Title: Battlefield
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: John Watson
Rating: PG
Word Count: 221B
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: I don't really know why my brain made me come out of a year long hiatus to write a post-TRF drabble on the eve of the season three premiere, especially since it's already been covered by so many talented people and probably far more eloquently than I managed to do in 221 words. But here we are. Enjoy.
John's world doesn't crumble.
It trembles and lurches, shakes hard enough to throw him off his feet, but it doesn't break.
London is a battlefield, a front line hiding beneath a veneer of normalcy, and Sherlock Holmes is the General of their army of two, waging an impossible war as John follows.
He's walked shoulder to shoulder with brothers in arms through far more dangerous places than this. He's followed them into battle with the promise of ruin and carried them through burning and scorching wastelands, where the air dances on the horizon and death shadows every step.
His skin have been stained by the blood of men and women far greater than Sherlock Holmes – men and women good in a way Sherlock might one day have become – and John's held their lives in his hands and watched them slip away between his fingers, their eyes seeking his and their teeth smeared red with death and fear and pain and God, no and John.
John's world doesn't crumble. It shakes and throws him to his knees, hands sinking into blistering sand as blood pools beneath his palms, and he breathes and chokes, the smell of burning metal on the air and the taste of loss on his tongue.
Still, he rises.
London might be a battlefield, but John's been here before.