Gone

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Screaming. There were so many of them and John couldn’t reach them all. Comrades, civilians and friends, all needing his attention. He ran over to the only friend he had left alive, Captain Jamie Wilson.

“John,” Jamie gasped but John shushed him. The doctor began to bandage the gunshot to Jamie’s leg but as he did so, a grenade rolled up to them.

“Run John, go!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Jamie pushed John with last of his strength and the strength of a dying man wanting to save his nearest friend is unimaginable. Just as the grenade went off, John slid under an abandoned car. He hit his head and everything exploded into whiteness as Jamie let out his death cry,

“God save the Queen!”

 

John woke up screaming. Immediately, the agony in his torso assaulted his mind and John gasped, his breath coming quickly and weakly.

“John? Are you okay?” asked a familiar baritone next to him and he felt a cool, long-fingered hand slip into his own. Had it been any other time, John would have been terribly confused and embarrassed but he was in too pain (both physically and mentally) to care anymore. He clutched Sherlock’s hand, his light in all the darkness and shadow, as his consciousness left him.

……

Mycroft Holmes hated seeing his little brother like this. Sherlock’s usual cold, flint-like grey eyes were swimming with tears; partly out of pain; partly out of anger over his leg but mainly out of fear and worry about John. Sherlock showed no emotion anymore but Mycroft remembered the young boy with the curly black hair and huge grey eyes that saw wonder in everything and everyone. But that was before the teasing, the bullying and the indifference of his father until Sherlock learnt that nobody cared. Mycroft hated himself now for not being there for Sherlock when he needed him, not being there the young boy would walk in after a day of teasing and disappear into his room to cry. And over the years, the wonder drained from Sherlock, along with the other emotions apart from rage and hatred. He became ice-cold and it was all Mycroft’s fault. Sometimes, he remembered his mother funeral. She had died in a car accident and Sherlock had been just five. He had found the dark-haired boy in his room later that day, with his father’s revolver pressed to his temple. Mycroft had wrestled the gun from him and held him close whilst he cried.

“Why?” he had asked his little brother. “Why, Sherlock?” Sherlock’s little voice had been weak and tearful.

“Because I want to be with her, Mycroft. I want my mummy back.” It wasn’t right. Five-year-olds shouldn’t be suicidal. Then after everything, Sherlock had found John, the other side to his coin. They couldn’t be more different but that didn’t matter; they were two halves of the same whole. Even though neither of them would ever admit it, Mycroft never how much Sherlock and John relied on each other and loved each other. Decisively, Mycroft picked up his phone and began to make a few calls, leaving the broken ex-army doctor and the shattered consulting detective asleep, hand in hand.

……

Sherlock shivered, his long eyelashes parting. There was a hand laying limply in his own and for an unknown reason, he took the pulse of the man whose hand resided in his own. Weak and fast, the pulse of John Watson thrummed under Sherlock’s thin fingers. He was alive. Sherlock frowned; of course he was alive; he was still here with him. So why was Sherlock suddenly feeling the need to check that his best friend was alive? Then the dream came back to him. He had merely dreamt John’s death, even if at the time it had felt very real. He turned his gaze over to the blonde-haired man and a tear pricked his eye. The poor doctor had gone through so much and it was all Sherlock’s fault. His feelings rollicked around inside of him and as much as he tried to delete them, push them away, snuff them out, he just couldn’t. How did ordinary people do it? What with all these damned feelings? Sherlock thought. Always feeling; it drove him crazy just loving John. At this thought, an argument started up between his head and his heart.

 

John doesn’t feel the same

Of course he does! He loves me.

How could anyone love you? You’re a sociopath. You have no feelings.

John doesn’t care. John loves me. And if I have no feelings, then what are these?

They’re, they’re fake!

The heart never lies, isn’t that a saying?

John doesn’t love you!

 

But for the first time in his life, Sherlock’s heart won the argument and he grasped John’s hand tighter in his own.

“I think… I think I love you John Watson”