A/N: Credit to Maddox for his help with medical questions. Thank you all for your lovely reviews and I have taken all of them to heart. Many of you voiced your concern that the BBC Sherlock/John were on first name basis unlike the original books/RDJ movie and I thought it over. Though I wanted to give a nod to the original, I see your point and have worked in the familiar nomenclatures per request. I hope it improves things. Always, please send a review. I love them all so dearly.

Chapter Three: Aria De Fretta

By: Sophie Quinn

Twitter: Quinnzical_

...

"Mr. Watson!"

The booming voice pulled him violently from his thoughts, his gaze snapping up as a stifled chorus of laughter tittered on around him. Whatever had been preoccupying his mind quickly faded as the cold, clinical surroundings of St. Barts crashed into his surroundings. He had fallen so far into his subconscious that he hadn't even noticed that he was singled out to answer a series of questions.

"If I am not causing you too much of an inconvenience, perhaps you would like to provide an answer?"

John found his tongue dry and his palms clammy, a helpless gaze at the burning stares of the strangers around him did nothing to alleviate the sudden social discomfort. Idly, he rubbed at his shoulder as a vague ache started to build deep within the muscle, must have slept on it wrong the night before.

"The question, Sir?" He asked hesitantly, licking at his lips.

"Yes, Mr. Watson! I am looking for a diagnosis!" His professor was impatiently tapping a pen across his desk, the steady rhythm nearly pounding in his skull, but all he could do was sit and blink.

The ache in his shoulder throbbed lightly.

"...For?" His brow furrowed as the laughter increased for a moment and a sudden wave of embarrassment coursed through his skin. It wasn't like him to space out during a lecture, much less ignore their professor so wholly that he didn't have a clue as to what they were even discussing.

"One more time, Mr. Watson." The older man huffed slightly, the pen tapping feverishly against the surface of his desk. "You've just come across a patient suffering from low blood pressure, nausea, sweating, clammy skin, shallow breathing."

The answer seemed easy and he could feel it dancing about on his tongue. Every first year medical student know what those symptoms meant. He nodded slightly and parted his lips, but hesitated as his stomach retched. He clenched at his shoulder a little tighter as if the pressure would still the urge he had to suddenly vomit all over his desktop. It did not.

"Professor..." Was all he could manage before he turned violently to his right and heaved his lunch across the worn tiles.

"Oh, John... that is vile." Sherlock muttered slightly, looking down at the splash of regurgitated fluids with a slight crease of his features. Watson should have been surprised at his flatmate sitting beside him in the classroom, he should have been thrown off at his gangly limbs folded uncomfortably beneath the small desk. He could only sit and stare, breathing almost labored as he struggled between the desire to retch again and his confusion at Sherlock's indifference.

Between pained breaths he watched Sherlock raise his hand and the professor standing before them smiled in delight. "Mr. Holmes! Fantastic. Do you have an answer."

"Yes. It's obvious, isn't it? The patient is suffering from a hemorrhagic shock induced by the wound to his left anterior scapula. If he isn't treated within the next hour, it isn't likely that he will survive." Sherlock's voice was calm, precise and calculated, and for once, John was struggling to focus on it.

"What..?" He muttered, shaking his head as the classroom blurred slightly and the ache in his arm increased to a constant burn. "He never mentioned an injury."

"But it's so obvious, John." Sherlock glanced at him, his features unchanged as he flicked his gaze over Watson's bent form. He had started slouching over in his desk, the dizziness behind his eyes and the nausea toiling through his stomach threatening to send him toppling over. "He is bleeding everywhere."

John gripped at his shoulder again as the burn increased and he found himself gaping at his own fingers as they came away covered in the sticky warmth of blood. Though he could see the professor and Sherlock speaking animatedly as the rest of the class listened, silence fell. As if struck invisible, none paid him any heed as he moved to stand from his desk as collapsed from a sudden lack of strength.

"Sherlock, help..." He called out, reaching up for the man sitting a mere foot away. His friend didn't hear him, and things were starting to fade away. "Sherlock!"

…

Watson jolted awake in the heat of the Afghanistan sun, torn from a nightmare too odd to comprehend and too blurred to remember coherently. He took a moment to lie on his cot, pulling in deep steady breaths as he fought away the unnerving sensations tickling their way along his spine, pulling at the back of his skull. He never did well with dreams.

There was a cacophony of voices in the distance that pulled him from his reverie, his hands reflexively moving to grab his uniform from where he lay it the night before. He dressed methodically, straightening out the fabric over his chest and pausing only to rub at an ache in his shoulder. Must have slept on it wrong, he decided, before stepping from the tent to report for duty.

"Watson!"

A voice yelled at him across the yard, strong and commanding, full of anger. He snapped to attention and raised his hand to salute his Lieutenant, squinting as the glaring sun crept below his cap in the motion. "Sir!"

"You're late, Watson!" There was a hand at his shoulder, shoving him along towards a waiting convoy of vehicles. "You're on the front lines, Watson! We need men out there!"

"Sir?" His steps faltered slightly, his gaze snapping up as he shook his head in defiance. "Sir, I am a medic."

"Front lines!"

