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In the beginning, there was efficiency. There was order and simplicity, there was utilitarian conformity and swift processing, and the only sacrifice necessary was to recognise that on occasion, the limited-capacity of the Hard Drive would be expended, necessitating deletions.
This was more than acceptable. He’d yet to delete a piece of information that he needed so greatly that he forfeited the rush of absorbing it anew.
This was more than acceptable, until Sherlock Holmes met John Watson.
The fact that John was an enigma was enticing from the start, so soaked was he in contradictions that Sherlock ached to disassemble his jumpers thread by thread to find the lie in them, the champagne string amongst grey wool that would stick in his mind like a splinter and lock itself with unknown passcodes, protect itself from deletion. The time between swallowing his third sip of tea and taking the fourth, how it deviated from the space between the fourth swallow and sip five; the flick of his thumb to catch the space bar off each of the twenty-six letters; the pattern of his breathing as correlated to the subject of his dreams.
Concerning John, there could be no deletion; because of John, the Hard Drive lagged. Sherlock knew where the passwords, the keys to unlock the files and eradicate them; he knew where they hid, knew where he could unearth them, but the demons, the secrets that would spill in driving a turnscrew through the fifth left intercostal space and wrenching, tearing: they were too numerous, too dangerous to turn loose.
John was too close, John was too essential; John could not be risked by proximity to the darkness Sherlock housed and held.
New means of storage now proved necessary.
The Palace was never ideal for Sherlock’s preferences, let alone his sensibilities; the Palace was very much an extension of the burrowed-breeding presence of all that comprised a John. It was warm, it was winding, it was infinite.
The compromise was tolerable.
The moniker itself is misleading; deliberately so. He’d first tried a palace, a true palace, with winding halls and wings, buttresses and chandeliers and gothic sculptures. He’d enjoyed the palace, its coolness, its impersonality, until a voiceless imposition emerged, a companion not of his mind but in it, now—a voice dear to Sherlock in ways he couldn’t yet own.
This is your palace, you’ve got to make a home of it.
And only one place had ever reeked of home.
So the Palace began to blend among everything else, its alterity breached by the susurrations of a voice that spoke no words, that responded honestly as its actual owner would, and the fact of it would have had Sherlock fearing for his sanity, except that it made perfect sense.
John was not merely contained inside the Palace, the observations and deductions and precious confessions of his person given a place to stay within.
No, John Watson was the walls, the blood of him holding the walls, the drapes, the strength of him keeping back harm; the hole in his shoulder etching unnatural, unreal scars in the wallboard where yellow smiles back.
Home.
So when Sherlock speaks to John aloud in john’s absence, it’s not for lack of feeling confident that he already knows John’s response. Sherlock feels he’s owed this flexibility, really, for the sacrifices he’s made in light of John’s arrival in his world.
Because the Palace is aesthetic, the Palace is wreathed in colour and impressions, data is stored in a place for a reason based on associations rather than hard facts and it’s all drenched in sentiment, right there in Sherlock’s brain and it leaks and it spreads and there’s John—
The sentiment is anathema. The sentiment is addictive.
Sherlock deserves to answer for John when he’s gone because more often than not, he presents the correct response. Sherlock deserves to answer for John because when he’s wrong, it digs a sliver deep in the septum, in the grey matter, and he suffers for the reminder that despite everything, despite the shrine he never meant to build in his head, there are things about John that remain unknown, if not unknowable.
It’s John’s fault that Sherlock knows to feel lonely, now. It’s John’s fault that he leaves, and Sherlock needs him.
John’s fault. It’s all John’s fault, in the end.
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Before the roof, as he plans the fall, Sherlock doesn’t dwell on the fact that his Palace, his home will never grow, will never rejoice for the knowledge of the new, for the interspersion of some depth thus far unplumbed in the being, the soul of John Hamish Watson.
After the roof, when knowledge itself is cased in loss; when the promise of what never ends is cut short and revoked, when the walls lose their colour and Sherlock’s world seems simultaneously miniscule and unbearably vast—
After the roof, Sherlock allows himself the moments he requires in which to mourn.
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It takes him three days before it dawns upon him. It takes him three days of running and tracking and choking down pernicious, anomalous sobs before Sherlock understands what he has.
