A/N: Hello all. Excuse me while I do my obligatory

***SPOILERS FOR S3***

Thanks. Now, once again I felt like they left out a lot of emotional fleshing in His Last Vow. The events (set over a long period of time) were slotted in very close together, leaving a lot of enticing gaps. So this is the first of a series of drabbles that are set during the episode, happened during events from another character's POV or a scene that must have happened offscreen. It's going to focus mostly on the Watsons. I'll try to do them in chronological order, but no guarantees.

This one is about John's POV when Sherlock was shot. I LOVED Sherlock's Mind Palace POV, but I was sad that John's was glossed over. So I made this thing. I know nothing at all about the way hospitals or ambulances or anything works, so I'm throwing out guesses here. Please R&R!

Enjoy!


John Watson had a very bad feeling about this.

Sherlock had wandered off, investigating the office, leaving John to take care of his not-for-long fiancee. John cringed internally at thought. Firstly because it was a strangely perverse idea, that any person could have such a claim on Sherlock. Second, he couldn't believe Sherlock had done something so utterly heartless. John knew better than anyone (other than perhaps the Holmes family) that Sherlock was a very warm and deep person, but he was capable of such cold acts that it was hard to believe. Never out of cruelty, but - necessity. And thirdly, because Jeanine was going to be spitting fire when she found out, and John wasn't eager to be around when that happened.

"Wha' happened." The Irishwoman slurred, from where John had moved her to her back.

"You've taken a blow to the head. You've got a light concussion, but nothing serious." John said in his professional voice. The woman nodded and flinched.

"Sherl?" she asked, worry glinting in her eyes in between lazy blinks. The nickname made John's stomach turn.

"Don't know," John said lowly, checking her one last time.

"Go get him, tiger." Jeanine said with a weak smile. "I'll be fine. I've been through worse." The army doctor pushed away a wave of guilt.

"Thank you. Stay still," John said with a kind tone.

She would be fine. The doctor in him was reluctant to leave her, but there was an uneasy nagging in his chest that urged him to move on. John briefly checked the guard, finding him unconscious, probably heavily concussed. No heavy bleeding, nothing John could really do to help. Sherlock took precedence, wherever he had ran off to.

John kept to a light trot, going up stairs and through hallways. Where was Sherlock? There was a door ajar, catching his attention in the uniform world of locked doors. He pushed it open, the sight inside causing a spike of adrenaline to explode in his chest.

Both Magnussen and Sherlock were on the ground, the former in a slightly curled position, mostly facing the floor, while the latter was flat on his back, spread eagle.

"Sherlock." he said breathlessly, worry making his face haggard. Without thinking John rushed to Sherlock's side, bending over the prone consulting detective. Pale face, clammy skin; not good. He patted Sherlock's cheek, trying to get a repsonse.

"Sherlock? Can you hear me?" he said calmly. No answer. He leaned close, listening for breathing. There was a rapid pace of exhaling, shallow and weak. Very bad.

"What happened?" he asked in an almost demanding tone, directing the question toward the freakishly tall man stirring at the other end of the room.

Magnussen seemed to smile. "He was shot." he said matter-of-factly. John's hands worked quickly, undoing the button of Sherlock's blazer. He was greeted by a small splatter of blood, just below and slightly to the right of the sternum.

"Oh my God." he breathed, more a prayer than a curse, the seriousness of the situation making his heart skip a beat. In an instant he had his phone out, calling 999, breaking and entering charges be hanged. Sherlock was in very grave danger.

"Who shot him?" he demanded of the appalling man who was adjusting the spectacles on his face.

The man just smiled, not saying a word. John gave up on that and turned his full attention on the too-still consulting detective next to him. The operator picked up and asked the routine questions. John gave a short explanation of the situation and the address of the building, waiting on the exact location in the building until the time came. He listed everything that was going wrong in his friend's body, muttering it under his breath, but also into the receiver.

"Massive internal bleeding, probable liver damage, shock, possible damage to the inferior vena cava, possible hemopnuemothorax, already suffering from hypoxia..." his voice broke and he trailed off. He made sure Sherlock's airway was open and tried not to panic. There was nothing else he could do. Nothing he could do to help his best friend who was bleeding to death in front of him, his life melting away like winter's first snowflake on the pavement. It was St. Bart's all over again.

"Sherlock," he said, placing his hand on his friend's cheek, "Listen to me, you git. Don't you dare die. Just hang on, you'll be fine." He had started out firm and ended shaky. Sherlock was right about emotions. They were incredibly annoying and distracting. But unlike Sherlock, John couldn't just turn it off. John's heart clenched painfully when Sherlock whimpered slightly, his jaw muscles tightening against the pain.

