(no subject)

[impishtubist]

The Fall of Gods (5/24)

Warnings: Language, angst, mentions of suicide, implied past alcoholism, implied PTSD, religious themes

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The truth of the matter is, Victor can’t stand dogs.

It was only by circumstance that he came to own one back when he was eighteen, a bull terrier pup a fellow student had sneaked into their shared rooms during Victor’s first year at Cambridge and then subsequently abandoned when he abruptly left university not three months later.

Victor may not like dogs, but he is not an unnecessarily cruel man, either. It was only proper that he keep the pup when no one else would take him into their homes.

And they had got along most days, him and Jasper, as well as two beings forced into such circumstances could. Jasper never wanted for attention, nor care, and Victor, well--it’s Jasper he has to thank for bringing Sherlock Holmes stumbling across his path one crisp autumn afternoon in his second year at university. Because, really, if the dog hadn’t latched onto Sherlock’s ankle that day in a fit of irritation, Victor doubts they would ever have met.

He’d have gone through life half-aware had it not been for that dog. And though Victor hasn’t thought about Jasper in months, tonight his mind keeps straying to the gentle beast--probably because, for the first time in years, he and Sherlock are under the same roof. In fact, Sherlock is pacing in the guest room that is just down the hall from Victor’s own.

Victor had come to this country with nothing--not even the clothes on his back, having woken up in a French hospital dressed in one of their gowns and with scarcely an idea of what had happened to him. He had shattered both of his legs in the car accident in addition to nearly bleeding out from the wound in his neck, and his recovery had been agonizing and lengthy. It had been made all the worse by the fact that Mycroft Holmes had strictly forbidden any ties to his former life. Before this week, Victor had not possessed even a single photograph of Sherlock.

Now, they are three rooms away from one another.

Victor pulls out his mobile and checks the time - just after midnight. He can’t remember the last time he slept properly. Perhaps a week ago. Certainly not since he got the news from Mycroft that Sherlock would be joining him here.

He turns fully onto his stomach and buries his face in his pillow in an effort to block out the sounds of night. Sleep is still elusive, however, and Victor thumps the mattress in frustration.

How in hell can Mycroft think that this is a good idea, bringing them together again? Victor had been removed from Sherlock’s life for a reason all those years ago, and Mycroft had gone to great lengths in order to accomplish that. To be reunited with him now seems like nothing short of folly, even though Victor has ached for this day; has imagined it a thousand times despite knowing that it would probably never happen.

And yet, it has. Which can only mean one thing: the threat to Sherlock’s life right now is unprecedented. Victor is the last in Mycroft’s near-endless line of resources; the final hope when things go wrong. To use Victor now, after all the trouble it was to kill him and keep him dead... Well, even Victor is uneasy about that. He can only imagine what they’re going to be going up against.

Moran.

Moriarty is a name that Victor’s well familiar with, but they aren’t dealing with him anymore. They’re dealing with his more grounded second-in-command, and a rejuvenated criminal network that spans the globe.

The benefits of working with Sherlock far outweigh the risks of reuniting you two, Mycroft’s note had read, but Victor is not nearly so confident.

This is mad, this is foolish... and dammit if it isn’t everything he’s spent the past four years hoping for.

Sherlock is still pacing down the hall, the floorboards of his room creaking unevenly under his stunted gait. Victor swallows and tries to ignore the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, but it persists anyway, because this isn’t truly a reunion. It’s a drink of water across the Sahara--brief and glorious, but temporary, and it will be over all too quickly.

The next time Victor looks at the clock, it is just past two and the house is quiet; cold. After that, he wakes with the dawn and to the sound of Sherlock rattling around in the kitchen downstairs.

Victor gets out of bed and takes a scalding shower, so hot he can barely stand it, as though he’s trying to burn away the weight that sits in his stomach. He had never imagined that their reunion would be quite this joyless.

