John knew the exact moment when his life ended. Everything that had happened to him before now was a blur of colors and dead emotions, and it all lead to this one moment. Every mistake he had made, and every error ever perceived narrowed down to this moment. Nothing else.
When Sherlock's head split open on the concrete, everything came to a standstill. The blood dripping out of the open cranial cavity only brought primal responses. Blood. Danger. Fear.
Then his human side kicked back in, and the entirety of Himself shattered into thousands of glass shards that only bit into his skin more. They slit his arms, imbedded in his legs, and left him blind.
His heartbeat echoed a drum, beating hard and fast, desperate to keep the pulse or else be lost and forgotten.
He clutched Sherlock's arm, feeling for a pulse, wishing to give him his, and screaming for him to wake up.
"Don't leave me! Sherlock… Sherlock wake up! PLEASE!"
Sherlock and John's identities were interwoven, and as one string began to unthread and fray, the others soon followed suit. They pulled apart until there were two distinct lines, with color mixed from bleeding into the other one and vice versa.
Sherlock's thread was black and stained with blood, while John's was gray and slowly fraying, only held together by Sherlock's thread.
John knew the moment when his life ended because in a matter of seconds all his reasons for living vanished into a pool of blood and brain matter.
He just kneeled there, hands covered in gore and blood, and stared.
Nobody could bear to tell him that he screamed even after the first responders took away Sherlock's body.
They just left him there, in Sherlock's mess, and let two men in black suits haul him away.
John's eyes never regained their light.
It took over two months before Mycroft let John out of the mental hospital, and John did the first thing he could think of.
He re-enlisted in the Army, with a note from several doctors saying that he was "cured of all underlying dieses and or problems and fit for service". Mycroft couldn't stop him, and the population of London would become weary if it seemed the Government was being overbearing and not allowing fit soldiers into war.
It was perfect.
He was sent off to Syria immediately after signing up, and was launched into the heat of the war.
There were mass killings, "shellings" of civilian districts, and the ever-looming threat of a nuclear war.
John was the top ranking medic in his squad, a basic team that did mostly non-city warfare. It was like Afghanistan except he was one notch higher in ranking. His team worked with three others, sweeping the outlying areas of hotspots, and checking in good-info on nuclear sites.
So far the only injuries he'd had were a stray bullet that bit through the top of his arm, minor and quickly fixed, and a knife cut to his lower leg. He'd fixed up his teams, and they had mostly the same injuries as him. They'd lost one man, a first time American soldier who hadn't ducked in time and took an unlucky bullet to the neck. He bled out under a minute and a half.
So that's what landed them here, at their current location. It was just their team, the other three out on emergency mission somewhere in a city targeted for another "shelling". Their party was hunting down the assembly of unknowns that had taken down the American.
It led them to a rundown farming town, seemingly cut off from the rest of more modernized Syria.
To say the least, they weren't expecting to be ambushed and captured.
John watched as a member of his team took several bullets to his chest, and a few to his head. He didn't have to watch any more of his men go down, because one of the enemies barrel-whipped him.
He went down with only a grunt of pain.
Sherlock was fuming in Mycroft's office, shouting and swearing at his older brother.
"YOU LET HIM DO WHAT?" Sherlock screamed, standing up and placing his hands on the edge of the other man's desk.
"I couldn't stop him, Sherlock. And what did you think he'd do after he watched "you" crack your skull open? Just sit in the flat sipping tea and then hug you when you returned?"
"You were supposed to watch him! Not let him run off and give him the opportunity to get killed!" Sherlock's teeth were grinding now, and his bony arms shook with rage. He'd spent three months "dead" to the world, tracking and hunting and killing to protect those he loved.
And yet somehow, John managed to get himself into another dangerous situation.
"Would you rather him to have shot himself?"
Sherlock just stared wide eyed at his brother, and images flashed behind his eyes.
John lying in a bathtub slowly overflowing, blood seeping out from his torn open forearms, biting his lip to contain the screams and pass out from the unbearable agony. Then he'd slip under the water and drown in his own watery blood.
