"John."

"John."

Wha...? "Whoisit," John mumbled, comatose from sleep and evening grogginess. A body was pressed up against his, warm and inviting - John smiled, Sherlock, he thought, and then he buried himself deeper in the sheets for warmth. The cold sun was peeking through the window as it set beneath the trees surrounding Sherlock's home.

"John, wake up." And then a slender hand was wrapping firmly on his shoulder and shaking him.

In his daze, it felt much more violent than it probably was; John grumbled and turned on his side to see Sherlock looking down at him, his face lit blue in the muted light of a winter sunset.

"What time is it?" John asked.

Sherlock ignored him. "Do you hear that?" he responded, quietly, looking from John to something behind John, in the middle distance.

"Sirens? Yeah. We have sirens almost every day, Sherlock."

When Sherlock didn't say anything, staring intently at nothing in particular, his eyes wide and worried, John just rolled back over and closed his eyes. How Sherlock was acting was a bit unnerving, but it wasn't as if they'd never heard sirens before.

The first time John heard them, he couldn't rest all night. He'd gone into work asleep on his feet, eventually just giving up and telling Mr. Morgen he had a terrible cold. And then he'd gone home to rest, and the sirens started up again. The strange unearthly howling soon turned into more of a subdued buzz, and then it disappeared completely into the background ambience of his day to day life. He learned to sleep through them, as did the rest of Bristol.

John wrapped himself tighter in the sheets, and only finally relaxed when Sherlock reclined back into the bed.

It was nothing, as per usual.

***

"John, wake up."

"Huh?"

"Get up. Get your shoes on."

John blinked his eyes open. Sherlock was hopping over him on the bed, the weight releasing from the box spring and into John's body. Sherlock stripped his shirt off, urgently pulling on a sweater and thick trousers. John gave him a bewildered look. "What's gotten into you? It's just bloody sirens, Sherlock, come back to bed, for Chrissakes. Or if you want to do something, we can watch telly-"

"Listen, John!" Sherlock suddenly yelled.

The room went silent. And then, so muted underneath the blaring, caustic sirens, was the buzz of... airplanes? And was that thunder? No.

No.

John rose up from the bed, despite the freezing cold blast of air that hit him. He walked out of the room; into the dark hallway that led to the empty guest bedroom, accelerating into a jog. It was colder in here than anywhere inside the entire house and in boxers alone the hair on John's legs and arms rose; John's breath exploded from his mouth in pants of panicked air - no, he kept thinking, no - his skin was crawling like there were fucking maggots in his veins, bugs eating at his insides.

The far window, beyond the bed, overlooked the city of Bristol.

And the city of Bristol was burning.

Like a match. A central fire, several hundreds of feet high, was surrounded by pockets of smaller fires. They swallowed up entire homes, businesses, streets.

All those people. James. He was on duty, he was out there. He was out in the freezing cold winter dusk while the city was being bombed to hell. John could see black ant sized dots whipping across the sky, dropping even smaller dots into the earth. They bloomed into red flowers in the dark, setting off loud thunder in rapid succession, working their way across the city systematically.

And then the thought occured to him: they would be here, soon. They barely had 10 minutes.

"John!" Sherlock yelled from the other side of the hall. "We have to get Mrs. Hudson!"

John spared one painfully reluctant glance back at the tremendous orange skyline, smoke billowing from the fires. He tore himself back, running into Sherlock's room. Sherlock was already dressed, and tying on his boots.

"She's in the cottage," Sherlock said to the floor. "I have to go get her."

"I want to go," John said, pulling on pajama pants and a coat that was on the floor. He inserted his feet into a pair of slippers that barely provided traction, and began to walk out the bedroom door.

"No," Sherlock insisted, pulling himself into a stand. "I'm going."

"I'm going!" John barked, jogging down the hall. "And I suppose you can come, too!"

Sherlock frowned, making a silent note to himself, before chasing John down the stairs and out the door.

They ran across the snow; John's slippers slowed him down, so he took them off and broke into a sprint, picking up snow under his feet. Even more frightening was the high octane noise from behind them. Big booms and decrescendoed tonal whistles as bombs fell behind them, barely five kilometers away. John ran faster, if that were possible, towards the homely cottage on the edge of the woods behind Sherlock's home.

