Here's the second and final part. I started writing it and all of a sudden it was John talking, and I thought why not. I'm rather pleased with how it turned out, actually. I hope all of you are too.

Thanks so much to all of the lovely reviewers for your kind words! I didn't expect to get the reception I did, and it made me ridiculously pleased. So thank you so much! Thanks too to everyone who put this story on alert or favorites. I appreciate all of you!

II

John Watson stares at the face in the mirror and wonders if what he sees is what everyone else sees too.

He sees a blond, middle-aged, pale-faced ex-soldier haunted by images he cannot shake that are slowly destroying him from the inside. He leans close to the mirror and stares into his own eyes. They peer back at him underneath a crinkled brow, and he does not blink. He thinks he can see dead men reflected in them, dead men that he could not save, and dead men that he killed because if he had not he would not be standing here now staring at them.

Among them is a cabbie whose face he never saw, but the faceless dead are nothing new to him. This one is no different.

Except it is, but he doesn't know why.

John leans back a little and braces his hands on the countertop, elbows locked, shoulders hunched around his ears. He looks old and tired, and his face is haggard in the florescent lights above the sink. He can feel the tension between he and his new flat-mate palpably, and the last thing in the world he wants is to leave the quiet solitude of the bathroom. He doesn't think Sherlock would confront him, but neither does he feel that he can ignore what Sherlock has already seen.

Who would want me for a flat-mate?

He snorts, shakes his head almost violently. Hadn't he just said that days ago to Mike Stamford? Hadn't he said it? And this, this here, was why.

"It's because of this," he said to his reflection. "And now Sherlock Holmes isn't going to want you for a flat-mate either, not even after you saved his bloody life. Who wants to live with a man who can't stop dreaming about…"

He trails off, because he is thinking unexpectedly about a tall, thin man with a cold, pointed face and an umbrella in a darkened warehouse. He is remembering the words, "You miss it."

"You know what's wrong with you?" he snaps, and points at his own face. He is nearly shaking—the adrenaline has worn off again and exhaustion is coming back with a vengeance. "You're a bloody adrenaline junkie. You like it. Well, stop it. Just stop."

The small bathroom feels suddenly claustrophobic, and he reaches for the door almost desperately. He spills out into the hall just as Sherlock is placing a bare foot on the top stair. His head comes around slowly, and he and John make eye contact. John cannot read the expression in those odd, pale eyes, but the jerk of the head is unmistakable.

"When you're ready," Sherlock says, and disappears down the stairs. John stands there for a moment, surprised at the invitation. He clenches his hands into fists and feels his heart thud against his ribs once, twice, in preparation.

"All right, then," he says to the empty hallway. "Okay."

Even though he tells himself to just go already it is still a full two and a half minutes before he convinces his legs to walk down the stairs and into the front room. It is still strange for him to walk without the aid of his cane, and he stumbles down the last three steps and lands hard on his right leg. A spasm of pain shoots up into his hip and he curses under his breath, one hand braced against the wall. Sherlock coughs in the next room and John straightens up and walks gingerly around the corner.

The room is dark, but Sherlock cuts a stark figure against the streetlamps filtering through the window. He is staring out into the street, hands tucked behind him. He is a marble statue, his sharp, thin profile etched in stone against the mellow light. His wild, dark curls are falling forward onto his forehead, and the one eye John can see at his angle is glinting silver. Altogether, he presents a strange and beautiful picture, and he seems as untouchable as he was the first time they met in the basement of Bart's Hospital. The man is an enigma, an oddity, something that does not belong to the quiet, mundane, ordinary life John has led after Afghanistan.

John sinks into the armchair he had claimed the day before and clears his throat. Sherlock turns as if just noticing he'd entered the room and says, "ah." He fixes his gaze on John's face for a long moment, and John returns the gaze unflinchingly. He has the strangest feeling that Sherlock is regarding him in the same way John had just seen Sherlock—as an oddity, an enigma, something that does not belong in Sherlock's mode of life.

And yet here they were.

Sherlock crosses from the window to the armchair opposite John in a few strides of those long, lanky legs and folds himself into it, hands balanced carefully on the armrests. He does not speak, but John is not afraid to wait.

"You are having nightmares about the war," Sherlock states. His voice is soft and low, like the rumble of distant traffic outside on the street.

"Yes," John says. "Yes, I am."

"I believed…" Sherlock pauses, and his eyes flicker away from John's for a moment and then back again. "I believed they were about earlier tonight. When you shot the cabbie."

John blinks. "No," he says. "No, not exactly. I mean, he was…he was in it, the cabbie. But I wasn't dreaming about that, no."

"But he was in it," Sherlock says. "So I wasn't wrong."

"Well, yes, he was in it," John reiterates. He is confused, and his exhaustion is starting to breed irritation. "But the dreams weren't about him."

"But the events of tonight could have triggered these nightmares." It wasn't a question, but John still feels the need to answer.

"Maybe. But these dreams weren't new, I have them often…enough."

Sherlock makes a disgruntled noise. "I see. So would you say I was wrong?"

"Wrong about…"

"Your dreams. I was wrong about your dreams."

"What is there to be wrong about?"

Sherlock seems to be ignoring the obvious frustration in John's voice, because he flings himself to his feet and paces across the room, every movement exploding with energy.

"I've listened to you all night, getting up approximately every one to one-and-a-half hours. You get out of bed, cross the hall, wash your face, cross back across the hall, get back into bed, and fall asleep until your dreams wake you again. I presumed that you may be having nightmares about killing the cabbie. That was presumptuous, I see now; no, you weren't having dream about shooting the cabbie, you've been having nightmares about Afghanistan, something I'd known you have, how could you not, with a psychosomatic limp? Afghanistan, of course, could have been triggered by tonight's events, but there's no way to know, not without a more in depth analysis of exactly what your dreams were about and how the cabbie factored into your usual nightmares…"

"Hang on," John interrupts, because something has just clicked in his head. "Is this all just another case to you? Am I your next pink lady, your next serial killing?"

