Fic: Sustained by the Strength of the Colours to Come (John/Sherlock, PG-13)

[swissmarg]

Title: Sustained by the Strength of the Colours to Come
Author: swissmarg
Beta/Britpicker: similarfrowns
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Pairing: John/Sherlock, brief John/Mary
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When John Watson was thirty-nine, a black heart appeared in the middle of his chest. When he was forty, he met a woman named Mary Morstan. When he was forty-one, he became a widower. And when he was forty-two, dust became flesh once more.
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were created by Arthur Conan Doyle. The updated BBC version on which this fic is based was created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. This is a transformative fanwork written for fun, not profit.
Notes: This is a sequel to my fic The Best Picture of the Human Soul and will not make any sense if you don't read that first. Thank you once again to similarfrowns for the quick and efficient beta-reading and Britpicking.

The amazingly talented Erin has created a perfect illustration for this fic, which you can view on her art blog. It contains spoilers, so I recommend reading this fic first before viewing the art. ;)

Sustained by the Strength of the Colours to Come

When John Watson was thirty-nine, a black heart appeared in the middle of his chest.

After that, nothing appeared on his skin for a very long time.

He always wore at least a vest and a button-down, and when he showered he kept his eyes closed, or stared up at the ceiling.

When he finally cleaned all of the old experiments out of the kitchen, he came this close to taking the perchloric acid and pouring it over his hand. Instead, shaking, he got the Dermablend out of his medical kit and smeared some on. It felt like a betrayal. The heavy make-up creasing and pulling every time he moved his hand made him more aware of what was there than ever.

He thought Ella might have some advice (he couldn't go the rest of his life avoiding looking at his dominant hand).

"Our images only mean what we want them to," she said in her calm, smooth voice. "For example, the tree on your arm could have been a warning to your childhood self to avoid repeating the same mistake. It could also be a physical marker of the place where your bone knitted together, thicker and stronger than before, like the branch of a tree. Or it could be a badge of honour, testifying that you're stronger than anything the world can throw at you."

"So you're saying all I have to do is assign a positive meaning to the key and stop thinking of what I actually know it means."

"What does it mean then?"

John looked away, rubbing his knuckle against his mouth.

He hadn't told her about Sherlock's box, so she couldn't be entirely blamed.

When John Watson was forty, he met a woman named Mary Morstan.

He was dead inside, and she was dying, and so they dug a grave together and slept in it.

"Who was this?" she whispered against his palm when she kissed the golden key that nestled there.

(No one, he answered, because there was nothing left for it to open.)

And "Who was this?" she breathed into his ear when she pressed her breasts against the flanks of the golden lion that stood proudly on his shoulders.

(No one, he answered, because there was nothing left for it to guard.)

And "Who was this?" she gasped when she pressed her fingers into the brown and gold snake that slithered down his back, as she held him inside her.

(No one, he answered, because there was nothing left to take his friendship and regurgitate it as poisoned tea and make him drink it.)

She didn't ask about the heart, because she knew that no one would dare to leave John Watson with a black, black heart in the middle of his chest.

(No one did.)

Neither of them said anything about the lily that bloomed on her thigh. It would have made John happy, if he'd had any happiness in him. It would have made him sad, too, if he'd had any sadness to spare.

They made no mention of the pale, winter sun that rose one morning on John's right breast. Mary smiled, though, and laid her hand on it and kissed him, and he laid his hand on top of hers and tried to make it right.

And because Mary was good and John was decent, they married on a cold day in November.

When John Watson was forty-one, he became a widower.

A darkling moon eclipsed the sun, and John stood naked in front of the mirror and bore witness to himself. He saw that his skin was true, and that he'd chosen every inch of it, and that there were still inches to be chosen.

When John Watson was forty-two, the wind returned from its journey around the world, echoing his own words back to him: one more miracle. Dust became flesh once more, and ashes became blood coursing through living veins.

======

When John slid into the seat across from Molly at the grubby little cafe opposite Bart's, even the lavender paw prints running past her ear seemed to be trying to disappear into her hairline. She pleaded with him not to be angry, but all he could hear was a rushing in his ears, and all he could see was the pale green vine wending its way around her middle finger. He wondered what was at the end. (A middle.)

