"Let me just…get this straight, all right?" Lestrade sighed, rubbing his face for the hundredth time that night. He steepled his fingers—an action so reminiscent of Sherlock that John tensed in his chair—and blew out a short breath. "This bloke—James Moriarty—he's some consulting criminal who organizes and controls crimes, and he's the one who's been behind these 'games,' yeah?"

John only nodded, sipping out of his foam cup of brackish coffee. He hadn't made eye contact with Lestrade, or anyone, all night. He focused on the white walls of Lestrade's office with a bright orange shock blanket draped over his shoulders, still shaking from the terror of having a bomb strapped to him for so long.

Or so everyone assumed.

Lestrade sighed again and continued. "He's just as brilliant as Sherlock, just as clever and mad…but he's completely amoral and bonkers. And now Sherlock's joined forces with him."

Donovan shook her head from a corner of the room. "What did I tell you? One day he'd turn over, one day he'd go to the dark side and want to start facilitating the crimes—I fucking told you, but did anyone bloody listen?"

"Shut it, Donovan," Lestrade said. "We actually have a real problem on our hands! John, what exactly happened in the pool? Did Sherlock give any indication that he was just stalling for time, or trying to find a weakness?"

"No. He was…well, he made it seem believable. To me, at least." John shrugged and had another sip. Lestrade and Donovan brushed off his silence as shock, but they couldn't tell the whirring electricity sparking through John's mind. He was sifting through each layer of his memory, dissecting and trying to be Sherlock so some of what Sherlock had said would suddenly make sense. There was no way in hell that what he'd seen had been real. There wasn't.

Even though Sherlock—

Even though…

Even though he'd said some very personal things, things that cut too close to the quick. Things that made John uncomfortable because they weren't just cruel…they were the tiniest bit true.

Villains have it all too easy, Sherlock had once said when they'd been watching a crap movie on the telly. They never have to throw out random insults—that's too obvious. All they have to do is find one weakness, one little insecurity, and the hero's resolve is shattered.

Did that make John the hero? If that was how Sherlock felt about it, then maybe John could take the words he'd said at the pool and regard them as true acting, acting he was supposed to recognize. Even though Sherlock had chosen a strange insecurity to exploit, one he didn't want to think about Sherlock recognizing…

You're just hopelessly in love with your flatmate and it kills you that you were wrong about yourself.

Sherlock was acting. He was pretending, probably to save everyone's skin even now. He wasn't a fool; he'd never join Moriarty willingly. There was a bigger game to all of this, one that Sherlock had seen and John was still struggling to picture.

And what he'd said…that was a lie, too. Even if it made John's chest constrict.

You're hopelessly in love with your flatmate. Who betrayed you.

Except he didn't. He was just protecting everyone. Protecting you.

"John? John? You okay, mate?" Lestrade said, breaking John's reverie. He jumped in his seat a bit and swiveled his gaze to Lestrade's tie.

"What?"

"You just seem a little…wired. Maybe you should go home for the night. We can handle everything from here."

"No, I'm really fine. I want to help," John said, setting his coffee cup on the desk. "What were we discussing?"

"Well, since Sherlock hasn't committed any crimes as such, we can't do anything to go after him, but we can send out a search warrant for James Moriarty and try and weed him out. Wherever he is, we might find Sherlock and set him straight before he does something stupid."

"If we can get to him in time," Donovan sneered, and for the first time that night at the Yard, John met her gaze head-on with a glare that made her shut her jaw.

"He's not going to do anything. He's coming back, and soon."

Lestrade coughed. "John, we don't exactly know what's going to happen here. It's better to try and find them before they hurt anyone instead of waiting to get hurt."

"He's not going to hurt anyone."

"John…"

"No, all right, I know him! I know him!" John insisted. "I know you're all ready to dismiss him, because he's the Freak to you, but can't you all see what's going on? Sherlock's playing the game. He knows what a threat Moriarty is, and he put himself in danger in order to save our skins!"

"We can't possibly know that!"

"I know it!" He felt himself shaking, even as he stood and pressed his knuckles into the desk. "I know that bloody man. He's two steps ahead of everyone else, and he saw that Moriarty would never stop, so he decided to fool him and become an inside man. In a few days Moriarty will be dead, Sherlock will be home, and everyone will be safe thanks to him. If you're too fucking daft to see that, then I almost feel sorry for this whole bloody place."

Donovan fumed from her corner. "You're wrong." With a turn on her heels, she opened the door of the office and walked out. "And you're going to see that soon."

The door slammed behind her, bouncing off the frame a few times before settling once more.

Lestrade massaged his temple. "John…"

"Lestrade, please. You know I'm right. You know him. Don't send out the search warrant just yet."

"The warrant's only for Moriarty—"

"If you send out that warrant, you implicate him before he has the chance to do what no one else can—kill that bastard before he can blow anyone else up."

Lestrade stared at John, who was still shaking with his certainty, and nodded once. "He gets 48 hours. But if anyone dies, Watson, it's on Sherlock's head. I've no idea why I'm even listening to you."

"You're not listening to me. You're listening to Sherlock, just like always. You're giving him the chance you always give him. If you get the Yard involved right away, you take away Sherlock's advantage." John sat down again. "We just have to give him a bit of time."

Lestrade fingered the edge of his desk, quiet for a moment. Finally, in a low voice, he said, "What's going to happen if you're wrong, mate? If he's really…crossed over, I mean."

"Not going to happen."

"You remember what he said—he's tired of playing by the rules. Coming from him, it's a valid complaint, and it's motive for joining Moriarty for real."

John shook her head fervently. "Sherlock would never do that. He said that no one believed in him, no one let him be who he was, except me. Well, most of the time—and I'm trying to make up for the times I didn't trust him to do the right thing. I trust him now, Greg."

Like clockwork, that's when the screen of Lestrade's computer flickered to life.