Notes: The "Four/Five + One" format and "Sherlock coming home" theme have been done to the moon and back, but this is my first attempt at both, just as a way for me to dip my toes into the fandom. Not beta'd or britpicked, apologies for any mistakes or typos.

Theories of Impossible Homecomings

1. with anger (42% probability)

His skin breaks on the second punch, and Sherlock has told himself five, I'll let him have five and no more, so when he feels blood start to dribble down his cheek, he doesn't wince, doesn't complain.

He's expected this. He's brought tissues to wipe the blood. John wouldn't like it if he used them now.

"You – " John stops himself again, the seventh aborted sentence in five minutes. He puts his palm to his lips, as if preventing something from leaving his mouth, or swallowing back whatever great emotions he's been holding in for three years, five months, nineteen days, eleven hours.

"Me," Sherlock says, and apparently it's the wrong thing to say (requires revision; backspacedeletedeletedelete) because then John's throat does something funny, a sort of half-sob half-yell, and his face screws up and his eyes are tired and – oh, yes, and the crinkles of his eyelids, and tears.

Sherlock raises his hand to catch John's fist in his own (he'll let him have his third later, John will want to administer it with four and five after Sherlock's said his piece) and reaches into his coat with the other hand, pulling out a tissue to offer as an – an apology, a white flag, he's not sure with this sort of thing, but John grabs it and smears it at his eyes and doesn't make another noise aside from a soft sort of gasp.

It's very quiet for ten seconds, then fifteen, twenty, and then there's just the noise of John's breathing and a muffled sob. Sherlock removes John's hand from his own and John grasps at the lapel of his coat.

And of course he knows the answer, but because his flatmate three years prior would tell him now is the time to be considerate of these things, Sherlock says very quietly, "Would you be willing to hear it?" and John just presses his nose to Sherlock's bony collarbone and nods.

2. with shock (31% probability)

Sherlock is watching the blizzard outside, standing with his back to the door, when John comes in with the shopping. No cane, two-week-old cold, overtime at the surgery, Tesco's was out of beans. He opens his mouth to say hello (in this scenario John is the one who arrives; it would only be polite to greet him first) but is interrupted by the sound of the groceries dropping to the floor, milk bursting over the floorboards and trickling down the stairs as John passes out.

An hour later they're sitting on the top step. John gets off with a cut on his cheek from where it hit the railing, an aching leg, and a large bruise on his elbow; Sherlock gets off with a few uncomfortable bumps in his sides from hauling John back up into a sitting position. John grabs a fistful of his coat, yanks him closer, and breaths.

"John?"

"I don't understand how you do it," he says. "All I can see is wet snow."

Sherlock wipes away a smear of blood dribbling down John's cheek with the edge of his thumb.

"But your scarf smells like grease," John mumbles. "Does this mean you were eating Philadelphia cheesesteaks in America, or that you've been running amok in Italian pizza kitchens?"

"It means I was sidetracked by Mrs Hudson's insitence to feed me a sandwich from Speedy's before coming up to the flat, and I couldn't swallow it." Sherlock peers at John's hair. He'd had it cut last week and there's noticeably more gray than he remembers.

"Ah."

"It's on the counter, if you want to finish it. I hardly took a bite."

"Ghosts don't eat."

"I wouldn't know," Sherlock says absentmindedly. There's a new scar just in front of John's left ear, a small one, shaped from what looks like the curve of a nail. "I'm not a ghost."

"You must be. You're dead."

"I'm very much alive. You're only in shock." He touches the scar very faintly, just the tip of his finger making the lightest of touches. "Understandable."

"Patient." John sounds taken aback, as if he's still stunned, trapped in the middle of the moment when he saw Sherlock standing by the window. "Two-year-old needed her shots, cried like a rainstorm, tried grabbing the needle out of my hand and got my cheek instead. Nail dug into my face."

"Enough to draw blood?"

"Enough to leave a mark." John stands suddenly, looks down at Sherlock, and then down at the ruined groceries littering the steps. "I'll have to go out again."

