John was happy.

He reached out for the glass of white wine and took another sip, enjoying the flavour. He checked his watch. Ten to eight. He smiled.

Mary should be here soon.

He unfolded the menu again, and glanced at the Mains a second time, more to have something to do than decide what to eat. He was aware he was alone in a fancy restaurant, and, out of habit, was determined to look busy until his date arrived.

While reading the description of the roast lamb for the third time, he sensed her arrive. He looked up, the smile already brightening his expression. He always knew when she was near him. She thought he was silly, but he could always, somehow, feel when she was by his side. He loved it.

He loved her.

He opened his mouth to greet her, but the words were lost as he took in her beauty. Her hair was carefully pinned back, making her fathomless eyes all the more visible. He felt his heart swell at the sight of her, at the playful smile on her lips, at the knowledge that she loved him too.

"Mary," he savoured the word as he had done the wine. There was no comparison which felt better on his tongue. He rose to kiss her.

"John," she smiled back as he kissed her cheek.

"You look …" at a loss for words to describe how the soft material hugged her figure, he let the sentence trail off into endless possibility as he pulled her chair out for her.

"Thank you. You don't look to bad yourself, doctor. I'm sorry I'm late, traffic was hell. Have you ordered?"

John sat back down, habitually putting a hand over his tie and pulled his chair in closer to the table. "No, couldn't decide if you'd prefer the lamb or the salmon."

"Oh, when in doubt, always choose the red meat," she joked. She unfolded her menu and cast her eye down the page. "Hmmm … Yes, definitely the lamb." She put the menu aside and looked up at him. "How was the clinic?"

Pouring her a glass of wine, John looked up as he answered.

"Uneventful. Had the Jones boys back in again. They're just passing that flu back and forth, their poor mother's in bits. But," he added brightly, "I prescribed them a new antibiotic I think will do the trick. How about you? How was work?"

"Fine, but I-" she broke off as a man appeared at the table, automatically fumbling for the menu to place her order.

"Ah, yes," John said, glancing up. "Can I have th-"

The air caught in his throat. He looked up at the man standing before him. It wasn't possible.

It was Sherlock.

In a second that contained an eternity, John's mind replayed the last time he had seen that face. Neither the three years nor his desperate determination to forget it had eradicated the image that had plagued in his mind for months. The image that had haunted his nightmares for the best part of a year, the horrible, heart-shattering image of Sherlock's face, pale and bloody, that had risen to the forefront of his mind whenever the guilt surfaced.

He glanced to Mary, unsure. This couldn't be possible. She was looking from Sherlock to John, clearly wondering why he had stopped mid-sentence.

"John."

John's heart tightened at the single word. The voice that had driven him close to insanity on many occasions, the voice he had missed so fiercely.

It was better than he remembered. He dimly noticed the undercurrent of - fear? Excitement?

His jaw dropped.

"Sher-" He couldn't get the word out. Saying it had caused so much pain, it was as though his tongue had forgotten how to form the word.

"John, what's going on?" Mary's curious voice barely registered in the shock of this sudden apparition.

But it couldn't be an apparition. Mary could see him; she was trying to catch his eye, no doubt to ask him who he was. His eyes were fixed on John's. He'd forgotten the exact shade of greenish blue. They were hiding something, though his mind was too scrambled to see what. Maybe it was the fear that had echoed in his voice.

"John, I …" the sentence remained unfinished. Sherlock clearly didn't know what to say. How unlike him.

John rose from his chair, eyes still fixed on the ghost of his best friend.

"You're … alive …" The words were barely more than a whisper.

Sherlock smiled.

Then the smile faded.

John's arm was pulling back, and before Sherlock had time to react, it was flying forward, driven by the thundercloud of grief and confusion and pain that had plagued John for three long years.

He felt his old friend's nose crack as his fist made contact. Before he knew what he was saying, John found himself yelling.

"You BASTARD! You utter, lying ass!" His fist pulled back again, but Mary leapt to her feet with a startled cry and grabbed his arm.

"Mary NO, let me hit him, let me go!" He was barely aware of what he was doing. Rage and pain had mingled together in a maelstrom of energy, and the only way to release it was to hit, was to hurt the man he had once called his friend. The man he had trusted when he would trust no one else, and the man who had lied to him for three years. The worst lie.

"John, stop!" The alarm in her voice finally broke through the confusion. He looked into her eyes, breathing heavily.

"John," her voice calmed him, soothed the turbulent storm of emotion that was threatening to tear him apart from the inside. He sought refuge in her deep eyes, as though they were a balm to his burning.

His breathing calmed. He looked back at Sherlock, whose nose was bleeding. Sherlock wasn't looking at him.

The manager appeared beside him, and informed them that they were making a scene and that he would be 'grateful' if they vacated the premises. John didn't say a word. He grabbed Mary's hand and brushed angrily past Sherlock, knocking his shoulder forcefully as he passed.

Once outside in the drizzle, he let Mary's hand go. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice strained. "I'm sorry, Mary, but I … I have to go. I need to …" He couldn't find the words. He didn't know how to begin to explain this to her.