Sherlock is still in the kitchen when Victor comes down a little later on, and they exchange nods in silent greeting. Sherlock’s mussed hair and the bags under his eyes betray the fact that he hadn’t slept well, and so Victor forgoes asking that particular, expected question. Sherlock wouldn’t appreciate the concern, anyway.

They breakfast together. Sherlock opts for a simple meal of toast and tea; Victor selects eggs and coffee. They sit at a small, square table meant for four, and when Victor takes a seat Sherlock chooses the one opposite him. It shouldn’t hurt, but it does, because there was a time when Sherlock would sit right next to him at a similar table, their legs tangling together while they breakfasted.

But that was a lifetime ago and a country away from here and now. Victor can’t afford to imagine that things will return to the way they were. They can’t risk it, not when there is so much at stake.

Victor finds it’s hard to think of death and terror, though, when he’s sitting in a warm and well-lit kitchen, a mug of coffee in hand and Sherlock across the way.

Sherlock’s file has never been very far from his side, and Victor opens it again this morning, leafing through the papers while he eats. He wants to know, wants to experience, every moment of the past four years, as though he lived them at Sherlock’s side. Instead, he has to settle for this file, and for what Sherlock deigns to tell him.

“Greg seems to have done well for himself,” Victor eventually ventures between bites.

Sherlock’s eyes flick to him, and he grunts noncommittally.

“How’s Angelo?”

“He’s out of prison,” Sherlock says. “He opened the restaurant up again.”

“Good for him. And Martha’s well, I take it?”

“She’s our landlady.” Sherlock looks up from his food then, fixing Victor with a confused stare. “Everyone thinks we’re a couple.”

“You and John?”

There’s not much of Sherlock’s flatmate in the file - or rather, there’s not much that pertains specifically to him. Most of the file, however, is actually made up of his blog posts. Victor gleans a little about the man from what he writes, but it isn’t much. Certainly not enough to satisfy his curiosity.

“Yes.”

Victor shrugs.

“They knew about the two of us. They probably just assumed that you were starting to move on.”

“Idiots,” Sherlock mutters darkly to his plate. He takes an angry bite of toast. “Why would I want to move on? And with John, of all people?”

“It’s what people do,” Victor says softly, though he’s one to talk. While he’s had a handful of sexual partners over the past four years--most business-related, some not--he’s had nothing that could even come close to being called a relationship. Partly this was because it was simply inadvisable, given his line of work. Most of it, though, was because he couldn’t contemplate having anyone else, not after Sherlock.

“I’m not people.” Sherlock gives Victor an abrupt, sharp glance - almost accusatory. “How can they think there would ever be anyone else but you?”

Victor stares at him a moment, dumbfounded, and then finally says, “Finish your food, Sherlock, it’ll get cold.”

The pass the rest of the meal in silence.

----

Sherlock’s days are long and empty, and he starts taking long walks around the expanse of the property in an effort to clear his mind and start to build strength up in his ankle once again. And, on certain days, he does it to escape Victor’s presence.

He cannot stand this waiting game, made all the worse by the painful puzzle that is this strange house and this not-dead man. There was a time, too long ago, when Victor had been endlessly fascinating. Sherlock could have taken a lifetime to try to understand him, and still it wouldn’t have been enough.

Victor is still brilliant, and still captivating, but not in a way that Sherlock can stand any longer. His presence is as painful as it is welcome, and Sherlock can’t deduce the answers he’s sure Victor is keeping from him. Victor maintains that Mycroft is the reason he could not return to England, and it’s likely that is true. Mycroft’s power and resources are vast, and though Sherlock hates to admit it, Mycroft is far more intelligent than he.

But a small, irrational corner of Sherlock’s mind says that there is no force on this Earth that could have kept Victor away from him. He has no evidence, no data, no information to base it on. It is simply a feeling, and a biased one at that.

He cannot operate solely on speculation, though, let alone survive on it. He has to put these doubts aside, he must, for they are going to be depending on one another for a very long time.

