The hotel that he'd retreated to in Vienna was basic, as boring as he could manage to find. Even walking down the corridor threatened to send him into a spiralling depression in the way that losing once again hadn't.

In comparison to that first time, on the roof top all those years ago, it had barely bruised him. Dented his ego perhaps, but there had been some satisfaction in knowing that Moriarty hadn't seen it coming until the end. The past month to be specific. Something had happened, something had been seen, had been discovered.

Molly? No, she hadn't known quite enough to be of any use and, though she might be the weak link in his most hastily created and perhaps most brilliant plan, Mycroft would have covered it. The moment that Mycroft had suspected (which if Sherlock were honest was probably about two minutes after he texted Moriarty to meet him on the roof) Mycroft would have plugged the gaps.

Just in case.

Mycroft then? But Mycroft was unlikely to make the same mistake twice; it would have dented his professional pride to have been made a fool of in the same way.

And Mycroft valued professional pride above everything.

John?

Sherlock paused.

How was it that after all this time, after a longer period apart than the entirety of their relationship, the name still made him hesitate. Still conjured up images of laughter, annoyance, tea and tears.

Sherlock pushed whatever the emotion was away and refocused without the distraction. John had no idea. Everything had hinged upon his reaction because if the sniper had John in his scope it meant he had every reaction, every expression recorded for every exacting detail.

And John's reaction had been the pivotal feature of his deception.

Which left him circling again. Tracking down the favours he'd called in would require intense legwork, something that bored Moriarty witless. And Moriarty may have glanced at the circumstances, may have even pinned them up on a wall somewhere to gloat as he recuperated, but the joy of the deception was that people would see exactly what they expected to see.

And John's reaction was the thing, the pivotal thing, which prevented most from looking any further. Moriarty had boasted with relish more than once about how he broke Sherlock's pet. Scotland Yard had looked the other way, uncomfortable and shaken in their belief of Sherlock's lie. The press had used the gossip angle, scraping Sherlock and John's relationship to pieces as they speculated in whatever way suited their readers.

John's reaction was Sherlock's protection, his escape, in the same way that Sherlock was now John's.

He was doing it again. Allowing the all-consuming sentiment get in the way of the deduction.

It wasn't John.

It wasn't Molly.

Mycroft.

All roads led back to Mycroft.

Because Mycroft was the only one who could piece bits of it together and approach the right answer. The only one that suspected with no tangible proof but with the resources to glimpse Sherlock's shadow.

Reaction. It was all about reaction. Mycroft was the only one who would suspect, and so the only one who might react in a way that would make Moriarty suspicious enough to look. To actually look.

What had Mycroft reacted to? He was hardly the most sentimental person in the world. Hardly out in the public view enough to cause a stir.

So the reaction had to be a distant one. Something he had ordered. Sherlock would have known if it had involved him, known if Mycroft had got that close to him.

The past five years living on the edge every second of the day had only sharpened him.

Not him then.

The text.

Sherlock had destroyed the SIM-card but it was hardly difficult to remember.

He's in trouble.

He twisted the phone in his hand, weighing up the options. His fingers moving almost as fast as his mind worked, grey eyes fixed upon the curtains.

For the first time in five years, he texted back.

?

Moran was in London. Dr. Watson got caught up in a tussle with one of his minions. MH

Really? Was it so hard to ask Mycroft to be just a little bit more specific?

Will you never learn to stop pointing the CCTV at him? would be a childish retort. After all it was clear from the ordering of priorities in the text that Moran had been the one that was under heavy surveillance, not John.

Wouldn't that vicious sniper be thrilled that he warranted such attention.

Is he hurt? would be asking for trouble.

So? would get him nothing. Mycroft would have no compunction about withholding information just to get Sherlock to ask nicely.

Did he suspect a link with Moriarty? Would be useless as Sherlock already knew the exact answer and had no doubt that Mycroft would be deliberately pedantic.

But it had been eight minutes since the text came through, which didn't look good.

It irked him that he still reacted this way, after all this time. Five years was a farcically long time to still be...curious about a former associate. Even one who had shot at an impossible distance to save his life, or hadn't so much as flinched when Sherlock had threatened to kill them all one night in a swimming pool.

Or one who giggled in delight at a stolen ashtray and just rolled his eyes at bullets in the wall. Whose only lasting gripe about being strapped to Semtex for hours was that Sherlock had scratched his head with a loaded gun as he paced back and forth.