Sherlock arrived first, eventually passing John and bursting into Mrs. Hudson's home unannounced. "MRS. HUDSON!" Sherlock screamed from inside the cottage, his voice no longer tinted with that familiar affection. It was now sheer terror. "MRS. HUDSON!"

"I'm here," came a frail voice; John bounded into the home and looked to where Sherlock already was, rushing Mrs. Hudson off her feet and towards the door. John could see that Sherlock was consumed by the task at hand. His eyes were light with some otherworldly determination, behind the fear.

He quickly led Mrs. Hudson outside and John followed. Finally, he turned to him, his eyes burning white hot electric blue. "John."

He snapped to attention. The rattle of fighter pilots became exponentially louder, and Sherlock gripped John's freezing hands.

"Take Mrs. Hudson to the bunker, John" - Sherlock pointed in the direction of the house, in the direction of the approaching German bombers - "it's there."

John nodded, quickly, but then realized. "You're not coming with us?"

Sherlock shook his head.

"What about you?" John yelled. "Do you have a fucking death wish?"

"I need to go back, John," Sherlock explained, giving John a desperately reluctant look, "I - I'm sorry-" Sherlock planted a haphazard kiss on a patch of skin that was supposed to be John's mouth, and then broke into a sprint, away from them, towards the house. He quickly became a black dot against a stretch of icy gray winter night.

"Sherlock!" John shouted at him. He kept running. "Sherlock!"

John, gravely distressed but unable to stop, to slow down and understand what was happening, refocused on Mrs. Hudson, who was shivering in the chilly wind. "Here," John said, shouldering off his coat and handing it to her. He immediately felt the chill, almost as if he wasn't wearing a sweater at all. "We have to run. Okay?"

Mrs. Hudson nodded chastely as she slipped the coat on, her brows twisted into a worried knot. She began to run, although she was slow from age and cold and the snowy terrain. John jogged by her to make sure she didn't lose her balance, and they trekked their way to a small metal manhole about fifty meters behind Sherlock's home. He could see fire rising five kilometers away, and the panic in his heart grew and grew.

"Get in," he said to Mrs. Hudson. She carefully picked up her dress and began the descent into the dark bunker.

"It's dark, John!" she yelled up to him once she put her feet on the ground. "Be careful!"

John put his bare feet on the third rung of the metal ladder. He'd dropped his slippers somewhere on the way over, and now the cold metal was biting into his wet feet and palms, and he couldn't see, and Sherlock wasn't here, yet-

A loud explosion set off barely 500 meters away; it shook the entire bunker and snow blew onto his face, blinding him.

"John!" Mrs. Hudson yelled.

He climbed down the ladder and shut the hatch, which flooded the bunker in total, indiscriminate darkness. John blindly climbed down, surprised as his his pink-purple feet landed solidly on the dirty concrete ground. "Where's Sherlock?" Mrs. Hudson asked immediately, but his name in her mouth was drowned out by another loud explosion, significantly closer.

"I don't know!" John yelled over the whistle of another bomb hurtling down at them.

He hoped to God Sherlock wasn't in the damage radius. He truly hoped he wasn't a mangled corpse - like those children, in London - John's blood ran cold, just like the rest of him, his mind flashing with grotesque images.

Another round of terrible noises rained down on them, and the bunker began to shake with such intensity that Mrs. Hudson had to grip onto the ladder with both hands.

It couldn't be that... it couldn't be...

"Where's Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson shouted, her voice full of dread, "where's my boy?"

John spared a glance at the dark place where she was supposed to be, and the air became saturated with a mutual knowledge. I need to go back out, he thought.

"I'll be back, Mrs. Hudson!" John reassured her, quickly climbing back up the ladder and pushing open the hatch. He could barely notice his feet, which had become totally numb. Below him, Mrs. Hudson's face was white and distraught. He tried for a smile, ineffectual as it was, and then finally pushed himself out and into the open.

