half the bloody dictionary and now this, ugh.

"Probably doing something bad," he drawled flatly. "Because pretending to be working in someone's house is a stupid trick that lots of robbers use."

"Ohhh," Hayley replied, eyes wide. Sherlock scoffed a bit and began making his way towards the house. Belatedly he realised Hayley was trailing along behind him. Stopping in place he frowned, looked back at her, then to the house. He'd meant to sneak in and eavesdrop on whatever the intruders were doing, but that would be difficult to pull off with a young girl in tow. And he didn't trust the little nutter not to dash off after him the second she heard a loud noise, orders to remain behind the tree be damned. Needed to come up with some alternative...

Less than a second later he perked up as an idea came to him. Ah, yes. That would work wonderfully. He reached down to grab Hayley's hand.

"Huh?" she asked, tugging her arm slightly as if to free herself. Sherlock just held firm and dragged her towards the Hudson's front door.

"Shut up and go along with whatever I do," he hissed. Hayley nodded, though still looked terribly confused.

Upon reaching the porch they could already hear evidence of someone moving around inside. Muffled cursing, two men arguing in low voices, the bangs and rattles of furniture being moved around. Sherlock glanced down to Hayley one last time, then, steeling himself, raised his fist and knocked smartly on the door.

Instantly all movement inside the house ceased. A brief, unintelligible argument broke out (Sherlock listening closely to pick up any words, but unable to do so) and then the sound of footsteps down the hall. With a startlingly quick motion the door opened to reveal a very pissed-off looking young man with dark olive skin glaring out at them. It was the thinner of the two burglars.

"Get lost, gringo, family's not home!" he shouted in Sherlock's direction. As Sherlock had hoped would happen, however, the man made no move to draw a weapon or threaten physical violence - his dark eyes had flicked noticeably towards Hayley for a split-second. By the man's expression Sherlock deduced he most likely had children of his own. Wouldn't risk exposing a little girl to a bloody fight scene. Excellent.

Bolstered by this minor success, Sherlock grinned, doing his best to make himself look a daft ponce.

"Oh, hi! Sorry for interrupting you," he greeted cheerfully. Beside him he felt Hayley shift in a surprised movement, most likely in response to his having suddenly switched to an upbeat American accent. "Mrs Hudson called a little bit ago and asked me and my sister to water her houseplants for her. Guess she forgot to do it before she left this morning?" He shrugged and kept his airheaded smile in place. Inwardly his brain had already gone off dissecting the short stretch of dialogue, berating him for errors, picking out all the tiny failures. *D's instead of T's, idiot, christ, and you mucked up half the bloody vowels again.*

Luckily the British-tainted muddle of an accent didn't seem to matter too much, as the Mexican man appeared to lack enough of an ear for English to catch the inconsistent pronunciations. Instead of suspicion his expression had set into a look of sheer aggravation.

"Come back later!" he snapped. Sherlock winced apologetically and tried to act as much like a nervous teenager as possible.

"Um, yeah, I would... but my sister's got to get to school soon. Can we just... er..." He hesitated, struggling to come up with an American-sounding phrase. A million snippets of overheard conversation flitted through his mind as foreign terminology quickly cobbled itself together. "... come in real quick?" *(Was that right? Sounded stupid. No time to dwell on it just keep talking.)* "To water them, I mean. It'll only take a few minutes."

He grimaced slightly, hoping his brief stumble had come off as a simple lack of self-confidence rather than someone making an obvious mess of American vernacular. A brief moment of indecision on the Mexican's part made Sherlock's hand unconsciously grip Hayley's a bit tighter, to which she responded by sidling closer to his leg.

Perhaps this hadn't actually been the best of ideas, Sherlock reluctantly admitted to himself. Just boldly knocking on the door like an idiot. Who knew what these two men wanted, after all? Simple burglary, one assumed. That's what Sherlock had thought, anyway. And his plan had thus been to get inside the house by whatever means, lock himself and Hayley in Harold's study and ring the police. Easy enough. But if their motive was something else, something more serious... *what* else, though? What could a couple of rough-looking Mexican men want with an elderly couple? Had to be thievery, no other option made sense.

All through Sherlock's internal deliberation the other man had apparently been considering his options as well. Finally with an extremely put-upon sigh he stepped to the side and gestured for them to enter.

"Water the fucking plants then, chamaco. Be quick though, eh? We got shit we're doing in here."

"Thanks! It'll just be a mome- er, minute." Grinning like a complete ponce Sherlock sidled his way past the dour-faced man, Hayley in tow. He'd meant to make a beeline for the study - the only room which he knew for certain had both a lock and a phone - but as they passed the open entryway leading to the sitting room Sherlock instead stopped short. The fatter of the two burglars was sitting on the floor, carefully affixing a square, smallish bundle of plastic and wires to the underside of a chair he'd upended. A remote-like device rested next to his leg.

A device Sherlock had seen before.

Some ten or twelve years back Father had for some unfathomable reason decided it vitally important to teach his children how to operate various firearms. Perhaps in the assumption that at least one of them would follow in his footsteps as an active duty spy. It was a lesson which, predictably, had gone rather poorly - Mycroft had deemed the very concept of armed combat beneath him and flatly refused to participate. This left Sherlock, around eight at the time and thus thoroughly incapable of objecting to anything he was told to do, nervously holding a pistol, trying to remember all the instructions despite a distracting cloud of anxiety induced by Siger's piercing gaze drilling into the back of his skull.

It wasn't the gun lessons themselves that were relevant to the current situation, however. No, it had been the room before that, the one containing safety equipment. They'd been doing all this in some sort of classified military compound. One of Siger's old stations, clearly not a facility generally open to the public, probably granted access through shady connections. The room wherein all the earmuffs and vests used for soldiers' shooting practise were stored had also (quite alarmingly, in hindsight) housed a massive stash of plastic explosives. Stacks of C4, casual as you please, just tucked right up next to the spare hazard signage.

*Somewhat of a contradiction,* Mycroft had jokingly pointed out. Siger had chuckled. Sherlock had been too busy wishing he were literally anywhere else to react properly. Instead he'd fallen to staring fixedly at a row of square plastic things on a shelf next to him. Olive green with a rough texture, buttons and an antenna, obviously electronic.

He'd not really been looking at them, of course. Just setting his gaze somewhere neutral whilst he struggled to drown out the angry buzz of static in his head. Jumbled up feelings. Dread for how horrifically loud the sound of a bullet exploding from the hollow tube of a gun would no doubt be. How he'd not be allowed to flinch or be hesitant about it if he wanted to avoid utter disdain from Father. Whether or not Mycroft would notice how scared he was, and if he'd care or if he'd start in on another lecture about how emotional weaknesses cripple the mind.

Siger had at some point spotted Sherlock's apparent interest in the neatly arranged boxes and, perhaps assuming the fixed stare meant the boy wanted to know what they were, gamely explained their use. Remote detonators. Electronically set off explosives from a distance. Terribly useful.

Like most things that happened in the presence of Father, Sherlock remembered the detonators uncommonly well. Well enough to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the plastic device sitting next to the overweight Mexican man's leg was absolutely identical to them. Right down to the colour of the casing. In such a drastically different context to the setting of his memories the sight was downright eerie.

Abruptly the man looked up from his work to wave Sherlock away, scowling and cursing in Spanish. Down the hall the other criminal had started toward them with an annoyed glare. Sherlock swallowed and resumed his earlier path down the hall, Hayley stumbling along behind him.

"Slow down!" the girl whinged. Sherlock did no such thing. He marched straight down the hall, past the wall-mounted phone, and in a quick motion that might have been a mere shift of his arm palmed the pad of notepaper off the small table. Probably didn't need to be so furtive about it, really, but the Mexican bloke was still watching them and Sherlock didn't want to give him any more reason to be suspicious than he already had. The fact that the man hadn't asked about the fact that neither Sherlock nor Hayley were currently wearing shoes was a miracle in itself. Best not push their luck.

They reached Harold's study within a few seconds and Sherlock flashed the man down the hall a quick, bright, completely moronic grin before shoving Hayley in ahead of him and slamming the door. He engaged the lock as quietly as possible (wouldn't want the criminals to notice he'd barricaded them out), then turned and leant for a moment with his back on the thin wood panelling. For some unfathomable reason he found his limbs had begun to tremble very slightly. The tremor left his already-overworked body feeling distressingly weak and helpless.

"You're scared again?" Hayley piped up. Sherlock startled a bit, realising he'd been staring wide-eyed at the carpet, and shook his head. It was a jerky, truncated sort of motion. With a grimace he grabbed at his hair and pushed off the door towards the desk where Harold's phone was.

"Scared? No, of course not... why would I... t-there's nothing to be scared of," he asserted, ignoring the way his fist compulsively clenched around the pad of paper in his hand and how his voice quavered the tiniest bit. He shook his head firmly, *get it together, moron,* and resolutely dropped the pad onto the desk. Mrs Hudson had jotted down a number on it - hospital line, so she could be reached in case of emergency. Sherlock was *fairly* certain this situation qualified.

A secretary answered on the second ring and he initially got nowhere trying to locate the couple, as he had no idea what Mrs Hudson's first name was. Thankfully she quickly put him on hold and it only took a minute or so before the kindly voice of the elderly woman greeted him from the other end of the line.

"Hello? Sherlock, dear, is everything alright?"

She sounded concerned. Damned well she'd better be, *christ.*

"Yes, hi," Sherlock replied, his voice flatly unamused. Much calmer now, thank god, no longer tremulous. At least he could still count on himself to maintain his trademark bland sarcasm even in the face of possible death by firey explosion. "There's a couple of Mexican blokes wiring your house up with C4."

Jarringly, Mrs Hudson just laughed. "Oh good gracious, dear, this really isn't the appropriate time for jokes, is it? A clever one though, I'll give you that." She hummed a little, sounding as if she were smiling, and then just carried on speaking. "We're just about finished in the ER, by the way. He had to get stitches! Half a dozen, should've seen the-"

Sherlock grit his teeth, glanced back toward the door where Hayley was hovering, then rolled his eyes to the ceiling in frustration as Mrs Hudson went on about the *bloody* stitches. He stifled a cough and turned his attention back to the phone. Before Mrs Hudson could transition over to some other inane topic he interrupted her.

"*Mrs Hudson*," he bit out angrily. The woman stopped mid-word with a little startled *'oh'*. Sherlock's free hand migrated upwards to tug fretfully at his hair. "I am currently locked in a small room with a six year old-"

"I'm seven!" Hayley interrupted indignantly. Sherlock let his hand slide down over his face with a frustrated growl.

"- a *seven year old*," he amended. "And I've just seen a rather large block of what was unmistakably a plastic explosive being affixed to your husband's armchair. I'm *really* not in the mood to listen to you natter on about fuck-all."

"Oh," Mrs Hudson replied. There was a long pause, during which Sherlock could hear the woman's clothing shift, and then she let out a rather unexpectedly shaky breath. "Oh, my... you are serious, then?"

"Of course I'm *bloody-!*"

He cut off at the sound of someone pounding angrily on the door, a burst of Spanish which Sherlock could only decipher enough of to identify as incredibly pissed off. His eyes widened and he went back to the phone.

"I'll do what I can to incapacitate them if I have to but I swear to god if you don't tell me what the *fuck* you and Harold know about this I'll-" His words left off abruptly once again as his attention was usurped by the doorknob rattling. Sherlock whipped his head towards it, quickly hung up the phone behind him without even bothering to listen to whatever Mrs Hudson was saying. Much more pressing matters at hand.

Striding past a wide-eyed Hayley he practically leapt to fling open the door, the daft smile once again firmly in place.

"Oh wow, hi! Was that locked? I'm *so* sorry, my sister must have been fiddling with it!"

Accent was worse than ever, but that wouldn't be an issue for long. The older man was glaring hatefully and shot a sneer towards the interior of Harold's study. His dark gaze settled on the single, lonely potted fern tucked into a corner.

"You fucking take ten minutes to water one goddamned plant?" he snapped furiously. Suddenly his black-brown eyes widened. Sherlock didn't even need to follow his line of sight to tell he'd spotted the phone on the desk. The man's lips parted in a snarl.

"Did you use that phone!?" he snapped. Pushing past Sherlock with a rough shove he stalked quickly to the object in question and ripped the cord out the back of it. He dropped the frayed end onto the carpet and rounded on Sherlock. At long last the man finally caught sight of their complete lack of shoes, his eyes narrowing in a mixture of confusion and suspicion. Sherlock maintained the false act of bewildered teenage fear regardless. Suspicions weren't solid. They could still get out of this.

"Oy, gringo... why you got no shoes?" the man asked slowly, dubiously. Sherlock forced himself to look befuddled.

"What on earth are you on about?"

The Mexican man tilted his head slightly, brows knitted. Perhaps catching the abrupt shift in accent - Sherlock had completely forgotten to do an American one that time. *(Idiot... oh, well, it hardly mattered now.)* He stalked closer, narrowing the distance between them to a scant metre, and glared from their feet to their faces and back again.

"You walkin' around barefoot to school?"

"What? No, of course not. That would be ridiculous," Sherlock replied airily. His accent wasn't even remotely American now. "If you'd just take a closer look I'm sure you'd see we've clearly got-"

*Hah!* The man had stupidly leant forward to comply with Sherlock's request, putting his collar within dangerously close range. Without warning Sherlock grabbed a fistful of starched fabric and in a flash of movement used his weight to unbalance his adversary from the top whilst hooking a leg round his shin, sweeping his footing out from under him. The result was one very startled Mexican slamming hard onto the floor.

A secondary result, unfortunately, was a rather displeased Sherlock *also* slamming into the floor, as he'd badly overestimated his current available core abdominal strength. He grimaced against the throbbing pain of abused muscles, sensation of burning knives through his gut paired with a nice new bruise from his elbow smacking against hard carpet. No time to cry about it, though. Get back in the game, keep the upper hand.

Luckily the criminal had landed square on his back, Sherlock's weight having slammed into his stomach, and was now effectively winded. His retaliation was little more than a few weak slaps between gasps. Sherlock straightened up to find himself more or less straddling the bloke. Awkward, yes, but also quite convenient. Made landing a solid blow much easier. Dead aim for the temple, then, hard enough to snap the head sideways, and...

"*Fuck*," Sherlock swore, panting as he shook out the fist he'd just smashed willingly into the side of a rock-hard skull. A few seconds' wait proved the man was out cold, though, so at least there was that. Still breathing hard Sherlock swallowed, winced, shoved himself sideways off his fallen assailant's legs. Gingerly he attempted to get to his feet without stumbling or blacking out. Argh his fucking *stomach*, christ. Like the sodding muscles were tearing in two. Shouldn't have yanked the bastard to the floor like that.

One of his arms had unconsciously curled around the injured area and Sherlock found himself leaning heavily on a nearby wall for support, grimacing as he tried to catch his breath. God, this whole week just kept getting better and better, didn't it?

"Did... you... I... is he *dead*?"

He glanced up to find Hayley standing wide-eyed by the half-open door. The girl was looking from the unconscious man, to Sherlock, then back again with a look of horrified fascination on her face. By the looks of things she was having trouble deciding whether to condemn or idolise Sherlock's actions. Exasperated, he let his head droop slightly, then lifted it again and forced himself to stop leaning on the wall. Walk over to Harold's desk. Not difficult. Ignore the stabs of pain.

"Not dead, just knocked out," he assured his young companion, then quickly continued. "Help me find something to tie him up with. We've still got to deal with the other one." Even as he said this he grimaced in anticipation of what would likely turn out to be a very one-sided fight. The fallen man's accomplice was nearly twice Sherlock's size. Even uninjured he'd have had doubts about his chances. As things were, well... odds weren't in his favour.

Nothing for it, though. Had to secure the house *somehow*. And with the room's sole phone put out of commission the police were hardly an option. Not unless they made it to another room unmolested. Not to mention that, barring the one in the hall, Sherlock had no idea where another phone might be.

Hayley had managed to find a spare necktie in one of the drawers of Mr Hudson's desk and Sherlock reluctantly acknowledged the necessity of dragging their incapacitated intruder over to a piece of furniture they could tie him to. The process was every bit as painful as he'd expected it to be. He ended up sat on the floor next to the desk afterwards, curled up with his arms on his knees miserably cradling his head whilst he instructed Hayley on how to bind a man's wrists securely to a table leg. He had no clue how good she was with following directions and quite frankly didn't much care at the moment. Self-pity was taking extreme precedence right now.

Fucking hell, the worsening head cold and the bruises coupled with what he was beginning to suspect might actually be a torn abdominal muscle... nothing in the whole bloody world now but stabbing, burning *pain*. Maybe the second thug would take mercy and just shoot him.

"Is this right?" Hayley asked. Sherlock reluctantly raised his head and squinted at the knot she'd tied. He reached out and tugged part of it, was vaguely surprised when it held fast.

"Decent," he ceded. No need to inflate the girl's ego. With an unenthusiastic huff of a sigh he pushed himself to his feet. Physical discomfort had to be ignored for now, more important things to focus on. At least his brief respite curled up like a pathetic child next to the desk had given him time to come up with a plan.

"Alright," he said to Hayley, who reacted to the stern tone of his voice by straightening up like a tiny soldier and adopting a comically serious expression. Despite everything Sherlock couldn't help a very slight twinge of amusement. He quickly shook his head and carried on.

"Here's what we're going to do..."

**««**

## Chapter 6

**««**

"Now?"

"No, not yet."

"... *now?*"

"For god's sake!" Sherlock snapped, looking up. Hayley was blinking innocently at him. "Could you be patient for *five bloody seconds*? I'm nearly finished."

Mercifully the girl shut her mouth. Sherlock huffed and turned his attention back to the task at hand. Not a beat later, however, he growled to himself at the sound of the little moron talking again.

"It's been five seconds," the girl pointed out in her obnoxious chirp of a voice. Sherlock grit his teeth.

"Hayley I swear to *christ* if you weren't a small child I'd-" He cut himself off. Ugh, no. Threats of violence weren't warranted. Just ignore her, focus on more important matters. Taking a bracing breath through his nose (or as bracing as one could get when every inhale caused a whipfire stab of pain), he looped the last length of telephone cord into a solid knot, gave it a sharp tug and was relieved when it held fast.

Hayley stared at him for a long moment. Then, not ten bloody seconds later, took a breath as if to speak. Sherlock growled and cut over her before the airheaded girl could ask the same sodding question for the dozenth time.

"*No*, not yet. Just shut up until I tell you otherwise," he snapped. Hayley abruptly closed her mouth but didn't look too chastised by the angry tone. Instead she was watching Sherlock with interest as he took several steps backwards to find the right position for their set-up to work. Once he'd settled on a spot just out of sight of the door frame Hayley's expression turned to one of impatient excitement. His loyal assistant, ready and *(over-)*willing to participate. Lovely.

Sherlock glanced around one last time, checking that everything was in place. Nothing jumped out at him as obviously wrong. With a short sigh he rubbed at his forehead and stifled another cough. Well. Best get things over with. It was do or die... with the latter option being significantly more likely.

"... alright. Now. Go," he grumbled reluctantly. Hayley's face lit up in sheer delight. She took a deep, ridiculously over-dramatic breath, and then bloody *screamed* at the top of her lungs.

Sherlock winced as the shrill screech sliced a bolt of pain through his skull. God's *sake* how could one little girl be so loud? Of course a piercing shriek had been the ultimate goal, so he should probably have been grateful of her being up to the task, but christ... mercifully Hayley ran out of breath within a few seconds. In the subsequent ringing silence she looked to Sherlock with a wide grin, eager for further orders. All Sherlock could do in response was meet her eyes and shrug - he had no way of knowing if the plan had worked. They'd just to have wait and see if their target took the bait.

Luckily they didn't have to sit around for long. The sound of heavy trundling footfalls soon echoed down the hall, drawn by Hayley's distress signal. Sherlock's attention shot over to the door, instantly on high alert as he signalled to Hayley to get on with the next bit. Hopefully she hadn't forgotten her part already.

The girl seemed to have a better memory than one might be tempted to assume. That or her enthusiasm for being asked to make an obnoxious amount of noise had temporarily boosted her powers of recollection. Either way she followed instructions to the letter. Sherlock nodded, and right on cue her eyes welled up, expression crumpling as she burst into a flood of crocodile tears.

"*Daddy!*" she wailed pitifully. Sherlock winced again at the shrill tone but kept his eyes on the door. Had to get the timing right - if he fucked this up they'd both be in serious danger.

*"¿Qué diablos está pasando aquí?"*

Someone speaking loudly in oddly-accented Spanish, sounded as if the man was right outside. A hand appeared on the side of the slightly-ajar door and pulled it the rest of the way open to reveal the portly intruder's stout frame. His face pulled into a puzzled expression at the sight of Hayley apparently standing in the middle of an empty room sobbing to herself.

*"Niña, ¿qué pasa? ¿Estás herida?"* the man asked carefully. Wanting to know what was wrong, if she was hurt. His tone of voice carried that note of obvious concern that betrayed this man as having a family as well. Weakness of parenthood, making otherwise reasonable people abandon all caution over anything vaguely resembling their offspring. Wonderfully useful where exploitable.

The man began to move into the room and Sherlock narrowed his eyes. Just a little more...

Finally the man took the fateful last step over the door's threshold - passing, unbeknownst to him, directly over the loose phone cable hidden in the carpet. Sherlock yanked back on the length of cord, drawing the line taut, and smirked in triumph when the man's left shin caught at exactly the right moment. Their quarry yelped in surprise as he crashed face-first into the unforgiving floorboards.

Instantly both Sherlock and Hayley were on the attack. Sherlock, grip still tight on the phone cord, shot forward and seized one of their fallen victim's hands before the man could get an arm under to right himself. Hayley threw herself bodily over the head, using her weight to both block vision and impede lifting the shoulders.

Unfortunately the bloke turned out to be rather strong (and surprisingly mobile for having his skull pinned to the floor by a fair-sized child) and his wildly flailing limbs were proving difficult to keep hold of. Sherlock lost his grip on one and found a hand shoved hard into his face. Eyes, *agh* - he was going for the bloody *eyes*. Desperately he tried to yank his face out of reach whilst still trying to wrangle control of the man's wrists. A finger strayed near enough his mouth and he bit it, hard. There was a sharp yelp as the man instinctively drew his hand back towards his chest, where Sherlock quickly looped a bit of wire over it and yanked the pre-tied slip-knot tight, pulling both arms together in a tight bind.

Panting hard - the pain in his stomach had reached 'unbearable' several minutes back - he did as thorough a job as possible lashing the intruder securely to the door hinges where the cable end was fastened. Once satisfied of the integrity of his makeshift restraints Sherlock grabbed hold of Hayley and stood up, lifting her bodily away from the man. Best get them both out of range quickly, didn't fancy having to deal with a young child taking a boot to the face.

Of course a second later Sherlock was forced to drop the girl, having lost all core stability as his injured muscle chose that moment to spasm. He stumbled back into the desk and slid down the back of it to a slouched sitting position where he instinctively curled around the injury like an infant. Agh, fuck fuck *fuck* he *really* needed to stop with all this physical exertion before he ended up doing himself irreparable damage.

A short, insulted *'hrmph!'* noise made him reluctantly look up, finding through one squinted eye that Hayley had picked herself up from her short tumble and was now giving him a stern look - apparently not at all pleased with being unexpectedly manhandled. Rather than attempt some sort of asinine lecture on the matter, however, she instead glanced over to their newly-captured prisoner. All trace of annoyance left her posture as she cocked her head like a puppy.

Sherlock glanced followed her line of sight and was absurdly relieved to see that the man appeared to still be held fast to the door frame. Telephone cord was resisting breakage admirably. The bloke was spouting obscenities in Spanish, nose bloodied from the fall, raging against his binds like a rabid beast. The sight did indeed look rather strange, all things considered. Worth staring at.

Whilst they both watched the man struggle Sherlock took a moment to catch his breath. Also a convenient moment for their prisoner to tire himself out. As the man's furious ravings began to wind down Hayley, for whatever ridiculous reason, moved back a few steps to sit leaning against the desk next to Sherlock. Without asking she shoved herself into the space between his right arm and his torso, cuddling up to his side as she continued to stare wide-eyed at their captive.

Sherlock frowned in annoyance but wasn't in any fit state to fight her over the unwelcome contact. He shifted his arm to rest more comfortably around her small shoulders instead and tried everything he could think of to put the issue of his now almost certainly torn abdominal muscle out of his mind. Knew he was capable of it, just had to remember... what had he done to push through these sorts of situations as a child? He'd had some sort of technique, surely. A mind game or something. Hadn't been seriously injured since going to live with Mycroft, though, and had spent the past four months determinedly avoiding any notion of his old life. Forgotten all the tactics he'd invented to mitigate pain...

"He seems sorta mad," Hayley remarked after a few seconds, interrupting Sherlock's thoughts. He opened one eye from the wince apparently frozen on his face to glance at the Mexican man. Sure enough the bastard had them both fixed with a hateful glare.

"Yeah, er... if that cord snaps I'm fairly sure he's going to try to kick our heads in," Sherlock replied, voice gone rather strained. "You'll probably want to run in that case."

Hayley frowned. "What about you?"

"Well, in the most dire scenario I suppose I'll have to heroically sacrifice myself for the good of your..." He paused, making a pained noise as he shifted his posture into something vaguely more upright. "... doubtless rich and fulfilling existence. Though of course you're likely going to grow up to be every bit as alarmingly bigoted as your father which will render my legacy somewhat disappointing."

"... what?" Hayley asked blankly. Sherlock shook his head.

"Nothing, I'm not explaining that. Do you know how to work a phone?"

Hayley looked a bit affronted. "*Duh,* yeah. I'm not stupid."

"Debatable," Sherlock countered flatly. Before she could rebut he continued. "Go use the one in the hall to ring the police, then. Tell them there's been a break-in or something, I don't know. Whatever you think will get them here faster."

"How do I ring someone?" Hayley asked, looking suddenly confused. Sherlock growled in abject frustration.

"You *just said* you knew how to use a phone!" he snapped angrily. Hayley scowled up at him.

"I do! I know how to *call* people! I don't know how to ring!"

After a seconds' baffled glaring between them - how did any part of that sentence make sense...? Sherlock finally figured out the problem. Oh christ's sake.

"Ring means the same thing as call," he explained through gritted teeth. Hayley gave him a dubious look.

"Are you sure? Cause I don't think-"

"Fuck's sake, go and *call* the police then!" he spat, shoving her away from him in hopes of getting her moving. "There's two tenuously-disabled criminals in the room and I'm half bloody dead, you moron!"

"Hmph! You don't gotta yell," Hayley retorted haughtily. Regardless of her snippy tone she still got up, dusted off her dress in a matter-of-fact way, and then flounced off into the hall.

Sherlock was left alone with one insensate burglar-slash-possible-terrorist-assassin-type-bloke (cumbersome, but he hardly had any way of knowing their official job description) and another tied to the door glaring daggers at him. He tried a bland smile at the conscious one. The man bared his teeth in rage and swore again.

Hm. Reacting to the situation with blind fury, not the stoic silence someone with a bit more training in hostage scenarios might have offered. Probably not a soldier, then. Excellent. More likely to give out sensitive information. Sherlock took as deep a breath as he could manage and stared the captive level in the eye.

*"¿Por qué son los explosivos?"* he asked in as decent an approximation of Spanish as he could figure, having not used the language in some time. Needed to know what the C4 was meant to accomplish, why they'd apparently wanted to kill the Hudsons. Asking their erstwhile prisoner was almost certainly the only chance he'd have of getting any satisfying answers out of this mess - didn't quite trust the Hudsons not to lie or sidestep the issue (assuming, of course, that they were directly involved - which by Mrs Hudson's reaction seemed likely), and of course the authorities wouldn't be willing to share. And Sherlock was *not* leaving without answers. If there was one thing he hated most in the world it was not knowing why things happened. Especially when those things involved such blatant anomalies as bombs in kindly old peoples' houses.

The criminal was visibly startled - obviously not expecting some pale white kid with a funny accent to speak his language. And, sure enough, his answering question was distinctly uninspired.

*"¿Hablas español?"*

"Sort of," Sherlock answered, then realised that responding to a question of 'do you speak Spanish' with an English phrase was more than a bit stupid, and amended his phrasing. "Er... *sí."* And then, because the man had just cocked his head at him rather than respond in any verbal manner, he irritably repeated his first question. *Explosives*, god's sake. Focus.

At the sound of Sherlock's second attempt at Spanish the Mexican's face scrunched up in confusion, or perhaps disgust, making Sherlock frown. What? Had he got the phrasing wrong? Swapped out vocabulary? Was that why the idiot wasn't answering him?

*"Tu acento es una mierda,"* the man remarked flatly a few seconds later. Sherlock huffed in exasperation and rolled his eyes. Oh, god's sake. His accent was shit. Well the idiot speaking like a half-speed record could bloody well talk, couldn't he? Glass houses.

*"¿Cómo supiste de los explosivos?"* the man spoke up again after a pause. Apparently he'd decided to skip straight to the point, that being why on earth Sherlock knew about the explosives. Sherlock just shrugged.

"Recognised the detonator," he replied without thinking. Wait, bollocks - English again. Damn. He tilted his head a bit, brow knitting, and tried to think of how to say that in Spanish. All his brain was coming up with was *'reconnu le détonateur'*, which was not helpful. Finally he just gave up.

"I don't know how to say that in Spanish," he admitted with a half-shrug. Quite pointlessly, it turned out, as the other man didn't seem to understand a word of English. Sherlock frowned and flapped a hand in a dismissive gesture. Body language to reinforce the meaning of his next sentence. *"No tienes que saber*. None of your business."

The man was staring at him, apparently trying to parse whatever of that utterance made sense. Which, by the look on his face, was very little. After a few silent seconds, however, during which Sherlock did his level best to look cold and intimidating and not at all like an injured twenty year old kid stuck several thousand miles from home, the man's expression seemed to shift into worried comprehension.

*"¿Avila te envió para probarnos?"*

Sherlock blinked. *Avila?* What in blazes did that mea... oh, wait, no. Grammar. Most likely a name? Had Avila sent him to... test them... Sherlock tried to keep the look of bewilderment off his face as he cleared his throat and forced uncooperative muscles to let him sit up a bit straighter.

Alright, then, er... sure, whatever. If this idiot was going to assign him convenient identities it'd not exactly be wise to correct the misconception. Sherlock had no idea what might have prompted the man to think he was any sort of hired agent, though. Not like either of the intruders had been particularly difficult to disable - managed to take them both down despite a worsening injury and with the dubiously-helpful assistance of a young child. Perhaps he just happened to resemble someone the man had been expecting?

As Sherlock both puzzled over this and strove to cobble together a marginally-comprehensible reply, the man had begun to quietly mutter to himself.

*"Dijo que esto iba a ser fácil... puta mierda, no debimos confiar en él..."*

Sherlock tilted his head slightly, trying to parse the meaning. Before he could make much sense of it, however, the distant wail of police sirens caught his attention. Both he and his captive looked towards the far wall with identical spooked expressions. Sherlock glanced back to the man and tried not to dwell on the fact that he evidently had the exact same reaction to the sound of approaching law enforcement as a violent criminal.

But, then again, that reflex had been imprinted into Sherlock's psyche for very good reason - experience had taught him well that a police presence rarely heralded anything positive. And that pattern would be no different now, because it had just occurred to him in the space of about a microsecond that, oh right... he was technically an illegal alien. Emphasis on the *illegal* bit. Shit.

And even if that weren't so pressing a problem, the authorities would no doubt make it a top priority to question the skinny wraith of a boy who'd somehow managed to incapacitate two dangerous men bare-handed. He very much doubted they'd believe him if he explained he'd learnt how to do that through a combination of library research and years of involuntary fighting experience. Interrogations, then, until they arrived at something they'd accept as the truth. And said interrogations would doubtless commence with a demand for identification. Which, even if he refused to give it, they'd easily be able to find back in Joshua's old bedroom. Everything he'd had in his pockets was still on the table there, right out in the open - UK passport, travel visa, wallet with two different driving licences, one of which was forged... and the other... well. But then *really* it hadn't seemed like a good idea to destroy *every* piece of legitimate identification he'd ever had, right? And it wasn't like he had anywhere else to keep it...

Sherlock grimaced at the revelation - oh good lord, he'd actually, seriously left a wallet with his *real driving licence* in it on a bedside table in an unfamiliar house whilst on the run under an assumed identity with an expired visa. For *fuck's sake*. Could he honestly not go a single day without doing something unfathomably stupid?

As aggravating as that whole issue was there wasn't exactly time for self-flagellation over it, because *oh hell.* They'd do a background check on both aliases. They'd have to. And it was unthinkable that any inquiry concerning the name *'Sherlock William Scott Holmes'* wouldn't set off several dozen high-level MI6 alerts. Not only would Sherlock have to deal with all the hassle of deportation under suspicion of being an international criminal, but he'd then find himself in immediate custody of the British Government upon arrival in London. No. *No* no no, not acceptable.

Vaguely thankful for the speed of his mental processing - all of those thoughts had taken scarcely half a second - he shoved himself to his feet with the aid of a sudden shot of adrenaline. Right. Time to get the hell out of here. Unanswered questions be damned, he was *not* going home. Not whilst Mycroft Holmes still controlled a significant portion of the government. The man's relentless surveillance had been the original catalyst, after all - the force driving Sherlock's need to find a chemical that could change how his brain functioned. Could make the cameras and the stalking agents seem okay, make it possible to ignore the sense of being watched, of never finding a moment alone, knowing his every action could be recorded and scrutinised.

A return to England would mean a return to the unending paranoia. Sherlock could either go completely mad under the stress or fall back on cocaine to cope. He already knew full-well which option he'd choose if given the slightest chance.

Granted, a surveillance-induced cocaine relapse might very well serve Mycroft right - finding himself personally responsible for his baby brother's eventual fatal overdose? Lovely, a count of fratricidal manslaughter to complement the patricide. Perhaps the guilt would drive him to psychotic break.

But, as vindictively satisfying as that scenario might have been, there was the small matter of it requiring Sherlock's death. And he was quite attached to being *alive*, thank you. Even with the frequent downsides of that condition. Because no matter how incredibly shitty his life managed to be, it was still vastly preferable to oblivion. Misery was better than nothing.

No option then but to find a way to remain nameless, unseen. If hidden he could count himself safe. For a given value of the word, anyway.

Headed for the hall, Sherlock hesitated a moment before passing by the door frame. The Mexican was watching him with a dark, calculating expression. Planning something? Being tripped or otherwise molested would likely slow Sherlock down quite a lot in his current physical state. Find a way to avoid aggression. Needed to instill fear, respect. The bloke thought he was some sort of proxy agent for his boss, right? Probably wouldn't attack a holder of superior rank. Best keep that charade going, then.

*"Informaré esto a Avila,"* Sherlock intoned in a cold, dangerous voice. Or as cold and dangerous as one could get whilst trying to speak a language they weren't particularly fluent in. Hopefully the intended message of *I'll be reporting this to Avila* had gotten through. He paused a microsecond, then decided going for full-blown melodrama couldn't hurt anything and added a few more layers to his current Siger impression before adding, *"Tratan de no hacerse más avergonzado."*

Hm. Alright, then, perhaps attempting a quintessential villainous sendoff of *'try not to embarrass yourselves further'* hadn't been the best of ideas. Mostly because all he got in return was a confused, vaguely incredulous look. Like he'd just said something patently ridiculous. Sherlock grimaced slightly at his own linguistic ineptitude but managed to take advantage of the moment of bewilderment to step neatly over the man's legs. Out of range of being kicked, now. That was all that had really mattered anyway.

Right, so - plan of action. Shoes first, that would be most efficient way to go about things. Still on the front porch where he'd left them yesterday. No time to waste, get moving.

Hayley flashed him an excited grin as he strode quickly by her. For some reason she was still on the line with the authorities; trying to keep her talking so she'd not wander back into danger, Sherlock guessed. He faked a smile for her benefit as he made for the front entrance - no need to let her catch on to what he was doing, she'd only get upset, make things inconvenient.

It took only a second to duck out the door, grab his still-muddy trainers, and glance up to see the flashing lights of a police car not far down the road. A burst of panic shot through his chest as he darted back inside. Bloody hell, that was an *impressively* quick response time compared to London. Must be a station or something nearby. Or was it just because a child had called? Either way it left him with a very narrow window of time in which to abscond.

Hayley's grin had shifted into a quizzical look as she tracked his progress back past her towards Joshua's room. He'd have liked to say something in parting to her *(though why he should have that impulse he had no idea - she was just some irritating little American girl, after all; shouldn't care, she'd forget him in a week)* but that would take too long. Instead he gave her another really rather obviously fake smile, the insincerity of which she was hopefully much too young to spot, and disappeared from her line of sight.

Passport, wallet, assorted random odds and ends he'd had in his pockets... would be nice to get his jeans back but Mrs Hudson hadn't- ah, no! She had. They were folded at the end of the bed. Must have brought them in while he'd been asleep.

He grabbed the small stack of clothing and looked around rather frantically for a bag of some sort he might be able to nick on short notice. An old knapsack was shoved under the bed, still bearing Joshua's name in thick black marker on the handle alongside a crude drawing of a dog. Sherlock tossed everything into it, slung the thing over one shoulder and set about removing the insect guard from the window as quickly as possible.

He'd just barely managed to re-position the screen in its frame, having made a painfully uncomfortable exit through the window, when he heard the distinct sound of multiple squadcars pull into the driveway on the other side of the house. Fuck, fuck fuck, *leave*. Now. He was *not* going back to England. Back to being watched every second of his life. Couldn't put himself within tempting reach of certain persons he'd sworn never to contact again, surrounded by the spectres of buried memories... no, no no no, failure simply wasn't an option.

Pounding of the policemens' boots on the porch. Sherlock scrambled to pull his shoes on, not bothering to tie them, and took off for the small copse of trees separating the Hudson's yard from their neighbours. Within seconds he'd vanished amongst the foliage.

Whilst up in the tree with Hayley an hour or so back he'd managed to make a fairly decent mental map of the surrounding landscape. The neighbourhood was a veritable warren, of course, but luckily not completely impenetrable. All he had to do was find the nearest main road, follow the pavement for a mile or so, take a few turns, and then it'd be a straight shot along the highway back to Tallahassee. Once there he could catch a long-distance bus and leave this whole miserable place behind him.

Listening closely for sounds of policemen searching for him - Hayley would've pitched a fit the moment she registered his absence - he risked wasting a half-second to tie his shoes, then took off at a brisk pace in search of a street that led towards the city.

Adrenaline had begun to drain from his veins, leaving him in significant pain, coming perilously close to dropping from exhaustion, but he set his jaw and soldiered on. *Been through worse*, he reminded his brain sternly. Lived through broken bones and fractured ribs and a semi-accidental suicide attempt. He'd survive. Always survived.

Sherlock coughed into the crook of his elbow, grimaced, and with a free hand fished out his cigarettes. Nowhere near the energy boost of cocaine, of course, but they'd have to do. Wouldn't be able to rest until he was as far from here as he could get. Hours of walking just to get out of the residential area. And then who knew how long after that.

