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Well, John thought, staring at the opposite wall of what he supposed was a waiting room (going by the fact that he'd been sitting there for half an hour), it could have been worse. Not by much, but he'd take what he could get. He absently rubbed at the dried blood on his hands and sighed.

…

The sounds of the battle were filling his ears and making it hard to think. The air was thick with the smell of guns and blood and sweat, and he tried to drag the frail body of his comrade away from it. There was an eerie halo around the battlefield, but its surroundings were dark, the sun having set hours ago. John spared a thought for how long the days were on this remote rock floating in space, but he couldn't remember. His hands under the injured soldier's arms, he dragged the body into a cave that was really more of an overhang of rock. It would have to do. He didn't have the strength to get much further away, and at least there was a barrier between them and the battle. He took a deep breath and looked at his patient. His eyes were shut and his face was pale with sweat. The bullet wound in his shoulder was oozing blood, and, as John had already checked, there was no exit wound. The bullet was still inside – not a particularly good sign, but also not his main worry at the moment. John turned to look at the leg. The soldier had been unlucky enough to receive damage to his femoral artery, and the emergency tourniquet John had put over it had been the right measure to take, but it was by no means enough. The man needed to be brought to a hospital, or at least to one of their ships. John sat up, the relentless noise not letting him concentrate - and then, suddenly, there was no noise at all.

When he came to, the sun was rising and his ears were ringing. He sat up with a groan and blinked a few times to get used to the brightness. Then he froze. His former patient lay dead before him, a ghastly sight in the early morning light. His eyes weren't completely closed, and his half-lidded, empty stare was focused on nothing. John swallowed and looked away. He'd seen this before, no need to panic. He routinely checked for a pulse, but the temperature of the body confirmed that he'd died a while ago.

He took a few moments to gather himself. There had obviously been an explosion, going by the slight ringing in his ears and his loss of consciousness.

There was nothing for it, he'd have to take a look at the battlefield.

Standing up, he looked over the wall of rock. What he saw felt like a punch to the gut. There was nothing there but death.

His search hadn't turned up a single living thing in the sea of destruction the explosion had caused, and, in fact, not even a working spaceship, although they had been standing quite a distance away. Had there been more than one explosion? The whole thing was so clearly a set-up, a trap, that it hurt John to think his comrades had paid with their lives for falling for it. What had they thought their enemy was protecting, here on this bare slab of land without as much as a tree on it?

That these... aliens... had sacrificed their own people for this made his stomach harden in bitterness.

He got his communicator out. Not much sense in him dying here as well – although there was still every chance of that happening. This wasn't exactly the most frequented area of this galaxy, and he'd be very lucky if a spaceship came into reach of his weak signal and decided to stop for him too.

…

But a spaceship had picked up his signal, and it had come to rescue him, although he had yet to see a crew member. All he had so far was a message on his communicator that said, "Rolling down the stairs. Sending someone to pick you up from there."

He'd been waiting for half an hour now.

…

The doors opened automatically. Frustrating. Sherlock was longing to slam a door, a nice, old-fashioned one that produced a satisfying bang. Beyond annoyed, he called out a "Bored!" to the bridge of the Tethys.

Lestrade turned around in the Captain's seat to look at him. "You do know you invited yourself along? If it's so boring, why did you come?"

"I was expecting the route to be a different one," Sherlock answered distractedly, looking for a chair to dramatically slouch on. "Clearly the person who planned this one is an idiot. Particularly in light of the last two days."

Anderson's offended "Hey!" followed as expected. Still not very gratifying.

Then Sherlock's eyes lit up. "Ah, Stamford!" he said jovially. "Leave."

Stamford looked up at him incredulously. "Why?"

"Or at least stand up," Sherlock amended generously.

"Sherlock!" Lestrade exclaimed. "Mike isn't getting up just so you can complain from a more comfortable position!"

"No one needs a doctor on the bridge of a spaceship," Sherlock said with a flick of the wrist.

"At least he's a member of the crew!" Anderson snarled.

"You yourself deliver daily proof that membership in this crew is in no way a means by which to determine the competence of someone. I could do both Mike's job and yours much better than either of you."

Lestrade scoffed. "Oh come on, Sherlock. You're many things, but you're not a doctor."