Sherlock suddenly sat.

Five years was also an awfully long time for John to still be getting caught up in all of this. Of all the people in London, why was it that John was involved in a...how had Mycroft phrased it...a tussle?

Because Moriarty had wished it so or because John had never been able to resist the call of reckless danger?

Caught up or aimed for? SH

Indeed. MH

Sherlock hadn't set foot in London since the day he'd left after watching John walk through the graveyard. It was surprising how much he had ached for it, for the familiar streets and sounds. The smells that meant he could map London with his eyes shut. And the snark.

God how he had missed the snark.

The one thing about Mycroft's gentlemen's club was that the staff there always remembered a face. Which was probably the only reason Sherlock managed to get through the door. The gawking butler's grip went slack with shock and he stepped back from the door as if Sherlock was about to fly through him.

"Do sit down," Sherlock said as he barged through the door with such force that the sound rang throughout the entrance. "Don't mind me,"

The butler seemed to be hyperventilating as Sherlock continued on through the silent room. A few peeped over their newspapers, but there was barely any other reaction. Sherlock continued on through the rooms, knowing the way even if he'd only been in the building three or four times under extreme duress.

The next butler he met almost dropped the tray in shock. Sherlock manoeuvred out of the way without breaking his stride and flung Mycroft's office door open.

His brother looked up from his desk and dropped his pen.

It was the closest he'd ever come to shocking Mycroft.

"What the_" One of the butlers started.

Sherlock slammed the door closed behind him without a backward glance.

Mycroft stood, hands braced flat on the antique desk, his eyes scanning Sherlock rapidly as if trying to read five years in five seconds.

"What did you do?" Sherlock asked.

Mycroft blinked and his fingers curled on the desk, fractionally.

"Do?" he asked, sounding a little distant.

"Yes, do." Sherlock glared. "I was close, so close and then something happened. You're the only possible suspect."

"Suspect?" Mycroft parroted.

Any other day he would have crowed with joy that Mycroft was so far behind. Now it was just irritating.

"Moriarty. Five years of work, gone, because you messed up. Again."

"I messed up?" Mycroft breathed with disbelief. "I? I was not the one that took this ridiculous charade beyond the point of sanity. I was not the one who put the people around him through hell_"

"For a reason Mycroft," Sherlock sneered. "I was hardly gallivanting around Europe for the sheer joy of it."

"To what? Destroy Moriarty? To prove you're better?" Mycroft's voice actually started to raise. "Because you're a spoiled child who needs to know he's the King of the playground?"

"Because he would never have left me alone." Sherlock snapped. "Had he known I was alive, he would never have let us go."

Mycroft stared at him as if he'd never seen him before. The hand on the desk trembled with some emotion but it was impossible to tell which.

"He knows now," Mycroft said eventually. "The moment you stormed in here_"

"He knew before that. Just over three weeks ago something happened. It went wrong," Sherlock couldn't bear the raw frustration that echoed from his voice. "You were the only one that suspected."

Suspected, but hadn't known for sure, he realised. Hadn't been completely sure that it wasn't a game that Moriarty was playing, or his own wishful thinking.

A sadistic part of Sherlock wished he could have seen Mycroft's face when he replied yesterday.

Then something in Mycroft's eye flickered and his back straightened.

Back to business and back to normality then, Sherlock noted with some relief. Back to the puzzles and intricacies that they both could deal with far easier than the dangerous and threatening emotions that swirled around them.

"Three weeks ago?" Mycroft asked, standing utterly tall now, the unruffled façade dropping back down as if it had never been lifted.

"I estimate that there was a change in his patterns three days before your first text."

"Ah," Mycroft's face dulled with disinterest. "That,"

"Yes, that." Sherlock took a step forward, starting their dance. "What is "that" this time, hmm? Been swapping holiday photos to prevent national security threats again?"

Mycroft didn't flinch. "If you had a problem with it, you should have told me then instead of leaving it five years to make a protest."

"Mycroft," Sherlock growled in warning.

"I was attempting to get you to come back." Mycroft said, sitting down with a heavy sigh as if it was terribly taxing to explain it all, "You were ignoring every effort I made and chasing after you is...more trouble than it's worth quite frankly."

Sherlock took three careful steps to the desk.

Attempting to make you come back.
Ignoring every effort.
He's in trouble.

"You had to make it real," Sherlock said as he stood close enough to the desk that Mycroft was within arm's reach.

