Sherlock was staring at John. The conversation was one-sided, but that was nothing new. As was John's vacant stare. Sherlock was sitting in his own chair, leaning back while staring at John's gleaming forehead. Sherlock's hands were under his chin, fingertips touching. He did this so often he was scarcely aware of doing it now.

Without warning, Sherlock leaped to his feet. Suddenly irritated by John's silence. Stepping on the coffee table to get to the couch, Sherlock deliberately didn't look at the plastic face that seemed to be accusing him of not caring about people. Sherlock let himself fall on the couch and rolled over on his side, his back turned to the room. But mainly turned to John.

Sherlock couldn't remember why he had kept the dummies, but he'd had both of them stuffed in his bedroom closet. He'd put John's dummy in John's chair, telling himself he'd simply done that to have something to bounce ideas off. And honestly, the dummies input was about as useful as John's input had ever been. The real John, the John that needed to breath to live and would've used that breath to communicate his displeasure with Sherlock's actions, was in the hospital. With Sarah.

Visiting hours were over, of course, but John still knew people at St. Bart's so he had been permitted to stay. Sherlock realised John wasn't at the hospital because he wanted to be with Sarah, but rather because he didn't want to be around Sherlock right now.

Moriarty had kept his promise. Had not forgotten what he had said he would do. Except he didn't seem to have gone after Sherlock's heart. Or maybe he had. After all, John wasn't at 221b baker street at the moment.

When they had found Sarah, she was about to be buried alive by one of Moriarty's people. Just in time had Sherlock deduced where Sarah had to be. After all, there would only be one place you could get rid of a body with virtual no risk of it being discovered. The coffin had literally already been closed and was ready to be lowered into the ground, when Sherlock and John had burst in and stopped the funeral.

The look on John's face when they opened the coffin and found Sarah, drugged, but alive. Relieved but still worried. Sherlock's expression on the other hand, had been smug - one of victory. An expression he hadn't taken of his face, because he hadn't realised in time how John would react to it. Sherlock had actually been a bit surprised when he saw John's reaction to his own expression. And he could've sworn John was about to hit him. And most likely would've, if Sarah hadn't chosen that moment to try and speak.

As Sarah got lifted into the ambulance, John had looked at Sherlock in a way Sherlock couldn't recognise, because he had never seen that look on John's face before.

Hate.

No, not hate. Disgust, Sherlock guessed. But then he did sometimes have trouble reading people's expressions. He could almost always guess their motives, because there weren't a lot of different ones, but expressions… they were tricky.

The moonlight had changed into sunlight and Sherlock was still lying on the couch. His eyes were closed, but he had been awake all through the night. Moriarty would be awake as well and he had to find a way to stop him.

You can't be allowed to go on, the strange duality of Moriarty's voice was a very clear memory in Sherlock's mind. Somehow the memory of his own threat seemed weak to Sherlock now. Catch you later. It seemed…

The door banged shut. It had been open all night, because Sherlock never bothered with closing it, but now it banged shut. Sherlock looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of John disappearing into the kitchen. Sherlock stayed on the couch. He considered pretending to be asleep. But in the end could find no logical reason for doing that. So instead he dragged himself off the couch and walked over to the kitchen himself. He moved towards his microscope, pretending to check one of his experiments.

John opened the refrigerator and took something out. Sherlock wasn't able to see what without moving his head, so he let it go.

Still without saying a single word, John passed Sherlock and started moving things around to free a space on the table. Sherlock had occupied the kitchen table as a small laboratory, filling it's entire surface with strange looking bottles with colourful liquids inside. John continued with his passive aggressive way of clearing a small corner for himself. Sherlock stayed exactly where he was. He noticed John sometimes glanced at him, but didn't let on that he knew.

Then, without warning, John suddenly swept most of the bottles and other junk off of the table. "You don't even care do you?" he suddenly almost yelled at Sherlock. Sherlock looked up, his face still calm and composed. He looked at John as John continued. "Sarah's in the hospital because of us and you don't even care!"

Sherlock raised his chin slightly. Still not responding to John's tirade. He could see angry tears in his friend's eyes, but that wasn't something he could act on. As usual this display of emotion made him uncomfortable; he simply did not know how to deal with it.

John clenched his jaw and looked away. Presumably trying to calm himself before speaking again. Apparently he decided against even trying, because he left the kitchen without saying another word.

