What Doesn't Kill Me, Part 2
Title: Sherlock (BBC): What Doesn’t Kill Me, Part 2 ( For part 1, click here)
Rating: PG-13
Genre/Relationship: John Watson, Mary Morstan, Sherlock Holmes
Wordcount: 2,128
Spoilers: None, really
Disclaimer: Do not own
Pairings: John Watson/Mary Watson
Summary: Sherlock’s revelations and Mary’s seeming betrayal have left John reeling. The two people he loves best in the world-and the two people who love him best in the world-have proven themselves capable of lies and deceit and betrayal at a level John can’t even begin to process. But the battle hasn’t even begun in earnest, and John has never been one to shrink from a fight. Whatever happens, he’ll try to fight his way back to the life he still wants with both of them.
Warnings: Psychological dissection. Please glove up and wear a mask
A/N: With gratitude to the creators of BBC’s Sherlock, who own this version of these characters, but not the ideas of this story.
The stitches had pulled but not given out. Once he was supine and the bandages redressed, he was brought up to the room. John was a familiar figure at the nurses’ station by now, and whether it was sympathy, professional courtesy or simply bowing to the inevitable, they allowed him and Mary to go immediately into Sherlock’s room as soon as he was settled.
“Tell them, won’t you,” Sherlock drawled almost immediately when they entered. He pulled against the restraints on one pale arm.
John looked at him for a moment with no expression, then poked his body out the door and turned toward the nurses' station.
“Do you have any leg restraints?” he yelled.
“For God’s sake, John,” Sherlock snapped. “Do try to contain yourself. I’m in hospital.”
“Only barely,” John said. He was angry-well beyond annoyed-and paced at the foot of the bed like a prizefighter ready to take the ring. He seemed to realize he was doing it and stopped, took a deep breath, and threw himself into the chair. Mary walked over and brushed a kiss against Sherlock’s forehead. She had done it before-had done it countless times before and in the last week-and Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed. Watching it, John felt as though he were trapped in some weird dream. Everything seemed so bloody normal, except that nothing was normal.
His phone began to buzz and he looked down, surprised to find he had 16 unread texts, 8 of them from Mycroft. He thumbed through them irritably and watched Mary help settle Sherlock more comfortably and hold a cup of water to his lips. He winced, and she put a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you hurting? Is the morphine-“
“Water,” Sherlock muttered. “I hate water. Can’t you get me a cuppa, Mary?” He was whinging shamelessly, unafraid of being denied.
She smiled at him, her mouth quirking in amusement.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and moved out into the hall.
The silence was deafening and, after a moment, Sherlock closed his eyes and feigned sleep.
“I know you’re ruddy faking,” John spat. “You’re probably still so wired from everything that it would take a hammer to knock you out.”
“You’re certainly wired,” Sherlock said mildly, his blue eyes drifting over to his friend. “Your respiration is up, your blood pressure-“
“Damn my blood pressure,” John growled. “And while I’m at it, damn your deductions and, oh, by the way damn y-”
“John.” He could not ever remember Sherlock’s voice being this gentle, not even with Ms. Hudson, and though it soothed the cracks in his soul he felt the old anger rising again. He did not need to be coddled.
“I’m not coddling you,” Sherlock said, and John smacked the arm of the chair with his fist.
“Stop it. Stop it, Sherlock, or so help me I’ll rip that morphine port out myself and hurl it out the window!"
Sherlock swallowed, looking very white and pale, and said nothing. Mary came back into that deadly silence and moved between them. She had a large Styrofoam cup in her hands. Steam rose from the top and a teabag label dangled over the edge.
“It’s a little hot,” she said. “Want me to add some water?”
“No, just blow on it, please,” Sherlock said, and Mary puffed the dark, brown surface of the water obediently. After a minute and a half, she held it up to Sherlock’s lips and he drank.
“Two sugars?” he asked, one eyebrow climbing. His Vulcan eyebrow, she had called it once, and John had laughed out loud. She was aware of him behind her, watching her, watching them.
“Three,” she answered. “I thought you could use the calories.”
Sherlock nodded and sipped again, looking at her. They did not need more than a look between them to know what the other was thinking, to know that they were both thinking of John, of his pain and his rage.
“S’good,” Sherlock said. “How did you-they wouldn’t let me have any. I asked. What did you tell them to make them let me have it.”
“I didn’t,” Mary said. “I told them it was for me.”
Sherlock laughed, then gasped and his hands fluttered to his wound. John was on his feet instantly, taking one long stride toward the bed and pulling the covers back. He pushed the gown away to view the fresh bandages, the bruising that spread over Sherlock’s torso. Sherlock gasped and clutched the edge of the gown on the opposite side as though to preserve his modesty, but John shoved his hands roughly away.
