There were things John knew now that he hadn't known before today. 

He discovered how church windows looked when the stained glass shattered, when the roof caved in on the pews. How craters swallowed houses whole, and fire consumed entire streets, hollowing out the frames of apartment buildings for ten blocks. 

John traveled through the midst of endless destruction, speechless, galled. The skeletons of blackened buildings were lined up like toy soldiers, street after street after street. He stared in thankless amazement at the rubble passing before him. Every few minutes, he would see a stray person picking through the ruins of their home and feel a stab of pity. It was a wonder his street had been spared - truthfully, he felt his luck was undeserved.

Although the night had been terrifying, they had gone untouched by German incendiaries while the rest of Bristol was relentlessly bombed for the third day in a row. He and Claire had fled to the bunker in their backyard and hid in stark silence as bombs thundered closer and closer. After the raid had ended, they'd emerged, shocked to find their house still yellow, still intact. 

John had figured that there had been infrastructural damage to the city. It wasn't until the bus started moving on the way to the academy that John put an image to the constant noise of the night before. He'd never seen Bristol so black, still smoking from the uncontrollable fires that had sprouted from incendiary bombs the night before. Even the sky was gray - it was almost as if the entire city had been drained of any color, and now John inhabited a bizarre parallel universe where everything was silent and cold and dead.

The only reason he had ventured out of the house was to - hopefully - speak to Mark, but now even that seemed dismal; there were only a couple people on the bus alongside John, and most of them looked to be nurses. Today, Mark technically had to teach a painting lesson today - but he may have just stayed home, in which case, this entire trip was useless. John internally credited it to the attempt he was making to rebuild the life he used to have, but an unwelcome and constant throbbing in his head was saying that he just wanted an excuse to see Sherlock. 

Which was untrue. John did not want to (and was not going to) see Sherlock. And as an aside that John definitely hadn't thought about in detail: he sincerely doubted Sherlock could play violin with a fucked up rotator cuff, anyway. He probably now had a cast over his ankle, his chest bound by ace bandages, a sling.

God. John turned away from the fathomless damage passing before him and slid his head in his hands. Why would he ever go back there? What was for him at the academy?

He could have just as easily gone to Mark's house and apologized. He could paint at home, with Claire, even in their tense mutual understanding that John had cheated on her. The idea was unpleasant, but how did it ever measure up to the cruel punishment of seeing Sherlock again, in the flesh, bruised body unobscured by chiaroscuro and flickering light? "Christ," John breathed, his eyes squeezed shut, breath pluming from his mouth like smoke. (Like Sherlock's cigarette smoke, like smoke from burning buildings. It didn't matter. Ultimately, John realized, they were equally as destructive.)

***

As much as the last two weeks had shaken the city, here he was, at the academy - and not only were there people, there were a lot of people. He couldn't quite believe how many. There was a line from the lobby leading to the canteen. The whole room was buzzing with energy, with gossip, with hunger. Men, women and children sat on cots that had been laid onto the concrete flooring for them. John didn't know what to do with himself, so he stood in the midst of the commotion and searched for someone he knew.

He could clearly see that the academy had been transformed into some sort of makeshift shelter for those who had lost their homes in the attacks. There were police officers, none of which John personally knew, but he was aware that some of them worked with James. Collins was a cop that he especially recognized. Stocky, blond but balding, and a face soured by time and sleeplessness, James had gone on hour long rants about the way Officer Collins had talked down to him after James brought Francis as a plus one for a work party. (Another racist, apparently.)

He'd been looking for anyone faintly recognizable for ten minutes when the door to the lobby swung open behind him and a sudden, familiar voice erupted up. "John?"

John went cold. Exactly who had been looking for, and he still hadn't been prepared, somehow.

"John, it's Mark," Mark said to the back of his head. 

John almost didn't believe it was really him when he finally turned around. He looked different, and not just physically. Yes, he was somehow taller. His brown hair had been buzzed, and his beard had grown - but he seemed more paternal, if anything. His features had lost the hardness and the scrutiny he'd had when he'd last seen John. How long ago was it? Six weeks? Eight? 

"Hey," John said, finally, the air in his lungs diffusing.

