As the seconds ticked by, they both stared out across the room at the wall, listening to one another breathe in the space between. Everything felt so surreal and unbelievable, and if they looked at one another, saw the pain, the moment would become tangible. Real. They weren't ready.

The purgatory continued.

The little red numbers changed.

"I won't shoot you until you start to change," said Sherlock. He tapped the gun lightly against his knee. "How are you feeling?"

"No different." 12:47. Any moment now. Why hadn't it started already? "Maybe that potion of yours gave me a little more time."

The detective didn't reply at first, but then replied, "Perhaps." The numbers kept changing, and the anticipation was near stifling, slowly killing him by frying his nerves. Was it supposed to be instantaneous or slow? Shouldn't he be feeling something by now? "Nothing?"

"No."

Sherlock rose from his place and looked him dead in the eye. John grit his teeth and tried not to pull away when his eyelids were forced wide by roving fingers. "Bloodshot, but still clear," he said to himself, not John. "How is your sight?"

John jerked his head away. "I see fine."

Sherlock scowled. "Why? The virus should be well into your bloodstream by now. It should be in your brain, affecting your synapses and chemistry. Mental descent should be setting in, but you still retain full use of your faculties. Why?"

"Sorry to disappoint," John deadpanned. Blue eyes flashed at him warningly. "Maybe that drink you gave me actually worked. You invented a cure and didn't know it?"

"Don't be ridiculous. If it was a cure, I would have known. It was not."

Some mixture of exasperation, hesitance, and hope was beginning to work its way through the doctor. "You're not omnipotent," he stated. "Maybe the chemicals needed more time, or they reacted differently in my body than you expected."

"It was not a cure, John. Do you think I would give you just anything? I tested that compound a hundred times. My blood was still contaminated when introduced to the contagion." He was up and pacing, now.

That took a second to process. "You've been experimenting on yourself? Sherlock—" He was waved off with a flippant gesture from his hand, and that was when John noticed the cuts decorating his fingers and palm. "When—"

"Quiet. Let me think. There has to be an explanation for this." He turned on heel to look at him. "Are you sure you were bitten?" John rolled his eyes.

"Judging from the teeth marks in my forearm, I would say yes. You're the one that shot it, Sherlock. You know I did." The pacing continued. The radio read 12:58. Eleven minutes past the estimated time. They weren't in the clear, yet, but it was a chance. A possibility at maybe. "The virus may have evolved. It may have isolated itself to its host."

"Viruses are viscous and manipulative. It would work to become more potent, not the opposite. That's counterproductive and doesn't make sense."

John sighed and leaned back against the wall. "I don't know. Maybe my immune system is managing to hold it off. It could still kick in any moment." That earned him a critical look.

"I need a blood sample." Sherlock dug through the desk drawer and pulled out a syringe. John didn't want to think about the implications of its presence there.

"I won't become your science experiment," warned John, eying him.

"You don't have a choice in the matter." He removed the cap to the needle. "There's always a reason, and the reason is in your blood," he explained.

John didn't even attempt to argue with him as he was stuck with the needle. "Fine, but don't get any on your hands. The virus could easily get in one of those cuts. I won't have you acting like any more of a loon than you already are. Bloody embarrassing." Sherlock's lips quipped.

"I'm not untying you." Because there was still time for the change to happen, so it wasn't safe to release him just yet.

"Yes, fine. I'll just stay here, tied up like a good little lab rat while you're off."

Sherlock slipped the syringe in the plastic sleeve and removed the gloves he still wore. "I shall return as soon as I have results." He slid on his scarf, pulled on his pea coat, and did up the buttons, just as he always did before. It made John smile.

"Bring back some milk on your way."

He couldn't, but he wouldn't when he could, anyhow, so it didn't matter. It made John feel better to say it.

The door clicked shut and John shut his eyes.

Okay.

Everything was going to be okay.


