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Why Do We Fall?	By : darkangel1210 Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 1587 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don’t own BBC Sherlock or any of the characters, nor do I make any profit from writing this. Just too inspired by the show that I had to borrow them.

Chapter List
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Disclaimer: I don't own BBC Sherlock or any of the characters, nor do I make any profit from writing this. Just too inspired by the show that I had to borrow them.

Part Two

Time itself ceased to have any meaning after the strike to his head, which had had enough power behind it to knock him out as quickly as possible with the least amount of pain. Suspended in the blackness which surrounded him, Sherlock had the quiet and somewhat ridiculous notion that perhaps the blow to his temple had in fact killed him and his conscious being was now permanently bound to a reality where he would be forever trapped inside his own mind, but he swiftly deleted the thought. There wasn't any sense in cultivating naturally destructive feelings when they weren't needed, fear being an all-consuming one that did more damage the longer it was left and therefore wouldn't do him any good in his current condition.

At least he had an awareness of his own body although he couldn't see it in the darkness, and, with no other sensations on which to focus on, nor any visual affirmations of where he was, he focussed his attention on making sure that everything was functioning normally in his muscle and bone structure. He wasn't in a huge amount of pain and the majority of his body seemed to have come to no harm beyond his head, which ached on three sides. The first being at the back of his head from where he'd most likely hit his head on the floor, the second at the place on his jaw where Lestrade had punched him, and the third at a spot just behind his left eye, no doubt from the strike to his temple.

Wait…

He frowned and directed his focus to the left side of his skull, finding that there actually was a sore point on the area behind his left eye; the young man's aim had been exemplary for he had made direct contact with Sherlock's temple, but that was absurd. It had only been a dream… Hadn't it?

"Sher-" A whisper inside him, a distant sound that held all the right nuances of John's voice even as the noise was muffled and broken, a voice he knew he would always be able to recognise for no one else had one quite like John's. He ached to respond to it, but he didn't know how to for his own voice was merely an exhale when he went to say John's name.

"Sherlock!" This one was much clearer, no longer resounding inside him but feeling as though it were coming from an outside source, the echoes of his name reverberating on his ear drums.

Sherlock tried again to speak John's name, moving his lips in the shape of the word and, finally, there it was! A sigh breathed out after the word was finished and, as his consciousness slowly rose to the surface from what felt like a very deep sleep, his own voice grew stronger and he repeated it, "John," before he found the strength within his own body to open his eyes, looking unsteadily at the two faces which were on either side of his head.

John's face reflected both his intense worry and relief at Sherlock's awakening, Lestrade's own being slightly nervous and more reprimanded. It appeared that John had had words with Lestrade over his rather poor handling of the situation thus far, although Sherlock couldn't find it in himself to be mad over the outcome of their overdue meeting. He had deserved the punch, and more, for what he'd done, despite the fact that he hadn't expected the punch to come from the DI but from John initially. He closed his eyes again and shook his head to clear his thoughts, more susceptible in his barely awakened state to the tangents of his own mind when it wasn't under his control, and fought to regain it with shaky mental fingers.

"Sherlock…" He felt fingers lightly cup the right side of his face; John's left hand given the position of the thumb, as he reached over Sherlock's prone form from his left side. He pushed his face into John's hand, inhaling the scent on his skin and feeling the gun calluses on his fingertips; still there after all this time and showing that he still handled the weapon regularly even if it wasn't fired; maintenance than, before opening his eyes again and seeing a much clearer image of John's face as John's eyes looked back down at him. "Are you ok?" John asked, removing his hand and placing it on the floor beside Sherlock's head.

"Where are we?" The question slipped out before he could stop it, before he could actually think about what he was going to say before anything left his mouth, but there was nothing to be done for it now. He lifted his head up to look around and saw that he was back in the flat again, lying on the carpeted floor and hearing the snap of the logs in the fire. He wasn't in the office anymore, with its grey walls and chaotic mess, but had now returned to Baker Street with John and Lestrade beside him. There wasn't a trace of the other man he'd met, with his soulful eyes and his broken sobs that hadn't been explained, his obvious struggle to balance his relief with his hurt while he was in Sherlock's arms…

"When did we get back?" Sherlock asked.

"Get back?" John frowned down at him when Sherlock looked back at him, shushing him when he went to say something as he made Sherlock rest his head again. "Lay still, you took a nasty bump to your head. I need to check you haven't got any signs of concussion. Do you remember what happened to you before you banged your head?"

Sherlock kept his head down on the floor as instructed but gave John a raised eyebrow at the question as the other man finished checking his eyes, looking for his pupil response to the small torch that John had retrieved from his room while Sherlock was unconscious. "Is that something you really want me to answer?" he replied, not needing to indicate Lestrade who was still kneeling down beside them and watching the proceedings.

John scowled at him, blushing a delicate shade of red when he realised what Sherlock was referring to but looking also privately relieved that Lestrade wouldn't have a clue whether Sherlock was talking about their change of their relationship or his latest experiment, before he resolutely moved on to another question. "Do you know who the Prime Minister is?"

"If I did I've deleted it."

"Do you know what day it is?"

"For goodness sake, John, my memory is perfectly fine," Sherlock snapped. "You'll find that both my reflexes and my balance may be a little off, but that's to be expected when someone smacks their head on a hard surface. If you let me up, I can show you that I'm all right."

John sighed, a little more dramatically than the situation warranted, but Sherlock had always known what it meant; John may be frustrated with him, but at least he was capitulating to Sherlock's will and that wasn't something that happened very often once Dr Watson made an appearance. Sherlock didn't fool himself that that was the only reason, however. When someone was thought to have suffered from a concussion, it was treated as an urgent medical condition until the seriousness of the injury that caused it, and the consequences of it, could be determined. Sherlock's lack of memory loss was a definite positive in John's books and there wasn't any alarm on his face for the moment. He also didn't doubt that, if his health deteriorated in any form, John would rush him straight to a hospital where he could receive more specialist treatment should it prove necessary.