"Uh..." Mark trailed, his voice placid. There was nothing hostile hanging between them - just earnest confusion. And maybe a little shock. "What are you doing here?"

Seeing him again was like rediscovering a closet you hadn't opened in years. His air was the same, but Mark's eyes were so much darker than John remembered. He was unreadable, obscuring his own intentions by saying as little as possible. Not that Mark had ever been talkative. 

"I've been helping out," John stated.

"No, of course," Mark said. "Yeah. I was just" - he threw a finger back to the hallway he'd just exited - "helping out in the canteen. It's my break, now."

"Oh. That's... great, Mark."

Mark's gaze kept oscillating from John to the space beside him. "Y'know, I don't want to say anything, I really don't, but-"

"Just say it, yeah?" John murmured, almost resigned to whatever was coming. He'd never believed he would find forgiveness here.

"They need people like you at the clinic," Mark told him. "Now, more than ever." 

"No, I know. I asked to come back - today's my last day before I go back to surgery," John told him. All in all, John had expected rebuke or condemnation; Mark gave him a subdued nod.

"Ah. Heard it's hectic."

"I'd hope," John exhaled, before pausing. "Are you heading home?"

"Just taking a break, actually. Probably going to paint a bit."

"I," John started, the words hardening in his throat. "I brought my briefcase."

Mark said nothing, and John struggled to continue as he remained unreadable, dead still as people passed by them. The hesitation in the air grew thicker as the seconds passed, until John finally blurted, "If you'd want to - maybe we could paint together."

The faintest smile curled across Mark's mouth, and along with it came a swell of relief in John's chest. "No, yeah, mate," Mark said, "Free country."

***

In some ways, right now was different than before he met Sherlock. Not very, though, and not in ways that John wished to dwell on.

His priorities had shifted back to Claire and to work, with the academy taking the back seat. He couldn't really find the time to go there anymore, anyway. When he wasn't in latex gloves, hands dripping with antiseptic, he was eating, or sleeping. He had his routine again, uncompromising and feverish as it was. The clinic was constantly filled with people; men and women laid on mats in the hallways; receptionists set appointments within ten minutes of each other; John never had his hands clean enough, never dry enough. Always a speck of mucus or blood or excrement.

He almost lived at the clinic, now - ten hours of nonstop work, endless and rigorous and certainly too much, given Claire.

It was different. When he got home, dinner was never made. She'd started working at a textile factory a couple months ago and now she was a full time employee, although she didn't really need the money, anymore. Neither of them really needed anything. John honestly didn't know if they were working to help the war effort, or if they just wanted time away from one another. 

She was always sleeping in her work clothes; short hair in a mussed bun, dirty and fatigued. He made sandwiches for them on most days, if there was bread. If there wasn't, John steamed potatoes and greens. Then he would pull off his scrubs, slip into bed and try to make Claire feel loved in any way that didn't involve touching her intimately. 

He'd be polite to an extreme. He'd ask her about her day. He'd try to be a good fiancé, for both their sakes. But it was still... different. Rather than their relationship being an explosive series of highs and lows, being with her was a uniformly cool flame, burning steadily, torturously inexhaustible.

He didn't want to touch her and feel as if he made her dirty. Claire didn't want to feel like a second choice, although she believed that she was. And whatever happened or didn't happen two weeks ago, it was clear that Claire was not past it in any sense that counted. They could have fucked every day if it would have changed the way they felt about each other. John had the creeping feeling that she didn't want to fix them anymore.

Still, she allowed him to go to the academy in those rare moments of gut-wrenching peace. Which was also very different, because there were always people in the lobby, sleeping or eating or talking. Management had organized a remedial daycare for the children whose homes had been lost in the constant bombings. 

A lot of time at the academy actually wasn't spent on painting, really. As Anderson had made clear, any adult who went there regularly was willingly condemning themselves to glorified babysitting duty. It was as the days went. The only time John really ever got to paint was when he was teaching the other people there how to paint, which he did, after church service on Sunday morning. 

He went early to watch the pastor. John subliminally believed it was self-sabotage because the number of times the pastor uttered "abomination" in one service gave John heart palpitations, but for some reason, John still subjected himself to it. (Maybe it validated his self-inflicted misery? He couldn't figure.)

