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Landscape With The Fall of Icarus According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling near the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning --William Carlos Williams
Sherlock recognizes his brother instantly, despite the drab Soviet-era greatcoat and flawless Serbian accent.
It is a closer thing than he cares to admit, his breaking point, and he is on thin ice now, skating up to the harrowing edge of splintering completely under weeks of sleep deprivation and relentless beatings (designed to administer maximum anguish while never actually causing serious injury) and psychological torture (degradation, humiliation, mockery. He never makes a sound, never turns his face away, smooth and remote as stone, never acknowledging the terror and fear bubbling just under the surface). He remains silent, stoic, accumulating every shred of evidence he can, constantly alert for an escape opportunity that never comes.
He is fading fast. His captors are brutal and ugly, but, unfortunately, they aren’t entirely stupid. They had caught him twice now, after all, and learned well from his last escape. Now they keep him in total isolation, bound 24/7, keep him awake under harsh floodlights and constant loud horrible Belgrade pop music until the lack of sleep exceeds even Sherlock’s capacity for wakefulness and scrambles his brains until he can barely think straight, let alone plan another escape.
But now Mycroft is here, somehow, prodded off his fat arse into the field, gone deep undercover to rescue his idiotic, inept little brother. Sherlock feels relief, annoyance and shame flood him simultaneously at the realization, and puts it all away a moment later. The task at hand now is to create an opportunity for Mycroft.
Sensations: his arms are dead, wooden, hours past numb from their fixed position. A sunburst of pain in his left flank as another blow lands from his abuser. A trickle of blood slides slowly down his back. Sherlock pushes it all away, mere annoyances of transport, scans his torturer for something, anything to use as leverage. For long moments, nothing.
He is so fucking tired.
Look at him, Sherlock, John whispers. Really look at this idiot, trying to be so scary but he’s ridiculous, with his navy tattoos and his shaved head, he’s trying to look tough but look at how he missed a patch above his right ear, as if he shaved it in the dark--
Yes. The gears, rusty with pain and exhaustion, finally turn and then the information flows, first a trickle then a torrent.
Thank you, John.
A smile touches Sherlock’s bloodied lips, and they part in a whisper.
***
Mycroft quickly releases Sherlock’s arms from the restraints, catching him and easing him to the ground with an efficient gentleness. His gloved hands rub briskly at Sherlock’s arms to restore blood flow, careful to avoid the areas of broken skin. Sherlock gasps at the burning pain as circulation returns.
“We don’t have much time,” Mycroft murmurs urgently. “Can you stand?”
Sherlock nods and allows Mycroft to help him to his feet.
“Quickly, now.” His brother guides him out of that grisly room, into a maze-like passageway. Eyes half closed, Sherlock still counts the lights overhead, notes the composition of the concrete under his feet (Eastern Bloc, late eighties, too much limestone, crumbling). Left turn, left turn, right turn. Footsteps approaching.
One arm supporting Sherlock, Mycroft reaches into his coat and shoots the man between the eyes without even pausing.
Voices, rising in pitch and timbre. Shouting now. Large door. Soviet-era low quality steel. Mycroft pushes it open, hinges squealing.
A nondescript van idling. Two men emerge, dressed in black, clearly British even at a distance. MI6. Mycroft thrusts Sherlock towards one of them.
“Get him to the safe house. I’ll be along shortly.”
“But sir--”
“Go, now, and that is an order.” Mycroft turns without another word and disappears into the low stone building.
Strong hands bundle him into the van, a blanket laid across his shoulders, a water bottle held to his lips. He drinks, feeling the bruised soreness of his lips, the sting of fresh lacerations in his mouth and the taste of his own blood, but he is floating beyond it somehow now, observing rather than living the sensations of his own body.
Closing his eyes, Sherlock allows himself a brief swell of feeling--let’s not put a name on it, just call it a feeling--for his big brother. He knows that when Mycroft opens that steel door again, every man now inside will be a fresh corpse.
