This prompt comes from Darkfoxx on ff.n
Sherlock sat on his newly-reclaimed armchair, nursing his bruised cheek with a bag of frozen peas. The swelling has gone down a bit, though it still throbs painfully. He idly wonders if he'll be able to make out individual knuckle-marks the following day. Molly stares at him with an obnoxious, motherly pout of worry. John glares at him unabashedly, a silent challenge directed at the tall blonde fugitive to avert his gaze to the floor and in doing so admit his wrongdoing.
"I cannot BELIEVE you," John growls, clenching and unclenching his fists in a muscle-recall of the previous five minutes. "Do you have ANY idea wha... how..." He trails off wordlessly, the anger proving too much to be expressed coherently.
"John," Sherlock leans forward in his chair, "If you'll let me explain,"
"Oh yes, fuck, explain!" John reels up out of his chair and paces about the room, turning back towards Sherlock only to throw additional anger in his direction. "Please, enlighten me with your superior fucking logic!" He stomps toward the kitchen, and Molly leans back against the table, shying away from his rage. "How, just HOW could you possibly reason out FAKING YOUR OWN DEATH as being anything but the cruelest and most inconsiderate action ever taken by any human being?" The livid doctor rests with his palm on the table, supporting the side that has taken to limping again.
"It wasn't his idea, John," Molly whimpers from a foot away, cowering towards the sink. "You know Moriarty was involved. There was no other option."
John glances at her and loses a shade of his ire, sinking down into the kitchen chair beside her as he can't even bear to be on even terms with Sherlock right now. "Fine," he spits from across the room, "What happened?"
"He gave me a choice," Sherlock murmured as he stared at the floor, running his fingers through his hair and again surprising himself with its absence, "Between myself, and those I care for." He glanced up to meet John's eyes, "Which of course is no choice at all." John's silence encouraged him on. "The world had to see me die or else his people would kill you. It is only through Molly's surgical skill and some tactical strategy on the part of my homeless network that I was able to survive at all. Otherwise the death would not have been a fake one."
"Right. Yeah. Okay." John sat and processed the story, trying to keep up with the leaps in logic that Sherlock had left out of the account. "So whoever was going to kill me had to think you were dead. I get that. But..." He looked back at Sherlock, who had his lips buried behind his fingertips, "Why did I have to think you were dead?"
"I..." Sherlock faltered, trying to find a way to phrase his reasoning without angering John further.
"You were already under media attention," Molly interjected helpfully, "If you had to keep this gigantic secret at the same time, well... We didn't want to risk that the burden would be too much for you to bear. Publicly."
John licked his lower lip, interpreting the subtext behind Molly's assurances. "You didn't trust me," he sighed, "I get it. I'm not some emotionally-stunted scientist like you lot. I wouldn't be able to play the part. I'd give you all away, I get it. But Sherlock," he seethed again, "How could you be so foolish as to keep me in the dark for a WHOLE FUCKING YEAR? Did it never occur to you what it might be like after all the media hype died down? When the graffiti stopped and nobody cared, and I had to go about with my fucking mundane life like you'd never existed in the first place?"
The poor doctor gestured pointedly to his leg, still accompanied by the metal cane which the hospital had given him three weeks in. "I lost my best friend," he muttered, and even softer added, "My only friend..."
Sherlock sighed at the melodrama. "That's not entirely true, and is in fact a point which bears discussing. The time I've been absent has been spent tracking down the gunmen under Moriarty's employment, and all those who would step up to replace them in the act of... exacting his last assignment." He winced softly at the harsh image of John with the bullet through his brain, a mirror of Moriarty.
"But there's still one left," Molly continued on in his stead, trying to keep the tensions low, "Sebastian Moran, your friend from the army, has been Moriarty's number two, his main man, from the very beginning."
John gaped at the both of them, putting together the pieces. The coincidental meeting at Goodale Park, the allusions to losing someone close, the insistence on keeping tabs on each other... It all made sense, when John considered that Seb was there with a gun pointed at him the whole time. "The bastard," he growled.
Sherlock smiled weakly, his only comfort being that John would not miss Sebastian's company after this was all over.
