As so many times in his childhood Sherlock does as his mother suggests. With her cup of tea clasped in his hands and a silk dressing gown tightly wrapped around him he curls up in front of the computer and he pushes the button that will call John's room. John looks like he's asleep but as soon as Sherlock pushes the call button John's eyes open and fix on the computer screen next to him, even though he is strapped to the bed and can't touch it.

A young and slender nurse appears at John's side and work her magic on the computer set up beside him. 'Hello Mr Holmes, John has been looking forward to your call.' She says in a cheery voice that does not reflect the expressionless face John presents when he looks at the computer.

'John, are you alright?' Sherlock asks putting his tea down beside him and focusing on the image of his friend.

'What do you think? You're the genius make a deduction.' John croaks and Sherlock winces at his broken voice.

'I'm sorry John.' Sherlock says softly and his flatmate shakes his head.

'What are you sorry about? I'm the one who tried to kill myself, Larson is the one who broke me. It's not like any of it is your fault. Don't let him win.' John says bitterly, looking away from the camera and unknowingly staring almost straight into the other camera that Mycroft had set up on the television.

'You're not broken John. You're hurt but we'll fix that everything will be like before.' Sherlock tries to reassure even though he knows that in the best of worlds where John heals perfectly there is no way things will ever go back to the way they were before. Too much has happened, too much has changed.

'It's too late. John's gone. He's dead. Just forget about him please.' John's voice is strangely calm as he utters the strange request.

'Stop talking about yourself in the third person John. We'll get him, we'll fix this.' Sherlock can hear his own voice growing more frantic, the pitch getting higher.

'Please turn it off.' John says looking at someone off camera. Surely the nurse.

'John please don't… ' he trails off. Don't what? Don't turn the camera off, don't fall apart, don't try to kill yourself, don't break my heart… he doesn't even really know what he is asking for.

'Don't what? I can't do much of anything, can't even wipe my own behind.' John spits the words into the camera pulling ineffectively on the restraints that hold him to the bed.

'I'm sorry John, it's just to keep you safe. I'll make sure they take them off as soon as I can be with you.' Sherlock promises and John laughs. It is not the happy giggle that Sherlock loves but a rather sarcastic and angry sound. One that despite the laughing does not suggest happiness.

'Don't you get it. I don't want to be safe.' John shouts at the camera and the nurse turns up at his side again placing a hand gently on his shoulder, but John tries to flinch away.

'Just turn it off, please, make him go away.' John pleads and the words cut Sherlock like a knife, and then the camera goes dead and the flat is silent. Sherlock can still see John of course, through Mycroft's other camera, see him trying to pull away from the woman at his side and failing as the restraints hold him in place. He sits staring at the screen as the two figures before him fight an uneven battle, as the woman presses the button by John's bed and a stern looking doctor arrives injecting something in John's IV that makes him slump against the bed and fall back asleep.

It seems like the world has stopped spinning but somewhere behind him his mother is still bustling around making domestic noises.

'Don't you want to see your brother and the detective?' his mother asks as she turns on the television. 'I'm inviting your landlady up so you have to turn the computer feed off anyway. She continues and Sherlock flinches. Even if John doesn't want to talk to him he wants to see him. Yet if Mrs Hudson is coming up he has no choice. Why is his mother consciously depriving him of the one thing he wants? He turns the live feed down and opens a page detailing management of suicidal ideation that he had been reading the previous morning when they got back. It seems appropriate.

When he hears footsteps on the stairs he curls up on the sofa with his face turned away from the room. What is the point in listening of Mycroft and Lestrade, it is all lies anyway.

Mrs Hudson is very quiet as she enters the flat. She accepts a cup of tea from mummy and sits down in Sherlock's chair watching him silently.

'Is there anything I can do?' she asks slowly and mummy shakes her head.

'I don't think there is much any of us can do.' She says as she crosses the room and looms over her son, knowing that even though the death of his flatmate is a fake her son is slowly falling apart. She can tell, she sees the cracks forming as he curls up and turns the world away, much like he did twenty years ago when his dog succumbed to cancer. His pain had terrified her then and it did the same now. His mourning was supposed to be pretend, a show for the cameras but she knew it wasn't. Even if the kind young doctor wasn't dead Sherlock was mourning and she wished she could protect him.

Instead she turned on the TV and herself and Mrs Hudson watched as her elder son and the kindly grey haired detective explained to the world that doctor Watson had taken his own life after being physically and mentally tormented by a man called Karl Larson for several months. There was a picture of the man in questions, and a very nice picture of John smiling at the camera with a glint in his eye. She could tell that Sherlock heard every word because every time one of the men started to describe one of the horrible ordeals the doctor had endured his shoulders tensed and a shudder ran down his spine. Yet she said nothing, he did not watch and he did not visibly react to the plea of his brother that anyone who may have seen the criminal in question please ring the number displayed.

She allowed her son to pretend that he was asleep throughout the television performance, through seeing his kindly and very sad landlady out the door and for an hour after that. The doorbell had been ringing incessantly through the day and her son had stubbornly showed her how to silence it by putting it in the freezer but two hours after the press conference the door opened without the bell ringing.

The steps on the stairs were rhythmic but fast and even though she could tell they belonged to her older son she was surprised. They did not have his usual calm and contained air. Clearly Sherlock had noted the same because he stood up from his constant position in front of the computer and looked at the door as his brother entered.

'He's dead…' Mycroft looked calm and collected but his tone as he delivered the news revealed something of his satisfaction to his observant mother.

'You didn't kill him, something else.' Sherlock observed as he stared at his brother.

'He was found twenty minutes ago in a hotel room just outside Bracknell. He killed himself, slit wrists, painkillers just like Charlotte and John.' Mycroft informed with a surprising amount of satisfaction in his voice. The two brothers stared at each other, both wondering if it was even possible that this was the end of their ordeal.

'Can I go see him? John, can I see him now?' Sherlock asked with urgency in his voice and Mycroft nodded with a small smile.