His chest, his throat, his body misses the tangible fact of John.
But his mind, his mind—
His mind does not need to miss.
He closes his eyes that night not to sleep, but oh, to dream.
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Because it is of John, the 221B Sherlock carries is not exact. The starbust of the scar around the bullet holes in the wall notwithstanding, the scent is different: tea leaves instead of chemicals. Brightness instead of dark.
“I miss you.” The first thing Sherlock says to the walls. It echoes, and he thinks perhaps this was foolish, this was useless.
“I miss you,” and Sherlock spins to see John just as he’d saved him, ever-changing, little edits: a new grey hair, a deeper laugh-line. “I hate you a bit, though, for making me mourn you as well.”
And John is the bones of this place, yes, but Sherlock’s burnt heart is the blood, and if the image of John is possible, then Sherlock knows what he’s kept in terms of the feel, the heft of John Watson in the flesh.
Sherlock knows, and so he walks and grips and presses John close to his chest, leans down and feel John’s lips and there is precedent for the feel of John’s mouth, one cold night involving high tide and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Sherlock moans, greedy, and slips his tongue between John’s lips.
There is no precedent for the feel of John’s tongue.
Sherlock leaps into to wakefulness. He feels rested, but not quite as the result of sleep. He feels fortified. He feels renewed.
The dawn is breaking.
Sherlock breathes in deep; out slow.
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The moon is full in Amsterdam: Sherlock tells John to take off his shirt as Sherlock unbuttons his own. They breathe against one another for hours, never going any further. It was only one time, Sherlock in the middle of dressing as he went to fetch a flannel from the bath, John coming out of the shower, his towel only just saved from the fall as they’d collided.
Sherlock doesn’t dare ease off their trousers, doesn’t make to end the projection of his memories so soon.
Waning gibbous, Bora Bora. He’s been stabbed five times and lost too much blood. John's hands on him, stitching his flesh back to rights is a thing Sherlock will never cease to know: which of John’s fingers are roughest, where the toughest calluses live. He grits through the pain of breathing, and he sinks into John’s ministrations and his quiet chidings as he lilts toward unconsciousness with every prick through his skin.
He wakes with a threaded needle in his hand, still attached to the last of his own sloppy stitches, and his chest hurts.
He wasn’t stabbed in the chest.
_____________________________________________
He’s been poisoned, and the safe house was almost too far. His heart is hammering, and he’s afraid, yes, he’s afraid this is the end and there’s still work to be done and he’ll be found and what if it’s not enough that he died eventually, that the end result was the same—what if they find John, what if they take him, what if—
“Stop.” John’s voice is firm, steady, calm. John’s face forestalls all argument. John’s hand rests on Sherlock’s chest, racing up and down with Sherlock’s shallow breaths yet never faltering: soothes up and down, eases him like a crouping child, and Sherlock’s heart doesn’t settle but his lungs begin to coordinate and fill wholly.
“I love you,” Sherlock says it with his eyes wide and there is no precedent, there is no way to approximate a reaction, but the universe is kind and this John before him, massaging his chest doesn't seem to hear; this John maintains contact with his sweat-slick, feverish skin until his heart tires and gives, no, until it calms and John smiles, and oh, everything loosens and Sherlock does, he does.
He loves.
Sherlock doesn’t know if it’s the Palace or if he’s coming undone. Perhaps it’s both.
He survives that night, and never again questions the source of the boon.
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It’s too dark, new moon in Marrakech, and he’s outnumbered.
John is there, suddenly, and Sherlock’s losing his grip on reality, perhaps, but his hand on the gun remains strong and he breathes in everything that is the man in his mind and his motions and his heart and his lungs and he exhales, fires seven shots in a whirlwind and none of them should hit true.
His enemies fall, lifeless. Sherlock falls, and John catches him.
He wakes among corpses, on the floor, but he hasn’t a single bruise from the fall.
_____________________________________________
Waning crescent in Dubai, and John’s on Sherlock’s bed Sherlock stares at the wall and begs for one new secret, one novel revelation. Sherlock listens to John breathe.
“You take up space beneath my ribs, inside my skull,” Sherlock confesses. “ It hurts.”
