John Watson sat alone in the stark white room. Well, alone is subjective. Sherlock laid beside him, hooked up to machines and sleeping on the hospital bed, but he hadn't spoken since the duck pond incident. He hadn't moved, he hadn't done anything. John had rushed over as soon as they called him about the news. Sherlock didn't really have anyone else. Not even his parents or Mycroft came. But he did.

He peered nervously at the body on the table. He looked like he was sleeping. They all did, really. Maybe death is like sleeping. But then, of course, your chest stops moving and your heart stops beating, which wouldn't happen. It couldn't. Sherlock had been through so much. Fallen off a ten story building, had guns pointed at his head, been in a room with a cereal killer and almost taken poison, how could it be the goddamned duck pond at the park that killed him. It couldn't, that's how. He'd wake up.

John stood up with a silent gasp as one of the nurses came back in. He didn't notice anything about his face, he didn't want to read his emotion. There would be one spurt of news, like ripping off a band-aid, he couldn't build the dread.

"Dr. Watson," the nurse greeted, holding a clipboard in his hand. "You are Mr. Holmes'…"

"We um, we share a flat, I help him on cases," John told him. The nurse ignored the fact that he completely avoided the question.

"Well, Dr. Watson," the man said, "There's good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"

"I'll take the bad, please," Watson said, coolly. He straightened his back, the way he had when he expected machine gun fire.

"Well…" the nurse began, "The oxygen was cut off from his brain for a severely long amount of time. As you are a doctor, I'm sure you can conclude what that means. In his current state, there is no promise he will live at all, and even if he does there's no promise he will ever actually leave the machines and regain consciousness."

For a few seconds John didn't respond. He wanted to scream at Sherlock, scream at the nurse, get angry at someone, but what was the point? So slowly, he took in a deep breath and nodded. At least there was still good news.

"And the good news?" he asked, trying not to get his hopes up.

"The good news is that there is also every and any chance that he will wake up in the near future. He may be disoriented and a little unlike himself, but an injury like this is something you can heal from with a few weeks of rehabilitation. There is a fairly good chance that he'll be awake again within the month, maybe even the week."

John slowly nodded again, looking down at the ground. That was something. He swallowed and looked up at the nurse again.

"Alright, thank you," he said. The nurse took it as a request to leave, and he was right to do such. He nodded and exited the room. John peered over at Sherlock. Like the tide rising, his hope slowly grew and he became more sure of himself. He would be fine. He was Sherlock. Comatose is a state of the mind, and John knew if anyone had a powerful enough mind to get out of it, it was Sherlock.

"You had better get out of there, you hear me?" John insisted. "You find the exit to your mind palace, I know you of all people can find it if you really try," he stopped for a moment, and then continued, "You wake up, Sherlock."

"I'm what?" Sherlock demanded.

"I'm sorry!" The Doctor shouted back for about the thousandth time. "When you went into psychospace it put you into a state of comatose, I didn't know it would happen." Sherlock sighed heavily, trying to get his thoughts together. Well, priority one was wake up. He certainly had no intention of spending the rest of his life in a dream world. He thought for a moment. What could you do in a dream that would wake you up in reality?

Then it came to him: Nightmares.

Finally, he looked up at the Doctor and said, "I know what to do."

The plan was fairly basic. Sherlock was in control of his world, so he would just resurface the nearest bad memory or relive the most recent bad dream and go through with it until he inevitably died. Or, at least, died in the dream, waking up from the coma in real life. His mind was vivid, and he was sure the dream would work.

"You're sure about this?" The Doctor asked, now sat down and nervously tapping his hand against his knee. "I mean… what if you just… die?"

"I can't die, not in a dream. I'll be fine. I just have to get a hold of a good nightmare," he insisted. "Now just… follow my lead."

Sherlock shut his eyes. A sense of dream filled his heart as he dived down into the thick recesses of his brain, the things that he kept away from his conscious mind. He hated going down into these murky, ice-cold memories but this was a case in which he had to. Memories floated past him like bubbles, exploding painfully on impact. Old, frightening memories, repeated childhood dreams. Monsters and demons and the headlights of oncoming traffic. But his heart sank a little as he found the best and worst one. Ah, yes. What else could he use?

He opened his eyes again. Immediately, every part of the scenery had changed. He could smell the slick oil smells of the most populated and city-like parts of London, feel that certain pattern of wind blowing through his hair. Feel that certain angle on which he stood on the rooftop, feel at exactly what point his feet hung off. He peered out over the city as he heard the words on replay.

"Sherlock?"

"Okay, look up, I'm on the rooftop," He could hear the voice and the source of it from his own mouth, but his lips weren't moving. How he wanted to change how it played out… but it was just a re-run. He listened, his heart sinking lower and lower into his chest. He could see, even so far down below, the fear and even guilt in John's eyes, always thinking somehow that everything I did was his fault.

"Oh, God."

"I… I-I can't come down so we'll just have to do it like this."

"What's going on?"

Just a dream, just a dream, Sherlock repeatedly reminded himself. His chest ached and he winced to block it out. Nothing but a nightmare.