It was midday now, the sun heating stiflingly humid air up to unbearable levels. He shook his head and bit hard into the filter of his cig as he walked. Ignore it. *Ignore it.*

Buoyed by a cloud of nicotine he forced himself onwards.

**««**

## Chapter 7

**««**

There had to be a point where the human body would simply fail.

It was like a machine, wasn't it? A transportation system for his brain. One comprised of brittle flesh and bone rather than solid metal. And if a contraption made of immutable iron could fail if not given sufficient fuel and upkeep, then it would stand to reason that one of flesh could as well. Logically it should fall to pieces that much more quickly, in fact, given its inherent fragility.

As things were, though, Sherlock had yet to drop dead. Which was surprising for a number of reasons. Considering everything he'd put himself through in the last... well, hell, actually now that he thought about it he'd not really had a respite from stress, injury, illness, or self-destruction since around the age of six. That was a bit depressing.

So what did that make, then? Fourteen solid years of reality doing its damnedest to destroy him? And yet he continued to stand. Or walk, in this case, which he was still managing to do despite wanting very much to fall flat on his face in the middle of the pavement and never move again.

Perhaps that would be inspiring in some other context. His indomitable will, or spirit, or whatever. But at the moment Sherlock was finding himself more than a little irritated by the whole business. Thanks to his own pig-headed stubbornness he couldn't quite bring himself to stop walking until such time as he was literally incapable of doing so. Anything short of passing out felt too much like giving up. Weak-willed, whingeing, just as unreliable as everyone had always claimed him to be. Can't keep on task, never commits to anything, never pays attention.

But he was *quite capable* of paying attention, thank you. Of applying himself wholeheartedly to a single task. Did so often, in fact, and frequently with such an intensity as to be a detriment of his ability to acknowledge the world around him. One might even say he was uncommonly *good* at focussing on small problems or details for extraordinary lengths of time. Better than most. A skill, perhaps.

The only problem with calling that a *skill*, of course, was that he'd never been able to choose what he set his mind to. It was always something random and unpredictable. Insect facts or the origin of the Greek alphabet or walking miles through suffocating humidity for no real reason other than a vague dread for how viciously his own brain would reprimand him if he were to give in to the temptation to stop. Even though it was probably quite safe to do so, now. He'd gotten far enough away from the Hudson residence to avoid being implicated in any crimes there. Could probably just sit down in the shade for five minutes without much trouble.

But then, no, he wouldn't. Because there was a small suburban shopping complex not too far ahead and for whatever asinine reason he'd made that his goal. He wasn't capable of giving up on the task of reaching the closest corner shop unless it proved literally impossible.

Why couldn't he have trained this pinpoint perseverance in the face of multiple distractions on something useful? Like, say, his studies. Back in university. If he'd been able to just ignore the stupid cameras none of this would ever have happened. But school work had never been interesting enough - other things always butted in, demanding his attention. Solving stupid puzzles no one cared about, researching things like crime scene forensics even though he was a bloody *chemistry* student and had no plans whatsoever of going into law enforcement.

A wave of dizzying fatigue sloshed through his brain and he wondered dazedly if perhaps *this* was the final breath, the moment he'd pass out and not have to suffer through this hell any longer. But it wasn't. He forced himself to inhale another lungful of too-humid, disgustingly warm air and kept going. Always kept *bloody* going. When the fuck would his system learn its lesson and just fail, already. Lord knew it'd had plenty of opportunities.

Could've just died peacefully at fourteen under a heavy veil of painkillers, but *no*, he'd had to go and wake up. Fatal bloody overdose, and he'd still woken up. Forced, then, to spend Christmas morning feigning polite deference to the man who'd casually snapped his wrist two days prior. Fight back the urge to pass out or be sick over breakfast.

Of course he'd succeeded. Always did. Got back to his room in one piece, spent the next six hours drifting in and out of consciousness, woke up to find his arm wreathed in a haze of excruciating pain with absolutely no way to mitigate it save curling up in the corner and trying not to cry. That had been lovely. Happy Christmas.

Mycroft had phoned, then, a few hours before nightfall. Sherlock had very nearly ignored it. Shouldn't have answered, really. All he'd ended up with was a very one-sided conversation wherein Mycroft vaguely apologised for not coming home before launching into a boring discussion of what exactly he was doing that had kept him too busy to travel. And, yes, wonderful, Sherlock was very happy for him and his exciting new job. But he'd spent the whole phone call biting back the urge to interrupt. Tell his brother everything that had happened in the past three days and beg to be saved from the hell of his miserable existence.

In the end he'd said nothing, of course. Mycroft sounded too enthusiastic, too pleased with his own position and rising rank and grand accomplishments. Sherlock hadn't been able to bring himself to ruin his brother's good mood with his own stupid litany of problems. Not on Christmas.

Instead he'd faked his usual attitude, engaged in their normal banter, tried not to make himself sound bitter or upset or in pain. And in the back of his mind he hoped, as he always did, that Mycroft would pick up on some tiny clue, see past the facade and ask what was wrong. Surely he was capable? He was *Mycroft Holmes*, for god's sake, he could deduce anything.

But Mycroft hadn't noticed. He never did. Sherlock was too bloody good at acting like he was fine. Mycroft hung up and didn't call again for nearly a month. Too busy, he'd said. Always was.

Sherlock shook his head and once more focussed on walking.

Five or ten or maybe twenty minutes later he half-stumbled into what looked like a small corner shop near a petrol station. Or a 'gas' station, according to the sign. Whatever. The clerk glanced up, loudly chewing a wad of gum, and gave him an extremely unimpressed once-over.

Reluctantly Sherlock straightened up from where he'd been doubled over against a shelf by the door, shot the girl behind the counter an imperious glare, and tried to retain some manner of dignity as he made his way back towards the refrigerated drinks section. Not that he really had any plans to buy anything (money was tight enough as it was without wasting any of it... though water might not go amiss) but the cool breeze from the AC vents back there looked heavenly.

He glanced over his shoulder to check that the shop girl didn't have a direct line of sight to his actions, and, seeing her occupied with a magazine, turned and opened the glass sliding door just far enough to grab two bottles of water and close it again. One of them he slipped inconspicuously into his knapsack - no reason to pay for something as basic as a bottle of water - and the other he opened and took a swig from before sinking down against the cool glass doors to just sit for a while. Sooner or later the shop girl would remember he'd come in and kick him out for loitering. He was perfectly content to wait around until that happened.

The jingling of the bells on the shop door caught his attention and he glanced up from where he'd been staring blankly at the floor tiles, but found he couldn't actually see anything past the shelf full of crisps in front of him. Eh, who cared anyway. Just another patron. Likely they'd wander back in search of a drink and spare an odd look for the dishevelled youth slouched against the freezer. Unless they tried to have him arrested he really couldn't care less.

Sure enough, footsteps approached along the tiles. Sherlock took another swig of water and resolved to ignore whomever it was. Set his thoughts instead to the long trek from here to Tallahassee. Perhaps he could catch a bus? Were there any routes running through this area? Had to be, it was a residential zone.

Deciding he'd just deal with that eventuality when he came to it, he let his head tilt back to rest against the cool glass behind him. Probably not a good idea to fall asleep whilst loitering in a shop he'd just stolen product from. So he wouldn't sleep, then, just… rest a bit. Close his eyes.

The next second he opened them again when he realised someone was standing over him.

Sherlock straightened his head back up, staring at the elderly gentleman who'd apparently come round the corner of the nearest shelf and was now looming above the pathetic heap that, for the moment, was Sherlock.

It was Harold Hudson.

After a tense few seconds the doctor finally spoke. "You're in the way, boy."

"Oh, erm… yes, sorry," Sherlock muttered. Reluctantly he hoisted himself to his feet, made to back away, but Harold halted the retreat with a firm grip on Sherlock's upper arm. Sherlock instantly froze. As much as he'd like to believe he'd firmly overwritten the habits and mannerisms of his childhood, being grabbed by a man both taller and older than him whilst he was already injured seemed to tap right into some deep seated instinct of self-preservation, making him lock up like a spooked deer.

Harold appeared to take note of this and raised a brow somewhat bemusedly.

"What, son, you think I'm going to hit you?"

"I… n-no," Sherlock replied, hating the way his voice stuttered a bit. He made a valiant effort to regain some measure of his usual poise. The state of his health was making that rather difficult, however, and he found himself painfully stifling a cough instead. Harold was still holding on to his upper arm.

Sherlock opened his mouth to object to this, attempting to tug his limb free for good measure, (he didn't quite manage - muscles still refused to function, stupid body convinced he was about to be badly hurt despite logical evidence to the contrary), but Harold cut over him.

"I'm going to buy what I came in here for, and then we're headed back to the car, where you and I are going to have a little chat about what went on at my house today. Understand?" he said in a low, no-nonsense tone. Sherlock tried very hard to look like he wasn't fighting off a creeping sense of terror.

"And if I refuse?" he retorted in what might have passed for a snippy tone were it not laced with a distinct note of alarm.

Harold just smirked. With a slight lift of his browline he shifted his overshirt, revealing the distinct bulk of a gun holster affixed to his belt.

"Then you'll get a bullet through your skull, kid, and I'll claim self-defence."

Alright, then. That… was a fairly convincing argument. Sherlock glanced elsewhere for a moment, weighing his options, but before he could come up with a suitable rebuttal Harold was already dragging him off by the arm. Struggling proved fruitless - as ever, Sherlock found his own lack of weight or appreciable muscle mass working against him. And of course it didn't help that any sudden movements involving his abdomen sent a white-hot stab of pain clear through his gut.

Harold plucked up a bag of ice from a nearby freezer with his free hand, hefted it onto his shoulder and walked the two of them to the front of the store to pay. The clerk gave them a brief, vaguely curious look but seemed to decide not to bother wondering about their odd arrangement.

Though on second thought, Sherlock realised, it probably wasn't odd at all - he knew full-well his body proportions hadn't quite filled out yet (doubtless his past year or so of unintentional self-starvation hadn't helped the process) and that he thus still looked like nothing so much as a gangly teenager. Harold, meanwhile, was a stern-faced older man in approximately the right age bracket to be either a parent or grandparent. Anyone who saw them would most likely assume a simple family dispute and not interfere. Wonderful. No reason for anyone to attempt to come to his aid.

Walking back out into the heat of the outdoors felt like being slammed in the face by a solid wall of scorching humidity. Harold didn't seem to take any notice, completely at ease as he not-quite-gently lead Sherlock on towards an unfamiliar vehicle.

"That's not the car Mrs Hudson was driving yesterday," Sherlock said for no real reason besides having thought it, which in his current predicament transferred almost immediately into speech. Mental processing power was diverted into survival strategies, not bothering with the brain-to-mouth filter. Harold just huffed a noise that might have been a laugh, or a scoff, it was difficult to tell.

This was a much larger vehicle than his wife's, some sort of modern looking pickup truck painted all in white. Sherlock was unceremoniously deposited in the back seat along with Harold's bag of ice.

The man climbed into the driver's seat and started up the engine, flashing an insincere, yet somehow disturbingly sociable, smile into the rearview mirror.

"Doing alright there, son? Look pretty worn-out."

Sherlock glared, unsettled by the sudden switch to amicability but unwilling to show it.

"I'm fine," he snapped, though in all fairness he very likely wasn't. Too many sharp stabs of pain all vying for his attention, the overall exhaustion of the heat (though the truck's AC was at least helping that), and a vague sort of mental weariness for the insanity of his life. Why on earth couldn't he just be a normal twenty-something who didn't continually find himself in life-or-death dramatic situations? Was that too much to ask of the universe?

Harold was now pulling the truck onto the highway, in the opposite direction to where Sherlock had been headed. Passing all the half-remembered landmarks he'd trudged by over the past few hours was a fairly nihilistic reminder of just how much misery he'd put himself through for absolutely no reason. He scowled out the window, then over to the man in the front seat.

"What, then, you're kidnapping me?"

Harold chuckled. "What? No, of course not. Just giving you a place to stay, that's all. Thought we'd take a trip down to the vacation house. Lovely place, right down by the water."

"Are suspicious Mexican men going to try to blow that one up, too?" Sherlock asked snidely. Harold just smirked to himself.

"Straight to the point, eh, boy? Fine by me," he remarked in the same genial tone he'd been using since they entered the vehicle. He shot another smile towards Sherlock. "This is pretty simple, then - you tell me what happened at my house today, down to every last detail, and in return I won't hand you over to the cops."

A small bolt of alarm shot through his chest, brain inadvertently flashing through all the worst-case outcomes of that scenario, but Sherlock quickly smothered it. Instead he managed to scoff dismissively.

"Delivering me to the safe hands of law enforcement? Hardly much of a threat," he retorted, throwing in an unimpressed glare for good measure. Being turned in to the authorities would be *inconvenient*, yes, but he was fairly confident he could find a way to escape. Deduce all the secrets of a few of the officers, pit them against each other if possible and make a break for it whilst the lot of them were disoriented. Wouldn't be difficult, he'd done similar before... though admittedly never with such stark consequences on the line. And, he had to remember, fucking around with American cops could very well get him killed. As could the current debacle, though, to be fair. Neither option was really shaping up to be the better one here.

Harold looked up and smiled again, the warm expression at odds with the sharp glint of pale eyes behind thin spectacles.

"Ah, well, maybe I wasn't so clear - specifically I'll give them this. *Then* I'll turn you over." On the word 'this' the man flipped an item out of the chest pocket of his shirt, holding it up over his shoulder between two fingers so Sherlock could see. The sun's glare off the plastic shifted with the vehicle's movement, leaving Sherlock staring blankly at his own driving licence.

Instantly his hand shot towards his wallet - he'd checked to be sure he had everything before he left, surely!? But the motion halted mid-way as he realised it would be a pointless endeavour to look. The card was right there, after all, clearly in Harold's possession. Sherlock had to have overlooked something, somewhere... allowed the one piece of crucial identifying information he'd permitted himself to keep *(for stupid, sentimental reasons, damn it all)* to fall into the hands of a stranger intent on blackmailing him. Forgot to double-check his belongings, blanked the entire necessity of doing so, even - always so bloody scatterbrained. He grit his teeth in a mixture of frustration and rage, trying and failing not to let either emotion show on his face.

Harold hummed lightly to himself and flipped the card back into his pocket.

"None too happy about that, I take it," he remarked casually, letting out a soft chuckle at the palpable fury Sherlock must have been exuding.

Before Sherlock could come up with a suitable scathing answer another blasted coughing fit rose up unbidden, and he was forced to duck his head to try and stifle it. The floor of the truck below his face was littered with bits of leaves and grass, a few brown stains, patches of sand and dirt. He fixed a vicious glare on the debris as if it could somehow be blamed for his life's numerous problems. And, hell, perhaps it could - messy floor of a truck seemed a perfect encapsulation of his general mental state, a disorganised debris field, completely unnavigable without a cushioning blanket of snow to smooth the jagged terrain. If he just had a bit of coke, christ... even just the barest layer of frost and this would all be so damned *easy*...

But *argh*, no - *no*, fuck's sake, don't think about that. That period of his life was done, over, finished. Had to learn how to pick through the scattered wastes of his head on his own, not just bury it all and forget the chaos existed. Don't take the easy route, lazy arse.

After what seemed an interminable silence Sherlock finally took as large a breath as he could manage without hurting himself, then leant back again to train an imperious scowl out the window, blurs of scenery zipping past. Pointedly he shifted to sit half curled up in his seat like a child and let his muddy trainers track dirt all over the upholstery. Well, then... best just go along with things. Cooperation was the least dangerous solution, for now.

"Two men, Mexican judging by their dialect, one thin and the other heavy-set," he started reluctantly. "The thin one spoke English, not well enough to notice I was foreign by my speech patterns, but held a fluent conversation. Heavy accent in both languages. They were posing as pest exterminators-"

Harold cut in with a snort, plainly unimpressed. "Didn't waste any time in the imagination department."

Sherlock shot the man an acid glare for interrupting him, but nonetheless continued. "It was an obvious ploy, yes." He huffed irritably and turned his attention to the window once more. "Hayley and I gained entry to the house by posing as neighbours, whereupon I spotted one of the men affixing a block of C4 to your armchair. This was rather alarming, as one might expect, so I quickly sequestered us in your office... and, er..." Sherlock trailed off, realising he was about to confirm himself as even more of a probable criminal than he already had, or a complete moron. Both, most likely.

He looked elsewhere and smothered a painful cough before continuing in what was definitely not an embarrassed mumble. "Er... I phoned Mrs Hudson."

"You called my wife first instead of the cops," Harold clarified, voice carrying the anticipated undercurrent of flat, disbelieving mockery. Sherlock scowled.

"It seemed logical at the time," he snapped defensively. In retrospect he had no idea why he'd made such a reckless decision - not when the more sensible choice had been so dead obvious. But, somehow, contacting the police hadn't even occurred to him in that moment. He couldn't remember so much as having had the notion to do so until later, when he'd been left with no other option. That was troubling in its own way, really, not having thought of something so basic... but, fuck, it wasn't exactly something he could afford to dwell on right now. Had to move on.

Up front Harold just shook his head, not disappointed so much as bemused. His false air of geniality had all but evaporated over the course of their conversation.

"Just get on with the rest of it, kid. We'll sort out what an idiot you are later."

Frowning, Sherlock nevertheless nodded. No real point in arguing that. He was of much the same opinion, after all. Turning to look out the window at the flashes of green amid the distortion of heat haze, he proceeded to explain, in as concise a manner as possible, how he'd disabled the intruders, spoken to (or attempted to, at least) one of them, and ultimately fled the scene.

Harold kept a brooding silence for a few moments afterwards. Finally he spoke, fingers tapping thoughtfully on the steering wheel.

"You know, if I were to take a stab in the dark here, I'd say you've got a pretty impressive array of skills for being some gap-year junkie off the streets." The man went briefly quiet in feigned contemplation, drawing out the tense static between them. "Almost like, oh I don't know... maybe there's a good reason you've been carrying around a fake passport, hm? Foreign, multi-lingual, fighting ability and a valid forged identity..." He smiled knowingly. "I'd just about wager someone's after you, boy."

He punctuated this with a meaningful glance through the rearview mirror, which Sherlock met but didn't respond to with more than a level stare. His personal history was none of this bastard's business, fuck off. He did his best to convey said sentiment through his expression, mostly succeeding judging by Harold's bemused snort.

Within a few seconds Harold broke the brief staring match to look back to the road. His expression shifted smoothly from vague amusement to an oddly pensive reverie.

"Let me tell you something, then, son," he spoke up after another long pause. "It never lasts. The snatches of security, thinking you're out of the fire, undetectable? Never for long. You'll keep on running til the day you die."

"Better to spend a lifetime running than lay down and surrender," Sherlock countered immediately, yet again without having really meant to. He scowled for the accidental response, about to be cross with himself, then quite abruptly found himself no longer giving a shit. Instead he just sighed a bit and let his head drop onto his knees, leant against the seat back beside him, all sense of rebellion melting away to be replaced with resigned weariness. Oh, fuck it, hardly mattered what he said at this point. Everything would go to hell in a handbasket soon enough. If it hadn't already.

Harold actually smirked for the line, though, humming in what sounded like amused agreement.

"Can't argue with that," he said, chuckling. "Don't let the bastards keep you down, huh?"

"You're one of them, you do realise that," Sherlock muttered irritably. Honestly, the man was in the process of abducting him to god-knew-where, for any number of nefarious purposes, and was holding massive blackmail over him to boot. If there was any clearer definition of a complete bastard he couldn't think of one.

"Hah. Ah, son, I've been one of them for a long, long time," Harold replied, his voice gone strangely calm, subdued. "Just part of life - you don't get anywhere being nice. Take what you need, give nothing back."

"You're a bloody *doctor*," Sherlock snapped, looking up with a glare. "How does that not constitute 'giving back'?"

Unsettlingly, Harold just smiled. His bearing remained utterly, unnaturally relaxed. As if he'd reached some internal decision and was now settling in to follow through with a simple, linear plan. In a casual gesture the man reached over and flipped on the radio - the warbling tones of some 50's classic settled in around them and Sherlock groaned for the injustice of it all. Injured, kidnapped, and forced to listen to awful mid-century American pop music, god.

Life, he thought, couldn't possibly get any worse.

**««**

## Chapter 8

**««**

"Is it bad form to ask one's kidnapper to stop for a smoke break?"

Harold glanced up from the road and quirked a brow at Sherlock, who'd over a sudden, extended period of stillness begun to seriously take notice of the amount of pain his body was in. Abdomen, jaw, knuckles, ribs... practically every part of him was either bruised or overworked or both. Plus he could feel the onset of a fever, that deep internal ache heralding a worsening infection. And on top of it all he was edging into tobacco withdrawal.

A fraction of this misery was in his power to mitigate, that being the acute lack of nicotine, but it seemed a rather poor idea to just light up a cig in someone's car. Especially whilst that someone was in the business of abducting you.

"It's only a two hour drive, son, think you'll make it."

Sherlock was well past the point of maintaining his usual imperious façade by now. Too many random sources of pain and discomfort throwing the whole concept of dignity out the window. In a fit of desperation he allowed himself to make an utterly pathetic face into the rear-view mirror. Everything hurt and his abdomen felt like a knife had got lodged in the muscle and all he wanted was a bloody cigarette. That didn't seem too much to ask. Have heart and take pity on the poor, downtrodden homeless boy.

Unfortunately Harold didn't seem in a compassionate mood. Instead he just snorted.

"I'm not about to let you run off into the wilderness, kid. I'm not that stupid."

Run off…? Sherlock frowned. He'd actually not considered that possibility. In retrospect an obvious plan... or it *would* have been one, anyway, if he were capable of standing upright long enough to implement it. And if Harold didn't have a gun on his belt. And if the weather weren't fatally hot. And... what, alligators? Were there alligators this far north? No idea. Wasn't about to take his chances, though. Being eaten by a giant carnivorous reptile was not a fate Sherlock was willing to risk under any circumstances.

"I can't even sit up properly," he pointed out, making sure to add a note of pained desperation to his voice. "And you've got a gun besides. How am I supposed to escape without getting my brains blown out?"

Harold seemed to purse his lips in thought. Sherlock redoubled his efforts to look as pathetic as possible. That wasn't very difficult, unfortunately, as he'd not been bluffing about the whole *can't sit up* situation – every attempt to straighten his abdomen came with a lance of stabbing fire.

"Didn't bother to wrap that abdominal contusion before you went off fighting Mexicans, I gather," Harold eventually remarked in an unimpressed monotone.

"Well I didn't exactly have a lot of lead time, did I?" Sherlock's attempt to be snippy lost rather a lot on the delivery thanks to the strain still in his voice. Alright, then, he really wasn't putting on an act at all now. This was problematic.

"It takes all of five goddamned minutes to-" Harold cut himself off with a sigh. After a quick glance in his wing mirror he slowed the truck to a stop by the side of the road. They were in some forsaken country highway, thick walls of vegetation all lit up in the verdant green of a tropical climate seeming to box them in on either side. Definitely not an environment Sherlock would have any chance in hell of surviving by himself.

The unexpected slam of a car door was startling, though not nearly as much as what followed next, which was the door next to Sherlock *opening* and a well-built elderly American man yanking him out of the truck by his arm. This had about the effect one might expect. Sherlock yelped, both in pain and for a sudden wall of stifling heat outside the AC compartment, and managed perhaps half a second of standing before he collapsed face-first into the grass. Harold let him fall, evidently more interested in fetching something from his back seat than in keeping his erstwhile captive upright.

Thoroughly undignified, this. Sherlock's newfound posture crumpled up on the ground. Wasn't really capable of caring about it. Good *god* if only he could just turn the whole fucking pain system *off* – yes, thanks, brain, he'd hurt himself badly. Message received. Didn't need to be reminded of it on a constant, excruciating basis. Just the once would be fine.

A sharp, but not unduly harmful, bit of what felt like plastic bounced off his head, the sound of pills rattling within. He uncurled slightly to find Harold had tossed a prescription bottle at him. The man was now rifling through the rest of the contents of what looked like a well-stocked medical kit.

With a myopic squint Sherlock discovered that the label on the bottle proclaimed it to contain morphine sulphate.

"Martha quit taking 'em after we found a good indica strain," Harold explained distractedly. "Popped her hip out doing a pole dance years ago. Now she's got arthritis like you wouldn't believe." He turned back towards Sherlock for a moment, raising a brow. Tossed a roll of bandages lightly into the air and caught it again. "You know it's a bit funny, actually. Back when we were your age we figured all our injuries would just heal themselves and that was that. Never dreamed they'd catch up with us. Now it's all arthritis and muscle cramps, cursing that dumb kid from forty years ago for all the breaks he didn't bother to splint."

"If you're trying to suggest-" Sherlock cut off with a hiss of pain, trying and failing to shift into a less absurdly vulnerable position than curled up in the dirt. "- trying to suggest that I'm setting myself up for misery in later life, I'd point out that concerns about old age are entirely irrelevant to someone who shouldn't expect to see thirty. Did you intend for me to *take* one of these?"

He rattled the pill bottle, glaring at it, and then up at Harold as if a good stare-down could tease forth the answer of why on earth a man would offer him painkillers in the midst of a kidnapping. Harold just took a step forward as he unwound a short length of his bandage roll.

"Unless you think a cigarette's going to help after what I'm about to do. Word of advice: it won't."

Well that was fucking ominous. Sherlock glanced between Harold and the pill bottle a few times, then in a split-second decision twisted the cap off and dry-swallowed a tablet before he could think better of it. Possibly he'd just poisoned himself like an idiot. Didn't care. Wasn't keen on playing the usual *remain stoic in the face of agony* game for the next eternity, and if it really *was* morphine... well, he'd be better off taking the risk, right?

Harold made a noise that might have been approval, or amusement, before grabbing Sherlock's arm and roughly hefting him upwards.

He didn't *quite* black out. But the sudden, hellfire stab of pain when he was forced to stretch his injured muscle by sitting up was enough to grey his vision for a beat or two. Luckily Harold actually did seem to have the skill of a trained emergency physician – or at least it seemed that way to Sherlock, who admittedly wasn't in any state to keep track of time – and had a tight compression bandage secured before Sherlock could so much as fully regain his senses.

"There, now. Wasn't so hard, was it?" Harold's tone was one of derisive mockery. Sherlock made an odd sort of helpless noise in response and began to wilt forwards into the grass again. Whilst the bandaging may indeed have been helping to immobilise the area, which was good, it was also partially constricting his diaphragm, which was bad. Between the reduction in lung capacity, the suffocating heat of too-humid air, and a veritable symphony of lingering pain he was fairly sure he was going to pass out in a few seconds.

"What the hell's the matter *now?*" Harold asked, exasperated. He bent down and dragged Sherlock to his feet, which he was only able to manage by virtue of being much taller and heavier-set than him, as Sherlock was nothing but dead weight at the moment. "Oh for- breathe from the *chest*, you damn idiot. You've got intercostal muscles for a reason."

Ordinarily Sherlock might have chosen not to obey that order out of pointless rebellion. For now, though, he very much wanted to be able to breathe, and Harold's advice very much sounded like a reasonable solution, so he did his level best to try. Wasn't sure how well he was succeeding, but he didn't get much more of a chance to evaluate the situation before Harold all but hefted him bodily into the back seat of his truck and gave Sherlock only a second or two to move his legs before slamming the door shut.

The next several minutes existed in an odd space between awkward and tolerable. No further conversation, partially because Sherlock was too busy trying to figure out how to obtain adequate oxygen, and partially because Harold looked extremely irritated. He kept checking his watch.

For a moment Sherlock pondered over what that could mean – they'd stopped for ten minutes, tops. Probably much less. So why was he suddenly on such a tight schedule? Had he wasted more time than he anticipated? Couldn't have been related entirely to Sherlock, though. Perhaps something he'd been doing before discovering Sherlock in that corner shop had got him tied up longer than he'd have liked? Look around the cabin, then... streaks of mud on the carpeting, sand, some older stains, twigs and other debris. Something to do with dirt and the woods, probably. Burying a body? No, that was a bit dramatic. Burying something *else*, though, maybe. Or digging something up.

Sort of pointless, mulling over this. Not like it made much difference to Sherlock if he knew why Harold had been mucking about in the dirt two hours ago. Wouldn't change his situation at all. Still, he didn't have much of anything better to do. Even the distraction of concentrating on breathing seemed to have faded away, possibly because there was no longer any discomfort from expanding and contracting old fractures on odd-healed ribs, which had been the reason he'd instinctively avoided breathing that way in the first place. Random pains from elsewhere were becoming little more than a whisper as well. As he sank down in his seat to sprawl half across the leather he realised fuzzily that the morphine must be kicking in.

Both drugs were opiates, so in theory it shouldn't have been much different to oxycodone. But where the painkillers he remembered taking years ago for bone fractures always seemed to leave him uncomfortable and anxious, this stuff was doing nothing of the sort. Just an odd sense of quiet sunlight permeating through the long-abandoned meadow in his head. Quite surprisingly serene.

And christ, but he hadn't seen this place in ages. His ridiculous little mindscape. Half-built tower there, he'd forgotten what it was meant for, and of course the willow tree. Leaves sparse, drooping branches seeming somehow limp and lifeless where once they'd been an elegant veil. Gloomy, discomfiting. But of course the gentle caress of warm sunlight more than made up for it. Grass overlying damp soil, occasional patch of mud where perhaps there might be a frog or two, everything well and in order.

Vaguely he remembered how all this used to be covered up in snow. Wondered how he could ever have thought that ideal, smothering everything under a uniform white. How boring. Sun was much better.

Harold had glanced over the seat at some point and seemed utterly exasperated by the sight of Sherlock flopped over on his back gazing blankly into space.

"How much do you weigh, kid?" the man asked as he turned back to the road. Sherlock blinked over at him.

"Hm...? Oh, er... I dunno?" He didn't, really. Why would he ever bother to weigh himself? Could maybe make a decent estimate, though, remembering the last time he'd known his weight, plus whatever other variables he knew his brain was factoring in but which he had no current capacity to identify nor care about.

"Erm... a bit less than nine stone, I think," he eventually decided. Somehow. Harold made an irritated noise.

"*Stone.* British lunatics. So what's that in English, then...?" He paused, apparently to do the maths in his head. "Around 120 pounds?"

"Probably?" Sherlock wasn't in any sort of mood to try the arithmetic to check that answer, and anyway wasn't quite sure what the point of this was. Who in hell cared about his weight, of all things?

"So I just gave thirty milligrams of immediate release morphine to a severely underweight adolescent with no opiate tolerance."

"I guess...?" Sherlock was still not entirely sure who cared or why, but Harold seemed some mixture of aggravated and concerned, which was interesting. He tilted his head slightly. "Why is that a problem, though? You wanted me dead anyway. No one would question an obvious junkie ODing on morphine tablets, they'd just write it off as self-inflicted. Perfect homicide." He paused, then frowned at himself. "Wait, why am I giving you advice on how to murder me?"

"Because you're stoned out of your mind, that's why," Harold supplied blandly. "And I don't want you dead, son. No sense getting rid of you if you might be useful. Have to figure out who exactly's after you, at least. See if they're willing to negotiate."

Sherlock huffed a laugh for some reason. What, extortion? Really? What kind of banal tactic was that?

"You're thinking you can use me as leverage?" He snickered and waved a hand towards the ceiling in a gesture whose meaning he'd forgotten in the millisecond since he started it. "I mean, you can, absolutely. No question. But it isn't going to help you at all. In fact you'd be far worse off for trying."

"And why's that, then?" Harold hedged. Thankfully Sherlock, out of it as he was beginning to feel, managed to retain some shred of self-preservation.

"If I answered that question then you'd not have much reason to keep me alive, would you?"

"I don't have much reason now, if you're saying you're no use."

"Ah, but you can't be sure I wasn't *lying* about extorting the person you can extort by using me as leverage not helping you... or... that I even have any idea what I'm saying right now. Which considering the incoherency of that last sentence seems highly unlikely."

Rather than try to answer that mess of logic with any sort of verbal response Harold just sighed, not so much out of weariness but frustration, and once again checked his watch. Sherlock noted this with interest.

"Why do you keep doing that?"

Harold glared up at him through the rear-view mirror. "What?"

"Checking your watch. Are you late for something?"

Harold didn't reply. Just dropped his hand back to the steering wheel and continued driving. Evidently he'd made the decision to ignore anything else Sherlock said until he'd sobered up a bit. Rude. But then, eh... no, that was perfectly fine. Not a big issue. *Everything* was perfectly fine, in fact. Nothing whatsoever hurt. For the first time in living memory he wasn't worried or scared or anxious about anything, and his head seemed to have filled with a haze of pleasant sunlight. Morphine, he decided, was *delightful*.

Some vague, far-away part of his mind was becoming rather cross over this. Off in a dark corner somewhere, lurking behind the chaos of everything, that intrepid spark of personal responsibility that always seemed to get smothered by the harsh grind of reality was now complaining that for *god's sake* they'd *just* managed to convince themselves to give up on the cocaine. That had been hard enough to justify, a struggle to ignore the pangs of longing. And now he'd gone and discovered this new drug with the power to temporarily erase the misery of existence? Fucking hell, that was going to be absolutely *impossible* to resist using if he ever got hold of more. Which of course he would. Somewhere down the line he was going to get overwhelmed, like he always did, and just want the whole awful world to go away for a bit. And now instead of being forced to cope with things he'd know there was an easy escape just a tablet away. Fucking chemicals.

On the other hand, though, he really did feel *fantastic.* So maybe it wasn't all that bad.

These conflicting viewpoints were creating a bit of a scuffle in his head. Well, that wasn't relaxing at all. Maybe if he very firmly promised the angry voice that he wouldn't let himself get dependent on any more drugs, it might...? Ah, but, no. That didn't work at all. He'd just gone and made it angrier.

*Yes you will,* the disembodied thought snapped. *Of course you will. No resolutions you make now are going to affect your future actions, they never do. This is going to become a massive problem eventually. And when it all blows up in our face like usual it'll be me who's forced to drag us out kicking and screaming because I'm the only part of this malfunctioning brain that seems at all concerned for life and dignity.*

It occurred to him that this voice was beginning to sound a lot like Mycroft.

Accordingly, he chose to stop listening to it.

That turned out to be easy enough to accomplish. Because as the minutes dragged by, and the world got ever more hazy and disconnected, he found he'd begun to drift off. Possibly not a good idea to fall asleep *(again – honestly it seemed like he'd been sleeping near-constantly over the last few days)* whilst being kidnapped... but he was very much drugged. And injured. And ill. Probably developing a fever. No realistic way he was going to be able to stay awake.

Harold might kill him in his sleep, granted, or he might stop breathing and die all on his own. There was no fear of that, though. Just blithe acceptance. It was fine. Dying was fine. Everything else was fine, too. He was taking a nap.

Waking up felt less like a return to consciousness and more like shifting into some sort of bizarre dream state. For one thing he was absolutely certain, now, that he did indeed have a fever. Felt that deep sort of not-quite-coherent ache that signalled one's brain was near to boiling. And for another he appeared to have magically teleported from the back seat of Harold's truck to a plush leather sofa.

Two sets of sensory information seemed to war with each other for a moment. Sofa, car seat, sofa again. He shook his head and decided he'd had just about enough of that. Brain was overheating, must be. Couldn't think straight. Best course of action would be to first get a solid idea of where he was, then work from there. Possibly find a cold compress as well.

Resolutely he took a deep breath and forced himself to sit up.

It was a leather sofa he was on now, apparently, not the car seat. Someone must have moved him. Around the room were walls lined with ornate bookshelves full of tomes on political theory, espionage, war, hemmed by a few expensive baubles. There was a large globe set off to the side of a hand-carved mahogany desk, spinning slowly. A faint scent of scotch hung in the air.

For several seconds he just stared blankly.

This was... home?

He was back home. The Holmes manor. Father's study, to be exact.

Feeling very lost Sherlock stood carefully from the sofa. Behind the great wooden desk was Father's familiar swivelling armchair, facing away from him. He frowned and walked towards it.

"Sir...?" he muttered quizzically. Not that he could really see any proof, but he knew by some sixth sense that someone was sitting in that chair. They should have turned round by now, right? Had to know he was there. With a slight glare – what, was the bastard ignoring him now? – he reached out over the desk and roughly shoved the seat sideways.

"*Excuse* me, then. That was bloody rude."

Sherlock froze.

The man in the chair was in all respects exactly what he knew to be Siger Holmes. Bespoke suit, white shirt with an open collar for the informal setting of his home office, posture that particular deadly-casual comfortable lounge, usual imperious, mocking expression firmly in place. This was *absolutely* his father. Had to be.

But... the proportions were wrong. Everything was off. Too thin at the waist, narrower shoulders, a more angular face. Hair too long, too dark... too... curly? Oh, christ, it wasn't Siger at all.

Sherlock was looking at himself.

"Well?" the doppelganger asked, raising a brow. The voice was a bit deeper than Sherlock knew his own to be... because this version of him was older, he realised. *Years* older. Too many lines etched into his face, too deftly confident in his movements to represent Sherlock's current awkward state of fading adolescence. Had to be in his mid-thirties, at least. "Did you have something you wanted to say to me," the man continued. "Or were you planning to just stand there gawping like an idiot?"

The raised brow climbed further in expectant mockery – a sickening reflection of one of Father's usual expressions. Sherlock snatched his hand away from the chair as if burnt and stepped back. This wasn't... no, this wasn't right at all. Why would he grow up to be like *this*, of all...

In a snap of anger he felt his stance abruptly shift. No, christ. He'd not calmly accept something this ridiculous. It must be some sort of prank.

"The fuck are you supposed to be?" He bared his teeth, clenched his fists at his sides. "A copy of *him* with my face? That's just-"

"I am *not*," the older him said coldly, cutting him off, "A copy of *anyone*, thank you. I am entirely my own person." He paused, seeming to reconsider. "Well... generally, anyway. At the moment I seem to be a figment of your delirious imagination. You are *incredibly* stoned right now, by the way. Good job on that."

Sherlock was now distinctly nonplussed. He blinked, unsure how to parse the sudden shift from menacing to frivolous.

"I, er... took too much morphine, I think," he found himself muttering, purely from a lack of anything more relevant to say. "Harold didn't warn me about the dose."

"Yes, I know. I was there." Rolling his eyes, the strange being masquerading as an older Sherlock leant back into his seat as if bored. He lightly swivelled the chair side to side as his gaze flicked idly over Sherlock's attire. "You look like a homeless person."

"Well, I'm... fairly sure I am one, so." Sherlock blinked again, then scowled. No, hang on. Still angry. Siger with his face, absolutely unacceptable. But then it was difficult to maintain that sense of outrage whilst he was also very confused. Some sort of movement caught his attention and before he could think further on the matter he glanced around the room instead. Things were changing. The books on the shelf were now about chemistry and forensics instead of warfare, and the coat of arms over the mantelpiece had morphed into a glass-fronted case of pinned bat specimens. The faint whiff of scotch became tea.

