Chapter 25: Razor

DAY 12

Sunday, 16.22 hrs

Sherlock Holmes wondered how the day could get any worse.

It had begun at John's bedside when, shortly before seven in the morning, the machines started blaring. Sherlock jolted upright in the chair to find John thrashing in the bed, back arched, neck rigid, mouth agape, and every muscle contracting violently. He flew to the door, wrenched it open, and cried down the hall for help.

By the time help came (about forty gruelling seconds later, by Sherlock's count), John had stopped seizing and lay limp, but the machines kept protesting his peril. They grew louder and louder in Sherlock's ears until he couldn't bear anymore to look on in silence while the doctors and nurses hovered around John, stabbing him in the chest with needles and feeding a ventilator tube down his throat. The machines kept screaming.

'Do something!' he shouted. 'Damn you all, help him!'

They had him forcibly removed and left him to pace in the waiting room, where he proceeded to kick chairs and throw lamps, frightening two small children who were waiting for their father to come out of a routine appendectomy. This time, hospital security apprehended him. Lestrade got the call of a disturbance related to John Watson's safety and rushed in shortly thereafter to sort things out. Unfortunately, Sgt Sally Donovan got the same call. She arrived first. And she brought Anderson.

Lestrade walked in on what seemed to be a one-sided row, Anderson against Sherlock. Anderson was beside himself, taking Sherlock's three-year lie and sudden reappearance as a personal affront. He lobbied against him accusations of all shades of criminality, everything from lying to law enforcement, to breaking and entering, to murder. For her part, Donovan just stared at him in wonder, wavering between disgust and awe. She made one comment, just one: 'So you're Arthur Doyle, are you?' to which Sherlock returned the dry retort, 'You've grown sharper, Sally. Have you figured out that Anderson is a complete wanker yet?' Other than that, she said nothing, just let Anderson sputter and spit and make an arse of himself.

Aside from his jibe at Donovan, Sherlock paid Anderson the ultimate insult of pretending he wasn't even in the room, neither answering questions nor responding to accusations. He didn't waste on Anderson even his customary glower. He paced, thinking only of John, infuriated that he had been forced from his side and that no one would tell him what had happened, or anything of his current condition, or when he'd be let back in to see him. He was left with the image of John convulsing on the bed—limbs contorting so fiercely he feared the bones would break, jaw stretched so wide he feared it might lock—replaying in his head on a constant loop, and he cursed his eidetic memory that captured the horror of it with such clarity. It had looked like the violent struggle of a spirit trying to escape a body prison that refused to yield its claim. Or maybe he had it the wrong way around, and it was the spirit that denied the body release.

Lestrade, coming in at the peak of Anderson's pathetic tirade, had succeeded in separating the two of them, though Sherlock hardly felt placated. He was on the edge. It was thoroughly unavoidable now—he could not return to being a dead man. Of course, he knew in his heart that such was impossible once he had seen Mrs Hudson, really seen her (and not from a distance), and she had seen him. Before then, he could still have retreated into the realm of the departed. Mycroft would have kept his secret, and Lestrade, and Molly. But Mrs Hudson was already talking about stocking his fridge with fruits and vegetables and didn't you like risotto? I'll make you some risotto and you're not still on about storing body parts next to the milk, surely and oh, you'll play your violin for me again, won't you, Sherlock? I do miss hearing it. No, he couldn't leave again, not after that.

Unless John wanted him to.

But that Anderson should know the truth made his being alive . . . irritating.

It was nearly noon before someone told him what was going on, and that someone happened to be Molly, whom he'd been texting relentlessly all morning, supplicating her to find out John's condition, as DI Lestrade was occupied with his interrogation of now nine former Yard officers, not to mention hunting for John's other abusers and Slough's killer, and no one else seemed to want to tell him anything. Not a damn thing.

She found him in the lab, where he sat numb and immobile, nowhere near a microscope.

