A/N: IMPORTANT NOTE: this chapter reads backwards, intentionally! Just to allay any confusion. Or to be the cause of further confusion. Whichever.

Also this was meant to be the final chapter. Now I'm not sure. It's really all over the place - it's meant to be, hence my decision to end it this way. But I could be persuaded to clarify some things in an epilogue or something. Thoughts?

ALL CLEAR?
The Doctor looked out the TARDIS window and knew he'd made a mistake.

Mycroft calmly took a sip of tea and ignored the slight shaking of his hands.

Sherlock cocked the gun and aimed it, with deadly precision, at the man who once enthralled him.

John shivered, breathless, and felt nothing as the blood dripped off his fingertips.

Moriarty foolishly stained the carpet, and when the light left his eyes it was not a parlour trick this time.

T minus 5...
"You know I'm going to have to have him killed," Mycroft said conversationally, as if mentioning the weather.

Sherlock winced. "No, I can do this. You know what this has whole affair has cost me - do not take away my one chance at - " he cut off with an odd sort of choking noise and fell silent. Taking a breath and a second to compose himself, he began afresh. "If I could just talk to him, you know I could make him see reason."

"What, and risk everything you've worked so hard for?" Mycroft looked at him bemusedly. "Is he really worth so much?"

"You underestimate him," Sherlock said firmly, in an uncharacteristic display of devotion.

"Perhaps," Mycroft conceded. "But I believe you overestimate yourself. Tell me, dear brother, which mistake is more dangerous in the long term?"

4...
The problem with time, the Doctor mused, was it wasn't linear. Things - changed. They rotated and mutated and went spherical and pearshaped -

And sometimes people were saved because of it, and sometimes people weren't.

"I didn't mean for this to happen," the Doctor murmured quietly. "I thought if I talked to you earlier, things might change - I could stop it. I didn't count on still it happening in a different way. I didn't count on it being fixed."

Sherlock's eyes took in the scene almost ravenously. He watched as John - his John - lovingly tucked a strand of hair behind Moriarty's ear.

"I suppose I should have done, though. There's enough of him in there to still feel love, but he's merged so much that the puzzle, the fascination is worth more than...salvation," the Doctor went on, as though Sherlock couldn't see that for himself.

Sherlock whirled on him. "You were supposed to be protecting him!" he hissed.

The Doctor felt very old, then. "I know."

3...
John woke up in the familiar bed, rolled over and stared into those bottomless eyes.

"Who am I seeing now?" he murmured. "Jim or Moriarty?"

The other man looked at him with contempt and adoration. "That rather depends on who I'm talking to, pet," he shot back in a voice that could cut glass.

John smiled. "You've always had all of me," he said, closing his eyes again. "Pick a side and it's yours."

"I haven't always, and I still don't now," that Irish voice growled.

John didn't even flinch at the familiar sensation of a knife pressed against his chest.

2...
"They will come looking for me," John said, struggling against the ropes, but he found his fight to be half-hearted.

"Oh, I count on it," Moriarty said eagerly. "But they'll never find you! Well, Sherlock might, but that's rather the point, isn't it?"

He laughed.

John was horrified to find he, too, was fighting back a smile. "It's actually kind of touching, really, that Sherlock means that much to you," the army doctor muttered. "I wish you'd stop bloody trying to kill him - he's my best friend and that kind of matters, a bit, in my book - but it is nice to see you connected."

Moriarty was staring at him. His lip curled. "When will you stop loving Sherlock more than you love me?"

John gave him a look, irritated. "I expect it might be right around the time you stop tying me up and torturing me."

Moriarty frowned. "Really? It's that simple?"

"Well, no, but it makes a difference."

"Hmm. I need to think about this for a bit." Without another word, Moriarty left the room and John shook his head in annoyance, struggling once more against the ropes.

1...
The Doctor looked at John and swallowed. "Hello," he said quietly.

"Hello," John said evenly. The bonds cut into his wrists. He was hungry and tired and everything hurt - but the worst part was he wasn't ready to quit yet. One thrumming image came to mind. "How's Sherlock? Have you spoken with him?"

"I have," the Doctor said in that same soft tone.

"Well? Is he all right?" John whispered anxiously.