Older Sherlock scoffed. "Oh, please. No you aren't. You've an entire *city* to call home. Perhaps you might have have realised that before you left if you'd not been such a pathetic coward."

"Get fucked," Sherlock snapped, shifting his attention back with a savage glare. Call him a fucking *coward*, the bloody-

The other Sherlock just smiled at him like one might a barking puppy. "Eloquent rebuttal."

With what seemed a long-suffering sigh he made the chair swivel sideways once more before bringing it to a stop. Leaning his elbows on the polished mahogany he let his chin rest pillowed atop clasped hands. "Let's have a look at the facts, then, shall we? The primary excuse you gave yourself for leaving home was to evade Mycroft, was it not? Except that reasoning is, of course, completely moronic – it would have been much easier to slip detection by taking a fake name and disappearing into the countryside. International travel was by far the riskiest path you could have chosen. You did it anyway."

"What're you-" Sherlock started, but his counterpart raised a hand for silence.

"We can deduce, therefore, that you're not *actually* trying to get away from Mycroft at all. Nothing you've done so far indicates a desire to even try. I mean for god's sake you've not so much as bothered to forge a new travel visa. How exactly were you planning to leave the country without getting caught on the expired one, hm?"

"I..." Sherlock trailed off, confused by the rapid monologue. "I'll figure something out, I guess. I don't know."

Older Sherlock snorted in derisive amusement. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. No you won't. You're going to let yourself be detained and deported back to the UK, because it'll be the only way to get home without having to admit how much you've missed England." The man leant back in his chair with bored sigh, as if this were all very tedious. He put his legs up on the desktop and folded his hands casually over his stomach. "But then none of that's important, really. The main thing to note is that if your actual goal was to avoid Mycroft you'd have been much more clever about it. Nor is any of this an effort to get away from the drugs, either, because you've mostly been sticking to major cities with well-established distribution rings, and have broken that pattern only to travel to *Florida*, of all places. You are aware proximity to Cuba renders cocaine almost laughably easy to obtain in that region?"

Sherlock didn't respond. Didn't really know *how*, to be honest. Instead he stared at his unwelcome companion, partly annoyed, partly wary. Perhaps a faint twinge of anger left over. Didn't particularly want to know where this whole monologue was headed. Knew he'd not be able to escape hearing the rest of it.

"The most logical conclusion, then," Older Him finished in a grand, decisive tone. "Is that you've been fleeing something else entirely."

Semi-translucent images seemed to flicker to life all around them. A titration setup suddenly covered the desk, flasks of chemicals lined up neatly by a stir plate. A violin was propped up on the mantle. Dead frog pinned to a dissection tray, a stray cat eyeing him for scraps... and there, just behind the chair, stood the faint ghost of a person.

Something very heavy seemed to lodge in Sherlock's chest. He found himself staring wordlessly into warm brown eyes and a smile on a friendly, freckled face.

Older Sherlock's condescending smirk had dropped into a more solemn expression. He allowed his chair to swivel gently side to side as he observed whatever mortifyingly candid emotions must have been warring for control of his younger self's face.

Nearly a full minute passed between them in silence.

Finally he spoke again.

"You've been running from everything that makes you who you are."

That... it wasn't...

Sherlock took a step back, shook his head, grimacing. Tried to ignore the choking near-sob of a noise he'd just made. He *wasn't*... it was... he hadn't... it didn't *matter*... he'd *chosen* to... to...

His older self huffed a quiet breath halfway between amusement and melancholy.

"Nothing ever really changes," he put in after a long pause, perhaps giving Sherlock a chance to regain some composure. "Human nature least of all. You'd do well to accept that sooner rather than later."

Unable to talk for fear of looking like even more of a pathetic child than he already did, Sherlock looked up with a furious, half-desperate glare. Fucking... who was *he* to show up and act like some sort of, the fucking... bastard... damn it he'd almost made the choking noise again. Stop stop *stopstopstop...*

"Oh and, also." Older Sherlock smirked, waved a hand in gesture to the room around them, which was beginning to blur at the edges. "This has all been patently insane. Never combine that much morphine with a fever again."

Sherlock had no way to respond. All he could do was watch as the entire world seemed to fade out to static.

And then he jolted awake. This time on a bed. With a stuccoed white ceiling and the scent of an unfamiliar house.

Instinctively, perhaps trying to escape the lingering wisps of what may have been the strangest, most distressing dream he'd ever had in his life, or perhaps just to help get blood back to his limbs, he made to sit up. Only got most of the way there before he was stopped short by a sharp tug on his right arm. Baffled, he glanced down.

Silver links of a narrow chain had been fastened around his wrist with a small padlock. Some sort of makeshift restraint? Why? Wait, hang on... where the hell was he, even? Hadn't he been...? Ah, damn... the morphine. He must have passed out. In a kidnapper's vehicle. Whilst half-dead of overdose. Brilliant, Sherlock, fantastic survival skills. And then to wake up chained to a *bed*, of all-

But then, no. Surely not. This couldn't be as cartoonishly literal as it seemed. Just a scare tactic, had to be. No one would *actually...*

With a faint sense of dread he yanked the chain taut. It held fast below the bed frame.

He was trapped.

**««**

## Chapter 9

**««**

Sherlock definitely didn't panic. Not at all.

He *may* have spent a minute or so flailing against the chain in a frantic attempt to free himself, feeling a sharp spike of adrenaline slice through the lingering haze of feverish morphine like a hot knife. That might very well have happened. And he *might* have damned near dislocated his own wrist with the sheer force of tugging against the manacle. But one didn't have to call that *panic.* Just… a bit of an overreaction.

Thing was, Sherlock really hadn't ever done well with being restrained. There were many reasons for this, and most all of them had to do with having been held down or locked up or otherwise confined dozens of times over the course of his life by people who invariably proceeded to kick the shit out of him. Maintaining an avenue of escape had thus become something of a psychological necessity. Absolutely *always* needed to know he could get away if he needed to, no capacity to tolerate imprisonment.

And at the moment, he was very much imprisoned. Which was very, *very* much not okay. Not not not *not not NOT* okay at all jesus get it off get it off *getitoff* yes alright he was perhaps panicking quite badly now. If he'd had the ability to bite his own hand off he might very well have done it. He was devolving into the instinct-driven mentality of a fox with its leg in a trap.

At the very least he was still physically exhausted, which limited the amount of damage he was able to do to himself. Within a few minutes he was too tired to really do much of anything beyond curl up on his side and stare balefully at the little padlock keeping him prisoner. Could pick that. Easily. But he'd not been able to find anything of use within reach. Supposed he could attempt to prise loose a length of wire from the box spring, at a stretch, but just the thought of expending that much energy on a plan that might not even work at all was soul-crushing. Couldn't afford to waste the effort. Too drained of motivation to even try.

If one were going with the trapped fox analogy he supposed he must have now transitioned to the phase where the animal goes stock-still and growls at anything coming near. He'd seen this happen several times back home, in the course of the groundskeeper's personal unending war on all carnivorous wildlife. Even tried to free a few of the foxes, on the rare occasion he got a chance to intervene, but of course all that usually got him were painful bites and scratches and a scolding from whichever adult caught him in the act. Always seemed so transcendently cruel, though. Those proud, sleek animals reduced to quivering lumps of fur, hiding their terror behind bared teeth and a snarl. He'd hated seeing the traps out, made a point of disabling any he came across even if he caught hell for it.

And now here he was absolutely vindicated in his childhood actions, because this was awful.

Some indeterminable length of time passed, wherein Sherlock did nothing but glare at the padlock and wallow in his misery. It had come to his attention at some point during all this that he was again shirtless. Which, to be fair, did make sense as his shirt had been rendered filthy by a combination of sweat, humidity, bark, grass, and dirt stains. Probably been taken for washing. Or removed out of convenience, as when he shifted his glare briefly from the padlock to his own body he realised the bandaging around his midsection had been re-wrapped. Less haphazard than before, done in neat overlapping rows.

There was also a new sticking plaster affixed to the underside of his left arm. Being intimately familiar with his own venous configuration he recognised the placement as having most likely been an injection into the cephalic vein. Fabulous. So he'd been drugged again. That meant he had no way whatsoever of knowing how long he'd been out.

As he was contemplating just how willing he'd actually be to dislocate his own thumb in an effort to slip the chain off his hand, he heard the sound of a door opening, and looked up to see a smiling Mrs Hudson bustle into the room with a serving tray.

"Oh! Dear, you're awake! How lovely." She beamed and, setting down her tray on a nearby chest of drawers, walked over to touch the back of her hand briefly to his forehead. Sherlock glared venomously up at her. "Seems that fever's gone down, then. Lucky thing Harold had some medicine on hand for that. Ibuprofen, I think... oh my, is something the matter?"

She appeared to have finally noticed the acid glare fixed on her. Rather than be at all perturbed she simply turned back round to fetch something off her tray, which appeared to hold a teapot, cup, plate with food, a glass of water and what looked like a cold compress.

Sherlock kept silent. Shouldn't have to explain what he was furious about, god's sake. She could see plain as day he'd been chained to the bloody bedframe, surely she'd not failed to notice such an obvious...

"Well, if you're not in the mood to talk that's alright," she said pleasantly. Without asking permission she pressed the cold pack to his stomach, making him jump. "Hold that there, then, else it does no good. Harold says there'll be permanent damage if the swelling's not addressed."

"What does he care?" Sherlock snapped. Forgotten he wasn't going to speak, as always. Why did he ever even bother trying that tactic?

Mrs Hudson seemed mildly affronted. Though of course with her kindly demeanour that translated into nothing more than a disapproving frown.

"Well, now. He is a doctor, you know. Taken an oath and all that."

"He's also *chained me to a bed*," Sherlock growled. He brandished his wrist to punctuate this, displaying both the chain and the somewhat impressive ring of bruising he'd given himself trying to get it off.

Mrs Hudson looked completely unperturbed. "Just a precaution, dear. Nothing to worry about."

"No, I'm fairly sure it's a *lot* to worry about. One doesn't generally find themselves taken hostage by iniquitous elderly people without good cause for worry."

Jarringly, Mrs Hudson just laughed pleasantly. "Hostage? Oh, now, don't be so dramatic! No, no, Frank just wanted to be sure you didn't go wandering about the house off your face on morphine, that's all. I'll admit the chain's a bit much but it's all we really had to-"

Sherlock frowned. "Who's Frank?" he asked, cutting her off.

"Oh, er..." Mrs Hudson looked slightly flustered. She patted down her skirt and made to stand, behaving like she'd just realised she needed to be somewhere. "I'm sorry, dear, I've got to go take care of a little something. Just remembered. There's supper on the tray, there, though. Help yourself!"

And with that she hurried off.

Sherlock glared, confused. Wait, so did that mean there was another player to the whole mess? Some man he'd not met yet? But one who evidently saw enough value in his (relative) safety to allow Harold to continue to treat him. Was this the new bloke's house, then, maybe? Ah, but no, hadn't Harold said... or perhaps he'd *not* said he owned it, just that they were going there... bloody hell this was bewildering. Ugh, forget it, just don't bother. Didn't matter anyway unless it helped him escape. And, speaking of, food actually sounded like a fantastic idea. Regain some strength, stop feeling so muzzy-headed.

Ah, but... alright, then. Looking for the tray, he realised Mrs Hudson had left it on a chest of drawers over by the door, which was a good two or three metres away. His tethered range was perhaps a foot and a half. The woman had *(inadvertently, one hoped)* left him to starve with a meal just out of reach.

Rather than waste energy having any strong opinion on this state of affairs Sherlock simply huffed a small, irritable sigh. Well, whatever, that was fine. Not like he wasn't used to the world finding new and inventive ways to torment him. He returned instead to the business of figuring a way to get free and resolved to put the thought of sustenance out of his mind.

Unfortunately the brief expectation of food seemed to have reminded his body he was (at this point in time likely quite literally) starving, which combined with a distinct lack of appetite-suppressing chemicals in his system meant he now had to contend with the utterly foreign sensation of being hungry.

And that just wasn't fair in the slightest – he could deal with pain or illness or exhaustion or fear, that was all fine. He'd spent the vast majority of his life existing in one or more of those states on a daily basis. *Hunger*, though, he rarely had to bother with. Even back before he'd started smoking cigarettes his instinct to consume food just hadn't ever been very strong. Possibly a trait borne of the combination of his being eminently distractible (to the point of often literally forgetting that eating was necessary) and of the off-putting nature of most edible substances he encountered. Everything always tasted horrible to him, or the texture was intolerable, or it was the wrong temperature, or he'd start contemplating the manufacturing process and thereby disgust himself to the point of being ill. Finding a dish he could eat without having to force himself was a frustrating and often futile endeavour.

Now, though, Sherlock was feeling something akin to what he supposed Mycroft might feel all the time, namely the instinctual drive to find and consume nutrients at all costs, taste or texture be damned. An extremely unpleasant sensation. Not painful in the way that a wound was but intolerable all the same. Especially for someone with so little practise ignoring it. Frowning, he considered making an attempt to stand. Would he even be able to, with the negligible length of his tether? Possibly. But then again quite possibly not. And even if he could, would he be able to reach far enough to grab the tray, with his physical health in such a state? Ugh... maybe. At a long shot.

But, then, that plan carried with it the same defeating sense of pointlessness that the whole 'prising a spring from the mattress' idea had, namely that he didn't want to waste the energy on something with there being even a slight chance of it not working out. This lack of motivation left him with very few options to try. No solid, workable plan beyond lying around in wretched helplessness.

After a brief minute or so spent wallowing in a cloud of self-pity Sherlock finally hit upon something resembling a clever idea, and busied himself for a bit tearing off a few strips of the bandage around his midsection. Winding them together for strength, he'd soon fashioned a passable little rope. This he then threaded through a link of chain and used as leverage to prise the thing apart. Just a tiny gap would do – enough to slip the next link. Easy... right? Theoretically, anyway. *Oh please just work, for god's sake.*

It was difficult, but he thought he might be making progress. And even if not he at least wasn't thinking about food. Small enough mercies.

A shuffling noise from somewhere above him caught his attention, and Sherlock looked up from his (likely pointless) efforts to see a fine dusting of plaster drifting down from the ceiling near what looked like a door for attic access. Seconds later a face appeared in the gap between the panel and the ceiling. Freckles were the first thing that stood out in Sherlock's view, and for a heart-stopping minute he thought he'd dropped back into some sort of fever dream. Hallucinating *him* in the bloody *ceiling*? Oh christ he'd done it, he'd gone and lost his damned mind...

With a stab of emotion that was one part relief and one part sheer confusion, though, his brain finally deigned to register the rest of the facial features. Red hair and green eyes and skin far too pale. Not him at all. No one Sherlock had ever met in his life, in fact. Which was a bit of a hollow comfort as it now meant there was a strange ginger man watching him from the ceiling.

Their eyes had locked, and the other's expression mirrored what Sherlock figured must have been on his own face, which was a look of nonplussed bewilderment. Then the boy frowned, however, and disappeared. A few thumping noises later he'd dropped down to the floor off some sort of folding ladder.

"God damn, seriously? He's taking hostages now?" American accent, young, perhaps Sherlock's age. And... he looked strangely familiar. Sherlock furrowed his brows, trying to place where he knew the facial features from, and responded on autopilot.

"... do I know you?" Possibly an odd question to receive from someone chained to a bed looking beaten and half-dead, but it was at point the most pressing matter in Sherlock's brain, and with his usual lack of a speech filter this translated into the first thing out of his mouth.

The other boy gave him a bemused tilt of his head. "Um... pretty sure no? I mean I guess we could have met somewhere before but I don't-" He cut himself off, looking slightly frustrated, and huffed an impatient sigh. "Okay no wait, that's not important. Did you get, like, kidnapped? Is someone gonna come looking for you?"

"Someone's *been* looking for me for quite a while, but he won't be coming here any time soon." It was a bit awkward to be speaking to someone looming over you like some sort of overdramatic half-lit movie scene, but Sherlock couldn't exactly stand up or anything. He settled for shoving his upper body upright, at least, sitting criss-cross with his back against the headboard, and tried to look like he was doing so by choice and not because he was currently chained to a post like a dog.

Meanwhile, his erstwhile companion's face had gone a bit alarmed. "Whoa, hey- is that your normal accent or are you, like, concussed?"

Sherlock shot him a withering glare. "I don't know, is that *your* normal accent or are you trying to sound like a moron?"

The other boy's expression was oddly difficult to parse. Some mix of confusion and wariness and in large part disbelief.

"How the hell did my uncle manage to kidnap a British guy?"

"Your uncle?" Sherlock repeated, and upon doing so the pieces of the puzzle clicked suddenly into place. Oh bloody hell so *that* was where he remembered his face from. "Oh! You're Joshua!" He exclaimed with the usual burst of excitement for having figured something out. And then immediately became confused, because... "Wait, you're dead. Harold killed you."

"Uh, did he? Wow, um... okay, cool. Spooky ghost, I guess." Josh blinked, then half-glared at him. "How do you know who I am?"

Sherlock glared slightly in return but answered anyway. "Mrs Hudson let me stay in your room for a night in Tallahassee. Hayley was quite enamoured with you, as well, so I got an earful of that."

"You know Hayley?" Joshua seemed genuinely surprised, then a bit regretful. "Aw, geez, is she okay?"

"She's worried that you hate her or something because you'd moved to Mississippi without a proper goodbye. Otherwise fine, I suppose." Sherlock waved a hand dismissively. For want of anything else to do with himself he returned attention to trying to prise the chain apart, because if he was going to sit here talking he may as well also be doing something useful. Or at least something that *felt* useful.

"Mississi...? Um... you mean Michigan? Cause I was supposed to be going there for college."

"Yeah, that one. Same thing," Sherlock snapped impatiently. Ugh, the bloody weld on this chain was some sort of diamond-strength armour job.

"That's... they're not, at all." Josh seemed to shake himself, and quirked a quizzical look down at Sherlock. He seemed to have finally taken real notice of the chain. "What kinda lock is that?"

"A regular Master pin-tumbler. Find me a sturdy length of wire and I can-"

Sherlock cut off as Josh dug into his jeans pocket and produced a worn, but serviceable, tension wrench, along with a half-diamond pick.

"Okay so if I bust you outta that thing you're not gonna, like, attack me or anything, right?"

"On my honour as an Englishman." Too impatient to even be intrigued by Josh's apparent knowledge of less-than-reputable skills, Sherlock brandished his wrist. For god's sake get the bloody thing *off* already, he'd about lost all feeling in his hand.

Josh proved to be a passably competent lockpick, though of course on so simple a lock it would have been difficult not to be, and within a few seconds the bolt popped free. Sherlock wasted no time getting the thing the hell off and away from him, then scooted off the bed and several feet further besides, as if the lock could somehow re-trap him if he stayed near it. He rubbed gingerly at his now-throbbing wrist and fixed the chain with a feral glare.

Josh watched this in some bemusement, then tilted his head towards the door for a moment. "So... my aunty's around, right? Thought I heard her talking in this room."

At the mention of Mrs Hudson Sherlock recalled what she'd been in here for, namely feeding him, and took advantage of his newfound freedom by retrieving the sandwich off the woman's abandoned serving tray. Didn't even care what kind of meat it was, just that it was food... although, then, upon biting into it he realised it was tuna, the taste and smell of which he'd always found nauseating, so that made for a rather torn opinion on the matter.

Swallowing *(with a grimace – ugh, revolting)* so as not to be talking with his mouth full, Sherlock leant his back on the chest to face his current companion and waved a hand in vague confirmation. "Yes, she's here. Left the room about..." He trailed off as he realised he'd somehow blanked out the entirety of his interaction with the woman. All he could conclusively remember was that he'd spoken to her, but not what about nor how long ago. The fine details had been reduced to static. "... oh... I guess... I don't know. I've deleted it."

"Deleted what?" Josh asked, confused. Sherlock took another bite of his unappetizing yet wholly irresistible sandwich and shrugged with a slight wince of what may have been self-recrimination. Should have been used to his brain doing this to him by now, really, but it still made him feel like a feeble-minded moron every time it happened.

"Er... when she was here last. I've forgotten what happened," he admitted, then glanced around the room, quickly scanning for clues. At the very least he was lucky to be clever enough to compensate for any gaps in his memory by deducing missing information. Small blessings. Ah, there, the cold pack – not quite all the way melted. Factor in his body heat, how long ice should usually take to melt, and... "She must have been here around twenty minutes ago. Left suddenly, judging by this tray being over here rather than beside the bed, so either I said something rude or she had something important to attend to. Possibly both. I'd guess she'll be back within half an hour to replace the cold pack."

"Should I ask why you forgot a thing that happened twenty minutes ago?" Josh looked slightly concerned, like he thought perhaps Sherlock might have suffered a concussion or other mental trauma. Sherlock just glared at his sandwich and forced himself to eat more of it before answering with a question of his own.

"I'm going to assume by your lack of concern for keeping a lookout that Harold's left the premises?"

Josh tilted his head a bit, plainly still suspicious of some sort of brain injury, but nodded. "Wouldn't've come out if he wasn't gone. Can't let him know I'm here. And I mean I guess he killed me or whatever, according to you, so that'd be a double-bad idea." A thought suddenly seemed to occur to him. "Hey... you know I don't actually know who the hell you are."

"Join the club," Sherlock replied cynically. No need to go introducing himself to even more people who might seize upon his name as blackmail material. Plus it wasn't as if anyone was going to need to be able to refer to him by name much longer anyway – he'd finished eating *(in record time, having wanted the abhorrent fish-taste part over and done with as soon as possible)* and now had no other goal besides escape. Get away from all this nonsense and stay the hell out of the American South all the rest of his days.

Of course, on second thought... leaving meant he'd never know what in blazes was going on here. Who exactly Harold was and why Mexicans wanted to blow up his house and why Joshua was hiding in the attic of his relatives' summer home instead of being either dead or in Montana. He glanced over at Josh and eyed him critically. How much information would the boy have, then? And would asking him get Sherlock anywhere or would he just have to suck up his curiosity and leave without answers? Could... could he even *physically* do that? Well yes, clearly... could just leave. Didn't have a compulsion to solve any puzzle he happened to stumble upon, that would be absurd.

And yet... "How much do you know?"

"What, in general?" Josh stepped over to the bed Sherlock had been trapped on, picking up a bundle that turned out to be Sherlock's identifying paperwork. (Sans authentic driving license, one assumed.) He flipped through Sherlock's fake passport and answered his question with clear sarcasm. "I dunno, about the same as anyone with a public education, I guess. Kinda wonder about the American school system sometimes, though, so..."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Yes, very clever." Josh smirked blandly at him, so Sherlock tried again. More direct this time. "Why do a load of Mexicans want your aunt and uncle dead?"

There was a bit of a spark of intrigue in Josh's eye as he looked back up, an odd half-smile making it clear he was quite further embroiled in this than he might have let on with his facetious attitude. He opened Sherlock's passport to the visa stamps and held it up slightly for inspection.

"Why've you been to so many different countries in the past three months?"

"I love to travel," Sherlock retorted in a tone of withering scorn. Josh seemed to get the hint – namely that the topic was not, and would never be, any of his business – and closed Sherlock's passport to instead study the gold relief on the front. He then huffed a slight sigh and tapped the little booklet against his hand a few times in thought.

"Okay, hey, look – I dunno who you are, or what you're doing here, or what my uncle's thinking keeping you all prisoner or whatever. For all I know you might be the enemy. So if you want my trust you're gonna have to do something to earn it first, right? Then I might tell you stuff."

"And how do you propose I earn said trust?" Sherlock hedged. Josh smiled at him.

"Wanna help me find a computer?"

Sherlock blinked. That was... an odd request. Also one he had no way of fulfilling. "I have no idea where one might be."

"Neither do I, that's the problem. I have some shit I need to look up, but..." He stopped, hummed a thoughtful noise to himself, and gestured to Sherlock's arm by nodding his chin that direction. "Look, not for nothing, but I'm pretty sure you're some kinda low-life junkie."

"Thank you for the assessment," Sherlock replied drily. Josh just shrugged.

"Hey, that's a compliment right now. I mean if I'm looking for someone to help me break into a house I'm not gonna go for the preppy asshole with a popped collar, am I? I'd want someone who looks like you – someone who obviously knows what he's doing."

"You're assuming I'm some sort of career criminal based solely on the fact that I've got track marks," Sherlock snapped, justifiably offended. That was just bloody *profiling*, christ.

"Am I wrong?" Josh asked blandly.

After a long, pregnant pause Sherlock was forced to grit his teeth and bite out an annoyed sigh.

"I'll need to find a shirt first before I do anything," he grumbled. Josh made a small *pfft* noise that was half amusement, half incredulity, and quickly undid the scant two or three buttons done up on the light overshirt he was wearing. He had a t-shirt with some band logo on underneath, in roughly the same blue-and-white colour scheme as the plaid buttonup he now tossed in Sherlock's direction.

"Back door's right out down the hall there, let me make sure Aunty's not headed this way first. Don't wanna freak her out."

Josh walked over and carefully opened the door, evidently knowing how to do so near-silently, and peeked out into the hall. Sherlock took the opportunity to button up his newly-acquired shirt and collect his passport plus other belongings. His cigarettes and lighter were among these, and he breathed a short huff of relief for that. Second they got outside he was going to chain-smoke the whole rest of the bloody pack.

"Coast's clear," Josh announced quietly. He smirked back at Sherlock. "Keep it silent, right? Just a couple'a spooky ghosts."

"You're the ghost, not me," Sherlock grumbled. Wasn't the one meant to have been murdered, here.

But Josh just made a short noise of amusement. "Yeah? You sure about that?"

Without waiting for an answer Josh slipped out into the hall, jogged a short distance to a door at the end, staying well clear of the decorative shelves or photos on the walls. And behind him Sherlock frowned, because it struck him that in truth he wasn't sure about that at all.

How would he know, really, if he were dead? What if he only *thought* his brother had saved him that day, chosen his life over Siger's, because it was the less painful scenario? Perhaps Mycroft had in reality done the sensible thing and shot Sherlock square between the eyes? Everything since then had felt so static and disjointed, after all. He'd thought that a symptom of the cocaine withdrawal, stress... but what if instead his entire current existence was just a series of synaptic misfirings as his brain tried in vain to repair its obliterated neural pathways? Shutting down around the violent destruction of a bullet? It would all make an alarming amount of sense...

This sudden new theory was disturbing enough to have wrenched his attention entirely away from the situation at hand, which as usual he only discovered upon blinking. He realised he'd stopped dead in the middle of the hall like an idiot. Josh was hissing at him to hurry up from the screen door ahead. Behind them the hall had begun to echo with the sound of footsteps.

Sherlock bolted a second too late.

**««**

## Chapter 10

**««**

*"Hey!"*

A man’s voice down the end of the hall.

Sherlock stumbled a bit, caught himself, carried on with a decidedly undignified scramble for the screen door, which had just snapped shut in his face as Joshua had apparently chosen not to wait for his erstwhile partner-in-crime to stop standing around like a moron. Fair. Aggravating, but fair.

Just as he’d grasped the door handle, however, he was stopped short by the sound of a woman’s startled shriek. Then the man growling, gravelly, in a voice Sherlock belatedly realized he knew already,

"Turn around right now, or she’s dead."

*"Frank!* Oh for god’s-!"

"Quiet, Martha."

Sherlock reluctantly paused in opening the door, turned his head to look back over his shoulder. Behind him Harold *(Frank…?)* stood in the middle of the hall holding his wife by the upper arm, handgun pointed directly at her temple.

Sherlock blinked, then glared in a mixture of surprise and angry disbelief. Really? What a stupid bluff, for god's sake. What did he look like, an amateur? Well… probably, at this point. He'd fucked up rather a lot over the past few days. But still.

"Oh fuck off," he snapped after a brief pause. "You’re not going to shoot her."

Harold smirked. Sherlock frowned, confused. He was struck with the distinct impression that he’d just made a grave error in judgement, but couldn't immediately see what it was. Brain was running on fumes, lacking the sharp clarity of his usual inference speed.

"Never," the man said with a smile, which briefly cracked into a tiny wince for the way the action caused a large, dark bruise on his face to shift. He released Mrs Hudson, who looked a tad offended but no worse for wear, and in the same motion shifted his firearm to aim down the hall instead. "But I’d sure as hell shoot *you,* kid."

Ah... and that would be the error made, then. Sherlock had stopped exactly where he’d needed to be to line up a straight shot for his ribcage. Oops.

He stared at the gun barrel for a long few seconds, trying to decide if he really thought he was about to die here.

Seemed like… probably not? Harold hadn’t killed him yet despite ample opportunity, after all. Had in fact taken rather distinct pains to keep him alive. Bandaged him up and treated him for infection. Wouldn't make sense to undo all that work just to stop Sherlock escaping. Waste of good leverage, if nothing else.

"You're bluffing," he asserted. Took a cautious step backwards towards the night air outside. No shift of the trigger finger. Good.

True to prediction, Harold didn't react to Sherlock's movement beyond gritting his teeth in frustration. Finally the man lowered the gun. His free hand crept towards his midsection as if cradling an injury there, and all at once Sherlock's brain caught up with his eyes. Injured? When did that happen? Had those bruises been there when Harold had him in the truck earlier? Didn't think so. Bruises looked a day or so old, too, so - wait, how long had Sherlock been unconscious? Christ, he had no idea. Hopefully not *days.*

Sherlock realized, with an enormous delay which seemed to be becoming the norm for him in this surreal hellscape of a week, that he'd stopped dead in his tracks staring at nothing important again. Fuck's sake. Survival skills of a gnat.

"Fine, you clever little shit. Run off into the woods, then," Harold snapped, breaking into Sherlock's tired self-recrimination. "Don't forget we still have your ID, though. And I know *exactly* who you're related to."

A thrum of alarm shot through him - ah, hell, had the man run a search already? Had Mycroft been alerted to his location? How long ago? Fuck, he was going to have to keep watch for British Secret Service agents on top of cops and Harold-Frank and whatever other fucking- ugh, this *bloody* week, for fuck's-

He internally cut himself off and did his level best to deliver an imperious, "Oh, and who might that be?"

Felt patently ridiculous, given the circumstances, but old habits died hard. Obligated to save face to the bitter end.

Harold graced him with a dark smirk, and then dropped an ominous, carefully-enunciated name…

"Violet Cauchois."

Sherlock's brain stuttered to a halt. His haughty stare dropped immediately into a perplexed blink - first because Harold had actually pronounced his mother's maiden name correctly, which was bizarre to hear in the man's broad midwestern American accent, and second because... *what?* His mum? What in hell did his *mum* have to do with anything?

"What in hell has my mum got to do with anything?" he asked blankly, because his brain-to-speech filter had shut itself down some dozen crises ago.

Harold seemed to have been expecting a very different reaction. His menacing expression dropped into confusion in much the same way Sherlock's had.

"What do you mean what's she-" he snapped, tone an odd mixture of baffled and angry. "The Kestrel? Heroin?"

Sherlock could offer nothing beyond an utterly bewildered stare.

Mercifully their little standoff was interrupted at that moment by a cacophony of what sounded for all the world like gunshots. With a sensation like cracking ice Sherlock felt his brain kick to life with the sudden spike of adrenaline. Barely paid any mind to the sight of Harold and his wife startling and turning around to look behind them down the hall; didn't matter what they were up to, who they knew or thought they knew, whatever the hell was going on here - fuck all of that nonsense, he'd dawdled plenty long enough. Time to get the hell out of this stupid bungalow and back to the business of leaving Florida behind forever.

He finally bolted out the door after Joshua.

The air outside was disgustingly warm and full of bugs, which in his current state was very nearly enough to turn him right back round into the shelter of air conditioning. Powered through it, of course. This was fine. Nowhere near the sweltering sauna of daylight hours. He'd manage. Just run, keep running. Don't stop until the treeline at minimum. Had to hit cover before Harold came back out with the gun.

Halfway through the back lawn he was startled into nearly overbalancing by the sight of Josh appearing from around the back of a shed nearby, waving frantically to get his attention. Sherlock thankfully clocked him in time to change course mid-stride, skidding slightly on damp grass in his trainers. Managed to hit the shed corner and swing round it to thud against the back wall next to Josh just as the screen door of the house slammed open.

Sounds of Harold telling his wife not to bother doing something or other - couldn't catch enough to process language. Too busy trying desperately to get enough air into a torso still rendered mostly immobile by a tight compression bandage round what had by now doubtless worsened into something like a torn abdominal muscle. Fantastic. Spared death by bullet only to die anyway of suffocation or internal bleeding. That would be just his luck, wouldn't it?

He was dimly aware of Josh craning his head around the corner to check something or other, but paid it very little mind. Instead he let himself slowly slide down the shed wall until he'd landed on his rump in the damp grass below, trying to negotiate a war between his body's need for oxygen and his diaphragm's objections to moving. Trick of it was to check out, he thought. Like he'd done as a child. Pretend he wasn't here and let the meat-husk sort itself out.

Tried to retreat to the landscape in his head, but it was fuzzy. Couldn't get a bead on anything, every image kept distorting and falling apart with every whipfire stab of pain from his gut. Fuck, this wasn't working at all…

"What the fuck, dude?"   
  
Sherlock jumped, then grimaced for the stab of pain. Squinted up at Josh with what he hoped was a sardonically apologetic look instead of the more probable appearance of an idiot falling to pieces on the ground.

"Sorry," he mumbled, dropping his head back down. Too much bother to look upwards. In lieu of trying to explain himself (what was there to explain, anyway, beyond his being a distractible moron who'd frozen like a spooked hare) he simply rested his forehead on his knees and focussed on pulmonary concerns. In, out, in, out.

Josh paused a moment, perhaps considering the pathetic state of the sod he'd made the mistake of rescuing from captivity. Sherlock heard the man breathe a tiny, exasperated sigh, and then respond with a tired,

"Yeah, well you're lucky I still had those firecrackers."

Sherlock had no answer to that readily available and absolutely lacked the air to deliver it even if he had, so he remained silent aside from the continual agonising labour of trying to breathe. All around them the unfamiliar ambiance of an unfamiliar ecosystem hummed like a menacing conceptual aura. Hated it. Hated Florida. Missed home. Longed for the banal predictability of London. The coolness of an ocean fog. The lack of swarming bugs. God, but he'd give anything for fewer bloody *bugs.* Must have inhaled a dozen tiny midges and things in the past few minutes alone.

His meandering insect-based thoughts were interrupted, yet again, by Josh.

"... okay, dude, get up. We can't hide behind the shed all night."

"I like the shed, we should stay behind the shed," Sherlock mumbled into his knees.

Knew that sounded pathetic, but he was a bit beyond giving a damn. Running had exhausted the sliver of strength gained by his morphine-induced nap and moving now seemed outright impossible. He'd die here and be happy for it.

Josh made an irritated noise, and to Sherlock's great displeasure bent down, grabbed him by the bicep, and hefted him up to his feet.

Pain. Quite a lot of it, all concentrated to a stabbing spike through his abdomen. Knees immediately gave out, followed by the rest of him as a hollow ringing in his ears kicked up and his vision greyed out. Dimly heard Josh bite out a small curse, felt the man shift his grip to hold Sherlock upright by both arms. Wasn't entirely sure if he was still conscious - probably? If he could think about whether he was or not? Oh, and he was aware of having listed forward into Josh's shoulder, and then aware of the other man shoving him backwards to brace against the shed, and… yes, alright, he was still cognizant. Barely.

"You good, dude?" Josh asked in a tight, somewhat irritated-sounding tone.  
  
Sherlock squinted one eye open, found vision tolerable, and then opened both eyes and shook his head groggily. No. Not good. Terrible, actually.

Josh looked away for a moment - towards some noise Sherlock had missed. The man seemed to chew at the inside of his cheek in thought, then moved. Shifted one of Sherlock's arms over his shoulder and proceeded to half-drag him towards the woods just behind the shed.

Venturing into some muggy Florida jungle in the middle of the night with a strange man who'd popped out of his captors' ceiling felt like one of the stupider things Sherlock had done in his life, but disabled as he was there was hardly any choice to be made about it. Either he walked along with Josh through the undergrowth or he passed out in the American swamp-wilderness and got himself eaten by some horrific megafauna. Option one involved fewer alligators. Hopefully.

Josh shifted under Sherlock’s not-quite-dead weight, fished around in a pocket, and came up with a small torch. He held it low, the beam slicing forward just enough to reveal a narrow strip of dirt threading into what looked to be less 'woods' and more… foliage. Aggressive foliage. Plants that looked like they belonged in a prehistoric diorama or a child’s drawing of a jungle. Nothing familiar. Nothing polite. Just a dense, humid wall of green things bristling with shapes his elite British education afforded no vocabulary for. Some leaves were huge and fan-like, others spiky in a way that felt personally threatening, and tangled vines lay over the lot of it like a nest of coiled vipers.

The path, if it could be called as much, looked uneven - the kind of root-twisted surface purpose-built to roll an ankle, and somewhere off to their right he heard something wet gurgle ominously.

*We cannot possibly be about to trek through-* he thought, and then stopped thinking because a wet leaf slapped him in the face as Josh pushed them forward straight into the undergrowth. Didn't even pause for Sherlock's disgruntled noise, which was quite rude.

Still, the man was being… kind enough, in a manner of speaking, to keep Sherlock from faceplanting into the mud for the second time that week. So he begrudgingly adjusted, did as much as he could to support his own weight, and allowed this strange ginger man to drag him into a foreign, hostile jungle which he fervently told himself was not full of large predatory reptiles.

Finally, after what felt like a small and nauseatingly damp eternity, they reached what seemed to be their destination, though there was nothing immediately visible to explain why Josh had pulled up short next to some stout, vaguely tree-like plant with wildly oversized leaves. Sherlock had so far seen no alligators, but there had been a snake or two slithering away through the foliage, and he was distinctly unhappy about how close he'd come to making an undignified squeak of fear over each one. They'd just *startled* him, alright, that was all- wasn't scared of- look, he just wasn't *used* to snakes, hadn't anything but tiny garters back home, not his fault this place was a bloody nightmare of-

His internal rambling was cut short by Josh letting go of his midsection, by which he'd been supporting Sherlock's weight all this time. Sherlock managed to keep his own balance, thankfully. Watched as Josh pushed one of the enormous leaves aside, revealing some manner of man-made cave behind, ducked inside, and then reappeared beckoning for Sherlock to follow. Gingerly, he did so.

Sherlock realised as he stepped over a partially-buried steel frame that what had seemed to be a cave was actually the back compartment of an ancient, rusted-out van. It had been consumed by vegetation so as to be fully concealed from above, and someone (presumably Josh himself) had converted the space into a makeshift hideout. A faded beach umbrella stripped of its frame was spread out on the floor like carpeting, fine mesh netting hung in gaps where doors and windows had once been, keeping out the bugs. Several plastic bags piled into a corner seemed to contain things like a sleeping bag and cookware, and a string of fairy lights had been affixed to the ceiling for illumination.

