[Sherlock BBC] {Fic}
Title: Cycle 1/Round 1: Firsts
Series: thegameison_sh
Genre/Warnings: Drama, Angst, death of a minor character.
Rating: R-ish.
Characters: John. Mentions of others.
Word Count: 732
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, and this is fiction purely written for entertainment purposes and no monetary gain is attained from it.
John could count on his hands how many people he had killed with a gun. Eight of them were in Afghanistan. One in London. One at home.
He had been four. He wore shortie pyjamas with little trains on them, and was a light sleeper, a habit he still hadn't grown out of thirty-two years later. Banging from downstairs had woken him up, the bad language making him curious. Thinking that maybe his daddy had fallen over again he crept down to have a look.
His daddy was on the floor and Johnny could see his legs around the edge of the kitchen door. The television was still on in the sitting room, the blue light flickering over the walls and casting long shadows that Johnny didn't recognise. It was scary, and Johnny fought against his curiosity and fear until curiosity won and he crept closer, keeping his eyes fixed on his daddy's unmoving legs. His daddy always got angry when Johnny woke him up.
When the legs stayed still, Johnny moved closer.
Daddy was fast asleep. He had knocked his head again, Johnny reckoned, because a sore above his eyebrow was bleeding. He was going to be really grumpy in the morning. Johnny was just about to turn around and go back up to bed when he saw it.
It was lying on the floor in the corner. Johnny had only seen it a few times since daddy was always quick to hide it whenever he saw him. He'd always thought that his father just didn't want to share that particular toy with him, but now that daddy was asleep Johnny could play with it without getting into trouble. For a little while anyway.
He picked it up. It weighed more than his one did and he needed both of his hands to hold it.
Fun, he thought as he swung it around him, “Pew, pew, pew!”
The television flickered again, the shadows jumped, and Johnny pretended to shoot them. Then one of them spoke, startling him, and he jumped.
The toy made a horrible sound like a fire cracker exploding, and his arms suddenly hurt as he went tumbling backwards into the kitchen table. Johnny was too busy holding his head and crying at the pain from where he smacked it to notice the stranger drop to the floor, his cries too loud to hear the sound of the shadow man struggling to breathe. Too busy being raced upstairs by Harry to know when the man had finally stopped.
He hadn't known what death really was until that night. He just thought it was when someone went away forever. He didn't know it was when you put holes in them and life drained away like the water out of his bathtub.
Johnny never really forgot that shadow man who invaded his home one night and knocked out his daddy, nor did he forget how it felt to hold a real gun. And as soon as he was old enough, John joined the smallbore rifle club down the street and learned how to shoot properly.
John didn't have enough fingers or toes to count how many people he had killed through inaction.
There was Adam at college, who injected himself with whatever chemicals he could get his hands on. John knew that it would kill him one day, but he didn't do anything to stop him. His death was expected. John won't ever forget the way waking up next to a cooling body felt, the sheets beneath him wet and reeking.
The guy in Signals who he didn't even bother to treat in Afghanistan. Just gave him morphine and held his hand.
And then there was Sandy, his little King Charles spaniel. He knew that she was sick, had been making little distressed noises late at night, but he kept putting off taking her to the vet. He felt he had better things to spend his money on, and anyway, she would be fine, he told himself.
He found her curled tight at the foot of his bed one morning, courtesy of an easily-fixed hernia. Her large chocolate eyes were unseeing, fixed on the pillow where his head would have lain had he been home that night.
But the first person John killed, was the only one conducted with his bare hands.
John Watson was born tasting blood.
Series: thegameison_sh
Genre/Warnings: Drama, Angst, death of a minor character.
Rating: R-ish.
Characters: John. Mentions of others.
Word Count: 732
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, and this is fiction purely written for entertainment purposes and no monetary gain is attained from it.
John could count on his hands how many people he had killed with a gun. Eight of them were in Afghanistan. One in London. One at home.
He had been four. He wore shortie pyjamas with little trains on them, and was a light sleeper, a habit he still hadn't grown out of thirty-two years later. Banging from downstairs had woken him up, the bad language making him curious. Thinking that maybe his daddy had fallen over again he crept down to have a look.
His daddy was on the floor and Johnny could see his legs around the edge of the kitchen door. The television was still on in the sitting room, the blue light flickering over the walls and casting long shadows that Johnny didn't recognise. It was scary, and Johnny fought against his curiosity and fear until curiosity won and he crept closer, keeping his eyes fixed on his daddy's unmoving legs. His daddy always got angry when Johnny woke him up.
When the legs stayed still, Johnny moved closer.
Daddy was fast asleep. He had knocked his head again, Johnny reckoned, because a sore above his eyebrow was bleeding. He was going to be really grumpy in the morning. Johnny was just about to turn around and go back up to bed when he saw it.
It was lying on the floor in the corner. Johnny had only seen it a few times since daddy was always quick to hide it whenever he saw him. He'd always thought that his father just didn't want to share that particular toy with him, but now that daddy was asleep Johnny could play with it without getting into trouble. For a little while anyway.
He picked it up. It weighed more than his one did and he needed both of his hands to hold it.
Fun, he thought as he swung it around him, “Pew, pew, pew!”
The television flickered again, the shadows jumped, and Johnny pretended to shoot them. Then one of them spoke, startling him, and he jumped.
The toy made a horrible sound like a fire cracker exploding, and his arms suddenly hurt as he went tumbling backwards into the kitchen table. Johnny was too busy holding his head and crying at the pain from where he smacked it to notice the stranger drop to the floor, his cries too loud to hear the sound of the shadow man struggling to breathe. Too busy being raced upstairs by Harry to know when the man had finally stopped.
He hadn't known what death really was until that night. He just thought it was when someone went away forever. He didn't know it was when you put holes in them and life drained away like the water out of his bathtub.
Johnny never really forgot that shadow man who invaded his home one night and knocked out his daddy, nor did he forget how it felt to hold a real gun. And as soon as he was old enough, John joined the smallbore rifle club down the street and learned how to shoot properly.
John didn't have enough fingers or toes to count how many people he had killed through inaction.
There was Adam at college, who injected himself with whatever chemicals he could get his hands on. John knew that it would kill him one day, but he didn't do anything to stop him. His death was expected. John won't ever forget the way waking up next to a cooling body felt, the sheets beneath him wet and reeking.
The guy in Signals who he didn't even bother to treat in Afghanistan. Just gave him morphine and held his hand.
And then there was Sandy, his little King Charles spaniel. He knew that she was sick, had been making little distressed noises late at night, but he kept putting off taking her to the vet. He felt he had better things to spend his money on, and anyway, she would be fine, he told himself.
He found her curled tight at the foot of his bed one morning, courtesy of an easily-fixed hernia. Her large chocolate eyes were unseeing, fixed on the pillow where his head would have lain had he been home that night.
But the first person John killed, was the only one conducted with his bare hands.
John Watson was born tasting blood.