'It was a tonic-clonic seizure,' she told him. 'They don't quite know what caused it, but they are speculating that the abnormal electrical activity in the brain could have been from low blood sugar or a poor response to the blood transfusions. His body is trying to straighten itself out but doesn't quite know how. I know that's not very scientific, but sometimes there are no satisfactory explanations for these things.'

'That it, then? Just a seizure?' He stared straight ahead, unable to feel relief, even though he had been bracing to hear her say those god-awful words: he didn't make it. An invisible pressure on his chest seemed to be growing heavier, making it difficult to breathe.

'Well, when he seized, the muscles in his chest sort of . . . squeezed together. One of the broken ribs slipped and pierced his lung. Then his lung collapsed. They've drained the blood and put in a chest tube. He's stable now. Just a bit of a scare. He'll be all right.' She nodded confidently, apparently trying to be reassuring, but he could see by the way she pursed her thin lips together and clutched the fingers on one hand with those of the other that she doubted her own words. She also looked like she might try to hug him again. He couldn't handle that right now, so he stood and resumed his pacing.

Mycroft returned to Barts at one o'clock to tell Sherlock to eat (he did not) and gave him a change of clothes, and Mrs Hudson arrived at two, bearing a vase of yellow lilies and white daisies. The three of them sat together in the waiting room on the third floor. Sherlock, on the understanding that he would behave himself, had been permitted to return. Mrs Hudson and Mycroft made awkward small talk, careful to avoid the subject of the last three years or even the reason that brought them all to Barts. Sherlock did not participate in the frivolous nattering. He sat still, and quiet, and deep in thought, waiting for word.

At half three, Lestrade returned, looking haggard, but he had come not to discuss the details of the ongoing investigation, only to sit with them in silent solidarity. At four, Molly brought them all coffees.

Then, at ten after the hour, Donovan and Anderson stepped into the waiting room.

'Sherlock Holmes, if you would please come with us.'

Sherlock slowly raised his head, but only to glare.

Lestrade got to his feet, closed the top button of his suit coat, and said, 'Not now, sergeant.'

'Are you arresting me?' asked Sherlock. 'Again?'

'Now, now, nothing like that,' said Lestrade. 'Donovan, this can wait.'

'We're in the middle of an investigation, sir. The longer we wait to question him, the more difficult it becomes to catch Mary Morstan's killers.'

'And we'll need to question John Watson, too, just as soon as he's woken up,' said Anderson.

Sherlock was suddenly standing. 'The hell you will.'

'Sherlock—' said Lestrade, putting out an assuaging hand.

'You'll stay the hell away from him. He'll talk only when—if—he wants to. Are we clear?'

'Who are you, his mother?' said Anderson. 'Last I checked, you have no legal relationship to John Watson. In fact, no one in this room has. Besides, on paper, you're dead. And in the absence of any familial ties, care and custody of incapacitated individuals falls to the state.'

'Shut up, Anderson,' Lestrade said through closed teeth.

'Don't be absurd, he has Harry!' shouted Sherlock.

'Harry's dead, Sherlock,' said Mycroft. 'Two years now.'

Sherlock closed his mouth, chastened. He hadn't known. His early Monday-morning research had not turned that up.

Mistaking Sherlock's contrition for submission, Anderson sneered, 'Yeah, you missed it.'

Sherlock came forward with his arm drawn back in a fist. Molly eeped, Mycroft grabbed his shoulder to restrain him, and as Donovan stepped out of his path, Lestrade stepped into it, ready to take the blow if it came to it, saying, 'I swear to god, Anderson, if you don't shut up this instant—'

'Look,' said Donovan, her mind a single track, and trying her damnedest not to show how Sherlock's resurrection had unbalanced her, 'we just have some standard questions about what you've seen, what you might know. As I understand, you were doing a little investigating on your own—'

'A little investigating,' echoed Sherlock scathingly, throwing his hands in the air and turning away.

