Fic: Beneath These Skies - 5/7 (BBC Sherlock + Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance)
Title: Beneath These Skies
Rating: R
Wordcount: 6k this part, 37k overall
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars, hiddenlacuna
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: An ex-soldier-turned-healer, a priest, and an unhorsed knight flee for their lives after the invasion of their homeland. John didn't expect the road to safety to be easy, but the addition of a petite mage and a scowling former prisoner to their small band opens his eyes to horrors beyond imagining.
Warnings: blood, violence, references to torture, references to mutilation, references to past rape and threats of rape (no rape occurring during the course of the story), fantasy racism (racism toward magical creatures), war, suicide contemplation.
Prologue: Flight to the Border
Chapter One: A Fight in the Dark
Chapter Two: Behind Enemy Lines
Chapter Three: A Friend Lost
Chapter Four: Besieged
Sherlock shaves with steady hands. When they shake, he stops. John tells him where he’s missed a spot. He refrains from pointing and does not touch.
“Your hair needs trimming, too,” John adds. “They’ve a team of barbers. I think one of them is even good, if you can believe it.”
“It’s fine,” Sherlock says, running his fingertips over the contours of his cheeks. He nods and hands the closed razor to John.
“Thanks.” John shaves with the cooling water, and the resulting sting is somewhere between irritant and refreshment. As John scrapes his stubble away, Sherlock doesn’t speak.
John cleans up and returns Brian’s shaving kit to the man’s pack. Over a month living beside Brian and John no longer asks to borrow it. Unfortunate enough to pull latrine duty, Brian won’t be back for some time yet. John pulls the tent flap shut.
“So,” John says.
Sherlock doesn’t so much as shift in the dark.
“Did you try to tell them you aren’t Daein?”
Sherlock sighs. “While dressed as one? Reeking of the army?”
John turns his head and surreptitiously sniffs the shoulder of his own cassock. “Even saying you were impressed, though?”
“Would it matter?” Sherlock asks. “When they first came upon us, if Brian had been one of the soldiers, would you have stopped to ask where he was from?”
“No,” John admits. He thinks it over a while longer. “Strange how that works.”
“What, killing people?”
“No. Well, yes, sort of,” John says. “We spend so much time making a fuss over who’s what, but in the end, it only comes down to what side you’re acting on at the moment.”
“That’s never occurred to you before?”
“Not this blatantly, no,” John says. “Things were a bit clearer cut on the eastern border. That’s Daein, this is us, and those are the towns that keep changing hands. Even for the confusion, you were sure where it belonged. But here? No.”
Sherlock says nothing, but the weight of his eyes presses against John’s skin. It’s incredible how he can do that.
“What?” John asks.
“You haven’t tried to run.”
“Not after how the last time went, no,” John says. “And I’d need to get other clothes first, preferably a coat. A sword would be nice. But I didn’t know how I could make it back to the border on my own.”
Sherlock’s silence is very loud.
“What?” John demands. “You think I’ve thrown my lot in with them, is that it?”
“You’re still here, aren’t you?”
John stares at him, at the grey outline of the man. “Fuck you,” he says and stands.
Sherlock flinches.
“They took you alone, do you remember that? I could have gone off with my friends and Molly, but no, I let Daein take me. I didn’t throw in my lot with them, you arse.”
“John--”
“No. Fuck you.” He opens the tent flap.
“Where are you going?”
“Dinner,” John snaps. He steps outside and flings the tent flap shut. He takes two steps, stops, turns around and comes back. He sticks his head into the tent. “Do you want any?”
“What?”
“Food. Do you want any.”
“I’m staying in the tent,” Sherlock says, as if John doesn’t know Sherlock hides away after having a fright.
“I didn’t ask you to come, you tit, I asked if you wanted any.”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” John storms off.
When John returns, he does not throw the biscuit or jerky at Sherlock. It’s control for the sake of control, not self-image. Brian still isn’t back, which means he’ll be positively reeking tonight. There’s no one to judge John here except for Sherlock, and it’s certain he will anyway.
“Here,” John says.
“Thank you.”
John sits. He decides to tug off his boots and go to sleep. He lies down and listens to Sherlock chew.
Once John’s begun to drift, Sherlock murmurs, “You’re still angry.”
Just like that, John is furious. “Shut it.”
“You’re that afraid I think your loyalties have shifted.”
“What? No.”
“Compelled obedience is not loyalty, John. And fondness for the servants is hardly fondness for the master.”
John fumes a bit in silence.
“I’m not wrong.”
“No, but could you stop reading my mind?”
“...Ah. Self-doubt, so you take it out on me.”
“Look, I’m not--” John cuts himself off. He sits up. “Sherlock,” he says.
“Yes?”
“I thought you were dead. I’m glad you’re alive.”
Sherlock audibly blinks.
“All right?” John demands.
“Yes,” Sherlock says, the word almost tentative.
“But if we can’t trust the laguz to let us live, we can’t exactly turn to them for shelter. We’re heading back to Crimea, and if we fight there, they’ll want me healing the soldiers who are killing my countrymen, and I can’t do that. When there’s no chance of them killing anyone I know, sure, fine, I can live with that. I’ll have to live with that. But I can’t help them hurt my own people.”
“They’ll kill you,” Sherlock reminds him.
“I know,” John says. “So I’m sorry.”
Sherlock tilts his head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“If I refuse to heal, that means you won’t heal anyone either. I know that’s both of us dead on my morals, but I can’t do anything else. So I’m sorry.” Hell of a thing, for Sherlock to survive the past month only to be killed on John’s account.
“...And this is why you’re angry,” Sherlock pieces together.
“Yes,” John says. He can feel Sherlock studying him by sound and unnamed senses, the natural awareness of where a nearby friend keeps his limbs.
“You’re a very strange man,” Sherlock eventually concludes.
“No,” John says. “Just a loyal one.”
“As I said,” Sherlock repeats, “a very strange man.”
John exhales a sound that might be a laugh. They sit in a different sort of silence.
“I thought you were dead, too,” Sherlock murmurs.
“Well,” John says. “That would have been shit.”
Sherlock smiles: John can hear it.
Brian chooses that moment to return. Both of them gag immediately.
John coughs. “Speaking of shit.”
“Sherlock!” Brian exclaims.
“Ugh, go away.”
Brian laughs, Sherlock holds his nose, and John starts giggling uncontrollably. Stress or relief, there’s no telling. All he knows is that he’s happy now, the happiest he’s been in a month, and it’s not about to last.
The trees thin, and the underbrush thickens. The light grows, and the humidity lessens. Sherlock keeps the cassock hood up at all times, wearing it pulled down to his nose. John begins to regret not simply explaining Sherlock’s terrible night vision from the start, but it’s a bit late to come clean now.
Sherlock is off duty as it is. He walks with John during the day’s march and retreats to Brian’s tent the moment it’s set up. Occasionally, Father Jason will summon him back to the bishop’s tent for further questioning, and Sherlock takes to breaking down and trembling every time someone besides John tries to escort him. The first time, John had been close enough to hear the panicked screaming on his own. It can’t be said the Daein army doesn’t learn from its mistakes: when John arrives the second time, there is no one trying to hold Sherlock down while he screams not to be touched. They’ve simply left him on the ground, huddled and shaking, and they stare down at him in a tight ring of heavily armoured confusion.
“Everyone step back!” John orders.
They do, too well-trained to resist a command from a priest.
“Farther! Step back and look away. He knows you’re looking at him.”
On the forest floor, Sherlock continues to shake, arms wrapped around himself, body curled, face turned against the ground. John kneels down well over an arm’s length away. “Sherlock,” John whispers, and Sherlock’s trembling turns to gasping tears. John talks him through it until Sherlock is breathing steadily, almost silently. When ready to move on, Sherlock tugs down his hood nearly to his mouth.