“Lie still,” he hissed. “Leave off and stop fussing.” He shot Sherlock a look. “It’s not like there are any secrets among us,” he said tightly. Mary said nothing, but her eyes flickered to Sherlock’s and he grimaced. John caught it immediately and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He put his hand over Sherlock’s bandaged wound and glared at them. “Are there?” he demanded. “What else aren’t you-“
Sherlock lay still, afraid to move with John’s hands on him, but he looked at Mary and nodded.
“Magnussen,” she said. “He may try to act now that Sherlock’s back. It could come…at any time, really.”
Damn. Another level in Hell just opened up, yawning, but John found he was steady on his feet. “Where…what will he do?” He looked at Mary, at Sherlock. “Who will be target?”
Mary darted a quick glance behind them, making sure no helpful nurse bustled through to overhear them. She opened her mouth to answer-“
“Mary and I are both targets,” Sherlock said. He looked straight at John, his eyes compelling, so John didn’t see the look of momentary confusion on Mary’s face. Her own look clouded, then cleared suddenly.
“He might try to make a run at Sherlock while he’s here,” she said. She turned to John, careful in how she approached him, and handed him the tea. Numbly, he took it. “You stay with him. I’m going to prowl the halls a bit,” she said.
John’s mouth opened. “Mary, be…” He hesitated, not sure how to complete his sentence. “Be careful.” He swallowed.
“Sherlock says that Magnussen is the most dangerous man on the continent.”
“Sherlock is almost never wrong,” she said with a bleak smile, and was gone.
***
Mary had a lot to think about on her trip around the ward, but it did not stop her from noting everything was as it should be. She saw the detectives masquerading as family members of patients, but those were from Lestrade, so she did nothing but smile her hausfrau smile and make sure she did nothing that marked her as what she was. She had done it so long it was second nature, and even the hospital security tapes would show only a woman riddled with anxiety, pacing the hallways restlessly and aimlessly. They would not show an agent noting exits, phones, cameras. This was a hospital, and there was not much here that would stop anyone who tried to get in-except her. And she would stop anyone who tried to get in. Of that she had no doubt at all.
She was almost back to the room when a man stepped directly in front of her. She had seen him, had known him for what he was, but she startled like she should and turned anxious eyes up to him.
“Oh! You-sorry. You startled me.” Mary noted the gun beneath his coat, calculated exactly what angle she would use to snap his neck, smiling nervously all the while.
“Ms. Watson. Sorry. Go right in.”
She smiled cringingly and went in. Mycroft and John were squared off at the foot of Sherlock’s bed. The nurses had all apparently fled in terror.
“No one is bloody going home,” John said with the barely restrained fury usually reserved for the terminally obtuse. “As long as Sherlock is here, we’re staying, so you can either help or sod off.”
Over the months of their engagement, Mary had had many occasions to see Mycroft and John interact, but the sight of John’s compact form successfully facing down Mycroft’s studied nonchalance never failed to thrill her. Or amuse her. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling and refused to look at Sherlock, who was smirking in supreme satisfaction.
“Yes, see if they won’t bring in another chair, brother dear,” Sherlock drawled. “Or a cot. And I’d like to see the papers.”
The room was already strewn with papers, although John had made a cursory attempt to corral them as Sherlock had thrown them about the room.
Mycroft ignored John by the simple expedient of looking over his head and gave Sherlock a look of pained exasperation. “Sherlock, this is a hospital, not a sitting room. The nurses have been complaining about all the…” He looked behind him, acknowledging Mary with a nod. “…people you’ve been having in here, and they said you threw a tray-“
“I was aiming for the cart. Sue me.”
“If you don’t behave-“
“I am behaving. I’m behaving in a perfectly reasonable way for someone like me who-“
“There is no one like you,” Mycroft snapped.
Mary muttered “Thank goodness,” under her breath, and Mycroft stiffened and shot her a look. “How could we manage if there were two of them?” she said, smiling.
Mycroft’s smile was tight. “From my point of view, there might be three of them,” he said, and Mary allowed her eyes to grant him just a little sympathy. Loving Sherlock was hard, very hard. She knew firsthand. If Mycroft saw anything other than womanly sympathy in her eyes, he didn’t let on, but Mary didn’t think he had. She hoped he hadn’t, but she was tired of measuring probabilities against the impossibilities that life was currently throwing at her.
John got back in Mycroft’s field of vision by backing up closer to Sherlock, and his expression said he intended to be heard.