The door bursting open woke John from a fitful sleep.

"This is perfect! Absolutely perfect! John, do you realize just how important your existence has become?"

So he'd only just now become important? What happened to him being worth dying for only hours before?

"Not really, no."

Sherlock was muttering as he went about the room, tugging off his coat and scarf. "Your blood," he was saying, "was infected. The virus flows through your veins."

The blood drained from John's face. "That's not a good thing, Sherlock."

Sherlock beamed. "But it is. John, don't you understand? You're immune."

Oh.

That was not what he was expecting.

He tried to wrap his mind around this, but his brain couldn't seem to understand Sherlock's words. "You mean that it won't affect me; that I can't contract it. Ever."

"Do try to keep up," Sherlock said impatiently. His voice took on a dreamy quality. "This is it. The chance we were waiting for. Now we can move forward."

All of this seemed too good to be true. Things like this simply didn't happen in this life. Miracles were just false hopes. Except with Sherlock. Just one more miracle. "Can you really? Make a cure, from my blood?"

"Yes. Maybe. If I can isolate the factor that neutralized the virus and then somehow recreate it." He laughed, a giddy-maniacal way. As if he didn't appear enough as the mad scientist without it.

John shook his head and shifted to ease his sore back. He would very much like to move now. "Does this mean that you can let me up?" His wrists were aching terribly, and now that the more immediate threat of the virus was no longer a factor, there was still the very real possibility of infection to the open wound. Sherlock had forgotten him completely, as it soon become apparent, as he was quickly upon him, murmuring hasty apologies. John hobbled over to the chair (which was still upturned, so he had to set it right) while Sherlock replaced his gloves so that he could get into a position that the detective could get at his arm. The jumper caught on the broken flesh and made him wince.

"Should have tended to this earlier," Sherlock groused. "Who knows what kind of bacteria was in that thing's mouth."

"Well, we had a bit more on our minds at the time than that, didn't we?"

His response was ignored as if he hadn't spoken at all, Sherlock intently pouring alcohol onto a rag and dabbing the edges of the wound, clearing away dried blood. "Sherlock, I think we should talk about earlier."

The detective's eyes met his briefly before turning back. "You should be rejoicing, not lamenting," he chastised.

"You were going to kill yourself," John said, seriously.

"You were going to die," he said back, as equally solemn.

John gave him a very disapproving look. "Sherlock, you can't just do that. You may very well be one of the only ones out there still looking for a cure. If you die, then so does the cure. You can't do that to them."

Sherlock glowered at John's arm instead of meeting his eyes. "They will not mourn my loss. They do not want my cure." He leaned back on his haunches. "I just consume their precious resources; it does not matter that I am here."

"They will think differently when you save them."

"I cannot be their messiah."

"You don't have to be," he opted, "but you won't be anyone's anything if you're not here."

Sherlock leaned his forehead against the back of his gloved hand, fingertips red with John's blood and glistening with the alcohol.

"You can't die on me, John. You can't...scare me like that, ever again."

John squared his jaw. "I will promise you this, if you promise to never take such foolish action again."

A shake of the head. "I cannot."

"I am aware," he conceded. "But then I will not make you that promise." Sherlock made an unhappy noise at the back of this throat and finished dressing the wound in silence. "So what are we going to do now?" John asked when the bite was properly bandaged.

"Resume our normal routine. I am going to need time to isolate the factor of your immunity. We can't allow anyone to know you are a carrier. If they know your blood is infected they will surely take every precaution in order to stop its possible spread." 'Precaution' meaning a bullet to the brain. "Is there any way to remove yourself from the ward? It's dangerous for you to be about the ill. Just one slice of the finger could mean a pandemic."

"It's a risk I will have to take. I cannot opt out of the ward. Not only would it cause suspicion, but I couldn't stand knowing I wasn't there to help when they need me."