The sight is always bewildering enough to hold off pity. The need for action is clear, blatantly obvious, but the loss of control is so contrary to everything Sherlock is that John can’t help but wonder if there’s some exaggeration to it.
Each time he wonders, he remembers where they met and his insides turn cold. Whatever the beasts have done to Sherlock, it was Daein soldiers who began this. For all John knows, those same Daein soldiers might be in this very camp.
John realises he has no idea how Sherlock manages to sleep at night. Fitfully, of course fitfully. The first three nights with Sherlock back, the third night bringing them out of the Sea of Trees, Sherlock tosses and turns. When he knocks against John, he always freezes and pulls in on himself. John wants to think it’ll be better once they’ve reached the fort ahead-only a day or two to go, one if they hurry-but putting Sherlock in a dark stone building with as many tense Daein soldiers as will fit is an obviously terrible idea.
He speaks to Father Jason about it in the only way the bishop might be receptive toward hearing. More simply put, he blames all the terrors on the beastmen and claims Sherlock should have a belt for practical beast-fleeing reasons. His trousers are meant for a much wider man.
“It’s not part of the uniform,” Father Jason answers.
“No one can see a belt under the cassock, sir,” John points out. “Incidentally, as we are part of your army, I do believe we are entitled to some form of compensation. As I’m aware that cash funds are running low, I am willing to take my first month’s wages in the form of a sturdy belt. I am also aware that this is well less than is actually due us, but am willing to make do in this time of conflict.” He smiles, very politely, and knows he’d never have been able to get away with this as a simple swordhand.
The new belt is extremely sturdy. John has to enlist a spot of help to punch more holes in it. By the time he returns to Sherlock, the man is agitated and close to trembling even in Brian’s tent. Having chased Brian out yet again, Sherlock sits with his hood down for once. John dumps the belt into his lap.
“This is... Oh,” Sherlock realises. “How did you...? What did you trade?”
“No, that was my wages,” John says. “Getting captured negated your wages. I still say that’s a rubbish lie.”
Sherlock’s hands go still upon the leather.
“We’re going to die soon, so I don’t see the point in saving up,” John says.
Sherlock stares at him.
“Look, I’m being realistic,” John says. “I’m sorry, but I am.”
“There are so many other things,” Sherlock says.
John frowns. “Sorry?”
“There’s an entire market trailing the army,” Sherlock says, as if this is something John wouldn’t know after life as a soldier. “Where do you think Brian runs off to?”
John shrugs. “They don’t have anything I want.”
“Nothing?” Sherlock asks.
“As tempting as it is, I don’t want to be drunk right now,” John says.
“There’s more than just drink, John.”
“Gambling enough as it is already, thanks.”
Though John must only appear as a vague outline, Sherlock continues to watch him. His mouth is in a strange shape.
“And,” John says, looking to the side and clearing his throat, “well. This never leaves this tent, all right? But I’m shit at prostitutes.”
Sherlock’s gaze does not waver.
“It’s not like normal sex. What’s that joke? If you want a prostitute to enjoy sleeping with you, don’t snore. I know they need the coin, but I can’t help but feel like I’m being annoying at best. I’d rather not pay for crap sex.”
Sherlock’s expression does not change, but something turns distant behind his eyes.
“I mean,” John amends, “I’d rather not the crap sex. At all. Once you’ve had it good, it doesn’t make much sense to have anything else. So if the last time was the last time I’ll ever have, I’m fine with that. Not with the dying bit, mind you. But I’m not left wanting, if that’s what you’re worried about.” By now awkward to the point of retreating, John gets up and reaches toward the tent flap. “If the belt still doesn’t have enough holes it in, I’ll have it fixed a bit more, all right?”
“Where are you going?”
“Outside. So you can change. If you want. I mean you don’t have to.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Stop tiptoeing, John.”
John settles back down. “I’m trying not to.”
Sherlock threads the belt through his trouser loops. He manages it under his robes, and he doesn’t gripe at John when John looks away. “The belt is fine,” he says instead.
“Good,” John says.
They sit for a bit.
“When they’ve tried to take you without me,” John says, not quite a question.
“I’m teaching them not to do that,” Sherlock replies. “They need to learn we can’t be separated.”
“I think they’ve gotten the message.”
“Mm.”
That night, when Sherlock tosses and turns, he doesn’t flinch away.
The next day, they reach the fort. It’s musty and old, a border marker between Gallia and Crimea that has never known true conflict. The Daein army is too large to fit inside in its entirety, not for a living situation. Priority is given according to rank and magic capability.
“See you, Brian,” John says. “Keep safe.”
“You too,” Brian says. They clasp hands. “Sherlock, you’ll be all right in there. Just you and John mind the knights.”
“We will,” Sherlock confirms.
John nods. There’s absolutely no question as to that. Stone walls block more sound than canvas ever could. They’ll also withstand any beast attack, which is why the men outside have begun to look rather nervous and rather expendable. Those camp followers who remain have already taken up a position to the north, keeping the army between themselves and the border with Gallia. It’s clearly not where the Daein army had intended to stop, much too small, but there’s no other fort they could reach within a week, and they do not have a week.
Brian offers his hand to Sherlock, and Sherlock pretends not to notice. It’s easy enough for him with hood pulled low.
“Sherlock,” John prompts.
Sherlock takes John’s arm.
Brian gives John an apologetic smile, then fruitlessly directs the same at Sherlock. He drops his hand, and there they part.
The barracks is large, the cots are musty, and the air is full of dust. Everyone is put to work throughout the fort, and John and Sherlock find themselves in the mages’ armoury, sorting tomes. John would like to think it a mark of trust, except it’s obvious that neither he nor Sherlock can cast from books. They are not allowed to touch the offensive staves for sleep and silence. No, this duty is no mark of trust.
“Full fire,” John says, handing the next from the pile to Sherlock. Sherlock sets the books in stacks upon the table, rows by elements, columns by freshness of power. “Half wind. About two thirds wind.”
If the mages in charge of sorting staves think to wonder why Sherlock can’t sense the magic in the books for himself, they never ask. John worries until the mages adopt John’s method of calling and passing. Hopefully, Daein will always chalk their oddities up to efficiency.
The walls are draughty, which explains Sherlock’s eternally worn hood. Once, in a rare moment alone, they test whether Sherlock can convincingly fake blindness when his sight is unhindered, and the answer is an emphatic no. Weeks without, he’s much too desperate for sight.
Beyond being indoors, very little changes. The army is still restless, though now cordoned off from itself. Sherlock still trembles if John ever leaves him alone, so John never does, not willingly. They take their pisses together, which is hardly anything unusual. “John’s stream tells me where to aim,” Sherlock claims when asked. “I don’t want to touch that bucket.”
Three days into their stay, the outworks are well underway. The sloping remains of a glacis are added to, the ditch between the glacis and the fort dug deeper. There’s call for spikes, but that means trees and carving. The process is slow.
Once off-duty, Sherlock tugs John after him up to the top of the fort. They stand with their hands on the battlement. “Describe it for me,” Sherlock says needlessly, facing into the wind and letting the breeze tug back his hood. The sun will set soon, but there’s still enough light even for him.
“The south is well-covered,” John says, very much aware of the watchman up there with them. “Most of the protection has gone into defending the men stationed outside. The glacis would probably force off humans-steep run up, hell of a fall into that ditch-but a tiger laguz would probably be able to use it as a ramp to jump over the ditch entirety. Unless they put those spikes in there, that’s going to be trouble. The wood is going to the camps, though. Some fences, more spikes. Really, they’re very big on spikes down there.
“It’s a bit obvious this fort was never meant for defending a large scale assault,” John adds. “Crimea has a long history of peace with Gallia. I don’t think we’ve ever been at war with them. This is more of a military outpost. It’s for peacekeeping in the surrounding countryside. Most of Crimea’s forts are.”
