Well, I promised a certain someone this would be up on Friday, but it's a bit late...Hopefully you can forgive me? Please?

But yeah! Hope y'all enjoy this reunion of sorts between our boys!

I spent hours waiting for him. For news, for anything. For any word on his condition, for any familiar face. The nurses stared at me. I was probably pretty worrying, really. Unshaven and in rumpled clothes, thinner than I really should be with sleepless bags under my eyes. I probably looked terrible.

It was what the grief had done to me.

It was killing me, the lack of communication. The not knowing. I couldn't eat, sleep, or think without him.

It had consumed me. I had let it consume me.

The grief, the not knowing.

They were horrible. They had destroyed me.

It was worse than after the Fall, a time I didn't much like to think about anymore. At least then, he'd been dead. I'd seen his body broken and bleeding on the sidewalk, and there was always a concrete anchor I could speak to. Whenever I needed to get something off my chest, I could go to his grave and kneel there and let everything go.

I had once thought that the years after his Fall had been the worst of my life. I had never been able to comprehend a worse moment then seeing him "dead" on the pavement or standing in front of his grave.

But knowing he was gone, knowing there was no way to get him back had been a good thing especially in hindsight. I could've grieved and had my time alone. And, had he never come back, I could've moved on and had a good life with Mary, always remembering my best friend.

But for so long recently, there'd been no place for me to purge my emotions, no way to gain full closure. I was always left wondering where he was and what he was doing and if I would ever see him again.

My obsession was, and continues to be, terrifying. I'd gotten a chance to ruminate on that during my time waiting.

I knew I was probably crazy to care so much. I'd let this destroy my life when everyone else had just moved on with their lives and accepted it.

Lestrade had been okay. He'd been shocked and sick with worry, of course, and for a long time he'd helped me to look for him. But he'd known when to stop, known when to sit back and let others take the lead because his own life was in trouble.

But I'd lost my wife and, inevitably, my child because I hadn't been able to let him go and live a semi-normal life without him.

I'd let the grief of knowing that I had been there for him when he needed me, knowing that I'd ignored him in favor of my wife, knowing that this whole mess was my fault, destroy me. It was absolutely and completely my fault that Sherlock was in the position he was in now.

For so long, I'd dreamed about what it would be like to see him again. I'd spent forever hoping, in vain, that it would be like the first time he'd disappeared under Lestrade's watch. I'd spent so long hoping that each time the two of us went out we would find him alive and mostly well. I'd spent so long hoping that he would be okay and that a short hospital stay and a stint in rehab would be enough to fix him. For a long time, I hadn't allowed myself to consider the possibility that he might be too far gone by the time we found him.

But now?

Now, I'm finally standing in front of him. I've finally realized what there many, many months had done to my best friend.

There was no more lying, because he's right in front of me.

I'm finally being confronted with reality.

And it isn't going to be like the first time. This won't be fixed easily.

Sherlock is weak. He's dying, slowly fading right in front of my eyes.

He's emaciated. His stick thin arms hang limp at his sides, stuck through with countless needles leading to countless hanging bags of fluids. His skin, deathly pale and slightly greenish blue, is stretched far too tightly over far too prominent cheekbones. His eyes look sunken in. I can even see the outline of his clothing hanger-like collarbone from behind the paper thin hospital gown.

It's scary. I've seen him thin before, especially after a stint of particularly stressful cases back to back. I'd barely been able to get him to eat at all, and could only just get him to a little something everyday. But his weight had dropped despite my best efforts, and I'd honestly been worried about low blood sugar induced collapses and fainting episodes. But that Sherlock barely held a candle to this one.

I know the complications of being underweight. I know what it means for someone like Sherlock, someone who was already very sick.

But worse than the all that is the tube shoved down his throat around slack, chapped lips.

I take a deep breath, shaking as the various monitors blip and beep around me and the machine connected to the tube down his throat whirls as air is forced in and out ceaselessly.

I force myself to move closer.

I don't have much time. It won't be long before the nurses come back and drag me away. The only reason I've even been allowed in here is because Mycroft pulled some strings. It should be family members only. But here I am, standing in front of him even when I shouldn't be.

