Title: Not The First

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)

Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: Discovering that John had spent twelve months volunteering at a MSF trauma hospital in Afghanistan was surprising. But not as surprising as the discussion that followed.

Notes: This is probably the closest I'll ever get to writing a post-Reichenbach reunion story. I was folding laundry and suddenly heard the following line of dialogue, clear as a bell, in John's voice: "You're not the first friend I've lost, Sherlock. The best, maybe, but not the first." Over the next few days, the story surrounding that line swiftly developed into this piece. The Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders) trauma hospital in this story does actually exist. According to the MSF UK website's FAQs, former members of the military can serve with MSF two or more years after their military service has ended. Since John's therapist says that it's been eighteen months since their last appointment in the beginning of TRF, I figure that, allowing for some time pre-ASiP and post-TRF, John could have easily hit the two year mark, gone through the 4-6 month MSF application process, and then served a twelve month placement. Whether he'd be allowed to return to Afghanistan or not, I don't know; I claim creative license on that detail. I went back and re-watched every scene in the series where John gets angry in order to do my best to capture him here. When he does shout (i.e. the scene with Irene Adler in the power station, or the Baskerville lab), he brings his voice back down within a sentence or two. He doesn't throw things like Sherlock sometimes does, nor does he wildly punch people (when he "chins the Chief Superintendent" the only sign it's coming is a slight turn and drop of his shoulder). At perhaps his most livid, the scene where he confronts Mycroft about giving Sherlock's life story to Moriarty, John is almost chilling in his stillness. So much of his emotional response is in body language: little nonverbal details that move along a fine continuum of control, which I find endlessly fascinating to explore. Please accept my continued apologies on the lack of regular responses to reviews and PMs. My eyes tend to dictate how much focusing they can do at a time lately. I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who takes time to review and PM and I love the discussions I've had with so many wonderful fans of the show. As always, I truly hope I did the characters justice. Thank you for reading.

It wasn't until a week later – once John's reaction had faded to a persistent, haunted hurt shadowing his eyes – that Sherlock brought it up.

"You were busy," he broke another afternoon's silence. "That's…..ummm…." he cleared his throat awkwardly; it was like the bloody pool all over again, his mind racing and uncertain. "…..good."

"Ah. Found it then, have you?" John's lips compressed to a thin, bloodless line, one corner quirking in memory of a rueful smile he didn't currently feel; tone a washed out version of its former mildness, overlying the barest hint of sarcastic reproach.

Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, eyes flickering toward the pile of medical journals and hand-written notes stacked neatly at the left corner of the coffee table; a silent, pre-emptive argument. Any vocal progression, however, died in his throat as John cut him off mid-breath with a single, pointed look.

Despite the rift between them, the struggle for a new normal, they still knew each other so well; patterns falling naturally – even if occasionally unwanted - right back into place.

"You're not the only one who knows when their things have been moved." Somewhere under the weary numbness weighing it down, was an echo of the long-suffering voice that had first discovered Sherlock's sock index.

Sherlock blew out a chastising, mental sigh. He knew he should have taken better measurements of how things were arranged in John's dresser drawers. Especially since John's military precision had obviously escalated as part of the stress response brought on by his absence. "I -"

"Don't. Don't apologize." John's voice was strained, shoulders stiffening; crossed arms shifting fractionally as he clenched the hands tucked firmly against his chest.

Sherlock hadn't intending on apologizing. He needed to know what John had done during his absence and, as John hadn't been doing much talking over the last week, Sherlock had grown impatient and searched out the necessary data himself. He drew a breath to continue his original sentence, pushing on despite John's increased tension at the inhalation. "I don't understand why you've buried the commendation where no one can see it."

"Because it wasn't about me!" John exploded, shooting up from his armchair with all the force of a long suppressed detonation. Every muscle was tightened to the breaking point, chest heaving as his rough breathing defied any attempt at control, each cell of his body practically vibrating with the cumulated stress of walking the edge of too many bad days for too long. "Because I'm not Sherlock bloody Holmes, needing the whole world to know how brilliant I am!" He threw his left hand over his eyes, pressing his thumb and index finger into the edges of his eyebrows as if trying to compress the overflowing anger back into his body. When he dropped the hand back to his side, it was with knuckles clenched white against fine tremors that had absolutely nothing to do with the contents of his therapist's notes.

Sherlock was silent, processing the rare image of John with one foot over the line of his customary tight control. Even while drugged and hallucinating at Baskerville, John had sorted himself rather quickly; reining in his brief outburst of fear and hysteria and reestablishing a steady centre. His moments of anger tended to manifest as heightened military body language, tight facial expressions, icily still silences, and the occasional shout that, within a sentence or two, was brought back down to a more controlled, but no less dangerous, simmering fire. But this…..this was proving to be much more than a moment. John was either failing to gather that inherent control, or breaking all his usual patterns; possibilities significant enough to prompt Sherlock to action.

He met the raging storm in John's eyes with same fearlessness with which he'd faced down Moriarty's top lieutenants. "Twelve months with a Médecins Sans Frontières trauma hospital in Kunduz province, John. Letters and drawings from patients," he recalled the contents of the folder he'd found aloud, "photographs of you and your colleagues treating blast victims, commendation from the organization itself…hardly a stretch, calling that brilliant."

John deflated a bit, shoulders slumping inward even as he remained fixed where he stood. He had never really been one for pacing while agitated; simultaneously, he wouldn't give up and collapse back into his chair. Face the problem head-on, to whatever end: that was John. "It wasn't," he waved vaguely as if the word 'brilliant' was a tangible thing in the air between them. "It was…..necessary."

Sherlock frowned, brows furrowed as he worked at the puzzle within those words.

