He's running.

His legs are screaming and his lungs are burning but he keeps running. His feet pound the old, decaying concrete beneath him to dust as he rounds corners at breakneck speed, gun held aloft, searching frantically.

There is a moment, when silence reigns throughout the empty, crumbling walls, in which John thinks his worst fears have come to pass. He stops in his tracks, bile in his mouth, heart in his shoes, and prays.

And all of a sudden, Sherlock starts screaming again.

The building itself shakes and moans as he plunges through, spurred onwards by the hollow echo of Sherlock's voice travelling down the decimated halls, out the broken, grimy windows, and onwards into the cold English countryside.

Please, he thinks. God, please.

But God doesn't answer his prayers, hasn't in a long time, and John doesn't have time to wait for him, so he searches the shadows, calling, "SHER –

– LOCK!"

"Yes?" The word drifts across the flat languidly, working its way into John's ears and irritating the living shit out of him.

"There's an eyeball in my shoe."

"Lestrade hasn't called."

"Why is there an eyeball in my shoe?"

"Must be Wednesday."

"Are you listening to me?"

Scrambling from his supine position under the table, Sherlock examines the various tubes and petri dishes that cover every conceivable surface of their kitchen. It takes less than three minutes for him to grow bored with perfecting his already immaculate experiments and utter the words John has been dreading hearing for the last twenty-four hours.

"I need a case."

"No."

"John –

"We're supposed to be on vacation, Sherlock! No Scotland Yard, no trips to A&E, and absolutely no cases!"

"Boring."

Slamming his mug down on the counter, John turns to face the Consulting Detective. "Oh, right. Absolutely. Spending time with your best friend, away from the world that you detest so much, is boring. How could I have missed it?"

Sherlock raises his head and fixed John with The Look. The one that says 'I know you're smarter than this, so why do you insist on acting so stupid?'

John hates that look with every fiber of his being. "Don't do that."

"What?"

"The face!"

"Oh, for pity's sake!"

"You know I hate that face but you keep doing it!"

Sherlock strides across the room and snatches his bow from where it rests on top of a body bag spread out on the table. "Don't be dramatic, John."

"Dramatic? Dram – sod this. I'm going out," he says, striding through the entrance to the living room and grabbing his coat from the back of his chair.

He's halfway to the door and already stewing in his own anger before Sherlock speaks. "You knew what you were signing up for when you agreed to live here."

"Yeah, well, it wouldn't kill you to try and be normal for once.

That was the wrong thing to say, he thinks later, pressing his cold beer against his temple, trying to ignore the throbbing in his head and the dull ache behind his eyes.

Only his friend could rile him to the point of a skull splitting migraine. And Sherlock is his friend. He cares about the man, he really does, but sometimes he could be so…Sherlock…-y.

"Christ on a cracker, but he was cross," he says to Mike.

"Well, 'e would be, wouldn't 'e?" Mike says, shoving a handful of peanuts in his mouth.

Setting his glass down on the bar John twists his torso around so that he's half facing his friend. "When did you become an expert in Sherlock Holmes?"

Mike laughs and little bits of peanut fly from his mouth. " 'M not. Never would want to be either. But think 'bout it, yeah? People 'ave probably been tellin' 'im to be normal since b'fore he could talk. Like that Donovan girl callin' 'im freak and all. And then you go an' do it. It's like a slap in the face, innit? Considering you two are…well. To each 'is own."

The words 'We're not a couple!' are on the tip of his tongue but he swallows them down. "Not good, then?"

"I'd say, yeah."

"Fuck," he says, and raises two fingers to the bar keep. "I have to go apologize, don't I?"

"Ye-p."

"Bloody hell. Right. I need to go," standing, he reaches in his trouser pocket for his wallet.

"Nah, mate. I've got this," Mikey smiles at him. "You go kiss and make up."

John forces himself to return the smile – 'WE'RE NOT A COUPLE!' – and, with a "Ta!" and a wave, says goodbye.

He stumbles a bit as he walks down the street, his brain warm and fuzzy from the alcohol, until he reaches Baker Street. The flashing lights of police cars blind him as he rounds the corner and suddenly he doesn't feel quite so warm.

Not again, he thinks. Please. Not again.

He rushes over; the street is swimming around him and the flashing lights are burning his eyes, but he shoves his way past officers and onlookers, until he reaches the police tape. He ducks under it without a second thought.

"John! John, wait! Stop!" there are hands on his arms, grappling for hold on his shirt sleeves, but he rips away and forces his way into 221B.

Mrs. Hudson is sitting at the bottom of the stairs crying, but he can't think about her right now. His mind is full of Please Sherlock pleasepleaseplease be okay.

Please, God, don't be dead. I can't survive this twice.

The flat lays gutted, its insides torn out and devoured by some strange, alien beast. He wanders around in a daze, boots crunching broken class beneath his feet, taking inventory of the damage.

His gun is on the mantle. Thousands of pounds worth of science equipment smashed on the floor, each shard a memory cultivated with more care than any experiment. His computer lay half hidden under the sofa and the violin rests largely untouched on the window sill, but the light is gone.

This beast, this monster, gone and taken the single most important thing in John's life, taken the air right out of his lungs, and left him with a hole in his chest.

"John?"

He turns and faces Lestrade. Behind the Detective Inspector, Donovan and Anderson watch him, their faces cold and apathetic, waiting for his reaction. He opens his mouth to speak, but there are no words for what he is feeling. Emptiness, perhaps? Despair?

Regret?

"Where's Sherlock?" he asks.

Lestrade breathes deep and shoves his hands in his pockets. "We got a call from Mrs. Turner's lot. Said it sounded like a domestic gone awry. I came. Just me. I thought maybe Sherlock had baked a cows head in the stove again or something. No one answered the door. Not that he ever did. It was Sherlock, for Pete's sake. He never does anything normal. When I came up…I called for backup right away."

John cringes at Lestrade's innocent use of the word that had caused him so much grief, but silently rallies inside. Straightening his spine and setting his shoulders, he examines at the wreckage around him.

"He put up a fight," Lestrade says, and John smiles a bit.

"He's Sherlock," he replies, and that in itself is explanation enough.

"There's something else."

John follows his friend down the hall, past the kitchen and the bathroom, to Sherlock's bedroom door. "Are you ready for this?" Lestrade asks.

"No."

The door swings open and John breathes a sigh of relief. There's no mangled body in the bed, as he had feared. Somewhere, Sherlock is alive. You would have thought that made it all better, but it didn't.

A disk, a DVD, hangs from the ceiling fan, spinning gently in the breeze, and a message, scrawled on the wall above Sherlock's bed in cheap red paint, taunts him wickedly.

He stares at it, unable to grasp exactly what he's seeing.

Time to play, Johnny-Boy.