As they made their way inside Josh flipped the switch on a large battery which powered the fairy lights, bathing the space in a weak ethereal glow. A small fan mounted near the front windows also kicked on to provide airflow, which was an unexpected godsend. Sherlock hadn't remotely got used to the stifling, cloying feeling of humid air filling his lungs with every laboured breath.

"Welcome to Fort Hudson, I guess," Josh announced tiredly. "Used to hang out here a lot. Makes for a pretty good bolt hole when the house isn't safe."

Sherlock didn't bother trying to come up with a reply. Hiking through a swamp draped halfway over a stranger had been odyssey enough, not to mention having a gun pointed at him (again), and all of this laid atop the vague, lingering memory of that bloody morphine-induced fever dream, which he hadn't remotely had a chance to process yet. Not that he especially wanted to try, considering the turn it had taken, with his older self conjuring that stupid ghostly image of… ugh. Why the fuck was he thinking about this!?

Josh glanced back at him, probably watching Sherlock's wavering stance to see if he looked liable to collapse again. Didn't think so. Maybe. Unsure. Watched Josh's freckled cheeks in the weak light morph into a face he very much did not want to risk thinking about at the moment and decided yeah no he should probably sit down.

He lowered himself down into a slouching heap against the furthest wall, and in an effort to avoid the sight of freckled cheeks in too little illumination to stop them morphing into imagery he couldn't afford to dwell on right now, closed his eyes. He must have seemed as if he were meaning to fall asleep, because Josh made a disgruntled sound and gave him a rough shake by the shoulder.

Pain, yet again. And a flash of sick nausea. Snapped his eyes open to fix Josh with an acid glare, and at the same time, mortifyingly, let out a pathetic half-whingeing growl of a noise. Not so much for the severity of the pain (which seemed to have lessened somewhat compared to what he recalled from… what, yesterday? this morning?) but for the sudden mental cascade of a thousand fragmented images of a different freckled face with a different stupid accent. Imagery from the dream overlaying the present overlaying memories which really needed to stay buried right now, thanks. Absolutely not the time for this shit.

"Oh, shit, sorry. I forgot you're all messed up," Josh said, drawing his hand back as if burnt. He gave Sherlock a quick, vaguely concerned once-over with his eyes, then seemed to shake himself and put on a more stern expression. "But, hey, this ain't nap time though, okay? We're just laying low until the heat's off a bit. Don't fall asleep."

Sherlock closed his eyes again and briefly dug the heels of his palms into them in an effort to stop the torrent of memories. Didn't help, just made his face hurt. Shifted his hands to tangle in his hair instead, then miserably curled up into a ball. That helped a bit. Made his stomach feel less like a throbbing pit of pressure and hot fire.

"Not sleeping," he growled into the little cocoon he'd made for himself.

"Right, sure, of course not. You just happen to look exactly like a guy getting ready to keel over and pass out."

Josh shoved him again, a bit more roughly this time. Too much, all of a sudden. The contact and the aching pain and the humidity and the sweat and the *stupid bloody freckles* and- fuck. Piss off! Who the fuck was this bloke anyway to be bloody *manhandling* him like this!? Lifted his head and abruptly snarled at the man to get him to back off. Full force of every scrap of danger he'd ever picked up from his father, projecting as threatening an aura as he could manage - *I'll fucking kill you if you touch me one more bloody time for fuck's sake, try me you bastard, fuck off.*

Josh did not, in fact, fuck off.

Instead he failed to react at all. Just watched Sherlock's little display of aggression with a bland, unimpressed stare.

An awkward silence stretched between them.

"My guy if you wanna fight me that's your prerogative, I guess, but I gotta warn you I would fuck you up," Josh finally informed him. By his tone this clearly wasn't meant as a threat, just a flat statement of fact.

Sherlock let the chill bleed out of his expression and blinked quizzically at the man. Didn't think he'd ever tried that trick and had it fail before. Usually people at least faltered. Was he really that badly off? Or was Josh just… not susceptible?

"Real mean mug, though, I'll give you that," Josh added with an offhand shrug.

Moving away, he shifted one of the plastic bags out from the pile in the corner and flopped down on it like a beanbag chair. The two of them regarded each other curiously - Sherlock in an effort to figure out what the hell made this random American so unmoved by his best imitation of a violent psychopath, and Josh for his own inscrutable reasons. At the very least, Sherlock found himself musing, the man's unruffled reaction in the face of impending violence had thoroughly dashed any associations between him and Eric, enough to where the intrusive memories had ebbed back into tolerable background noise. Small mercies.

After a few moments' scrutiny Josh finally huffed a tired sigh to himself and let his head loll back into the bags behind him.

"Alright, look," he grumbled towards the ceiling in a voice drained of the slightly-forced levity Sherlock had begun to expect of him. "I don't know what's going on with you, like, at all. And honestly I wouldn't even give a shit except for Frank went to all the trouble of bringing you here like he thinks you're important, and I want to know exactly why that is before I decide what to do here." He lifted his head again and fixed Sherlock with a hard stare. "So, here's the deal - tell me who the fuck you're actually working with, what Frank wants with you, and what you're trying to accomplish. And then if your goals don't run completely counter to mine I promise I'll do my best to help you out."

Under normal circumstances Sherlock's brain would have jumped down about a hundred separate paths of rabbit-warren crosslinking intrigue at once, unpacking every nuance of that statement.

At the moment, however… well, between failing to fully process the words and deleting what little he did catch he somehow only managed to retain next to nothing. Could only stare blankly at Josh and voice the single idiot detail he'd managed to catch hold of.

"... who's Frank?"

Josh's stare morphed into a look somewhere between baffled and intensely frustrated. "Who's *Frank?* The guy who almost just fucking shot you!"

Sherlock matched Josh's frustrated glare with one of his own. "You mean Harold?"

"What? No, dude. Frank. Harold left. Pretty sure I told you that, like, less than an hour ago."

A pregnant pause passed, during which Sherlock felt very lost, then slowly caught on as his waterlogged brain meandered round to connecting the dots, and then found himself even *more* lost because the answer he'd come to was fucking stupid.

"Your uncle has a twin brother," he concluded, finding himself offended by the very notion.

"Both my uncles have a twin brother, yes," Josh confirmed, dry as paper. "They also have completely different facial hair right now and one is beat to hell, so I gotta admit I'm not totally sure how you thought they were the same person."

"Oh fuck off," Sherlock snapped, not at all in the mood to be criticised at the moment even if he objectively deserved it. "I'll not be belittled over failing to notice if a man pointing a gun at me had a beard or not."

Josh held his hands up in an exasperated, placating gesture.

"Okay, okay, fine. Doesn't matter anyway. You good with that deal, then?"

Sherlock huffed a sigh and shifted himself to be leaning back against the van wall with his eyes closed. "What deal?"

"The deal I just - holy shit, dude, how do you keep forgetting stuff that just happened?" Josh's voice was an outraged mix of aggravated and concerned. "Did you get hit in the head or something?"

Sherlock huffed a tiny, dispirited sigh. Hadn't been hit in the head - not hard enough to concuss him, anyway. Just the abdominal contusion and a bruised jaw, and the lingering pain of having bitten his tongue at some point.

Despite the general floaty confusion of his mental space at the moment he could nonetheless track the shape of what Josh was no doubt reacting to. Sherlock kept forgetting things he'd just heard, obviously. No working memory. Distractible. Spending far too long in his head between sentences, thoughts skittering around and through and on top and below each other. No internal landscape to speak of.

He knew this state. Intimately well. Wasn't brain injury, unfortunately. Something much worse.

"No. I just… haven't had any stimulants in a while. Keep getting stuck in spiderweb thoughts. Sorry," he grumbled. Hated to admit that, both to himself and this bloke he'd just met an hour ago. Wouldn't do either of them any good to let Josh think he'd some sort of neurological crisis brewing, though. God forbid the man decide to ring an ambulance on suspicion of a brain bleed.

"What the hell are 'spiderweb thoughts'?" Josh asked, looking as if that explanation had only served to further spike suspicion that the man in front of him might be dying of a stroke.

Sherlock grit his teeth, let his head tap against the rusted wall behind him for a moment, then with deep reluctance clarified with, "Being this forgetful and distractible isn't… it's not… abnormal, for me." Saying that out loud felt like knives to the chest. Or perhaps he'd just moved wrong again. Kept going because he still had to explain the main issue. "When I haven't got any stimulants or adrenaline to run off of I'm just… like this, I guess. Default state."

Josh gave him a confused, dubious look. One raised brow and a hint of doubt. "Okay. And… what are you like with stimulants, then?"

"Ah… not this," Sherlock replied. Tacked on a silly little helpless shrug and hoped it did the job of making him look less pathetic than he felt. "Or not as bad, anyway. I should get a bit less insufferable as soon as I find a chance to have a smoke, that'll clear up the worst of it."

"Oh. Well you can light up in here if you've got em, dude, I don't care. Fan pulls it all out anyway." Josh hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the little whirring fan in the van's smashed-out front window. He paused, expression shifting as if remembering something, then turned to dig around in one of the bags beside him. "Oh, hey, wait, did Penny leave her-? Hang on, probably in one of these…"

With a flourish he pulled out a small, thin container. Shook it a bit to hear the contents rattle and grinned as he flicked it Sherlock's way.

"Knew she left a box of these damn things in here!"

Sherlock picked up the packet from where it'd bounced off his side and tilted it towards the weak light to read the label - generic nicotine patches. Despite everything he felt himself quirking a tiny, bemused smile. Wouldn't help much given the circumstances but… well, better than nothing. And it was… oddly kind of Josh to think of.

Josh was odd in a lot of ways, he was starting to realise. And strangely familiar in others. Almost like a distorted reflection of traits Sherlock knew in himself. A sort of coiled poise, a stance which seemed capable of shifting fluidly between violence or stealth, the calm, collected wariness of someone habitually scanning the exits…

"Girlfriend's been trying to quit smoking for a while now. Forgets to put the patches back in her purse, like, every single time," Josh rattled off casually. Far more casually than Sherlock had yet heard from him, almost chipper, even, which was yet another oddity to add to the pile.

Sherlock glanced up curiously and caught Josh's expression as the man paused a moment, looking somewhat pained, then muttered, "... well, ex-girlfriend, I guess."

Despite himself, Sherlock huffed a sympathetic breath through his nose as he set about trying to get into the fiendish little box. Everything felt unreasonably difficult right now, even something so banal as opening a bit of packaging.

Fiddling with the thing took up enough processing space in his mind in this state that he, predictably, found himself replying to Josh without realising what he was actually saying.

"I did that for a while, too."

Josh looked up from where he'd glanced away, frowning. "Did what?"

Sherlock replied with a questioning blink because he'd truly no idea what he'd said. "Hm?"

"You did what for a while too?" A hint of frustration in Josh's voice. He was clearly getting sick of Sherlock's scatterbrained nonsense. Fair enough, Sherlock was too.

He huffed in annoyance, firmly resolved not to answer, and then heard himself mutter, "... kept forgetting the ex part."

God. And that would be the linguistic centres of his brain firing off without so much as a by-your-leave, then. Brain in an absolute shambles - desperately needed a drug of some sort before he thoroughly fucked himself over. Thankfully he'd finally got the box apart, tore into the pouches, slapped a nicotine patch on his forearm with rather more aggression than necessary. Then followed it up with another for good measure. Considered a third, but… no he probably didn't want to risk vomiting with an abdominal contusion.

Josh watched all this with an unreadable expression. Continued watching as Sherlock dug the slightly-smashed pack of cigs and lighter out of his pocket and set about trying to decide which fag was the driest after their humid march through the wetlands.

Sherlock, for his part, tried to focus on not grimacing too obviously with every tiny shift of his upper body. At least he wasn't coughing anymore, that would've been a bloody nightmare. Wondered vaguely what he might have been dosed with to help the nascent cold, before recalling that morphine was a cough suppressant. Oh. Right. Well.

Josh was still looking at him. Sherlock met the man's scrutiny, made a tiny 'what' sort of movement. Josh shook his head faintly, leant back on his makeshift beanbag chair and seemed to make a conscious effort to shift back to a more flippant tone.

"Guess we got some shit in common then, huh," the man said as if trying to force some other emotion down with whatever this one was. Bitterness? Something like bitterness. "Don't suppose yours also broke up with you for no goddamned reason and took off for Cali?"

"Uh… no," Sherlock mumbled as he retrieved the battered cigarette pack from his pocket - patches were all well and good as a means to maintain a steadier dose going forward, but he had no intention of sitting around waiting for the slow percolation of nicotine through skin to build up to a functional level.

His stupid mouth of course took advantage of the distraction of fishing out his lighter to carry on talking without conscious approval. "Actually come to think of it I guess we never formally broke up."

"So what happened, then?" Josh asked. Genuinely curious, by his tone. Strange. Why would he want to know? Wasn't even an interesting story.

And yet, treacherous mouths being what they were in this state, Sherlock heard himself answering anyway.

"Father had him arrested as part of some scheme to manipulate my brother into offing me," his voice nattered out, words tumbling along in an unbroken stream of consciousness. Dimly he put some effort into shutting up, failed to note any change, and then with a sensation of utter helplessness just gave in and let himself keep going. "... I was able to get him cleared of all charges and released from jail without too much trouble but I didn't think he'd want to see me again after I'd shouted in his face like that and anyway I did need to get out of the country before Mycroft had a chance to work out my misdirection chain on the forged travel papers or traced the last trust fund withdrawal so I just left but it seemed like the breakup was implied I think or at least it must be by now since it's been a few months."

Josh blinked, drew his head back with a baffled little shake.

"Uh, wow, okay. You, uh… gonna help me unpack any of that or am I on my own?"

Sherlock scowled. Determined he'd be far better served keeping his mouth firmly clamped around his cigarette so as to absorb as much nicotine as possible. Stupid fucking brain with its stupid fucking broken impulse control.

"On my own, I guess. Cool." Josh drew a long, centreing breath through his nose, then turned and dug a small notepad and pen out of the same bag he'd found the nicotine patches in. He spent several seconds scribbling, frowned at the page in an oddly scrutinising way, then held the pad up to read back aloud what he'd written.

"Okay. Your dad got your boyfriend arrested to try to get your brother to kill you. Then you somehow got your guy cleared and fled the country after acquiring forged documents even though you're like barely an adult, with a trust fund in there somewhere? And you're super casual about all that. So you're either schizophrenic as hell, or you're from a background where that kind of stuff is normal. Frank wouldn't go to all this trouble over some crazy homeless kid, so I'm gonna guess your family's involved in something like deep state politics or organised crime?"

Sherlock was only barely listening. Enough nicotine had worked its way into his system to let him conjure up his silly little mind-field again, so in the midst of Josh talking he'd shifted over to trying to take stock of the state of his brain after this latest round of physical insult. Seemed a far higher priority than keeping track of whatever the other man was on about.

Memories and information lay scattered haphazardly across great swaths of his internal space, aftermath of the hurricane his mind became in the absence of chemical restraints. Christ, what an absolute bloody *mess.* He'd have to pick through the debris piece by piece just to start trying to make sense of anything he'd done or learnt in the past few hours.

"Er... both, I think," he heard himself say. In response to what, he wasn't sure. Something about criminals? His family? Oh! Wait, hadn't not-Harold said something important related to that?

"Ah!" Sherlock exclaimed. "My mum!"

Josh rubbed at his forehead as if fighting a headache. "Sure, dude, your mom. Who needs context anyway."

Sherlock waved him off impatiently, scrubbing hands through tangled curls. *Think, damn it, get it together.* What had the man said? Damn it, couldn't recall enough detail, everything kept scrambling… brain was still a disaster zone of loose scraps of data and misfiled recollection, getting it all back in order by means of his little mental abstractions would take ages. No time for that right now. Needed a more efficient way to organise, slow thoughts down enough to sort through them.

He eyed Josh dubiously through his fringe. While the man's freckled face no longer triggered a painful torrent of glass-sharp memories, it *did* remind him of the way Eric had always been happy enough to play audience to Sherlock's cocaine-fuelled rambling. How helpful it had been just having someone willing to listen whilst he worked through all the information in his head. And how Eric seemed to instinctively know when to reign him in before he got too worked up or off-topic.

Josh wouldn't have the same stabilising effect *(no one would, never going to have that kind of comfort again, stop thinking about him for the love of god not going down that path right now stop it stop it stop)* but it might be better than nothing.

"If I were to dump an absolute deluge of tangentially-related information on you right now, probably in a manic ramble, would you be able to… I don't know, listen, or write some of it down, or something? Help organise things?"

Josh, to his credit, didn't look especially fazed. With an air of a man resigned to his fate he balanced his notepad on one knee, pen at the ready, and lifted one shoulder in a silent *get on with it, then.*

Well, that would have to do. No proper way to collect anything otherwise. He took a deep breath.

"Har— *Frank* lifted my ID back in Tallahassee and threatened to 'find out who's looking for me' - but any public records search should've pointed him directly towards my brother, or, if his sources were badly out of date, our late father. Both prominent names in British military intelligence, both with a vested interest in knowing where I am at all times. Instead he cited my *mother,* by her maiden name no less, which doesn't make any sense because if you've dug far enough to find that name you've surely already come across Siger Holmes multiple times. Who skips over *him* to focus on a retired French spy? Not to mention he also said something about kestrels and heroin and that makes even *less* sense - I mean, not that I'd put Mummy past having been addicted to heroin, I guess, that might make a lot of sense honestly, but the other thing was presumably one of her codenames and why would some American bloke know anything about that? Unless he was CIA or something? Specialised in infiltrating the Soviets like my parents did, maybe knew her from before she married? But even if that were the case what the hell would any of that have to do with *me?* Surely anyone who knew Mummy personally wouldn't think her likely to give in to blackmail. She'd just tell them it was my own fault for getting caught like a bloody idiot and to dispose of the rubbish or something, assuming she were lucid enough to even remember I exist."

Several seconds stretched between them punctuated by nothing but Josh's scribbling. Finally the man dotted a final line with a bit of a flourish, then flipped his notepad up to regard it with an odd sort of pride.

"You know, Aunty was right, shorthand really *is* an undervalued skill."

Sherlock had no idea how to respond to that, and therefore didn't. Took a last drag off his dwindling cigarette instead, down to the acrid filter, and reluctantly stubbed it out on the metal wall of the van interior. Really would've liked to smoke another, but god knew when he'd be able to get more, and he couldn't be sure if the patches were going to be strong enough to rely on.

"Alright, so let's see what we got here… well, you pegged Frank right away, that's pretty impressive. Former CIA agent, yeah. Got up to a bunch of shady shit in Russia during the Cold War. So I guess he must have known your mom, then? Cause he sure as hell hasn't looked anything up. His secure computer's busted into a million pieces right now."

Sherlock felt something misalign at that - one of those quiet internal clicks that meant the puzzle pieces weren’t actually fitting, just been shoving them together by force. The filter aftertaste clung to his tongue, metallic, sour. Right. If Frank hadn’t researched anything, then-

“That doesn’t track,” he cut in, sharper than intended. “If he recognised her, it wasn’t from files.” His fingers twitched against his knee, compulsive, counting backwards through years he didn’t actually want to picture. “She was long retired by the time I existed. And no one in that world would mistake the surname for anything useful. If he knew her, he would’ve known her married name. So why use the maiden name instead?"

Hated how thin his voice sounded at the end. Like the sentence wanted to keep going but his mind hit something it had tripped over.

He frowned into the murky blackness around them and tried to think what he was snagging on. Was it… his mother being an actual person? Hadn't ever really thought of that before. The idea of his mother having had an entire life outside the limited scope of what he could imagine her being… jarring to think about, really… that she'd been anything like him, running about with thoughts and contradictions and everything. Felt and cheated and loved. Something more than the hollowed-out shell playing housewife he'd always known her to be.

Josh raised a brow at him, unimpressed. "Uh, probably to see how you'd react? Pretty basic intel-gathering tactic, dude."

Sherlock shifted out of the mum-shaped hole in his thoughts. Paused for a long beat to parse Josh's statement and let it sink in. Then groaned with the realisation. Ah, fuck. Josh was right. That had been an obvious operational trap and he'd walked straight into it. Dropped the word 'mum' and confirmed her relationship to him without a single scrap of resistance. *Fuck,* what an idiot.

Shouldn't have stung so badly, really - he'd been used to this at one point, hadn't he? Spent the majority of his existence in a constant state of dread, just waiting to discover how badly he'd fucked up this time. Not like this was any different to a hundred other mistakes.

But it had been so much easier to accept that reality when it was all he'd ever known. Before that brief respite of a field of sparkling white in his head. Now he knew how easy all this shit could be if he could only muster the bloody strength to force his mind into the more functional shape it took up under chemical bombardment. Or failing that if he could just manage the intake better, perhaps, not run himself ragged with the sine wave of highs and lows. He'd been getting better at it, hadn't he? Near the end. Could have found a balance if he'd kept up.

With a tired huff of a sigh he let his head drop onto one knee and closed his eyes.

"Should've never gone off coke," he heard himself mutter.

“Not super sure how that’s relevant, but okay,” Josh said. A buzz erupted in his pocket, sharp enough to jolt them both. Sherlock lifted his head in time to see Josh dig out a battered flip-phone and squint at the screen.

“Welp, Frank knows we’re out here. Guess that was inevitable.”

Sherlock tensed, a dark pulse of adrenaline trickling unpleasantly down his spine. “Do we… need to go, then?” Didn't fancy venturing back out into the bug-infested woods, but mosquitoes were less dangerous than bullets.

“Nah.” Josh shook his head and, for whatever reason, angled the phone toward him.

*Go ahead and keep him until morning, I’ll clean up your mess in the meantime.*

Sherlock read it in a glance. Remained largely nonplussed. Keep him? What, like a dog? What mess? Why did all this just keep getting more bloody complicated the longer things went on?

“Any suggestions for pithy one-liners?” Josh asked drily. His thumbs hovered over the keypad.

“No,” Sherlock grumbled, folding back over his knee. Then, a beat later, “Wait. Yes. Tell him ‘Siger sends his regards.’ Turn his stupid trick back on him. If he knows the name, it narrows context.”

Josh snorted. "Sure, whatever. Let's get fucking esoteric," Josh quipped as he typed. He flipped the screen towards Sherlock once more to confirm the spelling, then send it. "You know you never answered the question I actually cared about. Or told me your name."

"Sherlock Holmes," he replied flatly. Despite the nicotine he was beginning to feel profoundly exhausted. "Forgot the other question."

"Who you're working for, and what your goals are. Which is two questions, I guess, but whatever."

"I think at this point we've established I'm far too incompetent to plausibly be *working* for anyone." Sherlock hoped the cynical tone was enough to cover how deeply his latest string of unforced blunders had left him feeling hollowed out and useless. "And goals… I don't know. None, I guess."

"None?" Josh repeated dubiously. "You just randomly travelled to Tallahassee, from England, with no goal? Zero reason?"

"Yep," Sherlock replied in a falsely upbeat quip.

"You know I don't believe that for a fucking second, right?"

Sherlock sighed. Lifted his head off his knee to instead lean back against the wall of the van with his legs stretched out. Christ, fuck being cagey. He'd about run dry of anything resembling social energy. Best just say whatever he had on tap and hope that got Josh to leave him alone for a minute.

"Not… zero reason, I guess," he admitted dully, voice quiet, distant as he stared straight ahead into the murky glow of the fairy lights. "I was in New York for a while when I first got here, but… it felt too much like London. Kept tripping over associative triggers. So I started heading south, thought a drastically different environment might solve the intrusive memory problem."

Shifted his gaze to look at Josh's face, watched with resignation as his mind once again rearranged the man's freckles into more familiar constellations. Let a cascade of imagery and association tumble through. Eric's lopsided smile, foreign sensation of safety in vulnerability, the heady musk of his skin after sex. Wondered dully if this sharp stab of regret would diminish over time or if he'd spend the rest of his life pining over a month-long fling with a cockney stoner.

He looked away again. "... hasn't really worked."

“Jesus, man,” Josh muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. “You could’ve just said you were running. Didn't need a whole trauma map."

Sherlock flashed him a tired, faint smile. "Sorry."

Josh seemed to hesitate. Opened his mouth, shut it again. Breathed out a short sigh through his nose.

"I… it's fine, dude. I just…" he trailed off and scowled as if in thought, then jumped about a mile as his pocket buzzed again.

"*'Alphonse sends his back'*?" he read off his mobile screen quizzically. "Who the fuck is Alphonse?"

Sherlock raised his brows in bemused disbelief. Well, then. What a bizarre way to stumble upon new family ties.

"My grandfather."

**««**

## Chapter 11

**««**

*He was sat on the hard sofa in Grand-mère's sitting room, waiting for Father to return from seeing Mycroft off. The older boy was leaving early, since his first term at Cambridge was due to start. Sherlock knew he'd be in trouble when Father returned, because he'd collected a load of rocks and shells and things from the beach earlier and, in his distraction over Mycroft's departure, had accidentally left them in a little pile on the garden path where Father had tripped over them on his way to the waiting car. In the moment the man had laughed it off, waved Mycroft ahead while he paused to brush a bit of dirt from his shoe, but the dark look he shot back at Sherlock signalled he'd not be escaping reprisal.*

*Sherlock should have been old enough to know better than to leave stones and shells on a garden path, so he knew there'd be hell to pay. He was also old enough to know not to try to run away or hide before Father returned, as that would only make things worse. Instead he'd found the most conspicuous place he could think of, right in the middle of the sitting room off the front entryway, so it wouldn't seem like he'd been meaning to avoid being found. And then he simply waited. It was torturous, stewing there in silent trepidation, but he couldn't bring himself to move. Breaking the stillness felt like it might lift some secret spell and bring his doom crashing down upon him.*

*A quiet sound off to the other side of the room caught his attention, and he looked up without meaning to. Heart in his throat for a moment thinking Father had returned through another entrance. But, no. It was only Grand-père. The tall, severe man paused in his journey down the hall and regarded Sherlock through the entryway. Pale eyes an unspoken question:* What on earth are you doing?

*Mycroft had complained to Sherlock once that Grand-père never communicated with anyone. Sherlock had thought that a very strange and silly thing to say, because he communicated with Grand-père all the time. So he'd laughed. But Mycroft had reacted with annoyance, as if he'd not been trying to be funny. 'Grand-père talks by staring at you', Sherlock had eventually explained once he realised his brother somehow genuinely didn't know, and Mycroft had told him to stop being ridiculous. Sherlock knew that reply meant there'd be no point bringing the topic up again, so he didn't. But he did find himself wondering how it could possibly be that his brother didn't understand the strange, intuitive non-language Grand-père used, when for Sherlock it came so easily. Mycroft was so much smarter than him, how could he have missed something like that?*

*He met Grand-père's eyes and conveyed his answer by whatever hidden means instinct had given:*  Waiting for the inevitable.

*They held each other's gaze for a few seconds more. Finally, Grand-père abandoned his original path and entered the sitting room instead. With no pomp whatsoever he took a seat on the sofa next to Sherlock. And then just… waited with him. Side by side. Utterly silent.*

*This was extremely strange, of course. Beyond family gatherings where they were always the only two people in the room not participating in conversation, and therefore often passed the time trading looks over silly things the others said, Sherlock hadn't actually interacted with his grandfather all that much. Certainly hadn't ever exchanged a single actual word. But now here the man was sitting quietly next to him waiting for hell to arrive. Was he… expecting Sherlock to say something? Start a conversation? With proper talking?*

*Sherlock glanced over. Grand-père seemed to sense this, and looked down to him. Their eyes met.*

*No. Wasn't meant to speak. Only sit. Wait.*

*Really should have been quite awkward. But it wasn't. Somehow he found sitting in silence with his grandfather to be… oddly companionable. As if they'd both mastered this strange art of remaining perfectly still for hours at a time and could mutually appreciate the finer points of technique.*

*Eventually, of course, the silence had to break. It always did. The door in front of them opened, and Father strode through it with a tightness to his face that spoke of how much he utterly loathed visiting Violet's parents. Meant he'd likely been accosted by Grand-mère on his way into the house over some nonsense she'd decided to fret over. Didn't bode well for Sherlock. That, on top of having misbehaved, along with Mycroft having left… god, no, didn't bear thinking about. Just try to put on a stoic face. Have a bit of dignity.*

*Just one step past the doorway, though, Father froze. He stood with his hand still resting on the handle behind him and regarded the two figures on the sofa - grandson and grandfather, twin living statues.*

*"... Alphonse," Father said after what seemed a very long pause.*

*"Siger," Grand-père replied without the slightest inflection. Sherlock had only ever heard the man speak a handful of times, but every one of those utterances had sounded thoroughly bored. His default state, apparently.*

*Father held his gaze a few beats longer, then looked to Sherlock, who simply stared back. Had absolutely no idea what was going on. But he'd still done as he was supposed to, though, hadn't he? Or was he meant to have handled Grand-père deciding to sit next to him differently? Asked the man to leave, perhaps? That didn't seem like it would have worked. Hoped Father wouldn't be angry about this, too.*

*Father looked back to Grand-père and seemed to deliberate. Finally, as if having arrived to some important decision, he turned his icy gaze back to Sherlock.*

*"Come along, child."*

*Swallowing down a sick spike of dread, Sherlock shifted to slide off the sofa. A hand on his shoulder stopped him - just the barest hint of a touch. He froze in place with the contact, and as soon as he did the hand left him again. He turned to see Grand-père returning to the same placid position he'd been sat in all this time. The elderly man fixed a supremely disinterested stare on Father with his piercing grey-blue eyes, as if Siger Holmes were a bit of dull wallpaper, perhaps, or a misplaced houseplant. Sherlock turned his own grey-blue eyes on Father as well, though his expression was doubtless far less intimidating - more confused and panicked than anything, probably. No idea what he was supposed to do, which man he was meant to obey first. Anxiety was eating him alive.*

*Father worked his jaw a tick, seeming spectacularly annoyed, then huffed a clipped breath through his nose. Not quite a frustrated sigh, but something very like one.*

*"Never mind, Sherlock," he bit out. "Evidently your grandfather has… need of you."*

*It was one of those sentences where it seemed like the real meaning was something very different to what had actually been said. Sherlock had never been much good at parsing those, not the way Mycroft could. Rather than attempt to understand he simply remained frozen in place, hoping that might somehow be the correct choice, and watched as Father returned the way he'd come. Silence fell upon the room once more.*

*Just a short minute or two later, Grand-père stood. He turned to fix Sherlock with a meaningful stare:* He'll not trouble you here again.

*Sherlock stared back with a small, bewildered smile:* Thank you.

*Grand-père simply nodded. He turned, headed towards the hall to his original path, and was gone.*

**««**

## Chapter 12

**««**

Mycroft stared grimly at the screen before him. Should have assigned one of his staff to this task, really - trawling through surveillance clips collected from Father's estate was work meant for a junior analyst, beneath his paygrade for years now.

And yet here he sat, trying to decide which recording to watch first. As if he were back in his rookie days.

For the most part, of course, he'd delegated this project as expected. Hand-picked a team to comb through Father's extensive archive of home security footage looking for evidence of illegal activity, damning conversations, unknown contacts. Any information worth integrating into the ever-expanding dossier on his late Father's various political extortion enterprises.

One dataset stood starkly apart from the rest, however. The team processing these recordings in preparation for more detailed analysis had found that, with very few exceptions, the only notable events taking place in Father's private study involved Mycroft's brother. And for whatever nonsensical reason it had felt… indecent, somehow, to assign some underling to examine this footage. As if he'd be avoiding an act of penance.

And so, with a stiff drink at hand should worst come to worse, Mycroft loaded up the database of digitised footage and told himself he wasn't going to have any trouble watching through a few banal surveillance videos. Done plenty of this sort of work in his early days, after all. Analysing a handful of recordings collected from a single room in his childhood home would be of no consequence whatsoever compared to the scale of projects he'd typically been assigned back then. Bit of a dull morning, maybe. Nothing more.

All of the files in this batch had been processed already - trimmed of dead footage, cropped and sorted with incident time and location tags. Simple matter to filter for recordings from Father's private study, then sort by date. Considered going in order from oldest to newest, then internally recoiled at the thought of witnessing a small child subjected to the whims of Siger Holmes, and instead chose a file at random from down near the very bottom of the list. Late nineties, when he'd have already been a teenager. Easier to process.

Unfortunately, the instant the feed came up Mycroft realised he'd made a poor choice. Because, as he spotted the full date printed in the bottom corner of the main camera, it registered that this would have been the year he'd not come home over the holiday season. He'd been embroiled in a complex project in his new position with MI5 and hadn't wanted to risk losing grip on a few key contacts he'd recently developed. Despite having found this much more enjoyable than the usual routine of tedious family meals and hollow pleasantries, he'd nevertheless made a point of clearing his schedule to make the trip the following year. Sherlock had directed far too much vitriol towards him over his absence to risk skipping out again.

And that next year, of course, had been the year the blinders fell away. When he'd finally been forced to confront the reality that all the little troubling signs he'd cleverly rationalised over the course of his brother's life added up to one inescapable, monstrous truth. Leaving Sherlock at the mercy of their father hadn't been an option after that, so he'd convinced Siger to allow the boy to live with him in London for the remainder of his teens. They'd not made more than a handful of visits home thereafter.

Which meant, then, that this recording was very likely to depict whatever incident had caused Sherlock to treat Mycroft with such bitter contempt over the following months. An event which would alter the course of both their lives irreversibly. Lord have mercy.

On the flickering screen before him a video feed of excellent picture quality, given its age, depicted Father's study. Or, at least, the feed label proclaimed it to be STUDY-SOUTH-o1. Meaning the study located on the south side of the main house. Mycroft hadn't ever found much occasion to venture into this room, so the space was unfamiliar to him. Father's desk was a large mahogany affair in the late Georgian style he typically preferred, matching the rest of the office furniture. The security camera of highest image quality was mounted on the wall behind and slightly to the left of his desk chair, affording a mid-angle shot of the space directly in his working line of sight, with a clear view up to the leather chesterfield sofa and coffee table some metres off towards the bay window. A large, decorative world globe stood off to the side of the desk, partially cut off by the frame edge. To the right of this primary camera feed were several smaller inset frames, each depicting wide-angle shots of lower image quality covering different sections of the room, carefully arranged to ensure no blind spots. Microphones hidden around the space afforded a clear audio feed, with additional high-fidelity devices embedded directly into the desk and filing cabinets to detect any subtle movement of drawers or their contents. It was the surveillance system of a man whose wastepaper bin contained enough secrets to topple a dozen regimes.

Father's desk sat empty, for the moment, and a nervous-looking fourteen year-old Sherlock stood in front of it. By the slightly-too-short shirtsleeves Mycroft guessed the boy to be in the midst of one of the rapid growth spurts he'd had around that age, leaving him even lankier and more awkwardly-proportioned than usual. A fading bruise marred the skin around his right eye - not unusual at this age, he'd nearly always sported a facial injury of one sort or another throughout his teens. Mycroft had initially thought this to have been the work of their father, but when the bruises kept appearing following Sherlock's relocation to London it became clear he simply managed to get himself hit in the face by other students with impressive regularity. Troubling in its own way, of course, but perhaps less abhorrent.

Over the course of around ten minutes' quiet standing (which Mycroft had fast-forwarded through) the tense anxiety in Sherlock's stance had shifted by degrees into fidgeting boredom. An undercurrent of dull resignation in his expression implied being made to wait like this was nothing out of the ordinary, though he was still clearly growing ever more annoyed as the silence dragged on.

Finally a door opened on the other side of the room, and Sherlock snapped back to attention from where he seemed to have been idly running through a violin composition using his right wrist as a stand-in fingerboard. Siger strode through the room at a leisurely pace, cutting in and out of view of the various cameras, and took a seat at his desk. In this position the primary camera was behind his head, and the only secondary feed with a view of his face was quite a distance away, making his expression difficult to make out. Regardless, by his body language it was clear he'd chosen for the moment to behave as if Sherlock were invisible. The man took his time producing and arranging several items from the leather-bound folder in his arm: paperwork, stack of money to be counted, a pen.

By Sherlock's poorly-concealed look of frustration it was clear this was an ongoing habit of Siger's - summon the boy to his study, proceed to ignore him as a test of patience. Mycroft wondered vaguely how he himself might respond to such treatment, was forced to conclude he'd fail miserably. Probably would've made some scathing remark within the space of a minute; he'd never had much tolerance for time-wasting.

Sherlock, of course, was operating under much different risk/reward conditions than Mycroft would've been in his position, and was thus far more motivated to hold his tongue. Though doing so was clearly still quite a struggle, because by the time Father deigned to acknowledge his presence the boy's expression had slipped from polite attention into an indignant scowl. Such impertinence would surely be a punishable offence, Mycroft thought, but when he glanced to the smaller wide-angle feed the grainy image of Father's face just seemed amused.

"Well, get on with it, then," the man said in a jarringly upbeat quip. Between his tolerance of Sherlock's disrespect and the friendly tone of voice Mycroft found himself distinctly nonplussed - he'd not thought Father capable of being so… normal. He'd known the man to speak casually or engage in a bit of lighthearted banter on occasion, of course, but typically only for purposes of manipulation or some other obvious ploy, and never towards those he considered subordinate. Seeing him behave like this towards  *Sherlock,* of all people, was extremely disorientating.

Sherlock, for his part, didn't seem fazed by Father's bizarre frivolity. He also didn't appear to have any expectation of being able to guess what the man was on about, because he asked for clarification almost immediately. Another clue to their usual dynamic, perhaps - Siger must have regularly opened with intentionally confusing or out-of-context statements to force an information disadvantage. Basic intimidation tactic.

"Get on with what, sir?"

"Explaining your marks this half, obviously." Father's tone remained uncharacteristically glib. Sherlock's complete lack of surprise over this brought Mycroft to an odd revelation that he and his brother must have had wildly different concepts of who Siger Holmes was as a person. To Mycroft, their father had been a picture of cold austerity, defined by authoritative calm and the subtle threat of danger. To Sherlock, apparently, he'd been a bit of a cheeky git.

Sherlock's brows furrowed in a perplexed, wary look. Evidently not a topic he'd been expecting.

"I, er… all A's? Sir?"

Siger chuckled warmly, which was somehow exponentially more disturbing than the upbeat voice had been.

"Indeed! Quite an  *abrupt*  upswing in academic performance, wouldn't you say?"

Ah. He was toying with the boy. Mycroft knew his brother must have started smoking around this age, likely having built up from the occasional nicked fag to outright dependency sometime around the start of the previous school term. A steady intake of nicotine would have driven a dramatic improvement in his ability to tolerate tedious lessons and coursework. Reflection of this in his end-of-term report was an unexpected tell he'd apparently not thought to account for.

Siger must have known of his youngest's new habit early on and chose not to intervene, likely seeing it as a convenient way to assess the boy's aptitude for long-term subterfuge. And now, after several months' observation, he'd decided to bring the exercise back round to lessons learnt. In his own cruel, psychopathic way, it seemed the man was trying to impart some sort of wisdom about consideration of unexpected variables in the execution of clandestine operations. How utterly strange to think he'd taken such an active role in parenting.

