Title: Fractial Karma
Author: LimpBiskit
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Pairing: John/Sherlock-ish
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Implied bromance, violence, introspection.
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I honestly don't know where this came from, but I've decided to inflict it on the population at large. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think and how I'm doing.
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Somewhere between having a sip of tea and changing the telly, John Watson realized that he held the power of life and death within his hands.
It had nothing to do with warm porcelain or cool plastic, and perhaps not even which hand was which, but there it was. Setting both objects side-by-side atop the coffee table, he turned the thought over in his mind, not entirely unaware but uncaring of his companion's questioning sound.
If his addiction to things like pursuit and danger made him dark, then what did his aversion to flat logic and loneliness imply? Was that light, or was it only an oversight, something as yet uncovered by the shadow of larger things?
And for an instant, he knew, really understood what it must be like, to be the man that sat so unassuming on the couch, pale bare feet tucked up and sharp-tipped elbows covered by the faded material of an old dressing gown. Who would ever think that that man had the very same power, much more invested and applied, yes, but innate to him in a way that matched the increasingly alarmed doctor's own ability.
That man knew, had always known, who and what he was.
John Watson was only John Watson, and for a moment the very idea was frightening. Soldier, physician, brother, confidant.. Maker of tea and destroyer of injustice-
Were any of those right, were they plain fact without deviation..?
From the first bullet to the last stitched wound, had he changed, become one, ten, a hundred things? Or had he transfigured himself into a shape that fit none of what he associated with wickedness or verity by way of loading and unloading a gun?
And now there was this, this life cobbled together and held by the thinnest mixed patina of what he didn't have and the other couldn't, or was that wrong too?
Now he could hear the other leaving his place, footfalls almost lewdly noisy in the silence of everything that was or wasn't, but when those cool fingers wrapped around his wrist, the one that never shook under surgical or murderous steel, he welcomed it.
Welcomed and wanted it, God he thought maybe he even needed it, because who else was mad or brilliant enough to navigate the glaringly open place where his mind had stolen away to, and who would?
Who indeed.
He didn't need to look up, only down at the counterpoint of pale white on golden tan, and he thought that maybe he was mad, or was it brilliant, to think that there was the answer?
If the younger man had stood differently, if he had taken the right hand, he thought he might have died, if not in actual body then in essence.
But he hadn't. He never did.
He did raise his eyes then, and while still welcome, the understanding in the other's gaze was startling, but he laughed anyway.
Of course he knew, it was only logical.
And in that suspended bit of eternity, those eyes stayed fixed on his, unfaltering even though he was sure that he must look quite mad.
Maybe he was. He didn't think it mattered, not really.
Not when the person who did matter didn't care either.
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Well, there it is. Thanks for reading.