'—and you may have learnt something that could help bring John's kidnappers to justice.' She was appealing to his desire for vengeance now. 'We're not even a hundred percent sure who all we're looking for. There was Caldwell and Slough in the convent, but there were likely more players—'

'Sebastian Moran and Daz the Slash Man,' said Sherlock. 'Don't play dumb. You've already spoken to Lestrade.'

'We don't know anything about a Daz, or what he looks like. Daz who?'

'The Slash Man. That's what they're calling him on the streets. He's ex-military, probably, like the lot of them. But you would already know this if you had bothered to arrest him months ago when he started victimising homeless Londoners.'

'Sexual assault isn't exactly our division,' said Anderson.

Sherlock wanted to strangle him, and Lestrade knew it. Fixing Anderson with an authoritative eye, Lestrade pointed to the door and said, 'Step out into the hall, Anderson. Now.'

'Why do you keep defending this prat?' Anderson objected. 'Yeah, I get it, he's ruddy brilliant. Well, he'd have to be, wouldn't he, to fool us all like he's done. That doesn't stop him from being a murderer!' He mustered his courage, poked his head around Lestrade like a small child hiding behind his mother, and pointed a finger at Sherlock. 'You're a psychopath, Holmes. We know you killed Richard Brook. We have damning evidence of the fact. That's why you faked your own death and fled—to save yourself from a lifetime in prison. Well, guess what, mate? There's no statute of limitations in this country, especially not on murder! Showing up again wasn't your best move.'

'You are an utter imbecile,' said Sherlock, 'if you think you understand anything of what happened on that day.'

'Oh ho! Tell us, then! You think you're so clever. Where did I go wrong? Brook exposes you as a fraud, so you kill him. Then, in a panic, you apparently fake your own death. So how did you survive? We had two dozen witnesses who saw you fall. How did you do it?'

'It's not important. Why don't you focus your limited mental capacity on something that actually matters? Listen to what I am telling you now—he's known as the Slash Man on the streets. You want a description, go and ask the people he's raped, the people you haven't given a damn about up until now. Go on, get their stories, now you're so eager to find him. You're the detectives. That's what you do.'

'We've got men on it, Sherlock,' said Lestrade.

'Of course. London's finest.'

'Now, now, all Anderson is saying is that it'll be easier to move forward once we can interview John. We'll have more to go on. Look, let's not talk about it right now. Not here. I'm sorry, Mrs Hudson, this is entirely inapprop—' He trailed off, his lips caught on the p.

'You want my cooperation? It's all yours. Just take Anderson off the case. The witless, thoughtless, brainless—'

'Sherlock—' Lestrade had tensed, looking at a spot just past Sherlock's shoulder. But Sherlock didn't seem to notice and continued:

'He has no business being here anyway as head of forensics. I don't know why Donovan has even bothered bringing him, unless they're still shagging.'

'Sherlock.' Molly's voice now, with a ring of caution, but she had no place in this conversation, and he rode over her.

'He'll have me to answer to if he even tries to set foot—'

'Sherlock.'

He spun to Mycroft, aggravated by the censure, and erupted. 'What?'

But he noticed, then, that Mycroft, like Lestrade, and like Molly, wasn't looking at him, but at a fixed point that seemed to be just behind him, in the doorway. Mrs Hudson's eyes were locked there, too, and a hand was covering her mouth as her eyes slowly misted. Even Donovan and Anderson were staring. In trepidation, Sherlock glimpsed over his shoulder just enough to notice a figure standing in the doorway, a sight familiar to his periphery, though it had been so long since he had seen it. His heart guttered. He turned completely to face the door.

