Safe
by: imagia-quill
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Disclaimer: Not SACD, Moffat, Gatiss, or Thompson.
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At first there were just his heartbeats, beating slowly and peacefully in the dark, lulling him to sleep, to succumb back into his unconscious state.
And then there was an ear-splitting noise –the kind of noise you hear when you had a nightmare that made you spend endless hours trying to open your eyes– and John instantly knew he had to wake up. John was used to nightmares, and with his medical knowledge, he knew a thing or two about human nervous system and sleep paralysis to know how to wake himself during this kind of situation, but at the realization that none of his methods work, he knew he wasn't dealing with sleep paralysis.
The attempt to wake up was nearly impossible and it was as if his brain couldn't function. His brain couldn't function, he couldn't move, nervous system failing, but he was definitely thinking this train of thoughts–
Chemical compound. His brain couldn't function nor sleep properly because of a wrongly measured chemical compound in his body. If John had been knocked out, he knew he should be able to concentrate by now.
But John couldn't think. He couldn't even remember where he had been last–
Quick effect. So, chemical compound with quick effect– quick entrance–
Anasthaesy. He was being drugged.
Someone drugged him, someone wanted to harm him.
The attempts to open his eyes were tiring, even more the attempt to move his head. He then realized he was trapped in a small cavity that seemed to be made of wooden blocks and dry leaves, and when he managed to turn his head to a small opening through the pile of wood he was in, he could see a small source of light amidst the dark that seemed to be very far. Whatever this pile of wood was, it was big and he was well deep inside it.
If someone wanted to harm him, he wouldn't be buried deep under a mount of wood. Someone wanted to kill him, by suffocating him, or even…
John realized he could be burned alive inside this pile of wood.
If it was tiring to open his eyes and move his head, shouting for help was definitely near impossible, but at last he managed to croak.
"He–!"
He knew it wasn't enough.
He tried again, only managing to add the length of his pathetic cry.
For several moments that felt like forever, he was only vainly shouting for help, wheezing every so often because his lungs couldn't seem to breathe in much air, and only managing to add one more consonant after his fifth trial.
"Hel'–"
He didn't know which happened first, smelling the kerosene or realizing the anasthaesy was wearing off, but panic was starting to seize him.
"Help! Help!"
No later than he finished his monosyllable shout, he saw the wall of fire rose up around him with a loud whoosh, illuminating the little nook in which he was lying helpless. He forced out one more shout before the flame consumed all the oxygen left around him.
"Help!"
And then he heard it. As his sensory nerves began to work on wider berth, the sound of his surroundings penetrated his hearing, and the first thing he heard was his name. It seemed impossible but he was quite sure he heard someone shouting back at him.
"John!"
He saw the wall of woods being clawed out and felt himself dragged out of the inferno. The ground rolled beneath him and stopped as he was being laid far from the fire and rolled sideways so that he was facing upwards.
His eyes still couldn't focus on anything much, but he heard his name being called repeatedly. Spoken, gently called, whispered, said in the middle of sobbing. Opening his eyes, John then blinked and inhaled the largest gulp of air his diaphragm muscle could endure. With a bit fresh air in his lungs, John could finally make out two people looming over him.
"John! John!"
He faintly remembered the memory of two people looming over him too, just before he lost consciousness. Snippets of memories began to come back to him, but as he blinked and shivered, he didn't think these two people were the last ones. He hadn't recognized the two strangers back then, only remembered that he was feeling helpless as he felt himself descending and not being able to fight them, but there was only a huge wave of relief at the sight of the unmistakable blue scarf and the short blonde hair.
He knew some drugs could cause hallucination as an aftereffect, preceded by total knockout, and he was slightly concerned he was hallucinating, because looming over him were the two people he cared about most in the world, one of which he just had a massive fall-out with–
"Oh, thank god, thank god you're alright!" Mary sobbed. She then caught herself and dutifully peeled her hands that had been covering her mouth. He felt the pressure of her hands on his face and head, presumably checking for injuries. "You're hurt. What happened?"
John shook his head. He didn't think he was injured; although, in this state, he might've been just disemboweled and still not feel the pain.
He looked around. He couldn't move his head much, but he could gather from the night sky above him, framed by trees here and there, and the loud, panicked noise of a confused crowd, that he was somehow lying on a wide green opening. So the pile of woods he was just being rescued from was apparently a bonfire, going by the looks of the crowd and the location. John tried to figure out why were these people having a bonfire on a night like this –maybe the person who wanted him dead was around here, somewhere– but found out he couldn't even concentrate on remembering where he had last been.
"You– call an ambulance– quick, now!" he heard a familiar voice said to the crowd. Must be Sherlock.
Must be Sherlock. Funny how the only time he would tell himself this fact was when he was being held hostage during their crazy quests as irregular investigators and he would just know how to see the signs of Sherlock already coming for him. It was as if the brawl that night and the last two darkest years of his life had never happened and John and Sherlock were simply in the middle of a chase again. John found the revelation very disarming.