Both John and Lestrade helped him to his feet, John keeping a steadying hand on Sherlock's left arm when he wobbled a bit due to a small amount of dizziness, but on the whole he was physically sound. "How long was I unconscious for?" he asked, placing a hand on the back of his head to test the ache from where he'd hit the floor and finding the area slightly raised, but not enough to raise any worries, and there wasn't any blood.

"Only a minute or so," John answered, moving Sherlock's hand and turning him around so he could have a look at Sherlock's head himself. "You're lucky you didn't catch your head on the corner of the table, otherwise you'd have woken up in hospital..." He didn't finish his sentence, but Sherlock heard the ending all the same.

'If I'd woken up at all.'

There was still concern in John's voice with his last sentence, which he hadn't been able to hide despite their visitor, and Sherlock cursed Lestrade's presence in their flat because all he wanted to do was gather John in his arms and convince him that no lasting damage had occurred. Instead he was forced to change to a different subject, one which was more suited to the company. "When did we get back?" he repeated, turning around once John had finished his examination and regarding the other men.

Confusion darted across John's face. "Back from where? You haven't moved since Greg punched you and we haven't left the flat at all. Are you sure you're ok?"

Sherlock suspected that nothing had changed since Lestrade punched him, but to have it confirmed by the person that he trusted the most, especially when the whole thing had felt so real … it almost hurt to remember it, the dream that hadn't happened or the young man who didn't exist. Sherlock lifted a hand to his face, hiding his eyes for a moment as he took a deep breath to try and calm himself, for with his thoughts came an unwanted feeling of loss, something he hadn't experienced since his Fall from Bart's roof where he'd watched John's profile on the street, looking at the crux of everything he was risking to finish Moriarty's Game once and for all. Why did this feel the same?

He removed his hand from his eyes and placed his hands together underneath his chin in an attempt to sort through the tangle of his thoughts, wanting to tell John about his dream so that the other man could help him make sense of it all but unwilling to do so in front of Lestrade. He brought the memory of the young man's face to the forefront though the image was hazy now, distorted, as his mind tried to distinguish between imagination and reality. He had a few precious moments left where the dream would remain clear and sharp in his memory, enough time for him to analyse the details before they disappeared into obscurity. Sherlock quickly catalogued the various points of the dream that he wanted to remember, the first being the room; the desks which had been left open, the items thrown on the floor, the blank spaces on the walls. He didn't recall seeing an exit point in the room, couldn't remember seeing a door that would lead to other areas of the building, but his attention had been so utterly captured by the other man at that point that exits hadn't seemed important at all. He brought to mind the image of the young man's face again, looking at the way he moved, the tone of his voice when he spoke, the feel of his hands on Sherlock's face and body where they had clasped at his frame. The pain of the strike to his head as the young man had forced the heel of his hand against Sherlock's temple.

He snapped out of his Mind Palace with an almost alarming speed; his head ached from where he'd hit it on the floor, yes, but he had correctly concluded that it ached in three places, each very different from the others in their placement on a human head. He heard John's questioning, "What?" but wasn't able to answer it, couldn't find the words as he walked over to the mirror above the fireplace and pulled back his hair on his left side.

Then felt his mind come to a juddering, stalling halt.

There, just behind his left eye. The skin was a red hue compared to his natural white pallor, the area tender to the touch when he raised his right hand to carefully explore it. It wasn't anything he wouldn't recover from, the overall pressure of the hit enough to knock him out but not enough to do any lasting damage. Remarkable. And entirely unexplainable.

"What are you looking at?" John came up to his left side, pulling Sherlock's hand away from his head to place his own hands there and pushing back Sherlock's hair. In the reflection of the mirror, Sherlock saw the surprise on John's face when he realised what he was looking at and also knew that the injury couldn't have been sustained from his knock on the floor. "Sherlock, how did you get this?"

Sherlock turned his head to look at John directly, the other man's hands still on his face, and opted to tell the truth, a truth he knew John wouldn't believe as he was struggling to believe it himself. "I was hit."

When he'd looked at himself in the mirror, Sherlock had seen in his peripheral vision the evidence of Lestrade's punch underneath his jaw bone, the area swollen and red from the impact and, when he spoke, stiff as the muscles worked around the movement of his jaw. That wound was very explainable, given the way that Lestrade was favouring his right hand and the redness which was still there on the first two knuckles where they had come into contact with Sherlock, but the wound on his temple? How was John meant to explain that one when he didn't have all the pieces, all the evidence that would draw him to an altogether insane conclusion?

"We both know Greg didn't cause this," John said and Sherlock rolled his eyes at the statement. Of course Lestrade hadn't done it, but John drew his attention back to him by pulling his head down for a closer look. "Did you slip up in the shower?" he asked; turning Sherlock away from the mirror until his body was towards John's and also where Sherlock could see fully into John's eyes, worry and ire dancing in their depths.

It was a reasonable question, up to a point. John hadn't taken a shower with him nor had he been in the bathroom with Sherlock whilst he was under the warm spray, so he'd taken the only possible explanation that there was in an effort to make Sherlock tell the truth. The fact that Sherlock hadn't had an accident at all while he was showering, as John would have heard it if he'd hit himself hard enough to cause an injury, wasn't lost on either of them. It was also a given that Sherlock would have complained bitterly about it afterwards, had it happened that way, but had mentioned nothing of the sort after he'd finished and John had taken his place.

