Aftermath and Tears

A few hours later, Sherlock is still stuck in a hospital bed, while John is making his first attempts to leave his, with the help of the nurses. They encourage him to move around with care, to exercise his newly repaired lung, and John allows them to escort him to the chair by Sherlock's bed.

"I truly hope that this is the pinnacle of the most spectacularly fucking irresponsible things you have ever done and will ever do. I cannot handle any more," John says. He pauses. "I have to think I am missing something. I didn't just startle you when I came home. You looked dazed."

"I couldn't see properly," Sherlock admits.

"You couldn't-"

"I had been experimenting with the ergot gas, and my eyes were burning."

John's eyes glint with fury. "So you were under the influence of psychoactive drugs."

Sherlock grimaces. "No. There was no ergot suspended in it yet, just a benign type of fungus as a test."

"So you shot me due to sheer ignorance, not psychoactive drugs."

"Which do you think is worse?" Sherlock asks, curious despite himself.

John shakes his head, and his expression vascillates between impending tears and laughter. "Un-fucking-believable. When Mycroft said you were a battlefield, I didn't reckon I should take him literally."

"Lestrade said he won't give the gun back," Sherlock tells him.

John sighs. "I liked that gun. I'll get another somehow, I suppose. Any reason you didn't hide it?"

"I was busy trying to help you."

"Yes, I heard you sealed the chest wound. Saved my life. Ta."

Sherlock goes on, as long as he is confessing things. "Lestrade took the gun because I had it in my mouth."

John goes dead white, the same color as during his blood loss.

"I wish they'd given you my blood," Sherlock says, trying to move on.

"You're too fucking thin and you're anemic," John says. "They couldn't take any. You had none to spare."

Sherlock shrivels, feeling as he did in childhood when his father told him he always did everything wrong, while he tried so hard to be good.

John enunciates slowly, "You put the gun in your mouth?"

"I waited until I heard the sirens. I had to keep you safe first."

"You put the gun in your mouth."

Sherlock ducks his head.

"You-" John seems about to repeat it again but stops himself. "Am I to assume you meant to pull the trigger on purpose that time?"

"Yes," Sherlock manages, feeling as if a stone block is crushing his chest. "I was so sorry."

"And thought you being dead would make me feel better," John bites out.

Sherlock cannot think of a response to that.

"You fucking immature- For you, suicide is just the ultimate way of avoiding responsibility, isn't it?" John slams down his hand, and his food tray clatters. "I don't know how you avoided suicide watch after that stunt, but I ought to have you sectioned."

"It wasn't a stunt; I meant it!" Sherlock blurts out. John looks even worse, is now shaking slightly. Sherlock wonders if he should call the nurse. More quietly, he continues, "I haven't hurt myself since. I had to stay with you."

"You didn't eat or drink. You landed yourself an IV, didn't you?"

"I couldn't. I wasn't functioning correctly. I couldn't speak either."

"I think I remember something you said, something about running from you." John rubs his face, hard, smoothing down the stubble that is almost a beard by now. "I'm not ready to forgive you just yet," he says, "but god help me, I probably will, because I know in my heart you mean well."

"Please don't section me," Sherlock whispers. "Please."

"I didn't really mean that."

"Yes you did. And Father used to say that when I was small, but Mycroft and Mummy-" The tears finally caught up to Sherlock, now fully hydrated. "It's a waste," he mumbles to himself. "From the IV bag, into my veins, and straight out of my eyes. Wasted."

John's face crumples, and now he is crying too, and he brushes his fingers through Sherlock's tangled hair.

"When you were dying, I thought I would never speak again," Sherlock says. "Nothing mattered but you. I wanted so badly to die, and I deserve it. If I admit responsibility now, and I still die, does that fix it properly?"

"Oh god," John sobs. "I don't want you to die. I want us to be happy."

"You deserve to be happy. You'll find someone. The evening nurse is infatuated with you." Sherlock's lips are shaking as he kisses John's hands.

John's voice cracks. "I want you. Only you, you lunatic. I won't be happy without you, and I'd rather be shot and be with you than be alone. But if you ever do that again-"

"Which part?" Sherlock asks. Clarifying is critical at this point.

"Any of it, you unbelievable idiot. Gas or target practice or suicide attempts. Any of it, I'll-"

"What?"

"It will break my heart," John says, and he suddenly is so small and fragile. Sherlock wraps his arms around him, mindful of the bandage and their IV lines. "What you did was fucking idiotic, but you did your best to fix it. What I want you to do, Sherlock, is live for me, not die for me. Stay with me."

Sherlock looks down at their fingers entwined together, and like a jolt to his brain, the world twists violently back into focus and the data comes cascading back. The colours are so vivid where he didn't even realize they had been grey. The sounds sharpen, the fluorescent lights make that irritating hum, and he hears dozens of little beeps and the traffic on the street below, and he can feel the heat of John's skin against his own and the texture of his callouses. Sherlock sees that John's dried brown blood is still under his fingernails and cuticles and in the creases of his palms, and it must have been everywhere before, but it's flaked off by now. He realizes that he wearing in a hospital gown, too many scratchy seams and awkwardly open and drafty in the rear, and his ruined suit is nowhere to be seen. He smells the odors of ammonia and isopropyl alcohol and of a hot meal (rye bread, sage sausage, fried potatoes seasoned with a bit of garlic) drifting from down the hall, and he becomes bitingly hungry. John blazes into full colour, his eyes so deep Sherlock feels he is falling in them, and they hold each other as tight as they can without damaging John's stitches.

John reaches under Sherlock's gown, traces the scarred letters "JW" over Sherlock's heart, and Sherlock sobs. John had done that, just for Sherlock, sacrificed so much of his love and sanity to make Sherlock happy, and Sherlock had repaid him with a bullet wound to the chest in very nearly the same spot, had nearly killed them both simply because he was bored. "I'm sorry," he whispers, over and over, and he hopes some day it will be enough. He hopes some day he can be enough for John.

Something inside of him breaks, and then something else heals, and he is whole again. He knows it will be difficult, even heartrending and torturous at times, but in the end, everything will be just fine.

The End.

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