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It would have been easier if they’d concentrated on his front. But that would have required imagination, and they lacked that.
Sherlock twisted and contorted himself in front of the mirror, trying to see the mess they’d made – trying to see if all the stitches were still where they were supposed to be. Damn John anyway. If he’d just punched Sherlock in the face, it would have been so much better. Instead he had to tackle him. Three bloody times. And bloody was right – it was a blessing that the second-to-last tackle had given him a split lip, or he’d have had no excuse to have blood on his face. And there was blood. Dear God, was there blood. His tongue felt three times its normal size and everything he ate tasted of the coppery tang of blood, but it had been necessary.
He hadn’t screamed once for the torturer, he was damned if he was going to scream for John Watson. John didn’t need to see this, not if he was going to keep on being angry about something that couldn’t have been helped and had saved his life anyway.
God, Sherlock had been so happy to see him. Despite the moustache, and the girlfriend – who was actually surprisingly pleasant – it had been ridiculous, how pleased Sherlock had been to see him. John, his friend John, who thought Sherlock was amazing and brilliant and who Sherlock had died for, in every way that mattered (and if John didn’t think that having to change his name and go into hiding and leave London and John and Baker Street was all the death anyone needed then he clearly hadn’t been paying attention). But then John had been angry – and Sherlock had thought he might be, but he’d also thought that John might be glad to see him.
John hadn’t been glad to see him. Not even a little bit, not even at all, and that hurt more than Sherlock had ever thought John would hurt him, mainly because it was so unexpected. John would be angry, but then he would get over it and he would be happy that Sherlock was alive, and he’d give Sherlock a chance to explain, and he’d understand, and everything would go back to the way it had been before. That was the way it had gone in Sherlock’s head. But John didn’t want to know how Sherlock had done it, and Sherlock, for some reason, didn’t want to tell him about the snipers, didn’t want John to think that Sherlock was trying to ‘guilt’ him (although of course he wouldn’t have hesitated if he’d thought it would work, but not the point at all) into forgiving him, and he was not going to apologize. Not for saving John’s life, saving all their lives, and not for giving up two years to hunting down assassins and murderers and every single strand of Moriarty’s twisted web.
More than once he’d thought of taking it over instead, of installing himself at the heart of it under a new name, of never coming back to London at all. But the thought of John’s face when he asked him not to be dead had kept him going, kept him determined to keep the last, unspoken promise he’d made to John Watson.
One last miracle, Sherlock. Don’t be dead, John had asked, and Sherlock had said I’m not, and I’ll come back, I promise.
But John didn’t want Sherlock back now, didn’t want to see him or talk to him, and that was…that was okay.
Sherlock had lived without John Watson before. He’d just spent two years without him, for Heaven’s sakes, and before that there had been thirty-four years when he hadn’t even known of John’s existence. He’d be fine.
Except that his back was on fire and looked like a slab of raw beef and he couldn’t reach to clean the gouges and whip marks, and he was so tired still, and all he wanted was to fall down in his dusty bed and sleep for a month, but-
The sound of shattering glass surprised him. He’d thrown a picture – himself and Mycroft, when they were children, before Mycroft had become tedious and Sherlock had become…whatever he was – against the wall. The frame had shattered.
“Oh, Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson said chidingly from the door, and then, “oh, Sherlock.” In a completely different tone of voice, and she padded closer and Sherlock didn’t want to face her, didn’t want to see her pity, but the only other option left his back fully in view, so he hunched his shoulders and closed his eyes. “Oh, my poor dear boy. What happened?”
“Some parts of Moriarty’s web were…cleverer than others,” he managed. “Please, Mrs Hudson, I’m fine, really. I just need to-“
“Oh, hush, Sherlock. Sit down here, and I’ll clean them up for you.”
“I don’t need-“
“Sit down, Sherlock,” she said, and there she was, the woman who’d survived marriage to Frank Hudson for thirty-five years, the woman who’d taken her chance to save someone, who’d saved Sherlock in so many ways, so many times. And besides, it wasn’t as though she hadn’t seen Sherlock in much, much worse condition. He’d barely been able to walk, when she’d unlocked him from the shackles in California, had been delirious from pain and fever and hunger and drugs, and covered in blood and filth. She hadn’t flinched then, hadn’t flinched when his screaming nightmares woke her up in the night all the way down in 221A, and she wasn’t going to flinch now.
“Thank you, Mrs Hudson,” he said, and sat down. The feeling of her gloved hands, ever-so-gentle on his torn back, brought back memories of California, of the two of them after their second and last escape from Frank, of dressing each other’s wounds in a dodgy motel room and Mrs Hudson washing blood out of his hair.
“This brings back memories, doesn’t it,” she said softly.
Sherlock choked. And then he’d turned around and buried his face in the curve of her neck and he was crying like a child, like the scared young man he’d been when they first met, and she wrapped her arms around him and held him together as she always did.
“I want John,” he whispered, because when John was there he could be stronger, he could be so much better. “I want John.”
“He’ll come around,” she said. “That boy loves you so much Sherlock, he’ll come back to you.”
***
Three months later, John was hanging around Baker Street again, and everything was almost back to normal.
They didn’t talk about what had happened while Sherlock was away, or why he’d left, or any of that, but that was okay. Sherlock was just happy that John was there, and if sometimes he woke screaming in the night that was nobody’s business but his own.
John’s arrivals were unpredictable, but he was usually never there early in the morning. Sherlock certainly hadn’t been expecting him to show up at very nearly the crack of dawn. He’d have worn a shirt to play if he had.
“Jesus, Sherlock,” John breathed behind him, and the violin screeched Sherlock’s surprise as he spun around.
“John,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m just…Sherlock, what happened to your back?”
Sherlock shrugged.
“Some Serbians took exception to me,” he said. “Mycroft had to get me out, it was humiliating.”
“This was…”
“Oh, a couple of days before I came home. It was the last part of the web, you see. They were more perceptive than I thought, and-“
But John had paled alarmingly and sat down in his chair as though his legs had been cut out from under him.
“That was…that was just before you came back? And you let me – Jesus, Sherlock, why didn’t you say anything?”
Sherlock sneered.
“What would you have liked me to say, John? Please don’t hit me, I’ve recently been tortured and I really don’t feel up to it? You’d have thought I was lying. You’d have been even more angry.”
“Why didn’t you ask me to take a look at them?”
“I didn’t need you, John,” Sherlock snapped. “Mrs Hudson took care of me. She knew what to do, she’s done it before.”
“Sherlock,” John said slowly. “Sherlock, I’m sorry.”
Sherlock smiled.
“Whatever for, John?” he asked. “You couldn’t have known.”
Except that Sherlock would have known, if it was John, would have known John was in pain by the way he walked, by the way he flinched away from the chair in the second restaurant and preferred to stand in the third-
“You would have known, though,” John said, and Sherlock stared. “You’d have known, if it was me. And I’m a doctor, and I should have known. I’m not saying I was wrong to be angry, because God knows that was a dick move if there ever was one, but…if I’d known? If I’d known what you’d gone through out there? I probably would have been a bit less…”
“Violent?”
“Yeah, that. So just…I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Sherlock put his hand on John’s shoulder and smiled down at him.
“It really is fine, John. It’s all fine.”