"You're still in shock. Sit down. I'll go."

What surprise John may once have responded with to this declaration must, Sherlock assumes, be outweighed by his being caught unaware by his dead flatmate showing up in his home an hour ago, because John doesn't respond with any noticeable astonishment that he certainly would have three years prior. "Okay. Beans."

"Of course."

"I'll hit or yell at you when you get back."

"Of course."

"Sherlock?"

"Yes?"

John doesn't say another word, but he does smile, sort of: it's weak and sad and still a little bewildered, as if to say incredible or fantastic orbrilliant or maybe just unbelievable in every sense of the word – whatever it is, Sherlock understands, and he smiles back.

3. with grief (19% probability)

The mug tips from its perch on the armchair (his chair, John's been sitting in both regularly – for comfort, for reminiscence, for keeping it well used until Sherlock's impossible, inevitable return?) and the tea is going to stain the carpet, but John buries his head in his hands and takes a breath. "You bastard."

Sherlock doesn't take a step forward. The door behind him is still open. He hasn't removed his his coat and gloves and scarf, but he's still cold. "Would it help if I apologized?"

"Would you mean it?"

Sherlock doesn't respond because John wouldn't like his answer.

He doesn't cry. He just sits there. Sherlock stays standing.

After five minutes, or ten or twenty, or maybe an eternity (he would keep the time by how the snow gathers on the windowsill outside, but even he can't predict down to the exact second that) John lifts his head from his hands. "Okay," he says. "Alive, then."

He's not crying, but his eyes are the saddest Sherlock has ever seen them, filled with a great big something he's not sure the English language has a name for yet. An emotion that he seems to have misplaced over the past three years resurfaces, bubbles up to the forefront of his conscience and says fix it.

"I can't apologize for what I did," he says, "but I regret that my actions caused you anguish."

"You regret that your actions caused me anguish," John repeats, and that awful something is in his voice now. His tone rises, not out of anger, but from a sick sort of grief that Sherlock has only heard once before, in a graveyard when John had begged a tombstone, please, not to be dead. "Sherlock, you – do you have any idea? What you did to me, to everyone?"

"An idea," he repeats quietly. "I find I'm starting to appreciate it just now."

This, of all things, makes John pause.

"And." Sherlock recognizes that something for what it is now, not in words, but in immeasurable emotion: it's what he's been feeling himself since he stepped up to the parapet of St. Bart's, some part bitter and other parts misery and maybe a little bit of relief, too, in knowing that his better half is (would be) all right. He pauses. "John."

"Yes."

"I did it for a reason, you understand."

John looks very much as though he wants to simultaneously embrace and toss Sherlock out of the window into the storm. "I didn't do as you asked. When you told me to tell everybody you were a fake."

"I know."

"Of course you know." John huffs out something Sherlock refuses to call a laugh, stands, and reaches around him to closes the door, and somehow every bit of it says I missed you or I still miss you or possibly something else that's still getting lost in translation, but there's no warmth to it, none at all. "Come in, I suppose. You can stay for the night. It's cold outside."

4. with rejection (7% probability)

"No," John says, but doesn't close the door (he's too polite for that, but he wouldn't invite Sherlock in, either, even with how cold it is outside. Sherlock can imagine how his hand tightens on the frame, predict the way it would jerk a centimeter closed). "God, no. Absolutely not."

"John – "

"You have to go," John says, and swallows. He's letting the heat out. He doesn't care for his new flat, has grown bored of his job already, uses his cane, lives off takeaway, slept two hours last night, has an appointment with his therapist tomorrow afternoon. But he isn't getting shot at, isn't falling from rooftops, isn't suffering in any physical way, at the very least. "I mean it. You're dead. Please don't come back."

Sherlock makes to argue his case – as the worst case scenario, of course he has a plan – but a very sleepy, very feminine voice from inside around the corner makes him pause. "John? Who's at the door?"

