The more time passes, the more London realizes that hes never really had any choice in the matter. Every action leads to a reaction, and he is only acting out the script that he has been handed.

How else can he explain how everything just falls in place around him? It's like walking into a dream where you know what will happen, but are helpless to prevent it. Hes opened that door a hundred times, the result is always the same.

Life goes on. Plans are made. Obligations are upheld.

Alexander just wouldn't shut up about it. About any of it.

Despite the brothers not exactly being close or having a normal sibling relationship, it unfortunately doesn't stop Alexander from trying, from telling London that he cares about him and wants to help. A futile prospect, London knows that, but for whatever reason Alexander refused to hear it.

Closing his eyes hard, London focuses on his breathing. Alexander actually drove London here, well someone else drove and Alexander sat in the back seat with London, god forbid the British Government does anything himself. However he is in the car because at least that way London can't run. He hopes. Unless he wants another bullet wound or several to add to his collection.

Once London got his breathing under control, he opened his eyes once more. The gray skies are turned striped by the blinds, lending a stark white contrast to the shadows outside. The office is bright and happy, and the visitor's chair is far too comfortable. London sat on the very edge of it like a crow ready to take flight.

Comfort is a false sense of security.

The clock on the wall has marked off five minutes. Five slow minutes. An awkward greeting, and then silence.

London knows this drill. Dr. Finch wants him to open up. To let him in. To start talking. He wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of breaking first, so he remained quiet, making his own observations.

"Why don't you tell me why you're here?" 

Dr. Finch spoke first, of course he did. He thinks communication is more important than principles.

"You know why. I keep telling you."

"Then tell me again." 

His smile is infuriatingly patient. This is the third session, and London still has not managed to get him to lose his temper, much to his frustration.

"Because my brother won't take no for an answer." 

London can't quite stop the annoyed frown.

"Alexander." 

His smile is pleasantly and rather annoyingly neutral.

"Yes." 

As if there was anyone else.

"He's worried about you."

"I'm a burden. An inconvenience. He feels guilty. He should be in this chair. Not me." 

London looks around the room at everything and nothing, avoiding his eyes.

"But he's not. " 

Dr. Finch smiles softly, leaning a little closer making London move further back onto his seat, a move which didn't escape the Doctor.

"You are."

He looks like a predator, even though London knows he's not. He doesn't know anything. Not about him. Not about Alexander. You're just a nobody to him, a blank slate he's being paid to try and fill in.

"And from what you told me last session, your brother has indeed been exactly where you are right now. It helped him, so he hopes it will help you..."

London quickly interrupted

"Fix me, he hopes that this will fix me."

Fixable. As if he was a broken plate, something that could just be glued together. It doesn't work like that. Life doesn't work like that. Even if he could glue himself back together again, there are shards lost. To time. To trauma. Even if he could glue himself back together again, London could never be whole.

Without scars.

By now the scars are the glue, which has held him together. Stronger. Harder. In a way he's almost proud. He's lasted this long. That he's still here. Still alive. Points for persistence if nothing else.

"London?"

He shakes his head at the mention of his name, looking back towards Dr. Finch.

"Are you okay?" 

He asks softly.

"I'm fine." 

Another well practiced lie. Letting out the breath he had been holding. This had already been going on far too long and if it wasn't for Alexander and several of his 'Men in Black' waiting outside, London would've ran from the building long ago. The easiest and fastest way out of here was to tell Finch EXACTLY what he wanted to hear. The good Doctor wasn't the only one here who could act a role. The Consulting Criminal did it every day.

"Where were you?"

"Everywhere."

Which wasn't exactly a lie. Even though he was only one person, it didn't stop him from feeling like he was cut up into pieces and left scattered.

"How did it make you feel? Thinking about that?"

London shrugged.

"I don't even know where to start."

Dr Finch's words are quiet, unobtrusive.

"We have time."

Well in that case, it was time. It was showtime.

"Can I confess something to you?"

London doesn't look directly at him, the floor will do for now.

"Of course. Whatever you say does not leave this room."

He sounds so hopeful that had London been anyone else, he would have them believing he means it.

"I'm not even sure I know how to talk about these things. How I feel. Feelings were never supposed to be part of this equation."

Dr. Finch's smile is softly encouraging. Again a false sense of security, which someone was falling for and it wasn't London.

"Many people are finding it hard to talk about their emotions. You don't have to feel awkward about that."

London lets out a frustrated sigh. How was he supposed to find the words to share an experience other people wouldn't even have words for? He grits his teeth, settling on the feeling that's simmering under the surface.

"I don't feel awkward, I feel... Empty."

Dr Finch nods. London smiled to himself. This was too easy.