“Do you think they’ll be ready when Gallia advances?” Sherlock asks.
“I don’t know,” John says. “Daein’s laguz tactics revolve around bait, retreat and waiting for them to change back. The men outside don’t have much to retreat to. I know some of them are meant to come inside when the attack comes, but how many actually do will depend on coordination at the time. One panic at the postern, a door gets left open, laguz get inside, and we lose the entire ward, if not the fort. Daein’s discipline is generally good. Most of the ones we lost in the rout where the ones who broke and ran in the first place. That took care of most of the fresh recruits. The rest of them are out there, except for us and the archers.”
Sherlock nods. Hands on the merlons, body between them, he leans forward into the breeze and closes his eyes.
“Sherlock?”
“I haven’t felt fresh air in...” Sherlock shakes his head. “Too long.”
John frowns.
Sherlock leans a bit further over the edge.
“Enough of that,” John says, and tugs him back by the shoulder.
Sherlock looks at him sharply, then remembers himself. He settles for shoving off John’s hand. John looks over his shoulder at the watchman, but the bloke isn’t looking their way.
“What?” Sherlock asks.
“Look, it’s a bit of a drop, all right?”
Sherlock grins the way he does when he thinks someone is an idiot. It’s his usual grin. “Is it?”
“Yes,” John says.
Sherlock laughs.
“It’s not really that funny.”
“It is, actually.”
John shakes his head, looking out across the camp, across the ditch and glacis, and to the stumps where trees stood only days before. The cover for laguz decreases by the day. John supposes he should have some sort of opinion about that, something along the lines of “Good, I don’t want to die,” but nothing is forthcoming. He hopes he’ll be allowed to stay inside when the carnage begins again. That’s the extent of it.
“John?”
“Hm?”
Sherlock hesitates. “We can go in. If it’s too cold for you.”
John realises he’s hugging himself about the middle. He forces his arms down. “No, I’m. I’m fine.”
As if bent on proving him wrong, the wind blows a bit harder. Sherlock smiles into it, eyes closed, blissful as the wind plays with his hair. His hair is in absolute disorder, curly and wild here, matted and greasy there. He inhales deeply, chest rising with satisfaction.
“We can stay out a bit longer,” John says, looking away.
“Mm.”
The sun drifts lower. They might be missing dinner by now.
“How do you think the laguz will attack?” Sherlock asks.
“Probably all at once,” John says. “They might get through the outworks-I’d be surprised if they didn’t-but they’re going to break themselves on the fort.”
Sherlock hums agreement. “How would you do it?”
“Sorry?”
“How would you do it?” Sherlock repeats. “If you were a laguz general.”
“Waves,” John says immediately. “If there’s a time limit on the transformations, it’s the only thing that makes sense. A wave charges as beast, behind that come men, and they transform once they’ve reached our line.”
“Risky. Archers and mages, John.”
“Human instinct. If you’re being charged by something about to kill you, why focus on something that isn’t? And you realise there are such things as shields.”
“Shields?”
“Those metal and wood things,” John says. “They’re not just for show.”
“That’s hardly good against fire.”
“Animal hides soaked in water,” John says. “Simple. They must hunt, so they must have animal skins. That’s common sense stuff. Light wooden shield with wet animal skins, maybe some netting for arrows. They could come running in under those, then sling them over their backs and transform. After fighting up front, they’d have a shield to hide behind once they changed back, at least for a few minutes.”
Sherlock shakes his head.
“Why wouldn’t that work?” John asks.
“Laguz don’t stop fighting, John. It’s not in... It’s not in them.”
“So they’re going to keep doing stupid things that get them killed.”
Sherlock’s lips quirk.
John frowns at him. “Ashera, you’re morbid today.”
The shade of a smile fades. “Not today,” Sherlock says, eyes fixed on the horizon. “The breeze is too pleasant.” He starts to lean out again, out and over the edge.
John grips his sleeve at the elbow.
“What?”
“I’d rather you not fall to your death, that’s all,” John says. “I prefer you alive, generally speaking.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my balance.” He leans out a bit farther, tugging his sleeve away from John’s hand.
“Can you not do that please?” It’s hardly Sherlock’s balance John is worried about.
Sherlock doesn’t respond, eyes closed.
“Sherlock. Please don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Please don’t leave me alone.”
Sherlock opens his eyes. He pulls back from the edge, and John fights down the urge to tug him away, drag him back to the stairs. He would if touching Sherlock wouldn’t make him worse. That had come on much too suddenly.
“Thank you,” John says instead.
Guilt sits poorly upon Sherlock’s features. It doesn’t know how to fill his eyes and keeps spilling down to his mouth.
“Thank you,” John says again.
The guilt fills Sherlock’s face entirely.
“If you,” John says, and swallows. “If you need to kill yourself, I won’t fault you for it, but can you please wait until after they kill me? Or right before. Around that time. Will you wait?”
“I’m not going to kill myself.”
John sighs out relief. “Thank you.”
“No, John, I mean it. I’m not-that wasn’t.” Sherlock gestures to the parapet, to the air. He visibly searches for words. “I’m too angry to kill myself.”
“Good,” John says. “Me too.”
Sherlock looks at him long and hard, and then he pulls his hood back up.
They go inside.
“What’s Begnion like?” John asks that night. It’s two to a cot, everyone doubled up, and restless murmurs are as familiar as the scurrying of rats.
“Hm?”
“You were born in Begnion.”
“I was, ah. Conceived,” Sherlock replies. “My brother, he was. He was born there.”
“Your parents moved around?”
“My mother, yes. After Father was killed, she never felt safe in Begnion again.”
“I’m sorry,” John whispers.
Sherlock’s breath is warm against his forehead.
John closes his eyes and tries to sleep.
“It’s hateful,” Sherlock murmurs. “A veneer of peace and harmony over centuries of corruption. The senators can’t be trusted, and the Apostle has never heard the voice of the Goddess.”
The bottom of John’s stomach drops out. “You mean the current one. Because she’s too young.”
Sherlock says “yes” but he doesn’t say so immediately.
John feels a bit sick. It’s strange, the simple act of feeling. His emotions are something on the other side of a wall, out of sight and nigh beyond hearing. He can hear them crying but can’t make out the words.
“The buildings are tall.”
“What?” John whispers.
“In Begnion,” Sherlock whispers. “The buildings are immense in the capital.”
John lies very still. “Go to sleep.”
They do.
It’s a bad spot they’ve holed up in. The wells went dry on the third day, John hears on the morning of the fourth. No amount of hushing can keep that news from spreading. When water goes, life follows, and most of their potable drink was consumed in the forest.
As the word spreads, tension reaches breaking point after breaking point. Fights break out among the men. When John is sent in to handle disputes, Sherlock makes the majority of them worse. There’s a scuffle down by the front gate of all places, and John leaves Sherlock against a wall for that one.
“We know they’re coming,” John keeps saying. “We’re here for our own protection. No, I don’t know why they’re not here yet.”
They should have been. Everyone agrees on that: the laguz should have been here by now. They should have attacked. There should be something, and the utter lack of it has driven paranoia through the roof.
“Are you saying more time to build outworks is a problem?” John demands of more than one restless soldier. “I don’t see that problem.”
Evening begins to fall with no sign of attack. Sherlock drags John back up to the roof despite John’s foul mood. “You need wind on your face,” Sherlock urges. “Come on.”
They take their spots back up by the parapet, and the wind is from the north tonight. Sherlock spreads his arms, robes billowing, and the sight makes John giggle a bit.
Sherlock starts to laugh, and then it’s both of them in full, giggling and giggling. When Sherlock stops, he stops without warning and seizes John by the arms.
“I didn’t plan for you,” he says. “When I thought you were dead, I stopped planning with you in mind.”
“Makes sense,” John says with a bit of a laugh. His smile fades in the face of Sherlock’s earnestness. “Sorry, what are you talking about?”
