A/N: Woot, last chapter! I hope you guys enjoyed it, and I hope you like the emotional bits coming up. I got to write my gunfight, it's only fair I make up for it with some angstyness etc. As always, I do so love reviews, so... yeah. There's that. Anyways, have fun, and have an awesome Monday/rest of the week.

Jane shifted uncomfortably in the tension, making a sudden decision. "I'll… leave you two alone for a bit and go talk to that fellow in the other room." She beat a hasty retreat into the side room, where Moran was tied to a chair, as John stared at the man he'd thought was dead. He was still easily recognizable, but he was thinner than he'd been before, and his blue-grey eyes were one or two shades darker. His hair was still the same inky black it had been before, but he'd cut about two inches off of it, parting it down the middle, and it was swept back and straight. It made him look like some forties film star.

"I'm sorry, John. I had no choice."

"How?" John repeated, finally starting to get over his shock at the detective's sudden reappearance.

"It wasn't easy; I was nearly killed anyway." He gave a short, utterly humorless laugh. "I swear, John, I never meant to hurt you-"

"Never meant to hurt me?" John yelled, cutting the taller man off. "You made me watch you jump off of a bloody building and didn't even bother to tell me that you, by the way, weren't actually dead! How is that not meaning to hurt me?"

"It was better than you dying!" Sherlock responded. "It was my life or yours, and I don't regret what I chose to do." John was now thoroughly confused.

"What do you mean it was my life or yours? What the bloody hell happened on that rooftop, Sherlock?" Sherlock gritted his jaw and stared off into the distance, his mind flashing back to the windy roof of the hospital a year ago.

"All of your friends will die."

"John."

"All of them."

"I met Moriarty up there," he responded. "He was good, too good; I had no choice, John, I swear to you. If I had I'd have done anything else."

"Wait, so he made you fake your death?"

"No, he intended my death to be fully real, just like his was. I suppose in that sense I sort of got one over on him. Moran was the last of his operatives; I'm done now, I can come back."

"What does Moran have to do with Moriarty?" John asked. He still didn't know why Sherlock had faked his death, and he was still furious at him for it, but a picture was beginning to emerge.

"He was Moriarty's only friend," Sherlock responded. "His job one year ago was to kill you unless I killed myself." John was fairly certain that, had it been physically possible, he might just have been knocked over by shock. "That was Moriarty's plan all along, not just to discredit me; he wanted me to kill myself, and he used you as leverage."

"Me? How did he use me as leverage?" Sherlock continued to pace the room, staring at the floor.

"Moran was a sniper with the British Army before he met Moriarty. His orders were to kill you in front of me unless I jumped off of the roof." John rubbed his chin, slowly absorbing the revelation, while Sherlock continued.

"He also had people targeting Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson, too. If I hadn't jumped off of that roof all three of you were to be shot at the same time. I just barely survived as it was, and after that I knew I could never come back, not until I'd taken down every last person who ever worked for him. So I did; it took me a year, but Moran was the last. If I'd come back before now, and they'd known I was alive, you and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade would've been killed. Everyone had to think I was dead, there was nothing I could do."

John sat down in one of the station room chairs, processing the string of revelations he'd just received. Sherlock finally looked up, looking at John warily. "I know you're still angry with me. But I really am sorry." John nodded slowly, looking at the detective.

"I spent a year being angry at you, because I thought you'd killed yourself, and I didn't know why; now you're alive, and I do know why." He sighed, but gave a small smile. "I'm done being angry. Massively irritated, perhaps, but not angry anymore." He and Sherlock both grinned at the joke, but they were far from relieved.

"Scotland Yard still thinks I'm a fraud," Sherlock pointed out. John nodded.

"True; that could be a problem when we try to turn Moran in."

"Does Lestrade…" Sherlock trailed off, but the unfinished question was obvious. Does Lestrade think I'm a fake? John smiled at him.

"He's the only one at the Yard who never gave up on you; he's the one Jane and I went to before we came here. I need to call and tell him that we're safe. How are you going to tell him you're alive? Or the rest of the Met, for that matter?" Sherlock shrugged faintly.

"Call Lestrade; tell him we caught Moran, but don't tell him I'm alive. Not yet." John nodded and called the Detective Inspector, saying nothing of Sherlock's return, and soon he was on his way out to the observatory. He stopped cold in the doorway when he saw Sherlock. The taller man gave him a wry smile.

