Please, God, let me live.
It is not the first time John Watson grasps out for the hand of divine deliverance, but it will be the last.
He did not used to believe in monsters.
He believed in war and loneliness and purposelessness— the things that really scared him— but never had he thought the nightmares under his childhood bed would bear their teeth in his adulthood, or bear him onwards into the open arms of death.
It's all poetic for the ever-briefest moment, whether because he hasn't yet grasped the situation or eternity is already setting in, he won't live long enough to find out.
This was supposed to be a normal case— if "normal" can be applied to any of their cases. When they came to the Baskerville testing facilities, Sherlock told him look around and he did. That's what John Watson does: as Sherlock tells him. John was supposed to find something in the lab, maybe a test animal or some kind of hallucinogenic drug lying around, but he was never supposed to run into this.
The Hound is not supposed to be real.
But then it snarls and panic strips John raw. He covers his mouth, gasping so hard that he can hear the breath rattling his chest. Before he knows what's happening, his feet are moving and he's going with them, keeping low like the empty lab is the shrub-speckled Afghanistan desert, like there's even a chance something can hide him. Then he's in one of the cages, trapped but safe all at the same time, hardly aware that he, himself, closed the door until he feels the clang of the metal settling in his teeth. He presses his hand to his mouth again because, surely, the thing could hear him breathing from a mile away.
His mobile rings and the shock of it all but gives him a heart attack. The bloody phone nearly fumbles its way out of his hands when he pulls it from his pocket, but he manages to answer: "It's here. It's in here with me." He tries to breathe steadily. It's not really working.
"Where are you?" Sherlock's voice at the end of the line is so cool, so calm. John would hate it if it were not the voice of rescue.
"Get me out of here, Sherlock," he hisses in the quietest conceivable whisper. "You've got to get me out. The big lab, the first lab that we saw—" Again, he tries to breathe, just breathe before fear itself kills him, but then the Hound gives a low rumble, and a strangled little noise escapes him. His hand claps itself over his mouth of its own violation.
"John," says Sherlock.
John gasps a small breath. "Now, Sherlock, please—" The words barely make it out.
"Alright, I'll find you. Keep talking."
"I-I can't, it'll hear me." It's probably already heard him. John can feel it, circling, closing in—
"Keep talking." Sherlock has employed the voice he uses on idiots. The voice he uses on everyone, really, everyone but John. "What are you seeing?"
He's seeing hell. He's seeing horror, pure and raw. Panting, now, he shifts and strains for a glance of it, just to know where it is, to judge how many seconds are left in his life.
"John?"
"It's up here," he gasps.
"What do you see?" insists Sherlock.
Trembling, hating himself for the idiot devotion that makes him do it, John shifts closer to the bars for a better look. His mind clamors all over itself, adrenalin and terror and the ignored urgings of his fight-or-flight mechanisms all scratching for the upper-hand. Dizziness threatens. He can't see anything.
"I don't know," he breathes. "I don't know, but I can hear it." It's getting closer. Its low growls quiver his insides. The Hound snarls. "There— there, did you hear that?"
"Stay calm. Can you see it?"
Something horrible is occurring to John: this is the end.
He's so afraid. Nothing has ever frightened him so badly. Combat and nightmares and the morphine-induced thought that his arm is being eaten away by desert bugs could never compare to this, and he doesn't even know why. This shouldn't scare him so bad, but it does. It's sickening. He always thought he'd go out like a soldier, like a tree when they chop it down, strong and solid. But he's so scared. So scared that his hand has already started for his gun before he realizes he wants to end the fear now.
"Can you see it?" Sherlock implores.
"No," John hisses, and his fingers tighten around his L9A1.
Then he sees it.
The Hound is vast as night. It brays around a swath of needle-sharp teeth as it approaches, uglier and more hellish than he'd allowed himself to imagine. But here it is, living, breathing, red eyes watching, just as real as his phone in one hand and his gun in the other.
"I see it," John whispers, and an odd sort of stillness settles over him. Slowly, he draws the gun out of his waistband and rests it on his knee, leaning back as he does so. "It's here. It's right here." And here it comes, closer, closer, and he's going to die and it's going to be awful, a horrible death, eaten alive, and he's not ready, he can't do it, the horror's too powerful and too all-encompassing and Dear God, let me die!
He shoves the gun's barrel into his mouth with such force that a few teeth chip. There he sits, shaking, finger firm against the trigger. The Hound is so close that he can smell its breath, all sulfur and rot and the promise that John will die a death of agony.
There is something tearing up his insides that screams, "John Watson will not die like this!" but the fear whispers, "Yes he will," and he pulls the trigger.
Seconds later, Sherlock finds the brains of his only friend spattered up the wall.