I know you're all after me with flames and stones and I deserve it. I'm sorry!

No More Heroes

"He's awake."

Sargent Sally Donovan's voice was the first thing Sherlock heard when his eyes fluttered open to wet, November night. He was looking up at the stars - in the gutter, looking up at the solar system in motion almost - and all he could feel was icy rain hitting his face and the rusted taste of blood filled his mouth. He couldn't move; his body was frozen still but picked up the slightest of vibrations around him and multiplied them by infinity, making everything painful. His chin bobbed as he took in a sharp breath, his tongue lapped at a cut on his full bottom lip. His lungs ached as they fought to rise against stubborn ribs.

"Is he breathing?" Sherlock's mind registered another voice in the wet, night air and managed to piece together his senses enough to equate it to Charlie Hawkes, a new member of Lestrade's team whom he'd only met that evening, and his tone was tinged with worry.

"Just about," Sally replied and then a brief silence was permeated by the crackling of the radio in Sally's hand as she brought it to her mouth, "Freak's alive," she mumbled, "But it's serious."

"Is he breathing?" a voice broke through the static of the radio and Sherlock knew it instantly as DI Lestrade.

"Yeah," Sally replied on an exhale, "Shallow, though. His pulse is weak and there's a definite head injury. Lestrade, he's been shot in the back."

"Stay with him," Lestrade's voice cracked through the radio again. "I mean it, you and Hawkes, don't leave his side; the ambulance is on its way."

"Yes, Sir," Sally replied confidently, slipping the radio back into the loop on her belt.

Sherlock couldn't hear anything of significance after that; no voices, no traffic, no reassurance gave him any indication as to what had happened or why. Falling onto his face in icy droplets, the rain trickled down into his ears and consumed his senses. His head ached, his chest felt tight and a sharp pain in his shoulder stabbed persistently. But no words escaped his mouth to express his discomfort. The pain in his back, though, from neck to hips was agony; an all-encompassing glow of red-hot pain that refused to let up digging unrelentingly at almost his entire skeleton. But his legs were fine; they didn't hurt one bit. They didn't even tingle. They didn't even feel wet as the sky continued to teem down on him.

There were no flashing blue lights, no signs of help. There was Sally and Charlie and him. Not even John. He needed to tell him about the flat, or about the stars; he needed John to know about the stars. Where was John?

Hospitals were all the same to John, apart from those built up in Afghanistan by the Army, those were something all of their own merit. But hospitals, NHS ones, were unchanging in his eyes. They smelled strongly of disinfectant yet the rates of MRSA were still rather high; they teemed with people yet there was never enough staff; they were fast-paced with resources at their fingertips and yet the families and friend of patients were forced to wait, often without news, on plastic chairs with inadequate coffee and minds racing with the incurable disease of thinking the worst.

Silence was usually golden to him, but sitting in silence beside Lestrade – now off duty but still here, still waiting – was excruciating. The Detective Inspector tapped his feet, uncomfortable and nervous in an echo of John's feelings, and the sound grated on John's last nerve. "Greg!" he finally snapped, holding out his hand as if he were stopping an invisible bouncing ball. "Please,"

Greg sighed, his feet deadening immediately, "Sorry," his eyebrows rose a little in apology, "Nervous."

"I know," John nodded and leaned back a bit in the chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. The artificial lighting overhead was bothering his already pulsing temples; worry and florescent lighting didn't mix. "I know," he repeated, "So I am. God, I would have thought there'd at least be an update by now, if nothing else." he arched forwards again, elbows on his thighs and head in his hands, with such a curve to his spine that Greg deemed it too painful a position to mirror.

"Did you get in touch with his brother?" Greg asked as he sat forwards a bit, giving him room to squirm out of his coat. Two hours was more than enough and it needed to come off. He placed the coat on his chair as he rose to his feet and began to pace. It was better than sitting, it had to be. His arms folded neatly across his chest, he paced ten steps to the right, then back to John, then ten to the left and back again.