And as far as John knew, Sherlock wasn't coming back. John assumed he had gone back to Oxford, given that his entire home had been incinerated and his shoulder wrecked. He was probably finishing out his field credit there.

Sherlock's children - along with about twenty other children that had been transferred over from the Children's Hospital - were often shouldered on janitors and random nurses, watched in intervals, largely ignored. Which was why when Anderson told John to go to the music room once again, John didn't refuse.

He wanted to. But it wasn't as if Sherlock was ever returning to this war-torn city, to this concrete box. Not that it had lost any of its strange, inexpressible charm - it remained as disorganized and well-lit as when John had first stepped foot inside. A few of the posters had changed; John noticed the viola infographic had been torn off one of the wide windows, the residue of tape and paper under another picture of a cello. 

But all in all, everything was still in the same place. The carpet in front of Sherlock's leather seat was the same color and make. The cheap stacking chairs were still on the right side of the room, tucked into the alcove where the stove top that Sherlock had used to make John porridge resided. It was so familiar. Yet.

The door to Sherlock's office was shut and locked. No music. No commanding tones, telling John that his art was a cheap knock off of a better artist, no terrible breakfasts at the round table in front of the windows. No mornings where Sherlock made tea and John flicked open another sobering newspaper. His voice had soaked into this room. Every chair, every instrument, every place that Sherlock had touched or caressed or sat against had gravity, its own little magnetic field. Being here again felt like walking under shadows in the summer. Like being a ghost and passing through walls.

From behind him, the rustling from feet padding into the music room made John's thoughts disperse. Sherlock's students were tentatively filing into the room in a neat line, quiet, guarded, readying themselves for another day of disinterest.

John walked to the door to greet each of them. "Hello, good morning," he said, extending his hand to each child, one by one. Those whom he knew returned the hello with a smile.

When they had all settled, a hum of excitement spread through the children. "Alright, class!" John said, clapping his hands together to cut through their chatter. Three boys were hitting each other with sets of watercolors. "Jack, Isaac, Wilson! Hands to yourselves, put down the paint!"

"Dr. Watson," Jack wailed-

"Do I need to put you in the hallway again?" John asked him. That shut him right up.

The children were quiet on the red carpet in front of him, but fidgety. Alice kept poking Ronald in the side, Jacob was chewing on his fingernails, Lawrence was wiggling his knees, bouncing his legs. Almost no one was looking at him.

John leaned against a red chair, the familiar woven cloth pressing against his palms. Sherlock's chair - the one Sherlock never, ever sat in - but still his. 

"So." John crossed his arms over his chest, surveying the small crowd. There were a couple new kids that had to be watched - there always was. Everyone was under the age of ten, some of them sitting with crossed legs, some of them hunched over their legs, some on their knees. "For all the newcomers," John started, "my name is Doctor Watson. Um - I'm actually not a teacher, really. But I do like painting, so we're gonna be doing a lot of that. Does that sound okay?"

"Yes," came the chorus of thirty small children. 

"Alright, then. Um" - John reached behind him and procured a sheet of paper - "this is what we'll be using. And watercolors. Does anyone know what watercolors are?"

A boy's hand shot up, small and chubby. No one else bothered to say anything. "Okay," John eventually allowed after a couple seconds of silence, pointing to him, "what's your name?" 

"Daniel," the child immediately stated, no sooner than the words had left John's mouth.

"Daniel, okay," John repeated, laughing a little at the kid's unperturbed enthusiasm. "What are watercolors?"

"Paint," Daniel answered with such a conviction, so unequivocally. 

"Oh. Yes. That's true." The kids blinked up at him. "It's water-based paint. Which means if you use a brush to mix water into it, you can paint with it. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," the children said in droning unison.

"Alright. Good. So... if all of you would separate into groups of four on the carpet, that would be wonderful." As a thoughtful but stern aside: "Jack, you cannot work with Isaac, so don't ask."

