I think this can be read alone, but portions will make a LOT more sense if you read the other AUs first.

"You need to find a different back-up plan, Sherlock," his brother warned. "You know what this will do to him."

"Of course, I know!" Holmes fired back. "I have not forgotten how angry he was after the Culverton Smith case, but he will be fine. He will have Mary, I will return as soon as I may, and you will be able to contact me should I need to return sooner. Will you help me or not?"

Holmes scowled, rolling over in the darkness. He needed to sleep, not replay that conversation yet again.

Mycroft sighed, looking once more at the sheaf of papers Holmes had given him. "I do not think you will enjoy the results of this, Sherlock, but yes, I will help you."

Worried tension fled in a rush, and he nodded his thanks, unable to resist leaning his elbows on the table. These last few months had been harder than he would ever admit.

Mycroft had seen some of it anyway, Holmes knew. Mycroft had always been the more observant of the two brothers, and his next comment had confirmed it.

"Tell me about the case."

The words snapped him to the present, and Holmes pushed himself to his feet, shaking his head. "It is all in there," he answered, gesturing to the papers. "I intend to stop by Watson's consulting room on my way to one of my bolt holes. Would you be amenable to driving him to the station tomorrow?"

"Of course."

"Excellent. Meet him on the other side of the Lowther Arcade at a quarter past nine, and wear your red-tipped cloak so he recognizes you."

He had left without giving his brother a chance to reply, going first to Watson's practice before choosing a hideout at random to get some rest. He had not slept well in months, and he would get very little sleep over the next week or more. As soon as they left London, Watson would become Moriarty's primary target, not Holmes, and he would need to protect his friend.

That knowledge did nothing to stop the conversation from repeating yet again, and he stared at the ceiling, desperately trying to stop the what ifs plaguing his overactive imagination.

Forceful pounding nearly beat down his door, and he glanced up from his rapid packing.

"Monsieur Monet! Monsieur!"

An oath tried to escape. The footsteps just before had been an overweight Englishman, not a Frenchman, and the heavily accented voice further revealed the deception. He had been found. He needed to leave. Now.

Abandoning the last few items he had intended to grab, the valise swung over his shoulders as he sprinted for the back room. The motel had refused him ground-floor accommodations so many weeks before, and with his windows opening some fifteen feet above the ground, he desperately hoped he would have time to deploy the emergency ladder he had built. After three years, they were much too close to finishing this for Moran to catch him now. He wanted to go home.

The door gave with a crunch as he reached the bedroom, and heavy footsteps hurried through the entry. He would not be able to use the ladder, but he would dive over the sill before he surrendered. The window slid open as a large man appeared in the doorway.

"Sherlock!" the man hissed.

He froze, one foot already over the frame. That sounded like—

Returning his feet to the floor, he looked to find his brother striding quickly across the room, relief and fading worry mixing with something else in his gaze.

"Mycroft?" he replied, stunned. "What are you doing here?"

His brother's large hand landed on his shoulder, nearly dragging him away from the window in Mycroft's version of a relieved embrace.

"Come," he said instead of answering Holmes' question. "We have just enough time to catch the next train."

Mycroft hurried him into a first-class compartment, and worry lingered in his brother's expression even after they had pulled away from the station. A tendril of fear shot through Holmes. Only one thing could trouble his brother now that he knew Holmes was safe.

"What happened to Watson? Is he—?"

"He is alive," Mycroft answered when Holmes could not continue. "As of two days ago," he added before Holmes could show his relief.

Please no.

"And now?"

"I do not know."

No. No!

He raced along the water's edge, nearly tripping over the rocks as his attention refused to leave the prone form not a hundred feet down the bank. A long, worried train ride had eventually found him beside a river only a few miles from the Scotland border, and he no longer noticed the fatigue of sprinting from the station.

Watson lay propped against a rock, his shoes inches from the water. He did not appear to be moving.

Grief bloomed, lodging in Holmes' throat to steal the breath the run had already shortened. He was too late. He had failed.

Then Watson inhaled deeply, apparently just waking, and Holmes remembered how to breathe. He had not thought his friend one to sleep on the banks of a river several hours' ride from London, but at least he was alive. Holmes had not failed. He had arrived in time. Watson would be fine.

A change caught his attention, and he looked away from his index. Over the long journey home, he had watched his friend struggle not only to stay in the present but also to differentiate reality from hallucination—including whether Holmes' presence was genuine. A shell of the man Holmes remembered, Watson's fatigue had caught up with him when he finally believed Holmes was real, and Holmes had planted himself in his armchair to guard Watson's sleep. Watson's haggard face announced just how little rest he had gotten in the last weeks, and while Holmes could not change the past, he could wake his friend at the first sign of trouble.

