Overwriting does him in. It offers the one unaccounted possibility. The final truth.
He can learn from empty spaces, but not from ones he did know he filled.
.
Echoes, waking, aching.
John, at the bottom of the well.
(But how did he get there without falling?)
.
So much time spent prided on skirting the heroic, only to be more mired in the human than he'd ever dreamed. He is just a man, when all is said and promised. Just a man, just a beating heart and four limbs and a surprising warmth.
The weight of it is endless.
Ten, nine, eight.
A little knowledge of the solar system wouldn't go astray, but it didn't matter on the rooftop, when the sky was bullet-gray and John was small and permanent on the pavement.
A little knowledge of a supernova is a very dangerous thing; he could see that, when his sister stepped to the glass that wasn't glass.
Seven, six, five.
He's grown so used to guns, even ended a life in the view of king and country, won't let, of course, that same king and country trick him into a different choice now.
(Mycroft's heart is breaking. Oh, for all the unacknowledged truths in that.)
He's grown so used to guns. The hollow eye of this one, pressed under his chin, is as sure as a comfort.
Three, two.
Ah, mercy.
.
The girl in the sky and the man in the locked room and the doctor and the war and—
He's the only one in midair. All the dates are wrong, and all the data.
(We never had a dog.)
.
There was sacrifice in his first few tragedies, enough to make them beautiful in shame. There is less forgiveness for the sins of a resurrected man. The world will not regret its hatred a second time.
He must remind himself of Mary, and live on.
.
Sweat, blood, dark water. He bows his head and lifts it again. This has not been a day. John, huddled in blankets, does not look afraid. John, after all, is a doctor—he knows the utility of clean breaks.
Knowledge is not so different from humility.
Not today.
.
Take the girl out of the sky, take the man out of the mirror, take the sacrifice from its suspension in the bullet-gray air. Take the bones somewhere kinder, greener, and lay them quietly to rest. This has not been a day, not really.
But they are soldiers, and they are coming home from the war.
.
He told the yellow hound, his rescuer,
Its heart was bad, and it ought
Not wander by the creek at night;
If all his dogs got drowned he would be poor.