Where We Started

Replaced by a Dead Person

"Do you think Henry Knight is anywhere here?" John asked, mostly talking to himself and not expecting Sherlock to answer.
"Probably smeared on the window." Sherlock said with a sort of cough. John looked over to the ash on the window and swallowed his discomfort; he couldn't look weak for Sherlock, like he lost hope. Maybe Henry was one recovering, who knew?
"We'll find him when you're getting better." John assured. Sherlock's fingers twitched a little bit on the no longer white sheets, and John had an odd desire to hold his hand, for both of their comforts really. But he didn't want Sherlock to think that he was only starting to get romantic because he was sick and dying, he didn't want it to come across as a guilty last act. Sherlock simply stared up at the ceiling with a sigh that turned to a quick cough. John could see the mark on his neck, red and swollen, almost like an occupied sign for the plague, no vacancy. There was no one in this world that deserved this fate, but in that list Sherlock was last. He had given up so much and lost so many that it only seemed fair for him to live his life fully, and not to die in some peeling paint death camp. After maybe a half hour a nurse came over, her bird mask staring down at them almost suspiciously, dipping a gross looking towel in a bucket and smearing water over Sherlock's forehead.
"How long?" she asked, the mask smearing her words until John almost couldn't recognize what she said.
"About a day." John muttered, only guessing she meant how long Sherlock had been infected.
"I'm sorry." She muttered, but obviously she didn't care much because she moved onto the next patient, leaving Sherlock's face dripping with dirty water. This place just couldn't be sanitary. John wiped the stray water from his face the best he could, Sherlock's green eyes following his movements but not protesting in anyway.
"You're okay." John assured with a soothing smile. Sherlock just grunted, closing his eyes briefly before opening them again, as if resting the smallest bit. None of the other sick had people caring for them other than the nurses, no one else had successfully snuck into the plague grounds. The nurses were doing their best, but some of these 'minor' cases were obviously starting to become severe. Some of the patients were screaming, some moaning, others full out crying, sprawled in their beds, some two three to a single cot, like fish in a barrel. Whether luckily or unluckily the bed now occupied by Sherlock had obviously just been cleared out, so he didn't have a bunk mate yet. But no one seemed to pay John much attention, he was Sherlock's voice, he answered the questions and made sure everything ran smoothly for the helpless boy.
"Why don't you try to get some sleep and we'll see how you feel after that?" John recommended. Sleep was pretty much the default medical treatment, turn it off and back on again, that'll fix it. Sherlock nodded briefly before shutting his eyes, turning in the bed so that his face was facing John, falling asleep almost instantly, as if having waited for the cue. John himself felt drowsy, but he didn't trust this place just yet. Unlike Sherlock he didn't have a trusted eye looking over him, and he had a job to do, make Sherlock slept peacefully and safely. When they learned about this disease John knew sometimes they threw sleeping people into the graves, sometimes they mistook them as dead or they simply wanted to clear up some space. So John sat there, slumped over in his chair and watching Sherlock. He looked peaceful, he might even be perfectly normal, like he had just fallen asleep up in the barn again, nothing wrong with him and no mark on his neck. John couldn't help but notice just how attractive he was, not that he could shamelessly study the features of his face. He wasn't what girls would call hot or what some would call handsome, it was more beauty, Sherlock was simply beautiful. His pale skin stretched tightly over his sharp cheekbones, his pink, soft lips, and his covered emerald eyes. But John didn't need to see them to know they were gorgeous, Sherlock's eyes weren't something you so easily forget for some reason, like they were permanently burned into his brain. If things had been different, if maybe Sherlock wouldn't have caught this disease or by some miracle he recovered, what would happen then? Would he get his wish, would John fall for him as Sherlock had? It was an odd thought, but it also seemed that getting through the plague wasn't something you walk away from unchanged. Maybe they would have some sort of something before John had to leave, if he ever found a way. It wasn't like there was some bus station going to the future, but Henry Knight was quarantined, he could be on this island if he wasn't already dead, so really this was the closest John was to being able to go back. Apparently there was a positive to every negative, except for Sherlock of course, then it was just to negatives stacked on top of each other. It wasn't like John wanted to leave Sherlock, but he had to get back home eventually, and it wasn't his fault that Sherlock had fallen in love with him. There had to be some bad luck floating around Sherlock, every relationship he actually wanted ended up in tragedy, and the relationship he didn't want ended with a diamond ring on Irene's finger.