The Blind Leading The Blind...

Empathy, Final Part

blind_author — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 15:23:31 GMT

Title: Empathy
Rating: Maybe M/15?
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use.
Warnings: Disturbing concepts, including suicidal ideation, lobotomy, gory experimentation and emotional manipulation.
Spoilers: For all of seasons 1 and 2. Disregards Season 3.
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Summary: John is an empath. Which isn't nearly as much fun as it sounds. Most of the time, it’s not even useful.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Part Four

heal (verb)

1. to make healthy, whole; restore to health
2. to bring conflict or strife between people or groups to an end or conclusion

--

John woke up, feeling rather surprised that he could.

The last thing he remembered was choking on his own blood on a concrete floor. He was still lying on the concrete floor, and he could still taste blood in his mouth, but he wasn’t labouring to breathe anymore. He wasn’t in pain, and while his clothes were stained with blood it was stagnant and cooling instead of pumping and hot.

Sherlock was tucked against the wall, shaking and pale and watching John. His emotions were shrill and discordant – fear like knotted wire that tremored with hope and scraped along John’s nerves.

“Did it work?” Sherlock asked, his voice small.

John parted the tear in his jeans, and lifted his shirt and jumper to survey his wounds. Except they weren’t wounds, they were scars – pale pink, as if he’d been injured years ago rather than minutes.

“I’m alright,” he pronounced. “Some scars, but nothing hurts.”

“It hurt more than I expected,” Sherlock said quietly.

“It’s not just the pain of the injury, it’s how much it would have hurt as it healed as well.”

“That’s…how does that work?” Sherlock sounded personally offended at the sheer illogic of it all.

“I don’t know.”

“Emotions are, in essence, chemical and electrical signals within the brain – how can you pick up on that?”

“I told you, I don’t know. Now, do we need to do anything here, or can you just call Mycroft to come clean this up?”

Sherlock went still. “You know about Mycroft?”

“Empathy, Sherlock, remember? I know about Molly as well.”

Confusion crept through the bond like orange-hued mist, damp and obscuring. John wasn’t sure if it was because Sherlock was still confused about his empathy or if Sherlock just didn’t know how to proceed from here, so he did his best to ignore it. “Come on, Sherlock, what’s the plan?”

“It’s over,” Sherlock muttered, and his emotions were suddenly flavoured with creamy relief and a vague, yellow-lavender sense of wonder and ashy disbelief. Then he blinked, like he was coming back to himself, and went on in a much firmer voice, “Moran’s dead. Mycroft can deal with this.”

John nodded. It seemed pointless to stand up just to wait around, so he scooted over to the wall opposite Sherlock and leaned his back against it. Sherlock was beginning to bristle with worry like shards of silver tilting into the light, and his eyes were fixed on the blood that still stained John’s clothes.

“They don’t hurt,” John said, his voice flat and tired.

Sherlock must have read something in his tone, because the worry only sharpened into knives. “Does anything hurt?”

“Head,” John admitted – his headache was creeping back.

“Because of what you did?” The wonder was starting to creep back into Sherlock’s emotions.

John shrugged. He honestly had no idea.

But he did have a question. “Was Mycroft in on it from the beginning?”

“What?”

John knew Sherlock wasn’t confused or surprised – he was just asking for clarification; which beginning did John mean?

“You planned this for a long time. Months. Was he in on it from the start?”

“You knew-?”

John sighed. “Not at the time – I told you, it’s not telepathy. But I was picking up on some weird emotions. Didn’t make sense at the time, but in hindsight…”

Sherlock nodded, like he was mentally noting that down somewhere in his mind palace, and responded to John’s question. “He knew. We planned it together.”

John laughed bitterly. “Of course you did.”

He supposed it had been foolish of him, to think that Mycroft would be stupid enough to spill information on Sherlock to a criminal and then let the criminal go. But that was nothing new – John had been aware for some time that he’d been played for a fool. He didn’t want to look at Sherlock, so he closed his eyes and tilted his head back to rest against the wall.

His headache was getting worse.

--

John got through Mycroft’s arrival with his cronies and his subsequent lecture to Sherlock by the ingenious method of simply not acknowledging them. He didn’t glance at Mycroft and he didn’t speak even though several pointed silences invited him to, even when Mycroft suggested that Sherlock should go home with him and attempt to keep a low profile.

Sherlock was still in his usual habit of stubborn silence and unnecessary biting remarks when his brother was around, and he didn’t address John at all. Though it didn’t stop him from darting glances at John every five seconds while his emotions whispered worry and fear and sun-dappled resentment.

At this point, John’s headache was getting to the point that he was really wishing for some painkillers. He wanted to close his eyes and rub his temples to see if it helped the discomfort, but he didn’t want to reveal weakness in front of Mycroft.

At least Sherlock was quiet for the car trip away from the warehouse. In fact, he didn’t say a word until they were back in John’s house, just when John was closing the door behind them and thinking he might actually get a quiet rest for whatever remained of the night.

“If they do DNA tests on the blood or pay any attention to the splatter, they’ll know you lied,”

One of the minions had made worried noises about the blood covering John’s clothes, but he’d just claimed it wasn’t his. Sherlock hadn’t said anything at the time, and John supposed he was an idiot for assuming he’d just let it go.

“They won’t be able to test my clothes, because I’m going to destroy them,” John said bluntly. “And if someone happens to have a paranoid streak and take a closer look at the blood I’ve left on the concrete, Mycroft will just assume I was being a stoic military man and that my wounds were minor enough that I could treat them myself.”

“Ah.” Sherlock looked like he thought he should have figured that out, and his embarrassment tasted like sour apples on John’s tongue.

“This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve had to come up with some good explanations over the years.”

“Pressure points!” Sherlock exclaimed.

“What?”

“When I was strangled, back when we were dealing with the Black Lotus. I was wondering why I felt so healthy after you touched me, and you said it was pressure points.”

“Like I said, Sherlock, I’m a good actor.”

Sherlock’s emotions being complex and confusing were nothing new, but this time whatever was going on in his head only seemed to be making John’s headache worse, and his sigh was more pain than exhaustion. “Now I’m going to shower and get my clothes ready to…I don’t know, to be burned?”

--

The blood had long ago dried into a thin crust that crackled and flaked off John’s clothes as he shed them, scattering across the tiles like spots of rust. It was slightly tacky on his skin, moistened by sweat, and itched where it stuck to the hair on his chest and legs.

He was rather surprised he’d been allowed to go home – he was a walking biohazard.

There had been a large swathe of blood on the back of his jumper, and when he twisted in front of the mirror he could glimpse a pink, circular scar on his back. That was good news, because it meant the bullet had gone straight through him, and he wouldn’t have to worry about it drifting around his body and possibly causing problems later.

John turned on the shower and waited for it to warm up, then simply stepped in under the spray. The water began to dissolve the dried blood, streaking his skin pink for a few moments before he scrubbed with the cloth to wipe it away and get the last stubborn drops out.

He was tired, and his empathy seemed ‘louder’ than usual, the emotions of his neighbours grating on his nerves rather than being something that could slip past him without making much impression. His headache actually seemed to have diminished though, and John hoped it stayed that away. He’d prefer that it go away entirely, but he was trying to set realistic expectations.

He was disappointed anyway when he stepped out of the bathroom (dressed in a new shirt and loose pants) to find Sherlock lurking in the kitchen. As soon as he saw Sherlock, the headache hit him again like an axe between the eyes.

Sherlock seemed to take his groan as a sign of extreme exhaustion, and offered him a mug. “Coffee?”

“What have you done to it?” John was too tired to mask his suspicion.

“What?”

“I prefer tea. I know that, you know that. The one and only time you made me coffee was to drug me.”

Hurt wavered from Sherlock, like heat shimmers off an asphalt road. “Your tea has been tampered with.”

Oh, right. John felt a little bad for his assumption, but admittedly not enough to give Sherlock an inch. “You wouldn’t be the first person to decide this…anomaly…meant I was now their experimental subject. Hell, it wouldn’t even be the first time you used me as an experimental subject.”

“You’ve been using yourself as an experimental subject!” Sherlock snapped, brandishing a piece of paper John recognised as being the record of his attempts to break the bond. “What is this?”

“I was trying to break the bond,” John said bluntly. He took a sip of the coffee, because he clearly wasn’t getting any sleep tonight.

He was a little surprised to realise Sherlock had made it just the way he liked it. John hadn’t known he paid attention to that.

“The bond?” Sherlock echoed. “What-?”

“I’m not sure how it works,” John said, yet again. “But I can form bonds with people. It means I can always feel what they’re feeling, I have a vague sense of where they are, and I can heal them from a distance.”

“You have a bond with me.” Sherlock’s tone made it a statement, not a question.

John nodded. “And with Harry.”

“That’s how you knew I wasn’t dead.”

“I can feel it when people die. It’s like all their emotions just…go out. Like a light turning off. Yours didn’t.” He thought of Thomas. “Though I did feel it once when someone didn’t actually die.”

Sherlock frowned, the way he did when an experiment did something he wasn’t expecting. “Who?”

John supposed he might as well air all his dirty laundry. “There was a man in my unit. He wasn’t my boyfriend, but we might have…I suppose it doesn’t matter now. He lost his leg, and I was trying to heal it when I was shot, and I made a mistake.”

Sherlock didn’t ask about the mistake, but there was a definite sense of eucalyptus-confusion coming from him. “You…you always say you’re not gay.”

“Because I’m not. I can’t have sex with someone if they don’t…feel nice, for lack of a better word.”

“Your empathy informs your perception that much?”

“It’s not something I activate, Sherlock, it’s like sight or hearing. In fact, it’s probably worse, because you can at least close your eyes or plug your ears, but my empathy doesn’t come with an off switch.”

“Have you ever been able to make it stop?” Sherlock asked, his voice and emotions strangely soft.

John could admit he hadn’t expected this question. But if anyone could relate to having a brain that just wouldn’t stop, he supposed it would be Sherlock. “I can’t. And believe me, I’ve tried. I can’t count how many times I wished I could turn it off, but nothing does the trick.”

“Drugs?”

“Of course you would ask that,” John sighed. “And no. The only drug that had any kind of effect was the Baskerville one. It amplified my empathy until I couldn’t…I couldn’t tell what was me and what was everyone else.”

“That’s why you seized.” It was a realisation, not a question.

“I’m still surprised I came out of that sane,” John said, still feeling strangely apathetic about the whole thing.

“But you did try drugs!” Sherlock exclaimed, gesturing with the piece of paper again like he’d just remembered it.

“I told you, I was trying to break my bond with you. No luck, as it turns out.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment, worry and fear weaving together like slippery silk and rough hemp rope. “Why do you have brain surgery as an option?”

“If I was somehow able to locate the part of my brain that dealt with empathy, damaging it might break the bond or kill my empathy entirely.”

Sherlock’s fear suddenly gained strength, flaring like a burst of sparks when you tossed something on a fire. “The risks-”

“There’s a reason it isn’t crossed out,” John interrupted. “That was definitely a last resort. The kind of last resort that you consider but never actually use.”

Sherlock looked and felt relieved, so John took another mouthful of coffee, and wondered if their discussion was over.

“You didn’t want to tell me,” Sherlock said quietly.

“I considered it,” John admitted. “But then you locked me in the lab in Baskerville and tried to drug me to confirm something you already suspected. I can’t deny I was worried that if I told you something this unusual you’d be vivisecting me before the day was out. That’s happened once before and I’m not keen to try it again.”

Sherlock didn’t flinch but his emotions did, swelling with hurt like a boil ready to burst.

John set his coffee down on the table as his headache spiked. “Look, I’ve got a headache, so I’m going to go to bed – do you need anything?”

Sherlock didn’t respond, and John took that as a negative. He turned away from Sherlock and walked the few feet that took him from the tiny kitchen into the cramped bedroom. He didn’t bother getting undressed – what he was wearing was comfortable enough – and just crawled beneath the covers.

As he closed his eyes, he reached out by reflex to touch his bonds. Harry was probably sleeping – there was a vague sense of her presence, drifting eddies of jasmine-scented contentment, so she was either asleep or so drunk she was practically comatose. He preferred to think she was asleep.

But the bond with Sherlock was…strange. John had been trying to ignore it, so it was only now that he realised it was only giving him a vague and muffled view of Sherlock’s emotions. It was still there, but it was dim and fleeting, a flickering candle next to Harry’s 100-watt bulb.

The bond was diminishing, and John suddenly wondered if his headache was the bond…tearing, for lack of a better word. Seeing Sherlock had brought to life all the feelings of betrayal and hurt that he’d been quietly stewing in – had the mental withdrawal he’d been attempting in Sherlock’s presence been the missing piece for destroying the bond?

He’d sort it out after he’d got some sleep.

--

When John woke up, Sherlock was still in the flat – he could feel it. He was trying very hard not to feel anything else from him, but he knew Sherlock was there.

John went through his morning routine on automatic; dressing and combing his hair and brushing his teeth and doing his shoulder exercises. It was strange to see new scars on his chest and leg – while his brain accepted that he’d been injured, some part of it was insisting that he should have stitches and bandages, that the injury couldn’t possibly have healed that quickly.

Sherlock was perched in John’s armchair, staring out the window into the street, wearing the same clothes but clearly having showered at some point. John was rather surprised – he’d been expecting to find Sherlock on his laptop, looking at John’s files and being his usual obnoxious, intrusive self.

John had forgotten how quiet Sherlock could be.

He made some coffee to wake himself up. He’d been making it for one person for so long that it didn’t even occur to him to ask if Sherlock wanted any until he’d taken the first sip. He pushed aside the impulse – if Sherlock wanted coffee, he could make it himself.

“So how does this work?” John asked, moving to stand beside Sherlock’s chair. “What kind of paperwork is involved in coming back from the dead? Without getting arrested for fraud, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Sherlock scowled, and the bright burst of his anger felt painful. “Mycroft’s dealing with that.”

John didn’t think there was anything to say to that. He drank his coffee and tried to ignore the prickling of discomfort that told him his headache was coming back.

Sherlock was looking at him, and though the anger hadn’t left, there was now a hint of bitter confusion and resentment, hissing like a kettle just starting to boil. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

John was in no mood to hear Sherlock boast about this. “I know what happened. You pretended to kill yourself. In front of me.”

John was trying very hard to be logical and unemotional, but even he could hear the fury in his voice. He couldn’t help it – just remembering that moment when he realised Sherlock had lied to him, had actually wanted him to grieve like that made anger and betrayal and the hurting keen of ‘how could you do that to me?’ howl across his thoughts.

John actually choked and clutched reflexively at his head, make sure it hadn’t actually split open, no matter how much it felt like it.

“Your head can’t still be hurting,” Sherlock snapped, in the voice that sounded like anger and frustration but had never fooled John, not when he could feel the still-water worry that undercut it.

“It’s the bond,” John sighed, keeping his eyes closed as the pain began to ease.

“With me?”

He nodded shortly, and was confused by the sudden wash of fear and pain from Sherlock, like the thundering roar and noxious fumes of a passing truck.

“I’m…it’s hurting you?” Sherlock’s voice sounded off somehow, and the hurt radiating from him didn’t ebb.

“It’s breaking,” John said honestly. “It’s painful.”

“Why? What are you doing?”

“Nothing, really. It’s just…all the feelings I had when you first did this…all the betrayal and fury are coming back, and I think, being faced with you and not wanting anything to do with the bond is finally making it disintegrate.”

After being wary of talking about his empathy for so long, it was nice to finally be honest about it, honest about everything. Well, maybe not ‘nice’, exactly…but it was a relief.

Sherlock’s fury flashed bright and sudden, like a red firework going off too soon and scorching the ground. “Betrayal? It wasn’t a betrayal, anymore than you grabbing Moriarty and telling me to run was a betrayal. You were going to die if I didn’t. You and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson, if you think I should have gambled with your own life.”

It said something that John’s first thought was to wonder if Sherlock was being honest, or if this was another lie – a manipulation to try and get back into John’s good graces. He didn’t think Sherlock was lying, but what did he know? His empathy wasn’t much use when it came to this.

And even if he was telling the truth, what difference did it really make? So Sherlock had much more noble motives for the ruse than John had assumed – it was never the motives he’d been so angry about. It was the fact that he hadn’t trusted John with it, and that hadn’t changed.

“And you couldn’t tell me.” John was dimly surprised at how calm his voice sounded.

“I couldn’t risk it,” Sherlock snapped, frustration swirling and eddying within him like bubbling kerosene.

John snorted quietly, but didn’t say anything.

Sherlock was still scowling. “You’re angry, aren’t you? I don’t see why – you know why I had to do it-”

“I’m hurt,” John said honestly. “It’s hard to trust someone and care for someone and know they didn’t feel the same.”

“I do! I’d think what I just told you-”

“No, you don’t,” John interrupted, still keeping his voice calm and steady. “Not to the same level.”

There, that should shut Sherlock up. And it did, for all of about twenty seconds in which Sherlock stared at John like he was trying to deduce something from him. Sherlock’s frustration thickened and clotted, turning into pitch-dense determination.

“I can prove it,” Sherlock said, in the voice he used when he’d just solved a case. “How did I heal you?”

“What?”

“You said the healing only rarely works, and you refused to elaborate. You would have told me why if it was simple biology – you were practically telling me everything at that point – so that means whatever the reason is, it’s emotional and private.”

“Or maybe I just don’t know.”

“Again, you would have said so. So tell me, how does it work?”

Sherlock looked completely confident, but John could feel the doubt creeping in, like shadows cast by a guttering candle. John was half-tempted to prevaricate and misdirect, to leave Sherlock uncertain, but what was the point?

“Love,” he sighed. “You have to love them.”

“Ah.” Sherlock blinked, like he’d been expecting that answer but was still startled to get it.

“Yeah.”

“I just wanted you to not die,” Sherlock said, his voice soft as remembered fear licked at him like a sudden gust of snow. “I was willing to do anything, even if I died instead.”

John didn’t know how to feel about that. So he didn’t say anything, even though Sherlock was looking at him and his emotions were glittering with expectation.

Eventually, the expectation gave way to warm, frothing impatience, like Sherlock was sick of waiting for him. “So when you healed me…”

John nodded.

“You never said anything!” Sherlock was indignant, and John almost laughed.

“You’re married to your work, remember? No point in saying anything.”

Sherlock faltered, and John realised he’d just missed the perfect opportunity to claim that his affection was platonic.

Well, too late now. Sherlock would either deal with it, or he wouldn’t. John could admit he suspected Sherlock would just ignore his pronouncement, the way he’d ignored John’s entreaties to warn him before he left body parts in the fridge.

But Sherlock was staring at him with a strange expression on his face. His emotions were bitter-red regret and something that trembled and fluttered and felt suspiciously like happiness and…and…

“You love me,” John realised.

“You’re an empath!” Sherlock snapped, and John was surprised to see a blush creeping across his cheeks. “This can’t be news to you!”

John hoped he wasn’t flushing, but this was an embarrassing mistake to make, let alone admit to. “I told you, I know the emotions, but not the reason. I thought you were in love with Irene!”

“Irene?” Sherlock echoed, the way he did when he was honestly puzzled by something and trying to understand it.

“When you thought she was dead, you were…”

“I smoked a cigarette!” Sherlock felt gravel-crunch indignant, like he couldn’t believe John had made such a foolish assumption.

“And you sulked and composed-”

“If it had been you,” Sherlock hissed, anger streaming from him like a sudden jet of hot water in ice. “If Mycroft had called me into the morgue to identify your body, do you know what I’d have done? I’d have first determined if your death was anyone’s fault, and then I’d have dealt with them.”

Sherlock’s tone made it clear that ‘dealing with them’ would have been final and permanent.

“And then, I’d find enough cocaine or morphine to ensure I forgot you were dead, and then…” Sherlock trailed off. “And then…I don’t know what would have happened after that.”

“But you were quite happy to make me think you were dead,” John snapped, the feeling of hurt and betrayal boiling forth anew.

Sherlock loved him…but he’d still made John watch him die. That hadn’t changed.

His head ached.

Sherlock looked confused, as if he couldn’t understand why John was still angry. “But you know that I-”

“I discovered I could heal when I healed my dog,” John said. “It doesn’t have to be a love between equals.”

“You’re-”

“I love you,” John interrupted, feeling nothing but weariness. “I do, but I don’t trust you. And I don’t know if I can, not after something like this.”

“I did it for you!” Sherlock all-but snarled. “I didn’t tell you because I knew they’d be watching for that! If you could just get over-”

“I’m not sure I want to,” John admitted, feeling a bitter smile curl his lips. “When you told me about the threat, my first impulse was to wonder if it was a lie, just another manipulation. And that…wasn’t a good thing to think. So maybe…” John hesitated, but charged onwards because this had to be said. “Maybe what we need is closure, for both of us to move on.”

Sherlock’s surprise and instant, visceral rejection felt like being slapped in the face with hot oil.

“You can’t-” he started, then stopped and switched tacks, perhaps sensing that John was in no mood to be told what he could and couldn’t do. “John, I can fix this.”

“Really?” John felt nothing but a dull amusement. “How?”

Sherlock didn’t seem to have expected that. John could see and feel him scrambling for answers, for an instant-fix where there was no instant-fix. John didn’t even know if it could be fixed.

“That’s what I thought,” John sighed, and rose to start getting ready for work.

“If you don’t forgive me, he wins.”

John stopped, but he didn’t turn around or even look over his shoulder. On some level, he understood what Sherlock was doing – appealing to John’s determination and his streak of compassion, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to stand the idea of letting Moriarty win anything and would just brush everything under the rug for the sake of returning to the status quo. He understood, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t pissed off at Sherlock for using it.

“No, he doesn’t win,” John said without looking at Sherlock. “But you lose. You lose…whatever you thought this would be. Whatever you thought would happen after you came back. So don’t try to hold that over me. You don’t have anything you can hold over me.” Then it occurred to John that Sherlock did, in fact, have something. “I suppose you can always threaten to tell Mycroft about my empathy and have me dragged to Baskerville or wherever I’d be taken, but I think I’ve proved that I’m more than capable of defending myself.”

“I’d never do that!” Sherlock actually felt sticky-rose offended, like John had insulted him.

John snorted. “You’d want to do the experiments yourself, right?”

Sherlock swallowed, and John could feel sharp-plastic shock and hurt shiver through him. “I wouldn’t experiment on you. Not like…not like that.”

Some part of John was still suspicious – Sherlock could be lying, after all – but it was a relief to hear him say that. Sherlock tended to prefer lying by omission, so he was unlikely to do something if he specifically denied it.

John nodded – still not turning around – and was just lifting his foot to continue out of the room when Sherlock spoke again.

“I was wrong, alright? I didn’t think you’d be so…affected. I knew they’d be watching you, and I didn’t know you were so good at pretending not to know things you did.”

Sherlock must have been very upset – John had never heard him explain something so incoherently before.

“But I’m not sorry,” Sherlock said, practically burning with self-righteousness and determination. “I’ll never be sorry that I saved your life.”

There really wasn’t anything John could say that he hadn’t said before, so he walked away.

At least his headache was feeling better.

--

John’s day was boring but steady. There had been a virus going around and most people just wanted a certificate to say that they hadn’t been disguising a hangover as an illness. Of course, a virus also meant he had to explain to about half a dozen patients that no, antibiotics wouldn’t help them because bacteria and viruses weren’t ‘basically the same’.

Sometimes John wished there was some way of making learning that as mandatory as basic literacy. Granted, it wasn’t nearly as important, but it would certainly save doctors hundreds of hours of work a year.

John had never been the type to watch television or read the newspaper while he was at work, so he only knew something was going on when Mary popped her head around his door and said some reporters wanted to see him.

John liked Mary – she was nice, and didn’t put up with stupidity, and once when John had forgotten both his lunch and his wallet she’d shared her own sandwich with him. If John had really thought Sherlock was dead and thus been able to move on, they might have started something. Mary had certainly flirted, but John had never been able to bring himself to take her up on it. After Sherlock’s lie, saying he had ‘trust issues’ didn’t even begin to cover it.

Though he couldn’t deny that sometimes he felt a little wistful, wondering what would have happened if he’d been just a little more stable, a little less…emotionally damaged.

If nothing else, there would have been something funny about falling in love with two Mary’s.

But now wasn’t the time to brood – reporters were asking for him?

“Reporters?” John echoed. “For me?”

“Apparently,” Mary shrugged. “Did you win the lottery?”

John shook his head, but he exhaled hard as a thought occurred to him. He waved Mary off, feeling her humming confusion and tingling anxiety move away as she did, like the sound of music fading into the distance.

Mary’s empathic signature made him think of an orchestra without a conductor. Lots of activity, all happening right in front of you but still catching you by surprise when the music swelled – little, crucial movements lost in the white noise.

When she was gone (probably to do some investigating of her own), John opened up a webpage on his computer and typed his own name into the search bar.

He really hoped he was wrong about this.

The top result was still his old blog, but the second was some hastily-written online article, proclaiming that a famous detective was back from the dead.

John took a moment to remind himself that he couldn’t actually kill Sherlock, no matter how tempted he was.

--

John didn’t go home. If the reporters had managed to find out where he worked, he was sure they knew where he lived as well. He snuck out the back and Mary gave him a lift to a hotel to save him taking the tube.

He hadn’t told her the whole story, but he’d sketched out enough details for her to shake her head in sympathy and mutter, “He’s a bit of an arsehole, isn’t he?”

Mary always had a gift for understatement.

John didn’t have anything with him except his wallet and the clothes on his back, but the room had those little complimentary soaps and even a toothbrush, so he’d worry about that later. For now, he washed his shirt, trousers and socks in the bathroom sink and hung them up to dry. It left him walking around in his underwear, but such were the advantages of being alone.

Not that he was alone for long. The bond told him Sherlock was getting closer, so he had some warning before the knock at his door.

He might have used the time to get dressed, but his only clothes were soaking wet, so John answered the door in his underwear. Some people might feel at a disadvantage, talking to someone fully unclothed while they were almost naked, but John honestly didn’t care.

Besides, the way Sherlock blinked and stared left John feeling like he was the one with the upper hand.

Sherlock’s stare had lingered on John’s hips and shoulders, but it was concentrated on his scars. On the white starburst at his shoulder where the first bullet had hit him all those years ago, and the line where it was later removed. He thought he actually heard Sherlock suck in a sharp breath as is eyes landed on the new pink circle in the middle of John’s chest, and the fresh line across his thigh.

“I’m looking good for a man who was dying less than twenty-four hours ago, aren’t I?” John snorted.

Sherlock twitched as though startled out of contemplation, and John stood aside to let him enter. He’s rather not have this conversation in the hallway of a hotel.

“Is there any point in asking how you found me?” he wondered, slumping down on the couch.

“You didn’t come home!” Sherlock snapped, prickly and rough with anger, like fur or velvet rubbed the wrong way.

“I didn’t come home because some inconsiderate bastard set the journalists of London on me without any warning!” John snapped.

The anger turned into wavering guilt, shimmering like a heat mirage with streaks of blue hope bleeding through. And just like that, John understood what Sherlock had been trying to do.

“You wanted them to take me by surprise and corner me,” he said flatly. “You were hoping for them to push me into making a statement about forgiving you, weren’t you?”

His headache was back.

The guilt felt stronger now, as if Sherlock knew that was an underhanded tactic to use but had done so all the same. “I thought if you just saw-”

“No,” John interrupted, feeling his weariness return.

He didn’t want to talk, or fight, or…whatever it was Sherlock expected them to do. There was nothing to say that hadn’t already been said, nothing that would somehow make this easier. Right now, John didn’t even want to look at Sherlock – he just wanted distance. Distance and quiet and something resembling peace.

“Sherlock, just go,” he sighed. “Please. If you ever cared for me beyond my usefulness with a gun or how I fed your ego…leave me alone.”

John closed his eyes, but the hurt Sherlock felt flashed in orange fire behind them, smouldering and gritty like clay just drawn from a kiln. He could feel it cool into a rigid anger, dark and smooth like a stone worn from handling, and then it abruptly collapsed into….was that resignation?

“Alright.” Sherlock’s voice was small and timid.

John tracked Sherlock’s progress to the door by the sound of his footsteps, but didn’t open his eyes until he heard the other man speak again.

Sherlock had paused in the doorway, one hand on the knob, but he didn’t look back at John. “I am sorry that I hurt you.”

John knew that, on some level. He just wasn’t sure how much he cared. “But you’re not sorry you did it, are you?”

Righteous anger snapped from Sherlock like the crack of a bullwhip – sharp and deafening. But it was soon lost in regret that tasted like burnt tuna, and the sad strains of something that felt like love.

“I can’t be sorry you’re alive,” Sherlock said quietly.

And then he was gone.

--

Getting through the next three weeks felt like the state John had sometimes fallen into in Afghanistan. When there’d been an ambush or a convoy drove into IEDs or whatever else that left dozens injured and he’d had to work for days at a time, he’d found himself falling into a state where he processed what was happening but felt no real emotional impact from it. It was remote and distant, like he was guiding a character through a video game rather than living it.

Ella had called it disassociation and had been worried about it. John should probably be worried about it too, but he’d never been able to explain to Ella that he thought his ‘disassociation’ came from being overwhelmed by his own emotions and coasting on other people’s to muffle them.

John let the media storm die down. He didn’t talk to Lestrade or Mrs Hudson or Molly and he ignored the black car that pulled up in front of the clinic until Mycroft took the hint and stopped sending it. He usually wasn’t one for ignoring problems until they went away (that tended to end badly when you were in a war zone), but right now he was willing to indulge himself.

The journalists might have still been hounding him if he hadn’t got sick of them trailing him into the clinic and made a comment that suggested he wasn’t talking to them because he was upset at how they’d defamed Sherlock’s character two years ago. No one wanted to print anything that was badmouthing them, so they left him alone and he didn’t have to comment on any of the stories proclaiming Sherlock a hero.

The bond was still there, and John had the vague thought he should do something about that. But every time he told himself he should go see Sherlock and complete whatever severing process had been started, he always managed to talk himself out of it. For all that he was still angry, John didn’t want to cut his connection with Sherlock. At least, not anymore.

It was quite a change. Nursing anger and hurt for so long and then thinking about moving past it…John didn’t know if he was relieved or angry at himself for being a pushover.

He didn’t forgive Sherlock. He didn’t know if he could forgive something like that. But he was starting to believe that Sherlock had really just made a mistake – a bad one, but with good intentions. He said he hadn’t contacted John because he was worried that people were still watching him and any move on Sherlock’s part would have ended with John dead, and John felt as if he was starting to accept that as the truth. He knew more than anyone how fear could paralyse you, how you could be so afraid of putting someone at risk that you did nothing, but he’d always had someone (a commanding officer, a supervising surgeon) to snap him out of it. Sherlock hadn’t had anyone to snap him out of it.

John couldn’t forgive him – not now, possibly not ever. But maybe he could let it be. Move past it.

He rang Sherlock that afternoon, before he could talk himself out of it.

He was expecting the phone to ring out and leave him to do this by text, but to his surprise Sherlock answered on the second ring.

“John?”

“You answered the phone,” John blurted, caught off-guard. He wasn’t expecting Sherlock to answer it!

“Of course I did,” Sherlock snapped. “What’s wrong?”

John could feel Sherlock’s worry spreading through him like a bleach stain, and wondered why. But then, given how their last conversation had gone, Sherlock probably thought John had to be in serious trouble to call him.

Well, nothing to do but forge ahead. “It’s going to take time for me to trust you again.”

Anger and impatience swept along the bond like a wave, salty and gritty and stinging and cool all at the same time. Sherlock drew breath – probably to snap something about how John had said that before and Sherlock was leaving him alone like he’d asked – but then he seemed to realise what John had actually said. At least, the anger and impatience vanished to be replaced by cautious hope, like sunlight peeking through heavy clouds.

“But you’re going to try?” Sherlock asked, in the interrogative tone he used when he was nervous about something and trying not to let it show.

“Yeah, I’m going to try,” John said. “But I’m not moving in with you again, not for a while. We should probably…” Christ, he felt like a therapist just saying this, “…start over?”

“Start over?” Sherlock echoed. “Why?”

“I’m told it’s a legitimate form of rebuilding trust.”

John had read a few psychology books in his time – mainly in an effort to puzzle out why people’s emotions seemed to contradict what they were actually doing and saying half the time. Of course, the whole ‘starting over’ thing was usually used in romantic relationships when someone had cheated on the other person or otherwise crossed a huge line, but John didn’t see any reason to mention that.

“You know why I did it,” Sherlock muttered, sounding and feeling sulky.

“Trust issues, Sherlock – remember?”

“Do we have to?”

John was starting to feel annoyed – he was making an effort here, couldn’t Sherlock make one as well? “No, Sherlock, we don’t. We can say ‘it was fun while it lasted, goodbye, have a nice life’ and that’ll be it.”

“No!” Sherlock snapped, a quick lash of fear pricking at John’s senses, like he’d just stepped on a sharp rock. “We can go to Angelo’s.”

John was tempted to demand they go somewhere more neutral, but it would take a stronger man than he to resist the lure of free Italian. “Tomorrow at seven?”

Sherlock made a noise of affirmation, and John waited for the dial tone – Sherlock never prolonged phone calls. But it didn’t come, and it took him almost a whole minute to realise Sherlock was actually waiting for him to hang up.

“See you then,” he said lamely, and ended the call.

Sherlock had answered his phone, even though he usually only did that for the promise of a case. He’d waited for John to end the call instead of assuming he had all the information he needed and just hanging up. And – perhaps most important of all – Sherlock had actually respected John’s request to leave him alone.

Sherlock really did love him.

And John had no idea what to do with that.

--

John was surprised to find Sherlock waiting for him at the restaurant, especially since John had turned up ten minutes early.

Sherlock stared at him, and the bond fluttered with surprise – like he hadn’t really thought John would turn up, even though he’d been the one to suggest this – and tremulous hope. “John.”

“Hey,” John said. “Didn’t expect you to be early.”

“I’ve been here since six-thirty.”

John’s shock must have shown on his face, because Sherlock frowned and looked away, his emotions pulling into himself like a porcupine bristling defensively.

“I had to make sure there were no reporters,” he explained.

“I haven’t seen anything about you in the papers for a week,” John pointed out. “I’m pretty sure they’ve moved on.”

Sherlock scowled. “That’s what they want you to think.”

He sounded sulky and petulant, but he was leaning against the side of the restaurant in a tense way that told John it was make sure no one could sneak up behind him. His eyes were scanning every person on the street and his emotions were buzzing with nervous tension, like an irritated insect.

Those two years clearly hadn’t been easy on him. John had known that, on some level – how many times had he healed Sherlock’s injuries? – but he hadn’t wanted to accept it. He’d wanted to keep his resentment and crush every hint of sympathy that crept into his heart.

“Shall we go inside?” John offered.

Sherlock nodded, and preceded him into the restaurant.

Angelo actually waited until he was level with them to greet Sherlock personally, and John wondered if he’d had to deal with reporters too. Usually, the big man shouted out Sherlock’s name as if he wanted to inform everyone in the street.

“The table by the window, just as you asked,” Angelo enthused, shuttling them towards their seats. “I’ll get a candle.”

It was the same table they’d taken the first night, when they’d used it for surveillance. It even looked like Angelo had brought them the same candle.

John tried not to laugh, he really did, but he couldn’t help it. Trust Sherlock to take the ‘starting over’ thing seriously.

“What’s so funny?” The tangy citrus of Sherlock’s emotions was tilting dangerously close to ‘offended’.

“Just…this is a much more literal new beginning than I was thinking of,” John grinned. “Do I have to awkwardly ask you if you have a girlfriend or boyfriend again?”

Sherlock stared, and the sudden rush of nervous hope felt like the first breath after a resuscitation. But he didn’t reply.

John was just beginning to regret saying anything when Sherlock dropped his eyes to his hands and spoke.

“I don’t have a boyfriend. But, there’s someone…” his eyes darted to John for a moment before they flew away, and the fear felt like a sodden cloth choking him. “And I think maybe we could…”

Sherlock trailed off, swallowing sharply, and John blinked.

“You’re serious?” John was honestly surprised – he knew Sherlock loved him, but relationships were a lot of effort, and a lot of risk, and he’d thought that Sherlock would just decide it wasn’t worth it.

And maybe some part of him had hoped for just that; unrequited love was painful, but there was a kind of safety in it. Actually putting yourself on the line, opening yourself up to someone else…it was frightening.

“Only if you want to,” Sherlock said quietly.

Well, if Sherlock was being brave, John could too. He took Sherlock’s hand, just because he wanted to, and the bond opened like one of those high-speed films of flowers blooming.

“I’d like that,” John said, feeling a ridiculous smile stretch his face.

Happiness and relief burst like a meteor shower – illuminating the night without being blinding, throwing glittering sprays of colour – and John didn’t quite know where it came from. From him? From Sherlock? Both? Looking at Sherlock’s smile – small and private and wondering, as if he couldn’t quite believe this was happening – John thought it was probably both.

His head didn’t hurt anymore. John squeezed Sherlock’s hand and basked in the light of their healing bond.

It was a start.

End.

AN: This is for themusecalliope, and I'm sorry it took so long! Also, this is unbetaed, so do let me know if you've spotted a mistake!

Empathy, Part Three

blind_author — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 15:19:14 GMT

Part Three

break (verb)

1. separate into pieces as a result of a blow, shock or strain.
2. interrupt (a continuity, sequence or course).

--

John felt numb. Sherlock was alive, but had pretended to commit suicide. In front of John.

But why?

John knew Sherlock wasn’t exactly normal, and was capable of a lot of cruelty through sheer indifference, but he wasn’t cruel enough to do something like this without a purpose. The only mystery was what that purpose could be.

John told himself to keep calm and carry on – he’d understand soon enough. Sherlock would contact him, tell him what the plan was, and then they’d figure everything out. Together.

Though Sherlock better have a bloody good excuse for traumatising him like that. John knew he was alive – the bond told him that much – but that didn’t mean the memory of watching him fall and then apparently lying dead on the pavement wasn’t giving John nightmares.

The funeral had been an exercise in agony. Misery and grief permeated everything like smoke, oily and acidic like burning paint or plastics. John had a headache all through the service, and he couldn’t even look at Mrs Hudson and Lestrade – their emotions were bad enough.

He wanted to go up to them and tell them it was okay, that Sherlock was alive, but he didn’t dare. There had to be a reason Sherlock had done…what he’d done. There had to be a purpose to it, and John wasn’t going to risk ruining it.

John was waiting. Sherlock would contact him, and tell him the plan. He wouldn’t leave John to suffer this alone.

--

By the third day, when John felt Sherlock’s signature getting more remote – showing that he was moving away – he started to admit to himself that maybe Sherlock was leaving him. That he’d pretended to kill himself in front of John and now he was leaving.

John didn’t understand. He didn’t understand why Sherlock had pretended to kill himself. He didn’t understand why Sherlock had made him watch. He didn’t understand why Sherlock wasn’t communicating with him. He didn’t understand why Sherlock was leaving.

He didn’t understand anything.

John made himself sit down and think it through. He was no Sherlock, but he wasn’t an idiot, either.

Sherlock had pretended to commit suicide, and was now leaving London at the very least, judging by what John was feeling, if not the UK itself. Given that Sherlock wasn’t dead, John felt he could ignore Sherlock’s ‘note’ as a lie. The whole ‘research’ thing had been bollocks anyway – what kind of research would have told him Harry was an alcoholic but left him with the impression she was a man?

Moriarty hadn’t been heard from since they’d found him in that reporter’s flat. Not even to threaten or gloat that he’d won. It was almost as if he’d gone away…

Like Sherlock had.

Alone protects me.

And just like that, John understood. Sherlock was leaving, and his fake death had been his way of ensuring no one would come after him.

Not even John.

--

Everyone thought he was in mourning, and in a way, John guessed he was. He was in mourning for the friend he’d thought he had.

Because Sherlock could be an arse, and cruel and dismissive, yes, but John had thought that Sherlock cared for him. That Sherlock thought he was useful, if only as back-up muscle. That Sherlock had trusted him.

Apparently, he’d been wrong.

It was a heavy blow, and John was enough of an adult to admit that he didn’t take it well. It felt like the night Mary told him she was in love, and it wasn’t with him – a sudden tilt in his worldview that threw everything into a whole new light. Sherlock had been worried at the pool, but maybe he’d been worried because he thought he’d been wrong. There was that thing about John being a ‘conductor of light’, but maybe he’d only said that because he’d needed to make up with John so he could have a test subject for the supposedly-poisoned sugar.

This was worse than Mary. Because Sherlock had been the centre of his life.

And that had been his mistake.

Maybe if Sherlock had actually died, John could have stayed in Baker Street and grieved quietly, supported by Mrs Hudson and Lestrade and everyone who’d known Sherlock. But knowing that Sherlock had tricked him, that he had never really trusted him or considered him a friend, John just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t see any of his friends mourn (though they’d been Sherlock’s friends first, and that was part of John’s problem) without wanting to tell them that it was a lie, that Sherlock was just using them all.

Well, except Molly. John didn’t feel any urge to tell her because she already knew.

John wasn’t a genius – he knew that about himself. He had difficulty knowing why people were lying to him, assuming he even knew they were lying in the first place. But this was one of the exceptions.

He knew Molly was lying to him almost from the first moment he saw her after…just after. Guilt and fear were practically steaming off her, though to most people it probably would have looked like grief combined with some social awkwardness.

John had known better. He had known Sherlock was alive, and going by what he was getting from Molly, he was fairly certain she had a role in the staged suicide.

He’d had to walk away from her before he yelled at her. Before he asked her if Sherlock had told her why he didn’t trust John, why John hadn’t merited being let in on the plan.

He might have hated Molly under different circumstances, but she looked and felt so wretched with guilt that all he felt for her was compassion.

Not so Mycroft.

Mycroft was putting on a good show of a man tightly controlled but cracking at the edges with grief, and John was pretty sure it was fooling everyone. Anyone who got close to him at the funeral started getting sympathy sprinkled through their emotions like drops of warm rain, but John could feel that there was no trace of grief in Mycroft. There was something there – a flickering shadow of loss, like the intermittent pull of a malfunctioning vacuum – but it wasn’t grief, not really.

Of course Mycroft had been involved. The geniuses had hatched a plan on their own – god forbid they ever consider the mere mortals.

But John didn’t say anything. Because if Sherlock and Mycroft were really bringing down Moriarty, that was more important than screaming at them about being cold, crazy bastards who thought everything was about one-upping everyone else. No matter how much he wanted to.

So John moved out. Because he needed to move on.

--

Except he couldn’t. Move on, that was, because he’d gone and bonded himself to Sherlock like the idiot he so clearly was. Even when he determinedly ignored the bond, refused to probe for insight into Sherlock’s emotional state, it was still there, pulsing quietly in the background. Like white noise, except your brain got used to white noise and could ignore it, but John had never managed to just ignore a bond. It was part of him, and it was like trying to ignore his hands – you might not consciously think about them, but you were never unaware of them.

Clearly, he needed to break the bond before he was going to get anywhere.

Except he couldn’t. Not couldn’t as in ‘couldn’t manage it’, but couldn’t as in ‘had no idea how to’.

John supposed he should have expected this. He had no real idea how he’d created the bond in the first place, and he’d never tried to break his bond with Harry. He’d formed the bond when he just kind of…pushed emotion at Sherlock, and something had snagged. He’d been trying to push all his emotions – all of himself – so maybe the opposite would work? Pulling himself away from Sherlock, the same way he tried to pull pain away from people he was healing?

He tried to pull himself away from the bond. Like leaning away, except in his brain.

It didn’t work. John didn’t even get a headache or a twinge from the bond, which would have told him it was at least doing something. There was no change at all.

The worst part was that John wasn’t even sure if that was because he was doing it the wrong way or because he needed another tactic entirely. It wasn’t as though there were instructions he could consult.

So John embarked on some experimentation.

--

He tried visualising the bond as some kind of rope or chain, and then he visualised cutting it.

That didn’t work.

He tried to smother it, to bury it, to shove it into the back of his head and starve it.

That didn’t work, either.

He tried alcohol, but that only blotted his empathy out when he got to the stage where he couldn’t walk straight. He didn’t feel the bond, true, but John had no desire to pick up Harry’s bad habits, so he chalked that one up to a failure as well.

He tried marijuana, but he still felt the bond. The drug just made him not care that he felt it.

He bought self-help books that talked about meditation and ‘opening the mind to the energies of the universe’ and such. They didn’t help either.

John even made a neat little list, complete with checkboxes:

Visualisation [x]
‘Pulling’ [x]
Alcohol [x]
Marijuana [x]
Meditation [x]
Calming the mind [x]
Haloperidol [x]
Clozapine [x]
Brain surgery [ ]

Morphine was no help – John remembered that from when he’d been shot – so he’d considered cocaine. But cocaine tended to increase sociability and only began to induce numbness and blunting emotions after you’d been using it for a while, so he didn’t think that was a good idea.

The antipsychotics were a bit of a stretch and a definite abuse of his hospital contacts, but John had been hopeful. After all, if they helped schizophrenics cope with delusions then maybe they could help him cope with the bond. But they only made him feel tired and listless.

John could create the bond, but he couldn’t destroy it.

There was a final option he hadn’t explored: brain surgery, or more specifically, neural destruction. He’d have to get one of those fancy imaging scans that showed which parts of the brain were active at what point in time, use those to narrow down which part of his brain dealt with the bond, then just burn that little cluster of neurons and hopefully kill the bond. Of course, it would take years, cost a fortune and John had a better than average chance of ending up brain-damaged in a way he wasn’t expecting, so he didn’t really consider that a feasible option. He wrote it down anyway.

He put the list up on his fridge with a souvenir magnet they’d brought home from Dartmoor. The pub had a collection of silly things like that – stuffed toys and bottle openers and the like – and John had never been sure if Sherlock had actually bought the magnet or if he’d nicked it like he had the ashtray from Buckingham Palace. Sherlock had just given it to him when they were driving back to London and at the time, John had taken it as another half-arsed apology. But now he was wondering if Sherlock had just lifted it when he was anxious (probably as some bizarre way to calm himself down) and needed someone to pawn it off to.

John was settling into bed and wondering if he’d have any luck with combining his strategies (maybe if he took Clozapine and then tried the visualisation trick?) when the bond suddenly twitched. John had been doing his best to ignore it, but he was starting to feel…was that pain?

Paying attention to the bond was his big mistake. Pain flared along his left arm, concentrated in the wrist, and John – unthinkingly – reached for the pain and drew it into himself. It hurt, but of course it hurt; Sherlock had probably gone and broken his wrist like the idiotic git he was. The fine bones ached and throbbed, the way they would if they were healing, until it faded into discomfort then went away entirely.

“Shit,” John muttered. There wasn’t much point in swearing aloud when you were alone, but it made him feel better.

Well, the hope that Sherlock would never notice anything just went sailing out the window. John had never been entirely certain whether Sherlock was aware of the bond or not, and he’d often wondered if Sherlock would notice if it was broken – would he be aware something had changed, or did the bond operate on a level that Sherlock’s brain just wasn’t built to register? John had been afraid to test it when he still thought they were friends, because even if poking and prodding the bond didn’t set something off, just the change in his behaviour might have made Sherlock suspicious.

But now John had healed him, and there was no way Sherlock could have missed that. For all that he’d talked about Sherlock’s ‘spectacular ignorance’, John was pretty sure Sherlock would know it wasn’t normal for a broken wrist to fix itself within a few minutes.

All he could do was hope that Sherlock was too preoccupied with…whatever he was doing…to experiment.

--

John gripped the arm of the chair and resisted both the urge to scream and to grip the part of his body that hurt. He knew it wouldn’t help.

He hated broken fingers.

He especially hated when he was suffering them because Sherlock seemed to be systematically injuring himself. Probably to test out his newfound healing ability, just like John had been hoping he wouldn’t.

John had been watching some crap telly to bore himself enough to go to sleep when the bond started twinging, broadcasting a strange cocktail of feelings, the most prominent being lemon-scented pain and a bubbling, glimmering curiosity. It told him that whatever was happening was mild (it was when John could taste the pain that he had to start worrying), and the curiosity had made John suspect that Sherlock was doing it to himself, so he’d done his best to ignore it.

He couldn’t fix every little thing, and maybe Sherlock would lose interest if nothing happened.

But then there was something that felt like Sherlock had cut open his own arm from wrist to elbow, and…well, John had to fix that. Except Sherlock, the bloody idiot, had just done it again. And now he was apparently breaking fingers.

John was half-tempted to leave him like that so he wouldn’t do it again, but no sooner had the thought occurred to him that he felt guilty. For a moment, he was nothing but furious – how could Sherlock make him feel guilty? Sherlock was the one who’d faked his death and gone off to do something dangerous without him and was now breaking his fingers out of twisted curiosity – John had nothing to feel guilty about!

He felt guilty anyway. Because he was the one who’d healed Sherlock and piqued his curiosity in the first place, and because whatever Sherlock was doing was dangerous. Sherlock needed to be as close to full strength as possible, or he could end up severely injured or worse.

At least after John healed the broken finger, Sherlock seemed content to let it be. Well, he was probably taking samples of his skin and blood and analysing them or something, but he wasn’t mutilating himself anymore. John had learned to take the victories he could.

He told himself he wouldn’t be healing Sherlock again. It was a lie, but it was a comforting one.

--

It was strange how the drudgery of routine could make time blur. Little ‘incidents’ with Sherlock broke the monotony somewhat, but for the most part John’s life consisted of work, attempting to socialise, eating and sleeping. Two years had passed almost before he knew it.

He tried dating, but his heart wasn’t really in it and John soon stopped. It might have been different if he’d thought Sherlock was dead, but this strange limbo where he knew Sherlock had lied to him (had left him), but still felt what he was feeling…there was no closure, no chance to move on. He was still healing Sherlock, for Christ’s sake!

The fact that he could heal Sherlock said a lot about how well he was moving on – in that, he wasn’t moving on at all. John could only heal people he loved, after all.

Most of the time, John wanted to track Sherlock down just to scream at him (or maybe punch him, that’d get him some closure, right?), but he had no idea where to find him. The bond wasn’t GPS – it didn’t come with a homing signal, only a vague sense of Sherlock’s general direction. And John knew he couldn’t find Sherlock if Sherlock didn’t want to be found.

So he went through his routine as a now-established GP, wondering if this was what the rest of his life would be like. Hopefully he’d find a way to break the bond, and then maybe he could start to recover. (And maybe he was thinking about ‘recovering’ from Sherlock like he was recovering from a disease, but John though the simile fit.)

In short, being kidnapped was almost a relief.

--

John would have stood a chance against an actual person. He couldn’t read people’s minds to know when he was going to be attacked, but he could influence them as soon as they started in on him. Fear was always a good one, useful for making them falter or even run away.

But you couldn’t push emotions on a poisoned tea bag, and John could admit he never suspected a thing. He’d felt a little drowsy after the tea, but he hadn’t thought anything of it – it had been a long, dull day of routine, and he’d felt he deserved a nap.

It was only when he woke up and realised he wasn’t in his flat that John knew something was wrong.

John kept his eyes closed, just in case he was being watched. He was lying on his side on a surface that was hard and even but slightly rough – concrete, most likely – and he was feeling cold but not damp. Basement? Someplace industrial with little insulation? There was metal around his left ankle, thicker and heavier than a handcuff and lumpy. Maybe a chain?

John cautiously reached out with his empathy, and to his surprise the bond with Sherlock responded. It was sharp and bright in a way it hadn’t been in years, with worry and fear and pain glowing like warm coals and singing out that Sherlock was close. Very close.

“John?”

John opened his eyes.

It was a chain on his leg – big and thick, wrapped around his ankle and locked with a plain padlock. John was barefoot and without his jacket, just as he’d been when he’d laid down for his ‘nap’, and he wasn’t missing any other clothes.

He’d been right about the concrete floor, and one of the walls was brick. The other three were corrugated iron, and while that would usually make John hopeful about his chances of breaking down the door, he knew there wasn’t enough slack in the chain for him to reach it. The chain was anchored to a large metal ring embedded in the floor, wrapped and locked with a padlock like his ankle.

He could see all this by the light of a single bare bulb dangling from the ceiling – there weren’t any windows.

“John?”

With a deep breath to try to calm himself, John looked over at Sherlock.

His appearance was a bit of a shock. He was wearing a ratty T-shirt with the radioactive symbol on it, khaki-coloured trousers and his hair looked greasy and unwashed. For a man who usually looked so elegant, it was certainly a step down. He was secured more thoroughly than John was – he was handcuffed in addition to the ankle chain. He also had a split lip and a black eye.

“Hello, Sherlock,” John said evenly, clamping down on his emotions so he wouldn’t risk accidentally sending something through the bond.

Sherlock was looking shaken. “You’re not surprised?”

John felt an impulse to burst into hysterical laughter. “I knew you were alive.”

“Since when?” Sherlock sounded almost offended.

“Since about…a minute or two after you did it.”

“That’s impossible. I had everything planned-”

“You really shouldn’t be reminding me of this right now,” John interrupted, pushing himself into a sitting position and feeling a surge of fury at the reminder that Sherlock had planned that charade, had planned to betray John and leave him alone.

“But you…you seemed…”

“I’m a very good actor,” John snapped.

Sherlock shifted, like he wanted to move closer, but John realised Sherlock was at the limits of his ankle chain – he couldn’t move any closer to John unless he laid himself flat on the floor. But there was only about two feet between them, and they could touch if John pulled his own chain taut. Which meant this was a deliberate move; their captor wanted them to be able to touch.

John didn’t pretend to be an expert on interrogation, but he knew you only indulged a bond between captives when you were planning on manipulating that bond.

Sherlock opened his mouth, but John cut him off. “Any ideas?”

Sherlock immediately looked shifty. “John, you have to understand-”

“Any ideas?” John repeated, carefully keeping his voice flat and even and throttling the scream that was trying to burst from his throat.

“Sebastian Moran,” Sherlock said, sounding like he was trying to match John’s tone. “Former sniper in the army, dishonourable discharge. He was Moriarty’s second in command.”

“Was his second in command? He’s gone rogue?”

Sherlock hesitated. “Moriarty’s dead.”

That was news to John. “Since when?”

“Two years.” Sherlock’s voice was almost strained. “Moran wants information about his death. Or to be more precise, he wants lies about his death, since he refuses to believe the truth.”

John would like to ask what that truth was, but that wasn’t relevant at the moment and wouldn’t aid in their escape. He was trying to be distantly professional about the whole thing, treat Sherlock like one of those colleagues he didn’t like but had to work with.

John wasn’t optimistic about his chances of success, but he could at least try.

“So when can we expect a visit?” John asked.

Sherlock shrugged. “Impossible to say.”

“Has he visited before now?”

“No.”

Getting information out of Sherlock that he didn’t want to give had always been like pulling teeth, and John didn’t have the patience to deal with it right now. “Sherlock, I’ve been drugged and kidnapped and I don’t really know what’s coming next but it probably won’t be nice, so how about you tell me what you know so I can at least brace myself.”

Sherlock didn’t flinch, but the bond did. Pinched-lemon fear and burnt-plastic guilt and frayed-red worry all burst into his brain like bullets from a machine gun.

“Moriarty killed himself-”

“You’re sure of that, are you?” John grimaced, angry at himself – he’d been trying to get past this resentment, and interrupting Sherlock for petty digs wasn’t going to help them.

“Fairly certain, yes.” Sherlock’s voice was acerbic, but his feelings were…complicated. The guilt throbbed sharply, like a freshly-opened wound, but it was thick with something that felt like oily righteousness. “But the body was…removed. Moran held Moriarty in some level of affection, and refuses to believe that he committed suicide. He also wants to know the location of the body, and I assume he’s planning to torture us for it.”

That made sense. Or at least, made sense to the type of psychotic murderer that Moran probably was (being Moriarty’s second and all that), except for one bit. “Why does he think I know anything?”

“I don’t think the purpose of your presence is to extract information from you,” Sherlock said quietly, looking at the ceiling.

Okay, so Moran thought torturing John would get Sherlock to talk. At least that explained why he’d been kidnapped and why the chains were long enough to let them touch – John had been right, Moran was planning to exploit the affection he thought Sherlock held for John.

Maybe that was harsh; John knew Sherlock did hold some affection for him. Just not very much, it would seem.

“Do you know where we are?”

“Not the actual location,” Sherlock admitted, sounding furious at himself. “The style and degradation of the brickwork is consistent with an industrial building, most likely chemical-based. But the smell indicates it hasn’t been in use in at least three years, possibly four. I was unconscious until approximately half an hour ago, but judging by the footsteps I’ve heard, this place is quite expansive and Moran is employing at least five thugs.”

John nodded, already planning their escape. Not that it took much planning – he’d wait until someone came in and got within range, hit them with enough fear to terrify them into paralysis, then disarm them and knock them out. Even if this hypothetical person didn’t have the keys on them, they’d probably have something Sherlock could use to pick the locks. Once they were out of the chains, they could go from there.

So maybe his plans had room for improvement, but John wasn’t going to hang about getting tortured while he came up with a new one.

And escape plans always went better when everyone was healthy. Sherlock’s injuries looked (and felt) superficial, but pain still slowed your reflexes and made you vulnerable.

John both wanted to heal Sherlock and hated the very idea. Hated it because Sherlock would know, and Baskerville and the fake suicide had proven exactly how much John should trust Sherlock with his well-being. And he wanted it because at least then it would be done, John’s biggest secret would be revealed, and the worry and waiting would be over.

Still, he had to check; “Any surveillance in here?”

“No – this is a very sloppy operation.”

Good enough to catch you, John thought but didn’t say.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” John asked, focusing his gaze on Sherlock’s split lip.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock huffed, leaning back from him. “And don’t worry – there’s been a new development, which I’m sure will seem very unusual but which has proven reliable, so don’t-”

“Stop moving,” John muttered, shuffling close enough to grab Sherlock’s hand. “This is easier with physical contact.”

John closed his eyes and reached for the pain. It hurt more than he was expecting – there were some bruised ribs along with the mangled face – but he set his teeth and breathed slow and even until the pain began to fade.

“It was you,” Sherlock breathed.

John opened his eyes, unable to stop himself from giving a short, satisfied nod as he took in Sherlock’s healed face. “Yes, it was me.”

Under other circumstances, Sherlock’s lost expression might have been funny. “So every time-”

“Yes.”

“And when I-”

“Yes.”

“Have you always been able to do this?” And now Sherlock was irritated, but it was creaking and sparky – irritation at himself for failing to deduce this, rather than at John for not telling him.

“If you mean the healing, then I’ve been doing that since I was a kid,” John admitted. And then, because he might as well go all the way, “But this is really just an offshoot of my empathy.”

“Your what?”

“My empathy. That’s what I call it. I can feel other people’s emotions.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, but John couldn’t feel even a flicker of disbelief. “How?”

“I don’t know how. I only know that I’ve been doing it all my life.” John laughed, short and harsh. “Don’t you remember? You asked me once how I knew – how I always knew, with everyone. This is how.”

“But how does that work? Can you recognise them as distinct from your own feelings?”

“They don’t come as only feelings,” John admitted. “It’s a bit like synaesthesia. I feel other people’s emotions, but I also see them, hear them, taste them, smell them…it’s hard to describe.”

“And the ability to heal people is somehow related to this?”

“I can feel people’s pain. And I just try to…pull it into myself. It doesn’t work for everyone.” Which was definitely an understatement, but all John felt comfortable saying.

“You were…” Sherlock swallowed, the bond prickling with rose-tinted worry. “It looked like it hurt.”

John shrugged. “The pain has to go somewhere. It goes to me.”

Sherlock shifted, his emotions turning muddy and clotted and John didn’t have the energy to pick them apart. Instead he leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes, and tried to use his empathy to feel out how many people were holding them.

He could feel a man quite close to the brick wall, exuding a kind of calm boredom that said he was either used to kidnapping and interrogation or had no idea what he was guarding. There was a woman near the door, splashed with soft ripples of excitement, like she was enjoying what she was doing or looking forward to something. Her signature was moving – patrolling, or did she have somewhere to go? John kept himself focused on her, noting that she moved further away, remained there for a few minutes, and then returned to her original position.

Now, was that a trip to the bathroom, or had she gone outside the building for a quick smoke or something similar?

“What are you doing?”