"Tried," John scrubbed his hands over his face, exhausted and looking it, and tapped his fingers on his cheeks as he cupped his chin. "I left a message in the end, asked him to call me back as soon as possible. I didn't elaborate too much but made sure he knew it was about Sherlock, and that it was important, and asked him to get back to me quickly." He looked up at Greg through worried eyes.

Halting on the spot, Greg pulled his hand through his silver hair, "Did Hawkes or Donovan mention what they saw? They were with him, they must have seen something?"

"I asked," John's dark eyes widened further, "Both of them said nothing was out of the ordinary that they could see until the shots were fired and even then, they saw nothing. All I can piece together is that after you and I left the apartment on Northumberland Street, the three of them trailed a little way behind. Sally said Sherlock turned back even after they did, he wasn't convinced about something but she didn't catch what. She said Charlie was coming closer to us and she was about to follow when the shots were fired." John sighed, "Greg, there were three bullets, three. Two hit his spine and one went into his thigh. I didn't see everything, I couldn't gage the full extent of the damage but if the bullets have hit his spinal cord – if that's the extent of the damage – we had better start praying for a miracle because, chances are…" he held his breath, his eyes lost and misting.

"Chances are," Greg picked up, "Sherlock's looking at paraplegia as a bonus over dying." He sounded a little frightened, hating to admit the words but having been around the block enough to know what spinal cord injuries meant.

John nodded sadly and then amended, "Monoplegia, if he's lucky, but…" he shook his head, resigned. "The fact of the matter is he's not getting out of this unscathed, no chance; he's more than likely not walking out of this hospital."

"I'll question Donovan and Hawkes further, I'll get everything they know or even bloody think they know," Greg scrubbed his stubbled face with large, calloused hands, exhausted and confused. "Whoever did this, whoever fired the shot, I'll…"

"Yeah," John nodded, rising to his feet and stopping Greg in his speech. He stood a good deal shorter than the DI as he faced him, "Yeah, Greg, I know you will." He was serious, thankful and sincere in his expression but he knew that nothing would happen, nothing could happen; nobody had seen the gunman, there was absolutely nothing to go on and he wasn't in the dark on that fact. John wasn't naïve enough to allow himself the fairy-tale, rose-tinted belief that this would be a smooth, open and shut case.

Greg returned to his chair, a little more comfortable now that his coat was folded into it, and sat back as far as he could to cross his left leg comfortably over his right. It was John's turn to pace now, unspent energy and fear bubbling up beneath his jumper. They'd consumed as much coffee as anybody could without vibrating and it was doing them no favours. Greg wanted to go out onto the hospital forecourt and smoke what would probably have been the most satisfying cigarette of his life but he couldn't bring himself to abandon John, not when he knew that the surgeons could arrive with new – potentially life-altering news – at any moment. He wasn't far wrong, either. As he rose to his feet, about to excuse himself to the toilets down the clinical corridor to their left, John reached out and grabbed his wrists and, when he looked up, he trailed two men, suited in green scrubs, most certainly approaching them and his knees went weak.

"Doctor Watson?" the younger of the two men asked as Greg and John both sat back into their seats. The surgeons took the seats opposite and waited for recognition from John and Greg.

"Yes," John croaked, then cleared his throat. "Yes, sorry. Doctor Watson, yes." He nodded.

The young surgeon smiled, "I'm Rick Chancellor and this is Alec Chalmers; we led the operating team for Mr Holmes." His face was kind but neither Greg nor John found themselves comforted. "The surgery was successful, from a restoration and repair standpoint. The internal bleeding caused by the two bullets that entered the spinal column was remedied and the bullets removed," he listed and John could tell he was gearing up for something worse. "The muscle damage to the thigh was minimal, surprisingly, and the bullet removed and a drain was inserted to prevent any build up inside." He licked his lips, a tell that was easy to read. "Whilst we don't know the extent of Mr Holmes' permanent status, and won't until he is recovered, we are in a position to say that regaining full mobility is unlikely. The damage to the spinal cord was immense," he explained as gently as possible, "Nerve damage, the spinal cord itself-," He began to waver and John took a deep breath.

