It had been raining all week, a freezing deluge that left the Thames River engorged, roiling angrily in its overfilled banks. Its slate grey waters rushed loudly enough that you had to strain to hear the sirens wailing from the fleet of police cars clustered along the side of the embankments. A hundred voices shouted at each other into phones and radios and ears while camera flashes popped like so many tiny cracks of lightning nearly disappearing in the wake of the real thing roaring in the heavens above the heads of these onlookers.

Some crazy nutter had blown up a perfectly good bridge and everybody in London seemed to want a firsthand view of the proceedings.

DI. Gregory Lestrade was less than impressed. Spinning around to address the only person present likely to have any idea as to what the hell was going on he was stunned by the vision in front of him. He had known Sherlock Holmes for just over six years and he could honestly say he had seen the man at his best. He had also thought he had seen him at his worst, blotchy skinned and skeletal hopped up on enough cocaine to horrify any rehab center. But he had never seen him like this.

Eyes that were normally a disdainful icy blue were dull and ringed in an irritated red. If the man wasn't crying now (and how could anybody tell when standing in this infernal rain?) he would be soon. His skin had abandoned its normal porcelain paleness in favor of a sickening grey. His fists were clenched unthinkingly at his sides white knuckled and shaking. And most astonishing of all was the fact that the man was silent. Sherlock Holmes was at a crime scene, but he wasn't deducing anything. He wasn't butting into any of it. He wasn't forcing his way into the center of the group of forensic specialists grousing about the collective stupidity of the entirety of the Scotland Yard. He was just standing there… hyperventilating.

Warily Lestrade approached him, placing a cautious hand on his elbow. "Sherlock? Sherlock what is going on?" He started. Then, glancing around, Greg realized what was missing from the scene. He hadn't seen Sherlock without John in so long it was frankly embarrassing that it had taken him this long to notice the little army doctor's absence. "Sherlock, where's John?"

The trembling form of the consulting detective froze, his haunted eyes snapping to meet those of the confused Detective inspector. But he didn't answer. Instead he took one more short, painful sounding gasp of soggy air and promptly fainted at Gregory's feet.

Shocked, all DI. Lestrade could do was stare at the younger man lying in the mud. What the hell was going on? And really, who was going to explain this to Mycroft? And where the hell was John?

One Week Later

Sherlock sat numbly in the front pew of the church Harry had chosen for John's funeral. Though, he wondered vaguely, did it count as a funeral if there was no body? None had ever been found. At first this had offered some hope that John had somehow, someway, managed to get to safety in time. John was a soldier he could have should have found a way. But as minutes turned to hours turned to days it became clear that John (Oh God JOHN) was gone. John never would have left Sherlock waiting.

But the time for hope was over. This was the time for goodbyes. John's mother had already been to see him before the service started. She had yelled at Sherlock, because he had pulled John into this life of puzzles and crime solving. Because Sherlock hadn't saved John. Because Sherlock had lived while John had died.

She was right of course, not that Sherlock had agreed to her face. Sherlock hadn't said a single word to anybody since the night of the bridge explosion. But yes John's mother was absolutely correct. After all Sherlock was the one who had kept the pink phone and used it to stay in contact with a madman. Sherlock was the one who could not keep from running straight towards any interesting danger he could find which had gained him the attention of Moriarty in the first place. Sherlock was the one who had pulled John in and kept him there, all because Sherlock was to selfish to let go of the only person he had ever truly liked, had so unwisely allowed himself to make a friend when he knew damn well a screwed up freak like him didn't deserve one. Especially not a friend as brave and kind and patient as John Hamish Watson.

Staring blankly at the flowers around the empty coffin (John hated flowers, they made him sneeze didn't these people, John's family know that?) he wondered what John would have said. He would never have agreed with his mother, John always stood up for Sherlock. What would John say about burying an empty coffin filled not with his person but with several of his most treasured possessions, as if some material goods would make a sufficient standby for the fact that John was not in there. Not John and not even his empty shell-that-use-to-house-him? John would probably just be upset that nobody thought that any of his dreadful jumpers had qualified as suitably sentimental. He had loved those cable- knitted monstrosities. Sherlock wondered what he would do with them.

Harry had wanted Sherlock to speak for John. Stand up in front of this group and talk about John, tell a story or some such, but he just couldn't bring himself to. Speaking and gone the way of eating and sleeping. Useless irrelevant and for the time being impossible.