John was used to ignoring distractions while he did this, but Sherlock was hard to ignore. John opened his eyes and pinned Sherlock with what he hoped was a glare that expressed his full level of frustration.

“I’m trying to determine how many people we have to worry about,” he said flatly. “Do you think you can let me do that?”

Sherlock frowned. “And that’s something your…empathy…can tell you?”

“Yeah, everyone’s emotional signature is different.”

“Emotional signature?”

“I feel emotions, but different people make me think of different things. I know it sounds strange, but that’s really the best way I can describe it.”

“And you’ve always been able to do this? With everyone?”

John snorted to himself. “I must admit, I always wondered about the look on Donovan’s face if she ever found that I was the freak, not you.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment, and John was just about to shut his eyes and get back to work when he spoke again. “So you feel their emotions, and you understand them-”

“Not always,” John interrupted. He felt he should be clear on this point. “Emotions are complex and confusing, and they’re much more so when you don’t know the thoughts and experiences attached to them. I can feel them, sure, but I have no idea about the reasons behind them.”

Sherlock made the low, humming noise that indicated he was thinking, and John wondered at the prickle of watery fear and rough green relief that flowed down the bond. But he only wondered for a moment – he had things to do, and John shut his eyes again to concentrate on his empathy.

There was another man to the right of the cell, further away than the woman outside the door. There were two men and a second woman to the left, even further away than the third man. Not for the first time, John wished he had some reliable way of measuring distance with his empathy apart from ‘close’ and ‘further away’.

The congregation suggested some kind of entrance. Or a meeting. Or maybe just a lunch room – kidnappers had to eat too, right?

John tried to push his senses further, but he couldn’t pick up any more individual signatures before they started getting blurry and indistinct. So unless they were in a complex the size of a shopping centre (unlikely), he’d assume there were six people holding them – four men and two women.

John opened his eyes. “Okay, there are six people we have to deal with. A woman near the door, a man behind the wall there, another man somewhere in that direction, and two men and a woman over there,” he said, pointing in the appropriate directions.

“Excellent work, John,” Sherlock said, sounding like he used to when he had a plan. More specifically, when he had a plan that involved John in some way.

John tried not to make comparisons to pawns and cogs, but it was hard.

“All we need to do is-”

“No,” John said firmly.

“But-”

“No.”

“Come on, John-”

“Be quiet,” John hissed. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

He’d never managed to use his empathy to call someone over to him, but he figured he could give it a shot. He just needed to figure out what kind of emotion would make someone walk into a dungeon to torment captives…

“On what?” Sherlock frowned, suddenly scornful. “I have a plan-”

“Shut up!” John snapped. “Christ, you didn’t speak to me for two years easily enough, can’t you go a few more minutes?”

Sherlock fell silent, the bond going icy with guilt and irritation, but John was more focused on the new emotional signature he could feel approaching. Was it Moran?

John thought it was. The man was pulsing with wine-dark satisfaction and fluttering excitement. It wasn’t like the woman’s – that was vague and weak, but this was like black cocoa, thick and rich and liable to give you a headache if you ate too much. With anger and resentment undercutting it all, like points of barbed wire gleaming with blood. John never knew these things for certain, but it felt a lot like a man who had worked towards revenge and was finally getting it.

He knew it was Moran when the new emotional signature encountered the three congregated at…wherever that was. All three picked up a slightly purple tinge of fear, like the slight sourness of an apple – light but there. Like the boss had just come to look over their shoulder, and the boss was a crazy assassin.

One of the men detached himself from the group and approached their cell. The woman in front of the door flared with renewed excitement, and together they moved closer.

“Moran’s here,” John whispered, lying down on the ground and closing his eyes – if he could trick them into thinking he was still unconscious, they were likely to come closer. “Someone’s coming in.”

The door screeched open just as he finished talking – the hinges were in very bad shape – and the man and woman entered. John could feel Sherlock’s irritation and worry, but he concentrated on the two people who had entered.

There was a metallic click and a rustle, like someone drawing a weapon from a holster. Gun or knife? John supposed it didn’t matter.

“You don’t want to try anything,” the woman says, and John was aware of the man approaching him.

The kick was a surprise, though – right in the small of his back, too. John groaned and curled into himself, trying to act as though he was just rousing from a drugged stupor.

“Leave him alone,” Sherlock snapped.

“Shut up,” the woman barked.

The man yanked on the chain attached to John’s ankle, twisting the padlock up and opening it. Just what John had been hoping for.

It had been a while since he’d done this so deliberately, and with such intent to harm. Moriarty had been his latest attempt, and John did what he’d done then – shoving fear and despair and just about every negative emotion he could dredge up straight at them.

He opened his eyes to the sight of a blond man and brunette woman gasping and clutching at their chests like they’d just been stabbed. The woman lunged toward him – she had a knife, not a gun, more’s the pity – but John just rolled out of the way and she collapsed without him touching her.

They didn’t move. John got to his feet and checked them, pressing his fingers to their neck and feeling no answering pulse. He tried not to think about pressing his fingers to Sherlock’s wrist and feeling the same.

“They’re dead,” Sherlock said, staring at the bodies. “Heart attack, yes?”

John nodded. “My push was maybe a bit stronger than I meant it to be.”

He’d pushed so much at Moriarty without any kind of impact, he’d forgotten to adjust for other people. Not that John would be shedding any tears for these two, but it was slightly sickening to realise how easy it was to miscalculate that sort of thing.

John felt the beginnings of a headache knotting his temples. A side-effect of whatever drugs he’d been fed, or of pushing his emotions so hard?

He took the woman’s knife and the man’s keys from their hands, and began searching the bodies.

“We need to move quickly,” Sherlock was saying, already reaching out like he expected John to just hand him the keys.

“I need to move quickly,” John corrected. “You’re staying here.”

He could feel Sherlock’s surprise, like the sudden taste of detergent – bitter and nasty.

“I can deal with them easily,” John continued, gesturing to the two dead bodies laid out on the concrete. “And my old CO used to say that the only thing worse than no one at your back was someone at your back that you didn’t trust. You’ll just distract me.”

“You don’t trust me.” It would have been a flat statement of fact, if John couldn’t feel the sudden hurt spilling through the bond, sharp as aged cheese.

“I don’t trust you,” John affirmed. Then, because he felt he should explain himself, “I don’t trust that any instructions you give me will be genuine instead of attempts to manipulate me. If you say ‘duck’, I won’t duck – I’ll look to see if you’re telling the truth about the threat. We’re less likely to get killed this way.”

John took a solid grip on the knife and made his way towards the door.

“John, you can’t do this,” Sherlock cried. “You don’t know what he’s like, the things he’s done...John! John you can’t-”

John shut the door on Sherlock’s devastated face, and did his best to shut down the bond.

--

John always tried to avoid opening up his empathy too far. It was like squinting your eyes when you were checking the position of the sun – if you opened them, the light dazzled you and you didn’t see anything, so you had to control the amount of input. Except if you looked directly at the sun you could get eye damage and his empathy didn’t so much as dazzle him as stop him being aware of what was happening to his body, and here was where the metaphor broke down.

He’d slipped up a few times as a kid, just by accident. He’d been focusing on one person because they had an interesting emotion, then someone else’s emotions would grab his attention, and he’d inadvertently open himself up to more and more stimuli until he was just a mind drifting on a sea of emotion, mostly unaware of his body or anything that happened to it. While John didn’t walk into walls when he was like that, he’d once nearly walked into traffic and he often ‘woke up’ with bruises and scrapes where he’d collided or tripped and just went onwards without ever realising it.

It was like being so far in your head you didn’t notice what other people were doing, except John got so far into other people’s heads he didn’t know what he was doing.

He knew it was dangerous, to open himself up to everyone in the warehouse, but it was also the most effective way of making sure they were all dealt with, quickly and (relatively) cleanly. John needed to take out five people who were likely armed and definitely dangerous, and the only physical weapon he had was a knife. His empathy was the only thing that was going to get him and Sherlock out of this in one piece, so John was going to use it. He was going to make sure he knew where those people were and what they were feeling because he couldn’t feel anything but them.

John couldn’t really explain how it felt to drown in his empathy like that. It wasn’t like the Baskerville drug – they didn’t overwhelm him to the point of being absolutely lost, but his attention was definitely…absent. He was aware of people approaching him and trying to push fear on them. He was aware of them falling, of stabbing them to ensure they stayed down, and he was aware of them dying. He wasn’t aware of much else.

Of course, John could only drift like that when there were a lot of empathic signatures around him. The less people there were, the easier it was for his brain to parse the emotions, to remain focused.

When John came back to himself, he, Moran and Sherlock were the only people still alive in the building.

He’d also managed to acquire a gun (John had a vague image of a woman drawing it and shooting at him as he charged her), but there were only three bullets left. John would have done a more comprehensive check of himself, but he could feel Moran approaching the cell Sherlock was still locked up in and he didn’t have the time to waste.

He was a little disappointed in how out of shape he was, though. He was tired and it was taking real effort to breathe – the result of the painful stitch in his side, most likely. Or the way he kept coughing. Sherlock had said this place was old, and John hoped he hadn’t inhaled any asbestos. And he must have stepped in a puddle because his right foot was moist with lukewarm fluid and was making nasty squishing noises as he ran. With any luck, it wasn’t some awful chemical left over from when this place was still in use.

He turned a corner just as Sherlock rocketed out of the cell. John was surprised for as long as it took him to remember that the bodies had been left within Sherlock’s range – he probably swiped something to pick the lock. Sherlock took one glance around, saw John, and suddenly paled.

John would have turned around to check if someone was behind him, if his empathy wasn’t telling him that the only threat in the place was about to come down the corridor.

Moran turned the corner and raised his eyebrows at the sight of them. “If you want to threaten me with a gun, you should make sure you’re not bleeding to death first.”

And even though Moran was pointing his own gun at him, John was too tired to stifle the reflex to glance down.

That was the problem with empathy. Living in other people’s feelings and other people’s pain often made it difficult to recognise your own.

If John hadn’t been using his empathy, he would have realised he’d been shot in the chest. And a graze – or perhaps a knife wound – had opened up his right thigh. The bullet had probably got him in the bottom of a lung, judging by the way blood was foaming around the wound, and he’d obviously been bleeding for a while –his jumper and jeans were soaked. John would bet he’d been leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind him.

He was distantly surprised that he’d been able to walk. Or perhaps it wasn’t so surprising – he was feeling very tired (a side-effect of blood loss) and he’d been having trouble breathing. Injuries could hinder, but it was pain that incapacitated and John hadn’t really been in a position to feel much of anything.

Until now. He was feeling a lot of pain now.

“John…” Sherlock’s voice wobbled, and the high whine of fear coming through the bond sounded like the screech of static.

“It’s alright, Sherlock,” John muttered, coughing a little and finally noticing that the back of his mouth tasted like blood. “It doesn’t hurt as much as the first time I got shot.”

Of course, John knew that was a bad sign. If it didn’t hurt as much as it should have, it was because most of the blood and oxygen going to that area was then pouring out of him rather than giving energy to the various nerves that could send pain signals. He leaned to the side, letting the wall take most of his weight, and he let the gun drop. Not just drop from a firing position but actually drop to the ground. It wasn’t going to do him much good, anyway – in this state he was more likely to hit Sherlock than Moran.

“You’re dying,” Moran sneered. Because apparently he was the type that always had to gloat. “How much time do you think you have? Two minutes? Three?”

Actually John knew it was more like ten. Maybe he only had a few minutes until he lost consciousness, but it would take him longer than that to actually die. People were always making mistakes like that.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, trying to keep his voice from wavering.

Moran was looking amused. “It doesn’t matter, huh? Why not?”

“Because you’re going to die.” Usually it was a bad idea to warn people about your tactics, but his empathy wasn’t something that could be defended against. And he needed to buy time to gather his strength for another empathic hit.

“He can fix it!” Sherlock hissed, grabbing John shoulders in an effort to keep him upright. “John, do you what you did to me – hurry!”

“It doesn’t work like that, Sherlock. I take the pain, I don’t give it away.”

John could taste blood on the back of his tongue, rising with each exhale. Which could mean a lot of things, really, but it was never a promising sign. A burst of hysteria hit and he giggled, feeling little bubbles of blood form at the corner of his mouth.

Moran’s eyes narrowed. “I got a look at Wallace’s body, you know?”

John had no idea who that was. Sherlock was trying to slowly pick up the gun without telegraphing his movements, so John kept his eyes fixed on Moran so he wouldn’t inadvertently draw attention to him.

“His throat was slit, but that wasn’t what killed him,” Moran continued. “Not enough blood for that. But there wasn’t any other mark on him, like he’d just had a heart attack on the spot. Now I know you didn’t manage to smuggle in poison…so what are you?”

He clearly meant it in the form of what John’s rank and training had been in the army, but John answered honestly.

“A monster.”

Then he funnelled all his fear straight into the stormy hurricane that was Moran’s emotional signature, hoping he could bring the other man down before he passed out just as Sherlock snatched up the gun, brought it to bear and pulled the trigger.

John wasn’t sure if it was his empathy or the bullet in his head that got Moran first, but his money was on the bullet. John didn’t think he‘d pushed enough fear to startle a baby.

His knees were buckling, and Sherlock abandoned the gun to try to ease him to the floor. He didn’t do a good job of it – John’s elbows knocked the concrete painfully – but John appreciated the effort.

“John, what you did, does it work the other way?” Sherlock was saying, his voice low and frantic, his emotions practically bludgeoning they were so loud.

“Dunno…” John slurred.

Everything was getting dim and distant, probably because of the blood loss. The wounds didn’t even twinge anymore, and John knew he was going to die. Even assuming Sherlock could somehow acquire a phone, no ambulance could ever arrive in time.

He had the vague thought that he should be angry, or sad, or frightened, or something. But he just felt strangely resigned, as though there was some twisted peace in acknowledging that you were done for.

There was no ‘please, god, let me live’ this time.

Though he was very annoyed at the way Sherlock was shaking him, at the fear and guilt and crushing despair spurting across the bond like…well, like blood from a severed artery.

If he wanted to die in peace, John thought he’d earned the right.

“John, look at me! Tell me how it works – I can help you if you’ll just tell me how it works!”

“It’s fine,” John managed, before he coughed hard enough to feel drops of blood hit the back of his teeth.

Because you had to love someone to take on their pain. More than just love, in fact – you also had to admit it yourself, which was much more difficult. Sherlock scorned love because he feared it, and feared what it could drive people to. Sherlock might love John on some level, but he was unlikely to admit it, even to himself.

“It’s not fine!” Sherlock snarled. “This is the very opposite of fine. This wasn’t…it isn’t supposed to end like this! You’re not allowed to die!”

Honestly, John thought his death was the only thing that made sense out of all this. That was how these stories went, after all.

“I told you,” he gurgled – it really was getting difficult to breathe now. “I’m not the hero, I’m the monster. And monsters don’t get a happy ending.”

They died. That was how all the fairy-tales ended, and god knew John’s life with Sherlock had been crazy enough to sound like a fairy-tale.

Sherlock was talking again, but John couldn’t make sense of the words. He heard them, but they were lost in the haze that seemed to be rolling across his vision. He closed his eyes, and opening them again seemed like too much work, so he didn’t try.

He could still feel someone shaking him, and then someone kissing him. John wondered who thought it was a good idea to kiss a dying man – his lips were coated with his own blood, after all, and even leaving aside the unpleasant taste, what if he had some kind of blood-borne disease? They were risking infection.

There was a vague sensation of hands tightening over his shoulders and breath breaking over his face in a gasp or sob.

Then there was nothing.

--

Part Four

Empathy, Part Two (continued)

blind_author — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 15:16:33 GMT

Part Two, continued

It was strange, going to Dartmoor after spending so long in London. His empathy meant that being in London was like looking out at the city from their living room window. Up close you could distinguish the street lamps and lit windows, just as he could distinguish the separate emotions of individuals, but soon they all blurred into one sea of light, into a roiling ocean of pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow, hope and fear and everything in between.

And Sherlock had called his mind ‘placid’? If only he knew.

In contrast, Dartmoor had long stretches of emptiness, and John’s head went quiet for the first time in a very long time. Not silent, of course – he could still feel the people in the villages, and his bonds with Sherlock and Harry were still there – but quiet. Like someone had turned down the volume. The people were there, but…distant. As though it was just him and Sherlock (and Harry, sort of), and no one else in the world.

But it couldn’t last, and they were at the village before John really had time to appreciate it. The couple who ran The Cross Keys were nice, but guilt lurked beneath their cheerful veneer like a ribbon of blood through water. John snagged a receipt for meat, just in case it had something to do with their case.

He and Sherlock wound up with a single bed between them, but John didn’t really mind; Sherlock probably wouldn’t be doing much sleeping anyway.

Though of course he objected when John put his case on the bed. “Why can’t you take the sofa? You’re shorter.”

“Of the two of us, I’m the one most likely to do some actual sleeping,” John shot back, putting his toothbrush in the bathroom.

“You don’t know that,” Sherlock grumbled.

“Well, if you happen to fancy some sleep, then we can share,” John pointed out. “It’s certainly big enough for the two of us. But if you hog the covers or kick me in the night, I’m dumping you on the floor.”

There was a strange ripple of emotions from Sherlock at that, something longing and sad and strangely hopeful. John only got a brief glimpse before Sherlock deliberately smothered it – probably forcing himself to think about the case – and while John could probably probe the bond to determine what that had been, he felt his friend deserved some kind of privacy. John couldn’t help knowing what he was feeling, but he could stop himself from poking his nose into subjects Sherlock obviously didn’t want to think about.

--

For the first time, John wondered if it was possible for an empathic bond to become too strong.

He’d been able to follow Sherlock through the moor even when they lost sight of each other – that was one way in which the bond helped enormously, though it was a bit like playing hot-cold; John never got a clear picture of where Sherlock was, only a vague feeling of the direction he was in.

John had stopped to write down what he thought was Morse Code, until he’d probed with his empathy, picked up on the lust and love howling out into the night and realised it was people having sex in a car. Of course a place like Dartmoor would have several ‘make-out points’ – he was surprised they hadn’t stumbled across one sooner.

Then he’d felt Sherlock’s fear, and almost dropped his notebook in his hurry to find him.

The fear had been so strong, strong enough to start bleeding over into John. Even when they were back in front of the fire at the pub and perfectly safe, John could feel it creeping along his spine like a cold sweat. He’d tried to nudge some feeling of security into Sherlock – carefully not touching him, because then they’d have two people panicking – but the fear bubbling over into him made him shaky, not quite sure of himself. In the end he had to take a walk just to calm himself down.

That had never happened before. He was aware of other people’s emotions, yes, and they could influence his own, but they never consumed him like that. Not even Harry’s. Maybe it had something to do with his bond with Sherlock?

It was times like these that made John wish that he wasn’t the only one, that there had been some older, more experienced empath for him to learn from. He had no idea why his bond with Sherlock would be stronger than the one he had with Harry. He had no idea why it seemed to be getting stronger with time. He had no idea about a lot of things, and he was getting a little sick of it.

He’d been born with this damn empathy – shouldn’t he know something about it by now?

--

Sherlock didn’t return to their room that night, but John hadn’t really been expecting him to. He was feeling it again from Sherlock – the painful love and yearning that meant he was thinking about Irene – so he’d probably be roaming around and brooding.

John tried to stay up that night, tried to keep himself attuned to the bond between him and Sherlock so he’d know if there was a problem…but that intense fear had left him very tired, and eventually he succumbed to sleep.

He opened his eyes when he heard the door to the room shut softly. Usually, that sound would have had him leaping off the bed and grabbing for his gun, but his empathy told him it was Sherlock who’d just entered the room, and John was so tired he couldn’t be bothered to move. He shut his eyes again, already beginning to doze.

In the morning, when he awoke to an empty room, he’d tell himself that the feeling of a hand stroking across his forehead – and the dull glow of love and longing that shuddered through the bond – had just been a dream.

--

It was actually possible to lie to John – he’d figured that one out fairly early. He was an empath, after all, not a telepath like in the sci-fi shows. He didn’t know what people were thinking, only what they were feeling, and certainly not why they were feeling it. Most of the time, he could take a guess, but that was all it was – a guess.

Still, his empathy helped him get a better read on people, and pushing fear onto someone was certainly useful when he was being threatened. The hardest part was controlling it, ensuring his own emotions and sense of self weren’t consumed by the empathic noise that surrounded him.

So when his empathy suddenly started battering at his senses in Baskerville, John knew right away something was wrong. It wasn’t like those times when he got distracted and let his empathy drift free – he didn’t feel weightless and barely aware of himself. If anything, he felt like he was aware of too much.

He was aware of Sherlock, yes – he was always aware of Sherlock – but suddenly he was aware of the people lingering on the outskirts of the facility, of their emotions bleeding into his and no matter how hard he focused, he couldn’t shut them out. It was like all his barriers between himself and the world around him crumbled, emotions shattering through his mind like a broken window letting in a hurricane, a storm of thoughts and feelings that rushed by him and swept him up in the flood.

It was too much, far too much. He couldn’t block it, couldn’t stem the tide, couldn’t pick out individual people anymore and could barely pick out individual emotions. He was happy, and worried, and sad and confused and happy and angry and scared/triumphant/smug/anxiousexcited grievingguiltylovingcontentfrustrated-

Then he was feeling nothing at all.

--

There were voices…somewhere. Above him, below him, to the side – John couldn’t tell, but they were there. Sherlock and someone else, someone unfamiliar.

“-kind of dosage?”

“I…don’t know.” Sherlock sounded embarrassed.

“You drugged him without knowing the dosage you were giving him? No wonder he had a reaction – for all we know, these are the typical symptoms of an overdose!”

“Why didn’t a helicopter come for him?”

“Because we have a jeep with the facilities of an ambulance and no time to waste waiting for other transport!”

“If that’s…” Sherlock seemed to realise John was awake. “John? John, are you alright? How are you feeling?”

But John’s brain apparently decided that if he was hearing and seeing, it was time for his empathy to wake up as well. Too wide, too loud, too bright, too…everything.

Emotions rose up to swallow him, and for a moment John could feel his brain trying to fight back, trying to hang on to what was him in the deluge of feelings and personalities that weren’t his own.

It felt like he was being ripped apart on a molecular level, like every cell in his body was being pulled in a different direction. The human brain just wasn’t built to process every emotion at once, not even John’s.

John had just enough time to wonder if he had any chance of coming out of this sane before the tide rose to engulf him, and he was gone.

--

The next time John woke up, it was to the familiar sounds and smells of a hospital. Heart monitor, check. The bustle of nurses and doctors tending patients that they could never quite muffle, check. The scent of disinfectant, check.

The utter exhaustion that showed him he’d been injured and was probably on a cocktail of drugs? Check.

John wanted to open his eyes and take advantage of what he suspected would be a small window of lucidity, but he didn’t risk it until he was certain his empathy was under control.

The doctor in the hall was flavoured with bitter worry and pinstriped self-doubt. Maybe she’d made a misdiagnosis, or one of her patients wasn’t responding to medication? The patient in the bed next to his was sapphire-happy with relief resounding over it like a trumpet blast. A successful surgery? The patient in the one over was asleep, drifting little soap bubbles of contentment and security over to John.

And Sherlock was exuding blood-tinged worry and pus-smelling guilt through the bond, which was telling him Sherlock was close.

John opened his eyes. The fluorescent lights were a little too bright, and he blinked several times before he felt it was safe to lift his head.

Sherlock was perched in a chair – literally perched, in that bird-of-prey-way he sometimes did. He was clearly aware John was awake; he’d gone tense and wide-eyed, but he wasn’t saying anything.

“What happened?” John asked. Or at least, tried to ask – it emerged as a hoarse, painful croak instead.

What was wrong with his throat?

“You were screaming,” Sherlock said quietly, obviously reading the question on John’s face.

John supposed that made sense. He hadn’t even been aware he was screaming, but then he hadn’t even been aware of his own mind, let alone his body. He took a deep, uncomfortable breath and fought the urge to just close his eyes and drift back into unconsciousness.

“You collapsed in the lab and started seizing,” Sherlock went on, in the voice of someone who was trying for calm but not quite managing it. “They transported you out of the base and admitted you to the hospital fourteen hours ago.”

Fourteen hours? That was…a very long time.

“Henry?” John rasped. Even that one word felt like an enormous effort.

“Recovering. You should have been there, John – it was brilliant! Murder weapon and scene of the crime all in one-”

John let himself tune out, giving in to the drugs and letting his body rest so he could heal…whatever had happened. He had time to wonder one thing, though; what had set his empathy off like that?

--

When John woke for the third time, his mind felt much more his own – he was probably off the more potent drugs, then – and Sherlock was still there.

“How long this time?” he coughed.

“You’ve been here for twenty-seven hours,” Sherlock muttered, leaning over him and peering into his face in a way that would have made John uncomfortable if it was coming from anyone else.

He’d got used to Sherlock’s bizarre scrutiny, but it was the steadily-leaking guilt – now bitter and fermenting like rusted water – that was confusing John.

“How’d I get here?” he asked, enjoying the way his words didn’t slur and his mind was clear.

Sherlock explained in his usual lightning-fast way about some kind of drug that Franklin (Franklin, really?) had been dosing Henry with. There was a gas that was triggered by pressure pads in Dewer’s Hollow.

“…and some of the gas was leaking in the laboratory,” Sherlock finished. “You started seizing.”

But the guilt hadn’t gone away, and Sherlock wasn’t looking John in the eyes anymore.

“The door was locked,” John said slowly, a horrible idea taking form in his mind. But surely there were some lines even Sherlock wouldn’t cross? Sherlock wouldn’t...

“I thought it was in the sugar,” Sherlock said quickly, shifting uncomfortably.

It was eerily similar to being shot. A moment of blinding pain, followed by numbness and spreading cold as blood poured out of him into the dirt.

Sherlock had tried to dose him with an unknown drug – thought he’d succeeded, in fact – and locked him in the lab to observe its effects.

Sherlock had experimented on him.

Sherlock had experimented on him.

And if Sherlock did that for a case he’d half-solved already, then what would he do if he found out John was an empath? Would he take it as permission to lock John up in a lab somewhere? Sherlock cared about him, yes, but clearly that caring didn’t outweigh his curiosity about the effects of a drug that induced crippling fear and hallucinations. So what would Sherlock do if he ever learned about John’s empathy?

John honestly didn’t know. He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out.

--

The lights were bright, too bright, and the distinctive smell of hospital disinfectant burned his nose. John pulled against the straps that held him down and swallowed hard, trying to repress his panic.

Panicking wouldn’t help him.

Even his head was strapped down tightly, so all he could do was slide his eyes to the side to try to take in something besides the painfully white ceiling.

Something in his chest jolted when he realised Sherlock was standing next to him, wearing surgical scrubs, gloves, and a mask.

“Sherlock?”

“I’m coming, John.” Sherlock’s voice didn’t sound quite right – tinny and distorted, as though it was coming through a cheap electronic speaker.

Still, it was undoubtedly Sherlock, and John was just starting to feel reassured when Sherlock picked up a long, thin metal needle and a small hammer.

He reached out automatically with his empathy…but there was nothing. He kept reaching, scrabbling for the bond, feeling panic mount as Sherlock came closer.

“Sherlock, what are you doing?” And John wasn’t panicking, he wasn’t.

But then he most certainly was panicking, because Sherlock was bending over him, lining up the end of the needle with the corner of his eye, the precise spot where a sharp tap with the hammer would drive it through bone and flesh and into his brain. The exact procedure to perform a lobotomy.

“Sherlock?”

“Don’t worry,” Sherlock said, raising the hammer, the needle just beginning to prick the tender blood vessels around John’s eye, no matter how much he tried to blink the pressure away. “Laboratory conditions, I promise.”

The hammer came down.

And John woke up with an unpleasant jolt, the corner of his eye still prickling and burning, half-expecting fluorescent lights and white tiles. But the room was dark, and John remembered being released from the hospital, remembered the advice Stapleton had given him from the little information they had on reactions to the drug, remembered the trip back to Baker Street as he’d leaned his head against the window and ignored Sherlock’s faltering attempts at conversation.

John sat up and rubbed at his eye, trying to focus on the dull wallpaper and pull his mind away from Harry’s emotions, just in case the headache was coming from her.

It wasn’t, but it could have been, judging by the nauseous-green anger and paper-brittle unhappiness that was radiating through her bond. John needed to remember to call her in the morning.

Sherlock was downstairs, practically bubbling with curdled misery and burnt self-righteousness, slathered with more of that sour-blue guilt.

John would have liked to think all that was about him, but who really knew? He had a direct insight into Sherlock’s emotions, and that wasn’t enough to tell him when Sherlock was about to experiment on him, so he certainly wasn’t capable of teasing out something as complex as that.

John turned over and shut his eyes, but then had to open them again just to remind himself that he was actually in his bed and not a laboratory. Which was ridiculous – he could feel the difference between his mattress and a steel table, thank you very much – but he needed to see it.

Logically, he knew it was just a nightmare – god knew, he’d had enough of them to last him a lifetime. He knew it was just the toxin working its way out of his system. He knew it was just his subconscious twisting half-formed and ridiculous fears so they seemed like real threats.

But John didn’t go to sleep for the rest of the night.

--

In the morning, John went down for toast automatically, even though he didn’t feel hungry.

“You don’t want toast,” Sherlock pointed out from the sofa.

“I don’t actually want much of anything,” John said, pleased his voice was much calmer than he actually felt. “But eating something, especially toast, can help toxins work out of my system. Well, burnt toast is best, but I’m not eating burnt toast.”

“Loss of appetite isn’t one of the symptoms,” Sherlock said, sounding almost peeved.

John nodded agreeably. “True, it’s not in the list Dr Stapleton gave me.” And that Sherlock had undoubtedly appropriated for his own perusal at some point. “But they’re dealing with a limited sample size and I had a very extreme reaction. They think it’s done its damage, but I’m under strict orders to call them if there’s any change in case it does end up killing me.”

Sherlock made a funny noise, and woodsmoke-fear suddenly made the bond hum.

“But you already knew that, didn’t you?” John sighed, forcing down the last bite he could manage and tossing the half-eaten meal in the rubbish. “You know my charts, and you’ve read the list Dr Stapleton gave you. Which means that you also know that being thrown into a seizure indicates that I’m responding very differently than any other subject studied. It could just be an overdose but that doesn’t seem likely, given the speed of my recovery.”

John should stop talking. He knew he should, but he couldn’t clamp down on the bitterness that wanted to spew forth like vomit. “Look, I’ll tell you if I feel the urge to commit suicide, but for now, I need to indulge my PTSD. Which means staying in my room for the day, convincing myself I’m properly defended and trying to sleep to make up for the night of horrendous nightmares.”

Of which Sherlock had often been the star, but John wasn’t quite cruel enough to mention that.

But he was cruel enough to abandon his pretence at nonchalance and go on the attack. “What did you think was going to happen, Sherlock? Because I’m honestly curious.”

Sherlock hissed like an angry cat. “I didn’t actually dose you-”

“But you intended to!” John snapped. “You know I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD and you intended to feed me a drug designed to induce utter terror! What was your plan if I snapped on the spot and tried to kill myself? Or someone else? If I’d ended up in a mental institution, that would have been okay, would it? Or if you’d overdosed me and I went into cardiac arrest?”

“I made a mistake!” Sherlock shouted. “Is that what you want to hear? I made a mistake and I wasn’t thinking clearly!”

John had taken a deep breath to shout back when it suddenly faltered in his throat, the memory of his own mistake with Thomas rushing up to choke him. He still wanted to yell at Sherlock, but he no longer had the energy.

So he turned around and walked out of the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Sherlock asked, sounding alarmed.

“Upstairs to my room,” John said wearily. “Weren’t you listening?”

He spent the rest of the day trying to read, watching the sunlight track across the wall and trying to convince himself he was safe.

--

The next day Sherlock was still smoke-buzzing nervous and thorn-prick guilty, tentative in the strange way he had that meant he’d clear his throat before speaking and wouldn’t slam cupboard doors just to get attention.

John made him a cup of tea, trying to return to some semblance of their usual routine. He wasn’t quite sure if this was an olive branch or just him being too weary to keep holding a grudge, but Sherlock certainly took it as a sign that his not-quite-apology was accepted. By the afternoon, he was back to bashing around the kitchen like a scientifically-inclined elephant.

But John didn’t think he’d ever entertain the idea of telling Sherlock about his empathy again.

--

John supposed it was almost inevitable, really. With all the cases Sherlock took, he was bound to stumble over some famous ones eventually. He already had, come to think of it.

But never anything quite so famous as the Reichenbach Falls painting, or so many in such quick succession. It was ominous, mainly because John knew how the media worked – one month’s darling was next month’s scapegoat, and John honestly didn’t have the time, energy or inclination to deal with that. Media attention tended to be poisonous.

On top of that, Sherlock was feeling sad almost all the time now, which was strange and very disheartening. The intensity ebbed and flowed – not like a tide, because tides were predictable, but more like…actually John didn’t have an appropriate simile there. Because nothing came close to describing the seemingly inexplicable surges in misery that gripped Sherlock day and night.

John couldn’t figure out the pattern to it. It had to be there, he knew – emotions didn’t come out of nowhere, Sherlock was responding to something, he just didn’t know what.

He seemed happier when he was with John, and John couldn’t deny that left him feeling a bit chuffed. But then he’d say or do something and Sherlock’s mood would deflate so suddenly it was actually rather frightening. Especially because there was no outward sign of it. Sherlock didn’t frown, didn’t get the dejected expression that usually meant there was nothing but boring cases on the horizon. He didn’t do anything – if it weren’t for his empathy, John would never know there was something wrong.

But he did know, and the fact that he couldn’t figure it out was driving him a bit mad. Sherlock would be sitting in the kitchen, trying to get rid of whatever toxic waste his latest experiment had produced at John’s shouted behest and then suddenly everything would go wrong.

They’d been arguing about…John actually couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said. The usual about hygiene and food preparation surfaces and Sherlock retaliating with his spiel that essentially boiled down to ‘it’s for science, so you should let me do anything I like’. (John had a lot less tolerance for that one after Baskerville.)

Sherlock hadn’t been shouting, but he had been pouting – the expression he used when he was feeling oppressed. “Your obsession with cleanliness and antibacterial soap is really quite unbecoming for a medical man – aren’t you supposed to be warning people about the dangers of superbugs? After all, you’re forever lecturing me about every other danger.”

“You’d miss me if I was gone,” John tossed back.

And just like that, Sherlock’s emotions spilled sorrow like red ink, splattering across the steady scrolling of his thoughts and tainting everything.

John could admit he tended to nudge Sherlock’s mood a little if it got too bad – when the storm clouds broke and bled rain-thick sorrow, lightning-sharp worry, thunder-crashing bitterness and a slow howl of loss – but it was a palliative, not a cure. The brief burst of lightness would be matched by an even more dramatic dip, and John didn’t feel comfortable meddling beyond that. Sherlock had a right to….whatever this was. Maybe something to do with Irene?

Gradually John sussed out that Sherlock seemed especially unhappy when John mentioned something about going away or missing something, but that didn’t make any sense. Did Sherlock have some kind of terminal illness?

“You do know you can tell me anything?” John hazarded as he passed Sherlock while Sherlock was doing…something with his laptop. “If you were in trouble, or something?”

He was watching Sherlock closely in his peripheral vision, which was the only reason he saw the way Sherlock looked utterly stricken. It was only for a moment, but it was there.

“You think I’m in trouble,” Sherlock stated, in the tone of voice that somehow made a statement into a scornful question of, ‘how could you be that stupid?’

“You’ve been sad lately,” John said quietly.

“Why do you think that?” Again, there was no hint of defensiveness, but John hadn’t really expected any – Sherlock was a better actor than that.

“I’m not like you Sherlock, I can’t list off all the things I’ve noticed,” John shrugged. “It’s just…something I know.”

“Just something you know?” Sherlock repeated, but his voice was softer now.

Physical contact was always a bit dicey – sometimes Sherlock seemed to need it, sometimes he’d practically flinch away – but John took a risk and put his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock twitched like he wanted to lean into it and leap away at the same time, but both motions had equalised into a kind of spasm that didn’t actually move him anywhere.

When there was no other reaction John squeezed Sherlock’s shoulder and then drew back. Sherlock didn’t say anything, or do anything, and his expression didn’t change. His emotions were tense and roiling, sunburst-gratitude and wine-sharp bitterness and a low drumming of…regret?

John had no idea if he’d helped or not, but at least he’d tried.

--

John didn’t like going into the courtroom. The idea of seeing Jim Moriarty get his comeuppance was certainly an appealing one, even if Sherlock thought it was unlikely, but that ever-present emptiness – the emptiness he was now making no effort to disguise – was as sickening and gut-wrenching and wrong as ever.

Except Moriarty didn’t get his comeuppance. He didn’t even get convicted, which was…well, John couldn’t lie and say surprising, but it was certainly unsettling. Frightening, even. If Moriarty could do something that blatant, be caught in the act and still get away then what hope did they have of ever catching him?

Of course, that was assuming they were going to catch him. John should probably worry what it said about him that he was perfectly prepared to shoot Moriarty in cold blood, because that was exactly what he was half-planning to do. But he didn’t feel the slightest flicker of conscience about it, probably because what Mycroft had said about the battlefield was true – this was war, and in war, you shot to kill.

It didn’t help that Sherlock was frightened. A soft, creeping sort of fear that twisted at the edges of John’s senses like roots sneaking in beneath a door – thin but strong, smelling like earth and decay. It put John on edge, though in all honesty he couldn’t swear that he wouldn’t have punched the Chief Superintendent even without that constant, nails-on-chalkboard frustration.

Still, at least it was satisfying, even if it did end with him arrested and he and Sherlock on the run.

“Well, what stage of Moriarty’s plan is this?” John asked after Sherlock had picked the lock on that reporter’s flat.

Sherlock lunged forward like he wanted to turn the place upside down in search of…whatever he wanted to look for, but John stopped and set his weight as soon as they were through the door. The handcuff chewed into his wrist as Sherlock came up short against the restraint and actually came close to toppling over, flailing his long limbs and making a huffy, disgruntled noise like a cat that had just been stepped on.

John let himself enjoy it for a moment – it was rare to see Sherlock uncoordinated, and those moments were to be treasured – then took advantage of his imbalance to yank Sherlock down onto the couch as John sat down.

Sherlock was bristling, like he was offended somehow. “We need to-”

“I’m sitting down,” John interrupted, his voice calm and controlled. “I’ve got a headache.”

He’d tried to ensure the police hesitated to follow him by pushing as much fear onto them as he could, and it had been a long time since he’d tried to target a crowd. John wasn’t sure if that was the reason his head was pounding in time with his heartbeat – it could be adrenaline or fear or any number of things, really – but it was the reason he was using.

At least it was dark. John shut his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to centre himself. He tried to relax his hold on his empathy and just let himself float on the emotions that leaked from Sherlock and Harry and the people in the surrounding apartments – his own form of meditation.

It was broken when Sherlock spoke, the bond suddenly twitching with damp worry, “Did they hit you?”

“What?”

“Did the police hit you?” Sherlock repeated.

“Why would they hit me?” John asked. “I mean, I didn’t exactly resist arrest.”

“You struck their lord and master, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the plebeians went in for a bit of police brutality before they brought you down. And you haven’t answered me – did they hit you?”

“No,” John sighed. “No one hit me. The headache’s from…something else.”

“Oh. That’s…good.”

The back of Sherlock’s fingers were resting against John’s leg. John took his hand, because they were handcuffed fugitives and he needed to touch him and if Sherlock didn’t like it he could bloody well say so. But Sherlock didn’t pull away – on the contrary, he turned his hand over and gripped back, squeezing a little tighter than John was expecting.

“So, what’s Moriarty’s end game?” John asked into the darkness. He hadn’t opened his eyes.

“I don’t know.” Sherlock’s voice was calm and contemplative, and it was a masterful performance.

John knew it was a performance because silvery, toxic dread and frothing fear trumpeted across the bond. If Sherlock had been telling the truth, if he really didn’t know Moriarty’s end game, then there would have been some metallic excitement or something that showed how eager he was to figure it all out, but there was just fear. And dread.

“Liar,” John said wearily. “You’re frightened, so it must be bad.”

“How do you know that?” Sherlock snapped. No instant denial or scoffing – he must be really fraying at the edges.

“It’s what I do.”

“Yes, but how do you know?” Sherlock hissed. “How do you always know? With everyone?”

John shrugged and repeated himself. “It’s what I do.”

“But how?”

“It’s not exactly something I can explain.” Or felt prepared to, after Baskerville.

Sherlock exhaled harshly through his nose – not exactly a huff or a sigh, but certainly an expression of petulance.

“So…what’s going to happen?” John pressed.

Sherlock was silent for a disturbing amount of time. “It’s fine, John. It will all be…fine. You’ll be alright.”

That sounded far too final for John. “I don’t really care whether I’m alright or not.”

“I do,” Sherlock said.

John was having trouble recognising what Sherlock was feeling. It felt like toughened wood, fibrous and hardened by rough weather with streaks of tar-scented bitumen. He’d never felt anything like this from Sherlock before. Was it…resolve? Determination? They weren’t really emotions, but John didn’t know how else to describe it.

He was so wrapped up in trying to unpick what he was feeling from Sherlock that it took Sherlock stiffening beside him to make him realise that Kitty Reilly was approaching.

--

At least Sherlock finally picked the lock on their handcuffs, though John wondered why he’d left them on so long.

John was so involved in the argument with Kitty (and trying to somehow mitigate the sheer, sharp-varnish desperation that was hissing from Sherlock like steam) that he completely missed Moriarty’s approach. He felt it when Moriarty was right outside the flat, of course – that emptiness couldn’t be missed up close – but he only had enough time to tense and regret that Sherlock hadn’t kept the gun.

The door opened and Moriarty strode in, the very picture of the tired but devoted boyfriend. John stood there, feeling as though he were rooted to the ground, watching Moriarty babble and plead as though he were the innocent one, as though Sherlock was the one who should be in jail, and the force of his anger and indignation literally took his breath away. It washed out into the room like a tide of stinging light, and he dimly felt Kitty and Sherlock twitch with it but all his focus was on Moriarty and the sucking hole that ate those emotions as if they’d never been.

John stepped forward, gathered every scrap of fear and despair he could, dredging up memories of his worst nightmares and worst experiences and shoved it at Moriarty, hard. He tried to power it on the force of his hatred alone, and pushed more and more until it felt like he was dragging his guts out through his mouth. He pushed hard enough to send a dozen people running for cover.

And it didn’t work. The emptiness took everything – everything – and left John wavering on his feet, suddenly as tired as if he’d run twenty kilometres through the hot sun in full gear.

It didn’t work. It didn’t work, and John had no idea what he was supposed to do next.

And then Sherlock buggered off to do something important all on his own, but at least John got to rant at Mycroft.

--

Perhaps calling Sherlock a ‘machine’ was a bit of a low blow, especially when John could feel the evidence to the contrary, but he just wanted some kind of reaction from the man. Anything other than this low-level sadness and percolating guilt that had been gnawing at John through the bond, and he barely reacted to the news that Mrs. Hudson had been shot.

Of course, it was only when John saw Sherlock on the roof – his fear and distress and guilt and pain loud and bright as a beacon – that he realised why there’d been no reaction.

Sherlock must have known it wasn’t true. He’d known, and he’d let John go anyway.

Not for the first time, John reflected that this empathy thing would have been a lot more useful if it made it impossible to lie to him.

At first, he had no idea what was happening, and then Sherlock said it was his note and no, no, this had to be some kind of cruel joke. Sherlock couldn’t be talking about…

John pushed every single particle of joy and purpose, happiness and contentment and love (yes, love) – every positive emotion Sherlock had ever made him feel – through the bond, trying to give Sherlock a change of heart, trying to make him think twice.

It didn’t work.

--

John knew he was in shock. He didn’t fight the blanket that draped across his shoulders, didn’t acknowledge the paramedics that buzzed around him like midges, poking at the deep bruise on the side of his head.

It had to be the concussion. John’s brain had been rattled, that was why nothing made sense. A short trip to the hospital, and everything would get sorted out, and then he’d understand.

He’d seen Sherlock die.

But the bond was still there. It was crawling with guilt and fear and pain, but it was still there, as though it were echoing the last impressions he’d received from Sherlock. John wondered numbly if this was what it was like to have a phantom limb.

It was insane, it was crazy – John had finally snapped. Sherlock was dead (oh Christ, Sherlock was dead, dead and never coming back), and if his empathy was going to thrum with Sherlock’s feelings just before he’d suicided for the rest of his life, then John was going to ensure the rest of his life was very short. He had a gun, after all.

John closed his eyes and leaned against the frame of the ambulance – which the paramedics didn’t like and they started urging him to open his eyes. But John wouldn’t; he was looking inwards, looking at the bond and willing it to stop, to just stop, to shut up because Sherlock was dead and dead men didn’t feel emotions.

Unless he was feeling consistent proof of the afterlife, and at that thought John actually laughed. Laughed and laughed until there were tears in his eyes and streaming down his face. Laughed until he bent over and vomited on his shoes.

Fear and guilt surged through the bond, as if Sherlock had somehow seen John do that, and John shoved comfort and love at the link in a last-ditch attempt to get it to shut up, to wink out or do whatever it was supposed to do…

And the bond responded. The fear eased, and the guilt didn’t vanish but solidified somehow, like a bad decision made for the right reasons.

And then John knew.

Sherlock was alive.

--

Part Three
Part Four

Empathy, Part Two

blind_author — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 15:12:37 GMT

Part Two

bond (noun)
1. something that binds, fastens or holds together

--

Harry often bemoaned that John didn’t call or write or email, and John would make conciliatory noises and then still forget to do it because he could never explain to her why he forgot.

When he was a kid, John had spent a lot of time with his sister. He’d healed her scrapes and bruises a few times, and it was a rare day indeed that passed without Harry’s familiar emotional signature surging and ebbing at the back of his mind.

It was only when she left home that John realised Harry’s emotional signature was more than just ‘familiar’ to him – it was a constant. Whether they were separated by four feet of hallway or almost six thousand kilometres of land and sea, John always knew how Harry was feeling. Which meant he forgot to actually talk to her about it.

John had often wondered exactly what it was he’d done to form the bond, but he could never pin down the exact reason. Because he spent a lot of time with her? Because they’d sometimes fallen asleep together, so exhausted that the line between their separate emotions blurred and ran in John’s head until he couldn’t tell what feelings were his own and what were Harry’s? Because he’d taken on her pain to heal her so many times during their lives?

John didn’t know how he did it, but it wasn’t going to stop him trying to do the same with Sherlock.

His bond with his sister meant he always knew where she was – not precisely, not like a map, but more like a game of hot-cold. It meant he could heal her from a distance, like that time she’d contracted liver cancer while he was in basic training (and John was in no hurry to live through a year of chemo in the space of five minutes ever again – officially, the cancer had been listed as a misdiagnosis).

Of course, there were downsides to it as well – Harry’s emotions came through much clearer, and affected John much more than anyone else’s. It was one of the reasons he tried to avoid her when she was drinking – he needed to be in a good place himself, emotionally speaking, to resist her or they just dragged each other into a tailspin of misery.

Which was probably why he felt so apprehensive about the bond. He was going to give himself a direct window into Sherlock’s emotions, which were volatile enough at the best of times – what would happen if John could compound his black moods, could drag him down even further without even meaning to?

But on the other hand, John had no intention of letting Sherlock wander into danger without him. He wasn’t going to watch Sherlock walk into a trap again, not without knowing there was something he could do to help him.

If he really was going to try putting his empathy to use again, he might as well go the whole way.

At least Sherlock was nearby, since he’d fallen asleep on the sofa. He often did that after big cases – he wouldn’t sleep a wink all through it, but would crash as soon as it was over and sleep like the dead. And by this point, the adrenaline from the pool would be wearing off as well; Sherlock might like to play it cool, but John had felt the raw, electrified fear that had filled him as soon as he realised that John was strapped to several kilos of Semtex.

So John waited fifteen minutes to make sure Sherlock was genuinely asleep, then knelt down beside him – fighting the ridiculous urge to brush Sherlock’s hair off his forehead – and carefully entwined their fingers.

He’d never had any idea what he’d done with Harry to form the link between them. But he could feel it, like a weak glow in the back of his mind, so he did the best he could to mimic it. He took a deep breath, and tried to push his emotions at Sherlock, the way he did when he was trying to influence someone. Except he wasn’t pushing just one emotion but every emotion, all of himself, hoping that something would latch on, would catch and stick…

Something jolted in his chest, like his heart had been lightly squeezed and released. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but there was definitely something there. Not quite the weak warmth that Harry was, but brighter and sharper and hotter. Maybe because he’d linked himself to Sherlock deliberately this time, rather than it happening by accident.

He probed the link, testing it, and yes, that was definitely Sherlock. The same impression of depth and vastness and secrets John would never discover even if he explored for the rest of his life.

And now it would be with him forever, tucked up inside his chest and head next to the soft, throbbing glow that was his link to Harry.

He released Sherlock’s hand.

He’d never deliberately formed a bond with anyone else before, not even Mary. He tried not to think about what that meant. Instead, John simply went upstairs and crawled into bed, only bothering to remove his shoes.

--

John awoke the next morning to the deafening crash that was his bedroom door bouncing off its hinges, and a flood of fear from Sherlock. He jerked upright, automatically reaching for some sort of weapon – his gun was too far away, but his alarm clock was heavy enough to do a decent bit of damage – until he realised Sherlock had stopped in the doorway, and the tremors of fear and panic were abating.

“What’s wrong?” John asked blearily.

His reflexes were still hair-trigger, but his brain needed about fifteen minutes of run time before he was properly woken up.

“Nothing,” Sherlock said hastily.

“No one charges up the stairs like an escaped rhinoceros because of ‘nothing’,” John pointed out.

Sherlock looked affronted. “I did not charge-”

“Yes you did,” John interrupted, smothering a yawn. “So what’s wrong?”

Sherlock was shifting his weight on the balls of feet, as if he were considering simply running away from the conversation. But he probably felt that was beneath his dignity.

John was starting to get rather worried. “Sherlock?”

“…you weren’t there.”

It was mumbled, and seemingly directed at the curtains, but John knew what he’d heard.

Didn’t mean it made any sense though. “Um…what?”

“I woke up, and you weren’t there,” Sherlock repeated, looking as though every syllable physically pained him.

And John understood.

“Stupid, really, idiotic,” Sherlock muttered, in the rapid-fire speech he usually used for his deduction. “There was no sign of a break-in or a struggle, I hadn’t even checked your room, and yet…how do people function like this? It’s absolutely hideous-”

He broke off, and John revelled in the cool flicker of surprise that lashed across the bond – it seemed he could still surprise Sherlock now and then, good to know. Of course, his attempts to surprise Sherlock didn’t usually involve walking up to him and hugging him, but John was willing to take his victories where he could.

At that thought, he settled his arms more comfortably around Sherlock’s waist. He wasn’t squeezing, just holding and standing close enough that his face was pressed against the side of Sherlock’s neck.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock asked, holding himself rigid.

“Trust me, this helps.” John deliberately sent feathery comfort and stone-hard love along the bond, trying to soothe away the last remnants of Sherlock’s panic.

Slowly, as though he thought if he did it gradually enough John wouldn’t notice, Sherlock put his arms around John’s shoulders. At first they were just resting there, but Sherlock’s grip got incrementally tighter and tighter, until it bordered on uncomfortable.

John just waited. He knew Sherlock cared about him – even if he wasn’t an empath, Moriarty’s promise to burn Sherlock’s heart out while John was wrapped in explosives was a particularly unsubtle anvil. As was Sherlock’s expression when he first stepped out and opened the coat.

So yes, Sherlock cared about him, John had never doubted that. Though he didn’t care in the way Moriarty had implied – John suspected Sherlock didn’t do romantic entanglements, and that was fine. First and foremost, he was John’s friend, which meant John wasn’t going to burden him with…this.

It was just a silly little infatuation anyway, sprinkled with a bit of hero worship. It would go away, he was sure. Or more precisely, he hoped.

Because being Sherlock’s friend was one thing. Being in love with Sherlock…well, John suspected that was very fast road to a whole lot of heartbreak.

“You’re not allowed to get yourself strapped to a bomb ever again,” Sherlock said abruptly, yanking John out of his contemplation.

John snorted. “I promise I’ll try to avoid it in the future.”

“I mean it,” Sherlock snapped, suddenly tense. “You need to be careful, he…”

Sherlock’s voice trailed off like an engine winding down, and the bond quivered with sick confusion and elastic-tight worry and a strangely lost, almost helpless kind of feeling.

John would have liked to tell him everything would be fine, but that would only be a lie. So he settled for, “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

Sherlock nodded vaguely, but it was still a long time before his emotions quieted. And an even longer time before he made any move to let John go.

--

John was twenty-two when he fell in love. Her name was Mary, and she was a pre-med with an interest in punk rock and the kind of unashamed laugh that could fill a room. They were in the same group for practicals, and a friendly conversation had led to drinks, which led to dinner, which led to them tumbling into Mary’s bed and not leaving until morning.

It had started out casual – they were friends who occasionally had sex, and while John had heard of that ending messily it had seemed to work for them.

Until the night Mary had come to dinner from the hospital, and John had finally identified the soft, glowy feeling that had been permeating her for weeks.

It was love. Mary was in love.

John had spent the next day in a haze, wondering what to do about it, if he should do anything about it. What could he say anyway? Nothing that referenced his empathy, not if he wanted to get his degree without a detour to a psychiatric facility.

Mary was in love, and John knew about it – that much couldn’t be changed. So John took a long, hard look at himself and asked if he loved Mary, if he could love Mary?

And the answer was yes.

So they still went to dinner and drinks but now John considered them dates, and thought that they were ‘going steady’. He was on the verge of asking her to move in with him when she told him their arrangement had to come to an end; she’d fallen in love with a nurse at the hospital.

John knew that it was only his empathy that got his hopes up with Mary; if he hadn’t been aware of the love she was feeling and mistakenly attributed it to him, he would never have thought it was anything more than friends with benefits.

Still, he couldn’t help feeling a little bitter.

He and Mary remained friends, but they fell out of touch when he went into the army. John fell out of touch with a lot of people then.

--

John could tell he and Sarah weren’t going to last – he’d got much better at this stuff since Mary. But he thought they were coming from the same place, at least. Neither of them were looking for marriage and babies, but they both wanted some company and some uncomplicated affection.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t upset when she ended it. Not depressed, not torn up inside and feeling his own sorrow and loss like razors under his tongue, but certainly upset.

So he decided to have a lie-in to sleep off the emotional exhaustion, and was drifting in that wonderful place where you weren’t quite asleep but weren’t quite awake and knew you had absolutely no commitments for the rest of the day. His bonds were throbbing contentedly – Harry was asleep in her own bed, and Sherlock had been checking up on his homeless network for the past two days but was now approaching the flat. John spared a sleepy brain cell to hope that he wasn’t going to do any experiments involving loud noises or fire.

The bond shivered briefly with curiosity, then suddenly sent waves of irritation and confusion, and John tried to rouse himself to respond, bidding farewell to his luxurious lie-in.

“John!”

John dragged himself out of bed just in time for Sherlock to fling open the door to his room, stride over the threshold in a way that said he’d worked himself up into a proper snit, before stopping dead in his tracks as though a wall had materialised in front of him.

“We really have to have a talk about you battering down my door,” John muttered.

“You’re naked,” Sherlock said, in what John had come to think of as his ‘I’m surprised but trying not to show it’ tone.

“Well done,” John yawned.

He was still drowsy, but he woke up very quickly when he felt a hot, shaky flash of lust from Sherlock.

It disappeared as quickly as it had come – likely deliberately smothered beneath gruesome mental images – but John knew what he had felt. He felt it again – stronger and hotter – when he crossed the room and bent over to pull some underwear out of his bottom drawer.

But then this was nothing new. John was aware Sherlock was attracted to him, and he was equally aware Sherlock didn’t want to do anything about it.

“Is there a particular reason you were yelling my name on a Saturday morning?” John asked.

Sherlock blinked, and John saw him consciously move his eyes up to John’s face. “You didn’t text me.”

John tried to drag some kind of sense out of that statement, and failed. “Which means…?”

“Lestrade texted me half a dozen times asking for my whereabouts, and they only cease with the message ‘just texted John, he says you’re safe, talk to me when you can’.”

“And? Did you actually want him to keep texting you?”

“How did you know I was safe?” Sherlock demanded, looking almost affronted. “I even got a text from Mycroft, which meant I managed to shake his spies for at least a day, so how did you know I was safe?”

It was times like this that made John think it would be much, much easier if he just told Sherlock about his empathy. But then he remembered how eager Sherlock was to examine and dissect anything unusual, and a lifetime of caution reared its head. He knew Sherlock cared about him, but did he care about him enough not to experiment on him?

John didn’t know and, childishly, didn’t want to find out – he’d thought Kemp was a good bloke, after all, so what did that say about his judgement? It was far safer to let things continue as they were than to risk rocking the boat.

“You were checking up on your homeless network,” John said eventually. “I didn’t think I should be worried until a few days had passed.”

Sherlock looked and felt baffled and mildly affronted. “How do you know that?”

Because he had a psychic link that allowed him to know where Sherlock was and what he was feeling. But John couldn’t say that, so he settled for listing the other, more tangible signs.

“Because there’s been a bit of a cold snap, you’ve been collecting old newspapers, and you didn’t need all those scarves and gloves for yourself.”

Sherlock was silent, and the expression on his face would have confused John if he hadn’t been able to feel the tremulous wonder that whispered through the bond.

Then Sherlock blinked, and seemed to come back to himself, the wonder suddenly crushed beneath irritation and a touch of resentment.

“We’re out of milk,” he snapped, turning around and hurrying down the stairs.

“I bought two litres only yesterday!” John cried. “What the hell did you manage to do with it in the ten minutes you’ve been home?”

--

“Do you just carry on talking when I’m away?”

“I don’t know – how often are you away?”

John’s first reaction was worry. Could Sherlock feel the bond somehow? Certainly Harry had never shown any sign of being aware of their connection, but the link with Harry wasn’t nearly as strong as the one he had with Sherlock.

The bonds certainly gave John a feeling of companionship, a reassurance that he was never alone, not really, but he’d been the one to create them.

He told himself it meant nothing – that this was just one of Sherlock’s many idiosyncrasies. He didn’t know, he couldn’t know.

And even if he did, he wouldn’t bundle John off to a laboratory…would he?

John liked to think not. But sometimes there were too many similarities between Sherlock and Kemp for John’s comfort.

--

Lloyd Kemp was John’s favourite dissection partner in his labs. Most people didn’t seem to like him – he had a knack for saying disturbingly insightful things at the exact wrong moment – but he had steady hands and a weird sense of humour that was strangely compatible with John’s. Even if he did tend to treasure some beliefs about crystal healings and the like.

So when they were wandering back to the college drunk off their arses and Kemp was hit by a car that crushed his torso and collapsed his lung and just kept on going, John didn’t even hesitate to bend down and heal him. A collapsed lung was a new experience, and it took him several long moments to get his breath back.

When he was able to see past the pain, Kemp was staring up at him like a knight of the Round Table that had just found the Holy Grail.

John told himself Kemp was too drunk to remember anything – and if he did, he would chalk it up to the alcohol and move on.

His mistake.

Three days later, they went on another trip to the pub, and John had been out after his first drink – Kemp had slipped him something.

When he woke, he awoke to bright lights and bondage. Which might have been nice, under other circumstances, but rising out of a groggy haze to find himself strapped to something a lot harder than a hospital bed was rather unnerving. His head felt like it was full of concrete, and he couldn’t feel anything below his waist.

He’d glimpsed Kemp in the corner of his eye, wearing a surgical mask and bloodstained gloves, and still John hadn’t panicked. He didn’t quite know why – perhaps because he thought it was some kind of prank? Because all he was picking up from Kemp was blue, pulsing curiosity with no taint of malice and so he didn’t think he had anything to worry about?

“Wha…what’s going on?” John slurred, his lips and tongue feeling thick and uncooperative.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Kemp said, with the high-pitched laugh he always used when he was worried about something. “I’ve given you an epidural, so it shouldn’t hurt-”

John heard nothing past ‘epidural’.

“What?” he mouthed weakly, feeling as though he was slowly sinking into some deep, dark pit.

