Gun by InSilva
Disclaimer: own nothing of a Sherlock nature.
He crooked open an eye. Judging by the amount of daylight seeping through the curtains, it was early morning. 5 o'clock-ish maybe.
He wondered briefly what had woken him. Didn't feel like Afghanistan. Didn't feel like anything Sherlock-related not even the dream where the fall from the hospital roof was for real and the miracle never happened.
Mary stirred beside him and then settled back into sleep. He watched her breath rise and fall evenly, her hair feathered on the pillow, her face calm and untroubled by anything dark or dangerous.
She knew nothing about death and killing; about men screaming; about it being a good day if you made it to the canteen without being bombed. She hadn't looked into a pair of crazy eyes like Jim Moriarty's. She hadn't had to make a long distance shot with a gun to save a friend from a serial killer. She sure as hell hadn't been tied up and thrown under a bloody bonfire.
He would never let any of that happen to her. He would keep her safe. He would protect her. He would lay down his life for her. He would…he would…
He thought about his gun carefully stowed away in the wardrobe. He could still remember how he'd felt when he picked it up for the first time – like he was in control, like he had found a missing piece of himself.
"You alright with this, Doc?" Henderson was grinning. "Shooting stuff, I mean? You're supposed to be saving lives, aren't you?"
"Leave him alone," Daley said firmly. "He needs to know what to do, don't he? He might save your life by pulling the trigger."
"Yeah, well, a tenner says he can't hit the target."
"Twenty quid says he can."
As it turned out, he couldn't miss the target. He had natural deadly accuracy. His hand was as steady as when he was stitching up a wound. His control was as excellent as when he had to deal with hysteria and panic in a patient. And, as he'd found out, killing a man who was intent on killing you was not as difficult a moral choice as Henderson seemed to imagine.
No, he had no problems with defending himself or his friends or the woman he loved. He drifted back to sleep amidst half-imagined scenarios where he rescued Mary from various perils. He slept well.
She felt his body ease back into unconsciousness and listened to the sound of his regular breathing. She'd woken when he had, guiltily aware that for once it had been her own dream that had disturbed them both. It was the one where she hadn't left Rome in time. The one where she'd danced round the Colosseum and the Spanish Steps and Piazza Navona and everywhere she went, there were Santino's men. She hadn't made a noise, not in the dream and not in the waking world, as they closed in on her but she hadn't yet found a way of telling her body not to tense in anticipation of the pain.
Pain. The one thing that she wanted to keep John safe from. And much of that was wrapped up in him finding out about her past but if that past intruded in any way…if she were out shopping and trouble followed her home, if she were caught up in vengeance with John as a target… When he'd gone missing, she'd been convinced that someone had found her out and maybe it wasn't about making her suffer, maybe they'd taken him for leverage - some job that they wanted doing, someone they wanted taking out and she would do it, she absolutely would and then she would kill them for laying a finger on John.
When he'd ended up in that bloody bonfire she'd realised that it wasn't about her. The people she knew were a hundred times more direct. Except…there was one big fat spider that… She thought of the gun carefully stowed under the floorboard beside the bed. She would use it in a heartbeat to defend herself, to protect John… She would…she would…
She took a breath and slowed her heartbeat back to normality. Adrenaline was your friend but it needed to be managed.
She half-opened her eyes and looked out at the day. It was early.