AUTHOR'S FIRST NOTE
When I finally write a story that I'm pleased with, they always end up being a mile long! I have therefore split this one shot into three parts with one part being released each week. Like I wrote in the description, this is a Hurt & Comfort fic in every sense of the word. I'm writing from John's perspective again because it's just so interesting to explore this almost existential discussion from his point of view. I have also gotten very good feedback about the way I write "my" John so of course I want to continue on the same track. Not written as a Johnlock fic but of course you can read it as you like. Rated T for some dark themes and in later chapters, some bad language.

Dedicated to my two beta readers and fellow fangirls. I don't know what I would do without you!


WHEN DAWN BREAKS

PART ONE...

"Oh, for God's sake!"

It was when I found myself staring wide awake into the ceiling for the fourth time that night that I really lost patience with myself. I rolled my eyes and turned sideways in a brisk and frustrated manner, wondering if I finally would except that I wouldn't get anymore sleep tonight.

Periods of insomnia weren't really new to me. I had always been a light sleeper. The fact that I also was a naturally brooding person didn't make it better. It had kept me awake many times, hour after hour in the darkness, and then when I finally had fallen asleep, the slightest sound usually woke me up again. This was probably a legacy from my years in the military. Back then, if you weren't careful and alert all the time, every moment could be your last.

My experiences from the battlefields were of course another reason why it wasn't always too pleasant to enter dreamland. After I got shot in Afghanistan I was haunted every single night by my comrades screaming my name, begging me to help them with their wounds. Every night I woke up dropping with sweat and a racing heart. Every time I couldn't help them because I was a bloody crippling in an apartment on west side London...
Time didn't make it better, only worse. I was close to giving up on sleep all together. All I wanted was to be there by their side in the centre of it all and nothing else here seemed important in comparison. Not even life itself.

The nightmares became much less frequent after I met Sherlock and moved into Baker Street. This was kind of ironic because I always seemed to get into serious trouble whenever I followed him on his strange and intensive investigations. Still, I never had a bad dream about any of our cases. During nights when we were without something to do and I finally had time to get some sleep, I actually slept really well. It was completely illogical in theory but it worked like my own personal kind of therapy, something that probably said more about me than anything else.

Then Sherlock committed suicide and the nightmares came back and worse than ever. The difference was that visions of my comrades dying around me were replaced with Sherlock lying dead on the pavement in a pool of blood, just like he had that grey morning. I always tried desperately to reach him, screaming that I must help him, that I must save him. Every time I was pulled farther and farther away the more I struggled and could only stare as life left his body. Worst of all was when I saw his wide open eyes. They were completely hollow without the slightest sparkle of life in them. Just unlike everything that he was, the person who I saw as the embodiment of life itself. That was usually when I was awoken by my own screams.

The thought of these horrible memories threw me briskly back into reality again. I sighed deeply and calmed myself with the fact that all this was a long time ago now. All those nightmares, even that morning outside St Barts hospital. So much had changed since then and instead of brooding more about the past, I kept listening to the soothing sound from downstairs that was the familiar sound of a single violin.

I was staying at Baker Street over the weekend. Mary's girlfriends had surprised her this morning for her hen party. I had been let in on the plans a week ago and without any plans of my own, I figured that I could seize the opportunity to spend some time with Sherlock. My work at the medical centre took a lot of my time but I tried to come here some few times a month at least. Sometimes it ended with me following him on cases, just like during old times. Most times it ended with him lying on the sofa, muttering quite unflattering deductions about the sergeants in the police force while I read the latest newspaper, trying to ignore him. Oh, and he said he wasn't bitter at Donovan and the others. Bullshit.

The tune from downstairs ended on a low pitched note and for a short moment all was silent. When the music once again flowed through the rooms, it was with a melody I hadn't heard in two and a half years. I actually froze for a moment at the sound of it. For me the composition would forever be associated with one of our most extraordinary cases which introduced us to a most extraordinary opponent. I called it Irene's theme. What he called it, I hadn't the faintest.

I won't deny that I was slightly surprised. After the case was finished and Adler was out of our lives, I had never heard him play it again. When Mrs Hudson, in all her unknowingly good will, had asked him to play it for Mary a month ago, he had become somewhat irritated. Now here he was playing it during one of his nightly sessions between his violin and his mind. I guessed that I would never understand what she truly meant to him. Maybe this was the only way which he could express those feelings that he couldn't really understand himself.

As time passed 3:00 AM I decided that all my upcoming attempts at sleeping already were doomed to fail. Instead, I climbed out of my bed and put on my dressing gown, put my phone in my pocket and then slowly walked down the stairs, taking every step as carefully as I possibly could to avoid disturbing my friend in his playing. I headed for the living room but then stopped in the doorway when the following picture was displayed in front of me:

The light rays of the very early morning sun broke through the window glass and filled the room with warmth and a shine that was coloured in both red, orange and yellow. My friend stood by the left window with his back against me. He wore his grey pyjamas together with his red dressing gown and by his neck he held his precious instrument. His right arm moved gracefully as he let the bow caress the violin strings which created the soothing sound that was the familiar tune, just as incredibly beautiful as it was dolefully haunting.

