Author's note: So yeah. This was supposed to be only 2 chapters in total but then stuff happened and like, words, man; and it seemed silly to have one 2,000-word chapter followed by a 7,000-word chapter, so I've split it. Don't worry, the dreaded Confrontation of Feelings will happen in the next (and absolutely, the last) chapter. Makes sense that these two would hem and haw for as long as possible before they got around to that, right? :D

Once again un-betaed and un-Britpicked; the only one to blame for this is me.


There is tedious briefing and signing of agreements and an interesting meeting with Lady Sherwood in which she admirably but somewhat annoyingly does not allow her gratefulness to me for shooting Magnussen to override her sense of duty. At last I am set free… for a given value of 'free', anyway. Somewhat freer, once I find the last of the tracking and listening devices inflicted on me by MI6 and submerge them in a beaker containing approximately 174 mL of my own urine –fresh, obviously. I leave the beaker on the kitchen table at 221B. Mycroft will know, of course, and have everything replaced by morning along with much tutting and rolling of eyes; but he'll let me have these next few hours. It's not as if he doesn't know where I'm going. He just doesn't know precisely why I'm going there.

John has also been expecting me, if his face when he answers my knock is any indication. He scans the street and environs around and behind me –a useless gesture; there'd be nothing he could do even if he could spot whichever agents my brother has tailing me—and then nods me inside. Mary is in their kitchen, from whence come sounds of tea-making. I find it difficult to think of anything to say, and John's face isn't giving me any clues to go on. He's wearing his businesslike expression, the one he gets when he's digesting the facts of a particularly interesting case. From here, he could easily slip into the roles of captain or doctor or exasperated baby-minder to the world's only consulting detective. I'm usually the one pushing him in the appropriate direction, but John Watson is not following anyone else's lead today. He stands in the middle of his own sitting room with his shoulders back and his head cocked, as if listening for a cue I can't hear.

Mary brings tea and we sit, I in a somewhat restrictive armchair and the Watsons on their hideous, unyielding plank of a sofa. John accepts his RAMC mug with a nod and brings it to his lips. His eyes over the porcelain rim turn to me, anticipating a remark, some kind of contribution. I'm still drawing a blank, my own mug a useless prop on the side table by my twitching right hand.

After many more seconds of silence, John sets his tea on the coffee table and settles back with his arms crossed high on his chest. He lifts an eyebrow at me in what I realize is his version of my 'we both know what's going on here' look. I return my best shot at his standard nonplussed reaction face. We stare until he breaks, blinking through a sigh of impatience as he spreads his hands expectantly.

"Anything?" he asks.

Ah. He wants some acknowledgment of what he's done. My fingers settle around the handle of my mug, from which I am now able to take a sip. I close my eyes into the steam and emit a throaty noise of contentment. When I look up again, John is watching me. The smile he's fighting is the same as when he watches me flip my coat collar. I cough; I wish I could cross my legs, but the chair is too narrow. I fold my hands over my lap instead.

"Well, clearly I was right," I say.

His chin dips towards his sternum as he aims his warning glare at me from under a pointed set of brows. "Oh –no, Sherlock," he says. "You cannot tell me you knew that Moriarty's face would appear on video screens all over Britain just in time to turn that fucking plane around—"

"No," I answer, "that was entirely unexpected. I award you full marks for originality as far as that is concerned."

"Uh, then what?" The tight smile now, that canny tilt to the corners of his eyes. "Are you saying now that you knew I was up to something? Because I saw your face on that airfield, Sherlock. You thought you were leaving."

He's trying to dampen an element of smugness in his countenance –probably feels it wouldn't be appropriate—but he can't , because he knows he's right. I study the carpet between my feet for a moment. There were several beats on that airfield –words I uttered unthinkingly, a host of tells I let slip through—that I only allowed because I did indeed believe that I would never see John Watson again. Intellectually I know that I can trust him (this one man, if no one else) not to punish me for exposing myself in such a way. It doesn't stop my brain from thinking of damage control, plotting ways to undermine, deflect, obfuscate. I will never be as generous as John, nor as foolish, nor as brave. I shake my head.

"Had me there as well," I say with a glib expression that I know he finds annoying. "I fully admit that, were I ever to be asked for a list of likely culprits in a case of high-level technological sabotage, your name would be nowhere near it."

He makes a snide sort of grimace in acknowledgment. "Cheers," he says. I hear Mary snort but she's out of my line of focus and I won't shift it.

"It was Wiggins, of course, who managed it? At your request," I ask.

"The broadcast itself, yes," he answers, "but he's pants at the creative stuff. I mean, just to get the—" he waves at the lower half of his face, where the pixilated jaw of James Moriarty had been made to vibrate.

"So that was—"

"Raz," says John. I raise an eyebrow. "Oh, yeah; apparently he's 'branched out into the digital arts'. Easier to avoid the coppers that way, I imagine."

"Well, I've never made a point of associating with the duller class of delinquent. And the voice?"

"Raz's mate Steve," says John. I frown; I don't know a Steve. John sighs. "Another of the network. You might know him as 'Deneb 5'. Some sort of underground DJ or something."

"Oh yes, I remember," I say. "He was one of the –that is to say, he was involved in my—" I wave one hand in a prestidigitatorial manner.

"Yeah," says John, and coughs. "He told me. So I figured, you know, he'd be able to keep a secret."

I nod; there doesn't seem to be much else to say to that. I'm sorry comes to mind, as it always does, and I wonder how many apologies it will take for that to stop.

"Anyway, he had all the recording gear, and a sound editing program to add distortion and change pitch and speed and all that. Amazing what you can keep in a small office trolley."

