A/N: I got my inspiration from a song called "Brand New Me" by Alicia Keys. I know that the song and the fic are about two different things in life, but this specific line nagged me until I let it out on paper. Also, I'm aware that John was 18 around the 90's, so let's just pretend this song was written then.
Enjoy !
.יזכור. לעולם נזכור את חללי מערכות ישראל ונפגעי פעולות האיבה
.במותכם ציוויתם לנו את החיים
ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
תשע"ג
"I'll never be perfect,
but at least now I'm brave,"
John heard that line in a song he stumbled upon on the radio almost 20 years ago.
Now, 20 years later, he couldn't even remember the melody, and he was pretty sure the song was about a girl breaking up with her boyfriend or something, but he remembered that specific line crystal clear.
It meant something to him.
When he heard that song he was barely 18, just fresh out of high-school with the dream of being a doctor, debating whether he should or shouldn't join the army, as it was his only way to achieve his dream.
His family couldn't afford university for both him and his sister, so just because Harry was older she got there first, and he had to make do with whatever options he had.
That night he told his parents he wished to join the army to go to medical school without paying tuition, and his drunk of a father hit him with a cricket bat.
"How can you do this to your family?! Go off to fight in someone else's war and abandon your family when it needs you most?! You're so selfish! I didn't raise you to be such a spoilt, egotistical worthless twat!"
When his father finally finished with him he couldn't even move, curled on himself, crying on the cheap, dull-gray linoleum floor of the kitchen, wishing he had never been born.
In the morning he packed his bags, taking only the most important stuff with him, woke up his mother quietly without waking up his father as well, kissed her goodbye and walked out of the door of his childhood home, catching the earliest train to the recruitment base in London.
That was the last time he saw his parents.
He thought about that line again as he walked through the door of the recruitment base, now just a little bit scared when the moment has finally come, and vowed to always be brave, because he can't always be perfect.
That line became his mantra.
"I'll never be perfect,
but at least now I'm brave."
When he enlisted he thought he'll never get used to the battlefield, to all the pain and the horrors and the despair that the war could elicit in soldiers, but he convinced himself that they were worth it if he wanted to become a doctor, and as he did one, two, three tours in Afghanistan and in Iraq, he finally found his place in the world: patching-up wounded brothers-in-arms; training other young, promising doctors for the requirements of the war; working with American doctors around the operating table, the only place where their origin didn't matter to neither of them…
For 18 years he was a soldier and a doctor;
a killer and a healer;
a destroyer and a builder –
Those were the best years of his life, and he never regretted a second of them, and surely not the decision that led to them.
At the age of 36 he got shot, and again, his mantra played in his head as he lost consciousness for what he thought was the last time: "I'll never be perfect, but at least now I'm brave…"
The next thing that happened to him was Sherlock, Mr. "I-invented-the-job" Holmes, the world's only consulting detective.
He was brilliant, John couldn't argue with that, but he was also very spoilt – a posh accent and calling his mother "mummy" giving him away.
It's not like John had anything against public-school education and a big manor (as he figured Sherlock probably grew up in) just because he wasn't raised that way, but he never talked to him about his time in the army because he knew Sherlock would never understand.
He would never understand why John had to enlist in the first place; he would never understand why John stayed in the army for 18 years, even though he could walk away after 10 years with a doctor certificate; most importantly, he would never understand John's mantra, because he thought himself to be perfect in everything and if he wasn't perfect at something he deemed it unimportant.
And life moved on, as they do, and John was nothing but adaptable, so he moved on with it.
A year came and went, and he and Sherlock grew closer, and closer, and closer…
He couldn't recall when, but at some point he realized he developed feelings – romantic, protective feelings for his flatmate, and that was also the only time in his life he broke his vow.
He wasn't brave enough to say anything about it, to express his feelings, so he just ignored them, willing them to go away but knowing they never will. He was in it for life.
He had to hear the song again on the radio, on one unusually warm Saturday evening in order to confront his feelings and finally act upon them.
When he walked determined towards Sherlock's lanky silhouette, leaning against their counter with a steaming mug of black coffee in his hand and a certain look that suggested he was currently deep in his Mind Palace, one line played in his head:
"I'll never be perfect,
but at least now I'm brave…"
And brave he was.