Sherlock enters the morgue, bag of crisps in hand, to find Molly sitting on the floor in the back corner staring straight ahead at nothing, tears staining her face. She doesn't look at him when he comes in.

"Molly?" he asks uncertainly.

"Why did you make me do that?" she asks, still not looking at him, her voice cold and empty.

"Molly, we agreed…" Sherlock is baffled. "You said you wanted to help me."

"Not that. Him. He was here."

"John? But, why… He saw me himself already, why would he-?"

He knows why, of course he knows why, but it's easier to pretend it's all a mystery to him, to not have thought it through, to not be fully culpable for the consequences he'd now set into motion…

Molly finally whips her head round to fix him in her sights. "You tell me, oh great and powerful student of human nature. Why would a man who's just lost the person who meant the world to him want to see that person again? To say goodbye? To make sure?"

"What did you-"

"I took care of it. I did what I promised, didn't I?" She cuts him off bitterly. "I gaslighted John Watson and I broke his heart. Just like you wanted."

"I didn't want-"

"Then what did you want? What did you think would happen?"

Sherlock makes a frustrated noise. "When are you going to let me get a complete sentence out?" he snarls.

This is wrong, Molly has every right to excoriate him now, she more than anyone besides John and John could hardly do it, he should shut up and take it, but if he does then it's true and he's not ready for it to be true…

Molly jumps to her feet, pink with rage and plants herself in front of him. "You didn't see him," she screams. He steps back involuntarily, as she restrains herself – no less furious but quieter. "You were so pleased with yourself, with your little plan, that you didn't think what it would really mean, did you? Or didn't let yourself think it. Meanwhile, I get to deal with the mess you made. You didn't have to see him. You didn't have to hear him. The sound he made..."

She shudders, then levels a stare at him that puts ice in his heart. He's been running on adrenaline for days, hasn't really stopped to contemplate the results of his actions that he knew were coming. Couldn't stop, not if he was going to make it out alive. Keep John alive, and the others. But now it hits him at last what he's done and it silences him.

"You broke John Watson," she says softly. "You destroyed that man."

The truth of this is finally clear and Sherlock finds suddenly that his legs no longer want to hold him up. He grips the table beside him, and Molly looks at him without pity. He clears his throat which is suddenly dry. "Did he… um, did he believe you?"

"That you were a fraud? Of course not. He's not an idiot and even if he were, he loved you too much."

Sherlock's not sure which is worse – the verb she used that John never had, had never been allowed to use, or that she used it in the past tense. For the first time, he has real doubts about this plan of his, even though he knows it's the only way.

Is it the only way, he's explored every other option hasn't he, or is that what he needs to tell himself to justify what he's done, still he couldn't keep them both safe otherwise, but it could be a lie, he's been lying to himself more and more, like just now when he told himself this was his first moment of doubt…

The first real moment of doubt had come standing on the roof top of the hospital. Moriarty is dead, John is pleading with him over the phone as he lies and lies about who he is and what he's done. Lies that sound ridiculous even as he's repeating them in his most convincing tone.

Sherlock thinks for a moment that he needn't go through with it – with Moriarty gone and Mycroft's men capturing the assassins as they speak surely he and his brother are clever enough to extricate him and John from what remains of the trap. It was worth the risk, surely. He can't bear the ache in John's voice as it is.

His John, who had been willing to risk his own destruction to bring Sherlock back from the brink of an act like this, betraying everything he believed in just to snap Sherlock out of his own dark spiral, an act no one else in the world could have done for him, an act John's never really forgiven himself for and might never do, not now, how can Sherlock risk him seeing that go to naught, how can he even consider doing the one thing John would give anything to prevent, even if it's only in pretense…

But then Sherlock remembers how intricately, how subtly, Moriarty had led them here, to the decision point that wasn't really any decision at all. How even months ago Moriarty had engineered that moment of what John still felt to be his greatest failure, that attempt to destroy their bond if not themselves. There would be backups, fail-safes upon fail-safes to ensure that if Sherlock reneged whole armies wouldn't be enough to protect his friends.

The only way…

Sherlock says goodbye, not feigning the emotion in his voice for once, and steps off the roof.

The second moment of doubt, much worse, had come as Sherlock was lying on the pavement, soaked, with John Watson's fingers groping for a pulse that Sherlock has made certain he will not find. Hearing John's cries, feeling John's trembling hands on his skin, smelling the pain and confusion on him while Sherlock tries to stay as still and limp as death, is so much worse than he'd imagined.

