Heal Me

Chapter One.

A/N: I do not own any of the characters in this story, bar original creations. I recognise that BBC own the Sherlock characters I am writing about.

This story was completed on the 19th of June 2015

I don't think I ever believed in a God. Which is probably a good thing. If I had believed in a God, a God who was supposed to look after all sacred life, a God who was meant to guide me...I think I would have been harshly disappointed after all I had been through.  You see, if there was some other being who loved each and everyone one of us. If there was a being who even sometimes showed itself to us, to tell us which way to go, to help us, this creature would not condone war. Or death. So much death. 

I remember thinking all of this as I lay on an uneven, muddy ground. I thought this as I saw my brother die. I thought this as I lay bleeding for hours and hours. I can still hear the sounds of blood gurgling in the men's throats around me. Bang! Bang! Bang! The young men who had boasted in training, the men who had said they would take on the enemy single-handedly, were now lying beside me. Some were already dead, some were whimpering pathetically. I don't blame them. The pain was unbearable.

As I saw my own blood mix with the mud, I was thankful that I didn't believe in God. 

My name is Sherlock Holmes. I'm a detective. I have been for some years now, but I had a life before that. I feel as if my life has gone in three stages. Stage one, pre-war. Stage two, war and the recovery that followed. Stage three, forgetting it. I dream of stage one. I dream of a time when I didn't know how loud bombs were, of a time where I still had my brother, of a time before I met the love of my life.

I was sixteen when the war started. My brother was three years older than me, meaning that he could go. My mother didn't want either of us to be brought to the front, no matter how eager we both were to prove our strengths. Oh, how childish we were. Father was always quiet. He made it clear that he would have no say in whether Mycroft enrolled or not. He did insist that I didn't lie about my age. Despite how much I said I wasn't afraid, I am grateful that he didn't make me go.

We were a rich family. People in the village referred to us as 'Holmes, you know, the ones with the big house up the lane'. Being the richest family in a small town was probably one of the reasons me and my brother found ourselves being bullied, but in retrospect, those bullies were the least of our worries.

Luckily, Mycroft was never made enrol. Any time troops came to our town for volunteers, the volunteers got there before Mycroft. If only it had stayed that way every time. 

By the time me and my brother were made enrol, I was nineteen and he was twenty two. We had been very, very lucky. We had dodged so many attempts at bringing young men to fight, but our luck ran out. 

We were tested to see if we were fit enough to fight. I was a bit lanky and Mycroft was a bit chubby, but we passed the test. 

Mother hated to see us go and Father cried for the first time in my life. She gave us a packed lunch and told us how handsome we looked in our uniforms (me and Mycroft rolled our eyes in response). Dad told us how proud he was. He said that we were brave boys fighting for a good cause. He may have believed we were brave, but neither of my parents believed that we should have to fight. I didn't know better. I was happy to serve. I was happy to be ignorant. I was being made a slave to fight some other person's war, and my parents knew that. They were right not to tell me and Mycroft, or else we would have ran.

After our goodbye, me and Mycroft set out for our training together. I gained some muscle while Mycroft lost some weight. We would try and spend time with each other, seeing as he was the only person I felt comfortable around in this alien place, and he felt the same towards me. 

I was put in the infantry and I thank pure luck that Mycroft was too. So, we practised how to use rifles, we practised basic discipline, first aid and how to defend ourselves from a gas attack. 

We were being taught all these ways to kill, all these ways to avoid being killed and yet it hadn't sunk in yet. And, I was supposed to be smart. It hadn't sunk in, the harsh reality, that these people expected me to kill other soldiers. Kill. Murder. End their lives. What right did I have to kill someone? I had no right to put a bullet through anyone's brain, none at all. But, it hadn't hit me yet. 

Looking back, I feel like Mycroft may have realised before I did. He really was brave, staying even though he knew how easy it would be for him to die. I know that he stayed for me. He stayed to protect me and I wish he didn't.

Eventually it was time for us to be brought where we were needed. I was eager to finally get away from the training camp, into a different country. How exciting was that? Continental Europe, never touched before by my feet and I was so excited to go. 

I was brought to Somme.

As soon as I arrived, fresh faced and clean, my doubt started to creep in. These other men didn't look so happy. These trenches reeked and the air was stale.

Me and Mycroft and the rest of the men who had come with us were not put to the front straight away. We stayed behind, doing more training for an entire week. We were too far back to be hurt, but we could hear the bombs, we could hear screaming and we saw the people carried back on stretchers to the dressing station, belt buckled across bullet wounds in their legs. Some of the people carried stared at nothing, their dead eyes frozen in terror.

Then finally, after that last week of training, me and Mycroft were brought to the front. It was cold. It was raining and a man walked in front of us, saying that if we saw anyone refusing to fight, we were to shoot them. His words shocked me, and it was then that I truly understood that I was being used. I was just a pawn and these people didn't actually care about me or if I died. I was just one person among so many.

The air was cold against my face and I kept my fingers on my rifle, trying not to think of it slipping at an inconvenient time just because of the rain. I was next to Mycroft and I saw him give me a nervous smile, before looking back at the ladder we would have to climb up as soon as that whistle sounded. 

I was scared. I was so scared and there was no one to save me. No one was going to save me. I was going to die out here and I would lay, trampled upon and forgotten. I looked back at Mycroft one last time with frightened eyes and the whistle sounded.