Sherlock could hear the TV being switched on. He stayed at his microscope, still pretending to be looking at a slide. He would've liked to go back to the couch, but for that he would have to face John and he wasn't certain what he would see. If John was crying, he wouldn't know what to do. In his life Sherlock had accumulated no data that would help him comfort a friend.

A phone rang. Sherlock shuffled some of the papers still lying on the table around to find it.

Sherlock? The voice on the other end was Lestrade. It wasn't surprising, there were only three people who had Sherlock's number and out of them Lestrade was the most likely to call him.

"We've found another one," Lestrade said. Sherlock's brain quickly went through all the possible meanings of that sentence. Another body? But he wasn't working on any cases at the moment. Another case? But why would he say 'we've found another one.'

"Sherlock? Are you there?"

Sherlock realised he'd been silent for a while now. "What did you find?"

"Another message," there was a short pause, "of sorts…"

Sherlock hang up without responding and got up. He took his coat from the back of the door and then turned to John. He hesitated. "Coming?" he finally asked.

"What?" John sounded agitated.

"Lestrade found another message from Moriarty."

John didn't look at him once during the cab ride. Sherlock couldn't help but glanced at his friend from time to time. But John's gaze was always fixed on the window or something outside.

When the cab finally slowed down at their destination, Lestrade was there to meet them. He came towards them with long strides. "Stop," he yelled at the cabdriver. "We have to get to St. Bart's."

Sherlock could feel John moving next to him. Leaning forward, across him to talk to Lestrade through the open cab door. "What's happened?" he asked anxiously.

Lestrade shook his head.; he didn't want to say in front of the cabdriver. "Is it Sarah?" John asked, almost climbing over Sherlock to get out of the cab.

Lestrade just shook his head, but it wasn't clear whether that meant she was unharmed, or that he didn't want to tell them just yet.

"Sherlock, get out, we'll take my car, that way we'll get through traffic a lot faster."

"I'm not going in a police car," Sherlock simply stated. John turned to look at him, his eyes full of disbelieve and anger. "Sherlock!" he said.

Sherlock ignored him and closed the cab door. "I'll meet you at St. Bart's," he yelled so they would hear him.

Naturally John and Lestrade arrived long before Sherlock did and he hoped John would already have visited Sarah by now, so he would not have to join him in her room. He had no doubt Sarah was unharmed. If Sarah had been harmed, Lestrade would have dealt with it in a very different way. He would have said so on the phone, hoping Sherlock - as a friend of John's - would be able to break the news to John more gently than a stranger would. Of course he would've been wrong.

Both John and Lestrade were looking particularly annoyed when Sherlock finally met up with them. However, neither of them tried to reprimand him for his conduct. "This way," was all Lestrade said.

They entered a hallway where two policemen where keeping people out and Sherlock could see that one of the rooms had the familiar police tape across it's door. Lestrade lifted it so he could enter the room and held it up to allow Sherlock and John entry.

It was an unremarkable hospital room in every sense, except that only one bed was occupied and there were half a dozen people in the room, all examining it. The body on the bed was that of a middle-aged man. There was no sign of any injury and yet you could immediately tell he wasn't simply sleeping. He was dead.

"The theory is someone must have injected him with a poison," Lestrade said. He moved closer to the body and pointed at a small red mark on the man's arm. "But we're still waiting on the results of the toxicology report."

"Someone?" John asked incredulously. "You mean Moriarty."

"No," Sherlock said determent. "Someone who works for him." John looked at him aggravated.

Lestrade looked from Sherlock to John, frowning slightly and clearly not sure of what was going on.

Sherlock ignored both of them. He moved to the bed and took the clipboard from the end of the bed. He studied it. Then glanced at the body. Handing the clipboard to Lestrade - who took it despite feeling like Sherlock's subordinate - Sherlock moved around the bed and threw the blanket off the man.

It isn't the same man, Sherlock thought to himself.

"We've…" Lestrade started to say, but Sherlock shushed him with a movement of his hand.

Sherlock straightened himself. "This isn't the same man as the one who was admitted." He stated.

"What?" John exclaimed.

"Sherlock, the hospital staff would've noticed if a patient got replaced with someone else," Lestrade said.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. Then started to rattle. "I doubt they would. They have to deal with an insane amount of patients and they would've only seen this one briefly. Most likely he was discovered by a single staff member, who would've only briefly seen this man and most likely have seen the actually patient only briefly as well. Add to that the fact that ordinary people aren't likely to notice something they did not expect and it is more than plausible a patient could have been switched for someone of similar build."