"John, I- I think he did it to protect you, if that helps."

"Do you think it helps?"

She just sat there looking unhappy.

John left his coffee untouched on the table. He wasn't happy and he wasn't unhappy. He wasn't anything, really.

But then that wasn't true. He simply hadn't realised it because it had been so very long since he'd been anything. Whatever it was he was feeling didn't have a name yet.

But it had a colour: it was red.

It wasn't blood (how trite); it was fire and sunsets, tongues and orifices, poppies and war paint. All right, maybe it was blood.

He was almost surprised when he came home and found he didn't have something primal and fearsome scrawled across his face.

He wasn't surprised at all, on the other hand, by the dead man sitting in his living room.

======

"What are these?" John asked, his finger scanning the hatch marks printed like a bar code on Sherlock's forearm. Six of them were grey and two were red.

"My path back," he answered. (To you.)

John nodded. He knew about paths. He'd fought his way along one through six years in Afghanistan. His wasn't nearly so neat, even though it had led him just as unerringly to Sherlock. It lay in fragments under his heel and behind his ear and over his groin and red and puckered on his shoulder.

Sherlock laid his hand over John's and held it there, pressed against his arm. (To you.)

======

"I'm sorry," Sherlock said, three days later, when the flat smelled more like SherlockandJohn than it did like death for the first time in three years.

"For what?" John asked, which was more than justified, given, as he continued not to look up from the paperback thriller in his hand.

"Not for that," Sherlock said. He'd never apologised for that, and he never would. He stood next to John's chair and turned over the hand John was holding his book with so that he could press his thumb into John's golden palm. "I never told you."

John lifted his eyes to meet Sherlock's steady gaze. "Yes, you did." (Too late, too soon, to you.)

"I was afraid." (Of you, of youandme, of losing, of winning, of being human.)

"I would have protected you."

"I'm still afraid."

"I'll still protect you."

"Is the lion me or you?"

"Is there a difference?"

John could feel his pulse against Sherlock's thumb, in his throat, beneath the heart on his chest.

======

Sherlock was curled up on the couch with his back to the room when John came in from work. John's heart didn't skip a beat before his brain reminded it that Sherlock was back. He didn't freeze and wait until he could see the rise and fall of Sherlock's shoulders before taking his next breath. He didn't crouch down and hold his hand close over Sherlock's pajama-clad leg to feel the heat radiating from it.

He did see the closed eye on the back of Sherlock's naked heel. It was stylised, like a hieroglyph, heavily lined with kohl.

"Irene," Sherlock said, without moving.

"She has her eye on you?"

Sherlock huffed once, amused, then turned half around to look at John from over his shoulder. "A reminder of my own hubris. A blind eye."

"Blind to what?" John asked. He watched Sherlock steadily as nerves signalled and consequences were calculated.

"Motives," Sherlock answered finally. "My own... sentiments."

John bristled at that, for no reason that he could identify. Then, feeling reckless, he asked, "Do you have any more?"

Sherlock frowned and turned back around. "You know I do."

"I mean from her."

Sherlock was silent again, so long that John thought he wasn't going to answer. He stirred to stand up when Sherlock said into the back of the couch, "She wasn't meaningful in the way you think."

John didn't protest the assumption behind the statement, because it was true.

He was already halfway to the kitchen when Sherlock added, so low he almost didn't hear it, "It's not about her at all."

======

When Sherlock lumbered up the stairs at shit o'clock in the morning, John was standing in the kitchen getting himself a glass of orange juice, his t-shirt still damp from his fever breaking. (Hazard of working in a walk-in clinic.)

"Christ, what happened to you?" he asked as Sherlock collapsed onto a chair, pale (even for Sherlock, which was saying something) and with a hint of a tremor in his legs.

"Tasered," Sherlock said, leaning back and exposing his throat, dotted with all the miniature images that only John knew were there. (Dogs signal submission by exposing their bellies and throats.)

John put the carton back in the fridge and said, "Didn't Greg make you go to the hospital?"

Sherlock shook his head and closed his eyes. "It was Dimmock, and I didn't tell him."

John made a disapproving sound. "Let me look?"

Sherlock opened his eyes and regarded John warily.

"I've seen them already, Sherlock," John said.