He hadn't imagined, he'd not let himself imagine anything on John's side of the equation more detailed than John is sad, gets over it, if he had he'd never been able to do what was necessary to save them both, and even if he had, he'd never been able to imagine something as bad as this, John keening like a wild animal in a trap, screaming his name, begging that it not to be so and it's in Sherlock's power to make it not so even if it means they'd both be killed instantly it had to be better than this raw agony…

Had it gone a microsecond longer, Sherlock would have given in. He'd have sat up, taken John in his arms one last time and murmured his deepest apologies into John's sandy hair, holding him as tightly as he could while he waited for the bullets to pierce them both and hoping that in the highly improbable even that there was anything after this, that they would find each other.

But it does not go on. For better or worse, Sherlock's agents in disguise drag John off of him and bundle Sherlock away to the morgue and the moment is lost.

He'd thought then that had to be the hardest moment, but he had been wrong. Standing here, facing Molly in all her knowing fury as she refuses to let him believe that John is going to be fine, this is the hardest moment.

And it's starting to become clear that this won't be the last hardest moment either…

"You knew," she says quietly. "Of course you knew he would come down here. That's why you left, so you wouldn't have to see it."

"I left so he wouldn't see me," Sherlock counters, not bothering to dispute her first assumption this time

"Come off it," she scoffs. "He wouldn't have seen you unless you wanted him to. You were hiding from having to watch him come apart, so you could convince yourself he would recover. He won't, you know."

Sherlock is still, not moving or thinking, lest he think too much and discover she's right.

Molly knits her brows at him in the silence. "Why are you still playing his game? He's dead, you're officially the cleverest man alive. Why are you letting him win, letting him control you? I never thought you were a coward."

This puts Sherlock on firmer territory. "Because he's better at the game than I am," he tells her and watches her shock at his admission of being anything less than superior to anyone. "Even dead. And the stakes are too high if I lose. I'm not the forfeit here. It's John… it's Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson too. And you. You think you got off because you seem insignificant, but they'll know you helped me and exact retribution on you too. There are contingencies within contingencies to make sure Moriarty wins no matter the odds. The only way to win is to lose and keep losing until no one can conceive of the possibility that you might still be playing."

He has just lost everything and yet somehow it seems like John has lost more, that's what he'd planned, wasn't it, that means this has to work…

Molly has no answer for that, but she's still fuming. He envies her righteous and futile rage at the injustice of it, her stubborn insistence that this is wrong and there's another way out. He wishes he had the luxury of sharing it.

He notices her rubbing her right wrist, unconsciously. It's swollen and red, like she's landed hard on it. She sees him looking at it and hurriedly puts it behind her back.

"It was an accident," she says too quickly, too late.

"John," Sherlock says, not a question. Even in her anger at him, she'd wanted to spare him the knowledge of the full extremity of John's grief.

"He didn't mean to." Her voice quavers a bit. "He didn't know what he was doing."

So then, this is the hardest moment, hearing what he's driven John to, a form of madness to hurt a friend, to hurt Molly even through carelessness, even as an accident…

He draws Molly's arm from behind her back, gently feeling for a break that is thankfully not there. He holds her wrist loosely for a moment feeling the inflamed heat of it in his hand.

"I'm going now," he tells her. "I'm going to fix this, all of it." He touches his lips dryly to her injury, a sort-of apology, and turns to go.

"Some things can't be fixed," she says softly, without rancour now, to his retreating back.

Sherlock goes a few steps further and then turns back to her. "John," he asks against his better judgement. "When he left. Was he… was he limping?"

Molly pauses, then nods once, curtly, not meeting his eyes.

Sherlock processes this for a second and then turns again, forcing himself to walk away in what he hopes is an even pace.

No, this is the hardest moment…

John can't go home. He can't visit the flat full of Sherlock's things, full of their things together, ownerless now that there is no more them. He can't possibly go to sleep in Sherlock's bed, full of the echoes of all their nights together, probably still smelling of both of them, of their last sex, hurried and distant and distracted as it had been. He can't wash the half-empty tea mug with Sherlock's lip prints still on it, or put away his experiments or reshelve the last book he'd been reading, still on his chair by the fire.

He wanders the streets in the rain, hobbled by the flaring, phantom pain in his leg, for miles, no idea where to go and not wanting to be with anyone. He knows eventually he will have to go somewhere, though staying in the rain until hypothermia takes him isn't an unpleasant thought. He shakes it off, with effort.

