"You have got to give him time, don't you?"
"Time? What would that change?" Sherlock scoffed. John concentrated on keeping his breath even; the last thing he wanted to do was debrief his latest living nightmare. The light strained against his eyelids.
"Well, he wouldn't be pumped up on pain medication, for one," a woman replied, scoffing.
"I believe those are working in my favor," Sherlock replied and the woman laughed.
"He is a dangerous man, isn't he? And think, the first time I met him I kept warning him about you. How the hell did he escape from there, sick and injured as he was?"
Donovan? John wondered, baffled. He couldn't imagine Sherlock having a civil conversation with the officer.
"Look at the state of his wrists where his teeth scraped against his ulna. Plastic restraints, then, judging by the cuts, wire ties, almost certainly. He chewed them down and freed his hands, let this attacker come to him, surprised him - there was a struggle, he got the wireties around his attacker's wrist, reattached him to the chain, bought himself enough time to walk - no crawl, his knees are freshly chafed - to the interrogator's kit. Got his gun, crawled back, shot the restrained man, and escaped," Sherlock listed. John opened his eyes to stare at him, his mouth agape in wonder.
Amazing, he thought, but did not want to say. It had been so long, since he'd seen the wonder of Sherlock's mind. He'd once felt so blessed to be privy to it, even if Sherlock had mainly kept his own silence. And his own secrets.
Donovan was sitting beside the window, her chair angled toward where Sherlock was standing, like they'd always been civil colleagues. She was staring at John, her eyebrows high. John ignored her. He didn't like talking about violence. Everyone always took it to be bragging, on a subject no one should brag about. Greg was snoring in a chair beside her, his head tipped back against the wall. Sherlock was peering out the window, apparently distracted by something going on far below them.
"What did you do in the military?" Donovan asked, dragging his attention back to the room. John turned his head back to face her. She was sitting forward in her chair, her legs crossed, her hands clasped on her lap. Like she'd been there for awhile.
"Sorry, why are you here?" John asked, confused, and Sherlock smirked. Donovan swallowed, suddenly looking rather embarrassed to be caught there. She glanced at Greg, as if hoping he'd give an explanation, but the man was still openly snoring.
"She helped me," Sherlock explained, turning to face the room when she grabbed her purse, looking ready to leave. John blinked, surprised to hear Sherlock defending anyone. "Find you, that is," he added.
John nodded slowly, watching Donovan sit back into her seat, and Sherlock flushed.
But I'd escaped, John realized.
"Hardly necessary, but thank you," John replied, turning back to Donovan. She was glancing over his broken body, looking rather concerned, as if trying to decide if he'd be able to leap out of bed and attack her if he wished. He rather wished there was a newspaper at hand for him to bury himself in. Sherlock looked oddly pleased by him, like he was proud by association. Donovan glanced between them, her expression lightening.
"A couple of kooks, you two are," she said. John waited for Sherlock to snarl some nasty deduction at her but he simply smiled and turned back to the window, apparently agreeing with her.
She helped me find you. Apparently that was enough for the man. John settled back down to sleep, deciding not to question it.
"Can I add that to your statement, Dr. Watson?" Donovan asked and John waved his fingers, doing his best to make the small movement dismissive.
~~/~~
John woke to a whispered argument.
"You told her?" That was Sherlock; he'd recognize that voice anywhere.
"I could hardly keep it from her!" Greg protested.
"You could do precisely that," Sherlock protested.
"She's his sister," Lestrade replied and John felt his heart sink. The last thing he wanted to do was deal with Harry.
"You clearly know nothing more than that," Sherlock replied and John couldn't help but agree when he heard the door bang open, Harry and her drama arriving in force.
"Oh my god, John!" she exclaimed and John cringed, listening to her flutter around the room, no doubt scattering coats and scarves and bags around the room in a flurry. "Oh my god, he looks horrid. Look at his bandages. The man on the phone said he'd gotten into an altercation with another man, what does that mean, are you the doctor?" she demanded. John focused on inhaling slowly and keeping his eyes firmly closed. No one answered Harry, so he guessed she'd asked Sherlock.
"No, Ma'am, we are only friends," Greg responded finally and Harry started making noise again.
"You should have called me right away. Why did no one call me? I swear it's like no one thinks I'd even deserve to know, when he's my little brother. It's my job to take care of him, not that anyone will let me do that, and now look at him. Oh, John. Where's the doctor then?"
John exhaled slowly and listened to Sherlock slowly retaking his seat, having apparently decided she wasn't worth speaking to.