He shook his head in the negative and couldn't keep his own face from showing his frustration at having to bite his tongue lest he say any more. "Lestrade, we're going to have to cut this reunion short I'm afraid," he said, looking back at the Inspector who had stayed remarkably silent since Sherlock woke up. "I will explain everything to you, but I need you to wait until tomorrow morning. There's something I need to discuss with John now and it can't wait."

Lestrade bit his bottom lip, his arms crossed in front of him, and some of his earlier resentment tried to come to a head again before he visibly took control of himself and relaxed his posture. "Alright, Sherlock. I'll let it go this time, but you owe me a bloody brilliant explanation for why you've come back. I don't know why John's forgiven you, Hell, I'm not even sure I want to know, but… Dammit, Sherlock, it's been over two years!" Both Sherlock and John watched as Lestrade began to pace in front of them, wringing his hands through his hair once, twice, before stopping in front of Sherlock with what could have been regret in his features. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for punching you but I'm not sorry for why I did it. You damn well deserved it, especially for what you put John through, but I guess you had your reasons."

"Reasons I will share with you in the morning," Sherlock replied, stepping away from John and towards where Lestrade was standing. "I'm sure you understand why this meeting needs to be kept secret. This mustn't reach the Press until the time is right, Lestrade. John only agreed to let you come here because we feel that we can count on you to not divulge this. Please don't prove us wrong."

"Argh, you're a real sod, actually saying please," Lestrade said, a small smile tilting his lips. "I won't tell anyone else, I promise. What time do you need me back here?"

"Early would be best. Can you get here for eight?"

Lestrade nodded and looked down at the watch on his wrist. "I know we had drinks planned for this evening, John, but I'm ready to call it a day. Are you ok with it if we reschedule?"

"Yes of course," John said, coming around Sherlock to address Lestrade directly. "I'm sorry you had to find out this way, Greg, but if I'm honest, I couldn't think of any other way to tell you."

Lestrade smiled again. "I'm not surprised. It's not often you get to tell someone that your best friend has returned from the grave. Now, on that cheerful note, I'm off. Try not to do anything stupid, Sherlock."

Sherlock nodded again, and it was as much of a promise as they knew Lestrade was ever going to get before they watched the Inspector leave the flat, his steps lighter and his posture lifted, as though a great weight had been taken away from him. Only when they heard the front door open and close with a resounding click did Sherlock turn to John and take hold of his face in his hands, pulling the other man towards him as he met John's mouth in a bruising kiss.

John's lips parted for him eagerly as Sherlock lightly pressed his tongue against them, seeking entry to the hot, moist cavern of John's mouth, tasting the tea that they'd shared on John's tongue before Lestrade had arrived, inhaling the scent of John's soap from his earlier shower and wanting him to smell different, needing John's natural musk and the more earthly odours of sweat and sex that they'd both been awash in before John's mobile had rung. He knew it wouldn't get that far because, for all the yearning that John was displaying now, he would soon remember that Sherlock had only just come out of unconsciousness and needed to be carefully monitored in case he had a relapse, but, for now, he was all Sherlock's and Sherlock intended to make the most of him.

Regretfully, Sherlock hoped it was regret, John pulled back from the kiss, resting his forehead against Sherlock's in a way that reminded him sharply of his dream, of another face pressed close to his own and of another person's hands wrapped around his neck, so much that he could almost feel the pressure again which had come from an unknown source. Sherlock let go of the breath he'd been holding, sliding his hands across John's back and pulling their bodies closer together whilst keeping the contact between their heads, the air quiet around them as they breathed from each other, the pace slow and calm as each absorbed the feeling of the other and allowed the tension to dissipate between them.

"How did you get that knock on your head?" John asked, and they both knew he wasn't talking about the one on the back of Sherlock's skull. "You wanted to say something earlier, but Greg was stopping you. What happened?" John's hands were on Sherlock's hips now, his thumbs making soothing circles while his eyes held a patience that Sherlock was having difficulty finding himself.

"I had a dream while I was unconscious," he replied, as if that explained everything, which it did in his own head, but he already knew that it would just create more questions for John rather than provide him with any answers.

"Wait, what does this have to do with…? You know what, never mind." Again, John's hands moved to circle Sherlock's waist. "Do you remember it?" John waited until Sherlock answered and, when Sherlock nodded, he continued. "Ok, can you talk me through it?"

Sherlock paused, the better to clarify his thoughts, before plunging head-first into his memory, the images sweeping in front of his eyes as he recounted them and as clear as they were while he was in the dream. "I was in an office that had been abandoned; it was slightly larger than this flat and had six desks in it. There wasn't any power to the computers and there was stationary all over the floor. Someone had been looking for something because everything of importance had been removed; I couldn't find any evidence showing me what company was utilizing the building at the time. Even the posters on the walls had been removed. I was trying to figure out where I was when I met…" Sherlock hesitated, but when John murmured encouragingly he pressed ahead. "I met a young man who wasn't any older than nineteen. He was alone and only had a pair of white boxer-briefs on-"

"Woah, steady on, Sherlock! I know I'm not what I used to be, but if I'd thought introducing you to sex would make you fantasise about other men, and yes, I did do that, your previous experiments don't count, than I would've liked to have known about it first!"

Although the words sounded harsh, John's face was gleaming with humour and Sherlock didn't try to stop the same emotion rising up inside himself. "Don't be daft, John. He wasn't wearing anything more than that and the temperature of the room was just short of freezing, five degrees centigrade at the most. I was still wearing my Spencer-Hart so I took my jacket off and wrapped him up in it to try and stop him from shivering."

"Do you remember what he looked like? Or do I really want to know?"

"He had light brown hair; it was cut in messy bangs over his eyes, but the overall length didn't reach his jawline. His eyes were blue and his overall body-shape was excellent. He was just half an inch taller than you; and of a lean musculature although it was a strong one. He had a deceptive strength in his frame."

