A/N: Another try at writing John and Sarah, since they're rather fun and adorably awkward. I'm still trying to find Sarah's voice, so this was more of an experiment than anything else, but I was also working under the requirements to write a fic and include some mush for a challenge on another site. Enjoy!

Sense Out of Chaos

Sarah screamed when she opened the door to her flat. She hadn't meant to; it had happened completely involuntarily.

But really, what was her reaction supposed to be? She had been following the case on the telly. The media had been all over it, digging its claws into the mystery of London's mad, mystery bomber. Sarah had known from the moment the first explosion occurred across the street from 221B Baker Street that John would be somehow embroiled in this mystery, but she hadn't truly begun to worry until the moment he failed to show up at her flat.

He usually called or texted her if he was running late, or if he couldn't come at all. But this time was different – he just didn't show up at all. She tried calling him, but his phone was off, and that was when the fear began to gnaw at her, tearing her up from the inside out.

Heart racing, she had fled to her sitting room and turned of the telly. Her eyes remained glued to the screen, watching newsreport after newsreport, while a cup of tea remained untouched on the coffee table beside her.

She waited all evening and there was nothing to report – until around midnight when a swimming pool suddenly went up in flames.

Sarah lay on her sofa all night, staring blankly at the screen, desperately hoping, praying – maybe it was an accident, maybe it was a gas leak, an isolated incident.

Or maybe it was something else entirely. The news wasn't saying.

She threw the remote at the telly.

It didn't do any good, nor did it make her feel any better.

She only moved when she felt the empty ache in her stomach begin to grow and she heard it growling. It was about two-thirty in the morning by now. Dazed and moving as if in a dream, she wandered into her kitchen and grabbed the first thing she saw – a jar of olives.

She made her way back to her sitting room and perched on her sofa, olive jar in hand, eating mindlessly while she watched the news channel and continued to absorb rubbish being dished on celebrities and the weather. She was desperately hoping that she would hear more on the incident, but at the same time, she hoped that she wouldn't.

She didn't know when she fell asleep. But the next morning there was a delightful pile of spilled olives next to a cracked olive jar on her carpet when she woke up to the sound of her flat being buzzed. She was still wearing her clothes from the night before.

Somehow, she managed to get up and stumble to the door. Heavy on her feet, eyes bleary, her mind in far-off places, a complete and utterly confused mess—

And she opened the door and screamed.

John was standing there, bruised and scraped, his arm in a sling. He smiled at her, looking tired and worn – and apologetic.

"I'm sorry I'm late."

For just one brief, fleeting moment, Sarah stared at him in disbelief. And then she started to cry. She didn't mean to – the prickling behind her eyes had crept up on her without notice, and even though she told herself to stop, it was all she could do now.

John looked at her, uncertain what to do. He took a step towards her and patted her awkwardly on the back.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You idiot!" Sarah shouted. She ran a finger under her eye, trying to wipe away the tears.

"I know."

"You bloody idiot!"

Suddenly, she threw her arms around him, crying into his shoulder. They stood there on her step for a moment, completely oblivious to the stares they were getting from passing strangers, until he staggered backwards, wincing. Sarah let go.

"Oh no, your arm – I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"No, no it's all right, it's not that bad." He smiled faintly.

Sarah wiped her eyes again. "You… uh." She cleared her throat. "You better come in." She waved him inside the hallway; John passed by, murmuring her thanks, and she followed him, closing the door shut on the busy street.

"There's a jar of olives on the floor," John said when they reached the sitting room.

"Oh! Yes, I…" Sarah crossed the room and knelt, her fingers grasping at the stray olives and stuffing them back into their cracked storage place. She'd have to get rid of the lot of them later…

"Here, let me." John knelt next to her and cleaned up the mess with his good hand. "So," he said, fishing the final stray olive out from under the sofa, "how did a jar of olives end up on your floor?"

Sarah sat down on the carpet, hugging her knees to her chest. "I don't even recall now," she said. "I was hungry, I suppose."

John glanced at the broken jar in his hand. "Some snack, olives…"

Sarah shrugged. "It works."

She looked up, catching his eye.

"You look dreadful, by the way," he said. He was smiling – uncertainly, perhaps, but there was a genuine smile there.

"So do you."

He chuckled, passing a hand across his bruised face. "Yes, well… I've had worse, I suppose." He stood up, making to head for the kitchen, but Sarah caught his arm. He looked down at her and, noting her expression, quickly set the olive jar aside. He sat down, his back against the sofa, and rested his good hand on the floor.

"You aren't going to tell me what happened, are you?" Sarah said after a moment. Her fingers picked at the carpet.

"I can, if you want. It's been all over the news—"

"Yeah, I gathered that," Sarah interrupted. She looked away. "Mad bomber across London, naturally you'd be there."

