Disclaimer: This will be so out-of-character that it'll be embarrassing so please try and tolerate it.

The audience couldn't seem to stop clapping when they saw the man with the single crutch limp out from behind the curtain all the way up to the chair designated for him opposite the host of the show. The thundering applause of welcoming crashed down in heavy waves, though the man setting his crutch to an edge of the chair didn't seem to notice it. That, or he just didn't want to notice it.

His dirty blonde hair had obviously been combed in an attempt to look neat, but you could trace every spot he had tugged it and tousled it in some bout of negativity. Brilliant green eyes failed to draw the attention from the hollows under his eyes and a rough tumble of scruff covered the tan of his cheeks. If it weren't for the neatness of the gray jumper he wore, everyone would've immediately assumed he'd just escaped a brush with death.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please!" the host stood up opposite this man, a plastic grin spread over his cheeks with his hand waving out over the crowd slowly until they quieted down.

His black hair was slicked back expertly without a flaw, his face caked in make-up with a restricting black suit covering him. It was no question he had been doing this a while, but then again, the crowd was another indication of this. When silence befell the studio, the man sat down again and set one leg over the other with that plastic grin held tight.

"Tonight on the show, we have John Watson to tell us about the infamous Sherlock Holmes' suicide!"

The applause that revved up from the silence made the blonde sick to his stomach and he looked away from them, not even able to fake a smile. He had been faking a smile for seven months now, and those seven months were far too many.

"It's great to have you on the show, John," the dark-haired host held out a hand, and John gingerly shook it, pulling back as soon as he could to wipe his hand discretely on the chair as if the touch had been laced with poison.

The ex-blogger managed a faltering smile for a second, glancing up from the table as he saw the man take a seat opposite him, his stomach lurching in self-disgust.

"Not like I had a choice," he sorely breathed under his breath with a roll of his eyes.

He let his jade eyes roam out over the audience calmly. There was a variety of people, ranging colors and ages and heights, but he didn't want to see any of them. There was only one person he wanted to see out among all those faces, and he was supposedly six feet under at the moment. Fat lot of good that did anyone.

"Now tell me John, you were there when Mr. Holmes jumped, right?"

John sighed exhaustedly, rubbing at his neck before he looked back from the crowd and nodded curtly. He coughed.

"I uh… yeah. I was the last person he spoke to."

It was hard enough to swallow past the knot in his throat, let alone bring up these memories again. He couldn't even delete Sherlock's number from his phone. How was he supposed to make it the next hour or so being quizzed on something that… no. No, he made a promise.

"I understand you two were on the phone before he jumped."

Beneath the table, John had his hands into the tightest of fists and the sharp intake of breath was the first sign he showed as to his plan of giving up right now and just leaving. Stuck on his stupid crutch though, he knew he could easily just be reushered into the room. Even if he did escape, they'd just bug him for another seven months until he caved in again.

"We were… yes… he uh… that phone call… he called it his note," John put a fist beneath his lower lip, brushing off the break in his voice as a cough.

"I see," that was sheer interest in the stabbing gaze, "Would you mind telling us what it was he said in this 'note'?"

John's jaw clenched tightly, but he took a slow breath.

"I would mind, actually. I've minded for the seven months your reporters harassed me to get me here in the first place; not that you care of course," it took a lot of strength not to smirk at the mortified expression to cross the ebony's face; that plastic grin managed to shatter out on the floor. "But since you were so persistent, I will tell you this: he lied to me, and then he said goodbye."

Arthur Donovan was the man's name, the one in front of him struggling to regain a professional face because he honestly hadn't expected an answer like that. Arthur was a well respected man in the country, and that was mostly because of his television show that covered everything from tabloids to the royal family. All that respect and admiration from daring and darling fans—only to have one army doctor go and call him out on it. His face alone questioned this man's nerve, but he took a breath and remembered who he was. This interview was important to him. They could just cut that part out.

"You say he lied to you?" the man baited out, his face heating up with fury.