John with a gun to his head, sitting on the edge of his bed with a half-assed note in his hand reading "I'm sorry", and placing the barrel in his mouth and pulling the trigger. The shot would ring out like lightning in complete silence. John's body would slump like his spine was gone as brain matter and skull bits splattered on the bed and walls behind him, like a mock halo of an angel.
John hanging from the ceiling fan, with a rope tight around his throat and his eyes wide and dead as he swung there lifelessly. Final words rested on his frozen lips, choking out what he could never before say, not until he knew he'd never have to live to explain it. The rope would break and John would fall to the floor, cracking his skull and laying in an odd shape.
John swallowing bottles of pills with odd names, and giving himself a shot so he wouldn't puke them back up. Watching as John's body fought against the medication, before giving in to extreme pain of organs breaking down and screaming out his last breath.
John finding Sherlock's cocaine… his heroin… shooting up until the dosage got so high that his body refused to function and his eyes shut accompanied with a groan. The needle that Sherlock found reprise in would give him peace, he just had to endure the torture a little bit longer.
Every single scenario ended with Sherlock walking in to see John's dead body, and even without meaning to John forced Sherlock to go through what he himself had to also.
Mycroft never would admit that he saw his brother cry that day.
John woke up with a twisted ankle and cuts across his arms from where he fought the attackers.
He was tied to a metal chair with cuffs and rope, and faced away from what he believed was a door. He couldn't tell, not with a blind over his eyes.
There was scuffling behind him, and he tensed up, not sure what to expect. A knife against his jugular wasn't unforeseen, but still not comforting.
The blind was ripped off, and when his eyes adjusted there was a man holding a camera. The fact that he wasn't wearing a mask was terrifying. It could mean a few things, one that they were not afraid to be known by their true identities, or the nearly unthinkable one. John would not be leaving here alive.
The camera's light flicked on, and the man behind him spoke in perfect English. Still, though, the words were fuzzy to John's ears, but the knife against his throat spoke clearly and without misinterpretation.
"… or we will kill him. Don't test us, it does not matter if one dies, we have more of his troop."
As if to show, the man behind John stabbed him in his bad shoulder.
John cut his scream off by biting down on his lip until it split and bled onto his chin. The man twisted the knife, and John's body convulsed in the chair. He tried to kick out his legs, tried to move his arms a little higher or a little lower, anything to escape the pain. The knife was pulled out, and blood quickly soaked through John's shirt, and the man threw the knife on the ground before addressing the camera and leaving the room.
John just let his head fall forward, and tried to slow his breathing as the camera person came closer to get a better shot of the knife wound.
He did not say anything.
Nobody would come for him.
They had John for three days, and demands were still not met. They had heard talk of a high up man in British Government who wanted the soldier back, so they killed off a different person from the troop.
They put him down on his knees in front of the camera, and put a bullet clean through his forehead.
John watched as his brother-in-arms fell onto his side, face pressed into his own blood.
Sherlock's face took possession of that man's body, and John felt himself falling faster and faster.
The gun shot and the sound of a skull hitting the pavement did actually sound very similar.
That night they tortured him whole-heartedly, and sent the tape directly to the British government only, not the American or the Russian, just Great Britain.
John wanted to ask them to kill him, but kept his mouth shut and never did what they told him.
He heard them speaking of killing him in another three days' time if the demands were not met, and only a sliver of fear filled John. It wasn't fear of his death, but fear of Mycroft watching his body be broken and shattered, and knowing that there was no way to stop it.
John was led to a different room this time, and they handcuffed him to a bar on hanging low from the ceiling. They cuffed his feet to slots on the floor, and John quickly recognized what this room was. It was for torture, and John wasn't sure what they were going to do. There was a cart with large knives in the corner of the room, some still rusted over with other people's blood.
Three men entered the room, one with a camera, one in a corner standing guard and one went over to the knives. He studied them carefully, picking up a serrated one rusting at the hilt. They looked medieval, tools used long ago in the youth of the World Wars to scare the enemy. Now they just gleamed and did the task given to them.
John locked his jaw, and gripped the chains above him tighter even though he knew once the torturer got started that his legs would not hold and he'd be hanging from his wrists, kneels unable to buckle.