"I didn't mean to worry you—"

"But you did, John!" Her eyes snapped back to him. "You bloody well did! Any time anything awful happens, I worry. Because whether you're involved or not, I know exactly what you and Sherlock get up to and there are times when I can't even sit down and watch the evening news without wondering how much you had to do with some murder report that's being broadcast." She pressed her fingers into her forehead. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to shout."

"I deserved it."

"What? No!" Sarah shook her head. "No, don't feel guilty. It's not your fault—"

"—I should have let you know—"

"—no, you shouldn't have, that would only have made things worse—"

"—how could it make things worse, I mean, you have a right—"

"—because I shouldn't be distracting you."

They looked at each other.

"Oh," John said.

Sarah bit her lower lip. "Sorry."

"Why are you sorry?"

She plucked at a loose thread in the carpet. "Because maybe, someday, you'll get into trouble because you're not focusing on what you should…" She stopped. She felt tongue-tied. Why did she feel tongue-tied?

"No, Sarah, this is my own damn fault," John said. "I'm the one putting myself on the line. Anything that happens to me, well, let's just say that I don't have to do what I do."

She frowned. "What is it? What's wrong?"

He was quiet for a very long time. She waited, watching him trying to decide what to tell her. She twisted her fingers together.

"I had a minor case of abduction," John said finally. "Well, when I say minor, I mean—"

"Abduction?" Sarah exclaimed. "John!"

Not again, she thought in the same instance. She caught his eye, and she could tell that he knew what she was thinking. Some first dates were memorable like that – not that you particularly wanted to remember them in the first place.

"No, no, no," he said quickly. "Don't, that's… oh God."

She got up and crawled across the floor, sitting down beside him with her back to the sofa. "You don't have to say," she said. "Not if you don't want to."

He glanced down at his injured arm. "It's not me," he said. "It's the people we couldn't save. Didn't save. Twelve of them, or more. Sherlock solved the case, but he killed them anyway. People have died, Sarah."

"It's not your fault."

"Yes, but maybe there was something I could have done to stop that from happening."

She reached out and gently laid a hand on his arm. "Those people would have died, whether you were there or not," she said. "You aren't responsible for their deaths, John, some nutter is—"

"They didn't catch him."

"What?"

"He's gone. The man who organised this."

She swallowed. "But they'll catch him, won't they? DI Lestrade will catch him? Sherlock will catch him."

"I don't know." John paused. "He's something new."

They fell silent. Sarah didn't know what to say. She'd been rescued by Sherlock herself; it seemed impossible to imagine a criminal who could trump even him. She shivered. Maybe there was something worse out there, haunting London's streets: a criminal mastermind, playing games with people's lives for the sole purpose of toying with the police…

The more she thought about it, the more she realised what a dangerous world they lived in.

"Still," she said eventually. "It's over now."

"Yes. Yes, it is. For now."

"Another day, another trail of clues, I suppose," Sarah said. "They'll find him. I know it. One day they'll catch him and lock him up for good."

John turned to look at her. "Why so optimistic?"

"Because," Sarah said, "no matter how bad things get, you always seem to come back to annoy me."

He laughed at that. So did she. It wasn't the most hilarious thing in the world, but in that particular moment, it sure seemed like it.

"How do you do that?" John asked.

"Do what?"

"Make sense out of chaos?"

Sarah blinked. "If you call that sense," she said, "then maybe there is something wrong with you."

He chuckled. "Oh, thanks for that."

"Of course," Sarah said, "that would mean that there's something wrong with me, too, because I'm the one insisting that you keep coming around."

She caught his eye again, feeling a faint blush in her cheeks. But she had made up her mind about something in that moment, because she kissed him right then. He froze, taken by surprise, and suddenly she realised that she had never truly kissed him before – not really. But after everything she had felt in the past twelve hours – not knowing whether he was alive or not, left in the dark, wondering – nothing seemed better than to kiss him now.

After his temporary moment of shock, he seemed to agree with that.

"Well," he murmured against her lips.

She drew away, resting her head against his good shoulder. "I'm glad," she said.

"Me, too."

They sat there on her floor, Sarah curled against him, his good arm put lightly around her shoulders. The only sounds they heard were the light ticking of a clock in the kitchen and their own breathing. Sarah closed her eyes; it was incredibly calm, just sitting there, in a pleasant sort of way. And though she felt drained – drained of energy from having little sleep the night before – she was happy. Sincerely happy. She couldn't remember the last time she had been this content.

After a while – when she realised that it was around mid-morning, she murmured, "Say, John?"

"Yes?"

"Do you want some breakfast?"

"I think I could do with some, yeah."

Sarah smiled, though she didn't get up yet.

"I think I could get used to this," she said.

He ran a hand through her loose hair. "Me, too."

fin