Besides that, Sherlock has never been one to dwell on what ifs and he has never had the patience for people who spend their time agonizing over things past. There are events that cannot be changed, and it does no good to waste one’s time dwelling on them.

What should it matter why Victor stayed away, so long as they are together now?

Sherlock focuses on this, and tries to tell himself that it doesn’t hurt that Victor is obviously lying to him.

He tries to tell himself that it doesn’t hurt that Victor never came back.

----

Sherlock wakes in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and with his heart in his throat while his stomach is somewhere near the vicinity of his feet. It’s a repeat of the first night at Molly’s flat, and when he next becomes aware of himself he’s retching over the bathroom sink, the room spinning around him as he desperately tries to regain control of himself.

And then there are cool hands on his forehead and an arm around his shoulders. It’s an anchor that Sherlock latches onto, scrabbling for purchase in the middle of a storm. Victor supports him, holds him upright, says nothing while Sherlock retches and curses in-between heaves.

At some muddled moment Sherlock decides he’s going to sit on the floor of the bathroom. It seems a much better alternative, for some reason, than returning to his bed. And Victor joins him, helps him down so he doesn’t jostle his ankle, sits with him and presses his head between his knees.

“Breathe,” Victor says at one point, barely more than a murmur, his palm warm on the back of Sherlock’s neck and his beard scraping Sherlock’s ear as he leans close.

Breathe.


When Sherlock wakes again, hours later, he is back in his bed and Victor is nowhere to be seen.

----

There are moments when Sherlock wonders, in the vast stretches of time he has to himself, if this whole situation is the universe’s way of playing an elaborate, cruel trick on him. His death has come with a price, and that price is Victor. Someone he has hoped for, dreamed of, agonized over, but now that they are together again it is almost too painful to bear.

Now you know how John feels.

No. Sherlock dismisses the thought after the barest amount of consideration, and only partly because fate is an absurd concept. The two situations simply can’t compare. John only lost a friend. It must hurt--it has to, because Sherlock can’t bear the thought that he is alone in his agony over leaving John behind--but it is nothing compared to having one’s world ripped away. It is nothing compared to losing Victor. John will move on. John will heal.

Sherlock never could. And now that Victor is back and his world should have righted itself, he finds himself more lost than ever.

It is endlessly baffling.

It is endlessly painful.

Victor wakes one morning to the sound of Sherlock shooting holes in the walls of his study.

“Never liked that wallpaper, anyway,” is all Victor says when Sherlock finally puts the gun down. He pulls his dressing gown tighter around himself and folds his arms across his chest. “There’s a makeshift shooting range in the shed out back, you know, in case you ever wanted to try that out instead. Breakfast?”

He leaves the room just as abruptly--and just as calmly--as he had appeared. Sherlock turns and slams the palm of his hand against the wall in frustration, and tries to tell himself that it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, that none of this makes sense.

----

Some nights later they are sitting by the fire in Victor’s study, and it hasn’t occurred to Sherlock until now how absurd it is that Victor lights one near every night. They are nearing mid-summer here on the Continent; there shouldn’t be any need for a fire. The nights are cool, but not overly so.

“It’s comforting,” Victor says with a shrug when Sherlock brings it up. “I like the sound of it. And the light. More?”

He holds up a half-empty wine bottle. He hasn’t touched a drop of it himself; this has all been Sherlock’s doing.

Sherlock nods, because once again he has woken up in the middle of a free-fall and he cannot even contemplate returning to sleep tonight - or ever, if he had his choice.

“This is the fourth time,” Sherlock says dully. The third had happened some afternoons ago while Sherlock had been leafing through a book in Victor’s study. Victor nods to himself.

“The same thing happened to me.”

The fire crackles, as though on cue. Sherlock leans forward, oblivious of the heat that flares along the side of his face, intrigued in spite of himself.

