AN: Hello again! Thanks for sticking with me! On with the show, and keep those reviews coming! Just a little warning though, someone is going to get pretty mouthy so if you're offended by strong language you might want to brace yourself.

Disclaimer: All things Sherlock belong to the BBC, more's the pity.

Chapter 3:

After staring at each other for almost 5 minutes, John cautiously reset the safety on his Browning, slipping it back beneath his pillow. He pulled himself stiffly up into a sitting position and stared at the fidgeting man before him. So many emotions whirled through his mind seeing that face - anger, betrayal, hope, longing.

Sherlock stared at him like a deer in headlights, his twisting hands and scanning eyes the only sign of emotion. He looked far too thin and parched, his cheeks had hollowed out, and there were heavy circles beneath those knowing blue eyes. Seeing him so wretched looking turned the rage boiling inside him into an inferno. Had the stupid git gone back to his old drug habits?

To the detective, John looked as if he'd been doing well. It almost made him angry; his death had driven his friend to war but instead of throwing himself into danger like a suicidal teen the man was physically thriving. What a terrible thought, that he would rather his death cause the death of his friend! Sherlock deleted the sentiment with a vengeance.

John's gaze was hard, "You look terrible."

"You look well."

"I look it," the doctor sighed heavily, "but I'm not."

Hesitantly Sherlock made his way over to the only chair in the tent and sank into it. He could tell by the Spartan furnishings that John spent very little time inside. In fact, the bed looked barely slept in and the chair still creaked with disuse. The doctor did not object his taking a seat, and turned himself until he sat just opposite the chair on the foot of the cot.

Sherlock took a deep breath, "Before you start shouting at me, may I explain?"

"I'm not going to shout at you," John looked almost incredulous at the thought.

The detective narrowed his eyes, "Of course you will, in due time. When you get angry the volume of your voice rises in relation to the extent of your feelings and the length of your rant."

John smirked, "I won't shout. I promise."

"So you say," Sherlock inclined his head towards the doctor (who grumbled something that sounded like 'this had better be good') before continuing, eyes darting everywhere except the grey orbs fixated on him. "Moriarty planned everything from the start, and he made sure I had no way out in the end except to kill myself. He sent 3 men to assassinate Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, and you if I didn't jump off that roof."

"So, you called his bluff and faked your death," John's voice sounded slightly more curious than angry.

"Yes," Sherlock locked his eyes onto John's again, taking heart by how well the doctor seemed to be taking the news, "On the phone, I tried to get you to leave because I wasn't sure if you'd ruin everything by realizing I wasn't actually deceased. If you weren't broken up about my death, then you might have gotten shot." He turned his head slightly and allowed a small smile to peek through, "I didn't expect the ramifications."

"Ramifications?"

Fidgeting again suddenly, Sherlock leapt up and began to pace back and forth. He didn't speak for a long minute, but when he did his voice was slightly rough, "It hurt. It hurt you more than I thought it would. It hurt me more than I thought it would." He ran his long, pale fingers through his hair, "But at least you'd be alive, even if you were in pain. Then I set out to find the people who Moriarty had hired to assassinate you three. It took a long time to find the first 2, and by then word reached me that I was posthumously exonerated and my name cleared."

He smiled down at John, "Thank you for that, by the way. Lestrade told me you never gave up on me."

"How could I give up on my best friend?"

Sherlock stared at him for another long moment unable to figure out how to react to that question then he collapsed back into the chair, "The man who tried to stab you in there was the third assassin. Mycroft," John growled at the sound of that name then subsided, "is taking him into custody so he can figure out exactly how far Moriarty's corruption reached." The detective cocked his head at the doctor, "What was that?"

John gave him a blank look that was probably saved for superior officers who thought they knew everything, "What was what?"

"You," he pointed at John, "growled when I said Mycroft's name. Why?"

This time it was John who fidgeted, rubbing his palms against his thighs, "It's nothing."

Sherlock leaned forward, "No, it isn't."

John let out a loud, exasperated sigh before rubbing the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable, "Really, it's...it's fine."

"John."