"Oh. My. God," Harry announced and John knew she'd finally noticed him. "You were dead. How-"
Sherlock didn't answer.
"It's complicated, Ma'am. Good to meet you, my name is -" Greg started.
"Yeah, yeah, all that but how is this man alive again?"
John could almost see Greg's flabbergasted expression and fought back a wince. He was supposed to be asleep.
"Alive again, that's your theory?" Sherlock sneered and the room settled into an awkward silence.
"I'm confused. I don't understand," she announced finally. Neither man answered her and John was tempted to open his eyes, just to watch the commotion.
"That's hardly unprecedented, I assume," Sherlock drawled and the room went quiet again.
"Why will neither of you explain? I don't appreciate it. I thought you died. John was catatonic. I know more than people tell me, you know, so I don't understand why you're just standing there like it's some big secret I can't handle. I'm his older sister, it's my place to know these things."
He heard her throw herself into one of the side chairs.
"Oh my god, John," she repeated and started to sob.
I'm so glad I'm not awake for this, John thought senselessly.
"He is recovering well," Greg put out finally.
"He's always been so strong. What happened to him?" Harry asked, her voice thin, and John heard Sherlock stand up.
"An enemy of mine," he admitted.
"Do you sell drugs?" Harry asked. John heard Greg snort out a laugh at the blunt question. Statistically speaking, that was an apt question to ask.
An enemy of ours, John wanted to amend, but he couldn't admit to being awake and he had a strong suspicion he was wrong anyway; Moriarty had never been the least bit threatened by him.
His mistake, John thought proudly and fell asleep listening to Harry cry.
~~/~~
"Can I get you something from the vending machine?" Harry whispered.
"No, thank you," Sherlock replied. Greg must have left, John deduced from the silence.
'You know, I don't understand it, but I think you're a bloody bastard for what you did to John, making us all think you were dead like that," she replied.
"I gathered," Sherlock drawled. John inhaled slowly, sure Sherlock knew he was awake but not caring. He was glad someone else would curse out Sherlock for him, even if it did have to be Harry.
"That officer told me he'd thought John had killed himself, when he went and disappeared. You'd have just deserved that too, for what you did to him. I saw him, afterward, travelled all the way here from Bath. He mourned you something fierce."
He would have deserved it if I'd killed myself, really Harry? John thought but did not stir. He wanted to eavesdrop.
"I did not know he'd be so affected," Sherlock replied, his tone haughty and detached. Perhaps he had not noticed him awake after all, John considered. He'd never heard Sherlock sound the least bit remorseful to a stranger before. That at least was something.
"You're a daft prick," Harry answered. John couldn't help it; he laughed, and it set off a coughing fit and he had no choice at all but to open his eyes.
Harry sat on the chair furthest away from Sherlock's. Her brown hair was in its usual curly, frizzy poof from a recent perm. She stared at him, her mascara smudged beneath her eyes. The IV drip machine screamed in protest, thinking his IV line kinked or dislodged, and he canceled its alarm, wincing as the movement stretched his back and pulled his arm from its sling. He settled back onto the bed and returned her gaze.
"Hello, John," she said softly, rubbing at her finger where Clara's ring used to sit.
"Hello, Harry," he said, trying to sound pleased to see her. Sherlock smirked, unfooled.
"You look like shit," she joked and John tried to smile. From her tense expression, he'd failed.
So do you, John wanted to say, but he didn't think it'd be taken well. She rubbed a finger under her eyes, trying to fix the mascara, but it only smudged further. There was food next to his bed, John noticed, his stomach rebelling at the thought. The nurse should have woken him up for it. Perhaps she had, and he'd forgotten. It was dark outside the window, showing nothing but a reflection of their room.
"What happened, John?" Harry asked, taking his hand. The words landed between them like a deadweight. John glanced at Sherlock, who was glaring at the ceiling and looking spectacularly impatient.
He'd never stopped missing the way Sherlock never asked questions. It wasn't because Sherlock was polite, John had no illusions. The intolerable genius just always preferred the puzzle to the answer. But it meant that Sherlock never asked 'what'd you do in the army?' or 'how'd you get shot?' or 'what happened, John?'. So John had never had to answer. He'd never met anyone else in the world like that, and didn't expect to.
"I was captured," John said, in the same tone he'd once used when he'd faced Mike Stanford and answered 'I got shot'. Harry frowned. Not good enough, apparently. "Got a tramp stamp," John added, glancing at Sherlock. Sherlock's expression lit up at the phrase, amusement dancing in his eyes. Harry just looked confused. "Or most of one," John amended. Sherlock H. "Perhaps I should be grateful not to be Sherlock Ho," he added. He definitely would have died before he got to Holmes. The amusement in Sherlock's eyes died too quickly.