The East Wind will take them all, Sherlock thinks fuzzily, before the curtain of sleep descends.
He surfaces briefly, in a blind panic, fighting his way out of a dream--
cigarette-stained fingers twisted in his matted hair as he screams, he never screamed in real life, not once, but in his dream he does, crying out as he’s forced to his knees in the dirt, the muzzle of a gun pressed into the side of his head--
He screams for John, again and again until the sharp pinch of a needle pulls him down into blessed velvet blackness.
***
Sherlock wakes, disoriented, curled tightly in a fetal position under expensive sheets. One eye opening, he observes his surroundings. A small, sun-drenched bedroom, yellow paint over plaster, deep windowsills, a lowslung doorway. Wildflowers in a vase on top of a rustic chest of drawers. The smell of fresh dirt and green plants fills the air.
Farmhouse. Rural. Romania? No. Hungary, most likely. Not an official safe-house; the flowers indicate something far more humble. Likely something Mycroft arranged on his own, then.
Sherlock rolls on his back and groans as the broken skin touches fabric, an avalanche of pain. A moment later, a knock on the door, and a compact, sandy-haired man enters without waiting for Sherlock to respond. He carries a small paper cup in his hand.
“Mr. Holmes, you’re awake,” he says in a clipped Estuary accent as he enters the room. Despite his casual dark clothes--black jeans and black tee--he has that brisk and impersonal kindness unique to competent nurses.
Sherlock opens his mouth to say something snarky but all that comes out is another pained groan. The nurse pours a glass of water from the pitcher on the bedside table, and hands the paper cup to Sherlock. He accepts the pill without comment and washes it down with the offered water.
Tramadol. Not as good as hydrocodone, but far superior to paracetamol.
“Right, then. Let’s get you cleaned up.” The nurse moves toward the bed to assist him, but Sherlock waves him off with a grunt.
“I can--” deep breath, ow, Jesus, rib broken? No, just bruised-- “clean myself up perfectly well.”
“All right, then,” the nurse says, “but I’m sticking close by just in case you can’t, and you’ll need me to tend to your back, anyway.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes but decides not to waste energy arguing. He wraps himself in the bedsheet, keeping the fabric away from his back, notices the bedclothes are undoubtedly ruined by numerous bloodstains. The nurse (“...name’s Russell by the way, hello.” Sherlock doesn’t bother answering) ducks into the ensuite bathroom and starts the shower, fiddling with the knobs until the water is soothingly warm but not too hot, then takes a seat on the edge of the tub, present and observant but carefully keeping a respectful distance.
Sherlock uses the toothbrush laid out next to the sink, then discards the sheet, deliberately ignoring the concern on Russell’s face at the full extent of his injuries as he steps under the gentle spray.
The warm water is heavenly; even the sharp sting of spray on gouged and broken skin feels good, feels cleansing. Sherlock scrubs his body with expensive soap, something smelling of lemongrass and ginger, and feels the rawness of the past two months begin to recede, to take on dimensions that he can begin to control. The relief is enormous.
Sherlock pours shampoo into his palm and begins to scrub at his tangled, matted hair, flinching inwardly. I should just shave it off and be done with it, Sherlock thinks, and then immediately reconsiders. What he really wants is to return to London just as he had left it, as if nothing inside him had changed, coat swirling about him, collar turned up, everything perfect. He wants to prove the past two years had not left a mark on him, and shaving his head in a moment of weakened disgust is not really congruent with that image, is it?
Blunt, brutal fingers, smelling of nicotine, tangled in his hair, pulling his head back. Laughter.
Sherlock’s knees buckle slightly and he sags against the stall door. The nurse jumps up instantly.
“Mr. Holmes, sir? Do you need help?”
A bubble of something hysterical breaks loose in Sherlock and threatens to overwhelm him completely.
Yes, clearly I do, seeing as the simple act of washing my hair is apparently triggering some kind of flashback.
Then he takes a deep calming breath, exhales, and straightens. It is not even 24 hours after. This is the worst of it, certainly, and sure to improve with a little time. He can--he will-- get through this without involving strangers.
