Sherlock couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. He couldn't deduce. He couldn't think.
He sat in the middle of the living room of 221b, breathing hard, shaking, loosing his mind. He'd heard it, the shattering of glass, the thump of a body as it hit the floor. John was dead. He was dead and Moriarty had killed him.
Earlier that morning Sherlock was riding in a taxi back from the Scotland Yard, after jailing one of Moriarty's assassins. The case had been simple, this assassin obviously not being one of the master criminal mind's best, or maybe thats what Moriarty had wanted. It was always a game with him.
He was almost to the flat when his phone beeped with a new message. It was from an unknown number
'Play with mine, I'll play with yours. A gun shoots faster than water pours.'
It made no sense to Sherlock, they never did. This was one of the few empty threats he received from Moriarty weekly so he shrugged it off, focusing instead on formulating an experiment on how many days it took for a person's internal intestines to rot before their last meal was lost.
When he arrived home he was met by John lounging in his chair sipping on his mug of tea. He glanced at Sherlock with a small smile which Sherlock returned and then went back to the newspaper he had been reading. Sherlock had continued to his room grabbing a couple nicotine patches and returning to the living room, automatically flopping onto the couch and habitually bringing his clasped fingers to his mouth. He didn't even bother to take of his coat and scarf as he fell into deep thought over the previous case , making sure he had caught everything.
It wasn't till hours later that Sherlock was shaken from his reverie by the shattering glass and the thud. His mind raced quickly deducing that those sounds could only have been caused my a sniper rifles bullet through glass and the thud matching the fall of someone of John's height and weight.
John.
After that moment his head had gone blank. John was gone. His John, his doctor, his friend. He stood, not knowing why, to check upstairs? John was dead and Sherlock never even had a chance to say goodbye. He lost his only true friend. That thought brought him to his knees, unable to move from that spot as his body began to heave.
His face was wet. With...with tears. He was crying and couldn't stop. He didn't even have the power to call for Ms. Hudson, for anybody.
"Sherlock?"
John's distraught voice suddenly filled Sherlock's ears. He looked up to see John standing there, his bag of groceries dropped and spilled on the ground and his face a mix of fear and concern. What the hell had happened that brought Sherlock Holmes to his knees, crying?
Sherlock didn't move, just stared up at John his mouth opening and closing, but no noise coming out. Within moments John was on his knees in front of Sherlock, his hands checking pulse rate and for signs of violence with medical ease.
"Sherlock," he whispered, "Sherlock, what happened?"
"You, you, you...you were"
"I was what Sherlock? Breathe, Sherlock."
"You were dead."
"What?" John asked astounded, utterly confused at why Sherlock would udder such a statement. Sherlock only looked at him, tears surrounding those gorgeous silver irises.
"Oh, oh, oh. Sherlock... I'm here now. I'm alive."
John held Sherlock's hot face, staring intently into his red rimmed eyes. Sherlocks hands drifted across his shoulders, gripping tight to the fabric there to let himself know that this was real, and John, his John, was alive. John only sat there, and continued to hold Sherlock, his thumb stroking against Sherlock's temple in an attempt to relax him.
"I'm here, and I'm never leaving.