He took a few minutes to make sure everyone was settled in their group, equipped with little cups of water and a couple sheets of paper. John eventually sat on the floor next to the children with his own watercolor paper. It was a group of three; Daniel, Lucy and Isaac - Lucy and Isaac both Sherlock's former violin students. Isaac was painting furiously, deeply inside his own thoughts, captured by inspiration.

"Can I paint you, Lucy?" John asked politely. "I see you're painting me," he commented, peering over at her drawing. It was a man, as disproportionate and ugly as he was short and fat, with bright blonde hair. The colors were muddied and blending all together, but it was unmistakably him. She'd written "docter watson" in all lowercase in the corner of the painting.

Lucy, not usually very talkative, gave him a shy nod.

"I love your painting," he told her. "Are you going to have a background?"

Her black locks of hair quivered as she shook her head.

"I think I'll paint you at a fair," John told her, getting to work. A small head of dark curls, a pale blue dress. He painted cotton candy into her hand. Mixing on his palette, he made a soft peach morning light that faded into her surroundings.

"Y'know what I'm drawing?" Daniel blurted. "A dog." He held it up for everyone in the group to see. Lucy stared at it, enraptured, while Isaac hardly spared it a glance. "It's good, right?"

It was actually pretty terrible, even for an eight year old. John pretended to squint, taking the paper from him and really giving it a thorough inspection. Daniel held his breath in bated anticipation.

"Why is the dog purple, Daniel?" John asked him, momentarily giving him a bemused look.

"I just like purple."

"That so?" John inquired.

"Yeah. Pretty good, right?"

"Pretty good," John told him with a grin, handing the painting back to him.

"Luce," Daniel asked Lucy. "D'you like it?"

She blushed a deep scarlet. "Yes," came a tiny, melodic voice. She had stopped working on the painting of John and was now drawing her own rudimentary dog, which was green.

"Your dog matches my dog!" Daniel pointed out, smiling at her. She giggled and painted a little smiley face in the corner.

John turned to Isaac, who had stopped painting entirely. His paper was a blend of intense red color, frenetic motion, abstractionistic streaks of light and dark. He probably wasn't doing it on purpose. John didn't think children knew what abstraction was.

"What are you painting?" he asked Isaac, whose gaze was locked on some indistinguishable point beyond John, towards the door.

He was probably daydreaming, lost in his own world. "Isaac," John repeated with patience, "what are you painting?"

Isaac didn't answer. John pursed his lips, slightly annoyed, but looked back at his own little postcard-sized painting of Lucy. If John was being truthful with himself - with Lucy's face obscured by short dark curls, she really looked a lot like-

"Sherlock!" Isaac suddenly exclaimed, bouncing up from the floor.

The door behind John clicked shut. "Mr. Holmes!" Isaac shouted; John turned to look just in time to witness him crash into two legs that were standing in the door frame. The recipient of the violent hug gasped out a gravelly "oh," like he wasn't expecting it. 

A wave of gut-wrenching nausea spilled over John. His first impulse was to leave, to get as far away from that unearthly voice as he possibly could - but by then it had curled around John's chest, holding him down to the floor, constricting to the point of pain. Kids were rushing past John, towards Sherlock, hugging his calves close. Lucy had abandoned John ten seconds ago; she was also now attached to Sherlock, reaching for the hand that wasn't in a sling. "You're all so big!" John heard Sherlock say, his voice terrifyingly near, scorchingly warm, "Two weeks, and look at you!"

"Where were you?" Isaac asked.

"Oh, I had to go away for a little bit," Sherlock answered warmly. "I sprained my arm."

"Why are you back?"

"I wanted to see my favorite students," Sherlock replied, grinning.

"Hello!" a child shouted.

"Hello, Catherine," Sherlock said, squatting to her eye level, his body becoming fully absorbed into John's line of sight. And now that John was staring, he couldn't tear his eyes away. It hit him, full body, with such brute and unforgiving force. How much he missed Sherlock.

He had a beaming smile on his face, a real one, and he kept saying things like: "Susan, you look lovely today," and "Timothy, are those new shoes?" And John couldn't take it, couldn't take watching this precious man grin at these children like he'd just found himself again. "What have you been doing?" he asked them, and fifteen kids at once tried to tell him to come look at all the paintings they'd crafted. "One at a time," Sherlock reminded them.