He couldn’t feel his legs. There was a tiny, horrified part of John’s mind that just didn’t want to look, but he looked.

He could see his own femur. His left thigh had been cut into, skin and blood vessels and stringy bits of fat peeled back like a curtain, revealing the underlying muscles and tendons and knotty nerves and the dull yellow of bone.

John thought he might have been trying to scream. His mouth was open, and his chest was constricted and tight, but there was no sound coming from his throat.

“I always believed in it, you know,” Kemp was saying conversationally, somewhat muffled behind the surgical mask. “Knew there had to be more than just pills and surgery – I mean, look at the placebo effect! Our brains influence our healing so much, I just knew that there had to be someone who could influence other people’s healing as well. And then when you saved me after the car…”

This is just a nightmare, John told himself. This is just a nightmare. It has to be, it has to be – there is no way this is actually happening…

“Don’t worry,” Kemp said again, turning back to John with a scalpel in one hand and a small jar of liquid in the other. “I just want a sample, just a bit of the lateral cutaneous nerve to see how your neurons are different.”

And with those words, it was easy (far too easy) for John to take all the fear he was feeling, every scrap of his terror at his worst nightmare being realised (imprisoned and experimented on), gather it up like a fireball and shove it onto Kemp. Every single, sodding bit of it.

It screamed out of John’s head like a tornado, and he could feel the instant it hit Kemp and latched on hard, the force of the emotions practically pummelling him. Kemp’s face contorted, looking as though he were about to scream but couldn’t find the breath, and then he fell. John heard the sharp sound of glass breaking, and then Kemp’s fear and pain just…went out. Like a blazing lamp suddenly turned off.

John passed out again, but he was never sure if that was whatever drugs Kemp had given him or the shock of feeling all that emotion – of feeling Kemp himself – just die.

--

It had all been sorted out by the time John woke up, of course (Kemp had been using an empty practical lab and someone had found them). Kemp’s family had a history of psychiatric issues, and the stress and pressure had caused him to have an episode. And at some point, the strain had simply gotten too much for his apparently weak cardiovascular system, and he’d had a heart attack.

If John had actually wanted to truth to come out, he would have been able to poke a lot of holes in that story. What kind of delusion came on so abruptly and suddenly no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary until Kemp was cutting him up? How did a man in his mid-twenties with no history of cardiovascular disease suddenly die from a massive heart attack?

But the last thing John wanted was for people to start getting curious about what had happened. If the university wanted to sweep Kemp’s little ‘episode’ under the rug, then that was fine with him – they could sweep away.

He was more concerned with what it said about him. He knew his little empathic nudges physically affected people – fear would make their palms sweaty, a little burst of happiness would help them relax – but he’d never suspected it could be done to that kind of degree. He’d given Kemp a heart attack by pushing his own fear onto the man; what other kind of damage could he do?

For a little while, John didn’t think it made sense – how could emotions overload someone’s system like that? He hadn’t been having a heart attack, so how had he given Kemp one?

Then they took him off the good drugs on the second day, and his more logical thoughts began to come back. And John realised that in a way, he probably should have expected it. He’d been dealing with other people’s emotions all his life, and his body had adapted to be able to cope with that kind of mental upheaval. But Kemp hadn’t. John has shoved his fear onto him and when his fear had become Kemp’s fear John had still been afraid, so he’d just kept pushing and pushing, until he’d pushed Kemp far past what the human body could cope with. Far past the level of fear anyone would experience naturally.

Really, John was amazed it took Thomas to make him realise how awful his empathy could be.

--

John felt uncomfortable from the moment they entered Irene Adler’s house. It wasn’t the deception (god knew he’d had enough practice with that, working with Sherlock for so long) but the way his empathy was tugging at him, the way pain and sorrow were prodding him for acknowledgement like barbed wire stung between his bones.

It only got worse when he actually walked into the room. He knew Sherlock thought it was Irene’s nakedness that meant he was having difficulty looking at her, but he couldn’t have been further from the mark. It wasn’t Irene’s body that was disturbing John, it was her mind.

Or more specially, her emotions; they reminded him far too much of Moriarty. The feeling of emptiness was the same, but where Moriarty’s hollowness was blunt, worn smooth with time – whatever happened to make him that way, it happened a very long time ago, long enough that it didn’t hurt anymore – Irene’s hole was jagged, open and bleeding the soft echoes of where there used to be…something. Something more than grief and loss and a need for something to do, for anything that would take her mind off it for even a moment. Moriarty was like a black hole, consuming everything so that not even light escaped. Irene was like someone screaming from the bottom of a deep, dark well.

He could feel other emotions from her, of course. Happiness, triumph, smugness, curiosity…but they felt thin. A paper mask daubed with bright colours to cover the hole beneath.

“Could you put something on?” he asked, mainly because he couldn’t see any clothes lying about so she’d have to leave the room to put something on, which would give him some time to collect himself.

She didn’t leave, of course, just borrowed Sherlock’s coat (and John wasn’t jealous of the way they didn’t even seem to be aware of his presence except when they were using him to snipe at each other, he wasn’t). He sat beside her on the sofa, and tried to push some happiness, safety and peace on her, a big ball of emotions like a purring, contented cat – he just wanted to be able to think past the grief pouring from her like a burst pipe – but it just skated off her like watercolour on oily glass.

He tried again, with the same result. It wasn’t like Moriarty – she didn’t suck it into nothingness, it just…didn’t stick.

John had always known his little nudges were palliatives, not cures, but he was still a little shaken by a grief so deep he couldn’t even make the faintest impression on it.

What could have happened to hurt someone that much?

He was actually quite glad for Sherlock’s order to ‘man the door’ – it meant he could get out of the room and get some distance between him and Irene’s suffocating emotions. Sometimes (well, most of the time, really) his empathy was more trouble than it was worth.

After all, he was so busy keeping himself from getting sucked into Irene’s sorrow that he completely missed the men sneaking up on him.

--

Jeanette calling Sherlock his boyfriend had hit a bit too close to home. John was painfully aware that people had good reason to think he and Sherlock were a couple; they had a plethora of inside jokes, he nagged Sherlock into eating and knew what a ‘danger night’ was – he’d even created an empathic bond so he could know if Sherlock was in trouble. John could see why people would think that, but he still resented it.

Not so much for the implication that he and Sherlock as a couple, but the assumption that he’d be dating these women if they were. Okay, yeah, he’d got around a bit in his younger days, but he did not cheat on people, thank you very much!

And John was being absolutely sincere when he said he wasn’t gay. His empathy meant that his relationship with sex and sexuality was…complicated. He only felt sexual attraction if the person was…well, empathically appealing was a good way to put it. If their empathic signature felt nice, then he felt attracted to them. If not, then sex with them – any kind of contact with them – was just unthinkable.

That was why he was attracted to Sherlock, but wasn’t really comfortable calling himself gay. It was why he was attracted to Sarah and Jeanette and all the others, but couldn’t call himself straight (even bisexual didn’t cover it). It was also why he hadn’t felt attracted to Irene in the slightest.

Oh, he could certainly see that she was physically beautiful, but it was like admiring a well-crafted doll – a cold, almost hollow sort of admiration.

Sherlock, on the other hand…what he felt for Irene was a complex tangle of tangy admiration and flickering curiosity and strawberry fascination, with a sprinkling or two of lust. If John was perfectly honest with himself, he was more than a little jealous.

Because while Sherlock did care for him, John didn’t arouse (arouse, ha!) his interest the way Irene had.

‘Maybe I should have wandered naked around the flat now and again,’ he thought, then shook his head.

He’d been having a lot of these thoughts recently, wondering what it was about Irene that had managed to capture Sherlock’s attention and interest so effectively. It was pointless, he knew, but he couldn’t seem to help himself, like tonguing at a sore tooth.

He and Sherlock a couple?

John would never be that lucky.

--

John knew he was staying out of sight for anything to do with Irene Adler, and he knew it was confusing Sherlock. John usually jumped into a case right alongside Sherlock, and even when he couldn’t – like when he had to work or take care of Harry – he was at least curious about them.

But frankly, John just did not want to go anywhere near Irene.

The fact that she was clearly manipulating Sherlock like some kind of toy was only part of it. The fact that Sherlock was falling for it was…alright, it was more significant than he’d like to admit, but again, it was only part of it.

It was the pain. The never-ceasing pain that beat at him whenever she was nearby. After Sherlock had deciphered the code for her, John had retreated to his room for what he felt was a well-deserved lie-down (it was a pity painkillers wouldn’t make any impression on this headache), until thirst drove him back to the kitchen.

“I think you’re avoiding me,” Irene declared as he stepped past her and Sherlock, intent on the kitchen and kettle there.

He doubted tea would help, but it was a psychosomatic thing – tea helped him calm down and relax, after all.

He felt Sherlock’s curiosity spike, and John turned to give both of the geniuses a glance. After his experiences with Sherlock, he knew this was just Irene trying to put him off balance.

“Kind of,” he admitted, because he knew admittance was the best way to derail this kind of plan.

Irene smirked, just a little, a brief feeling of triumph and smugness flashing over that paper mask like a sprinkling of ink and cloudy paint. “Is it because you’re jealous?”

Sherlock wasn’t saying a word, which would have told John how interested in the conversation he was even without feeling Sherlock’s quicksilver fascination flow down the bond.

“No,” John said honestly.

He was jealous – one part of being an empath meant you were very good at recognising your own feelings, having seen them in others so often – but that wasn’t why he was avoiding her.

Irene laughed, low and throaty. “Oh come on, darling, you can be honest. It’s just the three of us, after all.”

She sent a flirtatious smile Sherlock’s way, and John couldn’t help marvelling at the tangled skein of her feelings for Sherlock. There was a sort of idle curiosity and a sense of prideful rivalry, but more than that, there was…wistfulness. As though she wasn’t truly interested in Sherlock, but wanted to be. Wanted something to fill that dark hole inside her, even if it was brief and based on deception and manipulation.

John sighed, and gave Irene one of his gentlest smiles. “Well, if we’re being honest, I thought it would be easier on you.”

“Excuse me?”

He didn’t have to be an empath to know he’d confused her. Confused Sherlock too, come to that, and John allowed himself a moment to revel in it.

“I thought it would be easier,” he clarified. “If you didn’t have to see us together.”

At first, he’d been puzzled, wondering exactly what kind of loss could have left that deep stain of grief on her for so long. And he probably would have remained puzzled if Irene hadn’t come to their flat. But she’d seen them talking and griping, had heard Sherlock’s comment about John calling him amazing, and the each time John had been struck by flashes of jealousy and longing, like the slow drip of spilled wine. But it wasn’t the kind of longing people felt when looking at something they couldn’t have – it wasn’t wistful and yearning but dark and bitter, the kind of longing people experienced when they had something and lost it.

And then John had understood. Irene once had something like that – something like what he and Sherlock had. She’d had someone who’d laughed with her instead of at her, who’d thought she was exceptional when everyone else thought she was a freak, who’d known exactly who and what she was and loved her anyway…and then she’d lost them.

No wonder she didn’t seem to give a damn about anyone or anything, including herself.

“I don’t often admit to this, but you’ve honestly stumped me, Dr. Watson,” Irene said, still smiling. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

She clearly thought he was going to make some envy-ridden comment about her and Sherlock hooking up. Just because John knew why she was doing this – seemingly trying to push them together even as she made Sherlock dance to her tune – didn’t mean he didn’t resent it, just a little.

But she was a human being in pain, and John was a doctor first and foremost, so it wasn’t malice that made him say, “It won’t bring them back.”

Irene blinked, suddenly going perfectly still. “What?”

“Whoever you lost,” John said quietly, staring directly into her eyes. “This won’t make it stop hurting. Trust me, I know.”

He crossed the kitchen in three strides and pressed a hand to her shoulder in commiseration. Irene stared at him, and John knew that he’d honestly caught her off-guard, that she was half-panicking as she wondered if she was really that transparent. He wanted to say something, to reassure her that he only figured it out because his brain didn’t seem to work the way other people’s did, but knew whatever he said would come out sounding like he was some kind of lunatic.

So he just kept his hand on her shoulder and looked straight in her eyes, trying to somehow communicate that he understood. Understood in a way he didn’t really think Sherlock could.

It was just a hunch – it was empathy, not telepathy – but John suspected Sherlock had never lost anyone he really cared about. His parents were still alive, and John thought he didn’t have enough contact with his extended family to really care if they were still alive or not.

But John had lost his parents, had come very close to losing Harry…and he’d lost Thomas. Correction, he’d killed Thomas, so yes, John could understand.

This time, Irene’s laugh was just a little too high, a little too quick to sound entirely natural. There was a measure of desperation in the way she shrugged his hand from her shoulder, as though she couldn’t even contemplate accepting comfort.

“I don’t know what you’ve thought up, but I assure you, you’re wrong,” she stated, making a deliberate show of looking John in the eye.

“Of course I am,” John said quietly, feeling his lips curl into a sad smile. “Just ignore me.”

“John…” Sherlock began, looking and feeling startled.

But the kettle had boiled, and John turned back to the kitchen without acknowledging Sherlock. He went through the motions of making tea, feeling Sherlock’s confusion and concern and something tinged with soft purple admiration. For Irene? John thought it was the most likely explanation.

“I’m going back upstairs,” he said, not looking at either of them as he walked past.

He didn’t think it was a coincidence that Irene left shortly after.

--

“How did you know?” Sherlock demanded.

John blinked, glancing up from his laptop. He was used to random outbursts while Sherlock was curled on the sofa and thinking, but this one was clearly directed at him rather than some phantom murderer or victim.

“How did I know what?” he frowned, unable to stop himself feeling a prickle of anxiety.

Sometimes he was convinced Sherlock was only inches away from discovering his empathy…had he messed up somehow?

“How did you know she’d lost someone?” Sherlock asked, staring at John with the kind of intensity he usually turned on corpses with no clear cause of death.

Oh, it was about Irene – John should have suspected. He could often guess when Sherlock’s thoughts turned to her, because his emotions became strangely wistful and yearning, bright dew drops of admiration and affection and even a light trickle of fear, as though he were afraid of how strongly he’d connected with her.

It was difficult to lie to Sherlock, so John settled for a half-truth. “I knew because I’ve lost people too – I can recognise the signs.”

“What signs?” Sherlock didn’t sound scornful, but honestly curious, apparently eager to resolve this gap in his knowledge.

John tried to come up with a way to express the inexpressible. “Well, she was a thrill-seeker for one, but not the usual kind, and you come to know the types when you work in an emergency room. There are those who do dangerous or illegal things because it gives them a rush, there are those who do it just because they’re idiots who’ve seen it on the telly or something, and then there are those who do it because they need the thrill to stop them thinking, to make their mind concentrate on something other than what they’ve lost. And while she wasn’t suicidal, she wasn’t terribly invested in her own survival – I expect if someone came to kill her, she wouldn’t try to get out of it as hard as she could. She’d try, yes, but it’d probably be a half-hearted effort, just enough to justify it to herself.”

John expected Sherlock to have some kind of response to that – more about how caring wasn’t an advantage or something – but Sherlock was silent. Silent and staring at John.

“Interesting,” he said at last.

Then he folded himself up on the sofa and didn’t speak for the next six hours.

--

Part Two, continued
Part Three
Part Four

Sherlock Fic: Empathy, Part One

blind_author — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 15:07:42 GMT

Empathy

Part One

empathy (noun)
1. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another

--

John always found it hard to pin down exactly when he'd realised what he was doing was out of the ordinary. When you were a child, you thought your world was the only world that existed, that everything that happened to you and everything you did was normal, and no one ever experienced anything differently. Gradually, through comments of 'you can't possibly know that John', 'what an imagination you have' and 'stop lying' he became aware that no one else knew what other people were feeling all the time.

They could tell, of course, from facial expressions and voice tones but they didn't know, not in the way John did. They didn't feel a faint curl of sadness in the back of their mind when someone was crying, they didn't feel a flicker of embarrassment and shame when someone tripped over in the street, and they couldn't cheer someone up just by thinking really happy thoughts at them.

And as he’d gradually realised this made him unusual, made him different, John started trying to hide it. At first because no one believed him, but then because he was frightened they’d take him away and lock him up in a laboratory somewhere. He once saw a movie that involved a man getting a lobotomy, and had nightmares about it for years afterwards.

So his first reaction to Sherlock’s deductions wasn’t affront or offense, but shock, awe and a tentative hope. John had tried to squash it, tried to tell himself to be calm and logical about it, but nothing could silence the tremulous question in the back of his mind.

Is he…like me?

But eventually, he learned that Sherlock wasn’t like him. He was just clever; very, very clever. It was still fascinating and amazing and brilliant and all those things, of course it was…but it was also a little disappointing. Just a little, just in the secret corners of John’s heart.

He used to ask people about it. He’d talk about auras, about psychics, and ask people if they believed it and then watch them, feeling about for a flicker of acknowledgement or fear or recognition.

But it never came. John was alone.

And perhaps that was a good thing. John called what he was doing – or had done, because he was holding to his vow not to use it again – empathy. It wasn’t telepathy, because he wasn’t picking up on people’s thoughts, only their emotions, and it wasn’t clairvoyance because he wasn’t seeing the future, so empathy was the best descriptor he could come up with. But whatever it was, it could do its fair share of damage. And after Thomas, and Kemp…well, it was probably a good thing he’d never found anyone else like him.

Wouldn’t want too many monsters running around, after all.

--

“So, you’ll stay.” It was phrased as a statement, but John could feel the way anxiety suddenly shot sticky black needles through Sherlock’s voice.

“Of course I’ll stay,” John snorted, picking over his fried rice to see if any more of those tasty shrimp pieces were lurking around. “I don’t shoot people for just anyone, you know.”

“Patently untrue – if it were a good cause, you would do whatever you deemed necessary.”

John could concede that Sherlock was right about that; the shooting part, at least. But before the shooting, John had used his empathy.

It wasn’t much. Just a little nudge of concrete-thick confusion and hesitation to slow Sherlock down, make him pause before swallowing the pill, buy John time to get his gun out and load it. But he’d still done it – a vow he’d sworn to uphold, that he’d stuck by for over six months, and he’d thrown it out the window as soon as Sherlock was threatened.

He should probably be more concerned by that. But he couldn’t regret it, not really – he liked Sherlock. The man’s emotions were just so…honest.

People (indeed, Sherlock himself) might claim that the man was emotionless, but he wasn’t. John might have tried to suppress his empathy but he still felt Sherlock’s emotions leaking out of him, wavering through the air like heat shimmers. Sherlock had emotions, of course he did, but he was more controlled about them than other people. At least, those not linked to frustration or excitement – those were always on clear display.

In many ways, it was a relief. Other people got angry, then pretended they weren’t because they didn’t want others to think they had a temper. Other people were sad, and pretended they weren’t because they didn’t want to share their grief with the world. Other people were amused, and then tried to pretend solemnity, because they didn’t want people to think they were morbid or weird. Other people hated, and pretended fondness because it was politic. Other people pretended, full stop, and the mixed signals – the confusion between what his empathy was telling him and what his eyes and ears told him – often gave John headaches.

There was never any kind of confusion with Sherlock, and it was refreshing. Correction, it was bloody magnificent, and John knew he would have put up with a lot worse than casual insults and disregard for his personal autonomy just to tag along after that kind of clarity.

He needed to be careful with this.

--

“Do you object to rich bankers in general or Sebastian Wilkes in particular?”

John turned his head, jerked out of the breathing exercise he’d been engaging in to try to calm himself down. “What do you mean?”

You don’t like him,” Sherlock observed. “You barely spoke to him, and didn’t shake his hand when we left.”

“Yeah, well, he’s kind of an arsehole,” John muttered. He couldn’t say that Sebastian’s frustration had scraped over him like piano wire, setting his teeth on edge like fingernails dragged over chalkboard.

Physical contact always enhanced his empathy (that handshake had been a mistake), but he might have dealt with it better if he hadn’t had to make a grocery run earlier that morning.

Really, this was just one more example of how this whole thing was more curse than gift. If John didn’t have his empathy, he might have stood a better chance at keeping his head when he was dealing with the stupid chip and pin machine.

But he always got so frustrated in grocery stores; so many other people were rushing around –frantic to pick up tonight’s dinner before their kids got off school, wishing the line in front of them would move just a bit faster, cursing the customer in front of them for taking the last bit of smoked cheddar – that John couldn’t help but pick up on it. He always tried to make his shopping trips short because after twenty minutes he started to become restless and impatient, like he was inhaling that cloud of frustration and it was slowly permeating his blood, an emotional form of passive smoking.

The tube was another problem place for much the same reasons, which was why John preferred to walk and didn’t grumble (much) over Sherlock’s love of cabs.

So shaking hands with Sebastian at the bank ended up putting him in a very foul mood. Sebastian was brimming with resentment and thwarted ambition and god, why were so many people so unhappy? There were times when John thought city life was just inherently unsuited for the human race, and everyone should move back to the caves and start over.

“You’re tense,” Sherlock observed. His voice was quiet, probably meant to be soothing, but John’s muscles only bunched tighter.

“Yeah, just…” John shrugged, and told a partial truth. “Too many people.”

Sherlock made a soft humming noise that John assumed was either understanding or considering. But when they hit the tight crush of the street, John couldn’t help noticing that Sherlock was manoeuvring himself to stand between John and the worst of the crowd.

--

John had always known he could make his emotions bleed into other people, and he’d always tried to push positive emotions to make people happier and more relaxed. If he was going to influence people like that, he might as well make it a good influence, after all. At least until…Kemp.

That had been the first indication of how dangerous his empathy could be. Before Kemp, John had never really thought to use it as a weapon.

But he used it as a weapon now – there was someone else in the apartment with Sherlock, someone who smelt of smoke-sharp frustration and oily-bitter determination – and John knew he needed to do something. He pounded on the door and vented some of his frustration, trying to get Sherlock to let him into the apartment.

When Sherlock’s monologue cut off, emotions fracturing into glass splinters of terror, John knew it was time to stop messing around. Kicking in the door would take too much time (and to be honest, John wasn’t entirely sure he was physically capable of it), but there was something else he could do.

John dredged up all the fear he was feeling – along with the memories of every moment he’d ever been scared or hurt – and threw them all at the foreign signature above him. He wrapped the stranger in them, smothered and drowned them beneath unreasoning, unquestioning fright until rational thought was erased and all that was left was the instinctual response.

Run.

John felt the person flee, and smiled grimly to himself.

He’d broken his vow again. And again, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

--

John spent several minutes mulling over how best to approach the matter, but in the end just decided to go for the bulldozer method.

“How bad is your throat?” he demanded.

Sherlock didn’t start, but his face twitched like he was surprised. “My what?”

“Don’t play stupid, it doesn’t suit you – your throat, how it is?”

Now Sherlock was looking intrigued. “How did you know?”

John couldn’t exactly confess that he’d been able to sense a second person in the apartment, so he went for the next best thing. “Your little deduction-rant cut off and now your voice sounds hoarse; it’s not much of a leap to think something happened. Did you suddenly develop a cold?”

“There was someone in the apartment, he tried to choke me and he left this,” Sherlock admitted, pulling out a folded black lotus flower and speaking very rapidly as though he thought he could distract John.

John gave into an impulse he’d been feeling for a long time, and reached up to cuff Sherlock across the back of the head. “You see? You see? This is what happens when you lock the trained soldier out of the apartment!”

“I didn’t know he was in there,” Sherlock protested.

“And that’s why you take me!” John hissed, keeping his voice low.

Sherlock huffed and said nothing, which meant he knew he’d made a mistake and didn’t want to admit it.

John knew he should leave it at that – he’d broken his vow too many times already. And in spite of what he’d used to think, he clearly didn’t have control over this facet of his ability – Thomas had proved that.

But on the other hand, he could ease Sherlock’s pain, ensure there were no complications…

God, he was like a drug addict, always making excuses. Besides, it probably wouldn’t work.

But John already knew what he was going to do. “Come here, I can do something for your throat.”

Sherlock looked vaguely suspicious. “If it involves drinking some sort of horrid liquid-”

“Do you see a tea kettle tucked under my jacket? Now shut up, come here, and trust me.”

To John’s surprise, Sherlock did just that, stepping well into his personal space and staring down at him with an air of expectation. He radiated a tangy sort of curiosity, the low engine-thrum of excitement that was presumably about the case, bright sparks of bitter pain from the attempted strangling and a rich, bright glow of simple, uncomplicated trust.

It had been a while since someone had felt that sort of thing for him, and John needed a moment to compose himself before he reached for Sherlock’s neck. He pushed the scarf aside and laid his fingers over the reddening mark, massaging it gently.

Then he took a deep breath, and reached for Sherlock’s pain.

The first time he’d done this, he’d been twelve and their dog – Gladstone – had wriggled under their fence and been hit by a car. John had been the one to find him, and he’d taken the whimpering puppy in his arms, for a moment wishing that he could take the pain himself…

And then agony had roared through his body. John had passed out on the spot, and woken to Gladstone licking his face. The dog had been whining and wagging his tail, and moving like he’d never been hit by a car at all. The previously mangled back legs were as straight and healthy as they’d been that morning, and only the blood on Gladstone’s fur and in the gutter told John he hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

It had taken John years to understand what he’d done. Somehow his ability to feel and influence other people’s emotions translated to being able to heal them as well. John wasn’t sure how that was connected, but it only worked if he was willing to take on the pain of their injury. And not just the pain of the infliction, but all the pain they would have gone through as it healed, compressed into the space of perhaps a minute. It didn’t work if he told himself his patient was going to die unless he healed them – his empathy had never been influenced by logic, after all. He had to care for the person enough to be genuinely, instinctively willing to take the pain from them, which made the number of people he could heal very limited indeed.

But Sherlock was one of them. At least, John was fairly certain he was one of them.

He was proven right when pain raced through his throat, sharp and sudden. It felt like his neck was collapsing, his throat being scraped raw as every little hurt or twinge Sherlock would have experienced until the bruises vanished rushed through him in the space of a minute.

Good thing he was used to this. John kept his head ducked to hide the grimace, and swallowed rapidly to try to quell the lingering soreness.

“That was very quick,” Sherlock said, so abruptly John twitched.

He probably should have drawn it out, massaged a bit longer to make it seem believable, but it was too late now.

“Pressure points,” John lied. “Those years of medical school are good for something, you know.”

He allowed himself one last stroke of his thumbs across Sherlock’s throat, checking that he’d healed it properly, and was surprised by the silk-shiver of desire that hissed up from Sherlock to greet him.

Startled, John glanced up at Sherlock, but the detective’s face was turned away, staring up at the house he’d just left.

It was a little disappointing, but not terribly surprising. Just because John’s empathy meant he knew Sherlock leaned more towards celibate than asexual didn’t mean he wanted John, and feeling desire for someone was a far cry from actually wanting to have sex with them.

And when someone was feeling so affectionate and in love it felt like trilling birdsong and cotton floss sticking to the sides of John’s mouth, it didn’t necessarily mean they were in love with him. Mary had taught him that lesson. It had been painful, but not nearly as painful as the lesson Kemp taught him. Or when Thomas taught him the final lesson, the one that made him give up his empathy as a bad job, a mistake, some freaky mutation in his genes that should never have happened in the first place.

Yet…this was the second time he’d used his empathy to save Sherlock’s life. And maybe, if was very careful, he could use it to heal people again.

But just small things. Nothing like Thomas. Nothing like that ever again.

John was uncomfortably aware he sounded like alcoholic pleading that they only drank on special occasions.

--

There hadn’t been many times in his life that John had been glad to go home alone after a date, but this was one of them; being knocked about the head didn’t make for a good night.

John brushed his fingers over the gash behind his ear, held together with three stitches. It stung painfully, and he quickly withdrew his hand – it wasn’t a terribly large injury, but the scalp was very sensitive.

“They said you didn’t have a concussion," Sherlock said. "You could have gone home with her.”

He sounded grumpy, but John could feel the guilt and worry Sherlock was stewing in, thickening in his lungs like noxious smoke.

“It was the first date,” John pointed out. “Whatever impression Mike may have given you about my dating prowess, I'm not in the habit of taking people to bed that quickly.”

“He did mention something about three continents,” Sherlock smirked.

He seemed amused, but there was a bitter tang of envy beneath there, along with scouring prickles of something like resignation and a thick blue flash longing. In short, it was far too much for John to sort out after he’d come close to having his skull bashed in.

So he ignored it and grimaced at Sherlock to express his disdain of that stupid nickname Murray had saddled him with.

Most of his friends had been astounded by his so-called ‘success’, but John couldn't really take any pride or satisfaction in it. His empathy ensured he always knew when someone was genuinely interested in him, and often warned him when he was starting to do something that would put them off. He had a small window into people's minds while everyone else was stumbling around with conversational cues and body language – of course he seemed like some kind of Casanova by comparison. Which sounded brilliant, but in reality was often just messy and painful, and ensured a one-night stand was almost an impossibility for him – other people might have been able to have sex with people they were essentially indifferent to, but John had to genuinely like them. He’d tried going to bed with people he didn't really care about on only two occasions, and each time the near-constant contact with their emotions his empathy provided made him tense and frustrated, like a cat having its fur rubbed the wrong way.

He didn't feel that with Sarah, though. She was...well, nice. Her emotions were sweet and clear and honest, like the peal of a chapel bell.

People’s emotions changed, of course they did, but everyone had their own…signature, for lack of a better word – a strange mishmash of sight/sound/smell/taste/touch along with something else, something beyond those five senses, something that was purely his empathy. The emotions might vary, but the signature stayed the same, and in John’s mind, Sarah would always be linked to the image of a church bell sounding out the dawn.

John's mother had felt like a meadow, like soft grass and pastel flowers with little insects buzzing over them. His father had felt like cloth, like threads of all different colours and textures weaving together, sometimes separate, sometimes blending to create something entirely new. Harry felt like a jewel, like a bright red ruby set in cold silver, all sparkling and sharp, sometimes so bright it hurt his eyes.

It meant he was able to identify people with his empathy – when he was a kid, John had always known when Harry was coming home from school because he could sense her walking down the street – but only if they were familiar to him. After all, he'd had no clue he and Sherlock were apparently being followed for days. And it hadn’t warned him he was about to be kidnapped; empathy wasn't telepathy, and while he'd been able to feel that their kidnapper was metal-bright determined and resolved, there had been no fireworks of anger or hatred to warn John they were in danger.

At least he'd known not to panic and try some last-ditch, suicidal escape plan when he felt Sherlock coming. He'd felt him from almost half a mile away – Sherlock's signature was very...unique. It always made John think he was standing in the midst of a labyrinth of caves – immense and intimidating and sparkling with astonishing crystal formations, fading into shadows and hidden depths.

Though something about Sarah seemed to irritate Sherlock for some reason. John couldn’t pin down why – the cavern of Sherlock’s emotions got dark and flooded and choked his throat when Sarah was brought up. There was the gritty silt of irritation, yes, some vague sharp flavours of jealousy (probably resenting those moments when he wasn’t the centre of John’s attention) and something that felt puzzlingly like shivering insecurity and resonating loneliness, but that was as much as John could make out.

Sometimes, John wished everyone’s emotions were exactly the same, instead of the billions of shades and nuances and mixtures they actually were – he’d probably have managed to sort out every possible combination by now if that was the case.

But he wasn’t that lucky, and instead he was stuck with strange echoes of feeling and a whole lot of confusion.

Just like everyone else. Well, not really.

--

If Sarah was a church bell and Sherlock was a winding set of caverns then Molly was like a river. Clear and calm apart from the occasional floods and flurries, and far deeper than it looked.

But the man with her was different. The happiness and excitement were genuine, but they seemed thin, as insubstantial as mist drifting across…nothing. A gaping hole like an empty grave, like someone had reached inside and cut out everything inside him.

John did his best not to touch Jim or look at him. He was almost grateful when Sherlock told Molly he was gay (almost, because really, that could have been done with a lot more tact) because at least she’d been warned off him. And John doubted anything he said would have made an impact – what could he have said, after all? He didn’t think a ‘sorry, but your new boyfriend feels like the kind of person who’d kill people just for fun’ would go down well.

He’d still considered saying something, but then he remembered how wrong his empathy had been about Kemp, and kept silent.

Still, considering that introduction, he wasn’t entirely surprised when he woke up in the pool changing room, his hands cuffed to the railing, to find Jim grinning down at him. He stared for a moment, then made himself look away, trying not to get sucked down into that black emptiness.

“What, no exclamation of surprise?” Jim drawled. “I’m disappointed, Johnny – don’t tell me you don’t remember me.”

“Jim, dating Molly, works in the IT department at Bart’s and seemingly gay,” John recited wearily. “Though I’m assuming none of that is actually true, and that the name ‘Moriarty’ means something to you.”

“He fell for that little trick with the underwear then, did he?” Moriarty giggled. “How delightful.”

John wasn’t surprised to learn it was a trick. He didn’t think Moriarty was gay – he didn’t think he was anything, really. He think Moriarty could be anything, not with that…emptiness.

He made himself look again, made himself stare into that yawning void and couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to make Moriarty like that.

Something must have shown on his face, because Moriarty’s expression suddenly went blank and flat, dead eyes glittering like a shark’s.

“Is that pity I’m seeing on your face?” Moriarty hissed, leaning in close. “Pity? When you’re the one about to be strapped to a bomb?”

John had no idea what Moriarty was seeing, but it probably was pity. Because he looked at this man, this man who’d killed so many people just to attract Sherlock’s attention, and the main thought in his head was ‘you poor, sad sod’.

“Don’t you dare pity me!” Moriarty suddenly snarled, slapping John across the face.

John automatically turned his head to absorb the blow, absently noting that Moriarty clearly wasn’t used to hitting people. He had slapped John instead of punching him, and it was a rather ineffectual slap at that – just a sharp sting, and it probably wouldn’t even bruise.

It was loud though; a sharp smack of flesh against flesh, and the sound seemed to restore Moriarty’s composure. He stepped back, straightened his suit, and grinned.

“You already know how this works, so I won’t bore you with the details,” he said, tossing an earpiece into the air and catching it again. “Do exactly as I say, say exactly what I want, and I might let you live through this.”

With anyone else, John might have been able to tell if they were lying – there might have been a sharp, illicit thrill at the idea of making him dance to their tune when they were just going to kill him anyway, like the icy point of a needle pricking his thumb. There might have been smugness, thick and rich like melted chocolate, there might have been stinging-sandpaper guilt or chili-scented anticipation or something. But with Moriarty, that emptiness offered him no clue, no hope, not a single shred of insight.

He hadn’t seriously pushed anything on anyone since he’d made that Lotus bloke run away from Sherlock. The slight nudges to Sherlock when the detective was in one of his moods were always half-hearted, always tinged with the thought that Sherlock would come out of it eventually, and maybe he should just leave him to his sulk. But now, staring into Moriarty’s face, John gathered all the fear and despair he was feeling and pushed.

And it was sucked into the emptiness like light going into a black hole. There and then gone, without leaving even the slightest impression.

The feeling of his emotions spiralling away into the void left John feeling like he was standing on the very edge of a very tall building. Sick with vertigo, the drop making him feel dizzy, and he jerked his gaze away from Moriarty before he vomited.

And he did exactly as Moriarty ordered.

Maybe this was what he deserved. John didn’t really believe in karma or some kind of cosmic justice, but maybe this was his punishment for what he’d done to Thomas.

--

Afghanistan had been when John began to understand other, less pleasant aspects of his empathy. Well, it was hardly pleasant to be able to feel people’s misery and pain simply by virtue of close proximity, and Kemp had shown him that his empathy could have devastating consequences, but he’d never considered that his empathy could truly be a weapon before.

Until he found he could create a neat hole in firing lines by pushing fear and despair like mustard gas onto the enemy soldiers, to the extent that they dropped their guns and cowered while he ran to treat the wounded. Until he realised he could raise the flagging spirits of his comrades with some subtle nudges of hope and courage and happiness like sweet-smelling coffee. The officers always liked it when he came around, saying that everyone seemed much happier after he’d visited.

John always laughed it off and gave some weak excuse about being a people person. It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed this side-effect of his empathy – even when he wasn’t deliberately trying to influence others, he seemed to instil a sense of calm and relaxation. He wasn’t sure why, but it was very useful when treating patients – they had to be well and truly worked up before they even started to get nervous.

He also found it easier to heal people in the army. You were much more motivated to take on a comrade’s pain than an acquaintance’s. And for a while, it was good; he was healing people, and he’d finally found a use for his empathy – there was actually a point to picking up on people’s heartbreak and terror.

Then John fucked up, and it changed everything.

Thomas was ginger and freckled, and burned whenever he forgot his sunscreen. He seemed to find the whole thing more funny than irritating, though, and grinned at John whenever he asked how he was doing. He had a habit of looking up at John through his eyelashes, and he shared the care packages he got from his parents, and John thought maybe, maybe…

Then Thomas tripped a mine when they were scouting the road for a convoy.

John managed to tackle him off it, but half of Thomas’ right leg had been blown off. John had automatically put pressure on the injury, reaching for Thomas’ pain to heal him, in that moment not even caring if half the bloody squad saw what he was doing.

But then something had hit his left shoulder like a hammer, and John felt himself falling. He felt his link with Thomas fading, his own pain overwhelming his empathy, and in his panic he grabbed for every ounce of Thomas’ pain he could feel and pulled.

John passed out on the spot. And when he awoke, he had a hole in his shoulder and a pending honourable discharge for medical reasons. All of which he didn’t really care about at the time because they’d had him on some very strong drugs.

They began to wean him off the morphine on his second day of consciousness, and it was then that his scattered thoughts came together enough to ask about Thomas and if he could see him. His doctors weren’t happy about it, but John promised quite faithfully to be a good patient as soon as he’d seen Thomas, and threatened to be as difficult as possible if he wasn’t allowed to. Which wouldn’t have worked back in London but this was Afghanistan, and perhaps it was a bit unethically sound to take advantage of overworked medics, but John didn’t care.

“It’s not pretty,” was Dr. Nguyen’s warning. “His leg’s fine, but we think he has brain damage.”

For a moment, John had been sure she was joking. “Brain damage?”

Nguyen nodded. “He seems to be catatonic. We’d need someone to get a look at him and make sure it’s not trauma related, but…”

She shook her head and sighed. “I’ve seen catatonic people, and he isn’t catatonic. I honestly have no idea what’s wrong with him, but brain damage is the most likely explanation.”

John’s chest clenched in dread, and he was grateful she left him to enter the room alone.

Thomas was sitting on the bed, staring at the wall, and didn’t even glance at John when he entered the room. Very much like a catatonic patient, except for the small smile and almost blissful expression on his face.

“Hey, Thomas,” John said, not really expecting a reply.

Thomas didn’t so much as blink. But John wasn’t deterred – if the brain damage was physical, maybe he could heal him?

He sat beside Thomas bed on the bed, and took his hand, reaching for his pain…

But there was none. No pain, no damage, no trauma, only pure contentment.

John had taken Thomas’ pain. But not only the physical, as he’d intended to – he’d taken all of his pain, every negative memory and emotion. He hadn’t just given Thomas relief from physical agony; he’d given him peace. Permanently.

And it was sickening. Because everyone needed a little discontent in their lives. It was what gave people ambition, made them strive for new things – the feeling that ‘okay, things are nice now, but they could be better’.

He’d left Thomas completely content, completely at peace, no matter what happened around him or even to him. And it was the most horrifying thing John had ever seen.

Thomas’ family wanted to meet him. John declined. He was invalided home. John didn’t fight it.

He’d always known he had to be careful with his empathy. But he’d never dreamed he was capable of something so hideous. He’d never thought he could reach inside someone and take away everything that motivated them, everything that made them who they were, and leave them an empty, smiling shell that wouldn’t even resent him because they’d lost the capacity for resentment.

John didn’t think it was a coincidence that the day after he saw Thomas, he started limping. With the leg that Thomas was missing.

After all, he’d always known he was unusual, but that was the first time he’d considered himself a monster.

He never made any kind of effort to connect with people after his discharge, not even Harry. He locked himself in his flat and stared at his gun and contemplated eating a bullet.

Because he was monster. And at the end of the story, the monsters didn’t get happy endings.

They died.

--

John was still shaky when they got back to the flat. Facing death was one thing – been there, done that – but the memory of that awful, sucking emptiness made him feel nauseous every time he thought about it. He hadn’t even tried to push anything onto the snipers, afraid Moriarty would just suck it all away.

But he wouldn’t take this lying down, either. John might have been willing to accept his own demise as punishment for Thomas and insurance he would never do such a thing again, but if Sherlock’s death came with it? That was a line he refused to cross.

For a while – a long while, really – John had considered his empathy useless. It didn’t identify Kemp, after all, and his healing of Thomas had been disastrous. Still, he couldn’t help but remember that his empathy had made him wary of Moriarty when even Sherlock had dismissed him. His empathy had allowed him to delay Sherlock taking the pill, and maybe it had some monstrous aspects, but maybe – now that he knew he had to be careful, now that he knew the horrific things it could do – maybe if he was careful, he could make it a force for good. Like he had back before…Thomas.

Maybe his empathy could be useful again, instead of a painful, misery-inducing burden.

“Sherlock…” he began, slowly and carefully, making tea just to give himself something to do. “Hypothetically, say that-”

The sudden crash of anger and fear from Sherlock was like the detonation of a grenade. “What did he do?”

John blinked, trying to reorient himself after the sudden emotional backlash. “Sorry, what?”

Sherlock was standing in the entrance to the kitchen, his eyes dark and his emotions wild. “You’re uncomfortable, your leg is giving you trouble, and while you usually value eye contact when speaking you’ve yet to meet my eyes since we entered the house. All indications are that you are wrestling with something unpleasant that you want me to know, but fear my reaction to, so I will repeat – what did he do?”

Sometimes, John thought it was almost funny, how Sherlock could see almost every detail of a situation but miss the one that explained it all. He was uncomfortable, and his leg was giving him trouble (Moriarty’s emptiness was of a different flavour than Thomas’, but it was still a disturbing reminder of his sins), and he was trying to discuss something unpleasant …but Sherlock had assumed it was linked to Moriarty, that something had happened to John before he’d arrived at the pool.

Which John supposed wasn’t an unreasonable assumption to make, considering.

“Nothing,” he said quickly. Then pulled a face and amended, “Well, apart from the bomb and the snipers, but you were there for that part. And before that, he just did a lot of strutting around and talking, though he did slap me once.”

Sherlock’s fear dimmed like a failing bulb, but the smoky anger was still present, though it was tempered with treacle-thick confusion. “He slapped you?”

John nodded. “Pretty rubbish slap, actually – barely even hurt. Harry gave me worse when we were kids.”

Sherlock snorted, shimmering amusement and cottony relief softening the edges of his fury as the corners of his mouth quirked, and John grinned.

Then he looked down, forcing himself to concentrate on dipping his tea bag into the hot water. “Hypothetically-”

“Oh, must we have the charade?” Sherlock sighed. “I know you’re referring to yourself, you know you’re referring to yourself, can’t we discard the-”

“No,” John said firmly, interrupting whatever tangential rant Sherlock had been about to launch into. “And yes, we must have the charade – it helps me, so you can just put up with it.”

He took Sherlock’s silence – and the vague throb of curiosity and something that felt disturbingly close to lumpy-armchair sympathy and minty worry – as consent.

“Hypothetically,” he repeated, just to hear Sherlock scoff. “If someone had been badly injured, and his doctor performed a risky, never-before-tested medical procedure to try to save him, and it killed him, would you say that doctor had committed a crime?”

He thought framing it as a possible crime would get a more honest response from Sherlock.

“Would they have died anyway?” came Sherlock’s voice from behind him.

John thought of the mangled mass of thigh – bone and gristle exposed to open air, everything below the knee just gone, blown into pieces, the way blood had squirted from the femoral artery, the already-depleted supplies in his kit and how far away they were from the base – and nodded.

“Then I don’t see the moral dilemma. Medical procedures sometimes go wrong, don’t they?”

There was a note of reassurance in Sherlock’s voice and in his emotions, and John realised that Sherlock was trying to comfort him. For a moment he almost laughed, wondering what the MET would think of the self-proclaimed sociopath now, trying to console John about losing a friend (and possibly something more) without the slightest trace of mockery.

But the thing was, it worked. Somehow those words allowed John to relax, allowed him to finally shelve the guilt he’d been carrying for months. It was still there, of course, but it didn’t weigh as heavily on him. The thought had been growing for weeks, the thought that perhaps he’d been too vicious with himself, that all doctors lost patients and made mistakes, and the point wasn’t that they were perfect but that they were trying…but he’d needed someone else to say it.

If it had been an ordinary, non-empathic medical procedure, he’d have been reviewed by a board. Instead, he was being reviewed by Sherlock.

And John tried not to think about the fact that Sherlock’s tacit approval and absolution made him feel much better than any review board he’d ever seen.

He’d already made up his mind about the bond, but he couldn’t deny that made his decision seem that much more justifiable.

--

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

The Republic of Heaven, Part Fifteen (contd.)

blind_author — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:30:48 GMT

Title: The Republic of Heaven
Rating: M/15+ for this bit
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings: Slash, some violence in this part.
Pairings: Sherlock/John.
Summary: HDM AU. John and Amarisa find some answers about Moriarty, and prepare to go north with Sherlock and Raniel…

(Title page by birddi )

Part One: The Architecture of Our Lives
Part Two: Stepping Stones
Part Three: Foundations
Part Four: Shadowed Archways
Part Five: Buried Labyrinths
Part Six: Crossing The River
Part Seven: Glimmers in Darkness
Part Eight: Perdition's Bridges
Part Nine: Building The Republic
Part Ten: Lit From Within
Part Eleven: Structural Integrity
Part Twelve: The Reader
Part Thirteen: Spiraling Down

Part Fourteen: God Killer
Part Fifteen: Dark Hands

Dark Hands (contd.)

It had been a long day, so John was glad to go to bed a few hours after dinner, leaving Sherlock and Raniel still in the library, pouring over what was supposedly a copy of Lord Asriel’s notes and muttering to each other. Amarisa curled beside him and he pulled the blankets over them both, idly wondering if Sherlock and Raniel would return for some sleep (or some sex) or if they planned to spend the whole night in the library.

When a sharp nudge woke John in darkness, his first through was that Sherlock had decided to come to bed after all. He blinked and fumbled in the blankets for a moment before his fingers found Amarisa’s muzzle. His dæmon growled softly in warning, laying a heavy paw over his arm.

“Shhh,” Amarisa whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

Sure enough, he could hear soft footsteps in the hallway, approaching the door.

John didn’t bother asking who it was. If the wolfdog had thought it necessary to wake him up, it clearly wasn’t a scent she recognised. At least waking up in the darkness meant his eyes adjusted quickly. Moving as silently as he could, John slid from the bed and grasped the lamp on the bedside table, following the cord to the wall and quietly unplugging it.

It wasn’t his gun, but it would do.

The footsteps stopped outside the door and John held himself poised, the lamp half-raised with Amarisa at his side, ready to attack as soon as they entered.

If this was some new ally that Sherlock had sent to wake them up, they were going to feel really stupid.

The door swung open, and John brought the lamp down.

He ended up hitting a tall woman across the arm she’d raised to defend herself with. Amarisa snarled – the blood-curdling snarl she reserved for when they or the people they loved were in genuine danger – and lunged upward, snapping at the hummingbird dæmon that had launched itself from the woman’s shoulder.

The intruder recovered quickly though. As John stepped in close to press his advantage – shouting in an effort to wake up the rest of the house – she threw some kind of powder into the air, and her dæmon used its wings to gust it into John’s face. It felt like fine ash or soot and smelled like potpourri, but John could feel the spell hanging off it and he automatically shut his eyes.

When he opened them, he couldn’t see a thing. It was like that moment just after the lights shut off in a previously brightly-lit room – the second where you genuinely couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

But John didn’t have time to panic. Give that he hadn’t heard Amarisa whine in pain or yelp in surprise he was going to assume his dæmon was unaffected, so he took another swing with the lamp in the hopes that their attacker hadn’t had enough time to move her head from where he’d last seen it. The crack of impact reverberated up his arm and in his ears, but from the sound John could tell she’d raised her arm again and he hadn’t managed to catch her head.

The fact that the lamp was torn out of his hand almost immediately afterwards was also a big clue that the witch wasn’t incapacitated. At least, John was going to go ahead and assume she was a witch – the bird dæmon wasn’t a tell, not really, but if human women could strike people instantly blind with handfuls of mysterious powder John was sure he’d have heard about it. She’d obviously got him with some kind of spell –the talisman would have helped with that, but John had left it on the bedside table like an idiot.

At least he was wearing boxers. Not that they would be much help, but fighting for your life naked added an extra edge of indignity to the whole thing.

Knowing that he’d be entirely lost as soon as the witch moved away, John stepped forward and tackled blindly. They went down in an uncoordinated heap, the lamp clipping the side of John’s temple as they fell. He grabbed at what he thought was a wrist and yanked, hoping the witch didn’t have a good angle to get him in the groin.

A knee hit him in the thigh and John twisted automatically, hooking his leg around an ankle and hoping entangling the witch’s legs with his would be enough to keep him from getting kicked in any painful areas. Using the grip on his attacker’s wrist as a vague gauge of the location of her other arm, John lashed out but ended up with a handful of what felt like hair.

There was a high, frantic trill of panic that told him Amarisa had grabbed the hummingbird, and in the moment when the witch’s body went momentarily lax with her dæmon’s pain, John used his grip on her hair to drive her head into the floor.

She went limp, but John wasn’t about to trust that.

“Is she out?” he asked Amarisa.

There was a sound like a cough and a soft thump that John took to mean Amarisa had dealt with the witch’s dæmon. Then, “Yeah, she’s down. Are you-”

“Yes, I’m blind,” John confirmed, carefully freeing his limbs from the tangle and scrambling to his feet. “Which I’m really hoping is temporary. We need-”

“To get out of here, right!”

He felt Amarisa’s shoulder bump pointedly against his legs, and John wound his fingers tightly in the wolfdog’s ruff, right where the fur was the thickest. The fingers of his right hand, so his dominant hand was free. He’d learned to shoot right-handed, of course (it was a requirement, unless you wanted spent shell casings flying across your face), but everything else – punching, blocking, writing and the like – was done left-handed.

Amarisa led him back to the bed and he felt the muscles in her neck and back bunch and coil as she picked something off the bedside table. John held out his left hand and felt cool metal drop into it, round and heavy – the talisman Hasna had made for him. He traced his fingers along the chain until he found the larger ring at the end and pulled the links through it to make a loop. John lifted his hand from Amarisa’s neck – fighting back an instinctive flash of fear as he was left disoriented and truly feeling his lack of sight for the first time – and slid his fingers and wrist through the loop so the watch dangled from his wrist like a bracelet. At least this way, it would stop or at least mediate any other spells that might be cast on him.

He put his hand back on Amarisa with relief, clenching his fingers in her fur again.

He’d like to get dressed, but John knew they couldn’t spare the time. At least one enemy had already infiltrated the house – there could be others. And they could be going after Sherlock even now.

He felt Amarisa’s chest expand as she inhaled deeply.

“There’s someone in the hall,” she whispered.

“Think they heard us yelling?”

“Don’t know – I didn’t smell them before, so they weren’t waiting outside.”

The door was still open, so Amarisa led John behind it, tucking them both out of the immediate line of sight to the hallway.

There was a crash from what he thought was downstairs – it was hard to pinpoint – and it sounded like glass and wood, like some heavy cabinet had fallen over. There was a shout that John identified as Aeliana, and he quelled the urge to run recklessly out into the house; it was almost physically painful, but if there was one thing the army had taught him it was that rushing in without a plan did much more damage than sitting back and waiting for the right moment.

It took thirty seconds before John began to hear footsteps. They were soft but hurried, like someone was trying to stay quiet but had a schedule to keep. He pressed his left hand against the door, readying himself to shove it forward if they tried to enter his room.

He was completely still, concentrating on keeping his breathing as silent as possible when he felt it; the tell-tale aura of magic that never felt like anything else. It was like a temperature change or a shift in air pressure, but somehow entirely unique.

The footsteps hesitated outside his open door, then – probably as they spotted the unconscious witch on the floor – turned sharply and hurried into the room.

He felt Amarisa rear up on her hind legs, obviously putting her front paws on the door and shoving it forward. There was a sharp crack of impact, and John didn’t hesitate. Letting his dæmon lead, they ducked around the door and made for the open hallway.

“Arm up!” Amarisa yelled.

John obeyed, his hand automatically making a fist to ensure it would be more difficult to break his fingers. Something hit his arm – wood, or something like wood – and slid off his elbow. The spell was clearly imbued in whatever the weapon was – it was a strong one, his skin was practically tingling with it – and John twisted his arm, trying to snatch it.

His fingers closed around what felt like a club. It was definitely wood and vaguely cylindrical, with a diameter that fit comfortably in his palm. John pulled, and was rather surprised when the weapon was surrendered. It was much easier than he thought it would be, like they weren’t prepared, and they hadn’t hit him nearly as hard as they could have. So maybe whatever spell was on the wood was meant to incapacitate him somehow and the talisman had protected him?

Either way, John wasn’t waiting around to find out. He shoved hard with the end of the club, and caught what might have been a shoulder or part of an arm – there was an accompanying cry, anyway, and a thud that suggested his attacker had been driven back against the wall. He kept his fingers clenched in Amarisa’s fur as the wolfdog bounded onwards, out into the hallway and turning a sharp left.

Before, John had real difficulty remembering the layout of the house, but now he could feel the map unfolding in his mind, with details of furniture and window orientation he hadn’t even known he’d registered. Danger always cleared John’s head, made him eliminate the extraneous details and focus like a laser.

There was a shout from behind him but John wasn’t going to risk engaging again and only quickened his pace.

“Stairs!”

Their progress down the stairs was more tripping then running, and John was quite sure he would have broken his neck if not for Amarisa’s guidance. He heard the loud twang of a bowstring and he ducked on instinct, surprised when he felt a rush of air past his shins – who tried to shoot someone in the leg?

Obviously, someone who was trying to cripple him, not kill him. Coupled with the fact that the powder had blinded him instead of suffocating him or burning his face off or something equally unpleasant, John thought it safe to assume the purpose of this excursion was to capture, not kill. But why?

Amarisa turned sharply, dragging John into a room (he thought it was that big place that had all the china) and then left through another door into the dining room.

“Think we lost them?” he whispered.

“For a while, at least,” Amarisa panted.

“Right.”

Then John took a deep breath and did something he’d never tried before – he tried to consciously feel for other spells.

It was like waiting for the slight shift in air pressure that signalled the breath or movement of an enemy soldier. He held himself completely still, barely breathing, and tried to somehow feel his way through the darkness surrounding him.

John was never sure if it was the fact that he was blind and his other senses were trying to compensate, or that this was the first time he was actively trying to use his sensitivity, but he began to feel something. The most over-powering ‘signal’ came from the wood clenched in his hand, but as soon as looked past that…

It was like the spark of a match in darkness, or the blast of chill air from a fridge. He could feel the magic clinging to the witch he’d just evaded (or maybe that was spells clinging to something she was holding or wearing), and he could tell she was still stalking through the hallway – she hadn’t seen him duck into the room. But there was another pinpoint of magic, what felt like two or three rooms over, and another above his head, at a slight angle, like the magic was several rooms over from his bedroom.

Well, he and Amarisa couldn’t afford to wait around until someone stumbled across them.

“Ready?” his dæmon whispered.

“Ready.”

Then they moved.

--

Sherlock knew something was wrong as soon as he heard the library door open.

Raniel sniffed the air, and Sherlock felt him bristle, the polecat’s white fur rising against his neck and chin.

Really, the flicker at the corner of his eye wasn’t a warning – it was redundant.

Sherlock ducked away, feeling Raniel’s claws dig into his shirt as an arrow flew over his head and slammed into a bookshelf at the level of his throat.

The witch – brunette, less than one hundred years old, no dæmon in sight but it was obviously a songbird of some kind – realised she wouldn’t have time to nock another arrow and cast her bow aside as Sherlock lunged. His right hand folded into a fist, planning to catch her across the jaw and hopefully put her into a headlock.

She was stronger than he’d suspected. Faster too. The witch raised her arm to block the blow and grabbed Sherlock’s wrist, yanking him forward. He broke her grip and twisted away – never close with someone who wanted you to close – and he felt Raniel let go of his collar and jump free of the scuffle.

That was when John entered the library in only his boxers, one hand holding a short cylinder of wood that bore a passing resemblance to a nightstick, the other resting on Amarisa’s neck, the wolfdog bristling and snarling at his side.

Dæmons tended to stay out of fights, except when they were personal enough to drive the dæmons themselves to attack each other. Dæmons had often fought on the battlefield, true, but that was before war became the purview of guns and grenades and tanks rather than close and personal attacks with maces and swords. Yet Amarisa always stood beside John when they felt they were in danger, braced as if preparing for an attack, and Sherlock and Raniel often wondered if it was a hold-over from their schoolyard days.

Dæmons often fought as children – it was a common sight in a playground to see dæmons scuffling, flickering through shapes as quickly as they could. Victory often went to the most imaginative child, the quickest-thinker, the one whose dæmon could shift the fastest, the one with the quickest mind and reflexes (Raniel had been undefeated). But after they settled, it became a different story. They still felt the need to compete, but in different ways – bird dæmons swiped and dive-bombed others, rodents nipped and bit, lizards and amphibians used tongues and claws, snakes hissed and danced, flying insects tried to out-manoeuvre others, induce them to slam into walls or doors or windows.

Fish and worms and the like were at something of a disadvantage, but people with predator dæmons liked to fight, liked them clawing and biting at each other in tired dominance rituals that after high school they deemed too childish. How many boys and girls with a leopard dæmon or a coyote or a bear wanted to fight Amarisa? How many took on the small, shy boy and his enormous black shadow?

And how many walked away with a bruised and beaten dæmon?

“Five eleven, standing!” Amarisa yelled.

Sherlock had a moment in which to wonder why she’d said that before John swung, tapping the witch over the head with his weapon. And it was a tap, compared to the kind of blow John was capable of delivering. It shouldn’t have knocked her unconscious – dazed her, maybe, if they were lucky – but she dropped to the ground as if she’d been shot.

“I don’t know what spell that is, but this is really handy,” John commented, swinging his club. “Sherlock, Raniel, are you-”

“Fine,” the polecat interrupted, hurrying over to rise up on his hind legs and push his face against Amarisa’s chin.

Amarisa ducked her head to fuss over him, nudging and licking his face and neck, but Sherlock noticed she didn’t step away from John. John had clearly been roused from sleep, judging by his state of undress, but at least he’d remembered to take the talisman (it glinted comfortingly from his wrist). There was a red mark on his arm, the type that would turn into a bruise in twenty-four hours, but he didn’t seem to have any serious injuries…

Then Sherlock realised John’s eyes weren’t focused on him. They weren’t focused on anything; they were roving aimlessly, the way people did when they were trying to locate something important in a clutter of useless detail…

Or when they were trying to locate a light source in darkness. He remembered what Amarisa had said, calling out the witch’s approximate height and position…

It wasn’t fear that shot up Sherlock’s spine – he was calm and in control, and he was most certainly not frightened. “You’re-”

John nodded. “Yeah, blind as a bat. Except not really, because bats can see.”

“Blind as a mole, maybe?” Amarisa offered. “The witch that attacked us – the first one – threw something in his face.”

They both sounded far too unconcerned for Sherlock’s liking.

“The first one?” Raniel echoed. “Explain, now!”

At least his dæmon could be trusted to get to the heart of the matter.

“We woke up when we heard someone in the hallway,” John said. “Turned out to be a witch, and we unfortunately gave her the opportunity to throw a handful of powder that clearly had a spell on it. Next thing we know, I’m blind and relying on Risa to find my way around. Got attacked by another witch, and managed to take this off her-” John waved the stick, as if it wasn’t perfectly obvious that was what he was referring to. “And it’s really handy; knocks people out pretty much instantly – we’ve got three others down already. Your Mum was having a spot of trouble in…okay, I have no idea what room that was, but she’s gone to find everyone else.”

Blinded? Temporary, it had to be, but how could it penetrate the talisman? Effectiveness of talismans worked via the strength of the maker’s feelings, and if Hasna had made it…

Sherlock glared. Which would be lost on John, but Amarisa’s eyes worked perfectly well. “You didn’t pick it up, did you? The talisman was right there, and you didn’t think to pick it up until you’d already been blinded.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” John huffed. “But when we’re under attack, we naturally think of being shot instead of having a spell cast on us!”