Though why should he have to when Sherlock hadn't...

He can't go to Greg.

Complicit, craven, gullible, despicable…

He won't go to Mycroft.

He could have stopped all this, but the interests of the crown were worth more than his brother's life, he's as culpable as Moriarty and if John ever sees him again…

John thinks of Harry, knowing whatever their problems in the past she won't question him now, will treat him tenderly and with the love a sibling should show in this situation. But somehow the idea of her treating him differently now that Sherlock is…gone… is worse than any disagreement they've had in the past.

He comes out of his reverie, startled to realize two things: That it is nearly dark and that he is somehow wandered back around the city and is standing outside of 221B.

Where else is there to be, really, the only thing worse than being home without Sherlock is being anywhere else without Sherlock….

Mrs. Hudson is, mercifully, out. Probably looking for him. He creeps into the too-still flat that smells faintly of chemicals and tea and the tobacco that Sherlock never quite banished from his life. Trying not to think any more, he collapses on the sofa fully dressed and falls into a restless sleep.

The next day, or maybe the day after that or even many days later - he's lost his phone and seems to remember periods of aimless wakefulness and meaningless interactions with others about Sherlock and a burial and a will that might all have been dreams for all the impression they made on him - there's a knock on the door. John hesitates to answer it.

Every time he answers it, every time he interacts with anyone else, it collapses the wave-function, as Sherlock would say, killing the cat, the simultaneously alive-and-dead Sherlock he cultivates in his mind when he's alone will just be dead Sherlock and he won't be able to pretend he has hope any longer, but it's not like he's been doing a good job of pretending so far and he'll have to face it eventually…

After a too-long pause, John opens the door. The list of people John hopes it is not is very long and includes almost the entirety of humankind. Victor Trevor is not on that list. In fact, he's not on any list – John had forgotten about him.

The lanky redhead stands stooped in the doorway, looking drawn and worn, no trace of his normal cheer left in him. He looks like a different person, and about a thousand years older. John wonders if he looks that bad. Or worse. He wonders how long its been since he bathed.

"John," Victor says weakly. "I'm terribly sorry to disturb you, but I didn't know where else to go."

John wordlessly motions him in and to sit down. He collapses on the sofa, heavily.

"It's all lies, of course. You know that, but you might be the only other one who does, really. Without any doubt at all."

John nods, a little relieved. So far no one else believed in Sherlock as he did, without reservation or uncertainty. He sits beside Victor, gingerly, still not feeling as if he's really in his body.

The past days – a week? – are starting to come back to him, with all the accompanying horror of sympathizers and cards and flowers and arrangements which had required his nominal presence and agreement, if not his actual engagement, and everyone pretending they believed in Sherlock, no one daring to say otherwise to his face, everyone, almost everyone lying…

"I know I shouldn't impose on you like this," Victor says. "But I had to come and see… I just couldn't believe…" He chokes back tears and John awkwardly puts a bracing hand on his shoulder to steady him.

Before John quite knows what is happening, Victor has thrown his arms around John's neck and is crying softly into his shoulder.

John finds that he does not mind. He has not broken down again, not since the morgue. He's been in a fugue and now that he's coming out of it he doesn't think he's capable of crying again, though he knows it would be healthier if he could. But if he started he might never stop again. Victor's tears stand in proxy for the ones he should be shedding, and he allows himself to pat the younger man on the back comfortingly while it runs its course.

He's found himself resentful, even enraged, by the expressions of grief or sorrow or sympathy of others, particularly those who hated Sherlock when he was alive and now feel bad about it, those who were culpable in his death, and even those who genuinely cared about him, how can they dare to think that their pain is common to John's own, that they even inhabit the same universe...

Victor's grief he can accept. John's not sure he can believe any grief could be as great as his, but it's of the same quality and sincerity, and John is grateful for it.

It is a brief, minuscule lifting of the burden to have someone to share this with. John has been carrying not just his own grief at losing Sherlock, losing everything he'd built his life around, but also the grief of a city that does not yet know what it's lost. All of London is mocking and denigrating Sherlock Holmes, and John carries that pain too, and the pain that will be when they discover they need him and find he's gone, destroyed by the city he loved and the people he saved.

And, surprisingly, it's soothing to be touched. He's barely allowed anyone to touch him since the day Sherlock died, compassionate hands burning on his skin, kind embraces suffocating him. But Victor's warmth next to him, his arms around him, the weight of his head on John's shoulder – it doesn't hurt. Maybe it's because Victor needs him, isn't trying to fix him, maybe it's because he knows Victor loved Sherlock too, or maybe he's just been too long without sincere human contact.