The sound of his own name in Sherlock's voice seemed to break some part of the wall surrounding John's emotions. He leaned forward and put his forehead into one hand, propping the other fist on his thigh. It seemed like he was struggling to breath.

"John," the detective insisted, putting a tinge of fondness into the name, "out with it."

Steel eyes bored into silvery blue as John, in a rough voice, said, "Guess who told Richard Brook all those little stories?"

Sherlock smiled for a few moments until the realization set in. Mycroft had told Moriarty all the information he'd needed to destroy everything Sherlock had worked so hard to build? He didn't want to believe it, didn't even want to consider it, because deep down somewhere inside his heart he still thought his brother loved him in his own way. That Mycroft, who had spent most of their lives protecting and restraining him, had been instrumental in his downfall?

"I'm sorry you had to find out this way," John's voice was soothing, probably in response to the stricken look on Sherlock's face. "I was debating whether or not to tell you ever since I saw you in the hospital. I wanted to scream seeing him acting like he cared you were in pain."

Sherlock stared at the clenched jaw, the hands curled into fists, the tensed shoulders of his friend and felt a familiar warmth suffuse his bones. John Watson, always the protector. If John had been his brother, Sherlock knew nothing horrible would have ever happened to him. John would rather die than betray his friend, and he'd proved it numerous times. Mycroft had left him out in the cold, and here he was acting like nothing had happened. That would not do.

"That bloody bastard," Sherlock hissed, rising up like a spitting cobra. "He didn't tell me that, he didn't tell me anything about that!"

John stood up, blocking the way out of the tent with his considerably solid body. "Betrayal hurts, doesn't it?"

The smaller man's voice dripped with venom. It was not a tone Sherlock had ever heard from his friend, and it wasn't something he ever wanted to hear directed at him again. He stared down at the shaking finger John placed against his breast bone. The doctor had suddenly done a complete emotional 180, from kind to furious in under a second.

"You left me, you bastard, and the last thing I had to remember you by was a bloody telephone call that you told me was your suicide note. Right now, that pain you're feeling? I've been living with that pain for 3 years. Three fucking years, you enormous prat! I thought my only friend in the world was bloody dead, and then you show up here alive, in the middle of a fucking war, looking like a junkie fresh off a bender acting like nothing changed?"

As he'd promised, John did not shout. Instead disappointment and anguish dripped from his mouth as he spoke, his eyes stormy with unshed tears and fury that hadn't had an outlet for too long a time. Sherlock shrank in on himself under the onslaught, his own awkward emotions knocking around in his head making him shake and sweat. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut short when John poked him sharply in the breast bone.

"You don't get to speak or ask questions right now, I'm not finished berating you yet, you arrogant git. Perhaps," the soft tone turned scathing, "you should deduce whatever answers you want for yourself, you being the brilliant genius you always insist you are. You know, for a good observer of other people, you'd think you'd have better insight about your own damned well-being you stupid bastard."

Well, Sherlock thought as his pale cheeks flamed in indignation, wasn't that something. He comes back from the dead, explains everything, and all he gets in return are insults. See if he ever saved a certain someone's life ever again.

"But that's neither here nor there at the moment. What's important is that your pompous head is still attached to your fool neck, but who gives a toss, since you're apparently hell bent on destroying yourself in the first bloody place! Have you even bothered eating or was the bloody cocaine and heroine too much of a draw for you?"

The detective shoved John's hand from his chest, "I used opium once, thank you, and only because I needed to infiltrate a drug ring to find one of the assassins! Otherwise, I haven't…"

"Don't you bloody realize what you're doing to yourself? Every time you do any narcotic you nearly destroy your mind! Your brilliant, genius MIND! Where would you be without that, you fucking half-wit?"

Slowly John advanced forward his voice never rising above a conversational volume, but the disappointed, anguished tone that made it crack roughly here and there was making Sherlock feel more and more ashamed. The look in his eyes was startling, and Sherlock wondered if John realized how very frightening he could be. Sherlock wasn't very empathic, but John's anger was so palpable it felt like the smaller man was choking him.