And there stood John. There, awake, alert, staring at him from across an impassable chasm. Standing. How was it he was standing, there, in the doorway, all alone, and looking so small? Ten days of starvation had stripped him of the meat of his chest and the paunch in his belly. His skinny legs, poking like sticks below the hospital gown, looked hardly thick enough to bear him up. Even the flesh of his face and neck had thinned, making him appear at once ten years older and ten years younger. He looked like he might shatter if touched. The dry, chapped skin around his mouth and eyes blotched and reddened his face, and with the swelling having gone down, the bruising was more prominent. The nurses had carefully shaven his face, but also parts of his head where stitching was required, giving him the patchy visage of a mistreated dog. Droplets of blood on his arms showed the places where he had been pricked with the needle, where he had plucked them from his own arms. How had he—? Then Sherlock understood: Despite the excruciating pain, he had pushed his broken body from the bed, escaping the medicine that dulled the pain and the machines that supported his recovery, and left, heading for the stairwell, and oh god, he'd been heading for the roof.

But his course had been diverted. Now, he leant heavily on a cane, and this time he needed it. Everything about him spoke of pain, but nothing more so than his eyes, which were rigidly locked on Sherlock.

Silence filled the room to the point of suffocation. The pressure of it swelled like an inflating balloon. Then at last, it was ruptured.

'You're alive,' John said. His voice fitted the state of his body—ragged, rent, and thin.

Sherlock didn't know what to say. It wasn't supposed to happen like this, not like this. He parted his lips to explain, but all he could say was, 'John.'

'All this time?' John fingers were as pallid and immovable as white stone around the handle of his cane; at his side, he clenched and unclenched his left fist, all fingers curling inward but the splinted index finger. 'You . . . you never told— If I had known, I . . . I can't—'

The cane wasn't enough. He put out a hand to brace himself against the wall.

'John, you shouldn't be on your feet,' said Lestrade. He stepped forward as though intending to assist John back to his room.

'No.' John stepped back stiffly, wincing at an unspoken pain. Sherlock saw that he left a patch of red in his wake. John put out a hand to forbid anyone from drawing nearer. At last, he seemed to take in the room, looking at every face but Sherlock's, faces he hadn't seen in years and could scarcely seem to comprehend. 'You knew about this, Greg?' he said, his voice straining. His eyes jumped. 'Mycroft?' They landed on Mrs Hudson, Molly, Donovan, and Anderson. 'You all knew he was . . . Oh, god.' His eyes returned to Sherlock, but he couldn't bear to look for too long. He squeezed his eyes closed and bowed his head, hand fisted at his side. His body expressed a hurt that his tongue could not.

Mrs Hudson, in a small, tinny, wounded voice, said, 'I found out only yesterday.'

Lestrade's mobile sounded in his pocket. He silenced it at once.

'John,' said Sherlock, as gently as he knew how, but John's body tensed up at the sound of his name spoken by that voice. 'No one—none of them—knew. Not until you were . . . taken.' Then he had to correct himself. 'Except Molly. But I can explain. I can explain everything.'

'But I saw you fall,' said John. 'I saw you fall!' He voice broke against the final word and his face twisted in pain. 'I buried you!'

'Forgive me, John.' He was desperate to explain himself, to make John understand. He stepped forward, but John regained himself and stepped back again.

'No,' he said. His eyes shone wet. 'He kept asking me, asking me, again, again, again, and I didn't know. I didn't know! I couldn't tell him and then he— My Mary is dead because of you! If I had known you were alive, I could have saved— She would still be— Oh god! Damn you! Goddamn you!'

The cane failed him. As it twisted away from his body, John collapsed to his knees in utter defeat, bending over himself with face tucked into the crook of his elbows. His trembling wrists drew together above his head of their own volition, and his shoulders quaked violently. Sherlock was instantly crouched beside him. But when he wrapped fingers around the bony shoulder, meaning to comfort or straighten him, he inadvertently pressed into a tender wound on his back. John gasped hoarsely and wrenched his body away. Sherlock's hand withdrew quickly, as though he had touched a hot iron. But John was still gasping. His hand splayed against his chest.

'He can't breathe!' Sherlock cried.

Donovan rushed from the room.

'Lay him down! Lay him down!' said Lestrade, hovering. 'On the ground!'

