From John's POV

One of the hardest realities to face as a doctor is that you cannot possibly save everyone that comes under your scalpel or passes through your exam room with a terrible disease. It's not as if you don't know that before you become a doctor. As you grow up, you know that people die and you learn to accept it as just another part of being alive. The inevitably of death always serves as a reminder to live. And then when you decide to become a doctor, you have to hear a thousand lectures about death and having your patients die on you. The whole time you're listening to these lectures, you roll your eyes and stifle your groans because you're not an idiot; you KNOW people die and that patients die and sometimes there's nothing you can do to stop it. You KNOW it's going to be difficult when your patients die, but you're convinced of your own infallibility with your emotions. You convince yourself that when the day comes, you'll get through it because you're strong.

But eventually that day comes. You never know when it will happen, even though you are constantly aware that it will happen eventually. Everyone handles their first death differently, but almost universally there is a kind of mental and emotional numbness and the feeling of frustration and a little bit of guilt. You start wondering what you could have done differently or how you could have meted out just a little more time for them. And you suddenly realise that you were a fool to believe that you were going to be able to accept your first death.

When you're an army doctor… well, I'd almost venture to say that it's a little worse. When you're an army doctor, you spend your time patching up the most horrid wounds and treating diseases that you never find in modern hospitals. You see men and women of almost every age, but a startling majority of them are so much younger… just kids, really. They're kids that have no business being in a war zone getting blown to bits by bombs and bullets. And when they're lying on your table bleeding out of a million irreparable holes… it smacks you in the face that you are not going to be able to put that kid back together. They're never going to go back home. You are not going to save them.

I had a commanding officer that told me once that the first rule of war is that young men die. The second rule was that doctors can't change rule number one. As much as you don't want to believe it… you know it's true. You can't save everyone… and you're not going to.

When I found Sherlock sitting with Cecil in that slightly squalid flat, I could tell that something was happening. There was something different sitting in the depths of Sherlock's damnable aquamarine eyes…something I've never seen from him before. It was a look borne of utter determination and resolution to right some wrong that had been committed. I'd seen it in the eyes of so many doctors and interns and nurses and infantrymen. I knew I'd worn the same look on my own face more than enough times during my career as a doctor and a soldier. It was a look that said "I'm going to save somebody."

Now, of course Sherlock has saved many lives, including my own, during the course of his career as a consulting detective. I think that some people believe that his true goal isn't saving lives or serving justice, but rather just to get off on the feeling of solving the puzzle and giving chase to criminals. Although the latter is true—he does get off on the feeling of solving the puzzle—it is not his sole motivation. I have witnessed the man stepping off a building in order to save lives, which is not something you do if your motives are purely selfish. I think he does genuinely care about people…even the "boringly commonplace" people, as he puts it. He believes people to be—on the whole—dreadfully boring, messy, and simple creatures of habit and instinct. But even though he might hold some grudging contempt for their boring existences, I know he would not think twice about saving that existence from harm.

But when I saw him interacting with Cecil, I knew that his "I'm going to save somebody" look was different—baser, perhaps. I think it was almost as if Cecil had reached into the very depths of Sherlock's soul and saw him for who he really was. And Sherlock looked into Cecil and saw… something that prompted him to act the way he did. I'm not sure what it was, but if I had to guess, I would say that Sherlock sees himself as a child when he looks at Cecil. Not the abused foster-child with selective mutism, but the child who observes without speaking. The child who looks and thinks before he acts. The child who was always… just slightly different.

Currently, Cecil is fast asleep on the couch with his mouth hanging open and his chestnut curls tumbled in a mess over his head. He reminds me so much of a sleeping Sherlock that a pang of affection snags in my chest as I watch the boy sleep. The aforementioned Sherlock is sitting in his armchair with a cup of tea, watching the boy with a carefully measured look over the rising steam of the hot liquid in his mug. I can't read what Sherlock is thinking, which isn't unusual, but I know that the look is so much softer than the gaze he levels on those unsuspecting people that he's deducing. It's tender and gentle, which are adjectives he usually reserves for the like of me and Mrs Hudson, but it's measuring and calculating as well. I think it's exactly the look that Sherlock would wear as if he were looking at a child… specifically, his child.

His baritone voice slides across my consciousness and interrupts my musings. "I am trying to refrain from thinking of him as my child, John."

Surprise, surprise. "How did you know—'''

"You were being obvious. You have a very emotive face, John," he answers my unfinished question. He turns his head so that now he is studying me from his armchair. "The boy is not my child."

"Obviously," I reply. "I… wasn't thinking that. I was just thinking… the look on your face is what I would imagine you would look like if you were actually looking at your own child."

Something flashes in his eyes. "I've never wanted children, John."

"I figured that," I said. "I never pegged you as the 'family man' type."

He lowered his eyes and stared into his teacup and a silence stretched between us for some minutes before he said, "I'm entirely too selfish to be a proper father."

What? There were a dozen reasons I would have imagined Sherlock listing as his motivation to not have children, his career and his life choices being at the top of that list. Never would I have imagined him saying something like… this. I opened my mouth to speak, but he stalled me with a wave of his hand.

"I know what you're going to say, John, and I must beg you to not say it." He fixed his eyes on mine again and they were a steely grey in the dim light of our fire. He set his cup down and extended a large, graceful hand out towards me. I set my own cup of tea down on the table behind me and walked over to his chair, taking his hand when I got closer. He squeezed over to one side of his large chair and pulled me down to settle in the space beside him. Our limbs tangled into some kind of a cosy nest and when the dust settled, I was leaning back against the arm and Sherlock was nestled in my arms, his own long arms wrapped around my middle.

"Fatherhood was never anything that appealed to me, really," he said. I could feel the muscles of his jaw working against my chest as he spoke. "I mean, I suppose I have some sort of biological imperative inside my animal hindbrain to mate and produce offspring, but I have always been able to supress biology." He wrinkled his nose at the thought and I made it a point to stroke his back gently, silently arguing that he'd given up on repressing this particular biological instinct.

"The desire to be touched intimately is completely different than the desire to copulate, John," he muttered.

I chose to keep my mouth shut, merely chuckling at his very clinical description of cuddling (oh how he hated the affectionate words like that!). I kissed the top of his curly head and we fell into a contemplative silence. I chose to not ponder his previous statement, but instead turned my thoughts to the young boy sleeping on the couch. I still marvelled at how easily Cecil seemed to slip into our lives, especially Sherlock's. It was almost terrifying to realise just how easily we had come to care about him. The boy on the couch could easily have been our child, so natural it seemed to be. What were we going to do when he left us and went to live with his adopted family?

"All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is a disadvantage," Sherlock murmured.

I did not stop to think about how in the hell Sherlock managed to do that. All I could think about was that perhaps for once… he may be right.

You all have the patience of saints. :) Thank you