John's Angel

John looked down at his hands. They were covered in crimson. Blood. In the distance shells exploded and machine guns rattled out a sharp maddening beat. A moan escaped from the the man in front of him. John frowned in concentration and pressed on the pulsing wound in the stomach of the poor soldier. There was nothing more he could do. It was so frustratingly futile that he wanted to scream, and sometimes, sometimes he wondered why he'd even gotten involved in this bloody war. He was reminded why when he felt the exhilaration of holding someone's life in his hands and not letting it slip away. It was a life of exhilarating highs and crushing lows.

He knew it the moment the body below him turned from a person to a corpse and a wave of depression washed through his mind. He had failed. Again. He looked up with tears in his eyes and stood, scrubbing them away with the heel of his hand. Now was not the time. John swept his eyes across the bare patch of land that marked the territory of the small skirmish. He turned just in time to see a dying man from the opposing side shakily raise a gun. John drew a sharp breath. The man's face twisted and his finger tightened on the trigger. John's world narrowed to a pinpoint as a bang filled the clearing. Almost instantly his shoulder was on fire and he could feel the warm blood seeping over his chest as he slowly, so slowly, fell backward. A howl of pain tore from his lips and he couldn't feel anything but white hot pain. The world faded to black...

...John bolted upright in bed clawing at the constricting sheets, desperately trying to free himself. He needed out. Now. Once he'd finally he freed himself he laid back breathing heavily, a cold sweat drying on his face and neck. He stared up at the ceiling as his eyes adjusted to the murky blackness of the room. Maybe it was the dark playing tricks on his corneas but in that moment he would have sworn that he saw a glimmer of light out of the corner of his eye. John whipped his head around searching franticly for any source of light at all. Finding none, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose in an attempt to calm down, maybe even go back to sleep.

Two hours later though, he had to admit that it was an unlikely possibility. He glanced at the alarm clock. Four A.M. With a resigned sigh he rolled upright and flicked on the lamp. John scowled when he noted that his cane was across the room; it would be an immense amount of effort to retrieve the bloody thing. Wincing in pain he grabbed ahold of a nearby chair and dragged himself across the room. Once he had the cane he hobbled back across the room and straightened the covers on his bed as well as he could given the circumstances. It was a small twin bed not unlike the cot he'd occupied in the army and it was as bare as the rest of the flat. John Watson had pathetically few possessions; he'd sold many of them before he shipped out and the rest he'd left behind when he got back.

He got up and had breakfast, an apple and tea, then got a shower. He had hoped that the hot water would wash away the haze that had begun to settle on his mind. It didn't. He completed his bathroom rituals with precision, taking as much time as he possibly could on each small task. If he had wished, he could have been finished in a few short minutes, but he knew better than anyone that all he had to do when he finished was nothing. Fifteen too short minutes later John found himself sitting at his desk, fully dressed, with nowhere to go. He slid open the top drawer. The item it contained was sleek and deadly. John reached toward it hesitantly. He brushed his fingertips over the cool black metal of the gun. He picked it up and turned it over and over in his hands. A thought ran through his mind that was horrifying and enticing and just plain /wrong/. He thought about how it would feel to put the cool metal of the gun against his temple and squeeze the tri... A small wisp of white curled in the edge of his vision and distracted him enough to snap out of it. When he realized just where his thoughts had been John looked at the weapon with a newfound disgust and threw in back in the drawer. He slammed the drawer and grabbed his laptop and cane.

John hobbled over to the small table that passed for his dining area and set down the laptop on its surface. He opened the computer and found that it was open to his blog. He released a sigh. Ella had insisted that he create it to document the events in his life. What she didn't understand, what she never understood, was that nothing happened to him. Nothing at all.

He sat and stared at the blinking cursor for the better part of an hour before giving up and checking his email. He was in the midst of deleting worried emails from his misguided sister Harry when he saw another, bigger wisp of the white smoke that he had so easily dismissed before. It curled around his foot like a nervous kitten, tentative and sweet. He turned around slowly, somehow knowing that it meant him no harm. Standing in the corner by his bed thoughtfully turning John's handgun over in his hands was a ghostly pale man wearing a long white coat over a button down shirt and slacks of the same color. John's sharp inhalation drew the figure's attention and the man in white turned startlingly pale jade colored eyes on the army doctor. John shivered slightly because the specter wasn't looking at him, he was lookingthrough him and those unearthly eyes asked one question. Why?

He slowly took one halting step toward John, then another, all the while trailing curls of white smoke in his wake. He was still holding John's gun. When he was standing close enough to touch, John could see that the man was slightly transparent. The only solid thing about him was the intensity of his gaze, a stare that had stopped looking through him and was now locked on John's face. The apparition opened his mouth and for the first time John heard him speak.

"Never, do you understand? Never. Do you hear me John Watson?" His voice was low, vehement and impossibly deep. He set the gun on the table with a soft thump. John swallowed the lump in his throat with some difficulty and nodded.

"Never," he agreed.

The angel, because that's what John was convinced he was, faded away, leaving a few wisps of white smoke and a very shaken doctor behind.

A month or so later after a chance meeting with an old friend, John walked into a lab in Bart's hospital and was struck with such feeling of familiarity that he just stood and stared for a moment. The man sitting behind a microscope turned pale jade eyes on him as John offered him his mobile. The man looked at him and asked him a question that would change his life.

"Afghanistan or Iraq?"