Mrs Hudson was crying openly. Molly put her arms around her shoulders to steady her, but her eyes were wide with fear.

Donovan wasn't gone long. The nurses had heard the shouting from down the hall and had come running. Next Sherlock knew, the room was filled with medical personnel and security officers, and he was shuffled backward until he came to stand by Mycroft, who gripped him at the elbow to hold him in place. Somewhere in the far distance, he heard Donovan speaking something into her mobile about security breaches and lockdowns, Lestrade murmuring obscenities as he ran a hand through his hair again and again, and Anderson repeating what was he thinking, he's mad, what was he thinking? But Sherlock's attention was locked on John; his ears were filled with John's excoriating breathing and the doctors' buzzwords: shock, and collapsed lung, and sedative. Soon, John was lifted onto a gurney and an oxygen mask was held to his face. But he fought it. He pushed weakly against the hands that tried to help him until they were forced to hold his arms down. His eyes streamed and looked wildly around the room, as though he didn't know where he was. Then, just as they began to wheel him from the room, his eyes found Sherlock. His body stilled, but his eyes were filled with an unspeakable pain. Then he was gone.

Sunday, 21.09 hrs

They refitted the chest tube. They sedated him with drugs. They strapped him into the hospital bed. They let no one in to see him, not even Lestrade.

'They've made him a prisoner,' said Sherlock angrily.

'It's for his own safety,' Mycroft replied. 'He should never have been able to leave the bed, let alone the room.'

'What happened to your air-tight security?' he asked scathingly.

Mycroft pulled a face. 'I've had a little chat with your dear inspector detective. And with my own people. The situation has been rectified. It won't happen again.'

'You need to make it happen again.'

'Pardon?'

'I need to see him.'

'Sherlock—'

'They won't let me anywhere near that room, but I need to see him, Mycroft. I need to explain. I know if I can only explain—'

'Don't be foolish. You saw how he reacted to your . . . let's just say it: your existence. After all you've done already . . .'

'He deserves to know why.'

'And he will. In time. Good lord, let the man rest! Wait for him to be stronger. Let him recover his senses, at least.' He thought a moment. 'Perhaps it would be better if someone else were to explain it. Someone close to him. Someone he trusts.'

Sherlock winced. 'There's no one, Mycroft. No one.'

Monday, 02.25 hrs

Are you still here?
GL

Yes.
MH

Is Sherlock with you?

I haven't seen him
since around midnight.

Damn. Text me if you
hear from him, will you?

Any new word on John?

Nothing.

Monday, 06.18 hrs

Timing was everything. The perfect moment would come only once. He watched, and waited.

It came in the morning, before sunrise. He had been keeping an eye on 319 from clandestine locations along the hallway (including the men's toilet near the waiting room), monitoring who went in and who went out of the room. A doctor had entered seventeen minutes before. Before he could exit, however, the normally quiet and empty hall came suddenly alive as two new patients—victims of a early morning car crash—were being transported from A&E into intensive care, each gurney surrounded by a team of nurses and doctors.

Timing. He stepped out of the men's toilet and joined them as they hurried down the hallway. Intensely focused on their patients' vital signs, they failed to notice him. Then, just as they were passing 319 (and the security officer who stood guard there) the doctor whom he had watched enter the room was just leaving it. Sherlock stepped away from the nurses and doctors who had been his camouflage and slipped directly into John's room as the door softly swung closed behind him. He had been, in effect, invisible. All told, it had taken him less than ten seconds. Nevertheless, his heart pounded madly in his chest.

The room was quiet, but for the steady beeping of the machines; and dark, but for the glow of monitors and a dim and solitary light fixture in the wall. The orange curtains were pulled only halfway around the bed, but Sherlock had to take two steps to the right before he could see John, who was lying on his back in a partially raised bed. Both arms, once again hooked up to IVs, were in padded restraints at his sides. His head was turned away from the open curtain, away from Sherlock, but as Sherlock drew nearer on the other side, he could tell that John was awake. His eyes were open, and he stared straight ahead as though seeing nothing at all.