Mary turned to the detective. "Oh Sherlock, that's very brave, I don't know what I'd do without you, thank you–"
"You broke the code easily yourself," he heard Sherlock said. There was blinding light for a second, but although most part of his body still couldn't feel itself, John could feel someone release their pressure on his eyes. That must be Sherlock checking his pupils.
"Sh'lock? M'ry? Where're we?" John mumbled, although he had tried his best to pronounce his question coherently. At some point, he realized his head was resting on someone's lap; Mary's, it seems, judging by how her head appeared upside-down in his vision. Not that he could make sense of up and down in his current state.
"St. James's church," Sherlock, being who he was, answered first. "You must've been kidnapped, and then drugged–"
"Yeah, I kno'," John panted.
"You know?" Sherlock asked. The sight of the detective still pestering people at their choice of words, like he always did when he was in a middle of an investigation, sent a strange feeling down John's stomach. Almost like nostalgia; but it was probably the drug messing with his nervous system. "Did you see your captors?"
"No– he– he shot me on th' back of m' neck–" John wheezed, remembering the syringe puncturing his skin before numbing his whole being.
"He?" Sherlock asked promptly, noticing the gender pronoun.
"He needs rest, Sherlock," John heard Mary interjected.
"Yeah, he," John verified, not listening to the nurse. He would've good-naturedly rolled his eyes at the detective if he wasn't in a state of fighting a drug after-effect. "I 's jus' walkin' 'n fron' of our flat."
John panted after the conversation, his pulse was still erratic, and his head still couldn't make sense of the gravity. Several moments passed in which he tried to steady his breathing and Mary repeatedly murmuring something he couldn't quite catch against the small on his head. When he looked up, he saw something flashed on Sherlock's eyes, although he couldn't be certain of what. Alongside of this realization, he then recognized a ghost of a squeeze on his palm, as though someone had just released it from a grip, although he couldn't be sure who it was.
"Do you remember anything?" he then heard Sherlock asked, in a tone he rarely heard from his best friend's lips he barely believed his ears.
"Sherlock, not now, he needs to rest. There's the ambulance," he heard Mary argued, but he didn't pay attention. Now that he had remembered the shot on the back of his neck, the chain of events came back to him in a whirlwind– it must be a wrongly measured anasthaesy after all.
221B, man bumped into him, another man gripped his shoulder, anasthaesy shot, two men filling his vision, pavement against his back, trying to shout 'Sherlock!'—
"I thin'- there're two of 'em," John managed to say, to which Sherlock instantly directed all of his attention. "One dis'racted me, one shot me. Dress all black. Must've 'appened 'round six."
John breathed deeply again, which Sherlock must've took as an end to their interview, or he simply thought he had all the data he needed, at the same time one of the paramedics came running to their aid, shouting, "Over here!"
In less than a second several paramedics crowded around him, running tests on his vitals, with Mary professionally provided them the details. He smiled reassuringly as Mary caressed his temples, although his facial muscles didn't seem to cooperate that much.
"Wait," just then he heard Mary called out. "Sherlock, where are you going?"
Something hit him in his stomach at the mention of Sherlock leaving. He realized he had served Sherlock trouble, all going to 221B and getting himself kidnapped. So much for a reconciliation meeting.
"I can track them down," he heard Sherlock replied. It was tricky to move his head to the side where Sherlock was standing, with the majority of his muscles still under the drug's control, and when he managed to do so, John only got to see the back of his coat as he walked to leave the park.
"'Ey, Sh'lock?" he called out. It must've come out as nothing but a feeble wheeze, drowning in the sound of paramedics and noisy crowd, but Sherlock still turned to face John all the same. The one thing he was surprised of was the fact that he had let himself felt touched by this gesture.
Because John knew it. He knew the feeling, the thrill of the chase, the blood pumping through his veins, just the two of them against the rest of the world. Sherlock was right; he'd missed it, and he could smell it in the air around him now. They were two polar opposites except for this one strange addiction that bridged them, that brought them together, that initially made them accepted each other. And if Sherlock kneeling there with his worried face when he first got out of the bonfire, or that his voice was laced with determination when he said he could track his captors down, or the fact that something flashed through his eyes when John said 'our flat' meant anything, it was that John forgave him.
"Yes?"
John put on all of his willpower to move his facial muscles to smile at him, not caring if it looked like a grimace because Sherlock would understand either way.
"Don' go 'nto trouble." There was one long moment before Sherlock finally grinned at him, that one particular grin which made John remember the time he told Sherlock he was an idiot for risking his life to prove his brilliance, that one grin that seemed to say well I'm glad we're not that different after all.
"I'll save you one."
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A/N: Phew, wow, okay, so what do you guys think? Reviews, feedback, and criticism are all welcome. Oh, and also I'm not a medical person so I'm really sorry if I got things wrong, I've tried my best to make it as realistic as possible.