"An apology. It's all true."

"What?"

"Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty."

"Why are you saying this?"

"I'm a fake."

"Sherlock…"

Sherlock swallowed as he heard the break in his own voice. "The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell LeStrade, I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly… in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes."

"Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up! The first time we met… the first time we met, you knew all about my sister, right?"
"Nobody could be that clever."

"You could."

"Enough!" Sherlock insisted on an impulse. Each word that was said was like a bullet to the heart, no more. The voices stopped. He sighed and swallowed the tears that were surfacing in his throat, looking straight forward. "Just skip to the fall…" he muttered.

Some subconscious part of his mind obeyed he could feel himself leaning forward. It was his own body, controlled by someone else, by the imprint of the memory. Like being tied to a sinking ship, his body was slowly dropped forward.

It was funny how the little things could make you so nostalgic. He had never considered how exactly the same the fall would be. He remembered the two or three somethings in the air that hit his face as he fell, he remembered the certain ways he turned, the last few things he saw. He even remembered his last thought being a curiosity as to if Ms. Hudson would still make tea everyday. It seemed so insignificant, but it was so important.

But as he approached the ground, there was no other body, there was no backup plan. This time, he just kept falling. The ground got steadily closer, and he began to doubt himself. He opened his mouth to tell the Doctor he didn't think it was working. But he was interrupted when he slammed into the ground.

Somebody cried his name.

He wasn't sure if it was John or the Doctor.

"Oh, god, Sherlock, Sherlock!" The Doctor exclaimed, appearing beside him and falling to his knees. His hands shook as he scooped Sherlock up in his arms, looking despondently into his blank face.

"Oh, Sherlock," he whispered softly, "What have I done?"

John took a moment or two to place what had changed, but once he had, his heart stopped. The heart monitor, which was steadily beeping before, was letting out a long monotone hum as though it were screaming a warning. He stood up rapidly. The sound of the flatlining heart monitor tempted him to get the paddles himself, but he wasn't the doctor.

"Someone, help please!" he called loudly. Immediately the room was filled with people and chaos, and like a terrible storm, John found him pushed out of the room. A nurse stood in front of him, the same one as before.

"What's happening, why is that happening?!" he shouted frantically.

"Please, stay calm sir, we can't allow you within the room just now-"

"Tell me what is happening to Sherlock!"

The Doctor looked around hopelessly as the world around him began to deteriorate and fall away, leaving nothing but white behind it. The people's faces were blank, any writing was gone, the faraway buildings were vanishing. Even the sky was falling into nothingness, square by square, leaving nothing but a screen of white behind it. The Doctor knew that Sherlock's mind was already failing.

"No, no please," he whimpered. He liked to believe that he didn't cry much, but he couldn't help but break down into hysterics. "No, no," he kept saying, tears streaming from his eyes, "You can't do this to me, please," he whimpered, "I've been here for so long, so long Sherlock, you were the one, please, please you can't die!" he glanced hysterically around. The ground began to fall away, the sky was nearly gone, every building beside the one he jumped off of and the two beside it were gone.

"I am a doctor, tell me what is happening to him!" John screamed at the nurse.

"We don't know anything yet, we'll just have to see," the nurse responded calmly.

"No, he was stable just a few seconds ago, there is no reason that he would just stop like this!"
The nurse started talking about how oxygen loss can affect certain things, but John just peered at the door to the room, hearing again and again the call of clear. His heart still hadn't restarted. How long could he wait?

The Doctor wiped the tears from his eyes. He can't die. He can't. The Doctor thought this again and again to himself. I've been here so long, I can't be here any longer.

The Doctor swallowed. There was one thing he could do to save him. He felt dirty and cruel just thinking about it, but it wasn't his fault, he had to get out of here.

He just… he had to get out of here.

So, as the ground around him fell away and the sky completely vanished, he scooped Sherlock up in his arms and started running towards the door to the huge building, the one he fell off of. The two buildings beside it had already faded off into the distance. The ground in front of him was vanishing, and it fell away just as he stepped on it. Frantically, he climbed up the last few squares of pavement. He shut his eyes, wishing hard, and then sprinted through the door.

"-And when that part of the brain goes without oxygen for so long, it can-" the nurse continued explaining.

"Shut up a minute," John snapped. He was slightly shorter than the nurse, so he had to stand on his toes to try and see through the window on the door, even though it was shaded out anyway. A dreadful silence hovered over the room. The nurses inside had stopped calling clear… that could mean one of two things.

"Is he…" John asked slowly, his chest tightening. After a moment, another doctor stepped out with a grave look on her face.

"He's stable," she said finally. John let out a long sigh, only now feeling how hard his pulse was beating on his neck and wrists. He rubbed his eyes, trying to get his heart rate to slow. So he was alive. But as he looked up, he could tell that something was still wrong. The other nurse, who had just come out of the room nodded coldly at the one who was with John, indicating something that John didn't know.

"Please come in, doctor," she requested. Unable to fight or shout anymore, John watched anxiously as both nurses went back in through the door.