Raniel snorted. “If you’re blind, what are you doing here?”

“I followed your scent,” Amarisa said, grinning her dog-grin. “We wanted to be sure you two were okay.” She looked down at Raniel with a mock-severe expression. “You know, normal people call for help when they’re being attacked.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the polecat grumped (though he submitted to Amarisa nuzzling his ears). “Why did you rush out waving your little stick instead of raising the alarm?”

“Hey, I yelled!” John offered.

Raniel snorted. “From the other side of the house?”

Amarisa swatted him gently. “We came to help.”

“Of course you did,” Sherlock sighed. Because of course they did. Blinded and already assaulted, of course they came to help.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. God forbid you show a sense of self-preservation.”

“Well, they couldn’t hide from me, could they?” John pointed out. “Witches tend to have spelled objects on them, and we found out that when I’m actually trying to sense those things my range is about…ten metres? Maybe fifteen? Not very impressive, really, but-”

“Oh yes,” Raniel scoffed. “Terribly unimpressive from a skill that’s not meant to have range in the first place.”

Sherlock made sure his footsteps were loud and clear, so John didn’t flinch or startle when he put his hand on his shoulder.

John grinned – still looking far too calm for someone who was blind (temporarily!) – and slowly extended his arm until his fingers bumped Sherlock’s chest. He trailed them up over Sherlock’s shirt and neck, cupping his jaw before leaning and kissing him. It wasn’t deep, but it wasn’t exactly chaste, either; close-mouthed but hard and with a tiny flicker of tongue. Sherlock had the feeling this was the sort of kiss John would deliver when the danger was over and he was feeling affectionate.

“We thought Mycroft could stop attacks like this,” Amarisa remarked. “Or at least be warned about them? Though come to think of it, Aeliana never said exactly how he’d prevent attacks-”

Sherlock interrupted. “Moriarty has proven we’re dealing with someone Mycroft’s unprepared for.”

Usually he’d be feeling smug about that. But Moriarty was different – he wasn’t another point scored in the endless duel with his brother, he was a genuine threat to John and Amarisa. And other people as well, obviously, but Sherlock and Raniel found that less concerning.

Though this incident had showed them that Moriarty might also be a genuine threat to their parents, which wouldn’t be tolerated either.

“But why attack now?” John went on. “Moriarty’s been working with them all along, and I thought he was having far too much fun to kill you. And even if he wanted to get rid of us, the witches weren’t actually trying to kill us, were they, Risa?”

“Those arrows were never aimed above the knee,” the wolfdog confirmed.

She obviously hadn’t noticed the one lodged in the bookcase, well above knee-height – probably too preoccupied looking out for her temporarily-blind human. So they’d shot to kill with Sherlock and Raniel, but not John and Amarisa?

“And this stick knocks people out but doesn’t actually hurt them,” John added. “Well, besides the whole ‘hitting people with a stick’ bit. I mean, Aeliana said death spells were pretty much once in a lifetime deals, but still-”

“Maybe they needed to take us alive? Except that other witch was certainly trying to kill Aeliana, so maybe they don’t want other witches alive?”

“Probably too much trouble.”

Raniel leaned against Amarisa’s legs as she debated with her human, staring into Sherlock’s eyes. They could only think of one explanation for why witches would try to take John alive, but no one else.

They’d always known it was only a matter of time…but somehow, they’d still expected it to be longer. They’d thought they had more time to anticipate Moriarty’s move, more time to plan, to persuade John and Amarisa to put their safety above the cause for what must be the first time in their lives.

They’d probably never know exactly how Moriarty had found out, what questions he’d asked, how long until he’d believed the interpretation…but they knew what he’d discovered.

Moriarty knew John could read the alethiometer.

It was the only explanation. Moriarty had been so dismissive of John at the pool; even though his clan knew about the prophecy, he’d been so utterly convinced John was nothing remarkable he wouldn’t mention him at all to a raiding party, let alone instruct them not to kill him. And the witches had tried to kill him once before – they wouldn’t stay their hands for any reason of their own.

But at the same time, Sherlock knew that wasn’t all of it, not quite. If Moriarty feared John’s ability to read the alethiometer, killing him was a guarantee that threat would be removed. But instead, the witches had tried to subdue John – blinding him to make him easier to overcome, carrying a spelled object that would force him into unconsciousness, trying to put an arrow through his leg so he couldn’t run.

Moriarty had told them to bring John and Amarisa alive. Which meant that he had a use for them.

Sherlock hadn’t been the type to develop fidgets or nervous affectations (no matter what John claimed) but now he could see the appeal of them, some mindless repetitive task to settle his nerves before he informed John and Amarisa that Moriarty knew what they could do and wanted it for his own use.

But then Hasna entered, blinking a little at the sight of John in his boxers (Raniel bristled and wrapped himself possessively around Amarisa’s foreleg) and announced, “The house is clear, and there are no more sentries waiting outside.”

“Looks like you missed most of the excitement,” John grinned in Sherlock’s general direction.

He turned his head towards Hasna’s voice even though he didn’t quite manage to face her, as though he was trying to acknowledge her presence as best he could without his eyesight and without actually touching her.

Of course, Sherlock and Raniel knew ‘the excitement’, as John had put it, was only beginning. This raid might have been unsuccessful but there would be others – if Moriarty wanted John and Amarisa, he wouldn’t rest until he had them.

It seemed Hasna had finally noticed there was a problem. “John, you’re-”

“Yeah, one of the witches blinded me with some kind of spell. I’ll probably need your help with that.”

“Of course.” Hasna’s expression changed, suddenly turning serious. “Do you have the alethiometer?”

There was an urgency in her voice that arrested Sherlock’s attention instantly. John had clearly noticed as well, because he frowned and his hand tightened in Amarisa’s fur.

“No, Mycroft took it somewhere, why?”

But Hasna had gone pale, and Sherlock knew what she was about to say.

“It’s not where it should be – it’s gone missing.”

Amarisa made a strange sound, half-growl and half-sigh. Raniel turned his head into her chest, rubbing the side of his face against her sternum, glancing at Sherlock from the corner of his eye.

Apparently the raid wasn’t as unsuccessful as they’d first assumed.

Hasna looked nervous – understandably so, if Moriarty’s clan could attempt a kidnapping in this house, could sneak in and snatch an alethiometer from under their noses – but John, accustomed to take every blow life could throw at him, only sighed and pinched his eyes shut.

“Well, we’ll have to deal with that, then,” he said. “But first I need to get dressed – I’m freezing.”

--

The Republic of Heaven, Part Fifteen

blind_author — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:26:35 GMT

Part Fifteen

Dark Hands

John and Amarisa thanked Grayson and Samieyah for their help, and left the library quickly – Sherlock and Aeliana needed to know about this as quickly as possible.

Provided they could find the way back to the entry hall where they’d left them. To find the library, they’d ended up going through the kitchen, a room full of computers and another that looked like a huge version of the lab Sherlock was always trying to establish in their flat.

“Stupid, oversized mansion,” John muttered. “No wonder Sherlock can hold that map of London in his head like that – he had plenty of practice growing up.”

“Like you’re ever lost with me around,” Amarisa snorted. “I can always follow our backtrail.”

“You only perfected that when we were seventeen,” John pointed out. “We got lost plenty of times before then.”

“It’s difficult to follow a trail when the scent I’m trying to follow is all around me!”

“I’m not criticising,” John grinned. “Just making a point.”

The moment of levity passed quickly, as their thoughts were inevitably dragged back to what Grayson had told them.

“Well, at the least the ‘crossing between worlds theory’ has been pretty much confirmed,” John commented as they made their way through the kitchen. “I mean, I don’t think it’s coincidence that Moriarty has two…things…that can be used to open up a doorway to another world.”

“How do you think that works?” his dæmon wondered. “Crossing over?”

Then – as suddenly as a slap – both she and John were giggling.

“That sounds like some kind of TV show about psychics,” John snorted, then pressed his lips together. “And I have no idea how it would work, and given what Grayson said, I don’t think he really knows either.”

“He said there was a lot of energy involved, like breaking a barrier…” Amarisa mused, leaving her train of thought hanging.

John’s fingers brushed the top of her head. “I guess that makes sense, for there to be some kind of barrier – I mean, if the physicists are right and there are an infinite number of parallel universes where everything that can happen does happen somewhere, then there’d have to be something keeping us from bleeding over into all the other universes, right?”

But what kind of barrier needed the energy of an intercision to break it?

“Ask the alethiometer how long Moriarty’s had the knife,” Amarisa ordered abruptly.

“Right now?”

She nipped the edge of his palm in remonstration. “Yes, right now.”

John had been planning on asking that question after they told Sherlock and Raniel the information Grayson had offered, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt to do it now.

It felt strange to sit down in the middle of the hallway, but it wasn’t as though anyone was going to care. Amarisa put her head over his shoulder as he turned the dials, trying to empty his mind of every thought but the question; how long has Moriarty had the knife?

The answer came within moments, as it always did. The theft was recent and the shards were still in transit – they wouldn’t reach Moriarty for another two days.

Amarisa snorted at that, nudging her human’s chin. “Can you imagine his face when he finds out that the witches weren’t lying and the knife’s really broken?”

John giggled, and reflected – not for the first time – that it wasn’t only Sherlock and Raniel who possessed an inappropriate sense of humour. While he was fairly certain Moriarty knew the knife was in pieces, he doubted he knew it could no longer be used to pass between worlds. And imagining the look of yes, surprise, on his face when he found out was certainly amusing. He was almost tempted to ask the alethiometer what he’d do, but he refrained.

It was strange, but every time he used the alethiometer John felt that he shouldn’t ask too many questions. It was like meeting some wise sage – you only asked them things that were really important, and didn’t want to bother them trivialities. It wasn’t logical, but then neither was his ability to read the alethiometer, so John felt justified in trusting his instincts on this.

Which meant important questions only – no asking about embarrassing stories from Sherlock and Raniel’s childhood. More’s the pity.

So John asked his next question; where is Moriarty going?

The needle spun, stopping on the helmet, the owl, the crucible, the globe, the garden, the anchor, the apple, the thunderbolt and the baby.

So, Moriarty was going to Svalbard – to where Asriel had first opened the portal to another world through the Aurora borealis. He believed that even though the portal was now sealed, the act of opening it had somehow weakened…whatever it was that kept the worlds from bleeding into each other, which would make it easier to open another there.

John wasn’t quite sure it worked like that, and the alethiometer hadn’t said it did – just that Moriarty believed that. So he asked another question – can Moriarty repair the knife?

Again, the answer was clear; he couldn’t. Only one person could repair the knife…and here, it got a little foggy. It seemed to imply that the knife somehow chose a bearer, and that this person would be the only one capable of repairing it.

“The idea that a lump of metal can choose anything is rather unnerving,” John commented, tucking the alethiometer away and putting his hand on Amarisa’s back to help himself stand.

Amarisa nosed his fingers companionably. “When held up against someone reading a supposedly inscrutable instrument that always tells the truth and seems to know everything and a way to move between parallel universes, that probably shouldn’t be the part that concerns you.”

“But the parallel universes make sense,” John protested. “Or partly, at least – they’ve been hypothesised about for years, anyway. But the idea that this god-killer knife-thing can choose its bearer is in the same category as me reading the alethiometer.”

“Weird and creepy without anything approaching a rational explanation?”

“Exactly!”

Amarisa laughed and then shook herself, as though trying to shake away their heavy speculation. “Well, I guess this is the part where we tell Sherlock and Raniel the good news.”

--

When they found Sherlock and Raniel again, Aeliana was gone and had been replaced by Mycroft, who was looking…well, not angry, because Mycroft’s expressions were never as extreme as angry – displeased, more like. Tehayla was perched on his shoulder, dark eyes fierce as she glared down at Amarisa.

“I believe you have something that does not belong you,” he said, just a hint of warning in his voice as his eyes fixed on John.

Tehayla clacked her beak sharply

Amarisa bristled, her lips peeling back to show her teeth, but she didn’t actually growl – Raniel did that for her, the polecat bristling on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Yeah, well done,” John sighed, letting his dæmon express his irritation. “I took the alethiometer with me – I figured you would have noticed before now, actually.”

“Hand it over, please,” Mycroft ordered, holding out his hand. “And if this incident is not repeated, we won’t have to involve various authorities who possess less of a sense of humour than I do.”

This time Amarisa did growl and John felt his eyes narrow. He could understand why Mycroft was angry – they’d stolen it, after all, fair cop – but they hated implied threats. If Mycroft wanted to frighten them, he could damn well say so plainly.

“It’s not like you could have made any use of it!” Sherlock snapped.

“And I actually found out something useful,” John offered. “The knife hasn’t reached Moriarty yet – he knows it’s in pieces, but he doesn’t know it can’t take him to other worlds anymore. He won’t get it for two days, apparently.”

“So we have some time at least,” Mycroft said quietly, in the kind of tone that implied he was only vocalising his thoughts for the sake of the lesser minds around him.

“And Moriarty’s heading to Svalbard,” John adds. “We were right about him trying to cross between the worlds – he thinks that Lord Asriel moved between the worlds at Svalbard, and he’s hoping he can re-open whatever seam or door or gateway Asriel used.”

“We knew he was likely hiring armoured bears,” Mycroft observed. “Still, I suppose it’s beneficial to have tentative confirmation.”

Mycroft glanced at him, and John was struck all over again by how much the other man just didn’t trust the alethiometer. The man would believe it about witch prophecies and other nebulous concepts, but as soon as it strayed into the territory of concrete fact, he became painfully suspicious.

John tried to tell himself it was only fair – if some guy claimed to know the answer to everything by twiddling a few dials and staring really hard at a fancy piece of clockwork he’d probably think they were crazy – but it still felt like a deliberate slight against him. And it didn’t make him any happier about giving the alethiometer back. It felt like he was handing over his gun when he put it in Mycroft’s hand. In fact, it felt worse – when he’d turned in his gun after his discharge, he’d been able to buy another on the black market. But he couldn’t get another alethiometer.

Sherlock frowned, clearly picking up on John’s disquiet.

“What do you know about Svalbard?” Raniel asked John.

Amarisa whuffed softly in amusement, and John reflected it was very typical of Sherlock and his dæmon to attempt to be comforting by interrogating them to take their minds off it.

“We know what we learned in school,” John offered. “And some things Ragnvald told us. Svalbard is populated entirely with bears – there used to be some humans, but the bear population eventually got too large. Things were kind of tense for a while, politically speaking, but eventually there was a treaty drawn up that gave them claim to the entire island. It’s their homeland, even though there are some bear settlements in Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Russia – basically anywhere that’s cold enough for them to be comfortable. They used to be one consolidated group, but they split into clans-”

“Ragnvald lives close to the original fortress,” Amarisa cut in. “But that’s because he’s big royalty; descended from Iorek Brynison.”

Sherlock seemed to recognise the name. “The bear you befriended in Afghanistan?”

John nodded.

“He was sent to fight even though he’s royalty?”

“Bears have a different view of royalty than we do. You still need to prove you’re worthy of the throne and if you can’t, it goes to someone else.”

“Bears have their own language,” Amarisa continued. “With some words in it that are linked to Old Norse. But humans literally can’t speak it – don’t have the right vocal chords, and some of the sounds are below the average range of human hearing. So most bears speak a second or third language, depending on the humans they’re most commonly in contact with.”

“Oh, and they’re having a problem with a shortage of sky iron,” John remembered.

“That’s interesting,” Sherlock mused quietly. “Especially considering what Moriarty took with him.”

John frowned. “All that metal stuff? You think he’s going to play on their need for sky iron somehow?”

Raniel wrinkled his nose. “Possibly.”

“But surely any metal he got his hands on couldn’t have been sky iron?”

“True,” Sherlock conceded. “He could have procured some, but certainly not in the quantities the Gyptians reported.”

“So why is the metal important?” Raniel wondered, sounding half-irritated, half-pleased that he and his human couldn’t immediately figure it out.

Mycroft had tucked the alethiometer away and was leaving – he obviously had no interest in listening to John and Sherlock re-iterate information he probably knew already – but at the doorway to the dining room he paused and glanced back.

“By the way, Hasna returned with news that the enemy clan is withdrawing, and they are heading north.”

“Why are they still supporting him?” Sherlock asked, in the kind of tone that said he and Raniel were off in their own little world. “Traditional Values for a Bright New Britain was their goal, their path towards repealing some of the more restrictive laws, so why are they still following him now that he’s abandoned that plan?”

“He might be deceiving them on that point,” Raniel pointed out. “Or he could have told them it fell through and he’s presenting this attempt to breach another world as an alternate plan.”

Amarisa wrinkled up her muzzle like she’d smelled something rotten. “So he’s telling them they could go to a world where they could follow their own rules the way they used to?”

“Exactly!” Raniel squealed.

He leaned down from Sherlock’s shoulder as though trying to touch the wolfdog, tail waving in an attempt to keep his balance. Amarisa obligingly rose to her hind legs so they could touch noses, giving Raniel’s chin a swift lick as she did so.

“So everything’s heading north,” John summarised. “Or at least, it seems that way. So I guess I should pack warm, huh?”

Sherlock avoided his eyes, and Raniel squirmed on his human’s shoulder, pretending to be absorbed in straightening Sherlock’s collar with his front paws.

Low-grade anger began to simmer in John’s gut, and Amarisa growled.

“We are going with you, you realise,” John said, in the kind of voice he’d often used on his subordinates in both the army and the operating room. The kind of voice that said this was exactly what was going to happen because the laws of the universe wouldn’t allow anything else.

“You’d be safer if you-” Sherlock began, but John cut him off.

“No, you don’t get to play that card. You know me, Sherlock, and you know being safe is the last thing I care about.”

“That’s the problem!” Raniel exploded. “You’re never careful, never! You stride into danger like no one would care if you got hurt, you try to save everyone else before yourself and you need to stop that!”

Sherlock wasn’t saying anything, but he was tense and staring at the wall over John’s shoulder, one hand clenched tightly in his dæmon’s fur.

John and Amarisa had a good idea where this was coming from.

“This alethiometer thing is really freaking you out, isn’t it?” Amarisa remarked.

“We’re not ‘freaking out’,” Sherlock spat, as horrified as if the wofdog had accused them of being boring. “We are merely expressing perfectly legitimate concern over the entirely unique talent you’ve manifested.”

“Sometimes I think we could make a graph,” Amarisa commented to John. “How many multi-syllable words they use in relation to how annoyed or worried they are and how desperate they are to hide it.”

John didn’t look at his dæmon, still studying Sherlock and Raniel. “You weren’t this bad when we went back to London, so what…oh.”

And just like that, John understood. London was Sherlock and Raniel’s domain – in London, they had contacts and knowledge and could face anything. Subconsciously, London was their security blanket, and in spite of what happened at the pool, they believed that they could protect John and Amarisa there, or at least keep the alethiometer reading a secret. But there was no map of Svalbard in Sherlock’s head, the bears didn’t owe him any favours, and there was no safety net.

The fact that it was Moriarty they were dealing with probably wasn’t helping either. John had a feeling Sherlock and Raniel weren’t good at coping with the people they loved being in danger. They’d tried to send him and Amarisa away before confronting Moriarty, after all – which John was still feeling a little insulted about – but it showed that Sherlock and his dæmon really didn’t like putting John and Amarisa in risky situations.

It was different with incidental danger during a case; Sherlock was so confident in his home turf and had such trust in his and John’s abilities that he rarely became truly worried. But Moriarty was clever the way Sherlock was clever, which meant Sherlock and Raniel were worried and unsure, at least a little. That was probably why they’d tried to get John and Amarisa out of the way in the first place.

“We can look after ourselves,” John said quietly. “I’m not going to lie and tell you we’ll be fine, because we really don’t know that, but I can promise you that Amarisa and I don’t die easy.”

Sherlock’s gaze flicked to John’s shoulder and hip, obviously picturing the scars beneath his clothes, the remnants of the death spells that Aeliana had saved him from, and Raniel made a soft sound of distress.

John moved close, sliding an arm around Sherlock’s waist as Amarisa leaned in against the detective’s legs, letting him feel her body heat through his clothing. With a quick glance around to ensure no one was watching, John dared to reach up and run his fingers over Raniel’s head, scratching through the white fur in reassurance.

Raniel melted, mewling and pushing his head against John’s fingers. Sherlock’s stiff spine suddenly bowed, leaning into John and Amarisa, one of his hands fisting in John’s jacket like a child trying to prevent his favourite teddy bear being taken away.

John gave Raniel one last caress behind the ear, then lifted his hand away and down to Sherlock’s arm.

“Besides, look on the bright side,” Amarisa said. “As long as we’ve got this dangerous talent, we’ll be using it as much as we can. And we’re pretty sure it’s something Moriarty doesn’t have on his side because if he did…”

“If he did, his ‘game’ would have ended in victory long ago,” Sherlock finished wryly.

John grinned. “Exactly. And now I’m going to see a witch about a battle plan.”

He kissed the corner of Sherlock’s jaw, soft and fond and – in spite of their previous discussion – feeling almost painfully optimistic. Amarisa nudged Sherlock’s hip affectionately, and then followed him out the door.

As soon as it closed behind them, John paused, looking at the long hallway and the dozens of doors that led off it.

As often happened, his dæmon said exactly what he was thinking. “Do you think we can find Hasna in this house without directions?”

--

Sherlock and Raniel knew that idea of leaving John and Amarisa behind was foolish. Even leaving aside their various useful skills, they were so determinedly loyal they’d simply follow Sherlock and Raniel to the north on their own if they had to. At this point, even an attempt to break ties wouldn’t make them stay – to get them to remain in England, Sherlock and Raniel would have to do something stupidly drastic like fake their own death or…actually, Sherlock couldn’t think of any other way. John and his dæmon were simply just that stubborn; the immovable object and unstoppable force by turns, whatever was needed at the time.

People who called Sherlock impossible had clearly never seen John when he was set on a course of action.

“At least the clan will probably be too busy trying to go to another world to bother about him,” Raniel offered as they made their way to the library.

Sherlock sneered. “Probably isn’t good enough.”

“I know that,” his dæmon huffed. “But if Moriarty’s still convinced the prophecy refers to us alone-”

“Assuming his own alethiometer hasn’t told him otherwise.”

“He never felt the need to consult it about the prophecy before. He was confident it was us.”

“That could have changed,” Sherlock pointed out.

Raniel fell silent, and Sherlock knew what the polecat was thinking – not just because Raniel was his dæmon, but because it had been on their mind since John had first read the alethiometer.

John had used the device to uncover Moriarty’s motives, the position and purpose of the so-called god killer and the identity of his spies. The first two might pass unnoticed, but Moriarty had to be wondering why and how so many of his network were being apprehended so quickly. And he’d undoubtedly use his own alethiometer.

It was only a matter of time before Moriarty learned that John could read the alethiometer. He might know already.

Which was why they were seeking out Mummy.

They found Aeliana in the library with Grayson – as they’d expected – bent over a book and talking.

“We’re heading north,” Sherlock informed them. Because why would anyone waste time when they had news to impart?

“I know.” Grayson didn’t blink, but Samieyah shifted on the back of his chair, bating nervously.

That was news to Sherlock. “You do?”

“John came to talk to me,” Grayson shrugged. “He wanted to clarify certain points.”

The tone of his voice was approving – Grayson appreciated curiosity and inquisitiveness.

Aeliana was frowning. “Are you sure?”

Sherlock knew she wasn’t asking if she was sure they needed to go north, but if they were sure whatever needed to be done couldn’t be done from here.

So he settled for saying, “We have to.”

Granted, he’d prefer it not be ‘we’ – Sherlock and Raniel would prefer John and Amarisa were never within fifty miles of Moriarty ever again – but they would bow to necessity.

He knew his parents would understand he meant it. Sherlock was a scientist, as his father was, and they never committed to an uncompromising statement unless they were without doubt.

Now to address his second purpose in locating them. “Can you arrange a talisman for John?”

Sherlock knew many people believed he and his dæmon were socially tone-deaf, but he was aware of the usual conventions and boundaries – they just didn’t see the point in bothering with them. There were some things he respected, however: not touching other people’s dæmons, and not asking witches about talismans.

Talismans were only made for someone the witch cared deeply about, and Sherlock had never heard of one being made on request. They were spontaneous gestures, prompted by the depth of affection a witch felt for a human, and to ask for one was…well, not good.

But this was John and Amarisa, and they needed to be protected.

Sherlock’s own talisman was still at Baker Street, a simple silver watch tucked into a drawer in his bedroom (silver being one of the few metals witches could successfully enchant). He rarely felt the need to draw on its protection, though admittedly John and Amarisa’s presence had a hand in its complete absence from his person since he moved into Baker Street – it was amazing what having someone willing to kill for you could do to your sense of safety.

Perhaps to a dangerous extent, considering it hadn’t even crossed his mind to bring the talisman to the pool.

Aeliana tilted her head to the side in a manner Sherlock suspected she’d picked up from her dæmon, and he hoped his mother wasn’t about to become angry or embarrassed at his line of questioning.

He felt Raniel huff softly in relief when Aeliana smiled. “There’s a talisman ready for John – Hasna made one.”

Jealousy was irrational and foolish, Sherlock and Raniel knew that. So why did they feel it? John and Amarisa wasn’t the type to be unfaithful, and judging by the behaviour of herself and her dæmon Hasna would never pursue him, so then why did they feel this prickling resentment that the witch could do something for John that they couldn’t?

Grayson’s face was drawn and pinched, and Samieyah hopped from her perch on the back of the chair to the arm of it, unfurling one large golden wing to curve around her human’s neck and head. Grayson’s fingers curled in the thick feathers of her chest, and Sherlock wondered if his father wanted to go with them.

Grayson obviously knew that he’d be no use there, but did that make it any easier to remain behind? This was the second time Sherlock’s father had watched his family go into danger, and Sherlock doubted he and Raniel would have had the strength to do the same. They couldn’t contemplate letting John and Amarisa go into danger alone.

Aeliana slid her fingers into his husband’s hand with a strange expression of resignation. But then, she would be resigned, at least to the idea of being left behind – barring accident or catastrophe, witches outlived their husbands and sons for hundreds of years.

Raniel made a soft, chirruping sound that mixed sympathy and regret, and curled himself tighter into Sherlock’s neck.

Sometimes Sherlock could almost convince himself that there was no point in pursuing Moriarty, that they should leave it to Mycroft and the police of the country he was fleeing to. But he and Raniel knew better – Moriarty would run rings around any ordinary policeman, and even extraordinary ones. Mycroft needed to look after his own arena, sweep out Moriarty’s spies and the lingering remnants of the web; it couldn’t catch and suck the life out of anyone anymore, but a web without the spider could still entangle. And when Moriarty learned the god killer was broken, he’d be desperate; Sherlock and Raniel had to go, to be able to see the immediate consequences of Moriarty’s actions and have a chance of outmanoeuvring him.

“You…you will be careful, won’t you?” Grayson said quietly.

Sherlock was tempted to say that he was always careful – and he was, no matter what John and Amarisa said, he never did anything without considering the consequences – but this was his father, so he only nodded, and Raniel actually bobbed his head along with his human.

Then they went in search of John and Amarisa, locating them in one of the many drawing rooms. Hasna was with them – likely she’d decided to return since the god killer she had Tamsyn had been charged with relocating had been replaced with a fake.

For a moment Sherlock thought John was reading the alethiometer again, until he realised it was an antique gold pocket watch cupped in the doctor’s hand. Amarisa was nosing at it, and John was ghosting his fingers over the surface, raising and lowering his hand over it like he was testing the consistency of the air.

John was grinning. “I can feel it. The spell,” he clarified, like there’d been some confusion.

Hasna was sitting across from him, smiling in a fondly indulgent way at John’s child-like glee. An albatross dæmon was also present, perched on the side table – as Hasna’s dæmon was a swan, this must have been some other witch’s dæmon, come to relay news.

John glanced up and met Sherlock’s eyes, and his smile turned soft and fond in a way that made Raniel shiver on his human’s shoulder.

“Raniel,” Amarisa said, going to the door to greet them.

Raniel leapt from Sherlock’s shoulder and landed neatly on the wolfdog’s back, nipping playfully at her ear. Amarisa trotted back to her human with her passenger and Sherlock followed.

“Look at this,” John enthused. “Hasna made me a talisman – this’ll protect me as long as I’m carrying it. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

The albatross dæmon laughed softly, and though Sherlock didn’t possess John’s talent for reading dæmons, he thought it sounded affectionate.

“Oh, by the way Sherlock, this is Percila,” John said, gesturing to the albatross. “She’s Tamsyn’s dæmon.”

“The one you said came to visit you in Baker Street,” Raniel nodded, resting his chin between Amarisa’s ears even as she placed her head on John’s leg.

“Our enemies are retreating into the north,” Percila pronounced, sounding pleased. “It was foolish of them to attack a clan that hadn’t wronged them – no one will support them now.”

“Though I don’t suppose that will matter, if they intend to go to another world,” Hasna pointed out.

“Remember when everything was just scouting patrols or retrieval missions?” John asked, apparently addressing the remark to his dæmon.

“Everything was so much simpler back then,” Amarisa sighed.

Percila laughed, and Hasna smiled. “Back when you served with armoured bears and were getting shot by death-spells?”

“I do miss Ragnvald,” John said, as if that were the only part of her sentence worth commenting on.

Sherlock felt distinctly put-out – he hated not being informed about things John had done. “I thought you were medical personnel.”

John nodded. “Usually. But we did scouting patrols as well, because of Amarisa.”

“Not to boast, but I’ve got a very good nose,” the wolfdog finished. “I could sniff out IEDs, enemy scouts, other kinds of traps…I was very good at it, too.”

“Didn’t you see those military recruitment ads?” John added. “They started a couple of years ago, asking for people who had dæmons with a good sense of smell?”

Raniel sniffed contemptuously, burrowing his face into the dense fur of Amarisa’s ruff. “Boring.”

“I suppose that went the way of the solar system, did it?” John sighed. “But I guess I can understand this one – who the army was recruiting doesn’t have much relevance to being a consulting detective.”

Amarisa giggled softly, and John tucked the talisman away. “And on that note, I think it’s time for some afternoon tea.”

Raniel’s back arched as if he was about to jump from Amarisa’s back, but John glared at him in a way that had probably frozen an entire squad in their tracks. “And the two of you are coming with us – you haven’t eaten at all today.”

Sherlock knew better than to admit to that, at least outright. “How do you know? We could have just had lunch.”

“Could have, but you didn’t,” Amarisa practically chirped.

“I know you don’t want to have an actual meal because you think it’ll slow your brain down, but it’s just not healthy to go an entire day without eating,” John was saying as they made their way to the kitchen. “Could you just…I don’t know, have a piece of bread? I’ll be happy with a piece of bread. Or some biscuits. ”

“We’re actually planning on eating dinner tonight,” Raniel muttered, nipping Amarisa’s ear again.

John blinked, his muted version of a double-take. “Really?”

“Surely you haven’t failed to notice I’ve eaten dinner every night we’ve been here.”

“Well, yeah, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about living with you it’s that you’re unpredictable.”

“I suppose it makes sense, though,” Amarisa mused. “If the dinner on offer here is the same quality every night-” the wolfdog made a low, throaty noise that Sherlock had previously only heard when Raniel was licking at her muzzle, “-it’s no surprise you’d want to eat it.”

Dæmons didn’t need to eat, of course, but they could if they wanted to, and they could gain pleasure from it. Hot or exhausted dæmons wouldn’t feel thirsty, but a few swallows of cool water would give them some relief. Dæmons didn’t feel hungry, but some of them ate particularly tasty morsels anyway, just to experience it.

Raniel had never bothered with eating – Sherlock had to, but his dæmon didn’t want to be subjected to it – but John and Amarisa were different. If John was trying something new for the first time, or something that tasted particularly good, he’d offer some to Amarisa. The wolfdog seemed to prefer savoury flavours over sweet, and she usually didn’t want anything more than a little taste, but Sherlock had once seen John and his dæmon split a sorbet almost completely equally between them. It had been in Angelo’s, and Amarisa and her human had taken alternate bites of the lemon-lime ice until it was entirely gone.

Even now, as John dug custard creams out of the pantry, he held one biscuit between his thumb and forefinger and held it out to his dæmon with the unconscious ease of ingrained habit. Amarisa huffed in refusal, and John didn’t pause, didn’t even blink as he raised the biscuit an inch or so to offer it to the polecat perched her back.

He did it all without even a glance at Sherlock for permission, as if offering Sherlock’s dæmon food was as natural as offering it to Amarisa.

Raniel, of course, had no interest in eating and wrinkled up his nose at it. So, without a trace of offence or self-consciousness, John took a bite out of the biscuit himself while he waited for the kettle to boil.

“You offered Raniel food,” Sherlock stated.

John nodded. “Yeah, I know you don’t like proper meals, but you always seem up for sweets, so I thought…is it alright?”

“It’s fine,” Raniel said quickly.

John stared at Raniel with a small furrow between his brow, the way he did when he suspected something had slipped by him and he wanted to work it out. Amarisa couldn’t stare at the dæmon on top of her head, so she settled for staring at Sherlock, golden eyes sharp and biting.

Sherlock wondered vaguely if this was what other people felt when he and Raniel stared at them. Was this why they objected? Because they felt as if he was peeling back the layers of skin and bone and seeing the chemical signals and neural patterning that constructed every thought?

If so, they were idiots because this was marvellous!

John and Amarisa blinked in complete unison, then smiled as though they understood it had been a stupid question.

Treating Raniel like he treated Amarisa, behaving as if Sherlock were merely an extension of John and vice versa, would always be alright.

--

Part Fifteen (contd.)

Sherlock Fic - Mathematics

blind_author — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:28:56 GMT

Title: Mathematics
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock – the characters or the setting – and am making no profit from their use.
Warnings: Self-esteem issues, Reichenbach.
Spoilers: All of season 1 and 2.
Pairing: John/Sherlock implied
Summary: It isn’t bravery that makes John so willing to risk his life for Sherlock. At least, he doesn’t think it is – it’s just simple mathematics.

Mathematics

John is shot when a sniper starts picking off his squad and he bends over his patient to shield him.  It can’t be said to set a precedent, because that would imply he hasn’t done that sort of thing before.

--

It’s not that John shot the cabbie without thinking about it – he did think about it, very carefully in fact.  He was just able to think quickly, because the whole thing was very simple; it was the only way to save Sherlock’s life.

And even if John had gone to jail for it, well, he could have lived with that.  Because Sherlock is amazing and brilliant, and he makes the world a better place – maybe not a politer or gentler place but still better – and John’s a washed-up army doctor who happens to be good with guns.  John is quite certain he’s not making the world a better place.

It’s simple mathematics.  That’s how he sees it in his head, complete with that little arrow symbol that means ‘greater than’ or ‘less than’ depending on which way it’s pointing.

Sherlock Holmes life > John Watson’s reputation.

It’s simple mathematics.

--

John’s quite pleased he came off worst in their struggle with the Black Lotus.  He’s got a concussion, a cracked rib and a gash on the side of his head that just won’t stop bleeding.  Meanwhile, Sherlock and Sarah are walking away with a couple of bruises and abrasions.

“Everything worked out alright then,” he sighs, grimacing as he holds the bag of cold peas against his head – he really needs to buy a proper cold pack at some point.

“This is your definition of ‘alright’?” Sherlock snarls.  “They could have killed you.”

John has taken off his bloodstained shirt and left it draped over a kitchen chair, and Sherlock is staring at it like he thinks he can will John’s injuries out of existence if he just focuses hard enough.

John shrugs.  “You and Sarah weren’t hurt – I’ll call that win.”

He has no idea why Sherlock scowls so viciously at this – doesn’t he get it?

Sherlock and Sarah’s safety > John’s safety.

Really, it’s not difficult.

--

After Moriarty, John doesn’t want to do anything except collapse and attempt to sleep the trauma away.  So of course, that’s the one thing Sherlock won’t let him do.

“What did you mean when you told me to run?”

“Exactly what I said,” John groans from where he’s lying on the couch – he’s not up to another flight of stairs right now.  “For you to run away from the bomb and snipers like a sensible person.  I suppose I should have known better.”

“You actually intended for me to abandon you?”

Sherlock sounds so offended John actually raises his head to track his friend’s pacing.  “That was the idea.”

Sherlock gives him a glare almost as fierce as the one he’d turned on Moriarty.  “He would have killed you!”

“Yeah, no shit,” John mutters; he’s really too tired to deal with this.  “But hey, better me than you, right?”

He doesn’t know why Sherlock looks so stricken – it’s really very simple.

Sherlock Holmes life > John Watson’s life.

Basic mathematics.

--

John doesn’t like Irene.  She’s playing Sherlock like a master con artist, and in the end, she’s going to serve her own interests rather than help or protect Sherlock.  And Sherlock either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

The former, John can understand – for all his deductions, Sherlock isn’t exactly well-versed in discerning people’s motives.  The latter…actually, John can understand that too.  Sometimes you just can’t help caring for someone you know is going to hurt you – right now, that’s John’s whole world in a nutshell.

But it isn’t purely jealousy that drives John out the flat when he leaves that night.  It’s much more elemental than that.

Sherlock’s happiness > John’s feelings

It’s simple, really.

--

On the rooftop of a hospital, Sherlock discovers that just because you’ve planned for something doesn’t mean you won’t be scared.  Because he is scared – in this one moment, he is more terrified than he’s ever been in his life.  There are so many ways this could go wrong, some part of him is tempted to just call it all off…

But he can’t.  Because standing on the pavement below him is the person who taught Sherlock what it meant to have something to lose, and if he doesn’t fall, John Watson is going to die.  And a world without John is the worst hell Sherlock can conceive of.

He needs to protect John because John makes the world a better place.  He needs to protect John because John always, always protects him and now it’s Sherlock’s turn.

He needs to protect John because John never protects himself.

John’s life > Sherlock’s life.

But that’s not quite all of it, is it?

John’s life > everything else.

It’s simple mathematics.

--

AN: Thanks so much to my beta, ginbitch!

The wonderful themusecalliope has made a podfic of this story - find it at AO3.

Skowronek has kindly translated this story into Polish - find it at ff.net

Supernatural Fic - Holding On and Letting Go

blind_author — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:27:51 GMT

Name: Holding On and Letting Go
Rating: PG
Warning: Character death, no ensuing resurrection. Angst, so much angst.
Disclaimer: I cannot claim to own Supernatural in any shape or form.
Spoilers: up to 8.16. But very general spoilers, not specific.
Summary: Dean/Cas. The tablet gives them a shot at a happy ending. But everything requires a sacrifice...

Basically this is a short, depressing segment I came up with and I decided my misery needed to be shared.

Holding On and Letting Go

It’s everything you wanted, it’s everything you don’t
It’s one door swinging open and one door swinging closed
Some prayers find an answer
Some prayers never know
We’re holding on and letting go

-”Holding On and Letting Go” by Ross Copperman

--

Dean keeps thinking these angel tablets should look more impressive. They’re the secrets of the universe written by Metatron as dictated by God or whatever, so shouldn’t they look less like rejects from some middle-school art class?

It turns out Cas can read this one, and it must be the one God wrote the cheat codes on, because he’s saying they can basically undo everything that happened since the angels decided to jump-start the apocalypse.

Which means Dean’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“So, if this is a giant reset button, do I end up back in Hell?” he can’t help asking.

It’s not that he’s not willing to take one for the team – especially when the team happens to be the whole freaking world – but if this is going to send him back down to the pit, he’d like to know beforehand.

Cas shakes his head, still scanning the tablet. “No, it’s not precisely a ‘reset button’-” Dean kind of loves it when he can hear the quotation marks in Cas’s voice like that “-so much as a method of restoration. The events will still have taken place, but the lives lost will be restored.”

Which sounds great on paper, but Dean knows that kind of thing has to come with some impossible price tag. So he’s waiting to hear Cas tell them it’ll unleash Cthulu or break reality or reset life back to single-celled organisms.

Of course, Sam’s always been the more optimistic of the two of them. “So could it...could it bring back Mom?”

Dean’s grateful Cas shakes his head quickly, before Dean can feel even a sliver of hope at that possibility.

“I’m sorry,” Cas offers quietly. “The tablet can only restore those who fell after open war was declared.”

Which still means it can bring back people like Bobby and Ellen and Jo and...fuck, what’s the catch? There’s got to be a catch – there’s no way they’ve just been handed this, that’s not how their lives work.

Sam’s looking cautious as well, but it’s kind of drowned by the sheer eagerness in his expression. “We can really do this?”

Cas nods. “Yes. If one is willing.”

He’s still staring at the tablet, and the whole ‘if one is willing’ thing sounds kind of ominous.

Dean’s getting a bad feeling about this. Cas has been silent and broody for a long time now, not to mention that time when he zapped back to Heaven and was out of contact for weeks, and Dean can’t believe he’s thinking this but they really need to talk. Though Dean’s not sure what that talk will consist of, other than him trying to find a calm, no-pressure way of saying ‘please don’t ever kill yourself, I don’t think I can take losing you again’.

“May I have a knife, Dean?” Cas asks, holding out his hand without looking away from the tablet.

He seems perfectly calm, and he’s as polite as a stuffy Victorian gentleman asking for tea, but Dean still doesn’t want to give him a sharp implement. He can’t say why, exactly – he trusts Cas, he does – but something’s telling him to just grab the guy by the lapels and drag him away from the tablet. And maybe smash the thing for good measure.

Dean tells himself he’s just being paranoid and hands over his silver knife. Which Cas promptly uses to stab himself in the palm.

“Cas! What the hell?” Dean yells, making an automatic grab for the knife.

He’s expecting Cas to jerk it out of reach, and is honestly surprised when he manages to grab it. Dean was preparing for a tug of war (that he’d lose quickly and stupidly, given that he’s going up against angel strength), but Cas just opens his hand and lets him take the knife back. Probably because it’s already served its purpose – he’s already smearing blood all over the tablet.

Dean likes this situation less and less every second.

Sam doesn’t look any happier at the sight of Cas impassively spreading his own blood all over the ancient writing. “Are you sure you need to do that?”

“This will initiate the...” Cas’s brow furrows. “It’s inaccurate to call it a spell, but that’s the closest translation.”

Just bleed over the tablet and everyone gets a happy ending? That seems suspiciously simple.

“So...we can really do this?” Sam repeats, staring down at the blood-smeared tablet.

That makes Cas look up, with an expression that suggests he can’t understand why Sam is asking him a question he’s already answered. “Of course.”

This is good, Dean knows that. He should be happy. So why is every instinct telling him this is really, really bad?

The weird carvings in the tablet are glistening with Cas’s blood, and Dean’s seen plenty of blood in his time but this seems especially morbid for some reason. Maybe because the blood doesn’t seem to be drying? And is it just his imagination, but are the carvings getting kind of shiny, like they’re starting to glow?

“You said someone had to be willing,” Dean points out, still side-eyeing the tablet. “Willing for what?”

Cas smiles at him, but it looks kind of sad. “Willing to make the sacrifice.”

And just like that, every internal alarm Dean has starts blaring: Red alert, red alert! Someone you love is doing something incredibly stupid!

“What kind of sacrifice?” Dean’s aware his voice is too unsteady to pass for calm, but he really doesn’t care.

“Energy,” Cas says simply. “It’d take many human souls, but in this case, I think a seraph’s Grace will suffice.”

Just like that, Dean understands what Cas has done. And for a moment, he’s back in Purgatory – or back when he was getting out of Purgatory – in that moment when Cas let go and Dean was left with his hand outstretched and his world crumbling around him. Sam’s face twists in horror, and Dean’s glad his brother speaks because he can’t, can’t do anything but stare and think softly, helplessly, ‘No’.

“No, Cas, we don’t have to do this,” Sam says, reaching out for the tablet like he’s going to try to take it away from Cas. “We’ll think of something else-”

“It’s already begun.” Cas is so calm, so painfully, stupidly calm that Dean wants to punch him. How can he stand there smiling like he’s given them some kind of gift while Dean’s world is cracking down the middle?

Cas glances down at the tablet – and it’s definitely glowing now, bathing Cas in white light – and Dean lunges forward, seizing Cas by the wrist and trying to twist the tablet out of his grip. It feels like he’s trying to twist a tree out by the roots, and it works about as well.

Cas lays his hand over Dean’s like Dean isn’t trying (and failing) to break his wrist. “Dean, it’s alright.”

And that finally breaks through whatever was strangling Dean’s voice. “No it’s not! Cas, this is the opposite of ‘alright’! You can’t do this!”

“It’s only fitting,” Cas says quietly. “You can’t pretend I haven’t done damage. At least this way, I can repair some of it.”

Dean wants to swear, but he doesn’t know a word strong enough, savage enough to be worth it. He doesn’t think one exists.

So he settles for some more yelling. “That’s not how this goes! You can’t...”

He trails off. There’s nothing he can say, nothing he can offer, except the truth. “I can’t lose you again, Cas.”

Dean’s trying to shout, trying to shove his words in Cas’s face like a wall that’ll stop the angel in his tracks, but instead he sounds thin and hopeless, like the pitiful whine of a dying animal.

Cas is starting to shimmer, light leaking out from his eyes and mouth like he’s swallowed glowsticks (or like his Grace is being leached away, fuck!) and the hand on top of Dean’s feels strangely light.

“You won’t lose me,” Cas whispers, and it might be the glow but Dean will swear those are tears in his eyes. “I’ll die as the restoration consumes me, but the process will...well, you won’t remember me. You won’t miss me, Dean – you’ll never know there’s anything to miss.”

Cas seems to think that makes it better, but it only makes it so much worse. Never knowing Cas existed? Not remembering how Cas smiles or frowns or the expression he makes when he’s working out a new piece of human culture or behaviour for the first time? Not remembering the way he stares at Dean like he’s looking straight to the bottom of Dean’s soul and he actually likes what he sees? Not remembering Cas’s weird sense of humour, the way Dean is never sure which jokes he’ll get and which will just make him stare at Dean like he’s an alien life form?

Dean would rather Cas just throw him back into the pit. If that’s the alternative, he’d welcome Hell.

“You…you stupid son of a bitch,” Dean grinds out. “You can’t do this.”

For all his personal space invasions, Cas usually isn’t a fan of touching people, but now he steps closer and curves his hand against Dean’s cheek like he’s trying comfort him. It feels like the brush of a snowflake – cold and weightless and almost insubstantial. Like Cas is just fading away as the tablet sucks him dry. But it doesn’t seem to be hurting him, and there’s a part of Dean that’s pathetically grateful for that.

“You can’t.” Dean’s brain and voice seem stuck on that; like if he says it enough, he can make it true. “You can’t do this, you can’t-”

Cas leans forward and kisses him, and the endless loop of ‘can’t’ on Dean’s tongue stutters to a halt. Not because it’s being prevented from getting out or anything – Cas’s lips have about as much weight as a breath, like there’s nothing solid behind them anymore. He’s even turning translucent; Dean can see straight through Cas’s forehead to Sam behind him, and it doesn’t surprise Dean to realise that his brother is crying – judging by the way Dean’s vision is blurring, he’s probably crying too. No, the reason Dean stops speaking is purely because Cas is kissing him, and anything resembling coherent thought in his brain has made like that scene in The Matrix when everything froze.

Cas is kissing him and Dean can’t move because he’s certain that if he moves – if he tries to hold Cas or even just kiss him back – he’ll pass right through Cas like the angel’s a brand-new ghost. And if he moves and goes through Cas then that means this is really happening, and Dean just can’t deal with that, not now. Not with Cas’s mouth resting gently against his own – not hungry or desperate or anything like the kiss of a dying man but just there, like this is something too beautiful and perfect for him to risk moving. Like all those thoughts and feeling and dreams that Dean told himself he didn’t have, that Cas didn’t have because he was an angel and anything Dean thought or felt was stupid and impossible and would only end in heartbreak.

And hey, look at that, it is ending in heartbreak. Just not the kind Dean thought.

“I’m sorry,” Cas whispers.

No, no, he can’t do this – not now, not ever. Dean brings his arms up, trying to clutch at Cas as he slips through Dean’s hands like mist and sunlight.

“Cas!” Dean’s scream feels like it’s ripping his throat apart. “Cas!”

He thinks Cas smiles, but he can’t see through his own tears. The last fragile outline of Cas shivers and blurs and finally vanishes.

Dean’s world shatters.

“CAS!”

--

“Dean, wake up!”

A lifetime of hunting means those words work better than a bucket of water – Dean is sitting up in bed with his knife in his hand before Sam’s even finished speaking.

It takes him a moment to realise there are no ghosts or demons attacking them (not even stray cockroaches) and when he does, he throws his pillow at Sam on principle. “Why’d you wake me up?”

Sam swats the pillow out of the air and doesn’t even toss it back to his big brother – he just leaves it on the floor. Like a bitch. “You sounded like you were having a nightmare – you kept muttering in your sleep.”

Dean doesn’t feel like he just had a nightmare; he doesn’t feel tense and his heart isn’t pounding with the lingering remnants of terror. But then, he doesn’t feel particularly good, either. In fact, he feels almost...empty. Like he’s missing something.

“What was I saying?” he asks, feeling vaguely curious.

Sam shrugs. “Don’t know. Sounded like ‘case’ or ‘cast’ or something.”

Dean has no idea what that might mean. “Hey, maybe I want White Castle.”

“It’s always food with you,” Sam sighs. “And not even healthy food.”

“We’ll get you a salad somewhere, Samantha,” Dean mocks.

Sam just rolls his eyes. “I was talking to Bobby, and he thinks he’s got a job for us. A guy found dead in Nebraska looks like the clone of some sales provider living in Pontiac, except said sales provider swears up and down he’s never met the guy.”

“So they’re twins,” Dean shrugs. “Separated at birth or whatever. Very Lifetime movie, but what’s it got to do with us?”

Sam smiles, the kind of smile that says he knows something Dean doesn’t. Dean kind of hates that smile. “They have the same fingerprints. Exactly the same fingerprints. Dean, even identical twins don’t have the same prints.”

Okay, Dean can admit that does kind of sound like their gig. “So are we thinking shapeshifter?”

“Probably not – not with the way the guy was found.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You have to see it to believe it,” Sam says, motioning towards the laptop. “Jo emailed us some photos – go take a look. In the meantime, I need a shower.”

“Don’t take too long washing your hair – I need hot water, too,” Dean manages to get in before the bathroom door closes.

He’s still yawning as he makes his way over to the laptop and turns it around to face him. The photo’s still open, so Dean takes a quick look to see what makes this guy so special and...

It must be because he’s tired. Or he’s having some kind of weird allergic reaction. Because suddenly Dean’s eyes are watering and his throat is tight and holy shit, he can’t actually be crying, can he?

No, it has to be an allergic reaction. After all, Dean’s seen dead bodies before, and this is just one more to add to the list – a dark-haired guy in a trenchcoat, sprawled on a road. The vast wings charred into the tarmac on either side of him are new, but it’s still nothing to get weepy over. In some of the close-ups, the guy even seems to be smiling slightly; whoever he is, he went out happy.

But Dean still can’t stop crying.

End.

Supernatural Fic - Marked

blind_author — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 06:01:33 GMT

Title: Marked
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Blasphemy (pretty much on the same level as the show) and Dean has mild dirty thoughts.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural; the setting or the characters.
Summary: Dean/Cas, pre-slash. A brief interlude set immediately after 5x08. Castiel could have raised Dean from Hell without marking him. He intended to, in fact. But once he’d grasped Dean’s soul, Dean…refused to let go.

Marked

Dean has nightmares of Hell. Which really isn’t a surprise – all things considered, Dean would have been very suspicious if he didn’t have nightmares. His dreams are blood and pain and screams not his own and a razor smile that’s either Alistair’s or his; he can’t tell. They leave him sick and shaking and torn between drinking himself into a coma and never sleeping again.

But sometimes…sometimes Dean dreams about something else.

A light pierces Hell’s darkness. The other demons beside him shriek and turn from it, but he looks – he can’t help himself. It’s beautiful.

It comes close, and it touches him, grips him. After the unrelenting heat of Hell’s fire, he’s forgotten what it’s like to touch something cool. Dean grips back and clings tight as it gives him wings and Hell falls away.

The place they go is cold, and something vast and fiery tries to pry him from the shelter he’s found. He resists; curling closer, holding tighter, and his shelter twists around him as the flames dig into it. It cries out in a voice like glass and water, and Dean presses deeper, lashing out at the choking heat – it won’t take him, it won’t!

And it doesn’t.

He almost falls apart in relief. He feels weak and shaky, like ice melting away in the sun, like the fire almost tore him to shreds. But his bright, cool light breathes strength back into him, breathes for him until Dean is breathing through his own lungs again.

Sometimes, Dean thinks he dreams about Castiel.

--

Dean expected Cas to zap away as soon as they were out of the warehouse – he came, he tried to help and got beaten around for his trouble by yet another douchebag angel, so Dean figured he’d fly off to keep searching for God as soon as he could, not slide into the backseat of the Impala without even a curious glance for permission.

Dean’s not going to kick the dude out or anything, but it’s still a big flashing neon sign that all is not well in the land of Castiel.

So now he’s expecting Cas to say something – about a new strategy, or a new possible location for God, or about the Trickster being a freaking archangel – but he just stares out the window like one of those meditating holy men.

Cas doesn’t say a lot – small talk isn’t really his area – but there’s a difference between not saying much and saying nothing. Sam’s usually the one who headshrinks people and figures out their inner emotional trauma or whatever, but his brother is giving him a look that says ‘he’s your angel, Dean, you say something’.

Well, this time Dean can be the one to bite the bullet.

“So, the Trickster is an archangel,” Dean prods.

Now Sam’s look is saying ‘Dean, you’re an insensitive jackass’ (which he isn’t…and even if he is, he doesn’t mean to be this time), but Cas just turns to meet Dean’s eyes in the rearview mirror with a little fold between his eyebrows.

“Yes,” Cas says, flat and toneless.

Anyone else would be irritated that Dean’s stating the obvious, but Cas just looks expectant, like he’s waiting for Dean to say something intelligent and profound. Like he thinks Dean wouldn’t have bothered getting his attention for anything less.

It’s kind of creepy. Or it would be, coming from anyone else, but Dean’s used to Cas by now. Enough to know that this – the thousand-yard stare and complete lack of irritation at stupid statements – is Cas feeling depressed and despairing.

He seems marginally better than he was after they trapped Raphael, but still – if that asshole Gabriel broke his angel, Dean’s turning this car around and frying him.

Sam apparently takes Dean’s spectacular failure at operation ‘cheer up Cas’ as a cue for his own attempt. “Hey, Cas, I’ve always wondered about angel hierarchy – I mean, every religion seems to have different ideas, and you’ve told us the Bible gets a lot of things wrong, so anything you could tell us would be helpful.”

Of course, Sam tries to cheer the angel up by being a geek, but it seems to be working; Cas is leaning forward and his eyes have brightened. Dean’s willing to concede the victory this time.

“There are five ranks of angels,” Cas intones, sounding like a professor giving a lecture. “The archangels are the first and highest in God’s favour – Michael, Raphael and…Gabriel.”

Cas hesitates over Gabriel’s name, and Dean has a moment where he thinks Sam’s just made everything worse, but then Cas just closes his eyes and sighs and it’s such a human gesture to make that Dean is brought up short.

“Lucifer was an archangel,” Cas comments quietly. “And only archangels have seen God’s face.”

Dean’s heard that one before, and he still thinks it’s total bullshit, but he doesn’t mention that – he can be sensitive when he wants to be.

“The seraphs are next in rank,” Cas goes on. “And they delegate the archangels’ orders. They aren’t as powerful as archangels, but there are many more of them – Zachariah is a seraph.”

“Middle management, huh?” Dean snorts. “Yeah, he seems the type.”

Cas gets that look on his face, the one Dean mentally subtitles with ‘humans are strange and I don’t understand them’.

He can admit he tries to get Cas to make that face as often as possible.

“Never mind about that,” Sam cuts in quickly, before Cas can ask for an explanation (Dean’s brother is a spoilsport). “So there’s archangels, then seraphs – what’s next?”

Cas tilts his head (another thing Dean tries to prompt as much as he can) and Dean can practically see the angel mentally shelving away his questions. “The erelim. They are the garrison commanders, and they’re linked to forces of nature. Anna was of the erelim.”

Another depressed-angel face, but Cas seems to snap himself out of his contemplative funks really quickly when he has something to explain because he barely blinks before continuing.

“The malakim are the most numerous of the angelic host – the foot soldiers that make up the garrisons. The only angels below the malakim are the cherubim, and they are messengers only. Reports of miracles or angelic sightings are usually the result of cherubim roaming the earth; as the weakest of the host, their true forms do not damage humans so they are able to descend from heaven without vessels.”

“That makes sense,” Sam enthuses, sounding like an eight year old girl presented with a pony. “So what do cherubs look like?”

“They can manifest as whatever they desire. Anything from a pillar of flame to a gentle gust of wind, though they commonly choose to manifest a human-like appearance.”

“But the rest of the angels need vessels?”

“I could manifest as whatever I desired.” It might be Dean’s imagination, but Cas sounds defensive, almost grumpy. “But my power…can’t be diluted. No matter what I tried to present myself as, I’d still blind and deafen you without a vessel.”

Dean grins. “So you’re too awesome to contain?”

And that gets him both a furrowed brow and a bonus head tilt – score two for Dean Winchester!

“So what rank are you?” he asks. “Pretty high, right? I mean, you kick lots of angel ass, and they wanted me out of the pit pretty bad…”

He adds an eyebrow wiggle for good measure, which makes Sam roll his eyes and of course, flies straight over Cas’s head.

“Actually I’m a malakim,” Cas corrects. “Very low in the ranking.”

Now Dean’s confused, and he’s not the only one.

“They sent a malakim down to hell alone?” Sam looks like he’s seriously questioning whatever passes for angelic strategy.

But then Cas is the one looking like he suspects them of mental deficiency. “Sam, if I’d entered Hell alone, I would have perished almost immediately. Demons may have difficulty truly injuring us in this realm, but their power is amplified significantly in Hell. And there are powerful demons which are more than capable of killing an angel. Tens of thousands of my brothers and sister stormed Hell alongside me – mostly malakim and their commanding erelim, and even seven seraphs descended with us so they could locate Dean.”

Tens of thousands of angels to pull him out of Hell. Yeah, that’s going to be one of those things Dean doesn’t think about. Ever.

But Sam never leaves anything alone. “The seraphs were meant to locate him? So you’re saying that you rescuing Dean was never part of the plan?”

Cas nods. “It was intended that a seraph would find Dean and give his soul to Michael for restoration. I’m a malakim, so I was intended as…cannon fodder.”

Just when Dean thinks there’s nothing angels can do to make him hate them any more, Cas comes out with stuff like this.

“Cannon fodder?” he grates, resisting the urge to clench his hands on the steering wheel until his knuckles pop.

But Cas doesn’t seem to understand what Dean’s problem is – he’s got that look on his face like he thinks Dean is going to understand this if he just explains it a little more.

“I was created as a soldier, Dean,” he says quietly, almost bleakly. “I was intended to go to Hell, and hopefully slay a few demons to ease the seraphs’ passage before I fell. But it…didn’t quite work out that way.”

Dean’s still furious – goddamn angels treating Cas like he’s disposable, something they can hurt and brainwash and then toss aside – but he’s momentarily distracted by the idea that the angels didn’t mean for Cas to pull him out of Hell.

If it really was a free-for-all – whoever found Dean first got to patch him up – then they definitely won the angel lottery with Cas. If Zachariah or Uriel had pulled him out then they’d all have been screwed.

Not to mention, the thought of having their hand seared into his shoulder – well, the thought of any mark on him other than Cas’s – gives Dean all kinds of the creeps.

But yeah, they’ve got a badass angel who’s willing to help them save the world without playing meat suits to archangels, while they could’ve been stuck with some douchebag with a stick up his ass. Not that Cas doesn’t have a stick up his ass, but it’s the kind Dean can deal with.

Which sounds much more sexual than he intended. And now he’s trying not to think about the ass of the angel in the backseat in case Cas really can read minds.