“I didn’t plan for you,” Sherlock repeats, hushed, insistent. He keeps his eyes closed the way he does when they’re in public. The struggle is obvious.
“I didn’t plan for you either,” John says. “And I don’t think it matters.”
“I don’t want you to die,” Sherlock says. “I have an active dislike toward the notion.”
“I want you to live, too,” John says.
“This is a problem.”
John laughs. “Of course it’s a problem!”
Sherlock doesn’t laugh with him, absolutely refuses to, and they turn in for the night.
The fifth day is worse than the fourth, more so because the scouts and foraging teams haven’t returned. The laguz are out there. They wait without attacking. All agree that this is inexplicable in the extreme. The consensus is that the laguz will wait for nightfall and stage an attack in the dark. That being the case, all attention turns toward the torches.
John and Sherlock are set back on inventory duty, a great deal of silent, dull sorting that does nothing to relieve the tension.
Apropos of nothing, Sherlock says, “Swap sashes with me.”
“What? No, I’m fine.”
“Swap,” Sherlock insists, untying his own.
“Er, why.”
“Because this is mine and I want you to have it.”
John hesitates.
“Take it.”
“Is that all you have left?” John asks. He wants to offer something of his own in turn, but all he has left of his own belongings are his smallclothes, trousers, boots and socks. Soon to be sock, singular, if the holes grow any worse.
“Molly gave it to me at the manse. I’m not overwhelmingly attached.” He thrusts the length of blue cloth out at John. “Take it.”
John takes it. He removes his own red sash and hands it to Sherlock. Sherlock ties on the red with the knot on the left. He deeply insults John’s intelligence when John ties the blue on with the knot on the right, but habit is habit. John looks out of place as it is, wearing the blue. So many of the soldiers have assumed the blue simply signals Sherlock’s condition, nothing more, but everyone is too busy to pay John’s clothing much attention.
That night, when Sherlock moves toward the stairs and John follows, the light is fading quickly. It’s unnerving enough a day that John welcomes their new habit with relief. They’ve orders to be close at hand should fighting break out during the night, and all that means is they each carry a staff. Everywhere in the fort is close to the fighting.
It’s another southward wind tonight. When Sherlock opens his arms to better catch the breeze on his back, John does as well. There are more watchmen up top tonight and archers as well; if John can make Sherlock’s oddities appear typical of Crimean priests, it would be a help. This is one of Sherlock’s only pleasures, and John won’t let it be taken from him. Fortunately, the sight of the cassocks provides them with a small amount of private space, such as there is to be had.
Below them, brands are lit and torches passed. The army prepares to hold its ground. Cavaliers await orders for a sally, their horses restless. The unruliness of the horses is what confirms it: the laguz are about.
“John,” Sherlock murmurs.
“Hm?”
“Hold this for me.”
John already has one staff in hand, but he takes the other. He bites down a sound of surprise when Sherlock takes hold of the blue sash and forces the knot to the left side.
“There,” Sherlock says with satisfaction.
“You arse.”
“Mm, yes.”
“Take your staff back.”
“No. You’ll want it.”
John frowns at him.
Sherlock, of course, pretends not to see.
“Sherlock--”
“Look south,” Sherlock instructs.
John does, not sure what he’s meant to see in the waning light of the sun. He’d look down between the merlons-there’s an embrasure just before him-but he’s not terribly fond of heights. The wind cools the back of his neck. He shivers.
“And stay calm,” Sherlock adds, voice pitched low.
“Why?” John asks, immediately on edge.
“Will you do that for me?”
“Sherlock,” John says.
“Please,” Sherlock whispers.
“I’m calm,” John says.
“Yes. Stay that way. When I say, stretch out your arms to either side.”
“Er. Why?”
“If I told you why, you might not do it.”
John looks at him. Sherlock does not look back.
“John, please. Will you do this for me?”
“It’s that important?”
“Obviously.”
“I don’t understand,” John says.
“You will in a minute. Arms out when I say. Eyes ahead. Will you do that?”
There’s more at stake here than looking like an arse, but John can’t see what. “All right,” John says. He turns his face back to the south, over the parapet before him.
He waits a strange stretch of time, nothing happening, nothing continuing to happen but the lighting of torches below, of torches around them as daylight continues to fade. If there’s some sound they’re listening for below the murmur of archers ready with their bows, John can’t hear it.
For no reason John can name, Sherlock hisses, “Now!”
John stretches his arms, trying for a casual motion with a staff in each hand, and then there is shouting, there is a screech, and twin bands of sharp steel seize John below the shoulders and drag him. All in an instant, his legs smash into stone, the wall high even at the lowest point of the crenels, and the double clang of staff-on-stone nearly pulls both staves from John’s hands. The inescapable force of it drives him over, pulls him over, and his pained cry sticks in his throat as the fort drops away.
“Hawk!” someone screams. “Archers, fire!”
“You’ll hit him!” Sherlock shouts. “Stop, you’ll hit him!”
The roar of wind rips all other sounds from his ears. John might be screaming, he has no idea if he’s screaming, there’s a shout in his throat, a shout in his open mouth, but the rushing wind forces it back inside him. His shoulder, his shoulder. His legs.
He looks down, too afraid to look up, and this is why rabbits stop struggling. Because he looks past his bloody legs, past his feet, and all the way down to the camp, to fire marking where the ground lies, to the shadows stretching upon the soil. And, fuck, it’s getting closer. It is rapidly, rapidly getting closer, close enough that fire spells flare up toward them, fiery heat lost with the chill of speed.
Past the camp, past the ditch, past the glacis, a gliding swoop of motion, and the giant bird, the hawk, it begins to screech as it dives for the distant tree line.
Roars greet its cry. Roars below them, roars in the darkness of the woods, savage bellows as tigers chase their descent. Trembling and immobile, John quivers in the hawk laguz’s talons, unable to see. The roars veer away abruptly, and the hawk turns with them. John’s feet strike the side of a tree, and he cries out for the first time, more surprise than pain.
They’re guiding it. The tigers are guiding the hawk.
Loud grunts on either side now, dropping down low, and the hawk screeches one last time before releasing John. John knocks into a man’s chest and promptly drops both staves to better hold on, to better be caught. A poor plan, as he is immediately thrown to the ground. Legs blazing with pain, he cries out. He scrambles to sit up but ultimately fails to stand.
“Who the hell is this?” the man demands. A dark shape against the night, the man points at John. “Who the hell is that?”
“He was the only one wearing blue!” a woman protests. “You know I can’t see at night.”
“That’s a beorc! A Daein beorc.”
“I’m Crimean!” John protests. “I had to serve, or they’d have killed my friend. I’m Crimean, I swear.”
“I don’t care where it’s from,” says another woman, much younger sounding than the first. “It’s still a human.”
“Where did you get that?” the man demands, still pointing at John.
“Get what?”
“Don’t play smart.”
“No, I can’t see,” John says.
“The cloth around your waist.”
“It’s my friend’s,” John says. “He gave it to me. The second staff is his too. Can I have that back? I’ve torn up my legs.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, dear,” the older woman apologises. “I can’t see either, you understand. It’s very dark.”
Something growls behind John.
“He’s got a point,” the younger woman states.
“We’ll see,” the man says. Then: “Here.” His shadow moves. John reaches forward for the staff, a side-to-side motion until he finds it.
“Thank you.” The power rises through John’s arm of its own accord, the staff seeking only to fulfil its function. He doesn’t need to say the words, not for himself. Very fortunate, because in the red healing light, pairs of eyes in untold numbers gleam out of the shadows, and John’s mouth dries up.
Not at the eyes. Not at the claws or the flicking tails or twitching ears. Instead, it’s the sight of the woman squinting into the faint light, the small woman with the immense brown wings. The woman with the purple sash about her waist, tied just so on the left.