“I’m fine,” Sherlock says. “Just a little sore.” Russell looks at him skeptically but returns to his seat at the edge of the tub.
Sherlock, suddenly wanting this over with, rinses his wrecked hair as well as he can and shuts off the taps. He opens the shower stall and Russell hands him an enormous fluffy towel. Sherlock squeezes the moisture from his hair, then wraps the towel around his hips.
“I’ve got my kit in the bedroom, Mr. Holmes. Let’s go back in there and I’ll look at your back.”
“I need you to do something else first, Robert.”
“Russell, sir.”
“Russell. Call me Sherlock, please. Russell, can you find a pair of scissors somewhere in this house? I can’t have this...situation on my head a moment longer.”
“Yes, sir. I think I have something.” Russell ducks into the bedroom and returns a moment later with a pair of bandage shears. “Will these do?”
“We’ll make do.” Sherlock finds a comb in the medicine cabinet over the sink and hands it to the nurse.
“You know I’m an RN, Mr. Holmes--”
“Sherlock.”
“I’m an RN, Sherlock, not a hairdresser.”
“Just cut.”
Russell saws off Sherlock’s hair with the bandage shears, and true to his word does a terrible job of it. When he is finished, Sherlock’s hair is roughly chin length, hacked irregularly around the edges.
“What do you think, Russell?”
Russell laughs. “You look like Severus Snape run through a food processor.”
Sherlock doesn’t get the reference, is about to ask, but instead dismisses it as irrelevant. Rifling through the cabinet, he finds a packet of disposable razors and shaving cream.
“Would you like some help?” Russell asks and Sherlock shakes his head no. He shaves quickly, carefully, wincing as the blade runs over the bruises and scrapes on his face.
Rajakovic held his face as Sherlock's arms were bound behind his back, running a tattered electric shaver over the planes of his cheekbones. He smiled, an ugly evil thing, and ran his thumb along the edge of Sherlock’s lower lip. “Much better,” he said, speaking in thickly-accented English. “It is much better when I see your beautiful mouth.” Sherlock wanted to cry. He wanted to beg. He wanted to vomit. He did none of those things.
Sherlock’s hand shakes minutely and he pauses so as not to add another wound to his collection. Russell has the decency to pretend not to notice.
After the haircut and shave, Sherlock allows Russell to lead him back into the bedroom. He sits on the low bench at the foot of the bed and Russell cleans and bandages the cuts on his back. The Tramadol begins to kick in, and he feels warm, drowsy and far away.
“Some of these will scar, Sherlock, sorry to say.”
“Honestly, John, I know you’ve seen far worse,” Sherlock mumbles.
“That I have,” the nurse’s gentle voice replies.
Later, after Russell finishes bandaging him, slips a dressing gown over his shoulders, and lays him down on his side for a nap, Sherlock realizes that of course Mycroft had picked that particular nurse on purpose specifically to lower Sherlock’s defenses and improve his compliance.
As he drops into slumber, Sherlock realizes he is far more grateful than angry.
***
When Sherlock emerges that evening, clad in soft cotton trousers and a thin tee, Mycroft is seated at the kitchen table, peering intently at his laptop. His brother is perfectly put together in Gieves & Hawkes, looking for all the world like he ought to be behind his desk on Downing Street rather than in the middle of Hungarian nowhere. An older woman, almost childlike in her tiny stature, is at the sink washing a pot. As Sherlock seats himself at the table she turns and directs a question at Mycroft.
“Igen,” Mycroft responds, and the woman picks up a bowl and begins dishing some kind of stew into it.
“I’m not hungry,” Sherlock says automatically, but when the woman puts it in front of him it smells delicious, beef and onions and paprika, and suddenly he is ravenous. The woman brings him a spoon and he dredges his brain for scraps of Hungarian.
“Köszönöm,” he says, a bit haltingly, knowing he’s mangling the pronunciation a bit, a lot, he never had Mycroft’s facility with languages. The woman smiles at him and turns back to the sink.
