Hi again. Just me posting old stuff. Nothing new.

Enjoy!

Sherlock needed scissors. Preferably the small type used for sewing. He needed them, but he couldn't find any, and he was becoming increasingly more and more agitated as his search throughout the flat continued. He knew Mrs Hudson must have had some downstairs, but the landlady was out, and to be quite honest, Sherlock couldn't be bothered to go and break into her flat.

"God dammit!" he cried, as he rifled through the last draw in the kitchen. He whipped out his phone and quickly typed a text to John.

Need sewing scissors. SH

John took three minutes and twenty four seconds to reply.

Go look in my room, in my desk drawer.

Sherlock smiled at John's reliability, and bounded upstairs to John's bedroom, and threw himself at John's desk, tearing open the drawer.

Inside, glinting slightly, was the pair of silver medical scissors John used for stitching his patients up, when they had miscalculated exactly how far away the next building was, but leapt from one roof to another anyway, and ended up with a gash on his forehead.

"Aha!" he beamed triumphantly, and was just about to leave with his prize in hand, when a small battered medical kit caught his eye, nestled at the back of the drawer.

Curious, Sherlock picked it up and snapped it open. Inside were rolls of old gauze and medical tape that clearly hadn't been used since Afghanistan. Sherlock pushed them aside to see tiny grains of sand resting in the corners of the kit.

"Hm," Sherlock murmured, pressing his finger into the clumps of sand and rubbing it between the pad of his index and his thumb. A thousand different facts and figures about said sand danced before his eyes, before he dismissed them. Irrelevant.

There was also a bottle of iodine solution, a few adrenaline shots, which he absolutely did not pocket, not at all, nope, and some heavy painkillers, a rough looking scalpel, and a packet of jelly beans which looked like they'd seen better days.

Sherlock then noticed the crease along the edge of the kit, meaning that there was something beneath this section. A secret compartment! Aha! Sherlock thought, his mind reeling as he thought about his father's old tool kit with all the partitions and extra storage spaces.

It took a bit of finger-nail work to prise the top part off, and he was eminently disappointed when all he found was a small plastic bag inside. Nonetheless, he picked it up and tipped its contents onto the desk.

A piece of metal hit the wood with a thunk, and a scroll of paper fluttered out next to it.

He picked up the metal object, and swallowed when he saw it was a medal. It was rather grimy- it hadn't been out of its box in a long time- and was attached to a crimson ribbon, and was in the shape of a cross. A lion over a crown was in the centre, and beneath that, the words:

FOR VALOUR

Sherlock's heart stopped. He was holding John's Victoria Cross. Correction, he thought numbly, I'm holding John Watson VC's Victoria Cross.

"Oh god," he mumbled, and held it up more gingerly than he had been before, by the ribbon, so that the light from the window could catch it.

He gathered some material from his dressing gown, and rubbed it against the metal. When he held it up again, it shone a little more.

Heroes don't exist, John, and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them.

Smiling slightly, he placed it back onto the plastic bag, and picked up the rolled up piece of paper. It was worn and delicate, originally a document with something official typed on it, and had something written on the back.

To John, I owe you my life.

To John, thank you.

Dear John, all the best.

John, God bless you.

Dr Watson, you are a hero.

Each little message had a name written next to it. The paper was covered in them.

Sherlock read what had originally been typed on the front, and immediately wished he hadn't.

It was a report of John Watson after he had been found, initially believed to be MIA, but in actual fact had escaped from a prisoner of war camp.

Detailed descriptions of John's injuries, the tortures they had used on the soldiers, and how John had planned the escape, surviving with a bullet in his shoulder, and then carried back by a certain William Murray.

For valour...

Sherlock stared at the paper, scarcely moving, before he grasped a Biro from John's desk and flipped the paper over, smoothing it out and finding a space amongst all the messages and names.

To John. A friend and my hero. Thank you for saving me too. SH

The paper was reunited with the medal, and carefully tucked into the medical kit. The tray was returned into its position, and he closed it, putting it back into the drawer.

He slowly made his way back downstairs, and sat on the sofa, scissors in hand but forgotten. He took out his phone again.

Am ordering takeout. What do you want? SH

He smiled when his phone buzzed in his pocket, three minutes and twenty four seconds later.