Mycroft smirked. "I hardly had to do anything Sherlock. Merely stand back."

Sherlock winced with twisted amusement. "John's protection. You pulled it."

Mycroft nodded, "You never came back. Ironically, what convinced me you were gone seemed to convince James Moriarty that you were alive." Mycroft raised

his eyes to Sherlock. "I overestimated you it seems."

Sherlock let out a long breath.

"I thought you would have wanted to keep watch from afar. That the second you saw what was happening and that he was vulnerable, you would fly back."

There was a flicker of triumph in Mycroft's voice, "But you couldn't trust yourself not to come running back the moment you sniffed trouble for the good doctor. So much so that you cut yourself off from_"

"What happened?" Sherlock demanded, wanting to brush past the accusations and the sinking feeling that perhaps Mycroft hadn't been the only one to make a mistake.

Then his words sunk in.

"You thought I was dead?" he asked stunned, "What changed your mind?"

"I went back." Mycroft smiled bitterly. "The day we saw an associate of Moran's attack John Watson. It took us less than three hours to see what had been happening."

Sherlock closed his eyes in fury. When he opened them again, it was to see Mycroft pushing a grainy paper to face Sherlock.

Even blurred and distorted, Sherlock recognised John. Older, thinner. The defeated set of his shoulders and bowed head.

Moriarty's glee sung from the screen cap.

October 1st.

Sherlock felt every muscle inside him tense, as if his body wanted to resist the implications of that for as long as possible.

John had seen Moriarty.

"First meeting?" he asked, forcing himself to pick it up as if Mycroft had thrown down a gauntlet.

"I don't know." Mycroft replied. "Certainly close to it."

"And the others?" Sherlock asked, tossing the picture back at the desk after it offered up no further clues. He despised screen-caps. They never picked up the right details.

Mycroft tossed another at him. This time John was rigid as if he'd had time to acclimatise his reactions to the madman.

The next showed a blurred image of John running after someone. There was just a slice of his face, focused on the man ahead and utterly determined.

Whole.

October 25th.
1.12am

Five days ago.

Sherlock's traitorous hand lingered on that one a little too long and his chest eased fractionally.

Until he noticed another screen-cap in Mycroft's hands. His brother seemed almost hesitant.

Nothing was said as Sherlock held his hand out for the final image. Determined not to look as if he were steeling himself against the image, he held it instantly to the light.

John, walking through the streets of London with dark marks all over him.

Blood.

"A tussle?" he heard himself say.

"He didn't seek medical treatment." Mycroft replied.

"He's an army doctor, he never seeks medical treatment. Dishes it out with the slightest provocation though," Sherlock let out an angry breath. "The name?"

"The attacker is in custody." Mycroft leaned back in his chair.

That was irritating.

Sherlock narrowed his gaze upon the desk that held papers countries would beg to see.

"What do you intend to do?" Mycroft asked into the lengthy silence that stretched between them. "Moriarty is now an acknowledged terrorist. There was a retraction in the papers...not that you've bothered with them clearly. Your name was cleared, the flat is still empty, the unsolved cases at Scotland Yard piling up."

"He will come," Sherlock said without a single doubt in his mind, eyes somehow still drawn to the screen-caps.

"He already has." Mycroft's eyes softened with something that looked frankly wrong on his brother's face.

Standing at the door to 221b again was like being kicked. For a moment, his throat tightened and his heart thudded just a little quicker.

And then the door opened to the only woman he had ever allowed to occasionally scold him.

Mrs Hudson just cried.

"He moved out about a month after...after..." Mrs Hudson swept past the unpleasant business of his supposed suicide. "I saw him sometimes, just around. He'd pop in to have a cup of tea with me sometimes. He'd never go upstairs, mind. I had to fetch the violin when he mentioned that he'd like it. The poor man went sheet white every time he passed the stairs."

Sherlock shifted as Mrs Hudson poured the tea, the lack of John eerily reminding him of the only polite conversation he and Moriarty had ever had.

Then Mrs Hudson bounced into John's chair and the feeling shattered.

"And of course there was that nasty business with his sister almost two years ago." Mrs Hudson shook her head, "I think that must have been the last time I saw him, just after she was sent down."

Sherlock perched on the edge of the chair, suddenly interested.

"Sent down?" he enquired, sipping the tea.

"Ooh, yes." Mrs Hudson wrapped her hand around the cup with a sweet and sad smile. "Poor thing. John, I mean, not the sister. I never warmed to her."

