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Sherlock stopped to catch his breath, gasping for air. His lungs burned. By twisting and turning on the wooded trails, he'd managed to lose their pursuers for the time being.
He sat Lissie beside him. In a rare burst of clarity, she told him, "You could leave me here."
"And spend my whole life knowing I left you? Never."
"But Sherlock, you're important. People need you. Britain needs you. I'm a nobody."
"I quite need you, Lissie," he said seriously. She looked up, cradling her arm.
He brushed her hair away from her face almost tenderly, remembering how Elsie's curls would hang over her eyes.
"We'd better get going." They moved through the woods, limping along.
"You do know your shoulder's bleeding?" Lissie asked him.
"Yeah, they nicked me when they were firing earlier," he said as if it were trivial.
"You carried me with your shoulder like that?" She was stumbling along rather badly, and it hurt him to watch her.
He didn't answer, but his eyes locked with hers.
"Thank you." Lissie said.
He smiled at her, then collapsed.
"Sherlock!"
She nearly screamed before she remembered the need to keep quiet. Pulling off his coat with her unbroken arm, she used it to apply pressure to the wound on his shoulder.
One arm covered in scars, the other a twisted mess. Her back oozing and sore. What could she do for him?
"Go on," he breathed. "There's a main road, hail a passing car. It's not the safest, but..."
She kept her scarred-but-usable arm on the temporary bandage. "I'm not leaving you. You can't be the only heroic one."
Her tone was as light as possible, but the pain in her back was pulling her in, threatening to overcome her.
Hot. She was so feverishly hot. Her ears rang and her vision swam, and she knew she must be slipping back into delirium.
Coming through the woods, she saw people, but she was too exhausted to do anything but cling to Sherlock's arm and close her eyes, letting the fever and pain consume her.
She had given up. His hand closed over hers, and she left herself go, slipping away...
Dark. Everything was so dark. Yet it was not frightening; rather, it was a sort of cool blue darkness, sweet smelling and cozy.
Lissie could see a face in the darkness. She recognized the face from old photos. "Mother?"
The pretty, young woman didn't speak, but she smiled kindly at Lissie, through the misty darkness.
"Am I dead?"
No answer,so Lissie continued, "Sherlock found me... I think he's learned to put up with me, and I to love him."
The woman's smile widened, and she touched Lissie' s forehead
Now everything was white, and blurry. She was lying on something soft. Had the blackness and her mother been a dream?
She stared groggily.
Was she in a hospital? That explained the white walls.
Doctors were buzzing around her. Her arm and back hurt. One of them said "Bad infection and fever. Have to drain and stitch that up, and set the arm. The arm'll need surgery, too.." She was being pushed somewhere, on her bed.
How did she have infection? What had happened? Ohhh. Her head ached at the memories...
Everything was still so fuzzy. The doctors' voices were loud and frightening.
"Sherlock," she called frantically, but she couldn't form the words, just hear them in her head. He was nowhere to be seen, in the dizzying brightness.
A mask closed over her face, and she was out again, breathing in the anesthesia.
Sherlock
He had stayed conscious longer than Lissie, and had seen that people in the woods were not their pursuers but rather Lestrade, John and Anderson. He'd lain there, unable to get up.
"Thank God," he'd said, lifting Lisse up to them before he, too had succumbed.
Now he lay in a hospital bed, waking up from a surgery on his shoulder. As the drugs wore off, he asked Lestrade, who was loyally hovering nearby,
"Where's Lissie?"
"She's still in surgery. John's been sitting by her bed in case she wakes, don't worry, and Mycroft used his influence to find out some things the doctor's weren't telling..."
"Still in surgery? What's wrong?" Intuitively he knew something had happened.
"Well...", Lestrade drew the word out and looked at Sherlock, "They don't know what happened. You were in here a little while - 3 days- before they did your surgery, the anesthesia just made you forget."
"Don't you remember? You wanted to see Lissie, and you almost hit a doctor who said you couldn't get up-" Anderson began before Lestrade sent him away with a dark look.
The DI continued gently, "Your daughter's been out this whole time, practically in a coma... Sherlock, they're worried she might have brain damage from the fever."
Sherlock pressed the tips of his fingers together. "Anything else?"
Lestrade sighed "Not much else, she'll need therapy for her arm,it's a bad break. They think the scars will heal and disappear, except for one that's particularly deep."
Sherlock heard the words, but it took a moment for them to sink in.
"Now we just have to wait," Lestrade said, worried eyes scanning Sherlock's face.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that's we'll do."