"I can forgive a lot of things, but I cannot forgive that. All the pain you put me through, all the lies, everything, and when I see you, alive, after all that, you look like fucking death warmed over, how the hell am I supposed to forgive you? All the work we did getting you clean of everything and as soon as you're out of my sight you do it again? Really? I thought we were past all that!"

Apparently the healer in John was still running at full throttle. Leave it to the doctor to harp on more about drug use and its effects instead of the part where his friend had faked suicide. It was a rather impressive tirade if Sherlock was being honest.

"The fact that you're alive, even after putting me through that damned phone call and your bloody funeral and your bloody burial, pales in comparison to the fact that after all that work getting you off drugs you fell back into old habits! I don't give a toss that you did it to get close to a bloody suspect! What if you'd bloody overdosed? What am I supposed to do, bury you twice?"

Pain lanced through John's voice and Sherlock shuffled back until his calves pressed against the cot. He had expected John to feel angry and betrayed, he just didn't realize how fiercely the doctor would feel those emotions. Or how John feeling so terrible would effect his own emotions.

"You left me all alone, you asshole, with no hope and no help. The only people who even cared to speak to me were the homeless network. Even Lestrade gave up on you after a while. I didn't! I risked my neck for you, my medical license for you, over and over and you repay all that loyalty by making me think my only friend lied to me and then I had to watch him throw himself off a building? Then you show up alive but not even looking halfway healthy, and you expect, what? Me to roll over and follow you around like nothing happened? That's not how it works. I'll let you off the hook for the faked suicide because a) you're alive, and b) you had a legitimate reason to do it. I will not let you live down not taking care of yourself. And if you ever pull any harebrained stunt like this again without warning, I swear on my soul, you insufferable twat, that I will kill you myself, and it will be far, far worse than falling off a bloody building, you wanker."

The detective sunk down onto the cot, his knees weak from emotional strain. Sherlock had spent so long schooling his face not to show emotion, he wasn't entirely sure he was capable of looking contrite, but he tried his damnedest to do so. "I'm sorry John," his voice was rough, the tempest of his emotions making him ramble, "I didn't mean to be away so long. Really I didn't. I'd hoped it would take less time, but I didn't factor in Moriarty's cleverness. I meant to come back in a year and tell you everything, I swear, and I was going to ask for your help redeeming my name."

The doctor stared, shocked, at the broken tone of Sherlock's voice. It reminded him of their emotional telephone conversation, how Sherlock had actually sounded pained. The detective didn't even seem to notice he was crying.

"Enough," John shushed him, kneeling down to pick up the hands wringing in his friend's lap, "enough of that now, you'll hurt your hands. All you have to do is promise to never, ever leave me out in the cold like that again," John's tanned rough hands folded around Sherlock's delicate pale ones, "And always remember no matter what," John's voice was so soft Sherlock's ears barely picked out the underlying note of sorrow, which was coupled with a look of utter heartbreak in his friend's grey eyes, "I will never betray you. Do that, and we'll call it even."

Sherlock was having trouble with his own body's reactions, finally noticing the tears cascading down his cheeks. The feeling of John's hands on his was making his skin crawl in an unnatural (but not unpleasant) way. How had he earned such loyalty and friendship as given by the man before him? John didn't deserve the constant abuse he'd been put under, the insults and the experiments heaped on him. Yet, despite everything, here he was soothing and calming, ignoring his own emotional turmoil to pledge allegiance to a sociopath who seemed to do nothing but put him through danger, pain, and strife.

Frantically the detective ripped his hands out of John's grip and lurched upward, running his hands through his hair and pacing vigorously back and forth across the floor while making an awkward, strangled noise in the back of his throat. John stood up slowly, as one would approach a skittish animal, concern deepening the lines of his face. The smaller man stepped in front of him and held out a placating hand, pressing against Sherlock's rapid heartbeat.

Without thinking (a feat in and of itself) Sherlock latched onto John's shoulders in a tight hug, gripping the doctor hard enough to bruise. The detective feared for a long moment that he'd done something wrong until strong, warm arms encircled his torso and hugged him back. He shivered violently, burying his face in the crook of John's shoulder and neck, the smaller man bracing him from falling down when his knees wobbled.

"I promise, John. I'm so sorry."