John sat there head lulled to the side until he was awakened by the pilot and flight attendant. Everything was too bright and too loud, yet simultaneously silent. He could feel his pulse in his throat where a large hard lump had formed. Somewhere, very far away, a voice screamed "John... John!" Something was wrong. This plane was supposed to take him away from Sherlock, to devoid him of his only reason for continued existence, because without him why continue? The man who had saved John so many times and in so many ways tried unfruitfuly to get a response as he lightly slapped his cheek and pulled on his coat collar. Mycroft of course new the problem; knew why what could have been a joyous reunion between his brother and…partner was going horribly wrong. Dr. John Watson had just overdosed. He saw this inevitability the moment he had arrived at the tarmac with his brother to meet Mary and John Watson. Mary and John had said their goodbyes earlier and now it was just left for Sherlock and John to do the same. It was fumbled and entirely unsatisfactory for Mycroft's taste. Neither of them could manage to say the things that they had always meant to say, had always felt. Mycroft, the clearinghouse of all things, couldn't help but pick up on the friendship that was more than just friendship. It had always been the case that Sherlock's business was inherently his as well. It was Mycroft's default setting, and the goal Sherlock's welfare. For the man of infinite accomplishments, capable of anything, this was the thing he most desired, and it happened to be completely unattainable. For the little boy who loved to chase puzzles, Watson would be surprised to find that he was Sherlock's most complicated one yet, an enigma within a man, who for him managed to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. As Mycroft watched his brother struggle to understand, to comprehend, what his best friend had done Mycroft pondered the follies of love, how it makes one blind. The reason Sherlock was incapable of seeing what was plainly obvious on the tarmac to everyone else. John Watson was high, and dangerously so. Mycroft even mentally congratulated Watson on his choice. Despite being ever the soldier, Mycroft and he both new that this death flight would be a painful and torturous one. Punishment for killing Magnussen he was to do some undercover work in Eastern Europe for a while. Well that was the cover story after all. What Mycroft and John had cooked up to tell Sherlock when Mycroft had visited him in his prison holding cell. John figured it had worked so well with Irene, lying to Sherlock, that it would prove again to be the best solution to the inescapable problem of his imminent demise. Try as he might Mycroft could not secure a pardon for the murderer of one of the most powerful men in Britain. Mycroft could tell however that John needed this story, needed it for his sanity, and had told it to himself so many times in order to be convincing to Sherlock that he had almost begun to believe it himself. Sherlock was willing to believe it on the basis of hope. That he could find John and rescue him from his punishment, the punishment of being his friend, of having believed in him to such an extent that he would blindly follow him into the house of a mad man. How Sherlock wished he could be the hero John thought he was. Standing there that night, that terrible night when Sherlock lost everything, he had tried to be a hero. Reaching around Johns back to grab a gun that wasn't there he was a deduction too late of understanding what John was capable of and willing to do for his friend and wife. John wasn't doing it for her though, he was doing it for the same reason he did anything, Sherlock. With that blinding clarity that struck him the moment Magnussen had said "no chance for you to be a hero this time, Mr. Holmes" John realized how utterly fucked they were and the consequences of what they had just done, and moved the positon of the firearm on his person accordingly. As he felt Sherlock's fingers lightly brush his back and Sherlock stutter as he finished saying "do your research" John resented Sherlock for the first time in his life and only for a split second. With one pull of a trigger he was about to lose everything; Sherlock, wife, and baby. All to prove he was clever the arse, but that wasn't true either, in his gut John new this had all been for him their trip to appledore, just like the fall had been, though Sherlock never said. So John, just like that, resented and loved Sherlock. "Research..." Adrenaline rush. With one fluid motion John removed the gun from his pocket, muttered the words "there's never not an opportunity" and fired.
So it was understandable to Mycroft why John had taken drugs before the flight. To choose death as opposed to life without Sherlock, Mycroft certainly would, then again the world moves and he's the one who moves it.
"John?" Sherlock breathes, and then, a sigh of relief as he responds.