Sherlock swallowed hard and came to a stop at the foot of the bed. Then he took a steadying breath. 'John,' he said, gently, hesitantly, as if the very sound of his voice were a razor, and no matter how he wielded it, he was sure to cut.

At first, he doubted that John had heard him. He made no movement, didn't so much as blink. But then, he spoke.

'Please,' he said. Sherlock noticed the glistening edge of John's eye, which threatened to spill over. 'I can't . . . do this.'

'I need you to understand.'

Cut.

'Leave.'

'I will. I will, just give me a chance to explain first.'

Slice.

'My Mary is dead.' John said it this time without anger, but with an emptiness that pierced Sherlock even deeper.

'I know.'

Carve.

'My fault,' said John. He squeezed his eyes tight and turned his head into the pillow.

'Don't. Never say that. It's my fault, John. If I had thought of her only thirty minutes sooner, I would have been there to stop them from taking her. I didn't act fast enough, John. I wasn't there to save her.'

'She wasn't . . . yours to save. You didn't know her.'

He took a tentative step closer and resisted the urge to reach out a hand and touch John's arm. 'I knew some things. I knew she liked to work with her hands. She made the curtains in your sitting room and in the kitchen, and she painted the walls herself. She was a gardener—the miniscule scars of rosebush scratches on the backs of her hands are quite inimitable—and cared for the growth of small things. She liked Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell and read their works over and over again, judging by the dog-eared state of the books on her shelf, and had a predilection for Tchaikovsky and ballet, given her CD collection and the shape of her feet. She loved Stonehenge—'

'Stop it,' said John angrily. His head came around, and he glared through the mist. 'You. Didn't. Know her.'

Sherlock bowed his head, penitent. He took a step back. 'You're right. I didn't. I'm sorry.'

This wasn't going well at all. Mycroft was right: it wasn't the right time. He wasn't just being foolish; he was being cruel. 'I'll— I'll go,' he said weakly.

'Why?' said John, trying to lift his eyes, but he couldn't quite meet Sherlock's.

'Why?' Sherlock echoed.

'How is it,' said John, 'that you're alive? I watched you die.'

'You saw what I . . . needed you to see.'

John lifted a hand, meaning to wipe the fallen tears from his cheek, only to rediscover the restraint. He would have to abide the tears. 'I don't understand. He made you. He made you.'

Sherlock recalled the last words John ever wrote on the blog that made him famous. I'll always believe in him. And something Lestrade had told him, after Sherlock had lamented John's believing his every word, even the false ones, the one meant to protect him: He didn't believe every lie. He never believed you were a fake. If that were true, John would have reasoned it out that the only cause for Sherlock's seeming suicide had been coercion. And the author of that coercion? Moriarty.

'Yes,' said Sherlock. 'He did.'

'How?'

Sherlock dared to step close once more. 'I can explain everything. All of it. Do you want me to?'

For a long, tense moment, John didn't answer. Then he nodded, just once, a subtle motion of the head, but he still couldn't look at him.

He spoke slowly, like he was shaping his mouth around a new language, weighing each word in his mind before tasting it on his tongue. 'Moriarty,' he began. 'Of course. That's where all the trouble started. He invented Richard Brook to destroy me, as you know, but I didn't know how far he would take it, or how quickly. The game was to discredit me entirely, all in one night. He began with the Bruhl kidnapping. You were there, you saw how he got suspicion to fall to me. Everyone believed it, too. Donovan, of course, and even Lestrade—'

'Not me.'

'No. Not you.' Sherlock looked at him tenderly, but John had turned his head away again and didn't see. 'That was . . .' He sighed. 'That was part of the problem. It made you a target.'

'I don't understand.'