"Dr. Watson taught us how to paint with watercolors!" Lucy yelled, completely uninhibited. "I painted a dog!"

The smile peeled right off Sherlock's face. His head snapped up from Lucy to John. All the air was sucked out of the room. And John had heard that life couldn't survive in a vacuum, but here they both were, alive.

He still was stunning. John wouldn't have been able to explain it to anyone out loud, but privately, John thought he looked crystallized, devastatingly permanent, a watercolor swirl of purple and alabaster. The gouge that had scarred over on his face was pale red, only noticeable under a shock of dark hair because the scar tissue had still not fully formed, glistening against the light streaming in through the windows.

He remembered neatly stitching Sherlock's forehead, fingers working the flesh, warm blood running down into the creases of his palms. He'd had Sherlock's blood buried under his fingernails for three days; he'd lost a week of sleep to the memory of that scar; he'd run every scenario over and over in his head like he could change what had happened. John became astoundingly aware of his own immorality - how could he find Sherlock beautiful, even now?

In truth, without any subjectivity, Sherlock looked like he'd been ripping himself in two for the last fourteen days. All the pinks in his face had drained, pale blue eye bags blossoming like periwinkles. The broken bones meant constant pain. John couldn't fathom it. Even though two weeks of rest meant that Sherlock was almost healed, that night had taken its toll on him. He probably hadn't slept for longer than three hours at a time since then.

"Dr. Watson taught us how to use watercolors!" a child shouted for his attention, which was now clearly placed somewhere else. Sherlock's eye contact was absolutely scorching; John sort of wanted to die. "Will you look at my painting, Mr. Holmes?" another girl asked. That question triggered a whole round of in-fighting. ("No, he'll look at mine!" "Yours is ugly, Tom!" "No, yours!")

All the while, Sherlock focused on the sight that was before him: John Watson, sitting on the carpet, surrounded by paper and watercolors. His legs were folded in front of him, body leaden, like the whole atmosphere suddenly had real weight. He couldn't read Sherlock for the life of him, yet - John still felt vulnerable, exposed under his icy eyes. Did Sherlock feel bewilderment? Cool, unforgiving hatred? 

"Will you play us violin?" Lucy asked. "Please!" Ronald added, and a chorus of children agreed, chiming in. "Please please please please please!"

Seconds that felt like minutes passed. Sherlock was still maintaining unbroken eye contact. "Dr. Watson..." he exhaled, voice unnaturally calm. John didn't have the presence of mind to glean any emotion from Sherlock that would make him feel less foolish. John's limbs were rotting under his inscrutable gaze.

"I'll go," John immediately said, voice firm and decided.

He had such ungodly desires. To hold Sherlock close, to apologize over and over again. To tell him: I was so stupid, so stupid. "I'll go," he repeated instead, gathering himself and his briefcase off the floor. Sherlock traced John's movement with his eyes as John briskly walked to the hat rack to gather his bowler and coat. "Goodbye," he stated, turning the doorknob and exiting into the harsh hallway. 

It was cold, here. The children were still bubbling inside, still begging Sherlock to play them something.

John closed his eyes against the uniform gray for a second and rested his body on the wooden door. His heart was beating a mile a minute. He'd never felt so foolish in all of his life. Showing violin students how to paint; "Oh, Jesus," John whispered, pressing his forehead into cold concrete. "Jesus."

After a moment of fully immersed self-reproach, John straightened his back and picked up his chin. He began to take it a step at a time, walking steadily, ignoring his pounding heartbeat. John almost made it halfway through the hallway. It was never going to be far enough.

Sherlock, did, indeed, begin to play something. The violin music was so familiar, so individualistic - it could have never been one of the children's. Never mind how hauntingly beautiful it was. It wove in and out of John, ceaselessly pulling a thread of sound through his chest, his hands. Walking became harder as the music rose into the hallway, irradiating John's cells; each crescendo made it more difficult for him to leave. The loud echoes of his footfalls didn't help to calm him, even as he tried to focus on it, even as he attempted to drown out the infectious song that now had turned the hallway into Sherlock's personal domain. 