Sherlock eats, and the old woman refills his bowl twice and brings out a plate of bread also. Mycroft quirks an eye at him but concentrates on his work while Sherlock inhales his food. Finally Sherlock declines a fourth bowl with a shake of his head and the woman brings him a cup of strong Hungarian coffee. Sherlock leans back in his chair with a sigh, and Mycroft closes the laptop, regarding him levelly.
“You kept those plans out of the hands of the IIPB, and put the Baron behind bars,” Mycroft says evenly. “You may well have saved an untold number of lives.”
Sherlock is careful to show nothing on his face, but deep inside he allows himself a small flare of warmth at his brother's praise.
“You’ll be debriefed in the morning,” Mycroft says. “Not pleasant, but necessary.”
Sherlock swallows his coffee and sets the cup down carefully. ”Fine.”
Mycroft pauses, choosing his words with care. “Sherlock, I need you to be completely forthcoming. The Baron is neutralized, but I’m afraid Rajakovic slipped away.”
At hearing that name, a potent mixture of anger, fear and shame rises in Sherlock’s gut, bubbling there alongside the stew. “That’s unfortunate but inconsequential. His operation is dismantled, his sponsor behind bars. He is powerless.”
Mycroft raises his eyebrows. “He is vermin, Sherlock, and he needs to be exterminated.” He takes another sip of his coffee.
Suddenly the room is too hot and Sherlock feels ill. “Give me a cigarette, Mycroft.”
“I don’t have any cigarettes.”
Sherlock pins him with a look until Mycroft harrumphs and produces a packet of Silk Cuts and a lighter. Sherlock plucks them out of his fingers and slips out the back door.
The night is cool and satiny dark, the stars shockingly bright and close overhead. Sherlock lights a cigarette, the nicotine exploding in his head, a sudden rush that makes Sherlock feel dizzy. He closes his eyes.
Returned to his cell, bleeding, exhausted, shaking. “You are lucky,” said the man in English as he bound Sherlock’s hands behind his back. “We take it easy. Rajakovic’s orders.” His companion said something in Serbian and the man laughed, a harsh wheezing noise. “Novi five,” he rasped in agreement as he pulled Sherlock’s head up by his matted hair. His captor stroked his cheek in mockery, blowing fetid breath over his face, a leer twisting his features. “Be good boy, yes?” Laughing, the two men clanged the cell door shut behind them, leaving Sherlock alone to wait for the heavy tread of his primary tormentor.
A rush of nausea threatens to overwhelm him, the stew seeking escape from his stomach. Sherlock slowly sinks down until he’s sitting in the soft dirt. He stills his mind and breathes, slowly and deliberately, in through his nose and out through his mouth, until the sick feeling passes.
He takes another drag off his cigarette, the nicotine leveling in his system, settling his stomach.
How he longs for this part to be over, for the scars on his back and in his mind to heal. He dreads the debriefing; he doesn’t give a damn if Rajakovic is captured, what he wants most in the world is to never ever hear that name again, bury it in the deepest pit below his mind palace. Then he can heal, and return to London, step back into his regular life and leave this time in the past for good.
He wonders what John is doing right at this moment. Is he in the sitting room at Baker Street, in his stocking feet in front of the fire? Is he reading the paper, watching telly, napping? Is he looking out the window, waiting?
Could John somehow, in some way, sense Sherlock’s imminent return?
Of course I can, John says in his fond exasperated voice. I know exactly where you are. I’ve never left you this whole time, have I?
“No, you never left me,” Sherlock mutters, not even realizing he says the words aloud. “You would never leave me. I need you. I can’t survive without you.”
I’m waiting, John says. I’m right here where you left me. Come home, back where you belong, and everything will be all right again.
Sherlock sits there for hours, chainsmoking his brother’s cigarettes.
Mycroft doesn’t come out after him.
