Chapter 10: The Game is on

"Right…well…hi." Was all that John could think of saying, right at this particular moment in time. It wasn't witty, it wasn't clever and it wasn't even remotely intelligent. But then, he supposed he could be forgiven; his best friend – and flatmate, who had apparently committed suicide two years ago, was stood here, in the sitting room of 221b Baker Street instead of lying decomposed beneath the headstone bearing the name: Sherlock Holmes.

Alright, so he had been warned that Sherlock was alive and that he was coming back…and everything. But, honestly, it hadn't seemed real. It had seemed like a game or a dream that he was ready to become unhealthily obsessed with. But it was real, his appearance in this flat proved it. All the warm, fuzzy feelings that he had been feeling were gone, only to be replaced by an overwhelming feeling of hurt and rage. It felt like a game of 'Chicken'; darting out in front of cars, cheating death, was all well and good, until the car was right on top of you.

"I can't do this." He muttered, dropping the carrier bags that he'd been clutching in his fists and turning right back the way he came.

"John – no, wait – John!" Sherlock had expected everything from being used like an oversized tissue to being beaten to death by the army doctor, but he hadn't expected this (well, he had, but he'd pinned this scenario as the least likely one). The slight panic he felt at seeing his friend turn away bled into his voice. It must have done, because thankfully, John stilled at the door.

"I'm sorry." The taller man said quickly, "Everything was falling apart, just the way he planned it; the newspapers called me a fake and the world believed them – you were right, they turned on me at the first opportunity – and no, I shouldn't have let our profile get that high in the first place. Moriarty had me cornered so that he assumed that there was only one way for it to end: with my death – except not, obviously; and that code – the one the assassins were on about – it was a fabrication that was supposed to lead me on, which it did but that's not the point. The point is that I didn't want to do it, but if the snipers didn't see me jump, they'd have killed you, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade. And obviously actually dying wasn't a particularly appealing option, so I had to fake it – don't you see? I'm trying to apologise, you know; the least you could do is answer me-"

"Sherlock, you haven't let me get a word in edgeways," John said with one of his patiently exasperated sighs, before his forehead creased in a frown, "What snipers? There weren't any snipers-"

"Oh, right. I forgot you didn't know – Moriarty had snipers stationed to kill you because simply shooting me wouldn't have fit in with his plans – and he killed himself before I could extract the means of calling off the snipers from him."

"Are you serious? He shot himself? But…Christ…he really was insane." He turned and looked Sherlock in the eye for the first time in two years.

"Yes. Yes, he was. Are we going to talk, or are you going to finish walking out?" Sherlock demanded, his glacial eyes unblinking. Waiting. To which John couldn't help but smile; it was good to see the irritating dick again.

"We're good." He murmured.

"Good. I've got to go to Bart's; I don't suppose you'd like to come with-"

"Oh God, I thought you'd never ask." John grinned, feeling more whole and complete than he had done in a long time as he and Sherlock ran downstairs and out of the door –

"Well, that didn't take long." Mrs Hudson smiled approvingly to herself as she heard the boys leave.

…

"How have you been?" Sherlock asked once the pair was safely ensconced in a black cab. Just like old times. "Good…good." John murmured, staring absently out of a window onto the grey streets of London.

"You're lying." Sherlock said in his knowing monotone. John's mouth tightened.

"And how would you know that?" he demanded, making a point to not look the other man in the eye; he half suspected that if he could see Sherlock's face, he'd punch it.

Sherlock blinked, noting the tightening of his former blogger's tone, but otherwise pretended that he'd simply been asked to give yet another of his demonstrations of deductive logic.

"You've gotten more grey and you're far paler than when I last saw you; the former would occur through stress while the latter means that you haven't been abroad or anywhere outside in the sun; you've avoided it – why? –"

"Because I've been working." John sighed, "Look, can we just leave it? I understand why you did what you did, and I accept it and forgive you, but I can't just forget the last two years. So can we just – please?"

If the consulting detective was hurt, he didn't let on. Instead, he looked out of the cab window, silently observing that they had around ten minutes until they arrived at Bart's.

"You kept Jack." Sherlock murmured.

"Jack?"

"My skull –"

"Oh, you mean Skeletor."

"His name's Jack, you know."

"Did you never watch 'He-man'?" John asked with a faint smile, "I still think you should call it Skeletor-"

"Please do introduce me to anyone you know who answers to the name 'Skeletor'," Sherlock smirked, to which John shook his head with a chuckle and a groan.

"Are we seriously having this old argument, again?

"It appears so." Sherlock replied simply.

"So, why are we going to Bart's, then?" John enquired, feeling, for some reason, immeasurably better. He frowned, however, when he noticed that Sherlock wasn't grinning at the prospect of a new case.

"I have a niece." Sherlock began, "She's the Hacker who took control of your laptop, two nights ago, just before you got carried off by Mycroft. She and a few of her 'connections' – as she likes to call them – have been working on rebuilding my public credibility and on proving that Rich Brook was, in fact, Moriarty.

"Shortly after she spoke to you, she got a video call from one of her connections: 'Serenity269', a Hacker known to the rest of the world as Emily Strange, a journalist working for 'The News of London'. She'd been writing an article proclaiming my innocence until she was hacked. Whoever hacked into her computer took all of her research notes, along with information of what she'd been doing over the last few months, and then had her shot on-video.

"Her body was transferred to Bart's early this morning."

Perhaps it was wrong of him, but the only piece of information that John was hung up on was the fact that Sherlock had a niece. Sherlock took one look at him and smirked. "No. I didn't know, either."

"She's not Mycroft's, is she?" John asked, his eyes wide with disbelief. When Sherlock didn't answer, he choked back a giggle. "I can't imagine him being a parent."

"He doesn't know." Sherlock chuckled.

