His Last Breath
AN1: SPOILER for 3/3 –TAG to His Last Vow. If you haven't seen it, please don't read unless you don't mind knowing a certain bit that happens.
AN2: First attempt at Sherlock. Please tell me if I should just stick to what I already do.
Not that the writers haven't already done pretty much everything, but I feel like there were a couple of things I'd have liked to see more of. Namely the time between John finding Sherlock shot, and Mary coming to the hospital. We missed out on all the worried!John. I feel a tiny bit cheated. Though I get why they didn't do it.
Anyway, on with the scene then...
*~.~*
He was going to die.
John could see it. He could feel it. Sherlock was going to die, and this time it would be for real.
It was too much. John was still in shock after finding Sherlock on the floor, and then realizing he hadn't simply been knocked out. He couldn't explain the jolt that struck through him, then. Only that he'd felt it once before. Just once. When he'd felt for Sherlock's pulse on that sidewalk...
No, damn you...
"We're losing you," John told him. "Sherlock, we're losing you!" As if the man needed to be shaken from the state of himself. As if Sherlock wasn't aware that he was dying and by letting him know, Sherlock could make it right. He'd fix it. He'd be okay.
But he wasn't. He wasn't okay, and he wasn't stopping being not okay.
In the back of the ambulance, John watched as the medics worked; watched past them at the ashen skin of his best friend painted with stripes of brilliant crimson patterns that had no purposeful direction except out. Dried patterns. Drying. No doubt they were sticky to the touch. John had a fleeting thought that there might still show some sign of drug use on a tox screen had there been enough blood left in his body to test.
That fleeting thought was followed by another and another. The stupid case. The stupid letters and this...this Magnussen. John thought that perhaps he just wasn't thinking straight, but he couldn't quite recall what the 'meth-den' had to do with this awful man. If Sherlock was undercover, was it really necessary that he actually do the drugs, too? Couldn't he have just pretended? And why didn't he tell John about it in the first place?
Oh...that's right. John hadn't seen Sherlock. Not since the wedding. Not with him and Mary off celebrating together. He'd left Sherlock alone. No... Sherlock had left. He had left the reception early, and John had watched him go. Sherlock left, and he went to drug himself up in the middle of a crack house. What did that mean? John clenched closed his eyes as he thought, knowing that there was something there that he wasn't seeing...
The ambulance came to a stop quick, sending John toppling backward against the doors at the recoil. There was no time. It was all a rush. He was out standing in the street as they pulled the gurney from the bus and set down its wheels, quickly pushing him into the emergency hospital doors, air bag over his face pressing oxygen into his lungs.
John followed. He didn't feel his feet hit the floor. He didn't know or care if he was allowed. He just followed. He didn't want Sherlock out of his sight. Not for one second. Not for one bloody second would he let him trick him again, make him think he died and force him to go through what he went through again...
Only, now they were pushing him away...or holding him back, he couldn't tell. Just that Sherlock was getting father and farther away and he couldn't keep up because they were restraining him.
"-can't go past here, sir," the man told him. Green. The man was dressed in green from head to toe. He looked like a string bean. "Sir, you can't go back there!" he repeated. "Please go have a seat and let us work!"
He stopped fighting them. He wasn't sure why he did, except that he remembered being a doctor. He remembered the loved ones of a patient wanting to go back to the ER with them. He remembered that they'd just be in the way.
He would be in the way.
"Gods," he crumbled, somehow having made it to a chair. His hands were immediately in his hair, elbows on his knees and they wouldn't quit slipping off because they were shaking. He wondered when that had started. "Don't," he said aloud. Then in his head. "Don't. Don't, Sherlock. Don't you dare fucking die. Don't you bloody fucking dare!"
It chose that moment to click in his head, the puzzle from before. The reasoning behind Sherlock's drug use. It all started to click together, piecing with all of the things he and Mary had talked about; Sherlock being afraid to lose him because he had a wife now. Surely he'd fixed him straight on that. And then the baby... It was the baby. It had to be. Sherlock had concluded that this meant there would be no more John and Sherlock. There would be John and Mary and the baby. Sherlock would be in the way. That must be what he'd been thinking. For such a brilliant detective, Sherlock Holmes could sometimes be the most daft man in the entire universe. Couldn't he see how bored John would become without him? The arrogant prat always made his importance in John's life obvious before now. Why was this any different? Unless...
