innie_darling

Thank you, wonderful anon! Except for my remix fic, I only write asexual Sherlock and straight John - that's just how I see the characters, though I do enjoy reading other people's take on them as a couple, and also John/Lestrade - so I knew that had to be the relationship here. I think there's so much to explore with the friendship; it's so rich and rewarding.

I am treasuring your kind words.

This was really nerve wracking in an enjoyable way. Thank you for writing.

I'm glad you found it suspenseful! Thank you for reading!

Wonderful. Bits I particularly loved:

that reasonable voice, Sherlock realised, let him get away with so much.

That John, the unassuming, the friendly, the overlooked, had been the one to snuff out Moriarty's misbegotten life with his bare hands didn't fit with the narrative Sherlock had carefully crafted, and now he was floundering. He couldn't claim to have stayed away, to have deceived John, in order to keep John safe – Moriarty had been lurking in the shadows all the while, listening for each drop of John's lifeblood as it spilled heedlessly to the ground. He couldn't declare that he had been protecting John – John was the soldier, the shield transformed at the decisive moment into the sword.

- fixated on the story he'd been telling himself about events, and suddenly discovering that perhaps he hadn't been quite in the right, had been too used to thinking of himself as the sole solution...

Thanks very much! I'm so pleased that my reading of John as capable and dangerous as well as cuddly and kind worked for you, and that it made sense that Sherlock would be taken aback by it. You're totally right in that Sherlock's not used to thinking about anyone other than himself being capable of acting decisively and rightly - that's part of what made writing this so much fun!

I'm glad you found sense in my comment because after I'd posted it I wasn't sure it made any! And I realised that I'd forgotten to mention how much I loved the showering/towelling/noticing marks of drug-use/Sherlock being unable to assign John's expression to a category -scene, and the almost depression-inducing illogic of John wanting to spend time with someone else.

There is an interesting horcrux-hunting tinge about Sherlock dragging himself around the city, unable to make contact with mainstream society, looking to neutralise Moriarty's network so that he's weakened by the time of the final confrontation, which pleased me (along with its undercutting at the end, of course).

And yes, I can definitely see John as more dangerous than Sherlock, exactly because a casual observer would assume that Sherlock was the dangerous one, while John has the social knowledge and demeanour to hide it...

Long response coming up - sorry. You made sense, but this might not.

I have a group of girlfriends (all in fandom) that I have dinner with every four to six weeks, and we usually discuss the stories we're writing. (They helped me figure out how to word the bit with Sherlock thinking about John sitting with his back to the window at Angelo's in this story.) Anyway, they know I usually write gen, and when I mentioned that I was writing a scene where Sherlock has to bathe John, they all said, "WHHAAAAAT?" But I knew that I needed that bit to keep the balance of the story (otherwise it's very much Sherlock needing John while not knowing or being able to quantify how much John loves him in return) and once I was able to convince them that the showering scene could happen in a gen fic, I knew I could write it. So I'm very pleased that the scene worked for you!

I had never thought of Sherlock and horcruxes together, but your explanation makes so much sense and I really like it. The idea that sparked this story was wondering what changes the modern setting would make on the realities of the hiatus. Figuring out that Sherlock could keep tabs on John via electronic surveillance instead of through Mycroft meant that I could free up Mycroft to be more of a free agent, which suited me fine. An unintended consequence of that, of course, is that Sherlock was truly isolated and completely on his own (and watching John and Mycroft spending time together). I sped up the hiatus considerably, but still, being forced to do without his brother's resources or John's quiet strength saps Sherlock far more quickly than he'd planned for. The story took over from me at that point - I hadn't intended to make that point, but it was the clear consequence of earlier events.

Thank you so much for your kind words!

A fanfic support group - how cool. Hope they gave you a prize for gen shower scene success.
The Sherlock POV of John & Mycroft's reactions and interaction is so successful 'cos his uncertainty with emotional clues makes us do some of the work - seems all those school-teachers who said things would have more impact/stick better if we worked them out for ourselves were right! Something I struggle to remember as a writer, even though I feel it as a consumer - that the audience/readers like to feel they've puzzled something out :-)

Did I not comment on this before? How did I not comment on this before? I may have been a bit taken aback by the darkness of it: Anthea's death, Sherlock committing murder, the rather abrupt ending (with Sherlock uncertain how Mycroft will react).

Yet it rings true. I hate to think of Anthea dead. (Not canon! Not canon!) I hate to think of Sherlock killing someone, but I have little doubt he'd do it in the circumstances we see here. He would kill to save John, but it would bother him; he's not emotionless, he just likes to pretend he is, and maybe even to believe he is. He doesn't value what he has until it's threatened; he has never had cause to value his brother before, because he never thought he could lose him.

I feel bad for Molly, but I love her chewing out the guy who tries to get information from her until Sally comes and arrests the man. She has more strength than she might appear to have.

I feel for John, who seems pretty wrecked by Sherlock's apparent death—but I like that he tries to muddle through, insisting on doing it his way. He won't give up the flat, but he won't doesn't simply withdraw into it, either. He's also more capable of defending himself than Sherlock—or Moriarty!—thinks. I'm wondering from the lack of hesitation, and from his meeting with Mycroft at a restaurant, if he and Mycroft were in fact aware of the bug, and had communicated more than Sherlock realizes? John would be perfectly capable of rising to the situation even without Mycroft's involvement, however.

I love that Sherlock apologizes, as difficult as it seems to be for him, and the way he tries to process John's reactions, especially this part:
That the fury was on Mycroft's behalf and not his own gave Sherlock a sudden, dizzying hope – that he was secure in John's affection, that the choice John had made to love him was fundamentally unshaken despite what he'd done. Hope had not figured largely in his life before, and he felt his throat closing up with fear that it was false; he had never before wanted anything other than the truth.

I'm glad to see from your recent post that you're working on the sequel!

Hey you! Yes, this one was darker than my other stuff, though hiatus fic sort of demands it, I think.

I really didn't want to kill Anthea - I like that she's so mysterious to Sherlock - but that was the only way that Mycroft could convincingly wash his hands of Sherlock that I could think of. Mycroft himself was supposed to just let Sherlock go, not stick around and befriend John, but obviously that didn't happen. It definitely wasn't my intention to imply that John or Mycroft had any knowledge of Moriarty's bug; Sherlock happens to catch them meeting because of when he tunes in, and it's left to the reader to decide how often J&M have been meeting up.

I'm glad you bought this version of Sherlock and John! I've been trying to figure out how Sherlock would woo back his brother and John and finally realized that would be enough to build the next story in the sequence on. Fingers crossed I can get that done soonish!

Thanks!

Ahhhh. That was really wonderful. I think you have such a great grasp on Sherlock's voice and motivations, and even his little behavioral quirks. Also satisfying was the way you fleshed out Moriarty's command structure, which is not often done in this fandom. Most of all, I really loved the shift in dynamics that came with Sherlock listening via Moriarty's bug (the perfect combination of 'unsettling' and 'ouch' and 'yay, spying'), especially through that last confrontation.

Thank you for putting so much work into this. It's the details that made this story really sparkle for me, and I'm sure it must have taken a lot of effort to put together a work of this scale. Brava/o!

I'm grinning madly at this wonderful comment - I'm so pleased that the small details all added up to something for you! Sticking to Sherlock's PoV was tough and there were definitely moments that I wanted to abandon it, but I think it justified itself by shining a light on Sherlock's thoughts and actions. I'm glad too that the bugs made sense to you in this story.

(That's me in the icon, so it's "brava." Thank you so very much!)