"You're joking!" John gasped.

"I'm not."

"Jesus…what's her name?"

"Violet Sherringford." Sherlock answered with a grin before glancing out of the window to see the off-white walls of Bart's Hospital rising up, out of the ground. "We're here."

…

"I'm sorry, I cannot let you in." the Nigerian Morgue assistant told them for the third time.

"Of course you can, you can simply open the door and let me look at Emily Strange's body. It's hardly difficult." Sherlock snapped, almost ready to physically incapacitate this annoying assistant, who only been working in the Morgue for a week, judging by the state of his cuffs – "Look," John interjected with a frustrated grimace, "where's Dr Hooper?"

"Molly?" the assistant frowned dumbly,

"Yes Molly! Are there any other Dr Hoopers working at Bart's?" Sherlock cried, before turning away and taking out his Blackberry and calling Molly before the assistant could tell him that it was her day off.

Unfortunately, the number that he had for Molly was now defunct. She'd bought a new phone and changed her number – as Sherlock would have known if he'd contacted her at all in the last two years since she'd helped him 'die'.

With a childish groan and a sigh, he called someone who would know how to track his pathologist down:

"Violet, I need you to track down a mobile phone number for me. Yes. Belonging to Dr Molly Hooper. Her Personal Information? Her mother's maiden name, obviously. Text me the number when you're done." He ended the call with a flourish and waited for the text, coldly eyeing the assistant.

"So," John said, trying to be friendly to make up for Sherlock's frank offensiveness, "how long have you been working here?"

"A week." the assistant answered, "You know, you really cannot be here." He pleaded.

Just then, Sherlock's phone beeped shrilly: MH mob: 07734 23 96 91. I expect chocolate as recompense. Xs.

Almost immediately, Sherlock was on the phone to Molly Hooper, demanding that she make her way down here as her assistant was being particularly annoying.

…

"You know these men, Molly?" the assistant said weakly, looking at the pale, delicate woman with a newfound respect. Molly, in turn smiled, shrugged and asked him to get her a coffee: Milk – two sugars, please, Nathaniel.

As the assistant hurried gratefully away, she turned on John and Sherlock. "You didn't have to scare him like that." To which John spluttered:

"Wait, hold on – you're not surprised that he's not – oh, forget it." He sighed. Molly grimaced, understanding that John must feel betrayed, but she didn't stop to talk; she pulled out Emily Strange's corpse. It was strange, really; she'd gotten a call in the middle of the night, telling her that she had a new body on her list and it was to be treated with extreme care –

"You should leave him, you know." Sherlock murmured absently, bending over the body.

"I-I-I'm sorry?"

"Your fiancé. He doesn't appreciate you. He's jealous and he demands your time and attention like a child." She didn't ask how he knew. She wasn't sure that she particularly wanted to know. But he was right. And she had been thinking about calling the whole thing off, anyway, but that wasn't the point. In the last two years, she'd felt like she'd grown up a lot. Perhaps it was the fact that Sherlock wasn't around to make her feel like a silly love-struck teenager. And now that he was here, again, she saw him through fresh eyes, eyes that knew that he needed to be put in his place, once in a while. "Hmm. Reminds me of you a bit." She smiled, instinctively softening the verbal slap.

Sherlock looked at her, but didn't answer, and John stared at something on the ceiling which had suddenly become ever so interesting.

"Yes. Definitely assassination – look at the size of the bullet-hole – and it's clean; straight through; no fragmentation. I'll need to see the bullet to determine the type of gun it came from." Molly nodded and told him that it was upstairs, in the lab and without a word, Sherlock left to get on with his experiments.

That left John and Molly, both straining a little under the awkward silence, to put away the body.

…

Just as Sherlock was about to look through the microscope at the flattened bullet, he got two texts. Rolling his eyes, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and read: Welcome home-M

The other one was from 'Dracula': There's been another one.-D

Thirty seconds later, there was another one from 'Dracula': Get the strange old lady to let us in, would you? We've got work to do.-D

He hadn't expected them to be this early – it was only half past two in the afternoon, so Mrs Hudson wouldn't be expecting them and therefore wouldn't let them in. At this, Sherlock couldn't help but inwardly smirk: in the virtual world, Hacker's were kings, in the real world, they were little more than children.

Author's Note: I know this has been a long time in coming, and the next one will probably be, as well, sorry about that, but I can't help how evil coursework is.

I really want to thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter (I think that's the most reviews I've got for a chapter on this story, so YAY!)

Magesa-I love all of your reviews: I'm so glad that I've made you happy in the midst of your essays, and I hope that John and Sherlock's reunion was worth the wait. And Mrs Hudson is one of those people who are simply brilliant, isn't she? I really wanted to do her justice, just as I hope to for all the other characters.

CheyanneChika-Thanks so much for reviewing; I hope this thing keeps you suitably intrigued. As for Moira (now known as Violet) and Mycroft, I just wanted someone other than Sherlock to push his buttons; he knows how Sherlock rolls too well.

Alaris24- I hope the reunion was good for you. I didn't want it to be too sad and overly dramatic, but I didn't want it to be completely ignored, either. I always think that John and Sherlock's emotions are really subtle, though they are there, so I wanted to reflect that…sorry, I'm rambling. Anyway, I hope you liked it

I'm sorry if I went on a bit too long about the skull, I just like the idea that John and Sherlock have two different names for it. John watched too much He-man as a child, while Sherlock watched a certain Christmas film about a skeleton taking over Christmas. He has since deleted it, mind you ;)

Anyhoo, to cap off that really long Author's Note, I'll leave you with the Soundtrack piece for this chapter: Dust Bowl Dance by Mumford & Sons.

Whether your views on this story are good or bad, I'd kill for a review…pretty please?