John jerked awake to find himself tangled in his bed-sheets, sweating and shivering at the same time. He let his head flop back onto the pillow, feeling a cramp in his bad leg and groaning as he stretched it out, trying to remember to breathe.

Once the pounding of his pulse began to slow and he could focus beyond the rhythm of his breathing, he could hear a low hum from the next room. Continuing, the hum began to solidify into a tune, and he realized it was Sherlock's cello, coming from the sitting room.

John took another moment to himself, trying to decide if he really wanted to face Sherlock at this point, but in the end the idea of seeing her alive and well overrode his embarrassment, and he got up, wincing as he let his leg straighten, trying not to remember the blood from Michael's wound staining his trousers.

He opened the door, not caring about his rumpled vest and mussed hair, and rolled his shoulder. Sherlock had her head rested on the back of the sofa, and was staring, unseeing, through the skylight as her bow moved across the strings. She didn't acknowledge his presence as he came to stand next to her, looking down at her face and the way her throat moved when she breathed, seeing the pulse and reminding himself that it was just a dream.

After a moment of stillness he let himself reach forward and brush a stray curl off her face, and she blinked as she focussed on him. "Hi," he murmured quietly. "Would you like a cuppa?"

He didn't want to explain, and she didn't ask, just nodding before looking back up through the skylight. John nodded firmly to himself once before walking into the kitchen, wishing he had put on his slippers as his feet touched the cold tile.

His hand didn't shake at all as he put the kettle on, which told him the tension was still humming through his veins like the notes that wandered from Sherlock's cello. He found himself humming along after a bit, realizing she must have altered one of his favorites so she could play it on the cello, because he'd played this earlier, while he was knitting.

Maria had been pretty, the kind of pretty that you saw in a poisonous flower or in the desert sunrises, the type of pretty that meant danger. Most of the time she was busy being one of the best shots in the company, wiping the sexist smirk off any new recruits. There was very little femininity about her; she'd gotten a crew cut like the boys when she'd joined the army, didn't do makeup or her nails, didn't wear baubles or think twice about getting up to her elbows in muck or blood, whichever was put in front of her.

Her stubbornness had made her stand out, because while she would hold herself to the standards of the men, if you called her one she would be in your face, insisting she was a woman and if you called her otherwise from then on she'd wipe the smile off your face with a punch. And yet it had made her one of the best soldiers John had known; she knew who she was and who she wanted to be, and it wasn't based in her looks or skills or the army or even her gender.

John had found himself sharing a tent with Maria at one point, after his had gotten ruined due to the unexpected explosion of a Hummer on yet another trip into the unending sand. She'd let him have some of her chocolate in return for a couple paracetamol tablets, joking until late at night even though he knew it was probably miserable for her to be camping while menstruating. Murray had asked him later how he'd survived without her hating him, and John had shrugged. "Be nice? Give her some privacy and act like a decent human being?" he'd suggested doubtfully, and Murray had snorted.

"Sure, mate. As if that's what works with women."

John didn't understand why it wouldn't work... but then, he preferred men anyway.

It was Maria who had knitted in the tent late at night, making little things to send home to family at Christmas.

Three weeks after Christmas John had found himself having to draft a very different sort of letter to her family.

John shook his head, trying to clear it as he realized the tea was done brewing. He pulled the teabags out with a spoon and tossed them in the trash, stirring in his milk and Sherlock's sugar, bringing one out in each hand and setting one in front of Sherlock before sitting in his chair across from the sofa, pulling his legs up in front of him and watching the bow move across the strings. Hell, even Sherlock had a hobby.

The thought of picking up his knitting made him slightly nauseous, and he rubbed his thumb over the handle of his mug, noting a nick in the glazing on the ceramic. He wondered when it had happened. Probably in the moving.

"Are you going back to your therapist?" Sherlock said, apropos of nothing.

John looked away from his mug to look at her grey eyes, which were now focussed on him in a way that he fancied could bore into his skull.

"I don't -" he shook his head. "Probably not. I - ah - well. It hasn't helped much, has it?"

Sherlock frowned, her focus unwavering. "True. What are you going to do, then?"

John shrugged. He had no good answer to that question, and he didn't really want to think about it now. Sherlock seemed to understand, pulling out a block of rosin and tending to her bow.

His therapist had been a tall dark woman named Ella, who had a no-nonsense attitude. John had liked her, as it went for liking when you were numb. She'd called him out when he was bullshitting, which was possibly the only thing that actually helped him. She'd wanted him to write a blog, as if writing would somehow make him feel again. Besides, he'd had nothing to write about. The blog was still there, a blank page on the internet.

Drawing the bow across the strings again, Sherlock managed to pull John away from his thoughts, and his eyes fell on his computer. His last entry for the blog had been simple; Nothing ever happens to me.

Things happened to him now, he thought ruefully, and pulled the laptop closer, lifting the lid with a click and pulling up a word document. The cursor flickered at him, and he took a moment to flex his fingers before looking down at the keyboard. He was an absurdly slow typist, but this could be doable.

And he painstakingly started to pick out the words, titling the page.

A CASE STUDY

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