John hesitantly returns the embrace, still not crying, but letting himself bury his face in the crook of Victor's neck and relax just the tiniest bit.

Victor smells good, not like Sherlock, but somehow like him as well, and he is tall and slender and his touch is earnest and wanting, it stirs something in John, something that makes him not want to let go, eases the physical withdrawal he's been going through if only slightly, makes him crave more of it, anything to beat back the worst of the loneliness and grief, even if he knows it's wrong, no man other than Sherlock has made him feel desire before and even now what he really is desiring is Sherlock, but Sherlock isn't here…

He finds himself gripping Victor more tightly, desperately and Victor responding in kind. Before he quite knows what is happening, his lips are on Victor's graceful, almost-but-not-quite-familiar, white throat and Victor is nuzzling into John's hair just above his ear. John's hands are at Victor's trim waist, pulling him closer, feeling his warmth and his rising heartbeat and the raw need coming off him that matches John's own.

He's out of his head, grateful and guilty at the same time, without the will to stop any of it, without the will to care that he's not stopping it…

But Victor finds the will. After another endless second, he disentangles himself from John with obvious reluctance and shifts back on the sofa, putting the barest modicum of distance between them.

"John…"

John feels his face burning from shame of how easily, how quickly he was willing to hop into the arms of another man to ease his pain, and how he still would if he thought for even a second he could use it to conjure up being with Sherlock again. He doesn't even care that it wouldn't be fair to Victor, using him as a shadow, a substitute for what John would never have again.

It would be all right if Victor was using him, too...

"I feel it too," Victor continues, faintly, echoing his own thoughts. John notices that Victor has not let go of his hands and that he is trembling. "I want to… I mean, if I thought that…"

"Yeah," says John dully, understanding and wishing he didn't.

"You're all that's left of him," Victor goes on with an incredibly sad smile. "At least for me you are. But I fear neither of us would find what we seek that way." He brings John's hands to his lips swiftly and then releases him and looks away.

John nods. Of course, he's right. And for a moment, John is furious with him for it, for stopping the mistake. But it doesn't last, because if anything is clear, it's that the other man is in almost as much pain as he is. He reaches out almost involuntarily and strokes his back with what he hopes is friendly and platonic reassurance.

He's starting to forget what normal human interaction is like, what normal people feel and do and say, is this what it felt like for Sherlock all of the time...

John lets Victor sit there as long as he wants, saying nothing. Finally Victor composes himself, wiping his eyes and nose with a pocket-handkerchief. He sits up straight and runs a hand through his copper hair.

"I'm terribly sorry about that," he tells John. "Er, all of it. The last thing you need is another burden. I told myself I wouldn't get emotional, but once I saw you alone, here…"

John shakes his head. "No. I mean, it's no burden. It…helps… that you care."

A pause. "I thought I would go and see the… the grave." Victor all but gags on the word.

John nods but says nothing. He hasn't been able to bring himself to go there yet, although he knows he must do it eventually. Soon. Not today.

Victor give him a tight-lipped half smile, getting up and heading for the door. He turns at the threshold. "John, I know as well as you what a futile gesture it is to say that if there's anything I can do… I'm sure you've heard too much of that. But from the depths of my heart if there's anything you need, ever, no matter what it is, please come to me. And if you need to get away from here, my home is large and I'll see to it that you aren't disturbed."

John thanks him and shuts the door behind him, letting out a long breath of air. Victor is kind and sincere, but being around him is both too tempting and too painful to contemplate right now. But it is a comfort to know that there's someone else out there, loving Sherlock too.

This is the hardest moment...

Sherlock watches, concealed behind a tree, as John speaks to his grave, tears filling John's eyes and choking his voice. He says things he'd never said to Sherlock in life, never would have, never needed to. He says things that hurt to hear. He doesn't say the word Sherlock was never able to abide, and somehow that hurts too.

John touches the shiny headstone gently, as he had so often touched Sherlock's shoulder. In the way he has when he's struggling to make Sherlock understand something, to reassure them both. And he tells Sherlock not to be dead. To stop all this and come back to him.

It takes everything in him not to obey, to force himself to stand still and watch as John's face crumbles and he turns and walks away. Not limping, but clearly only through dint of willpower. Sherlock watches him longer than he should before turning up his collar and returning to the car.

