Don't own anything
It was evening in 221B Baker Street and their latest case had just been solved by some very clever detective work on Sherlock's behalf. All in all, Sherlock was very pleased with himself.
John and Sherlock were sitting in the living room of their flat and their conversation about the case turned into a discussion.
"John, I don't understand why you are so upset. The case is solved and the murderer is caught. Why should you be so concerned about it? I don't understand."
"Sherlock, is it that difficult just to feel sad for another person? Imagine what that woman is going through! First her husband is murdered and then she finds out that he has actually been having an affair for four years! Can you not at least feel a tiny bit of compassion or even sentiment?"
"John, these are other people's lives. If I would have sat by her and cried about her misery, I would never have found out that it was actually the husband of the victim's secret girlfriend, who was clever enough to find out they were having an affair and took his revenge. This sentiment you talk about constantly is useless and, fortunately, completely absent from my brain. Would it help me solve the murder faster?"
"No, that's not the poi –you know what? Never mind." John knew he was getting nowhere with this argument and noticing the lateness of the hour he thought it best to just give up. He stretched himself and yawned. "I'm tired, might as well go to bed. Good night."
John only got a grunt from Sherlock in return. He shook his head in mock despair and trotted upstairs.
Sherlock, in the meantime, plopped on the couch with a sigh. Bored.
The next morning, John had gone off to work and Sherlock was still sulking around the flat. Almost twelve hours passed since Sherlock had solved his latest case, so obviously he was bored out of his mind.
Sherlock took turns in pacing around the flat, lying on the couch and surfing the internet in search for new experiments. All to no avail. One and a half hour later found Sherlock on the couch again, thinking over the argument that he and John had the previous evening. He just could not understand John's concern for such a trivial matter and that he wasn't full of glee about the brilliant deduction that ultimately solved the case, like Sherlock was. All this sentiment John talks about is only distracting from that what really mattered, the case.
Sherlock lay pondering for a while longer, until he heard Mrs. Hudson coming up the stairs. He sighed, not in the mood for her boring chatter. He closed his eyes and decided to ignore it.
Mrs. Hudson walked into the living room and waved with the post in her hand. "Brought up some mail for you, Sherlock, just arrived."
Sherlock did not move an inch from his current position, nor did he make any attempt to do so. His eyes remaining closed when he replied: "Not interested, Mrs. Hudson."
"Got a funny letter in here, I didn't know you had a friend called Jim?"
Sherlock's eyes shot wide open and he swiftly jumped up from the couch. "Let me see." He demanded.
Mrs. Hudson handed him the envelope and after that walked away again, all the while muttering things like 'being a landlady and no housekeeper' and 'Irresponsible', 'should take more care'.
Sherlock stood there with the envelope in his hands staring at the writing of the sender on the back:
With love, Jim
The envelope felt a little heavier just to contain a piece a paper, more like a disk of a CD or a DVD. Sherlock thought a moment before opening it, it could be a trap. But in the end curiosity won over and after all, he was bored.
As Sherlock had already guessed, the envelope indeed contained a disk, together with a little note. Sherlock unfolded the note and read it:
Dear Sherlock,
Thought I would send you a little treat, in case you got bored.
Love,
JM
After he had read the note, Sherlock examined the disk and found out it was a DVD. There was black writing on the disk, reading Sherlock's Heart, ready for burning.
Sherlock frowned and wondered what Jim could possibly mean by this. Only one way to find out, so Sherlock put the disk in the DVD player and sat down to watch.
On screen appeared a village in the dessert that was destroyed to the ground, smoke still rising from the demolished houses. Soldiers were running through the village, one of them apparently holding a camera. There was shouting and the fire of gunshots. A battle was apparently ongoing.
Sherlock, of course, had immediately deduced that this fight was taking place somewhere in Afghanistan and that these were British soldiers.
A man walking in front of the camera was barking around orders: "Harper, Williams to my right, fire at my command! All men forward carefully!" Two men, supposedly Harper and Williams, moved to the right and unlocked their rifles. The group moved slowly forward and at some point their commander halted and shouted: "Fire!"More shots and shouting could be heard.
Suddenly one of the men cried out in pain and men around him began to shout: " Williams is down! We need a Medic!" The commander, who was still walking slightly in front of the camera, looked behind his back and shouted: "Watson! Over here!"
Sherlock shook his head. Did he hear that right? Of course he had, why wouldn't he? He brought his fingertips together and wondered what Moriarty would want to achieve with sending Sherlock an old army video from John. He continued to watch as the action proceeded.
Another man, presumably John, came running forward and fell down near the wounded man on the ground. "No no no Dave, please! Come on mate, you will make it." The situation did not look very promising and it was clear that Dave would probably not survive the attack. Nevertheless, John continued to attend his wounds and to encourage him to keep hope: "Stay awake Dave, you will be fine. You're such a brave man, come on!" But it was all to no use, and not long after Dave closed his eyes for the last time. That was the moment that John burst out in tears and kept murmuring: "Come on Dave, please don't do this, you're my best mate."
The next events seemed to happen very fast and at the same time very slow. As John was mourning over the body of his dead comrade, a shot rang out and simultaneously, silence fell over the battlefield. John grunted while his body moved backwards from the bullet's impact. He grabbed his left shoulder with his right hand and leaned forward, breathing heavily. A man ran forward towards where John sat and shouted for another medic. John was trying to say something and the soldier leaned forward to try to hear him. "John, stop thinking about Dave for a sec ok? You're wounded, let's get to that first, then we can find a proper way to honour his death, " The soldier said to John with a soft voice. This was the moment John decided to black out and fall forward, still holding Dave's hand. The screen went black.
Sherlock's face was white as a sheet, his hands clutched hard in the arms of his chair. His eyes were wide and one single tear rolled down his cheek. With a shaking hand Sherlock reached for his face and wiped the tear off his cheek. He stared at the drop of moist on his fingertip with a calculating look. Never before in his life had Sherlock Holmes shed a tear for someone else's pain. After he turned twelve, genuine tears weren't on his hard drive anymore, or so he thought. But this...this was different, this was John. John's pain, John's best mate dying in front of his eyes. Sherlock promised there and then that he would never do such a thing to his best friend.
Sherlock decided to get rid of the DVD before John got home. He had deduced all that he could from the disk and had concluded that it was just a in between taunt from Moriarty to remind him he was still in business. Sherlock thought it would be best not to show it to John. He already got through that misery once and most likely didn't want to again.
After a few hours the front door of 221B opened and slammed shut again. Footsteps could be heard on the stairs and a moment later John walked into the flat. "Hey Sherlock, something up?" asked John, when he noticed Sherlock was staring at him intently. When Sherlock didn't answer John continued, "Just got a phone call from Lestrade, told me about a case you might be interested in. It's about a lost painting, ever heard of Reichenbach?"
The End