He'd told her of Sherlock, not much it was true, but he knew Mary had read the old articles. She knew he had been his friend. She knew he was dead.

"John, it's alright, listen to me," she put a hand on his cheek, forcing him to look her in the eye. She could see he needed to be alone, needed to get over the shock. "Go back to the flat. I'll meet you there later - with take out." She smiled as he nodded, still unable to speak. He kissed her cheek, a little more forcefully than he normally would have done, and stalked off in search of a cab.

Sherlock's mind was reeling. Stupid, stupid. He had known what he was going to say to John when he finally saw him again. He thought he'd found the right words to explain his disappearance, and his sudden return, but when he'd seen John … after so long … the words had vanished.

He tried to ignore the now familiar pang of pain in his chest. He'd seen the hurt in John's eyes, and knew he was the cause of it. His eyes, which were as familiar to Sherlock as his own, had changed. They had regained some of the pall of helpless frustration and pain that had filled them when they'd first met, left there by all John had seen in Afghanistan. It was subtle, but noticeable. Sherlock knew Afghanistan wasn't to blame this time. He distanced himself as he felt the guilt rise in his chest.

The woman was waiting for him when he left the restaurant. He glanced briefly up and down her person. The furry black coat she wore was expensive; the hair carefully styled for the night out with John; her nails were manicured regularly; the red lipstick accentuated the shape of her lips. Clearly this night out had been a special one. An anniversary?

Smiling, she held out a tissue for him. He took it, glancing at her hand as he did so - and felt his heart turn icy. She was wearing an engagement ring.

John was engaged to this woman.

Anniversary.

Sherlock felt an unfamiliar twist in his stomach, a peculiar mixture of shock and jealousy. John was engaged. Sherlock didn't even know the woman's name. Regret washed over him at the time he'd lost with John, and he couldn't help but feel somewhat … replaced. If John was engaged, what would he want with a friend that had vanished for three years?

Sherlock mentally shook himself, banishing the thought. The business with Moriarty had impaired his ability to distance himself from emotion, a consequence that continued to annoy him.

"So you must be Sherlock Holmes."

"Yes." He was looking the way John had gone, and had time to see him hail a cab nearby and climb in. Even from this distance, he could see the rage in the man's bearing.

"That didn't go as you planned, did it?"

Sherlock looked back at the woman. "Not exactly, no."

He held the tissue to his bleeding nose, remembering what The Woman had said when they first met, "Someone loves you. If I had to punch that face, I'd avoid your nose and teeth too."

She held out a hand. "Mary Morston."

Sherlock shook it, then returned the tissue to his nose with his other hand. He glanced, without realising it, in the direction that John had gone, as though hoping to see him coming back.

"Don't worry, he'll come around."

Sherlock returned his gaze to the blond woman beside him. She was smiling. He looked quizzically at her. She glanced around before answering, clearly stifling a giggle.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't look so happy," she said, positively beaming now. "But John said, I don't know how many times, that this would happen. That one day we'd be reading the paper in the morning or taking a stroll somewhere and you'd just turn up out of the blue." She chuckled at the memory. "I thought it was just the grief talking at first, but the more he told me about you, the more I started to believe him - he was so sure, sometimes."

The smile left her features. She looked Sherlock directly in the eyes, and he saw an accusation there, bold and clear.

"But then he stopped joking about it. He stopped mentioning you at all." Sherlock's heart seemed to sink slightly in his chest. "I asked him once, about a year ago, why he didn't talk about you. And do you know what he said?"

Sherlock's voice was barely more than a whisper. "No."

"He said that it had been to long. He said that if Sherlock Holmes hadn't come back to him by then, then he never would. So he must be dead."

There was a pause. He didn't know what to say. Mary broke the silence, her voice laced with anger now.

"It took me months before he'd even mention you, and even then he couldn't even say your name most of the time. It wasn't until we'd been together for eight months before he stopped looking sad when he thought I couldn't see. I knew he'd been a soldier, I knew he'd been through hell in Afghanistan, but you, Mr. Holmes are the reason he had nightmares for over a year. You are the reason he'd sometimes feel so guilty he couldn't breathe - he blamed himself you know! For calling you a machine the last time he saw you, for not getting to you in time after you'd jumped, for leaving you alone in the first place!"

She was standing close to him now, and her voice was like venom.

"He blamed himself for you jumping, Sherlock. He thought you must have jumped because of what he said. He thought it was his fault."

Silence.

Sherlock was stunned, speechless. He had no idea John would be so affected …

When Mary spoke again her voice had regained its composer, the anger held once again in check, but the steely edge was still there.

"So tell me, Sherlock Holmes." She waited until he looked her in the eye. "Why did you do that to John?"

His mind was still reeling. How could he possibly explain it all to this woman? How could he make her understand? Hoe could he make John understand?

He swallowed, hoping his voice would be audible, and replied with the only thing that would make her understand. He hoped.

"To save his life."