“It’s not merely a flashback, Sherlock, is it?” Victor goes on. “And it’s not a dream, not always, because sometimes it doesn’t even happen when you’re asleep. For whatever reason, at any time of day, you start reliving the event. And you can’t stop it.”

Now Victor leans in, resting his forearms on his thighs. His Saint Christopher medal slips out of the collar of his shirt, and the gold chain it hangs from glints in the firelight. Victor tucks it away absently. He’s had it for as long as Sherlock has known him, and the metal pendant is tarnished from the number of times over the years that Victor has worried it between the pads of his fingers. Sherlock finds it curious that, out of everything, this is the one thing that Victor has held on to from his old life. From the life he’s supposed to have buried and left behind.

Victor turns his face to the fire; Sherlock continues to watch him.

“There’s a reason I don’t have a car,” Victor says at last, almost bitterly. “I used to not be able to ride in one, it was so bad. Makes things a bit difficult when you’re trying to get in the good graces of a country’s president, that I can tell you.”

“I don’t drive anymore,” Sherlock says softly, because he had been the one behind the wheel on that awful day. “Not unless it’s strictly necessary.”

The corner of Victor’s mouth tugs downward in sympathy.

“I got better,” he says after a moment. “I can hear a whistle without thinking it’s a siren. I can hear an engine run without reliving the crash. It’s not much, but it’s something. Things will get better for you, too. It’ll just take some time.”

“I fall,” Sherlock admits. “Every time I close my eyes.”

“You realise that you had no choice, right?” Victor says vehemently. “Your friends would have died if you hadn’t fallen. You made the best you could out of an awful situation. None of this was your fault.”

“You forget,” Sherlock says, “that I was the one who engaged Moriarty in the first place.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” Victor sighs. “He would have come for you anyway.”

The heat from the fire is bordering on uncomfortable, but Sherlock can’t bring himself to draw away. Every time Victor sighs, he feels it upon his face. Every time Victor makes a fist, Sherlock imagines he can just reach out and touch his hand.

A thin line of perspiration has broken out across Victor’s forehead, and Sherlock feels sweat beading on the back of his own neck. The fire is baking them both, but they don’t pull back. Forearms on thighs, heads bent low, they huddle together in the midst of a shifting world.

“Tell me about John,” Victor says suddenly.

“John?” Sherlock turns the abrupt segue over in his mind for a moment before wondering, “Why?”

“Curiosity. You don’t willingly take the company of too many people,” Victor says in response, but Sherlock knows he is lying. This time, though, Sherlock knows why. Victor is trying to distract him.

“He’s an army doctor, and he’s been to war. He killed for me the first day we met.” Sherlock looks down at the drink in his hands; traces his finger around the rim. “He... once said I was his best friend.”

“Sounds as though we’ve got a bit in common,” Victor comments.

Sherlock nods absently.

“I suppose, in many ways,” he says slowly, “John reminded--reminds--me of you.”

And here, finally, is the truth Sherlock had never before wanted to admit, not even to himself. John is all of the things about Victor Sherlock never knew he had missed, not until the day John told Mycroft to piss off and then later put a bullet through the chest of a man he didn’t even know, all because Sherlock had been threatened. And though John has turned out to be extraordinary - and useful - in his own right, for those initial few weeks of their living together Sherlock would listen to John rattling around the flat and pretend it was Victor. And for those initial few weeks, the perpetual grip around his chest had loosened, and he could breathe properly for the first time in four years.

“I don’t see -”

Victor stops abruptly and is out of his chair like a shot. He’s halfway across the room before Sherlock can push himself to his feet.

“What is it?” Sherlock asks sharply.

Victor’s attention has been drawn by one of the computer displays on the wall.

“Someone’s tripped the alarm on the south side of the house,” he says quietly. He punches at a few buttons, eyes skimming the readouts.

“What does that mean?”

Victor’s already moved over to his desk, where he pulls out a gun and slips it into his belt.

