The next few chapters should be much more prompt, but until then, enjoy this one!  Caroline comes to the rescue again!  Sherlock learns some things and deduces some things – two sides of a single coin.  After all, what is truth.

---

Sherlock sighed and resisted the
urge to pull the blanket up higher over John.  Reason wouldn’t make the
pathological need to protect any less, but common sense would.  He’d lived
long enough with the little veteran to know a single tug at the blanket would
start John awake, narrow eyed and full of enough adrenaline that he wouldn’t be
going back to sleep anytime soon.

And the boy needed rest.

While the old disappearing act had
filled Sherlock with equal measure of concern and exasperation, it also had
Watson brother plotting written all over it.

The Watson brothers would always
have things they kept secret among themselves.  That was just the way it was. 
After everything, it was only right.  Horrors needed to be put in boxes
and left in the corners of the mind to rot away in their own time.  

There were secrets he and Mycroft had
kept from their parents.  That they still kept.

“He’s starting to get to an age
where you have to let him make his own decisions.  He needs to come into his own,” Watson said.  His hands were tucked into his pockets, his
center of gravity perfectly balanced.

“Like you did?” Sherlock asked
him.

“Yes, you don’t understand how my
mind worked – not really – but you understand I needed purpose.  He’ll need purpose too.”

“Why don’t you tell me then?  Why did you do what you did?”  

Watson looked down at his
son.  “I don’t know.  The same reason you would have, I
assume.  Love.  Someone told me it’s a much more vicious
motivator.”

“That’s it?”

His smile was kind and sad, the
gentle tuck of his mouth ticked up at the corners.  “That’s all I can offer I’m afraid.  I’m not real after all.  One of the downsides of being a figment of
your imagination is I can’t tell you anything you don’t know yourself.”

“Why do I keep you then?  Should I have let you go?”

The hand on Sherlock’s shoulder
was the memory of warmth.  “I would have
said no, I would have wanted you to hold on to something that reminded you
you’re loved.  That you can love and it’s
going to be alright.  If I hadn’t then I
never would have entrusted you with my sons.”

“Wouldn’t you have?” Sherlock can
feel his face go soft and entreating.

The answering laugh was extracted
from that one case they had solved together.
There was the worry that overuse would wear it thin, but it hadn’t lost
its charming delight.  In a world that
turned boring in its predictability, Watson’s giggle held a brightness random
and comforting all at once.  “Don’t play
coy; if you want me to compliment you, just say so.  I liked you, I liked your brain.  I was happy that day, with you, solving that
case.  You made me happy.  That you could deduce if nothing else.”

“Ugh, why are you always teasing
me?” Sherlock crossed his arms.

“Because the boys are always
teasing each other and you suspect they got it from me.  You could find out, you know.  I won’t be upset, I’m dead after all.”

Sherlock stood very straight.

“Sherlock,” Watson paused, his
eyes set, far too piercing.  “It’s
alright to be curious about the other Watson. That’s just human nature.  You’re not failing me to want to know, to be
curious about his wife, and about his relationship with the other Sherlock.”

“What if I just learn the way I
finally let the other Watson down?  The
way I finally disappointed him?”

“John adores you, don’t let your
self-doubt make you obtuse.  We can talk
about that later.”  He pointed toward the
stairs.  “I may not be real, but that
knocking is.  That’ll be my brother.”

“Tim?”

“This is John’s territory, the
closest of Bad Davey’s outposts is twenty minutes away.  Yet Bad Davey’s lackey arrived at 221B almost
as soon as you were.  And without guns.  And without Bad Davey.”

“Tim told him.”

Watson smiled.  “Tim sees all.  Answer the door, Sherlock.”

Gasping as he came out of his mind palace with a jerk, Sherlock took
a couple tries to stagger out of his chair without waking John up.  He was down the stairs two at a time; Mrs.
Hudson would still be up anyway.  If Tim was here, so would Irene and the
insufferable Godfrey.

When he opened the door Tim (bespoke suit, ate gourmet on the
plane if the sauce on his sleeve was anything to judge by, stroking his phone
in his pocket) nodded to him, just about vibrating to get into 221B.  Godfrey was absent, but Irene stood at Tim’s
shoulder typing away on her mobile.
“Tim,” he said, stepping out of the way.

“John?”

“Sleeping on the sofa.  He tried
to be noble last night.”