Sherlock turns, walks down the stairs, out the door, up the street, and does as John asks.

(requires MAJOR revision; DELETEDELETEDELETE)

reality

Sherlock doesn't let himself think about the remaining one percent when he pushes open the door.

"Oh," John says after a stunned minute, the longest of his life, and then he folds his newspaper and sets it aside. His hands aren't shaking. "…Mm."

Sherlock swallows, because it is polite for John to say something first, but he's not sure if monosyllables count.

John doesn't faint, doesn't cry, doesn't hit or tell him to go or stay. He just stares.

Sherlock says, "May I come in?"

"…Yes," John says, and Sherlock doesn't miss the pause. "Of course. Would you like a cup of tea?"

He wouldn't, but he says "yes" because John will want something to do with his hands.

John moves into the kitchen and Sherlock is still standing in the same spot when he returns five minutes later. In that time Sherlock has been measuring the noises and movements; John takes no time to himself, not even ten seconds to let himself digest the situation while the water boils, bustling around looking for mugs or moving around old newspapers until the kettle beeps.

"I imagine you'll want to move back in soon, then." John hands him his old cup (mainly unused; John's left his personal effects alone, hasn't touched them aside to move the old things to places where he won't have to see them daily) and sits down at the table against the window with his own mug. He looks very small.

"If you're agreeable."

John just closes his eyes for a long moment, then takes a breath and says, "Drink your tea. It'll get cold."

Sherlock doesn't drink his tea. He walks to the table, sets it next to John's elbow, and takes the seat opposite him. "I did it for a reason." And because he may as well, "For you." The timing's all wrong for this, but John isn't following any of the patterns and he doesn't know what to do. "It was in your best interest. I did it because you were in danger, you and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson were going to be killed, and I didn't have another choice."

"Okay."

"You're not allowed to be apathetic," Sherlock says, and almost snaps be angry, be upset, be furious or tell me to go, but for god's sake, you can't not care. "John. I know you have something to say about this."

John lowers his mug from his lips, still looking and acting for all the world as though they may be having a conversation about Molly's new cat; he lowers his mug and looks at Sherlock squarely, as if taking a leaf out of his book and analyzing some sort of explanation instead of asking for one.

Whatever he finds in Sherlock's gaze, he doesn't let on, but he does swallow and say, "I have a lot on my mind right now. But I think I should get some sleep before I say any of it aloud."

"Moriarty – "

"It's all right." John looks at his watch; it's an hour before he usually goes to bed (though usually, is Sherlock really in a position to talk aboutusually?) but John rises and takes his mug to the kitchen and drains it in the sink. "I'm going to head up. Today's been." He shakes his head. "Your bedroom's still the same. May have to move around some of the boxes. We had to pack up your things, the chemistry equipment and all. I'm sure you'll yell at me for it tomorrow."

Sherlock swallows. "John?"

"Good night, Sherlock."

Sherlock stares at his nearly untouched cup of tea, sitting innocently on the table, and wants to throw it at the wall, or fling it out the window and sweep everything else off from the table, as if to make up for the empty reaction he's come home to.

It's all terribly anticlimatic. Somehow, somewhere he's made an egregious error; he's only been back ten minutes and already this one percent requires the most revision, yet he's not sure where it's gone wrong, where to even begin.

He stands instead and pours the tea down the drain, then puts his hands on the edges of the sink and thinks.

When he's done thinking, he steps into his old room.

Sherlock looks around.

Sherlock flicks on the light and moves inside.

Sherlock hunts around in the boxes and takes out his violin because he's not sure what else to do.

Sherlock plays in the living room, then puts the instrument away for half an hour and thinks on the couch, and then he plays some more.

Around one in the morning he notices that the sound of his violin is not the only noise in the flat. Sherlock tucks it neatly back inside the case again, walks up the stairs, and stops at John's door. He knocks.

John doesn't answer, but John is too busy crying to notice, and knocking at 221B has always just been a formality, anyway.