“It means that they’ve got within five meters of this house. Kitchen, now. The cupboard just inside the door has a false back. Push it through. There’s a passageway that runs behind it. It’ll take you down into a safe room just behind the wine cellar.”

“I’m not hiding,” Sherlock protests indignantly, and Victor whirls on him, suddenly furious.

“You’ve done nothing but hide since you threw yourself off that building,” he snaps in irritation. “Go. You’re no use to me dead, nor to your friends.”

He spins on his heel and leaves the room, snapping the lights off in his wake. Once he’s sure Victor has gone, Sherlock steals upstairs.

Victor’s bedroom looks out onto the south end of the property, and Sherlock knows - deduces, rather, from years spent in the other man’s company - where he keeps another gun.

Sherlock ignores the protesting throb in his ankle as he drops to the floor and slides under Victor’s bed. It takes him less than ten seconds to figure out how to trigger the false bottom, and when he removes it he finds a gun stashed inside a small compartment. He replaces the false bottom of the bed and crawls out from under it, the handgun clutched in his left hand. It’s not his dominant hand and he hasn’t fired a gun in months, but it will work in a pinch. Victor had left a window open in hopes of coaxing a breeze out of the otherwise oppressive day and that is where Sherlock takes up a position, finger on the trigger as he scans the impenetrable darkness.

He hears nothing but the light rain; sees nothing but the unending night.

And then a door slams. Victor is downstairs, cursing, and for a wild moment Sherlock fears he’s been injured. But then it quickly becomes apparent that his words are said in fury rather than in pain.

“Where the hell did you get that?” he snaps when Sherlock limps back into the main room, gun still in hand.

“Your bed,” Sherlock replies, nonplussed. He sets the gun down on a low table. Victor turns away, one hand on his hip and the other scrubbing furiously through his damp hair. “What happened?”

“It was just a bloody deer,” Victor snarls, clearly irritated and jittery with lingering adrenaline. Sherlock stares at him.

“Your state-of-the-art security system,” he says slowly, “was fooled by a deer?”

Victor shrugs in annoyance, a deep crease forming between his brows.

“Obviously, there are some kinks in the programming I haven’t worked out yet.”

They stare at one another for a beat - and then, simultaneously, they break into laughter. Victor peels off his shirt while Sherlock tries to stifle the worst of his chuckles and tosses the rain-soaked garment over the back of a chair before the fire. Sherlock glances at him and, in an instant, the laughter dies in his throat.

Victor’s solid torso is a map of jagged lines and knotted flesh - scar tissue from wounds both ancient and new. There’s one on his shoulder that Sherlock remembers from a particularly gruesome rugby match years ago, in addition to the white line at the base of his neck. But now there are also the remnants of a bullet wound between his ribs and an old gash from a knife that slashes across his pectoral. There’s also a thick, angry line across his stomach, as red and inflamed as though it had been made only yesterday. Another scar skirts Victor’s right hip and disappears beneath the waistline of his trousers.

“Don’t worry, they’re not as bad as they look,” Victor says, giving a weak smile when he notices Sherlock’s stare.

Sherlock closes the distance between them in two quick strides and brings his fingertips to rest over the bullet wound. A muscle leaps under his touch, the smallest of shudders, but Victor doesn’t move.

“Bullet,” Sherlock murmurs as he traces the injury. He moves his fingers to the scar on Victor’s chest. “Knife. What about this one?”

Victor remains perfectly still as Sherlock drops his hand to the ragged flesh that slices Victor’s stomach nearly in two.

“Meat cleaver in Mexico,” Victor says. Sherlock nods and once again finds himself drawn to the bullet wound.

“This shot should have killed you.”

“Remind me to lodge a formal complaint.” Victor breathes for a moment, his chest rising and falling under Sherlock’s palm, and then he finally murmurs, “Sherlock.”