Rolling his eyes, Tim moved past him to see his nephew.  “Ta for dragging him back home then.”  Tim tread as silently as he ever did,
something like a ghost.

“Sherlock, darling,” Irene said, finally looking up to give him
one of those looks so slow and heavy it was a physical sensation.  “I hope you don’t mind me saying goodbye as
soon as I say hello.  I’m a busy woman.”

“Presents for the Watsons again?” It was easy to lean against the
doorjamb and pretend he wasn’t counting away seconds to give Tim enough time
with his nephew.  It wouldn’t do to race
back up the stairs too quickly.

She smiled at him, ruffling her feathered lapels.  Irene had always been a master of sleight of
hand.  “I have to be the favorite aunt.”

“We all have to be something I suppose.”

Laughing she leaned forward, her perfume mixed with the warmth of
Godfrey’s aftershave.  The scents blended
perfectly because of course the Nortons used complimentary fragrances.  “I have to say I haven’t missed living in
your twee little place.”

“I missed you too.”

Her soft fingers held his chin in place so she could press a kiss
to his cheek.  “I have to tell you all
about how ridiculous Americans are later – there’ll be a Watson reunion of
course.  Very Game of Thrones, I’m sure.  I’ll
regale you then.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You’ll love it,” she waved him off.­ “Wait until I tell you about
my costar, he has these odd joker teeth and a penchant for talking too much
about old murders.  Surprisingly charming
once you get over his hobbies.”

He couldn’t help smiling, even through his worry.

She seemed to recognize it, because of course she did and caught
him by the hand.  “Darling.  You’ve been handling this, haven’t you?  Whatever this is?  What Auntie said didn’t make a great deal of
sense, but you’re handling it, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

Pausing for a moment, she tilted her body into a perfect
contrapposto.  “There are people you can
talk to, Sherlock, if you need to talk to someone.”

“When did we become so sentimental?” he sighed.

“Settling down will do that, won’t it?  The Watson patriarch was clever, wasn’t he?  Taking out all those threats with a single
swing.”

“He didn’t do anything to Mycroft.”

“Mycroft lives in a box.  He
can’t get over himself.  You, me,
Godfrey, we’re the real threats.  Just
smart enough to get into trouble, too dumb to figure any way out again.”   She patted his cheek.  “You look like you just woke up.”

“Mind palace.”

She rolled her eyes at him.
It charmed him enough he gave her a hug.

“Come now,” she said, palming his backside under his robe for old times’
sake.  “Not too sentimental now.  I have a husband to get to and you have some
Watsons to wrangle.”

“What an American word.”  He
stepped back, let her resettle herself, readjust the tropical green of her
feathers around herself again.  The
fashion had helped him on a couple barely a three cases and one that was almost
a seven, but he could see how much maintenance it took.

“I’m going native.  I’m also
off.  Hugs and kisses to the littlest
Watson.  Let him know I’ll be there to
spoil him at the get together.  He will
be in awe of my present giving brilliance.
I know what people want.”  She
winced a little at the connotation, but he let it go.

“I’ll be sure to tell him to react appropriately.”

She laughed, charmed enough by him to flip her cascade of
red-blonde curls over her shoulder as she skipped down the steps.  “See that you do.”

He missed the dark hair, they
looked so much more alike with the dark hair.
She’d have it back in a month or two anyway.  Still.
Closing the door, he took a deep breath before looking up the stairs.

Had he given them enough time?

Had he given them too much?

Tim had to have some idea about
what had happened.

There was the feeling he got
sometimes with Mycroft.  Like he was
watching some great shadow move behind a curtain.  If the Watsons didn’t know something they
wouldn’t be moving too quick.  While the
Watsons may not have a perfect idea of what was happening, they had to have a
theory.  Bad Davey had disappeared from
London sans revenge, otherwise the horrific murder of Mycroft would be on every
channel.  Bad Davey did like to advertise
his handiwork.  Roost likewise had gone
missing.  John had once broken his second
favorite mug, and the boy hadn’t left his brother’s side for days.  Now Tim was in town and Irene talked about a
Watson family reunion.  The sort of event
that could hold all the gravity of the meetings of heads of state.

He skipped the creaking stair because
a little eavesdropping never hurt anyone.