“Oh,” John breathes, and the light fades upon a changed world.
previous | next
Rating: R
Wordcount: 6k this part, 37k overall
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars, hiddenlacuna
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: An ex-soldier-turned-healer, a priest, and an unhorsed knight flee for their lives after the invasion of their homeland. John didn't expect the road to safety to be easy, but the addition of a petite mage and a scowling former prisoner to their small band opens his eyes to horrors beyond imagining.
Warnings: blood, violence, references to torture, references to mutilation, references to past rape and threats of rape (no rape occurring during the course of the story), fantasy racism (racism toward magical creatures), war, suicide contemplation.
Prologue: Flight to the Border
Chapter One: A Fight in the Dark
Chapter Two: Behind Enemy Lines
Chapter Three: A Friend Lost
Chapter Four: Besieged
Sherlock shaves with steady hands. When they shake, he stops. John tells him where he’s missed a spot. He refrains from pointing and does not touch.
“Your hair needs trimming, too,” John adds. “They’ve a team of barbers. I think one of them is even good, if you can believe it.”
“It’s fine,” Sherlock says, running his fingertips over the contours of his cheeks. He nods and hands the closed razor to John.
“Thanks.” John shaves with the cooling water, and the resulting sting is somewhere between irritant and refreshment. As John scrapes his stubble away, Sherlock doesn’t speak.
John cleans up and returns Brian’s shaving kit to the man’s pack. Over a month living beside Brian and John no longer asks to borrow it. Unfortunate enough to pull latrine duty, Brian won’t be back for some time yet. John pulls the tent flap shut.
“So,” John says.
Sherlock doesn’t so much as shift in the dark.
“Did you try to tell them you aren’t Daein?”
Sherlock sighs. “While dressed as one? Reeking of the army?”
John turns his head and surreptitiously sniffs the shoulder of his own cassock. “Even saying you were impressed, though?”
“Would it matter?” Sherlock asks. “When they first came upon us, if Brian had been one of the soldiers, would you have stopped to ask where he was from?”
“No,” John admits. He thinks it over a while longer. “Strange how that works.”
“What, killing people?”
“No. Well, yes, sort of,” John says. “We spend so much time making a fuss over who’s what, but in the end, it only comes down to what side you’re acting on at the moment.”
“That’s never occurred to you before?”
“Not this blatantly, no,” John says. “Things were a bit clearer cut on the eastern border. That’s Daein, this is us, and those are the towns that keep changing hands. Even for the confusion, you were sure where it belonged. But here? No.”
Sherlock says nothing, but the weight of his eyes presses against John’s skin. It’s incredible how he can do that.
“What?” John asks.
“You haven’t tried to run.”
“Not after how the last time went, no,” John says. “And I’d need to get other clothes first, preferably a coat. A sword would be nice. But I didn’t know how I could make it back to the border on my own.”
Sherlock’s silence is very loud.
“What?” John demands. “You think I’ve thrown my lot in with them, is that it?”
“You’re still here, aren’t you?”
John stares at him, at the grey outline of the man. “Fuck you,” he says and stands.
Sherlock flinches.
“They took you alone, do you remember that? I could have gone off with my friends and Molly, but no, I let Daein take me. I didn’t throw in my lot with them, you arse.”
“John--”
“No. Fuck you.” He opens the tent flap.
“Where are you going?”
“Dinner,” John snaps. He steps outside and flings the tent flap shut. He takes two steps, stops, turns around and comes back. He sticks his head into the tent. “Do you want any?”
“What?”
“Food. Do you want any.”
“I’m staying in the tent,” Sherlock says, as if John doesn’t know Sherlock hides away after having a fright.
“I didn’t ask you to come, you tit, I asked if you wanted any.”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” John storms off.
When John returns, he does not throw the biscuit or jerky at Sherlock. It’s control for the sake of control, not self-image. Brian still isn’t back, which means he’ll be positively reeking tonight. There’s no one to judge John here except for Sherlock, and it’s certain he will anyway.
“Here,” John says.
“Thank you.”
John sits. He decides to tug off his boots and go to sleep. He lies down and listens to Sherlock chew.
Once John’s begun to drift, Sherlock murmurs, “You’re still angry.”
Just like that, John is furious. “Shut it.”
“You’re that afraid I think your loyalties have shifted.”
“What? No.”
“Compelled obedience is not loyalty, John. And fondness for the servants is hardly fondness for the master.”
John fumes a bit in silence.
“I’m not wrong.”
“No, but could you stop reading my mind?”
“...Ah. Self-doubt, so you take it out on me.”
“Look, I’m not--” John cuts himself off. He sits up. “Sherlock,” he says.
“Yes?”
“I thought you were dead. I’m glad you’re alive.”
Sherlock audibly blinks.
“All right?” John demands.
“Yes,” Sherlock says, the word almost tentative.
“But if we can’t trust the laguz to let us live, we can’t exactly turn to them for shelter. We’re heading back to Crimea, and if we fight there, they’ll want me healing the soldiers who are killing my countrymen, and I can’t do that. When there’s no chance of them killing anyone I know, sure, fine, I can live with that. I’ll have to live with that. But I can’t help them hurt my own people.”
“They’ll kill you,” Sherlock reminds him.
“I know,” John says. “So I’m sorry.”
Sherlock tilts his head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“If I refuse to heal, that means you won’t heal anyone either. I know that’s both of us dead on my morals, but I can’t do anything else. So I’m sorry.” Hell of a thing, for Sherlock to survive the past month only to be killed on John’s account.
“...And this is why you’re angry,” Sherlock pieces together.
“Yes,” John says. He can feel Sherlock studying him by sound and unnamed senses, the natural awareness of where a nearby friend keeps his limbs.
“You’re a very strange man,” Sherlock eventually concludes.
“No,” John says. “Just a loyal one.”
“As I said,” Sherlock repeats, “a very strange man.”
John exhales a sound that might be a laugh. They sit in a different sort of silence.
“I thought you were dead, too,” Sherlock murmurs.
“Well,” John says. “That would have been shit.”
Sherlock smiles: John can hear it.
Brian chooses that moment to return. Both of them gag immediately.
John coughs. “Speaking of shit.”
“Sherlock!” Brian exclaims.
“Ugh, go away.”
Brian laughs, Sherlock holds his nose, and John starts giggling uncontrollably. Stress or relief, there’s no telling. All he knows is that he’s happy now, the happiest he’s been in a month, and it’s not about to last.
The trees thin, and the underbrush thickens. The light grows, and the humidity lessens. Sherlock keeps the cassock hood up at all times, wearing it pulled down to his nose. John begins to regret not simply explaining Sherlock’s terrible night vision from the start, but it’s a bit late to come clean now.
Sherlock is off duty as it is. He walks with John during the day’s march and retreats to Brian’s tent the moment it’s set up. Occasionally, Father Jason will summon him back to the bishop’s tent for further questioning, and Sherlock takes to breaking down and trembling every time someone besides John tries to escort him. The first time, John had been close enough to hear the panicked screaming on his own. It can’t be said the Daein army doesn’t learn from its mistakes: when John arrives the second time, there is no one trying to hold Sherlock down while he screams not to be touched. They’ve simply left him on the ground, huddled and shaking, and they stare down at him in a tight ring of heavily armoured confusion.
“Everyone step back!” John orders.
They do, too well-trained to resist a command from a priest.
“Farther! Step back and look away. He knows you’re looking at him.”
On the forest floor, Sherlock continues to shake, arms wrapped around himself, body curled, face turned against the ground. John kneels down well over an arm’s length away. “Sherlock,” John whispers, and Sherlock’s trembling turns to gasping tears. John talks him through it until Sherlock is breathing steadily, almost silently. When ready to move on, Sherlock tugs down his hood nearly to his mouth.