“You take up space in my veins and my lungs, in the air,” John shoots back. “I’d say we’re even.”
Sherlock turns; John is gone.
_____________________________________________
Too often, now, he seeks to move beyond the precipices of his knowledge. Too often he drives John away with all the things he doesn’t know.
Sherlock, for the ache in his bones that comes from John’s residence within the marrow: Sherlock pushes harder, works faster, unravels the web.
Unravels his mind.
The Palace holds, because John is stronger. John was always much stronger.
And some things, Sherlock just won’t survive losing. Not anymore.
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When the end comes, Sherlock is ready and not ready.
The blows to his torso, to his knees, to his head: they shatter and echo and Sherlock is struggling to breathe, can’t focus on anything, his enemies are blurring before him, and he knows he’s done for. He knows he’s failed. No one could survive this.
You could.
The voiceless voice is like a dagger in his heart, and it sears, and he cries out in a pain that his attackers take credit for, jeering through the din, but Sherlock holds to it, grasps the blade in his breast and grips it, lets it burn and oh, John.
John believed in him. John believed.
Sherlock hurls everything he has at them: fists fly and his body contorts and he lands a roundhouse and reacquires his firearm, shoots blindly, channels the man at his centre and breathes until the darkness comes, cold.
____________________________________________
His consciousness skips around, but when the clouds dissipate he sees it: the full moon through the Eye. He smells it: the Thames, the night air musky and sweet.
He hurts everywhere, can feel the grinding of broken bones inside his skin, and oh, he does not deserve this, but his mind was always exceptional, and John was always the heart, and yes.
This makes sense.
Sherlock doesn’t bother licking his wounds, treating his maladies: he’s beyond that, now, it doesn’t matter. He drags himself down familiar streets until he sees it, until his neurones spark erratic and his heart flutters and yes, the end, he’s breathless, too little oxygen, but he manages the stairs, somehow, because there is mercy and he will grasp at it until this is done.
The door swings open, and John looks at him; takes him in, and seems to stop breathing.
Sherlock accesses his stores within the Palace and remembers John’s hands upon his chest to ease the function of his lungs: he steps forward and makes to touch, but there is a blow to his cheek, swift and clean, and oh, yes, he’s coming apart, this is the last gasp before the end: the rush of endorphins brought him here, gave him John, and he wonders how long it will last, hopes the limits of science have cut short an eternity, because even as John glares at him and shouts at him and Sherlock can feel the physical blows to his person as his enemies attack his failing body somewhere else, this is where home is.
His mind has come here.
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The darkness clears; he’s stretched, supine on the sofa. The material is familiar, the texture known beneath his fingers. He’s in pain, he’s very much in pain, but everything is quiet.
He blinks.
His pulse gains speed as he realises: not dead.
His pulse gains momentum, force as he realises: not real.
Sherlock digs his fingernails into the soft of his palm, tries to wake again to whatever horror awaits him, tries to startle himself from the safety of the Palace, the heat of home, but then he turns, catches the form in his peripheral vision.
John is there, watching him, saying nothing, his breathing inaudible.
John is there, staring, and oh, Sherlock hadn’t accessed the way those eyes shown past dark just so, just like this at this precise angle,: Sherlock didn’t think he knew it, but there it is before him: John’s eyes inhumanly bright, and his jaw tense enough to snap, posture tight, straight.
The soldier gleaming.
Sherlock sighs, and strokes his own chest to ease the tension. He’s on the brink of oblivion when he feels another hand, so known, take over the task.
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John is still there when he wakes, 221B still surrounds them, and there is only this, now, only Sherlock’s memories and fantasies and the fact of another world coupled with the dark spells.
Sherlock’s chest constricts, and he knows he’s lost his mind.
But so much of the mind is the Palace, and that holds here, isolated and ever-bright, and Sherlock will crumble as a man of science to the last; he must test it, he must know.
“I miss you,” Sherlock whispers to John where John sits next to him, taking his pulse and stroking a cool cloth across his brow; the heat then. Infection. Fever.
Sherlock opens his mouth when he’s coerced into taking one pill, then another; swallows as John commands wordlessly with a touch to his jawline and a quirk of his lips.
Sherlock waits to see if the reactions repeat themselves.