From the doorway he watched Tim
squeeze John to his side with the arm thrown over his shoulder.  Looked at John’s hands: loose and unfisted,
fingers apart, palms tilted upward.
Looked at Tim’s face: pinched between the eyebrows, nostrils flared,
corners of his mouth ticked down.  Looked
at the way their backs straightened and they turned toward Sherlock standing in
the doorway.

“Irene was supposed to distract
you longer,” Tim told him

“She does what she thinks is
best,” Sherlock told him.  The
uncle.  The man who could take John away
if he wanted.  It went against Watson’s
wishes, but then Watson was dead.  He
knew he didn’t need to be jealous, didn’t need to be so temperamental.  Every time he thought he turned a corner on
this, there was another one in front of him.
He was on the tenth corner, and it didn’t look like he’d run out of them
anytime soon.  The trick was just to keep
Tim off his electronics, John’s electronics, everyone’s electronics.

“I want to tell him,” John said,
looking at his palms.

Tell him what?  Sherlock went up on the balls of his feet
took an involuntary step into the flat.

Tim stood up quickly, gritted his
jaw.

Something big then.  Something huge.  A real mystery.  Watson then, or Grendel, or the brothers.  Something John had a right to tell Tim even
though Tim was his uncle.  There was a
laundry list of possibilities that Sherlock began to assemble but promptly
pushed out of his mind, one should never have too many assumptions when approaching
John.  Still his heart beat fast in his
chest, his breath sped.  

“We can trust him.  Tim, please.”

“I’m not worried about him.
You know what will happen when you talk about it.  Especially after yesterday.”

“It’s important.  We have to do something to fix things.  They have to go back to their world, it’s not
fair to keep them here just because talking about it might cause a little panic
attack.”

John never had little panic
attacks.  Every panic attack was terrible
and needed never to have happened.  But
also, John was about to share a mystery with him.  Parenting was hard.  

And it wasn’t his decision to make
one way or the other.

John did need to come into his
own.

Also he needed to tell Sherlock
what was so important, such a risk, so clever, it might put the Watsons at risk.

The Watson-Dimmock men shared a
heavy look that lasted too long.

“Fine.  Fine.  It’s
all fine anyway, isn’t it?”  Tim walked
over to the window, shoulders tense.
Pulling out his phone he started poking around his apps.  There was nothing else new to be learned from
him.

“Thanks,” John’s smile was
soft.  Too soft.  A distraction.  His laugh was real though, an inside joke.

“Sherlock,” Tim asked.  “Can I borrow your laptop?”

“Sure,” he said and then caught
himself.  “Absolutely not.”

“You can use mine,” John offered.

Whatever kept Tim out of the
conversation.

Without sparing the man any more
attention, Sherlock moved to go sit down on the coffee table.  Before Watson he would have just said the
first thing that came to his mind to see what John’s reaction would be.  He trusted John to try to be open now.  

He also knew how hard it was for
John to open up.

“It occurred to me that if all
Grendel wanted to do was make more of his little soldiers after your father
destroyed his labs and he went on the run, then he wouldn’t have needed all
that power.”

John looked up at him.

“In all the newspaper articles
about mysterious explosions, there were factories and old power plants.  He wouldn’t have needed all those factories
for more children.  There had to have
been something more.  Something
industrial he was trying to make.”

Tim made a furious, exasperated
sound; John just offered him a small, proud smile.

“I knew you looked into his
European adventures.  You’re too clever
to miss the clues, and you were too interested in my father.”

“It was hard to miss once I knew
what to look for.”  He felt it was
important to let John tell him.  If he
tried to ask questions John would just get mulish again, he curled his hands
against the side of his thighs to try and hide his curiosity.  If it came to it he could always push later.  It took a careful hand to interrogate someone
who knew what he was feeling with a look, who knew him so well.  If Sherlock wasn’t careful John would have
him paying attention to entirely the wrong thing.

“The project my family was a part
of, that was Grendel’s main area of focus.
He was trying to create a prototype of this thing –”  John looked down at his hands, they were
trembling, his breath rattled in his lungs.
“I.  It.”

“Prototype?  He was making a new one of… whatever it was?”

“The old one didn’t always work
the way it was supposed to work.”

“How was it supposed to work?”
Sherlock leaned in, weightless with morbid fascination.