I force myself to inch forward again, force myself to get closer to him.

I find myself at the side of his bed, and I sit down in one of the nearby chairs.

For a few seconds, my eyes flicker to the LCD screen that shows his vitals. Immediately I'm entranced by the steady beeps, the way the green line spikes up then dips back down. It feels as though each descending peak takes him further away from me.

I tear myself away from the screen, for it won't do me any good to stare. I should spend what little time I have left with him instead.

I take his hand in my own because I can't bear to look at his face any longer because I doesn't even look like his anymore.

His hand doesn't look right either.

It's skeletal, absolutely skeletal. His hands had always been spidery and slim, but in a good way. They'd always suited him, slim like himself with quick, delicate fingers equally as adept at wielding a glass pipette as a violin bow. Fingers that could create beautiful melodies or unweave chemical mysteries.

But now, it wasn't a good thing. His joints and knuckles protruded. Skin that was normally discolored by chemicals were instead bruised and cut and still slightly dirty, yet to be fully scrubbed clean. Usually well-manicured nails were chipped and broken and yellowed.

If his hands have fared so poorly, the rest of him is surely worse.

I turn his hands over slowly to look upon his forearms, which have borne the burnt of the abuse.

The sight nearly makes me sick.

His skin that isn't bandaged a sterile white is smattered with bruises of varying ages, garish shades of yellow and green and purple and black. The bandages surely cover welts and oozing, infected wounds. The crook of his elbow is nearly black with old dead skin and bruises. And upon the background of bruises are tracks marks, countless bright red reminders of his activities lo these many months alone.

I look down, unable to look upon the shattered remains of my best friend any longer. I close my eyes and shudder involuntarily as I try to remember.

I try to remember Sherlock healthy.

The pale glow of his skin, which on anyone else would've appeared sickly. Instead, it made him seem ethereal and mystic.

I try to remember the hair that was somehow unkempt and well managed at the same time.

I try to remember his thin lips pulled into a smile. I try to remember the quick, lithe hands.

I try to remember his voice, that impossibly deep, haunting baritone capable of holding equal amounts of joy and sorrow. The sort of voice that made you lean in, eager to hear more as each syllable escapes perfectly formed from equally as perfect lips.

But most of all, I try to remember the eyes.

Their indefinable color, somewhere between grey and green and blue and gold all at once. Impossible to place and impossible to find anywhere else.

The glimmer they held during cases, the inexhaustible spark that had always embodied him. That brightness they so rarely lost.

I worry that I'll never see them again. That the shadowed eyelids before me will never recede to reveal the glasz glow I've missed so much. Or worse, that they will open, but the spark will be extinguished. I worry that'll they'll be blank and cloudy should I ever see them again.

I hear a door open at the end of the hall and rubber soled shoes slap against the hard linoleum.

I only have minutes left before I'm ripped away and sent home by Lestrade, assured that I would be updated.

So I take his hand in mine and squeeze it tight, willing for him to keep fighting. Willing him to stay.

And I whisper. Hurriedly and softly before the nurse rounds the corner and my false sense of privacy is obliterated. I pour my heart out to this undead shell that takes the place of my closest friend. I plead on what are probably deaf ears for a miracle.

I plead hoping that each word sticks, hoping that they somehow travel through the perpetual white noise and come to make sense in his fogged brain.

I hope hears me and understands that I'm there, and that I always will be. I hope he hears me and understand how much I care about him and how much I need him back, how much I need him to pull through and get better.

But I don't have enough time to say everything before the nurse is behind me with her hand on my shoulder.

I can only hope that this isn't my last chance to speak to him.

I can only hope that he will carry on this miserable existence, that the time of danger will pass and he'll be moved to a private room where I can speak to him more where I can try to convince him to fight.

I hope we have more time together.

I hope he can pull through.

The next chapter will probably be from Sherlock's POV again, so I hope you look forward to reading that as much as I do to writing it.

Also, I'm almost done with school, I'll have a chance to write more often, so I'll probably be able to update more often! Which is definitely a good thing :)

Well, hope y'all enjoyed and drop me a review to tell me what you think! Hope to be back around soon with more sadness!