"I told you you didn't want to see that," Mycroft says. "It doesn't help anything."

No, it doesn't, it burns like liquid nitrogen injected into his chest, but still the things John said about him, to him, faint as like glow-in-the-dark stickers on their last legs, still still fill him with the praise and admiration at their core, down past John's grief, something for Sherlock to hold on to while he's gone...

Sherlock doesn't reply.

"Have you thought about what you'll do if he's not waiting for you when you get back? Not that it's likely to matter..."

That snaps him out of it. "Of course he'll be... wait, not likely to matter? You think I'm not going to survive this, don't you?"

Mycroft waves a hand with his usual air of condescension, "Of course I do. It's a fool's errand, you're playing right into Moriarty's posthumous hand. You should have let me handle this from the beginning, and now you're in an impossible position. Haring off after the remains of his empire isn't likely to improve things and is, in fact, very likely to get you killed properly this time. But it's far too late for me to do anything about it - you've been very thorough."

"Good, I don't want you to." That sounds petulant, even to Sherlock's ears and the truth is he's depended on Mycroft for a lot and would do even more on this venture. Still, he knows his chances of survival are not high - the last thing he needs is a reminder from his big brother.

They both fall silent, but Sherlock breaks it.

"What did you mean about John not waiting for me?"

"You can't tell me you've honestly never considered it. You could be gone years. He hasn't accepted your death yet, not really, but after months or more... he'll move on. He'll have to. You can't tell me you want him to stay stuck, grieving, not living any sort of real life for however long it takes you to track down the rest of Moriarty's network. And if you do die in the process what then? Is he to wait forever?"

"Of course not!" Sherlock snaps, feeling hurt and foolish in the way only Mycroft could provoke. "I just thought... I thought..."

"Oh, I see!" Mycroft's insufferable sarcasm intensifies. "You wanted him to get over it... but not too much. To be okay, but not too okay. Not to build a life he can't walk away from, not to find someone he won't want to leave. And maybe that's how it would be, if he knew you were coming back. But you made spectacularly sure that he doesn't. And even I, dear brother, know that people don't work that way."

Sherlock again says nothing, knowing Mycroft is right and hating him for it.

"And what will you do, if you come back and he won't forgive you. Won't let you back in his life. Will it have been worth it?"

John would never reject him, never, not permanently, he'd sworn it, of course he'd be quite angry, but he'd have Sherlock back, wouldn't he, never mind that Sherlock has just done or pretended to do any number of things things he swore to John he'd never, a laundry list of the things that would hurt John the most...

"Yes," says Sherlock.

"Well, that's a very noble sentiment. But are you quite sure? Theory is one thing, practice is quite another."

Sherlock fixes his brother with a venomous stare that slowly fades into simple exhaustion. "You'll watch him?"

"Naturally."

"And if I do die? You'll tell him-"

"I will tell him precisely nothing," Mycroft cuts him off. "Surely you wouldn't wish to put him through all this again?"

He's right again, of course, but suddenly it seems to very final, in a way it hasn't before, in his mind he had, perhaps foolishly, seen himself conquering evil and sweeping back into John's life and, perhaps after a punch and some hard words, to hear how how proud John is of Sherlock, how much he'd missed him, to bask in John's adoring, homey, glow, like a fire banked down low to warm a house through a cold winter...

But now it's real. John is shattered. Sherlock is leaving, very possibly forever, going off to die unmourned in some dark place where no one will ever know. Even if he makes it back, there may be no reunion, no restoration of togetherness. Only separation, separate lives.

Sherlock swallows these thoughts down hard.

Mycroft lets him be for a moment while he grapples with this new understanding and then says, with surprising gentleness, "Sherlock, we have to go. If you are going to get out of this city undetected, we can't wait any longer."

Sherlock nods, shaking it off. True or not, it doesn't matter right now. He has to go on. He'd thought it was Moriarty, but now he knows it was really only ever him. He's left himself, left them all, no choice. And that realization is the hardest moment of all.

The car pulls away from the cemetery and Sherlock forces himself not to look back.

Despite everything, John is still there, in his mind, a bright spot, not bright enough, muffled torchlight, but not gone out, the one part of John he can keep safe, keep with him throughout whatever comes next, a part that will never leave him...

After a decent interval Mycroft says, "So," in a tone of neutral curiosity that sounds just the tiniest bit forced. "Where will you begin? Do you have a lead? The assassins my men captured ended up annoyingly dead before we could question them."