Of course, to Sherlock, this line of inquiry probably felt more as if he were being criticised for earning high marks, which must have been deeply confusing. He stared at Father for several long seconds, glanced away as if trying to decide how to respond, then reluctantly shifted his gaze back to the man's face.

"Um… a bit, I guess?" he finally hedged. Then a beat later added, "Sir."

Siger laughed again. "And what, may I ask, has prompted this sudden dedication to scholastic pursuits?"

Giving the boy an out - hinting he should take this opportunity to craft an excuse plausible enough to maintain cover. Sherlock, unfortunately, didn't appear to have any idea what Father was on about. Mycroft had assumed, at this point in time, that Siger would have long since made clear to Sherlock his intent to mould him into a field agent to complement Mycroft's desk role. Plainly the man had done no such thing. Perhaps he'd thought it best to keep the boy in the dark as a means to deny him the opportunity to render himself unfit for service should he object to that career path. Hadn't banked on harsh teaching methods driving him to substance abuse instead, leading to the same outcome.

As was typical when demands on his impulse control exceeded some arbitrary internal threshold, Sherlock's patience with whatever nonsense Father was playing at quite abruptly snapped. His face dropped from passably polite deference into a venomous scowl.

"Threats of being tortured to death tend to be quite motivating, sir," he replied in a voice gone flat with undisguised contempt.

Rather than the anger Mycroft might have expected in response to such insolence, their father simply… laughed. Not his usual coldly amiable chuckle, either, but something which sounded for all the world like genuine amusement. This dynamic of theirs just kept becoming more and more surreal.

Without bothering to reply Father stood up and looked down the pager clipped to his belt, making as if he'd just received some important message.

"I'll be gone five minutes, child. You are  *not*  dismissed," he said over his shoulder as he strode from the room. Sherlock watched him go with a vaguely bewildered glare.

Atop Father's vacated desk, Mycroft could now spot the trap - he'd left a stack of ten-pound notes alongside supplies as if intending to count the money, implying he'd not know how much he'd started with. He'd then needled Sherlock until he'd hit his self-discipline limit, got him to drop out of the obedient son routine, and promptly left the boy to his own devices for an explicit duration of five minutes. Overall an insultingly obvious ploy to tempt him into thievery.

Mycroft felt faintly ill. Surely his brother would've caught on? It was such blatant entrapment. But, then, the child was fourteen. And likely either already well into nicotine withdrawal or facing the looming threat of it shortly.  *And*  he'd never possessed more than a threadbare scrap of impulse control to begin with.

Of course he fell for it.

To his credit, at least, the swipe was subtle. Clearly knew where all the cameras were and took pains to mask his action under the guise of a bored fidget. Wouldn't matter, of course. Siger would have marked the notes somehow. He'd spot the loss immediately.

A duration of near-exactly five minutes passed, during which Sherlock looked to have quickly come to regret what had doubtless been an impulsive act, but didn't appear able to figure out how best to undo it without being too obvious. He kept glancing up at the primary camera (straight into the lens, which made it seem unnervingly as if he were meeting Mycroft's gaze), then down to the desk again, scowling at the polished surface. Clearly indecisive on the risk. Then, once he'd determined there was no good way to reverse his choice, he moved on to an internal debate on whether to be more angry with himself or with Father.

It was strange, seeing Sherlock's facial expressions so easy to read. Every thought seemed childishly exaggerated compared to the mannerisms Mycroft would come to know just a scant few years later. He'd really not interacted with his brother much at this age at all, he realised. Spent most of the boy's awkward early teens away at uni. At this point in time they'd have practically been strangers.

As Mycroft had predicted, Siger took only a passing glance at his desk when he finally returned, then settled back into his armchair. By the tilt of his head and Sherlock's apprehensive expression he'd likely fixed the boy with one of his cold, predatory smiles.

"Bold of you," he remarked casually.

Sherlock's only reaction was a single, resigned exhale. Must have learnt over the years not to bother with denials or apologies. Logical, knowing Father's usual disposition towards grovelling. Without waiting to be told Sherlock flipped the banknote out from where he'd palmed it into his left hand and reached out to return it to its original place.

Quick as a flash Siger grabbed hold of Sherlock's wrist the instant it moved into range. Startled, Sherlock let go of the money and fixed Father with a questioning look. Siger shifted forward and, with painfully deliberate slowness, placed both hands in a precise configuration to either side of the boy's arm.

Sherlock didn't seem to recognise the intent of that hand placement. Mycroft, unfortunately, did. A flash of dread shot through his gut.

Father's arms jerked with sudden twisting force, and the high-fidelity microphone hidden under the desktop picked up a dull, sickening  *crack!*

The silence was deafening. Mycroft watched wide-eyed as his baby brother, face so impossibly young, went chalk-white and turned a shocked, uncomprehending stare down to his own limb in Father's grip.

"Your stupidity never ceases to astound, my boy," Siger quipped with a surreal degree of levity given he'd just snapped a child's wrist.

Sherlock said nothing. Father released his grip, then leant casually back in his chair as if waiting to see what his victim would do.

It took a few long, motionless seconds before anything happened. Sherlock's brain rebooting after the sudden shock, one assumed. Once he'd regained the ability to move he took a few steps back, instinctively cradling the injury against his chest, then stood in stunned silence as if still trying to process what had just happened.

In his time with MI5 (and occasionally before, though one hated to dwell) Mycroft had witnessed many horrific acts of violence. Typically via surveillance videos such as this one, in later years perhaps more often displayed on the screens of live operations centre feeds, very rarely in person. He'd always found the wide range of human reactions to deliberate injury quite fascinating. There were those who screamed. Those who wept. Those who begged, or swore, or fixed their captors with a silent, vengeful glare.

And then there were the most fascinating group of all - those who did nothing. The stoics. Men and women so accustomed to pain it became second nature to shrug it off, dissociate fully if necessary, to deny their assailant even the minor satisfaction of drawing a reaction. Mycroft had always found himself torn between a sense of deep intrigue and feeling vaguely unnerved when confronted with those rare individuals. The way they could retreat so far from conscious awareness as to become empty shells struck him as uniquely disquieting. He'd often wondered what experiences might impart such a skill, the ability to snuff the light from one's own eyes.

Here, apparently, was some part of his answer. Because Sherlock was a stoic.

In retrospect, of course he was. Mycroft should have deduced that already, having witnessed his brother's face go abruptly blank in response to overwhelming stress several times by now. But, even still, it was an unexpected depth of horror to witness a young teenager, his  *baby brother,*  display such a profound underreaction to traumatic limb fracture. Sherlock hadn't made so much as a sound so far. Hadn't done much of anything, in fact, beyond remain standing ashen-faced before the desk. The light in his eyes had dimmed to a vacant, unfocussed stare.

Behaving as if all of this were perfectly normal, Siger hummed a tune to himself and set about clearing away the remains of his trap, then turned his attention to other business. He seemed content for the time being to let Sherlock remain frozen like a statue in front of his desk.

"Movement and sensation?" the man asked after a few silent minutes. Sherlock startled, blinked at him, then seemed to register the question and obediently shifted the fingers of his left hand. Despite this no doubt being excruciatingly painful his wince was limited to just a small twitch of facial muscles, nearly too subtle for the camera to pick up.

"Yes, sir," he said quietly, almost inaudible from the desk mic.

Siger's head lifted. Mycroft could easily picture one of the man's bland, unimpressed stares, with the slight condescending brow lift. After a seconds' pause he went back to his work, flipping a hand dismissively.

"Well, go and have a seat, then. No sense bothering Vasily."

Vasily being Siger's long-time friend and colleague, who during this period in time would have been living in a detached servants' cottage on the estate. During the Cold War the man had primarily served as a torture-based interrogation specialist, utilising the skillset of his prior career as an orthopedic surgeon to devastating effect. He and Siger had met during Siger's time working as a double agent for the Soviet Union, struck up as close a friendship as two men such as themselves might ever hope to find, and maintained their bond throughout the subsequent decades. For a period of several years following the fall of the USSR Vasily had even lived with them at the estate, Siger having offered him refuge in one of the old cottages while the political dust settled. This arrangement meant that Mycroft had, at one point, considered the man something of a beloved uncle. An illusion shattered with age, of course, but it remained difficult to shake an odd sense of nostalgia on hearing his name.

Father, here, would have meant he didn't consider the fracture severe enough to go to the trouble of summoning Vasily to evaluate it. He intended instead for Sherlock sit and wait until such time as Siger deigned to do something about the disabling injury he'd inflicted.

Looking to be operating on some sort of auto-pilot Sherlock moved back to take a seat on the edge of the chesterfield's hard cushion, still cradling his arm. After a long moment spent staring robotically straight ahead his blank mask finally cracked. No doubt the break was rapidly growing more painful as adrenaline subsided and swelling set in. He grimaced whilst leaning forward into a curled slouch over his knees, hiding his face from view.

Several silent minutes crept arduously past. Siger busied himself examining documents with an air as if he considered this a perfectly reasonable activity to prioritise over his son's urgent need for medical attention. By the slight movement of Sherlock's back visible against the dark leather of the sofa Mycroft could see he'd begun to draw a series of deep breaths, which looked to be becoming progressively faster and less evenly spaced. He'd seen his brother descend into full-blown panic enough times by now to recognise the signs of impending hyperventilation. Siger apparently knew this signal as well, because he lifted his head to look at the boy.

"Oh for god's sake," he snapped, apparently deeply annoyed by the sight of a child slipping into traumatic shock in front of him. "Have the good sense not to fall on the bloody fracture, at least."

Hearing Father swear was jarring, but Sherlock was either used to it or too preoccupied to care, as he just nodded faintly. He let himself list to the right until he'd flopped over with his face pressed into the sofa's leather seat, wrist clutched tightly to his chest, then promptly brought his legs up to curl into a ball around the injury. Default protective reflex.

Siger breathed a supremely put-upon sigh and reached down to a panel on the side of his desk to press one of several intercom buttons there.

"Василий, мальчик снова получил травму," he intoned when the connection beeped to confirm receipt. A deep voice on the other end replied by immediately launching into a very rude, very Russian diatribe on the theme of being interrupted in the middle of work, but Siger cut the connection without waiting for the rest. Seemed he'd decided to bother Vasily after all. Small mercies.

Almost twenty minutes of nearly-identical footage followed. Logically, Mycroft should have fast-forwarded again, but an irrational sense of guilt stayed his hand. He couldn't quite suppress a ridiculous thought that his baby brother on the other side of the camera lens hadn't had the luxury of fast-forwarding through this. He'd spent every second of those twenty minutes under the judging scrutiny of Father, curled into a miserable ball in a vain attempt to mitigate a worsening injury. What right did Mycroft have to speed things up? Ease a bit of his own suffering watching these events unfold? He'd survive a bit of a wait, just as Sherlock had.

Instead, during the idle time, he reflected on Siger's motivations. An injury of this nature was too significant, and inflicted with too much precision, to have been some simple sadistic whim. No, Father must have been planning to do this from the start, and likely whether Sherlock fell for the trap or not. To what end, though?

Sherlock had, around this time, taken extraordinarily well to symphony. Made principal second the previous year, concertmaster that year, and had even recently expressed some interest in carrying on to play professionally. Not a career trajectory Siger would have found amenable to his plan of pushing the boy into espionage. Siger had never held much respect for music, despite having once been a reasonably talented violinist himself. He'd also been of the staunch belief that a good spy must have some manner of practical education in an area not directly related to the craft, such as science or politics. Perfectly reasonable on his part, then, to force Sherlock off this burgeoning virtuoso path before he became too invested in it. Redirect him towards academics.

Couldn't simply forbid the boy from playing, though. Even Siger must have acknowledged Sherlock's capacity to become fundamentally uncontrollable if pushed into outright rebellion. Better to engineer a way to make him feel responsible for his own fate, then. Put him out of practise long enough to kill the ambition by means of some ostensibly avoidable punishment, thereby leveraging self-loathing to undermine the boy's natural recalcitrance. It was a logical, if revoltingly psychopathic, plan.

And it had worked. Sherlock had indeed dropped out of symphony and applied himself to school with enough dedication to eventually attend Oxford. Mycroft hadn't known the impetus for this, at the time, apart from Sherlock's vague claim of violin having been 'too boring'. He'd had little motivation to pry further; this had been the period where Mycroft's attention had been near-fully consumed finishing university and launching his career, and Sherlock hadn't said anything to him about a broken wrist. They'd not seen each other in person until holidays the following year, by which time the fracture would've fully healed, leaving Mycroft none the wiser. What a horrifying implication regarding what other injuries he might have overlooked throughout his brother's life.

Back on screen Sherlock remained folded up in his protective ball, favoured defence mechanism since childhood. Over the past few minutes his breathing had begun to hitch every few breaths, as if drifting back towards a panic state. But then with a single deep breath he abruptly went still again. Hadn't passed out - muscles still tense. Must have managed some trick to force himself to calm down.

And with that innocuous detail came a fresh stab of guilt, because the idea of his brother being able to do such a thing reminded Mycroft of their conversation when he'd phoned the boy on Christmas that year, just a day or two after this incident. Sherlock's breathing had kept catching oddly before he'd go silent for a moment and return to sounding normal again. He'd claimed he was suppressing the urge to yawn because Mycroft was very boring. Mycroft had bought the lie, self-absorbed idiot that he'd been back then. Though, perhaps in his very minor defence, Sherlock  *had*  gone to significant effort to mask any obvious signs of distress. Deflected personal questions, engaged in their usual banter. Hadn't tried in the slightest to tell his big brother anything was wrong.

… because he'd not thought telling him would accomplish anything.

And the terrible thing was that Mycroft knew, deep down, it wouldn't have.

At twenty-one years old, how would he have reacted to his baby brother claiming Father had snapped his wrist with the casual ease of a man cracking an egg?  *Stop being dramatic.*  Blinders still fully engaged against the reality of the situation, he'd have thought it nothing but an absurd lie invented in an effort to make him feel guilty over skipping out on family Christmas. He'd not be able to bring himself to entertain the notion of his father being physically abusive until the following year, when every clever explanation he'd invented to paper over the unthinkable truth burnt away. Sherlock's behaviour around their father between the ages of thirteen to fifteen, when Mycroft largely hadn't been present in his life, had undergone too dramatic a shift to be dismissed any longer - from the silent discomfort of their childhood to blatant, undeniable fear. A change likely driven in large part by this very incident.

From the boy's timid behaviour at dinner, to his hateful glare in response to Siger's criticism of a piece Sherlock must have worked enormously hard to regain the ability to play, to his panic over Mycroft thoughtlessly threatening to tell Father about having caught him smoking. All of it could be easily attributed to the events depicted in this scant hour of surveillance footage.

Good lord, of all the files to have chosen.

A new voice drifted into the scene, finally breaking the horrific stillness. Mycroft felt a preposterous wave of relief on recognising Vasily's deep rumbling bass - as if the arrival of a former KGB interrogator might somehow  *improve*  the situation. Obviously he understood now, with age and access to classified intelligence, that the man had been every inch as cruelly sadistic as Siger. As a child, however, all Mycroft had known was that Vasily gave him gifts of Russian sweets whenever he visited and was always happy to spin outlandish tales of Soviet political intrigue. What to do with fond childhood memories irreversibly tainted by the reality of who the adults in one's life had been was a problem he'd not yet mustered the strength to address.

Vasily was a stout, muscular man with a thick black beard, bald head, and sharp brown eyes under bushy eyebrows, and though his English was reasonably fluent he nearly always chose to speak Russian, as he was doing now.

*"Alright, I am here. Convincing our friend downstairs to wait nicely was no easy trick, but he should be fine for a time."*  Vasily strode into view of the camera, clad in sweat-damp vest and trousers as if pulled away from some strenuous physical labour. He casually wiped a spatter of what may have been blood off one of his bare arms as he spoke.  *"So what stupid thing have you done now?"*

Siger turned to him and leant back casually in his chair. He raised a hand in vague indication of Sherlock, who was still curled up in a pitiful ball on the sofa.

*"Tried for a clean radius fracture, may have splintered a bit,"*  he replied, also in Russian.

Vasily made a noise of disgust.  *"Splintered! Look at you, Siger, nothing but a shit amateur."*

*"What can I say, I'm out of practise,"*  Siger conceded with distinct amusement.

*"No, no. You've always been shit at fractures,"*  Vasily replied dismissively.  *"That's why I got so good at setting them, to save us the embarrassment of anyone else seeing your work."*

Vasily took a heavy seat on the sofa next to his erstwhile patient and attempted to pull Sherlock's arm out of his protective ball, but succeeded only in triggering the boy to curl up more tightly like a prodded snail. The man clicked his tongue in annoyance and turned instead to dig through the medical bag he'd brought along.

*"You want him awake? I have some new paralytics."*

*"No, use something reliable. Not in the mood to discover another paradoxical reaction."*

Vasily chuckled to himself as he drew up a syringe of some medication.  *"Ah, no? But that was so funny! Little scrap of a boy trying to fight the both of us."*  Casual as anything the man injected whatever drug he'd chosen directly into Sherlock's upper arm through his shirtsleeve, eliciting a startled flinch. He then stowed away the syringe, retrieved a pad of paper from his bag and began industriously taking notes - whether on Sherlock's injury, or their 'friend' downstairs, it was impossible to tell.

After a minute or two broken only by the rustling of paper picked up by the desk microphone, Vasily spoke up again.  *"You know, I had actually been thinking more about that recently. We really should have predicted such a reaction to that sedative class. Exact same as the father - becoming savage instead of docile. Do you remember?"*

*"Yes, Vasily, I remember,"* Siger bit out irritably.

*"I'm sure you do!"*  Vasily laughed as he bent down to retrieve a stethoscope from his bag. Balancing his notepad on one thigh, he set the bell of the scope against Sherlock's back in a few places, jotting down whatever he'd heard - evidently not taking notes on the condition of their 'friend', then, but creating an impromptu patient chart. Mycroft would have to ask the document recovery team if they'd come across any handwritten Russian medical records.

*"The look on your face when he got you with that scalpel, ha! You nearly snapped his neck!"*  Vasily went on, chuckling to himself fondly.  *"Ah, I am glad you didn't, though. That would have been such a waste to kill him so quickly."*

Siger didn't seem interested in reminiscing with his friend over shared fond memories. Instead he returned to the documents he'd been reviewing, allowing Vasily to busy himself once more with his charting. Mycroft, meanwhile, found himself obliged to perform a tiny bit of actual work in recording a timestamp and brief description of the past few lines of conversation - Vasily and Siger alluding to having personally tortured Sherlock's biological father to death was exactly the sort of information which made watching these recordings worthwhile.

After another short silence Vasily finished whatever he'd been documenting and set aside his notepad. Beside him Sherlock's tight ball had relaxed considerably as the sedative took effect, allowing Vasily to extract the boy's arm without resistance. He set to examining the broken wrist with the air of a man grading a student project.

*"Bah, Siger! A whole piece broke off, you clumsy bastard,"*  he groused as he manipulated the nauseatingly flexible bone.  *"This will need imaging if we're to avoid loss of function."*

*"Ah, well. Curse of overconfidence."*  Siger replied with an offhand shrug.  *"Have you time to see to it?"*

*"In truth, no! Our friend downstairs needs attending to."*  Vasily huffed a long-suffering sigh and bent down to retrieve materials from his bag.  *"But it seems that task I must now hand off to you, my friend. Your British doctors will insist on plate fixation or some useless shit for this, we will be stuck undoing their mistakes if I don't go."*

With that, he splinted Sherlock's arm with deft confidence, then hefted the boy up into his arms bridal-style. Knowing Vasily's usual mannerisms, Mycroft had half-expected the man to throw the child over his shoulder like a sack of produce. Vaguely grateful to see Sherlock had been afforded some small measure of care, at least.

*"Since I am so kindly doing you this favour, however, you will get someone else for followup,"* Vasily said as he headed towards the door. *"This boy's Russian is dogshit and I will not practise medicine in English."*

*"Reasonable,"*  Siger conceded.  *"Morris should be reliable enough."*  He appeared to be packing away his work in preparation to take over care of whatever 'friend' Vasily was referring to - doubtless a captive from some rival group or agency. As Siger joined his friend in leaving the room Vasily bumped into his side playfully and said something inaudible. Just a pair of old mates off to handle errands. Daily lives of psychopaths.

The surveillance feed fell still.

Mycroft sat silently, filing away all the new information. Amending his understanding of the ultimate fate of Mummy's affair partner, refining his mental models of his brother's psychological profile. Trying to suppress a suffocating upsurge of guilt for having not removed his brother from that environment sooner.

A gentle  *ahem*  from his office entrance interrupted his increasingly-despondent thoughts. He glanced up to see his assistant standing in the doorway. She was eyeing him blandly over the top of her mobile device - doubtless knew exactly what grim task he'd set himself to, didn't approve in the slightest. Not that she'd ever drop decorum to say as much, of course.

"Your cousin's requested a meeting with you," she informed him without preamble. "Given the current… situation, I've taken the liberty of pencilling her in for this afternoon."

Mycroft furrowed his brows slightly. She had to be referring to Reine, his eldest maternal cousin. None of the others were in a position to be requesting formal meetings. And - his heart leapt a bit - it had to be something to do with Sherlock. Nothing else would have prompted such a dramatic rearrangement of his schedule without prior approval.

"Thank you," he breathed in a tone perhaps more sentimental than he'd intended. "Reine's agreed to our security requirements?"

"No." His PA fixed him with a level stare, as if challenging him to criticise her judgement. He would never. "We're leaving primary site control to her team. Given her relationship to you and the urgent nature of the matter to be discussed I felt it a reasonable concession."

Mycroft let out a quiet breath and nodded. Under normal circumstances he'd never entertain taking such risk - meeting sites had to be cleared by his own security staff as a matter of basic protocol, absolute lunacy to leave his safety in the hands of anyone else. His assistant was right, however. In this singularly unique circumstance, bending the rules would be permissible.

Reine Cauchois was the first of five grandchildren on his mother's side, just over a year his elder. Mycroft's status as her 'little cousin' would drive familial interest in his personal wellbeing, and her current role within the family hierarchy would ensure she'd not risk any action liable to compromise his government position. In recent years she'd successfully manoeuvred herself into the position of protégé to their grandfather, and was now poised to take control when the elderly man finally let loose his iron grip over the family business. A simple shipping logistics firm, according to most paperwork - in reality a multinational enterprise specialising in smuggling, assassination, and contract espionage. Mycroft had utilised their services to complete missions of a more politically sensitive nature on several occasions now, when ties to the British government needed to be kept minimal, and naturally preferred them over similar groups due to the family connection. Reine understood the benefits of this nepotism perfectly well, and also knew that the relative lack of interference she enjoyed from the British government relied on Mycroft's influence. She could be trusted to protect him.

Hopefully she planned to let him know she'd taken it upon herself to protect Sherlock, as well. Preferably without having already recruited the boy. Mycroft had hoped to avoid his brother being drawn into that lifestyle.

With a very small sigh he flashed his assistant a tired smile to signal his silence hadn't anything to do with her. She already knew, of course.

"Very well," he replied. "Keep me apprised of any changes."

With a curt nod, she turned and disappeared back through the door.

Mycroft leant heavily back in his chair and allowed himself a moment to close his eyes. Well, that would be one worry off his plate at the very least. Reine would've contacted him through less formal means for news such as a death. Calling a professional meeting implied there were delicate logistical matters to discuss. Which meant Sherlock must, if nothing else, be alive.

Unfortunately, it also meant Reine must have decided Sherlock was no longer too risky to recruit. Despite a clearly developing interest in the boy's abilities over the past few years they'd been holding off approaching him while Siger still held potential sway, out of prudent concern for how easily he might be used as a mole. Mycroft had hoped this arrangement might continue under the assumption he'd hold a similar level of influence over his brother, but of course Reine would have unique insight into the fact that Sherlock really didn't give a damn what Mycroft had to say about anything. Moreover she'd know exactly how much Mycroft could be made to buckle under threats to Sherlock's safety, rendering him an even more lucrative asset. The only saving grace was that, in theory, the woman's own protective streak should keep her more ruthless tendencies in check - Sherlock was her youngest baby cousin, after all. She'd never let him come to harm. Or so one would hope.

Straightening back up, Mycroft finally took a resigned sip of the glass of scotch he'd been holding this entire time.

Good lord, what a mess.

**««**

## Chapter 13

**««**

Conversation hit a lull for a time. Sherlock hadn't had much information to offer about his grandfather - the sum total of his knowledge amounted to the man's full name (Alphonse Cauchois), his rough age (mid-80s), that he had three children (Bernard, Hubert, and Violet), five grandchildren (Reine, Mycroft, Alethea, Corin, and Sherlock), was wealthy enough to own a home on the French Riviera, and that on the rare occasion he spoke aloud it was always limited to short one- or two-word phrases. Josh had no good theory as to how his uncle might know the man, and didn't recognise any of the names, so they'd hit something of an impasse.

Seemed as good an opportunity as any to turn to the business of trying to sort though the disaster his mind had made of itself over the past several hours, so Sherlock had stretched out on the uneven floor of the van and stared at the fairy lights until he fell into a detached, trancelike state.

Amongst the debris littering his mind-field he found an old memory, something shaken loose by the mention of Grand-père's name. Recollection of the time the man had somehow intimidated Siger into leaving Sherlock alone for the remainder of the trip, which Siger inexplicably continued to honour every visit thereafter. Holidays in France thus gained an unfamiliar (and to be honest sometimes quite confusing) quality of feeling safe. Debated mentioning this to Josh. No, too difficult to explain without discussing a load of childhood trauma. Didn't understand it himself, anyway, as he'd never been able to figure out why Father should care what Grand-père thought of his parenting methods. Could've asked someone, maybe, but a dark streak of paranoia had slithered into his brain and convinced him that verbally acknowledging Grand-père's protection would anger the man and prompt him to rescind it. Hadn't seemed worth the risk.

Conjured up a box and packed the memory neatly away. Still accessible, so he'd not have to go digging later. But nothing to be bothered with for now.

Over the next however-long Sherlock made decent progress sorting things out. Hit a bit of an annoying snag when one of the memories scattered about turned out to be all the words to that bloody folk song Eric had played on repeat for a few days, and picking that up caused the song to begin playing in the background on loop. Couldn't figure out how to turn it off, so he set to tolerating it the same way he'd tolerated Eric playing it over and over the first time - by relegating it to a subconscious section of neural circuitry where it could meander around without bothering him. Shifted instead to trying to collect together any relevant information he could find on his other maternal family members, starting with trying to remember what his uncles did for a living.

"Is that Iron & Wine?" Josh asked suddenly, voice cutting through Sherlock's mental space like a jagged knife. Sherlock blinked and shot the man a questioning, irritated look. Josh was still sat on his plastic-bag-turned-beanbag-chair, but rather than scribbling in his notepad as he'd been doing when Sherlock lay down, he'd produced a set of pencils, a sketchbook, and a small lantern from somewhere and seemed to be drawing something under the stronger light.

"The song you were singing to yourself just now," Josh clarified, not looking up from his sketching. "It's by that Iron & Wine guy, right?"

Sherlock scowled deeply in an effort to mask a flash of embarrassment. Hadn't been consciously aware of having started to quietly sing the words until Josh pointed it out. With short huff of a sigh he painfully propped himself up on one elbow and dug his cigarettes and lighter out. Clearly one fag's worth of nicotine hadn't been enough to stop his body acting of its own accord when he wasn't watching it.

*"Trapeze Swinger,* I think?" Josh went on, apparently not caring in the slightest if Sherlock failed to participate in the conversation. "Penny dragged me to a couple of that guy's shows last year trying to hear that song cause it was, like, mad hipster cred to learn the words before the EP dropped. You in that scene?"

"No," Sherlock grumbled, having only the faintest idea what Josh was even on about. Sherlock had by now caught on to the man's immensely irritating habit of responding to one-word answers with a stream of vapid chatter, so before Josh could become seized by the urge to speak again he reluctantly elaborated. "I don't know what song it is, Eric found it on the internet or something and I never asked the name. Just gets stuck in my head sometimes because he kept playing it on loop for whatever reason."

Having got his cigarette lit, he lay back down again and turned a petulant scowl on the fairy lights above. Hoped that had been enough information to satisfy Josh's bizarre compulsion to engage in pointless conversation.

"Who's Eric?" Josh asked idly. Fucking talkative bastard.

Sherlock grit his teeth but answered anyway. "My ex."

"The one your dad got arrested?"

*"Yes,"* Sherlock spat. "Stop asking so many fucking questions." His tone came out far more pissed off than he'd intended - couldn't help it, ever since seeing him in that surreal morphine dream earlier every thought related to Eric had been accompanied by a piercing bolt of complex emotional pain he'd no hope of understanding. Josh had triggered that stabbing wound so many times by now it had begun to feel like an icepick lodged in his chest.

Sherlock resolutely ignored Josh's bemused smirk his direction by taking a drag of his cig. Smoking whilst lying on the floor was a little awkward, but he wasn't about to sit up if he could help it. Needed to give his bruised abdomen as much rest as possible before he inevitably found himself running for his life again.

After a few silent beats Sherlock saw Josh shake his head out of the corner of his vision. The man made a small, frustrated noise, then leant back on his seat to fix Sherlock with a hard stare. Sherlock waited a few seconds to see if he'd stop, then with a roll of his eyes finally deigned to turn his head to meet the man's gaze more properly. Matched Josh's intense stare with one of flat disinterest.

"Alright, fine," Josh said after a long stretch of silence.

"Look, the reason I keep… I dunno, trying to chat or whatever, is cause I've been trying to figure out how to ask something that's gonna come off really fucking weird and… well I guess I was just looking for an opening. Trying to make it less, you know. Fucking weird."

Sherlock's flat look morphed into a mix between baffled and deeply annoyed. "You've been interrupting me every ten bloody minutes over not wanting to come off *weird?"* he snapped, wincing for a spasm in his battered abdominal muscle as he moved his head to glare more directly. He absently stabilised it with a press of his palm to the throbbing knot of pain under the bandage. "What exactly gave you the impression that I give a shit?"

Josh huffed a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "Yeah, fair enough. Then… fuck it." He took a steadying breath. "So, you said both your parents were in foreign intelligence. Did they… try to make you like them?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Sherlock retorted as he let his head thump back down. Kept pressure on his gut with the free hand - it had gone back to hurting like hell over the past few minutes. Pain relief fully wearing off, probably. Wished he had more morphine.

Josh made a small, frustrated little noise. Sherlock heard the tapping of a pencil. Then…

"Were you raised to be a spy?"

This wasn't asked in a tone of idle curiosity, but instead one of flat desperation. Sherlock frowned, absolutely baffled, and opened his mouth to reply with a scathing *'What kind of ridiculous question is that? Of course not'.*

But before he could transfer thought into speech… something deep in his brain broke free. Like a cracked dam blowing through its last fragile facade, unleashing a sudden deafening torrent on an unsuspecting landscape.

Awareness shifted with a sensation like stepping through a patch of thin ice and plunging into frigid water. Sinking down through a kaleidoscope of different, yet horrifically similar memories. Eight years old, nine, ten, eleven. Different versions of himself stood nervously next to Father trying very hard to pay attention and not forget any special instructions beyond his usual role. Always to keep himself as unobtrusive as possible and observe every person they encountered - on the lookout for blackmail material, ways to thwart security, identifying tells of foreign intelligence agents. Siger's trained rat.

In Sherlock's early childhood, back before Mummy retreated fully into herself, she'd set time aside to teach him various skills she'd deemed 'fundamentally necessary for the sort of life you're going to lead'. First was how to turn his tendency to pick up a constant stream of extraneous details into a habit of deducing things, something she'd also taught Mycroft. This was very important, she'd said, because without it people like them would go mad. Next came pickpocketing, and then lockpicking, which were things Mycroft hadn't needed to learn. Mummy said they'd only be useful to Sherlock, because his brother hadn't inherited the storm of restless curiosity which filled up all the spaces in his head and drove him to the sort of situations one might need to pick or steal their way out of. Lastly, how to avoid being seen. Because, Mummy told him, being good at disappearing was going to be his only means to protect himself. From what, she'd not explained.

After Mycroft left for boarding school Mummy's interest in interacting with anyone fell sharply away, leaving Sherlock quite suddenly alone. Being too young to know better he'd sought out companionship in the other parent. At first Father had simply ignored him, but with persistence Sherlock managed to severely annoy the man - not yet to the point of physical violence, as that wouldn't start up for another year or so, when his impulsive chattering began to reveal the secrets of houseguests. Instead he'd found himself locked in a broom cupboard. That was alright, of course, because he always carried his lockpicks. But in letting himself out, and then in trying to appease the anger caused by doing so, he'd revealed what Mummy had taught him. Shown his potential to be useful. A mistake, of course, but then he'd only been six. Didn't yet know to be wary.

Over the next few years he found himself conditioned into the role of Father's little spy, accompanying the man on any business endeavour he could plausibly drag a child into. Sherlock hadn't ever known quite how to feel about this. Because while many of the places they went were dangerous or frightening, paying attention to so many details for such long stretches of time was profoundly exhausting, and being near Father felt like waiting for a viper to strike, doing well on these outings sometimes earned him a word of praise. So on balance it came out a bit of a wash.

As Sherlock got older Father and Vasily became more open about what exactly they did with the agents and assassins he spotted for them. Perhaps they'd thought he might find it as entertaining as they did. He didn't. He'd been cursed with far too much empathy to find it anything but horrifying. Learnt instead how to retreat to a far-off place in his head where he didn't have to process what was happening and wait for them to finish their business. Thankfully this translated into a vacant stare Vasily found unsettling, which meant he usually ordered Sherlock to go wait somewhere else. Small comfort, since even if he didn't have to bear witness he still knew he'd condemned some stranger to a terrible fate.

Lying to protect people hadn't ever been a plan that was going to work, but he'd felt obligated to at least try. Father caught on immediately, of course. Reacted as expected. Tried for a time to break Sherlock of this ridiculous compassionate streak, but it turned out he couldn't turn off his empathy without also turning off the ability to see people's secrets, so that hadn't worked. Declared him instead too unreliable for fieldwork, shipped him off to Eton where he'd been tasked with spying on his schoolmates. Those with well-connected fathers knew exactly what he was, they'd warned the rest and soon enough he'd become a pariah.

For a brief moment his perception seemed to wage a small war between realities. One in which he was currently frozen in place fixing a blank stare on the roof of a rusted-out van whilst his cig burnt down between his lips, the various injuries he'd taken to ignoring having arisen from being beaten half to death by a load of pissed off Americans in a swamp. Another where his wounds had been inflicted by means much more painful, to a body much smaller, and he was lying on his back in the grass under the willow tree, staring up into the gnarled branches and wishing he could vanish into cracks in the bark like the insects did. These two offset planes rippled and touched but couldn't quite merge, leaving him caught in motionless suspension between the two states.

In a spark of clear cognizance he realised he must have fallen into one of those dissociative fits Eric always used to break him out of. Couldn't usually tell when they were happening - impossible to distinguish from having simply got caught up in his thoughts. But Eric had always known, somehow. And knew how to get him back out again. If only he were here.

With that thought his perception lurched again, shifted rapidly towards the willow tree reality. He found himself suddenly in his mind-field, lying under the willow in his head. And the ghostly apparition of Eric lay in the grass next to him - same strange, translucent figure as in the dream earlier. Sherlock looked over to him quizzically, and ghost-Eric met his eyes with a smile.

"Hey, Sherly. Git stuck again?"

Without thinking Sherlock shifted his hand in search of Eric's, was deeply relieved to find it rendered solid by the memory of their fingers intertwining. Watched as the hazy translucence of the rest of Eric's body coalesced into a faithful recreation of the man by the same mechanism.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe."

Not-Eric gave him a look of fond exasperation. "Well, did y'get tossed in here cause y'got overwhelmed or did y'do it on purpose to avoid sommat?"

"I… the first one, I think," Sherlock recalled in his strange wordless mind-voice. "Josh asked about something I must have buried, I guess. Got hit with a load of memories all at once. Too much to process."

"So yer stuck," Eric not-said with a shrug. "And yer gonna stay that way til yer brain thinks it's safe t'come out."

Sherlock sighed, looked out through the willow boughs to the roiling sea of emotion looming beyond. Didn't want to go out in that, but he knew he couldn't stay hidden in his head forever. If nothing else because his cigarette would sear his lips when it burnt down.

"Well, that's unfortunate. I've a lit cig in my mouth."

Eric laughed at him. "How many times did I tell ya t'stop fuckin' holding 'em in yer lips if y'were gonna keep spacing out? Daft prat."

Despite his unconcerned tone not-Eric hefted himself up, rolled over so he was half on top of Sherlock and cupped his jaw in one hand to kiss him. Sherlock realised it was the left hand on his face and drew away slightly to glance down - this dream version of Eric didn't have a cast on. Wondered vaguely how he remembered the pattern of freckles on skin he'd only briefly seen uncovered.

"Sherlock, hey. Look at me." Eric's ghost commanded. Sherlock looked back up, met warm brown eyes, and the world around them vanished.

Sherlock blinked. Looked around.

Fairy lights casting a weak glow in the darkness, background hum of an unfamiliar forest, cigarette filter burning acrid between his lips.

Had… had he just summoned Eric's ghost like some sort of deranged spirit animal to break himself out of a dissociative episode? Was that *allowed?*

Before he could dwell much further on this new development in his general state of insanity, Josh spoke up. He appeared to have teleported from his seat on the far side of the van to kneeling next to Sherlock, apparently having been shaking him by the shoulder.

"Oh thank *fuck,"* he barked in a tone equal parts relieved and upset. "Thought I triggered a sleeper agent or some shit."

"You triggered *something,"* Sherlock growled, hoping the tone would convey he'd very much prefer Josh never ask him anything like that again. He angrily took the burned-down cig from his lips and stubbed it out as he pushed himself into a sitting position.

Josh, of course, was not an especially empathetic individual, and either didn't catch the intent of Sherlock's tone or (perhaps more likely) didn't care.

"Is that your way of saying 'yes, I was traumatically raised to be a tiny little child spy and I don't want to talk about it'?"

"Yes," Sherlock snapped.

"Well, great." Josh huffed a sigh and rocked back on his feet to land with a soft *thump* on the floor, now sitting on his bottom with his legs bent loosely in front of him. He leant his elbows on his knees. "I mean… not great, obviously. But… kind of a relief? I mean cause the reason I even wanted to ask is-"

"Because Frank subjected you to harsh training in preparation for a career in the CIA, resulting in a traumatic childhood, and you wanted to confirm I've a similar background before committing to telling me anything of actual substance," Sherlock supplied irritably. Didn't need it spelled out, for god's sake. He'd enough nicotine in his system now to piece things together.

Josh flashed him a flat, humourless smile. "Yeah, pretty much." Before Sherlock could reply he elaborated further, nattering on in a way that seemed oddly nervous, "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I get that it was a fucked up thing to ask, especially with all this stressful shit going on, it's just… I dunno, I guess I wanted to be sure you'd understand before I explain what I'm aiming to do."

