A/N: Please read and review!

The scene was bloody, but not bloodier than some of the others Sherlock had brought him to in the past. The young man's body was slumped on his side against the bedroom wall, his eyes wide and un-seeing. Dark red blood was crusted on one side of his head, the source being an obvious bullet hole to the right temple. Resting next to him was a handgun, presumably missing the bullet that had torn through the victim's skull.

There was another victim at the scene. It was a pretty brunette woman around the same age as the dead man. She was sprawled across the bed like a broken doll, her hair spread across the bloody pillows and sticking to them. It was grisly, and John felt terrible looking at her pretty face that was now being marred with red from the bullet wound in the center of her forehead. At first glance, it seemed to be a murder-suicide, but if that was the case, then why would Lestrade need Sherlock's assistance?

"The victims are Jackie Davis and Steven Baxter, both twenty-five years of age," Lestrade began, hands clasped behind his back as he frowned at the corpses then at Sherlock. "Apparent murder-suicide." He hesitated a bit at that, and it did not escape Sherlock's notice.

"At first glance, it does look like one," he agreed, "but you don't believe that is the case, do you?"

"I'm not sure what to think. According to the woman who found them like this—Baxter's sister—he and Davis had been quite happy over the past few months since they started getting serious. No abuse to speak of; not even of the verbal kind. But I've seen murder-suicides like this before, ones with no apparent cause." Lestrade looked very tired as he spoke, as though he had hardly gotten any sleep the night before. Then again, maybe he hadn't.

"Go ahead and have a look, guys. I'm going to need anything you can give me to put this to rest."

The usual serious mask he wore at crime scenes on his face, Sherlock got to work. The first thing he did was to put on a pair of latex gloves so as not to contaminate any evidence, knowing Lestrade would be very displeased if he did. He knelt beside the young man's body then, taking out his little magnifying glass and examining every little detail. He focused for quite some time on the bullet wound in the side of his head, and then he went right to looking at the gun on the floor. He picked it up and opened it to take note of the number of bullets.

"Two bullets were fired from this gun," he said calmly.

"Well, it's a murder-suicide with two victims," came Anderson's drawling voice, sending thrills of annoyance through Sherlock's body. "Of course there were two bullets fired."

"You see but you do not observe, as always," Sherlock stated snappishly, narrowing his eyes at Anderson before setting the gun down where it was found. "But since you obviously think you know what you're talking about, indulge me: how can there be only two empty shell casings when three bullets were fired in total?"

"Three bullets?" Lestrade sounded surprised; Sherlock rolled his eyes and moved to the dead woman next, grabbing her by the shoulder and carefully rolling her over a bit onto her side. The back of her shirt was saturated with blood, another bullet hole under her shoulder-blade.

"Head wounds bleed a lot, but I could tell from the way the blood was spread across the sheet underneath her that it hadn't dripped down from the exit wound at the back of her head. The pillow is completely saturated with blood from the head but beyond the pillow, the only other blood is that from the bullet wound in her back. The blood from her head hadn't been able to seep that far down."

Anderson said nothing, merely glaring at Sherlock for a few moments before shaking his head, backing off to let Lestrade deal with him. John smirked a bit at that, but soon looked at Sherlock expectantly.

"So, how are there three bullets and only two empty shell casings?" John questioned, trying to lead Sherlock into a deeper explanation that the ordinary people on-scene could understand.

"This is where it gets interesting." Sherlock smirked and pointed at the male victim. "John, take a look at the bullet wound in that man's head. Tell me what's wrong with this picture."

John sighed and did just that, kneeling next to the body and closely examining the bullet wound. He frowned, narrowing his eyes at the wound and then glancing down at the supposed murder-suicide weapon.

"If this man did commit suicide, a high-caliber weapon like this would have left much more damage at close range, but the entry is very clean. There should be an exit wound from a weapon like this, but there isn't one."

"Which means…?" Sherlock pressed, smiling proudly at the doctor.

"This gun couldn't have been used to make the wound."

"Very good, John." John's chest puffed out with pride and he smiled, glancing up at Lestrade, who also seemed very impressed as well as a tad confused.

"So where did the two bullets missing from that gun end up?" he wondered aloud, looking from one corpse to the other. "They obviously had to end up somewhere."