The blonde sat there quietly a second, following the man's suit in questioning nerve, but in a blink, his training came up and punched him in the face. This was just another interrogation; another hand-to-hand battle. He could turn the tables and get things his way, one way or another. The wounds he had were a reminder of that.

"Sherlock Holmes thought he knew everything there was to know about everyone, but he doesn't and I learnt that during the eighteen month span I lived with him," he set his elbows to the table to support himself, "On the rooftop, he told me… he said he was a fake."

The explanation was a breath from rolling off his tongue, but of course he wasn't allowed a spotlight in defense for his greatest friend. He was in a jury of his peers, and they were all too tall to see eye-to-eye with him.

"The papers covered this thoroughly. He invented Moriarty," Arthur cut him off, bearing the sort of omniscient smirk that got people shot back in John's prime.

John let out a groan of irritation, lifting his arms up so his fingers could flex in protest before he entangled them with his hair and tugged again. That, along with picking up Sherlock's smoking habit to keep the flat smelling like it did, was the only way he managed to cope with stress anymore.

"Now why would he do that? To cope with boredom?" the face he made was one that might be given to someone asking to know why it was illegal to kill people, which was appropriate seeing that it was soon to be returned to him, "I've seen him when he gets bored. He shoots holes in the walls and blows up the kitchen. He dissects bodies and experiments on them with chemicals. He makes up something to play on his violin. Never in his life would he stoop that low."

A reign of snickers and chuckles ran through the crowd around him, causing John to turn sharp and glare at them. His body may have been weathered and sore, but the anger in his face… it managed to singlehandedly silence them all. In those eyes were all the deaths he had seen, all the losses he had grieved through, all the deaths he had inadvertently and purposely caused. It was then that this tiny little John Watson was suddenly a veteran, and that the joke ran dry.

"Sherlock… he was an arrogant dick, I give him that, but he wouldn't kill himself because of what anyone else called him. Are you kidding me? I've called him worse things to tease him, let alone when I want to take his bloody head off! And in case you forgot, Moriarty put me in a bomb jacket. There were actual explosives strapped to my chest, ones that would've detonated. Arrogant dicks don't let their only friend get murdered just to seem clever."

That burning hot feeling that coated the outside of his skin, the unmistakable rage that surged in to the bone, was that the spotlight on him? He could feel every eye in the room on him, all silent and urging him on because his words made sense.

"Now wait a second," Arthur stepped forward, breaking off the light, "You said he shot, blew up and dissected things. How are those any further from murder?"

The man was robbed of his breath as he found himself staring down the length of a cane, eyes crossed to follow it all the way back to the stone set face across from him with a sudden gasp ringing out through the crowd. The blonde lowered it when he realized that there were armed security guards backstage; he didn't want to have to bring their bodies to the families they might've had waiting at home.

"You all make him out to be a psychopath, but he's not! He's practically a little homeschooled kid who notices things others don't care to look for," the cane was set back beside the chair, "I know he wasn't above murder, but it's the fact that it was me that makes it matter. Sherlock Holmes doesn't have friends. He has me. One of the last things he said to me got me thinking. He claimed he researched me, so he could impress me. You can't impress me if I'm dead, now can you?"

Following back the host's gaze as he waved his hand, John saw the security guards step back behind the curtain to where they thought they'd be out of firing range. Always forgetting about shadows though, what a shame.

"What makes you think you were his friend?"

The question paralyzed John to his core, darting his eyes back to the host and letting the contempt settle into his features as he saw the tiniest of a smirk creep over his man's lips. There was amusement in the twinkling of those eyes. Arthur was having fun? It was time for some real angst in this story.

"He was made famous because he could read people like books. Just a glance, give him a few seconds, and he could have your life story spun out with maybe one slight error that was close enough to bruise. Some people he didn't even have to look at; others he had to intently stare at until I nudged him so he wouldn't come off as a pedophile. With me though… he took that one glance and he knew everything he needed to. He messed up on one thing though. He mistook my sister for a brother. It was that little slip-up that brought us close, but—"

"Humans mess up all the time," Arthur interrupted, but John was to have none of it.

