A Photo Of John

Chapter 7

When John awoke, Sherlock was gone and his foot clean of blood. He sat up and looked around, he was nowhere in sight. He stood up and cringed, it felt like 1000 tiny needles were stabbing him in the feet repeatedly. His neck ached, so he went to lie down in bed. He pulled the warm quilted covers over his body and tried to fall asleep. But, he was having trouble. As soon as he started drifting to sleep, Sherlock would pop up in his mind. What was up with him lately? He was acting...odd. John fell asleep, still unsuccessful with deciphering Sherlock's actions. When he woke up, he softly stood up from bed, his back ridged from all his military training. John had awoken from a horrible nightmare, taking place back in Afghanistan. It was a memory of trying to treat the wounds of a good friend of his, but they were mortal. John held his hand as he passed away. But the scariest part was that he didn't cry when he passed. He just sat there. It made John wonder who he really was. Was he like Sherlock? Cold hearted and manipulative? No. But something was wrong with him and John wanted to find out. It left an unsettling feeling in his stomach.

He entered the open area and Sherlock was nowhere to be found. John didn't fret, he was used to Sherlock being absent. He plopped down into his comfortable chair and pulled his laptop over his lap. He checked his email and their blog. Suddenly, there was a massive crash from the other room, Sherlock's room. John threw the laptop off of him and onto a nearby table, sprinting to his door and busting it open only to find something equally disturbing. He stepped in as Sherlock threw his lamp against the wall and watched the glass pieces ricochet across the room. His bed sheets were scattered across the room, one half of his mattress on the floor, books thrown onto the ground due to the bookshelf collapsing from being kicked too many times. Curtains ripped from the window. Clothes scattered. Sherlock turned to John with a wild fire in his eyes, different from anything John had ever seen. Usually his eyes would remain cold and hard and sometimes light up a bit from laughing but nothing like this. Sherlock's eyes blazed like the fury of a thousand armies. He looked like he had the capability to kill John if he merely wished. But John wasn't afraid, instead he stood silently, trying not to enrage him any further.

" John." He growled.

Sherlock was angry that John could turn him out of his cold shell, that he could turn him into this horrible form of himself. All this compressed emotion, good and bad, was coming out now. All those times Mycroft told Sherlock to push his friends out, told him that they were lying to Sherlock, that they didn't care. Mycroft's "friends" would constantly laugh at him and Sherlock would never know why. The time his mother bought him an ice cream cone and Sherlock got some on his nose and his mother licked it off causing Sherlock to giggle. When his old drug dealer beat him to a pulp and left him on the street after he didn't pay him off for the cocaine he bought, Mycroft punching him in the face for getting involved in drugs. Mycroft holding his hand when they walked around the zoo, telling Sherlock to never tell another soul. He never held his hand again.

Sherlock collapsed on his bed, or what was left of it, and clearly stated:

" Leave me be. I am nothing but a clock, missing some of the gears."

John's doctor instincts kicked in and he went to help Sherlock, trying to brush glass from his hair. But Sherlock slapped his hand away and yelled " GO!"

He solemnly nodded and walked out of the room, silently closing the door behind him. Sherlock picked a pillow up off the ground and placed it on his kind-of bed. He buried his face into the soft surface. He softly murmured into the pillow:

" Alone is safe. Alone protects me." over and over until his speech slurred and he passed out.