The whole ‘try not to think of how sexy Cas is’ thing is happening way more often than Dean likes. Seriously, if he doesn’t get this under control, someday Cas is going to dream-walk into a sex dream starring himself, and aren’t the ensuing questions going to be wonderful?

Sam’s voice breaks into his increasingly pornographic thoughts – thank god.

“So what went wrong?” Sam asks. “I mean, no offense, but if Dean is meant to be Michael’s vessel I thought Michael himself would have pulled him out and fixed him up.”

“That was the intent,” Cas admits. “No archangels descended to Hell – they couldn’t be risked in the assault – and while the seraphs were intended to locate Dean and deliver him to Michael to be restored, all the seraphs perished within the first ten years.”

Okay, that’s something Dean needs explained right now. “The first ten years?”

“Our attack upon Hell lasted for over thirty-five of Hell’s years,” Cas explains, sounding genuinely bewildered that Dean and Sam didn’t pick this up. “You don’t think we can descend at will and pluck souls out of the pit, do you?”

Actually, Dean kind of did. But obviously he knows better now, and can’t quite wrap his head around it – over thirty-five years fighting demons in Hell? Without sleep or shore leave or anything resembling rest? And maybe angels don’t need rest, but still; that can’t have been good for Cas.

“Towards the end, our forces were heavily weakened and scattered throughout the many levels of Hell,” Cas continues. “I was alone and pinned when…I found Dean.”

I found Dean. It’s just three words; there’s no reason they should push the air out of Dean’s lungs and make his head swim, but they do. Because those three words are saying that Cas fought hordes of demons to reach him, grabbed him from the teeming souls of Hell and dragged his ass out of the worst situation Dean had ever gotten himself into. It’s like a gut punch, like a kick to the nuts, like looking into eyes with something alien and ancient behind them that says he deserved to be saved.

It’s likes those dreams he has that make him think of being saved, instead of being condemned.

A light pierces Hell’s darkness. The other demons beside him shriek and turn from it, but he looks – he can’t help himself. It’s beautiful.

Cas is still talking. “I grasped Dean and we ascended. It was much easier to leave Hell than to enter it.”

“I’ll bet,” Sam mutters.

It comes close, and it touches him, grips him. After the unrelenting heat of Hell’s fire, he’s forgotten what it’s like to touch something cool. Dean grips back and clings tight as it gives him wings and Hell falls away.

“Michael was meant to restore Dean,” Cas says absently, and now he seems to be telling the story just for the sake of telling it, of knowing he’s with people who’ll listen to him. “The angels believed he would feel a measure of gratitude towards his saviour, and that it would make him more willing to accept his role as Michael’s vessel.”

Dean snorts at that – he can’t help it.

“But something went wrong,” Sam pries.

Dean thinks he knows what.

The place they go is cold, and something vast and fiery tries to pry him from the shelter he’s found. He resists; curling closer, holding tighter, and his shelter twists around him as the flames dig into it.

“I didn’t let go, did I?” It’s not really a question.

“No, you didn’t,” Cas acknowledges. “I returned to Heaven and I was prepared to pass you onto Michael, but you had entwined yourself in my Grace so thoroughly Michael couldn’t extract you without destroying the both of us. Although he…tried.”

Dean’s come to learn that when Cas does that – flattening his voice and pausing like he’s trying to pick the right word – it means the angel is covering up something really nasty that happened to him. Like when he got dragged back upstairs for a little heavenly ass-reaming.

It cries out in a voice like glass and water, and Dean presses deeper, lashing out at the choking heat – it won’t take him, it won’t!

And it doesn’t.

Okay, Dean needs to be calm about this – if he seems upset, Cas will freak out and shut up. It’s like he thinks he’s protecting Dean when he keeps quiet on whatever his douchebag brothers have done to him; like he thinks whatever happens to him doesn’t matter.

So, Dean’s trying for casual – nonchalant, even – when he asks, “So, what do you mean when you say he tried?”

Cas frowns. “It wasn’t pleasant. You should understand that souls in their pure form are very raw and their responses are quite primal. You were aware that what Michael was doing caused me pain and you…didn’t approve. Eventually Michael realised that his attempts were only increasing your hostility towards him, and left you with me.”

He almost falls apart in relief. He feels weak and shaky, like ice melting away in the sun, like the fire almost tore him to shreds.

“I attempted to draw you from my being, but you resisted – Michael’s attempts to take you had made you frightened and wary. So I withdrew from Heaven and took you to the place where your body lay, and there you loosened your grasp enough to permit me to restore you.”

But his bright, cool light breathes strength back into him, breathes for him until Dean is breathing through his own lungs again.

For a moment, the air seems so thick Dean’s half-convinced he won’t be able to breathe it. That he’ll drown like a man underwater, like a fish in air, like a soul struggling in Hell.

Sam seems to feel the silence that’s…well, not exactly awkward, but certainly not comfortable. And, being Sam, he tries to break it.

“So is that why Dean’s got the…?” Sam makes a gesture at his shoulder that’s probably meant to refer to the handprint that Cas seared into Dean’s shoulder.

Cas doesn’t quite shake his head, but it looks like he wants to. “No – the restoration process cleansed Dean’s body entirely.”

And that one’s news to Dean, but then this whole conversation has been news to him. He figured the mark was some side-effect of being yanked out of Hell or Cas fixing him up, or maybe even an angelic signature – Cas’s way of telling everyone that he’d been the badass who pulled Dean out of Hell.

“So, what happened?” If Dean’s voice is a little rough at the edges, no one will ever get him to admit it.

“When it came time to place you back in your body, you…resisted.” Anyone else might drop their eyes or fidget, but Cas just keeps staring, still as a bronze statue. “You clung, and wouldn’t let go. You insisted I remain with you, and you didn’t want to let me out of your sight. I promised I’d find you once you were restored, but you weren’t easily persuaded. In the end, you didn’t release your hold until I imbued you with some of my Grace. It…leaves a mark.”

Dean honestly has no idea what to say to that. Instead of being a signature or a side-effect, the mark on his shoulder is where Cas put a piece of himself inside Dean. And not in the fun sexy way either – that he could joke about, shrug off. But Cas shoving some of what’s basically his soul into Dean as a promise that he wouldn’t leave, that he’d come back to him…

Yeah, Dean has no idea what to do with that. Absolutely none. It’s probably a good thing he’s driving because if he was having this conversation with Cas face to face, he’d probably say something incredibly stupid like how at times Cas’s faith in him seems the only bright spot in a fight that looks increasingly hopeless. Or do something incredibly stupid, like grabbing Cas by that crumpled tie and kissing him (seriously, that idiotic tie always looks like Cas stopped halfway through knotting it, and it always makes Dean’s fingers itch to adjust it).

Come to think of it, Cas is the only angel Dean’s ever seen who didn’t look like he was ready to sit down for a board meeting. Sure, Cas has got the neatly pressed suit that never seems to wrinkle or stain, but then there’s the messed-up tie and the trench coat that sometimes makes him look like a creepy flasher. Even from the beginning, Cas stood out among all the other Stepford angels as the only one that showed even a hint of individuality.

And yeah, Anna was different, but that was after she’d been human for about two decades. Gabriel is clearly not the poster boy of rigid obedience either, but again, he’s been a Trickster for however many centuries he’s been kicking around down here. Cas is the only angel who’s turned his back on Heaven’s plan and never tried to be anything but an angel.

Dean has no real idea what that means, only that it means something.

At least Cas seems cheerier – his stare isn’t as distant, and the line of his shoulders has relaxed. Not a whole lot – it’s still Cas – but it’s much better than the rigid, ruler-straight-spine thing he had going on before. Dean’s not sure why discussing going down to Hell and getting worked over by Michael would make him cheerier, but he’s not going to question it. If Cas finds hope in weird things, then that’s okay with Dean, as long as he’s still got hope and isn’t going to become the bitter junkie Dean saw in Zachariah’s twisted future.

“I should go,” Cas says, in a decisive tone like he’s just finished some sort of great debate.

Sam looks startled. “You’re still going to look for God? After what Gabriel said?”

Sam’s usually the one who glares at Dean because he thinks his brother has said something offensive – though Dean’s not that bad, he just doesn’t pussyfoot around – so it feels pretty damn strange for Dean to be the one elbowing his brother sharply in an effort to get him to shut up. If Cas wants to keep looking for his Dad, that’s fine with Dean – it’d be pretty damn hypocritical of them to try to stop him.

“Considering that Gabriel has been absent from heaven for hundreds of years, I’m not inclined to listen to his opinion on the matter.” Cas actually sounds snarky, and Dean doesn’t bother holding in his grin.

Usually, Dean can’t help feeling a bit uncomfortable when Cas pulls his vanishing act – there’s always the grim reminder in his head that it might be the last time he sees Cas, that this time might be the time the other angels catch up to him, that Dean would never even know where or how he died…

But this time, he’s feeling strangely at peace with it. After all, if he’s got a piece of Cas’s Grace riding around with him, then he’s going to feel something if Cas is in trouble, right? After all, Cas always seems to show up just when they need him.

Suddenly, Dean’s wondering if the whole being marked thing goes both ways – if there’s a bit of himself that somehow got stuck inside of Cas. Again, that’s in the hippie spiritual way, not the sex way. Maybe Cas always shows up at just the right moment because he and Dean have a freaky soul-bond thing going on.

Dean’s pretty sure even the idea of that should freak him out. But instead it feels…comforting, like the gun or knife tucked under his pillow before he goes to sleep.

Still, this is probably one of those things they should talk about or clarify or some shit. Maybe. Hopefully not. They don’t need to mention this ever again, right?

But Cas is still here, and still staring, with the kind of look that first gave Dean the idea that angels could read minds. He’s sure Cas is about to say something big and earth-shaking and profound – the kind of thing he says because he still doesn’t get that humans don’t say shit like that. The kind of thing that he’ll just throw out there and Dean will end up stewing about for days after.

Like, ‘good things do happen’. Or, ‘I’ll hold them off’. Or even, ‘I did it, all of it, for you’.

So Dean’s ready for it, he’s bracing himself for it, but all Cas does is make that little expression that on anyone else would be a smile and on Cas is a small tilt to the corners of his mouth and a softening of his eyes.

“I’ll find you later,” he says.

And then he’s gone.

Dean knows a promise when he hears one, and somehow that feels just as weighty and world-tilting as…well, everything else Cas has said to him.

Strangely though, he’s still feeling pretty good. Considering they’ve just found out a maybe-sort-of-potential ally is an archangel in hiding who wants them to ‘play their roles’, Dean’s way more cheerful than he should be.

Though if Sam keeps snickering like that, Dean’s going to slap that gigantic forehead of his, just see if he doesn’t.

End.

--

AN: The ranking of the angels is taken from a few different sources and mashed together in a way I found vaguely in-keeping with what the show does with angels – it doesn’t actually conform to any religious text.

themusecalliope has created a wonderful podfic of this story - find it at AO3.

Charlotte Francine Xavier - Part Fifteen (Conclusion)

blind_author — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:28:04 GMT

Title: Charlotte Francine Xavier
Rating: R/NC-17.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings: Genderbend, violence, disturbing images, references to the Holocaust, past non-con and child abuse. I delve into the darker implications of telepathy here, so please heed the rating.
Pairings: Erik/always-a-girl!Charles
Summary: Written for a kinkmeme prompt that wanted to see the events of the movie if Charles had been a woman. This story will also wander into psychic-bond trope territory, as well as being a shameless fix-it fic. Just so everything’s clear up front…

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve
Part Thirteen
Part Fourteen

Part Fifteen

Then You Win

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.”

-Mahatma Ghandi

So many people seem to assume that the difficulty with her telepathy is in reaching out, that it’s a strain to contact someone a mile or so away. Maybe it’s like that for Emma, but for Charlotte, the difficulty is not in reaching out, but in limiting it. When she froze the CIA, the trick came in freezing only those she wanted to and not every single person within a five mile radius.

So now, the problem is not contacting the men on those ships, but in ensuring she doesn’t blanket anyone on the beach or in Cuba within her telepathic grasp.

Charlotte closes her eyes and reaches out with a single, unshakeable command. STOP.

They do. She can feel it, and it’s difficult to keep her touch light, to just shut down their conscious actions rather than their heartbeats or their breathing or any other of the dozen autonomous functions the human body must perform to keep living.

“They’ve stopped.” Erik’s voice sounds strangely muffled to Charlotte’s ears.

I’VE STOPPED THEM. She really wishes she could spare the energy right now to control her mental touch a little better, but she doesn’t dare.

No one moves, but she can feel the desperate need to take several large steps away from her, the pulses of fear/anger/wariness/how is she doing that? that rise around her like heat shimmers from a baking road. The teleporter (Azazel) isn’t the only one considering an escape, but he’s the only one she has to worry about.

STAY WHERE YOU ARE.

All ideas of teleporting himself away vanish in the rush of fear/panic/she knows, she knows/mustn’t anger her. Charlotte knows he’s remembering what he’s seen Emma do, and is all-but trembling at the evidence that her own power so outstrips Emma’s. Perhaps she should reassure him – and the wind-maker (Janos), and Angel – that she’s not going to hurt them…but then again, they hurt her friends, so perhaps they can stew for a little while.

She tries to narrow the focus of her telepathy to the people on the boats tasked with communication while still keeping the others frozen, which is…more difficult than she would have expected, like plucking an individual snowflake out of a snowstorm. But Charlotte knows how to do this, she has grown up doing this, and she will do it…

She does it. In the seething maelstrom out there, she finds the two minds she wants, the Russian and American with direct lines to their respective governments, in charge of relaying any changed orders the moment the political climate should alter in any way. Not exactly standard military protocol, but these are unusual and rather fraught circumstances.

Of course, once she’s found them, it’s relatively easy. Relatively easy to make them contact who she wants them to, to make speak the words she wants them to speak. Relatively, because it’s still difficult not to make everyone else on the ship attempt to do the same.

I am not the person you believe you’re speaking to. I am one of the mutants you just tried to kill. And I am suggesting you reconsider your strategy.

I understand that fear can lead to impulsive and, upon reflection, foolish decisions. I hope that was all that this was. Because if this was the first push towards war, whether open or subvert…then understand, we will push back. And we are more powerful than you’ve ever suspected. Think long and hard before you make an enemy of us,

But if you want to talk, I’ll be very happy to listen. And one last warning – I will know if you’re sincere.

Short, simple and almost painfully direct. She thinks Erik would be pleased.

Charlotte takes a deep breath – or at least, she feels her body take a deep breath, but the sensation is rather muted – and gives the men in the ships one last order.

GO HOME.

She burrows it in deep, ensures the compulsion won’t lift until they’re back in the harbour, and turns her attention to the last, most difficult task.

She stretches her mind towards America, towards the CIA and the government, towards everyone who has ever interacted with them or checked their criminal backgrounds or even glanced at their files. It’s a long way, and the wider her telepathy spreads the louder the minds between her and them become, until it’s like she’s trying to track a sibilant whisper through a rock concert. That was Cerebro’s real gift – the ability to narrow her focus, to hear only the mutants without picking up on all the humans between her and them.

Well, there’s no Cerebro now – Charlotte is on her own.

Her head is starting to throb, and it almost feels like her brain is swelling inside her skull, and Charlotte knows that’s her telepathy coming up against the limits of her body, but she can’t listen to that – she’s been telling everyone else to push their limits, while she did nothing to even put a toe outside her own comfortable boundaries.

But now, Charlotte pushes. Pushes in a way she didn’t know she could do, in a way that she was afraid to do. She’s aware of her body (still standing on the beach as the ships turn away from them, back the way they came) but that awareness is secondary to the sheer weight of the minds pressing into her. It’s like her mind is physically drifting away, a helium balloon tethered to her body by only a flimsy string.

Charlotte really hopes that string doesn’t snap.

She’s not sure how long she searches – it could be days, weeks – but the first thing Charlotte’s telepathy taught her was patience. Patience to build her shields so they didn’t crumble at the first push of a strong emotion. Patience to drag her mind into something resembling order when said shields were punctured or outright shattered by nearby horrific experiences (granted, supremely happy experiences can so the same, but Charlotte’s never minded those instances quite so much). It’s exhausting – not physical exhaustion, but the deep mental exhaustion that makes your brain feel like it’s been squeezed out like a dirty sponge, that every nerve and synapse has died and you’ll never have a coherent thought again…but whenever Charlotte feels like admitting defeat, like turning away and retreating, she simply can’t. Deep inside the tangled chaos that has become her mind, something nudges her onward, something supports her and soothes her and drives her onwards.

And in spite of the disorientation and the flood of minds and memories and people (ChristieThomasAlbertoSophiaKellyNoreenClaytonMelissaAllanMaxDerekSamanthaAshleyRowan so many, too many), eventually, Charlotte finds what she’s looking for.

And she erases it.

In the CIA headquarters and in various government branches across America, employees delete files, destroy hard drives and burn files in office bins. If they are questioned, they will never remember doing it, but they won’t be questioned, because no one sees them or even realises anything has gone missing.

The memories are more difficult, requiring a finer touch, because Charlotte can’t simply erase them entirely. People need to remember ‘the mutants’, need to know they’re out there (and exactly how very bad it will be to persecute them)…but they won’t remember their names, or their faces, only vague impressions – shadows and echoes, nothing more substantial.

She finds Emma, and in spite of her crimes, Charlotte can’t leave the other telepath prisoner to captors who have forgotten she existed. Besides, she was immersed in Emma’s mind once, and that creates a connection (even when she doesn’t want it to); it’s no coincidence that Charlotte hasn’t referred to Emma as ‘Frost’ since she broke into the other telepath’s mind.

She’s not sure if Emma’s had time to rebuild her shields – what Charlotte had done was meant as a temporary measure only – and there certainly seems to be some resistance there, before Charlotte sweeps it aside like dust.

Emma is frightened, panicked, and lashes out instinctively, and though it made her stagger and reel only a few months ago, now…now, Charlotte barely feels it. It’s like the bite of a mosquito – annoying and momentarily painful, but nowhere near as crippling as she remembers.

LISTEN TO ME!

Charlotte really wishes she could turn that off somehow.

Emma stops her feeble attempts to resistance, but her mind still shivers with fear/panic/awe/what happened?/how is this possible?

Xavier? What happened to you?

This is only reinforcing the vague feeling Charlotte has that she’s broken through something, done something that maybe even a telepathic brain isn’t built to take

It started in anger, yes, anger at the betrayal, that those they had saved would turn on them, but anger is precious little fuel on which to run; it flashes like a firework and burns out just as quickly. It has to harden into icy resentment or hatred before it can become a true driving force, and her anger was gone the moment she turned those ships away.

Anger couldn’t have seen her through the maelstrom, couldn’t have given her the strength to plunge into the seething morass that is the entire country and find the people she wanted to find. What drives Charlotte is not anger, or even fear…it is purpose, plain and simple. She has a task, and it must be completed.

Millions, tens of millions of minds are still howling around her like a hurricane, but somehow she’s in the eye of it, possessed by a determination terrifying in its intensity. She feels the thoughts hum and buzz and throb, a living, moving ocean that passes into her and through her but it doesn’t drown her – this single, shining purpose burns them all to steam.

She will protect the people she loves. All of them. No matter the cost.

YOU WILL LEAVE, she tells Emma. WALK OUT NOW. NO ONE WILL STOP YOU. NO ONE WILL HUNT YOU. DO NOT HURT ANYONE AND DO NOT RETURN FOR VENEGANCE.

Yes, yes of course. Whatever you want. Emma is practically falling over herself to agree, her terror of Charlotte saturating every pulse and whisper of her thoughts.

The last time she spoke to Emma, the blonde had been smug, gloating even though she was a captive, confident that there was nothing they could do to her that she hadn’t suffered before. Now she is all-but grovelling before Charlotte, eager to appease, desperate not to gain her anger.

Emma wasn’t even this frightened of Shaw. Charlotte wonders what that says about her, about what she has become, that she can inspire this kind of terror.

She hangs on just long enough to ensure Emma has made it to relative safety (no one will be following her, but Charlotte wants to make sure), then Charlotte slowly begins to draw herself back to her body.

It’s strange. She’s never done this with her telepathy before, never reached so far or done so much, and pulling herself back to her body feels almost like she’s diminishing herself, like curling into a too-tight cage or forcing herself into clothes three sizes too small.

Her head hurts. It seemed insignificant when she was doing…what she was doing, nothing more than those little nagging aches you get if you’ve stayed awake too long. But now that she is back (back in her body, as if she’d gone somewhere and how had she done that? What has she just done?), it feels like her skull is moving inwards, crushing her brain in a vice.

When she opens her eyes, Charlotte’s surprised to find that everyone’s still where they were. She’s still standing on the beach, and the ships are still in the process of turning around.

She’d thought it had taken her hours, at the very least, to do what she’d done. Maybe even days. Instead, it took her perhaps two minutes, at the very most.

Everyone is staring at her. Moira’s fingers are clenched at the base of her throat, around her dog tags. Hank and Alex are supporting Sean between them, and they she knows they’re not sure whether they should step closer or step away. All of Shaw’s people are unanimous in their desire to be elsewhere, away from the woman who can turn armies aside with a single thought.

Raven’s hands are clamped over her mouth, and even though her thoughts screech with fear there is worry threaded there as well, worry for Charlotte, if she’s alright because she’s gone pale and her eyes aren’t focusing properly.

Erik is standing beside her, one hand cupping her elbow to support her, and the bond…actually, the bond is wide open, and Charlotte wonders what he felt of her mental voyage, what his mind could process of it. She remembers the support she felt, the soothing presence that wouldn’t let her give up, wouldn’t let her surrender, and she knows – she knows because she can feel it – that it was Erik, refusing to abandon her, refusing to let her face it alone.

“What did you do?” Alex asks quietly, and Charlotte is uncomfortable with the awe in his voice.

I MADE US SAFE.

Charlotte is starting to wonder if she’s permanently broken whatever kind of control she had over her telepathic communication.

“Charlotte?” Raven’s whole mind is thrumming with confusion/fear/worry/is she alright?/was she hurt?

Charlotte takes a step towards her…or at least, she tries to. Her legs move sluggishly, like that strange disconnection between her mind and her body is still in effect, and her sense of balance doesn’t compensate quickly enough. She wobbles, tries to put one leg back to stabilise herself and shift some of her weight to Erik’s hand, but it responds too slowly.

The last thing Charlotte is aware of is Erik catching her before she hits the sand.

“Do you think she’s alright?” Raven asks.

Erik hates how everyone always asks him this – like he has some great insight into how telepathy works and can tell them if Charlotte is slipping into a coma or if she’s just getting some much-needed rest.

Granted, the bond means he’ll probably know if she starts to die, but he’s doing his best not to think about that.

“I don’t know,” Erik repeats for what must be the twelfth time.

But he can’t bring himself to be angry, not when Raven is so clearly terrified for Charlotte. But Erik supposes they all are – he may not be Charlotte, but he recognises fear when he sees it.

Hank is all-but locked in his lab, studying whatever brain scans he managed to salvage from Cerebro, insisting he can find something in them that will somehow help. Moira is obsessively cleaning and organising the entire mansion, even the rooms they never bothered to open, as though she thinks Charlotte will wake up if the place is just a little bit tidier. Alex seems to be single-handedly trying to burn all of the mansion’s uglier furniture, and it’s similar enough to Erik’s own impulse to destroy everything with even a trace of metal in it that he can recognise Alex just wants to be left alone. He’s less sure about Sean though. Sean will spend hours alone in his room but will attach himself to Moira at random intervals and follow her for hours trying to ‘help’ in her clean-up mission. He won’t spend more than a few moments in Charlotte’s room but he’ll nag them incessantly for updates at mealtimes.

Frankly, Erik has no idea how to deal with any of it, so he’s keeping his distance.

It’s been three days since they came back. Since the teleporter took them from the beach and broken wreckage of their plane to the mansion’s neatly-trimmed lawn.

The others wondered why he did that, but Erik understands. They’d just seen Charlotte turn hundreds of people into puppets, sweeping their own wills aside like they were nothing – Azazel (apparently, that’s his name) wants someone like that thinking well of him. He probably hopes this deed will compensate for his previous animosity – it’s just common sense.

Erik understands it, but it doesn’t mean he likes it. It’s cowardice, plain and simple – siding with the strongest person in the hopes that they won’t crush you.

Still, it got Charlotte off that beach, so he’s not complaining too loudly.

But when Azazel left, no one was quite sure what to do. Erik carried Charlotte into the house and laid her out on her bed. They’d considered the hospital, but Moira had vetoed that, saying that they were probably on some kind of watch list, and Charlotte would get carted away to some government lab (which is not happening on Erik’s watch). And it’s not like the doctors would have known what to do anyway. Their best guess is that this is some kind of telepathic overload, and their initial (and overly optimistic) theory was that Charlotte only needed to sleep it off.

When she hadn’t stirred fourteen hours later, they realised this was much deeper than over-exhaustion.

Moira had risked contacting some of her friends in the CIA, trying to determine what had been done with Emma, and if there was any way they could somehow use her to help Charlotte.

She’d reported back with startling news.

“Emma’s gone,” Moira sighs, slumping into the couch.

Their impromptu strategy meeting is taking place in the same living room where they first realised they were going to try to stop a war, and if Erik was a poetic sort of man he’s sure he’d see some parallel in that.

“She escaped?” Sean yelps.

Moira shakes her head. “Not that simple. She’s gone…and so are all of you.”

“Explain.” Erik knows he should probably be politer – she’s helping them, after all – but Charlotte’s still unconscious and a possible door to helping her has just been slammed in their face which means he’s not happy with anything or anyone right now.

“Every record of you is gone,” Moira says bluntly. “No one can recall who you are or where you come from or even what you look like. All of you.”

While some part of Erik relaxes at the knowledge that government agents aren’t about to storm the mansion (he’d been seriously concerned about that, enough to plot out escape routes and contingency plans), the rest of him goes still and silent. Now he knows what’s happened, something in him trembles in awe at the thought of Charlotte reaching so far, through so many minds to finds the ones she wanted.

He’d felt her desperation through the bond and assumed she was struggling to control the sailors. He’d tried to send feelings of love and support, tried to lend her his strength for whatever she might need, but he had never suspected she was doing…anything like that.

Erik knows Raven’s figured it out by the way she looks at him, yellow eyes wide with realisation. “She said she made us safe…”

A horrified silence descends, but only for a moment.

“Holy shit!” Alex blurts. “Holy shit! She really…holy shit!”

Hank presses clawed fingers to his temples, looking like his mind is struggling to grasp the kind of power it would have taken for Charlotte to do that.

Moira is muttering to herself, like she’s trying to keep herself from panicking. “They can’t know – they can never know. They’ll lock her in a cage. They’ll experiment on her. Or kill her. Probably kill her. They can’t know-”

“Could she always do that?” Sean asks quietly.

He sounds almost betrayed, and Erik knows what he’s really asking. If Charlotte could always do that, what was the point of having them come with her, of training them, of finding them in the first place? If Charlotte was powerful enough to make two opposing armies sail away from each other, why didn’t she do that from the start?

“I don’t think she knew,” Raven sighs. “Charlotte, she…she’s always been so afraid of her telepathy, she never really tried to find out what she could really do.”

Erik remembers Charlotte telling him about Cain, about how she never truly tested the offensive capabilities of her telepathy after that, too frightened of the damage she might do.

“Studies have shown that adrenaline can enhance physical strength and speed,” Hank comments, his voice soft and contemplative. “It’s likely the same for our mutations.”

The others are nodding, making little murmurs of agreement, but Erik isn’t entirely convinced. From what Charlotte’s told him about telepathy, and from the memories he experienced through the bond, blurring those memories would have taken more concentration and focus than sheer power.

But he doesn’t say anything – just leaves to check on Charlotte once again.

Erik knows, logically, that he doesn’t have to stay in Charlotte’s room – the bond will tell him the instant she begins waking up – but he can’t help but think that she’ll wake up more quickly if she knows they’re waiting for her. So Erik stays and reads aloud from the books that show the most signs of wear in the spine and thus are probably Charlotte’s favourites.

The catheter was set up on the first day, courtesy of Hank – apparently he had a lot of medical know-how in that enormous brain of his – and the IV was set up twenty-three hours ago, to ensure Charlotte isn’t going to die of dehydration. Hank’s talking about a feeding tube as well, ‘in case this comatose state persists’.

Comatose state. Like he has any idea what’s going on, like any of them have any idea what’s happening. Erik has a better idea than most – the bond sees to that, but all he feels through that is the kind of drowsy pull and dull murmurs of activity he feels when Charlotte’s sleeping.

That should probably give him hope – if she’s sleeping, she has to wake up, doesn’t she? – but the bond doesn’t get any response from her either. Erik has spent the past two days calling down it, then sending Charlotte all his fear and anger in the hope that she’ll respond to his distress even if she doesn’t respond to her name.

But nothing’s worked. Charlotte isn’t waking.

Raven leaves for her own bedroom at nine, but Erik lingers, still reading, until well past midnight, when he leaves for the room across the hall. He doesn’t think he’ll fall asleep, but he finds himself jerking awake in the darkness, the clock telling him it’s half-past three in the morning, and his pulse thrumming for no reason he can determine.

Has he heard something? The house is quiet, but Erik rises anyway – he’s learned to trust his instincts. He’s pulling the edge of the curtain aside to check the grounds when he feels it; a faint, barely perceptible tug on the bond, like Charlotte is gently tapping him on the shoulder to get his attention.

Hardly daring to believe, Erik marshals his thoughts into something like coherency, and sends a tentative question.

Charlotte?

Erik, why did I wake up with an IV and a catheter?

Anyone else might be embarrassed about the way he slams open the door, but Erik’s not the sort of person to get embarrassed about things like that. His reaction is entirely appropriate to the situation.

Charlotte is stepping out of the ensuite bathroom, looking very unsteady on her legs – like a still-wet calf trying to toddle after its mother. She’s holding a ball of cotton wool over the back of her hand, where the IV needle had pierced her skin.

For a moment, Erik does nothing but stare at her, a quick visual check to ensure that yes, this is Charlotte and yes, in spite of the inevitable muscle weakness she doesn’t seem to have any problems coordinating herself so it looks like she’s avoided the possible brain or nerve damage Hank was worried about.

Then he’s across the room and she’s in his arms, and he’s probably holding her a bit too tightly but he doesn’t care because that was too damn close, way too close and she can’t do that to him, dammit, she just can’t…

Erik, it’s alright, Charlotte’s mental touch whispers through his mind, the first active outreach after three days of mental starvation, and Erik almost wants to close his eyes to bask in the feeling of her mind slipping against his, warm and thrumming and so clearly alive.

He can feel the moment she realises she’s been unconscious for three days – a burst of comprehension/understanding/sympathy/oh, that’s why.

At least that explains the IV and catheter, Charlotte quips.

Erik pulls back to glance at her hand, but the pinprick has already clotted, and Charlotte drops the blood-spotted cotton into the bin beside her desk.

I think I’d like to sit down, Charlotte says

Erik doesn’t need to feel the weariness/frustration/I’ve only been on my feet for a minute! to know that Charlotte’s having trouble standing. He eases her back to the bed, settling her against his chest the way he did that night when she read to him about DNA and mutations and he only vaguely understood what she was talking about, but listened more for the pleasure and fascination that had rung through her voice and mind both.

“Are you hungry?” he asks quietly, when she rests her head against his collarbone with a sigh.

Not really. I had a few mouthfuls of water in the bathroom, but I don’t actually feel like eating anything.

Erik supposes that’s just as well. After three days without sustenance, she should probably start slowly, eating soft and bland food.

Charlotte picks up the thought and Erik can feel her disgruntlement. I don’t like porridge.

“We do actually have honey and sugar,” he reminds her (sometimes it still feels strange to know that he has those kind of luxuries on hand), and he feels her distaste settle into more general grumbling.

Erik knows he should probably wake the others up, but he remembers how frightened and wary they were when they understood what Charlotte had done, and he just…doesn’t want them here. Charlotte seems strangely vulnerable, minutely shifting against him and flexing her hands and legs as though she’s re-acquainting herself with her own body, and she shouldn’t have to deal with that right now.

Erik lets her wind their fingers together, trying to force the small, panicked animal that’s been clawing at his chest for the past three days to calm. “Why were you asleep for so long?”

I think my brain was…adjusting. Erik can feel Charlotte searching for the correct word, knows that she’s not certain ‘adjusting’ truly applies but unable to explain it any other way.

What happened on the beach? she asks, and though Erik knows she could just pluck memory from his mind, he’s starting to think this is the telepathic version of polite courtesy.

“You won,” he says bluntly.

Because it’s not ‘we’, it’s ‘you’. Whatever Charlotte did, she did it alone.

She shifts against him, almost fidgeting, and Erik can feel her uncertainty, her bewilderment and the low, flashing strobe of her fear. Fear at what she did, at what she’s capable of.

You know, there are theories that the brain isn’t fully matured until we’re about twenty-five.

The words and information are clean and bland, as though she’s deliberately trying to scrub away any emotion that might be linked to them but Erik knows what she’s in trying to say. That perhaps her telepathy only came into its full maturation when she was twenty-five…but by then, she was strictly controlling herself, afraid of what she could do.

Charlotte had never found the limits of her power, because there had never been a need to. And when there was a need, when she’d stripped her own limitations away…

I think the bond helped too, Charlotte’s thought intruded into Erik’s contemplation. I don’t think it would have been possible without it, actually. Erik, you…you kept me grounded, stopped me from forgetting who I was. There were so many minds, around me and through me and inside me…but I was able to keep my identity separate from them. I knew I was Charlotte Xavier, because you knew it.

The depths of those implications leave Erik a little uncomfortable, and he knows Charlotte can feel how quickly he steers the conversation elsewhere.

“Moira told us about the ultimatum you gave them.”

How did she know?

“She seems to have friends everywhere. Friends who, when push comes to shove, are more loyal to her than their superiors.” And Erik can admit he admires that – Moira does what the situation requires, and uses whatever tools at hand to do so. Moira needs to keep tabs on what the CIA is doing, so that’s exactly what she does, without any hysterics or grief about perceived betrayals – it’s very refreshing.

That’s one of the reasons I like her, yes. Charlotte feels ever-so slightly smug, probably because Erik has been rather bewildered at the friendship she cultivated with a human government agent, but now…well, now Erik can see how similar Charlotte and Moira are.

But he still feels the need to warn her – she may have put two world powers in their place, but that’s no guarantee of safety. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite; now they’ve got a spotlight on them. “You know it could go either way now, don’t you?”

Charlotte nods, her hair slithering against his neck. Yes – they may step back and approach us peacefully, or they may only come down on us all the harder. But either way, we have drawn the line. We’ve taken a stand, and now we have to show them that we will not run, that we will not be persecuted.

Erik remembers a conversation in a government-issue car, seeking out an older mutant who hadn’t wanted anything to do with them. “Aggressively peaceful?”

Exactly.

Charlotte huffs a quiet sigh, and turns her face against his neck. Erik presses his lips to her temple just because it’s there, and he can. Her mind is humming with affection and love and pride, and Erik can admit he’s practically basking in it because Charlotte’s here, she’s awake and she’s alright…

But then suddenly she’s not alright, because a dark wave of fear dims the happy glow. Erik, I reached across hundreds of miles and manipulated minds like they were toys. And the effort was in finding them, in only erasing what I wanted to and not wiping them entirely – it would have been effortless to destroy them. Erik…Emma Frost was scared of me; what does that make me?

In some ways, Erik can understand her worry. If Charlotte ever gets it into her head that she always knows best, that her way is always the right way no matter what anyone says…well, she’ll make Shaw look like a joke. She can bring world leaders to their knees, manipulate people like puppets and ensure they never even know she’s done it.

But in the end, she’s still Charlotte. That’s why Erik tried to wake her up, rather than take the chance to kill her while she slept. That’s why the others haven’t turned away, for all that they’re clearly afraid of what she can do.

“You’re Charlotte Francine Xavier,” he says quietly. “You’re what you’ve always been.”

And Charlotte actually laughs.

End.

AN: A big round of applause for my beta, ginbitch, who helped me start, conceive and finish this story! And thanks to everyone who stuck with me.

Charlotte Francine Xavier - Part Fourteen

blind_author — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:25:38 GMT

Part Fourteen

Pushing Back

“When you push someone too far, they will push back and they push hard.”

-Rachel Vincent

The attack comes too fast for Erik to block or evade, and the sudden pain that lances across his right side is enough to make him lose his grip on the sofa. He reaches for the metal in the submarine walls, trying to push himself away and counteract the force of Shaw’s blow, to cushion the impact so he won’t be knocked unconscious immediately.

Erik hits the wall and drops to the floor, but his ribs aren’t broken and his skull is intact. He rolls to his feet, glancing wildly about for Shaw…

And he finds him on the opposite side of the room, pinning Charlotte to the wall. Erik can only just see her face over Shaw’s shoulder, eyes wide and dazed as though she’s been stunned, Shaw’s fingers wrapped around her throat, his thumb pressing beneath her chin to tilt her face up towards him.

Erik has never seen one of his nightmares come to life before. And he is painfully, horrifically aware of that fact that Shaw wouldn’t even have to squeeze to kill her.

Charlotte is pushing at Shaw’s arm, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. He’s staring at her the way he used to stare at Erik, intrigued and delighted, and the only thought in Erik’s head is to get Shaw away from her.

He reaches out to the metal girders that hold the submarine together and shoves them at Shaw. They’re carefully aimed away from Charlotte, which is more difficult than he thought it would be – that kind of fine control is beginning to get lost amid the familiar tidal wave of anger and fear.

Shaw doesn’t bother batting them away – they hit him and veer off course, smashing through walls and floor and driving upwards into the ceiling. His expression doesn’t even flicker; there’s no amusement or condescension or even triumph as he puts one hand on a steel support beam and pushes it towards Erik.

Erik tries to throw it backwards, but apparently his own mutant power is no match for the force Shaw is exerting. The bastard isn’t even breaking a sweat as he slowly extends his arm, until Erik feels cold metal touch his fingers.

Every scrap of Erik’s power is focused on pushing that beam back towards Shaw, the pulse at his temples pounding so hard he wonders if he’s about to have a stroke. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, and the beam keeps coming.

Shaw takes a step towards him, and for a moment Erik hopes he’ll let Charlotte go in favour of pressing his point (and the beam) home. But of course, he should have known better – Shaw never relinquishes any advantage. He simply drags Charlotte along with him, his grip forcing her onto her tiptoes to keep from strangling herself. He can see her hand tighten on Shaw’s arm, but it seems less a ploy to make him release her and more a desperate attempt to keep her balance.

Humiliatingly, it’s only seconds before Erik is pinned against the wall with the beam he pulled from the ceiling himself.

The metal is shuddering with the force Erik is exerting on it, but it’s not moving. He tries reaching for more anger, or for that place ‘between rage and serenity’, but all he’s feeling is sick despair and a sense of inevitability. Shaw had always been stronger than him – why did he think this time could be different?

It’s alright, Erik, Charlotte sends into his mind. The link has been dormant since he laid eyes on Shaw, but now he feels the slightest whisper of wariness/hope/fear/dread. If he wanted to kill us, he would have done it already.

Which is not reassuring in the slightest. If Shaw doesn’t want to kill them, it only means he has a use for them, which is far more horrifying.

“You’ve come a long way from bending gates,” Shaw says to Erik, his tone genial and conversational.

Charlotte squirms in Shaw’s grip, and Erik recognises the diversionary tactic for what it is – she is trying to draw Shaw’s attention to herself, rather than on him.

He wants to shout at her, but instead settles for sending a blistering rebuke through the bond. There is no acknowledgement, not even an answering thought as Shaw looks at her, one casual glance taking in her flushed face, the strands of hair that have come loose from her ponytail.

He laughs, and drops his hand from the beam, only there’s no chance for Erik to take advantage of that because he leans his shoulder on it instead. It’s just his shoulder, but it might as well be the side of a mountain for the effect Erik’s straining has.

“I must say, your taste has certainly improved,” Shaw says in a low, almost intimate tone, his face far too close to Erik’s. “From an underfed human brat to this magnificent specimen? My compliments.”

As if the insinuation isn’t terrifying enough, Shaw uses his free hand to brush the hair away from Charlotte’s cheeks, to better see her face. But Charlotte doesn’t flinch or cower or even look away – she matches Shaw stare for stare, eyes wide and defiant and impossibly blue…

Erik jerks when Shaw raises his hand again, half-convinced he’s about to hit her, but he only grips her chin and turns her head to the side. Not painfully or even particularly forcefully, simply as though Charlotte is a doll he wants to inspect.

Charlotte doesn’t struggle. Erik’s grateful for it.

Thankfully, Shaw seems to lose interest in her soon enough and turns to Erik again, speaking as if there had never been any break in his attention.

“And you’re just starting to scratch the surface. Think how much further we could go…together.”

Shaw’s tone is soft, probably meant to be enticing, but all Erik can feel is a pervasive sense of disgust and the shrill, ringing terror Shaw’s presence always induces. Shaw leans in as if to whisper in Erik’s ear (a nauseating concept) but he suddenly freezes, his head swinging around to stare at Charlotte again.

“Extraordinary,” Shaw breathes. “Emma could never penetrate the helmet at all, but with you…does close contact enhance your abilities? I can feel something tickling at the back of my mind.”

Charlotte blinks, and the surprise/fear/astonishment that comes to Erik through the bond tells him she hadn’t even been aware she was chipping at Shaw’s mental defences. But then there’s a swift wave of something that feels like pure determination, and Erik knows she’s bearing down on Shaw’s mind, trying to turn him to her will.

The sudden crack of flesh striking flesh echoes like a gunshot and Charlotte’s head spins to the side, a thin line of blood whipping through the air. Erik just manages to stop himself crying out, feeling the shock of her pain jangle through him before she drags the sensation back. He knows that if Shaw weren’t holding her by the neck, the force of the blow would have knocked her to the ground.

“Don’t try that again,” Shaw says, perfectly calm.

Charlotte stares at him, and Erik wonders if she even notices the fat drop of blood welling on her bottom lip.

Erik! The bond thrums with fear/desperation/anxiety like a violin string plucked too hard. The helmet!

Erik might be able to yank the helmet off Shaw’s head, but the metal feels…strange. Almost slippery, as though his powers don’t quite have a good grip on it. He won’t risk reaching for it, only to have it just wobble on Shaw’s head and tip him off to their plans.

So instead, Erik manipulates the metal wiring in the destroyed ceiling above them, directing a coil to snake down, moving slowly and carefully so Shaw won’t see sudden movement in his peripheral vision and turn around.

“Fascinating, isn't it?” Shaw muses, still gazing at Charlotte. “How so much mental power can be contained in a body so small and...” His hand lifts to her face, thumb catching the bead of blood that was beginning to ooze down her chin. “...fragile?”

Shaw is staring at Charlotte’s mouth and the smear of blood with the kind of interest he once looked at Erik with. His finger drags across her lip, painting bright crimson across her skin.

It’s frighteningly close to Erik’s nightmare, and the metal ship groans with his terror.

Charlotte can tell Erik’s hold on the metal wires is slipping. She’s not surprised – the intensity of the anger and fear pouring through the bond is making fine control of his powers almost impossible. She’s trying to calm him down, but her determined waves of peace/focus/calm aren’t making any kind of impression on the rabid terror that has Erik in its grip. And it’s difficult to concentrate properly when she’s almost frightened as he is.

The helmet needs to come off Shaw’s head in the next thirty seconds. The wires aren’t close enough to grab for it, and she suspects that kind of control is going to be beyond Erik very soon.

Shaw’s thumb rubs across her lips, making the gash sting anew from the salts on his skin. Charlotte flinches in an abortive jerk backwards, not from the pain but from the sudden howl of Erik’s fear. She tamps down the bond, like drawing a curtain across a window when the sun is too bright, trying to muffle Erik’s panic enough to clear her mind.

But not before a glass-clear image flies through the bond – her panting and bloody, strapped to a metal table, Shaw tracing her lips with hunger in his eyes. This is Erik’s nightmare made flesh and Charlotte can see his face twist, see his lips form the word ‘please’.

She can’t tell if he’s begging Shaw or god and wonders if even Erik knows. All she can hear is the thought drumming in his mind like a hurricane.

Please don't hurt her.

Shaw’s fingers begin to tighten on her neck, enough to make her gasp and her lungs begin to burn. Slowly, inexorably, her trachea closes beneath the pressure he’s exerting, smooth and relentless, and Charlotte has a brief moment to think this is very similar to what Emma felt when Erik strangled her with that loop of metal.

She can’t read Shaw’s mind, but she knows he doesn’t want to kill her. She’s never been particularly skilled at reading body language – she’s never had to be – but Erik can tell that Shaw is curious about her, and he never destroys anything he’s curious about. At least, not physically.

Charlotte suspects – she doesn’t know, but she suspects – that his purpose in strangling her is to provoke Erik. She might think he’s doing it to subdue her, except he’s certainly proven he doesn’t need her unconscious to do that; with that helmet on, and his mutation, she’s helpless against him. No, he’s trying to push Erik into putting on a display for him. He’s seen Erik’s power, of course, but as a child – he wants to test the limits of Erik's fully-matured ability, and sees tormenting her as the best way to do it.

It might actually work. Erik’s fine control is deserting him, but the scale of his powers is growing. The actual submarine is beginning to buckle around them but she doubts Erik’s even aware of it, not when all his focus is on the beam Shaw is pressing into his chest.

She can’t get enough air, and another flex from Shaw closes her throat entirely, and she has to act now before panic (her own and Erik’s) completely overwhelms her.

She sends one thought through the bond, bright and loud enough to burn through Erik’s terror.

CATCH!

Then Charlotte spits in Shaw’s face.

She was hoping to catch him in the eye, but she’s never tried to spit accurately since she was thirteen and Raven invented that disgusting contest, so the saliva actually hits the cheek of the helmet. But Shaw’s head still snaps back instinctively, his weight shifting off the beam crushing Erik’s ribs as the dome of the helmet smacks into the wires dangling so invitingly behind it.

They curve around it like fingers and yank it off his head, and as soon as Charlotte feels even a spark of Shaw’s mind she latches onto it like a terrier with a rat. She locks down any kind of voluntary movement, leaving him a prisoner in his own body, frozen in the act of reaching backwards for the helmet.

She’s not sure how long she can hold him – his mutation seems to give him some kind of inherent resistance to telepathy, it’s like trying to hold a writhing eel with soap-slick hands – but for now, she has Shaw under control.

Charlotte prods at Shaw’s mind, forcing his fingers to release her throat, and she staggers back, dropping to her knees and gasping for air. The metal beam that had been pinning Erik falls to the floor, and the helmet follows it.

Then Erik is beside her, cupping her chin and brushing her cheeks, tucking her hair out of her face, the bond steaming with worry/relief/protectiveness/Charlotte/are you alright?

I’m fine, she sends back, but she knows Erik doesn’t believe her. She’s still breathing like a bellows, though that comes more from her effort to restrain Shaw than the strangling.

Erik’s fingers are stroking her certain-to-be-bruised neck with the lightest touch she’s ever felt, like the brush of an eyelash or an insect’s wing. Charlotte wants very badly to just close her eyes and lean into Erik’s arms and Erik’s mind, but she can’t let herself relax yet.

There’s not even enough time for her catch her breath

Erik, I can’t hold him for long, she tells him.

Erik raises his eyes to Shaw and his face contorts, rage and hatred and remembered terror lashing down the bond like shrapnel.

He reaches into his pocket, feels the shape of the coin Charlotte knows is there, and stands slowly. Charlotte stays on her knees – she doesn’t think any attempts to stand right now will end well. Shaw is still raging, like a rhinoceros on a short chain, and she can almost feel the links slipping through her fingers.

Erik!

“Can you shield yourself from him?” he asks, voice flat as he pulls the coin from his pocket, the metal hovering above his hand, deliberately positioned in Shaw’s line of sight.

No, she can’t shield herself, but she’s not going to tell Erik that. He would try to find some way of subduing Shaw that didn’t harm her, which will take time they don’t have to spare. Instead she battens down the bond, reduces it to a cell door with a single viewport, just enough to keep them from developing any inconvenient headaches or nausea.

“I’ll be fine,” she says. It’s not even a lie.

Erik nods.

And he moves the coin.

Erik can admit he’d had some idea of pushing the coin through Shaw’s gut and chest, shredding his insides slowly and painfully. But with Charlotte in his mind, Erik doesn’t want to chance that she might feel something of what he’s doing, so he’ll send it through Shaw’s brain instead – there are no pain nerves inside the brain itself, but there are lots of blood vessels. With a little spin on the coin as soon as it’s past the skull, Erik can reduce it to pulp.

Erik, hurry! Charlotte urges.

There are no accompanying emotions, and the bond actually seems…muffled, almost non-existent. But Charlotte probably needs to shield herself entirely to avoid feeling Shaw’s pain.

Erik can feel himself grinning as he sends the coin slowly forward, the kind of grin that twists his lips and makes his cheeks hurt, the one he’s always showed people who are about to die. The coin meets the flesh of Shaw’s forehead and Erik feels a brief shudder of resistance, the coin wanting to rebound like it’s been thrown against concrete. Erik suspects that if he moves too fast, if tries to drive the coin straight through like a bullet it will be thrown back – whatever power that inhabits Shaw’s skin rejecting the intrusion – so he keeps the push slow and steady, feeling the metal to part skin and eventually bone.

Shaw’s expression doesn’t flicker, which is a pity (some part of Erik wanted to see fear on his face, for a change), but Erik hopes he’s feeling every moment of it. Charlotte gasps and chokes, as though in fear, and Erik steps between her and Shaw, so she won’t have to see what’s happening. It’s probably a ridiculous impulse – she’s undoubtedly seen and experienced worse, if she picks up car crashes and rapes on a regular basis – but he doesn’t bother to curb it.

Once the coin disappears from his sight, Erik spins it, rotating like the blades of a blender. Blood begins to cascade from the slit in Shaw’s forehead, running down his nose and mouth – staining his lips the way he’d stained Charlotte’s. It’s only when the blood has soaked half his shirtfront – the way it had soaked Erik’s mother’s frayed dress – that Erik deems it safe to send the coin out through the back of his skull.

Shaw slumps to the floor, and in that moment of blinding relief and triumph, from the corner of his eye Erik sees Charlotte do the same.

Triumph turns to dust and smoke. He whirls around, sure that he’s missed something, been too focused on Shaw to see that her trachea was crushed, that he’d broken ribs when he slammed her against the wall, that the backhand had fractured her skull…

I’m fine. Even her mental voice sounds exhausted – fuzzy and soft and slightly inarticulate, as if it’s taking her several seconds to think of the right words. I’m fine, just…drained.

Careful of any possibly injuries, Erik slips an arm under her shoulders and props her into an upright position.

I’m fine. And there’s a definite tinge of irritation/worry/concern to that one. Erik, I’m not the one who was thrown around the submarine.

The bond is still dim and muffled, and Erik wonders how long that’s going to last.

The others are still fighting, Charlotte points out. Help me up.

It feels strange to think of the world outside the submarine, that a struggle might still be going on now that Shaw is dead.

Now that Shaw is dead. Erik runs the words through his head, over and over, staring at the dead body, and still can’t make himself believe them. He half-expects Shaw to stand up and start swinging, and surreptitiously wraps a few wires around the man’s limbs so Erik will have advance warning if he moves.

He feels numb, almost dazed, as though he’s concussed even though he never hit his head. Shaw is dead, and while he’s certainly satisfied, he can’t deny that he thought he would be…happier, somehow.

He helps Charlotte to her feet and steadies her against him; her legs are as wobbly as a newborn fawn’s. He spots Shaw’s helmet lying on the floor, and raises one of the steel beams above it, ready to crush it into a useless hunk…

Don’t! Charlotte exclaims, a thin dart of denial/refusal/pain/no following it into Erik’s head.

“Why not?” he snaps, more harshly than he means to. But standing near Shaw’s body is making his skin crawl.

We need to understand it.

Charlotte totters over to it – brushing off Erik’s hovering hands – and picks the helmet up, tucking it under one arm.

It was the shield of an unrepentant sadist and psychopath, the only thing that can neutralise her power and make her vulnerable…and Charlotte wants to study it?

Of course she does. Erik doesn’t know why he’s surprised.

The bond is still muted, only the faintest whisper hinting at its existence, so Erik has no idea what Charlotte’s thinking when she reaches out one hand and closes Shaw’s blind, staring eyes. She closes her own eyes for a brief moment, her fingers coming up at rub at her forehead as though she has a headache.

But she’s not massaging her temples, or scrubbing her palm across her face. Two fingers are gently running up and down in the centre of her forehead, like she’s soothing an injury that’s only an inch long…

Exactly the size of the coin Erik dug into Shaw’s skull. Charlotte’s fingers are even tracing the exact location.

Horror blurs Erik’s vision. “Did you feel that?”

Charlotte snatches her hand from her head, and Erik remembers their conversation.

Can you shield yourself from him?

I’ll be fine.

Too late, he realises that wasn’t a ‘yes’

“Charlotte…”

“He’s…not the…first person…I’ve felt die,” Charlotte says slowly, as though it takes effort to remember to speak the words aloud. “And I think…we have bigger…problems…right now.”

Of course, Shaw’s people are still out there – the teleporter, the wind-maker, and…her.

Charlotte is beginning to totter in the direction of the hole Erik tore in the side of the submarine, and it occurs to Erik that maybe a show of force will be much more efficient than throwing themselves into another battle. He reaches out for the wires wrapped around Shaw’s limbs, using the metal to levitate the body. Charlotte grimaces but doesn’t object (though the bond is still utterly silent and Erik is doing his best not let on how unsettling he finds that).

Erik is trying to think of something grand and attention-getting to shout upon their exit, but Charlotte is still looking wobbly and faintly sick, and it’s hard to think past the…Erik doesn’t think he can call it relief, but it’s certainly the absence of the crawling terror that itched at the back of his mind whenever he thought of Shaw, alive and out there.

In the end, he goes with the basics. “Stop!”

And it seems that’s enough of an attention-getter all on its own, though that might be the spectacle of Shaw’s hanging body. As soon as he’s assured that Shaw’s cronies are staring, Erik drops it, and the corpse hits the sand with a wet crunch.

All three of them stare down at Shaw’s body as if they can’t really believe he’s dead. Erik can sympathise.

He tries to keep his face blank and intimidating while thinking very clearly for Charlotte to hurry up and do whatever she does that makes people peaceful and conciliatory (Erik is secure in his ability to terrify people, but if they’re trying to get this to end without any further bloodshed then that’s Charlotte’s area, not his), when he feels a stirring from the huge metal ships, so far away from them.

Those enormous guns are turning towards this beach – towards them.

Slowly, Charlotte’s head turns to stare out at the ocean, and Erik’s not sure if it’s a side-effect of shielding the bond or whatever she went through when Shaw died, but suddenly her mental voice slams across his consciousness with all the subtlety of a train wreck. It’s as if nothing exists but her words, and for a moment he loses all ability to think about anything else – as though she’s lost the telepathic equivalent of volume control.

I THINK WE HAVE A PROBLEM.

Charlotte has never been able to find the words to describe what it feels like to die. Possibly because words have never been created for it – no one dies twice, after all.

Except for her. She died when her father did, and when her mother did, and when that girl hanged herself, and when that boy was beaten to death…

Really, Shaw’s only one more name in a long, long list. But she keeps the bond silent and tightly shielded while she tries to get a handle on Shaw’s memories – a deep connection like the one she was forced to sustain to hold him inevitably results in some spill over.

It’s why she closed his eyes. In those moments, Charlotte had seen what made him…the way he was. She doesn’t want Erik to see that – he deserves to hate cleanly, without the muddying taint of doubt or pity.

Charlotte doesn’t have that luxury, but she’s used to that.

She’s keeping the helmet to study of course, because you have to know your enemy to defeat them, and because, well…

She projects awfully when she’s sick. Every single barrier comes down, which means her thoughts bleed into everyone else’s even as theirs bleed into hers. Charlotte has only been seriously ill once in her life, but that was more than enough for both her and Raven, who was stuck with nursing her by sheer necessity – anyone else would have run as soon as they started feeling Charlotte’s projected nausea and fever.

Charlotte can’t help but think that if something like that were to ever happen again, it might be handy to have something that kept her thoughts to herself.

The display of Shaw’s body does seem to get everyone to stop fighting, if only in sheer shock. Charlotte’s just beginning to feel like she’s clawed back enough control to risk lowering her shields; in general, that is – the bond is staying tightly locked up until she’s sure no memory of Shaw’s is going to slither down the connection to Erik.

Slowly, cautiously, her mind unfurls, glancing and skipping along the tangled thoughts around her, relief and horror and confusion, and she risks a mental peek at the men on the ships…

And suddenly realises that Shaw’s people are the least of their problems.

Charlotte blames her shock and still-shaky bearings when she blasts into the others’ minds like that. Usually it’s easy to just whisper into their thoughts, to insert what she wants them to know without it becoming overwhelming and subsuming all other thought processes, but now she has to consciously rein herself in.

We have a problem, she repeats, trying to ignore the fear and wariness suddenly skittering through the minds around her – not directed at Shaw or the ships but at her, at the sheer force of her mind.

Erik is the only one who doesn’t seem bothered by it – he’s reserving his wariness for whatever has made her so worried.

She’s not surprised he knows what it is.

“The guns,” he says bluntly, staring out over the water. “I can feel them turning. Targeting us.”

Apparently both Russian and American militaries have decided that ‘the mutants’ are too much of a threat to be countenanced. Even if ‘the mutants’ have just prevented nuclear war.

Strangely, Charlotte doesn’t think of the unfairness, of the betrayal, but instead of her first laboratory class in university, all those years ago. Her lab partner had been nervous, unsure of what to do, but when she offered her assistance he’d slapped her gloved hands away and said scathingly that he ‘didn’t need some girl helping him’.

Charlotte had been so shocked that she’d frozen for a full minute, able to feel the resentment ringing from his mind like a gong struck too hard. Even though she’d only been offering help, his reaction had been to punish her for it. It isn’t the last time she experienced that – it isn’t even the first, but perhaps it made such an impression because some part of her had hoped that things might be different in university, that she might be accepted on the merits of her mind rather than her sex.

Charlotte thinks, for one brief moment, that if this had been the first time it happened, she probably would have been utterly useless. The shock of it would have left her reeling for far too long.

But it isn’t the first time. It’s not even the fiftieth, and her shock and stunned hurt have long since faded to nothing more than a quick spark of flint on steel; there and gone

Now, she’s just furious. She can feel them preparing to fire and the only thought in her mind in as clear as glass and as sharp as shattered obsidian.

No you don’t. Not this time.

AN: Thanks to my beta, ginbitch!

Part Fifteen

Charlotte Francine Xavier - Part Thirteen

blind_author — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:22:18 GMT

Title: Charlotte Francine Xavier
Rating: R/NC-17.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings:
Genderbend, violence, disturbing images, references to the Holocaust, past non-con and child abuse. I delve into the darker implications of telepathy here, so please heed the rating.
Pairings: Erik/always-a-girl!Charles
Summary: Written for a kinkmeme prompt that wanted to see the events of the movie if Charles had been a woman. This story will also wander into psychic-bond trope territory, as well as being a shameless fix-it fic. Just so everything’s clear up front…

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve

Part Thirteen

Divergence

“In the end we are all separate: our stories, no matter how similar, come to a fork and diverge.”

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The whole house has been tense ever since the announcement, and while some part of Erik is glad that they’re taking this as seriously as it deserves, he can feel the headache it’s giving Charlotte. She retreated to her room almost immediately after dinner, and for almost an hour now the only thing he’s picked up from her is the low-level calm that seems to denote her attempts to quiet her mind and block out the din of others’.

Erik’s been put in the very foreign position of being the one to reassure everyone else that they’ll be fine, that they’re prepared (which he doubts, but telling them otherwise is only going to lower morale). He’s never been someone anyone turned to for comfort, and he’s not quite sure he likes it.

He’s doing one last circuit of the grounds, checking all entry points are safely closed off, when he feels a soft ripple of disquiet from Charlotte, flavoured with worry and emotional distress.

He’s halfway to her room before she reassures him that she’s not hurt, that there’s nothing to worry about.

He hopes his feeling of irritation comes across the bond. He refuses to feel embarrassed about his reaction – this is probably Shaw’s last chance to abduct her, and some part of Erik is convinced he’s going to take it – but his irritation is derailed when Charlotte tells him exactly why she’s upset.