"Good. You are talking about how you feel. About how you really feel. That's the only way forward."

Whatever you say, Doc.

"Is it?"

"Yes."

He says as the faintest outline of a frown on her brow.

"Why? Is that bothering you?"

London hesitates.

"I...I'm not sure."

"It's okay not to be sure."

London clasps his hands in his lap, looking down at them. It isn't. It really isn't.

"I need to be sure."

"What will happen otherwise?"

The question is innocent, but it makes London flinch all the same, because even though this is an act, he knows the answer.

He'll fail. He'll fall apart. He'll be punished. He needs to be sure. 

How would Dr Finch feel if London pulled up his sleeves, revealing the maze of scars from years of self-inflicted cuts and needle marks upon his skin? Would he truly understand? Would he still be so determined to help him?

"London? "Do you need to take a break?"

His voice is soft as he nudges London's attention back to him.

"Do you really care what I need?"

It comes out harder than he meant it, because it's a slap in his face. How dare he be sympathetic when he doesn't even know the truth?

"I do. Of course I do."

He says, brow furrowing in concern.

"My brother pays you to care. Big difference."

London doesn't even bother to hide the barbs anymore. Alexander might be footing the bill, but didn't mean he had to play nice.

"I get paid to help."

Dr. Finch replies, a little more harshly than before.

"Caring is something I do for free."

London leans back, crossing his arms. Things were suddenly getting interesting.

"So you don't care about all your patients?"

"No."

He admits, not breaking London's gaze.

"Some people I get in here are absolutely vile. But that doesn't stop me from trying to help them. I'm a professional."

London steeples his fingers under his chin and leans forward slightly in his chair. Studying the Doctor in front of him. 

"Why care in the first place? Caring is not an advantage."

Dr Finch also leans forward slightly. Not backing down. 

"Do I need a reason?"

Touche.

"Everyone has a reason, you said so yourself."

Dr. Finch frowns and London can still feel him trying to read him.

"I'm concerned about your well-being. Because quite frankly, I am worried about you."

He's sitting there in his chair, focused, professional. Ignorant.

"I want to tell you..."

London starts, fighting his own rising dread.

"I'm sensing a 'but'."

The pause he leaves after the word makes it easier to continue.

"But I keep telling myself it won't help. It won't matter."

The truth.

"Why would you say that?"

London sighs and looks to the wall behind Dr Finch.

"Because nothing really matters in the end. Good or bad, we all end up the same way. And I'll deserve it."

"I am not a nice man. It's important you and everyone else understands that. It's going to save you all a great deal of time and effort. There is not a warmer, kinder me waiting to be coaxed out into the light. I am acerbic. I can be cruel. That's who I am. I am neither proud of this, nor ashamed of it. It simply is. In my work, my nature has been an advantage far more often than it has been a hindrance."

Dr Finch raised an eyebrow and crossed his right leg over his left and leaned back in his chair. London kept his focus on the wall behind the doctor.

"Ah, yes, your work. You like to call yourself a Consulting Criminal. I imagine that must leave you conflicted, at a crossroads more often than not?"

If only it was that simple London mused.

"Yes. I commit crimes and I can solve them. Some days it's a blessing that helps distract my criminal side, I get bored, so it allows me to focus on using my brain in ways crime doesn't. It's a completely different type of adrenaline rush. Other days it's a burden, a curse, that has me wishing I was never born and fighting the urge to grab my gun and pull the trigger. So when life gets too strange, too impossible, too frightening, there is always one last hope. When all else fails..."

God he had told himself this speech so many damn times, he had actually started believing it.

"There's a place for people. The desperate, the terrified, the ones with nowhere else to run..."

London trailed off briefly, taking his eyes from the wall to study Dr Finch, who simply kept quiet and nodded for London to continue.

"My front door. If there's a queue, they join it. I feel I could live in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds and any version of reality, they'd still find me."

It was the truth and he was so tired but it's all he had. It was the one thing he was truly good at and helped him feel not so... dead?

"Every task, every interaction, no matter how seemingly banal, has the potential to contain multitudes."

Impressive. it would appear that Finch was somewhat smarter than London gave him credit for.

"London, I'm going to ask you a question and I want your complete honesty. No hiding or deflecting. You will answer me. Have you ever attempted or thought about taking your own life? You spoke earlier of getting bored and being the Consulting Criminal helps with that but does it really? A mind like yours, its got to be a nightmare at times."

London, for the first time since the session began, looked Dr Finch directly in the eyes and admitted what Alexander may or may not have already told him and if he had it appeared Finch was waiting to hear London admit it.

"Yes."

London almost didn't recognize his own voice, so soft and unsure. So child like.

"When was the last time you had these thoughts?"

