Author's Note: Ugh! Gawd! I hate writing the middle of a story. It's like pulling teeth. I've always found bridging the main plot points together to be so difficult so this is why it's been taking me so long to update here. Anyway, hope you guys aren't fed up waiting for me. Here's hoping the next chapter will come sooner, eh? ;)

Watson stared passively up at St. Bart's, his last moment with Sherlock replaying in his mind.

"It's all true…Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty… I'm a fake!"

He could pretend all he liked that none of that mattered to him, that whatever Sherlock invented, he was still a good person and Watson recognised this just from living with him. The truth was that this hurt the most, that Sherlock had researched him and used him for his own gain. While he considered Sherlock a friend, Sherlock considered him a project and it was that betrayal that hurt the most.

"Did you see him fall?" asked Samantha who was standing by his side.

Watson didn't know why he had let her talk him into this. He had always hoped that Sherlock was still alive somewhere. He had spent many nights refreshing the conspiracy website dedicated to this belief. It was Samantha's proposal that inflated that hope. Her arrival at Baker Street was no accident. She had been searching for Sherlock for months.

"He wouldn't take my case because it was too boring," she had said that night in the graveyard, "It was only a week after his supposed death that I received an anonymous note detailing my father's whereabouts. Dead men don't solve crimes, but I knew it was him who had solved the case. He's still out there."

Watson had little desire to relive the scene at St. Bart's all over again but something about this…investigation ignited something in him. He felt the way he did when he was solving crimes at Sherlock's side. For the first time in months he felt alive.

"He fell from there," Watson said as he pointed, "Landed on the pavement below."

Samantha appeared to be studying the scene for a moment.

"And then what happened?" she said.

"Um…" Watson rubbed the nape of his neck, "Bit of a blur really…I went over to check if he was dead…he didn't have a pulse." He remembered seeing him fall. He remembered the blood on the pavement. It seemed so real.

"John, what really happened?"

Watson glanced at Samantha whose green eyes stared back earnestly. She was imploring him to find another answer, to ascertain if what he had seen was really what he had seen.

"I…may not have been entirely clear headed," Watson replied, "I was knocked over by a cyclist. Everything seemed… disorientated."

"You think that was a coincidence?"

The sentence hit like a bullet between the eyes. The implication that Sherlock didn't just fake his death but had carefully been orchestrating it for a long time shook Watson to his core. He was in a state of panic that day when he received a phone call about Mrs. Hudson being shot. He was even more so panicked when he realised it was all just a distraction that Sherlock had set up. He was so pumping with adrenaline that he could have easily missed all the clues.

He should have known, he should have been in on it. All those months in therapy, all those nights spent alone and miserable were for nothing. How could he? How could he put him through this?

"John?"

"What?" Watson snapped out of his grief, realising that Samantha was peering at him with concern.

"You know if this is too much for you-"

"If Sherlock had faked his death," Watson cut her off before it did start to get too much for him, "then he would have been preparing for quite some time. And if that is the case, it's more than likely that he made it so he wouldn't be found."

"Nah. There's a way, there has to be a way," Samantha said absent-mindedly. She paced the street, looking around with her hands in the pockets of her forest green coat. While Watson admired her optimism, something about her demeanour implied there was more to her motivation than wishing to save the man who saved her father.

"There!" she pointed to a traffic camera behind him, "Do you think we could salvage any footage from that?"

Watson followed the camera's viewing angle noting that it was too low to have captured Sherlock falling… but then again…

"Stay exactly where you are! Don't move! Keep your eyes fixed on me."

Sherlock had made sure Watson had his full attention. Watson was supposed to watch him fall so that he wouldn't see behind the smoke and mirrors. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"I have a few friends down at the police department," he said, excitement brewing in the pit of his stomach, "I'm sure I can twist somebody's arm."

Samantha smiled and swung an amiable arm around his shoulder. "It's not much but it's a start," she said, "You should go ahead. I think I'll check out the hospital records and see if there's anything suspicious about Sherlock's death certificate."

Watson gave her a sidelong glance. "How, exactly?" he asked suspiciously.

"You let me worry about the how," she replied with a wink, "All you need to do is see about getting that footage. We can rendezvous back at the flat later." She chuckled and added, "Rendezvous. I feel like we're in a spy movie."

She turned on her heels and headed toward the hospital, leaving Watson with a suddenly wary mind.