Hank has finished the serum, and Raven has refused to take it. I’m not reading her mind, but I gather he said some…unkind things.

Erik’s anger returns at that, quiet and seething. He doesn’t think about it, just shoves open the door and strides into the room.

Charlotte is sitting on the edge of her bed, Raven beside her in a bathrobe, her hair blonde and her skin pink, but her eyes are yellow and glimmering with tears. One hand is entwined with her adopted sister’s, and Raven’s holding on so tightly Charlotte’s skin is turning white.

Raven looks up in surprise as Erik enters, and for a moment her eyes flash blue, as though she’s trying to hide behind them. Then the blue fractures like stained glass and slides back into gold. Instead, Raven hunches her shoulders and tries to turn away from him.

Charlotte doesn’t even glance at him – all her focus is on Raven, on finishing whatever conversation they were having before Erik burst in. “If you came here looking for justification, Raven, I can’t really give you that. It’s your decision, it has to be, and I shouldn’t really get a say in it one way or the other. But you’re my sister, you’ll always be my sister, and that means that if you want to look like-” Charlotte made a vague gesture with the hand Raven wasn’t holding, trying encompass the blonde hair and fair skin, “-then I’ll support you. And if you want to be…well, blue, then I’ll support you in that as well.”

Raven sniffs a little wetly, and looks like she’s trying to muster up a glare. “You want me to look human, though.”

Charlotte winces slightly. “Well, I can’t deny that I worry about exposure, about people hurting you…but you’re strong, Raven. And in the end, it’s your choice.”

“You know what I think,” Erik adds, remembering their brief conversation (though perhaps conversation is being a bit generous) when he found her lifting weights.

He doesn’t really want to look too closely at why he hates Raven’s disguise (reminds him of yellow stars inadequately concealed under jackets and scarves), he only knows that he resents it, that her need to hide seems to perfectly encapsulate everything wrong with the human race.

“In fact,” he continues, getting into his stride. “You might consider not wearing clothes at all. You don’t seem to feel the elements in the same way we do, and since you can morph the appearance of clothes anyway…”

Alarm and a sense of please, stop comes to him through the bond, but Raven is looking intrigued. “You really think so?”

“Have you ever seen a tiger, and thought you ought to cover it up?” And all those philosophical discussions with Charlotte must have been good for something, because they’ve certainly helped Erik articulate his point of view.

“Let’s not take it too far,” Charlotte grumbles.

Raven looks crestfallen. “Don’t you like the idea of me as…me?”

“It’s your choice, and I promise I’ll support you whatever you choose, but…” Charlotte grimaces. “But please think very hard before you decide to go around naked in a house with three easily-distractible men in their early to mid-twenties. We’d never get a straight sentence out of Sean again.”

You’re not including me? Erik asks.

I’m assuming you have more self-control – at least enough not to drop or break something if my sister walks by naked. Should I revise that assessment?

“Oh, right,” Raven mutters, almost to herself.

“Although if you felt like making an entrance…” Charlotte offers with a cheeky smile.

Even Erik can hear the acceptance beneath those words, and he can feel Charlotte’s pride in her sister along their connection. She and Raven both laugh, and Raven abruptly shifts into her natural form, sans bathrobe.

“Good god, Raven, you're my sister – warn me when you're about to do that!” Charlotte says in mock-horror, covering her eyes.

Raven giggles – the soft, furtive giggle of a child taunting their sibling – and the bathrobe reappears. The blue skin, however, stays. Charlotte runs her eyes over Raven, like she’s taking in a new dress or haircut, then smiles

“You look beautiful.”

Charlotte’s voice is soft, but her eyes are proud. Raven makes a sound that suggests she’s trying to sniff back tears, and Erik suddenly wishes he never opened the door – this is feeling a bit too private.

It’s fine, Charlotte’s voice is in his head before he even turns towards the door. She looks up to you – it helps, having you here.

Raven suddenly flings her arms around Charlotte and literally throws herself against her sister. Charlotte rocks back at the impact – Raven’s taller than her, even if she is deliberately hunching her back so she can tuck her head beneath Charlotte’s chin. Charlotte runs a comforting hand over Raven’s shoulders, resting her fingers at the nape of her neck, soft pale flesh a stark contrast to blue scales as she presses a gentle kiss to her sister’s crimson hair.

Eventually, Raven sighs and draws back, but she’s looking…not happier, but more settled than Erik has ever seen her.

“Now, do you want me to convince Hank the lab is infested with rats?” Charlotte asks. “Or cockroaches – I can do cockroaches. I can also make a very convincing illusion of an earthquake-”

“Like that one time that boy tried to bully me at school and you made him feel itchy for the rest of the day?” Raven sniggers. “I think I can fight my own battles at this point, thanks.”

The reminder of battle sends a shadow flitting through the bond, but Charlotte’s expression doesn’t flicker in the slightest. It’s moments like these that show Erik, over and over again, just how rigidly Charlotte controls herself, how much she works to prevent her true feelings from being detected – a habit forged over a lifetime of inadvertently learning all the ugly, shameful secrets of people you’re meant to respect.

Raven is still blue and smiling when she leaves, but Charlotte’s grin disappears as soon her as sister is out the door, and she lets her body flop backwards onto the bed with a soft groan.

Are you alright? Sometimes, Erik wonders if he’ll ever talk aloud around Charlotte again. He rather likes that he doesn’t have to – it appeases the dark, shadowy part of his mind that worries about overheard communication and leaked information.

I think it’s just hit me that in less than twelve hours we’ll be leading them all into battle. Charlotte words are laden with worry/fear/regret/trepidation and a strange, bitter sense of inadequacy, like she thinks she’s not good enough to do this.

You’re the only person who could do this, he tells her, and he means it

Erik knows he’s a good taskmaster, good at pushing others into testing their limits, but he’s not good at the other side of it. The gentle encouragement and verbal pats on the back Charlotte seems to do so effortlessly simply aren’t part of his vocabulary, they never have been. And for all Moira’s grasp of tactics and strategy, she’s human and government-employed, all of which combine to give them a certain wariness around her, a sense of a gap they can’t bridge. Except for Charlotte. But then, ‘except for Charlotte’ seems to be Erik’s motto, nowadays.

I can feel them, Charlotte goes on, the words veiled with a kind of haziness that Erik is learning denotes the thoughts Charlotte only half-means him to hear. All through the mansion, and they’re all so worried, so uncertain, and I don’t what I can say to them, if there’s anything to say…

You managed to deal with Raven’s crisis well enough, Erik points out.

Yes, but that’s something I can relate to. I know what it’s like to be told you’re inadequate, that you’re somehow deficient simply because of the way you were born.

The words are underpinned with snippets of memories, of Charlotte standing in front of the mirror and hating the breasts and hour-glass hips that mark her as female, of Charlotte considering projecting the illusion of a male body into everyone’s minds and living as ‘Charles Francis Xavier’ because it would be so much easier.

I need to shut my brain off for a while, she admits ruefully. Or at least think about something else. Can we play chess?

Coming from anyone else, that might have sounded like some kind of euphemism, but Erik doesn’t need the bond to know that Charlotte doesn’t feel like having sex right now. Chess has become a relaxing, almost meditative pastime for them both.

At least, when their conversation doesn’t take them into dangerous territory.

“Peace was never an option,” Erik says, and tries to ensure Charlotte can feel his determination through the bond. Either Shaw will die tomorrow, or Erik will – there is no middle ground.

Charlotte tilts her head, and a sense of puzzlement trickles into Erik’s mind. Erik, when did I ever say I didn’t want you to kill Shaw?

Erik pauses, trying to dredge up a memory of Charlotte doing exactly that, and comes up short. All she’s ever said is that killing Shaw won’t bring him peace.

I’m not happy about it, she admits. The thought is accompanied by a complex tangle of thoughts and emotions, most of which give him the impression that Charlotte’s main wish is that none of this happened to him in the first place, and Erik…doesn’t really know how to process that.

But really, what else can we do? Charlotte continues. I don’t know any prison that can hold him, so the only alternative would be to trap him inside his own mind, which is essentially death anyhow, and death is possibly kinder.

There’s still a part of Erik that bristles warily when Charlotte does this – mentions something like trapping someone in their minds for the rest of their life like it wouldn’t take as much effort as cooking an omelette – and he’s reminded all over again that for all his power, Charlotte is really the more dangerous of the two of them. It’s not suspicion, exactly, more like those self-preservation instincts that have always been strangely silent in regards to Charlotte are making a feeble attempt to be heard, screaming that he’s in love with someone who could destroy him without breaking a sweat, and shouldn’t he be more worried about this?

The bond actually helps with that, though. Those brief glimpses of what it’s like to be a telepath he caught when the bond formed (not just voices as he’d half-imagined but images and tastes and smells and touches and even emotions and not for the first time he wonders how Charlotte escaped adolescence with her sanity intact), showed him exactly how strict Charlotte is with herself, how much she shies away from true manipulation without good reason. Not because it’s difficult, but because it’s too easy.

A shiver of trepidation and unease through the bond pulls his attention back to Charlotte.

I just don’t want you to have any illusions, she whispers. Killing Shaw won’t make it go away.

It would be easy to scoff, to ask her what she knows about it, if Erik didn’t know what her life had been like, hadn’t seen her secrets in excruciating detail. Charlotte knows what it’s like to watch someone who abused her die.

But she’s also admitted that his death reassured her, and to be perfectly honest, there’s nothing she could say or do to turn Erik back now. He’s spent most of his life plotting to kill Shaw and to stop now would be…unthinkable.

They don’t make love that night, and Charlotte wonders if Erik gets any sleep at all. He’s curled around her when she falls asleep, muscles tight and tense, breathing a little too evenly to be purely natural, and he’s in the exact same position when she wakes up, three and a half hours later. She’s the one who’s moved – turning into his embrace, her nose pressed into the hollow of his collarbones, her hair catching in his early-morning stubble.

She knows why he’s like this, thinks she would know even without the bond. He’s afraid.

Not for himself, of course. Erik doesn’t fear his own death…but he fears hers. And Raven’s, and Sean’s, and Hank’s, and Alex’s and even Moira’s. He’s worried about all of them because they don’t know Shaw the way he does, don’t know what will happen if he gets his hands on them (and she can feel Erik very deliberately not thinking of the interest Shaw’s already expressed in Charlotte herself).

She takes a deep, steadying breath, and wishes she could give him some kind of reassurance, in words or through the bond. But any reassurance she can give now would be lies, and Charlotte’s made a promise to herself that she will never lie to Erik.

Of course, the bond may render it moot – he could probably feel if she was trying to deceive him – but it’s the principle of the thing.

“Well, I suppose we should get up,” Charlotte murmurs, speaking aloud to ease the early morning tickle from her throat.

She cranes her head back to look into Erik’s face, tight and worried with deep furrows around the mouth.

Charlotte tries to smile. “Time to face the world.”

She wishes she was speaking metaphorically.

Sean has rarely seen anything more awesome than the plane that Hank calls the Blackbird.

And Christ, what happened to Hank? He said something about a serum, and Sean vaguely recalls him doing something with Raven that would make them look human or something (he was never really clear on the details), but it seems to have backfired spectacularly.

Erik was kind of a dick though, with that comment about Hank ‘never looking better’. Even Alex didn’t go there.

At least the Professor got Hank to let Erik go before he killed the dude. But she’s good at getting people to listen to her. She got Sean onto the satellite dish, didn’t she? And this was before he knew he could fly.

But the Professor’s just the sort of person people automatically trust, Sean’s noticed. It doesn’t have so much to do with her blithe smile or air of complete honesty, but more in the way her face seems to tell you that she knows exactly what’s going on and exactly what you’re really capable of, and that she’ll die before she lets you get hurt.

It was Erik that gave him the final push though – quite literally. Sean gets why he did that, he really does – it’s like when his uncle took his hand off his little brother’s bicycle. In many ways Erik does remind him of that uncle, who went to the Korean War and came back…different. Not evil or anything, just quiet and sad and angry all at once, the way Erik can be when Charlotte’s not cheering him up.

Also, if the two of them think they’re being discreet about their relationship, they really need to get their heads checked. Charlotte always smiles at Erik whenever he walks into the room, small and soft, like she barely realises she’s doing it. And Erik, who’s usually all about personal space, seems to consider it some kind of mission to invade hers as often as possible.

Sometimes, Sean thinks he should be worried about that, but he’s not. It seems like something out of the fairy tales his mother used to tell him – the rich scientist and the lone Nazi-hunter – but it works. Charlotte often seems rather stressed (Sean supposes helping them with their powers and dealing with the government people is pretty much a full-time job), but she relaxes with Erik, as though she can somehow give her brain a break when he’s nearby. Erik can be a bit of a hard-ass at times (but Sean gets the feeling it’s only because he simply doesn’t know how to deal with them – sometimes he looks at them smiling and laughing at one of Alex’s jokes like he just doesn’t understand how they’re doing that), but Charlotte smooths those sharp edges a bit, like she’s reminding him that not everything is some kind of life-or-death battle.

Of course, just because he’s (semi) forgiven Erik for pushing him off the satellite dish doesn’t mean he’s going to give the guy a chance to push him out of a moving plane. Sean’s jumping when he’s good and ready this time, and not a second before.

The submarine falls from Erik’s grip as the summoned winds send them into a tailspin, and Charlotte knows she can only pull Erik onto the plane because he’s using his powers. She can feel himself pulling his own body towards the metal ceiling against the force of the conjured typhoon – she’s merely acting as the fulcrum.

She loses her grip on his hand – his fingers slipping out of her glove – and for one terrifying moment she hangs weightless as the plane spins in the air. Some small, hysterical part of her brain thinks that she’ll leave a very nasty smear across the shiny metal deck.

Then the plane hits the beach, and Charlotte slams into the floor, the impact driving every scrap of air from her lungs. There is one split-second where everything is crystal-clear, time slowed by adrenaline, and the blind panic of everyone in the plane rings through her head like a gong. Erik’s fear is louder through the bond, echoing like metal screeching against stone, but it’s being drowned by determination.

Then he’s on top of her, hands flat to the floor and locking them in place, his body keeping her pinned as the plane rolls along the ground like an empty beer bottle. The drag of gravity, the phantom pressure along every inch of her skin demands release, and she screams because there’s nothing else she can do, wondering how long she can hold out before she blacks out…

But then it stops. The plane grinds to a halt upside-down, she and Erik attached to the floor-turned-ceiling, Erik’s heart beating so hard she half-expects it to break his ribs.

“Ta,” she says, rather inadequately. And aloud, because her mind is still scrambling to shut out the aftershocks of fear from everyone else in the plane

Miraculously, no one’s seriously injured – a few bruises and scrapes, and Charlotte actually trembles in relief for a moment before she can collect herself.

Erik lowers them slowly and carefully, grunting low in his throat when his back hits the ground, and she squeezes his wrist briefly before scrambling to her feet.

She knows there’s no time to waste. The submarine must be telepathically shielded somehow – she can feel the minds there, but they’re…slippery. Hard to fix on and grasp, sliding from her mental probes like oil. It’s the reason the whirlwind-maker caught her by surprise, but she had just enough time to catch a glimpse of Shaw’s plan from the mutant – Shaw is going to absorb the energy from the submarine’s reactor, and turn himself into a bomb.

Charlotte would really prefer not to be caught in a nuclear blast.

She’s tempted to try to disable the three on the beach, but holds herself back – she trusts the others to take care of it, and she has a feeling she’ll need to reserve all her strength for Shaw. Apart from the helmet, Emma’s memories have shown her Shaw’s mutation makes him resistant to telepathic control.

“I’m coming with you,” she says to Erik – aloud, for the benefit of those without a telepathic bond.

Erik’s mind practically screams a denial. He’s accepted that she’ll have to get into Shaw’s head at some point, but there’s a very instinctive, visceral horror at the thought of Shaw laying eyes on her for even a moment.

I’m sure he’s in the void, she tells Erik, already picking her way to the place where the Blackbird was torn in half. If you enter without me, it’s very likely our bond will be completely cut off. And while I don’t precisely know how that will affect us, I don’t think it will be good.

She deliberately calls up memories of her own attempts to break it – the headaches and nausea and dizziness. Side-effects they can ill-afford when tangling with a man who can make himself into a nuclear bomb.

I go in first, Erik thinks, and Charlotte knows this is non-negotiable. She sends a feeling of assent through the bond, and is hard on Erik’s heels as he runs across the sand.

Alex and Hank are dealing with Angel and the teleporter, but the whirlwind-maker – Janos – is still standing. Charlotte is considering the best way to take him out – order him to sleep? Tell him to turn his powers on himself? – when Erik takes care of it for her, flattening Janos with a long sheet of metal ripped from the side of the submarine.

We need to make for the middle of the vessel, she tells him as she skirts around the unconscious man. That’s where the blind spot is.

They enter through the hole Erik has created in the side, and find themselves in some sort of control room. Several of the panels are sparking ominously, and Charlotte flicks through the remnants of Emma’s memories to find the location of the controls for the nuclear reactor. It’s simple enough to pull the lever into the ‘off’ position, but Charlotte knows they’re not out of danger yet – Shaw must have already absorbed an enormous amount of power, and it’s not going to simply dissipate now that the reactor has been turned off.

She wants to impress upon Erik the need to be cautious, to not take risks, but Erik’s mind is a snarl of anger/fear/dread/anticipation underscored with a burning need for vengeance, thick and bitter as cigar smoke, and Charlotte knows anything she says now won’t make the slightest impression. It makes her nervous – not of Erik, never of Erik, but for him. Frightened at the idea that Erik might not survive this, that he might not even want to.

Erik opens the door at the end of the control room, holding out an arm to keep Charlotte behind him as he scans the room beyond.

Charlotte is expecting to find Shaw in there – they’ve reached the edges of the void, after all – but the room is empty.

He’s not here! Erik’s thoughts are tinged with bitter frustration and deep, throbbing anger. He’s left the sub!

He strides to the centre of the room, glancing up to check for some kind of door hidden in the ceiling, before whirling around and running his eyes along the walls.

Charlotte follows him into the room, feeling confused and a little lost. This is the void – Shaw should be here, he has to be here. And even if he isn’t, how did he leave without them seeing him? The doorway they entered through is the room’s only exit.

Then the wall at the opposite end of the room parts, as smoothly and silently as a satin curtain.

Erik sees her eyes widen, feels her surprise through the bond, and turns to face the man standing in a room of mirrors.

“Erik,” Shaw greets, as genially as if they are old acquaintances meeting for cocktails. “What a pleasant surprise.”

There are no thoughts accompanying his words, and even though Charlotte had expected that, it feels…wrong. Like a gap in her vision – she knows it should be there and maybe if she just focuses hard enough, she’ll see it. But there’s nothing; no thoughts, no emotions, not even the faintest whisper of them. It makes Shaw seem more like a mannequin than a person – she almost wants to prod him just to see if he’s real.

For a moment, Erik is frozen, staring at Shaw like a child watching a snake. Then Shaw breaks their gaze to look Charlotte up and down and Erik steps in front of her, his fear souring the bond like bile.

“So you’re the telepath,” Shaw muses. It’s hard to get a good look at him with Erik between them, but Charlotte sees him smile. “I’m so pleased to finally meet you – I’ve heard so much about you.”

Charlotte stares, caught in the sickening fascination of seeing someone move and speak without feeling anything from their mind. It’s like seeing a corpse get up and dance.

The metal doors suddenly bend inwards, flying towards Shaw at Erik’s command. He swats them out of the air like he’s batting away flies, sending them careening into the mirrors behind him which shatter into thousands of glittering shards.

Shaw actually smiles at Erik, looking almost proud, then his eyes land on Charlotte again. “Just let me put Erik down, and I’ll be right with you.”

Charlotte, run! Erik screams across the bond as his powers lift one of the sofas by its metal frame.

But he never gets the chance to throw it. Shaw suddenly moves, so quickly that Charlotte wonders if he can somehow translate his absorbed energy to speed, and deals Erik a blow to the side that sends him spinning into the wall. His pain bursts across their link, and Charlotte automatically takes a step towards him, for a moment forgetting about Shaw’s presence because it’s so easy to forget when half her senses are telling her he doesn’t exist…

She remembers him when a large hand wraps around her throat and drives her back against the wall. Charlotte coughs reflexively, her hands coming up to tug at Shaw’s arm, instinctively trying to ease the pressure on her neck.

It’s like trying to move a steel girder. Without Erik’s powers.

But Charlotte doesn’t actually feel any fear – there are no thoughts behind Shaw’s movements, so he doesn’t seem quite real. It’s why she’s never been fond of movies; without that mental hum, people just don’t seem real to her – it’s like watching a puppet show. There’s nothing there, so in spite of the hand at her throat it feels surreal, almost dream-like.

No, not even dream-like. Because even in her dreams, she can feel people’s thoughts, and this is just…blankness. Erik’s fury and fear are the only things that seem real, the only thing alerting her to her peril.

She was always much more worried about the toll this confrontation would take on Erik rather than herself, but now Charlotte wonders if perhaps she will be the one who doesn’t survive this.

AN: Thanks to my wonderful beta, ginbitch, who humours me when I’m being paranoid.

Part Fourteen

Semper Fidelis, Epilogue

blind_author — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:07:20 GMT

Title: Semper Fidelis
Rating: Probably an R
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings: Angst, partner betrayal, torture and related PTSD.
Summary: Written for a kinkmeme prompt: Moriarty frames John and "Anthea" of betrayals which cause both of the Holmes brothers to cut them off. Cue BAMF!John and BAMF!"Anthea" doing their best to clear their names. Both het and slash; Mycroft/Anthea and John/Sherlock.

(Title page by mabivia)

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve

Epilogue

“Queen to E9.”

“Rook to A5.”

There were few things in the world that could make Avra want to laugh out loud, but her sons playing chess were one of them. They always did it so intensely, as if the fate of the world depended on their game – when he was eight, Sherlock had slammed one of the pawns down so savagely he’d actually split both the soapstone piece and the board itself.

Of course, they’d stopped using actual pieces when Sherlock was twelve and old enough to hold the board in his head without getting distracted by…everything else. Even now, Sherlock remained the most distractible of her sons – he was glancing towards her phone every minute, as precise and regimented as a digital watch. Mycroft was better at compartmentalising; he only glanced her way every five minutes.

The evening of tense waiting had begun with a single message; ‘Jack and Jill are up the hill’, meaning that the missions had begun in earnest. The target had been another splinter of Moriarty’s previous organisation, one that had gathered itself under a leader of both intelligence and skill. They wouldn’t have been another Moriarty, but they had been causing enough trouble to warrant the intervention of Jack and Jill.

Three hours later the message had been followed by ‘Fetched the pail of water’, indicating that everything had gone well and Jack and Jill were on their way home.

In fact, Avra suspected the laughter that was beginning to drift up the staircase was theirs.

“And when she opened the door-”

“I thought she was going to end up apologising to us, by the end! Good job with switching those knives, Rosy.”

“It wasn’t quite as amusing as his face when you pulled out your gun. Why is that that everyone, everyone, thinks you’re harmless the first time they meet you?”

“Years of practice.”

Yes, that was them; John and Jane. Or – as they were known in the covert operations business – Jack and Jill, the pair who, within six months, had developed a reputation for completing jobs others deemed impossible.

Sherlock and Mycroft had crossed to the door before it even opened. John entered first, and nearly ran straight into her youngest son.

“You know, Sherlock, one of these days I’m going to open the door too fast and you’ll end up with a broken nose,” John warned.

Sherlock ignored his remark. “You were supposed to be back two hours ago.”

While Sherlock didn’t embrace John, he was running his eyes up and down John’s body over and over again, trying to detect any injuries.

John frowned in exasperation, but there was fondness lingering in his eyes. “I was not supposed to be back, I said if we were very lucky, we might be back. Might, being the operative word there.”

The annoyance in his voice would be more convincing if he wasn’t leaning so close to Sherlock. Jane and Mycroft were much less demonstrative, but they were gazing at each other in the fashion of a romantic movie just before the credits rolled, and the fingers of her left hand were entwined with the fingers of his right.

Avra smiled, and for a moment she allowed herself in the feeling of everything going completely right. Just for a moment.

End

AN: A big round of applause for my beta, ginbitch, who helped me out enormously with this story!

Semper Fidelis, Part Twelve

blind_author — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:03:41 GMT

Title: Semper Fidelis
Rating: Probably an R
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings: Angst, partner betrayal, PTSD in this chapter.
Summary: Written for a kinkmeme prompt: Moriarty frames John and "Anthea" of betrayals which cause both of the Holmes brothers to cut them off. Cue BAMF!John and BAMF!"Anthea" doing their best to clear their names. Both het and slash; Mycroft/Anthea and John/Sherlock.

(Title page by mabivia)

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Anthea woke to the smell of frying fat. She blinked as she sat up, taking note of the position of the sun through a slit in her curtains –she’d slept late, though considering what time she’d fallen asleep, that wasn’t much of a surprise.

She stretched, finger-combed her hair into something approximating an orderly state, and ambled into the kitchen. John was at the stove, bent over a frying pan, and looked up as she entered.

“Figured you’d be waking up soon,” he grinned. “You had eggs, and your bacon was still in date, so…”

“It smells wonderful,” Anthea said. “I’ll get out the plates.”

They ate at the small table, and Anthea wondered if she was the only one chewing slowly in an effort to prolong John’s stay. She didn’t think so, because even after he’d finished eating, John made no move to put his plate away, just crossed his cutlery and drummed his fingers on the edge of the table.

“You know you need to leave at some point,” Anthea said, just because she thought they were both in danger of forgetting, of making excuses for John to stay just one more night. Which would become another day, then another week, and before they knew it they’d be unable to function without each other.

“I know,” John sighed. “I need to see Harry, and that’s just for starters.”

Anthea nodded. John had called Harry after they’d been released from the hospital – a very short conversation that had consisted of him telling her that they weren’t fugitives any longer, that he was okay, and he’d explain everything when he got back to London.

Anthea didn’t envy him the visit.

“And then it’s back to…” John trailed off and shrugged, letting the gesture indicate Baker Street, Sherlock, and everything that involved.

“Do you think your stuff’s still there?” Anthea asked – not to be spiteful, but because she was genuinely curious.

“If he’s thrown any of my clothes out, he can buy me new ones,” John huffed. “God knows he must be wealthy enough, if he can hand over a thousand pounds with no notice.”

He sounded rather bitter, and even though she knew he hadn’t meant it as a slight, Anthea felt the sting of his words. Sherlock had given John money from his own pocket, while Mycroft hadn’t even bothered to give her a gun.

Granted, she had her own funds and her own weapons, but it still rankled.

“I’m surprised he didn’t show up on the doorstep this morning to drag you back,” she made herself quip. “He did know you were only planning on staying one night, didn’t he? Or did he turn up while I was asleep and you chased him away?”

John shook his head. “Sherlock didn’t come – he hasn’t even texted. It means he’s definitely feeling guilty, because the only time he gives me space like this is when he knows he’s done something wrong.”

“I would have thought he’d be the type to pester you until you forgave him.”

“Actually he’s pretty good about giving me time to calm down. Probably because he knows I’m not going to listen to any apology otherwise.”

Anthea laughed, but it sounded forced even to her own ears. On the table, John’s hand curled into a light fist.

“I should probably get my things,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Anthea sighed. “I’ll help you.”

John did his very best not to think of anything on the cab ride home – he didn’t usually approve of cabs when the tube would work just as well, but the thought of all those people around him, crowding him, pressing against him was just…no. Not happening.

He wondered idly how long it would be before he felt comfortable in a crowd again, before he wouldn’t feel the prickling need to look over his shoulder and ensure no one was following him.

He was reaching into his pocket automatically before it occurred to him that he didn’t have keys. He hoped the police hadn’t taken them, or if they had, that they’d be willing to give them back – it would be a bit of a bother to get new ones made.

Then John told himself to stop procrastinating and knocked on the door.

It opened so quickly John wondered if Sherlock had been lurking in the stairway, waiting for his knock.

“I don’t have keys,” John blurted. “Anymore. I don’t have keys anymore.”

Sherlock blinked, looking slightly bewildered, as if he’d been expecting John to say something very different. And just like that, everything suddenly teetered on the brink of becoming horribly awkward.

“John!” came a loud, utterly joyous explanation.

Sherlock was shoved to one side and then John found himself with an armful of Mrs Hudson and trying to quell the urge to shove her backwards.

Granted, he’d let Sherlock touch him, and he and Anthea had been practically draped over each other just last night…but he’d often initiated that contact, and when he hadn’t he’d at least been expecting it. This – sudden physical contact without invitation or signal – was making his spine stiffen like it was being torqued.

And it was Mrs Hudson, one of the few people he could pretty much guarantee wouldn’t hurt him. John breathed deeply and evenly, and made himself hug her back – at least that way he’d have some kind of control over it, and it did seem to dull the wild panic clawing at the back of his skull.

“I’m so glad you got that mess sorted out,” she said, drawing back and making a little fluttery motion with her hand that suggested she wanted to smooth John’s hair but was restraining herself. “And it’s good to see you’re not too badly off. Now maybe he’ll stop smoking.”

John was fighting the urge to grin – Mrs Hudson was taking it in stride, but then as long as it didn’t involve damage to her flat, the coming of the apocalypse probably wouldn’t make her turn a hair – until that last word.

“Smoking?” he echoed, glancing at Sherlock, who suddenly seemed very keen to avoid looking John in the eye.

“Oh yes, the whole flat stank of it, it was just awful,” Mrs Hudson nodded, with a certain gleam in her eyes that reminded John of Harry when she was deliberately getting him trouble. “But I’ll leave you to settle back in – have you got all your things back, yet?”

John knew that the police would probably have taken some of his belongings as evidence, maybe all of them, but he preferred not to think of their inevitable retrieval. It wasn’t that he bore Lestrade or any of them a grudge, not really – if the evidence had been good enough to fool Sherlock then it must have been masterfully done – but still, the thought of having to walk into New Scotland Yard to get his laptop and clothes back…

“They’re upstairs,” Sherlock said quietly. “I brought them back when…when it became clear they weren’t evidence of any crime.”

“Right.” That was one less thing to worry about, at least. “Um, thanks.”

Sherlock still wasn’t looking at him.

“I’m going to go upstairs,” John said at last.

Sherlock nodded curtly. “Fine. Good.”

“Sherlock…you’re standing in front of the stairs.”

Sherlock blinked, as though he honestly hadn’t realised that, and John heard Mrs Hudson giggle. Sherlock didn’t actually move, of course, just turned so John could slide past him and followed him up to the flat.

The flat looked...well, it looked hideous, but it was home, and there had been a time when John wasn’t sure he’d ever seen it again. Just crossing the threshold made something in him relax, and he took a moment to soak in all in. Even the lingering smell of cigarettes (which Sherlock seemed to have tried to cover by opening all the windows).

John rarely lay on the sofa – that was Sherlock’s ‘thing’, and John just didn’t have it in him to sprawl all over furniture like some prima donna – but this time, he wanted to indulge. To immerse himself in being back in England, in London, being home, after days of wondering if he’d live the rest of his life as a fugitive and then hours of thinking he wouldn’t have a ‘rest of his life’ and then two weeks of trying not to think about it at all. The leather sighed as he collapsed into it, the ceiling was still sporting that brown stain from some failed experiment Sherlock refused to tell him about and just for a moment, John could convince himself that all was right with the world.

He toed off his shoes and socks – he’d never been the kind of person who threw off their shoes as soon as they were through the doorway, but now he found he didn’t like wearing them, not when he didn’t have to. But then, razorblades in shoes were probably enough to put anyone off footwear for a while.

“You were tense,” Sherlock said quietly. “When she hugged you.”

He made his way to the window and stared down at the street, as though he suspected some horrible crime was taking place in the sandwich shop below.

“The brain’s not designed to forget pain,” John sighed. “He might have had me for only two hours-” he thought he saw Sherlock’s hand twitch at the word ‘only’, but he couldn’t be sure “-but trust me, I’ll be having nightmares about it for a long time yet.”

He shrugged, hearing the leather sofa squeak slightly against his shirt. Sherlock turned around, as though he was about to say something but then went suddenly still, the way he sometimes did when he had a revelation. John didn’t speak, wondering what stumbling block Sherlock’s mind had just leapt – he seemed to be staring at the end of the sofa, and John propped himself up on one elbow to try to see what had caught Sherlock’s attention.

Then he realised that Sherlock wasn’t staring at the sofa – he was staring at John’s feet and the prominent pink scars that crossed their soles.

Sherlock’s hand stretched out, like he wanted to touch John, but was waiting for some kind of permission.

“It could have been worse,” John said quietly. “If there’d been a sharper angle on the blades, they could have cut deep enough to damage my tendons, which would have meant lots of complicated surgery and months of recovery time.”

Sherlock swallowed, and the expression he was wearing was quite close to the lost, almost-hurt look he’d been wearing back when John was in the Swiss hospital. “John, I-”

“Oh god, stop being so apologetic,” John groaned. “It’s giving me the willies.”

It was also making resentment prickle along his spine. He refused to be pitied or treated with kid gloves – he was…well, he wasn’t fine, but he was getting better, Moriarty hadn’t destroyed him. John had killed Moriarty before the consulting criminal had even had him for a full day – if this was a game, he’d won – so there was no reason for Sherlock to look at him like that.

“Just…come here,” John muttered, leaning forward to grab Sherlock’s still-outstretched hand and tug him towards the sofa.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock asked as John leaned up and pushed Sherlock into a sitting position behind him.

“If you’re going to brood, you might as well be useful,” John muttered, settling his head on Sherlock’s lap.

He guided Sherlock’s hand up to his head and left it there, stroking his fingers down the tendons in Sherlock’s wrist before pulling away. John closed his eyes, breathing deeply to take in the scent of leather and Sherlock (and more than a hint of smoke, but he was doing his best to ignore that), content to luxuriate in the feeling of finally being home.

He wasn’t really expecting Sherlock to keep sitting with him – maybe for a minute or two before he remembered some crucial experiment and rushed off to the kitchen – but just as John was beginning to doze, he felt long fingers carding through his hair, stroking lightly.

John smiled.

After two days of lying around eating far too many sweets and watching far too many brainless action movies (and spending the entire movie thinking she and John would have solved the storyline’s main crisis much more efficiently), Jane was starting to feel up to going outside again.

And starting to feel like she wanted to be Jane again.

She’d called John, of course, and been called by him at almost all hours. Which wasn’t entirely healthy, but Jane told herself it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. She’d resisted the urge to storm Baker Street, and John had confessed he’d had to stop himself from coming over to her place as well, but that they could resist the impulse was a good sign.

She was thinking about going to the bakery a few streets down and getting something warm and sugary, then maybe going for a walk. She was confident it was going to be a good day…

Right up until she opened the door to find Mycroft on her front steps.

He was carrying a briefcase and dressed in his usual suit, and to anyone else he would have looked perfectly composed, but Anthea knew better. His tie was off-centre – just a little, but it showed he’d been fiddling with it – and he was holding the briefcase in front of him with both hands, like a shield.

Jane resisted the urge to smooth her skirt or check that her hair was in place, adopting a brusque, irritated tone.

“What do you want?”

Mycroft cleared his throat. “I want you to know you are under no obligation to return-”

For a moment, Jane considered slamming the door in his face – he was here to talk about work?

“-and if you choose to resign your position, I’ve ensured your severance package is…generous.”

Jane blinked. This was…well, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it was certainly unlikely. Where was Mycroft going with this?

“Generous?” Jane repeated, trying to buy time to think.

“You will never have to work again,” Mycroft said quietly.

Jane shook her head, more in confusion than any true rejection of the offer. She’d promised herself that she’d come to some resolution regarding Mycroft, but she’d planned on a formal, distant meeting or perhaps phone call, one she could anticipate and control, not for Mycroft to show up in person on doorstep, obviously nervous. She needed more time to think, dammit!

She genuinely didn’t know whether she wanted to take his offer or not, and that was what most unsettled her. Jane had always known what she wanted, always, and to not to know was disconcerting.

But there was something she did want to know. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”

Before he’d made her a fugitive. With anyone else, she might have needed to clarify that, but not with Mycroft.

“Because you would have convinced me,” Mycroft replied immediately. “I knew that if I let you explain…it wouldn’t matter how much evidence I had, or how comprehensive it was.”

Jane knew how much it meant that she could have persuaded Mycroft to ignore evidence. In some ways, she could also understand why he’d been so reluctant to dismiss it – how many powerful people had fallen into the trap of ignoring suspicious behaviour from the person they were sleeping with? But she didn’t know if it was enough to even attempt reconciliation, let alone carry them through it.

“I’ll think about it,” Jane said, with more composure than she was feeling.

She held out her hand for the briefcase, making sure her fingers didn’t touch his as he passed it over.

Mycroft didn’t swallow or shift, but Jane knew he was searching for something to say, some way to prolong their interaction. It must have been difficult – he knew she’d see through all the usual ploys.

“Do you want some coffee?” Jane asked.

A slight flicker of Mycroft’s eyelids was the only signal that she’d surprised him. She’d surprised herself, really; Jane had felt an impulse to invite him in, but she hadn’t expected it to be strong enough for her to actually do it.

She stood back to let him step over the threshold, wondering if she was making a mistake. Still, she could always throw him out.

Jane had made coffee then sat down at the table to read through the documents Mycroft had brought. She’d wondered if she’d feel comfortable paging through the papers with him in front of her, but he’d been very quiet, only speaking to thank her for the coffee.

She could say that in his favour – at least he knew when to shut up.

And he hadn’t been kidding; she really wouldn’t have to work again. In addition to the kind of retirement package usually given to CEOs of multinational companies, there was a note stating that if she ever wanted to return to her previous job, the position would always be available (along with several others on offer that had a similar role but no direct contact with Mycroft).

The language was all very carefully couched to induce no sense of pressure or expectation. It was just a range of choices, offered without any hint of coercion, and exactly what Jane needed.

Sometimes she really hated it when Mycroft did that. Other times she loved it, and Jane wasn’t quite sure what this one was.

She glanced up at him, trying to catch his gaze, but he was staring into his coffee cup like it was the latest report on Sherlock.

Some part of Jane was ready to walk away, to take the retirement package and be done with Mycroft and everything to do with him. Another part remembered everything they’d been to each other and was reluctant to give up on it…but was she willing to do that for a man who didn’t trust her?

No. Absolutely, unequivocally, no.

“I do trust you,” Mycroft said abruptly, and Jane very nearly gave into the temptation to swear – having her thoughts read like that could be charming (it meant he was paying a lot of attention to her) or irritating and right now, it was definitely the latter.

“No, you didn’t,” she snapped. “Yes, I know you have your own insecurities, and the self-worth issues of you and your brother alone could send a dozen psychiatrists into early retirement, but the reflection of that is you not trusting me or respecting me enough to think that I know my own mind.”

Jane broke off and set her teeth, breathing deeply through her nose to collect herself. This was why she’d never fallen in love with anyone before Mycroft – because it made you irrational and impulsive and took away all ability to control yourself.

And that was her sticking point – that years of loyalty and love could be overturned in an instant. She simply couldn’t afford for that to happened again; there was only so much she could take.

Mycroft’s hand had tightened on his cup. “I take it this is…goodbye?”

It was tempting. To call it all off, to throw Mycroft out of her house and go back to the way she’d lived before…

But – almost against her will – Jane remembered the way it felt to wake up in the morning with someone beside her. She remembered the way Mycroft would look at her when he thought she wasn’t looking, like she was everything he’d ever wanted but had never dared to wish for. She remembered that it seemed she was the only one Mycroft relaxed around – she’d never heard him swear except when they were alone – and how it felt to have someone love her that much, the deeply.

It hadn’t been the first blush of love, they were well past that, to the point where it had calmed into something like, well…normality. Her name was Jane, she did the kind of work that you couldn’t talk about at parties, and she loved Mycroft and he loved her.

And god help her, she still did. Enough to try again.

“Do you want to get some lunch?” she asked.

Mycroft actually started, a visible near-flinch before his eyes snapped up to her face.

Jane knew he could read everything on her face – she wasn’t making any effort to hide it. Mycroft blinked, as if he wasn’t quite convinced of what he was seeing, and the tight line of his shoulders slowly relaxed.

His smile was so wide it looked almost unnatural on his face. “I would love to.”

At least the face-reading thing went both ways – she could see how much it meant to him that she was willing to try again. And maybe somewhere down the line Jane would decide it wasn’t worth it, but really, wasn’t that true of every relationship? Here and now…it might not be good, precisely, but it was getting better.

She was happy. And for now, that was enough.

AN: As usual, thanks to my fabulous beta, ginbitch!

Epilogue

Semper Fidelis, Part Eleven

blind_author — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 09:59:50 GMT

Title: Semper Fidelis
Rating: Probably an R
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings: Angst, partner betrayal, PTSD in this chapter.
Summary: Written for a kinkmeme prompt: Moriarty frames John and "Anthea" of betrayals which cause both of the Holmes brothers to cut them off. Cue BAMF!John and BAMF!"Anthea" doing their best to clear their names. Both het and slash; Mycroft/Anthea and John/Sherlock.

(Title page by mabivia)

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten

Part Eleven

“Any idea what you want to do now?” Anthea asked as she and John sat down on a bench at the train station – the meeting place they’d agreed upon with Mycroft and Sherlock.

“I think…” John sighed, wondering how to put this. The decision didn’t seem particularly momentous, even though he knew it was – it was as though it was been slowly coalescing inside him for the past two weeks, and seeing Sherlock had just brought it into perspective.

In many ways, John suspected they’d both been using his recuperation period as an excuse to put off making any kind of decision about their respective Holmes’, and now that it was over, it was time to bite the bullet and decide whether they were going to walk away or if they had it in them to try again.

John was almost sure he was going to try again. After he made sure Sherlock understood that he had to trust him, at least a little, that they had to talk about these things and if this ever happened again John was going to kick his arse across London. But still, he was willing to try and put it behind him.

Even now, he was wondering if he could exploit Sherlock’s guilt to get him to do the shopping or make tea occasionally. Which was probably a little mean, but John felt entitled to some compensation.

“I think I’m going to go back,” he said slowly, testing the idea. “To Sherlock, I mean. I’ll lecture him until his ears ring, enjoy him grovelling for a bit longer, and then I think we’ll try again.”

“You can really do that? Forgive him, I mean?”

“I think so,” John said honestly. “Maybe it’s because we were in a relatively new relationship – you’re always testing the boundaries at that stage. It usually doesn’t happen in quite that fashion, but still…”

“You’re going to give him another chance.”

It wasn’t a question, but John nodded anyway. “It’s all about risk versus reward, right? How about you?”

“I don’t know.” Anthea’s voice was subdued.

John nodded again. They hadn’t exactly discussed their respective relationships but from some of Anthea’s comments, he gathered that her relationship with Mycroft had been going on for years, and that kind of betrayal, after you thought you knew your partner inside and out and they knew you equally…John couldn’t really imagine it.

“Do you want me to punch Mycroft again?” he offered.

Anthea smiled, just a little. “If there’s any further punching going on, I’ll be doing it myself.”

“Thought so. Still, I felt I should offer – that’s what friends are for, right?”

“I don’t know,” Anthea admitted. “I’ve never really had a friend like you.”

“Me neither, Rosy,” John grinned. Then, taking her hand, “Listen, no matter what happens, don’t be a stranger, okay? Don’t vanish into the ether and make me track you down – I’d be absolute rubbish at it.”

“I don’t know,” Anthea laughed. “I think you’d succeed eventually, if only by virtue of sheer determination.”

John chuckled a little at that, and put an arm around her. She leaned into him with a sigh, resting her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes.

And that was how Sherlock and Mycroft found them.

“Hello,” John said cheerfully, just for the pleasure of disconcerting them.

His arm around Anthea tightened reflexively, because for all that he’d chosen to forgive Sherlock (because it was a choice, John believed it was always a choice), he didn’t know if he’d ever manage to forgive Mycroft. If Anthea did, then he’d make an effort for her, but for now he simply hated the man.

Or maybe not hated, exactly – John was sparing with his hatred. But he really, really resented him.

“We have a plane waiting,” Mycroft said, in the tone of voice a man would use to give a report to his superiors.

John hoped his face wasn’t showing how surprised he was. He never liked being surprised in front of Mycroft – he always felt like the man was taking notes on his moments of vulnerability to use later – but really; a plane?

Sherlock was quiet, but then he’d been unusually silent since they’d walked up to them on the beach – a sure sign he was honestly upset. When Sherlock was truly distressed, he either stammered and babbled (as John had witnessed at the pool) or just pressed his lips together and refused to so much as cough.

“Shall we, Rosy?” John asked, honestly curious. His decision about Sherlock aside, if Anthea decided she didn’t want to go back to England just yet, then John would stay with her.

She sighed, and stood up. “Let’s go.”

She put out her hand to help John to his feet, and John took it.

Sherlock knew it was neurotic and useless and idiotic and everything he’d promised himself he’d never be, but he couldn’t stop staring at John.

John had fallen asleep on the plane, barely fifteen minutes into their journey – the kind of restless sleep that meant he was stressed, but didn’t know when he’d next get a chance to rest, so was essentially forcing himself to sleep.

Sherlock had never known people could do that before he met John.

And if Mycroft thought he was being subtle about the glances he kept sending his former assistant, Sherlock had woefully overestimated him. Though perhaps that was the point, to let her see how distressed he was – she was certainly looking at him often enough to detect it.

Under other circumstances, Sherlock would have given in to the urge to taunt Mycroft about it, but that would irk Jane, and she’d probably tell John, and then John would be unhappy with him. Well, more unhappy with him.

And of course, it would give Mycroft ample opportunity to point out Sherlock had been doing the same thing with John.

At least he could stare as much as liked without fear of discovery – John was fast asleep, and would probably remain so until the plane landed again.

So Sherlock watched. John usually murmured and shifted in his sleep, flexing muscles every now and then like his subconscious was ensuring they all remained functional, but now he was completely still. The only movement was the expansion of his chest with each inhalation, and the flicker of his eyelids as his body entered the REM stage of sleep.

John suddenly grunted and twitched, arching his back as though straining away from something, and Sherlock barely had time to become concerned before John was opening his eyes on a choked gasp. For a moment, he stared directly into Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock recognised the wide eyes and white lips of utter terror before John shut his eyes, shook his head and ran for the tiny bathroom.

He left a very pointed silence in his wake.

“He has nightmares,” Jane said quietly, as if she needed to explain anything about John to Sherlock, as if Sherlock didn’t already know.

“Yes, thank you!” he snapped, already rising to follow and ignoring Mycroft’s admonishing glare.

The sounds emanating from within the bathroom suggested John was splashing water on his face, the way he did after a particularly harrowing nightmare had woken him in a cold sweat. How many times had Sherlock seen John come down from his bedroom late at night, face carefully blank and shoulders straight? Since they’d been sleeping together, he’d been woken twice by the sudden, almost full-body jerk that seemed to signal John waking from one of the nastier dreams.

Seemed to, because Sherlock hadn’t possessed enough data to corroborate the hypothesis, and now it seemed he never would – John certainly wouldn’t be sharing a flat with him again, let alone a bed. With anyone else, he would have argued, manipulated, explored every avenue to get them to return to the status quo, but now…now he just wanted to know John was happy and safe, even if he was happy and safe away from Sherlock.

At least John hadn’t locked the door – that indicated he felt safe, at least, even if he wasn’t happy right now.

The latch clicked as Sherlock slid it back, and the first thing John said when the door opened was, “Rosy?”

It was clearly instinctive to ask for Jane after a nightmare, not Sherlock, and that made his throat burn like he’d aspirated something.

John’s eyes looked distant, unfocused, but he seemed to realise it wasn’t Jane who’d followed him into the bathroom, and he blinked sharply.

“You can’t come in,” he said, freezing Sherlock at the doorway. “There’s not enough room.”

Sherlock knew there was enough room if they pushed it, but he also knew what John had really meant by that comment; there wasn’t enough room for Sherlock to enter the bathroom and give John the space he needed to feel comfortable.

Before this, John had been comfortable with Sherlock crowding him – more than comfortable, he’d actually seemed to enjoy it. But before was the key word wasn’t it? Before Sherlock chose to believe Moriarty’s doctored evidence over him, before John logically decided that Sherlock was not to be trusted, not again.

John splashed some more water on his face, and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, swearing quietly under his breath.

It was unpleasantly reminiscent of the first time Sherlock had seen him awake from a nightmare, and though John’s order to stay out kept him where he was, he couldn’t help asking, “Is there anything I can do?”

John made a strange sound that resembled laughter, but there was no humour or joy in it. “Nothing anyone can do – just got to wait for my brain to wake up properly and realise I’m not actually being tortured.”

Sherlock swallowed, and quelled the urge to put his hand on John’s shoulder – John wouldn’t want Sherlock to touch him, not now.

“You can have the flat,” he blurted.

“What?” John blinked at him, looking completely bewildered.

“You can have Baker Street,” Sherlock clarified. “I can pay the rent for a few months while you find another flatmate.”

“But you love it there,” John said, and he was even developing the little fold between his eyebrows that appeared when he was confused and Sherlock had to look away before he leaned in and ran his fingers over it.

“You seemed happy there,” Sherlock shrugged. “I’m willing to move out, and you shouldn’t have any difficulty finding another flatmate.

John snorted. “You do remember I tend to have screaming nightmares, and they’re probably going to be much worse for the next few months?”

That made Sherlock scoff. “Yes, but you make tea so regularly people could set their watches by you, you have an almost compulsive urge to clean and tidy everything, you’re refreshingly non-judgemental about everything and you smile at people like they’re wonderful and…”

The surprised look on John’s face made Sherlock realise his assurance had perhaps run on over-long.

“…you’ll have no trouble finding a flatmate,” he finished.

“Right,” John sighed.

He closed his eyes again, looking pained.

“Are you alright?” Sherlock asked, and that was stupid, idiotic – any moron could see John wasn’t alright.

“Not really,” John said absently, staring at his reflection in the tiny mirror. “The nightmare…well, that one’s always the worst. The one where all of this – killing him, the hospital, the holiday – was the real dream. That I hallucinated the whole thing, that I’m still there and he’s still got me.”

Sherlock managed not to wince, but for a moment it felt very much like someone had punched him in the sternum. John was clearly trying so very hard to be stoic, to appear unaffected, but he was breathing just a shade harder than he should have been, and his fingers were trembling almost imperceptibly.

John dropped his head, letting it loll against his chest like he just didn’t have the strength to hold himself upright anymore, and Sherlock’s hand was covering the back of John’s neck before he realised he’d moved.

John tensed, the muscles and tendons beneath Sherlock’s fingers tightening reflexively, and Sherlock was about to step away when John sighed and leaned back into the pressure. Slowly, ready to stop as soon as John indicated he didn’t want Sherlock touching him, Sherlock moved his hand in a cautious caress, rubbing across the prickly hair at the nape of John’s neck, feeling the ridge of a small, pink scar where the tip of the whip had caught him.

It was useless to apologise, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “I’m sorry, I-”

“Here’s the thing,” John interrupted, turning around and shaking Sherlock’s hand off his neck, his expression determined and almost harsh. “It’s no good to say sorry unless you actually try not to do it again. So you need to trust me for this to work.”

Sherlock could have sworn he felt his heart lurch painfully. Could John actually mean…?

“I do trust you,” he said hastily. ‘Of course I do, it’s just-”

“No, you don’t trust me to make my own decisions,” John went on, voice calm and implacable. “To be with you because I want to be with you. And I understand you have a bucket of self-worth issues – I’m not exactly light in that department myself – but if something like this ever happens again Sherlock…”

John trailed off and shook his head. “Then it’s over. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust me. And this is not a threat or an ultimatum, this is me telling you how it’s going to work, because it can’t go any other way.”

Sherlock knew he was staring – probably gaping with his mouth wide open like an idiot, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help staring at John, who looked so normal and unremarkable but was really most extraordinary person who’d ever breathed. John, who laughed when he should have been offended, who followed Sherlock when he should have run in the opposite direction, who forgave when he should have hated Sherlock for the rest of his life…

“I love you.” The words were out of his mouth before Sherlock even realised what he saying, which was very disconcerting.

John smiled, slow and content, the smile that said everything was well with the world. “Thought so. I love you too, by the way – you think I’d go through this much trouble for just anyone?”

And maybe they needed to discuss boundaries or going slow or something, but Sherlock had to kiss him after that.

It was like coming home.

Anthea knew she was glaring at Sherlock when he and John stepped out of the bathroom, but felt she had good reason to be. She knew what had happened – the cubicle wasn’t exactly soundproof, and even if she hadn’t heard them she would have been able to tell from the way they held themselves, as if they wanted to lean close to each other but didn’t quite feel comfortable enough.

Sherlock noticed her glare, of course, and she did her very best to communicate non-verbally that if he hurt John like that again, she’d make it her life’s mission to make his as miserable as possible.

John followed the direction of Sherlock’s stare, and for a moment Anthea wondered if he’d be irritated. But he only grinned at her and winked, and she remembered the way he’d punched Mycroft – of course he understood.

She’d half-expected him to sit with Sherlock, but at the same time she wasn’t truly surprised when he sat down next to her. He even took her hand and smiled at her, gentle and understanding in a way that would never cease to be slightly eerie. It was like he was seeing straight into her brain, seeing her wariness about Sherlock and the way some small, selfish part of her resented him for forgiving his Holmes, when she still couldn’t even bring herself to consider it.

Mycroft was still glancing at her every twenty seconds – Anthea had timed it – and she wished she actually had the guts to do something about the simmering resentment percolating in her veins. Maybe if she did something about it, then she’d feel better. After all, John had punched Mycroft (his nose was sporting a magnificent bruise, and it didn’t make Anthea want to fuss over him, it didn’t), and he’d found himself forgiving Sherlock only a few hours later.

People might say that time healed all wounds, but Anthea felt that a punch or two in the faces of those who had wronged you probably helped as well.

John squeezed her hand as though he’d felt her tensing and Anthea squeezed back almost reflexively, a silent indication that she was alright, just keen to be on the ground, off the plane, and away from Mycroft. At the very least, she was sure some distance would stop her from feeling as though her intestines were about to climb up her ribs.

When the plane landed, she’d go straight to her apartment. Which was fairly empty, granted, but it was large and spacious and better than checking into some hotel. It had really been held for appearance’s sake only, so enemies wouldn’t know at first glance what she and Mycroft were to each other.

Had been to each other. Had been – past tense, past tense…

John squeezed her hand again, smiling at her in a way that had probably put hundreds of frightened patients at ease, and Anthea suddenly realised that they were going to go their separate ways in an hour or so. She’d had the vague idea that they’d be splitting up once they returned to England, but now she knew that John was going back to Sherlock, while she was going to her own apartment, and it didn’t sit well with her.

She knew she was being irrational – she and John had been separate before now, for Christ’s sake. But that had been for little things; to go to the hotel bar for a meal or a drink, or the shops for some sunscreen, never for more than two hours since they’d escaped from Moriarty. They’d stayed close, any holiday activity one of them wanted to do the other came along for, they’d left the doors to the bedrooms in their suite open at night so they’d hear if the other was in trouble…

Anthea took a deep breath, and told herself she was being foolish. She realised her free hand was fiddling with her phone and forced it to still, focusing on selecting some stupid movie on the screen in front of her, trying to be nonchalant.

Given the fact that John didn’t let go of her hand, she didn’t think she succeeded.

John couldn’t deny he’d felt…lighter, since he and Sherlock had sorted things out. Much happier, too, though the kiss might have had something to do with that.

Still, he wouldn’t be going home with Sherlock quite yet. He thought he needed another day to get used to being back in London and not on the run before he tackled going back to Baker Street.

“If we pick up some pasta and sauce on the way, I’ll make spaghetti bolognese when we get to your place,” John offered to Anthea, because if she was going to put him up, then he would make the dinner – wasn’t that some kind of rule?

Anthea looked surprised, and for a moment John thought he’d made a mistake, that she didn’t want him coming home with her.

“I thought you were going with Sherlock,” Anthea said quietly.

Truth be told, even if John had miraculously felt secure enough with Sherlock again to go back to Baker Street, he probably still would have attached himself to Anthea. He just didn’t like the idea of them spending the night separately, though that was probably the paranoia talking.

Still, they’d been shot at only a few hours ago – he thought he had a right to be paranoid!

“I’m with you,” he grinned. “At least for tonight.”

He felt relieved when she smiled back at him, apparently not at all irritated that he’d essentially invited himself to her house.

“I should have known – he looks rather irritated,” she commented, nodding to where Sherlock was watching them.

“I don’t see how you could have figured it out from that – he’s always irritated.”

He waved jauntily at Sherlock, almost teasing, and for a moment, Anthea was so furious she actually trembled. It just didn’t seem fair that this was the relationship Moriarty wanted to tear apart yet was the first to sew back together, while the devastation he’d wrecked with her and Mycroft was just ‘collateral damage’.

“Do you think I’m being unreasonable?” she asked quietly.

John turned to look at her, seeming puzzled but, as ever, he knew what she was talking about. “I don’t think I’m the right person to ask about that – you do remember that I punched him, don’t you?”

Anthea shrugged. “Yes, but you and Sherlock…do you think I should forgive Mycroft?”

“I think you should do exactly what you want to do. Me and Sherlock…well, there are always hiccups in the beginning of any relationship, while you’re feeling each other out. Ours was just more dramatic and bloody than the norm, which is actually a fair approximation of our relationship in general, I suppose. But you and Mycroft…that was different. You’d been together for years, and he…well, it was different.”

Anthea nodded. “Now, I suppose we should go tell them that we’re most certainly not going home with them, and if they follow us, they’ll be in trouble.”

Anthea had never cooked anything more complicated than a toasted sandwich in years – she simply hadn’t had the time, and Mycroft’s house came with a cook. So the smell of cooking mince and pasta sauce drifting through her kitchen was a new experience.

“What kind of salary would tempt you into becoming a part-time cook?” Anthea asked, glancing over John’s shoulder at the pot the pasta was boiling in.

“You do not want me as your cook,” John laughed. “Trust me on this one. I can make spaghetti and stir-fry’s, but anything more complicated than that and I’m in trouble.”

Anthea chuckled along with him, glancing out the window. Anyone else wouldn’t have seen anything amiss, but Anthea had worked with Mycroft for years, and she knew his surveillance teams at a glance.

“We have company,” she muttered.

John sighed. “To be expected, I guess – neither of them looked happy when we left.”

Anthea grimaced, remembering the way Sherlock had looked petulant and faintly hurt until John had said ‘remember what I told you about trusting me? This is where it can start’. Mycroft had only looked resigned, which had only fuelled Anthea’s resentment – he did not get to play the guilt-trip card!

He’d started to say something about the risk of retaliation, but she and John hadn’t wanted to hear it. They’d got this far on their own, it was unlikely anyone else would try to kill them, and she didn’t want the Holmes’ brothers sticking their noses in her business anymore.

So she yanked out her Blackberry and dialled the number she’d memorised but could never actually enter into her contacts list.

Mycroft answered on the first ring.

“Jane-”

Anthea spoke over whatever he’d been going to say. “Get them away from my house.”

There was a pause, and when Mycroft resumed speaking, his voice was carefully atonal. “We need to take necessary precautions-”

“These people spent over a week hunting me down,” she snapped. “I don’t want them around me!”

She could hear him inhale slightly harder than usual, a sign he was preparing to argue his case, but Anthea had worked with him (loved him) for years, and she knew exactly what he was about to say.

“If you think Moriarty’s people are still out for our heads, you can assign one of your oh-so trusted people to watch the CCTV of the street outside my house, but if I see any of your people outside in fifteen minutes, then John and I will start kneecapping them. And he’s an excellent shot.”

She hung up without waiting for a reply, and resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room.

She’d thought she was better, that she could handle it, that a plane ride consisting of boredom and frosty silence was proof that she’d managed to bring her anger at Mycroft under control. Apparently it was much easier to be furious at him when she couldn’t see the kicked-puppy look he was affecting (it was subtle, she didn’t think even Sherlock had seen it, but it was there).

And that was exactly what she didn’t want to be – it wasn’t that she didn’t want to be angry, because she was and did and felt she was damn entitled to it, but she didn’t want to let Mycroft see how he affected her. It felt too much like admitting weakness, showing vulnerability to the enemy.

