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Sherlock

I knew I wasn't going to die.

Even as I watched Moriarty insert the gun into his gaping maw. Even as I watched him shoot, blasting himself backwards with a grotesque sort of grin on his face, and strike the cement behind him. Even as I watched a pool of black blood spread thickly out from his skull. Even as I stood on the edge of Bart's roof top, my arms spread, staring down from dizzying heights. Even as I fell, John's ravaged scream in my ear.

I am laying on the pavement now. Cold. Hard. Unforgiving. Fact: nobody else in the world would have survived this plunge.

I hear voices around me now, a tumble and a swarm of words that I don't care about. I shut them out. Listen. Listen, and force my body to be still, my lungs to collapse in on themselves. I hear many sets of footsteps around me but wait for only one.

Fact: I know the sound of his gait better than I know the sound of my own. Slightly heavier than the average person's. Purposeful. Even now, even with the irregular hurried rhythm of it, I can tell who he is. John Watson.

John.

John—

"Sherlock, Sherlock." It's a whisper but my whole being is so finely tuned to him that I have no trouble discerning his voice over everyone else. "I'm a doctor, let me come through." He is closer now. On the edge of the crowd surrounding me. Voice: pained. Something in me that has been threatening to break since the moment that all of this began and the idea of John being hurt (of John being killed) first came to my mind now twists deep inside of me. Weakens. Almost cracks. I can feel panic in my throat. It isn't over yet. He's still in danger.

(The tears that came involuntarily from me on the roof top now burn behind my eyes. I keep myself furiously still.)

(Dead.)

"Let me come through, please." I can tell that he feels more panic even than I do. Tone: weaker than it usually is. Higher. And, I think, truer. This is the John Watson that he thinks no one ever sees. The one that was broken in a war that broke thousands. The one that breaks anew when the stars are hung high above a sleeping London as I stand in the shadows outside of his door.

I see him. I know him. All of him.

I hurt.

They are trying to hold him back and to keep him from me. "No, he's my friend," utters John brokenly. An organic phrase, pouring out of his mouth in such a way that I know it must be true. His friend. I feel pride in those words. I am (was) (was) (I hate the word was) friend to John Watson, the bravest and kindest and most wonderful man that has ever lived.

And I know that if I die, I will be satisfied. That is the greatest thing that I ever could have hoped to accomplish.

"He's my friend. Please," he says, even though he's already through. I feel him stir near me. He reaches down and grabs at my wrist.

And I almost sit up and throw my arms around him and abandon all of this.

But I don't. I can't. Fact: somewhere around us there is a sniper with his scope fixed unerringly on my friend, ready to shoot the moment they see I am not dead, and fact: there would be no point in my living at all if John was not there to live with me.

He is shaken and undone and tragic and his hand is warm around my wrist, even as it trembles. That thing inside me bursts now. Floods me with sorrow, despair, rage. (Do not know what this thing is. Know only that it hurts.)

I want him to hold onto me forever. If my heart had been beating, if my lungs had been working, they both would have been racing faster than even I knew was possible. But someone reaches down and comes between us, peeling his fingers away. (Asshole.) (For the best.)

A stretcher comes, wheeled by medics that are far too late.

"Please, let me just..." he doesn't fight. He is broken. And yet his words are frantic and I can feel his intent in them. He falls. (My body tenses when he does this. If I can feel his small descent all the way down to my bones, then how did it feel for him? Did his body break when mine fell from such heights? Hope not.)

Two people take hold of me and gently roll me onto my back. I hear John groan (utterly despairing) as my blood stained face and wide, glassy, staring eyes are revealed to him. A choking noise escapes him, a noise that sounds like broken things and a knot of tears in his throat. "Jesus, no," he murmurs, trying to stand but sinking again, back down onto his knees and into the arms of people who don't deserve to touch him as he stares at me. "God, no."

(Remember: the second day that I had known him, hearing him yell about his leg in pure fury. Me, making a decision that would ultimately change both of our lives. Taking the steps back upstairs two at a time, something closer to hope in me than I had felt in a long time. Asking him to come. And John's words. "God, yes." Things are so different now. Things hurt, now.)

Four pairs of hands lift me. Arms: stiff. They know there's no saving me. I'm lowered onto a stretcher and then rapidly wheeled away.

I close my eyes. None of them will notice, I know this. And if they do–and if they do–

And if they do, then I don't care.

I close my eyes, and I remember John.