The Doctor nodded. "He will be." He narrowed his eyes. "Will you?"

John's eyes fluttered shut. "I've endured worse."

"That's not what I meant and you know it," the Doctor countered.

"As long as Sherlock's all right, I'm fine," John said, but he knew his tone betrayed something because the Doctor's eyes narrowed.

"I could take you with me," he said to John, eyes hopeful. Then his face fell. "But you...don't want to go."

John winced. "Think of the repercussions. Him coming back and finding me gone," he pointed out, trying to smile. "Sherlock will save me. Or I'll escape."

But they both knew it was a lie.

BLAST OFF -
"You," breathed Moriarity, eyes gleaming with intensity, "are an impossible thing."

"Am I?" asked John, then cursed himself for it afterwards. He should know better than to bait the bear.

"Oh, yes," Moriarty insisted. "That, and so much more. Would you like a glass of milk? I was just thinking of having one. Strong bones and all that." He walked out of John's range of vision, calling back over the noises of clinking glasses, "Plus I would imagine it brings back fond memories of your dear detective, and remembering is important, doctor."

He walked back, two glasses in hand. "Remembering is a crucial part of grief," he beamed.

The madman extended a glass to John who made the tiniest gesture of polite refusal.

"Well, come on, then, why not?" Moriarty looked melodramatically exasperated. "It isn't poisoned. See?" He took a sip from John's glass and extended it once more.

"That's doesn't reassure me, as it happens," John said steadily.

There were myriad toxins the consulting criminal could have built up a resistance to by increasing his exposure over time; the milk diluted the dose, an perhaps the tiny sip was not dangerous but a larger swallow would be fatal; undoubtedly Moriarty had known John would refuse at first, and would wait to slip something in it until the very second before handing the glass to him a second time; Moriarty could be the harbourer of a deadly disease he himself was immune to but exposure to his bodily fluids would destroy another; or, murder attempts aside, the milk could simply be drugged - with what, John did not care to speculate, and Moriarty either was not susceptible to such a high or low or he just did not care if he lost a calculated fraction of his inhibition and control in front of John - John was not enough of a challenge, perhaps, to worry him.

Or there might be nothing wrong with the milk at all. It could very well be a good old-fashioned mind-fuck.

He could hear Sherlock's voice, deep and goading, not quite a sneer yet but oh so close - "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, John! Plurality should not be posited without necessity!"

Well, yes, that was a fair point. Except -

The simplest explanation is usually the right one; one should only consider the more complex ones when he has no other option.

Yes. Right. Except -

If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck!

Yes. He knew that. Except -

Occam's razor didn't apply with men like Moriarty.

And he could refuse the milk - the drink itself was not important - but the gesture, the decision he made right this very minute would set the tone for the entire evening. It would dictate to his mind how much Holmes and how much Watson to utilise; it would send a message to Moriarty that may or may not be interpreted as he meant it to be. The man was dangerously unpredictable and off-balance and 20 steps ahead in a game John didn't even know the rules to.

He only knew this: focus; think; observe.

Don't try to keep up with him - your brain's not big enough and you don't know all his traps and mines. But keep him ahead of you. As long as he's ahead of you, you can think during all those moments he can't see you. As long as he's in his own head, you're invisible to him.

Moriarty wouldn't want him dead, not yet. Eventually, oh yes, indeed. Not just dead - annihilated. But for now, Moriarty would want to play and explore.

See what made John tick.

What did make John tick?

Swallowing convulsively, he barely contained a panicked laugh. And so it begins, he thought, paralysed and exhilarated at the same time. But of course, who was he trying to fool? His mind had been made up the moment Moriarty took a sip from his glass, and John knew it. He very well almost did laugh then, because it was such a familiar feeling - it was so new to him but not new at all, it was so -

Sherlock.

His vision swam for a second and his mind went blank. He took an inaudible, shallow breath and stared deep into Moriarty's hypnotic eyes. Somewhere inside of him, something fractured and tore away like dead flesh and -

"Cheers," he said with a polite smile, lifting the glass. "To our health."

Moriarty looked surprised but delighted, and elegantly raised his own. "To our health," he repeated airily.

Consulting criminal and army doctor clinked glasses and downed the milk together.