He stared into the camera knowing that in a day or so Mycroft would be watching, and he wished that he could convey he knew it wasn't the man's fault, but to show any emotion was to give the enemy power.
Why did that rule even matter? It wasn't like John was going to survive much longer, anyway. He didn't even flinch as the man with the knife got closer, he just kept looking into the camera as the knife was placed delicately on his skin.
"Beg." The man hissed into his ear, and when John gave no reaction, he sliced a line on his chest. "Beg!"
John felt the blood dripping slowly down his chest, and wondered how deep these wounds would get. He doubted they'd kill him… not yet, at least.
"Do you not wish to live?" The man sneered, and stabbed the knife back into the earliest of his wounds. "Beg. Beg for death."
John just choked back a cry, and imagined that Sherlock was with him now. That Sherlock's arms were around him, protecting John from the pain and the hurt. John just wanted to cry and lay down on the cold, dirty ground. His stomach hurt from starvation, and every wound inflicted so far was infected. It burned his body, raging through him like a flood of agony rolling back into the sea and roaring back even stronger than before.
The man was angry now, screaming things in a language that John's mind could not translate, and the knife came through his other shoulder. The one that had sent him home the first time around.
John, even with all his training, could not hold back the scream that was ripped from his sore throat. Tears blurred his vision, and his kneels gave out, but there was no escape.
The man had a sadistic grin on his face, and twisted the knife back and forth, working it deeper and probing at rough scar tissue. John hoped that nobody would watch this, too see him at his lowest, sobbing in a torture chamber with blood running down his torso.
He was glad Sherlock would never have to see this… Though in a sick way he did want him to see this, so that Sherlock would have to watch him suffering like John had done.
His mind kept the pain away for a bit, but a new wave washed over and took away any thoughts. The man was drawing thick, deep lines on his chest and stomach, crisscrossing them in a sloppy pattern until John's torso was red.
John's screams persisted until he passed out from the sheer pain, and even then his chin clenched as if holding back more.
They spat at John, and left him there bleeding. It seemed that during the torture the men had decided that John was not worth their trouble any longer.
They took the camera, no doubt to send the footage to Mycroft or some other official, and in the silence of the room, John prayed.
Not for God to "let him live", he just prayed that it would be over soon, and as blood trickled down his chest, he knew the wish would momentarily become true.
So, with odd words flowing past his lips, John blocked out the scent of his blood and sweat. He blocked out the desperate beating of his heart, and the tears that would not stop flowing down his cheeks.
John had lost track of time, but in reality he'd been in the facility for a week and a half, and this was the fifth time he'd been tortured.
It would be his last.
Mycroft sat at his desk with hands clenched so hard they were white knuckled. The desktop in front of him was…. Indescribable.
John's body hung from the rafters, bleeding out onto the floor. The screams rang out in his office, as the government worker tried to find any sliver of a clue that would lead him to the enemy base.
So far he'd just seen John pushed to his limit, and three British soldiers executed. John was now the only soldier left of the troop that had not been killed.
How would they not find one damned base? They had the terrorist's faces, they showed them on camera without hesitation, but somehow the Syrians had "no knowledge" of this cell.
Mycroft wanted to scream.
He'd sent Sherlock off with Anthea two hours ago, back to the flat, and only a few minutes afterwards the tape had arrived. Sherlock didn't even known John was captured. Mycroft feared the backlash of his brother if he told him.
It seemed, however, that fate had dealt a cruel hand because just as the tape was finishing Sherlock stormed in.
His face was bright red, with tears tracks whipped hastily away, and his mobile clutched like a child's toy in his hand.
John continued to scream.
Sherlock stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the back of the monitor, silently pleading.
"Who's… Who's screaming?" He asked brokenly, and almost childishly. The coat he wore seemed to big now, draped over his fragile frame like a blanket of protection. He had one of John's sweaters on underneath it, and his fingers gripped the material.
"He's not dead yet."
Sherlock collapsed onto the floor, pulling his knees up and burying his head in-between chest and legs. He couldn't look at Mycroft, and the older brother quickly muted the sound.
"How long?"
"A little over a week."
