A/N: Alright, I wrote this one on a whim past midnight last night on an iPad when my brain wasn't properly functioning, but I revised the crap out of it. I hope it makes enough sense and that you guys enjoy it, ehehe.
John hadn't seen the explosion, but he'd heard it.
The sensation of dread that built up in his chest felt like a cold clamp inside his body when he turned towards the source of the ground-shaking noise, but his view was blocked by a building. He had walked about a mile from the crime scene of London's newest murder, an abandoned parking garage complex, in order to alert Lestrade of Sherlock's findings. Shortly after John had returned to Lestrade and the multiple police officers who were blocking off the surrounding area to keep away citizens, the building had suddenly blown.
Of course, Sherlock had insisted on going alone so the "simple-minded people" wouldn't put him off. But John had protested that at least he should come along, lest the murderer was lurking nearby, waiting to claim another life. It had been a horribly bloody scene, and the victim was hardly identifiable. Sherlock had even taken a while to determine just how the body had reached its gruesome condition; there had been many possibilities.
Now Sherlock himself might have reached a horrific death, too, possibly having been blasted to bits by the explosion that had torn the garage apart.
Oh, God, no.
John hastily grabbed his phone from his pocket as people rushed past him in order to see the damage. Chunks of concrete occasionally rained from the sky, shattering into millions of pieces on the pavement, but he paid them no more mind than the drops of rain that were starting to fall. He wondered if Sherlock was safe, if the explosion had only taken out a section of the garage, and if Sherlock had been in a completely unaffected part of it. He wanted to get ahold of the detective so he could be reassured that he was safe, that he wasn't dead, that he was going to walk out in one piece...
When John turned his phone on, he noticed that he'd gotten a text.
Bomb. Not much time.
-SH
His heart thudded against his ribcage. It had been sent more than a minute ago, before the building blew, and he hadn't even noticed. His phone had stupidly been silenced.
Had those been Sherlock's last words to him? Sent as a text that he hadn't even seen before it was too late?
John spun around after switching his phone to vibrate and turned the corner of the building that had obstructed his line of sight, desperate to see what the bomb had done to the garage.
It was in shambles. Smoke rose from it in pillars twisted unevenly into the darkening sky.
All sorts of profanities cycled through John's mortified mind. Then he started to run, and he ran quickly. Sprinted, even, leaving behind the cops and detectives behind him as he went flying towards the pile of rubble faster than he thought his legs were capable of carrying him. He hadn't run that fast since Afghanistan.
The adrenaline pumping through his veins made John disregard any sense of tiredness he felt after the mile-long sprint, and his eyes frantically searched the hill of concrete and metal for any sign of his friend. But he didn't see one.
"Sherlock... Sherlock!"
His words were met with the rattling of a broken pipe that went tumbling down the mess, but he heard no voice. He also heard the rapidly-approaching footsteps of policemen, but he ignored them as he hurriedly began to circle the whole of the disaster, constantly calling out Sherlock's name until his voice cracked. He still received no answer.
He isn't dead. He can't be dead. He isn't.
He started feeling nauseous, his lungs burned, and his legs suddenly felt like they were about to give out. Everything passed in a blur; people immediately beginning to search for any sign of Sherlock, Lestrade approaching John and sayings things that passed straight through him as though he were deaf, Donovan doing the same, his legs giving out and forcing him to his knees...
He stayed in the position for five minutes, then ten, then twenty, and then a half hour, while his brain struggled to make sense of the activity that was going on around him.
Sherlock Holmes was, without a doubt, incredible. But John wasn't sure if even he would have been able to escape this type of fate, being buried underneath yards of concrete.
For the first time since he'd heard Sherlock's first deduction, John felt immense doubt. Then he saw something other than solid debris lying nearby. It was deep blue in color, torn in various places and darkened by rainwater and mud.
A scarf.
"John. Are you with me?"
He looked up at Lestrade, gazing up at him dully. He must have been standing above him for a short while, but he hadn't noticed.
"I'm sorry, John, but we can't find him. It's getting dark, so we'll have to continue searching tomorrow."
John looked down at Sherlock's scarf. It was in a heap on his lap, and his hands hadn't left it a single time since he'd reached over and picked it up from the wet ground. It was almost like his life depended on the scarf; he seemed like a child clinging to a teddy bear in public, constantly terrified that the precious possession would be taken from him any second because it was one of the most important things in the whole world to them.
There he stood, clutching the scarf in one hand, nearly falling back down when the blood flow was restored to his weakened legs, and said, "I'm going to look myself. He can't wait until morning."
Lestrade looked like he wanted to protest, but he caught himself and merely nodded; even he had noticed how close Sherlock and John had become over the course of the several months they had been flatmates. He wasn't about to get in John's way.
John searched for what felt like hours in the darkness, using a convenient app on his phone that served as a flashlight in order to check every crevice in the piles of concrete slabs, until his battery nearly died and he was forced to look in the shadows again because he wanted to preserve the rest of his phone's energy for any calls he would have to make, or ones that he would receive.
He was unbelievably tired, but he pressed on, having to resort to simply using his voice as a means of getting Sherlock's attention.