'The pieces of the jigsaw were beginning to fit together for me, rapidly, when we encountered Richard Brook in Kitty Riley's flat. Then he, Richard Brook, fled, and you and I were back on the street. Suddenly, I could see the whole picture, the comprehensiveness of his plan. I told you then that he needed only one more thing, one more thing, to complete his masterpiece. For the world to believe I was a fraud, he needed me dead, unable to speak, defend myself, or unmask him. But more than that. He needed me to die by my own hand. A suicide. That would seal it in everyone's mind: Sherlock Holmes, exposed and defamed, takes own life to avoid public humiliation. But Moriarty was a clever man, like me, and he knew he couldn't simply talk me into it. He needed leverage, and only one thing was bound to work against me. You.'

He noticed that John's fists were balled, but he was otherwise unreadable. What he was thinking of all of this, Sherlock couldn't tell. Afraid to ask, he continued.

'That's why I left you, then. As long as you were at my side, you were at risk, but I knew you would only argue with me if I tried to explain that. Moriarty was going to do whatever he had to in order to make sure I committed suicide. But I didn't want to die, John. Call it selfishness, call it cowardice, or maybe just human impulse, but I didn't want to die. So my best chance was to make him believe I had, if it came to it, if I couldn't find a way out on my own. Then I would have the element of surprise on my side when I hunted him down. Him and his people, though at the time I had no idea just how vast that population was. But you have to understand: it was a last resort, a precautionary measure I hoped never to have to use. All the same, it had to be perfectly planned, or it would never work.

'So I went to Molly. She was perfectly situated in talent and anonymity, the only person I trusted who was capable of helping me fake my own death, if she followed my instructions carefully. I could control everything: where, when, how. Still, I held to the hope that I could defeat Moriarty without her. I thought I could do it all on my own. That's always been one of my greater failings.

'You found me in the lab, and something you did in there made me hopeful that I could in fact beat him at his own game. Your fingers tapping on the counter reminded me of something Moriarty had done in our flat—a key code. I didn't realise it was a red herring, Moriarty playing my own of love of shrewdness against me. But I believed, then, that I had something to use against him. The game was in my pocket. All I had to do was face him. But if I had any chance of beating him, I couldn't give him the opportunity to use you against me, because I knew it would work. I also knew that you would never willingly leave my side, not even if I begged or threatened or insulted or reasoned with you. That's why I had Molly call your mobile, masquerading as an A&E nurse, to tell you that Mrs Hudson had been shot. Nothing else would have gotten you to leave me. I could have the whole thing sorted by the time you learnt that I had lied to you. So believing you were safe from him, I texted Moriarty and arranged to meet him on the roof. If things went badly, I would have to execute my plan and fall. But my hope was to defeat him first and then go find you.'

Sherlock realised, then, that he was pacing and gesticulating fervently, his talking pace rapid once again. It was the first time, since that day, that he had allowed himself to so fully relive all that had happened, and he wanted John to understand—needed him to understand—why he had done all he had done. He forced himself to slow down.

'I met him there, on the roof, and played dumb about what it was he expected me to do. But I had underestimated him by overestimating his love of the complex. His plan hadn't been complex at all. There had been no key code. He had broken into the Tower of London, the bank, the prison, all on bribery. And he didn't need you on the roof with me to use you against me. He told me that, unless his people saw me jump, he would kill all of my friends: Mrs Hudson, Lestrade . . . and you. Three snipers. I admit, I had not been expecting it. But I still trusted in my own mental prowess that I could in some way talk Moriarty into calling them off. But he was insane, John. Nothing was more important to him than the sure knowledge that I would be defeated at his hand. So to ensure that I had to jump, he took himself—the only one capable of stopping the snipers—out of the picture. He must have known that his great and terrible work would continue in the hands of others. But it was my own ruination that was his masterpiece. So he shook my hand, put a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