He looks up. Victor’s eyes are visibly dark, even as the light from the fire glints off them. Sherlock slides his palm up, achingly slow, pushing his fingers through the hair on Victor’s chest--which has also been dyed blond--before bringing his hand to rest on the side of Victor’s neck. Sherlock is transfixed, glued to the spot by Victor’s gaze, Victor’s smell, Victor’s heat.

“Your face...” Sherlock murmurs before trailing off. This is the closest they’ve come in four years, and Sherlock can finally see what his mind was trying to tell him his first night on the premises. Several tiny, white scars cover Victor’s face around his nose; some even snake down into his beard and disappear. The lines are minute; invisible from any sort of distance. This close up, however, they are difficult to miss.

“I broke several bones in my face in the crash,” Victor says softly. “They had to reconstruct part of my nose. Good thing, too. It’s one thing to change my hair colour. But anyone with even halfway-decent profiling technology would have been able to scan my face and match it to that of dead Victor Trevor. Now... I’m simply no one.”

“Hardly,” Sherlock croaks, and something flickers behind Victor’s eyes. Finally, he raises a hand to Sherlock’s face; cups his cheek and brushes a thumb across his lips. “Why did you stay away?”

The light behind Victor’s eyes fades and he shifts, as though to move away.  Sherlock holds him in place.

“I can understand having to leave,” Sherlock goes on. “Mycroft’s... very good at getting what he wants. But why didn’t you come back?”

“I couldn’t,” Victor whispers. Sherlock’s lips thin.

“You, if I remember correctly, are also extremely good at getting what you want.”

Victor curls a hand around the one that Sherlock has resting against his neck. He squeezes, once, and then pulls it away.

“There are times,” he says quietly, “when what needs to be done takes precedence over what I want.”

Sherlock huffs in frustration.

“Right, let’s try this, then. Mycroft went through a lot of trouble to kill you.”

“Indeed.”

“So why would he throw all of that work away now by reuniting us?”

“That’s a question you’re better off asking him.”

Victor still has a hand curled around Sherlock’s, though he’s holding it a good several inches away from his face. They notice this nearly at the same time, and pull away from one another.

“We can’t get back into this,” Sherlock says quietly, voicing the thought he’s known since the moment he first set eyes on Victor in this house. They cannot afford to get mired in the past. There is too much at stake, and six lives that ride on Sherlock’s back. Distractions will only lead to disaster.

“I wasn’t expecting that we would,” Victor says, and Sherlock knows he means it. “Don’t mistake my intentions, Sherlock. I only want to help. But keep in mind that you’ve spent four years thinking me dead, while I’ve always known you were still out there. I... still care for you. This mission isn’t just another job for me.”

“It should be,” Sherlock says, suddenly harsh and inexplicably angry. An unexpected wave of fury floods through him, and he doesn’t know where it’s come from. “Damn it, Victor, it has to be. Mycroft chose you because you are the best. Don’t you dare let your emotions--let sentiment--cloud your judgment. You’ll get us killed, and maybe even John and Lestrade, too. I won’t have my death be for nothing!”

Sherlock turns on his heel and leaves the room before Victor can say anything. The expression on Victor’s face--shock with a tinge of hurt--tells him enough.

This doesn’t hurt.

----

The next afternoon, Sherlock’s feet take him to a part of this forest he’s never seen before. It’s a good hour out of his way on an unfamiliar path, and though he knows that he can find his way back to the house he’s not entirely sure that he wants to. He has not spoken to Victor since his outburst last night, mostly because Victor has been giving him a wide berth and made himself scarce for most of the day. Even if he had been around, though, Sherlock isn’t sure what he’d say. He feels cold and hollow, and the lie he’s been telling himself for nearly two weeks--this doesn’t hurt--isn’t as effective anymore.