“Sherlock’s fine-
“Oh, yes-certainly. He had a hole blown in his gut and then ran away from the hospital to do God-only-knows.” John’s face hardened, and was that very impenetrability that caught Mycroft’s attention. He stepped closer and looked at John. “Or perhaps God isn’t the only one who-“
“Shove off, Mycroft,” Sherlock said from the bed. Mary thought the morphine must be working or he’d have said something worse.
“Sherlock!” There was a wealth of impotent rage in that name, and Mary felt her heart twist within her. What do you do when the person you love most in the world doesn’t want your love, doesn’t- She snapped the thought in two, stuffing it away. She could not think about that now. She could not think about that here.
“Sherlock’s fine here,” John said, glaring at Mycroft. “We’re fine. But we’re not going.”
”I could remove you,” Mycroft returned. He said it like he was suggesting an outing, a picnic, a day at the park.
John grinned, a savage joy on his face. “I’d like to see you try,” John said, and Mary had the supreme pleasure of seeing Mycroft’s face register genuine surprise.
“You would, wouldn’t you?” he murmured.
Mary felt Sherlock stir beside her and darted him a quick look. A million things passed between them, and she cursed herself vehemently, uselessly for not knowing to trust him. She had thought she and Sherlock were partnered only their protection of John-she had not realized that he had extended his grace to her herself as well. It was sobering, cataclysmic.
Mycroft saw the look-of course he saw it-and there was an instant when Mary felt his eyes sharpen on her face. If Sherlock’s penetrating gaze was chilling, Mycroft’s was paralyzing. Then the eyes shuttered, and Mycroft’s carefully pleasant face suddenly returned. The older Holmes sighed. “I’ll see about the cot,” he snipped.
“We don’t need a cot. We’ve got this covered,” John insisted.
Sherlock had to smile-his own personal army of two. He felt decadently safe. “I told you, brother dear, I don’t need you-“
Mycroft carefully pleasant face suddenly looked ferocious. “I told you to stay away from Magnessun,” he hissed. “For God’s sake, Sherlock, show a little sense for once. This time he only shot you. Next time-“
“He didn’t shoot me,” Sherlock said languidly. “I told you that a hundred times.”
“And next time, you might not be so lucky.“
Sherlock ignored his older brother and looked over at John. He and Mary shared a small smile.
“I’m very lucky,” Sherlock said with the ghost of a smile about his lips.
Mycroft left them in a righteous huff.
Rating: PG-13
Genre/Relationship: John Watson, Mary Morstan, Sherlock Holmes
Wordcount: 2,128
Spoilers: None, really
Disclaimer: Do not own
Pairings: John Watson/Mary Watson
Summary: Sherlock’s revelations and Mary’s seeming betrayal have left John reeling. The two people he loves best in the world-and the two people who love him best in the world-have proven themselves capable of lies and deceit and betrayal at a level John can’t even begin to process. But the battle hasn’t even begun in earnest, and John has never been one to shrink from a fight. Whatever happens, he’ll try to fight his way back to the life he still wants with both of them.
Warnings: Psychological dissection. Please glove up and wear a mask
A/N: With gratitude to the creators of BBC’s Sherlock, who own this version of these characters, but not the ideas of this story.
The stitches had pulled but not given out. Once he was supine and the bandages redressed, he was brought up to the room. John was a familiar figure at the nurses’ station by now, and whether it was sympathy, professional courtesy or simply bowing to the inevitable, they allowed him and Mary to go immediately into Sherlock’s room as soon as he was settled.
“Tell them, won’t you,” Sherlock drawled almost immediately when they entered. He pulled against the restraints on one pale arm.
John looked at him for a moment with no expression, then poked his body out the door and turned toward the nurses' station.
“Do you have any leg restraints?” he yelled.
“For God’s sake, John,” Sherlock snapped. “Do try to contain yourself. I’m in hospital.”
“Only barely,” John said. He was angry-well beyond annoyed-and paced at the foot of the bed like a prizefighter ready to take the ring. He seemed to realize he was doing it and stopped, took a deep breath, and threw himself into the chair. Mary walked over and brushed a kiss against Sherlock’s forehead. She had done it before-had done it countless times before and in the last week-and Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed. Watching it, John felt as though he were trapped in some weird dream. Everything seemed so bloody normal, except that nothing was normal.
His phone began to buzz and he looked down, surprised to find he had 16 unread texts, 8 of them from Mycroft. He thumbed through them irritably and watched Mary help settle Sherlock more comfortably and hold a cup of water to his lips. He winced, and she put a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you hurting? Is the morphine-“
“Water,” Sherlock muttered. “I hate water. Can’t you get me a cuppa, Mary?” He was whinging shamelessly, unafraid of being denied.
