[Sherlock]

Time seemed to slow down, then stop altogether as we regarded each other, matching looks of shock on our faces. Each of us waited for the other to react, to do something, anything, in light of the situation which we now found ourselves. However, since neither of us could have possibly predicted this meeting, we had no idea what to say to each other. For once, my brain was not trying to come up with a solution. I was too numb inside for any kind of deep thinking, and I knew that once I started to delve into what this situation now meant for the both of us, I would not be able to stop for some time. John seemed to be thinking along the same lines. wasteland like a while before either of us moved, though it must only have been a few seconds in total. Needless to say, John's reaction was also quite unexpected, but at that moment I really felt I deserved it.

The change was so sudden that I barely had time to process it before he was upon me. His eyes became slits and he bared his teeth in a snarl as he leapt forward, shoving me down onto the floor of the stage and sitting on top of me, pinning me down so I couldn't struggle. I wouldn't have been able to anyway, I was still in shock. This man was not my John. He couldn't possibly be my John, the man I left behind. That man was a good man. This person was barely human.

He screamed abuse at me, and I lay there and took it. He began to slap me and pull my hair, and still I lay there, unmoving. I could feel the eyes of everyone on us, Mycroft included, but I ignored them all. This moment was for me and John. He had started crying sometime between then and when he had first started punching me. I let him cry, and he didn't bother to wipe the tears away. They dropped on my face, and he stopped with his vile, horrible, truthful words to watch them as they moved down my cheeks. We stayed like that, just watching each other, and silently he got off my chest and sat beside my head, still keeping his gaze locked with my own.

"This is certainly not what I planned out reunion to be like." I said, my voice devoid of emotion. He finally looked away, looked down to where he had been unconsciously twisting his fingers together, and sighed.

"How did you plan it, then?" He asked, and I realised I had no answer for him. Certainly never on a stage surrounded by strangers. Never shoving him away from Mycroft as he aimed a gun at my brother's head. Never watching him, knowing he had lost his mind. Lost his humanity, even. I'd been prepared for the abuse, the hurtful words. I'd deserved them. The insanity was not what I'd wanted, nor expected from the level-headed army doctor.

"I don't know what to say." I finally admitted.

"That's a first." He started to drum out a rhythm on the floor. Four beats, over and over again. Dimly I registered that the police force were trying to disperse the crowd, and the noise they were making was giving me and John some more privacy. I didn't know when I had unconsciously stopped calling him 'my friend' in my head. I didn't know whether I'd be able to call him that again, not after this. I was pretty sure he felt the same way about me.

"I did it for you. It was all for you." I said, and I truly meant it. No matter what he had done, I still meant it. I would always mean it. That didn't mean I was going to accept him. There were certain limits, and John had passed them all with his unforgivable actions.

He turned to look at me, and I saw a stranger. A stranger, with John's face, staring back at me. He had the look of John, but it was his eyes that gave him away. I once heard someone say that "The eyes are the window to the soul." But if that was the case, the man in front of me didn't have one. His eyes were bottomless pits of seething anger and hate and cruelty. I searched, but I could not find the good army doctor, who had risked his life for so many others on so many different occasions. My friend did not feature in the eyes of this heartless killer.

"You left. It destroyed me." Was all he said. He had spoken in a factual manner, as though he was talking about the weather or what he was going to have for dinner that night.

Frankly, it scared me.

"I..." There was no way I could finish that sentence. He seemed to realise this, and nodded to himself, as though I wasn't even there.

"You made me watch." He smiled to himself, as though he was reliving a happy memory. The only thing that stopped me calling him out on it was the fact that his had was shaking, ever so gently. For the first time in that conversation, I allowed myself something, a good emotion.

Hope.

If his hand that had been so steady throughout his heated insults was now shaking, there was a possibility that the John I knew and loved was still there somewhere, buried in the depths of this hideous creature who called himself John. This madman. I decided to retaliate with accusations of my own, to see if I could bring out more of this John.

"You killed Mrs Hudson." It hurt me to say that out loud, but he needed to hear it. His eye twitched, but he remained otherwise impassive.

"You were about to kill Mycroft." I tried again. He looked at me for a second, but he only seemed to be checking if I was serious.

"He betrayed you. I did what I thought was right." He stared thoughtfully at the ground for a few moments, then back at my face. "You always agreed with me when you were in my dreams. Now though... You just look sad. Ashamed, even." His expression had turned to one of confusion, and he looked at me questioningly.

"I would never have agreed with you." I told him. He nodded as though he had expected it. I noticed he was still drumming away on the wooden floor. He had picked up multiple splinters, but he was either ignoring them or just didn't care.

"I don't know what to do now." He confessed, and I agreed with him, though I didn't give any indication of this. Sometime during our conversation the crowd had fully dispersed, and we were left with John's armed guards and a group of Yard officers watching us. Mycroft had moved away to give us some privacy, and it seemed John's men were at loss for what to do, and they had let him pass to speak with Lestrade. They were shooting us worried glances, but I wasn't done yet. I knew as soon as we moved, life would start up again, and we wouldn't be able to get off this time. The last few years had left us changed in a way I wasn't sure was reversible.

There was something I really wanted to ask him, but wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answer. In the end I just went for it.

"Is he still in there? The John I left behind, my friend, is he still alive in there?" I held my breath and looked away from those dead eyes that had lost that happy glimmer John had once had. Kind, joyous, loving John.

"I don't know." He answered, truthfully.

I swallowed thickly against the tears that threatened.

"I missed you, Sherlock." He said. That's when the tears finally did escape from my eyes. They trailed slowly down my face, and my vision blurred. I was dimly aware that I hadn't cried in seventeen years, but I decided it wasn't really something to be proud of.

John cried too, and we just sat like that, waiting for that inevitable moment when time would start once more and release us, spinning our lives back into the dark depths of chaos.

You. Guys. Are. Amazing. Have I said that enough already? No? Well I think I'll be saying it at least once every chapter for the foreseeable future! Hope you liked this one, it was fun to write in a sort of sad, depressing way. I had no idea until this moment how dark I could actually be. You'd think I got some kind of rush out of it, which isn't true at all. Really.