***
The following morning there are new clothes hanging in the wardrobe, dark jeans and a forest green shirt, and Sherlock feels better when he puts them on. It’s not Spencer Hart, it’s not a full suit of armor, but it’s a definite improvement nonetheless.
Russell takes his vitals and offers him painkillers. Sherlock declines.
Mycroft is gone, but an MI6 agent awaits him in the sitting room, a specialist, a man so nondescript as to be almost invisible. Sherlock can’t deduce a single thing about him, which is unsettling.
The agent asks questions and Sherlock answers them. Sherlock tells him about the theft of the plans, the successful drop, the initial capture, the first escape, the recapture. He tells him the exact dimensions of every room he was held in. He tells him the minute details of the instruments they used to beat him--coat hangers, a rusted chain, an extension cord (Italian, specification standard CEI 23-50).
“Tell me about Rajakovic,” the agent says, and Sherlock swallows down the spike of panic and flatly lays out every detail he gleaned about the man. His age (43), his substandard dental care, the clubbing of his thumbs, the size of his boots.
The prison tattoo, a blurry emblem of Arkan’s Tigers, just inside the right pelvic crest.
He opens his mouth to speak--it’s nothing, it’s over and it’s just transport anyway and it’s over--but the words die in his throat unsaid.
Late in the afternoon, after he has showered again (scrubbing as hard as he can and he still doesn’t feel clean) and Russell has rebandaged his back and offered him another Tramadol (which this time he accepts), Sherlock sits on the bench at the foot of the bed, staring at nothing as John paces, scrubbing fingers in his hair in concern.
You didn’t tell them quite everything you know, did you? John says, concern and accusation mingling into a tone Sherlock can’t quite parse. Arkan’s Tigers. That’s important. That could lead them right to--
“It’s not necessary,” Sherlock murmurs.
How can you say that? You know that tattoo could be the key. You’re in a bad place, Sherlock, really Not Good, and you’re hurting the chances of catching the monster who--
“I said it’s not relevant, so LEAVE ME ALONE!” Sherlock shouts into the empty room, and John disappears.
***
It is dark when Sherlock awakes to the unmistakable presence of Mycroft sitting on the edge of the bed.
Of course the room is monitored, Sherlock thinks.
He keeps his eyes closed and pretends to sleep. Mycroft pretends to believe it as he strokes Sherlock’s hair. After a while, Sherlock falls back asleep for real.
In his dreams, an ugly voice rasps in his ear. Stay strong, pretty one. Stay silent. Every day you don’t talk I get to keep you, and I want to keep you for a while yet.
In the morning bright sunlight pours in, and Mycroft is gone again.
***
The jet rolls to a stop on the Heathrow tarmac. Sherlock pulls out his new phone, types John’s number from memory. He has typed out and erased messages to John on so many cheap burner phones in so many terrible rooms over the past two years, and with fingers that shake just the tiniest bit he types just one more. Three words.
His finger hovers over the send button, paralyzed suddenly by uncertainty. Maybe John isn’t waiting. Maybe John has forgotten.
Then the cabin lights come up, and Sherlock puts his phone away.
***
Mycroft arranges for a decent haircut and a shave. Sherlock is afraid he’ll flinch and scream and humiliate himself, but his adrenals and his sympathetic nervous system have accepted that London means safety, and he is fine.
He accuses Mycroft of enjoying the beating to erase any lingering feelings of weakness, of needing rescue, of needing comfort. They both need the emotional space of adversarial distance.
Sherlock slips easily into the new suit and white shirt, pulling the pieces of armor around him one by one. Fully protected, he feels strong enough to mention John. He tries to make a joke of it, like John hasn’t been on his mind, in his mind, every single day of the last two years. “I’ll pop by Baker Street. Who knows, jump out of a cake.”
Mycroft has the calm, practiced timbre of a man used to delivering difficult news. “Baker Street? He isn’t there anymore.”
Sherlock regards him with surprise shading into alarm. He had always believed, taken as an article of faith, the idea that John was waiting for him at Baker Street. It was the thought he had clung to. It was the thought that had kept him sane.
