Prologue
"It's all true."
"What?"
"Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty."
John stood in the rain and watched the water slowly diluting the blood.
"The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade. I want you to tell Mrs Hudson, and Molly. In fact, tell anyone who will listen to you: that I created Moriarty for my own purposes."
Someone was talking to him. He could hear the voice, gentle, coaxing. He just stood in the rain; and watched the blood rinse away. Some part of his mind registered the cold and the wet as well as the pain in his left shoulder where he'd hit the pavement after being run down by the bicycle. A larger portion, simply didn't care about the weather or the ache.
"It's a trick, just a magic trick."
"Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please will you do this for me?"
"It's what people do, don't they? Leave a note?"
John's world bounced between chaotic noise and absolute silence. In the noise there were people talking to him, moving him under the shelter of a roof, wrapping a blanket around him. They were anonymous hands, hands that worked in the hospital, hands skilled at dealing with grieving family members. These people didn't know him, didn't know the man who had just …
In the silence he watched Sherlock fall, his arms spread, coat flapping behind him. John tried to freeze the images in his head. Stop them before they reached the inevitable end. Before he saw Sherlock's bloody head and body on the sidewalk.
"John? John!"
John came back to the noise to find Inspector Lestrade standing in front of him. John looked up at the inspector but didn't speak. He didn't know where the inspector came from, didn't know how long he had been standing there, and he didn't really care.
"John, come with me. We need to get you checked out and out of the weather." Lestrade reached a hand forward to guide John into the hospital.
"No." John stepped away from the offered hand. These hands did know him, and Sherlock. These hands belonged to a man who had tried to arrest Sherlock, who believed the lies.
"What do you mean no?" Lestrade asked. "John you're in shock. You need to get inside and out of this wet."
"No," John said shrugged out of the blanket and stepped back out into the rain.
"Please will you do this for me?"
"Leave me alone, Inspector," John said quietly.
"John." Lestrade tried again. "You need .."
"No!" John swung around on the inspector and in a flash was not a man mourning his friend but a very angry soldier. "I said, leave me alone!"
They stared at each other a few moments more until Lestrade relented and stepped back. "If you won't come inside, will you at least let me drive you home?"
John turned back to the sidewalk. The blood was mostly gone now, just a faint pink in the gutter.
"Where is Sherlock?" John asked still watching the water.
"They took him," Lestrade stopped. When John glanced at him, he swallowed and said, "They took him down to the morgue. Do you …"
"No!" John almost shouted. "No," he said again, though more softly this time. "A ride home is all I need, thank you." He rubbed at the ache in his shoulder.
Before climbing into Lestrade's car, John looked back at the walkway one more time. The rain had done it's work and all the blood was gone.