"If you were dying, if you were being murdered, in your very last few seconds, what would you say?"
He had been there before. Sherlock didn't know what he was saying, of course, because he didn't grasp any sort of tact, it seemed, but... Sherlock had been the one to guess that John's invalidation had been caused by traumatic circumstances, so shouldn't have he made the simple mind connection?
But, then again, Sherlock was on a case, it was all very sober, and he seemed more agitated by the fact that Scotland Yard was searching their flat for drugs than the fact that a woman had been murdered. So, Sherlock probably wasn't thinking of John's circumstances.
"'Please, God, let me live.'"
Five words he had used daily in the war, when the gunfire had gotten too rapid or the bombs had gotten too close. Everyday, he went into battle knowing that it could be his last, and everyday, he hoped that it wouldn't be.
"Oh, use your imagination!"
"I don't have to."
The last time that it had been a mantra for John had been the time that he took a bullet to the shoulder. He had had far too many close scrapes in the past and he had hoped with all his heart that this wouldn't be his undoing.
Thankfully, it hadn't been, so John still held hope to those five pleading little words.