"Yes, obviously. We know that at least one of the bullets couldn't be in either of the victims, but the second bullet killed the woman."

When Sherlock was met with blank-but-amazed expression from everyone in the room, the detective sighed heavily. "Why do you always have to be so vacant, honestly…? This case is quite obviously a double-murder made to look like a murder-suicide. The murderer came into the house—presumably invited, as there was no sign of a break-in, from what I saw on the way in—and drew a gun on the woman. She panicked and ran to the bedroom, thinking her boyfriend might be able to protect her." Sherlock made his way out into the hallway just outside of the bedroom, gesturing to a small table that was slightly askew and on which a picture frame had fallen over.

"While she was running from her attacker, he shot at her and, in a panic, she ran into this table and knocked the photo over in doing so before finally entering the bedroom. Having heard the gunshot, her boyfriend grabbed his gun from that drawer right under the sink in the bathroom and ran out to defend her, firing a shot at the assailant and missing because he had mere seconds to react."

"How do you know he shot at the murderer?" John asked, amazed because upon looking around him, he couldn't see any sign of a shot being fired anywhere but at the two victims. Sherlock walked past John and over to the dresser near the bedroom door. He pushed it further down the wall, gesturing to the place where the stray bullet had struck the wall.

"How could you tell?" Lestrade asked with a subtle grin on his face.

"The carpet," Sherlock stated simply. "There is a flattened section in the carpet here where the dresser was supposed to be. I'm frankly appalled that no one else took note of that."

"Alright, don't rub it in," John scolded lightly. "There's more, I take it?"

"Yes." Immediately, Sherlock was back in deduction mode. "The woman's attacker was furious when he was fired at and in the split second that the woman's boyfriend moved toward her to make sure she was okay, the shooter took his chance and fired. The bullet struck him in the temple and he fell; he dropped his weapon, and he was no doubt dead by the time he hit the floor.

"The killer then got the brilliant idea of possibly being able to avoid suspicion by making the killing look like a murder-suicide, so he put his own gun away and grabbed the victim's, shooting the girlfriend in the head and then quickly putting the gun back where he found it once the deed was done."

"The only prints on the gun were the victim's," Anderson stated irritably, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow at Sherlock. "So at the very least, the murderer was smart enough to wear gloves."

"But he obviously wasn't smart enough to realize that not all handguns are exactly the same," John interjected thoughtfully. "Different caliber guns use different types of bullets. If he knew he shot each of them with his own gun…"

"But he didn't." Sherlock sounded smug as he spoke, which made John more than a little frustrated.

"What do you mean, he didn't? He shot the girl once in the back with his own weapon!"

"Maybe he didn't realize he hit her. Look at the color of her shirt, John: crimson. If she was shot, the blood would not be visible from the killer's vantage point while in the room."

"She would have known if she'd been shot, Sherlock."

"John, you're a doctor. You, of all people, must know there are instances where that isn't the case."

John thought a moment before realizing what Sherlock meant by that. "Oh, right. There have been reports of people having so much adrenaline pumping through them under stress that they do not feel the pain right away. She probably didn't even realize she'd been shot. Being in shock wouldn't have helped, either."

"Exactly. So, with this information, I believe it is very likely that the killer did not know a whole lot about guns. He believed that the bullet embedded in this man's skull that had come from his own gun was exactly the same as the bullet he killed the woman with from her boyfriend's gun. The mistake of an amateur."

"Brilliant," John breathed. He would forever be in awe of how much more Sherlock was capable of noticing than the average person.

"Right," Lestrade started, "so we're looking for a man… A man?"

"That is the statistically more likely solution so yes, I believe so."

"Right, okay. And you said he had to have been invited in since there was no sign of forced entry, which means the woman at least knew the killer."

"Talk to the people most likely to be in their inner circle: friends, family and coworkers," Sherlock instructed, removing his latex gloves and tossing them into a nearby wastebasket. "Someone must know something about who might want them dead."

"I'll look into it. As soon as I find out anything, I'll let you know. You two can go now if you want; we can take it from here."

