A/N: To be honest, I think this is the last SH fic you'll get from me for a while. I have caught the original-story bug and just wanted to finish this last short before sinking my teeth into some less-time-wasting ideas that need fleshing out and may or may not become novels.

This is a reunion fic. Expect it to be mostly AU following Series 3.

The pale concrete is like jagged ice through the knees of his slacks. He tries to look up, to look into the eyes of his attacker... but there is the barrel of the gun, and Sherlock thinks, this is really it.

Damn.

The assassin is breathing hard, wisps of expelled cloud fade to the color of the darkened warehouse room, which isn't black - it's never black. John had read a snippet of a novel to him once, about a man who knew that when a shadow's too black it's almost never just a shadow. He'd read that the day before Christmas three years ago, just after their first brush with The Woman, and Sherlock had tried to make tea, and John had said, "Look, now, you've let it steep too long and - here, we haven't even got any milk." He'd been angry.

Sherlock sighs. He wishes, not for the first time in the past three years, that John were with him. "He's just... so much better at killing people," he'd said to Her when they met last summer, at a particularly frustrating time in his murder spree, when Col. Sebastian Moran was still at large. Sherlock had killed him, messily, in Jakarta on the equinox. This one - the last one - the one who holds the gun to Sherlock's head - he is small fry, the last bit of cleanup here in London before Sherlock can finally go home, so he'd been careless and now look at the mess. He curses himself again. Stupid, stupid.

"Did you think you could kill me?" boasts the gunslinger in Russian. "Idiot," he spits at Sherlock's hair in English. Spittle lands on the back of one of Sherlock's hands, which are hovering behind and above his head. The consulting detective grimaces, and he figures he might as well get a bit of pleasure from taunting, since it is almost certain he is going to die.

"I already killed your boss. Seb Moran, he died with a harpoon through his -" The click in his ear, by his temple, makes him swallow the rest of his words.

I was so close.

"Shut up," says the assassin, and his finger slides to squeeze -

BANG.

BANG.

Sherlock opens his eyes.

"Christ, mate, you all right?" says the one voice that could always surprise him. "Jesus, how'd you get caught up with this lot, eh?" He is jogging towards Sherlock and the dead man. "Lemme see - I'm a doctor, I can hel-"

John's voice just falls away when Sherlock lifts his head to meet his eyes. His feet halt awkwardly, his balance is off, and he is staring at Sherlock like he might be sick. Sherlock puts down his hands and wobbles to his own feet - which are cold - and keeps his eyes on John. "Thank you," he says, inadequate.

John's psychosomatic bad leg folds like linen, and he drops his gun, clattering as he kneels. He splays his hands on his jeans and stares at the concrete immediately before him. He isn't blinking, but he's swaying slightly and controlling his breathing - god, he's hyperventilating. "John," he begins, exasperated, but one of John's hands comes up and his head sharply turns down and away.

There are a few moments during which John breathes at his annoying military-march tempo and doesn't otherwise move, and Sherlock grows more frustrated. If John is going to do anything stupid like deny his existence -

"You can't. Be. Here."

Sherlock lets out a short sigh. "I am, though."

John laughs. Sherlock swallows.

He shifts to move closer, hands out, steady. "John."

"Stop saying it like - who the hell are you, and why do you have his face." John has grabbed the gun again and is glaring at him. "This isn't ... legal. Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm Sherlock H-"

"NO, YOU'RE NOT!" John shouts, stumbling to his feet and training the gun on the space over Sherlock's heart. "You are not, I was there, I took his fucking pulse and he was dead, so don't try to..."

John's glare, boring into Sherlock's wide eyes, has faltered. Surprisingly, he breaks eye contact - foolish, really, Sherlock thought his old friend knew better with a potential enemy so near - to drag his sleeve across his eyes. His gun hand doesn't waver, though. When the arm is lowered again, John can't meet his eyes.

"God. You sick bastard. You look just like him." That is the worst, Sherlock thinks. Once he knew what it was, he had thought his heart couldn't break any more after years of watching over his friends while they grieved for him - for someone he'd thought didn't deserve such devotion from anyone. But this...

He hadn't thought this would be difficult part.

"I don't know what I can say to convince you I'm me," Sherlock tries honestly, and John's wet eyes skate over him, unable to reclaim contact. Sherlock puts his hands up higher. "Will you let me at least try to explain?"

There is a tense moment. Finally, John nods.

"Moriarty told me he had three agents in place to kill those I consider... those closest to me. The only way to ensure those agents did not pull their triggers was to make them see me die. It had to be convincing. It had to be flawless. No one could know, or I would have told -"

"Who?"

Sherlock blinks. "Who?"

"Who did you tell?"

"I just said -"

"Even Sherlock Holmes would need an accomplice to pull off a stunt like this." John had pulled out his mobile, and his thumb hovers over the keys. Ah, clever.

"Mycroft."

The gun, which had fallen slightly as John listened to the story, returns to its deadly aim. "Try again."

I despise being confused, Sherlock wants to growl. "Why not? He can tell you everything you want to know!"

"I don't trust him. He is as responsible for Sherlock's death as Moriarty was." The cold hatred John blends with his usually mellow tones to state this is frightening. He had no idea John's respect for his brother had fallen so far. Perhaps the uncomfortable truth had come out at some point in the past three years. "Or didn't you know?" John continues, half his face a mask while one corner of his mouth quirks up humorlessly. "Mycroft Holmes sold his brother to the devil for worthless intel."

"He is a git," agrees Sherlock, in a voice a deal less cold than John's. "But he did not intend to hurt me, John," he adds softly. "Even my brother makes a mistake once in a while."

"A mistake that destroys his only family?"

"Stakes are higher when you build assumptions from assumptions." John doesn't put down his gun. "Please, John, it really is me."

"Mycroft's the only one who knew?"

Sherlock hesitates. "No."

"Well?"

"Molly."

John's gun arm falls in shock. "Molly?"

"Go ahead and call her. Tell her Sigerson has bought the milk."

John lifts the phone to his ear. He doesn't bother with a hello, and simply states the code phrase.

Molly's shriek makes him hold the phone away from his ear. Sherlock's ears aren't what they would be if they were warm, but he can hear her shouting and imagine her jumping up and down, and can't help a small grin slipping onto his face. "He's back he's back he's back! Oh, John! Is he there with you? He's back!"

John's face is inscrutable as he puts the phone back to his ear. "Thanks, Molly," he says calmly, and ends the call.

He thumbs the gun's safety back on, tucks it back into his trousers, and carefully replaces the phone in a pocket of his jeans.

The warehouse is quiet and very, very cold, and Sherlock has never been so at a loss for what to say.

"I'm sorry," John says. "For," he tries, and his voice cracks.

"You?" Sherlock attempts to scoff. "You didn't -"

"I should have -"

"I couldn't -"

A couple of dogs bark in the distance. Sherlock suddenly remembers the corpse. He turns to it, bending slightly into a crouch to get a closer look at this last crosshair in Moriarty's web, and he is attacked from behind.

John's embrace is chilly and shivering, and being as he is behind Sherlock, the recently-reinstated-as-alive consulting detective can neither fully straighten nor return the hug, though he wishes fervently he could do both. "John?"

"S-s-sorry -" John says, releasing him, and Sherlock spins and pulls him close.

He worries he's doing it wrong. He hasn't much experience.

John does not criticize his technique.