Sherlock was about to retort that yes, he was a very capable physician, albeit without any experience, much less any sort of official qualification, when Donovan spoke up.

"Captain, we've got an incoming emergency signal."

Lestrade's eyebrows rose. "That's a surprise. Didn't think there was another living thing around within a day's distance. Details?"

"It's coming from planet number M27 of the system, about forty minutes away. Device is a standard HAF communicator, older model."

Sherlock moved over to her and leaned over the screen. "Call up the message," he ordered.

She did and said, "It's a set message, contains name and position, time it was sent et cetera."

Lestrade considered this for a moment. "Read it out," he said.

"You can't possibly be considering picking them up!" Anderson spluttered.

"Of course I am. At least have to check who it is before we leave them here to die."

"And also this is a rather interesting development," Sherlock added. "Quite promising."

With a glare at Sherlock, Sally read, "John Watson, armed medical forces-"

"John Watson!" Stamford exclaimed. "I trained with a John Watson on board Bart's! Medical forces, you say? That must be him. Now that's a surprise!"

Sherlock leaned back with a smirk. "Oh really? So tell us, Mike," he drawled, looking at Anderson. "Is John Watson worth saving?"

"Aye, finest lad I ever met."

Lestrade shrugged. "Okay then! Sally, what can you tell me about the planet?"

"Computer says it's not populated. Barely any plants."

"Sherlock, could you just check the military reports for action there?"

Anderson's head snapped up. "But it's my-"

Sherlock stopped him before he could embarrass himself even more. "You know as well as I do that I'm much faster at this. The division was originally set to go to Lunar 7 of this system, but there was a last minute change of plan. Apparently it was discovered that the enemy troops had been reposted to M27 and it was concluded that they must have been protecting something there. Foolish, of course, and quite suspicious. It was obviously a trap, but why did they fall for it? And why did the enemy sacrifice one of their own division just to do a little bit of damage to the much bigger human troops?"

The crew sighed in unison.

…

They proceeded to answer the message and land the ship, opening one of the smaller side entrances to let their guest into a waiting room.

Sherlock was pacing up and down agitatedly, his hands pressed together under his chin. Finally something was happening. A mystery, thrilling despite its military setting. A single surviving victim, all his to dissect.

Why M27? Why why why why.

Lestrade cut into his frantic thought process. "Anderson, he's in. Go get him here."

"Anderson? You cannot be serious. Do you realise the value of observing a victim directly after the traumatic event? The first contact with the outside world?"

Lestrade gave him a hard look. "I realise he must be shocked, and that means you of all people shouldn't be the one to see him first."

"Oh, and Anderson's mug is less frightening? At least my eyes aren't bottomless black holes of stupidity!"

Anderson gave him the finger and exited the room. Sherlock collapsed onto the newly deserted chair with a longsuffering sigh.

They waited for fifteen minutes, looking at each other questioningly when Anderson didn't return then. Frowning, Lestrade decided to use the intercom.

"What the heck are you doing?"

"He isn't here," Anderson snarled, perfectly audible for everyone on the bridge.

"Of course he's there. The room's shown as occupied!"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Let me guess. You're at Entry 8."

"Of course I fucking am!"

"Well, then I regret to inform you that the entry we opened is Entry 6, which, as luck would have it, is on the other side of the ship." With that, Sherlock shut off the intercom (to an irritated "Hey!" from Lestrade), and said, "Stamford, come with me. Maybe the presence of someone he knows can balance out my rudeness."

"That's one way of calling it," Lestrade told his retreating back, at the same time reasoning that it was all fine since Sherlock was actually going to find the room and not let John Watson wait until he starved.

…

Stamford scrambled to keep up with his long steps, but Sherlock barely spared him a glance. Time to take a look at this piece of live evidence.

…

John was absentmindedly wondering what the point of letting him wait was, or if the crew were just busy. Maybe they'd forgot all about him. He looked out of the glass wall of the room into the hallway, picking at a small scratch on the back of his hand.

There was the sound of footsteps, and then two people rounded the corner. John's eye was immediately drawn to the first man. Tall, dark haired, purposefully striding down the corridor, oddly shaped face dominated by eyes that were glinting with intent.

