A/N I do somewhat like this one, actually.
Thanks to Motaku1235, starrysummernights, MapleleafCameo, 666BloodyHell666, hjohn302, johnsarmylady, and sparrowismyhummingbird
Disclaimer I don't own Sherlock or any associated characters, events, etc.
LXXXIII. Heal
John's the doctor. He's the one with the medical training, with the torturous experience in the dry expanse of Afghanistan, with the title and degree necessary to proclaim so. But he's also the one with the scars, on his shoulder and on his mind, silvery shadows of former wounds, echoed traces where blood used to flow freely.
Scars don't heal. They're residual of the injury itself, a sneering reminder of the agony that he suffered, of the fact that he'll never truly be free of it. That's what scars are, really, reminders, haunting and impossible to avoid, impossible to ever be free of.
There are the supposed solutions, of course. There are the lotions for his shoulder, the pills for his brain, but neither of them will ever be truly effective, especially not the latter. He doesn't mind, not really. He'd never expect them to. Since he is a doctor, he knows quite well that the promises on packages rarely retain even seventy percent of their promise in the product itself. He knows that he's never really going to be fixed.
Or at least he thinks so. He never expects the introduction at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, never anticipates the wild night of taxi-chasing and cabbie-killing that follows, or the years that stretch on afterwards, punctuated only by a single Fall, otherwise a ceaseless flow of life, of wonderful, pure life, which flows over his thoughts, reforms them, erases any scars that were ever there.
Perhaps medicine can't work wonders on such things, but, it would seem, people can.
It doesn't make much sense, at least not to him, that things work that way. He can imagine something like the lovely peace he gets coming from a romantic partner, perhaps, Sarah or Jeanette, because that's supposed to be their job. But Sherlock manages to do something that none of those poor women ever come near. He's amazing, he is, because when John's with him, everything else fades away. It no longer matters that he was in the war, or if it does, it's irrelevant, insignificant compared to whatever enemy they might be pursuing now. He's landed himself right in the middle of a new way of existence, and it's wonderful, he's not complaining one bit.
It's true enough that the scars aren't really healed. But that makes sense. It's logical. They're not supposed to—he'll always be a different person for the pain he received, but that doesn't mean that the effects can't be invisible, that he can't forget them every once in a while.
Sherlock is his medicine, Sherlock is his healer, Sherlock is his everything. He needs the dark-haired detective like he needs water, and perhaps someday he'll realize just what that means.