John signs deeply, and takes Sherlock’s hand in his own, plays with Sherlock’s fingers, teases the knuckle around his poorly-set index finger and breathes a few times, in and out with depth and intention, before he says anything; Sherlock can feel the way his blood sprints when he swallows hard in wait.
“I’ve missed you," John tells him, soft; Sherlock deflates, eased and horrified all at once. “But I—”
“You hate me a bit,” Sherlock interjects, filled with warmth that isn’t fever even as the floor falls out from under him; “for making you mourn me, as well.”
John nods, unsurprised that Sherlock knows what he’s thinking, and Sherlock forces himself to simply be grateful that when his brain began to cannibalise itself, when his intellect splintered and he fell between the cracks, this was saved. This remained and sheltered him from the worst.
“I do,” John affirms, and keeps Sherlock’s hand in his.
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Darkness, and light again where John hovers, hazy, and the heat is maddening as Sherlock shivers, sweats beneath the thin blanket around him, and John murmurs reassurances as he takes note of Sherlock’s vitals, as he stands guard through the waking hours.
“The rules,” Sherlock pants, moves to swallow but can’t for lack of moisture, his mouth a wasteland. “Broken. All broken.”
“We’ll fix you,” John tells him simply, lingering to count Sherlock’s pulse at the temple as he cups Sherlock’s cheek—one time, this happened. Only one time before, and Sherlock’s heart isn’t pounding now nearly so hard as it did then. “I couldn’t leave you broken, you know.”
Sherlock doesn’t remember this conversation, these answers, but his mind’s jumbled, his claim to consciousness tenuous. Nothing is solid, or sure.
“You take up space beneath my ribs, inside my skull,” Sherlock moans, the last of what he has at his disposal above the swirling, painful throb in his veins. “It hurts.”
John brushes the damp curls from his burning forehead, and presses his mouth to the skin to test, to soothe.
“Well, you take up space in my veins and my lungs, you’re in the goddamned air,” John breathes into bone, tries to calm the fire that is consuming what’s left of Sherlock’s broken mind; “so it sounds like we’re square.”
The same, so similar.
Sherlock shudders, and the last thing he knows is that he needs to be grateful, because for the lack of anything else, John’s lips hover against his brow and they’re the best and most beautiful balm he could want for the way he’s deteriorating, for the way he knows everything will rip apart, soon.
If he’s going to lose everything, John will face the end with him, and that’s all he’s ever wanted, really.
In all this, in everything, if he could not save John Watson, Sherlock would be selfish, and keep him as long as he could. John would stare down armageddon at Sherlock’s side, if Sherlock failed to find a way for John to survive the world's end.
The end. Together.
That was always the goal.
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Sherlock feels as if he’s walked the equator, his lungs stretched thin and his heart too heavy to lift, but he does, he breathes and it’s a privilege, because John’s head is resting on the cushion next to the line of his ribs and he’s watching Sherlock with bluer eyes than Sherlock’s mind has conjured in many moons, so very many moons across the four corners of the globe and Sherlock breathes, and it’s a burden, but it’s worth the brush of his bare skin against John’s cheek.
There’s only one thing left for it.
“I love you,” Sherlock parrots in order to complete the circle, to be sure of his own fractured sense; Sherlock tells it and breathes it because he is filled with it and the Palace shines with it and his heart feels light with it and it’s less of a burden when he owns to what fills him and make him buoyant against impending doom.
Sherlock breathes, and his heart shivers in anticipation, frightened and giddy and twice as unsteady for the mixture, the melee and Sherlock breathes and it’s brilliant and John blinks, and maybe he heard and maybe he didn’t but Sherlock won’t risk it, this time.
No.
“I love you,” he says it again, with his heart behind it and his breath catching up; “with all that I am, and I only left you in order to keep you and you were with me every step of the way and I couldn’t have done it without you, I couldn’t have survived without you because I need you and you are in my mind and in my chest but you're in my blood and my lungs just the same, you’re in my bones and the water and the air and the soil and the phases of the moon, John—”
Breathe, and oh, the heart has wings.
“You are the walls and the synapses and you are all of this, you are my world and my mind and my sanity and its lack, and you are the Palace and you are infinite and I...”