Sherlock steeled himself, then stood and headed for the bathroom, shedding his greatcoat on the way.

"Where is it?" John asked as he got out the first aid box and started washing his hands.

"Here." He pulled his shirt out of his trousers and held it up on the left side.

"Just take it off," John said, still scrubbing.

"You can see it fine like this."

John sighed. "You know I've already seen what's on your chest. And the rest of them too, at least briefly."

"You haven't," Sherlock muttered, probing at the red marks with his fingers.

"Don't, your hands aren't clean," John said, frowning. "And yes, I have. In the ... morgue." He rubbed very hard at his hands.

"It's been three years, don't you think I might have acquired more?" Sherlock said in an acid tone.

John's back stiffened. "Oh. Yes, all right. Sorry."

He plucked a fresh towel off the shelf and dried his hands off, then crouched down to inspect Sherlock's side. He couldn't stop his eye from flickering up to the border of shirt and skin, but Sherlock wasn't holding the shirt high enough to expose the box. John wondered if that was the reason Sherlock was being so modest, or if there were something else he didn't want John to see. He forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

There were two bright red puncture wounds in the thin skin over one of his ribs. Just below them was a chain with three links, the middle one broken.

"My mother died," Sherlock announced abruptly.

"I'm sorry," John said reflexively, then processed what Sherlock had said, and looked up at him in real sympathy. "When?"

"Last year," Sherlock said, his chin tucked down and his fingers jittering at the edge of his raised shirt.

"Did you- Were you able to go to the funeral?" John asked.

Sherlock glared at him.

"Right, no, sorry," John said, frowning at his own stupidity. "I only thought- If it was a private burial..." He adjusted Sherlock's elbow so it wasn't blocking the light. "I'm just going to disinfect it, but it looks all right. I don't think you even need a dressing, unless your shirt is chafing on it."

"It's fine," Sherlock said stiffly. "Now you see why I didn't bother mentioning it."

John opened an alcohol wipe and gently swabbed the area. "Any other symptoms? Heart irregularities? Numbness in the extremities?"

"No."

John swept the wipe once more across the wound but stopped, still holding the square of material against Sherlock's side, when a shadowy image on Sherlock's stomach caught his eye. It was a pair of wings, dove grey. The line of fine hairs bisecting his lower abdomen seemed to feather the wings' edges. He didn't realise he was staring at them - rude, really; inexcusable in a medical setting; surely a relic of being sick - until he heard Sherlock's voice saying, "Dewer's Hollow."

John leaned in to see better, and in doing so pressed against the side of Sherlock's leg. Sherlock didn't move it away. John, however, started at the contact and sat back again.

"Sorry," he said, pulling his hand back as well and tossing the disinfectant wipe into the bin.

"It's all right," Sherlock said. He let go of his shirt. It dropped (a damsel's handkerchief, a gauntlet, a veil) back into place.

John looked up at him. It was: all right. Everything was the way it should be. John and Sherlock, sitting in their dingy little bathroom, Sherlock's body punctured, John's immune system at war, barely a month since their lives had reconverged (what they were learning: they'd never actually diverged).

"We shared a lot, didn't we, John?"

John swallowed (throat still sore), nodded, didn't know what that meant.

"That was the snake. Yours, I mean."

Dewer's Hollow, then: the laboratory, the drug, the beast. (The beast; the snake; the wings.)

"Yeah," John agreed. His heart was pounding. At the memory of the laboratory.

"You showed me all of yours. I didn't feel-"

"It's all right," John rushed to assured him. "They're private."

"I think I've realised that sometimes they shouldn't be." Sherlock's hand strayed to the left side of his chest, fingers curled inward.

John recalled with perfect clarity what was there.

"Ella told me they only mean what we want them to."

"Obviously."

John smiled a little.

"Why the wings?"

Sherlock let his hand drop to his lap. "The ephemeral nature of the drug-induced fear; escape; perhaps that, like Icarus, I was trying to fly too close to the sun."

John snorted. "Even your images are cleverer than me."

======

They weren't even on a case when it happened. Coming back from the Vietnamese place on a Monday night, some kid out of his mind on pills jumped them; John had him on the ground in twelve seconds, but not before he'd sunk a blade into John's stomach and yanked it sideways.

