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The TARDIS was there. That had been Sherlock’s plan all along, and it has been the only weakness in his elaborate scheme. He’d taken the chance, though, and it had paid off — spectacularly.
Now, he sat on the box’s stark metal stairs, their coldness slowly leeching into his body. It seemed poetically just, somehow, even though Sherlock had never been prone to such nonsense. Behind him, footsteps, irregular and frenetic. Sherlock sensed an impending lecture — about his lack of empathy, perhaps.
“Sherlock…”
“What?” It was rude, he knew. Mycroft would have chastised him for a lack of manners. The thought stings a little, because it reminds him that his brother was the only one that knew. He’d tell their parents, of course, but his friends wouldn’t know. He tries not to care. He fails, his mind involuntarily replaying John’s panic over the phone.
The Doctor abruptly interrupts his train of thought.
“In all my years, in my journeys across time and space, I've seen enough people making mistakes — goodness knows, I've made enough myself — to know that this is one of them.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. “Don't be dense, Sherlock. I know you're better than that.”
That was true. They were alike in many ways, finding in each other a rare intellectual equal.
Sherlock pulled himself from step he sat on, turning to face his interlocutor at last. “Well, Doctor, if I'd known that you were going to start behaving like Mycroft–”
“I'm not Mycroft, you know that.”
They were still separated by several metres, the TARDIS console between them.
The Doctor began again. “Sherlock, just stop and think about this. Think about John.” Sherlock winced at his name. “Your best friend, Sherlock. He watched you fall, you made him watch. He's in pieces!”
“Really, Doctor.” The voice was cold, inflectionless. “Of all people, I thought you’d be the last to judge me.”
“That's different.”
“It's not, and you know it. If you truly believe that then you're deluding yourself.”
They were both on the defensive now, trying to justify lifetimes’ worth of selfishness with feeble excuses and anger, voices crescendoing to shouts.
“It's for their own good, it's always been for their own good!”
“So is this! This is the only way to protect everyone: John, Molly, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade...Mycroft, even! This is best for everyone!”
His voice reverberated through the space, leaving the air quivering. There was a sense of wrongness about this: one face, usually empty, teeming with emotion and suppressed tears; another, normally optimistic, pale and drawn and desperate.
“So,” the Doctor said, quieter now. “You’re just going to leave.”
“For now.”
“So you're coming back.”
“When it's over. When they're safe. When I've rooted out every miserable being in Moriarty’s network.”
There was a long, pregnant pause, the space between them laden with regret.
The Doctor forces his words out. “I suppose you’re right. I'm in no position to judge. But don't expect me to approve.”
“I don't.” It’s said bitterly.
“Good.”
They fell silent for a long while, kept company by the hums and whirs of the TARDIS.
“Where are we going?” the Doctor asks, his voice muted. He avoids eye contact, but Sherlock knows that they’ve reached an understanding. Otherwise, it would have been where am I taking you? Where do you want me to drop you off?
“I don’t care.” He does. He always does. “Somewhere far away.”
It’s not wise to run from your mistakes. At that moment, Sherlock doesn’t care, especially when his travelling companion is the universe’s foremost expert on running away.