A/N I suppose there's nothing much to say here, except that I've finally gotten myself organized in terms of time again, so I'll hopefully be posting daily. There are only two weeks' worth of chapters left if I manage to do one a day!

Thanks to Song of Grey Lemons, 666BloodyHell666, hjohn302, starrysummernights, 3star, Starlight05, Florence the Impaler, MapleleafCameo, withoutachord, Hummingbird1759, johnsarmylady, Guest, and Motaku1235

Disclaimer I don't own Sherlock or any associated characters, events, etc.

LXXXVI. Seeing Red

"Step back!" Sherlock shouts, not caring about his volume at this point. A gun is in his hand, heavy and solid, pointed steadily at his target—the dark-masked man crouching at the end of the alleyway, the blade of a knife shining between his fingers. His other hand is wound in John's sandy hair, pulling him back and exposing his throat, which the knife's edge dances along tauntingly.

"Why should I?" the masked man questions, his voice muffled but still clearly sneering. "What's going to stop me from cutting his life out?"

"I am." He takes a step closer, grip on the gun tightening as the knife is pressed in closer. "There are very few things that can make me angry, but you've just managed to hit one right on target. I am a formidable man even in the calmest of moods. Your best choice now would be to run. Of course… you'd probably regret doing so before you got far." The gun is swiftly cocked, the sound reverberating off the slick alley walls. The criminal flinches, the blade twitching and a light scratch darting across John's throat, red swelling in its wake. He hisses in pain, and fury rears up in Sherlock's chest, white-hot and suffocating.

"Step back," he repeats, the words utterly deadly. The gun is pointed straight at the man's forehead, and they're mere meters away. He won't miss. "The police are on their way, and I can promise you that they'll deal with you in a much more humane way than the one that I have on my mind. But if you hurt him one more time… they'll be calling in a coroner, not a lawyer. Am I clear?"

Long moments stretch by, sirens beginning to wail in the distance and John's wide eyes anxiously flickering between the two men. Anger is still throbbing at the inside of Sherlock's skull, distorting his vision with a pale red mist, and he's practically trembling with the potency of it. He wants more than anything else in the world to fire the damn gun, to shoot the man straight in the skull, savor the look of shock on his face as he fell away—nobody is allowed to touch John, to hurt him.

Nobody.

But he forces himself to hold back, and minutes later, the police are there, with their own guns, handcuffs and the strength of their numbers, and the masked criminal is letting John go, holding up his hands in surrender, Sherlock's lowering his gun and racing to his frozen flatmate's side, reaching out and just feeling him, running his hand over John's warm shoulder to assure himself that everything's alright now, that they're both safe and that he didn't have to hurt anyone, didn't have to wind up in a court case, himself.

"Would you have shot him?" John asks a little later, on their way home, when the police have taken care of the criminal and driven off in their lighted cruisers.

"You killed that cabbie," is Sherlock's only response, and it's enough for them both to stay silent from then on.