If he was still alive, that is.
Part of John knew that he was in denial, that there was no possible way that Sherlock could have survived the explosion, but another part of him stubbornly held onto the hope that his friend was fine (or rather, as fine as one could be after having a garage complex fall on top of them) and that the two of them would soon return to living their everyday lives.
But hope could be deadlier than any weapon.
Feeling emptier with each passing second, he kept searching. He'd find him if it was the last thing he did.
The sun began to rise, casting a dim blanket of early morning light that quickly grew warmer and brighter across the ruins of the garage. It had stopped raining, and white puffs of clouds were scattered across the orange and pink sky.
John yawned and checked his watch. It was almost seven in the morning. He hadn't slept a wink, but after hours of fumbling around in the dark, he had lost the energy to call out and had merely walked around the edge of the rubble, having some vain hope that Sherlock would notice him first and alert him to his survival. He wondered when the search team would return and continue looking for the detective now that the sun was up.
"You idiot, why do you always have to do everything alone?" John muttered aloud, as if Sherlock was right by his side. "Those 'ordinary minds' you mentioned could have helped you, and you would've been out of there before the bomb went off."
His phone vibrated.
Wrong.
-SH
John froze, staring down at the screen with a look of bewilderment on his face, and tried to figure out if his tired brain was playing tricks on him, showing him what he wanted to see.
"Sherlock?" He said tentatively.
Text me.
-SH
"What for? Can't you just speak?"
Just do it, John.
-SH
He sighed and obliged.
There.
-JW
A short moment later, he heard a phone go off behind him. He turned around and his mouth dropped open.
There was Sherlock, standing several feet away, leaning against a miraculously undamaged lamppost. His dark hair was disheveled and his face was smeared with dirt and a blotch of blood. His coat was in terrible condition, along with the rest of his clothes: almost every inch of them was covered in mud and dust. He was standing a bit strangely even while leaning against the lamppost for support.
He smiled crookedly.
Hello.
-SH
John couldn't help himself. He broke into a strained jog that didn't nearly compare to the dead run he had broken into the previous day, moving his sore legs as fast as they could go, and threw his arms around Sherlock, nearly knocking him off his feet. The emotions he had held in hours earlier broke loose and he wasn't able to restrain the tears of relief that had sprang to his eyes.
"Thank God, I thought you were dead," He murmured.
I'm not.
-SH
John pulled back slightly. "Why are you still texting me?"
My throat hurts. Too much smoke and dust. Every breath kills me. It's a miracle that this phone even works.
-SH
Sherlock glanced from his phone to John's face, then to his phone again.
Also, I think I broke my leg, a rib or two, and bruised a few others. Can we save this for later?
-SH
John studied Sherlock's face closely. There were tears in his eyes as well, but not because of emotion; he was trying to control the amount of agony his face betrayed. John stepped away immediately, carefully making sure that Sherlock wouldn't go toppling to the ground by keeping a hand on one of his shoulders. "Sherlock, I... I mean, we need to get you to a hospital... Wait, how did you get out of there, anyway? How are you even standing?"
Sherlock hesitated.
I don't know. Luck.
-SH
John paused and stared into his unique gray-green eyes, as if he needed to be assured even more that they were full of life and not empty and sightless. He said nothing for about a minute, then, with anger bubbling up, he grumbled, "Never do that again."
What?
-SH
"Almost die. Don't almost die. You scared me to death!"
Sherlock grinned. Then he started chuckling, and much to John's surprise, tears started streaming down his face. He couldn't tell if they were caused by overwhelming pain, as each breath he took must have felt like fire in his damaged throat, or if they pushed past their restraints because of something else.
"All right," John said. He put Sherlock's arm around one of his shoulders so he could help him walk. "It's all right, Sherlock. Let's get you out of here."
They made slow progress due to Sherlock's broken leg and because of how weakened both men were. John's body was screaming at him to sit down and rest, but he fought the urge, knowing that he would fall asleep if he rested even for five minutes, and he instead focused on his friend's well-being; he wasn't out of danger just yet.
Then, in the distance, John saw Lestrade and the search team, and the sound of an ambulance was carried across the wind. John's breath left him in a sigh of relief when the group spotted them and started running towards them. He and Sherlock stopped walking and waited eagerly for them to arrive.
"Oh, I almost forgot," John said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the battered scarf he'd stuffed inside. "I found this yesterday. Thought you wouldn't want to lose it. It's sort of a wreck, but Mrs. Hudson should be able to fix it up a bit."
When his scarf was handed to him, Sherlock looked genuinely surprised to see it, like he hadn't even noticed that he had lost it in the first place. Or maybe he had known, but never expected to see it again. He started writing another text.
Thank you.
-SH
John smiled, and they were soon surrounded by a whirlwind of activity. John was bombarded with questions, mostly ones along the lines of "how did you find him?" and "how did he survive?" He patiently answered every single question he received even though he didn't always have solid answers as Sherlock was taken to an ambulance on a stretcher.
He still couldn't determine how Sherlock had escaped almost certain death, but all that mattered to John at that moment was that he was alive.