The pavement is painfully hot against Sherlock's cheek. He can feel the coarse grain of it against his skin, harsh and unforgiving. He blinks his eyes into focus and watches the heat radiate off the surface of the road. He's drowsy, and he wonders what he's doing on the ground. The prelude from Rachmaninov's The Bells of Moscow plays in his head. Well, that can't be good. Considering the implications of death…
And oh, there it is. Blood on the pavement. His own, no doubt. His surroundings suddenly appear in sharp relief. He hears everything too loudly. The pain hits him then, the agony like a blazing fire ripping through his chest cavity. Stab wound, low left lung. Catastrophic blood loss imminent. Can't breathe. His hands clutch reflexively at the wound.
A pair of knees crashes to the ground beside him, and there is soft swearing somewhere above him. A pair of hands grasps his shoulders, turns him over gently, and swears a little more. Sherlock is staring up into the face of Greg Lestrade.
"It's okay," Lestrade is saying, "it's all right. You did well, Sherlock, Donovan's got him. You're okay. You're okay." The incessant babble is a clear sign that he is not okay. Lestrade should be shouting at him. He did something relatively brash, after all, and pretty reckless. And he's not authorised to pursue suspects, isn't that the argument they're constantly having?
"Shh, don't speak," Lestrade says now, even though Sherlock doesn't recall trying to talk. The DI tears his clothing away from the wound, and even the slight movement of that jars the knife sticking out of his chest, and he chokes on a cry of pain. Lestrade is saying something else, but he can't make out what. And then his fingers are tentatively wrapping around the hilt of the knife and Sherlock is suddenly quite alarmed. He struggles, trying to pry Lestrade's hands away, but he can't talk – can't talk – can't tell him not to – please don't –
"No," John says sharply, appearing on Sherlock's other side. Oh, thank God. John pushes Lestrade's hands away and then Sherlock's too, and examines the wound quickly, expert fingers peeling away the fabric that has stuck to the frankly incredible amount of blood already coating Sherlock's chest. "It's gone right through his lung," John tells Lestrade, "and it's the only reason he's still breathing. Take it out, and his lung will collapse."
Lestrade winces. "What now?"
Sherlock's head lolls in the DI's direction, almost as if he's saying, I tried to tell you… Instead he chokes on blood and bile.
"Get him up a little, so he doesn't choke to death on his own vomit, first. Then we need to stabilise the weapon and try to stop the bleeding." John's voice is brisk and authoritative. Doctor Watson has taken over. He directs Lestrade swiftly toward Sherlock's head, and gives him a few curt instructions. Lestrade takes his place, and the two men work together to pull Sherlock into a semi-upright position, supported by Lestrade.
The movement has Sherlock practically convulsing in pain, his sharp cry ringing through the street as his bootheels dig into the pavement. Then, to add insult to injury, John relieves Sherlock of several inches of his shirt and wraps it around the knife before balling the material up at the base of the blade and pushing down, hard.
A short, guttural scream fills the air and Sherlock realises with some dismay that it has come from him. His back arches in pain as John pushes down on the wound, and he suddenly feels like he's drowning.
"Hold him!"
Lestrade's hands press his shoulders down, but Sherlock's blood-slicked fingers are groping for the wound, trying to pry John's agony-inducing hands away. Away, away, away, oh let it be…
Prelude in C-sharp minor. It's his own body in the coffin. It wasn't the bells of Moscow to begin with, was it? It was death, death all along, his own death, his own funeral, his own body in the coffin – "John!"
"It's all right, Sherlock, they're nearly here. No – no, look at me. Look at me. You need to be still, you're only – "
"—hurts—"
"I know, Sherlock, I know." John looks then to Lestrade, discusses the ETA of the ambulance with him in a low voice.
Lestrade's face is ashen. He is calm and collected, and he does as John tells him – every order, without question – but his eyes are dead and his skin is an unnatural hue of grey. "You okay?" John asks. His voice is barely above a whisper, but Sherlock hears it.
"Yes," Greg says. His fingers are digging painfully into Sherlock's shoulders, as though he's afraid that letting go will cause him to disappear altogether. Sherlock agrees with this idea, and dreads the moment when he knows Lestrade will have to let go.
A man knows when he is dying.