John winced.  “I’m sorry, this is hard to talk about
it.  It’s complicated and dangerous, The
Thing I mean.  It has an entirely binary
effect.  Either you hate it and want to
kill it, or you love it and it makes you want to use it.  There doesn’t seem to be anything in between.“

“Fine,” Sherlock shrugged, “I’ll
hate it.”

“Will you?  You lo… you thought Moriarty was your friend
at first.  Even after that old lady, even
after those kids.”

“That was years ago.  I discovered Moriarty’s nature years
ago.  Can we put it to rest?” he snapped.

“I didn’t mean it like that.  I meant-
It’s powerful.”

"You keep
referring to it as though it’s almost alive.
As though it has intent.”

“Well it’s
not, at least I don’t think so.” John listed to the side, head waggling.    “It could be.”

“You’re
talking in circles." Sherlock was so close!  Whatever it was, it had to be big, big enough
for Watson to die for.  Big enough to give
up his life to keep secret.

A Mystery.  

An eleven at
least.

“I’m just trying
to find the right way of explaining the right way without sounding mad.  It wouldn’t make sense if I said it outright.”

Sherlock snapped,
seizing him by the shoulders.  "Just, how does it work!" 

John
started.  Then looked sad.  Then looked down.  His jaw set and
clenched in the way he had when he came to a decision.

"I’m sorry,”
Sherlock told him.

"Only
because if you think I’m mad at you I won’t tell you.”

Sherlock let out
a huff of annoyance, but couldn’t make himself argue.

“It’s okay,
Sherlock.  I know you.  I know you can’t resist a mystery.  I’m
not mad.  Davey’s head of family without anyone dad enough to put him in
his place, but I’ve given up too much to keep them safe."  When he
looked up again he looked just like his father.  “You need to let me speak
at my own pace.”

That made Sherlock shake himself
all over.  What had he been
thinking?  He was supposed to take care
of the boy.  Supposed to take care of him
in Watson’s absence.  He looked at John
and his stomach dropped.

John sat trembling in place, his
teeth rattling quietly in his mouth.  The
boy looked like he was trying to make himself small.  “Do you know why it takes children so much
time to start talking?”

Sherlock blinked, but accepted the
diversion, leaned forward to set one hand on John’s shoulder.

“It’s not just muscle tone, muscle
control – ability to speak, it’s also the brain.  It doesn’t matter how smart someone is.  The brain needs time to develop, sort, store,
learn.  It’s impossible.”  His swallow clunked in his throat, his teeth
chattered softly in his head.   “It’s
impossible for an eight-year -old, a six-year-old, a toddler to be a
surgeon.  Physically the mind hasn’t
developed enough to sort and filter.”
John spoke faster and faster as if he had to get the words out before he
fell apart.

“When you were eight, you didn’t
have an eight-year-old brain,” Sherlock said, held John together while he tried
not to shake.  That was what he was there
for.  To hold the boy to a sense of
safety.

“No,” John finally looked at
him.  “No I didn’t.”

“Mycroft and I have known since we
saw the scan of your brain that Grendel did something to you.  Genetically you’re peculiar, but nothing…  Nothing that would explain the advanced
development in a way that made sense.  It
had to be at least partially something mechanical to speed up your natural
genius.  We’ve known that for years, it
was just a matter of putting together the evidence.”

“I know,” John’s hand closed tight
around Sherlock’s wrist.  “After I fell
off that truck and you made me go to hospital even though I was perfectly fine.”

Sherlock and Tim both snorted in
tandem.

“Ahem,” John frowned at them.  “After that time you wasted everyone’s time
making me go to hospital, Mycroft showed you my brain scans.  But he knew it before then, didn’t he?  Told you.
But you hadn’t seen what he meant it person.”

“No, I hadn’t seen it for myself
before,” Sherlock agreed.

That got him a genuine smile.  “It’s so nice living with you sometimes, you
put the pieces together all on your own.  I’ve never had to try and explain.  You never brought it up.  You never made me talk about it.”

Of course he wouldn’t make John
talk about it, he still remembered the nightmares John used to scream his way
through.  “It was obviously part of some
unpleasant memories.  I imagine whatever
the process was, it wasn’t enjoyable.  If
you were ready to talk about it with me, you would.  Are you?”

John pressed his lips
together.  “No, I.  I don’t think I’ll be ever ready to talk
about it.  It.  Was.”

“Tim knows,” Sherlock sniped.

“He was my uncle, he had to know
because of.  Because of how we met.”