The quiet room showed no sign of a problem, however. Watson still slept calmly. Mrs. Hudson had not yet returned. A crier hawked his wares on the street. Something important was missing, but what?

The realization slammed into him. The room was more than quiet. It was silent.

His gaze darted over to focus on his friend. Watson's chest no longer rose and fell with shallow breaths, and utter terror shot through Holmes for the second time in as many days.

"Watson!"

There was no response, and the index hit the floor as he lunged to grab his friend by the shoulders.

"WATSON!"

He should have investigated when the mail stopped.

"I am here for Doctor Watson," he said in a strident voice, readjusting the books he held under one arm. "He is expecting me."

The maid leaned lazily against the door, eyeing him with a gaze more searching than was proper. Watson would scold her if he ever saw, but Holmes made no comment as she waved him inside.

"He just returned. This way, sir."

They walked down a hall notably devoid of decorations, eventually stopping to knock on the door of Watson's study.

"Mr. Hines to see you, sir," she announced, leaving Holmes in the hall. A strange silence answered her for slightly too long.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Ivy?" Watson finally remonstrated, his voice worryingly empty. "I do not accept patients outside of consulting hours."

It was not her fault he had claimed an appointment, and he hobbled forward, entering the room before Watson could continue. Stacks of records covered a desk bereft of the personal clutter Watson had previously displayed, and Holmes faintly wondered what had strengthened the blankness in his friend's eyes. Watson had not looked so distant on the street.

"I just wanted to apologize for my gruffness, sir," he started the moment he cleared the door. "You were so kind in helping me pick up my books, and I was nothing but a prickly old man. There was no harm meant, I assure you."

Something flickered in Watson's gaze too quickly for Holmes to catch. "You make too much of a trifle. May I ask how you knew who I was?"

He started rambling a long line of deductions, starting with the meeting outside the courthouse and leading into an invented bookshop up the street. He pointedly referenced seeing Watson during his rounds, as well as Watson's evident work with the Yard, but he paid more attention to his friend than to his words.

Watson was thin, more so than he had been when he was still recovering from Maiwand. He had not been eating, and the shadows under his eyes revealed a lack of sleep. His expression remained completely—and worryingly—shuttered no matter what Holmes said, and even his eyes did not betray his thoughts. He also stared through Holmes more than at him. Holmes did not like the vacancy that lingered in that gaze.

That blankness changed his plans. He had intended to lead Watson to the realization through conversation, but a pleasant surprise would change emptiness to delight and renew the smile Watson had apparently lacked since Mary's death. He steered his rambling toward the bookshelf behind Watson's desk.

"…I have plenty of novels for sale," he finished, "and five volumes might fill that empty place on your shelf. It looks untidy, does it not, sir?"

Watson had kept pictures there at one time, but he reflexively looked at Holmes' gesture. Holmes took the opportunity. Quickly gaining his feet, the bookseller's disguise fell to the floor, and when Watson turned around, he saw Holmes as himself.

"Hello, my dear chap," he said with a smile, waiting for joyful surprise to fill Watson's face.

Watson froze, staring, but surprise never formed. He slowly stood after a moment, unreadable eyes now looking completely through Holmes.

"Watson?"

Still nothing. Watson never moved, staring blankly as if not recognizing his friend, and worry bloomed. Was Watson about to throw him out?

His question died unspoken. Watson's face lost color, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Stark fear shot through Holmes.

"Watson!"

He lunged, barely catching his friend before Watson bounced off the desk. Holmes was a fool. He was an unthinking imbecile. Watson had recently lost his wife. Had Holmes just given his friend a coronary?

Watson's pulse was strong, if a bit slow, and Holmes breathed a sigh of relief as he propped his friend in the desk chair. Fainting was better than a heart attack, but even that still labelled Holmes an idiot. What kind of friend overlooked the signs of strain to deliver a severe shock? Everything from the lack of pictures on the shelf to the deep lines in Watson's face announced his friend's heavy grief.

Watson always kept a flask of brandy in his desk, and Holmes found it easily, supporting Watson with one hand as the other dripped the alcohol into his friend's mouth. Watson unconsciously swallowed, then his eyes blinked open.

"My dear Watson," Holmes said as his friend tried to focus. "I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea you would be so affected."

Watson still made no answer, now staring at Holmes as if he was transparent, and the guilt already plaguing Holmes grew.

