Summary: This story is set not long after the events in the first-season episode, “A Study in Pink,” and it follows soon after the events in my story, “Background Check”. John is wondering how he’s going to deal with the fact that his military-issued handgun is now illegal. He’s in for a surprise! (Thank you, Doomsteady and Jolie Black, for beta-reading my story! And thank you, sgam76, for your suggestions regarding my story.)
The door clicked shut behind John as he returned to 221B from his daily walk. Sherlock, he knew, was at Barts, conducting an experiment. It would probably be some hours before the consulting detective returned home. Trudging up the 17 steps, he entered the flat.
Emitting a deep sigh, John sank into the red plaid armchair; the mattress sank underneath him as he leaned back. The Union Jack cushion flattened against his lower back. It felt so good to be able to walk without a cane once more! That stupid bloody cane had made him feel so crippled.
After I’ve caught my breath, I’d better go upstairs and go through my paperwork, he thought, resting his arms on the armchair’s rests. And I probably need to clean my gun while I’m at it. He glanced briefly at the window. At least the rain which had poured through the night had stopped earlier, and the sun had come out, so the pain in his shoulder had subsided back to its usual dull ache. The sunlight poured in through the window, forming a rectangle on the carpet. John smiled, and then looked at the teapot on the kitchen counter. When I’m finished upstairs, I’ll make myself a cup of tea. He dropped his hands into his lap.
For the next several minutes, he reclined there, his hands clasped in his lap, reflecting on the events of the last several months, from the day he had been shot while treating a seriously wounded soldier during a retrieval mission to the days after he had moved into the flat with Sherlock. So much had happened within that time! Being shot while attempting to stabilize the critically-injured soldier; waking up in Selly Oak Hospital after being in a coma for several days (he didn’t even remember being a patient in the hospital at Camp Bastion, or the intensive-care airlift back to England, since he had been unconscious then); the operations at Selly Oak and all the rehab he’d had to undergo; the life-threatening complications he had been forced to endure; being discharged; and moving into a London bedsit on the outskirts of the eastern side of Greater London, south of the River Thames, and then, two months later, into 221B Baker Street with Sherlock, where he had immediately started solving crimes with his new flatmate.
Shifting position, John furrowed his eyebrows. And speaking of which—I can’t remember why I still had my gun when I was discharged. It should have been taken off him, as he knew, but since he had been still in the RAMC when he had been sent to England from Camp Bastion, apparently, no one had thought to do that. After all, once his shoulder had been initially operated on, and his condition had been stabilised at Camp Bastion, he had been sent by military transport plane to an airport in England, and from there, he had been taken by ambulance straight to Selly Oak. He wouldn’t have been required to turn in his service weapon until his discharge. My gun must have been packed with the rest of my possessions the whole time, he thought ruefully. As I would have discovered before my discharge, if I had unpacked my army pack a lot sooner!
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