John put a finger over Sherlock's mouth to stop him before removing it. "How do you know how strong he was?"

"When I finished putting the jacket on him, he looked at the mark that Lestrade made when I was punched and then he touched it." Sherlock took John's right hand, the same hand that the young man had used, and got John to mimic the action in the same way. "Like this. He seemed fascinated with my hair," Sherlock ignored John's snort, "and when I tried to pull him away he wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and one around my waist, pulling our foreheads together before he started crying." Sherlock moved John's hands again into the correct position.

"Crying?" John pulled his hand away from Sherlock's neck, but kept the other around his waist. "Why was he crying?"

"I don't know. He didn't tell me and I couldn't figure it out from his appearance alone. I hugged him to try and comfort him but it didn't look like it was working, so I told him that everything was going to be ok and that I was going to get him out of there. I wanted him to come back to Baker Street so you could take a look at him and I told him that I have a partner that could help him."

"This all sounds very realistic," John said, a furrow appearing between his brows. "You remember this much of your dream? I don't know why I'm surprised; your mind is just brilliant when you're awake so who knows what it's doing while you're sleeping."

Sherlock didn't entirely disagree with John's statement, but he knew from previous experience that, when he slept, his mind literally had to shut down with just the barest cognitive function to ensure that he kept breathing. "I can't really explain it, but it felt real, John. As I was saying, after I told the man that you'd be able to help him, he wrapped both his hands around the back of my neck and there was a pressure in my frontal lobe, but I can't tell you where it was coming from. It wasn't from the contact between our heads because he only placed his head against mine; he wasn't bearing down on it. Once the pressure reached its peak, I felt something snap inside me and then it dissipated."

"It could have been down to the pressure on your head from the impact when you hit the floor," John suggested.

"Perhaps. The man asked me if I would promise him that I would take him back here, and I said to him I would, before he told me that he would be holding me to it and then he hit me."

"He hit you?"

"Well, he apologised first and then he hit me."

"Wait, Sherlock, stop for two seconds. You promised your imagination that you would take it back to Baker Street and then it hit you. Where and how?" John pulled out of Sherlock's embrace, the better to see Sherlock in action when he went to describe it.

"He put his left hand on one side of my face and used the heel of his right hand to strike the left side of my head. In answer to your question as to how I knew how strong he was, the strike itself was hard enough to cause unconsciousness, and then I woke up here."

John remained silent when Sherlock finished and he wasn't sure whether that was a good thing until John spoke. "So how exactly does this explain the mark on your head? The lump you have on your temple?"

"The only thing I can link it to is an undiscovered form of somatoform disorder," Sherlock said, walking around John and pacing in front of the sofa.

"What?" John stepped in front of him to stop his pacing. "You're talking about a disorder that causes multiple problems, Sherlock, and has at least five different sub-categories, one of which is phantom pregnancy!"

"Yes, I know," Sherlock replied. "I also know that it cannot be fully explained by a general medical condition, any direct effects of a substance, nor is it fully attributed to any other mental disorder. I can only speculate that my mind was convinced that what was happening to me was in fact real and therefore, when I was hit, my mind forced my body to react to it, which caused the redness and swelling that you see here."

John lifted a hand to his face, rubbing at his eyes as he huffed out a disbelieving breath. "So you were in the matrix?"

Sherlock scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. If I had to live in a world where I couldn't presume everything I touched was actually real, do you really think I'd be in this predicament? Here I am with an unexplainable mark on my head, and the only thing I can possibly link it to happens to be a dream where a nineteen year old boy decided it would be a good idea to put it there!" His incredulousness over the situation abruptly took hold of him and Sherlock moved around John to start pacing again, his mind whirling with the possibilities.

'Conversion disorder; involves the loss of actual bodily function, such as blindness, paralysis and numbness due to excessive anxiety.

'Deleted.

'Somatization disorder; characterized by recurring, multiple, clinically significant complaints about pain, gastrointestinal, sexual and pseudoneurological symptoms. Must begin in patients before the age of thirty.

'Deleted.

'Hypochondrasis; involving persistent and excessive worry about developing a serious illness.

'Deleted.'

"Ok, just calm down." John matched Sherlock's pacing before he put one hand on Sherlock's back, encouraging him to stop and look at him. "I know what I said was borderline offensive to you and I'm sorry, but this is all… Why did you have this dream? Do you have any idea what might have caused it?"

Sherlock dropped his hands from his chin and turned his head to look at John, his bottom lip parting from his upper one when he saw the complete sincerity on the other man's face. "No, not at the moment. I need more time."

"That's fine; you know there isn't any rush. And if you have this again we can take you to a specialist who'll be able to help diagnose you, if you're that worried about it. It might just be a one-time side effect of your unconsciousness." John glanced at the clock on the wall, noting the time before looking back at Sherlock. "I'm sorry for cutting this short, but it's late and I really need some sleep. Will you come to bed with me? It's probably better if you don't fall asleep for at least another hour, but I want you close by just in case."

Sherlock nodded his understanding and acquiescence to John's question, needing more than ever the feel of John's body pressed up against his own in the intimate way that he'd only just become accustomed to and perfectly happy to let John lead the way to Sherlock's bedroom. Soon, he hoped, to become less his and more theirs.

He hadn't meant to fall asleep. Truly, it had happened all on its own despite his will to resist, his fatigue and the warmth of John's naked body beside him working together in concert to lull him into a slumber he was helpless to avoid. And it felt so good, the quiet of undisturbed rest and the gentle sound of John's breathing next to him, although the flickering sound from the light was gradually filtering its way through and prodding him to wakefulness. John had forgotten to switch off the light and Sherlock knew that he did need to change the bulb on the right side of his bed, but when he reached a hand out to look for the switch of what should have been his lamp, his hand came into contact with something else entirely.