Sherlock knew what Josh was hinting at before he'd even properly registered the man's words - there was only one realistic goal a person could have whilst stuck under the control of a hyper-competent psychopath, after all. One he himself had fixated on at various points in his life. He set a resigned stare straight ahead and stated the obvious in a flat monotone.

"You're trying to get Frank killed."

Josh didn't react with surprise, or dismay, or any of the other things people usually did to prove Sherlock's wild leaps of logic correct. Instead he just confirmed with a quiet nod and a determined glare.

"It won't help," Sherlock went on without really meaning to. Instinct was to drop the topic and try to deflect, not reveal deeply personal emotional struggles, but for some reason his brain felt a need to warn Josh what success would mean. "Nothing gets better afterwards. It just… creates a void. Where the anger was. Consumes everything else like a black hole."

"... leaves you wandering foreign countries with no goals?" Josh asked blandly.

Sherlock said nothing.

Silence stretched heavy between them.

"I don't fucking care," Josh finally said, voice gone low and bitter. "Doesn't matter what happens to me. He'll get what's coming to him and won't be able to hurt anyone else. You're not gonna convince me to give that up."

"Wasn't trying to. Just letting you know."

Another silence.

As was apparently his habit, Josh tolerated only a scant minute of quiet before attempting to fill it with a stream of nervous chatter.

"Look, it's not like I've got, like, a solid plan or anything at this point. I only really started thinking about it when Allie showed up. Because when a literal French assassin gets involved that's when you know shit's gone significantly sideways, right? And I figure, since Frank still thinks I'm on his side, that puts me in a good position to catch him off-guard. Like right now as far as he knows I only helped you escape as a way to establish trust and get you alone to build up a rapport or whatever. Won't be expecting anything else."

Sherlock's brain had jumped to a ludicrous conclusion over the combination of the name 'Allie' with 'French assassin', but he resolutely quashed it. No. He was *not* going to entertain the notion of one of his cousins roaming about Florida with a rifle taking out hits on people.

Instead he shot Josh a disgruntled look, because he'd just realised the man had said something profoundly stupid.

"You're hoping to catch the man off-guard by… doing exactly what he thinks you're doing? Helping me escape and establishing rapport is literally all you've done so far," Sherlock pointed out irritably.

Josh went abruptly still, met Sherlock's gaze, flicked his eyes down to the floor as if considering his own actions. Then muttered a quiet, disbelieving "fuck".

Despite the tense atmosphere Sherlock couldn't help a small laugh. "Well now I don't trust you at *all."*

"God damn it, you shouldn't," Josh said with a groan. He brought his hands up to cover his face.

Perhaps it was just Sherlock projecting his own experiences, but he actually found himself fully inclined to trust that Josh hadn't meant to follow Frank's script for him. How many times had Sherlock found himself played similarly by Siger, after all? Become all too familiar with that crushing feeling of realising far too late you'd been dragged along on puppet strings.

And come to think of it… oh. Well. That thought actually slotted a piece of the grand puzzle of his life into place. Hadn't even realised until just now.

"… suppose that must have been the point," he muttered absently. Josh peeked out from behind his fingers with a questioning noise, so Sherlock took pity and elaborated. "Moulding a child into your own little… agent, or whatever. Creates something predictable, easy to control. That's why he decided to get rid of me after rehab. Addiction created too much volatility."

"Are you trying to say I can free myself from my uncle's influence by getting hooked on hard drugs?" Josh asked in a tone of flat, dejected sarcasm. He'd dropped his hands from his face and leant back into the wall as if exhausted.

"Er… yeah, probably?" Sherlock conceded. "For a bit, anyway. Father did get back round to me eventually. And if I'm honest about it, being controlled by dealers instead was… quite a lot worse."

A small, sardonic smile flitted across Josh's face, then dropped. The space fell quiet for a few moments before the man spoke again.

"Well now I'm fucking paranoid anything I decide to do is gonna be exactly what he's predicting."

Sherlock had just been nebulously thinking around that issue. Trying to imagine how he might go about trying to outmanoeuvre Siger in a similar scenario. All he could come up with was the vague idea that Eric had always seemed to approach problems exactly the opposite way to anything Sherlock might consider logical, and how that usually ended up creating something like a workable solution between the two of them.

Feeling very silly, he turned his focus inwards for a moment and let the ridiculous apparition of Eric materialise in his mindscape again. Gave his absurd construct access to all available knowledge regarding the situation and received a faintly alarmed, bewildered stare in response.

"Why th'fuck are you in bleedin' Florida?" Eric asked in the strange, indefinable not-voice afforded by being a figment of Sherlock's imagination.

"I conjured you to help me come up with a plan, not ask stupid questions," Sherlock snapped back. Hoped he'd done so only in his mind, and not aloud, since having to explain who he was talking to would be absolutely mortifying.

"Alright, christ, calm down," Eric not-said with a roll of his eyes. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and bit his lip in thought. "Er, well… I reckon that old lady seemed nice enough? An' she didn't seem too pleased wit' the Frank bloke fer acting like he were gonna shoot her, but weren't all that upset neither, like maybe she expects that kinda shit from 'im. So I'm guessin' she don't like him much. Plus she's been decent t'you even when she didn't have t'be, more'n you'd expect for just bein' nice. Might mean she knows yer family too, somehow, recognised your face on the pavement back there. And nobody's gonna stop and help out a kid what looks like someone they hated, so, um… I guess find a way to lure th'Frank bloke out so y'can talk to her alone? See if she's secretly on yer side, or get her to answer a few questions at least."

Sherlock stared blankly ahead as he shifted focus back into the material realm. Spent several long moments trying to decide if he was seriously about to suggest a plan he'd come up with by consulting the imaginary ghost of his ex-boyfriend.

"We should lure Frank out of the house so we can talk to your aunt alone," he finally said.

Continued to stare at the far wall. No, shut up. It was fine. He'd still come up with the plan himself, he'd just done it through a bizarrely convoluted mental abstraction driven by a stupid sentimental attachment to an idiot he'd never see again. Didn't matter. Just never breathe a word of it to anyone.

Josh lifted his head to fix him with a dubious look. "Why?"

"She has information we're missing, and being caught talking to her seems unlikely to arouse suspicion about your loyalties in the event things go awry."

Josh stared at him a few beats. Finally he lifted his shoulders in a resigned shrug. "You know what, fuck it. Not something I'd think of, Frank might not expect it. Worth a shot."

"We'll need a plan to get him to leave the house."

"Already on it," Josh said. He'd flipped to a new page of his sketchbook, laid it on the floor, and began drawing a layout of the house. "Alright, so this window over here is the best way to get in without being seen…"

**««**

## Chapter 14

**««**

"Ready?" Josh whispered. Sherlock nodded, eyes fixed on the house. Josh pressed a key on his mobile. They waited.

It took a long, silent minute, but his mobile finally buzzed softly with a reply. He read it and grinned.

"Says he's on his way." Stowing his mobile again, Josh clapped Sherlock lightly on the back. "See ya in a bit, Casper."

"Casper?" Sherlock repeated, confused, but Josh had already moved off towards the spot they'd decided he should start from. Who the fuck was Casper?

Oh, well. Couldn't waste brainpower on it. Had a very narrow window in which to slip into the house. He waited with bated breath for the back door to open. As soon as it did, and Frank stepped out, Josh appeared from behind a tree nearby and feigned being out of breath.

"Uncle Frank! H-holy shit, I'm so sorry, fucker's way faster than I thought he'd be."

Frank turned a dubious glare on Josh, but after a tense few seconds seemed to accept his dishevelled appearance as evidence of a fight and subsequent mad chase through the woodland. With an irritated noise the older man moved off towards the treeline, away from the spot where Sherlock was hiding.

"For fuck's sake Josh he's a skinny British kid in Florida, probably passed out in a ditch somewhere and you ran right by him."

Sherlock furrowed his brow, vaguely offended. But then a beat later shrugged to himself instead, because on second thought, yeah, that was fair.

Also meant they'd be spending a while combing the underbrush, which would give him more time to find Mrs Hudson, and hopefully give Josh better opportunity to slip Frank's notice doubling back. Against all odds they seemed to be pulling this plan off remarkably well so far.

As soon as Frank was out of sight Sherlock darted out from his hiding spot behind the shed again, then made his way across the garden to a set of tall windows set low enough down the outside wall to where it was a simple matter to slide one up and step inside. Josh claimed to have sabotaged this window's latch intentionally to facilitate a quick exit point from the attic hatch in the laundry room. Inside was, as promised, a small space taken up by laundry machines and shelving. Sherlock was now supposed to navigate to the sitting room, as Josh said Mrs Hudson would most likely be there. If she weren't asleep, anyway. It was after all going on something like three in the morning.

Thankfully Josh's hand-drawn map turned out to be accurate, and Sherlock was able to find the sitting room easily. Could see from the hall that a light was on. Good sign, one hoped.

"Sherlock, dear! Well, goodness, you're a bit early," Mrs Hudson said pleasantly as he poked his head around the doorframe. Despite ostensibly having been looking for the woman she still managed to startle him quite badly, though he did his best to hide the jumpy flinch under a cough. She was sat in an armchair near a large bay window, apparently sorting through a pile of documents and photographs spread out over the coffee table in front of her.

Sherlock approached her warily. Found her lack of surprise vaguely confusing, though honestly he wasn't sure why he continued to be caught off guard by this woman's underreactions.

Mrs Hudson apparently read his thoughts in his expression and smiled indulgently at him. "Oh, I knew you'd be back round soon enough. You'd be too curious after Frank went on about your mum like that."

"It, er… did raise quite a lot of questions," Sherlock conceded. Sherlock tried to sidle close enough to see the documents without losing sight of the hallway entry. Awkward angle, couldn't quite manage. Didn't get a chance to decide on what to do next - Mrs Hudson had plucked up a photograph the moment he came near enough her armchair and, leaning over the arm towards him, waved the thing insistently until he reluctantly accepted it. As he looked down at the picture all thought was driven abruptly from his mind by the sight of his own face staring back at him.

"Goodness, you poor child," Mrs Hudson murmured sadly as she observed his reaction. Presumably his expression had dropped into something approaching stunned confusion. "You've not been told a thing about him, have you?"

Finally Sherlock's brain managed to process details of the image. He realised he wasn't, in fact, staring at his own face. Or not quite, anyway. Hair too light, eyes the wrong colour, differently-shaped ears. But the bone structure and facial expression of bored annoyance were like looking into a warped mirror. It felt very much like the moment of startled confusion he'd had upon recognising his own face in Father's chair in that bizarre dream earlier, though of course this incongruous replica of himself hadn't yet called him an idiot.

As he stared he realised dimly… ah, right. This had to be the man his mother shagged to produce him. The affair partner.

He'd always known, on some level, that he wasn't a true son. Not like Mycroft was. On paper Sherlock had been your standard spare, the much-younger second-child afterthought. Reading between the lines of layered implications threaded through their family, however, had suggested early on that he'd really just been a bastard-child permitted to live for Siger's amusement. This presumption had coloured much of his childhood and teens, though he'd never discovered any hard evidence to prove the suspicion one way or the other.

Here was that evidence staring back at him, then. In full, high-resolution colour.

It took him far too long to realise a name was printed underneath the headshot, and then finally to read it. *Lochlann Faulkner.*

Sherlock stared at the neat, typewritten letters. Tried to decide how he felt about his mother having often used the pet name 'Lockie' for him as a child.

He felt extremely weird about it, was all he managed to determine, before Mrs Hudson was speaking again.

"What a tremendous bloody idiot that man was," she muttered fondly. She'd picked up another photograph and was regarding it with a wistful smile.

Her sentimental tone was badly at odds with the words, causing Sherlock to glance up with a brief, confused look. Rather than reply, she simply handed him the photo she'd been looking at. This one was a washed-out polaroid, perhaps dating back to the mid-70s, depicting a vaguely familiar young woman alongside Sherlock's uncanny doppelganger. They were stood in front of what he was fairly certain was the Baker Street tube station in the bright sunlight of some summer's day, both of them making ridiculous faces into the camera. Apart from the couple's absurdly 70s fashion sense, and the fact that the man had his arm around his companion's waist in a way that seemed more intimate than Sherlock could imagine being with a woman, he might have been convinced it was a photo of himself.

"A gorgeous idiot, though, mind you," Mrs Hudson went on. "And terrific in bed."

Sherlock blinked. Stared at Mrs Hudson, who just smiled blithely back. Looked back down to the polaroid instead. Realised the woman was her.

"Oh," he said stupidly.

Mrs Hudson put a hand to her mouth, a slight flush to her cheeks. "Sorry, dear. That was a terribly odd thing to say to you, wasn't it?"

Sherlock was mercifully saved the trouble of trying to find a reply by the slamming of a door nearby, followed by heavy footsteps approaching. He barely had time to spin around before his planned escape route back through the laundry room was blocked by a steely-eyed Frank. Josh trailed along behind him, shooting Sherlock a look that seemed equal parts apologetic and terrified.

"See, kid, what'd I tell you? Little trained rat came scurrying back," he growled to Josh.

Really should have bolted for a window, but Frank's choice of insult caused Sherlock's brain to stutter to a stop before he'd got his legs to move. A thousand different explanations for why the man might call him that. Didn't have to mean they'd met before. But a nebulous wisp of recognition made him suspect they very much had. Whether by means of his having sold the man out to Father, or in some other capacity, he couldn't know without going back through the memories and risking becoming trapped in a vortex of childhood trauma again. Even the mere thought was beginning to draw him inexorably towards dissociation like water spiralling around a drain. In an act of desperation he conjured up his stupid imaginary Eric again, let the memory of their fingers intertwining act as a tether to keep from falling in. Didn't know how to feel about the fact that it seemed to be working.

Frank quirked a dark smirk at him and stepped forward, which Sherlock of course matched by stepping back, until he unfortunately hit a wall. Frank closed the remaining distance and pinned him there with a firm grip on one shoulder, thumb ready to hit the brachial pressure point at first hint of provocation. This did not at all help the issue of trying to avoid being sucked into childhood trauma. He froze in place like a spooked deer.

Parsing speech had fallen sharply off his cognitive priority list, so he had no idea what Frank snarled in his face. Instead focussed on the phantom presence of Eric at his side, which thankfully hadn't disappeared, and with that as a lifeline managed to at least claw himself back into remaining aware of his surroundings. Still locked up like a statue, of course, but some things couldn't be helped.

"Frank, unhand that child this instant!" Mrs Hudson's uncharacteristically irate voice broke in.

"He's not a fucking *child,* Martha."

"Fine, you're right, he's a twenty year-old junkie just barely off a coke habit. Does that sound better to you?" she replied snippily. Sherlock managed to tear his eyes off Frank's face long enough to see her standing beside her armchair with her hands on her hips. "Now take your bloody hand off the boy before he faints, I'll not have him hitting his head on the hardwood."

Frank scowled. Despite having not taken his eyes off Sherlock's face whilst speaking to Mrs Hudson, he seemed to only just now realise the dramatic effect he'd elicited. With a vaguely concerned frown he released Sherlock's shoulder and stepped away with both hands raised in a placating gesture.

"God damn it. Alright, kid, calm down. Didn't mean to spook you that bad."

Sherlock remained pressed against the wall. Tried not to acknowledge how badly he was shivering with adrenaline nor how rapid his breathing still was. The only thing keeping him from making good on Mrs Hudson's worry and cracking his skull on the floor in a dead faint was Not-Eric pressed up against his side, shouting furious insults at Frank. Same as he'd done once in a crowded pub, towards a man much different but no less threatening. Frank couldn't hear any of it, of course, but it still seemed to help. Made him feel less alone.

"Thank you," Mrs Hudson said archly to Frank. Then, to Josh behind him, "Joshua, it's lovely to see you again."

"Uh… you too, Aunty," Josh muttered.

"Can we save the fucking pleasantries?" Frank snapped. He turned a dark glare back on Sherlock, who managed to meet the man's gaze with a glare of his own for a brief few seconds before his brain threatened to overload and he was forced to look away again. Despite how pathetic a display of defiance that was he still felt oddly proud of himself.

"Look, kid," Frank continued in a tone as if he were trying very hard not to sound excessively threatening. Wasn't succeeding in the least. "I thought I knew who sent you, but I've since been informed otherwise. So, as a gesture of goodwill, I'm going to ask you what the fuck you're doing here, and you've got ten seconds to give me a straight answer. If you don't, I go back to being an asshole."

"I'm not doing anything," Sherlock answered immediately. Grimaced for how much of a blatant lie that sounded. Sure enough, the frigid glare Frank gave him in response said in no uncertain terms he'd just fucked up. Panicked a bit. Scrabbled for Eric's hand in the sliding space between reality and the field in his head.

"Really not in the mood for this, kid," Frank growled.

"It's the truth!"

Frank did not appear convinced. "You're the bastard son of Faulkner and Cauchois, spent half your fucking life helping Siger Holmes exterminate my colleagues, and now you happen to show up on my doorstep right when shit starts going sideways. And you're expecting me to call that a coincidence."

Sherlock shrugged helplessly. "Er… yes?"

Frank was predictably not impressed. "Cut the bullshit. Obviously Holmes sent you, just fucking tell me what he wants."

A sharp bolt of confusion gave Sherlock enough confidence to meet Frank's gaze with a baffled, faintly insulted glare.

"Father didn't *send* me," he retorted. "He's been dead for months."

Belatedly he remembered the text he'd told Josh to send. Rushed to try to explain, so as not to seem even more dishonest, and as he did so the burst of composure melted away again. "T-the text was just to see if you knew who he-"

"Holmes is *what?"* Frank barked over him. He sounded some mix of alarmed and angry.

Sherlock cut himself off, had a brief moment of internal upheaval trying to reroute his train of thought. "Er… dead."

Frank growled in a way that seemed oddly frantic. "And who the fuck told you that?"

"Um, no one? M-my brother shot him in the face. Right in front of me. So… I mean, I suppose I didn't personally confirm it, but he did seem quite dead."

Apparently incensed by Sherlock's unintentionally flippant tone, Frank stormed forward and grabbed him roughly by the collar. Adrenaline tore through nerves already frayed near to breaking and he made a valiant effort to avoid hyperventilating.

"Don't fucking lie to me!"

"N-not lying," Sherlock mumbled. Screwed his eyes shut against the situation, tried to will his heart to slow down.

*"Frank!* For the last time take your *bloody* hands off him!" Mrs Hudson's voice cut in, sounding closer than she'd been before.

Frank mercifully let go of Sherlock's collar and backed away. Sherlock drew a sharp breath he didn't know he'd been holding, snapped his eyes open, then promptly slid straight down the wall as his legs gave out. Resisted the urge to curl up in to a ball for a brief moment, lost that battle very quickly. Couldn't help it - without cocaine his only reliable means to block out enough stimuli to stave off a panic attack was to fold up small as possible and press his face against his knees. That this made him look like a pathetic child was a very distant concern compared to the firestorm beginning to kick up in his head.

Blocking the world out wasn't enough this time, unfortunately. Found himself yanked inwards, directly towards the flames. A hand appeared out of nowhere and grabbed his wrist, dragged him away from the storm, through the veil of leaves into a safe bubble of calm beneath the willow tree. Eric, of course. Or his memory. As soon as they'd made it past the willow boughs Eric turned and grabbed him up into a crushing embrace.

Sherlock let himself be hugged (or let the memory of being hugged play out, he wasn't entirely sure how this worked), but did so with a deeply confused frown.

"Erm… what?" he asked eloquently. Eric drew back with a fondly exasperated look.

"Y'been callin' me up this whole past while tryna keep yerself afloat, ain't ya? Course I'm gonna keep at it even if ya forget to do it on purpose."

"No. I refuse to be this patently insane," Sherlock decided. Tried to extricate himself from the hold Eric still had on his arms, meaning to leave the willow and find a way back out into reality, but Eric held firm.

"Oi, slow down. Ain't gonna be able t'leave just yet."

Sherlock frowned at him. Should reply with some scathing insult, but it was hard to muster up the will to be intentionally cruel. Couldn't bear the thought of hurting him, even if only a copy.

"It's my head, I can leave whenever I like," he objected instead, ignoring how his abstract not-voice came out sounding highly uncertain of that. "Ideally as soon as possible, because I need to get back out and deal with-"

Eric put a finger to his lips to shut him up, shot a meaningful glance through the leaves in an indication Sherlock should follow his gaze. Sherlock obliged. A demonic tornado of fire was tearing through the landscape beyond the willow boughs, leaving a scorched hellscape in its wake. Oh. Well. Alright, then.

"I don't think tryna get yerself out is gonna work until that calms down some," Eric explained as they watched the devastation unfold. "Or, well, I mean it might, I guess. But you'd just come right back in."

"As if you have any better idea how all this works than I do," Sherlock groused. Eric turned away from the firestorm to give him another exasperated look.

"I'm your own fuckin' brain, dumbarse. Just, like… wearin' this bloke's memory or sommat." With a nonplussed shrug he moved off towards the willow's trunk, dragging Sherlock along by one arm. Sat them down next to a small mound of stones covering memories of a dead cat. "He understood yer panic shit better'n you do, though, so I reckon I got about as much of a handle on what's goin' on right now as any part of you ever could."

Sherlock shook his head in vague disbelief for his own madness. "God forbid the real Eric ever finds out I'm doing this."

Not-Eric scoffed. "He's out there doin' th' exact same bleedin' thing with his memories of you."

At Sherlock's dubious look he rolled his eyes, dialled back the confidence a bit. "Alright, fine. Obviously I can't know that. But I'm the mental model you built of 'im, and if *I* were stuck havin' t'figure out how to get on without you I'd sure as hell be imagining yer voice in me head."

Sherlock huffed a bitter, humourless laugh. "Nobody would want me in their head."

Not-Eric smacked him lightly on the thigh in admonishment.

"Don't be a prat, fuck's sake. Y'know damn well he leant on you much as you on him. He's a terrified wreck right now, out there on his own. Yer ghost in his head goin' on about bees or whatever'll be the only thing keepin' him from breakin' down."

"That seems… incredibly presumptuous to just assume." With a small sigh, Sherlock took not-Eric's hand in his, let memory make the touch seem real. He looked out to the firestorm beginning to die down beyond the leaves and added, quietly, "... I hope his imaginary version of me is kinder to him than I was, at least."

"It ain't," not-Eric assured him. "Kindness weren't what he needed you for."

A lump rose unexpectedly in Sherlock's throat and he swallowed heavily against it. Eric's memory-made-ghost glanced over to him, then briefly rose, shifted, sat down directly in front of him so they were face-to face with their legs bent around each other. Kissed him with the weight of a hundred memories.

"I can't drag him into my life again. Not if it's always going to be like this," Sherlock muttered. He moved his hands to either side of Eric's waist in a loose hug, let their foreheads rest together. Breathed in the faint scent of pot smoke clinging to freckled skin.

"Yeah," not-Eric replied. "Poor bastard would jus' get used as leverage. Or live in terror of you bein' killed. Better to let him just forget."

Sherlock said nothing. Had sort of hoped ghost-Eric might disagree with him, but of course they had the same knowledge. Knew the parade of random danger he constantly found himself in wasn't a lifestyle Eric could survive for long. Hell, Sherlock wasn't sure *he* was likely to survive it much longer - nearly died a dozen different ways this week, after all. And things didn't seem likely to get much safer.

After a long, silent moment, he reluctantly voiced what they both knew. "I have to go back."

Eric huffed an unhappy sigh, but nodded. He straightened himself back up so their heads weren't pressed together and grabbed Sherlock's face with both hands.

"Look at me," he said softly. And Sherlock did.

**««**

## Chapter 15

**««**

"You're not going mad."

"Will you *please*  just shut th'fuck up?"

"Not until you acknowledge what I'm telling you."

Eric whipped around angrily, but of course all he found was an empty field. Rolling expanse of vibrant green, capped in the distance by a squat stone wall. No houses to be seen from here - for reasons he didn't understand he'd begun to feel their windows as judgemental, staring eyes, so he'd set himself the goal of putting as much distance between himself and civilisation as the English countryside allowed. Or at least enough distance to avoid being seen. Succeeded on that front, for now. Though he'd not thought through the consequences of running out of cigarettes so far out from a shop. Been off the weed for a while now, so that bit was fine. Hadn't really meant to quit nicotine as well.

Rabbits were dotted about the grass all around him, long ears swivelling to track him. He huffed a frustrated sigh to himself and turned back to continue in the direction he'd been going. Just ignore the voice. Don't engage. Avoid contemplating the horrifying prospect of losing himself to the same disease which had swallowed Mum.

"That's not what's happening."

Bloody fucking thing was reading his  *thoughts* now and why did it have to keep using that voice and couldn't he just be fucking normal for one day in his entire bloody life and just-

"SHUT UP!"

Every rabbit nearby scattered for the sudden noise. Save one which had been directly in front of him - brave little bastard, speckled brown and white, which stood on its haunches to stare him down reproachfully.

"Um… s-sorry," he told it. The rabbit flicked an ear.

"You're talking to a rabbit," Sherlock's disembodied voice pointed out.

Eric grit his teeth against the urge to ask how that was any worse than talking to a schizophrenic hallucination of one's ex.

"This isn't schizophrenia," the voice insisted. Fuck. He'd forgot it could tap straight into his thoughts now. "It's temporary psychosis. You knew this was a risk of quitting nicotine."

"I didn't fuckin' know I might get harassed by a fuckin' ghost."

"A benign auditory hallucination," not-Sherlock corrected, sounding utterly bored.

"Fine, I don't fuckin' care! Piss off anyhow!" Eric snapped. A wave of directionless anger rose up, making him shake his head violently and redouble his pace. He'd spotted a large, solitary tree stood tall down the field a bit. Good a place as any to post up. He'd enough supplies in his knapsack to survive just about anywhere.

"Ugh, really?" the voice asked as Eric's goal apparently became clear to it. "A willow in a field?"

Eric stared straight ahead into memory.

**««**

*"Where d'ya go when you're like that?"*

*Sherlock grimaced, shaking his head to clear it as he usually did after being snapped out of a trance. Thankfully he'd set the chemicals down before spacing out this time. He glowered to himself and returned to setting up whatever step of his purification process he'd been at before his brain froze.*

*"The willow, usually," he grumbled. Eric blinked, raised his brows. Considered whether he was going to ask the obvious question or let it slide by without comment.*

*Sherlock had glanced sidelong to him and apparently caught the confused look. He huffed a frustrated sigh. Cross with himself for saying too much, perhaps, or with Eric for stumbling upon an unexpectedly complicated question. Impossible to tell. Whatever the case he apparently thought it best to explain without waiting to be asked.*

*"It's an abstraction technique I came across in a book about human cognition once. You're supposed to visualise a familiar location and use it as a sort of, I don't know… like a mental short-hand? Meant to help utilise the visuospatial portions of the brain to induce better recall ability."*

*Eric continued to keep his brows raised. He knew most of what those words meant, and honestly didn't have much trouble sussing out those he didn't through context clues, but it was more fun to play stupid. Usually got Sherlock to talk more, in any case, which was always good. Bloke's voice had captured Eric's fancy from the moment he'd first turned up on the doorstep.*

*Sure enough Sherlock frowned at Eric's blank look, and carried on trying to explain. "I'd messed about with it a bit when I was younger but it never really worked properly. And then when I started doing cocaine I had another go, and it worked that time, and then sort of got out of hand? Can't really turn any of it off now."*

*"And a… willow tree's involved somehow?" Eric asked, because he wasn't sure if Sherlock forgot to explain that bit or if he didn't want to.*

*Apparently he'd just forgot, because he shrugged and clarified gamely. "You're supposed to use a familiar location as an anchoring point, so I went with the tree I always used to hide in back h-" He cut off, scowled to himself, shook his head. "At my family's estate. Old-growth weeping willow stood alone in a field, with a little stream nearby. Seemed a simple enough visual to start out with. Stupid book never discussed the perils of using a setting fraught with childhood association, of course."*

*Eric didn't miss the self-correction of the word 'home', but as with most such details let it slip past. By this point in their relationship it had become clear (to Eric, at least - he was relatively certain Sherlock didn't think about such things at all) that a large part of why they got on so well came down to a mutual instinct to sidestep topics too painful to discuss. Unhealthy avoidance, perhaps. But also… oddly comforting? Made it easier, somehow, to get near the difficult things, knowing they could trust one other not to stray too near the raw edges hidden in the details. Things like feeling you ought to call the place you'd grown up something else besides 'home', or why you might use the word 'hide' instead of 'climb'.*

*So rather than call attention to any of that, Eric just gave an easy shrug.*

*"Good to know you're someplace safe when you get stuck, I s'pose."*

*Sherlock shot him a baffled look. "Were you… worried that I wasn't?"*

*Eric made a noncommittal noise, which had come to be shorthand between them for not knowing how to answer and not really wanting to try. Unlike anyone else Eric had ever been close to in his life, Sherlock accepted this without question. He returned to his work, and they fell easily back into peaceful coexistence.*

**««**

Back in the present moment, Eric shook his head trying to dispel wisps of memory. Had to quit doing this to himself. Yes, alright, so he'd spent a brief, surreal month with a bloke miraculously fluent in all the little tricks Eric used to keep himself from falling into the suffocating pit of trauma in his head. Someone whose own pit was just as deep, and who thus understood the lengths one went to keep well clear of the edge.

All that was past now, though. Good while it lasted, a collection of memories to fall back on, but he'd not be risking forming such a close bond again. Fallen to an itinerant existence specifically to avoid it, in fact. Never lingered in any one place more than a night or two, limited human contact to the bare minimum, fled like a spooked hare the instant anyone learnt his name or he theirs. Every person he'd ever cared for had died a horrific death and left a scar on his psyche, and if he was doomed to keep living he refused to let anyone get close enough to hurt him that badly again.

"You don't know if I'm dead or not," Sherlock's disembodied voice said, drifting from the empty fields. "All you know is that I left you."

Eric ignored it.

He'd come upon the tree now (which was indeed some manner of willow stood alone in a field, and the association felt like a jagged knife to the soul but he wasn't about to dwell on such bullshit) and slung his bag off his back as he took a heavy seat against the trunk. Exhausted, empty, terrified. Stupid brain always with the slow drip of adrenaline. Fear and anger and regret and anxiety and crushing loneliness all mashed up together in the shape of one useless idiot.

"You don't get extra points for self-reproach, you know."

"Shut up," Eric tried again, plaintively. "Please. Just leave me alone."

He brought his knees up and buried his head in his arms as if that might somehow muffle a voice his mind had invented to torment itself.

"No."

Fuck.

Well, perhaps another tack. Maybe he could convince it to stop fuelling memories of the only man who'd ever got him seriously contemplating the concept of romantic love? Would it be more bearable that way? Seemed worth a try.

"At least use a different fuckin' voice, then?"

"Like this?" the voice asked, and suddenly it was Benny's instead. "Sure, mate. Happy to accommodate."

A grisly, burnt-in image of Ben's face all smashed in, blood pooling in a halo round his head. Eric made a high-pitched keening noise and curled in on himself.

"Ah, right, sorry." The voice, still Benny's, sounded genuinely apologetic. "Er… how 'bout this'un, yeah?"

The voice became Rosie's, and that was  *infinitely*  worse - Benny's ruined face transformed into her lifeless eyes and ashen skin, blood soaked through her hair, dripping off the tips of the plaits he'd done for her that morning. Bailey nearby with her wild curls fanned around her like a lion's mane, face and arms all cut up because of course she'd fought back. Mum on the floor and the knife in her…

"No no no nono STOP!"

He screeched the last word out into the empty field, scattering a handful of rabbits who'd crept back. The spotted one he'd apologised to earlier carried on being unfazed, but shot him a reproachful look. He met its deep brown eyes with savage glare. The rabbit didn't appear to give a shit.

"God's sake, stop being so dramatic."

Sherlock's voice again. Mum's empty gaze transformed into his, but the scene wasn't of him lying dead - just stuck staring into space like usual. Eric felt the ghost of his past self reach out to touch him and saw the spark of life return. A dozen tiny snippets of memory - giggling over a stupid joke, a coy little smirk, a questioning frown for some social concept gone over his head. And it was confusing because, of course, Eric had awful memories of the bloke as well. His demonic visage in the street fight, the snarl on his face when he'd left. But somehow those didn't eclipse all the happy moments like the corpses did.

"How kind of him to leave before you had a chance to stumble upon his lifeless body," the voice remarked blandly.

Eric didn't reply. Sat and stared out over the field instead. Watched the rabbit tearing up a dandelion and imagined the anxiety eating him alive as its teeth ripping into his brain.

"I don't think that's how the visualisation tactic is meant to work."

Considered imagining the rabbit eating the voice, but of course if he tried to give the thing a proper form it would have to be with Sherlock's face, and he couldn't bring himself to picture that. Best just resign himself to living with it, then.

He huffed a tired sigh and stared dully out over the field. "Where's he at right now, d'ya think?"

"Decomposing in a shallow grave."

Fuck's sake. Even his imaginary version was a tactless shithead.

"Ain't funny, mate."

"Sorry."

A silence threaded by the whisper of the wind in the tree above, the gentle noises of springtime around them. Eric couldn't remember the last time he'd slept. Or ate. Or what time it was. Wasn't sure what time even meant anymore.

"Well… let's deduce, then, shall we?" Sherlock's voice started up. Eric quirked a small smile for the wording - 'deducing' had been the term they'd eventually settled on for what to call his manic coke-fuelled logic trains no one had asked for and no one besides Eric wanted to hear. "Start with the parcel he left you: given the vague wording of the note and omission of any names, we can assume he'd been trying to avoid including any details which might have drawn a connection to him should the package fall into the wrong hands. We know he worried about you being threatened as a means to control him, since that was a common theme of nightmares. Most likely a tactic his father is known to use. His being concerned with avoiding being extorted that way, however, implies he must not yet have fallen under the man's control. Wouldn't have risked drawing attention to you if he were already caught. Furthermore, the fact that he left you his peacoat along with a frankly absurd amount of cash would seem to indicate he intends to get sober. Doesn't want to have disposable money nor the association-laden item on hand. Therefore the only logical conclusion we can draw is that he's off wandering the streets alone somewhere trying to go cold turkey off coke. Which doesn't actually mean he's not dead, of course, but it does leave open the possibility that he isn't."

Eric had shifted into a full, proper smile as the diatribe progressed.

"Still don't understand how you do that shit, Shers."

"That was all  *you,*  moron," the voice corrected irritably. "I'm not Sherlock, I'm an auditory hallucination triggered by a combination of grief and tobacco withdrawal.  *You're*  the one deducing all this."

Ah. Right. That… that was true. Probably.

Dwelling on that was overwhelming, so he shook his head, felt his expression fall. Imagined the idiot sat next to him and then regretted it immediately for the spike of painful longing.

"Why couldn't he have just taken me with?"

"Eric, you are  *not*  suited to a life on the run from a load of rich psychopaths."

"W-well maybe I coulda learnt t'be!" The sudden surge of emotion in his outburst startled both himself and the rabbit, which resentfully hopped a few feet further down the field away from him. Eric glared after it, found the words still pouring out his mouth. "Maybe if he'd fuckin'  *asked*  I'd have told him I'd rather die in terror by his side instead of-" He was forced to stop and swallow heavily around sudden tears. Carried on regardless, because even if he wasn't really talking to anyone it still felt important to force the words out. "... instead of being left alone again."

"That went without saying, I think."

Eric choked out a laugh or a sob, he couldn't tell anymore. "Why'd he leave me, then?"

"You know why."

**««**

*"What nonsense mental abstraction are you stuck in, then?"*

*Eric blinked. Realised he'd been staring into space there for a bit and smiled to show nothing was wrong.*

*"Weren't stuck, mate."*

*Sherlock made a dubious sound. "You've been stood there staring at nothing for…" He glanced at a nearby clock, paused, then turned back with an awkward air Eric could by now interpret to mean he'd forgot what it said when he last looked and thus had no idea how much time had actually passed. "Er… a while."*

*"Bit over three minutes," Eric supplied automatically.*

*"Right. A while."*

*This was funny enough to draw out a chuckle - both for the bland delivery, and the fact that they both knew Sherlock's concept of 'a while' really just meant any arbitrary amount of time he happened to have noticed passing. Which, on reflection, implied that he probably wasn't actually concerned about how long Eric had been staring. Must have picked up on something else that worried him and not known how else to ask.*

*"I'm alright," he replied in answer to the unvoiced question. "Just tired, is all."*

*"Seemed like you'd got lost in thought."*

*Definitely not been worried about the length of time staring, then. Eric cracked a small smile. Was nice to have someone looking out for him, he supposed. Even if it felt strange to be on this side of the caretaking equation. And even if Sherlock was rubbish at communicating.*

*"Nah. Ain't got deep enough thoughts to be gettin' lost in."*

*A flash of irritation cut through the coke-induced placid calm Sherlock had been in since his last hit. Eric raised his brows curiously. Figured he must have just mucked something up with the chemistry, so he asked after it in hopes of triggering one of the usual rambling science lectures.*

*"Somethin' get fucked up?"*

*"What?" Sherlock frowned at him, then down at the beaker he was holding. "Oh. No. I was just… I don't understand why you keep doing that."*

*"Doing what?"*

*"That!" he exclaimed, waving a hand impatiently. Eric blinked down at himself.*

*"Standing?"*

*"No," Sherlock snapped. "Saying things like… that. Like you haven't got deep thoughts or whatever. It doesn't make sense why you keep up the idiot act when it's just the two of us."*

*Eric was now very puzzled. "You think I'm… pretending to be stupid?"*

*"Obviously."*

*"You call me a dumbarse, like, all th'time."*

*"Yes, but not seriously! And you do the same, so that doesn't-" Sherlock cut himself off with a frustrated noise and appeared to try a different tack. "Look, it's ridiculous to keep up such a farce when it's clear you're at least as clever as I am."*

*Eric had to laugh for that one. "You fuckin' what?"*

*Sherlock looked about as insulted as Eric had ever seen him.*

*"I'm serious."*

*Regardless, Eric was still giggling over the idea of a thick pillock like him being anywhere near the level of a bloke who'd been attending bloody*  Oxford  *a few months ago. Sherlock appeared to find this deeply frustrating.*

*"Eric, you've been stoned literally the entire time I've known you, and yet with very few exceptions you've had no trouble whatsoever keeping up with me in conversation."*

*"Does that mean I'm smart, or does it mean you ain't half as clever as you think you are?"*

*Sherlock whipped around to point at Eric's face with a pair of tongs, which he clacked together as if to punctuate his accusatory scowl.*

*"There, see!? Firing off a devastating repartee like that without so much as a pause to think? You're not some common idiot, you're a mastermind hiding behind freckles and a stupid accent!"*

*"Mastermind," Eric repeated, scoffing for the sheer absurdity.*

*"How many strings did you have to pull to get Corey to offer me a job?"*

*Eric opened his mouth, shut it. Met Sherlock's accusing stare for a beat, then glanced sheepishly away to the far wall. Fuck. Hadn't thought he'd caught on to any of that.*

*"I just… made a few comments here n' there. Weren't anything clever."*

*"And then you convinced him to let me have access to the whole stock even when he said absolutely not, you smoothed things over with the crew those idiot thugs were from even though I nearly killed two of them, you got permission for Rhys to stay…"*

*Sherlock wasn't angry about any of this, of course. Smug, if anything. Eric met his triumphant look with a peevish little huff.*

*"What're you tryna get at?"*

*"Just want you to acknowledge your latent potential for greatness," Sherlock said airily.*

*Eric was unimpressed. "Why? So you can pretend you didn't settle for th'first dumbarse willing t'put up with you?"*

*Sherlock didn't respond with the expected teasing banter - instead he became unusually serious, staring down into the beaker of acid now swirling away on the plate he'd set up.*

*"So you won't settle for less than you're worth."*

**««**

He sat a long time under the willow. Listening to birds slowly return after his shouting had driven them off, the rabbits creeping back over the grass. Wondered dully if he even existed anymore. If he'd ever been real at all. It had been so long since he'd spoken more than a handful of words to another human being. Felt like he couldn't be sure.