"Is he paralysed?" John was blunt, his voice firm and authoritative. Look meek, mostly, as he might, his years in the army and attending a London university for his medical training had given him the confidence he needed to assert in times like this.

"Given the type of injury, something we call a T12-L1 Spinal Cord Injury," Doctor Chalmers began in place of the younger teammate with an older, more mature and soothing sound to his voice and John wondered why it was you always felt at ease with a Doctor who resembled your Granddad over one who resembled your brother. "We would anticipate complete paralysis from the lower back, yes."

Greg's inhale was sharp and loud and ultimately painful but John was silent. He had been expecting this and yet he'd allowed himself to hope, to pray, that somehow it wouldn't be this way. Chances, about ninety-eight percent, John reckoned, were that Sherlock would never get over this.

Given a moment for the news to sink in, though it was impossible to absorb, Greg and John were led to the ICU, under strict instructions to be respectful. The room was dark, lit only from the lights that illuminated the hallway outside of it, and was alive with static. Beeps, gushes, whooshes, pulsing and popping battled for lead vocals whilst a low, electric buzz sang a sad backup. The bed was raised high and laid completely flat and Sherlock's long, slender body was splayed across it, nude to the waist before disappearing beneath a blue, cotton blanket and white, hospital-issue sheet. His pale skin looked even paler against the stark, clinical room; his light dusting of freckle and moles on his chest all but invisible under the room's bluish glow.

Greg's eyes were drawn to Sherlock's face, smattered with small cuts and forming bruises; his mouth was obscured by an oxygen mask that fogged and cleared unsteadily and his head was held in straps to the bed to prevent him moving. He looked like a baby, propped between pillows and supports to stop him falling out of bed and, in effect, that's what was happening; the bars were pulled up on the sides of the bed and pillows were placed at Sherlock's sides, locking the lifeless creature into an oversized cot.

Sherlock's chest was covered with pads that led off to the heart monitor at the side of the bed and an antibiotic and saline drip ran into the back of his hand. There were tubes that disappeared beneath the blankets, too, but Greg didn't even want to know what their jobs were, wincing as visions filled his mind and threatened to make him vomit.

John stepped closer to the bed, as close as he could get without lying down on top of Sherlock, and took the hand free of electric of medicinal attachments and wrapped his fingers around Sherlock's as tightly as he could before the fear of breaking him made him loosen his hold a little. Sherlock's eyes fluttered slightly and he returned the grasp with a twitch of his fingers. His breathing was sharp and a little ragged but deep and lung-filling. Between the drugs, the pain and the earlier anaesthetic, he couldn't bring himself to waken up and John didn't envy him the exhausted, fuzziness in his head.

"Hey," John's voice was calm and low, whispered softly as Greg stood at the foot of the bed trying not to frighten himself at the Frankenstein's creation his mate of the past six-years had become. "It's OK now, it's alright. I'm not going anywhere." John's words remained softly-spoken and so, so calm that, for a moment, Greg felt as though he were intruding on something intimate. The wold didn't get to see this, the officers at the Yard weren't privy to this level of personal affection and Greg doubted Mycroft or Mrs Hudson were, either; the tender, loving, gentle closeness between the Army Doctor and his Consulting Detective, a moment usually just for them, on blatant display.

Sherlock gave a whimper – soft, small and echoic behind the mask – and a bubbled croak emanated from deep in his throat. His head moved in the tiniest motion as if to struggle against the confining straps and John placated him quickly, reaching up with his free hand to touch Sherlock's cheek softly and as closely as the straps across his forehead and chin would allow, keeping the other hand locked tightly in Sherlock's hand. "It's alright, shh," he said, his face pained. This was hurting, deeply.

He looked back, over his shoulder, and Greg could see the tears in his eyes. "What do you need me to do?" He asked, his voice equally as small as John's had been to Sherlock.