"How bad?"
Mycroft didn't reply, only taking a deep breath and letting it back out.
"I don't know if he'll survive the night."
Sherlock sobbed until Mycroft had a nurse give him a sedative. Sherlock's hands buried in John's sweater, curling in on himself and even in sleep his face cried of anguish.
In the secrecy of his office, Mycroft cried, and if anybody asked he'd just say the monitor's light was hurting his eyes.
Anthea only typed away at her phone, trying desperately to keep her voice level and face emotionless.
John's screaming echoed throughout the night.
John didn't wake the next morning… not truly. He was alive, but barely, and he knew that he had only a few hours. Unless he got a blood transfer and medical attention, he'd die. It was simple and logical, but for some reason his brain refused to compute it. It turned from a basic fact to a scramble of horror and other emotions.
He'd die. It was simple.
He'd never have a family, no children to cuddle through nightmares, or a lover to kiss. He'd die, in a cell that stank of death and decay, and he'd never be remembered for anything.
Sherlock went out with a bang, and John would waste away with a whimper.
Mycroft wasn't coming, that much was clear. The British Government did not negotiate with terrorists, and there was no way one man could go through so much red tape. There was no malice in John toward Mycroft, only a slight pity. The man had so few people left that he loved. John never was extremely close to the older Holmes, but he knew at least Mycroft would have tried to save him if he could.
John sighed and waited for the end.
Mycroft was trying to go between keeping Sherlock from running off to Syria, and controlling a delicate operation. He had a team heading for John's location, but they had no idea what to expect.
The Holmes brother couldn't even tell Sherlock if John was dead or alive.
Sherlock just stared with a glassy eyed look.
Mycroft had never felt so terrified in his life.
John could feel his minutes ticking down, his heart was slowing at black was creeping in his vision.
He was dying.
It was simple.
There was screaming and gunfire from outside his cell, but he figured that his body was just shutting down and creating a hopeful situation. His thoughts were slurring together, though, and he couldn't be sure.
He didn't even recognize the sound of his door opening, or voices calling out his name.
They were too late, John wasn't going to survive but a few more minutes at max.
Somebody grabbed him, and he felt them running desperately while others provided cover fire. John tried to replay the events in his head, but all that his mind provided was a loop of pain and confusion as his wounds were jostled.
There was the start of a car engine, and wind blowing through his hair and over his exposed flesh.
He couldn't open his eyes, but spoke to whoever could hear him.
"Tell… Tell.. Sher..L..ck.. I … -uv h…i..-m."
He didn't hear the other soldiers desperate cries of "HOLD ON WATSON", only that the pain was getting stronger. He bit down on his lip and tears fell down his cheek.
"I… -m… s-rr…y."
He slipped away within five minutes of a hospital.
Mycroft's phone lit up with one text from Anthea, and he dreaded what it would say.
Sherlock was reading over his shoulder, breathing harsh and fast.
"Watson declared dead at 4:38."
Sherlock didn't even have the energy to scream.
"We are here to mourn the passing of John Hamish Watson…" The pastor's words did not register with Sherlock, who sat up in the front row by Mycroft's side.
John's coffin was closed because nobody could bear the site of his hunger-stricken face, cuts and bruises. Sherlock wanted to pretend John was just pulling a cruel, cruel joke to get back at Sherlock for his own faked funeral.
Mycroft's hand on top of his reminded him that it wasn't, and that John was in that coffin dead.
Sherlock didn't even try to stop the tears, and bowed his head.
They spoke of John's success, his loyalty, and his strength. They spoke of him like they knew every secret… They spoke of him like they were closer to John than Sherlock was.
Sherlock knew of John's fathers abuse, of his mother's addiction to alcohol, and how he stitched Harry up after a suicide attempt.
They never mentioned any of those things at the funeral.
After the funeral ended, and only Mycroft and Sherlock were left, the younger Holmes walked up to the fresh ground of the grave and sat. He rubbed John's name on the gravestone, and leaned his forehead against the cold marble.
He just whispered under his breath even after Mycroft nudged him up and led him to the car.
"One more miracle… Please, John… Please.."
John never came back.