"Don't worry, Lestrade, I'm no ghost; although I feel like one. We've kindly captured one Sebastian Moran for you. I believe you'll find that he's responsible for several unexplained murders in the last few years." Lestrade just nodded slowly, still not entirely sure he wasn't hallucinating massively.

"We'll talk about this later," he told the other two men. "For now you two had better get out of here; there are quite a few more officers on the way and a lot of them still think you did those things." The two nodded, realizing that Lestrade was putting his already precarious position at further risk by letting Sherlock go without arresting him. They made their way out of the observatory at the same time as the rest of the officers arriving.

"Does Moran know the full story?" John asked. Sherlock nodded silently.

"The question is will anyone believe him? I could just be paying him off too, after all." His voice was slightly bitter, reflecting his pent-up frustration with how easily it seemed everyone else had bought into Moriarty's lie. John sighed.

"Well, we'll see, won't we? For now, what do you say we go home?" Sherlock glanced at him in the darkness.

"To Baker Street? I know it wasn't sold." He sounded hesitant, still not certain that John would accept him back after such a monumental surprise. John smiled, even though Sherlock couldn't see it in the nighttime darkness.

"That's what I was thinking of; unless you had something different in mind?" Sherlock smiled back.

"Not in a million years, John. Now let's do go home; I could use some sleep."

It took a great deal of work on both John and Sherlock's part to convince Mrs. Hudson that she wasn't seeing a ghost, and after they'd sat her down and gotten her some very strong tea, both Sherlock and John stepped into 221B for the first time in a year. It was good to be back; as a matter of fact, it was fantastic. But there was still trouble ahead of them.

As far as most of the public, all of the media, and the police force were still concerned Sherlock Holmes was the mastermind behind all the crimes that he'd really solved. It was going to take no small amount of convincing, conniving, and ignoring on their parts to get everyone else to realize the truth, especially since Moran would probably do his best to deny that he'd been working for Moriarty and not Sherlock.

Lestrade couldn't hide Sherlock's survival forever, and soon enough the rumor was spreading fast. They decided to go into Scotland Yard on their own and clear things up, before Sherlock was arrested again for more crimes that he didn't commit. They disregarded most of the officers, who were having too much trouble believing their eyes to care that they were being ignored, and made their way to the Chief Superintendent's office. Sherlock gave a slightly sarcastic smile as they headed towards the door.

"Hmm, so, you punched him in the face and I'm a dead criminal mastermind- I'll bet that he's going to be thrilled to see the two of us." After a long, loud conversation that very nearly turned into a melee, Sebastian Moran, Sherlock, John, Lestrade, and Jane were called into the Superintendent's office to explain exactly what the hell had gone down in that observatory. As Sherlock had predicted, Moran claimed that he'd been hired by Sherlock and not Moriarty, and that everything Sherlock, John, and Jane were saying was a lie.

"You've got no proof of anything," he spat. "And I'm not saying a word." Jane stood up, surprising everyone, and said,

"Well, you might not be saying a word, but I sure am. I heard you confess, to me, that you'd been working for this Moriarty fellow the whole time. And why would I lie? I've got no vested interest either way."

"You know him," Moran shot back, gesturing at John. "And you've got no proof either. I could have said anything to you in that blasted room." Jane gave an icy smile.

"Oh yes, you could have said anything," she responded, "but I do have evidence of you confessing in 'that blasted room', as you call it. You see, I might have mentioned this, but at the observatory we're big on recording things. Like, really, really big on it. So yeah, I do have proof, and I have on tape and a computer file. Which would you prefer?"

Jane's recording of Moran's confession, combined with some thorough outside investigation and a lot of hard work on Sherlock and John's part, cleared the detective's name a month later. Soon enough they were back to the old ways again, bickering and running and solving crimes together while Sherlock put weird things in the fridge and John tried to get him to eat. Sherlock checked his email one morning after his name had been cleared and hollered to John in the kitchen,

"We've got a case!"

"Where?"

"Dorset; it sounds interesting. Want to come?"

"Of course I do." It wasn't as though nothing had happened; there was still a gulf where a year might have been, but it got smaller and smaller by the day as the two were drawn back together, like two galaxies going their own ways- no matter what, they'd always head in the same direction. Together.