Sherlock loses himself then, there, because John looks at him, almost passive, apparently unmoved, and Sherlock is mourning the loss of too many treasures to notice that John’s hand finds his own beneath the sheet covering his body, takes Sherlock’s hand and holds tight.
Sherlock fails to notice when John’s lips lean in to touch his own; he laments the precedent, the continuance, the endless confines of what he can know within what will never, now, be known—
He short-circuits, from the firing in his neurones to the pumping in his chest, when John’s hand comes to cradle his face and his tongue parts Sherlock’s lips, and the touch of John’s tongue, the rough drag of his taste buds on Sherlock’s gums, the taste of him.
That is absolutely unprecedented. There is no existing data that can account for this.
The darkness doesn't come.
Sherlock is breathless and ravaged with a fever now, a madness so very new, so very frantic, so very dangerous that it bursts in horrible lightning storms in his skull and his nerves and his chest, and he shakes, and John holds him, sees him, and Sherlock can ask only the obvious questions.
“Are you a dream?”
John’s lips quirk, and his right hand joins his left to frame Sherlock’s face and hold his gaze. “No.”
“A hallucination?”
John shakes his head, slides one hand up to feel Sherlock’s forehead: dry now, the curls a mess. “I highly doubt it. Your fever’s gone down enough by now to rule that out, I think.”
Sherlock swallows, his voice small as he watches John, trusts John, feels John in ways he’s never felt before and there’s no sense, there’s no sense, he’s broken but John promised: “Am I insane?”
John’s lips lift just a tad bit higher, and he leans in to press a quick, chaste kiss to Sherlock’s slightly-gaping mouth, a tenderness in it that makes Sherlock shiver before John quips, light against his lips: “No more than usual.”
Sherlock’s mind reverses, thoughts racing down pathways forgotten, rusty, overgrown as he tries to amass the data correctly, tries to remember the steps. “Are we in the Palace?”
John clears his throat, but doesn’t move; doesn’t let go of Sherlock and doesn’t pull away, and Sherlock is grateful, Sherlock in unutterably grateful that John stays.
“I can see where the confusion might come from, given you’re naked under a sheet,” John starts, never breaking with Sherlock’s gaze. “But again, your fever was becoming a genuine concern. Had to get you stripped down for a cold bath, and once it broke, you only wanted the sheet. Getting you dressed again was a hassle I was in no state to manage.”
“John,” Sherlock exhales, and Sherlock doesn’t even hear his own voice above the pumping of his blood; his throat is raw, and this is vulnerability, then. This is trust.
“Are you real?”
John's expression shutters, his breath hitches, and Sherlock doesn’t know what to make of any of it; he merely knows the thickness of arteries and how much more pressure they can take before they cannot sustain the anxious thrumming that takes him and shakes.
“Sherlock,” John asks carefully, places his hand on top of Sherlock’s and just holds, just anchors; “where do you think you are right now?”
Sherlock shakes his head, tries to speak many times without success before a sound makes it way into the world.
“I don’t know,” he confesses, lost, and John brings a palm to stroke Sherlock’s cheek; encouraging, gentle.
“The Palace looks like this,” he reasons, reveals; “the Palace is you and you are home and this is home, and yet,” he swallows hard, waits for enough saliva to form a single word: “Mingachevir?”
John’s thumb strokes Sherlock’s cheek as his other hand squeezes Sherlock’s fingers. “No,” John whispers, and when they breathe, they both inhale in tandem.
“Am I dead?” Sherlock asks, curious for a moment before the panic hits, before irrationality takes hold and the afterlife seems both possible and unnervingly bleak and his heart pounds and he loses his breath and he can’t find it, can’t find it; he reaches for John and holds but it’s not enough, it’s not—
“Oh god,” Sherlock gasps, searches John’s eyes as they widen, concern pinching them at the corners, as ever; “are you dead?”
“Sherlock,” John’s voice breaks in through the wave of agony that strikes him down and makes it all so very difficult with the lead seeping back into the ventricles and veins. “Sherlock,” John urges him, “breathe.”
John’s hand is on his chest, now; John’s hand is still holding Sherlock’s and they’re both on Sherlock’s chest moving up, then down, and oh.
Oh.