Dr. Finch had opened a door and was now focused on walking further through it.

"I'm not sure. They come and go, but... I think the last time, the most recent, I was standing on the roof of my apartment building, I don't even remember climbing up there but I do remember thinking about jumping. You know falling is just like flying except with a permanent destination. It's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing."

Dr Finch's sudden and sharp intake of breath didn't escape London's attention.

"Have you had these kinds of thoughts often?"

Every second he breathed.

"Why don't you tell me how one of those thoughts get started?"

Really? He wanted to place this game? Well who was London to deny? The game was now afoot and he wanted to see how far he could take it.

"Think back, try to describe how things happens, how you felt before that thought popped into your head. They don't come from nowhere."

Scratching one of the scars on his inside forearm safely hidden by his jacket, London paused, making sure it appeared to Dr Finch that he was truly trying to find an answer.

"I wish I could tell you, but I can't. It really is out of the blue. I can be doing something, anything, and all of a sudden I realize that if I just stepped over the edge of the roof of my apartment building I would finally die. Or walked into traffic. Or cut my wrist instead of the bread. Or putting some of my chemicals into my cup instead of coffee or tea. Things like that."

If he leaned any further forward in his chair, Dr Finch was going to hit the floor, a sight London wouldn't be opposed to seeing.

"Intrusive thoughts."

London nodded.

"Yes."

Keeping the game going, he added.

"Loud ones."

Deafening.

"Alexander?"

Of course he would bring Alexander into this. The one person he knows is connected to London and he tosses the name out there like a life-preserver. He uses the one person who could possibly and has on multiple occasions kept London alive and the one that keeps following him here (and quite a few places in between like leaving England several times to come and find him in America) and waiting outside for him as if he's afraid he wouldn't go otherwise.

"Maybe he'd miss me, but he'll be better off without me."

That's not even up for discussion.

"I know from speaking to him that he would not agree with that and you know it."

London hates it but he's right.

"He has never understood what's good for him. Like giving up on me."

"Do you tell yourself people like Alexander would be better off if they gave up on you not because it makes you a better investigator but because it's some sort of penance?" 

Touche Dr Finch, touche.

"For whatever happened in England. It has occurred to me that it might be something that you do and not even know it."

London knew exactly what he was doing and penance was near the bottom of the list.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. The people who come to me, the desperate, the terrified, the ones with nowhere else to run, they can be helped and they know it. Just like I know I cannot.

The sooner this was realized and accepted...

"It's truly incredible the way that you can solve people, puzzles, just by looking at them. What would you do without those you help? Without your brother? Without the mask of the Consulting Criminal to hide behind? What would the real London Holmes do?"

Finally the Doctor had asked somewhat of a challenging question. A question that London was entirely sure that he wanted to answer and apparently his body language showed as such. The doctor refused to let up.

"You don't know, do you? You don't know and that terrifies you."

It was true. He hated not knowing anything and was starting to hate that the Doctor was getting to him, this was London's game, not the Doctors but it was quickly becoming that. London needed to put an end to it, to take back what was being taken from him.

"You're absolutely correct. Give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I crave for mental exaltation. I also crave the psychical and that does terrify me but not for the reasons you may have already thought. I may be on the side of angels but I've never claimed to be one. There is a reason, one very major reason, that I was exiled at my own brothers request I may add, from England. Do you like games? I do. I'm extremely good at them. However things happen, pieces may get broken, people may lose interest or..."

London leaned forward in his chair and for the second time during the session made eye contact with Dr Finch. It was time for the kill shot.

"The players lose their lives."

London leaned back, steepled his fingers under his chin and waited. He had said all he was going to say. It was up to the good Doctor to either carry on, pretend he didn't hear the confession or remain quiet and let London leave. The clock was ticking. However Finch never got the chance to make a decision. There was a knock at his office door and a voice rang out into the silence.

"Excuse me, Mr Holmes? You brother requests your presence immediately."

He wasn't even in the room, yet Alexander once again managed to put a stop to London's antics at the most opportune time except this time it was welcomed by the Consulting Criminal. London stood from his chair, straightened out his jacket and tie and headed for the door. Pausing just before he turned the door handle, he turned around and took one last look at the Doctor who still hadn't spoken a word. If the doctor wasn't going to have the last word, London was going to make sure he did and he was going to make it count. He wanted the doctor to remember it. To think it over and over again until when and IF London returned for another session.

"The only promise a puzzle makes is an answer."

London smiled to himself and opened the door to find one of Alexander's 'Men in Black' waiting for him. Together they walked out of the office and back to the car where Alexander was waiting for them and London didn't know if he wanted to thank or tear into his brother. Opening the door to the back of the car, the look on his brothers face said it all.