Sherlock didn't even chase after the punk. Mobile in one hand and the other holding John's insides together, he was blank and terrible, and John saw the two red hatch marks in his demeanour.

He lost consciousness before the ambulance arrived, but not before he heard Sherlock say, "Not like this, John." And then, softer, more desperately, "Please."

When he woke up - properly; the first couple of times he'd only been able to grunt an affirmative before drifting off again - it smelled like hospital, and there was a rustling at his side, followed by a slight jolt as someone bumped against the bed. A sharp pain bloomed in his abdomen and he groaned involuntarily.

"Watch it," Sherlock's voice barked. "Didn't they teach you not to run into furniture in whatever passed for a nursing school?"

"You're not actually allowed to be here," an unfamiliar female voice sniped.

"And the physiotherapist you're not actually having an affair with is planning to go on a two-week cruise with his wife for a second honeymoon, leaving this Saturday, so that's your plans for your birthday down the drain."

John opened his eyes in time to see the backside of a set of pink scrubs leaving the room. He had to angle his head to the other side to find Sherlock, sitting on a chair pulled up right next to the bed. It must be night; the room was dim, the only light source a small lamp mounted on the wall behind John's head.

"John." Sherlock's eyes searched his face and his hand moved to John's arm. John looked down at the feel of skin on skin. He didn't have a shirt on. Probably because of the large white bandage over his stomach. A blanket lay across his hips and legs. He hoped he was clothed underneath it but didn't have the energy to check.

John felt his face stretch into a grin. There must have been a large amount of medication running through his system; his head felt thick and his extremities far away. "Did you get him?"

Sherlock frowned as if John were the last imbecile. "Your abdomen was sliced open and you were losing blood fast enough that you were unconscious inside of eight minutes. What do you think?"

"Really? You let a suspect get away to wait with me for the ambulance?"

"He wasn't a 'suspect'," Sherlock said testily. "Just an idiotic addict. I gave a statement detailed enough that even Lestrade should be able to track him down."

Sherlock's hand flexed on John's arm. John lifted his opposite hand and let it drop heavily on top of Sherlock's. The effort pulled at his wound, and he grimaced.

"Thank you," John said.

Sherlock swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly. His eyes flickered down to John's chest and back.

John looked down at himself. "Christ, that's a pretty sight. They need to take anything out?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Just stitched you up. Antibiotics against infection." He nodded at the drip attached to the arm he was holding. "John..."

"Yeah?"

Sherlock looked at John's chest again. John got a cold feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with his injury. There was something Sherlock wasn't telling him. Was he... He tried moving his legs. The effort sent a renewed wave of pain through his torso, but they responded well enough. Not paralysed then, all parts intact... What was he missing? He looked at Sherlock with panic dancing at the edge of his mind.

Sherlock slowly lifted his hand from where it was resting on John's arm, and lowered it over the middle of John's chest.

Oh, God.

John turned his head away and closed his eyes. "I thought you were dead," he said, roughly.

He felt Sherlock's fingers ghost over the heart, barely touching it. He forced himself not to flinch away. It's not like he could help what his body did.

"I know," Sherlock said. "I didn't know you felt..."

"You weren't meant to. That's why they're private, yeah?" John said with a touch of bitterness. He didn't want to be an object of pity, some foolish schoolboy displaying his emotions for all the world.

"And this..." Sherlock let his fingers drift to Mary's sun and moon. "You loved her."

John turned back to Sherlock and met his gaze straight on. He hated him right then, for making him ashamed of what he and Mary had. "I married her, anyway," John said. "We tried- We were there for each other. We tried to be there for each other. We knew she didn't have much time left, and she knew I wasn't capable of- Although I know she hoped..." He looked away again. "She gave me something to live for."

Sherlock took his hand away. He didn't say anything, but John could hear him breathing, and something else: the slide of skin on cloth. Was he putting on his coat? Getting ready to leave? Typical Sherlock, to run away from an emotional scene. John turned his head all the way to the other side, facing the door, willing someone to at least come in, so there wouldn't be an awkward good-bye with just the two of them.

"John," Sherlock said, finally.

"What?" John asked without moving.

"John, look at me," Sherlock said with a hint of impatience.