"But why do you think…" John started.

"I do not think, I know," Sherlock said. He took the clipboard back from Lestrade - who had been holding on to it dumbly all this time - and thrust it at John.

Despite his irritation with Sherlock and his underlying anger about Sherlock's callous behaviour towards Sarah, John took the clipboard and studied it. Every now and then he glanced up at the body. Sherlock fixed his eyes on John, as if willing him to see the truth as clearly as he did. Lestrade turned his head away from the two, trying to keep his calm.

"I don't see it," John said eventually.

Sherlock let out a long sigh and threw his hands up. "John, with your medical training you should be able to spot the obvious fact in there that tells us this is not the same man as was admitted.

John let out a deep breath and gritted his teeth, all in an effort to not let Sherlock's remark insult him. He failed spectacularly. "Fine," he said, thrusting the clipboard at Lestrade, who once again took it and held it dumbly. "Just take me through it, will you?"

Sherlock turned to Lestrade, "can you get me his shoes?"

"His shoes?" Lestrade started to ask for an explanation but soon gave up. Instead he instructed one of his officers to find the patients shoes.

When the young officer came back, he was carrying not just the victim's shoes, but all his clothes, Sherlock took one shoe in his hand and gave the other one to John.

"Fairly expensive shoes, fashionable, not too old, but obviously worn quite often; the leather around the heel and toes is soft, stretched," Sherlock was pouring out words at his usual rate, leaving no pauses for questions or remarks and really not a hell of a lot of time to process what he was saying. As usual John was straining to follow the monologue being thrust at him. Trying to pick up all the little facts Sherlock would expect him to remember.

"But… the soul is still firm, hardly pliable, unlikely whoever wore these did a lot of walking with them. A fact that's easily corroborated by the fact that there are almost no scuffmarks on the soles. As if the shoes were brand new, while we know they are not. So… shoes that are worn a lot, but shoes no one ever walks on. Therefore the owner is most likely paralysed."

John waited a moment before replying, half expecting more information to be thrown at him. But Sherlock remained quite, so John took his chance. "That makes sense, because his chart does mention he's paralysed from the waist down."

"Exactly!" Sherlock exclaimed. John knew that tone of voice too well, he knew Sherlock expected him to have cracked the case know. To understand what he had understood within seconds. But John didn't have a clue. And soon Sherlock face fell. He almost seemed disappointed that John hadn't figured it out for himself.

Sherlock took a deep breath. "The man in this bed obviously wasn't paralysed from the waist down."

"You can't simply…" Lestrade started saying, annoyed by the show Sherlock always made out of solving crimes.

"I can," Sherlock said. "Look at his legs. Really look." he moved around the bed and gestured along the length of the man's legs. The man was wearing a hospital gown, which meant his legs were mostly bare. John stared at the legs and couldn't see anything. What was he supposed to see? Sherlock had such an extensive knowledge of the most absurd things that there was no telling what clue he had seen.

Sherlock turned on his heels. "His legs, John, his legs!" he exclaimed. "A man paralysed from the waist down would not have those legs!"

"They're too muscled," Lestrade said.

"Precisely! They would've atrophied. These legs are clearly an active man's legs."

"Then the man was pretending to be paralysed?" John asked.

"I highly doubt it," Sherlock said. "I suspect the hospital staff would've noticed that during their treatment of them." Pushing past Lestrade who was looking at the shoe John was holding, Sherlock moved towards the other clothing items. He took out his magnifying glass and studied the jacket. "And this confirms it," Sherlock said, "The majority of the hairs on here are dark, not the sandy colour our victim has."

"But why would Moriarty even do that?" John asked, feeling more and more aggravated by the second.

Sherlock turned to John and hesitated for a moment. It wasn't something he was used to doing, Usually he just stated the blunt truth, no matter if it could be painful, but this time he paused. "It's a message John."

John looked at him, slightly frowning, almost as if he could sense what Sherlock's short pause meant. "From Moriarty, for us?" he asked.

"No, for me," Sherlock said, his eyes still fixed on John in that eerie way he had.

Then Sherlock turned on the heel of his foot and spoke to Lestrade, "John is missing something important. You said it was a message from Moriarty. How did you know?"