I leaned to the door frame and let my eyes consume the picture in front of me. The whole scene could have been fit to become a beautiful photograph or a painting by an old master. Instead, it was actually a scene from my reality. Just months ago, I had been more than sure that I would never again witness my friend playing on his violin. Apart from that, I would soon marry my fiancé Mary Morstan which, for some extraordinary and wonderful reason, really liked Sherlock and got along with him in a way that none of my former partners had done. He even seemed to enjoy her company most of the time. Every time I watched them talking and occasionally laughing together, I became even surer that she was the love of my life. Yes, in five months I would marry the woman I loved and I would do it with my best friend, the man that I had thought dead for two years, right beside me. I smiled and hoped that God wasn't done spooling me yet.

Sherlock finished the tune with a gorgeous last note and took the violin from his neck.

"I like that one." I said. "It's very beautiful."

Sherlock didn't seem to react the very least when he heard my voice, like he was already aware that I had been watching him for a while.

"Have you ever stopped for a moment to admire the sunrise in the morning, John?" he said after a moment of silence as he continued to stare out the window.

"Well, I took my time sometimes when I was in Afghanistan." I answered as I walked into the room. "When you don't know which day might be your last, you start to appreciate those everyday things a bit more."

"Mmm, on ne sait jamais. It is just as much a gift as it is a curse, don't you think? What would life be if we knew when it would end?"

He spoke calmly but with a feeling that I had rarely heard in his voice.

"Can't sleep either, huh?"

"Never intended to."

"You're on a case? Something I can do to help? You know I want to if I can."

I have to be honest and say that this was an understatement. I was absolutely desperate to help. The small medical centre was always quiet. The suburban apartment building were we lived was always calm. Too calm! Sometimes I actually thought I could understand how Sherlock felt on nights when he practiced his shooting skills against the wall in the living room (the recently wallpapered one since two months, much to Mrs Hudson's despair).

When all this appeared in my thoughts I felt at once very ungrateful. I really shouldn't say that my life with Mary was boring. I loved her more than anything and I would do anything for her. She alone had gotten me through the past year. She had been the only one who had truly understood me during this time. She had finally helped me to move on after losing my closest friend in a way that I had been absolutely sure that it was forever a closed chapter. She had been brave enough to take me on, a lonely and traumatised man, and save me from myself. Mary Morstan was my rock and my soulmate. For her it was worth being bored sometimes.

Sherlock snickered darkly in response to my question.

"Of course I do. And no, I don't have a case right now. Nothing of interest has come across."

His snicker suddenly turned into a cynical, almost crazy sounding chuckle. He buried his face between his fingers before ruffling his hair in clear frustration.

"Dear God, they all come here with their little everyday problems and think I will found them interesting. How utterly ridiculous. At least the development in the papers about the "Hitchcock murders" suggests that the investigation is getting to a halt."

He handled me his phone with notices and articles from both The Telegraph and The Guardian ready for me to read.

"Judging from these, Lestrade will most likely convince Gregson to ask for me in about five hours." Sherlock said while taking up his violin again. "Until then, why sleep when you can drift off to violin land where everything is sweet and in harmony and no boring clients bore me with their boring problems?"

He began to play, a ballad that he had written himself, and in just a short moment he seemed to have lost himself completely in the music again.

I shook my head slightly at him. Sherlock hated everything about the mundane routine that was everyday life, probably even more than me, and would do anything to get rid of his boredom. Still, he could play on his violin hour after hour in complete silence with his eyes closed the whole time. How that wall shooting, harpoon waving maniac could be in the same mind and body as that peaceful musician was a mystery complicated enough that I was sure that only he himself could be able to solve it.

"Tell me more about the case." I said.

Sherlock stopped playing immediately and turned around with a pleased smile on his face.

"Of course. I'm just going to have a shower first. Haven't washed off the smell from the treatment plant yet."

For once, I wasn't really feeling too eager to hear all the details of that particular case.

"Make yourself some breakfast if you want to." Sherlock continued. "I think there are some eggs in the fridge but I might have mistaken the eye balls for them."

He placed the violin in his armchair and began to walk out of the living room. Half way out he dropped his dressing gown and began to pull his T-shirt over his head. When he was just about to round the corner of the living room doorway, that's when I first saw it...


AUTHOR'S SECOND NOTE
What do you think John saw? Let me now in the comments and also tell me what you thought about the first chapter of this story. Follow & Favourite!