"You could shout at the rabbits again," the voice suggested. "Prove you're real by scaring the piss out of them."

"Wouldn't prove shit, rabbits get scared over nothin' all th'damn time."

"True."

They sat in silence for another while. Unwilling to voice the obvious. How he'd fallen to such a spectral existence, and what he'd have to do to resolidify.

"There was a music shop with a 'help wanted' sign back in the village," the voice offered, somehow a quiet mutter despite echoing from within his skull.

Eric felt like he should object. On principal, if nothing else. "Don't need money."

"No," it agreed. "You don't."

He breathed an exhausted sigh and leant his head back to stare into the willow boughs above.

"... I can't do it."

"What do you mean you can't?" Sherlock's voice was all baffled disbelief, like he'd just said something profoundly stupid.

"I mean I fuckin'  *can't,*  Shers. I can't get attached to someone again and just… watch 'em disappear."

"So don't get attached," the voice said in a tone as if this were dead obvious.

"Fuck's sake," Eric huffed. Brought his knees up again and ran his fingers through his overgrown hair, pushing it back from his face. Shook his head and pulled the elastic from his wrist where he'd put it out of long-dead habit; always used to keep a few extra for his sisters. Tied his hair back just for something to do with his hands.

"It's a perfectly reasonable strategy," the voice went on. "You packed a lifetime's worth of romantic passion into one whirlwind relationship with a lunatic, then cut yourself off all human contact like a junkie going cold turkey. And that's clearly not gone well, as evidenced by the fact that you're being counselled by a hallucination."

"Yeah well nobody fuckin' asked you to-"

The voice carried on speaking straight over him. "So split the difference. Go for surface-level connection. Pop round the shop, say hello, ask after the job. Not aiming to make friends, just colleagues. It'll be like a test run."

Eric frowned into the tree limbs above. Felt right on the verge of agreeing, just to get it over with, but fear rose up like a smothering fog. Couldn't. Too much risk. Too much pain and loss and grief to open up again.

"Sleep on it," the voice suggested, sounding rather irritated but doing its best to stay supportive. "Haven't in days anyway."

Hadn't he? Felt like he'd slept recently enough. Days all blurred together now, though. Perhaps he'd not slept last night. Or the night before. Just kept walking.

Reluctantly he let himself list to the side and lay stretched out in the grass under the willow.

**««**

*"You shoulda said sommat, though. I coulda hurt you," he heard himself protest, words distant and dreamlike. Felt both the grass beneath him and another, parallel experience, where he was back on the ratty, threadbare mattress in the tiny bedroom in Stockwell. And his stupid boyfriend was rolling his eyes at him as he hunted for a pair of clean pants.*

*"It's fine, Eric. You couldn't hurt me if you wanted to, let alone by accident."*

*Well. That was… hrmph. He frowned, tried and failed to fight back against the deranged teenaged instinct to defend his masculinity. Still felt bad about having got a bit rough when they'd been fooling around earlier, of course - hadn't meant to wrench his arm round like that. But facts did need to be set straight. Eric wasn't weak. God's sake, likely twice Sherlock's weight by now with how often the idiot skipped meals.*

*"I'm well stronger'n you are, mate."*

*Sherlock shot him a bemused smirk over his shoulder as he finished pulling on the pants he'd retrieved from the floor. Then, still mostly nude, he flopped back down onto the mattress and sat criss-cross facing him.*

*"Hit me," he ordered simply.*

*Eric scowled. Knew the proper response was probably confusion, refusal… but, nah. Wasn't about to play that game. Eric wasn't some limp-wristed fairy - he'd been a footballer, found himself in a few scraps back in his school days. Of course he'd never done much of the actual fighting, preferring to hang back and try to negotiate whilst his mates got into it, but still. Bloody well knew how to punch a bloke. He threw a swift right took at Sherlock's shoulder.*

*His fist deflected smoothly off a bony forearm, which had shot up at just the right angle to clip the back of his hand. Sherlock then did some clever twisting movement to flip his arm round Eric's, caught his wrist with a firm grip, and in the space where a counter blow might have gone he instead leant in and kissed him. His face when he drew back was the sort of unimpressed smile one might give a small child.*

*"If you'd managed to connect you would've dislocated your thumb," he pointed out. Shifted Eric's wrist to where his finger placement was visible, then let go and made a fist of his own to demonstrate how it ought to look. A line of fading bruises across his knuckles fell in step with each other to mark the strike points.*

*Eric grumbled a bit for how easily he'd been blocked - wouldn't admit it, of course, but the speed of that counter had been bloody impressive. Despite keeping up his annoyed front he dutifully shifted his fingers to mimic Sherlock's example. Thumb out, not tucked under the others. Once he'd got it Sherlock nodded, then threw a slow-motion, demonstrative punch at Eric's shoulder, thumping into him lightly but with enough force to still shove him back a bit.*

*"Extend, twist, follow through. Always try to hit with the middle knuckle first."*

*Eric dropped his good arm to catch himself before he fell over backwards. Stabilised, then re-made the proper fist he'd been shown. Experimentally tried the punch again, slowly - Sherlock reached up to guide his arm into the correct form and had an oddly proud little smile when he managed to connect with the middle knuckle. Of course Sherlock hadn't budged a fraction from the weak blow, even sat criss-cross as he was.*

*Eric absently tried it a few more times as he thought back to that first street fight. How seamlessly Sherlock had shifted from giddy drunk to ruthless fighter, the deft confidence in his movements. At the time Eric had vaguely assumed the bloke's thoughts just moved so fast he could read opponents and plan his attacks lightyears ahead. Now, though, he understood that Sherlock really didn't think at all whilst shitfaced as he'd been that night, let alone plan things out - turning his brain off was the entire point, after all. Must have been acting on instinct instead. Pure muscle memory.*

*"You're proper trained at this," he eventually concluded.*

*Sherlock huffed a flat little laugh. "If getting the shit kicked out of you until you learn to defend yourself is proper, then sure."*

*He paused, glancing away with a bit of a thoughtful, reflective expression. Didn't even blink when Eric aimed another weak punch at his shoulder.*

*"At school, y'mean?" Eric asked. "Picked a load of fights tellin' folks shit they didn't wanna hear, right?"*

*"I… yeah, at school." Sherlock's voice came out distant. Eric stopped the silly punches to study his face. Not checked out, thankfully, just got distracted. Finally he shook his head. Furrowed his brow as if trying to piece together several loose scraps of thought. "No… I think that's a lie? I keep telling myself I learnt it on my own, to deal with bullies, but… I'm pretty sure I actually had to teach myself* not  *to fight. Or to… do it less viciously. Read a load of books on self-defence trying to learn less aggressive techniques, to avoid putting other boys in hospital. But then I pretended like that was where I learnt it to begin with? I don't know. It's confusing."*

*Eric, too, was confused. But he'd plenty of practise with that. Knew it was easiest to just ask questions until he could catch hold again. "Y'mean you think you were taught t'fight as a little kid?"*

*Sherlock nodded. "If I'm not paying attention I'll default to the same style Father uses, so he's probably the one who trained me, but I've no idea when or how. A lot of my childhood is just… blank. Whole sections I can't remember."*

*A memory of Mum's face flitted through Eric's mind - back when he'd been small, and she'd been younger than he was now. Explaining why she couldn't tell him stories about his grandparents.*

*"Mum used to say that's how brains protect themselves. Blank out the really bad shit so it don't get in the way."*

*Sherlock gave him a morose little half-smile. "Don't think my brain's much interested in protecting me."*

*"Maybe it's doing its best wit' what it's got," Eric offered. He tried another soft punch again.*

*"Or maybe it's trying to get me killed so it'll finally be rid of my nonsense."*

*"Or that," Eric agreed.*

*The fond smile on Sherlock's face seemed rather more sentimental than was usual for him, so Eric let his own smile shift a bit questioning in return - no idea what he could've possibly done to elicit a look like that.*

*"Would that we could all have your fortitude, Eric," he muttered, looking away into the middle distance.*

*"Fortitude?"*

*Sherlock shrugged. "You're always so… calm, I guess. Even when we're discussing awful things."*

*Eric laughed and shook his head. "Mate I'm freakin' out, like, all th' time." He stopped, frowned to himself thoughtfully. "Or I used to be, anyhow. I guess with you around I'm more like how I was back home? Before everything happened, I mean. Benny says it's weird."*

*Belatedly Eric bit his lip over the 'before everything' comment, hoping Sherlock wouldn't ask him to elaborate. As usual, though, Sherlock seemed intuitively able to tell when simple words were hiding demons, and kept well clear.*

*Sherlock had looked off towards the far wall thoughtfully. After a few seconds of silence Eric tried one of his little punches again, thinking he'd try to put a bit more force into it so he could knock the bloke over and maybe pin him down for a cheeky snog, but in the distraction of not looking his direction Sherlock's mysterious training seemed to have kicked back in. He caught the punch easily, blinked down at it, then over to Eric with an unimpressed expression.*

*Eric gave him a silly, apologetic smile, then leant forward and kissed him. Sherlock met this with the same passive acceptance he afforded any sudden physical affection - as if he weren't sure why it was happening but saw no reason to object. Let the kiss deepen into something more passionate, and then allowed himself to be pushed backwards until he was lying on the mattress with Eric on top of him. They'd been vaguely intending to sleep at some point, before they'd got distracted by each other. Probably best to try to actually get some rest.*

*But, of course, being the age they were, hormones had far more power than they'd any right to. And the physical reaction to lying atop a cute, mostly-naked bloke was both immediate and difficult to ignore. With an almighty effort of willpower he managed anyway and drew back to regard the boy below him. Looking for the first signs of any shift in mental state, making sure he had enough cocaine in his system - all the little things he'd begun to make a habit of checking for before they did anything.*

*"Eric, I just want you to know I find it incredibly weird how often you stare at my face," Sherlock said blandly. Eric huffed a small laugh and briefly stuck out his tongue at him.*

*"It's cause you're hot."*

*Sherlock rolled his eyes. "No, it's because you're looking for signs that I'm about to have a psychotic break."*

*Eric bit his lip, considered denying it. Realised he'd have absolutely no luck even trying and shrugged. "Yeah, sorry."*

*"No, it's fine. Probably warranted." Sherlock sighed and looked away again. "Sometimes I worry that... ugh, nevermind."*

*Eric frowned. "You worry that what?" When Sherlock didn't answer he insistently prodded at the bloke's face, whingeing "say it" in an irritating tone until he huffed and reached up to grab Eric's hand.*

*"That Father was right about…" He trailed off, let his hand flop down onto the rumpled duvet. Closing his eyes, his voice shifted into the cold, clipped tones Eric had learnt to associate with him mimicking his dad. "'You're a weapon forged in brutality, doomed to mirror that which created you.'" He opened his eyes again and let the chill drop out, replaced by quiet resignation.*

*Eric tried to parse the meaning of this, but must have looked utterly lost because Sherlock gave him a smile and a tiny laugh.*

*"He meant I'll only ever hurt people, because that's all I've ever known."*

*"Oh. Well that's fuckin' stupid," Eric replied easily. Earned himself a bemused look.*

*"Stupid?"*

*"Yeah," Eric affirmed. "Really just callin' himself a shit parent, ain't he? People get over shit parents all th' damn time."*

*Sherlock sniggered, then laughed, and then, quite suddenly, kissed him.*

*"You're such a fucking idiot," he said as he buried his face in Eric's shoulder.*

*He'd said it in that way which actually meant he appreciated Eric's habit of poking fun at awful shit, so Eric let the jab pass without comment. Thought back to his own life instead. To the things Luce had done to him. To feeling so helplessly terrified whilst a man held you down and hurt you. But people got over shit boyfriends all the time too, didn't they? And shit upbringings and all the shitty consequences of their shit decisions. People always found ways to keep living.*

*Perhaps he'd more hope for the future than he'd thought.*

**««**

When he came back to himself, to the moment which might have been the present but which felt more like a dream than the dream had, it was to find he'd already dragged himself to his feet. Walking was pure automation, now. Done so much of it lately. And so the whole distance back to the village passed by in a blink. Might have still been asleep, for all he knew.

Afternoon sun danced merrily over the window before him, a handwritten sign behind glass. He caught sight of his own reflection above it. Beard he'd given up shaving months ago had grown past the patchiness stage now, begun to look mostly intentional. He'd let his hair get long enough to where tying it back was easiest - currently bundled into a bun as he'd always done to keep his sisters' curls more manageable. And with the posh cut of the peacoat offsetting the ragged condition of the rest of his clothes one could hardly tell he'd been wandering homeless for the better part of four months.

"Doesn't matter even if they notice the stains," the voice in his head piped up. "Just win them over like you always do."

"Won't have a chance if they toss me out soon as they hear me talk."

"So talk differently."

Dropped eye contact with his own reflection to stare instead at the pavement. Considered whether he'd be able to pull off an Estuary accent well enough to fool anyone. They were a long ways from London. Possibly no one would notice even if he mucked it up a bit.

"If you're interested in the position you'd do far better coming in and asking about it!"

Eric startled quite badly, looked up to find a young woman had poked her head out the shop door. A twinkle in her eyes said she'd meant her words playfully. Eric tried a smile.

"… I think I might be, yeah."

**««**

## Chapter 16

**««**

"Mycroft, dear! Oh, how lovely."

He blinked, looked up from the printout in front of him to regard his expected guest - Reine, his older cousin - alongside the somewhat less expected presence of his mother. Dimly he recognised his brain running through the analysis of why this wasn't actually all that surprising, given Mummy had gone to stay with her family following her husband's demise and subsequent investigation of his estate, but the sound of her voice was nonetheless jarring. Reine picked up on his discomfort immediately, of course. Smirked for the small victory. She'd always been fond of finding ways to unsettle him.

"Mummy," Mycroft intoned politely. He slid the report back into its file, a signal Reine would understand to mean its contents were classified but could potentially be 'misplaced' given sufficient motivation. The addition of Mummy, of course, threw something of a wrench into his plans for the meeting. One assumed this had been the entire point of bringing her along.

Rather than take a seat across the table alongside Reine, Mummy made a beeline directly towards him and planted a loving kiss upon his forehead, exactly as she'd done when he was a child. He allowed this with only a modicum of exasperation.

"Oh, look at you! It's been simply ages!" Mummy exclaimed as she drew back to look at him, holding his face in both hands. He politely reached up to extricate himself. Thankfully she deigned to have a seat, though her insistence on scooting her chair up to be directly alongside his was… grating. He resolved to ignore it.

"Reine," he said instead as his cousin took a seat across from the two of them. "You're looking well."

It was true, at least - her new position of authority within the family business had clearly been to her liking. In contrast to the harsh, awkward girl she'd been in their youth, she now cut a rather imposing figure: short, dark hair; bespoke business-casual attire; spectacles of a thick, cat-eye styled frame betraying her family flair for the dramatic. She flashed him a pleasant smile.

"And you, Myc. Hope you don't mind my bringing Aunt Violet along."

"Not at all," Mycroft replied, though he very much did - hadn't spoken more than a fleeting handful of words to Mummy over the past few months. Not that he'd been avoiding her, necessarily, but the reality of having unceremoniously executed her husband, and then promptly losing track of her youngest son, left him feeling an uncomfortable emotion very much like guilt in her presence.

Ah, speaking of the son, though… he raised a brow at Reine. "One imagines the matter at hand involves Mummy and I rather equally."

Sure enough, Reine's smile shifted to a smirk. Without taking her eyes off his face she snapped her fingers as if summoning a dog, and one of her assistants appeared from a side entrance to hand Mycroft a small manila envelope. He slid its contents out, which turned out to be a printed photograph, and couldn't quite help a long pause as he stared wordlessly down at it.

It was a shot captured via telescopic lens, cropped close to mask any location-identifying features. What remained of the image depicted two figures sat on some sort of veranda. One was an older man; beard, spectacles, collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He appeared to be in the midst of examining the other figure: an emaciated adolescent wearing a pair of faded jeans, trainers, shirtless. The boy's face was visible only in profile, and marred by a large splash of mud… but it was unmistakably Sherlock.

Mycroft resolutely quelled an upsurge of relief as he passed the photo over to Mummy.

"My word, is that Frank Hudson?" Mummy exclaimed as she took in the image. Mycroft blinked, frowned at her - one might have expected the woman to acknowledge the sorry state of her own child before any other matters.

Reine gave a performative shrug. "Perhaps. Who can really say, in his case?"

Violet's brow furrowed. "Ah, right… he was the one with a twin brother, wasn't he? Always made target confirmation a nightmare."

Mycroft bit back a childish huff. Hated feeling out of the loop, and though his mind was racing through reams of knowledge it hadn't yet pulled up anything related to the name. Based on Mummy's words, however, one might safely assume he'd been among her general cohort of Cold War era spies. Evidently an asset whose twin had been used to strategic effect, which a parallel thread of his mind had already seized upon in relation to his work. Assessing the feasibility of targeted recruitment, testing as a possible explanation for a handful of unsolved incidents.

All well and good, of course. But he found himself far more focussed on the matter of his mother failing to comment on the state of *her own bloody child.*

"Perhaps we might focus on the more relevant subject?" he put in archly, hoping to nudge her into at least giving him some modicum of faith in her ability to recognise her offspring.

A short staring contest ensued. Finally Mummy glanced down to the photo again, gazed at it a long moment. Mycroft watched her face for some emotion. Relief or anguish or worry or *anything,* really.

But there was nothing. A mask of perfect neutrality. She finally took a short breath, seemed to shake herself, and handed the photo back to him.

Mycroft failed to smother a disgusted glare.

Wasn't new behaviour for her, obviously. In Sherlock's early years she'd been every bit as attentive as she'd been towards Mycroft. A better parent in some ways, even - taught her youngest troublesome skills no child should possess, encouraged his endless stream of chattering so long as he made efforts to do it in French. But as the boy grew she'd slowly become more distant. By the time his brother turned eight Mycroft had grown accustomed to never seeing the two of them interact beyond surface-level formalities.

Like so many other troubling aspects of his childhood, Mycroft hadn't paid it much mind. Sherlock hadn't ever seemed to care whether Mummy paid attention to him, and during her frequent depressive episodes she'd be similarly aloof towards everyone, so it hardly seemed a pressing issue. He'd far more important business to attend to in his life - grades and exams and choosing a university. Perfectly reasonable to assume one's parents could be trusted to know what they were doing in regards to raising children.

They *had* known, he supposed. In a manner of speaking. Because Siger had clearly developed an action plan for both his sons. Implemented to perfection in Mycroft's case, as he found himself content to follow the path intended for him. And in Sherlock's case…

"You might at least *pretend* to care about his wellbeing," he spat.

Perhaps he'd been expecting Mummy to react as if he'd slapped her, or to give any indication at all that she'd strong feelings on the matter, because her response of a placid lift of the brows was infuriating. Enough to where he no longer cared that Reine sat just across the table from them, watching.

"This has always been your strategy, hasn't it?" he continued acidly. "Years of your life spent refusing to acknowledge the situation directly in view."

Mummy's brows lowered, but she betrayed no clear emotion. Which only incensed him further.

"What was your preferred approach, then? Did you sit across the table every meal carefully overlooking the obvious? Or was avoiding him altogether the easier solution?"

In her silent stare he saw his brother's face. And then his own. Recognised with a sickening lurch what she was about to do, because it was what he himself would do in her place. An exact mirror of what he'd done to Sherlock countless times.

Mummy stood, silent, and left the room.

He was left to suffocate on his own outrage.

Reine remained mercifully silent. Giving him time to process, or perhaps giving herself a moment to reflect.

… or, perhaps, internally gloating. Given how obviously she'd set this up. Mycroft clenched his jaw once - just the once, for just an instant, and then forced himself to relax back into his usual air of collected calm.

"Touché," he bit out. Calmly.

Reine flashed him a bland half-smile which didn't reach her eyes. An acknowledgement, nothing more.

Several beats of silence stretched between them, both waiting for the other to break. Mycroft settled back into his seat, fully intending to drag this into a staring match, and then caught the faintest smirk creeping into Reine's expression. Instantly bristled, realising she was baiting him into a childish game. Not the time. They'd far more important matters at hand.  
  
He shifted forward again and leant his elbows on the table between them, picture of collected poise.

Apart, of course, from the deeply irritated spark he knew must be dancing upon his face by its reflection in Reine's spectacles (and her widening smirk). Ignored it. Not important.

"What are your terms?" he asked her levelly. No point beating round the bush, playing at polite diplomacy. Not with her, of all people.

"Terms?" Reine repeated, tone a picture of innocence.

Mycroft felt his expression hardening into perhaps the most venomous face he'd worn in months. Trust an elder cousin to draw such pique out of him. She'd acquired skills of exquisite, targeted irritation aimed at his very core in their shared youth, and then proceeded to spend the next two decades refining them into an art form.

"Reine I am *entirely* not in the mood," Mycroft found himself snapping.

Mercifully, Reine's smirk broke into a full, very slightly apologetic smile. She huffed an overdramatic breath of a sigh and with a roll of her eyes gestured to the photo laying face-up on the table.

"Have another look at that, then. Get all the details."

He did so. Details jumped out - warm climate, likely tropical; texture of the mud on Sherlock's face and trousers suggested a tumble into a bog or swamp; length of his tangled hair timed it to within the past few weeks at earliest. Thanks to Mummy he now had a name to put to the unfamiliar face, could infer he'd been a Cold War field agent with a twin brother. Should be simple to pull up intelligence records and determine the man's last known whereabouts.

The photo was plucked from his hands. Reine gave it a glance, then flicked it away like a playing card. Her expression made it clear she considered herself to have just done him an enormous favour.

"Up to now, Uncle Siger's control over the boy rendered him too dangerous for Grand-père to consider recruiting. Obviously that is no longer the case, thanks to your recent actions. I'd been relatively successful these past few months convincing relevant parties you'd replaced Uncle's influence with your own… but here now we've found the boy alone, far outside your sphere, under absolutely no surveillance, within easy reach of several key Cauchois agents. I have no choice but to act on this."

His heart sank. He'd been hoping to avoid this. "He's… ungovernable. Even if you manage to capture him, you'll never be able to-"

"It's not about what *I* am able to do, Myc. It's about what Grand-père can do."

Reine said this with absolute flat dispassion. Unspoken implications along a dozen vectors - if there was anyone who could bring Sherlock to heel with minimal fuss, it would be their grandfather. The boy had always gravitated towards the man during family holidays for some unfathomable reason. Two silent statues watching the rest of them with matching grey-blue eyes.

Control by a man whose methods were kinder than Siger's might have been a relief, of course. Except for the small manner of Grand-père's actual business… he'd press Sherlock into the position of infiltration and assassination specialist, no question. It was the only role within the Cauchois ecosystem the boy was suited to, and he'd be a natural at it. Might even excel, for a while.

Wouldn't take long at all, though, until… well, Reine thankfully seemed to share Mycroft's awareness of just how brittle Sherlock's psychological stability could be under certain conditions. This was a boy so averse to suffering he'd once had a habit of freeing foxes from traps round the Estate, after all, bites and punishments be damned. He'd never acclimate to the moral code Reine and their other cousins lived by.

But, gods, he'd try, wouldn't he? For their grandfather? Absolutely. He'd cut himself to the quick trying to perform.

Mycroft did his level best to suppress a sigh, failed, then gave up and allowed himself to wilt a bit. Leant an elbow on the table and kneaded at a headache beginning to blossom through his temples.

"How long can you give me?" he asked her.

"Three days. Maybe less. Depends how Alethea's loyalties shake out."

He blinked, shot her a look halfway between appalled and aggrieved.

"You've put Alethea in the thick of this?"

Reine answered with a raise of one manicured brow over the rim of her spectacles.

"I've put one of my most reliable field assets on a target she's intrinsically motivated to protect, yes. You're quite welcome."

A thick silence took hold, both of them drawn to their own thoughts. Reine sat watching him impassively. Mycroft let his eyes drift, caught sight of the photo where it had come to rest near the table leg. Sherlock's face in profile.

Some deep-vault of a memory chose that instant to serve up a flash of a holiday long ago, sitting on the beach at the Cauchois' property on the Côte d'Azur. Looking up to catch sight of Sherlock's profile in the same orientation, over a decade younger - the little boy had bounded up to a wholly disinterested teenaged Reine holding a long strand of seaweed and was gearing up to subject her to a rambling lecture on the particulars of the species.

Deciding to take pity on his elder cousin, Mycroft had interrupted his brother with the easiest means to get the boy to shut up - threatening to tell Father he'd been irritating people. It worked, of course. Sherlock snapped his mouth shut and dropped the seaweed. Mycroft had considered this an empty threat, at the time. Just a reliable way to get Sherlock to stop and reassess his behaviour, nothing more.

Reine had given him such a *look* in that moment, though - a sharp, almost disgusted glare. He'd glared back, having no idea what her problem could possibly be. She'd stood, taken his baby brother by the hand, and left Mycroft to watch in perplexed annoyance as she led the boy down to the water and encouraged him to tell her all about the different types of kelp.

The memory hit now with a different timbre. A realization, one amongst a cascade of the blasted things today, that he'd lived his entire childhood blind to more than he'd ever thought possible.

"... did you always know?" he found himself asking. Quietly. Horrifically, appallingly quietly. Hated himself for it, but… well, this was his cousin. Known him his entire life, and he the majority of hers. Lord knew they'd seen worse from each other.

Reine graced him with yet another raised brow. "You'll have to be more specific."

"About… my father. The sort of parent he was. To Sherlock," Mycroft clarified, each word feeling like a small shard of glass.

Reine regarded him for a long moment, her expression betraying nothing. Then she shrugged. Mycroft glanced up to her, and imagined her expression to have softened the tiniest fraction.

"It was really never subtle," she replied.

Her words fell like a knife to the chest. Mycroft felt himself freeze, then a fraction later relax back into the chair, exhausted. For once his mind seemed to go silent. No thoughts, no recriminations, no spiralling deductions, no fractal branches of plans upon plans. Simply a pause, allowing the ambient enormity of the day take hold.

Reine watched him again, unfazed. When next she spoke it was to offer the tiniest of olive branches.

"If Uncle Siger had meant for you to see, you would have."

Mycroft shifted his eyes to meet hers, searched for something to reply to that, but found nothing. Instead he breathed a small sigh and shook his head, letting his gaze drift away and down.  
  
Reine seemed to take this as her cue; she flashed him a tight smile, and then with no fanfare whatsoever rose to her feet and left the room.

Mycroft remained for a few minutes more. Stared dimly at the photograph of his brother askew on the floor below.

Finally he took a deep, bracing breath, leant over, and plucked it up.

**««**

"For a period of several years, spanning from roughly 1992 to 1998, Siger Holmes was known to conduct unsanctioned intelligence operations featuring the frequent deployment of a juvenile field asset, provisionally identified as his youngest son. The child appeared to have been purpose-trained to identify foreign assets, serve in a basic-to-advanced infiltration specialist role, and to engage in hand-to-hand or weapons combat as necessary.

"Frank Hudson of the CIA served as head of a limited task force charged with the elimination of this child, formed in response to Agent Holmes' success in leveraging the boy's anomalous observational capabilities to identify and neutralize foreign assets involved in MI6 operational theatres.

"MI6, of course, maintained that any allegation of their awareness of such a dynamic, and indeed the existence of the child asset at all, were 'fanciful nonsense'. They also maintained a list of foreign operatives known to have been eliminated by Siger's ongoing activities. And another of those they'd like to see targeted next."

"Meeting with your cousin went well, then?"

He fixed her with a look he knew must be doleful as a kicked hound. A pause, trying to collect his thoughts, before he found his voice again. Quiet this time, no longer reading off the legal pad in his hand but instead staring blankly into the scene of a memory.

"He evaded a full retrieval team for five hours at nineteen years old whilst high on cocaine, disabled two combat-trained agents without so much as a bruise to show for the trouble… of course he was developed as a juvenile asset. Father didn't just set him on a career path, he had the boy fully operational by age eight. How could I have overlooked the extent…?"

His PA raised a brow at him. Polite irritation. He'd left her bereft of context, as usual.

With a sigh he handed the document he'd been reading from over to her - his handwritten summary of the results of the past several hours of obsessive poring over files, cross-referencing between intelligence databases and his own late father's meticulous records.

A few joints in his spine popped as he leant back in his chair, reminding him he'd scarcely moved since returning from Reine's meeting. Considered standing up for a stretch as he watched his assistant skim his notes. Then considered instead pouring a stiff drink. Both seemed far out of reach beyond an ocean of physical effort. Better to simply sit. Stare at nothing.

"Well," his PA said primly as she finished reading. "That explains some things."

Mycroft didn't reply - couldn't think of anything to say.

A scant beat passed, and then his assistant carried on with a brisk, "Removes a concern, however. He won't be needing a full recovery team. We can treat him as a rogue asset rather than a hostage, simplifies the extraction process."

"He's a *child*-" Mycroft started, aggrieved.

"He's a young man," she corrected sharply. "A mentally unstable twenty year-old with comprehensive field ops training, a record of high-stakes conditional deployment, and a substance abuse problem. If he weren't your brother we'd have already contracted out the hit."

Mycroft opened his mouth to object, then shut it again. He rubbed a hand down his face and leant further back into his office chair, huffed a tired sigh, and found himself staring blankly at the ceiling.

She was right, of course. She was always right. That was why he'd kept her on as his assistant all these years. Could count on her to slip blades of hard truths straight between his ribs without blinking.

"My cousin's already deployed a Cauchois Syndicate asset to the area, extraction timeline depends on that asset's loyalty profile. We've a few days at most before he's drafted into the family business," he relayed dully, dimly aware he'd not yet got around to relaying the contents of the meeting to her.

"And you're wasting time compiling a historical dossier?" she replied, dry as paper.

He drew a deep, theatrical sigh, and fixed her with a glower which would have doubtless been far more intimidating had he not been clad in rolled-up shirtsleeves, chair back leant at a perilous angle, looking up at her with an air of death warmed over.

As expected, all he got for his efforts was a bland stare. A beat, then she politely snapped the document back towards him. He took it. Looked once more at the words on the page. Shut his eyes and rubbed in vain at his aching forehead.

His PA was already turning towards the open door of his office, typing rapidly on her mobile device.  
  
"I'll have a list of deployables to you in an hour," she informed him. "Only those capable of non-fatally neutralising a rogue asset."

And with that, she was gone.

Mycroft watched after her a few beats, then huffed a breath. Should go after her. Help with team selection.

As he went to set aside the intelligence summary, however, his hand brushed against the photo he'd got from Reine. His little brother in profile, covered in mud, sat across from the twin of a man once tasked with eliminating the boy.

He decided to pour that drink after all.

**««**

## Chapter 17

**««**

Reality reasserted itself, as it often did, with very little fanfare.

One moment he'd been in his head, with the willow and the firestorm and the ghost of a past left behind. And then the next he was on a hardwood floor in an unfamiliar house in some godforsaken jungle-swamp, body breaking out of its curled-up ball with enough of a startled jolt to set his bruised abdominal muscle spasming. This forced out a yelp and dropped him back into a ball, curled forward over his knees this time, pressing his forehead to the cool hardwood with a grimace. Fuck.

"Ah, there you are, dear. Knew you'd come round soon enough if we just left you be," Mrs Hudson's cadence drifted in, pleasant as always.

Sherlock lifted his head just enough to seek the source of the voice, found the old woman sitting there in her armchair with a cup of tea in hand and an open file folder resting across her lap. Behind her sat a squat coffee table laden with similar folders, a few scattered papers, packets, and a potted cactus.

He blinked at the tableau, then belatedly recalled the more salient concern and pushed himself as close to upright as he could get without pulling his abdomen.

"Where's Frank?"

Mrs Hudson gave him an unconcerned hum, took a sip of tea whilst dropping her gaze back to the documents in her lap.

"Other end of the house with Harold. Joshua's off on a bit of an errand, should be back soon I imagine," she told him, tone light as a sunbeam.

And then… nothing. She offered not one single scrap of further information. No threats, either, or directives, or… whatever the hell else he'd been expecting. Just carried on reading. Started up a few seconds later humming a tune to herself.

Sherlock stared at her. Some part of him tried to classify the interaction as a standoff but it really wasn't much of one, considering he was still stuck pathetic on the floor and she was… ignoring him, apparently?

Well… fine, then. That was fine. Let her read her stupid file and hum her rubbish little tune and not pay him any mind. Better setup for escape.

Or the start of an escape, anyway. Which for the moment consisted of a very slow, careful shift into a slouching seat with his back against the wall. Kept one arm clamped gingerly round his throbbing core muscles to stabilize over the compression bandage, successfully fought off the urge to be sick.

Alright… great. Good progress. Doing well. Relatively speaking. Step one complete.

"Everything alright with that bruise, dear?" Mrs Hudson cut in. Sherlock resolutely did not startle, cracked open an eye to glare her direction. She glanced up towards him over a placid sip of tea.

"... hurts," he begrudgingly admitted.

This earned him a sympathetic smile… and absolutely nothing else. No micro-tells, no fidgets, no soft hint of sadness. Nothing by which to deduce intent, motivation, opinion, plans. Bloody woman was a platonic void in a cardigan.

He tried not to scowl.

"Ah, well, you have been running yourself a touch ragged," Mrs Hudson told him. Voidishly. Like a black hole of pleasantness.

A pause, then she continued with, "can you manage standing on your own, do you think, or will you need a hand?"

"Checking if I'll be able to run?" Sherlock replied in a tone as close as one could come to snide whilst slouched against a wall like a pillock.

Mrs Hudson offered no clear reaction. Very mild amusement, if anything. Infuriating.

"Checking if you'll be able to come join me for a spot of tea without my having to go over there and try to help you up," she clarified, tone catching a bit of light inflection nowhere near enough to get a read on whether she was lying. "I've a dodgy hip, you see," she added, patting the offending joint.

Sherlock frowned at her. Could be a trap. Luring him over for… something. Repositioning the captive or drugging him or whatever else. Should stay put.

But, then… the hard floor was putting his arse to sleep. And everything was sore. And he could really bloody go for some caffeine. Prospect of having it in the form of actual proper English tea really just rendered the offer impossible to reject.

So. Fine. Getting up. He could handle that. Definitely.

Bracing against the wall was just good sense, not a sign of imminent collapse. And if he made the entire few-metre journey partly hunched over in an attempt to avoid stretching his screaming abdomen any further than absolutely necessary, well. That was also sensible. Aggravated the thing enough over the past few days. Best have a bit of caution, avoid further damage.

Mrs Hudson didn't seem to mind him collapsing into the other armchair and instantly drawing his legs up, muddy shoes on the cushion, which was a relief as he wasn't confident in his ability to sit like a civilised adult without being sick all over her files or the stupid cactus.

The woman had been busying herself with a tea set during his slow trek over to her. With an absentminded air she added milk and sugar without asking, which would have been annoying but for the fact that she'd somehow got the ratio exactly as he preferred, so he accepted it with only a very brief flash of open confusion.

"Hm? Ah, sorry!" she exclaimed upon catching his expression. "Wasn't even thinking! Here, let me pour another-"

"Er, no, it's fine. Perfect, actually," Sherlock assured her.

Mrs Hudson seemed to go still for a beat and quirked a strange, bemused smile at him. "Is it really? Well, fancy that."

A scattered burst of attempted deduction skittered through his mind, but the lingering throbbing of his abdomen was proving quite a damper on cognition. Finally enough pieces managed to settle into place - not a threat, not coded meaning, just…

"You accidentally made it how that Faulkner man liked," he intoned dully. Took a resigned sip of his tea and settled his weight more comfortably in the chair. For a given measure of comfort, anyway. Everything around the central-gut area felt rather like a pulsating inferno. Ignoring it was taking more energy than he preferred to admit.

Mrs Hudson's smile drifted a touch apologetic. "All this reminiscing, dear. Got my poor head thinking we're decades back."

He huffed a noise which had been meant as a scoff but which came out more like a sigh. Recalled the polaroid still lying on the floor where he'd dropped it. The one depicting this woman decades younger, stood in casual embrace with some bizarre echo of himself in vintage clothing. Ah, right. Personal connections. A web of nodes linking all these people together. Should probably get on trying to map that out.

"So, what, then? You dated my… er, father?" Stumbled over the last bit - not sure how to handle that word. Too inextricably linked with Siger.

Mrs Hudson laughed. "Dated! Oh goodness, no. He usually just turned up at my door like a stray cat."

Tried to parse this intelligently, slot the information in his head somewhere, but the majority of his brain was still a scorched wasteland. Fell instead to a bit of an unfocussed stare, gazing into space without a single concrete thought beyond the stabbing in his gut. Shook himself with a quick grimace and a gulp of tea. Caffeine. Needed more stimulant in him. Nicotine patches weren't doing more than taking the edge off a creeping cognitive fog.

Mrs Hudson apparently took his silence as invitation to carry on.

"He'd do that same thing, you know - get overwhelmed and curl himself up like a hedgehog, wouldn't be budged for anything. Always came round soon enough if you just let him be, so I guessed you'd likely do as well. Isn't it strange what turns out to be genetic?"

It *was* strange. And… unsettling, somehow. His brain's propensity to trap him in a paralysed trance state whilst the system rebooted had always been one of those absurd facets of his existence so alien and nonsensical he'd given up hope of ever meeting anyone else who experienced it. The idea some man with his face and his mannerisms and this same idiotic problem to deal with had lived before him, could have lived *alongside* him, even, if not for having been killed…

… well, he didn't know how to feel about that. Confused, perhaps. Maybe closer to upset if he were being honest.

But this really wasn't any time for honesty. Still stuck in a strange house with a strange woman and a man in the other room who probably wanted to hurt him. Had to get a hold of himself. He shook his head again as if that might help dispel the eddies of whatever detritus had set to swirling in his mind.

"Fascinating," he droned, flat as paper. Knew the instant he heard himself that he'd landed more on the side of exhausted than derisive or imperious. Oh well. Gave it his best shot.

Mrs Hudson's expression shifted to an odd smile he put absolutely no effort to deciphering.

"I suppose I should say something like he'd have loved to meet you, but… as far as I knew he was dead-set against having children. I don't suppose you've any idea what changed his mind?"

