Summary: John ponders the wars he's been in, and makes a decision.

Pairings: N/A

Warnings: Violence, language, discussions of war, and implied past abuse.

AN: I'm picking back up writing stories after quite a long time away, so I'd really appreciate feedback on both my writing and my characterization. Constructive criticism is more than welcome!

John Watson wondered about it sometimes, what it would be like to be normal.

He watched other people sometimes, watched them walk down the streets, caught up in their petty concerns, lost in the moment, doing their best to forget the truth. The thing that everyone knew but no one thought about. That their days were numbered. That they were going to die, all of them, without exception. Any day, any instant could be their last on earth. As a doctor, he knew that better than most people. He'd seen it, seen people die who should have lived, and seen people lived who everything he knew about medicine told him should have died.

He could never forget that. He never wanted to forget that. Because it was then and only then, when he knew how fragile his life truly was that he felt alive. When his heart beat so loudly in his chest that he could hear it, when his breathing was sharp enough to be truly conscious, then he knew. He knew what being alive really was: it was continuing to exist in the face of that certain darkness.

Maybe that was why John Watson needed a war like other people needed air.

A psychologist might have pointed to his father, said it came from the way he was raised. Coming to understand the world in the shadow of bitter words and angry fists. Redefining normal in a way that let him survive, let him be the man his father never believed he could be. Not that he'd have told anyone—not that he told the oh-so-concerned, oh-so-wise psychologist the bloody army had assigned him after he was sent back to England after the mission that went to hell.

Psychology was full of shite anyway.

He'd found his war in medicine once. In the battle of life and death, the desperate fight against a body that could turn so quickly on its owner. In the thrill of snatching lives from the brink, and bringing them back, putting people back together and returning them to their families. In the moments of kinship with people who knew, people who saw the razor edge that humans walked every day.

It wasn't enough. Perhaps if he'd been a surgeon, he could have found his war there, but John wasn't meant to be a surgeon. He lacked the all-consuming ambition and ego for it—not to mention the marks, with the way he'd been working to put himself through medical school. And so, after his residency was spent patching up colds and allergies and doing the occasional stitches from a bike accident, he knew he needed more. A b it funny, really, that he'd chose to become a soldier. Or maybe he was just more like his father than he liked to admit. But it was that or alcohol, and Harry had that covered already.

Five tours. That was how long he served in Afghanistan. Found his peace in war, in being an army doctor. If he wanted danger, if he wanted to be reminded over and over that his life was constantly in the balance, this was the way to do it. Blood and sun and sand. And he was good. He was very good. Good enough to be recruited for some less official missions as well, missions where his steady hand and crack shot were very useful. And it was good. He needed danger, needed the excitement, but it meant something. Patching together his comrades, saving lives, sending soldiers home who would have gone home in a body bag without him, it was good. It was worth it.

He needed to believe his life was worth something. He'd long since resigned himself to the fact that he would probably die in Afghanistan.

Then one day, he was shot. He'd known, he'd seen it enough times, but it was different to be the one dying. Not like he'd expected. And even though he'd never really expected to go home, he still pleaded, still prayed to a God he wasn't at all sure was there: Oh God, oh God, please let me live.

Funny thing, he was surprised when his prayer was answered. And almost a year of physical therapy later, he was healthy enough to leave. And once again, John Watson was left without a war. Not only without a war, but without a way to fight a war, a doctor with a tremor in his hand, a soldier with a psychosomatic limp. There was nothing left for him to do, nothing for him to fight. Nothing happened to him—and nothing could. He'd lived, but what was the point if he couldn't feel alive?

Then he walked into (more like strode in and demanded coffee) John's life. Sherlock Holmes. The world's only consulting detective, and quite possibly the biggest git on earth. And John was drawn to him like a moth to flame, to that brilliant, blazing, destructive genius. To the danger of challenging the international criminal underworld with nothing more than Sherlock's brain and John's stolen service gun. To mattering again, to fighting a battle that saved lives and kept people safe. To being alive. And for two brilliant, frustrating, maddening years, it was everything John had ever wanted and more. Even with (or probably because of) the constant danger and the body parts in the fridge and the fact that he'd lost count of the times he'd nearly been blown up.

And then, just as suddenly as it started, it ended. It ended with a body on the cold pavement and blood draining into the grate. Almost incongruous, the kind of thing he still associated with blazing heat and the sound of machine gun fire, despite the fact that he knew by then that the streets of London could be no less dangerous than Afghanistan.

John was left alone again, and with Sherlock's death, the world once again grew dull and lifeless. And he finally realized that it wasn't just the danger and the excitement. It was the improbable friendship he'd managed to forge with Sherlock Holmes. The meeting of two souls who were both desperate for something they knew would be their destruction. Who understood what it was to be a freak. But he was not left without a war.

Mycroft had once said, "Most people blunder around this city and all they see are streets and shops and cars. When you walk with Sherlock Holmes you see the battlefield." It was true. John had seen the war raging behind the city streets, and he couldn't walk away from it. He couldn't give up the war simply because he—they (he and Lestrade and Molly and even bloody Mycroft) had lost their general. Lives were at stake. Perhaps entire countries. And the fact that he was one ordinary man couldn't stand in the way either.

Wiping the tears that stung at his eyes, Captain John H. Watson straightened and nodded once towards the tombstone of his friend, his general, the best man he'd ever known. And turning with the sharp, practiced turn of a soldier, he marched away from the grave to fight one last war.