This is the chapter with spoilers for the Fall. Significant chunks of dialogue were lifted from it. I nearly made myself sick from all the angst related to writing this. You have been warned.
The moment John realized he'd walked into a trap, his heart fell through his stomach. "Oh, my God," he breathed. Then he ran. "TAXI!"
As he climbed out of the cab beside St. Bart's, John's phone rang. He picked it up without glancing at the name. "Hello?"
"John."
A tiny part of John breathed a sigh of relief. The rest of him kept moving toward the hospital. "Hey, Sherlock! You okay?"
"Turn around and walk back the way you came."
"No, I'm coming in—"
"Just do as I ask!" John's footsteps slowed at the tremble in Sherlock's baritone. "Please," the detective added.
The plea was more than enough cause for John to backpedal. "Where?"
"Stop there!"
John slowed his steps. His flatmate was nowhere to be seen. "Sherlock—"
"Okay, look up. I'm on the rooftop."
No. That's impossible, John thought. Then he turned to the hospital roof and nearly dropped his phone. "Oh, God."
"I—I—I can't come down, so we'll—we'll just have to do it like this."
Although John couldn't see Sherlock's face, his friend's uncharacteristic stammer was enough for John to feel Sherlock's strange emotions. "What's going on?"
"An apology." Another shock. Sherlock didn't apologize. Something was wrong, very wrong, with Sherlock, and John was trapped on the ground many storeys beneath him. Everything about this was wrong, wrong, wrong. "It's all true."
The ground rocked beneath John's feet. "What?" he demanded.
"Everything they said about me. I…invented…Moriarty."
John could just barely see the way Sherlock turned his head to glance at something laying on the roof behind him. Instantly, he knew Sherlock was lying to him. You're looking back because he's there! Moriarty's behind you. See, Sherlock, I can deduce things, too. Why are you lying to me, though? "Why are you saying this?"
Slowly, Sherlock turned back toward John. It took him a moment to force the words out. "I'm a fake!"
Stop it— "Sherlock—"
"The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade. I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly—in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes."
Finally, Sherlock's quavering voice got to John. "Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up. The first time we met—the first time we met!—you knew all about my sister, right?" There was some way to talk people down from these things, but John was no psychiatrist, he didn't know how—
"Nobody could be that clever."
"You could," John countered.
Sherlock made a strangled noise, half-laugh, half-sob, that John had never heard from him before. John swallowed back more words, hoping, hoping… Then Sherlock shook his head. "I researched you. Before we met, I discovered everything that I could to impress you." As John squeezed his eyes shut against all the lies, Sherlock sniffed. "It's a trick. It's just a magic trick."
Even as he spoke, John kept his eyes shut. "No. No. Stop it now." What if Sherlock thinks I'm not looking at him and he…John snapped his eyes open again. Quickly, he strode across the street. It's not happening. No, no, no.
"No, stay exactly where you are!" Sherlock's voice cracked through the phone line; John's unoccupied ear even heard the sound echo down from the roof. While Sherlock instructed, "Don't move!" the doctor backed up with one hand held up in surrender.
"All right," John conceded.
From the roof, Sherlock stretched out one spindly arm, as if he could touch John's palm across the distance. "Keep your eyes fixed on me!" Sherlock begged. A shiver passed through John when he realized, finally, that Sherlock was crying. "Please, will you do this for me?"
Even though he felt incredibly thick, even though a part of him knew what was coming, John still asked, "Do what?"
"This phone call, it's, uh..." Sherlock swallowed, then continued more steadily, "It's my note." When John didn't reply, he elaborated, "It's what people do, don't they? Leave a note."
A note? A note—no, God, Sherlock, no! Stay where you are, I'm coming up—John shook his head furiously in refusal of all of it. "Leave a note when?"
"Good-bye, John."
John couldn't stop shaking his head. "No. Don't—"
Sherlock kept the phone to his ear for only a few more seconds. John watched while his flatmate—detective—friend!—threw it aside and spread his arms out wide. Like he's going to hug someone. Sherlock wouldn't hug someone. Sherlock hates touching. Sherlock hates—"Stop—SHERLOCK!"
Yelling for Sherlock had worked before, when John had shot through the cabbie through the glass at the school building the day after he'd met Sherlock. Yelling for Sherlock would save him now, it had to, it—
God. He's flying.
Falling—
"Sherlock—Sher—"
No. No. Nonononono Sherlock NO!
No.
John ran.
Breathe in—Sherlock—out—jumped—in—God—out—no—
Bam.
John came to in a sea of pavement. There had been a bike…a bike had hit him…running, running, Sherlock—a case? Sherlock forgot he couldn't run as fast as—
Paramedics. Nurses. A crowd ahead.
Oh God. Sherlock.
"Sherlock…Sherlock! I'm a doctor. Let me come through. Let me come through, please! No, he's my friend. He's my friend, please!" He has to have a pulse. Please, Sherlock. Get me out of here. You have to get me out. Breathe, Sherlock, live…
There was nothing.
And nothing.
And nothing.
Someone pulled John's hand away from Sherlock's motionless wrist. He sagged against them, whoever they were, because all of a sudden pain flared through his leg as it hadn't in years. Blood splattered everywhere while the paramedics pulled Sherlock onto a stretcher and carried him away from John, but he knew they wouldn't take him into the main hospital. They'd take him down past his lab, down to where Molly worked, where Sherlock left his riding crop, where they kept the—no, no, God, no. GOD, no. Sherlock!
Sherlock!
"Sherlock, don't!"
"John. John! John, wake up now!" a voice above him commanded. "Wake up now, John. JOHN!"
Instantly, John jerked awake with a crazed laugh. "Oh, God, Sherlock, you're here, you're—"
Just as quickly as it had appeared, the baritone voice slipped from John's memory. He sat bolt upright in his painfully hard cot, panting, and stared around the unfamiliar room wildly before reality sank in.
Not 221B Baker Street. The military psych center. Breakdown. Therapist. Leg.
Sherlock's gone.
God, Sherlock's gone.
John buried his face in his sheets. Sherlock hadn't woken him from the nightmare, no matter how much John believed he had heard his voice. Sherlock never could. He didn't have a pulse. John had checked.
No more cases. No more Cluedo. No more harpoons on the Tube or bullets in the wall. No more 221B Baker Street or bad hats or insinuations about perpetual bachelors.
Just…John. Himself. A basket case.
His therapist's voice rose unbidden in his mind. "The stuff that you wanted to say, but didn't say it….say it now."
John swallowed back bile before he rasped, "No, Sherlock. Stay where you are. Don't jump. I believe in you, you amazingly clever genius. I believe in you." He hesitated, then added, "Please stay here. For me. Stay."
His pillow swallowed every word.
