Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.

-William Shakespeare (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II, Scene II)

The next thing I knew I was sitting in my chair, collar undone. Sherlock was, inexplicably, perched on the other one, elbows on his knees. He looked exactly like I remembered him-striking features, dense, curly black hair, and a cat-like air of preciseness. He was even wearing a slightly wrinkled blazer.

"Oh," I said aloud, after a long minute of silent incomprehension. "I get it. I'm hallucinating."

"Nope."

"Yes I am. You're dead. You've been dead for three years now and there is no way you're sitting in my chair."

"I thought this was my chair."

"It was, but you're dead." He was proving surprisingly stubborn about this simple fact.

"Are you sure? Really sure?"

Then it hit me. I'm hallucinating. This was bad.

"Oh no," I said, getting up, suddenly afraid. "No-no, you're not real, This isn't happening. Stop it." I hadn't hallucinated anything before, ever. Oh, my God. Something was wrong. This couldn't be happening.

He cocked an eyebrow. "Seriously, John? Look, just let me-" He strode forward and took my hand. It was steady.

"Tactile hallucination," I snapped automatically, snatching it back. Oh my God, I'm actually having a conversation with a hallucination. No, no, get a grip, John, come on, you can do this…

"I'm going to close my eyes," I said, in as measured a voice as I could, "And I'm going to count to three. And when I open them, you'll be gone."

He sighed, then took a deep breath. "You're taking Prozac for depression, as prescribed by your therapist, whom you've started going to against Mycroft's wishes-I told him to tell you not to-which you don't even need. The first conclusion you jumped to was that you were hallucinating."

"Most people would have thought that!"

"You're not most people, you're a doctor, you think in side effects. You know there would have to be a reason, and hallucination is a serious side effect of quite a lot of anti-depressants. Painkillers, too, but the leg's not that bad. It's partly psychosomatic, anyway, in case you've forgotten. You've been on call the past few weeks judging by the coffee stains on your teeth, so the hospital's understaffed, and you're thinking about moving in with Sarah as you've got a picture of the two of you on your desk, which means you haven't broken up yet but there are no articles of women's clothing in here at all, although I assume they would be in your bedroom. But there's none of her stuff in here either. Nothing remotely feminine, except you've got Love, Actually on the shelf. You? No, no, no, that was for Sarah's benefit. You hate that movie."

"Actually that's fairly accu-"

"Shot in the dark, then, good one." He looked extremely pleased with himself. "I just keep finding new ways to surprise you, don't I?"

I sat back down slowly. "Oh, my God. It really is you."

"Yes, I believe we've established that already-"

"Fucking hell!"

"Language, John."

"Okay, sorry, but, I mean…fuck, Sherlock!"

"I suppose I owe you an explanation."

"You better believe you owe me an explanation! Everybody thought you were dead! We thought you killed yourself!"

"All part of the plan."

"What, tax evasion? Scaring me half to death?"

He smiled a little at that. "Not quite. To the first one, anyway. Perhaps that was a little too dramatic."

"Yeah," I said weakly, sinking back into the chair. "No kidding."

He then launched into his narrative. I didn't interrupt, not even when he told me his twisted justification for going after Moriarty. He seemed almost…perturbed, which was a word I simply didn't associate with him. I listened to all of this with a growing sense of frustration until we arrived at Mycroft, which is when I decided I couldn't take it anymore.

"Mycroft? Sorry, you told Mycroft?"

"Yes, I just said that. I needed someone to help me hunt down Moriarty's associates, didn't I?"

"You told MYCROFT and you didn't tell ME?"

"I-"

"I thought you trusted me!"

"This isn't about trust," he said impatiently. "That's not even important."

"Yes it is! You lied to me-to all of us, Sherlock!"

"It was necessary. Sit down. Sit."

I hadn't even noticed getting up. "You're telling me to sit down? Look at in perspective, John, it's not that big a deal-well, I thought it was a big deal! I THOUGHT IT WAS MY FAULT!"

"Well it wasn't exactly a picnic," he shot back, eyes narrowing as he stood, too. "I was fighting for my life."

"Oh, yeah, with the help of the CIA and MI6 and whichever other organizations Mycroft's pulling the strings of, that must have been hard-"

"He didn't tell anyone, we had to do it all in secret! I was dead to the world, remember? It was unfortunate, yeah, sure, but I couldn't tell people! Do you think you could have written such a convincing account of my death if you-"

I slapped him. Hard. I didn't care about the noise he made-like he had been sucker-punched, or the devastation plain on his face.

It felt good.

For a long moment we just stared at each other, both breathing hard. He put a cautious hand up to his face and wiped away the blood dripping from his nose. The red contrasted sharply with his crisp white dress shirt.

"I was going to move some of my stuff back in," he said slowly, gauging my reaction with his sharp gray eyes. "Mycroft has most of it."

"You no longer live here," I said coldly.

I may as well have slapped him again, for the look in his eyes. That made me rethink a little.

"Okay," I sighed. "All right, I shouldn't have-look, I'll get you something for your nose, just…" I made a circular gesture with one hand, not sure what he should do in the meantime. "Sit down."

He nodded wordlessly, still watching me with those steely eyes.

When his nose had been patched up, I was still mad. And so, unfathomably, was he. I could tell. His anger was simmering beneath that cold mask of his, just below the surface.

"Why don't we drop by Lestrade?" he asked innocently. "I wanted to ask about the Adair murder…"

"Fine. Sure."

We both knew that this was by no means an apology. I wasn't sure I would ever forgive him.

"Oh, by the way," I said, to break the awkward silence as we walked down the stairs, "You were wrong about one thing."

"Oh?"

"I'm not moving in with Sarah. I'm proposing to her. Next Friday."

I immediately felt guilty, but consoled myself with the fact that he probably didn't even care.