John had been in Afghanistan.
He has seen this done...not many times, but even once would have been sufficient, especially if that once had been the time the nine-year-old girl had walked up the convoy a few hundred yards ahead of his own transport and left as her legacy a gaping hole and a roadblock of wreckage.
He has never before understood how anything could be important enough to take that kind of drastic action. It was one of the tactics that had always seemed, to him, so extreme, so drastic and unnecessary.
Now he understands.
The world calms and slows around him, like he is moving under water - not inhibiting, but stretching the seconds into minutes, hours, decades. The tall, pale man with the striking features (Sherlock?) and the shorter man in the suit (Dark eyes, Dark hair) (Jim?) are both almost close enough to touch, and there is no way either of them can move away fast enough. The second man seems to be making an effort to do so, John notices as his fingers move (slowly, so slowly, like a film viewed frame by frame), but the tall pale man isn't moving. No muscles are starting to tense, his mouth isn't opening in terror, he is simply staring at the man in the unseasonable parka and semetex vest, trying to read him like he is the most interesting book ever written.