She hadn’t meant to put that emphasis on ‘trusted’, she hadn’t even realised she was doing it until it was out of her mouth. But she couldn’t deny that it still rankled – that Mycroft had trusted…whoever had brought him the information over her. Granted, it had been expertly set up by Moriarty, but didn’t he consider the possibility of planted evidence?

And she’d made sure to say ‘your people’, because they certainly weren’t ‘our people’. Not anymore. Maybe not ever again.

The caveat of ‘maybe’ was automatic, because some part of her was quietly bewildered at the idea of walking away from this, from Mycroft. They’d had years together, years, and whatever she could say about trust, she knew he loved her.

But that sounded frighteningly like a battered wife, and Anthea refused to be the sort of person who returned for more abuse just because it was familiar.

“What’s the matter?” John asked, turning around from the stove to frown at her. “Is he refusing to remove them?”

“He’d better remove them,” Anthea muttered darkly, digging into her cutlery drawer.

John grinned. “Yeah, I heard that bit about kneecapping them.”

With anyone else, Anthea might have felt embarrassed at that melodramatic threat, but with John – whose eyes were crinkled in a way that seemed to say he understood exactly why ridiculous threats were sometimes necessary – she only laughed.

“Do you want to watch anything while we eat?” she asked, setting out two bowls on the kitchen counter.

“Don’t laugh, but I could really go for some Doctor Who right now.”

Anthea bit her lip to hide her smile; tea, jumpers, Doctor Who…sometimes John was very much the living embodiment of the frumpy Englishman stereotype.

“I see you smiling,” John said, mock-glaring at her.

“But I wasn’t laughing.”

“Still counts.”

John was tired, but unwilling to go to sleep. They’d watched three episodes of Doctor Who (which Anthea had on DVD – John wasn’t the only one who liked it!) and John had found himself missing long stretches of the final episode between blinks. He belatedly realised his head had listed over to rest on Anthea’s shoulder, and he hoped he hadn’t drooled on her. But he wasn’t concerned enough about it to move – if he was drooling, surely she’d shove him off?

“John, I do actually have a spare bed, you know,” Anthea said quietly. “You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

John heard himself give a vague, affirmative mutter.

He felt Anthea’s hand in his hair, smoothing it like he was a sleepy child. She was one of maybe a handful of people who could touch him when he was like this and not send him rocketing back into wakefulness, tense and alert.

“I know,” Anthea sighed, as if he’d answered her. “I kind of don’t want to go to sleep either. Not when you’re leaving in the morning.”

John mumbled again, slowly easing into a coherent state – this conversation probably required participation from both parties. Anthea stroked his hair again, and he sighed.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” he asked eventually, assured that Anthea would know he was only inquiring out of curiosity, not out of a desire to pressure her.

“Not really,” she admitted. “I keep thinking I need to go back to work – to do something – but my work…”

‘Was with Mycroft,’ John silently finished. He nodded to show he understood.

Anthea shrugged the shoulder he wasn’t resting on. “What about you?”

“Well, me and Sherlock are going to take it slow,” John huffed. “Not sure about anything beyond that. And I’ll call you.”

“Do you have my number?”

John paused to consider that. “Actually, I don’t think I do.”

He glanced up at Anthea, and in the next moment they were both laughing helplessly. It just seemed utterly absurd that, after all they’d gone through, they still didn’t have each other’s numbers. John felt his head rocking with the vibrations of Anthea’s laughter, but he felt no need to move.

Their giggles trailed away into silence, and John sighed again. “I’ll admit, I don’t like the idea of leaving, but-”

“But it’s what we have to do,” Anthea finished. “This…isn’t healthy.”

John nodded against her. “Co-dependent and all that psychological stuff.”

“We’re used to leaving each other for a few hours at a time,” Anthea pointed out. “Right now, we could probably get away with frequent meetings and phone calls – we’re not breaking out in a cold sweat as soon as the other leaves our line of sight. If we attach ourselves at the hip, this will only get worse.”

“I know,” John said quietly. “But…we don’t have to separate right now.”

In the end, they slept on Anthea’s couches, which were uncomfortable and not at all good for their backs or necks, but neither felt like going to separate bedrooms.

AN: Thanks so much to my beta, ginbitch!

Part Twelve

The Republic of Heaven, Part Fourteen contd.

blind_author — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 02:39:55 GMT

Title: The Republic of Heaven
Rating: M/15+ for this bit
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings: Slash, some disturbing themes in this part.
Pairings: Sherlock/John.
Summary: HDM AU. Moriarty vanishes, and as Sherlock and Raniel try to untangle the reasons why, John and Amarisa ask the alethiometer a very important question - what does Moriarty want?

(Title page by birddi )

Part One: The Architecture of Our Lives
Part Two: Stepping Stones
Part Three: Foundations
Part Four: Shadowed Archways
Part Five: Buried Labyrinths
Part Six: Crossing The River
Part Seven: Glimmers in Darkness
Part Eight: Perdition's Bridges
Part Nine: Building The Republic
Part Ten: Lit From Within
Part Eleven: Structural Integrity
Part Twelve: The Reader
Part Thirteen: Spiraling Down

Part Fourteen: God Killer

God Killer (contd.)

Sherlock and Raniel prided themselves on knowing everything they needed to know to solve crimes. The solar system wasn’t important to crime solving, so they didn’t care about it. Witch artefacts had never been important to crime solving, so they’d never learned anything about them.

In the car on the way back, they came to the conclusion that they were beginning to regret the latter.

“And you’re sure that’s what it was saying?” Raniel asked, his claws tense and tight in Amarisa’s fur as Sherlock heroically refrained from cursing at the slow-moving traffic in front of them.

“Of course I’m sure,” John said, one hand in his pocket and undoubtedly curled around the alethiometer. “I’m pretty definite on the ‘god killer’ part, I just have no idea what that is.”

“Neither do we,” Raniel admitted. “But we’re pretty sure it’s a witch artefact, possibly the very one they were so worried about this morning.”

Amarisa cocked her head. “Really? Any particular reason for this theory?”

“Oh, come on!” Sherlock snapped. “Moriarty wants something called ‘god killer’ and at least one of his spies made an effort to discover the location of an artefact? Seems a bit coincidental, doesn’t it?”

John and his dæmon said nothing, but his lips thinned and Amarisa’s ears flattened.

The drive back to the Holmes house was almost silent, Sherlock processing what he’d learned and exploring the ramifications.

They had assumed Moriarty’s goal was the same as the witch clan that had birthed him, the same as Traditional Values for a Bright New Britain – foolish; he of all people should have known better.

Raymond Coram had told him some Gyptians had been tasked with moving stores of metal – actual, physical stores of metal, not stashes of drugs or smuggled humans. It wasn’t what Sherlock and Raniel had been expecting, because taking metal over the more obvious black market trades suggested either that Moriarty was building an armoury, or that he was attempting to hire armoured bears.

The bears seemed more likely, but they were reluctant to assume anything after this little revelation.

So, metal supplies (possibly to recruit armoured bears), and a desire for something called a ‘god killer’ which was possibly a witch artefact. And the theft of the Maystadt Guillotine as well. But what did they add up to?

Raniel hissed and squirmed, sharing Sherlock’s frustration – it was absolutely infuriating to have all the pieces, yet be unsure what kind of pattern they made. Something told them that all the threads were right there in front of them, they just needed to tug them in the right way…

And they didn’t know which way to pull them without knowing what Moriarty hoped to achieve by acquiring the ‘god killer’.

“Did you ask the alethiometer what a ‘god killer’ was?” Raniel suddenly piped up.

John nodded. “It just kept giving us circular answers – ‘the god killer is the god killer’ and variations thereof. We must not be asking the right questions.”

“We even tried asking what the god killer does, as opposed to what it is,” Amarisa offered. “But we didn’t really understand the answer – the alethiometer seemed to be telling us that it was something used to ‘move through worlds’. But that’s the most sense we could get out of it.”

“Move through worlds,” Sherlock repeated. “So is it some kind of universal passport among witches? The equivalent of an all-access keycard?”

“Do witches have passports?” John mused.

The question was apparently addressed solely to his dæmon, but Raniel chittered in surprised amusement.

“It’s a valid question!” Amarisa protested, indignant enough to nip at the polecat’s ear. “I mean, we know that they move between countries, so do they have passports to get through airports and across borders? Is there some kind of witch equivalent that identifies their clan, the way passports identify your country?”

“And I bet if it’s magical, it’s probably hard to fake,” John went on, clearly warming to the subject. “So maybe whatever Moriarty wants is like psychic paper, or something.”

“Just what is psychic paper?” Sherlock asked, feeling a bit snappish – he never liked feeling ignorant.

John grinned, seemingly amused by Sherlock’s frustration. “Just something from the telly.”

Well, that was acceptable, then – Sherlock and Raniel refused to pollute their hard drive with ‘popular culture’ unless strictly necessary, as in the Connie Prince murder.

“But then why would they call it a ‘god killer’?” Raniel pointed out.

“The most lethal thing a passport could give you would be a really bad papercut,” agreed Amarisa, wrinkling her nose.

John went back to looking out the window, but not before Sherlock saw a frown beginning to etch itself in his face.

John and Amarisa had been feeling uncomfortable ever since they’d read the alethiometer – the same prickling, anxious/afraid feeling that gnawed in their gut while they waited for an enemy attack in Afghanistan. The sense that this was the calm before the storm, and that said storm promised to be big.

At least Aeliana was still home – John and Amarisa had been worried that she would have left with the others.

They’d been half-expecting Mycroft to rain holy hell (well, maybe more like frosty disapproval) on them for taking the alethiometer, but it didn’t look like anyone had missed it. Probably too busy ‘cleaning house’, as Mycroft had said.

They’d been planning to ask what a god killer was as soon as they walked in the door, but Aeliana spoke first.

“The artefact Moriarty’s spy knew about? It was determined to be a fake half an hour ago,” she said bluntly.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, and John stifled a resigned sigh.

“Of course it was,” Amarisa muttered, low enough for only John to hear.

“And now we have no idea how long ago it was stolen,” John replied. Then, frowning as a sudden thought struck him, raised his voice, “It hasn’t been a fake all along, has it? I mean, the artefact was authentic at one point, right? And how do they tell?”

“It was originally authentic, yes,” Aeliana sighed.

For a moment her hand seemed to twitch, the way John had seen nervous patients do when they wanted to reach for their dæmon but didn’t want to show how nervous they were. But of course Nostrepheus was nowhere near – he had gone with Hasna and Tamsyn.

For the first time, John wondered if those people who separated from their dæmons ever regretted that they had. Of course it gave them extra mobility, it meant they didn’t have to worry about any limitations their dæmons might have…but did they ever get lonely? Did they ever miss the constant companionship, the knowledge that wherever you went, your dæmon went with you? What did they feel when they instinctively reached for support in times of stress or crisis and their dæmon wasn’t there?

“It used to be different, you know,” Aeliana said, her voice distant. “Witches never used to bother about artefacts – they were communal property, and one clan couldn’t be said to ‘own’ anything. But there was a…war many years ago, and the witch clans started to become divided. And then when humans rose in power and technology, when they used that technology to scour the cliff-ghasts from the face of the Earth, some witches didn’t mind, and others…did. Suddenly witches from different clans could be as remote as humans from different countries, and possession of artefacts took on new importance.”

“So what was this artefact supposed to do?” Sherlock asked, sounding impatient. “And does it have any connection with something called a ‘god killer’?”

Aeliana went very still. “Where did you hear that word?”

“I asked the alethiometer what Moriarty wanted,” John explained. “And it said he wanted the god killer, which is supposed to help him move between worlds.”

John had the very strong impression that if Aeliana had been anyone else, she would have sat down very abruptly. As it was, she only squared her shoulder and titled her chin, but that sign of shock in a centuries-old witch had John reaching down to twist his fingers in Amarisa’s ruff and relieve his anxiety.

“The artefact I am talking about, the one that we must assume Moriarty stole, is known among the witches as Æsahættr – the translation of which is god killer – and among humans as the Subtle Knife. We don’t know how the knife was made, but one side is sharp enough to slice through any material presented to it, even a bear’s sky-armour. And the other side can open holes in whatever it is that binds and separates realities – parallel universes, as you would call them.”

To say John was surprised would have been something of an understatement. The thought of something like that in Moriarty’s hands brought ‘horrifying’ to whole new levels. Amarisa bristled, a low growl rumbling through her chest and John rubbed at her ears as Raniel made low, crooning chitter of reassurance.

“And Moriarty probably has it…” Sherlock said slowly, articulating his thoughts the way he did when he and Raniel were thinking in a hundred different directions at once and needed to focus themselves.

“How did your clan end up with that?” John couldn’t help asking. “I mean, it sounds like something that’s far too dangerous for anyone to have, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Some might say the same about a man who can read the alethiometer,” Aeliana quipped. “But you’re probably right – I think every clan would have fought us for the knife…if it had still worked.”

“So it’s broken?” John tried to clarify. “Moriarty won’t be able to use it?”

Aeliana nodded, and John wondered if the relief he suspected everyone could see on his face was half as strong as what he was actually feeling.

“I won’t bore you with the details,” Aeliana continued. “But the last bearer of the knife came to the same conclusion you did, John, and shattered it. While the shards are probably still unnervingly sharp, the knife cannot cut between the worlds unless it is whole.”

John nodded – it made about as much sense as anything else.

Aeliana cocked her head, for a moment looking very much like her owl dæmon. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but you seem to be absorbing the news about the knife very well. I expected a bit of disbelief, at the very least.”

“Well, don’t most physicists agree parallel worlds exist?” John shrugged. “And besides, I’m the object of an ancient prophecy and apparently have a magical ability to read a device that always tells the truth – I think my bar for ‘unbelieveable’ has been raised several notches in the last few days.”

Aeliana smiled. “I suppose so. As for how the knife came to us…originally, the bearer took it back to his home, for he wasn’t born of this world. But the holes it made between the worlds were still open, thousands upon thousands on them. While some…people…agreed to journey across the worlds and close them, it was to be a very lengthy process, and I’m sure many are still open to this day.”

Aeliana had put a curious emphasis to the word ‘people’, but John filed that away as something to think about later. “So the bearer came back.”

The witch shook her head. “His granddaughter did, with the shards of the knife. She entrusted the shards to my clan, and asked us to keep them safe.”

“And then she went home?”

“Unfortunately, no. She never managed to find the hole through which she’d entered – those kinds of openings can be temperamental. You can know where it is to within five feet, and still not manage to go through it. And people rarely last more than ten years in a world not their own; she died when was thirty-five. We never learned why she came, but some of the things she said, the fact that she was carrying the knife shards with her…I’ve always believed that her crossing into this world was unintentional, an accidental sidestep as she was fleeing from something in her world.”

“How do you know this?” John couldn’t help asking. “I mean, it doesn’t sound like most of this is common knowledge, even among witches. Or is your clan just really good at keeping secrets?”

“My aunt, the previous clan queen, told me,” Aeliana related with a fond smile. “Serafina Pekkala was said to have witnessed these events herself.”

“I just can’t understand why!” Sherlock suddenly burst out.

John and Amarisa didn’t so much as twitch – they were used to these sorts of outbursts after Raniel and his human had spent some time wandering off in their own mind. Aeliana only smiled and shook her head with the fond exasperation only a mother was capable of.

“Why what?” John asked.

“Why does he want the knife? Not for its cutting ability, surely – nowadays, lasers can take care of what simple blades can’t. So does he want to move between worlds? But to what purpose?”

John shrugged, and even Amarisa rolled her shoulders.

“We’ll leave that to you,” he said to Sherlock. “I think my psyche’s disturbed enough without trying to get into Moriarty’s head.”

Sherlock made a dismissive, sweeping gesture that over their relationship John had learned to translate as ‘I’m busy thinking, go do whatever you have to’.

John nodded even though he knew neither Sherlock or Raniel would see it, and he and Amarisa made their way down the hall, trying to remember how to get to the library.

They had a hunch. It was a very vague hunch, true, but strong enough that they wanted to talk to Grayson and Samieyah rather than dismiss it out of hand. And the library was where they thought Sherlock’s father was most likely to be found.

Sure enough, as soon as they entered the library they saw the golden osprey dæmon perched on one of those high-back leather chairs that probably cost a full year of John’s salary. Usually, that kind of casually displayed wealth would make John wary and self-conscious, but Aelina and Grayson were just so unconcerned and nice about it that he and his dæmon had never felt the need to stand on ceremony.

John couldn’t help but smile when he came around the chair and saw Grayson engrossed in a Nature journal. Samieyah’s head rose from where it had been leaning over her human’s shoulder to look at them, and Grayson glanced up as his dæmon did.

“John,” he greeted, smiling with every appearance of welcome. “How did it go?”

John shrugged. “We got some information that apparently means something to Sherlock, but I can’t figure it out.”

Grayson nodded, and Samieyah sighed, as though in resignation. “I understand completely – I only barely understand Aeliana when she starts talking about her clan. Witch politics go completely over my head.”

Then he sobered abruptly. “But I’m not entirely blind to the troubles of this…” he made a frustrated gesture, “…situation. My son and my wife are in real danger, aren’t they?”

John’s first instinct was to lie, to mouth some empty reassurance, but he was stopped by the hard light in Grayson’s eyes, the tension in Samieyah’s claws where they gripped the chair. They weren’t stupid, and they were telling him not to treat them as such.

“Yes, they are,” John admitted.

Grayson made a humming sound, the sort of noise Sherlock made when he was thinking; he even steepled his fingers in the same way. In spite of the rather grim line of conversation, John felt his lips twitch as Amarisa’s tail wagged.

“You’re a soldier, John,” Grayson said, apropos of nothing. “I’d wager you have good instincts for danger. And you’ve been in the thick of this from the very beginning. Tell me truly – how bad do you think this is going to get?”

John glanced down at Amarisa, seeing in the wolfdog’s yellow eyes the same dread and determination he was feeling. “If these kinds of actions had been perpetuated by a foreign government, not a single man, we’d probably be gearing up for World War Three.”

Samieyah made a low noise of distress, her feathers ruffling and shivering. Grayson raised his hand and ran the backs of his fingers over her chest in a soothing gesture.

Even if honesty was what he’d been asked for, John couldn’t help feeling guilty that he’d made them so worried.

“I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to protect Sherlock,” he assured them.

It was a promise easily given because frankly, John and Amarisa had been planning on doing exactly that.

Grayson’s lips twitched, as though he wanted to smile but didn’t think the mood was right for it. “I don’t think my son would appreciate that sentiment.”

John shrugged. “Tough.”

At that Grayson did smile, though it was only for a moment. He dropped his eyes back to the journal in his lap, but Samieyah pinned them with a gaze so intent that John had to take a moment to assure himself that ospreys did not have X-ray vision.

At least now he knew where Mycroft had learned that disturbingly penetrating gaze.

“I’m given to understand you may be in just as much danger as Sherlock and Aeliana,” Grayson said slowly. “Perhaps more, given your…talents.”

It was John’s turn to drop his eyes as Amarisa’s hackles rose. He hated that they still felt the need to hide whenever someone said anything about them being ‘special’ or ‘different’, but a lifetime of caution couldn’t be unlearned in a few weeks. And John and his dæmon’s previous experience told them that being branded as unique made people back away, not come closer.

It was different with witches and bears in Afghanistan because there was a strange kind of comradeship in all of them being regarded as unusual by the rest of the humans. It had let John feel comfortable with them, allowed him to ask questions about their lives and cultures without worrying about being intrusive, or feeling defensive when they turned that same scrutiny on him.

But when other humans did it? It left John and Amarisa feeling marked.

Grayson seemed to realise John was uncomfortable. “But you haven’t come here to listen to depressing reiterations of facts you’re already aware of, have you?”

“What do you know about the Maystadt Guillotine?” John asked.

Grayson blinked, but otherwise didn’t react, though Samieyah bated nervously. “Nothing pleasant.”

“You know we think Moriarty might have stolen one. I want to know if you can think of any reason why.”

Grayson extended his arm to his dæmon, and Samieyah gripped it, careful not to scratch him with her claws as he lowered her to rest on the arm of the chair, rather than the back. He left his hand on the golden feathers of her back, and John felt Amarisa press herself against his legs as his fingers tightened in her dark fur.

It was almost reflexive to clutch at your dæmon when you were discussing intercision, like when an actor was bloodily disfigured on the telly and you found yourself clutching at the site of the injury. You needed reassurance that you were still whole – that your own dæmon was there and that no one would ever part you.

“Everything we know about intercision comes from the notes maintained by those scientists and doctors that worked in the concentration camps,” Grayson began. “It’s true that the Magesterium experimented with severing children in a place the witches refer to as Bolvangar, but almost none of that so-called ‘research’ survived its destruction.”

“But what can you gain by intercision?” John asked, feeling vaguely ill even as he spoke. “I mean, from what I know and what I’ve seen, intercision just seems to result in an…empty person and dæmon. They have no interest in anything, like mindless automatons-”

“Exactly,” Grayson broke in. “Mindless. A severed person will agree to anything, perform any task set to them without question or complaint. We do not know what changes at the moment of intercision, but we do know that severed people have no will of their own, so they seem to adopt the will of whoever is around them, accept the directions of whoever commands them.”

So if Moriarty wanted to create an army of mindless slaves, intercision was the way to do it. But the thought didn’t sit right with John – Moriarty didn’t seem to have any problem manipulating people into doing his own bidding without them even knowing it, so why would he need slaves?

“Is there anything else?” he asked. “I mean, Moriarty doesn’t seem the type to need slaves.”

Grayson shrugged but Samieyah twisted her head to peer into her human’s face, yellow eyes intent and prodding, as if urging him to remember something.

“Although…” he said slowly. “This was never proved or confirmed, but…are you aware of the mysterious circumstances regarding Lord Asriel’s disappearance?”

John shook his head, but the name jogged something in his memory. “Asriel…any relation to the Asriel procedure?”

Grayson nodded once. “He invented the method of treating film so Stanislaus particles would show on the photograph. He disappeared around the time the Magesterium established the General Oblation Board and first became a little shaky in their position. He wasn’t the only one, to be sure, but…as I said, this was never proved…”

Amarisa gave an exasperated growl, expressing her and John’s frustration and Grayson cut himself off.

“There was always a theory floated around that Asriel had crossed into another world,” he said eventually. “He’d been discussing research into such before he disappeared, claiming that the Aurora borealis was a place where the divide between the worlds was thin. Aeliana told me that this much was true, but she doesn’t know about the last part.”

“What last part?” John wondered.

“The part where it was suggested that he broke the barrier between the worlds with the energy released when the bond between human and dæmon is severed. He believed that intercision results in an enormous outpouring of energy at the moment of severing which, if harnessed, can potentially create a gateway between the worlds.”

Something told John this was more likely than the slave-army. If Moriarty had stolen that artefact – what had Aeliana called it, the Subtle Knife? – to try to cross between the worlds, it made sense that he’d explore other means of opening up those gateways as well. But to what purpose?

What did Moriarty want that he couldn’t find in this world?

AN: Thanks so much to ginbitch, who caught several inconsistencies in this part for me.

Part Fifteen: Dark Hands

The Republic of Heaven, Part Fourteen

blind_author — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 02:34:37 GMT

Title: The Republic of Heaven
Rating: M/15+ for this bit
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings: Slash, some disturbing themes in this part.
Pairings: Sherlock/John.
Summary: HDM AU. Moriarty vanishes, and as Sherlock and Raniel try to untangle the reasons why, John and Amarisa ask the alethiometer a very important question - what does Moriarty want?

(Title page by birddi )

Part One: The Architecture of Our Lives
Part Two: Stepping Stones
Part Three: Foundations
Part Four: Shadowed Archways
Part Five: Buried Labyrinths
Part Six: Crossing The River
Part Seven: Glimmers in Darkness
Part Eight: Perdition's Bridges
Part Nine: Building The Republic
Part Ten: Lit From Within
Part Eleven: Structural Integrity
Part Twelve: The Reader
Part Thirteen: Spiraling Down

Part Fourteen

God Killer

“Hungry?” John asked as he dug some bread, cheese and ham out of the Holmes’ gigantic kitchen.

He wasn’t getting his hopes up, but it never hurt to ask.

“Working!” Sherlock snapped.

John rolled his eyes at Amarisa, and his dæmon whuffed softly in amusement.

“You know,” John went on in a conversational tone as he fixed himself a ham and cheese sandwich. “I can cite several convincing studies on the detrimental affect hunger has on concentration and memory retention.”

“What would be the point?” Raniel snorted. “None of them were studying us.”

John laughed – he couldn’t help it – and Amarisa gave the polecat a pointed nudge with her muzzle.

“Sometimes I think we’ve found the borders of your ego, and then you go and remind us that your ego apparently has no limits,” she sniffed. “Are you really suggesting you’re so unique as to merit entirely new studies?”

“Of course,” Raniel said, sounding genuinely surprised she’d ever thought otherwise.

He and Sherlock were in front of a laptop – a different laptop from the one in their room, and John wondered if the whole family was as enamoured of computers as Sherlock was.

“What are you looking at?” Amarisa asked.

It was a mark of how large she was that she didn’t need to put her front paws up on the table to be level with Raniel.

“The financial records of Traditional Values for a Bright New Britain,” Sherlock answered, his voice clipped.

If that abrupt tone had come from anyone else, John and his dæmon would have assumed they’d done something to offend them. But that was just Sherlock – he always got snappy when he was busy. The fact that he’d answered at all meant that he was eager to include them in the investigation.

“Anything interesting?” John asked, taking his plate and sandwich and positioning himself so he could look over Sherlock’s shoulder.

“The usual eclectic combination of shares and stocks,” Raniel sniffed, resting his chin on Amarisa’s muzzle in a rather proprietary gesture. “But there’s a common thread – over half of the companies own overseas mines or smelting factories. Largely iron and titanium, but some tungsten, tin, manganese and copper as well.”

John was opening his mouth to ask ‘why’, when Amarisa suddenly moved, her ears pricking and her nose swinging out from underneath Raniel’s head to point at the door.

A moment later, Mycroft walked in, with Tehayla on his shoulder.

“Moriarty is gone,” he pronounced, not bothering with any kind of greeting or prelude.

John was grateful that years in the army had suppressed his startle reflex until it was only a rapid blink. Amarisa padded to his side, and he reached down to curl his fingers in her fur.

“What?” Sherlock snapped. “He can’t be gone.”

“’Gone’?” John repeated. “As in, run off?”

“Yes, John,” Raniel hissed. “Gone as in ‘run off’, if that’s how you want to put it.”

Amarisa cocked her head, staring the polecat and his human. “Seriously?”

“Mycroft is never anything but serious,” Raniel snorted.

“But no big dramatic showdown, no final confrontation, not even an attempt to find out how we knew about his spies?” John wondered. “Doesn’t seem his style.”

“It’s not,” Sherlock muttered, his eyes getting that hyper-focused look they always wore when he was picking at a case. “Which means that it was a deliberate retreat – we didn’t scare him off, he chose to leave. But why?”

Mycroft smiled in a way that always made John wonder if it was deliberately tailored to seem as insincere as possible. “Well, I’ll leave that to you – I have some housecleaning to do.”

John watched the door shut behind him, and Amarisa wondered aloud, “Is ‘housecleaning’ some kind of euphemism for interrogating Moriarty’s spies?”

“Very likely,” Raniel said. “Mycroft always says he’s housecleaning whenever he suspects a leak.”

Amarisa snickered, and though John shot her a disapproving look he couldn’t stop his lip from twitching.

“But why?” Sherlock suddenly burst out.

John frowned. “Why housecleaning?”

“No, not the housecleaning – try to keep up! There was no reason for Moriarty to withdraw at such an early stage, no reason not to try to fight for this organisation that will supposedly hand him the keys to Great Britain when needed…unless, for whatever reason, Traditional Values for a Bright New Britain was not his mainstay, but then what was?”

Sherlock’s fingers drummed on the arm of the chair for a moment, and Raniel’s tail flicked.

“We need to speak to the Gyptians!” Sherlock declared, leaping to his feet as though his legs were spring-loaded.

“We do?” Amarisa echoed. “Why?”

“Boats!” Sherlock exclaimed, scooping Raniel up and practically running out of the room.

Amarisa growled in exasperation, and John sighed. “Sometimes, I wish they were quite so melodramatic.”

At least he’d managed to eat half his sandwich.

Sherlock knew he rarely drove – cabs were so much more efficient, never had to worry about parking – but he still didn’t think the sight of him behind the wheel merited the flabbergasted expression on John’s face.

“You can drive?” Amarisa said as she clambered into the backseat, disbelief in her voice.

“Of course we can drive,” Raniel snorted. “How else would we get out here for the Christmas parties?”

John grinned wryly. “I just figured you teleported.”

“Astounding as some of my skills may seem, I have not yet managed to master teleportation,” Sherlock drawled, feeling ridiculously charmed.

“Can we get a move on?” Amarisa asked, her ears pricked towards the house and her tail stiff.

Sherlock could feel his eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s ‘wrong’, per se,” John muttered, looking furtive. “But the alethiometer is still in my pocket, and I think your brother might object when he finds it missing.”

Raniel laughed as Sherlock started the car and sped down the driveway. John and Amarisa kept glancing over their shoulders as though worried Mycroft was about to come flying out after them.

“He probably won’t notice it’s been taken for at least three hours,” Sherlock offered. “He and Mummy have been busy.”

“Yeah, I noticed Tamsyn and Hasna had kind of disappeared,” Amarisa mused. “Witch business?”

“Relocating some artefact that one of Moriarty’s spies in the Consul was showing a bit too much interest in,” Raniel sniffed.

John frowned. “Should we be worried? Granted, Moriarty with a witch artefact doesn’t sounding as terrifying as Moriarty with the Maystadt Guillotine, but still.”

“Hardly,” Sherlock scoffed. “Witch artefacts never have working spells on them – they’re far too old. They are valued for the history behind them, not because they do anything of use.”

“So why is it a problem if Moriarty’s interested in it?” John wondered.

“Wait, wait!” Amarisa broke in. “I think I remember Hasna saying something about this in Afghanistan. Remember, when we were discussing the Crusades and the myth of the Holy Grail?”

“Oh, yeah,” John nodded. “Didn’t she say something about how a witch clan’s status is linked to how many artefacts they hold?”

“Exactly!” Amarisa exclaimed. “So having one stolen would mean losing a lot of face.”

Raniel chuffed in irritation. “Pointless game-playing, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“It wouldn’t surprise you?” John echoed, looking bewildered. “You mean you don’t actually know?”

“Why should I?” Sherlock pointed out.

“The politics of witch clans have very little to do with crime,” Raniel added. “And when they do…”

“Mycroft never lets us, and I quote, ‘meddle in clan affairs’,” Sherlock spat.

It didn’t rankle much, given that politics was more about subterfuge and diplomacy than actual crime, but there had been that case five years ago with that Greek translator that had looked so interesting…

“He says we’re not diplomatic enough,” Raniel grumbled.

John’s face contorted, as though he was trying to hide a smile, and Amarisa made the soft, muffled whines that denoted smothered laughter in a wolfdog.

“What’s so funny?” Raniel growled.

“You’re many things, but diplomatic is certainly not one of them,” John grinned.

Sherlock was trying to determine whether that was an insult (and if so, what should be done about it), when Amarisa spoke up.

“We don’t blame you – we’ve never seen much merit in the ‘keep your enemies closer’ thing.”

But in spite of their cheer, the mention of Mycroft had made them edgy again, and it was only when the house vanished around the bend that John dug his hand into his coat pocket and produced the alethiometer.

“Any particular reason you took that?” Raniel asked. “Annoying Mycroft is a perfectly valid reason in and of itself, of course, but was there anything else?”

“I don’t really know,” John mused, staring at the thirty-six symbols and the ever-moving needle. “It sounds ridiculous – it’s just a hunk of metal, it’s not like it has feelings – but I feel as though it…likes me, or something. And that I should keep it with me.”

It did sound ridiculous, and if anyone else had said that, Sherlock would have sneered at them. But aside from the fact that this was John and Amarisa, he knew that John and his dæmon seemed to possess an awareness that other people simply…didn’t. As though they existed on some kind of higher plane, separate from the rest of humanity – even from Sherlock and Raniel.

Most of the time, thinking about that produced a strange feeling of mingled excitement and triumph. But sometimes – like now – Sherlock found some wistful part of himself wishing he could see what John saw.

Raniel – previously draped across Sherlock’s lap – climbed his human’s shirt and jumped into the backseat, landing next to Amarisa. The sound seemed to shake John and the wolfdog out of some sort of reverie.

“So,” John said, tucking the alethiometer away again. “Gyptians – why?”

“Moriarty retreated, yes?” Sherlock began. “So clearly, his insipid little organisation wasn’t important to him, but we need to find out if it hid anything of importance. He’s left the country, but what did he take with him?”

“And if you want big things moved quickly and anonymously, you use the waterways,” Raniel piped up from where he was snuggled between Amarisa’s forelegs. “He probably wouldn’t have hired actual Gyptians, but they make it their business to know everything that happens on the water.”

“So if there have been any new boats around, they’ll know about it,” John finished. “Brilliant.”

John had called him ‘brilliant’ and the various synonyms thereof so many times that even Sherlock had lost count. So it was completely ridiculous that the strange flush of pleasure those compliments gave him had yet to abate. A glance in the rear-view mirror showed him Raniel had turned away in embarrassment to groom his fur.

Sherlock made himself snort. “Hardly. If he’s fleeing the country, he won’t want to be encumbered with anything not strictly necessary – he’s far more likely to have moved money electronically and anonymously.”

“Still, it can’t hurt to check,” Amarisa said philosophically. “Do you want us to ask the alethiometer?”

“Probably not the best idea,” her human cut in. “The alethiometer can be very literal, remember? And with only three hands to structure the question, it’s difficult to be very specific. We ask it what Moriarty took with him, I bet we’ll get what he actually physically carried with him – like, say, a toothbrush and a change of clothes.”

Raniel made a noncommittal humming noise, then wriggled into the thick hair that covered Amarisa’s chest and rested his head on her paw.

The main problem with driving a car to London was that you then had to find somewhere to park it. Sherlock decided to head to the MET, largely because there were always a few spaces open there and he could easily talk his way in.

“You’re sure your brother’s not going to have me arrested?” John asked abruptly, his fingers curled over the pocket that contained the alethiometer.

“Doubtful,” Raniel replied, gazing out the window with Amarisa. “He hasn’t had us arrested yet.”

Amarisa looked down at the polecat. “You know, if you were anyone else, we’d probably ask why he’d want to arrest you.”

John chuckled; a sign that he was amused, but still worried. When John was truly happy he giggled like a prepubescent child – a high-pitched, breathless sound Sherlock found ridiculously endearing.

“What’s wrong?” Raniel asked, fixing his eyes on John.

“It’s just…taking the alethiometer was an impulse,” John shrugged. “I don’t usually listen to impulses about things like that. So now some part of me is wondering if this thing can somehow control people.”

Amarisa made a strange, uncertain noise – part growl, part whine.

“On the contrary, I think taking it was a sensible idea,” Sherlock cut in. “We are essentially at war with Moriarty, with all the dangers that implies. The alethiometer is a powerful weapon in that war, one that only you can use – what would have been the point of leaving it with my brother?”

Though Sherlock could admit he and Raniel would have been happier if John and Amarisa stayed at the house with three witches on hand to protect them. But they couldn’t trust that John and Amarisa’s noble impulses wouldn’t lead them into ill-advised self-sacrifice if the house was attacked – at least this way, they could keep an eye on them.

Sherlock was broken out of his thoughts by the sound of John’s giggle – no chuckle this time, but an actual giggle. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” John grinned, reaching behind him to rub his dæmon’s ears. “I was just thinking that you always know how to cheer me up, and wondering what that says about my sanity.”

Sherlock had a full second to absorb that before Amarisa – obviously recognising their surroundings – asked, “Hey, are we going to see Lestrade?”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Sherlock said shortly, turning the car into the car park.

“Then why are you pulling into the MET carpark?”

“Because I know there’s always a space or two available.”

John giggled again, and Amarisa whuffed in amusement as Sherlock pulled into the first available space.

“He does still need our statements, though,” John pointed out as he opened the door to let Amarisa jump down.

“So?” Sherlock snorted, letting his own dæmon take his customary place on his shoulder.

“So I’m not going to make his already difficult job more miserable just because you’re impatient,” John said, he and Amarisa already making for the entrance.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Raniel squeaked indignantly.

“To see Lestrade,” Amarisa replied, looking mischievous as she grinned her dog-grin. “You coming?”

As if she and John knew the worry that lurked at the back of Sherlock’s and Raniel’s mind, the thought that maybe – with their government spies being ferreted out and Moriarty on the run – the witches would be willing to risk striking the wolfdog and her human down, regardless of Mycroft’s power and influence.

“That’s cheating,” Raniel grumbled as he and Sherlock followed them.

Sherlock agreed.

“I’ll make it up to you,” John tossed over his shoulder, with a grin and wink.

Sherlock had never seen the point of innuendo (if you were talking about sex, why not say so outright?) but looking at the teasing, almost daring expression on John’s face, like he was sharing a secret, Sherlock thought he could begin to grasp the appeal.

The grin Amarisa was wearing now was closer to a wolf’s than a dog’s.

Lestrade was surveying the neat pile of paperwork on his desk and wondering if he could somehow procrastinate for another hour or so.

Zarania shot him a sharp glare, and snapped her beak at him. “No you don’t – we promised we’d get the desk tidy today.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Lestrade grumbled.

Times like these – times of politics and bureaucracy, everyone wondering just how long a self-proclaimed ‘master criminal’ had been around and why no one had noticed it before – drove him quite close to regretting his promotion.

He glanced up, letting his eyes skim the desks outside his office, hoping for some kind of problem or even an emergency that would need his immediate attention and justify abandoning the desk for another day…

When he saw John and Amarisa step out of the elevator, closely followed by Sherlock and Raniel, Lestrade had to work hard to keep the grin off his face. He allowed himself a little snicker of relief, swiftly followed by a soft sigh of resignation – taking Sherlock’s statement was always a nightmare – and was composed by the time John opened his office door.

Usually he sent one of his people to take statements, but dealing with Sherlock was a very cruel and unusual punishment, and none of them had done anything to deserve it. At least, not recently.

“Hi,” John greeted, sounding sheepish.

“Hello, Zarania,” Amarisa said, looking up at the falcon on her perch and wagging her tail.

Lestrade could admit he’d been curious when he’d learned Amarisa was a wolfdog, curious enough to look into it. He and Zarania had learned about wolf-exclusive behaviours and dog-exclusive behaviours, that wolfdogs could mix and match them, and it had made them wonder if it was natural for Amarisa to wag her tail, or if she did it because people expected her to.

It had also made them wonder why having a wolf dæmon was supposed to be a bad thing. Sure, everything they read was filled with words like ‘apex predator’ and ‘specialised hunter’, but it was just as liberally sprinkled with ‘social’, ‘pack-oriented’ and ‘protective’. Wolves were one of the few animals that formed monogamous mating pairs, and were even known to drive away bears when they were defending their den or offspring.

People usually held up the vicious Tartar warriors as an example of why people with wolf dæmons were to be feared, along with Genghis Khan and his dæmon Kalazhad. And there was certainly something to those stories – both the Tartars and Genghis Khan had committed terrible atrocities. But there were two sides to every story, and people often forgot that the Tartars had been so feared because of the strong sense of community and loyalty that held them together, that drove each man to fight for his friends and brothers rather than himself. Before they set out to found the largest contiguous empire in recorded history, Genghis Khan and Kalazhad rose from starvation and poverty to unite clans that had been warring for centuries. Lestrade wondered idly how the man would have coped with Anderson and Sherlock.

Perhaps people with wolf dæmons were fierce and frightening…but only to those they considered enemies.

“How are you two holding up?” Lestrade asked, taking in Sherlock and John with a policeman’s eye.

Sherlock looked disgruntled, but that was the expression he usually wore whenever he was in the station. But this time, it had an extra edge of irritation to it, and judging by the way Raniel was frowning at Amarisa, Lestrade was willing to bet Sherlock had never had any intention of coming down and giving his statement. He shared an amused glance with his falcon dæmon, and turned his attention to John.

In many ways, John and Amarisa were actually harder to read than Sherlock and Raniel. They were certainly more expressive than the consulting detective and his dæmon (you could practically track John’s thoughts by the contortions his face made), but that was only superficial – if John and Amarisa actually decided to hide what they were feeling, be it fear or irritation or sorrow, you’d never even suspect something was wrong.

After all, just look at the way Amarisa behaved. She was always polite and welcoming, deliberately down-playing the wolf side of herself so as not to put other dæmons on edge, and she let other dæmons touch her…but the only dæmon Lestrade and Zarania had ever seen her actually reach out to was Raniel. John and Amarisa seemed very personable, very open, but they let you as close as they wanted and no further.

Right now, John looked a little embarrassed, his eyes somehow managing to convey the fact that he was very sorry for the delay in taking their statements and making Lestrade’s job that much more complicated without saying a word…but that was all Lestrade could read. If John and his dæmon were shaken after being strapped to a bomb or nervous at the prospect of being hunted by a witch clan, there was no sign.

“We’re doing alright,” John grinned. “I think.”

“You think?”

“Well, I’m not sure how you’re meant to ‘hold up’ when you find out you’re the subject of a prophecy. Whenever someone mentions it I still get the urge to tell them to pull the other one.”

Lestrade couldn’t deny he was curious. “What is the prophecy, can I ask?”

“He will walk the fringes and his dæmon will set him apart,” Sherlock said, the first time he’d spoken. “He will find a home with the outcasts and his soul will be unique. A witch will raise him and the witches will protect him. He will forge his own path and he will answer his country's call. Loneliness will know him, death will touch him, he will see what others are blind to and he will know what others cannot see. And he will be our destruction. And he will be our downfall.”

Some parts sounded almost nonsensical, but it sent a small wave of goosebumps up Lestrade’s arms, nevertheless. Zarania ruffled her feathers and shifted on her perch, a sure sign she was agitated.

“You know,” Lestrade said slowly. “If it was anyone else, I’d laugh, but knowing you two are the subject of a witch prophecy makes a disturbing amount of sense.”

John chuckled. “Is that a compliment or a criticism?”

“It can’t be both?”

Amarisa made a chortling sound of amusement, and John ruffled her fur with the backs of his fingers. Lestrade was fairly certain he even heard Raniel muffle a snigger in Sherlock’s collar.

“So…” Lestrade announced, trying to get them back on track. “Statements?”

“I am complying under protest-” Sherlock began, and Lestrade snorted as Zarania screeched in laughter.

“Not any different from the usual, then.”

“It’s a ridiculous rigmarole,” Sherlock snapped. “You already know what happened-”

“They don’t know everything that happened, Sherlock,” John interrupted. “But hey – points for the alliteration of ‘ridiculous rigmarole’.”

Sherlock scowled, but the effect was rather ruined by the way Raniel was making little squeaky giggles through his teeth.

In the end, John and Amarisa had given their statement first, hoping to lead by example. Which they doubted would work on Sherlock and Raniel, but they could at least try.

They had debated over whether or not to tell Lestrade about Moriarty touching Amarisa. John could admit their first impulse had been to keep it a secret – being violated like that was deeply personal, and it wasn’t easy to talk about – but if Lestrade and his people had even the slightest chance of encountering Moriarty, they needed to know what he was capable of.

Mycroft had said Moriarty had fled Britain, but John could admit he was rather disinclined to trust that. Wouldn’t it be in Moriarty’s best interests to let them think that he’d gone, but keep working behind the scenes and just try to keep a much lower profile?

Granted, since no one had even known he’d existed before he started playing this game with Sherlock, John and Amarisa weren’t sure how it was possible for him to keep a lower profile, but they weren’t letting their lack of imagination deter their theory. Sherlock and Raniel seemed to agree that Moriarty had left the country, but John and his dæmon couldn’t shake the fear that Moriarty was playing with them, that he was watching them, that they’d turn around and he’d just be there.

When they were finished, they waited outside the office while Sherlock gave his statement (one they were both sure would include far too many references to the supposed incompetence of the police), and every time a short, dark-haired man in a suit walked by John couldn’t stop himself from tensing. Amarisa was leaning against his legs, and the fur on her neck bristled every time she caught a whiff of strong cologne.

John and the wolfdog were aware they were being paranoid, but felt they had good reason to be.

The door clicked open, producing a disgruntled Sherlock and Raniel and an exasperated Lestrade.

“We’re done,” Lestrade announced, with the long-suffering sigh possessed by all policemen who had to work with Sherlock. “Now for Christ’s sake, take him back to wherever you two were hiding.”

John laughed, not surprised that Sherlock had managed to sour Lestrade’s mood within twenty minutes. Moriarty had scared him, and Sherlock got snippy and vicious when he was scared.

“You were the one pestering us to further your foolish bureaucracy,” Sherlock sniffed as Raniel’s nose wrinkled, as though in disgust.

With that last cut delivered, Sherlock strode away, making a beeline for the elevator.

But John and Amarisa lingered.

“Sorry about…” John waved an arm in Sherlock’s general direction, hoping it would convey his meaning. “It’s just that-”

“I know, Moriarty scared the shit out of him,” Lestrade interrupted bluntly. He was looking at John, but Zarania was focused intently on the retreating forms of Sherlock and Raniel.

John shrugged. “Wasn’t quite how I was going to put it, but you’re right.”

“Come on, John!” Sherlock called, sounding as frustrated as if John and Amarisa were holding up a particularly spectacular chase.

John rolled his eyes, and Amarisa made a soft, chortling sound of amusement.

“Sorry, got to go save the world,” John quipped.

“Or Sherlock, which is a probably a lot more difficult,” Lestrade snorted, before suddenly sobering. “Be careful, all right?”

John nodded, refraining from mentioning that he and Amarisa were nervous enough – they didn’t need Lestrade’s warning – then jogged to catch up with Sherlock and Raniel.

“What were you talking about?” the polecat asked as soon as the elevator doors closed.

“Just a friendly warning to watch our backs,” John replied. “This prophecy business has him worried.”

“And it doesn’t have you worried?” Sherlock snapped.

“Of course it does,” Amarisa huffed. “But we’re used to being in danger – it’s different when you’re safe, and someone else is in the firing line.”

Sherlock made the kind of noise that indicated he was mulling that statement over, but John caught the way Raniel shifted his grip on Sherlock’s collar, as though uncomfortable. They might like to pretend they didn’t know what it was like to worry about someone else, but he and Amarisa knew better.

“So, is Lestrade going to investigate those mines?” John asked as they made their way out of New Scotland Yard and into clouded daylight.

Sherlock didn’t say anything.

“We didn’t tell him about the mines,” Raniel admitted.

“What?” Amarisa barked. “Why?”

John rubbed his forehead, and took a moment to reflect that he should have mentioned them in his own statement. But Sherlock had known more about them, and he and Amarisa had just assumed Sherlock would be the one to tell Lestrade…

John supposed they should have known better than to assume anything with regards to Sherlock and Raniel.

“He doesn’t need to know,” Sherlock said in the kind of lofty tone that seemed to imply mere mortals could not understand his thought processes.

“Sherlock…” Amarisa growled softly, giving him a stern look.

“Well, think about it!” Raniel protested, sounding indignant. “If he wants to investigate, he has to tell the rest of his team, doesn’t he? And police are the worst gossips.”

John felt like protesting on Lestrade’s behalf, but he knew the polecat was right – police investigation depended upon a lot of people knowing exactly what was going on. And considering the vast network of spies Moriarty had possessed in the government, it wasn’t exactly a stretch to assume he had police working for him as well. So perhaps it was a good idea to keep what little information they had to themselves, for a while at least.

“Fair point,” John said at last. “So where are we going to find the Gyptians at this time of day?”

It turned out that at this time of the day, most Gyptians not at work would be found moored at a nice waterfront pub. As usual, Sherlock seemed to know where every single one was, and chose the ones his contacts frequented.

They didn’t find Marge Costa this time (which was a little disappointing – she and her husband had been very friendly) but instead a tall, well-built man with tattoos, red hair, and a goat dæmon. Sherlock and Raniel went to greet him but John and Amarisa hung back, unable to quell the need to keep their eyes on the door, to keep track of the various exits.

“This isn’t healthy,” Amarisa muttered. “This is twice now we’ve been obsessed with checking people’s faces and I can’t seem to stop sniffing the air, trying to pick up the scent of his goons.”

“I don’t think we’ll enjoy public places for the next week or so,” John sighed, reaching down to rub the wolfdog’s ears. “Though I suppose it could have been worse.”

Amarisa’s giggle was strained and nervous, but it was a giggle nevertheless. “Really, if all we take away from…that…is a bit of anxiety around strangers, we’re getting off very lightly.”

John put his hand in his pocket, feeling the weight of the alethiometer. The metal was warm against his fingers, but then, it had never truly felt cold. Perhaps because the first time he’d touched it had been in a large, heated room, and now it had been tucked in his pocket for hours and was undoubtedly warmed by his body heat…but he couldn’t help but think it was something more. He felt that same, dim stirring that he did the first time he touched the alethiometer, the feel of something acknowledging him, waiting for a request.

Amarisa knew what he was doing of course – her golden eyes were fixed on the pocket containing the alethiometer, and the hair along her back was beginning to prickle.

“It feels strange, doesn’t it?” she whispered. “Almost like it’s alive.”

John nodded absently, still running his fingers over the warm gold. It was actually a rather unsettling concept – John and his dæmon were the practical sort, used to dealing with what they could see or feel, and this was a bit more mystical than they were used to.

Later, John and Amarisa were never entirely sure what drove them to do it. Maybe the alethiometer was alive and wanted to be asked questions. Maybe pocketing it had made them feel bold. Or maybe, with Sherlock and Raniel putting the pieces together and getting important information, they just wanted to be useful.

A glance at his dæmon showed she was thinking the same thing he did. John slowly sank to the ground, like a drunk who’d lost his coordination, and Amarisa moved in front of him, laying across his legs to block the alethiometer from view as John pulled it from his pocket.

He turned the three dials, barely even needing to glance at the alethiometer – it was like he could feel where each symbol was – holding the question in his mind as clearly as he could.

What does Moriarty want?

The constantly-spinning needle began to whirl more purposefully, stopping at the symbols for power, control, and…

And John had no idea what the last symbols referred to. Well, he knew what they were saying, but he’d never heard of…whatever that was before.

Sherlock and Raniel abruptly reappeared, and John hastily stowed the alethiometer away before rising to his feet.

“Anything useful?” he asked as they stepped out onto the street.

“We’ll see,” Sherlock said, with the preoccupied look that meant he’d been given a new fact and was wondering how it fit with the rest of the case.

Usually, John would be pestering him for details right now, but there was a more important question on his mind.

“Sherlock, have you ever heard of something called a ‘god killer’?”

Part Fourteen: God Killer (contd.)

Chinese Translations!

blind_author — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 04:37:38 GMT

sherryeris has translated two more of my fics! Thought and Memory on mtslash and One in Ten Thousand, also on mtslash.

The Republic of Heaven Fanart!

blind_author — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 00:20:32 GMT

yasei_raiden has done a wonderful photoshop for The Republic of Heaven - find it here on photobucket.

Semper Fidelis in Spanish!

blind_author — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:34:29 GMT

I bring news of further translations! ertal77 is starting to translate Semper Fidelis into Spanish - find it here at her journal.

Charlotte Francine Xavier, Part Twelve

blind_author — Mon, 14 May 2012 02:48:31 GMT

Part Twelve

Changes

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

-Arnold Bennett

Hank knows he’s not the best when it comes to interpersonal relationships. But at the same time, he thinks even a child would know something’s wrong.

He’d risen early (he has a new idea for Alex’s suit he wants to try out), but as soon as he opened the door to his lab, he’d come face to face with Erik and Charlotte. But they hadn’t been facing him; they’d been staring at each other – well, glaring, really – as though they were having some sort of silent argument. Which, given Charlotte’s mutation, isn’t outside the realms of probability.

But Charlotte turns to him as the door closes, and her smile is tinged with exhaustion. “Hank, I was wondering if I might ask a favour.”

At first, he thinks they’ve come about the serum – but no, their mutations aren’t visible, and Charlotte always looks strangely sad when she glances at the vials sitting on the bench.

“Sure,” Hank says automatically. “Whatever I can do.”

He likes Charlotte, after all. She’s given him the run of this lab, and it’s nice to have someone who actually understands him when he rambles about his theories. And there’s a certain sense of fellow-feeling between two people who have always been on the outskirts of academia; Hank because he was always too young, and Charlotte because she happened to be born female.

Erik, he’s less sure about. It’s not that he’s afraid of Erik, just that there’s something…unsettling about him. A feeling of tightly-leashed violence, and while it’s certainly not directed at them, it’s enough to make Hank wonder how long Erik will stay with them before that tension inside him forces him to leave.

“Can you draw some of my blood?” Charlotte asks.

Erik crosses his arms, and the first response that springs to Hank’s mind is ‘not while he’s in the room’.

“I can,” he begins cautiously. “What do you need it for?”

Charlotte brightens, as if she actually thought he’d refuse her something so trivial. “You needn’t worry I’m giving you more work – it’s mainly to satisfy my own curiosity about how being a telepath might alter my body chemistry.”

Almost against his will (really, he’s got enough projects to work on in very limited time), Hank is intrigued. “That sounds fascinating – I’ve often wondered about that myself, actually. I mean, speaking from a purely physiological perspective, there should be no way for thoughts to transmit over distances, unless you’re somehow highly attuned to our brains’ electrical activity, and even then recent research suggests our thoughts are as much chemically based as electrical-”

Charlotte beams. “Exactly!”

And with that, she rolls up her left sleeve, presenting him with her bare arm, veins standing out beneath pale skin like blue threads.

Erik still hasn’t said a word. Hank collects the sterilised needle, vial and cotton swab as quickly as he can, eager to get it over with.

He’s really hoping Charlotte doesn’t flinch, if only because he suspects Erik will hurl him across the room if she does.

Charlotte feels guilty about lying to Hank, but this inadvertent bond she’s created with Erik feels like something deeply private, something secret and cherished.

But just because she cherishes it, doesn’t necessarily mean this is a good thing.

Erik hadn’t been comfortable with the idea of Hank drawing her blood – it smacked too much of Hank studying her, of lab rats and bright white tile, and she’d known better than to ask for him to donate some blood to the cause. Charlotte can admit she has no real idea what she expects to untangle from her blood, but there’s the vague hope that if they draw some at regular intervals, they’ll be able to tell if the bond becomes detrimental to their health.

Exactly how they’ll be able to tell that…well, she’s still working on it.

He’s still working on the serum, Erik points out as they leave the lab, his thoughts tinged with bitter anger.

I know, she sends back. But what do you expect me to do about it? He’s a grown man, not a child – I can’t order him to stop.

And Charlotte can admit some part of her doesn’t actually want to stop him. That some part of her wants her sister to have the best of both worlds – to be a mutant, but not experience the potential danger of being easily identifiable as such.

She’s not sure if that thought goes through to Erik or not, but she’s not actively shielding it, so he probably feels her indecision in some form

Charlotte had been immensely relieved to discover that, if she couldn’t sever the bond to Erik, she could at least muffle it. She’d been worried about Erik having a direct conduit to her thoughts and feelings – his mind simply wasn’t built to cope with that for hours on end – and is glad she can dim the link until they only feel a vague sense of the other’s mind. It’s almost like Erik is standing just behind her with his hand on her shoulder, a silent sense of warmth and presence.

Of course, that didn’t stop Charlotte from probing and testing, trying to see if there was a weak point in the bond through which it could be attacked (even if a part of her was screaming against the idea of removing it), until Erik told her that he could feel everything she was doing and could she stop it?

But that doesn’t mean she’s given up. The bond might feel like everything she never knew she was waiting for, but that doesn’t mean it’s good – after all, before she actually met Kurt Marko she’d thought he might be a second father to her.

Erik knows Charlotte keeps expecting him to pull back, for him to demand their bond be broken no matter the consequences. He’s not sure if he should be insulted at the idea she thinks him so spineless, or furious at what this expectation of abandonment implies.

Erik can admit there are some aspects of the bond he is most definitely not happy about. The fact that if he has nightmares in the future, Charlotte will most likely share them, for one. He doesn’t like the idea that his memories are in her head, memories of blood and pain and horror just waiting for her to trip over…but he doesn’t actually resent it.

When Erik makes a promise, he keeps it, no matter the cost. He’s vowed to stay with Charlotte, and in many ways, the bond makes it easier. There’s a tiny, selfish part of him that rejoices in the fact that the bond ensures she’ll find it difficult to leave him, and he hates himself for that. Then he’ll wonder what happens if he needs to leave (he can’t clearly picture why, but the fear is there, lurking at the corners of his thoughts), and feels a prickle of fear at what that might do to their minds.

Of course, his biggest worry is what will happen if one of them dies. If Shaw kills him, will Charlotte die too?

She’s tried to sever the link twice, but while she can muffle it – mute the bond until it’s just a dim awareness of her in the back of his mind – any attempt to break it makes both of them nauseous, gives them splitting headaches, and Erik worries Charlotte was right when she said severing it could result in brain damage.

He’s always been willing to die to kill Shaw, but now…he’s not so sure. If only because he has no idea what his death would do to Charlotte.

Erik knows his acceptance is probably made easier by the way Charlotte needs the bond – she might pretend otherwise, but it’s difficult for her to protest when he can feel her essentially using his mind as a shield when she gets overwhelmed. He’s not sure exactly how it works, but whenever Charlotte picks up on something upsetting (which is more frequent than he’d ever imagined), she seems to be using his mind to tune it out, rather than simply slamming up her shields.

At least she’s getting something out of this as well.

Charlotte has learned that distance is apparently no obstacle to the bond. She feels Erik just as clearly when he’s in the room with her as she does when she’s three hours drive away and the others’ thoughts have long since faded into the white noise of mental chatter that permeates Charlotte’s world. When the link is open it’s like having a constant conduit between their minds, thoughts and emotions flowing freely, though Charlotte can’t help noticing that fear and dread – in short, the emotions of peril and distress – seem to transmit far more clearly. Or maybe it’s just that those kinds of feelings grab your attention much more quickly than positive ones.

Still, trying to look on the bright side, it’s much easier to protect herself from others’ thoughts now. Where before she had to either shield entirely – the mental equivalent of shutting your eyes when you didn’t want to see something – or risk opening herself to other minds to blot out the unpleasant one, now she only has to open up the bond and let Erik’s thoughts drown out whatever is causing her discomfort.

Charlotte can admit a large part of her terror at the bond had come from the belief that Erik would find it horrifically invasive and would hate her for essentially trapping him in the telepathic link. But while Erik had harboured a tiny prickle of resentment at their link, she knows that his wariness of it is based on his fear of what happens if one of them dies – more specifically, what happens to her if he should die. In fact, sometimes she gets the impression Erik actually likes the bond, likes this tangible proof that he’s not alone.

Of course, that doesn’t stop Charlotte from worrying about it – she asked Hank to take blood for the second time today.

I wonder if it was an adaptation, Charlotte muses, staring at the chessboard.

Erik knows she’s talking about the bond and simply shrugs, moving his queen to take her bishop.

I mean, in some ways it makes sense, at least from an evolutionary perspective, she continues, peppering her thoughts with succinct summaries of various papers she’s read on natural selection and relevant portions of her thesis. I can’t count how many times my telepathy has overcome me and induced a fit of vomiting or a fainting spell, things that could easily be fatal several thousand years ago if they happened in the wrong place – like on a hunt, or during a battle with a neighbouring tribe.

So how is this bond an adaptation for that? Erik asks.

I think it’s intended to ensure I have a permanent knight in shining armour. Charlotte lets her wry amusement sparkle through that thought. Something goes wrong, I’m in distress, then you’re meant to feel that distress and do something about it.

Objectively, Charlotte can see how useful it would be for long-past telepaths to have a protector on hand whenever the situation called for it. But she can’t help feeling like she’s…trapped Erik, somehow.

“You do realise that this bond means I can now feel when you get guilty and self-sacrificing,” Erik mutters.

You can? Charlotte frowns, wondering if she should mute the bond a little.