I prop my chin on the tips of my index fingers as I process the data. "So yours was primarily a directorial role, then," I say eventually.

He cocks his head. "Every good operation needs good direction," he answers.

I can't argue with that. John has been efficient and resourceful. "Absolutely," I agree, and we both fall silent again.

"So," he resumes after a moment, "you were right about—?"

"Mm? Oh; most things, of course," I reply; this earns me a chuckle. "In this particular case it was that allowing you to know I was alive before I actually came home would have been disastrous."

Mary emits a short incredulous yip. John can only blink. "I'm sorry?" he manages when his brain begins to reboot.

"Well, really, John," I tell him. "If what I saw out there was your best impression of a man seeing his best friend off on a dangerous mission, never to be heard from again, then it's as well I hesitated to stake your life –and Mrs. Hudson's, and Lestrade's—on your ability to pretend I was dead for the length of time required."

John makes an unintelligible choking noise. He turns to Mary, anticipating some form of support.

"Don't look at me," she tells him. "I've never thought of you as a master of deception, dearest, but that was… really quite pathetic. Sorry."

John huffs at her. "Yeah, well, Mycroft didn't seem to think anything particularly amiss, did he?" he says. "Didn't even look twice at me; and you'd think if anyone was going to notice, his brother—" He's pointing at me.

"My brother," I say, "made the same mistake he has made before, and far too often. He dismissed you as irrelevant." John's mouth goes tight on one side and the set of his jaw gets a bit dangerous. Why Mycroft persists in diminishing John Watson in his thoughts confounds me.

"If he had deigned to pay you any attention," I continue, "he would have seen immediately that your behavior was odd."

Again, John looks at Mary, who shrugs. "I thought you must have taken one of Mrs. Hudson's soothers. Or more than one," she says.

It occurs to me now that Mary may have been as much in the dark about John's plan as I was.

"Well I hadn't," says John evenly. "And here we are."

"Yes, here we are," I echo. "But, John. Much as I appreciate et cetera and so forth, the thought behind and the effort involved… truly, I am –quite touched—"

John snorts heavily at this.

"—but really, even someone as accustomed to shallow plot points and impossible last-minute rescues as your film viewing history has clearly made you would know that this plan of yours can't possibly work."

John processes this with a blink, and then shrugs.

"It has worked," he says simply. "You're here, aren't you?"

His sudden and utter vapidity makes my head swim. "Well, yes, John, obviously," I snap, "but for how long? It won't take even that lot more than a few days to discover there isn't actually a threat. They already know it isn't Moriarty, for God's sake."

"But Sherlock, you don't—"

I talk over him. He hasn't thought this through; not his fault, his brain isn't wired for scheming. Mine is ticking back up to speed, analyzing the situation. "And under normal circumstances, it's true," I say. "A few days would be more than enough. I could disappear easily, vanish; I've done it before, after all. But that's the thing: it was only Mycroft and a very few others who knew, that time. This time, everyone would know; and the more people you have to fool, the more difficult it gets. People get careless, they let things slip—"

"Sherlock, would you—"

I shake my head. "If it was just Mycroft, it would be different; that's the beauty of a minor government position, you see. So few mouths to feed, so little chance of the wrong bits of gossip getting out. So easy to lose a man in a file. But all of the British government knows where I am now, John," I say, and realize in a distant way that my voice has gone loud and a bit manic. "Or at least they know where I should be," I say, "and they know that I'm currently not going there, and they are determined to know the reason why not. And all I can do is sit here and wait for the truth to come out and hope that my brother can manage to keep you out of prison, and then it's off to the wars I go after all—"

"Sherlock!"

John is shouting at me. My mouth snaps shut. I'm frozen in my chair passing tense marcato breaths through my nose.

He waits. He is truly awful at this, by which I mean that John Watson has a terrible and unendurable way of gazing steadily at me and waiting until he's convinced that I'll listen to him. This time the indignity is brief, as after only a few seconds he nods and resumes at normal volume.

"Give me some credit, will you please?" he says. "I may be an idiot, but at least I'm clever enough to know I'm an idiot, unlike some people." I smirk at this and his expression softens a bit further. "I knew I could never fool your brother," he says with a wry smile. "Convince Mycroft that Moriarty is still alive and wreaking havoc? Impossible. Not a chance. But that's just it, you prat. I don't have to. Didn't you learn anything from this last case of yours?"

My mouth drops open, attempting to form declarations of pique or demands for clarification, but instead I suspect I look like a stunned grouper. John's smile crests into his eyes.

"Look," he says. "I know you exist on some rarified plain outside the world of media and the popular press. Somehow, you've emerged from the last three decades of your life not knowing who Madonna is. You can watch crap telly and soak up all that rubbish as if there'd be a quiz on it tomorrow, and then just chuck the whole lot from your hard drive." He waves his hands in a shooing-out motion and shakes his head. "You, consulting detective: you don't have to chat with the receptionist at work about the latest goings-on in the lives of celebrities or politicians or the Royal Family or any of that," he says. "No one corners you over a pint and asks your opinion of the latest load the Daily Mail crapped out. But I do live in that world, Sherlock. At least part of the time, I have to live in it. And I'll tell you: he may have been a boil on a baboon's arse, but Charles Augustus Magnussen was right." He leans in, elbows on knees, and cocks his head at me like he's sharing a joke.

"The return of James Moriarty, the villain of the century," he says. "A story that good, that terrifying, that sexy?" He shakes his head again. "You don't have to prove a story like that to sell it."

I take a startled breath, and then another. There's an answer here that John Watson knows. I'm not quite there yet; there's still something I've just missed. But I do know the second half of Magnussen's axiom.

"You just have to print it."