John frowned and turned his head. "What-"

Sherlock had opened his shirt. There was the box situated over his physical heart, the one whose keyhole matched John's key; and to the right of it was a black valentine analogous to John's.

John blinked several times, thinking the drugs in his body were mapping the afterimage of his own marking onto the still relatively pale expanse of Sherlock's chest. "Is that-" He tried to lift his right arm - the one closest to Sherlock - but was hampered by the IV line.

Sherlock stood up halfway to lean over John. He picked up John's left hand and lifted it to his own chest. John touched the heart first, two fingers mimicking Sherlock's earlier gesture. His skin was warm and his ribs trembled slightly with the strength of the heartbeat beneath them. (To you. To you. To you.)

Then he opened his hand, and placed it flat over the image of the box. The throbbing increased in tempo and strength. He looked up at Sherlock.

"I didn't know..." John whispered.

"I'm... not sure I did either," Sherlock said, with something like surprise.

"Suppose they're good for something after all," John said. His voice was thick.

Sherlock covered John's hand with his own, against his chest. "I want to show you the rest. I - They're yours, too."

John shook his head. "No, Sherlock-"

"I want them to be yours." There was something both demanding and vulnerable in the way he said it, so John nodded because he could never deny Sherlock what he needed.

"When we get home," John said. "They'll still be there. We can take time. You can tell me."

Sherlock relaxed minutely and sat down again, lowering John's hand to a more comfortable position while keeping it firmly between his own, and held it there in the semi-darkness until John drifted off again.

======

They woke up when the nurse came in at six to check John's vitals. Sherlock tried to unfurl his limbs from the unaccommodating chair while grumbling about the ungodly hour, and John tried to be helpful by offering his hand up for the nurse to check his pulse and the blood oxygen clip on his finger.

When she let go, he noticed something on the backs of his fingers. At first, he thought it was the remnants of some tape, where monitoring equipment or tubing had been attached to him during surgery, but when he looked more closely, he realised they were new markings: two short, white bands across the top and bottom of each of his three middle fingers, and a white curve lengthwise along his little finger.

Once the nurse was finished - Sherlock gave her black looks until she left, but didn't say anything - John held his hand up so Sherlock could see.

"New one. What do you make of it?"

Sherlock leaned over to look, turning John's hand toward himself.

"Looks like plasters?" John guessed.

Abruptly, Sherlock flipped their joined hands over to look at the back of his own hand.

"What-?" John tried to sit up so he could see better, then thought better of it as his abdominal muscles protested.

There were similar white markings on the backs of the fingers of Sherlock's right hand.

"I don't get it," John said. "Why would you have plasters too?"

"Shh!" Sherlock hissed. He placed their hands alongside each other, comparing the markings. They were not quite identical; Sherlock had a lengthwise curve on his index finger rather than his pinky.

"Oh," John said, as he held his fingers together. "Look, they make a letter... A U, or a C."

"Very good, John," Sherlock said, meaning that he was already two steps ahead. He slid his fingers in between John's, curving their hands so that each fingertip slotted exactly against the web of skin at the base of the other man's fingers. "And, like this, an O. Or, quite simply, a circle." He tilted their hands so that the backs were angled toward John.

John looked quickly at Sherlock, slightly alarmed. "But it's not a-"

"It's whatever you think it is," Sherlock said. "The circle, of course, can be a symbol of completion, infinity, unity, and protection."

"But it's not a ring, I mean," John said, almost making it a question.

"It's rather large to be a ring." Sherlock took his hand back. "Or they could just be U's. If you prefer."

"U for utterly mental?"

Sherlock grinned. "Uniquely brilliant."

"Underhanded and devious."

"Usually right."

John laughed, as much as his stitches allowed. "Come here, show me again." He held out his hand with his fingers spread.

Sherlock slotted his fingers in between John's again, and they both watched as the perfect circle formed across their joined hands.

"That's amazing," John said, in the frank way he commented on Sherlock's deductions.

"A bit obvious," Sherlock said.

"It's brilliant," John insisted.

"Sentimental," Sherlock sighed, but he didn't let go.

"Undoubtedly."

"Undeniably."

And they let their skin say what they couldn't out loud.

(I need you.

I'm yours.

You complete me.

Forever.

I love you.)