'It was then I knew it—nothing could save you, all of you, except my death. He had won. I was going to jump. His people needed to see it, and believe it, or you were sure to die. I stepped to the edge of the roof. That's when I saw you step out of the taxi. The way you were running, I knew you were in a panic. You knew by then that I had sent you away deliberately, and probably that I was in danger. So there was one more thing I had to do. You needed to see me fall. As I had discussed with Molly, there would be no body to identify after the fact, and you wouldn't necessarily trust the testimonies of the eyewitnesses I had set in place. You needed to see me fall yourself, or you would never fully believe I was dead. So I made you stand there and watch. I tried to convince you that I was a fake, to give credence to my fall but also to make you hate me. I thought it might . . . be easier, that way. But when you refused to believe it . . . I knew you were a better friend than I deserved. When I said goodbye, I believed I would never get to explain that to you. And I fell.'

He explained everything then, how he had survived the fall, how he had deceived John on the ground, how Molly had so perfectly played her part. And no one knew. Not one soul. And Sherlock left England.

'Three years,' said John quietly. 'You've been lying to me for more than three years. Molly's been lying to me. Mycroft—'

'Didn't know,' Sherlock said forcefully. 'I swear to you, no one, not Lestrade, not Mycroft, no one but Molly knew I was alive. For all intents and purposes, I had died that day.'

'You hadn't. You could have come back.'

'I couldn't, John. Not if it would jeopardise you and the others again. As long as I stayed dead, they would have no reason—'

'A note. Some word. Anything.'

'You would have come after me. Besides, it wouldn't have been fair to you, my return. I believed that, in time, you would be . . . fine. You would move on.'

John was shaking his head again. 'I wasn't fine. I was never fine.' His arms strained against the straps.

There was a loud pause, and the silence was an aching pressure against their ears. 'Nor was I,' said Sherlock. 'But I didn't know what else to do.'

John frowned deeply. He looked off to the side, breathing hard, fighting to remain in control. 'Where were you?' he asked next.

Sherlock spoke of disappearing first to France, changing his name and appearance everywhere he went. He gave a brief history of being constantly on the move, tracking down and destroying Moriarty's vast network thread by thread, unable and unwilling to settle, through Eastern Europe and into Asia, Australia, Africa. When he arrived in Libya in his narrative, he hesitated, saying only, 'I was seen by someone I had once known.'

'Irene Adler,' John supplied. At Sherlock's stiff nod, he said, 'He told me you had saved her. I didn't believe him.'

'I made a mistake, not telling you. But I made a larger one, trusting her.'

He proceeded to explain his gravest error yet in telling her that one person knew, and how she had incorrectly deduced that that one person was John.

'I had figured that she had retained Moriarty's services, that once. Used him as a consulting criminal, like the others had. I never knew she had deeper connections to his network. So when she told the likes of Sebastian Moran'—John flinched, ever so slightly at the name, and Sherlock resolved to be more judicious in his naming the man in the future—'that I was alive, and that someone knew it . . .'

John nodded, understanding.

'I came back only when I learnt you were missing. It was Moriarty all over again, though I didn't know it at the time. I hadn't known that she told anyone about me, so I hadn't guessed it, that someone would take you.'

'To get to you.'

Sherlock sighed, bone weary and despising himself. 'Yes.'

'That's why Mary died. Because of what I was to you.'

What you are to me, Sherlock thought. 'I'm so sorry, John,' he said one more time.

John continued to look away, his sadness so profound that Sherlock felt it weighing down his own heart. John could never forgive him. He knew it, and he would not fight for it. It would be inhuman, and deeply unfair, to expect anything but hatred from John now, after all he had done.

'I just needed . . . No. You deserved the truth of it. All of it. Though I know it's not enough to . . . It can never . . .'

He left the thought unfinished. These were words, just words. Meaningless, worthless. And yet, how deeply they cut, each syllable, each consonant. He waited for John to say something, anything. To call him inhuman and gutless, inglorious and degenerate. To scream his hate and fury and lash him with every merited abuse. But John was done talking. And Sherlock understood. He would leave. He would not impose himself on John again. And until—unless—John asked him to, he would not come back.