Sherlock perches on the rotting stump of a tree to catch his breath. He turns his face to the sky, what little of it he can see through the tree leaves. The forest’s rich canopy stretches out above his head, as far as he can see, and when he closes his eyes he can hear the call of the birds and the rustle of squirrels as they leap from branch to branch. There’s an entire ecosystem up there, hundreds of feet above his head. There’s an entire world that exists suspended in midair, and creatures who live out their lives without ever stepping on the ground.

It’s a strange--and brutal--reminder that the fate of a world rests on his shoulders, and it isn’t theirs.

The world-in-the-trees will persist, regardless of whether Sherlock’s mission succeeds or fails. It doesn’t care that Victor’s alive; it isn’t bothered by the fact that he died. For that matter, most of the world on the ground doesn’t particularly care, either.

Sherlock envies their world--and his own--their ignorance.

“You look sad.”

Sherlock starts and looks around. He hadn’t even heard Victor approach, and doesn’t bother asking how Victor found him.

“What’s wrong?” Victor takes a seat next to him on the stump. Sherlock shakes his head.

“Nothing.”

Victor nudges him gently with his knee.

“That might work on your friends, but it doesn’t on me. I’ve known you too long.” Victor takes a deep, hesitant breath. “Look, about yesterday -”

“Don’t,” Sherlock snaps. “You think too highly of yourself, Victor, this isn’t about yesterday.”

Except it is, of course it is. It’s about yesterday and the past week and the four years they’ve been apart. Victor is quiet for a moment.

“Tell me what’s wrong, then,” he says softly. “You look like you’ve taken the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

Sherlock snorts.

“I have.”

“No, you haven’t,” Victor counters readily. “Half the weight, maybe. Other half’s on me. Or, at least, it should be. That’s what I’m here for. So what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Sherlock repeats.

“All right,” Victor says. “Then how I about I tell you what’s wrong. You weren’t angry at me last night, you were angry at yourself. That whole bit about letting sentiment cloud your judgment, that’s happening to you. And you’re worried this mission will fail because you’ve had a shock and you don’t know how to handle it. You don’t want your death to be for nothing... as you perceive mine to be. How’d I do?”

Sherlock is starting to tremble, and he balls his hand in a fist in an effort to stem the tremors.

“You forgot one thing,” he manages at last, hating how his voice skitters up the scale. “You... aren’t the only one who didn’t move on.”

They are quiet for a while after that, the silence broken only by the breeze that sweeps through the trees and the animals that call and beckon to one another as night closes in.

“That’s not all of it, I don’t think,” Victor prods gently. And he’s right, of course he is. Sherlock has very rarely ever been able to slip anything past him.

“Not all,” Sherlock agrees dully. “I was forced off the top of a building by a dead man, a dead man whose snipers would have killed the only people I had left in the world. I’m a fraud who’s not a fraud, and you’re alive, and there are creatures that live in the air instead of on the ground, and none of that makes one bit of sense. The world’s gone mad, only it seems to have left me behind because I haven’t got a clue what’s going on anymore. It’s all wrong.”

Sherlock presses the back of his hand to his nose.

“And you got old,” he says quietly, his voice thick. He half-turns to look at Victor in the dying light of the day, taking in the silver at his temples and the lines at the corners of his eyes. “You got old without me. Who gave you permission to do that?”

Victor shifts, as though he’s about to reach for Sherlock but then thinks better of it. Sherlock clamps his eyes shut, shuddering with the effort it’s taking him to remain composed. He has to dig the fingers of his free hand into his knee in order to keep from reaching for Victor.

“I’m sorry,” Victor says at last in a low voice that’s full of sorrow. “I’m sorry, truly I am. I know nothing I can say will make this better for you. All I ask is that you trust me when I say that it was unavoidable.”

Sherlock gives a wet, disbelieving laugh, because trust has never been their issue, not even now. He swipes the heel of his hand under his left eye and swallows hard for several moments, trying to regain control of himself.

“I always trust you,” Sherlock says at last, distinctly grateful that his voice has returned to its normal register. “But that doesn’t mean I believe you.”

-----

Part 6

----