He stayed close, taking Sherlock's pulse in his wrist and systemically checking his breathing, both of which were worsening far too quickly to allow John to breathe normally. He swallowed and bowed his head, fury and grief raging in his chest. Every second counted, each moment allowed the bullet wound to bleed out further, inflaming the tissues and lowering blood pressure, causing the heart to beat faster and faster, quickening the pace of bleeding. Blood loss, one of the body's few positive feedback systems. The ambulance had to get here in the next couple of minutes or Sherlock would definitely die. Both the doctor and the detective's faces continued to lose their color, but Sherlock never had any to spare, so soon he looked as pale as - as a corpse.

The operator asked where they were in the building, and John was able to direct them to the correct floor. Thankfully security let them through, probably not realizing who the paramedics were for. He heard them arrive in the lift, rolling out a gurney.

"In here!" he yelled loud enough for all of London to hear. They took less than 30 seconds to find the room, and one paramedic ran to Magnussen, the rest of them focusing on Sherlock. John would not have tolerated anything less.

"He's fading fast. Nearly at maximum blood loss, already suffering hypoxia." he said authoritatively to his fellow medical professionals, who nodded and lifted the unconscious man onto the gurney, and fitted him with an oxygen mask. John was instantly back on the sidewalk outside St. Barts on that fateful morning, seeing Sherlock's bloodied carcass being lifted onto a gurney and carted away, but to the morgue instead of the ICU.

Whoever had done this would pay dearly. John would see to that, if he had to do it with his own two hands. Who would even dare do this?

When John moved to follow them out of the room, one held out his hand, stopping him.

"I'm family," John said quickly, and ran alongside them as they hurried to the lift and started to go down.

He looked at Sherlock's ashen face, a faint fog of moisture periodically clouding the mask over his nose and mouth. His eyes cracked open for a moment, and John got right in front him saying his name when they quickly closed again, wrenched shut in pain. John couldn't help but mimic the action.

They arrived downstairs and John kept alongside Sherlock as they ran, always trying to be in his line of sight in case he woke up again. The lights of the ambulance flashed brightly in the parking lot, drawing them like moths. Sherlock was quickly loaded into the back, and John followed, not waiting to ask permission. He seated himself next to the hauntingly still consulting detective just as the vehicle took of at a not-so-legal pace, zooming off to the hospital. Sherlock seemed to regain consciousness, his eyes opening a slit. But his gaze was utterly blank as his head lolled lazily with the frantic movements of the van. The normally marble-ivory of Sherlock's skin was now as white as a sheet, now turning a deathly pallor of grey.

"Sherlock?" John said nervously. One of the paramedics ripped open Sherlock's shirt front, revealing the wound. There wasn't much blood to be seen, making John's stomach clench with the knowledge of how much internal bleeding there had to be, throwing off the acid-base balance and causing a lot of cell death from the loss of aerobic respiration.

"We're losing you," he scolded, trying to motivate his friend to hold on. Sherlock just closed his eyes again, and faded away. John made a tight fist, so tight that his knuckles turned white. A thought occurred to him and he whipped out his phone and dialed while he asked anyone in earshot a crucial question.

"What hospital are we going to?" he asked, trying to sound polite but probably ending up being the exact opposite. A young man next to him glared a moment before answering.

"Royal London Hospital, sir." he said, a bit tersely.

"Thank you," John bit off before almost yelling into the phone, cutting off whatever the other person had been saying.

"Shut up Mycroft. Sherlock has been shot. He's dying. We're going to Royal London Hospital. Have the best staff and rooms waiting. No, we don't know who the shooter is," he said, taking slight pity on the steady stream of questions before hanging up.

He also texted Mary and Lestrade, giving them a brief run-down of the situation, not trusting his voice enough to call. Best not to tell Mrs. Hudson at all, not now.

It was all so surreal. Was this really happening? Or was this another one of his nightmares? But there Sherlock was in front of him, with an accusingly red circle where a piece of metal had penetrated. He remembered a phrase from Shakespeare, though probably not accurately. '...ruby red lips crying out in grief...' Something like that, after Caesar had been stabbed, they were talking about the wounds. Speaking of Sherlock's chest, there was some light hair on it. He hadn't had any during the Buckingham Palace incident. So then was he waxing before, or had he miraculously sprouted some? Perhaps Jeanine liked it. He fought back a wave of nausea, realizing he had literally worried himself sick. Not that anyone would blame him.

