His throat is raw and his ears filled with the echoes of screaming, wailing. His shoulder throbs, a bitter, stinging pain. The edges of his vision are blurry but it's John crouched at his feet, John's face floating before his eyes. He sucks in a deep gasp and his chest and throat burn like a lungful of desert sand.

John is saying his name (he can watch John's lips and they are moving, air in and out, and John's nostrils are flaring because he is breathing, he is alive) but his voice sounds strange in Sherlock's ears; its pitch rises and falls like a siren drawing closer.

"John," he croaks and his voice is a wreck. His fingers clutch in John's shirt like roots, tightening into dry fists. John's hands are on him, taking his pulse, steadying him. John's eyes are on him too and his lips are moving but he is addressing someone Sherlock cannot see. "What did you give him?" he demands. Touching Sherlock's face, checking his eyes, John's fingers warm on his cheekbones.

Someone responds; Lestrade, a voice Sherlock recognises but the content unintelligible.

John's neck is marred by a glaring burn, ruddy crimson running north to south. The angriest welts, Sherlock notes, marvelling, have risen up where the gun had been cocked, the revolver, holding Sherlock frozen in place, holding John between two worlds. John had gotten burned?

He tries to reach out, to touch the swath of red stretching across his friend's skin, but his arms are too light for his brain to control them, his feet and legs and head so heavy. The sting in his shoulder is fading (needle, supplies some wispy, vacant section of his mind that remembers what to do about pain), everything, in fact, is fading down to that furious splotch of colour.

"The cabby's gun," he says, and his English feels like it's being spoken backwards but by the softening of steel gray, he sees that John can understand him (of course John can understand him; John is always the one to put Sherlock back together, to collect the pieces when they shatter apart). "It was the cabby's gun?"

John looms closer; his face is distorted in his concern, taking up all of Sherlock's vision, his lungs. "Yes," he says, and the sibilant winds its way around Sherlock's rib cage as the lines in John's face flicker. "Sherlock," (his face is pained, twisted), "how could you not know?"

And there's no way he couldn't have known, because he had been the one to call the cabbie out on it in the first place, and besides, he's Sherlock Holmes – something like that could never

(but he hadn't known, he hadn't, because when they had forced John to his knees and jammed it below his jaw, Sherlock had shut down in the worst possible way – he could see everything around him, every detail, every piece of information and his eyes were stretched wide open but not one of it did him a bit of good, despite it all there was nothing he could do for John and he had fought, body wracked with the struggle but held in place by the knowledge that one step forward would bring it one second closer, and he had watched in agony the progressive twitches of the three muscles needed to pull a trigger and his world had gone over dark and screaming)

have escaped him, and John knows that, knows what Sherlock can see and do, and so that's why he is crouched here looking so heartbreakingly concerned when he should be rejoicing, singing to proclaim his own resurrection, the miracle that Sherlock had pocketed somewhere between the moment his life was saved and the dawning instant where his eyes were opened to how extraordinary John was.

How could you not know?

All the tension wound up inside of Sherlock escapes him in one ragged exhale, one corrosive sob, and he slumps forward and his forehead rests against John's and everything is so much quieter, finally.

It's still quiet when he awakes (four hours later, to judge by the chill in the air and the hum of traffic outside) and his eyes open in his bed, where John is lying beside him on cream-coloured sheets. John's eyes are closed, his mouth slack in sleep, his breathing even. He is lying half-curled on his side, and the paperback book he had been holding in his right hand has fallen closed, the bookmark askew beside it.

John is there, Sherlock realises, because he won't permit Sherlock one moment of doubt. He won't allow Sherlock to awake, disoriented and groggy and drugged, and think even for one scathing instant that he is dead.

It's because John knows, John has known loss and he understands fear. He learned it in Afghanistan, stranded in a sea of sand after a deafening blast, floundering in the heat of the sun, bleeding out where the rock gave no sign of water, frantic to know what had happened to the rest of his squad. And he'd learned it again, Sherlock had showed him – had had to show him – that desperation like that could follow you home, that even in London there were places in where there was nowhere to hide, no rock or tree that could provide shelter.

And he must have stirred because John is awake now, asking him gently if he's all right, trying to hold back his concern but still staring at Sherlock like he's just pulled him out of the Thames. Sherlock tries to answer, reassure him, but his voice breaks and he's almost impressed at how he must have been shrieking for the pain to last this long.

John sighs and his face scrunches up again. He looks like he wants to curl in on himself, but then his eyes clear and Sherlock sees resolve in them. He straightens up and sets his jaw, looking Sherlock directly in the eye, freezing him in place with his stare so there can be no mistake about whatever comes next.

"Sherlock," he says and his voice is calm, filled with military authority. "You know that... I would never have let you think that." He swallows, and Sherlock can read the honesty in his eyes, how badly he needs to be believed. "I couldn't. Not..." He shakes his head.

And this is John so Sherlock can hear what he's not saying: Not after that.

He sees John watching him and he knows, then, all he can think is how bloody unfair it is, what they seem to have done to each other, when out of all the people in the world each of them just wants to keep the other safe and this is what comes of it.

John is still watching him, silent, as Sherlock sits up just enough to lie the book (paperback, bought used and well-loved since – and God, it feels incredible to be able to think again) on the bedside table so that there's nothing lying between them in the silence.

And he doesn't say a word but he hardly needs to because this is John and John is always there watching him, John is always waiting for his signal, and while the world might not be a fair and balanced place, Sherlock might have to stop complaining because John is alive and John is reaching for him and there is no way he deserves any of this. So Sherlock stays quiet until he can't anymore (and John is so gentle with him) and when they fall asleep, he doesn't dream, not of grasping, thirsty brambles nor the beating sun nor the endless sea of sand.

NOTES:

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water."

This is one of my favorite passages. I might even use it again because it deserves something that is less unapologetically melodramatic.