John recognized the expression with a heavy sigh. "Look. You….." he cleared his throat, fixing his eyes on a point beyond Sherlock; a soldier back on the parade ground. "…..did what you did," he swallowed thickly, "to stop Moriarty's last order; to track down his network. It's where you were needed. I volunteered because that's where I was needed."

"London needs doctors," Sherlock stated the obvious. "Particularly ones invested in current research," he gestured at the coffee table before coming to his ultimate point. "So there was certainly no 'need' to leave the country, let alone go back to the one where you were shot."

"MSF opened that trauma centre because of need, Sherlock; a need most of London couldn't even imagine. Before that hospital, the wounded and critically ill in that region had three options: travel all the way to Kabul or Pakistan, go to an expensive private clinic most of them couldn't afford, or die from lack of care. Now, thousands of people have been given a chance at survival. I've got more experience with IED and gunshot injuries than I'd care to remember and I speak some of the language. Of course I had to go back."

Sherlock watched as the flash of passion those words ignited was quickly extinguished by the all-consuming, numb hurt that now clouded John's eyes like an ugly, inoperable cataract.

John met Sherlock's deductive nystagmus with a defiant tilt of the chin, clasping his hands behind his back, his solid stance a silent challenge: Right, then, Mr. Punch line. Answer that.

Sherlock swallowed. "It was…..unexpected," he admitted. Of all the ways he'd imagined John getting on, volunteering at an Afghanistan trauma hospital hadn't been one of them. Although really, now that he thought about it, it had been quite stupid not to have considered such a supplier for John's well-established danger addiction.

"Was it?" John asked mildly. His voice was soft and sad, yet hard-edged at the same time. "What did you expect, Sherlock? That I'd just sit 'round the flat, alone?" There was a hint of ferocity there; a milder form of the same calculated manner in which Sherlock hurled pre-meditated words at people in order to provoke a desired response. "Well I did, for a bit," John admitted honestly before tilting his head a bare fraction with subtle, survivor's confidence. "And then I got on living with you being dead. I visited your grave, applied with MSF, packed away your things, sorted the body parts in the fridge, and never stopped believing that our last conversation was a lie. I mourned you, right up to the day you walked through that bloody door – all while doing a year's good work in the country that nearly killed me." John took a shaky breath that was more anger than sadness; one that, though drained, somehow strengthened rather than diminished him. He looked Sherlock right in the eye. "You're not the first friend I've lost, Sherlock. Not to trauma, not to suicide."

Sherlock's eyes widened in that rare, uninhibited way that meant something had truly surprised him.

"The best, maybe, but not the first," John added wearily, as if part of him was trying to soften the blow. Subconsciously, he probably was. Because despite his anger, he did care: about Sherlock, about this whole bloody mess. Even if just thinking about it hurt.

Sherlock's voice was unusually subdued. "John, I -"

John held up a hand. "I said, don't," he reminded him firmly; exhaustion edged with steel. "I'm just….." he paused, searching for the words. "I'm not used to getting those friends back." He scrubbed a hand across his eyes again. "All right?"

Sherlock caught the surreptitious glance toward the door; noted the minute shift in position that told him John was forcing himself to wait for a response. "All right." It was acknowledgement more than agreement, but judging by the way John responded, it was enough.

John nodded in brisk, silent gratitude and spun on his heel, striding to the door and grabbing his coat for another one of his increasingly frequent walks. He paused in the doorway, turning to face Sherlock again. "I'll be in for tea, okay?" he said quietly.

Sherlock met John's eyes and forced back an exclamation as everything suddenly came rushing together. Nodding in what he hoped was a suitably understanding manner, he watched John's eyes narrow slightly before, with a slight shake of the head, he accepted the response and jogged down the stairs.

Sherlock steepled his fingers under his chin as the front door closed, releasing his epiphany with a breathy, "ohhh." It all made perfect sense now. This was so much more than anger, numb hurt, and a deeply ingrained adrenaline addiction; because when John had turned in the doorway, Sherlock got a brief glimpse beyond the overwhelming shadow masking his friend's once open eyes.

And that fraction of a second was all he'd needed.

Sherlock was a master of minutiae, able to pinpoint a murderer's location and orthopaedic history in a few flakes of mud; for him, a millisecond of data in John's expression was the equivalent of an instantly downloaded dissertation. And though he was generally not quite as skilled when it came to noting emotional minutiae, if there was one subject Sherlock knew, it was himself; well enough to recognize that brief flash in John's eyes as something he had seen in his own sunken eyes years ago, the night he stood in front of Mycroft's bathroom mirror after another enforced round of rehab and brilliantly, defiantly, created his own profession.

It was the resigned, yet resolute spark of someone who had done it before and would do it again: the look of a man who knew how to survive.

The medical mission to Afghanistan, the heightened neatness, the research…that had all been John surviving. Striving to move forward with a determination born of multiple experiences with death and loss; one who knew that darkness intimately and had sworn never to let it drown him again. A man who had learned to honor himself and his friends by continuing the fight with what he had, who he was.

And just as that had been him surviving, the long walks, strained silences, and stiff conversations under haunted eyes since Sherlock's return…that was all John adjusting. Adapting. Dealing with a positive, but unexpected, interruption to the life he had rebuilt on survival experience; the one that had been, until a week ago, serving him quite well.

Perhaps Mrs. Hudson had been right when she told a confused Sherlock - in the wake of John immediately excusing himself for some air after first laying eyes on his newly resurrected flatmate - that "these things take time, dear." It had taken Sherlock weeks to transition from a genius junkie looking for stimulation and distraction to the world's only consulting detective. It would take time for John to just be John again.

Sherlock had died to save John's life; had killed for the safety needed to return to his side.

For someone who considered himself a scientist at heart, Sherlock wasn't generally the most patient of men.

But for this - for John – not only could he wait…..

…..He would.