Sherlock frowned, his mind quickly referencing the textures that met his fingertips, and with a strangled gasp he realised it was another person's leg he was touching, but John was on his left side, not his right. He opened his eyes, his own anxiousness making his breath rasp in his throat and his heart stutter before that person was shushing him and leaning towards him, removing Sherlock's hand from their leg and coming down to kneel beside him on the floor. The steel floor with the notches in it, the flickering coming from above his head on his right side although the room itself was still bathed in artificial light from where he'd switched on the main lights earlier. All of this was lost though at the vision currently knelt before him, the same man who'd struck him on his temple and was, for all intents and purposes, trying to soothe Sherlock from the panic which threatened him.

"It's ok," the man was saying, his voice low and calm. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just breathe with me, slow and deep. It will stop the panic from taking hold."

"You!" Sherlock scrambled up from where he'd been lying down on the platform and didn't stop until his back hit the wall, his knees bent in front of him to keep the other man away although he hadn't made any move towards Sherlock. In this position Sherlock could see the man better, and he blinked away the flickering to see that he was crouched down, his left foot flat on the ground while his right was on the ball of the foot, a stance that was easy to alter if the situation required it.

The young man turned to his right, the side that Sherlock couldn't see, and pulled out the jacket that Sherlock had lent him earlier, holding it out in front of him as though Sherlock were a cornered animal that needed convincing that no harm would come to it. "Thank you for lending me your jacket," he said when Sherlock reached forward to grab it, the hand in which it was offered to him relinquishing its hold when it felt Sherlock had enough of a grip on the material.

Sherlock didn't reply to the thanks, concentrating on getting his breathing back under control and shrugging his jacket back over his shoulders, noting that the scent coming from it was different now; the scent of the man who'd been wearing it. As his breathing slowed along with his anxiety, other details began to make themselves known to his befuddled mind, such as the fact that the other man was now wearing clothes. It wasn't anything special, just a tank top that was one size too big for him and three-quarter-length combat trousers that looked worn and frayed, secured around his waist with a length of cable from one of the computers, and both of them dyed in a dark grey colour that seemed too much now, matching the colour of the paint of the walls. Too much grey for his mind to adequately blank out on its own; he needed a distraction. "You're not real."

The other man smiled; a small one that reached his eyes and transformed his face into a thing of beauty, contemplating Sherlock's words until he answered. "'I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?'"

Sherlock didn't respond immediately, letting the meaning behind the words wash over him. "John Lennon."

The young man nodded before shifting his position, leaning against the metal barrier of the platform and mimicking Sherlock's position against the wall, his bare feet just shy of touching Sherlock's shoes and his arms draped over his knees, a relaxed posture. "How is your head?"

"Hurting." Sherlock didn't even try to cover it up; the man's eyes looked like they'd seen it already and there was something more important on his mind other than how much pain he was in. "Why did you hit me?"

There was a brief hesitance from the other man, as if he was unsure of how much to say. "It was the only way to send you back." He waited for Sherlock to process his words, five seconds in all, before continuing. "You're wondering where you are, why you're here. The truth is that I have no idea where we are or why we're here. What I can tell you is that this is the only place I can remember without … well, without any pain."

"Why pain?" Sherlock watched the other man's face carefully, and although he seemed uncomfortable with the admission, he nevertheless pressed ahead.

"There are other rooms in this building, of course, but I have only ever seen two of them. This room," the man indicated the office; "is one of them."

"Are you trying to tell me that we're in your memory?" He could hardly believe the words as they left his mouth, but the young man didn't so much as flinch.

"It's as good a description as any I suppose. It's difficult to try and explain something which you have never experienced before. Believe me when I say I want you to understand, but I don't know what to tell you because there's so little I know myself and we don't have much time." A small pause. "There are other ways though, if you find them acceptable."

For what must be the hundredth time in his life, Sherlock found himself enthralled. It felt like the drive with the cabbie all over again; the temptation to know his secrets even at the cost of his own life, the need to understand everything to its core, dissecting from the outside in, and this man was no different. "And what other ways might those be?"

The man shifted where he sat, holding a hand out in front of him in a placating manner as he shifted towards Sherlock's body. When he was close enough, he came to Sherlock's right side and crouched down again until he was kneeling, his hands in his lap. "If you put your legs down, would you be ok with me sitting across your knees? I don't know if this will work, but I'd like to try."

Sherlock did as asked, watching carefully as the other man straddled his legs across where he said he would, and the scent which permeated his jacket became much stronger now, the source directly in front of him and a scent he had yet to name. "What are you planning to do?"

The other man shifted slightly, easing the pressure on his feet and getting himself comfortable, which made Sherlock wonder exactly how long he was planning on staying where he was, before he described what it was he wanted to do. "I'm going to put my hands on either side of your head and close my eyes. I would appreciate it if you also closed your eyes as I think it will aid the process; the less outside stimulation, the better."

"You still haven't said what it is you're going to try," Sherlock said, following the movement of the other man's hands as they came to rest on his temples. The man didn't say anything at first, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, centring himself for something Sherlock couldn't deduce, before he too closed his eyes and waited. As the seconds passed, Sherlock became aware of a pressure building inside his head and its steady increase, aiming on keeping his breathing in time with the man straddling him to maintain his own calm. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to show you," the young man said and before Sherlock could say anything else he felt the world ripped out from under his feet.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump…

A heartbeat, slow, rhythmic, drifted through his consciousness, like a wave gently lapping on the shoreline, softly and without abrasion.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump…

His subconscious did the calculation for him, forty-nine beats per minute; the sign of a relaxed heart if the person was sleeping or a possible symptom of Bradycardia depending on the person's physical health.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump…

Too little information to make a decision at this stage.

