Hello! I decided to try and upload weekly, so there will be a new chapter every Sunday (hopefully - you never know, right^^'). For now I have lots of chapters that I only need to translate and upload, but at some point my repertoire will be fully used and I'll have to write new chapters first (though I think I'll write them in English and then translate to German - it seems to be easier for me that way around :D).

Again I wish you have fun reading this chapter! Leave me some feedback so I know what to improve and what to leave the way it is ;) Also: If you find missused terms and/or missspelled words, please tell me! I would be more than happy to improve my, in some points lacking, vocabulary ^^

Well, enough for now! Have fun!
Kats

Stumbling

5.38 pm | Come here, solve my case. SH

A message as such... he didn't know anyone who would send him something like this...

5.40 pm | You know where to find me. I've been lying here forever. SH

"John? John?!" Mary's voice started to reach his conscience.

"John, are you all right?"

After staring into nothing for a while he winked vigorously, answered her breathlessly "Sorry, I need to- need... need..." and stormed out of the store, hailing a taxi and driving away immediately.

When they arrived he through the money onto the front passenger's seat and stormed through the building's door. He ran up the stairs as if he was possessed and threw open the door in front of him and there he was, just lying there, pale as he'd always been. Glassy, empty eyes staring at the ceiling. Unsure about what he was seeing he observed his slowly rising and lowering chest. John's body was trembling. Finally that head, the home of those stinging, blue eyes, with that cold stare the doctor had missed so badly the last two years, was tilted to face him.

John collapsed, but got up again almost immediately to take some steps towards the detective. In his absent-mindedness he hit his knee on the living room table, which he hadn't passed for so long. But even that he did not perceive.

The slender man sat up straight quickly and then lifted himself very slowly in front of his small friend. A glance of hopeful expectation flashed up in his iced-blue eyes. John, however, felt the deep anger rising inside of him and before Sherlock could realize what was happening he was already lying back on the sofa, his hand on his left cheek. John lowered his painfully pulsing fist – there was nothing that mattered to him that moment except for him being here and him feeling incredibly empty and numb.

"Two. Years... Two BLOODY YEARS YOU LET ME-" he took a deep breath in order to keep himself under control "...Do you have any idea just what you have done?!"

"Well, according to your reaction, I don't really know, but-"

"Shut up! That was a rhetorical question – of course you don't know because things like these just pass a cold idiot like you over a distance of hundreds of miles!"

Silence.

Sherlock highly surprised and John white by anger looked at each other.

Suddenly Sherlock stood up again leaving John no time to react in any possible way by enclosing him with his long arms and immobilising him by pressing him tightly against his body.

"But I now can imagine very well how you must have been and I am more than sorry.. But, John, I had no choice."

"You didn't explain to me back then why you suppedly jumped to your death..." again he tried to keep calm by taking deep breaths, but this time also to not collapse in his friend's arms "... care about telling me now just what the hell had happened?!" It sounded more like a demanding request, than a requesting demand.

"Moriarty. He left me no choice, which I had presumed and therefore made some precautions to make it look perfectly. If I hadn't done that..." he stopped to prepare his next words in order to say them as steadfastly as the previous "...His henchmen would have shot Mrs. Hudson. Shot Lestrade... Shot...you... I couldn't let that happen. Your death would have been real, you wouldn't have deserved that – dying for my cowardice. No. I'd rather have the world go without someone like me, than take away someone like you from it, someone who carries so much more goodness and is able to be a friend to others. The best I can do... is being less insulting and cold."

John was trembling. There was the quiet noise of air being sucked in sharply. Worrying he might have made John cry, Sherlock wanted to release him and offer him a little more room by loosening the tightness of his hug, but John pulled himself to him, clinging onto his shirt. Therefore the younger one decided to enclose the older with his arms again and seemingly also support his stand. John seemed as if he could be collapsing any second. This emotional weakness made Sherlock worry a little and while he left one of his hands around John's waist he had the other one run up into the short, blond-grey hair.

They stayed this way for a while until John pushed himself away from Sherlock gently and looked to the floor uncertainly.