A Lesson Before Drowning

by Servant of Fire

He has one last vow to make, to break, to wish upon. What will John do when he learns the history of brotherly love and unending violence that Sherlock always hid from him? Sherlock is drowning 3 miles away from him. Will he come to Lestrade's side when he gets a strange text from a dead man or will he be two steps two late?

6. Chapter 6

Resurrection

It's his shout that stirs the cold. His shout that is a shriek of hoarse pain. Inhuman and yet the most human of sounds.

John's bones are pulled apart and pieced together again like confetti falling in reverse. The light trains immediately on the shape in the river. Lestrade lets out a scream. Sally turns away and faints, sliding off the truck and landing in the river mud. Then all watch. As the screaming man, back from the Styx_alive from the dead_Goes on shouting in delirium.

"End it! End it! End it! Sign of nine_And thatchers!" And other unintelligible things.

John wades to his waist in the water. Dreamlike, he thinks he will go out to him. To the river of the dead which coughed him back up. The answer he wasn't looking for brought again by the current.

"What are you doing_you idiot! You'll drown!" Anderson hauls John back a few paces. John fights. The mud is cast up. The fish fleeing. All of them racing, back to the wound, where the sea sliced her wrists and let the Thames run free.

"End it! End it! A two of clubs!" The voice full of purpose, but lacking meaning.

Sherlock goes under again. Before their eyes.