Sherlock's eyes roll as he takes in everything around him, memorizing, committing to memory. Little details, the important things. The things he wants to take with him. Lestrade's face, John's voice, the incredible azure of the sky. Lestrade's cold hand against his shoulder. The frown of concentration between John's brows. The heat of the day. Donovan's gruff voice from down the street. John's fingers. John's wrists. John's eyes, blue like the sky. John. John. John.
John.
John.
"Sherlock."
He wakes in the ambulance, because the pain is jarring and the light is bright and the noise is overpowering. Someone's fingers are wrapped around his own. His hand spasms at the realisation, and whoever it is tightens their grip reflexively. Sherlock's other hand is straying toward his chest, trying to find the gaping hole to close it, because the person holding his hand would want that wound to close, but someone is saying, "Shh" and someone else is strapping his hand away at his side. The word 'combative' is tossed around over his head, and Sherlock doesn't know anything about being combative but he trusts the judgment of the gloved hands far more than his own, at this point. What a terrifying feeling.
"Pollen from the hollyhocks… in the tread of his boots…" It takes several seconds for Sherlock to recognise his own voice, thick with pain and drugs.
"It's okay," says John's disembodied voice in his ear. "It's alright, you got him. Donovan arrested him."
Too cold, now, and it's a startling change from the gut-wrenching heat of just a few hours earlier. No, not hours – minutes. Just minutes.
"The girl…"
"I know, Sherlock. That was yesterday." Is that sorrow in John's voice?
The bus sails over a bump in the road, and Sherlock's eyes roll back with the sudden new assault from the knife in his chest. "Oh…"
Rachmaninov's Prelude, when played correctly, ends in a few soft, mournful notes that peter out into silence so exquisite that you can literally feel it resonate through your body. It is these seven notes that drift through Sherlock's mind now as he wakes to the sound of soft voices and the gentle glow of late-evening sun. He opens bleary eyes and sees a speckled ceiling floating above him. The tiles swim in and out of focus in such a way that they seem as if they are creeping into one another, an amorphous mass roiling above him. Jellyfish. Or jelly. Jam. Marmalade.
Oh, these are good drugs. Good but bad. Bad but good. What would it feel like if they were gone? Can't have them, but oh, how I need them…
The voices draw his attention – unintentionally; they seem to be unaware of his awakening – and his gaze slides toward the other side of the room, where Lestrade and John are speaking in hushed voices. They are each clutching a steaming paper cup. Coffee for John, tea for Greg. Of course.
But beyond that, Sherlock deduces nothing. His mind is quiet. The details aren't flowing from his friends like they normally would, not adding up to some massive, earth-shattering conclusion about what they've been doing for the past however-many-hours-I've-been-here.
And that is just wonderful.
Sherlock smiles.
John notices him then, and fixes him with a quizzical look that is bordering on comical.
"Oi," breathes Lestrade.
"Hello," Sherlock says. The word drags itself out of his mouth. He blinks languidly.
Setting his cup down on the bedside table, John approaches Sherlock and casts a cursory glance at the monitors surrounding him. Then he looks down at his flatmate and smiles thinly. He's tired. It must have been hours. "Do you know that you're an idiot?" he asks in an over-sweetened voice.
Hmm. Nope. "You've… mentioned it…"
Lestrade chuckles and draws level with John by the bed. "Gave us a bit of a scare," he says. "Again."
"Must keep you on your toes," Sherlock intones, eyelids aflutter. "Wouldn't life be dull otherwise?"
Sherlock's two friends answer at the same time.
"Terribly," says John.
"Definitely," says Lestrade.
A/N: Rachmaninov's Prelude in C-sharp minor was said to have been inspired by a dream. In the dream, Rachmaninov is at a funeral, walking toward the open coffin to pay his respects. When he draws close to the coffin, he sees that it is he himself lying inside of it. This is what Sherlock means when he associates the piece with death and has a brief breakdown whilst imagining his own coffin. When Rachmaninov wrote it, it was just called 'Prelude' and was part of a set of five pieces comprising Morceaux de fantaisie. Only later was the piece titled The Bells of Moscow by the Americans in 1918 (and this is what Sherlock is referring to with the line "It wasn't the bells of Moscow to begin with, was it?"). Prior to that, the Prelude had been called by its given name, as well as The Burning of Moscow, The Day of Judgment, and The Moscow Waltz. The piece was so popular that audiences demanded it as an encore at many of Rachmaninov's performances, by shouting collectively, "C-Sharp! C-Sharp!"