The sight is always bewildering enough to hold off pity. The need for action is clear, blatantly obvious, but the loss of control is so contrary to everything Sherlock is that John can’t help but wonder if there’s some exaggeration to it.
Each time he wonders, he remembers where they met and his insides turn cold. Whatever the beasts have done to Sherlock, it was Daein soldiers who began this. For all John knows, those same Daein soldiers might be in this very camp.
John realises he has no idea how Sherlock manages to sleep at night. Fitfully, of course fitfully. The first three nights with Sherlock back, the third night bringing them out of the Sea of Trees, Sherlock tosses and turns. When he knocks against John, he always freezes and pulls in on himself. John wants to think it’ll be better once they’ve reached the fort ahead-only a day or two to go, one if they hurry-but putting Sherlock in a dark stone building with as many tense Daein soldiers as will fit is an obviously terrible idea.
He speaks to Father Jason about it in the only way the bishop might be receptive toward hearing. More simply put, he blames all the terrors on the beastmen and claims Sherlock should have a belt for practical beast-fleeing reasons. His trousers are meant for a much wider man.
“It’s not part of the uniform,” Father Jason answers.
“No one can see a belt under the cassock, sir,” John points out. “Incidentally, as we are part of your army, I do believe we are entitled to some form of compensation. As I’m aware that cash funds are running low, I am willing to take my first month’s wages in the form of a sturdy belt. I am also aware that this is well less than is actually due us, but am willing to make do in this time of conflict.” He smiles, very politely, and knows he’d never have been able to get away with this as a simple swordhand.
The new belt is extremely sturdy. John has to enlist a spot of help to punch more holes in it. By the time he returns to Sherlock, the man is agitated and close to trembling even in Brian’s tent. Having chased Brian out yet again, Sherlock sits with his hood down for once. John dumps the belt into his lap.
“This is... Oh,” Sherlock realises. “How did you...? What did you trade?”
“No, that was my wages,” John says. “Getting captured negated your wages. I still say that’s a rubbish lie.”
Sherlock’s hands go still upon the leather.
“We’re going to die soon, so I don’t see the point in saving up,” John says.
Sherlock stares at him.
“Look, I’m being realistic,” John says. “I’m sorry, but I am.”
“There are so many other things,” Sherlock says.
John frowns. “Sorry?”
“There’s an entire market trailing the army,” Sherlock says, as if this is something John wouldn’t know after life as a soldier. “Where do you think Brian runs off to?”
John shrugs. “They don’t have anything I want.”
“Nothing?” Sherlock asks.
“As tempting as it is, I don’t want to be drunk right now,” John says.
“There’s more than just drink, John.”
“Gambling enough as it is already, thanks.”
Though John must only appear as a vague outline, Sherlock continues to watch him. His mouth is in a strange shape.
“And,” John says, looking to the side and clearing his throat, “well. This never leaves this tent, all right? But I’m shit at prostitutes.”
Sherlock’s gaze does not waver.
“It’s not like normal sex. What’s that joke? If you want a prostitute to enjoy sleeping with you, don’t snore. I know they need the coin, but I can’t help but feel like I’m being annoying at best. I’d rather not pay for crap sex.”
Sherlock’s expression does not change, but something turns distant behind his eyes.
“I mean,” John amends, “I’d rather not the crap sex. At all. Once you’ve had it good, it doesn’t make much sense to have anything else. So if the last time was the last time I’ll ever have, I’m fine with that. Not with the dying bit, mind you. But I’m not left wanting, if that’s what you’re worried about.” By now awkward to the point of retreating, John gets up and reaches toward the tent flap. “If the belt still doesn’t have enough holes it in, I’ll have it fixed a bit more, all right?”
“Where are you going?”
“Outside. So you can change. If you want. I mean you don’t have to.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Stop tiptoeing, John.”
John settles back down. “I’m trying not to.”
Sherlock threads the belt through his trouser loops. He manages it under his robes, and he doesn’t gripe at John when John looks away. “The belt is fine,” he says instead.
“Good,” John says.
They sit for a bit.
“When they’ve tried to take you without me,” John says, not quite a question.
“I’m teaching them not to do that,” Sherlock replies. “They need to learn we can’t be separated.”
“I think they’ve gotten the message.”
“Mm.”
That night, when Sherlock tosses and turns, he doesn’t flinch away.
The next day, they reach the fort. It’s musty and old, a border marker between Gallia and Crimea that has never known true conflict. The Daein army is too large to fit inside in its entirety, not for a living situation. Priority is given according to rank and magic capability.
“See you, Brian,” John says. “Keep safe.”
“You too,” Brian says. They clasp hands. “Sherlock, you’ll be all right in there. Just you and John mind the knights.”
“We will,” Sherlock confirms.
John nods. There’s absolutely no question as to that. Stone walls block more sound than canvas ever could. They’ll also withstand any beast attack, which is why the men outside have begun to look rather nervous and rather expendable. Those camp followers who remain have already taken up a position to the north, keeping the army between themselves and the border with Gallia. It’s clearly not where the Daein army had intended to stop, much too small, but there’s no other fort they could reach within a week, and they do not have a week.
Brian offers his hand to Sherlock, and Sherlock pretends not to notice. It’s easy enough for him with hood pulled low.
“Sherlock,” John prompts.
Sherlock takes John’s arm.
Brian gives John an apologetic smile, then fruitlessly directs the same at Sherlock. He drops his hand, and there they part.
The barracks is large, the cots are musty, and the air is full of dust. Everyone is put to work throughout the fort, and John and Sherlock find themselves in the mages’ armoury, sorting tomes. John would like to think it a mark of trust, except it’s obvious that neither he nor Sherlock can cast from books. They are not allowed to touch the offensive staves for sleep and silence. No, this duty is no mark of trust.
“Full fire,” John says, handing the next from the pile to Sherlock. Sherlock sets the books in stacks upon the table, rows by elements, columns by freshness of power. “Half wind. About two thirds wind.”
If the mages in charge of sorting staves think to wonder why Sherlock can’t sense the magic in the books for himself, they never ask. John worries until the mages adopt John’s method of calling and passing. Hopefully, Daein will always chalk their oddities up to efficiency.
The walls are draughty, which explains Sherlock’s eternally worn hood. Once, in a rare moment alone, they test whether Sherlock can convincingly fake blindness when his sight is unhindered, and the answer is an emphatic no. Weeks without, he’s much too desperate for sight.
Beyond being indoors, very little changes. The army is still restless, though now cordoned off from itself. Sherlock still trembles if John ever leaves him alone, so John never does, not willingly. They take their pisses together, which is hardly anything unusual. “John’s stream tells me where to aim,” Sherlock claims when asked. “I don’t want to touch that bucket.”
Three days into their stay, the outworks are well underway. The sloping remains of a glacis are added to, the ditch between the glacis and the fort dug deeper. There’s call for spikes, but that means trees and carving. The process is slow.
Once off-duty, Sherlock tugs John after him up to the top of the fort. They stand with their hands on the battlement. “Describe it for me,” Sherlock says needlessly, facing into the wind and letting the breeze tug back his hood. The sun will set soon, but there’s still enough light even for him.
“The south is well-covered,” John says, very much aware of the watchman up there with them. “Most of the protection has gone into defending the men stationed outside. The glacis would probably force off humans-steep run up, hell of a fall into that ditch-but a tiger laguz would probably be able to use it as a ramp to jump over the ditch entirety. Unless they put those spikes in there, that’s going to be trouble. The wood is going to the camps, though. Some fences, more spikes. Really, they’re very big on spikes down there.
“It’s a bit obvious this fort was never meant for defending a large scale assault,” John adds. “Crimea has a long history of peace with Gallia. I don’t think we’ve ever been at war with them. This is more of a military outpost. It’s for peacekeeping in the surrounding countryside. Most of Crimea’s forts are.”
“Do you think they’ll be ready when Gallia advances?” Sherlock asks.
