Set during 'His Last Vow', days after Sherlock reveals to John the truth about Mary. Epic friendship story.
"I did warn you."
"Been waiting this whole car ride to tell me that, have you?" Sherlock sighed through his nose in annoyance, leaning back wearily into the pristine leather. Mycroft smirked superiorly from the passenger seat, looking through the mirror to see Sherlock and John in the back.
"Had you not gone run away from the hospital, you would have been on the road to recovery days ago. But of course you had to go and prove your genius. The empty house was a bit dramatic, even for you." Mycroft sniffed distastefully. John's hand trembled slightly at the mention of the disastrous events just days prior.
The paramedics rushing in, Sherlock's pained voice calling out his name, reaching for him. The whimpered cry as Sherlock fell to the floor, his heart failing and his punctured lung giving out. The defibrillator, the convulsion of Sherlock's thin body. He was running his hand through his friend's raven hair, tears staining his face as the stretcher was brought in. Sherlock had almost died again protecting John, showing him the truth- John was being pushed away, his hands torn from their clasp on his friend's pale face. Mary was watching him scream Sherlock's name over and over, her eyes devoid of any emotion.
"John deserved to know." Sherlock answered Mycroft quietly, his voice thick from exhaustion. John blinked the nightmarish memories away, his hand still trembling on the seat.
"And running around London with him caused severe internal bleeding, which almost killed you for a second time in less than thirty-six hours." Mycroft countered smoothly. Ignoring Mycroft, Sherlock let his head loll back uselessly onto the headrest, his eyes fluttering shut.
John watched Sherlock out of the corner of his eye, trying without much success to seem relaxed. Ever the soldier at attention, John allowed himself to observe Sherlock.
He was a wreck.
His friend laid stretched out on the seat in a tangle of gangly limbs and IV tubes. Sherlock was gaunt, more so than John had ever seen him. His skin had a sickly sallow pallor that gave Sherlock the appearance of being more dead than alive. His raven curls were a wild mess from his pained tossing and turning in the hospital bed. The curls were slick with sweat from the physical pain Sherlock had endured in his move from the hospital ward to Mycroft's waiting sleek black car.
John felt like his heart was being mercilessly squeezed in an iron grip as he watched his friend try to steady his breathing. It was pitiful. The young man lay there limply, shuddering slightly as he took another rattling breath. His hands lay languidly in his lap on top of the pale blue hospital gown. The hospital gown, John realized, only served to highlight Sherlock's increasing thinness. The collarbone sharply jutting out from his chest, the wrist bones seemed too delicate all added to his skeletal appearance. Sherlock Holmes, the man back from the dead, looked ready to join their ranks once again.
John shook this thought away forcefully, repelling the hideous thought as he had many times in the recent days. Sherlock was recovering. Well, as much as one could recover, John mused listlessly, his own bullet wound aching in his chest.
Sherlock had just got out of surgery yesterday. Once they had deemed him stable enough, the doctors had finally removed the bullet that had been lodged into Sherlock's back. Sherlock's hadn't spoken much since then, his dark glacier eyes becoming distant.
John had been by his young friend's side through the entire god-awful night after the surgery. He had held Sherlock's slender hands encompassed in his own. The long, fragile fingers looked so foreign against his strong tanned ones. John had been there as Sherlock, drugged and half-delirious with pain, had tried to avoid sleep. He had finally succumbed, curling into himself for comfort. He had seemed so small in the hospital bed. John stayed by his side vigilantly, fighting away his own exhaustion with the promise he would be there for his friend.
Be there as he had not been since Sherlock's return from the grave.
He had abandoned his friend for Mary, and Sherlock had paid the price. He had taken a bullet because of John's own blindness.
Sherlock's eyes dimmed with unattainable emotion."You chose her." His voice whispered in his soft baritone, the young detective smiling sadly down at him.
Memories of John's own war wound had flickered in the darken ward.
The explosion before his eyes, the shock that had brutally ripped all thought from his mind. And the pain, the torture that ravaged his body with every gasping breath, every quiver of his heart.
John could still feel the hole inside him, the empty void just below his heart. Every beat the wound echoed, a cold and unfeeling reminder that he had been broken. A hole ripped through him. He had been shattered into a thousand pieces flying through the air, glinting with the light of the hellish Afghanistan sun.
Sherlock had been shattered too. You could see it in the depths of his cobalt eyes, the miniature stars falling one by one. Both men were broken.
Sherlock had always known that John was broken. Yet Sherlock had befriended him anyway, taking the broken soldier and giving his life new purpose.
"I will solve your murder, but John Watson will save your life."
John glanced at Sherlock, who had fallen asleep, his neck arched awkwardly so his head fell on the headrest. Carefully John reached over, mindful of the IV tubes. Grasping Sherlock's shoulder, John guided him to lay down stretched on the seat, his head falling into John's lap. John cautiously ran his hand through Sherlock's damp curls. John stopped abruptly as Sherlock shivered in his lap. A second later, a contented sigh escaped Sherlock's parted lips. John cautiously resumed stroking Sherlock's hair, laughing softly to himself as Sherlock's lanky frame attempted to curl into a ball.
"Like a cat." John chuckled, brushing Sherlock's bangs away from his closed eyes.
"I'm not the only one who's saved a life, you know." John echoed, low enough so Mycroft wouldn't hear.
"You saved mine."
John stroked Sherlock's hair, unaware that the tremor in his hand was gone.
Depending on the response I get, this will be a collection of one-shots. Please review and tell me what you think!