As he felt his mind slowly awaken within him, he became more aware of the state of his own body; the heaviness of his eyelids, sleep-induced no doubt; the rush of blood through his veins with the sensation being more focussed in his arms and hands. He felt the wakefulness rise up inside him, his body ready to greet it, but as he became more alert he was increasingly aware that something was not right.

Sixty-two beats per minute…

There wasn't the sound of London's early morning traffic, a usual occurrence on Baker Street at what should have been London's early morning rush hour because it just had to be morning now. It had to be, but instead there was the dull, incessant beep of a heart monitor on his left-hand side. He listened for more noises, but he couldn't hear any sounds of a ventilator and there was no tickle in his nostrils, which meant he was breathing on his own. He was lying on his back on a cold, hard surface that dug into the back of his head, registering that there were no pillows now, no soft mattress for his body to relax into. He felt naked, uncovered, the cool air breezing over him with the shift of the air-conditioning and his anxiety over the feeling climbed along with his heartbeat.

One hundred and twenty beats per minute…

He flexed his fingers from their relaxed position, or tried to, but the movement was forced and took too much concentration for what should have been a simple task. The concentration required meant that the action itself was more pronounced as a result, his arms reacting along with his hands and trying in vain to get them to abide to his will.

One hundred and eighty-five beats per minute…

"Jesus Chr-…"

The heart monitor's beeps increased in their frequency, matching his own heartbeat perfectly, but it was the sound of another voice in the room, 'male, Australian,' that sent his mind into a frenzy, the sentences broken into fragments through the roaring in his ears.

Two hundred and eleven beats per minute…

"-waking up! He's- … -vitals are unstable! -need to- … now!"

His lungs burned in his chest as his brain overpowered his body, forcing it to hyperventilate when he felt two people pin his arms to his sides, restraining him for the pinch of a needle in his right arm. He cried out in his own head, for when he opened his mouth nothing came out of it, just an exhale which held the force of his scream but with nothing to belly it. The pressure in his right arm increased with the flow of liquid being pushed into it from the needle's plunger, but the weight of a person on each arm, both male from the callouses on their hands and the overall size of their hands (measured by calculating the length of their middle fingers from their wrist and the width of their palms), meant that there wasn't anything he could do to prevent it.

As the chemical effects of the liquid made themselves known, he realised that he'd been given a sedative to slow his heartbeat, to calm his body and prevent it from working itself to a point of fatality, heard the relief in the Australian's voice when the instruments next him communicated that fact. "Vitals… stabilising."

Muscles that were clenched released themselves, fingers uncurling from his palms as the tension ebbed from him in slow, moving waves, a tide that was gradually rising to smother him in its depths in the vast ocean of unconsciousness. A feeling to which he wasn't accustomed flashed behind his eyelids before he was fully submerged, an emotion strikingly raw in its intensity for those few seconds he was aware of it and following him down into his own mind.

It wasn't fear; he'd felt fear before by the poolside. No, this was a new feeling and it was by far the more dangerous of the two.

It was called hopelessness.

Sherlock's mind released as if he were a tap that had been opened to ease the pressure of the water just behind the valve and, as the compression subsided, his awareness slowly came back to him. He opened his eyes, feeling the air in his lungs as he panted, struggling to regain enough oxygen to keep himself conscious as his eyes sought out the man in front of him.

The man was still straddling his legs with his hands on Sherlock's temples and his face was streaming with sweat, his own tiredness plain to see as he too fought to regain his breath. "What was that?" Sherlock asked, trying to make sense of it all when it felt like his mind had been turned inside out. "What did I see?"

"My earliest memory," the man replied, his eyes dull in their sockets as the pain of the memory clouded their intensity. "I have another one that I need to show you. I'm sorry if it's too much."

As before, the pressure intensified in his skull and, when it reached its zenith, Sherlock felt his mind shut down for a second time as he was launched into another vision.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump…

The sound of his heart beating was the only thing he could hear in the darkness. It should have been peaceful; a comforting presence in the blankness of his own mind and evidence that he was still alive, not the victim of a premature death. Yet all he could think about now when he heard it was the bodies holding him down and the voice of the Australian who had been in the room with him. The feel of the metal under his back, hard and unyielding against his flesh, and the vulnerability of it all when he'd been forced down for an injection with something that for all he knew could have been poison.

Dimly he remembered his heart rate had been too high; that he'd been hyperventilating and was at a high risk of his heart stopping with the strain of it all. Did it matter that the sedative they'd given him had ultimately saved his life in the end?

He supposed that it did.

His heartbeat continued to resound in his ears as he again felt his own awareness take over. His body was on a much softer surface this time, not a mattress though; it felt more like memory foam, as did the thin pillow under his head, each providing as much support as required. He could feel a small measure of tape that had been strapped to the top of his left hand that was holding a small tube in place. It had been inserted directly into a vein and was no doubt attached to an intravenous drip; although what they were putting inside him he had no way of knowing. His skin was still uncovered but the room was warm and the air was fresh, sucked into the air conditioning and filtered before being released into the room. He couldn't hear any sounds of machines taking his readings, but he knew that he was being monitored because he could feel the pads of electrodes on his head and chest. He wondered what they were looking for.

"Vitals are stable."

It almost alarmed him when a female's voice sounded near him on his right-hand side, but she wasn't facing him and his body was unresponsive. Her voice was turned towards the wall at the top of his head, so she was very likely referring to a screen that displayed the results of their testing. "Cognitive function is normal."

"Did you run the tests?"

That voice…

"Yes." She had turned now, to face the Australian. "I told you, if we're going to do this, we need to do it now."

'Do what?'

"All right. Commence procedure one zero one, A."