The ambulance arrived at the hospital, and Sherlock was rushed away to an operating room.

"I'm sorry sir, but I'm going to have to ask you to wait in the waiting room," said a middle-aged woman, almost forcibly holding John back from trailing after the gurney.

"That makes sense, that's why it's called a waiting room, isn't it?" he said bitterly, giving up. He allowed himself to be led to the area in question, ignoring everyone else in the room with him. John ignored the trilling of his phone, probably Mary and Lestrade asking questions that he was either unable or unwilling to honestly answer. He paced restlessly, like Sherlock would when he was hot on a scent. He couldn't even agonize without Sherlock helping him along. How could he have let this happen?! He never should have let Sherlock go off by himself. But then, he had never been able to make Sherlock do a single bleeding thing he didn't want to do. Who was he kidding, he was useless.

John didn't keep track of the progression of time, lost in his dark thoughts. Suddenly a young woman approached him out of the corner of his eye, and he turned eagerly for any news.

Her face. Her face was wrong.

"No." John choked out, and she started to speak in a calm tone.

"Sir, I'm very sorry but-" she said, looking fearfully at him.

"NO!" he exploded, making everyone in earshot (which was quite a lot of people) jump.

"No," he continued, his anger becoming a very dangerous calm. "You go back in there. You try again. You try harder." John said, his breathing heavy. A small part of his brain was screaming for him to shut up, that it wasn't her fault. But he ignored it.

"Sherlock Holmes cannot be dead." he said quietly, shaking his head. "He can't be. It's impossible." He took a few calming breaths before continuing to speak to the nurse, who was too petrified to move. "I refuse to accept this. Is it too much to ask for you to just keep one man alive!" He ducked his head and finished, "Just one."

"He lost too much blood," she squeaked, clutching her clipboard nervously.

"I don't care!" John said, barely managing to keep from shouting again. "Give him more then. Drain me if you have to. But you are not going to give up on him." John said, his steam nowhere close to running out.

"Sir, please-" she started, her voice almost in a whisper, but John interrupted her.

"Just leave!" he snapped, and she scurried away, sniveling. He bowed his head and clenched his fist, angry with his unbridled behaviour.

He sat heavily in a chair, dropping his head in his hands, something deep in his soul praying that the nurse had been wrong.

Sherlock was not dead, he couldn't be.

It's my fault.

I've failed him again.

If John had just been faster in finding him, if he had run instead of walked. If he hadn't spent so long on Jeanine. If he hadn't been so useless.

If, if if.

It was an agonizing game to play.

If.

He was numb. Like after Sherlock had died the first time. And now Sherlock had the nerve to go and do it to John again. To think that the great detective Sherlock Holmes could be so affected by such a small thing. All it took was a tiny piece of metal to bring the world crashing down. Just one bullet to make such a great man nothing more than a corpse in a morgue. It was all so unfair.

He hadn't noticed someone was standing directly in front of him.

"Sir?" said a low male voice with a Scottish accent. John looked up, his expression blank.

"We're moving him to the recovery ward," continued the blond-haired man, adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses. "He's sedated, but he should be awake in a few hours."

John's face became a mask of shock.

"What?" he said hoarsely, blinking rapidly. He rose, suddenly bursting with energy.

"We don't know how, but he came through," said Dr. - John looked at the nametag - McKline. "We thought we had lost him when he suddenly regained consciousness. It's a miracle," said the doctor, seeming honestly bewildered. John was too busy melting in relief and thanking whatever deity had listened to him to immediately respond.

His phone went off, announcing a text from his wife. He glanced at it, the brief message saying she was here.

"Thank you," he said breathlessly to the kind-hearted doctor with a wide grin, who nodded and turned to leave.

"Wait," John said, a sudden thought occurring to him. McKline turned back around, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.

"You said he was conscious? Did he say anything?" John said, hoping Sherlock had said who the shooter was. The sooner the better, so they could start a search. Whoever it was was going to have a whole lot of angry and dangerous people to deal with. Sherlock was nowhere close to friendless or unloved, no matter what he thought.

"He didn't say much. Just... 'Mary'," said the McKline, clearly not concerned about it. John thanked him again and went to go find his wife. Why she had been Sherlock's first thought after being so close to death, John didn't know. But it didn't matter. It was going to be a very long and grueling recovery. That didn't matter either. John's face had a smile irreversibly etched into it, exuding a warm atmosphere to everyone nearby.

What was important was that Sherlock was alive.

And whoever had done this to him wouldn't be for much longer. Everyone would see to that.