“I don’t know,” John says. “Daein’s laguz tactics revolve around bait, retreat and waiting for them to change back. The men outside don’t have much to retreat to. I know some of them are meant to come inside when the attack comes, but how many actually do will depend on coordination at the time. One panic at the postern, a door gets left open, laguz get inside, and we lose the entire ward, if not the fort. Daein’s discipline is generally good. Most of the ones we lost in the rout where the ones who broke and ran in the first place. That took care of most of the fresh recruits. The rest of them are out there, except for us and the archers.”
Sherlock nods. Hands on the merlons, body between them, he leans forward into the breeze and closes his eyes.
“Sherlock?”
“I haven’t felt fresh air in...” Sherlock shakes his head. “Too long.”
John frowns.
Sherlock leans a bit further over the edge.
“Enough of that,” John says, and tugs him back by the shoulder.
Sherlock looks at him sharply, then remembers himself. He settles for shoving off John’s hand. John looks over his shoulder at the watchman, but the bloke isn’t looking their way.
“What?” Sherlock asks.
“Look, it’s a bit of a drop, all right?”
Sherlock grins the way he does when he thinks someone is an idiot. It’s his usual grin. “Is it?”
“Yes,” John says.
Sherlock laughs.
“It’s not really that funny.”
“It is, actually.”
John shakes his head, looking out across the camp, across the ditch and glacis, and to the stumps where trees stood only days before. The cover for laguz decreases by the day. John supposes he should have some sort of opinion about that, something along the lines of “Good, I don’t want to die,” but nothing is forthcoming. He hopes he’ll be allowed to stay inside when the carnage begins again. That’s the extent of it.
“John?”
“Hm?”
Sherlock hesitates. “We can go in. If it’s too cold for you.”
John realises he’s hugging himself about the middle. He forces his arms down. “No, I’m. I’m fine.”
As if bent on proving him wrong, the wind blows a bit harder. Sherlock smiles into it, eyes closed, blissful as the wind plays with his hair. His hair is in absolute disorder, curly and wild here, matted and greasy there. He inhales deeply, chest rising with satisfaction.
“We can stay out a bit longer,” John says, looking away.
“Mm.”
The sun drifts lower. They might be missing dinner by now.
“How do you think the laguz will attack?” Sherlock asks.
“Probably all at once,” John says. “They might get through the outworks-I’d be surprised if they didn’t-but they’re going to break themselves on the fort.”
Sherlock hums agreement. “How would you do it?”
“Sorry?”
“How would you do it?” Sherlock repeats. “If you were a laguz general.”
“Waves,” John says immediately. “If there’s a time limit on the transformations, it’s the only thing that makes sense. A wave charges as beast, behind that come men, and they transform once they’ve reached our line.”
“Risky. Archers and mages, John.”
“Human instinct. If you’re being charged by something about to kill you, why focus on something that isn’t? And you realise there are such things as shields.”
“Shields?”
“Those metal and wood things,” John says. “They’re not just for show.”
“That’s hardly good against fire.”
“Animal hides soaked in water,” John says. “Simple. They must hunt, so they must have animal skins. That’s common sense stuff. Light wooden shield with wet animal skins, maybe some netting for arrows. They could come running in under those, then sling them over their backs and transform. After fighting up front, they’d have a shield to hide behind once they changed back, at least for a few minutes.”
Sherlock shakes his head.
“Why wouldn’t that work?” John asks.
“Laguz don’t stop fighting, John. It’s not in... It’s not in them.”
“So they’re going to keep doing stupid things that get them killed.”
Sherlock’s lips quirk.
John frowns at him. “Ashera, you’re morbid today.”
The shade of a smile fades. “Not today,” Sherlock says, eyes fixed on the horizon. “The breeze is too pleasant.” He starts to lean out again, out and over the edge.
John grips his sleeve at the elbow.
“What?”
“I’d rather you not fall to your death, that’s all,” John says. “I prefer you alive, generally speaking.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my balance.” He leans out a bit farther, tugging his sleeve away from John’s hand.
“Can you not do that please?” It’s hardly Sherlock’s balance John is worried about.
Sherlock doesn’t respond, eyes closed.
“Sherlock. Please don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Please don’t leave me alone.”
Sherlock opens his eyes. He pulls back from the edge, and John fights down the urge to tug him away, drag him back to the stairs. He would if touching Sherlock wouldn’t make him worse. That had come on much too suddenly.
“Thank you,” John says instead.
Guilt sits poorly upon Sherlock’s features. It doesn’t know how to fill his eyes and keeps spilling down to his mouth.
“Thank you,” John says again.
The guilt fills Sherlock’s face entirely.
“If you,” John says, and swallows. “If you need to kill yourself, I won’t fault you for it, but can you please wait until after they kill me? Or right before. Around that time. Will you wait?”
“I’m not going to kill myself.”
John sighs out relief. “Thank you.”
“No, John, I mean it. I’m not-that wasn’t.” Sherlock gestures to the parapet, to the air. He visibly searches for words. “I’m too angry to kill myself.”
“Good,” John says. “Me too.”
Sherlock looks at him long and hard, and then he pulls his hood back up.
They go inside.
“What’s Begnion like?” John asks that night. It’s two to a cot, everyone doubled up, and restless murmurs are as familiar as the scurrying of rats.
“Hm?”
“You were born in Begnion.”
“I was, ah. Conceived,” Sherlock replies. “My brother, he was. He was born there.”
“Your parents moved around?”
“My mother, yes. After Father was killed, she never felt safe in Begnion again.”
“I’m sorry,” John whispers.
Sherlock’s breath is warm against his forehead.
John closes his eyes and tries to sleep.
“It’s hateful,” Sherlock murmurs. “A veneer of peace and harmony over centuries of corruption. The senators can’t be trusted, and the Apostle has never heard the voice of the Goddess.”
The bottom of John’s stomach drops out. “You mean the current one. Because she’s too young.”
Sherlock says “yes” but he doesn’t say so immediately.
John feels a bit sick. It’s strange, the simple act of feeling. His emotions are something on the other side of a wall, out of sight and nigh beyond hearing. He can hear them crying but can’t make out the words.
“The buildings are tall.”
“What?” John whispers.
“In Begnion,” Sherlock whispers. “The buildings are immense in the capital.”
John lies very still. “Go to sleep.”
They do.
It’s a bad spot they’ve holed up in. The wells went dry on the third day, John hears on the morning of the fourth. No amount of hushing can keep that news from spreading. When water goes, life follows, and most of their potable drink was consumed in the forest.
As the word spreads, tension reaches breaking point after breaking point. Fights break out among the men. When John is sent in to handle disputes, Sherlock makes the majority of them worse. There’s a scuffle down by the front gate of all places, and John leaves Sherlock against a wall for that one.
“We know they’re coming,” John keeps saying. “We’re here for our own protection. No, I don’t know why they’re not here yet.”
They should have been. Everyone agrees on that: the laguz should have been here by now. They should have attacked. There should be something, and the utter lack of it has driven paranoia through the roof.
“Are you saying more time to build outworks is a problem?” John demands of more than one restless soldier. “I don’t see that problem.”
Evening begins to fall with no sign of attack. Sherlock drags John back up to the roof despite John’s foul mood. “You need wind on your face,” Sherlock urges. “Come on.”
They take their spots back up by the parapet, and the wind is from the north tonight. Sherlock spreads his arms, robes billowing, and the sight makes John giggle a bit.
Sherlock starts to laugh, and then it’s both of them in full, giggling and giggling. When Sherlock stops, he stops without warning and seizes John by the arms.
“I didn’t plan for you,” he says. “When I thought you were dead, I stopped planning with you in mind.”
“Makes sense,” John says with a bit of a laugh. His smile fades in the face of Sherlock’s earnestness. “Sorry, what are you talking about?”
