***Author's Note***

This is not a fix it. This is John coming back to himself after attacking Sherlock. This is the slow realization. The cracks in the armor. This is John beginning to see he's not the only one broken.

The lights weren't buzzing overhead.

The lights weren't buzzing, and it was unsettling. Too quiet. And entirely too bright for the the room. John blinked quickly up at a fixture, and just as quickly back down to the hazy grey nothing he'd been staring at the moment before. He swallowed and heard it. He listened to himself continue breathing.

Even. Measured. A practiced technique. It was too loud. Each respiration deafening. Heavy. Using up all the oxygen. Taking and taking and taking. If he could quietly stop it, cause it to cease, to still, he would.

He tried to focus on the hushed conversations around him. The white-noise static of words that should hold meaning simply added to the hazy grey nothing. So he listened to his own breathing.

God damn high-efficiency bulbs. This place, this... this favorite room didn't deserve efficient, sickening, brightness. Manic. Consuming. Overwhelming. Manufactured. Deceptive. The lights overhead, the too quiet efficient ones. The ones that didn't buzz.

And not the one being wheeled from the treacherous room on the gurney. The one he would have... Could have... Almost had...

No one was deserving of that light. Amazing. Brilliant. Least of all him.

A single breath, weightier than the last. Back to the steady, rhythmic in and out. Then, a disturbance in the hazy grey nothing to his right.

"Detective Inspector," John made no additional move to acknowledge the other man's presence.

A beat. "Bloody hell, John. What happened?" Spoken low, between friends. A professional courtesy. Lestrade noted John's posture. He stood not at attention, not at ease. A wavering, worn version of still. Another man's still. It settled on John all wrong, as if he were being forced under, not simply drowning, and not flailing desperately to survive.

No. John Watson was sinking. The fight was gone. Brutally spent.

"John." Stern, yet hushed. "What were you thinking?"

A measured exhalation and a slow, intentional blink. John attempted to focus on his surroundings. The false brightness of the institutional, cavernous, insidious room. Hollow. Bereft of life. A space not intended for the living - the dead were brought and hidden away in dark recesses. Like secrets and lies and weaknesses, sealed tight away from prying eyes. Eyes that could be distracted by the false, comforting lights.

In the center of the room though, the focal point, visible to all, there was no denying the corpse. The shriveled, wasted, decay occupying the heart of the space.

It should not have felt relatable.

He blinked again, seeking, until he spotted the blood on the floor. Sherlock's blood. "I wasn't," John murmured.

"Say again?" With a concerned frown, Lestrade leaned nearer.

"I wasn't. Thinking." John didn't meet Lestrade's eyes. He kept his head down. "He was pushing. He was pushing and pushing like he does. Always. Like he did when..." He licked his lips and shook his head once. "Then he had the scalpel. And it was too much. He was going too far. And then... I. He was going to." Finally meeting Lestrade's gaze. "Wasn't he? He was actually going to..."

"Smith seems think so," Lestrade sighed.

John glanced across the room to the hateful, smug man watching him with a menacing, calculating smirk. There would be no winner in this fight.

I couldn't let him do that to us. Not again. "Someone had to stop him. I couldn't..." I didn't know how to stop. I couldn't stop. The hurt was too much. The anger. I couldn't... "I stopped thinking and just... reacted."

"You stepped in to keep him from harming someone else?" Lestrade prompted.

No. "Yes." I wanted him to stop hurting me. So I hurt him before he had the chance.

"All right," scrubbing his hand down his face, Lestrade exhaled deeply. "If Sherlock, or Mycroft more like, chooses not to press charges..."

"Are you here to arrest me, Greg?" John forced himself to stand a bit straighter. The hazy grey nothing pressed heavy upon him.

"The nation's most charitable celebrity was threatened with a knife in a hospital he funded, and Sherlock Holmes was physically assaulted in the confrontation. My superiors want this handled." There was a look of genuine regret on Lestrade's face. "You could be looking at an ABH, John... I won't lie. This is bad."

"You going to cuff me?" John reflexively rubbed his left wrist.

"Do I need to?"

"I..." John shook his head, but kept his eyes downcast.

"You know how this works. You come willingly, you'll be booked in, and I'll ask you what happened. You've rights, of course. You're entitled..."

John retched. "No." No. No, never. Is that really what Sherlock thought? It was... Damn it. Damn it. He was going to destroy Sherlock. If he let himself get close again, it would be the end of them all. He'd endure this humiliation, paraded in front of former friends and colleagues as a common criminal - a penance too lenient for his transgressions - and then he'd extract himself like a cancer from Sherlock's life.

"John?"

"Do it. Now." Nodding to the door, John let Lestrade put one hand securely on his elbow and guide him from the morgue.