And John was still Sherlock's domain, wasn't he? He hadn't been spared in this onslaught; the music was piercing John, revealing him to himself. Strong decrescendoes, closing in on him, creating holes where seconds ago there had only been pure notes of vibrato. He was still Sherlock's, somehow. 

Sherlock had told him that he wanted John to leave. Is this what he'd felt? Had Sherlock felt sound roaring through him, grinding and crackling in his ears, flammable, carnivorous? 

That's what John had felt. When they'd first met, Sherlock had been a fathomless shadow, a living representation of all of John's vices. Maybe it was all simply desperation, John thought to himself, rebuking his wistful ruminations, maybe all I ever felt for Sherlock was blind lust.

He remembered almost all of it. The swaggering grace. The insults. The energy in the room, as if Sherlock wanted to kill him - as if he was honestly considering killing him. (And he would have let Sherlock do it if it would have made John feel real again.) Every time their eyes met, it cleaved John open, exposing the rot that was inside. Did Sherlock see it? Is that why Sherlock chose him? 

John was rotten, gangrenous, stupidly absorbed in his own pleasure. There was little comfort in the thought that John had spent five months of his life wrapped in his indulgences, his own inherent vice: Sherlock Holmes. Maybe John had crafted his own personal misery. Maybe he had done this to himself.

And John could have sworn that he'd heard this melody before. This song. That precise, eerie, melancholic softness. So subtle in its pain. He could place the tune almost exactly. 

Oh, John realized with sickening violence. He suddenly ceased to move down the hallway, pressing his right hand to the crease in his brow. It's the same song. He'd been playing it. The evening we met.

Maybe this was fucking it for John. Because John could not recall, not once, feeling so utterly robbed of his agency. He remembered every agonizing second of breaking that boy's heart in university. He remembered breaking Harry's boyfriends' noses with his bare fists. He remembered Claire's voice when she'd said: "I know you're having an affair." It had been nothing like this. 

This was like being branded. This was like Sherlock was taking a pocket knife and carving his name into John's torso. And if John fully deserved it, was Sherlock still being sadistic? Was this his final comeuppance, a last hurrah for something already dead?

John was about to lose it. Anger, molten and crimson, was rising with the bile. He darted into the faculty bathroom, turned on the faucet and splashed freezing cold water onto his face.

He didn't give a fuck if he deserved it. He didn't care whether Sherlock was playing this as some sort of... last sonata, some kind of requiem. They'd ended it. They had both been willing participants in their demise, the whole way through. 

John glared at himself in the mirror, the running water doing nothing to mask the violin music. His reflection repulsed him, exacerbated his hurt to a boiling point.

What kind of trite, manipulative fucking shit-

The rage spilled over. John flung his arm at the mirror, full force. The glass splintered and sliced his knuckles open. 

"SHIT!" John yelled to no one, reeling back from his self-inflicted injury. A drop of dark blood washed down the drain, and the music didn't stop. Quieter, the anger quickly evaporating in the face of sickening pain: "Shit."

John slowly unwound his fist. Blood welled from his knuckles with persistence, pooling in the dips between his metacarpal bones. The cuts were deep. He knew what punching that mirror was going to do to his hand, and still.

He quickly wrapped his knuckles in twenty paper towels, wincing throughout. Doctor John Watson, huh?

John looked at himself again. The mirror had warped, the separate pieces breaking John's face apart, splitting him like a Picasso. Blood had smudged at the point of contact John had made with the glass, partially obscuring his eye.

John recognized the thing looking back at him, gaze hidden by halting shadow, by sticky crimson. He saw himself, finally, in the fractured pieces of glass. That monster looked a lot more like the John Watson he knew.

A/N: quick thing that some of you may have noticed - last time john was in this bathroom, he said that he "didn't know how to be a bad person" which is actually kind of hilarious considering what he thinks about himself now ^^^

This chapter was originally gonna have five or six more scenes, but I vastly overestimated how many words the last scene would be (it's sitting at 4.9k) so you're gonna get those juicy scenes another time B) MORE IS YET TO COME AND IT'S GONNA SUCK SO LET'S GO 👏😎

ps ty so much for the comments and votes!! Your support means a lot in the ways of actually getting anything done :)