"What?" Sherlock whips around. His pacing has landed him next to the couch, and the streetlamps are glancing off his eyes again, and with the rest of his face in shadow he looks positively maniacal.

"Am I just something else to observe? To deduce? Well, no thanks, I'm not interested," John says shortly, and pushes himself up. He has no intention of sitting here to be analyzed like some sort of mental experiment. "And here I thought you might actually be concerned about me."

"John, wait."

"No, Sherlock, I'd really rather not. I'm not another little puzzle for you to sort out, okay? You got me wrong this time, and I'm not going to give you a second shot at what's inside my head." He knows he's letting his temper get the better of him, but he's not in the mood to pull it back. "Good night, Sherlock!"

He turns on his heel and swings around the armchair, intent on heading upstairs and locking himself into his room. He won't scream with the next ones, even if it means shredding the insides of his mouth bloody with holding the cries back. He's done it before, and he can do it tonight.

"You're right, I did get you wrong," Sherlock says quietly, and the almost humble timbre in his voice stops John despite himself. "I misjudged you. All night, I misjudged you. I thought you were just another boring ex-soldier invalided home from a war I don't care much about. You like things unnecessarily tidy, you've got an odd thing for rather wooly jumpers, and you're a recreational drinker on the weekends with family issues and so closed up inside yourself I can't even deduce you right after living with you for nearly 24 hours. Bloody infuriating."

"Um…sorry, what does all this have to do with…"

"The point is, I don't understand you," Sherlock says. He starts towards John, and in the same way he felt so compelled to follow the man on a mad dash through the streets of London, John feels compelled to stay where he is. Sherlock stops a few feet from him, and he suddenly seems child-like, his expression open, his hair tangled and sticking out in all directions, pajama bottoms brushing against the floor. "I don't understand you, and it's rather refreshing."

"Um, thank you, I think," John says. "Anything else?"

Sherlock is looking at him in the same way he was when John first came down, like John is an idea that he's never had before. Then his face breaks out into an almost sheepish smile and he collapses into the armchair again.

"You must think me very odd, John Watson," he rumbles. "It's written all over your face."

Tact, or honesty? He decides that Sherlock would appreciate honesty, and says, "Yes. Yes I do think you're odd. You're the strangest man I've ever met, and that's saying something, because I've met a lot of weirdos."

Sherlock chuckles, and John smiles.

Is this how a friendship starts? He wonders. Two people who drive each other up the wall, but are somehow so intrigued with the other they won't walk away. Because he sits down now too with a groan, with a warm feeling starting to blossom in his chest. It feels good to sit here in the middle of the night with someone sitting across from him, even if that someone is the ever-so-enigmatic Sherlock Holmes.

"You know," he says, and he doesn't know how long it's been since they talked, but it's been a while, "I never saw that cabbie's face."

Sherlock has been staring at the wall over John's head for some time, but he grunts and pulls his eyes down to John's face. "Hmm? Oh, no, no, you didn't. Why?"

"Well, there's a lot of people…people whose faces I never saw," John says, and he shifts uncomfortably in the armchair, because this is something he has never talked about before, not even with his therapist. Especially not with his therapist. "People I killed."

Sherlock is silent, and he is so focused on what John is saying that it is almost unnerving. But John can't seem to find the words he's looking for, and he abandons the train of thought and hopes that Sherlock follows.

"That cabbie, he's the first man I've killed since Afghanistan." Sherlock cocks an eyebrow, and John amends, "Of course, of course he is, what I mean is, sometimes I forget what it feels like to pull the trigger and see someone fall, and know that the reason they're not alive anymore is the gun in my hand. And tonight I remembered. I remembered what that felt like, and so I think you were right, that the nightmares are particularly…" he clears his throat, "difficult…tonight because of what I did."

"Do you regret it?"

"Shooting the cabbie or the others?"

"The cabbie."

John shakes his head immediately. He knows the answer to this one. "No. No, I don't. You asked me if I was alright, right after it happened, and I told you I was. That was the truth. It was him or you."

"And you chose me, why? We were both virtually strangers to you."

John considers this. Again, his conversation with Mycroft Holmes comes to mind. "Loyal, very quickly."

"I suppose…I took a side," he says slowly. "I chose a side, and I chose yours."

"Did Mycroft give you the war analogy?" Sherlock asks dryly, and a grin cracks out on John's face despite himself.

"Yes, he did."

"He would."

They lapse back into silence. Then Sherlock says, so quietly John thinks he must have misheard, "Thank you, John."

"Thank you…for what?"

"You may have saved my life."

"Oh. Well." John smiles softly, feeling that warmth grow in his chest again. "I'm a doctor. That's what I do."

"Killing one man to save another is a rather unorthodox method."

"Yes, it is, isn't it?"

"Hmm, yes."

And as he sits there, watching the sun rise behind Sherlock's head, he puts the warm feeling into words. Companionship. Friendship. Comfort. Belonging.

John Watson is no longer alone.

And he may have found the most eccentric companion in all of London and possibly beyond, but it is who he has chosen. And judging by the crooked half-smile face on Sherlock's face as he dozes in the armchair across from John, he seems to have been chosen too.

Let me know what you think! I'd love to know how I did with this one, and use whatever constructive criticism I get to do better on whatever comes next. Thank you so much for reading!