He didn't have any opportunity to question it, whatever it was that they were going to do with him, but he heard the noise of one liquid being poured into another in the drip chamber that would feed the new substance into him. The noise of the bag being shifted was loud in his ears; they were distributing the two liquids evenly in the chamber.

Then the waiting began. Over time he felt the stasis his body was under lift from him slowly, as though he were waking from a deep sleep and needed to stretch to relieve his muscles. The fingers in his right hand twitched, far more sensitive to his control than they had been previously, and the same again when he tried the fingers of his left, curling and flexing the digits into his palms.

It was hard to ignore the murmurs of the people in the room with him; he could hear their gasps, their quick inhales at his movements, and his breathing began to quicken in response.

Opening his eyes had never been this hard, this arduous, and his face curled up in a frown with the effort involved. He knew that they weren't taped down because he would have been able to feel it, but as the chemical worked its way through his body it felt as though his eyes were the least responsive part of him. His fingers dug into the bedding underneath him, scrunching it in his hands and regretting the lack of strength in them, his whole body now reacting to urgent impulse to see. The instruments that were attached to him showed the strain on his body, the anxiety that had overtaken him before rearing its head and threatening to destabilise him again.

"No! Don't touch him."

"If we're not careful he could go back into cardiac arrest! We need to-"

"I said no! It's too late to stop this now, do you hear me?"

It was the words from the Australian man that gave him the final push he needed to open his eyes. The lights from the ceiling were dimmed, purposefully it seemed so that they didn't blind him. Everything was fuzzy; it was as though he had gauze wrapped over his eyes and could only make out shapes of the things next to him. He managed to blink once, then twice, and gradually the film began to fade from his vision to be replaced with clarity, enabling him to calm his heart rate and slow down his breathing as his mind processed the image he saw before him.

The half-masked faces of two people were above him, one woman and one man. She was in her early thirties with crows-feet in the skin around her eyes, and her irises were a cool shade of blue against her brunette locks, tucked back in a surgeon's cap. The man was younger, no more than mid-twenties, but he radiated an authority that was well above his age bracket and his experience was reflected in the stone grey of his eyes, the colour a stark contrast to the red auburn of his hair which had been tied back from his face.

They weren't the eyes of people who were relieved to see him awake. They were cold and distant, flickering about on his prone form to catalogue the changes that were happening, as though he were an animal that had been drugged to test its reaction. It sent a wave of heat down his spine and his breath caught in his throat, fear seeping into his bones and seizing him in its grip, and he knew with absolute certainty that he had to get out.

His right hand reached toward his left to remove the drip, knowing full-well that they were watching his every move but he was not in a position to do anything about that yet. As he was moving, his eyes quickly scanned the room, noting the key-card that would be required to exit his prison and the two other men in the room between him and the door. The distance wasn't so far that he couldn't see the badges of the men who were guarding the exit and he saw a name, blue letters on white, before his fingers located the tube in his hand and began to undo the tape.

He felt the grasp of the Australian's hand taking his wrist to stop what he was doing and his mind went blank as his body reacted on instinct. His hand curled against the thumb of the left hand on his skin in an anti-clockwise rotation, dislodging the grip and, while keeping the contact, slid his hand along the arm to clench at the fabric of the other man's scrubs. Before anything could be taken to stop him, he was already pulling his target across his upper body and met the surgeon's face with what was now a left fist, striking with the first two knuckles and using the momentum from the pull and his own jab to make the strike.

The crack of his knuckles against the Australian's eye socket was nowhere near as fulfilling as he'd hoped it would be, but he did feel a glimmer of satisfaction when he heard the thud of a body hit the wall next to him, knowing that at least he'd given him a black eye if nothing else, judging by the cursing that was coming from the other man's mouth.

It didn't take long for the men by the door to spring into action, other hands pinning his body to the table and working to restrain him as he screamed at them wordlessly to let him go. He felt stronger than he ever had while being here and it still wasn't enough to free him, the men surrounding him determined to stop him as he tried to bite and scratch his way out. Through the red haze that had captured him, he saw the woman had another syringe in her hands and was calmly injecting it into the intravenous chamber, her cool manner completely unaltered when he fixed her with his eyes in a silent plea to not do this. Begging for her help even though he knew every unspoken word would go unheard, so cruel when she could see it and chose to do nothing about it.

It was a realisation that shook him to his core, and if there was one thing he was certain of before the sedative took effect, he knew that if he didn't get out of here soon, he never would.

This time was better, the speed of his recovery at least half the speed of the initial vision and, when Sherlock opened his eyes, he saw that the young man had also fared better in this instance, although the stress from reliving the memory was etched into his face and his eyes were still closed in a frown. "Are you all right?" Sherlock asked, able to feel the trembling in the body astride him and the clamminess of the hands against his head.

The man nodded shakily, opening his eyes for an instant before shutting them again, the light of the room too bright for him to handle at that moment. "I'm ok," he gasped around a breath, panting on Sherlock's lap. "It's getting easier to manage now."

"What's project one zero one, A?" Sherlock asked, bringing his hands up to rest on the other man's hips. "Have you heard of it before?"

The man shook his head. "No," and then took his right hand away from Sherlock's head to rest it on his chest above his heart, shutting his eyes again to try and calm his heart-rate down.

Sherlock waited while the man recovered; the sound of their breathing heavy in the air around them. "Do you know where that room is?" he asked.

The man shook his head again. "No, before they move me to another cell they make sure to sedate me first. I came around once while we were going through this room, but they stopped and injected me again before moving on." As the man finished speaking the room around them shimmered, like the lights of the aurora borealis had somehow found their way inside and they were sat right in the middle of them. They both waited until the shimmering had passed but Sherlock noticed that the office was a lot less stable now. The walls were beginning to crack, long gashes in the stone that were slowly working their way down from the ceiling to the floor, and they both watched the progress of one just next to them before Sherlock felt the man's right hand come to his head again. "We don't have much time," the man repeated quickly, bringing Sherlock's attention back to himself. "I need to show you another memory but we won't see each other again after it's finished. I can't hold it for that long."

