Suddenly everything slowed down, like time itself had stopped. Helens eyes widened, the monster that was the intruder smirked. John's knees buckled beneath him and Sherlock stood, stony faced, holding the gun pointing it at the blond shadow.

He pulled the trigger and time restarted. The gun crackled and the room fell suddenly silent.

The silence was broken with a thud as the man hit the carpet. John found himself gasping for breath and Sherlock dashed by him to fall upon the blond shadow that was now lying on his back, sprawled on the floor with his glassy eyes staring, unfocused, at the ceiling.

"He's dead" Sherlock muttered. There was a neat bullet wound above the dead man's brow and a slight trickle of blood ran across his temple. The detective began inspecting the body, picking up its hands and gazing at the fingernails. He slowly emptied the pockets of the corpse trying to piece together each item, creating a story as he went along.

John, however, had his attention solely focused on Helen. Her skin was pale and her breath was coming in sharp rasps.

"John?" She managed to choke out "Help me, It hurts, John" and yet, not a tear rolled down her alabaster cheeks. She opened her hand, the knife that had so nearly stopped her heart slipped between her fingers. Despite the gaping wound on her shoulder, she'd had a lucky escape.

When Sherlock had burst into the room, successfully distracting the man, Helen had managed to wiggle a hand free to grasp the knife as it flashed down towards her ribs. Clutching the knife in her hand took the pressure away from any where that it could do any real damage. Then Sherlock had pulled the trigger, and their assassin found himself with no time left to finish the job. A huge cut had blossomed with tiny beads of blood along the width of her palm.

'Better the hand than your heart'. She thought. She couldn't remember who had said that to her, in fact, the entirety of her thoughts seemed to be a little fuzzy. She found herself gazing up at John. He looked angry, he was shouting but Helen couldn't hear him. His mouth moved like a pantomime creature that had been struck dumb. Helen wanted to laugh, but her chest was tight, as if her breath was escaping.

'Good' she thought 'he has to let me sleep, I'm so tired'

"Helen! No! Helen, stay with us!" John tried to shake her undamaged shoulder.

"G'way, John, lemme sleep. So tired" Helen's eyes were fluttering shut. Thankfully, the wound on her shoulder was on the right side of her body, the wrong side to pierce her heart, but she was losing blood - fast. John had peeled off his jumper and pressed it to the gaping hole in her chest, already the cream wool was stained crimson.

John turned frustrated to Sherlock, who was still nursing the man's corpse.

"Sherlock! SHERLOCK!"

"Yes?" Sherlock glanced up and over to John, then over to Helen.

"She's losing blood, we need help, call your brother, call an ambulance. Just. Do. Something. Useful" John paused, anger showing on his face. This was exactly like Sherlock, ignore the actual victim and go straight to the body, and what's his excuse? 'People are boring'

Sherlock stood, wiping the dust off of his trousers. Brushing his hands together, he had tiny flecks of blood under his nails.

"Yes, of course John..." he picked up his phone, his fingers darting over the keys. The flat seemed to hold it's breath.

"Lestrade? It's Sherlock, there's been an accident. Send an ambulance... yes, the flat" and with that he ended the call and crossed the room. He slipped into his coat he'd picked up off of the armchair, pulling the collar up around his neck.

He glared at John. "Now all we can do is wait"

There was something about hospitals that made John feel uncomfortable. Maybe, it was simply the fact he was no longer here trying to heal, all he could do was wait. He found his eyes roving restlessly over the tubes and machines that fed Helens body. She could be dying. The doctors didn't know if she'd be alive tomorrow, or the next day, or next week or even in a hours time. She'd lost a lot of blood, almost too much. She was lucky, they said.

But John couldn't see how she'd been lucky.

She'd come to them for help and they couldn't even do that.

Her hair had been washed and it lay about her on the bed, it gave her an air of defiance, of indestructibility. Although, every harsh beep of the machinery tried to take that away from her. She looked almost angelic.

John shifted in the hard plastic chair, wondering where Sherlock could have possibly got to. As soon as they had got to St Barts Sherlock had stormed off, muttering something about needing the lab time. He'd left John in the ward, on his own with only the machines for company.

A nurse bustled through the door. Goodness knows how Sherlock had persuaded them not to call the police, or blab to the newspapers. It was a small wonder what that man's reputation could do in certain situations.

"Visiting time's over now, love" The nurse said in some approximation of kindness.

"Uh, thanks... Will she be okay?" John asked. To which he only got a small, pitiful smile in return.

Helen lay on the bed, John was sitting beside her and she could feel the pressure of his hand in hers. She wanted to talk to him, to reassure him. She wanted to see the machines, and the nurses. She wanted to be able to observe every person that passed by the door of her ward.

She couldn't, she couldn't open her eyes. She couldn't even murmur out a pathetic word or squeeze the army doctors hand.