John inhaled deeply, trying to swallow down his emotions and be braver than he felt. "Can you go to Baker Street?" he asked and Greg's nod was instantaneous. "Can you pack a bag with our stuff in? If you ask Mrs Hudson she'll help, I'm sure. I need changes of clothes for a couple of days, I can go back after that and get sorted out myself. Erm, my phone charger, it's beside the TV on the locker. Erm…" he swallowed again, his throat constricting as Sherlock's fingers twitched against his hand. "Sherlock's pyjamas, maybe; t-shirts are in the second draw in the first bedroom, the bottoms are in the draw below and maybe some toiletries? Just raid the bathroom cabinet, you know?"

Greg gave another swift nod, "Of course," he licked his lips and silently decided there and then that he'd just grab anything in sight in the flat that he thought might be of some use. He watched John a moment, waiting for more instructions, and noticed his expression change. "John?" he said, his voice careful as a frown furrowed his brow. "What is it?" His head tilted to the side.

"We're going to have to leave Baker Street," John looked him square in the eyes.

"No," Greg dismissed with a tick of his tongue against his teeth, "Not necessarily – changes can be made to houses these days, John. I don't consider myself an expert but I've seen the shows."

"Not to places like that," John shook his head. "And then there's the stairs. Have you ever carried a wheelchair, Greg? Impossible to get up and down stairs that narrow and then with Sherlock in it…" he closed his eyes and wetted his lips with a quick lap of his tongue. In a moment, his moment of despair evaporated. "I can't think of anything we need, my keys are in my coat pocket. I left it on the chair by the door." He nodded over to the lone plastic chair along the wall beside the entrance with his coat thrown over it.

Greg stepped forward and cupped his hand onto John's tense shoulder, "I'll just be a phone call away. Anything you need, just get in touch. I'll try to be quick."

"Thanks, Greg," John blinked slowly.

Nervousness trembling right to his fingertips, Greg reached down and touched Sherlock's arm with his left hand, "We're going to do everything we can, Sherlock." John gave him a closed-lipped smile as he quickly pulled his hand back and, without another word, left them alone.

Sherlock continued to make occasional sounds, mostly incoherent bubbles of far-off pain, and it stabbed John's heart. He felt vulnerable, having to be stronger than he had since Afghanistan, having to be the one to placate the pain away and it was worse because he knew that he couldn't. Sherlock didn't know yet, wouldn't for some time, that the chances of him walking again were slim to none. John didn't know if, when the time came, he could be the one to tell him, to irreparably change Sherlock's life. At the same time, he didn't think he could stand for anyone else to shatter Sherlock's world with the revelation, either.

Alone, scared, vulnerable and angry, John let the first of his tears fall with Sherlock's hand tightly gripped in both of his own. He wasn't Doctor Watson, Captain Watson or even Sherlock's blogger anymore; he was just John Watson now, standing to lose a part of his life and he needed to cry about that and so he did. He let his breath hitch and shake, his chin tremble and his teeth catch his lower lip as it shook uncontrollably whilst tears cascaded down his stubbled cheeks. It took ten minutes for the pain to stop, or to at least become controllable again. The grief wasn't gone, not by a long chalk, but the urgency of his sadness had. He could be stronger now, would be stronger now. He had to be, there was no other choice.

I know you're all after me with flames and stones and I deserve it. I'm sorry!

I decided to reread this story when I got a bout of writers block and noticed some major issues in character placement and some big plot-holes that left me a bit randomly placed with where I wanted the story to go. Getting angry at myself for that I deleted the story and decided to go from scratch, rewriting and adjusting (swapping some people, adding and taking away information) and I am getting happier now with every rewritten chapter.

Although fundamentally the same story, there have been changes made and parts have been reworded so there are differences but I completely understand if you don't want to go over old ground and just want to wait for the new chapters. I'll work as quickly as possible but I don't want to rush and make mistakes. Hopefully, you guys understand that.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 699