“And if you’re thinking about what I think you are,” Erik continues, his thoughts a stream of half-formed ideas of consent and traps and manipulation. “Then I might remind you that the bond was just as much of a surprise to you as it was to me. If we’re going to talk about being trapped in anything-“ the emphasis Erik’s gives the word ‘trapped’ is enough to tell Charlotte what he thinks of that, even without the disdain washing through the bond “-then you’re just as trapped as me. Probably even more so.”

Charlotte’s a little lost on that last statement, and sends Erik a sense of puzzlement and gentle query. Erik’s answer isn’t in words, but in a sense of the cloying finality and permanence that has dogged her ever since she realised what she’d done. The sense that there can never be anyone else for them, not after this, in a way that makes ‘til death do us part’ take on a truly ominous meaning. And she can tell from Erik’s thoughts that he believes she’s the one with the raw deal, that she’s the one who should be complaining about being tied to him for the rest of her life.

That’s absolute rubbish, she thinks, infusing those words with as much conviction as she can manage. I love you and want to stay with you – the idea of being with you for life is actually rather pleasant…

She trails off at Erik’s pointed look and the swell of satisfaction that comes down the link. And you imagine I feel differently?

Oh, yes, very clever, she grumps, not quite willing to credit that Erik played such an obvious trick on her so easily. Why are you so calm about this?

Erik shrugs again, deliberately thinking as loudly as he can, The idea that your telepathy might hurt me is your complex, not mine.

But Charlotte knows it’s deeper than that – she can feel it. Erik has decided to stay with her, and he’s not a man for half-measures. The bond makes it easier, so he likes it; it’s really as simple as that.

Personally, Charlotte thinks he should be a little more concerned with his mental integrity, but she’s finding it hard to complain.

It’s eight days after Charlotte accidentally initiated the telepathic bond, and by this point she’s noticed some interesting side-effects.

Previously, Erik had been wary of physical contact – at least while he slept. Charlotte often drifted off with their hands entwined, but he’d wake up if she cuddled up to him in the middle of the night. But this is now the fifth day straight Charlotte’s woken up to find Erik wrapped around her like an affectionate octopus. They touch each other constantly now, often without either of them being really aware of it. Just yesterday Charlotte had been speaking with Erik and Moira in the library about possible leads on Shaw, and she’d only realised her hand was on Erik’s knee when Moira gave her a particularly knowing look.

She has a feeling that if there was ever any hope of keeping this quiet and discreet, it’s gone now. Charlotte’s not entirely certain why she wanted to keep it quiet, only that what she has with Erik seems…fragile. Ridiculous, perhaps, but she can’t quite squash the urge to tuck it out of sight and keep it all to themselves, where no one can interfere.

For now though, she lies still, enjoying the feeling of Erik’s breath on the back of her neck. One of his hands is resting on her breast, well away from the dark bruise on her abdomen – a relic of sparring with Raven, and the source of the dull ache in her lower body.

Except it suddenly occurs to her that Raven’s blow had been closer to her sternum, and this ache is settled in her pelvis. She lifts the blankets and chances a glance down – yes, there’s the bruise, just beneath Erik’s arm, but the pain is lower, and deeper somehow, less like a bruise and more like the burn of a pulled muscle.

Curious (because this feels vaguely like the last period she’d had, back when she was twenty-three and before her telepathic range grew so vast), Charlotte dips her fingers between her legs, not surprised to find lingering dampness, but when she draws them back they’re smeared with blood.

It’s probably quite telling that her first thought is that Raven’s blow did internal damage. But she dismisses that thought, telling herself not be silly, and carefully extricates herself from Erik’s arms to go clean up in the bathroom.

She’ll probably have to wash the sheets, and she’s quite sure there’s some kind of cloth for this thing, but she can’t remember where she put hers (the last time she needed it was over seven years ago), so maybe she can borrow one of Raven’s?

Charlotte lets the inner babble of her thoughts and the sluggish processes of Erik’s sleeping mind calm her turmoil. She knows that for most women, menstruation is entirely normal and they’d only become concerned if it failed to happen. But Charlotte’s not ‘most women’, and all the periods she ever had were before her telepathy fully matured.

So what’s going on?

She made Hank take another blood sample (and then had to sit down for a little while, and Hank refused to take anything from her for at least two weeks), and now she’s testing her oestrogen levels. Re-testing them, really, but they keep giving her the same results.

They keeping coming up…normal.

She’s looked at the blood samples taken earlier, of course. The one taken the morning after she accidentally forged the bond shows what the tests five years ago did – minimal oestrogen levels, and some of the hormones that have been tentatively linked to stress present in near-debilitating quantities. The second sample showed a drop in those hormones, and a subsequent increase in oestrogen.

And now, while this sample still shows high levels of stress hormones, the oestrogen is gaining ground. At least enough to give her a period.

In some ways, Charlotte supposes this makes biological sense. Telepathy is incredibly stressful in more ways than one, but the main factor being that she just cannot shut it off; not without shielding herself entirely, which is even more stressful. It’s like being stuck in the middle of a riot, with people shouting and jostling her all the time. She adapted – of course she did – but she always thought her telepathy sapped her body’s resources to the point that it simply had none to funnel into reproduction.

Except now, she has a buffer. Now, when she feels other minds pressing in too tightly, instead of just bracing herself and taking it and trying to do something relaxing afterwards, she can lean on Erik’s mind like crawling beneath a security blanket. And so her stress levels are dropping, apparently enough for her body to divert some of its energy.

It’s all rather surreal. Charlotte had accepted her sterility – it had been a fact of life, and now to know that fact might possibly be overturned…it’s strange. She’s not entirely sure how she feels about even the possibility of having children (there’s yearning there, for love and family where she had none, but there’s also terror – she had horrific examples set for her and would probably be a terrible mother), and anyway, this is certainly not the time to be pondering it.

Concern suddenly washes through the bond as Erik feels her distress, and Charlotte automatically soothes him, sending back calm/content/I’m fine.

In some ways, this development makes the telepathic bond even more logical, in terms of evolution, that is. Setting aside the stress telepathy places on her body, Charlotte had always doubted if she’d even be capable of carrying a child to term. Physical contact always increased her telepathy, and a developing mind that was actually inside her body? She’d be focusing on it almost constantly – she wouldn’t be able to help herself – and that much mental power concentrated on a developing mind could harm it. Maybe even enough to hamper development and induce a miscarriage.

Which, of course, explained why the tendency for psychic bonds had been passed on, and also why telepaths were such a small fraction of the population. Powerful female telepaths would be unlikely to reproduce – and maybe even male telepaths would have difficulty producing healthy sperm – unless they had another mind linked to theirs.

Charlotte shakes her head, just once, and pushes herself back from the laboratory table.

They have bigger things to worry about, after all.

Alex was a bit suspicious – still is, really – but he can admit that the Professor does know what she’s talking about. Most of the time.

This target practice shit still makes him think she’s crazy, though. Sometimes he just wants to scream ‘do you remember what I did to Darwin? Do you have any idea what I could do to you, without even meaning it?’ There was that one time he’d singed her hair, and while she just laughed it off Alex was half-expecting Erik to stab him with forks in retribution.

It’s not that Alex doesn’t like Erik – on the contrary, he thinks Erik’s pretty cool, really. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a fucking scary guy; hell, just look at the way he reacted when Alex insulted the Professor in the prison. Which was probably kind of a dick move, but he’d just been pulled out of solitary confinement (where he belonged) and told to go with what he thought were government mooks – he thinks he can be cut a little slack, under the circumstances.

So yes, the Professor knows what she’s talking about. And she’s also kind of hot, in a sexy-teacher kind of way, but Alex does his best not to think about that. Partially because she’s a telepath, and he really doesn’t want her to pick that up, and also because she and Erik are so in love it’s actually kind of sickening.

Alex has to admit, the Professor and Hank are onto something with this chest plate. It’s making the blasts more focused instead of the widespread destruction he’s used to, though he prefers practicing with the Professor – Hank gives him the creeps.

He does his best not to let on (can’t let them see any weakness), but he stills feels it. Hank is strong enough to pick up a car’s engine in one hand and quick enough to run laps around the Professor. When Alex went into the lab to get his chest plate measured, he’d caught a glimpse of the equations written up on Hank’s blackboard, and he hadn’t even been able to understand the symbols – the only thing that was comprehensible to him was the square root sign. And if he’s that strong, and that smart, it’s only matter of time before he loses patience or someone presses an invisible button and he snaps.

Alex has been trying to nudge out the guy’s limits, find out what kind of things get to him more than anything else, but it hasn’t been going well. He’s figured out that Hank’s feet are his weak point, but whenever Alex jabs him about them Hank doesn’t look angry so much as crestfallen and hurt, and it leaves Alex feeling like he’s just kicked a puppy.

Though sometimes Alex can’t see what the problem is. Sure, Hank’s got some really freaky feet, but he’s also got the Professor’s totally smoking sister panting after him – surely that’s some kind of karmic compensation or something right there?

Erik can feel Charlotte’s worry/fear/concern thrumming through the bond like a plucked guitar string as she raises the gun. He tries to send confidence and assurance back, but he’s not sure it’s getting through the adrenaline and the lurking rage he needs to summon to control his powers.

She’s squinting, as though blurring his features will somehow make it easier to pull the trigger, and Erik grins, already reaching out for the feel of the bullet, remembering the shape of Shaw’s smirk…

But then the gun drops from his forehead. He actually feels disappointed.

I’m not going to shoot you, Erik, she sends to him, and by this point Erik can recognise the exact flavour of determination that means Charlotte absolutely will not yield an inch.

Although, I suppose we could always-

She’s muffling the bond, so Erik doesn’t know exactly what she’s planning, only that she’s planning something, but then the gun starts to rise again, swivelling to point at Charlotte’s temple.

Erik has the gun in his hand before he’s even registered using his powers to yank it from her grip. He knows his mind is probably screaming with fear and anger, but he never wants to see a gun pointing at Charlotte’s head.

Alright, alright, we don’t have to. Charlotte’s thoughts are deliberately saturated in calm. In fact…I think I have a better idea.

She takes Erik’s hand and tugs him towards the edge of what he’s come to think of as the lawn-balcony, and while he’s aware there’s probably a better word for it that’s what it looks like to him, so that’s what he calls it.

You see the satellite? she asks, nodding towards the enormous dish that doesn’t look like it could be built with anything other than serious government money but is apparently part of her property too.

Through the bond, he gets a glimpse of what she’s planning. I don’t think that’s going to work.

Why not?

With something that big, I need the situation, the anger. And summoning an image of Shaw’s smile is a paltry prod compared to actually seeing him.

Anger alone isn’t enough.

Erik’s starting to feel the prickle of indignation. It’s got the job done all this time.

It’s nearly got you killed all this time, Charlotte sends, somehow managing a huff without actually opening her mouth.

Erik stifles the childish urge to retort ‘has not’, but of course, Charlotte feels it anyway.

When we first met you were drowning in the ocean – I think I’m allowed to be sceptical of your instincts for self-preservation.

There are some things more important than my survival. The fact that Erik’s beginning to look beyond his confrontation with Shaw (shaky and blurry, perhaps, but he’s starting to glimpse something there) doesn’t make this any less true – she’ll never convince him otherwise.

He can feel Charlotte very deliberately decide not to argue that point (though she has no room to throw stones on the subject of martyrdom), and instead thinks, I believe true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity.

‘Serenity’ isn’t exactly something Erik associates with his powers. The moments when they came to him, when they were strongest, are always those when he’s the grip of utter rage.

Perhaps, but do you remember what happened with the car?

Remembering half of a car flying at her head is not really making him feel serene.

You were calm, Charlotte points out. When you stopped it, there wasn’t the slightest trace of rage in you.

That might well be true – it wasn’t as though Erik was paying much attention to his emotional state. He just remembers the cold-wind chill of fear and the knowledge that he had to do something; the car couldn’t be allowed to hit Charlotte, and he was the only person capable of stopping it, so it had to be stopped. There were no other options.

Try, Charlotte’s mind whispers to him.

Erik should probably be disturbed by how automatic it is for him to obey, to reach out for the huge metal structure. He concentrates, willing steel beams and fixtures to bend, just a little, just enough…

But he can’t. It’s too big, too heavy – just like Shaw’s submarine. His power has limits, after all; he may hate it admit it, but they’re there.

Sweat has broken out on his face by the time he gives up. He’s half-expecting Charlotte to be disappointed, but on the contrary – what he’s feeling from her is more like anticipation.

May I? She wiggles her fingers near her temple, asking for permission to delve into his mind. Or at least, deeper into his mind – the bond ensures her being in his mind is pretty much a constant.

Having Charlotte deliberately reach into his mind is always slightly surreal, like falling into warm, golden water and watching shadows flicker on the surface above you. He can feel her sifting through memories, which always makes him a little nervous because Charlotte’s seen enough horrors in her day without taking on his own, but these aren’t his usual memories. They’re saturated in warmth and comfort and love…

Then there’s his mother’s face, and candles, and a feeling of peace and security he’d long ago forgotten.

Watching the satellite turn, Charlotte can feel Erik’s bewilderment and elation, his confusion as everything he knew about his powers is suddenly…well, perhaps not turned on its head, precisely, but certainly skewed.

She can’t deny that she’s feeling pleased as well – it feels wonderful to show Erik how much good there is in him, that’s he so much more than what he believes himself to be.

He grins wide, so wide it looks like it must hurt, and his eyes are shining with more than tears when he turns to her. A complex tangle of love/surprise/wonder/pride/mourning rolls through the bond like a warm, salt-tinged wave and Charlotte steps closer, feeling Erik’s mind hum enthusiastically at her proximity.

A sudden flash of nervousness/expectation/anxiety from the minds in the mansion makes her twitch, and then Moira is leaning out of the sitting room window.

“Hey, the President’s about to make his address,” she calls.

She and Erik trade cautious glances, Erik’s mind now seething with suspicion and cynicism, and then they turn for the house.

It’s actually more like calm determination, Erik comments as they enter through the kitchen.

The bond ensures Charlotte knows exactly what he’s talking about. Between rage and serenity is catchier.

Catchier?

Well, which are you going to remember? ‘The place between rage and serenity’ or ‘be calmly determined about it’?

The corner of Erik’s mouth quirks ever so slightly. I suppose the former is more poetic.

Charlotte laughs quietly, but then they’re in the sitting room and the time for lightness passes.

AN: Thanks so much to my beta, ginbitch!

Also, that bit about the biological side to telepathic bonds it just my headcanon for telepathy. In the comics, inherited mutations could be a bit mix and match, but telepathy was the only power that was practically guaranteed to be passed on. Basically if one parent had telepathy, the child would have it too, or telekinesis or some variant of mental power. And my biology-oriented mind wondered why telepathy hadn’t dominated the entire population on a global scale, considering how much of an advantage it would have been. This was my explanation.

Part Thirteen

Semper Fidelis - Part Ten

blind_author — Mon, 14 May 2012 02:26:38 GMT

Title: Semper Fidelis
Rating: Probably an R
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and am making no profit from their use, more's the pity.
Warnings: Angst, partner betrayal, aftermath of torture in this chapter
Summary: Written for a kinkmeme prompt: Moriarty frames John and "Anthea" of betrayals which cause both of the Holmes brothers to cut them off. Cue BAMF!John and BAMF!"Anthea" doing their best to clear their names. Both het and slash; Mycroft/Anthea and John/Sherlock.

(Title page by mabivia)

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine

Part Ten

There were very few problems that two weeks of sun and sand couldn’t – if not help – then at least bring a measure of perspective to.

It also helped that Anthea had been very focused on John’s recovery, and trying not to think about anything else. But now, with the last of John’s bruises vanished and his gashes knitted into the vivid pink of new skin, it was getting difficult to maintain that focus.

Not that they were healed, of course, not entirely – Anthea sometimes wondered if this was something they could get over, or if the fear and relentless paranoia that lurked in the back of their minds was something they just had to adjust to.

John still had nightmares – silent horrors that would keep him up for the rest of the night, starting at every little sound – but he seemed almost resigned to them, as though bad dreams were an old habit he was simply re-learning. They were new to Anthea, though – she’d never been the kind of person who had nightmares, and now almost every second night she was dreaming of running, of being pursued and not being able to find John and knowing that she was dead as soon as she was caught but she couldn’t run fast enough…

John stiffened when dark-haired men in well-cut suits moved close to him, especially the light happens to glint off a watch or a ring. Anthea knew she was displaying something similar to separation anxiety in regards to John, reluctant to let him out of her sight for even a moment. And she couldn’t stop herself from automatically evaluating the threat level of anyone they saw, which okay, yes, she’d done that beforehand, but never with this level of desperation to it.

Right now, they were on the beach, sitting on a picnic blanket and enjoying sandwiches and soft drinks, and Anthea was considering going to the couple at the other end of the beach and just punching them both in the face. At first glance they appeared to be a businessman and his much-younger wife, but considering she’d seen them every day, and those very distinctive mannerisms that just kept bleeding through, likely only visible to her…

She should probably tell John. “You know that couple over there-”

“Are Sherlock and Mycroft,” John finished, taking an appreciative slurp of his lemonade. “I know.”

“You do?”

John nodded. “I suspected, but it wasn’t until this morning that I knew for certain. Only Sherlock can sweep out of a restaurant like that.”

Anthea didn’t glance at the Holmes’ – there was no need to alert them to the fact that they’d been discovered after all – and instead fixed her gaze on the waves. “Do you think we should go over there?”

“Definitely,” John said, with a surprising amount of conviction on his voice. “There’s something I promised Mycroft I’d do.”

That sounded a little ominous, but Anthea had been nursing a secret desire to do Sherlock some serious physical harm on John’s behalf for a while, so she simply nodded in agreement. They packed up their lunch, John tossing the blanket over his shoulder, and set off down the beach with every appearance of two friends going for a nice stroll. They even maintained a conversation for appearances’ sake, though Anthea doubted it was the kind of conversation people usually had on a beach.

“So what were you saying about fighting with a knife?” she asked.

“Well, with a knife, you can really make your first blow count, so a lot of people tend to give into the temptation to go for the neck or chest, thinking they can kill the person straight off,” John said, his tone bland. “But your chances of getting a seriously damaging wound aren’t good – they’ll bring their hands up automatically to protect themselves, and the neck is such a small area you’re likely to get their hands rather than what you want. The chest is even worse because although you might draw blood, the blade’s more likely to skitter off a rib than do any serious harm. Your best bet is to aim just about here,” John tapped the middle of his abdomen. “Just below the sternum, and angle upwards. With a bit of luck, you’ll puncture the diaphragm, and even if you don’t you’ve still hit a lot of blood vessels and a heap of nerve endings. And if you hit the digestive system, that really ruins their day.”

“And how do you know these things?” Anthea couldn’t help asking. “Not that I’m doubting you, mind, but you seem very well informed in ways to kill people for some who supposedly didn’t see much front line action.”

John shrugged. “I’m a doctor; it’s my job to know the weak points of the human body. And I accompanied a few Secret Service missions now and then – unofficially, of course, so it was never in any records. You pick things up.”

Anthea shook her head in amazement (because attending SS mission unofficially wasn’t the sort of thing offered to an army medic, and there had to be more to that story), unable to resist teasing him a little. “And to think, all this from a part-time GP.”

John grinned good-naturedly. “I must admit, you’ve inspired me to try my hand at something a bit more exciting than part-time GP. I’m a good doctor, and it helped get me back on my feet when I was still shaky and worried I’d kill someone if I had to operate on them…but I think I’m ready for something more suited to my tastes. Like working in an emergency room.”

They’d drawn level with Sherlock and Mycroft now, and Anthea could reluctantly admit she was almost impressed; Mycroft’s face looked very different with a beard, and Sherlock was a rather convincing woman. Not good enough to fool either herself or John, but a commendable effort nonetheless.

“Do you have the time?” she asked, deliberately turning to John.

John picked up on what she was doing of course, and shook his head. “Didn’t bring my watch.”

“Excuse me, but do you have the time?” she addressed to Mycroft and Sherlock, smiling the polite smile she always used when dealing with strangers.

Mycroft glanced down at his watch, clearly not suspecting he’d been recognised, and John moved. In one moment, he’d stepped around Anthea and punched Mycroft straight in the face.

Anthea could tell he’d pulled the punch because Mycroft merely staggered instead of dropping to the ground. Perhaps doing the same to Sherlock was uninspired, but there was a pleasing symmetry to it, and she certainly felt satisfied when he rocked back on his heels and clapped a hand to the blood running from his nose.

“It appears you are not a man for idle promises,” Mycroft commented, his words addressed to John even as his gaze remained on Anthea.

“What the hell are you two doing here?” John snapped, sounding so very military that Anthea felt an instinctive urge to straighten her posture.

She expected some kind of snappy comeback, but instead both brothers looked away and came very close to shuffling their feet.

“We just…wanted to watch over you,” Mycroft said quietly.

Anthea despised the way those words made something lurch in her chest. Because while most people had difficulty determining when Mycroft was just telling them what they wanted to hear, she knew that right now, he was completely in earnest. They hadn’t come expecting forgiveness or to salve their consciences, but because they were genuinely worried about them.

She also hated the way time had dulled the sting of betrayal, so that now beneath the hurt and resentment she was remembering. Remembering the way he was the only person who’d never been intimidated by her intellect, who’d never made her feel as though she had to consciously dumb down her own talents for fear of scaring him off. Remembering that in spite of his own staggering intelligence, he’d never made her feel as if she were foolish or stupid when she couldn’t follow his train of thought. Remembering the way he’d never smothered her with overprotection, never thought she was somehow less capable or dangerous just because she was a woman. Remembering that he was the first person she’d ever been herself with, instead of what she thought the other person wanted.

Remembering just how much she loved him. Still. Goddammit.

“I don’t have nearly enough alcohol in my system for this,” she muttered.

“Well, I fulfilled my promise, so I’m up for a nice drink at that swanky restaurant we passed on the way here,” John declared, but she noticed it took effort for him to look away from Sherlock.

He turned to her, and held out his arm like a turn of the century gentleman. “Shall we, Rosy?”

Anthea laughed, the nickname grounding her as nothing else could have, and she put her arm through John’s. She took his hand, intending only a brief squeeze to convey her gratitude, but John held on just shy of too-tightly, the only sign that he wasn’t as unaffected as he seemed.

The soft scuff of feet on sand told her Sherlock and Mycroft were following them, and she was torn between whirling around and shouting at them or whirling around and (god help her) hugging Mycroft. She settled for completely ignoring both brothers.

“Tell me more about the ‘things you pick up’ with the SS,” she prodded.

“Well, I already told you it was off the records so I couldn’t have any formal training,” John said, his voice picking up the ‘storyteller’ vibe it sometimes slipped into. “But there was this one guy on the team, I can’t tell you his name – I mean, you’ll probably figure it out yourself but it’s the principle of the thing – and he kind of took me under his wing, so to speak-”

Anthea closed her eyes, letting John guide her through the crowd, and hating herself for the fact that the footsteps behind them sounded louder than his voice.

“So, exactly what kind of alcohol do you want?” John asked, thumbing open the wine list. “Something a bit posh? Or just something that’ll get you drunk?”

Anthea took a few moments to take in the restaurant before answering. It was the sort of place designed to fleece tourists with safe options at ridiculous prices, but Anthea didn’t mind. She might have dined at some of the world’s best restaurants but at times tacky and convenient hit the spot nicely. Besides, she knew that fussing over her like this helped take John’s mind off his own problems – he was a caretaker at heart – so she simply smiled at him.

“Surprise me.”

He smiled back weakly, darting a quick glance towards the table behind her. Anthea didn’t bother turning around – she knew that Mycroft and Sherlock were sitting there. They’d changed their clothes and tried to cover their bruised and swollen noses, but it was them.

Later, she was never precisely sure what had alerted her. Perhaps it was the hyper-vigilance she’d felt the need to maintain ever since they’d escaped that meant she saw the glint of metal in the waitress’s hand, perhaps it was the paranoia that had dogged her that made her think the woman’s expression was entirely too calm and still for someone dealing with a lunchtime rush, perhaps it was her need to protect John that made her assume the woman intended him harm. All Anthea knew was that she saw the woman, and realised something wasn’t right.

“John!”

John’s head, already half-turning towards the waitress, snapped around at her cry, and his arm shot out just as the waitress stabbed a long, slightly curved knife towards his neck. His hand caught her wrist and twisted – probably breaking something judging by the snapping sound – and his foot swept out from under the table to hook her knee and force her down, giving John enough time to get out of his chair.

Anthea had already moved. She grabbed the woman’s other arm and twisted it up behind her back, planning on holding her immobile for questioning (never mind that the police were probably going to be there within ten minutes, judging by the way the other customers were screaming).

“Down!” Mycroft shouted.

Anthea obeyed automatically, a relic from back when that voice never said anything that wasn’t in her best interest.

Even before she was entirely behind the table, there was the tinkle of breaking glass and the high whistle of a bullet, ending in a sharp crack as it was embedded in the floorboards.

John was on the floor beside her, having already put their attacker in that fancy sleeper hold of his (and Anthea really wanted to learn that).

She could hear Sherlock muttering acerbically at his brother, something about ‘if he had any bright ideas’, but she was more concerned about John.

And she might have flicked a quick glance over her shoulder to check that Mycroft was unharmed, but they’d never be able to prove it.

“Are you all right?” she hissed, trying to be heard over commotion.

People were screaming, glasses and dishes shattering as employees and customers alike stampeded towards the exits, overturning tables and chairs as they went. She was tempted to rise and join the desperate rush to the door, hoping that the sniper wouldn’t be able to pick them out of the crowd, but she knew better than to suggest it to John. He wouldn’t agree to any plan that had the slightest chance of innocent bystanders getting shot.

“Fine,” John grunted, relaxing his hold and letting their ‘waitress’ slump to the floor. “You?”

“Likewise. Any thoughts?”

“They attacked me first, and only started shooting when we’d overpowered their assassin,” John summarised.

“Which suggests that you are the main target,” Mycroft interrupted.

Anthea was severely tempted to tell him they’d already realised that, but Sherlock was quicker.

“As no one here has a brain the size of a lemming’s, I think we’ve all deduced that,” Sherlock snapped, but his eyes were white-rimmed when they fixed on John. “The sniper has also refrained from indiscriminately shooting at the tables, so we can assume they don’t have a substantial supply of bullets – they need to make each shot count.”

“But if they were confident enough to bring so little bullets, it’s unlikely they’ll miss once they are presented with a target,” Mycroft interjected smoothly. “And all our routes to the exit necessitate breaking cover. I can call for backup, but I doubt they will arrive before the sniper decides to switch their vantage point to one better suited for killing us.”

John sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any point to mentioning that I could try to draw his fire while the rest of you escaped?”

Anthea scoffed, and Sherlock looked disgusted.

“I’m not leaving you!” he snapped.

Anthea wanted to laugh at his scandalised tone, and couldn’t help but think that he’d have given a very different reply three weeks ago. Judging by John’s bitter smile, he was thinking the same.

Of course, she didn’t trust John not to perform heroic sacrifices, so she laid a hand on his arm to keep him where he was.

“Bad things happen when we split up,” she reminded him a level voice. “It’s not happening again.”

John grinned wearily. “Still, I figured the option should be on the table.”

“Well, no one’s going to be taking it up, so take it off the sodding table.”

John giggled, and Anthea couldn’t help but giggle along with him – John had a dangerously infectious laugh.

Sherlock and Mycroft were still muttering from her other side, forming and discarding plans at lightning speed, but Anthea’s eyes were drawn to the bullet hole in the floor. It was impossible to tell the gunman’s exact position just from one bullet, but she could at least take a vague guess. She raised her eyes to meet John’s, and knew by the hard glint in them that he was thinking the same thing she was.

“Shut up, both of you,” she barked, turning to Sherlock and Mycroft. “We’re going to get out of this.”

“And just how are we going to manage that?” Sherlock snarled.

Anthea gave him a scathing look, then smiled conspiratorially at John. “John’s a dark wizard.”

“Excuse me?” Mycroft’s expression of disbelief was cut short by John’s cry of triumph when his search of their ‘waitress’ produced a pistol.

“Nice heft,” he observed, checking the clip. “Fully loaded – certainly serviceable. Cover your ears.”

Anthea obeyed instantly, but both Holmes brothers delayed to ask ‘why’, and as a result cringed and flinched when John fired into one of the chairs the other diners had overturned in their rush towards the exit.

“Pulls a little to the left,” John observed, studying the small hole he’d made in the wood. “I’ll have to watch that, but I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

“Into the breach?” Anthea smirked.

“Since we never seem to do anything else,” John quipped. “Into the bloody breach, then.”

With that, Anthea grabbed the collar of the ‘waitress’s’ shirt and hoisted the top of her head above the table. She let it drop just as quickly, and sure enough, a bullet smashed into the floor, followed by the echoing bang of a gunshot.

Apparently the sniper wasn’t fussed about checking the identity of his targets.

Anthea stared at the bullet holes, calculating distance and angles, remembering the layout of the street opposite them…

“Blue house, second story, right window.”

John nodded, readjusting his grip on the gun.

Mycroft looked alarmed. “You can’t possibly be thinking of-”

John rose the way he’d done in that house all those weeks ago – smooth and fluid, without the slightest flinch as he brought the gun to bear and fired. One shot, just one.

And there was no answering bullet.

“Right, that’s sorted, but there might be more of them,” John said, bending his arm back and holding the gun pointed at the ceiling. “I’ll check out the exit – the three of you, stay here!”

Then he was gone, and Anthea was left to enjoy the flabbergasted expressions on the Holmes’ brothers’ faces. They recovered quickly, of course, but she couldn’t resist rubbing their noses in it a little.

“John Watson; death from above,” she snickered. “And also below and the side and really, wherever he happens to be at the time.”

“There was nothing in his papers,” Mycroft said, strangely insistent. “There was nothing in his papers about that kind of…”

He trailed into silence, which only happened when he was truly shaken.

“I knew he was a good marksman,” Sherlock said hoarsely. “The way he handled the gun, the way he sighted along it – it was all there. But I never-”

“We’re clear!” John called. “Come through the kitchen.”

Anthea set her shoulder against the unconscious woman’s belly and dragged her into a fireman’s carry. It was difficult – people were always so much heavier than they seemed – but she snarled at Mycroft when he moved to help her.

Sherlock, of course, was paying absolutely no attention to them and already sprinting after John. The fact that he was doing it in a dress made her want to laugh.

John was waiting outside, next to the restaurant’s pick-up truck.

“This is more your area,” he offered, gesturing to the vehicle and holding out his arms. “I’ll take that off your hands for you.”

Anthea handed over her burden silently and went to work on hotwiring the car.

Mycroft was rarely surprised, and almost never to this degree. He’d seen John’s record – above average, perhaps, but certainly nothing extraordinary. The only area he’d truly distinguished himself was marksmanship, but he’d never actually done anything with it…or at least, nothing that made it to any kind of record.

It took a certain kind of man to break cover when a sniper was firing and calmly eliminate the threat the way John had just done. And that kind of man wasn’t made in the RAMC.

They were trundling down the road in a restaurant’s pick-up with an unconscious woman who was clearly one of the remnants of Moriarty’s organisation, and Mycroft was staring at John and wondering what else he’d missed.

It also helped that staring at John kept his eyes off Jane. She’d refused to speak directly to him, barely glanced at him, refused his help…

It was true he hadn’t expected anything less, but it still hurt.

“May I suggest we depart the country with all haste?” he offered, and he would never have thought ‘tentatively’ could ever be applied to any of his communications, but there was no other word for it.

Jane’s jaw clenched, and her eyes didn’t move from the road.

“Good idea,” John agreed. “Any suggestions, Rosy?”

It made no sense for that familiar, obviously fond nickname to sear Mycroft’s gut the way it did, and yet…

“It would be easy if you came back to England,” Sherlock burst out, then promptly pressed his lips together, as if even he knew that wasn’t the right thing to say.

“What if we don’t want to go back to England?” Jane snapped. “Suppose John and I have decided we want to stay in Italy?”

Three weeks ago, Mycroft would have been able to tell whether she meant that comment in spite or in truth. Now, he honestly had no idea, but that wasn’t what was frightening him – it was the fact that whatever Jane decided, he had no say in it. She could decide to immigrate to Thailand, and he couldn’t even expect a courtesy call to inform him of that – he’d lost that right the moment he decided to believe his informants over her.

“Rosy,” John said quietly, and they shared a glance full of unspoken communication that made Mycroft clench his jaw, not in juvenile jealousy, but in regret.

“We can always come back here afterwards,” John pointed out, the words sounding like a tag to a much deeper conversation. “Or go to Germany or France or wherever you want. But not Switzerland – I think I’ve gone off Switzerland for a while.”

Sherlock’s eyes were dark and pained even if the rest of his face was motionless, and Mycroft didn’t think he was the only one experiencing jealousy.

They ditched the truck close by the hotel he and Anthea were staying at, and packed as quickly as they could. John twisted his belt into a makeshift holster and tucked the gun into his waistband, ensuring it was at an angle where it wouldn’t blow off part of his leg if it discharged. He slung his suitcase partway over his back, so he could draw the weapon quickly if he needed to.

Sherlock and Mycroft had changed out of their ridiculous disguises, and were trying to find the most expedient means of transport. John still wasn’t sure what to think of the fact that Sherlock had followed him all the way out here simply to watch over him. On the one hand, he was quite irritated at having his nice holiday/recovery period interrupted, but on the other hand, the idea that Sherlock had merely wanted to keep him safe without any kind of ulterior motive made him feel…well, made him feel the way he’d felt three weeks ago, before any of this had ever happened.

It felt strange to contemplate going back to London. Like he and Anthea had built their own world over here in Italy, and now they had to return to the real one.

He wondered if the woman they’d picked up had any more ammunition.

John strode into the little sitting room/kitchen area, giving it a last glance to make sure he’d taken everything, to find their captive unconscious on the sofa, Anthea standing over her. He didn’t know what made him pause – perhaps it was the set, rigid expression on her face, or how still she was standing, despite the fact that her slightly bent posture couldn’t be comfortable.

“What’s going on?” John asked, his free hand easing towards his gun as he carefully set his suitcase on the floor.

Anthea raised her head, and in the light from the window John could see her face was quite pale. “We need to know if there are any others coming after us.”

Before…everything…John might have wondered what she meant, but now he understood only too well. “Are you saying…?”

“I don’t have time for anything you’d call torture,” Anthea said (and John noticed her use of ‘I’ rather than ‘we’). “But people give away a lot without realising it – if she’s expecting rescue, I’ll be able to spot it.”

“What about Sherlock and Mycroft?” John asked. It felt somehow disloyal for him to be mentioning them, as though he was disparaging Anthea’s talents, but it had to be said. “Wouldn’t they be better at that sort of thing?”

Anthea shrugged. “If I can’t tell, they can give it a try. But I don’t think she’ll be particularly difficult – I don’t think she’s particularly skilled or exceptional. I don’t think the sniper was, either. They’re professional, of course, and competent, but…”

Anthea trailed off, but John thought he understood what she was trying to say. These people were dangerous, yes, but they lacked that particularly vicious edge that Moran and the others pursuing them had possessed. If this had been an organised attempt on their lives, it was a pretty poor one – it was more likely that any high-ranking people in Moriarty’s organisation had either joined someone else or struck out on their own, and these two were just middle rankers that had been left adrift when he died. Enough so that pointless vengeance had begun to appeal to them.

“I won’t ask you to get involved,” Anthea said quietly.

John shook his head, even though he felt a bit queasy. “We stick together, remember? I’m pretty sure we made some kind of promise about that.”

Anthea smiled weakly. “It was certainly implied, but I can’t recall ever actually saying the words.”

“Then we’ll say them now – we promise to stick together, right?”

“I promise,” Anthea nodded. Then she giggled, and held out her little finger. “Pinky swear?”

John laughed, and linked his finger with hers. “Pinky swear.”

They pumped their hands once, then let them drop, both of them giggling so hard that the unconscious woman began to stir.

Anthea cursed. “Keep her here for a minute, I just need to find something to tie her up with.”

John drew his gun and kept it pointed at their captive, absently stilling his hands when he noticed they were shaking.

The woman – who John decided on the spot to call ‘Amy’ because she looked a bit like that character from Doctor Who – opened her eyes, and he made sure the gun was the first thing she saw.

“Move, and I’ll fill you full of so many holes you can double as a sieve,” he growled as Anthea returned with what looked like the length of plastic wire they’d used to hang their clothes on.

It was kind of a rubbish threat, but it worked – Amy kept still and silent while Anthea bound her to one of the kitchen chairs.

John holstered the gun as soon as he was out of her sight, then found he had to go and sit in the bedroom doorway for a few minutes.

Anthea made certain Amy was secure before hurrying over to him. He could tell she knew what was upsetting him, but grateful she didn’t comment, instead forcing a smile.

“You can double as a sieve?” she whispered. “You can use people as sieves?”

To his own surprise, John found himself chuckling. “Best I could come up with at the time – my threats tend to be kind of medical, and hard to understand, like; ‘I’ll hit you so hard you’ll display haematemesis, that kind of thing.”

“Heamatemesis?”

“Vomiting up blood.”

“Oh.” Anthea nodded, patted him tentatively on the shoulder, then went back to Amy.

She positioned herself in front of their captive, speaking so low that John couldn’t make out her words, for which he was rather grateful. He didn’t want to hear what she was saying, didn’t want to look at the woman tied helpless in the chair, didn’t want to remember Moriarty, didn’t want to think about high laughter and chill hands…

He started when Anthea laid a hand on his knee. A quick glance at Amy showed she was now gagged with something that looked suspiciously like their clean tea towel.

“It’s fine,” she said in a low, steady voice as though trying to calm him, which John might have resented if it hadn’t worked so well. “It’s over – it was just the two of them.”

“But there might be more,” John pointed out, and by Anthea’s grim nod he knew she’d already thought of that.

“But given that these two seem to be the first to have found us…” Anthea took a deep breath. “We don’t have to go back to England. We can send Sherlock and Mycroft away, and we can go somewhere else, if you like.”

John absorbed that for a moment. Amy would be easy enough to get rid of – a little anonymous tip to the police when they left – and given that he and Anthea didn’t know any locals, it would take a long time for the authorities to realise they’d been involved in the shooting in the restaurant. And Mycroft could probably exercise some of that bloody omniscience of his to get that taken care of…somehow. John was quite certain Anthea knew how Mycroft did what he did, but he was equally certain he didn’t want to know.

They didn’t have to go back to England, not unless they wanted to.

The trouble was, John wasn’t really sure what he wanted anymore.

AN: Thanks so very, very much to my beta, ginbitch, who saved me from falling into the trap of assuming my readers can also read my mind.

Part Eleven

X-Men Fic - Sex and Telepathy

blind_author — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 03:13:11 GMT

Title: Sex and Telepathy
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Graphic sex, allusions to child abuse, homophobia and allusions to derogatory beliefs about homosexuals
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men
Pairing: Charles/Erik, Charles/others
Summary: Most people can’t pinpoint the moment when they first become aware of sex. Charles can. Just a quick look at Charles’ telepathy and how it might shape his attitude towards sex. Slash, Charles/Erik.

Sex and Telepathy

Most people can’t pinpoint the moment when they first become aware of sex. They can name an approximate age, but the exact moment? Sex education is not as methodical as education boards would have us believe, but rather a sort of fractured osmosis, transference of knowledge through prolonged contact with the world.

Charles, on the other hand, can name the month, the date, and the time, almost to the hour. The first time his telepathy happened to pick up a sexual fantasy.

Most people can’t pinpoint the time when they first become aware of death. Some can, of course – for some, the knowledge is not a gradual slide into the awareness that everything passes but a sudden drop of terror and horror and blood and pain. Charles can name the moment he became aware of death; it was the same moment his telepathy awakened.

The moment his father shot himself in the head.

Charles remembers being just outside the study door when it happened, the sudden blast of pain/despair/shame that hits him as the gunshot roars through the halls. He drops to the floor as though he’s the one who’d been hit by the bullet, shaking with his father’s emotions as they bleed out from beneath the door like shadows.

Perhaps that might have been the end of it. Perhaps he could have picked himself up and gone for help, if Brian Xavier had better aim.

But as it is, the angle of the bullet is off, and it takes Brian two hours to die.

Charles feels every second of it.

Later, when he’s escaped the people downstairs (because their minds are so loud, too loud, and their pity clogs the back of his throat with a sickly-sweet taste he can’t get rid of, no matter how much he coughs and swallows) to curl up in the attic, he shuts his eyes and blocks his ears and pleads with God to make it go away. He prays like his mother taught him, prays for it to all to go away and leave him in peace.

It doesn’t. Charles Xavier will never know peace – or solitude –again.

Charles has always known that two men and two women can desire each other just a man and a woman do. By the time he’s seven, his time without telepathy seems a distant, unreal dream, and he’s seen enough images tinged with desire/yearning/lust/love to know deep, intimate details of how two people can bring each other pleasure.

Puberty is far over the horizon, so while Charles knows that people desire sex, he has yet to understand why they desire it. To him, it just seems vaguely repellent – messy and clumsy and surely some of those things would hurt, just a little bit?

Anyway, it’s something grown-ups do, clearly, so Charles does his best not to worry about it. Grown-ups do all sorts of things he doesn’t have to, like paying bills and worrying about jobs, so maybe sex is like those things. Just something you have to do when you’re a grown-up.

By the time Charles is ten, however, he’s become more discerning. He’s able to recognise the more nuanced emotions and motivations now, and he’s recognising a sharp divide between views on sex. Images and desires featuring a man and a woman are sometimes tinged with embarrassment/humiliation/furtivenesss/guilt like they’re something to be kept secret, but it isn’t as acute or as common as when it’s two people of the same sex. Shame/horror/guilt/self-loathing snags and snarls at the corners of those images and Charles doesn’t understand why.

He makes a comment at the dinner table – it’s worth the risk of speaking up in Kurt’s presence, just to understand. His mother is horrified, and Kurt…

Well, suffice to say, Charles never raises that subject again.

He lies in his bed, nursing his bruises, and thinks, turning the events over and over in his mind, trying to make them fit. So, a man and a woman together is fine, is acceptable and expected, but two men or two women…aren’t? It’s…wrong, somehow?

He wants to look into Kurt’s mind and find out why, but Kurt’s mind is dark and sharp and it hurts, and he doesn’t want to go in there, ever.

So he lies in his bed, his ribs aching as he breathes, and wonders.

Eventually, of course, Charles understands why people want sex so much. At sixteen, he’s also grasped why a woman fantasising about another woman might feel sick and ashamed, might worry there’s something wrong with her, something evil and perverted.

He’s old enough now to have comprehended society’s judgements on homosexuality, old enough to realise that public opinion holds it as a disease of the mind, as a perversion that must be cured…

Perhaps it’s because he grew up with it, perhaps because it always seemed as natural and unquestioned as heterosexuality, but the scientist in him screams ‘show me proof’.

He stumbled across the complete works of Sigismund Freud in the mansion’s library, so he’s well-versed in the so-called ‘immature desires’. It might just be that Charles is sceptical of the whole premise to begin with, but a lot of those conclusions seem rather shaky. He’s yet to see anything that comes even close to convincing him.

He’s learned since Kurt’s beating, though. Raven knows his opinion on the matter, but no one else does – his position is one it’s not wise to advertise, especially while he’s still dependent on his mother’s goodwill. And Raven too; it won’t do to get her thrown out just because he feels the need to stand up for himself, to look his mother in the face and say ‘I want to have sex with men, and there’s nothing wrong with that’.

But of course, that isn’t the whole truth. Charles has found his relationship to sexuality is…complicated, for lack of a better word. He doesn’t drool over pin-ups the way most other boys his age do – people don’t seem real to him without the soft press of their thoughts, and while looking at a photograph of someone he knows can make him recall the flavour and patterns of their mind, it doesn’t work for those women in the magazines. It’s like trying to feel sexual desire for a doll; it simply doesn’t happen.

What he finds desirable is less about the person’s body and more about their mind. And it’s not to do with intelligence or complexity, as Raven once assumed when he tried to explain it to her. No, it’s more basic than that – their mind has to be pleasant for him to touch.

Some people’s minds are like Kurt’s – they bite when they’re touched, and Charles knows enough to steer well clear of those kinds of people. Some people’s minds are like cacti – prickly and unpleasant, only tolerable in small, light brushes. Sometimes Charles feels like Goldilocks; this mind is too hot, this mind is too cold…

He wonders if he’ll ever find one that’s just right for him.

Charles loses his virginity in London at age eighteen, to a woman named Audrey. She’s a year older than him, an aspiring actress, and her mind is like lemonade – clear and sweet and refreshing. She trained as a ballerina and worked to collect money for the Dutch Resistance during the war, and she isn’t afraid to debate with Charles. She smiles into each kiss like she knows a secret, and they share their dreams between the sheets. They’re not in love, though Charles thinks they may be close to it on several occasions, and when she breaks it off for the sake her burgeoning career his well-wishes are sincere and without bitterness.

Years later, Raven will never understand why Charles, who usually hates movies, is so eager to see Roman Holiday.

His first attempt to have sex with a man does not go nearly so well. His telepathy is very free during sex; nothing terribly invasive, but he can’t help picking up on emotions and surface thoughts, and his partner’s are so full of shame and hatred – towards himself and towards Charles, for stirring this desire in him – that Charles simply gets up and leaves. Not very polite, true, but the headache and sudden nausea churning in his gut don’t leave him much choice.

Charles has never been one to be deterred by setbacks, so he tries again. And again. And again.

But it’s no good – it never works. The only way he can even get an erection is by completely blocking off his telepathy, which is somewhat akin to plugging his ears, shutting his eyes, and shoving his head into a bucket of water. Everything becomes very muffled and distant, and people suddenly seem like unreal mirages.

While it’s possible to become aroused in that state, actually achieving orgasm is completely beyond him.

After the eighth time, Charles gives up. It’s not in his nature to surrender to anything, but it’s simply too tiring, too draining to keep doing this. And it’s hard not to feel bitter when yet another discrete, bright-eyed young man spends the evening worrying whether they are being too loud, or whether the curtains are thick enough or, memorably, whether their wife will notice that they smell different when they return to their little lives of domestic bliss.

Charles knows rationally that there must well-adjusted homosexual men somewhere in London. But he hasn’t found them, and he just doesn’t have the energy to keep looking.

So he puts that aspect of his desire to the back of his mind, not without a little bitterness, and concentrates on women.

It’s easier.

Charles knows that Erik wants him. He’s been trying to keep his promise to stay out of Erik’s head, but there’s only so much he can keep out, and the flash of desire/lust/want that hits him across the chessboard nearly sears his skin. It’s got to the point that Charles can severely hamper Erik’s strategies just by licking his lips or glancing up at him from beneath his lashes.

Not that Charles is much better. Those tantalising glimpses of Erik’s mind, the memory of it washing over him and into him that night, vaster than the ocean he’d plunged into, shadowed and full of dangerous, hidden currents but no less magnificent for that and god, Charles wants…

But he won’t. He’ll honour his promise to stay out of Erik’s mind, because at times it seems all he has is his honour.

Charles slides his queen across the board, through the avenue opened up by his knight.

“Checkmate,” he declares, letting his voice change into something deep and throaty, feeling a curl of satisfaction and pleasure when he sees Erik’s hands tighten on the arms of his chair.

Oh, he wants to be in Erik’s mind so badly. Everything he’s accidentally picked up from Erik tells him that Erik doesn’t feel ashamed of his desire for Charles, a stark contrast to everything he experienced in England. Perhaps Erik’s been so removed from society for so long that he no longer puts any stock in what it deems acceptable.

But it doesn’t matter, because Erik has asked him to stay out, so Charles will stay out. He closes his eyes for a moment and builds his shields, high and impenetrable, the ones that will muffle his telepathy completely.

When he opens his eyes, everything has taken on the dream-like quality he associates with these kinds of shields. It’s like he’s suddenly become very remote from his body, like he’s watching everything that happens on a movie screen. Telepathy is such an integral part of himself that cutting it off affects every sense, makes him feel disoriented, as though he’s just stepped off a pitching boat onto solid land and his brain hasn’t adjusted yet.

But Erik wants sex, and Charles doesn’t mind. He’d like to say he looks forward to it but he doesn’t, not really. Still, Erik will enjoy it, and Charles can’t deny he feels pleased at the prospect of giving Erik pleasure when he’s had so little of it in his life.

“My friend,” he says quietly, rising from his chair and deliberately moving close to Erik, laying a cautious hand over his. “I haven’t pried, I promise, but if you want what I want…”

He trails off, deliberately leaving Erik a graceful exit. He wants Charles, true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll act on it. Charles loves Erik – he can feel it, tucked against his heart like a lead weight – but that doesn’t mean Erik feels the same way

For a moment, Charles honestly doesn’t know what to expect. Then Erik’s hand turns beneath his, and he weaves their fingers together. It’s the only signal Charles needs to prompt him to slide into Erik’s lap, bracket his jaw with one hand, and bring their lips together.

Erik kisses Charles the way a man would eat his last meal – desperately, greedily, but slowly, savouring each touch and slide and twist of tongue. His hand tightens on Charles’, and his arm comes up around Charles’ waist to pull him closer.

Charles is quite sure this will progress to sex almost immediately unless he says otherwise. Erik is used to grabbing what he wants, because for him, there’s never been any guarantee it will be around later.

So Charles isn’t really surprised when Erik stands and begins to guide him backwards towards the bed. He wonders if Erik suspected something like this was going to happen – Charles’ suggestion to play chess in his bedroom rather than the study was probably not the most subtle of invitations.

Erik’s hands keep moving, tugging at buttons and zips, tracing over Charles’ skin as though Charles is some alien creature he needs to learn entirely by touch. Charles applies himself to returning the favour, feeling a sluggish stir of desire at the expression on Erik’s face, like he can’t quite believe this is really happening.

Erik is already hard against his belly, and Charles is grateful he tucked some lubricant into the drawer of the side table. He’s not sure if his preference is to be penetrated – he’s not even sure if that’ll be on the cards – but he trust Erik enough to want to try.

It’s hard to focus with his shields up but he manages to pull off his shirt. Erik pushes him back onto the bed, pulling at his trousers so hard that Charles wonders vaguely if he’ll rip them. He shucks them off, kicking them to the floor, and Charles takes that as his cue to shed his own pants and reach into the drawer.

“You might want this,” he says, passing the tin to Erik with his best cheeky smile.

It’s always slightly surreal to hear himself speak when he’s like this – unnerving more than anything else, but Charles finds he doesn’t mind speaking as long as it gets Erik to keep looking at him like that. Like Charles is just too good to be true.

Now Erik is naked, Charles can’t stop staring. He feels his own cock starting to stir and harden, sluggish but still responsive.

He wants to touch Erik’s mind – wants to know what he’s feeling and thinking and what he wants – but Charles won’t let himself. Erik has made it clear he doesn’t want Charles in his head, and Charles will respect that.

Erik plucks the lubricant from his hands and kisses him again, deep and searing, his hand snaking between their bodies to wrap lightly around Charles’ cock. It takes a moment or two to adjust to the sensation but Charles can feel his cock thicken and the urgent pressure of arousal beat against the fog of his mental shields.

Erik breaks the kiss to gasp, as though just feeling Charles grow hard in his hand is enough to take his breath away. He moves back but not away, staring at Charles in a way he simply cannot interpret – no one has ever looked at him like that before. A mixture of awe and reverence and…

His shields groan under the weight of his desire to touch Erik’s mind, and Charles hastily shores up the barricade.

He prepares to roll over onto his hands and knees, but Erik’s hand on his hip stops him. Puzzled, Charles goes still, and Erik takes the opportunity to kiss him again, gently nudging his legs apart.

Apparently Erik wants to see his face. Charles realises that Erik hasn’t spoken since they first kissed, and even now he’s keeping himself hushed, trying to mute his moans, almost as though he’s afraid anything louder than a whisper will break the spell.

Erik begins kissing Charles’ neck and shoulders, moving slowly, inexorably down his chest as a slick finger begins to probe between his legs. Charles sighs, trying to lose himself in the dim sense of pleasure and the love that wells in him every time he catches a glimpse of Erik’s face.

But Erik seems to be slowing, darting hesitant glances up at Charles, a slight frown beginning to appear on his face. Charles smiles, hoping to dispel whatever misgivings Erik is feeling, but Erik doesn’t resume his ministrations, just rubs a thumb over the crest of Charles’ hip thoughtfully.

“Charles…this is alright, isn’t it?”

Charles really wants to read his mind, just lightly – people make so little sense when you can’t feel the brush of their emotions and motivations.

“Of course it is,” he assures, reaching down to cup Erik’s cheek. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Usually I can feel…something from you when we’re touching,” Erik points out, remarkably self-composed for someone stark naked and inches away from Charles’ cock. “Even through clothing.”

Charles blinks, a feeling of consternation piercing his shielded haze. Physical contact enhances his telepathy, and he can’t deny he’d been getting a small, guilty rush from those brief glimpses into Erik’s mind, but he’d thought it had been one-way.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he blurts out. “I didn’t realise, and I promise I’ll control myself better in the future-”

“Charles, if I minded I would have told you about it before now,” Erik interrupts. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Charles is about to ask ‘what question?’, but then he remembers Erik’s comment about not feeling anything from him. “Physical contact enhances my telepathy, but since you’ve asked me to stay out of your mind, I’ve had to shield very tightly.”

Erik still looks sceptical, but Charles takes his chance to explain the secondary effect of his shields. “Cutting off my telepathy like this is a little disorienting, so please don’t be terribly offended if I don’t have an orgasm.”

Judging by the careful, almost reverent way Erik has treated him thus far, Charles suspects he would have wanted to make sure Charles climaxed. He needs to let Erik know that isn’t likely to happen.

Erik goes still, and suddenly levers himself off Charles’ body. “Explain.”

His voice is terse, almost angry, and Charles wonders what he’s done to offend him.

“Deliberately shielding my telepathy is…well, it’s somewhat similar to complete sensory deprivation,” he begins cautiously. “I suppose the equivalent for you would be if you were gagged, blindfolded, deafened, and suspended in deep water.”

He smiles, trying to be reassuring. “As you can imagine, it’s difficult to have an orgasm in that state, but don’t worry – I’ll still enjoy it. Just because I don’t climax, doesn’t mean it’s not pleasurable.”

Erik swears in German and shoves himself backwards, almost to the foot of the bed.

“Erik?” Charles knows his voice doesn’t hide his confusion.

Erik is shaking his head, staring at the wall. “What did I do to make you think this was necessary?”

The depth of self-loathing and recrimination in his voice startles Charles, and he props himself back up into a sitting position. Erik turns to look at him, and Charles is suddenly very aware of how much clumsier he feels with his shields up, how it always seems to take an extra second or two for his body to respond to him.

“You’re even moving slowly,” Erik observes, his eyes dark and bitter. “Mein Gott, it’s like you’re drunk, or drugged.”

Charles feels a flare of indignation at the implication in that statement. “I am in full control of my faculties and perfectly capable of giving consent, thank you very much.”

Erik gives a hoarse bark of entirely mirthless laughter. “Yes, but hearing you’re essentially undergoing torture is not arousing to me in the slightest.”

“Torture? Erik, it doesn’t hurt-”

Charles voice splinters into nothing because Erik is suddenly right there in front of him, foreheads pressed together, his hands cupping Charles’ face as gently as if he’s made of thread-thin glass, thumbs rubbing over Charles’ temples.

“Stop it,” Erik whispers. “Stop it, just…stop.”

Charles holds himself very still, afraid that Erik will get up and leave if he moves or speaks. Erik’s looking at him expectantly, but Charles has no idea what he’s waiting for – maybe he should kiss him again? It was nice, and Erik seemed to like it…

“Stop shielding,” Erik says eventually, each word carefully articulated as though he were talking to a small child. “You don’t have to do that, not with me.”

The want that rushes through Charles at those words actually leaves him shaking, but no – he has to hold himself back, he has to make sure.

“You told me to stay out of your head,” he whispers.

Erik’s lips quirk as though they’re trying for a friendly smile but don’t quite remember the expression. “I did – as I was leaving. You don’t think some things might have changed since then?”

Charles can feel his breath coming in fast and hard, scraping the back of his throat. “Are you sure?”

One of Erik’s hands slips to the back of his neck, fingers curling in his hair as he leans forward and says, almost right against Charles’ mouth, “I’m sure.”

His shields drop as if they were waiting for that exact cue and they were, they were. For a moment everything’s a tangled jumble of his emotions and Erik’s sensations and his sensations and Erik’s emotions, and he’s probably blasting exhilaration and love through Erik’s mind like a trumpeting fanfare and he might have to be embarrassed about this later...

But no, because that’s Erik’s love he’s feeling, a slightly darker flavour than his own, layered with protective instincts frightening in their intensity. The tidal flow ebbs somewhat, and suddenly Charles is painfully, breathlessly aware of the fact that he and Erik are both naked and nearly on top of each other.

When he lunges forward, snagging Erik’s mouth in a kiss as he makes a clumsy grab for that gorgeous cock, he thinks he catches a thought of that’s better! flitting from Erik’s mind to his own. He can’t swear to it, though, because in that same moment Erik runs his blunt fingernails down Charles’ spine, which makes him shiver and arch which makes him accidentally rut up against Erik’s hip and the feeling of his own pleasure snapping into Erik’s mind is enough to take his breath away.

The lube is abandoned as Charles gives himself over to rubbing their cocks together mindlessly. He whimpers into Erik’s mouth, so desperate it might have been embarrassing if he couldn’t feel Erik’s awe and pleasure and lust at the picture he made, the snippets of thoughts of look at him/I’m doing that/he’s like that because of me!

Besides some small, still-sane fragment of Charles’ consciousness thinks he can be forgiven this wildness. He’s in Erik’s head and Erik doesn’t mind – no, Erik’s correcting him, Erik wants him here, actually wants him/needs him/loves him. With his shields up he was only getting the barest taste of Erik, and now it’s like being given jam or sweet chocolate after eating only bread and water. He just wants more, more, more, and is only half-surprised when he comes after barely five minutes, dragging Erik into orgasm alongside him.

It’s an intense, full-body spasm, and the aftershocks leave his limbs watery and useless. Erik eases him down to the bed, stroking sweat-clumped hair out of Charles’ eyes, his thoughts tingling with love and possessive devotion.

“I’m sorry,” Charles manages to gasp. “I-”

But then he can’t speak, because Erik’s kissing him again. Not particularly hard or deep, a kiss that speaks more of affection than lust.

“Save your apologies for things I’m actually upset about, Charles,” he says, draping an arm over him and pulling Charles into his side.

Charles doubts that Erik will actually fall asleep in his bed, but he certainly seems content to hold Charles close while they catch their breath.

“Besides, aren’t you always saying practice makes perfect?”

Charles suspects the grin on his face probably looks rather stupid, but he can feel Erik’s pleasure at the sight of it, so he doesn’t bother to dampen the expression.

Abruptly, Erik’s thought patterns suddenly go still and steady, and his face falls into grim lines.

“We’re not all telepaths,” he says in a low voice. “When you need or want something, if I’m asking for something you’re not comfortable with…you need to tell me.”

Charles doesn’t have to read Erik’s thoughts to know that this is very, very important to him. As far as Erik’s concerned, it’s absolutely vital that Charles is happy and comfortable and safe, and if Charles wasn’t already in love with Erik he would have fallen very hard in this moment. As it is, he merely basks in the soft, warm glow possessed by someone whose love is given to someone who richly deserves it and returned in full measure.

“Charles,” Erik prompts, and Charles realises he hasn’t actually replied.

“I’m not good at that,” he admits.

He can’t help but think of Kurt, of wishes ignored even when they were voiced, sometimes actively denied to punish him – in the end, it had been easier not to speak up at all.

Erik’s mouth flattens, his thoughts twisting into darkness, and Charles wonders if he inadvertently leaked some of those thoughts and memories to Erik.

“Promise me you’ll try,” Erik says at last.

That, Charles can do. “I promise.”

And he seals it with a kiss.

AN: Thanks so much to ginbitch, my fabulous beta, who helped me seriously re-work some of this story.

Podfic - One in Ten Thousand

blind_author — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:15:27 GMT

themusecalliope has once again recorded a brilliant podfic - this time of One in Ten Thousand.

There are two versions of this podfic, one with sound effects to simulate John's heartbeat, and one without.

With sound effects

Without sound effects