John blinked and quickly looked at the second man. For a moment he was stunned by how two people could be that different, for Stamford was neither as tall nor as graceful as the other man. Then it registered that it was Stamford, and he jumped to his feet, staring at his friend in disbelief.

"Mike!" he exclaimed when the two men had reached the room. The tall man took out a key and opened the door – but his eyes never left John, he noted absently.

Mike stepped towards him and shook his hand enthusiastically. "John! I couldn't believe it when we picked up your signal!"

John grinned and shrugged. "I didn't think anyone would pick up my signal, much less someone I know."

The man smirked. "Very true. There's no reason for anyone to take this route."

Mike smiled. "Sorry, forgot to introduce you. Sherlock, this is John Watson. John, this is Sherlock Holmes. He's our resident genius."

John proffered his hand with a grin. Sherlock lifted an eyebrow, but took it.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Holmes."

"Sherlock, please."

They looked at each other for a moment before John broke away, intending to talk to Stamford.

"It's not your fault he died."

John's head snapped back to Sherlock. "What are you talking about?"

"That soldier. He wouldn't have survived even if you had stayed conscious after the explosion. He'd already lost so much blood by the time you were able to apply the tourniquet that he'd either have died by the time he got to a hospital or had a necrotic leg, which, in his state, would have killed him just as effectively."

John stared into space for a moment.

"Ah, there he goes again..." Stamford murmured, shaking his head at Sherlock but smiling fondly.

"How could you possibly know all that?" John asked, frowning and looking up at Sherlock expectantly.

Sherlock affected being bored. "Oh, easily. The amount of blood around your elbows signs toward a profusely bleeding wound. There's a little less blood on your hands, most likely because you've already rubbed some of it off. However, there are lines in the blood that tell me you've used a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. The most likely place for such a wound is the thigh. As I said before, your elbows are bloody. Therefore he must have been bleeding for quite a while. You couldn't possibly have saved him."

John opened his mouth, closed it. "How...?"

"I observe."

John licked his lips and looked to the side. "That's. That's amazing."

"It is?"

"Oh yes, absolutely. Never seen anything like it."

Sherlock's eyebrows twitched, torn between wide-eyes surprise and uncomprehending frown. "That's not what people usually say."

"Why, what do they say?"

"Piss off."

John laughed, startled. Sherlock studied him for a moment, then grinned back at him.

Mike looked back and forth between them, shaking his head. "Come on, you two. We've got to get John to Captain Lestrade."

…

The ship was huge. John had been able to tell as much from outside, but actually being inside it was another thing entirely. They walked down an endless corridor to a lift the size of his parents' living room. While they were going up, John realised that now that he was out of danger, the reality of what had happened was starting to set in. He was physically all right, nothing beyond a few scratches here and there, and he could do with a shower, but that was it. The thought that he was the only surviving victim of a major explosion on a deserted planet, though, that all his comrades were dead, made him feel nauseated in a way that had nothing to do with being sick. His very core felt so queasy that it made his whole body weak, yet left his knees strong enough to keep him upright. He thought maybe he'd get a fever, or stumble and fall, and he worried how he was ever going to get rid of that feeling-

"If you aren't going to structure your thoughts at all, then you might as well stop thinking."

John's head snapped up. Sherlock wasn't looking at him, his eyes focused on nothing in particular but definitely trained on the shut door in front of him.

He's feigning nonchalance, John realised. "You're feigning nonchalance," he found himself saying.

Although he hadn't been moving, Sherlock visibly stopped, froze. After taking a moment to get over his surprise, he spoke. "And on what observations do you base this theory?"

John shrugged. "Just a guess."

Sherlock scoffed. "No one just guesses something like that."

John licked his lips. "Okay. It's your posture. Your eyes. You're trying way too hard to look like you're bored to actually be bored."

Sherlock smirked. "That wasn't half bad! Of course, it also wasn't good, not scientific at all and with an incorrect deduction as a result, but certainly better than ninety percent of this ship's occupants."

John gave a deep sigh and turned back to the door. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should. It's highly improbable you'll ever hear anything like that from me again," Sherlock announced cheerfully.

Mike, standing on Sherlock's other side, chuckled before he could stop himself, and it was then that John remembered there were actually three people in the lift.