For John Watson, the game is never over.
One month in the suburbs, as Sherlock so eloquently put it, and he's going mad. His skin crawls, shifts over him like it wants to fall off, his heart's never not beating rapidly inside his rib cage like a bird begging to be free. Every moment he's awake is spent with a burning and itching that doesn't go away; every moment asleep is a cold shock to the system, Sherlock there in his head, them running through the battlefield of London, ducking for cover, vatican cameos, helping Sherlock prove a point, and when he wakes up he's not breathing again. A man constanty drowning.
One month away, and he's bursting into a God's honest drug den with all the dramatic and grandeur of Sherlock bloody Holmes; he's backing a junkie up against the wall and spraining his wrist on purpose (barely restrained himself not to break it), and the wide eyed panic in the junkie's eyes releases the constriction in his chest and it should frighten him, should rattle his teeth and bones, should freeze him up and lock im in palce, but all he wants to do is laugh.
Two years without Sherlock Holmes and John's engaged to an assassian. Marries one. Has a baby with one, a baby who is half him and half her, and the both of them are so voilate, a volcano, Chaos at it's finest, and John worries.
Because John Watson pours danger from every opening in his body. He is a dangerous man who needs dangerous people to feel alive. He's not the clean cut, white collar soldier with the national pride evreyone thinks he is, who he thought he was. He is adrenaline and gunshot wounds to his shoulder and a cabbie's; he'll down near death expierences like a line of shots. He shoots violence into his veins like Sherlock's 7% cocaine solution.
Mary (or whatever her name is, Abigail, or Anita, or Adrianna, he'll never know) Watson is everything he is and everything he isn't. She's a crackshot, like him, can shoot a coin flying over her head dead center without even looking. She inhales the London battlefield like smoke, looks at Sherlock with that same wide-eyed fractured gaze John does, because Sherlock Holmes is a walking promise. A promise they both need. She is him in that they both ahve blood soaking their hands, up their arms, covering their elbows, but she is cash to prove for it and he has nightmares. John likes to think he's a real bonified Dexter Morgan, kills the one's who deserve it, the cabbie who tried to kill Sherlock, he'd kill Moriarty fifty times over if he could. Oh, but he can, because Moriarty isn't even really dead.
Did you miss me?
Oh, John did.
Missed him like he missed Sherlock for those four minutes he was up in the air and in exile; he watched that plane go because a part of him knew it wouldn't be the last. Shook his hand like that first day he met him, because Sherlock Holmes is never gone for long. They are the sun and the Earth, the Earth and the moon (not so difficult to tell who is who), forever circling each other, forever revolving. One month apart and they're both falling to pieces, crumbling to the ground in a pile of dust and disease. He knew, watching that plane turn around, it would be this way.
He knew. He always knew.
There's nothing they can do right away, can't track down the source of the broadcast that blasted itself on every television. Everybody's shaking, like their own personal earthquakes, people are screaming, it's a bloody mess. Moriarty's somewhere laughing.
But for now, they wait, with the battlefield on their fingertips and SherlockandJohn(andMary) in eachother's lungs and they wait.
The game is on.