There was a flurry of movement before he realized he was being shoved along into a waiting vehicle, a gun of a caliber he wasn't familiar, placed into his trembling hands. He had seen his fair share of violence, he helped to patch up the gaping holes, cauterizing off the ends of missing limbs, but he rarely had to take part in it. He could, if necessary, but he was a doctor, damn it, not a soldier.

"It's alright, John." Sherlock muttered softly and John looked up rapidly to see his friend sitting across from him in the Humvee. The long black coat and blue scarf was replaced by the sandy colored military issued uniform and the unruly black curls were tucked firmly beneath a cap.

"Sherlock? ...What.."

"It will be alright." He glanced across at Watson, curling the corner of his mouth up before his attention was drawn back out to the passing desert scenery. "You're not going to die."

"That's a little disconcerting." He furrowed his brow, shaking his head as his both his confusion and the ache in his shoulder, increased. "What are you doing here?"

"I will find you." Sherlock looked at him but something seemed different. His eyes were darker, fretting silently beneath the brim of the cap. "So don't worry, John. Just stay strong, like the soldier you are, and I will find you."

The vehicle lurched to a stop and Watson found himself being shoved out into the hot sand by soldiers he didn't recognize. He tried to keep an eye on Sherlock, but in the flurry of movements and camouflage, he lost sight of him. "Sherlock?"

He turned on his heel, squinting in the bright of the sun and the burn of air, his hand shifting up to grip at his shoulder as the ache turned into a burn that throbbed straight through him. A vague groan fell from his lips as he continue to look for his friend, the palm of his hand suddenly slick. He blink at it for a moment, not registering the color of blood contrasting so brilliantly against his tanned skin and white sand. "Sherlock!"

…

The silence of the empty room was shattered by Sherlock's cellphone ringing in his pocket. Not a singular tone this time to signify the arrival of a text message, but a constant droning noise of someone calling him. There was the slightest of twitches in his eyes as he glanced at the screen before pressing the little green button to connect.

John's Number.

"Guess again." Not John's voice. Moriarty's sing-song tenor crooned over the line, and Sherlock did little more than blink.

"I never guess." There was a cold venom to his words, his gaze still trained on the gruesome scene around him, the smell of it growing stale and sickening.

"Oh come now, Sherlock. You would have been disappointed if it was this easy." He clicked his tongue softly, breathing slowly into the cellphone. "Well, I can tell you're upset so I thought I would give you a little present. Behind the door and don't say I never gave you anything nice."

Sherlock turned slightly, his gaze falling on the door he shoved open in haste. He held the phone lightly in his hand as he reached to pull it away from the wall, studying the small object lying on the floor with calculated interest. "A two way radio?"

"Time ticks, Sherlock." The line cut off and Holmes glanced down at his cellphone for a moment. The screen defaulted and then fell black before he slipped it back into his coat pocket. He wasn't sure what to expect as he knelt down to pick up the radio, toggling the volume from silence to a crackling hiss. It could be another red herring, or a useful clue that he could use to find his missing blogger. Certainly he wasn't expecting to hear his own name, weakly and choked, rattling through the tiny speaker.

"..Sherlock.."

"John?" He furrowed his brow, adjusting the volume slightly. He could hear labored breathing, broken by moments of terrifying silence before another gasp would sound. "John."

"Left anterior scapula. Not much time. Hemorrhagic shock." The silence fell again as Sherlock started pacing the room, his mind a whir of erratic thoughts. "Threw up on your shoes. Sorry."

"What? No you didn't." He paused in his pacing, odd things happening between his stomach and his heart. "John, I need you to focus. I need to know if you can see anything around you. I need facts, John."

"Got shot again." He mumbled, nearly wheezing between struggled gasps. "Met your friend."

"A man like me doesn't have friends."

"Wouldn't say that..I thought.. we were.. becoming.. good.. frie-.."

The air was filled with the stench of decomposing blood and the sound of hissing interference over the radio, the throbbing of Sherlock's own heartbeat nearly drowning out all of it as he brought a hand up to his hair. Tugging at the strands, he struggled to organize his thoughts, catalog them, line them up so he could just see the answer he was looking for.

"Think, damn it, think!" He scolded himself, pushing aside pesky emotions in favor of cold calculations. "Radius of the theater to the restaurant narrowed it down to five locations. Lestrade was able to track a lorry to this building but it was a false lead so, where could they have taken him so quickly, so secretively. People would have noticed, someone would have alerted the police. John said he was shot, so there was gun fire. No one reported that either. Why did no one report it. Because no one heard it. Silencer, or somewhere the sound wouldn't have traveled far."

There was still silence over the line, meaning John had either gone unconscious again or it was too late. It was enough to spark off the adrenaline in Sherlock's system, his lips nearly tingling.

"Subterranean, then. If not a building than an underground location. A tramway, the tube. No sounds of trains in the background on the radio, a constant signal but only silence. Where is there no noise going in or out that they would have been able to get him to without being seen."

"..Sherlock.." Watson's voice was quieter now, but it was there and there was good enough. "Always liked this bit. Your voice... That singer had nothing on you."

The detective fell still, the radio nearly falling from his fingertips as his eyes widened and his jaw slacked. How could he have been so dense. "Oh! John, you brilliant man! This whole time! Hold on, John!"

Sherlock started running.