Sherlock opens the door and steps through to find that he has been gone for quite a long while, almost too long. The violin has distracted his attention from the heart of the matter. This will have to be fixed.

John has a half-packed suitcase sitting on the floor with clothes trailing from the wardrobe, as if he's been changing his mind back and forth and back again over the past few hours. He sits now with his head in his hands at the foot of the bed and sobs.

Sherlock steps up to John, reaches into his pocket and hands him a tissue, no longer useful to him considering Scenarios One (and Two and Three and Four) has been so incorrectly forseen.

"I thought of you," Sherlock says quietly, "often."

"So did I," John snaps, and he sounds so miserable and hurt and angry and terrified, Sherlock is sure he should do something comforting and reassuring and Good but this is all of his predictions and none of them at once so he just stands and stares and yearns.

"I didn't," John pauses to gasp, as if the crying is physically hurting him, and the pathetic napkin Sherlock offered isn't doing a thing to help. "I didn't believe you on the rooftop. But I stood at your gravesite and begged you not to be dead."

"I heard."

"You weren't supposed to hear that, Sherlock, that's exactly what I'm talking about," John snarls, and Sherlock is not so proud not to recognize justifiable fury when he sees it. "You – you're supposed to be in a hole in the ground, and you're telling me you've been there all along, you've been off doing god knows what while I've been mourning you, standing up for your name and getting mocked in the papers and – "

Sherlock lets him have his say, listens to all of it, and doesn't avoid the fist when it comes at him half-heartedly to hit him in the abdomen. John's face is very red and his hands are shaking and eventually, finally, the yelling turns into a much softer, quieter tone, until it fades into a very stunned silence.

Sherlock sits on the bed next to John. He smoothes down the duvet for something to do. Places his hand next to John's, very close; not touching, but just in case.

"You can't be alive," John says quietly.

"I assure you, I am."

"I know," John says and rubs his face, "but I can't believe it." He lowers his hands again and doesn't look so angry anymore, not even so apathetic as before, but a wretched kind of helpless that, for all his declarations otherwise, Sherlock can't help empathizing with.

"Shall I tell you the story? Or." He cuts himself off. Or what?

"I don't want to hear it right now," John says, and his forehead is crinkling again, the tight way that means more tears. "It's all right."

It's the farthest thing from all right, but the look on John's face tells him now is not the time to say such things. "Shall I find you another flat?"

"Excuse me?"

"You're packing." He gestures briefly to the suitcase, the clothes strewn about the floor. "Mycroft can arrange suitable accommodations for you."

John barks out a laugh; it's an awful sound, something that shouldn't be categorized as a laugh at all, but Sherlock isn't sure what else to call it because he's smiling, too, and it somehow makes him feel ten times worse.

"Why should I have to go?" John asks. His gaze and hands are steady. "This is my flat. You left, Sherlock. My therapist wonders why I have trust issues. I wonder what she'll say when I tell her my best friend faked his death for three years because he decided it was in my 'best interest.' Why not just," he swallows, "just stay gone, then, if you were thinking of my best interest?"

Sherlock doesn't answer, but John doesn't need him to, because he's working his way there, following the patterns and Sherlock knows he needs to go through the motions for it all to be all right. Sherlock's done them already, outlined the plans and made his deals with the longing and heartbreak on his own. Somehow, being reunited feels quite a bit like losing him all over again, and he's done his research: the stages of grief need to be upheld, need to be respected, even out of order, even on their own impossible terms.

So he understands it's necessary and isn't surprised that John stops speaking in hypotheticals and stops looking as if his world is ending all over again, even stops crying. (He apologizes for the crying, for god's sake, John.) If nothing else, it may be the only thing he understands of grief, but still.

When John is worn out, when his hand starts shaking again, Sherlock picks it up. John rests his forehead against his shoulder, closes his eyes. Sherlock listens to his breathing.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock says, and means it, this time.

John moves his hand to Sherlock's wrist, finds his pulse, and keeps his finger there.