He should have returned before Mary's death.

"You idiot!" Mary hissed as Holmes dove forward to take his friend's limp weight off Mary's awkward grip. "You should know better than to surprise him like that!"

Holmes adjusted, supporting Watson's unconscious form against his side as he glanced between them. He had been in the room for nearly thirty minutes as young James Sherlock entered the world, and Watson had seen him at the start. How did that qualify as "surprising" his friend?

"He saw me enter."

"But he did not acknowledge you, I'll warrant," Mary growled, her worry over Watson emerging as anger at Holmes. "Then you make him fear I am about to convulse again and seat yourself not two feet away before he has a chance to believe you're real. What did you expect to happen?!"

She lunged, momentarily forgetting how bad of an idea that would be, and pain appeared on her face before she could more than half sit up. She slowly leaned back with a glower. Only James' arrival had prevented him from receiving a black eye.

"What do you mean 'again'?" Watson had yet to move in his place against Holmes' side, and Holmes readjusted the slight weight. Watson was much thinner than Holmes remembered. His friend had obviously not been eating, and shadows under his eyes indicated an extended lack of sleep.

"We lost our daughter last year," she answered bluntly, probably enjoying his smothered flinch. "Pre-eclampsia sent me into early labor, and our daughter was stillborn. I went into post-birth eclampsia, and for a while there he feared I was about to follow our daughter. James is nearly a month early. John's first thought on arriving home was that it was happening again."

Oh, Watson. That explained the air of perpetual grief. The laugh lines around his eyes and mouth had smoothed, replaced by worry lines in his forehead and between his eyes. His friend had endured a long three years.

"That does not explain why he fainted."

"He mourned you, Sherlock," she emphasized. "Why can you not understand that? You know he sees you as a brother. Your death sent him into brain fever for months. Of course your return would shock him."

Months? No. That could not be accurate. Watson was stronger than that. Why would Holmes' loss make him so ill?

Mary read something of his thoughts, and her renewed irritation announced his disbelief showed more than his surprise.

"Yes, I said months, Sherlock," Mary snapped just as Watson stirred. "It is a miracle he came back at all, and he never fully recovered. The last thing he asked just now was if I could see you, too."

She silenced at his frantic gesture, and he focused on where Watson slowly roused, her words ringing through his mind.

'He never fully recovered.' Just what had he done to his friend?

Watson turned his head, then his brow furrowed. He tensed, preparing to fight as he registered a person beneath him.

"Easy, Watson," Holmes said quickly. "You are safe, as are Mary and your son."

Watson's mouth turned down in thought, and his eyes opened. Blinking the room into focus, his searching gaze noted Mary still lying on the settee and James asleep in the bassinet, then looked at where Holmes' arm held him upright. He immediately ducked free, pushing himself along the floor to stare warily at Holmes.

"I owe you a thousand apologies, Watson." Holmes voiced, hoping the words would prove this was real. "I had no idea you would be so affected."

"You're dead." Watson's wide eyes announced surprise mingled with fear and staunchly denied hope, among other things. "You're dead. I—" The words cut off, and Holmes wondered what Watson had silenced. Now was not the time to ask, however.

"I am not dead," he countered, laying a firm hand on Watson's ankle, "but I had to make you believe I was." He hesitated, trying and failing to fully deduce Watson's thoughts. "Moriarty had a lieutenant under orders to target you if I survived," he slowly continued when Watson made no reply. "I could not reveal myself until he was in custody. It was supposed to be for a few weeks, maybe a month, not three years."

Watson simply stared at him, a hesitant hope repeatedly sparking and dying in his eyes. Watson evidently still wondered if he was hallucinating—or perhaps dreaming. Today was not the first time he had seen Holmes since Switzerland.

He should have ensured they followed the original timeframe.

Watson sat limply in his armchair, staring at nothing. He remained silent when Mary replaced Mrs. Hudson in the nearby chair, and he did not even look when Holmes falteringly knelt in front of him.

"Watson?" There was no answer. "Watson, look at me."

Nothing. Watson's hollow gaze remained a thousand miles away, and Holmes tore his attention from his friend when Mary sighed.

"Don't take it personally," she said quietly. "He hasn't said a word since the day he returned."

Holmes looked between them, noting the fatigue and worry in Mary as well as the heavy grief bowing Watson's shoulders beneath the crepe suit. He had spent a fourteen-hour train ride preparing himself to find Watson injured and bedridden, but this was worse. Watson's many medical lessons had never covered a cold brain fever.

