When bullet bites

Sherlock wasn't sure what he remembered about it after. He had deduced the outcome in a daze. They hit the shore, but Sherlock rolled John over underneath him just as a bullet whizzed and made a direct impact with something. It was hot. All over. Hot and cold. If he had to perish twice, he fancied to do it by the light of John's eyes.

They were wide and staring. Searching the life that was ebbing in Sherlock's own eyes. Sherlock spat from the grave. Sherlock whose lips dripped blood still where the chains had mauled him.

A plane sailed to the face of the Thames_into the fight. It was Mycroft. Mycroft who had staged the texts from Sherlock to Lestrade. Who placed the video camera. Who had used his own little brother as bait. The guilty and the heroic.

If Sherlock had to perish twice, he'd say he'd rather the warm fingers of the bullet than the cold of the Thames. He felt a smile creep his pain spasming face. As John ordered medics to his side and performed surgery with a switchblade there in the mud of the Thames.

We're losing you….Sherlock watched the eyes. They danced they swung like chandaliers_Fireworks.

"No, no…"Sherlock's hand on John's arm. There was something wrong. Water crept to his brain. Water, water everywhere. A muted thought.

He was still drowning. They pumped his lungs and fire and frost came up. They slipped an oxygen mask over his nose and he was going under. Drowning in reverse. Breathing a struggle as he swam in his blood.

His thoughts rose up. Scraps of burning paper. Firecracker red, bursting in the air. Talking to him with small deductions. Glimpses and Scrabble and scrapbooks and….

We're losing you. Those eyes. Burning like gunmetal. Hot. White. A grenade going off in Sherlock's head.

It's you. All the deductions evaporating. Even in death, he knew who this was. No abyss could obscure him. No fire and no ice.

John, mine.