Mycroft speaks to him the way one might speak to a particularly deranged mental patient.
“Why would he be? It’s been two years. He’s got on with his life.”
Sherlock’s mind considers this information, finds it wanting, and rejects it. “What life? I’ve been away.”
***
Sherlock turns up the collar of the Belstaff and walks into the London night. His feet carry him without conscious thought as he chews over what his brother said.
John has moved out. John has moved on. John has given up on him.
“It’s possible you won’t be welcome,” Mycroft had said.
Sherlock slows his steps and pulls out his new phone.
I’m not dead.
Just one push, send the message. John will be delighted. He will be.
But what if I’m not? John whispers traitorously.
The uncertainty yawns up, threatening to engulf him.
Better to do something more personal, then. More immediate.
But for that, he needs something else. Something to make this terrible empty feeling stop. Then he can show John how alive and whole and clever he is, and John would be happy to see him. He would. He will.
Sherlock enters another number from memory. Sends a different text entirely. Not two minutes later, an address comes back in response.
He hails a cab.
***
Shinwell Johnson steps out of the shadows at Sherlock’s approach. “Sight for sore eyes, my old friend.”
“Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Sherlock replies.
“Indeed they are,” says Shinwell. “Now, sir, are you headed up or down this evening?”
“Up,” says Sherlock decisively, a hundred pound note folded into his palm.
Shinwell takes pride in his profession, and his product is outstanding. Good enough that a couple of bumps in the cab make Sherlock believe that impersonating a French waiter is a really good idea, right up until the moment he realizes it’s by far the worst idea he’s ever had.
The night only goes downhill from there.
***
Sherlock returns to Baker Street. He throws himself into the case information, pinning papers all over the wall above the couch. He steps back, making the connections, mind whirring at a million miles per hour. He realizes John is sitting in his chair, watching.
Back two days and it’s already a paper tornado in here, John says.
“You’re not here,” Sherlock says. “You left me, you hate me, you’re not here.”
It takes two lines to make him go away.
***
Sherlock solves the case, he saves John, he prevents the bombing, he forces John to confess his forgiveness. He tries to forget about the baggie stashed in his most undetectable secret spot and mostly succeeds, except sometimes when he doesn’t. But he mostly succeeds because he has a case, and he never (almost never) uses on a case.
But sometimes the John in his head talks to him and won’t go away, and the real John is across town and asleep in bed with Mary, and then he does.
***
Nineteen days after the averted Guy Fawkes bombing, Mycroft summons him to lunch. Sherlock has nothing on and hasn’t eaten in a day or two, so he goes.
“Something interesting crossed my desk the other day,” Mycroft says as he pours a cup of tea and passes it to Sherlock.
“Really,” says Sherlock, uninterested.
“The Serbian Ministry of Defence asked us for some assistance. Apparently a dismembered torso was mailed to the minister’s home address.”
“Really,” said Sherlock, much more interested.
“A male torso, genitals excised. Quite gruesome, I’m told.” Mycroft takes a sip of his tea. “However, the DNA doesn’t match any databases and there are no identifying marks on the specimen--skin completely flayed off, how interesting--but there’s nothing for us to go on, so I asked the office to pass along regrets.”
Sherlock picks up his teacup. If his fingers shake, it is surely far too minute for Mycroft to notice.
“Shame, in a way,” Mycroft says. “A waste of resources, obviously, not worth our time, but I would have rather liked to observe that kind of handiwork up close.”
***
In his bedroom, Sherlock contemplates the baggie for far longer than he should, but in the end he flushes the remaining contents.
Deep in his mind palace, a torso, stripped of skin, is placed in a carved marble sarcophagus. Wrapping the stone chest in iron bands, locking it tight with enormous unbreakable padlocks, Sherlock drags the heavy burden down the steps and throws it deep, deep into the darkest pit of the dungeon where the bodies and bones are kept.
Sherlock sleeps then, and he doesn’t dream.