"You've met her then?" Sherlock shifted; as far as he'd been aware John and Harry had been at odds since just before Moriarty's trial. He'd been distracted at the time, but not distracted enough to not notice the signs that Harry Watson had been in a relationship that John disapproved of. The ex-wife had been muddled in there somewhere too, if he cared to search for that almost deleted memory.

It had been so typically mundane that for once, he'd decided to keep quiet because John would only pull the face that meant he was trying not to scream at yet another person. And then things had spiralled...

Mrs Hudson nodded, her mouth and nose wrinkling. "He lived with her. Took care of her as well as Ava. With all he had going on_" she broke herself off to sip her tea.

Ava.

Wife? No. That didn't sound right from the way that Mrs Hudson had said it.

"_she was carrying on with a married woman. The husband found them in bed together. Attacked the pair of them. The wife's paralysed for life."

"Harry killed him," Sherlock considered that for a moment. "I assume the plea was self-defence."

Mrs Hudson shook her head, "Manslaughter. Though how the jury came to that decision I'll never know. John even took pictures of her injuries when she woke him up in the middle of the night drenched in blood. It's a wonder she didn't scare the child for life."

Child.

Ava.

Interesting.

"Then she went and hung..." Mrs Hudson paused and looked at him over her tea, then sighed, "...hanged herself."

Sherlock paused in bringing the cup to his lips.

Jury.
Suicide.
Three year anniversary.

"In June?" Sherlock asked before he took the sip.

"You did hear about it then?" Mrs Hudson sighed, "I wish he'd kept coming round. Did me good to see him and to give him a break for an hour."

"Yes," Sherlock said, mind elsewhere.

The flat looked empty without experiments crowding the counter and John's medical books in the corner. The skull was gone, in storage, according to Mrs Hudson, and most of Sherlock's things were apparently scattered around the charity shops of London.

It didn't feel like the flat. And, as saccharine as it was, it didn't feel like he'd come home yet.

"Hardly recognisable now," Mycroft commented, stepping through the following morning.

"Have you successfully resurrected me yet?" Sherlock asked, eyeing the table, vaguely surprised to note how light the wood was when properly taken care of.

Mycroft ignored him, sitting in John's chair with a careless air that had Sherlock gritting his teeth. He waited with his back to his brother as the man arranged himself until comfortable.

"Have you found him?"

"He was found seven minutes after you stormed out of my office." Mycroft retorted. "If you wanted the information that badly you knew where to go."

Sherlock whirled and held out an expectant hand for the address.

Mycroft studied his palm and then his face, "I have my own questions for the doctor."

Dropping his hand Sherlock allowed himself to make an irritated noise and simply reached for his coat.

It was probably the most pathetic acting he'd ever attempted in his life, and Mycroft likely saw through it instantly, but he needed something standing with him when he faced John again.

If only to use as a human shield against the rage that was about to be aimed his way.

The neighbourhood was wrong for John. Just wrong. Especially if what Mrs Hudson had insinuated was correct and John did indeed have a child.

"I assume you will handle this meeting with the doctor with greater tact than you did ours." Mycroft drawled as they approached the door.

Sherlock just ignored him and rapped on the door, refusing to feel cowed.

The little girl that swung it open to the width the chain would allow looked to be about four or five. Curling blond hair in clumsy pigtails framed a heart shaped face and curious blue eyes.

The shape of the jaw was John's, as were the eyes and the colouring...the nose, however, was Harry Watson's all over.

Not John's. Too old. John would have had to have conceived the child before Sherlock's "death" and Sherlock doubted that would have been something John could have successfully hidden from him or ignored.

But the resemblance had to mean that the girl was a Watson. One way or the other.

"What do you want?" she asked, with a tilt and flash of her eyes, showing utterly no shame in demanding an answer.

From the smell of it, they had interrupted her dinner. Children were notoriously annoying when they weren't fed.

"AVA! Manners"

John.

John's voice scolding in a way that made Sherlock almost ache with jealously. How many times had that frustrated, almost amused and weary tone been aimed at him when they lived together?

The little girl...Ava... clucked her tongue in annoyance.

"Please," she added looking utterly unapologetic.

Sherlock bent closer to the girl, studying her, trying to work out how attached John was to...yes, it had to be his niece. A child thrust upon him by Harriet Watson's out of control lifestyle, selfish ways, and untimely end.

