John could remember a lot.
Not all of it was pleasant—or even mediocre—but memories continued to surface as he sat there by Sherlock's hospital bedside, some just appearing in his mind like quiet reminders, and others clawing their way to the top with bloody, broken fingers, shrieking and wailing inside his skull, demanding to be heard.
To be felt.
One such memory had stayed with him for years. It dated all the way back to just after he'd learned that Sherlock had ever hurt himself. Back when it was just dawning on him that the consulting detective wasn't really as coldly unfeeling and robotic as it had seemed.
John shut his eyes and pictured what that had looked like.
He remembered the darkness he'd woken to, lying in his bed and hearing noises in the kitchen: footsteps, cursing.
He remembered the bright face of his alarm clock, proudly blaring a neon 4:16 AM.
He remembered feeling that perhaps something wasn't quite right.
A valid feeling to have, all things considered.
He pushed himself up with a groan and shoved his feet into his slippers, trying to get the feeling back into his left arm, which, unlike the rest of him, stubbornly remained asleep.
There was only one light on in the kitchen, and he could see the weak glow filtering in under his door. With a tired sigh he shuffled across the room and turned the knob. "Sherl'ck...?"
The footsteps paused.
Sherlock stopped dead and turned to look at him, his eyes a little wide and shadowed and his cheeks a little pale, holding a towel to his arm with one hand while he tried to search through the drawers with the other one.
John was instantly awake, shaken out of his drowsiness by the little hint of panic he could feel emanating from the taller man.
It made him nervous too.
"Sherlock, what's wrong?"
"Nothing-"
John watched him bite back a wince, and quickly took a few more steps forward. "No, something's wrong. Wait, did you...?"
He could feel his stomach dropping as Sherlock only swallowed and turned away in place of an answer, and he knew at once that he was right. John's eyes went to the towel Sherlock was holding to his arm, and in the weak light he began to see the colour seeping through the fabric, turning what was white to red.
"Sherlock..."
"Don't lecture me! It's-I... I'm just..." He let out a breath. "I'm taking care of it. Okay? Go back to bed."
"Are you sure? That's a lot of blood..."
"Yes." He spoke with a forced matter-of-factness through gritted teeth, trying to remain in control. "I hit a vein, but I can fix this. It's okay."
John just looked at him for a moment. He thought of all the things he wanted to say to this rigidly composed wreck of a man, all the things he wanted to do.
And then he held out his hand.
"Let me see."
"No. I said-"
"I'm a doctor. Let me see."
Sherlock hesitated, and it seemed that he was at the same time anxious and relieved. And then, slowly, he held his arm out to John, still with the towel over it so as not to drip on the floor and ruin the landlady's carpet.
"Come here. Sit at the table, and I'll get a light and my kit, okay?" John would never describe Sherlock as meek, really, but this was the closest he came to it.
When John came back Sherlock was leaning back in the chair with his eyes closed, just breathing. He didn't open them as John set the kit down on the table and pulled a chair up next to him. It was only when the doctor leaned forward and gently straightened his arm that Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at him, quiet, waiting.
Uncomfortable.
John spread another towel out on the tabletop and lay Sherlock's arm on it before carefully removing the bloody compress.
Despite what he'd seen in military hospitals, the neat little incisions in his best friend's skin sent his stomach turning somersaults and his jaw tightening. It almost made him feel as if he had been snipped up by a giant pair of emotional scissors.
As soon as the pressure was removed the deepest one began to bleed again. It wasn't a horrible gush of blood like you might see in the movies, but that didn't make it any better.
It kept dripping.
A steady, methodical little crimson drip that tickled the skin on its way to the tabletop. Definitely a vein. "Sherlock... you're not going to want to hear this, but maybe-"
"No. Just put pressure on it. They waste your time in AE, anyway."
John wasn't prepared to ask how he knew that, so instead he bit his lip and set to working, carefully cleaning the smaller cuts and wrapping a gauze bandage round his arm to staunch the bleeding. It took all his gauze, and all his willpower not to say anything about it.
He sighed as he stood up to put the bloody towel in the sink and run the water over it. "Keep holding it. If it bleeds through, don't lift it, because-"
"-that might remove the clot and keep it bleeding. I know." Sherlock leaned against the table. "I hate to tell you, but I know how this works. This just hadn't... happened for a while. I wasn't planning on it."
"Fucking hell..." John stopped, leaning heavily against the sink, head lowered.
"Hm?"
John gritted his teeth. "You don't plan on this. You NEVER PLAN on this. This is... It's not even... Normal people don't do this, Sherlock. People don't WANT to HURT THEMSELVES. It's just..."
Sherlock was looking at him quietly.
"...Yes?"
"It's just... sad." John swallowed his voice and turned back from the sink, drying his hands on his pyjama trousers and trying to think of exactly what it was that he had really wanted to say.
But that was all that came to mind. That was the only word his tired brain could fit to what he was feeling, despite its incredible inadequacy.
Sherlock seemed to sense this inner dialogue and didn't push it, looking down at his arm and shutting his mouth.
No, normal people didn't want to do this.
But Sherlock wasn't normal.
The kind of people who wanted to do this sort of thing... John had trouble even imagining the thoughts inside their heads.
It scared him.
To be so near to his friend, in the same room even, and yet to feel so far away from him, to have no idea what kind of dark thoughts or unusually painful things might be harboured in that tall, resolute body.
Locked away inside, with no key in existence.
With only the occasional nicked vein to show that anything was wrong.
It truly scared him.