"Hold what?" Sherlock's voice was strident, trying to understand what was happening and all too aware of how the room was disintegrating around them, chairs and desks succumbing to the cracks which had now formed large holes, the items falling into the blackness below them.

"No time," the man replied swiftly. "Just remember as much as you can."

Sherlock had a single moment to reflect that this would be the last time he would hear the other's voice before the darkness took him.

"Dammit! We don't have much time, Steve!" Although he couldn't open his eyes, he knew it was the same woman from before just by the sound of her voice; the one who'd injected him through the intravenous chamber when he'd tried to escape in the previous memory. He tried to differentiate the details in this memory from his experiences of the others, but there was an urgency in this one that hadn't been in the others, and he couldn't find the concentration to undertake an in-depth analysis of his surroundings in the little time that he had.

"I know!" a man replied, the one who must be Steve, the Australian, before the sounds of clicking could be heard to his left. He was typing quickly on a keyboard and then there was the sound of a door opening, the air beyond it creating a whooshing sound as it was sucked into the larger room. "We have to do this right, Jean. We've only got one chance at this." He finished typing on the keyboard. "Have you injected him with the serum?"

"Yes, he's ready," Jean replied.

"All right, let's move him."

He felt the sensation of hands on his body, just two pairs, Steve at his head and Jean at his feet, and they counted to three before he felt his body being lifted from the surface he'd been placed on.

The new surface he was put onto was padded, although not with a mattress but with a gel-like substance that moulded to his frame where he came into contact with it. It wasn't unpleasant as the gel was warm; a steady temperature which had been calculated to ensure that his core temperature remained at thirty-seven degrees Celsius and the padding was long enough for his whole body to rest comfortably on its surface.

"What do you think will happen to him?" Jean asked as Steve finished placing his limbs into the desired position and there was a pause, an audible tension while Steve considered his answer.

"He's not our responsibility anymore," he replied, and there was a sincere regret in his voice. "When GMCB was cut adrift we had already lost him. But I'm not just going to let him die. We've put too much on the line for this to end in failure."

"How long will this keep him alive?" Jean asked, and he heard the noise of something whirring to life above his head; Steve had activated a machine and he had the nauseating thought they were going to put him inside it.

Steve didn't respond right away but he could hear the other man working, his fingers tapping at a screen, checking details and results before he gave Jean his attention. "I would like to say as long as the power holds out, but that's planned to be cut this evening so we can't count on it. Once the backup generator kicks in it should be able to sustain him for another three months, but after that he'll only last as long as it takes for his body to give in."

"Then how can you be sure that he's going to survive?" Jean argued. "We can't come back here after this!"

"Because he's special," Steve said, without any heat but with a vindication that anyone would be hard-pressed to disregard. "The serum you gave him was only an immobilizer. He can hear everything we've said."

"What?" Jean's voice was disbelieving, small and shocked in her throat. "You've let him…" Her voice trailed off, a sigh breathing past her lips in resignation. "I hope you know what you've done."

"Trust me, Jean." He heard someone walking around the room, their shoes clipping on the floor, and he felt the presence of another person leaning over him, their hands on either side of his head. "I know you can hear me," Steve said directly into his ear, his voice soft. "If you don't remember anything else we've said, then you must remember this. The date is the nineteenth of September, twenty-thirteen. This machine will keep you in suspended animation for as long as there's power to keep it running, but you've only got three months. If you want to survive, you'll need to find a way out and we can't come back to help you. But you deserve a chance, do you hear me? You deserve that much."

It was the last thing he heard before he felt the padding beneath him being moved, sliding into the machine at his head and the door being closed after him.

Sherlock could feel himself struggling where he lay; his limbs tangled in something that was refusing to let him go and his fear a fire raging in his chest. He vaguely felt it when his hands struck out at something that was trying to hold him down, so it was with no small amount of relief that he felt his head rocked to the side beneath the force of a blow, his vision greying as the slap to his cheek sent his mind reeling, and when he finally pulled himself from the fog there was John in front of him, panting and concerned where he lay in the bed next to him.

"Sherlock!" John's hands were holding his head, forcing him to meet his partner's eyes in a quest for the recognition that he knew John was seeking. "Sherlock, are you all right?"

"John," a whisper, broken on the ground. "Where…?" The other man was gone; the room was gone, just as he'd said it would be, the last time he would hear him speak. A strangled sob tore its way from Sherlock's throat, the noise raw and painful as the last vestiges of the memory clutched at him before they receded, imprinting on his mind the date that had suddenly become so important.

'Nineteenth of September, twenty-thirteen. Fifteenth of December, twenty-thirteen. Four days to go.'

"It's all right, love, you're at the flat with me," John was assuring him, stroking his thumbs across Sherlock's cheek bones. "What happened?"

Sherlock watched as his own hands reached up and gripped John's head, pulling their faces closer together as he struggled to relax, the pain inside his head receding until he wasn't sure it had ever been there at all. "John," he whispered again, voice cracking around the word and a realisation that he really should have seen before but had been too addled to see it. "John, I don't…"

"What, Sherlock? What is it?" John's voice sounded so calm and reasonable, an annoyance when Sherlock's whole world felt like it was tilting on its axis.

"John," he tried again, taking deep breaths that did nothing to relieve him, instead forcing their way from his body in time with the panic building inside him. "I don't think I have somatoform disorder."

To be continued

A/N: Thank you to the people who have read, reviewed and favourited the story so far! :-) Your support is always welcomed!
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