Cornflower blue eyes narrowed suspiciously as he got closer to her level. "I have the chain on the door," she warned, as if that were any kind of a deterrent.

The light behind her shifted as if someone were moving behind.

John.

And this tiny person was standing in the way.

"And I know your Uncle." he said, almost sure that the girl would fold and let him in before John could react.

The girl scowled fiercely up at him, John shining from her as she glared. "I don't have an Uncle," she said, sounding annoyed at the implication.

Beside him, Mycroft tilted his head to one side as if considering something.

Sherlock paused, torn between following that line of thought and just getting in the damned-

John.

It was just a glimpse. The barest glimpse of his profile and his eyes. Eyes that were filled with hurt and betrayal...

And for a second he was up on that roof facing the possibility of death or life without John.

He pushed forward without conscious thought, the chain doing it's job and the girl dimming into the background.

"John, open the door," he demanded.

Pleaded.

But then a familiar and steady hand closed around the girl's shoulder and pulled her away from the door, the flimsy wood a pathetic and infuriating barrier between him and what he wanted.

But John would probably not appreciate Sherlock knocking his front door down.

"Doctor Watson, I understand you may be shocked, but_" Mycroft started to say.

Shut-up.

"I can get in, you know. Even with a chain" Sherlock snapped over the top of Mycroft.

The moment the words left his mouth he knew it was entirely the wrong thing to say. The door suddenly slammed and Sherlock could hear the feeble locks draw across the door.

But then the light under the door was blocked.

John was barricading the door.

Mycroft let out a long, frustrated, and unimpressed sigh, twirled his umbrella for a moment, and then turned away without another word.

After hours of banging on the wood and talking to a door, Sherlock slumped opposite on the floor, against the wall. Such was the clientele of the neighbourhood that people just stepped over him without a second look as he stretched his legs out along the width of the dirty hall.

Every time he looked around, he felt sheer unmitigated fury roar up. Yelling at John through the door wasn't helping, so he needed to be quiet.

Focus on John.

Deduce.

Calm.

The mystery of the niece.

And it was John's niece. John was not the type to date women who would walk away from their children. In fact, the more dangerous their lives became, the more John seemed to try and balance it out by reaching out to dull, inane women that were ill-suited to him for that exact reason.

Then why did the child call him Daddy?

Harry Watson.

Sherlock glared at the closed door. Harry Watson had been having an affair while she and the wife...Clara were working things out. He'd deduced at the time that it had been male. For all that Harry Watson seemed a remarkably frank woman when it came to her shortcomings, that had been something she had shifted uncomfortably over, had almost been ashamed of. Ridiculous, really. John had mentioned once that Harry had announced her sexuality as a teenager.

Everyone was allowed to experiment.

Had having a baby been an experiment as well? One to dump on John when it had gone slightly wrong or lost it's glow?

It irritated him. John, in the brief moment that he had seen him, had changed, and not for the better. If one could ignore the swelling around his eye and nose, the deep bruises curling up his throat, and then wince as he moved quickly, then it became obvious. The cheap clothes, vegetarian meal, the child's practical clothing with no frippery, as well as the neighbourhood of the flat itself all indicated that John was struggling to make ends meet. A doctor paid well, but it was clear he no longer worked as one. Perhaps he had not managed to work as a doctor and act as a single parent to his sister's child. John, being John, had sacrificed rather than demand anyone else suffer.

There were tiny cuts and scabs all over his hands that had long pre-dated the fight. Dried skin, stubbed nails, torn cuticles, and strong wrists all indicted bar work.

Far beneath John's capabilities. He was a doctor, a soldier, an assistant consultant.

Mycroft had to have known that. His withdrawal of the protection around John had only happened recently so he had to have been aware of John's financial problems...

He's in trouble.

As if Sherlock couldn't have found an anonymous way to slip John money had he known. He wouldn't have had to come out of hiding or reveal himself or do anything anywhere near as dramatic as what Mycroft had suggested. He was Sherlock Holmes; he'd engineered a death scene in moments and fooled the world...

But Mycroft had only wanted confirmation. He'd dropped security in the knowledge that no organisation was infallible. And if John had come into an unexpected yet reasonable windfall, then no-one but Mycroft would have been any the wiser.

And John wouldn't be in this mess.

Idiot. Foolish, blind, arrogant idiot.

Distracted as he was, he missed the moment when the moonlight streamed through under the door again.

It was easy to pick the locks. Terrifyingly easy.

Harder was opening the door.