She smiled at him, her mouth quirking in amusement.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and moved out into the hall.
The silence was deafening and, after a moment, Sherlock closed his eyes and feigned sleep.
“I know you’re ruddy faking,” John spat. “You’re probably still so wired from everything that it would take a hammer to knock you out.”
“You’re certainly wired,” Sherlock said mildly, his blue eyes drifting over to his friend. “Your respiration is up, your blood pressure-“
“Damn my blood pressure,” John growled. “And while I’m at it, damn your deductions and, oh, by the way damn y-”
“John.” He could not ever remember Sherlock’s voice being this gentle, not even with Ms. Hudson, and though it soothed the cracks in his soul he felt the old anger rising again. He did not need to be coddled.
“I’m not coddling you,” Sherlock said, and John smacked the arm of the chair with his fist.
“Stop it. Stop it, Sherlock, or so help me I’ll rip that morphine port out myself and hurl it out the window!"
Sherlock swallowed, looking very white and pale, and said nothing. Mary came back into that deadly silence and moved between them. She had a large Styrofoam cup in her hands. Steam rose from the top and a teabag label dangled over the edge.
“It’s a little hot,” she said. “Want me to add some water?”
“No, just blow on it, please,” Sherlock said, and Mary puffed the dark, brown surface of the water obediently. After a minute and a half, she held it up to Sherlock’s lips and he drank.
“Two sugars?” he asked, one eyebrow climbing. His Vulcan eyebrow, she had called it once, and John had laughed out loud. She was aware of him behind her, watching her, watching them.
“Three,” she answered. “I thought you could use the calories.”
Sherlock nodded and sipped again, looking at her. They did not need more than a look between them to know what the other was thinking, to know that they were both thinking of John, of his pain and his rage.
“S’good,” Sherlock said. “How did you-they wouldn’t let me have any. I asked. What did you tell them to make them let me have it.”
“I didn’t,” Mary said. “I told them it was for me.”
Sherlock laughed, then gasped and his hands fluttered to his wound. John was on his feet instantly, taking one long stride toward the bed and pulling the covers back. He pushed the gown away to view the fresh bandages, the bruising that spread over Sherlock’s torso. Sherlock gasped and clutched the edge of the gown on the opposite side as though to preserve his modesty, but John shoved his hands roughly away.
“Lie still,” he hissed. “Leave off and stop fussing.” He shot Sherlock a look. “It’s not like there are any secrets among us,” he said tightly. Mary said nothing, but her eyes flickered to Sherlock’s and he grimaced. John caught it immediately and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He put his hand over Sherlock’s bandaged wound and glared at them. “Are there?” he demanded. “What else aren’t you-“
Sherlock lay still, afraid to move with John’s hands on him, but he looked at Mary and nodded.
“Magnussen,” she said. “He may try to act now that Sherlock’s back. It could come…at any time, really.”
Damn. Another level in Hell just opened up, yawning, but John found he was steady on his feet. “Where…what will he do?” He looked at Mary, at Sherlock. “Who will be target?”
Mary darted a quick glance behind them, making sure no helpful nurse bustled through to overhear them. She opened her mouth to answer-“
“Mary and I are both targets,” Sherlock said. He looked straight at John, his eyes compelling, so John didn’t see the look of momentary confusion on Mary’s face. Her own look clouded, then cleared suddenly.
“He might try to make a run at Sherlock while he’s here,” she said. She turned to John, careful in how she approached him, and handed him the tea. Numbly, he took it. “You stay with him. I’m going to prowl the halls a bit,” she said.
John’s mouth opened. “Mary, be…” He hesitated, not sure how to complete his sentence. “Be careful.” He swallowed.
“Sherlock says that Magnussen is the most dangerous man on the continent.”
“Sherlock is almost never wrong,” she said with a bleak smile, and was gone.
***
Mary had a lot to think about on her trip around the ward, but it did not stop her from noting everything was as it should be. She saw the detectives masquerading as family members of patients, but those were from Lestrade, so she did nothing but smile her hausfrau smile and make sure she did nothing that marked her as what she was. She had done it so long it was second nature, and even the hospital security tapes would show only a woman riddled with anxiety, pacing the hallways restlessly and aimlessly. They would not show an agent noting exits, phones, cameras. This was a hospital, and there was not much here that would stop anyone who tried to get in-except her. And she would stop anyone who tried to get in. Of that she had no doubt at all.
She was almost back to the room when a man stepped directly in front of her. She had seen him, had known him for what he was, but she startled like she should and turned anxious eyes up to him.
