Chapter 5: Maelstrom

"Alice said nothing; she had sat down again with her face in her hands, wondering if anything would ever happen in the natural way again." –Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

The moment John got back to the apartment, he collapsed onto the couch, and stared up at the ceiling. Why did you come here tonight, to meet with the man you hate more than anyone else? It was a good question, a very good question. It was easy to claim that he hadn't meant to go, that it was coincidence that had led John's feet to the very café he'd been trying to forget. But it wasn't really possible, was it?

He thought about what his councilor would say. She'd probably claim that it was a psychological need to face and overcome his worst fear. But, as both Holmes brothers had believed, she was terrible at diagnosing him. Mycroft would probably say it was his need for danger that had brought him there. And perhaps there was an element of truth there. You're not haunted by the war... You miss it. Moriarty was war incarnate, changing, unpredictable, vicious, and undeniably dangerous. Was it possible that without Sherlock's chaos, he was just searching for another source of adrenaline?

No, he couldn't believe that about himself. He wasn't just another ex-soldier, addicted to adrenaline. People were more complicated than that. And where did that leave him? Confused. Lost. What was wrong with him? Because something was definitely wrong with him. Why else would he have sat down and had a civil diner with the man who'd killed his best friend? His 'purpose in life,' Moriarty had called him. John looked down at the skull he still held in his left hand, and remembered that Sherlock used to talk to it, before he had John.

He lifted it up, wondering what those hollow eye sockets had seen, what the skull had heard, without ears to listen, or a brain to comprehend. Oh, that was just great, he was descending into poetics. He pulled his thoughts back to practical matters, wondering again if he should take all this to the police. Surely, with enough evidence, he'd be able to convince them? Then John remembered how easily Moriarty had once rigged the jury, and dismissed the entire system. Besides, at best, a jury would lock him away for life. John wanted Moriarty dead. That seemed to be enough, but then John remembered that death hadn't been enough. Death would never be enough.

John wanted to see Moriarty's pride broken. He wanted to see him screaming like the men he'd performed surgery on, when they didn't have time to let the painkillers kick in. Or begging like the men in the interrogation rooms he'd briefly had to doctor in. He momentarily indulged in a fantasy of Moriarty being in one of those rooms, then sighed, telling himself not to go there. That was what Moriarty wanted, for him to fall to his level.

Wasn't it? What exactly did Moriarty want from him? A puzzle, he'd said. But what kind of puzzle? John had assumed it was the type that you solve, made of clues and questions that you had to follow to the source. But what about the type that John used to do with Harry, when they were younger? An image, broken apart into pieces, that you had to put back together. John didn't like thinking of himself as an experiment, but a puzzle was possibly even worse.

An experiment was adding one thing to another, standing back, and letting them react. But when solving a puzzle, you were constantly pushing and pulling, trying to get the pieces to go where they should, trying to figure out why they went there. John stood up, and put the skull on the table beside the couch. It was doing him no good, thinking like this.

He went into his bedroom, undressed, and collapsed into bed. He'd worry about everything tomorrow. Right now, all he wanted to do was sleep.

John woke up, gasping into the darkness. The waking was familiar by now, hand flying for his gun, panic and heartbeat slowing, receding, being pushed down and locked up. After Afghanistan, nightmares had been normal. He was used to them. In the Baker street flat, they had become more infrequent. Getting back to sleep had been easier when he'd been able to hear Sherlock downstairs, the plinking of violin strings, or the clink and clatter of experiments at 3am.

After Sherlock's death, the nightmares had come back with a vengeance, changing their tune. Now it was usually watching Sherlock fall, listening to him tell John that he'd never been real, that he'd never really liked John at all, or reminding him over and over again that he could have been quicker, that he could have saved him if he'd only been a bit smarter.

Tonight, however, the dream had been an old one, from his time at Baker street. It was the one from the pool, with the bomb vest heavy around him, and the weight of Sherlock's eyes, and the little red sniper dot that he knew was on his chest. In the dream, Moriarty won, and Sherlock died first, dropping to the ground as John watched. Then, usually, Moriarty turned to John and killed him, forcing him to wake up. But this time he had just laughed, patted John on the head, and walked out, leaving John to stare at Sherlock's body on the tiles of the pool deck, puddles of blood slowly dripping into the water, tinting it pink.

John closed his eyes, his breathing loud in the silence, trying to banish the image. He knew why this dream was worse; because it was too close to the truth. He and Moriarty still alive, dancing around each other, and Sherlock dead, blood pooling around his head. John had seen it. He remembered.

How could you assure yourself that it was just a dream, when you'd seen it, the dark blood, and the curls limp with it, the stains on the coat, the body twisted like a discarded doll, John had seen it all, it was real, so how could he tell himself that it was just a dream?

He was craving the feel of a gun in his hand, but Moriarty had taken it, and John doubted he'd give it back. He wanted to feel the recoil, hear the sharp crack as the bullet lodged in Moriarty's skull, or at least into a brick wall. Or he wanted a needle in his hand and a wound under his fingers, the red blood on white medical gloves, edges of skin drawn together with black thread, saving another life, cut closing like a speechless mouth.

He buried his face in his hands, cursing himself, cursing Sherlock, cursing Jim Moriarty, and everyone else who had stumbled into his life and changed it somehow, because it all led up to this, a man curled in his bed, craving blood and violence and chaos. Sick, I'm sick, John thought, and realized there were tears on his face. They'd probably been there since he woke up.

But more were sliding down his cheeks, and he was trying to stop them, because his throat hurt, and his breath was hitching, and he was so fucking helpless, and the tears kept coming. They were in his mouth, and he could taste the salt, missing the metallic tang of blood, but still a reminder of it, a reminder of the memories, screaming, and John wasn't even sure where he was anymore, some part of his mind realized he was hyperventilating, but it didn't really matter because everything hurt, and the tears wouldn't stop…

There were gunshots outside. John looked up, his eyes wide, already adjusted to the darkness, focusing on the faint outline of the window. His breathing became more even, still gasping, but deeper and no longer erratic. He took advantage of the clarity, and focused on the breathing patterns his therapist had taught him. He sank into the space between the breaths, clearing his mind.

What had he even been panicking over? It wasn't as if his danger complex was anything new. He worked best under pressure, that was why he went to be an army doctor, where life and death were in the balance every day. And after that, he'd been only too happy to go with Sherlock, even when there was only death to be found, corpses to examine instead of people to save. Sherlock… His mind drifted back to memories, and nightmares, and John desperately searched for something else to distract him.

The gunshots outside, that had distracted him earlier. John focused on that memory, wondering what could have happened. Robbery? Gangs? Jealous lover? One side of John's mouth turned up. It all seemed so mundane. After going head-to-head with a criminal mastermind, everything would probably seem boring. The thought of boredom reminded him of Sherlock.

This time the memories were fonder, tinted with exasperation, but they made John smile. He closed his eyes and lay back down, letting his thoughts drift. They finally slowed down enough to let John slip into sleep, and he stayed there until the morning light shone in his window, waking him.

A/N: Sorry, this is a 'ideas' chapter. I like them, but I know that not everyone does, so I apologize to the people who were totally bored. There are quite a few chapters like this ahead, because I wrote this story as a character examination, and I really want my readers to have fore-shadowing, because I need John to be thinking a certain way so that I can use it later on. I can't promise that the next chapter will be more plot-filled, but the one after that will be. And I'll post again very soon! I promise!