Chapter Text
“I would try to convince you, but everything I've got to say has already crossed your mind.”
He's been biting back images of IED blasts and the scorching sun since the vest was strapped to his chest; heavy like his old army gear but far less forgiving. Blinking his SOS to Sherlock had only been partially a conscious decision, and he's just begun to pull himself out of the panic with a bit of levity (“Well I'm glad no one saw that”) when the return of the sniper marks, red and burning into him like fire, send him crashing back into it.
The nod, when he gives it to Sherlock, is not given in a moment of clarity, as his flatmate no doubt believes. He does not see Sherlock. He sees Lieutenant Bill Murray as he gives the silent order to pull the trigger. But it doesn't matter because John's muscles are poised to the same course of action here in the present as they had been in the past; like some twisted sense of muscle memory. Pool or Afghanistan, John is ready for what happens next.
“Probably mine has crossed yours.”
The air around them stills and the smell of chlorine anchors John to the seconds building around him. Building to a crescendo. Moriarty breaks into a reptilian smile, confident within a moment where confidence is not due to him. As time slows down to a gut-wrenching beat, John watches the muscles and tendons of Sherlock’s hand tighten, just as Murray's had once done. He feels himself react before his mind can catch up with his body. It's purely semantics though because his mind would have given his muscles the order had it been granted the time.
There is heat and pain—pain that should feel deeper and more consuming, but doesn't (merely promises to in the future). Heat that is from a bomb but not a roadside bomb. And then all at once, they are enveloped by the cold depths of the pool.
The world around them is lost to the muffling and buoyant calm of the water, not to shouting and sand and insurgents, as his mind tries to tell him it does. When the flashes of light ease and darkness encompasses the air above them John pushes upward, one arm wrapped around Sherlock's chest, his lungs bursting for air. He has to push past chunks of tile and concrete as the debris glides listlessly through the space around them. When his fingers touch the familiar shape of a gun, he grabs it unthinkingly. The lights have gone out and so his movements are blind but he knows that shape and that weight better than he knows his own self. When they break through the surface and he gasps in desperation, and is relieved to feel Murray...no, Sherlock do the same despite immediately going limp in John's grasp. Another bolt of pain shoots through the wrist of the arm that holds his friend. Broken, he thinks but continues to hold on anyway. Later, much later, he'll recognize it as adrenalin. His ears ring and there is no light to see how injured the unconscious man is, though John is sure his own body had taken most of the blast.
They float for a moment, John choking on the residual smoke and dust. He feels that pull again, hears orders through the incessant ringing. Hears his name, hears captain and medic. He feels heat and dryness where there is none and tastes the sand in his mouth. Murray's chest rattles beneath John's broken wrist and he realizes that Bill is choking on air too and, distantly, how strange it is to smell chlorine in Kandahar.
Not so strange, though. He's in water after all. A pool, his tired mind supplies.
Cursing, John tries to swim to the edge. Already his limbs are turning to rubber and he finds himself sinking more than propelling himself forward. He reaches out blindly for any kind of handhold, gun still clenched tightly and making the task difficult, and he recoils when he comes face to flesh with a dismembered limb, detached and floating amidst the debris. He chokes back bile and forces himself forward. He knows his cargo has both arms and legs, can feel them; knows he does too. Maybe it belongs to an insurgent, perhaps the sniper—John doesn't care. He needs to find the edge of the pool, but darkness and a possible concussion (if the dizziness and nausea are any indication) are confusing his sense of direction. Just as he sinks again, inhaling another gulp of chlorinated water, his fingers bump against metal hanging loosely from the tiled pool interior.
The pool ladder!
He tries in vain to haul Murray out of the water and onto the ledge where he sets down the gun, but he simply doesn't have the strength and the pain is returning in waves. His head, his wrist, his back may very well be on fire despite being submerged in water. Instead, he shoves the broken wrist he's got secured around his cargo’s middle into the other man's belt, crying out in pain (he thinks, because he still can't hear for all the ringing). He grabs for the gun again, shoving his free arm through the warped metal of the ladder right to his shoulder, and then rams it through the top most rung. If he passes out now their heads will hopefully stay above water. If he can hold onto consciousness, John can still shoot the gun. He hopes to God there are still bullets in it. He can't say for sure, but it certainly feels like his gun—the one that shot the vest...
The vest that Sherlock shot, not Bill Murray, Sherlock. Not Kandahar, London. Not the Taliban, Moriarty. But definitely snipers...
His past and present are clashing and it makes John's head throb. Or perhaps the concussion does that, but this isn't helping matters either. Still, war zone or not, there is a threat. A threat to himself and a threat to Sherlock. John forgets about the limb in the water, and feels Moriarty's eyes on them in the darkness; hears movement despite his deaf ears. Panic, nowhere near to settling, forces his arm up awkwardly as it is still slightly hindered by the ladder rung. His hand is steady when he shoots with nothing to aim at and the blast from the gun leaves a bright picture of the room around them burned into his retinas. Mayhem and disaster, or what little the brief flash of light has granted him, is all that is left of the pool.
John's body is getting cold, so cold. If his wrist were not tucked into Sherlock's belt he'd have no choice but to let the man go to sink into the carnage-ridden water.
He is ice.
He is weak.
He is only holding the gun now because his fingers are stiff around it.
Beams of light from far off make his eyes flutter open. John raises the gun. Moriarty can't have Sherlock—John is determined to stop him at all costs. The lights give him something to aim at. He pulls the trigger.
Once.
Twice.
He loses count but eventually he realizes the gun does not kick back with the force of dislodging a bullet from its metal body. Perhaps it’s the prospect of an empty chamber, but John finds that he can no longer stop the oblivion from dragging him under.