“I didn’t plan for you,” Sherlock repeats, hushed, insistent. He keeps his eyes closed the way he does when they’re in public. The struggle is obvious.
“I didn’t plan for you either,” John says. “And I don’t think it matters.”
“I don’t want you to die,” Sherlock says. “I have an active dislike toward the notion.”
“I want you to live, too,” John says.
“This is a problem.”
John laughs. “Of course it’s a problem!”
Sherlock doesn’t laugh with him, absolutely refuses to, and they turn in for the night.
The fifth day is worse than the fourth, more so because the scouts and foraging teams haven’t returned. The laguz are out there. They wait without attacking. All agree that this is inexplicable in the extreme. The consensus is that the laguz will wait for nightfall and stage an attack in the dark. That being the case, all attention turns toward the torches.
John and Sherlock are set back on inventory duty, a great deal of silent, dull sorting that does nothing to relieve the tension.
Apropos of nothing, Sherlock says, “Swap sashes with me.”
“What? No, I’m fine.”
“Swap,” Sherlock insists, untying his own.
“Er, why.”
“Because this is mine and I want you to have it.”
John hesitates.
“Take it.”
“Is that all you have left?” John asks. He wants to offer something of his own in turn, but all he has left of his own belongings are his smallclothes, trousers, boots and socks. Soon to be sock, singular, if the holes grow any worse.
“Molly gave it to me at the manse. I’m not overwhelmingly attached.” He thrusts the length of blue cloth out at John. “Take it.”
John takes it. He removes his own red sash and hands it to Sherlock. Sherlock ties on the red with the knot on the left. He deeply insults John’s intelligence when John ties the blue on with the knot on the right, but habit is habit. John looks out of place as it is, wearing the blue. So many of the soldiers have assumed the blue simply signals Sherlock’s condition, nothing more, but everyone is too busy to pay John’s clothing much attention.
That night, when Sherlock moves toward the stairs and John follows, the light is fading quickly. It’s unnerving enough a day that John welcomes their new habit with relief. They’ve orders to be close at hand should fighting break out during the night, and all that means is they each carry a staff. Everywhere in the fort is close to the fighting.
It’s another southward wind tonight. When Sherlock opens his arms to better catch the breeze on his back, John does as well. There are more watchmen up top tonight and archers as well; if John can make Sherlock’s oddities appear typical of Crimean priests, it would be a help. This is one of Sherlock’s only pleasures, and John won’t let it be taken from him. Fortunately, the sight of the cassocks provides them with a small amount of private space, such as there is to be had.
Below them, brands are lit and torches passed. The army prepares to hold its ground. Cavaliers await orders for a sally, their horses restless. The unruliness of the horses is what confirms it: the laguz are about.
“John,” Sherlock murmurs.
“Hm?”
“Hold this for me.”
John already has one staff in hand, but he takes the other. He bites down a sound of surprise when Sherlock takes hold of the blue sash and forces the knot to the left side.
“There,” Sherlock says with satisfaction.
“You arse.”
“Mm, yes.”
“Take your staff back.”
“No. You’ll want it.”
John frowns at him.
Sherlock, of course, pretends not to see.
“Sherlock--”
“Look south,” Sherlock instructs.
John does, not sure what he’s meant to see in the waning light of the sun. He’d look down between the merlons-there’s an embrasure just before him-but he’s not terribly fond of heights. The wind cools the back of his neck. He shivers.
“And stay calm,” Sherlock adds, voice pitched low.
“Why?” John asks, immediately on edge.
“Will you do that for me?”
“Sherlock,” John says.
“Please,” Sherlock whispers.
“I’m calm,” John says.
“Yes. Stay that way. When I say, stretch out your arms to either side.”
“Er. Why?”
“If I told you why, you might not do it.”
John looks at him. Sherlock does not look back.
“John, please. Will you do this for me?”
“It’s that important?”
“Obviously.”
“I don’t understand,” John says.
“You will in a minute. Arms out when I say. Eyes ahead. Will you do that?”
There’s more at stake here than looking like an arse, but John can’t see what. “All right,” John says. He turns his face back to the south, over the parapet before him.
He waits a strange stretch of time, nothing happening, nothing continuing to happen but the lighting of torches below, of torches around them as daylight continues to fade. If there’s some sound they’re listening for below the murmur of archers ready with their bows, John can’t hear it.
For no reason John can name, Sherlock hisses, “Now!”
John stretches his arms, trying for a casual motion with a staff in each hand, and then there is shouting, there is a screech, and twin bands of sharp steel seize John below the shoulders and drag him. All in an instant, his legs smash into stone, the wall high even at the lowest point of the crenels, and the double clang of staff-on-stone nearly pulls both staves from John’s hands. The inescapable force of it drives him over, pulls him over, and his pained cry sticks in his throat as the fort drops away.
“Hawk!” someone screams. “Archers, fire!”
“You’ll hit him!” Sherlock shouts. “Stop, you’ll hit him!”
The roar of wind rips all other sounds from his ears. John might be screaming, he has no idea if he’s screaming, there’s a shout in his throat, a shout in his open mouth, but the rushing wind forces it back inside him. His shoulder, his shoulder. His legs.
He looks down, too afraid to look up, and this is why rabbits stop struggling. Because he looks past his bloody legs, past his feet, and all the way down to the camp, to fire marking where the ground lies, to the shadows stretching upon the soil. And, fuck, it’s getting closer. It is rapidly, rapidly getting closer, close enough that fire spells flare up toward them, fiery heat lost with the chill of speed.
Past the camp, past the ditch, past the glacis, a gliding swoop of motion, and the giant bird, the hawk, it begins to screech as it dives for the distant tree line.
Roars greet its cry. Roars below them, roars in the darkness of the woods, savage bellows as tigers chase their descent. Trembling and immobile, John quivers in the hawk laguz’s talons, unable to see. The roars veer away abruptly, and the hawk turns with them. John’s feet strike the side of a tree, and he cries out for the first time, more surprise than pain.
They’re guiding it. The tigers are guiding the hawk.
Loud grunts on either side now, dropping down low, and the hawk screeches one last time before releasing John. John knocks into a man’s chest and promptly drops both staves to better hold on, to better be caught. A poor plan, as he is immediately thrown to the ground. Legs blazing with pain, he cries out. He scrambles to sit up but ultimately fails to stand.
“Who the hell is this?” the man demands. A dark shape against the night, the man points at John. “Who the hell is that?”
“He was the only one wearing blue!” a woman protests. “You know I can’t see at night.”
“That’s a beorc! A Daein beorc.”
“I’m Crimean!” John protests. “I had to serve, or they’d have killed my friend. I’m Crimean, I swear.”
“I don’t care where it’s from,” says another woman, much younger sounding than the first. “It’s still a human.”
“Where did you get that?” the man demands, still pointing at John.
“Get what?”
“Don’t play smart.”
“No, I can’t see,” John says.
“The cloth around your waist.”
“It’s my friend’s,” John says. “He gave it to me. The second staff is his too. Can I have that back? I’ve torn up my legs.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, dear,” the older woman apologises. “I can’t see either, you understand. It’s very dark.”
Something growls behind John.
“He’s got a point,” the younger woman states.
“We’ll see,” the man says. Then: “Here.” His shadow moves. John reaches forward for the staff, a side-to-side motion until he finds it.
“Thank you.” The power rises through John’s arm of its own accord, the staff seeking only to fulfil its function. He doesn’t need to say the words, not for himself. Very fortunate, because in the red healing light, pairs of eyes in untold numbers gleam out of the shadows, and John’s mouth dries up.
Not at the eyes. Not at the claws or the flicking tails or twitching ears. Instead, it’s the sight of the woman squinting into the faint light, the small woman with the immense brown wings. The woman with the purple sash about her waist, tied just so on the left.
“Oh,” John breathes, and the light fades upon a changed world.
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