John craned his head over to look at the chart hung on the wall beside him. His vitals were fine; his temperature a bit high but then, he was healing. The antibiotics were working so far. But still, he hadn't eaten many solids, due to his torn throat. That was apparently the next step. They'd brought him yogurt and jelly. Lovely.
"You're going to stay with me when you get out of here," Harry cooed, like it'd be a relief to hear.
Oh, am I? John wanted to snark but he hesitated, uncertain. Stress creeped into his mind, making his back tense. Post-op care was a complicated, horrible process to do alone. That he'd learned from his bullet wound. He'd need help bathing, walking, and eating. He'd wake up in the night screaming. Who else was he to call?
Lestrade, maybe. Greg had always worked hard to be a good friend, even if John had neither accepted nor reciprocated it after Sherlock's fall. But if not Greg?
We should grab a pint, after you recover. That was hardly an offer of full time nursing care.
He had forgotten how very isolated he and Sherlock had been. How strongly he'd come to realize that, when Sherlock had died. It had been disturbingly easy to be alone, unfollowed, and unquestioned. To the assassin's downfall first and his own second.
I've always been one for contingency plans. Moriarty must have noticed that John would disappear for days without problem, were Sherlock taken out of the picture.
"John," Harry called and it sounded like an order. John pulled his attention back to her. "It's good to see you again. Even if the circumstances are shite. You disappeared after he died, you know," Harry said, jerking her head toward Sherlock. "I'll take care of you, this time."
John blinked away sleep, trying to figure out how to dodge the question. Harry would take good care of him for a day. She'd bring him tea and wash his back and keep him eating. But over months? Harry couldn't keep a goldfish alive. She'd tried three times. The last time he'd visited her cat's liter box was so caked with feces it'd formed a solid block.
Where am I going to go? John tried to keep his alarm concealed though he had no hope of keeping it from Sherlock. As if on cue, Sherlock pulled his head down from staring at the ceiling and scanned John's body and hospital monitors, a rather perplexed expression on his face.
What did he expect? John wondered. Sherlock had seen first hand how John had few family members and even less familial support. He'd eschewed Harry's care after returning from the war, what made Sherlock think anything had changed? And if Sherlock didn't expect him to rely on Harry, who, then? Or had Sherlock not realized that John would require additional care than what a hospital could offer? At first glance, that looked the most likely - as far as John knew Sherlock had never experienced being truly injured. He certainly didn't act like he had.
People didn't just pop up after gunshot wounds. Of anyone, Sherlock should know that. John frowned, watching as Sherlock settled his elbows on his knees, his fingers pinched before his lips, his thinking pose. No, it made more sense that Sherlock would know precisely how long wound recovery would take and all that would be involved in it. But in that case, why was Sherlock acting so puzzled? Surely he didn't expect John would ask him for help?
John gaped at Sherlock, who met his gaze defiantly.
"Well, we all know he's not staying with you," Harry snarked, turning in her seat to glare at Sherlock. John closed his eyes, exhausted. "You should've stayed with me, back then, when you got shot and everything. I've got the place to myself now, you know, got the couch and all," she said, trying to look proud. John nodded tiredly and she deflated. "My neighbors are a couple of twats but what can you do?" she said and grinned. "I left used cat litter on their doormat, that's what. Took a shit in it myself," she said. John blinked at her, flabbergasted, and Harry tittered. She was right, he thought, deciding not to renew his meds. It had been a long time. He wanted his head finally clear of the damned haze.
"You really shat on your neighbor's mat?" he asked and Harry laughed, banging her palm against the hospital cot.
"He wrote to management about the dog in 27C!" she crowed and smacked the hospital bed again. John nodded, doing his best not to look disapproving. By the way she slowly sobered, her expression growing frustrated, he thought he'd failed at it.
"Have I ever told you about the time Sherlock and I went to Buckingham Palace?" He asked, though he felt far too tired to tell the story. Harry's face lit up and she leaned toward him. Sherlock stood up, moving to look out of the window again. John hesitated, uncertain, but Harry's hopeful expression won him over. "I arrived, having been escorted there despite my will and with all the pomp and circumstance you'd expect, to find Sherlock sitting, completely starkers, wrapped in a bed sheet. So, as you would, I asked him if he's at least wearing pants-" John started. In moments, he had her bent over laughing again. Sherlock watched them in the reflection, his face blank, his gaze as measuring as ever. It was only when John stopped talking, his throat sore and his lungs torn up from coughing, that he remembered he wasn't supposed to be speaking. His back burned and pulled, damaged by the coughing.