She could feel the tubes flowing into her body and the machines humming next to her. The medication was making her drowsy. Helen felt her world slowly spiralling into sleep once again.

"Molly" Sherlock barked.

The girl standing over a desk studying Petri dishes jumped out of skin.

"Sherlock?" She asked whilst smoothing down her lab coat, and pushing the hair out of her eyes. "What can I do for you?"

"I need use of the equipment." He glanced around the lab, moving from bench to bench collecting up seemingly random items from the room and moving them over to a clean workspace.

"Of course" Molly chirped "What equipment do you need?"

Sherlock gazed up at Molly, sighed, and just simply gestured to the things he'd picked up from around the room.

"I have what I need" He pulled out a couple of small evidence bags out of his pocket and slapped them onto the bench whilst focusing the microscope.

"Well, okay, I'm here if you need anything... I'll just finish what I'm doing shall I?" Sherlock just ignored her. "Fine, okay, I'll just..." She trailed off.

It was later that John found them both, with Molly standing at Sherlock's shoulder whilst the man inspected and compared slides under the microscope. Equipment was scattered everywhere, there were even several small patches of acid left unattended burning into the surface of the desk.

"Sherlock, are you ready?"

"John?" Sherlock looked up with bleary eyes, trying to focus on something that wasn't his microscope. "But, it's only been ten minutes"

"Ten minutes? Sherlock, It's been four hours" John sighed incredulously.

"Don't be stupid, John"

"He's right" Molly murmured, not really wanting to get into an argument with them both.

"Oh, well..." Sherlock grabbed his coat, slinging his scarf round his neck. "We have to be getting going!" He strode out of the lab with John in tow, leaving a bespectacled Molly to gaze around at the havoc that the detective had left in his wake.

They stormed past the hospital staff, Sherlock gripped John's wrist, literally dragging the man along.

"What a wonderful couple, just look at them" One nurse said to another.

"Uh, we're not actually a coupl-!" John managed to say before getting dragged off again. "Why are you rushing?"

"John, anything could have happened in four hours! Anything" He hailed a cab. "Why didn't you get me sooner?"

A cab pulled up and they bundled themselves into the back, barking instructions to the cabbie.

"Well, for one, Sherlock, I am not your babysitter, I shouldn't have to care for you like some... some child!" John pushed back his hair in frustration. "And two, I HAD NO IDEA WHERE YOU WERE!"

Sherlock twitched his lips into a flash of a smirk. "I didn't realise it'd be that hard to take a guess as to where I might have gone, you know"

"Well, unlike some I can't actually figure out where someone has been, will be or might be just be looking at the way they wear their collar" He snapped.

They gazed out the windows, the silence grew longer until they glanced over at one another and burst out into peels of laughter.

"John, honestly, it's easy enough" Sherlock said with the slightest smile on his face.

"Yeah, of course it is" He just rolled his eyes at Sherlock's impossible personality.

The cab slowed to a halt and John jumped out and was quickly followed by Sherlock.

"Tha'd be twenty quid, mate" The cabbie said, looking from the taxi expectantly. Sherlock tossed a few notes through the window before striding back into the flat. He shoved the door back and strode up stairs with John on his heels.

"Sherlock?" John received no answer "Sherlock what's up, is something wrong?" Sherlock held out a hand to silence him as he slowly pushed open the door to their flat. The room was obscured to John by the other man's back and it was a while before he could see what exactly was wrong. But as Sherlock moved out the way it soon became apparent.

The room was ransacked, papers littered the floor, chairs were moved or knocked over and lying on their backs like beached whales. Books had been ripped from the shelves and everything else had just been thrown to the ground. The kitchen was no better. Sherlock's experiments were flung about the room and the fridge door was open and you could see a jar of eyes had been knocked over inside.

Sherlock just stood in the middle of the room taking in everything, what had been taken and what had been left, what had been moved and to where.

"Sherlock?" John said, sounding a little shell shocked, he was checking over his laptop. It'd fallen from the desk and a great split ran down it's casing.

"There were three of them, they came through the door. Mrs Hudson is at her sisters. No one was hurt. I think this is Helens doing."

John stood up to face him. "Who is she, Sherlock?"

"I don't know, John, I DON'T KNOW!" The detective pressed his hands against his temples as if trying to make his brain work faster "I JUST CAN'T THINK"

Sherlock's phone rang, he slipped it out of his pocket and checked the caller I.D. Before answering. He silenced to John to hush and he held the phone to his ear.

"... Mycroft"

Once again, thanks for reading. Now, I'd like to know what you'd prefer; More frequent updates but shorter chapters [800 to 1000 words] or less frequent updates but longer chapters [1500 to 3000 words] It'd be helpful to know exactly what you guys expect.