"I have a name," Sherlock says slowly, thinking back to a case almost a year ago. To a screaming red dye-job who knew more than she should have. "Hanna Mihov."

John's been trying to ignore it, the pain in his leg. In his thigh. The imaginary wound in the place he had shot that young boy. He hasn't felt it in the slightest since the second day he spent with Sherlock, except for a twinge once when he finally told his friend the story. He's been gritting his teeth and refusing to limp, refusing to take pain medicine, refusing to admit it's back again to anyone. It takes all his energy, but at least the physical pain is a distraction from the emotional pain. Even though that's really just in his head too.

Admitting it's hurting him again is admitting Sherlock is well and truly gone, had the pain ever stopped, had he just been so enchanted by Sherlock's influence he thought it was gone, forgotten to feel it, and now the spell is broken, it's so hard to know what's real any more, hard to know what had ever been real between them, with the world shouting lies at him, with no one else who understood their language to stand witness for what they were, maybe he had made it all up, if it had been real how could Sherlock have...

At some point, he can't take it anymore. It hurts too much. His leg, that is. He gives up and goes rummaging through the hall cupboard.

After visiting the grave he didn't think he could come back here, had meant to move and escape the prison of memories 221B was becoming, but he'd been drawn to it again, like a wound he can't stop poking, and once again, he had no where else to go...

Somewhere in he'd stashed his cane what feels like a lifetime ago. Was a lifetime ago. Someone else's lifetime. It's filled with boxes, mostly his old things he'd moved there when he'd turned his old bedroom to a lab for Sherlock

The lab, a tangible expression of his commitment to Sherlock, giving up his last refuge to his friend's needs, he's not been able to make himself go in there yet, who knew what was growing in there by now, but he doesn't care...

Shifting the boxes is difficult and the ceiling in the cupboard is low. He feels like he's been at it for an hour when Mrs. Hudson startles him by coming up behind him and bellowing his name.

John jumps, hits his head on the lintel, and curses. Mrs. Hudson looks surprised.

"Sorry, John dear, I thought you were in the kitchen. What on earth were you doing in there?"

"Nothing. I mean... you haven't seen my cane have you? I'm sure I put it away in here ages ago, but I can't seem to find it."

Mrs. Hudson gives him a slightly concerned look. Not that she gives him any other kind these days. "That old thing? You threw it in the bin the week after you moved in, didn't you? I remember because I thought Mrs. Turner might have a use for it but then I thought you might not like it if I took it out..."

"I didn't-" John begins to protest but then stops.

Sherlock, of course Sherlock had binned it, so sure John would never need it again, that he had cured him, that John would never leave him, arrogant and endearing all together and suddenly it hurts fresh all over again...

Mrs. Hudson can clearly read all this in his face and pats his arm gently before changing the subject.

"I just came up here to tell you you've got a phone call, is all. You really ought to replace your mobile."

"There's not really anyone I want to talk to, Mrs. Hudson."

"So you've told me, and so I've told everyone who's called, but he's a persistent one and this is the fifth time just today. I can't have the phone ringing off the hook all day and night, you'll have to see him off yourself this time!"

John sighs. "Who, Mrs. Hudson?"

"Why, Detective Inspector Lestrade of course. Don't you ever read my notes?"

John goes a little cold inside. "Right," he says, and bangs down the stairway into her flat, grabbing the phone from the table with more force than necessary.

The list of things he wants to say to the DI is nearly endless, choking him, but most of all there's why, why did you let it happen, you were supposed to be be his friend, you were supposed to protect him, protect us, why did you believe those things about him for even a millisecond, why did you let them come for him, why didn't you defend him, why didn't you stop him...

But asking those questions hurts too much so he settles for yelling into the phone, "Fuck off, Greg. And if you don't fuck off, I'll come down to the station and make you fuck off, got it?"

There's silence on the line for a second, but then, with disarming mildness, Lestrade's voice says slowly, "Well, that's fine with me. I've been trying to you get down here for days. Don't you ever read Mrs. Hudson's notes? I need to talk to you about someone."

The tone takes the wind out of John's sails and to his surprise he finds he's curious as to what could possibly make Greg so persistent in getting a hold of a man he must know hates him.

"Who?" John asks, warily.

"A woman. From one of your old cases. Hanna Mihov. Name sound familiar?"

John puts the phone down without a word, calling to Mrs. Hudson for his coat. He grabs it from her, ignoring her questions, and bolts out the door. He doesn't notice until much later that his leg has stopped hurting again.