"If he had researched me, like he said, knowing my siblings would've been easy math to him. Not the point," he placed his hands together under his nose for a second, a prayer and an imitation of the genius he would give anything to see again, "When he read me, the first thing he saw was that I was a soldier in Afghanistan."

That little smirk flitted back.

"Don't tell me the consulting detective had a thing for army men?" he teased with a playful wink to the blonde.

The tight breath expelled from his nose showed just quite how upset that statement made him, but he released it slowly and drew his hands back into his lap.

"He was married to his work. Still not the point, though, so stop interrupting me. Like I said, he saw that I was a soldier. Immediately, he knew about the night terrors and all the symptoms of my PTSD, and he was very understanding about it. The thing about soldiers though, the thing this man knew just like his 243 types of tobacco ash, was how we relate to who we fight beside."

A quick glare kept Arthur silenced.

"When we leave home, our first thoughts are to defend the people we have depending on us to come back. We're fighting for our family when we go to boot camp. When we leave boot camp, we're fighting for our bunkmates. The person to our left and the one to our right is our new family, and we'll be killed before we let anyone lay a hand on them. Semper fi, you know. The camouflage beside us is now what we're fighting for, and we won't rest until we know they're safe. That's how it's always been for me, and he knew that."

A trembling hand reached out and took a small drink of the tea set out for him, trying to clear back the knot in his throat, the silence near overwhelming. It was a comfort though. He could almost feel the consulting detective stare at him from across the room without a noise, still waiting for the pen he had asked deaf ears for an hour ago.

"The second I moved into the flat with him, Sherlock became that man to my left. He didn't have to wear camouflage to become what I fought for, and he definitely didn't have to go to a boot camp for it. The thing he did? He protected me, because that's what friends do. Sometimes, he did a pretty awful show of it, but he always saved me at the end of the day. He knew how I felt. Emotions were like aliens to him, but he knew mine better than I ever did."

"What does that mean? It means he knew how much I loved him. Er, I'm not gay or anything, in case you cared, but he meant the world to me and… basically, if I was told to shoot myself or let him be killed, I'd be tasting lead in a heartbeat. That's how a war's won. He knew that, and yet, he made me watch. He tried to change my opinion of him as he told me not to take my eyes off him. He wanted me to see him die. A part of him must have known that it would trigger the night terrors again… he had to have had a reason… but…"

John couldn't say another word, even if he tried, because that knot was in his mouth and the tears were holding it there. Maybe he should've agreed to come out and talk a long time ago. This was a bit better than talking to a therapist, to say the least. They weren't being paid to understand and be sympathetic. He was sick and sad of apologies.

"If you guys were one side, who was fighting the other half of this war then?" Arthur said something that, for once, didn't have anyone there wanting to punch him in the throat.

With trembling fingers gripping the porcelain cup and sipping at the tea until it swept the knot down back into his stomach where it sent tremors everywhere he didn't need them.

"Everyone else?" his laugh was so shaky, self-mocking and drenched in the tears his eyes refused to shed as he raised a hand and rubbed at his neck lightly. "You all believed it so easily…"

He scrubbed at the underneath of his eyes with a small smile before he looked out to the camera.

"Well, I don't believe it. Sherlock, if you're watching this, pick up a bloody phone and text me! It's been seven months now! I'm getting sick of waiting for your joke to be over."

In the rent house, the TV was set to mute until the air was a chilling silence, and it settled darkly like the nighttime outside. There wasn't a light in this room, factoring out the TV, and its light was dim enough that only a figure was outlined in a small black armchair that was misused with two feet to the flat and hips resting along its back. A thin white sheet draped the figure, down out over the bare pale toes.

"John," a deep voice murmured, a trauma drifting gently into the well chiseled features before long nimble fingers began to fiddle with a spare phone.

Forget about him he tried to type, but he erased every letter.

They all die in the end that didn't even leave his head.

Miracles take time, doctor.

He almost sent it. His fingers trembled over the enter button, but he instead just turned the phone off and groaned into his palms.

I love this fandom. I just wish I could get in character.

-F.J. III