"He has been like this for two weeks?"

"Or so," Mary replied. "He withdrew a day, maybe two, after you separated at the falls. God knows how many times I have tried to reach him, but he does not even seem to know where he is." She paused, still staring at Holmes. "There's been very little progress," she admitted quietly, "but maybe that will change with you here. He might listen to you in a way he cannot hear me. He will be so pleased to see you, Sherlock."

He was not the only one. Pleasure warred with concern in Mary's gaze, and if the way Mrs. Hudson puttered behind him was any indication, she was just as thankful. Holmes had not expected more relief from them than from Watson, but no matter what he did, his friend refused to look at him. Talking did nothing, touch brought no response, and Watson did not even react when Holmes started playing—then scratching—on the violin someone had brought from Baker Street. His friend had locked himself in his own mind and refused to come out, all because of Holmes.

Even worse, however, was the fearful thought warning that if he did not reach Watson quickly enough, there might be nothing left to reach. There must be something he could do.

"You need to refute what he is telling himself," Mycroft provided when Holmes asked for advice the next day. "He will only listen to you."

"Refute what he is telling himself," Holmes repeated, slightly confused. Watson's expression was a blank slate. "I have no way of knowing what he is thinking!"

"You know what you would be thinking." Holmes raised an eyebrow, silently asking what Mycroft meant, and his brother rephrased. "What would you be thinking if he had died at Moriarty's hand?"

He stared, a mixture of understanding and horror crashing over him. If Watson had died at the falls that day, it would only have been Holmes' fault—for not protecting his friend, for not warning him of the danger. He would have been blaming himself, but Watson could not think that. Holmes had very clearly sent him away!

That did explain why Watson had not yet responded, however. Watson had not retreated because of Holmes' death. He had retreated to deal with the blame of Holmes' death. Holmes had been trying to drag Watson out of his retreat instead of making the retreat unnecessary.

Mycroft clapped Holmes' shoulder on his way out, the gesture wordlessly announcing his own relief at Holmes' safe return, but Holmes focused on his friend.

"It is not your fault, Watson."

Watson's brow twitched, as if he had tried to furrow it in confusion, and Holmes took one limp hand in his and tried again.

"You did not cause my death."

Mary gasped faintly, suddenly realizing what Mycroft must have seen weeks ago, but Holmes paid her no mind. Watson's brow had twitched again.

"You are not a murderer."

That granted him a minute cringe, and he knew he was on the right track.

"You did not kill me. Moriarty and Moran both tried to, and they both nearly succeeded, but you did neither. You are not a murderer, Watson."

Pain sparked in Watson's eyes. The emotion was much better than that vacant blankness, and Holmes continued talking, pleading, refuting, promising anything required to draw his friend back. It took far too long, but the hollow emptiness slowly retreated. Watson eventually looked at him, responded to him, moved, and relief bloomed in Holmes.

But only for a few minutes. Watson grew quiet while he ate, and Holmes' rebuttal when Watson's thoughts showed on his face did very little. Watson finished that bite, swallowed, and did not take another. His eyes lost focus a moment later.

"Watson!"

No response.

"Watson, no! Do not do this."

Still nothing. Holmes shook him, then purposely sent pain lancing through his shoulder, but Watson continued staring through the floor.

"Watson, come back."

Watson never moved. Holmes had gotten his friend back only to lose him again, and chills snaked down Holmes' spine when Watson's breathing slowed.

With hollow gaze and shallow breathing, Watson looked dead.

"Watson, PLEASE!"

Holmes jerked awake to the echoing cry. Shaking fingers clutched the thin blanket, trembling a counterrhythm to the rapid pulse that pounded against his ribs.

Dreams, he told himself, breathing heavily as he scanned the small bolthole. Just dreams. Mary was alive. James did not exist. Watson had not stopped breathing in his sleep.

Watson did not stare through him, a breathing corpse propped in his armchair.

He lunged out of his bedroll, covering the room's lone window before he lit a small candle. Mycroft was right. He needed to change his back-up plan, and with his pocket watch showing three hours before dawn, he would have just enough time. Mycroft's letter would find him at breakfast, and should it be needed, Watson would find his at the falls.

There was a better way to protect his friend.

Heck of a nightmare for Holmes, eh? What do you think his new plan is? Don't forget to review :)

Thanks to MHC1987 and Jean-Moddalle for your reviews on Glad Rewards. I've edited that authors note as well, but Jean-Moddalle, you can find the other "Barnes" mention in chapter 8 of Smoke, Heat, and Other Things