Sherlock had no answer. Frankly didn't even feel up to starting the process of finding one.

And so, in silence, he budgeted a bit of painful movement to lean forward and snatch up one of the files on the table. Data. Sidestep conversations with information-gathering, keep his mind off degradation of the physical shell, avoid dwelling on anything too complex for current processing. That was the tactic.

Mrs Hudson made no move to interfere, nor (thankfully) to press him into an answer. Just raised her brows a tiny bit, then took another sip of tea and looked back down to her own file.

The first thing visible as he flipped open the battered folder was a photograph affixed to the page as part of what looked like a mission briefing. Grainy, perhaps a still from a surveillance video.

A young boy staring at something off-screen, dark curls neatly trimmed but still somehow cowlicked in the back, ice-pale eyes… ah, fuck.

He was looking at himself. At ten. Next to the word 'TARGET'.

He stared into his own time-displaced gaze for a long moment.

"Drink your tea, dear, before it cools," Mrs Hudson piped up.

He definitely didn't jump, of course. Just gave himself a tiny shake, barely a shiver really, and followed her suggestion of another sip of tea.

And then his brain caught up and he turned a deep scowl.

"What the fuck is this?" he snapped, tilting the page so she could see it.

She gave him another of those patient, raised-brow looks he was beginning to find deeply aggravating.

"Well I imagine it's a briefing packet, hm?" She gestured to the rest of the files on the table, smiling with her usual air of pleasant calm. "Harold went out and dug up Frank's old cache earlier, brought back anything with you in. Quite a lot more than we expected!" She laughed, then abruptly shifted to a more sombre tone as she continued, "Though of course it's all terribly upsetting, isn't it? How frightened you must have been."

Sherlock blinked, furrowed his brows. Wasn't… really the response he'd been expecting. Not after Frank having called him 'trained rat' earlier.

"I… it wasn't that bad," he heard himself mutter. Hadn't meant to say anything but of course his mouth never much cared what he meant.

"Wasn't that bad!?" Mrs Hudson repeated, sounding near to scandalised. "Forcing a child into covert operations?"

"I don't remember most of it," Sherlock clarified. Sipped his tea again. Felt the vortex of repressed memories start to creep up as if to prove his statement wrong and wondered if he still needed to summon Ghost Eric or if that would just happen automatically now. At this thought his mind conjured an image of Eric sat on the sofa across from him, smiling blandly around at the sitting room, and that actually didn't answer the question at all.

Right. Well. Back to the moment at hand, no use traipsing through psychological minefields in the midst of being… whatever he was. What *were* these peoples' intentions at this point, anyway? Was he the subject of some sort of revenge plot? Or a hostage, maybe…?

It occurred to him that he could just ask, and so he did.

"Am I a hostage right now?"

Mrs Hudson's affect again dropped to a void of perfect banal pleasantness. "Hm? Oh, yes, I'm afraid so. You're simply far too valuable at the moment, you understand."

Sherlock blinked, then scowled. Supposed that was honest, at least, but also sort of insulting.

"And you imagine yourself capable of keeping me here?" he asked snidely.

"You can barely walk, dear."

A brittle silence stretched between them. Well, brittle on Sherlock's part - Mrs Hudson just kept reading. Started up humming a little jaunty tune as she returned to reading the file in her lap.

Finally he huffed and shifted back deeper into the embrace of the armchair. Not pouting. Just annoyed. Glaring at the sofa where his mind's ghost-construct of a freckled idiot continued to flicker in and out, currently smirking over Sherlock's predicament.

So what if he'd a bit of trouble standing upright earlier. Didn't mean anything. He could leave if he wanted to.

Gathering information remained the only cognitive tool he felt relatively capable of wielding, so he turned his focus back to that.

"So… what, then? You're sort of ex-agent too? MI6, one assumes?"

Mrs Hudson laughed, a bubbly sort of noise. "Agent? My, how lofty!" She shook her head, still chuckling. "No, no, nothing so grand. I ran a little escort service out of my rental property in Westminster, back in the 70s. You see all sorts in that line of work, especially those days. Had a handful of spies in the client list, all the different agencies. I suppose I may have picked up a thing or two beyond my station, but… no, I wasn't ever one of them."

She glanced up and must have caught a look on his face, because her eyes set to twinkling again.

"It's a lucrative business, you know - knowing people. Knowing what sort of things they want," she explained with what might have been a wicked smirk were it on any other face. "Got to where I could size anyone up with just a glance, over the years."

"Size them up how?" Sherlock found himself asking before he'd any real chance to assess how to play this.

Mrs Hudson laughed again. Really more of a chuckle. "Well how do you think, dear? All the usual things one might find useful in that line of work. Orientation, preferences, secret needs, what sets them to talking and what brings them crawling back." She paused for a sip of tea, giving him a little wink as she did so. "Bottom," she added with no context whatsoever.

Sherlock froze. Felt his cheeks flush hot through an affronted glare. How did- how *dare-* ugh no she was just *guessing* there was no way she could have- what information would she even be-

Across the coffee table his bizarre construct of Eric gave a delighted sputter and laughed like a bloody hyena.

Sherlock's brain offered up nothing whatsoever to say to that, so he dropped the whole conversation like a hot iron. Ugh, no. Back to… something else. Literally anything else. His gaze landed on the file still in his hands, flipped past the cover page to the next.

He'd meant to read the mission overview there, but one of the accompanying photos drew focus like a magnet - his child self stood next to Vasily, the man's hand resting atop his head, glaring directly into the lens. Barely visible behind them was a lavish garden of some country estate and shapes of milling guests in formalwear.

Something about that image felt like it stood out, somehow. And not just the fact it was his own face.

Should recall this moment, shouldn't he? A normal person would, he thought. Anyone with a functioning brain.

He stared into his own eyes and hunted for anything which felt like a spark of memory in the pattern of the image.

Could deduce things about it, of course… though he wasn't sure if that counted as remembering. Setting wasn't any of his parents' gardens, so they'd probably been attending some socialite function. At this age Sherlock knew he'd have had all focus on Father if the man were nearby, so Siger must have been occupied elsewhere. Vasily's hand on his head. Meant to look like a sign of affection to fit whatever role they were playing. A tense discomfort in the boy's stance betrayed the reality of it. Internal battle between the instinct to duck out from under the touch and knowing he'd be made to regret it if he did.

Nothing in any of that seemed to be triggering a memory of any sort. Must not be approaching it right. He frowned, sipped his tea and tried to come up with a new tactic.

"Try lookin' for it in the field?" his imaginary Eric suggested, which was startling enough to drive a tiny jolt - hadn't expected the vision to speak. Sherlock glanced up at him, but of course he wasn't actually there. Just an empty sofa, and Mrs Hudson to his right, gone back to reading her own document.

The suggestion, though… well, not the worst idea. Worth a try. He gazed back down to the image of the angry, mistrustful child he'd once been.

His field remained a scorched wasteland - cinder and smoke. Hadn't had a chance to recover after the firestorm. So much for his attempt at organisation back in the van. Not that a tidy system would've helped him here anyway, granted; hadn't exactly run across any repressed childhood memories in the reshuffling earlier. Didn't know if he even *had* any, or if he'd deleted the lot of them. Hopefully not. Though if they were hidden somewhere he'd no idea where to start looking.

"Up there, reckon," Eric's voice cut in, his presence suddenly at Sherlock's side. Eric met his questioning look with a smile, then nodded towards the 'up' he'd been referring to. The willow tree.

"S'where you went to hide as a kid, right? Up the tree. Seems the place to look for kid stuff, then."

Sherlock frowned, considering. Shrugged. "Sure. Makes as much sense as anything, I guess."

"S'pose the question is if you're gonna get all fucked up f'you run into something real bad prodding around up there," Eric went on thoughtfully.

"I think the really bad stuff is all, you know…" He gestured towards the field around them. Knew without knowing that, yes, a graveyard of things too sharp or misshapen to process lay buried. Not to rest, they'd rise at night like the undead. But… hidden, for now. For sanity.

"Ah. Yeah." Eric cast a sad look out over the field, then seemed to shake himself and deliberately flip melancholy over to optimism, as he'd so often done. He grabbed Sherlock's hand and set to dragging him off towards the willow. "Well, tha's good, then, aye? Means we ain't about to hit nothin' too awful. C'mon!"

Climbing the thing was as simple as Sherlock remembered - which, well, of course it was. He was literally remembering it. Shook his head to dispel the meta-thoughts. This was all confusing enough without getting himself tangled up in what was and wasn't real.

"Look," the Eric-shape ahead of him said and gestured towards a strange artefact tucked amongst the willow's gently swaying fronds. Some sort of… glitched region. Like a void in the air where light misbehaved and folded in on itself. A glance around whilst settling himself on a thick bough next to Eric revealed there were dozens of these things dotted around, all different shapes and suggestions of colour. Phantom texture overlaid atop snags in the substrate.

"Is… that what memories are supposed to look like?" he asked, confused. Vaguely unimpressed. Seemed a tad abstract.

Eric shrugged. "In here? Yeah, reckon so." He paused, then reached out with one hand. "What happens if we touch 'em?"

And before Sherlock could so much as make a disgruntled noise he'd grabbed hold of the nearest light-knot.

**««**

*He was smaller, shorter - knew in that way one does that he was nine years old and very tired. Hadn't been sleeping much lately; nightmares. Didn't know what to do about them. Asking Father wasn't an option. Mycroft hardly spoke to him these days, being busy with school. And trying to talk to Mummy about anything but her horses or the weather invariably resulted in her ignoring him until he gave up. So he'd been stuck muddling through on his own.*

*Might get better over the annual summer holidays at his grandparents' property, he'd hoped. Always calmer there, didn't have to spend so much time keeping track of Father. And Vasily never went on these trips, claimed he couldn't abide the climate, so that was one less variable to account for. Spared all those little stabs of mixed fear and familiarity over every nearby footstep or snatch of baritone Russian.*

*But, no, three days in and he'd been having just as much trouble here. Hadn't slept more than a few hours at a time so far. Stupid brain kept replaying bits of last winter, shards shaken up like a snowglobe every time he'd thought himself settled past it. Survival, resistance… whatever the rest of the acronym was. Filtered through Russian and Serbian and whatever else his father's men spoke. Not even proper memories at this point, really, just jumbles of color and sound and pain slicing through sleep like a knife. No idea how to stop it.*

*Perhaps if he just leant in? Vasily had said that if you never stopped for rest you'd eventually just pass out. Sherlock had passed out before, plenty of times. Never had any dreams during. Maybe that would be enough like sleeping, then, and-*

*His thoughts were shattered by a jolt of adrenaline - arms around his waist from behind, hefting him up. A flash of a dozen other moments all layered over each other in his mind and a shout tore through his chest ahead of suffocating panic. No, not here, not- no nononon-*

*Muscle memory slammed into activation and he twisted, aimed a kick at the attacker's shin and flung an elbow back as he'd been taught. Missed the elbow but landed the kick, felt his bare feet drop back into soft sand and immediately whipped around with his fists up in the defensive posture he'd learnt for grapple scenarios.*

*There was no hulking, well-muscled opponent back there, though. Just his teenaged cousin Alethea. The girl was fourteen, loud, brash, and spent most of her time thoroughly confusing Sherlock with the utter incomprehensibility of every single thing she did.*

*"Ow! Lockie, merde! Uncalled for!"*

*She gave him a pouty scowl and bent down to rub at her shin where he'd kicked her.*

*"Why did you grab me!?" he snapped. Tried desperately to settle his pulse. Shakiness was trickling in as the adrenaline ebbed; wasn't supposed to, just him forgetting the process. Do better, idiot. Breathe. Deep breath.*

*"Because I've two skinny little boys here to toss in the water, and Corin's already accounted for."*

*Alethea said this with a roll of her eyes as if it should be obvious. It wasn't. She gestured towards where the waves lapped against a rocky outcropping, where Sherlock's other cousin Corin - Alethea's younger brother - was currently standing, visibly soaked, atop a rock, scowling and trying in vain to wipe the saltwater off his spectacles with the corner of his sodden shirt.*

*Sherlock frowned at Corin, then back to Alethea. Bewildered. These two always left him thoroughly lost.*

*"... what?" he finally managed, stupidly.*

*Alethea made a noise of outraged disbelief and regarded him hands-to-hips like she was judging a mismanaged foal.*

*"Mon dieu! Your brother's been negligent in his duties, hm? You don't even know what big siblings are for."*

*Well that made even* less *sense. What on earth did Mycroft have to do with anything?*

*"What are you talking about?" Sherlock insisted. Threw in a little glare so she'd know he was serious. Never quite knew what signs she used to decide what things were jokes and what things mattered.*

*He got no answer, because in the next instant the girl lunged for him. Another bolt of panic, but Sherlock didn't have a chance to strike back - she was the wrong size, too much smaller and faster to fit into the sparring patterns he'd drilled, and he found himself hefted up before he knew what was happening. Heart pounded in his throat as his mind scrambled through the likely next moves, what she might do to him, anything he'd learnt to defend against-*

*Cold, suddenly. Wet. Sputtering around an inadvertent mouthful of brine.*

*She'd dumped him into the sea.*

*He managed to shove himself into a sitting position on the wet sand, surf swirling around his hips, and fixed her with a disbelieving stare.*

*Alethea had doubled over laughing, saying something breathless about his face. Corin wandered up behind her, took one look through his smudged lenses, and sighed heavily before turning to trudge further up the beach.*

*"... what?" Sherlock repeated.*

**««**

Sherlock blinked, and in an instant was no longer nine. Back in his twenty year-old body, all sharp angles and too-long limbs, sitting in an imaginary tree with the imaginary ghost of his ex.

"... what?" he said, for either the third or first time, depending on how you counted.

"Neat," Eric remarked. In his hand the light-glitch-thing they were calling a visualisation of memory seemed to shudder, then slowly unwound itself like a knot coming undone, until the space there returned to a regular absence of form.

Sherlock watched this alongside Eric, frowning, then shot his companion what was most definitely not a petulant scowl.

"A bit of warning next time," he snapped.

Eric turned a lazy shrug, unrepentant. He was already moving, shifting up to grab a new branch. "Did warn you, innit? Asked what happens if we touch ’em."

"That's not a-" Sherlock cut himself off, realising he was about to argue semantics with a figment of his own battered psyche. Huffed a frustrated noise instead and amended with, "Just… try to have a bit more caution, would you?"

"Why?" Eric asked - he was halfway through clambering up another level. "We're in your head, love. Ain't nothin' here wants to hurt you."

"That's not even a little bit true," Sherlock retorted, though in truth it lacked enough heat to really qualify as a retort… hadn't been expecting his mind-construct of Eric to drop the same casually-accidental 'love' slip he'd done a few times back when… well. When it might have mattered.

He followed the apparition of a man he'd never managed to say the right words to up the branches of his childhood. Higher up in the canopy, the light-knots clustered denser, pulsing with faint echoes of colour and shape.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. There was… a pattern here. He was sure. Some of the knots flickered with the frozen static-white of winter. Others breathed soft gold like sunlight. Still more shone flat orange, or shimmering blue, some were mixtures, and a handful pulsed in strange, fractalizing patterns laced with shifting gradients like an oil slick.

What did the variables map to? Age? Category? Emotional tonality? His brain flipped through every possibility on autopilot. A categorisation system he of course must have already known because, as Eric had just pointed out, they were inside his head.

And the entire reason they were there in the first place had been to find…

"The memory connected to that photo in Frank's file will be…" he let his mind fill in the details, "... dark green with black, sort of… mixing around itself like a paint swirl."

Had no idea why he'd settled on that, but it felt correct. Eric, for his part, went along as if this made complete sense. Supposed to him it must; he was an avatar of the mind, after all.

"Loads of green ones over here," the avatar in question piped up. He'd shuffled out near the end of a branch which looked too flimsy to hold him, unbothered by expectations of gravity. Sherlock followed and considered the cluster of greens there. All different shades, some mixed with blacks, greys, a few pulsed through with red which he instinctively gave a wide berth. And then, over near the very tip of the branch…

"Ah, there! That one."

He shifted to a sort of monkey-climb across the disconcertingly-thin branch, and reached out for the thing.

**««**

## Chapter 18

**««**

*They were meant to be uncle and nephew, or something like that. He'd not fully understood what the plan was - Vasily and Father always spoke Russian too fast and with too many unfamiliar words for him to follow. Asking for clarification would've got him accused of not paying attention, so his only real option was to guess at the gaps. That was alright, though. He was good at guessing.*

*Working with Vasily was far less stressful than with Father, apart from the man's grating habit of wanting constant physical contact. Lower expectations, as Vasily thought him too stupid to handle anything complicated, and small mistakes tended to be forgiven for the same reason. Unfortunately this lack of tension also made it far easier to get distracted. As he was doing right now, staring at a man chatting with a woman a few feet off.*

*A hundred tiny details marked him as a spy. American. Active-duty CIA. Under normal circumstances Sherlock would've been expected to signal this, but when he'd flagged the German earlier Vasily had seemed annoyed and waved him off. So now Sherlock wasn't sure if he was supposed to keep bothering the man or hold his tongue.*

*The American looked down to him as the woman walked away. Sherlock watched as the man smiled, crouched down to his eye-level. Glint off a tiny lens - micro-camera hidden in the lapel pocket. Sherlock frowned as he caught the near-imperceptible shift of the man's foot, pressing a concealed switch. Taking a covert photo. Arsehole.*

*Suddenly Vasily's hand was gone from his head, and Sherlock looked over to see his guardian moving off into another room after the Uzbek woman he'd been speaking to. Sherlock started to follow, but Vasily flashed the hand signal which meant to wait in place, so he stopped. Scowled to himself - Father had specifically told Vasily not to leave Sherlock unattended. Now he'd have to decide whether it was safer to tattle on the man for leaving him when they got back, or to pretend nothing had happened. Hated choices like this.*

*"No worries, kiddo, he's not going far," a voice said in American-accented English. Sherlock jumped, whipped his head around to glare at the man who'd somehow snuck up on him. Piss off.*

*All he got for his vicious glower was a chuckle as the man leant up against a decorative tree next to him. They were now standing together a short distance away from the other guests, under a trellis of vines.*

*"Oho, fierce! Way more spunky without your dad around, huh?"*

*Sherlock felt his expression shift before he could do anything to stop it - thrill of confusion, wariness. How did this man know Father? Was he planning a kidnap? Worse? Were there any hidden weapons beyond the penknife? The cufflinks, maybe, tie clip…*

*The man picked up on Sherlock's alarm, of course he did. His smirk turned darkly amused.*

*"Relax, kid. I'm not running ops on a ten year-old."*

*"I'm eleven," Sherlock replied, still focussed on the man's tie clip. Immediately snapped his mouth shut with a frustrated click of teeth. Gah, stupid! Don't talk to foreign agents, don't volunteer details, don't speak in your native bloody accent whilst under cover as a Russian child. Moron, idiot.*

*Hadn't meant to speak at all, of course, but as always seemed to happen when his attention got split the words had tumbled out before he had a chance to intervene.*

*"Good for you," the man remarked with a bland lift of one brow. He glanced up and nodded in the direction Vasily had gone. "Saw you get ditched just now. Figured I'd better come hang out and make sure you don't wander off, that's all."*

*Sherlock frowned, insulted. He wasn't about to leave. Knew better than that.*

*"I'm not going anywhere."*

*As before, he really hadn't meant to say anything. Mouth kept firing on impulse. Supposed it didn't much matter now, anyway. Already set to be in a world of trouble the instant Father found out - which he would, of course. Father always found out.*

*The American quirked a flat smile. "Wouldn't be up to you."*

*Sherlock blinked as he parsed the meaning. The man's tone was dark, faintly sardonic, implying… Sherlock caught on with a sickening lurch and shifted to scan the other guests. Ah, there! A heavyset man watching them with a clenched jaw. Short beard, poorly-matched makeup over a hand tattoo, strange scuff patterns on the shoes. Private mercenary. Turkish. Likely sent to capture or kill him whilst Father was occupied with the Moldovan thing. Probably why he'd made such a point of telling Vasily not to leave him on his own this time, had a tip on a planned hit.*

*He swallowed heavily. Looked back to the American. The man appeared to have followed his gaze and was now giving him a look Sherlock couldn't even begin to understand the provenance of. A bemused smile and a furrowed brow? Impressed? What was there to be impressed about?*

*The man shook his head. "God, wish my nephew could pull off that kind of focus. Swear all that kid pays attention to these days is Mario. What about you, huh? Got a Nintendo?"*

*"I don't know what that is," Sherlock muttered, having no idea how else to proceed. The man's presence was apparently the only thing standing between Sherlock and certain death, so he obviously wanted to keep him talking so he'd not leave until Vasily got back. But… he also wasn't especially keen on idle chitchat with a foreign agent. Very much forbidden under normal circumstances. Probably forbidden under this circumstance, too, but Sherlock couldn't see any immediate alternatives.*

*The man grinned. "Ha! I bet that's the trick to it, right? Holmes doesn't let you waste time on any of that stupid kid shit."*

*That was accurate, more or less, but hearing it voiced in such an upbeat tone was strangely upsetting.*

*"The trick to what?" Sherlock asked instead, hoping to move past the uncomfortable sensation in his chest without giving too much away. Glanced nervously at the mercenary again, saw he'd moved a yard or so closer. Ugh. This was shaping up to be a nightmare of a tightrope walk between following his father's rules and not getting himself killed.*

*"How your dad made you," the man explained, sounding bemused. Sherlock blinked at the oddity of the wording and looked back with a furrowed brow, to which he received another strange variant of a smile as the man deigned to elaborate. "Built himself a trained little observation machine, you know? Most useful damn ethics violation I've ever seen in my life. Been trying to recreate it with mine over the past year or so, but…" The man huffed a performative little sigh. "Kids are tough."*

*Sherlock stared up at the man, deeply confused but trying his best not to let it show. Father 'made' him? Father hadn't built him out of clay or some rubbish, he'd just imposed a load of exhausting training schedules and maintained unreasonable expectations for as long as Sherlock could remember. Couldn't see how that amounted to 'making' anything. And what 'mine' was the man talking about - the nephew he'd mentioned? Another child like Sherlock? Also, ethics violation…? Whose ethics? Did the CIA hold their men to some sort of special code of conduct? That didn't seem very efficient.*

*Before he could gather his thoughts enough to respond, the sudden weight of a large hand atop his head derailed all focus. Vasily had come up behind him.*

*The American tucked his hands into his pockets, met Vasily's glare with an easy smile.*

*"Gotta keep a better eye on your kid, Suvorov."*

*"Who let in such scum as you?" Vasily barked. The hand on Sherlock's head tightened, gripping his skull, and he froze still as a statue. Very much hoped he wasn't about to be dragged off by the hair.*

*"I know, right?" the American agreed with a smirk and a roguish wink. "Security team's just been waving any old asshole through. Who knows what kinda trash might be milling around in here?"*

*Vasily scowled as the man flipped them a jaunty little wave, turned on his heel, and sauntered off.*

*The hand on Sherlock's head didn't relax - instead it did as Sherlock had feared it might and balled into a fist in his hair. He winced and tried very hard to keep still as Vasily crouched down to his eye level.*

*"What did you tell him?"*

*Speaking English, still, so Sherlock wouldn't have any excuse of misunderstanding the question. Which meant he'd screwed up. Badly.*

*"N-nothing!"*

*"You are lying."*

*"I'm not!"*

*With a growl Vasily let go of his hair, gave him a light smack upside the head as he stood back up.*

*"Fine. We will see what you tell your papa later."*

*Still had a job to do, even if Vasily was angry with him now. So he swallowed the bitter knot of fear and put on the obedient child act and did as he was told. Found the microfilm they were after, swapped it with the fakes, didn't get caught. A perfect little rat.*

*He'd expected none of it to matter, of course. How well he'd done or not done. Vasily would complain to Father when they got back to the hotel and Father would doubtless be angry and everything would go right to hell. As usual.*

**««**

Sherlock blinked, suddenly no longer eleven. Twenty again, still perched on the thin branch, Eric just behind him peering over his shoulder at the little knot of green-black light twisting slowly in his hand.

"Is that it?" Eric asked curiously. "It ain't unfolded and disappeared like th' other one did."

"It's… no, not done. There's more to it. But…" Sherlock hesitated, but didn't know what in god's name he was hesitating over. This one wasn't pulsing with any sort of warning - nothing awful lurked in the depths of it. Not in his childhood self's estimation of 'awful', at any rate. There was just… something… he didn't want to look directly at. Not quite yet.

And of course at that thought not-Eric, being perhaps the most dedicatedly-intrusive mental construct Sherlock had ever accidentally instantiated for himself, took the opportunity to lean over his shoulder and give the swirling knot of light-color-association a smart, open-palmed *smack*.

**««**

*Father hadn't been angry at all, in fact.*

*Which… really hadn't been that unexpected, he recalled thinking at the time. Sherlock hadn't been following the logic properly back at the garden party; been a bit frazzled after the American incident, fallen to his usual habit of assuming the worst.*

*In truth, Father (or Dad, rather - he was meant to be called Dad during the upcoming operation to fit the roles they were playing, and Sherlock had been trying to adjust how he labeled the man in his thoughts ahead of time so as to reduce the risk of flubbing it in speech and blowing cover) hadn't been angry because he hadn't blamed Sherlock. Instead he'd clocked Vasily's omission in a microsecond and said something deeply unimpressed in Russian Sherlock was fairly sure translated to, 'how did he end up speaking to an American with you watching him the whole time?'*

*Vasily had replied with a performative, silly sigh. A flippant 'bah, you cannot expect eyes on a child the entire day! It was only five minutes, he was fine, our little fox is very resourceful.' And the argument had sort of fizzled out from there. Father never stayed angry at Vasily for long.*

*Dad, rather. Right. Had to keep on that. Didn't want to slip up in conversation later.*

*Anyway, Dad had mainly just been pleased that a complicated operation hadn't descended into outright chaos, and even expressed satisfaction with how Sherlock had handled himself. That was nice. Didn't often get told he'd done well.*

*But the reason all this wasn't unexpected, of course, was that the man usually got like this after successful ops phases - slipped into that mode where standards softened, frustrations slid off him like water, and odds of violence remained steadily low. A rare version of Siger with little regard for formality and a high tolerance for Sherlock nattering on at him out of boredom or curiosity or sometimes just for company.*

*Sherlock liked this version. Felt almost like having the sort of dad he read about in books. Strong, protective figures who actually seemed to like their children and wanted them to be happy. A novel concept. Mystifying, really. He couldn't imagine having a dad who just… stayed like that. All the time. Never flipping to a new face or a different ruleset. Endlessly safe and predictable.*

*Seemed… nice? Or… well, maybe not. Maybe it'd get boring over time. Nothing ever changing and all. You'd get used to the one set of rules and then what? Chat about football or something?* *Ugh, how dull.*

*So that must be the trade-off, then - Sherlock didn't get a nice-all-the-time dad, he got a not-boring one.* *Deeply, unavoidably, oftentimes very dangerously… Not-Boring.*

*Siger's moods were fickle things. Sherlock knew that perfectly well. Even with the man in a pleasant state the conversation could just as easily end with a cracked rib as a pat on the head if one wasn't careful about tracking. Had to watch the microexpressions, that was the trick - all the tiny clues in his face before a sudden shift, the hints between his words. A constant game of spot-the-pattern where screwing up meant consequences.*

*And that was fine, of course. Sherlock was good at this game. Knew how to play the odds, easy as breathing.*

*"So he hung around to protect me from the Turkish asset, according to him, and he said something about how I'm an ethics violation and that he was trying to recreate whatever you'd done with me, and, er… 'kids are tough'?" Sherlock related, sitting criss-cross in boxers and t-shirt at the foot of the hotel bed. It was late, going on 22:00, and that would ordinarily have meant sleep except there was a minor threat of attack tonight so they were staying up until the local team radioed all-clear. Vasily was in the adjoining room, already in bed after having said he'd leave his fate to fortune and a sharp blade.*

*"Well, best of luck to him," Siger intoned, bemused. He handed Sherlock one of the two mugs he'd brought from the kitchenette area. Sherlock took a sip, wrinkled his nose at the bitter taste of coffee, and his dad blinked and switched round the mugs. Cocoa. Right, that was more expected.*

*"Definitely don't need you caffeinated," Dad muttered to himself, taking a sip of the mug meant for him.*

*Sherlock blew on his cocoa and watched as Siger took at seat at the room's tiny table, where he'd already set a stack of whatever documents he'd recovered from his arm of today's operation. Took one from the top of the stack and began skimming through it.*

*"So which agent was it?" Siger asked idly after a moment of companionable silence. "Vasily skipped straight past target identification in his bluster over the audacity of it all."*

*"Er… not sure. I didn't get a name. Was one of those blokes who kind of looks the same as all the rest," Sherlock answered. He finally tried taking a sip at the cocoa, gingerly for the temperature, and still managed to singe his tongue.*

*Ducked his head to hide a childish wince, then shook himself and called up all the details he could find from earlier. Rattled them off the way he'd been trained to do since he was small. "Caucasian, a few inches over six foot, blue eyes, brown hair, military cut. Square jaw, clean-shaven, no ring, didn't see any pet hairs, midwestern American accent… oh!" Sherlock recalled suddenly with a pleased smile, because aha, right! That would be an identifying detail, had to be. "He said he had a nephew! And something about, uh… a Nin-ten-do. I told him I didn't know what that was."*

*"It's a video gaming console," Dad replied offhandedly.*

*Sherlock had no reaction for that but a blank, uncomprehending stare, sipping his cocoa with both hands. Absolutely no idea what sort of object those words were meant to map to.*

*Father glanced up, caught the look. Frowned and dropped focus for a searching beat as if considering how to define the thing more clearly. Then, finally, he seemed to give up and shrugged.*

*"I don't fully know, to be honest. Some sort of idle leisure activity."*

*"Oh," Sherlock replied. Bounced one knee a bit, then risked a followup question, because Dad was in a good mood and Sherlock was, frankly, quite bored. Normal for him on these sorts of travel-based ops, really. Always tore through the one book he was allowed to bring within the first few days and wound up with nothing to do during downtime for the rest of the trip.*

*"So… physical description, has a nephew? Is that enough information to pin agent ID?"*

*Siger hummed in thought. "Hm… possibly Frank Hudson. Had a tip placing him in the region last week."*

*"One of the usual idiots, or an actually interesting sort?" Sherlock volleyed back. He'd become aware he was bouncing both knees now - didn't mean to, just antsy. Wanted to go run about outside or explore the hotel maybe but it was late and he was still technically working so he was meant to keep sight of Fath- Dad, ugh. Slipping.*

*He did his best to still. At least keep his legs from moving, if nothing else. Sort of worked.*

*Dad quirked a small smirk, eyes on his document. "You've a more recent interaction with him than I have. What was your assessment?"*

*Sherlock blinked, tilted his head. What did he think? He'd been more preoccupied with the mercenary than with assessing the agent. But… well, the man had seemed at least moderately clever. Had annoyed Vasily quite a bit. And knew about the threat vector, how to defuse it without drawing attention. Oh, and he'd recognized Sherlock as belonging to Siger, which was an intriguing detail.*

*"He seemed interesting," Sherlock eventually concluded. "Knew I was your son right away, so I suppose he must at least be good at deducing things. Can't be a total idiot in that case, right?"*

*Siger actually chuckled at that, which Sherlock found mildly confusing. He sipped his drink and, after a beat, risked asking, "What?"*

*"He didn't deduce anything. He recognised your face because he has orders to kill you on sight," Dad informed him, bemused.*

*Sherlock froze.* *He took a long moment to study the man's face, trying to pick out whether he was joking - hm... none of the usual tells. Just placidly reading the document, taking a sip of coffee. No crinkle of the eyes, no head tilt, no glance up to see if Sherlock was reacting properly.*

*He was serious, then. Alright.*

*"Well… he didn't seem like he wanted to kill me," Sherlock countered slowly. "He was protecting me from a mercenary." Knew he'd told Father that already earlier in the debrief bit, but still. Seemed important to reassert.*

*"Because avoiding major incidents at today's event would've been deemed higher priority than snapping your neck. Basic risk calculus."*

*Father's tone was that offhand sort of voice he got when he wasn't really paying attention to the conversation, just going through the motions of speaking whilst he absorbed information from the document in his hand. Sherlock huffed and looked away. Frowned out the open window overlooking the twinkling lights of some unfamiliar European city.*

*"... maybe he just didn't feel like it," he muttered, a tiny bit peevish. Didn't need to know the bloody Americans wanted him dead, thanks. Sort of knowledge one seemed better off without. Now he'd have to work not to act nervous every time he spotted one.*

*Siger smiled, raised a brow without looking up. "Sure, why not," he agreed in idle bemusement. "Doubtless close enough to correct, knowing how Langley tends to operate."*

*Sherlock turned the unfamiliar word over in his head. He’d seen it written in cables and briefs, but it'd never caught quite right in his memory. Too many nouns attached to too many places. Worth the chance to ask? Probably.*

*“Langley?” he echoed, aiming for casual curiosity. “Is that a man or a building?”*

*“Building,” Father replied without missing a beat, still in that tone of not really paying attention. “Town, technically. Headquarters. Shorthand for the CIA as a whole.” He flipped the page on his document and carried on speaking absently with, “A cluster of nervous Americans signing off on the same handful of stupid ideas repeated with minor variations, ad nauseum, all billed under the erroneous heading of a functional intelligence agency.”*

*Sherlock snorted into his mug before he could stop himself. Some of the tension in his shoulders loosened. He bounced his heel against the mattress again, gentler this time. “So… worse than MI6.”*

*It wasn’t really a question, but Siger answered anyway. “Barely,” he droned. “Worse discipline, primarily. They break half their toys with poor operational standards and then draft long reports on the tragedy of it all.” A slight curl at the edge of his mouth suggested bone-deep contempt. “It offends one's sense of craft.”*

*Sherlock hesitated. Several possible next questions lined themselves up in his head: how men like that might go about ending him, whether he needed to be more vigilant, how many agents he must have ratted out to Father and Vasily for the body count to reach 'kill order' levels. His tongue sat heavy behind his teeth. Did he actually want to know?*

*He watched Father instead. The man’s face had gone neutral again, eyes moving steadily across the text. Coffee, document, the occasional casual glance to check whether the room was still doing as it ought. He didn’t look concerned. If anything, he looked… comfortable. As close to relaxed as Siger Holmes ever got.*

*Sherlock took another sip of cocoa, now just on the tolerable side of too hot.*

*“So Hudson’s too undisciplined to get worked up over?” he ventured, testing the water. Seemed the most operationally relevant thing to ask. Father always appreciated operational relevance.*

*Father hummed. “Less than most.” He finally took another sip of the coffee in his hand. “He’s capable of following an order, but reserves the right to decide whether it’s worthy of him. Serves him well in some respects, poorly in others.” A beat. The corner of his mouth twitched again. “Which, in fairness, is more than I can say for half my current colleagues.”*

*Sherlock let out a short breath that might have been a laugh if he’d felt braver. The prickling unease hadn't ebbed, of course, but that was the normal state of things with Father… Dad. Right.*

*It always went like this - coiled nerves under banter, comfort and anxiety swirled up together like a vortex. You went along with talkative moods until they stopped looking safe, then you played by ear until you figured out where he might be headed next, what the risk vectors were. And if any looked bad you paid attention and tried to catch the shift before it happened. This was life. Familiar, easy, safe… well, sort of safe. Most of the time, anyway. So long as he didn't screw up.*

*Siger seemed to register Sherlock's actual implied question somewhat belatedly. Though, to be fair, he was in the midst of reading and talking at the same time. Sometimes caused a bit of cognitive drag. Sherlock had learnt not to point that out.*

*"Hudson's a known quantity. He heads up a small task force on you, doesn't run the ops himself. If he's out here on his own, it means you're not his current target."*

*Sherlock made an odd sort of face - half consternation, half vague concern. "There's a task force on me?"*

*"Yes, apparently," Dad replied blithely, more entertained than anything. "Brilliant, hm? Some orderly group of men convened for the sole purpose of eliminating an eleven year-old. American fieldcraft at its finest."*

*"I don't… I don't really like that at all," Sherlock admitted. Felt both deep awkwardness and a sick stab of adrenaline at the very thought.*

*"Oh relax, you'll be fine," Siger quipped, flapping a hand. "I've been dropping those idiots like flies since the 60s."*

*Sherlock gave a tiny little huff, which might have been annoyance, or acknowledgement, or maybe even a tiny laugh if one were so inclined. Felt a strange mixture of disorientation for having found himself a target, apparently, but also… safety? Or some vestige of the concept. Because after all Dad could be counted on to handle things like this. Always did.*

*"Yeah, alright, I wasn't that worried about it," he thus tossed out easily. Finished the last of his cocoa and slid off the bed to go rinse out the mug in the sink. He padded back in his socks, skidded a bit on the hardwood, and caught his balance on the table Dad was sitting at. On a whim he grabbed up the topmost document on the stack there, but it turned out to be written in Ukrainian rather than Russian so he set it back down again.*

*"What's on for tomorrow, then?" he asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Still antsy.*

*Dad didn't look up, just flipped a map out from the bottom of the document stack and handed it over.*

*"Draw up a path assessment," the man droned, bland and unconcerned. Trusted Sherlock to be able to tackle such a thing. Which of course he did, because Sherlock had always been good with the maps stuff. Picking out relevant patterns and tiny little clues in the shape of the roads and geography was one of those rare tasks he never ever messed up.*

*Sherlock leant forward, plucked up a pencil from beside his dad's hand, and happily got to work.*

**««**

As with the others so far, he simply blinked, and was no longer eleven. Back in the willow tree with Eric. Or the mental construct of Eric. Whatever he was.

Said mental construct was staring into the undulating, fractal light-knot of the memory with a strange expression. Sherlock looked back to the thing as well. Didn't really know what to think. Or perhaps just didn't want to think anything at all. The structure of the knot unravelled itself before their eyes like a tangle in the air smoothing out, and then was gone.

"... yeah, alright, that one were a bit fucked up," Eric said eventually.

Sherlock frowned. "What's fucked up? He was being nice to me for a change. Isn't it better to realise he wasn't always… you know…"

Lacking any workable phrasing for what he meant to convey he just gestured towards the ground instead, meaning all the memories buried under scorched soil. Eric glanced down, made an even stranger face than before, and huffed a sigh before looking back up to him.

"Let's just… climb down, yeah? You've probably been sittin' out there starin' into space for half a bleedin' hour by now."

"Ugh, probably," Sherlock agreed, and followed the construct of his ex down the familiar path of branches. Dropped to the ground off the last limb and stumbled the landing, which was odd. Whiffed a drop in his own head? What sort of logic was that?

Eric had an arm out to steady him, drew it back when Sherlock managed to catch himself. The man's face had gone… melancholy, almost. For some reason.

"Keep hold of yourself out there, love," he said quietly.

And before Sherlock could so much as open his mouth to ask after the tone shift, he was back sat in an armchair in Florida.

**««**