AU after second season. Some events of third season may be used, but as I had already started this well before I saw it, it will not be compliant. I will try for putting up a new chapter every other week - as busy as I tend to be, weekly updates are often impossible! Hope you enjoy.
Summary: After Sherlock's fall, John Watson was left drowning without a purpose. He was offered him a new one - as an assassin, helping destroy the last of Moriarty's web.
Disclaimer: Sad though it may be, I do not own Sherlock in any of its incarnations or any of the characters. The rights to Sherlock BBC belong to other people, who are actually paid to write and film for it. I am very much not paid.
Not good enough.
That was the whisper that drove him onward, had driven him all his life. That fear, that voice in the back of his head, always pushing him to do more, try harder, move faster, drive on and on and on until he simply couldn't any more. Until he failed. Until he cracked. Fell. Hit the bottom. Then the process started all over again as he scraped himself up off the floor – you can do better than that, can't you? Is this all you're really worth? - on and on and on in that same cycle. Over and over. He always considered himself a failure, at least where it counted most. No matter that he'd gotten into medical school, against all odds – no money, no support from his alcoholic parents and sister, barely scraping by on scholarship. No matter that he'd graduated in the top ten percent of his class – a result of more late nights than he'd care to count, while all the others had been out on the town but he'd been locked up in the labs or library. No matter that he'd become a soldier, saved hundreds of lives, even earned a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross – he had finally found a place there, a purpose, and had enjoyed it. All he saw were his failures, brought back to horrifying life every time he closed his eyes.
Not good enough to keep his parents together. In fact, he rather thought it was his fault they divorced. He was the final straw, he supposed. Logically, he knew they would have split up eventually (one raging alcoholic was bad enough, but two? Toxic, a wasteland in what should have been a paradise). He still felt responsible. Perhaps if he hadn't said anything about his father's affair, they would have worked things out eventually. Not good enough to help Harry. She'd started drinking at, what, fourteen? Or had she been sixteen? He couldn't remember. Not brave enough to stand up to their parents, not like she was then. She may have finally gone the same route as their father – the drinking, the affair, leaving her wife – but then, she'd been brave and honest about who and what she was. She'd told their parents. He'd never hinted at it. Even now, after they were both gone, he wasn't brave enough to admit it. Never mind that everyone seemed to know anyway. At least when it came to his ridiculous (fantastic, brilliant, amazing) flatmate.
Former flatmate. No, stop, don't go there. I – I can't. Not now.
And sure, he'd finally found his place as a soldier and as a doctor. Part of him delighted in the paradox, the challenge. The adrenaline became as much of an addiction for him as Harry's drinking was for her, but that hardly mattered because for once, he was good enough. For all the lives he'd taken, all the lives he'd failed to save, at least he'd saved a few. At least, he had until he finally lost the dangerous game he'd been playing as a doctor in wartime, closer and closer every time. He'd been shot when he took one risk too many to save someone and sent back to England without so much as a fare-thee-well. He was given a medal he didn't need, a dull little flat he didn't want, and a therapist he hardly listened to all to go with the fresh nightmares to play on endless repeat every night. Not to mention the limp.
But then he'd met Sherlock Holmes.
From the moment he'd asked, "Afghanistan or Iraq?," he'd been captivated. That first meeting, all he could do was watch, stunned, as a man he'd hardly met threw down his entire life before him and declared it enough. Boring – don't worry, practically everybody is – but enough. Enough to follow this man into the whirlwind of danger and adrenaline that he craved so much, following murders and mystery and watching it all fall in his path. He'd seen too much blood and hurt and all that (for a lifetime, far too much – want to see some more? Oh God yes) and it would only be worse (better) here, but it was all worth it for this, for him, being at his side and seeing London become something more than cars and streets and buildings and people. He'd even thought, for just a moment, in passing – well, who'd been around Sherlock and hadn't? Of course, he'd turned out to be uninterested – married to my work – and he'd struggled to recover from his obvious blunder, praying Sherlock would dismiss it without any further evidence and it would all be fine. It's all...fine. And it had been. He resolved to be involved with strictly women from that point, in hopes of keeping this odd partnership that was forming. God, he'd already stood up to Sherlock's "archenemy" - which he still didn't believe most people had in real life, but Sherlock always had to be the exception. He'd rolled his eyes and let it go. And then, when someone threatened to take all that away, snuff out that brilliance that outshone even the stars when he'd hardly known the man more than two days, he'd killed without hesitation. Without regret.
In that moment, he resigned himself to being Sherlock's protector. Because Sherlock, as brilliant as he was, was an idiot.
Days had turned into weeks, then into months. They had become friends – not that either of them had really appreciated that fact at times, or even acknowledged it, but there they were regardless – as well as partners in almost every sense of the word.
Then... the fall.
And just like that, his world shattered into a thousand pieces, all jagged edges that tore at him one impossible breath after another as he ran to his friend, lying on the pavement (how could he no no no it's a trick, like he said a magic trick he can't be) dead.
You only realise what you have when it's gone. He'd never realised what he had, what could have been, until suddenly it wasn't there anymore. He had loved Sherlock from the first day, and never admitted it until... well. Until. Everyone had known – wearing your heart on your sleeve again, Dr. Watson – but he'd denied it to himself until those last, heartbreaking moments as he tried to talk his friend down from doing this mad, terrible thing.
He'd failed.
Not good enough.
Un-beta'd.
Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome!