Molly wanted to perform the autopsy right away; Sherlock managed to convince her to hold off. "Not yet, Molly...please."

The girl nodded, and backed out of the room so the detective could be alone with him. It took him a long, long time to be able to look at his blogger laid out on the cold metal table. When he did, he ran his fingers over John's still-warm cheek. "Why you?" he asked quietly. "Why?"

Of course, the body didn't answer. So Sherlock got down to work. Removing the sheet, he first examined the dead man's clothes. They were dirty, and the back of John's jumper was ripped in places. Up against something abrasive. Finding nothing else out of the ordinary, he pulled the jumper off and laid it on the empty slab behind him. John's torso was sporting a few bruises. Strange, he thought, brushing his fingers over one. Unless he was beat up a while before he was... Even he couldn't bring himself to think the word. His back was also bruised, and scraped. Like he was shoved against a wall, he mused. John would have put up quite a struggle.

Sherlock brushed his fingers over John's cheek and frowned when he caught sight of a tiny hole on John's neck. A bit of dried blood was around the puncture. A needle hole. Poison. Taking a syringe, Sherlock took a blood sample and set it aside for Molly to analyze.

After learning everything he could from John's body, Sherlock left the hospital with Molly's agreement not to touch John's body. For some reason, anyone touching his flatmate's body felt wrong. Cutting into his body... He had to suppress a snarl at the thought.

He phoned Lestrade on his mobile.

"Sherlock. I thought you might call. Is...is it him?"

Sherlock took a deep breath and affirmed the DI's suspicion. Lestrade swore. The tautness of his voice revealed the stress he was under. "Sherlock...I am so, so sorry. If there's anything we can do for you..."

"Unimportant," the consulting detective interrupted. "Where?"

"Where what?"

"Where did it happen?" he asked impatiently.

"I'll text you the address," Lestrade assured him. "We're here, waiting for you. We haven't even touched anything, given the...situation."

After Sherlock hung up, he waited anxiously for the text to arrive. When it finally did, Sherlock easily located the place in his head. It was one of the side alleys on John's route home from the market. That made him feel even more angry. How dare someone attack his John when he was doing something so innocent as buying milk and jam?

Once he hailed a taxi and directed it to the place, Sherlock met Lestrade outside of the police tape. Sally Donovan and Andersen were conversing by a police car behind them. Good. He couldn't deal with them right now. "Everything is as we found it," Lestrade informed him. "Except for the bodies. I made sure of that."

Sherlock was silent and took everything in with his eyes. There was a small pool of blood a few feet from the wall, close to a bag of groceries standing straight up, untouched. Curious. Maybe John saw them coming. He set it down? Didn't want anything to get broken. And judging from the bruises, they slammed him against that wall there. Sherlock stepped carefully to the wall and noted a few pale strands from John's jumper caught on the rough stone. He fought. My soldier-doctor. A twinge sounded through Sherlock's chest; he shoved it to the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand. Then...

"Where were the bodies found?" Sherlock asked. Lestrade joined him at pointed to the pool of blood.

"One of the muggers was found there, shot dead. John had the gun, over..." He took several strides to the left and stood. "...here. I didn't recognize the gun, so I assume that John got the gun off of his attackers. We're dusting it for prints now."

Nodding, Sherlock came to stand on the place the DI indicated and tried to play out what happened. So... "How do you know there were two attackers?" he demanded.

"A witness," Lestrade said, pointing to the police car on the street. "He's over there, if you want to question him."

Sherlock nodded again, sweeping his gaze over the scene. If there had been two of them, and one was still alive...

He was going to pay for robbing Sherlock of his John. He would pay with his life.