“Don’t tell me anything you don’t
want to.  I know it.  Your father was so kind, so good, but he
hated Grendel more than I thought someone could hate someone else.”

“How do you know?” John blinked up
at him.

“He made Grendel kill himself
while he watched.”

“Oh.”  John looked down to where his thumb still
rested over Sherlock’s pulse.  “I guess
you’re right.”

“I never would have thought Watson
had it in him.  He was too good,” Sherlock
said, totally on autopilot.  He got that
way sometimes in the middle of a deduction.
“He hated Grendel because he loved you and your brothers.  Love is a much more vicious motivator.  It was more than just the children Grendel
murdered, more than just the affront to God and nature.  More than how Grendel hurt you.  People are hurt everyday and the three of you
were in the process of bouncing back.”

John stared at him and the typing
behind him had stopped.

“He didn’t know I was coming.  He wanted to watch Grendel die as one of his
last acts on earth.  He wanted to feel
it.  It was personal.  But how was it personal?  It was more than just stealing his DNA,
stealing his chance to watch you grow up.
Grendel had deeply offended his spirit.
Offended his soul in a way he found abhorrent.  It wasn’t just that you were tortured, you
were tortured in a way that only he and you would understand.  Oh.”

John straightened in that way he
did without realizing it.  Mimicking
Sherlock when he’d had an epiphany.

“As the doctor, you didn’t just
have to experience it, you had to observe it.
You had to watch.  This is more
than just what he did to you.  This is
about what he did to your brothers.  This
is why David and Roost are far more protective of you even though they’re both
far more damaged.  The prototype.  The reason the first two generations had
difficulties wasn’t just because of the genetic alterations.  It was because of the machine.  It
didn’t always work.”  

The sound John made was purely
reactive, his eyes tiny pinpricks of panic, of the horror of memory.  Sherlock froze up, tensed tight into a knot.  It felt like something had dug its hand into Sherlock’s
abdomen and ripped his insides out, had hollowed him from belly to chin.  He could feel the revulsion lodged like a
meat hook in his soft palette keeping him quiet while John kept making these
little coughing anguished sounds.  He
sounded like an animal.  Sherlock reached
out with both hands, but John shrugged him off, wouldn’t let Sherlock pull him
close the way he used to.

The boy grit his teeth still,
forced his back straight.  “I’m fine.”  His hand squeezed tight around Sherlock’s
wrist.  “I’m in control of myself.  I’m not a child.”

His eyes closed.  

There was the rustle of Tim’s
suit.

“Shut up, Tim,” John snapped, eyes
squeezed closed.  “Not everything is a
straight line.”

“Look at me,” Tim answered.

John opened his eyes, tilted to
look past Sherlock’s shoulder.  It was
fascinating to watch the transformation, the way John calmed, focused, his face
was like a spear driven into the heart of the matter.  “Right.
That’s much better.”

“Is it?” Sherlock asked.

When John looked at him he looked
about thirty years older, but none the worst for it.  He had a bit of his father’s authority.  “I just thought I was over it.  Thought everything would be normal.  It’s not really alive, I don’t think.  It’s just a machine.  But I had thought we’d killed it.  This proves we failed, that it’s still a
threat.”

“Just. Don’t think about that,
John.  Don’t think about it.  Think about a solution.”

John nodded once, twice.  Breathed.
Was still shaking a little, but more like an annoyed dog then someone
about to fall apart.  “We can’t let anyone
use it again.  You can’t tell.  Please.
Please.  No one can know about it,
as soon as they do they’ll think it won’t affect them, that they can try to fix
it, try to make it work.  It doesn’t just
affect the person its pointed at, it has a sort of radiation to it.”

“No one’s going to use it.  I won’t let them,” Sherlock promised.  “Your father killed him, John.  He gave his life to keep your family safe.  I won’t let that mean nothing.”

Tim
was still typing away because of course that
was what he was doing instead of helping.
Well, he helped a little.

John
stood up to wrap his arms around Sherlock, hugged him tight.  “Thank you, Sherlock.  Just, thank you.  I wish I could tell you everything, I wish I
could say the words.”

“It’s
okay if it’s too painful,” he soothed.

“It’s not just that,” John clung tighter to
him.  “But it’s not just my secret.  And it’s so dangerous.  It’s just better this way.  Letting you figure it out yourself.”