“Oh! You-sorry. You startled me.” Mary noted the gun beneath his coat, calculated exactly what angle she would use to snap his neck, smiling nervously all the while.
“Ms. Watson. Sorry. Go right in.”
She smiled cringingly and went in. Mycroft and John were squared off at the foot of Sherlock’s bed. The nurses had all apparently fled in terror.
“No one is bloody going home,” John said with the barely restrained fury usually reserved for the terminally obtuse. “As long as Sherlock is here, we’re staying, so you can either help or sod off.”
Over the months of their engagement, Mary had had many occasions to see Mycroft and John interact, but the sight of John’s compact form successfully facing down Mycroft’s studied nonchalance never failed to thrill her. Or amuse her. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling and refused to look at Sherlock, who was smirking in supreme satisfaction.
“Yes, see if they won’t bring in another chair, brother dear,” Sherlock drawled. “Or a cot. And I’d like to see the papers.”
The room was already strewn with papers, although John had made a cursory attempt to corral them as Sherlock had thrown them about the room.
Mycroft ignored John by the simple expedient of looking over his head and gave Sherlock a look of pained exasperation. “Sherlock, this is a hospital, not a sitting room. The nurses have been complaining about all the…” He looked behind him, acknowledging Mary with a nod. “…people you’ve been having in here, and they said you threw a tray-“
“I was aiming for the cart. Sue me.”
“If you don’t behave-“
“I am behaving. I’m behaving in a perfectly reasonable way for someone like me who-“
“There is no one like you,” Mycroft snapped.
Mary muttered “Thank goodness,” under her breath, and Mycroft stiffened and shot her a look. “How could we manage if there were two of them?” she said, smiling.
Mycroft’s smile was tight. “From my point of view, there might be three of them,” he said, and Mary allowed her eyes to grant him just a little sympathy. Loving Sherlock was hard, very hard. She knew firsthand. If Mycroft saw anything other than womanly sympathy in her eyes, he didn’t let on, but Mary didn’t think he had. She hoped he hadn’t, but she was tired of measuring probabilities against the impossibilities that life was currently throwing at her.
John got back in Mycroft’s field of vision by backing up closer to Sherlock, and his expression said he intended to be heard.
“Sherlock’s fine-
“Oh, yes-certainly. He had a hole blown in his gut and then ran away from the hospital to do God-only-knows.” John’s face hardened, and was that very impenetrability that caught Mycroft’s attention. He stepped closer and looked at John. “Or perhaps God isn’t the only one who-“
“Shove off, Mycroft,” Sherlock said from the bed. Mary thought the morphine must be working or he’d have said something worse.
“Sherlock!” There was a wealth of impotent rage in that name, and Mary felt her heart twist within her. What do you do when the person you love most in the world doesn’t want your love, doesn’t- She snapped the thought in two, stuffing it away. She could not think about that now. She could not think about that here.
“Sherlock’s fine here,” John said, glaring at Mycroft. “We’re fine. But we’re not going.”
”I could remove you,” Mycroft returned. He said it like he was suggesting an outing, a picnic, a day at the park.
John grinned, a savage joy on his face. “I’d like to see you try,” John said, and Mary had the supreme pleasure of seeing Mycroft’s face register genuine surprise.
“You would, wouldn’t you?” he murmured.
Mary felt Sherlock stir beside her and darted him a quick look. A million things passed between them, and she cursed herself vehemently, uselessly for not knowing to trust him. She had thought she and Sherlock were partnered only their protection of John-she had not realized that he had extended his grace to her herself as well. It was sobering, cataclysmic.
Mycroft saw the look-of course he saw it-and there was an instant when Mary felt his eyes sharpen on her face. If Sherlock’s penetrating gaze was chilling, Mycroft’s was paralyzing. Then the eyes shuttered, and Mycroft’s carefully pleasant face suddenly returned. The older Holmes sighed. “I’ll see about the cot,” he snipped.
“We don’t need a cot. We’ve got this covered,” John insisted.
Sherlock had to smile-his own personal army of two. He felt decadently safe. “I told you, brother dear, I don’t need you-“
Mycroft carefully pleasant face suddenly looked ferocious. “I told you to stay away from Magnessun,” he hissed. “For God’s sake, Sherlock, show a little sense for once. This time he only shot you. Next time-“
“He didn’t shoot me,” Sherlock said languidly. “I told you that a hundred times.”
“And next time, you might not be so lucky.“
Sherlock ignored his older brother and looked over at John. He and Mary shared a small smile.
“I’m very lucky,” Sherlock said with the ghost of a smile about his lips.
Mycroft left them in a righteous huff.