With that, Sherlock and John made their way toward the front door so they could leave, but Sherlock was stopped halfway there by Sergeant Donovan. Realizing Sherlock was no longer walking, John paused and looked over his shoulder at him, flashing Sally with a little smile.

"Everything okay, Sally?" he asked. Sally smiled at him and nodded.

"Yeah, everything's fine. There's just something I need to talk to Sherlock about for a minute. I won't keep him long, I promise."

"Okay. Well, uh… I'll meet you outside, Sherlock." Still seeming a little confused by Sally's reason for stopping Sherlock, John made his way out of the house and left the two of them alone in the entryway. The second John was out of earshot, Sally turned on Sherlock with an angry look on her face.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Well I don't know, Sally, but I'm sure you're going to tell me," Sherlock responded coolly.

"I've seen the way he's been looking at you ever since you came back, Sherlock. Even a complete idiot would be able to tell that you two are shagging."

"A very accurate statement, I would say," Sherlock said dryly with a tiny smirk.

Ignoring Sherlock's comment, Sally continued. "When you left, he was devastated. Devastated. And do you know who was there for him when you weren't?"

"Lestrade?"

"And me, Sherlock. Me. Both of us had to look after him for the first few months after your 'death' to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. There was the span of a few months where he took to drinking himself practically to death, but do you know what he did three months after you jumped?"

Sherlock felt a sick feeling of dread roiling in his gut when Sally asked him such a thing and he swallowed heavily, giving a minute shake of his head.

"He went up to the roof of Bart's and stood on the ledge, right where you jumped from. He was going to jump, Sherlock. He was going to kill himself because of you." Sally's voice was sharp as ice and full of venom, but it was the words themselves that hurt most of all.

The day I came back, when I went to see Lestrade and he stopped himself from saying something… Is this what he was keeping from me?

He didn't know what to say.

"Molly saw him going up to the roof and gave Lestrade a call. Thankfully, we were both able to talk him down from the roof, but he was so broken, Sherlock. Do you know what he said to me after we managed to get him down?"

"No…"

"He said 'I just wanted to see Sherlock again.' His reason for wanting to jump off a bloody roof was that he wanted to see you again, you bloody stupid wanker," Sally hissed. She jabbed a finger into Sherlock's chest, glaring at him furiously. "I swear to God, Sherlock, if you ever do anything to hurt him again—"

"I won't." Sherlock's voice was strong and steady; determined. "I know I hurt him… and I've already told him several times that I wish there had been another way to protect him. But there wasn't. What's done is done, and I have every intention of putting it behind us and starting over. I'm back now, and we're both doing well. That being said, back off."

The sound of Lestrade calling Sally's name from the bedroom temporarily tore the police sergeant's attention away from the detective and she shook her head, crossing her arms.

"Don't you dare forget what I said." The woman turned and headed back down the hall to the bedroom to assist Lestrade with gathering all of the evidence they could from the crime scene.

Sherlock finally made his way out of the house, an uncomfortable queasiness in his stomach as he approached John. He saw the easygoing smile on his face now, and all he could think about was what Sally had just told him. He climbed into a taxi with him to return to Baker Street and all he could picture was John up on that roof, as clearly as if he had actually been standing there looking up at him.

"I just wanted to see Sherlock again…"

The phrase repeated itself in John's voice over and over again in his mind and even though he was good at masking his emotions even now, this new development was devastating.

What if Lestrade and Sally hadn't gotten to him on time? Would Mycroft have told him about John taking his own life, or would he let him find out on his own upon returning to 221B only to find it vacant?

Mycroft.

The name made him indescribably angry. There was no way Mycroft hadn't known about everything he had just learned, yet he had deliberately kept him in the dark. His hands clenched into fists on his lap in the taxi, brow furrowed with silent, seething rage.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock snapped out of his angry haze almost immediately and turned his head slightly to look at John, trying to seem as calm as he could so as not to worry him. John already did way too much of that. John gave him an uncertain smile, setting a hand on his knee and kneading it softly with his fingertips as he leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the detective's full lips.

"I love you. You know that, right?"

Sherlock's expression softened. "Yes."

Even when his response made John relax and turn his gaze back out the window, one thought kept tearing at him: If you love me, then why did I have to hear all of that from Sergeant Donovan?