John got up slowly, pulling away his fingers from the neck of the man lying on the snow-already cold, and without any doubt, already dead. For some reason, he felt like wiping his fingers-although he realized that he didn't get any blood on them, there wasn't much blood to begin with-one shot, right through the heart, and the blood already had time to freeze in the cold. He'd seen enough deaths-both in Afghanistan and in London-but for some reason, here, in the peaceful tourist Switzerland, death seemed entirely unnatural and out of place.

Sherlock obviously wasn't squeamish in that way-having turned the body over, he felt it, took a close look at the wound, then thrust his hand under the man's fur collar. Tsk'd with annoyance, and, rising, stuck his hands, which had grown white in the cold, into his pockets. What exactly he'd wanted to find and what he did find, John didn't know and wasn't at all eager to find out.

"There's no group anymore."

"Hmm?" John shook himself, realizing that once again, he hadn't followed the thread of Sherlock's thoughts.

"Our bodyguards-or overseers, or the support group-whichever name you like better, John-they're not here anymore. This guy should've been relieved forty minutes ago, but nobody has walked on this path since before noon."

He titled his head back, squinting at the snow-covered peaks, and matter-of-factly summed things up:
"We'll have to manage by ourselves."

John opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again, looked at the gloomy-unusually gloomy-Sherlock...and never voiced what flashed, caleidoscope-like, through his mind.

They were stuck in the mountains. Stuck in the mountains, in the middle of May, without equipment and without even a thermos. More precisely, with a standard tourist first aid kit and an empty thermos instead of proper equipment. Cell phone service is unavailable because of the coming storm. The car, which was supposed to take them back to civilization, hot tea, and the smugly smiling Mycroft, was now lying in smashed remains at the bottom of the ravine...And they were no longer live bait. Now, they were actually game animals. Prey. It would be a true miracle if they were to survive until morning.

John refrained from saying it aloud. Sherlock has probably already calculated all the odds...And, if John has learned anything about Sherlock in the three years they've known each other (well, two years, considering that for nearly a year their interaction was strictly one-sided-via a fake epitaph on an equally fake grave), then now Sherlock was frightened. His long period of solitude made the consulting detective into a genuine adventure-seeker-even more so than he had been before-but neither back then, nor now would he have ever done anything that could constitute a threat for him, John. Only if that happened inadvertently...

John remembered only too well Sherlock's "Stop!" when a pistol was pressed to the back of John's head in Irene Adler's house. And—his breaking, full of horror voice in the phone last June. "Go back where you came from! Do what I say!" And-fear in the voice. Fear not for himself, fear which made John obey that time, even though his entire being demanded that he keep going, find this accursed schemer and smash his genius face, after all.

It took him an entire year to be able to understand the reasons behind Sherlock's strange actions that day. And he wasn't about to repeat his mistake.

"Uh-huh...All right, we'll manage," he tried to instill confidence, which he actually didn't feel, into his voice.

Sherlock flashed him an angry, full of some sort of helplessness and despair look-and swallowed. Didn't make any reply-only nodded and hastily turned away.

At this moment, John would have given away even his pistol (which had been left behind in London anyway, but if…) for the opportunity to explain to Sherlock that he wasn't angry at him over his mistake. And that it would be better for both to die here than for John to have stayed at home and have to live with the knowledge that his friend perished, and that once again, he wasn't there with him...And...John gave a crooked smile, returned the nod and swung his backpack onto his back.