There was a sweltering heat blowing in his direction. The bunker's ladder was oriented away from the house; John couldn't see the blaze, but he saw the light cast on the field and forest in front of him and he felt it, as if it was going to singe the hairs on the back of his neck. John turned to face Sherlock's home.

It was no longer there. Instead of beautiful Victorian ivy and stone and wood was a fire that swallowed half of the entire house in the dark, and it was slowly inching its way across the building. It was grotesque, but John almost forgot what he was doing; he couldn't tear his eyes away from it.

It was only when a bomb went off, close enough for John's body to be pushed by the subsequent gust of super heated air, that John finally realized where he was, and where he wasn't. But everything was so loud - explosions and whistles and wind and sirens and planes flying overhead and red black fire roaring and spitting and snow, snow, everywhere, endless and cold and pure white, and no Sherlock, no Sherlock, where was Sherlock-

He'd never been so scared. His eyes were flying everywhere, his feet were burning numb, and in the chaos he could only see ash. (Or was that snow on his skin? It wasn't melting.)

John blinked a couple of times, breathing deeply and trying to locate anything, a man, a dark lump, a bloodied mass in the dead gray. When he inhaled - when he steadied his body against the fire and wind, like he was readying himself to shoot a gun - he could see everything more clearly. In front of the blazing fire was a shape that wasn't human - but it was in movement, heat waves flickering across its form.

"SHERLOCK!" John screamed, but his voice was drowned by the rattle of machine gun fire. "SHERLOCK!" he screamed at the tall black figure.

This was unreal. The thing was coming toward him but it was standing still, too, swallowed by heat and red flames. "Sherlock?" John said, surely not loud enough for anyone to hear but himself. He started to walk barefoot in the snow, towards the shape, towards what was Sherlock, what had to be Sherlock.

A terrifyingly loud creak of falling wood became the center of John's focus as he jogged in the direction of the house; a large part of the home crumbled and fire billowed out from its windows as hot air exploded outwards, pushing the black figure down, into debri and ice.

"Sherlock!" John yelled, breaking into a sprint. His legs were burning from running. His chest felt like it was underwater, heaving and constricted and barely able to absorb oxygen. He was choking on the ash and heat, on the panic, on the thought that Sherlock was a crumpled shape in the snow, dying, like embers in winter, like sunlight in a hurricane. His legs hurt but he only ran faster; he could hear the planes circling back around, artillery making mechanical clicks, jets tearing holes in the sky.

Sherlock's body was splayed in the snow, but he was moving, struggling to get up. He was obviously hurt; he'd fallen on random bits of debri, and it looked like he'd hit his head on the ice because blood was seeping down his face from a nasty wound on his hairline. As John approached, he blinked in pain and disorientation at the sight of his purpling bare feet. John grabbed onto his shoulders and pulled him up, wordlessly, turning back in the direction of the bunker. Beyond the field, fire was swallowing the entire forest. And a couple kilometers away, above the treetops, were German planes coming over quickly and with obvious intent.

"Come on!" he shouted, dragging Sherlock in the direction of the bunker. His body was lagging and so heavy, and he made no attempt to move, staring in complete shock at his violin a few meters away, split open on a piece of rocky debri. He tried to reach for it but John pulled him fiercely in the direction of the bunker, wrapping Sherlock's arm around his shoulder and dragging him away.

"No," he heard Sherlock slur. His limbs were like jelly. He crumbled into John, the weight making John stumble and fall into the snow, his hands burning as the ice cut into his palms. Sherlock painfully cried out as he twisted his ankle in the ice. Everything hurt. John wanted to catch his breath but couldn't. Sherlock was yelling incoherencies; there was blood and tears in his eyes.

"Sherlock," John said to him, in a voice that was falsely steady. "We - we have to get to the bunker. Okay?"

Sherlock gritted his teeth, tears streaming down his face. John garnered the last of his strength, and with it, he got up and hoisted Sherlock into his arms. He was fully off the ground, his ankle dangling perversely, uselessly. John clenched his jaw and began to stumble barefoot towards the bunker with the extra weight.

John didn't look back as he ran. He didn't need to; Sherlock's face was bright with agony as he watched his childhood home being consumed by red and black flame.