Unless Sherlock meant to do him a favor. He thought he'd be doing him a favor...
"You stupid, bloody idiot!" John pushed out of his chair and went toward the ER doors. He had no idea how much time had passed. The nurse's desk was empty. The halls were quiet. Until he opened those doors and started down them. That's when he heard the tone of a flatline.
The world around him slowed down.
He moved like he was walking through knee-deep mud, pushing through the thick fog that bore down on him in hot waves. He saw it now, the open door of Sherlock's room. His body still and white and without life. The monitor just off to the side of him, a straight, horrid line of green and a blaring sound he would never escape from.
"No..." he wanted to scream. The word felt ripped from him, torn through the tendons of his diaphragm and sliced into his esophagus on its way out, leaving him bleeding out onto the floor...but it had no sound but air.
It couldn't be... It couldn't be. He must've fallen asleep in the chair and this is all a nightmare and he can't breathe... His knees hit hard on the cold tile floor, but the pain only proves his previous thought to be wrong, and his voice still refuses to work because he could swear that he's screaming, but he can't hear a bloody thing.
That turns out to be a good thing though, because then he hears it. A beep. So short he thought he might've imagined it. He doesn't allow himself to believe it. He doesn't let himself hope. But he looks at the monitor again. He sees it this time. He sees another blip and hears the beep, and suddenly he's pushing up off of the floor, and there's another and another, and then he can't see Sherlock anymore because there are doctors all around him, and suddenly there are firm hands on John's arms again, pulling him away...
*~.~*
They let him in finally, hours later. Sherlock's in a different room, now. Intensive care. He's hooked up to monitors and oxygen and still looking like hell. There are black circles under his eyes and sheen of sweat on his brow. John looked to see that there was a morphine drip beside the bed. Then he looked to his friend's face again.
He swallowed against the lump in his throat that had refused to go away as he approached the bedside. His hand fit gentle on Sherlock's, a twitch of the man's fingers surprising him.
"Sherlock?" John's eyes flitted back and forth between his hand and his face.
"Mm..." a deep, short groan rumbled from him.
"Sherlock, it's John," he told him, unable to keep a smile from his face, the first hint of true relief he'd felt since he saw the bullet hole in Sherlock's chest. "You're going to be okay."
Sherlock heard him, though it sounded far away, as if the man weren't in the room at all, but on the other side of glass. "You're going to be okay, you hear me?" he heard again. But he was stuck. His voice was trapped in his throat, and there was a fog in his head. It felt like he had taken another hit in the drug house.
The drug house...
The fog began to clear. There was something important. Something he needed to tell John.
Danger. John's in danger.
Why is John in danger? How the bloody hell am I supposed to know? Get this bloody fog out of my way!
Mrs. Smallwood. Mrs. Smallwood's letters. Magnussen has Mrs. Smallwood's letters and I was supposed to retrieve them.
Mrs. Smallwood is going to kill Magnussen. She has a gun pointed at his head.
Wait...
John is in danger.
This is why I came back. Why is he in danger?
He forced his eyes to open. He tried to, anyway. They were stuck. He barely opened them a crack and sought out his friend.
"Sherlock," John moved into his line of vision, and he felt him squeeze his hand. He felt something hard and cold against his knuckle with the movement. A ring. And then he remembered.
His voice didn't want to work. But he had to warn John. He had to warn him.
"Sherlock, it's okay. It's alright. You don't need to try and talk," John assured.
Yes I do! I need to!
"Are you in pain?" he asked.
Bloody hell kind of question is that? I've been shot!
"Sherlock..."
"Mm..."
"You should be resting. You nearly died."
"Mm...Mary," he forced out with all the strength he could muster, and then the world faded to black again...
End~
AN3: Yeah so that was pretty short, but it wasn't really a story as much a "missing scene".
So while I'm here...I'd like to plug an upcoming convention for fanfiction writers and readers, because one of the fandoms being hosted this year is Sherlock. So if you've never heard of FANCON (formerly known as ANCON) check out the site at fandom-con dot com. It has pretty much all the information you'd need. Also, you can nominate your favorite stories there for an award. There are raffles every month, and all kinds of fun stuff. :) I'll be there, and there's a list of other guests already signed up! It's not until July, so you've got plenty of time for planning! Thanks, all! Let me know if I did okay...lol