"To add insult to injury, I was never able to blog about that one, for it was quickly deemed classified information," John explained, laying back on the bed, closing his eyes for some much needed sleep. He pressed the button for his morphine. He didn't want to know what his nightmares would look like, if he went off the medicine now. He'd have to live with the haze.
"Tell me another one," Harry ordered. John pretended he'd already slipped into sleep. For once, Sherlock didn't inform the room of his dishonesty.
~~/~~
:You should have informed me when you found him. I have called off the military search:
Sherlock deleted the text, unconcerned. Mycroft had more than earned that when he'd sold their information to a terrorist. His phone gasped again; another text.
:I will upgrade his room to something more appropriate: Mycroft offered. Offered, and didn't do it. Testing the water.
:No. SH: Sherlock replied. John wouldn't like that. And he was going to live. No doubt they'd already been reassigned the best doctors in the country.
He was getting bored. That didn't feel right. Hospital visits to tortured friends sounded like one of the events he was supposed to find fascinating regardless of their content, like human births and funerals. It wasn't good to be bored at a funeral.
Sherlock ran his finger over the metal arms of his chair, warmed from his contact. He'd been waiting for days, agonizing about how furious John would be, how pained, and how they'd get over it. He still had no answer. John's brain was too drugged out to constitute his friend, so he was left staring at a sleeping lump of flesh, watching it heal like he'd once watched wet soil dry. There was no content there but he couldn't get himself to do anything else. He could just stare and be bored.
"It's a bit creepy, you being here, in't it?" Harry said, drawing attention to where she was knitting by the window.
"He does not want to be alone," Sherlock replied, gesturing to the heart monitor, though it no longer showed how John's pulse had risen at the suggestion of being left unattended.
"And you've elected yourself, have you?" Harry scoffed, shaking her head and digging in her purse for something. Sherlock kept his face blank, knowing it unsettled her.
"You leave every day at four to get dressed for dates. You follow the willing home, probably to avoid staying at the grimy motel you've let and to bolster your flagging ego. You're drunk before you arrive, drunk in their beds, and you come straight here when you're kicked out in the morning, and yet you don't arrive until 10:30. You flirt at the nurse's station. You should leave the brunette alone; she's becoming uncomfortable," Sherlock recited. Harry gaped at him.
"Asshole," she made out finally.
"Prove me wrong, stay with John for his sake," Sherlock returned. Harry shook her head.
"Oh, and keep you company?" she deflected.
Could I leave?
Sherlock smirked and turned away, trying to ignore the question. Leave John? Let him heal alone? Sherlock wasn't sure he knew how. Did that make him a stalker, then? What would he become if John tried to send him away? He could be very skilled at keeping John from ever seeing him. Harry was watching him, her eyes too shrewd. Sherlock kept his gaze on his nails - supposedly the gesture indicated disinterest.
~~/~~
Harry was gone by the time John woke again, but her purse was still hanging off the end of John's bed, so she hadn't gone far. John was beginning to wonder at the best way to send her home. He had a feeling she'd gotten paid time off work to help him, if she was dragging it on so long.
Sherlock was still sitting in the same seat, apparently unbothered by those petty human things like food and drink and visiting hours. John was inclined to ask how he was holding up and when he'd last showered, but something held him back. He didn't want to sound like he'd forgiven it all, John figured out, his shoulders falling with the realization. Sherlock's eyes darted over to him, reading the motion.
He wasn't going to heal. Not from losing him. He had nothing but a bedsit and an empty cot to return to, and he felt no true desire to change that. John closed his eyes, remembering the thought he'd had in his drug-addled state just that morning, hoping to go home to his couch. He didn't have a couch, anymore. He'd been thinking about 221B. He was never going back there. Where precisely, was he going to go, then? He'd need nursing care for longer than a hospital could give him. John closed his eyes, imagining a homeless shelter and volunteer care. He would not be employable for months, if he was correct about the state of his arms.
Sherlock had gotten showered and dressed, he realized, finally noticing his normal slacks and buttoned shirt. Sherlock's hair was dry now - he'd been back for awhile.
Did he leave the hospital? John wondered, too tired to ask.
"Lestrade brought me clothing unprompted," Sherlock answered awkwardly. John nodded.
"Kind of him," he murmured, and slept.
~~/~~
A/N: Read & Review?