Mycroft had tried to get him to sleep, even going so far as drugging Sherlock's coffee. The elder Holmes had forced Sherlock to stay with him fearing that he would relapse back into cocaine and heroin without supervision. The fact that Sherlock had not only allowed it but didn't deny it at all had Mycroft resorting to drastic measures in his concern.

The sleep didn't help. As soon as Sherlock closed his eyes he was back by the bridge on the muddy rain drenched grass to afraid to move, staring across it at John, once more in Moriarty's clutches, not two meters away from the bomb and less than one from the madman himself. He could hear Moriarty's mocking words gloating about how he would burn Sherlock's heart out. He saw John snap his eyes to meet Sherlock, his eyes and lips full of apologies (as if this were somehow JOHN'S fault) before turning and informing Moriarty that he was no longer willing to be Sherlock's weakness. Snapping the ties around his wrists John had lunged and grabbed the gun from Moriarty's hands before spinning and, much like Sherlock had at the pool, shot the bomb. Then there was hell.

They had found pieces of Moriarty, a leg, some… goop. Of John there was nothing.

Sherlock had screamed himself horse unable to wake up from the drugs. Mycroft hadn't made him sleep again.

"Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson said softly making Sherlock start and stare at her. "The service is over Sherlock." She whispered grief clear in her eyes.

Sherlock nodded sharply and glanced around for Mycroft who he had come with.

"Sherlock, Harry wants to talk to you before you leave." Mrs. Hudson stated.

Flinching Sherlock nodded, was Harry going to yell at him too?

"Please come back to Baker street when you can dear", she said with a watery tremulous smile before moving slowly away.

With a sigh Sherlock moved searching for Harry, wanting to get it over with so that he could leave, spotting her finally already walking quickly towards him and away from a frowning Mycroft.

Taking Sherlock's elbow she wordlessly steered him out of the church before turning to speak to him.

"One of the recovery workers at the bridge found something this morning and they brought it to me." She said fiddling with something in her pocket. "I know that mum blames you for" she waves her hand nebulously "everything that has happened. But she didn't see him after he came back from the war. My brother was dying, slowly. The war may have hurt him but leaving the army, it was like the civilian world had captured him in a jar and was slowly suffocating him. When he met you… that changed. It was like having him back, my brother, instead of the stranger he had become. He was happy. You were his best friend, all he would ever talk about when he bothered to call was Sherlock said this and he deduced that and Sherlock is so brilliant. So I think that he would have wanted you to have them." She said tearfully holding out her clenched fist.

Reaching out a trembling hand Sherlock accepted Harry's offering. With a metallic clink John's dogtags fell into his palm. They were burnished now and dented in places but easily readable, and wearable.

Harry, clearly having said her piece leaned forward and hugged him. Awkwardly patting her on the back he held his breath, and gratefully released it when she let go.

"Don't be a stranger alright? John thought of you as family and that makes you one of us." She said

Sherlock didn't promise anything and when he didn't react at all Harry just sighed sadly.

"I'll see you around." She said and walked away.

Sherlock stood for a moment in indecision before unclipping the chain of the tags and quickly re-clipping them around his own neck. John, Sherlock's only friend, would hang over his heart forever as a reminder never to open up or let anybody in ever again. John was special and Sherlock would never forget him.

That finished Sherlock gave one last long look at the coffin that would never hold his friend before walking stiffly to Mycroft's waiting car.

More than one hundred miles away the man once known as John Watson calmly drove down the road in the dingy car he had bought cash- in- hand taking the very first steps on his rode to destroying Moriarty's web. John was no genius, but he was a soldier. It was his job to protect his friends and family. Sherlock, bless him, could never have done it, he was all brain and no experience in these covert operations. And anyway Sherlock had never had to kill someone before, and John didn't want him to start now.

Pulling into the parking lot of a shabby store he quickly pulled out his prepaid phone to call his army buddies waiting for him up north. He wanted to let them know that everything was going as planned. After all he would need all the help he could get and the boys that had helped train him in covert warfare were more than willing. This was what men like them, men like John, lived for.

And John could finally feel like he had repaid Sherlock for all he had done, without his help John's limp and depression would have destroyed him. He wondered if Sherlock would ever forgive him when this was all over. Probably not, but he could worry about that later. Right now he needed hair dye, make up, and tea.