"Of course you could opt out," Sherlock chided. "All you would need to do is feign mental duress. It is not so hard to believe that the stress caused by being forced to endure those suffering day in and out would cause mental instability under prolonged conditions. They would be able to find someone else to take your roll."

"Sherlock, I was once a soldier, though I know you often forget this. I've been through war before and came out fine. This is no different." Sherlock looked at him beseechingly for a moment, hoping that John would crack, but John was having none of it. The imploring look immediately dropped away and was replaced by something snide and derisive.

"John, patron saint," Sherlock mocked.

"Oh, shut it. I will be careful." He looked to the jumper still strewn across the desk, where Sherlock left it. The blood on the sleeve was still fresh enough to infect. Sherlock could be astoundingly hypocritical.

Of the two of them, he wasn't worried about his own actions near as much as Sherlock's.

He'd either end up killing them all or himself.


Sherlock was listening to the radio as John lay in bed, unable to sleep. This still remained one of the only times they were able to keep for themselves, away from all the chaos and noise. The radio was down so low that it barely filled the space left by the silence.

Without seeing his face, John knew Sherlock's eyes were closed, fingers steeped in a meditative state as he stared blankly to the boarded up window. Above the bed was a periodic table with harsh black scribbles of X's and checks that John was now scrutinizing, as he'd done countless nights before.

"Your cure," he began. "Can it reverse the virus in a living being?"

He could almost pinpoint exactly the time and the way Sherlock's eyes slid open despite the lack of sight.

"No."

"Right, then." But that wasn't quite all. "There's something you're not telling me."

"I cannot bring back the dead."

John snorted. "I think the virus does that well enough on its own."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous." Sherlock stood, disturbed the papers on his desk, and turned the radio off. "I know the common superstition is that those infected are the 'walking dead.'"

John sat up. "That phrase has been used many times. You've never protested it before," he pointed out.

"It is an apt, if misinterpreted epithet," he said. "Those infected that still walk live. They never died."

"I know that's not true, Sherlock. We've seen one of them reanimate before our eyes. Remember, Mrs. Hudson—"

"Adrenaline, John," Sherlock snapped. Their previous landlady was still a topic in which they had been unable to broach, despite John's best efforts. "The virus doesn't kill them. It's toxic and it makes the immune system attack itself. The disruption of chemicals in the brain does not just make them mad; it changes the behaviour of the entire body. The body begins to shut down, but then is 'reanimated' by the release of adrenaline, unfiltered, throughout. This is what keeps them moving, despite the circumstances. By all means, they should be dead. The 'walking dead' is acceptable terminology."

Wait a moment.

"Then there is hope? If they are not dead, then—" Sherlock groaned.

"Are you listening? Those infected have already had their bodies subjected to more than any living person could take, but the excess adrenaline coursing through them allows them to defy the necessities of physical limitation. If it were not for the virus, their bodies would not be able to function. It's all that's keeping them alive. To take that away would mean to kill them."

The bile in John's stomach was making a valiant effort of crawling up his oesophagus. They were all alive. Every single of them. It was so much easier to distance himself from it all when he thought them already gone. It was Afghanistan all over again, as it never was before.

"It would be absurd to suppose that you could kill something that was already dead," Sherlock continued, oblivious to John's newfound inner turmoil. He had turned away and was fiddling with the dials of the radio before turning the power on once more. As the broadcast flitted into the room, John lay back upon the bed, mind alight with new, unwelcome thoughts.

If you are forced into a confrontation with one of the infected, shoot to kill. Aim for the head to separate the brain from the body; this is the only way to stop them, said the speaker. It was a message he'd heard a million times before, but now had too much meaning. Sherlock rested his head in his hands and waited, patiently, for the report to end. For a new one to begin.

"Absurd, yes."

No more so than believing they were dead to begin with.

No less devastating.

He rubbed his calloused hand over his tired eyes.

To think that tomorrow he'd have to carry on as if none of this mattered, because it didn't.