((Hello, I have finally returned! Thank you for your patience. I have actually just taken a vacation across the country and I figured after returning would be a good time to come back to this fic, one of the most major I've ever written. Glad to be back! Enjoy!))

The gavel banged against the desk.

"We are gathered here to discuss the case of Sherlock Holmes, charged with murder of the second degree,"

Sherlock opened his eyes.

He found himself in a large courtroom, at the table for the accused. He looked around him. Nobody sat in the seats behind him, and the room was mostly silent. Only a few people were in the jury, and he could see as he looked closer that the jury was very badly made as he knew everybody there.

The first person he noticed was Sally in the front seat. She was slouched in the front, uninterested in his case, her eyes on the phone in front of her. Every moment or so, she'd tap something on her phone, making a rather loud beeping noise. It was incredibly rhythmic, monotone, and obnoxious.

The second people he noticed were in the back row, Molly and Ms. Hudson. They were turned to each other, both of them softly talking, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

The next person he noticed was LeStrade in the front row. He was watching over the whole room, waiting for what was going to happen. His hand tapped against the wooden armrest of his chair.

His eyes drifted just in front of him as he noticed the judge, decked out in robes. He knew who it was, with a gentle, horrible smile. Moriarty. He shivered, but he didn't move.

The final person he noticed was standing right beside him. His heart sank as he saw him stand. John Watson. Testifying, defending him as always. He quite honestly wanted to stand up and ask him a thousand questions, but he remained seated. He couldn't move. He tried, shifting his arm slightly, but he winced to feel a pinpoint stabbing just along his inner elbow. He looked down to see a nail sticking out of the arm of the chair. Still, though, he didn't move.

"John Watson," Judge Moriarty said slyly. "Would you like to call your first witness, or perhaps, show some evidence? Do anything you like, I'm not even really sure how this works."

John nodded. "Yes, I believe I would, yes." He said. Sherlock swallowed. He didn't know how to feel about hearing his voice again. "I call the victim himself, Mycroft Holmes to the stand," He said.

Sherlock was about to question how that would work, but by the time he blinked, Mycroft was sitting at the witness stand. His skin was pale, his eyes sullen, and there was a large red blotch on the front of his shirt. Other than being dead, however, he seemed fine.

John stepped out from behind the table and stood in front of the witness. "Mycroft Holmes," He addressed. "Permit me to ask, was Sherlock the one to stab you?"

Mycroft shook his head. "He did not."

"And did he organize your murder?"

"He did not."

"So…" He began to pace back and forth, slowly getting more confident. "In what way could this be murder of the second degree?"

Mycroft shrugged. "I could list several ways, however, none of which have a likelihood anything over one percent."

Well, that was one way to defend your own brother.

"I say that Sherlock was totally unaware of what he was doing. He is not a killer." John said. "And yes, he was told not to come, but he did not disobey to commit a murder, but to make sure his brother was not in danger." Sherlock sighed in relief. John always knew.

"However," judge Moriarty said. "He was told specifically not to come, and Mycroft would not have been killed were he not there. Doesn't that clearly display an intention of harm towards his brother!"
"No, definitely not! It was manslaughter, at the very most!" John argued, beginning to get rather animated. "He may have come but his intentions were good!"

"Well, you know what they say about that, Mr. Watson." Moriarty said, a twisted smile spreading across his face.

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Suddenly, the chair and ground beneath Sherlock fell away and he was falling a hundred miles per hour through the air. He reached for the light of the courtroom above him as the world around him got darker and darker and hotter and hotter, encasing him in ragged stone. Hell.

The ground beneath him was was getting hotter, spraying up and burning holes in his trench coat. He managed to grab the wall to either side of him, his feet pressed against one and his scraped up hands against the other. But it was still too close. His entire back was burning, his trenchcoat dipping in the lava and setting on fire. He screamed as it bubbled over and burned into his skin. Even though he felt he was miles away from the court, he could hear the noises from the jury even louder in his ears as his back was set on fire.

Lestrade's tapping.

Sally's phone beeping.

Molly and Ms. Hudson talking.

Tap, tap.

Beep. Beep.

"I think he's started waking up, yes, he's coming to…"

He opened his eyes.

No Hell.

No lava.

No jury.

No courtroom.

No judge.

Unfortunately, No John or Mycroft either.

The room around him was white, and after a few clues he was able to recognize it as a hospital. It all fit together, all the sounds he heard were still there, just misinterpreted.

Sally's phone, a giant screen monitoring his heart.

Lestrade tapping, the footsteps on the floor.

Ms. Hudson and Molly talking, the nurses in the background.

The nail in the chair an I.V. in his arm.

