A Desperate, Painful Kind of Love

2

Casualties of war. Good or bad, troops or civilians. People died. It could be between two countries or two men, but at the end of the day, when the tallies were counted up to become a figure written in a history book, those people were husbands, wives, sons, daughters . . .

They were friends.

It never got any easier, and John thanked God for that, because the day that the death of a fellow man didn't lose him some sleep at night was one he prayed he'd never see.

As it was, today wasn't that day.

It was too white in here. The room had a feeling of sterility, of bleakness, it got right under his skin. Everything was too bright, to spacious, and too quiet.

It made the sounds of the machines working to keep a man breathing and his heart beating almost deafening.

John sighed from the chair he sat in, running his hands over his face. He wasn't going to pretend that he and Sherlock always got along. On the good days he could say they were friends, best friends, they could go out for a drink, a case, laugh and joke and enjoy each other's company. They would solve cases without a hitch. And then there were the worst days, when their personalities and decisions clashed, when joking and teasing turned to insults and John had to remind himself to be the better man, or at the very least keep himself from decking Sherlock out the window.

John didn't think he was better. They were two men born in different situations, raised in different ways. Sherlock was intelligent, too smart for his own good. He never had friends, and his family were fairly oblivious. But they cared about him. John was a poor, lonely kid with an alcoholic mother and an abusive dead father. His family was distant, but he had friends; tons of them. Sherlock could be too full of himself, John could be too righteous, and sometimes it took a serious threat looming over London to even get them in the same room.

But despite their differences, Sherlock Holmes is a good man. He's proven it before, and lying here on a hospital bed, bruised, bloody and broken, he's proven it again.

Alive, but just barely, and nothing guaranteed that he'd stay that way