“We’re neither of us dead, though you put up a mediocre effort for it, showing up at the door delirious with fever and riddled with infection, half your skin torn off or bruised,” John chides him, runs a light hand across the places where Sherlock’s skin sticks, where it itches and burns beneath the sheet. Sometimes, John lingers, or presses, and Sherlock can feel the beat of his own heart in the contact, the pressure; alive, then, yes.
“You almost fell over after I was out of the woods myself,” John continues, bringing Sherlock’s hand to feel his chest rise and fall for a moment before he threads their fingers together once more and leans in, hovers over Sherlock in the most exquisite way, his heat intimate, consuming through the thin fabric between.
Both alive. Yes.
“Nearly gave me a heart attack to see you there,” John murmurs softly, so much sadness in his voice, despite the rueful surface; “and then you did fall over shortly after I clocked you one, you can imagine I felt like a right arse once I got you settled inside.”
Sherlock focuses on breathing, and notes the passing of moments as his heart feels light again, as the sentiment and the joy and that buoyancy that comes with John returns; and breathing is fascinating, breathing is perfection.
“Sherlock,” John coaxes; “look at me.”
Sherlock can’t deny John much in this world; Sherlock can deny John even less of what Sherlock himself desires.
He looks.
“You’re in London,” John states plainly. “You’re safe. I’m here.” John leans in and kisses Sherlock’s brow, nuzzles his temple and breathes into his hair; “You’re home.”
And John is the benchmark, John is the arbiter of truth.
Sherlock shivers, but John is near, and there is warmth soon after, and it is so very close to right.
“Home,” Sherlock says it, feels it on his tongue and thinks it feels just like John’s papillae, tastes just like John’s mouth and breath and warmth. He reaches out, still dizzy with what is beginning to coalesce in his mind, the answers he’s coming to, the truths that are emerging and beginning to take hold; he reaches out, and runs the tip of his index finger down John’s lips and exhales, more desperate than he’ll ever admit: “Real?”
John’s expression softens, and Sherlock’s heart feels light against his lungs again; that’s how he knows what this is, knows what fuels it, knows it’s as real as anything, as honest and aching as what runs in his veins.
“Very real,” John whispers against Sherlock’s finger before he kisses it, before he works his way down to the centre of Sherlock’s palm and kisses every hollow, every joint, every rough patch and callus and crease.
“It’s over?” Sherlock whispers, almost afraid to give it voice, this senseless dream behind everything he’s known for so long, now, too long.
John nods, and though he doesn’t understand yet, though he doesn’t know everything, he understands Sherlock, and he knows enough. “I think so.”
Sherlock exhales, and the world turns for the change in the winds, Sherlock feels unmoored and immortal and his very cells seem to sing and the space in his mind that is John overtakes everything he is and reaches, draws John to him and they breathe and they are, and it’s wonder and unceasing knowledge and ineffable revelation and the end giving way to all beginnings and John is warm and his heart is strong against Sherlock’s and full, and time passes without consequence and when Sherlock feels the darkness coming close, he doesn't fear it; he believes that tomorrow will still be true, will still be bright.
“John,” Sherlock sighs after so many moments, so warm, and it’s not a loss to give that name to the world, not when everything Sherlock has is tinged at least, is drenched at best, is made entirely at its core of the man himself.
John hums, content, and Sherlock feels heat build in him despite the warmth they share when John smiles against his skin, when Sherlock can map the evolution of his grin.
“So what’s this about me being a Palace, hmm?” John asks dazedly as he nestles tighter against Sherlock’s chest, careful of the wounds, only the barest weight against the flesh itself but Sherlock doesn’t mind because it’s real, and John is the Palace and they are both mesmerising just now, so filled with intangible feeling that Sherlock thinks it could all just as easily take flight as it could implode, and the miracle is that it’s held and it’s perfect.
The miracle is that it’s theirs, and Sherlock carried it; it survived, and it will never founder.
“Not just the Palace,” Sherlock murmurs, barely coherent, because no.
Never just the Palace.
Sherlock’s eyes drift closed as he tucks himself around John, falls into him. Breathes.
The last thing he sees is the view out the window, straight over the buildings at just the perfect angle; the soft light of the moon through the clouds.
Gibbous. Waxing.