It's not the fall that kills you.

Chapter 1

Week 1

John had a plan.

Specifically:

Find Sherlock bloody Holmes, and beat the hell out of him.

Forestalled by, to the surprise of absolutely nobody who had ever met him even once, Mycroft.

Mycroft. Who, after a week of black cars and Anthea or whatever the hell her name was this year, had kidnapped him to another fucking warehouse and had threatened, in no particular order, being taken into MI6's custody, removed from the country, quietly assassinated in a back alley, and buried in an unmarked grave, if he so much as laid a hand on his brother.

It wasn't actually the threats that got to him. John was a soldier- he could take threats.

It was the tired look on Mycroft's face, after John had punched him instead, bloodying his nose to hell and back.

The tired shadows on Mycroft Holmes' face, and so much infinitely worse than that, the dark worry, lurking in his eyes and every rhythmic tap of his umbrella.

John thought about what that meant, about what that might possibly mean for Sherlock, Sherlock, who was still not here, and suddenly was twice as sick as he was angry.

Week 2

John, therefore, had a new plan.

Specifically:

Lose his mind. Already in progress since 2012.

This one was forestalled by, of all people, Molly Hooper.

John had been mid-probable-nervous breakdown, and Molly had been trying to calm him down without any success whatsoever, and it had just- come out. Sherlock's name had just come out, because Sherlock Holmes was legally dead and very much a state secret and Mycroft really hadn't been joking about warning him to keep quiet, but John had been running on counting two weeks of no respite and his name had just come out.

And, Molly.

Instead of looking at him as if he'd lost his mind.

Instead of asking him if he'd been drinking.

Instead of watching him that that dammed, miserable, tearful pity.

Molly's hands had flown to her mouth, eyes going wide, and against the blood draining from her face, she gasped, "You know?"

Which was how John learned, two years after his best friend had not-died in his arms, that Molly Hooper had known the entire fucking time.

Having someone available to talk to helped.

It also rekindled the urge to punch Sherlock, but that was neither here nor there.

Week 3

New, new plan.

Specifically:

Fuck Mycroft Holmes, and tell someone else, just because he fucking could.

This one was not forestalled by anyone at all. This one, he actually carried out.

He stormed to Greg's flat at half-past midnight, blood pounding in his ears and hands shaking, fuck; he flipped off every camera he saw, and never well mind all the looks he got for it. And he pounded on Greg's door until the harried inspector answered it, still pajama-clad and hair-mussed, and he finally said it, he opened his mouth and the words came out and after three weeks, they were fucking real.

"Sherlock's alive."

Greg gave him all the looks that Molly hadn't. The suspicion. The search for signs of alcohol. The sadness. The pity.