"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.
It only took a day for the disease to really take hold, one day to make sure Sherlock couldn't get more than one word out at a time. John hadn't slept since the night before he found out about Sherlock's disease, but he didn't even feel the slightest bit tired. Sherlock's fever, if possible, had flared up even more, so hot now that John felt it from where he sat. He didn't even try to open his eyes; Sherlock just lay there, moaning softly. Another mark sprung up, next to the first one, but it swelled to a bigger size and just showed that Sherlock was doing a very poor job of fighting off the disease. Not like he could do anything about it of course, he had held on for a while but now everything was going downhill. Soon most all of their roommates had been moved to 'severe', Sherlock was one of the last of their little boat crew to go. But of course the beds were filled twice as fast as they were emptied, and it only took John's death glare at approaching nurses to get them to leave Sherlock alone. They came around some times, wiping dirty no longer cold water on Sherlock's head with a matted washcloth, making him drink water that wasn't clear, and even gave the two of them a loaf of semi-stale bread. No one really bothered with John, assumed he was a brother or something, he didn't actually have to show people the continually growing blue web around his chest. But he knew it was there, and he knew it was growing. Why it was growing he had no idea, but obviously it was helping him more than it was hurting him because it had given John a one way ticket to Hell on Earth, the one place he actually wanted to be. It was around ten o'clock when Sherlock's eyes opened abruptly, even from where he sat John could see they were filled with unbearable pain.
"Take me." he muttered, rolling his head over with difficulty. "To him."
"What?" John muttered, his eyes having been almost closing for once.
"Victor." Sherlock muttered. It's not like that name was foreign to John, he's heard it before, Greg had told him. Victor, Sherlock's previous lover, one of the first to die, had he been quarantined?
"You want me to take you to Victor?" John clarified. Sherlock nodded stiffly, and even that seemed to take a lot of effort. "Where would he be?" John asked, fully understanding that Sherlock had no idea and wasn't going to answer. John looked around the hospital, there were no nurses now, all gone for the night, and the sick wouldn't go tattling.
"Alright then." John shrugged. Most would be grossed out by carrying someone so sick in their arms, but in the time John had been exposed to this disease he hadn't been infected, maybe he was immune, maybe he had been vaccinated for it when he was young, but for some reason the disease didn't touch him. It took some effort to get Sherlock up from the bed, but once he was cradled in John's arms he weighed almost nothing. Sherlock had lost so much weight since he was infected, his once muscular arms were now simply bones and skin, his ribs were poking out from under his shirt and even his cheeks had sunken in. His hair was sweaty and dirty, there was ash smeared over his face from in the air, and he smelled like he hadn't taken a shower in weeks. But John held his feeble body to his chest like he was the most precious thing in the world, which indeed he was, and started for the door. The sick didn't sleep, John learned that the hard way, they simply closed their eyes and prayed for the end, they moaned, they cried, and he could even hear screams from the 'severe' wing. The door was locked but it was so old it only took a kick to get it open, the rusted iron flaking off the hinges and allowing John to carry Sherlock out the door. He hadn't been outside in ages, he had almost forgotten what the wind felt like, or the sea sounded like, or even what the gleaming moon looked like. These were small details he didn't focus on for the longest time, not since he lost Sherlock to focus on them as well. John walked a small brick path, overgrown with weeds, around the building and at the foot of the forest. There were huge piles of burned corpses waiting for him, still smoking and burning, making him shield Sherlock's eyes with his hand. If John had been fed in the last couple of hours he would've thrown up, but thankfully he avoided that. The pile was almost as tall as the building, the bodies partially burned, the flesh black, the clothes singed, smoke wavering out from inside, spreading the smell of flesh and ash through the entire compound. He saw women's hair still clinging to the skulls, eyeglasses falling off a partially decomposed ear, and even a child's skull rolling in the ashen dirt. It was the most horrible thing he had ever seen, something that would stick inside his mind for who knows how long. John forged on, keeping his hand over Sherlock's arms so that he couldn't see; John didn't want Sherlock to see what might become of him after a while. The forest wasn't far off, and it wasn't all that hard to spot three graves settled hastily in the mess of tree roots. Sherlock seemed to know they were getting closer; he twisted a little bit in John's arms and moaned softly. John had to walk over freshly lain dirt, trying his best not to picture what it was covering, and went to the only patch of green grass he could see for miles. The three stones were covered in ash of course, but the names were recognizable. Sir Jeffery Patterson, Beth Davenport, and the last, smallest stone, Victor Trevor. There were no inscriptions under them, no date of birth or death, it was unknown if they were married, parents, or siblings, only their names and that they died on this fateful island. John set Sherlock down softly in the grass, making sure he didn't bump his head on the way down, and just let him lay there. Sherlock did all he could to lift up his head, reading the inscription on the stone, and letting it drop back down on the grass. He was weak, but he stroked the spears of grass sticking up from the dirt gently, almost lovingly.
"Victor Trevor." John read, as if letting Sherlock know they had made it.
"Victor." Sherlock agreed in a huff of breath. John sat down next to him, on the side without the marks on his neck, and pushed his hair once again from out of his eyes. He knew that did nothing, but it was better that Sherlock knew someone had his back, that someone was there for him other than a long dead plague victim, buried in the ground underneath him. Sherlock looked at peace, ready to die even; he was back where he wanted to be, back with Victor, where he belonged apparently. John could help but feel a pang of jealousy, remembering what Sherlock had said in the loft. He had sort of made John feel like his heart was completely set on him, and even though John was reacting very poorly to it, he felt extreamly special. But it warmed his heart to see Sherlock, even in the state he was in, smiling softly as he lay on the ground above his long dead lover.
"Does this mean you're feeling better?" John asked, trying to break the uneasy silence. Unlike the town, the nights on the island were silent, there were no crickets, no birds, no distant talking, completely, unsettlingly silent. Sherlock didn't answer, but John sort of knew the answer to his question. Sherlock wanted to come here because he knew his final moments were approaching, he knew he was pretty much gone. John hated to admit it, but Sherlock's health was decreasing hourly, who knows when he would just give up? Sherlock's eyes had closed but John could see his chest rising and falling soflty, looking once again peaceful and plague free. It was nice to see him once again looking normal, as if he had just fell asleep at a grave, like some people did when they lost a loved one. It was like being with them again somehow, John could only assume. He'd never lost someone close to him, except some distant uncle he's never really met, but he knew that Sherlock couldn't be the first to go. It wouldn't be right, he was only seventeen, how could he die? This plague was evil, but maybe he could pull through somehow, there had to be survivors somehow right? John decided to push all thoughts, both positive and negative, from his mind, curling up next to Sherlock on the grass and deciding that it was time for a little bit of sleep after so long.