But as soon as all this ran through his head, he winced in pain, as he found another thing had a source. The burning. The Hell.

He hissed through his teeth, trying to sit up, to get the pressure off the burns. "What is this?" He hissed, because he knew someone was talking someone was in the room. He looked up to see a nurse, with blonde hair and trustworthy blue eyes.

"You were in close range with a large explosion. I'm afraid you've been covered in third degree burns, and we've turned up the morphine to as high as it can be."

Sherlock panted, trying to get his back up off the bed. "Dammit…" He hissed.

"We are allowed to give you an anesthetic, if you-"

"No, no anesthetic," He responded. "Moriarty, where is he?" He asked, somewhat deliriously.

"We don't know anyone named that. We do need to ask, however, did you have any relation to one Sam Winchester?"

"Co-worker…" He answered, shutting his eyes tight and shaking his head before he looked back up. "Why? Is he dead?"

"We're not sure of anything yet." She responded vaguely.

Sherlock nodded, almost a bit worried. I mean, he didn't like Sam, but he was valuable for research. He didn't want him dead. The nurse beside him removed the I.V. from his arm and took his blood sample.

"I have to test this," She told him. "Feel free to get some rest." And with that, she took the blood sample and left.

If there was anything Sherlock was going to do, it wasn't get some rest. He tried to sit up once, but failed due to the aching in his back. He tried a second time. Nope. Finally, he got up as much momentum as he could and tried a final time, managing to sit up. He looked around his surroundings. Hospital, in Virginia. 8:00 at night. He could have figured out several other things, but they weren't important at this moment. He rubbed his eyes, trying to think of what happened. The words rang in his head the explosion before.

Stop looking for Lucifer, they rang, as he recalled the burning heat in his eyes. You can't stop him. It's already over.

He shook his head and threw his legs over the side of the bed, carefully standing up. The room was bright, and the outside was getting dark. This effect made the window look like a black tinted mirror, which he stepped in front of. He saw he was still in his white, button-up shirt, but his jacket and trench coat were gone. It was probably too soon and too urgent for them to have changed him into hospital clothes. He looked himself over. His face was clearly tired and rather greasy, but he hadn't started growing stubble. He estimated he must have been out for at least 12 hours, give or take a few. He saw about halfway down the right side of his neck a long, dark tendril begin. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt and pulled down the corner with a wince. The long strip of red ran down his neck, leading into his shoulder. Giving it up altogether, he unbuttoned the rest of his shirt and looked down at his chest. On all sides of his chest, over his shoulders, around his neck were long red stripes of burnt scars as though vines were growing around him, pulling him in. He could still feel the long tendrils of the toxic fire wrapping around his back and his arms and his chest. He winced at the very echo of the pain.

He pulled off the rest of his shirt and threw it to the ground, turning rapidly around. His eyes widened as he peered at the reflection behind him. He thought his chest was badly burnt, but his entire back was deep red, a few spots still bleeding. The long burn spread from under his pants up to the top of his neck, all across his shoulders and bleeding into his chest. He turned back around and looked even closer, shocked to see the deep red reaching even up into his jawbones, which he hadn't noticed before. He sighed in both pain and exasperation, looking at himself in the mirror. He still looked like the fire was there, just behind him, pulling him back, refusing to let him go. He looked away. He didn't want to spend the night in the hospital.

Carefully, slowly, he bent over and picked his shirt up off the ground, pulling it back over him and buttoning it back up.

It took some effort, as any sort of moving cause immense pain, so as he went up, button by button, he began to think.

He remembered that it was easier to worry if you didn't list the things to worry about and often times you would overestimate or underestimate. So he made a list. Of everything important.

1: He was alive.

He was practically deep fried, but he was still alive. There wasn't much else to say on that topic, really. He didn't know whether to be glad or not, but it wasn't important. He was alive: that was a fact.

2: Mycroft was dead.

He didn't know how to feel about this one either. Mycroft was his brother, but an irritating, neglecting one. His emotions were numb and mixed up, but like he said, his emotions weren't what was important. The fact was Mycroft had a knife through his heart, and after, he was at the heart of an explosion. No way had he survived.

3: Moriarty was back.

That voicemail couldn't have been old, and it played at exactly the right time he knew it. Sherlock shivered at the thought of the hot blood across the ceiling. Did you miss me. Iconic, particular, specific. It couldn't have been anyone else.

Those were the facts, or at least, the important ones. They were all immense and barely credible, but still, his face was totally emotionless. Not like he was hiding, but he was truly feeling nothing. He wasn't sad. He wasn't happy. He wasn't even scared.

But he did know the facts added up to one thing in particular, that the burns that ran long across his skin helped to represent.

Everything had changed.